******************************************************************************* BioShock Plot Summary A Complete History of Rapture Version: 1.14 (07/22/09) Author: XG3 Contact: bioshockstory@gmail.com !! ** SPOILER ALERT ** !! =============================================================================== IF YOU HAVE NOT COMPLETED BIOSHOCK, CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK. THIS GUIDE CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS RIGHT FROM THE GET-GO. Donations =============================================================================== If you enjoy this guide or find it useful, please consider donating any amount you find appropriate via this PayPal link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=FQHT262JK8D92 For the Record =============================================================================== - The BioShock story is very complex and richly woven, but it is told through many fragmented audio diaries and radio messages. As such, not everything that happens in the game is directly stated; many events are implied or inferred. Feel free to email me if you have a better take on a certain character or event, and I will include it with proper credit if your argument is compelling enough. - If I got any part of the timeline wrong, please email me with a source (quote, image, link, etc.) or compelling argument for why I'm wrong, and I'll do my best to correct it. - I'm not the best writer in the world, and a lot of the text was spliced (sorry) together from various sources. I tried my best to blend everything together into one cohesive text, but some sentences may be awkward, the tense may be wrong, or the flow of a certain section may seem off. If you have any suggestions or possible rewrites - in which you are able to state the events more concisely than I have - feel free to email it to me. I do plan on eventually rewriting it to improve the grammar/sentence structure of this FAQ. - If you really enjoyed this FAQ and would like to donate, please email me and I will provide a paypal address. - If you have any questions, comments, edits, or suggestions about the story, this FAQ, or anything at all, I'd love to hear from you. Don't hesitate to email me! Sources =============================================================================== 90% of the facts stated in the account of Rapture below are taken from the things you hear, see, and experience in BioShock. 5% are taken from reliable outside sources. Ryan's backstory was taken from an interview with Ken Levine, creative director of BioShock, on CultofRapture.com. The construction of Rapture was taken from a magazine ad someone had transcribed on some forum (I've never personally seen the ad but the info seems compelling enough to post, and I doubt the poster made it up). Per the disclaimer above, some events (the last 5%) are implied and not directly spelled out for the player. BioShock's story is a big puzzle. I merely put together the pieces. ******************************************************************************* TABLE OF CONTENTS ******************************************************************************* {c01} ... Andrew Ryan {c02} ... The Construction of Rapture {c03} ... The Discovery of Adam {c04} ... Frank Fontaine {c05} ... Little Sisters {c06} ... Rivalry {c07} ... Jack Ryan {c08} ... The Beginning of the End {c09} ... New Years Eve {c10} ... Big Daddies {c11} ... Paradise Lost {c12} ... Welcome to Rapture {c13} ... Frequently Asked Questions ... "I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well." - Andrew Ryan =============================================================================== Andrew Ryan {c01} =============================================================================== Andrei Ryan was born in early 1900s Russia. The Russian Revolution, which led to the rise of the Soviet Union, destroyed his family when he was a child. Resenting the Communist ideology, Ryan fled to the United States, changed his name to the more American-sounding "Andrew", and eventually became an incredibly successful industrialist, scientist, and inventor. Ryan was initially very happy with America, a place where intelligence and determination was rewarded with prosperity and fame. When the Great Depression came about in the 1930s, however, Ryan got a bit of a rude surprise. The New Deal, a series of programs facilitating the redistribution of wealth to the poor, upset Ryan because it reminded him of the world he thought he had escaped. His belief in, and devotion to, the American Dream was finally shattered with the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Immediately after World War II, Ryan began plans to build a hidden sanctuary for those who shared his beliefs - a place for those he considered to be humanity's best and brightest, in a location where it could not be taken from him by outside forces. The society was envisioned as the ultimate capitalistic and individualistic paradise, with the elite achieving for themselves rather than for the whole. It would be free from God, government, and the Parasites of the world - those who take without giving. The city would be named Rapture, where all of Ryan's chosen people would at once be taken away from earth, leaving everyone else behind. It became obvious to Ryan that there was only one place he could conceivably build Rapture: at the bottom of the ocean. It would have been impossible to build it anywhere else. =============================================================================== The Construction of Rapture {c02} =============================================================================== "What would the Russian Bear and the American Eagle do if they discovered our paradise? Our secrecy is our shield!" - Andrew Ryan During his time in America, Ryan amassed a fortune worth billions from contracts with the United States and other various world powers on underwater weapons and research, which funded the construction of Rapture. In 1942, Ryan invented an ingenious device that compressed the molecules in water with an electrical charge in the same way that air is compressed with force. Ryan originally intended for the device to be used applications such as cooling mechanisms and for desert countries where water was scarce. The government, however, decided to use it as a military weapon. The device could rapidly increase the water pressure around nautical vehicles such as submarines, crushing them in a matter of moments. Ryan resented the government's use of his invention in such a way, which added to his extreme dislike of government and his own extreme individualistic ideals. Ryan began construction of Rapture in early 1946. An oil rig construction site was set up in the mid-Atlantic, in-between Greenland and Iceland (63* 2' N 29* 55' W). Rock, granite, and other resources for his buildings were gathered on location using drills, while metal was purchased from outside sources. The materials were processed on the oil rig while the actual buildings were constructed on a platform supported by two other massive oil rigs. The base for each building was constructed on the platform and slowly lowered down into the water using flotation devices and very sturdy chains. The foundation for each building was laid first, with the other stories being lowered in succession like building blocks, each placed on top of the other. The sections of each building were then sealed together using the granite and cement harvested on site, and the windows were securely fasted into place. Finally, the buildings were drained using Ryan's water compression device. A "pressure explosion" blasted the water out of the top of the buildings while creating a huge pressure bubble to keep the lower levels dry. Conventional pumping methods would have been costly and unfeasible, making the device absolutely essential to the construction of the city. After most of the water had been blasted out of the buildings, the outlets were sealed permanently. Protected by a network of giant sea walls and consisting of a cluster of enormous skyscraper-shaped hive towers, Rapture was designed to be entirely self-supporting, with all of its electricity, food production, water purification and defense systems powered by undersea volcanic openings. To harness the heat from the geothermic vents, Ryan created a massive power production facility called Hephaestus and situated his main office there. Ryan also hired a scientist from Berkeley by the name of Julie Langford to build a tree farm at the bottom of the ocean. Arcadia became the living, breathing heart of Rapture, its lush forests and abundant plant-life serving to generate