Arthur Holden

The less-empowered types, the undecided, the morally shifty and most mundanes who get slapped around by greater powers go here by default.
Post Reply
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Arthur Holden

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Name : Arthur Maximilian Holden
Age : 229 years old
Gender : male
Species : vampire, Freak subspecies

Abilities :
like all other nocturnal vampires, his baseline abilities include enhanced physical strength and speed. At well above twice the average mortal lifespan, he can prospectively snap someone's throat with a single hand or turn strong slaps into blows that might open fairly serious gashes across his victim's face. He's bent steel bars the way some schoolteachers bend Saint Catherine's toffee around spring and forced open reinforced steel doors with very little effort. He's been run over quite a few times before, only to stand up after what had to be a fairly painful tumble.

His speed and generally fleet-footed nature allow him to affect a particularly effective form of stealth, with his developed supernatural instincts further adding to his concealment efforts. If he doesn't want you to find him, odds are you won't – even if you're only a few steps away from him. He's had more than long enough to develop an excellent ability to spot a room's blind spots and to ascertain the exact nature of a target's wakefulness and general visual acuity. In short, he's frighteningly good at staying just short of your field of view – always there, but impossible to see or otherwise draw a bead on. Naturally, this comes as a part of his apex predator package and works hand-in-hand with a similarly boosted sense of smell and his excellent low-light and “no-light” vision. Like wolves teasing a stronger prey into exhaustion, Freaks tend to follow their Ringleader in the process of relentlessly hounding a chosen target, their abilities combining into a fairly ruthless and even sadistic form of psychological warfare.

He's very, very good at scaring people to death over generous time periods.

When attacked, his nature as one of the undead gives him a few defensive perks. With his vascular system no longer being vital to his survival and only acting as his blood storage solution, he doesn't experience much pain when shot in the chest. Head-shots will be just as insufficient, while damaging his frontal lobe does cause a few short-term problems to appear. His sentience and general existence now being far more supernatural than natural, head-shots only seem to damage his cognitive abilities if they hit the frontal lobe – temporarily driving him mad with a wounded animal's need to attack whatever is causing him harm. Pain might no longer factor into it, but the vampire he is still isn't keen on being damaged – largely because the recovery process that follows extensive brain trauma is long and difficult. Hit the back of the head and you'll potentially render him blind. Hit either one of the sides and chances are you'll either bring about temporary speech aphasia or hamper his impulse control. As you can expect, even a vampire's extraordinary regenerative abilities can't fully restore something as complex as the brain, so severe cerebral or cranial injuries might bring about minute shifts in personality and behavior.

Hitting or slashing at everything else feels like trying to bash a man-shaped slab of cold beef jerky. If he's recently fed, you'll see copious quantities of blood gush out of whatever injuries you'll have inflicted, but he no longer appears to feel pain. Similarly, his flesh is a little tougher than living adipose and muscular tissue – not because of additional training, but because it's plainly and simply dead.

Provided blood is available on short notice, there isn't a single injury he can't mend in record time. Broken bones that would require months in a splint can heal almost overnight if he's allowed to well and truly gorge himself. As this doesn't happen often, it's more common to see him brought back from the brink of death after a week's worth of regular donations. Thankfully, each vampire's base instincts tend to be the first forms of vague deliberation that are restored to a brain that had been rendered inactive. Art might spend a few days as a continuous feeding machine of sorts, before his waking mind finally, well, wakes up.

Finally, even when well and truly dead, slumbering vampires like him can be stirred into that base-line feeding mode by allowing a few droplets of blood to make their way down his opened mouth. Nothing short of incineration or dismemberment will suffice if what you want is for him to be honestly and truly dead. You can put him out of commission for a few weeks by turning his brain into mush, but he'll eventually come back. Eventually. It doesn't take a master's degree to figure out that anyone can hamper that process by digging a hole and stuffing him in it, encasing him in concrete or weighing him down underwater, but all you're doing is changing the time scale of his return from weeks to months – or maybe years.

