Lucius Zuciane
atroscence
- Created
- 8 months, 26 days ago
- Creator
- atroscence
- Favorites
- 24
Profile
01 — Profile
The former head of the Containment Division, Lucius has taken on the role of the charming interviewer of the Investigation Division. He comes off as approachable and friendly, speaking with a natural gravity that almost draws people towards him. He hides his true callousness underneath a kind mask, concealing his distaste for most of his so-called "friends."
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Has mid-back length hair that's always let down, and is dyed silver midway.
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Has a tattered coat that's usually worn over his shoulders. He doesn't bother to get it fixed.
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Usually wears fingerless gloves, but can be drawn without them.
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His belt buckle is in the shape of the Investigators’ symbol.
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Important to draw with collar chain (attached to his coat instead of his shirt collar), since it marks him as part of the Investigation Division.
02 — Personality
Charismatic, charming, and polite, Lucius’s presence and voice always seem to have a natural gravity to them. When he walks into a room, people turn to look; when he speaks, people turn to listen. Rarely seen without at least a subtle smile on his face, he comes off as somebody that others can truly rely on -- a sympathetic ear, a helping hand, a person that you know will have your back no matter what it is that you’re asking him to do. Lucius carefully picks his words and constructs his appearance so that people feel like they can confide in him, confess in him, treat him as a friend and praise him for his good work. By coming off as kind, at the very least, he can trade in trust like it’s a currency: one that he controls and understands in a way that nobody else does.
Despite the facade that he puts up, Lucius is, at his core, highly apathetic to the human relationships that he puts so much effort into maintaining. To him, every ally is just one less potential enemy to deal with; every friendship is a weapon that he can bend towards his own ends when the time comes. The only reason that he enjoys being trusted is because it allows him to gather secrets from other people that he thinks will, eventually, benefit him. To Lucius, it doesn’t matter what he does in order to get what he wants. He can, in the same breath, be a friend to one person and a traitor to the next. He holds no true loyalty to anybody except for himself -- and regardless of the social, legal, or even moral standards that would bind anybody else, Lucius is willing to break them all if he thinks it’ll give him a better chance of the easy, comfortable survival that he ultimately desires more than anything else.
As a result of his own twisted nature, Lucius can be highly paranoid and fearful of the people around him, often worrying that they might be gathering information about him for the sake of stabbing him in the back, as well. The mask that he puts on is nigh-impenetrable; he picks his words carefully, ensuring that he shares as little as possible about himself while gleaning as much information, both subtle and overt, as he can about his supposed “friends.” He’s often annoyed by people and how much they demand from him, but he makes sure that he treats their worries like they’re something that he also genuinely cares about -- regardless of how trivial or brainless he thinks the concern really is. He’ll betray his own feelings, no matter how strong they are, if it means that he’ll stay on someone’s good side. Every ally is one less enemy. Every friend is a future weapon.
Underlying all this is Lucius’s genuine belief that the people in his life are, ultimately, expendable. He’s seen so many people in his life come and go, he truly thinks that the only constant in his life is himself -- and why bother forming genuine human connections if you think that whoever you’re learning to care about is going to leave you eventually, and if everyone who doesn’t is just winding up to strike back at you later down the line? Hollow and insensible, with few dreams and aspirations other than his need to survive yet another day, Lucius feels most like himself when he’s smoking a cigarette at night, completely alone. It’s one of the small pleasures that can get him through yet another day of dealing with the hundreds of people that pass like ghosts through the shadow of his life.
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Smoking.
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Mints, menthol-flavored gum.
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Various weaponry.
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Dimly lit places.
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Nosy individuals.
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Sweets and confectionery.
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Goody two-shoes people.
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Plenty of others, though he tends to hide it.
03 — Background
Past
Lucius and his twin sister, Laverne, were born to a family of espers and essence-users that expected both of them to pick up the same familiarity with essence that the rest of the family seemed to possess. While both of the children were, initially, awed by the powers that their parents demonstrated to them on a day-to-day basis, it became rapidly apparent that Lucius didn't possess the natural ability to channel essence the way that his sister did did. Nevertheless, his parents still loved and cherished him the same as they did his sister. Laverne and Lucius were incredibly close to each other as children, often playing with each other even as they entered elementary school; Lucius dreamed of one day putting on EQE of his own, learning how to use essence as naturally as he breathed in day-to-day life.
At the age of 10, however, both of their parents would unknowingly contract deadly cases of viscerosis -- due to their regular essence use, neither realized that their symptoms were more than a particularly bad case of essence poisoning until it was far too late. Lucius watched his parents ripped away from him in the blink of an eye, becoming irreversibly transformed into Vessels that neither resembled the mom and dad he once knew or even recognized their own children as their own. Orphaned in the matter of days, both Lucius and Laverne were isolated from their former friends and school, left in an orphanage with only each other to depend on -- but even that sense of siblingship would only last for so long.
The awe that he once felt when thinking about becoming an essence-user grew into a total, all-encompassing fear and hatred of what had taken his parents away from him at such a young age. Seeing Laverne, on the other hand, only seem to grow more interested in figuring out why their parents had died and how essence actually worked, led Lucius to distance himself from his own sister. To him, it didn’t matter how they had died, it just mattered that they did -- and that it was his own family’s magic that seemed to have caused it.
Their adoption by the Carier family only worsened this separation, given that Laverne chose to adopt the Cariers' last name while Lucius refused to. As Laverne grew ever-closer to their step-sibling, Cameron, and ever-farther away from her brother, Lucius became more and more alienated from the world around him even though he had a family willing to accept him. He turned inwards, believing that he truly didn’t have anybody else in the world to depend on and wanting nothing more than to protect himself from the viscerosis that seemed to be lurking around every corner. By the time the two of them entered high school, they were nothing more than cordial acquaintances; by the time they entered college, Lucius was a virtual stranger to his own sister.
