NEW KILLERS: The Executioner (Pyramid Head): A sadistic and merciless executioner, Pyramid Head is fixated on dispensing punishment through pain.
Encumbered by the steel frame upon his head and with a hulking great blade in tow, he stalked the hellish corridors of Silent Hill, committed to a duty that no one truly understood. Where he trod, even monsters fled for the shadows, and those who crossed his path fell victim to unrestrained acts of aggression.
When his duty was complete and his presence no longer needed, he prepared for the long rest — and yet, his skills were required elsewhere. The Fog that streamed over him was somehow different than that he was accustomed to in Silent Hill, as if each wisp contained the nerves of a creature, writhing, seeking him out.
There was an unspoken agreement in that moment. The billowing cloud was an invitation to duty and sadism, and Pyramid Head, taking a step into The Fog, accepted his obligation once more.
The Blight: To understand the human condition, one must rise above it. This was the credo of Talbot Grimes, a Scottish chemist whose unrestrained ambition took him to towering heights. As a boy, he was a popular child—bright, charismatic, and unafraid to challenge authority—yet despite his social graces he was fiercely independent, spending much of his time exploring the sprawling fields near his town alone. What began as a child's curiosity nearly turned deadly after experimenting with a patch of poisonous foxglove. For days, he laid in bed dripping with sweat, purging any food that touched his stomach. When he recovered, it wasn't fear that gripped him, but fascination. There was something magical in how a single flower could so drastically affect him.
Into his adult years, his ambition developed as quickly as his questionable methods. He attended the London School of Medicine and excelled despite several reprimands. His willingness to push the limits secured him a position with the British East India Company, and within seven years he was made head chemist. In time, he completed one of his greatest achievements: a chemical that could increase a worker's productivity while reducing their need for rest. He was rewarded with a secret laboratory beneath a prison camp on Dyer Island.
There, off the coast of India, prisoners from the Opium War became his unwilling subjects, leading to a drug that allowed soldiers to withstand incredible amounts of pain. Though most side effects were minor, there were rumours that a small number of soldiers went mad. In feral states, they massacred villages, impaling the populace on bayonets, leaving them hanging from trees. There were no official reports on the subject, and Talbot refused to blame himself for what could only be exaggerated war stories.
Though his callous brilliance seemed unflappable, he was ignorant to the enemies his questionable work had amassed. The realisation struck him quite literally—with a steel pipe to the back of his head during a trip to Mangalore. He was bound and loaded into a wagon. When his blindfold was removed, a sickly man showed him a mass grave filled with hundreds of bodies. Unbeknownst to Talbot, his productivity-increasing drug had killed nearly an entire factory's worth of workers. He knew he couldn't defend himself against the anger and accusations of his abductor—all he could do was curl up as the blows from the steel pipe rained down. His body was thrown into the grave and left for dead. Shifting between consciousness and the darkest black, he crawled for an escape, fingers sinking into rotting flesh. Black flies feasted on his uncovered skin, the sensation of a hundred pin pricks stabbing into him. As he collapsed, he came face to face with a dead woman's dazzling hazel eyes. Too weak to pull away, he could do nothing but witness his life's work.
Then, from the edge of death, he was brought back. He found himself on a small bed as a kindly, wrinkled face looked over him. With each pained breath, he was nursed back to health in an ancient mystery school posing as a monastery. In verdant gardens behind tall, unassuming walls, monks studied forbidden texts, striving to expand the human mind in the search for other dimensions—believing one to be connected to the other.
Talbot's knowledge proved indispensable, his mind-altering chemicals integrating seamlessly with theories of neural expansion. He realised then that his salvation was no coincidence—he was plucked from the pit specifically to advance the school's knowledge. He agreed to help until his recovery was complete, being tasked with researching what the monks called the soul chemical, a compound derived from the pineal gland that could open the mind's eye. What began as a favour to his saviours, soon became an obsession. Poring over the school's archives of lost texts, he uncovered scientific formulas that confirmed previously unthinkable ideas. He dreamt of ushering humankind into a new period of enlightenment. Perhaps then, the nightmares of hundreds of dead factory workers—and of those two hazel eyes—would fade from his mind.
As he came closer to a breakthrough, the demeanor of the monks shifted. The gentle smiles they offered were paired with uneasy eyes that quickly darted away when spotted. The polite conversations he was once privy to turned to hushed murmurs. The last thing he would see of the school was the cracked ceiling above his bed, branching like a dendrite through plaster.
His next memories were a shattered mosaic of images and sensations. Smearing lights, horse hoofs on cobblestone, coarse burlap scratching at his cheeks, and sharp bites into his arm. He awoke ragged and unwashed, splayed on the straw mattress of an opium den. Mind in a dense fog, his first thought was of his notes, the only record of his groundbreaking revelations. He searched frantically, scrambling through the dingy basement, pleading aloud for help. The few other denizens looked up from their hammocks, offering nothing but drug-soaked eyes and apathetic gazes that soon fell into half-slumber. Before he noticed the robed figure appear behind him, a needle plunged into his arm and the world disappeared once more.
