#EMILY KALDWIN » daughter of the void.

[torntruth]

"When others might choose to draw blood, you find another way. This, I think, is my highest praise."    anyway,   thanks  fake  jessamine  soul  in  a  heart.  thanks for  making  me  cry. 

#— ch / emily kaldwin ‚ the daughter of the void. #EACH TIME

[stolen-breath]

Emily Kaldwin

escapes dunwall without disturbing so much as a rat

the guards set to guard her in the palace have nightmares for weeks

if she could escape the heavily guarded palace without alerting a single soul, who will hear the guards scream when she comes for them

they secretly pledge themselves to her service upon her return, to save their own skins if nothing else

she pays her debts of laxness and sloth to the citizens of karnaca one at a time -- returning mindy's lover, saving the woman at addermire, rectifying the sins of the past so the miners of the present can breathe

the only blood her blade tastes is that of bloodflies

alexi and corvo always taught her that good can be found in all if you simply dig deep enough

the only two people she kills are kirin jindosh and delilah

kiren because to have something great, only to lose it and live the remainder of your days with fleeting wisps of what was once is a special kind of hell that not even he deserves

delilah because she is too crafty -- she managed to escape a void prison once and came back stronger for it -- she'll manage it again

on the very rare occasion that she is forced to kill, she turns the bodies to shadow and ash so the bloodflies don't have a place to nest

very tidy, our emily

powers || blink · domino · shadow walk · shadow kill

Corvo Attano

corvo has lost another empress

this time, to a witch claiming to be his lover's half-sister

corvo's done playing nice

the only thing some people will listen to is the blood at the end of his blade

this time, it is the only warning he will give

escaping dunwall tells him all he needs to know

the guard is corrupt, dunwall is corrupt, even the silver shores of his birthplace are corrupt

he closed his eyes to it all, he coddled emily long enough

it is time to fix their mistakes and make sure that this time, they don't get a second chance

he cuts his way through karnaca, a whirlwind of blades and blood

he leaves the civilians alone, unless they get in his way or try to stop him

he intends to kill the crown killer, but once he discovers their secret, he spares them, helps them escape their cruel prison

the rest all die afraid and alone

he makes a point of killing all their allies and servants before coming for them

he forces them to hear the cries of their fellows so when they finally see his mask, splattered with blood and eyes set upon them at last, they know that no one will come for them

breanna dies at the foot of delilah's statue, begging for her empress to save her

when he enters the painting, delilah's clones frantically search for him, desperate to find him, but they can't

until his blade sinks deep into her back

it is the one time he applies stealth

she took his daughter's throne through stealth and sabotage, and he happily returns the favor, a twisted reflection of herself

he will never admit, not even to himself, that he missed this

that he enjoys it, in a grim sort of way

even emily cannot protect corvo now

he kneels before the firing squad with a smile

he knows she's safe at last

corvo shows no mercy so that emily can rule with compassion

corvo bathes in blood so emily can remain clean like her mother before her

everyone in dunwall knows the truth, thought they dare not say it

corvo is the hero dunwall deserves so they hunt him

because he can take it, because he's not a hero

he's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight

powers || blink · bend time · dark vision · possession · windblast

#dishonored #dishonored 2 #emily kaldwin #corvo attano #dishonored headcanon #working on this platinum trophy right now #god i love this world so much #dishonored imagine #my imagines

[rosedragonblast]

Dishonored. SOIAF!AU.

I've watched GOT and HOTD too many times to count. Specifically from season 1 to 6 and all episodes of season 1 respectfully.

I had this idea for too long, so here we go.

Emily is one of the two surviving members of her dynasty. Unlike in the DH, Kaldwin family have been ruling over their kingdom for centuries. Many were pleased with their reins, especially the one of Emily's grandfather, king Euhorn. He died suddenly in the plague that killed many. Most lands lost at least half of their population. The illness took not only people, but animals too. Many dragons lost their riders, Emily's relatives. They scattered across the landscape. Some were killed in an attempt so save cities from the immense destruction.

Her mother, barely being able to survive the illness, became bed bound. As a young child, Emily was forced to face many challenges, including corrupted politicians, unsatisfied common folk and the pressure of crowning her a new empress before her mother's even began to decline.

Jessamine, seeing that her child might not be able to face all of his alone, assigned Corvo as her Hand of the Queen. He protected his bastard daughter, trying to shield the child from the corruption of man around her.

Unfortunately, he was not able to succeed the first time. She was kidnapped, and later pronounced dead, as assassins threw the child off of a cliff near Dragonstone. Burrows, seeing the throne as an empty seat, tried to crown himself, but was banished by the followers of Kaldwin family.

Corvo, devastated, was still pronounced Jessamine's regent. The queen eventually started to recover, not knowing that her daughter has, supposedly, passed away. Corvo kept the secret well for many months, until a dragon roar shook the very foundation of the island on which the Dragonstone stood.

Emily, almost drowning, but being able to survive, was washed ashore. Almost freezing to death, she found a cave. Suddenly hearing a loud growl, she faced one of the last surviving dragons of house Kaldwin. Starfyre, Jessamine's dragon, as light as the fallen star, found his rider's kin and, feeling a familiar blood, obeyed the young princess.

He flew over the sea, returning to his birth place, Dragonstone. Seeing the young girl alive, some of Burrows' loyalists tried to kill her for good. But Starfyre, felling Emily's wrath and resentment towards men who tried to get rid of her and put the usurper on the Iron Throne, burned them alive. His roar travelled far and wide, attracting attention of many. Starfyre let Emily dismount him, afterwards escorting her to the castle gate.

Corvo, seeing his daughter alive and well, immediately goes with her to Jess' chambers. She stands up, feeling well rested, yet uneasy. Jessamine went down from her tower, surprising many. She ignored many people on her path, until she stood at the entrance.

She and Starfyre reunited in front of the castle. Jess put her hand on her dragon's snout, while it rested it's wings near her back. Jessamine started to fell even better afterwards, restoring her health and bond with her dragon. Emily pointed out exact individuals, who were loyal to the old hand of the queen. Burrows was sentenced to death by dragon fire, ending his rebellion even before it started in full.

Other facts about AU:

* Corvo has a dragon, Bianca. It's named after his sister. It's a pure-black dragon with piercing black eyes that resemble the void of space, or a starless night. It's fire is also fully black. It's a calm, collected creature, much like his rider. Corvo doesn't use Bianca to threaten the common folk or for political power. Bianca is mainly his friend and mount for travel between the mainland and the island of Dragonstone. It was previously named Bellas, but, once the dragon layed eggs, she was renamed into Bianca.

* Jessamine's dragon, Starfyre, is a white beast with streaks of blue in his wings. His fire is slightly bluish in color, mostly being white. When Starfyre is not covered with dust, especially when he is covered in sea water after his rides above the sea with Jess, he glistens in the sun like a pile of fresh clean snow.

* Emily eventually tames a dragon of her own. It's a black dragon with purple membranes and purplish fire named Crownbearer or Crown. She is a tall, yet sturdy beast with an unusually big horns. Membrane that is stretched out between them resembles a crown, which is a feature she was named after. She is not as agile as Bianca, but she compensates with sheer psychical strength and fire power. Behind her cute and alluring appearance Crown hides a ferocious animal that only obeys it's master. When Bianca and Starfyre except commands from Emily, even tho they already have a close bond with their riders, Crown will not listen to anyone but her, making this beast quite a bit of trouble to work with.

* Wyman occasionally rides with Emily. Crown likes Wyman, but still doesn't give two shits about his commands, only listening when her rider says it. At least she is not trying to eat him on every occasion.

#dishonored #corvo attano #emily kaldwin #au #dishonored au #hotd #house of the dragon #game of thrones #song of ice and fire #dragons #dragonstone

[bamboozledchaos]

Dishonored 2 takes place in the city of Dunwall, and the city of Karnaca, 15 years after the first Dishonored. For a brief overview, the Empress, Jessamine Kaldwin, was murdered and you, the Lord Protector, Corvo Attano, was framed. Later escaping and gained the powers from beyond the mortal realm, you managed to unravel the plot and save the heiress (and the secret daughter between Corvo and Jessamine), Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin, and place her back on the rightful throne.

