Gren had made his way above deck: he lit his pipe, drawing in a long and calming breath, leaning heavily against the thick greyoak bulwark. Still eyes watched as black water softly lapped the hull. The collier felt almost still in the moon-gray fog.

"You're not cold, Marine?" A voice spoke from behind. Gren trusted his senses, and was surprised that someone had been able to approach him without his knowing; he turned quickly.

"No sir" He returned, at attention. His accent was almost neutral now, he felt, but evidently still betrayed a hint of his Tyvian heritage.

The naval officer was a boy, but an officer all the same; he held himself firm and distanced from his surroundings, as all commissioned officers were instructed. He grunted mutely, approached the gunwale and stood beside Gren, staring out into the unfathomable bank.

"I suppose you enjoy this weather, you Northers" The officer spoke, finally.

"I was born in Dabokva, in the countryside outside Dabokva. Even we find it cold here"

The boy grunted again, nodded into the air. "Do you mind fighting them? I mean, the low-men. Your own people?"

It was the same sentiment he always received, although this time far more refined: a Norther fighting beside the Empire against the Morley. And Low-Men was the most civil insult thrown upon him today.

"Not my people Sir."

"You speak their language, share physiognomy, no?" The boy returned with haste.

Gren was unsure how to reply, how the officer had meant the remark: was he too young to perceive the racial sleight?

"I've been taken from a musket company; acting battalion translator". Not that we'll need one – this battle will not be settled by words.

The young officer was preparing his own calabash, pinching a tuft of tobacco to the chamber. He lit, drew in. They were both still for a time; two gulls trailing the barque screeched and banked away into the fog; through it, the black profile of a man-of-war bucked on a thin undulation carrying across the water. There was a heavy slap on the waterline, and Whitebank herself rolled, pitching in the freezing swell.

"We're to the Citadel within a day" The officer said; his accent and syntax were smooth south-Gristol beau monde.

Gren had lived in Dunwall for seven months, working in a shipwright and rooming in a bed-sit overlooking a Downside dockyard: he had once been to the Estate district, running an errand for the foreman. It was the Month of Wind and he had stood in the heavy grey rain beside two City Watch guards as a porter took the letter he carried: the porter had spoke in the singing southern-Gistol brogue, now an oddity amongst a city of foreigners.

The estate families were each Dunwall high aristocracy; lineages like Thackston and Pendleton whom ran the city and its empire like oligarchs. They were large families; there were more than nine Lindale children. During times of war it was customary for these families to send a child to the battlefront, as affirmation of their fidelity to the Empire. Never a direct heir, of course; commonly some third or fourth child past the age of majority, already schooled in marksmanship, fencing, riding, seamanship, the art of war. They would be commissioned into service and generally see out their days of combat in auxiliary formations.

Gren spied the officer out the corner of his eye, similarly leaning upon the gunwale; he wondered what family crest he carried. The fourth in line for succession bore a different weight than his older siblings: while they may be destined for a life of service to their nation and dynasty, fulfilling official positions of the state, those younger were prone to otiose lives. A few ran successful businesses and rose as captains of industry. Some would study as physicians or engineers or artisans and work or travel abroad. But most rarely strayed far from their family demesne, except perhaps to swan between select social engagements.

In the city, real power lay in title: there were few ways to achieve that without inheritance, even within families of note. One way was through service to the Empire.

Perhaps that was his intent, Gren wondered, or perhaps he was just a small boy playing man, playing soldier.

Gren returned his attentions to the Sea. Since sunup a pall had descended, cloaking the fleet. They were inside the Blackiron now, a vast bay separating the Northdell from Haywynne Isle. Its west coast held the city of Fraeport, the last bastion of this rebellion.

Around them, the vast Griswold navy readied itself for the coming night: cannonships with heavy armour had sails open, steam boilers cold. Marine tenders were oak-hulled and propelled purely on sail; this afforded them greater littoral manoeuvrability, protecting disembarking troops.

Gaining firm intelligence of Morley defences in Fraeport was difficult to obtain: those spies who hadn't been turned were drowned in the black water, and the rest had all run. Fraeport militia were without flintlock muskets, or any decent artillery. On the other hand, the men of Northdell were hunting with Bows and pikes from the age they could hold them, and were well accustomed to battle.

Yet the Marine commanders held a confidence Gren had not before seen; perhaps some weapon hidden below their decks that would make short toil of the militia rabble.

