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Apr. 28th, 2016 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bestamontilladoPlayer's Name: Birdy
Contact info: Carrier Pigeon
DW:kyanve_te_shirhan
Character: Daemon Spade
Canon: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Version: Manga/Pre-existing CR here
Canon Point: Post-canon
Age: Apparent age mid-late 20's , Chronologically ~150
Gender: Male
History: The Wiki is not worth looking at.
Canon never really clearly states what time period the First Generation was from other than a few cues and backdrops that'd place it somewhere between the 1850's and beginning of the 1900's; usual head canon places their events during some later part of the Italian Unification.
Spade was born into the aristocracy, high enough to move in those circles but not enough to have a great deal of real power; he'd grown disgusted and disillusioned with his peers, and picked up some relatively revolutionary ideals, with the belief that power should go to those with merit and ability rather than a game of being born into high station, and that people should be respected for their abilities no matter what their standing and social class. During one or another party, he met Elena, who was like-minded and seemed a little less cynical about it; they both decided to work to change what was wrong with the world, and fell pretty hard in love. At some point, Elena met Giotto, and saw in the Vongola family people who shared their ideals and goals; she introduced Spade and Giotto with the suggestion that Spade join them, and they threw in with the Vongola and their fight, Elena supporting from the background while Spade became one of Giotto's Guardians and inner circle.
Things went relatively well for a while, as the Vongola became leaders of what seems to've been a significant fighting force and became a power to be reckoned with; it's shown in canon that they'd outright fought in large-scale battles, and stated that the police and other legal authorities wouldn't challenge them lightly. At some point, they became the Guardians of the Vongola rings, part of the Tri-ni-Sette - three sets of seven, relics that were said to have the power to remake the world if all three sets were ever brought together under one will. When Spade talks about this time period, even through all of his bitterness there's still some sense of nostalgia to it - "Everything was perfect then".
After a while, there was a point where it seemed like they'd beaten back the worst of their threats and there was a period of peace; Giotto, reading it as such, decided that he didn't want to keep any more force than was absolutely necessary, and began to dismantle their "Military", probably against Spade's advice. Their enemies waited quietly until there seemed to be an opening, and then attacked; the Vongola suffered heavy casualties, Elena included.
Spade, to put it mildly, snapped; while Elena's last words were to "Protect the weak", he had a breakdown and backlash, blaming that type of ideals and Giotto for what happened, which ended up causing him to reject her last words. Since the more "high road" route had led to them not even having the power to protect the people close to them, he rejected it in favor of seeking power; after all, if they had enough power, then they'd be the biggest monster on the field, the one all the other monsters were afraid of, and they wouldn't be targets like they'd become. As much as it's not outright stated that he blamed Giotto, he also went out of his way to get rid of one of Giotto's closest friends as a "liability", snipes every time you see him called out of the Ring, and even over a hundred years later in Inheritance is also sniping at and aiming at Giotto and his ideals - right down to hissing at Tsuna once for being "just like Primo". For all his rationalizations and the outburst he had at the time, he basically internalized all the hurt, anger, frustration, etc. from her death, turning into a seething, frustrated rage. This is where he took the turn from being underhanded and manipulative but idealistic, to what everyone is used to now. He didn't express this openly, and resorted to quietly working around the others to remove what he saw as weaknesses and encourage more vicious tactics; at some point, Giotto caught on to this, and realized that he couldn't entirely trust his old friend anymore.
This was tested and proven when Giotto's old best friend, Cozarto Simon and his family, were caught in an outnumbered and surrounded battle in need of help; the Vongola were, themselves, involved in an active battle. Spade volunteered to carry Giotto's orders to send help for Cozarto personally, and bring his own followers to do it…
With every intention of destroying the orders and not only not sending backup, but getting his people to sneak in and, if the enemy failed to eliminate the weaker Family, finishing the job himself. Giotto secretly sent the other Guardians to rescue Cozarto, replacing Spade's underlings, unknown to the illusionist; they rescued the Simon family. Cozarto decided it was better if Spade were allowed to believe he'd succeeded without being caught; they left every indication that he'd succeeded and they'd died there, then vanished into obscurity and hiding, to support the Vongola from the shadows. Spade went on to continue his string-pulling, and while it's not explicitly stated in the manga, he probably had a hand in encouraging Ricardo, who forced Giotto to retire and pass on the rings to his generation; according to the anime, Spade served as Ricardo's Mist Guardian as well, and has a slightly ominous line that implies he might've gone a bit further in his lashing out at Giotto than just that.
There is also the wonderful disturbing note that Spade is known from his first mention in canon, when it's just commentary on "The First Mist Guardian", as "The Traitor", which begs the question of what he did to earn that. After all, all records or indications of him having betrayed Giotto over Cozarto were destroyed, and his loyalty to the Vongola as an organization never wavered, and from Ricardo on for a while the Bosses were doing what he wanted; it was his loyalty to Giotto, the other First Generation Guardians, and their ideals that broke, which means he had to do something fairly major to get recorded that nastily in the history books - my current headcanon theory is that he might've had a hand in the post-retirement deaths of at least some of the other First Family.
At some point, Spade learned possession techniques, and after his death, went on to jump from body to body, using that and his power as an illusionist to manipulate events and people to try to reshape the Vongola to his vision; nobody actually realized he was still active, and he pretty much managed to move unchecked. The next time anything is mentioned of his actions in canon, he enacted a few massacres, killing several higher-up leaders of the Vongola and slaughtering twelve agents of CEDEF, their intelligence and security agents to blame it on the Simon family, then killing the Simon boss and his entire family save his young son while mimicking the head of CEDEF, setting in motion a plan to turn the Simon against the Vongola, get them to self-destruct, and use them to take out some of the "weaker" parts of the Vongola. This got slightly meddled in by the Vendice, the enigmatic and apparently immortal law keepers, who had been keeping relics with the memories of what really happened back in the First Generation, along with some instructions from Giotto that, should the two families ever be turned on one other, the Vendice were to share the truth with them, which for the most part effectively killed the Simon family's hatred of the Vongola as they realized they'd both been played; as the plan to use the Simon to destroy the Tenth Generation successor and Guardians failed (and likely destroy the Simon in the process), Spade stepped in personally, having made sure the confrontation happened in territory well away from any backup where Tsuna might have control.
That and he'd had a secondary plan going on at the time to use Chrome, the girl who served as a host for the currently-imprisoned 10th Gen Mist guardian, Mukuro, as bait; she was kidnapped by the Simon - more specifically, the Simon member Spade was possessing - to use as a hostage against the Vongola, as far as anyone knew. Spade had abused some of the mind-control powers he'd learned to force Chrome under his thrall against her will, and then left an opening for Mukuro to re-establish contact with her and interfere - after he'd interfered with the power Mukuro was using to keep her alive, as Chrome's missing several vital organs and a bit dependent on Mukuro's power to survive. Whatever his motives, Mukuro took the bait, leaving his own body in the Vendice's prison to channel through Chrome and save her; he seemed to "win" a fight with Spade. Attempting to return to his own body found it blocked, leaving him stuck moving into their familiar-esque owl "Weapon", as Spade had taken the opening to steal Mukuro's body, and abuse the FUCK out of the fact that, because Mukuro was, himself, an incredibly powerful Mist user, Spade could …pretty much exert full power plus everything he'd been working on over the centuries from his body on a level he hadn't been able to do in a long time - and he had every intention of making the grand theft body permanent, finishing off the Simon and Tenth Gen himself, and going on to use Mukuro's body to continue his meddling.
Even with the fact that he'd somehow managed to learn to use the void and dimension-warping powers previously kept as the closely-guarded secret of the Vendice - how he'd managed to get Mukuro's body from where it was in their prison to the island on the other side of the globe - the attempt at taking on the entire Vongola 10th Gen basically plus the leader of the Simon family went …
Poorly.
