Deviation from this state-imposed dogma was unacceptable and illegal. The Founders , led by Comstock and Columbia's elite, were the prevailing political faction in Columbia, retaining exclusive control over the city's society, government and business infrastructure. They enforced Comstock's religious and social vision out of blind devotion or greed, and in turn benefited from it as part of the privileged social strata. The Founders were also extremely militaristic, enforcing their laws and operations in a police state with a huge army of police officers and security automatons.
They used child indoctrination to encourage military service through the popular Duke and Dimwit Theatre. A fleet of airships, headed by Comstock's personal zeppelin The Hand of the Prophet , kept constant watch over Columbia's skies, ready to attack on Comstock 's orders. Fink Manufacturing was the largest business in Columbia, as well as its largest employer and manufacturer.
Due to a high demand for Vigors in Columbia, Fink Manufacturing bottled and distributed Vigors produced by independent, contracted businesses, such as Marlowe for Murder of Crows. The work floor at Fink Manufacturing showed its dominance in various markets—one floor, for example, was devoted to Gun Automatons , while the one above focused on children's toys. Smaller businesses produced various items for the people of Columbia, the Founders, and the Vox.
However, most of these companies were quickly bought out by Fink's cruel business empire, leaving him the sole distributor for goods in the city. Furthermore, Fink's price gouging and heavy-handed exploitation of his workers forced them into poverty, frequently leading to starvation and disease. This, in turn, further exacerbated the rise of the Vox Populi. Comstock believed that scientific knowledge was the blueprint of "God's work," and that it could, therefore, be practiced and controlled in the name of God.
Many advancements in Columbia were the product of the mind of Rosalind Lutece , a quantum physicist and one of the most prominent scientists of her time. Her work led to the discovery of the Lutece Field , a field capable of manipulating the properties of subatomic particles. One such application was the suspension of particles in space, facilitating the creation of airborne machinery and, by extension, the city of Columbia.
Following her work on the Lutece Field, Rosalind Lutece made an even more ground-breaking discovery: the device she created allowed her to interact with parallel realities, leading her to contact her duplicate from another universe, Robert Lutece. Through their joint effort, they developed machinery capable of creating contingencies in the space-time continuum, or Tears , allowing Robert to travel to Rosalind's reality albeit at a great physical cost.
Father Comstock interpreted these Tears as revelatory visions of the future, increasing his delusions of grandeur.
Using these Tears, he orchestrated the transfer of Anna DeWitt , the daughter of an alternate version of himself to Columbia and rechristened her as Elizabeth to become his successor. He unknowingly gave birth to her reality-bending powers by splitting her from across multiple realities. In an attempt to control her powers, he had the Luteces engineer several Siphons , devices capable of feeding off her energy. Their experiments nonetheless led to the spontaneous formation of many Tears around Columbia.
While most citizens regarded these Tears as a mere curiosity, individuals such as Jeremiah and Albert Fink exploited their access to parallel universe technologies. While Albert Fink simply used Tears as a means of trans-dimensional artistic theft, Jeremiah copied the designs of other researchers some of them hinted to be from Rapture to create radically new technologies, such as Vigors , automotive horses, the Voxophones , and Motorized Patriots.
Based on the blueprints of an armored suit , he engineered the Songbird Defense System. As Zachary Comstock observed the Tears engineered by the Lutece twins, he became convinced that the glimpses of potential futures were, in fact, prophetic visions.
Styling himself as the Prophet, he envisioned a future in which Columbia would bring forth a cleansing apocalypse across the world below, reshaping it in the city's image. However, repeated exposure to the device left him sterile, prematurely aged and terminally ill. In search of an heir, he used the Luteces' device to travel to an alternate universe in and purchase the daughter of his counterpart, Booker DeWitt.
He rechristened her Elizabeth and established her birth as the result of a miraculous seven-day pregnancy. The transfer also granted Elizabeth the power to create Tears when one closed on her little finger, causing her to exist in multiple realities. Lady Comstock , the Prophet's wife, did not take kindly to this fraud.
Unwilling to listen to Rosalind Lutece's explanation, she accused her and Comstock of having an affair and threatened to reveal Elizabeth's true nature to the public. Desperate to maintain the myth surrounding the Lamb of Columbia, Father Comstock orchestrated Lady Comstock's murder and framed her scullery maid, Daisy Fitzroy , for the crime. However, Daisy escaped custody and went on to lead the Vox Populi as revenge against the Founders.
