Azrael Drake

Out of Character (tell us just just a bit about you outside RP)

Name: Sub


In Character

Name: Azrael Drake
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Blood Rank: Half-Blood
House: Slytherin
School: Hogwarts
Career: Mercenary and Part-time Vendor/Shopkeeper in Knockturn Alley



Parents: Jasper and Maria Drake
Grandparents: Melchoir and Nina Drake; Aaron and Demi Zabat
Siblings: Raguel
Aunts & Uncles: Anath Hepburn (nee Drake); Amos Zabat
Nieces & Nephews: None
Cousins: Adrian and Robert Hepburn; Silas, Phineas, and Andrea Zabat
Children: Wyatt (2), Phineas "Fin" (Future)
Grandkids: None Yet



Skin color: Pale
Hair Color: Black
Hair length: Mid-back
Eye color: Brown
Size: 6’
Build: Thin
Picture:



Tattoos:
- Front, across collarbone: Memento Mori [Translation, Latin: “Remember your mortality” / “Remember you must die” / “Remember you will die”]

- Back, across shoulders: Vita brevis breviter in brevi finietur [Translation, Latin: “Life is short, and shortly it will end”]

- Left Hand: Skulls on each of the three knuckles on his pinky and ring fingers. There are 2 skulls on the first two knuckles of his middle finger.

- Right Wrist: Bloody barbed wire, with scattered “blood” droplets

- Right Bicep: Scantily-clad, female inferius/zombie pole dancer, closely surrounded by black roses

- Left Bicep: A fiery, skeletal dragon


Scars:
- Diagonal scar on face from left eyebrow, down side of nose, to mid-cheek
- Talon marks down his back, and a few across his chest



Crushes: Eowyn "Piper" Voclain
Mates/Spouse: None
Status: Involved with "Piper" Voclain



Personality: Azrael is a man who is a little paranoid – he is typically suspicious of others and plans things from the worst case scenario up. Considering where he works, what he does, and the legal trouble his profession could generate, it makes sense that this shady wizard tends to be a little on edge with new people. Most people’s first impression of him is that he is an irritable, price-gouging, unyielding bastard. Once Azrael learns you’re visiting to deal, however, his demeanor shifts to sleek charm and an illusion of flexibility in business.

Although Azrael primarily earns his living as a merchant, the skull tattoos on his knuckles are not just for show. He has a violent streak and a varied fuse length before finally exploding. Despite the violence he tends to bring, Azrael is not fond of leaving a mess behind. Aside from a proper embalming and potentially a few missing pieces of a victim’s body for resell value at his shop, Azrael tends to leave a corpse positioned not unlike how an undertaker positions a body in a casket for funeral viewings. Only for very special cases does he actually conjure a casket to place the body in. Some few have one step further taken in their “final care” by Azrael’s hands, in which a rose is left with the cadaver.

One could say Azrael has a preoccupation with death and funerary customs. It was mild as a teen and blossomed after a particularly nasty brush with his own mortality. The text tattoos across collarbone and shoulders were placed there after recovering from the near-death experience. Occasionally Azrael attempts to recreate the feeling of every fiber of his being afire with life by pursuing dangerous and potentially lethal activities.



Your Story Please? Azrael is the younger of two sons born to a halfblood father and muggle-born mother. His father, Jasper, is a funeral director. Maria, his mother, is a botanist. From an early age both Raguel and Azrael were exposed to the concepts of life and death. Raguel’s boyhood included tending the sick regardless of the life-form, or else tending to the seedlings his mother would let him plant. Azrael, on the other hand, became intensely interested in the funerary customs of his family and the culture in which they lived. This fascination spread outward to cultures of the entire world.

Both parents were proud beyond belief when their sons each made it to Hogwarts. When Raguel attended he was immediately sorted into Gryffindor. Azrael’s arrival at the school three years later was proof positive that the brothers were like night and day, for the Sorting Hat placed Azrael into Slytherin. Raguel was disheartened, realizing that they would likely become academic enemies. Whether Azrael was too young to realize the same or denied it is anyone’s guess.

Even though Azrael felt he belonged in Slytherin, he soon began to doubt their acceptance of him. Whispers soared around the Common Room that he was a freakish oddball that was fascinated by death. In his third year a few of the older students attempted to get him to play a dangerous game with them. Initially Azrael didn’t want to, but he was more or less bullied into it. To the chagrin of the older students, Azrael had a general idea about what they were doing and managed to avoid most of the harm inflicted. The older students spent the next couple of days in the hospital wing. Rumor had it that Azrael was the reason the students were hospitalized. Although untrue, Azrael didn’t bother to correct them. It was empowering to have the respect and possible fear from certain others.

