-- , angel

[ANGELUS]

ANGEL


IN-CHARACTER
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FULL NAME: Angel ;; Angelus ;; Liam Byrne (human name)
NICKNAMES: The Scourge of Europe ;; The One with the Angelic Face ;; many others Cordelia and Lorne can think of
DATE OF BIRTH: 1727, sometime in October
AGE: 275
SPECIES: Vampire (cursed with a soul)
ABILITIES: Typical abilities of a vampire, enhanced by his advanced age: enhanced speed, pain endurance, superhuman strength; posseses a certain psychic link with the ones he sired, which allows him to sense their presence and even exeperience dreams based on their deeds; superior hand to hand and weapon combat skills; superior knowledge of demonology, history and fluency in several foreign languages; moderate skills in witchcraft and sorcery
FANDOM: BtVS & Angel

PERSONALITY:

There is no simple way to describe Angel and it is impossible to describe Angel without speaking of Angelus first. Only minutes after his rising from the grave, he gave signs that he would be no ordinary vampire, and the years that passed just confirmed it. Angelus' sadism knew no limits. He had made killing an art and every victim had been his masterpiece. He loathed diving in for the kill, like the common vampire, finding it much more fascinating to inflict slow physical and psychological torture on his victims, before putting an end to their miserable human lives. The pleasure he took in a kill had always been considerably greater when it came down to someone which Angel had allowed himself to become close to – probably the only positive aspect he couild find in the curse that had been cast upon him. Angelus displayed a cruel sense of humour most of the times. He wascalculated, liked drawing up plans before acting and hated those who jump head first into something, only to put everything in jeopardy.

Nothing of this was preserved once the gypsies cursed him with a soul. Years of being plagued by remorse over his deeds have impacted on his personality. The best words that could sum up what Angel had become are: broody, mysterious, isolated. Even though he wanted to help humans in order to atone for his past crimes, Angel preferred not getting too close to anyone, for fear that he could end up hurting them. The very few people which he had allowed himself to become close to have had the surprise to discover that Angel knew how to display the loyalty and support a friend was supposed to show, even if he was not the most open person or cheerful company. It had never been in his nature to be too open and talkative, which was why his attempts at being social were always likely to have ridiculous outcomes. In fact, having to socialize and make small talk has always made Angel nervous to the point of stammering and rambling in his speech. When he had truly fallen in love for the first time in centuries, Angel was reluctant to admit to his feelings, but when he did, he devoted himself completely to Buffy. She had become the most important thing for him, to the point in which he had put her above the opportunity to be normal once more. And he would have given much more than that for Buffy's sake. As much as he tried to pretend otherwise, she would always remain his first true love and carry a special place in his heart.

Angel used to display a strong sense of justice and took his mision to help the helpless very seriously, even more so after he found out that this would be a way for him to atone and fulfill the Shanshu prophecy. All of this has now remained behind. He is still Angel, the curse hasn't been broken, but his personality has become much darker. Where he used to fight only in defense, now he is the one to start the offense. He no longer wants to fight the good fight and help the helpless, he wants to destroy those who pick on them – one evil law firm in particular. For that, he uses more than questionable methods, leaving conscience aside, to the point in which he has managed to completely ignore it and his soul. Now he lacks faith in good, in humanity and in redemption, even in the Powers That Be and the meaning and purpose of everything they had ever made him do.

HISTORY:

The story begins in Galway, Ireland, in 1727, when Liam was born as first son into the Byrne family. Such were the times that the birth of a son was an important event and all hopes and expectations of his parents were put into him, to become a man of virtue, noble at heart, although he did not belong to noblety on the social scale. Under the harsh eye of his father, Liam grew into the exact opposite of what his father expected of him. His ambition in life was to get to see the world and there was barely a night which he wouldn't waste in taverns, abusing alcohol and enjoying the company of women. His father grew more and more disappointed with him and one day, after Liam tried to seduce the house maid after a night of drunken debauchery, he threw him out of the house. Liam obeyed him and left, even though it hurt him to leave his mother and his younger sister, Kathy, behind. With the hurt he dealt the way he knew better: he drowned it into alcohol, getting himself involced in a brawl which caught the attention of someone that was to change his life forever. As he walked out of the tavern, he caught sight of the enchanting blonde and followed her into an alley. His mind, hazed by the alcohol, was easily seduced with the promise that she would show him the world. Liam only felt a little pain when the woman bit down into his neck and he was vaguely aware that she made him drink her own blood from a cut that she made across her chest. Then his world faded to black and nothingness.