Or well, he managed to make a very credible threat of himself, and cheated like a BASTARD, but they did manage to corner him with a coordinated attack and pin him down enough to make it clear it was a fight he wasn't going to win, and beat him down pretty well. It probably didn't help that the memories of the First Gen the Vendice were sharing was pulling on a lot of very old raw nerves, never mind that his own treachery and manipulations more recently were revealed, and he possibly wasn't being quite as cautious as he should've been about it. (Nor did it help that, besides all the nerves and things unravelling, part of why it was happening was that Giotto who he'd harbored such resentment towards had …effectively outsmarted him by setting up contingencies against this kind of a snarl.) In some ways the attack was equal parts "planned assault" and "mental breakdown/meltdown".
As he was seemingly "dying", he conceded that the Tenth Generation had managed to earn his respect as capable successors to take care of the Vongola, and … accepted an assurance that Elena would've forgiven him for his actions, although some of his comments are less that he truly believed it and more that there was some appreciation for the thought; while he did a nice dramatic death scene, his parting words were an implied threat if the new successor ever managed to fail the Vongola. It's been established in canon previously that the First-Gen guardians basically became the "Wills" of the Tri-ni-Sette Rings of their respective elements, as well as outright stated that said presence of the First Generation was not "a projection" or reflection but actually them, and he'd known some things in Inheritance Arc he could've only known if he'd been able to keep track of the Ring itself...
So as nice and dramatic as it was, he was still around, just … has conceded defeat for now and is taking some time to rest and rethink his plans.
During last cycle, he was brought here by Mukuro not long after that as a spirit inhabiting the earring, staying dormant; Mukuro, aware that stray spirits could be turned into things, decided to wake him and up and keep him involved, often shoving him into the body of the Mist Owl box-weapon. As an owl, he was walked off with by Lyhn, and due to Lyhn doing the psychological equivalent of percusssive maintenance and some CR with castmates and others, he began the long and painful process of trying to find some kind of path back towards what Elena would have wanted. This included ending up teaching Mukuro and Soubi how to handle a baby. He's still not incredibly confident in it, and his social skills are only a thing that works consistently when he's got a goal in mind (for better or for worse) - outside of that he can be abrasive, cynical, and very moody.
Personality: Spade is, even after what is essentially having a keystone of his plans fail and being forced to stop and re-evaluate things, often a very bitter and cynical man; it's likely that even in his younger days when he was less vicious and more idealistic, he was still given to a dim view of human nature and a tendency towards underhanded tactics. He's also so Scorpio it hurts, and typically very calm, in control, and focused on the surface, hard to move or shift in his ideas and moods, but underneath the calm and composure, everything internally is running at hurricane-force - and that hurricane-force is being focused and channeled very well, most of the time.
Given the time period he was living in and his powers, it's probably not a big surprise that he's picked up a dim view of human nature; he was an aristocrat and one probably intimately familiar with the pit of vipers that is politics, during a time where there was a great deal of turmoil and class conflicts. Odds are good he was good at the politics game, less so at actually honestly associating with people, and that his one sanity anchor was Elena. Ironically, some of his ideals are part of what contributed to his cynicism; he honestly does believe in trying to improve the world and fight back against the worst of humanity, but he's very much in the more Machiavellian and shaded ethics mold, and he's so bitter and cynical because he's aware of how rotten the world is when he doesn't think it should be.
Basically, he believes that there is such a thing as a better nature, but that it's impossible to actually fight the worst of humanity without learning to be a monster yourself to SOME degree, enough to challenge them on their own terms. He had a long breakdown where he was driven by some of his own panic into treating anything of "human better nature" as a weakness that would be exploited, which he is still working on deconstructing down to something more rational than what it was for most of his time in the ring.
He had a very strange and unpredictable set of standards; his main targets are the "monsters", but he's devoted himself to "strengthening" the Vongola by trying to turn them into his concept of what would defeat the "Monsters". He's currently dealing with a lot of guilt and self-loathing for what he did while he was more off the deep end, although he's still occasionally prone to anxious circles between "Do not hurt/use the weak or innocent" and "Afraid of being targeted/losing someone/getting taken advantage of for HAVING a better nature". On a good day he can be very anxious and over-worry about things and might even show some of it; on a bad day, he has it in him to be very cold, manipulative, vindictive, and downright sadistic.
(It is worth noting that as much as he's known as "the traitor", he never actually turned against the VONGOLA per se - one of his current-canon best-known acts of treachery, setting up Giotto's closest friend outside the Guardians to die in an outnumbered battle and making sure backup was never sent, was in the name of removing what he perceived as a weakness of the Family; as much as he had a grudge against Giotto that was simmering, his conscious reasoning for any bits thrown in helping drive Giotto out of power and helping Ricardo, known for being more vicious and temperamental, into power was the "improvement" and strengthening of the Family; he basically destroyed his own life even for the sake of the Vongola. Nowadays he WILL admit to himself or if pressed by the right person that yes, he was also getting petty revenge on Giotto even if he didn't want to acknowledge his own volatile emotions then.)
One of his long-term weaknesses of character is that he does have a very wide vindictive streak, and is capable of holding a grudge FOREVER. Odds are good that part of what drove him so far down the "monster" path is justifications and rationalizations of him picking up a grudge against Giotto, and blaming the Primo's pacifistic tendencies for the attack that led to Elena's death; basically, that event became a justification for "I told you so" taken to an extreme, and a demonstration, in Spade's mind, that Giotto's more conventional sense of ethics was only going to get them destroyed, and that he was right all along, to the point that he actually went …. Well, to the extreme end of the scale, using his own trauma as justification to go 120% on the "being the bigger monster" game. He regrets a huge amount of what he did then even if he did keep driving down the path out of fear of what would happen if he did anything ELSE, and is currently trying to work on relearning how to be a decent human being.
It's a very slow process.
Considering that it's said in the anime and implied in the manga that he probably helped drive Giotto's generation into retirement, if not more permanently "getting rid of them", that grudge was enough for him to turn on what had, previously, been his closest friends, and he held that grudge for a good hundred and some years just as vehemently as the day it started. He's calm, collected, and patient normally, yes, but do something that actually hits a nerve, and you have made an enemy that will ruin your life, then continue that through the generations down your descendants, for all eternity. Worse, his temper isn't explosive or visible; there is very rarely any kind of outburst of more than temporary frustration, and he'll quickly recover to be just as calm and poised as normal most of the time. As a friend put it, this isn't someone who'll blow up at you and rant to clear the air, this is someone who'll pull a Cask of Amontillado on you. Get in his path as a target, and if he gets an opening, he'll make your life Hell.
He's also incredibly methodical and manipulative; he went for a hundred and fifty years pulling strings in the shadows without anyone realizing he was still even around, and before that, spent the last chunk of time he was alive manipulating things without openly challenging his comrades even while he worked to undermine their idea of how things should work. He's prone to layered plans and being perfectly happy to set up plans that can take decades to come to fruition. Depending on your perspective, he's either adapted incredibly well to being functionally immortal, or been warped even further from "human" by it. In most cases, he's almost freakishly patient; as mentioned, unless someone manages to completely destroy his world, he's unlikely to ever show any signs of an emotional outburst more than a little bit of bitching or snark, or give a real account for his own emotions and mood, instead showing whatever reactions seem like they'd lead to the outcome he wants and taking any setback or problem as something to solve, deal with, or account for. Annoyances and irritations are similarly handled; as much as he has a great deal of pride, he'll weather blows to his dignity without any more protest than seems like it'd be a good idea at the time, although he might plot revenge and have moments of petty sadism and vindictiveness later in return for it.
People seriously trying to get his goat will probably fail! Depending on what they do and his mood at the time and how useful/amusing they are to him, his reactions could range from finding the attempt at pulling on nerves itself entertaining, to covering his irritation and making a mental note to get back at them for it later. He's very calculating, and very good at reading people and feeling out their motives, desires, and weaknesses; a lot of his interactions are likely to involve quietly taking notes on their behavior and personality, and he's very good at pushing buttons and pulling strings without being open about it. While he can, internally, be an incredibly moody bastard, he's excellent at controlling how much of that is visible, and while it will influence his actions and decisions more than he'd ever admit, he's usually very analytical and calculating.
