Ifryn Macier

So we’ve been on hiatus here for a bit at Black Wednesday’s trying to locate the last few interviewees for you before my job here comes most literally to an end.

It should be perhaps be no surprise then that the most recent bedraggled thing we managed to convince to visit our studios is one severely diseased vampire. I’d say our scouts were scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one but Ifryn Macier is a stubborn old geezer who they have been trying to persuade since our doors opened. 

Ifryn, like most of his species, is of ord origin. This is mostly due to the fact that the vampire species germinated from ords and vampires fare best when they feed on similar blood types. Vampires sired from other species such as fae or anthropomorphs tend to die younger unless they feed upon those of their origin species. Worse still, some insist on drinking sugar-water and thus sentence themselves to a slow and painful death, dying as young as 50 which is a considerable markdown from the extended lifespan these beings are meant to have.

A reasonable height then for an ord at 5ft 6in tall Ifryn is still the most horrible mess of a vampire. He is 137 years old and wow it really shows. Put in stark comparison to Eyzith who is 150 and still fresh-faced you can tell how much his ills have ravaged his body. His sunken face, hollowed eyes and accompanying scowl however say more about him than his sickness because as it happens Ifryn really is a grumpy old git. 

Speaking to him it is clear that he dislikes everything and everyone. The epitome of a nasty and nosy neighbour, your business is his business and you’d better keep out of his affairs. A haggard limping and outwardly offensive individual in all ways it’s difficult to even hold a conversation with him. He gripes and snipes at every possible opportunity and generally makes it impossible to communicate. Yes Ifryn hates you and us and life and the universe. We tire quickly of trying to ask him questions, for someone so elderly he appears sapped of any wisdom.

His sickened state has no doubt left him vulnerable and likely angry; that is understandable. That said we get the feeling that he’d probably be the same awful person even if his skin were not slightly sloughing from his bones.

Alongside Eyzith, Emmus and Dro’Zar, Ifryn is one of the few remaining old vampires who recall the now obsolete way of siring and raising their kind; an outdated, well documented and draconian method for selecting children to join the species which has since perished. Due to its brutality it is hardly surprising to learn that the old system was replaced. 

This extreme method for choosing new vampires technically didn’t exist when Ifryn was born as an ord and certainly was not meant to be in use by the time he was sired. Of course, the practice was still being illegally used at the time of Ifryn’s siring, and to this day there are reports of similar set-ups occurring outside of organised society. But then maintenance of population control for a society such as that of the vampires has never been an easy thing to micro-manage.

Ifryn is then both blessed and cursed by his illness. In one respect he has become a bitter, withering old man far sooner than he should for a member of his species, in the other he has been granted immunity from their laws of population control which means he doesn’t have to pass any tests to validate the reasons he should be allowed to keep living. Incapable of breeding they are quite happy to let the man live out the remainder of his days in whatever agony the sickness brings, how nice of them.

Jet Korro (returns)

Jet’s had his ears lowered! 

  

 Ok so although we’ve met him twice before and had not one but two stabs at sketching his portrait we realised we’ve never sat down to interview Jet, what better opportunity then than his arrival at the studio to show off his freshly chopped locks?

Still standing at 6ft 7in tall and a little eccentric in his behaviour Jet is an amiable 19year old with an acute addiction to video games. Therefore to begin with whenever we asked Jet a question it took him a good five minutes or more to process and respond since his eyes were glued his hand-held device. Then when he did manage to wrench his attention away from the screen, his answers didn’t make any sense seeing as he had only heard a portion of what we asked. 

Thankfully convincing him to put the game away wasn’t too tricky, however without the distraction in hand he opened up like a grimoire and began spouting way more information than necessary. In the space of sixty seconds we learnt that Jet is an adventurer of sorts, he can’t swim, his favourite colour is black, he has minor OCD for symmetry, has a dire fondness for cats and cat related things, suffers from light sensitivity and low blood pressure that causes dizzy spells and black-outs, has fantastic flexibility and night-vision, loves his shades, and the one we found most peculiar and amusing is that the very tall Jet is apparently afraid of heights.

