Steph

Al had stayed over last night... and hasn't quite left this morning, either. The day is stretching on, and Barma is still beautifully comfortable, now immersed in a book, as his fingers trail through Al's hair.

Alastair: Supernatural

 
OOC
Name: Steph
Contact: UndrwO on AIM.  Underwater.owl@gmail.com
Age: 22
Current characters: N/A


IC
Name: Alastair
Fandom: Supernatural
History link: http://supernatural.wikia.com/wiki/Alastair
Age: Several thousand years old, in all likelihood.
Canon point: Just as Sam finishes torturing him for information, after he breaks and admits that he has no idea what has been killing angels.  Right as he's being killed, so he knows it's over.

Personality: Alastair is one of the oldest demons in Hell, Lillith’s close ally and chief torturer in the pit.  He was the one put in charge of trying to break first John then Dean Winchester’s spirits, tasked with trying to convince good men to become torturers themselves.
 
Alastair excelled at his work, viewing the torture of souls as an art form to be perfected, and a game to be won.  He has a sly, cruel sense of humour, and is a sadist in the purest sense of the world.  Rather than simply inflicting pain he also employs a kind of psychological torture.  During his scenes in the show he cleverly mixes lies with truths, using as much of the truth as possible to make the stories more believable, delighting in and devoting himself to the psychological torment of Dean Winchester in particular.
 
In Supernatural canon, demons are formed by torturing a human soul past the point of recognition, until it becomes perverted into something twisted and dark.  Demons manifest as a sort of black smoke that pour themselves into the unwilling bodies of humans, possessing them.  He is one of the most powerful demons shown in the series, and extrapolating from that, probably one of the oldest and most twisted among them.
 
Alastair’s determination to raise Lucifer from Hell is worth commenting on.  Other demons (Crowley in particular) articulate a concern that when Lucifer does return, his plan will be to kill the demons as soon as humans are taken care of, but Alastair seems to either not consider this possibility or to be unperturbed by it.  There isn’t much discussion in the show of why he’s placed his loyalties with the Devil, but it’s my theory that it’s because of what the Apocalypse promises.  While other demons in the show have seemed inclined to hurry out of Hell, Alastair stays there more often than not, committed to his role as torturer.  He only eventually surfaces to deal with a few very important, special tasks, after a number of lesser demons have tried first, with what I read as a certain air of ‘I shouldn’t have sent children to do my dirty work for me.’  Alastair likes his torture, his bloody pit, his favourite rack and knives.  The prospect of having his arena expanded to include Hell on earth, the souls of the living accessible to him as well as the dead, is enticing enough to secure his cooperation.
 
On a physical level, although demons are technically only black smoke, he has some physical qualities that stay consistent.  Alastair tends to favour possessing white, middle aged men, and is always depicted speaking with a certain drawl to his voice.  He takes pleasure in the fact that he’s stolen his hosts from their proper lives (commenting that ‘don’t you recognize me? Oh, that’s right, I’m wearing a pediatrician) and enjoying the grief of the families of the people he’s essentially kidnapped.
 
One of the most fascinating things about playing him is the complex, alien sort of morality (or more specifically, lack of it) that this calls for.  Demons are nothing but pain, suffering, and evil.  With most RP characters, I tend to be of the school of thought that everyone has complex personal motivations for doing what they do, and even if their actions may seem immoral they’re usually justified in the character’s own minds.  That just isn’t the case here.  Alastair is evil for the sake of being evil; he is evil because everything good has been burned out of him.  He tortures because he enjoys it, because he would be bored otherwise. 
 
At the point I’m bringing him in from in canon, Alastair has just been tortured by Heaven’s best interrogators (who are ferocious, terrifying, have the ability to brainwash and simply undo other angels in the show.)  They failed to get the information they wanted out of him, since their efforts were mild, no doubt, compared to what Lucifer used to inflict upon him in order to turn him into a demon.  After their failure, he was turned over to Dean Winchester. 
 
His relationship with Dean is complicated; Alastair was given the task of breaking Dean in Hell.  He’d torture him every day, and begin each session by offering him the choice to pick up the knife and inflict the pain on someone else.  For thirty years Dean resisted, but for the last ten years he was in Hell he caved and worked with Alastair, under his direction and as his unwilling apprentice in the torment of other human souls.  It’s a defining moment in canon for both characters when Dean gets Alastair before him, restrained and subdued, with directions to get information out of him.  The torture sequence that follows is not for the faint of heart, but Alastair seems to survive it with a sort of snide glee (After being forced to drink corrosive holy water he spits up blood and wheezes ‘there’s something caught in my throat.  I think it’s… my throat.’)  He takes a sick pleasure in watching the person he has turned Dean into, even when he himself is Dean’s victim. 
 
