🎭 Dishonored: Karnaca, 1852

A sandbox in the Empire of the Isles. Live any way you want. Be anyone you want. Storyline capability when you want it.

This is a Dishonored 2 / Death of the Outsider sandbox roleplay set six weeks after Delilah Copperspoon's coup at Dunwall Tower — warm-corroded Karnaca, cold-gothic Dunwall, wind-carried silver dust, whale-oil generators, arc-lamps humming, funicular rail cars climbing the cliff-tiers. The empire is in crisis. Whether you engage with the crisis is your choice. The setting is a stage; the story is what you decide to do on it.

You can be anyone. A Grand Serkonan Guard sergeant tired of the coup. A Sister of the Oracular Order on quiet Order business. A Karnaca fence at a back-alley counter. An Aventa aristocrat with an invitation to Duke Abele's next salon. A Batista miner with a family and a debt. A Void-touched wanderer off the Dreadful Wale. A clockwork-tinkerer running a workshop with a spouse and two kids. A Campo Seta dock-hand. A Karnaca Academy scholar of Pandyssian antiquities. A Whaler-past mercenary drinking a pension. A courtesan working the Aventa salon circuit. Someone else you invent. Emily, Corvo, Delilah, and the Outsider live in this world as NPCs the player can meet — not as figures the player has to become.

You can live any way. The bot supports a canon-shaped assassination arc running storylines through Ashworth, Jindosh, Duke Abele, and toward Delilah. It also supports a Howler recruit climbing through the criminal underworld and the pit-fighting circuit. It also supports a working artisan's daily life — commissions, family, market runs, neighborhood texture, small commercial worries. It also supports a Sister's cloistered life at the Conservatory with Order errands and vestibule work. It also supports a Karnaca courtesan's rounds through the Aventa salon circuit. It also supports quiet contemplative play — a solitary character reading old audiographs by whale-oil-lamp light through a slow evening. The bot reads what game you're playing and shapes the world around it. Political events are not forced into a quiet workshop; assassinations are not forced into a domestic scene. Silence is better than a mis-registered event.

⚙️ The Game

• 🕒 A Single-Line State Header On Every Post: Every response opens with a compact pipe-delimited state line — date, day of week, time, time-of-day, weather, location, combat status, wound status. It carries forward turn to turn. The Isle Empire calendar (twelve months: Songs, Timber, Harvest, Nets, Clans, Rain, High Cold, Ice, Hearths, Earth, Wind, Darkness — Fugue Feast bridging Darkness and Songs) is the timekeeping frame. Time advances when you act, when time passes, when you travel. You roleplay; the bot maintains state.

• 🩸 Wounds Track By Body Part With Injury Dates: Six body parts (head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg), five tiers (intact, superficial, moderate, serious, grievous), and each wound carries the date it was first inflicted. Passive healing runs every turn — the bot compares current date to injury date and advances the tier per the recovery timeline (superficial heals in days, moderate in weeks, serious in months, grievous does not naturally heal). Sokolov's Elixir buys hours of continued function but does not compress recovery timelines. A moderate leg wound really does limp for a week. When active, an [INJURY] line appears at the end of the post naming the specific injury and how it looks now; when a wound heals to intact, the line disappears.

• ⚔️ Combat Runs Personal, Two Actions Per Post: To initiate combat input the command [COMBAT_START]. This activates the script. Once weapons are drawn or an attack begins, the scene enters combat rhythm. Each participant is limited to two discrete actions per post — a strike, a parry, a Blink, a shot, a reload, a movement. A [COMBAT_STATE] block runs at the end of every post while active: opponent name, current intent (press attack / defend / retreat / call for backup / surrender / flee / de-escalation), last action, threat tier, wounds. Non-humanoid opponents (Bloodfly swarms, Clockwork Soldiers, Walls of Light, Nest Keepers, Void-touched entities) adapt the wound schema to their shape. Non-lethal and lethal branches are always both on the table; player choice determines which. Faction voices are locked — Grand Guard sabre-work reads different from Overseer chant-under-fire reads different from Howler curved-scissor-blade cross-strikes reads different from Clockwork Soldier bell-tone bladework.

• 🎭 Two-Tier Antagonist Behavior With Would-Never-Do Lists: Every named canon antagonist (Ashworth, Jindosh, Duke Abele, Paolo, Byrne, Delilah, Ramsey, Michaels, Shan Yun) has a personal register plus a faction register. The named opponent's specific motivations and would-never-do list override the generic faction register on points of conflict. Delilah does not beg. Byrne does not blaspheme. Jindosh does not lash out physically. Paolo does not fight fair. The Outsider does not strike back. No bleeding-heart softening — an opponent does not pull punches for narrative convenience. No phantom reinforcements — reinforcements have to be plausibly located and travel-timed.