Now, fifteen years later, on the day of the anniversary of the previous Empress' death, a coup is launched against you by the Duke of Serkonos and Jessamine's half-sister, Delilah Copperspoon.

In this game, you can choose to play as either Corvo Attano or Emily Kaldwin; and, later on, the choice to accept the Mark of The Outsider, offered by a godlike entity known only as The Outsider, granting you powers from The Void; an Everywhere and a Nowhere.

Your actions all have consequences: will you reclaim your throne violently, killing those who would otherwise defy you? Or will you sneak by, unknown, and make the world a better place without raising blade nor gun?

It's your choice, after all. All I can say is this:

Enjoy your powers, and always think before you strike.

I JUST SKIMMED THIS BUT IT SOUNDS GREATvvv

Gonna reread that again wait wait

The gate is comfy frfr 🦦

#brain is spinning rn <333 love this sm ty for this summary frfr

[crownprotector]

The Same Coin

In all honesty, Corvo thought he had already lived through the worst day of his life the day Jessamine was killed right and Emily was taken in front of him, while he was powerless to stop either. Two steps - and he would remember that for the rest of his days. Two steps to the left was all it would have taken for him to be ready. For Jessamine to live. And Coldridge... Coldridge had felt deserved, even if he hadn't been the one wielding the blade. Punishment. Penance. He'd had one task, one purpose, and he'd just let her die. But despite that, and with some help on the way, he'd eventually fixed the one mistake he had been able to, half a year later: He'd found Emily, he'd brought her home, kept her safe.

So when, a few months ago, he'd woken up to her missing, Corvo could have sworn his heart had stopped beating.

No. No, not again, not again. Not her, please, hadn't she been through enough? Couldn't it just be enough? For a few hours, he'd lived in hope that she'd just snuck off into the city. She did, sometimes, and he let her, using it as an opportunity for her to test her sneaking - and for him to test his tracking. But the only tracks he had found were those of a scuffle by her window, scratches on the sill, and a few stray hints leading towards the docks, and then... nothing. And he'd barely slept since.

It had taken a lot of effort to find more leads. Where the boat had come from, nobody knew, but when he finally found a sailor sober enough to remember it, the description didn't sound like it hailed from Gristol or Serkonan - the only two styles he would have recognised. It sounded like a heavier vessel, sturdy, spiked and with more masts than anything he was familiar with. A blade on the whole length of the bow. After some research, he'd learned that it was meant to break ice as the ship made progress, same with the spikes. It was built and intended for frozen waters, and that meant the high north of Tyvia. He had been north once in his life, accompanying Jessamine, but they had never set foot anywhere north of Tamarak. The ship the sailor had seen had come from Meya, if not even further beyond.

It answered the question of who, at least. A few months ago, operatives wearing something that still vaguely resembled Holger's Mask had ambushed him on the way back to the tower. They'd had no music boxes, but flutes instead, though the effect had felt similar, and Corvo had been grateful he'd kept his sword on him that night. Not that he took it off often, but there were days.

... there had been days. No longer.

He had gotten some insight from the contents of their pockets: They were Overseers, or at least a branch descended from what he knew as Overseers, born from a group of them that had set off to tame the Tyvian wilds decades ago and stayed there. They had done their own research into the Void there, unobserved and unhindered by having to keep a presence in society, with dangerous results... and the wilderness of Tyvia had only doubled their fanaticism to a point where, once news of Empress Emily Kaldwin's ascent to the throne had spread and the rumours of it having been accomplished through darker powers had followed, they had set their sights on Dunwall, and Corvo specifically. He hadn't been naïve enough to assume they wouldn't try again, but even in his worst fears, he hadn't dared think that, one day, they would take his daughter. The last good thing he had left, the only good thing he had left. Everything that meant anything to him. They knew he would follow to get her back, just like he'd followed Daud, the Pendletons, Burrows, the Loyalists. They knew it was only a matter of time until he came to them, now.

And he had tried. He had, with all of his resources and skill, found a ship willing to take him as far as Dabokva, and from there, tried the rest on foot, but winter had Tyvia hard in its grasp, and the farther he had gotten, the more strength it had cost him, until he'd had to admit to himself that, yes, he could get there, but he was battling his way into the lion's den, and every step took more strength than he could afford to spend. There would be a fight at the end of his path, one against people who knew his powers and how to counter them, and if that didn't work, with an ace up their sleeve he was powerless against, because all it would take was a knife to Emily's throat, and the fight would be over.

He couldn't do it alone. He needed more hands. Another sword. Eyes like his own.

Over the years, he had kept a vague eye and ear on Daud (@facetedspades), as time passed more and more just out of habit than concern. It wasn't a pinpoint location, but enough for a start, enough to have somewhere to turn and a flicker of hope to go on, and that was all he had ever needed. All he could have hoped for. From there, he'd found stories, whispers of the arcane, of things not adding up, of a witch haunting these parts. Breadcrumbs, that had eventually led him to a cabin near a small forest.

And there he was, eyes taking in everything about the building at a glance as he followed the pathway up to the door, loosely outlined by rocks along the sides, past a crude table and up on the porch. The owner of the cabin had clearly never intended for multiple people to be living with him, or anyone to really come visit. Everything about the place spelled private and if times had been different, Corvo would have left him to it. He had no real desire to see the murderer of his love again, even if he had kept his word and laid low, but he was heading into a fight that took more than he had, and nobody not touched by the Void would do. This was the only place he could have gone...

...

So he knocked.

#PUTS MY PEN DOWN #GOOD CHRIST THAT TURNED LONG #I'm so sorry y'all haha #but hey #worried dad 2: electric boogaloo #facetedspades

[horrorempathy]

@survivedempathy  /  @vetrhridar​ :     He's just going to gesture, his head nodding discreetly towards where the Queen of Tyvia stands further in the ballroom, laughing at her sister. He knows the two were friends years ago, before everything. His eyes move to meet Emily's carefully, eyebrows raising in question. "You talk to her?" He signs quickly, unbothered by the glances towards him. / survivedempathy corvo (set like. During Elsa’s coronation thing okay let me indulge myself.)                 ➜           ACCEPTING   /    this  is  random .

the  voices  around  the  throne  room  hall  echo  quietly,   choruses  of  different  voices  chiming  in  to  create  a  social  function.    emily  kaldwin  didn’t  have  the  same  type  of  coronation.    circumstances  were  far  too  dire  for  her  to  wait  to  be  of  age.    corvo  &  a  few  select  members  of  a  royal  court  made  the  bigger  decisions.   emily  was  just  a  figurehead  until  her  first  big  decision:    the  regenters  fates  after  they  attacked  she  &  alexi  mayhew.    emily  just  glanced  at  corvo’s  features,   standing  tall,   hands  linked  behind  her  back.   a  very  rigid,   proud  stance.    corvo  attano  is  many  things,   but  he  has  never  once  failed  at  being  an  excellent  father.    spymaster  isn’t  the  reason  he  knows  her  friendships;    it’s  the  fact  she  cares.     emily  was  planning  on  congratulating  elsa  as  it  was.   a  speech  about  region  bonds,   something  uplifting  to  promote  unity  &  allyship.    emily’s  lips  are  pursed.    no,   he’s  asking  not  out  of  the  empress  to  the  new  queen  of  emily’s  empire --     but  to  be  an  old  friend  again.

“   i  don’t  think  it’s  relevant  anymore  to  ask  her  if  she  wants  to  play  hide  and  seek.   ”      as  if  that  was  the  only  option,   emily  knows  it  isn’t.   it’s  just  exceptionally  overwhelming  to  drudge  up  a  childhood  that  was  torn  apart  by  various  circumstances  &  then  laced  with  a  rat  plague  just  to  usurp  the  throne.    emily’s  voice  is  soft,   words  spoken  just  for  him.    sepia  eyes  soften,   though.   that  was  sarcasm,   but  she  might  try  speaking  to  elsa  like  an  old  friend  none  the  less --   just  not  exactly  like  the  sarcasm. 

