Sebastian St. Battenberg

Name: Sebastian St. Battenberg
Door: Left

Canon: The Infinite Bad (podcast)
Canon Point: Shortly before the events of The Butchers of Goose Lake

Age: 45
Appearance: Canon art (there are only two canon images): and PB (on the left):

History: Sebastian St. Battenberg was born in 1881 in a somewhat rural village south of Swindon. His parents were upper class, and he grew up on an estate near woodland, where he lived a comfortable life as a child with his parents and older brother. He owned multiple dogs whom he adored and raised. In his early twenties, he joined the army, which allowed him to travel farther afield, though still never too far from home. Then, in 1914, the Great War began, and everything changed for Sebastian.

The experience of the war was traumatizing to many soldiers - Sebastian was no exception. He saw the terrible atrocities that such a global-scale war could elicit from men, and he experienced the absolute emotional and mental exhaustion that constant battle brings. He dealt with some of the negative emotions by writing very, very bad poetry, but otherwise remained stoic. He was never diagnosed with shell shock, as it was called at the time, but there were certainly lingering effects from the war.

It was also during his early life that he was married and divorced three times, though nothing canonically is known about Sebastian's wives - he mentions them only once, in the context of a sudden realization that it was perhaps his fault that his marriages did not last. Throughout the course of the podcast, he appears to be single.

In 1919, at the tail end of the war, he traveled to Drakelow Hall in rural Cumbria to visit an old friend he had served in the Army with. Drakelow Hall at the time was the home of the Gresleys, who had transformed their manor house into a convalescence home for soldiers. It was here that he met three women who would again change his life. Cornelia Cavendish, a wealthy older socialite. Dorothy Taylor, an American nurse who had served in the war. And Joy Dutton, a teenage orphan whose parents had died at sea. All were visiting the manor for their own purposes, and the four were thrown together as the only people at the manor who were not a part of the sinister conspiracy that had taken over the Gresley family, the medical staff, and the hapless soldiers entrusted to their care. During their several day stay, they experienced bizarre happenings and eventually discovered that the Gresleys had revived some ancient Egyptian cult. They had been harvesting the teeth of the soldiers in their care, and killing them - for what purpose, it was unclear. At the climax of their time at Drakelow Hall, all four witnessed the horrific transformation of several people into monsters made almost entirely of hands. Sebastian was forced to resort to violence when fleeing these horrors, but all four managed to escape.

Sebastian attempted to return to his life again - he was living with his father at their family home, and attended to the upkeep of the house and grounds for his aging parent, his mother having passed on several years before. After a time, he managed to convince himself that perhaps it had all been a hallucination of some sort. Certainly he could not have actually seen hands clawing their way out of a living person’s throat and emerging as an impossible beast. But a half a year later, he received an invitation from Mrs. Cavendish to join her for her 60th birthday celebration in Egypt. A new tomb was being opened, and she wanted her companions with her that had witnessed what had happened at Drakelow Hall, as she had not forgotten or convinced herself that it was not real. In Egypt, the four again were thrown into strangeness. Angela Gresley, one of the Gresley family that they had all met at Drakelow, was spotted in the streets of Cairo, and was murdered in front of them all by Egyptian nationalists. Sinister events and the death of those around them plagued the four as they make their way to the dig site and the tomb of Arensnuphis. Once they had breached the tomb, they discovered what appeared to be a European gothic cathedral being used to offer some sort of sacrifice, and then an entire ancient city beneath the ground that was crawling with strange, pale trogolyditic type creatures. Again they fled, this time using the dynamite at the dig site to destroy the tomb and the entrance to the underground city.

Again Sebastian attempted to return to his life, but he was less able to ignore the things he had seen. His elderly father died within the year, and he was left alone in the home he now had sole ownership of. His older brother, a priest, had his own obligations with his parish, and left their estate to Sebastian to care for. That Christmas, he was once more invited overseas by Mrs. Cavendish, this time to Hong Kong. He had serious trepidations about the trip this time, but it was his first Christmas without his family, and so once again set out to join the three women. They gathered for a Christmas party at a very upscale hotel in the city, thrown by another socialite of Mrs. Cavendish’s acquaintance, but the party unexplainably descended into a Bacchanalian chaos. The four investigate the cause, and find that the hotel staff had been serving the guests human meat. Determined to get to the bottom of this, the four investigated and followed leads that lead them to the island of Kau Yi Chau, where yet more horror awaited. A new companion tagged along - a Portuguese journalist named Sofia - who became yet another victim of the cult. On the island the five found an English manor that bore a startling resemblance to Drakelow Hall, guarded by a maze comprised of fishing net and corpses strung up as grisly obstacles. Once they reached the manor, they were confronted with a former acquaintance who again underwent a terrible transformation. This time, another person pushed their way through the man's skin, shedding him like a snake - Angela Gresley emerged from the man's mouth. As she did so, she promised to tell them terrible secrets, but even as she uttered these words, Sebastian felt something inside himself clawing to be let out. At Dorothy's instructions, and against Mrs. Cavendish's wishes, he shot Angela Gresley in the face, destroying the monster ... for the moment. However his actions drove a wedge between himself and Mrs. Cavendish for years to come.