As Ringleader to the local Circus – the term used to refer to any permanent gathering of Freaks – Arthur is both their community representative and elected official. Like any group, his Circus offers a multidisciplinary catalog of skills to consider and naturally tends to use its abilities in the field of information brokering. As such, Arthur is their authorized broker, the head snoop who handles any and all forms of accounting and business-making involved in the process of currying and carrying out favors.

He isn't Weasel or Jimmy, but the younger Holden has his hands in a number of pies – from City Hall to Holden Hall and Wyvern Securities' office floors. He keeps tabs on every criminal group or agency in town, safeguards whatever he might happen to learn and, usually, offers to sell it to the highest bidder. With his brother being involved, however, he tends to do Shield work pro bono. What he doesn't do, however, is leverage what he learns in order to obtain control. He doesn't see himself or his Circus as a power to be considered while in town, instead operating like a lucrative go-between for whatever you might need to know or want found.

Hope's Circus isn't really something to fear – unless you've done something really stupid – and more akin to something you're better off paying your respects to. Ideally, you'd do that in order to maximize your own work-flow or because legal instances are proving to be uncooperative.
Weaknesses : as explained above, some vampire strains tend to be exceptionally good at reconstituting their brains after sustaining severe injuries to the noodle. Unfortunately, a copy of a copy of a copy isn't the original brain you started out with, and Arthur's been shot at or bludgeoned a few times before... You can still tell he's a Holden through and through and there's still the clear sense that he's Archie's brother; but the spy's phlegmatic restraint is more than simply missing – it's supplanted by a psyche that feels a little screw-loose at times, in a morbid and playful sort of way. Spend a couple decades squatting in abandoned crypts with your only companions being other walking corpses – and regular corpses too, they just don't talk much – and odds are your relationship with the world of the living is going to end up being a little off-kilter, after a while...

Simply put, Arthur is a vampire through and through. If Archie has a hard time sticking to the casual social standards of the twenty-first century, Arthur has a bit of a tenuous grasp on what it means to be alive and on the concept of how precious life is to most people. It isn't so much a case of him needing sensitivity training as him not being able to adequately respond to pain in its various forms, to grief or to grasping that your own demise might be incoming in quite the same way as anyone else. This could also be a side-effect of his having eventually chosen to bite into unlife with all the gusto he can muster, pun intended.

A morbid punster carrying the shreds of old resentment towards his more successful sibling, he tends to mistakenly assume that he's right and everyone else is wrong. The old Holden Family class has indeed festered into a fair bit of honest snobbery in Arthur's case, but his very nature and the needs that it imposes onto him have both conspired to keep this aspect to mostly manageable levels.

Contrary to what popular culture suggests, only one strain of vampirism comes complete with extreme photo-sensitivity. The Freaks, on the other hand, are only cursed with their obviously grotesque nature and by the fact that after spending so much time in dank and dark spaces, their eyes haven't quite finished rediscovering how to handle daylight. The Vienna Accords might allow them out in the open, but you're liable to find Art topside with one of his several pairs of antique Victorian tinted glasses. General daytime conditions still put quite a bit of strain on his eyes. Without proper protection, they'll profusely start to weep; blood being mixed into the product of the tear ducts, and you're liable to see Art as well as any other unprotected Freak furiously strain to somehow keep his eyes focused. It isn't painful, for obvious reasons, but it still is excessively annoying. It also has the inconvenient of leaving him vulnerable, as he'll see little else than a blurry, whitish haze. Without decent eyesight, this normally lithe and predatory fellow turns into a frustrated and clumsy oaf who's stuck stumbling forwards with his hands extended outwards.

Considering how Art's only chance at probable adaptation would involve tearing his eyes out and waiting for new ones to be generated, he still largely prefers blurry quasi-sight to general daytime blindness. The only time that doesn't quite match up with the dark of night in which he can still be expected to see fairly well is in the late two or three hours of dusk.

If injured and forced to gorge, his body will quickly enter a deep state of lethargy in order to divert as many resources as possible to the task of healing. This is such an ingrained mechanism that even accidental or casual binges (like drinking a few blood packs with friends on top of his filled stomach and vascular system) will knock him out within minutes. Reduced to a limp and snoring heap, it'll take every ounce of willpower he has in order to dredge up the slightest bit of effort. Somewhere in-between, the onset of the grogginess caused by the body diverting power to burn blood it doesn't need leaves him more than a little tipsy.

Then there's the problem of what happens when he sucks the blood of a recently inebriated person, a junkie or, in fact, anyone who habitually takes certain hormonal, chemical or radiation-based treatments. Alcohol in and of itself has no effect on him, but drinking the blood of a drunkard could send him reeling. Sucking at a heroin addict's neck could force the effects of a hit on him, and draining someone who's recently gone through a chemotherapy cycle could leave him puking his entire reserves a few hours later. Most applicable poisons also apply, with one of the usual tricks used by jilted girlfriends or boyfriends of Freaks being the forced intake of a small measure of ipecac syrup. You'll probably puke your guts out, but you can be certain that any vamp that takes a bite at you is liable to do the very same, some time later.

Finally, being of a classically undead vampire strain, the only thing that keeps him active in periods during which the Centennial Tree is slumbering is his willpower. Sophia's charge clocking out for a few decades tends to hit undead individuals like a shock-wave, with only the strongest and oldest maintaining enough stamina to stay somewhat active. Even then, they'll spend those years sleepwalking through life; never quite awake and always struggling not to fall asleep. In the Freaks' case, this sleep is suitably deathlike. This means that if the Centennial Tree were ever disabled or destroyed, Arthur could be forced into a situation where his weaknesses are magnified and where he's always in danger of nodding off for good.

If that happens, no amount of blood will revive him. Those vampires Science classifies as being alive are free from this bond, but the eldritch life that keeps undead vampires going is a fickle thing, tied to the sphere of influence of any nearby Nexus. If the Tree goes, they all go too. Research into Nexus emulation is underway but has proven to be inconclusive. It doesn't help that some social circles in town tend to appreciate the notion of Arthur's brood disappearing beneath the earth, never to return. His suspected under-the-table work as an information broker may be one of the potential causes of this, as he is forced to employ a small cadre of supernatural snoops and hackers to collect the best nuggets.

He doesn't harm anyone, but his suspected sideline isn't exactly what you'd call legal. It wouldn't matter if the Vienna Accords hadn't come into effect – secrecy and occult natures and all that – but legal existence does come with its fair share of inconveniences. He's packing a small rap sheet at this point, largely filled with white-collar charges slapped onto him to try and adequately describe the nature of his activities.

Appearance :
if you were to stick Archie and Arthur side by side, you'd maybe be able to see a few signs of obvious parentage. Archie's nose was sculpted and hammered in a refined shape that Arthur's slightly less noble schnoz vaguely evokes, and the set of their lips and cheekbones is somewhat similar. However, Arthur's vampirism has taken practically everything else and twisted it into new and oftentimes grotesque ways.

A little wider across than his Clank of a sibling, Arthur seems to have been built more for power than agility, although not by an especially large margin. He still is fairly lithe and still packs that aristocratic leanness that makes it hard for judgmental people to see a potential killer when looking at him. For all of his extreme jolie laide qualities, he still somewhat looks like someone you could see in cocktail parties, flashing his best grins with the rest of the city's “crème de la crème”.

With a charcoal cast, blackened gums and diseased teeth, most of his discernible charisma has nothing to do with how appealing he looks. Rather, the set of his facial bones and his lips tends to work past the initial ugly marks of the Freaks – the uneven shape of the skull, the boils atop his scalp and the mottled, unhealthy blotches that dot his face – to present a kind of graven, sepulchral cousin to classical handsomeness. In essence, there's just so much life and unbridled class hiding behind those crooked teeth and hardened, elongated fingertips that few people tend to be able to remain indifferent to him.

Not everyone bites, of course. There's always going to be some people for whom having one pointed ear and one that's almost reabsorbed into the surrounding scalp is going to be a turn-off; there's always going to be someone who's going to take offense because you took to raising a few generations of sewer rats into progressively clean and surface-dwelling companions. There's always going to be someone who looks at your blood-based Martinis and who turns a little green around the edges. Despite all that, Arthur's background as a former thespian ensures that no matter how gross he gets, he maintains a certain level of magnetism.

Like Archie and several other immortals in town, Arthur has a hard time not subscribing to the fashion cues of his years spent as a member of the living. The catch is that with the Vienna Accords allowing him to shop for his own fabrics or favorite suit cuts, he's developed a bit of a comically funereal take on Archibald's sense of haberdashery. Blacks and charcoals are common, with his waistcoats being covered in little embroidered silver death's-heads and his cufflinks and jacket buttons being shaped like little coffins with ruby insets. There's a certain “pallbearer chic” to how he dresses, and he takes pains to ensure that his most casual of outfits keeps up with his very Charles Addams-esque sensibilities. This goes right down to his choosing to slip on horizontally striped black-and-charcoal antique swimsuits for the summer or for his take on modern Hawaiian shirts being usually black and covered with deliberately garish headstones. He's a little more flexible than his mechanical aristocrat of a brother, but he never takes modern looks as seriously as you'd expect. Nearly everything from his jogging trainers to the sweatband he'll stick on one of his wrists during a run around the block has to have a bit of that Happy Goth edge to it. In essence, he can't help himself but to want to non-verbally scream the exact nature of his state to the entire world – and just how awesome he believes it is.

That also translates to his general physicality. Contrary to what some people might expect, being a vampire doesn't free you from whatever social conventions used to make you nervous or uncomfortable. You might find vampires who managed to transcend their initial awkward nature and who returned to something resembling a normal poise – but rarely will you find someone who's as breezy and, well, cool with what he's become as Archie's brother. This stands as a shock to Archie, as his last few memories of his brother involved copious amounts of self-loathing. Maybe one knock on the head too many or one attempted murder directed at the Ringleader's person was what his psyche needed to finally snap and give up on the old anxieties of yesteryear.

As relaxed as he is, there's a kind of fluid quality to his gestures and poise, something you don't readily see in undead blood drinkers. The norm tends to involve some amount of inescapable rigidity similar to what Matthias d'Aubignier displays, with Holden's rubbery nonchalance being decidedly unusual. Walks take a bit of an absent-minded dance-like structure, he nearly constantly plays with his own walking cane or his occasional cigarette holder and liberally gestures and emotes while speaking. Standing as probable evidence that he's maybe a little insane in the membrane is the fact that he has a hard time not relating conversations he's had without making voices or imitating other people, and that he very clearly has far too much fun creeping his brother's friends out. He nearly constantly has a kind of Cryptkeeper-worthy twinkle in his eye, like the bubbly and oddly sympathetic version of innocent malevolence waiting behind his roguish smiles, as if he were constantly assessing the current situation for when to make a morbid pun or a well-placed Boo!

Despite all that, he's a bit tricky to read – far more difficult than in Archie's most recent memories of him, actually. His acting talent is always somewhere around the bend, allowing him to hide his plotting, information-gathering or general scheming behind the offended sensibilities of a gentleman you'd have the unmitigated gall to suspect of back-room dealings. Couple that with his mild insanity and you maybe end up with a better spy than even Archie – as not everyone can tell when he's being serious and when he's goofing off for the sake of getting a rise out of you. Generally speaking, his face and poise are inscrutable when he needs them to be, and crystal-clear when he doesn't care.
Behavior : Archie remembers his brother as a struggling artist, the exact portrait of the bohemian type with lofty ideals, an overly active imagination and beauty standards that have no real bearing in the sometimes gritty reality which is ours. As far as he knows, being turned shattered these pretty little illusions and seeded a heavy dose of cynicism and resentment in the would-be artist.

Unfortunately, Archie's missed the events that saw his brother across the Atlantic, swept in as he'd been across the events implicating everything from Karthian expatriates to Ulysses Grant and President Lincoln. In these missing chapters is some probable form of trauma Arthur never seriously elaborates on, usually dodging the question by providing a needlessly graphic account that ends up being sheer and baseless provocation, or a silly little explanation that seems designed to get a few chuckles out of him. Archie's heard about thirty variations on his brother's head being caved in with a blunt object, to the point where he honestly no longer cares to find out why and how his sibling transitioned from a bitter sack of tears and gnashed teeth to a graveyard-dwelling funnyman without a single care in the world. This is what Arthur seems to be now, to the point where some people have serious trouble believing in what still is an obvious parentage between the two. One is as conventional and rigid as his artificial anatomy, the other stacks loud cartoon snores over the soundtrack of boring movies while at the theater, and sometimes bursts out laughing in the middle of an admittedly gory horror movie segment.

Still, for all of the obvious signs that he's utterly and completely embraced his supernatural nature, there's plenty more that suggests that he's doing this to hide a weak chink in his personal armor. He tends to be especially clownish around the city's bourgeoisie, only to suddenly grow a sense of restraint among the middle-class types. Spend a little time with him and you realize he's actually covering a deeply considerate nature with all the trappings of snobbery, nonchalance and general dismissal : he might look the other way while you're talking to him, he might even yawn and look generally bored; only to suddenly bring the object of your conversation back some time later – to reveal that yes, he has been paying attention. Not just a little, either. Quite a lot.

Sometimes, and without much in the way of warnings, he tends to put his infantile leanings aside – generally when he's assured that his suddenly acting like a responsible adult will take you completely by surprise. He'll then provide whatever assistance you might need as seriously as you can imagine, and for as long as it takes for the game plan to take shape. Past that, however, you'll almost clearly see that he's following that plan's steps to the letter behind his apparent dismissal of the very notion of an organized plan.

Considering, he's a bit hard for new acquaintances to grasp. You might be annoyed by his seemingly flippant response to whatever serious business needs tending to, only to later realize that wow, he's actually fairly competent and lucid!

For some reason, that extends to seeing friends of his in emotional or psychological distress. His first instinct might be to erroneously dismiss physical injuries, but he's bizarrely keen when it comes to facing someone else's inner turmoils. He'll slow down and reveal that whatever it is that's changed his perspective on undeath also opened his eyes on the suffering endured by others. Completing Archie's professionalism and occasional cases of social clumsiness, you could say he tends to be patently unprofessional and paradoxically mindful of what's going on in the cockles of the Hall's relationships and its many strange and intriguing persons.

The end result is that the two brothers lovingly hate one another, if such a thing is possible; and work tremendously well together while exchanging idle threats.

Goals :
Art not being an extremely Cartesian fellow since whatever it is happened that he keeps exxagerating or embellishing; he tends not to have any clear goals. Ever since the Vienna Accords, he's at least joined the fold by becoming one of your average breadwinners. Having dilapidated his end of the Holden family fortune long ago, he's recycled his acting talent into a voice-over career starting in the eighties and still unfolding today. He's voiced several classic characters since then, from a slew of originals to a few Warner Bros. and Disney classics. Owing to his nature and the natural tone of his voice, he tends to work largely in the villains department, providing all the evil purrs and the distinguished zingers your average Saturday morning requires from its array of habitual TV screen megalomaniacs. He's also provided movie trailer voices and network idents for all of the major channel groups in the country, from CBS to MSNBC and Fox.

On a practical level, the fact that he's immortal means he's likely to keep at it for as long as the voice-over business doesn't start boring him to death. Past that, his “little fingers” will always be around to text-message or email him juicy little tidbits precisely tailored to make a few of the mobsters, one or two elected officials and maybe the odd super-villain drool with envy. Not being that much of an asshole, he tends to have a borderline-unfair bias towards the good guys, to the point where Commission members have to pay a fairly ludicrous premium to even have access to the semi-autonomous SMS and email system his Circus has created.

This could potentially pay far more than any funny voices he could make in front of a microphone, but it could also pay far less – or nothing at all. Considering that, Arthur hopes never to have to depend on his data-mining and reselling activities in a primary fashion. If that were to happen, he'd have some trouble guaranteeing a legal living for himself.
History: while Arthur isn't one to spit on the living and the hardships they endure, a quick interview would reveal that his personal opinion on mortal life in general is fairly unflattering. In his own words, living is only worth it if you're in the “business of heartache, ingratitude and pain”. Part of this may have to be explained by the fact that he had to die in order to step out of his brother's shadow.

