Alastair

Alastair is a character in Seishin Ichinyou, appearing as one of its three main protagonists, amongst Marcus Cawthorn and Skylar Whittaker. He is the oldest of the three, and seemingly also the only criminal.
Alastair is a career criminal and a former caporegime and elite hitman of the Nicastro Family, having been a part of the global criminal world for decades, being titled the Monster of Nicastro in the genuine doubts of mafiosi of him being human. Alastair began as an antagonist, it being hinted and left ambiguous to the audience that he is something other than human as he terrorized Skylar Whittaker and his mother with attacks and attempts to kill them as orders from the mafia, though quickly became unlikely allies with Skylar after the Nicastro Family betrayed him, his crew being slaughtered and him vowing vengeance. Supernaturality revealed to be a red herring and replaced by humanization, he later befriended and partnered with high school student Marcus Cawthorn, becoming a mentor, trainer, and father figure to him, and founded the Castelluccio Family with new recruits and old and new allies. Having known that the criminal world and violence alike are evil yet trapped to the two since childhood for various reasons, Alastair's story focuses on his guilt, a quest for redemption, and an escape from a criminal life he views as a “lifelong damnation”, seeking vindication in ways beyond killing and usurping those of the mafia while continuing to do so to escape it, blazing his own fate-defying path to his goals despite how impossible freedom and forgiveness may be.
== Appearance ==
=== Bodily Appearance ===
Alastair is a massive man, standing at 7'0" and 315lbs, with a colossal musculature trained to its utmost limit despite being 37 years old. He not only has an incredible physique but a medical condition giving him twice the muscle, creating a slightly wider build in both this and to support his height. Although undeformed, his back muscles can form the face of a Japanese oni when flexed. Alastair has black messy chin-length hair and a slight stubble across his jawline. His skin is extremely pale, causing Javier to joke that he was the perfect canvas for both his tattoos and his scars of which are innumerable all over his body small and large. Even outside of these features, he still appears hypermasculine, with a heavy amount of body hair, and a very chiseled, sharp face with a stern expression said to be especially intimidating. He may have some form of albinism due to his complexion and his dark red eyes.
Alastair's attire consists of a white tank top, black cargo pants with a studded belt, and black combat boots. He also wears two earrings, one a long, dangling diamond earring in the form of a dragon, and the other a diamond stud earring. He deviates from this outfit very rarely, save for a shirtless variant as common as it. 
=== Tattoo ===
Alastair's tattoo depicts Yama and Kali on his right upper arm, a yamaduta and rakshasa on his left, black dragonscales everywhere and the Virgin Mary on his back. Yama, king and judge of hell, refers to his high rank in the hell of the criminal underworld and his judgment of June, giving the same judgment to those he sees as violent and bloodthirsty as evil, mostly mafiosi, even saying that he sends mafiosi "into death and down to hell". He grabs and wounds June's tongue in their fight, referencing the idiom, "If you lie, [Yama] will pull out your tongue". Kali is a protective destroyer of evil despite her terrifying appearance, alluding to Alastair killing lovers and doers of violence, especially mafiosi, in his justice despite being the same. The two on his dominant right arm holds more, using an arm with justful, executioning deities of death to kill such people. A yamaduta over a fiery gate references Alastair's entrapment in the hell of the criminal world and himself as a mental prison of June, recalling her criminal past, and a rakshasa armed with a sword refers to a realm where rakshasas with swords kill violent sinners in glee as they did to their victims, recalling Alastair's justice against mafiosi, being the monster to them that they are to civilians. 
Alastair's tattoo of black dragonscales, in the background of his tattoo alongside hellfire and smoke, and the Virgin Mary on his back holds dualism in that he is no different than Aurelio Romano, known in the mafia as "the Dragon", the two being violent, morally grey criminal overlords. In Chinese mythology, the black dragon and the red dragon also lord over opposing cardinal directions, north and south respectively, with Romano titled the "Red Dragon" from his preexisting title and distinct red hair. Satan is allegorically depicted in the Book of Revelation as a "great red dragon" (12:3). Alastair says he chose his tattoo of Our Lady of Guadalupe to honor his mother, it being a depiction of Mary's allegorical image in the same book, who gives birth to a son (Jesus) that the dragon seeks to eat, yet he defeats it as a dragonslayer (12:9). In Alastair construing his mother as Mary, symbolically he is Mary's son who after redeeming himself from being such a dragon as Romano soon defeats him and crushes his head with the killing blow as Romano reaches for his heel that tramples his head (a reference to Genesis 3:15), killing the man titled "the Dragon", becoming the dragonslayer. 
