Sir Diederic de Wyndt

Diederic de Wyndt is the main protagonist from Black Crusade, having entered the Mists chasing after the heretic Catholic priest Father Lambrecht Raes. Sir Diederic achieved his goal, but in the process he committed many foul deeds and became darklord of Malosia.

Background

Before Ravenloft

Sir Diederic de Wyndt was a knight of France and one of the invading Crusaders that took Jerusalem in 1099 A.D. Like many of his fellow crusaders, he participated in the butcher that followed the breach of the walls. Though it deadened his soul and sickened his heart, de Wydnt saw the ensuing bloodshed as a necessary evil. However, de Wydnt became disturbed by the murder of his fellow Frenchman Baron Joris van den Felle, literally stabbed in the back by somebody he trusted. As he searcherd for the baron's murderer, Sir Diederic found that a madness- one different from the violent carnage of the Crusaders cutting down Jerusalem's people in droves- infected the denizens of the city- invader, defender, or noncombatant alike, and turned them into giggling, savagely and insanely violent killers that would turn on friend or foe and even hurt themselves.

At one point in the violence, Diederic saved a priest of the Roman Catholic Church named Father Lambrecht Raes from some of the gibbering lunatics. Father Lambrecht enlisted Diederic's aid in rooting out the source of the madness, only to abandon Diederic to die from the murderous madmen or succumb to the madness plague itself. The knight confronted Lambrecht, whom revealed he had found half of the [{Laginate Grimoire]], a tome of dread lore that was the source of the madness plague that hit Jerusalem. Lambrecht had manipulated Diederic to gain the power of the tome for himself. Lambrecht would use fight fire with fire: root out witches and use their own weapons against them. He would use the grimoire's power to save the Roman Catholic Church, even if it meant murdering his own men and even the baron to get what he wanted. However, Sir Diederic foiled Lambrecht's attempt to gain control of the grimoire and delivered both the tome and the corrupt priest to church and temporal authorities for trial of witchcraft and murder.

The trial did not go well, for there was no direct evidence of Lambrecht's responsibility in the baron's murder, and Lambrecht successfully argued that he pursued knowledge of the enemy in order to fight the enemy. Moreover, he called into doubt Diederic's credibility as a witness as a victim of the madness plague. However, Diederic turned things around by bribing the errant deserter Eliseo into providing false witness against Lambrecht. With such a witness, Lambrecht was convicted, to be hanged and the grimoire to be burnt. Yet the Laginate Grimoire did not burn and instead erupted in an explosion of mist, taking with it Lambrecht. Although injured by the explosion, Diederic followed into the Mists.

Escape from Perdition Hill

Diederic literally popped out of nowhere in a new land: Malosia. He was almost immediately arrested for witchcraft and send to Perdition Hill, an almost impenetrable prison. Months later, he staged an escape with two other prisoners, Violca and Leonera Talliers by escaping into the ancient and forgotten tunnels beneath the prison. After they escaped, Violca left them as they were sleeping in order to find her kindred, the rest of Clan Hanza. Diederic was thus denied using Violca's gift of the Sight in order to track down Lambrecht. Regardless, Diederic had more urgent issues to worry about: escaping the pursuing Redbreast soldiers.

To escape their pursuers, Diederic and Leonera fled into the Cineris Forest, a huge set of woods infested by the Fair Folk. Bloodshed between the pursued and their pursuers offended the fey that dominated the wood, for there was killing without tribute. The fey thus became hunters of both the fugitives and the Redbreasts. In order to appease the fey, Diederic lured two redbreasts into a false parlay and then struck them down, offering them as sacrifice to the Fair Folk. The Fair Folk were pleased. And so Diederic and Leonera traveled through the forest, eventually coming to Leonera's hometown of Birne.

Investigations in Birne

In Birne, Leonera found the reception to her return surprisingly quite hostile. For one, it was thought that her escape from Perdition Hill impossible. For two, her sister Marta Talliers was accused of witchcraft that blighted the village and was awaiting being burnt at the stake for it. At Leonera's behest, Deideric went about proving Marta's innocence. Diederic asked questioned and sometimes pushed hard. His investigation provoked the wrath of a trio of young toughs, whom came to rough up, and perhaps even murder, him and Leonera in the dead of night. After one of the toughs, Rolan Reveaux came at Diederic with lethal arms, Diederic struck a fatal blow against the boy. After Rolan's funeral, Diederic found that he had alienated most of the town.

Diederic found himself under attack by wispy and elusive attackers, evil spirits of the woods. Diederic sought to question Silma Reveaux, for she had conspicuously disappeared after expressing her desire for vengeance. Diederic came upon an ancient site of occultist activity and defeated Silma, revealing to be a witch responsible for the attacks against him. He also freed Leonera from possession by a hag spirit. However, it turned out that the reason for Birne's problems was not the casting of a malignant witchcraft but rather the failure of it. Birne's founding families had long ago made pacts with the Fair Folk to offer regular sacrifices. Over time the cost of these sacrifices grew in demand, such that the regular benign sacrifices failed to appease the Fair Folk and regular human sacrifice was needed. The founding families failed to keep up with the demand of the Fair Folk, thus causing the town's prosperity to fail. Meanwhile, the townsfolk not of the founding families believed this to be the work of witchcraft put upon the town, and thus Marta became a scapegoat. Upon realizing much of the town had witch or occultist ties and this fact's concealment, Diederic bitterly left the town and abandoned Marta to her fate.