Pieter Van Eckhardt

Pieter Van Eckhardt is the main antagonist in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. He was a 15th Century evil alchemist who created a powerful weapon called Sanglyph. To keep the Sanglyph safe, Eckhardt split it into five pieces and hid a piece behind five paintings he created, depicting evil images, called Obscura Paintings.

Eckhardt grew ever more evil and powerful through alchemy. He eventually created an order known as The Cabal which consisted of an alliance between five powerful alchemists including Eckhardt. He eventually prepared to resurrect an extinct cross-angelic race known as the Nephilim which is the reason why he created the Sanglyph. He believed that using the Nephilim would help him and the Cabal have dominating power over the world. Because of his intentions, an order of Christian monks called the Lux Veritatis was born to stop Eckhardt and the Cabal. The other members of the Cabal eventually were all murdered by Eckhardt to retain the secrets they held.

The Lux Veritatis acquired the Periapt Shards, ancient weapons of light that were used to make the Nephilim race extinct in biblical times. The three shards were used against Eckhardt who became trapped in a state of paralysis. The Lux Veritatis led by Brother Obscura sealed Eckhardt in a deep containment pit near their headquarters, Castle Kreigler, located in present-day Germany, and he was left there for 500 years. The seal on Eckhardt would only last if the three Periapt shards remained combined. Brother Obscura then confiscated the five paintings that contained the pieces of the Sanglyph. He painted religious images over the evil ones and then made secret copies of each paintings before hiding them separately at hidden locations throughout the land. The copies were named as the Obscura Engravings, with each copy containing an encoded map to the location of the original painting.

During 1945, Castle Kreigler was bombed, causing the shards to split. The now-freed Eckhardt escaped the pit which he had spent the last 500 years in pain, vowing revenge against the Lux Veritatis and revived the Cabal, basing it in his hometown of modern-day Prague. While remaining faithful to Eckhardt's original mission, the new Cabal became devoted to hunting down any members of the Lux Veritatis. Eckhardt also managed to obtain the Periapt Shard that had been separated from the other two which still remained in the possession of the Lux Veritatis. He hid the shard in his old laboratory, deep underground beneath the Strahov.

After he hid his shard, Eckhardt and the Cabal set out to reclaim the five Obscura paintings, in order to acquire the Sanglyph. By the time Lara had become involved in the plot, the Cabal had already attained three of the five paintings. Eckhardt then hired Werner Von Croy to find the last two. Von Croy did learn of the location of the fourth painting beneath the Louvre from the Obscura engravings, but he never informed Eckhardt, because by that time, Von Croy had learn the truth of Eckhardt's evil plans. Although Von Croy was murdered, Eckhardt was or was not responsible.

Lara Croft found the two remaining paintings which Eckhardt then reclaimed off her before retreating to his old laboratory under the Strahov. He then started to finish what he started 500 years ago: reviving the Nephilim race. The Cabal had retrieved the last Nephilim specimen from Turkey: a Nephilim body which had been nicknamed the Sleeper. To revive the Sleeper, Eckhardt needed body parts, which he harvested from the victims he killed using his glove. During a final confrontation in his laboratory with Lara, Eckhardt starts the process of reviving it. He battles Lara using the Sanglyph, but he is eventually killed by Joachim Karel, his right-hand man in the Cabal, who stabs him with the third Periapt Shard right in the forehead. And so his plan to revive Nephilim race was not complete and was destroyed along with him.