Eliphas Buck

[IamLEAM1983]

Name: Eliphas Buck
Age: 237 years old
Gender: male
Species: Werewolf

Strengths: the eldest of the Buck patriarchs has a few perks he can derive out of the greater curse he's subjected to. Lycanthropy may have kicked in fairly late in his life, but it still gives him heightened resistance to effort, sharper senses than most humans and a higher threshold to pain of both a physical and psychological nature.

Of the two brothers, Eli is clearly the one who's managed to carry the clan forward throughout the years. His approach to the family's sorrowful lot is sober, perhaps to the point of appearing dispassionate. He leaves the occasional violin-stroking to Zebediah and would much rather focus on ensuring that life goes on despite all odds.

As such, before his more outright perks as a werewolf come into play, what he has to show for himself is keen managerial instincts coming right out of two centuries ago. Everything from family spats to Buck Groceries and Sundries' ledger books can be managed as variables and assets to tweak. A pure product of the Industrial Era, he's certainly “machined” the clan into the kind of old-fashioned money-making scheme that keeps running no matter how much you try to jam its wheels and cogs. His great-granddaughter Madeline certainly takes after him, considering. She has his dry wit, his spunk in the face of crushing adversity, and his plain and simple refusal to lay down and die.

As a beast, however, Eliphas' intellectual abilities take a backseat to pure destructive capability. With a twisted take on a hybrid of lupine and humanoid bipedal forms, his transformed self has powerful hind legs and massively strong forearms that can give enough torque for his claws to tear through sheet metal. All of his already heightened senses are solicited to the peak of their ability when he transforms once per month, to the point where fear can be smelled, hesitation can be read in the slightest of twitches, and mild injuries unleash the kind of destructive furor only classic Hollywood werewolf movies can represent faithfully.

On the bright side, his coiled feral instincts operate much like a wolf's, if you'd acclimated a wolf to regular human presences from very early on in life. Some individuals, notably his kin and those who know enough to stay relaxed in his presence, will not be attacked. Strangers might be growled at, but the beast will not pursue them until they either start smelling of fear or clearly run away. Just walking off casually isn't enough to key the werewolf's predatory instincts, as the beast understands casual or nonchalant behavior to denote self-assurance. It's been shot at enough times to understand that self-assured individuals who don't tremble or give off certain scents in its presence are not to be trifled with.

Also like regular wolves, Eliphas' werewolf self is fittingly clannish. People who stop by regularly without keying it off, along with family members, all tend to carry scents the beast understands to be close to its own. Pups are playful, but grown wolves aren't. The most the werewolf tends to be able to manage in terms of “cheerful” displays involves simply hovering nearby with its mouth open in a doggy grin. The kindest display it can manage tends to involve pacing about in front of the closest entrance or exit point, eyes turned outward in an attempt to protect the “pack” from interlopers.

Considering, Eliphas is usually only locked away in the hour that precedes his transformation, but the werewolf is usually trusted by family members to be able to wander the mansion grounds freely without causing too much trouble. The early years' werewolf panic has been well and truly over for several generations now, and hearing distant howls from across Pickman Sound isn't the kind of thing that fazes most locals anymore. If anything, the beast is keeping the toad and fox populations in check.
Weaknesses: Eliphas wasn't given the honour of communing with an animal spirit, unlike some Native American tribes and a few European peasants. His curse didn't involve communion so much as forced co-habitation with the kind of hungry, slavering and untrustworthy cur that took from the first few British settlers in the coldest of winters when prey became hard to find.

Eliphas and the werewolf share the same body and the same essential senses, but everything else is utterly distinct. Eliphas is unable to exert conscious control over the beast while it's riding along. All he retains from his transformation is a vaporous and heady rush of dissipating feral urges, the deep-seated satisfaction of having killed and eaten his meal suddenly tainted with the very human doubt and fear that he may have murdered an innocent. On most occasions, he wakes up to find he's torn a fox, a few toads or maybe the occasional large bird or two to pieces. If he's so unlucky as to transform somewhere in Green Island, the beast tends to thankfully go for the easiest catches first. It isn't uncommon for the werewolf to smash his way past a storefront and start gulping down a butcher's prepared cuts for the next day.

Of course, these rare instances are double-edged. The feral pleasure of stuffing himself full will be there, but so will the pressing need to vomit all that excess meat back up. That's quite the problem, as the werewolf seems to usually be focused on sustenance – either for itself, or what it perceives as weaker clan members in need of a share. The more it hungers, and the more it will consider humans and anthros as fair game. This means that regretfully, his personal history is tainted with several murders he doesn't consciously remember committing. The eighteen-hundreds' legal system was blessedly permissive and ignorant of the true nature of the older Buck's problems, but some people are calling for Eliphas' euthanasia. If he weren't old, technically immortal and locked in a wheelchair outside of his nighttime jaunts, odds are one of the clan's hired nurses would have pulled a Jack Kevorkian long ago.

Being a werewolf, the only way to dispose of him without condemning him to a comatose or neurovegetative state involves the use of silver or silver nitrate in considerable doses. A few silver bullets shot at the beast's center mass will only enrage it, and it moves far too quickly for headshots to be an easily guaranteed feat.

His biggest weakness is also potentially his saving grace. The month that followed his being cursed with lycanthropy saw him lose the use of his legs. Only the werewolf seems to be able to temporarily restore his lower spinal column’s function, with sunrise laming the wretched thing and pinning it in place as it restores Eliphas to consciousness. This makes it difficult for him to tap into the wolf's ebullient urges in any threatening manner or to give the Department of Justice an easy, conscious conviction that could seal his fate.

Appearance: standing, Eliphas would be a stout fellow of six feet sharp for two hundred and thirty pounds, showing both the muscles of someone accustomed to physical labour and the kind of layer of fat that would normally indicate a well-deserved rest after a life of effort. A cursory look at his blue eyes, thick covering of snowy hair and his full yet impeccably trimmed beard would give the impression that he's someone's favourite grandpa. Yet, one look at his eyes dispels that impression. They're cold, tired, definitely world-weary, and indicative of the kind of lupine stubbornness that's as much to pin on his curse as it is to the family's long-suffering if enduring lineage. There's plenty of life left in those eyes, but it's not the kind of cheery life that makes you think of your grand-kids or think about taking a stab at buying the latest video game console just to see their eyes light up.

Like his brother, Eliphas has fine facial features. His, however, seem to be encased in a little more flat muscle and a little more flesh, the lich's vaporous aquiline outline swapped for a more pugnacious-looking round bud of flesh that looks like it's been broken once or twice, with drooping and bushy eyebrows that tend to give the impression that any smile whatsoever would be an indication of dire portents to come...

Even wheelchair-bound, Eliphas tends to dress in more practical ways than his layabout of a brother. With dress pants, dockers or Oxford shoes, a shirt, sweater and tie underneath a tweed jacket, you get the sense that he values looking his best. The earthen tones and the flat cap he tends to put on while outside are all indications of the fact that he used to be quite the huntsman, and that he'd probably go one one of his old duck hunts if he could. Instead, with his lower half being paralyzed, a tartan fleece cover is usually tucked around his legs while he's in his electric wheelchair.

Knowing how nobody in the family can count on Zebediah for anything, Eliphas has had a 2015 Grand Caravan modified for wheelchair use. He can get in using a small hydraulic lift and has had the driver's seat removed. All pedal controls have been re-routed to switches located behind the steering wheel, a bit like a race car's usual configuration. When the van's in the shop, you'll find him using the city's paratransport service like any other disabled citizen. His wheelchair's battery might be perfect for short walkabouts and shopping mall trips, but this isn't exactly an ATV. This frustrates him, as he certainly misses taking off, rifle in hand and galoshes on his feet, around late October or early November.
Behaviour: more than Zebediah, Eliphas embodies the way the Bucks handle the family's almost clockwork-like precision at triggering the emergence of tragedy or loss in its midst. That involves a dogged resolve and the kind of emotional restraint that enables you to look at your dead nephew's spirit with a cool head, or to consider that you're harbouring a feral beast somewhere inside yourself with a clinical approach. If he ever hurts, it's in quiet and isolated ways. If he ever weeps, it's well away from Madeline's sight.