Darkness and nothingness were strange though. While his family and the ones he knew were gathered around his grave, mourning him, Liam could hear their heartbeats from within his coffin, he could hear the blood coursing through their veins, as if they called to him somehow. Somehow, soon, he was conscious once more – and also confused, in pain and trapped inside a coffin. He clawed out of his grave and was met with the same woman that had drawn him inside the alley, who was welcoming him into the world. Under her eyes, Liam made his first victim, a poor keeper of the cemetery. That first drink was enough to give the newly risen vampire a whole new perspective on the world, to fully awaken the demon inside and give it control over the darkest of impulses which Liam ever had. When offered to chose someone in the village as his next victim, he warned that he would take the entire village and kept to his word. First, though, he needed to pay a visit to his own family. Kathy opened the door for him and, thinking that her dear brother had returned to her as an angel, she let him. Moments later, her angel ended her life brutally, before doing the same with his mother. With his father he took his time, showing him that he has managed to make something of himself after all, before draining him. Even if his sire, Darla, tried ruining his mood by warning him that his father was the victorious one, because his disapproval would forever daunt him, Liam ignored her and proceeded with murdering every single human being in the village. From that day forward, bemused by the confusion his sister made, he took the name Angelus for himself.

For the years that followed, Angelus and Darla caused chaos and bloodshed throughout Wales and Northern England, before they reached London, where Darla presented him to her own sire, the Master. Despite the Master's greater age and position of authority, Angelus openly mocked him, not being deterred from it even when the other vampire chose to physically retaliate. To make his defiance even greater, he challenged Darla's decision to stay by the Master's side, underground, when she could join him, when he could offer her the view which she always wanted. Winning her over by his side, the two left and started their travels. In York, 1764, Angelus took great delight in killing the family of one vampire hunter called Daniel Holtz. The man, eager to seek vengeance, followed him and Darla all across Europe, nearly catching them in Arles. It was then that Angelus learned just how quick Darla could be to save her skin without thinking twice about leaving him behind in a burning barn. Fortunately, he made it out safely and met Darla in Vienna. From there, Angelus visited more European countries, even North Africa, in Darla's company, all the while with Holtz on their trail. Eventually the annoying vampire hunter disappeared, so Angelus had time to have a little fun by siring a puritan called Penn, who started mimicking his sire by killing his family and carving a cross on his victims' cheek. Later, in Prusia, he encountered a demon called the Beast, which he declined to join.

The year 1860 found Angelus back in London, in Darla's company. And his sire drew his attention to something which was soon to become Angelus' greatest masterpiece: a young woman called Drusilla, gifted with sight. After killing her family, Angelus massacred the convent inside which Drusilla had taken shelter, driving the girl insane before finally siring her. His creation soon got bored and sired a man called William Pratt, for whom Angelus became a mentor. That didn't last for too long because Angelus made a point to exploit William's greatest weakness, Drusilla, earning himself a rivalry that would last for centuries to come. The group, which became known as the Fanged Four, continued their travels until the year 1898 found them in Romania, the place where Angelus' existence would change dramatically. One night, he returned to their lodging, to find a present which Darla had brought him: a young gypsy girl. Angelus never gave a second thought about killing her – until the clan which she belonged to, the Kalderash, cursed him by restoring his human soul, and his conscience along with it. Overwhelmed by remorse over more than a century of crimes, Angelus tried to seek Darla's help, but she threatened to stake him and threw him out, disgusted by his soul. Burdened by his soul, Angelus wandered from place to place, until he managed to get reunited with Darla in China, during the Boxer Rebellion. He tried to convince his sire that the soul hadn't change him, he tried to prove himself by killing criminals and wrong doers, but when he failed to kill a baby, he fled again.