life-sustaining oxygen. Transportation among the different areas of Rapture was by a system of bathyspheres called the Rapture Metro. Smaller scale travel was facilitated through a network of glass tunnels. Mail was delivered through a series of pneumo tubes. The city's architecture featured a grand Art Deco style that had an appearance merging the futuristic and archaic. After construction had completed, the oil rig on the surface was cannibalized, with the exception of its foundation. It was used to support Rapture's only entrance, a great stone lighthouse flashing its guiding light to the world's down-trodden. Rapture opened its doors to the world's elite on November 5, 1946. The city's population numbered several thousand at its peak during the early 1950s, composed of those people Ryan viewed as the best examples of mankind. A large and tiered economy grew among the people, catering different quality products to different levels of the society. =============================================================================== The Discovery of Adam {c03} =============================================================================== Bridgette Tenenbaum was only 16 when she found herself a prisoner in a German prison camp. She was able to observe German doctors as they did experiments on the prisoners, and it was here where she discovered her love for science. During these experiments, Tenenbaum would often point out to the doctors their errors. The Germans noticed that this girl was clearly brilliant and decided to employ her talents. They called her "Das Wunderkind", the wonder child. She was very interested in discovering why people were born the way they were, and did genetic experiments on the other prisoners. For some reason, she did not consider her colleagues in the German prison camp as tormentors, but rather kindred spirits. Her scientific talents allowed her to survive World War II, and her desire for scientific growth eventually led her to Rapture. One day, Tenenbaum saw a man with a crippled hand from the war playing catch on the docks of Neptune's Bounty - home of Rapture's fisheries. She inquired about this apparent miracle. The man revealed that he had been unloading the barge one day when he was bitten by a sea slug. Waking up the next morning, he discovered he could move his fingers for the first time in years. Luckily, he had the foresight to retain the sea slug, and so he gave it to Tenenbaum for research. Tenenbaum discovered that the slug secreted pure stem cells, later called Adam, that not only healed damaged cells - it resurrected them completely. Needing money for further research, she approached all of the "respectable labs" for funds, but was turned away. With nobody else to turn to, Tenenbaum was approached Frank Fontaine, a successful businessman who also happened to be Rapture's criminal mastermind. =============================================================================== Frank Fontaine {c04} =============================================================================== "A gun in every home, peace on every street." - Frank Fontaine at the installation of the first Power to the People machine, 1/22/57 Frank Fontaine was a savvy entrepreneur of modest beginnings and engaged in charity and various other enterprises. He built the foundation of his empire on Fontaine Fisheries, a front for his smuggling operations in Port Neptune. Fontaine used his charisma to those in Rapture who were disenchanted with Ryan's Great Chain philosophy. A man of great foresight, Fontaine understood that even in a society of the world's elite, "somebody's gotta scrub the toilets" and so he began his campaign to control Rapture by appealing to the lower class. He set up Fontaine's Home for the Poor and recruited the fish workers in Neptune's Bounty, led by Peach Wilkins, to smuggle items from the outside world into Rapture. Bibles and crosses were among the most prolific contraband smuggled into Rapture by Fontaine's operation. The items were in demand from those who found their lives in Rapture to be empty and those who would need something to turn to during imminent war between Fontaine and Ryan. Fontaine supplied these religious articles to make a profit and simultaneously gain an edge over Ryan by appealing to the public's morality. Fontaine immediately saw the potential economic viability of Adam, so he decided to invest in Tenenbaum's research in exchange for any future profits resulting from it. Through his smugglers in Neptune's Bounty, Tenenbaum was finally able to get the equipment and money she needed. Thus, Fontaine Futuristics was established. Tenenbaum spent her time researching Adam. She discovered that the substance could be used to enhance one's body, improving physical or mental capabilities, cure disease and heal injuries. Her research partner, Dr. Suchong, began developing a series of genetic modifications made from processed Adam called plasmids. These plasmids, code-named "Lots", gave humans special powers and additional innate abilities using a serum called Eve. While Suchong immersed himself in developing different applications using plasmids, Tenenbaum focused on studying the genetic properties of Adam itself. As Adam reached the general public, Fontaine Futuristics began reaping the profits. At this point in time, Fontaine had become a major influence in Rapture through his various business ventures. These included the oxygen market, Accu-Vox Personal Voice Recorders (everyone who was anyone had one), and the Power to the People machines. He sunk the profits he made from Adam into bigger and better plasmids. Fontaine, now a player in high technology, had cornered the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences while Ryan had spent his time purchasing real estate. Initially, Ryan praised Fontaine's plasmid business as an exemplification of the free market ideology, and refused to regulate it despite pressure from his closest advisors. =============================================================================== Little Sisters {c05} =============================================================================== Adam revolutionized Rapture. The world's best and brightest humans were able to better themselves by "splicing" (integrating into the genetic makeup) more and more plasmids and gene tonics. Plastic surgeons were able to sculpt the flesh in ways never thought possible. The long-term effects of Adam soon became apparent as more people used it. Adam acts like a benign cancer, destroying native cells and replacing them with unstable stem versions. This instability is what gave it its amazing properties, but was also what caused the cosmetic and mental damage resulting from it. It became a vicious circle; the more Adam you took, the more Adam you would need to undo the damage. While this was catastrophic from a medical standpoint, it was great from a business standpoint. Another side effect of splicing was the ability to see ghosts. This occurred from memories being passed on between users of the Adam through genetic sampling. Those who overused plasmids and gene tonics became psychotic and extremely aggressive, and were known as splicers. Fontaine himself was secretly building a spliced up army of lower class citizens in the poorhouses. As the demand for Adam grew, Fontaine Futuristics began looking for a way to increase the supply. Tenenbaum discovered that she could produce more Adam by implanting the sea slug within the stomach lining of a host. The initial tests using young girls as hosts were a success. The host was induced to regurgitate after feeding, yielding 20-30 times the amount of usable Adam as a lone sea slug. The host also became indestructible as a side effect. Any wounded flesh would be regenerated with stem versions of the dead cells. Since the relationship with the implanted slug was symbiotic, harvesting the slug would result in a dead host. Tenenbaum discovered that the symbiotic relationship only worked on children, and of them, only girls. She did not understand why. When she disclosed this fact to Fontaine, he quipped that it was one less bathroom to build for the orphanage he was setting up to address the shortage of hosts. Before long, Fontaine opened the doors to the Little Sister's Orphanage, welcoming his future "Adam factories" with open arms. =============================================================================== Rivalry {c06} =============================================================================== "We laid the foundations of Rapture at the end of the last war... but before the final, terrible war that is to come..." - Andrew Ryan As Fontaine's influence and