Rufus
Basics
Name: Rufus Henry Gabriel, aka: Gabriel, LokiAge/Birthdate/Zodiac: 245/March 6, 1763/Pisces
Likes:
Young, attractive people - they're the most fun to possess, and their lives are the easiest to manipulate.
The highly religious - not just easy to manipulate, but also fun to corrupt.
Technology - despite hailing from the time before the internal combustion engine, Rufus appreciates and keeps up with modern technology. Given his wealth, he is able to afford many a new innovation and he keeps them all, wacky and useless or efficient and worthwhile alike.
Money - since possessing the child of a wealthy family, he has been steadily increasing his fortune.
Indoor Plumbing - so nice. Just so, so nice.
Fine dining - experienced vicariously through others, of course.
Random Likes: Asian markets, contact lenses, designer drugs, night clubs, black jack.
Dislikes:
Vegetarians - no fun. People are meant to eat MEAT, damnit. If he possesses one, he'll go out of his way to make the person eat many greasy hamburgers.
Animals - they're noisy and smelly and they only make good meat suits for strategic purposes. He avoids them if he can.
Intellectuals - they tend to resist him more strongly and even if they don't actively resist, their constant self-evaluation makes it very difficult for him to wear away at their sense of self.
Interruptions - he is the strange, eccentric rich man living all alone in a huge house, who gets crotchety when people bother him.
Other Jinn - for the most part, they're just bothersome and intrusive and ultimately useless because he can't possess them. He doesn't mind a commission from one, though; he'll be polite if money is involved.
Reality TV - it's got nothin' on him.
Random Dislikes: Children, feminists, law and order, popcorn.
Timeline
1763: Born a sickly child in England to parents he no longer remembers. Mild spina bifida leaves him unable to walk properly and as a result he is kept inside, isolated and restricted for much of his young life.1769: Father and older brother killed, leaving him with his mother, sister, and youngest brother. Partial awakening of Geld blood, though he didn't realize it until years later.
1778: 15 years old. Mother's death fully awakens his Geld and Jinn blood. Realizes he can manipulate tin and alloys of it, begins to make and sell tin and pewter objects (figurines, plates, goblets, cutlery, etc.) in order to be able to provide for his remaining family. Later that year, realizes he has a connection with the things he makes and can see through their owners' eyes.
1779: Continued practice with his talent reveals that he can not only tag along for the ride, but even control some of his host's movements. Spends the next few years alternately making pewter objects and possessing people to see what happens.
1805: Knows his health is failing and begins working on leaving his body for good to inhabit another's.
1829: Starts life anew as Jacques, a 25-year-old Frenchman working in England. Continues to possess people and stir up trouble.
1842: Jacques' untimely death leaves him scrambling for a new body; hops bodies for a few weeks without actually claiming one while he gathers strength to attempt another takeover.
1843: Becomes Elise, an 11-year-old only child from a prominent family. Lays low and only does minor possessions.
1850: Elise's parents both mysteriously die, leaving their fortune to her. She promptly disappears with the money. Later that year in Spain, she marries a wealthy widower, who also mysteriously dies. His young sons inherit everything.
1872: Having continued to act as the boys' "mother", Elise lives the life of luxury and bides her time until she will need a new body.
1907: Becomes the widower's eldest son (from his previous marriage), Emilio, who inherited the majority of his father's wealth. Moves to America.
1923: Marries a woman named Emily
1925: Emily gives birth to his first biological child (sort of), Rufus.
1940s: Is drawn to California, gets involved with Hunters for the first time. Tries to possess one and is met with real resistance. The possession backfires and he is forced to bide his time as a dog for a few weeks. Emilio dies in the exchange, and he is left with a distasteful choice: either steal his own son's body to have access to his fortune, or start all over. He decides on the former, and becomes Rufus Henry Gabriel, son of Emilio and Emily Gabriel. The last of his humanity dies with his son.
Up to the present: Rufus has, over the years, developed a definite god complex. He plays with lives as easily as children play with their dolls, especially after taking his own son's life for the sake of his money. He took on the persona of Loki in the late 60s and has been mostly holed up in the basement of his house since then, sitting on a rather large fortune and doing all his dirty work by possessing others. He still plans on permanently possessing a Hunter one day.
Big Deals
Appearance - Rufus
Eyes: Almond-shaped by heredity, but the host body's once hazel eyes turned dark gray upon permanent possession. The same thing happens whenever he possesses someone in this manner, though not when it is only a temporary thing.Hair: Rufus' hair first became shot through with gray when he was 15. It was thought to be the result of stress due to his father's sudden and somewhat mysterious death, but of course it is really the result of his magic. Since then his hair has turned completely dark gray, with silver highlights throughout.
Face: Weathered and wrinkled, Rufus' face boasts a squared jaw with only small jowls due to his age, high cheekbones, a subtly hooked nose and thin lips.
Skin: Naturally possessing a dark, coppery undertone from the host body's Spanish heritage, Rufus' lack of sun exposure over the past few decades has left him pale with only a hint of a brownish tone in his complexion.
Build: At about 5'8, Rufus is of fairly average height. He doesn't get out much, but he also doesn't eat much without the buffer of a possessed body to absorb the calories, so he tends to be a little flabby about the midsection but otherwise underdeveloped in musculature.
Appearance - Adrianne
Eyes: Dull gray, sunken and very tired-looking. General oval shape with deep crow's feet branching off the corners.
Hair: Limp from lack of proper nutrition and greasy from lack of proper hygiene, mousy-brown in colour and hanging about shoulder length.
Face: Thin and long, somewhat emaciated-looking with sunken cheeks and thin skin. Her nose is long and crooked, as if it had been broken a few times (which it has), and her lips are thin and chapped and marked with scars from old cold sores.