Within a year and the Morley insurrection was all but dead, its leaders either fled or crushed under stone at Harrowfield Motte or left hanging by their necks in Empire square at Arran. The rebellion was stuck deep with the blade of the empire; it bled into the sea. Fealty to local clans remained as it ever had, but while bands of men roamed the highlands flying the green-white cross of the false king, they were brigands and not liberators. Imperial troops returned to their Garrisons; rabble-rousers would whisper of a free nation, veiled in indecipherable tongue, persisting in the dark corners of taverns and drink-halls of the Midshire. But enough blood soaked the soil, enough bodies choked the steams; no one wanted more death. Trade ships sailed into Alba harbour every day now, and in return carried cereals and fruits and to Driscol and further to Dunwall or Cullero. The Insurrection was done.

But the Northdell was a different animal entirely. Above the Midshire, hills became mountains and the reach of the Empire ended with the roads. At the northern-most tip of Morley, above the Coldspine, the weather coast possessed three-hundred foot blackstone cliffs diving into frozen ocean, lined with knotted crags and the gored skeletons of rotting hulks, each driven to the seafloor by the god's themselves. The men who claimed these lands saw no need to stop fighting.

Fraeport was their only coastal city; straddling a broad river coming down from the mountains and emptying into the massive expanse of Black Iron bay. Navigating to the city was a mortal affair; rock shoals hid below impenetrably dark water, and through the Iron Mouth – the single passage leading into the bay – torrents would flow fast with the tide, pushing mistimed ships onto shark-teeth rocks that hemmed the thin opening.

But ships did come; they traded in every ware of the empire, and in return they sailed with heavy chests within their vaults. Beneath the Northdell, seams of gold cut grey rock; their purity and magnitude beyond any else in the known world. Money flowed into the city, and with it they built high walls to keep the fierce sea, and all those beyond it, at bay.

But despite their prosperous fortune, the men of the Northdell saw the empire needed them far more than they themselves required masters. Their lands were naturally fortified, and terrifically inhospitable. What they lacked in technology they possessed ten-times over in fortitude.

Fraeport would not fall easy.

Gren inhaled the last of his grass smoke, placed the pipe into a small leather satchel and into his inner breast pocket.

"Sir" he offered a thin salute as he turned.

"Good luck, Marine" The officer said, not bothering to turn "Godspite to our enemy"

"And you, sir"

Gren walked the gangway, stepping past coils of fibrous, arm-thick rope lashed around mushroom cleats protruding like bulbous fungal growths from the deck.

"Marine" The Officer called. Gren stopped, turned, came to attention. There were sailors on deck; they all went tense, careful not to make eye contact.

"What was your name?"

"Sokolov. Anton Sokolov, Sir. They call me Gren. And yours, sir?"

The boy turned, looked back out to the sea. At least they still they had the weather.

The vociferous sea roared, asserting a mere fraction of its awesome, godlike power. Salt air bit Gren's nose, his eyes, lousy with shore grit and the stench of blacksalt and burning timber.

A wave reared back and pounded the ship: it was heavy and pitched Whitecliff like a babe's bathtoy. The broken water sparkled with flame light, against the sheer night-black. Gren looked up, white-gripping the guard line in one fist, the other on the thin brim of his Marine sunhelmet; high above, the mainsail was in tatters, and burning.

Dagger sharp, granite hard gusts of ice wind pummelled the barque. Crisp black patches of sailcloth tumbled as burned black leaves, sizzling as they touched the waterlogged deck.

The ship rolled, shook; the strake slapped and plunged into the black, knifing deep as a geyser of frozen, grey swell thundered upward, flooding over the weather deck.

A sergeant on the was barking orders: his deep bellow was lost against the howling wind. The maindeck was littered with dark shapes scrambling toward the gunwales, tossed with every hard wave strike against the vessel, each glistening below raining fireflies.

Where were the cannons? Gren saw none of the bombardment fleet, only Marine tenders depositing longboats into the swell; heard only the crash of the surf. The sea was too rough, he realised; the Gristol frigates had long guns that far exceeded the range of catapults and primitive Morley artillery, but all of that accounted for nothing in the face of the god's fury.

