Maxim Ravenshaw

Page history last edited by Amanda 3 years ago

Maximilian Iago-Cruz Ravenshaw

Vampire

written by Amanda

General

Nickname: Maxim

Age: 261

Date of Birth: January 1, 1748

Place of Birth: Arundel Estate, England

Age of Transformation: 43

Date of Transformation: April 29, 1791

Place of Transformation: Japan

Status: Single

Religion: Catholic, non-practicing

Ability

Maxim is able to project thoughts, images, voices, illusions over great distances, though the magnitude of what he is able to project lessens the farther away he is. He could make a being go crazy if he wanted, or place words or thoughts in a being's mind and make them think they are their own words/thoughts. This makes him an incomparable manipulator when he wants or needs to be.

Unfortunately, projecting can leave him in a weakened state if he does so for an extended period of time or over great distances. When the Volturi studied him, they attributed this to the defect in his right eye, but it was not certain. Another strange phenomenon that was also attributed to the discoloration of his eye is the fact that the sunlight causes him pain, and though it will not kill him, it leaves him extremely weakened if he remains in the sunlight. On the other hand, at night or under cloud cover he is known to be more powerful than most.

He is also an extremely skilled and powerful fighter and strategist. Some may not label this a special ability, but instead credit it to his skill as a martial artist and his military history, but it is still something he is known for.

Appearance

Height: 6'1"

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Burgundy when well-fed; the lower left portion of his right eye retains its natural blue

Other: He has a number of vampire bite scars across his body. Also, meeting him can be quite the startling experience due to the two-tone color of his right eye.

Personality

Maxim is a vampire who enjoys his privacy and the quiet. He exposes himself as little as possible, not because he is a vampire, but because of the mess that is his own mind. His mind is constantly in turmoil and madness is something he is constantly battling. This inner war is more difficult for him than any physical one he has ever fought. Though he has been more controlled in the last century or so, there are times when he is in a particularly weakened mental state that he is unable to fully control his projections, and because of this he will remain in seclusion. This is part of the reason he has not found a coven. He does not wish to afflict anyone with his presence.

In public, he has a commanding presence and still carries himself with the old-world aura of an aristocrat. Though he can be quite intimidating to meet, when needed he is completely charismatic.

Occupation

Maxim is involved in several arrangements that do not require his actual presence. He has accumulated enough wealth that he could live several lives of leisure, but he is still involved in stocks and owns a few businesses, to include an upscale nightclub in Cardiff and another in London. These particular establishments are not for the money so much as that they provide good hunting grounds. He also owns a successful vineyard on his mother's lands in Spain.

Personal History
Maximilian Iago-Cruz Ravenshaw was born into the privileged life of the aristocracy on the first day of the year of 1748, to parents Lord Frederick Ravenshaw and Lady Isabella. His middle name stems from his Franco-Spanish mother's maiden name. He was to inherit both the Arundel Estate (which had belonged to the Ravenshaw family for generations, since it was built in 1621, and the land had been in the family even longer than that), as well as his mother's family's fortunes and land in Spain; but his father was a drunk and a gambler, and when he lost the Arundel Estate after going into bankruptcy, he returned in a tirade and demanded his wife's money from her family's holdings. Knowing he would lose it just as he'd lost everything his own family had worked for, he beat her to death, and then hung himself.

Maxim was an orphan at the age of eight. He was sent to his uncle, an independently wealthy merchant and the second Ravenshaw son. Alastair Ravenshaw was a bachelor and had no children of his own; he shared his brother's temper, but he had something his brother had so obviously lacked: business sense. As the second son, he had been forced to make his own way with what he was given, but he succeeded tremendously in the mercantile industry. He was always traveling and rarely returned to England -- he knew he had to go where the goods were. When he heard of his brother's death, he was in India.

Alastair traveled with a Japanese man, Kiyoshi, who served as his linguist. When Maxim arrived, Kiyoshi's duties tripled to that of caretaker and tutor for the withdrawn boy. Kiyoshi was a well-learned man from a Samurai village who had chosen to leave Japan to become a scholar, with the intention of returning to his native land when he felt he had learned enough to pass on his knowledge. He had been to Oxford, Paris and Rome, to name but a few locations. Having no children of his own, he developed an instant fondness for the young Maxim and often shielded him from his uncle. He recognized very early on that the boy was exceptionally bright and he composed an arduous regimen for him. Maxim had a knack for languages and he buried his sorrows with his studies, building an impenetrable wall around himself. Kiyoshi was also a master of the martial arts and instructed Maxim in various forms, which is something he became quite adept at and continues to practice.

When Maximilian was twelve, his uncle found himself a Frenchwoman to marry. Knowing that the boy would quickly be forgotten, as Alastair was hardly a father-figure, Kiyoshi offered to take him back to Japan to further his education. Alastair accepted the offer and even paid him to do so. Maxim never saw his uncle again.

