Physical Description:
Tristan is not especially tall, as far as some vampires go, at about 5'10'' and of a medium build.

He has always possessed odd looks - all the more emphasised by his transitioning of species type in the late 19th century. Black, slightly slanted eyes with a quiet sense of humour he cannot quite lose. A strong jawline and steep cheekbones to frame his high, aquiline nose. Tristan has a frank but untalkative smile; often polite and certainly strained around the more ignorant humanoids of his acquaintance. His teeth are only really noticeable when he laughs (an easy and musical laugh).

Tristan's manner is vague and sedate, the movements of a man lost in a dream but never seems to stumble. His footsteps are silent. Sometimes, if he is floating, they are not there at all.

When he is working, Tristan's wardrobe appeals to clean lines and modernist cuts. He does not wear robes as a rule. His leisurewear is typically more colourful and bizarre, drawing from different eras or collections - very much dependant on his moods.

Personality Description:
Here is not a terribly animated or fascinating vampire: not on the exterior anyway. Tristan doesn't always say a lot but when he does he is often pointed and serious, his questions abrupt and his statements dry. Sometimes he thinks that his insides are petrifying - he has lived many years and some vampires do not make it to their second century. His increasing focus on the treatment of his kind has narrowed down Tristan's interests from those at the beginning of his non-human life. He fears this loss and will sometimes attempt to interject some inappropriate form of humour into conversation.

Not all symptoms of his humour are human-friendly, after all.

For the most part he is not difficult to get along with. You might forget he is in the room (if forgetting about vampires is something you can do) though that sometimes works to his advantage. Tristan spends his free time trying to reclaim his old interests in the arts and literature. He is a big fan of Violet Islington's contemporary efforts in wizarding society.


History:
1861 - 1888

Tristan Vaillancourt was born towards the end of the Second French Republic and the lead up to the Franco-Prussian war. His parents were a witch and wizard who both owned as well as ran a large café on the Champs-Élysées. The establishment’s ground floor was opened to public business for muggles but its first and second floor, typically “closed for private events”, was exclusively run for the patronage of magical communities. Tristan’s memories of his childhood often bypassed the political tensions of living in times of great change - for him it was mostly to do with helping his parents with errands, and hushed whispers about secret meetings in private rooms overlooking the historic city.

The War lasted hardly a year and the Vaillancourt’s café was a well-known safe house for those in the magical community who sought to avoid becoming involved in conflicts after the siege of Paris. Tristan did not have to live long in this turmoil. He was to attend Beauxbatons Academy, after all, in 1872 - just as the city’s Belle Epoque was coming into itself.

(Beauxbatons ~ Belle Epoque begins)
At school, Tristan turned out to be gifted in the arts - growing up in Paris certainly encouraged this, especially as the years that followed were some of the most fruitful for the artists and writers who had flocked to France. He specialised in those artistic subjects that most interested him while giving little thought to what he intended to do for a living.

Tristan’s summer holidays were lively and decadent. Although they hardly needed the help, his parents put him to work in the restaurant to keep him busy once they realised his tendency for staying out late. He was a beautiful young boy, subject to attention by various poets or artists of the day who enjoyed being around those with whom youth is an advantage.

As he grew older, sex and liquor and the illicit thrill of Paris nightlife began to take over. It was the Belle Epoque after all! A time for the Impressionists! Bizet was new and the Exposition Universelle was in town! Chat Noir, the first modern cabaret, had finally opened! While Tristan would go on to finish at Beauxbatons with above average achievements in his subjects, he did not have any direction in life except to enjoy it and to push the limit of pleasure. He was hungry for the interesting and the illicit.

At any rate, it had always been assumed that he would learn to run the café whenever he got around to it and eventually become its proprietor. What did it matter that he played the fool and dabbled in the arts?

He would go on to eventually become a regular contributor to the Wizarding World’s Paris Journal, a quarterly publication that discussed the goings-on and analysations of contemporary artists as well as poets and musicians. This gave him license to mingle with the great minds of the era and Tristan found himself not only in their company, but in the company of more dangerous rarities: werewolves and vampires.

Vampires in particular had caught his interest; the exclusivity of their hidden covens and the promise of long life. The wizard befriended them, insofar as any human can, but was especially well-acquainted with Calixte, a local vampire who had been travelling around the world and who returned to Paris the summer that Tristan turned 25. The pair hit it off instantly: both beings loved the arts, Romanticism, beauty. And both were eager to cast off the shade of morality in pursuit of greater experiences, great thrills.

