A Wetpaint Site

The Wiki @ Landel's Damned

Already a member?
Sign in

William Birkin

"Real" Name: Albert Smith
Room: n/a
Roommate: n/a
Age: 36
Hair Color: Sandy blonde
Eye Color: Pale blue
Height: 5'8"
Other Characteristics: He has freckles speckled all over his face and the stubble of a mustache and beard growing. He also has dark circles beneath his eyes from long nights of no sleep.

Backstory

((Sadly, Birkin's life events are never thoroughly explored throughout of any of the games and, because the only times Birkin's past is ever mentioned are in Wesker's written reposts, Birkin's life can only be explained through Wesker's eyes. Well, up to the events that take place in Resident Evil 0, anyway))

William Birkin first joined Umbrella at the age of sixteen. There, he was placed at the Umbrella Research Facility where he was made the apprentice of James Marcus who was studying the development of the T-virus (short for "Tyrant" Virus). Also working under Marcus was Albert Wesker who became Birkin's acquaintance and rival.

A year after Birkin joined, he and Wesker were transferred to the Arklay Research Facility where they both became chief researchers. At the facility Birkin continued his research on the T-virus on a human specimen known as Lisa Trevor who was the only human who seemed to survive all injections of multiple viruses. But not without a price of course, considering she barely looked human anymore.

This continued on until three years later when the news that another researcher by the name of Alexia Ashford, who was ten years old, had joined Umbrella. Before the new recruit's arrival, Birkin had been the youngest researcher there and was considered a genius. Understandably, the praise and admiration went to his head (not that he ever said anything about it aloud) and with Alexia there (despite the fact that she worked at another facility) the praise was diverted from him to her.

Jealous, Birkin threw himself into his work in attempt to compensate. Yet despite all his efforts to create something that would "show" Alexia who was better, all Birkin managed to do was run increasingly pointless experiments with such speed that Wesker's staff was unable to collect biopsies before the specimens began to die. This continued for sometime (much to Wesker's annoyance) until the announcement of Alexia's mysterious death came two years later, causing Birkin to revert back to his normal behavior. Only after her death did Birkin finally manage to create the first B.O.W. (Bio-Organic Weapon) also known as the Hunter, a large reptilian beast with exceptional agility and bloodlust.

Somewhere around this time, Birkin married his assistant, Annette, and three years after Alexia's death they had a daughter which they named Sherry. It is believed that around this time William may have experimented on Sherry (which leads to yet another belief that Birkin only married Annette for the sole purpose of gaining access to human embryos) due to Wesker's final words in his first report.

"Sherry is safe in our hands. I would never underestimate Birkin.

There's something about this little girl..."

Regardless, two years after the birth of his daughter, Birkin was "promoted" to lead the T-virus project. Marcus, who Birkin originally apprenticed under, was the original head of the project, but over time he began to grow increasingly mad (calling the specimens his "children" and even calling one of them his "queen") until finally Wesker and Birkin conspired to assassinate him. With the help of the founder of Umbrella, the conspiracy against Marcus was finally set into motion and the last thing Marcus saw before dying was the sight of Wesker and Birkin taunting him.

As the new head of the project, Birkin experimented on Lisa Trevor (the specimen mentioned before) with a NE-parasite (the prototype for a project that would later be known as the Nemesis project) that had been sent to him from a facility in France. At first Birkin absolutely refused to have anything to do with the parasite on the principles of pride, but in the end he finally decided to run tests. As he experimented, Birkin noticed a variation in her body structure and realized that she had absorbed the parasite causing all previous viruses injected into her in the past to mutate into a whole new virus.

This virus was called the G-virus (short for "Gene" virus).

After this discovery, Birkin requested to begin working on the G-virus project immediately. Eventually, the project was approved and Birkin was transferred to a huge underground facility located beneath Raccoon City where he led the project himself. During which time, Birkin contacted the chief of the police department and bribed him in order to cover up the dealings of Umbrella from the public.

Yet only a few years later news of victims being attacked on the outskirts of town near Arklay reached Raccoon city. Horrified, the public demanded something be done about it and S.T.A.R.S Bravo team was sent in to investigate. Unfortunately, when Bravo team went missing, Alpha team was sent in to see what was going on. Of course we all knew it was the zombies long before the events ever began, but do they ever listen?

Around this time Birkin decided to investigate how the T-virus got leaked for himself and met up with Wesker (who at this time was heading the investigation team as a double agent) at the Umbrella Research Facility.

Understandably, Birkin was confused at how the lab, the mansion and a train three miles away were all contaminated by the virus. Wesker didn't really give a damn about any of that and declared that the train needed to be destroyed to prevent any knowledge of the incident from getting out, yet before he could order it to be done so the infiltration team on the train was attacked and killed. Once again, William was left in the dark. Sometime later, the said train crashed into the facility and one S.T.A.R.S member by the name of Rebecca Chambers and one escaped convict entered the facility.

