Stephen Malone

Stephen Malone was born in Clarence, capitol of The Golden Simatar. His parents were both lawyers in one of the country’s best law firms. Instead of going into law like his parents had wanted, when he graduated high school a year early at seventeen, he immediately joined ROTC in hopes of being in Special Forces.

He served as an officer in the 17th Airborne Division until he managed to be accepted into the Rangers at twenty-three, where he served as an auxiliary medic as well as squad leader until he retired at twenty-six as a sergeant. His last mission was to capture drug lord/terrorist Pablo Mendez in his compound up in the Barishu Mountains. Its code name was Cherry Blossom.

The mission started out well, but ended in disaster as Stephen’s company was attacked by Mendez’s forces that was comprised mostly of former soldiers from various countries and had several armored cars with them. The Rangers hid out in a riverbed and the battle continued for much of the day. During the battle Stephen fired his grenade launcher into a grove of trees thinking there was an enemy soldier there. He received a call for aid from his childhood friend Michael Kamphaus. Stephen realized it was from the grove of trees and when he got there he realized it was his friend who he had seen in the trees and not an enemy soldier.

Stephen failed to save his friend and was captured before he could get to safety. He was brought down into the bowels of Mendez’s compound where he was bound to a chair with barbed wire and tortured for several hours. As the battle continued, a former Spetsnaz operator walked into the room where Stephen was near death. He injected Stephen with a virus that had been engineered to lay dormant in his body for several years before coming to life and begin work killing him. But then the battle began to turn as Apache helicopters blew a corridor through Mendez’s men. Once news reached the dungeon, the Russian placed his pistol to Stephen’s head but at the last minute a Ranger came in and saved Stephen’s life.

When they had finally managed to get the wire out of Stephen and evacuated him to an M*A*S*H unit, they were able to keep him alive and were able to bind some of the wounds inflicted by various instruments. It took several months for Stephen to fully recover, but his body is still covered with scars from his experience. Despite healing, he was mentally scared and began drinking and attempted suicide once before leaving the military just a few weeks before he was going to be dismissed due to mental problems.

Under pressure from his wife Emma and psychiatrist he decided to travel for a month or two to get some fresh air. He was driving through the country of Tarlachia his car broke down and he was stranded in the capital city of Clarence. One his first night he found a body of a young woman completely pale with no noticeable bruises or marks from a weapon. Confused, he went back to his room and consulted several forensic websites but found nothing on the strange death.

The next night he was walking through the park when he stumbled upon several men and women hunched over the body of a young woman, blood on their lips. Terrified, Stephen turned and ran but crashed into a light pole and fell to the ground. The group came upon him but did nothing but warn him to leave.

Later he was met by a man named Daniel Able from the nation of Valient. Able brought him to a pub to talk to him about what had happened as he had spied Stephen being chased. It was then the group who had attacked Stephen crashed into the pub and barely a minute later several men came in and helped dispose the group. Stephen Malone became the first Simatarian to have an encounter with vampires. Not willing to believe, it took the hunters to disfigure a vampiress in front of him to prove vampires did exist.

As vampires did not exist in the Golden Simatar at the time and knowledge of their existence was not known, Stephen found himself lost in this newly discovered world. It was also he found himself in the middle of a vampire revolution led by a vampire named Maximus. The pair had started off as enemies; Maximus had ever captured Stephen and nearly killed him before the coup began.

During the battle, Stephen was bitten by a vampiress in the arm. He didn’t know it would have far reaching effects for him. As the fight turned sour for the humans he called his wife Emma for aid as she was the daughter of General Alexander Thomas, who was the Army head on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Only problem was that when he called he heard another man’s voice with her. It turned out she had been cheating on him for most of their marriage and his daughter Jessica was not his. Furious, Stephen hung up and got drunk before trying to escape Tarlachia.

But, Stephen was captured and brought before Maximus and Skadi but instead of being a celebratory dinner for them; Maximus interrogated Stephen and the pair slowly felt each other out. By the end of the evening, the pair had reached a sort of friendship that grew stronger as the years went on.

He returned to the Golden Simatar a week after the revolt and got involved with a messy divorce with Emma that left him only a few things and several thousand dollars. After the divorce he joined a successful campaign by his former Ranger Company to block production of a film adaptation of Operation Cherry Blossom and they were able to get a law passed stating that the film company needed signatures by all who participated in the battle before they could start production. With this finished, Stephen decided to return to Tarlachia as he felt he got too much tabloid coverage in the Golden Simatar.

He bought an apartment in Tarlachia and started work in construction. But, when he hit fifty, he finally took note and agreed with his friends something was very off. He still looked twenty-nine. A visit to the doctor’s office confirmed there was an unknown substance in his body and its effects were unknown.

