Name: Kim Hyunjoong
Birthdate: June 6, 1868
Status: Vampire (8 October 1895)
Age: 143
Location: New York City
Family: all deceased

Hyunjoong was a nameless royal guard to Empress Myeongseong. Skilled and handsome, but not recognized any more or less than his comrades, he was resigned to a life of ceremony and drill until he grew old enough for a modest retirement. But in the early hours of October 8th, 1895, the Empress approached him alone as he patrolled the shadowed hallways outside her rooms. There were tears of fear in the regal woman's eyes, an emotion he had never once seen his queen betray. But she remained ever the calm and stately empress as she took his hand and pressed into it a small red bead. 

"It will lead you to those you can trust," she said, her delicate hands cold and trembling. "Avenge me."

He began to speak, but the empress' fingers caressed his brow, and suddenly he slept. He woke to the smell of blood and woodsmoke. The palace had erupted into chaos. The royal guard was slaughtered. He had been forgotten, no doubt taken for dead. Dazed, but compelled by an urgency he could not understand, he snuck out of the palace and was brought short by the world outside. A wall of smoke boiled across the horizon, the hue of bloody mud.

The empress had been dragged from her chambers and burned in a pine forest beyond the palace, her ashes scattered. Hyunjoong took his horse from the stable and rode hard to the forest. He did not know if he had miraculously caught up to the assassins, or if they'd been waiting for him. The battle was swift and violent and ended within seconds. The assassins, vampire-hunters hired by a handful of secretive Japanese officials, overwhelmed him and left him to die. 

In the silent forest a man came to him, making no sound to punctuate the stillness. Hyunjoong drifted in and out of consciousness, but through his hazy vision he caught a luminous red glow leaking out between the fingers of his fist. He knew the man- no, not a man... He knew this creature would help him. He trusted his empress utterly.

And so his grave wounds left him no choice but to accept the life the man offered him, the life of a vampire. Slowly the secret history of the world was revealed to him, so full of the paranormal that the simple guard he had once been would have trembled to learn it. Throughout the ages, vampires have ruled the people of earth as often as humans, and also they have been some of history's most terrible villains, whose real nature was never known. Hyunjoong came to know why his empress was not simply killed but taken from her chambers and set aflame: There were few ways to kill vampires, and fire was one of the most final. 

Years went by, and Hyunjoong trained not only in the art of swordplay and combat he learned as a guard, but he honed his vampyric skills as well, dedicating his life to hunting down those that hunt his kind. A killer of vampire-slayers. In his heart he yearns to find and murder those that took the life of his queen, though they are doubtless long dead. If there is some sort of god of this world, they will not let a descendant of the Empress Myeongseong's killers cross paths with Kim Hyunjoong. He will remember the scent of their blood, even if its generations diluted.

He has traveled to all corners of the world and back, and left death behind him. He loots the riches of those hunters he kills, leaving him with the means to continue his lifelong hunt. He stays in the most expensive lodgings and lives in luxury between murdering, for what little comfort it can give. Relationships and earthly belongings mean little to him. In almost 100 years he has not lived in one place for longer than 6 months. 

His constant hunting has brought him finally to New York City, from where he has heard of a sudden surge in needless killings of vampires. He is driven by a need to protect those who share his nature, strangers and killers and "demons" though they may be. He imagines his empress would be pleased.