In order to preserve secrecy, he also engineered the sabotage of the Lutece Twins' device in an attempt to murder them and cover up their deaths. Unbeknownst to him, the accident actually scattered them across the space-time continuum, allowing them to travel freely across all realities. Determined to set things right, they contacted Booker DeWitt and arranged his journey to Columbia. Upon transfer to Comstock's reality, Booker's memories are rewritten: rather than setting out to find his daughter, he believes he has taken the task of retrieving Elizabeth to be able to wipe away his debt.
Booker arrives in Columbia and is directed to find Monument Island. Traveling through to the Raffle and Fair, he is exposed as being the False Shepherd, the anti-christ figure prophecized to lead the Lamb of Columbia astray. Immediately, he is hunted down by Comstock's forces and must fight his way through to Monument Island. There, he meets Elizabeth and is beset by Songbird, her giant mechanized jailer.
Songbird chases the two down, destroying portions of the city sky-line and part of the Monument in the process before they escape to Battleship Bay. Later on, the two gain access to The First Lady , an airship capable of taking them to the mainland. The two get separated, and Booker finds himself forced to work for Daisy Fitzroy: to regain the airship, he must find Chen Lin, an arms manufacturer sympathetic to the Vox Populi's cause, so that the Vox may lead an armed revolution against the Founders.
Booker and Elizabeth reunite in Finkton and travel inside to find that Chen Lin has been murdered by Jeremiah Fink's men. Elizabeth then creates a Tear to a parallel reality in which Chen Lin is still alive, albeit with his tools confiscated. Setting out to Shantytown to find his tools, the two travel through to another Tear in which Columbia is in the middle of an uprising. In this reality, Booker DeWitt was a martyr of the Vox who died for their cause.
Fighting their way back to Finkton, the two are discovered by Daisy Fitzroy who orders their execution. At the summit of Fink Manufacturing, Elizabeth kills Daisy, after the Vox leader murders Fink, to prevent her from killing a young boy in cold blood.
Though the two manage to come back on board The First Lady , they are attacked by Songbird, who crashes the airship into Emporia. Set upon by both the Founders and the Vox, who are rapidly putting the city to ruin, Booker and Elizabeth attempt to gain access to Comstock House. To do so, they must collect a handprint from Lady Comstock to bypass a lock.
Father Comstock activates a Siphon at the grave and resurrects his dead wife as the Siren. Confused and angry, this new entity attacks Booker, using her powers to send armies of dead soldiers against him. Through three Tears, the two discover that Elizabeth is not, in fact, Comstock's daughter and that the latter had Lady Comstock and the Lutece twins murdered to keep Elizabeth's origins a secret.
In a final battle, Elizabeth finally manages to appease the Siren, who blasts open the door to Comstock House. As soon as they enter, Songbird appears, captures Elizabeth and brings her to Comstock House. Booker sets out to rescue her. He finds that he was too late, and Elizabeth has been indoctrinated to become Comstock's successor.
Fighting his way through Comstock House, he is greeted by an elderly Elizabeth, who explains to him that she felt remorse for her actions and brought him through a Tear to prevent her from turning into a monster. He follows her to the dining room, where she's observing her painting of the Eiffel Tower. Elizabeth then opens a Tear to Paris in the 's, but is forced to hastily close it as a firetruck suddenly approaches. Booker, in shock, follows her to the library.
Booker accidentally falls through the ceiling into Elizabeth's library. While initially scared and defensive, the girl is relieved by the presence of another person and expresses her desire to leave. Elizabeth becomes fearful as a whistling signal blows and the Songbird arrives at the tower.
She and Booker escape from Monument Island, barely evading Songbird who destroys most of the building, as the two fall onto the shores of Battleship Bay. Awakening on the beach of Battleship Bay, Columbia's leisure and entertainment area, Booker finds Elizabeth enjoying her newfound freedom.
He soon discovers the existence of The First Lady , a zeppelin which could take them out of Columbia. Booker tells Elizabeth of his plan to take her to Paris in reality intending to take her to New York and clear his debt , and they both head for the First Lady's Aerodrome. On the way there, they are ambushed by Comstock's minions. Booker kills the attackers and explains to a distraught Elizabeth the severity of the situation they are in and that he will need to kill if they want to leave Columbia.