== Personality ==
Alastair is one of the most enigmatic characters in the entirety of Seishin, able to be described as many things: psychotic, psychopathic, sociopathic, homicidal, extreme, excitable, hyper, vengeful, wrathful, sadistic, bipolar, unhinged, unpredictable, uncaring, insane, and is highly susceptible to disproportionate, unpredictable, explosive outbursts of anger resulting in extreme violence towards allies, enemies, or innocent people as well as destructive rampages. Despite these traits, he is aware of their negative natures and effects and does not deny them nor show hypocrisy about them. It is only with the unveiling of his ideology and backstory that Alastair is revealed to have and given any sort of humanization and semblance of reason for his frequent acts of homicide rather than being a character of pure evil. As most serial killers have deeper reasons other than simply recreation in committing murder, most of Alastair’s killings are shown to happen in his fits of rage rather than in pure randomness, as well as many happening due to his criminal employment, even deriving sadistic enjoyment from said murders, although none of these reasons excuse his actions. As for his apparent sadism, he has multiple though similarly unredeeming reasons, examples ranging from the justful pleasure in killing mafiosi whom he sees as violent murderers to his easily excited, delirious and hyper personality, with these also applying to his overall seeking and exertion of violence or fighting. Alastair is nonetheless a ruthless and cold, blunt man even outside of the anger and violence deeply embedded as a part of his personality, disregarding and holding mostly zero empathy for anyone but his allies, and holding no value to their lives. It is not that he holds a deep hatred for everyone or that he is genuinely rude, but that in terms of his entire mindset he is deeply uncaring, reckless, and id-driven, this being a notable part of his perceived insanity, being very detached from even serious situations although he will complete the objectives he feels he needs, rarely is ever shocked, and acts on decisions generally on instinct and impulse and does not simply ignore but does not form thoughts of well-beings of others in these choices, also eliminating those blocking his path with little thought. His lunacy in this regard is not immoral in the sense that he is only unmindful of others, as he equally is thoughtless of his own well-being, performing many near-suicidal stunts (most of these being either entirely unnecessary or the least safe and most impulsive, brute-force, and quickest option) in many of his missions and tasks in his criminal career. The same aspect of his damaged sanity gives him an incredible amount of bravery and courageousness, and literal fearlessness, as Alastair has not been seen fearful once in the events of Seishin; he unhesitantly battles dozens of men on his own very frequently, and immediately seeks to challenge and destroy the entire mafia once he is betrayed. Despite disliking disrespectful and angsty people, Alastair himself is an uncouth man, unafraid to speak vulgarly and graphically to others and perpetually does so whether calm or angry, and with his thuggish, blunt way of speaking he frequently but flatly taunts and mocks others with little effort, yet many times speaks bizarrely and intelligently given his psyche. His personality, though, has much bipolarity, his moments of hyper, extreme, and delirious excitement and furious episodes of rage easily activated from the smallest triggers and breaking what would be a perpetually cold and blunt tone of thuggishness, both of these often overtaking him completely and bringing violent, gory fights. Similar to his dislike of disrespect, he loathes angry and rageful people, seeing them as childish, weak of mind, and immature, and violent people as evil, despite being both of these. He often makes to dominate the social situation, be it with intimidation, off-putting friendliness, or even sexual threats, and is presumably entertained by the discomfort and submission of the receiver. What little humor comes from him is purely dry and sarcastic, the seriousness of his tone and lack of clarification often causing indiscernibility of genuine or ironic statements, and it is extremely rare to see him laughing and grinning outside of battle save for doing the latter in an intimidating manner somewhat often. He has been shown to be capable of slow-burning, calmer anger rather than solely episodes of rage, such as when he punched Skylar in the stomach for not listening to his advice but did not continue the attack. Nonetheless, his myriad of mental issues permeate almost all aspects of his personality, and it is not only this overview but his philosophy which is a major part of his personality and its iron will and warlike ways.
Unsurprising of an old man and one as seasoned as him in fighting and suffering alike, Alastair holds a warlike philosophy that is built on tenacity, determination, and nihilism, to the point of social Darwinism. He refuses any meaning to life and calls it to be nothing but a perpetual, nonstop war given its many battles of all kinds, in which the only victory and thus meaning possible is to stand up from one's defeats and give in not to but struggle against all hardships no matter what they are, defeat being the opposite of this rather than literal defeat. In his words, the true warrior is the struggler, and the only absolute defeat is death. Alastair not only views struggle as beneficent, but this and his notion of war as the highest force there is that also envelops life is a major explanation of his violent and sadistic ways, often doing atrocities and beginning conflicts for no reason but these nihilistic ideals like a force of chaos, though in his protagonism he shows that these beliefs do not mean he has to do so. He classifies mankind into weak or strong, with the former damaged or destroyed in some form in life's hardships, a broader natural selection, but the latter keeping afloat, and every human swallowed into war in its many forms just as all else is. War permeates life to him, but his definition as said goes beyond a literal war of nations with true battles, being any struggle, hardship, opposition, etc. that threatens anything's life or livelihood, partly or wholly, mental or physical, literal or nonliteral, if not grappled with, this notion of war even applicable to an object's needs to exist. Alastair ultimately declares that, for war has been for eternity and over all existence as the highest force, bringing a struggle for existence and cyclic destruction to everything as matter is destroyed of its structures before reforming and destroying again, under this all humanity, all nations, and all life passing to its destruction before more come after their ruin and too die in continuation of this cycle, that war of all its kinds is ubiquitous and inevitable in the lives of men not only because it is in everything but too because violence is in man's nature, and that for war as both the almighty judge and the ultimate test elects from the strength of men's willpowers what man will remain and what man will be destroyed, "war is God." 
