Background

        Hm... how to describe Gabriel's world to those of you who haven't been there? It's not all that different from the one that we live in. Gabriel is just a struggling, semi-successful writer of pulp horror novels trying to make a living on that and the used and rare bookstore he owns, St. George's. He lives behind the store in the French Quarter of New Orleans, he's unbearable until he's had his morning coffee, he's incorrigible, a ladies' man, and a bit of a cad. One of his favourite pastimes is flirting with/tormenting his very useful and uninterested assistant, Grace Nakimura.
        And somewhere deep in his psyche, he's convinced that none of this matters, because he's doomed to die young. After all, his dad and mom were killed in a car crash before his dad was thirty, and his grandmother raised him; her husband (his father's father), too, had died before thirty. Before that, who knows? The family left Germany for reasons unknown. The early deaths seem to be something of a family curse, but what can Gabriel do about it? Just enjoy life while it's there and don't fret about things; that's his philosophy.
         Except it turns out that it is a family curse. One that started long ago, when an ancestor of his betrayed the woman he loved, who just happened to be a very powerful voudoun priestess. And when Gabriel starts looking into some modern-day voudoun murders for a book he's writing, he gets pulled into the world his forebear tried so hard to leave behind.
         Gabriel, he soon discovers, is the last in line of the Ritters, a very old German family with an hereditary title to pass on -- Schattenjäger. Shadow Hunter. And in order to save himself, his family, and possibly the woman he's coming to love, Gabriel must take on the Schattenjäger mantle to fight for goodness against the powers of evil.

         Sound melodramatic? And that's just the setup for the first game! If you're interested and don't feel like playing the game, I recommend the novelisation, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, by Jane Jensen.

        So what is it that makes me want to write about Gabriel, let alone slash him? Well, for that, you have to take a look at the second game.

Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within

         Gabriel, having come out of the adventures of the first game with a few new scars inside and out, a new knowledge of the fuzzy boundaries between good and evil, and all the powers and responsibilities of the Schattenjäger, is living in the ancestral Ritter family home (castle), in Rittersberg in Bavaria. His last book, based on the voudoun murders, sold ridiculously well, business in the bookstore has picked up, and everything's going fine. Then the villagers of Rittersberg show up at his doorstep en masse, with torches...erm, flashlights.
         It turns out that one of them has family up near Munich, and the family's five-year-old daughter, Tomi, was killed -- by a werewolf. Now, as reluctant Schattenjäger, it is Gabriel's job to find the killer and take care of him or her, whilst dodging the police's non-supernatural efforts and finding out the connection between the several murders in Munich, a pair of wolves escaped from the zoo, and a Bavarian nobleman from King Ludwig's time named the Black Wolf.

        Gabriel tracks the escaped wolves to the head of the zoo's mammal section, who, bizarrely enough, has a membership in a hunting club in town composed entirely of members of prominent German families. Attempting to use his Ritter pedigree to gain entrance, Gabriel is met by the lovely and slightly mysterious Baron Friedrich von Glower, the founder of the club, who invites Gabriel in as his special guest. "Gabriel!" he says when introduced to the American. "Like the angel."
        Not everybody in the club is so pleased to meet Gabriel, however. One member in particular, Baron von Zell, a friend of the zookeeper, is agitated and surly, refusing to speak to Gabriel and all but demanding he leave. In contrast, Friedrich gives Gabriel his card and invites him to visit his house if he needs anything at all.

        The following day, Gabriel does visit Friedrich, and they drink wine together and discuss all manner of things, including the hunt club's philosophy that men need to get closer to their inner beast, live more in tune with their primal selves that society tries so hard to subdue. They discuss some of the foibles of the current club members, and von Zell's horrible temper, and the tragedy of the local murders, one of which occurred not far from the club. And Friedrich gets very upset when Gabriel asks if he's heard of the Black Wolf. Before Gabriel leaves, Friedrich takes both of his hands in his own and encourages him to return.
        That evening at the club, von Zell accuses Gabriel of ulteriour motives in joining the club and says he doesn't belong there. Friedrich puts him in his place, but Gabriel decides that he should probably go; Friedrich says he'll see him later at his (Friedrich's) place. And when Gabriel goes to retrieve some things from the place that he's staying, a large black wolf watches him.
        Back at Friedrich's place, they are in the process of getting drunk and friendly on the couch, when a beautiful woman strolls in and drapes herself over Friedrich, necking with him. Gabriel offers to leave, but in return, Friedrich offers him Detta -- she doesn't speak any English, he says, but she has her own way of making herself understood. Detta and Gabriel adjourn to a lavish bedroom upstairs at Friedrich's.
        After Detta leaves, Gabriel lies naked and debauched, apparently asleep as Friedrich enters. Friedrich sits on the side of the bed next to Gabriel and strokes Gabriel's hair out of his face, then lets his hand drift down to pick up the Schattenjäger talisman Gabriel wears around his neck (proof against evil) and examine it. Then he leaves. And Gabriel opens his eyes.

        The next day, the hunt club adjourns to a forest not far from Munich, where they plan on spending the weekend, and Friedrich invites Gabriel; Gabriel doesn't have appropriate hunting clothes, but that's okay -- he can wear some of Friedrich's. After talking with a few of the members, Gabriel decides to go on a walk through the forest. And there, in a cave, he finds von Zell, naked and bloody, gnawing on the bones of the missing and dead.
        Panicked, Gabriel rushes back to the hunting lodge; he knows that none of the other members would understand or help, but Friedrich will. He tells him what he's seen, and Friedrich reveals that he knows exactly who Gabriel is and why he's been in Munich -- he has his own sources of information. They make plans to head out that evening and destroy von Zell in wolf form.
        And eventually, after a chase, they corner him -- he can't get past Gabriel's talisman (think old-school vampires and crosses). Friedrich has the rifle, but says he can't do it; Gabriel will have to. He throws Gabriel the gun, and Gabriel manages to shoot von Zell and kill him -- but not before von Zell bites him and makes him drop the Schattenjäger talisman. Friedrich helps him back to the lodge, binds his wounds, and gets him back to Rittersberg. But if all Gabriel has to do to defeat the lycanthropic infection is kill the head of the wolf bloodline, and he's just killed von Zell himself, why does he still feel the Change coming on him? Friedrich sends him a letter to explain, and returns the talisman to him, but Gabriel's assistant Grace intercepts them and keeps them from him.
        It seems that, while von Zell was in fact responsible for the murders in Munich, Friedrich himself is the Black Wolf of King Ludwig's time. He inherited the werewolf blood from his father, who was burned at the stake by an ancestor of Gabriel's when Friedrich was still young. Friedrich is several hundred years old, and has been searching for a companion for some time, but all the ones that he has tried to change before have either died, or gone mad like von Zell (and King Ludwig). But Gabriel, with his Ritter blood, already has a type of power in him; the Change should prove no problem...

         All this, plus Friedrich's being a close companion of King Ludwig (who struggled with his own homosexuality), two gorgeous men with wonderful voices, and themes of eternal love and friendship. How could I not slash them?

Pages created and maintained
by Lorelei

Last modified 08 August 2004