The ship heaved, rolled again; Gren came off his feet, swinging from the guardline as the pitch-covered deck became quicksand below him. His arm twisted, he was on his back, clinging tightly. Around Whitecliff, ink darkness was stabbed with fire; on the coal-black cliffs above the bay, Fraeport citadel's fortifications catapulted meteors of flame, arcing through the sky in long ballistic curves, crashing into the dark waves. Ships were already burning, weighed down by the impossible burden of flames, thrust down into the depths of the bay. A meteor came off the battlements, an ephemeral contrail cut the matt night sky, it overshot Whitecliff's mainmast by feet, harshly sibilant in the watersoaked air.

Behind, the night lit up: the missile gored into the galley Ocsauna, amidships. The ship was discharging its Marine complement: Men were limned with saffron fire against storm darkness. Powder kegs for the field guns were strewn across the main deck. The fire engulfed everything; a moment later a titanic thunderclap took upon the ocean as fire seized the blacksalt. Hot wind washed over Whitecliff: Ocsauna lifted into the sky as she detonated, splinters of wood spearing the sea like buck shot.

Gren bumped another body in the darkness; their skinny muskets – strapped firm against their backs - tangled, momentarily restraining them both. They twisted, desperate to free themselves. The other Marine was Coldford.

"Fuck me. We're on fire" Gren thought to say.

"I know" Coldford was wide eyed, coughing as a blast of seawater caught him mid-word. He hacked.

There feet slipped; the guardline was the only point of reference. They worked their way along, to Corporal Bassow.

"Corporal, the ship, we're on fire" Gren choked.

The barrel chested Marine spat "Gods wept, you backbirth, the entire sea is on fucking fire! Get your arses over the side!". One arm around a capstan, he grabbed Gren by the epaulet of his soaked uniform, firm in his massive paw, pulled him half over the gunwale. Gren stared down into the black and roaring hiss where the freeboard stabbed the waterline and churned with every colossal wave; the foam roared like the frothing jaws of some beast, ancient and terrible. A heavy rope net was strung out over the side, falling toward the gnashing jaws of the surf. A marine longboat lay in the water, pitching hard in the water. It was driftwood in the storm. More longboats were in the swell; gangs of ten or twelve heaved heavy oars, muscling them slowly toward the shoreline, through the wind's tirade of obscenities.

You're fucking joking me Gren turned to say, bit his tongue. His head spun to the Corporal.

"Get down there or ill throw you down there" he shot.

Gren looked back down. Every inch of him was telling him to run, to hide, to ball up in some dark corner. But training made his body react to command on instinct. He grabbed the netting, pulled himself forward, belly on the gunwale, then spun and kicked his feet into the netting like stirrups.

He went down.

Blackcoat Marines bobbed face-down in the churning water, stuck with foot-long fletched arrows, blood at their roots. Boats were upturned on the shore, marines below them sheltered like turtles, pushing forward as volleys of black darts spat in from the sea-wall battlements.

More longboats pulled toward the shore, Marines hauling their oars, straining against the black water. The beach was fifty yards from the surf to the city wall, pitted with rocks and sloppy sinkholes that reefed boots from men's feet. Twenty or so boats were landing together, oars vertical as they pushed up the sand, each discharging a dozen men. They charged the wall en mass.

Gren scanned the beach: of two thousand marine raiders, he could see no more than four hundred ashore. They were dimly backlit, light pouring from a dozen ships still burning as they sunk. They were slowly crushed against sentinel crags churning the water white, wood cracking and splintering as they broke open, visceral cavities spilling out into the flaying surf.

Between crenulations upon the walls edge, black shapes shifted into view. Flocks of arrows sliced the air, stabbing the charging soldiers down, pinning them to the ground. Piteous wails cut the sky.

Fraeport citadel loomed to the east, atop its high stone outcrop, shot black. The cadence of firebolts from its battlements were beginning to slow, now spearing out once every minute. The landing was in a cove; the waves had lost some of their ferocity, but the wind came just as strong. Ahead, a landing boat overturned in a sudden gust, casting Marines into the surf. A moment later and Gren's own vessel passed through the thrashing mass of troops each churning the water, pulled down by cutlass' and muskets and pounds of winter clothing, fighting to stay afloat with the last of their waning energy.

The city wall towered over the shore: it had been built into two parts, lineage clear from the waterline. The lower twenty-foot was seawall, built of bulbous granite slabs and founded far below the sand. Above, grey ashlar reached upward, forming fortifications.

