My name is Corvo Attano, and I am innocent.

I was thrown in prison for six months for a crime I did not commit and was nearly executed for it. I broke out with the help of a group of Loyalists and now I'm out to regain the things that I have lost and to make those who wronged me pay.

I suppose I should tell you the full story, to leave a legacy of sorts of what has transpired. If anything is to happen to me, let this document serve as my testimony. All of my sins will be here plain as day to see, and all of my victories. You will come to see that I am not the man that the City of Dunwall has been led to believe I am. The Lord Regent deals in lies and lies alone. I will strive to make my account of things as accurate as possible just in case anything should happen to me before I can tell my story.

It all began as I was making my way up the Wrenhaven River with Geoff Curnow. We had been out to sea for months. Our mission was to go around to the surrounding nations to see if they could help Dunwall overcome the rat plague that has ravaged our city. Unfortunately, we brought bad news home, but more on that later.

We rode along the river to Dunwall Tower, home of Empress Jessamine and her daughter, Lady Emily. Curnow and I docked the boat and disembarked. He was a fine traveling partner. He knew when to speak and when not to, he could hold his liquor very well, and he was a trustworthy and honorable man; I couldn't ask for a better partner.

I walked off towards the gazebo where I would find the Empress, but Lady Emily stopped my first. She and Jessamine were my charges as Lord Protector back then, you see. But Emily had always taken a liking to strange stories of bizarre far off places. And she gave me quite the shakedown when I came home. She complained about how boring things had been since I left and demanded all of the details about my supposed wild adventures off on the great sea. I told her that those stories had to wait until later. How I wish I took some time to talk to her right then…

Empress Jessamine was speaking with the Royal Spymaster Hiram Burrows in the gazebo as Emily and I approached. Their conversation was starting to get heated. It seems he's been pushing her to make some kind of deal with him in regards to how to treat the victims of the plague. Knowing Hiram, this involves slaughtering them and burning them, but I have no evidence to back up these claims. The Empress wasn't taking kindly to his suggestions, whatever they are. She claimed that she would do all she could to save her citizens from the plague, all of them. Admirable, though maybe not entirely realistic in the grand scheme of things. Whatever the case, Hiram acknowledged his loss and walked away, greeting me as he left. He told the guards to give us a moment of privacy and they left us alone, overlooking the sea. If I had been more observant maybe I could've pieced things together right then and there. Encouraging the guards to leave, Hiram is a bold man when things come down to it.

I handed the Empress the official statements from our neighbors. She said that it was a fair wind that brought me to her, but the news I had in store was anything but. They said they were to blockade us and wait from there to see what the rat plague would do to Dunwall. They had no cure, they had never even seen a plague like this before, so they thought that the best course of action would be to cut us off from the rest of the world and simply wait. To be fair, it's not a bad idea, but it's quite upsetting when you're the one being blockaded.

As the Empress was looking over the papers, Emily pointed out some men wandering about on a nearby rooftop. Jessamine looked around and saw that the guards were nowhere to be seen. Things were about to get nasty.

The assailants on the nearby rooftops vanished from sight only to appear mere feet away from us. They didn't swing over using any kind of grappling device, they didn't use wires or a smokescreen, either. It was as if they managed to cross the gap between the buildings in a single step, instantly. I had no idea what I was looking at, but that didn't matter. I grew my sword and my gun and prepared to do my duty as Lord Protector.

Two of them came at us at once. Both of them were wearing the same garb. Black cloaks with gas masks to completely disguise themselves. To be honest, they looked like they all could have been the same person. With teleporting assassins, there's no telling what else they're capable of. One dashed straight at me, but I knocked his blade aside and cut him down. But even as I felt my blade hit home, I saw the masked face look up at me as he vanished from sight again, though I had no clue where he got to that time.

The second one nearly took my head off with his swing, but I parried the blade with the barrel of my pistol. I brought the gun down and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit its mark right in the center of the target's chest, but the same thing happened again where the face looked up, met my gaze, and then vanished. I had no idea what was going on and I didn't like it.

Jessamine called out as another one (or maybe one of the same assassins) appeared behind me. This time we traded a few blows. This one could do a better job reading my feints and parries. They were tougher than the rest, but a poorly timed feint was all I needed to put an end to our little dance.

With the assailants disposed of, I looked back to ensure Jessamine and Emily were unharmed. They were perfectly fine, much to my relief. But when I looked around the place again, I couldn't see any of the guards. What was taking them so long? Surely they heard the gunshot and the clashing of swords up here. I glanced over to the rooftop again just in time to see two more men approaching. The first one held up their hand and a strange burning green light blazed from their palm and I was thrown up against the ceiling with a force that I couldn't see. I was pinned in place there, there was nothing that I could do but watch what was coming next.

