Backstory

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Early life

Werner Faust was born in 1926 at a farm in a Bavarian countryside. The Fausts were a big family of 6 children, with a quiet mother and a stoic father. Even on the backdrop of growing fascistic nationalism that seemed to buzz on a fixed-up TV, life was brain-numbingly idyllic for Werner.
The 3rd oldest of the brothers, he spends all day fooling around at the farm with his 2nd oldest brother. Sure, he did help with livestock and mostly farming the crops, but the two rowdy older brothers left most of the work on the oldest brother, and the 4th oldest sister. Back then, the 5th youngest sister was too young and usually tagged around her older sister, and the 6th youngest brother was but a crying babe in his mother's arms.

There was a school down the road where everyone in that little town went to, and that was usually the second great highlight of Werner's day. He was so often told that he was the smartest of the brothers, the strongest, the fastest, was the tallest in class with boyish charms. He was treated like the brightest sun in his family, and didn't realise the shadow that he casted on his 2nd older brother, whom he thought was his closest sibling and friend.

Growing up in Nazi Germany

By 16, the Hitlerjugend dominated all other clubs in school--there was no need for silly track-and-field clubs or swimming--all the boys in school wanted to join the Hitlerjugend. They get to do the cool stuff like what was said and done on TV and by their parents, to camp, dig trenches, shoot guns and load artillery, "just like the heroes of Nazi Germany".
Werner's father and older brothers were already being sent to the military and he was bursting with excitement to join them. Father hasn't returned home, and he wanted to wave hello to his brothers. It was 1942 after all, his great nation was in trouble by "wicked foreign forces" and by God's heavenly grace, it is up to strong and brave young men like him to defend it.
His father never came home, not in one piece that is. His body couldn't be bothered to be salvaged completely, and his mother lost a part of herself that day. The oldest brother hadn't came home either, but the second oldest briefly came back for their short, private funeral. It was but a few years but he seemed more confident yet more violent, like a proud look in those eyes that Werner hasn't seen before. It was like he was better than everyone, like he found a purpose.
He told his younger brother, his closest friend, that their father died for the greater good.

Then came 1944 when he turned 18--finally his chance to see action. He wasn't sent to the main division where most of his classmates were at, no, he was stronger and larger than most so there were a few just like him who were sent to the other adult forces to bolster numbers. It was a long trip to France, to "defend" something, hold down some "position" at some beach. It didn't matter then it was the action he was seeking, the heroics!

Meat fodder at the Normandy Beach landings was what they were. Bullets, dirt, blood, screams and limbs of strangers and classmates and squamates all mangled together barely discernable in a goop of red on the sand, Werner crawled away bleeding, crying in fright with shrapnel in his eye. Someone dragged him away. Everything else became a blur afterwards.
The wagon, the flashes of the dead. Cobblestone road, shouting of words. Bodies in carts passed along the way, bodies of people he once knew, now in mangled pieces unidentifiable, bodies in strange uniforms emancipated and ashened under the July sun, told to stay down yet he couldn’t understand why. Not then, at least.
The smiling boy back at that farm died that day.

After World War Two

When Nazi Germany had to be dismantled by the Allied nations who won that ghastly war, Bavaria was handed over to the Americans. The 6th youngest brother grew up in that post-war zeitgeist, a little confused but he was loved and sheltered by the dutiful and stern 4th oldest sister. Their mother passed shortly after, and the three older brothers returned as shells of their former selves, for the most part.
The oldest took after the farm like what his father would have wanted, but the second grew violent. Angry. This wasn't the country he knew while growing up, these foreigners weren't allowed here. He would take it out on his sisters but Werner couldn't let him, no, not after all that, not after what he saw and processed.
The two brothers drifted apart in ideology and Werner found himself having to protect his sisters from the wrath of his 2nd brother, sticking with the 4th sister who always seemed to see reason before anyone else did. She could never agree with anything, how she was treated, what was going on, her parents, her older brothers. After that brief time she was sent as field medic, the oldest didn't speak a word to her and neither did she, and it was ok like that. But Werner was now there at like that, the 3rd, 4th and 5th sibling grew closer together.

But he'll never tell them, especially not to his 5th and 6th youngest siblings on what he saw. The images that still flashed in his head. He ran away from people crying to be rescued. On that beach, on that wagon. People that he had damned from his actions. They looked at him in the eyes. Werner would wake up at night, feeling like his hands are still leaking, bleeding, they need to be scrubbed clean but the deluge wouldn't stop. There was refuge he found in enforcement-like jobs that demanded an almost masochistic amount of discipline, first starting with the auxiliary police in Bavaria and then, with his distrust in the army, private-hire security.

