God moves in mysterious ways. Where Kurt Wagner is concerned, it's awfully damned mysterious. Of Romani stock, he has the form of a medieval witchfinder's deepest nightmare of the Devil and yet he has the soul of Saint Frances and the heart of Sir Perceval. Forever alienated from others by his unnatural visage, he views his isolation as his cross to bear. His faith is strong but even saints know the long dark night of the soul, he's always striving to keep himself fighting on. He clings to what is good in the world in order to help him withstand all of the bad.

It's a very rare person who gets to get a good look at Kurt. He appears, from shadows or thin air, as a lithe, slender figure just a little over five feet. He wears a heavy greatcoat with a hood, beneath it a pair of darkened goggles and a gas-mask obscure his face. His custom made gloves suggest a deformity of the hands, having space only for a thumb and two large fingers. Besides concealing his true form, his coat also conceals swords, knives, guns and other necessities of the good fight.

He's not just one who lives in the darkness, he's of the darkness. Shadows reach out to caress him, to swaddle him, mingling with his inky fur. With a thought he can slip into a hellscape of smoke and shadows, reappearing in a sliver of an instant at another location. More like a monkey in his physique than an ape, he has a prehensile tail and feet, able to move and climb with unnatural agility, moving up walls and across ceilings like a lizard.

Kurt is a knight of the Poor Brothers of the Rosy Cross, an order of pious men who strive to fight the deeper and more esoteric evils that threaten mankind. He takes a great deal of interest in the more banal evils that plague his flock and takes care to teach sinners the error of their ways. He cares as much about saving souls as he does lives and has a great deal of compassion even for the wicked. When he's fighting for the innocent, however, he's nothing short of the wrath of God.

His provincial has sent him to the United States on the trail of Nils van der Wirth, a defrocked Dutch priest who had found acceptance among certain elements of the German government. van der Wirth was given funding and aid in setting up an expedition to the United States to recover certain archaeological artefacts. Wotan's Sons, a fascistic neopagan white-supremacist cult, have been recipients of funding from the National Socialist government in Germany, via van der Wirth, in return for their muscle and expertise. Kurt, for his part, relies on a small network of holy men and ordinary folk looking to help make the world a better place.