Kyburz

"You can't cut off the power, comes right from the volcanic vents... Ryan always gets his juice. But I suppose you could drown the son of a bitch in it..."

- Kyburz

Kyburz was an engineer, working as Chief Supervisor at Hephaestus's power facility.

History
Kyburz was a university-educated, patriotic, Australian electrical engineer who left for Rapture from the beach of Turtle Bay in 1947 with several other notable Australians. He initially looked up to Ryan a great deal, calling him "the best electrical engineer of our generation" in one of his personal Audio Diaries. Kyburz rose to prominence in Rapture as the main Supervisor at the Hephaestus workshops, where his office was located.

During the Civil War, Kyburz decided to try to kill Andrew Ryan. However, he was stymied by Ryan's Splicer guards and an elaborate security device guarding Ryan's office suite. He then had a dream that gave him the idea to overload the energy core which provided power to Ryan's central command headquarters. He devised a plan to assemble an electromagnetic pulse bomb (though Kyburz only refers to it as the "device") made of a bomb casing, nitroglycerin, four R-34 lead shield wire stubs from the suits of Big Daddy corpses, and half a can of ionic gel, many of which can be found throughout the Hephaestus level.

Near the end Kyburz began to get paranoid. He turned Anya Andersdotter in to Ryan's men when he thought she was one of Ryan's spies. Kyburz did not finish the device, and was probably killed by Ryan's security forces, though the device itself lies undiscovered in a crawlspace behind his work area. The corpse near the device frame in the secret area is suggested to be that of Kyburz, since it contains one of his Audio Diaries.

BioShock
Based on his Audio Diaries spelling out the recipe for the device, the player is given a mission in Hephaestus to assemble the components of Kyburz' bomb and place it at Harmonic Core #3, thereby carrying out Kyburz' legacy.

There's Something in the Sea
While searching for his daughter, Mark Meltzer comes across a February 1967 newspaper clipping that discusses the unexplained disappearances of Kyburz and other prominent Australians back in 1947. A local vagabond witnessed the embarkation as the expatriates met at a beach at Turtle Bay, boarded a submarine, and left, but few one believed the man or his story.

Burial at Sea
In the BioShock Infinite Downloadable Content Burial at Sea - Episode 1, a photo of Kyburz is briefly seen in the Need to Know Theater film "Taking the Taint out of Fontaine" along with other members of the Rapture Central Council. This suggests that he was a part of the council in that version of Rapture.

Audio Diaries

 * Hephaestus
 * Scoping the Gate
 * Device Almost Finished
 * The Dream
 * Assembling the Bomb

Behind the Scenes

 * According to "BioShock: Breaking the Mold," Kyburz shares a name with Jay Kyburz, the Acting Environment Lead at Irrational Games' Australia studio during creation of BioShock.
 * In the BioShock: Rapture novel, Kyburz' first name is "Stanley."
 * InBioShock Infinite's Downloadable Content Burial at Sea - Episode 1, a photo of Kyburz is briefly seen in the Need To Know Theater Taking the Taint out of Fontaine among other members of the Central Council, suggesting that he was also part of it.