APPLICATION || MEMORIA
Player Information
Player Name: Feo
Contact: This journal.
Timezone: GMT
Character Information
Character's Name: Frank Fontaine/Atlas
Character Journal: notaliberator
Fandom: Bioshock
Point Taken from Canon: Right as Atlas is about to reveal his true identity to Jack.
Appearance: Passport image | Poster Image | I'm going to use Jude Law as a playby as there just isn't enough images of Atlas or Fontaine
Abilities: At the point in canon Atlas is being taken from, he has not spliced and as such has none of the superpowers that are granted via plasmids and gene tonics. Instead, Fontaine's strength is in rational thinking and scheming. Being able to both think on his feet and also plan ahead.
Atlas has basic knowledge of hacking. But this knowledge is based around the technology - the security systems first and foremost - of Rapture, and as such his knowledge would most likely prove useless when faced with modern day technology.
Weaknesses: A lot of this is probably written into his personality - I tend to try to be quite thourough with personalities so...
Atlas's biggest weakness is likely a lack of proper physical strength, especially in Rapture terms. He doesn't have any super powers and hasn't used any enhancing plasmids and so he is actually rather notmal. Couple that with the fact that he can't have been eating well the past few months since Rapture collapsed, he's likely down a lot of muscle mass.
His mind is his greatest asset and he uses it incredibly well. But he also manages to construct his own downfall. He has to have control of a situation and thinks incredibly far ahead when making plans, so when something changes, when something doesn't go quite as planned, it can throw him, though he often recovers from this and changes strategy. However, it is also likely that he will act rash in situations that he has absolutely no control over - as he does just a little down the line from where I've taken him from.
Housing Preferences: Somewhere that isn't leaky plzkthx ♥
History: Atlas's history begins with that of Frank Fontaine, the man he truly is.
Fontaine came to Rapture in 1948, just two years after it opened. He arrived without a job and not a penny to his name. It is not made clear why he came to Rapture, though it's possible that he did have a plan in mind. Fontaine was a con man, a criminal mastermind willing to do whatever he needed to get where he wanted to be.
Fontaine began his career in Rapture when he created Fontaine Fisheries in Port Neptune. The fisheries started out as just that, and through it, he began to make connections with those who - just like him - were at the bottom of Andrew Ryan's 'Great Chain'. With the aid of these disgruntled workers, Fontaine expanded his business by creating a smuggling ring which brought items branded as contraband by Ryan - items such as religious relic and the bible, films from out with Rapture and even beef, certain brands of alcohol, tobacco and weapons - from the surface. Needless to say, Fontaine began to rake in the cash and for Ryan (oblivious to he true source of his wealth), became the perfect example of the so-called 'Great Chain'.
It was Fontaine's smugglers that first encountered the sea slugs that would later change the fate of Rapture. Brigid Tenenbaum, a German scientist who had arrived in Rapture after WWII, observed how the crippled hand of one of the smugglers was returned to normal function after he was bitten by one of the slugs. She researched the slugs, finding that they could be used not only to heal and even resurrect damaged cells, but to go as far as to 'splice' DNA and allow access to a whole variety of new abilities. The substance which allowed them to do so was dubbed ADAM.
Tenenbaum was turned down by most science facilities in Rapture, but when she came to Fontaine, he saw the value - the business prospects - in her discovery. Fontaine started a new company, Fontaine Futuristics and employed not only Tenenbaum, but other scientists, most notable Yi Suchong, to research and develop Plasmids and Gene Tonics, which allowed the consumer to splice their DNA, giving them the aforementioned superpowers. However, it soon became clear that the ADAM produce by the slugs was not enough to meet the ever increasing demand.
After urging Tenenbaum to find some other way to produce ADAM, she discovered that it could be mass produced inside host bodies. However, for reasons unknown, the only hosts in which the ADAM could be produced, turned out to be little girls. Fontaine had no qualms about this, and as a perfect remedy to the problem of convincing families to give up their little girls, he created the Little Sister's Orphanage. This was masqueraded as a charity, promising safety, education and a bright future for the children of the poorer citizens of Rapture. However, the Orphanage was in fact just a way to get parents to willingly give up their children so they could be turned into Little Sisters.
He also opened Fontaine's Home for the Poor. This provided for the masses of citizens who had come to Rapture hoping for something they could never get. Better still, it provided him with the seeds for rebellion, in one of his audio diaries he states "Who needs an army when I got Fontaine's Home for the Poor?". People living in these poor houses were often subject to testing new combat based plasmids that Fontaine Futuristics was developing.
