Robert Cath was born on April 16th, 1890, into a well-off upper-middle class family living in London, England. His family had a extensive background in medicine, and his father was a particularly notable physician, managing to acquire a substantial amount of money by establishing his medical practice in the city, establishing important connections in the process, and also earned large winnings through particularly lucky gambling, which allowed him to easily provide his family with a prosperous lifestyle. Robert was known for his intelligence, passion for learning, and his devotion towards helping the less fortunate from a young age, and has consistently performed well at school, much to the pleasure of his father, who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a man of medicine to carry on the Cath name. Robert was also known for his physical agility and endurance, allowing him to excel well at physical education and learn the art of combat for self-defense, in the event he would ever have the need to do so.

In 1909, a major turning point in Robert's life occurred, as he managed to get accepted into the prestigious Oxford University as a medical student, owing to his excellent school performance and his family's connections. While being a medical student at Oxford, he met and quickly befriended an American international student called Tyler Whitney, a passionate advocate for the rights of the oppressed, who was known for financing revolutionary movements in Mexico, Cuba, and other areas of the world that were exploited by corrupt governments, and also developed an interest in the Wobbly Movement, also known as the Industrial Workers of the World.

Tyler Whitney's frequent support for armed rebel groups quickly shower its ugly face however, as evidenced by an unfortunate event in Belfast, Ireland in July 1911, where he unexpectedly ran into Robert Cath, who at the time was travelling across Europe to gain a new perspective on the world beyond England. While secretly meeting with Irish nationalist activists and insurgents in order to help them with their cause, Tyler invited Robert to said meeting, who reluctantly agreed in order to not disappoint his friend, but before the meeting could properly agree to a plan of action, the premises it was held in were raided by British constables, causing a firefight from which Robert and Tyler barely managed to escape in a fishing boat, along with an Irish male named Gerald Reilly, who was wounded amidst the gunfight. Unfortunately for Robert and Tyler, the firefight also resulted in the fatal shooting of a British Police Sergeant named Matthew O'Connell, forcing them to flee from Ireland and Great Britain to avoid being branded as fugitives.

Robert Cath fled to Paris after the incident, while Tyler returned back to his family in the United States a few months later after boarding a French passenger liner sailing to New York City While Robert was in France, he spent the next few months learning the French language and travelling across the country, exploring nearly all French cities, and utilizing his knowledge of medicine to establishing his private practice in Paris, earn a steady income, and help anyone in need he could find. In March of 1912, he purchased a First Class ticket for the RMS Titanic, the most luxurious and opulent passenger liner of the White Star Line, which was also dubbed the "Ship of Dreams". He intended to rendezvous with his friend Tyler in the American South and find a way to leave their tumultuous past behind. A month later, on April 10th, 1912, Robert boarded a luxury train departing from Gare Saint Lazare in Paris to Gare de Cherbourg, from where he would later board the RMS Titanic, hoping to safely return to Tyler while exploring everything the Titanic has to offer.

A surprising twist of events would quickly flip Robert's world upside down however, as during the voyage, he met a young American journalist from New York named Joshua Smithfield, and he and his party of friends and associates told him that he is on a mission to track down and destroy a religious cult called the Black Brotherhood, who allegedly intended to use a book of dark magic called the Necronomicon to summon a malevolent ancient entity by the name of Azathoth, and have been involved in numerous terrorist attacks around the world, including the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911 that nearly killed Josh's loved ones. According to Josh's intel, a major leader within the cult, Hugo Chauveau, was planning to execute the ritual onboard the Titanic itself. Robert was mystified and spooked by the astonishing revelations he has just learned about, and he swore to Josh that he would help his group track down and neutralize Hugo Chauveau and the Black Brotherhood, prevent and save a defecting former member called Matthew Jones from being killed by the cult, and secure the Necronomicon by any means necessary.

While onboard the RMS Titanic, Robert helped out Josh and his group in any way he could, such as by flipping through the passenger list and finding Hugo Chauveau's cabin, keeping a watchful eye out for other members of the cult, and even met Matthew himself, and warned him about what was happening. In addition, Robert also got to meet with and befriend many kind passengers, including a pioneering doctor called Leon Merrin, who came across a plant with potential curative effects for a large variety of cancers while on a expedition in Africa, and he also happened to be a friend of one of Josh's associates. Robert also met an aspiring actor called Bradley Johns, who he quickly became soulmates with due to his extraordinarily honourable and kind personality, along with an Irish immigrant family, the Donegans, who were aiming to sail to America in search of a better life amidst the ongoing destitution and exploitation of Ireland under British imperialism, and he quickly became one of their closest friends. Right before the Titanic struck the iceberg on the night of April 14th, 1912, Robert, Josh, Nellie, Matthew et al confronted and pacified Hugo Chauveau in the cargo holds just as he was about to execute the ritual, seizing the Necronomicon from his hands and taking him into custody, fleeing the area just before the impact. During the sinking, Robert managed to miraculously escape on the second boat to leave the Titanic, Lifeboat No. 5, along with a railway businessman named Saberius Winters, a troubled man whose recent marriage to a fellow passenger named Charity Swanson fell apart after a regrettable extramarital affair. Robert and other passengers watched with horror from afar as the once thought to be unsinkable Titanic slipped beneath the Atlantic Ocean, claiming the lives of more than 1500 people, including the Donegans and some of Josh's friends, much to his dismay and grief. He greatly worried about Josh's safety and wellbeing while adrift in the Atlantic and was extremely happy to see Joshua alive on the Carpathia despite all the losses they have suffered in the sinking.

