You do not expect Lt. Gore to make the choices he makes.
He’s an aristocrat which—for as much as the meaning of that word has been twisted or misunderstood by moderns—is something a bit older and I would say load-bearing in his world.
He looks at Captain Somerset—reckless, common-born, possibly cursed—and concludes: This man survived when he should have died. That is data I cannot ignore.
Dossier: Lieutenant Marion Gore
Designation: Second Lieutenant, Arunean Navy; Officer aboard the frigate Siren’s Reply
Known For: Analysis, lineage, competence, efficiency
Appearance & Demeanor
Marion Gore is tall—even for a family known for their height—with the kind of bearing that suggests years, if not generations, of expectation informing it.
His features are the usual acute angles. High cheekbones, a blade of a nose, pale blue eyes that assess. His uniform manages to always be immaculate. Every button catching the light at precisely the right angle. It’s infuriating.
What’s also infuriating is that he doesn’t perform superiourity. He simply is superiour—at least in the variables he considers meaningful. He’s calm under pressure, he’s rather good at what he does.
When he fights, he doesn’t brawl. He doesn’t charge—he advances. His movements are a dancer’s waltz and he’s just too bloody perfect.
The creature at the bow moved with speed that should not have been possible, but Gore was faster—not in body, but mind. He sidestepped with balletic precision, his saber tracing a path planned moments prior. The strike wasn’t aimed at thick hide or otherworldly flesh. It found the weak point, the joint where whatever was holding the emaciated body upward was clipped apart.
One thrust.
It fell. Gore wiped his blade.
Psychological Profile
Gore was raised to be a certain kind of officer.
The sort father envisioned: methodical, traditional, obedient. And the “right” families produced the “right” officers through breeding and training of comportment alone. His father, Commodore-General Valoren Gore, is quite certain about all this.
Tall, austere, absolutely convinced that his way—the old way, the proper way—is the only way. You know, the usual noble father trope.
Marion is supposed to become that. A continuation of the family legacy. Another Gore in the long line of Gores who commanded through birthright rather than earning it through blood and salt because now they were expected to earn it in reverse. Blood and salt was the entry fee when Arune was only a dream.
But Gore—our Gore, not father Gore—had another idea.
He looked at Captain Somerset—common, reckless, contemptuous of regulations—and saw something his father couldn’t process: Somerset survived when doctrine said he should die. Somerset held a ship together through the Fathom’s dreamed up storm when every law of seamanship said it was impossible.
That is not mere luck, surely. There are numbers for this. There’s data.
And data, to Gore, is the only god worth worshipping.
The Variable He Can’t Control
Gore burns bridges. Quickly, too. Because for all the times father has said he’s being troublesome, it’s only because he raised him to be decisive. Gore is.
And he chooses to serve under Somerset despite dad really not liking that. And not out of any loyalty, per se.
Somerset survived the psychic storm. That data justified the choice. But Somerset is also becoming something Gore doesn’t fully understand—something touched by forces that don’t operate on logic. And Marion Gore is, above all else, a man who trusts data.
What happens when the data changes? When Somerset’s competence starts looking less like skill and more like communion with something that hunts them. When the sea’s obsession with his captain becomes undeniable?
Gore chose to stay. But he’s an analyst, not a zealot. He follows Somerset because Somerset has proven his worth. The moment that proof becomes compromised—the moment competence tips into madness—Gore may very well recalculate.
For now, he stays.
It’s not about whether Gore respects Somerset. It’s whether respect will be enough when the abyss starts calling.
Well, calling louder. We already established the whole abyss calling thing. It’s a nautical horror.
Fair winds,
—D.S.
The fact that his rebellion comes not from some abstract need to rebell, not from some core ideological differences, but is the product of what he was meant to become is such a beautiful thing to me. Your child learned all you wanted to teach them and then... surpassed it, became even more perfect to a degree you can no longer accept.