Another man appeared. He was older and wore a red coat, his face completely unmasked. He had thinning black hair and a few wrinkles on his clean-shaven face. His jaw was set and by the look in his eyes I could tell that this man was a trained killer. As his associate grabbed Lady Emily by the wrist, the man slapped Jessamine across the face, grabbed her by the throat, and drove a knife through her stomach. Then they vanished as quickly as they came, with Emily in tow.

I fell to the ground and scuttled over to Jessamine. I held her in my arms and I just felt so utterly useless in that moment. The blade had gone too deep, there was no saving her. She looked at me and told me to find Emily and protect her. I barely had time to tell her that I would before she died in my arms.

Then, conveniently, the guards arrived along with Hiram Burrows and High Overseer Campbell. The guards drew their weapons on me and Hiram claimed that I had killed the Empress. Hiram declared that he'd see me beheaded, and I was struck in the temple and the world around me faded to black.

The next six months of my life was spent in Coldridge Prison in cell B5 in the solitary wing. I was given rotting and moldy food day in and day out and I was tortured regularly. In that time, many things changed. I didn't quite get all the details from my cell, those had to wait until later. Honestly, I'm still trying to piece things together myself.

Hiram Burrows took the opportunity to seize power of Dunwall after Jessamine's assassination. He declared himself the Lord Regent and that he would serve the people until they managed to find Emily Kaldwin. And High Overseer Campbell also seems to have gained even more power now serving him. The two would regularly come in to supervise my torturing sessions. It was then that they confessed to me that they were responsible for the assassination of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and the abduction of her daughter Lady Emily. It confirmed my suspicions of them all along. I had enough time rotting away there in my cell for those six months to think their whole plan through, believe me. And now it seems as if Hiram has what he wants. He's the king of a dying kingdom. I have no idea what his schemes entail, but I don't quite care to figure that out myself. I had no reason to, seeing as I was only days away from being beheaded.

The day before my execution, a guard left me my last piece of moldy bread with a strange message. He said to me, "You should eat, Corvo. This meal comes to you from a friend." After he left, I took the bread and found a note lying underneath it. A note complete with the key to my cell. The note said that a group of people wanted to meet up with me and were willing to break me out of Coldridge Prison. They arranged for a few things to aid in my escape including a weapon to be left just outside of my cell, a bomb to blow my way out of one of the prison and into the river below, and some equipment and even a transport to meet up with this mysterious group of people if I managed to make it that far. These people were either very optimistic or damn fools. Or maybe they were just desperate. Thinking about the way things are out here now, I think that it's the latter.

I snuck out of my cell and took the weapon. The route to get to the explosive was lined with guards. It was being kept in the interrogation room, according to the note, a room that I knew all too well. I crept past some guards, knocking out a few others as I made my way up through to the upper walkways that I could take to get to the chamber. The guard was a bit on the light side tonight, I suppose they weren't expecting any last minute escape efforts. Too bad for them.

Inside the interrogation room I found my little explosive device. It had a timer on it so I could set it up and get ten seconds to run for cover. I'd probably need that, I have no idea how much firepower something like this would pack, but a note with it said that it should be enough to blow a hole through the door in the loading dock where they get transports from other parts of the prison. I started making my way over there. It wasn't too far, I only had to cross the courtyard which was under patrol by a few guards. They didn't even know I was there.

I knocked out the guards around the door and tucked them away so they wouldn't get caught up in the explosion. After looking around, I saw that the only good cover that I had close to the door was an empty dumpster. I figured that it would have to do as I set the timer off on the bomb and ducked inside. I felt like I was going to go deaf after the device went off, but I didn't have time to wait in there. I threw myself up and out of the dumpster and I sprinted through the opening in the door, jumping off the ridge into the river below. As my hearing came to, I could make out a few dozen voices hollering at each other over the alarms. Up on the walkways above, I saw guards running about with their weapons drawn, going to secure the prisoners. I took a deep breath and dove down and swam across the river to the other side, towards the entrance to the Dunwall Sewer System. I slipped inside with no one around to see me. I guess I still had it in me after six months of torture and malnourishment, I was oddly proud of myself for my little escape and definitely thankful to the ones who made it happen in the first place.

I slowed my pace down as I crept through the sewers. Partially because I didn't want to make much noise and alert any of the people or rats that might have been down there, but mostly due to the fact that the exhaustion was setting in a bit. Being so close to an explosion like that isn't quite good for you and all the swimming, climbing, sneaking, and running that I'd been doing wasn't going well with my body that was out of shape to say the least.

I heard guards speaking up ahead at one point, they were checking the sewers for me already! Hiram's boys were efficient. Two of them were loudly talking as they patrolled the tunnels, which made them quite easy to avoid. In their gossip, I learned that they still knew to keep their distance from me. One of them seemed to be a bit on the older side, he called me by an old moniker I was given during my pre-Lord Protector days, the Serkonan Whirlwind. A bit silly, I know, but it wasn't my choice to be named like that. Let the people call me whatever they want, I suppose.

