Forsythe Atticus Holden

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IamLEAM1983
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Forsythe Atticus Holden

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Name: Forsythe Atticus Holden
Age: 254 years old
Gender: male
Species: anthro mouse, Ordo Dracul vampire

Strengths: being Chairman of the Vienna Council, Forsythe stands as the “Vampire's Vampire”, the highest form of race-specific legal representation and general support any discriminated supernatural could hope to count on. His assistance is never direct, however, in that he is only charged with the oversight of the Council's various outreach and social justice programs. You could argue he also has to act as the “Mortals' Vampire”, being the most politically visible undead as of the integration of blood drinkers in the Vienna Accords. He has the power to present the metaphorical face of Undeath that sensible people would wish to see, and has to deprive the slayers and various bigots of this world of any enabling arguments.

This is, obviously, a political battle of Sisyphean proportions. No matter how much work he puts in, there's always more left to be done. He has to protect his fellow undead and supernaturals from excessive slayers and Exosuit users, while at the same time reassuring the international community of their complete right and ability to use whatever means necessary in order to protect citizens. To put it simply, he has to display a deep understanding of the mistrust shown by people such as Marianna Jameson, while displaying enough restraint, civility and adherence to the Rule of Law to make it as clear as possible that people like her should be able to lower their guard in his presence.

Thankfully, his bloodline's intrinsic need for control is here more of an asset than an inconvenience. A staunch believer in law and order – especially in the mundane spectrum – he's displayed a complete lack of favoritism since claiming his post, perhaps to the point of gaining a following with the hardlining mortals and gaining the enmity of some powerful, if contentious undead.

As a basis, his no-nonsense approach is as obvious a Victorian relic as his nephew's gilded plates and carters. If Archie's strengths lie in assembling motives together in order to expose occasionally far-reaching international coups d'état, Forsythe's approach is utterly Cartesian. He is very much as clever as the family sleuth and spy, but his cleverness seems to work best when allowed to box things in very neatly. Being fairly dispassionate in comparison with Archie, he generally does tend to have the clearest of heads, when all three Holden males are compared.

Having been a vampire for slightly longer than Archie's own adventures have lasted thus far, he has the proportionate speed and strength of a vampire packing two solid centuries of personal experience. Bucking the trend of anthro mice being depicted in fashion magasines as slender and small types, he has a burlier build than Archie, with a chest-heavy configuration he doesn't have much trouble infusing with inhuman strength or dexterity. Being a politician, however, his control over his supernatural abilities is finely honed and is very rarely put to the test. Forsythe tends to employ the services of vampire-centric gym trainers in order to run his increasing strength through and to ensure that his personal control remains faultless.

The end result is a big mouse known for fine and generally fastidious gestures, paired with the extremely rare sighting of a supernatural dash or a slightly enhanced slap. When the Vienna Council is faced with a power-tripping idiot of the fanged persuasion who demands to speak to the Chairman, Forsythe has no trouble shifting gears between being fussy and proper and suddenly choke-holding the delirious moron with a single arm. Public knowledge puts Forsythe behind the breaking-in of a supernatural wing of Elysium, following the kind of interrogation procedure that would qualify as sheer torture, if applied to a mortal. As the prisoner was a self-deluded Carmilla male barely a century old, Forsythe had relatively little trouble terrifying him into submission and willing collaboration.

The short of it is that being fairly pragmatic, the elder Holden has no compunctions whatsoever with doing whatever appears to be necessary, given the circumstances – as long as he has been legally authorized to do so.
Weaknesses: being such a stickler for the rules and someone who solves crimes on national and international scales long after Archie's fairly municipal retirement, he does tend to be accused of lacking imagination, especially by the younger Holdens. He sees Archie (and especially Arthur) as perennial children trapped in bodies and social functions neither of them honestly deserve, and tends to pride himself to be the most mature of all the clan's males, Hiram Holden notwithstanding.

