Brauner

Brauner's History

An elder vampire with a resemblance to Count Orlok, Brauner recreated Dracula's Castle using the souls of the dead from World War II in order to destroy Humanity, because his two real daughters were killed 30 years ago during World War I. Unlike most other vampires in the series, Brauner has no loyalty to Dracula due to his repeated failures in the past, and separates him from the castle using his portraits, where a portion of the monsters he took control of reside. However, Death was resurrected alongside the castle and retains full loyalty to Dracula. Upon hearing about him from Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin, he starts planning for the usurper's removal.

When Eric Lecarde investigates the castle alone, he was defeated and gravely injured by Brauner. His daughters, Loretta and Stella, enter the castle to find their father back and successfully locate him within the vampire's atelier. Eric was found lying on the ground and Brauner appears behind the sisters, believing that they were the reincarnation of his deceased daughters. He vampirized them and put them under a spell to make them love him as their father right in front of a helpless Eric. Eric was presumably killed afterward, but not before he bound his ghost in the castle, looking for someone to get rid of Brauner.

Brauner was first met alongside Loretta and Stella in the Sandy Grave. Stella attacks the young hunters to defend him until Brauner tells her to calm down. Jonathan asks him if he is planning to revive Dracula, but he explains that he has no loyalty to Dracula because of his many failures, and he will wipe out mankind by himself with his castle. He also tells Charlotte that he sealed Dracula using his paintings. Jonathan and the vampire sisters antagonize each other before Brauner calms them down by telling them that taking out Death should be priority, then teleports his daughters away and flees via another painting.

If the duo defeats the Lecarde sisters without casting Sanctuary, Brauner will arrive to interfere with Jonathan's attempt at finishing them off and spirit them away alongside himself while begging him to have mercy on them. When Charlotte points out that he and his "daughters" aren't actually blood related, he infers that their familial ties actually lie in their souls, not merely their blood. The castle crumbles with all three vampires escaping, resulting in a bad ending followed by the game over screen.

However, if the duo successfully casts Sanctuary on the Lecarde sisters and clears the remaining four of Brauner's portraits, they will be able to confront him within his room. He believes that Stella and Loretta have returned, but finds out that Jonathan and Charlotte have successfully intruded into his room and are about to stop him. Upon being informed by Charlotte that the Lecardes had already regained their senses, Brauner still clings onto his delusions while Johnathan calls him out of his delusional mindset as "sad", heavily angering him and a fight commences.

Once the duo defeat him, he curses Humanity for starting the World Wars and tells them that he just wanted to protect his family, before Death arrives in time and kills him, successfully unsealing Dracula and reinstating him as the castle's proper ruler. This forces Jonathan and Charlotte to one final mission: tie up loose ends by defeating Dracula and Death.