Skin: Pallid and pale, with a grayish undertone. Pockmarked and sickly-looking with little elasticity left.
Build: Thin, lanky, spidery and hunched.
Personality
* Virtues: Patient, curious, forward-thinking, strategic, adaptable
* Neutrals: Amoral, mischievous, uninhibited, temperamental
* Vices: Inconsiderate, misanthropic, selfish, ruthless, megalomaniacal
Blurb
Having been alive for many years, Rufus has learned to be patient. He knows there is no real foreseeable end to his existence, so he can wait a long while for a desired result of a wanted item. His longevity has also taken a toll on his morality, gradually wearing it away over the years, especially as he watched social norms waver and change so drastically.
He prefers to be called Loki. Though he has possessed multiple people, something changed when he possessed Rufus. Even though the person he was born as had no relation to Rufus, he had taken the role as the boy's biological father (as Emilio) seriously. As Emilio, he had married his wife, conceived his child, and raised the boy. For all intents and purposes, Rufus was his son, so upon possessing him he was pushed to create a new name for his own consciousness, to separate it from the body of his son. As such, he is uncomfortable with being treated as Rufus and tends to stay away from situations which would warrant it. This is why he never leaves his house.
Being the only person he knows of who doesn't die, Rufus has developed a bit of a god complex, further compounding his amorality. By now he feels invincible and has little, if any, concept of consequences to his actions. He doesn't care much for most people - seeing them as inferior - and actually actively dislikes or detests much of humanity in general. Despite his dislike of people, though, Rufus is still curious about them. Having lived different lives as different people, he is fascinated by the way people interact and judge each other.
Rufus does whatever he wants whenever he wants and cares little for what anybody else thinks. He does not, however, do things rashly or without consideration. He doesn't want to compromise himself or his safety, so he conducts himself carefully, and usually with strategy in mind.
Adapting well to change, Rufus has survived the turning of three centuries and even thrived among the major technological and social changes. His adaptability has allowed him to play many parts and become many people without much incidence of anyone becoming too suspicious. As a result, he is a fantastic actor.
All in all, Rufus is not a very good person. On his own, he lacks people skills though while possessing someone else he does fine. Luckily he keeps himself hidden away most of the time, and few people alive today have actually seen him in person.
The Other Side
Bloodline: Body Snatcher
Body snatchers are Jinn who are able to exert control over others' minds and bodies. They use a form of possession that is unlike Daemonic possession. The Jinn's own body is unable to come along for the ride, so most Body Snatchers seek out a place of refuge to leave their vulnerable bodies when going about their business, though some stronger Jinn are able to divide their consciousness enough to have basic control over their own body while simultaneously controlling another's.
Snatcher possession differs in another way from Daemonic possession in that most Snatchers require some sort of catalyst for efficient possession. While they can possess someone without a catalyst or any prior preparation in a moment of crisis, it is far more difficult and dangerous and they run the risk of being overpowered by the host's will. The catalyst may be different for every Jinn, but it must be imbued with some of his or her own energy or essence somehow, and it usually must stay fairly close to the host to be effective. Rufus' catalysts are small metallic charms with an old Norse design carved into them. When a charm finds its way to a potential target, he uses it at first to just hitch a ride in the person's consciousness for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, gradually exerting more and more control until the host no longer senses the intrusion. Eventually they become mentally exhausted by the process and he can take over completely.
While Snatching is draining for the Jinn, it can be even more so for human hosts who are continually used. Since Snatchers must convince their human hosts not to fight them, some have developed a way of eroding levels of consciousness in the host. The longer Rufus has control of a host, the more the host's will and self-concept wear away. A host who is only used for a short amount of time, like a day or a weekend, might feel fatigued and unmotivated for a week or so afterward, while a host who has been used for a month could still be in a depressive slump many months later. A host who is used relatively continuously for longer than a year might never recover or regain what he or she had lost.
It is also possible to switch bodies entirely, though there is a lot of effort and risk involved on the part of the Jinn. He must first possess a person normally, and then cut his own consciousness out of his present physical body and try to force it into the host's. This can backfire in many ways: since it is so much more difficult, he may lack the strength to force his will upon the host to that degree. The host's will might be strong enough to fight back against a rather psychologically uncomfortable process. If the process doesn't work, the Jinn's disembodied soul will be sent searching for the nearest easy body to possess, which usually ends up being an animal, due to their lack of self-concept. If, however, he succeeds in taking over the host completely, he functionally kills who that person was before, and once he leaves that body, it is just a corpse.
Rufus has a default host who, without him possessing her, is nothing more than an empty shell. Arianna was a bag-lady when he found her, constantly looking for a way to get out of her mind, either through drugs or alcohol, so it wasn't difficult to kick her out of it and take her place. Since she is a street person, she goes mostly unnoticed, so he uses her to gather information and pass around his charms by sneaking them into pockets or purses while they're not watching. She is a regular at a local shelter, having been diagnosed as catatonic schizophrenic, so her basic needs are taken care of and she is available for possession whenever he needs her. It's terribly convenient.
Jinn Abilities: The aforementioned possession ability is all he's got, but it's more than enough.
Elemental Control: Earth: Tin
Elemental Abilities: Rufus can mold and shape tin (and pewter, an alloy of tin) like Brian shapes glass or a child uses sculpting clay. His magic is very weak and very specific, meaning there is not much else he can do with it.
Relic: Pewter charms he makes himself. They act as focuses or catalysts for his possessions.
Faction: He is LOKI, GOD OF MISCHIEF. He is on his own side. But he will use his Jinn abilities to help someone, for the right price.udition