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[gradationsofevil]

IN CHARACTER

Character Name: Armand
Canon: The Vampire Chronicles (novels)
Canon Point: Roughly 1977, or shortly after the events of Interview with the Vampire (the first novel). Note on canon point: the first three novels overlap significantly in timelines, and character info and history will be drawing from all three.

Age: Yeah, this is one of those "appears like a teenager but is a million years old" deals. Armand looks 17 and is ~497.
Species: Vampire (Anne Rice flavor)

Content Warnings: child abuse, sex trafficking, childhood sexual abuse, grooming, murder, romanticized suicidal thoughts, cults, religious extremism and satanism, lots of just really bad mental health takes. His canon (mortal) history is VERY heavy on child grooming and sexual abuse, please read with caution.

History: Link to canon world/species history.

Armand was born as Andrei in 1480 in Kiev in what is now the Ukraine; as a vampire, his recollection of his time as a mortal is hazy but emotional. At around 14 or 15 years old, he was kidnapped from his home and sold to a Venice brothel. He was kept there for a brief time before being bought by a vampire named Marius; a vampire whose aims were interpreted as kind by the kidnapped child Andrei, but whose purpose is clearly not so simple to anyone reading the account of events.

Marius intended from the moment he purchased Armand to turn him into a vampire, and he bought him, simply put, because Armand was attractive. He had Armand trained for an unknown amount of time (Armand thinks it was two or three years) in painting and singing, while keeping Armand - along with a small bevy of other (young male) painting apprentices - with him in his Venice home.

Armand, having been 'rescued' by Marius, was fascinated with his guardian and knew only that something about him wasn't quite human. As time wore on and the secret became more clear, Armand begged to be turned into whatever his guardian was, so he could stay with him. Marius withheld for a little while but eventually turned Armand into a vampire when he was about 17, in 1497.

Marius was not, unfortunately, very popular with other vampires - posing as a human and interacting with them was frowned upon by a larger coven of them. Within half a year of being turned and living with his guardian, Armand was chased out of his home by a coven of them. They burned Marius seemingly to death in front of Armand, as well as all the other (still human) apprentices Armand had been living with.

Armand was then brainwashed by the members of the coven. This group of vampires saw themselves as worshipers of Satan and called themselves the Children of Darkness; Armand's prior belief in God was twisted into a self-hating zeal for keeping up the new rules of this abusive coven. Armand became a banner of the group, dedicating himself to it. He also became proficient at a very specific and unique manner of feeding on humans. Armand learned to call to him 'those who truly wished to die', discovering his powerful ability to connect to others' minds across distances.

Eventually, Armand came to lead the coven on his own, and eventually they lost track of other vampires in their cultish group. Their splinter group stayed put in a cemetery in France, in the catacombs underneath it, suffering because they believed they needed to suffer.

Armand's life stayed stagnant for hundreds of years until he met Lestat in the late 1700s. Uprooted once again, but this time of his own volition, Armand was shocked by the things he heard Lestat say about vampires. Armand finally dissolved the Children of Darkness (he...killed most of the other members by burning them to death, because after deciding he didn't like what they were doing, he hated them) and begged to join up with Lestat.

It didn't work out, and he ended up settling down with what he was handed yet again - this time, tasked with babysitting Lestat's old theater. He did this for decades before once again abandoning his new brethren when a different vampire burned down the theater. Instead, Armand became attached to a new vampire, Louis, who he followed for even longer - nearly a century - fascinated by him and hoping for any sort of affection in return.

When he finally realized that this, too, was a one-way relationship from which he would ultimately gain nothing, Armand left Louis as well. That brings us...roughly to where Armand is now, in a world that's suddenly learned about vampires through the published work about the vampire Louis.

Personality: Armand is defined by extremes of behavior - as a vampire frozen in time at seventeen, he carries certain aspects of adolescence with himself permanently, even as he matures in other ways. He often seems calm and quiet, but his rages - and his impassioned feelings towards others - are tumultuous and eventually drive him to boldly calculated actions.

