KONSTANTIN HEISSTURM CHRONOLOGY
1954 – Kurtis’ grandfather Gerhardt Heissturm, is hunted down and killed by Eckhardt and the Cabal. [Gerhardt was present as a young man at the ‘accidental’ release of Eckhardt by Allied bombers in 1945.]
Kurtis’ father Konstantin, age 21, inherits his father’s Lux Veritatis role as Adept as well a number of talismanic items such as the Periapt Shards and various other arcane LV weapons & artefacts of immense potency. Only a properly trained Adept can make use of these items effectively.
From this point on Konstantin is a target for the Cabal’s murderous attacks trying to totally eradicate the Lux Veritatis, regain the Shards and capture the LV artefacts. There are only a few surviving Lux Veritatis Adepts and these wage a constant war with Eckhardt and the Cabal. The world at large knows nothing of this ‘Shadow War’ fought in the dark corners of history.
1966 – Konstantin, age 33, meets an American Navajo Indian, Marie Cornel. She is a specialist on Shamanism and the Way of the Warrior and is on a lecture tour of Europe. She gets caught in the crossfire of a Cabal assault against Konstantin but proves to have unexpected innate powers that enable the attack to be defeated. As the couple exchange details about their unusual family histories they come to realise that they have a surprising amount in common due to their atypical upbringings. After a whirlwind romance she returns to the States…for now.
NB. Marie Cornel’s father, Jefferson Cornel, was one of the U.S. Marine officers who worked as a Navajo Code Talker during WW II, which goes some way to explaining her roots and possibly her unusual ‘abilities’. From her earliest years she had shown a specialist interest in the mysterious Shadow Walkers, the Watchers or Grigori of the Chumash and Tongva Indians and had experiences which triggered a limited telekinesis and the ability to ‘farsee’.
1969 – On a Lux Veritatis mission against the Cabal’s forces Konstantin arrives in the US. He seeks out Marie Cornel. Whilst visiting the Anasazi ruins of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico they get attacked and have to wipe out a scavenger pack of Cabal agents. Shortly after that Konstantin and Marie get secretly married in a desert tribal ceremony. For the next few years they move back and forth between the States and Europe.
1972 – KURTIS IS BORN 26/06/72.
Konstantin (age 39x) takes Marie to a secure Lux Veritatis bolthole beneath the Utah Salt Flats and Kurtis is born. As soon as they can travel Kurtis and his mother go into hiding whilst Konstantin makes return trips to the European continent to pursue the ‘Shadow War’.
There are skirmishes in remote and centralised parts of the world between LV and the Cabal in which the dark Alchemist makes a great deal of use of his sinister Glove[see document: The Glove Wars]. Konstantin has long since mastered use of the arcane LV weapons he inherited, all of which Eckhardt wants in his control. No one except a trained LV can use them effectively but the Black Alchemist wants all such dangerous artefacts captured & buried to prevent their being used against him or his henchmen/agents. These weapons are:
- the Chirugai
- the Irenfolm
- the Irenscyld and
- the Culcrys, all forged from sky-steel or meteorite iron.
1976 – Kurtis and his mother spend a year in Scotland in hiding whilst Konstantinfends off a particularly vicious campaign to wipe out the last elders of the Lux Veritatis. The battle centres on the underground cities of Anatolia in central Turkey where Eckhardt appears to be holed up. But it is an elaborate trap. Only six LV Adepts now survive, apart from Konstantin.
1988 – Kurtis, age 16x, continues his intense Lux Veritatis training and passes through all of the initiate stages under the remaining six Adepts. All that remains is for him to gain the extensive experience in the field needed to hone his innate & highly trained abilities. His father is absent for several years on covert missions for the Lux Veritatis.
1991 – At age 19 Kurtis rebels and runs away to join the Foreign Legion. He wants no part of the ‘Shadow War’. At this stage only three LV Adepts still survive, apart from his father – if Konstantin is indeed still alive!