Archie is fairly used to the idea of thinking outside the box, and Arthur wouldn't know what to do with that proverbial box if you gave it to him. One specializes in flights of intuition guided by tightly-coiled professional passion, the other has his nature and the disconnection it brought him, in regards to the everyday world's happenings, to thank for his intuition and general abilities as an information broker. Forsythe, comparatively, only works well when all the scraps of evidence, all the names, all the provided facts, are made to fit nicely together. Archie doesn't keep files so much as a personal clutter of notes he keeps stashed in a file cabinet, while Forsythe needs everything stamped, double-checked, officialized and curated. If something makes no sense, his bloodline's obsession with control is uncomfortably teased.

In Archie's case, when something makes no sense, he pushes through the immediate mire of confusion and tries to make the best of the situation. In Forsythe's case, facial tics and general exasperation win over any sort of continued attempts to keep working. Intuition isn't so much a factor, in his case, as clear and present intellection.

The end result is a third intellect that clashes with the other two – albeit in usually productive ways. Archie has fun while working sometimes fairly scabrous cases, even if it doesn't show. Arthur couldn't hide his enjoyment of all things reprehensible and macabre even if you paid him a fortune. “Uncle”, as Archie tends to flatly address Forsythe, couldn't possibly be expected to understand how enjoyment could influence a case's outcome, duty being what trumps all in his personal morals. Consequently, he doesn't really understand what Holden Hall's ragtag metahumans, supernaturals, extraterrestrials and mundane techies have to bring to law enforcement as a whole. The general concept of the Superhero is something Forsythe cannot grasp, as it feels to him as though yesteryear's caped crusaders added shades of whimsy to what should have been approached in utter seriousness.

What can be said of this is that he doesn't agree too well with artistic or intuitive types. Anyone with a meandering type of logic irritates and eventually infuriates him, and he also tends to grow frustrated when he is faced with someone who cannot reason on his level.

He doesn't mean it and couldn't be faulted for any sort of incompetence, but there are certain subsets of criminal activity which he can't wrap his head around, thanks to this. Crimes of passion or ideologically-motivated exactions puzzle him enough to have him consider them as being unworthy of his time. Similarly, outgoing personality types annoy him, and he tends to oppose a very cold, quiet, posed and incisive level of contempt toward the younger undead and supernaturals as a whole, especially those who can't marshal their impulses.

If these things do peeve him, you can generally assume that some practitioners and mages have attempted to bend artsy-fartsy pursuits or whimsical surroundings into weapons to use against him. It hasn't happened yet, but chances are certain excessively quirky types or surroundings could test his patience enough, to the point of having him snap.

Forsythe Atticus Holden cannot afford any sort of loss of self-control. A lesser vampire could recover from their having lost it thanks to a therapist and some time; the Chairman of the Vienna Council going on the warpath would place the very foundations of the Vienna Accords in seriously hot water.

Appearance: at six feet eight for a somewhat top-heavy two hundred and eighty pounds, Forsythe really isn't your average cute and cuddly mouse anthro. With a light brown coating and thick cream-colored bands extending from right underneath his muzzle and back up to under his ears, in a natural à la Souvarov design, you'd initially think him to be a whimsical time-lagged undead. His equally pale eyebrows, however, tend to arch in decidedly regal ways that do evoke some sort of family ties with the more human-based Holden family tree. His brown and somewhat shaded eyes tend to always pack a degree of hardness or sombre countenance, while his expected nose twitches tend to evoke less those of a mouse constantly questing for food or potential dangers, as those of a fine nose warily scanning new surroundings for aromas it might find displeasing. Usually packing hooded eyes and a generally unimpressed look, you get the sense that he's seen and heard it all from undead cretins that railed on in the hopes of having their delusions of grandeur supported. To say that he acts like he can't get rid of a hard little core of sheer boredom wouldn't exactly be incorrect.

On the other hand, he appears to be less of a frozen and preserved old gent and more of someone who identified what complemented them well and stuck with modernizing it all gradually. His clothing options tend to be of the Modern Designer Victorian persuasion, with longer suit jackets than 2025's fashion dictates, paired with modern neckties and echoes to the fob watch chains of old – even if he has a hard time abandoning straight-collared shirts. It makes for a surprising mishmash of the Old and New, like the sight of his faithful tablet being slotted in a genuine quilted leather case.

