Topic: Castlevania: Umbra of Sorrow (1999 Fan Project)

[theplottwist]

OOooh boy, you're in for a trip lol

Soon I'll post about it

[VladCT]

I need my brain for midterms, but fuck it. :V

[Ericard]

Good luck with the project. Hope more fans get to know the storyline.

[theplottwist]

Julius' origin coming soon. I'm fixing more plot-issues.

Julius origins requires me to also tell what Alucard has been doing for the past 200 years, how the Belmonts surpassed the defect in their spirit and some other things.

[AISTODIAOLO]

i just read  the story.
i loved it.
good luck

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

This is turning out to be pretty great, keep it up!

[theplottwist]

This is turning out to be pretty great, keep it up!

Thank you!

I'll ask you dudes for a little more patience. Just as I was about to speak about Julius, a quite huge project landed on my plate and I had to take care of it. In the mean time, I gave the story a little more mind and some things changed for the better. But I haven't forgotten.

Julius' story needs me to tell a little more than simply his origin, as this is the grand raison d'etre for everything that happens here. Just a little more patience, friends! But here goes a tiny preview-spoiler:

The one responsible for creating a very specific cure spell that plays a key role somewhere is Shanoa.

[Chernabogue]

Cure Spell? Like the Sanctuary spell from PoR? Interesting.

[theplottwist]

Cure Spell? Like the Sanctuary spell from PoR? Interesting.

Bingo.

Since I'm unable to post the whole thing yet, I'll post this specific bit right here:

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1843 - After Dracula is defeated by Shanoa, she goes into a travel hiding his dormant remains all over Europe. Their power completely drained by Dominus, they are as good as useless and cannot be traced by evildoers.

1844 - After traveling and having no goals left, Shanoa returns to Wygol expecting to spend time with elder Daniela. However, she is greeted by Alucard, who had returned after perceiving his father's presence, but arrived just after Dracula had been destroyed by her. After being informed by the villagers about Albus and Shanoa, he became curious to meet the one able to destroy Dracula without the Vampire Killer and awaited for her return.

Shanoa fills him in all details surrounding Ecclesia, Dominus' creation, and her quest. She reveals that Dominus had been made into a glyph by extracting Dracula's power from his soul, and that she had resisted its corruption because she had absorbed the power of the Belmonts present in the 13 villagers through glyphs set by late Albus. Interested, Alucard decides to analyse Shanoa looking for traces of Dominus as potential means against Dracula, but finds something else much more interesting in its place.

He discovers that by absorbing the Belmont essence contained in each villager (including Nikolai's/Richter's), Shanoa had unwittingly turned into a vessel for a shard of Belmont spirit born out of the concentrated power from each of the villagers. The shard was solid and powerful enough to shield Shanoa from the evil influence of Dracula himself, and now resided inside her. With this knowledge, Alucard reveals to Shanoa the reasons for the disappearance of the Belmonts, and the secret behind Wygol's existence.

Inquiring Shanoa about the glyph-forging method, he tells her his new plan based on this discovery: To forge a glyph out of the Belmont spirit shard she possessed - just like Dominus had been forged from Dracula's spirit. Thanks to having recovered her memories and still having access to the now abandoned Ecclesia, Shanoa complies.

She recovers all of Barlowe's research about glyph forging and the development of Dominus at Ecclesia, and with Alucard's help, she forges a glyph from the Belmont spirit shard contained within her: A gigantic seal, encompassing the entire Wygol Village meant to slowly heal the crack in the soul of the main-Belmont-bloodline descendants by drawing power from the souls of all other villagers related to the Belmonts standing inside it.

As Dominus had been created from Dracula's spirit to be the ultimate Glyph of destruction, this one had been created from the Belmont spirit to be the ultimate Glyph of healing. It was named "Sanctuary" as a reference to Wygol Village itself, since it was built to be the sanctuary of the Belmont bloodline.

