Riley Biers

*A Reluctant General*

* Overview
* Sheet
* Background
* Logs

A natural leader, recruited as an instrument of vengeance.

## Personality

Riley was always a highly-intelligent and nice, friendly young man as a human. As a vampire, he retains the ability to be just as friendly, although now he often sees charm as a means to an end. He can't afford to let most people get too close to him, whether part of his army of newborns or otherwise; he's had no real time to acclimatize to his new life, which has led to certain trust issues. As he has an inborn ability of self-control, it's ridiculously easy for him to simply control his emotions and try to analyze his situation when it is possible.

He would, deep down, like nothing more than to be able to express his emotions again and not have to be so guarded, but the opportunity hasn't come up for some time. If he could trust someone, they would surely gain so much from it, as would Riley. But he's most often excessively careful; it's not like he can even trust Victoria, regardless of how much she tries to insist that she loves him.

## SIGNATURE ABILITY

### Natural Leader

When Riley truly believes in a cause greater than himself, he can help sway others to that cause and get them to work together with astonishing efficiency, even if there's little other logical reason why they would manage. He can gather a group of people with completely unrelated personal desires, and by convincing them of their common interest he can get them to work together effectively as though they had trained to do so. This allows them to complement one another in terms of skill and power as though they had served together for years, even if they've only actually known one another for days. This power does not rob the members of his group of their free will. They must still elect to join him, but it does make him especially able to clearly make his pitch for why they should join him with no misunderstandings, bridging any gap in communication that might otherwise exist. Once they do join, they become part of his highly effective group for whatever purpose it serves, gaining the benefits of cooperative membership for as long as they remain allied.

## SKILLS

Riley can not only hold his own in a fight, but he can engage beings more powerful and potentially more dangerous than he is and have a reasonable likelihood of winning. He is fierce in any battle, but his natural vampiric grace allows even the most savage blows to be delivered with finesse and a terrible beauty.

Riley is an expert at manipulation and subterfuge. He reads people very well and tends to get an easy idea of their desires, fears, and anything else that he might be able to use, if he needs to do so. Lying is no problem at all for him, and he's excellent at acting any part to put himself at the greatest possible advantage.

Riley is especially skilled at assembling seemingly disparate, random things and extrapolating accurate conclusions from these clues. He is able to forecast events based on scant information and come to conclusions about things that he otherwise might not be assumed to know.

Riley knows more than the uninitiated and the neophyte, but there are some significant gaps in his information. Considering his primary sources, this should not be too surprising. He does, however, possess a sizable amount of knowledge about his kind and their nature, and a decent working knowledge of the supernatural in general.

Riley is a notable strategist, although not the best the world has ever seen. Using his other abilities, he manages to make up for his shortcomings by recognizing his strengths.

## POWERS

Vampires exude an aura of appeal. Their features, their voices, and even their scent (which contain pheromones that appeal to humans) are designed to make these predators more appealing to humans. This allows them to easily draw in those of weaker will, whether to make them prey or simply hold their attention more effectively in a social situation.

Vampires are able to manifest fangs that rate as Enhanced-level weapons. These fangs are one method by which vampires can transmit their venom, which counts as an Enhanced-level toxin. Light doses of this venom cause limited paralysis and fog the memory, so a vampire with great control can feed on humans without causing them lasting harm. Humans thusly affected remain mentally foggy and easily suggestible for up to a few hours afterward. In larger doses, the venom becomes lethal and can be used to transform humans into vampires.

Vampires possess physical strength sufficient to bend and twist metal bars, smash through most non-armored structures, and break through a brick wall with sustained moderate effort. Usually able to push up to a few tons and dead lift a small motor vehicle. They also have enhanced toughness and are much harder to kill. With skin as hard as stone, their toughness is sufficient to shrug off what would be lethal wounds for ordinary humans. If damaged, they break like stone, but they can recover if most of the pieces are reassembled. They are vulnerable to fire, however.