On the whole, just looking at him is enough to have the words bureaucrat and politician spring to mind. He acts in an even more castrated manner than Archie, and it quickly becomes fairly clear that there isn't a whole lot of denied quirks or secret passions to express, underneath that fussy exterior.

Being as lawful as he is, however, you'll occasionally surprise him as he's indulging the quiet and private enjoyment of a few mundane vices. Good food typically tugs at his mouth, and people who have been performing fairly well while under his watch eventually end up receiving a grudging smirk or a complicit look. As much of a stickler as he may be, he wouldn't put up with the mundane world's usually sanguine denizens if he wasn't able to at least grow remotely fond of some people.
Behavior: the Mycroft to Archie's Sherlock, Forsythe is the telltale “successful relative” Archie's parents kept referring to, in their exhortations to keep to the nice, straight, narrow and bloodless aristocratic mindset. The spy speaks of his uncle in obvious aggravation, referring to him as an “undying and lifeless old fussock” who's climbed the ladders of the international supernatural community out of equal parts blind ambition and the kind of self-love that demands a personal secretary and private meetings with United Nations and European Union representatives. Archie would also be the first to claim that Forsythe isn't entirely forthcoming in his lawful pursuits, and that a fair bit of ego-stroking defines him professionally. Forsythe passes for the man who's constantly distracted while listening to his nephew's adventures, and someone who would genuinely fall asleep while listening to a retelling of the Battle of Hope.

Archie wouldn't be exactly right, to be honest, but nor would he be exactly wrong. Forsythe isn't some self-centered egotist who chases power like any typical carrier of the Blood of the Dragon, he rather is someone who's seen what his nature allows excessive mindsets to accomplish, and who would rather thrust all of his attention and support towards the mundane legal and criminal system. If he falls asleep during re-enactments of some of Gregory Rendell's gloats, it's because he's heard so many megalomaniacs – with or without fangs – that they all tend to blend together. Rendell isn't anyone special, as far as he's concerned. He isn't much more than just another madman, the sad and unfortunate byproduct of power and immortality on certain minds and predispositions.

He can appear to be harsh towards, if not outright judgmental of, Archibald and Arthur. You could be forgiven for thinking he doesn't understand what the Holden Hall gang contributes to Hope, but the fact is that he can recognize when Archie thinks he's stumbled upon something related to the Void Weavers or Elysium, only to actually be investigating some ordinary crime. He also can recognize Arthur's occasional psychotic breaks and knows when to disregard the family's resident madman's occasionally implausible bits of research and data-mining. Forsythe is actually quite proud of his nephews, but so many years spent looking self-contained and imposing in order to guarantee self-preservation in front of bigger and nastier undead made it difficult for him to show just how far that pride extends. He can't claim to be able to follow the mercurial bits and bobs that keep connecting and producing little bits of investigative genius in Archie's mind, but he can appreciate their output. Sadly, the most he's able to conjure in these cases is the quick clasp of a shoulder, a stiff bow or dry congratulations.

The result is someone who's more or less torn between two mindsets. On the one hand, you have the demanding and stolid former aristocrat who thinks everyone born in the last century or so is pitifully soft, with men required to be sensitive to the point of being unable to handle emotional hardships. He looks at the modern world's geeks and nerds with quiet dismay, seeing two or three generations of overgrown children and disarmingly unladylike women, and keeps beating against these aggravatingly quirky sorts, with their augmentations or powers or their superiority complexes...

He's deluded himself into thinking that his mundane years were simple and clear. There were no quirks to his proceedings in Parliament, nothing but the unimpeded pursuit of Justice. Archibald scampered off and forced many a sleepless night on poor Jocasta, his mother – something which still strikes him as being unforgiveable. Then, to make matters worse, Arthur put it in his fool mind to run off to London, denying and ignoring all attempts to financially support him, all so he could connect with some foolish muse he was chasing! Nothing about those two was proper, nothing about those two would make a father or uncle proud, and it took years and years before Hiram could live with the notion that his son was less of a socialite and more of a covert operative. The two boys tore at the family's dynamics like greedy wolves at a fresh catch, with absolutely no concern for how the elders of the family would feel!