wealth grew, Ryan became more aware of him both as a political threat and as his ideological antithesis. Ryan began attempts to stomp out all smuggling in order to prevent Fontaine from becoming even more influential. He was sure that Fontaine was behind the rampant smuggling taking place in Neptune's Bounty, and so he put his chief of police, Sullivan, on the case full time. Sullivan and his men made it their mission to take down Fontaine by any means necessary, and even resorted to torture. Unfortunately, Fontaine always managed to be where the evidence wasn't. Fontaine displayed his cutthroat personality at this time by taking a bigger cut of the smuggling revenue and threatened to report the workers himself if they had a problem with it. In one case, a worker died from electrocution under interrogation after refusing to reveal anything to Sullivan because he was more afraid of Fontaine than he was of Ryan. In another case, a worker privately revealed that he was going to rat out Fontaine, but was found dead in a sack the next day. Peach Wilkins and his crew were essentially trapped between a rock and a hard place. As the smuggling problem grew worse, Ryan enacted the death penalty despite the disapproval of the council. Convicted smugglers were publicly hung in Apollo Square for all to witness. As a result, the residents of Rapture rioted in the streets. =============================================================================== Jack Ryan {c07} =============================================================================== Fontaine began preparations for his Ace in the Hole, a secret weapon he would use as a last resort in the imminent war against Ryan. He knew that his weapon would need to be genetically tied to Ryan to get past his security measures. On behalf of Fontaine, Tenenbaum approached Mary-Catherine "Jasmine" Jolene - a performer at a club called Eve's Garden who was publicly known as Ryan's mistress - to get pregnant with Ryan's child in exchange for some much needed money. Once this was done, they extracted the egg and proceeded to create Jack Ryan, Andrew's illegitimate son. Andrew Ryan eventually found out about this arrangement and killed Jolene in the back room of Eve's Garden. Dr. Suchong was assigned to engineer Jack for the purposes of assassinating Andrew Ryan, if that were to ever become necessary. He used an accelerated growth plasmid on Jack to speed up the aging process, and he weighed 58 pounds and had the musculature of a 19 year old at the age of one. Suchong was also responsible for the false memory and mind control imprinting that Fontaine had requested. Jack was made to obey the phrase "would you kindly", a test which was proven successful when Suchong ordered him to break a puppy's neck against his wishes. Fontaine commissioned an antidote to the mind control plasmid in case Jack ever fell into the wrong hands. Fontaine also had a second code phrase, "Code Yellow", imprinted into Jack's brain to slowly stop his heartbeat in the event Jack ever rebelled against him. When Jack's physical and mental conditioning was completed, he was smuggled out of Rapture to the surface as a sleeper agent living a pre-programmed life until the day Frank Fontaine would need him. Tenenbaum eventually had a falling out with Fontaine over her increasingly afflicted conscience. She was disturbed by the maternal instinct she had developed over time working with the Little Sisters. Seeing this, Fontaine fired her from Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum went into hiding, building a safehouse for the Little Sisters she would attempt to find and cure. =============================================================================== The Beginning of the End {c08} =============================================================================== "Ryan takes down smuggling operation...Fontaine and thugs killed in fiery shootout!" - Headline, Rapture Standard, 9/12/58 On September 12, 1958, Ryan and his men, including security chief Sullivan and general contractor Bill McDonagh, killed (who they thought was) Fontaine and his thugs in a fiery shootout, after overcoming his army of splicers. Fontaine had seen this coming and faked his own death. Instead of handing over the organization to those specified in Fontaine's will, Ryan proceeded to nationalize Fontaine's Futuristics, assimilating it under the Ryan Industries banner despite the protests of McDonagh. Ryan, who once burnt down a forest he owned when the government moved to nationalize it, betrayed his own principles. The event was a turning point in his career, and was the first in a series of poor decisions that would lead to the downfall of Rapture. McDonagh resigned from the council in protest and Tenenbaum was nowhere to be found, having previously disappeared. With Fontaine and Tenenbaum both gone, Suchong took advantage of the situation and eagerly accepted a position from Ryan, knowing that he was the only other person in Rapture who knew all about the Little Sisters, which had been a Fontaine Futuristics secret up until this point. At this time, Fontaine reemerged as Atlas, a revolutionary war hero that picked up the movement where Fontaine had left off. Adam use was still not ubiquitous in Rapture, and civil order was still maintained relatively well. Ryan was becoming a dictator. He hired Sander Cohen, a musician and artist, to shill for him in Fort Frolic, writing and performing propaganda pieces to clean up Ryan's increasingly corrupt policies. Anna Culpepper, another performer in Fort Frolic, openly condemned Cohen for being Ryan's stable boy and wrote a few songs criticizing Ryan himself. As the feud between Culpepper and Cohen escalated, Cohen sought out Sullivan to do something about Culpepper. Eventually, Ryan got involved and ended up ordering Sullivan to execute Culpepper. Sullivan complied, but not without remorse. He killed her as she was taking a bath in her Mercury Suites apartment, and took with him a red and black, half-knitted blanket to remind himself of what he had done that day. Ryan's biggest mistake during this period was perhaps his complacency. He assumed he was controlling the situation and failed to disassemble Fontaine's organization, so Fontaine was able to continue his underground activities under the identity of Atlas. Atlas had control over certain areas of Rapture, such as the poorhouses in Apollo Square, and he never stopped recruiting and planning for the day he would finally strike. =============================================================================== New Years Eve {c09} =============================================================================== "Do we gouge the suckers a little? Maybe. But where else they gonna go?" - Lloyd Webster, President, Circus of Values Vending The Kashmir Restaurant served as a staging area for fresh arrivals, welcoming them to their new home in Rapture. It was also a popular destination for the inhabitants of Rapture to both eat and play in style; its New Years Eve celebrations were legendary. The Rapture Masquerade Ball of 1959 would become perhaps the most legendary of all. Rapture's wealthiest citizens gathered in The Kashmir, many of whom were sporting bunny masks, to ring in the new year. One of the attendees was Diane McClintock, Ryan's girlfriend. Ryan himself was nowhere to be found, working late in Hephaestus, something that McClintock had come to expect. She was complaining about this fact into her audio diary when shots suddenly rang out and screams erupted from the party. Fontaine's splicers came streaming out of the poorhouses, breaking into riots, storming the rich, and razing the rest of the population. It was an open revolt that would initiate a full blown civil war and signal the collapse of society. McClintock's face was horribly disfigured in the attack. A handful of sane individuals, including Ryan and Dr. Tenenbaum, survived but locked themselves away to prevent being attacked, while other, less sane beings found other forms of "entertainment" to keep themselves occupied. People quickly joined the call to arms, and soon the city was divided into two. Rapture's capitalist nature rose to the occasion; before long, companies were installing vending machines, such as the new El Ammo Banditos, to provide ammo and weaponry to those who needed it. More combative items were added to the Circus of Value and U-Invent machines. The Power to the People machines were so popular during this period that they would often run out of upgrades after a single use, as many a customer would find out to their dismay. Ryan began setting up a harsh regime of security and checkpoints. Security cameras