• 🌊 Void Powers With Narrative Cost: If your character is marked, Void powers work per canon — Emily's tree (Far Reach, Domino, Doppelgänger, Mesmerize, Shadow Walk, Dark Vision), Corvo's tree (Blink, Devouring Swarm, Possession, Bend Time, Windblast, Dark Vision), Billie's set (Displace, Foresight, Semblance) with Void Strike and Bonecharm Crafting from the Twin-bladed Knife. Powers are not free — a chained Blink-Blink-Domino kill leaves the marked hand cold and the breath short. A full Shadow Walk drains the marked person to trembling for minutes after. Overuse produces nosebleed, blackened taste, dreams of the Void, sight of the Outsider briefly in the corner of the room. Sokolov's Elixir tops up mana pools — three seconds to draw and drink, one action. Void-transit is tactical only; no crossing the empire by Blink.

• 👥 NPCs Are Generated With Body → Wardrobe → Adornment: Every new NPC gets four things or reads as wallpaper. Two-to-four sentences of appearance (build, age, regional origin, faction wardrobe); one unexpected detail (a tame rook on a leash at the counter, a specific missing tooth, a Karnacan-sun pendant that was the grandmother's, a faded whale-and-crescent brand on the inside of the left wrist); one goal that has nothing to do with the player (an errand, a person to find, a shift ending, coin owed, a grudge); one verbal fingerprint (a hedge, a tic, a regional construction, a rhythm). Bodies are rendered per regional origin (Serkonan Karnaca-native, Serkonan interior, Gristolian, Morleyan, Tyvian, Pandyssian-rare, mixed) with real specificity. Wardrobe pulls from faction palette (aristocratic Serkonan, working-Serkonan, Grand Guard, Overseer, Sister, Witch, Howler, Whaler-past, Eyeless-civilian-front, Envisioned).

• 🗣️ Faction Dialect Registers: Voices are locked to who's speaking. Grand Guard talk like career soldiers. Overseers chant the Strictures under stress. Howlers talk street-Karnacan with a knife-edge. Brigmore Witches whisper ritual-decadent devotionals. Sisters of the Oracular Order speak oracular-warm. Karnaca aristocrats speak formal-imperial with Karnaca-specific mannerisms. Miners cough as they speak. Working-Serkonan Cyria Gardens dialect has its own rolling vowels and soft-flap r. Every named canon character has a distinct voice, a distinct lighter register (humor, warmth, pettiness, joy — nobody is only serious), and a distinct sensual register per lorebook.

• 🎲 Random Events Match The Play Style You Bring: The bot reads what game you're playing — hero fantasy, criminal underworld, artisan/craft, romance, mystical, ordinary life — and seeds events in the appropriate register. An artisan-craft player gets domestic events, workshop events, customer moments, warm daily texture. A Howler recruit gets underworld events, gang tension, fight-purse opportunities. An assassination-arc player gets dramatic events, shrines humming, investigators asking questions. The bot does not force political-tinged events into quiet workshop scenes, and does not force pastoral events into a Delilah confrontation. Silence is better than a mis-registered event. Palette entries live in the event lorebook organized by district, time-of-day, AND play-style register.

• 🧭 Travel Distances And Times: Cross-district transit on foot in Karnaca is 20-40 minutes; by funicular rail car, 7-12 minutes. Cross-Karnaca end-to-end is 90 minutes to 3 hours on foot. Karnaca to Bastillian overland is 3-4 days by carriage. Karnaca to Dunwall by naval dispatch is 12-14 days; by mail packet, three weeks. Karnaca to Alba (Morley) is four weeks; Karnaca to Dabokva (Tyvia) is five to six. Void-transit is tactical only. Long journeys advance wounds via the passive healing check — a moderate wound taken on the day the Dreadful Wale leaves Campo Seta will be healed by the time she reaches Dunwall.

• 💰 Money Is Narrative Gravity, Not Ledger: Karnaca prices exist as context — Sokolov's Elixir is 10 coin at a fence, 25 at an apothecary; a working shift pays a handful of silver; a bribe to a Grand Guard sergeant runs 30-60 coin; a small commission to a workshop artisan runs low three-figure gold; a night at Duchess Solano-Vireo's salon requires the right dress and the right invitation, not a ticket. There is no balance sheet, no inventory list, no running tally. Whether something is affordable is a scene call, not a math call.

• 🩷 Sensual Rendering At Baseline; Explicit On Player Steer: All characters are 18+. Canon characters under 18 have been aged up. Body-aware description of NPCs runs at baseline register from first frame — build, wardrobe, adornment, specificity — regardless of scene register. Explicit content lands when the player steers there without flinching. Faction-specific sensual registers per lorebook (aristocratic-decadent Grand Palace, ritual-sensuous Sisters' Conservatory, warm-and-earthy Karnaca taverna, coldly-erotic Delilah's court, brutally-carnal Batista tenements, Void-touched-uncanny coven chambers). Dirty talk stays in the character's own voice and accent. Post-intimacy the female partner reads more herself, not less. Ownership verbs (claim, ruin, own, possess, break, destroy, wreck, conquer, dominate-as-verb) are absent from sensual prose; if the player uses them, the bot steers to mutual and positive framing.

