Ramsey Torryngton was born in AD 982 in a stone manor near Bamburgh, Northumbria, to a minor noble house with ties to the ruling earls of the north. From a young age, Ramsey was groomed for knighthood and service in the border conflicts that plagued England and Scotland during the late 10th and early 11th centuries. Fiercely loyal, charismatic, and trained in swordsmanship and cavalry tactics, he became a trusted retainer to Earl Uhtred’s household.
In AD 1019, during the Battle of Carham, a key conflict between the Scots and the Northumbrians, Ramsey was mortally wounded leading a charge to protect the retreating English line. His first death occurred on the battlefield — his body left for dead among the slain. He revived that night, confused and alone, in the mud and mist of war. A passing immortal found him days later and gave him the first truths of what he now was. The centuries that followed Ramsey’s reawakening were a long and winding odyssey of survival, reinvention, and reluctant wisdom. Cast adrift from time and unmoored from mortal life, he adapted to his new reality not with bitterness, but with a grim, quiet determination. He became a student of the world’s shifting tides — its wars, languages, and beliefs. Though he traveled far and often, England remained the center of his inner compass. It was home, even when it had changed beyond recognition.
In 1096, Ramsey took up the cross and joined the First Crusade under the name Sir Renatus of Sussex. The horrors of that campaign — starvation, brutality, the sack of Jerusalem — left deep impressions on his soul. He saw men justify atrocities in the name of God, and though he fought bravely, Ramsey emerged disillusioned with holy causes. He did not return with glory or faith but with a hardened edge and a profound mistrust of righteous certainty.
In the 12th century, he spent time sailing with Norse-descended raiders along the coasts of Ireland and western Francia. These years were raw and wild, filled with ale, blood, and salt air. Among those savage and superstitious men he earned their loyalty through sword and storm, and left when the plundered gold no longer held meaning.
The High Middle Ages saw him shift toward mercenary work, fighting in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Iberian Peninsula. Ramsey was a knight-for-hire in a world that never stopped warring — his skill with a blade made him valuable, and his quiet detachment kept him alive. But between campaigns, he sought something softer. In the mid-1200s, he lived as a fisherman along the rugged Cornish coast, waking to gulls and gray seas. For a few peaceful years in Provence, he worked sun-drenched vineyards and tilled stony soil. He passed through the German states as a traveling scholar and scribe, gaining knowledge in the cloisters of Benedictines and debating philosophers in shadowed halls. Marriage came and went. He wed more than once — sometimes for love, sometimes for shelter — but always knowing the end was inevitable. His wives aged while he did not. Love, for him, became a tender wound: something sweet and fleeting, to be held but never clutched.
During the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), Ramsey assumed the title of Lord D’Arenne, a fabricated noble identity, and took control of a minor barony in the English-occupied territories of Normandy. There, he laid down his sword to lead from within. For nearly two decades, he governed the region, maintaining order through diplomacy, local alliances, and pragmatic kindness. He learned the subtlety of leadership, the burden of taxes, the fragility of harvests, the need for compassion in a hard world. These were his most mortal years, marked by a slower rhythm of life.
By the late 1400s, Ramsey had moved on once more, retreating into the background as the Renaissance dawned. He lived quietly in Bruges, then Florence, briefly swept up in art, humanism, and invention. His heart longed to embrace this new world, but his nature always kept him on the margins — never the artist, always the observer. He began to write in those years, privately chronicling the many lives he’d lived under different names, though he burned more pages than he kept. The centuries turned, and with them, so did the world. The Reformation, the rise of gunpowder, the slow death of the sword — all of it marked a quiet, internal grief for Ramsey.
Ramsey was in Cornwall in 1599 when he came upon a relatively new immortal, a girl of 15, named Izzy Crowe. Ramsey became her teacher in the Game. To the outside world they appeared to be father/daughter (or father/son depending on if Izzy was going by Lucas). He and Izzy would cross paths with each other from time to time, with scheduled meet ups to check in.
In 1629, Ramsey traveled to Wiltshire at the invitation of his longtime friend William Norrys, an aging noble and magistrate. There, Ramsey met Lyra, William’s sixteen-year-old daughter, newly betrothed to Reginald Latham, a man forty years her senior. Though their first real conversation was brief and circumspect, Ramsey immediately sensed the dormant spark of immortality in Lyra. He remained in Wiltshire under the guise of friendship and tradition, not interfering, simply watching. Seven years later, in 1636, word reached him that Lyra had been murdered by her husband, and that she had risen from the dead. The village accused her of witchcraft. Ramsey -- who had been sent away two years prior, an arrangement made by Reginald -- returned without hesitation, and rescued her.
The pair went to Amalfi, Italy where Ramsey took up training Lyra in the Game. He fell in love with her — slowly, deeply — but she never returned his affection in kind. She gave him her body for a time, but her heart remained closed. In 1648, Ramsey left her, no longer willing to torture himself in a half-life of unrequited love. He has not seen her since, but he has no doubt she’s survived.
After decades of wandering through war-torn Europe, Ramsey sought peace in the gentle countryside of Devonshire, England in the early 1700’s. There, he lived as a farmer on a small estate under the alias Thomas Ramsay, cultivating barley and raising sheep. The simplicity of this life offered him a form of penance, a reprieve from centuries of bloodshed. Though the world continued to change around him, Ramsey remained quietly rooted in the soil, content to let the years pass without conflict or cause. It is during this time that he meets immortals, Pandora Renard and Mursi Storvold, who are his guests for a time.