and automated turrets were not an uncommon sight all over Rapture. Ryan instructed Sullivan to lock down all of the bathyspheres in Rapture by installing a genetic device that would only allow him and his inner circle to move around the city freely. Unfortunately, the genetic keys at this time were unreliable, and anyone in the same genetic ballpark (close relatives) could come and go as they pleased. As things in Rapture grew worse, and due in part to Ryan's capital punishment policy, Sullivan officially resigned as chief of police. He was haunted by what he had done to Anna Culpepper, and committed suicide. Atlas' popularity soared among the population, with many preferring to support him rather than Ryan, who had become reclusive and increasingly dictatorial. To counter Atlas' growing number of supporters, Suchong proposed a mind control plasmid - in the form of pheromones - through which the actions of Rapture's citizens could be effectively be controlled. Ryan was initially hesitant to go with the plan citing free will as a fundamental cornerstone of Rapture, but he quickly succumbed to the "desperate times call for desperate measures" mentality. He rationalized the decision by saying that if Atlas were to win the war, they would be turned into slaves, which would be just as bad if not worse. By bending his ideals yet again, Ryan was able to amass his own army of splicers. Ryan also commissioned Suchong and his team of scientists to create a series of Vita-Chambers, a device that could resurrect specified people, upon death, through the use of plasmid reconstruction and quantum entanglement. Ryan had the device tuned to his genetic frequencies only for the testing phase, which it never left. =============================================================================== Big Daddies {c10} =============================================================================== One of the benefits of the war was the number of corpses strewn about the city, many of which contained recyclable Adam which had skyrocketed in demand since the war began. Suchong, now working for Ryan Industries, solved this problem by adapting the Little Sisters to become scavengers, harvesting Adam from the corpses of people killed in the war. Knowing that the Little Sisters would be at great risk if they were out on the streets gathering ADAM with no protection, Suchong sought to rectify the problem through the use of bodyguards called Big Daddies. These Big Daddies would follow the Little Sisters around and attack anyone who attempted to harm either of them. Suchong presented his idea to Andrew Ryan, but with trepidation. Knowing that becoming a Big Daddy would be a "one way street" Suchong was worried about finding candidates. Andrew Ryan assured him that this would be no problem, and began "volunteering" people for the job. The Big Daddy program was initiated, and a Big Daddy/Little Sister production facility was quickly set up at Point Prometheus. Volunteers had their skin and organs grafted into an enormous diving suit. Ryan was cheap and asked an incredulous Suchong to reuse the suits to conserve on materials. This was disgusting and impractical as it was impossible to remove the steam-sealed flesh from the suits of expired Big Daddies. The candidates went through a painful voice box modulation process and a pheromone application which the Little Sisters were attracted to. They were then injected with a plasmid that effectively turned them into mindless drones with only one purpose: to protect the Little Sisters from harm. Using various other plasmids developed at Optimized Eugenics, the humans inside the suits were spliced with strength and agility, but with no humanity or sanity to lose. They were able to lift heavy weights with ease, as their steel suits were designed to keep them alive during their duties and to resist pressure six miles beneath the ocean. Two models of Big Daddies were produced at the Failsafe Armored Escorts assembly facility: Bouncers were armed with a large drill and Rosies carried a rivet gun and proximity mines. Bouncers were subjected to far more splicing than the Rosies, and as such their heads were deformed to the point of grotesqueness. They wore a helmet with multiple tiny portholed eyes, while Rosies were fitted with a more traditional diving helmet. In addition, elite versions of both models were created, with enhanced size and strength. The Big Daddies communicated by haunting sounds similar to that of a whale's call, as their larynxes had been modified. For easier understanding and for the protection of civilians, lights were added to the helmet to display what state the Big Daddy was in. Green meant that the Big Daddy was completely passive and unalarmed, common for civilian situations such as repairing and maintenance. Yellow meant that the Big Daddy was highly aware of his environment and protecting a Little Sister or actively searching for one. Red meant the Big Daddy was threatened or engaged in combat. Since they no longer had access to Fontaine's Little Sister's Orphanage, Ryan Industries resorted to kidnapping young girls in Rapture to be converted into Little Sisters. One of these girls happened to be Masha Lutz, daughter of Sam and Mariska Lutz. The couple stayed at the Fighting McDonaghs Tavern in Neptune's Bounty and searched tirelessly for their missing daughter. The kidnapped girls were put through mental conditioning exercises, at the Little Wonders Educational Facility, to bond with the Big Daddies. Suchong began work on a protection bond plasmid that would imprint the Big Daddies to the Little Sisters. One day, frustrated with an unsuccessful test batch, Suchong was recording an audio diary in his Artemis Suites lab when he was rudely interrupted by a Little Sister. He slapped her away, and promptly received a Bouncer's drill to the chest. Since the plasmid was apparently quite successful after all, Ryan was able to continue production of Big Daddies without the help of Suchong. Ryan set up a network of tunnels throughout Rapture for the Little Sisters to easily traverse, and made it an actionable offense to interfere with them. The Little Sisters affectionately referred to their accompanying Big Daddy as "Mr. Bubbles." They were mentally conditioned to recognize the dead as "angels". Upon seeing an angel, they used a hypodermic syringe to extract the used Adam, take it into themselves, and convert the material within their body back into a usable form. Ryan also set up the first Gatherer's Gardens vending machines to profit off the population's need for plasmids, using much cuter depictions of the Little Sisters as marketing assets. One day, the Lutzes saw their barely recognizable daughter drawing what looked like blood out of a corpse near Fontaine Fisheries and then walking off with a Big Daddy. The couple later committed suicide in each other's arms by taking pills. A few weeks after the New Years attack, Diane McClintock recovered after being operated on by Rapture's most famous plastic surgeon, Dr. Steinman. Rapture had changed a lot in the time she had spent in recovery, and she was shocked to see that people were being rounded up and executed in Apollo Square. She confronted Ryan about killing innocent people, to which he replied that there were no innocents, only those with him or against him. From that point on, Ryan showed little interest in McClintock, and she blamed it on the scars the "terrorists" had left her during the raid. Eventually, McClintock decided to seek out Atlas and his men to tell them how they had ruined her life. When she arrived in Apollo Square, McClintock witnessed one of Ryan's guards incinerating a woman as she tried to escape. She bribed one of the guards to let her into the Hestia Chambers compound and began to sympathize with their plight and living conditions. Eventually, the people living there grew to trust her, and took her to see Atlas, despite her past as Ryan's mistress. Before long, McClintock was in Atlas' inner circle and began participating in raids for supplies and skirmishes against Ryan's splicers. One day, she was recording an audio diary about how her party had successfully defeated one of Ryan's Big Daddies and harvested the Adam from the Little Sister, when she accidentally entered Atlas' office as he was also recording a speech as Fontaine. Rather than risk having his identity exposed, Atlas/Fontaine killed her right then and there. =============================================================================== Paradise Lost {c11} =============================================================================== "My city was betrayed by the weak..." - Andrew Ryan As the civil