Awoken. Again. Each time, hazier than the last. He tongued at hollow gaps between his teeth. How long, he wondered. A faint memory returned. The soul chemical. His notes. The verge of a breakthrough. A faraway whisper entered his mind.
He fumbled with a stone, sharpening it with shaking hands. In the dim light of the den, amongst the catatonic occupants, he carved his research from memory into the walls. He wrote for hours until his fingers bled, moving to the floor, taking in everything the voice whispered despite his inability to comprehend it. When there was nowhere left to write, he gripped the stone and carved the message into his chest. Stained with blood, he witnessed a miracle appear before him—a magnificent field of lush, orange flowers. The whispered voice beckoned to him, urging him to enter the field and discover worlds and dimensions beyond human comprehension. For a moment, Talbot felt the sense of wonder he possessed as a child.
The denizens of the opium den awoke to silence, the dry scent of smoke still lingering in the air. Shambling out of their drug-hazed fog, they found the stone floor wet with blood, tiny rivulets coursing through the cracks. As eyes adjusted to the darkened room, the jagged lettering scrawled along its length began to appear. Written over and over without end, there was but one single line:
Death is only the beginning.The Twins: A pair of conjoined twins, Charlotte and Victor Deshayes formed an emotional bond like none other. The unlikeliness of their successful birth in the 17th century could be described as miraculous, yet it immediately brought about their life of persecution. The twins emerged with Victor's lower body affixed into the chest of his sister, legs twisted around her muscles and organs. He was smaller than Charlotte, grown as if he were an appendage of her body rather than a fully formed boy. As the newborns screeched, so too did the midwife who delivered them, running from the home, yelling of a demon birthed by a witch. So began the hunting of Charlotte, Victor, and their mother Madeleine.
The coming years were fleeting memories for the twins, yet they were the closest thing to a normal life they would know. The journey with their mother was what they believed all children underwent, the games of running and hiding through France's countryside being an ordinary occurrence. At the age of five, a new challenge to the game was presented as their mother fell ill. Pale and exhausted, Madeleine had no choice, but to pass responsibility of collecting food onto Charlotte. The girl, burdened under extra clothing that concealed Victor's protruding body, set out from their forest tent and marched to the nearby town. Though a peculiar sight, she did what she had been trained for, waiting for an opening at the market and swiping whatever food she could. It was a victory in the game, but one short-lived.
After midnight, glowing flames surrounded the family's encampment, bobbing through the darkness. A single commanding shout broke the night's silence and a mob of witch hunters streamed in. Grubby hands tore the twins from their bed, Charlotte frantically kicking all who approached. Madeleine cried for her children, her voice abruptly silenced by a club to her skull. Victor shrieked, the wailing of a trapped rat.
The hunters coordinated quickly. A judge on-hand declared Madeleine guilty of witchcraft, evidenced by her demon spawn. Within minutes, they shackled her unconscious body to a tree, surrounding her feet with dry twigs and moss. As she awoke, she did not struggle, only begged her children to turn away. They would be given no choice. The twins were forced to watch as the torch was lit, and they watched as flames leapt up their mother's skirt, charring and sizzling her flesh. They watched as fat dripped from her body, and her face bubbled and twisted. They watched until the screams that tore her vocal cords were no more, and all that was left was the crackling of embers and a nauseating stench.
Whatever joy and goodness were in them died with their mother. Caged and transported to an old wooden temple, they were sold to a secretive group clad in dark cloaks. Victor reacted with the ferocity of a rabid beast at any who approached, clawing and biting. The only solace that could calm him was the embrace of his sister. Charlotte, bitter and hateful to all but her brother, found purpose in being his protector.
Within the temple, they were exposed to unusual experiments — some cruel, many simply baffling. One day they would be made to break the neck of a small grey bird. The next, they would bleed their fingers into a vase of roses. Every seventh day, they would sleep with the branch of a damp oak beneath their pillow. Then there was the chanting: a never-ending chorus from cloaked figures on scheduled intervals.
In time, a final experiment was planned. Two robed figures herded the twins to the centre of the temple, holding Charlotte upon an altar in a room lit with candelabras. The wrinkled face of a man peered from under his hood, placing a hand on the forehead of each twin, making careful examination of their skulls. Memento mori, he uttered, as he withdrew a shining blade.
Charlotte rolled to her side, shifting her brother off the altar. With a screech, he stretched his arm as far as he could, knocking a candelabra to the ground. The flames took to the dry wood immediately. They swept over the floor, igniting the black robes that brushed against it. Screams of agony pierced the chaos, invigorating Charlotte. She dashed through the inferno, vision concealed with nothing, but black smoke and blazing flame. A painful heaviness filled her lungs. No exit could be found, every step leading to overwhelming heat. She fell to her knees, suffocating, and then saw it — sunlight, trees. She stumbled from the fire into dewy grass. Without looking back, she ran into the forest until she collapsed.
