A CREATURE THAT IS SUPPOSED TO SHRINK INTO THE SHADOWS, FLAUNTING ITSELF IN THE BRIGHT LIGHTS!

Henry Sturges was born in England to a ferryman and a seamstress. He learned the ferry trade from his father and studied as a blacksmith's apprentice. It was through this apprenticeship that he met the love of his life, Edeva. They were wed and set off to the new world to start their lives. He and Edeva landed at Roanoke on July 27th, 1587. There they both met their mortal ends. The colony's doctor, Thomas Crowley, slaughtered everyone and forged for Henry a new existence.In the centuries following, Henry was a friend to the American Revolution, present at the Battles of Trenton and Yorktown, a staunch supporter of the North in its hour of need, an adviser to presidents, a decorated soldier who distinguished himself in the trenches of the Great War, and a member of the Union Brotherhood—a collective of vampires dedicated to preserving the freedom of man and his dominion over the earth.At the tail-end of prohibition, Henry began a new apprenticeship under Howard Stark Sr., who he'd met through some old friends of his. From the man, Henry eagerly learned the ins and outs of mechanical engineering. If the industrial revolution or his friendship with Tesla had taught him anything, it was that technology was the future and nothing kills a vampire like becoming stuck in the past.After Howard Stark Sr.’s wife and child died during the birth, he began treating Henry Sturges more and more like a son. Initially, this made Henry uncomfortable, because it meant a serious, messy attachment, and that was not something he could afford to have being what he was. However, Howard Stark Sr. simply wouldn't take no for an answer and Henry had grown so fond of him that he couldn't bring himself to deny him.And so Henry Sturges begrudgingly took on the alias of Howard Anthony Walter Stark, and Howard Sr. always introduced him as his son from that day forward. Together, they founded Stark Industries. Henry went on to become involved as a consultant with the SSR as WWII broke out. The fame Stark Industries had gained proved to be advantageous for him as it meant that Henry could continue being spurred on by the same purpose of protecting humanity from the others of his kind. At the behest of the SSR, he was able to create inventions that levelled the playing field against vampiric interferences throughout WWII.All of this led to Henry Sturges breaking two of his most coveted rules: never form complicated human attachments and never let yourself be in the spotlight. It felt like a necessary rebellion against his own good sense. It completed a sort of pattern of his in a way and it restored his feelings of purpose as they were being to wane. The larger-than-life persona allowed Henry to experience the world in decadent ways that'd he'd never would have done otherwise. He let himself get lost in the role, full committed to the bit.As the years continued, he traded out one secret organization for yet another, this time co-founding S.H.I.E.L.D. with his trusted friend, Peggy Carter. It was through his connections with this organization that he was able to develop a strategy for extracting Howard Stark from the public's eye once the time was right.Henry went on, as Howard, to marry Maria Collins Carbonell, the only woman he had ever loved since his first wife. She was privy to his condition prior to their wedding, but somehow managed to love him despite it. She desperately wanted a child and he'd been heartsick over the idea of being a father ever since his first wife and their unborn child had been murdered at Roanoke. Recklessly, he'd reached out to fellow vampire, Dr. Jonathan Reid. Dr. Reid had been studying the genetic makeup of their condition since 1918 in search of a cure. While the doctor was nowhere near that breakthrough, isolating their condition so that it wasn’t passed on was well within his skillset. Although the conception was more scientific than it was romantic, Henry and Maria were able to conceive an heir who wouldn’t be cursed with his father's condition.When he could no longer safely remain in the public due to his lack of aging, S.H.I.E.L.D. hired an actor to take his place. The man underwent one plastic surgery procedure after another until he was the spitting image of Henry. Then the actor took the man’s place. This way the public would see him age as the years passed, but Henry himself could continue running Stark Industries behind the scenes and play some small, secretive role in his family's lives.This is the reason Anthony grew up with such a cold and calculating father. The man hired to play Howard never formed any sort of real emotional connection to Henry’s family. If anything, the years made him bitter and angry that he’d agreed to the whole thing. The daily stress of the ordeal caused things to sour between Henry and Maria.Finally, on the Ides of March, because Henry's love of Shakespeare is unmatched and Howard Stark was nothing if not a theatrical role for him, Howard and Maria allegedly died in a plane accident. The hired man was killed, because S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t take chances and he knew too much to let loose. But his Maria was spared. Henry had intended to take her to Italy with him so that they could live out the rest of her life together. However, she couldn’t forgive him for being so absent over the years and for ripping her from her son.Henry spent the next several decades acting as a consultant/agent for S.H.I.E.L.D., mostly to keep an eye on it and give himself something to hold onto. When S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, so did his remaining attachment to it. He disentangled himself from it cleaning. When its files were leaked, his had been so heavily edited that his secrets remained intact.In the years following, Henry has tried to remain out of any world-saving business. He's tired and it's complicated.

WHAT PREVAILS IN THE END, I WONDER, THE DESIRE FOR BLOOD OR TO BE OF SERVICE TO MAN?