Reaching Soldier's Field , Columbia's amusement park and youth education center, they discover they need the Shock Jockey Vigor to power the gondola to the First Lady's Aerodrome. The duo head to the Hall of Heroes , a museum dedicated to Columbia and Comstock's history and past exploits, where the Vigor is said to be located. Taking the elevator to the Hall of Heroes, Elizabeth opens a Tear and explains to Booker that they are windows to other worlds. They narrowly avoid an attack by Songbird through the Tear, causing Booker to deem them dangerous and advising against their use.
Booker and Elizabeth enter the Hall and are contacted by Slate. He explains that Comstock had apparently lied about his involvement at Wounded Knee and leading the cavalry, and that for attempting to expose this lie, he was stripped of his title.
Slate forces Booker and Elizabeth to go through the museum exhibits of Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion to fight his troops before meeting him. After going through those two displays, they are finally allowed access into the First Lady's Memorial. The exhibit covers the death of Lady Comstock, and there Elizabeth discovers to her horror that she is the daughter of Comstock and that he intends to make her follow in his footsteps, becoming Columbia's leader. Nearing Slate, Booker now advises Elizabeth to use her Tear-manipulation to assist him in combat.
After fighting off Slate's men , Booker neutralizes Slate and recovers the bottle of Shock Jockey from him.
Elizabeth becomes excited about her freedom, seeing the world and Paris, but she notices that Booker is directing the zeppelin towards New York. Booker reveals his true intentions and that he needs to bring her to New York to a man who can clear his debt.
Elizabeth fakely breaks down in tears and as Booker comforts her, she knocks him out with a wrench. In order to do this, he needs to find the gunsmith, Chen Lin , to resupply his weapons for the Vox Populi's cause.
Booker finds Elizabeth and pursues her, but is attacked and thrown off the city by a Handyman. He is saved by a zeppelin summoned by Elizabeth, who decides to help Booker despite not trusting him, knowing he is her only means of reaching Paris. Booker lets her in on how they can reclaim The First Lady , and they set out to fulfill Daisy Fitzroy's demands. Booker and Elizabeth journey into Finkton Proper , the industrial and labor district of Columbia.
Booker is contacted by Jeremiah Fink to work for him as his head security officer. Booker declines, and later learns from Chen Lin's wife that he was taken by the Founders into the Good Time Club for interrogation. Entering the club, Booker and Elizabeth find Chen Lin dead from extreme torture. However, the Lutece Twins appear to reveal a Tear to a universe in which Chen Lin remains alive and able to help their cause, prompting Elizabeth to bring them into a reality where Chen Lin was never killed.
Upon entering this new realm, they discover an automatic difference with reality. Namely, those who were killed in the previous universe have been brought back in a super-position in which they recall being both dead and alive at once.
One of these is Chen Lin, who was spared because his wife in this universe is a white woman with connections to the Finkton Police. Upon realizing that Chen's tools for making the guns are confiscated and stashed in a nearby police station, Booker and Elizabeth head to Shantytown , Columbia's housing district for the poor, to retrieve them. However, there are far too many tools for them to carry all at once.
Coincidentally, a Tear opens nearby where the tools aren't at the police station. Elizabeth, once again, brings her and Booker to a new reality of Columbia where the tools are gone and back at Chen Lin's shop. The two witness how drastic the change in this Columbia truly is. Apparently, in this universe, Elizabeth was taken away from her tower before Booker could reach her. He thus reunited with Cornelius Slate and the two died burning the Hall of Heroes down, furthering the cause of the Vox as martyrs.
This flux of information and new memories causes Booker to experience the same super-position of being both dead and alive. Not only that, but when he and Elizabeth return to the gunsmith shop , they find Chen Lin and his wife lying dead on the floor. Now reinforced by the gunsmith's weapons, the Vox begin a massive, violent uprising across Columbia, massacring soldiers and supporters of the Founders, including many innocents, and lay siege to Finkton's Factory.
As Booker and Elizabeth head to reclaim The First Lady , they are noticed by Daisy, who wishes to keep Booker as a martyr to inspire her cause. Daisy executes Jeremiah Fink and turns her army on Booker and Elizabeth. They defeat her troops, but Elizabeth is forced to kill Daisy when she threatens to murder Fink's son.
