Editing Castlevania (section)

===Lament of Innocence (Castlevania 0)===
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A long time ago, during the year 1096, there were two knights who were friends; Baron Leon Belmont, and Baron Mathias Cronqvist. Leon was the fighter, Mathias the tactician and scholar. Together they lead a company of knights who were greatly successful during the First Crusade. During the crusade, Mathias's wife Elisabetha had taken ill and died. Mathias cursed God's name, and decided that if He would take away Mathias's wife while he was fighting God's war, Mathias would defy him and live forever. Using his knowledge of alchemy, specifically in utilizing the souls of beings to grant power and gain dominion over them, Mathias created a magic gem called the Crimson Stone which, when filled with the soul of a Vampire, would grant him immortality without being bound to any master. 
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Mathias baited a powerful Vampire named Walter Bernhard, known for kidnapping the loved ones of powerful mortals to bait them into his great castle to fight for his amusement, into kidnapping Leon's future wife Sara Trantoul. Walter possessed the Ebony Stone, the twin to the Crimson Stone (the two together being a corrupted, unmerged version of the Philosopher's Stone), which granted many powers that the Vampire did not understand. He knew that it created a shroud of eternal night and believed it would allow him to control Death himself (a property actually belonging to the Crimson Stone). Believing himself to be immortal and unbeatable, he anxiously awaited the fun a knight of the Church would bring. Mathias, feigning illness, informed Leon the Vampire had taken his bride-to-be and where Walter's castle could be found. 

However, Leon was forbidden from pursuing the Vampire due to the Church pursuing punishment of heresy before destruction of monsters. Forced between love and duty, he broke his oaths and entered the Forest of Eternal Night on foot. There he met an Alchemist named Rinaldo Gandolfi (a former adventurer who had failed to rescue his own daughter from Walter in the past) who enchanted his armor and gave him a whip formed of Alchemy that was particularly strong against magical beasts. 

Leon battled through Walter's castle, arranged in a grand hall with a room filled with magical elevators leading to other portions of the castle. 
* Within the Anti-Souls Mystery Lab, an Alchemy wing filled with libraries and furnaces, he fought an unfinished Golem. 
* In the Garden Forgotten By Time, he fought through prehistoric and unnatural flora and fauna before killing an extremely large [[Medusa]] that resembled a [[Beholder]]. 
* In the House of Sacred Remains, the former chapel that was in a state of terrible disrepair even before Walter's minions converted much of it into a torture maze, he fought a mass of flesh and demon insects feeding on it from the former slaves. 
* In the Dark Palace of Waterfalls, a massive underground series of chambers and sewers connecting to aquifers and complexes inspired by Escher, he fought Joachim Armster, a Vampire servant of Walter's imprisoned within the maze of water for trying to usurp him who wielded multiple swords telepathically. 
* In the Ghostly Theater, a massive complex of rooms and halls decorated anachronistically for grand performances with cast and audience stuck forever in a show, Leon found a suspiciously vacant stage with only one seat; here, a Succubus posed as Sara and attempted to assassinate him. 