He is the Patriarch. He is the anchor. He has no right whatsoever to allow the younger generations to see him display weakness, or to even suggest that he sometimes has doubts on what needs to be done. Someone needs to present the family curse as being something that can be carried through, endured nobly, and that doesn't render life completely impossible. Considering, Eliphas wants nobody's pity. He despises it when Madeline accidentally hires the kind of nurse who thinks he needs to be coddled or cajoled, and he brushes off any signs of kindness or concern others might show. Unfortunately, this goes to the extent that he may refuse help or oppose serious concern with outright hostility.

Paradoxically, this drives him to have a deep respect for survivors or individuals forced by circumstances to go against the grain. He might be more inclined to ask for help from people who haven't expressed pity in some way or another, instead of from people who would have offered their assistance from the start. The infamous Buck ego makes it difficult for him to even consider that others would be wiling to provide him with assistance.

Don't piss him off, however, and you find that the ruthless financial tactician he happens to be and the borderline militarized leading figure he presents himself as can still find the proverbial silver lining. Eliphas, thanks to his age, is a living almanac and history book, and he loves taking the time to show youngsters how things used to be. He has a definite knack for storytelling and has a few bits and pieces of his brother's occult knowledge, largely cobbled together from parsing through grimoires the lich left unused, around the house.

Get him talking, and you'll start to see how forcing yourself to weather through tough scrape after tough scrape gives you an appreciation for the smaller, finer things in life. While gruff and not initially the most friendly sort, people would be surprised to learn that the local werewolf is a lot more approachable, all things considered, than the lich.

Goals: to kick Martin Charney's ungrateful behind out of the mansion, and hopefully out of town. Failing that, he'll find ways to push the idiot far enough to at least smell of fear. If threats and ultimatums don't work, then letting the beast take over could provide them all with a definitive end for that unpleasant chapter in the family's history...

If only he had his legs, he sometimes thinks, or if only Zebediah was worth a damn as a mage! Even Madeline is expressing disgust when speaking of her brother-in-law, and Selena has complained of being continuously prodded by that weasel, about the damned vault!

History: born in 1788, Eliphas was lucky enough to grow up in one of the rare, but generally blessed periods of down-time the ever-present family curse occasionally sees fitting to bestow on its members. Born hale, hearty, sane and the son of a hale, hearty, sane and alive Buck patriarch – Tubalcain Buck – Eliphas was believed to be the sign that a century after that blasted shaman's death, maybe old curses could start losing steam. Just maybe.

Fate was kind enough to give his family seventeen years of bliss, before yanking the proverbial tablecloth from underneath the dinnerware. Seventeen years where he, like Zebediah, would be exposed to the finest in culture and general refinement, in the hopes that he would grow up to be a fine and upstanding member of the local high society. If anything, Eli's personal wrinkle in that plan was how no attempt to render him presentable or remotely distinguished worked for very long. He'd always been a feral child, ultimately more interested in running off on Lake Island to fish with the “seal persons” he kept insisting lived in with the slowly trickling and settling Irish and Scottish immigrants. On a more land-based level, however, Tubalcain Buck did teach him how to shoot; which was something he took great pleasure out of.

In 1800, his younger brother Zebediah came into being. Very quickly, differences in character began to emerge. Where Eli was blunt, honest, lively and possessed of a kind of slow-burning intelligence, Zeb displayed sensitivity, a slight propensity towards self-centered actions and more of a wispy, then faelike demeanor; the kind of fragile countenance you typically find in dreamy kids who spend so much of their free time curled up in their personal head-space. Most people assumed they'd both quickly be separated by life's broader strokes, but, as it is wont to do in this particular clan, tragedy struck.

In 1805, Tubalcain and Genevieve Buck were lost in a tragic accident. Karma precisely lined up a sick horse that hadn't been properly screened, a coach's axle that had been severely taxed by verdigris over the previous years, and rather horrid road conditions on the cliffs marking the very edge of Pickman Sound. The horse gave one exasperated whinny, ignored the panicked driver's whip, caused the coach to drift past the cliff's edge and sealed the fate of three unfortunate innocents. While 2025 sees the roads along Pickman Sound adequately paved and fenced off, the cliff-lined road giving access to the Buck Island Bridge is now rarely, if ever travelled by motorists of any kind. Some say the ghosts of the hapless parents still haunt the road, giving reproachful glares to anyone who dares to negotiate the curve that cost them their life. The most you'll find, nowadays, is YouTube videos styled after Ghost Rider-styled crotch rocket speed runs. A few were even passed on to EVP specialists who claim to be able to execute precise freeze-frames on Tubalcain and Genevieve's silently pleading shades.

