— DEVOUR

APPEARANCE DETAILS

HAIR... short, dark brown, sometimes shaved

EYES... light blue, almost grey

BUILD...wide frame and softly muscular, more bulk than cut

HEIGHT... 5'11"

CADENCE... originally born in ireland but his accent has been americanized with time, leaning slightly southern. at times he will still use irish sayings or slang.

NOTABLE MARKS... a military tattoo on his chest over his right pec, smaller scattered body scars.

USUAL COUNTENANCE... lazily dressed and styled, very causal in presentation, generally sporting a shit-eating grin or a faux sympathy meant to mock.

BIOGRAPHY

Peter was born in Galway in the year of the 1890 in the slums of the city center, a poor tenement that contained a hundred families living in one home. It was the dawn of the world wars, Ireland just barely beginning to rise again from the famine but still so underdeveloped and poor under the reign of Britain. From birth he slept in one room alongside his parents and siblings, three brothers, two older and one younger, and his one sister, Elise, who was born last, with her birth taking their mothers life and leaving the family without the warmth of parental care. To his father’s credit, he tried, but they needed money to survive and at the time he was the only one old enough to work. So he worked, leaving the baby in the arms of the four young boys. Elise didn’t survive past infancy, the Big Snow of 1910 having much to do with it, all from no fault of their own, but all being boys under the age of twenty, they carried the burden on their own shoulders. Slowly with age Peter and his youngest brother took well to the streets, pickpockets and trouble makers, having nothing worth being home for. The summers were hard, the winters were harder, and all the boys began to work at the age of twelve if they could find it. Backbreaking agricultural jobs were the easiest to receive, the pay devastatingly low for work that was incredibly difficult and physically demanding. In a cruel and desolate time, all they had to rely on was each other.

He was twenty-four when World War I began, the spread vicious and violent. Ireland wasn’t directly affected, not right away, but young men were urged to enlist on behalf of the crown. With the hope of escaping poverty, all four of them enlisted together. They didn’t realize until later, the lines of battle set and trained, that the Irish were there for the front lines, destined for nothing more but to be cannon fodder. His youngest brother was killed on the first day of battle. It was a wash of blood and metal, the sounds of firing shots and the yells of soldiers, days and days starving and shivering, a lack of sleep and care, full body shakes by the third sunrise. The oldest died soon after, and the last day before they retreated, his last standing brother lost his leg and was left disabled for life. Yet Peter was able to walk away, for all his injuries none were debilitating, he recovered relatively quickly in a way none of his brothers ever would. He was no coward, he had fought hard and insistently, his brothers falling one by one and in the moment he was determined that he would die the same earnest death, and still he hadn’t. He survived, and with it came the unbearable weight of regret and survivors remorse, his life proof that there was more he could’ve done, the horizon of relief they all wanted so desperately taken away in only a few days. He returned home empty handed, his remaining sibling held up in permanent care and his father old and failing. He had nothing left, so he did what everyone does when they’re impossibly buried in failure and loss; he drank.

He would continue drinking for years, left homeless and aimless, staggering through the streets to the locals' disgusted sort of empathy. After a year of desolation and drowning his sorrows he needed to escape, to get away from the misery and the squalor, a decision to attempt to leave the past behind, the land of opportunity alight on the horizon; he leaves for America. He travels ruinously through the same port as all immigrants in his time, Ellis Island into New York City. The country was not what it was made out to be, on the verge of the collapse of the Great Depression and riddled with nationalism, his identity as an Irishman was scorned. It was a brutal adjustment, the fight for employment and housing, a cold cadaver in a community of people who are experiencing this level of poverty for the first time while he was raised into it, a fresh body versus the one already rotting. He was close to normalcy, on the very verge of something liveable when he stalked home from a bar one evening, hidden under the cover of darkness, the rare vehicle passing by and the distant clamor of other drunks when he was taken. It happened quickly, he thinks even if he were sober it would have felt just as instantaneous. He was surrounded by bodies, in the center of a large field while the faces talked of things he was unfamiliar with, it wasn’t until later he learned what was happening; take a life, replace it with a new one. He was a punishment, the scream unable to even break his throat when the sharpness tore into him, everything dark. 

He awoke the next night, crawling out of the dirt with a strength he had never known, a burning in his throat that was unrecognizable. Someone stood near him on the pile of Earth, covered in the same grime as himself. His name was Jack, and he was his maker. For the first time in his life, he felt he truly had a purpose. There was a war in the city between the followers of the Vampire Bible and the new traditionalists, the ones seeking peace in the shadows. He knew instinctively that he was on the wrong side, but the word of his maker and the taste of blood in his mouth trained him like a Doberman, brainwashed in gluttony and praise, no choice but to follow every command from his mouth. He wasn’t his only progeny, one of dozens in fact, all living together in a sick coven, vying for death and sacrifice. He was only allowed this purpose for a short time before the final battle broke out, cannon fodder once again, and his maker was slaughtered along with many of his blood siblings, and once more, he escaped unscathed. The guilt and self hatred of his human failures boiling back up just the same, the pain of surviving, of failing. He could no longer stay in New York, he hadn’t wanted to anyways, the treatment he received was bad enough before he was turned into the monster he had now become. It wasn’t safe, and it wasn’t practical.

He found himself in Boston for a time, the vampire population far more tame and quiet, and the Irish population far larger in itself. Nightwalking was easy for him, hardly an adjustment with the lifestyle he had carried before but it took no time at all to miss the sun. He could have built a life there, but he found himself surrounded by more of the same things he had tried to escape in the first place; too familiar, too suffocating. He went south during the latter half of Prohibition, living in Tennessee he found that opportunity he had been seeking, the ability to do what he’s always done; break the law and get his hands on booze. Though alcohol no longer did anything for him, he knows how the craving feels, the draw it has, and how desperate a man can become. He started bootlegging whiskey under a pseudonym, the same name as his deceased maker; Jack Daniels. Success was immediate and unending, a booming reign of cash making its way to his hands and a never ending supply of alcoholics no one would miss if he drank too deeply. This was where the fortune was found, and where ideas began to come into fruition. The next step was power, his relationship with the Authority rocky since his turning, the actions and demands of his maker reflecting on him, but money talks. He became a donor to the Authority, a big one at that, large donations earning him their better favor.

Prohibition ends but the success does not, a good reputation among the southern drinkers and a healing one with the greater Authority. Time passed, the fortune grew, his relationship with the Authority only got better, a dabble in politics and a touch of manipulation that they so admired. He expanded into Louisiana with a cruel touch, the inching years making his alias’ mortal age grow more and more. So, he killed him. A story of cracking his foot against a safe and dying of gangrene to the toe, a story he found humorous and the humans believed to be true. Pathetic and sad how they’ll fall for anything. With the death of good ol’ Jack, so died the fortune, or at least that’s how the story goes. 

A hundred years of seeking success and finally he realized he had been right all along, the boy who picked pockets and failed at being a hero, there’s only one way to have it all; through blood and greed. Rich and wise and vicious, a hand is extended from his new friends, a territory to call his own. Though his methods are unorthodox, they’re incredibly effective, and he made a new home as the vampire Sheriff of Lefleur county, a little nothing town that’s only the beginning of his conquests. His secrets are safe, as are his motives aided by that dark, sadistic persona that keeps the victims at bay. At least for now.