In a Heroic World

Originally, this was for a Mutants and Masterminds setting, and I had it lying around.

Even in the Old West there had been heroes. Heroes like The Golden Ranger with his native riding buddy Toro; and Raymond Curse, the scarred bounty hunter and honourary Apache warrior. There was the Masked Rider, Calisto Buenaventura, better known as La Cuervo

They were few and far between, but then, at the turn of the century, there came the Masks. They were men like The Shade, a man in a mask and fedora, knowing what evil lurked in the hearts of men; They started out as little more than detectives, vigilantes looking to write the wrongs and protect the innocent. Many of them were rich, and a style was created of a masked man and his valet working together to stop crime. One of the more famous ones, The Blue Wasp, was actually one of the great, great grandchildren of The Golden Ranger.

And then it came in the 1930s that the "Golden Age" began. It started with the "brass boyscout", Captain Miracle. In March of 1933, he made his debut during the attack on the city by a robot created by a mad scientist. He kept a runaway bullet train from derailing, catching it before it could reach a missing section of the track. Soon there came others, like Super Woman, the Amazonian princess Artemis. There were also more of the men who really wore masks. The hero-detectives, like The Mothman, who stopped crime wherever it dwelled, and worked with--and sometimes against--the police to stop the new breed of criminals grew in number. Soon heroes were everywhere.

The Golden Age lasted through the Second World War, with heroes like the United States Ultra Soldier Project creating Sergeant Columbia, who faced off against his German counterpart, The Scarlet Skeleton. Captain Miracle, Super Woman, and The Mothman were the first heroes to band together, creating the Justice Organization of America--Stan Reynolds, the Sergeant, was thought lost in combat.

The Golden Age ended in the mid-50s, with the rise of the House UnAmerican Committees, and accusations of Communism. Mothman especially was hit hard, being blacklisted by MacCarthy.

For a few years, there were no heroes.

Then began what would come to be known as the Silver Age. Captain Miracle had retreated to his Citadel of Solace far beneath Antarctica, and SuperWoman returned to the Amazonian Isle. But fortune would have it that there were others.

The chief among them, and some would say the first of the new breed of heroes, was Eddie East, Mercury, the lightning man, struck by a bolt of electricity in an experiment and gifted with the power to move faster than sound. Soon there would be others. The Fabulous Five--the Rock, Doctor Elastic, Lady Ghost, The Flaming Man, and Hydroman. Gifted--and cursed--with strength and a rocklike carapace, the ability to stretch to amazing lengths and morph skin, become invisible and intangible, to turn into fire, and to become like water.

Less fortunate was grey monster of science, Doctor David Danvers, who exposed himself to radiation in the hopes of curing illnesses, only to become Gamma, a giant mass of muscle fueled by rage.

But together, these new heroes fought against the likes of The Gorilla, Professor Chaos, and Wendigo.

With the likes of Baldr--who may or may not be the son of Odin--and Red Demon, they stood up for the innocent.

They brought back the good name of heroes everywhere. It was the Mothman II that tried once again to create the JOA. And for a while, it worked.

But soon, things changed once again.

The Silver Age died with Tracy Guenevere. That is what the historians agree. The end began with Annie Stands, girlfriend, and soon to be fiancee, of Spectra. Until he came home and found her body stuffed into the refrigerator, superheroes had been seen as untouchable. They had laughed off the bullets of the Nazis, and faced the monsters of the Atom Bomb with fearlessness. That act, on it's own, may have been nothing. But a few weeks later, The Mothman II's ward, Bluebird II, was killed in an explosion by The Jester. Finally, the last straw was had when the Gremlin made Bug-man choose between Tracy and a metro car full of innocent people.

Bad things come in threes.

But soon, a few years later, new heroes emerged. And they became more human. They had problems. Gear, the billionare Antony Rokkos, struggled heavily with alcoholism. Spectrum Lad, son of Silver Age villain Spectrum, was homosexual. Groups of mutants banded together, calling themselves Outcastes and struggling with being different. Public perception of heroes had changed from heroes and villains, to only villains. The Family rose up, taking in the outcastes among the Outcastes, those who were too 'evil' or hideous to fit in among society. They didn't look for acceptance, seeing themselves not as equals with humanity but lords over them.

