Lucero "Luc" Lonetree

"Damn shame."

Appearance
Luc is a tall, slender human with terra-cotta brown skin, wide hips, and broad shoulders. He wears a pair of large red vaquero boots, a black and gray western shirt, grey vest, black pants, and a red bandana. Peeking out from beneath a wide-brimmed hat is a face with high cheekbones, almond shaped eyes, full lips, and a slightly crooked nose that looks like it was broken once or twice. His wavy brown hair has grown out since season one and currently falls around his shoulders. His demeanor is reserved, and though he stands tall he has a penchant for leaning against things.

Personality
Luc has been quiet and polite in nature during most of his appearances on Sang Noire. The most notable breach of this conduct was when, upon accidentally harming a disguised Perry, he slapped the warlock as she came to. He also appeared to "lose it," so to speak, when confronting Isabel Montemayor in the Cicitlahuacan ruins.

Abilities
Luc is extremely adept with machetes and revolvers, the weapons he tends to favor in combat.

He's been shown to be able to supercharge one of his weapons with cold damage by spilling his own blood, usually with his own machete blade. It seems Luc has done this many, many times, as by now he has thick scars running across both of his palms.

Luc also appears to be able to push himself to perform superhuman feats at the cost of his own health, possibly exacerbating his own illness. When engaging in one of these blood bargains, his veins turn black starting at his neck and slowly spreading to cover part of his face and over his chest to his forearms.

Occasionally, while in "Witcher mode," Luc's eyes cloud over black and he begins to bleed from them. Spooky!

Luc is also able to brand enemies, as he branded the Hunter, searing a mark into their flesh that allows him to know the direction to his quarry at all times, and harms the branded when they attempt to harm Luc or his nearby allies.

Backstory
Luc and Perry were involved in a caper of sorts together a year and a half ago in Thunderbird City. Sometime prior to this incident, Luc became a Blood Hunter and was acquainted with Isabel Montemayor. It is unclear how or when this occurred, Luc has a terminal disease that he believes will take his life eventually.

Chapter I: Party Crashers
Luc arrived at the De Soto manor as a bodyguard along with Perry Diane Eckhardt and Luis Cavalier, only to be met with failure when the party they were supposed to be guarding was attacked by Nocturne Order terrorists, which Luc managed to detect before they arrived but not quickly enough to stop them. After that, Luc, along with Perry and Luis, fought off the terrorists still in the manor before delving into the underground region to rescue Santiago.

Chapter II: Blood Suckers
Luc, Luis, and Perry were able to rescue Santiago, but not without fighting through Nocturne agents and vampires alike. Luc was knocked unconscious during a fight with a Nocturne Order terrorist with a shotgun, but saved by Luis's quick thinking.

Chapter III: Get Money
Luc, Perry, and Luis were able to solve codes and follow clues that lead them to Manuel Zaragoza, a Nocturne Order agent who frequents the Peace & Quiet.

Chapter IV: Six Feet Under
Luc and Luis followed stealthily while Perry charmed Zaragoza, leading the team to the Rookery.

Chapter V: A Bold Bluff
Luc fought off mockinghounds who had severely injured Perry and knocked out Luis, hiding himself and the other two in a room with barricades that he had constructed out of bed frames.

Chapter VI: Friendly Fire
Luc pulled Perry and Sinola out of a vent they had been dragged into by mockinghounds so that the team cold make their escape. Upon realizing that power was needed to operate the elevator that would provide this escape, Luc rushed back into the Rookery with the rest of the team on his heels. He managed to disassemble the barricade preventing ingress to the basement enough that Perry and Sinola could enter, but not enough for himself to get through. Luc had to enter the basement by entering the emergency vent system, where he fought off a mockinghound and stabilized an unconscious Luis. Luc proceeded to stealth his way into the control room, where he saw a mockinghound about to attack Sinola. Luc rushed in and knocked out the mockinghound, dealing 20 damage, only for it to be revealed that the mockinghound was Perry in disguise. A reluctant Sinola healed the unconscious warlock, and Luc promptly slapped her upon her revival. This lead to a brief wrestle that was interrupted by an impatient Sinola.

Chapter VII: Under Auspicion
Luc had a heart-to-heart of sorts with Perry on the subway before returning to his home in the wee hours of the morning to find it had been ransacked by a shape-shifting creature who had turned into an owl after rifling through his research and torn off the bars on his bedroom window to gain ingress to his house. Later that day, while investigating a long list of suspects provided to the team by the Wolfsbane Detective Agency, he met with Aurora De Soto in order to question her. He did not do this, however, and simply talked shop with her until he was extended an invitation to receive private tutoring in biological alchemy from her for free, beginning one week from that day.