In his fourth year, Azrael took notice of one particular girl sorted into Slytherin: Ariadne Grey. He had by this time established himself as one of the toughs of House Slytherin. Whenever the opportunity presented itself, he would watch her. There was something about the girl he couldn’t quite put his finger on. In due time they crossed paths and during some of those encounters they were on fairly good terms. Other times it seemed as though they were butting heads in an attempt to get the other to give in to demands.

Whereas Raguel had it all figured out that he would become a Healer after Hogwarts, Azrael didn’t have his life nearly that planned out. After Hogwarts, Azrael acquired a job with the proprietor of The Hog’s Head. In addition to tending tables and occasionally managing the bar, Azrael also assisted in a little underground black market the proprietor had going. The items were specifically enchanted with dark magic. Azrael had to learn what equipment to wear and what to package the item in in order to prevent himself or the customer from accidentally receiving the curse. To say Azrael became fascinated with what he was able to learn was an understatement.

Several years into his “career” and earning the proprietor’s trust, Azrael was finally given a task with excitement. He was sent out to acquire a wealth of very particular gemstones for the old man. It was known the trip was going to be a dangerous one. If the jungle and some treacherous mountains weren’t potentially dangerous enough, there was the creature that guarded these gemstones and the toxic fumes of the locale itself that added to the “fun”. Oh, and the gems would have to be extracted from the rock by hand – the cave’s natural magic dampens the magical abilities of others except the creature.

So Azrael left for the location with a magic carpet, the containers to collect the gems in, and a muggle excavation kit. For protection he had a wand and was given a muggle shotgun... which was knowingly powerless against the creature that guarded the cave.

The jungle was no problem – an invisibility cloak given to him by his pureblooded grandfather aided in venturing through the jungle undetected. The mountain was a little trickier. Nearly every spot he tried to step out on at its summit crumbled away in response to his weight, and re-formed once he no longer stood upon the soil. Twice he nearly fell to his death. On the third time his grip slipped on the carpet and he slid down the mountain, earning several bleeding scrapes. Azrael abandoned the idea of using the carpet for transportation. Instead he used it to carry his equipment behind him as he climbed. Once he reached the top by his own means instead of magical aid, the ground supported Azrael. Tired, bruised, and achy, the young wizard decided to pause for some rest.

To some people, finding respite in a makeshift cemetery was both not a good idea, and a bad omen...

Azrael found it fascinating, but also a little disturbing. He became highly concerned when he noticed one of the half-buried corpses resembled an inferius. The wizard treaded cautiously and quietly across the expansive, slightly swampy graveyard. The proprietor of The Hog’s Head failed to mention that little detail, Azrael noted, and was a bit put off by that realization. If the old wizard had forgotten this, what else did he forget to mention?!

After the swamp, Azrael found himself entering a wooded section of land that steeply descended downhill. This was something the old man had mentioned. The trees grew out at odd angles. One could almost walk along the trunk and then hop down to the next tree, and so on not unlike a sort of ladder. It was all fun and games until the trees stopped and soil much too rocky to support decent tree growth began. Fumes of something reached his nostrils, and Azrael realized he was close. He conjured a gas mask from a half-eaten walnut, and slipped it over his head.

With confidence he hopped down from the tree, landing loudly upon the gravel. He magicked the carpet to remain on the trees, and summoned the containers and excavation kit. A rocky terrain leading to a meadow could be seen in the distance, but it was the cave that held Azrael’s interest. It was an ominous cave, indeed, but the area appeared to be very much deserted. With one last glance to the surrounding area, Azrael attempted to summon light to his wand only to belatedly remember the place dampened one’s attempts to do magic beyond that point. He figured out how to make and light a torch the muggle way, and stepped carefully inside.

The cave’s interior made up for the ominous outside, for inside the walls glittered with stones and crystals aplenty. Azrael couldn’t help but stop to take in the breathtaking beauty. After a few moments he recalled that he needed to hurry, and thus went into the deepest recess of the cave: it was here, the old man said, that the crystals and stones would have the most power.

Turning to go down one of three possible corridors, Azrael encountered a pair of mysterious creatures. They were small – reaching no higher than Azrael’s knee – and appeared to be something of a mix between a winged dragon and a manticore. It seemed as though the creatures were simply curious: sniffing at his clothes and equipment, but not at all as aggressive as their resemblances. Azrael couldn’t help but laugh. This was the creature to be feared, guarding the cave against intruders?! The mission now seemed to be a piece of cake!

