| Vincent | |
|---|---|
 Vincent in Timeline A, None Shall Pass 4: A New Hope | |
 Vincent in Timeline B, None Shall Pass 7: When the Storm Came | |
| Name | Vincent; "Vince" to his allies |
| Epithet | The Necromancer Hunter |
| First appearance | None Shall Pass 3: The Dark Ages (cameo) |
| Last appearance | None Shall Pass 9: Red Tooth and Claw (2018; Timeline B) |
| Role | Necromancer Hunter; member of the Knights of the Bright Lantern; self-declared Geomancer Messiah |
| Affiliations | The Knights of the Bright Lantern; the opposition to Evil Beef Nate (fourth and fifth films) |
| Weapon | An enchanted sai, sometimes called the Trident Dagger |
| Timelines | Timeline A (Prime); a Timeline B counterpart |
| Status | Killed by Evil Beef Nate in Timeline A; alive in Timeline B |
Vincent, styled the Necromancer Hunter, is a supporting character of the None Shall Pass film series and the protagonist of its planned prequel. He is a descendant of the Guild of the Geomancers, the ancient rivals of the Necromancers, and a member of the Guild's last surviving sect, the Knights of the Bright Lantern. He enters the story quietly, freeing two of Beef Nate's dead friends from the Necromancer's hold, and comes to the fore in the second trilogy as one of the three men who stand against Evil Beef Nate, believing himself to be the Geomancer Messiah of prophecy. The series treats that belief as sincere and mistaken. He is voted out of the opposition he helped to found, loses his weapon to Gordon, and dies in Timeline A saving a pregnant woman from Evil Beef Nate. A Timeline B Vincent survives, and it is he who first confronts and then arms the stranded Max.
¶ Background: the Geomancers and the Knights of the Bright Lantern
The Geomancers are a guild of earth-magicians locked for centuries in a secret war with the Necromancer's Guild. When the Necromancer, Richard, gained sole control of his own Guild, he launched an ambush that all but exterminated the Geomancers. The only survivors were a small cadre, led by a figure remembered only as Morrison, which happened to be on a mission in the Far East at the time. That remnant became the Knights of the Bright Lantern. It continued the Geomancer mission in secret and, in time, recruited Vincent and his apprentice Delongy.
The Knights are bound by the Blood Oath, which gives None Shall Pass 6: The Blood Oath its title. The oath is the Geomancers' counter-bond to necromancy: where the Necromancer binds the dead by thrall, the cold of the grave, the Knights bind by blood, the warmth of the earth. It is one rite with two uses. A living apprentice swears it to become a brother-soldier of the order, and a revenant swears it to be freed from the Necromancer's thrall, the blood bond being the only thing the Geomancers have that can hold a dead man free. What the oath has freed stays free; the unbinding is an act completed, not a hold maintained, and necromancy can answer it only with a fresh raising, which is a new thrall. The oath is sworn by each person for himself alone and cannot be inherited. The Necromancer Hunter who administers it pledges his own life as surety, and his death releases the living he bound. In Necromancer blood the same oath burns for as long as it holds.
Geomancer lore also carries a prophecy of a Geomancer Messiah who will defeat the Necromancer or his heirs and prevent the breaking of the world, and the oath is sworn to that Messiah. Vincent believes that he is the Messiah.
In Timeline B the surviving Geomancer sect is instead the Sisters of the Bright Lantern, an all-female coven of geomantrixes, from which the Timeline B Vincent keeps his distance.
¶ Biography: Timeline A
¶ First appearance and the freeing of the dead
Vincent's first appearance is a brief one in None Shall Pass 3: The Dark Ages (TDA), the film in which the Prophecy is first spoken. It is Vincent who states it: "The prophecy foretells that he who kills the necromancer will go on to break the world." Delongy, beside him, repeats the last words in disbelief. Vincent's other line in the film is an instruction to Beef Nate, "You must find the amulet!", the first mention of the artifact that drives the second trilogy.
His most consequential act in the film happens without dialogue. Beef Nate's friends Greg and Little Dave, killed in the first film and raised by the Necromancer as thralls, are still under the Necromancer line's command in TDA, sent against Beef Nate by Gordon ("Kill. Beef. Nate!"). Vincent frees them both through the Blood Oath, the only means the Geomancers have, and the price is the oath: both men carry it from then on, and Little Dave in particular comes to resent that his freedom arrived with a war attached.
¶ The opposition
None Shall Pass 4: A New Hope (ANH) opens eight years later with Vincent watching the city from the top level of a parking garage. Mike, cured of his illness, has assembled an opposition around a posthumous videotape from the Necromancer, and Vincent is one of its three members, with Mike and the Necromancer's younger son, Ronald, now an alcoholic. Ronald, who killed his father, swore the same Blood Oath during the eight-year gap, as repentance and to earn the opposition's trust; it burns in his Necromancer blood, and the drink is how he bears it. Vincent does not trust him. When Sheriff Ara asks after the missing Beef Nate, Vincent tells him, "You're wasting your time with him, he's a drunk!", and he later confronts Ronald directly: "You may have fooled Mike. But you're not gonna fool me, Necromancer spawn!" The accusation misreads the burning as the blood rejecting the bond.