He also seemed to enjoy sharing even the most intimate details of his private life in detail as though flamboyantly parading around in his underwear. Jet explains this as compulsive honesty. He relays that he gets over-excited when meeting someone new and that he can’t help but overload them with pointless details and stories. Immediately after which he decided it was important to tell us that until recently his favourite food was eggs on toast but that he has just adapted his diet to a purely noodle and bread regime.

Fair to say then that Jet rambles a lot and not just in the country. He rarely gets straight to the point and seems to have a knack for finding the most convoluted way to tell his story.  His outlook on life the universe and everything is in his own words, ‘things are what they appear to be until they no longer appear to be what they are.’ An observant character who notices details others might miss at first glance he does tend to over-complicate matters. Thus Jet has adopted a method of decision-making that involves dithering and procrastinating until the presented choice is made for him. 

Jet’s biggest bugbear in life is the need to sleep. He wishes he never had to slumber but informs us matter-of-factly that he understands naps are necessary to move on in life. When asked to explain we realise that Jet seems to think that it’s normal to wake in a different room, town or even country to the one he fell asleep in. He calls it ‘sleepeportation.’ Which we discovered is a term he invented roughly 30 seconds prior to uttering it, that translates to, ‘sleep teleportation.’ To elaborate he decides to regale us with an anecdote about how he once thought he woke up underneath a dragon but after a fit of blind panic realised that a gecko had just fallen asleep on his face.

He states that he likes to help others when he can and will often put himself out to do so. However from witnessing the extent of his game addiction we can’t imagine him going out of his way very often. He shows us the pixelated names of his closest friends on his screen and then mentions that he’d quite like to be a dragon tamer or a cat breeder, or a cat, or failing that he’s quite good at ‘stick twirling.’

We jokingly suggest he sticks to the latter only to discover that, as it happens, Jet really is quite nifty with a Bo staff. He explains how he started staff fighting as a young child after he found he was fascinated by playing with sticks. He taught himself many new ways to bruise his forehead via twirling and twisting the bamboo canes in his garden before his grandfather took note and mentored him in the art. Jet says he doesn’t miss much of the quiet life back home with his folks but that he does miss regular mealtimes. Quite the antisocial, social butterfly he’s never lonely as he tends to get on well with others and makes friends easily. Besides as he jests, he’s always got himself to talk to and his gaming station.

There were a few brief moments where Jet appeared to show glimmers of high intellect and we wondered if he simply chooses to play the fool. Then he would say something nonsensical just to remind us what a tall, ditzy blonde he can be, making us conclude that the air up there must be as thin as he is.

Ann Cyncaid

Interviewing vampires usually unnerves us not only because they have the potential to kill and/or alter us to be like them but also because it means that the session has to take place at night and we really like our sleep. Having previously met Ann Cyncaid we were more afraid of dozing off during another painfully awkward interview than for our lives. 

She continues to use the pseudonym Cyan in place of her real name, is currently 24years of age and is still a waif-like 5ft 2in tall. For the most part she remains a timid, introverted and sensitive character who is overly-cautious and highly introspective. Knowing that the kind and soft-hearted are easily trampled we try to be sympathetic by not yawning too often and feigning interest on the odd occasion where she speaks without prompt. Much of the following information is therefore subjective and gleaned from the sparse few questions she was able to answer.

In many ways Cyan is the embodiment of your atypical ‘vampire who doesn’t want to be,’ a pathetic half-starved wretch whose self-esteem went on hiatus and never returned. Perhaps a little less crushed under the destructive weight of depression than the first time we met, Cyan is still a miserable soul prone to tearful moments and emotional outbursts. Her bleak and ultimately negative outlook means we’d probably have had more fun interviewing a limpet. 

A social outcast by her own doing, she inadvertently makes situations such as this one more problematic than they are which is quite a feat considering her origins. Having a mind ravaged with guilt and dark thoughts, it is apparent that she often allows her fears and worries to consume her. Whilst we appreciate much of this anxiety is justified it does prove difficult to hold a conversation when the other party is continually looking over their shoulder and jumps at the slightest sound.