When Charlotte opened her eyes, she reached for Victor's hand. He made no attempt to budge. His body hung helplessly from her torso. She clasped his face, stared into his sad, still eyes. The movements she was accustomed to — his body pulling at her skin, his legs prodding at the cavity in her chest — were no more. Victor was dead.
Charlotte had no choice, but to continue moving as she mourned, fearing black cloaks and witch hunters were prowling. She concealed her brother's corpse under her clothing and marched for the sewers of a nearby city. There, she set up camp, emerging often to steal whatever food she could, resorting to raiding barns for pig slop when desperation set in. Throughout the years, Victor's corpse rotted as his limbs oozed and blackened, yet his body demonstrated resistance to complete decomposition, as if his sister's blood still coursed through him. Protecting his lifeless body became Charlotte's sole reason for being, refusing to ever be separated from the only family she had left.
Life into her teenage years was a game of survival. Her hatred for humanity grew each day under the realisation they would never leave her be. No matter how many died during her botched robberies and desperate attempts to escape, there would always be more to pursue and sling words of condemnation at her — monster, demon, witch. And it was the black cloaks who were the worst of them. Their hunt for her was unending, forcing her to constantly abandon shelter and run.
For years, Charlotte fled, drawing blood out of necessity, cradling her long-dead brother in the night. During a frigid winter, her body began to break down. Food was scarce and the refuge of rickety shacks were no use against freezing temperatures. Sickle in hand, she sheltered near her campfire in the woods, not knowing if the black cloaks would take her before the cold did. As frost crystallised around her nostrils and her lips took on a gentle blue hue, Charlotte felt something she had never experienced: acceptance. She closed her eyes, opening herself to the serenity of death when — a shriek, shrill and vicious pierced her ears. Victor spasmed and flailed from her chest, a cloud of fog encompassing him. Before she could react, he spilled from her in a bloody puddle, landing on the snow and running.
Pulling herself from the edge of death, she gave chase. Calling his name, she ran through the forest until her legs could hardly carry her, until finally, within her view, was Victor, sitting at the edge of a thick fog. His face, twisted and feral, screamed as a dark hooded figure emerged from the fog, grabbed his arm, and seized him. The serenity that had crept into Charlotte was extinguished, replaced with the seething hatred and rage she had depended on for so long. With a tight grip on her sickle, she charged into the fog, prepared to eviscerate any who set foot near her brother.
The Trickster: Ji-Woon Hak thrived under the attention of others, energized by every eye that watched him and every tongue that spoke his name. Amidst the prestige, he had only one desire: more. Even as a child he found ways to draw crowds. Working at his family's restaurant, he attracted business with spectacles he performed using throwing knives. Gullible tourists believed this was a traditional South Korean experience, gladly parting with their money to witness it. Ji-Woon's father spent the restaurant's earnings on dancing and vocal lessons for his son, pushing him to attain the fame he never could.
Ji-Woon did not disappoint. After years showcasing his abilities to nobodies at talent shows, he hit the track to stardom. Yun-Jin Lee, a producer at Mightee One Entertainment, recruited Ji-Woon into her training program. He transferred to a dormitory in Seoul where, for fourteen hours a day, he was crafted into a star, taught how to move and sing, how to carry himself with the right balance of confidence and modesty.
Draining as the process was, it worked. Yun-Jin selected Ji-Woon to join the band NO SPIN, bringing a raw energy to their tracks. Fame was almost immediate. Ji-Woon lived in a daze of interviews and adoration, and though the frenzied schedule exhausted his bandmates, he was invigorated. Each day was an affirmation that he was greater than the mediocrity society spewed out.
But over time, the champagne grew stale. When he looked at his fans, he saw their joy and envy split five ways, thinned out between each band member. The validation that had surged through him left a desperate yearning for more.
Ji-Woon kept up impressions, mimicking a charm long buried under loathing. He recorded the latest NO SPIN album with his bandmates, never missing a beat. After a lengthy lunch break, he returned to the studio to discover fate had granted him a gift. The scent of burning wires was unmistakable. He rushed to the control room, finding the door blocked by fallen speakers. On the other side, his bandmates pounded on the door, their cries accompanied by the crackling of flames.
Ji-Woon called to them, dashing to the speakers, grabbing one and—stopping. He froze. Each breath was a conscious, deliberate process requiring all his attention, the nearby cries hardly audible until, slowly, he backed away. And then he heard it. They were screaming his name as they burnt. Screaming for him to save them. Ji-Woon! Ji-Woon! Ji-Woon Hak! It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. When the fire crew arrived, his tears were genuine.
Ji-Woon was celebrated as a tragic figure, a hero who did all he could in a futile attempt to save his friends. Yun-Jin paraded him through interviews until it was time to rebrand. He was reborn as The Trickster, a solo artist who produced his own songs, sporting a soft heart beneath a wild exterior. But, away from concert set-ups and television stages, something darker grew.
