Eight of Spades, Bo Kyungban

Bo looks like many other athletic Korean men in their early 20s. He's in fantastic shape, he has short, dark hair and he dresses in jeans and t-shirts. If all else were equal, he'd blend seamlessly into the streets of Seoul.

All is not equal, though. While Bo can pass for an average 20-something Korean among mortals, the supernatural world catches on faster. For Bo was born over five hundred years ago.

He was born in 1475 by the Gregorian calendar, to a family of scholars and sorcerers living at the capital. It was his family's duty to advise the nobility on all matters academic and mystical. Bo grew up steeped in Buddhist and Taoist lore and rituals. He spent a year in China during his teens, studying under a Taoist master, before returning to his home near present-day Seoul. Life looked like it would be normal for him. He married, had a son, and prepared to assume his father's post as advisor.

But Fate has a way of rudely transforming someone's life. When Bo was 23, the Joseon king issued the first of the Literati Purges. Scholars were murdered or purged in droves and Bo's family, being of that caste, were prime targets.

Bo caught wind of the coming purges before they happened and in desperation, he performed the ritual to concoct the legendary Elixir of Life. He drank the elixir and just as the soldiers arrived to kill him and his family, the potion killed him.

He died that day, but even though his body perished, his mind hovered nearby. The soldiers dismembered him and left him to rot in his home with his son's and wife's bodies. But after they left, his broken body began to put itself back together. Minutes later, he breathed again. He'd done what very, very few others had managed. He'd successfully made the Elixir of Life.

Bo has spent most of the past five hundred years traveling the world, exploring history before his life and watching (sometimes even paticipating) as the future unfolds. His body can be killed and he has died numerous times. But the Elixir allows him to come back. Death is an inconvenience, not an end for him. He never gets sick, and the Elixir's magic causes his body to constantly return to a pristine, perfect state.

He has been from one end of the world to the other and back. He's become a thrill-seeker as he's grown older, constantly fighting to keep immortality from becoming boring. After all, Bo would say, what good is immortality if you don't do something with it? So he experiences what's out there and tries new things. He usually doesn't stay in one place for long -- a decade at most. It helps him from getting too attached to the transient. As a Buddhist and an immortal, he knows all too well how fleeting everything around him is. Even though he will continue on, nothing else around him will.

Now, Bo works with the London Mysterium. He's the assistant curator of antiquities at the British Museum, working directly under the Mysterium Provost and is friends with both the Hierarch of London and the Freehold's former Autumn King. Age has its benefits.

For better or worse, Bo is growing attached to this generation of London supernaturals. He's made several friendships that, were he mortal, would be the kind to last a lifetime. He's taken two young men under his wing -- one a scrappy former street thug and one a polite, well-educated, but very naive changeling lad. He's fallen harder for another than he's fallen in a couple centuries. He doesn't know it yet, but these people are latching on and anchoring him in this generation. When they pass on, it's going to be really hard to let go.

In World of Darkness mechanical terms, Bo has the Purified template, which can be found in Immortals.

Eight was picked for Bo's number because it is a very lucky number in Chinese numerology.

Drawn and colored in Adobe Illustrator!

Alternate Version