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sundayswiththeilluminati · 9 years

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Hi! Huge fan of NP here (obviously), and I was just wondering, could you give us any thoughts you might have on Esmond Roseburrow? Particularly concerning his relationship - professional & private - with Sokolov? I am considering writing about Roseburrow myself sometime (since no one else seems to want to) and I wanted to know your opinion on the man. Canon says he and Sokolov knew each other for at least 14 years (1820-34); I know NP's timeline is different, but still. Any personal headcanons?

Confession time: I came up with the outlines of the NP timeline without a huge amount of thought, largely because at the time I was experimenting with this new concept called “just friggin’ write the thing and post it” (you can all see how long that lasted). I could probably go back and retcon some of it, because now it’s a little awkward to fit all the right events in the right places.

Eventually I want to do a full timeline post, but here’s a basic outline: Anton comes to Dunwall at around the age of 19, at about the same time Esmond Roseburrow reveals the trans distillation process; he wins admission to the Academy at 20 and immediately devotes himself to studying trans and its properties. Since it’s a brand-new field he’s able to carve out a niche even though he’s very low on the scientific totem pole. His penchant for doing his own engineering serves him very well here, since the Academy stalwarts are heavily invested in the idea of pure thought and pure research being the only appropriate tasks for a gentleman of natural philosophy. This backfires on him in his third year, when he’s trying to secure a spot as a Scholar after graduation - nobody wants to take him on because he’s antagonized and/or made them all look bad with his own talent. But it’s Anton, so he decides, “why dick around with these idiots when I could find the real thing?” He half-buys half-threatens his way in to see Roseburrow and tries to convince the man to take him on as a partner. And Roseburrow, to his secret astonishment, does.

Anton’s had to fight for everything he’s ever had. He grew up out in the absolute middle of nowhere in Tyvia and, as I will hopefully get in to if I ever manage to make that Tyvia post, it’s a country that strongly values your origin as a measure of your worth. The wealthy coastal city-states, with rich agricultural and fishing industries, look down on the backwards provinces. So he had to fight to be taken seriously in the Tyvian cities; he had to fight to be taken seriously in Dunwall, as not only a commoner but a foreigner to boot; he had to fight to be taken seriously at the Academy, as a charity student and a foreigner and an underclassman with ideas far above his station; and he has to fight like hell to get to Roseburrow. And then when he gets there, Roseburrow not only listens to him - he agrees. It’s a huge thing for him. Roseburrow is, to Anton, the first person who looked past all the other bullshit to see what was really important.

Roseburrow himself never expected to be famous or important, and never particularly wanted to be. It was the challenge that drove him. But it also blinded him for a long time to what his inventions were doing. He was a little bit like Piero in certain ways - what was important to him was the science, not the uses to which people put it. He considered himself above all that, and above politics. As he was freed from immediate practical concerns his research focused more and more on trying to understand the essential nature of trans - where its energy came from, its connection to the Void, how the leviathans produced it - than on applications of it, but that was all other people wanted from him. Taking on Anton solved many of those problems, and Esmond closeted himself with his beakers and books of occult theory while Anton built more and more ambitious creations.

I think both Anton and Esmond were of similar minds on the topic of the supernatural: that there was no such thing, only laws of the physical world they didn’t understand yet. Anton’s theory of voltaic action provided a practical framework for predicting and understanding the behavior of trans when others were still trying to figure out whether it was an “unholy creation of the Outsider.” It was likely quite refreshing for both of them to be able to talk on the subject, since the prevailing view in Isles society ranged from never mentioning the occult out of fear that demons would eat you to a religious faith in it that assumed it was the province of beings so far beyond human comprehension that it would be ridiculous to try and understand. Neither of them believed in the idea of things man couldn’t or wasn’t meant to know.

I wish I’d left enough room in my timeline for Anton and Esmond to have worked together for the 14 official canon years. As it is, my timeline has Anton being made Royal Physician a bare 2 years after joining up with Roseburrow, not entirely of his own volition. The position was supposed to go to Roseburrow, but a number of factors complicated that: Roseburrow had alienated a fair number of people with his refusal to take orders; Anton’s practical inventions - particularly his weaponry - had begun to give him a higher profile than the reclusive theoretician; and then there was the Tyvian issue. Tyvia’s hunted leviathans for centuries, but never used the oil, since it was considered sacred and had to be burned before the sailors returned to land. So Tyvia possessed the largest whaling fleet and the most experienced captains in the Isles, but asking them to harvest the oil instead in defiance of centuries of tradition was an extremely hard sell. Appointing a Tyvian to the position helped convince them that their traditions would be respected (even though, of course, Anton had no intention of doing so).

