Viktor Tongalin is known today as the Grand Master of the vampires of Forgotten Hollow. He slew the former master and founder of the town, Vladislaus Straud. Straud was a reclusive and enigmatic figure. His distance caused the townsfolk to both honor and fear him.
Viktor has taken a different approach, making himself widely known for his cruelty and incivility. The Tongalin Vampire Clan has grown so evil and expansive that other, smaller groups of good vampires have bonded together to try and overthrow the tyrant. But how did we get to this point? Was Viktor always evil?
The Tongalin Vampire Clan is notoriously tight-lipped about their personal lives. Their histories, of course, do not appear in the town archives. Even National Leader Emmit Tongalin, apparently the grandson of Viktor, refuses to speak to reporters about his family, distant as they may be.
Therefore, this record is sourced from urban legends, rumors, and circumstantial evidence found in town records, as well as bits and pieces from interviews of other Tongalins and present-day neighbors of Tongalin properties. This is my best reconstruction of the Tongalin family history, but please don’t take it as actual fact.
Beginnings
Extremely little about Viktor’s parents or their ancestors is known to the public. I imagine that, like many wealthy families in the past, the Tongalin family probably settled in Willow Creek. Very little evidence of any original settlers has survived, as most of the structures in town are relatively knew. At this time, we have no way of knowing when or where or who began the Tongalin story in our region, or even where they came from, if anywhere.
What we do know is that Viktor’s family was extremely successful. At the height of their success, an ancestor built what we know today as the Tongalin Castle. While we are familiar with it today standing on The Crumbling Isle in Windenberg, it was originally built in the Llama Lagoon neighborhood of Newcrest, not far outside Willow Creek. We’ll discuss its move in a future volume.
The castle was enormous, styled after medieval French castles, and, as you might expect, didn’t fit into the newly-built neighborhood at all. Neighbors referred to the structure as “Tongalin’s Folly,” seeing it as an ugly and ostentatious waste of money. I imagine this caused the Tongalins to hide away from these critical neighbors, using the castle for its actual purpose, defense. The privacy of the Tongalins, in their comically large house, created a belief that the family was “crazy,” maybe even evil. Some of the stories I heard were wild.
A Willow Creek resident told me that her grandparents heard stories of “Tongalin’s Murder Palace”, a la H.H. Holmes.
Others told stories of intense familial abuse of all kinds, satanic rituals, kidnapping and murder, and much more. With no hard evidence of any kind, anything can be true (or made up).
What I can verify is that Viktor, as he grew up, made a bit of a name for himself. He was a businessman, seemingly in an unrelated field to his family, though he still lived in the castle. I was unable to find any records of any other family living with him. The remains of any ancestors of Viktor have never been found.
He married a young woman named Ari Hampton. The two held their ceremony in the chapel of the castle, though I couldn’t find anyone who even knew of someone who was invited or went. Even so, an announcement, without a photo, was published in the local paper’s legal announcements.
Ari later gave birth to two children, Vivek and Veronica. The family lived a fairly normal life, with the children attending public school in Newcrest, and Ari and Viktor entertaining guests from time to time at the castle.
I was able to find some secondhand sources (diaries and a few letters from contemporary Tongalin neighbors) which described the couple. Ari was often referred to as quiet and small, though warm and welcoming. Her smile was always broad and genuine. Viktor was described as handsome and tall, muscular and charismatic. Though, some sources described his voice as having an uncomfortable and unsettling steely tone. One resident even wrote of Viktor having an aura of ravenous darkness around him, as if he was sucking up and destroying all the light.
While I can’t know what exactly was meant by this, or what it refers to specifically, I think it’s important to mention it now.
The Catalyst
Looking back over this (lack of) history, it’s easy to assume it was this one completely random moment that completely changed the lives of the Tongalin family forever. Though, it’s much more likely that this moment was part of a much larger behavioral trend. We can only guess at what that looked like.
It’s not likely that Viktor and Ari were living a completely happy life with no issues when Ari one day walked in on her husband in the throws of passion with her own brother, Del. Some reports say the marital and familial transgression happened in the very chapel where the young couple was married.
Allegedly, Ari was so overwhelmed with grief and shock that she died in that very moment. It’s likely the actual cause was a heart attack, but since her body was cremated, we’ll never know for sure.
When Ari died, her two children were very young. They both grew up with only fuzzy memories of their mother because of Viktor’s inability to even hide his destructive behavior from his wife.
Ari’s brother Del became the subject of town gossip for years and years. His presence gave folks a whole new supernatural aspect of their myth-making.
In Volume 2 we’ll look into the claims that Viktor not only prefers men to women, but has an uncanny ability to give any man the ability to become pregnant and give birth.
Ari’s Resting Place
Initially, Ari’s urn was interred in the upper chamber of the Tongalin Family Crypt, located within the Tongalin Castle. This crypt was open to the public on special occasions, and we know for sure that Ari’s remains rested in a dedicated niche for many years before being moved to the Willow Creek Park Cemetery. This move coincides with the Togalins leaving the castle, seemingly for good.
At the rear of the chapel was a small room that houses the stairs to the crypt. In this room Ari’s urn sat at the feet of a weeping angel.
While we know her remains were moved to Willow Creek, I have not been able to verify it personally, as the Tongalin crypt is always kept locked.
Join us in Volume 2 to look into Viktor’s relationship with Del, their children, the first alien abduction, and the Tongalin’s dramatic exodus from Newcrest.