Alastair is incredibly intimidating, carrying with him a menacing, horrifying aura that terrifies those around him. Simply his presence alone is enough to discomfort, unnerve, or terrify people who may encounter him. This is mostly due to his impulsive and short-tempered nature and the range of his tones from off-puttingly friendly, calm but blunt, vulgar, and thuggish, to downright aggressive, as well as his appearance, with few exceptions being those used to him such as his compadre Javier. Hannah and Skylar, in their first encounter of him, immediately speak carefully, with the former calling him "sir" and the latter restricting what would usually be his wisecracking, jabbing tone. Javier, although not fearful of him, is able to predict when his explosive outbursts of anger are about to begin and at times is able to prevent him from going berserk in times of battle simply by calling his name, being a grounding presence to Alastair. His crew, La Squadra Esecuzioni, seems to be similarly accustomed to him, none of its crewmen showing any surprise or disapproval to any of his actions in and out of their criminal conduct, though this is also due to the fact that they are an elite death squad. However, despite Darko having known Alastair nearly as long as Javier has, he is deeply shocked when he hears that Alastair is both alive and still in Detroit, and chooses his words carefully when the two finally reunite, although shortly from then on they return to speaking as they, being long-time partners, would. 
From Seishin's three main protagonists, Alastair is easily the highest candidate for the label of a true psychopath: he kills with no hesitation, often sadistically jokes and "plays with" his victims, and in his childhood had the many warning signs of a developing psychopath and future serial killer, committing arson and animal cruelty alongside fighting other children and being raised in the typical broken home, having committed his first (willing) murder at only age 7. Impulsivity, one of his most prevalent attributes, is also a trait in many psychopaths. He has also admitted that he will kill if he feels like it. Despite this, psychopathy in him is debatable, as he is revealed to have long held a deep guilt for all of his actions to the point of harboring a deep self-loathing, the former something psychopaths are incapable of as well as usually being unable to hate themselves. Alastair not only is deeply guilty of his evils but has feelings of genuine friendship towards Javier and Darko, considering them to be true friends and mourning the death of the latter to the point of tears, also coming to form a very deep, fatherly bond to Marcus; being able to form and host genuine emotional bonds rather than ones of superficiality is something entirely impossible for psychopaths, no less grieving in anguish to the loss of someone in their life. He grows closer and closer to Marcus to the point of selflessly sacrificing himself to save his life, taking multiple gunshots fired from Nessuno's pistol for Marcus and at last telling him to flee before killing Nessuno offscreen and, due to his wounds and time in recovery, is presumed dead for several chapters to both Marcus and the rest of his allies. Impossible of a psychopath, Alastair's guilt and his search for redemption becomes more and more prevalent, the complexity of his sadness, his true feelings towards the criminal underworld and its people, and even reasons for his homicides and sadism as well as reasons for joining such a world shown gradually, but all of these things were always been apart of him even before his protagonism, since he had entered said world. 
An equally confusing yet stranger aspect than others of Alastair's personality is his sexuality. It is revealed through Darko that he had raped and killed a man during a gang war despite them both being in the Cosa Nostra, him being a pimp that raped one of his prostitutes, with this as the implied reason for his actions. He frequently makes sexual threats to other men, even ones of rape, simply to dominate the social situation and those within it through their shock and fearful discomfort, and it is likely that he would go through with these threats if specifically aggravated by the receiver to do so. Otherwise, he seems to be attracted to women, seen having sex with one before the raid on Stadpool only to snap her neck when interrupted by one of his crewmen as she was about to fellate him, him notifying Alastair that the raid was about to begin. Despite all of this, it is unlikely that he has raped beyond what he did to the pimp or is an active rapist. His perception of sex appears to be extremely distorted given that he and his parents failed to integrate him into society as a child, unaware of homosexual sex as a taboo and seeing sex as a violent act the same as fighting rather than what it is, utilizing it although consensually only because of his violent nature, having sex only to literally, not sexually dominate someone no different than maiming them or defeating them in battle. 
