Name: Averill Hadley Penn
Role: Forensic Inspector turned in 1924
Age: 182
Year Turned: 1924
Gender/Pronouns: Cis man, he/him
Sexuality: Bi
Appearance: Averill, who often goes by Av with his friends (precious few of them), was turned at 24, having been born in 1900. He stands at 5'11", with a slim, rectangular form. He isn't bulky, but is still pretty strong (you have to be, to move bodies). He also has a pretty fast metabolism (or well, used to), which contributed to not having to work out too much to keep in shape. He is white, with pale skin that only got paler when he was turned. The freckles he had prior to being turned are long gone, leaving only pale white skin in their wake. He has a sharp jawline and cheekbones, with slightly hooded green eyes that have darkened faintly as he has aged, ringed by thick dark lashes. His lips are slightly downturned, though not too much. He has a button nose, and dark eyebrows that tend to be drawn together in a near permanent look of contemplation, as if he is always studying everyone and everything around him. His hair is a warm brown tone, with faint waves in it. His parting naturally sits to the left, and he often keeps it combed, though there isn't much he can do about the waviness. His bite scar is on the bottom of his throat, near his shoulder, just low enough that he can usually cover it with his shirt collars, so long as he wears button-ups. It is still rather dark, when visible. He often wears white button-ups and dark slacks, and almost always looks rather formal. There are various old scars on his body, especially his torso and forearms.
Personality: Av has a tendency to be thoughtful and precise, but still quick when necessary. He likes to study things and get all the details before rushing to conclusions about what has happened or what someone is like, which leads to him generally being a rather nonjudgemental person. He's seen almost everything, at this point (or so he believes), and there isn't much out there that can phase him. Living through and fighting in both world wars has also jaded him, to the point that he can be slightly pessimistic sometimes, especially about human nature. He doesn't consciously choose to believe the worst of people, but often the worst is what he will assume about someone (if that makes sense). So while yes, he likes to have all the details before rushing to conclusions, he also isn't inclined to believe the best of someone. He doesn't smile often, as while he is not nearly as old as Narciso, he has seen a lot of horrors in his life.
Background: (this is so much longer than I meant it to be lmao I'm so sorry) Av was the second oldest of six children, in England. Until 1914, his childhood was perfectly normal for the time period. He attended school and helped in his father's shop, and occasionally watched over his younger siblings. When World War 1 started in 1914, his older brother, Emmett, was called off to war. Emmett was killed only a few months later, and the family received his dog tags rather than a body. He did his best to help his parents (his father was not eligible for service, due to a bum leg) and his siblings, while dreading his own drafting, which happened as soon as he turned 16, in 1916. He was shipped off overseas, and somehow managed to survive through the last two years of the war. When he returned home, he had shell shock (what we now diagnose as PTSD), and was only 18 years old. He moved to London, and signed up with the police, where he was trained as a forensic inspector. During the war, he had assisted with similar things, so they used that experience. Soon, he was one of the better inspectors in the force, following each lead with a quiet, methodical determination. While he had once been a happy, smiling child, after the war he was now a young man that rarely cracked a laugh or a smile. He had seen too many other young men and boys die on a muddy battlefield, and now his job was seeing even more bodies. During this time period between the age of 19 and 23, however, he had a romance with one of the other young men on the force. It ended only a few months before he was bitten.
He was bitten at 24 by a body that, it turned out, was not really a body, but instead a vampire that had thought it could escape notice by pretending to be one. When Av got too close and began to touch it and shift it in order to investigate what he thought was a murder scene, it struck, biting him in the throat before quickly making their escape. Av vanished for a few years after that, lost and afraid as he tried to navigate being a vampire and everything that that entailed. He went across the channel, to France and around Europe, trying to learn more about what he was and what had happened. Once he had learned more, he came back to England and reapplied at the force. They grilled him about his absence, which he managed to explain away as a family emergency that turned into an extended trip. They accepted him back on the force, and his new vampire-ish abilities were very helpful, in his line of work. However, he soon realized that the fact that he was not aging was going to be a problem, as the other men around his age began to gain weight and wrinkles. It was subtle, at first, their differences. Subtle enough that he was the first to notice that while everyone else, approaching thirty, was beginning to show the signs of the approach of age, he was not. He still looked young and fresh and always would. So he moved to a new precinct, a new city in England, where no one would know him. His parents had died while he was in Europe, and his siblings only had infrequent contact, so it became easy to move on every few years, jumping from precinct to precinct. They never caught on, as they didn't have great interconnection between precincts at the time.
When World War 2 came around, he joined up, silently furious that the world powers had allowed this to happen a second time. He still bore shrapnel scars from the first war, but he signed up for the second anyway, in the hopes that he could spare some family the pain of losing a son, as his parents had. The official paperwork was the first problem, as according to the government, he was 39 nearing 40, but physically, he was still 24. Somehow he was able ot dodge that, and went overseas to France to fight. He fought for most of the war, bitter and jaded and cynical beyond his years, talking more with the "old timers" of the first war than with the "other young men". All he saw when he looked at them was himself and Emmett, thrown headfirst into a dangerous, dangerous war that they were hopelessly in over their heads in. So he often took more risks than he should have, trying to shield those young men from dying. He did not see it as a loss if he died. He was a vampire. He was already dead, was he not? For his bravery, he was awarded Victoria's cross, twice, and essentially forced to retire a year before the war ended. They didn't want him dying, not now that he had become a national hero.
Of course, no good thing ever lasts, and the limelight soon began to show his more unnatural abilities. Namely, his inability to age. At first, it seemed "fitting", that the handsome young man should stay handsome. Then, it became less and less "good aging" and more and more "unnatural". Soon, he was more reviled than admired, with old ladies clutching their purses and murmuring that he was a spawn of Satan, that he was the antichrist, that he had hoodwinked the queen and the nation. So he disappeared from the limelight, fleeing to Northern Ireland to a small little town in need of an inspector. He lived there for a few years, before his lack of aging forced him to move again. For quite a few years, he bounced from town to town, never anywhere larger, until his story had faded enough that he could go to larger precincts again. It was at some point in the 80's or 90's that his secret leaked out. This happened when the precincts began to sync old information, and his description and photograph began to pop up in impossibly old photos. Some smart detectives rubbed their heads together and, with the knowledge of vampires now something more known, they knew. They confronted him, and he admitted to it. What else could he do? He fully expected to be kicked off the force, perhaps even exiled. But instead, he was kept on the force, and referred to as the "senior inspector". It is a position that he quite enjoyed. New York had a rather large and problematic case, back in the 2010's, that completely stumped them. They reached out to Scotland Yard and requested "the vampire inspector", as Av had become rather well known in criminal inspection circles. Scotland Yard said Av could go if he wanted. As he had never been to America, in his 110 years of living, he accepted, and when New York offered a permanent position, he accepted, and has been there ever since. He has not, however, lost his English accent.
Other: Wears his brother's dog tags, along with his own, underneath his clothing