#01. the world isn't kind to a young empress / emily kaldwin. #02. like father; like daughter. / emily dyn: corvo attano. #02. the cold is a warm fit inside the void anyway. / emily rel: elsa. #survivedempathy #vetrhridar

[horrorempathya]

i  really  like  that  now  that  emily  has  the  mark,   shadow  stealth  is  her  whole  thing  but  she’s  also  part  void.   looking  at  her  shadow  form  is  looking  at  SOMETHING,   but  yet  nothing.   i  don’t  give  her  that  power  where  she  can  literally  summon  void,   but  i  made  it  so  now  it’s  more  of  a  part  of  her  when  she’s  actively  trying  to  use  her  powers.   and  that’s  the  whole  thing.    she’s  still  emily  with  some  people:   her  father,  wyman,  elsa.   she’s  still  the  empress  with  all  other  people.    which  is  another  discussion  post  itself,   but  now  sometimes  she’s  the  void.   there  isn’t  just  a  shadow  in  that  space;   that  space  is  now  EMPTY.    that’s  cohesive  with  what  she  had  to  go  through  to  get  her  throne  back.   delilah +  crew  slaughtered  her  whole  entire  throne  room,  slaughtered  random  people  on  the  streets  of  dunwall.   these  are  people  she  didn’t  know  personally,   but  these  are  HER  people.   she  was  a  serving  empress.    now  the  streets  are  empty,  her  throne  is  empty.    something  should  be  there,   but  it’s  just  empty.   this  gets  darker  with  high  chaos,  but  since  she’s  low  chaos;   there  are  times  when  she’s  using  her  powers  that  you  FEEL  that  emptiness.   a  void  heart.    you  need  more  oxygen,  you  feel  empty,  there’s  something  that  should  be;   BUT  IT’S  NOT.

#EMILY KALDWIN » THE EMPRESS. #a lot of this is in part because of jo's ideas with his outsider #jo's outsider and my emily are just: #gay void father and lesbian void daughter solidarity

[stealingpotatoes]

because you’re mine

Ao3 link

Summary: In a quiet moment at the Hound Pits Pub, Emily asks Corvo who her father is. Corvo knows he has to tell her.

n/b: I wrote a fluffy Emily-accidentally-finds-out-about-Corvojess fic a while back, and while I LOVE that idea, I also love the idea of Corvo telling her after the whole assassination thing (and I think that that might be more canon compliant, considering this). So yeah… here’s that!

---

Corvo hated waiting between missions. 

Taking Lady Boyle out at her own party was a smart idea. There would be so many other masked men there that Corvo could slip right in, remove her from play, and slip out with no worry about the guards. It’d be a nice change from having to skulk past and knock out every City watchman in order to not be seen. Though the idea of going to one of those noble parties he hated so much wasn’t as nice a change. But he could do it. He’d probably been to more than a hundred of those. He could make it through one more. 

You’ve never been to one without Jess, an unwelcome voice in his mind reminded him. He pressed his lips to a thin line. He could make it through one more party, even without her. He had to do it. He had to for her, to cut Burrows’ funding and get one step closer to ending his reign of tyranny. To get her justice.

But the real issue was waiting . He had to wait until the night of the party. It was so very soon -- only tomorrow evening -- but it felt too far away. There was too much time to think about things he didn’t want to think about, too much empty space. The waiting between missions was the worst part about them. 

He thought it should have been missions themselves; pushing himself like that after six months of prison and pain should have been a bad thing. But on missions, he could distract himself from everything by focusing on the objective and nothing else. Finally not feeling useless and weak, finally feeling like he was doing something to fix things. To make up for his failure that day, and everything that had happened afterwards. 

In times like this, in between, the feelings of restless uselessness crept back in. He’d had plenty of quiet moments to think in Coldridge; he didn’t need any more. He was doing nothing to help. Nothing to get justice, nothing to get Emily back home and on her rightful throne. Right now, he was sitting on his bed in the Hound Pits and sharpening his sword. He hardly used it on missions, but maintaining his weapons and training himself was a good way to pass the time. It was the best thing he could do to try and abate the useless feeling. Preparing himself for the mission ahead, making sure he would succeed. If he did want to use his sword, he couldn’t have it being blunt or failing to open. He couldn’t leave anything to chance. 

His thoughts were interrupted by quiet and familiar footsteps coming from the stairwell. Corvo allowed himself a small smile. He knew those steps almost as well as he knew his own. 

Knowing Emily, she was trying to move as quietly as she could -- trying to copy his own near-silent footsteps. She’d spent hours trying to perfect it back home, and was always annoyed when he could still hear her small footsteps coming, and when he could still sneak up on her. 

The tread got closer and stopped where his room began. “Hi Corvo.” 

Corvo glanced behind him, pretending to have only just noticed her in the doorway, holding some paper and pens in her small hands, and smiled at her, “Hey Em.”

She smiled back. “Can I come in here and draw?” 

“Are you done with your lessons?” Corvo asked, despite knowing they would be by now. He had to remind her that her lessons were important, even if now they seemed like a silly thing to be concerned with. 

Emily dropped her shoulders dramatically, “Yes. They were so boring.” She walked further into the room and plopped herself on the floor, evidently taking his question as a yes. She knew by now he would never deny her his company. 

Corvo folded his sword in one practiced motion, not wanting weapons out when Emily was in the room, and caught her interested look at the blade. Swords and fighting -- particularly him fighting -- had always interested her. Certainly more than her lessons with Callista did. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Emily had tried to ask Piero for her own version, though Emily wasn’t going to be fighting with anything but wooden sticks for a long time. Hopefully she would never have to touch a blade, despite how much he knew she wanted to be a fighter like him. He didn’t want her to be like him. Anything like him. 

“I just had history.” Emily laid out the paper and crayons on the wooden floor in between her and Corvo’s feet. “Callista was teaching me about some of the past Emperors and Empresses and dynasties.”  

Corvo placed his sword hilt down by his side and leaned forward, “Anyone not boring?” 

Emily kept looking down at her paper, and brushed a finger over her crayons, trying to pick the right colour to start with. “Some interesting ones. Some really not .”

Corvo gave Emily a slight huff and a smile. 

Emily perked up and looked at Corvo, “I did learn about my grandfather, Emperor Euhorn.”

Did you learn he was a bit of an asshole? Corvo thought, but luckily didn’t say out loud. “What’d you learn about him?” 

“Um… that he was the first of the Kaldwin rulers and he became Emperor in 1803, after a regency that started in 1801,” Emily turned back to her pens and picked a blue one. She set to drawing, “A bit like me. I’ll be Empress after a regency too.” 

“Mm,” Corvo agreed, his mouth a thin line. It seemed strange to compare the two events. Then, he’d been a boy of just five, playing in the streets of Karnaca. Dunwall and everything that happened there had seemed so far away and inconsequential to him. If only he’d known. Now… now its events were practically carved onto his skin... 

Corvo shook his head slightly, not ready to let himself go down that line of thought. To distract himself, he tried to get a better look at Emily’s paper. He couldn’t quite see what Emily was drawing yet. It looked like the beginnings of a building, perhaps. He loved her drawings. He just about preferred them to the perfect portraits hung around the Tower… though he might have been a little biased. Ok, he was definitely biased. 

Emily suddenly stopped drawing. She set her pen down, but didn’t look up from the floor, and she sighed in a way that made her sound a decade older than she was. “Learning about my grandfather made me think… Mother always said she would tell me about my father when I was older. But… she’s gone now and she… can’t tell me,” Emily’s gaze remained blank on the floor.  

As Emily spoke, Corvo’s heart felt like it shattered into a million pieces. An uncomfortably familiar feeling now, it seemed. He could ignore how everything made him feel, but any time Emily said something about it all that happened, the flood of emotions threatened to break through the dam of control he’d built. 

She can’t tell me. Corvo thought of the Heart, that continuous echoing beat in the back of his mind. Her voice, but not her. Emily wouldn’t be able to hear or see it anyway. Only the Void-touched could. People like him. People like the assassins. She can’t tell me.