Becoming a vampire

It was in the mid-1970s when that strange job came up, something about guarding a luxurious and exclusive nightclub-lounge for a group of...eerie individuals. His colleague called in sick that night, probably drank himself silly and thus he took up the job.

On that fateful midnight, the vampiric supremacist cultists, the Sabbat, tore through this secret meeting amongst young neonates--members of vampiric society who work for the Camarilla, the vampire government. It was like hell broke loose and every other poor human who took up the job to guard were slashed, ripped open, drunk out like a juice box while the neonates fled for their lives or fought back as best they could. Werner too, like the other mortals, was horrified but he had to keep shooting, he had to destroy as many of those ghoulish nightmares as he could while scared shitless and--and, he didn't know but someone was watching.

Swiftly as if those vampiric cultists were nobodies, one by one they were drained, crumpled and turned into ash. Werner was already ripped open and drunk out too but he, with his last conscious, aimed his gun at this new stranger standing over him and pumped all his shots into the stranger before collapsing.

The stranger was a powerful, ancient vampire by the name of Otto, and back then he was both the current Sheriff of Berlin, like the Chief of Police for the vampiric government Camarila. On top of that, he was the local clan head for the Tremere, the widely-feared vampiric clan that delves in dark magics.
On that fateful day, Otto, who've only walked out from the shadows once every century on a complete whim, wanted an underling. On that fateful day, he was looking around for anyone who could fit the bill and there he watched, a pathetic mortal that should have already died, yet by adrenaline in that dying brain, still pumping bullets into him while looking like he crapped his pants and having his chest basically torn into two.
And on that fateful day, Otto decided he would whisk a mortal away from his religious afterlife that he has so craved for decades, and bind his soul into eternal darkness.
That was Otto's everlasting gift, and Werner's eternal punishment.

Now, Otto was named "Sheriff" but being so old and ancient also meant that the Prince, the head of local government for Berlin, couldn't really punish him when he barely cared for the job. In fact Otto only became the Sheriff because he couldn't be bothered to question anything the Prince gave, since he also barely cared. The one thing Otto, could care about was growing his Chantry, the local base of operations for the magical clan Tremere and also what is basically their massive library-school-hostel for fledgling Tremere vampires and their teachers.
Tasks that didn't fit into Otto's plans for growing his secret magical university, usually ones that targeted individuals within the city, were ignored and tasks that were more generic (a.k.a. spy on anarchist vampires, take down the Sabbat cultists, clear off a list of targets wanted by the vampire Interpol) were given to his elite group of assassins, the Sheriff's Hounds.

There Werner met his two other Hounds, a quiet man called Tomonori Hisa and a friendly, chirpy lady who went by Ece Araz. Neither were clan Tremere or even a local, but Otto didn't care and let them into their Chantry for he believed that as long as they can do the job, they're hired.
He didn't want to admit it as his discipline and professionalism meant keeping everyone at bay, but deep down in his heart, he started to grow fond for both Tomonori or "Tommy", and Ece. They carried out their tasks individually, but Ece would sometimes call for the three to meet up. Usually its for the job but sometimes, just sometimes, its just for fun when workload gets less hectic.

Meeting Delphine

Near the end of the 1980s he met an artist who went by "Delphine", and their careless infatuation brought about something Werner never thought was possible–a half-vampire child. Delphine, none the wiser, was overjoyed but the impossibility of the situation perplexed him. How? Was he secretly a thin-blooded weak vampire? That can't be, then he wouldn't been capable of the level of vampiric feats he was able to effortlessly achieve. His body had been dead for nearly a decade as well, it wasn't possible, was it?
Still, although aware of the dangers, he quickly grew to love both Delphine and his giggling bundle of joy.

And then, the old paranoia and fear crept in.
He shouldn't be happy for long, nothing good should last for a man like him. He killed so many vampires and their mortal ghouls--there will be retaliation. There will be blood. The Sabbat would want their hands on his baby, even some members of the Camarilla would be too interested that he could sire a healthy mortal baby.