From that moment onwards, he began living in isolation, in order to keep away the temptation of feeding off humans. Changing his name to Angel, he moved to America, where he continued to avoid unnecessary interaction with humans. The '50's found him staying at the Hyperion hotel in Los Angeles, as awe inspiring resident of Room 217. Though the hotel was less than normal and strange suicides were taking place, Angel ignored everything, refusing to care or get involved. Eventually he started opening up towards a woman named Judy, whom he found hiding in his room. He helped her hide from a detective that was following her and soon enough he felt compelled to help the hotel residents free themselves from a Thesulac demon, a paranoia demon which affected their thinking and their behavior. By the time he found the way to defeat the demon, the people in the hotel were already deeply under the demon's thrall. Their paranoia made them turn on Judy, which, in fear, revealed the fact that Angel was a monster keeping blood in his room. Infuriated, the hotel residents attacked Angel, beating him up and hanging him over a railing. Angel survived to see the Thesulac materialize himself as the paranoia had reached its peak. Embittered by Judy's betrayal, crushed by what the ones he wanted to help did to him, Angel left the Hyperion, leaving everyone inside as prey to the Thesulac. Roughly twenty years later, his existence came to another dramatic turn point. Angel witnessed a robbery at a doughnut shop. An employee was shot and Angel stayed by his side as he died. The smell of blood overwhelmed him and he succumbed to the urge and fed on the body. Disgusted by himself, Angel pushed his isolation from humans even further, living on the streets and feeding on vermin for the next decades.

In 1996, a demon called Whistler sought him out on the streets who persuaded him to change his life and start fighting evil. Whistler took him to Hemery High School, where, from the shadows, Angel saw Buffy Summers being called to her mission as Slayer by Merrick. As impossible as it sounded, Angel fell in love with the girl immediately and his purpose became helping her in the fights which she had ahead of her. He kept a close eye on her and followed her to Sunnydale, where he eventually introduced himself to her as Angel. He assisted her in a few fights, keeping an aura of mystery around him and secrecy over what he really was. Much to his surprise, Buffy had also fallen in love with him and when the two shared their first kiss, the inevitable happened and Buffy found out that he was a vampire. This lead to distrust, which Darla's presence in town and her scheming only served to deepen. Angel managed to earn Buffy's trust once more when he chose to stake his own sire in order to save her life. Soon after that, Angel discovered a prophecy that foretold that Buffy would be killed by the Master. Angel had to watch completely helpless how the prophecy nearly came true but fortunately Xander saved his beloved one and the Master was defeated.

The calm days didn't last for too long in Sunnydale. Drusilla and Spike came into town and Angel found himself targeted by his own rival, which needed him for a ritual to restore a weakened Drusilla's power. Buffy saved him before the ritual could be completed. Angel and her began dating and he offered Buffy a Claddagh ring, a traditional Irish token of love. The two became gradually closer until, on Buffy's birthday, they spent their first together and Angel experienced a moment of pure happiness. It was all it took to break the gypsy curse and make Angel revert to his soulless self, Angelus, who joined Drusilla and Spike with the goal of destroying Buffy for the fact that she had made Angel feel so human, that she had made him love her. Angelus tried to tear her down emotionally, by constantly stalking her or by sending her gruesome messages. When he learned that Jenny Calendar was a descendant of the Kalderash clan and that she was working to retrieve the ancient curse that had once ensouled him, Angelus brutally murdered her, then left her in Giles' home, so that he would also torment Buffy's Watcher. After that was accomplished, Angelus found out about a demon called Acathla, whose awakening would bring the end of the world. Angelus pursued this new opportunity of bestowing chaos, torturing Giles in the process so that he would learn the ritual to awaken Acathla. Buffy fought him to prevent the awakening but it was too late. Just as the vortex to Acathla's hell dimension was opened, Angelus' soul was restored once more by Willow. Before everything had time to settle in, Angel found himself imapaled by Buffy's sword and sucked into the hell dimension, so that the apocalypse could be averted.

Time ran differently in hell and Angel suffered a century of brutal torment, which had reduced him to a feral state before something unexplained happened and he found himself back in the Crawford Street mansion, completely dishoriented. He was found by Buffy, which, despite Angelus' deeds, had helped him recover. Angel had to work hard before he was capable of regaining the trust of Buffy's friends. When his existence finally looked like it was beginning to go on the right path, visions of his past victims, including Jenny, began tormenting him, driving him close to madness and encouraging him to lose his soul once again. Despaired and refusing to take that path, Angel chose to kill himself by waiting outside for the sunrise, resisting all of Buffy's desperate pleas for him to go inside. Much to his shock, a heavy snow fell down upon Sunnydale, blocking the sun and saving his life. Angel tried to resume his relationship with Buffy, but he kept being reminded of his inability to offer Buffy the life which she deserved to have. Angel took the painful decision to leave her. He had to face another crucial try when Faith tried to kill him with a poison arrow. Angel only managed to escape death by drinking Buffy's blood and leaving her in a very severe state. The incident helped straighten his conviction that leaving would be for the best. After helping Buffy and her friends stop the Mayor's ascension on graduation day, Angel left for Los Angeles.