Armand is an emotional person who often has reason to hide what he's feeling. He easily and often closes himself off from anyone he'd rather not speak to. When overwhelmed or feeling reflective, Armand seems to lose interest or even the ability to speak out loud - he is silent and fretful when Lestat demands answers from him after he pursues Lestat for friendship. When pressed to explain himself, Armand spends a long time visibly upset at the idea of speaking about what happened to him, and then at long last he shares his entire history, at once, in graphic detail...as mentally-telegraphed pictures and ideas and snatches of phrases. He speaks out loud relatively little while upset or while discussing personal matters, and seems to prefer using his telepathy as a crutch.

But when Armand does feel strongly enough to emote about something, or when he trusts the other person enough to risk emoting, there will be no confusion that he's having feelings. He just might not be the best at handling those emotions. He's capable of incredible cruelty when wronged, and will absolutely have deeply painful arguments with someone if it's a topic that strikes a nerve. But he is equally capable of deep and sudden professions of devotion or affection, and of being vulnerable and wanting guidance.

Once he awakens from being a cog in his old cult's machine, Armand is constantly at risk of turning into a bit of a neutral evil zombie again, but this is something he is aware of about himself. As he ages, it's also something he slowly wants to work on. Armand tried to join up with Lestat because he sensed that the impassioned Lestat has something to teach him, but he's turned down. Armand didn't take it well, and what happened is a type of 'compromise' that is typical of him - he goes straight to obsessive, self-punishing worship of what's just refused him an equal relationship. Armand is asked to stay behind with Lestat's old theater, to babysit his old human friends as well as the surviving fellow vampires, so that Lestat can leave and explore - and Armand does this for decades.

Armand's sense of right and wrong is warped; he has killed hundreds if not thousands of people throughout the years, including a chief violation among vampires - he's killed other vampires. He considers killing mortals that 'want' to die one of the few acts that used to give him relief from his own constant suffering. But he speaks about not understanding war, or why mortals kill one another; he kills to survive, and he kills those that want to die with a romantic outlook that is clearly significant to himself. He thinks of himself as evil in a biblical sense - he thinks he's a damned creature - but he is gradually learning not to be cruel for cruelty's sake. He isn't fantastic at people skills while managing Lestat's theater, to put it mildly - he ends up cutting off the hands of one particular misbehaving vampire as a punishment - but he does that to keep from having to kill him, because he's attempting to do what he thinks is right...in the only way he knows how. Armand tends to pick a road and stick with it by any - literally any - means necessary.

Armand is a perpetual pupil who seeks out potential teachers (and seems consistently drawn to terrible ones). His ability for dedication is a potential strength that can (and has) rapidly devolved into a weakness - he will happily lose himself to another's philosophy or morals, which can be used for bad ends.

Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping: Here is a link to typical Anne Rice vampire powers. Shortly, they're mostly what one might expect (superhuman speed, strength, and agility - balanced with a weakness to fire and sunlight, narcolepsy at dawn, etc) with a few Rice-flavored changes. Vampire abilities vary greatly from vampire to vampire and are based on a mixture of age (of the vampire themselves and their sire), how many vampires a single vampire has made and in what order, and existing personality.

Armand is older than most other vampires in his canon - in fact in the first novel, he's the oldest known surviving vampire. Armand is a very powerful vampire; he also seems to have a greater affinity for mental abilities than other vampires. His ability to 'speak' telepathically to other beings can be literal - projection of words - but it's usually both more and less than that. Armand seems to specialize in sharing pictures and stories into others' minds, of giving over entire scenes of exposition or harvesting across a city for certain emotions. He also can encourage victims to trust him and be drawn to him, acting as a beacon. He hunts by calling his human prey to himself. Armand claims to never speak out loud to or embrace his victims, and says they never fight him.