Editing Resident Evil: Chronicles of Darkness (section)

===Dealing in Death===
Initial efforts to cultivate the virus on its own are a failure; the mass-cultivated flowers will not produce the virus, due to the absence of some unknown environmental factor. Refusing to be discouraged by their lack of ability to cultivate the virus at will, Lord Spencer makes plans to found a pharmaceutical and medical company, Umbrella Corporation, that will provide funding and a front for their bio-weapons research.

Despite this limitation on their stockpile, research continues into the properties of what they came to refer to as "the Progenitor Virus". With Lord Spencer's private mansion in the Arklay Mountains of America having been completed in 1967 and serving as a hidden research laboratory for the virus, Lord Spencer became obsessed with preserving his secrets. He has the wife and daughter of the mansion's architect, George Trevor, abducted and used as human test subjects for the virus. George's wife Jessica dies, but his daughter, Lisa, will survive - indeed, she will thrive, developing immunity to any virus that the researchers chose to dose her with, even as she devolves into an insane, inhuman monster.

George Trevor will ultimately be imprisoned on the estate and starved to death by early December of that year.

Umbrella is formally founded and launched in 1968. Determined to have more control over the company, Spencer secretly arranged for Ashford to be exposed to the Progenitor virus, resulting in his death. Although Edward's son, Alexander, takes his father's place, true control of the company is now in Spencer's hands.

Spencer has become obsessed with his own twisted vision, of using the Progenitor Virus to catalyse a spectacular evolution in the human race and trigger the replacement of the society he has grown to hate with his visions for a utopia. Although the virus is not yet understood enough to be used for what he desires, he already has plans, and begins a proejct to gather selective children of "superior stock" whom he hopes will be the seeds for his plan. He calls these children "the Wesker Children".

By this point, Umbrella has utilised mercenaries to violently drive the Ndipayans from their land, aided by their unwittingly thinning their own ranks by desperately consuming the Stairway of the Sun flowers in hopes of gaining superhuman soldiers. With the only source of Progenitor now in their hands, Umbrella can truly focus on exploring its potential.

Soon afterwards, an executive training center for future Umbrella employees is established in the Arklay mountains, and James Marcus is promoted to director, moving his experiments into a secondary hidden laboratory beneath the training center. This becomes just one of many Umbrella-owned facilities built within the mountains and the nearby Raccoon City.

Meanwhile, by 1969, the Ashfords have constructed another research lab in Antarctica. Two years later, recognizing Alexander's own failings to keep up in the fields of biological research, Alexander completes an experiment to clone the brilliant Veronica Ashford from some generations back, creating a perfect clone that he passes off as his daughter, Alexia Ashford, as well as an accidental male twin, Alfred Ashford.

It is in 1977 that two of the men destined to shape the modern era come into play, joining the Umbrella Executive Training Center; William Birkin, and Albert Wesker, who will go on to be the last of the Wesker Children.

It is not until January 13, 1978, that James Marcus officially announces his successes with the Progenitor Virus project. He has finally devised a virus strain that should more reliably unlock Progenitor's mutagenic properties. He proceeds to test this by infecting leeches, causing them to mutate into a swarm-organizing pack predator species. He becomes enamored with his creations, especially when they started to mimic him, as if recognizing him as a sort of "pack leader".

Harvesting cells from his infected leeches, he discovered that the Progenitor Virus had mutated inside of them, absorbing leech DNA and becoming a new species. He dubs this new creation the "Tyrant Virus", or T-Virus for short. By this point, the Training Facility has closed and Birkin and Wesker have gone on to working in the Arklay Lab, but Marcus remains in his former domain, obsessively experimenting with his mutated leeches.

Three years later, in 1981, the T-Virus has been stabilised and experiments begin in its use to create "Bio-Organic Weapons"; organisms deliberately mutated to serve as living weapons that can be sold for profit. Marcus's ground works have mostly been failures; mutant primates (Eliminators) that are too feral and savage to be used, the cowardly and mindlessly predatory mutant frogs he calls Lurkers, and cheaply produced but weak insectoid fusions called Plague Crawlers. Birkin surpasses his mentor, creating the first zombies, and the Alpha strain of the Hunter B.O.W line. To Spencer's frustration, Birkin cannot seem to make the T-Virus have more than a 90% infection rate for humans.

Feeling pressured when rumors come to them of the successes of Alexia Ashford, a University graduate and senior researcher at only ten years of age, Birkin and Wesker start experimenting upon Lisa Trevor, dosing her with the T-Virus and other experimental viruses, all to no avail; the feral mutant survives everything that they infect her with.

In 1983, Alexia and Alfred discover their true origins in the Antarctica Base. Incensed and betrayed, they capture Alexander and use him as a test subject for T-Veronica, a unique strain of T-Virus that Alexia has created by fusing with DNA taken from a virus found in an ant fossil. The experiment fails, devolving Alexander into a horrific monster that will come to be known as Nosferatu, but gives Alexia an idea. She devises a plan to infect herself with T-Veronica and then spend 15 years in cryogenic sleep, which should allow her body to more peacefully come to coexist with the virus. With Alfred's help, she fakes her death in a laboratory accident and is hidden away in the depths of the Antarctica Base.

By 1988, Umbrella is truly progressing with its plans in developing bio-mutagenic agents for its B.O.W projects. Not only has the T-Virus advanced to the point that Umbrella is working on a new "ultimate bio-weapon" project, but a European facility has created an experimental macro-parasite, the NE-Alpha Type Parasite, that they feel has great potential.

At this point, Marcus has become a dangerous embarrassment, freely killing his own trainees and attendants to provide fodder for his leeches. At Spencer's directive, Birken and Wesker lead an Umbrella Security Service team to ambush Marcus in his lab and murder him, slaughtering the mad scientist's beloved leeches and then disposing of the remains in the waste treatment plant. 

However, the research into the "Tyrant" has stalled; although technically possible, only one in ten million people has the unique genetic markers required to allow for such a transformation after being infected with the T-Virus.

Desperate to progress, Wesker and Birken start experimenting with the NE-Alpha, killing a long list of human test subjects before they try it out on Lisa Trevor. To their amazement, she assimilates the parasite into her own body, consuming it. Even more remarkably, when they examine her, they find her cells have become host to an entirely new virus, one with even greater mutagenic potential than Progenitor or T. Birken becomes obsessed with this new virus and dedicates himself exclusively to it, being so enamored that he calls it the "God Virus", or G-Virus for short.

Fortunately for Umbrella, it turns out that Sergei Vladimir, a former Soviet Union Colonel turned agent for Umbrella, has the right genetic markers. Clones are grown from his DNA and are used to form the basis of the Tyrant program.

Despite what Wesker expected, approval is given to Birken, and he is given his own private laboratory below the streets of Raccoon City in 1991. Wesker chooses to resign as a researcher and goes on to become an infiltration agent. 

Meanwhile, a European Research lab starts to investigate the possibility of implanting a Tyrant with an NE-Alpha Type parasite.

Wesker's infiltration agent duties culminate in April 1996, when he establishes the Special Tactics and Rescue Service (or S.T.A.R.S) Team in Raccoon City. Intended to be a heavily experienced and equipped team to deal with matters beyond the capabilities of even the Raccoon City SWAT Team, it will go on to play a crucial role in the future of Umbrella.