Professor Abraham Van Helsing

[Omni]

[float=right][/float]Location/Role: Abraham Van Helsing serves a variety of roles for the populace of the Pale Moors. A philosopher, scholar and a medical doctor, Van Helsing has been at the forefront when it comes to documenting the degeneration of the Moors from an idyllic marshland to a place where nightmares are real and demons still walk aboveground. He also spreads medicine to the pockets of civilization that exist outside the sanctuary of Darkshire. When not studying demonology tomes or tending to the sick and injured, Van Helsing is out in the Moors, working to ‘cleanse’ them of the taint of evil. He will not commonly work with strangers unless he has been able to properly vet them. After all, his work and his seemingly personal hatred of Dracula has made him the number one target

Story: Compared to many of the various personalities that roam the Omniverse, Van Helsing’s past is strangely tame, despite his ‘side job.’

Born in the spring of 1847 in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Van Helsing was a member of an affluent family. His nascent years in Amsterdam and his family’s rural estates were iddlyic, with the young Abraham enrolling in the University of Amsterdam at the age of fourteen. He soon transferred to the University of Berlin, where he would obtain a PhD by the age of eighteen and a Doctorate of Letters by age twenty.

As the barely adult Abraham began to publish works on both mundane issues of philosophy and rhetoric, he also started to pursue a bizarre new interest—the occult. Under a pseudonym, he published several various accounts of the supernatural. All the while, he completed a medical degree within three years. As a doctor, he traveled across Europe, using his profession as both a reason to help the downtrodden but to also pursue his less publicized interests.

With his medical skills, Abraham volunteered as a physician in the Franco-Prussian War, where he was first exposed to the horrors of armed conflict. Although technically a medical officer, he used his period traveling with the victorious Prussian army to hone his own combat skills. He became proficient with various tricks of the trade during his months in France and northern Germany. After the war, Helsing traveled to East Prussia and the Baltic region, where he gained his first experience fighting the supernatural.

Van Helsing’s fame, however, wouldn’t reach its pinnacle until events drew him to southeastern Europe. During the Russo-Turkish War, Van Helsing served with the Russian and Romanian armies, continuing his role as a field surgeon and doctor. Despite serving a noble cause, Van Helsing spent his nights hunting the creatures of the night. Over the course of the war, Abraham made a personal enemy of a particularly vicious ‘breed’ of supernatural monsters—the vampires. These creatures, who masqueraded in the guise of men and women, feasted on the blood of humans. Unlike the mindless creatures he had fought in the forests of eastern Germany, the vampires were smart, savvy, and able to easily manipulate humans.

Seeing the danger, Van Helsing immediately set out to destroy the creatures. Tracing them back to a castle in the Transylvanian Mountains, Abraham slaughtered the fel monsters, leaving nothing the castle but the charred remains of torched corpses. Afterwards, Abraham served out the remainder of the war and returned to Germany, where he married a beautiful young woman who birthed him a daughter. For a decade, the young family lived an idyllic life.

Little did Abraham know, he had failed to destroy one vampire—the leader of the roost. After ten years, this ancient creature tracked down Van Helsing, but rather than murder the man, he took his family. The professor woke up one morning to find his wife dead in their bed next to him, her throat ripped apart by teeth. In the next room, Abraham’s young daughter had been left defiled, tortured, and drained of her blood.

From that day forth, Professor Abraham Van Helsing forsook any attempt to live a normal life. Taking his wife’s cross to wear around his neck, Abraham left Germany for Romania, where he would spend the next eight years scouring the Balkans for traces of the vampire who took his family. He only gave up his hunt when a former college asked him to help tend to his wife, who had started to waste away. Realizing the similarity of the symptoms to those he had seen during the war, Helsing went to London.

It was in London that Abraham realized the same vampire who had murdered his family was tormenting his former student. The two tracked the Romanian count to a mansion, where they dispatched his guards. They found the vampire asleep in his coffin, but as Van Helsing was about to strike the final blow, he was blinded by a white light. When the light faded, the vampire had vanished. An irate Van Helsing torched the mansion and slipped into a somber rage for the next year.

[float=left][/float]At the peak of his downward spiral, Van Helsing awoke one morning, took a swig of brandy, and the next moment, he was in the Omniverse.

Once he regained his bearings, Abraham wandered from the Fountain of Infinity and found himself in the Pale Moors. Once in the Moors, the professor simply continued his previous behavior—drinking and languishing until one day…everything changed. Abraham knew the Moors was a terrible place plagued by monsters, but as he sat in ‘The Pub’ one afternoon, a pack of monsters got through the gates. Hearing the commotion, Van Helsing went outside, and much to his shock, he saw the attackers were vampires.

Feeling renewed vigor as the adrenaline coursed through him, Van Helsing killed all of the creatures, save one. He tortured the final one until he revealed the identity of his master—Count Dracula. From that day forth, Professor Abraham Van Helsing has had renewed purpose and another lease on life. Since then, he has worked tirelessly to purge the Moors of evil and slay Count Dracula.