Ash Rivers

[Malkavian Riddler]

 
Name: Ash Rivers
 
Gender: Male
Species: Vampire, Toreador
 
Age [appearance]: Mid twenties
Age [actual]: 30
Years as a Vampire: 5
 
Note to Other Roleplayers:
My character is a movie star but even though your character might recognise Ash Rivers, they will likely not know where from. If your character has a good memory, they might recall he was in a couple of movies, but nothing exciting. It\'s unlikely they\'d know his entire movie history unless your character is a genuine movie buff.
 
Appearance:
His hair colour is a medium to dark brown with light brown highlights throughout. Cut short back and sides, long in front in order to sweep back in Jimmy Dean style.
 
With hazel hooded \'bedroom eyes\', Ash Rivers is a typically \'preppy\' looking young man, who could (and did often) star in movies about young adults coming of age.
 
Often compared to James Dean (thanks to his hairstyle and often typically cast \'rebellious\' roles, Ash attempted to cash in by dressing much like the long-dead legend with cowboy boots, denim jeans, tight white t-shirts and brown or black leather jackets.
 
Often unshaven and adopting the \'grunge\' look, he also has a pierced left ear, where he commonly wears a stud.
 
Standing at six foot exactly, he\'s tall enough to carry some extra charisma but not so tall as to be completely intimidating. With a muscular frame thanks to a lot of gymnasium work in his mortal years, Ash usually gets appreciative looks even by those who don\'t recognise him, (something that is happening more and more often as time passes).
 
Tattoos/Distinguishing Marks:
He has a scar across his eyebrow where the hair doesn\'t grow from a stunt he performed himself on his second movie, involving jumping out of a first floor window into a bin (he mis-calculated the window height and smacked his head before even making the jump).
 
He has a tattoo with the words \'Play Hard\' in old fashioned script across his right collar bone, inked into his skin on his eighteenth birthday. The letters are roughly one inch tall, the capital letter of each word in extra ornate script.
 
He has a terrible puckered scar that travels the length of his outer right thigh and jaggedly towards the back of his knee. This scar looks like he\'s narrowly escaped losing a limb.
 
Since his vampirism, his hazel eyes have turned a golden colour.
 
History:
Born Ashton Cary Rowe to a single mother in a backwater town ironically called Hope, in Nevada, he grew up the youngest of three boys in a caravan park. His brothers Reilly and Shaun were four and three years older than him respectively, and therefore closer friends.
 
Not terribly interested in scholarly pursuits, he often went with his brothers to Vegas on weekends, though usually his fake I.D. couldn\'t pass him off because he looked too young. Often left to his own devices as his brothers were drinking and gambling, he was by the Bellagio fountain when a talent scout introduced herself and handed him a card for a modelling agency. At fifteen years of age, he thought it would be an easy way out of a boring life and was quick to investigate further. He did better than expected and was whisked away to foreign locations with fistfuls of money.
 
Adopting a party lifestyle and quickly forgetting his roots, Ashton was primarily influenced by those who were around him, such as his agent and the other older models. Detached from normal relationships, he had a whirlwind of casual romances with both girls and boys his age, and women and men much older than him. One of those women suggested he try out for movies and soon enough he was acting in non-speaking parts (uncredited) or having short lines (credited as Ash Rowe) in unknown movies.
 
His main lucky break came when at a party of a Hollywood behind-the-scenes bigwig. He was introduced to an Hollywood agent named Isaac Abrams, whose neck and fingers were adorned with jewellery. Wearing a white tuxedo, Ash had made a few jokes at the fellow\'s expense and was then challenged in a conversation he was unable to keep up with. Made to look a fool in front of his in-crowd, the tables were turned on him and he left the party in a sulk. The eighteen year old still didn\'t understand social nuances, but before he could drive off in his second-hand sportscar he was stopped by Isaac and the two had an in-depth private conversation that turned Ash\'s opinion around about the older man (who looked to be in his fifties - but he would discover that Isaac was much, much older).
 
Isaac had more connections than Ash had realised at the time, and soon enough he had a good speaking part in a low budget movie named Sunflowers and Rain, with a lot of arthouse interest. Cast in a young, rebellious role, Ash was credited for the first time as Ash Rivers, a name he\'d legally changed to under his agent\'s advice, and the film was awarded a prestigious arthouse award, internationally recognised.
 