So Anton was made Royal Physician, somewhat under the assumption that it would be Roseburrow who was actually in charge. And that worked out for a little while. But people started getting a little carried away with their new toys. Tensions had been simmering with Morley for a few decades at that point; Morley wanted greater autonomy, Gristol didn’t want to grant it, and the conflict had broken out into violence more than once. With Sokolov’s new steel ships coming into the fleet, the hardliners decided it was time to teach them a lesson once and for all. They secretly put together a small fleet of the new hulls under Farley Havelock’s command and, the next time Morley balked, told them resistance would be met with force, Morley called their bluff, and open war began.

The Morley war was a bit of a wake-up call for both Anton and Roseburrow, although Anton didn’t much think about it that way. He’d designed his ships for whaling and hadn’t thought about how their existence might change the balance of military power as well. For him it turned his mind to the larger impact trans could have on the fundamental society of the Isles. For Roseburrow it was a shock. He woke up and started paying attention again to what his company was creating. He’d always assumed he deserved his wealth and power because his discoveries were improving the lives of millions of people. Now he saw that no matter how good the gift he gave them, others would turn it into something ugly. He went to the Empire and expressed his concerns, only to be shocked when they were dismissed out of hand. He finally realized how far beyond his own control all of “his” research had gone. He tried to discuss the subject with Anton, but Anton, who was neck-deep in military contracts - ships, guns, mines, and everything in between - couldn’t understand what his mentor was so worked up about.

The only option Roseburrow believed he had left was to make a statement. Surely when people saw that the famous discoverer of trans, the enabler of this new age of prosperity, had died by his own hand, they would rethink the path they’d chosen? So he did it.

Anton was the one who found him, coming to visit his office in the middle of the night to talk over some interesting result. He still remembers the scene, of course, can’t forget it; and can’t forget, either, the very first thing he really processed about the scene: that the pistol Roseburrow had used was one that Anton had made himself, personally, one that he had given his mentor. As a gift. He’s never been able to rid himself of the irrational conviction that if he’d only done something, if he’d only listened to Roseburrow beforehand, he could have somehow prevented it all.

To go back to Anton and Esmond’s relationship, though, Roseburrow obviously had a big impact on Anton’s life. Anton still idolizes him somewhat. He sees Roseburrow as a true genius, someone who was able to look past the beliefs of centuries and see both the potential of trans and the potential of Anton himself, and also a man of great conviction. Whether he was is somewhat debatable, but. Roseburrow and Anton had similar opinions on a lot of matters both scientific and philosophical and were good friends, if not exactly equals; Roseburrow saw Anton as a protege and Anton felt a debt to Roseburrow for giving him the chance to be the scientist he wanted to be, since he knows that without Roseburrow’s backing he wouldn’t have become Royal Physician and that his life and researches would have been much more difficult.

Publicly they presented a more or less united front in the sense that both of them were too wrapped up in their work to spend much time on politicking - which ended up being a little unfortunate when Roseburrow died unexpectedly. The Empire kept the truth of his suicide from getting out, replacing it with the cover (orchestrated by Burrows, actually) that he had been killed by a Tyvian anti-whaling fanatic - an orthodox faction remains that considers the hunting of leviathans for oil to be deepest blasphemy, and Roseburrow was number one on their hitlist. Because of all the questions surrounding the affair, though, there’s a looooot of rumor out there about “what really happened,” and the general Gristol racism settled on Anton as having been responsible. The conspiracy theory goes that Anton, despite having been made Royal Physician, was still jealous of his mentor and, since everyone knows Tyvians are ruthless backstabbers, poisoned him to take control of the Roseburrow Concern and ensure his place as the most powerful natural philosopher in Dunwall (ignoring, of course, the fact that the Empire assimilated Roseburrow’s company after his death). Anton’s well-known vanity doesn’t help his case too much in this instance, and after the whole affair he was so angry and depressed he didn’t do much except show up at parties and get violently drunk and furious whenever someone brought it up.

Anton blames himself to greater and lesser degrees for Roseburrow’s suicide, and in his darker moments he hates him for doing it; for killing himself and abandoning Anton to deal with the future, for dying for a black-and-white absolute rather than staying alive to wade through the ethical morass that Anton’s had to deal with ever since. It seems terribly selfish to him, and in a sense he’s right. Roseburrow was vain enough to believe that he was a crucial component in the machine and that with his death it would all somehow stop. He didn’t think about how Anton would be left behind to pick up the pieces.

There’s probably more but this has already gone on forever. I HOPE YOU LIKE WORDS.

#Anton Sokolov #Esmond Roseburrow #Dishonored #Natural Philosophy Appreciation Month #Mad Science Month #output generated #things I made up #traumatizing Anton Sokolov #SAD BACKSTORY AHOY

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