

"Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag."
~ John Steinbeck




Ivan Claudius Certus Moreau
nee "Claude Henri Moreau"
NICKNAMES
"Van" - a shortening of an already short name, often preferred to his first name
"Fangs" - common among the supernaturals of the town, also prone to negative reaction
DATE OF BIRTH
April 12th, 1740
AGE
277
OCCUPATION
Librarian, Director of the Bellingstone Library System, runs a book club on the side
GENDER
Male
SEXUALITY
Bisexual
DIALOGUE COLOR
#573D41






Bitten in his late thirties, Ivan has retained his middle-aged appearance for the last two hundred and fifty years. His hair is a mousy brown with sandy streaks mixed in. Often, he lets it grow a bit out, as well as his beard and mustache, to give him some sort of starving-artist vibe. He stands at about five feet and eleven inches, weighing somewhere around one hundred and seventy pounds. It tends to grow tedious to measure oneself after two centuries.
His eyes are a captivating hazel that tend to appear green in most situations, with light flecks of gold. He bears a few scars from multiple lifetimes of scuffles - and, of course, he has his bite marks which are located on the underside of his wrist. Most of his body sports a collection of tattoos he has accumulated over the years. Both of his ears have been pierced - in their lobe and also along the cartilage in multiple places on his left ear. Certainly, he has a few more piercings, but he has not used them in years, and they have not closed up given the fact that his skin doesn't really heal the way it used to. Ivan likes to dress in layers and has taken to hipster culture with a passion. He certainly doesn't need glasses, but he always wears a pair for the whole bookish recluse vibe he tries to give off.
PERSONALITY
Ivan has, and always will be, a man of biting sarcasm and wit. It isn't to say he doesn't take problems seriously, but he prefers to avoid them if he can, for he has grown tired of cleaning up the messes of others in his age. He gives off a morose, anti-social exterior, but it is merely a precaution he takes against unwanted interaction. Ivan has little to no filter, feeling as though he deserves the ability to speak his mind without reservation. If anything, that makes him honest to a fault - quite a big fault if he is unfamiliar with whomever he is speaking to.
Deep down, however, Ivan cares deeply for his town and the denizens of it. Having no real family of his own, the members of the town have begun to make up a sort of ragtag family for him over the years. He likes to know them all and, though he likes to stay out of problems that don't need his help, he has been known to lend his support to someone desperate enough to ask him.
Still, he likes to brag and is a bit stuck-up around most people. Ivan is quite the gossip and enjoys gathering as much information as he can about Bellingstone's citizens. He is quick to analyze someone and decide whether or not he likes them. Most of his actions are thought through at least vaguely, but he also acts with little remorse or fear, doing as he pleases without much of a care.
LIKES
✔ Wine - It may do nothing for him by itself, but he does adore the taste
✔ Literature - He's quite the book snob, and he enjoys bragging about the famous authors he has met in his lifetime
✔ Peace & Quiet - While he loves keeping up on gossip in the town, it is nice to have down time to himself and a good book
✔ Alternative Rock - He may have an old taste in books and drink, but he loves modern rock music and its culture
✔ Learning - He may have lived for centuries already, but Ivan still craves to learn more about the world, as if he gets off on hoarding pointless knowledge
DISLIKES
✖ Daylight - Yes, he is naturally inclined to hate it given his vampirism, but Ivan has always been a night owl
✖ Open Water - He never learned to swim as a boy nor intends to, having almost drowned in his early years
✖ Dogs - He finds them to be loud and in-your-face far too much for his liking
✖ Summer - It's far too warm for his tastes - and it makes dressing to his aesthetic seem out of place
✖ Tea - He is a coffee snob, but tea has always repulsed him
FEARS
☠ A Painful Death
☠ Bellingstone's Ruin
☠ Bodies of Water





Though he is quite the old soul, Ivan has only been alive for roughly three centuries which, granted, still is quite a long time in relation to his non-vampiric peers. Born in 1740, the year the Austrian War of Succession began, Ivan was already destined for a life of change and strife. Of course, his name was not Ivan then - he was Claude Henri Moreau, second son of a French banker and his wife. Nestled in the upper middle class of Parisian society, Claude wanted for little throughout his childhood and teens.
While his brother, Jean, was pegged to inherent the bank from their father, Claude took up writing and politics, drawing him into a side of Paris that was brimming with an oncoming revolution. In the meantime, his father sent him into law once he realized how drawn the young man was towards the growing turmoil in politics. Claude married a young French woman in his late twenties, fathering two sons and a daughter.
Life was quite uneventful for a time, and Claude built quite a reputation for himself as an eloquent yet unshakable lawyer. He was walking home one day in 1780 from his office when he was jumped in a backstreet. He fought his attacker as valiantly as possible, but she dug her needle-like teeth into his neck, slowly draining him off his life. She might have killed him there, but a large group of drunken men moved down the alley and frightened the vampire off. Though they almost trampled the bleeding Claude, they helped him up and to the nearest doctor.
He passed the next few days in a feverish haze, his wife and children tending to him as best as possible, assuming only the worst could come. But it didn't, and Claude recovered swiftly, surpassing his previous state of health with ease. He had no idea what he had become until, a few days after his recovery, he attacked a young man in the dead of the night over a small cut the man sported on his arm. Horrified, Claude sought to learn what he was, but the truth was no more comforting. He had become a vampire, a demon of sorts. As much as he wished to die after his transformation, he also knew he could not leave behind his family. And so, he mustered up the willpower and continued his life as normally as possible.
In the year 1789, Claude was called to represent the Third Estate in the Estates-General. While at the conference in Versailles, he became close to a few men from Brittany who dubbed themselves the "Club Breton" - later, they would become the "Jacobins", the political club that would lead France into revolution. And so, Claude was roped into the charge towards democracy in France, rubbing shoulders with names like Robespierre and Marat. To this day, he still believes it was during this time that he truly lived - though he was medically dead the entire time, feeding freely off of the commoners who had been thrown in a panic by the events of the day.
Early in 1794, however, Claude became aware of the fact that the movement had begun to falter. His wife having died years ago and his children all married off, he decided to simply leave the country, knowing they would be left alone as long as he disappeared. Claude dropped his name, picking up the name Ivan somewhere along his travels through Europe. Finally, he decided to journey to America, happily leaving behind Europe. It was on the boat to America that Ivan met Felix Wolff, a penniless, hopeless bachelor who bonded with the vampire over their supernatural abilities. When they finally landed in New York, the two decided to set out West and build a town for creatures like them, looking for a place of refuge.
Ivan remained in Bellingstone until its completion, but he soon grew weary of small-town life and left to explore the world once more. He toured Europe for years, learning languages and histories he had only dreamed of experiencing as a curious boy in Paris. He would return every few months to Bellingstone to check on the town and his friend Felix or, as it later became, Felix's son and grandson. For a while, he made his money by writing, running in and out of famous writing circles for fun and to bounce ideas back and forth with some of the greatest minds of history.
This life eventually grew tiresome, however, and Ivan returned to Bellingstone as a far more permanent resident somewhere in the 1960s. Thus, he has been quite the constant presence for most residents of the town, though he still frequently takes trips around the world when he can spare some time away from his library. He loves the town as though it were his child, and he would do anything necessary to preserve its peace.