Character Details

[nolongerhollow]

Name: Vladislaus Dracula
Alias: Vladislaus III Valerious, Iulian Caradja, Richard Grant
Race: Vampire
Age: 470

Ethnicity: Romanian/Romani
Nationality: Wallachian
Height: 6'
Weight: 170 (varies due to his flight ability)
Hair: Dark brown, past shoulder length (usually tied back)
Eyes: Pale grey; glow silver when thirsty, angry or using certain powers
Distinguishing Marks: Very pale, lightly scarred throat, pierced ears, signet ring
Apparent Age: 40
Sex: Male
Kinsey: 0
Canon Home: Transylvania circa 1888
Current Home: San Francisco, CA circa 2013

History

Born in 1423, Wallachian Prince Vladislaus III spent his mortal life embroiled in the strife of his time and region, eventually ruling Transylvania as Voivode, and aiding his father Valerious the Elder in serving the Church as a bulwark against the Turkish invaders. During this time he befriended Gabriel Van Helsing, a friendship that was apparently quite close and trusting. But the war took its toll on Dracula; the Church demanded that he stop the Turkish tide at any price, and he finally resorted to the most extreme of measures, including the mass impalements of both Turkish enemies and Transylvanian criminals. His reputation as a bloodthirsty monster struck fear into the Turks, but also his own people. Fearing that he had become depraved enough to escape their control, the Pope ordered Van Helsing to kill Dracula.

Betrayed and murdered, he made a desperate eleventh-hour pact with the Devil to not only save himself, but gain enough power to revenge himself against the Church and all humankind. Thus was born the monster Dracula, a vampire of such power that he literally could not be killed. But he had one weakness, which remained a secret for centuries: he could die at the talons of a werewolf. Valerious swore that none of his family would enter Heaven until Dracula was destroyed, thus cursing them all to an endless hunt. For only he knew how to kill his son, and he found himself paralyzed by guilt for allowing Dracula's murder in the first place instead of trying to help him. He left clues to his son's weakness in Castle Valerious, and used magic to bind his son in an icy castle atop an impassable mountain. Valerious died believing that Dracula was forever imprisoned, and thus never passed on the secret of destroying him. He never knew that Satan had already gifted Dracula with an additional power: the Hellbeast, allowing him to fly to and from his impregnable "prison" at will.

Dracula's return terrorized peasants throughout the Carpathians. Fancying himself still Voivode in spite of being dead, reviled and deposed, he ruled the land with an iron claw, his soullessness preventing him from any empathy with his people. He was restrained only by the knowledge that his appetites could wipe out whole villages if he was not careful, and considered himself merciful for killing one victim a month. He took brides, starting with the enigmatic Verona, and found that his time with them was one of the few bits of happiness left in his existence that did not come from carnage. But that bit of happiness was flawed, incomplete; his brides gave him only stillborn offspring that could not be quickened no matter how much blood was given them. This disappointed Dracula and left his brides in despair; finally he capitulated to them, and swore to seek a solution to the problem.

That solution came in the form of the mad scientist Victor Frankenstein, who promised that his experiments could bring life to the dead. The catalyst for this process, his Monster, could stir to life dead flesh by having sufficient electricity run through his body via a machine of Frankenstein's invention. Unfortunately, Frankenstein had stolen body parts for his Monster from a graveyard that was part of the Valerious protectorate; in short order, Dracula's family, which had never stopped fruitlessly hunting him, stirred the locals against them both. In the ensuing attack, Frankenstein died, his Monster was apparently destroyed and Dracula was left discouraged.

He spent a year attempting to recreate the process using Frankenstein's machinery, but without the catalyst his efforts were always doomed to failure. Ironically, hope came for him after the unexpected reappearance of Gabriel Van Helsing--who was unaged and did not have his memories. Even as Van Helsing sought to aid the last of the Valerious family in destroying Dracula, he inadvertently discovered Frankenstein's Monster, hiding in the ruins of an old windmill. After much effort and risk, and the loss of two of his brides and much of his court, Dracula reacquired the monster and placed him in the machine.

Unfortunately, his enemies conspired to stop him, and had an unexpected advantage; Gabriel had been bitten by a werewolf, and was in the period of time where he was too newly infected for Dracula to control him. Just as it seemed he was about to prevail, Dracula was thus murdered by his former best friend...again.

Post Canon History

Fortunately for Dracula, his polluted soul found itself aboard a multiverse-traveling prison ship known as the Barge, where he met--and was forced to learn to get along with--beings good and evil from several different worlds. With the guidance of people as diverse as Armand St. Just, the Gallifreyan Narvin and several superheroes, and after his immaturity and wickedness got him into trouble several times, he began to see reason. In the end, assisted by the angel Castiel, he underwent an exorcistic ritual which ended his service to Satan. It was agonizing, nearly destroyed him...but he came through it successfully and regained his empathy and full control of his morals and his mind. Soon after, the Admiral of the Barge deemed him fit to release and resurrect. He retained his powers, though he lost his Hellbeast form, and is no longer burned by holy objects, even developing a strange sort of non-institutional faith.

Dracula was hired by the Admiral to assist others in their redemption, although he took several secret "breaks" during his stay to cope with personal issues, using the Barge's existence outside time to conceal his sometimes lengthy vacations. Unfortunately, he quickly learned that the Barge was turning into something he could no longer support, and was forced to leave before he graduated his first Inmate.

He spent a few years wandering the Multiverse, dealing with his guilt and sorting out his mixed feelings about his past experiences and current existence. In the process he has discovered that true servants of Hell instinctively despise him--and that the feeling is entirely mutual. No longer forced to conform to a strictly human-centric morality, and still as ferocious as ever, he found a moral compromise in hunting down and destroying the truly wicked--whether human, supernatural, alien, or otherwise. Though he remains very picky about his targets, he thoroughly enjoys his new job--even as he contemplates the irony of ending up in the same line of work as his murderer.