Sam Walls, Vampire Therapist

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.