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The Abbey of the Everyman
In general
The state religion of the Empire of the Isles, the Abbey of the Everyman is a fanatically misotheistic religion dedicated to opposing the influence of the Void at any cost.
- Burn the Witch!: While they're never shown actually burning anyone at the stake, it's heavily implied and Overseers often reference the trope by name.
- Cessation of Existence: They consider this a good thing. They hold that a life lived in accordance to the Scriptures will ensure that the soul will dissipate into nothingness, while the souls of sinners and nonbelievers are instead stranded in the Void for eternity.
- Church Militant: Both branches of the abbey seen in the franchise are trained in combat.
- Corrupt Church: The worst of them are solidly this. High Overseer Campbell in the first game even goes out of his way to break every one of the Seven Strictures each day.
- Devil, but No God: The Abbey doesn't venerate any deities - it opposes the Outsider (who is considered the God of Evil) and instills the Seven Scriptures that regulate everyday behaviour. The closest the Abbey has to a saint is its founder Benjamin Holger, but in general they oppose ANY religious worship, believing all supernatural forces are incomprehensible and/or evil.
- Does Not Like Magic: As all magic in the setting stems from the Void, even harmless bonecharms are enough to get someone burned at the stake for heresy.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The entire faction is dissolved off-screen by Emily in The Veiled Terror.
- Hypocrite: Possibly. The abbey relies upon the predictions of the Oracular Order to help make decisions. Seeing as the Void is the only known source of any kind of supernatural ability in this setting, it's likely that these predictions originate from the very thing their entire religion is dedicated to opposing.
- Knight Templar: They react violently to any trace of void worship or witchcraft. In Dishonored 2, one of the Serkonan Overseers can be heard sharing a story about how he killed a little girl for having simply found a shrine to the Outsider somewhere.
- Naytheist: The Abbey does not recognize any benevolent deities. They exist purely to oppose the influence of the Outsider.
- Scary Amoral Religion: Their rule is totalitarian, their methods are brutal, and their appearances are ghastly. The Abbey preaches that the Void is a terrifying and monstrous place, and that most of what is unfamiliar in the world will try to kill them, though they aren't entirely wrong to think so. There is evidence that they weren't always so severe, and it's made clear on many occasions that the people of the Isles find genuine religious comfort in the Abbey's sermons.
- Villain Has a Point: While they are violent and overzealous, it's worth keeping in mind that the Void is dangerous and is shown to drive people to madness on multiple occasions, with the most prominent Void-worshipers seen in the entire franchise being Delilah's coven, Granny Rags, and the Eyeless. This is even aknowledged by some people in-universe, such as Daud in both his private journal in the first game DLC and in Death of The Outsider.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Most members of the Abbey do genuinely believe that everything they do is necessary to keep the people of the Isles safe from the malign influence of the Void.
- Would Hurt a Child: Young children that the Abbey believes show promise will be send to the Abbey to undergo a series of tests. If they succeed, they become an Overseer or an Oracle, depending on their gender. If they fail they are never seen again, and what happens to them is a closely-guarded secret within the Abbey.
- The overseers also aren't afraid to kill children for heresy. One Serkonan overseer relates a story of a young girl who made the mistake of asking an overseer too many questions about Outsider worship, admitting when confronted that she had been visiting a shrine she had discovered in an abandoned sawmill. According to the story, she was locked in an iron cage and dumped into the sea.
Overseers
Warfare Overseers
The Heart: Wherever the Overseers go, common folk tremble, and brother accuses brother.
The warrior-priests of the Abbey of the Everyman. They wear masks that protect them from headshots and carry pistols and grenades. Some also carry "music boxes" that can counteract Void powers.
- Anti-Magic: The Music Boxes are able to render bearers of the Outsider's mark powerless, apparently by making use of "fundamental mathematical principles."
- Church Militant: As their name implies, they're as combat-focused as they are religious.
