Chapter Text
Melancholy strikes the hardest when hit by such stark contrasts, like the slap of a cresting wave against the sailor’s weathered, rugged face. It’s a reminder to those roving souls that stray far from home, leaving behind familiar stomping grounds in an often fruitless search for the pleasures of the unknown. This gloom creeps in when one’s at their most vulnerable, a siren’s song whose call is heeded with castaway yearning, desperate for the comfort of the shore, despite knowing that no such respite will ever arrive, that memories past are long gone, sunk and gone.
The Isles themselves are a land of said contrasts, from Tyvia’s frozen steppes, with the stoic resilience of its endogenous flora and fauna to weather's inclement adversity; to modern Dunwall’s wondrous new inventions and its putrid, oily puddles festering on the gutters. An Empire built out of incongruous, often conflicting, patches of cultures and traditions. It’s said that not even towns or villages within the same borders strike visitors as being similar, no two places are the same.
Hailing from a small fishing hamlet on the northern Gristolean coast and as a relative newcomer to the Imperial capital, all feelings of awe and amazement she had experienced during those first few days had quickly given way to one of uneasy alienation.
Cushioned in the velvet upholstery of the iron cocoon, she reflected on her surroundings, on what little could be discerned through the horizontal viewing ports carved into the door.
The sterile grandiosity of Dunwall’s Estate District, admirable and uncanny all at once, felt so foreign in nature to what she was accustomed to. Her family’s decaying manor up in distant Norcaster held no discernable similarities to the grand estates that loomed like arcane monoliths over the rattling metallic carriage sent to fetch her as it raced atop electrified rails, sunken into the cobbled streets.
Everything around her, lifeless, grey and heavy; drained of its colour and energy. It’s what Dunwall does to you, she’s heard. A cursed city that devours whatever it can get a hold of, only to spit it out for the rats to chew. Decadence, pestilence, all hidden under the guise of carefully manicured appearances, an illusion she was most familiar with.
After all, it wasn’t as if Josephine Buckley, Lady Josephine Buckley , had been raised in downright squalor. So to speak. Poverty, you see, has many faces; all you need to do is know where and what to look for.
Grandfather had been cunning, everyone can attest to that. Fishing is a profession most ancient, one that's been around for centuries, perhaps even longer, with large flotillas controlled by generations of veteran captains and eager entrepreneurs. He was by no means a successful businessman, not like the fine folk from out of town that made the village a stop in their tours of the countryside from time to time. He would earn that quality much later in life.
Owning a boat or two here and there provided just enough coin to pay the men, rent of their fishmonger's shop and a bit extra for rainy days or a little something for more vain pursuits, a pretty dress for the wife or a warm coat to last him more than a few winters. The advent of the first Industrial Revolution around the 1750s provided the lifeline the family so desperately needed to climb the Gristolean social ladder, and it arrived in the most unusual of forms: Tin.
Edwin Buckley had always been a keen reader, a man intent on keeping up to date with whatever happenings made headlines around the Isles, even if it meant importing the latest newspapers at great personal expense. This microscopic detail on their account books would matter little in the grand scheme of things, for this small investment would end up paying for itself sooner rather than later.
Somewhere in the many, many administrative offices and bureaucratic enclaves of Dunwall, a tall gentleman with greying, thinning hair files a patent for a revolutionary invention designed to preserve various perishable goods. The technique, involving stuffing processed food into airtight tin cans, sealed with careful lead soldering, quickly gained traction among the established tradesmen. Canneries sprung up in all corners of the city’s manufacturing districts and investors would soon be fighting tooth and nail for a piece of the cake.
Now, Edwin Buckely had always been eagle eyed. First reports on the Patent Office's gazette made little mention of this newly developed process, devoting but a mere footnote to it on the fifth page, but once the lines caught his gaze, they'd lit a fire inside of him impossible to quell. He arranged for a coach destined for Dunwall at once, newspaper ink still fresh on his fingertips. Being first in line meant he could easily strong arm his way into obtaining a lucrative contract as the exclusive and sole provider of seafood to the hungry new factories.
