“I have watched the world for four thousand years. Can you even imagine that length of time? If you could, it would drive you from your senses.” (The Return of Daud)

“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 ;)

The Leader of Envisioned is barely mentioned, but after giving this person some thought, (s)he could play a more significant role in Dishonored story.

Spoilers from D2, DOTO and books below!

We saw the Leader of Envisioned in D2 cutscene about the Outsider’s origin - a person holding the Twin-bladed Knife, at the head of the altar. In TRoD book the Outsider looked directly in his/her face just before his throat was cut.

Breanna mentioned that the anomaly at Shindaerey Peak is similar to the disruption caused by the ritual performed in Stilton’s manor, but probably much older. Does it exist because miners discovered the Eye there? Or maybe someone powerful tore through the boundary of the Void, just like Delilah did, and came back to reality many years ago? ( “How many of the founders are still there?”)

All Envisioned at Shindaerey Peak have been already transformed into immortal stone-like creatures by their constant exposure to the Void. But there is one thing to consider: Delilah managed to regain her human form after harnessing the power of the ritual grounds in the Void, growing stronger and becoming a part of the Outsider. The Leader could probably do the same, maybe even more with a knowledge given by The Eye of the Dead God. The ritual altar is still a powerful source of magic even after DOTO, just like Billie’s artifacts.

The Leader was once the owner of the Twin-bladed Knife, used to create the Outsider. The knife was discovered later in a Tyvian salt mine by Zhukov, 4 years before D2. What happened in between, it hasn’t been revealed yet.

Can the Leader be somehow related to the Abbey of the Everyman? There is a striking similarity between the Twin-bladed Knife and the Overseer’s swords. The creation of the Abbey is still a mystery – at some point they rose up as a militant group and ruthlessly wiped out other religious factions, including followers of the Outsider at Whitecliff. It was revealed in DOTO that the high-ranked members of the Abbey know the true nature of the Outsider (as the boy sacrificed in the ritual) and perceive a possibility of his fall as a catastrophe (just like the Cult of the Outsider). The Abbey might be also responsible for erasing all records about Shindaerey Peak in Karnaca (“Here, the Void is closest to the surface of reality, breaking through and spilling out all the fear and power the Abbey of the Everyman tries to hide.”).

Now about the Outsider… Many parallels can be drawn between the Outsider and Billie, the two of them have lived lives that mirror each other, including a savior/mentor figure (The Outsider seems to have a strange sentiment about Daud, chose to die from his hand, and did everything to make it possible, before Billie jumped in). There is little mention of his relation with Envisioned - he died a horrible death by their hands, but I got the impression that maybe he wasn’t killed right away after they took him from the streets. He speaks more like someone who was betrayed.

“When I knew them, they had names – and ambitions.”

“Daud spared you life, all those years ago. But I was taught the lesson that you still haven’t learned: some wounds stay with you even in the Void.”.

„You think you are alone, Daud? You think you are the only one who is in pain? Running from a past you cannot forget, the memory of evil deeds a fire inside your mind – a fire that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot extinguish, not fully.”

If we will ever get D3, I would like to see a confrontation between the human Outsider and the Leader (if both of them are still alive, a lot of “if” here ;) ).

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

The Mark of the Outsider was designed by Charles Bae. It’s interesting how the mark went from a triskel to this final version (WIPs and the artist’s commentary).

A moral compass was my first thought. As someone doing design and art for a living, I tend to overthink about everything I play and watch, ha ha.

EDIT: Someone made a good point that the indicator could be also viewed as a sword/blade and using it is the difference between low and high chaos (balancing on a knife’s edge).

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.

Speed painting of the Outsider from Dishonored, inspired by the song „In the Month of Darkness”:

In the Month of Darkness, seasons destroyed

A ritual killing bound his spirit to the Void

Eyes drained of color, the beggar no more

To become what the Believers waited for

They set him outside, beyond the spheres

Quiet as the night, long like the years

He opened his eyes, as black as a dream

Trying to speak, his only words… a scream.

Every other change aside, why does the Outsider’s hairstyle look so terrible now? I wish character designers would step away from the early-Justin-Bieber-style already. It’s ridiculous.

by Albert Camus

What’s it about?

The main character is Meursault, a French man living in Algeria who is so disconnected from his environment that he barely registers the fact that his mother dies at the very start of the book, and seems to have no feelings whatsoever about murdering an Arab, for which he is sent to jail.

There is a context that most modern readers miss. The book was written in the middle of World War II, but the book explicitly deals with the brewing tensions in Algeria which would eventually erupt. As a pied-noir himself, Camus would have been very sensitive to these tensions.

There is a strong argument that proper, grown-up literature doesn’t need “context” and any effort to provide one dilutes the universality of the text. For instance, you don’t need to know anything about Joe McCarthy to get the point of The Crucible. I agree with this argument, but I’ve given you the context anyway because I’m complicated and I have layers.  

That all sounds a bit grim.

While it is indeed a bit grim, it should be judged as a work of absurdist literature, which includes Waiting for GodotandCatch-22. They are all unquestionably a product of existential philosophy, which broadly speaking deals with how people should relate to the universe when god has been removed from it. 

I don’t care about any of that. Also, you sound pretentious.

Right. I might be pretentious, but the book was a genuine attempt to respond artistically to the idea (now very mainstream) that each individual is horrifically alone in the universe, and that life is meaningless. Mersault has several opportunities to make things easier for himself by simply lying about how he feels, and he refuses to do so. 

Therefore, the sociopathic character is more “authentic” than all the “good” people who end up killing him. Although if you’ve read Game of ThronesandThe Outsider has too much meaninglessness for you, you should present yourself to the relevant authorities at first light.

Camus was famous for putting across his existentialist philosophy in accessible literature, while his frenemy, Jean-Paul Sartre, was famous for more direct, intractable existentialist philosophy in works such as Being and Nothingness. As you might expect, both men violently rejected the idea that either could be considered an existentialist.

What should I say to make people think I’ve read it?

“Even if you can’t relate to it, it’s probably a good idea to play the game of whatever society you’re in.”

What should I avoid saying when trying to convince people I’ve read it?

“A guidebook for people interested in solving the Muslim problem.”

Should I actually read it?

Yes. Every so often, it’s good to be confronted with how meaningless everything is. Some people never consider it at all. 

Hes just smushing the outsiders face :3