He's an excellent actor, and very practiced; most of his actions over the last hundred and fifty years have been accomplished by body-hopping, and he's usually been good enough at mimicking whoever he's possessed that even close friends and lovers haven't caught anything off. Besides the obvious - where he's EXCELLENT at mimicking people and passing off as them, given a way to pull it off - it also feeds back into his surface control; he has to be at wit's end and things have to be going utterly wrong with added trauma-kicks for him to show an honest reaction. 99% of the time, what he's showing the world will be, to some extent, a facade; he layers his reactions and what he lets people see of him, and he has an image and persona he's carefully crafted of an affable, calm, controlled, usually (and occasionally unsettlingly) genial and pleasant predator. He doesn't allow himself outbursts or expressions of his own emotional state unless it's past breakpoint, and even then, unless things are COMPLETELY falling apart, it'll simmer with him fighting to hide it until he can get in private if he has any say in the matter.
Obviously he's very good at being very subtle, but there's an odd sort of duality to his behavior; when he's plotting or in most cases where he's avoiding drawing attention to himself, he's very subtle, even soft-spoken for all his predatory ego, and will direct attention away from himself; however, if a plan calls for it or something falls through and he has to act directly, the same skills at playing with perceptions end up merging with his ego to give him a talent for theatrics. Basically, he uses Magician Logic; he's very carefully controlling how other people perceive him, so while he'll usually be playing "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", put him on the spot and he insists on owning the stage and having enough force of personality to control the audience; as much as the theatrics are still fairly calculated to get certain reactions, and often meant for intimidation value with more control than most would guess, he … can be a very large ham. If he's going to have attention on him and leave an impression, he's going to leave an ~IMPRESSION~, and burn his image and his persona into the memory of everyone involved. Ideally, even if he loses, he'll be something remembered fearfully for ages to come.
He does have a sense of humor! It's warped, and far from being stunted, it's actually TOO healthy and well-developed. Keep in mind that he's decided that he's going to be the biggest, baddest, meanest, worst and cruelest monster there is, and in the name of the "Greater Good" he's making himself into a demon - which means that his sense of humor tends towards the vindictive and spiteful; Schadenfreude is his natural happiest state, his humor is as black as the void of space, and he can be a sadistic bastard and enjoy it a bit too much. It's hard to tell if there's still fragments of a more "human" sense of humor… or if he's just good at faking it.
He's stubborn, but not stupid; set him back far enough or have something go badly enough, and he'll pitch a fit at the time, maybe even have a bit of a breakdown if it's epically bad enough, but after he's exhausted that enough to regain control, he's more than intelligent enough to go back to the drawing board and rethink his approach. This is both a saving grace and a bit of a problem; he's capable of admitting defeat and that he fucked up, and even that he needs to adjust his tactics and maybe allow someone to exist whose methods aren't what he'd agree with if they succeed well enough … but he's basically going back to plotting and planning and hasn't really changed so much as decided that maybe he needs to adjust his tactics somewhat, or backed off to pick his fights better. Note that with Tsuna, even though he's admitted that Tsuna won and maybe the Tenth Gen is capable of keeping their strength in spite of the "weaknesses" of compassion and worry for others they've shown, he still left the dangling implied threat that if they ever failed to stand up to the threats facing the Vongola or "brought shame to the Vongola name", he'd never forgive them. This is also after being emotionally kicked in the proverbial family jewels a few times and finding out that Giotto, who he'd grown to think of as a weak fool, had out-plotted him in a couple directions, things HADN'T happened the way he'd thought they had, and getting jabs at his bond with Elena, the last thing that'd made him "human".
The sad part is that there's a strong core underneath the "Monster" that is, and has always been, human, as much as he tried ot bury it. He was initially introduced to Giotto as someone like-minded, meaning that unlike his tenth gen counterpart, there WAS a time that he had something resembling faith in at least ideals and the ability of humanity to overcome its worse nature. He'd also been incredibly fluffily attached to Elena, and very much in love, as well as having been acknowledged as having been a close friend to Giotto; before things turned bad and he broke, he was quite capable of keeping close bonds with others, and still had a sense of empathy and compassion. The fact that the pocket watch, commissioned by Giotto from the craftsman who worked on the rings as a token of their pact of friendship and trust, stayed bonded to him enough to be carried through the centuries, shows that on some level he does still value those ties; during his breakdown when he's defeated and discovered that he was outmaneuvered and out planned back when he'd been alive, one of the things that seems to hit the worst is the fear that, if Elena saw him now, she'd revile him as the monster he's turned himself into. Even while he seems to halfway accept the assurance that she would've forgiven him, it's accepted as a comforting gesture made up to show compassion, not as the truth.
He had a list of complexes keeping him justifying and rationalizing his behavior as "being a genuinely good person is dooming things to fail and others to suffer so you need to be a bigger monster to stop the monsters"; part of this was not wanting to admit he was still terrified of ending up in a position of losing people like Elena again, which turned into burning bridges. He probably has some variety of anxiety disorder and basically spent 150 years doing the equivalent of lighting the house on fire b/c then nobody could take it away. He's well aware that he's been kind of an idiot that way, but he's slowly fumbling his way through adapting to recognizing his own anxieties and trying to NOT relapse into withdrawing into his "monster" shell again.
Speaking of Elena, he does technically have the potential for a great deal of loyalty; given how far he's fallen, and the way that her death affected him, it'd be hard for anyone to actually get that kind of devotion from him again. He was deeply in love with Elena, and from the beginning Elena was what grounded him; she'd helped serve as the anchor for his conscience, and was what managed to guide him into joining the Vongola in the first place. Note that he's never actually turned against the larger Vongola family and the basic idea of their purpose! At least a decent part of this comes from it having been important to Elena, and her last words to him were for him to help keep the Vongola strong. Therein lies one of his big internal conflicts; the circumstances of her death and how hard it hit him are what drove him to such a violent backlash against the kind of idealism that'd led to Giotto dismantling their armed force and leaving them open to attack, yet he's still personally devoted to preserving the Vongola. As much as he rationalized that he was taking care of the Vongola Elena loved so much (after all, he had rationalized that Giotto's path of idealism would've just made victims of them all and destroyed the Vongola), he's well aware that she was, herself, an idealist - after all, her last words were to "protect the weak", and his resolve to actually follow those last words had the rough lifespan of a snowflake in Hell until Lyhn verbally forced his rationalizations to divide by zero. He's doing a lot of things because of her, and because of what happened to her, and for her (or in revenge for her), but he wasn't actually doing what she wanted and he knows it.
Basically, there's three big layers - the surface facade layer, with whatever he's affecting to enact his plans or, outside of specific plans, the affable and controlled predator that will shift between calm and quiet and theatrics as necessary; the Demon and Monster, that will present as the biggest boogeyman there is to properly terrify the other monsters into submission and enjoys tormenting others, which can be moody and vindictive; and, underneath those, occasionally caught in glimpses if he's gotten attached enough to someone to show it, one INCREDIBLY damaged and broken idealist with a guilt complex and self-destructive tendencies that hates what he's become.
Fears: Losing people close to him - to the extent that he's afraid of getting attached to people, even; if he does end up caring about someone, he'll end up worrying about them more, can be prone to hovering and fussing at things that might hurt them, and can get to where the object of his concern may want to strangle him. He can also end up going abrasive and being more of an asshole trying to play off and pretend that he doesn't care about them in case anything watching might consider targeting them for it.
Failure - yes he is the sort to go over things that went wrong and worry about what they could've done to NOT have them blow up, and he's often over-aware of potential consequences if something goes wrong or he and the others he's with fail whatever mission they have.