He targeted those who lived alone, coming to them in the night. The first was a college music student with a captivating voice. Ji-Woon woke him with a baseball bat to the skull, binding his arms and legs, gagging him with a rag duct taped into his mouth. He tortured him for hours, dissecting him alive. Yet there was something missing—a sound, a connection. He wanted to hear the victim's wonderous voice pleading as he cut his belly open, but all he received was muffled cries through a rag.
He learned and adjusted.
Victims had to be abducted, driven to an abandoned building where he could let their voices carry unrestrained emotion. He made music from them, prodding in the right places to evoke different types of shrieks and howls. Stabbing the quadratus lumborum elicited a long, guttural wail, while slashing the carotid artery created a sound like a cat being strangled. There was honesty in their suffering. Ji-Woon recorded each session, synthesizing and working them into his songs, hiding them behind layers of melodies.
He was elated with his work. He left hints for police, arranging a mink boa from a recent photoshoot around a victim's slashed throat. For his next killing, he removed the teeth from a man that a boxer in one of his music videos was without. During a particularly audacious plea for attention, he killed a fan he had met during a VIP meet-up, replacing her eyes with his diamond cufflinks and writing I HAVE SEEN GOD in blood across her chest. Each scene was a dazzling spectacle.
Between music and murder, Ji-Woon's work was discussed globally. However, as violence became his preferred art style, his music career took a hit. Revenue was down and Mightee One executives pointed their fingers at him. Yun-Jin, with professional fury, came to his defence, but she was outnumbered. It was decided that Ji-Woon could no longer self-produce his songs.
The decision was devastating. His tracks fused genuine humanity into music, yet executives rejected anything that wasn't generic and expected. And so be it. If they couldn't understand his art, he would incorporate them into it until they did.
He had three months until he was to perform a private show for Mightee One's board members; three months to plan his magnum opus. He transferred obscene amounts of money to a veterinarian in exchange for cannisters of nitrous oxide, then bribed the stage technician of Mightee One's private theatre for access to the room. His celebrity granted him a benefit of the doubt no regular person could conceive. When the show was ready, gas seeped into the room as executives and stagehands awaited Ji-Woon, conveniently running behind schedule.
When he arrived, half-conscious bodies were splayed in their seats and crawling across the floor. He worked quickly, binding everyone, pausing only when he came to Yun-Jin—the woman who had plucked him from a mudhole and set him on the path he deserved. She would be rewarded, granted special access to the coming display of wonder. Even under sedation, she fought, a raging storm within her, far stronger than the others. He propped her up as the lone audience member, prying her eyes open. The others, snivelling and sobbing, were brought on stage to perform their final act. With a contemptable sneer, he slapped makeup onto their faces and shone stage lights upon them. They became his instruments.
To the sound of self-produced melodies, he tortured them, gracefully dashing from one body to another, conducting an operatic crescendo from their wailings. They shouted, whimpered, screamed, cried for their loved ones, cried for their mothers. It was a magnificent outpouring of emotion, of what it meant to be human, and they did it with eyes fixed on Ji-Woon.
Viscera drained from the stage until, with the toss of his throwing knife, the final human instrument fell silent and the music stopped. Covered in sweat and blood, an exhausted Ji-Woon looked to Yun-Jin and bowed. Curtain call. He had attained perfection. With blade in hand, he made his way to Yun-Jin, prepared to tie up loose ends before the credits rolled. But as he reached her—
The Fog.
From where, he didn’t know, but it billowed around them, damp, cool... comfortable. He saw the grand stage: hospitals and temples, forests and slaughterhouses—an eternal plane adorned with rusted hooks, sustained by the million eyes that would watch him, run from him, experience him. All he had to do was accept, become an implement of The Fog and, most importantly, make them scream.
Encore!
(This guy has one of the best Killer Trailers out there. Seriously...IT"S AMAZINGThe Nemesis (Nemesis T-Type be be specific): Designed by Umbrella Corporation, The Nemesis is a nearly unstoppable bio-organic weapon fixated on pursuing and eliminating its targets.
Part of the Tyrant T-103 series, this specimen has increased intelligence and awareness due to the NE-α Parasite implanted within it. Its first mission unleashed it upon Racoon City, where it had a singular objective: exterminate S.T.A.R.S. members.Rampaging through the city, The Nemesis faced off against Jill Valentine multiple times, and though she managed to escape, he was never far behind. He nearly had his target, when a strange fog descended upon them, mixing with the smoke of a city in chaos. The phenomenon meant nothing to him—the frigid cold and decreased oxygen never posing a threat. All that mattered was soldiering on into The Fog, continuing the mission: find S.T.A.R.S., exterminate S.T.A.R.S., and kill anyone who gets in the way.
(Forgive the lack of picture) New Survivors: Cheryl Mason: Caring and impulsive, Cheryl Mason, previously known as Heather, attempted to rebuild her life after the tragic death of her adoptive father, Harry Mason.
While she had freed herself from the religious cult that pursued her since birth, she was shackled by the guilt of her father's death. A darkness punished her every night under the guise of abominable nightmares.
To ease her conscience, she volunteered at a crisis intervention centre for troubled youth. Three months later, she aced training and could answer the crisis line without supervision. Yet little could have prepared her for the first call. All she heard was static. The air thickened as black fumes rose from the ground and suddenly she heard the voice of a woman — someone she thought she'd never hear from again
Why do you cling to this corrupt world? You know that only God can save us.
It couldn't be her — Claudia was dead. Suddenly, the world spun and she dropped to her knees, nauseous. Hot bile travelled up her throat and she retched warm blood on the floor. Then the spinning stopped as swiftly as it began. Cheryl looked up and saw she was somewhere else. A cold, hopeless place.
Felix Richter: Felix Richter was born to Janos and Ursula Richter in Coburg, Germany, where the Richter family had deep connections and were among the most respected of its physicians. His parents, both members of an ancient society, were always out of the Richter manor at medical conferences or providing humanitarian aid around the world. Travelling exposed young Felix to new cultures, languages, and architecture unlike anything he had ever seen before. He wasn't sure when the architectural bug bit, but when it did, it bit hard, and he knew that despite his family's legacy, he would one day design buildings that would inspire the world. By 23, he was considered an architectural prodigy having won the Swiss Architect Medal and the German National Design Award. Yet despite his success, Felix couldn't shake the gnawing feeling that his success had more to do with luck and connections than talent and hard work.
Growing up, Felix was socially awkward and introverted, preferring his imagination to the company of others. He had few friends so when he wasn't travelling with his parents, Felix was in his father's library devouring rare books, studying history and architecture, soaking up anything and everything he could on architectural movements throughout the centuries. His father hoped young Felix would learn to be more outgoing and hired every possible specialist to help improve his social skills. When these efforts failed, he threw in the proverbial towel and figured his son would learn when he was ready. He then joined young Felix in the library, where he helped him build elaborate wooden models of buildings while telling him wild stories about his secret club and their ancient battle against a dark and ominous force. Stories, Felix was sure, his father had made up to make his 'Imperiatti' group sound cooler than it actually was.
Felix sometimes wondered if his design sensibilities came from his summer trips to Dyer Island, a private island that boasted some of the world's finest homes and designs. Every summer, Felix would accompany his parents to the island, where members of The Imperiatti would encourage their children to network and forge lifelong connections. Felix didn't mingle well with the other teenagers, but he did make four friends who like himself didn't quite fit the 'high-society' mould. They were often ridiculed by other teens and disparagingly called 'The Pariahs', a name they liked and gladly adopted. Instead of practising public speaking and engaging in endless debates, The Pariahs spent most of their time exploring the ruins and mysteries of the island until one of their adventures took a turn for the worse.
Exploring an abandoned internment camp, they descended into what seemed to be an underground laboratory where they uncovered old, leather journals with illustrations and notes of inhumane experiments conducted on prisoners of the First Opium War held by the British East India Company. As they pushed through a locked door, they found a chamber scattered with human skeletons and dusty vials filled with an unknown serum. Before they could examine the contents, the ground seemed to shake beneath their feet and a hissing sound filled their ears. A strange fog suddenly appeared and giant claws seemed to burst from the ground as dark imagination mingled with reality to terrorise them. Before they understood what was happening, Felix's father and several other parents came to their rescue, using strange tools and objects to protect them. Felix stared at the scene in shock and disbelief. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or living one of his father's ridiculous, supernatural stories. By the time he realised it wasn't a dream, it was all over. The Pariahs were safe, but their parents had mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
After the shock of his father's disappearance, Felix searched for any theory that could help him understand the phenomena he had encountered on the island. He exchanged notes with The Pariahs and other people he had met online who had also lost loved ones in a similar way. The tragedy had fostered a strong relationship between The Pariahs and for years they worked together to unravel the mystery of what had happened to their parents. But nothing made sense, and every lead they pursued hit a dead end. With time their efforts dwindled, and the five friends slowly grew apart, each going their separate ways, hoping to forget the nameless darkness that had robbed them of their parents.
Over the years, Felix proved to be an exceptional architect, though he found little inspiration working for others. He realised his father was right. His lack of social skills was holding him back. With dedication and purpose, he improved his diction and decorum and learned how to network or 'play-act' as he liked to call it. He created the perfect façade to make himself more likeable and popular with potential clients. After working for several architectural firms, he established his firm with his colleague Lauren Golder. Both shared a similar vision and were philosophically opposed to formulaic modernist buildings, often experimenting with unusual materials, shapes and structures.
Felix continued to undermine traditional expectations in favour of the edgy and unconventional devices that set the architectural world abuzz. But even with all the accolades, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was a phony, like an actor who had learned a part instead of a true architect who had inspired the world with an impeccable design. During these moments of insecurity and self-doubt, he would distract himself with endless parties and drown his anxieties in alcohol, wishing his father was still around for some harsh advice and tempered wisdom.