Born in 1796, Arthur followed in the same initial footsteps as his older brother, going through boyhood at Eton College. Growing up while occasionally receiving letters from Arthur that spoke of the wonders and perils of the Indies, a fair bit of envy and a little resentment were both seeded in him. Archibald was the one who'd had the balls to defy parental authority, while Arthur's more strict mothering extinguished some of his more adventuresome leanings. The only area in which Hiram and Jocasta Holden weren't able to gird him to a strict model involved his artistic leanings. Having always been a sensitive soul, the one remaining heir apparent to the current Lord Holden's tenure was him. Archie would have made a better social figure, but he was quite obviously unavailable. Being considered as the third wheel or the second-best choice didn't exactly help Arthur's initial sense of self-esteem.

Once freed of Eton, he attempted to emulate his older brother; with far less success. His moderate talent as a writer was put to the test as a minor Canterbury playwright. Perhaps it was the proximity or the fact that virtually everyone there knew of the Holden boys, but the reception given to Arthur's first few plays felt forcefully warm. Jocasta's watchful eye could be felt, the locals feeling pressured into attributing more merit to the fairly mediocre Travails of Horatio Grant than what was strictly necessary.

Turning 22, he packed his bags and left for London. There, he spent a few months bouncing from odd job to odd job, trying his hand at everything from waiting tables to working as a writing clerk. He could have tapped into the family coffers to live a life more fitting of his stature, but his fairly acute artistic pride prevented him from considering it. A bit of a bleeding heart, he almost valued the difficult conditions in which he had to fight to find time to work on what also was fairly uninspiring scenarios. To him, the apparent “purity” of his pursuits was worth far more than Archie's provided services towards their common motherland. Resentment also colored his judgment, his parents' preference for the elder son being clearly visible.

Archie was recalled around this time period in order to train for the planned operations in Saint Petersburg. This allowed time for the two brothers to meet. Archibald was appalled to find his brother's rinky-dink little London flat and to see how Arthur limited his own professional advancement for the sake of having time to work on newspaper serials and play projects that kept being rejected. Arthur being the only person able to break through Archie's phlegm, rather harsh words were exchanged. The spy loved his own brother like a son, but he simply couldn't abide the thought of him throwing his life away in the pursuit of – what, exactly? Art? Truth? Beauty? He valued artistic productions as much as anyone else, but Baudelaire and Poe weren't around to provide examples of bleeding-heart types doubling as tortured geniuses who allowed themselves to be consumed by their discipline. There wasn't any mystique to the kind of suffering Art was putting himself through yet, so anger, disappointment and confusion were the only things Archie could offer his younger sibling. In the confines of the would-be thespian's apartment, the spy let his exact feelings run their course – a rarity for him.

Of course, Arthur fired right back. Archie was always off saving Britain from itself, parlaying with savages and sending telegrams that increasingly made him feel distant from the idea of him their aging parents still kept. Archibald simply wasn't there, ever, and had no business meddling in his affairs! Arthur's own weapons included the fact that he was the one who'd stayed behind, the one who lived to see his own mother sigh wistfully while looking at a picture of the son sent abroad, while pinching her lips while looking at her youngest!

As you can imagine, they both parted in a funk, saying things they'd later intensely regret. In 1830, however, and not being one to let go of resentments easily, Arthur used his first few meager successes to rent out a small warehouse in the East End. He turned it into the seat and main production space for the Light of Truth Theater Company, a small setup that would manage a few ripples in the city's counterculture circles without ever rising to prominence. This would be remarked by a few independent leaflets and bulletins as a shame, as Arthur's acting talent was undeniable. If only he'd had enough sense to petition for a position at a more prestigious institution... As he would never develop these intentions, sixteen years of constant efforts receiving mediocre reviews or scathing critiques would follow. Stubborn as a mule and decidedly a precursor to Romanticism in British territories, his attempts to fight the pull of Realism would amount to nothing. Having spent most of his adulthood subsisting on wishful thinking and the deliberate ignorance of several voices of reason, it stood to reason that something unfortunate would be needed, in order to break through the fragile elements of stability he'd managed to establish for himself in London.