In any case, this event forced Eliphas to expose his younger brother to the cruelly cyclical nature of the Buck family's curse. From then on, the previously feral child grew to turn that wild edge into a surprising reservoir of self-confidence and countenance, to the point where he had firmly established himself as the man of the family before turning twenty-one. To Zebediah went the quirky pursuits, the teenage love affairs with chemistry and phrenology. He took to the ledger books and the clan's entreprises, instead, and set about consolidating the fairly flimsy financial empire.

Incidentally, this involved hunting. Lots and lots of it. Green Island's nouveau riche weren't quite nobles in the standard definition of the term, but it would still be a few decades before the notion of the bourgeois type would emerge. Until then, the best way for aspiring money-makers to get going was to be seen with someone who had money to begin with, and to strike deals as needed. One of the most casual settings for business talk, back then, was a relaxed boot-hewn jaunt through tall grass, armed with a musket and a few flintlocks. Just about the only ones who didn't bite, proverbially speaking, were the Mac Loch. To deal with them, Eli had to see himself to Lake Island's single tavern and down a few pints with the peculiar-looking fellows the little fishing town was known to harbour.

The land-lubbers, however, loved it. He also came to appreciate it more than as a handy context for negotiation. By 1812, Buck Mansion's grassy and rising hillocks and cliffs were all dutifully fenced off, and whatever wasn't part of the original floor plan's English gardens was left for perusal by a small gaggle of beagles and a few mastiffs. Later, as armatures and alien designs would begin to influence human technology, early and expensive bolt-action weapons and early Victorian takes on repeater pistols would come to dominate his hunting cabinet's arsenal.

For years, and especially starting in 1845 with the incorporation of Lake Island, Pickman Sound and Willowdale into Hope's greater municipality, Eliphas became known as the city's “hunter king”; a man who was as skilled with hunting down irregularities in payments and payrolls as he was with finding the right spots around the isles to hunt for wild deer, pheasants or foxes. That year, however, marks Eli's fateful meeting with the undying Wampanoag shaman, Samoset.

Long ago, Samoset had been of the tribe Nikolaas Buck had ousted out of Green Island to establish the first of the city's numerous incarnations. While the Flemish colonists' fairly disloyal tricks forced the medicine man to call for war against the invaders, the white men had been much better armed. Grief and rage had pushed the well-meaning Native son over the edge and driven him to forsake his balanced and mutual bond with his animal spirit. Instead, wishing to strike a blow the white men wouldn't soon forget, he welcomed the Wendigo within his heart and sang for seasons of pain unending for all sons and descendants of their leader. Twisting his animal spirit out of shape, Samoset willingly cursed himself to eternal life, so that he would spread the ancestral evil's endless pain and misery to all sons and daughters of these invaders. Back then, and in the heat of the moment, it felt like a justified act : Nikolaas had orchestrated the infection and subsequent death of some two hundred Wampanoag men, women and children. A hundred years later, things hadn't improved for Native sons all across America. In essence, Samoset's anger was never given cause to recede.

Naturally, Eliphas represented everything Samoset had come to hate. Not only was this White man hunting outside of the grounds his family had claimed, he was poaching for them further northwards, now! For what purpose, at that? Did Eliphas carry his catches back to have them prepared and eaten? Was everything put to use? Were the spirits honored and thanked for their gift? Of course not!

Driven impatient by the Wendigo stirring within him, Samoset waited until nightfall, when Eliphas and his future client of the moment, a haberdasher who was looking to establish himself closer to the coast, made camp. The moon was full, as Samoset didn't intend on giving the White dogs any respite. Whomsoever would turn would do so on this very night. He'd make sure of it.

Gunshots and screams rang out in a secluded woodland area, but no-one was there to hear them. Only the birds responded when Eliphas' screams changed in pitch and nature, those flocks that hadn't taken off before being promptly cast away by the newly created werewolf's first blood howl.

The man who returned home the next day was bloodied, shell-shocked and confused. There was nothing left of Joseph Thorne, haberdasher. Nothing execept bloodied and torn clothes and blood stains that took off in several distinct directions starting from their camp site. Eli's stomach felt eerily full, and something in the back of his head screamed at him to throw up or to force himself to vomit...