As planned, the crack had started healing for the first time in half a century, albeit very slowly. With each new main-bloodline Belmont born, the crack would return progressively smaller. It'd still take generations of Belmonts to have the crack completelly healed, but now Alucard had a hope that it could be done. However, Dracula's return would not wait, and now Alucard had to plan a way to stave off his ressurrection until the Belmonts were ready while still guarding the village.

And now you know how the Belmonts were cured from their spiritual mallady. I also tried to explain where Ecclesia's studies went: Shanoa recovered them, used them to fabricate Sanctuary, and destroyed them.

Wygol plays a last large role in the story I'm writting. I'm just trying to fit the pieces in.

Now... This spell is found inside one of Brauner's paintings. Can you guess how it wound up there (and ultimatelly in Charlotte's hands)?

[X]

Well we all know how Charlotte finds the spell; Inside one of the paintings they were traversing. The Egyptian painting if memory serves. The only one who knew about the spell or at least heard of such a spell was Wind (Eric Lecarde). But he did not know where it could be located. Are you by chance having Charlotte be a relative of Shanoa's? Remember though, Charlotte doesn't have any of the Belmont's power within her or it would have been mentioned in her PoR backstory. That and she's not mentioned to be related to the Belnades family either. Shanoa does have the Belmont power, but it was an unnatural occurrence; a blessing in disguise from absorbing Dominious, and probably cannot be passed down to the next of kin as it does with the Belmont's natural-born power. It'll be interesting to see what you can come up with 

[theplottwist]

Well we all know how Charlotte finds the spell; Inside one of the paintings they were traversing. The Egyptian painting if memory serves. The only one who knew about the spell or at least heard of such a spell was Wind (Eric Lecarde). But he did not know where it could be located. Are you by chance having Charlotte be a relative of Shanoa's? Remember though, Charlotte doesn't have any of the Belmont's power within her or it would have been mentioned in her PoR backstory. That and she's not mentioned to be related to the Belnades family either. Shanoa does have the Belmont power, but it was an unnatural occurrence; a blessing in disguise from absorbing Dominious, and probably cannot be passed down to the next of kin as it does with the Belmont's natural-born power. It'll be interesting to see what you can come up with 

Charlotte does have a connection to the Belnades, but IGA never elabored on that, even though he did mention it in his interview about Portrait of Ruin. Charlotte will be the great-aunt of Lenora Belnades in this story, and have nothing to do with the Belmonts through blood. Her family is to the Belnades what the Morris are to the Belmonts, probably.

And no, Charlotte is not a relative of Shanoa. All Shanoa did was fabricate Sanctuary from the Belmont power she got from the villagers. As soon as she created the glyph, this power left her body to work as the glyph itself.

And Wind, apparently, didn't even know something like that was possible:

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Charlotte: I wonder if there's a chance we can save those two if
           I use some kind of purification spell.

Eric: The chances are very slim. You should know that. Even I
      never knew how to do it. I appreciate your sentiments, but
      I am resigned to their fate.

Neither him, nor Charlotte... The most we can see here is that just maybe Wind thinks a purification spell could work but not even he knew how it could work...

...but Vincent Dorin did have a vague knowledge about how purification spells work, possibly because he's an insider from the Church. You can check that in the dialogue he gives while being vampirized. More on that later.

Here's somewhat of a hint about how this "spell" landed in Charlotte's hands:

You're right about it being hidden inside one of Brauner's paintings. Now, what are his paintings? Why would a vampirism-nullifying magic be inside one of his creations? Are the worlds inside the paintings real, or are they created from something else?

The answer to this involves a very vague line from Wind in Portrait of Ruin concerning Brauner's existence:

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Wind: It is indeed Dracula's Castle. However, the castle's
      lord is a vampire by the name of Brauner.

Charlotte: I've heard nothing about that!

Wind: As one would expect. His identity has been kept secret
      for years, after all. He infuses magic into paintings to
      increase his power. You will undoubtedly come across
      these paintings in this castle. Search for these paintings.

Why would this be? What happened to Brauner that became a secret that not even the people hunting Dracula could know? And one more hint. Remember the Vincent dialogue I mentioned up there? This is the one:

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Charlotte: J-Just calm down! You've still got time before
           you turn into a vampire.

