[dohtml]<div class="forumtable" style="width:95%; padding:5px; border:3px solid white;"><div class="maintitle" style="text-align:center; font-weight:bold; text-transform:uppercase; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:5px; padding:3px 0px 3px 0px;">In Character</div><div style="text-align:justify; font-size:10px; padding:3px 0px 3px 0px;">
<b>Full Name:</b> Stephano Luciferus Shanks - has also gone by Lucifer Heathcote and Stephan Seymour<br>
<b>Nicknames:</b> Shanks, Fano, Stephan<br>
<b>Birthdate:</b> September 14th, 1837<br>
<b>Current Age:</b> 44 years of age<br>
<b>Occupation:</b> Assistant Head of the Department of Mysteries<br>
<b>Hogwarts House:</b> Former Hufflepuff<br>
<b>Wand:</b> Red Oak, 13", Dragon Heartstring, Rigid. <br>
<b>Blood Status:</b> Half-blood (claims pureblood)<br>
<b>Social Class:</b> Upper Class<br>
<b>Family:</b> Gemima Shanks (née Ellis) - Mother - Deceased<br>
Bernard Shanks - Father - Deceased<P>
Berenice Heathcote (née Montgomery) - Deceased Wife<br>
Mallory Heathcote - Deceased Daughter<br>
Lillith Seymour (née Appleton) - Deceased Wife<br>
Maria Shanks (née Cauldwell) - Deceased Wife<br>
Hortensia Shanks (née Maldini) - Deceased Wife<br>
Lana Shanks (née Christiová) - Deceased Wife
<br>
<b>Appearance:</b> He is meticulous about his appearance and takes great pains in making himself appear handsome by dressing elegantly and with unquestionable taste. He is handsome and dark haired with dark eyes and angular features. He is a reasonably tall man, standing at 5'11" and weighing well within average range for a man of his dimensions. His wand hand is his left hand though he write with his right hand due to being trained to write with his right rather than left. <br>
<b>History:</b> Stephano was the only son born to his unhappily married parents. His mother had been a wealthy, upper class witch until she had married a miserly middle class man and suffered a great change in lifestyle. Throughout his childhood, the young boy would often hear his parents argue - many of their disagreements escalating into screaming matches and hitting. The little boy was rarely removed swiftly enough by his nanny to miss these outbursts and soon came to hold a harsh view on marriage. He adored his father and yet came to resent him for the fact that his 'rightful' place as a proper gentleman of high society had been denied him but more so, he resented his mother for displeasing his father and putting him in a foul temper.<p>
The Hogwarts letter was a blessing to the young boy who desperately wanted out of his conflicted home. The sorting hat had great difficulty when it came to placing him; he was not outstandingly clever, he was not particularly ambitious, nor could he boast of bravery. The words of the sorting hat stayed with him forever as his sorting was more or less a process of elimination rather than by merit. His eleven year old pride was hurt and he resented his house for several years before he finally settled into a healthier mode of apathy rather than active hate. He alienated himself and made no effort to stand out, even when he did make effort, he felt he was overlooked for being so... average. And so it was his average OWL grades that finally gave him the motivation to find some direction in his life. He didn't want to be average anymore. He wanted to be special, he wanted to be respected and admired and envied! <p>
And so he studied. He studied for his final years at Hogwarts consistently and diligently until he finally got those 4 Os he had been hoping for. Now he wasn't so average, was he? But nobody really cared. He had made no real close friends to hear congratulations from, he was so quiet in class that his professors were constantly overlooking him or mistaking him for someone else and he found now congratulations there and his parents were far to self-obsessed with their own discontentment in life that they barely noticed he had grown up. So frustrated by the fact that the world seemed to be ignoring him, he took it out on his parents. One evening he grew so tired of their bickering, that he slipped Deadly Nightshade into their even drinks and woke up orphaned the very next day. <p>
A good while late and once his inheritance was settled and he had full control of his assets, he decided to try and gain respect and notice by working as an apprentice to a well respected Alchemist. Unfortunately, alchemy turned out not to be Stephano's strong point. He was a poor apprentice and was let go within six months, however, in this time he had been put in the path of the very beautiful Miss Montgomery. He fell deeply in love with her from the moment he set eyes on her but as was his luck, she didn't notice him. A few months down the line, however, the fact she hadn't noticed him proved to be his greatest asset. Desperate to win her affections, the young man went to great pains to appear the epitome of an upper class gentleman in possession of a large fortune. His parents had left him enough that he could afford the clothes but it put strain on his resources. <p>