Throughout his college years, Lucius would apply for various odd jobs, trying to make a living in whatever way he could -- both legally and illegally, learning how to use a variety of weaponry as he studied for his degree. He worked most regularly as a bartender, satisfying his inner desire to maintain a hidden sort of dominance over the people around him; listening to the secrets they spilled when they were drunk made him feel a strange comfort in the fact that he had more power over them than they would ever suspect. As he grew more and more distant from the people around him, the more paranoid he grew of their intentions and of the possibility of facing official repercussions for his actions. A mysterious figure would eventually convince him that the only way to protect himself would be to hide amongst his own supposed persecutors: the government of Atriven City. In hopes of learning its secrets and holding some kind of prominent social status, he would apply for the Virion Project right out of university -- eventually being accepted to the Containment Division, despite his lack of essence use, solely due to the recordbreaking scores on his weapons tests.
Virion Project
As part of the Virion Project, Lucius rapidly climbed the ranks of the Containment Division, being promoted time after time due to his outstanding performance in the field until he eventually became head of the entire Division, with Set as his co-head and Nikolai Korobeiniki working under his command. On one hand, he was driven by the need for success, wanting to demonstrate himself as capable enough within an official position to be trusted by his higher-ups; on the other-hand, he wanted to show himself as more powerful than any essence-user could ever be, regardless of how powerful viscerosis seemed to make them before their deaths.
Harboring a deep-seated hatred and resentment of these victims for using essence and "causing" their own deaths the way his parents did, Lucius was often ruthless on the job -- killing or shooting their targets the second he realized that they'd already gone past the point of no return, having lost themselves entirely as Vessels. As the members of the Containment Division died off and were replaced, Lucius gradually came to see his entire team as expendable, even if he would never express it out loud. He would send them into dangerous situations without caring for their lives; as long as the mission got done, the mission got done. At the same time, his mind was focused elsewhere: during this period, both he and Tolys Mareika of the Forensics Division would be re-approached by the mysterious figure that Lucius had first met during his college years. They'd be offered a deal that neither of them could pass up.
When the Outbreak Incident happened, a majority of his team was killed -- and all he could think about was how grateful he was that he'd made friends with all of them, making sure that they’d be willing to put themselves in harm’s way for his sake when the time was right. Lucius and Tolys would fill the suddenly-vacant slots left in the Investigation Agency -- alongside Nikolai and one of the original members of the Investigation Division, Aaron Vesre.
While Lucius observes the inner workings of the Virion Project, he’s convinced that he’s going to come out the winner of both deals: the protection that his high-ranking government position allows him, as well as the results of he, Tolys, and the shadow’s arrangement. All he has to do is mislead the Project, collect data, and wait -- patience being a virtue that he is very capable of having.
04 — Trivia
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The brooches of his collar chain serve as audio recorders. They're useful for recording clients and keeping track of conversations. This is knowledge only to him and his coworkers, though.
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Proficient with guns and never misses his shots. Although to him, anything can be a weapon.
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He's ambidextrous, so he's able to properly use both hands to handle weapons with equal skill. This makes dual wielding and writing reports much easier for him.
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Has a smoking habit, though he usually eats mints afterwards to mask the taste and smell.
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Had long hair in college, but cut it off when he started working for the Virion Project. He decided to grow it out again alongside his fellow coworker Nikolai who also had short hair at the time.
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Has high alcohol tolerance (which is probably because he's worked as a bartender in the past) but isn't immune to having a slight flush while tipsy. He can still keep his composure and his mouth shut though.
05 — Relationships
”What can you say? I didn’t think he’d still be here after all this time... and yet look at him. Still going strong, despite it all.”
Aaron might be one of the few people that Lucius tolerates -- if not one of the, like, three people that Lucius even likes. He’s fascinated by how Aaron’s managed to continue working as an Investigator despite the viscerosis that he was exposed to causing him to lose his eye and his team, all in one fell swoop; it’s a determination that Lucius rarely sees reflected in other people, a determination that he can barely even begin to comprehend feeling for himself.
He wonders what Aaron even sees in the Project that he can’t even begin to grasp -- and hopes beyond hope that Aaron will survive for long enough that Lucius can figure it out.
”He lights my cigarettes. Do I need any more reason to keep him around?”
While Lucius initially saw Nikolai as just another member of the Containment Division, Nikolai’s survival again -- and again -- and again, for years on end, led Lucius to develop an odd familiarity with his presence that he’s not quite used to feeling with the people that pass in and out of his life.
He knows that Nikolai respects him, but he can’t understand how that respect would ever translate to Nikolai’s willingness to put himself in danger for Lucius’s sake. He distrusts natural espers, let alone espers using EQE, and Nikolai’s seemingly-careless use of essence at such a grand scale puts him on edge for a reason he can’t quite understand. Could it be the fear that Nikolai would get essence poisoning as well, the same way his parents did?
”Interesting. I always feel like I’ve puzzled him out, but then he’ll go on and do or say something that keeps me on my toes.”
Both Tolys and Lucius were recruited by external forces to subvert and mislead members of the Virion Project, while collecting information about its members for some purpose that they don’t understand. Both of them have committed themselves to their double-duties, but Lucius can easily see that Tolys is doing it for an entirely different reason than he is. He finds Tolys’s obsession with fame, knowledge, simple social power... all so trivial, but he knows that these trivial things are going to be what makes Tolys so useful to him as a resource later on -- so he can’t just let go quite yet.
Even past all that, there’s just a certain constancy to their mutual acts of betrayal that... well, Lucius isn’t quite sure how to fully describe.
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