After clearing the castle, Leon assembled the key to the Pagoda of the Misty Moon (a translation error, the intended meaning is "Shrine/Temple Of The Misty Moon") where Walter confronted him, congratulating him and returning Sara. Leon attempted to use his whip on Walter, who was unaffected claiming that Death could not take him. Leon returned Sara to Rinaldo's cottage where he discovered she had been turned into a Vampire by Walter. The only way to save others from her and Leon's fate was to kill her and bind her soul within the whip. Thus was born the Vampire Killer whip. 
Leon, enraged and heartbroken, battled his way through the castle keep where he discovered the key to a hidden room behind a painting depicting a powerful monster not long after confronting a Doppleganger of himself. Entering the Prison of Eternal Torture, which consisted of a bloodstained hallway, a miles-long staircase in almost pitch-black darkness, and finally a room covered in spikes and chains housing the upper half of a gigantic monster that was flayed alive and left to rot and be consumed by giant maggots yet was still alive; the Forgotten One, which in it's youth challenged God and almost destroyed the world. Leon tested the Vampire Killer by killing the Forgotten one by destroying it's exposed organs, then it's remaining hand, then finally collapsing it's skull (yes, the VK is that fucking powerful). 
Satisfied Sara's sacrifice was not in vain, Leon destroyed the last of Walter's servants and challenged him in his throne room. Leon defeated the arrogant Vampire, who was shocked to find Death take his soul and deliver it into the Crimson Stone. Mathias appeared, reclaiming the Ebony Stone for himself, and revealed his plot to Leon. He offered Leon immortality at his side, which was then rejected (apparently Mathias thought doing what God had done to him would make someone else come to the conclusion God was to blame for that too). Mathias fled, leaving Leon to fight and banish the grim reaper himself with a message for Mathias; the Belmont clan would use the Vampire Killer to hunt him, and all other monsters, forever.  The castle fell apart and the sun returned to the forest. 

====Intermission Lore====
Leon's family no longer had the support of the Church. Although not branded outright heretics, they became pariahs and their wealth and prestige diminished greatly. Despite this, they continued to hunt and destroy monsters, using the Vampire Killer and passing it between father to son and brother to brother. The spirit of Sara within the whip refused to be wielded by the impure or one not of her lost love's family; any who attempted to claim the Vampire Killer wasted away as Sara fed on their life force. 
But every beast destroyed by the Belmonts was claimed by Mathias unbeknownst to them. With his alchemy, Mathias absorbed the powers of the Crimson and Ebony Stones, making the power of Dominion his own. Every creature he claimed became an extension of his own will, although Walter's soul within him gave Sara's power the ability to harm him and any pawn of him with ease. 

[[Matt Ward|Mathias]] traveled far and wide, even journeying to Hell itself to battle Lucifer for the title of Prince of Darkness. Mathias traveled to the realm of [[Chaos]], absorbing the energies of the beings within and forcing [[Chaos Gods|them]] into the shape of a great and ever-changing castle who's very grounds can be the size of a province and who's immensity defies the laws of physics, the titular Castlevania. 
Mathias even dominated abominations and unknowable horrors, pressing beings such as [[Cthulhu]] and the kin of Walter's Forgotten One into service as mere guards within his halls. Taking on the name of Vlad Tepes, or Dracula, he claimed Walachia as his own and dared God to move against him. God indeed responded, by giving Vlad hope of redemption. 
Within his new kingdom was born a woman named Lisa, the reincarnation of Elisabetha. Vlad fell in love with her as he had her past life, and married her. After she gave birth to a son whom he dubbed Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, Vlad retired from gathering the forces of darkness and ruled his people wisely and justly. Lisa was skilled with the healing arts, and with the spread of the Black Death in the 1400's did her best to ease the suffering of the people. But in a frightened riot, Lisa was burned at the stake as a witch. 
Vlad finally became Dracula, and enacted a war of genocide against the human race. He selected humans with dominant personalities and a talent for Alchemy, called Devil Forgemasters, to lead his armies as the forces of darkness were unleashed and caused immense suffering on every continent. Dracula sipped wine served by Succubi to the wails of the hundreds of dead and dying within dungeons below. The rivers of blood nourished Castlevania, and hellish weapons were forged using the souls of the doomed. Anywhere his minions treaded was cursed, a spreading toxic influence of evil that warped the wildlife into twisted beasts, filled men's hearts with sin, and rendered the landscape inhospitable. 
Adrian, who was told by his dying mother that mankind suffered more than  enough hardship, was unwilling to be a part of his father's evil and vanished for a time before returning using the holy blade of his mother's ancestors and using the name Alucard to wage a one-man war on Dracula.

In a silly non-canon (maybe) side story, a small boy (or monster) in burlap clothes wearing a pumkpin on his head trick-or-treated Walter's castle.
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