I slid up on top of a catwalk and was making my way through the tunnels when I saw the two gossiping guards. They opened the wrong door and I got a chance to see the savagery of the rat plague with my own eyes. There must've been a hundred little things that swarmed out of there like rushing water. They were over those men instantly, killing them in seconds and devouring all that they could in minutes. It was disgusting to see something like that unfold, but quite the educational experience. I had no idea that the rat plague had such a grotesque impact on the creatures themselves. When the plague was first starting to take hold in Dunwall, Jessamine and I received word from the local doctors who described the situation. Well, the reality of things was far more grave than I had anticipated. I made a mental note to keep away from any and all rat related things for a while.

Thankfully, I didn't come across anything else quite as horrible as the rats. Though I did manage to run into some terrible sights along the way, more tragic than anything else.

I came across a journal that was written by a man named Damien. He and his girl, Amanda (be it wife or girlfriend it did not say), had retreated into the sewers after they both caught the plague and didn't want to be thrown out by the Lord Regent's Watch. It seems they're breaking into the homes of the infected and carting them down to the Flooded District, or worse, the journal did not say. Damien said that he and Amanda simply couldn't afford the elixir dosage that they needed, so they chose to hide down in the sewers spending their last moments together in each other's arms. They lit a fire to keep the rats away. By the time I arrived, the fire was long dead and so was the couple. I said a silent prayer for their souls and moved on. I had a terrible feeling in my gut that their story was simply one of many, and I fear that I will see many more sights like this before the plague is wiped from the city, if it is at all. Damien's last words in that journal haunt me still "the rats will have this city."

Further on into the sewers I found the gear that my "friends" had stashed for me. A pistol crossbow, the likes of which I had never seen before, and a folding blade made with some of the sharpest steel I've ever come into contact with. These were high quality weapons, no doubt about that, and I was eager to give them a bit of a test run at a later date when I was feeling a bit more up to it. For right now, though, I needed to make sure that nobody saw me on my way out. A man named Samuel was to meet me at the point where the sewer empties out into the river. I kept going in hopes that things would all be alright in the end.

Another group of three guards had set up a station near the sewer's end. They weren't too difficult to trick, though. All it took was a glass bottle and a halfway decent throw to distract them and give me more than enough time to slip away undetected.

To his surprise as much as mine, I found Samuel waiting for me in a boat by the river. He's an older man, a retired sailor by the look of things. He greeted me and we were off quickly, making sure not to be spotted on our way out. We spoke very little during the ride back to wherever it was that he was taking me. I was exhausted from the day's excursions, but I couldn't sleep just yet.

An hour or so on the water, Samuel and I arrived at the Hound Pits Pub. I remember seeing signs for this place on the walls of the break rooms for the guards as I was making my way out of Coldridge. Samuel told me that they closed their doors months ago due to the plague. Half of the district here was marked off dead and there wasn't anything else here anymore. The City Watch didn't look into the area anymore, making it the perfect base of operations for the Loyalist group. As we came ashore, Samuel showed me the way inside and sent me off to speak to the two men who were in charge of this whole operation: Trevor Pendleton and Admiral Havelock.

The two men explained to me their purpose and goal: to find Emily Kaldwin and secure her place on the throne. To do that, they're gonna need some men dead or "taken care of" as they so aptly put it. Havelock seems to appreciate the blunt way of saying things. Pendleton, on the other hand, absolutely reeks of nobility. I preferred my job as Lord Protector, I didn't have to do much speaking to people then, they just glanced over me as you would a piece of background decoration. I didn't mind that too much. I wished for those days to return, not for the first time either.

The Loyalists explained their plans to me but maybe it was a look on my face, but they quickly shifted gears and told me to go get some rest after speaking with a man by the name of Piero. A strange man, a tinkerer at heart. He's got his own theories about crazy inventions such as his "Door to Nowhere" project among other things. Some would say that he's a wack job and maybe he is, but he's made some remarkably useful equipment for me already, so I won't judge. He even gave me a mask with some fantastic lenses in it that allow me to magnify my vision and see things from quite far away. It's a dial on the side that can switch the lenses from normal ones found in glasses to low-powered telescopes. If I'm going to be involved in dangerous missions to take down the Lord Regent and his allies, I'm going to need all the gear and gadgets that I can get my hands on.

And so here I write this now, sitting in a bed that they've lent me with an empty book that I found in one of the drawers. I figured that it would be good to take notes on the current situation just in case anything should happen to me during my exploits. Things seem as if we're on the cusp of a great deal of conflict. I hope that I'm ready to live up to expectations. All I want to do is find Emily. It was my promise to Jessamine that I would get her back and that's what I'm going to do. Everything else is second priority, even that sick bastard Hiram Burrows, this "Lord Regent." Finding and retrieving Emily is my top priority now. Let's see what I can do about that.

But first, I need to sleep. This has been the most lively day that I've seen in quite a while and I'm in nowhere near the shape that I need to be in for work like this. These last six months haven't been kind to me, but I don't have the time to nurse myself back to health. My work begins tonight.