A few more strokes: the longboat ran aground, sand and rough pebbles grating against her keel. Gren stood with his complement, hurdled the side. The freezing water was still well above his knees; his boots slipped on slime-slicked rocks. He clung the boatside, desperate to stay standing. Marines pushed the vessel together, up out of the water; turned it over. The blackcoats clambered below, held the shell against their backs like a cockroach carapace on a blur of legs, skittering across the dull sand. Arrows hammered the hull, flagellating the whitewashed teak, standing like barbed spines.

"Ladders up" someone was shouting. The boat hull was swung on its side as a barricade against the intensifying fusillade; it shuddered with each impact. City defenders were hurling rock slabs down over the wall, diving into the sand its base. Ladders were carried in each longboat, hastily roped end on end to make the height of the wall, leaning against the battlement in full view of the Freaport defenders.

A Marine non-com was issuing hasty orders: he gave a hand signal, signalled to load. Gren unslung his musket. Four feet long, cork in the barrel. In a leather pouch on his bandolier he had shot and blacksalt in a paper cartridge; he ramrodded the load, primed the pan. An arrow skipped off the lip of the boat, studded the ground a foot from Gren, sinking deep into the sand.

"Make ready!" The non-com shouted. Gren cocked the musket. "Choose your targets, reload and fire as they bare. Ill see you on the other side". The non-com had a line of blood coming from his hairline, tricking past sure, grey eyes.

Gren saw another blackcoat lock forward his bayonet – a foot-long pigsticker; he did the same. Gren could reload five times in a minute at his fastest pace, could hit a man at one hundred yards.

The non-com poked his head out from cover. A sharp thwack and his body went stiff. The arrowhead stuck out the back of his skull, shaft through his eye socket.

Gren turned and shouted "Fire!"

The Marines all leaned out, took aim, fired.

A cackling ripple of gunshot ripped the air. White smoke and spray of sparks. Screams as lead ball found their mark, cutting flesh and shattering bone. Black shapes fell; bodies collapsed and tumbled from the battlements, spearing headlong into the ground with sickening speed. Several marines had a field gun in cover, ball round in the breach, trunnion angled high. The gunner chief reefed the trigger pull; a jet of fire speared into rock.

Men fell, screaming.

Marines charged the ladders, scrambling to make height in the confusion. Arrows belted in; they could be fired faster than bullets, but they each flew slow and were easily buffeted by the wind. When they did hit they just as easily ricocheted off metal belt buckles as stuck flesh. Gren had seen two marines with fletched shafts jutting from their bodies, apparently unaware of even being struck. Ballshot was heavy and fast; it was easy to aim and easier to fire. It killed what it hit.

Marines climbed quickly, already storming the battlements, fear their stimulant. Ugly thundercracks sounded as they hurdled between embrasure, lobbing blacksalt hand grenades, detonating with violent sprays of shrapnel. Gren reloaded his musket, gathered his fear, sprinted out from cover.

Arrows stuck from flesh and sand, clustered in tight copses like wood-stemmed reeds. The ground was soaked with blood, littered with bodies crawling and howling and silent. Wet smack; a blackcoat to his right was stabbed in the chest. He tumbled backward, gurgling blood from his mouth, gripping at the root of the shaft sticking from his torso. Gren reached a ladder; marines were bottlenecked at its base, queued with a strange order, continuing to fire as men ahead climbed fast. Gren made the rungs, Marine above him, another immediately below; he scuttled hand over hand.

An arrow passed over his head, he felt the air part and a fletch wipe his helmeted crown. A Marine below was gouged, fell back screaming. His cry was cut by a heavy, cracking thump as he reached the sand. The soldier above vanished, boots sliding between stone merlons. Gren reached up, felt a hand catch his own, pulling him through sawtooth crenulations.

Atop the curtain wall, Gren collapsed, back to the inner barricade.

Coldford's eyes caught him. Gren said "Where were you?"

Coldford was confused "I've been behind you since Whitecliff. You didn't know that?"

Gren excused his own inattention. He breathed heavy, hemmed by a cluster of Blackcoat raiders each frantically reloading their musketry. Every two-hundred yards the city wall fed into broad, rampart-topped towers, studded with parapeted protrusions allowing archers to enfilade onto the curtain wall itself, and down to the base of the seawall. Arrows were already beginning to hammer in; Gren cocked his flintlock and sighted a target, a dark shape suffused by torchlight. The musket barked and jumped in his grip; the figure reared and vanished behind the bulwark.

