Introduction
Miranda was an Eastern European biologist and cult leader who ruled over an isolated mountain village from 1919 to 2021. After losing her only daughter to the Spanish flu, she discovered and became infected by the Mold within a nearby cave. Gaining vast knowledge and superhuman powers from the infection, she pioneered research on this mysterious fungus and used it to conduct experiments on local villagers over the next century, hoping to find the perfect vessel to revive her daughter. In February 2021, she abducted the infant Rosemary Winters for this purpose and, seeing no further use for the villagers, committed a genocide by unleashing Lycans on the local populace. Miranda was ultimately killed by Rose’s father, Ethan Winters, who had become intertwined with a BSAA operation to contain the outbreak.
Biography
Early life and discovery of the Mold
Miranda was born sometime in the late 19th century in an agrarian mountain village in Eastern Europe. In 1909, she gave birth to her first and only child, Eva. In 1919, the Spanish flu made its way to the village and devastated its population. The death toll was so high that the cemetery was soon full to capacity, forcing many survivors to bury their loved ones outside of the village, including in the Potter’s Field. Among those who perished in this pandemic was Eva, only 10 years old at the time of her death.
Driven to despair, Miranda ventured into a nearby cave wherein she intended to commit suicide. However, before she could end her life, she came across a massive ancient fungal super-colony, which she dubbed “The Mold”. Miranda touched a portion of the large mass and in the process saw the memories of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who had been consumed by the fungus over the centuries. Among those was Eva herself, whose body had been assimilated almost immediately after her burial.[4] Believing she could use the Mold to bring her lost daughter back to life, Miranda came to revere this substance as “The Black God”.
As Mother Miranda
Returning from the cave, Miranda infected several villagers with the Mold, curing them of their sickness, and used the apparent miracles to proclaim herself a prophet of the Black God, soon after giving sermons at the local church. The villagers, under the mind-altering effects of the Mold, quickly abandoned their Christian faith and converted to her new Pagan cult, henceforth addressing Miranda as “Mother”.
Over the next several decades, Miranda conducted research on the Mold from makeshift labs beneath the village and ceremony site, where she would perform experiments into its functions and abilities. One of these experiments resulted in the creation of the “Cadou” (Romanian for “gift”), a parasitic nematode altered by the Mold. Various people from peasants to nobility were implanted with these parasites as part of her studies, which sought to create a superhuman host for a copy of Eva’s consciousness to manifest within, therefore giving her a second chance at life. The vast majority of test subjects failed, either dying outright or becoming Lycans.
These Lycans were then cast out of the village by Miranda in order to keep the remaining townsfolk alive for future research. The Lycans ended up making their den in the ruins of a medieval fort and were treated more akin to foxes, only occasionally raiding the village to kill livestock. The most promising candidates of Miranda’s Cadou experiments were themselves the descendants of the Four Kings who had once ruled over the region – Alcina Dimitrescu, Karl Heisenberg, Donna Beneviento, and Salvatore Moreau. Although none were suitable vessels for Eva, Miranda recognized their ancient feudal rule over the region, and they operated together as a council.
In the early 1950s, Miranda employed at least one research assistant, after rescuing British medical student Oswell E. Spencer when he got lost on a hiking exercise. Although Spencer was deeply inspired by Miranda’s research, having never thought of mutating a human by implanting them with an organism, he soon departed due to a conflict of interest and ideology – namely, Miranda sought only to revive her lost daughter, whereas Spencer wanted to bring about the next stage in human evolution.Despite this, Spencer still kept in touch with his friend and mentor and continued to hold her in high regard. He then went on to create and found the Umbrella Corporation after discovering the Progenitor Virus in Africa, and used the sigil of the Four Houses as his company logo to give reverence to Miranda.
At some point, Miranda began to take on the guise of an elderly woman, dubbed the “Old Hag”. This form allowed her to spy on the villagers undetected, most of whom regarded her as insane.
The Connections
In 2000, Miranda was approached by the crime syndicate The Connections, who had been made aware of her research and wished to collaborate with her. Miranda provided them with a sample of the Mold and an embryonic clone of Eva. The Connections, in league with H.C.F., were working on a human B.O.W. project that could brainwash enemy combatants and believed the Mold could assist in this process. With the embryo, they were able to produce a number of prototypes, with Miranda herself overseeing the development of Eveline, the first of their “E-Type”, created at some point before 2014. Miranda met Eveline in person along with her assigned handlers, Mia Winters and Alan Droney. When the Connections’ facility housing Eveline was discovered during a BSAA investigation in October 2014, Eveline was transported across the ocean on a tanker which then crashed off the coast of Louisiana, resulting in the Dulvey incident.
