Annet Renard was Richter Belmont's girlfriend, and it was her fate, too, to become a pawn in the eternal play. After Dracula was risen from his slumber by Shaft and his deviant followers, he cooked up a plan that saw his forces ravage Warakiya and take some of the town women hostage in hope of luring a Belmont hero to his castle for a duel. The skeletal and demon perpetrators grabbed Annet, her younger sister, Maria, plus others and imprisoned them in ghoulish locations surrounding the castle.

Annet, herself, was locked away near the castle keep, in the preceding clock tower (or in the caverns, if you prefer Castlevania: Dracula X's truncated story). From here, Dracula could keep an eye on her while further taunting Richter. When Richter arrived in the clock tower, he located the key to her chamber in an eagle's nest in a branching corridor, and this is all that stood in the way of his beloved. It was easy, yes--but Dracula's only interest was to goad Richter this far.

Her saving holds more relevance toward the story continuation of both games: In Rondo of Blood, her rescue counts towards your completion percentage and thus the best ending. And in Castlevania: Dracula X, saving her opens up a hidden stage, and, thereafter, an alternate boss on the clock tower stage whose defeat unlocks the game's best ending.

The master Librarian is a longtime ally of both Count Dracula and his son, Alucard, and throughout the eons, he resided in the castle's huge library where it was his job to maintain the castle's wealth of informational pieces. The Master Librarian thereby became a very fountain of this information.

No one was more surprised than he to see Alucard emerge into his tiny den within the long library when the two hadn't been in contact for hundreds of years. Though the Librarian's allegiance was strongest with Dracula, he couldn't suppress his true nature to help the less fortunate, especially if they had something to offer in return. While Alucard certainly wasn't in that class, the Librarian readily made his services available to the half-breed hero when promised a huge reward in return. (Perhaps his redemption? We never learned.) To such a soul, wealth and security were always of the utmost assurance.

Of course, his services are more yours than Alucard's: After his trust is earned, in-game, the Librarian will begin to function similarly to the merchants of games' past only with more in the way of information. He'll sell to you stronger armor and weaponry, he'll buy from you gems and other valuable stones, he'll list for you the many enemies and their statistics, and he'll furthermore supply valuable tips on how to defeat the game's strongest enemies. After the game is cleared, his den will also be the site of Symphony's sound test.

Lisa was the woman with whom Vlad Tepes Dracula fell in love after becoming a vampire. After the death of his first wife, Vlad waited patiently for countless years, for he believed that she would one day be reborn so that they could be together again. When he met Lisa, he was convinced that she was his beloved reborn.

Not surprisingly, as Lisa learned to love him, his hatred toward God did not resonate onto her, because it was never in her nature to hate. In fact, she loved Vlad more than anything in the world despite his flawed vision.

To others, Lisa was known as the very kind woman who sacrificed all of her time to medicine, and she would prepare all kinds of remedies for the sick and weary. Due to the paranoid nature prevalent in this time-period, when people lived in fear of the forces of darkness, a rumor spread that Lisa's medicinal practices were so effective because she was a witch. Thus, the authorities arrested her, tried her as a witch without much proof, and executed Lisa immediately thereafter. This was an act that drove Vlad to insanity and became the driving force behind his lust for revenge against the humans.

Though, there remained one true connection between the two: The baby to which Lisa gave birth shortly before her death--Adrian Farenheights Tepes, better known as Alucard. Right before her execution, she made Alucard promise to deliver to his father two messages: "Do not do the humans any harm," she'd ask, "for theirs is already a hard lot." Also, she needed that Vlad know one more thing: "Tell him," she said, "that I will love him for all of eternity."

In Symphony, Lisa's is more a pseudo-apperance: The Succubus tries to play upon Alucard's conflicted status by taking Lisa's form, in an attempt to enrage him enough to where he'd join in evil's cause almost unwittingly (as in Luke Skywalker "joining the dark side"). Thereafter, after defeating Dracula, Alucard speaks to him the words he promised his mother he'd relay.

Ten years before the events of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, there existed an untold tale of Dracula versus the family of legend (or at least a faction of the family bearing blood relation to the Belmonts). After Richter Belmont vanquished from this world the hated Count, the clan pulled a disappearing act and relinquished possession of the Vampire Killer and the mystic sub-weapons due to an unexplored policy that it not again touch the hardware until Dracula's next in-cycle resurrection--one requiring approximately one hundred years of rest on the part of the Dark Lord. Fearing that deviants, as they always had, might attempt to resurrect Dracula early, the clan left the weapons to the care of the Baldwin and Graves warriors, who were related to the Belmonts by blood. It would be their job to in the meantime counter any threat.