The film's statement of the three men's motives comes from Keegan's mother, Holly. "Some men fight for honor," she says. "Some out of necessity. Some for vengeance. What do you fight for?" Vincent and Ronald answer in the same breath: "Justice."
¶ The Gift of Fire
Greg's opening summary in None Shall Pass 5: The Gift of Fire (TGoF) describes the opposition as "cancer boy, a washed-up Necromancer hunter, and the town drunk." The film shows Vincent trying, and mostly failing, to hold his cause together. In a convenience-store parking lot at night he reminds Little Dave of his obligations and is refused ("Vince, this is none of my concern." "What about the blood oath?" "Don't talk to me about the blood oath!"). Sitting on a curb with Delongy, he learns that his apprentice has gone his own way ("So you're working for Beef Nate now?" "I'm working for myself."), and when he invokes the oath to the Guild of the Geomancers and the Knights of the Bright Lantern, Delongy does not answer. He tries to recruit Sheriff Ara with an appeal to the wider war ("You don't have to fight this battle alone. There are others like us. And there's a world out there to save."), and is told, "I don't care about the world. I just wanna find my brother."
Gordon, the Necromancer's heir, finds him and asks, "Do they know you're lying?" Vincent drops into a fighting stance, sai raised, and answers, "You filth!" The question is a precise one. The oath is sworn to the Geomancer Messiah, and Vincent has bound the dead to his cause under a credential that is not his: the oath is owed to Delongy, the true Messiah, who has just walked away. Delongy's silence on the curb is the moment he half-understands what Vincent never does.
When Gordon summons Ronald to a midnight meeting at the Ranch, Vincent decides that the confrontation is his. Ronald refuses his help ("I appreciate this, but I don't need any help"), so Vincent takes the matter out of his hands: he seizes Ronald from behind, presses a chloroform-soaked rag to his face, lays him down on the pavement, and goes alone. "I'm sorry, my brother," he says. "But this battle is mine." Ronald, waking, sees what has happened: "He's going to fight my brother. He doesn't know what he's doing!" On an empty street at night Vincent draws his sai against Gordon. Gordon knocks him flat with a blast of energy and takes the weapon.
The opposition then dismisses him. "Vince, we took a vote," Mike tells him. "You're out." When Vincent tries to object, Mike finishes the thought: "No, Vince, you're not the Messiah. Just get your things and just get out of here." Vincent's parting words are "You were all good soldiers to me." The vote is Mike's and Ronald's; Little Dave is the one who stops, turns back and hesitates. Vincent's sai has a coda of its own. Gordon kneels and presents it to Evil Beef Nate with the words "I have done well, Master?", and Evil Beef Nate answers "No" and kills Gordon with it.
¶ The Blood Oath
In None Shall Pass 6: The Blood Oath (TBO), the question of who the Geomancer Messiah really is comes into the open when Evil Beef Nate confronts Delongy over his allegiance: "It's time to choose sides, Delongy... You're either with me, or you're against me." Delongy affirms both his oath and his claim to the role Vincent believes is his own: "I swore an oath to the Guild of the Geomancers, the Knights of the Bright Lantern... Nate, I'm the Geomancer Messiah." Evil Beef Nate answers, "Even Messiahs can die, Delongy. Even Messiahs," and Delongy is beaten and killed against a curb soon after, with no words spoken during the act itself.
Vincent's own end comes later in the same film. Evil Beef Nate kidnaps Mike's pregnant wife, Smyrna, and Vincent comes to rescue her: "Unhand her, you filth! Get behind me, Smyrna." He is beaten ("Didn't Gordon teach you anything, Vince? You're not made for this. You don't have the ingredients." / "Care to find out?") and left broken on the street at night. Evil Beef Nate takes Vincent's phone, calls Mike ("There's been a murder! Better go get your friend."), and leaves. It is Mike, the man who voted him out, who reaches him first: "Who is this? Vince? Can you hear me?" / "I'm sorry." / "No, no, no, no, no. Just breathe easy, breathe easy." Vincent's last words are spoken to him: "Screw the prophecy. Nothing is written." He does not claim, at the end, to have been the Messiah. He dies for a private person and an unborn child, and tells Mike that fate had nothing to do with it. The eulogy divides between two speakers: Mike says "He made mistakes, but he was one of us," and Ronald answers, "He was the best of us." The film's only oath act is Little Dave's: he takes Vincent's hand.
His death has one further consequence under the rules of the oath he administered. As the surety for the men he bound, his death releases them, and what the crew does afterwards is, for the first time, entirely their own choice. Those who go on fighting Evil Beef Nate do so unsworn.
The series' own position is that Vincent was never the Messiah. The Messiah is Delongy, and neither man knows it. Delongy's shouted "I shall pass!" in ANH is the series' title turned inside out, spoken by the one person the Prophecy actually concerns, and it passes unremarked by Vincent at the time.
