Luka Balcescu -Tacharan
Birth Name (Name Guidelines): Ladislau Balcescu
Aliases: Luka
Place of Birth: Bucharest, Romania
Age:(real and apparent) real : 50, apparent 27
Male/Female: Male
Current Occupation: he owns a few night club establishments in Bucharest that he collects income from but rarely does he work
Past Occupation: (If different from above) a member of the Securitate (secret police)
Appearance
Hair Color: dark brown
Length and Style: short and well kept
Eye Color: brown, nearly black
Skin Color: drab and washed out, you can tell he has olive undertones in his skin and you know that once he could hold a tan.
Height: 5f 11in
Weight: 190 lb
Nationality: Romanian
Race: (I.E. Vampire, Werewolf, human etc.) vampire
Body Type: Athletic
Description (if an NPC) or name of your creator/gifter(if a PC) Magda Balcescu, Luka’s twin sister. Magda had left the orphanage after Luka and had turned to a life of prostitution to survive. That is where she came across her creator, Toma. When the revolution broke out, Magda pleaded with Toma to aid her in finding her brother, knowing he was a member of the Securitate and that he was in immediate danger. Finding Luka had been easier than they had thought as the Romanian people were hunting down all of the Securitate to maim and slaughter them. Following the crowd they made it to Luka where they found him being dismembered. Magda made up a story of personal vendetta against him and the crowd left her and Toma to finish him off. Under Toma’s supervision, he allowed Magda to turn her brother and join them as immortals.
Personal Questions
1. Describe your character's personality: Luka is pretty laid back on the outside. Inwardly he always watching and noticing what is going on around him. His years as secret police have taught him much about observation and he is able to slip into combat mode quite easily. Now that he is not starving or being brainwashed, he finally is able to relax and just be himself. He likes to joke and has been called lazy from his sister who is much more uptight than he is.
2. Describe how your character would appear to a stranger (I.E. typical dress, way they carry themselves etc.) Luka likes to dress well and is always sleek in appearance. He moves fluidly and is always the perfect gentleman. Ladies are often taken with him and men usually are annoyed with him.
3.What does your character like?
-American accents. Luka is amazed that one country
could have so many different dialects and accents. He could really listen to them all day. - For this reason, he likes to watch TV. He never had a real TV in Romania, and even when they were given one in the Securitate it only showed channels boasting of the greatness of their President. Real TV was something new to him and he can sit for hours in front of it. One of his favorite shows is Jerry Springer .- Luka owns three clubs back in Bucharest. His love for the nightclub scene developed on a trip to Spain. When he returned home he began to open his own clubs to service both vampires and the unsuspecting humans that stumbled in. It’s not that he likes to dance himself, he just likes to give people the freedom to do so. This stems back from all the things he was unable to do as one of the many social orphans of his childhood.
4. Dislike? The Romanian vampire stigma : people assuming he knew Dracula/is a direct descendant of Dracula. Not all people from Romania are vampires, nor do they know vampires…He thinks it’s poor luck that his homeland is Romania because he get’s all the shots taken at him for it. Why don’t American vampire’s get teased for Blade? It’s something he often wonders.- He also hates country music. He simply can not understand the attraction to its slow twangy sound. To him, it’s close to nails scratching across a chalk board. – Luka also dislikes his birth name. To him it sounds terrible when other people who are not Romanian try and say it. So he goes by Luka.
5. (For humans) Describe what abilities you see your character having if they were turned.
6. What are your fears? (please choose and explain 3 minimum)
-Luka has nightmares that everything is a dream because life has become to good. He fears one day that he will wake up and he’ll be 7 years old again in the orphanage, tied down on a thin mattress that he can feel the broken wire springs through.
-Large crowds of angry people. Because of how he was originally maimed and nearly killed, Luka is afraid of mobs of angry people. He went to a concert once and near had a breakdown in the mosh pit. He has since never stepped foot at a heavy metal concert again.
-Magda’s death. Besides being his twin sister, Magda is also his creator whom he owes his very life too. If anything were to happen to her… it could get very ugly
-Luka will also never step foot into an orphanage. The memories have been painfully blocked out and he is more afraid of those scabs being torn open than anything else.
7. What is your character's strengths and weaknesses? (please pick 3 minimum of each and explain in detail how and why this affects your character)
Strength:
-Luka is supremely loyal. After many years in the secret police, Luka has learned one thing above all else, loyalty until death. He also expects loyalty from those around him and can not forgive lightly those who have broken his trust.
-Luka is a survivalist. He is adapt at finding ways to sustain his life. Whether it be rationing food as a child, hiding out in the depths of a city to stay alive, containing his thirst as long as he can as a vampire. Surviving was all he has ever known until his “unlife” started. Now he makes sure not to get to comfortable.
Quick lto Learn. In order to survive against all odds, Luka has become a quick learner. He is a keen observer and can quickly figure out ways to adapt or make any situation work for him.
Weakness
- Gullible. Never having tv as a child or very nearly into 30's, Luka takes what he sees on TV as literal. Because of this he spends a lot of time researching what he hears because while he can be naïve he is not dumb.
-Children are a weakness for Luka. Specially children in need. Because of his past experiences that are still fresh enough to remember, Luka will always stop and help children.
- Luka also likes to think the best of people. This usually ends up with a breech of loyalty and trust which in turn ends up with a very angry trained solider. Once Luka has been pushed far enough he will snap and it's not pretty.
Vampire -
Abilities (Listed here) Dream walking, & Glamour
Flaws (Listed here) Missing limb – hand and some of his forearm. He wears a prosthetic that is robotic and is able to move it with competence.
