Your character bio's

okay, been putting this off and putting this off - but really need to do it before Alcon:

Horatio Quicksilver

Quicksilver was born to Money, but never felt at home there. The second son of a Military Man, a veteran of the First Aether War, Quicksilver was expected to join the military like his father, to server oversees and win great honor, while his older brother was raised to inherit his fathers' business holdings - a shipping yard and factory just outside of Manchester, while his younger brother was to go to join the Priesthood, and his dear Sister was to be sold off for political and monetary gain - a wedding of convenience to a man twice her age and four times her weight.

Quicksilver, with the pure faith in a Father Figure that only comes with youth, thought that this was all as it were supposed to be, and followed along eagerly. At the age of thirteen he was enrolled in one of the finest Navy schools in the country, and by Twenty, he was the first officer aboard the Diligence Of The Sword, a Naval frigate serving in Africa during the height of the British occupancy of the land. Needless to say, during his time there, Quicksilver experienced and saw sights that amazed and appalled him - sometimes in equal measure. However, he only saw one thing that truly and utterly destroyed his previously unshakable view of the world.

During land maneuvers in what had been Ethiopia, he and his crew were ambushed by...something that could no longer be called human. It shambled out of a ravine, under the cover of trees, and was on top of the six men before they knew what to expect. It was both slow and ponderous, the flesh of what had once been a man hanging rotted and bloody from its yellow bones. Its eyes were pecked out holes, and its teeth were blackened stumps that seeps a dark, oily substance, which ran down its putrefying skin in rivulets. Needless to say, it stank of death.

In a panic, Hawkins drove his sabre up to the hilt into the belly of the thing, spilling gore and ropes of infested intestine to the ground. The thing walked up the blade, apparently without feeling, and bit Hawkins in the neck, clamped down on his and began to savage him like a rabid animal. Not the first to find his sidearm, but luckily the most accurate, Quicksilver put a bullet between its eyes and blew the back of its skull away with a single round.

Whatever it had been, it fell like limp flesh, and didn't rise, even though a dozen pistol rounds had joined the saber blade, and they had had as little effect. Somehow, Hawkins was still alive, bleeding out, but still alive. The men did their best to seal the wounds, and hauled him between them back toward the ship. He never made it.

Over several hours, his condition worsened, and he grew more and more distant. By evening, he had begun to cough up blood and black bile. finally, the blood stopped - along with his heart. Ten minutes later, Hawkins got to his feet, and tried to attack Quicksilver. He was forced to shoot his own man in the head, and bury him in a shallow grave.

The experience changed him, but not in the way many would have thought. He began searching out what had caused the infection, delving into local folklore and shamanic texts. from there he dove headlong into occult research wherever he could. when he was promoted to captain at the age of 26, upon the previous captains retirement, he used the resources of the ship to hunt down any rumor that fell into line with the myths and legends he had found. he discovered spells and rituals that the secretive shamans of the tribes had kept hidden for millennium from outsiders and the White Man - regrettably sometimes by force. With experimentation, all done in clandestine meetings with only the most trusted members of his crew, Quicksilver even tried some of these rituals - often on himself. He extended his lifespan and his memory, though neither noticeably, as his skill was lacking, and he had yet to discover his true potential.

With his mind opened, Quicksilver eventually found the confines of the Navy suffocating. He left after his tour of duty had finished, and returned to Europe, where he not only sought out more tomes and legends, but also books on sciences - Aether science and engineering especially. he recruited men and women of similar interests or curses to his cause, and began to explore the hidden world in every way he could. he drained his personal savings, and soon began to dip deeply into the family holdings. It took some time, but his Brothers eventually caught up to him. They tried to reason with the half mad man they found, but when Quicksilver tried to justify himself, his Older brother Peregrine called it madness. His Younger brother Segwick called it heresy. They tried to have him arrested. they tried to have him committed Quicksilver went into a rage so deep that he blacked out. When he came to, his hands were stained with the blood of his brothers, and his body was scrawled with designs that warped and twisted the magiks he had learned.

He was appalled, sickened at what he had done - what he was capable of, and what he had done to himself. The souls and energy of his own kin were bound now to his own, empowering him like never before, but his Aetheric self had become twisted - black and shriveled. he had become something evil.

Quicksilver repented then and there - he knew he was damned, but he vowed to spend the rest of his days destroying and burying those secrets that he had discovered. his first targets were the Cabal of sorcerers that he had created, and had led for more than twenty years. having extended his lifespan to a greater and greater degree, though Quicksilver was by now a middle aged man, he looked barely past twenty five.

Now, it is 1984, and London is a place of grand and shining technology. Aether science has made global travel and communication easy and cheap. the rich live in luxury, sitting upon the backs of the teeming masses of the Poor. The shining jewel of a tarnished empire. Yet, in the shadows, the rot of the uncanny and the supernatural lurk - some good, some evil, most drawn to the city for their own purposes, that go beyond the whims of man.

Quicksilver walks a fine line here. A rich man with two lifetimes of knowledge and collected wealth written off as family investments, Quicksilver leads a second life in the shadows, using his technology and the skills of his long obsession to seek out and destroy any that would think to become the same as him. Leading a rag-tag band of men and women that he has saved or recruited along the way, Quicksilver hunts nightly to try and buy back his soul, and save himself from the damned afterlife he knows he deserves.