Drawn by loyalty to the Crown and a belief in order amid chaos, Ramsey crossed the Atlantic to fight for the British during the American Revolutionary War from 1775–1783. Ramsey served as a captain in a Loyalist regiment, motivated not by blind allegiance but by a desire to uphold the traditions and stability he’d known for centuries. Though he sympathized with some colonial grievances, he saw rebellion as a dangerous fracture threatening the fragile balance of power. War was familiar ground, and in the turmoil, he found a way to channel his restless spirit. It is during this time he meets immortal Cassius Aurelias, also a British officer. He also encountered Demetrius Sebestyen, a ruthless immortal aligned with the colonizers. Demetrius killed Ramsey’s student, Felix, an immortal barely twenty years in appearance. Ramsey challenged him in kind, but the war raging around them interfered. After the conflict, Ramsey lived briefly in London, moving through political salons under a carefully maintained alias before retreating once again into the shadows.
Ramsey arrived in Paris in the spring of 1792, drawn by the same electric pulse he’d felt in the colonies — a nation tearing itself apart in the name of freedom. At first, he aligned with the Girondins, moderates who sought to reform rather than destroy, believing revolution should have restraint. But Paris devoured idealists. As the Jacobins seized control and the Reign of Terror bled across cobblestone streets, Ramsey became something else — part soldier, part ghost. He fought in skirmishes outside the city, ran guns for desperate revolutionaries, and smuggled innocents out of execution queues under forged names. He wore no tricolor, carried no party allegiance. He simply endured. By the time Robespierre fell and the guillotine slowed, Ramsey had vanished.
From 1812-1820, Ramsey settled in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the height of the Scottish Enlightenment. Taking the name Dr. Alaric Wynn, he immersed himself in philosophy and historical studies at the University of Edinburgh. He published several treatises under pseudonyms and built friendships with academics and intellectuals, finally indulging the quieter, cerebral side of himself. The city’s dark beauty and sharp wit suited him, and for nearly a decade, he lived as though he were mortal — lecturing, debating, and walking the misty streets with a sense of belonging.
In 1853, drawn once again to conflict, Ramsey enlisted under a French flag during the Crimean War. He served as a cavalry officer, fighting at the Battle of Balaclava and witnessing the devastating toll of both combat and disease. It was here that he briefly crossed paths with Eloise Bennett, an immortal physician. They shared long nights in battlefield tents, speaking of purpose and penance. Her healing work stirred something long-buried in him: the desire to preserve rather than destroy.
In the wake of war, Ramsey sought solitude in the American West. Under the name Elias Rowe, he claimed land in Montana in the 1870’s and built a modest ranch in the Milk River Valley, near the Canadian border. The hard work suited him, and for a time, he lived among settlers and cattlemen as one of them. He married a widowed schoolteacher, Mae, and helped raise her two sons as his own. Though he knew he would eventually have to leave, he cherished the years with her. When she died of fever in 1882, he buried her beneath a cottonwood tree and returned to England once more.
Ramsey could not ignore the call of World War I. He joined the British Expeditionary Force under the name Captain James Torrance, from 1914-1918. The industrial horror of this war — gas, machine guns, and senseless slaughter— left deep scars on his psyche. He watched boys die by the thousands and carried that weight long after the armistice. After the war, he spent several years as a medic and aid worker in Greece and the Levant, disillusioned and deeply weary, his once-proud idealism reduced to embers.
By the 1930s, Ramsey reemerged in London as a respected antiquarian under the name Julian Ramsgate. He curated rare artifacts and manuscripts, developing a reputation for uncanny expertise in medieval history. The looming threat of another world war gnawed at him, and he quietly used his influence to secure passage out of Europe for Jewish scholars and artists. Though he did not fight in World War II directly, he worked in the shadows to preserve knowledge and lives.
A teacher in Argentina in 1951, he meets a young immortal, Aurora Greene. They become friends, as he takes up the mantle of teacher, developing a father/daughter type relationship. He also meets pre-immortal Valen Santiago around this time. In 1956, Ramsey and Aurora parted ways, when he left for a job in Tokyo. The pair, bonded by their time together, would keep in touch.
He spent several years with a spiritual collective in India in the 1960’s and later worked with a small humanitarian agency in Cambodia during the early 1970s. These decades were his attempt at quiet redemption, a patchwork of service and survival, compassion and detachment.
Ramsey arrived in New York in 1977, straight from the ragged edges of Cambodia. He rented a brownstone apartment in the East Village and found work with a non-profit medical outreach group, running supplies into neighborhoods the city had long since forgotten. At a small Latin American restaurant tucked under the 7 train in Jackson Heights, he met a young immortal named Diego Chavez. Ramsey liked the food and found Diego -- the chef and owner -- to be pleasant enough and so it became a regular spot for him in the three years he lived in the city.
In 1981, Ramsey returned to England and acquired an old estate in Cornwall under a noble title long forgotten by time. For nearly a decade, he lived as a modern Lord, restoring the house, walking the cliffs, and mentoring a few wayward young men who reminded him of himself. But wealth and legacy felt hollow, and eventually, he walked away, leaving behind nothing but ghost stories and local legend.
In 2000, Ramsey traveled to the Grand Canyon, where he purposefully sought out the man Aurora had told him about: Elan. Upon finding that the other immortal still had no clue what he truly was, Ramsey told him over lunch.
In the summer of 2002, Ramsey was living in Montana again, back on a ranch in the Milk River Valley, under the alias Julian Ramsey. Until Captain Tripps.