This was a time of heroes that were tarnished, but still heroic. Their villains were social constructs as much as they were criminals. Congressmen were looking to keep tabs on the so-called 'mutants' and metahumans, and prejudices against superheroes who were anything more than gadgeteers and the well trained. Aliens were often between the two categories.

While the Golden Age ended with resignation and the retirement of the great heroes, and the Silver Age died when they realized they weren't untouchable, the Bronze Age died with a universal catastrophe.

Two omnipotent beings, calling themselves The Black Guardian and The White Guardian, had spent eternity playing a game with reality. There were rules to their 'game', and though the White struggled to work within the rules and get his 'pieces' up to snuff, the Black was still more powerful. Hero and villain alike came together to stop the erasure of reality, and together they managed it, though the year 1985 would be erased from history, becoming "The Year that Never Was".

Many of the heroes involved in it died. And even in dealing with more 'mundane' threats--as mundane as they get for a superhero--heroes were being shown they weren't invincible in ways not seen in the last Age. It began with the then-elderly Mothman II having his back broken by Poison, a scientist born in a prison and powered by a serum of powerful muscle stimulants. It was then that heroes began to believe that they needed to be tougher.

It began with The Avenger, a soldier of the Gulf War who came home to find his family was caught in the crossfire between two gangs. And others followed. There was an unspoken belief among the heroes that heroes that they needed to be tougher. Some heroes became more willing to kill. Others clung to their technical pacifism, but were willing to lead villains into situations in which they would kill themselves, or break bones.

Some say that the Iron Age never ended. Others say that a new Age began when Captain Miracle returned after fifty years of solitude. Once again, the citizens of Centrolopolis were saved from a runaway metro car by the city's favoured son.

Or when Artemis stopped the legions of Tartarus from marching on Washington.

When Sergeant Columbia was unthawed from a block of ice, coming into the new century to see what his country had become.

There was a return to the sensibilities of before. The Iron had become tempered with something more dignified. The grit was brushed away, and Diamonds were found. Together, Superwoman, Captain Miracle, and Mothman II--who wouldn't let something like a broken back stop him for long--recreated the Justice Organization, this time no longer limiting themselves to America.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Columbia, Gear, and the still living David Danvers became the government backed organization known as the Defenders. Teams of heroes began to spring up, banding together to defeat the villains, darker than ever, but now facing a shining legion of justice and hope.

The heroes of the last decade have seen a lot. They've seen dark reflections of the Spectrum Ring bringing the dead back to life. They've seen heroes taking sides against each other over politics. The heroes of this so called Diamond Age have faced their pasts and questioned their futures. Many of them have made hard choices, such as when Sergeant Columbia stood against the government he loves in defense of it's ideals, and Arachnid revealed his identity on national television. Torches have been passed, such as when Columbia was murdered on the steps of the Capitol, and when Mothman II was killed in the line of duty, and Owl--formerly Bluebird III--became the third Mothman as well.

It's a harrowing time, with darkness everywhere, and a few shining beacons.

And it's up to you to decide how it turns out.

On Your Feet, Private

On your feet, Private.

With those words, I bolt upright, feeling a sudden rush of life and air surged back into my lungs. I claw at my throat, ripping at the sick, filmy caul, still wet and dripping. Then I feel a memory that never happened to me.

I'm 23, my name is Andrew Franklin. There's another man here, in this convenience store with a gun, holding it at a co-ed. Part of me is heroic, part of me is stupid. A little bit thinks I might get lucky. As he starts to pull the trigger on the crying twenty something, I sneak up behind and tackle him. We struggle, but he gets the gun under me. I hear something in the distance, and I look up and laugh, thinking it's over. He doesn't, though, and isn't trying to run. It feels like a goliath punched me in the chest, and my smile fades as I realize I've been shot. The police sirens are the last thing that I hear, along with the girl and the clerk screaming in Chinese.