Tristan did not know what he was asking for when he asked Calixte to turn him, not two years later. All he saw was the nearing possibility of growing old and the threat of being what everyone else in Paris was starting to be (in his view): normal. Calixte didn’t try to abate this desire and it was, indeed, something he wanted very much.

By turning Tristan into one of his own kind, they could finally be together - friends of equal standing.


1888 - 1914

Calixte invited Tristan into his coven, led by a woman vampire who owned a cabaret not far from the Champs-Élysées. News of Tristan’s turning had disappointed his parents deeply: they were ashamed to call him their son, and made a point of never acknowledging his existence to other relatives. Tristan didn’t care. He was too hungry for the world, for the unknown, he only wanted to see and be this new Thing.

His turning had not been violent though he remembers little from it. Much of his human life, thought retained, felt distant. The memories of another person with whom he sympathised only if pressed. He was keen not to forget too much (especially of the joyful memories) and began to keep journals to record them: Tristan has never been without them. They are an objective key to what remains of his humanity; sometimes treated with scorn, other times with tender bewilderment.

But the tenderness would only come later. Now, in the height of the Belle Epoque, there would be only celebration! And death, for his coven had no scruples about human life. Neither did he at the time. They preyed on the poor, uneducated and disfranchised. Those for whom the Belle was nothing more than unintelligible clamour, and whose corpses would never mean as much as that of a great Thinker or Painter.

The Archduke Fraz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in 1914. The Belle ended and the first muggle World War of his lifetime came into being.


1914 - 1918

Nothing would ever be the same again. Tristan knew this of the war. He had placed so little value on human life but this was before he had seen them march off to battle - before Paris herself had been invaded, violated, its innocents murdered for no reason a Poet’s heart could discern. His parents were killed in the bombardment of the city by German aircraft and artillery; they had been unconscious, suffocating beneath the rubble.

Those four years were the longest in his memory. A pair of Vaillancourt cousins came over towards the end of the war to continue running the café, though Tristan did not think to acquaint himself with them.


1918 - 1928

The reprieve from conflict was a chance for the vampire to help rebuild Paris. He chose to consort less and less with his coven; they had their suspicions but it was a tumultuous era and even they had their parts to play in returning the city to its former glory. As their species could never be out in the daylight, they chose instead to fun structural reparations - often by selling what old treasures or belongings they had collectively accumulated in the past century.

Life continued much in this way for years. Tristan went through an introspective period, spending long measures of time alone - reading, writing, studying. He tried to sustain himself on the blood of victims who were on the wrong side of the law, still appalled by the loss of innocent life during the war. His coven left him alone; they acknowledged that he was drifting apart from them and recognised the signs of someone who was due a bit of wanderlust.

Tristan set out for New Orleans, America in 1928. He was going to visit a ‘friend’ of the coven who lived in the bayou.


1928 - 1965

While the beginnings of a second war was gathering upon itself in Europe, the young vampire was receiving an an informal education by travelling in the United States. It was not always easy - he knew the bayous and town life of New Orleans only by moonlight; whatever charms these things held in the day, Tristan would never know. His host, who had formerly lived in Paris, was a boisterous woman with a great love for nature and her home. They became fast friends and he spent the better part of a decade attempting to learn blood magic from her - an art at which she excelled as a much older and more experienced vampire.

When he finally took to the road again, it was in search of a fortune. His travels took him to New York - stopping by various towns and estates on the way - where he would befriend a small coven that helped him to find a purpose. Although these other vampires were hospitable, Tristan never initiated himself into their fold. He wanted to remain independent, and invested what money he had in an architecture firm run by a local Squib who passed for a muggle business in the city.

Initially, it was not a profitable business, though some of the city’s most memorable buildings were built in this era. But the 1930s saw The Great Depression (the Clutch Plague) take effect across the board: its only redemption was that people were more willing to sell themselves as sources of food for those of Tristan’s kind.

During the Second World War, he invested in different sectors - mostly in factories that did construction or arms production for the military. He was an unseen benefactor and recipient of profits, often funnelling what he earned into buying up land or gold or other things that could easily be converted to a more acceptable currency in wizarding society when the time came when he might return to familiar shores.

