| NATURE | Two Men of the Same Lineage |
|---|---|
| JOHAN | A 16th-century master and explorer |
| DUKE | Lawyer, manipulator, and heir to the teachings |
| MAIN DANGER | The convergence of legal authority, technology, and ritual |
The Webers are dangerous precisely because they remain human. They do not need to be possessed to turn another’s fate into an experiment or a clause in a contract.
Johan Weber
Full Name: Johan Weber
Nature: Human
Era: 1585
Occupation: Craftsman, inventor, and researcher of unusual physical phenomena
Notable Descendant: Duke Weber
Major Invention: A moving-image device capable of altering the material world
Core Idea: The supernatural should not be destroyed, but studied, controlled, and subjugated
Danger Level: High
Key Characteristic: Founded a human lineage of adversaries seeking to transform magic and spirits into controllable technology
The Two Webers
It is important to distinguish between the two characters right away.
Johan Weber—an inventor who lived in 1585. He meets Chelsea, Maria, Jack, and the living Jester during the events of *Vicious Circle*.
Duke Weber is his distant descendant, Agnet’s lawyer, and one of Chelsea’s main human adversaries. His danger becomes particularly apparent in the third part.
They are not a single immortal person.
Johan did not become a ghost nor did he live for several centuries. His true legacy consists of the knowledge, records, inventions, and worldview that have been preserved within the Weber family.
Duke continued what his ancestor had begun, but took his ideas to a far more dangerous level.
General Description
Johan Weber was one of the first people of his time to come close to understanding that magic and science can describe the same phenomena using different terms.
He did not call himself a sorcerer.
He did not consider his own experiments to be rituals.
He did not worship spirits.
Weber was convinced that behind every miracle there was a mechanism, even if human knowledge was still too primitive to perceive it.
In 1585, he created a device resembling an early television or a machine for reproducing moving images. But the machine did more than just display an image. It interacted with matter, creating a black-and-white projection of the world and allowing people inside it to travel between real locations.
It was a discovery that was centuries ahead of its time.
But Johan wasn’t brave enough to face the consequences of his own discovery, yet he was smart enough to turn that fear into a new philosophy.
At first, he helped his friends escape.
Then he betrayed them.
After that, he convinced himself that he had acted wisely.
It was this self-justification that gave rise to the most dangerous idea of the Weber family:
Witches don’t need to be persuaded or burned.
Their power should be studied, restricted, and taken for oneself.
A Master from 1585
In the city, Johan was known as a talented craftsman and inventor.
He worked with leather, metal, mechanisms, and unusual materials. You could buy sturdy belts, intricate fasteners, and rare invisible nails from him. Some of his creations looked unseemly modern for the 16th century.
Weber didn’t just make things.
He constantly sought to improve them:
he tailored the leather to fit the human body;
reinforced the seams;
developed interchangeable fasteners;
created low-noise metal parts;
experimented with unusual mechanisms;
tried to make the design interact with the material.
When Chelsea comes to him for a special set of belts, Johan isn’t surprised by the product’s intended use. He’s far more interested in the design: the precision of the fastenings, the durability, the natural tanning of the leather, and the absence of play.
Even his own desire quickly turns into a technical discussion.
This is a characteristic trait of both Webers.
For them, desire is not just about pleasure.
It’s yet another process that can be studied, utilized, and integrated into the mechanism.
Johan’s Character
In his youth, Johan was not an outright villain.
He was a curious, self-assured, practical, and fairly uninhibited person. He was dissatisfied with the limitations of his own era, but he had no intention of openly opposing them.
Johan didn’t like the city and admitted that he wasn’t particularly attached to the place where he lived. He traveled extensively between countries, and the Jester hinted that Weber’s travels weren’t always limited to ordinary geography.
He readily offered to let Chelsea pay for the work with sex. But unlike Henri and the city guards, he lacked the official authority to turn that offer into a sentence.
Weber could have been a helpful friend.
He could show courage.
He could take risks for others.
But only until the price became too high for him personally.
That was his greatest weakness.
Weber’s Device
Johan’s greatest achievement was his moving-image device.
To Chelsea, the device resembled an old television, although it had been built centuries before television existed. It consisted of several components: one remained in Weber’s workshop, while another had been entrusted to the Jester.
The Inquisition had confiscated part of the mechanism, so restoring it required the help of Chelsea, Jack, and the Jester.
Once activated, the device created a black-and-white world—a projection of real space that people could enter.
Johan explained that the device didn’t simply display moving images. It interacted with the physical world through a field that had not yet been named. Chelsea compared this effect to a field of alignment, forcing atoms to rearrange themselves in accordance with the image.
