Tagged as Daud, The Whalers

Contributors:

Hiaen

Thinking about Daud and his relationship with "living with other people"

I have many thoughts that I will try to organize

Because at first he obviously doesn't strike as a people person at all. He's rude, grumpy, arrogant, can't do a full conversation without slipping a threat in, his job is literally to kill people, he has a very pessimistic outlook on the human condition.

But on the other hand, he created the Whalers when he didn't really need them at all. Financially speaking, he could likely get very rich by working on his own. He's so above the general population in terms of skills that he doesn't need any kind of protection either. In fact, the Whaler's presence are more of a threat than anything - he himself expects to be killed by one of them. And the assassin job isn't the kind that requires a whole team - as opposed to running a bootleg elixir operation or a smuggling ship, for example.

And even if he were to assemble the Whalers to make his job easier, he had no need to go that far in the organisation. We see they have training grounds, a library, weapon stocks, they probably eat there too if we go from the amount of food littered around. This is going far beyond you'd expect someone like Daud to go for the simple sake of practicalities.

More importantly: Daud has the Whalers living in the same building that he sleeps in. And while his living quarters are a bit isolated from the rest, it's nowhere near secure - he doesn't have a fucking roof - and Whalers getting in and out seems to be normal. There's literally a Whaler who comes to wake him up (in low chaos, Daud doesn't give any sign that this is anything but the usual).

Another telling thing: Daud shares his magic. The fact that he choses to do so can be chalked down as it being useful, but the simple fact that he has the ability in the first place is rather telling. Neither Corvo nor Emily, who we'd expect to be much more sociable than Daud, have the Arcane Bond.

On another hand, the Whalers are literally the only ones he lets that close. He spends his whole life distancing himself from the rest of the humanity, both physically and symbolically. He lives in the Flooded District - the most isolated place in Dunwall, especially during the plague. His whole philosophy relies on him standing above society, a neutral force, obeying only money, above judgements of "good" and "evil". And when his life comes down crashing and he separates himself from the Whalers, he goes beyond exiling himself and goes full-hermit, barely talking to a human being for years.

Additionally, he's. Well. He's just bad at communication. Most of the dissent in his ranks, and especially Billie's betrayal, would have been avoided (or at least mitigated) if he'd been a bit more open to the Whalers instead of becoming withdrawn for fear of appearing weak.

So conclusion: Daud doesn't like people as a general rule, likes distancing himself from humanity, but he still craves company. He enjoys being surrounded by carefully selected people, including in his living space. Independently from whether he wants to be around someone or not, he's straight-up bad at proper communication.