These 'charity' angles quickly boosted Fontaine's public image. Andrew Ryan was initially proud of him, but with the increasing popularity of ADAM, plasmids and gene tonics, he began to keep a watchful eye on Fontaine. This watchful eye soon turned into panic as he realised that his grip on Rapture was slowly sliding into Fontaine's hands. For by now, ADAM and splicing wasn't just a way of bettering oneself just a little - it was an addiction. And so the man with the ADAM, was the most powerful man in Rapture.
Ryan's discovery of Fontaine's smuggling operations only increased the tension between the two men. In a panic and a rage, Ryan deployed severe methods to deal with smuggling - he introduced capital punishment. He was not worried about the items being brought in, but rather the possibility of surface dwellers discovering Rapture. However, with no proof of Fontaine's connection to the smuggling but knowing he was behind it, Ryan could only instruct Security Chief Sullivan to crack down on the smuggling and do anything possible to find a link.
Fontaine's response to this was to ensure that none of his own men would turn him in. He employed even crueller methods than Ryan. With wage cuts and threats of severe punishment should any of his men even think of turning him in (it is known that at least one worker was killed after hinting that he might turn Fontaine in), plus the leverage of controlling all the ADAM in the city, it was a simple enough task.
For some time, Ryan's security force and Fontaine's 'splicers' were locked in combat. However, non-spliced persons were quickly defeated by the splicers, who with the aid of the new combat plasmids were 'burping fire, spitting ice'. It made it clear just how powerful plasmids were in battle. And this was only a taster of the Civil War that was to come.
As pressure from Ryan increased, Fontaine knew he had to make a back-up plan to guarantee that control of Rapture would eventually be his. The back-up plan he engineered was a cruel and elaborate scheme.
Fontaine had been following Ryan, probably as well as Ryan had been following him. He knew that his rival had an interest in an exotic dancer at Fort Frolic. Jasmine Jolene was Ryan's mistress and when she fell pregnant with his child, Fontaine had the perfect way out for her. Instructing Tenenbaum to buy the embryo from Jolene, Fontaine had Suchong artificially age, brainwash and train the child, who was then sent to the surface as a sleeper agent, completely unaware of the part he would play. Now that he had a person under his control, with Ryan's genetic code - the key to all of Rapture, which could access all areas and get to Ryan, no matter where he was hiding - it was time to disappear.
Knowing that Ryan was hot on his heels (due to the betrayal by Peach Wilkins, one of Fontaine's workers, who turned Fontaine in), Fontaine made use of ADAM for the first time. Ryan had planned an arrest, but Fontaine (with other plans already started) decided to make one last stand. During a raid and shoot-out at the Fisheries on September 12th 1958, Fontaine faked his death. To the rest of Rapture, he was truly dead and those who had supported him began to become even more discontent and Ryan was provided with a false hope that Rapture was safe in his hands once more. But Fontaine's 'death' was just a new beginning.
With a little facial reconstruction surgery and a new voice, Fontaine shaped himself into a new man. This man was Atlas. An Irish fisherman, proletariat hero and family man, who had come to Rapture with his wife and son in search for a better life. Where Fontaine had not appealed to much of the Rapture public due to his status as a thug and criminal, Atlas was loved by the people and generally represented someone better than the increasingly tyrannical Ryan.
In the aftermath of Fontaine's 'death', Ryan betrayed his own philosophy (Rapture had been built to escape the 'big government' which took over private industry) and nationalised Fontaine Futuristics. This foolish move was a turning point in the decline of Rapture, and even without Atlas rallying the people, it probably would have escalated into civil war sooner or later. Civil unrest was rife, and Atlas charmed the people into turning against Ryan, fighting for what Rapture was truly all about - the people who had been a part of Fontaine's poorhouses were some of the first recruits to the cause.
Merely a few months after Fontaine's demise, Atlas had gained control over the angry citizens of Rapture, and on New Year's Eve 1958, a group of revolutionaries attacked the Kashmir Restaurant - a restaurant in the upper class area of Rapture - where a masquerade ball was being held by Ryan for 'Rapture's Elite'. Most of the people there were part of the upper-classes and loyal to Ryan, so the ball was a perfect opportunity. The splicers descended on the party, destroying the building and killing many. This was marked by Rapture historians as the true beginning of the Civil War.
After this attack, the people who hadn't spliced began to do so as a form of protection and sales of combat plasmids such as Incinerate! and Electro Bolt jumped. The real beginning of the War also brought about a huge increase in ADAM usage, and the side effects of excessive splicing became even worse. Before long, the city was mentally unstable and addicted to ADAM.
In answer to the uprising and declination of Rapture, Ryan imposed new laws and a strict curfew. Martial law was imposed on Apollo Square (where many of the poor of Rapture lived). Those suspected of being loyal to Atlas and other criminals were hung for their crimes. Ryan also established a lock-down on the bathysphere network, which connected the city, and the security system - closing them to only Ryan and his closest followers. But Ryan's followers were dwindling, many being killed or defecting to Atlas.
Ryan didn't stop there though. He began to splice his own followers and military, and thus the demand for ADAM increased even more than it already had. Ryan Industries began to use Little Sisters to harvest ADAM from the corpses of splicers. They became the targets of kidnapping and murder by splicers desperate to get their hands on some ADAM. This lead to the development of Big Daddies, mindless subjects in armoured diving suits with only one task - protect Little Sisters whilst they gathered ADAM. These were brutal monsters that murdered anyone who came remotely close to their Little Sister.
Even the Big Daddies weren't enough though, and the Civil War shook Rapture to it's core as the city fell into disrepair and people were killed left, right and centre. The people of Rapture fashioned weapons out of various items found in the city. They no longer cared about making money and expressing themselves - it was now all about ADAM and surviving.
The turning point of the civil war was when Yi Suchong, now working under Ryan, proposed a means of breaking the stalemate. The structure of commercial plasmids was altered to make citizens susceptible to mental suggestion via pheromones. Despite this representing the ultimate betrayal of everything Rapture was about, Ryan agreed to it, and he took control of the majority of the splicers, turning them on Atlas.
Backed into a corner, Atlas had just one more ace up his sleeve. He activated his sleeper agent on the surface and thus Jack came to Rapture.
Under the pretence that he only wanted to escape Rapture with his family, Atlas lead Jack (who was completely unaware of everything, since Suchong implanted false memories within him) through Rapture via a short-wave radio. In this time, he never allowed Jack to see him.
Just as Jack was about to reach Atlas's family, trapped in Fontaine Fisheries, the submarine in which they were hiding was blown up by Ryan. After this, Atlas's goal became revenge and he enlisted Jack to assassinate Ryan. Of course, the family never existed, and the entire act was simply a ruse to eventually convince Jack to kill Ryan. He was helped along in this by the control phrase 'would you kindly' which Suchong had imprinted on Jack.
Ryan by then had pieced together the puzzle and discovered who and what Jack was, and had set the self destruct mechanism on Rapture, unwilling to hand it over to Atlas no matter what. When Jack reached Ryan's HQ at Hephaestus, Atlas asks him 'Now would you kindly head to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch?' When facing Jack, Ryan gives his famous 'A man chooses, a slave obeys' speech to prove that Jack had been under Atlas's control and then orders Jack to kill him.
After Ryan is dead and Jack has disabled the self destruct mechanism, Atlas begins to laugh as he intends to reveal his true identity to Jack. It is here I will be taking him from, right before he does so.
Personality:
Andrew Ryan once said about Fontaine that; “Once, he was just a menace, to be convicted and hung. But he always manages to be where the evidence isn't. He's the most dangerous type of hoodlum... the kind with vision.” This is probably as close as one could get to summing up Fontaine.
Fontaine is a man unafraid of doing anything to get what he wants. He is first and foremost out for himself. To make money, he has no qualms about leading or taking part in criminal activity - this is proven by the fact that he starts a smuggling business in Rapture to bring in the cash. He will cheat and lie where he sees fit, masquerading scandals such as building a rebellion as offering a home to the poor and using charity angles to boost his own public image. He will also take part in business deals that would be unethical or wrong to others, and if those profit him he will not back out, even if his business begins to have a negative effect on others - such as with ADAM and splicing.
As both Fontaine and Atlas, he has his sights set high. Rather than simply take over Rapture, his plan is to use his control of Rapture to move to the surface with ADAM and plasmids and the splicers, and take the entire world for himself. He doesn't bother himself with measly goals, but instead the grandiose, and perhaps even that which he knows is within his power, one way or another.
