Bastien Cavanaugh

BASTIEN CAVANAUGH

OOC

Member name: Arrow <3

How you found us: PB Support <3

Other characters: Fletcher Johnson <3

Roleplay experience: 7-8 years <3

Activity level: High? I think

Code word: Verified by Bee.

Basics

Full name: Bastien G. Cavanaugh

Gender: Male

Age: Looks 25

Divine Parent: Hephaestus

Powers: Enhanced mechanical skills, fire resistance, and pyrokinesis

Playby: Tyler Hoechlin

Personality

When it comes to campers and quests, Bastien is a very helpful man. It's not often that he refuses to drop everything to help someone out, but when he does it's because he's suspicious. In order to receive help, one must first ask for it; he is a very detail-oriented person who has to know anything and everything before embarking on a quest or even a personal mission. This makes him very calculating and confident whilst working, because it gives him the illusion of being in control.

As Bastien is quite detail-oriented, he is naturally observant. He values silence as it allows room for thought and dislikes those that speak before they think. Given his tendency to take everything in, he can seem a little off; along with his tuned senses, his memory is strong. He tends to remember little details about people and their lives, which can definitely make him seem a little creepy. He's a good listener but he can also be good at offering counsel.

He doesn’t reveal much of his past to everyone and seems a little closed off when it comes to getting personal, which is exactly how it is. He doesn’t care to speak of his violent past as he considers himself to be a reformed man, so that’s an area reserved for those who must know. When it comes to emotions, he’s not one to talk. He’d rather sit there and suffer, so trying to get him to talk is like pulling teeth.

He is emotionally reserved so that he can fulfill his masochistic needs; if he were to speak of what was troubling him, he wouldn't be able to sit on it and punish himself. He feels a sense of guilt from his past actions and wants to remedy that, thinking pain (both physical and emotional) might help ease it all away. By no means does this mean he wants to take his own life, as he feels indebted to those he thinks he’s killed. Does he wish it was him? Yes. Was it? No. He is a firm believer in fate and subscribes to the idea that everything happens for a reason.

In a nutsell, Bastien is very intelligent and crafty, passionate when it’s necessary. His dream is to invent something like none other. Though he is neither a lover nor a fighter, he is a good mix of both. He’s a pretty well-rounded individual that is not concerned with himself nor the affairs of others, which allows him to offer a generally unbiased opinion. He’s actually a good mediator between petty camp fights.

LIKES: Peanuts Alone time Hephaestus children Apollo children Hard work Blood Sweat Tears (if his, hidden) Classical music Fine wine	DISLIKES: Carrots Nosy people Ignorance Disobedience Water Cats Loud music, 'less it's a party Dirt bikes Being called "Sebastian" Bad wine
GOALS: To help guide his siblings on a path toward prosperity To stop losing friends due to selfish decisions To find his true love and not let her die	FEARS: Losing another friend His mother hunting him down Someone learning about his past and pushing him away Heights Explosions

History

Claimed?: Yes

Camp experience: at least 10 years

Mortal parent: "Epiphany"

Other relatives: Ivan Cavanaugh, "Father"; grandparents

History: Born in Greece to a woman who went by the name ‘Epiphany’ was the child of an affair, a little boy named Bastien. His father was Hephaestus, but the man who was supposed to have been his father was Ivan Cavanaugh. Henceforth, he inherited the man’s name so the woman could continue sleazing about. Baby Bastien was raised by his ‘father’, for the most part, until the house burned down.

His father was asleep and never woke, dying there in his bed. The baby, however, survived. Any normal human baby would have died, but there was something special about this one. The woman, his biological mother, began to take a little more care of the baby who survived against the odds. Her arson went unnoticed. It’s quite clear to the reader that something about the woman was unstable, which probably begs the question: what drew Hephaestus to her? Was he lonely and just wanting to get some?

No; this child was a little more thought out than that. The woman had some admirable qualities, with her olive skin and her enticing eyes. Hephaestus, being the ‘ugliest’ of the gods, wanted to produce a child that could be called beautiful. He’d no idea of the woman’s mental state, though it may have been alluded to during Bastien’s conception.

Once Ivan died, the baby became quite the burden. It always seemed to cry when it couldn’t look around and simply had to be warm at all time. Once it grew, the woman took careful notice of it’s attention to things that rolled. He hated baths, always screaming like a banshee, so she often just settled for a dirty child. She didn’t try to kill him again, however. She’d decided she’d like him.

As Bastien aged, the draw toward fire became more and more evident. Whenever the family would have a fire near the ocean, the boy would poke around in it, drawn to the fire like a bug to the light. No matter how stupid he seemed to be, he never ended up getting burnt. He began to spend some time with his grandfather, who taught him about metal and swords, as the boy seemed to be intrigued by the shininess of the blade.

As he grew and matured, Bastien began to notice the peculiar way fire would bend when he walked near it; he had never tried to manipulate it, because that would have been silly. No one else noticed, however; they were all too busy remarking on ‘his good looks’, even as a child. Before long, the boy ended up burning his mother’s house down during a ‘cooking experiment’, though it was really just a giant screw up when he tried to build a fire in his bedroom. 

The woman never learned of the truth, just rushed the two to America; Ivan’s family was going to visit, and she wanted nothing of them. She’d money to spare, and time as well. They settled in to Arizona, where she purchased the boy a dirt-bike, something that he cherished until the age of twelve.