He made a killing during those years, naturally. His fishing fleet was upgraded to the latest technology, its size and tonnage doubled, along with the number of seamen on the payroll. Buckley Fisheries became a household name. A renowned architect from out of town designed for him a stately manor on a formerly overgrown plot atop the cliffs overlooking Norcaster cove. Doors previously closed to a man of his low station were now wide open with warm greetings and genteel smiles.
One evening would see the family as the Mayor’s gracious guests, their names announced by a stately looking footman upon their arrival; another they’d be over for tea with the local physician and his wife, or enjoying the customary nightly game of cards with the owner of the grocery. Likewise, these figures of provincial renown became fixtures in the Buckley’s gatherings, held inside their manorhouse’s lavish staterooms.
Myrtle, Mrs.Buckley , wasted no time in using her newly cultivated social skills to secure the hand of a wealthy tradesman’s daughter for their son, Silas. It seemed to them, in their infatuation with all things refined, that everything was going so well in their bid to secure the Buckley legacy and fortune. Smooth sailings where everything went according to plan, but it was never enough.
Restrict the Restless Hands, the Overseers preach, for they rush to sordid gain, vain pursuits and deeds of violence.
It was one dreary day in a stuffy Dunwall office down by Rudshore when that juicy offer was dangled in front of him, balancing in front of his eyes, like a piece of fresh meat withheld from a ravenous wolfhound.
Negotiations swung back and forth, like an anchored boat on an open harbour, stubbornly held fast to its firm chains. Edwin Buckley was no fool, he was aware that the terms would put him and by succession, his heirs, in great disadvantage. One does not easily relinquish control of a monopoly like that, especially one as fruitful as this. Mere royalties would not make up the loss, not even close.
Yet he thought, wasn’t he wealthy enough? Their fortune, if handled properly, would last decades to the very least. The silver tongues of Dunwall’s merchants sang the sonet of these fleeting reassurances to his ageing ears, the poetry of greed and avarice. Wasn’t it time for the next step?
Opening up the market to the competition in exchange for a pompous, long desired noble title.
As his adversaries predicted, the choice proved easier than thought and Lord Edwin, 1st Baron Buckley returned triumphantly to Norcaster, arm in arm with his dashing wife following a lavish ceremony in Dunwall Tower itself. He died, eventually, like all things do and everything went to Silas, who’d be left to pay the heavy price of his father’s mistakes and ambitions.
The family’s newly acquired pedigree elevated them above the common folk both native and foreign to the hamlet, clans of farm labourers, fishermen and the like. Lord Silas, now 2nd Baron Buckley, and his wife, Lady Madeline, went to great lengths to assure their children, young Jacob and Josephine, of their rightfully earned position in society, entailing the duty to preserve the acquired birthright at all costs.
It would not be long before Buckley Fisheries drifted away from collective memory, as their products gathered dust in the back of store shelves, their fleet laid up, boat by boat, by the dockyards. All the while the clan became relegated to the long, long registry of minor heraldic peerages dotted around Gristol's countless villages, another pompous, forgotten name for people to claim to be familiar with in polite conversation.
Facing reality was hard, it still is, for her somewhat delusional parents. Spendthrifts and reckless, they were too proud to come face to face with the grim reality of their estate’s finances.
As such, Josephine Buckley grew in a world of smoke and mirrors that masqueraded the obvious decline of the family’s fortunes to the outside world, one where the responsibility of turning their luck around was placed upon her shoulder from the earliest of ages. A puppet, she mused, like those pauper’s shows on decrepit cardboard theatres with moth-eaten curtains, where her talents lay at the mercy of the puppetmaster’s will for a pretty coin.
Was that really how her life would play out?
Was a puppet entitled to dream about happier days? To control its own destiny?
She pondered, as she did during the endless nights of her younger years, the same haunting question. Josephine fidgeted with her small handbag as the railcar carrying her sped through the posh streets of Dunwall. The mere memories of childhood filled her with trepidation, yet everything was always simpler in distant Norcaster, the rural lifestyle where everyone knew each other, their joys and secrets.
What could the Imperial capital offer her but uncertainty at every corner? A whole new world awaited to be uncovered, with all its malice and magic. Josephine rummaged through the contents of her cream, knitted silk purse until her fingers found the treasured invitation, clutching it firmly in her hand. She sighed, maybe today she would find the answer to all her questions.