In 1848, Archie was killed in his sleep by Karthian-trained operatives. The last few months had been spent trying to talk some sense into the also-aging thespian, Arthur finally agreeing to join a somewhat more prominent troupe as a regularly-cast extra, promised repeat performances at the recently reconstructed Lyceum Theater. This didn't sit too well with his notable ego, as he never saw himself in bit parts. Irony would see to it that he'd finally land the part of Claudius in the play of the same name on the day of Arthur's death.

Visiting Archie's unknowingly empty coffin, Arthur was able to pocket his insecurities and mourn. In a sense, he marked the end of one life he'd loved despite the recriminations the one that lived it gave him, and celebrated the beginning of another. Still, success and his apparent difficulty at committing to sound judgments would combine when he'd formally begin a relationship with his new troupe's leading lady, Alana Davison. She was the one who'd first come to realize that Arthur had strong managerial abilities, a good sense for people and a serious acting streak – all of it hampered by an ego that was pulling the other way. Even Archie had once remarked that Art had more ease at playing the buffoon or the farcical type than carrying the weight of a full-blown Greek tragedy. That obviously wasn't what he wanted to hear.

Finally, his courting Alana and his maintained illusions of dramatic grandeur drove their couple apart, the younger Holden digging deep in the family's coffers in an attempt to woo her with riches a lord's son could afford – which betrayed his earlier promise to never draw on the family's wealth. Alana could only draw on Archie's memory in an attempt to berate her ex into moderation.

In 1850, an aging Arthur had lost nearly everything and was kicked back down to his early indigent years. With Hiram and Jocasta long-since dead, no-one remained to keep him afloat. He remained in the troupe as a sort of reminder of faded glories, the one guy who triggered comments along the lines of “He's great, but...” whereas most of everyone else received uniform praise and criticism alike. He festered in this odd mix of so-so performances and generous compliments for over ten years, the end of which marked his transition into undeath.

Arthur would have probably died of old age if not for the way he'd treated Alana during the tail end of their relationship, and how his initially precarious footing improved over time – his ego mistakenly reading lukewarm praise as rave reviews. By then, his reputation as an insufferable ass had reached all of London's literati, condemning him to the special professional Hell reserved for actors such as Klaus Kinski, who are or were known for their ability to deliver good performances only with one specific director. The theatrical arts coming with their own special mystique, you can imagine how thoroughly impossible he became... Of course, another meeting with Archie, following the declassification of his new Clank self to his next-of-kin, would also serve as a catalyst towards this. Archie had hoped their reunion to be honest, a decent chance to try and start anew in more ways than one, only for Arthur to bring up the subject of their old enmities and spit out his customary accusations of favoritism...

Some people could argue that Archie's given up on his brother, since then, but it would be more accurate to say he's been giving him space. Arch wouldn't be much of a spy if he couldn't keep an eye on his loved ones without their noticing, after all.

In any case, while the thespian was stroking his ego every which way, Alana Davison was having troubles of her own. Her own rise to prominence had been less needlessly complicated than Arthur's, but she'd also had a bit of excessive self-worth and something of an image problem. She'd been secreted away by forces unknown in 1850, leaving Arthur's troupe forced to go on without her. She'd ended up in the midst of the Freaks, who inducted her into London's Circus and thoroughly broke her spirit, as was customary for fledgelings born out of a desire for retribution.

Six years later, it was Alana's turn to choose a fledgeling of her own. Her choice was fairly obvious, 1856 marking the end of Arthur's mortal life and something of a return-to-sender, after Archie's forced non-disclosure of his new physical form.

Poignant dislike turned into searing hate, the old caterwauling and proto-Romantic leanings returning in full force. As can be expected, Archie's absenteeism as a brother was once again blamed, with the brothers' second meeting in London shifting from the shady rear of a dockworkers' pub to a sewer-side brawl. Pneumatics and hydraulics managed with the keen life force of a seasoned spy won out over a young leech's impetuous and emotionally desperate nature, Archie pinning his brother down and demanding that he, for the love of God, stop blaming others for his own failings. He'd made his own choices, nobody had forced them onto him, and he'd essentially managed to dig his own grave.

It didn't quite sink in. Not originally, at least.

