Traugott Jans

*"There is a terrible darkness descending upon the world, and we shall not see it ended in our lifetimes."*

-Traugott Jans

## History

Traugott Jans was born to a family from the very north of what was once the Reich Nördlich, the men and women of his home remembered the devastation of the war with the Windwalker. Indeed, they remembered when Abi Eodauga of Nadezhda made common cause with the Fuhrer, and led his mages north to fight side by side. The old men of Jans' home, of his father and his grandfather's generations, told stories not of the mage wars, but of the horrors beneath the ice. And so, when Traugott Jans chose to become a Hexenjäger, his choice was met not with pride but with painful indifference. But they understood young Jans, even as they pitied him. He wished to serve all mankind, to honor the Hexenjägers who perished against the abomination. He wished to be a knight in an age of machines, a crusader in an age of peace.

And so, Traugott Jans followed a strange path indeed. It was clear to his instructors that the curious recruit from the far north had a faint distaste regarding the execution of mages. He would do it if asked, but he seemed to deem it beneath him. He was talented and hard-working, a natural leader with a head for logistics and a keen knowledge of the land. And so in time Jans was promoted to the rank of Special Agent, and assigned to an informal *Cursebreaker* task force, disparagingly refereed to as the *Tomb Prospectors* by their detractors. Their purpose was not to hunt people, but objects - artifacts, fortresses, wards, and curses, and to cleanse them of magic. It was inglorious and dangerous work, but taken seriously by the poor souls who undertook it. In his capacity as a curse breaker, Traugott Jans learned a lot, speaking to knowledgeable locals, aged storytellers, and information peddlers alike. He learned more than the the clinical techniques behind the destruction of arcane objects, but about their significance and history. In this search, he learned much about the city of Xiclotl, upon which the Northern Dome had been built - and much as well about the mythic city of Thule, and the Hyperboreans that once dwelt there. He began to put together the Pallid Mask with the demise of Shorden Hiem and the rise of the Church of Transcendental Theosophy, but he had no hard proof. Besides, as far as Traugott Jans was concerned, the north was far more vast and full of mystery than the wildest dreams of the Arendurians could conceive of. The Church and its dreadful King in Yellow were but the tip of the iceburg.

In due course, Traugott Jans was promoted to become Gauletier of the Northern Administrative Zone, a position that was deemed a career-killer. In the circles of Hauptstadt, Jans was mocked as a governor without a people, the administrator of frozen wastes. He paid them no mind, for he and his staff were focused on the Northern Dome and the surrounding lands. It was plain to him that the first two expeditions had failed to uncover any meaningful truth, and may have even caused more harm than good.

How little he knew.

## Personality

Shrewd, curious, and possessed of single-minded focus. Traugott Jans has a clipped and odd sense of humor that clashes with his otherwise serious demeanor, seeming to slip through the cracks of a mask. His ideals are both old-fashioned and unusual. He fancies himself half-knight, half-scientist, and the fact that he is expected to hunt mages seems to escaped him entirely. Traugott Jans is aware of how others perceive him, and has fashioned himself an identity that is both odd and irrelevant, so that others might leave him alone in his work.

## Demise

Traugott Jans led one last, doomed expedition to recover the abandoned Forward Operating Base in the Plateau. His men succumbed to mutation, cannibalism, and finally Wendigo Psychosis. He himself tried to fly back to the Northern Administrative Zone Outpost, but fell grip to the worst of the disease, becoming a Windwalker Wendigo.