From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

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A dark soul filled with beautiful words
Jarod Kingsly
Player: @santo.
Origin:	Magic
Archetype:	Corruptor
Threat Level:	Confidential
Personal Data
Real Name:	Confidential
Known Aliases:	TJ King
Species:	Presumed Human
Age:	Confidential
Height:	Confidential
Weight:	Confidential
Eye Color:	Confidential
Hair Color:	Confidential
Biographical Data
Nationality:	Confidential
Occupation:	Author
Place of Birth:	England
Base of Operations:	Confidential
Marital Status:	Guarding his heart
Known Relatives:	Deceased
Known Powers
Confidential
Known Abilities
Confidential
Equipment
Confidential
No additional information available.

Dark Musings of the Writer

It was very early, his restlessness before the trip making his sleep uneasy and he was not scheduled to leave til after breakfast. His publicist had set up a penthouse loft in TJ King's name, as per their usual arrangement. Jarod Kingsly wouldn't even be in Paragon as far as anyone knew. The suite would be used during the day but at night he would be down in the shadows, seeking to asuage the needs of his body and perhaps helping someone in need as he did. Jarod moved silently to the side of the room and opened the double doors to his balcony and stepped in the cool pre-dawn twilight. It was that eternal time, between moonfall and sunrise as the sky changed from indigoes into the russets of early day. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, naked to the sky's embrace, his hands resting to the rail before him. His dreams had been of that day once more.. and everytime he watched the sunrise he thought of that night when he was sure he would soon witness his last. On bare silent feet, he padded from the balcony and passed through his bedroom into his study. Fingers paused upon the spine of worn leather and he drew the book from the case. Carrying it to the table by his favorite reading chair, he set it aside for a moment and stirred the fire to life under the mantle. He settled into the comfort of the wing backed chair, drawing the journal into his lap and thumbed through the faded pages til he found the entry he sought. While the dreams showed him images, he felt the need to read the sensations and emotions he felt, as penned by his own hand. Seeking some sort of solace from his insights of that dark day. His dark gaze settled on the flowing script of the page...

July 26, 1816

It is the two hundreth anniversary of my death. The dreams have plagued me worse than usual and so I felt the need to recant the events here on the page. Hoping to purge them from hiding so deep in the recesses of my mind.

It all seemed to begin with my engagement to Sarah. She was a wonderful girl and at that the time the love of my life. We were living in England, Sarah with her brother and I with my mother and two sisters. They were midwives, all the women in my family had been for generations. Something happened that summer, some infection that affected the mothers and passed to the womb. The babes were being stillborn and nothing my mother knew seemed to prevent it. The last to die was the child of a young gypsy girl. Her clan was travelling and they heard of my family and sought them out when she went into labor. When the babe didn't make it.. the girl's grandmother was distraught with grief. She sent men to my mother's home and they dragged her and my sisters to the constables and claimed they were witches. I had been with Sarah, walking and speaking of our wedding and returned home to discover the door splintered upon its hinges. They were given a prejudiced trial and sentenced to be hanged, while I was riding, hell bent for leather, to reach the court house in time.

No one would listen to me and I was cast down the steps, ridiculed as a lay in the dirt for my loayalty to them. The night before they were to go to the gallows I sought to free them. I was captured in the midst of my endeavors, beaten and cast into a cell and told I would share their fate on the morrow. I spent those long hours, seeking to comfort my family and dreading the coming of the sun. Watching the sky as it brightened into colors of hope that only caused me fear. Sarah was in the crowd, as we were led up the steps of the gallows, and I begged of her to turn away and flee before the deed was done. Sarah's voice was raw as she pleaded for mercy for me, for only being a loving son and brother, but her sobs fell on deaf ears. I felt the terror of the noose as they lowered it upon me, my mind panicking and shying from the drop to come. The rope was corse and heavy.. I still remember the weight and the way it scratched my skin.. every sensation sharp and vivid. Just then the old gypsy woman, pushed herself to the front and met my eyes, holding my resigned gaze. Her clawed hand made some sign and her parchment thin voice spoke to me with an echo of power.

"You who have love and spurned it to save these slayers of innocent.. Who protect these woman that bring death and sorrow.. You shall be an instrument of death for now and all the days to follow. You shall never know the sound of hearing the first cry of a child of your own. I curse you with my will and my breath, to feel sufference forever more."

The the floor dropped out from under me.. there was a sharp searing pain as the rope crushed my air way and then I knew nothing. I died kciking and flailing like a common criminal but her curse wouldn't let me cross to the beyond. There was no sensation.. no warmth for me. I could see a vague light and the shadowy forms and voices of my mother and sisters but could not go to them, chained in my cold flesh and the ravings of my mind. I awoke the next night..to find myself in a cart with the bodies of my family, the dreaded noose still about my neck. At first I was confused as to the events and I stumbled as my body was consumed in wracking pains as if my blood and bones were on fire. I didn't know what was happening but I felt a hunger like never before. My body craved.. needed something to ease the torture within it. I made my way through the woods to Sarah's house, seeking answers. She screamed when she saw me and thought me an evil sprirt, come to torment her in her times of distress. Her brother came at her cry and he attacked me, berating me as a fould demon to take the face of her betrothed. I was weak and frightened as we grappled about the room. His hands closed on my throat and in a fit of panicked rage I cast him from me and across the room. He sruck his head on the bricks of the fireplace, dark glossy blood pooling beneath his hair.. it was an accident.. and as he died.. I could see a vortex of swirling energies that cascaded up from him as it lost the last spark of animation for his now vacant vessel. I drew it into me like a man dying of thirst, my sinews and veins flooded with health and euphoria. It was the elixer I had been craving. I stood tall and whole, then cringed at the screams ripping from Sarah's horrified frame. She had witnessed it all and the fear in her eyes.. was too much to bear and I fled into the night, leaving behind the only home and family I had ever known.