There is a deep sorrow to Alastair, with him being envious of those living normal lives and haunted greatly by the guilt of his many misdeeds that results in a heavy hatred towards himself. This woe is not only caused from this, but the many traumas and horrors of his childhood. He does not reveal his sadness to others, not even to Javier, but his misery from such guilt is so great that it causes him to be suicidal, even attempting to commit suicide in his own home shortly after the slaughter of his crew and only forgoing it when remembering the ideals of his philosophy. What Alastair is exactly guilty of is the uncountable numbers of killings he has done and the pain through them that he has caused. The criminal life was not his choice, forced by his father to be an executioner and torturer of the cartel and killing in this at only age 6, and from this violence. killing, and crime were all he ever knew both in organized crime and out of it. The ways forced on him continued into his teenage years as he had not learned another way, but even in the conscience of adulthood it trapped him in a hellish cycle. Alastair would escape to entirely new countries from whatever previous criminal syndicate since he knew that being apart of one was amoral, only to find that a normal life was unbearable both in its alienness and because he was haunted by the lives he was forced to take, unable to bear the morbid hypocrisy nor cope with the guilt and self-hatred for his sins, and thus would fall into joining the next criminal syndicate, this wheel of torment repeating for decades despite how much he hated the criminal life and likewise (its) violence. Such a cycle had gone on for so long that he began a facade that would become its own split personality just to cope with his actions, one separate from his moral conscience, that because it was sadistic and homicidal in nature let him cope with his murders and criminality and even made him often do such things in seeking the same sadistic enjoyment, a major explanation for his murders of civilians and mafiosi alike and an unhealthy coping mechanism. Outside of this persona, while being forced to kill as a child heavily damaged his grasp on empathy or a life's value, also why he had killed in his youth even outside his father's forcing, Alastair still knew well the unethicality of the criminal underworld, life, and its members both in common sense and because he had experienced it firsthand in his father's abuse. He grew to resent it more and more, yet never spoke it, seeing his merits and praises in such an evil world as worthless and increasingly detesting. He sees killing mafiosi as justice nor has empathy for them given that they themselves either harm or take lives, and that they join the criminal underworld knowing the risk of death they have put themselves in and that they are expected to die for their boss if needed. In retrospect, the vast majority of his murders have been of those in organized crime rather than solely innocent people. With all of his feelings swelling more and more, Alastair essentially swore a silent oath to himself to become the monster to mafiosi that they are to civilians, adopting a horrifying and destructive image and killing them with zero hesitation and excessive cruelty, at times even those of his own side, his actions indiscernable of belonging to either a controlled persona or a true split personality: too, in his own words, he would not allow another monster like himself to live. He despises violence, bloodthirst, and criminality and thus himself in knowing the amorality of the three, this being his motivation as it is his undoing. However, he knows that his hate for mafiosi is worthless in changing nothing and that their deaths are not absolute justice, knowing blood cannot wipe away blood, and even then he still has the deaths of several innocent people to atone for. Alastair knows that not feelings alone but actions will redeem him and seeks the redemption of his sins in all the ways he can, this being defeating with control and change the destructive and violent inner part of him that is in every man but for him took so much lives, keeping the young but strong Marcus from the path he took, and toppling Detroit's criminal underworld both to escape the criminal world he always wanted to and for such vindication, the thousands of lives he has taken outweighed by the thousands more he will save.
Contrasting his brutish, erratic nature and massive size, Alastair is extremely intelligent. He is a polyglot, being fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Aramaic, and (it is implied) Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, able to calculate the millions of dollars inside a duffel bag in seconds, mentions the Ojibe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi tribes that formerly lived in Detroit, and spontaneously quotes the Greek statesman Pericles, these both implying a significant knowledge in history. Alastair is also extremely knowledgeable in strategy and tactics, these being actual war tactics typical of a high-ranking member of the military or police department, despite having been in neither force, and with this proficiency he was able to defeat an entire fully equipped SWAT team with an outnumbered, ill-equipped crew of mafiosi. His ability in this regard is so great that Javier believes he cannot be bested in battle. Alastair also carries with him a complex and developed philosophy of his own, often explaining it intelligently and sophisticatedly, and although his age may explain some of his level of intelligence and wisdom it is unknown how he acquired his deep knowledge of other fields such as polylingualism. 
== Fighting Styles ==
Alastair is enormously strong, durable, and endurant. He is able to pick up entire motorcycles (1,000lbs+) and both swing them and throw them into the air, hurl chunks of concrete like slingstones, throw and slam men around like dolls one-handed, defeat entire mobs with his bare hands with little to no injuries (all of which unexplainably heal the next time he is shown), and generally kills people with a single punch to their head. He professes extraordinary gunmanship, mastery in every weapon he may use, and an extreme knowledge of strategy and tactics, leading his crew in urban warfare as if the location were an actual battlefield and them as an infantry unit, with so much skill in this that Javier believes he cannot be bested in battle. His endurance is equal, seemingly never tired such as when he walked over 24 hours and back in a desert untired, and not only appears to not feel pain but grin when he is somehow injured. His reflexes have been said to be that of an animal's, able to dodge and deflect countless attacks yet carelessly takes many in their futility compared to his endurance and durability, has caught the extremely agile Nate's dagger in its arc with his mouth, and runs at speeds terrifyingly fast for his massive frame, only punching in a slugged manner due to charging of momentum rather than lack of speed. Similarly, he noiselessly disappears and appears from scenes like a phantom, betraying his massive and imposing frame. Before his protagonism it is this and his perfection as a fighter of all kinds alongside a myriad of other alluded supernatural factors that suggest he is a sort of god of war, broader interpretations being a supernatural entity, force of nature, or even a concept. 
=== Monster ===
This is the art of a god of war wandering as an apparition from battlefield to battlefield, mountains of corpses and oceans of blood left in his wake, his name bloodshed and his throne carnage. Every kind of weapon has struck and sliced him and no part of him is without a scar, yet he stands invincible and charges with beastly thrashes, swings, and bludgeons that bring him to a bloodsoaked victory, grabbing, pouncing, and goring with his head like a bull and neither refusing gouges of the eye or attacks of fangs and claws. His title of a monster is one of many but none truly describe such a terror as him. Men and mass alike are thrown around like dolls in the battlefield that he rules and lives within, his temple, and them brought as offerings. He does not grit in pain, nor pant in tiredness or fall to the ground, yet one punch from him to the head is enough to kill. Fists charged with momentum like whole sledgehammers, foes must never get hit lest they fall or give an opening, and as said, to kill he only needs to be lucky once.
