Activity

Alright, here’s Basil’s formal re-introduction to the castle!  For those of you who knew him before, he’s changed a bit and really developed (but don’t worry he’s still a socially awkward brat XD)

Basil:

– Tall, (6’3″), super pale white skin, thick black curls.  He’s got a very uncanny, almost disproportionate frame – you’d notice it and feel like something’s off, but you might not be able to put a finger on it.  He has the number 1711 tattooed on the left side of his neck/throat and on the inside of his right wrist.   Right now he’s around 18.

– Unbeknownst to Kit and his brothers, Basil is a prototype super-soldier who was raised in a lab.  So, Dr. Corvo had a tremendous influence on his engineering, and views Basil as “his” creation.  Over time, though, he started getting attached to him as if he were his own son.  While the dynamic was certainly unhealthy, Dr. Corvo did advocate for Basil and tried his best to make him comfortable.  While the labs were inherently unethical, there was no deliberate malice or intentional cruelty towards Basil and the other subjects.  However, there was some serious embezzlement going on in the higher levels of the program, and a lot of money that was allotted to Corvo and his staff never saw their labs.  Long story short, Basil ended up slightly less functional than the military expected, failed a major inspection (partially his own fault tbh), and was essentially abandoned by the labs in favor of a newer project (Dr. Corvo turned him loose on the streets in an attempt to save him, and he wandered off to the Goldenseal brothers cloistered apartment soon after.)

Interestingly enough, Dr. Corvo is a prisoner himself.  I based him and his story after the Nazi scientists and engineers who were snatched up by the US and the Soviet Union after WW2 and forced to work for either side.  So, while Corvo is obviously a horrible person, he’s a rather sympathetic antagonist imo, especially in light of his dynamic with Basil.

So that’s the dark side of his backstory.  He’s since been adopted by the Goldenseal brothers, though, and now has a healthy and loving family 🙂

So, one other thing – Basil is autistic, but learned to mask in a highly dysfunctional environment.  Dr. Corvo was one of the few doctors who recognized this diagnosis and tried to accommodate him (the others hoped that if it was ignored in the labs, it might be ignored during the inspection too.)  So Basil sometimes behaves EXTREMELY oddly.  One of his adopted brothers, Julian, is also autistic, and he’s been helping him learn to communicate his wants and needs (which were almost always ignored in the labs)

As far as personality goes, Basil is extremely blunt and rather rude at times.  He’s socially awkward at times and can come across as whiny – in the labs, he quickly learned that major sources of discomfort would never change, but if he raised a big enough fuss he could change the smaller issues.  He’s a brat, to be sure, but he’s also incredibly gentle.  Despite his upbringing and incredible strength/fighting skills, he’s quite peaceful and prefers to avoid major disputes.

And of course, he’s fiercely devoted to his new brothers 🙂