Not doing enough - He fully expects the world to go to Hell if there aren't continual efforts made to deal with everything that could make things worse.
Getting taken advantage of - He's afraid of his own ideals and the risk that trusting others, showing any kind of honor, caring about people, etc. might get used against him or others in a way that would do more harm in the long run. This is one he's still struggling with.
Elena - He's TERRIFIED of what Elena would think if she knew what he'd spent the last 150-some years doing.
Giotto - He's simultaneously still a little angry at Giotto and terrified of the realization that, now that Giotto's got his feet back under him and found his spine again, Giotto is honestly RIGHT in beating the shit out of him; he's terrified to face Giotto again until he feels like he's done enough to maybe even the balance for everything wrong he's done.
Weaknesses: Anxiety-prone: Spade worries about EVERYTHING, and when he worries, he gets agitated, moody, and more likely to be an asshole if he isn't called on his bullshit or if he doesn't catch clues that his asshattery is making things worse.
Social Issues: He's great at being manipulative and is very good with people as long as he has a goal to work towards where he can calculate out what's likely to get the responses and reactions he's aiming for. If he's being honest and NOT trying to be manipulative, he's basically a drunken water buffalo in a china shop.
Self-loathing: He still kind of hates himself for what he's been even if he's fumbling through learning to NOT be that without Elena to play guidelines. He's well aware of how disturbing it is that MUKURO was managing to take over for Elena on herding his complexes and directing him.
Does Not Do Well By Himself: Spade is the meme dog who tore the house apart because "I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONE FOREVER" when the owner was out for ten minutes. He kind of needs SOMEONE to pop him upside the head and tell him when something is a bad idea, ideally someone who has established dominance that he'll listen to and not argue with too much. In the absence of such, he kind of falls into trying to guess what Elena would want if he's thinking enough for it.
Unpredictable: He has a lot of issues and mood swings he's good at hiding, sometimes even from himself. This means that, when he starts rationalizing reactions and trying to ascribe reason to actions that're actually just him being a moody bastard, there's no telling WHAT he'll come up with if he goes too far into it.
Spider caught in own web: He can occasionally plot himself into corners if he's trying too hard to continue towards a goal where things have shifted on him or if he's trying too hard to salvage existing plans.
Trust Issues: He's a paranoid bastard prone to assuming the worst of people. Even worse, even if someone does twig his radar as being an idealist or Good Person, he'll tend to be JUST as wary as if he were dealing with someone sketchy, because he'll not trust it until he can confirm that they aren't going misguided Templar "I Know What's Right" or naive and therefore being a weak point themselves.
Authority Issues: He hates nobility; he grew up nobility and loathed his family and everything they stood for. He's also been around long enough to see plenty of variations on corrupt governments, and thus doesn't trust government either. He's well aware that pretty much any authority can be subverted, corrupt, misguided, or self-centered malicious, and therefore doesn't trust any of them without being hit over the head with good reasons for it.
Manipulative Git: Seriously, the only way he can usually function that gets along with people is if he's trying ot push buttons somewhere.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: Intelligent/Educated: He was well-educated for his time, and in the 150 years, the body-hopping and other operations he ran required him to be a bit of a walking library of odd information and skills. He's INCREDIBLY well-read and can pass for a range of different professions competently, as well as having encyclopedic knowledge of politics, history, some literature/philosophy, assassination and stealth subjects, sabotage, and tactics.
Clever/Scheming: He's VERY good at problem solving, very detail minded, and very good at politics and working out cause-effect chains; he is his own worst enemy, really, since he only really ends up with "blind spots" when his complexes interfere with his reasoning. Outside of that, he's terrifyingly good at plotting, planning, setting up contingencies, and taking into account many different ongoing factors.
Cautious and patient: He's VERY careful, and after 150 years of scheming, very good at sitting on his impulse reactions and watching to adapt to situations.
Observant and meticulous: He is, again, detail minded, and he's been intelligence-focused for most of his existence; he's very good at both catching aspects of his environment and other people around him, and working through those to figure out what's going on. He's also a bit frightening at reading people and their behavior, again only tripped up when one of his complexes interferes with his reasoning by filling in expectations.
Agile and combat-experienced: In his own body he fought through the Italian Unification War, even if he was leaning more towards use of powers where possible; he also, in other bodies, fought through World War II, and has been a constant presence in the underworld and well aware that subtlety and use of physical force is sometimes just as effective as illusions. He's very skilled with polearms and good with firearms. He does tend less towards brute-strength, however, particularly in his own body.
Excellent Actor: He can spend years at a time passing for someone else in their own body, flit between hosts and swap illusions over himself to slip through places by blending in or replacing others, and is generally VERY good at controlling what other people see/hear of him most of the time.
Stealth: Many of his host bodies could not use powers; he's gotten very good at mundane stealth and misdirection.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: MIST USER BULLSHIT: He's an illusionist, which is a little more complicated than it sounds. HIs power essentially forms temporary constructs that function exactly as what they look like; whatever he forms his "Mist flame" into is functionally real. It is possible for someone to attempt a battle of wills to "disbelieve" and break the effect, but he's old, experienced, powerful, and has the potential to brute-force it into "reality" anyway; this takes more power than if someone accepts its reality without a struggle. He CANNOT remove existing matter directly this way, although his illusions CAN affect other existing matter; when the illusions are dismissed, they dissipate into nothingness, but any collateral damage or injury remains.
Essentially, if he illusions a hole onto a wall, and someone tries to go through it, they will run into the wall. If he illusions a cannon and uses it to blow a hole in the wall, the cannon will vanish after he lets go of it, but the hole it put in the wall will still exist as damage to the real environment.
This can have some very somewhat cheap uses; for example, he can illusion over an injury or missing limb as "it's still there", allowing the person to function normally (although there may be risk of aggravating injury), or at least preventing death by blocking bleeding out or other negative effects until the person can get actual healing or attention.
Basically he's a cheap reality warping bastard with powers that are either ridiculously cheap or very fragile and useless depending on what he's using them for and who's around/involved.
Possession Links: By drawing blood with a weapon he's attuned to enough, he can form a link to another person. The primary use of this connection is that it allows him to pull a possession, leaving his own body empty and taking over theirs. While in another body, he can only use powers he's familiar with, and can only use what abilities the body has. (The good news is he knows leaving your body unattended here is a VERY BAD IDEA.) He can do some mental eavesdropping on whoever he has a tie to, although rooting around beyond surface thoughts and what they're paying attention to can risk being noticed. He can also, with a little effort, do influencing effects altering their behavior; this can potentially turn into brute-force control and puppeteering, or be less dramatic bits of slipping control in. He has a long history of knowing HOW to use this for Not Intended Purposes, and can just send thoughts openly to the subject/use being able to read them to communicate back and forth.
If he makes a replica of his old scythe with illusions, it does function as usable for forming a link; he might be able to use illusion blades for this otherwise, with more of a chance element/needing to roll for it.
He can short-term attempt to exert the control/influence/charm effect by eye contact; this will probably be contested rolls depending on who he uses it on and the preferences of the other player involved.
Flame of Night: A dark/void based power that, in his world, is only available to those who've died but somehow not left the world. He's aware that it's dangerous here and would get meddled with. The Flame of Night allows the user to teleport and create dimensional rifts and time-space warps; he's nowhere near as skilled as the Vindice, but he's good with it, able to do some very cheap "dimension door" tricks and dodges.
OWL: He will occasionally end up a fluffy owl as discussed with TC/Allison at night. As an owl he is a perfectly normal snow owl that happens to talk, and loses access to most of his powers.
Supply List:
Pocketwatch: A gold pocketwatch with a photo of the First Gen + Elena inside the lid, along with an inscription. It has a bit of his Flame in it, so that there's a glowing indigo wisp over the face when it's open. There's a wood ace-of-spades-emblem charm from last cycle attached to it.
Game Transfers:
Sample RP post: Spade has been in this game for a year as an owl accompanying Mukuro.
