Name:  Simon
Age: It’s impolite to ask such things, but his mother was executed for witchcraft in 1648.
Age Apparent: 30-35
Race: Doesn’t the next question answer that?
Race Apparent: Human
Appearance:  Though his appearance changes subtly, Simon is generally 6’ tall and lean and though his weight shifts ten or so pounds from time to time it rarely exceeds 165 lbs and rarely drops below 150.  Likewise, his eyes rarely change from sky blue, only occasionally growing darker or greyer.  His hair on the other hand shifts from dark brown to blonde, medium length to close cropped, his chin from clean shaven to stubbled.

His dress changes equally, from suits to business casual to jeans and t-shirts, all depending on where he is and what he's looking for.

Powers: Though it couldn’t rightly be called a specialty, Simon has learned to prolong his life beyond most other Expisco.  He does this through a disciplined routine of feedings, performed like clockwork and scheduled far into the future.  Between such feedings, he snacks, so that his body is rarely forced into a state of weakness or hunger.

He tends to change his appearance with ease, though his changes tend to be minor, length of hair, growth of beard, muscles slender and gaunt or full and firm.  He shifts them like clothing, depending on where he haunts or the tone he wishes to present, like a hunter’s camouflage.

Perhaps his greatest powers are in the primal abilities of the Expisco.  Like a thief, he can drain life with a glancing touch, a harmless jostle in a passing crowd, a finger brushing over bare skin.  He can hold the energy like a miser with gold, its release not easily wrested from him unless he wants and when he does, he’s every bit the monster he was as a boy.  And where he might lack finesse with his appearance, his hair growing too fast, his muscles massing and trimming too swiftly, he makes up for with his cloak, easily overlooked by the unwary eye and hard to sense by those looking past his mask.

Though not a power per se, his truest specialty is sensing desire; both its existence and its flavor.  More practiced sense than preternatural ability, he’s often able to pick out those with a hunger like picking out the weakest from the herd.  Usually, with little more than sight he can guess at their wants and with a bit more information, can often draw it out of them like sweat from their pores.  From there he’s grown skilled in using the Expisco ability of suggestion to set people on the path towards those goals.  It’s the combination of the two abilities, understanding their wants and intensifying their willingness to achieve them that gives him the opportunity to make his bargains, that and centuries of wealth and influence to put towards its disposal.

Profession: Salesman, Psychologist, Talent Scout, Drug Dealer or whatever else he feels like being.

Personality:  If there were two words to describe Simon it would be confident and restrained.  He’s patient and reasonable, in the sense that he rarely acts impulsively and rarely demands more than he could otherwise expect from someone.  He’s surprisingly forgiving in most regards and is rarely judgmental.  He’s not easily roused to anger and takes slights easily, often finding them more amusing than insulting.  He’s rarely bored, but just as rarely pays attention to anyone for more than a moment or two, finding most to be shallow in the sense they have little to offer him beyond the most basic and passing interest.

He doesn’t particularly like self-important people or successful ones, except perhaps to help them fall to self-destruction.  He is however especially drawn to individuals with either stronger drives or repressed desires, seeking satisfaction or release and he takes as more pleasure in helping them along than he does seeing the grand fall, even if he doesn’t get anything out of it for himself.  As a result, he likes to frequent places where the desperate and determined linger, from restaurants and bars, to churches and universities.  He also likes to indulge himself with others, whether it’s with alcohol, drugs, sex, fine food or any number of other pleasures for good or ill.

Background:  There are only two absolute truths in the world; anything is possible and everything has a price.  The best of mankind knew this once.  They took risks, they sacrificed, they strove for life, for more.  Some say they grew fat and lazy, life got too easy, they got too complacent.  Others say they were crushed, brought to heel by those who would carve themselves kingdoms on Earth, whether popes or kings, despots or idols, fallen angels or those that would pretend to be Earthenbound ones.

And so the world grows quiet and cold, safe and predictable, progress measured in bytes that do little to fill the hungry soul.  Psalms, One o’Seven Nine, for those that care.

Yet blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they will be filled.  Matthew, Five Six.  Anything is possible, for a price.  Me.

So, find me, or maybe I’ll find you, it doesn’t matter in the end.  And don’t worry, I won’t ask for your soul, that’s too cliché, but we’ll negotiate, come up with a fair trade so we both get what we want.