A year later and he was involved in a casual-but-not relationship with the multi-millionaire jeweller Isaac Abrams, while enjoying a brand new role in a more mainstream movie, this time of the horror genre, titled Spirit Estate. Playing a young hoodlum who breaks into a haunted mansion and finding an untimely end in the first fifteen minutes of the movie, his role was the only highlighted positive note in a generally panned movie by critics. Thanks to first comparisons to James Dean, he started being offered roles which would generally typecast him in the rebellious light.
 
After starring in a couple of different movies with the same kind of roles and always as a supporting actor instead of in the starring role, Isaac urged Ash (now twenty-one) to accept the starring role in a movie that was not as heavily financially backed (or as formulaic) as the typical Hollywood movies. Now allowed to play a part of a young co-pilot who heroically saves a plane full of passengers after it crashes (based on a little-known true story of a young Canadian pilot), he was able to show that he had true acting skill. The movie, Flight of the Brave, was loved by critics and audiences, but never truly hit the mainstream market. It was enough, however, to land him a starring role in an action flick titled Sleet, about a young cop in a bad neighborhood breaking the rules and dealing his own brand of justice.
 
Unfortunately the mega-budget movie was a flop and Ash\'s ego was badly bruised by the same critics who\'d loved him so much a single movie ago. In the two years it took him to face acting again, there were a few big impacts on his life. Driving at speed in his little sportscar one night, he lost control on gravel and crashed into a metal barrier, mangling both the car and his leg. Firemen cut him out and were amazed he was alive but figured he\'d lost his leg. He was raced to a hospital but was met by Isaac Abrams, who talked his way into being alone in the room with the car accident victim (which a pain-addled Ash was surprised and confused about why the doctors were leaving him) and bled his blood into Ash\'s deep wound. Not long after, the doctors were back with him and Isaac went generally unnoticed (though he was in the room with all of them and Ash saw him until he was put under). His leg saved and thinking it was all a dream, Ash began paying a lot more attention to Isaac\'s coming and goings when they were together.
 
Eventually, after a circular conversation, Isaac was frustrated enough with dancing around the truth that he admitted to Ash what he was. A vampire. Ash was incredulous and sarcastic to begin with (though it had been the answer he\'d sought), only to be shocked into silence after being drunk from. Angry and upset that he hadn\'t been told sooner (but more so because he hadn\'t figured it out for himself, amid Isaac\'s protests that humans were generally disbelieving of \'monsters\' and often rationalised), Ash dropped out of contact and only returned after Isaac pursued him with an insistence that Ash was unable to deny.
 
Eventually becoming Isaac\'s live-in lover (but not publicly known), he found it in himself to star in a few more low-budget but high-brow movies where he often played a University student or drop-out of some degree, allowing Isaac to be his agent for him. Even though he wasn\'t as well-paid as other Hollywood actors, he had enough money to purchase a very fast, thrilling sportscar, which he often drove too fast and was pulled over many a time by police who would usually give him a warning and let him drive away.
 
Eventually, when driving himself and Isaac to a late-night Hollywood party which was in celebration of his latest and most successful movie to date Bargain Hunter, which was about a young man who uncovers a slaver\'s trade in Thailand, Ash Rivers crashed his car for the second time. What should\'ve been a fatal accident for both driver and passenger saw both Ash and Isaac coming out unscathed. Ash, however, had died in Isaac\'s arms, who\'d saved him from a more bloody death from internal injuries.
 
Now a childe of Isaac Abrams, a Toreador and Baron to the Anarch society of Hollywood, Ash discovered he could no longer pursue his Hollywood dream and was forced to watch the limelight gradually die away from him. He was now being taken to and introduced in more politically active circles, of a vampiric nature. Isaac had made the contacts he had in Hollywood because he was a bigwig in vampiric society.
 
Desperate to have some recognition or his own and getting everything he wanted from a Sire who didn\'t want to lose him, he was given a nightclub to run in Hollywood called the Asp Hole. He found himself bitter with what little recognition he did get, and thought little of the fans who recognised him - for they knew him from his more mainstream roles rather than the few he was truly proud of.
 