“Corvo, do you know who my father is?” Emily looked up from the floor finally, up at him, “Because you were always with Mother… so maybe you… know .”

Her question caught Corvo completely off guard. 

He had been asked that near same question -- you’re almost always by Her Majesty’s side, you must know who the princess’ father is -- many times before, by prying nobles and gossips who thought he might share the secret when his Empress wouldn’t. But he never did. He usually insisted he didn’t know, though sometimes he would simply say he was sworn to secrecy, just to annoy people with the idea that he knew something they didn’t. 

But he couldn’t lie to Emily. He couldn’t deny her this. Not now. Not when she’d lost her mother; Corvo couldn’t let her believe she was an orphan, couldn’t let her believe that the secret had died with her mother. She needed her father. She needed… she needed Corvo . 

Just tell her. Tell her. 

He couldn’t silence the voice in his head that was telling him that Emily deserved a better father than him. It was true; she did. She deserved a man who could openly be her father, not a lowborn Serkonan like him. She deserved someone who could have saved her mother, not the ex-Royal Protector who had failed in the worst way imaginable. 

But he was what she had. He couldn’t change that. He didn’t want to change that. He loved Emily with every fibre of his being, and she… she was his daughter. Void, he could barely think the words; how was he meant to say them aloud to tell Emily? 

This was hardly how he’d imagined telling her. He’d thought it would be when she was a little older, he thought it would be in Dunwall Tower, he thought it would be him and Jess telling her. Maybe he could wait. The latter was impossible, but the first two -- he could wait until they’d reclaimed Dunwall Tower and everything was as okay as it could be to tell her. Or he could tell her now. Or--

“You do know…” Emily said slowly and quietly, furrowing her brow. Corvo realised he’d hesitated too long to make the choice. She was a smart girl, she knew he knew. 

Tell her. “Yes… I do.” 

Emily’s brown eyes widened. Jessamine had always said Emily’s eyes were just like his own. It would have been a comfort, something nice to see in his daughter, if he hadn’t always been so stressed about someone finding out about him and Jessamine because of them. “Please tell me. Please, Corvo.”

Corvo moved his hand behind his back so Emily wouldn’t see the glow of the Mark and activated Dark Vision, glancing at the door and the room through it. Nobody was there to hear the secret. He wanted to think he could trust the Loyalists not to listen in on him -- or even trust the Loyalists full stop -- but something was off about them, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He hoped it was just his own paranoia born from Burrows’ betrayal, but he wasn’t going to let his guard down too far. 

Corvo deactivated Dark Vision, letting the world shift back to its normal colours and gave Emily a sure look, “It still has to be a secret.”

Emily sat up straighter, so very eager to learn the truth. “Yes. I promise. I promise I’ll keep it a secret.” 

Corvo nodded. Maybe there wasn’t any point in keeping it a secret anymore, but old habits died very hard, and the anxiety was still pooling in his stomach.

Emily continued to look up at him hopefully, waiting. Say it . Tell her. She needs to know.

“I-” the words didn’t want to leave his mouth. He took a quick breath in- “It’s me. I’m your father.”

“What?” Emily’s mouth was open in shock. She was expecting someone better than you, Corvo thought. But then her expression spread into a grin, and the thought melted away, “Really?!”

“Really.”

“You’re actually my father?” Emily said, the grin still wide on her face. It hit Corvo that she wanted it to be him. She was happy that it was him. Despite everything.  

“Mm. And you’re actually my daughter,” Corvo couldn’t help stop himself from smiling as he spoke. 

Emily was up off the floor and hugging him in the blink of an eye, her arms tight around his shoulders and her face half-shoved into his coat collar. Corvo closed his arms around her small body and shut his eyes, focusing on the feel of Emily -- his daughter -- safe and sound in his arms. 

They pulled away from each other after a few seconds and Emily continued to beam up at him. Corvo didn’t think he deserved that smile, but he would easily die a hundred times over for it.  

“I knew it. I knew it was you.” 

Corvo thought of all the times Emily had tried to convince him and Jess to get together, and didn’t completely think she was lying.  

“This whole time… you were...” Emily glanced down. “You’re my father,” she repeated with a grin at Corvo. 

Corvo’s chest ached with love. He couldn’t stop smiling back at her. “Yeah, I am.” And I’m the luckiest man alive to have you as my daughter. 

It almost seemed like Emily smiled more  after he confirmed it again.

Corvo quickly tried to look more serious, “But remember, you can’t tell the others. Including Callista.”

Emily nodded, then shut her mouth and squished her lips together to illustrate ‘my lips are sealed’ . 

Corvo gave her an affirmative half-smile. I love you so much.

Emily glanced to the side and paused for a short second. “I know it’s a secret, but could I call you father when it’s just us?” She looked up at him with pleading eyes, “Please?” 

The ache of love in his chest grew stronger. Corvo hesitated for a moment. He nodded, not sure he could actually form words through his emotions to say yes. 

Emily grinned. “Father,” she all but whispered, trying it out. Then she went in for another surprisingly strong hug. “I love you, father.”

Corvo hoped his daughter couldn’t tell how close he was to crying. “I love you too, Emily.” 

#[slaps roof of corvo] you can fit so much self doubt in this man #dishonored #emily kaldwin #corvo attano #dishonored fanfic #dh1 #potes wrotes

[genderbinaryisforlosers]

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Relationships: Jessamine Kaldwin/Corvo Attano, Jessamine Kaldwin & Emily Kaldwin, Emily Kaldwin & Jessamine Kaldwin, Corvo Attano & Emily Kaldwin

Characters: Jessamine Kaldwin, Emily Kaldwin, Corvo Attano, Lonely Rat Boy (Dishonored), Delilah Copperspoon, The Loyalists (Dishonored), not tagging them all but the gang’s all here, Anton Sokolov, Minor Original Character(s)

Tags: Alternare Universe – Canon Divergence, Jessamine Kaldwin Lives, Marked Jessamine AU, Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Medium Chaos (Dishonored), Mute Corvo Attano, Temporary Character Death, Minor Character Death

Summary: Jessamine isn’t used to getting her hands dirty. There are people on staff at Dunwall Tower whose entire job is to make sure it never happens – but she isn’t in Dunwall Tower any more. Her Spymaster is slaughtering her people, and she’s in the gutter far below, trying to fathom a way to reach up so she can bury him in the diseased muck he created. Six months ago, she died. But she still has a job to do, a daughter to find. If she has to turn her hands black with the Void to save her family and her Empire, she will do it.

#jessamine kaldwin #dishonored #dishonored 1 #dishonored au #dishonored fanfic #corvo attano #emily kaldwin #kaldwin-attano family #my writing #things i made

[sp00kworm]

Maybe The Outsiders first time on land since sinking into the ocean or his complete lack of social skills, something like that. You're the writer here not me.

Pairing: (Slight) Corvo Attano x The Outsider

A/N: This is a short snippet of something I intend to properly finish one day. I do love Dishonored and the world just drags me back in time and time again. 

----

Whale Song

The blood had run out. The Outsider remembered the vague sensation of losing the feeling in his extremities before the world had flickered slowly into darkness. He remembered trying to curl his fingers despite not being able to breathe as the dark spots blinked closer and closer to his sight. The last air left him as he wondered why he felt so cold. The Outsider hadn’t felt the cold of the water in many years. Thousands if he had kept track of time correctly. But he realised quickly that his years of experience had very little relevance in real, day to day life. Billie Lurk had gone to kill him. To avenge her mentor, perhaps? He found himself uncaring when he felt the void blade slice into his gut before she whispered his real name back to him. Fear pulsed through him similarly as to when he was laid bleeding out into the water as a young man, fingers grasping at nothing as he felt something snap within him. Thousands of years of power and the residual hum of power in his veins was gone. He gasped the first new breath of life clutching Billie Lurk with weak fingers, feeling the place around him grow cold and harsh as he was removed from his home.

 “Being human means, you’ll feel a lot worse than this, guppy.” Billie sighed as she wrapped him in the third blanket from the storage room, the fabric coarse and rough underneath his fingertips. The Outsider shivered underneath the layers, looking out of the thin glass windows at the choppy seas surrounding them in the middle of nowhere, floating on the ocean, heading back towards Dunwall and where they knew two people would be curious as to what was happening with the Void.