war continued, the need for Adam greatly outpaced the supply for it. Neither side of the conflict had enough Adam built up to help their combatants resist the inevitable damage caused by the substance. As a result, Ryan's followers began suffering physical and mental damage, resulting in widespread depravity and insanity throughout Rapture. Splicers began wearing the left-over bunny masks from the Kashmir Restaurant, which had been abandoned since the new years attack, to hide their facial disfigurement. Atlas' army suffered even worse than Ryan's, having lost control of Fontaine Futuristics and therefore the large supply of Adam the Little Sisters provided. Peach Wilkins and his men sealed themselves within the Fontaine Fisheries freezers to protect themselves from both Ryan and Fontaine, whom Wilkins was convinced was still alive. The mechanics of the city were routinely targeted by Atlas' splicers and thus not enough of them were around to keep the city up and running. The city fell into disrepair, with many areas flooding with ocean water from breaches. McDonagh begged Ryan to hand over Fontaine Futuristics to Atlas as a peace offering, but Ryan ignored this and continued splicing up his army with more and tougher plasmids. It had become an arms race, and by all accounts Atlas was losing. At this juncture in time, several people attempted to assassinate Ryan. McDonagh vowed to kill Ryan in order to save Rapture from going down the path Ryan was setting for it. He was unsuccessful, and was burnt and staked up in what had become Ryan's morbid trophy room of "doubters." Anya Andersdotter, a women's shoe designer who - like Mariska Lutz - also had her daughter taken away by Ryan Industries, decided to try and assassinate Ryan on her own initiative. Having lost her daughter and all faith in Ryan and Rapture, she had nothing else to lose. Meanwhile, Kyburz, one of Hephaestus' top engineers, was also plotting to take down Ryan. He did some surveillance but discovered that Ryan had barricaded himself within his office and surrounded it with splicer guards. Kyburz decided that the only way he could get to Ryan would be to trigger the circuit breaker on Ryan's shielded gate using an EMP bomb. Andersdotter began her mission by seducing and sleeping with a mechanic for three weeks before he revealed that it would take a "sympathetic overload in Harmonic Core #3" to reach Ryan. She travelled to Lower Heat Loss Monitoring to inquire further about this and ended up sleeping with another mechanic by the name of Pablo Navarro, who finally pointed her towards Kyburz's tool shop. At this point, Kyburz gave into his paranoia, as his bomb was nearly complete. Thinking she was sent by Ryan to spy on him, Kyburz reported her as one of Atlas' sympathizers. Ryan's splicers dragged Andersdotter away and hung her corpse in Ryan's trophy room, across from McDonagh. Unfortunately, Kyburz was also killed before he was able to complete the device. None of Ryan's would be assassins were successful up to this point, each foiled by Ryan's many security measures, or by each other. Things looked dire for Atlas' cause. And so he began making arrangements for Jack Ryan's return to Rapture. =============================================================================== Welcome to Rapture {c12} =============================================================================== "They told me, 'Son, you're special. You were born to do great things'. You know what? They were right." - Jack Ryan For as long as he could remember, Jack Ryan had lived a quiet life with a normal family on a farm in the United States. One night, he found himself on a flight over the Atlantic ocean, carrying a wrapped gift with a mysterious note attached: To Jack with love from Mom & Dad Would you kindly not open until: 63* 2' N 29* 55' W XXX OOO When the time came, Jack opened the package revealing a revolver inside. For reasons unknown to him, Jack proceeded to hijack the plane, blacking out amidst the screams of other passengers, as the aircraft plummeted towards the dark ocean below. When Jack came to conciousness, he was several feet underwater. He quickly scrambled to the surface and swam towards the nearest piece of land, an ominous, towering lighthouse in the distance, carefully avoiding the blazing, floating wreckage that surrounded him. Jack went into the structure and instinctively descended down the stairs until he reached an open bathysphere. Stepping inside, Jack pulled the lever and the bathysphere slowly submerged into the water. A prerecorded speech by Andrew Ryan began to play and soon ended to a beautiful view of the underwater metropolis Ryan had referred to as Rapture. A voice suddenly emanated from a small handheld radio attached to the wall of the bathysphere. A man by the name of Atlas was communicating with a man named Johnny. Atlas had just seen the burning wreckage above and was sending Johnny to receive the survivor who had apparently taken a bathysphere down into Rapture. Johnny sounded apprehensive about this, and his fears turned out to be justified when a splicer attacked and gutted him live, to the horror of Jack who had just arrived in time to witness it. "Would you kindly pick up a crowbar or something." - Atlas Atlas instructed Jack to to pick up the small radio, introduced himself, and pledged to guide Jack to safety. Jack stepped out of the bathysphere and made his way out of the Rapture Metro station, fighting off a splicer with a wrench, until he found himself drawn to a Gatherer's Garden machine at the top of a flight of stairs. Jack impusively grabbed the red plasmid syringe that rested on top of it and plunged it into one of his tattooed wrists. Jack's body began pulsing with electricity and he immediately lunged himself off of the balcony in distress. "Look Mr. Bubbles. It's an angel. I can see light coming from his belly. Wait a minute... He's still breathing. It's all right, I know he'll be an angel soon." - Little Sister When Jack came to, two splicers hovered over his body and were about to finish him off when he was saved by an approaching Big Daddy and Little Sister. The Little Sister, mistaking Jack's body for a corpse, was about to harvest him when she realized he was still alive. She left, and Jack quickly fled the area and headed towards the abandoned Kashmir Restaurant. At this point, Atlas asked Jack to help him retrieve his family, who was trapped in Neptune's Bounty. "So tell me, friend, which one of the bitches sent you? The KGB wolf? Or the CIA jackal? Here's the news: Rapture isn't some sunken ship for you to plunder, and Andrew Ryan isn't the giddy socialite who can be pushed around by government muscle." - Andrew Ryan As Jack approached the entrance to Neptune's Bounty, one of Ryan's security turrets discovered him and locked the gate. At Atlas' suggestion, Jack began making his way over to Rapture's Medical Pavilion - where there was an emergency access entrance to Neptune - but was stopped when Andrew Ryan decided to confront the stranger through a projection feed. Ryan accused Jack of being a CIA or KGB agent sent to take over Rapture. As a result, Ryan began a campaign to kill Jack by using Rapture's automated systems and his splicer armies, controlled by the pheromones Suchong had created and pumped into Rapture's air supply. Atlas was able to hack the gate just in time, and Jack quickly escaped from the incoming splicers into Medical Pavilion. "Darling, you really MUST go see Steinman... everyone goes to Steinman!" - Marianne Delahunt, Resident, Mercury Suites At its inception, the Medical Pavilion was the main location to have ailments treated. The quality of care was directly related to how much a patient could pay. As plasmid use became prevalent, self-healing eliminated the need for the Pavilion's services, save for one. The plasmids used to boost physical and mental performance left their user scarred. The only fix came in the form of the Medical Pavilions retooled purpose: cosmetically correcting physical disfigurement. Dr. Steinman was the most famous plastic surgeon in Rapture, operating on many of its citizens in his clinic, Dr. Steinman's Aesthetic Ideals. When Adam was discovered, Dr. Steinman went insane with the endless possibilities of "sculpting" his patients, considering himself more of an artist than a true doctor. The utterly delusional Dr. Steinman often conversed with Aphrodite, his imaginary muse. Aphrodite "convinced" him to pursue a new type of beauty: lack of symmetry. Thus, the self-proclaimed "Surgery's Picasso" began to operate on his patients unethically, including one event where he gave an unconcious patient a face lift she never