Name: Vlad Mihail Ionescu
Codename: N/A
Age: 113 (appears 33)
Date of Birth: March 17th, 1898
Height: 6'
Weight: 221 lbs
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Blue
Place of Origin: Bucharest, Romania
Nationality/Race: Romanian/White
Classification: Mutant
Status: Other
Occupation: Information broker
Personality Profile: Vlad is unnaturally composed at all times and under a multitude of situations. Everyone who has known him, save for some of his family members now long dead, describe him as "cold and calculating...when he looks at you, he's looking through you." He is professional at all times, and though he does handle his business personally, he lives alone, and spends little or no time in social circumstances except as a matter of business or obligation.
Vlad is ambiguously moral. Though he was baptised Eastern Orthodox, he seems to adhere very little to his given faith. Though he was an agent for the KGB and a Soviet Communist for more than 40 years, he holds no allegiance to Communism. The only thing he consistently values is the unity of the Romanian people. While not necessarily nationalistic, he uses his considerable influence to shape Romanian politics and improve the lives of Romanian citizens and strengthen the economy.
Physical Description:
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Powerset:
Ability One: Shadow Walking - Simply, Vlad is able to walk in and out of shadows. The range of this ability is not known exactly, though the farthest that Vlad has attempted to move in this fashion is a mile. Moving through limbo is much faster than travelling by foot, but it still takes an amount of time; as an example, Vlad can run a mile in 7 minutes, but he can travel that same distance through limbo in 4 minutes.
Ability Two: Regeneration - Vlad's ability to regenerate tissue is remarkable. While other mutants can heal from wounds much more quickly and easily than him, Vlad heals four or five times as quickly as a human being does. What might take a month to recover from takes Vlad just over a week. As a result, he ages much more slowly than a human being.
Ability Three: Carbondanium Skeleton - While not an inherent power, his skeleton has been infused with carbonadnium as a result of his participation in the Soviet super soldier program. This makes every bone in his body extremely difficult to break and makes his skeletal structure impervious to most ammunition and trauma.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
In order to travel from one shadow to another, Vlad must have access to a shadow of appropriate size on the other end. Similar to a physical doorway, if an area of shadows or darkness is not large enough for him to move through, he will be unable to enter or exit through it. If he enters limbo and no appropriate shadows are available for him to exit, he will become trapped until an exit can be found. However, due to the nature of limbo and its altered perception of time, he may succumb to insanity if trapped for too long.
While able to recover from most injuries, Vlad is still mortal. If he suffers serious damage that he could theoretically repair, such as multiple gunshot wounds or multiple lacerations, he enters a comatose state while his body attempts to repair the damage. In this state he can be kept alive so long as he is provided with oxygen and blood to his brain. However, if he is unable to recieve such medical treatment within an hour of suffering these injuries, he will die.
The carbondanium that was injected into his skeleton is radioactive. While not a particular danger to people he comes into contact with, even at very close range, it is toxic to him. This radiological toxicity has hampered his regenerative abilities, and the toxicity increases if he suffers substantial trauma. This causes him to suffer from radiation poisoning as he heals from his wounds. While it will not kill him, it makes his life hell when he is injured.
Projected Power Growth & Development: Vlad's powers have developed as much as they are going to. Barring genetic or mystical manipulation, his powers will not improve or decrease.
Skills:
Having spent more than half a century as a soldier and KGB operative, Vlad has a diverse range of useful skills. He can speak several languages, including English, converstionally. His adaptational training rivals any special forces operators today; he can improvise explosives, hot-wire and drive multiple vehicles, set up ambushes and other tactical situations when pursuing a target or losing pursuers, and a myriad of other skills. His only weakness is electronics. While he has a very good working knowledge of electrical systems, he is less proficient at electronic warfare and sabotage, and generally dislikes using computers.
Vlad is proficient in the use of a number of firearms, from Soviet made rifles and pistols to their American counterparts. He is a marksman with an assault rifle, and while he is an able sharpshooter, he prefers closer range engagements. He is very skilled at hand-to-hand combat, and is extremely dangerous with a knife.
Aside from his military training, Vlad is also a shrewd negotiator and businessman.
Background: Vlad was born to Teodor and Florina Ionescu, a middle class family, at the turn of the 20th century in Bucharest, Romania. Few records remain concerning who his parents were or what they did, but it is clear they had some wealth and lived comfortably. Vlad was the third of five children, and the first boy. From what records are available, he was academically bright and excelled in political science and history.
Official records for Vlad Ionescu start in 1916, when he enlisted in the Romanian army and fought in World War I. He rose rapidly as an enlisted soldier and was comissioned as an officer by the end of the war. It is noted in a number of correspondences from his commanders that he seems to have a knack for surviving grievous injuries and miraculously manuevering around enemy forces, but little else is mentioned concerning his mutations.
