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+--- Thread: Xander Mitchel (/thread-973.html)
Xander Mitchel - Xander - 08-12-2018
Age: 26
Origin: Unknown (Some midwest state in the middle of nowhere)
Occupation: Grifter/Con Man
Aliases: John Lee, Danny Murphy, Barry Rogers, David Smith, Alex Kennedy, Richard Martin, Tobias Johnsen, Noah Preston, Alexis Trottier
Description: Xander is 6 foot even. He is muscular but not overly so. He prefers running and boxing to weights but will lift to get stronger. He has ice blue eyes and inky black hair that he likes to style in a faux Mohawk. He likes to wear comfortable jeans and t-shirts with cool sayings. But he wears a suit well. Xander has several protection brands, the eye of horus on his left shoulder, the eye of rah on his right shoulder, a pentacle over his heart, a triquetra on the inner side of his left hip
Personality: Xander has a hedonistic nature. He believes in a pleasurable life at the cost of everything else. He is a very good liar and exceptional con artist. He was raised with an us against the world mentality that when his parents died became me against the world. He's a hard worker and always gets the job done. Xander needs to be in control of everything. He doesn't trust easily and once broken it's hard to earn the trust back. He is a very passionate lover, but he doesn't take any relationship seriously. He's got a mild exhibitionist streak that rears its head at times. He believes in finding the truth even if it's ugly it's one reason he thrives in his chosen career path. He likes to control which truths make it to the right ears.
Supernatural Powers: Xander can see images in a person’s aura (like Min) He doesn’t always understand what they mean. (Prophet)
History: Xander was born to a single mother. His father died shortly after his conception. His mother never told him of his demise, not really. But Xander saw it in his mother’s aura. The pain the tragedy and the hurt she was going through. Her death was not a surprise. He found her when he was 8 years old with her wrists bleeding into the bath he’d drawn for her.
But before that Xander and his mother lived a good life. She taught him everything she knew. School was boring but it was required - she said you gotta have book smarts as well as street smarts to make it in this here world. So Xander did as he was told.
And when he first started seeing the colors, he was afraid. Xander couldn’t stop seeing them. And that was when he saw the darkness in her aura. The death and the pain. He saw images of a man bleeding out. He saw things he didn’t understand at the age of 5. When Xander told his mother what she saw she was afraid. Not of him, but for him. They searched for months to find someone who didn’t think he was crazy.
They found an old witch woman who said Xander could see the soul. See truths in it. She didn’t offer to teach Xander, but his mother left him anyway. It wasn’t until Xander told the witch woman what he saw when he looked at her did she offer to help him. But before she would teach him he had to survive.
Xander was five, he’d survived so far and his mother wasn’t there to say no. The first brand upon his chest made Xander cry out in anguish. It burned. He cried. It was torture. But the witch didn’t stop there. She pressed three more into his skin, one at each shoulder and one on his hip. Then she told him her name, though Xander would never repeat it again. There was power in a name, and Xander never offered up his own. Xander Mitchel was a ghost. No one knew his name - no one but his mother and the witch who taught him about his gift.
The witch taught Xander what the colors meant the surrounded people. She taught him to translate most of the images he saw. They always came true, if they were the future, and if the past it was such a strong emotion it was usually all Xander could see. She also taught him how to ignore it, turn it off so it wasn’t blinding.
Xander’s mother came back a little more than a year later and yelled at the witch woman. She scared her son. His mother was about to strike the woman when Xander stepped between them and spoke softly. “Mommy, it’s okay, it’s to protect me. To protect her. To protect you.”
His mother had asked to protected her from what, Xander never told her to protect her from the evil within. The witch hadn’t considered his viewings to be a gift, they were a curse sent from the to torment me. She only taught Xander because he saw her death. There was nothing she could do about it except teach me. She didn’t have long to live.
But the images around his mother were worse now that he understood. Xander lived with the lights off most of the time, he couldn’t bear to see the images around her. But once his mother found out that his images came true, they used it to find the best payouts and the most lucrative payouts. And that’s how they lived for another three years. And then she commited suicide with a bath he’d drawn for her. He still saw the image of her lying in the water. It was a nightmare he saw anytime he saw death in the auras.
Xander was a child when he became a man. He couldn’t own anything. But there were ways around that. With Xander’s gift he knew what strings to pull and how to manipulate a person so that they would do exactly what he wanted. He never hurt anyone, and he only took what someone else didn’t need. He never took from the poor, in fact he gave some to them whenever he had a chance.
