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Katherine Marlowe
Katherine Marlowe
Played By: Rosalind Ayres (English), Mari Natsuki (Japanese), Lyudmila Ilyina (Russian)
I merely want what's mine.
The head of a centuries-old order that dates back to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, Marlowe is the main opponent of Nate and Sully's quest to find Iram of the Pillars. She believes that Sir Francis Drake's ring, and whatever secrets it still holds, are rightfully hers.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When she finds herself drowning in quicksand, she begs Nate to save her life. And he tries.
- Ancient Conspiracy: She's the head of one. For this reason, her tarot card is, of course, The High Priestess.
- Asshole Victim: Literally no one except Talbot mourns for her death, of which was of a well-deserved, literal dirtnap.
- The Baroness: A typical Rosa Klebb-type, being older and sexually unavailable.
- Big Bad: She is the main antagonist of Drake's Deception, leading an ancient order that aims to control the world through fear.
- Break Them by Talking: Being a woman in her sixties, she really isn't one for direct confrontations, preferring by and large to use her skills as The Spymaster to gather information on people and using it against them.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: She looks very similar to Helen Mirren.
- Entitled Bastard: She tries to kill Nate repeatedly throughout the game, but when she's drowning in quicksand, she begs for him to save her life. To Nate's credit, he tries.
- Evil Brit: Comes with being the head of a British Ancient Conspiracy.
- Evil Counterpart: To Sully, best seen in her relationship with Talbot, which is exactly parallel to Sully's relationship with Nate.
- Evil Old Folks: Evil and in her sixties.
- Hidden Weapons: A short blade hidden in her umbrella.
- Jerkass: She's a cold-hearted, contemptuous bitch, and she likes being that way.
- Lady of Adventure: She has appeared in South America and in the final area in the Middle East. Her underground hideout implies that she has collected a lot of artifacts from across the world.
- Meaningful Name: No doubt she's named in honour of Christopher Marlowe, 16th century British poet and alleged spy for Queen Elizabeth.
- And not just her last name—the original Marlowe was also known as Kit, then a common nickname for Christopher, now more commonly a nickname for Katherine and variants.
- Non-Action Big Bad: She isn't the fighting sort and leaves all the dirty work to her army and Talbot.
- Precision F-Strike: When Nate makes a joke about her being vulnerable to water, like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, she scornfully calls him the "same cocky little shit."
- Rich Bitch: She is snide, haughty, high-class and elegant.
- Smug Snake: She's pretty sure of herself throughout most of the game, but ultimately she wasn't prepared for Nate to bring her plans crashing down with three bullets.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: She has a very calm, low voice, even when she's holding an umbrella dagger dangerously close to Nate's throat.
- The Spymaster: A villainous example. The Ancient Conspiracy she runs was founded back in the day by John Dee, one of the most famous historical British spies, after all, so her organisation has eyes and ears everywhere.
- Technically a Smile: Katherine's smile is never a good omen.
- The Unfought: Drake never gets a chance to confront her directly because Talbot usually gets in the way. In the climax, she and Talbot have Drake and Sully at gunpoint, but the floor they're standing on gives out and she falls into quicksand. Drake does try to save her at Talbot's pleading, but she's too far out for him to reach.
- Would Hurt a Child: Slapped a teenage Drake across the face for not handing over Sir Francis Drake's ring; this also serves as her Kick the Dog moment. And that's not even mentioning the fact that she gives her goons free reign to actually shoot at him, which leads to Sully pulling a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and taking Nate with him.
- "You!" Exclamation: Upon finding Nate and Sully after he sabotages the crane she was lifting the brass container with, sending it back under the water.
Talbot
Talbot
Played By: Robin Atkin Downes (English), Kazuhiro Yamaji (Japanese), Ilya Khvostikov (Russian)
Don't trust Drake.
