[Other FULL] Venice: City Of Masks [M][OOC]

"Never forget; I know who you are... and where you live. Just try to run. I will find you."

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Age: 25

Gender: Male

Species: Human mage

Affiliation/Job: Aurelio has worked for the de' Medici family from a very young age, and is very loyal to them. During the day, he oversees the several of the family banks and helps manage the family's less reputable finances. At night he dons his mask and conducts much shadier business; whether it be making deals with the family's more wayward contacts or collecting debt from hapless families. In many ways, the Bloodhound has become the "face" of the de' Medici's underbelly.

Appearance:

The most striking feature Aurelio has are his honey-coloured eyes; so pale and cold that they were almost eerie to look at. His wavy brown hair hangs loosely around his shoulders, and despite having tried to correct it many times, he still has terrible dandruff that he generally covers with a hat. His mask is sleek and silver, of an intricate design. Almost reminiscent of a steel knife, it emphasises the cold sneer or otherwise emotionless expression that he usually wears underneath. While he is more expressive when unmasked, he has still often been described as distant.

Aurelio's posture is actually slightly hunched by nature, and he has to consciously draw himself up whenever he wants to appear intimidating or important. At his full height he is slightly above average, and looks deceivingly short when in his natural pose. He dresses himself in tailored, subtly expensive clothes, as he believes is fitting for an employee of the de' Medici family. He favours dark blue with gold or silver lining.

As the Bloodhound, Aurelio consciously dresses differently. He wears mostly black clothes of more comfortable and durable cloth. It is more beneficial to all the legwork he is called upon to do if he dresses practically, and the colour helps to blend him in; both into the night, and into the shady underground.

Personality:

Aurelio sees little point in making personal connections with others and views many of his interactions as some kind of business transaction. Of uttermost importance to Aurelio is money. He cannot abide by those that treat money with carelessness or disrespect, and this extends not only to the poor, but to anyone who lives outside their means. Despite having been in debt in one way or another for most of his life--or perhaps because of it--he has no sympathy to those who live in poverty. He firmly believes that people only become poor through poor decisions and laziness, and that anybody who had let themselves or their family come to such a state deserved it. While he views giving charity to the homeless as encouraging laziness, he views children slightly less harshly and may even give them a spare coin if he is feeling particularly generous.

While Aurelio is not completely without empathy, he believes that you have to either use or be abused. There is not much that Aurelio would stop at to achieve his goals. He has a distaste for violence, though, and believes that murder is much too messy and permanent to be effective. Why butcher the cow today if you could make money off of it for the next ten years? For some reason, more people tended to do business with you when you didn't cause them to drop dead every so often. This did not keep him from holding children hostage or otherwise being ruthless when demanding money, however. It would not do for the de' Medici family to be seen as too forgiving.

Perhaps the only other thing that Aurelio really values, is obligation. Whether it be his own obligations to others, or those to himself, he views them as almost sacred. Those that borrow money are then obliged to return it. Those that promise anything are bound to their word. Business transactions of any kind tend to fall under this umbrella as well; one thing is for sure, if he promises to pay somebody a certain sum for their services, he will definitely fulfill his end of the bargain. Even at his most desperate he would never skim off the top or otherwise shortchange anyone. It is one of the reasons why those of uncertain character are willing to deal with him despite his off-putting personality. A deal with the Bloodhound guaranteed that you were dealing with the de' Medici, and that money was definitely forthcoming.

Aurelio can be pretentious and arrogant during the day, all traces of this is gone when he acts as the Bloodhound, and he acts chillingly cold and analytical as opposed to merely distant. Either way, he is a severe workaholic and has very little interest in anything unrelated to his job. Another thing to take note of is that while Aurelio has an extraordinarily good memory, he is less capable of forming connections or arriving at a new idea.

History:

From a young age, Aurelio had been aware that his father was a compulsive gambler. His family hadn't started incredibly poor, but they also weren't exactly comfortable. Eventually, when Aurelio was nine, they lost the house. His mother couldn't take it anymore and fled in the middle of the night; unwilling to live in desperate squalor, and unwilling to face her family and friends as a woman who had broken her vows.

His father dealt with this abandonment by throwing ever increasing amounts of money that he didn't have at his addiction, taking out bigger and bigger loans. Aurelio knew that the problem could only get worse, and that it would drag him into a lifetime of suffering if he did nothing about it. He began to sneak into the homes of the rich or into bookstores at night and went through any book he could think of that might give him some skill he could use to make some money. Fortunately, even back then, he'd had a knack for sensing nearby presences which aided him invaluably given that he was inherently clumsy and slow-moving. In the meantime he did any jobs he could find, putting most of that money into paying part of his father's debt and saving a small portion of it for himself.

After a year of desperately reading almost anything he could lay his hands on, during which he and his father had relocated neighbourhoods dozens of times to try and shake the debt collectors knocking at their door, Aurelio stumbled upon a book of magic. He devoured it, and hunted for more. He ended up emptying much of his pitiful savings on more magic books--some of them duds--until he had acquired some control over his abilities. This process took over another year, during which the collectors grew successively more violent. It wasn't rare for him to be threatened or beaten in an effort to encourage his father to pay up, or for him to arrive and find their residence completely destroyed.

With his newfound magic, he managed to track down the only person he could think of that could definitely get him out of his father's mess; Giovanni de'Medici. Giovanni was smart enough to see a potential asset even in a twelve year old child and began hiring him for small almost menial jobs. Eventually, working two other side jobs in addition to this one just to make enough to keep the loan sharks at bay, Aurelio managed to improve enough and work satisfactorily enough to prove himself to the family. He slowly climbed higher and higher up the ladder, and when they realised he was highly proficient in management of finance, he was allowed the responsibility of some of their monetary affairs as well.

At fifteen years old, Aurelio took out a large debt from the family themselves and used it to pay off every last person that his father had owed, and then completely severed ties with the man as he felt that he had fulfilled any and all familial obligation. He has since paid off the debt through work but remains completely loyal to the family.

Powers/Skills:

• Tracking: Aurelio has the ability to track down anybody he's met or anything he's been in contact with. He has an extensive map of the city in his mind and can generally visualise the location of the one he's searching for within a few blocks. The closer he is to the person or object, the more precise his power becomes. Within a few hundred metres he could pick them out of a crowd of people.
• Memorisation: While it's not perfect, Aurelio has an exceedingly good memory. He never forgets a face or name. His rote memory is also near-perfect. Unless he takes the time to commit it entirely to memory, however, he cannot remember everything that he's read and will only be able to recall the general gist of it.
• Artifacts: He is not aware of it yet, but the strange ring he had confiscated from a thief at one point is actually an artifact. When worn together, they are capable of sight-based teleportation.

Weapons: He carries a gun around, although it has only ever been used as a threat. Aurelio has limited experience with it, and by nature the gun is very unwieldy, so it is questionable whether he could hit a target more than a few paces away. The gun only stores and fires one bullet at a time, and Aurelio only carries a further four bullets on his person as an extra precaution.

RP Sample: *ditto appears and transforms into my earlier RP Sample*