He couldn't always be around to make sure Delphine and Cecil are safe from vampires. However he couldn’t explain to her the reason for his neurosis due to the risk of a Masquerade breach--vampires cannot expose their identities to humans, and his agitation drove the two apart. That paranoia eventually come true, with his partner turned into a ghoul and Sabbat cultists ready to kill him and kidnap his toddler.
After all the horrors of killing a possessed Delphine and crawling through the hallway to see his toddler walk out in numb confusion, he eventually whisked Cecil away, bringing him along for his jobs and, with tricky vampiric domination and word of mouth through hotel staff, made sure Cecil was always safe even in the daytime.

Life while in Cecil's childhood

There came anger, and then afterwards, sadness as he travelled along Central Europe with little Cecil snoring away on his lap. It wasn't Delphine, it was he who caused all that mess, that he should have just, maybe, handled things better. Of course the Sabbat would come after him but he could have done better, maybe if Delphine knew, maybe just a little. But slowly, with Cecil in his arms again, brief few years before returning him to the United States wasn’t too bad. With the two almost always close by and with the freedom to plan his directed assassinations, Werner experienced a fleeting rare joy again despite continuing his violent job. As if this mad and confusing world was alright again with blood on his hands and heavy thoughts off his head, running away from anyone who recognised him with a million different names and identities that wasn't his.

But then he temporarily settled down in English-speaking America (oh god), in Brooklyn, New York and that was when things got hectic.

Living abroad meant tougher , more 'international' tasks from Otto. Living in Brooklyn and sending Cecil to school (and all other parent-school activities on top of Cecil just wanting almost every inch of time with his papa❤️) also meant keeping his facade of pretending to be a normal single father, on top of juggling to learn to listen to "American accent" (on top of basic conversational-level English).

That was daywalking rituals upon daywalking rituals every dawn of the day to stay awake and keep his act of a normal father, and then keeping awake to continue his Hound assassination duties. With virtually no sleep that spanned for a decade, Werner's focus eventually started to crash right when Cecil entered his rebellious middle-school years. The stress that the old, traditional man had when raising a growing “delinquent tomboy girl” relapsed him into neurotic paranoia once again with every clash and argument he had with Cecil. Thoughts that he couldn't control his son and therefore keep him safe, thoughts that he was being followed in New York. Tommy and Ece occasionally came over to visit and there eased up his workload at times, so the situation wasn't too dire yet.

But all of that changed on that fateful day of Cecil's highschool concert performance.

The death of Otto

It started as a final promise, that he should at least show up once to something his son worked so very hard on. He had a singing segment, and Werner was barely there in his life in recent years.
He knew that, and he knew that he had to show up for his son. No matter how tired he was, he needed to be there to watch him, or at the very least show up just in time when Cecil comes on stage.
Werner knew that if he drove home from Cecil's high school, which was quite a long drive away, he would crash out again and fall into deep sleep until the sun sets. So he secretly parked nearby, pulled out sun-blocking window-shades and tried to briefly nap and wake up in-between intervals.

Then came a call from a Tremere clan member in the Chantry, that it was being hit by vampire hunters.

As it turned out, "Tommy" was a vampire hunter from an ancient clan Hisa, who were originally kicked out from a religious sect of family clans dedicated to eradicating vampires. Clan Hisa ingests the blood of slain vampires and thus gain their powers and mask their mortal 'aura' with the undead. For decades, they were finally contacted by a growing global group of vampire hunters seeking to bring about "The Second Inquisition", aka the second wave of mass-killing of these foul vampires.

Tommy was meant to act as squad leader to infiltrate into the base of the Sheriff in Berlin, and slowly invite more hidden vampire hunters into the Chantry before getting the call to start their ambush, taking down their "Chief of Police" and as many vampires as possible.
And now, it seemed like he started the ambush, slashing down as many vampires as possible, whether they be from clan Tremere or are also working under Otto as local enforcers.
Werner would call Ece, but there's no answer. He couldn't reach Otto telepathically, as if all connections are axed off. In cold sweat, he gathered all resources that he gained from work and flew as quickly to Berlin.

He was too late to save Otto from being killed by Tommy, shocked by his colleague (and friend)'s betrayal. Tommy knew how dangerous Werner was and quickly struck him down, but didn't expect Werner to have changed the properties of his own blood to become highly acidic and toxic.
Werner was angry at Tommy but, eventually, realised the two of them were more similar than he originally they were. Both were professionals--it was either the hunters fell or the vampires did. Werner would have destroyed his clan the same way.

With a heavy heart on his sire and Tommy's death, Ece's body nowhere to be found and uncontactable, and with Cecil's destroyed trust in him, he went in the night to Tommy's wake held at the clan Hisa household. All were horrified to see him and too scared to act, but Werner did not kill another hunter that night, laying a single flower to the coffin of the man whose face he melted clean off.