Contact info: Carrier Pigeon
DW:
kyanve_te_shirhanCharacter: Daemon Spade
Canon: Katekyo Hitman Reborn
Version: Manga/Pre-existing CR here
Canon Point: Post-canon
Age: Apparent age mid-late 20's , Chronologically ~150
Gender: Male
History: The Wiki is not worth looking at.
Canon never really clearly states what time period the First Generation was from other than a few cues and backdrops that'd place it somewhere between the 1850's and beginning of the 1900's; usual head canon places their events during some later part of the Italian Unification.
Spade was born into the aristocracy, high enough to move in those circles but not enough to have a great deal of real power; he'd grown disgusted and disillusioned with his peers, and picked up some relatively revolutionary ideals, with the belief that power should go to those with merit and ability rather than a game of being born into high station, and that people should be respected for their abilities no matter what their standing and social class. During one or another party, he met Elena, who was like-minded and seemed a little less cynical about it; they both decided to work to change what was wrong with the world, and fell pretty hard in love. At some point, Elena met Giotto, and saw in the Vongola family people who shared their ideals and goals; she introduced Spade and Giotto with the suggestion that Spade join them, and they threw in with the Vongola and their fight, Elena supporting from the background while Spade became one of Giotto's Guardians and inner circle.
Things went relatively well for a while, as the Vongola became leaders of what seems to've been a significant fighting force and became a power to be reckoned with; it's shown in canon that they'd outright fought in large-scale battles, and stated that the police and other legal authorities wouldn't challenge them lightly. At some point, they became the Guardians of the Vongola rings, part of the Tri-ni-Sette - three sets of seven, relics that were said to have the power to remake the world if all three sets were ever brought together under one will. When Spade talks about this time period, even through all of his bitterness there's still some sense of nostalgia to it - "Everything was perfect then".
After a while, there was a point where it seemed like they'd beaten back the worst of their threats and there was a period of peace; Giotto, reading it as such, decided that he didn't want to keep any more force than was absolutely necessary, and began to dismantle their "Military", probably against Spade's advice. Their enemies waited quietly until there seemed to be an opening, and then attacked; the Vongola suffered heavy casualties, Elena included.
Spade, to put it mildly, snapped; while Elena's last words were to "Protect the weak", he had a breakdown and backlash, blaming that type of ideals and Giotto for what happened, which ended up causing him to reject her last words. Since the more "high road" route had led to them not even having the power to protect the people close to them, he rejected it in favor of seeking power; after all, if they had enough power, then they'd be the biggest monster on the field, the one all the other monsters were afraid of, and they wouldn't be targets like they'd become. As much as it's not outright stated that he blamed Giotto, he also went out of his way to get rid of one of Giotto's closest friends as a "liability", snipes every time you see him called out of the Ring, and even over a hundred years later in Inheritance is also sniping at and aiming at Giotto and his ideals - right down to hissing at Tsuna once for being "just like Primo". For all his rationalizations and the outburst he had at the time, he basically internalized all the hurt, anger, frustration, etc. from her death, turning into a seething, frustrated rage. This is where he took the turn from being underhanded and manipulative but idealistic, to what everyone is used to now. He didn't express this openly, and resorted to quietly working around the others to remove what he saw as weaknesses and encourage more vicious tactics; at some point, Giotto caught on to this, and realized that he couldn't entirely trust his old friend anymore.
This was tested and proven when Giotto's old best friend, Cozarto Simon and his family, were caught in an outnumbered and surrounded battle in need of help; the Vongola were, themselves, involved in an active battle. Spade volunteered to carry Giotto's orders to send help for Cozarto personally, and bring his own followers to do it…
With every intention of destroying the orders and not only not sending backup, but getting his people to sneak in and, if the enemy failed to eliminate the weaker Family, finishing the job himself. Giotto secretly sent the other Guardians to rescue Cozarto, replacing Spade's underlings, unknown to the illusionist; they rescued the Simon family. Cozarto decided it was better if Spade were allowed to believe he'd succeeded without being caught; they left every indication that he'd succeeded and they'd died there, then vanished into obscurity and hiding, to support the Vongola from the shadows. Spade went on to continue his string-pulling, and while it's not explicitly stated in the manga, he probably had a hand in encouraging Ricardo, who forced Giotto to retire and pass on the rings to his generation; according to the anime, Spade served as Ricardo's Mist Guardian as well, and has a slightly ominous line that implies he might've gone a bit further in his lashing out at Giotto than just that.
There is also the wonderful disturbing note that Spade is known from his first mention in canon, when it's just commentary on "The First Mist Guardian", as "The Traitor", which begs the question of what he did to earn that. After all, all records or indications of him having betrayed Giotto over Cozarto were destroyed, and his loyalty to the Vongola as an organization never wavered, and from Ricardo on for a while the Bosses were doing what he wanted; it was his loyalty to Giotto, the other First Generation Guardians, and their ideals that broke, which means he had to do something fairly major to get recorded that nastily in the history books - my current headcanon theory is that he might've had a hand in the post-retirement deaths of at least some of the other First Family.
At some point, Spade learned possession techniques, and after his death, went on to jump from body to body, using that and his power as an illusionist to manipulate events and people to try to reshape the Vongola to his vision; nobody actually realized he was still active, and he pretty much managed to move unchecked. The next time anything is mentioned of his actions in canon, he enacted a few massacres, killing several higher-up leaders of the Vongola and slaughtering twelve agents of CEDEF, their intelligence and security agents to blame it on the Simon family, then killing the Simon boss and his entire family save his young son while mimicking the head of CEDEF, setting in motion a plan to turn the Simon against the Vongola, get them to self-destruct, and use them to take out some of the "weaker" parts of the Vongola. This got slightly meddled in by the Vendice, the enigmatic and apparently immortal law keepers, who had been keeping relics with the memories of what really happened back in the First Generation, along with some instructions from Giotto that, should the two families ever be turned on one other, the Vendice were to share the truth with them, which for the most part effectively killed the Simon family's hatred of the Vongola as they realized they'd both been played; as the plan to use the Simon to destroy the Tenth Generation successor and Guardians failed (and likely destroy the Simon in the process), Spade stepped in personally, having made sure the confrontation happened in territory well away from any backup where Tsuna might have control.
That and he'd had a secondary plan going on at the time to use Chrome, the girl who served as a host for the currently-imprisoned 10th Gen Mist guardian, Mukuro, as bait; she was kidnapped by the Simon - more specifically, the Simon member Spade was possessing - to use as a hostage against the Vongola, as far as anyone knew. Spade had abused some of the mind-control powers he'd learned to force Chrome under his thrall against her will, and then left an opening for Mukuro to re-establish contact with her and interfere - after he'd interfered with the power Mukuro was using to keep her alive, as Chrome's missing several vital organs and a bit dependent on Mukuro's power to survive. Whatever his motives, Mukuro took the bait, leaving his own body in the Vendice's prison to channel through Chrome and save her; he seemed to "win" a fight with Spade. Attempting to return to his own body found it blocked, leaving him stuck moving into their familiar-esque owl "Weapon", as Spade had taken the opening to steal Mukuro's body, and abuse the FUCK out of the fact that, because Mukuro was, himself, an incredibly powerful Mist user, Spade could …pretty much exert full power plus everything he'd been working on over the centuries from his body on a level he hadn't been able to do in a long time - and he had every intention of making the grand theft body permanent, finishing off the Simon and Tenth Gen himself, and going on to use Mukuro's body to continue his meddling.
Even with the fact that he'd somehow managed to learn to use the void and dimension-warping powers previously kept as the closely-guarded secret of the Vendice - how he'd managed to get Mukuro's body from where it was in their prison to the island on the other side of the globe - the attempt at taking on the entire Vongola 10th Gen basically plus the leader of the Simon family went …
Poorly.