¶ Biography: Timeline B
A Vincent also exists in the divergent timeline created by Ronald's assassination attempt, and he is alive there. His first act on screen, at the close of None Shall Pass 7: When the Storm Came (WtSC), is to press a gun under the chin of Max, the Timeline A refugee stranded alongside Young Beef Nate. The hostility does not last. In None Shall Pass 8: The Necromancer's Daughter (TND) Vincent entrusts Max with the briefcase containing the Codex, the artifact through which the timelines can be rejoined.
The Timeline B Vincent has isolated himself from the Sisters of the Bright Lantern, his own sect's counterpart in that reality. The two are mirrors of each other: the Sisters kept the oath and rejected the Messiah, while the Timeline A Vincent kept the Messiah and let the oath rot. It is for the same reason that the Sisters kidnap the Timeline B Delongy. They want the oath without the prophecy.
¶ Relationships
| Timeline A | Timeline B | |
|---|---|---|
| Delongy | His Geomancer apprentice, who leaves him to work "for myself" in TGoF, and who is, unknown to either of them, the real Messiah and the man the oath is owed to. | A Timeline B Delongy exists and is kidnapped by the Sisters. |
| Greg and Little Dave | The two revenants he frees from the Necromancer's thrall by the oath in TDA. Little Dave wants nothing more to do with the oath, hesitates at the vote that expels Vincent, and takes his hand in TBO. | |
| Mike | Leader of the opposition he serves in; the man who tells him he is not the Messiah, and who holds him as he dies. | |
| Ronald | A comrade sworn to the same oath, whom he distrusts as "Necromancer spawn," answers "Justice" alongside, and calls "my brother" as he drugs him. | |
| Gordon | The enemy who defeats him, takes his sai, and dies by it. | |
| Evil Beef Nate | The enemy he never faces in equal combat; kills him in TBO. | |
| Sheriff Ara | Would-be recruit; refuses him in favour of finding his brother. | |
| Smyrna | Mike's wife, whom he dies protecting. | |
| Max | Hostile first contact at gunpoint; then the man he entrusts with the Codex. | |
| The Knights of the Bright Lantern | His order; the Geomancer remnant. | Represented in Timeline B by the Sisters of the Bright Lantern, whom he avoids. |
¶ Appearance
Vincent wears a white collared shirt, a tie, glasses and a trenchcoat, and has long hair. He carries a sai, an enchanted three-pronged dagger, which he raises in a martial-arts stance when threatened. In Timeline B he is seen in a windowpane-check shirt with the same glasses.
¶ Quotations
- "The prophecy foretells that he who kills the necromancer will go on to break the world." (TDA)
- "You must find the amulet!" To Beef Nate (TDA).
- "You may have fooled Mike. But you're not gonna fool me, Necromancer spawn!" To Ronald (ANH).
- "Justice." With Ronald, in answer to Holly (ANH).
- "What about the blood oath?" To Little Dave (TGoF).
- "But you swore an oath to the Guild of the Geomancers. To the Knights of the Bright Lantern." To Delongy (TGoF).
- "You don't have to fight this battle alone. There are others like us. And there's a world out there to save." To Sheriff Ara (TGoF).
- "You filth!" To Gordon (TGoF).
- "I'm sorry, my brother. But this battle is mine." Over the unconscious Ronald (TGoF).
- "You were all good soldiers to me." On being voted out (TGoF).
- "Unhand her, you filth! Get behind me, Smyrna." (TBO)
- "Screw the prophecy. Nothing is written." His last words, to Mike (TBO).
¶ The prequel
A prequel, The Necromancer Hunter: The Static Age, is in development, with Vincent as its protagonist and Seattle, Washington as its setting, before the events in Cupertino. Its draft opening is a monologue in Vincent's voice. It tells of a young man who mastered every art, good and evil, extended his life past its natural span, and was courted by "warriors, kings, emperors, philosophers, Cesars and Furhers"; of the "brotherhood of knights, sworn by an oath of blood" that rose against him and warred with him for millennia; of his bargain with an ancient demon, the Drowned God, and the three artifacts in which he stored the lives of his servants; and of the remnant that survived the brotherhood's fall, "armed with only fragments of myth for a history." The speaker counts himself among that remnant, and apart from it: "Unlike my brother-soldiers, I knew I had a different destiny." The monologue ends on the character's name for himself: "I'm the fucking necromancer hunter."
The prequel also introduces an antagonist distinct from the Necromancers, the Neuromancer, a technomancer who works through machines rather than the occult.
¶ Production
The filmmakers have cited three sources for the character's design. His collared shirt, tie and trenchcoat come from John Constantine of Hellblazer. The image of the skilled sentinel watching the city from a height, the parking-garage shot that opens ANH, is drawn from Batman. His role as a learned ranger descended from a noble line all but destroyed by its enemies, surviving as a small remnant, is modelled on Aragorn, with the Knights of the Bright Lantern standing in for the Grey Company of the Dúnedain. The filmmakers have also described Delongy's "I shall pass!" as a deliberate inversion of the series' title.