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P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Tilly
OOC Journal: aurallyfixated
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: nope
Email + IM: the.miraculous.descent at gmail, vinomancy on AIM
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Heather Mason - sweetmotherofgod

C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Corvo Attano
Canon: Dishonored
Original or Alternate Universe: Original
Canon Point: the beginning of The Flooded District, after being poisoned by the loyalists and left on a raft by Samuel but prior to being discovered by Daud's men
Number: RNG me please!

Setting: Overview at the Dishonored wiki - a Whalepunk analogue of Victorian England.
History: Corvo was born on Serkonos and sent to Dunwall to serve the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin as a diplomatic gesture. At 12 years of age, each member of the royal family chooses a royal protector. Jessamine chose Corvo, making him the first ever Royal Protector born outside of Gristol. As a result he has spent most of his life as Jessamine's constant companion and protector and enjoys all the benefits of court life with few of the restrictions, as the role comes with tacit permission to do whatever he pleases in order to ensure that the Empress – and later, her daughter Emily – stay safe.

At the opening of the game the city of Dunwall has been through major technological advances in a short space of time due to the recent discovery of trans, a refined whale oil that grants such energy as to seem almost magical. Whale oil has become the basis of the economy and widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than ever. Dunwall is also in the grip of a plague spread by rats. Victims of the plague first exhibit flu-like symptoms of fever and coughing and if untreated, will deteriorate into a zombie-like state. They retain the basic needs for warmth and food but will attack healthy people on sight, vomiting a substance acidic enough to burn. Due to the haemorrhaging of the eyes that comes with the advanced state of the plague, these people are commonly known as Weepers.

Determined to save her subjects from such a fate, Empress Jessamine has sent a party to travel to the other Isles to discover whether they have any knowledge of the plague and how to stop it. On the advice of her royal Spymaster, she assigned Corvo to lead the team. The game opens with Corvo arriving back two days earlier than expected with bad news: none of the other Isles has ever encountered the plague or anything like it. Almost immediately after he delivers the news a wave of assassins using black magic - something rare enough to be considered impossible by most – appear and attack Jessamine and Emily. Corvo succeeds in fighting off the first wave but when a second group appear and hold Corvo immobile by magic, he is powerless to do anything but watch as their leader stabs Jessamine and they disappear with Emily. Once freed Corvo runs to Jessamine and holds her. She implores him to find and protect Emily before dying in his arms – just in time for the Spymaster and his guards to arrive and find Corvo holding the Jessamine's dead body and covered in her blood. Naturally, he is blamed for her condition and immediately knocked out and arrested.

We then skip ahead six months and into a torture chamber of Dunwall's Coldridge prison, where the Spymaster is explaining to Corvo that while his early return to Dunwall was unfortunate, it provided them with an excellent fall guy for their plans. He has declared himself Lord Regent in Emily's absence and spent the past six months trying to torture a confession out of Corvo. As Corvo has steadily refused to provide any such confession, he is scheduled for execution the next day. When he is returned to his cell a guard leaves a loaf of bread for him, advising that it “comes from a friend”. Beneath the bread is the key to Corvo's cell and a letter advising that if Corvo can make it out of the prison through the sewers he will find a cache of weapons and a boat waiting to take him to safety. Piloting said boat is Samuel Beechworth, who works for “some good people, who very much want to meet you”.

Samuel takes Corvo along the river to the Hound Pits pub, where he meets Admiral Farley Havelock and Lord Treavor Pendleton, who introduce themselves as loyalists to the Kaldwin family and ask for Corvo's help in rescuing Emily so they can overthrow the Lord Regent and restore Emily to the throne. This help comes in the form of a series of assassinations that enable the Loyalists to get a strong enough foothold in the political world of Dunwall to achieve their goal, starting with the High Overseer and head of Gristol's religious community and culminating with the Lord Regent himself.

It's on his first night with the Loyalists that Corvo is first visited in his dreams by a black-eyed young man known as The Outsider. To the Abbey of the Everyman he is a devil figure, though in behaviour he's closer to a Trickster god, directly telling Corvo that he intervenes the way he does just to see what will happen. The Outsider marks Corvo (quite literally, burning his Mark into the back of Corvo's left hand) and gives him the power to “blink”, a form of magic that allows Corvo to essentially teleport short distances. He also provides Corvo with a means of finding whalebone runes that will allow him to unlock further powers; a still-beating human heart, mechanically altered. When the heart speaks to Corvo, it does so in Jessamine's voice.