This heavily traumatizes Elizabeth, who retreats to The First Lady and changes her outfit. Booker takes The First Lady' s controls, but before he and Elizabeth can leave Columbia, the Songbird reappears to crash-land the airship. The two crash-land in Emporia , Columbia's financial and commercial center, where the Lutece Twins inform them that the only way to stop Songbird is controlling him through a specialized flute and playing key notes.
Booker and Elizabeth then spot Comstock House , the Founders' primary base of operations, and aim there. The Vox has now taken control over Emporia and most of Columbia, slaughtering any survivors and burning the city down.
After once again evading Songbird in the district's Grand Central Depot , Booker and Elizabeth reach the entrance to Comstock House, but are told that they need a handprint key by the gate's automaton, which confuses Elizabeth for Lady Comstock, giving her the idea to take Lady Comstock's hand from her air-tight coffin in the nearby cemetery.
However, upon trying to retrieve her hand, Comstock releases a small Siphon inside Lady Comstock's tomb to leech Elizabeth of her power and uses it to transform his wife's corpse into the Siren , a spectral form of Lady Comstock, both dead and alive, with the ability to revive the dead through manipulation of Tears.
Lady Comstock is hellbent on revenging the lies Comstock had spread about her, Elizabeth, and the Luteces, and the Twins reveal that in order to turn the situation to their advantage, Booker and Elizabeth need to uncover the truth. Exploring Emporia, the duo uncover the conspiracy regarding Comstock. Through the Tears, they learn the truth: Comstock's sterility from exposure to the Tear device, his adoption of Elizabeth from another universe, and his plot to kill Lady Comstock and the Luteces.
Elizabeth reveals the whole truth to Lady Comstock after Booker subdues her. While in disbelief, Lady Comstock forgives Elizabeth and assists the pair by opening the gate to Comstock House. As Booker raises the bridge to Comstock House, Songbird suddenly appears.
Before the beast can kill Booker, Elizabeth intervenes and begs him to take her back with him. Songbird agrees and flies off with Elizabeth in hand. Booker chases after the two, only to find himself suddenly in a snow-covered Columbia. He then enters Comstock House after hearing Elizabeth's cries for help, all the while encountering disturbing sentries monitoring the mansion called the Boys of Silence.
Through discovering certain Tears, Booker learns it has been at least six months since he last saw Elizabeth, who has been tortured and indoctrinated to uphold Comstock's beliefs, becoming a proponent for Columbia. He finds Elizabeth and realizes he has traveled forward 72 years, Elizabeth having aged considerably and upheld her father's prophecy to use Columbia to destroy New York City in — the very same dream Booker experienced when first entering the city. The old Elizabeth explains that it was her loss of hope that broke her, and now regrets what she has become.
Knowing her past self can stop the cycle by achieving her full potential, Elizabeth brings Booker forward in time to avoid Songbird and gives him instructions on how to control the creature. She then sends Booker back to to rescue her younger self. Returning to Comstock House, Booker enters an operating room where he finds Comstock and his doctors torturing Elizabeth and deactivates the generators to the Siphon containing her powers.
With the machine now offline, Elizabeth opens a Tear to a field being ravaged by a devastating tornado, killing the doctors. After Booker frees her, the two resolve to finally confront and kill Comstock. Journeying to the roof, they fight their way through the remainders of Comstock's army and board a gunship to dock at the hangar bay of Comstock's personal war zeppelin, the Hand of the Prophet.
After navigating through the levels of the zeppelin, battling both forces of the Founders and the Vox Populi, Booker and Elizabeth find Comstock in his cabin. There, Comstock attempts to regain Elizabeth's trust by weakening her faith in Booker, grabbing her and demanding that Booker tells her the truth about her lost finger.
In a fit of rage, Booker grabs Comstock by the neck and smashes his head against a baptismal font multiple times before submerging his face in the water, drowning him. Elizabeth is concerned about Comstock's words, and she and Booker resolve to fly the ship to Monument Island to destroy the Siphon and learn the whole truth. Alas, the Vox Populi are now unleashing an all-out assault on the Hand of the Prophet. At that moment, Elizabeth works out the meaning of her older self's letter.