Chapter VIII: Isabel
Luc helped put bars on Perry's windows, but did not do a very good job, as the apartment was broken into by the skinwalker later that night. He stayed mostly silent during the interrogations of the politicians in the palace, preferring to appear as the dumb muscle behind the two talkers. He was, however, the only one to observe that the queen had returned to the palace after being missing for 24 hours. After a return to the De Soto manor, when the party arrived at the police precinct, he recognized the "dog" wandering the building as in fact the same skinwalker that had broken into his and Perry's respective homes. While he, along with the rest of the party, attempted to apprehend her, she managed to escape after transfiguring into various creatures and finally an owl, disappearing into the Cicitlahuacan ruins.

Chapter IX: Under Hallowed Ground.

Luc, with the help of Perry and Luis, tracked Isabel through the ruins of Cicitlahuacan and into a tunnel system below. The trio managed to survive traps and avoid basilisks as they traversed the tunnels. When they encountered a trapped trap door with a note from Isabel addressed to Perry on it, Luc was the only person not to be blown up to the ceiling and battered about.

Chapter X: Toll the Dead.

After the gang got stuck in an infinite skeletons trap, Luc was able to provide a lot of aid in stealthing through the ruins to the other two detectives. Once they all arrived at the subterranean lair of Isabel Montemayor, tensions between him and the scientist were high and calm emotions was cast on Luc by Peregrine. When Isabel was only withholding information, he seemed annoyed, but once she began to tempt Perry and Luis towards becoming a part of her machinations he became very angry with her. He rejected her offer to be a part of her plans to "save the world," as she stated that he was of no use to her and he claimed she had nothing to offer him.

Chapter XI: Zoodled.
When the gang decided to go on a (gay) bar crawl to celebrate their survival of the previous events, Luc seemed happy enough to go along with this plan. He was made uncomfortable by the anti-indigenous comments made by two tourist girls at Club Galaxy, but seemed to enjoy himself later at Le Chaos, and at one pointed danced (impeccably) with Perry. The two appeared to be getting along for once until, at Coraline Poe's penthouse, Coco made a comment that something Luc said was "gay" and Perry began to have a crisis, telepathically asking Luc what gay meant and freaking out at the answer. After the Coraline Poe song played and hypnotized everyone, Luc woke up at home in his bed.

Chapter XII: What a Way to Die.
While camping in the Undercity with Luis, Sinola, and Perry, Luc gave the group instructions on how to embellish true events into a ghost story--to Sinola's discomfort. When fighting a group of Mockinghounds and Echoes, Luc saw the situation was getting dire and revealed a Witcher-like ability wherein his eyes and veins turned black and the latter began to bleed, and he seemed to draw power from every kill he made. Fighting the Sandalphon, Luc began to glow as though burning up and his frost blade turned to one of fire, dealing burning damage to the angel creature. Ominous.

Peregrine "Perry" Diane Eckhardt
Perry is Luc’s girlfriend. Definitely.

Perry does not know Luc will die after the last ritual is dealt with, as in, immediately after. This may come to her as something of an ugly shock.

OLD

Peregrine Eckhardt is entirely too friendly.

That was Luc’s first impression right off the bat, anyhow, back in that bar in Casas Grandes. Folks usually stop being friendly to Luc ‘round the same time they start realizing he ain’t gonna be friendly back, but Perry never did.

Right away Perry’s ichor habit did her a disservice in the way of making an impression on Luc, as activated ichor and all the trouble it entails is just one more thing Luc wishes he could be freed of. Perry doesn’t seem to consider herself the ichor’s prisoner, though, or if she does, she doesn’t mind much. Luc can’t imagine being content like that.

Perry does have positive traits in Luc’s eyes, however. The mage is chatty, an endearing quality to Luc, as it reminds him of a person he was very close to once. In addition, Perry appears to Luc to have strong morals, as, despite her many fears, she always tries to do what is hard because it is right. That’s a sentiment Luc can agree with.

When Perry agreed to work along with Isabel, Luc felt angry (your funeral) but also concerned. Luis at least seemed to not particularly care about the world-saving business and appeared to be using Isabel as much as she was using him. Perry, though… Isabel had something on Perry. Luc was used to Isabel's lies and manipulations, but Perry believed Isabel might really know something about her mother, about her mother's current whereabouts, even. Luc could understand being desperate for info about missing loved ones, but he also knew Isabel was just using the aasimar. For all Isabel's talk of Perry being special, Luc knew she really saw the sorcerer as no more than a means to an end.

This was only confirmed during the events of House of Dreams when Isabel showed up to chastise Perry only to be met with Luc instead. When she dehumanized Perry to Luc’s face and creepily touched the sleeping mage, Luc felt furious. No one deserved to be treated like that, to be certain, but the fact that it was Perry seemed to hit a nerve somewhere with Luc. Isabel attributed it to a possessive kind of protectiveness Luc had over Perry, but this was puzzling to Luc. That’s not how he feels at all. The fact of the matter is that he does care about Perry and wants to protect her, but he doesn’t see the mage as his inferior. Still, the world seems to have it out for Perry, just a little. Maybe the gal needs all the help she can get.