The curse has made me an angel of death.. That moment when a person dies.. The entropy of life that had moved muscle and bone.. sustains me. I have tried not to feed from it but if I don't.. the pain is beyond words. My body is racked with chains of torture and my brain is on fire. But the suffering will be eternal, there will not come the welcome escape of death for me. I have discovered a couple of weeks may pass before my body needs to asuage its hunger once more. I lived the life of a murderer those first few years till I could control it. I have learned my limits and discovered some gifts of the curse as well. I can sample the life force of living beings in small measure and can do so without killing. I can pass that pure essence of life into another and invigorate and heal them of their wounds. I have sought justice as my penance and now only seek to feed from those that have stolen innocent lives themselves. I can reveal to them the spectre of death and paralyze them with fear. I do not enjoy killing, even to this day. Rather than suffer for all eternity I hope I might do some good and see others avenged. I am no souless creature bringing death with pleasure... I am but still a man. Still the person that once had a family and dreams of a live of love.

The book was closed and his fingers traced the faded leather under his fingertips. It had been four hundred years now he had wandered and put his talent for words into a meager fortune. Wealth didn't matter but it made it easier to vanish as those around him aged and he did not. It was good to read these pages now and again. Necessary to remind himself of those thoughts that still sustained him after all this time.

I am no souless creature... I am a man..

A New Chapter Begins

The wind blew through jet black hair, the short strands streaming back from the speed at which the Ducati moved down the asphalt. The rider never bothered with a helmet.. he didn't see the sense in it when you were cursed never to die. Motorcycles were his true guilty pleasure, as it were. There was something about the reckless abandon of careening down a road, at high speeds, without any true form of protection. Even with the curse of his immortality, there was no escaping the adrenaline and the instinctive fear that came from knowing that one instant of loss of control would mean horrendous pain.

Jarod finally throttled back the steel steed beneath him and turned off the road. Cutting cross county he headed for the coast of Talos and his favorite section of rocky shoreline. The engine silenced with those last few rumbles of seeming protest and a booted heel set the stand. Leather clad arms were folded across the handlebars and his body leaned forward till his chin rested upon crossed arms. That dark gaze looked out across the slowly churning waters..past the rocks thrusting from the surface without really seeing any of the details. His mind was full of visions of a heart shaped face, long flowing moonlight tresses and the scent of wild roses in full bloom. Mostly, he thought of the lingering feel of her supple lips as they had shared their first kiss. His own firm lips were curled in a whistful smile and as usual he found himself anxious for her return from her bowery prison once more.

Odd he had met her under such circumstances. A woman alone seeking someone that it seemed had abandoned her to her fate. Her name he soon discovered was Rose and it suited her like no other. She thought she was cursed and immediatley he felt the desire to offer whatever aid he could. He had lived through his four centuries under the reigns of his own yoke and could only guess at what might have been done to this lovely young lady. Listening to her fears and anguish of having such little control over her movements, a prisoner in her own home.. she had been whisked away, vanishing before his very eyes. So he returned... night after night till she appeared again. He gave her his card and told how to find his home and he would retire to begin his research from the knowledge he had gleemed from her.

He was very pleasantly suprised when she appeared on his doorstep a couple of day later. Discovering her love of words and books they had retired immediately to his study and he had gifted her with one of his works. Dark eyes danced with delight, as he recalled how her smile had radiated from her and the blush upon her complextion, clutching the book to her bodice as if it was the rarest of treasures. His curse seemed to respond to hers.. his very essence of entropy in some way kept her from feeling connected to her garden chambers. The place she escaped each time to return to him. She could spend hours with him, talking and laughing, her questions never seeming to cease. Smiling at the memories he considered his next course of action.

With her aid he had discovered, it would seem, the country her garden should reside in. Jarod hoped to locate the place that held sway over her and unlock its secrets and free her. Perhaps he hoped now.. even free her to be with him. She made his heart lighter and less lonely.. he had friends but no one that he could truly share dreams with as he had once before. Those shrouded eyes became pensive and he admitted to himself why he had truly driven out here to think.. He was afraid. Afraid of failing to free her.. afraid that his invasion might cost them both much more. Jarod was scared at thoughts of not being able to hold her once more.. or seeing her harmed because of his arogance in assuming he could break her curse when none had before.

The jet had been fueled days before and it stood ready to depart in a moments notice.. but he hesitated to give that command. For once he left..he might ruin any chance of ever seeing Rose again. So he gathered his resources and his knowledge, preparing himself as best he could. He would not fail her.. could not fail her.. she had become someone important to him and he had lost so many of them before. Head lifted and lips were moistened from the sea air, the faintest hint of her lingering still. Jarod nodded to himself and brought the engine back to life. He had a mission.. to give a beautiful woman her life back.. and perhaps.. just perhaps.. she would share more of it with him.