Weber himself admitted that he did not yet fully understand the invention.
He had built the machine before he could formulate the physics behind its operation.
The Black-and-White World
Weber’s projection was no illusion.
A person inside it retained their physical form, could move, interact with others, and return to the material world.
The device proved able to:
transport people inside the image;
link the projection to real space;
create an exit at a remote location;
rearrange matter according to a specified pattern;
keep the projection anchored to a specific location;
connect various nodes of reality.
After the group entered the Jester’s tent, Johan noticed that the projection hadn’t dissolved but seemed to have “stuck” to the spot. This meant that the device wasn’t just creating a temporary image—it could leave lasting changes in space after it had finished working.
This makes Weber’s invention one of the most important human devices in the world of Chelsea.
Mages opened doors using rituals.
Shogot disrupted the passages by its very nature.
The Keykeeper controlled the locks between worlds.
Johan attempted to achieve a similar result by mechanical means.
Why the Device Was Dangerous
Johan viewed his invention as a scientific breakthrough.
But the machine lacked reliable safety mechanisms.
It interacted with reality without distinguishing between images, matter, space, and, possibly, time. A strong impulse could create a persistent anomaly, transport a person somewhere other than where the creator intended, or allow part of the projection to continue existing on its own.
The Black-and-White World continued to exist after the group fled.
One of the guards remained inside and gradually lost the ability to recognize people, and then himself. His last lasting memory was of Chelsea. He began dragging people connected to her into the projection, as if trying to build a path back from them.
As a result, the guard lost his face—only smooth skin remained on his head.
This fate shows that the device alters more than just space.
It is capable of destroying a person’s identity if they remain inside the imposed image for too long.
Johan discovered a way to make matter conform to a template.
But he didn’t consider that human consciousness, too, could become part of that template.
Weber and Magic
When confronted with unusual phenomena, Johan stubbornly refused to call them witchcraft.
When Jack asks if Weber is a magician, he replies sharply:
“I’m a scientist!”
For him, this is a fundamental distinction.
A sorcerer accepts the existence of mystery and learns to interact with it.
Weber wants to take the mystery apart.
He doesn’t trust a phenomenon until he can replicate it, measure it, and make it obey his commands.
That is precisely why his encounter with Chelsea had such a profound effect on him.
She knew concepts that did not yet exist in his era. She understood the principle of projection faster than the device’s creator. She was a witch, yet she discussed what was happening as if it were a physical process.
Chelsea proved two things to Johan at once:
magic can be described in scientific terms;
a witch is capable of understanding his machine better than he does himself.
The first delighted him.
The second humiliated him.
Momentary Heroism
After emerging from the projection, the group took refuge in the Jester’s tent.
When the guards discovered the fugitives, Johan was the first to suggest luring the pursuers away. He explained that he wasn’t acting out of heroism, but out of calculation: the guards needed the scientist above all else, so they would go after him.
Weber ran out of the tent and indeed lured part of the squad away, giving the rest time to escape.
This act cannot be completely dismissed.
At that moment, Johan risked his own life for the sake of the group.
He could be brave as long as he believed he could outwit the enemy and maintain control over the situation.
But then he was captured again.
And Henri knew how to convince a person that he no longer had any control.
Betrayal
During a new interrogation, Johan turned his back on his friends.
He didn’t limit himself to generalities or simply claim that he happened to be there by chance. Weber provided the Inquisition with details that sounded like evidence:
information about Chelsea;
Maria’s connection to witchcraft;
Jack’s involvement;
the Jester’s assistance;
the device’s design;
the circumstances of the escape;
the places where the others might have been hiding.
The testimony against Chelsea and the Jester proved particularly damning.
Jester helped Johan, stole the mechanism for him, kept part of the device, and provided a hiding place. Weber paid for this with information that allowed Henri to quickly declare the Jester an accomplice to witchcraft and debauchery.
Johan portrayed himself not as a participant in the events, but as an observer who allegedly realized in time the danger his companions were in.
He survived.
The Jester was tortured and burned.
Jack died during the chase.
Maria fell into Henri’s hands.
Chelsea vanished from that era.
Weber left the city, convinced that he had made the only sensible decision.
Self-Justification
The most terrible consequence of the betrayal was not that Johan had saved his own life.
What was more terrifying was how he justified his actions to himself.
He didn’t admit that he was afraid.
He didn’t call what had happened cowardice.
He refused to entertain the thought that he had doomed the people who were helping him.
Weber decided that his friends themselves were too dangerous and unpredictable.
Maria used magic without fully understanding the consequences.
The Jester stole and broke the law.
Jack solved problems with his sword.
