Michael Edwards

"But there were those who made a difference. Michael Edwards was one such man"

- Edward Roivas on Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards was a Canadian industrial firefighter who, in 1991, was sent to help extinguish burning oil wells set on fire by the Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Edwards uses a charge of dynamite to blow out a fire by creating a powerful blast of air, however, as he does so, the dynamite detonates prematurely, killing Edward's collegues, McCormick and Patterson and causing the ground under Edwards to collapse, causing him to fall into an ancient temple to the Ancients, four mysterious extradimensional horrors older than humanity, Chattur'gha, Ulyaoth, Xellotath, and Mantarok. Edwards meets the ghost of a 15th century Italian architect named Roberto Bianchi, who was sacrificed to the Ancients centuries earlier. Bianchi gives Edwards the "essence" of one of the Ancients, the specific Ancient depends on the player's actions earlier in the game. Edwards is then attacked by a couple zombies, and quickly dispatches them with his fire axe. Nearby, Edwards finds the zombie's previous victim, a dead soldier, with a Glock 17 pistol and an (anachronistically placed) XM29 Objective Individual Combat Weapon combination assault rifle/grenade launcher. Armed with this heavy firepower, Edwards proceeds to shoot his way through hordes of the minions of an Ancient specified by the player's actions earlier in the game until he finds the Tome of Eternal Darkness, a mysterious book that chronicles previous people's encounters with Ancients, learning of the evil that lurks in the temple, as well as a number of powerful magic spells for healing wounds, supercharging weapons etc. Edwards later gets a hold of a C-4 charge and some blasting caps, and is instructed my a mysterious disembodied voice to set the charges in a room centered around a bridge of a deep pit. Edwards realizes that this will bring down the whole temple, and uses and "Enchant Item" spell he discovered in the Tome to supercharge the C-4, before setting the bomb. Edwards escapes before the bomb detonates, destroying the temple and killing all of the monsters within. Edwards later sends the "essence" and possibly some other items depending on the player's action to the home of Edward Roivas, where essence falls into the hands of Edward's daughter Alex, who uses it in the final battle of the game.