In LA Angel returned to his hermit life, fearing that after having drank human blood, from Buffy, he would not manage to resist the temptation of doing it again. This lifestyle ended when one half-demon irishman by the name of Doyle came to him and presented himself as a messenger of the Powers That Be, sent to help him in his mission to help the helpless, with the aid of his visions. Soon, Angel ran into Cordelia Chase, which joined their team and the three of them set up Angel Investigations. On Thanksgiving, a vision of Doyle sent Angel to Sunnydale, to help Buffy fight off a tribe of indians. Angel helped without letting her know that he had been there. It took a slip of Xander for her to find out and the Slayer went to Los Angeles to confront Angel about his way of acting. Their conversation was stopped by a Mohra demon which crashed into Angel's office with an intention of killing them. The two went on its trail, through the sewers. Angel fought it and managed to kill it off. During the fight, the demon's fluorescent green blood touched a fresh cut on the vampire's hand and mixed with his own blood, restoring his life. After the Oracles confirmed that Angel could now live as a human and that the Powers That Be didn't need him any more, he dedicated the day to Buffy. At night, Doyle came to warn Angel that the Mohra had regenerated. Despite being a simple human, powerless, Angel left with Doyle to fight it. He got severely beaten up before Buffy tracked him down and distracted the Mohra. Angel managed to permanently destroy it by smashing the gem on its forehead but the fight taught him an important lesson: as a human, he was of no help to Buffy. Angel persuaded the Oracles into taking his humanity away, so that he would be able to fight by Buffy's side and they agreed to take back the day, leaving only Angel with the memory of what had happened.

The memory weighed heavily upon Angel, doing nothing good to his general mood. To make things worse, he could do nothing to stop Doyle from sacrificing his life in order to save humanity. Even if Wesley Wyndam-Price soon joined the team, he would never replace Doyle in Angel's eyes. Later on, a demon hunter called Charles Gunn also joined them. During all this time, Angel's fight for good didn't go unnoticed by a not so common law firm called Wolfram and Hart. In order to stop him, they went as far as to hire Faith Lehane to kill him. Not only she didn't succeed, but Angel managed to convince her that she could earn redemption for her past deeds. Later on, during an infiltration in the Wolfram and Hart headquarters, Angel found a scroll in which Wesley discovered the Shanshu prophecy: about a vampire with a soul which, at the end of his fight, would become human. Soon after, Angel and his team unsuccessfully tried to stop the evil law firm from completing a rising ritual. The evil which they had risen was none other than Darla, brought back to life as a human.

For the weeks that followed, Angel had dreams of Darla, dreams which served to shatter his focus and make him very unreliable for his team. Darla turned into his obsession, so much more when he found out that she actually was alive. When he learned that she was to die again in a couple of months, Angel tried everything he could to save her. He even underwent the Trials, accepting to lose his life so that she would have a chance to live a human life. Unfortunately she could not receive her second chance at living, because she was already living it. Darla resigned herself to the idea that she would die and Angel promised to be by her side. This was ruined when Wolfram and Hart brought in Drusilla. The insane vampire sired Darla and Angel was completely helpless in stoping her. He tried to stop Darla from rising but got to her too late. Deeply anguished by his failure to save Darla, infuriated towards Wolfram and Hart, Angel completely abandoned himself into his dark impulses, pursuing a vendetta against the law firm, Darla and Drusilla. At his darkest moment, he locked a party of lawyers into a wine cellar with the two vampires and allowed them to slaughter them, claiming that he couldn't seem to care about them. After that, he fired his crew, so that he wouldn't be hindered in his vendetta. He went as far as setting Darla and Drusilla on fire, leaving even Darla shocked at his new persona. Later on, he found out that Wolfram & Hart would be having a Review, during which a Senior Partner from the Home Office itself would come to Earth. Finding out that by taking its ring, he could go to the Home Office, Angel crashed the party. After a fight with Darla and crashing through a window, he defeated the Senior Partner and got the ring. The instant in which he slipped it on his finger, an elevator opened behind him an undead Holland Manners greeted him and offered to take him to the Home Office. During the elevator ride, Holland revealed to Angel that Wolfram & Hart existed ever since the dawn of humanity and that they couldn't be stopped, because they would continue to exist as long as there would be evil inside people's minds and souls. Deeply shocked by this revelations, Angel watched as the elevator doors slid open to reveal another horrible truth: the Home Office was Earth, not Hell. It was all it took to completely crush Angel. He headed back towards the Hyperion hotel, where him and his team had set base after Angel purged it of the Thesulah demon that inhabited it. He opened the door and stepped inside, just like he did any other night. Only that, this night, he found himself in a completely different place.