After arriving in New York City, he reunited with Whitney, who was relieved to see him alive after hearing news of the sinking in the papers, and they decided to travel back to Oxford to finish their schooling after the incident in Ireland cooled off and their role in it was not discovered. They both graduated with high honors in 1913, and agreed to stay in touch as lifelong friends. After a troubled relationship with a woman who turned out to be a shallow individual, Robert Cath was looking for some well-deserved time off. In March of 1914, he and Tyler met up and went down to Panama to relax and reflect on everything life put them through so far. Unfortunately, their idyllic vacation was quickly cut short after Tyler angered the Unites States Army forces present in Panama City by secretly selling weapons to Panamanian socialist revolutionaries. This forced Tyler and Robert to flee back to Europe to avoid capture and certain imprisonment for sedition and illegal arms trading, and they parted ways for the time being.

In July 1914, without his knowledge, Tyler made a secret agreement with Milos Jovanovic, a influential figure wihin a Serbian nationalist and revolutionary group called the Black Hand, to hand them a large amount of weapons by trading in the Firebird, a legendary Ottoman national treasure that he recently discovered on one of his many journeys around the world. In order to get these weapons, he arranged a bargain with a German arms trader named August Schmidt, and he planned on selling the Firebird to a mysterious North African art collector and nobleman named Kronos, in exchange for a briefcase full of gold that he would use to pay Schmidt with. However, something went seriously wrong, and before boarding the famous Orient Express to complete the transaction, he sent a concerning and hastily written telegram to Robert Cath, inviting him to board the Orient Express in Paris at the soonest opportunity after having come across something exceptional. Robert Cath accepted and boarded the Orient Express from Gare de L'Est, but the moment he boarded the train, he discovered a shocking truth.

Over the next few days, Robert Cath found out that Tyler was murdered in his compartment by an unknown assailant that mutilated his face with claw-like markings, and was quickly drawn into the complex bargains Tyler made behind hid back, having to pretend he was his now deceased friend in order to avoid drawing suspicion to himself. Thankfully, he met his old friend Joshua Smithfield onboard, and together, they managed to unravel the mystery of the Firebird, which turned out to be a mechanical automaton of a bird that could turn into a killing machine with the blow of a scarab whistle after dusk, saved the Orient Express from being bombed by an anarchist radical called Alexei Dolnikov, and fell in love with a violinist named Anna Wolff who he soon realized was an Austrian undercover agent, sent to the Orient Express to investigate August Schmidt's suspicious dealings with designated terrorist groups. After defeating the Black Hand, who attempted to take the entire Orient Express hostage near Belgrade, neutralizing Kronos and Kahina who attempted to take the Firebird by force, and stopping a grief stricken Tatiana Obolenskaya, a Russian noblewoman and the childhood friend of the murdered Alexei, from destroying the train, Anna promised to reunite with Robert after they reached Constantinople on the same day that the Great War began, putting her dog Max in his care and sharing a tearful kiss, and Joshua too promised that they would try and keep in touch to the best of this abilities.

After hearing news of war being declared against the so-called Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire by the Triple Entente in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by the same Black Hand that terrorized the Orient Express, and the sudden invasion of Serbia by the Austrians in an act of retaliation, Robert quickly returned home to London, and decided to enlist for the Royal Army Medical Corps when the draft was instituted, intending to use his medical skills to save as many lives as he could on the battlefields of Europe, and he was eventually deployed to the trenches of the France, eventually finding himself in the Somme, a bloody months-long meatgrinder of a campaign that barely budged the frontlines in the Western Front at all, and led to heavy military casualties on both sides as the seemingly endless war dragged on and on, and Robert struggled to remain sane and fulfill his duty with brother after brother falling to the treacherous Hun imperialists, particularly with the introduction of Yperite, a poisonous gas and one of the world's first chemical weapons, onto the battlefield, and while Robert was able to save a significant amount of otherwise doomed soldiers at the Western battlefields of the Great War, the conditions in the trenches were becoming more desolate and unfit for life than ever.

Thankfully, respite finally arrived for Robert on November 1916, as he and several other RAMC troops were recalled to the HMHS Britannic in Southampton in order to retrieve and treat thousands of wounded soldiers from the disastrous Dardanelles campaign at Mudros, and he quickly headed back to Britain to report for his duties on November 12th, 1916, ready to work in a substantially safer and more comfortable environment compared to the deadly trenches of France, for what he expected to be a routine troop retrieval voyage. Surely....