Tristan Eberhardt

Life was uneventful in Belgium during the early 17th Century. Tristan was born into a rural farming family in 1603, and was raised Catholic in the region of Flanders. Things were simple. Most of his life was spent going to school, until he was old enough to help with the farm work. By the time he turned twenty-six, his father was getting on in years, and with his growing inability to tend to the running of the farmstead, Tristan was set to take charge of things when the time came.

Unfortunately, it never did. One evening, Tristan simply vanished in the middle of the night. He was sought for weeks afterward, but when nobody could turn up a trace of him, his family inevitably began to mourn.

Tristan's disappearance had not been voluntary. What had begun as a moonlit trudge to the outhouse abruptly turned into the most agonizing, torturous period of his life. In one moment, he had been alone. In the next, he found himself gripped by multiple pairs of pale hands, his breath stifled so that his vision darkened into nothing. The following days were a vivid nightmare filled with visions of crimson eyes and dagger-like teeth. What time he had to be conscious, he spent desperately praying, beseeching the loving and Almighty God he had been raised to trust to deliver him from his otherworldly tormentors. After weeks of pleading, bleeding, and rotating into and out of consciousness, Tristan's emaciated body was too deprived of strength to move. He'd long since lost track of time, but at some point, the cold weakness gave way to warmth, and once again his vision faded. This time, he hoped, for good.

It was in that moment an answer to his prayers finally came. But this answer came not from above. It came from below. He was presented with an opportunity. Survival. Beyond that, supremacy. And beyond that, still..vengeance. In exchange, he would belong to a different flock, whenever it was that his time genuinely came. One infernal. With his faith betrayed by the heavens, and oblivion his only alternative, Tristan made the pragmatic choice.

The next thought his mind conjured was that he couldn't remember ever being so cold. His senses were clouded, his extremities numb. Smothered in a hypnagogic shroud, gripped by a burning dryness within his chest and throat, and with only a vague, instinctual tug of where to go, Tristan shambled through the shapeless darkness. Time and direction were unknowable to him. His feet simply knew where to go. A door opened before him, bathing him in yellow light. Arms wrapped around him, vaguely familiar voices shouting exclamations--muted, unintelligible and distant. His bedchamber. A woolen blanket above him. It didn't last long. His moment of lucidity drew to a close as everything dissolved and only a red haze remained.

His sight returned but the color remained. It stained his hands. His face. His chest. The walls, floor. Bodies surrounded him. Bodies he knew. The cold washed over him anew as he opened the door.

His captors waited to receive him just beyond. Wordlessly, they beckoned to him, and silently he followed.

He sleepwalked through time for a while, gradually reattaching to the world around him. The beings that had imposed his new fate upon him brought him into the fold, under one much older and more potent than the rest. It began to sink in, just what had happened. What he had done. There was trepidation, and certainly remorse. However, it was soon dwarfed by an unfathomable hatred. One he kept well-hidden. And well-fed.

The next several decades were spent learning from his betters, wearing a subservient mask. The promise of vengeance, and of supremacy kept him going. He refused to let that sustaining flame die, growing slowly more powerful as a member of that reclusive cell of unholy creatures. It began with one of his new kin disappearing. Then, years later, another. And another. Given how well he'd endeavored to play his part, he managed to evade suspicion.

Whenever their numbers dwindled to a point, the command from above would be given, and some would be sent out to force upon others the same fate that had been placed upon him. But he would never let their numbers fully recover. One evening, Tristan revealed what a century's worth of personal cultivation and planning truly looked like. What exactly transpired remains to this day known only to him. But in the centuries that have passed since, not one memory made has ever been as sweet.

Following his acquisition of independence, Tristan lacked purpose for quite some time. Having found resolution, he knew not what to do. Realizing eventually that he'd gotten quite good at improving himself in order to achieve his greatest goal, he reasoned that he might as well simply..continue. In the event he ever acquired such a goal again, he resolved to be adequately prepared to handle it. Reasoning that there was no shortage of folk in positions both lofty and lowly with problems that required a brand of forcefulness and discretion that only he could provide, Tristan made the underworld his new home.

It remains so to this day.

And it will remain so forever.