Sam Walls, Vampire Therapist

Childhood
- Is currently 221 years old [Possible DOB: 1803]
- Father was 'takin' [...] away for their "manifest destiny"' [1845? Heard it after the fact], and died 'fightin' the British so the US could say they owned Missouri'. [War of 1812 (1813-15)]
- Mother was forced to marry a drunkard who would then beat her and Jebediah, leading to Jeb developing a permament stutter. When Jeb was old enough to fight back, their stepfather turned on Sam, but Jeb killed their stepfather instead and took Sam with him to live on the run.
- Killed his first person at age 12. 'Then it started gettin' too easy'. [~1815]

Wild West Outlaws
- Active outlaws for 35 years. [~1838-50. Age range 35-47 on being turned? = ~186-174yrs as vampire]
- Moderately infamous outlaws called the Handsome Boys, 'on account of the fact that we were young an good lookin''.
- He and Jeb married a pair of sisters and were looking to settle down, but they got sucked into One Last Big Job.
- Met "Ernie" at a saloon who offered to help them take down the Pioneer Missouri Bank for a $30,000 split three ways, enough to set the brothers up for life.
- During the heist Jeb got shot in the head; Sam didn't know who did it so he killed every single person left in the bank. That same night Jeb's wife and his own left, and he never saw them again.

The Mystic Bastards (vampire gang/cult)
- Sam believed he had nowhere left to go, as 'Wanted: Dead or Alive' posters were going up for him. Joined the gang because he had no reason not to.
- Forced him to prove his loyalty and make sure he had nothing left to lose (to fully indoctrinate him into the cult).
- Killed his horse Princess in front of him, which he wasn't able to prevent or look away from. Feels as though she was blaming him for betraying her/letting it happen
- Stayed with them until "The Wild West was endin' [1865-95], and the Pinkertons [1870s-1890s] were startin' to get the better of my gang'", and ran away from that point.

Transcendentalism
- After running away, found "a strange group of folks out in the country", ID'd by Andy as Transcendentalists.
- Taught him to 'appreciate the beauty of the night', how to read, philosophy, and curiosity ("how to question things instead of bein' scared of them").
- When his community 'died out' [literal or metaphor??] Sam started 'walking' for 90 years. [Re-emerges into society 1985? Acquires his PC in 1989]

"Hey, you've reached Sam Walls. I'm probably asleep, so, er- leave a message, amigo!"


| Text | Voice | Video | Action | Private |

OOC PREFERENCES:
•CONTACT METHOD: Maniette or PM here!
•THREAD-JACKING: Feel free on network logs, but please ask for log threads!
•FOURTH WALLING / CANON PUNCTURE: He's a vampire, he's heard all the fuckin' jokes, Hell he'll make them himself. Just not that he's from a video game please <3
•BACKTAGGING: Backtags are great, just let me know!
•AVOIDED TOPICS: Nothing in particular, but I'll give a heads up if any topic starts getting too intense!
•PREFERRED GENDER PRONOUN: She/they but I truly don't mind.

IC CHARACTERISTICS:
•CURRENT CANON POINT: Post-game
•PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: He's a goddamn cowboy. Roughly six foot tall (not including the ever-present hat), barrel-chested and real good for huggin'. Keeps himself clean, well-kept and generally pleasant, but by nature of being a vampire he is very often cold to the touch. Can very much get an erection.
•DEMEANOR: He is a goddamn gentleman of an undead cowboy. Extremely pronounced accent, which has almost certainly abated slightly since he was alive, but it's very much locked in. He makes no attempt to make himself small or harmless, and certainly doesn't pretend he's incapable of harm, but he's so genuinely warm and forthcoming that it's easy to believe he's exactly as genial as he puts forth, and is very firm about the line between treating people like clients and like friends. Missed most of society's cultural touchstone events since he was walking in the wilderness between roughly the 1890s through until the late 1980s.
•ABILITIES: A vampire! Undead, stronger/faster than regular humans, requires blood to survive (preferably human, but animal is fine), can turn into a bat! Has fangs always and claws on command, some telepathic skill (though not one Sam's implied to use a lot). Has the supernatural ability to soothe terrified people (by treating them like spooked horses), unique to him alone. Not actually inhibited by needing permission or Catholic imagery, but he is polite about it. After he drinks blood he'll very quickly need to fall asleep (water-adjacent liquids like tea and artificial plasma are apparently fair game; hydration is still important for vampires!)
•MEDICAL INFORMATION: Still a vampire, and has been one for 220 years. Despite the lack of a heartbeat can still get an erection.
•CABIN INFORMATION: 504. A fancy but mundane oak door leads to a short hallway, attached to a huge lounge pit with a few tiers of cushions and couches (it's clearly intended for mass orgy use); past the lounge is a set of stairs leading up to more rooms: the first is a fancy office with a fancy desk, a plain fridge tucked in the corner, and Sam's fancy-ass coffin pressed against the far wall. The next is a cosy gothic-ass lounge; both rooms have tinted windows looking out on the Barge's starscape. The door opposite is more Gothic aesthetic with a massive sunken sauna bath, a waterfall shower past it, and a huge sink in a stone counter with a large mirror.

•OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS: Malicious animal injury or death. Threatening innocent people in front of him will always get a reaction, but more or less everything else won't net an outward reaction.

IC PERMISSIONS:
•MENTAL: Sam does have some telepathic abilities, so he'd be able to notice and resist, but go for it!
•MIMICRY: Debatable how that'd go for copying a vampire but I'd love to see someone try.
•VIOLENCE: Ask first! Sam is a quickshooter and a vampire on top of that, he's going to be hard to get the jump on.
•MAGIC: Again, vampire, ask first!
•DEBATE: That is very literally his job, please debate him.
•OTHER / NOTES:

User Name/Nick: Maniette
User DW: maniette
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: maniette
Other Characters Currently In-Game: Arthur Lester, Jesse Faden

Character Name: Sam Walls
Series: Vampire Therapist
Age: ~45 on his death, +220 years spent as a vampire
From When?: Post-game

Warden Justification: He's literally a therapist who's done more time thinking about and improving himself than he's spent being alive. Time for these good bitches to get some therapy!!

Item: A handheld compass on a chain with his inmate's image on it; the still image changes position to show them mid-task at that point in time.

Abilities/Powers: Sam's a vampire!

• Vampire physiology: Vampires are faster, stronger and more durable than basic humans, and even among them Sam has exceptionally fast reaction speed. He has fangs on permanent display, can grows claws (involuntarily if he should lose his cool), and can turn into a bat, distinctly larger than the species he appears to be. Weak to sunlight, stakes to the heart, garlic and being beheaded, but Christianity seems to be hit or miss. Anything that doesn't kill him he'll recover from eventually!
  
• Telepathy: Sam can read people's thoughts, speak to them mentally and even do so while holding a verbal conversation. Though he implies himself it's not a power he's particularly experienced in, he's still capable. In game: Requires IC and OOC permission to use on people, and would actively seek it out. It's rude not to!
  
• Wild West Outlaw: Sam's an accomplished combatant, with a quicker draw than vampires can move, and is a savage fighter whose style focuses on a quick kill rather than a take-down, and thanks to being a vampire can hit harder, take more damage, generally fight longer and faster than any normal human. He's also very strategically minded, able to pull off sizeable heists and robberies, and work both in pairs and small teams.
  
• Mind Control Horse Whispering: An ability that is unique to Sam is the ability to settle spooked creatures - by treating them like spooked horses. It's definitely a form of psychic manipulation, but he only uses it in an emergency to prevent someone from hurting themselves or others in panic. In game: OOC permission required, but ICly since the person would be outright panicking it would be for their own good. (It's also implied Sam may have other powers in a similar vein, but we don't see these in canon.)

Wardening Strategies and Philosophies: Sam's coming as a straight-up therapist to the Barge, and will be applying those strategies where he can. His current studies, and thus what he feels qualified to actually use are largely various methods of cognitive behavioral therapy, and he's looking to get practice in with these methods as much as he is actively looking to help someone. Yes he's falling into a Control Fallacy about being someone who can help everyone but he's aware of it so it's fine. Right?

He's used to dealing with other vampires, who are all varying degrees of batshit insane, and given that he's a cowboy who's learned how to set up a dial-up modem and his own v-mail, he's certainly highly adaptable. However he's still a 40-something-year-old outlaw at heart, which makes him not reluctant to engage with new concepts, but certainly slightly out-of-date with particularly modern concepts such as 3D video games and streaming; luckily he's more than happy to approach people and ask questions if he's not sure what he's looking at, and picks up slang extremely readily.