Miss Berenice Montgomery was perfect in Stephano's eyes but she was also very much out of his league, not that he was going to let that hold him back. She was upper class, pureblood, wealthy, beautiful and talented. He spent all of his time an effort either finding his way into her company and trying to win her love. He spent far more than was wise on gifts and other things to make him appear the wealthy man he was pretending to be. It took him two years of courting but he finally won her heart! He was twenty-three and she nineteen when their engagement was made official. He had managed to weasel his way in to her family and had managed to keep his charade up. In the meantime he had to sell his parents' house to keep from falling into debt, but he didn't care. <p>
For the first few months of marriage, the couple rented modest accommodations and all seemed well. However, his wife began suspecting he was not what he had presented himself to be. He never took company or paid social calls and never spoke of 'home' or of the residence she assumed they would eventually stay in. Her discontent increased as she found out she was with child, though Stephano was delighted. The tentative balance was finally destroyed one evening when she decided to confront the stranger she had married and in a fit of anger and frustration (for he could not give her an honest answer without revealing the truth) he struck her. His regret was instantaneous and while he apologized profusely and begged her forgive him, she did not and would not. <p>
Mallory Shanks was born a few months later in the small cottage Stephano had finally dubbed 'home'. He felt no desire to don the pretense any longer; he had the wife he had desired even if she no longer loved him, he believed he would always have her for they were married, just as his parents had been. But he was wrong. Angry and resenting her marriage, Berenice took a lover and began refusing to share a bed with her husband. He was hurt at first and made the decision to uproot his family to get away from her lover. She proved greatly apposed to the move, of course, but he went ahead with it anyway. It wasn't until a few months later when it became apparent that not only was she still meeting him in secret but that she was also carrying his child. Beside himself, he threatened to move once again where the lovers would be unable to meet. Berenice and her lover plotted to run away together after Stephano's intentions were known and unfortunately for them, Stephano caught them in the act. Enraged that this man thought he could take not only his wife but his daughter too, he set his house on fire with dark magic and it burned quickly to the ground. <p>
It was only once he had seen the damage and his rage had subsided that he realized he had killed his beloved daughter. <p>
He was twenty-eight when he finally recovered enough to begin his assault on the world of wealth again but this time, he would not be falling in love and he would also have a different name. This time he was purely out to get the respect and the esteem he felt he deserved and he felt deprived of. His eye was caught by a pretty young woman by the name of Lillith Appleton. He managed to charm her into loving him with ease - it was different than it had been with Berenice, he didn't care for Lillith as he had his first wife and the pressure for perfection was not there but that in itself made him more masterful, less awkward and nervous. It was an advantage. <p>
Their courtship was brief and their engagement even shorter, especially when he found out how much he would be getting. The family were assured he was wealthy and respectable and he gave them no reason to think otherwise. He lost his composure, however, on their wedding night. Plagued by a sudden rush of guilt over the death of his Berenice and memories of his first wedding night, he smothered her sooner than sleep with her. He vanished in the middle of the night, leaving behind the body of his bride with no explanation for her death. <p>
Assuming yet another name, he set himself up as a gentleman elsewhere and lived opulently on his dead wife's dowry as well as the money he had made from the precious jewels he had stolen from her possession. He began to make friends for the first time in his life, with upper class men but he was still not satisfied. They were shallow and did not esteem him above others, he was not being given the value he felt he was worth. As he began nearing thirty-one, his money began to dry up; he had spent it frivolously on gambling and drinking and the likes. Fortunately at the time, Maria Cauldwell happened to be an acquaintance of an acquaintance and visiting said shared acquaintance. She was a reasonably young widow but most importantly, she was exorbitantly rich and were he to marry her, he would take possession of her entire fortune. It was too good to pass up. <p>