“I know well what it means to be human. I did used to be one, in case you had forgotten.” He snapped as she stoked the little furnace with a laugh and moved forwards on her stool, face looking younger for a smile. Billie Lurk had seen a lot in her time, but nothing was more amusing than a God pretending to remember what it was like to be starkly mortal.

“Although I know you were once a human, I don’t think you even remotely remember what it was like to be one.” She teased as he huddled in on himself, nose dripping with snot in the bitter cold of the seas.

“I can…vaguely remember what it was like. It was not a kind existence. I wasn’t granted a great start in life, and it ended all too early.” He uttered, young green eyes staring out at the sea as it rocked them back and forth. It was almost calming. Perhaps the Void was looking for him. He saw the great fins of a whale disappear underneath a great crashing wave and sighed bitterly. The ends of his fingers didn’t ripple with power, and he stared at them, willing the Void to himself only for it to end in failure like the rest of his attempts.

“None of us have it easy. Life’s a bitch like that.” Billie cursed with a harsh chuckle as she reached for a pipe and tapped the contents out into a small ash tray on her table. She pushed a knife inside to grind at the wood and ash inside before pushing tobacco inside and lighting it with a match. The Outsider curled his nose at the stench of smoke as he reached his hands out of the blanket and towards the flames to try and warm his palms. The sensation of burning heat made his fingers recoil before he took a breath and held his hands as close as he dared to the fire.

“Life is wonderful in all forms…I just wonder where my own will lead now.” He confessed as he rubbed at his knuckles and looked at his own pale skin, flushed with pumping blood underneath it.

Billie shrugged her shoulders, “Firsts things first, it leads you back to your precious Attano and Kaldwin. They can decide what to do with you after I get you there.”

 Disposed of. Billie wanted no ties to him. It made sense. She held a hatred towards him even with her sparing of him. A twisted sense of justice was for him to live his life out as a human. To suffer a mortal existence, and then to end, like he had watched so many of his chosen do, the latest having been Daud. He’d felt his hatred and his movement within the Void. Now Daud was cursed to wander it alone. Alone with the whale song singing in his ears as he peered into the endless shadows and reflections of blood and water.

“So, you are giving me away?” He droned as the heat seared at his fingertips, cold burning with heat in the tips of them as he pulled them back into the blankets. He blinked a few times, trying to get rid of the sleep from his eyes as the boat rocked harshly with a vicious wave.

Billie scoffed from her stool, her feet put up on the table as she looked at the maps before her, “I never wanted you to babysit in the first place, but I thought you deserved better than a watery grave of nothing.” She confessed as she puffed on her pipe, “I would much rather you be safe with Corvo Attano than shivering aboard my ship, Outsider.” She teased, blowing smoke rings before she reached for a pan to put on top of the furnace to heat up some tinned food.

 “I do not think they want to see me.” He whispered, rubbing his hands together under the coarse fabric as Billie poured a tin of beans into the pan and watched the heat begin to bubble the juice they were stored in. She unwrapped a loaf of bread and revealed cheese and jellied eels. He wasn’t a fan of eels, nor was he a fan of anything meat related, but he knew Billie would only roll her eyes if he protested. He would eat the beans, cheese and bread, but he would rather leave the jellified eels away in their tin. Billie could have his portion of those.

“Why wouldn’t they?” Billie looked at him with raised eyebrows, “They’re probably the only people that like you…” She added as she leaned over and stirred the pan of beans.

The Outsider scoffed, rubbing at the dark circles underneath his eyes, “Corvo saw me as a method to save his daughter, and his daughter saw me as a method to save her father.” He confessed, “I was only a persistent entity between the two of them. A common occurrence.” He watched Billy cut two slices of bread and place them on her least dirty plates from the cabinet before she cut thick wads of cheese and laid them on top of it before taking the beans from the wood stove and sharing it between them. The jellied eels were left on the table for herself as she handed the Outsider a spoon and his plate of food.

 Billie hummed around a mouthful of bread and cheese, “I think you’re being dramatic.” She snorted with laughter and a harsh smile before pointing her knife at him, the end piercing out of skewered cheese, “They don’t hate you and I think you believe that little Empress actually despises you. Let me tell you, I’ve spoken to the two of them, and neither of them hold any ill will towards you. Corvo once drank too much Orbon Rum and told me about the Whale God he saw in his sleep after Jessamine’s death. He’s a hard man to read, but he sometimes talks.” She shrugged her shoulders, “He doesn’t talk a lot, mind you, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t know just who he was talking about.” Billie chewed her cheese before grumbling, “That and the vicious nightmares Emily used to scream in. Or those she used to sleepwalk in. She’d climb the stacks of barrels sometimes and just sit, muttering to herself about nothing. I couldn’t understand her half the time.” Billie looked him in the eyes and saw a young man, scared and closed off from the world for too long. He was like a child.

“She dreamed of me for a long time. I used to pull her into the Void to take her away from her mother’s death. She…She liked the whales but…She screamed when she saw the wounds on their backs and…” He rung his hands, “She feared my eyes. Now she is just as headstrong as her father.” He chuckled as he picked at the bread and cheese.

 The woman across from him flicked her knife before pointing it at him, “No more lamenting about nothing. I’m sick of hearing you whine.” Billie grinned before pointing at the food on his plate, “Now eat up. We’re only a few days off the coast, and I doubt Corvo will be too happy with me rocking up in the gardens with you in tow.”

“You mean you haven’t sent anything ahead?” The Outsider smiled at Billie, ducking his head as he scooped some beans onto his spoon and took a small bite of bread and cheese.

“Like the Void I have.” She took a bite of bread and swallowed before kicking her boots off in front of the fire, “I want to see the look on Corvo Attano’s face when I give him the Outsider to babysit.” She grinned as the man before her laughed and moved back to scooping beans into his mouth. Billie moved to find her record player as the two of them finished up and chatted late into the rocky night on the boat.

 Dunwall was high walls and infinite stone. He’d seen it through many other eyes, and watched it fall in many different futures. He’d even watched the stones bleed red with Corvo’s revenge. All of them were possibilities that had never occurred. He walked slowly next to Billie, wondering if his clothing was out of place for the era’s current fashion. They got no extra glances as Billie bought two apricot tartlets and offered him one of the sticky treats to eat as she glanced around the plaza, eyes watching invisible enemies.

“The guards are still looking for you?” He asked as he peeled a corner of the pastry away and chewed it on his back teeth.

Billie shrugged, “Nope, not after Emily’s interventions, but I like to make sure I’m not going to get run down by an angry mob before I go anywhere in this place.” She chewed her own sweet down quickly before looking back at his. The Outsider was coated in pastry crumbs and sticky jam, looking at his hands with disdain at the sticky jam coating the ends of his fingers.

“Here, dumbass.” She laughed and handed him a napkin before pushing off the wall, “Now let’s go and find your little pets and get this over with.” The Outsider nodded and followed, wiping syrup from his fingers and onto the napkin as they headed towards Dunwall tower.

 The gardens were gorgeous. The Outsider watched the ocean from the wall, green eyes curious as he watched the fishing boat bob back and forth in the calm waters. A few street urchins ran around the bottom of the walls pilfering oysters and mussels that had washed up on the beach. Billie smoked her pipe from against the little outbuilding, her eye watching the rose arches as giggling ladies moved past, too and from the gazebo, eyeing up the strangers hidden in the shadows of the garden with curious eyes.

“Billie, you better have a good reason for being here.” Corvo’s gravelly voice drifted past The Outsider’s ears as he fiddled with his hands, nervousness eating away at his insides as the Lord Protector loomed over the both of them.

“Oh, I think you’ll love this reason, Attano.” She purred before pointing the end of her pipe at the man perched on the wall.

“A boy?” He asked with attitude, “What is he? A spy?” Corvo hissed before taking a step closer.

The Outsider turned on his bottom, swinging his legs over the wall with a sigh, “Not a spy. Just an old friend, my dear Corvo.”