Honestly, thinking about those two in this specific light still causes the shadows around his eyes to deepen and his moustache to bristle. The more he sinks into that old indignation and disgust, the more his fangs peek out from behind his mustache – and still...

Still, he can't deny what his “boys” have accomplished. One averted the spread of an alien hegemony across Europe, the other became the nevralgic centre for a group of afflicted individuals, something that obviously requires latent managerial skills. One became a living (or mostly living) legend, the other found a comfortable nook in the first's shadow, keeping potentially feral and dangerous undead very close to the point of complete and total social reinsertion. One did far, far more than was expected of him, the other split off and became something else entirely – something that engenders as much disappointment as it does pride.


What this creates is a tightly-packed knot of emotional confusion regarding his younger relatives, something he smooths over by attempting to appear as rational and pragmatic as possible. Fun and general liveliness challenge that pragmaticism, so he denies himself much of their respective applications. Everything he is and does is displayed in the service of greater ideals than himself; the notion that even the most powerful supernatural in the world has the Society-given duty to adhere to mundane laws and limitations.

Some people go to clubs or eat out with friends for fun. Others play video games or join up with a role-playing guild of some persuasion. Others play music or simply read. He, instead, fastidiously collects different currencies from as many places and periods of the world as he can reach, and tabulates their respective current worth, in relation to one-another. A fittingly lucre-based hobby for an Ordo Dracul vampire, and one that has the inconvenient of creating a fairly compact and still considerable personal fortune that can be held in a few ring binders and cardboard boxes.

As he doesn't know himself very well, he's become a master in the art of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, he intimately knows every archetypal vampire, selkie or dragon to be expected, and can pick their goals and motivations apart as neatly and emotionlessly as you'd expect. While he'd love to do the same with ordinary sorts, he simply cannot. In most cases, thankfully, his disapproval of the modern world's sensitive nature is something he pockets away, having quickly realized how being surrounded with offended mortal subordinates gets your average undying bureaucrat absolutely nowhere.

Goals: Forsythe has been a vampire for quite some time, and deeply feels the core of greed that his cursed blood seeded in him. He was able to twist his hunger for power into a yearning for Order, to wrest deeply selfish conottations that hadn't been his natively towards a noble goal. On most days, he feels as though he's won his personal fight against Alexander Ruthven's carried blight. Unfortunately, his days spent in relative peace of mind allow him to see just how little certain old supernaturals seem to care for the very world they live in.

When the Vienna Accords were drafted, starting with Matthias d'Aubignier's reveal and Cordatus and Aldergard's initial signatures, very few people had any sort of concrete idea of what these officialized papers would trigger. Yes, the bugaboos of old were now flesh and blood and deserving of the same rights as any mortal – but what of fairness? What of justice? Too many voices initially rose up, requesting all of the rights but none of the consequences. D'Aubignier, bless his heart, isn't a conference-room warrior, and much more of a vampire with a long-denied and finally-realized social conscience. One of his own – one of their own, had to step forward, age or supernatural potency be damned – and show that they were ready to sacrifice in order to prove to the remainder of the world that they were worthy of being trusted.

Forsythe had the chops, and Dracul's cold, sobering influence made his mind cut through any self-deluded conceits the early applicants entertained. Months-old fledgelings with clean records blazed through the screening process and came out with their new I.D., while millennial creatures who couldn't repress their desire to hack through the mortal world's financial and political fabric in plain view were beaten back with the ruthless arm of Bureaucracy.

If anything, Archie's uncle is a clear and present example of how a vampire has no need to be particularly old in order to inspire respect. By simply denying older undead of their ability to scare others, Forsythe gained the upper hand on undead that should have been able to tear him to shreds. His conviction in the need for logically applied justice is absolute, and makes him out to be one of the most indirectly fearsome adversaries your average scheming individual could possibly have.

He doesn't understand Archie or much of Shield, to be honest, but as they are part of the legal system and help to enforce it, he is professionally and personally called to support them by any means possible. Even if this means butting heads with Hope's two Holdens.