Hobbies & Skills (for more information, read here) He has decent management skills ( he does operate 3 businesses ) Since coming to Nachton he has discovered TiVo. His current hobby includes TiVoing shows to watch later.
Cosmetic Traits (Distinct, character defining physical attributes. These should be minor and offer no real power other than to make your character appear more interesting.)- It is hard to tell that Luka is missing some of his arm and hand. He rarely wears short sleeved shirts so no one can see his prosthetic. The hand itself looks real enough and Luka uses his Glamour extensively to cover up anything noticeable about it
Quirks and Habits worthy of mention – He will watch tv for hours if you let him. In this way he is easily amused.
Personal History: Luka was born a twin in Bucharest Romania during a time when many people were forced to place their children in orphanages. This was largely due in part to the countries ruler Nicolae Ceausescu paying off Romania’s international debts at the cost of his own people and then forcing families to produce more offspring. Luka and his sister Magda were placed into one of the many orphanages that littered the country side with horrid living conditions. More often than not, the children were tied to beds for hours at a time and deprived of what most people consider basic necessities. But Luka and his sister managed to survive. By the time the twins were of age to leave the orphanage they were not given many options. They could seek out the family that had given them up, or try and strike out on their own. There was a third option that was given to Luka simply because he was male. President Ceausescu had built a group of secret police to defend him called the Securitate and he was filling the ranks with orphan boys. If Luka wished to join this elite party he would be given his own apartment and given special access to stores that contained food and items other civilian Romanians could not get their hands on. When presented with a choice like that who wouldn’t have taken it? Luka signed up for it immediately. The only hardship he faced in that choice was leaving Magda on her own as he was not permitted to bring her with him. It was a tough decision and the shame he feels about it is still carried with him to this day. Luka spent the greater portion of the 1980’s serving his President as brutal and callous as needed be. He never searched for his sister in fear that he would find she had died or worse yet, that she had joined up against their President. In that case it would be his sworn duty to kill her, and that was something he did not want to do. In 1989 when he was twenty seven, Luka had been sent to another city in Romania to help put down an uprising. By the time he returned to Bucharest the city had spiraled into chaos and he was given the news that his President had been executed. Still loyal to the cause, Luka and other Securitate solders continued to fight for days, ravishing the city they all called
home. By the third day, most of his brother in arms had been shot, beaten and strung up in the city streets like gruesome flags of determination on the side of the revolutionaries. He had been running for an entire day to find a hiding spot that gave him ample room to defend himself against the crazed citizens, when they cornered him in an empty store house. It didn’t take the crowd of six men and three teenage boys long to disarm him. They tore his clothes from his body as they used wooden clubs to beat him. One of the men had a crude machete that was undoubtedly coated in the blood of his fellow officers. The others stepped back as the man took aim at Luka neck and swung. Beaten as he was, Luka quickly curled into a ball and held his arms up to protect himself. He felt each blow as the man hacked his way through Luka’s arms meaning to end his life. Just as he was counting himself down and out he heard a voice he thought he’d never hear again. The man stopped chopping at Luka and Luka let out a sob. He had to be dead if he was hearing Magda calling for them to leave him alone. It seemed like hours before he felt soft hands wiping the blood from his face. Magda had come and she was not alone. At the time Luka had truly thought he was dead and that Magda was also. In his state of mind, he thought Magda had brought God to him to save him from the crowd’s viciousness. It was then that he passed out from blood loss.
When he awoke three days later, Luka found himself completely healed except for his right hand, which was nonexistent. Magda was by his side once more and explained everything that had happened to him. The man, who Luka had thought was God, was a Tacharan vampire by the name of Toma. Under Toma’s guidance Magda had bitten him and turned him into a vampire as it was the only way to save him. Unfortunately, his right hand had not been salvageable. Luka was not angry with his sister and he’s considered her gift of immortality as a blessing in disguise. In his eyes, it was an act of forgiveness for her when he had turned his back on her ten years prior. Luka is extremely loyal to both Magda and Toma. Toma was the father figure they never had and loved his sister faithfully. Magda and Toma showed Luka all the things he had been missing in life. Movies, Television, Musicals, literature, everything and anything he could imagine were his for his beholding. Nightclubs were his favorite places. Everyone inside had fun and was allowed to behave as they pleased. This appealed to Luka and he knew it was something he wanted to be a part of. With assistance from Toma Luka purchased his first club. It was the first of many as each one blossomed as a vampire hang out. It was here in one of his nightclub that he met an older Greek vampire by the name of Panos. The two hit it off right away and spent many years together traveling in Eastern Europe. It turned out that Panos knew of a Greek doctor who specialized in robotics and owed him a favor. This doctor fitted Luka for the prosthetic that he now wears,
enabling him to do things with two hands that he could not have done before. Luka was so pleased with Panos and his graciousness to just use a favor on him that he recommended the clanless vampire to the Tacharan. Panos declined to stay in Romania but agreed to come to America, namely Nachton, and join the clan there. With his family growing by one brother Luka was more pleased than ever. But what happens when you have everything you want? Boredom sets in. Luka has grown bored with Romania and his sister and her lover. Looking for some excitement in his life, Luka has decided to look up his old friend in Nachton and see what the big American city has to offer him.
OOC Checklist
Player name (online is fine) - Dia
Other Characters you play – Chryseis, Panos, Diane, Delilah
How you came to SA (Other board, friend, etc) – I was in the waiting room when it was born
Have you read all the Rules? yes
Do you understand that this is an adult board with adult content (sometimes graphic and violent in nature)? yes
This board is adult only. Are you over the age of 18? Sadly yes