Eventually, Felix's girlfriend announced that he was going to be a father. The news shook him to the core and, wanting to inspire his unborn child as much as his father inspired him, he quickly pulled his life together. What he needed was a project that would challenge him and cement his worth as an architect. As fate would have it, the perfect opportunity presented itself when old friends of his father commissioned his firm 'Richter and Golder' to build something new and unconventional on Dyer Island. The challenge excited and terrified Felix, who now drowned his anxieties with articles and books on parenting.
Within six months, the Dyer Restoration Project was underway, and as Felix surveyed the island, he suddenly heard a familiar voice calling out to him from beyond the shattered Victorian buildings and the crumbling ruins hiding dark stories long hidden and forgotten. Through a strange, gathering fog, he saw a form slowly take shape. His eyes widened, and his lips parted, but no words issued forth. Could it be? Was it possible? No... it couldn't be... it was... impossible... and yet...
With dawning realisation, Felix staggered back as he watched his father emerge from the fog. His legs felt weak, and his rising heartbeat thrashed in his ears. It was him. It was really him. His unborn child would know his grandfather, and he could finally show him how much he had accomplished since he disappeared. They stared at one another for a long moment. Then his father gave him a look of disappointment, turned his back on him, and proceeded to walk away. Over his pounding heart, Felix chased after him and was never seen again.
Elodie Rakoto: Born into a lush Parisian household, Élodie Rakoto grew up in a comfortable home miles away from the verdant island of Madagascar, her parents' birthplace. Her backpack was always heavy and usually contained no schoolwork. She carried the essentials: a few history books, some printed maps, and a compact shovel. Instead of wasting away with regurgitated facts from her classes, she explored the city to discover the stories behind each statue, neighbourhood, and street sign. She collected bits and pieces of Paris, making it her own.
When she was fourteen, her parents took her to Dyer Island for a 'business trip.' To her grand disappointment, the island was a private site for exclusive members of the Imperiatti. She was forced to attend pretentious and awkward social mixers daily. After a few weeks on the island, she met the Pariahs, like-minded teenagers who had no interest in being pawns for their parents' political chessboard. On dull, rainy nights she would convince them to sneak out and explore the island unsupervised.
One foggy evening, they stumbled upon an abandoned internment camp. Felix, one of the Pariahs, didn’t want to go in, but Élodie insisted. Inside, they found a strange underground laboratory in ruins. The Pariahs grew excited, browsing through the strange apparatuses for trophies and mementos. But Élodie noticed something in the far-left corner of the wall: odd scratches in the shape of a circle. She ran her fingernails against the cool concrete—the marks were deep and narrow. A warm whisper suddenly sent her mind adrift—
—Deep, rumbling thunder. Black, glistening waves. An ashen sanded beach. Incomplete. She was compelled to touch the ice-cold sand and draw a circle with a line in the middle.
A sharp thunderclap and lightning whipped the sky. The ground shook as sleek, obsidian claws tore through the concrete floor, ripping the earth open. The building began to collapse and Élodie spotted her mother wielding a bizarre instrument while her father told her to run. Then--
Complete darkness.
Élodie never saw her parents again.
For years, this nightmare woke her in the middle of the night, cold, sweating, shaking like a leaf. As a child she suffered from night terrors and often resisted going to bed. To soothe her mind, her grandma would light a tea candle and tell her stories until the wick extinguished in a hot pool of liquefied wax. The perfume of the warm vanilla-scented wax would lull Élodie to sleep as she envisioned stories of legendary heroes defeating fear and foes. Élodie had forgotten the stories, but she still remembered her longing for the verdant Malagasy rain forests and colossal mountains that her grandmother described. When Élodie felt cold and numb with grief, she would light a vanilla-scented candle and summon her childhood memories of this distant, idyllic place, raising her spirits to rise above her crippling depression.
Fourteen years later, Élodie still searched for the missing pieces of the puzzle. No rational explanation could explain her parents' disappearance, so she had been looking elsewhere. She researched any and all legends that mentioned a dark force that snatched people at night without a trace. From there, she translated old tales and built a tapestry of narratives from around the world that corroborated the uncanny way her parents had vanished on Dyer's island. She also gathered artefacts made by ancient civilisations who sought to destroy or resurrect the incomprehensible and indescribable Thing that took her parents. There were various names for it, differing from one language to the next: The Abyss, The Infinite, The Hole.
Her findings pushed her further into the dark field of occultism. The Pariahs were long gone. She'd alienated them with her theories. But she refused to give up on her parents.
Élodie had to set out into the cold, misty evening. She turned a corner, leaving Paris' 13th Arrondissement, an eccentric neighbourhood with a substantial library dating from the middle ages. She had pressing work to do for Hazra Shah, the Collector, an occult specialist who archived rare artefacts.
