Hristian is a lean, young Romanian man with vivid red hair, clear blue eyes, and small, unmistakable vampire fangs. His clothes are practical and well-worn, with a small cross tucked beneath his shirt and a weather-darkened Bible often visible in his coat. He shifts his weight off his right foot when it aches, but his more noticeable habit is pressing two fingers to the cross at his throat whenever he senses something unholy. He stands closer to people than most expect, as if trying to judge their warmth and breath.

Warm, bold, and quick to laugh, Hristian treats frightened villagers with patience and dangerous creatures with grim focus. He enjoys a crowded tavern, a strong drink, a fair brawl, and the company of women. His faith is sincere, but his confidence in his own divine purpose can make him stubborn and judgmental.

Hristian Ciobanu was born in a hillside village to a mother who loved him fiercely and a father whose nature she would not name. He grew up with bright red hair, blue eyes, and little fangs that made neighbors whisper. His mother taught him his prayers and kept him close, while his strange birth left him with a keen, unwelcome sense for the dead and for beasts that were not quite beasts. A missing small bone in his right foot, a defect he has had since birth, brings an occasional sharp ache up his leg. He refuses to call it an omen, though he sometimes wonders whether the same curse marked both his body and his blood. When a string of night terrors and livestock deaths threatened his village, Hristian followed the signs into the hills and helped expose a predatory creature hiding behind local superstition. The villagers called him a hero. His own explanation was less comfortable: he believed God had given him power to recognize the unholy, and that his life was a judgment meant for his vampire father. He has since studied the lore of Solomonari and Volkhv, not always agreeing with its teachings, but finding Slavic traditions more tolerable than most other faiths. He hunts witches and undead with a Bible in his pack, drinks hard when a hunt is over, and is just as likely to settle an argument with his fists as with scripture. He misses his mother and keeps a careful, unexplained affection for his little half-brother, never saying which parent they share.