Octavian

Octavian is very old. While he looks to be in his seventies, he's much, much older than that, by millennia. He is intimately familiar with the world behind the world, having lived in it for most of his extended life. He probably knows more about our world's best kept secrets than any living person.

As the bastard son of a Roman emperor, talent and nepotism groomed him to become a high-ranking officer in Rome's army. His father - drunk on Lilith's promises of power and willing to dance to all her whims - raised the boy as a sun worshipper who would do anything for the glory of Rome and his god.

Octavian, too, shared a bed with Lilith, who seduced him as she had seduced so many men - and women - of power. As a senior officer in the army, he became her rising star and champion. When Lilith wanted Transylvania dug up in her search of the abysmal power buried below, she sent Octavian and his men.

He would soon learn that Lilith was not a patient mistress. Only a few years after arriving, she made him dismiss most of the soldiers and all the servants, leaving only a single centuria. Impossible woman, she demanded both urgency and discretion! They were to focus on digging for whatever was cocooned beneath the mountains, and, she made frightfully clear, they were to succeed.

As they dug deeper into the soil and hacked away at the bedrock, the soldiers slowly changed, becoming more and more obsessed with their task. Many of them skipped sleep and food and dug till their hacks and shovels broke. Then, discarding the useless tools, they continued with their bare hands, soon calloused, soon a bloody pulp.

One person remained unaffected by whatever madness came over the soldiers - Octavian. Rather than being corrupted by the force underneath, he saw the insanity for what it was. This sick toil, he realised, had to stop. He tried to halt the digging, commanding his men to step away, to return to their tents and rest, for the love of hygiene, to at least clean and dress their blood-tattered hands! But the men would not stop, not even to relieve themselves. When he tried to pull them from this cursed place, his men, spurred on by mad fervour, attacked him.

Going against all the vows of honour he had made, Octavian fought his own men - his brothers-in-arms - to the death. Even in their blind rage and physical exhaustion they were still trained fighters, and even with his perfected skills, his odds were slim.

Though mortally wounded in the battle, he triumphed - if it can be called that, to be surrounded by the corpses of friends and brothers. To make matters worse Lilith, his mistress and commander, came to crush his weary soul like a boulder of fury.

Octavian, overcome with grief and horror over what he had done, was ready to fall on his sword, but Lilith denied him that last honour. By going against her orders, he had not only failed his mission, but also betrayed her. She told him that if death was what he wanted, the only fitting punishment was life - the more of it, the better. And so she cursed him to suffer in eternity.

He would remember that day forever.

Octavian's days were filled with self-disgust, his sleepless nights haunted by waking nightmares. He wished for nothing but the end. But the embers of good burned within him. Merely a year later, he was given a new purpose, a chance to redeem himself.

The once proud officer of the Roman Army was approached by the Eight - a mysterious and extremely powerful group with interests that opposed the maker of his misery. Finally he had a reason to stand straight - against everything Lilith stood for. They saw great potential in his character and recruited him to their cause, teaching him about Gaia and preparing him for the inevitable war.

Over the past two thousand years, Octavian has travelled the world, but he always returns to Transylvania. It was here he swore an oath to the Eight, it was here he stood alongside Vlad III Dracula - both during the rise and the fall. It was here he lived through and resisted Mara's rule. And it was here that his faith in humanity was first shaken.

In the last few years, he's increasingly come to question humanity's future and right to exist on this earth. Octavian is, above all else, very tired. Sometimes it is just aching weariness in the limbs, and others it is weariness with living. He is tired of fighting a seemingly impossible fight against both the deep-rooted enemies of mankind and mankind's own ferocious folly. As one of the Eight, he is dedicated to protecting Gaia - not humanity - and every eternal day he is a witness to the Earth's ravaging by greed and ignorance.

He no longer believes that the war can be won.

To Octavian, the time of heroics has passed, and now he sees himself only as a murderer, living forever with the blood of his brothers on his hands - just as Lilith intended when she cursed him.

He made the right decision when he fought his men, but, as Octavian has learned, not all right decisions can be easily forgiven. He no longer sees any worth in his actions - neither those of the past nor the present. He has become a depressed yet ferocious old man, ruminating on the nature of evil and boredom. When one is so blood-stained and jaded, it is difficult to find anything worth saving.