He eventually rose to become the face of authority and magic in Berlin, a Sheriff and Regent just like his venerated sire before him. Anything the mysterious Prince would direct him to do, it was he who enacted the law and killed who he was told to kill, believing that that was a threat to peaceful vampire existence in Berlin.
At the back of Werner’s mind, there was an itch that told him that he was making the same mistakes once again.

Arcs

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Arc 1

It was as if his nightmares came true, just like what happened in Paris more than 2 decades ago. Cecil was accidentally killed by machinery, and took the lives of 3 vampiric Elders as well. Now all knew how he looked like and his suspicious resemblance to him, the current Sheriff. Cecil had to be executed by his own hand if proven guilty (and likely he will be), and Werner wasn't sure what was worse, his son's death by his own hand or for all of vampiric society to find out he's a dhampir (...and thus be kidnapped, experimented on, slaughtered, every other grisly detail Werner thought while mentally spiraling).

No, Werner will claim him to be his childe, and to take responsibility for his 'misbehaving fledgling'. None in Berlin would dare stand against him save for the Prince, and the Prince knows he is indispensable. Thus, thinking this was the best course of action, he sent Cecil into one of his many safehouses in the city and locked the door.
There, he told Cecil everything he thought he should know before heading off to deal with any political aftermath against him. It definitely wasn't enough, but that should do.

Werner knew, in his guilt, that he should have done a lot more for his own son. But right there and then, the pulling responsibilities of his position called more towards him, as if being busier drowned out his own self-scolding voice in his head.

Arc 2

The civil war against the growing Anarch gangs worsened and thus directives from the Prince grew from "handle Sabbat violence" to "teaching these gangsters a lesson". On top of traditional teaching and adminstration roles required from being the Tremere Regent and thus his weakened clan's local head, Werner's energy and thus grasp on reality started to shake.

He was angry at the Anarch gangs for 'taking' his son away, for 'brainwashing' him with ideas of breaking the peace held so long by the Camrilla local government. Could he not see how hard his father worked, the blood and sweat spilled, just to ensure the streets way safe enough that no one else was dragged away in the night by the Sabbat cultists? That there was a clear, orderly function for every single vampire citizen to feed the lifeblood of this churning system?
Nevermind that the directives grew suspicious, some of these targets did not even seem like a Sabbat cultist nor a strong supporter for the gangs, some of the targets were just people who did not like the current shadowy Prince or seeked to topple him in their own ways, or even innocent thin-blooded vampires whose existence fueled rumours about the 'vampire end times'--

--and he did not want to think about that. With every slaughter and arrest, he told himself that it was for the "greater good".
The greater good.
His father died for "the greater good" too.

The civil war worsened with increasingly more vampiric citizens showing support for the largest Anarch gang, whom there were rumours that his 'childe' was part of them. With rising support, Werner's doubts grew too. It eventually took a text from Cecil for him to finally steel himself with resolve to finally confront the Prince with the strange directives and make peace with the gangs.

There, he went under a dark highway, both agreeing to meet at that spot to finally talk after what seemed like one long, painful year of hatred and war. But to his surprise, it turned out to be Cecil's ambush and the confrontation took a bloody turn.
Werner would have won either ways, his abilities honed sharp after years upon years of immense stress and intimidating conspirators away. But just a look on Cecil's horrified face and he lost all fight adrenaline and strength left in his bloodied, armless, battered body.

With that, Werner finally lost conscious and the war was won with the 'final death' of Berlin's tyrannical Sheriff who ruled as the Prince's judge, jury and executor.

Pre-Arc 3

Cecil, in his post-fight hubris (even though he didn't do anything except cry and look cute), stuffed Werner's crumpled body into a cut-up oil drum, sealed, and left him inside a dilapidated alley. Each night Cecil would come over and drop his own blood inside a small hole for Werner to frink, thus forcing the slowly-recovering vampire to stick his tongue out and drink like some humiliation ritual.
Cecil thought he could continue this debasing ritual in his sick, sadistic glee until Werner frenzied. So Cecil, who has no prior concept of vampires turning into beserk beast-mode when they lack blood in their bodies, was shocked when his father essentially tore the oil drum he was held in into pieces and started feasting on his flesh alive.
Eventually Werner's conscious returned and realised he was diablerising his son, so he fell into horrified grief and started to take care of him while Cecil(hubris) fell into torpor.