For a thousand years after the vampire revolution in Tarlachia, Stephen lived in Turath and moved from construction to computer work after he turned seventy. During that time, he made many friends who were vampires and even dated a vampiress for several decades. When he hit five hundred, Stephen went back to the Golden Simatar, still stunned by its obliviousness to the other side of the world that was now completely normal to him. He bought an apartment but didn’t spend a lot of time there and he returned to Tarlachia.

He was not till his late nine hundreds did he finally begin to question his abnormal lifespan as he was still completely human. One day, Stephen sunburned on a fairly cloudy day but he thought nothing of it. Though, as the years went on, he began to burn more easily in the sunlight, he also began to hear people’s thoughts and he started to throw up his food.

Puzzled, he went to the doctor’s again and after several more advanced blood tests, it was found the reason behind his life. The vampiress who had bit him, her saliva had gotten into the wound and into the bloodstream, where it traveled and found the virus that had been injected into him years before beginning to wake up. The vampire DNA took the virus over and twisted it into a vampiric virus. But, before it could turn him, Maximus had given him a drink that would stop his change. So, it had lay dormant but not after already altering his body to destroy his aging, leaving him immortal. It had now only begun to resurface and begin its original objective.

As Stephen began the slow, painful change he started staying more indoors during the day, eating rare meat and he noticed his wounds were healing faster. Deciding for a break, Stephen returned to the Golden Simatar knowing its oblivious record would serve him after he turned.

Several nights later Sigrun Greenwood, the elf reincarnation of Maximus, appeared with Skadi in the Golden Simatar looking for Stephen and the pair found him shortly before he turned. He spent his first year as a vampire with them, learning everything he could about his new existence from them.

During the year, he learned that because his turning had taken so long, he was far more powerful than any vampire his age should be. His strength at ‘birth’ was already that of a 500 year old vampire and as he aged, so his strength grew and he became more of a threat to any vampires even a hundred or two or even three hundred years old. Stephen would come to appreciate the strangeness of his change later on.

A year after his turning, the trio was in Emerald City, Assington just as one of the heads of Valient’s Hyraphore Coven Alexander Kelsing began to wage war in Emerald City to gain control of the vampires there by primarily using a pack of lycanthropes…werewolves. The Third Assington Vampire War had begun.

Stephen stayed and fought besides Sigrun, Skadi, and Skadi’s fledgling Hondur and his coven during the battle. During which he gained a reputation amongst Hondur’s coven as the man who took a thousand years to become a vampire and to some surprise by others that Skadi had in some ways taken him under her wing.

One of his accomplishments during the battle was the demolition of Emerald City’s new mall to cover the escape of his friends; the mall only had a few more days of construction left before the stores could move in. Skadi had been brought to death’s doorstep after Hondur’s former human partner Garm filled her with silver nitrate. Shortly after Stephen returned to the coven, Hondur took him with him and within the hour the President of Assington and the Defense Minister were both dead at their hands.

After the war, Stephen returned home. Knowing he had to keep his existence secret, he only half drained his human victims, something he still does. He lived peacefully for several years before getting word from Sigrun, who had now become King of Tarlachia that there was a human named Todd Harte who had learned about vampires at a conference in Akaton. Intrigued, Stephen met Todd and the pair quickly formed a strong friendship and Stephen helped the human develop a paper about vampirism and the possibility of its existence. When it was publish, Stephen lost hope that his country would learn of his kind. Then again, he made him happy as he could do anything he wanted.

His biggest shock came when Todd showed him a dragon he had bought in Tarlachia, a horse sized, pearl white Ice Dragon Todd had named Cassandra. After Todd passed away, Stephen visited the dragon and kept her company during the long nights.

Just over two centuries after the Third Assington War, Skadi awoke and Stephen returned to Assington to see her. Shortly after his arrival, the two other living Assington Ancients, Svartel and Idun returned, Idun in company of Elves. The VP was also headed by a cold-blooded Russian named Ivan Kolstov.

On his second night in Assington, Stephen encountered Lady Viannor of Starblaydia. After witnessing her hold of a gang of vampires, she was very weak and Stephen, impressed by her combat kill sired her. She would serve by his side till the end of the battle when she returned home to Starblaydia.

Several years later, Stephen encountered the Golden Simatar’s only other immortal, Roman Cyrus Celadrin, a shape shifter. Despite Stephen’s human personality, Roman thought him a threat and managed to beat Stephen in battle and captured him. Doing the insane, Roman turned him into the government. President Becky Kimble, unsure whither it was a hoax or not sent the body to a military research station GN-475. There, with the scientists mocking Roman, he pressed a silver pen into Stephen’s side, reawaking the vampire. And much to the shock of the Simatarians, vampires proved to be very real.