As of Seishin's latest progression, Alastair is still yet to learn his three remaining styles.
== Background ==
=== Childhood ===
Alastair’s backstory is amongst the most speculatory yet unique and traumatic within Seishin, with most of it randomly revealed by him in small pieces of dialogue during conversations with his allies. What is known about his background is his birthdate being placed sometime in 1982 in Jalisco, Mexico. Alastair claims he was raised in “three states, seven homes, two juvenile detention centers, and two orphanages.” Alastair’s father was Mexican, whereas he says his mother was a Scottish anthropologist who decided to stay in Mexico during a research trip in the aforementioned country, later marrying his father.
Alastair's childhood was notably traumatic. His father, a member of the Gulf Cartel, was physically and psychologically abusive to him, having no care for him whatsoever and subjecting him and his mother to severe beatings and intense verbal abuse, whereas his mother loved him but had a severe addiction to drugs (which his father caused and enabled) which severely strained their relationship. Alastair was forced by his father to act as a drug mule for the Gulf Cartel as well as an apprentice to his butchery, a front for an execution and disposal site of victims of the cartel, being forced by his father to torture and behead several people and dispose of their bodies, this being his first blood and what likely desensitized him to death and killing. His father essentially attempted to groom him into becoming a devoted sicario of the Gulf Cartel in these ways. Both this and the many forms of abuse he suffered likely were the seed of various mental illnesses, including Intermittent Explosive Disorder as a very likely candidate. He claims to have experimented with arson often, constantly fought other children, and killed animals such as cats and rodents frequently in and out of episodes of rage, having first killed outside his father's forcing at the age of 7 by tossing a classmate who did not know how to swim in a river and holding their head down in the water. Despite his common bouts of animal cruelty, Alastair mentioned that the only friend in his childhood was an unnamed pet dog. The membership of his father in a cartel and his mother’s drug addiction also exposed him to the criminal underworld at a very young age and likely became a heavy influence in his criminality later on in life. Alastair's episodic periods of intense anger otherwise ruined any attempts to integrate into society and socialize with others, but he mentions that he often ran to his local church and boxing club to escape the abuse of his household; while the former is never mentioned again, the latter is one of the only in-depth stories of Alastair's past ever revealed.
=== Induction into Criminality ===
As Alastair describes, he entered amateur boxing with immediate innate skill as a promising, rising star, never having lost a single match in his amateur career and rapidly building a steady local reputation for such success during his teenhood, his reputation going so far as to earn him the title El Toro ("The Bull") in the local area for his aggressive fighting style and frequent use of headfirst charges in his matches. However, before he was about to enter his first tournament and begin professional boxing, his coach took him to be physically evaluated, where the doctor examining him found nothing wrong but noticed his musculature displayed a subtle yet prominent instance of myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy. The doctor stated that this does little to provide an unfair advantage of strength in his boxing career despite the abnormal level of muscle, but after the physical evaluation the coach nonetheless had him disqualified from the upcoming tournament and suspended him from his boxing club. Alastair killed his coach in anger and retaliation, tying him with rope and shoving his own boxing gloves into his anus before stabbing him to death, also having to feed his corpse to his dog in an attempt to dispose of the body before also forcing himself to eat it after seeing that the body was still not fully erased. This was Alastair’s first memorable murder and also his first confirmed instance of many hypothetical implications of cannibalism. After the murder of his coach, he fled his hometown, likely where he began an aforementioned series of travels between states, homes, and prisons, though mostly living on the street, and quickly entered his first true career in organized crime thereafter. Alastair joined the Milenio Cartel at age 16 in spite against his father, who belonged to the rival Gulf Cartel, and soon returned to his hometown with intent to commit patricide in vengeance for the abuse from his father and the mistreatment against his mother. Alastair entered his childhood home and incapacitated his father with several gunshots before torturing him to death, and after killing him entered the room of his mother with intent to greet her after years of silence, but found her in the middle of a fatal overdose on her bed. Knowing that it was already too late to save her, Alastair held his mother in his arms as he hesitantly shot her in the head to quickly end her pain, and promptly left the house after setting fire to it. He later had a famous icon of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe, tattooed on his back in homage to her. Alastair refers to his entrance into the Milenio Cartel and the events that transpired shortly afterward as “both a baptism and damnation” into the criminal underworld.
=== Early Criminal Career ===
What little is known about Alastair's early criminal career is that he entered several other criminal organizations across the globe after abandoning the Gulf Cartel and joining the Milenio Cartel, these in order being the MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, the North Coast Cartel, the 'Ndrangheta, the Kkangpae, the Yakuza, the Triad, and the Juárez Cartel. However, most criminal syndicates require their members to be of or at least partly of the syndicate's nationality or ethnicity. His entrance of many cartels is inferrable enough, being able to pass as any Hispanic nationality given that he is a native Spanish speaker, but how he joined other foreign syndicates is entirely unknown. It may be that to recruiters his displays of strength were too grand as they were terrifying for him to be refused, and perhaps also implying an uncanny charisma. Both how he survived years in all of these organizations and how he survived escaping them is also left ambiguous, probably thanks to his general strength.