For the next ten years occasional word reaches Kurtis that his father is still alive and active against the Cabal but he is unable to reconcile the differences between them. He never sees his father alive again. [He does however come across his father’s preserved remains in a grotesque waxwork exhibition in a later game. This travesty is in one of Luther Rouzic’s trophy displays in a Cabal protected vault.]
2001 – Konstantin (age 68x) is finally cornered and murdered by Cabal forces in Iceland.
Marie Cornel was in the States, under cover, when Konstantin received news that she was being stalked by a Cabal Extreme Action Squad at a site in Iceland. The message contained the word ‘Keppi’ in runes, a code name they used between them. Marie had previously carried out a dig at this location within an ancient chamber below the extinct Snaefellsjökull volcano. This subterranean site is an immense labyrinth of tunnels and caverns that penetrate deep into the Earth’s mantle concealing many domes of immense size, sealed away and complete with their own environments. Nothing in there has seen the light of day for millennia.
Konstantin knew that Marie Cornel had once spent months at this location searching for a Baetyl, a meteoric stone of unpredictable or magical qualities. As he had no reason to doubt that she was in great peril he departed as quickly as he could extract himself from his current anti-Cabal operation on the edge of the Baltic.
At the time Konstantin had been running his Baltic action on a Cabal outpostaccompanied by a potential Lux Veritatis apprentice for whom he had high hopes; an 18x year old called Annessa Chimoya*. When news concerning his wife’s imminent jeopardy reached him he departed in haste, leaving Chimoya behind, and arrived at Vesturhorn in Iceland in record time. But he had neglected to carry out all his habitual checks; possibly age had something to do with it. He had been battling the forces of darkness hell bent on eradicating all Lux Veritatis for decades now and the unremitting strain of working alone was taking its toll. Possibly the great man was wearying. Possibly he felt weighed down with the suspicion that the Lux Veritatis was losing the long drawn out Shadow War. Whatever the full explanation, somehow, his most essential & potent weapon, the Chirugai, was missing! Had Chimoya had anything to do with it?
[The Periapt Shards were in safe keeping at a secret location under powerful protection overseen by Marie. Quite where the Culcrys was at this stage was anyone’s guess.]
At Vesturhorn Konstantin was met by Captain Larks Ullsgarth and his brother Stellan Ullsgarth, both ex-forces. They had been of assistance to Marie Cornel on her previous forays into the labyrinth’s depths. He agreed that they might accompany him as guides.
Once within the labyrinth they were cornered by Cabal forces laying in wait and led by an adept Alchemist, Allacord Siglum. This shadowy character had been waiting to gain membership of Eckhardt’s inner Cabal circle by eliminating his competitors for the position. He had constructed this elaborately contrived ruse to wipe out the last of the Lux Veritatis in order to prove his suitability for inclusion in the ranks of the Cabal.
Unfortunately the Ullsgarth brothers were also part of Siglum’s convoluted conspiracy and Konstantin understood too late how he had been misled. It was then that he realised the Chirugai was absent from his side-pack and in its place was the Irenscyld. This oversight was a sure sign of how distracted he was by fear for his wife’s safety.
Still armed as he was with Irenfolm and Irenscyld he fought his way into the lower regions to where he thought Marie was holding the ferocious forces at bay. In the end the enormity of the plan laid against him became apparent and his LV weaponry proved unable to cope with Siglum’s assembled cohorts and the treachery of those who might have proved to be allies.
After a titanic mêlée in the subterranean tunnels Konstantin was finally taken down and his LV weapons fell into Cabal hands. But not the Chirugai, much to Siglum’s incandescent fury. No one knew where it was.
[See docs on how Annessa Chimoya took the Chirugai but immediately lost it in a murderous battle between the LV and the Cabal. The story of how the Chirugai finally got into Kurtis’ hands is a long story in its own right involving Marie Corneland an Amerindian warrior adept, Chingacha Red Hand.
