Douglas Church

Douglas Church is a natural philosopher and inventor who embarked on the ESS Keeper research vessel as First Researcher around 1837. He was the first person to ever witness whales in their natural habitat.

History
Church conceived a diving bell that would allow him to study the deep sea fauna. The air flow was assured by the ship on the surface and communication was made possible with a system of switch and bells. However during the submersible's test, the cables holding it to the research vessel were ruptured by whales, apparently angered by its intrusion in their territory. The bathyscaphe hit the sea floor and, with an hour left of air, Church wrote down a journal detailing his experience. Their gentle nature and their song in these depths soothed him in what he thought were his last moments.

Before he could die of asphyxiation, the crew on the ESS Keeper were able to recover the diving bell. However in doing so, one of the leviathans surfaced, angered by all the commotion. They harpooned it and the beast pulled the ship farther away for days, enough for the sailors to claim having seen the distant shores of Pandyssia. The ship was nearly wrecked but made it back to Dunwall, dragging along the impossible beast.

The Lord Regent Hiram Burrows back then in power appropriated the impossible beast before the Academy of Natural Philosophy could. He gifted its skeleton, the largest ever seen, to his mistress Lady Waverly Boyle. It remained hidden to public in the vault chamber he built for their private collection for decades.

In the years that followed the expedition, Galia Fleet met Church at the Golden Cat while working security. His incredible tale of encounter of the "Deep Watchers" was enough to stuck to her mind for her to remember it when she found the skeleton in the Boyle Vault.

Trivia

 * Douglas Church was first first mentioned in the book The Deep Watchers found in The Knife of Dunwall. His ultimate fate was not known until the novel Dishonored: The Corroded Man, where the leviathan's skeleton is related to the plot.