Niklaus Brahms

DRAFT — recovered worldbuilding notes. Not yet reconciled against other sources.
Recovered source uses the name "Nicolas Brams" / "Nicolas Bram". Preserved verbatim.

Summary

Nicolas Bram is a troubled child. Parents died when he was 9. He had no friends or close family to turn to. He spent months on the street before being picked up by the cops.

Nicolas was then adopted by Isambard Orphanage. Bram was forced to take a series of tests every day for over 6 months. The distribution was measured for the most accurate score possible of his abilities. Bram's mental faculties were unlike seen in anyone before him — he effortlessly maxed every measure.

Bram was quickly placed into a group known as "The Withered", who were worked to death for the success of the family behind Isambard Orphanage.

Bram was given the number 333.
He was the 333rd child to be taken in by Isambard Orphanage.
He was the 28th Withered of 19 who are still alive. (Contradictory numbers preserved from source.)

Current Activities

Brams spends his time back and forth between:

Analyzing stock market trends.
Solving criminal cases related to a terrorist organization named The Jihad Coalition, who follow the True Path religion — the belief that killing is the way to enlightenment and that only those willing to kill deserve to live.

"The Boy" and the Monarch Case

Under the alias "The Boy", Brams encountered Rylee Moncler during the 2017 Monarch Case.

Was one of only 7 of 40,000 contestants admitted into Rylee's group Blank after her series of investigative tests.
One of only 2 members whose identity Rylee's surveillance team failed to penetrate.
Completed the exam in a time category all his own — Rylee questioned whether she herself could have matched it.

Through his access to global camera networks, Brams discovered the GitHub repo Albion, authored by Sydney Lane. Using Albion's Intuition Synthesis and Predictive Analysis features, he identified 4,998 instances where individuals wearing butterfly-wing-patterned clothing loitered near middle and high schools around the world in blind-spot zones.

He traced the clothing via pixel-cleaning programs to specific brands and local retailers, then to a specific kidnapper via a phone number on an internal store receipt. This tip led directly to the raid that dismantled Monarch.

After the raid, Rylee formally offered Brams the position of Co-Captain of Blank. Brams formally declined.

Isambard Orphanage

Isambard Orphanage was started in 1970 as a secret division of Remington & Co. to secretly exploit child labor behind the scenes. Due to national laws limiting the number of children any one orphanage could adopt, Isambard hired mercenaries to kidnap for them when needed.

Isambard used a series of specially developed standardized tests to divide children into groups based on capabilities. They had:

No access to fun or outside.
Limited access to socialize during lunch.

This caused serious mental illness among the children, handled by Malakai Othello, a former world-renowned psychiatrist known as Doc.

Isambard Orphanage was relocated to China in 2012 and put in a much nicer facility in the outlands, designed by an architect named Sydney Lane. (Sydney was commissioned at $26.5M and signed numerous NDAs without being told what the facility was for — see her file.)

The Withered

(Section marker in recovered notes. Body missing beyond Brams's own placement in the group.)