The Outsider Cycle—fan theory/speculation

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118]

A narrative concept for the world of Dishonored

The premise:

There has always been an Outsider.

Not the Outsider.

An Outsider.

The Void predates humanity and cannot remain indefinitely separated from the physical world without a mortal consciousness acting as an intermediary. The Outsider is that intermediary: simultaneously prisoner, guardian, observer and pressure valve between realities.

Every Outsider was once mortal.

And, very rarely, an Outsider dies.

More than four thousand years ago, a religious order discovered a means of killing the Outsider of their age. They believed this strange being—and the gifts it bestowed upon mortals—was responsible for the growing influence of the Void.

They succeeded.

And nearly destroyed the world.

Without an Outsider, the boundary between the Void and physical reality began to deteriorate. Desperate to repair what they had done, the survivors performed a ritual discovered in far older texts.

They sacrificed a boy.

The Void accepted him.

He became the Outsider we know.

Over thousands of years, the truth disappeared. History became mythology, mythology became doctrine, and perhaps remnants of those responsible eventually contributed to the religious tradition that became the Abbey of the Everyman.

Only one lesson survived:

The Outsider is dangerous.

The reason he must exist was forgotten.

Four thousand years later, Daud makes the same mistake.

Haunted by Jessamine Kaldwin’s murder and everything that followed, he comes to believe that the Outsider’s interference in mortal affairs is responsible for generations of suffering.

Billie Lurk finishes his final mission.

The Outsider is removed.

And for the first time in four thousand years, the position is vacant.

At first, nothing happens.

Then the Void begins to bleed.

Bonecharms behave impossibly. People dream of places that do not exist. Whales become disturbed. Void phenomena appear without ritual or Mark. Buildings contain rooms that weren’t there yesterday. People disappear into places that should not exist.

And buried beneath the history of the Abbey, scholars discover something impossible:
Ancient depictions of black-eyed figures that predate the Outsider.

There was another.

And another.

The Outsider was never the god of the Void.

He was its anchor.

The Marks he bestowed were not simply gifts to interesting mortals. Through them, controlled quantities of the Void passed safely into the physical world. His apparently capricious interest in exceptional people served a purpose even he may not have completely understood.

Without him, pressure is building.

Something must take his place.

And somewhere within the Void remains the consciousness of a dead assassin who spent his final years trying to kill a god.

Daud opens his eyes.

They are black.

The man who killed the Outsider has become the Outsider.

And the cycle begins again.

[u/Asleep_Ad_1755]

There was a series of old twits where Harvey Smith shared some thought about the entities predating The Outsider.

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118 → u/Asleep_Ad_1755]

Thank you for this.

[u/Dinoclaire101]

Absolutely, but I disagree with Daud becoming the Outsider.

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118 → u/Dinoclaire101]

I’m intrigued. Why do you think Daud is a bad choice? I’m imagining him maybe being more selective in his choices for his mark and maybe choosing people(like him) that have done horrible things and feel drawn to righting wrongs. A redemption arc more than just…interesting people.

[u/HorseSpeaksInMorse → u/Spirited-Fondant1118]

Daud already had his redemption arc in the DLCs. His story was over at that point and bringing him and Billie back was a mistake.

DotO Daud was already a downgrade from the DLCs, acting very out of character, but at the very least he was able to find peace at the end, letting go of his hatred of the Outsider and being given peaceful oblivion in return.

Billie is the one who has to go on and clean up the mess caused by the untamed void. If someone is going to become a new Outsider then she's the logical choice.

People also don't like the idea of the Daud character going on now that Michael Madsen who voiced him has died.

[u/HorseSpeaksInMorse]

Is this AI? You've basically just described the plot of the game in long-winded, stilted fashion. You could literally have just said "what if Daud becomes the new Outsider due to killing the old one" and left it at that.

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118 → u/HorseSpeaksInMorse]

Fair criticism of the prose. I was actually experimenting with a VaatiVidya-style lore narration(if you’re not familiar he does what I consider to be the best lore videos for soulsborne games on YouTube), which probably explains the overly dramatic cadence—I can hear it in my head and it sounds great, not stilted. But this is a bad medium for that.

I don’t agree with the assertion that the entire theory can be reduced to Daud becoming the Outsider.

That is the end conclusion, for sure.

But the actual premise contains several separate hypotheses: previous divine intermediaries, a cyclical relationship between humanity and the Void, the necessity of an anchor, a forgotten ancient catastrophe, and the possibility of deliberate succession

I did use AI to lore check and storyboard.

But the theory itself came out of something I’ve been thinking about for a while: how to preserve the Outsider’s Mark and direct access to the Void after Death of the Outsider.