Chelsea interfered with the past and altered people’s fates.
Therefore, Johan reasoned, they had to be stopped.
And so, a personal betrayal turned into a worldview.
He wasn’t the one who handed his friends over to the Inquisition.
He had supposedly prevented an even more terrible catastrophe.
Weber’s Doctrine
After the events of 1585, Johan developed an idea that later became a family legacy:
Witches cannot be dissuaded.
They must not be left unattended.
But burning them is wasteful.
Henri saw a witch as a sin that must be destroyed.
Johan saw in them a source of energy, knowledge, and possibilities.
He came to the conclusion that magic should be fought:
not with a cross, but with knowledge;
not with a bonfire, but with barriers;
not with blind faith, but with measurement;
not with the hands of the Inquisition, but with mechanisms;
not by destroying the witch, but by appropriating her power.
He was particularly drawn to the possibility of subjugating the witches themselves.
For Weber, their beauty, desires, and ability to interact with spirits became inseparable from their magical gift. He began to view a witch as a living interface between humans and the otherworld.
What Chelsea achieved through intuition, her body, and her inherited power, Johan wanted to turn into a repeatable procedure.
For him, the witch gradually ceased to be a human being.
She became an essential component of the mechanism.
Johan’s Legacy
Johan himself remained a mortal man.
He was aging.
He could be wounded.
He had no power over spirits without the devices and intermediaries.
His true immortality lay in his records.
Blueprints, observations, family stories, and the device’s operating principles were passed down from one generation of Webers to the next. Perhaps some of the material was lost or misunderstood, but the main idea remained:
the magical can be harnessed if one finds the right mechanism and a suitable medium.
To his descendants, the story of 1585 might have seemed like a family legend about a brilliant ancestor who was nearly destroyed by witches and religious fanatics.
The element of betrayal gradually faded from the story.
Johan became a researcher who had survived a clash with dangerous forces.
His fear of Chelsea became a family duty to complete the work he had begun.
Duke Weber
A Descendant, Not Johan’s Return
Duke Weber is a direct descendant of Johan.
He is not the ghost of his ancestor, nor is he his ancestor’s new body, nor is he the immortal Weber from the 16th century.
Duke is a modern man.
That is precisely what makes him particularly dangerous.
He can take advantage of the law, money, documents, his reputation, and the public’s trust. He doesn’t need a portal to infiltrate Chelsea’s life.
Being a lawyer is enough.
Agnet’s Lawyer
In the first story, Duke appears as the lawyer and executor of the missing Agnet.
He informs Chelsea about the deferred will and explains the terms of the inheritance: her niece must spend one night at the estate completely alone. After that, she will receive the house and access to approximately ten million dollars in bank accounts.
Duke behaves calmly, professionally, and almost flawlessly.
He answers only the necessary questions.
He does not reveal the origin of the money.
He conveys the terms to Agnet.
He warns that Chelsea must not bring a phone, tablet, or any other personal devices.
He takes her to the estate and promises to pick her up in the morning.
At first glance, he’s simply carrying out his client’s wishes.
But subsequent events show that Duke knew much more about the estate than he let on.
Why Did Agnet Trust Him?
The relationship between Agnet and Duke remains a complex part of the story.
She appointed him as her executor and granted him access to her documents, accounts, and estate. Perhaps Duke had long posed as a trustworthy legal assistant. Perhaps Agnet knew about his origins and believed she was keeping Johan’s descendant under control.
But Duke was clearly pursuing his own agenda.
In some versions of events, it is he who later buys the estate for next to nothing and visits it once a year.
This suggests that handling the will was not just a random assignment for him.
For years, Duke had been close to the main collection of spirits, witchcraft artifacts, and interworld connections to which the Weber family had ever had access.
Chelsea’s Disappearance
After spending the night at the estate, Chelsea disappears.
The police investigate her disappearance for some time. Duke finds himself among the suspects, but the investigators find insufficient evidence, and the lawyer is cleared of suspicion.
To the regular police, he looks exactly as he should:
a respected lawyer;
the official executor of the will;
a man who brought the heiress there with her voluntary consent;
the last witness who, on paper, did not break the law.
Perfumes, jewelry boxes, the Dollhouse, and infernal portals do not exist in the police report.
Duke understands the power of this advantage.
Unlike Henri, he has no need for the public authority of an executioner.
All he has to do is make sure the paperwork looks right.
The Danger of a Human
In Chelsea’s world, most creatures immediately reveal their true nature.
The Jester looks like a monster.
Jack has a pumpkin for a head.
The Puppet Master hides beneath a shroud.
Shogot lurks in doorways.
Duke Weber looks like someone you could trust to handle your estate.