They'll grouse at one another and exchange quietly murderous glances at times, but the truth of the matter is that pride is a much stronger connective tissue between the three men than any sort of vitriol they seem to be unable to stop generating, once their little triad comes together. Win the Chairman's respect, and you'll quickly see just how impressed he is with what they – and Shield – have come together to create.

He just won't tell you. He has his pride, after all.

History: 1771 saw Forsythe's birth, in the Holden fiefdom of Canterbury, Kent. Their own parents had been Julian and Alice Holden, he an anthro mouse and she, a human. Hiram would go on to carry his human genes into his half of the family, while Forsythe's destiny would be a tad more involved than simply laying the groundwork for the next, and arguably more illustrious generation...

As can be expected in the peerage system, he was born, bred and educated as a future member of the high crust. However, unlike his future nephews, Forsythe would never develop an intrinsic rebellious or artistic streak, instead wholly embracing what his education foretold, forever molded into the perfectly poised and ever-so-proud constituent of the Holden family's nobility. As boring as some of his attended soirées in his younger years happened to be, they were rightfully endured. Every scrap of personal indignity, every bit of bullying at Eton College – all of it, he endured like the proud, distinguished, if still rather resourceful and capable Holden he happened to be. What had been an inordinately plump anthro child shot out into a burly and solidly built adult that could have flattened lesser schoolmates in the barnyard after dark, but who had enough dignity to never attempt such a thing. 1793 saw him enter the House of Lords on an official capacity, as Viscount Canterbury. That meant a departure from the family estate and a prolonged stay in London.

Thanks to this, “Uncle Forsythe” wouldn't play much an active role in the boys' education, even if he doted over them quite a bit. Hiram being a rather absent father figure and Jocasta a fair bit of a worry-wart, most of the direct actions taken against Archie's first attempts at freedom or Arthur's later flights of fancy came from what essentially was the second-best in paternal figures that they could afford. The idea of receiving a talking-to from a male figure was usually something both boys associated to schoolteachers or to their uncle's Christmastime lectures. As you could expect, Archie didn't have suitable priorities and later, Arthur would be told to dash those silly attempts at being a playwright and refocus on what mattered most.

Today, nobody would be surprised to hear that family glories didn't matter to either of them. Archie got out, and Arthur spent a few years wanting out without knowing how to obtain it. Irony would make it so Archie's death and resurrection would earn him an honorary slot in the House of Lords – a fact which, in normal circumstances, Forsythe shouldn't have been alive to witness, much less ruminate over.

Forsythe did everything right, as far as Victorian aristocrats would be concerned. He was a keen political observer and a fairly inept wielder of idle banter, lacking practice in spontaneity and finding comfort in social prescriptions. Back them, people enjoyed men of that persuasion, as he appeared to be calm, poised, attentive and possessed of a kind of profundity that was more alluded to than openly displayed. The truth was that he could dissect a bill waiting to be passed around a dinner table or append a scathing critique to a dinnertime review of an opera he'd seen – but he had no timing for jokes, no concept of what others would find spirited or enriching, and especially no clear grasp on female wiles. He managed to avoid offending his female acquaintances thanks to his ability to appear as bland and harmless as plain white toast, but could honestly be criticized for his bursts of clumsiness. Drinking never suited him, as it exposed the part of him that he'd repressed to be a good and productive Holden family member. The bouncing little child he'd never been wanted out, and he ruthlessly denied it. As Alice herself would put it, he'd always been a “frightfully serious little boy”.

The years passed. Archie fought in the Indies and returned only long enough to learn Russian, catch up on his missed years of courtly intrigue, and fly back towards the Caucasus. Forsythe had a very brief window of barely two weeks in which he did everything in his power in order to turn the dashing, scrappy, slightly nervous and not consistently gentlemanly young lad into ballroom fodder. Archie himself would admit that part of who he is was forged in the family's Great Hall, in memorizing the steps to a waltz, when to bow and how to doff one's top hat, how to suggest empathy more than display it... These things would allow him to save lives by making him blend in. If Lancet didn't seem to care for anyone, then no fiend worth his salt would waste time in cherry-picking kidnapping potentials.