Luc is determined to believe that despite the angel wings and magic powers, Perry is just a normal person with a normal destiny. He hopes so anyway. For Perry’s sake.

UPDATE: It's so fucking painfully obvious that the gal is falling for him and hard. Luc knows it's not gonna work out. First off, he's a dead man walking. Second, she's like, some kind of half-archon chosen one evidently?? That's... Out of his league, even if he was interested. Plus, he's still not over his missing fiancee whom he might actually have a chance at finding for the first time in years (not that it's smart for him to be with her, either.) Luc is resolute that he oughtn't lead Perry on, and that entertaining her little crush will only lead to trouble. But she's still, you know, his friend, so he can't just ditch her, she's going through a rough time and she really could use someone to lean on. So Luc has somehow convinced himself that he can provide for all her needs and keep her safe while simultaneously emotionally distancing himself from her. Cause obviously that is a smart idea that makes sense! It's the only way!

Luis Cavalier
Luis has proven himself to be completely different from Luc in almost every way, and thoroughly undependable to boot. Luis is suave and a good liar, with all kinds of connections in the city. What Luc and Luis do have in common is that they are both dedicated with almost irrational tenacity to their own individual goals, and both keep their cards close to their chest. Luc understands and respects this about Luis and does not intend to stand between the other man and his goals other than when Luis’s dedication to them endangers the entire party.

Despite being largely disparate men with few shared ideals, there are things about Luis that Luc admires. The radio host’s smooth talking, for example, is something Luc couldn’t hope to match, but appreciates greatly. Luc believes Luis to be competent, and would trust the bard to handle himself in a bad situation. Luis’s most colossal mistake in The Weight of Your Sins caused Luc to doubt this momentarily, but Luc’s faith in him was restored to an extent during the events of Sentimentalism, when Luis showed that there was more to his abilities—and motives—than meets the eye in the fight against Cristian Vasquez. Luc highly respects Luis’s demonstration of restraint in this situation, as shown in the bard’s choice not to kill the Sword despite an obvious personal vendetta that Luc trusts is surely justified.

All in all, Luc thinks highly of Luis’s skill and tenacity, and feels that Luis can at least be trusted to be, well, Luis: hardworking, determined as hell, and self-serving to boot. Luc is confident that Luis is the best there is at what he does, and while the bard’s true motives might be mysterious, Luc trusts that whatever they are, they are probably for a good reason. Luis can be stubborn and short-sighted, but he still has a good head on his shoulders. That is, he knows what he wants and he knows how to get it. And while Luc and Luis are surely as different as night and day, perhaps Perry is right and the two do have a good connection.

UPDATE: Oh Luis... The dude has had many chances and has proven himself not just untrustworthy, but also out of his depth. Luc gained respect for the power that Luis demonstrated at the end of Birdsong, but Luis seemed anything but powerful at the end of Ghost Story. He was totally out of control. Luc knows that Luis's intentions were good, but what Luis meant to do doesn't outweigh what ended up happening anyway. He's a liar and a cheat, but more importantly, he's not even good at it. Luc doesn't hate him. He just doesn't trust him (duh). And he knows that, even if Luis has the best intentions in the world, it's not smart to rely on him anymore.

Aurora De Soto
Dr. De Soto and Luc spoke briefly at the De Soto anniversary party, discussing Aurora's work and sampling some tamales. Later, while purportedly investigating her on suspicion of involvement with the Nocturne Order, Luc instead asked her more about the nature of her work and the classes that she teaches at the Academy, expressing interest in it in relation to his own personal studies. He explained to her that he had been privately tutored in alchemy in the past, and Dr. De Soto offered to provide him private tutelage in the subject. In A House of Dreams, Dr. De Soto discovered Luc's vampirism as she had to do blood work in order to heal him, and shortly after, he discovered that she had contracted (and recovered from—sort of) the virus as well. Over the past three months, the two have been working together to try and halt the progression of Luc's disease through "tricking it" into remaining dormant, rather than taking a slash and burn approach. Most recently, they abandoned this attempt at saving Luc’s life in favor of making him resilient against being exposed to the rituals, although there is no escaping the fact that the last one will do him in.

Isabel Montemayor
While the finer details of Luc's relationship with Dr. Montemayor are unknown, he has claimed that she used him as a scientific experiment for her own gain, intentionally accelerating the natural progression of his fatal illness. He has given little regard to her assurances that it is all for the greater good, to save the world from unknown forces, and either doesn't seem to believe her or doesn't seem to care. Is he bluffing?