Pieter Van Eckhardt (Original Timeline)


 * For Pieter Van Eckhardt in other continuities, see Pieter Van Eckhardt disambiguation page.

Pieter Van Eckhardt is the main antagonist in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.

Early Life
He was a 15th Century evil alchemist who created a powerful weapon called Sanglyph. To keep the Sanglyph safe, Eckhardt split it into five pieces and hid a piece behind five paintings he created, depicting evil images, called Obscura Paintings.

Eckhardt grew ever more evil and powerful through alchemy. He eventually created an order known as The Cabal which consisted of an alliance between five powerful alchemists including Eckhardt. He eventually prepared to resurrect an extinct cross-angelic race known as the Nephilim which is the reason why he created the Sanglyph. He believed that using the Nephilim would help him and the Cabal have dominating power over the world.

Imprisonment
Because of his intentions, an order of Christian monks called the Lux Veritatis was born to stop Eckhardt and the Cabal. The other members of the Cabal eventually were all murdered by Eckhardt to retain the secrets they held.

The Lux Veritatis acquired the Periapt Shards, ancient weapons of light that were used to make the Nephilim race extinct in biblical times. The three shards were used against Eckhardt who became trapped in a state of paralysis. The Lux Veritatis led by Brother Obscura sealed Eckhardt in a deep containment pit near their headquarters, Castle Kriegler, located in present-day Germany, and he was left there for 500 years. The seal on Eckhardt would only last if the three Periapt shards remained combined. Brother Obscura then confiscated the five paintings that contained the pieces of the Sanglyph. He painted religious images over the evil ones and then made secret copies of each paintings before hiding them separately at hidden locations throughout the land. The copies were named as the Obscura Engravings, with each copy containing an encoded map to the location of the original painting.

Escape
During 1945, Castle Kriegler was bombed, causing the shards to split. Eckhardt came upon one of the guardians Johan Kriegler and killed him when he attempted to hide his shard. The now-freed Eckhardt escaped the pit which he had spent the last 500 years in pain, vowing revenge against the Lux Veritatis and revived the Cabal, basing it in his hometown of modern-day Prague. While remaining faithful to Eckhardt's original mission, the new Cabal became devoted to hunting down any members of the Lux Veritatis. Eckhardt also managed to obtain the Periapt Shard that had been separated from the other two which still remained in the possession of the Lux Veritatis. He hid the shard in his old laboratory, deep underground beneath the Strahov.

After he hid his shard, Eckhardt and the Cabal set out to reclaim the five Obscura paintings, in order to acquire the Sanglyph. They managed to attain three of the five paintings.

The Angel of Darkness
Eckhardt then hired Werner Von Croy to find the last two paintings. Von Croy did learn of the location of the fourth painting beneath the Louvre from the Obscura engravings, exchanging information of this discovery with former Lux Veritatis member Mathias Vasiley, an art dealer, historian, and fellow professor. But Von Croy never informed Eckhardt, as he had learned the truth of the latter's evil plans.

During an argument between Von Croy and his former student Lara Croft, Eckhardt breaches the former's apartment and attacks the two, knocking Lara unconscious. He proceeds to interrogate Von Croy about the painting's location; Von Croy reveals that although he found the painting, he never collected it, claiming the task to be extremely risky, but states Lara herself will be able to do the job for him. Eckhardt murders him, causing Lara to be the prime suspect.

While making attempts to clear her name, Lara found more information on the two remaining paintings and sought to find them. With information from Louis Bouchard and upon meeting Kurtis Trent in Prague, she learns from the latter that Eckhardt plans to use the paintings to revive the Nephilim race and that Cabal had retrieved the last Nephilim specimen from Türkiye: a Nephilim body which had been nicknamed the Sleeper. She also learns that Eckhardt murdered people for their body parts using a glove to revive the Sleeper.

During a final confrontation in his laboratory with Lara, Eckhardt starts the process of reviving it. He battles Lara using the Sanglyph, but he is eventually killed by Joachim Karel, his right-hand man in the Cabal, who stabs him with the third Periapt Shard right in the forehead.

Appearances

 * Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness