Harailt Murdoch had always loved high places, and had dreamed of soaring like the birds in the sky for as long as he could remember. He had in fact died of his love of high places and desire to soar like the birds the first time he had done so. Had IQ tests existed back then, one would have found that Harailt Murdoch was on that step beyond mere genius where the line between genius and madness became blurred and intermixt. After all, it would take either an idiot or a certain kind of genius to climb fifty feet up a tree in order to get a look at a nest full of fledglings that was located on a particularly unsturdy branch in order to examine their developing wing structure with the intent of figuring out exactly how they flew.

It had been on the day that he had first seen his first hot-air balloon during that exhibition in New York during the opening days of the Nineteenth Century however, that his destiny had been set. For the next hundred years, he was Harailt Murdoch Balloon Pilot. Then came Kittyhawk...

After Kittyhawk, everything and nothing changed for Murdoch. He was still a pilot, but now, rather than being held at the whims of the wind, he could soar anywhere he chose. As he wasn't the lucky sort who had been born with a silver spoon, or the patient sort who could leave money sitting in a bank for ages, he couldn't afford a plane or even parts for one on his own. After a few years of trying to figure out how to get his hands on his own airplane, he found a solution to his problem when the United States Army acquired several newfangled contraptions.

He enlisted. Then, he re-enlisted, and re-enlisted, and re-enlisted...Always with the same initials, and always with a variant of his family name, Murdoch, Murdoc, Murdock...

In Korea, he was introduced to a relatively new flying contraption that he used primarily to lift the wounded off of the battlefield and carry them to surgery. By the time Vietnam rolled around, flying in one of them or one of its more advanced descendants became old hat, and he could do tricks that people were willing to swear were impossible in it.

It had also been in Vietnam that Murdock had made a bunch of friends. Friends who let him fly anything and everything he could get his hands on, and didn't get too pissed when he crashed like he often did...