MONSTRUM

WE EAT OUR GODS OUT OF GRIEF.

[aquilanus]

@AQUILANUS:  PRV, SLOW-ACTIVITY VAMPIRE OC FROM ANCIENT ROME  [ LATE IMPERIAL PERIOD ]  CALLED MARCUS JULIUS AQUILANUS / GIULIO AQUILANO, WRITTEN INTO THE 19th OR EARLY 20th CENTURIES.  CREATED & DEVELOPED BY VINN.  CLICK FOR RULES, INFO AND BACKGROUND. 

MAJOR TROPES & SOURCES OF INSPIRATION ARE:  THE PAST IS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, MEDITERRANEAN GOTHIC, ROMAN HISTORY / MYTHOLOGY / LITERATURE, THE CIVILIZED MONSTER, REAL GODS REQUIRE BLOOD, LOSS OF HOME, LET THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME.  FREQUENT TRIGGERS:  RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE AND FANATICISM, HUMAN SACRIFICES, NATIONALISM, WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME, AND THE USUAL BLOOD / VIOLENCE.

[aquilanus]

GIULIO IS BEING MOVED TO @vinduri

[aquilanus]

GENERAL:

★ ★ ★ ★  ★ ★  ★ ★ ★ ☆ —   strength ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★   —   offense ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  ★ ☆  —   defense ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  ★ ★  —   speed ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆   —   durability ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★   —   accuracy ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  ★ ★  —   agility ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★★ ☆    —   stamina ★ ★ ☆  ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  —   teamwork ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  ★ ★ ★  —   stealth

SPECIFICS:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  —   close combat ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★  —   bladed weapons  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★★ ★ ★ ★   —   blunt weapons  ( clubs, staffs, axes ) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  —   ranged weapons ( archery, guns ) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★★ ★ ★ ☆   —   superpowers / abilities  ( magic ) ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  —   traps / setups ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆  —   medic

LASTING INJURIES: 

none, neither as a mortal nor as a vampire. when he was alive, he was incredibly receptive to his military education and showed early on to be a skilled and disciplined soldier, virtues that definitely saved his life in the (lost) battle that marked constantine’s rise to power. also, his role in the praetorian guard in itself required stay in rome, far from the battlefields. unless we are considering his vampirism a ‘lasting injury’, he has none.

SCARS: 

as stated above, his skin is fairly unblemished. he has a few minor scars from military training, truly nothing more than superficial cuts that stand out due to the overall sickly paleness of his complexion. during the first decade of the twentieth century, he has a bite mark on his forearm where the vampire sadik el-sharkawy, that giulio himself sired, bit him. the fact that this wound didn’t magically heal like the others and instead left a scar heavily shocked him.

FIGHT STYLE: ( bold any that apply / italicize any that sort of apply )

commander  /  duelist  /  honourable  /  dishonourable  /  would have others  do their fighting  /  stealthy /  long - ranged  /  mid - ranged  /  melee  /  technological  /  sorcery  /  superhuman abilities  /  has fought in a tourney  /  a lover of fighting  /  a hater of fighting  /  cowardly  /  reckless  /  strategic   /   uses underhanded tricks  /  renowned for their skill  /  trained  /  untrained  /  keeps skills a secret   /  won a battle  /  lost a battle  /  ruthless  /  merciful .

tagged by: @jokethur tysm love <3  tagging:  steal it !

[aquilanus]

listen the gladiator is a terrible movie riddled with historical inaccuracies but it’s also the only known movie set in mid-imperial era who’s given me a semi-accurate and also very sexy depiction of what the praetorian armors looked like,  so i cannot not take the opportunity to show yall what giulio’s full ceremonial armor was like as praetorian prefect.

[aquilanus]

giulio's parents, marcus julius aquila and flavia lartia, had two other children before him — a girl and a boy, however neither of giulio's siblings lived to see their first birthday. flavia was desperate to find a solution to the ill will of whatever god had decided to curse their union; everyday during her third pregnancy she made sacrifices to the ancestors so that the child would live. giulio did live, except that after him, no other attempts at conceiving a child succeeded, resulting in him having no siblings at all. his mother hammered into his head that he was predestined to greatness because of this, and that no other brother could have robbed him of his birthright.