- Church Police: Which is why they can be treated as interchangeable with the city watch at times.
- Corrupt Church: Played with. High Overseer Campbell seemingly makes the Abbey a textbook example of this trope, as he's a hypocritical and falsely pious Sinister Minister who secretly indulges in a variety of sinful pleasures and collects occult artifacts. The fact that he blackmails a number of his fellow Overseers by keeping a record of their own vices indicates there are others like him. However, most rank and file Abbey clergymen are sincere in their beliefs, as are both Overseer leaders seen in the second game.
- Elite Mook: The ones that carry music boxes certainly are, as they can easily cripple your options in combat, but the masks even the lower ranks wear do make them more of a threat than the average guard.
- Enemy Mine: In the second game, the Overseers firmly oppose Delilah and don't play along with her puppet Luca Abele either. Still, there's the slight problem of Corvo and Emily also being Outsider-affiliated magic-users (unless doing a Flesh and Steel run), which makes the possibility of lasting alliance with the Overseers unlikely, however, this actually doesn't affect the game's ending.
- Expy: Of the Hammerites from Thief.
- The Extremist Was Right: The Overseers' persecution of occult practices may seem harsh and indeed affects quite a lot of innocents, but black magic is real in this world, and, with the possible exception of Low Chaos protagonists, is used purely for evil purposes. The second game displays a witch coven's victory against the Overseers, and its aftermath is not pretty.
- Grey-and-Grey Morality: Their war with the Howlers in Karnaca. The Overseers are a bunch of ruthless witchhunters, while the Howlers are a murderous street gang, but they're both trying to make the city a better place in the face of Duke Abele's debased tyranny. Most of the conflict simply stems from the leader of the Howlers using an arcane artifact.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: In Dishonored 2. They're still Knight Templars who are hostile to the protagonist for most of the game, but they've stamped out most of their Corrupt Church tendencies from the first game, are viciously opposed to the Big Bad, and can even outright ally with the player under the right circumstances.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Those Overseers with music boxes can nullify your ability apart from doing massive damage themselves. Normal backstab and choke still work normally though. Still, that huge music box will give you a massive Interface Screw should you decide to carry them away to be hidden.
- Malevolent Masked Men: With their scary, scowling masks and foul tempers, the Overseers are rarely bringers of good news, even if you don't practice forbidden magic. More so in High Chaos and when directly trying to kill you, of course.
- Palette Swap: It seems that the Overseers of each nation in the Empire wear different uniforms, with distinct masks:
- The Overseers of Gristol in Dishonored wear grey jackets with fluted sleeves, and wear gilded masks in the shape of a snarling human face.
- The Overseers of Serkonos in Dishonored 2 wear relatively light white and black clothing to compensate for the region's heat, with thick workman's gloves and utilitarian black masks that lack armor around the mouth. The uniform also looks more like something the average worker would wear, minus the aprons and mask.
- While not seen, Emily indicates that the Overseers of Morley wear masks similar to the dentistry mannequin heads occasionally found in Dishonored 2.
- Pet the Dog:
- A somewhat literal example, many of them really do care for their wolfhounds. One can be seen sweet talking to a sick wolfhound in a kennel, and you can find a note where one refused even the idea of having the wolfhounds strapped with bomb vests no matter what the Chaos Level is.
- The heart will sometimes mention selfless or kind things done by certain overseers, such as selflessly charging into a burning building to save a boy trapped inside.
- Putting on the Reich: An interesting, purely visual example. Lore-wise, while stern and oppressive, the Overseers in fact are LESS racist than guards or civilians, caring for all of their flock, and, in the second game, including people of all colors in their ranks. However, the visual style of their Dunwall chapter has certain Nazi vibes, from attire (which, save for masks, appears to be based on German uniforms of early-mid 20th century) to architecture. In particular, the High Overseer's office, with its regal, pompous marble main hall, militaristic kennels and barracks, barbed wire, ominous dark red banners hanging everywhere, Sigil Spam and torture rooms reminiscent of nearly modern laboratories looks like something straight out of Wolfenstein games.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Marginally in the second game. While still not saints, they actively oppose Delilah's government and attempt to remove her from power, as opposed to Campbell's Corrupt Church in the previous game.