Reacting, I put a hand to my chest. It wasn't me in that store, but I feel like I felt it anyway. The shot that killed me was five inches to the left. It's already healed up. The blood is still there, my shirt still torn. I run a finger along it as I catch my breath, then feel one of the other five shots. I managed to stop them from being so bad, but these ones will still leave scars, already looking like they're months old.

That's the first time that's ever happened to me. I didn't expect it to be so intense, somehow more real than my own deaths, living someone else's. Then I see the last girl, and realize I have more important things to do.

She's wearing a miniskirt that's pink and green pleats and loud in every sense of the word, and a little top that clings to her in a way that her mother wouldn't want it to. Her stockings are long and stripped, though dirty now, and ripped. She looks like sex and sweetness and all those things little girls try to be thinking it's 'adult'. Before that bastard came home, she was clinging to me and crying and begging me to stop him from hurting her. Now she's covered in Death, and her body just feels empty, soulless.

I swallow, trying to get a lump out of my throat as I lift up her clothes. He beat her, bruises all over her body. I don't know whether it made her 'taste' better or if he just wanted to torture her first for the hell of it. I come to her skirt, and I can't go any further. I've seen enough.

On your feet, Private, the Unknown Soldier orders again. His voice is a calm, but I know there's always fear and trepidation underneath it all. I cross myself, and say a quick prayer for her, then get to my feet. I come up too fast, too angry, and too soon after coming back, but I need to go after him.

I take a look around, leaning against a support post. I'm in the basement. Everything is sparse, and there's no light. The girl is chained to the wall. There's a parts cabinet, and a workbench, with melting candles as the only source of light. I don't even want to look at it, covered in blood and sigils. It's bad mojo. I've seen enough shit to know blood sigils and soul eating aren't the hallmarks of a priest or a saint. I avert my eyes, and in the flickering light, I see something that makes me smile.

It's the pipe I used to beat that bastard before he shot me. There's a bit of blood on it, but even better, it reminds me there's a tooth somewhere around here. It doesn't take me too long to find it, and slip it into a white handkerchief.
Now it's time to get busy. I run up the rickety wooden stairs fast enough that I'm afraid they'll break, then start busting open doors until I find a desk, then I rummage through it for a marker. I lay the tooth, still covered in dried blood, down in the middle of the handkerchief, then start tracing magic symbols around it, invoking Jesus and Hades and anyone else who's ever been in a death myth. I could say it was something I learned from a legitimate source. A Vatican priest, or a Kabbalah rabbi. I got it from a video game. In the last few years, I've realized it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do something. Just one more thing to finish it off.

I've been chanting throughout, but now I need complete silence. Quietly as I can, not even disturbing the wind, I reach out my left hand. The pipe is there again as soon as I close my fingers, and it feels good to have it. I wave it like a magic wand, and say the words only in my mind. With a gentle tap on the tooth, I feel my blood run cold. It feels like I'm bleeding out again. I involuntarily shiver. I tie my makeshift bag, filled with a tooth, some silly writing, and a bit of dirt, and let it dangle on the string. It gently moves, tugging a bit.
hat means it worked.

I'm halfway out the door before I realize I look like shit, and I'm covered in blood and dirt. I rummage through the rooms of the cabin and find a shirt, putting it on and fixing myself up in the mirror. He's going into town, and I don't want to stand out.

How many times have I died now, I wonder. It's been three. This is the first time I've ever died up here, though. Dying in the land of the dead, that doesn't really 'count', now does it? The first time I was shot in some hellish hospital by one of the nurses, and came to naked up Above in a broom closet. Second time, some wannabe Lawmaker threw me into the River of Scorpions. And now this is three deaths.

Four the Soldier says. Confused, I look into the mirror, and can almost see him there. The Unknown Soldier. Wearing BDU and a red-coat. With warpaint and dogtag eyes. His mouth is a knife wound, and his nose a gunbarrel. Sometimes he carries a Lacadanion sheild, and others European greaves and a samurai sword. He has no expression, but that slit of a mouth repeats You've died four times, Private.