He was put in a containment cell and interviews began between him and Nicole Patterson, the assistant to GN-475’s head Doctor Arthur Hauk. With the hidden microphone and camera turned of to Stephen’s request, Nicole became only the second Simatarian to talk to Stephen about his vampirism. During the next few weeks, the pair became attracted to each other. After Nicole’s police officer brother was killed by bank robbers, their bond became closer as Stephen had been able to mentally unlock the doors to his cell and comfort her.

Everything went to hell after Kimble showed Stephen was alive and as a vampire in a closed session of Congress. A bug had managed to slip past security and a young journalist quickly sold the story and tapes to various papers and networks. There was an instant firestorm where a para-military organization tried to overthrow the government, but was violently put down by the military.

The night of the battle, the survivors managed to get to GN-475 after stealing the tapes with the objective to kill Stephen and hopefully be proclaimed heroes by the Simatarian people. Before they could get to him, Stephen escaped and saved Nicole’s life and then the rest of the men and women at GN-475 spare for two men who had been executed. Because of this and for the safety of everyone, Kimble released Stephen.

Deciding to flee to Tarlachia, Stephen left with Nicole, they were now in love with each other. Heading to Todd Harte’s old vineyard which his family still owned along with Cassandra, Stephen and Nicole were given the dragon as if news of Todd’s knowledge of Stephen they would get swept up in everything and Cassandra could be taken away from them.

Stephen’s friend Sigrun granted them refugee in Tarlachia and the night after they arrived, Nicole asked Stephen to sire her and he did.

A few years later, a gang of Assington vampires slipped into the Golden Simatar and attacked a small town. Cassandra had been in the area and had been attacked by the vampires. She got word to Stephen and Nicole and the pair made their way to the small town of Auburn in the mountains just as the new Vampire Investigation Bureau Emergency Response Team arrived to deal with the vampires. Unfortunately, the VIB ERT was wiped out on their attack and Stephen called his friend Hondur to help him.

During the day, a company of Army soldiers were moved into the town and the civilians were evacuated. The next night, Stephen, Hondur and Nicole slipped down to the factory where the vampires were and tried to get them to leave. The head of the gang attempted to talk her way out of the situation before the humans attacked. The battle ended very quickly, with all of the vampires dead but also half of the humans as casualties. Roman meanwhile had appeared and taken Hondur prisoner.

Stephen returned to Clarence and spent the next few days talking to Kimble to get Hondur released. Needing Roman’s signature, Stephen contacted his friend and fellow Celadrin clan member Raphael ‘Zero’ Celadrin to convince Roman to release Hondur. Zero arrived and after some ‘lumber jack’ persuasion, Roman agreed and Hondur was released the following night.

After the incident, the vampires departed the Golden Simatar but only twenty years passed before Stephen was approached by the Simatarian government. He and Nicole could live peacefully in TGS under cover in barn houses on a horse farm ran by the VIB if they help train VIB trainees and act as consultants. Their existence only to be known to the President, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and heads of the VIB and IBI. Roman agreed to bury the hatchet with Stephen and would work as his go between.

A few weeks after moving in, Cassandra gave birth to a litter of pups and the vampires took in the runt as their house pet and Nicole named it Tolkien. They also invited their close friends over for a welcoming party. Everything went perfectly until the second night when a vampire attempted to kill Hondur and missed, striking Nicole. Using his elf magic Sigrun saved Nicole’s life, but no one was able to stop Stephen from making the attacker into nothing more than a pile of moaning and moving muscle and bone.

But he did learn it was a strong group of some four hundred vampires from Assington, many of whom had served with Svartel. They had come to the Golden Simatar hoping to destroy Stephen, knowing Hondur, Skadi, Sigrun, and Zero were too high profile and dangerous to go after.

Stephen’s friends stayed and fought in the two night Battle of Clarence. For the immortals, the battle was different than what they had experienced before in Emerald City as it wasn’t just police they were fighting but crack Army Armored and Infantry divisions with attack helicopters and gunships in support. The battle ended with the destruction of most of the vampires and within ten years all of the vampires would be killed. But the battle had also cost several thousand human lives and Roman was killed by the vampire elder. After the battle, despite being immortal Stephen and Nicole married.

Barely a month later after their friends had slowly drifted home, Stephen received a tip of strange maulings in the city of Karnotz. Taking Cassandra, who left the care of her pups in the hands of her mate Darius, flew to Karnotz and to his surprise the attacker was a lycanthrope. To even more surprise, the lycan was a young eighteen year old girl named Amara Waggner. Bitten in Assington two months before while studying overseas, the aspiring actress became a werewolf. Her creator, a man named Marcus who was also bitten as a teen followed her home and killed her family and friends.

Stephen and Nicole took Amara in and the young lycan became the daughter they could never have and now calls them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.

Currently, Stephen and Nicole live with their lycan daughter outside of the capital city of Clarence.