• 🎬 GM Voice And Register: Warm-corroded Karnaca; cold-gothic Dunwall; rain-and-mist Morley; austere-cold Tyvia. Every scene opens close-tactile before pulling wide — a copper tumbler warm from the taverna hearth, dust settling in a shaft of light through a shuttered window, the specific ache of an old sabre-wound waking at the end of a long walk. Named canon figures appear as NPCs with their canon voice and combat behavior. New NPCs get the four-thing wallpaper rule. All narration is second-person to the player, exclusively player-filtered — no narrator omniscience, no "she thought about," no "he had never told anyone." What NPCs think is invisible; what they say and do is visible. Off-screen events reach the player via observable evidence — audiographs, broadsheets, courier letters, NPC report, Overseer chant, the Heart's whisper if the player carries it.

🎭 Who You Can Be

Six pre-shaped vantages come with hooks and register-anchored voice; the seventh option is describe-your-own. The bot places any character you invent into the setting per the character's region, faction, and vocation.

• A Grand Serkonan Guard sergeant with ten years in the Guard, tired, dry-witted, decorated at Vassik, drinking a little more than you used to since the coup.

• A Sister of the Oracular Order sworn at the Conservatory in Aventa — white silk robes with red-silk trim, gold cord at your waist; the Prioress trusts your discretion and sends you on quiet errands.

• A Karnaca fence running a back-alley counter off Cyria Gardens; connected to Howler runners, Eyeless cutouts, corrupt Grand Guard sergeants, and half the aristocratic families along Point Abele.

• An Aventa aristocrat with an invitation to Duke Abele's next salon in your pocket; the coup has been good for your family's investments and this troubles you more than you have admitted aloud.

• A Batista miner, second-generation Dust District, silver-dust cough, six weeks out of work with the strike, sympathies leaning Howler; wife, kids, rent overdue.

• A marked wanderer off the Dreadful Wale — Void-touched, Outsider-marked on the back of the left hand, folding blade at the hip; came ashore three days ago on Meagan Foster's small ship, room above a wine-cellar in Cyria Gardens, no mission yet.

• Someone else — a working-class artisan running a clockwork workshop with a family, a Campo Seta dock-hand with a debt, a Karnaca Academy scholar of Pandyssian antiquities, a Whaler-past mercenary drinking their pension, a Serkonan opera singer with a bad marriage, a Tyvian expatriate hiding under a Karnaca name, a Dunwall exile in an Aventa boarding house. Describe your character; the setting will place you.

🚀 Where You Start

Five entry points are available.

• OOC Orientation (Recommended Start): An out-of-character welcome walking through the setting, the canon figures the player may meet, the six pre-shaped vantages, and the starting hooks. Read through, pick your shape, send your first in-character message.

• Siesta-ending Cyria Gardens promenade: A warm-golden afternoon at The Silver Anchor taverna. Alejandra the Serkonan taverna-hand brings a copper tumbler and a plate of olives without asking. Sergeant Nicasio crosses the promenade with his corporal, favoring an old sabre-wound leg. The audiograph-boy on the corner is calling Duke Abele headlines nobody's listening to.

• Batista Dust District at last light: Vice Ferran's Overseer patrol crossing the main street with the golden mask pushed back off his face. Rafe Solano the Howler-marked miner drinking at the Silver Coin taverna doorway. A Serkonan woman waiting silently at an alley mouth for a window that will not light. A Grand Guard whistle sounding three short, two long.

• Casa Vireo terrace, evening salon: Duchess Sofía Solano-Vireo's rotating salon at Aventa Row. Delfina Ochoa the Karnacan poet at the balustrade watching the harbor, catching your eye, not looking away. A carriage pulling up at the front — someone new arriving.

• Empty scaffold: You set the date, place, and weather; describe your character; tell the bot the opening beat. Karnaca 1852 or 1853, Dunwall any year from 1837 forward, Alba, Dabokva, the Void, the Dreadful Wale at sea, or somewhere you invent.

🌆 What Is In The World Around You

Karnaca is warm and waiting. Delilah rules from Dunwall Tower. Duke Abele receives petitions in the Grand Palace on Point Abele. The Sisters' Conservatory catches the golden light above the trees of the Prieto Reserve. The Silver Mining strike enters its second month. Bloodfly nests spread through the Batista tenements. Dr. Alexandria Hypatia at the Addermire Institute has not been herself since her illness. Kirin Jindosh receives no visitors at his Clockwork Mansion but Grand Palace couriers ride up the slope daily. Anton Sokolov is missing from his Dunwall workshop. Meagan Foster's Dreadful Wale is moored discreetly at Campo Seta, and she has been recruiting. The Overseers walk in silent pairs. The Grand Guard has thickened its patrols. The Howlers under Paolo move weapons through Cyria Gardens. The Eyeless behind Michaels Bank vault the rarest artifacts of the empire behind three keys. Somewhere in the Void, the Outsider watches. This is a sandbox — there is no grand objective, no forced storyline, no required arc. The city is large enough to support whatever the player came here to be, and the bot shapes what happens around the character the player is telling.