Or well, he managed to make a very credible threat of himself, and cheated like a BASTARD, but they did manage to corner him with a coordinated attack and pin him down enough to make it clear it was a fight he wasn't going to win, and beat him down pretty well. It probably didn't help that the memories of the First Gen the Vendice were sharing was pulling on a lot of very old raw nerves, never mind that his own treachery and manipulations more recently were revealed, and he possibly wasn't being quite as cautious as he should've been about it. (Nor did it help that, besides all the nerves and things unravelling, part of why it was happening was that Giotto who he'd harbored such resentment towards had …effectively outsmarted him by setting up contingencies against this kind of a snarl.) In some ways the attack was equal parts "planned assault" and "mental breakdown/meltdown".
As he was seemingly "dying", he conceded that the Tenth Generation had managed to earn his respect as capable successors to take care of the Vongola, and … accepted an assurance that Elena would've forgiven him for his actions, although some of his comments are less that he truly believed it and more that there was some appreciation for the thought; while he did a nice dramatic death scene, his parting words were an implied threat if the new successor ever managed to fail the Vongola. It's been established in canon previously that the First-Gen guardians basically became the "Wills" of the Tri-ni-Sette Rings of their respective elements, as well as outright stated that said presence of the First Generation was not "a projection" or reflection but actually them, and he'd known some things in Inheritance Arc he could've only known if he'd been able to keep track of the Ring itself...
So as nice and dramatic as it was, he was still around, just … has conceded defeat for now and is taking some time to rest and rethink his plans.
During last cycle, he was brought here by Mukuro not long after that as a spirit inhabiting the earring, staying dormant; Mukuro, aware that stray spirits could be turned into things, decided to wake him and up and keep him involved, often shoving him into the body of the Mist Owl box-weapon. As an owl, he was walked off with by Lyhn, and due to Lyhn doing the psychological equivalent of percusssive maintenance and some CR with castmates and others, he began the long and painful process of trying to find some kind of path back towards what Elena would have wanted. This included ending up teaching Mukuro and Soubi how to handle a baby. He's still not incredibly confident in it, and his social skills are only a thing that works consistently when he's got a goal in mind (for better or for worse) - outside of that he can be abrasive, cynical, and very moody.
Personality: Spade is, even after what is essentially having a keystone of his plans fail and being forced to stop and re-evaluate things, often a very bitter and cynical man; it's likely that even in his younger days when he was less vicious and more idealistic, he was still given to a dim view of human nature and a tendency towards underhanded tactics. He's also so Scorpio it hurts, and typically very calm, in control, and focused on the surface, hard to move or shift in his ideas and moods, but underneath the calm and composure, everything internally is running at hurricane-force - and that hurricane-force is being focused and channeled very well, most of the time.
Given the time period he was living in and his powers, it's probably not a big surprise that he's picked up a dim view of human nature; he was an aristocrat and one probably intimately familiar with the pit of vipers that is politics, during a time where there was a great deal of turmoil and class conflicts. Odds are good he was good at the politics game, less so at actually honestly associating with people, and that his one sanity anchor was Elena. Ironically, some of his ideals are part of what contributed to his cynicism; he honestly does believe in trying to improve the world and fight back against the worst of humanity, but he's very much in the more Machiavellian and shaded ethics mold, and he's so bitter and cynical because he's aware of how rotten the world is when he doesn't think it should be.
Basically, he believes that there is such a thing as a better nature, but that it's impossible to actually fight the worst of humanity without learning to be a monster yourself to SOME degree, enough to challenge them on their own terms. He had a long breakdown where he was driven by some of his own panic into treating anything of "human better nature" as a weakness that would be exploited, which he is still working on deconstructing down to something more rational than what it was for most of his time in the ring.
He had a very strange and unpredictable set of standards; his main targets are the "monsters", but he's devoted himself to "strengthening" the Vongola by trying to turn them into his concept of what would defeat the "Monsters". He's currently dealing with a lot of guilt and self-loathing for what he did while he was more off the deep end, although he's still occasionally prone to anxious circles between "Do not hurt/use the weak or innocent" and "Afraid of being targeted/losing someone/getting taken advantage of for HAVING a better nature". On a good day he can be very anxious and over-worry about things and might even show some of it; on a bad day, he has it in him to be very cold, manipulative, vindictive, and downright sadistic.
(It is worth noting that as much as he's known as "the traitor", he never actually turned against the VONGOLA per se - one of his current-canon best-known acts of treachery, setting up Giotto's closest friend outside the Guardians to die in an outnumbered battle and making sure backup was never sent, was in the name of removing what he perceived as a weakness of the Family; as much as he had a grudge against Giotto that was simmering, his conscious reasoning for any bits thrown in helping drive Giotto out of power and helping Ricardo, known for being more vicious and temperamental, into power was the "improvement" and strengthening of the Family; he basically destroyed his own life even for the sake of the Vongola. Nowadays he WILL admit to himself or if pressed by the right person that yes, he was also getting petty revenge on Giotto even if he didn't want to acknowledge his own volatile emotions then.)
One of his long-term weaknesses of character is that he does have a very wide vindictive streak, and is capable of holding a grudge FOREVER. Odds are good that part of what drove him so far down the "monster" path is justifications and rationalizations of him picking up a grudge against Giotto, and blaming the Primo's pacifistic tendencies for the attack that led to Elena's death; basically, that event became a justification for "I told you so" taken to an extreme, and a demonstration, in Spade's mind, that Giotto's more conventional sense of ethics was only going to get them destroyed, and that he was right all along, to the point that he actually went …. Well, to the extreme end of the scale, using his own trauma as justification to go 120% on the "being the bigger monster" game. He regrets a huge amount of what he did then even if he did keep driving down the path out of fear of what would happen if he did anything ELSE, and is currently trying to work on relearning how to be a decent human being.
It's a very slow process.
Considering that it's said in the anime and implied in the manga that he probably helped drive Giotto's generation into retirement, if not more permanently "getting rid of them", that grudge was enough for him to turn on what had, previously, been his closest friends, and he held that grudge for a good hundred and some years just as vehemently as the day it started. He's calm, collected, and patient normally, yes, but do something that actually hits a nerve, and you have made an enemy that will ruin your life, then continue that through the generations down your descendants, for all eternity. Worse, his temper isn't explosive or visible; there is very rarely any kind of outburst of more than temporary frustration, and he'll quickly recover to be just as calm and poised as normal most of the time. As a friend put it, this isn't someone who'll blow up at you and rant to clear the air, this is someone who'll pull a Cask of Amontillado on you. Get in his path as a target, and if he gets an opening, he'll make your life Hell.
He's also incredibly methodical and manipulative; he went for a hundred and fifty years pulling strings in the shadows without anyone realizing he was still even around, and before that, spent the last chunk of time he was alive manipulating things without openly challenging his comrades even while he worked to undermine their idea of how things should work. He's prone to layered plans and being perfectly happy to set up plans that can take decades to come to fruition. Depending on your perspective, he's either adapted incredibly well to being functionally immortal, or been warped even further from "human" by it. In most cases, he's almost freakishly patient; as mentioned, unless someone manages to completely destroy his world, he's unlikely to ever show any signs of an emotional outburst more than a little bit of bitching or snark, or give a real account for his own emotions and mood, instead showing whatever reactions seem like they'd lead to the outcome he wants and taking any setback or problem as something to solve, deal with, or account for. Annoyances and irritations are similarly handled; as much as he has a great deal of pride, he'll weather blows to his dignity without any more protest than seems like it'd be a good idea at the time, although he might plot revenge and have moments of petty sadism and vindictiveness later in return for it.
People seriously trying to get his goat will probably fail! Depending on what they do and his mood at the time and how useful/amusing they are to him, his reactions could range from finding the attempt at pulling on nerves itself entertaining, to covering his irritation and making a mental note to get back at them for it later. He's very calculating, and very good at reading people and feeling out their motives, desires, and weaknesses; a lot of his interactions are likely to involve quietly taking notes on their behavior and personality, and he's very good at pushing buttons and pulling strings without being open about it. While he can, internally, be an incredibly moody bastard, he's excellent at controlling how much of that is visible, and while it will influence his actions and decisions more than he'd ever admit, he's usually very analytical and calculating.
