Hey tee want to hear an absolutely horrific Desmond idea that just popped in my head? Of course you do.
(tw though for a bunch of stuff about dead bodies so if that's a squick you can delete this message without reading the rest.)
At one point in The Hollows book series, the protagonist encounters a high-power magic entity that can possess the recently dead in order to communicate directly with mortals.
What if a Desmond whose body is destroyed by the aurora device and he ends up adrift in the Grey for an unknowable amount of time
until he gravitates, without meaning to, to points in his ancestral history where there is a suitable vessel for him to inhabit?
The rules surrounding this:
1) The vessel he occupies must be recently deceased, within about two hours.
2) How long he can stay in a body is affected by how complex the life form is. Humans are the longest at 12hrs.
3) The time limit is expressed by the body slowly turning to ash and dust, until it reaches a critical point and can no longer hold itself together, at which point it basically disintegrates.
4) Those with Eagle Vision inherently know on looking at a body occupied by Desmond that it is Desmond. If he is occupying a human body, he will seem to them to resemble what he looked like when he was alive.
//
more assorted thoughts:
Desmond isn't limited to a linear timeline. He gets drawn back to the Grey every time his body dissolves, from which theoretically any point in time can be accessed.
I like the idea though that at least at first, he doesn't have control over where he goes. In addition to trying to figure out how this whole thing works, he's just popping up in the most random/useless of times.
He can visit any time and place he has an ancestral connection to, whether or not he unlocked those memories while he was still alive. There just needs to be a suitable vessel nearby. And, well. Pretty much every assassin ancestor has plenty of opportunity for that.
Also, jumping off rule 3 above, Desmond isn't like...so him needing to possess a vessel is basically like, needing to anchor himself to something Present. And what he's anchoring to isn't even the body exactly, it's the memory of life. Which is why more complex things anchor him longer, they have a more substantial memory of life/concept of self/their existence.
So as he's burning through the body, he's holding it together through his own force of will more and more, until the memory is burnt out and will alone isn't enough.
An interesting effect then is that the body's death blows don't affect what he's able to do in it, but lifelong conditions do, when he first possesses it. If a person's eyes were gouged out to kill them, Desmond can still see in the body, because the memory of life still remembers having eyes, even though the physical eyes are ruined. But if Desmond possessed someone who had been blind for years, he wouldn't be able to see, because the memory of life doesn't conceptualize itself as a seeing being. As the memory faded and it became more about Desmond holding himself together, he'd regain some of his sight.
Funny enough, this means that while non-human bodies tend to be of limited usefulness, there is a period toward the end of the possession where he can speak and communicate with people, even if he's like. A mouse. Because at the very end it's more his concept of self establishing what the body can do than the mouse's.
.
For real though just imagine with me how freaked out his ancestors would be when some of their kills randomly sit back up and start talking. Like. You never know when or where Zombie Desmond will appear, but it will probably be at the least convenient of times and everyone will scream.
I love this idea because of the sheer angst potential.
Like, sure, we can go down the horror comedy route and I’m all for it since I love that genre.
But just imagine Desmond possessing one of the Auditore’s bodies while Ezio was trying to bury them. Ezio’s horrified outrage at the idea that some kind of entity was possessing his younger brother. Desmond didn’t mean to possess Petruccio’s body, he still can’t control this, Ezio- “Shut up!”
It’s definitely the worst kind of first meeting.
And Desmond doesn’t know if this was worse or better than his first meeting with Altaïr.
Because with Altaïr, Desmond screwed up so badly by possessing Adha’s dead body, giving Altaïr a false sense of hope that he wasn’t too late.
Unlike Ezio’s grief and rage, the way Altaïr’s face completely shut down was much more worrying to Desmond because he has no idea what that silence was supposed to mean.
Even when Desmond apologizes and promises that he didn’t mean to, Altaïr simply ignored all of these and just asked Desmond what he was and what he wanted.
The worst part of this entire thing is that Desmond doesn’t even know what he wanted.
And then there was Ratonhnhaké:ton.
Desmond didn’t even know if Ratonhnhaké:ton hated him or not.
Because the first time Desmond possessed someone in Ratonhnhaké:ton’s time, he was getting the hang of all of these.
And he was able to save Kaniehtí:io, sure.
By possessing a child who had recently died. A child that Ratonhnhaké:ton knew by name. He had probably been playing with that child a few hours ago before Desmond possessed their corpse.
… and Desmond spent weeks in that body with only Ratonhnhaké:ton knowing that he wasn’t his friend.
Ratonhnhaké:ton probably didn’t trust him.
But hey…
At least he didn’t possessed Kaniehtí:io or something.
That would have been so awkward.
The new problem Desmond had was that…
Well…
He just possessed some naked dude in the middle of some sort of island.
“Jeezus!”
And he has no idea who this dark blond haired man that smelled of salt and rum was supposed to be.
But from the looks of things…
He was wearing what may or may not be Assassin robes belonging to the dead body he was now occupying.
