Richter von Brandt

In the history of the world there have been many dark wizards who vie for power from eldritch places but none as equally cunning and monstrous as Richter von Brandt. Combine those qualities with frothing paranoia as Richter found himself fleeing from the crumbling Third Reich and the enemies he had made during the second world war and you have a recipe for disaster.

The Slow Road to Hell
To escape persecution for his crimes Richter used every dark trick he had acquired in his time as a commanding officer in Hitler's Dark Circle. He summoned ever demon he knew the name of, and promised every piece of his soul until he could spare no more.

His desperation put him in the magical debt of several Dark Powers that eventually came to collect, but not before Uther Pendragon banished them and the cursed city of Arkham into the Astral Sea, tethered only by the River Styx. Robbed of their ability to influence the material plane, the Dark Powers of Arkham waited hungrily for Richter to slip up somehow. They did not have to wait long.

Richter's final mistake would come in the winter of 1990 when he attempted to kill the last of his pursuers, Jack Radigan; who had survived a fatal ambush by Richter at great cost, leaving him half-alive and withered to just his bones. Jack mercilessly hunted Richter across the globe, forcing him to relocate from one hiding spot to the next till Richter snapped and pulled the last trick he knew but was too afraid to use.

Richter opened a door to the outer realms with the intention to gain psionic power and was instead discovered by the great stygian psionic mind of Vlaakith CLVII. The Lich Queen experienced all of his memories instantly and ripped Richter's mind into pieces before stitching them back together.

With her newfound knowledge Vlaakith ordered that the barriers protecting Earth from inter-planar travel be destroyed, and that Richter be the one to do it at any cost. Thus Richter was forced to travel to Arkham where the barriers between realms were weak and he could gather power to bid his Queen's command. He traveled there in wide-eyed terror as he was both compelled by his psionic link to Vlaakith, but fully conscious of what would happen to him when he arrived there.

Enter Sandman
The horror that was inflicted on Richter's body and mind upon his arrival into Arkham as the Dark Powers consumed what was owed to them is indescribable and vile.

In the end the Arkham Collective and the piecework remnants of Richter von Brandt coalesced into a singular being called the Sandman. He had become the host for a legion of evil whose sole purpose was to bring down the Barriers of Law and Creation to pave the way for the coming of the Lich Queen Vlaakith and the only way to do that was to kill the High Council and break Uther's banishment.

Unable to fully manifest save for a few precious seconds when the planes were closest, the Sandman was forced to kill his victims through a psionic link he would establish via his "sand" or rather the dissolving shadow and ash that comprised his body. Once inside a persons' mind he would plunder its' depth for their darkest fears before manifesting them while the victim continued to imagine them, creating a negative mental feedback loop that would crush a mind under its' own weight.

Personality
Richter is the textbook definition of a psychopath but what sets him apart from the everyday serial killer is his obsession with fear and the control that it exerts on the minds of others. He is obsessed with phobias and the irrationality of the mind when confronted with terror. This obsession took Richter down deeper and darker paths until he found himself a commanding officer of arcane Nazis who ritually sacrificed prisoners for demonic powers.

von Brandt is cunning and cruel with a dark curiosity for eldritch secrets. He would gnaw off his own arm and sacrifice it to the abyss just to hear the sound the demons made as they tore apart his flesh, and he would be smiling while he did it.