Ultimately, Dean never succeeds in breaking Alastair, but Sam steps in and gets the information he wants out of him.  Still, when Alastair comes in he’s going to have to live with a) the memories of being tortured by his own pupil, and b) the fact that he did cave in the end, albeit to Sam, and the knowledge of his own weakness.  It will be a lot for him to process, and it will keep him comparatively quiet, introspective, and maybe even a touch insecure, though he’ll mask it all with aggressive verbal attacks, casual (no doubt sadistic) sex, and other sinful indulgence.
 
Ultimately, though, what will make this jerk a playable character in an RP sense is his drive to survive.  He’ll play nice (ish) in Vegas, not only because of the recent shake-up, but because the setting requires a certain cooperation with other characters.  Alastair will entertain himself in less non-consensual, torturous ways… although he’ll probably be deeply suspicious of Loki, as an agent of a religion outside his own.  I want him to confine himself to mind games.
 
Given the nature of Dirty Vegas, a bit about his sexuality; he doesn’t technically have any, given that he’s non-corporeal.  He does, however, get off on power, control, and misery, and that’ll manifest itself on a physical sexual level.  Personally, I don’t RP non-consensual sex, nor do I see Alastair caring to partake in it, no matter how the side effects get or who he has to trick into going to bed with him.  He’s far more the type to enjoy the trickery aspect- seducing someone into falling into bed with him and then leaving them to their torment and grief afterwards, either pulling the rug out from under them or letting their own guilt do the work for him.  He does have a certain magnetic personality, and will probably attract masochists from miles around.
 
Normally, here I’d put a likes and dislikes section, but other than show tunes and torture, he doesn’t have much of a demonstrated canon background with those sorts of things.  He had them all once upon a time in his human life, but that’s a distant memory, now.  The last few thousand years have been spent in Hell, where you don’t get access to human sorts of things.
 
Part of playing him will be writing about his exploration of the world, discovering flavours and favourites, proclivities and tastes.  He’s going to get to have ice cream for the first time, pick out a sweater in green because it makes him want to smile, get addicted to caffeine and possibly nicotine, discover his host has an allergy to pollen.  There’s a lot to him that’s still unformed, but he used to be human long ago, and his body is still human now.  He has it in him to learn.

Powers/Abilities: Alastair is a demon, which for Supernatural canon means he has the ability to possess human bodies.  He is a powerful demon, too, so he has some telekinetic abilities.  Doors bursting open as he approaches them, the ability to gesture and hurl an opponent physically during a fight, as well as extra strength and speed.  Alastair also speaks Enochian, which in canon gives him the ability to banish angels back to heaven, though that probably wouldn’t work in this setting.  Most of his abilities would be toned down, considering that he’s coming in injured and limping.  On the other hand, if you know how to control him, he can be trapped quite easily.  Alastair can’t cross over a line of salt, and holy water burns him.  If you know how to draw a devil’s trap, and can trick him into standing inside it, he’ll be contained by it.

It's late in the evening for a session, but there had been something about that voice on the phone that had made Paul decide to grant an exception to his usual rule.

So, he flicks the porch light on as the sun goes down, and waits for his new patient to materialize.

These Pandora clients are... frustrating, to say the least.  But when Paul answers the door he has a smile on.

"Vincent.  Come in."

He appears behind Yuca, a few weeks later.

To the three children coming up the lane, the house must loom overhead like some sort of monstrosity.

Roman waits on the front steps, ready to greet them when they arrive.

The house stands empty for many years, and for good reason. It isn't the kind of place that people stay in for long: musty, filled with cobwebs, mice and little visitors, as well as drafty and dark, you'd have to be a fool or desperate to try to live here.

Roman is a little bit of both. He arrives in a small truck late one night, deeds of the place newly acquired, and goes to sleep in the dark on the front hearth, too nervous about the state of the chimney to try anything like lighting a fire.

The next morning, stiff but not yet disheartened, he starts his work. The first order of business is getting all the windows open.

Well-


Could anyone use a roommate?

[Post-flood Sherlock emerges, soggy and irked.]

Senta is in the kitchen, sipping her tea when someone comes through the door.

This will end well.

[On the video tonight, Sherlock is running blood tests. this thrums along in the background.]

I resent the implication, you know.