Voyage of the Bounty (Kazan)

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    • #762
      modeac
      Participant

      A random thought occurred to me;
      What exactly was Delacor doing in his Spectre career?
      I considered that Delacor would be doing Premiseversed-up versions of the side quests from the game ME1; for example rescuing chairman Burns becomes attempting to defuse a hostage situation involving L2s who are pawns for something much bigger and the one hostage becomes dozens of VIPs from various species who all die when Delacor blows the operation. The medallions side quest becomes a joint op with the STG which goes to hell thanks to Delacor, the retrieval of the nuke stolen by Elanos Halliat ending in disaster, and so on. Or perhaps they just run around clearing up the messes left behind by the AIS or Hades Group.
      This would be effective in establishing a tone for the Kazan without Shepard and the importance of Spectre assignments.

      What is the attitude aboard the Kazan? You stated Jeong hated Delacor and Traynor was constantly depressed.
      My take on Delacor is that he’s a Good fighter but nothing else- he’s not a leader, he doesn’t inspire anyone with confidence or show respect for those under his command, and worse makes it obvious he sees no value in his subordinates lives. I’m remembering OSABC 1 where Delacor is sabotaging Shepard’s career on Florez’s orders- as a Z2 Shepard could have been executed at any time by the Commisars and AIS on the spot without a trial so if anyone had enough evidence to justify what Delacor was told to do, Shepard would simply have been formally executed, I don’t see Delacor being stupid enough to not know that so his motivations were simply spite of some kind. Also, if Delacor really thought Shepard was psychologically imbalanced why was he seemingly trying to enrage her? Did he not consider the deaths Shepard could cause amongst her fellow soldiers of she really snapped? Basically I consider the guy a total prick and I wonder if the reason the council and SA sent him and Vasir of all Spectres after the Butcher because they want them both dead.

    • #776
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      Delacor is a complex character….my take on an officer I served under in the US Navy, a guy with perpetual bad luck who was also a badass.

      Most of what Delacor has been doing is the ‘side missions’ from ME 1 and ME2, minus the Luna Base mission. He has dealt with, at this point:

      — biotic terrorists
      — missile launches
      — abandoned ships
      — Cerberus and Broker intel
      — the mess with the nuclear device

      Traynor is depressed because she had a relationship go bad and her heroes (Liara and Shepard) were brutally killed. Jiong is despondant because Susan is still on Luna and not doing well mentally or physically and the Commissars are considering recycling her.

      The Kazan is divided on how to feel about Delacor. On the one hand, the marines respect him immensely. No matter how dangerous, Delacor will never let his men go where he will not, and more than once has been seriously hurt protecting his people. The engineers like him since he has an engineering background and is fanatically careful with the ship.

      Ops on the other hand dislikes him, because he does not like to let them run the battle plot and is constantly interfering with Nav.

      Delacor himself has long ago realized that being a Spectre is a fancy way of being a iron-handed thug of the Council, and that the job is not about doing the job right. This, above all else, is what infurates him about being compared to Shepard. Delacor’s solutions to problems have, thus far, caused the Council ZERO trouble and no unexpected consequences, unlike Shepard’s actions. He’s lost remarkably few men and (aside from the comet thing) other Spectres see him as more credible in his skill set (programming and hacking, combat, engineering and piloting a tank or battlesuit, political and diplomatic skills and survival training) than Shepard’s more limited skills.

      But the Butcher has put Shepard back in everyone’s mind, and death has a funny way of making you remember only the good side of people.

      Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.

    • #783
      modeac
      Participant

      Thanks for the reply and the interesting tidbit about the superior officer thing, although the description of Delacor doesn’t seem to fit with earlier portrayals, like when back in OSABC you called the Sole Survivor a ‘Broken man’ and there has to be some reason why in TWCD Joker called Delacor a disaster and why Admirals Ahern and Schulman (whoever that is) hates him.
      Also, you really didn’t mention the point I made about Delacor taking secret orders from Florez and your claim of Delacor being highly concerned for his men’s safety contradicts the dangers of provoking the highly unstable Shepard seen at the beginning of OSABC.
      The new information you gave does make him sound like a micromanager and quite paranoid though.

    • #786
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      The descriptor of ‘broken man’ can have many appliques. Delacor is broken in that he’s paranoid, functionally and operationally. He has a persecution complex and lets that color his beliefs and how he interacts with command. I know common depictions of broken people are what Ahern would call emo crying asshats, but there are more ways than that to be broken and Delacor fits that.

      He refuses to have much of a social life because he’s convinced Fate is out to ruin him. He disconnects from people on a personal level because he doesn’t trust anyone. He has no hobbies and no real life outside of his military command because everything else (family, fiance, political options) has been taken from him.

      Delacor is called a disaster because he is infamous for having extremely bad luck, that tends to blow up on people around him.

      However, with the exception of Jiong, no one on the Kazan has any real knowledge of Delacor’s background or history with Shepard except rumors and stories about his bad luck.

      As far as Shepard goes, Delacor saw Shepard (with some justification) as being both inappropriate for command and wasteful of her men’s lives. In addition, due to his paranoia, Delacor felt Shepard had been foisted off on him as some sort of punishment or even plot to get him killed.

      The reality of the situation was that Delacor fundamentally disliked Shepard, and provoking her was the best way to get her out of his unit. The fact that he had orders from Florez to make her unstable and miserable segued nicely with what he felt anyway.

      Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.

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