ROLEPLAY SAMPLE:

”Suuure, Spike, sure. Keep telling yourself that if that's what helps you sleep at... whenever you bloodsuckers sleep”, Xander quipped back in a mocking tone. No, he was pretty sure that out of the two of them, Spike had to rank the lowest in terms of pathetism. Come on, he had been the loser for all of his life. His status of “pathetic” had been well-acknowledged well before he reached the age of kindergarden, when he met enough new kids to observe him in his full loser glory. Xander was used to it. Being pathetic and a loser defined him. It was what he had done the best during his entire life. He would have honestly been shocked to be called something other than pathetic one day. Now that he could have actually taken as an insult. Whereas Spike... oh boy... Take one vampire about which books are written, who has his own place in those famous Watcher Diaries, who allegedly killed two Slayers and who caused havoc by the side of none other than Angelus himself. Okay, now wouldn't anyone expect said vampire to be able to hold his own against some guys playing military? To like... don't know... rip their throats and escape? Being caught and neutered that way... that, right there, made Spike a whole lot more pathetic that Xander had ever been in his twenty plus years of miserable life. ”Keep dreaming, chip-brain. Not going to happen. You'll never hurt Buffy.” Not just because Spike had that chip to stop him from it. Xander trusted Buffy to be able to best the peroxide wonder even if that chip was out of the way.

Xander felt rage boiling inside of him. ”It's not!”, he emphasized between his clenched teeth, mentally going through all the tricks he knew that were supposed to calm someone down before they did something completely foolish. Well, that would have probably had more chances of actually working if Spike didn't just continue saying the very painful truth. God, he hated him and his insight so much! ”Newsflash, Spike: they didn't move on without me! We're still a team and we're still great friends. Not that you will ever be able to understand those two words.” Angered, Xander reached under his pillow and pulled out the stake which he kept there, for safety, tossing forward on the bed. ”Oh, be my guest! You're already doing that. If you would have been the hot shots you claim to be, you would have actually done something long ago. You're all talk. ”Ooh, look at me! I'm the big bad Spike and I'm going to kill Buffy so I'll just come up with a lame plan that's bound to fail and let her kick my ass every time!” Xander spoke that line imitating Spike's accent and mannerism as well as he could. If he'd had a chance, it was more than obvious to Xander that the annoying vampire never really tried to use it.

God, vampires punched hard! Hell, Spike shouldn't have punched him back, that moron! Xander had been counting on the vampire to be reluctant to get that chip to fry his brain. Obviously he'd been having false expectations. Still, the pain in his face was well worth it because it seemed like something so small compared to Spike's migraine. Xander used all the force he could muster for the other two punches he threw at the vampire, satisfaction obvious on his face when they connected with his chipped head. He was ready to call it a victory over Spike but he was forgetting that someone more pathetic than himself was bound not to know when to stop before making things much more worse for himself. Spike's move came as a surprise once again and Xander was tackled down and hit. He cringed with pain and tried to hit back but he was met with air as Spike was already up, victim of his own stupidity. While Spike had his little moment of anger, Xander rushed back to his feet and grabbed the stake which had earlier been tossed carelessly on the bed. Holding it firmly, he rushed towards the vampire and aimed another punch at his face, before trying to shove him back into a wall and aiming the stake to his heart. ”No, I should kill you. Buffy should have done this long ago, anyway. You're nothing, Spike, nothing! The only way in which you'll actually be worth something will be as a pile of dust on my basement's floor.”

OUT-OF-CHARACTER
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NAME/ALIAS: kmy
AGE: 23
ROLEPLAY EXPERIENCE: 1 year and a tiny bit
CONTACT: PM is the best; AIM: kmylove15
FUN FACT! I actually tried doing the "dance of joy" (kuddos to whom knows Perfect Strangers)[/BLOCKQUOTE]

[BUTTERFLIES]

ACCEPTED.

ohhh angel. you're so broody and emo and
hot. well done on the app! have fun on B&H.