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 Lambretcht Raes. Sir Diederic achieved his goal, but in the process he committed many foul deeds and became darklord of Malosia.

Background

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.

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.