Victor Maxwell Pyre

Victor is one of the founding members of the Volturi and the coven leader of the Butterflies, the main group that claim independence from the Volturi. He possesses the powerful gift of suggestion, a form of mind control, making him feared by even the Volturi. Victor and the other members of the Order, these being his wife, Jane, and his blood-brother, Alec, are a part of the Volturi Guard, though only provisionally so.

## **Biography**

### **Early life**

Victor was born in Ancient Egypt around 1400 BC, the son of a high ranking noble and one of his concubines. He became a soldier as a boy, but on his first military excursion he ran into Ephraim, the first vampire, and his burgeoning vampire army. Most of his fellow soldiers were slaughtered, but he managed to get away with several bites and massive blood loss. Eventually he collapsed in the desert, the turning process having begun.

He was found by his creator, the first vampire, and inducted into his army, becoming a soldier once more, this time for the vampires. Due to his gift, he was made into one of Ephraim’s closest advisors, becoming responsible for organising Ephraim’s military and coordinating strategies. Around ninety years into his military service, he was approached by a newcomer who had worked his way up the ranks named Aro. Aro recognised that those with powerful gifts should be on top, and he also realised that, in the long run, Ephraim’s vampire army would grow too large to sustain itself, resulting in either complete or partial collapse and civil war.

Both of these were outcomes that Aro wished to avoid, so he, along with another newcomer, Marcus, went to Victor to get his help in organising a rebellion. Victor, who had foreseen the same outcome, fully supported this revolution, and used his gift to convince more people, leading the rebellion in a civil war to slaughter Ephraim and his troops. Fearing a repeat of the events just past, he turned his powers on every other vampire present (with the exception of Aro and Marcus), making them kill each other and burying the knowledge of the First Great Vampire War forever. Aro, Marcus and Victor decided to form a governing body to prevent this from ever happening again. They called this group the Volturi, and they settled in a small city in Italy called Volterra.

Victor stayed for about two hundred years before leaving the Volturi around 1000 BC, abdicating his throne and leaving his apprentice, Caius in his place. He left to visit one of the surviving splinter groups in Romania, where he was hailed as 'The Nightmare King’, due to how he used his power, often torturing those that displeased him by influencing them to ‘dream a little dream of him’. He left Romania shortly before the Volturi attacked them, causing the surviving members of the massacre to blame him for their coven’s downfall.

For the next few centuries, until the year 1306, he began empires and then drove them into the ground for fun, playing with the lives of millions like toys, which was also how he kept himself fed. It was during this time that he gained names such as ‘The God Emperor’, ‘The Bloody King’, and ‘The Crimson Warlord’. Victor made several appearances during the Black Death, where he was often seen hovering by the beds of the sick and the dying, and was believed to be Death himself, come to collect his due. In actual fact, he was immersing them in dreams of his own design, showing them their sweetest hopes come true while they died, and then gorging himself after making sure they were thoroughly dead.

He had decided that after centuries of warmongering, it was time for him to help people, so he went around doing this until the end of the Plague, after which he became a doctor, operating in several hospitals around the world. He decided that, with the riches he and his armies had captured, he didn’t need to worry about money, so he took his wealth and erased himself from human history, becoming a ghost, many times richer than the richest human ever could be.

He stayed a ghost until the year 1876, when he opened up a string of hospitals over the world. His medical organisation quickly rose to fame, bringing him a fortune, but he still worked to keep his name out of newspapers and such things. In 1956, he opened multiple blood dispensaries around the globe, taking the newly invented blood bag and improving it many times over. He made many advances in science and technology but always let other men take credit. People would suddenly dream of blueprints, or think up wild theories that they would chase until they became reality. In his own words, he had “brought about the modern age.”

He also went back to his old habits of warmongering, bankrolling some of the biggest wars in history, including WWI and WWII. By the year 2015 he was more powerful than most countries just off of his gathered wealth and influence alone.

## Physical Appearance

Victor is 5'5” tall and has a slim but muscular body with tousled dark hair. His skin is pale and translucent, as he is positively ancient. He is boyishly handsome with wide eyes and full lips. His voice is light and airy , but can become piercing, and can cut through a noisy crowd like an arrow. He speaks with perpetual casual amusement, and always carries a small smile on his lips, but still exudes a dominant authority to people around him.

When he moves, he is so graceful and measured that if one is not focused directly on him they may miss his movements entirely, leading to his tendency to ‘just pop up’. His eyes are usually a hypnotic red flecked with spots of gold, but become a deep black when he is thirsty. He keeps his nails long and well cared for, and makes a habit of dressing well, making an effort to appear in appropriate dress for every situation. One exception to this is when visiting the Volturi court. On such occasions he always appears in full black, or in battle regalia.

## Personality and Traits

Victor generally conducts himself with a polite amusement, even in situations that would normally alarm or endanger. He maintains this mask in all but the most egregious situations, or when dealing with people who violate the principles he lives by. In such situations he shows his true face. He is smart, calculating, brutal and ruthless. He is an extremely manipulative, highly strategic individual who is excellent at planning, to the point where he could predict weeks in advance what his fellow vampires would decide in the moment.

He exerts fine point control on the world around him, using humanity’s instincts against it. He is not a man for wasted space, and every vampire community either lives by his rules (largely those of the Volturi) or dies. He only maintains the Volturi out of personal respect for Aro and because of their necessity to the survival of the vampire species. He is a collector of ‘the little things’ as he calls them, and has entire observation rooms full of butterflies, moths, spiders, and other such critters, many of which are alive. He is also known as ‘The King of the Flowers’ because of his position as the leader of Anthos (greek for flower).

He possesses terrifying organisational skills, being able to organise massive balls every ten years and inviting both vampires and humans from all over the world, all without ever being noticed or found out. His every move is deliberate and patient, calculated carefully for maximum output. He is a curious individual, and will go far for his research, but has also made various impulse decisions in his time. He hates it if his sovereign loyalty or his intelligence are brought into question. He is a possessive individual, refusing to share most things, and only sharing Jane because of the respect he has for his brothers and his apprentice. He loves Jane and is always happy to be in her presence, stating that, “to be away from [her] is to tear his moon from the sky”.

Victor is generally amused by the world around him, finding other people like ‘funny little toys’ and even finds most other vampires to be his intellectual inferior. He enjoys manipulating people and events to dance to his tune, but will accept when he has been outplayed. He always prefers to do things ‘the old fashioned way,’ but will not hesitate to use his gift when necessary. He also loves to get his hands dirty, delighting in things like battle, duelling, and torture. He is a sadomasochist, which is what drew him to Jane.

## Powers and Abilities

### Suggestive Mind Control

Victor possesses a powerful and fearsome gift, making him one of the most feared and respected vampires in the entire world. He possesses the gift to make anyone do or say anything: he deceives the individual he influences into believing that any and all commands he gives them come directly from their own psyche. Any person who he uses his gift on will find themselves having "extremely good ideas" or sudden drives to do something, almost like compulsion. Though close to undetectable and as such nigh unstoppable, his commands can be resisted by those who know to look for them or those that are extremely strong of will. He can also use this power to manipulate the senses by directly suggesting a sensory effect to the brain of his victim. He does not need a trigger for this ability, but for his power to work, his victims must remain within a certain radius of him.

### Hyper Durability

Due to his immense age, being older even than Aro, Victor has built up a near perfect immunity to most if not all things that could pose a threat to him. There is almost nothing (except perhaps a nuclear explosion or two) that could possibly destroy him.

### Master of War

Victor has copious training in the utilisation of functionally every instrument of war and every martial art ever created. He has also taught Jane his knowledge.