Character Info;

Source work and author: Dracula, Bram Stoker. With a mix of other sources and some creative license.
Door: Penny Dreadful
Character Journal name: ~dragwlya
Character Name: Dracula. Sometimes Vlad, sometimes Count.
Character Age: Immortal. Somewhere in his 400s.
Character Played By: Luke Evans

Character History and Personality:

Dracula is many things. A man. A legend. A monster.

Stories flow like rivers, whisper like breezes, down from the Carpathian Mountains and into towns, cities, and some believe. Some have their superstitions. They pray and ward themselves from evil, the darkness that has a name. But some do not. Some think the stories are just that, stories-- tales, to be told for amusement. They can't be true. Surely no man can live for centuries, sustaining himself on the blood of humans. No man can become smoke and mist, control the wolves that howl at night, become a bat to fly high above the land.

This works to his advantage, you see.

Some say he was a prince. Others say he was a great general, a warrior descended from a noble bloodline who commanded vast armies. To his enemies he was merciless, a man to be feared-- a man who had a penchant for and even enjoyment of violence. Brutal, fierce, and shrewd, even those who hated Dracula admired him. Battles were waged and won. He had a wife, they said. Beautiful, light to his dark, and he loved her like no other. But death comes for all and it came for her, a tragedy written in blood, and for him; even the greatest of men are only mortal in the end.

But Dracula, the storytellers insist, did not stay dead.

No one but the man himself knows for certain how he achieved immortality. Dark magic, perhaps. Some unholy pact with the devil. However it was done, he rose from death far more powerful than he had ever been in life. He was not dead, nor did he live; he was the undead. There was a price to be paid, of course, and pay it he did. He required the blood of the living to survive and that is where the stories end, become vague, painting the picture of a monster in his castle preying upon humans in the night.

Indeed, Dracula remained in his castle. Time passed. Most believed him dead, and those who insisted he had risen were discounted. He took his revenge (though his thirst could not be quenched quite so easily). But immortality is lonely, for while all those he had once known died he remained the same; he did not age. The lands he had once conquered changed, his bloodline thinned, and warriors such as himself became a rare breed, no longer needed as they once had been. Dracula observed it all, but he refused to become obsolete. What good was immortality if he wasted away behind stone and mortar?

He read. Book after book, poetry and philosophy and science, he kept himself informed, he amassed great collections and found himself amused by the progress the world made. Soon, Dracula grew tired of life as a recluse. He ventured out, not just to feed but to integrate himself back into what the living called life.

While there were those who feared him, Dracula found willing servants in those who saw the undead as one to be worshiped rather than cowered from. They were not friends, no, not companions, but they served their purpose all the same. In turn, he spared their families. They did not fall victim to his bloodlust. Prince or commander, in life he had been a great man... a powerful man. And while he had power still, Dracula's influence was limited to his home. He wished to change that. More time passed. Decade upon decade, becoming centuries, and he lived still. Some would say he grew crueler, less human, and they would have laughed at the suggestion that the vampire could feel anything at all.

He did create others like himself. Not equal, no, lesser, more like soldiers, but vampires all the same. Dracula had subjects to rule again. Those who could not be controlled, who disobeyed, were swiftly killed. To amuse himself he lured visitors to his castle, foreigners, and took from them what he wished before either draining them dry or, if he thought they could be useful, damning them alongside the others.

Sometimes, he traveled. Away from Transylvania, to explore, occasionally alone and occasionally with one or two of his vampires, whichever he favored that particular week. And it was upon one of these travels, over four centuries after his death, that Dracula met her.

Mina, her name was. Married to a man he found dull and uninspiring, she first caught his attention due to her striking resemblance to his long-dead wife. At first, Dracula merely watched her. Studied her. The living mattered little to him, you see. Their only uses were to provide him blood and to serve him, if they could; otherwise they were weak, pitiful things. But she was different. Beneath her smiles and her demureness there was something, untapped potential perhaps, and Dracula was not the sort to deny himself. He took what he wished, when he wished it.

In a social setting, it was easy to approach her. To strike up conversation. He was the charming yet mysterious foreigner, and it was a ruse which worked quite well. He ensured that they encountered each other time and time again, seemingly by chance, until it was no trouble at all to coax her into meeting without her husband present. And, for one of the first times in centuries, he listened when she spoke. What she did not know he taught her; he introduced her to books, to poetry, gave her a taste of darkness. She returned, each and every time.

Eventually, Dracula turned her. He drank of her blood and she drank of his, and like the others she belonged to him.

There were those who sought her, he knew. Those with power and those without. But they knew nothing of him, the fools; the stories of the undead vampire stayed within his country, and even there his name had been lost in time. It amused him, to watch their quest. For all the vampires they killed he would simply create more.

But then they took Mina, and Dracula was no longer amused. He would not rest until he had tasted their blood, until each and every one was dead.

Well, perhaps not every one. What Dracula seeks is eternal night, the end of mankind's rule and the beginning of his new reign. Darkness shall smother light, and humanity will fall. And if the girl, the dark-haired one Mina spoke of, should truly be a means to that end... then she shall be his, too.

Journal/Key: Dracula's journal is old but well preserved, deep reds and blacks, yellowed pages within. There is no visible lock, but it will not open for anyone but him. His key is engraved silver, large and fitted to his hand.

Storylines;

Mina Harker: [Taken]
Van Helsing: Nemesis!
Renfield: Loyal servant.

Notes;
Powers:
- Immortality
- Superhuman strength
- Immune to conventional attacks
- Only sustenance required is fresh blood
- Superhuman agility
- Can defy gravity, to a degree
- Hypnotic + telepathic abilities
- Command of nocturnal animals
- Weather manipulation
- Shapeshifting
- Can vanish + reappear elsewhere
- Has the ability to "turn" others into vampires

Weaknesses:
- The sun weakens him; he is much less powerful in daylight
- He can only shapeshift at dawn, noon, and dusk (though he can shift freely at night)
- Garlic, crucifixes, and other holy items repel him
- A stake through the heart followed by decapitation will permanently kill him
- He cannot enter a home unless invited