Arthur Kirkland

Stats:
Age: 500 (start)

Birthday: 23rd April 1510

Hair: Sandy blonde

Eyes: Green, but turn red when hungry, startled, or angered.

Species: Vampire.

Likes: Reading, knitting, hunting, cats (with the exception of Antonio), sewing, soap operas, romance movies, fresh food.

Dislikes: Old blood, dogs, action movies, hunters (with the exception of Gabriel) cooking, most people.

History
Arthur was born to two nobles in the year 1510. He had two older brothers and an older sister, and though they picked on him as siblings do, they were still a family. When Arthur was 17, the house was attacked by a vampire, who savaged his parents to death, then knocked out young Arthur and trapped his siblings in the basement. The unknown vampire force-fed the four siblings some of his blood, one by one, starting with Aine, the eldest, then James, then Darren, and finally Arthur. The four of them had to endure four days of their bodies changing, screaming in complete agony the whole time. When Arthur came to at the end of it, the Sire had gone, and his siblings had run away. Abandoned, Arthur set out on his own.

As a very new vampire Arthur found it nearly impossible to control his hunger, and with no Sire to teach him how to hunt effectively, he rampaged throughout a nearby village, which caught the attention of the Vampire Society. They captured Arthur, calmed him down, and finally explained what was going on. After a crash course in vampire ettiquet and the rules that vampires had to obey, he was allowed back out into the world.

He stayed in London from 1560, where he met Bess, a prostitute, and fell helplessly in love with her, though he tried to hide it. She, in turn, found him quite adorable in how he sent her secret letters and took her out on dates, not just for sex. She agreed to help him get food by giving him some of her customers.

It was at this time that he met Francis Bonnefoy, a body-hopping ghost, who was at that time possessing the body of a whore. After killing a customer of Bess' that Francis was sharing, the ghost was forced out of the body he was possessing, thus revealing himself to Arthur, who could see ghosts, as well as Bess, who had no idea she had the Sight before then. Francis managed to negotiate his way around Arthur's bad temper, charming Bess also, which made the vampire dislike the Frenchman immediately. Despite repetative attempts to get rid of him, the ghost stuck around to watch Arthur and Bess for a while longer before vanishing off one day, as he tended to do.

Bess died in 1605. Darren, the third of Arthur's siblings, found him at her grave soon after her burial, tracing Arthur using the money he'd taken from the family vault to pay for the funeral. The two of them set out to find the last of their siblings, and by 1665, they were all together again, though some of them somewhat grudingly. From there, Arthur commissioned the building of a large house with many rooms. One by one, he sired more vampires, filling the house and creating his own coven.

Alfred was hardly the first person he turned, but he was very precious to Arthur, and quickly became his favourite. Arthur observed that vampires would indeed grow if one Turned them before they became an adult, but they would grow at on quarter the rate of a human. So even as he turned Alfred when the boy was only 12, before long he was turning into a teenager, and then nearly an adult. He also turned a boy called Matthew, who became great friends with Alfred in a matter of weeks, and soon they were inseperable and calling each other "brothers". Indeed, they even looked similar, though Matthew's hair was longer and curled at the ends. Alfred wished to find a way to "cure" vampirism, an idea Arthur merely raised an eyebrow at, having never even considered vampirism a disease of any kind. He was dismissive of Alfred's ideas, until one night the two argued, and Alfred, enraged and frustrated, left the coven.

Arthur was depressed for a long time, and the loss of Alfred caused him to redouble his efforts in building a large and powerful coven, one of the largest ever found in Vampire Society. Every day he worried for Alfred, however, and never gave up hope that he might come back.

He met Gabriel in Bristol in late 1779, where the two of them had a quick scuffle and a fight in a book shop before settling down, and realising the other might have something they needed. Gabriel required knowledge to turn his brother, Antonio back from being a cat. Arthur needed to know the movements of the hunters so he could keep his steadily expanding coven out of their way. The two formed an odd sort of alliance, which turned to friendship, and then, oddly, romance. Neither of their factions knew about the affair, and it was kept a close secret, though Arthur's more perceptive siblings and sired vampires noticed easily. Arthur managed to return Antonio half-way to normal, allowing the cat to change into a man momentarily, though unpredictably, and gave him the ability to speak while in cat form.

Then, in 1912, werewolves were spotted around the property. The ensuing fight was long and bloody, but the Kirkland Coven emerged victorious, though battered. However, the long seige between the two factions of monsters attracted the attention of the hunters, and in 1919, Aine, Arthur's elder sister, disappeared. Her head was found two years later, clearly murdered by hunters. Though they didn't make another move for a few more decades, Arthur's control over his coven was slipping, the 100 years of bonding long over for many of the sired vampires under him. One by one, they became harder to control, slipping away without notice. Only a few remained.

That might have been for the best, because in 1937, the Hunters found and killed all the remaining vampires in the coven, apart from Arthur, who was away at the time visiting Matthew in Canada. He returned home to find the bodies of his family, his coven, scattered throughout the entire house, pinned to the walls with mocking messages. All dead. Unknown to Arthur, Darren had posed as head of the clan, thus protecting his younger brother, and leading the Hunters to believe they would never have to come back to the house.

Arthur quietly cleaned up the bodies of his family, burying them in the back garden, and never sired another vampire afterwards. He wouldn't stand to see anyone, and hunted only those foolish enough to come near to his house. He even ignored summons from the Vampire Society, isolating himself in his house. Only in the 1960s, when Francis visited again in another body, did Arthur finally start talking to people again, and hunting like a normal vampire. He moved all the pictures he had of his coven, and all his diaries up into Alfred's old room, only going in there once he'd finished off a diary. He had electric lights installed in the house, started going to dinner parties at the Vampire Society again, and tried to move on.

When he met the human Alfred F. Jones, he was beyond shocked. He was amazed, hopeful, and scared at the same time. What could he do but take the boy in, even if he was an absolute maniac. He was loud and brash and nothing like his Alfred, but some desperate part of him just needed to have someone around in the house, and if he let this Alfred go, he didn't know what he'd do. Possibly return to his mourning. So he kept him, and was the most well fed he'd been since the 1800s.