Vincent: !! Y-Y-Yeah... That's what they say. Purification spells
            are effective in the early stages. I beg of you! Do
            something for me! Get that purification spell!

Now keep in mind: Charlotte finds this spell inside a painting made by a vampire, and the knowledge about it was vague to null even to her, who is a magical genius. But Vincent somehow heard about something like a "purification spell being effective against vampirism in early stages" from someone.

So, I think this might help you piece what I have in mind together

[X]

Being a member of the church, Vincent would have access to knowledge normally off-limits to the general public, so it goes without saying. However he's not all that up there in the church hierarchy so his access would also be limited. But a sanctuary spell for fending off vampirism he would definitely know about, as it would be required in order to fight off the effects of vampirism if someone had been victimized.

[theplottwist]

Being a member of the church, Vincent would have access to knowledge normally off-limits to the general public, so it goes without saying. However he's not all that up there in the church hierarchy so his access would also be limited. But a sanctuary spell for fending off vampirism he would definitely know about, as it would be required in order to fight off the effects of vampirism if someone had been victimized.

OK, here is what happened. But since I still can't post about it due to reasons, this is subject to change as all pieces are still not in place:

(click to show/hide)

After Shanoa fabricated Sanctuary as the ultimate Glyph of healing to slowly heal the Belmonts, and a very little time after Castlevania Bloodlines, Brauner had his magical power awakened due to his grief. He, then, sought a place to complete his turn to darkness by absorbing enormous amounts of dark energy. To this end, he started looking all over Romania for places where concentrations of darkness were abundant.

This search led Brauner to the Monastery: A place where once good men sucumbed to evil. Thing is that Brauner discovered the reason to why this had happened: There was a rift to a dark realm under the monastery, through which a small amount of darkness poured in this world and corrupted the monks who once lived there, eventually attracting demons and ghosts.

While Brauner started messing with the rift to open it, the Church, noticing his movements, dispatched agents to fight Brauner and stop him, all ultimatelly resulting in failure. Eventually, Brauner had absorbed darkness enough to finally turn into a vampire and became too strong to be defeated in this form. The hunters sent to face Brauner then devised a plan: Near the Monastery, there was Wygol Village. By this point it was known to the Church through Alucard that Sanctuary existed there. Brauner would need to feed soon, and would need to leave the Monastery to attack the townspeople at Wygol, the nearest town. So they hypothesized that the all-healing magic of the Glyph could revert the newly-vampirized Brauner to human form, and decided to use this in their favor.

The hunters hid on the village, and when Brauner arrived, they trapped him there in a fierce battle. They expected that Sanctuary was going to revert Brauner back to human form, so they started fighting him inside the enormous Glyph to buy time and make Brauner grow weak, enabling them to finally best him.

Unfortunatelly for the hunters, Brauner noticed the ruse of the Glyph as his recently-acquired vampiric powers started to fade, and fled Wygol Village before the Glyph could take full effect. His vampirism was not reverted in time, but a small fraction of the powerful magic of the gigantic glyph was engraved in his own dark magic due to it having affected him, even if momentarily.

When Brauner began creating his paintings containing the will of the artist, his own will, many elements of real life that he had witnessed were subconsciously given shape inside the twisted worlds that Brauner weaved with his magic. One such thing given embodiment was a much smaller form of the original Sanctuary magic, which manifested inside the painting when Brauner infused his magic into it and the small fraction accidentaly absorbed from the Glyph years before poured into the painting.

After Brauner fled from the trap, the hunters had to take care of the rift opened by him at the Monastery. They sealed it with powerful magic, and the Church built a tower surrounding it that came to be known as the "Condemned Tower" given the nature of the thing that it was built to seal. Eventually, this tower became the annex to a castle...

[Chernabogue]

That last part with the Condemned Tower is soooooo cool. Man, you're a boss at reconnecting things.

[X]

I see. Wygol village is the same village from Dawn of Sorrow.