Tristan had come a long way from the lover of arts he had been when he was a wizard. The sentimentality for life had receded over time and over the many miles travelled - his journals, those sweet human recollections, went neglected and were no longer reread. While no longer in a coven, he was close to his brethren in these times and would be especially kind to those newly turned. He saw that he could not count on wizarding society to have his best interests at heart. In Paris and New Orleans, the protection of his vampire friends - and some humans - gave Tristan a sense of complacency. In New York, the illusion shattered itself across a span of decades.

What friends he made outside of the covens, they still saw him through a lens of expectations before they saw him as an individual. And what they expected, firstly, was a monster. Nothing that preyed on human blood could be a good thing. Nothing classified as The Living Dead could be a good thing.

He left America when a British witch, in her late 40s, came to visit the city and invited him back with her for a holiday. Her name was Rory - short for Veronica - and she was an advocate for Vampire Rights. Rory saw nothing monstrous about him, not even at the start. She viewed all non-human beings with a sympathetic eye and often described them as victims. Tristan would come to grow tired of her righteous pontifications but that would only happen in years to come: at the time, she was new and refreshing. A change that he was curious to follow to the ends of the earth.


1965 - 1985

Although he had never been to London before, Tristan had no trouble in describing it as the end of the earth. The place seemed to contain every extreme. Good people masquerading as bad people, bad ones and good ones. And then anything in between. Veronica founded the Society for the Tolerance of Vampires with a group of like-minded friends, citing her “export” as their consultant on all things vampiric and using him as an example of appropriate behaviour.

It was amusing sport, until it became annoying. More and more Tristan began to feel like a token existence - a lasting novelty being affectionately utilised by a witch whose pursuit of Vampire Rights seemed more to do with her lacking direction in any other part of life. He began to realise that the society as well as his position as a non human Being were things Veronica embraced to feel better about herself. She had some redeeming qualities - he did not think for one moment that she would ever wish a bad thing upon him for being a vampire - but she suffered nonetheless from the tendency to see him as a species before she saw him as a person.

Still, Tristan stuck around the society as the years passed, though in a lesser capacity from the 70s onwards. He would drop by their candlelit office every month, unannounced and with a mild interest in whatever they happened to be publishing in their meagre newsletter. The vampire himself was more interested in academic periodicals surrounding his brethren: anthropological studies of covens across the continent as well as personal statements written by those who had lived as he had. Sometimes these articles were featured in the Society’s newsletters but they were often more casual in their writing, trying to appeal to layman sensibilities.

By the 80s he had experienced a falling out with Veronica, divorcing himself from the Society altogether. He wrote a scathing opinion piece about them in the European Journal of Vampiric Studies that went mostly unread by anyone of significance. This was also around the time that Tristan decided to visit his home town for the first time in over fifty years.


1985 - 2000

This was not the Paris of old but it was home. Tristan’s first stop in the city was with his old coven - there was much catching up to be done and he learned that his old friend who had turned him, Calixte, was no longer with them. He had gone to Germany many years ago and they suspected him to have passed in one way or another. An ominous tone surrounded this news. Tristan stopped by his parents’ old café one night. He had sat with a coffee (untouched) and watched the goings-on for two hours before leaving a hefty tip and returning to his rented abode.

There were other reasons for being in Paris. The European Journal had its Headquarters here and they were in search of an editor; he already had a solid repertoire as a contributor with them, and obtaining this position was not difficult. Although he continued to live and work in Paris for another ten to fifteen years, he found it increasingly tempting to return to his old ways: to the coven, the murders that he knew sometimes still happened. Tristan returned to the United Kingdom at the turn of the century and acquired a home on Moonstone Mews just off Diagon Alley - he still had a significant fortune left over from his days in America, supplemented by what work he had done on this side of the pond.


2000 - 2012

Tristan took on the position of the European Journal’s head editor in its (smaller) London offices. He was a quiet but conscientious writer of letters to the Daily Prophet, particularly when articles portrayed his species in a less than flattering light. His attitude towards his fellow vampires is pragmatic; he knows what crimes they are capable of committing - and what a desperate vampire might be willing to do when there is no recourse to sustainable, legal living.

Tiring or essays and academia, Tristan quit his job as editor and has been working as a Consultant Vampire for the Ministry's Beings Division since March 2011.

