Vinilla's Den

Early life

Thomas Devlin was born into a large family with a long-standing tradition in shipbuilding, which was the profession of his father. His mother worked as a nurse, and he inherited his fiery and headstrong personality from her. Although he was expected to go into the family profession, he had more interest in sailing and seeing the world, and intended to join the Royal Navy in order to do so. His mother was apprehensive about this, worried about the navy's culture and how her son might be mistreated for being Irish, but knew their shared personality would make it nigh impossible for her to change his mind. She only warned him and hoped that he would come to his senses with experience.

Navy Life

Although Devlin's mother was right in her worrying about his reception into the Navy, the young man was determined to not let the obstacles get in the way of his idyllic ambitions, as though he imagined himself to be the protagonist of an adventure novel. He was no stranger to quarrels with others who he disagreed with - which sometimes included officers - and as such was also no stranger to punishment. He was never rude or argumentative just for the sake of it though. Despite his differences with the other crew, he did always try his best to get along with them and be a helpful member of the team and only got heated whenever he was personally slighted, something that most men were expected to just put up with passively. Despite his sometimes problematic attitude, his hardworking nature did much to help him stay on the good side of many officers that he worked with.

Devlin was proudly Irish, and merely viewed the Royal Navy as a means to an end, a necessary evil for him to be able to live out his dreams. He maintained this attitude even after many years serving as a seaman. One of the dreams he had was to explore one of the last untouched tracts of land that the Earth had to offer, Antarctica. He had been on expedition already by the time that the Enlightenment Expedition had been announced, and he eagerly signed up to participate.

Under the Weather

After a few weeks of business as usual at the newly constructed Enlightenment camp, Devlin began to show a few symptoms of illness, just the same as Marley Roscoe and (SEAMAN). When it became clear to him that it would not resolve on its own, he got himself checked out by the surgeons, Cecil Rycroft and Domagoj Evans. They concluded Devlin and the others were likely becoming ill with scurvy and began to treat them accordingly. Devlin was restless during his stay in the surgeon's, eager to get back onto his feet and back to work, but it eventually became clear that his condition was not improving. His body slowly froze over, gradually making him into a prisoner of his own body. This greatly distressed him, and he urged the surgeons to reverse the change, but Rycroft could only keep them under the lull of morphine as relief.

In this state, Devlin was mostly oblivious to the greater goings-on at the camp, including the drama surrounding the dead dog handler and the ensuing hunt for the animal that killed him. Eventually the three ill seamen became completely frozen over, seemingly dead to the world. Desperate to try to give them any sort of relief or improved quality of life, the surgeons placed the men in front of a stove in hopes that the warmth would alleviate symptoms. However, to their horror, they checked in later to see that the men's bodies had melted into a sort of sludge, fusing their bodies together into a single, horrifying mass.