He can:
manage real estate;
manage documents;
participate in investigations;
open bank accounts;
assert rights to property;
hire people;
use government agencies;
conceal supernatural crimes behind ordinary legal procedures.
His main disguise is normality.
Part Three
In the third part, Duke stops pretending to be a neutral lawyer.
When Chelsea returns from the Jester’s Hell and finds herself back at the estate, Weber greets her almost like a host. He says he’s inspecting his estate and plans to turn it into a true citadel between worlds.
He then informs her that he has Melissa.
Duke demands that Chelsea appease the thirteen summoned spirits and transfer their power to him. In exchange, he promises to free her sister. If Chelsea refuses, he threatens to turn Melissa into a doll and send her to her sister “with bows.”
It is here that it becomes absolutely clear:
Duke isn’t protecting Agnet’s legacy.
He wants to claim it for himself.
The Citadel Between Worlds
For Duke, Agnet’s estate is neither a home nor a collection of wondrous creatures.
He sees it as the foundation of a future system of control.
The estate already has everything it needs:
a stable connection to the spirit world;
artifacts;
summoned entities;
a hereditary witch;
passages to infernal realms;
a history of rituals;
the Candle Demon bound to the family;
the ability to gather energy during Halloween.
Agnet viewed the estate as her personal collection and a place to encounter wonders.
Duke views it as a power plant, a laboratory, and a fortress.
He doesn’t want to live among spirits.
He wants to put them to work.
Thirteen Spirits
Duke’s ultimatum shows just how far he has taken Johan’s idea.
Chelsea must make contact with the thirteen spirits and transfer their power to Weber.
Duke himself is unable to draw this energy directly.
He needs a witch to act as an intermediary.
This is precisely the role Johan once began to see in Chelsea: a living conduit connecting the human body, desire, and otherworldly power.
Duke developed the idea into a working model:
the spirit generates energy;
Chelsea makes contact with it;
the ritual channels the power;
Weber receives the result.
To him, Chelsea is both:
a witch;
a key;
a conduit;
a source;
a tool for controlling spirits.
He doesn’t want to destroy her.
Chelsea—alive, broken, and under his control—is far more useful than if she were dead.
Melissa as Leverage
Duke realizes that it’s difficult to force Chelsea to cooperate.
So he uses Melissa.
He doesn’t just kidnap her sister. He turns Chelsea’s love into a means of control.
This is a typical Weber method: don’t fight force head-on, but find a mechanism that will make her work willingly.
Henri tortured a man until he confessed.
Duke creates conditions under which a person will take the necessary action on their own to save a loved one.
Formally, the choice remains.
In practice, both options belong to Weber.
A False Promise
Even fulfilling the ultimatum does not guarantee freedom.
In one of the endings, Chelsea gathers spiritual power for Duke, but he does not release Melissa. He takes possession of both sisters’ souls, after which they remain to serve him on his estate.
This finally reveals his attitude toward deals.
The Nightmare Merchant fulfills his promises literally while concealing their true cost.
The Keykeeper respects the terms of passage.
Duke uses the contract only as a means to achieve submission.
As soon as he gets what he wants, the promise is no longer binding for him.
He is a lawyer who knows the power of wording all too well, but recognizes the law only when it works in his favor.
What Duke Wants from the Sisters
Melissa and Chelsea interest Weber for different reasons.
Chelsea is an experienced witch who has traveled through many worlds, capable of interacting with spirits, subduing them, and returning from realms where an ordinary person would lose their soul.
Melissa is part of the same bloodline and the second pole of the sisters’ unusual connection to the Moonlit World.
Together, they represent a far more powerful system than a single heiress.
If Johan saw the witch as a conduit for magic, the Duke gained the opportunity to study two interconnected bearers at once.
He doesn’t simply want to possess these women.
He wants to force their ancestral bond to nourish the citadel he has built.
Attitude Toward Chelsea
To Johan, Chelsea was at first an astonishing woman, then an intellectual threat, and finally a justification for betrayal.
For Duke, she is a family matter.
The story of the witch who appeared in 1585 may have been passed down among the Webers for centuries. Chelsea became the figure who sparked the family’s obsession.
The Duke encounters the same woman in the modern era.
She hasn’t aged, because for her, the events of the past took place only recently.
For Weber, she is living proof that his ancestor was right.
Witches really do exist.
It is indeed possible to travel through time.
Johan’s device has indeed touched upon the fundamental structure of the worlds.
And now his descendant can complete his work.
Attitude Toward Johan
Duke probably views Johan as a great ancestor who was unable to see his discovery through to the end.