 Silence. Corvo looked at him with confusion, brows furrowed low, the silver in his hair glinting in the light as the information set in.

“Fuck me.” He cursed before peering around and crowding the two of them into the outhouse, “What in the Void have you done now, Billie?!” He looked the Outsider in the eyes again, looking at the soft green of his miserable eyes as he scowled.

“Scowling makes you look so old, Corvo.” The Outsider droned as he watched the man before him.

“You need to be quiet while I understand just what in the Void is going on!” Corvo snapped as Billie sighed behind him.

“He’s human. Don’t ask me how or why. But he’s human, just like you or me. Surely you figured out something had gone wrong when your marks faded? Your powers are gone because he isn’t there to siphon them to you.” She blew smoke upwards before pushing the Lord Protector’s shoulder and moving out of the door, “Look after him, Lord Protector. He needs your help, just like you once needed his.” She smiled before closing the door, leaving Corvo with a man who used to be a God.

#corvosider #corvo attano #the outsider #corvo #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonoured #corvo attano x the outsider #corvo x the outsider #emily kaldwin #outsider #fanfiction #fanfic #my writing #snippets #death of the outsider #doto spoilers

[torntruth]

high  chaos  emily  for  @notodin​ .

overseers  and  christians  both  have  the  same  stench  about  them.   it’s  something  like  moldy  water.   they  could  never  clean  themselves  of  their  sins  in  dirty,  dirty  infested  water.   a  trail  of  blood  follows  them,   it’s  what  they  wade  in  to  clean  and  then  pretend  it’s  the  cleanliest  water  there  is.   they  hide  behind  their  masks,  free  of  pretenses  and  vanity.   knights  and  overseers  are  very  much  alike.    emily  doesn’t  even  quite  know  where  the  buttons  were  pushed  and  who  pushed  them  and  she  knows  this  isn’t  quite  like  herself,  but  underneath  the  mirthful  smile,   the  rest  of  her  doesn’t  seem  to  care.    she  hasn’t  looked  in  a  mirror  since  returning  to  england,   so  she’s  missing  even  the  fact  her  eyes  are  pure  black.   the  deepest  crevices  of  the  void.   she  has  a  hood  up  that  just  covers  her  eyes,   so  anybody  that  didn’t  die,   wouldn’t  have  been  able  to  point  it  out.   she  heard  word  of  another  coup  attempt,   whispers,   so  she  came  to  end  it.   it’s  just  far  too  bad  said  coup  attempt  also  partially  worked  --  using  magic  to  rid  her  of  something.   maybe  they  thought  it  would  simply  kill  her.   they  forgot  she  is  the  void.

it  was  just  an  encampment.   two  overseers,  two  high  ranking  christian  members.   she  only  knows  the  overseer  structure,  failed  to  learn  the  christian  one.   religion  is  the  plague.   there’s  one  overseer  crawling  away,   whispering  about  a  heretic.   she  doesn’t  spare  him  out  of  mercy,  merely  keeps  him  alive  so  he  can  spread  the  word.   heretic.   maybe  she  can  get  used  to  that.   then,  just  like  that,  she  hops  onto  her  horse  and  trots  to  eivor’s  clan.   a  smear  of  blood  across  the  royal  symbol  of  her  family.   the  one  ship  and  it’s  crew  she  took  to  get  here  should  already  be  docked  at  ravensthorpe.   she  just  got  off  to  handle  this. 

#EMILY KALDWIN — daughter of the void. #EMILY DYN: EIVOR — there's no reason to fear shadows anymore. #notodin #i was trying to find some plotline that's NOT 'another cult brewing to take over empires' #but that's all i have #it just always works

[merulanoir]

I’m still thinking about The Return of Daud.

So, let’s recap a lil bit: Daud is in Dunwall when Delilah and Luca Abele stage their coup d’état. What’s more, he’s wandering the streets when people start milling about and as the news spread. And during the mission A Long Day In Dunwall, the Grand Guard soldiers are calling out orders on the streets.

All hail Delilah Kaldwin, our new empress!

You can’t tell me Daud doesn’t hear that. And yes, at this point he’s not doing great. He’s obsessed with finding the Twin-Bladed Knife, on his way to Wyrmwood Way to find the Sixways Gang and Eat ‘Em Up Jack.

But: What if he hears the name Delilah? What if Daud immediately connects the dots, because he’s many things but stupid isn’t one of them; he sees the empress fleeing Dunwall Tower, heading towards the boat with a name he can’t read from that far away. Dreadful something.

He doesn’t know where Corvo Attano is, but he knows something bad must have happened. The Royal Protector would never, ever abandon his daughter. If Emily Kaldwin is running away and doing it alone, Corvo must have been killed or incapacitated. And somehow Delilah is back, even though Daud imprisoned her in the Void fifteen years ago. He wanted to make amends and save Emily’s life, and apparently it wasn’t enough.

So what if Daud abandons the search for the Twin-Bladed Knife? What if he goes after Delilah instead? He can’t pursue Emily, he’d only scare her, and she has no reason whatsoever to want his help. But Daud could go to the Tower. He’d see what happened to Corvo. And Daud may be callous and egoistical and a bastard par excellence, but fuck if he doesn’t feel like he owes Corvo Attano an enormous debt.

Basically what I want is a story where Daud spies on Delilah and makes her life difficult again, until he (for reasons yet to be revealed by my muse) has to go to Karnaca and team up with Emily and Billie. Maybe he learns Delilah’s secret, or what she is truly after.

I have so many thoughts about that meeting. A reunion for Daud and Billie; for Emily, confronting the man who killed her mother and who knows her enemy better than anyone, save Billie, who up until now has not breathed a word about her true identity. The two Whalers would have to come clean at this point, and oh, would that be painful, especially if Emily had started to trust Meagan Foster.

Emily might want to abandon her allies, but she’s smart; she can’t afford to lose Billie, and Daud brings information. Daud also swears he wants to help, so Emily takes him along to the Dust District; she does need someone to look into the Jindosh Lock, after all.

And that’s how the two of them end up at Aramis Stilton’s home.

#i'm having feelings!!!!! #dishonored #daud #billie lurk #emily kaldwin

[aelaer]

Dishonored: a summary

So during my tumblr break I found a new side-fandom to oogle. While I don't plan on writing any content for it, and probably won't draw anything, I'm starting up my reblog queue of all the pretty fanart and memes of my new fandom and I wanted to a) give people who've never heard of it an inkling of wtf they're seeing on my dash and b) give people the time to block the tag if they really don't want my new fandom nonsense but want to still see whatever I produce for Marvel, LOTR, or whatever. I also wanted to give people a chance to check it out for themselves if they're interested in it after this ramble, because I didn't know it existed until May and it's been out for years. All art is official concept art or screenshots from the game, to my knowledge.

So without further ado, let me tell you about Dishonored.

Dishonored is a video game series of 2 games, 3 DLCs, and a bunch of side stuff like books, short videos, comics (I think), and so on. It was originally released in 2012 with its sequel published in 2017.

The original follows this handsome set of pixels known as Corvo Attano.

Corvo Attano is the Royal Protector. His main job is to make sure that the Empress he serves doesn't like, die. He probably has other duties since it's such a high position but that's the big one. He's a glorified bodyguard.

Unfortunately, as the game trailer below shows, everything sort of falls apart very quickly.

https://youtu.be/VeIn3WjbVbw

And if you watched the trailer, you'll note a few things:

There's a dude who's clearly magical

There's a shitton of bodies and rats in this steampunk-esque city

Holy shit magic fights

The clearly magical dude is the Outsider. He's a god-like figure that exists outside of the normal world in an area known as the Void. He's the pure definition of chaotic neutral and likes to give a very select group of "interesting" people insane powers just to see what they'll do. He gives Corvo his powers, as seen here, and things just tumble forward from there.

The setting is in a city called Dunwall which is the capital of the island of Gristol, which in turn is one of four islands in the Empire of the Isles. As one can see, life realllly sucks in Dunwall at the time of the first game.