asked for. It became common practice for Steinman to butcher his patients' faces and bodies in the name of perfection, killing many of them in the process. When Jack arrived in Medical Pavilion, Atlas informed him that Dr. Steinman held the key to the Emergency Access to Neptune's Bounty. After overcoming Steinman's obstacles using his newly found Incinerate and Telekinesis plasmids, Jack killed Steinman and retrieved the key. As Jack headed towards Neptune's Bounty, he ran into an unguarded Little Sister. Atlas encouraged him to harvest the girl for maximum Adam, which would have the unfortunate consequence of killing her. Tenenbaum then appeared on an overlooking balcony and begged Jack to save the little girl instead, which would result in less Adam. Tenenbaum threw Jack an antidote plasmid that would remove the Little Sister's thirst for Adam, and promised to make it worth his while if he used it. After much delibiration, Jack made his decision and headed off to Neptune's Bounty. Neptune's Bounty was where all of Rapture's critical fisheries were found. In time, it had become the home for some of the city's criminal element. A local bar, the Fighting McDonaghs, offered refreshment after the work day. Rumors of a smugglers ring operating out of Neptune's Bounty had been heard, though no evidence had been found. After arriving in Neptune via bathysphere, Jack made his way to Fontaine's Fisheries, where he reached a lock door. Peach Wilkins, who had sealed himself and his crew inside during the war, introduced himself and said that Atlas had radioed him ahead of time to let Jack in. Wilkins, unaware that Atlas was in fact Fontaine, warned Jack that he would kill him at the first sign he was working for Fontaine. He then asked him to retrieve a camera from the wharf master's office and take a few photos of some enemy splicers, in exchange for access to the fishery's freezer, the only path to Atlas' family. At this point, Atlas gave Jack a sob story about his wife Moira and son Patrick. Little did Jack know, his family had been completely fabricated and their names were taken from two well known Rapture performers of the same names. The camera Jack successfully retrieved was able to analyze genetic information and parse biological structures. After the photos were taken and delivered, Wilkins kept his word and Jack in, but not before demanding he put all of his weapons in a pneumo beforehand. Jack complied, and was promptly ambushed by Peach and his men, who were convinced he was working for Fontaine. Jack was able to defeat them using only his plasmids, so he retrieved his weapons and headed down a secret passage into Smuggler's Hideout. Smuggler's Hideout was a submarine bay that only smugglers and thieves used. Jack made his way to meet up with Atlas at the submarine in which his family was allegedly held in captive. Once he reached the rendezvous point, Atlas instructed Jack to open the gate by flipping a switch so that he could get inside. The next thing he knew, Ryan had sent in his splicers to attack Atlas and the sub was detonated in a huge explosion. Atlas vowed to get revenge on Ryan, and instructed Jack to head to Arcadia, just a bulkhead door away. "Why not spend your holiday in Arcadia? Fun for the whole family!" - Ad in the Rapture Standard, 9/1/53 Arcadia was the living, breathing heart of Rapture, its lush forests and abundant plant-life serving to generate life-sustaining oxygen. It was also a tranquil haven for those seeking a respite from the daily rigors of life beneath the surface. Vacationers seeking something more relaxing than the flashing lights of Fort Frolic could find peace and serenity in the lovely Waterfall Grottos, serene Tea Garden, and other havens beneath the canopy. Atlas told Jack to get to the Rapture Metro station in Arcadia, just past the Rolling Hills. On his way, Jack encountered the Saturnine, a cult of houdini splicers who had formed a religion around their plasmid powers. Instead of treating the powers as being something created by gene-splicing and genetic manipulation, the demented splicers believed that their powers were granted by ancient gods. The Saturnine were known to drink human blood and chant, "Harness the flame, Harness the mist!" When he reached the gate to the metro, Ryan began releasing a gas into Arcadia, killing the trees and forcing Arcadia to go into automatic emergency lockdown (as to prevent polluting the rest of Rapture with contaminated oxygen). As a result, Jack was trapped inside Arcadia. Atlas pointed him towards Julie Langford's office, hoping she could help them somehow. Julie Langford had spent four years on the surface coming up with ways to defoliate trees in the Pacific to scare out the Japanese at Iwo Jima, and was now at the bottom of the Atlantic doing the same thing in reverse. While working for Ryan, Langford discovered a way to use genetic engineering to revive dead plants. Her so-called "Lazarus Vector" would be able to reverse the effects of Ryan's herbicide. After retrieving a sample of Rosa Gallica for her, Langdon let Jack into her office, but was gassed by Ryan right as Jack got to her. In her dying moments, Langdon scrawled the combination number of her safe on the office window. She had left in her safe the ingredients to the Lazarus Vector as well as a key to Farmer's Market, where several of the components would be. The Farmers' Market was Rapture's most lively and popular marketplace. It was the only place folks could go to obtain the freshest produce - melons, tomatoes, delicious cheese and even pumpkins could be found being hawked by the vendors of the Farmers' Market. Citizens could also enjoy the exquisite wines at Worley's Winery, and honey still dripping from the combs at the Silverwing Apiary. While the Farmers' Market was a bustling and successful area at its peak, its level of standards fell towards the end of Rapture's more civilized days. Merchants began resorting to using fake or imitation ingredients in their various products. By doing this, they were able to increase their profit margins by reducing costs and cutting corners and naming their products, for example, "'Apple' Pie" and "'Chocolate' Cake". Instead of buying or growing legitimate ingredients, merchants would buy the cheaper knock-off ingredients that found their way into Rapture through the smugglers. In one instance, the owners of Worley Winery were found to have diluted their wines with distilled water. With no government agency regulating the standards of food in Rapture, there was nothing to prevent the Farmers' Market vendors from engaging in this kind of activity. After retrieving the materials for the Vector in Farmer's Market, Jack returned to Langdon's office and placed them into the misting device. Ryan took this opportunity to send in splicers while the Vector was cooking. Jack was able to fend off the waves of splicers, and soon the Lazarus Vector was successfully released into the air, reviving the dying trees. Jack went into the Rapture Metro station and continued to the next stop, Fort Frolic. "A star, mama! Mr. Ryan said he's going to make me a star!" - Mary-Catherine (Jasmine) Jolene Fort Frolic was the playground for the citizens of Rapture. Whether its high class shopping, gambling, theater or just some "company" for the lonely... anything could be had for a price at Fort Frolic. It featured a main atrium with various entertainment offered around this hub such as "Sir Prize: Games of Chance", "Eve's Apple" exotic dance club and the fantastic "Fleet Hall" where opera and musical theatre would regularly take place. "If you can't come in from the cold, then you gotta grow ice over your heart. And the iceman cometh, Sander baby. The iceman fucking cometh." - Martin Finnegan When Jack arrived at Fort Frolic, Sander Cohen shut down his radio access to both Ryan and Atlas. He promised to let Jack out of Fort Frolic if he killed each of his four estranged proteges, Patrick, Cobb, Martin Finnegan, and Hector Rodriguez, took a picture of their corpses, and hung the photos in the atrium. Once Jack completed Cohen's "quadtych", Cohen allowed him to leave. "Would you kindly get to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch?" - Atlas When Jack reached Hephaestus, he headed towards Kyburz's office, where he discovered his nearly completed EMP bomb hidden away. Jack finished the bomb and was able to attach it to the core of Hephaestus, destroying the power supply to the locks barring him from Ryan's office. At this point in time, Ryan literally connected the dots and figured out who Jack really was, having listened in on Atlas' radio communications with Jack the entire time he