When Hunters came to the club in order to slay him (thanks to his miraculous recovery from two more car accidents, they were starting to put two and two together), he narrowly escaped and informed Isaac, who dispatched them very quickly thanks to his broad and varied connections. Tired of being Isaac\'s \'toyboy\' which Isaac insisted he wasn\'t, Ash has left his Sire in order to get some space. Isaac promised he would give him a few years on his own but after that he would come find him, so Ash has left Hollywood and travelled to a new city.
 
This city.
 
Personality:
Stubborn and resolute, Ash is incredibly arrogant yet oddly not independent. He needs affirmation from those he chooses to have around him, but is dismissive of his fans (unless they name a movie he is proud of, such as Sunflowers and Rain, Flight of the Brave, or Bargain Hunter).
 
He continues to smoke, though the cigarette gives him no pleasure or addiction, so he often digresses into the drugged or drunk world through his victims. He feels out of control of his life (and subsequent undesired death), and tends to wallow in it. His psychology is of the \'if you don\'t try, you can\'t fail\', because he doesn\'t want to attempt to succeed only to be a loser. It\'s easier not to bother and go slumming instead. He\'d rather consider himself better than a bunch of addicts than be mediocre among those who are like him, or worse still, of a lower status than those who are better than he is.
 
He doesn\'t like a challenge (other than acting) yet loves confrontation. He likes making people uncomfortable, because that makes him feel more powerful. He\'s never really been in control of his life and future, and it is this deeply hidden desire for independence that has made him leave Isaac (though he is also relieved - yet embittered - by his Sire\'s promise that he will come find him and take him back).
 
Awareness of Supernaturals: He knows about vampires and aspect shifters, because he's met an actor in Hollywood that can change his face physically to get real privacy.
 
Occupation/Job: Hollywood nightclub owner (Asp Hole)
 
Interesting Facts / Quirks: Ash chain smokes cigarettes.
 
Hobby/Hobbies: Other than smoking and driving fast cars in a dangerous manner, Ash doesn\'t really have any hobbies or interests. Perhaps this is the reason for his unsatisfied nature.
 
Likes: Sportscars, oil paintings depicting sunrises or blue skies, watching the movies he\'s starred in (even the crappy ones), his appearance, conversing about life/death issues and philosophising about hypothetical situations.
 
Dislikes: Travelling, having his picture taken by anyone who isn\'t a professional photographer, being showed up in a social or mental challenge, being recognised by teenage girls/boys, himself (except his physical appearance), being considered shallow.
 
Strength: Wants to change, has strong opinions, hungry for deep conversation.
 
Weakness/Flaw: Vain, arrogant, dismissive, low tolerance for strangers making it difficult for him to meet new people.
 
Toreador Disciplines: Auspex, Celerity, Prescience.
Due to his powerful and insistent Sire (who hasn\'t confirmed to his childe that he is over six hundred years old), Ash has access to many of the multiple talents that stem from these three disciplines thanks to Isaac\'s tutoring. He is still limited though in these powers, because of his age.
 
Filmography:
Summer Break, 1993 (credited as Ash Rowe)
The Party House Lives Again, 1993 (credited as Ash Rowe)
Sunflowers and Rain, 1995 (Arthouse, somewhat known)
Spirit Estate, 1996 (Mainstream)
Common Ground, 1997 (Arthouse, little known)
Sawmill College, 1997 (Arthouse, little known)
Flight of the Brave, 1998 (Arthouse, somewhat known)
Sleet, 1999 (Mainstream, flopped)
University Gradient, 2001 (Low Budget, Straight to TV)
Red Pepper, 2002 (Low Budget, Straight to TV)
Crows at Night\'s End, 2003 (Arthouse, little known)
Bargain Hunter, 2004 (Arthouse, semi-mainstream)
 
*Note: Asp Club, Ash Rivers and Isaac Abrams have been taken from and inspired by the game Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, but all creative storylines including background information is all the Riddler's, as VTM:B only glosses over the relationships in the game, alluding to nothing beyond a strained Sire/Childe relationship.