[He nods, and takes a deep breath before starting back up.]
So... right. 1797. Up to that point, Dracula's Castle only manifested about once every century. That time, though... it had shown up a few years before when a corrupted priest and his followers resurrected Dracula, and kidnapped a bunch of women. Richter Belmont fought his way through to free all of them, killed the evil priest, and defeated Dracula, but then something went really, really wrong.
Somehow the priest's spirit stayed behind, and... it took a few years to get control of him, but then Richter vanished and the Castle reappeared. It kind of... without its master there, it sort of implodes? I haven't seen it happen yet myself, but that's one thing pretty much every legend and written account agrees on. So he vanished, and Alucard's father's Castle reappeared, and that's what he woke up to. He'd promised he'd be the one to help if the Belmonts needed him, so he went to investigate.
When he got there, it seemed like business as usual for storming the place. Monsters everywhere, some that recognized him and some that didn't, some that were friendly towards him and some that weren't. There was another hunter there, though, her name was Maria Renard. It's not clear if she was actually related to Richter or if she'd just kind of been adopted, but she'd come there looking for the man she called her brother. She was a perfectly normal human, somewhere around seventeen, and Alucard looked only a few years older, so she treated him like an equal...
[He stops speaking and smiles.]
And he had no clue how to deal with that.
Everybody assumes they fell in love at first sight or something, there's like three novels and a movie where they do, but all we know for sure is that he was worse with girls than anybody and they were pretty constant companions once they'd freed Richter. They did, of course, though they didn't fight side by side to do it. Most of the legends agree that Maria was basically acting like a lookout for Alucard, going ahead and figuring out what he'd need to do if she couldn't clear a pathway herself. In the end, she knew she couldn't bring herself to fight her own brother - could hardly believe he'd declared himself master of the castle - so she gave Alucard a charm that'd let him see through illusions.
He was able to see and take down the evil priest, then, and Richter recovered his senses... but once he'd managed to get them both out from where they'd fought, it was obvious something was wrong. The one thing every story agrees on is that a second castle appeared, and that was where Alucard had to go to fight his father. Nobody knows for sure what happened between them, there, but he returned, and both castles fell to ruins. He would have left by himself, probably gone to sleep again, but Maria followed him after making sure Richter was going to be all right.
Like I said, they were traveling companions for a long time. There's a family in Spain that claims her as a kind of ancestor, and they pass a spear down through their eldest children that might well be Alucard's own. It's named after him, and my father's best friend carried it into battle when they fought together. Apparently he had Alucard hand it off to him directly when he was a kid.
He's still out there, somewhere. Just vampire enough to never age past twenty, just human enough that the sun won't ever kill him. Could be kind of a sad life, but... trust me on this, hunters gossip worse than cops, and from the stories that make it over to the States he's made the best of it. I think maybe he promised somebody he wasn't going to sleep through history again.
[He looks uncharacteristically thoughtful, for a moment, then shakes it off.]
So for whatever reason, 1797 broke the "once a century" pattern. There were three resurrections between 1830 and 1860, one in 1897, one in 1917, and then... well, about two years ago, but the Church couldn't get anybody in to investigate until me and... my partner, in 1944.
no subject
[He nods, and takes a deep breath before starting back up.]
So... right. 1797. Up to that point, Dracula's Castle only manifested about once every century. That time, though... it had shown up a few years before when a corrupted priest and his followers resurrected Dracula, and kidnapped a bunch of women. Richter Belmont fought his way through to free all of them, killed the evil priest, and defeated Dracula, but then something went really, really wrong.
Somehow the priest's spirit stayed behind, and... it took a few years to get control of him, but then Richter vanished and the Castle reappeared. It kind of... without its master there, it sort of implodes? I haven't seen it happen yet myself, but that's one thing pretty much every legend and written account agrees on. So he vanished, and Alucard's father's Castle reappeared, and that's what he woke up to. He'd promised he'd be the one to help if the Belmonts needed him, so he went to investigate.
When he got there, it seemed like business as usual for storming the place. Monsters everywhere, some that recognized him and some that didn't, some that were friendly towards him and some that weren't. There was another hunter there, though, her name was Maria Renard. It's not clear if she was actually related to Richter or if she'd just kind of been adopted, but she'd come there looking for the man she called her brother. She was a perfectly normal human, somewhere around seventeen, and Alucard looked only a few years older, so she treated him like an equal...
[He stops speaking and smiles.]
And he had no clue how to deal with that.
Everybody assumes they fell in love at first sight or something, there's like three novels and a movie where they do, but all we know for sure is that he was worse with girls than anybody and they were pretty constant companions once they'd freed Richter. They did, of course, though they didn't fight side by side to do it. Most of the legends agree that Maria was basically acting like a lookout for Alucard, going ahead and figuring out what he'd need to do if she couldn't clear a pathway herself. In the end, she knew she couldn't bring herself to fight her own brother - could hardly believe he'd declared himself master of the castle - so she gave Alucard a charm that'd let him see through illusions.
He was able to see and take down the evil priest, then, and Richter recovered his senses... but once he'd managed to get them both out from where they'd fought, it was obvious something was wrong. The one thing every story agrees on is that a second castle appeared, and that was where Alucard had to go to fight his father. Nobody knows for sure what happened between them, there, but he returned, and both castles fell to ruins. He would have left by himself, probably gone to sleep again, but Maria followed him after making sure Richter was going to be all right.
Like I said, they were traveling companions for a long time. There's a family in Spain that claims her as a kind of ancestor, and they pass a spear down through their eldest children that might well be Alucard's own. It's named after him, and my father's best friend carried it into battle when they fought together. Apparently he had Alucard hand it off to him directly when he was a kid.
He's still out there, somewhere. Just vampire enough to never age past twenty, just human enough that the sun won't ever kill him. Could be kind of a sad life, but... trust me on this, hunters gossip worse than cops, and from the stories that make it over to the States he's made the best of it. I think maybe he promised somebody he wasn't going to sleep through history again.
[He looks uncharacteristically thoughtful, for a moment, then shakes it off.]
So for whatever reason, 1797 broke the "once a century" pattern. There were three resurrections between 1830 and 1860, one in 1897, one in 1917, and then... well, about two years ago, but the Church couldn't get anybody in to investigate until me and... my partner, in 1944.