Abduction of Rosemary Winters
In early 2021, Miranda gained vital information for her goals. Eveline was killed during a BSAA operation in July 2017, but not before infecting Mia Winters and her husband, Ethan, who had since conceived a child. The Connections, who had a mole in the BSAA, were also able to provide Miranda with the family’s location and the child’s name: Rose.
Believing Rose was guaranteed to be the ideal host for Eva, Miranda immediately made plans to abduct her from the Winters’ home. On Wednesday, February 3, Miranda instructed a villager, Eugen, to bring her medical equipment and drugs. By Friday, Miranda had successfully abducted Mia and subjected her to unknown tests, allowing Miranda to assimilate Mia’s DNA into her own body and physically transform into a duplicate of her, thereafter convincingly disguising herself as Mia to infiltrate the Winters’ home. Miranda pretended to be Mia for several days, with Ethan completely unaware of her true identity. Already having marital difficulties, Miranda’s more confrontational behaviour towards Ethan was not suspicious, and her sudden familiarity with local folklore and cuisine could easily be explained away.
Although Ethan was fooled, Miranda’s infiltration was quickly uncovered by a counter-bioterrorism unit under the command of Cpt. Chris Redfield, who had been investigating Miranda since the Baker Incident. Miranda was gunned down through the dining room window and shot repeatedly at close range by Redfield himself.Although conventional firearms had minimal effect on the immortal Miranda, she realized that it would be difficult to escape with Rose and instead chose to play dead. Her body was loaded into a car with Ethan and Rose and then taken away. During transit, Miranda attacked and killed both soldiers on board, causing the car to crash in a forest. From there, she grabbed Rose and made her way to the village.
In the early hours of Tuesday, February 9, Miranda held a ritual with the Four Lords in the ruins of an ancient church. There, Rose was subjected to a procedure which crystallized her body in a way that would ensure her survival even after being mutilated, with each of her body parts then being put into flasks and taken into possession by each of the Lords under Miranda’s orders. Rose being divided served as insurance for the ritual, though unbeknownst to the Lords, Miranda planned to kill everyone in the region to feed the Black God and ensure the ceremony’s completion, including each of the Lords themselves.
With the peasants’ usefulness expired, Miranda unleashed the Lycans on them. By daybreak, most of the village’s population had either been slaughtered or transformed into Lycans. While overseeing the destruction, Miranda spotted Ethan Winters fending off an attack by the Lycans; rather than let him die, she ordered the Lycans to retreat. Taking the form of the Old Hag, Miranda provided him with false information that Rose was at Castle Dimitrescu, knowing he would search for Rose there and, if all went according to plan, kill Alcina Dimitrescu, ridding herself of one of the most powerful Lords of the region while simultaneously allowing her to observe the extent of Ethan’s Mold infection and, by association, Rose’s. During her final search through the village, Miranda spotted the last survivor, Iulian, and killed him personally.
Not long after, Miranda held an emergency session at the old church following Heisenberg’s capture of Winters. Having either lost faith in Winters’ reliability or simply pretending she did not care about his survival to avoid the Four Lords becoming suspicious of her true motives, Miranda gave in to their demands to have Ethan killed and charged Heisenberg with the task. As noon approached, she received a phone call from Alcina Dimitrescu alerting her to Winters’ presence in her castle and the death of one of her daughters, though Miranda once more decided to prohibit Ethan’s execution, much to Alcina’s fury. In the early afternoon, Winters escaped the castle after his slaying of the Dimitrescu bloodline and ran into Miranda in an underground shrine beneath the ceremony site. In her Old Hag form once more, Miranda teased her knowledge of his mutant nature and sent him off in search of the other three Lords, knowing for certain he would be able to dispose of them now.
Over the course of the evening, Miranda became aware a BSAA operation taking place, having been tracked back to the village by the mercenary squad Hound Wolf, led by Cpt. Chris Redfield. The squad set up a series of camps around the village to monitor the situation, including one within the very cave Miranda had discovered the fungal root. Moreau was alerted to the threat the BSAA posed to their plans, though was ultimately unsuccessful, as he too fell to Ethan. Heisenberg himself was also aware of the BSAA’s plans, though whether he learnt through Miranda or on his own is uncertain.