After finding their way into the building itself, the two were studying the portrait of (ironically enough) James Marcus, when the deceased scientist's voice blared into the room repeating Umbrella's motto-

"Obedience breeds discipline, discipline breeds unity. Unity breeds power, power is life."

With those last words, the video screens Wesker and Birkin had been watching Rebecca and the convict through became nothing but static then changed to the image of a mysterious man with the ability to control leeches. The man then gladly confessed to scattering the T-virus and went on to say that it was for revenge against Umbrella- more specifically, Birkin and Wesker- for the death of James Marcus. What Birkin and Wesker didn't know (and wouldn't know until much later and even then Birkin refused to believe it) was that this man was actually Marcus. With the aid of his "queen", he was revived ten years after his assassination and immediately sought revenge against those who did it.

And if Marcus managed to leak out news of the conspiracy against him, Umbrella would be finished.

Birkin wasn't about to let that happen just yet. While Wesker was quite willing to "shed Umbrella", Birkin still needed more time to complete his G-virus and so he decided to blow the research facility to nothing but "a mass of rubble". With this decision in mind, Birkin made his way to the basement of the facility where he set off the detonator while Marcus was busy fighting Rebecca, giving her and the convict five minutes to get out. By doing this, Birkin killed Marcus (AGAIN) and got rid of all evidence of the initial conspiracy in one fell swoop.

Little else is known about Birkin's actions after successfully destroying the facility, but it can be presumed that he went immediately back to his work with the G-virus. Due to the fact that Birkin began to disagree with his superiors at Umbrella, he knew that it was only a matter of time before they came to steal the G-virus, his "perfection". Knowing this, Birkin once again contacted the chief of police to bribe him to alert Birkin of any suspicious individuals.

After finally completing the G-virus though, Birkin ran out of time. Not one to play games, as always, Umbrella sent in a salvage team to assassinate Birkin and take the virus sample. Hearing the gunshots, Birkin's wife runs in the room after the departure of the assassination team and is horrified to find her "darling" on the floor. After expressing said horror, she then promises to take care of "that wound", almost foolishly so considering she refers to his multiple wounds as only one wound. Either way, she quickly runs off again in effort to find a way to help William. Ironically mirroring the events of Marcus' initial "death", Birkin ignores Annette's words altogether and injects himself with his last remaining "precious" sample in effort to get revenge, immediately losing all humanity as he mutated into a horrible beast known as G.

Before he mutated, during his "death", is when William Birkin shall be brought to Landel's.

Personality

To put it simply (and forgive my language), William is an asshole. On the outside he appears to be nothing more than quiet, serious and perhaps a bit obsessed with his research, but in reality he is quite capable of killing, betraying and manipulating others with ease when he chooses to do so. This goes for his wife and daughter as well. If there is something that proves to be a threat or a stumbling block in his path, William will go through whatever means to remove it before making sure there's no evidence that leads back to him. To add insult to injury, if William sees the opportunity to do so, he's not above taunting and/or laughing at those he's killed just before they die.

Hence Marcus' two deaths and the destruction of the Umbrella Research Facility.

William is also extremely logical and is usually about five steps ahead of the game predicting what could happen. Surprisingly, despite his complete lack of morals, there is one person who William hasn't alienated despite their odd rivalry and that would be Wesker who pretty much is his conspirator-in-arms. William has wonderful self-control and, even in strange situations, it'd be odd to see him grow frightened or react with more than anything but mild emotions. This is mainly contributed to by the fact that he is also just a bit insane after all the years working for Umbrella and not much matters anymore.

His research always comes first, but his pride is a major deciding factor in what is done (as it was when he received the NE-parasite considering the parasite was sent to him by a rival facility). If he's interested enough he's quite willing to change his mind with his decision, of course. William is the type of guy who usually speaks with sentences filled with jargon and scientific phrases we would only hope to know. With his logic, William is capable of being open-minded (believing in monsters and whatnot despite being a man of science) and he's also the type of guy to want to research said monsters if he ever got the chance.

William is not one to be underestimated in the least, as Wesker has stated in his report, and is quite capable of making the improbable become reality despite how ordinary he seems. To add to that, he is also very dangerous- more so with his lack of morals which lets him do as he pleases with little to no guilt, and underestimating him is just like turning your back to a rabid dog.

Generally, William is usually quiet and serious with a tad bit of suspicion. You will never find anyone William trusts completely (though Wesker is pretty much the only person who was privy to a small portion of William's thoughts. Much more than anyone else considering William barely even trusts his wife…). Normally you can find him with his nose in a book or some documents concerning some data and when he does that it's pretty much useless trying to talk to him.

At Landel's
Still sleeping.

For Psychics
Uh... brain can't think right now, will update this later.

Things Not To Mention
Brain under heavy maintenance.

OverlordMandee	Latest page update: made by OverlordMandee , Jun 23 2008, 10:04 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Moved from: Resident Evil - OverlordMandee No content added or deleted. - complete history)
	Keyword tags: character Resident Evil William Birkin More Info: links to this page Bookmark: Del.icio.us StumbleUpon Facebook