This tragic fall of the last great LV master was Kurtis’ wake up call and on receiving the Chirugai a while later, he went after Eckhardt on a vengeance mission. With the terrifying discus-like weapon forged generations ago from meteorite alloy and one of the Periapt Shards to give him the edge he has made Eckhardt his personal project. And it will get merciless. Kurtis is now the only living full LV initiate and descendant of a true bloodline that goes back to the Knights Templar (although there may be someone else who…but that’d be spoiling things…!).
NOTES.
: Irenfolm – Iron Hand
: Irenscyld – Iron Shield
: Culcrys – SpearAxe
: Chirugai – Surgical Measures
NB.
· Annessa Chimoya* had clandestinely positioned herself as closely as possible to Konstantin to infiltrate his support network and in order to observe his use of LV techniques. Being trusted with the storage and protection for certain LV artefacts she had cunningly switched around two of the weapons-casks containing Konstantin’s arcane weapons, the Irenscyld and the Chirugai, which were roughly the same size and weight although their handling required distinctly different skill sets. She also hid another of the sky-steel weapons, the Culcrys intending to return and take possession of it at a later date.
· With Konstantin distracted by his fear for his wife’s safety Chimoya succeeded in making off with the Chirugai weapons-cask secreted in a reinforced titanium vasculum but in her flight she became caught up in a massive LV-Cabal sea battle in which she was brutally wounded and captured. The Chirugai weapons-cask sank into the deep coastal waters off Gotland. Chimoya’s terrible fate at the hands of Eckhardt and subsequent involvement in the Shadow War are detailed in another document.
NB.
After treacherously eliminating his own brother, Captain Larks Ullsgarth of the Foreign Legion, Stellan Ullsgarth later became one of the reformed new Cabal under Karel, as did Allacord Siglum and Clarice Lanreath [game II The Lost Dominion].
NB.
Allacord Siglum* was a bloodline descendant of the medieval alchemist savant Arne Saknussemm, a contemporary of Niccolo Machiavelli and Pieter van Eckhardt back in the 1400’s. No record exists of Saknussemm birth date but he was thought to have attained considerable years due to his alchemical researches. Like Eckhardt he did not appear to age, a condition which required many relocations and changes of identity for both of them. His collaboration with Pieter van Eckhardt and the demonologist Juan de Gruas in the creation of a certain set of satanic paintings (later know as the Obscura Paintings) brought him into ill-favour with the civil and religious authorities of the day and he fled Europe for a number of years.
By the late 1400’s Saknussemm had acquired a reputation as a great traveller and magus and was believed to have found a doorway into the deepest nether regions of the world where he had discovered previously unknown creatures and secrets of science and arcane philosophical significance. His achievements were later fictionalised by Jules Verne in his imaginative work Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.
Saknussemm’s works were burned by the Inquisition in Copenhagen in 1573. He was recorded to have been burned alive around the same time but a rumour began that there had been a substitution on the night of his pyre and he had slipped through the Vatican torturers’ hands.
Three days after his immolation-disappearance members of the Inquisitorial Council began to die in the most public and horrific ways. This went on for nine months until every single one of the council and key conspirators involved in Saknussemm’s betrayal were eliminated.
For more on Allacord Siglum* see separate doc:
Allacord Siglum Alchemist, his links to Saknussemm, Eckhardt and the Cabal, the death of Konstantin Heissturm and the Occult Reich.
ALLACORD SIGLUM ALCHEMIST
His links to an alchemist of earlier years.
Allacord Siglum was a twentieth century bloodline descendant of the medieval alchemist Arne Saknussemm. In fact he bore an astonishing resemblance to Saknussemm in ways that most people who understood such matters found deeply disturbing. Saknussemm was an Icelandic savant and explorer who was active in the 1400 – 1500’s and reputedly even as far back as the late 1300’s. After Saknussemm’s works were burned by the Inquisition in Copenhagen in 1573 and he himself evaded burning alive, almost all trace of him vanished.
It was thought that he must have continued his old practice of adopting different names and identities and being constantly on the move to avoid the unwanted attention his apparent lack of ageing inevitably drew to him. There is no definitive record of his activities from that time on or of his eventual demise. But there are some disconcerting appearances, brief and never confirmed, of someone who could have been the Icelandic fugitive in his latter years. Clearly he had taken great care to cloak his continuing work in secrecy, no doubt advancing his great endeavour of alchemical research into the many aspects of dissolution, transfiguration, and resolution – ‘solve et coagulae’ as the ancients would have it.
Throughout the centuries there have been alchemists of vastly differing abilities whose work was misunderstood and they all gained much ill repute, deserved or not. Some would appear to have modelled themselves on the mysterious and long absent Saknussemm. Cases are recorded where it was claimed that signature features identified in disturbing portraits and engravings were those of the gaunt faced Icelandic renegade thought to have perished in the sixteenth century. But of course this was all the merest supposition.
Such beliefs and theorising gave substance to the dark fables of Cursed Eternals, the Wandering Jew, the Undying Mage and so on. Several attempts were made to piece together clues that there were certain individuals slipping through the timestreams of history adopting a succession of guises and assumed names to evade detection. Such attempts came to nothing however as those involved would disappear under grim and often grisly circumstances.
Saknussemm’s name occurred frequently in this connection and he was often cited as the prima example of an ‘accursed eternal’, a long lived creature aged far beyond the normal requirement or desires of everyday humanity. From time to time such an accursed one would surface beneath the lens of history only to disappear again leaving no discernable trace.
1930’s and 1940’s
Allacord Siglum, or at least an ominous individual using that name, made his first appearance during the tumultuous 1930-40’s upheavals in Germany. His origins were obscure and his presence created quite a stir amongst the upper echelons of the Nazi party who were becoming increasingly engaged in all kinds of occult investigations and insane rituals.
His name was hinted at in reports by British Intelligence linked to disturbing practices in certain concentration camps and the Georg Helser conspiracy to assassinate Hitler at the Bürgerbraukeller in 1939. It was the failure of this ill conceived plot which led to Hitler’s increased popularity and eventual election as the German Chancellor. Siglum was also named in association with the arrival at the Berlin Unterwelten complex of a consignment of Tibetan mummified corpses amongst many other exotic and abstruse items. Construction of this vast labyrinth of bunkers had begun in 1937 with a ‘mystical’ Baetyl foundation stone delivered by Siglum and laid by Hitler himself.
1945
Beyond that Siglum’s name crops up repeatedly in intelligence reports on the Occult Reich. One puzzling event is worthy of note: he seems to have been key in a misdirected Allied bombing raid which took place over a remote region on the Czech German border in 1945. Quite why the bombing of Schloss Kriegler was of strategic importance to the Nazi party at the very end of the war has never been properly explained.
Further traces of his activities were linked to a list of shadowy projects with names such as:
- Zwei Länder (Two Domains)
- Fleisch Materiums Konstrukt (Flesh Math Construct)
- Eiszeit Festung (Ice Era Fortress)
- Das Dunkle Welten Program (Dark Worlds Programme)
- Gehirnkabinetprodukt (Brain Cabinet Product)
- Zweites Reich Program (Second Domain Programme)
- Fleischantwort (Flesh Answer-retort)
- Lebendegehirnmachine or Bewussteskabinet (living calculus engine)
Whether these were linked or distinct projects never became clear because, once again, nothing substantial could be confirmed due to the agents connected with the reports simply vanishing without a trace, sometimes an entire network – gone overnight. What was pieced together about several of these projects was Siglum’s involvement in Hidalgo-Zennikco Transport, a large haulage firm working for the Nazi war effort. The company was contracted to transport immense amounts of archaeological material and artefacts to the Berlin Unterwelten Complex from all over the world. Routes extended as far as Anatolia, Tibet, the Far East, Egypt, Scandinavia and the Eastern Baltic states.
As the war progressed the number of overland convoys did not diminish though it was noticed that larger and larger amounts of equipment and personnel were being diverted to ports serving maritime convoys. Three of these housed fleets of specially constructed Uber Submarines or Ubermarinekraft, which were capable of covering vast distances under water. The models identified were classed as Unterschalenkraft (exact meaning unclarified; Shell Craft?).
