#i could talk about him forever sorry this is so long FHGFKJDSGKH

[purgetrooperfox]

I WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR BOY DESMOND!!!! TELL ME THINGS, PLEASE!!!!💕💞💕💞💕💘💕💘💕💞💕

HELLOOOO Desmond hours real. Des my darling my fucked up little guy. he is um. he's very much not V (cont. under the cut)

grew up in Pacifica. yikes! had connections with Mr. Hands that will come back later

got roped into Maelstrom pretty young under ripperdoc/mechanic pretenses

hence all the headgear! Maelstrom initiation involves an optic nerve operation [x] that afaik usually involves taking both eyes. Des made a case for only losing one, citing ripperdoc superstition about organics vs cybernetics, which went over like a lead balloon but ultimately panned out under the assumption that he'd just struggle more for it

did more ripping than doc-ing if you catch my drift (famously medical-tortured and forced implants on whoever the bosses targeted, killed A Lot Of People on the table, human experimentation, wrote the Maelstrom handbook on all of the above) and had no qualms about it

like I cannot stress enough that he was Bad News <3

if it wasn't for turbulence in the upper ranks, he would've gladly kept at the job indefinitely. but he and Royce had ✨️issues✨️. namely that Des was fiercely loyal to Brick and company, and by that point he'd climbed the ranks to a level where his opinion carried quite a bit of weight

so even before Royce took over, he was all worried about the discourse Des was starting about him and his posse

but shit didn't hit the proverbial fan until after the power transfer. Royce took over and stuck one of his guys under Des to be trained (a la train your replacement), Des was severely unimpressed, eventually tried to jump ship

and got caught! and got his turn on the table! lost a couple limbs to his replacement while making sure to make clear that "this motherfucker is an embarrassment to everything I built here". was probably more upset at the disregard of his legacy than the fact that he was most likely going to die very slowly

reputation is soooo important to him you see. and "Eyes" was infamous

anyway. Dum Dum busted him out (gave him an adrenaline shot and unlocked the back door)

which led to a pretty pathetic trudge through the city until he passed out on the street, and eventually got scooped up

enter Misty "we can't just let him die" and Vik "god dammit if you say so"

cue a long, slow recovery process. realization that he can't do the ripperdoc or mechanic work he knows with only one organic arm and a royally shitty cybernetic. merc work to pay Vik back (thanks Mr. Hands, hello again). Vik wants to try to teach him that he can relearn how to Fix Things. do you see my vision?

important that Maelstrom thinks he's dead so Royce doesn't keep sending goons after him. also important to build a new network

tricky to build a new network when his entire face says "I'm with famously violent gang Maelstrom" innit

but he's trying! and mostly trying to behave himself! and trying to build a new arm so he can do work he enjoys again (even if it's more doc-ing than ripping now)!

all to say I think he's neat and I think Maelstrom was woefully underexplored in the game so I'll do it through an oc 😌 the smaller details are unnecessary but entertain me deeply. he has a funny little casual on again/off again with Dietlinde (yes the Totentanz bartender with minimal canon personality). he and Dum Dum were dumbass buddies. his sense of humor is drier than the desert. he is A Junkie. nothing he knows about mechanics or medicine or engineering was learned in a classroom and you couldn't pay him to learn that way, but he picks it all up well in a practical environment. his pride will be (kind of already was) his downfall. he says shit off the cuff that thoroughly disturbs civilized company without even realizing he did it

he is. my beloved