His best strengths are going to be with people who need that bit of emotional distance in their wardens, while still approaching them with compassion and understanding. Someone who needs literal actual therapy will be an excellent partner, and Sam is very good at minding the distinction between being a therapist and being someone's friend. He can also defend himself, both physically and verbally against someone that's going to hiss and spit about the fact he's giving them therapy - but he doesn't feel the need to prove himself, either, so escalation won't occur on his end. He'd be a difficult sell for someone who looks down on him for being any combination of cowboy, vampire, or therapist; and if someone chooses to refuse his services, he won't force them to, and can come across as decidedly passive or pacifist in his steadfast belief that you can't force someone to get better unless/until they want to.

Deal: His old horse Princess.

History: Below the cut.

Born in the late 18th century, Sam grew up with a fairly rough lot. His father died in battle during the American Revolutionary War, leading their poverty-threatened mother to marry a hard man with a drinking problem; their stepfather would abuse her and Sam's older brother Jeb, to the point where Jeb developed a permanent stutter - and when their stepfather started trying to beat Sam instead, Jeb murdered their stepfather. The boys immediately went on the run, and Jeb provided for Sam as best he could, largely through stealing and begging. When they were no longer 'cute' enough to beg, they began robbing and killing, leading to Sam's own first murder at age 12, and the two became a pair of relatively famous outlaws called the Handsome Boys; while the name didn't stick their whole lives, they were still working that way for 35 years, and eventually they both managed to marry a pair of sisters, and Sam even had a daughter.

One of the last jobs they did before Sam was turned was helping a man who called himself Ernie Ewigdunkel try and rob the Pioneer Missouri Bank: a take of $30,000 split between the three of them. During the heist, his brother got shot in the head and killed, and Sam (grief-struck and unable to identify the killer) murdered every soul in the bank. After the failed job, his sister-in-law was beside herself with rage and grief, and that night she and Sam's wife left with his daughter, and he never saw them again, something he admits he can't blame them for (though he's aware in the 2020s that he does have a long-distant descendant).

That depression and lack of community lead him directly into becoming part of an outlaw cult gang called the Mystic Bastards, since Ernie was already a member - and in fact their vampiric 'father' (real name Heinrich Kramer, writer of the Malleus Maleficarum). While he initially joined because he thought he had nothing left to lose, it turns out he did - not his life, in fact, as the gang were vampires, and the reason he was turned to begin with, but his beloved horse Princess, that they slaughtered in front of him and made sure she was aware he was watching. To make sure he really felt like he had hit rock bottom and was willing to do whatever they wanted, and therefore he spent the better part of another fifty years with them, murdering and pillaging unrepentantly throughout the West; until the Pinktertons and the changing landscape made him finally take a step back and leave the group, before he got killed for his association with them.

After that, he spent time with a group of transcendentalists, who welcomed him with open arms despite his outlaw and vampire status, and were instrumental in getting him to start considering who or what he was outside of those labels. In roughly the 1880s Sam was introduced to John Muir himself, and ended up spending quite a lot of time with him in the wilderness - Sam later admits John was probably the first man he fell in love with; despite the fact the man openly pitied Sam's immortality, Sam didn't begrudge him, and they both cared deeply about each other's opinions (they weren't sexual, but Sam commented that John probably wasn't with his actual wife, either; "his first love was Mother Nature"). After they parted ways, Sam spent the next ninety years just travelling alone in the wilderness, contemplating life, examining the ways in which vampires think and hurt themselves, the mental traps they get stuck in with their age, trauma and grief - and independently began developing and understanding cognitive distortions, even coming up with names for them and learning to understand himself better through them.

At some point during all that, the Mystic Bastards caught up with Sam again, but while he had changed, they hadn't - though in the 21st century they had adapted and become an extremely predatory health insurance company called Sanguinius Health - and the confrontation is implied to have turned violent before Sam was able to defeat the posse that came for him and escape intact. Later on he was also able to get in touch with Andromachos, a vampire who's over three thousand years old. Intrigued by Sam getting in touch with him specifically to learn how to help other vampires, he invited Sam to Europe, to his club in Germany to learn more about professional therapeutic skills and terms from him - and also first-hand experience, as Sam was very quickly given patients to practice his skills on and help with their own therapy needs.

In his current age Sam chooses kindness and gentleness, over and over again. That's not to say he doesn't struggle with being firm, or standing his ground, or even with not being an asshole and snapping back at people (he's certainly not a pacifist); but he's at a point where he no longer feels the need to prove himself, his masculinity or capacity for violence - he just wants to help people, as much and as best as he can.

Sample Network Entry/RP: TDM post!

Special Notes: Sam is going to ask the Admiral for a fridge with an unlimited supply of blood bags for him to eat during the interview process.