Frostywild
Member
So in Deadlock lore there is an Island called Cadenza. This island was controlled by the Fairfax corporation (an occult arms manufacturer) before being taken over by the United States Government. This seemed very similar to the United States Annexation of Hawaii, which gave me the idea for a Character in Deadlock. So at the risk of getting a bit too close to real world politics I’m going to write out my idea for a Character based on real events. Why, because I think it would be interesting!
Some disclaimers, I’m not going to get too into the history, if you want to know more I recommend reading books on the subject. Cadenza is a fictional place and could be made into anything, and doesn’t necessarily need to accurately represent any real life group or location. This whole character is more about parallels I noticed from what we know of the lore.
Some background for Cadenza, we don’t have any. I’m not sure how much of the lore of Cadenza has been decided on (probably not much) so I’m going to not make up too much and try to extrapolate what I can from in game and some possibilities based on real life events. Right now all that is known is that at some point Fairfax Industries had sovereignty over the Island of Cadenza until the United States Government passed a law that made Cadenza the 50th state of the United States (Instead of Hawaii which is the real life 50th state). In one of the conversations between Mcginnis and Haze, Mcginnis implies that Nathanial Fairfax, the owner and CEO of Fairfax Industries, knew that he would not be able to control Cadenza forever and was just waiting for the Laws to catch up, and that on some level he wanted to be known as the person who brought in the 50th state. We don’t really know what Fairfax got from controlling Cadenza, there could be a rare resource on the island, it could have just been a big company town or city that Fairfax controlled, anything.
For the sake of not making this a giant history lesson I’ll keep it brief. On Hawaii there were a lot of business interests from the United States including US born plantation owners on Hawaii that wanted more control to expand sugar plantations, as that was the major export at the time, so these business interests supported certain members of the local population and missionaries into government offices until they gained a large enough coalition to launch a coup against the monarchy, creating a provisional government that five years later became a territory of the United States and eventually the real life 50th state. To be clear this was all part of the plan, making Hawaii part of the US was important for the sugar plantation owners as many of them were from the United States and wanted their ownership of land in Hawaii protected by the United States.
This can lead us to some ideas as to why Fairfax industries wanted to control Cadenza, there could be some supernatural resource on the island that’s incredibly valuable, and Fairfax industries, as an arms dealer, would be better equipped to occupy an island. Possibly with the help of mercenaries (Wrecker). The United States, wanting an American Country to continue to control this resource would Annex the island.
So now we go into the character, in real life the Monarch at the time was Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was overthrown. After the end of the Monarchy the Queen lived the rest of her life as a private citizen and wrote a biography. There was a small failed attempt to reinstate the monarchy but the Queen was not a part of it. If you would like to know more about this I would recommend her biography “Hawaii’s story by Hawaii’s Queen”
Taking from what is known from history here’s what could be possible for a character. The Queen of Cadenza having been deposed some time ago by Nathanial Fairfax and his corporation, learning about the Patrons goes to New York as a desperate attempt to return Cadenza to its people (or maybe to regain their power, there are many ways to play this).
There is one more consideration before I get into a moveset which is “what is Cadenza like?”. This is important because this character will probably represent the Culture of the island before Fairfax showed up and would probably influence their moveset (especially, to use some Magic The Gathering Parlance, this is a top-down character rather than a bottom-up character, which is to say this is a lore first character rather than mechanics first).
So for this move set I'm going to use a concept I learned about while researching for this topic, the Oceanic concept of Mana. From what I was able to find Mana is a concept in Oceanic Cultures (Hawaii, Polynesia, New Zealand Maori) of spiritual energy that people can accumulate by doing things, usually things that affect other people, fighting, or helping others. (Disclaimer: I wasn’t able to find a lot of sources on this. In Maori culture it’s more like a word fro authority so many different cultures in that large region of the world have different interpretations of the concept.)
GUN: This could really be anything, however I’m partial to a slightly archaic semi - automatic rifle, for no other reason than it being underrepresented currently.
Ability 1 - Fishing Hook - Launch a fishing hook towards a spot, press the ability again to pull any enemies within a radius of the hook halfway towards the Queen. This does spirit damage on successful hook.
Ability 2 - Ride the Wave - The Queen moves forward on a wave of water, dealing spirit damage to enemies caught in the path
Ability 3 - Soothing Rain - Creates a rainfall around the Queen, healing and removing debuffs slowly over time. Adds a mana stack to the ultimate
Ability 4 - Eruption - Creates an erupting Volcano on a spot, enemies touching the volcano will take damage, the volcano will also shoot fireballs that will create damaging zones on random locations, enemies hit by the fireballs will take significant spirit damage and be stunned. This ability will also gain more power with Mana. Both fishing Hook and Soothing Rain will give Mana when they hit an enemy and ally respectively. Killing enemies will also give Mana. The idea I have for the numbers are 1 Mana for every enemy hit by Fishing Hook. 1 Mana for every second an ally in Soothing Rain, and 5 Mana for every enemy kill or assist. When this ability is used all Mana is used up with it.