Why’d he stop when he was twelve? Why, it almost got him killed. He was out riding through the desert with a friend of his when an arrow went whizzing in front of him. Instinctually, he sped up, hoping to avoid any further fire. He was lucky, but his friend did not fare so well. After he saw his friend fall, he didn’t want anything to do with the bike. It was his fault, after all. He’d had the idea.

Closed off in his room, he began to realize how boring it was without anything to tinker with. Ever so slowly, he began to venture outside during the night. He wasn’t going to start heeding his mother’s warning about going outside in the darkness when he could go out in the shed and mess around with this and that just to see how they fit together.

After school ended, a man showed up at his house and offered to buy the boy from his mother. His mother, then broke, obliged. Having heard the transaction from his bedroom, the boy flung himself out the window and got on the one thing he’d vowed to never ride again; his bike. Something about it was stuck and it wouldn’t start, but something, what he called ‘intuition’, told him to check the kill switch. It was jammed. With a little strength, it moved; the bike roared to life. Bastien left the premise like a bat out of hell.

Little did he know that the man who had offered to buy him was sent by his biological father to take him to Camp, a place that Bastien would soon love to be at. The man hunted him down to a restaurant, where the boy was trying to work to get a little food. Having only heard the man, he didn’t recognize him by sight. When he tried to run again, he was only tranquilized until he ended up inside the camp, waking up bleary eyed and cranky.

It was there that he learned about his true lineage and his actual father. It then made sense to the boy why the fire seemed to like him, why he’d survived and Ivan had not, and why he’d know exactly where to look on the bike. His love to tinker was justified as well as his hatred toward water. With a brand new outlook on life and an escape from the hellhole he called home, he went out and began to volunteer to help.

As he was a little too small to actually accomplish much, the boy set toward crafting weapons and whatnot for his friends. He was pretty good at it, a natural, and that only helped because of the great lengths the fire went to just to keep him warm. Someone suggested that he possessed the gift of pyrokinesis, which was certainly not a false statement. Knowing how rare the gift was, however, led to a denial by the boy. Sure enough, as he observed some of his brothers and sisters, he realized that the fire didn’t seem to love them nearly as much.

With his desire to learn renewed, the boy set out to find someone to teach him about his abilities. The camp was not adequately staffed to do so, however. Instead of burning down a cabin, the boy chose to seek out someone on his own. Recruiting a couple of good friends, a son of Hypnos and a daughter of Hecate, the son of Hephaestus set out to learn more about himself.

He’d gotten a good lead when they had reached Manhattan, a lead that involved a man who had practicing smithing since he was a boy. Thinking that this man, too, might have been a son of Hephaestus, the trio set out to find him. Trekking through the wilderness to get there was no fun at all; when they emerged, they were certainly not well-rested. By then, Bastien had stubble growing on his chin, though the hairs were few and far between.

After conversing with the man and being told they were crazy, the boy flew into a fit of rage. Politely, he asked his friends to head back without him, telling them about how the man said he’d assist if he were alone. Agreeing, though reluctantly, the two headed back down the direction they’d come in, leaving Bastien behind.

The olive-skinned boy killed the smithy, with his most precious possession. Who’d have known someone could wield a hammer so well with such deadly intentions? After he’d killed him, he’d made it look like a wicked accident of sorts, taking the hammer with him to prevent evidence from showing through.

Having told his friends he would master his gift after they’d left, Bastien stayed back to hone his skill. He left the smithy’s cabin and found something else – likely a vacation home – back in the woods. Eventually, he taught himself to control the fire. By the time he returned to the camp, he learned of the two campers that never returned. They were overtaken by creatures of some sort, though no one was certain as to what. They were a little too dead to ask.

Swearing to avenge his friends, Bastien made the decision to set back out. His theory, in fact, was that whatever had killed them knew they were there. If it was intelligent, it would have known what was going on and what they were. Again, he did not travel alone. With him he brought a daughter of Apollo and his trusty, stolen hammer. They went to the Smithy’s cabin, which had since been under investigation, and set out back down the hill once night had fallen.

Without Bastien’s ability, the trip would have been hard to accomplish. He’d brought the daughter of Apollo because of her gift, and the fact that he trusted her. Matter of fact, he’d grown quite fond of the girl. Both were sixteen and quite reckless, both were madly in love; neither would admit it. Pride wouldn’t allow. They were attacked, but Bastien survived. As she lay dying, he slayed the creature, though he wasn’t educated enough to know what it was called. Luckily, he got there in time to hear her whispered sentiment, and he returned the words with ease. Before she died, coughing up blood, they shared their first kiss. The memory is still vivid in Bastien’s mind to this very day, and it still brings tears to his eyes.

After the experience in the woods, Bastien vowed not to be so reckless. Slowly he took to mentoring his siblings, helping them out with what they could do. The affection he’d felt for the sun daughter was placed on the children instead. Before his stay at camp was over, he went back to Greece and stayed for a few years, without telling the others what he was up to. He wanted to figure out what had killed his friends that he had slain, back in the woods. Greece seemed to be the perfect place.

Instead of finding answers, Bastien only uncovered more questions, questions that he still intends to answer. With little luck and more time than he’d bargained for, he went back to Camp Half Blood and decided he would help staff the camp and partake in quests when necessary. He’s yet to meet a woman to match his first love, but he keeps an eye on the daughters of Apollo that remind him of her sweet disposition. He hopes to find someone to rekindle the fire inside, someone to keep him in line and ensure that he doesn’t get anyone else killed… including themselves.