Daumentas Skuodzius
Sobriquet: Manta (Meaning "Braniac," or possibly "Nerd.")
Appearance: Manta is a shortish, well muscled Balkan man, the product of poor nutrition as a child, and regular fitness training as an adult. He wears his sandy blond hair in a close-cropped military cut with just a hint of styling gel. His dark grey eyes seem to evaluate everyone and everything, as if wondering what makes them tick. In command situations, he still resorts to a drill-sergeant-esque overbearing manner, rather than the calm, easy command exhibited by his predecessors. He usually wears fatigues or lightweight civilian mufti - shorts and a tank top emblazoned with a rude motto, but wears suits and is able to blend into the Ventrue elite much better than most of his compatriots.
Behavior:
History: Daumentas grew up in a dockside slum in the port city of Klaipeda, Lithuania. As he labored through his childhood chores, he watched ships come and go, their crews bound for fantastic, unknowable places. He filled his drab existence by making up stories about these people, and how they would react to the exotic situations they would encounter in such far-away places as Germany, England, China and America. As soon as he could shave, he lied about his age and signed on with the Soviet Navy, dreaming of seeing the world.
Opportunity for Balkan natives was scarce in the Russian dominated armed forces, and Daumentas found himself headed for a long-term posting on some nameless arctic island. Quickly learning the ropes, Manta arranged for a dim-witted rival to fill that post, by making himself useful to a low-ranking officer with good connections. Over the years, Manta made connections and became a go-to guy for obtaining hard-to-find luxuries for officers on the make. He rose to the rank of supply sergeant, unheard of for an uneducated grunt from the rebellious ass-end of the Union.
And he met a hard ceiling. Less able Russians were promoted over him, put in charge of him, given credit for his successes. Daumentas began to make a game of ruining the careers of "unworthy" officers. An important Colonel fed the finest Beluga Caviar just hours past its expiration cashiered the Lieutenant who gave it to him, but then got curious about the caviar's source. Daumentas found himself cashiered back home, just ahead of a court marshal.
And so it was that Daumentas was available to help his family pay a long-standing debt: he became the quartermaster of an off-the-books private security force that spent two decades training, being given minor assignments designed more to develop their abilities than for their strategic necessity, before finally being assigned to bodyguard young Brian O'Reilly. The challenges of this new position were myriad, and Daumentas met them head on. Obtaining top-of-the-line military equipment off the books became a specialty, just as obtaining rare luxuries in out-of-the-way places once was.
Things were going well: The team was faced against tall odds, but nothing they couldn't handle. In the early years, the biggest challenges came from keeping their young charge from committing suicide. As Brian developed the abilities to go with his ambitions, the team was pressed harder, needing Daumentas to come through with better and better hardware to make up for the advantages that greater supernatural abilities gave Brian's enemies.
When most of the team was killed in Quebec City, Daumentas became the default leader of a reconstituted security force. Fortunately, he had help from his predecessors, Aras Valdemaras and Bronius Gintaras, because training and leadership had never been much of a focus in his life. Thus he feels guilt that half the force was killed along with one of their Embraced alumni, Jurgis Ąžuolas, in England in 2031, wondering if there was something he could have done better to prepare or deploy the troops under his command. His guilt is compounded by the fact that Jurgis's death prompted his own "promotion" to the embrace.
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