[aquilanus]

ngl giulio killed several monks who tried to turn the aeneid into some christian allegory, a shame he could not kill that bitch dante

[aquilanus]

@leftenantcolonels​ sent:  like you, i have tried with all my might not to forget. 

 real understanding is brittle and rare. presuming, always dangerous. giulio looks with keen, dark eyes at some fixed point beyond the soft line of thomas’ shoulders. somewhere distantly unclear, where the air shifts and time is absent. the other expects something, maybe a story; he doesn’t loudly wish for one, but it’s limpid by the way he waits, waits, and lets a languid silence stretch.  i could tell him a thousand,  giulio bitterly consider,  or none at all.  what else is there to add?  what else but silence?  —   there’s the ferrous aftertaste of a woman’s blood in the back of his mouth, and he lets his mind linger on it. the warmth and resignation, and all that comes after fear. it tastes shallow, though perhaps it is only his own mood souring his meal.

   “i have a good memory.”   giulio only says. matter-of-factly, though his voice has an edge that threatens to crack.    “there are things you can’t forget, regardless if you want to or not. regardless if you have got revenge, or closure, or christian forgiveness.”    his tongue clicks against the vault of his palate as his gaze returns on thomas, bottomless and black as midnight. he reclines against the velvet backrest.    “which of the three do you have?”

[luthienne]

“He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt.”

— James Baldwin, from Giovanni’s Room

[aquilanus]

i've been meaning to elaborate on giulio's divine ancestry but it's actually pretty linear, if you don't count that it crosses many many generations. venus (i won't refer to her as aphrodite because the cult existed among latin people well before coming in contact with the greeks, but she is also aphrodite) is mother to aeneas, who fathered ascanius/iulus, progenitor of the gens julia. as the last member of said lineage alive (or sort of), venus has been watching over giulio and has granted him powers and gifts that other vampires, even those he's sired, do not possess. to name a few, the ability to walk in the sun, to shapeshift, to become invisible at will, to dreamwalk, foresight. the latter is maybe the most unique of giulio's abilities — while not as powerful as a god's, he can foresee fragments of the immediate future and, more rarely, even further in time.

[women-loving-art]

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), collages of herself with Classical art, from her scrapbook, date unknown.

[weltenwellen]

Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

[aquilanus]

the natural link between vampirism and eroticism is inevitably disrupted when it comes to giulio's personal experience, both due to physical characteristics (his bite is not only unimaginably painful, but also very brutal; definitely not as neat and sexy as the vampire bite is often depicted) and the circumstantial premises of his transformation. the curse is meant to be as dehumanizing as possible, and only by sheer force of will does giulio manage to retain a a semblance of humanity; he cannot, however, gain back what the process of dying and coming back has taken from him. the joy of eating, the warmth of the sun, the pleasure at the touch of another. giulio is not asexual because he can feel sexual attraction, the problem lies in the fact that he's started to find intercourse... bland; and his libido has severely decreased as a result of that.

what little enjoyment he still takes in sexual activity is firstly driven by his sense of smell, which is yet another aspect that humiliates him and makes him feel animalistic. rare peaks in his libido happen when he finds somebody whose scent he finds particularly attractive, and even then, it doesn't strictly mean that he will have sex with them — he may really just flirt.

[aquilanus]

giulio be like the future? nonexistent. the present? a passable echo. the past? home, consolation, glory.

[girlwithouthands]

“I don’t live in exile / exile lives in me”

— — Fiston Mwanza Mujila, from “SOLITUDE 12,” The River in the Belly, tr. J. Bret Maney (via lifeinpoetry)

[aquilanus]

there isn't much room for variation in english so giulio's speech pattern comes off as very formal, but in other languages that do include an informal 'you' vs formal 'you' opposition (spanish tú/usted for example, or italian tu/lei/voi) giulio displays an odd convergence of formal speech + informal you, which may come off as haughty or rude. that's because ancient romans used almost exclusively tu (tibi/te/etc) and only when they wanted to express great respect they sometimes used vos (formal you) , the use of which became prevalent during the middle ages. giulio used vos only in front of the emperor, not even while praying the gods, and he sure as hell isn't going to start addressing people formally now.

[aquilanus]

so my friends made me rewatch twi*light and, cringe as it is, i have thoughts

[eopederson]

Colonna e architrave corinzie, Pantheon, Roma, 2019.