He’d recruited her after she’d salvaged a rare stolen Maori statue of spidery fangs like the claws she'd seen on Dyer's island. For the next five years, Élodie had been procuring occult relics for the Collector. In exchange, he provided large sums of money, equipment, and precise information about obscure manuscripts.
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Just as the Collector requested, she had secured the annals of a witch trial convicting a mother birthing conjoined twins in the 17th century. According to legend, an occult incantation was engraved on a set of skulls, all of which the Collector possessed except one—the witch's skull. There were no traces of where the skull was now, but Élodie had found a newspaper article dating back to the same year, mentioning that most remains had been relocated to the catacombs to avoid a pandemic. Élodie was acting on a hunch. Breaking into the catacombs to retrieve a lost skull involved certain risks, but no more than the previous work she'd done for the Collector.
With a flashlight, she followed the ancient layout of the catacombs and spotted a collapsed wall. A few large stones blocked the way in. She grabbed her portable XRF-analyser and scanned the materials of the wall. Working for the Collector had its perks. The brick mortar had been poorly mixed, showing high traces of sand. The whole thing was brittle, and the ground was moist from the damp evening air. This was her way in.
The journey beneath was long and treacherous. The air was heavy and mouldy. She gasped when her key-chain flashlight hit an endless wall of bleached-white skulls.
Something cracked behind her. She spun around and collided headfirst with a baseball bat. Pain exploded in her skull and darkness filled her view.
When she came to, a man was carrying her over his shoulder, venturing deeper inside the catacombs. He was wearing a dark robe.
The Black Vale.
She'd managed to elude them until now. Ruthless and lethal, they went by many names. She'd figured out that they ultimately all worked for the same group, a ring of occult fanatics rumoured to perform human sacrifices for what they called The Old One. She had to get out of here fast.
Élodie spotted a loose skull on the wall, grabbed it and smashed it on her assaulter's head. Stunned, the man lost his balance and Élodie hit the ground running. As she turned a corner, she suddenly felt a sharp pain to her side.
She looked down and saw a large blade planted there. Shocked, she removed the knife and warm blood spurted out.
Her heartbeat rang in her ears as her vision blurred.
She fell to her knees. Summoning all her strength, she drew a circle on the ground with a shaking, blood-red finger and traced a line in the middle.
An opaque heaviness fell over her shoulders. A familiar scent of vanilla-spiked fruits and lychee nuts coated the air. Thin, tropical rain drizzled down leafy vines. Warmth.
Madagascar.
A ghostly cry erupted from the thick foliage.
Élodie looked up and the vines turned into hissing snakes. The soft canopy soil suddenly turned ashen and collapsed under her feet. She sank into something dense and cold that swallowed her like quicksand. She screamed, before being smothered by... the abyss...the infinite... the hole...
She found what she had been searching for.
Yun Jin-Lee: Resilient and ambitious, Yun-Jin was born into a life of hardship finding success in the music industry after years of effort and self-sacrifice.
As a child Yun-Jin was fascinated by sound, mimicking drums, and hitting keys on the piano. When she turned ten, however, she lost her instruments. Her family was heavily in debt and did not make the payments in time. The creditors took everything they owned, including the house. Yun-Jin held her four-year-old sister tightly as she cried. They moved into a windowless, two-bedroom basement. Since her parents worked day and night to pay their debt, Yun-Jin became her sister's caretaker. Every night she sang until they both fell asleep.
At seventeen, the renowned record label Mightee One Entertainment came to her high school to audition talent. She was rejected as an idol trainee but obtained an unpaid internship at the studio. For the following years, she created some of the studio's biggest hits, without any credit or recognition. To get her dues, she emerged in the public eye wearing flamboyant fashion and put soundbites into her songs that looped her artist name, Magnum Opus. Fans began to recognize her songs and she became the producer of NO SPIN, a poorly performing boy band who needed her special touch.
Dissatisfied with NO SPIN's commercial sound, she sought a rogue element to make the band stand out. Through her contacts in talent shows she found the edgy, raw sound of Ji-Woon Hak. She re-launched NO SPIN with Ji-Woon as its newest member. Within hours their first video was a viral sensation.
Their success cemented Yun-Jin’s reputation as a shrewd producer. Adorned in high fashion to attend luxurious events, Yun-Jin's harsh, impoverished childhood seemed far behind her. She moved into a penthouse and dined with socialites in skyline restaurants with breathtaking views of Seoul.
The success of the first album broke records, setting the bar high for NO SPIN's second. As they were recording new tracks, the fire alarm suddenly blared. Concerned for her safety, Yun-Jin hurried to evacuate the building and left the dallying staff behind. Only when she bolted out into the street that she realized NO SPIN was nowhere amongst the coughing crowd. A goliath of flames engulfed the building, slowly tamed by the steady streams of fire hoses.
All members of NO SPIN perished in the fire except one: Ji-Woon. The album was ruined. The band was over. She would be shelved while Ji-Woon would rot away as an instructor for idol trainees. But she refused to be a victim who watched helplessly as vultures swooped in to take what was hers.