What's really interesting about the game is that the player's actions determine the results of the end. This is known as the Chaos system. Low chaos means a lower body count, while high chaos is a high body count. The way Corvo's situation is presented, both low and high chaos work as canon and are just labeled as low, medium, or high. It's like book vs movie canon that you see in other fandoms.

Anyway, the only other bits you need to know before I start my spam are other main characters besides Corvo and the Outsider that I'll be reblogging:

Emily Kaldwin - the daughter of the Empress Jessamine Kaldwin

She's 10 in the first Dishonored and 25 in the second one. She has a very close, father/daughter type relationship with Corvo and it's one of the items that really draw me to the fandom because it's so adorable and wonderful.

Daud - the assassin that killed Empress Jessamine Kaldwin

He leads a band of assassins known as the Whalers. Fans fell in love with Daud with the first game's DLCs, which presented him as a surprisingly complex character who didn't just kill the leader of a nation 'for the evilz'. There is a looooottt of Corvo/Daud stuff as you might imagine that came out of that.

There's tons of other side characters in both games, but those four are the real important ones.

If you're interested in how the game plays out, but don't want to play it yourself and would rather watch it like a movie (which is what I did for this one), I'd recommend the Dishonored HD Walkthrough by YouTuber Zevik, which he broke down into 16 parts. His is the ultimate low chaos walkthrough with 0 deaths (which is *very* hard), so he gets the good ending at low chaos, and he reads all the notes, books, and finds all the little scenes that are easy to miss. If anyone is having a hard time finding it and wants to see it, let me know.

But that's that! Now time to fill up my queue.

#dishonored #new fandom #yay

[hauntscreation]

CHARACTER INTERVIEW

▌real name: oliver “ollie” shaw. ▌single or taken: single, main verse.  ▌abilities or powers:  teleportation, immortality, shadow manipulation, possession, creature summoning, control over dreams, and a whole lot more.  ▌eye colour: bright aqua hidden underneath a near - impenetrable obsidian color.  ▌hair colour: jet black, soft. never grows beyond his ears. ▌family members:  raymond shaw, father. abusive alcoholic, never wanted a child and made sure that oliver was aware. dorothy shaw, mother. a woman who couldn’t choose between her son and her husband, and as a result failed her only child by allowing her husband to act out. his feelings towards his parents are extremely complicated. one child, emily kaldwin.  ▌pets: none, but occasionally spends time with rats or whales.  ▌something they don’t like: child abusers, wealthy people.  ▌hobbies/activities: reading, writing, speaking to his few marked, exploring.  ▌ever hurt anyone before: yes. ▌ever killed anyone before: yes. typically only if he deems appropriate.  ▌animal that represents them: whale, specifically the livyatan melvillei. a sorrowful creature with large, sharp teeth.  ▌worst habits:  overemotional due to an abundance of untreated trauma. unable to admit that his ambiguity is untrue, with him easily having a favorite and giving preferential treatment to a select few people. he’s vaguely aware of the latter but considers it a non-issue as most marked aren’t aware of how their treatment differs. pretty aggressive when confronted.  ▌sexual orientation: gay. ▌thoughts on marriage/kids: it’s a dream for him, but one he doesn’t expect to come true.  ▌fears:  to be abused again. to be unloved. to be forgotten.  ▌style preferences: elegant. whether feminine or masculine attire, the outsider has a massive preference for something that makes him appear more ‘normal’, more noble. clothes are often also made of darker fabrics, with black and purple a frequent recurrence, often with gold or silver undertones. doesn’t shy away from jewelry, especially rings and necklaces. ▌someone they love: the one person he will always love is his daughter, emily.  ▌approach to friendships: the outsider has few true friends, with the marked being the ones privileged to know him beyond myth. he’s difficult to get close to.  ▌thoughts on pie: he has a sweet tooth lol, so he loves pie. especially sugar cream pie. ▌favourite drink: he likes fruit juices! peach and cranberry are his preference for sure. ▌favourite place to spend time at: near the water. there’s silent comfort in the whale songs.  ▌swim in the lake or in the ocean: the ocean for sure. his void - based connection with whales and the water had him grow a fondness for both. ▌their type: physically speaking? he loves men larger than him. full stop. he’s lucky with his height in that regard: almost every man he meets is taller than him, and if they’re stronger / broader there’s a higher chance of attraction. i’d even say it applies to weight, he likes it when a man has a little chub. that doesn’t mean he can’t be and isn’t attracted to thinner, less muscular men, however! he’s just more likely to show sexual interest first in tall, broad men.      personality wise? intelligent, dominant, stubborn, cold or mean men he’s drawn to most. whether cold in the way that they’re difficult to get close to or them just being blatantly selfish, there’s something about an arrogant man that makes him want to impress them. he’s very sex driven as well so sexual chemistry is very important to him, and the dynamic he desires is one where he, for once, isn’t in control. kindness and genuine love is a feeling he does genuinely crave, but isn’t used to, and as a result he chases what he’s adapted to. that being said... there’s always, always exceptions, and those exceptions tend to be healthier for him. men which have adapted their survival to a lack of strength or height are quite interesting and attractive to him because they’ve often developed other talents. whether it’s their intellect or their tools, they’ve got their own ways of winning fights, and can easily impress him. ▌camping or indoors: indoors. warmth and comfort are important to him.  ✨ TAGGED BY:  @corrodent​, thank you! ♥  ✨ TAGGING: @horrorempathy for emily!, @mvsterthief, @lilolnumber, @psyccheout, @umvetrinn​ !!

#◟🌙 » 𝐢𝐢. headcanons. ◝ #whew ... this is fun

[luckydicekirby]

*predicatable* the daudsider fic where daud gets killed by hc corvo...

LMAO honestly thank you i love talking about this fic…the original idea behind this was realizing that if Corvo kills Daud at the end of Brigmore Witches, it’s by cutting his throat. And that’s how the Outsider died, so obviously they should talk about it! Weirdly this ended up being kind of an afterthought in the fic itself, which is mostly just Daud being gay and sad, as is his legal right. I guess this is the only time I’ve really written Daud POV. Or actually Daud at all? I tend to mention him a lot in fics as a rhetorical device but he never really shows up, oops. 

wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall, for anyone else playing along at home!

Never let it be said that Corvo Attano doesn’t know how to handle a knife. He makes it quick. Daud hardly feels the cut as it crosses his throat. He’s already fading when Corvo tosses him over the side of the building. He doesn’t feel himself hit the ground.

There is like, something subtly wrong with the rhythm of this paragraph, it reads a little flat? Two of these sentences need to be combined and then I think it would be fine. Riveting commentary I know.

When Daud contemplated death—a common enough way to kill time, for an assassin—he liked to think it might bring him peace. Foolish, to expect that peace was something he could ever have.

Daud, I think maybe thinking about dying all the time is a YOU thing.

He opens his eyes. He’s lying on stone. The Outsider peers down at him, and around them the Void is no different than it’s ever been, gray and cool and harsh.

“It was a very pretty speech,” he says. “But Corvo Attano heard enough pretty words for a lifetime when he lived in Dunwall Tower. He spent his days learning that they only ever hid viciousness and cruelty, knives poorly sheathed. The Loyalists toasted him eloquently before they poured poison down his throat. Why should he have believed yours to be any different?”

I leaned more into like, shrine-style speeches than I usually do in the Outsider’s dialogue here, probably because that kind of dialogue makes him sound like an asshole. It’s SO fun to write. 

Daud sits up and presses a hand to his neck, the place where Corvo’s knife cleaved his skin in two. His hand comes away bloody. It looks almost black in the gloom of the Void.

“You saved me,” he says, voice shredded to pieces, and the Outsider laughs.

God the kind of implied hopefulness of this is really crushing, huh.

“I don’t take sides,” he says. The lying bastard. The moment Corvo Attano was Marked, the moment the Outsider decided he was special, the outcome of this day was decided. “You’re dying, Daud, your life slipping out from between your fingers. A fitting end for a man who spent his life spilling a river of blood. I wonder what you’ll do with these final moments. Curse my name?”

“Fuck you.”

