Viscount Rausan

"Give it up, you heretic slime. You've picked a fine place to meet your doom. Time to meet your Maker"

- Viscount Rausan

Viscount Rausan is a character in the video-game Shadow Hearts. Rausan is the last great Inquisitor of Christianity and a pawn of "Roger Bacon", instrumental in his scheme to summon for the power of God.

Rausan the witch-hunter
Rausan was the leader of a group of Friar Knights keeping Christian Inquisitions going in Europe. The knights are simply referred to as The Order, and said to be the last trainers of Paladins in Europe. Rausan kept the Order going by hunting Europe for heretics and suspected heretics. One day a man calling himself Roger Bacon came before Rausan and told him of a witch running free in London, a mere stone's throw from The Order's "Mental Hospital". Rausan was aware the man was a warlock and resented working with Bacon, who was infamous as a heretic in the Church but the notion of bringing in a real living breathing witch, possibly the last one of the age was more than enough incentive for Rausan to temporarily overlook Bacon's heresy. Bacon not only was willing to point out where the witch was hiding but arranged for Rausan and his men to receive holy empowerment by pledging their service to God. With the powers given to them by Bacon the Order went after the witch, though cunning and powerful the Order was eventually able to persuade the witch to come with them quietly by threatening to kill her son, Halley.

Halley felt guilty for years and was never certain if he lost his mother because she was looking for an excuse to get away from him and his powers or if she was just pressured into giving him up for either-way her capture by the Inquisitor's was his fault. Halley tried to get into the Calios Mental Hospital where his mother was held many times but the guards were both vigilant and inhumanly strong. While saving some of his fellow orphans from a mad orphanage director named Jack, with the help of some new friends named Yuri Hyuga, Alice Elliot, Margarete Zelle and Keith Valentine, the protagonists of the game, Halley was held back by a voice that psychically projected itself from Yuri. Yuri said he had heard the voice several times before and it had given him good advice and saved Alice's life on one occasion, though whenever it spoke Yuri would double over in pain. Much to everyone's surprise though Halley recognized the voice though. Once Jack was defeated Halley told the others his sad story and that he recognized the voice as that of his mother who had been taken away by Viscount Rausan years ago. With the new information on the voice which had helped them over the course of the game and hearing of their new friend's plight the party decided to help Halley get his mother back.

With Yuri and the others Halley was finally able to get past the guard of the Calios Mental Hospital. Fighting the guards revealed that once they  invoked the holy magics given to them they were transformed into inhuman specters. Meanwhile, inside Rausan had heard the intruders were approaching and informed Bacon and his right-hand ghost Arcane Olga that he and his best men were going to re-enforce their star prisoner. Bacon warned Rausan that the intruders and the young-man Yuri Hyuga in particular were not to be underestimated and were extremely dangerous. Rausan causally dispelled Bacon's warnings and said none would take away the Order's great prize. Once Halley Yuri and the others made it to the cell Halley's mother was being held in Rausan was there to stop them himself, Rausan transforms into an inhuman specter like his fellow Inquisitors but substantially stronger and with strong holy powers and an inhuman formed manifested by Rausan's extreme hatred of non-Christians.

Bacon's Pawn
Arcane Olga has a severe dislike of Rausan, Olga herself being a witch in life disliked those who used their religion as an excuse to kill people even though Olga herself was otherwise an enthusiastic murderer. Bacon himself also has strong fundamental values against Rausan and his like but viewed him as an invaluable pawn since the witch Koudelka was the last and most essential pieces to a ritual he was planning and only Rausan and his Order could put Koudelka in a pacified state that would eventually allow Bacon to use her as the catalyst for the rites. Rausan seems to dislike working with Bacon and Olga just as much as they disliked him since both were practitioners of unholy magics and just barely seems willing to be in the same room as the two and even then only because Bacon was the one to give him and his men holy powers.

The Order
The order is said to be the last trainers of Paladins and Friar Knights in Europe, if this is true then the Order almost certainly is tied to the group Sapientes Gladio. Sapientes Gladio employs paladins similar in appearance to the Friar knights of the Order and considering "Bacon's" link to them may have used his previous knowledge of the groups inner workings to separate them from the rest of the group to use as pawns. Sapientes Gladio is never actually mentioned in the first game and so no real connection is made but if the claims of the Order being the last trainers of Paladins are true then by default the group must have had some link to Sapientes Gladio at some point in their recent past before "Bacon" arrived.