If you played everything down to the point where you only had a whisper of a personality, then you could truly become a ghost, free to twirl amongst Saint Peterburg's elite. From Forsythe's point of view, it'd be less a tactical consideration and more of a period-appropriate desire to remain inoffensive and unobtrusive in all things. Discretion and Distinction would always be the proper nobleman's motto, in his book.

Sadly, 1828 would be Forsythe's last year spent among the living, at least in the traditional sense. In his late fifties, he'd gradually appended a political analyst's worth of backroom moxie to his aging self, dressed up in immaculate social graces and rendered weightier by the addition of crow's-feet, a bit of a tummy and a luxurious mustache. He plied Great Britain's course and enjoyed dinners with the Queen and her family. He had connections, wealth and power.

In short, he was prime Ordo Dracul material.

It was easy enough to bribe his typical lorry driver to drop him well off of Regent's Park and in the depths of Whitechapel, and easy enough for Vlad Tepes, rechristened as Alexander Ruthven, to overpower him. Ruthven's ambitions were in full swing, back then, and he was well and truly far away from the future disgrace he'd suffer at the hands of Goliath and Elysium. If he could lay claim to the House of Lords, then the Kingdom of Great Britain and its attending colonies would become the first vampire-led nation in the world. He'd have power beyond what his mortal years had allowed him to experience, said power allowing him to exact true justice. If you've taken a few Mythology classes, then you're probably aware that Tepes' problem-solving attempts were usually extreme, if not deadly.

Little did he know, unfortunately, that he'd just sired a true-blue stickler. The Blood of the Dragon killed the repressed child in the back of the elder Holden's mind, replacing it with the cold and calculating precision brought on by an apex predator's capabilities. Microfiche copies show that it took only a few hours before the Viscount's disappearance would be felt, at which point Archie begged his handlers to allow him to stay in England long enough to at least put some time in the search efforts.

In the immediate, they'd turn up nothing. Forsythe had awoken on a sailboat that was on its way to America, saddled with an overbearing master with conflicting ambitions to his own and a new thirst he had to cope with. Alexander had planned for everything, coming complete with new papers he forced on the big mouse, under threat of tossing him overboard.

From Ruthven's point of view, the years that followed on the East Coast and in Providence were fruitful. The mouse was a worthy intellectual companion and dutifully turned his wits to the admistration of the warlord's acquired sawmills and more remote iron, copper and gold mines. Forsythe Holden would effectively be declared dead in 1830, even as he actually lived on under regularly shifting aliases, going from a shopkeeper to a mill boss and finally, as the Dragon's personal proxy. All the while, any supernaturals who crossed their path could plainly see how he loathed his forced position, how acting in lawlessness and in occasionally immoral ways offended deep-seated convictions he'd always held dear.

He was a Holden, however. He wouldn't beg or snivel or bemoan the cruelty of his fate. That much, Forsythe Atticus Holden promised himself. He'd instead scheme like the best of them. It came easily, too, his new supernatural proclivities sometimes having him buzz with a kind of dark joy at the prospect of slipping a few good passes by the Master's hands – while they remained in his.

While Archie took Russia by storm, Forsythe pecked away at Ruthven's hierarchy. By all accounts, Atticus Findley was nothing but a simple trade official keeping a counter in Hope, a big, stolid rodent with a humor deficit who nonetheless ran a profitable, honest and demanding business. The truth of the matter was that Forsythe employed people out of Ruthven's workforce, cherry-picking the Dragon's top brass one at a time, and slowly enough that his maker wouldn't realize his intent. It was hard work, involving long, long years spent trying to virtually be someone else, when he had never been the one with the skills of a social chameleon. Still, he couldn't renounce his deeply-held beliefs, and bucked the Ordo Dracul trend of banking on America's relative youth in order to sidestep inconvenient regulations. In essence, Forsythe attempted to pull the most underhanded of schemes in the most law-abiding way possible.

Eventually, things fell into place for the last parts of his plan to be set into motion. Another burly mouse he'd stuck in the tannery he'd administrated had finally died from the fumes as of 1867, allowing him to stage a grisly accident on the docks. It was a complicated affair, involving the task of ensuring that Ruthven would know the weight that would have fallen on his body from a malfunctioning crane would have been able to kill him, regardless of his status as a vampire. He'd needed to plan everything years in advance, from the deliberate and gradual misuse of the crane to the cargo the crane would be holding at that precise moment, right down to the tanner's projected death. Having found ways to make everything fit within a day or two of one another, all that was left was to tempt fate.

Against all odds, it all worked perfectly. Ruthven suffered his first setback of the Industrial Era thanks to a wilier and craftier mind than his own, and unknowingly allowed Forsythe to run free. As ever, all that the mouse took back from his stunt was a sense of sombre and fairly intimate satisfaction – as well as the urge to somehow return to something approaching the life he'd led prior to being turned.

Of course, that could never be. The Viscount Canterbury was someone else, now, the title having fallen to another eligible family. Archie's own title of Lord Holden had already been bestowed and his new life had already begun. His new life was in America, a country which Forsythe was leaving behind with a moue of disgust and sheer contempt. Even to this day, he maintains a fairly stereotypical view of the Yankee, as a blunt and no-holds-barred individual of low breeding and misguided aspirations of intellectual worth who has the nerve to attempt to bully him into an agreement. He finds his modern-day tours of the United States, and more specifically, of Hope, to be an absolute slog through which he has to go in order to periodically meet with the local constituents of the Council.

It would take the d'Aubignier Incident and the vampire's reveal in a French television broadcast for his life to unstick itself, while the events surrounding Elysium and the Battle of Hope would only serve to further spur the need for the Vienna Accords' offered structure. Like any depressed carrier of the Dragon's Blood, he spent a few lifetimes packing on the pounds or shedding them out of sheer lack of care, mostly surviving off of Friday night trysts with women he met in London's various bars and clubs. Even at his most slovenly, however, he couldn't quite shed his paper-pusher and neat-freak tendencies, nor could he stop keeping a stiff upper lip.

In the wake of d'Aubignier followed Aldergard Kuhn and Cambrius Cordatus, followed by Oberon and Titania. Even while mages were creeping towards technological equality with the mundanes, vampires also came out of the coffin. Soon, their requirements as legally recognized citizens and their diametrally opposed job security and personal safety called for something more formal, more effective than a simple declaration stipulating that they all existed, and that they were all worthy of all the stipulations of the Declaration of Human Rights.

What the public ignores is that the Vienna Council wasn't formed immediately following the initial signatories' participation. Months of bickering and politicking followed, during which it became clear that everyone wanted the good stuff that being “human” on paper would grant them, but none of the bad. Someone had to stamp down, and while Cordatus and Aldergard both presented incredibly concise and useful legal tools helping towards the financial and penal legislation of supernatural entities, cutting out the various species' sometimes domineering attitude toward the mortals was almost impossible.

Luckily, there was one vampire in the assembly who was more of a despot toward his fellow vampires, and less so with the humans and mundane lawmakers... Forsythe made the point of their having nothing to expect out of Humanity, especially not kindness – and everything to expect out of themselves. If they wanted power, if they wanted more money than your average human billionnaire, if they wanted some sort of oligarchy in order to fulfill some sort of instinctual need for control – they'd all have to work for it, to prove to the mundanes that they could be trusted.

Starting with Forsythe's fairly Randian allocution in front of the high powers of the dragons, Fae, undead and marine supernaturals alike, things began to progress. Aldergard's efforts to legislate immortal wealth bases took fruit, and Cordatus' desire to submit immortals to equal employment opportunities finally took root. Around the world, the existence of Faerie analogues to cities in the mortal plane became known. Evergloam, notably, was no longer a delicate secret kept by a Pentagon that didn't know what to do with the “vanishing” Apache helicopters that had slipped through to Faerie in an effort to help in Evergloam's defense.