After this latest confrontation with the occult, Sebastian could no longer turn a blind eye to the strange horrors of the world. He had acquired Sofia's journal, and while he did not speak Portuguese, he did his best to interpret what he saw there. As ever a man of action, he chose to travel Europe, to find any sign of the cult. He sold off the estate and grounds of his family home, and donated the money to charities in Hong Kong. Thus freed of worldly ties, he begun his hunt. For the next five years he would go it alone, but he had few successes - while he might have been naturally gifted with the physical brawn and obstinate nature to fight evil, he wasn’t particularly well equipped to locate and identify it without the help of his friends. Thus, in 1926, when he was contacted once more, this time by Dorothy Taylor, he eagerly packed his bags for America, hoping he might have more luck with the women who had been his companions during his most significant encounter with eldritch evil to date.

Personality: Sebastian is not a complicated man. His desires and ambitions are fairly straightforward, and he can be honest to a fault - while he has learned the necessity of lying at times over the years, he’s never been very good at it. He is, at his heart, a very good man. His automatic instinct is to protect others and try to help them, even at the cost of his own well being. He tries to do the right thing as he perceives it whenever possible in the world, and generally expects others to do the same. He is also a very physical man, not just in body, but in mind. He struggles with those things beyond what he considers the ‘real world’, and while in the past 7 years he has come to understand that there are many unexplainable phenomenon and beings in existence, this knowledge has cost him something in the way of his sanity.

Perhaps the most prominent aspect of Sebastian’s personality is his sheer bullheadedness. It is very difficult to dissuade him from any path or course of action he has chosen. In fact, once he has decided something, he tends to assume everyone around him agrees and proceeds forward accordingly, ignoring any naysayers or conflicting comments, often quite cheerfully. He does the same when he believes he knows another’s motivations, ascribing these motivations to them even if they deny this. He also tends to hang on to certain ideas even while everything else around him is distracting from it - at one point during the podcast, while investigating the cult and cannibalism, etc, in Hong Kong, he became very focused on the fact that he hadn’t gotten his friends Christmas presents, and spent much of that time, no matter what else they were doing, looking around for knick-knack or curio shops, or considering if various inappropriate items around them could make decent gifts. This obstinancy is both a weakness and a strength for Sebastian. He cannot easily be swayed and he will stay the course through almost any obstacle. However, he will also refuse to turn back when the situation has become impossible, often to the detriment of his own body or mind, and sometimes to the detriment of those around him.

Sebastian is also a man of strong emotions, while also being a big believer in the ‘stiff upper lip’ philosophy the British of the era were known for. What this means in a practical sense is that Sebastian will, in the moment, loudly express his feelings by bellowing, exclaiming, making loud noises, and otherwise reacting. However he refuses to discuss any discomfort or trauma he might be experiencing, always loudly proclaiming that he’s fine. He is also uncomfortable with certain kinds of displays of friendship or affection. He is always up for a handshake or a hearty clap on the back or hand on the shoulder, but gestures such as hugs make him very uncomfortable. He also becomes uncomfortable when certain relationships are assumed between himself and his female companions - both Mrs. Cavendish and Ms. Taylor have been mistaken for his wife in canon, and on both occasions he became very embarrassed and immediately denied it.

Sebastian is not very socially adept. He has been married three times, all of which ended in failure. He does not show any romantic interest in anyone, male or female, in the podcast - though admittedly the circumstances during the podcast are hardly conducive to romance. The only people from his past that are met during the course of the podcast are two old army buddies, and these two seem fond of Sebastian but somewhat contemptuous or pitying, which he appears to be oblivious to. His propensity to blurt out his opinions or thoughts likely contributes to this - he is an awkward man, made worse by his enormous size. He is a man who highly prizes and admires physical prowess and competence in others. He will, almost without fail, squeeze far too hard when first shaking someone’s hand to gauge their reaction. If they flinch, he will generally give them a jovial clap on the shoulder and laugh, still perfectly friendly. If they can weather his painful grip or give as good as they get, he is immediately respectful and fascinated by them.

Finally, Sebastian, at this point in his life, is somewhat mentally imbalanced. He has seen too much, first during the war, and then during his multiple encounters with the occult and the eldritch horrors hidden by the rest of the world. This puts him often on the edge of a mental breakdown. He manages quite well if he is not put in any particularly stressful situations, but when under stress there is the danger that he might devolve into a more volatile state. For Sebastian this means either reacting with immediately violence toward anything even vaguely threatening appearing; lapsing into a near catatonic state where he just goes through the motions of life and does whatever anyone tells him; or bursting into a screaming fit. He might have any number of other unpredictable reactions as well, depending on the stimuli.

Also, he loves dogs.

Powers and Abilities: Sebastian is an ordinary human with no supernatural abilities. He is a very large man - approximately 6’10” and very bulky and muscular, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. He is extremely strong and athletic. He is competent with firearms and very skilled with his fists. At this time in his life, he is familiar with certain occult trappings, though most of his experience is centered around one specific cult. He possesses extraordinary willpower. He can manage a modest sized rural estate.

Inventory: Father’s pipe, loaded pistol, and a flask of whiskey.

Samples:
From the TDM
And another.