He's an excellent actor, and very practiced; most of his actions over the last hundred and fifty years have been accomplished by body-hopping, and he's usually been good enough at mimicking whoever he's possessed that even close friends and lovers haven't caught anything off. Besides the obvious - where he's EXCELLENT at mimicking people and passing off as them, given a way to pull it off - it also feeds back into his surface control; he has to be at wit's end and things have to be going utterly wrong with added trauma-kicks for him to show an honest reaction. 99% of the time, what he's showing the world will be, to some extent, a facade; he layers his reactions and what he lets people see of him, and he has an image and persona he's carefully crafted of an affable, calm, controlled, usually (and occasionally unsettlingly) genial and pleasant predator. He doesn't allow himself outbursts or expressions of his own emotional state unless it's past breakpoint, and even then, unless things are COMPLETELY falling apart, it'll simmer with him fighting to hide it until he can get in private if he has any say in the matter.
Obviously he's very good at being very subtle, but there's an odd sort of duality to his behavior; when he's plotting or in most cases where he's avoiding drawing attention to himself, he's very subtle, even soft-spoken for all his predatory ego, and will direct attention away from himself; however, if a plan calls for it or something falls through and he has to act directly, the same skills at playing with perceptions end up merging with his ego to give him a talent for theatrics. Basically, he uses Magician Logic; he's very carefully controlling how other people perceive him, so while he'll usually be playing "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", put him on the spot and he insists on owning the stage and having enough force of personality to control the audience; as much as the theatrics are still fairly calculated to get certain reactions, and often meant for intimidation value with more control than most would guess, he … can be a very large ham. If he's going to have attention on him and leave an impression, he's going to leave an ~IMPRESSION~, and burn his image and his persona into the memory of everyone involved. Ideally, even if he loses, he'll be something remembered fearfully for ages to come.
He does have a sense of humor! It's warped, and far from being stunted, it's actually TOO healthy and well-developed. Keep in mind that he's decided that he's going to be the biggest, baddest, meanest, worst and cruelest monster there is, and in the name of the "Greater Good" he's making himself into a demon - which means that his sense of humor tends towards the vindictive and spiteful; Schadenfreude is his natural happiest state, his humor is as black as the void of space, and he can be a sadistic bastard and enjoy it a bit too much. It's hard to tell if there's still fragments of a more "human" sense of humor… or if he's just good at faking it.
He's stubborn, but not stupid; set him back far enough or have something go badly enough, and he'll pitch a fit at the time, maybe even have a bit of a breakdown if it's epically bad enough, but after he's exhausted that enough to regain control, he's more than intelligent enough to go back to the drawing board and rethink his approach. This is both a saving grace and a bit of a problem; he's capable of admitting defeat and that he fucked up, and even that he needs to adjust his tactics and maybe allow someone to exist whose methods aren't what he'd agree with if they succeed well enough … but he's basically going back to plotting and planning and hasn't really changed so much as decided that maybe he needs to adjust his tactics somewhat, or backed off to pick his fights better. Note that with Tsuna, even though he's admitted that Tsuna won and maybe the Tenth Gen is capable of keeping their strength in spite of the "weaknesses" of compassion and worry for others they've shown, he still left the dangling implied threat that if they ever failed to stand up to the threats facing the Vongola or "brought shame to the Vongola name", he'd never forgive them. This is also after being emotionally kicked in the proverbial family jewels a few times and finding out that Giotto, who he'd grown to think of as a weak fool, had out-plotted him in a couple directions, things HADN'T happened the way he'd thought they had, and getting jabs at his bond with Elena, the last thing that'd made him "human".
The sad part is that there's a strong core underneath the "Monster" that is, and has always been, human, as much as he tried ot bury it. He was initially introduced to Giotto as someone like-minded, meaning that unlike his tenth gen counterpart, there WAS a time that he had something resembling faith in at least ideals and the ability of humanity to overcome its worse nature. He'd also been incredibly fluffily attached to Elena, and very much in love, as well as having been acknowledged as having been a close friend to Giotto; before things turned bad and he broke, he was quite capable of keeping close bonds with others, and still had a sense of empathy and compassion. The fact that the pocket watch, commissioned by Giotto from the craftsman who worked on the rings as a token of their pact of friendship and trust, stayed bonded to him enough to be carried through the centuries, shows that on some level he does still value those ties; during his breakdown when he's defeated and discovered that he was outmaneuvered and out planned back when he'd been alive, one of the things that seems to hit the worst is the fear that, if Elena saw him now, she'd revile him as the monster he's turned himself into. Even while he seems to halfway accept the assurance that she would've forgiven him, it's accepted as a comforting gesture made up to show compassion, not as the truth.
He had a list of complexes keeping him justifying and rationalizing his behavior as "being a genuinely good person is dooming things to fail and others to suffer so you need to be a bigger monster to stop the monsters"; part of this was not wanting to admit he was still terrified of ending up in a position of losing people like Elena again, which turned into burning bridges. He probably has some variety of anxiety disorder and basically spent 150 years doing the equivalent of lighting the house on fire b/c then nobody could take it away. He's well aware that he's been kind of an idiot that way, but he's slowly fumbling his way through adapting to recognizing his own anxieties and trying to NOT relapse into withdrawing into his "monster" shell again.
Speaking of Elena, he does technically have the potential for a great deal of loyalty; given how far he's fallen, and the way that her death affected him, it'd be hard for anyone to actually get that kind of devotion from him again. He was deeply in love with Elena, and from the beginning Elena was what grounded him; she'd helped serve as the anchor for his conscience, and was what managed to guide him into joining the Vongola in the first place. Note that he's never actually turned against the larger Vongola family and the basic idea of their purpose! At least a decent part of this comes from it having been important to Elena, and her last words to him were for him to help keep the Vongola strong. Therein lies one of his big internal conflicts; the circumstances of her death and how hard it hit him are what drove him to such a violent backlash against the kind of idealism that'd led to Giotto dismantling their armed force and leaving them open to attack, yet he's still personally devoted to preserving the Vongola. As much as he rationalized that he was taking care of the Vongola Elena loved so much (after all, he had rationalized that Giotto's path of idealism would've just made victims of them all and destroyed the Vongola), he's well aware that she was, herself, an idealist - after all, her last words were to "protect the weak", and his resolve to actually follow those last words had the rough lifespan of a snowflake in Hell until Lyhn verbally forced his rationalizations to divide by zero. He's doing a lot of things because of her, and because of what happened to her, and for her (or in revenge for her), but he wasn't actually doing what she wanted and he knows it.
Basically, there's three big layers - the surface facade layer, with whatever he's affecting to enact his plans or, outside of specific plans, the affable and controlled predator that will shift between calm and quiet and theatrics as necessary; the Demon and Monster, that will present as the biggest boogeyman there is to properly terrify the other monsters into submission and enjoys tormenting others, which can be moody and vindictive; and, underneath those, occasionally caught in glimpses if he's gotten attached enough to someone to show it, one INCREDIBLY damaged and broken idealist with a guilt complex and self-destructive tendencies that hates what he's become.
Fears: Losing people close to him - to the extent that he's afraid of getting attached to people, even; if he does end up caring about someone, he'll end up worrying about them more, can be prone to hovering and fussing at things that might hurt them, and can get to where the object of his concern may want to strangle him. He can also end up going abrasive and being more of an asshole trying to play off and pretend that he doesn't care about them in case anything watching might consider targeting them for it.
Failure - yes he is the sort to go over things that went wrong and worry about what they could've done to NOT have them blow up, and he's often over-aware of potential consequences if something goes wrong or he and the others he's with fail whatever mission they have.
Not doing enough - He fully expects the world to go to Hell if there aren't continual efforts made to deal with everything that could make things worse.
