The year; 1230 Anto Domini, the Baltic Crusades.

The fierce Crusader order known and feared as the Teutonic Knights were carving a bloody swathe across the lands of Prussia and Lithuania, slaughtering the pagan peoples without mercy, killing all who resisted their expansion and refused to convert to Christendom.
The Lithuanians fought with grim determination, refusing to be overtaken and enslaved to the German tyrants and their "black Crusaders."
Thousands upon thousands were slain amongst both powers, staining the grass crimson and creating rivers of blood and tears all across Eastern Europe.

One of the fiercest knights of the Teutonic Order was none other than the Grand Knight Commander and leader of the Order, Gran Hochmeister Gunther Hauserkurst of House Hauserkurst.
He led his armies with bravery in battle and fought without mercy nor quarter, forming a string of victories across the Lithuanian border and accosting hundreds of thousands of Pagan lives and expanding the Orders power and reach beyond belief.



The enraged and desperate Pagans realized that unless Hauserkurst was killed that soon all of the free Eastern Lands would be under the boot of the Catholic Church.
They all determined that to weaken the willpower and zeal of the fanatical and greedy Teutonic Order, they had to kill Hauserkurst, who had become a symbol of might and pride amongst the devout Crusader Orders and the ever loyal Catholic Kingdoms.

It was late one evening in the fall of 1234 A.D that they put their plan into effect.
Lord Hauserkurst was returning home to Prague with a small entourage of the elite Ritterbruder, the finest, most well trained and undyingly loyal knights that the Order had to offer.
It was during this journey when the unsuspecting knights were ambushed on a small countryside road just to the north of Prague.
A sizeable unit of Lithuanian knights came charging from both tree lines on either side of the road, they fully intended to slay this Catholic snake and his horned minions, or die trying.



The Crusaders fought valiantly, but were no match for the superior numbers of the Lithuanian knights.
One by were they were felled by the cold vengeful steel of the Pagans' swords.
Soon Hauserkurst stood alone, his comrades all dead or dying, while he stood surrounded by the leering Pagans who immediately overpowered and severely wounded him due to their sheer numbers alone.

They each exacted their own personal vengeance, taunting him and mocking he and his god alike, all the while kicking and beating him and notching his body with cuts and scratches, as they intended to leave him to bleed out, ensuring he would suffer just as he had made the peoples of Prussia and Lithuania suffer.

As the Pagans departed and left him for dead in a circle of mangled bodies, he prayed.
He begged and pleaded his Lord to save him, to grant him a miracle so that he may exact vengeance on the Pagans.A vengeance that would allow his comrades and brothers in arms to rest in peace, a vengeance that would see the Lithuanians and Prussians wiped away from the earth like the blasphemous vermin that he saw them as.
He received no response, and as he continued to slowly bleed dry, he lost hope.
He lost faith, he lost his trust and loyalty to God.
The same God he worshipped and praised day in and day out.
The same God whom he had spent year after year fighting for and defending his church.
Was this his reward?
To be taunted and tormented and bled like a pig by a band of villanous, barbaric pagans?

As the sun dropped from sight and the skies grew dark, Gunther Hauserkurst, on the void of death, renounced God, casting aside his faith and purging his love and loyalty to The Lord whom he had fought and died for day by day for over a decade.
He spat and cursed to the skies, declaring to forever despise his creator whom had left him and ignored his cries for a miracle as he lay bleeding to death in the deep wilderness of Germany.

It was then that, upon hearing his denouncement and his curses towards The Lord that the Evil One, Beelzebub, or Lucifer, the fallen angel came before Hauserkurst, offering him eternal life and an escape from death as well as a way to exact the most spiteful of vengeance against the god who had abandoned him.

Without hesitation, the dying knight agreed and accepted the terms and commandments of this bargain.

Gunther Hauserkurst would live for all of eternity and received a black blessing of some of the greatest and most wicked of powers that the fires of hell had to offer.

But their was a great price to pay.
He could never again walk in the light of the sun, he was cursed as a beast of the night, a "prince of darkness."
He would be dead not not dead, a hellish demon that occupied the space of the living and could coexist with the living themselves.
He would be cursed to forever feed upon the blood of the living, forced to murder and drain dry the children of God of all of their precious blood.
A terrible beast, a corrupted product of the Black Pit, a monster.