Other than those of Alastair's childhood, the Gulf Cartel and Milenio Cartel, and those shown in the events of Seishin, his service in the Juárez Cartel is the only one to be described and shown, with his final acts and abandonment of it shown in his debut. The scene begins with Alastair's crew resting outside a ranch and cooking a pig on a spitroast, and him sitting with them, before a lost American girl age nine or ten stumbles upon them from the middle of the desert, emaciated and naked. They are unable to speak in English to her, save for a fluent Alastair, who begins to play with her after she is fed, bouncing her on his knee and causing her to laugh before tasking one of his crewmen to get the crew a case of beer. The man returns to see the girl dead on the sand with a limp neck and a mangled face. He pulls out a gun and presses it to the back of Alastair's head, but as Alastair tells him to either shoot or put the gun away, he is unable to and does the latter. Instead, speaking angrily against him and revealing that he had already gotten them in constant near-suicidal battles that killed much of their comrades, he walks away into the desert in mutiny, with the crew following and Alastair not stopping them. However, Alastair begins to pursue them calmly in the wilderness of the desert, and this eventually goes on for hours, with him continuing untired and the crew faltering. some collapsing due to exhaustion. The remaining look behind themselves and initially think they are seeing one of their crewmates returning before realizing it is Alastair wearing his skin and clothes. The pursuit continues for over twenty-four hours until the last mutinying crewman collapses, whom Alastair kills. He makes the same route back to the ranch and speaks to Javier, who was the last crewman alive, given that he did not rebel in being either asleep and unaware of where the crew went. telling him that they now are to flee the Juárez Cartel. Alastair tells Javier that he will "rebuild the acolytes" from him. The pair illegally immigrate into America as planned, aimlessly leading north with no other plan or destination in mind until one night Alastair tells Javier that "the priesthood is near", with Javier unaware of what he meant. Alastair walks to the middle of a grassland, with Javier not knowing where he went, sitting for hours on a log to where a crew of fleeing mafiosi soon finds him, him seemingly expecting and waiting for the crew despite not having heard of or met them beforehand. Seeing that the crew is fleeing from another force, he orders them to circle the forest they passed seven times before coming back to him, and when they do so the crew that was pursuing them comes into sight and is annihilated by Alastair from triggered IEDs he threw despite not having any resources or materials whatsoever at where he sat. After Javier rejoins with him, Alastair leads the crew back hundreds of miles back to their original territory in Detroit, essentially having become apart of the crew and its defacto leader despite the captain still being alive. The crew is ordered to a meeting after their return for an inspection by the boss of their family, and as they stand in the lawn of his mansion the captain finally rebukes Alastair taking leadership of his crew and challenges him to a duel for the office of captain. A grinning Alastair agrees, as well as the boss agreeing to honor the appointment of the victor, and in one swift motion Alastair throws him dozens of feet into the air, impaling him on the spear of a statue sitting atop the mansion's gateposts. With this, the boss inducted Alastair into the mafia as caporegime of the crew he was with, also initiating Javier as his compadre.
== Relationships ==
=== Allies ===
* Javier Angeles: Javier consistently seems to be the closest person to Alastair, having known him for at least 4 years and being under his leadership as captain both in the Juárez Cartel and the Cosa Nostra, as well as his compadre (running partner) in the latter. In the two's few appearances before the events of Seishin, Javier seemed somewhat subordinate to Alastair, following him to the United States at his command and at times unable to keep up with his sudden antics, but in Seishin's events him and Alastair speak as equals, partly also given that the former now leads men of his own. The two speak tranquilly and even with jabs to another. although Alastair's being dry as always, and Javier not only tolerates his episodic anger and is never shocked at any aspect of his personality, but at times is able to predict such episodes and even prevent them from taking over for the worse with only things such as calling his name, being a sort of grounding presence to Alastair, something seemingly impossible. They profess an incredible level of loyalty to one another both in actions and words, each often choosing to aid the other in battle either with their respective crews or by themself, such as when Javier agreed to follow Alastair in his war against the Chaldean Mafia almost instantaneously. Alastair often reminds Javier of a pact they swore that would give Javier all the riches and power he could hope for so long as he "devoted [himself] to [Alastair]", this being at first an implication that Javier sold his soul to Alastair but is later revealed that the pact in question was merely their friendship. It is discernible that Javier is his best friend and has been for years, the two clearly having a deep, unbreakable bond and Alastair holding much more respect and closeness for him than any of his crewmen.
* Darko Dragovic: One of the few possible contenders other than Javier for the label of Alastair's best friend would be Darko. Similarly, Darko has known Alastair for years (although less than Javier) and was a colleague to him in the Cosa Nostra. The two were separated for even longer when they and several other mafiosi, including Javier, went to complete an illegal arms deal near the Canadian-American border before it was revealed to be a sting operation. Five on the side of the Cosa Nostra survived, Darko, Javier, and Alastair, leaving an innocent man and a traitor, with four other of their comrades killed. When Darko and Alastair reunite, the latter suspects him to be the traitor and conflict ensues, but later on Darko manages to (truthfully) convince him that he was not behind the sting. The two talk as would close friends from then on, though in their respective harsh and hardened personalities, but their time in reunification, going on criminal endeavors and missions together with Javier, ended up being short-lived with Darko dying at the hands of La Luce. Alastair not only cries in grieving him but vows to find the traitor for him in his memory, the only ambition Darko had. As Darko was a man who was hardened by and many times speaking against the amorality of the criminal life, his memory was one of the most important driving forces in Alastair seeking redemption.
