Richard Francis Burton Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton was a 19th century adventurer and ritualist who joined Faction Paradox and became known as Father Abdullah . Biography . Richard Francis Burton was born in 1821 to a bloodline connected to the Grand Families . After he studied at the University of Oxford , the Star Chamber recruited him as a field agent and sent him to Bombay in 1843 , where he began a lifelong interest in esoteric Eastern ritual s . He became highly skilled in the use of tantric techniques of time control and was even able to bi - locate at will . He complemented these ritual abilities with a great skill at blending into cultures , which he practiced by performing a hajj to Mecca and Medina and spending time in the “ Great Game ” in India . However , he quickly grew to disdain his " superiors " in the Star Chamber . ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) On a trip to Arabia to investigate rumours of Mal ' akh activity , Burton was inducted into Faction Paradox by an older version of himself . He then summoned the Lady of the Last Night and obtained " The Thousand and Second Night " . ( PROSE : " Head of State " ) From that point on , Faction Paradox used him as a double agent in the Star Chamber . In 1845 , Star Chamber agent Sir Charles Napier became aware that a small group of young British army officers under his command had begun to dabble in tantric rituals in the backroom of male brothel s in Karachi . These rituals were causing localised disruptions and attracting the attention of some unpleasant daevas , so Burton was ordered to put a stop to them . During the ritual , a young boy died and the summoning unleashed at least one full - blood Mal ' akh . It was captured for study and transported to the Stack s of the Eleven - Day Empire , but not before it killed the officers , half the occupants of the brothel , and three Cousins of Faction Paradox . Despite discovering Burton ’ s double agent status , Napier buried the night ’ s events to preserve his own career ; however , parts of the story were still eventually leaked , irreparably harming Burton ’ s later career . Lord Byron may have been involved , sparking the enmity that would later blossom between the two . Most importantly , this encounter with the grotesque inspired Burton ’ s studies into the vampire lore of Africa and the East that would consume most of his later life . He was a known associate of Bram Stoker , and his knowledge may have contributed to the mythology of Stoker ’ s famous novel " Dracula " . In 1857 , the Star Chamber sent Burton on his final mission to investigate the interior of Africa alongisde John Hanning Speke and to find the Mountains of the Moon , the ancestral home of these Mal ’ akh . The official story told that they were searching for the source of the River Nile , and to this end they discovered Lakes Tanganyika and Nyanza ; however , Burton ’ s private journals described their journeys beyond Tanganyika into the Mountains . They suffered many bouts of illness in these travels , and the journals describe Speke ’ s delirious ravings about bestial winged demons . However , perhaps with the help of Faction Paradox guides , they discovered the remains of the High Place and returned to Britain . Unfortunately , weakened mentally from the trip , Speke became obsessed with revisiting the Mal ’ akh city and threatened to tell the Royal Geographical Society not only about the Star Chamber ' s secret history but also about Burton ' s connection to Faction Paradox . Burton tried to diffuse the situation by moving the debate to a public forum and framing it as a disagreement over the source of the Nile , but Faction Paradox sent Byron to preemptively assassinate Speke . On 15 September 1864 , Byron bi - located to Speke ’ s estate to try to prevent the assassination , but he arrived too late to stop the shooting , instead simply accusations that he ’ d been seen in the area ( despite being present at a meeting in Bath at the time ) . More than the shooting itself , the fact that Byron defamed Speke ’ s memory by framing the assassination as a suicide provoked Burton to challenge and defeat Byron in a duel . In 1890 , Burton faked his own death and moved to the Eleven - Day Empire , adopting the name of Father Abdullah . There , he continued his feud with Byron , the two sitting on opposite sides of the Eleven - Day Empire ’ s Parliament for decades . Abdullah became the Faction ’ s foremost expert concerning the Mal ’ akh , proposing an extensive hypothesis that the Great Houses had such a paranoid reaction to Grandfather Paradox ’ s armour was not due to any kind of implied paradox , but instead its suggestion of a hidden truth : the truth that during their war , the Great Houses deliberately infected their own biodata with the Yssgaroth taint to give themselves fast - healing abilities . Rather than coming from an ” oxbow lake ” in the river of time , as the Houses and the Faction would like to believe , the Mal ’ akh are failed Homeworld experiments or – even worse – future versions of the Houses ’ agents , finally overcome by the Yssgaroth taint . This theory proved universally unpopular and was suppressed by the Faction . Michael Brookhaven made the film " The Silver Mountain " based on Burton ' s life . ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) Writings . Burton ’ s talent for understanding languages like Arabic and Sanskrit allowed him to understand volumes that had never been read by a westerner , and he used this to make translations of many texts . He notably translated and published the Arabian Nights , " Vikram and the Vampire " , and all three of the East ’ s most erotic texts , the Ananga - Ranga , the Kama Sutra , and The Perfumed Garden . These three contained several passages relating to the conjuring of demons . Other ritual - erotic texts , which pertained to the suspension of time and the opening of pathways , became foundational texts for later Faction scholars . Burton added significantly to the " Liber Sanguisugarum " , which he took into his possession some time after 1861 ; he claimed that it contained all the knowledge ever needed to combat the Mal ' akh . One entry translated an obscure Sanskrit passage to say , " They hold whatever form suits their purpose best , but should they wish to seem fair to our eyes , they must feed upon the blood of man . Should they of necessity feed upon each other , then their curse is laid bare for all to see . " Another entry , inspired by his experiences at High Point , coined the term " grotesque " . Burton took the " Liber Sanguisugarum " with him to the Eleven - Day Empire , where it , along with most of his work concerning the Mal ' akh , was sealed away by his superiors . In the Eleven - Day Empire , Abdullah wrote and annotated extensive records . For instance , he added marginal notes speculating about the Faction ’ s response to the Clockwork Ouroboros attack in 1834 ; ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) he also wrote an account called " An Account of Some Travels in the Arabian Desert " describing his induction into the Faction and his dealings with the Lady of the Last Night . ( PROSE : " Head of State " ) He wrote in a neat but exceptionally small handwriting that his biographers considered a living nightmare to decipher . Unfortunately , most of Burton ’ s works were lost . First , his massive collection of Oriental manuscripts , books , and journals were inflamed in the burning of Grindlay ' s Warehouse in the spring of 1861 . The lost journals included most of his notes on the physiological manipulation of time , erotic techniques in summoning rituals , and the anatomy of exotic grotesque s , as well as the full account of his journey to the Mountains of the Moon . Then , most of his remaining work was burned after his “ death ” by his staunchly Catholic wife Isabel Burton , who was shocked by the sexual rituals ( PROSE : " The Book of the War " ) and wished to save fellow Christian s from sin . This was particularly upsetting to Burton , since she had been nothing but a friend and a supporter during his “ worldly life ” . However , he quickly retrieved the ashes of the documents from his wife ’ s home , and , using a memecatcher , he was able to capture the lingering ideas and preserve the information . As a result , though his works were unavailable to those of the 20th century , many were “ rediscovered ” in the 21st . One work he deliberately chose to not rescue was his translation of " The Thousand and Second Night " , which he had come to understand as propaganda designed by the Lady of the Last Night to sway readers in the War . However , he feared that someone else would use the loa s to reconstitute a copy . Indeed , the book resurfaced in the 21st century and inspired Dave Lawson to assassinate President Matt Nelson . ( PROSE : " Head of State " )