At the end of the corridor, Azrael suddenly had second thoughts about the difficulty of the mission.

The room was full of huge eggs that the pair following him must have hatched from. It didn’t take a Care of Magical Creatures professional to realize the “toddlers” following him were precisely that, and that Mom and Pop were sure to be nearby. A crackling sound unnerved Azrael. The others were hatching. He backed out of there in haste to try another corridor.

The second corridor he tried turned out to be a dead end. Perhaps the creatures were excavating a new area of the cave to make room for the newborns and had yet to finish. However, they did leave behind some gems and crystals scattered on the floor. As the wizard opened the container and stooped to collect the items, the baby creatures attacked. For tiny things they had sharp teeth and claws. It was either his life or theirs, and so he killed the two creatures. In haste he did what he could to bandage his wounds and collect the gems and crystals. Azrael didn’t want to be caught down this corridor with two dead creatures when the adults returned, and thus he took off down the remaining corridor. This was where he wanted to go.

The gems and crystals here glowed with the same energy the ones in the other corridor did. Without delay he set down his gear, opened the excavation kit, and started hacking away at the wall to extract the deposits. The hard and laborious work was only made moreso by the wounds, which he could feel tearing open further with each swing. But he had to do this... The old man told him to not come back until he had acquired a full container’s worth. Azrael had left with four of these containers – one for the old man and three for himself. Now that the youth saw precisely what he was up against if the old wizard ever sent him here again, Azrael was relieved that there was a sense of greed in his nature. Occasionally a hatchling would wander in and instinctively attack him, and he would kill it. Unfortunately he didn’t have the time to take the bodies elsewhere and he couldn’t back out now, now that he’d come all this way and was finally achieving his goal. At one point Azrael wondered if he should take one of the small creatures back with him, but decided against it. If the parents came back and spotted him with one of their young it would spell his doom for sure.

Containers as full as they were going to get without accidentally spilling the contents, Azrael gathered up his gear again and started heading for the exit when he heard a crash outside the cave. He didn’t wait for the huge shadow lumbering forth to see what it was, and instead hid with his back to the wall of the chamber, waiting for the creature venture off into one of the other areas of the expansive cave. Out of sheer dumb luck the creature did, and as quietly as possible Azrael dashed for the exit.

Unfortunately, while one parent had gone to explore the cave, the other remained outside... and Azrael ran right into it. The wizard panicked and attempted to use magic, only to be reminded again that it was of little use. A desperate struggle for his life against one soon became a battle of two against one. The shotgun he’d been given did not even frighten the creatures away from him. They very nearly tore him to shreds, but something in the forest above scared them off and back into the cave. Azrael wasn’t in much of a position to discern who, what, or why. All he knew was that who- or what-ever had intervened would likely expect a life debt... assuming Azrael would even have a life to give. There was little he could do for the claw-like gashes except bind them with what remained of his shirt and robes. Horribly wounded, profusely bleeding, and exhausted from the cumulative efforts, Azrael heaved a sigh as he glanced up at the long trek he still had yet to go.

Reaching the tree he’d left his flying carpet on, Azrael became alarmed when he found it was gone. He swore, and continued his slow climb back up the hillside. There was no safe place for him here to make camp, and Azrael was too stubborn to lie down and die. He had long since forgotten that magic would work in the woods. The wizard slowly stood and had to nearly drag himself through the forest. Once he got back to the swamp he could rest there again, Azrael thought. Then it would be straight back home from there.

Not quite.

Nearly dead on his feet, Azrael arrived at the swampy graveyard to find that it had come alive. The corpses – Inferi, Azrael realized – had woken from their daytime sleep now that the sky had turned a dark, dusky hue. They did not seem to be completely true Inferi for Azrael could hear their voices, whereas the Inferi he’d read and observed before did not speak amongst themselves. His magic carpet had been laid next to a campfire for a pair of undead to play a game of dice with earthy currencies instead of silver and gold for wagers. Too tired and injured to magic himself away, he stumbled into the undead “village”. The wizard thought for sure he’d have to fight them off, but instead they strangely welcomed him as one of their own. Then again, Azrael had adopted a pallid complexion from blood loss and moved at about the same lumbering pace.

In a daze that was almost as a dream Azrael sat, ate, and drank amongst the Inferi, listening to their tales of having tried to make the same trek he had... and obviously their spectacular deaths that ended it all. Each one recalled awakening at dusk, but could not explain how or why it happened. It was all a mystery, as magic often tended to be to even the most seasoned of sages. Beneath the haze of his wounds, Azrael was quite fascinated with the culture he’d found.