~O~

From the journals of Governor John Winthrop, 1648 in relation to the witch Margaret Jones:

In the prison, in the clear day-light, there was seen in her arms, she sitting on the floor, and her clothes up, a little child, which ran from her into another room, and the officer following it, found it had vanished. The like child was seen in two other places to which she had relation; and one maid that saw it, fell sick upon it…

Her husband was released upon her death and sought to leave upon the Welcome, a trading vessel bound back across the ocean.  The Captain reported quarrel and upon the following the ship began to list even in the calmest of seas.  The man was eventually put over and drown and it was claimed the ship immediately righted itself.

~O~

The man who would call himself Simon grew up thinking himself the demonspawn so described in Governor Winthrop’s journals, a child born of witch and warlock that set pestilence on those who gazed upon him.  He was named Ben then, a name bestowed by his mother, a name now few would know call him.

His powers were wild in those days, wild and stronger as he grew.  Livestock grew ill at his touch, people went mad, suffered fits or fell dead.  But it was a time of death for many, his kind fleeing the persecution in Europe only to find the war between Expisco and Nephilim following them to the New World.  How he survived those early years at all was a mystery known only through faded folk tales of a demon child that prowled the streets of Boston and the countryside surrounding it.

And that likely would have been the end of his tale had he not been taken in by a vampire coven who understood him better than he understood himself.  They taught him restraint, taught him how to feed without killing, how to stay unseen.  They were dead now, purged by the Nephilim when the war became less about cause and more about extermination.

He was still a monster then, keeping to the shadows.  It would another decade before he met others of his kind, ones that could teach him to control his appearance with any degree of certainty.  Even centuries later he was not the best among the Expisco in that ability, though he made up for it in other ways, including a wealth of energy he could put towards changing his looks from decade to decade, his other weakness in that regard a vanity lingering from his youth and a preference for skins that others might find handsome.

He survived the ‘war’ as it was sometimes called by the help of those less militant in their views, vampires who taught him secrecy, his own kind, who taught him their abilities and a handful of warlocks who were forced to hide from the witchhunts that raged in the later part of the 17th Century.

He held himself indebted to all of them, though he wasn’t beyond draining the odd warlock now and though never without their permission.  The wolves and mortals on the hand, while he preferred making bargains, deals so that there could be no question what they were allowing, he still took nibbles in passing, the sort that would make someone think they’d had a long, tiring day or a long, pleasurable, but exhausting night.

But even the wolves played their part in his education, teaching him about passion, something he took and adapted to his own needs, using it as the carrot to extort payment.  And so from the three, vampire, warlock and werewolf, he learned seduction and secrecy, power and restraint, desire and release.

It was a hundred years before he claimed any mastery in them all, a New World and a new nation providing him the room and the market to perfect and ply his trade.  It was a perfect place and a perfect time, a land of opportunity and aspiration, one which he could both farm and harvest with equal success.

By the time there were 24 stars on the flag he had amassed a small fortune in coin and bargains.  It was the latter that mattered most to him, bargains made with those who wanted, whether it was power or pleasure, he sought to provide it for a price, that price measures in minutes, hours, days and years of life.  Soon his ledgers were thick with promises and his vaults filled with money.  And as the country expanded, so too did his own opportunities, moving from place to place to avoid attention as well as overharvesting, letting cities or regions go fallow, for desire and desperation to grow until it ripened.

He avoided the bulk of the war, the one between the North and the South, as well as the one still lingering between the Expisco and Nephilim.  They were all fools in his book, wasting life so carelessly.  He was no pacifist, but life was too precious to be spilt in such numbers and for such pointless reasons.

The age that followed was a golden era.  He had to be careful thought, while the remaining Nephilim searched for hidden Expisco and the remaining Expisco made their last stand through two World Wars.  But despite that, it was an age of even greater expansion and greater desire.  Prohibition and the jazz age was a godsend, letting him wet his lips on small wishes and feast on grand ones of fame and fortune.  He stayed young and powerful on starlets and singers, drunks and addicts and he like always, he learned, taking the tricks of the speakeasies and bootleggers to learn how to create safe houses and travel safely.

Later it was the Great Depression, another boon for him and he grew fat on people who wanted nothing more than crusts of bread.  Even into the second Great War there was so much want, some of which he could relieve, some he couldn’t.  Either way, he remained fed even without having to haunt the battlefield like so many other did.

And so it went, decade to decade, adapting to the want of the times, heroin and cocaine, rock and roll and disco, money, sex, fame.  He learned to provide them all, and he asked so little in return.

~O~

New Orleans was not a place he'd frequented for some time.  It wasn’t his first visit, but he rarely stayed for long.  Still, he had business there and he had other reasons to visit the Big Easy and so, he found himself checking into the Hotel Monteleone and wondering where he might go for a quick snack.