I nearly forgot. The first time I died. I was seventeen. That was a world away, lifetimes. That was someone else who died. Some young kid going out tagging and getting hit by a car, watching as it hauled ass to get away from the dying kid, leaving me to bleed out.

It was then that I met the Soldier. I'd heard him before, or maybe others. I could never make out words, but I'd get the gist of it. They wanted me to do this, and that. The unquiet dead. I lay there bleeding out, and I slipped into that other world, that place of ghosts. I grew colder as my blood filled the curb, and stained the world around me. Everything was pale. Buildings were different. The old ones were solid, but some of the new ones weren't even there. And the Soldier stood over me. He hadn't been there, but then he was. Just fading in, as I faded out.

On your feet, Private. But I couldn't stand. Do you want to die? It was said in that same tone as always. Giving an order, but scared of it. Someone not used to power, but trying to use it properly. Someone about to die, but not letting on to the people now under him.

You have a chance to live. And the pipe dropped down from his hand. I looked up, and saw him. I might have pissed myself if I wasn't dying. I think I pissed myself because I was dying. Take it, and keep fighting.
I don't know why I did it. Why I reached out and grabbed that pipe and pulled myself up. Why I became Bound to this spirit of those lost in battle, dying for nothing and everything. Sometimes, I regret it. I regret it when I see a young girl beaten, crying, begging me to stop him, and not being able to. Other times, I don't. Times like when I beat that bastard to death and tear out his eyes.

"Four deaths," I say to myself in the mirror. They say when you die Below, it just makes you crazy. Nothing a little piece of mind can't get you back. But when you die Above, when we die Above, it shreds our souls, makes is closer to monsters. Someone else dies each time. I cross myself again, and say a prayer for Andrew Franklin. Let's make sure he doesn't give me his life in vain. "Keep fighting."

My pipe is back in my hand, and my knuckles are tight gripping it. I'm going to find that bastard. I head out, and raise up the bag, letting it gently rise in the direction he is. I'm not going to let him take another girl's soul. He killed me once, it's time to return the favor.

Project Rundown

I need to write more. This is a given. I want to be able to add more things to my portfolio, specifically more creative things than just modeling (which I also need to do more of). There are so many good and bad ideas that I've forgotten, though, and I'm going to try to remember as many of these as possible and write them down here.

I'm going to try something similar to Stephen King's method. I'm going to just write something each day and hope it sticks. I expect a lot of crap, but hey, Stephen King has also written 66 books and over 100 short stories, as well as a book on writing (called On Writing, naturally), most of which have been best sellers and gone on to become movies or miniseries. Hopefully something will come of it, since it's by this method that he wrote Carrie. Of course, in his own words, most of it is crap.

Without further ado, the rundown.

Vindae, and Einher/Sephirot: the single largest project here. It encompasses not only a story, but an entire fictional world. The story side of things is intended to be my take on fantasy stories. It mixes magic with science fiction, but stays closer to the Final Fantasy games than it does to the 'sword and planet' genre of scifi presented in books like Edgar Rice Borough'sJohn Carter of Mars series.

The Science Fantasy feel of this picture is what I want Vindae to be like.

Also, for those of you slow on the uptake, that's Pokemon as a fantasy setting.

The story concerns a boy named Aiden, and the young girl who falls from the sky with no memory. The girl is a homonculus, an artifical human, created by the group Sefirot in an attempt to unlock the gates of Heaven and use the power that resides in the Tree of Life to erase Creation and start over. The story follows Aiden and Riza, the girl, as they uncover her past (and the fact that being a homonculus, she doesn't have one, as she only woke when Aiden found her), and avoid being killed by the Sefirot.
The villains in the story each have a personality based on one of the seven sins, though except for one of them none of them are truly evil. Their leader, Kether, only wants to 'destroy' the world so that he can remake it without strife and hatred. He's actually something like Adrien Viedt. He knows that what he's doing is wrong, but that his goal is ultimately Good. He plans to punish himself when the ordeal is over, banishing his own soul to the Abyss, a place characterized by an eternity of conscious non-existence.
Kether's backup plan is that the entire world will raise up against him as one, proving that he does not need to destroy the world to make it a better place. In the journey to uphold the promise to protect Riza, Aiden ends up gathering together a multiethnic party and defeating Kether. In this way the story is intended to be like Final Fantasy as well. The story is written with the conscious feel of an RPG in mind.