The effects of the constituted Council were twofold. At first, it seemed as though most of the law-abiding supernaturals heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed their long-standing survival-oriented lies and deceptions. Vampires freely walked amongst mortals, not all Fae maintained the practice in covering themselves in human or anthro-worthy veils, and Mertown's population was informally integrated into Hope a second time, on Saint Patrick's Day of 1990. The Mac Loch, local selkies and other waterkin finally started exchanging with their Green Island brethren in a way that didn't exactly feel like Innsmouth 2.0, for once.

For others, the Vienna Council's creation was perceived as a defeat. Watatsumi and Ruthven groused at the news, each in their own way, and the Void Weaver rebels became especially antsy at the prospect of walking openly in a prospectively accepting society – largely because they entertained concerns for the safety of those they'd interact with. Some vampires and other long-lived sorts simply decided to return to their lairs, where continued anonymity would guarantee them some sort of ersatz of their former schemes and plots. Of course, even some supporters of the Council were concerned, as exposing the entire supernatural world would enable a wild and hoary host of would-be slayers and religiously-motivated assassins.

In America's case, the NSA would alleviate some of these problems with the setup of programs such as the Dragon Registration Database and its little brother, the Bullseye Program, of which Seamus Mac Loch is the Rhode Island representative – being the only dragon operating openly while in Hope, while all others are limited to disclosure towards their friends, loved ones and authorized associates. With a target painted on his back, Mertown's Captain effectively increases the odds of the greater numbers of Hope's dragon contingent staying safe, as otherwise unpredictable attacks would be more easily pinpointed. No solution, unfortunately, is ever perfect.

Still, as the years went on, it became clear that Forsythe worked best when allowed to act as the Council's ideological strongman, the stout and reassuring figure who replied to the occasional slaying or vampire-perpetrated massacre with the full force of the Austrian organization's indignation and disapproval. Even Mary Jameson would remember seeing the broad-chested anthro stop by her precinct long enough for an allocution, in which he hammered in just how horrified, disgusted and offended he and his constituents were with the dreadful events that had transpired. When so many people aspired to live well and to live quietly, having disgraceful idiots who figured they'd start a bloodbath tear a swath through mortals was to spit in these honest folks' faces. As old-fashioned as he is, he compared the Hong Kong Massacre to “degrading jeers perpetrated by buffoons unworthy of their fangs and deserving of the highest calibre of scorn.”

As long as he approaches mortals as a concept worthy of being supported or defended and as long as he sticks to his definition of a productive and balanced supernatural, he garners nothing but praise during televized interviews or Internet broadcasts.

As soon as individuals start to creep out of the mass and the individual quirks of various long-lived sorts are considered, however, his nature as a calcified fuddy duddy becomes clear. In essence, Forsythe upholds such stringent standards of social responsibility and justice because he perceives, paradoxically, that mortals have grown staggeringly irresponsible in the past decades. He supports them, yet certain personality types and professions irritate him. He cannot accept belittling mortals as being a legal action, yet cannot stop himself from expressing vague puzzlement towards the rapidly shifting mundane cultural basin, a kind of confusion that turns into outright rejection, at times, if not genuine contempt.

Considering, his sometimes sombre mood can be understood, as he has to do whatever he can to make sure that power-mad fools from his neck of the woods don't tarnish his reputation. If that means protecting the slang-tossing, speed-texting, meme-spouting Pop Culture aficionados that actually make him grind his teeth at night, then, regrettably – so be it. Underneath that broad canvas, he can still find two tiny little dots he recognizes, even if they've changed considerably from the Late Regency Army Brat and the Dickensian Poverty Paean he remembers.

They aggravate and irritate him, he'd stick Arthur's head through a vice and twist, if he could, and would honestly ask Archie to stop being so bloody sentimental about his armature and get an upgrade, for God's sake – but he loves them.

Grudgingly, he'd admit that there is one American axiom that fits his dynamic with his nephews, and how they tend to feed into one another's investigative or official pursuits.

Family. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: Forsythe Atticus Holden

Post by TennyoCeres84 »

I like his bio. Forsythe should be a fun character to interact with, and he should be interesting to occasionally needle.
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