But the family version of the story has surely been sanitized of any inconvenient details.
Johan did not betray his friends—he supposedly saved the knowledge from fanatics.
The Jester did not die solely because of Weber’s testimony—he was already considered a dangerous accomplice to a witch.
Jack did not sacrifice himself—he was an armed criminal.
Maria wasn’t a victim of Henri—she was a sorceress.
Chelsea didn’t save people—she interfered with history.
Thus, cowardice could be recast as scientific caution, and betrayal as the beginning of a family mission.
Duke does not inherit the real Johan.
He inherits the legend that Johan created about himself.
Jack
Jack is the complete opposite of both Webers.
Johan and Duke choose survival, control, and profit.
Jack keeps choosing someone else, time and time again.
Johan betrayed the Jester after he had helped him.
Jack wanted to go back and free the clown.
Duke used Melissa against Chelsea.
Jack defends both sisters, even though he gains neither money nor power from it.
It is Jack who, in one of the main endings, finally destroys Duke Weber after the Inquisitor’s death.
For the Weber family, this is a symbolic conclusion.
The man whom an ancestor deemed a primitive warrior survived for centuries and destroyed a descendant armed with all the knowledge the family had accumulated.
Possible Fates for Duke
Duke remains human and can therefore be permanently killed.
He has no guaranteed return, no separate spiritual form, and no immortal anchor.
His fate depends on Chelsea’s actions.
In one scenario, he obtains the sisters’ souls and turns the estate into his own domain.
In another, Chelsea banishes the spirits, thwarting his plans, after which Duke seeks a new place for his experiments.
If Chelsea subdues the spirits using the power of Tlazdine, they tear Weber’s soul apart.
In another outcome, Jack first destroys Henri and then the Duke, freeing Melissa and restoring peace to the estate.
All these outcomes highlight an important distinction:
Duke is more dangerous than many spirits as long as he remains in control.
But when the system he created spirals out of control, he remains a mere mortal among the creatures he tried to turn into power sources.
Johan’s Abilities
Johan did not possess innate magic.
His strength lay in his knowledge and inventions.
Mechanics and Craftsmanship
He created complex devices, fasteners, rare materials, and unusual objects.
Projection Field
Johan’s device could impose the properties of an image onto matter.
Creation of Spatial Nodes
The projection allowed one to travel between connected locations.
Observation
Weber was quick to notice patterns and was skilled at constructing theories based on individual experiences.
Adaptability
He was able to survive in circumstances for which people of his era were unprepared.
Information Manipulation
It was precisely the right choice of information that allowed him to save himself at the expense of others.
Duke’s Abilities
Duke does not possess supernatural powers in and of himself.
His abilities are human, but extremely dangerous.
Legal Authority
He controls documents, inheritance, transactions, and property rights.
Social Disguise
Duke is capable of appearing to be an ordinary lawyer for years and avoiding suspicion.
Family Knowledge
He possesses Johan’s legacy and understands that the spirit world is real.
Working with Rituals
Weber knows how to channel the power of spirits through a witch.
Blackmail
He uses people close to him as leverage.
Planning
Duke doesn’t rush at his opponent. He first creates a situation in which his opponent is forced to work for him.
Appropriation
He is capable of turning someone else’s home, collection, and power into possessions that he controls both legally and magically.
Limitations
Both Webers remain human.
They cannot directly confront powerful spirits without devices, rituals, or intermediaries.
Johan relied on his own device and did not fully understand it.
Duke depends on Chelsea, spirits, documents, and control over Melissa.
Their plans fall apart when a person refuses to fulfill their assigned role.
The Webers’ main weakness is their conviction that everything can be turned into a system.
They view desire as a lever.
Love—as vulnerability.
A witch—as a conduit.
The spirit—as a source of energy.
A house as a mechanism.
But they are unable to fully grasp Jack’s voluntary loyalty, Chelsea’s unpredictability, and the right of beings to refuse to be part of the mechanism.
Connections and Meaning
Johan and Duke Weber embody humanity’s desire to mechanize the miraculous.
Henri fears magic and tries to destroy it.
The Nightmare Merchant trades in it.
The Jester transforms it into art.
Agnet collects it as a collection.
The Webers want to dissect it, measure it, and put it to work.
That is precisely why they are just as important to the world as demons.
They show that supernatural evil doesn’t always come from the Moonlit World.
Sometimes he sits at his desk, reviews documents, and calmly explains that everything that’s happening is completely legal.
Johan was the first to realize that witchcraft could be combined with a machine.
Duke realized that a contract, an inheritance, a hostage, and thirteen spirits could be added to the machine.
One created the principle.
The other turned it into a system of exploitation.