Getting taken advantage of - He's afraid of his own ideals and the risk that trusting others, showing any kind of honor, caring about people, etc. might get used against him or others in a way that would do more harm in the long run. This is one he's still struggling with.
Elena - He's TERRIFIED of what Elena would think if she knew what he'd spent the last 150-some years doing.
Giotto - He's simultaneously still a little angry at Giotto and terrified of the realization that, now that Giotto's got his feet back under him and found his spine again, Giotto is honestly RIGHT in beating the shit out of him; he's terrified to face Giotto again until he feels like he's done enough to maybe even the balance for everything wrong he's done.
Weaknesses: Anxiety-prone: Spade worries about EVERYTHING, and when he worries, he gets agitated, moody, and more likely to be an asshole if he isn't called on his bullshit or if he doesn't catch clues that his asshattery is making things worse.
Social Issues: He's great at being manipulative and is very good with people as long as he has a goal to work towards where he can calculate out what's likely to get the responses and reactions he's aiming for. If he's being honest and NOT trying to be manipulative, he's basically a drunken water buffalo in a china shop.
Self-loathing: He still kind of hates himself for what he's been even if he's fumbling through learning to NOT be that without Elena to play guidelines. He's well aware of how disturbing it is that MUKURO was managing to take over for Elena on herding his complexes and directing him.
Does Not Do Well By Himself: Spade is the meme dog who tore the house apart because "I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONE FOREVER" when the owner was out for ten minutes. He kind of needs SOMEONE to pop him upside the head and tell him when something is a bad idea, ideally someone who has established dominance that he'll listen to and not argue with too much. In the absence of such, he kind of falls into trying to guess what Elena would want if he's thinking enough for it.
Unpredictable: He has a lot of issues and mood swings he's good at hiding, sometimes even from himself. This means that, when he starts rationalizing reactions and trying to ascribe reason to actions that're actually just him being a moody bastard, there's no telling WHAT he'll come up with if he goes too far into it.
Spider caught in own web: He can occasionally plot himself into corners if he's trying too hard to continue towards a goal where things have shifted on him or if he's trying too hard to salvage existing plans.
Trust Issues: He's a paranoid bastard prone to assuming the worst of people. Even worse, even if someone does twig his radar as being an idealist or Good Person, he'll tend to be JUST as wary as if he were dealing with someone sketchy, because he'll not trust it until he can confirm that they aren't going misguided Templar "I Know What's Right" or naive and therefore being a weak point themselves.
Authority Issues: He hates nobility; he grew up nobility and loathed his family and everything they stood for. He's also been around long enough to see plenty of variations on corrupt governments, and thus doesn't trust government either. He's well aware that pretty much any authority can be subverted, corrupt, misguided, or self-centered malicious, and therefore doesn't trust any of them without being hit over the head with good reasons for it.
Manipulative Git: Seriously, the only way he can usually function that gets along with people is if he's trying ot push buttons somewhere.
Mundane Strengths/Abilities: Intelligent/Educated: He was well-educated for his time, and in the 150 years, the body-hopping and other operations he ran required him to be a bit of a walking library of odd information and skills. He's INCREDIBLY well-read and can pass for a range of different professions competently, as well as having encyclopedic knowledge of politics, history, some literature/philosophy, assassination and stealth subjects, sabotage, and tactics.
Clever/Scheming: He's VERY good at problem solving, very detail minded, and very good at politics and working out cause-effect chains; he is his own worst enemy, really, since he only really ends up with "blind spots" when his complexes interfere with his reasoning. Outside of that, he's terrifyingly good at plotting, planning, setting up contingencies, and taking into account many different ongoing factors.
Cautious and patient: He's VERY careful, and after 150 years of scheming, very good at sitting on his impulse reactions and watching to adapt to situations.
Observant and meticulous: He is, again, detail minded, and he's been intelligence-focused for most of his existence; he's very good at both catching aspects of his environment and other people around him, and working through those to figure out what's going on. He's also a bit frightening at reading people and their behavior, again only tripped up when one of his complexes interferes with his reasoning by filling in expectations.
Agile and combat-experienced: In his own body he fought through the Italian Unification War, even if he was leaning more towards use of powers where possible; he also, in other bodies, fought through World War II, and has been a constant presence in the underworld and well aware that subtlety and use of physical force is sometimes just as effective as illusions. He's very skilled with polearms and good with firearms. He does tend less towards brute-strength, however, particularly in his own body.
Excellent Actor: He can spend years at a time passing for someone else in their own body, flit between hosts and swap illusions over himself to slip through places by blending in or replacing others, and is generally VERY good at controlling what other people see/hear of him most of the time.
Stealth: Many of his host bodies could not use powers; he's gotten very good at mundane stealth and misdirection.
Sensitivity/Magical Ability: MIST USER BULLSHIT: He's an illusionist, which is a little more complicated than it sounds. HIs power essentially forms temporary constructs that function exactly as what they look like; whatever he forms his "Mist flame" into is functionally real. It is possible for someone to attempt a battle of wills to "disbelieve" and break the effect, but he's old, experienced, powerful, and has the potential to brute-force it into "reality" anyway; this takes more power than if someone accepts its reality without a struggle. He CANNOT remove existing matter directly this way, although his illusions CAN affect other existing matter; when the illusions are dismissed, they dissipate into nothingness, but any collateral damage or injury remains.
Essentially, if he illusions a hole onto a wall, and someone tries to go through it, they will run into the wall. If he illusions a cannon and uses it to blow a hole in the wall, the cannon will vanish after he lets go of it, but the hole it put in the wall will still exist as damage to the real environment.
This can have some very somewhat cheap uses; for example, he can illusion over an injury or missing limb as "it's still there", allowing the person to function normally (although there may be risk of aggravating injury), or at least preventing death by blocking bleeding out or other negative effects until the person can get actual healing or attention.
Basically he's a cheap reality warping bastard with powers that are either ridiculously cheap or very fragile and useless depending on what he's using them for and who's around/involved.
Possession Links: By drawing blood with a weapon he's attuned to enough, he can form a link to another person. The primary use of this connection is that it allows him to pull a possession, leaving his own body empty and taking over theirs. While in another body, he can only use powers he's familiar with, and can only use what abilities the body has. (The good news is he knows leaving your body unattended here is a VERY BAD IDEA.) He can do some mental eavesdropping on whoever he has a tie to, although rooting around beyond surface thoughts and what they're paying attention to can risk being noticed. He can also, with a little effort, do influencing effects altering their behavior; this can potentially turn into brute-force control and puppeteering, or be less dramatic bits of slipping control in. He has a long history of knowing HOW to use this for Not Intended Purposes, and can just send thoughts openly to the subject/use being able to read them to communicate back and forth.
If he makes a replica of his old scythe with illusions, it does function as usable for forming a link; he might be able to use illusion blades for this otherwise, with more of a chance element/needing to roll for it.
He can short-term attempt to exert the control/influence/charm effect by eye contact; this will probably be contested rolls depending on who he uses it on and the preferences of the other player involved.
Flame of Night: A dark/void based power that, in his world, is only available to those who've died but somehow not left the world. He's aware that it's dangerous here and would get meddled with. The Flame of Night allows the user to teleport and create dimensional rifts and time-space warps; he's nowhere near as skilled as the Vindice, but he's good with it, able to do some very cheap "dimension door" tricks and dodges.
OWL: He will occasionally end up a fluffy owl as discussed with TC/Allison at night. As an owl he is a perfectly normal snow owl that happens to talk, and loses access to most of his powers.
Supply List:
Pocketwatch: A gold pocketwatch with a photo of the First Gen + Elena inside the lid, along with an inscription. It has a bit of his Flame in it, so that there's a glowing indigo wisp over the face when it's open. There's a wood ace-of-spades-emblem charm from last cycle attached to it.
Game Transfers:
Sample RP post: Spade has been in this game for a year as an owl accompanying Mukuro.