But Xander wasn’t alone for long he fell into a group of people who all worked the same thing doing various things. Anita was the oldest, she was almost an adult at 18. She was like their mother. And she acted like it most of the time. They weren’t homeless, though they did bounce from one location to the next to keep the authorities off their cases.
Junior was next he was 17 but no one knew why anyone called him Junior, he said that was all anyone had ever called him. Trevor was 15 when Xander joined them, and he was the first one to introduce Xander to the fine art of using sex as a tool. Trevor was with Lillian she was some rich girl they all stayed with from time to time. Xander thought she was a slut even at that age and when he was 14 he got the full experience. Xander was second youngest, Diana was the baby, she was five and she was Trevor’s little sister. They had just a tragic story as Xander did, both parents dying, no living relatives and when you run away from your foster home continuously they soon forget about you.
Xander wouldn’t know about that he never stayed around long enough for anyone to find him till he found this group. They taught each other things and helped each other out. They were sort of a family, but none of them were really close. A few of them were considered friends, but Xander didn’t tell anyone his true name. Knowing his name was against his own rules. They all played their own games. And helped each other out, but they were still alone in this world. No one fully trusted anyone else. But they needed each other to get through growing up.
No one ever really questioned him growing up, and by the time he was a teenager he had enough connections to fake whatever identity he wanted. Criminal masterminds always wanted his talents. Even the low level scum who couldn’t afford his prices wanted what he had to offer. Xander’s visions always came true and they all knew if he said something was good, it was good.
By the time Xander was 16 he’d made a name for himself in the midwest. He moved east and spent a few years making scores on the east coast before he decided to try his hand at the precious CCD. America wasn’t what it once was. So with his newly minted CCD ID Xander made his way across the ocean. He was 18 when he first set foot in the CCD.
There he didn’t have connections, the challenge was new and through his gift and his acquired wealth from his former life in American, Xander grifted his way through what was once England, and then France. He hit Spain for a few months. The Ukraine was next, and he eventually moved into what was once Italy and the City of Rome where he learned through his visions to avoid the men with the ouroboros tattoos. These men and women were deadly snakes, and the visions surrounding them were awful. Their deaths were always gruesome and that’s all he saw for them. Just death - lots and lots of death - theirs and others.
Xander moved on quickly from Italy finally into the center of the world - Moscow. He was there when the big announcement about Ascendants and channelers was made, and the giant monument the Ascendancy created it. He wished he’d have been there when he did it. Xander had seen strange things around men and women with the sickness. He always saw their deaths and Xander wondered what images he would see around those who had survived. Where they any different.
Moscow was ripe for the pickings. Xander only had to find his next mark but who would it be?
Alexis Trottier is just one lucky son-of-a-bitch who happened to invest in the right things at the right times (much like Xander did in his own life to make his money) and now he’s traveling the world looking for the next investment. Clean cut and well dressed Alexis is the portrait of a successful business man. Alexis speaks with a French accent.
PCs he's met: Ilesha, Elyse, Rena
Tobias Johnsen is a man of no where. He's a drifter working whatever jobs he can to make ends meet. Tobias could be a fallen rockstar, down and out. Scruffy but always clean shaven, he's always comfortable. Tobias speaks with a Dutch accent.
PCs he's met: Rowan, Mikhaill, Armande, Ashavara, Elias
Noah Preston is a rare arts collector. He's formally employed Tobias and in the context of Elias/Asha's sea monster arc he is a recluse - doesn't work with people he doesn't know/trust. Noah is an Englishman but travels the world.
PCs he's met: N/A
PCs who know of him: Ashavara, Elias
Z is the persona Xander uses when he's being himself and looking for a new mark. He tries not to interact with people as himself as they tend to ask too many questions. Z has no accent, he's completely unremarkable, just a guy people watching.
PCs he's met: Seven
Kristian Osterhagen is a fence of rare antiquities and other fine art. He only deals with big name hauls and sells to even bigger ones. Kristian isn't afraid to spend money to make money. He has lost his German accent completely but when excited sometimes slips into German.
Kristian is working for Paval Vasiliev (and the Russian mob). He is also unabashedly flaunting his gifts in the open.
PCs he's met: Maskim, Pavel Vasiliev (npc), Alistair Bishop, Jensen James, Rafael Janssen, Noémi Jourdain [see wiki for full list of people]