Marlowe's second-in-command. He basically plays a similar role to Navarro and Flynn from the first and second games, acting as Drake's dark counter in the third game. He's the ruthless and cunning dragon to Marlowe (also much like Navarro to Roman and Flynn to Lazarevic), and he's not afraid to use dirty tricks—or to throw people away when they're of no further use to him or his organisation. The one exception, and the person to whom he gives his absolute loyalty, is Marlowe.
- Ax-Crazy: He ends up becoming this after Marlowe dies.
- Big "NO!": He yells in despair after witnessing Marlowe's death.
- Combat Pragmatist: Apart from his reliance on Mind Screw, he also blindsides Nate with a knife and tries to brain Sully with a large boulder. If you don't shoot him as Nate really fast, he succeeds.
- Disney Villain Death: In the final battle, Drake shoots several rounds into his chest, and Talbot collapses into the abyss below.
- The Dragon: He is Marlowe's second-in-command and main enforcer.
- Dragon Their Feet: He's killed during his attempted revenge for his boss.
- Enigmatic Minion: Unlike Navarro and Flynn, you never do find out why Talbot is helping the Big Bad or why he's so fiercely loyal to her.
- Entitled Bastard: Even after he and Marlowe have tried to kill Nate and Sully numerous times throughout the game, he still screams to Nate "You can't just let her die!" when Marlowe is sinking into quicksand.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He is deeply devoted to Marlowe and overtly treats her like a beloved mother-figure. When she dies, he utterly loses his slick and smug composure.
- Evil Brit: As evil and British as his boss.
- Evil Counterpart:To Nate. Both are young, physically fit and agile, Caucasian, dark-haired men with similar builds and skill sets who've partnered with older treasure hunters, to whom they've developed intense bonds with filial shades. They're both cunning, determined, conspicuously lucky, tend to appear wherever their enemies least want them, and go absolutely ballistic if harm befalls their mentors. Their character designs reflect both their similarities and differences - where Talbot wears crisp, sharp, dark suits and never seems to allow a hair out of place, Nate prefers more comfortable, casual clothes in earth tones (green, brown, off-white) and has an aura of permanent scruff, even in a suit of his own.
- Faux Affably Evil: When he drugs Nate into ditching his friends, his distorted voice can be heard uttering soothing words to Mr. Drake in order to cajole the whereabouts of Iram out of him.
- Final Boss: He poses the final threat in Drake's Deception, following his boss' death.
- The Heavy: He's the villain who causes the most direct trouble for Nate and his allies during Drake's Deception, and is the Final Boss, but is still only serving Marlowe.
- Hypocrite Has a Point: When Nate finds out he was going to pay him and Sully fake money in exchange for Francis Drake's ring.Nate: You're a thief!
Talbot: Well, now, that's ironic. - Last-Name Basis: His first name is never mentioned. Or maybe Talbot is his given name. Not even that is known.
- Mind Screw: His favourite tactic. His tarot symbol is The Magician, after all.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Talbot lives on this trope, using Mind Screw tactics to get under his enemy's skin. In Syria he seemingly vanishes into thin air in a closed off area, and when he gets shot by Charlie Cutter in the chest, he shows up moments later unscathed without explanation. It's unclear to what extent Talbot uses trickery and illusion, or if he does actually possess supernatural powers.
Word of God states that it's the former. There's a reason he's identified with the tarot card of the Magician. - Man of Wealth and Taste: Talbot seems to enjoy his nice suits.
- Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Sully says this after clipping him in the shoulder when he's pinning Nate down trying to shove a knife into his eye.
- Out-of-Character Moment: Handwaved with the chase scene, considering his personality throughout the rest of the game it makes no logical sense for him to run from an unarmed Drake. Word of God later stated that this part in particular was made before they had his character established and were just told to do a chase segment.
- Offscreen Teleportation: He walks behind a corner that leads to a dead end and is gone when Sully and Nate reach the corner. He also has a habit of abruptly appearing when you least expect or want him.
