Heller Schmidt (Earth-1771)

Heller Schmidt was the thirtieth Baron of a fortress near an unnamed village in rural Germany, which was governed by a religious cult known as "Zyklus Unitology" (English: "Cycle of Unitology"). Although his appearance resembled that of a ten-year old, and his frial body resembled that of an elderly man, he was only 20 years old.

Early Life
Baron Harbin Schmidt, the great-great-great-grandfather of Heller, was the ruler over an isolated castle in Germany around 1812. Greatly opposed to the expanding religious movement known as the "Zyklus Unitology", Harbin began a brutal wave of persecution against followers of the faith, and had the object of their faith - a intelligence of unknown origin called the Flut - sealed in an ancient complex in the caves beneath his castle. The fifth Baron, Wolfgang Schmidt was fascinated when he was told the legacy of his family by his father, and of the connection his father, Wolfgang and his grandfather, Klaus Schmidt had with Die Flut. Heller mused in his journals, chronicling the quest the Schmidt Bloodline had long taken, about the Flut's origins. When his father died, Heller become the Thirtieth Baron in late 2000. He lived alone with his butler and had no immediate family since childhood.

The Master Plan
For years, Heller continuously lived with his butler. This left him vulnerable to Grigori Rasputin's influence, who succeeded in indoctrinating Heller into becoming a fervent believer in Zyklus Unitology' teachings. Schmidt became convinced that he had to undo the seal of Die Flut in order to atone for the "sins" of his ancestor, the First Schmidt. Once the excavation of the Flut had begun, he was injected with one of the parasites. This would give him power over the Gastgeber, most of the Zyklus Unitology' cultists, and two fearsome, mutated bodyguards known as the Aufstands. Eventually, he was completely taken over by the power of the parasites. Heller became a recluse in his castle, as he no longer cared for anything but the survival and domination of Zyklus Unitology, which led to his assistance in the kidnapping of the Russian President's daughter, Alena Vorshevsky. Only his butler knew the truth of his full spiritual incapacitation.