[hider=Volkimir Sturmkirk][center][h2][u]Dark Prince of the Shadowlands[/u][/h2]
[h3]Volkimir Sturmkirk[/h3]
Vampire Eldritch Knight

[img]http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/daily/stf/ewdfghjmfklsdhfdjfd.jpg[/img]

A tallish man with the well-balanced build of an experienced warrior, Volkimir Sturmkirk is a striking figure to behold. His features are sharp and angular, balanced by his masculine brow and strong jawline. His eyes are the most distinctive feature of his face; their black sclera and golden, luminous irises are distinctly inhuman, and Volkimir's gaze is piercing and predatory. Sharp, white fangs are revealed whenever he smiles or speaks, and his incisor teeth seem unnaturally sharp and jagged. His hair hangs to the top of his shoulderblades, and is so fair that in most lighting it seems completely white. Volkimir's skin, while usually so pale as to seem translucent, takes on a sickly, ashen hue when exposed to sunlight, stripping away his last disguise of humanity.

While his adornments vary depending upon his company and preoccupation, Volkimir's prefered attire strikes a balance between the practicality of adventuring clothes, the mystique of a dark magician and the regality of a noble knight. A floor-length, ornate leather coat is worn over a enameled, ruby-encrusted breastplate. Engraved armor plates are set into the shoulders and forearms of the coat, the shins of his black, woolen trousers, and the toes of his thick-soled leather boots. His distinctive coat is apparently filled with numerous hidden pockets and compartments, and can deploy a hood to shield him from daylight.[/center]

[b]Actual Age[/b]
While Volkimir appears no older than his late twenties, he is in fact well into his seventh century.

[b]Race[/b]
Volkimir is a Vampire, though he was originally a mere Human.

[b]Gender[/b]
Volkimir is male; his transformation has not changed that much.

[b]Rise to Power[/b]
Legends and myths surrounding the Dark Prince of Schattenwald stretch back several centuries, and vary greatly depending on the region and time period. However, certain facets of the story seem ubiquitous enough to be accepted as truth. Generations ago, the thick forests and jagged mountains of Schattenwald (known by most outsiders as the Shadowlands) were not as dark and profane a place as they are today. The nobility of the land, the high house of Sturmkirk, was well-respected by their courtly peers, and had yet to glimpse the forsaken reputation that they now carry. The tale begins with a famine blighting the fields and forests of Schattenwald; farms became barren lakes of dust, and trees withered to blackened husks. Common folk starved in droves, driving many into despair and madness. The ruling Prince of House Sturmkirk went to great lengths to save his dying people, each more desperate and esoteric than the last. Prayer to the region's guardian angels, invigorating wizardry, and even ritual sacrifice did not turn the tide of death from his lands. As his own wife and sons succumbed to starvation, it is said that the Prince went mad with grief, and sought to cure the famine once and for all by consorting with a demon.

The demon (the specific identity of which greatly debated) was summoned with an offering of mortal blood, but found such a sacrifice to be unworthy of the task requested of him. To save the starving peoples of Schattenwald, he would require the blood of an angel. With a deceptive prayer for help, the Prince lured one of the region's few remaining angels (believed with more confidence to have been known as Marycz) to the dungeons beneath his ancestral manor. There, he trapped her with dark magic, and exsanguinated her. Offering the angel's silvery blood to his demonic patron, the Prince and his noble subjects were cursed by the demon with Vampirism. They would not starve, but only as long as they fed on one another. Even so, the curse carried the unexpected boon of immortality, and so the Dark Prince still lives to this day. Some will say that the Prince feared death, and sought immortality from the beginning. Others claim that the demon was responsible for the famine that began this unfortunate chain of events. Regardless, the fall of House Sturmkirk was seen as the beginning of Schattenwald's descent into darkness, and the original sin for which the Shadowlands are cursed.

The vampire Volkimir Sturmkirk is more an ill omen than a man. This mysterious figure has plumbed ancient depths and sought after forgotten powers, and as such his prowess in battle and might of magic are both formidable. He wanders the world, searching endlessly for distraction and diversion in progressively debase and debaucherous pleasures. Though he refers to himself as "Prince," and carries the forsaken Sturmkirk name, none can say for sure if he is the same Dark Prince of legend, as evidence exists suggesting that he both is and is not. In any case, over his centuries of travel, Volkimir has taken hold of the fate of nations and peoples on several occasions, either saving them from destruction, or damning them to obliteration. Whether this is done as a part of a strange agenda, or merely for his own entertainment, none can say for sure.

Reputations of the Dark Prince vary wildly, as his capricious nature has made him a bane or a boon to many different regions and cultures. Remarkable is his near-universal revilement by other Vampires, who refer to him with the epithet of "Mortifier." In a time past, the Vampire nobles of Schattenwald sought to expand their claim, and drove their undead legions into neighboring regions in pursuit of riches and conquest. While their power was great and the threat posed by them seemed grave, Volkimir stood against their onslaught. With expansive traps of wizardry and unholy alliances with angels and demons alike, Volkimir turned back the zombie hordes of Schattenwald, in some cases even turning their armies against themselves. As the invasions failed, and the Vampire nobles were sent cowering back to the depths of the Shadowlands, they cursed Volkimir as a traitor to their kind, and swore bloody vengeance.

