personality

Leon is very easily bored and when he becomes bored he becomes frustrated. In life, he would chase thrills and sex for entertainment and always hated staying in one place. In death, he is not much different. However, the inability to feel sexual gratification certainly complicated things a little bit. He had to find other means to get his kicks, such as Blood Bonds and masochism.

Leon hates committing to anything, but especially ideas and decisions. Part of the reason he became addicted to blood blonds is that they remove his pesky free will. He is almost forced to do whatever the regnant asks and to commit to that idea. In a sense, it keeps his impulsive tendencies in check. Leon has always been a dopamine-chaser and has very little self restraint, typically searching for immediate satisfaction with little regard for long-term consequences. He can also be quite self-serving at times, often having little regard for how his thrill-chasing may affect others. This isn't helped by his “out of sight out of mind” mentality, either. He finds it quite easy to ignore consequences if they are not staring him right in the face. But when they are? He will try to escape them before the guilt can set in.

This has been a major problem in all his relationships. He chases the high, causes a problem and burns the bridge before the guilt can set in. Because of this, he has had a long chain of failed romances. In theory, the idea of finding the one who makes the mundane seem thrilling sounds wonderful, but in practice he has always found mind-numbing. Still, some part of it has a fleeting interest in it, but he mostly finds such a thing laughable. Especially now that he is undead.

Though, he's always had an odd relationship with death, having planned his own 10 years before it ever happened. He had always sensationalised and romantacised his eventual suicide. His subscription to the “live fast, die young” mentality was extreme. He figured if dancing with death was so thrilling, that final breath must be pure ecstasy. He was certainly a weird guy in life, but he never struggled to find lovers. Perhaps there was a bizarre allure to his demented outlook on life. But because of his commitment issues, he never stuck around and was never particularly in it.

history

Leon DeSilva was born July 31st in 1992 as a result of a recently married couple still in their honeymoon phase. It did not last, and they were quick to begin arguing and divorced in less than a year due to disagreements about the husband's gambling problem. The divorce was finalised December that same year, and Leon and his mother, Nicola DeSilva, continued their lives in a downtrodden neighbourhood resting on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Nicola met a new man quickly and repeated a similar cycle. Fall in love, become engaged quickly, get married in 1993, have a baby, become disillusioned and get divorced again in 1995.

The other child, though, was a daughter she named Rebecca. She bore slightly more affection for the new baby. Because of her divorces, she chose to give both babies her surname, over her husband's names. The two children rarely saw eye to eye. They were extremely different. Rebecca was studious and easily annoyed and Leon was annoying and impulsive. He had a fairly average adolescence for a delinquent. Skipping class, being generally irritating, getting into fights with older school kids, arguing with his mother and blaming all his problems on his younger sister. One argument with his mother resulted in him packing his bags and going to live with his father - who he had little contact with in the first place. When he turned up at his door, though, he simply found a corpse. Swinging from the ceiling fan. So much for that. And he didn’t even get that much time off school for it. What’s the point in that, right?

Despite everything, Leon wasn’t entirely isolated. He did have a particularly intense high school romance with one of his peers. It was likely unhealthy and co-dependant on Leon’s part, but Leon’s extreme feelings were undeniable. They were inseparable. Things, however, got complicated when Leon’s partner, Riley, was diagnosed with late stage lymphoma. In a cruel twist of fate, Leon’s romantic feelings only got stronger and he spent most of his time skipping school to visit him in hospital and buying him gifts with money he stole from his mothers purse. In August of 2008, the relationship came to a sudden halt when Riley died. A month later, in September, Riley’s mother held an open casket funeral. The image haunted Leon for the rest of his adolescence. From that point on, he spent a lot less time at home and a lot more time out, unsupervised and running with the wrong crowd. He was argumentative, self-destructive and difficult at school. His grades dropped even lower than they were before - low enough for the school to take note And after that, he just got worse.

He became part of a small online community who documented their self-destructive, borderline suicidal antics. He became seduced by risk-taking and dangerous situations. In fact, he found the risk of death quite erotic. When things were too easy, he would become bored and move on. His relationships were the same. They would become too easy and he would move on, sometimes without even really speaking to his partner. If it wasn’t thrilling or gratifying anymore, he wouldn’t bother continuing to pursue it. He also hated staying in the same place for too long. It’s how he ended up getting to know the urban explorer Brett so well. Brett was also quite a risk taker, but Leon never really felt the need to divulge too much personal information with him. Not even a last name. But they both enabled each other's worst behaviours. And Leon kept him around for that reason. He spent his social life engaging in dopamine chasing. He would chase sexual gratification and toxic relationships for thrills and engaged extensively in the BDSM lifestyle.

