Hiram Bancroft

Though introduced in Episode 1 as Emil, his real name was revealed to be Hiram Bancroft during the events of Episode 5.

#### Appearance

Emil walked with a dark wood cane topped by a silver crow skull. He walked with a limp, and when walking, it was clear that his right leg was in bad condition. He dressed in three piece black Victorian suits, and his appearance was often disheveled.

#### Skills

Emil was a skilled surgeon and an inventor. He kept a journal of thoughts and ideas in development.

The same day of his execution, he was marked by an outsider, likely the Carpenter, which gave him the ability to sense weak spots in the objects and architecture around him.

#### Notable Events

He designed and created a device for concealing and quickly firing a gun. The device was give to Hyzel, while Sab took the blueprints. Sandr designed a gun to fit the device, naming the whole rig The Presage.

Emil was instrumental in constructing the bomb and its timer which was used to blow up the Maypole's Cruel and its crew.

After being arrested for the bombing of the Cruel, Emil received a vision from the spike he was connected to, which gave him the name of the criminal he was trying to track.

During the trials of himself and Jared Valentine, he used his surgical training to save the man Valentine slit the throat of. He also used his new mark to bring down a section of the courthouse ceiling, killing Valentine.

#### History

When Emil was a child, he broke his leg in the woods outside his hometown. Worried that he would be caught doing something he was not allowed to, he hid the injury for a few days, and when it was found out, it had already started to heal improperly, leaving him with a limp.

Emil had a much older sister named Sarah when he was very young, but she disappeared mysteriously, and no one knows where.

Emil had a wife named Edeleine, who he married at 19, and a daughter named Adna.

He trained under a man named Dr. Harst, who was the surgeon for his hometown. He picked up the practice easily enough, and was successful enough that he wanted to experiment with surgery. His experimentation with cosmetic surgeries, though largely unsuccessful, drew the attention of a man know only as a criminal by the townspeople. The criminal's underlings approached Emil with an offer of large sums of money or a number of alternative payments if he would perform cosmetic surgery on the criminal to make him unrecognizable. Emil agreed, with the understanding that he would need time to perfect his techniques first. He was still unsuccessful, and asked for more time, which was not granted. He continued to refuse to perform the surgery, suspecting it would not be successful.

In response to Emil's continued refusal, the underlings killed Edeleine and kidnapped Adna, saying that if he refused again, they would kill his daughter as well. Emil tried to bargain with them, but they responded by killing Adna and abandoning the prospect of the surgery.

After his wife and daughter's deaths, Emil became extremely reclusive, and began studying engineering with plans to take revenge against the criminal who had ordered his wife and daughter's deaths. He remained this way for four years, until he heard a rumor that the man was fleeing to Pandyssia.

Intending to follow and find the man, Emil boarded the Maypole's Cruel to Pandyssia.

He met Jared Valentine aka John Reed, the man responsible for the death of his family, onboard the Cruel. This was left unknown until the trial of Jared Valentine and Emil.