Vampires possess agility several times that of peak human potential, allowing them to catch arrows with moderate effort or dodge bullets with a bit of luck. This also allows for visibly enhanced running speed and reflexes, from ten to twenty times human norms. They are also able to run in bursts so fast that the eye can scarcely follow. While they do not take all actions at this speed, they are easily able to run at faster than two hundred miles per hour, in many cases approaching three hundred miles per hour or more.

Vampires have strong regenerative powers, sufficient to recover from even lethal wounds without great loss of ability. Minor wounds heal almost instantly, and even severe wounds heal within a few hours to a few days, usually "off screen." Extensive healing may take longer, such as if they need to reattach a limb. Additionally, by drawing on the power of blood, vampires can emulate some of the processes of human life. For example, a vampire could process food (though they derive no nutrition from it) or make their hair grow. This does cost them extra blood expenditure, so it tends to be something of a luxury.

Riley has an incredible inborn amount of control over himself. As a newborn, he should be one step away from insane frenzy at any moment, but he never was. It wasn't due to Victoria's hands-off vampire parenting; Riley's special ability is restraint and self-control. Compared to even exceptional others of his kind, he is extremely difficult to affect with regards to frenzy or losing control in the presence of blood, and he always has been. Even things that he never experienced in his previous human life are hardly daunting to Riley, and this gives him an excellent foundation from which he can work to organize and control others.

Vampires have vastly enhanced senses, capable of detecting levels of minutia that are well beyond human sensory input. Indeed, the spectrum of sensory information available to vampires actually makes it difficult for them to remember details from when they were human. However, experiences from the time they become a vampire are always recalled with precise clarity, no matter how old they may be. They can see in the dark, track scents by blood alone, hear a heartbeat from over a mile away if conditions are quiet enough, and listen in on conversations from a great distance. They can see with the accuracy of a bird or prey, spotting small targets from over a mile away.

## ADVANTAGES

Vampires are uncommonly beautiful, not only due to their porcelain perfect skin and their exuded aura of appeal, but the transformation literally refines their features, turning a plain human into a lovely vampire and an attractive human into a stunning immortal beauty.

## WEAKNESSES

Vampires will be incapacitated if they are decapitated, despite their various powers. However, if their body parts remain essentially intact, they can often be reassembled and reanimated by being fed blood.

Vampiric venom is highly flammable. Thus, if a vampire is damaged enough to "bleed" their venom, that venom can be set aflame. This tends to cause extreme damage to the vampire and is likely to be fatal.

Vampires exude strong pheromones that are highly appealing to humans. However, many other supernatural creatures with enhanced senses, particularly most varieties of werewolf, find this scent vile and offensive--as well as easily to detect and track. As such, while the pheromones of a vampire make them much more effective as human-hunters, it can also make them prey if they are not careful.

Newly made vampires are often more impulsive and struggle with self-control, particularly where feeding is involved. It can take years for a newly transformed vampire to learn enough self-control to avoid entering a frenzied state when they smell fresh blood or are otherwise strongly tempted to feed. In time, most do develop the ability to resist this urge. However, if a vampire becomes starved enough, their ability to resist this temptation will be reduced more and more until very few can help but give in.

Sunlight causes vampires to shimmer brightly due to the crystalline structure of their skin, which tends to draw a great deal of attention.

Riley Biers was born in New Mexico. Funny that he should end up going from a desert climate to what amounted to a rainforest when his family moved to Forks. He had an unexceptional life there, aside from being a good student, which led to him attending college in Seattle. However, one rainy night, he was assaulted by the vampire Victoria and changed into a vampire himself.

Unlike most newborns, Riley was possessed of a strength to control himself from the start. She had chosen wisely and well, because Riley was important to her. He would be the one to lead an army of newly-transformed vampires, to keep her in the shadows until the right moment.

Riley took to his new work and seemed to be the perfect choice for it, assembling a group small enough at first, but steadily growing. With Riley to lead them, the newborns were able to exist undetected by the world of the living. And Riley himself learned perhaps the most effective way, by doing, by experiencing the reactions of the others and their lack of control, their lack of discipline. He was not sure the sum total of what he had lost in leaving behind the human world, but he knew that this was now where he belonged.

Logs featuring Riley Biers:

* 2019.01.29 - The Newborn Army