Background/History:
Alexander Anderson is a Catholic priest and a
member of the Vatican's super secret Iscariot Organization (which is part of or
also known as Section 13). Like Arucard, Seras, and the rest, he is a vampire
hunter, using blessed blades and Catholic rituals and magic instead of guns and
vampiric powers. Hellsing the anime reveals next to nothing about his
origins, although a flashback in Episode 7, Duel, shows Alexander
kneeling on a sidewalk facing a tall shadowy figure dressed in archaic clothing
of roughly the 18th Century. He is carrying a gun in the flashback and goes from
pointing at the figure (who one presumes is a vampire) to placing the gun barrel
in his mouth. The flashback ends before we can see what happened next.
At some point, Alexander was recruited into Section 13. I feel this must have happened after the flashback, and that Alexander may have even pulled the trigger before being taken in by Section 13. At any rate, the Vatican rebuilt Alexander, using technology to place him on equal footing with the vampires and other supernatural creatures he hunts down and destroys.
Alexander appears initially in Episode 3, Sword Dancer. He then returns in Episode 7, Duel, where he gets both arms shot off by Arucard. He leaves, and isn't seen again, until a brief shot of him in a London crowd is seen in Episode 13, Hellfire.
Personality/Motivation:
Alexander has one mission in life: kill
vampires. That's about it. And make no doubt about it, he will destroy any and
all vampires he finds, even if they are nominally on the side of good (like
Arucard and Seras). He will even go so far as to kill those who freely associate
with vampires, as seen when he runs Captain Gareth Henderson through in Episode
3.
When he's not killing vampires, Alexander seems like a nice enough guy. He tells the both Channel Tunnel train attendant and a London prostitute "God bless you," and seems to mean it. But then, when it comes time for him to eliminate the undead the gloves (metaphorically speaking) come off. He will show no mercy for any vampire, even one such as Seras. His attitude is pretty well summed up by the quote: "Even if you serve humans, you are still a corrupted non-human!"
Quote: "I am a mediator of God! I am the instrument that delivers the punishment of heaven!"
Powers/Tactics:
Although he doesn't look all that different from
normal people (aside from being well over six feet in height), Alexander is very
well-equipped to tackle your average vampire (such as Seras... even with the
Haloconnen). He is extremely strong, and can slash through steel pipes with his
blades, and in one scene runs the length of a subway car, dragging his blades
through the walls of the car (causing the car to fall apart after he's done with
his attack). He's also very fast, looking to be nearly as fast as Arucard.
Under his coat, Alexander carries a seemingly endless supply of blessed short swords. These are curiously shaped weapons, with an "S" curve between the handle and the blade itself (so the blade is lower than the handle). He usually has one in each hand, and can hurl upwards of 10 in an eye blink, and is skilled enough to put four blades through the heads of four men in a single attack. Arucard stats that Alexander's blessed blades can hurt a vampire. I've given them the Affects Desoildified to partially represent this.
Aside from his blades, Alexander also has a fairly unique style of "magic." It is based around the use of what look to be holy writs of some sort. he has sued these writs to bind Arucard's arms to the inner posts of a subway card, to ward an area against vampiric magic, and to teleport away from the scene of a battle. My guess is that he really can't do the Entangle trick more than once, although you might want to let him do it a few times. In the anime, the Entangle was preceded by his hurling a book at Arucard. Arucard shot the book and it exploded into streams of pages that then entangled Arucard's arms. His teleportation consisted of him simply standing still for a few moment and then having sheets of writs surrounding his body, at which point he vanished. This leaves his warding power...
Alexander's warding power is pretty serious. As in 300 Active Points of serious. Originally I thought of making it a simple Change Environment (ground to sanctified ground), but then that brought up the problem of how to define a vampire's powers. Would it be a Physical Limitation (powerless on sanctified ground), or a -1/4 Limitation on the vampire's power? And which powers? So I ended up using Suppress instead. In order to set up the warded area, Alexander needs to hurl a cloud of writs and then stick them in place with a similar cloud of hurled knives. The one time he does it, he looks to toss out about 20 writs, with 3-4 knives per writ pinning them in place. Thus, I figured he has around 60 knives. There is no reason he can't use the knives as weapons, either, so I bought them as a separate attack power. However, if he does set up a warded area, he will have to use all the knives in his possession. If he's already used some of the knives (say, on another vampire), he might not be able to get full coverage of an area. He also needs vertical surfaces to stick the writs to, although he might be able to get away with sticking them into the ground (face up).
Appearance:
Alexander Anderson is a tall man, standing around 6' 6"
(he looks to be taller than Arucard). he has short blond hair, dark stubble
along his chin and lower jaw, green eyes, glasses, and a wedge-shaped scar on
the left side of his face. His clothing consists of white trousers and shirt,
gray boots, an ankle-length gray trenchcoat with purple trim, and a large silver
cross hung around his neck. Like all major characters in Hellsing,
Alexander wears gloves. The back of his right glove reads "Jesus Christ is in
Heaven," while his left reads "Speak with Dead."
Designer's Notes:
A lot of Alexander's powers are pure guesswork.
He never seems to run out of swords, for example, and uses something like 13 or
so in Episode 3 (one in Seras's throat, 10 in Arucard, two still in his hands).
As I stated above, I made the smaller knives weapons, as well as the delivery
system for his warded area spell. He might have other powers, mostly relating to
his holy writs. You might even want to give him some sort of blades martial art,
although in his case his bladework looks to be more of raw speed and fighting
skill as opposed to any serious technique.
(Alexander Anderson created by Kourta Hirano and Studio Gonzo, character sheet created by Michael Surbrook)