In 1860, after being promoted as the head of London's Circus and unsuccessfully protecting his charges from a band of slayers, Alana and the other members vetoed for a change in management... Not so much in terms of who was leading them, but how... Owing to the malleable nature of Freak cerebral tissue, a “hard reset” that would do better than any long years spent in therapy seemed like the best idea.

Deep in the old underground Roman ruins of the city, Arthur wasn't so much beat to death by thirty angry undead as turned into mush and forcefully fed afterward. After dying, the Circus members would feed their old Ringleader's body some blood, and wait to see what kind of psyche would emerge. It took eight tries until something happened – the end result being fairly surprising, even for them...

After a whole week of whaling on a young wad of undying flesh, tearing it apart and putting it back together, the mind that emerged from the bruised and cut mess of the actor's face didn't look to Alana with pain or loathing or any kind of emotional turmoil – but with a grin. That grin didn't look healthy at all, it was accompanied by a wandering pair of eyes that took in the ruins like a bedtime monster licking its chops at the sight of young things to terrorize and with a spring in his step that wasn't exactly common in vampires of his type... It would take some time, but Alana would eventually realize that while Arthur still hated her and she still found cause to hate him back, she'd managed to break and remake his mind in such a way as to make him unconditionally love his nature. No wonder the self-defeating wretch he'd been and the angry has-been who requested some level of respect he'd never deserved, Arthur had finally been made to realize where his true calling stood.

It wasn't quite comedy, it wasn't quite Grand Guignol-esque horror, it wasn't quite keen psychological terror or being an unseen jerk towards people who deserved it – but it was a bit of all of these things. Pathos, drama, noble suffering and the indignities of life? Alana opted to play it safe and took her charge to a covert viewing of I, Claudius – only to find that she had to jostle him awake every so often! His mind had entirely spun on itself; to the point where ultimately, he'd prove to be able to put his old managerial skills to good use and buy his way back in the London Circus' good fortunes. Things wouldn't quite heal up between Alana and Art, but their remaining barbs of enmity but those knives they do still throw at one another sometimes have the air of jest to them – as if calling her a hussy and he a prick had come to stand somewhere between dispensing a compliment and an insult...

If one thing hadn't changed, however, it was the new Ringleader's lofty pride. He'd never consent to giving a serious account of the events that led to his change of heart and mind, always making it more gross than it needs to be, more silly or more inconsequential – or sometimes answering with a flippantly sarcastic answer. That graven party animal still had the old thespian's ego, and that hard little nugget of aristocratic snobbery apparently refused to discuss that most shameful of topics, usually citing “defense secrets” as a reason why. Few people, even in 2025, would think to take a tire iron to a vampire's skull to make him discover the true meaning of Christmas, and he understandably intends to keep it that way.

In any case, the new and improved Arthur Holden was eventually deemed too valuable an asset for the Old Country to keep to itself. Wanting to see how the rest of the world handled vampires like him, he originally appointed Alana as his replacement, and packed his bags for the little sleepy town of Hope...

In 1882, Arthur had already benefited from a few good years as an unofficial and illegal American citizen, with Hope's contingent of Freaks taking to his leadership and offered services fairly well. Unfortunately, that year would mark one of Zebediah Buck's possession episodes. That would provide impetus for the now American operative to check out the coast of Rhode Island and deal with that AWOL and bony undead. As you can imagine, the now perky vampire didn't quite feel like sitting in the rinks if his broseph stopped by, so it was easy enough to stage a little spooking-out attempt. This time, unburdened by guilt, sorrow or much of any negative fluff, Arthur performed flawlessly and got the drop on his superspy of a sibling with very little effort. The resulting shock is still quite fresh in Archibald's mind : he'd left a caterwauling sack of undying insecurities and delusions, only to be tackle-pounced by another gaggle of delusions, albeit one that was grinning ear-to-ear and rather happy to see the fleeting look of sheer terror on his face, upon realization...

From then on, a closer collaboration between the two brothers would begin to take shape, from the Clank's establishment at Holden Hall all the way down to the Battle of Hope and the Vienna Accords. Today, Arthur is known as one of the first persons to contact if and when his brother and Bucky will be in need of being reawakened.
Post Reply