He managed to seduce her quite easily and within six months they were married. He did not kill her at first - she was older than him and if he was honest, pleasant company. His sudden indifference towards her after their marriage made everything turn sour very quickly; she was quickly disillusioned about any love he might have declared for her and was convinced he was indeed after her money. When she openly accused him of marrying her just for her money and estate, he grew furious and she was found the next morning with a broken neck at the bottom of the stairs. <p>
For the first time, he did not flee after murdering his wife, instead he played the part of the grieving husband. However, there were rumors beginning to crop up about his history after suspicions about whether Maria had fallen or been pushed were raised. Though they could not prove he had killed her, he hastily sold the house and decided to go abroad. <p>
He traveled in Europe and was happy for a while; he was able to sustain his wealth this time and he was welcomed into various social circles as he hadn't been in England. At the age of thirty-four, he moved on to Italy. The company was not as accommodating as he had hoped and he was inclined to leave Italy altogether, that is until he heard rumors of a woman who had sworn herself to a celibate life. It was perfect. She was also very wealthy and if he could secure marriage to her then people were sure to finally respect him as they ought. <p>
It took him three years to finally coerce her into marriage and once she realized he did not love her, she quickly declined into mental instability. A history of mental health problems through the female line of her family was apparent once he looked into it properly and unwilling to be tied to an insane woman, he slipped poison into her dinner one evening and found himself a widower once again. He hastily moved on to Russia, wanting to escape Western Europe. He did not actively pursue a wife - he had enough money to live comfortably but happened to attract the attention of young Lana Christová. The fact she noticed him first, struck him and he couldn't help but encourage her. His ego was flattered by her attentions and he decided to marry her in an attempt to make a fresh start. He was more or less happy to begin with but he quickly grew tired with his obliging, shy little wife. She was not Berenice. One evening in an attempt to heal the wound she had sensed in her marriage, she had attempted to seduce him but he was irritated by it and thought it grossly out of character. In a rather unhinged outburst of anger, he strangled her with the bed linen. He would mourn his little wife briefly but she would become just another one of many wives. He took the spoils from his marriage and decided to return home to England. <p>
Torn up by his constant discontent, his occasional waves of guilt and frustration at the world, he spent a large amount of money on a rather more debauched way of life in an attempt to find some sort of peace with the world. He spent the best of five years in this manner before he finally sobered up and decided to move to Hogsmeade at the beginning of 1882. A house of pure opulence and extravagance was built using up the majority of his money, leaving him now in the position to either marry again or to resort to other means of securing money to support his lifestyle. He decided to take up a position at the Ministry in the Department of Mysteries. He decided as an unspeakable it would make him more inconspicuous. When the opportunity for Assistant Head of the Department arose, he jumped at it, the temptation of a pay rise and the fact he was closer to Head of the department too much to resist. However, the salary is not enough to support his lifestyle alone.
<br>
<b>Personality:</b> He has a very short temper and is very restless. He is easily distracted and very fickle. He suffers from paranoia and anxiety and rarely trusts other human beings. He is secretive and often exhibits reclusive behavior. He has a very delicate ego and does not take criticisms at all well and he is quite intelligent but by no means a genuis. <br>
<b>Sample Roleplay Post:</b> See one of my other
beasties characters :P
</div><div class="maintitle" style="text-align:center; font-weight:bold; text-transform:uppercase; font-size:12px; letter-spacing:5px; padding:3px 0px 3px 0px;">Out of Character</div><div style="text-align:justify; font-size:10px; padding:3px 0px 3px 0px;">
<b>Name:</b> Olive<br>
<b>Age:</b> 19<br>
<b>Contact:</b> Just ask and ye shall receive. Or y'know... stalk me. That's cool too.<br>
<b>Other Characters:</b> Many. Check out the CML<br>
<b>How did you hear about us?:</b> Possessed pigeons from the Moon told me.</div></div>[/dohtml]