Unknown to Mightee One Entertainment, she created new tracks to re-launch Ji-Woon's career. She pushed him to tap into his grief and create a song exploring the pangs of sudden loss. The music video showed Ji-Woon saying goodbye to each member of NO SPIN. Yun-Jin cleverly launched the song under Ji-Woon's newly adopted stage name: The Trickster. He would embody both fear and awe like the legendary dokkaebi spirits.
Ji-Woon's song was a global phenomenon, its universal themes of grief and guilt resonating internationally. Together, Yun-Jin and The Trickster toured the world. Success greeted them on every shore. Yet disturbingly, so did a series of eccentric murders. This connection unsettled Yun-Jin as she noticed that the tour dates coincided with the victims' time of death. She was weary after the loss of NO SPIN and anxious to preserve her artist, so she increased the Trickster's security detail. What if the serial killer was an unhinged fan fixated on the Trickster, inspired by the artist's morbid songs?
Returning to Seoul, Yun-Jin worked with Ji-Woon on his new material. When she entered the studio at the brink of dawn, she was surprised to see Ji-Woon already there. He seemed exhausted, like he had worked all night. When she listened to his track, she discovered a bizarre intro filled with shrieks and snares. It was too experimental for her taste.
A week later, another death was reported. The body showed traces of torture and was arranged in the same flamboyant style as previous murders, this time diamond Cufflinks gouged into the eyes victim's eyes. The following day, the victim was on every television channel. A video from the victim's social media showed her squealing, surprised when her boyfriend handed her a heart-shaped, birthday cake. Yun-Jin's stomach churned. That voice. So familiar. And yet, she had never met the victim.
The next morning, her heart froze when she listened to the Trickster's opening track. The shrieks in his song matched the victim's squeal. Did he sample the victim's birthday video? No, that was impossible: he had recorded this song before the murder was reported. She stared at Ji-Woon on the other side of the booth's glass window. He was NO SPIN's only survivor. Everyone else was dead. Not to mention the eccentric murders that matched his tour dates. Death trails that seemed to converge… to him.
If he caused… this, no artist would survive the scandal. Yun-Jin's career, no, her life would be over. All she had would be destroyed. A wave of nausea surged over her. Heart racing, she rushed to the restroom. Wild thoughts blazed through her mind as she splashed icy water over her face. There had to be a simpler explanation. Perhaps she was overworked. Or maybe, she did not trust her success. Her mind was fabricating this suspicion because disaster was easier to trust than success. It was all in her head. She returned to the recording booth, eager to put her worries behind her.
Months later, pressure came from Mightee One Entertainment executives. Revenue was down and they blamed the Trickster since they disapproved the violent themes in his music and the knife tricks he pulled during performances. While Yun-Jin was furious they scapegoated her artist, she agreed that Ji-Woon's sound was too niche to generate profit. She told Ji-Woon she fought them off but was ultimately outnumbered. Because of her initial fury, he believed her to be on his side. They were given three months to create and perform the next hit for Mightee One.
Months flew by and the time came for Yun-Jin to take a seat at the executives' private show. She was confident about her song but as soon as the music started, she knew something was amiss.
Dense, foul smoke permeated the room. Yun-Jin coughed and gasped for air. But the more she coughed, the more she inhaled. Her body sank in the chair, her limbs heavy and numb, and her eyes widened as she watched, terrified, a nightmare come to life.
The Trickster was a whirlwind of blood, slashing, stabbing, and chopping limbs. The executives were carved up like meat. They could not run. They were stuck, like Yun-Jin, paralyzed. A boiling rage swelled in her gut. How could she have denied her instincts? The fire. The murders on tour. It was him. It had always been him. And she had known from the start. Now her career was over, and so was Mightee One. Everyone she had worked with, her colleagues, her friends, dying before her eyes. Everything she had, taken from her once more.
No, she would not let him. He would pay. He would know her suffering. Suddenly, dark coils of black fog rose from the ground and she was... somewhere else.
Bright lights flashed and blinded her. A spotlight found her in the darkness. Then a crowd erupted, chanting her name. "Magnus Opus! Magnus Opus!"
She smiled and welcomed the darkness within.
(No pic for the rest of the survivors until further posting, sadly) Jill Valentine: Excelling at lock picking and bomb disposal, Jill Valentine was a brilliant Special Tactics and Rescue Service (S.T.A.R.S.) agent.
After bravely rescuing her team members from a devastating biohazard, she returned to Racoon City to save any survivors left behind. But a lethal and ruthless super soldier labelled Nemesis was on her trail. After dealing The Nemesis a few blows, Jill rushed to the basement and picked the lock of a cold room. Once inside, her body turned numb as a black fog engulfed her.
Leon Scott Kennedy: Having faced hordes of zombies on his first day as a police officer, Leon S. Kennedy had to learn the job quickly.
Investigating the biohazard that had ravaged Racoon City, Leon infiltrated an abandoned Umbrella Corporation laboratory where a sudden and unexpected black fog led him astray.