was there. He taunted over the radio: "So far away from your family, from your friends, from everything you ever loved. But, for some reason you like it here. You feel something you can't quite put your finger on. Think about it for a second and maybe the word will come to you: nostalgia." ... "Even in the book of lies, sometimes you find truth. There is indeed a season for all things. And now that I see you flesh-to-flesh and blood-to-blood, I know I cannot raise my hand against you. But know this: you are my greatest disappointment." ... "Come now, my child. There is one final thing to discuss." - Andrew Ryan Although never stating it directly, Ryan revealed to Jack that he was indeed his son. This explained why Jack was able to travel freely using the genetically locked bathyspheres and Vita-Chambers spread throughout the city. This was confirmed once Jack reached Ryan's office, where a series of photos were pinned on the wall and connected with string, linking Jack to Andrew Ryan and Jasmine Jolene. "The assassin has overcome my final defense, and now he's come to murder me. In the end what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No, a man chooses, a slave obeys. You think you have memories. The farm, your family, an airplane, a crash, and then this place. Was there really a family? Did that plane crash or was it hijacked, forced down, forced down by something less than a man? Something bred to sleepwalk through life, until they're activated by a simple phrase spoken by their kindly master? Was a man sent to kill? Or a slave? A man chooses, a slave obeys. Come here, stop, would you kindly? Would you kindly, powerful phrase, a familiar phrase. Sit, would you kindly? Stand, would you kindly? Run, stop, turn! A man chooses, a slave obeys. Kill! A MAN! CHOOSES! A slave, obeys. OBEY!" - Andrew Ryan "Nice work, boyo. It's time to end this little masquerade. There ain't no Atlas kid, never was. In my line of work it takes the full variety of aliases. Hell once I was even a Chinaman for six months. But you been a sport, so I guess I owe you a little honesty. The name's Frank Fontaine. I gotta say, I had a lot of business partners in my life, but you? Of course the fact that you were genetically conditioned to bark like a cocker spaniel when I said 'would you kindly,' might've had something to do with it. But still, as soon as that machine finishes processing the genetic key you just fished off Ryan I'm gonna run Rapture, tits to toes. You been a pal, but you know what they say, never mix business with friendship. Thanks for everything kid. Don't forget to say hi to Ryan for me." - Frank Fontaine Ryan had set Rapture into self-destruct mode moments before Jack confronted him in his office. Ryan revealed to Jack that Atlas had been manipulating him since his welcome in Rapture with the words "would you kindly." After a short speech, Ryan used the code phrase to instruct Jack to kill him with a golf club. This was to demonstrate two important things. Ryan wanted to die on his own terms to prove that he was in control to the end. He had shut off the Vita-Chamber in his office so that he wouldn't be resurrected. He also wanted Jack to realize that he was truly a slave and a puppet so that he might get revenge by seeking out Atlas. Once Ryan was dead, Atlas revealed that his real name was Frank Fontaine. Fontaine asked Jack to kindly shut off the self destruction mechanism, an order to which he could only comply. Once that was finished, Fontaine left Jack to die from Ryan's security system when a Little Sister appeared and led him to an escape route through a crawl space. Crawling in the narrow tunnel, Jack accidentally fell through a gap and blacked out. Jack woke up in a safehouse, located in the sewers of Olympus Heights, to find out that Tenenbaum had sent the Little Sisters to rescue him from Ryan's office. While he was sleeping, Tenenbaum had undone some of the genetic conditioning that kept Jack a slave to Fontaine's will. To finish the job, Tenenbaum suggested he look for "answers" at Suchong's flat in Mercury Suites. Soon after Jack departed the safehouse, Fontaine tried to get him killed by asking "go get stepped on by a Big Daddy, would you kindly?" This attempt was unsuccessful thanks to Tenenbaum's treatment. However, Fontaine had a backup plan, and activated Code Yellow, a phrase that would increasingly slow Jack's heartbeat until he was dead. Jack quickly made his way to Suchong's apartment where he found a diary that revealed the existence of Lot 192, the antidote Suchong had made for Fontaine in case Jack ever fell into the wrong hands. Luckily for Jack, Tenenbaum had stolen a sample of this plasmid but had left it in her old apartment. Jack made haste to the apartment to retrieve the sample, but not before stopping by Sander Cohen's apartment to kill him. He searched Tenenbaum's apartment only to discover that the plasmid had been moved to Fontaine's penthouse. Jack was able to enter Fontaine's apartment (due to a paparazzi tabloid that revealed his security code) and retrieve the small dosage that Tenenbaum had stolen. The dosage was enough to eliminate the effects of Code Yellow, but made control over his own plasmids difficult. Tenenbaum told him that a second dosage could be retrieved at Suchong's lab at Artemis Suites in Apollo Square. Once Jack took the second dosage, he had completely broken free from Fontaine's grasp. Tenenbaum then directed Jack towards Point Prometheus, where he could finally confront the man that had created him. When Jack reached Point Prometheus, he briefly saw and gave chase to Fontaine until he was stopped by a collapsed entryway. Fontaine fled through a door into the museum. Tenenbaum informed Jack that the only way through that door was by getting a Little Sister to open it, and to do that Jack would have to appeal to them by disguising himself as a Big Daddy. Jack traveled to the different wings of Point Prometheus to retrieve the necessary components and undertake the necessary procedures to become a Big Daddy, or at least appear as one. Once this was completed, Jack banged on a hole in the wall, and a Little Sister appeared to guide him the rest of the way to Fontaine. The Little Sister that accompanied Jack, while cured of the need for Adam, was still mentally imprinted to collecting it. This made Jack's journey slightly longer than it needed to be, and it forced him to protect her since she no longer had the invulnerability of a slug-infested Little Sister. Eventually, the pair made their way to the end of the museum. The Little Sister offered Jack her syringe, knowing it would be useful in the upcoming fight. Jack loaded his arsenal one last time to prepare for his final task: murdering Frank Fontaine. "I had you built! I sent you top side, I called you back, showed you what you was, what you was capable of! Even that life you thought you had. That was something I dreamed up and had tattooed inside your head. Now if that's not family, I don't know what is!" - Frank Fontaine When Jack emerged from the elevator, Fontaine was strapped into an Adam injecting device pumping into him all the Adam, plasmids, and gene tonics he could get his hands on. Fontaine revealed that this was to be the very first time he would splice plasmids, having only spliced with gene tonics before as evidenced by the chase in Point Prometheus when he was able to lift and throw a statue. Fontaine was quickly growing into a monster. Tenenbaum told Jack that the only way to defeat him would be to draw Adam out of his body using the syringe he had received from the little girl just moments before. Eventually Jack was able to extract nearly all of the Adam from Fontaine, and Fontaine knocked Jack off his feet. Suddenly, a group of Little Sisters appeared, swarming the defeated Fontaine and stabbing him to death with their needles. What happened next is uncertain. Some say that the Little Sisters offered Jack the city, which he refused. He decided to return to the surface, bringing the little girls along with him and giving them a normal life in the outside world. Jack finally had a family, and they would love him to his deathbed as the man who had saved their lives. "They offered you the city, and you refused it. And what did you do instead? What I've come to expect from you, you saved them. You gave them the one thing that was stolen from them. A chance. A chance to learn. To find love. To live. And in the end what was your reward? You never said. But I think I know: a family." - Bridgette Tenenbaum But others say that Jack, overcome with his lust for Adam, began his rule over what was left of Rapture. When a rescue party arrived at