He spent four years in Japan with Kiyoshi. The village was the only peace he had ever known in his young life, and it was also the only home he knew. He still cherishes those years, but as he got older and learned more of his past, the foolish urge to return home to restore his family honor grew stronger. Kiyoshi knew he could not hold him back, and so at the age of sixteen, he returned to England with one intention: to enter the military. It was the one way he knew he could reclaim his family's honor. Kiyoshi had saved the money Alastair had given him for Maxim's education. Maxim used that money to study at Cambridge and later to buy his commission in the army.

In 1767 he became a cavalry officer, and at the age of nineteen, he was sent to the increasingly-rebellious British colonies in America. He spent the next few years saving his money and studying military strategy, and even though there wasn't much activity, he was known by his superiors as an extremely proficient officer. The military was the life he had been bred and raised for. He faced several hardships toward the beginning of his career because of his quick temper and the rumors that surrounded his family name, but as the war began, his skill on the battlefield spoke for itself. He was a captain when the fighting began, and advanced through the ranks quickly.

By all rights, he should have been a very wealthy man at this period of his life from his mother's holdings that she had managed to keep away from his father, but his uncle still retained control over the fortune and Maxim never attempted to regain it. Instead, he slowly started to build his own wealth, profiting from the war. Until the surrender at Yorktown, he had never lost a battle, and he was a colonel by the time the British were forced from the colonies.

He spent a bit of time in England, but at thirty-four, he was sent to India where he was truly able to amass his fortune. He was a cold, calculating businessman and warrior. He was deemed too brutal and merciless an officer to advance further than colonel; he was nothing but a tool to be utilized by his superiors. So long as the blood was on his hands and not theirs, superiors looked the other direction when it came to his conduct. In the meantime, he had learned of his uncle's passing and that the earldom (even though it had always, officially, been his), as well as his uncle's private wealth, had finally been restored to him. He didn't care. He reaquired the Arundel Estate, and though he could have returned to England to live out the rest of his life in leisure, he didn't. Money was something to be acquired, but not enjoyed.

In India, he became involved with a native woman from a village near his unit. She certainly wasn't the first, but she was the first he returned to, even after fathering a child with her. Not only was she Indian, but she was from the lowest caste, an untouchable by Indian standards. It didn't take long for news to get out of the taboo affair. A rival officer, Colonel Webbe, who commanded a similar unit to that of Maxim's, decided to push false evidence that the village was rebellious to the crown. He had it approved to move against them, which resulted in Radha's death, as well as that of Maxim's three-year-old child.

Unfortunately, Maxim didn't acknowledge his love for them until it was too late. They were dead by the time he came upon the scene. He killed Colonel Webbe, stabbed him to death in front of everyone. Webbe's men shot him and left him to die with the rest of the villagers, and he wanted to, but that night, when he was barely alive, they came for him.

They told him they had been watching him, and they wanted him for his strategic knowledge and fighting ability. He wanted to die, but they didn't let him. His world, already dark, became much darker. After the transformation, not only was he introduced into the supernatural world of the vampires, but he was also introduced into the world of vampire wars. The coven was from Russia and their thirst was for land. They made Maxim the general of their newborn army, as was the practice, and took him with them back north. He didn't fight it. All he wanted was blood, and they offered it to him. Not only was he an unrivalled warrior, but he soon realized he had an ability other vampire's didn't, but it seemed only an extension of his prior human ability to manipulate people.

A female of the coven, Nadya, who had taken a particular liking to him helped him to realize his talents of projecting not only his own thoughts at will, but illusions and voices as well. It wasn't controlled at first. He couldn't control the projections for several years, which was a detriment, and strangely, it physically weakened him the farther he projected. Sometimes he couldn't pull himself from the illusions of his own crazed mind, but with Nadya's help he was slowly was able to. And then the Volturi came.

The activity of the coven had come to their attention, and they came to do away with the problem. They exterminated the newborn army, as well as the coven, but took an interest in the vampire with the strange and abnormal blue in his right eye and knew he had no emotional ties to the coven. Death evaded him again as he was brought into their guard in 1810. As the ultimate warrior, he was a significant asset for almost a century. They helped him to more fully develop his talents and he continued doing what he had done his entire life: win wars.

He finally grew tired of it. Aro forced him to share his thoughts when he made it known his intention to leave, and when he sensed no threat from him, he let him go in 1887. He returned to Japan, but even the rural land wasn't the same as he remembered as a boy, and he went on his way for a few years. He lived as a nomad for a number of years and only recently has he returned to the UK. Though he still owns Arundel Estate, he can't bring himself to live there and instead bought a large portion of land in Wales, where he has lived for the last four years.

Residence

Maxim lives on an estate on the coast near the Welsh/English border. He also owns a penthouse in Cardiff and the Arundel Estate in England.