During the interview she nervously gnaws the corner of her mouth and constantly fiddles with the hematite band around her thumb. Being a lip-biter appears to have caused scarring and indicates it’s something she does frequently to the point where it repeatedly bleeds and heals otherwise no mark would remain. Her anxious habits are most distracting and when questioned about the origins of her ring she clams up as though we had asked what colour knickers she is wearing.

Although usually of a demure nature Cyan’s excruciating insecurity makes her liable to catastrophic thinking and the occasional bout of melodrama. Clearly uncomfortable in her own skin, she is very aware of personal space and dislikes being touched. To say she is hypersensitive would be an understatement, plus we never thought we’d meet anyone who could best our writers when it comes to ridiculously lavish over-exaggerations.

What is perhaps surprising about her lack of self-confidence is the fact that it is coupled with the sheerest determination we have thus far witnessed. Whilst on the one hand she spends a lot of time lost, confused and blubbing like a baby, on the other she dropkicks every challenge life throws at her so squarely in the jaw she may as well be made of metal. It’s enough to make one’s head spin, but therein lies the nature of her depression; she simply cannot recognise her own successes. To do so would be like admitting that it’s ok to keep breathing, which would in turn mean that it’s ok to be Cyan and a vampire, which she intrinsically ‘knows’ to be incorrect and won’t be told otherwise.

Thus Cyan only feels justified when berating herself and believes she deserves to be punished. She mentally tortures herself for every little mistake and scrutinises every part of her being whilst glossing over all the faults of others, even other vampires. Most of her woe is self-inflicted and likely existed before she was sired; being vampiric is simply another convenient excuse for self-flagellation. Yet for all her melancholy she has a fierce will to live and strong sense of moral grounding, she will readily fight for her beliefs and those she cares about.

It strikes us that Cyan could probably use a sharp wakeup call followed by a big motherly hug, however by the end of the interview her eyes were a hunger-ravaged yellow so don’t judge us for not volunteering, ok?

Ben Cyncaid

Well what more can we say about young Adeth? Ok so we didn’t actually say that much in the first post but then he was one of our very first interviewees. He’s still the sincere sort, still stands 5ft 4in tall and still looks like a malnourished sixteen year old. Thankfully this time around he was considerate enough to wear a shirt. In return we made a point of not calling him Ben and tried not to ask too many questions about his family.

Adeth describes himself as a soulful poet; one, who we note, can’t help but wear his heart on his sleeve. For the most part he is shy and socially withdrawn. He expresses that he finds it hard to trust others and that it requires a lot of confidence-boosting to get him to lower his defences. An honest and open intellectual, he is awkward at first but a pleasure to talk to once his nerves are settled.

Adeth remains very cagey about his past and immediately closes off when we mention his sister. The subject of Ann is obviously one steeped in guilt, brewed to the point where his eyes glaze over with oily film at the mere mention of her name. Being passive-aggressive he switches tack to show us some of his poetry. Whilst this is probably meant to distract us the pages of words he presents only serve to reveal more of his deeply troubled psyche. His poetry is abstract, emotionally bipolar and idealistic; it tilts between themes of repressed anger, elation, remorse and hope.

Now we’re not doctors but it strikes us that Adeth must be suffering from depression and that the ‘thing’ he refuses to talk about is the root of his mania. Shockingly he wasn’t too enthralled to hear our theory and met the idea with a cardiac-inducing glare before announcing his imminent departure. We admit we were taken aback by the sharpness of his temper and surprised to spy such a virulent flash of vengeance in his usually soft violet eyes. Which reminds us, Adeth has this fun thing where his eyes change colour making him look more like this:

Of course by ‘fun’ we mean slightly disturbing.

It’s atypically a vampire trait, loss of pigmentation in the eyes particularly when hungry or emotions are heightened. It is not clear why their eye colour fades from its original shade through yellow to white or indeed why Adeth has this trait. Reflectors in his eyes suggest Adeth also has night vision; however he confesses to being very much a day person, is partial to sweets and thankfully doesn’t burst into flames upon exiting the studio.