The story is also meant to be written as if it was translated from a fictional language, with footnotes explaining nonexistent translations, idioms, and other things.

The volume of information I have on the story as well as the setting is enough to fill it's own Note, or even Notes, and covers religion, magical items, holidays, countries and races, and even the different types of magic.


Ashcroft is the second of my large projects, and though I've already written notes about it, I'm going to put it here anyway.

Silent Hill is one of the things that inspired Ashcroft, and the main character originally wore a white vest, green skirt, and boots in homage to Heather.

The story is intended to be a game, and has always been written as something between Silent Hill and a point and click adventure game. The first draft even made mention of the protagonist's inventory.
Ashcroft follows the journey of Ashleigh Harker, who wakes up after crashing her car on the outskirts of a haunted town with no memory. In dealing with the town's demons, she learns what part she had in the town's current state, and why she's been brought to the town after four years.
Ashleigh faces the minor demons of the town, as well as the seven people who turned the town into Hell by destroying the life of a young girl, a young girl created in a laboratory as a psychic weapon. The malevolence of the town itself also plays a part in it, an entity that wants to take the girl's power for itself.

This twisted abomination is likely to end up an enemy in Ashcroft.

With that, I leave the more defined projects, and go into ones that exist as nothing more than a vague concept and maybe a few notes.

The Celestial War: In the beginning, the Creator made Creation, and with it, Eden. When Creation was formed, the Creator faded away. In the Creator's place where left the Celestials. For a while, there was peace. After a great earthquake, Eden was split. The Celestials in the West became known as Demons, and the Celestials in the East became known as Angels. For a time, things were still peaceful. There was trade and travel between the two nations.
As the years grew longer, distance created dissent, and the Angels and Demons went to war with each other. No one knows how it started, who first attacked or why.

The Celestial War is nothing like this, but I like giving everything a picture.

Lead by the brothers, Michael and Lucifer, the two armies battled for years. Eventually the Demons were defeated, and Lucifer and the demons were taken to Mount Purgatory and cast down into Hell. In that empty world, Lucifer and his celestials set to work rebuilding. Meanwhile, Michael declared himself God, ruler of all Creation.
In Hell, in the golden fields of Elysium, the city of Pandeamonium was built. For a time, things were good. Despite being exiled from their home as punishment for losing, the demons lived content in Hell, far from their enemies in Heaven. After the city was completed, Lucifer was declared God, and ruled his new nation.

Now, everything has changed. For two thousand years, the war has been over, but for Lucifer's Lieutenant, Azazel, a new home cannot fill the whole left by the loss of the old. Scarcely had Lucifer been crowned regent of that new world before Azazel began to stir dissent. Lucifer was deposed by those he had once led, and once called friends. He was exiled from the home that he built with his own hands and the sweat of his brow once again. He was banished to Earth, the world of humanity.

Now, 2000 years later, Azazel makes his move. He seeks to awaken the beast Apollyon, chained beneath Creation, ultimately leading to the end of the world, as prophecised by Metatron, the half-mad blind oracle kept chained in Eden's capital of Arcadia, who is believed to hear the voice of the creator. Yeshua, a strange urchin has appeared, taking care of Elyon, stirring her to deeper prophecy than ever before. To save the world, Lucifer must find his way back to Heaven and Hell, and convince his brother Michael that Azazel must be stopped. Unfortunately, the deposed God of Hell is nowhere to be found. The Four Riders are coming, and Apollyon stirs. The only one who can save creation is the missing Daystar.