By nightfall, Winters had recovered all four flasks containing parts of Rose and placed them within the Giant’s Chalice at the ceremony site. Miranda, watching from afar, began the process of waking up the Black God, causing earthquakes to manifest as it began growing beneath the surface of the village. While Winters explored Heisenberg’s factory, Miranda took possession of the chalice. As Winters and Heisenberg fought, Winters ultimately proved the victor, and with Heisenberg no longer a threat to her, Ethan had outlived his purpose and Miranda ripped his heart out.
Final preparations and death
Miranda waited at the ceremony site as the Fungal Root grew more and more, destroying the eastern and southern parts of the village in the process. It was at this point BSAA Europe finally made their move, having been investigating the region independently from Redfield. This operation was not a sizeable threat to her preparations, however, and the colony had grown to sufficient mass to produce imitation Lycans and Moroi to fend off any operators on the ground. The real threat to Miranda came from Winters himself, who she discovered had mutated to possess a hyper-regenerative ability which allowed him to survive her murder attempt, though was still in the process of dying. When confronted, Miranda continued with the ritual but discovered to her horror that the reincorporated Rose was fighting back the super-colony. As a result, Miranda, and possibly the Black God as a whole, were weakened, and the Eva’s consciousness failed to take over.
With Winters and Redfield taking the offensive, Miranda was forced to take extreme measures and underwent a series of transformations. Having lost her regenerative ability due to Rose taking some of her power, Miranda was once more susceptible to injuries she otherwise would have been invulnerable from. Ultimately, Winters gained the upper hand by using this opportunity to gradually crystallize her, as her body slowly broke down from his offenses. With a final cry of Eva’s name, Miranda’s physical body finally crumbled, at last dying after over a hundred years of life, though her consciousness became one with the Black God in the process.
In a beaten and weakened state, Winters pleaded with Redfield to take Rose back to Mia and the escape helicopter so that he could ensure their safety. Taking Redfield’s detonator, Winter’s charged the growing fungus, and blew himself up in the process. The explosion decimated the entirety of the village, killing the remaining Lycans and ensuring Miranda’s death for good. Winters died in the blast, but his death meant the world would not be harmed by Miranda anymore.
Inside the Realm of Consciousness
Due to a fragment of the Black God being salvaged from the wreckage, Miranda’s consciousness survives within the being. Fascinated that her consciousness is stored within the Realm of Consciousness, Miranda reiterates her determination to use Rose as a vessel to revive Eva and begins experimenting on the properties inside the fungal root, such as mixing and manipulating the consciousnesses stored inside to create entities. Her first creation is a warped, sadistic, and disfigured version of the Duke, the village’s merchant that she previously had business with. Her attempts at making duplicates of Rose have resulted in failure, as the Rose copies are husks without Rose’s full powers and only noticed that they exhibit small semblances of Rose’s powers when exposed to situations of “extreme terror,” so she makes the Masked Duke torture the Rose copies as experiments. In her experiments, she cultivated different realms in different strata of the fungal root, with the realms mimicking areas of the village including Castle Dimitrescu, Benevento’s house, and finally the village itself as the core.
She then hypothesized about bringing the real Rose, who by now is a teenager to enter the realm and relinquish her powers willingly due to her overwhelmingly strong abilities. In doing so, she projected an illusion into Rose’s mind in the form of Rose’s family friend and colleague Canine. Exploiting Rose’s traumatic childhood as an outcast and victim of bullying due to her nature, the Canine illusion guides Rose to enter the salvaged fungal root fragment, straight into Miranda’s trap, under the guise of being able to remove her powers using a Purifying Crystal. However, Miranda’s plan is complicated by the consciousnesses of Ethan, who becomes a guide for Rose in evading and foiling the Masked Duke’s traps. Another hindrance is Eveline, who lashes out at Rose over being loved and care for by Mia and Ethan while she was rejected as a failed experiment; Miranda observes that Eveline’s interference has unintentionally motivated Rose instead of making her give in to despair.
Miranda enacts the final stages of her plan after Rose arrives at the realm where she resides. Rose finds Miranda’s laboratory and notes before retrieving the crystal and purifying herself from her powers. Miranda finally reveals herself and her intentions to a horrified Rose. Ethan arrives and helps Rose escape her clutches, and he stays behind to fight a losing battle against Miranda so his daughter could escape but Rose destroys the crystal instead and regains her powers to rescue her father and to fight Miranda one last time. Rose uses her abilities to finally destroy Miranda’s consciousness and remove her from the fungal root, erasing her existence.
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