When one of the Inferi found out that Azrael had not died, everything took a turn for the worse. Azrael isn’t quite sure what happened or how it came about to be. All that is known was that there was a gigantic uproar. The last memory he has of the Inferi consists of him being tied to a tombstone with sturdy tree roots and the leading inferius preparing several daggers by dipping them in a strange substance that was reddish-purple-black in color and had the consistency of fresh tar. They stripped away most of his clothes, exposing his wounds to the air. In ritualistic fashion the inferi gathered round, some approaching to draw symbols upon his skin. When they had finished with that, the leader of the group approached with the dipped knives and a cup. A cut was made diagonally across his face that readily drew even more blood from his nearly-drained body. They collected his blood in the cup, and forced its contents down his throat. Azrael finally blacked out when the second of half a dozen knives was selected, this time used to stab from point to hilt into his flesh.

Miraculously, after an uncountable amount of hours – or days – Azrael awoke. He was wrapped in his carpet with his belongings, and bound not unlike one would bind a sleeping bag. A few other tokens in the form of carved bones had also been left with him. It was daylight, and Azrael found himself at the base of the mountain, in the jungle. The track from the summit suggested that he had rolled down the mountainside, and his head had quite clearly just missed a jagged rock. Weakly he struggled to free himself, climbed back onto the carpet with his containers and souvenirs, and managed to stay barely conscious long enough to reach the Hog’s Head. Once he felt thoroughly safe and was on the ground, Azrael passed out yet again.

When Azrael woke up a second time he found himself in St. Mungo’s. He had no recollection of how he had arrived there. According to Healers, he should have died about three days ago. He decided not to tell the Healers about the night with the Inferi on account that they might think him crazy. However, it would’ve explained the odd physiological changes that occurred in him: insanely low blood pressure (when before it was either normal or high) and difficulty for Healers to detect a pulse. Azrael’s eyes, already hooded, had sunken in even further and the skin around them was blackened. He accents and covers up this feature by wearing black eyeliner daily. Also as a result his blood is colored different: instead of a healthy red it now appears as a familiar reddish-purple-black hue... the same color as the tar-like substance the Inferi had made him swallow.

All of this had transpired when Azrael was twenty-five.

After this brush with death at a fairly young age, Azrael reduced the amount of hours working for the old man at The Hog’s Head. He also bought a flat in the magical sector of London instead of relying on the old geezer for room and board. It was shortly after recovering from his incident that he met the lovely Ariadne Grey once again, recognizing her immediately from their old school days. He certainly liked what he saw of and in her, and couldn’t help but wonder what her life was like now that they were free of academia. Did she have a boyfriend – a family – kids? After a while he finally decided to speak with her and find out. Instead of revealing much about her personal life she did express that a friend of hers needed allies for his cause, but that a token of good faith would be required. Ariadne accompanied Azrael to his brother’s house, where he slaughtered Raguel’s young wife. The wife's blood was impure, and on top of it both husband and wife had been associating with muggles and muggleborns for years. Azrael proceeded to murder Raguel in cold blood, after his brother had the chance to say goodbye to his loved one. Each of them were placed in a conjured casket, given a rose, and then sent to Jasper Drake for a proper embalming and burial without a word as to who had killed the couple or why.

Azrael tried looking for a second job, but nowhere was interesting enough and no one would hire him, especially with the new “Memento Mori” tattoo emblazoned across his clavicle. When he spotted an ad in the Daily Prophet for an old storefront in Knockturn Alley, Azrael snagged it immediately for a potential business opportunity. But now what was he going to sell?

Azrael decided he would give his employer some competition and take on an enchanter’s role, making and selling items of value to those looking to curse an adversary. Custom curse enchanting would of course cost extra. However, he would also act as a pawnbroker: buying goods from clients to resell... albeit at a much higher price in order to gain a profit. His merchandise ranges from perishable human and animal bits to nonperishable items of all kinds. The décor is decidedly morbid and death-centric – almost like walking into a funeral parlor. His shop, despite the irregular days and hours, has flourished since.



Magic Specialty Dark Arts; Curses; Enchanting
Favorite Spell: Any curse considered dangerous or potentially lethal



Weakness:
- Money
- Impatient
- Danger; adrenaline junkie
- Has difficulties with trusting people
- Preparedness occasionally comes across as pessimism.
- Women (especially if he finds them beautiful and mysterious xD)

Strengths:
+ Prepared
+ Tenacious
+ Resourceful
+ Shrewd business skills
+ Acquisition of hard-to-find items

Favorite Color: Black

Theme song: Dragula by Rob Zombie