The Rat God: A story set in Vindae before it's main story. It tells the story of Gaetta the Rat, a demigod and trickster, who sets out to defeat Bahamut, the last of the Old Gods that holds Vindae in a grip of terror.
Bahamut, along with it's brothers Ziz and Leviathan, fell to the planet Vindae a millennium ago in an event that shattered two of the three moons and left the planet with three massive craters. For ages they slept, but eventually they awakened, and resumed their eons old war. They were Ziz, God of the Skies and Father of the Wyvern, the massive bird capable of blotting out the sun with it's wings; Leviathan, the God of the Oceans, and Mother of the Wyrm, the great sea serpent with the power to cause tidal waves and flooding with a flick of it's tail; and Bahamut, Lord of the Earth and Flames, and Father of the Behemoi, who's burning grip engulfed the world the longest. Ziz and Leviathan had been sealed away, and Bahamut was left to rule the world. A great alien creature so powerful that it could defeat the Gods of Vindae.
This is where Gaetta comes along. Setting out to bind up Bahamut as Ziz and Leviathan had been, he traveled to the burning kingdom of the South, with a waitress as his companion, and used a magical necklace to defeat the Lord of Earth and Flame.

The story was originally thought of as a parable for why Behemoths, large elephant like creatures, would be afraid of mice and rats. The answer being that a rat defeated their creator.

The World's Greatest Theif Jack of Diamonds The only thing I've thought of that would actually be a series, the Jack of Diamonds is a young boy who happens to be the worlds greatest thief. Originally it was intended to be yet another story set in Vindae, though somewhat lighter. In fact, it's possible it could be a children's or young adult story. Jack's misadventures would involve him attempting to steal something impossible, all while avoiding the pursuit of a beautiful female detective, and at the same time, he would be stealing from people who were thieves themselves, exposing them as he took their riches for himself, and gave what he didn't need back to the victims. Something like Robin Hood, but in it for the challenge.

Further owing to it's possibility as a children's series, Jack of Diamonds is likely to be accompanied by a wise cracking animal sidekick.
I think I settled on either a red panda or a fruit bat.

Possible exploits include being framed for murder, escaping prison, and whatever other misadventures I could think of. Think of him as my version of Sly Raccoon, Jing: King of Bandits, Lupin III, Phantom Thief Dark, the Leverage team, and other similar thieves who aren't necessarily villains.

I don't know, I think I could write a pretty good young adult series.



Theme: One Character Gives Up Their Life for Another
1. A soldier who saves a child in a wartorn land
2. A woman goes after the man who killed her father and falls in love, thereby giving up her life of revenge for him. Or, he kills himself. Or she kills him, then herself.
3. A man and woman fall in love, and have some sort of great adventure together. They have sex, he dies saving her, and she lives on with his children having no father. I think I actually stole this one from a Trigun fansite that theorized Milly and Wolfwood made love the night before he died, and that Milly was pregnant.
4. A woman finds a man lying half dead in a river, nurses him back to health. The man gives up his life to save her. From a monster, perhaps. The idea being that whatever almost killed him is what he saves her from. Perhaps mixing this with 3, because nothing says drama like a baby with only a mama.

Phantom Brave actually did inspire Shadow Wars a bit. The spirits in that game are called Phantoms, and they need to be bound to a material object before they can interact with the world.

And that's all I can find at the moment. I think I have some other journals lying around with other ideas in them.
This is what I have, though. I don't think it even touches the tip of the iceberg, though.

In addition, there's still the game related ideas.

Odyssean, the game about powerful mages in modern society who are cursed to never be able to settle down at the cost of the gift of magic.
and
Shadow War, which features magicians teaming up with spirits to fight hungry ghosts.

Ashcroft | Bram Hellsing

Abraham Hellsing was one of the ranking members of ParaSol, and he was the head of Ashcroft's wing of Neurological Enhancement and Application Research, what most people called The Cradle.