- The Witch Hunter: Their order's primary purpose is to hunt down and eliminate heretics who worship the Outsider and practice magic.
- The Worf Effect: Towards the end of Dishonored 2, you learn that a fairly large army of Gristol Overseers, supported by music boxes and wolfhounds, attempted to storm Dunwall Tower to depose Delilah and her coven. By the time you get there, they've been slaughtered to a man, because they hadn't anticipated the presence of Jindosh's Mecha-Mooks, who function without the aid of void magic.
The Oracular Order
The Oracular Order is a division of the Abbey of the Everyman that consists entirely of women. Though its chapels are not as numerous as those of the Overseers, the Oracular Order is spread far and wide, with operations in Gristol and Serkonos.
- Amazon Brigade: Despite being expected to mostly remain cloistered in their chapels to study and make predictions, they are just as trained in combat as their male counterparts.
- Badass Bookworm: They're surprisingly dangerous combatants for a groups of scholarly nuns. Their heavy maces deal high damage and stagger the player even when blocked.
- Blind Seer: Subverted. They are sometimes called the "Blind Sisters," there's an in-universe rumor that they are blind, and their appearance in Dishonored: Death of the Outsider has them wear blindfolds, but they can actually see just fine.
- Carry a Big Stick: Each wields a large mace as her weapon, the end of which is shaped to look like an open eye.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: In their pursuit of wisdom, some Sisters choose to ingest hallucinogenic substances along with their studies.
- Phony Psychic: While some of them do possess genuine oracular abilities, most just engage in enough study and debate with one another that their mundane predictions can pass as prophecy.
Delilah's Coven/Brigmore Witches
Witches
Voiced by: Abby Craden and Colleen O'Shaughnessey
The Heart: She longs to be Delilah's favorite. She will dance naked on grass slick with the blood of the enemy.
The members of Delilah's coven.
- Always Chaotic Evil: The closest Dishonored has to this trope, apparently. While some witches have sympathetic backgrounds (including, ironically, both Delilah and Breanna) and/or redeeming qualities (such as the sense of sisterhood and caring for each other), as a faction they are dedicated to openly defying all things moral and right, and thriving on misery of others - rather than simply killing their opponents, witches often indulge in torture, humiliation, blasphemy and deceit, quite openly enjoying the wrongness of it. A scene where two witches fondly recall murdering an old lady after making her watch them trashing her collection of keepsakes takes the cake, but is hardly the only example.
- Amazon Brigade: Delilah isn't the type to recruit men.
- Body Horror: Zigzagged. Most witches are young and physically attractive, but the effects of supernatural abilities transforming their bodies are... disturbing, to say the least. And some of them seem to be permanent.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Some of the witches are rather... spacey. Rather than be amusing, it serves to highlight their insanity and make them creepier.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In Dishonored 2, their skin and the roses on their outfits change color when in combat. The exact color change denotes what kind of abilities that particular witch can utilize.
- De-power: Their power comes from Delilah, which means that her defeat causes the group to dissolve. Her return in Dishonored 2 coincides with various witches throughout the Isles suddenly regaining their powers.
- The witches at the Royal Conservatory in 2 draw their powers from Breanna Ashworth, who seems to function as a sort of locus for Delilah's presence (due to the coven leader herself being in Dunwall). If you tamper with Breanna's rituals and cause her to lose her powers, all the witches under her command simultaneously lose their powers as well and fall unconscious.
- In Death of the Outsider, the witches have lost their powers once again in the wake of Delilah's second defeat. They aren't idle this time, however, siding with the Eyeless cult in Karnaca and giving them instructions on how to properly create potions and bone charms. They fight alongside the other Eyeless mooks, but without Delilah's void magic they're no stronger than the street thugs.