* David Price: As with most people he meets, Alastair spoke vulgarly and roughly to an unfazed Price in their first time meeting but agrees to his legal proposition, knowing that it would bring prosperity to his newly founded criminal enterprise. However, into their second meeting, Alastair suspects Price of attempting a sting operation on him (likely trust issues or even trauma from the sting operation with Darko) and binds him before forcing him to confess anything of the sort. Price lies in an attempt to intimidate him, but Alastair is able to tell that he is lying, and thus unbinds him. From then on, the two gradually get closer throughout the story, with him even becoming as close as Darko or Javier to Alastair beyond their businesslike alliance to one another. This comes to a peak when Price decides to stay with Alastair and his allies despite the discovery of his own organization of their corrupt deal, essentially abandoning the FBI and choosing to go against them in his loyalty that developed for Alastair despite knowing the extreme level of danger that would follow.
* Marcus Cawthorn: Marcus and Alastair began with the latter being off-puttingly friendly to him in their meeting, Marcus sent by Lincoln to spy on him, and Alastair forcing him to drink despite his age. Their meetings that followed were equally strange and mysterious. However, as Alastair is forced to go against the mafia, he allies with the young vigilante and a gradual father-to-son relationship begins. Alastair mentors and trains Marcus, preventing him from taking the killing blow to Michael, despite him having killed his friend Stanley, in order to not let him cross such a line and "become the monster that [he] did" as well as teaching him the emptiness of vengeance. He treats Marcus with a fatherly demeanor more and more, with examples such as giving him general advice and wisdom, getting angry when seeing that he is failing 2 courses in high school, and teaching him many basic skills, Alastair even calling him "son" and Marcus calling him "old man". It culminates in Alastair even taking multiple bullets from Nessuno's gun to save Marcus's life, urging him rather emotionally in what might have been his last words to continue his journey and become a "true warrior", being presumed dead for several chapters in the severity of his wounds after killing Nessuno offscreen. With the bond snowballing further and further in its strength throughout the story as the two alongside Skylar take on the Angeli Clan together, it can be argued that Marcus grows closer to Alastair than even people such as Javier, becoming the closest person to him thus. Alastair sees a young but untainted version of himself in Marcus as well as general growth, and aside from selfless fatherly love believes that raising his life and keeping it from a path of taking others gives some morsel of redemption for Alastair's taking of them, making sure that Marcus does not go down the path he did lest he becomes what Alastair became and Alastair causes more deaths through him, creating yet another monster in the world.
* Skylar Whittaker: The relationship between Skylar and Alastair began as soon as the former's debut with the latter being threatening and aggressive to him, given that he intruded on his crew's turf. This continued until Alastair was at last forced to go against the mafia, thus becoming unlikely allies with Skylar. Their relationship naturally grew in closeness as the fight continued, with the two becoming very close to one another in a trio with Marcus. Although Alastair comes to respect Skylar in the view of his philosophy, at first viewing his courage as idiotic stubbornness, and likely sees a younger but untainted version of himself in Skylar as he does with Marcus, their friendship in terms of complexity goes as far as this, not exactly hosting a fatherly love to him as he does with Marcus. It is not that Skylar and Alastair do not become very close to one another in their fight against the mafia, but only that their relationship lacks as much complexes as it does with the much younger, teenage Marcus.
* June Whittaker: The relationship between June and Alastair began with his kidnapping of her, before he mocked and humiliated her after defeating her in battle, seeing her as a coward, yet oddly spared her. From then on, June's dislike of the man decreased more and more as he began to give her odd philosophical sermons when finding her at places he should not have known she was coming to, her getting used to him by his constant appearances and his words either accidentally or purposefully growing her despite his mocking and condescending tone, to the point of neutrality despite all that he had done to her. Alastair became in every way a mentor to her despite her being a few years older than her. It climaxed into their second and last fight done purely out of her mental growth, and although she put up a better fight than their previous clash she was beaten. She nonetheless asked Alastair how his idea of the "true warrior" would handle defeating something that absolutely cannot be changed, and he responds with accepting it, something which she seemed to have already learned in his mentorship before the battle. The two hold deep respect for another from then on, it only increasing when Alastair at last becomes an ally to her in the fight against the mafia.
* La Squadra Esecuzioni (Crewmen): Aside from his compadre Javier, Alastair seemed to have an underlying respect for his crew as he never had turned on them unlike his crew in the Juárez Cartel, whether in anger or in a proper state of mind. An explanation for why he did not hate his own men despite his moral ideals is that he had converted them to his philosophy, like a sort of priesthood of it, and turned them (more accurately, their mentalities and beliefs) into, in his eyes, true warriors. Their deaths cause his vow of vengeance against Nessuno and the Nicastro Family, killing the latter and supplanting the former. Such a vow was what converted him from Seishin's main antagonist to one of three of its main protagonists, now fighting against the mafia.