The wall-walk gangway was twenty-five feet across, littered with corpses. A blackcoat marine was face down with a yard-long blade sticking through his chest and from his back, slicked in gore; the rest wore a different uniform. Gren had not seen a Morley soldier from any distance; their battledress was plain, studded tanned leather for chest armour, steel cabasset helmets that lay around them like metal bowls. All had long beards of knotted brown or fire red. The blacksalt grenades had cut them down, dashing their faces and necks with deep rents that bled profusely, and dug black holes across their torsos, like burning ash poured upon white parchment. They stunk of burned hair and ruined flesh.

Gren turned and peered over the barricade; the city wall's inner bulwark was three-foot high and lacked sawtooth defences. Beyond the wall was Fraeport's downside: a warren of smyths, thatchers, taverns and urban stables piled upon each other, cut by twisted, narrow, mud-lined alleys into a nightmarish labyrinth. The downside sprawled far beyond sight.

Each Marine reloaded. A corporal had made it to the battlements, found himself ranking over a platoon plus of grime-faced privates; archers were in a dominating position, firing from defilade onto the wall-walk from the closest wall-tower. The corporal flashed a hand signal – the ragtag Marine platoon raised to its feet and charged along the gangway. A heavy oaken door separated the walk from the tower innards, a tiny spitting window in its face allowed defenders to see beyond, and fire arrows along the rampart: the Marines crowded around the narrow postern, muskets covering as two advanced forward. They nodded to each other – the first leant in and jammed the muzzle of his musket through the window, fired. The second had a goose-egg grenade, primed it with a sharp twist of the fuse and posted it through window, himself sheltering in a ball. A moment before a sharp stab of dust and gunsmoke jetted from the window and below the door, coupled with a hard muted thud, like a granite slab dropped on flat rock from height.

"Go open it" the Corporal said. It took a moment for Gren to realise that the order was for him. The Corporal had a breaking charge in one hand, long fuse coiling away like a little girl's pigtail braid; Gren took it, the Corporal nodded.

Gren had only seen a charge used once: it had a length of twine, which allowed him to set it to the door latch. The marines were all moving back, at least fifty foot along the wall-walk, staying low. Gren took a match, lit the fuse, and ran. He didn't cover twenty feet before the charge went. A titanic firecracker swallowed the air whole and spat it back; scalding hot. Gren went down on his face, cracked his brow; a dragons breath of pitch smoke and debris blew out in volcanic gush. Footbeats were around him almost instantly: Gren turned to see a gaping wound where the door had been, Marines charging the breach. He went in after them.

Beyond the door the tower was lit by torches; a spiral staircase wound up to the tower rampart, and down into the outer bailey. The air was furnace hot inside; it stunk of sweat and seared flesh. The stair was designed to impair a climbing force, and aid a descending one; it had not been designed to defend from musket-armed raiders. Marines hurled blacksalt grenades down the stairs at a charging band of Morley militia; one bomb detonated beneath a mans feet, turning his legs to vapour and rocketing his torso into the roof with a hard slap. Gren went up.

He almost fell on three bodies on the stairs up, stuck through with bayonet and bullet wounds, blood pooling on each step before tricking down to the one below. Gren made the roof; hard wind struck him, cold and sharp. More bodies littered the ground, and a dozen marines held three Morley at musket-point, each shouting barbaric insults in their furious language. One of the militia stepped forward and muskets fired: two militia dropped instantly, the other grabbed his neck, streaming blood. A big marine raider cracked him in the face with the butt of his musket, pushed him against the rampart then picked him up by the legs, dumping him over the lip. The Morley failed to scream, just spun away into darkness.

Gren could see over the bay; the sea still bucked with heavy wind, but few ships could be seen now, those burning had sunk, the rest retreating beyond the range of the Citadel catapult. In the gloom there were other shapes though; long, low to the waterline. There was a cannon flash from one; the sound echoed a moment later before a ball hit the citadel wall with a crack of metal on stone. The storm had subsided enough to commence the naval bombardment, although it would still take time before they could place their shots exactly where they aimed.

Blackcoats were pouring musket shots down onto the wall-walk below, scattering the militia archers still brave enough to camp there before training their volleys toward the next tower. The corporal was with them; he sighted the tower and more arrows coming in from the downside, now sprawled at their feet. He ordered two Marines assemble the Mortar-launcher.