The Vox Populi begin an assault on the flagship's main generator, and Songbird helps defend the surface deck from the Vox forces. Once the attacking Vox army has been eradicated, Elizabeth hands the Whistler to Booker, who uses it to command Songbird to destroy what remains of Monument Island's statue, and with it, the Siphon inside.
The massive energy feedback that results from the tower's destruction disables the Whistler, thus making Booker lose control of the bird. Just as Songbird is charging at Booker, Elizabeth opens a Tear transporting the three of them to Rapture. Elizabeth brings Booker and herself to the inside of the underwater city's Welcome Center , but leaves Songbird outside the building. She comforts the creature in his final moments as he is crushed under the extreme pressure of the ocean and sinks to the seafloor below.
Emerging on the surface by way of Bathysphere , Elizabeth is now able to see all the realities and has become virtually omniscient. She reveals to Booker that Columbia and Rapture are connected via key elements, and are the same city across different realities.
She leads Booker to a realm between realities, each displayed as one of many lighthouses and bridges that represent the "beginning" of Booker's journey. Elizabeth explains that the worlds behind each door are similar and different in specific ways, all somehow connected.
During this traversing of realities, Elizabeth also reveals the truth of Booker's memory of events being flawed — that he never agreed to retrieve her from Columbia in exchange for eliminating his debt.
And that rather, Booker gave his infant daughter, Anna, to Robert Lutece for that same purpose. Booker then realizes that Elizabeth is Anna, and the portal severing her finger was what gave her the power to create Tears in time and space, when her body became a part of two separate dimensions. After re-experiencing these events, Booker puts the blame on Comstock, and thinks that he and Elizabeth can go on with their lives since Comstock is no more. This isn't the case, though, since Comstock remains alive in many more universes.
The one way to be rid of Comstock permanently is to go to the point where he first came to be. Booker is transported to one final location: the riverside of his baptism.
Here, different versions of Anna — Elizabeth — reveal the truth to Booker: he and Comstock are, in fact, the same person from different realities, similar to Robert and Rosalind. In Rosalind's reality Booker was baptized after the Battle at Wounded Knee, renamed Zachary Hale Comstock, and never sired a child before suffering from sterility.
In Robert's reality, Booker had refused the baptism at the last second therefore keeping his original name, got married, and fathered Anna. Learning this, Booker allows all the Annas — Elizabeths — to drown him before he can accept or reject the baptism, preventing his choice being made, thus stopping Comstock from ever existing. With the elimination of Comstock across all timelines, Columbia's existence is erased, and all the events that occurred over the past twenty years vanish along with it.
One by one, the alternate versions of Anna — Elizabeth — begin to disappear until only the original remains, thus ending the cycle. After Elizabeth drowned Booker DeWitt at the pivotal baptism, a majority of possible versions of Comstock who created Columbia and stole Anna were erased from existence.
However, one Elizabeth did not disappear with the other versions of herself after the drowning. Through her newfound power of omnipresence, and using the Sea of Doors, she discovered there were still universes containing a Comstock who had taken an Anna not of his own.
Elizabeth took purpose in pursuing and eliminating every last version of Comstock, and she entered an alternate Columbia as Comstock was again stealing Anna from Booker.
Elizabeth argued with Comstock to let go, claiming she wasn't his child, and the infant was caught in the middle, resulting in her decapitation by the closing Tear, rather than just severing her pinky. Riddled with guilt and remorse for causing the girl's death, Comstock reverted to his original identity as Booker DeWitt. Branding his right hand with Anna's initials, DeWitt wished to leave his world and erase all of his memories.
Robert and Rosalind Lutece offered DeWitt the opportunity to enter into another universe, in a different city, where he could forget his past. DeWitt was then brought to the city of Rapture in He became a private investigator, and built a reputation among alcohol retailers, high class, and working class clients. Like his alternate versions, DeWitt was a gambler, and he was present in the year to experience the significant events that would lead to Rapture's fall.
Brigid Tenenbaum and the first line of Plasmids and Tonics by Dr. I've been meaning for ages to read The Devil in the White City but I never get round to buying a copy. Columbia is an old fashioned nick name for the United States. Columbia is actually a very American term. If Christopher Columbus would have just coped with the fact that he landed on a new contient America would have been called Columbia instead. Please Log In to post.
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