* Castelluccio Family (Judy, Danny, Duncan, etc.): From his ideals despising and criticizing the criminal underworld and its members, Alastair although with loyalty and very efficient leadership is either tranquilly indifferent to the members of his family to outright homicidal, killing his own men Duncan and Milo in the same scene though for a reason, of whom were veterans of the Castelluccio Family. As the family grows, mostly in anger he frequently kills his own men whenever they harm or kill someone needlessly, especially if they took sadistic pleasure, given his hatred against the violent and bloodthirsty. A stark difference from how he saw his former squad, he likely sees the membership of his own family as far less honorable and more uncouth and hateable, on top of his self-loathing also likely seeing amorality in his leadership like a king of demons. Nonetheless, he utilizes his family as support for his own goals as any don does - his reason for leading them - and dramatically increases its manpower, territory, and overall strength more and more, his gambit to break free from the criminal world and life in not only this but destroying all other criminal syndicates in the area, even the Angeli Clan of whom the Castelluccio Family belongs to, given his moral beliefs.
=== Enemies ===
* Nessuno: Alastair seemed to have been dismissive and uncaring for the boss of his former family, and while not disloyal seems to have not held much respect for him. This was about the full extent of their relationship, given that they had met very few times, and Nessuno's commands were delivered through, typical of the mafia, his consigliere. The connection only transforms from acquaintanceship to rivalry when Nessuno betrays Alastair by banishing him from the Nicastro Family and killing his crew, this done for his sparing of the Whittaker family, with Alastair then swearing vengeance for his comrades, battling with the don's family and working his way up to find him before at last killing him. 
* Aurelio Romano: Alastair's relationship with Romano was essentially the same as with Nessuno except that he had only met him once before their battle. In the said battle, joined by Skylar and Marcus, Alastair manages to kill Romano, concluding the finale of Seishin.
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== Trivia ==
* Alastair’s character is heavily based off of Trevor Philips from the action-adventure game Grand Theft Auto 5, Daisaku Kuze from the action-adventure game Yakuza 0, and Judge Holden from the epic historical novel Blood Meridian. Various other inspirations of varying levels of influence were also taken, including Yujiro Hanma from the anime/manga Baki the Grappler, Wyald from the manga Berserk, and Thorkell from the manga/anime Vinland Saga, and many real-life inspirations including but not limited to serial killers Ed Gein and Peter Kürten.
* Alastair does not know his own birthday, knowing only the year he was born.
* No records whatsoever of Alastair's existence in the USA exist (given that he immediately went to the USA without any paperwork with Javier in abandonment of the Juárez Cartel), such as a passport, driver's license, or registry in the US Census, with the closest and only possible proof being a facial composite of him in a wanted poster warranting his arrest from the Detroit Police Department. This and his ability to get away with his crimes has helped him evade arrest and legal consequences.
* The name Alastair is a Gaelic version of the name Alexander, which in itself means "man's defender" in Greek. It is unknown why Alastair chose this name, but he may have chosen it for its Scottish origin as homage to his mother, a Scottish woman, similarly to his tattoo of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Him being half-Scottish may also partially explain why he is extremely pale.
* Alastair has many titles given his legendary fame in the Angeli Clan, used often by mafiosi and even known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation: the Monster of Nicastro (due to doubts of mafiosi that he is human) as his most famous and the Merchant of Death (due to his status as a hitman and arms trafficker, likely also because of his killcount). 
** Alastair has said that he does not care for any of his titles and comes to despise them. growing a complex to his most famous title, the Monster of Nicastro, seeing it as nothing but a mark of his sins in the killings and pain he earned it by and the praise of men as evil as mafiosi as worthless.
** His titles in the yakuza also have explanation, with the Bull of the Buzoji deriving from his appearance and personality coinciding with a bull's hypermasculinity and extreme aggression and anger, and his accomplishments and fame in the Buzoji Clan. The Black Dragon comes from, typical of a dragon, his sharp teeth, long nails, and tattoos of black dragonscales, their color and his black outfit also explaining the prefix of "black", and the Bulldragon merely a corrupted moniker of these two titles as well as the Onyx Dragon deriving from both these factors but also his monochromatic appearance like an actual onyx stone; the Onyx Dragon is moreso an alternate reading of Black Dragon rather than its own title. Yet another is an alternate reading of this same title, the Dragon of Daikoku, which has a double meaning, "daikoku" meaning "black" but also being the Japanese translation for name of the Hindu goddess Kali, whose name also means "black", another reference to his tattoo.
** Bulls are the symbolic animal of Alastair, constantly used to describe him in the story in both titles and literary metaphor. They are aggressive, angry, and dominant creatures with an appearance as hypermasculine as their personalities, heavily dimorphic from cows in their protrusive horns and far stronger musculature, all of these traits coinciding with Alastair's. He even shares their sexual mannerisms, being very virile and sexually aggressive creatures with a focus on dominance in this regard. The similarity also stretches to his way of fighting in that he often charges headlong and uses headbutts in battle, like a bull goring with its horns.
* Alastair has two theme songs that play during his fights: Pledge of Demon and God of War.