After the war, he pursued further education and was granted a position as an assistant professor of political science at the University of Bucharest. He showed promise as a teacher and was well-liked by many of the staff there, showing great potential for tenure. He was also remarked as looking very young, despite his growing age. The professor that he worked under wrote that "despite being only six years my junior, he looks as young as the students in my undergraduate classes." His career continued modestly, but well, until World War II.
In the early part of Romania's involvement in World War II, he distanced himself from Ion Antonescu and the National Legionary State, believing a dictatorial, Nazi-puppet state to be the antithesis of a unified Romanian country, which he had felt strongly about since his childhood. When the Soviets assisted King Michael I to overthrow Antonescu, he once again fought to liberate his country with the Soviets, joining their campaign into Germany. He was one of the first Red Army soldiers to set foot into Berlin, and he recieved several commendations that were uncommon for a non-Russian at the time.
His particular skills were noticed by the KGB in Moscow, and he was lauded as a hero and ordered to come to the USSR. It was quickly discovered that he was, in fact, a mutant. After being confirmed as a member of the Communist Party and a soldier in the Red Army, he was drafted by the KGB for use as an assassin and investigator. From 1947 to 1954, he was officially a tactical liason for the Red Army to the KGB, though in reality he investigated dissent in Russia and the Warsaw Pact nations, eliminating targets of interest in order to solidify the Soviet Union's power over its satellite states.
In 1955, Vlad was selected for the Soviet super soldier program (the same program which would produce Omega Red). As part of the program, Soviet engineers and doctors were able to graft carbondanium to Vlad's skeleton much the same way adamantium would later be grafted to Wolverine's skeleton. The process was excruciantingly painful, and he suffered from acute radiation poisoning throughout much of the procedure. Once it was completed, he was given supplements that were designed to increase his body's ability to regenerate and cope with the new strain on his system. They succeeded, and though his body's natural ability to regenerate was negatively impacted by the carbondanium implants, the procedure was succesful. He was the Soviet's first super soldier.
He recieved commendation from Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, and went back into the service of the KGB. His new task was to put down any attempt by local movements or Western agencies to overthrow Communist governments around the world. Though the CIA maintained a file on him, referred to as codename Hector, they lacked susbtantial intelligence on his whereabouts, habits, and even his appearance. He was ranked amongst the most susbstantial threats to national security and containment abroad by the CIA, and he was considered a high priority target during the majority of the Cold War.
During the 1960's, he travelled extensively through the Eastern Bloc, and also spent time in Western Europe, Asia, and Cuba, assisting Communist governments as a military advisor and terminating resistance movements. From 1968 to 1973 he was assigned with a group of military advisors in Vietnam, to train Viet Cong guerillas and conduct unconventional warfare against the U.S. presence. In this capacity he was highly successful; according to official KGB reports, he was personally responsible for more than 200 enemy kills.
After returning from Vietnam, he requested to operate in Romania, his home country. This request was granted by the KGB, under order from Brezhnev, and Vlad returned to Romania to a private ceremony, where he met and shook hands with General Secretary Nicolae Ceausescu. He was placed in an advisory position to the Securitate, where he continued his work as an enforcer. Though he disliked turning a critical eye on his own countrymen, he did what was necessary to uphold the government that was in place, a government that he felt freed Romania from what would otherwise have been Nazi occupation.
By 1989, Vlad had become severely disillusioned with the Ceausescu government, feeling that it had become inheritor to Stalin's Russian legacy and failed to benefit Romania, and began to actively subvert it. His skills in unconventional warfare, espionage, and subversion far exceeded the Securitate's ability to hunt him down, and he helped set in motion the riots that would result in the December Revolution and the overthrow of Communist government.
Following the revolution, Vlad embraced the free market economy rapidly developing in the Eastern Bloc and former Soviet Union. Using his contacts in the former KGB and Securitate, he amassed significant political and economic power by becoming an information broker. His focus remained on Romania, and by the turn of the century, his plans came to fruition, with the significant restoration of Romania's economy and improvement of its infrastructure. In this capacity, he has made and destroyed political careers and lives, preferring to use the media and public backlash to the barrel of a gun.
Aside from his domestic interests, he maintained his extensive network of contacts and funnelled information through his network to his benefit. On a number of occasions, and despite their previous animosity, he has provided intelligence data to the CIA concerning terrosit organizations in the Middle East and Africa...for a price, of course. This has earned him some credibility with the American agency, though his tendency to sell information to anyone who can pay has kept their relationship lukewarm at best.
Criminal Record: Technically he does not have a criminal record. His operations as a member of the KGB and Securitate remain highly classified to this day.
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
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I'm not sure where I want to take Vlad, though I do want to use him as a springboard to some storyline in the future and as a playable character making occasional appearance in Salem, MA. Originally he was a character from a different room, and when Narcisa was posted, I thought it might be neat to bring him here and relate the two, seeing as they have the same last name.