Armed with the weapons provided by the Loyalists and a mask which protects from plague and provides enhanced vision, Corvo achieves much in a very short space of time. Soon the streets of Dunwall are plastered with wanted posters featuring both his own face and the terrifying, skull-like mask fashioned for him. In addition to eliminating his targets ( not always by lethal means), he frees the loyalist Overseer Teague Martin, allowing him to be installed as High Overseer once Thaddeus Campbell is eliminated, rescues Emily Kaldwin so she might be protected by the loyalists and returned to the throne, and abducts the natural philosopher Anton Sokolov whom the loyalists pump for information. His final mission is to eliminate the Lord Regent Hiram Burrows, so that Emily can be crowned. He does this by playing over the national broadcast system an audiograph in which Burrows details how he'd brought the rat plague to Dunwall to “cure” the city of its high number of poor. Despite the disastrous effect on the city he shows no remorse, blaming those who tried to escape quarantine and declaring that is would have worked if only people had followed orders. As a result he is overthrown and removed from power by his own guards, his named forever ruined among the citizens of Dunwall.

This triumph sees Corvo return to a hero's welcome, toasted by the loyalists as they prepare for Emily's coronation. Corvo falls ill during the celebrations and staggers up to his quarters where he passes out – only to awaken in time to hear Havelock, Pendleton and Martin reassuring each other that they have only done what was needed by poisoning Corvo, and that he needed to be out of the picture for them to succeed. Corvo passes out again as they ask Samuel to dispose of the body, and regains consciousness once more in Samuel's boat. Samuel apologizes to the still-groggy Corvo, explaining that giving him a half-dose of the poison and removing his “body” was the only way he could think of to save Corvo, and that he intends to place him on a raft in the Dunwall's Flooded District and then disappear as he is now certain that once he has outlived his uses the loyalists will have him killed. This is the point in canon from which Corvo is pulled, just prior to being discovered and taken by the group of assassins who killed Jessamine and abducted Emily.

Personality: Because Corvo's dialogue in the game is very limited and never voiced, the best way to determine is personality is how people react to him. In the opening sequence, it's clear that Corvo is not only held in high regard but genuinely liked. He is loyal and loving toward the Kaldwins; Jessamine, whose first appearance has her arguing fiercely with her Spymaster over the treatment of plague victims and insisting “I will save every one of them if I can” writes to Corvo that her heart is at peace when he is near. Her daughter Emily runs to Corvo on spotting him and greets him with a kiss on the cheek, requests that he play hide-and-seek with her and indicates it happens frequently by saying “I always find you”. It's also clear that his is not one to stand on ceremony rather than befriend people; conversation with Emily shows that that he's promised to teach her a choke-hold, and even commoners in the area greet him warmly rather than with the deference suited to his title. Even after his imprisonment, which takes a great mental toll on him, he's still thought of kindly by the people he works with at the Hound Pits. Samuel tells Corvo it's an honour working with him, and Lydia - a generally sharp-tongued staff member - calls Corvo love, demonstrating that there is at least in part a goodness to him that can't be beaten out.

That said, he is prepared to fight ruthlessly to protect what he believes in. He was appointed Lord Protector at a young age and was trained to think nothing of spilling blood in order to keep Jessamine's where it should be. There is no hesitation when Jessamine and Emily are attacked; Corvo knows his job and executes it as reflex. While he is friendly and kind in a relaxed state (which will be... rare, considering that he was wrongfully imprisoned and tortured for six months) and perfectly capable of courtly manners having all but grown up in Jessamine's service, it only takes a threat for that side of him to be shut off until the job is complete.

I take Corvo from a low-chaos playthrough, in which he is willing to kill but will try to find alternatives where he can. He recognises that members of the City Watch, for example, are just men doing their jobs and if his goal is on the other side of a group of them he will pass them by stealth rather than the arguably tactic of tossing a grenade at their feet. Still, not all of his choices are born of compassion. When tasked to eliminated the High Overseer who had been complicit in the plot against Jessamine, Corvo chooses not to kill him and instead applies the heretic's brand to the man's face, knowing full well that anyone with the brand is excommunicated and shunned to the point where it is actually a criminal offense to offer them food, money or assistance. Corvo is a man for whom doing the “right thing” is not an instinct but a choice, one that he makes repeatedly but would abandon if backed far enough into a corner.

Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:

Abilities:

As royal protector, Corvo has been trained to turn into a killing machine at the slightest sign of a threat. He uses a sword like it's an extension of his body and is good enough to have obtained an almost mythic status among the guardsmen, as displayed in two conversations that can be overheard while escaping the prison:

Guard A: Kids like you, you never saw him in action. I saw him fight three-to-one in the practice yard. He's a whirlwind.
Guard B: I hope it's me that finds him.
Guard A: I hope it is too!

and

Guard C: Do you know who we're talking about here? Don't try to take him on alone!
Guard D: But what if no-one from the squad is around?
Guard C: Then try to make a lot of noise when you die. Knock something over, if you can.

Okay, I mostly included those because cynical vet/clueless newbie dialogue amuses me, but you get the point.

Even prior to being granted his powers by The Outsider he is extremely stealthy – it's actually possible to break out of Coldridge without being spotted by a single guard until he reaches the entrance, where they're all waiting and are well prepared for his appearance due to his decision to blow the door off its hinges with explosives.

He also has some magical ability due to being marked by The Outsider. The only power I would want him to be able to bring to the Tranquillity would be Blink, which allows him to teleport himself short distances provided there is no solid obstruction in his path.

Weaknesses:

Having entered the service of the Empress at quite a young age, Corvo really has no concept of living for himself. His sole purpose was to ensure the continuation of two lives, and neither of those were his. As a result he can be somewhat malleable when faced with orders from someone on the side of what he deems to be right; it's why he followed Havelock and the loyalists so blindly when he ought to have had at least a suspicion of treachery. He has been thoroughly and effectively trained to disregard his own safety in favour of that of others deemed more valuable.

He's also suffering the aftereffects of being wrongly imprisoned and tortured for about six months, and subsequently being attempted-murdered by the people who saved him from that situation. As a result he's quite nervous about personal space. He'll avoid open spaces as much as possible, try to position himself in the corner of rooms in order to be sure nobody can creep up behind him, and react badly to sudden or unexpected sounds or movement.

Power Limitations:

At the canon point I'm taking him from Corvo should have a wide range of Outsider-granted magic, like the ability to possess people for a short amount of time, detect the movement of living creatures through walls and command a blast of wind that will knock a person back with great force. None of these powers would come to the Tranquillity with him, save the short-range teleport known as Blink. He'll remember being able to do these things and not realise that he can't any longer unless he tries – at which point he will fail.

Inventory:

one (1) plague-resistant mask with optical enhancements
one (1) long, hooded coat
one (1) folding sword
one (1) bottle red wine
one (1) human heart as modified by The Outsider, non-functioning (and therefore slowly decomposing)

Appearance: As seen here , Corvo is a white male with long, scruffy hair, a serious expression and a dire need of a shave. He was formerly tan and quite muscular but due to spending six months in Coldridge prison on bread-and-water rations he's currently fairly pale in the unhealthy manner of someone who's just not getting any sun and showing signs of muscle wastage. He has some very old scars from training and some newer and nasty burn scars from torture.

Age: unspecified in canon, but I put him at 43.

AU Clarification: n/a

S A M P L E S
Log Sample:

Corvo is used to being in places he does not belong. He is less accustomed to having nowhere that he does. He can't stand the gardens. At best they remind him of Emily, who would have delighted in them and run him ragged touching and tasting things before he could tell if they were safe. At worst all he can see are the myriad places he could hide, and if he could hide there so could anyone else. The rest of the ship is strange, metallic and sterile. Dunwall was never truly his home, and it's strange to find himself missing its heavy air and the thick fug of whale oil. Eventually he settles in a kitchen, easily defensible with its door in his line of sight and every potential weapon a known quantity.

To calm his restless hands, he cooks. Something half-remembered from his home. The tomatoes are large and bright, and while they lack the depth of flavour of Serkonan tomatoes they are a vast improvement on what was available in Dunwall. He cooks them down slow and thick, with garlic and spices that have unfamiliar names, guessed at by taste and smell. Potatoes cut small and cooked crisp and golden, turned quickly through the sticky red sauce – and then he finds that he can't eat a bite.

He steps back, eyes still on the dish. Perhaps if he leaves it here, somebody will eat it.


Comms Sample:

[The feed shows a face half-hidden, tipped slightly down to make use of the shadow cast by the raised hood. Not hiding, as such; simply concealing a little out of habit. A brief pause, a quiet inhale, and then:]

I would know what is done with the remains of the dead here. How they are laid to rest.

Urgently, if possible.