[b]Combat Skills[/b]
Whereas most mortals are given a handful to decades at the most to practice their arts, Volkimir has had centuries to perfect his own. He is a swordsman [i]par excellence[/i], wielding a bastard sword with inhuman power and grace. As a Vampire, Volkimir has a number of advantages that ordinary mortals do not possess. His strength and speed, when unaugmented by magic, are both twice that of a Human. He can see in darkness just as easily as in light, and his senses are sharp enough to hear a heartbeat from across a room, or smell one's bloodscent from half a kilometer away. Volkimir can move in complete silence, if he so chooses, and can survive for a month on only a single life's worth of blood. As well, his half-living nature confers to him near-complete immunity to sickness and poison, and he is greatly resistant to cold temperatures. Naturally, Vampirism carries several disadvantages: sunlight is severely discomforting, searing his skin and inducing migraines after prolonged exposure. Silver nauseates him, and seeing his own reflection (particularly in a silver mirror) inflicts him with delirium, and silver-reflected moonlight induces temporary blindness. While he can recover from most wounds faster than a mortal, those made with living wood blacken and fester rather than heal cleanly.

Volkimir has studied and learned to wield a mostly-forgotten dark magic known as sangromancy. This school of magecraft controls and manipulates flesh, bone and blood, particularly the lattermost. As a sangromancer, Volkimir can raise undead servants, imbue himself or others with unnatural strength and vitality, sap and absorb the strength of others by draining their vital energies, induce rapid decay and entropy, create strange structures and objects from biological matter, mend wounded or blighted flesh and bone, or simply force the flesh of his enemies to turn to ash. One of the most advanced applications of this dark art is to willfully control the blood and musculature of a living creature, allowing Volkimir to turn anything that bleeds into a flesh puppet. Naturally, as a form of magecraft, sangromancy drains Volkimir physically as he uses it, but he has adopted the technique of consuming the life-force of others with his magic, thus forcing his enemies to be the fuel source of his magic. 

[b]Hobbies[/b]
Over his innumerable years of travel and hedonism, Volkimir has acquired many eclectic interests and pastimes, each with a certain level of sinful depravity. That said, he seems most fond of exploration and adventure for their own sake, and witnessing the marvels of the ancient and natural worlds. Lost ruins and forgotten cultures fascinate Volkimir, and he studies and investigates them with rapt attention. Equally so, strange creatures and wonders of natural beauty command his attention, and he has a mind to keep a menagerie of his favorite exotic species.

[b]Gear[/b]
Volkimir's armor, while said by some to contain the damned souls of every person that he has killed, is in reality rather mundane. While it is of luxurious quality, it is simply steel, enamel and leather. More worth of rumors would be the large ruby embedded in the center of Volkimir's breastplate. Any life energies that Volkimir himself cannot contain within his own body, he stashes away in this sangromantic gemstone, saving the excess power for times of distress. In the numerous secretive compartments in Volkimir's coat he has stashed a variety of small trinkets found in his travels, miniature bottles containing potent potions and poisons, easily-concealed supplies such as blades, lockpicks and matches, several varieties of coinage and legal documentation, and small scrolls and books that he is fond of.

Almost as famous as the man himself is Volkimir's bastard sword: Elbrus, the Bound Blade. While ornate in design and flawless in construction, Elbrus is quite unusual in having been forged of thunderbolt iron, fallen from the stars. The blade is seemingly unbreakable, with an edge as sharp as winter, and so dark in color that it appears to consume light rather than reflect it. Intensely magical, the sword absorbs the life-force of those it wounds, giving Volkimir a considerable advantage in lengthy duels. However, this is not a mere enchantment; Elbrus has bound within it a powerful demon, sealed within the sword ages ago by a holy warrior that gave his own life to contain the monster. The sword has an unspeakably unholy aura to those sensitive to such matters, and the demon whispers foul promises and fouler threats to anyone weak of will that comes to wield Elbrus.

[b]Retinue[/b]
In Volkimir's experience, it is usually best to leave entire bloodlines or nations indebted to oneself, rather than individuals. He has a particular habit of outliving most people he meets, and this practice serves him best. His personal accompaniment appears to be small, but potent. A handful of Schattenwalder Blackguard knights and their squires, a spare few Vampire Bloodwitches from the swamplands of Malakir, a hired necro-alchemist and his menagerie of specially-engineered zombies, a collection of bound geists, and an enthralled pack of werewolves from the moors of the Shadowlands. A pack of ordinary zombies performs all of the menial labor that would usually be relegated to servants, slaves or pack animals, and a new one is raised whenever one becomes too rotten or dismembered to continue its service.

[b]Retirement[/b]
While the Dark Prince has yet to "retire," per say, he has not been sighted in more than ten years. The last known sighting of Volkimir Strumkirk placed him in the foothills of Schattenwald, slowly making his way into the hinterland. He was not alone, however, as he seemed to have been commanding a diverse host of soldiers. Banners from many lands flew over his small army, and various dark and vicious beasts stalked ahead of the host as its vanguard. Word has been silent from the cursed Shadowlands in recent years, but far fewer horrors have crept out from its unhallowed depths, and angels seem to have returned to the damnable lands.

[b]Family[/b]
As a member of the noble House Sturmkirk, Volkimir is at least distantly related to nearly every member of the vampire nobility of Schattenwald. That said, he is universally hated by his house and their allies, due to his "betrayal" of their attempted invasion more than a hundred years past. Volkimir is reputed to be of some relation to the legendary Sturmkirk Prince that damned Schattenwald ages ago, or to be the man himself.

[b]Miscellaneous[/b]
Though he would sooner kill someone than admit it, Volkimir has a deathly phobia of heights.
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