Born in London, Jonathan, along with his sister Mary, were raised in the West End. All was well until their father disappeared, for unknown reasons, when Jonathan was starting his pursuit of becoming a doctor, leaving the rest of the family distraught for a time. Before enlisting to part-take in the Great War, Jonathan Reid was already a renowned doctor and a skilled surgeon. During the war, Reid continued on his pursuit of perfecting his work and research on blood transfusions, while saving lives on the front lines in the process.Upon the night of his return from the Great War in 1918, during his 32nd year of life, Jonathan was killed. His body was found in the streets and taken to one of the mass graves for victims of the Spanish Influenza. When Jonathan awoke, he was alone and disoriented. The overwhelm of his new affliction led him to do something he would spend eternity lamenting. His sister, Mary, had been searching for Jonathan, trying to find out what had happened to her brother when he hadn't arrived at the family home. Mary's search led her to the pile of bodies he'd been unceremoniously taken. Without realizing who she was or what he was doing, he fed on a human for the first time. His sister was already dying when her voice finally registered, crying out to him. He had little time to process or mourn as a group of vampire hunters called the Priwen Guard found him and opened fire.Jonathan took shelter from the hunters in an abandoned house where he began to hear the disembodied voice of his maker, a typical feature in the progeny of vampires. Realizing London was profuse with corpses, he followed a blood trail to a bar. The bartender pointed Jonathan to William Bishop, a suspicious patron. Bishop was caught feeding on a man named Sean Hampton and was killed by yet another vampire, Lady Ashbury. A fellow doctor, Edgar Swansea, rescued Hampton, taking him and Jonathan to the hospital Dr. Swansea oversaw, Pembroke. He hired Jonathan to practice medicine at Pembroke Hospital on the spot, having been a big fan of Jonathan's previous work as a blood specialist. Jonathan readily accepted. This arrangement allowed him to help mankind during a horrible pandemic while also providing him with a convenient cover while he adjusted to his affliction.After the room of patient Harriet Jones was found covered in blood and Hampton was reported missing, Jonathan tracked him down for questioning. Hampton insisted he did not murder Jones and directed Jonathan to an underground haven for corrupted vampires known as Skals.Skals are a result of something going amiss when a vampire tries to create a new progeny. It is most often due to the sire being of a poor constitution. The more muddled a vampire's bloodline is or the younger the vampire themself is, the weaker their blood. It is much harder for a Skal to blend in with society because of their ghoulish appearance. Their wounds don't mend the way a vampire's do and their eyes yellow and lose much of their pigmentation. They drink blood, as vampires do, but they also are compelled to eat corpses.In that underground haven, it is revealed that Jones faked her death. Jonathan later discovered a corpse in the street bearing his mother's brooch. He pursued the perpetrator towards the cemetery in Whitechapel and finds his sister Mary with their mother Emelyne. Causing Jonathan to realize that Mary was turned into a vampire the night he fed on her. His poor sister's mind had already been ravaged by grief at the loss of her son and husband even before she'd believed that some misfortune may have befallen her brother. When Jonathan killed her and unwittingly turned her into a vampire, although his bloodline is incredibly powerful, the newness of his affliction caused something to go wrong. Mary's sanity was not intact.When he met Mary and his mother in that cemetery, Mary was intent on killing him to rid herself of his voice inside her head. (Canonically, Jonathan killed her in order to end her suffering but it's a stupidly thin foil considering he's already learned things that should have led him to the logical conclusion that her sanity could have likely been restored with a freaking blood transfusion!! Truly it's stupid and I'll give my kingdom for a canon-divergent Mary who doesn't get murdered by Jonathan.) Jonathan vowed that night to discover a cure for their vampiric affliction so that future lives could be spared from the pain that had befallen the Reid family.Throughout these events, Jonathan learns that there is a second disease wreaking havoc on London which has been mistaken for the Spanish flu. Some sort of virus was spreading among the Skals and turning humans who came in contact with the infected skals to become skals themselves; something inspiring terrible violence and rage. Something turning people rabid.One night, Lady Ashbury invited Jonathan to the West End on behalf of the Ascalon Club, a secret society of vampires who considered themselves to be elite and highborn. By the order of its leader Lord Redgrave, Jonathan rooted out the source of Skal outbreaks in the district. Swansea was later kidnapped and, once located, admitted to attempting to heal Jones with Lady Ashbury's vampiric blood without her knowledge or consent, thereby creating the Skal epidemic. Once Ashbury found out about her involvement, she fled in shame.An entity calling itself Myrddin Wyllt, made himself known to Jonathan. Claiming to be his maker, Myrddin said that he sired Jonathan to defeat his mother Morrigan, also known as the "Red Queen", after she possessed Jones to wreak havoc upon London. Morrigan's possession turned Jones into something much more powerful than a Skal should have been. He later found out that this creature was called a Disaster. Jonathan defeated the Disaster in battle and resolved then to travel after Lady Ashbury to her family castle, where she had hidden with her maker William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.Marshal explained to Jonathan that when he fought the previous Disaster that caused the Black Plague (and the Great Fire of London that was caused by him), Marshal succumbed to the blood of hate. The blood of hate is what Marshal had coined the strange infection that Morrigan's Disaster spread, leaving plagues and eliciting destructive madness in its wake. He'd turned Lady Ashbury while under the influence of this blood of hate, but after discovering a cure for it and using it on Ashbury. She'd been cured of the symptoms but had essentially been turned into a host for the disease. Marshal had chosen to live in his castle to hold back his dark thirst and as an act of atonement.After telling Jonathan and Lady Ashbury everything, Marshal asked Ashbury to end his life, which she complied with.Lady Ashbury then resolved to burn herself in order to keep her blood from ever hurting anyone again. Jonathan convinced her against it and vowed to find a cure for the blood of hate. Together they have been traveling across the world in search of a cure.