the Rapture lighthouse surveying the wreck, Jack sent up a contingent of splicers to slaughter the unwelcome visitors, and seized the nuclear weapon aboard their submarine. "They offered you everything, yes? And in return you gave them what I've come to expect of you, brutality. You took what you wanted, all the ADAM, all the power. And Rapture trembled, but in the end even Rapture was not enough for you. Your father was terrified the world would try to steal the secrets of his city. But not you. For now you have stolen the terrible secrets of the world." - Bridgette Tenenbaum THE END ... =============================================================================== Frequently Asked Questions {c13} =============================================================================== 1. Why did Atlas/Fontaine go through all the trouble of deceiving Jack? The first, more obvious answer is that it's easier to get someone to do something if they believe in it and are motivated to achieve that goal. Instead of risking an insubordinate Jack fighting him every step of the way, Atlas wove a believable story to make Jack personally hate Ryan, and thus motivate him to kill him. The second reason is that Atlas was simultaneously tricking Andrew Ryan, who he knew was listening into all of their radio communications. Ryan did not figure out that Atlas was actually Fontaine, and that Jack was actually his son, until moments before Jack reached him. If Ryan had known these things earlier, things would have played out much differently. Ryan could have exposed Atlas as Jack's slave driver, or refrained from blowing up the submarine if he knew that there was nobody inside. 2. Who blew up the submarine in Smuggler's Hideout? Ryan did, thinking Atlas' family was really inside. 3. What do those tattoos on Jack's wrists represent? The chain tattoos on Jack's wrists symbolize his role as a slave. Fontaine created Jack for the sole purpose of carrying out his wishes, so it was the entire embodiment of his existance. 4. Is Ryan really dead? Yes, Ryan is dead. There is a Vita-Chamber in a hidden corner of his office, but it is the only one in the game that is de-activated. Ryan shut it off before the confrontation with Jack to prove a point, and leave the world on his own terms. 5. Why did Fontaine have to use Andrew Ryan's son as his assassin? The fact that Jack is Ryan's son is the sole reason he is able to travel freely throughout Rapture using the Rapture Metro bathysphere system. Ryan had Sullivan lock down the bathyspheres during the war, and only those closely related to Ryan and his inner circle could come and go as they pleased. It is also the reason why Jack is invincible in Rapture; he is able to use Ryan's Vita-Chambers, which are genetically locked to Ryan himself. This is why the splicers in Rapture die permanently while Jack can ressurect. An assassin that cannot die is the perfect assassin. I'd also like to comment that this is absolute brilliance on the game developers' part; that such an integral part of the story explains the player death/resurrect mechanic perfectly. 6. I seem to have thought that the Little Sisters-as-scavengers predated the Atlas/Ryan war. Weren't they already being cultivated for this purpose by Fontaine for his Adam industry? The Little Sisters were adapted to become scavengers only after the war began (after Fontaine had become Atlas and Ryan took over Fontaine Futuristics), when corpses began filling the streets and they realized there was Adam to be had. Something important to note is that Fontaine got all of his Little Sisters strictly through the orphanage. These were little girls with no families, etc. Ryan, on the other hand, got them all through kidnapping, which is ironic considering Ryan is the leader of Rapture and Fontaine is a notorious crime boss. All of the kidnappings you hear of in the audio diaries are directly linked to Ryan Industries. The Little Sisters before Ryan (for example, in all of Tenenbaum's recordings) are just "Adam factories"; there's never a mention of them physically going out to do any harvesting. 7. How do you know that Sullivan killed himself? It is never directly stated in the game that Sullivan killed himself, although it is heavily implied. Sullivan was a good guy at heart who followed orders from a corrupt official and ended up doing some very horrible things, including killing a guy during interrogation and a singer for writing a few songs that upset Ryan. After he killed Anna Culpepper, the audio diary talks about how he took from her room a half-knitted blanket after killing her as a reminder of what he'd done. It's clear that at this point he is very remorseful and on the brink of quitting. When Ryan finally enacted the death penalty by hanging, Sullivan handed in his badge. We never hear from him again, and there is a dead body in the wharfmaster's office next to the interrogation room and the "Have My Badge" audio diary. We can therefore reasonably conclude that Sullivan committed suicide for the atrocities he committed during the latest parts of his career as chief of Andrew Ryan's police. Questions? ---------- If you have a question about the plot, feel free to send it to me at bioshockstory@gmail.com Donations ---------- If you enjoyed this guide or found it useful, please consider donating any amount you find appropriate via this PayPal link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=FQHT262JK8D92 Thank you so much for reading! Version History ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.14 (07/22/08) - Added spoiler alert at the beginning and fixed the reason why Jack was locked in Arcadia. 1.13 (10/07/08) - Fixed an error about Fontaine not having spliced before the final boss fight. We assume he was only talking about plasmids, since it's obvious he has spliced gene tonics, at the very least, to be able to lift and throw the statue at the beginning of Point Prometheus. 1.12 (10/06/08) - Fixed an error in chronology. Fontaine didn't activate Code Yellow until after Jack had left the safehouse. Also, clarified that Ryan did not explicitly reveal Jack to be his son, he only heavily implied it. 1.11 (06/07/08) - Fixed a typo. 1.10 (05/29/08) - Fixed a few sentences. 1.09 (12/18/07) - Rearranged a few points regarding the timeline of the death penalty and its relation to smugglers and Sullivan's suicide. New paragraph explaining that Tenenbaum actually disappeared before Ryan's takeover of Fontaine Futuristics and why. Clarified that Fontaine only continued his underground activities after becoming Atlas. Clarified that Aphrodite, Steinman's muse, was imaginary and a product of his insanity. Elaborated on the Farmers' Market's declining standards towards the end of Rapture. Fixed a paragraph that said that Ryan revealed to Jack that Atlas was Fontaine. In fact, he never said this; Atlas himself revealed this after Ryan had died. Various typos. Thanks Ivan! 1.08 (09/21/07) - Fixed a few typos. 1.07 (09/19/07) - Reworded the part about why the slug hosting only worked with girls and not boys. 1.06 (09/18/07) - Fixed a typo. 1.05 (09/14/07) - Fixed a typo. 1.04 (09/13/07) - Fixed a typo. 1.03 (09/12/07) - Added a question about Sullivan's suicide. 1.02 (09/11/07) - Fixed a typo and added a frequently asked question. Added a sources section at the top. 1.01 (09/10/07) - Added more info about the Saturnine and the first FAQ questions. Added a quote. A few typos fixed. 1.00 (09/06/07) - First version of guide completed. Credits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Thanks to Irrational Games for creating this amazing game and story. - Thanks to the following people and sources for all of their contributions, whether it be providing insight or simply reporting a typo: Mauricio V, Brett Middleton, Brooks Carmichael, Ivan Trembow, Michael Herrling, Michael Fortson, Ivan Tarapov, Jered Gunn, Christopher Saunders, Jason Roper, Al_Ka_Pwn, Chris Vig, Kcappa, DSLSublime, _SilentGhost_, jungfreud, PrivateJoker, Growshroom, ShadowsDieAway, Snowmanatee, perianwyr, Deacon Swain, Sith_Lords, Yann van Uden, Scott Matthew, Arca Gunay, http://bioshock.wikia.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock (c) Copyright 2008 Jeff Liu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You may post excerpts of this FAQ on your forum or fansite on the condition that you link back to this location (url) at GameFAQs.com. Please also send me an email at bioshockstory@gmail.com with a link to wherever you posted it, as I'd like to see all of the different places this FAQ turns up. This may be not be reproduced under any circumstances for commercial reasons without advance written permission.