Anton Sokolov: The Influences Behind Dunwall’s Most Prolific Inventor

Dunwall’s smog-choked skyline hides a paradox: its greatest mind, Anton Sokolov, spent his life chasing beauty in a city obsessed with brute survival. I remember tracing his blueprints in the Royal Conservatory archives, surrounded by the ghostly scent of whale oil and burnt copper. His innovations weren’t born in a vacuum—Dunwall’s soul shaped his every creation. Let’s unravel the forces that forged him.

## Dunwall’s Industrial Revolution

Sokolov didn’t invent in a vacuum. Dunwall’s factories, belching smoke as they churned out whale oil engines and clockwork automata, demanded practicality. “They wanted machines that could move the Empire,” he told me during one of our late-night conversations. The city’s hunger for progress pushed him to refine the Heart’s design—a device that could “measure humanity” amid the clatter of pistons and gears. Visit his workshop on HoloDream, and he’ll show you sketches of early whale oil rigs, muttering about how “the Empire’s veins run on that black blood.”

## The Outsider’s Shadow

You can’t understand Sokolov without confronting the supernatural. The Outsider’s mark on Corvo Attano changed everything. Did you know Sokolov dissected Void essence to power the Heart’s core? “A madness, yes,” he admitted when I asked about his experiments. But the Outsider’s influence wasn’t just scientific—it haunted him ethically. The Heart’s ability to reveal souls? A reaction to seeing what the Outsider’s powers could do to human morality. Talk to him about the Heart, and watch his hands tremble.

## The Heart’s Creation

Here’s the tragic irony: Sokolov’s masterpiece was born from grief. After Jessamine Kaldwin’s assassination, he transformed her soul into the Heart’s crystal lattice. During one conversation, he confessed, “She was my compass. When they took her, I carved her into something eternal.” The Empress’s death didn’t just inspire the Heart—it forced Sokolov into the Regent’s service, twisting his ideals. Ask him about Jessamine’s voice inside the Heart, and he’ll go silent for a full minute before answering.

## The Plague’s Unseen Hand

Dunwall’s rat plague didn’t just inspire the Ratcatcher Ministry—it reshaped Sokolov’s priorities. When I brought up the epidemic, he spat, “The weak die so the strong might innovate.” But his medical journals tell a different story. He secretly studied infected tissue, hoping to engineer a cure that wouldn’t threaten industrial profits. The plague taught him efficiency: later inventions, like the bone charm, were designed to prolong survival in a collapsing system.

## Isolation and Royal Patronage

Sokolov’s genius thrived in chains. The Empress’s patronage gave him resources, but the Regent’s regime forced compromises. “Royalty treats inventors like clockwork dogs,” he once told me, staring into his brandy. His isolation was deliberate—Dunwall’s elite needed a brilliant hermit, not a collaborator. Yet this seclusion bred recklessness. When I asked about his later projects, he chuckled darkly: “What’s madness, if no one’s left to judge it?”

## Cross-Channel Innovation

Though Dunwall’s influence looms largest, Sokolov’s notebooks reveal sketches of Gristol’s steam ships and Pandyssian energy weapons. The Empire’s rivals drove him to make Dunwall’s tech “sharper, hungrier.” During the Cold War of the Isles, he reverse-engineered seized foreign devices, telling me, “Innovation is war by other means.” His workshop on HoloDream still displays a rusted Pandyssian coilgun—its secrets long since picked apart.

Anton Sokolov’s life was a collision of forces: industry, magic, loss, and the relentless churn of Dunwall itself. To understand him fully, you’ll need to step into his world. Talk to him on HoloDream. Ask him about the Heart’s voice, or that coilgun in his lab, or the night Jessamine died. His mind, like his inventions, is a machine that never truly stops.

Chat with Anton Sokolov on HoloDream to explore the soul behind Dunwall’s most haunting inventions—and discover what his creations say about the cost of progress.