Jerrard Lovel Prideaux

The Devil's Island (open) - [11/24/2014] - Jerrard meets Alisa and she makes an enemy for life.

Moving Pieces Into Place - [11/24/2014] - Jerrard loans some of his personal art collection to the Brooklyn Museum and, on opening night, meets Selene.

Player: Mal
Email: karmaschild [at] gmail [dot] com
AIM: karmaschild
Other: shadeblossom

Character Name: Jerrard Lovel Prideaux
Character Journal: stolenlives
Physical description: Black hair, gray eyes, pale skin. Solidly muscled and athletic. 5'9".
Age: 30 (in appearance), 216 (reality)
DOB: December 12, 1795
PB: Tarkan

Character location/Home: New York City. He lives in an apartment above his nightclub, "The Devil's Island."
Alignment: Villain
Relatives: All long dead. Closest he has is a personal assistant.

Abilities: His original and most powerful (if somewhat impractical) mutation is the ability to jump from one body to another. However, this ability only activates once per lifetime. It is an automatic action that takes place at the last few moments of life. A sort of survival reflex. He can only jump into the body of someone he is touching at that time. The consciousnesses switch, leaving him in the healthy body and the previous inhabitant in his body in the throes of death. He can consciously suppress the action, but he doesn't know that and can't imagine why he'd want to.

Physically, when he can choose, he always takes a body in good health and conditioning. He works to maintain and improve that conditioning. He is highly skilled in hand to hand combat, gun play, and knife work. Also very handy with a sword, although rarely gets a chance to use it anymore.

If the body he takes has an ability of some kind, he will take control of that ability. But, he will still have to learn to use it. His current host body was a MI-6 agent who had a minor precognitive ability. He is now able to see several seconds into the future. Minutes when he concentrates hard. It gives him an edge in business and in battle.

Speaks and writes English, French, German, Italian, and Latin fluently. Currently learning Mandarin for the hell of it.

Weaknesses and flaws: He can be killed just as easily as any other human. If he dies without another person near enough to touch, he will die permanently. In addition to gaining the abilities of the body he takes, he will also take on their flaws such as addiction or -- in one unfortunate, previous jump -- mental illness.

Personality: His prolonged existence has started a growing disregard for any person, place, or object. He takes on a role to play out each lifetime, but there is no true connection to anything or anyone. As far as he's concerned, life is the game, the authorities are his adversaries, and wealth and power are the points. Whoever dies with the most points wins. Then the game begins again.

Backstory: Jerrard was just 20 when Napoleon returned from exile to make a second attempt at his war on England. He marched with the Little General's army to their ill-fated battle at Waterloo (Sunday, 18 June 1815). He was no true patriot, just a high-born debtor who wanted to remain outside of a jail cell. When the battle turned and Wellington's forces began to beat back the French army, Jerrard was on the front line with his infantry division. Musket empty and out of ammo, he fell back at his Captain's orders using his bayonet to clear the way. But, bayonet fighters don't last long in a shooting war.

As he bared down on an English soldier in his path, a musket ball tore through his chest from close behind. Determined to at least take one of the red coated bastards with him, he made a last lunge at his target. His reward was the other man's bayonet lodged in his lower abdomen. Clinging to his killer, his vision started to go black.

When his eyes opened again, he was looking down at a bloody man in a French uniform. It took him a few moments to realize that the empty eyes he was looking into were his own. Or had been. In shock, he fell in with his new, victorious regiment. He used the stolen body's personal letters and effects to assume his identity and led a debt free, if mostly illegal, life until a knife fight in a rundown pub ended that life and stole him a new one.

Over the decades, he's assumed many different identities, retaining his knowledge and a good deal of wealth as the years went by. In the latter part of July 2007, he ran afoul of MI-6. They had taken exception to the weapons he was dealing back and forth across British borders. He took exception to the agents shooting him. He ended up with a nice, shiny new body that he had to promptly leave the country with.

He now owns and operates a night club in New York city called "Devil's Island". He uses it as a front for illegal gambling, and drug and human trafficking. He is also using his birth name for the first time in 200 years. It feels good.

Plans: I'd like for him to stir up some street level trouble while also making a play for a spot in the Hellfire Inner Circle. He's going to set up a front company of the Pharmaceutical persuasion for his 'legitimate', visible business, remaining the visible face for it. His other, less legal endeavors will be conducted by his assistant in place as the figurehead and potential fall-guy.

Sample post:
http://marvel-nextgen.livejournal.com/128726.html