literature

Dishonored Drabbles: The Outsider [Spoilers]

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After the Storm

The sun cast warm, bright orange rays over the calm sea and the Isles as it rose in the east, peeking just over the horizon. The whaling ships had already cast off days ago, and the harbor was empty of the looming black titan ships, and the air silent of the bellowing cries of captured whales. The fishermen were out in their boats, smoking their pipes as they cast out nets to catch hagfish and other sea life. For them, their lives were simple, focusing on their trade and their daily lives.

In the city of Dunwall, people were moving with more purpose and activity than the fishermen. The City Watch, along with hundreds of volunteers were taking down the quarantine signs and blockades, prying boards off of doors and cleaning up the city. Special task forces searched from top to bottom, recovering corpses and piling them elsewhere to be put onto a boat and then cremated at sea.

For the city’s greatest minds, Sokolov and Piero had finally used their genius to create the cure to the rat plague. No more were there weepers or rats attacking people in the street, though everyone was still nervous. But under the reign of Empress Emily, and of the Lord Protector Corvo, the city was regaining the splendor it had shown when the old Empress had been in charge. And just like the other final outcomes, I had foreseen this coming.

The Lord Protector was a strange man. When I first came to him, he was a man haunted by his failure in protecting the Empress and his loss of Lady Emily. But he had been stubborn, persisting past months of torture and starvation. The day of his escape, I could see all his tomorrows and all of his choices. I drew him into the Void while he slept, and gifted him my Mark, just like I had done to the sailors who had carved my mark on the bones of dead fish and whales.

Like a compass out at sea, my Mark would cater to his desires, helping him navigate to where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. But what he would do with the Mark was not up to me. I was not a deity of predicting the future, but predicting possibility. I have been called a Leviathan, an embodiment of chaos, but this is only a small piece of my being.

For I am vast and large as the sea, anywhere and everywhere at once, at all once calm, peaceful, chaotic, enraged, solemn. Humans can only see a little at a time, in the form that I choose. The Abbey hated me only for the sole reason of what my Mark had granted to others. I chose the ones with the most interesting possibilities, and then sat back and watched them work.

The Abbey may hate me, but just like their city depends on the sea, their lives also depend on me. I know all their tomorrows, their choices, and their children hundreds of year from the present time.

Corvo’s choices were limited, but what fascinated me was that he picked the hardest path, and succeeded. Where other men raged, he would listen. Where others would give up, he pressed on. And even dressed in that mask and clothes, he sought to save, rather than kill. Not one in a thousand men did he kill, but instead he used his skills and my granted powers.

He branded the High Overseer, enslaved the Pendleton brothers, gave Lady Boyle to her lover, and brought down the Lord Regent with incriminating evidence. He stole Daud’s key, and managed to sneak up on the grand leader of ‘The Whaler” assassins, who had visited all my shrines in Dunwall and cut down city guards like a farmer cutting wheat.

All this, Corvo had done, and when he restored Lady Emily Kaldwin to the throne, I saw his final fate. He had picked the hardest path, but he also received the best reward in the end. But I am not going to vanish, even when I do draw him into the Void one last time. No, the Outsider does not rest, not when there is the Pandyssian Continent to watch, along with Tyvia, Morley, and Serkonos. Gristol may be the capital of the Isles, but it is not always the most interesting.

Though the people carve my mark onto the bones of whales, I will only grant visits to those who are the most interesting. This boring world needs chaos, or order, and I am the god of possibility and probability, not the future. Who wants to look over a world without the influence of magic?
Just finished Dishonored, playing it non-lethal all the way. The Outsider was very, very interesting, so I thought I would write a little drabble about our crazy crazy sea god (as I see it, he may be actually different).

Dishonored & Associated Characters (c) Arkane Studios.
© 2013 - 2024 PhantomOfTheSerpents
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Cosmic--Chaos's avatar
I really enjoyed this perspective on this rather inscrutable character.