"In all of my efforts to preserve my own legacy, I may have very well doomed it for all eternity. Though I cannot say it is truly my fault for becoming such a depraved yet spectacular being, I was pushed to the edge by something more 'inhuman' than what I have become. It is to you that I entrust this knowledge of my long and arduous past, and I pray that you may never befall the fate that has been thrust upon myself." -Edward Richtofen

As a child I had always wondered what exactly went on during the night, though many of the priests of the church had warned that only evil lurks I had to see for myself in order to truly believe their pious words. At the tender age of twelve my wanderlust took hold one fateful November night, when the moon was its fullest and the air was crisp between the bare trees of the coming winter. My mother and father as well as my little sister were fast asleep, but I was wide awake wandering through the twisted trees of the forest lit only by ivory light. With quiet footsteps I traversed the damp, leafy ground and explored the foreign woods of the night. Nocturnal creatures greeted my trespassing with hoots and cricks along with the ocassional, yet far flung howl of the wolves miles away from where I was.

A brief and hushed conversation graced my ears and my curiosity peaked, who could possibly be out here (other than myself) at such a late hour? My questions were soon answered as I carefully hid myself behind a group of trees and watched as a congregation of ragged men stood at a small clearing. They wore tunics of simple folk, ruddy cloth trousers, and more than enough wore no boots or slippers at all. What would these men be doing in the middle of the woods on such a night? Thinking back to all the stories I had heard about the "Devil servants of the night" it got me wondering which kinds of "servants" they were.

Their clothing helped me narrow down the options and their rough appearances gave me the correct answer just before the real scary stuff started to happen. Piercing howls and cries of pain screamed out into the November night air as the men all writhed in agony, their bodies contorting into misshapen twists and angles. Their faces elongated into inhuman porportions and formed into wolvish snarls and grins, their pale skins turned to rough-hewn fur and eyes turned feral like a wild beast's. Werewolves they were, wild, dangerous, and horrifying aspects of ferocity and for my young mind the shock of seeing this terrorizing transformation was too much.

I remember waking up back home in my parent's bedroom with my father glaring daggers into my very soul. Father was a man of great, intimidating bearing and I immediately succumbed to fear even though he hadn't even voiced his displeasure with my sneaking out. He and I looked a lot alike, but by no means did we think alike. Father was a man of the church, believing in the Bible word for word and he could care less what his "Godless son" had to say about anything especially the "far-fetched fantasies of a boy that would never grow up to be a man of any worth".

I was punished severely for my deviation, but a few lashings of a horse whip was nothing compared to what I was forced to do at the church. Verdammt how I hated going to church, not that I didn't believe in God or anything (which sometimes I don't), but the damned churches were always so hypocritical. Praying for the poor and the needy and preaching their warnings to do good deeds "so that you may be pure in the eyes of our Lord and Saviour" whilst they built lavish churches gilded in gold and decked in marble and waged war on those who dared question the authority of God or the church. Never did I voice those opinions outloud, such an outburst would have surely costed me my life.

There at the church I was forced to copy scriptures and psalms in order to "renounce my coming heresy and to get God to forgive my sins by writing his holy words". Complete crap, that's what I thought of it and I was never happier to get that out of the way. To say the least my childhood was not the best, even though my family was quite wealthy I was never the prized child. That's why my father was always trying for another son to take my place, with some dark luck he never succeeded on account of my mother, after having Angelica (my sister) had rendered her infertile. Even my mother was not kind to me, when father was gone she was as bad as him, setting strict schedules and limiting my curious mind to the solemn and boorish words of the Bible as father often did.

My education, however, was the highlight of my young life, learning mathematics and alchemy which would later be known as science was a pure delight to me. This was a red herring to my parent's both of which were convinced during my early teens that I had completely forsaken God and turned to heresy as a slave to Satan's will. They tormented me in the only way they knew would work, they punished me by sending me to church and doing the duties of the monks. It was a grave mistake that eventually pushed my teenage mind over the brink and thus led to their deaths. A hot, July midnight and a few rugged outlaws taking refuge in the forest were all I needed to cover my deed from being pinned onto me.

After all I was asleep with my fellow monks-in-training when the blaze consumed my home and the flames devoured my ungrateful parents or so everyone in the town thought. My sister Angelica lived due to the fact that she was visiting the home of another noble family in the town on the other side of the river (my father had insisted on getting her to marry at an early age due to my "shortcomings"). This was the perfect time to fake my enlightenment to the words of God and repent against my previous heresy. That got me out of the church's regiment and let me live a life of my own and I took the only way I knew that I could. I left my hometown for the rare establishments of learning in the country.

It was at the age of sixteen that I started to realize just how much the church would meddle in my affairs once more. Tensions had been rising in the Holy Land for many years now and that set off one of the most brutal and one-sided campaigns in human history, the Crusades. And yes, I was forced to fight for God, because I was a healthy young man and it was "my duty to fight the heretics in the Holy Lands". With the last of my inheritance money and weight of my noble name I was able to prolong the inevitable for quite some time, but it was inevitable after all and I was carted to the Middle East. It was there that the steps to my "transformation" began even if I didn't realize it at the time.

"Ah, yes so you see my childhood is a bit different than yours, hmm? That's the least of it just think of all the things I've seen in my 'lifetime' and imagine just how much I really know." -Edward Richtofen