Thank you for reading this if you did, and if anyone has ANY CRITICISMS of this post PLEASE let me know, I would love to improve myself in any way. (basically call me out if I did something wrong please)
Some disclaimers, I’m not going to get too into the history, if you want to know more I recommend reading books on the subject. Cadenza is a fictional place and could be made into anything, and doesn’t necessarily need to accurately represent any real life group or location. This whole character is more about parallels I noticed from what we know of the lore.
Some background for Cadenza, we don’t have any. I’m not sure how much of the lore of Cadenza has been decided on (probably not much) so I’m going to not make up too much and try to extrapolate what I can from in game and some possibilities based on real life events. Right now all that is known is that at some point Fairfax Industries had sovereignty over the Island of Cadenza until the United States Government passed a law that made Cadenza the 50th state of the United States (Instead of Hawaii which is the real life 50th state). In one of the conversations between Mcginnis and Haze, Mcginnis implies that Nathanial Fairfax, the owner and CEO of Fairfax Industries, knew that he would not be able to control Cadenza forever and was just waiting for the Laws to catch up, and that on some level he wanted to be known as the person who brought in the 50th state. We don’t really know what Fairfax got from controlling Cadenza, there could be a rare resource on the island, it could have just been a big company town or city that Fairfax controlled, anything.
For the sake of not making this a giant history lesson I’ll keep it brief. On Hawaii there were a lot of business interests from the United States including US born plantation owners on Hawaii that wanted more control to expand sugar plantations, as that was the major export at the time, so these business interests supported certain members of the local population and missionaries into government offices until they gained a large enough coalition to launch a coup against the monarchy, creating a provisional government that five years later became a territory of the United States and eventually the real life 50th state. To be clear this was all part of the plan, making Hawaii part of the US was important for the sugar plantation owners as many of them were from the United States and wanted their ownership of land in Hawaii protected by the United States.
This can lead us to some ideas as to why Fairfax industries wanted to control Cadenza, there could be some supernatural resource on the island that’s incredibly valuable, and Fairfax industries, as an arms dealer, would be better equipped to occupy an island. Possibly with the help of mercenaries (Wrecker). The United States, wanting an American Country to continue to control this resource would Annex the island.
So now we go into the character, in real life the Monarch at the time was Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was overthrown. After the end of the Monarchy the Queen lived the rest of her life as a private citizen and wrote a biography. There was a small failed attempt to reinstate the monarchy but the Queen was not a part of it. If you would like to know more about this I would recommend her biography “Hawaii’s story by Hawaii’s Queen”
Taking from what is known from history here’s what could be possible for a character. The Queen of Cadenza having been deposed some time ago by Nathanial Fairfax and his corporation, learning about the Patrons goes to New York as a desperate attempt to return Cadenza to its people (or maybe to regain their power, there are many ways to play this).
There is one more consideration before I get into a moveset which is “what is Cadenza like?”. This is important because this character will probably represent the Culture of the island before Fairfax showed up and would probably influence their moveset (especially, to use some Magic The Gathering Parlance, this is a top-down character rather than a bottom-up character, which is to say this is a lore first character rather than mechanics first).
So for this move set I'm going to use a concept I learned about while researching for this topic, the Oceanic concept of Mana. From what I was able to find Mana is a concept in Oceanic Cultures (Hawaii, Polynesia, New Zealand Maori) of spiritual energy that people can accumulate by doing things, usually things that affect other people, fighting, or helping others. (Disclaimer: I wasn’t able to find a lot of sources on this. In Maori culture it’s more like a word fro authority so many different cultures in that large region of the world have different interpretations of the concept.)
GUN: This could really be anything, however I’m partial to a slightly archaic semi - automatic rifle, for no other reason than it being underrepresented currently.
Ability 1 - Fishing Hook - Launch a fishing hook towards a spot, press the ability again to pull any enemies within a radius of the hook halfway towards the Queen. This does spirit damage on successful hook.
Ability 2 - Ride the Wave - The Queen moves forward on a wave of water, dealing spirit damage to enemies caught in the path
Ability 3 - Soothing Rain - Creates a rainfall around the Queen, healing and removing debuffs slowly over time. Adds a mana stack to the ultimate
Ability 4 - Eruption - Creates an erupting Volcano on a spot, enemies touching the volcano will take damage, the volcano will also shoot fireballs that will create damaging zones on random locations, enemies hit by the fireballs will take significant spirit damage and be stunned. This ability will also gain more power with Mana. Both fishing Hook and Soothing Rain will give Mana when they hit an enemy and ally respectively. Killing enemies will also give Mana. The idea I have for the numbers are 1 Mana for every enemy hit by Fishing Hook. 1 Mana for every second an ally in Soothing Rain, and 5 Mana for every enemy kill or assist. When this ability is used all Mana is used up with it.
Thank you for reading this if you did, and if anyone has ANY CRITICISMS of this post PLEASE let me know, I would love to improve myself in any way. (basically call me out if I did something wrong please)