Walked right into that one my dude. Also “I don’t take sides” NEVER stops being funny unfortunately. And ‘spilling a river of blood’ I think is just straight up from one high chaos Outsider shrine speech or another.

“Always so predictable,” the Outsider muses, and Daud hates him, hates himself, hates the sick curdling feeling he always gets in his gut when the Outsider sounds disappointed. Sounds bored. The same sickness that stayed with him for fifteen years while the Outsider ignored him, until Daud blundered his way into Corvo Attano’s life and suddenly became interesting again. 

That’s being in love, Daud. Sorry, in your case it’s terminal!

“You begged him for your life. I admit, Daud, that surprised me. And Corvo refused to give it to you. Your one last request denied. How does that feel, Daud? Like justice? Like redemption?”

And this is like, endgame narration style dialogue. Good times.

It feels like blood sliding through Daud’s fingers, spilling down his coat. Dozens of people have bled on this coat. Jessamine Kaldwin did. And now Daud will be the last. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”

He wants it to be done. He wants the peace he knows he doesn’t deserve, but even now the Outsider won’t leave him alone, staring at him with his too dark eyes. It itches like bloodflies under his skin, the Outsider’s eyes on him, and yet Daud has never been able to hate it the way he should. He’s always craved it, as if he’s no better than the likes of Vera Moray, crooning to her rats about the black-eyed boy who will abandon her. Who abandons everyone, in time.

On the bright side, number of times Daud has made a guy into soup is still zero, so you’re still doing okay.

Corvo will feel like this one day. The thought should console Daud. It doesn’t.

“Of course it matters, Daud,” says the Outsider. He kneels down beside him and presses his hand against his throat, under Daud’s own. It’s cold, shocking enough that Daud starts, and the bastard laughs at that too. The Outsider has never touched him before. He would remember. “History is determined by men like Corvo Attano. By the men who kill Empresses and the men who take revenge. He could have let you live. He almost did. That future still hangs in the balance. A fish hooked but fighting against it. Soon enough it will have swum away.”

I love a good weird Outsider metaphor.

“So let me go,” Daud says.

The Outsider runs his thumb along the edges of Daud’s wound. It should hurt. It does hurt. Daud doesn’t try to move away. “My throat was cut, once,” he says. “The day that I was made what I am. It’s a terrible way to die. I can’t remember how I felt about it. I was going to do what you did. I was going to beg for my life. But they never gave me the chance.”

He must be telling the truth. This close, Daud can see the scar.

See I like, wrote the bit about them dying the same way and then all the subsequent dialogue I wanted to write was like, unrelated depressing gay bullshit, so I just went with that. I do like “I can’t remember how I felt about it”, it gets at everything that’s so fucked up about the Outsider’s like, whole existence. The most fun way to write the Outsider imo is just as a dude who fundamentally does not understand the human experience of anything, including his own literal human experiences.

The Outsider draws his hand back, covered now in Daud’s blood. Daud knows precisely how much blood the human body can hold, and he’s bled too much for anywhere but the Void.

I was like what am I talking about, is knowing about blood anatomy and assassin thing, but actually I think this is a joke (“joke”) about him having gone to college. 

“What would you have said?” Daud asks. He can’t look away from the Outsider’s hand.

The Outsider ignores him. He takes Daud’s jaw in his hand, smearing blood across his cheekbone, and tilts it to the side. He speaks into Daud’s ear. “Was it all my fault, Daud? Whispering in your ear, making you think you were somehow important?”

Does the Outsider ignore this question because he’s a bitch or because I couldn’t think of an answer? Who can say! 

Also the Outsider actually literally whispering in his ear is the kind of dramatic bullshit I fully believe he would do.

“You’re such a little shit,” Daud growls, and he has both hands fisted in the Outsider’s coat before he can think, before he can remember all the reasons that he has never dared touch the Outsider, no matter how much he loathes him.

“loathes” lol ok

The Outsider watches him, and does not let him go. They would be breathing the same air, if either of them were breathing anymore. “With my Mark, you thought you were going to change things. And you have.”

I still go back and forth about whether Mark/Marked should be capitalized. This ambiguity is the Outsider’s greatest crime.

I can no longer remember if there’s any canon basis for Daud ever having wanted to change the world for the better; it is my sacred duty to assume that everyone’s a sad former idealist though.

“From where I stand, the world looks exactly the same.”

“You killed an Empress, and saved her daughter. History peeled away from the curve of your blade like skin from a knife. I gave you what you wanted, Daud: the power to make your own regrets.”

Oh god what a gross metaphor. I like it a lot but also, yikes.

The Outsider slides his grip from Daud’s jaw back to his hair, and he yanks his head back. Daud chokes on nothing. He can feel blood dripping down his throat, can taste it on the back of his tongue. He clenches his fingers, and finds them too weak to hold onto the Outsider’s coat any longer.

Oh sorry I forgot the other reason I wrote this fic, “being kinda horny for people getting their throat cut” apparently. Like this blocking is so gross but, unfortunately.

“Are you going to let me die?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” The Outsider tilts his head. He looks curious. “Death made me what I am. I wonder what it would make of you.”

“A corpse,” Daud tells him.

“Daud,” says the Outsider, still so fucking disappointed. “Your problem has always been that you lack a grander vision.”

“Dead is dead.”

“Not when it happened to me.”

“I saw what was in Attano’s coat. If you make me into a thing like you did to the Empress—”

“If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would sit still and let me,” the Outsider says. “You can try to hide it with all the anger in the world, Daud, but you would do anything for me.” His voice is dispassionate, as if he were not filleting Daud to the very bone with his words.

I remember that I added this line in while editing, because Ruby got mad at me about it. “If I wanted to cut out your heart, you would let me” IS the most sarahcore thing I’ve ever written probably. Play to your strengths I guess!

Also can you imagine like, Daud style heart lines. Just miserable.

“A word from me after fifteen years, and you picked yourself up out of your guilt and grief to scour Dunwall from end to end. You didn’t have to kill Delilah to save Emily Kaldwin. You killed her because you were jealous. You thought you could kill Corvo too. But after you’d already murdered his dear Jessamine, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it.”

“Shut up,” Daud says. A rasp from his ruined throat.

The Outsider kisses him, cold lips and colder tongue, and Daud makes the same noise people make when he slides a knife between their ribs.

I am pretty happy with how the tone of this fic is basically ‘getting stabbed but in a sexy way except you still very much got stabbed’. Seems right for the ship!

There’s blood on the Outsider’s mouth when he lets Daud go. Daud wants to kiss him again more than he wants to live.

God what a depressing line. I like it a lot but hey Daud? You good???

“You should let me die. You should give Attano what he wants.”

“But I am,” the Outsider says. He touches Daud’s cheek, like the parody of a lover. “Corvo wanted his revenge. But more than that, he wants to be the kind of man above needing it. The kind of man who can raise his daughter well, and teach her to be kind, and good, and all the things that Empresses should be.”

Of course. Daud bleeding out before him, and it’s all about Corvo fucking Attano. “So you’re going to save me for Attano’s sake.”

Daud is miserable and jealous: the fic.

“I told you,” the Outsider says, eyes more pitiless than the sea. “I haven’t decided yet.”

This line…is really good. I love a good snappy ending line and this is probably the best one I’ve ever gotten, tbh. nailed it past sarah! there’s also like, no universe where this fic ends in a less weird and ambiguous way, because like frankly I can’t even figure out what that would be. Like where do you go from here. Nowhere, you live in this terrible moment forever!

Anyway, sorry that the only daudsider fic I’ve ever written is mega depressing and half about the Outsider also being in love with Corvo, but he’s VERY mean to Daud so surely that makes up for it!

#ask meme #artificerdivine

[maxieofdunwall]

Can I get a promo from the Void?

Hey, I’m Maxie and I love Dishonored way too much. Emily Kaldwin is my adopted daughter and I love her 😍

Can I get a promo? I want to find other fans :3

I rebagel stuff and post screencaps

(Note: this is a sideblog; follows will be from my main @mojavejourneys)

#dishonored 2 #dishonored #death of the outsider #corvo attano #emily kaldwin