Describe your job duties and how you go about them:

Due to having to keep odd hours as a vampire - especially in the summer months when daylight hours are longer - Tristan often arrives at the Ministry once most employees have gone home and are having their dinner. His daily duties do not take very much time: he reads and types up responses to official inquiries that have been owled to the Beings Division pertaining to the subject of vampires. All of Tristan's responses are left for the Division Head or his assistant to read through before they are sent to their respective recipients.

He is also responsible for the division archive of vampire news, which is highly unorganised and dating back many centuries. Tristan takes his time to sort these out and sometimes fact-check articles that have asserted various misconceptions about his kind (sticky notes are left on these, drawing attention to the period context of such misconceptions). His work here overlaps with that of the Ministry's librarians, with whom the original copies of the newspapers must be kept.

Finally and foremost, Tristan acts as an official advisor to the Beings Division on technical and diplomatic knowledge regarding Vampires (covens, history, culture, etc). As he is not often in office at the same time as other employees he usually requires advanced notice so that he is able to come in later at night and stay indoors for the entirety of the following day. Alternatively, Tristan invites and and all employees who urgently need his advice to visit his home in Moonstone Mews.

Elaborate on your expertise in your field:
Tristan's personal life experience with vampiric society as well as covens is his most valuable expertise as a Consultant Vampire. However (as seen in History above) he also has extensive experience in working with a formal academic journal for Vampiric Studies, as well as having been an advisor to the Society for the Tolerance of Vampires.

Sum up your character in one paragraph: Tristan Vaillancourt is a consultant vampire at the Ministry of Magic. He comes across as erudite and yet somewhat lackadaisical, and can be very dry in conversation if he's trying to put you off. Although he makes efforts to seem approachable, there is very much a vampiric energy to Tristan that warns you of his nature. He has lived a long life and mortal problems don't quite matter to him in the same way. While he does not like to scare colleagues, he sometimes falls into lapses of silence that, unfortunately, do the very opposite. Tristan is supportive of vampire rights but he has no delusions about the nature of his species.

How did they become a creature?
Tristan was persuaded by Calixte, a French vampire whom he had come to know in his youth whilst growing up during the Belle Epoque in Paris. He found the promise of a longer life and a unique perspective to be enticing; the ultimate promise of never being normal. It was easy for Calixte to make him abandon the stark downsides of the situation - the social ostracisation, abandonment of a human life, likelihood of committing murder. Those things did not matter to him until after he was turned.

Are they registered with the Ministry of Magic?
Yes

If yes, what does registry entail?
Tristan registered with the Ministry of Magic when he came over in the 1960s with a British witch to help found the Society for the Tolerance of Vampires. He has been conscientious about informing the Ministry of his movements in the country as well as of his departure (and imminent return). At present, he received blood for consumption from Ministry-approved sources. As Tristan is now an employee of the Ministry, he is trying hard to avoid illicit forms of feeding.

Are they considered a 'Dark' Creature?
No

If yes, are they currently under pursuit by the Ministry of Magic?
No

What crimes have they committed?  Were they convicted?
Tristan has murdered many Parisians in the late 1910s and early 1920s, as part of a local coven and in order to feed. He was never convicted of these crimes. His lifestyle changed as a result of WWI. He has since only committed the crime of feeding blood from a source not approved by the Ministry, for which he also hasn't been caught.

Character History 2013 - 2017:
Time moves differently when you're over a hundred and fifty years old. Tristan is a vampire of routine and comforts, much as he likes to meddle. He has spent the last five years as a reliable consultant for the Ministry of Magic, particularly useful ever since the legalisation of consensual vampire feedings. Since 2014 he has been moonlighting as a feeder at Wolf & Lamb on new moons, although he does have his own less-than-legal favourites.

Tristan continues to be on good terms with the Camden Town Hookers and its coven leader, Terry Hooker. They are still playing the same game of wizarding chess. He often leaks inside information to Hooker if he feels it may benefit the coven.

Although he is not particularly given to relationships, Tristan has had the odd fling over the years. He sometimes wishes for more lasting company. Not being part of a coven himself, Tristan has lately been thinking about finding a life partner among his fellow vampires. In more desperate moods, he has even considered the possibility of turning a mortal for that very purpose.

For now, Tristan plays a safe game.