When Dracula did indeed return to this world, early, it was Morris Baldwin and members of said Graves family who battled the resilient Count and removed him from this world.

After the epic struggle, Morris came to realize the near-unlimited power of Dracula, and in researching history, he lived in fear that Dracula might return sooner than believed--that his followers would seize a golden opportunity, a Belmont-less scenario, and hastily try again, or that Dracula was simply feigning defeat in order to hide out and over time regenerate enough power to orchestrate a surprise return. To prepare for such an event, he took under his wing two youths: His son, Hugh Baldwin, and Nathan Graves, the offspring of his relatives; he trained the two boys to be expert vampire hunters. Though, in a move that shocked everyone, Morris, as the elder entrusted with the whip and the weapons, decided that Nathan should be the next hunter in line and not Hugh, his son, who seemed to be the more logical choice. This decision affected the two youths in different ways. Morris was deeply disappointed to learn that Hugh came to despise Nathan, his former friend, who he now saw as his bitter rival.

Years later, notwithstanding, the event that Morris feared was coming to fruition: The countess Camilla had been resurrected and was preparing to do the same for her master, Lord Dracula. Morris and his students sensed this imbalance in nature and sped toward the castle to prevent such a ritual from occurring. They were too late, and for Morris, this resulted in his untimely capture, wherein Dracula would slowly drain the old hunting master's life-force and use it to replenish his own.

Morris survived the process long enough for Nathan, and later Hugh, to arrive and carry him off to safety. While Hugh was proud of Nathan's efforts in vanquishing Dracula from this world, he was even more proud of the fact that through their castle-wide encounters his two students learned to work out their differences and accept their separate distinctions.

Hugh is the son of Morris Baldwin and, like many others, a Belmont descendant of a different surname. Because of the strong bond between the Baldwin and Graves families, he and Nathan became great friends during their years of training under the watchful eye of Morris.

It was obvious from observing their training that Hugh was superior in terms of skill, and Hugh always showed great pride in that position. However, when his father started to favor Nathan, it was beyond his understanding. "What was it that his father saw?" everyone wondered. Over time, the constant attention paid to Nathan began to make Hugh feel resentful, jealous and even hateful. Finally, Hugh was pushed over the edge when Morris Baldwin, the elder, presented to Nathan the Vampire Killer whip and the sub-weapons rather than to Hugh, who proved to be more skillful.

When the trio arrived at the castle, a preemptive strike by Dracula landed Hugh and Nathan in the castle's catacombs. Hugh broke free from Nathan, pushing him aside, and set out to look for his master. He was having little to no luck and became bitter when Nathan was able to make better progress. The hate grew so much that Hugh's mind became clouded, and he was easy prey for Dracula's dark magic. Nathan learned this all too well when he entered the castle keep only to be attacked by a nearly possessed Hugh.

When Nathan emerged victorious, knocking some sense into him (or knocking the spell's influence out of him, as it were), Hugh, who had been watching himself externally, helplessly, came to finally understand why his father made the decision to hand down the weapons to Nathan. The humbled Baldwin gave Nathan his blessing to finish the search and bring their master to safety, and he vowed, thereafter, to restart his training with a newfound respect.

When Cornell ventured into the castle's Villa during his adventure, he stumbled into a mansion owned by Master Oldrey. Upon entering into its master bedroom, he watched on as Oldrey bang away at the door, demanding that his wife, Mary, open it. Mary refused to open the door because she knew the secret that Cornell would soon discover: Master Oldrey had been infected with Dracula's curse, and he grew so accepting of his eternal status that he wished for his wife and son to join him in his "paradise." He put up tombstones with their names in the Villa's garden and was preparing to remove them from this world and allow them entry into his.

After Cornell chased off her husband, Mary, who was under the pressure of impending doom, asked a big favor of the man-beast: She pleaded with Cornell to locate her son, Henry, and bring him to safety, far away from the castle, to ensure the family's survival. Cornell obliged and thereafter found the boy hiding in the Villa's hedge maze, where a Frankenstein Gardener and two hell hounds were patrolling. Cornell came through on his word; he braved the dangers and brought the boy to safety.

This event would have so much impact and inspiration on the young Henry Oldrey. For one, he'd grow up to despise the creatures of the night. And, as a result, he'd train hard to one day become a member of the Order of Church Knights, whence he'd vow to protect children from Dracula's dark forces as Cornell once did for him.