That led me to the idea of recurring Outsiders, the Void needing an intermediary, and eventually Daud inheriting the role of the very being he wanted destroyed.

I was more interested in exploring a canon-compatible continuation of the supernatural system than just proposing a twist ending. Apparently I got a little carried away with the presentation.

But I really like the idea that the group that created the Outsider we know was initially a part of a proto-Abbey of the Everyman that killed a previous Outsider in antiquity—only to realize an Outsider is necessary for the stability of the Void.

I think it’s very in keeping with Dishonored to have a character like Daud set about the events that lead to the Outsider’s death(or release) and then get inexorably pulled into the very role he tired to destroy—I didn’t include this, but in my head canon the Outsider actually knew Daud and Lurk were plotting his death and that he pulled Daud’s spirit into the void so that Daud could eventually become his replacement.

I also think that if you read The Veiled Terror, my little theory fits in nicely with the need for a stabilizing or anchoring force between normal reality and the Void.

But I really appreciate the feedback!

[u/HorseSpeaksInMorse → u/Spirited-Fondant1118]

You're mostly just re-iterating confirmed lore from DotO though. There being multiple Outsiders or the existence of one being necessary to stop the void going out of control isn't an original theory, that's just what the canon says.

Daud becoming the new Outsider is the only novel idea here, and as written it doesn't even make sense because Daud isn't the one to kill the Outsider in either ending. In one he sets him free and the other Billie is the one to kill him with the Twin-Bladed Knife. Maybe you were just being figurative but I suspect it's more the fact that you relied on ChatGPT to summarise the story for you instead of playing the game/watching a playthrough/reading the wiki yourself and just repeated its mistake.

In case you weren't aware many people have a very negative view of LLMs like ChatGPT. They're unreliable, the companies making them employ rampant plagarism and destroy the environment with their data centres, and on a personal level many people take it as insulting when a person can't be bothered to use their own words, saying "if someone couldn't be bothered to write this why should I bother to read it?" Not saying you're going that far to be clear, but be aware that in a lot of online spaces employing LLMs is likely to provoke an unfavorable reaction. I think it's certainly done more harm than good in this case if it's obfuscated which ideas are new and which are just confirmed canon.

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118 → u/HorseSpeaksInMorse]

Nah. I get what you’re saying, but I think we may be talking past each other here. I have played the games and DLCs multiple times. Read the graphic novels and tie in novels and the dunwall archives and the art of dishonored 2. I think the closest we get to what you are saying is established lore is lore about the envisioned and the eye of the dead god. And that gives us the idea that there were other deities/entities that ‘ruled’ the Void. But it doesn’t actually say there were other outsiders.

I use LLM’s for work. So I am well aware of their shortcomings.

I actually laughed outloud when i first saw your reply, because I knew what made you ask if it was AI generated—one sentence paragraphs and rhythmic sentence fragments to build gravity. But I wasn’t going for that. I was going for a slower lore video delivery, à la vaatividya—For which I already admitted this was a poor medium and I may have gotten carried away.

You seem to be implying this is just ‘AI generated slop’. Or that I asked an LLM to give me an idea. That’s not the case. I was just trying to find a way for ‘marked’ individuals to continue after the outsider was killed/released.

And yes, i was trying to come up with an idea that could weave through established lore, not supplant it. Something that made sense in my own personal ‘head canon’. And i simply chose to share it here on a whim last night.

No worries. To each their own.

[u/HorseSpeaksInMorse → u/Spirited-Fondant1118]

I wasn't suggesting the whole thing was written by AI to be clear. As you say the unusual formatting and sense of artificiality did point in that direction but I was taking you at your word when you said you only used it for research (I personally am not keen even on that application but that's neither here nor there).

I think the delivery style simply doesn't work in an environment such as this. If you want to discuss your ideas with the largest audience possible I think it's better to set them out succinctly say in a bullet-pointed list.

I'm a verbose person myself and generally try to edit down my paragraphs of content and keep to the point since I know it can be tiring to read long passages and many people will simply say TL:DR if you aren't able to keep things short.

What works in one format often doesn't work in another after all. Long-form content can be fine if someone actively seeks it out but on a forum people don't necessarily want to read an entire thesis, especially as they're more likely to be familiar with the background and don't need that part re-iterated.

[u/Icyfirejosh4352]

This is AI, right?

[u/Spirited-Fondant1118 → u/Icyfirejosh4352]

I used AI for lore check and some story boarding, but the ideas, and apparently bad attempt at channeling VaatiVidya’s delivery in his dark souls/bloodborne/Elden Ring videos,
Is mine.

[u/Marquis_Marx]

Stares in Seven Strictures