These things were also talked about in his blog, though he often avoided using names, simply assigning people a letter or nickname. The blog was live at a custom URL that he is still paying for now in his unlife.The URL was (and still is) “silvalining.net”. The main purpose of his blog, however, was his bucket list. It was an extremely lengthy, dark and quite insane bucket list that started at age 17 and aimed to end 10 years later, on New Years. Some of the smaller things on his list were trying certain drugs, chemsex, or extreme (and unsafe) BDSM acts. But some of the more extreme examples were things like driving against traffic, running from the police in a high speed chase, grand larceny and robbery, and eventually ending his life when it was all fulfilled. Things would be added from time to time, and sometimes he would take suggestions from people viewing the blog. The only rule was “don’t bore me.” His blog had photographs, as well, though they were often blurry and bizarre. Once he completed his bucket list, he set his death date as midnight, January 1st, 2019. And December 31st, 2018, he parked his Ford Pinto in the car park of an old, rundown hotel. He signed in and went straight to his room. He put down his suitcase, opening it to look at the belongings inside: a razor, and an unreasonable amount of prescription pills. Most of them were not his own - he had bought them from a man named Kev, a drug dealer he had spoken with a few times. He never explained what he needed this many pills for, and Kev didn’t care enough to ask as long as there was money involved. Leon had a history of risky behaviours, after all.

Leon made his final blog post laid in the motel bathtub. He described how it felt to die in his final blog post. He had not cared to lock the door of his motel room, though. His soon-to-be sire, a Ravnos Vampire named Vance, frequented the motel for a quick drink. Vance was an Osiris predator and preferred to feed on sleeping victims, as opposed to awake ones. Vance caught the strong scent of blood from Leon’s motel room, and quickly investigated, finding him freshly drained of blood. Not fully thinking about the repercussions, Vance gave Leon a taste of his vitae, thus embracing Leon as a childe.

Leon was shocked to wake up to fully healed wrists and insatiable hunger. He almost didn’t notice the complete stranger in his motel room, who quickly covered his mouth before he could start to react. And that’s when he learned: vampires are real, you’re technically dead, sex sucks now. It was… odd. There was a strange ecstasy to being around this strange vampire who embraced him. He found it almost impossible to say no to him. In fact, he’d gotten a strange taste for his vitae. On the journey out of the motel - and after Vance taught the childer how to feed - Vance told him that this strange affection he was experiencing was a weak blood bond. He tried to explain more important vampire information, but Leon didn’t listen. He was overwhelmed, but also already disinterested. This new thrilling life state was already becoming stale. A never ending unlife? He failed to see the thrill in it all. At some point, while the two were leaving the area, the motel’s cleaner found the bathtub full of blood, abandoned empty pill bottles and razor blades and quickly called the police. Using his name, email address and phone number that had been used to sign in at the motel, they were lead back to his blog where he described his own suicide in stomach-churning detail and were easily able to identify what had happened. However, the one thing that was unclear was the disappearance of the body. Leon’s family was informed and he was considered dead, despite the lack of body. All the evidence pointing to his suicide, after all.

Leon’s relationship with his sire was short and fleeting. Leon pressured him to strengthen their blood bond, but was dissatisfied by how it was utilised. Vance didn’t bully him or treat him badly in any way and was not interested in doing as such. Leon just found him… boring and Vance had no real interest in entertaining a young kindred. They were quick to barely talk. Leon knows Vance experienced Final Death not too long after, having heard about it from other kindred, but he was pretty glad to be done with him. The two did not get along and Leon had begun to harbor a lot of resentment for Lance after the latter robbed him of finally fulfilling his bucket list with the most thrilling entry: death. Now he felt like he was left with a dull existence for eternity. But then he realised, in Lance’s final moments, he had given him something special. This taught him that there were more exciting, new ways to die that he’d never even considered. And his lust for unlife and desire to chase thrills was reignited. Perhaps the fire didn’t burn as strongly as it had before, but it was still there. Of course, it’s difficult to find a place in society when your clan is doomed and you don’t always have the sense to present as Caitiff. Leon mostly operated outside of kindred society and politics like many Ravnos choose to do. He acted mostly as a courier, mercenary or spy to whoever would pay the most. His sire never really explained Camarilla and Anarch politics to him, and he never really cared to learn the details. Whichever sect comes out the highest bidder is where his temporary loyalty lies. After all, most Kindred see him as an unstable force and would rather not have a Ravnos in their domain. Perhaps this is why he joined the coterie. A safe domain with other politically unaligned kindred, with space to hunt and light protection from Camarilla politics. Plus, he still has a lot to learn about vampirism.