- Recurring Element: He's the third Evil Counterpart to Nate.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: Most of the time, Talbot has a low, soothing voice, like his boss, but it only emphasizes what a depraved monster he truly is.
- Undying Loyalty: To Marlowe, as he'll do anything she tells him to and he goes ballistic when Drake fails to rescue her.
- Villainous Breakdown: He flips out when Marlowe is killed, and concentrates solely on killing Nate and Sully, rather than escaping the rapidly collapsing Ubar. No longer a refined possible magician, he behaves like an unhinged murderous thug.
- Villainous Friendship: Although he's a Dragon, he seems to be a very loyal and protective one, up to the point where he sounds sincerely desperate when begging Drake to save Marlowe's life when he himself is too far to help. His bond with Marlowe is a dark reflection of the one Nate has with Sully.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Twice in a single chapter. When an agent is swarmed by deadly spiders, Talbot grabs the artifact and doesn't even acknowledge the guy pleading as he dies. Not five minutes later, he traps the East End thugs, whom he had previously hired to burn the chateau in the first place, in the burning building with Nate and Sully. He's not as bad about it as Lazarevic, but he's ruthless nonetheless.
Charlie Cutter
Charlie Cutter
Played By: Graham McTavish (English), Unshō Ishizuka (Japanese), Valery Storozhik (Russian)
Typical bloody Yank. All talk.
A British thug who works for Katherine Marlowe, but he's quickly revealed to be an ally of Drake's.
- Bald of Evil: Subverted. He is introduced as Marlowe's dragon, but a few chapters later reveals himself to be The Mole and is firmly on Drake's side.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: At one point early in the story, Talbot sticks him with some sort of dart that makes Cutter hallucinate and start attacking Nate and his friends. He needs to be punched back to his senses. He later seems to be under Talbot's influence later down the road, but it's actually a ruse to get Talbot to drop his guard, giving Charlie the opportunity to shoot him.
- Claustrophobia: Cutter really hates tight spaces. Drake and Sully occasionally get annoyed by this and the fear drives him to violence when he's drugged. According to Nolan North, this was ad-libbed by Graham Mc Tavish himself, who thought it'd be funny.
- Cluster F-Bomb: He's pretty liberal with profanities after jumping off the top of a tower to escape a fire and breaking his leg upon landing.
- Deadpan Snarker: "It's a book, mate. There's a lot of 'em here, it's a library." Pretty much half of Cutter's dialogue is snarking at any of his compatriots.
- Evil Brit: Subverted. He is British and has a menacing look of an archetypal European thug, but proves himself to be quite friendly.
- Friends All Along: Yes, the intimidating London Gangster who just roughed up Nate and Sully and shot them at the start of the game is actually on their side and hit them with blanks. Makes a nice change of pace from Uncharted Brits being all evil.
- Genius Bruiser: He's a pretty intimidating guy and is good with his fists, but is also just as knowledgeable as his colleagues. If one looks closely at his apartment in the game or in concept art, there are also a number of books on the shelves to seal this further.
- Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: At one point Cutter needs to literally be punched out of claustrophobic/brainwashed mania.
- Good All Along: Starts the third game as a hired, if unstable, goon of Marlowe's who seemingly kills the heroes. However it turns out it was ploy he was pulling with Nate and Sullivan to get Marlowe to lead them back to her base and get what they need. In reality, he's a close ally and friend of the two.
- Hidden Depths: Despite his rough exterior (at first he appears to just be a guy Nate knows who's good with his hands in tight spots and not someone who would help with following the trail), he's actually about as learned as Nate is on subjects of esoteric and hidden histories and probably better with pop culture.
- Implied Love Interest: It's strongly implied that he's seeing Chloe.
- Injured Limb Episode: After being cornered on a tower by Marlowe and her men, who then set the tower on fire, he jumps from the top of the tower to reunite with his friends. He ends up with a broken leg and has to sit out the rest of the plot.
