Re-reading D1 lore after D2 and DOTO

Goodbye, Meagan

My beloved getting dressed to kick some ass, somewhere between D2 and DOTO.

“Like you did for me.”

…somaybe it’s his turn to assist the next protagonist under a false identity? ;)

Dishonored lore: How this world was created and at what cost

D2 and DOTO SPOILERS below!

Let’s talk about the one of the biggest lore revelations in DOTO: apparently the Envisioned succeeded where Delilah failed, and 4000 years ago reshaped this world to their ambitions, and probably did something terrible to its previous denizens. It also explains a lot how the Outsider in D2 is still “definitely true to the character” (by Harvey Smith) after suddenly going from "I only observe and don’t play favourites” to "here is your timepiece and tips how to get rid of Delilah”, and why he meddled so much in DOTO. What’s even more interesting, the damaged veil between the reality and the Void seems to be not the only one we have to worry about.

The last mission in DOTO reveals a lot about "the foundation” – not only of the Cult of the Outsider, but of this world as well:
"When I died, this world was remade. And when I die again…” – The Outsider.
"While the sheep slumber, we shape things. We made this world, with the dragging of a knife blade.” – idle quote of cultists.
“The gate has been broken since the foundation of our world, and so the gate has always been broken.” – cultists talking about the shattering of the gate to the Ritual Hold.
"The Outsider is a static point, a truth upon which we build our foundations.” – The Essence of Eternal book.
”- These anomalies threaten everything we’ve done here. – Our foundations are strong, We avoided catastrophe” – cultists discuss how Delilah’s actions affected the world.

Before DOTO I was wondering why cultists bothered so much to create a god who hates them fiercely and refuses to bestow any favor, or even talk to them. They gave the face to the Void, but apparently they didn’t care who he was and what he wanted – they needed him as “both a focal point and a catalyst for its power”, allowing them to bend the power of the Void. Very little we know about the world before the Outsider’s creation, but it was probably in a dire state: seasons destroyed, mass fish dying, entire constellations of stars disappearing from the skies. Whatever way this world was later remade by the Envisioned, it probably changed a lot after The Great Burning – an epochal event hinted since D1, which caused cultural destruction and marked the beginning of the modern calendar.

Delilah meddled with powers she didn’t fully understand, but actions of the Envisioned were guided by The Eye of The Dead God ("The ones who made me have watched the Void for centuries with a dead eye, rotting from the inside.”). In DOTO the Outsider clearly wanted to take away the power of the Eye from the cultists. Maybe they were up to something again? What were they searching for? ("The relic will look inside us and we must aid its search.”) Another candidate for a deity to reshape things? After all this world seems to be not a perfect creation ("There are cracks in the world, from the Outsider’s birth.”) and after Delilah’s ritual the situation has become even worse, with the Void leaking through the hollows „like seawater sinking an old ship”.

But wait, there is more! The Void is probably not our only troublesome neighbour. The cultists have this strange map and refer to the veil between the central part of the Void and the reality as „the inner veil”. Which immediately evokes a question: so what the hell is the outer veil and what’s behind it?

“I see… I see shadows. Many shadows, blue and dark. I see light, blue and bright. I see… there is a path, a way forward, but it is blocked. There is a curtain. A veil. A veil of blue. The veil… it moves. I can see… hands? I can see hands. There are many hands. They move behind the veil. Pushing. Clawing. Pulling at the veil, reaching out, reaching out.” – a vision of the one of the Blind Sisters in „The Return of Daud” book.
“All the old boundaries are falling apart. Between the living and the dead, the real and the forgotten. She watches them crumbling.”. – the Outsider
“They scream against indifference and whisper questions. All their hate, their loneliness, their terror. They break against the rocks, one wave after another.” – the Outsider
“- Thusly, all meaning flows from this state of within and without. – Yes, my work focuses on this foundational act! - The exclusion of the Outsider is necessary to maintain the hermeneutics of the self. What is „Us”, what is „They”, without the Outsider to create that distinction?”. – cultists argue in DOTO.

Who are „the forgotten”, the shadows behind the outer veil? Were they human before, like the Envisioned, but behind the other side of the veil? Maybe dumped there after this world was reshaped?

The main antagonist of post-DOTO book „The Veiled Terror”, is a supernatural creature called the Void Shadow. It looks like Emily in a Shadow Walk form – a shifting mass of smoke and darkness, with elongated body and blade-like fingers. It possessed the body of the Queen of Morley and tried to manipulate the time to erase all bearers of the Mark of The Outsider from the history, before Billie managed to destroy it.

Maybe Hypatia was possessed by something like that as well? After DOTO many members of the Abbey of the Everyman went mad after their attempt to repair the damage caused by the fall of the Outsider and became addicted to Addermire Solution. Shortly after dissolution of the Abbey, Void Rifts appeared – curtains of blue light, fissures between the reality and the Void, but completely different than hollows we encountered in DOTO. Some rifts are small, but the biggest one on tyvian tundra streches for miles from horizon to horizon, slowly moving forward.

"Together, we maintain the delicate position of reality”. Well, it seems like in the end of DOTO we not only cut the Outsider out of the Void and broke status quo between powers after 4000 years, but also spawned like three Death Stars to this world, in the same time ;)

Tell me, Daud, is this really how you thought it would be? Is this how you thought your story would end?

WIP from animatic inspired by the last conversation between Daud and the Outsider from “The Return of Daud” book (and the good reason why they don’t talk anymore in DOTO). I aim to make the whole chapter, but this gonna take some time (painting, slicing + the Void really hungers for my RAM, om nom nom).

Tools: Photoshop + After Effects

So my headcanon is that the post-DOTO Outsider adopted two wolfhound puppies (discarded by Overseers after failed training) and enjoyed good weather somehere in Serkonos, not bothered by any thugs.

I come to you with arms wide open, a favor to ask that hopefully will be returned to you in fanfic form—

Who ordered the contract, in DotO, “Álvaro and the Abbey”?

Like, someone put out a contract in a district that everyone says is untraveled, with instructions to kill all but one zealot? And they’re gonna pay one bonecharm in exchange for all that slaughter?

It’s bait, pure and simple, bait for Billie, sure, but from who?

Paolo? Mindy? Breanna? A random witch, a random whaler? Some noble binch? It can’t be one of the Eyeless, they would prefer Billie fail- oh, unless that’s it? They think she can’t?

Whoooo?

LURKing in the shadows

[do not repost.]