First, to understand things better, it's necessary to know more about the Cradle. The project had it's roots in the late Sixties, after the end of the MK-ULTRA trials. NEAR was designed to "create and cultivate psychic and parapsychic potential in the individual", and to achieve this goal they created the Espers. Young children, often either clones or orphans, that had their neurological abilities enhanced, made stronger, brought out.
NEAR's espers were designed with a variety of applications, from simple remote viewing to more direct operations. Though the Cradle's projects still failed in most cases to live up to the military expectations, they still made great strides. Unfortunately, there were side effects. While MK-ULTRA's trails involved LSD and hypnosis, NEAR worked with genetic manipulation and neurological engineering. The children of the Cradle became quiet, reserved, and completely obedient to their handlers without a second thought. All qualities that any parent would want, but in a way that no child would normally be. The children were often described as 'creepy', 'ethereal', and in at least five cases 'evil'. Studies revealed that the Cradle's espers emitted a low level psychic field that caused unease in those around them, specifically their handlers.
The children themselves often had problems. The were often plagued by nightmares, and the espers labeled Watchers, the ones involved in remote viewing, would have visions, seeing things that weren't there. The children called them Faeries, and more often than not they took forms that were disturbing and wrong, much like the feelings that the children themselves emmitted. They would look perfectly normal, but at the same time they would appear off, as if everything about them was shifted one micrometer in the wrong direction, or their shadows twisted and changed while they stayed the same, or they had smiles that were too wide. They saw things that weren't there, things that couldn't be explained even by the tests that revealed the low level psychic disturbances caused by the children.
But every single one of the children described the same creatures.
Either way, the Cradle suffered from a number of psychological problems, and had a high rate of suicide. In at least two cases there were murders, but both cases were considered to be unrelated to NEAR.

Bram oversaw the Cradle of the Sariel Project, one of the most promising subjects. She had relatively few of the problems that the other handful of current Cradle children did; she didn't see dark creatures between the seams of reality, she didn't unnerve her handlers, her nightmares were easily manageable. She was the most talented esper of the lot of them, and people would stand to make a lot of money if things had gone well.
Now, with all of this it would be easy to paint Bram as a monster, a cruel man who only wanted to make money. This isn't true, though. Yes, he was motivated by his own greed, and it was that greed that he was punished for when Sariel snapped. He also treated her like a daughter. While his primary goal was for wealth and power that would come from the success of NEAR, he was still a decent enough human being if not for his insatiable avarice. He cared for Sariel, treated her kindly. He was still strict, but he would treat her as gently as possible. He had a grandfatherly demeanor, though he was capable of outbursts of anger. He managed to restrain that temper around Sariel, and not only because she was important and expensive. He truly cared for the child so long as it didn't interfere with any money or power that he would gain.

It was Ashleigh Harker, Sariel's handler, who was the one who stopped that. She grew too close to Sariel, and as she got older, and the tests got harder, she couldn't deal with what she had to do to the girl to force her potential. She went to the head of ParaSol, and she lobbyed to cut back on the project. With results not being what they wanted, they scaled back the Sariel Project. Or at least, that's what the official unofficial statement was. Bram made it so that the project would be going into a new phase, to watch and wait. Sarah was given surgery that would hamper her abilities, her memory was erased, and she was placed in adoption to be adopted by Micheal Carpenter.

After Sarah was raped and Michael killed Andrew Cunningham and himself, Bram was there to pick up the pieces. Ashleigh, shaken deeply by the incident, ran away, fleeing to Boston, Maryland to start a new life. Hellsing continued the project without her, and Sarah once again became Sariel. Things quickly spiraled out of control, though, and Sariel slipped deeper into the same problems that the other Cradle children had. Her demeanor became the same hollow shell that the other espers had, and she began seeing the Faeries--and the other things that either couldn't be seen or didn't exist--more and more. Her nightmares increased, and her new handler was unable to help her cope. He hanged himself less than a week after starting, despite maintaining his composure through three of the Cradle's other espers. This was three days after Paul Krueger was found murdered in the California Hotel, and by the end of the month, Ashcroft stopped existing as it had and became part of the Otherworld.

Hellsing, for his part in it, sits in the Operating Room of the Ashcroft Medical Research Hospital, between the main hospital and the branch used in the Cradle. His new form represents the Greed that drove him to make and break a little girl, and is punishment for his part in Sarah's death, and Sariel's rebirth.