Oddly none of these Unterschalenkraft were ever involved in sinking Allied supply ships or sighted on the open oceans. What they were used for was clandestine transport, presumably for the materials amassed within the Berlin Unterwelten labyrinth and now being relocated. But where?
One exception to this was an Australian Polar vessel which reported sighting the conning tower of a submarine craft of unusual configuration. This was close to the 60 degree southerly latitude. Its heading was due south which, if continued, would bring it to landfall on Antarctica. The Polar vessel, the Orion Fuwalda, was never heard from again. No further light was ever thrown on the Ghost ship, its destination or its fate.
OBSCURE TECHNOLOGIES.
What is beyond dispute is Siglum’s connection to activities carried on in more than one of the concentration camps. The kinds of horrors perpetrated within these abominable places are on record but even after the Allied and Russian liberation of the camps evidence of some of the worst abominations was considered too shocking to be made public.
In the early 1940’s fragmentary reports by a Polish intelligence cell kept mentioning something called Das Fleisch Materiums Konstrukt (Flesh Math Construct). The implications of these incomplete transmissions were too appalling to contemplate and frankly beyond belief. Mention of a ‘living calculus engine’ or Bewussteskabinet prototyped in the concentration camps excited initial interest, then disbelief. Things weren’t helped by the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the Polish cell.
The camps in question were known to have been involved in breeding experiments, amongst other horrors, and something understood to mean genetic vivisection, though often the terms used were either intentionally bland or deliberately obscure. It is to be noted that details of all such reports were routed to Bletchley Park in the UK where all trace of the reports promptly disappeared behind a barricade of Top Secret classifications. Every hint or whisper of their existence was simply stone-walled and buried. At the same time any possible disclosures were threatened with the harshest possible sanctions and reprisals. Loose talk costs lives – possibly yours!
However, in the absence of verifiable facts about these dark projects surmise amongst the intelligence community was rife. No sanctions however brutal could prevent lively minds from conjecture and imaginations ran riot. At the very end of the conflict in Europe horrors that were filmed and paraded in public were almost beyond belief. How much worse must the gruesome findings of the secret Nazi Dunkle Welten programmes have been to require such rigorous cover-ups? The possibilities were enough to make the skin crawl. It would seem that no grotesque idea that could be dredged up from the imaginations of these unhinged monsters was beyond their boundless and perverted ingenuity; they would conceive and attempt anything.
And as always the shadowy figures most responsible would not be the ones to appear in any court trial. Whatever involvement Allacord Siglum had in these atrocities it was as if he simply evaporated like mist, rather like the Geister Flotille Unterschalenkraft, Ghost Fleets themselves.
Time and the seas swallowed everything up.
MORE CONTEMPORARY EVENTS.
A shadowy figure, Allacord Siglum, is known to have been involved in the elimination of Lux Veritatis elder Konstantin Heissturm beneath an extinct volcano in Iceland. This enigmatic individual had been vying for several years to gain membership of Eckhardt’s inner Cabal circle and had advanced his claim by ruthlessly eliminating all competitors for the position. When Konstantin was finally taken down, Siglum gained possession of two valuable Lux Veritatis weapons. But he was incensed to discover that the particular LV weapon he most sought to get his hands on, the Chirugai, was not with the murdered adept. No trace of it could be found.
The next time the Chirugai came to the Cabal’s attention it was in the possession of Konstantin’s son, an enigmatic individual named Kurtis Trent, who was known to have changed his name years before and absented himself from the ranks of the Shadow War. The possibility that he might even be deceased had been considered for a while. It soon became evident that the young inheritor of the LV Chirugai weapon was hell bent on hunting and eliminating not only those who had murdered his father but had his sights set on Eckhardt, the Dark Alchemist himself.
[For more details see document on Konstantin Heissturm.]
Notes on the Angel of Darkness story written by Murti Schofield.