Gren had not seen the device before – it looked to be a hollow tube built around a steel-armed crossbow. The cylindrical metal housing formed the body of the weapon, encasing the string release and bolt groove, string running through a channel cut along both sides of the tube. The back end was welded shut, bipod legs from its open end extended with pins and allowed the tube's angle to be changed through an arc. A marine carried it on his back, slung like a musket, armed with a pistol: the device would've had to weigh more than a hundred pounds. That marine didn't even carry ammunition for the weapon – a second raider had a leather sack over his back; as the first marine sighted the crossbow-tube with a folding leaf on the side of the tube, the second pulled metallic ostrich eggs from the satchel. On striated outer shell was a single key hole, as if each were some chest contain gold or…something else. Something glowing white from inside.

"Gods damn it; there are Militia on that rooftop!" The Corporal shot; every Marine on the rampart was transfixed by this strange tube-weapon and its equally odd ammunition.

Militia shadows were on the Downside rooftops below, swarming behind chimney stacks and low walls to launch a dense murder of arrows at the Marines. Gren steadied his musket on the lip of the bulwalk and the Blackcoats fired in a sudden volley, blacksalt singing the nostrils, ballshot cutting down militia silohettes where they hid. Gren sat back, reloaded his Musket.

"Ready!" The Mortar-marine shouted.

The Corporal turned to him: "Church at the far end of the main street".

Gren had seen the church; two tall spires clear despite the shifting light. A mass of figures stood there, more than forty-shapes, armoured helmets and pikes defining their silhouettes; they were ready to charge the wall, ready to defend their city.

"Range two hundred, a crowd in the street" Mortar-man called, sighting in his weapon. The bead lay upon four Militia beyond the Muskets good range, lobbing arrows with longbows. There was no decency amongst these mountain folk, Gren had been taught strenuously, They will use women and young-ones to fool you, just to shank you from behind. They will use Chapels as storehouses or Forts, with their belfries and heavy walls.

"Crowd in the street" The ammo bearer returned; he had a key around his neck, inserted it into the metal egg, wound it a precise number of times.

The Mortar man reefed a charging handle, sliding down the face of the tube from top to bottom, the string pulled taught, arms straining against the terrific force of the bow. It sounded a solid metallic snap as the weapon was primed. The two Mortar Marines caught each other's eye, nodded. The entire Marine complement was spellbound by the spectacle.

The ammo bearer placed the egg over the mouth of the tube: dropped it in. A half second later, the Mortar man pressed on a triggering leaver. The crossbow discharged with a heavy thud, jumped on the gangway; ostrich egg shot out and vanished into dark sky.

A white flash washed the city. Gren's vision stained, as if he looked directly into the midday sun.

The crowd became nothing.

Each mortar carried sprung coils, unwinding fast like demented toys as they flew. At the end of their hasty mechanical fuse, a hammer would strike against blacksalt and the rivets binding the shell of the bomb would burst, the sphere's skin peeling like fruit. A glowing vial of whale oil stood at its heart; the vial shattered, energetic fluid flooding over a wrapped copper anode. Voltage funnelled into a diaelectric condenser. In a half second the capacitance filled; a gate opened and raw energy flooded the dense network of glass-lined arc filaments.

The mortar discharged; a single, brutal flash blinded the air. Lightning speared down in an umbrella, splashing the huddled mass. Bodies desiccated as electric charge poured through hair and skin and blood and bone. Visceral cavities collapsed, Fluid became steam, flesh was burned paper.

The crowd burst as a cloud of ash.

"Godfuck…" Gren breathed. Already wind carried the ash, carried it away; dark stains were left on the cobbled ground.

A scream pieced the storm; somehow something still lived down there.

G'day,

Had some time off work, and wanted to have a little write after playing through Dishonored again.

I created a backstory for Sokolov, trying to see why he was the way he was. The complete narrative will probably not be written, as I have to go back to work tomorrow, although if I have time I may give it a shot.

Essentially, Sokolov was a soldier during the Morley insurrection when he first sees the devastating power of the Whale Oil. Mopping up after the final battle, he meets Roseburrow - the weapons maker - who is broken by the images he sees: the bodies of Morley burned by his creations. Sokolov returns to Dunwall and carries on his work, knowing that despite dark implications of this technology, it saved lives and will ultimately lift the Empire toward Renaissance.

Essentially it was a study of teleology (Sokolov) vs Deontology (Roseburrow). That said, all I wrote was people being butchered so who knows?

Enjoy!