Luke/Buffyverse

"Okay, Vessel Boy. Wanna play?"

- Buffy Summers

Luke was a fictional vampire who appeared in the WB Network television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Played by character actor Brian Thompson, he first appeared in the series pilot "Welcome to the Hellmouth". He also appeared in the subsequent episode "The Harvest".

Biography
Luke was an old and powerful vampire who belonged to an organization known as the Order of Aurelius. He was the right-hand-man to the Order's most distinguished leader, a vampire known only as the Master. Luke was well-versed in the prophecy concerning the Harvest, which he believed would one day pave the way for the return of the Old Ones.

Very little is known of Luke's early years save that he was active in Madrid around the year 1843. During this time, he had an encounter with a noted vampire hunter who managed to catch Luke while he was sleeping. The two fought one another, but the hunter managed to survive; one of the few to battle Luke to ever do so. This seeming failure caused Luke some level of embarrassment and he never forgot the incident.

By the late 1990s, Luke and several other members of the Order set themselves up in the underground ruins of a buried church in Sunnydale, California. It was here that his Master slept inside of a pool of blood, trapped inside this house of worship. In 1997, Luke awakened his Master and they prepared for the coming Harvest. The Master hungered and sent Luke out to find him "something young". What he found was a vampire Slayer named Buffy Summers. Luke fought with Buffy inside of an old mausoleum, but she managed to escape, making her the second combatant in Luke's life ever to survive a fight with him. He returned to the Master and told him of his defeat. The Master instantly recognized her as the Slayer and set about baiting her into a trap.

As the time of the Harvest grew closer, the Master anointed Luke with a mystic sigil upon his brow, declaring him the Vessel from which he would gain the strength to break free of his prison. With every soul that Luke laid claim to, the Master would grow stronger. Luke, Darla and several other minions executed a raid at the Bronze. Taking the club's door man hostage, Luke dragged him up onto the bandstand and addressed the terrified club patrons. He told them how they would all die to feed his master's power, then killed the door man before the startled onlookers. He then took a second victim and was preparing himself to kill Cordelia Chase when Buffy entered the room. Buffy prevented Luke from feeding off Cordelia and the two began battling one another on stage. He grabbed her in a bear hug, but she delivered a smashing head butt, forcing him to let her go. Buffy scooped up a microphone stand and hurled it through a window. The amber floodlight from an adjacent room shone through the glass and Buffy tricked Luke into thinking that it was actually sunlight from outside. While Luke was distracted, Buffy staked him from behind. As his body crumbled away, the Master lost all of his newfound power.

Notes & Trivia



 * Brian Thompson also played a vampire character named Eddie Fiori in the short-lived 1996 television series Kindred: The Embraced.


 * The Order of Aurelius was identified in the "Darla" episode of Angel.