- Ink-Suit Actor: A lot of Charlie's appearance is quite similar to that of McTavish's.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The fact he's actually on Nate's side in Drake's Deception is no longer obscured thanks to Nate keeping his contact info on his phone in A Thief's End.
- London Gangster: He looks the part, with the official art book describing his design as a "quintessential European thug", but it's a subversion. He's the only Cockney who's not one of Marlowe's hired thugs.
- The Mole: He at first seems to be working with Marlowe and Talbot, but later turns out to have been Nathan and Sully's man on the inside.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When he nearly chokes Nate out during a drug-induced rage, he's clearly shocked when he finally comes to his senses and apologizes profusely.
- Opt Out: Due to a broken leg, he and Chloe sit out the second half of the game and leave it up to Drake and Sully.
- Pop-Cultured Badass: He's quite well-read, and has seen Lawrence of Arabia. As for "Badass", that fight scene in the opening should say enough.
- Put on a Bus: And humorously, quite literally. After he breaks his leg, Drake, Sully, Chloe and he just barely manage to escape from Marlowe's men by commandeering a tour bus and fleeing the scene. He doesn't show up for the rest of the game, leaving it to Drake and Sully to finish the quest on their own. He likewise never shows up in person in the 4th game either.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: In a fortunately non-lethal example, Graham McTavish being cast in The Hobbit caused Cutter to break his leg in Syria, as he was originally intended to take part in all of the game.
- Smarter Than You Look: Although he looks like a brute with no brains, Charlie is in fact very well-read.
- Vitriolic Best Friends: Despite being on Nate and Sully's side, he's a little too happy to headbutt Nate when fake-fighting in the bar.
- Walking Spoiler: Notice how much of this article is spoiler-tagged?
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Last seen in Drake's Deception escaping on a bus with Nate, Chloe and Sullivan and having to bow out of the quest due to a broken leg gotten while escaping from Marlowe's men. He gets a mention in A Thief's End, as Nate still has him as a contact, but that's pretty much it. In Lost Legacy, he's not mentioned at all by Chloe, despite the two being implied lovers.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He's claustrophobic, so whenever the group has to go through some tight spaces, he'll always bemoan having to make his way through them and act nervously. Eventually he ends up lashing out while drugged because of this.
Rameses
Rameses
Played By: Sayed Badreya (English), Minoru Inaba (Japanese), Alexander Novikov (Russian)
A pirate Marlowe hires to get rid of Drake.
- Card-Carrying Villain: He seems quite proud to identify as a pirate, judging by his response to Nate's Insult Backfire.
- Faux Affably Evil: Hey, he might have Drake tied to a chair and be preparing to beat him within an inch of his life, but he's willing to bargain! Very polite of him, considering he was hired to kill Nate and dispose of his body. He even gets a little miffed when Drake rejects his offer and points out that, since he doesn't know where Iram is and he'll be killed anyway if he gave up the info, there's not much point in making a deal.Nate: You're a pirate!
Rameses: (nodding) And a good businessman! Show me some respect. - Ink-Suit Actor: Very pronounced in Drake's Deception, where he has flecks of white in his beard and a thicker face, resembling his actor strongly
◊, and downplayed with his appearance in the Thief's End multiplayer; he looks younger and leaner, and less like Badreya. - Large Ham: He's pretty over-the-top, his accent just adding to his silliness.
- Ruthless Modern Pirates: He might be hammy, but he's as vicious as they come.
- See You in Hell: He says this word-for-word to Nate, right before attempting to drown both of them.
- Taking You with Me: Nate shoots him after being lured into his ship's hold. Rameses manages to catch up with Nate as he's escaping the capsized ship and shoots the glass roof to drown them both, knowing there's no way he himself will survive.
- Torture Technician: He's all too happy to torture Nate and Sully- or at least, pretend he has Sully to torture in the first place- and when he can't do it, he'll let his men do it for him.