Naturally, Thorne had never returned home. He'd never returned to his wife and daughter and had never signed any agreement with Eliphas. Returning home empty-handed was a first for the hunter of both game and investment partners – but it was something he'd become accustomed to before 1850.

From that point on, Hope's former tycoon nearly emptied the family's coffers in trying to stay afloat. Priceless heirlooms that had been in the family since those troublesome Flemish years were sold off for a third of their actual value, as desperate as they'd become. Every scrap of wealth they could collect was stored away in a vault he had secreted somewhere in the mansion, and every ounce of ancestral wealth was recalled from both England and the Netherlands, to join with the increasingly dragon-worthy hoard of pearls and gold and diamonds, among other items. For the clan to keep existing, an easily transferrable form of active capital was needed. As sad as it was, the family jewellery would do.

Bad luck began to rain on the clan in a more regular stream, in some ways recalling the years of utter calamity and catastrophe the town's founders had endured. Zebediah lost his wife, child, life and all credibility as an arcane researcher and practitioner, while a horseback-riding accident crippled Eliphas in 1860. A few more years would pass before the true bane imparted from Samoset would register to the werewolf, in that he had been made privy to all kinds of suffering, but utterly exempt from the release of death. Like his brother, it seemed, he was destined to live through the centuries with the family's sorrowful events to serve as occasional footnotes.

Thankfully, he hadn't been without adolescent romps. Unrequited children kept the lineage alive for both brothers but usually died fairly young. Sometimes it was Eliphas' grandchildren who dominated the family tree, while Zebediah's would suddenly top the charts for a few years. Tragedy didn't seem to think much of discrimination, as both felt themselves growing increasingly distant from their Great-great-great-grandchildren.

By 1956, however, Eli's lineage came out on top, providing them with Madeline and Felicia Buck. As the decades went by without any proverbial anvils hitting either girls, it became oddly apparent that Madeline certainly took after “Grandpa” Eliphas, while Felicia was a more cretinous, flippant take on Zebediah's own temper.

Finally, the early 2000s saw both women return to the family's ancestral seat with their eye on a personal prize. Madeline Shriver, now a celebrated wedding planner, figured she could spruce the local grounds, make as many of the fixtures as foolproof as possible, and have herself a ready-made “Best Wedding Ever” factory. With a Do-or-Die attitude and a careful attention to detail, she stood as being uncannily able to make this work without the curse rebounding on the occasional guests of the mansion. First, though, the family's finances had to be put into order and the grounds had to be cleaned up and replanted – if not thoroughly renovated. After all, the last time someone had played around with the mansion's power grid, light bulbs had been a keen invention... To say that Eli liked the girl would be an understatement, even if the most he ever managed in terms of pseudo-paternal affection was a grunt and a nod.

As for Felicia... Her mind was on the cash. By common standards, the crusty old guys in Buck Mansion were and are still very much loaded. In a climate of bubble economies, subprime scandals and mercenary banks that would make Paradise shylocks shiver with pleasure, the prospect of being able to pawn off a few dusty relics and walk off with just over three million dollars was a very tempting one. Her husband, Martin Charney, had once been a mildly seductive and a compulsive gambler and liar. Well – he still was very much a liar, and lies were one of the things Eliphas' preternatural nose had gotten very good at spotting...

Along with Madeline and Felicia came a younger generation : Selena and Lydia. While neither Zeb or Eli are particularly inclined to care about teenage hormones and things like boyfriends or modern fashion trends, both men realize the importance of keeping the doomed clan in as closely knit a unit as possible. Charitable sorts would mention the concept of being there for one another, and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume Eli wouldn't mind helping Madeline and Selena to their feet if need be.

Felicia and Lydia, however? The girl is – salvageable, as the werewolf would grudgingly admit, but the mother and her dolt of a husband are both utterly lost causes. If he could, Eli would give Samoset a ring to, say, have him coax the bolts of that awful satellite dish Felicia had installed on top of the East wing to come loose at just the right moment...

Eli has some practice when it comes to producing silent crocodile tears, or chewing bile in the back of his throat while delivering apparently heartfelt eulogies... If something more traditionally poignant is ever needed, he'll nudge his brother and simply coax him into mumbling something depressive in the microphone.