- Elite Mooks: While not especially durable or dangerous with a sword, Brigmore Witches can teleport like Whalers and boast a slew of unique magical attacks, which can catch an inexperienced player off-guard.
- Flechette Storm: Witches can launch a magical spray of thorns as a ranged attack.
- Foe Romance Subtext: Some of them are said to admire Daud "like stupid schoolgirls" and others will flirt while also threatening to eat him.
- Garden Garment: An easy way to tell if someone's a witch is to notice the vines and flowers covering her outfit.
- Green and Mean: Once alert, their skin will turn green, and won't change back until they're idle, unconscious, or dead.
- Green Thumb: They share Delilah's plant-based powers.
- Homoerotic Subtext: They address each other as "dear" or "my love", and occasionally ask if another wants to join them for a swim later.
- Hot Witch: Subverted. Witches certainly dress provocatively, but they're dishevelled and filthy, and the marks of Delilah's magic gives them ghoulish markings, discolored skin, and plant matter fused to their flesh.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Not only do they threaten to eat Daud's heart and drink his blood, you can find an Overseer who's been forced to do this as a form of torture.
- Mook Carryover: In Death of the Outsider, the remaining Brigmore Witches have integrated themselves into the Eyeless cult in Karnaca as advisors and instructors. However, without their powers, they're little more than common Mooks.
- Necromancer: They keep undead wolfhounds as pets and guards.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Some of them will say some rather suggestive things while possessed by Corvo.
- Pretender Diss: In Death of the Outsider, most of the witches display barely-concealed contempt for the rank-and-file members of the Eyeless. The witches once wielded genuine void magic, while most Eyeless mooks are superstitious street thugs who rely on crude potions and bone charms to get stronger.
- Super Powered Mooks: Delilah's Arcane Bond gives them Blood Briar, as well as the ability to shoot thorns, a sonic scream, and make clothing out of plants.
- Super-Scream: They have a scream attack that works similar to Windblast.
- Teleport Spam: They Blink around the areas they patrol, and while in combat.
- Theme Naming: Many of them have names ending in the sound 'ah'- e.g. Parmelia, Tamina, Carina, Orlanda, Breanna.
- Touched by Vorlons: Through Delilah, they receive Outsider powers.
- Uncleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness: It certainly cannot be said that they smell of flowers. Their lairs, no matter how upscale they originally were, are quickly trashed and filled with rotting corpses and food.
- Undying Loyalty: While some have this towards Delilah, others are more devoted to each other. The turncoat witch in particular wants Delilah gone, but warns you against hurting any of her "sisters".
- Voice of the Legion: Their voices have a slight reverb effect in Dishonored 2.
Grave Hounds
Undead wolfhounds used by the Brigmore Witches as attack animals and sentries.
- Ambushing Enemy: Gravehound skulls can be found lying on the ground in areas held by witches — if the player gets too close, the monster will animate and attack, likely alerting nearby enemies.
- Raising the Steaks: Zombie wolfhounds powered by Delilah's void magic.
- Reviving Enemy: Slain gravehounds revert to their skull form, but will very quickly revive unless the skull is smashed as well.
Blood Briars
Hostile plant tendrils summoned by void magic.
- Flechette Storm: Can launch a spray of thorns as a ranged attack, similar to the witches.
- Stationary Enemy: Being plants, they can't really do much besides wait for the player to get too close, though in The Brigmore Witches they can cast Pull to force the player towards them. This is especially true in Dishonored 2, where blood briars can be encountered already placed on the map to obstruct pathways.
- Weak to Fire: Blood briars can be destroyed immediately using fire.
- You Will Not Evade Me: In The Brigmore Witches, blood briars can use Pull to yank Daud within attack range. They lack this ability in Dishonored 2, however.