- The Unfought: He's already dying by the time Nate's in any position to fight him.
- Villains Never Lie: Subverted. He never had Sully; by claiming to and threatening him as a hostage, he'd expected Nate to crack and give up the location of Iram of the Pillars. Unfortunately, the threat instead spurred Nate into tearing the whole pirate encampment apart to rescue his friend.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: You could basically remove him from the plot and it wouldn't make any difference. That said, Rameses is pretty much a
One-Scene Wonder, so why bother?
Salim
Salim
Played By: T.J. Ramini (English), Daisuke Endo (Japanese), Peter Ivashchenko (Russian)
Are you my enemy, American?
Leader of a desert tribe. He saves Drake during his fight with Marlowe's goons in an abandoned settlement and becomes an ally after Drake reveals he out to stop her.
- Badass Native: He is the sheikh of his tribe and has enough experience with firearms to take down several of Talbot's Mooks with minimal assistance from his allies.
- Bedouin Rescue Service: While he may or may not actually be a Bedouin (he doesn't appear long enough to be sure, though he's in the right place and uses the honorific sheikh to describe himself), it is his tribe that saves Nate's bacon when he's stranded in the Rub'al Khali. Right after coming close to shooting Nate in the head.
- Blue Is Heroic: He wears blue desert clothes, and he saves Nate from Marlowe's men.
- The Cavalry: Right as Nate says aloud that there are too many of Marlowe's men for him to fight in his exhausted state, Salim and his tribe ride in and shoot the agents dead.
- Exposition Fairy: He becomes Nate's ally late in the game, and tells the tale of the city of Ubar and the Djinn that were cast into the heart of it. Drake pieces this together once Sully and he reach the city and realizes what Marlowe's truly after.
- Expy: A noble bearded Arab leader tasked with preventing an ancient evil from being released upon the world, who allies with a sarcastic American Action Hero. Are we talking about Salim or Ardeth Bey?
- Sacred Hospitality: He notes that he is compelled by his people's tradition to shelter Nathan when he proves himself not one of Marlowe's men. Killing him would have been "impolite", even if he's an enemy.
T.E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward "T.E." Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia)
- All men dream. But not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to realise it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men. For they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This, I did.
Also known as "Lawrence of Arabia", T.E. Lawrence was a real-life Adventurer Archaeologist who worked and travelled in the Middle East in the early 1900s. During World War I, he was a British Army intelligence officer and was instrumental in the Arab campaign against the Ottoman Empire. After the war, he spent some time as an adviser to Winston Churchill and served in other British armed forces under assumed names. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1935 after swerving his motorcycle off the road to avoid two young boys on bicycles. In Drake's Deception, Nate and Sully will be using records of Lawrence's time working as an archaeologist in the Middle East in order to find Iram of the Pillars.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: T.E. Lawrence was an archaeologist whose travels earned him fame as "Lawrence of Arabia". Though somewhat romanticized, he participated in the Arab Revolt
- Badass Bookworm: He got his degree in history, worked as an archaeologist, explored the Middle East and spoke eight languages, before becoming a military strategist and soldier. He later did professional translations and wrote a doorstopper of a memoir.
- Heroic Sacrifice: A low-key example, but still Truth in Television. He crashed his motorcycle to avoid hitting a pair of young boys.
- Historical Domain Character: Mr. Lawrence actually existed.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: In Drake's Deception it's speculated this was the real cause of his death, because he'd outlived his usefulness to the queen and knew too much.
- Omniglot: Lawrence spoke English, French, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish and Syriac. Part of why he was recruited by the British Army.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Lt. Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence was known professionally as T.E. Lawrence, or "Lawrence of Arabia".
- Posthumous Character: He's dead by the time the story starts, obviously.
- Warrior Poet: A warrior who translated works and wrote a huge memoir.