As the year went by, Werner shifted sleeping Cecil into a secretive safehouse of his in an unmarked location deep in the Black Forest. There, he hunted small animals and fed his son their blood--sometimes mixing his if he didn't look nourished.
Werner could feel his own conscious turning sluggish as well, and he knew the reason why. He did not live normally as a vampire after Cecil started going to school in New York. He was forcing his body to take daywalking rituals almost daily to keep that pretense of being 'a normal human'.
Daywalking rituals in the daytime, assassinations at nighttime, this went on until his own sire was killed. Infighting for being the next Sheriff began but no one dared become the next Tremere clan head after their chantry underwent 'cleansing' and thus lost all power, magical knowledge and structure throughout the country. Werner knew he had to bridge the gap in his lack of experience and take full advantage of his highly potent blood, thus religiously using as many hours as possible in a full day to catch up in knowledge and expertise.
But it came at enormous cost, and he was pushing his own undead body to hit the limits many powerful and old vampires normally reach after centuries of staying conscious. They would fall into deep slumber and never to wake up for centuries to come.

Werner couldn't leave Cecil like that, not with what little he knew of vampires, not with what little he knew of his identity as a dhampir and his powers, and...what little he knew of who Werner truly was. If he was to disappear from the world for who knows how long, at the very least Cecil deserved to know his real name.

So Werner sat down and documented a big guide, a guide that eventually Cecil would carry around with him. It was the biggest consolidation of everything he knew, from the common Masquerade laws that cannot be breached globally to common abilities that most vampires have. From the true identity of his father to what really befell his mother on that night, from a brief explaination of how to activate basic Blood Sorcery powers that every member with the Tremere clan should have, to a list of vampiric rituals and a compedium of their basic components needed. It was a huge encyclopedia-textbook-guide of everything that he knew, written in a fit of madness and desperation, until very slowly he grew too sleepy and collasped into deep sleep.

Arc 3

Werner was essentially a 'corpse' for the most part. When in deep sleep (torpor) he shrivelled up but Cecil found a way to 'inflate' him by filling his body with human blood. His old man was a low generation vampire after all, animal blood couldn't nourish him the same way it could for himself.

This meant Cecil could put his papa's crumpled corpse in a luggage that he could carry around, and 'inflate' him if he...had bad intentions.

Years later at the climax of the chase (that he was the target of), he woke up fresh and full on that dark stormy night, his huge build too large to be contained in an already large luggage. Realising he was in one of his safehouses and familiar voices echoing from the halls, Werner decided to wander in his castle of a safehouse to recollect any memories and bearings after a long, restful sleep.

There, on top of a flight of steps he finally crossed eyes with an injured young man that seemed vaguely familiar. The man introduced himself as a budding vampire-hunter Riki Hisa, a nephew of the hunter he killed over a decade ago. Slowly, memories of the past flashed back to him and there, Werner understood what all of these was about.
And walked away. Because there were better things to do, like finding where Cecil was.

Arc 4

Werner couldn't return to Germany for a while, hoping a few more years would settle any political infighting for which gang would rule Berlin after the Anarchs won. In the meantime, whilst staying in the United Kingdom, he decided to follow the footsteps of his sire and rebuild all that was lost in Otto's library of magical knowledge, dating back to when he was formerly inducted in the ancient hermetic Order of Hermes.
In the meantime, he attempted to recreate the same structure he had in his life in Berlin, not as the Sheriff but his teaching experiences as the Tremere's head of clan. Opening up a secretive magic school for anyone, including eager mortals and budding Tremere fledglings, the unused east wing of his safehouse became a silent attraction in the quiet English seaside town.

(To be continued...)

Relationships

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Appearance

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Massive 2m tall and powerfully-built blonde man with a blood-red eye. Other eye gone and covered with an eye patch. Seems to be stuck with perma-stubble all over his lower jaw.

He normally wears a huge worn-out blue overcoat over a semi-formal white dress shirt with dark pants and a tie. Sometimes would wear a shoulder holster that straps around his chest to hold guns, but he doesn't do that anymore in recent days.

When he was the Sheriff, he would always wear black gloves to hide his hands as he personally cannot conduct any Blood Sorcery while his fingers-skin is 'blocked'. This is one of his many ways to shelve off his mental guilt, as he hallucinates leaking blood when he starts to get too guilty. The gloves come off when it is time to kill.

Abilities

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Concept

Big asshole with bigger guilt in heart that cannot catch a break. Kinda looks up to his sire. Unfortunately he aint him