Fontaine knows how to manipulate a person - as both himself and as Atlas, he managed to bring many people around to his way of thinking, convince them that Ryan was the enemy and that he needed to be taken down. Of course, this was much easier as Atlas, since Ryan was slowly causing his own downfall. He does not make friends, but rather allows people close enough when they are his greatest assets, and even then, he does not care so much about them that he cannot simply throw them away. To him, the people who support him are just a stepping stone to get to where he is going, and he will gladly kill anyone who decides they don't like that idea. Proof of this is that he docks pay and threatens his workers with numerous punishments, including death, when Ryan is trying to prove he is behind the smuggling ring. His controlling nature is best shown with Jack, who he goes as far as to genetically modify to do as he says using the phrase 'would you kindly?'.
He also seems to be able to weigh up a person well. He is able to predict how Ryan is going to move, predict how the citizens of Rapture would react to his demise, and know exactly what the would need when he returned as a new man.
He is a con-man who loves nothing more than the power of a good grift, and much of what he does in Rapture is all part of a massive scheme to seize control. He tells Jack that 'Hell, once I was even a Chinaman for six months!' hinting at just how skilled he is at pretending to be someone he isn't. Atlas is what he refers to as 'the longest con', as by becoming Atlas he changed himself completely, while keeping all the same goals in mind. And indeed, Atlas is testament to just how skilled a con-man he is.
Perhaps his greatest asset after his skills as a con-artist, Fontaine has an incredibly sharp mind. He is capable of thinking on his feet and objectifying, so that he find solutions to almost every problem ensuring that nothing gets in the way of his goal. He is also known for thinking very far in advance, predicting his opponents moves and countering at every turn - his entire plot to take over Rapture including Jack shows this.
It is rare that Fontaine messes up. When his life is threatened, he may think irrationally and act stupidly, however he quickly takes control of the situation and finds a way to maintain the upper-hand in these sorts of situations.
Fontaine was a coarse man, and not just in looks and accent. He would step on as many toes and break as many rules as needed to, getting rid of every obstacle in the way right up until he faked his death. He has no objections to violence what-so-ever.
As Atlas, however, Fontaine was a different man. Atlas is a family man and a people's person. A charismatic and yet humble freedom fighter. He was a figurehead in the rebellion which lead to the eventual destruction of Rapture; the people who had been repressed by Ryan's increasingly dystopian society looked up to Atlas and followed him. Yet Atlas claimed that he was not a liberator; he was not there to liberate the people, but to help them liberate themselves. As Atlas, he would act kind towards those who came to him, rather than harsh. He would lure them into a false sense of security and keep them close to use for his own deeds.
In the end, Atlas is no different from Fontaine - it is simply that he has a different way of dealing with things and a different way of treating people. As Atlas, Fontaine is still the manipulative scumbag that he once was, only now he has a welcoming smile on his face.
Character Quote: Never play a man for the short con when you can play 'em for the long one.
Journal Sample: {The device in his hand was not entirely unlike the short-wave radio he'd been talking into moments ago, or the audio diaries he'd been keeping. While smaller and with more buttons, it didn't take long for him to figure out how to work it. Not sure what to do, he tries speaking to Jack through it, speaking in an Irish accent.}
Boyo? Are y'still there? Would you kindly give me some sign that yer alive?
{No reply, so after a few more minutes - just to be sure - he gives up being Atlas and lets out a long sigh. The next voice that comes over is a thick Bronx one.}
Damn, kid. And here I was about to spill the beans. Seems someone don't like the thought of that.
Prose Sample: Fontaine hadn't been here - wherever here was - for long, but he'd been here long enough to know that Jack wasn't here. Nor was Andrew goddamn Ryan or the splicers or any other poor bastard from Rapture.
He'd already tried the pinching himself, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming (damn, if only he was - he had a fucking fantastic victory to start celebrating!). Since he didn't suddenly jolt awake in that damn chair he'd been sitting in for so long, he knew that the reason the ground felt so solid was because it actually was. After all, he couldn't be dead and in heaven - like hell he was going to heaven after all he'd done with his life. That and he'd never heard of people being branded with numbers in the afterlife.
Yet what he couldn't deduce was why the hell he was there. There he'd been, about to reveal his biggest secret to Jackie-boy, tear the kid's world apart with the revelation then set the splicers on him, and suddenly he was here. Someone apparently didn't want him breaking the news just yet.
“Fuckin' hell, way to ruin a guy's fun.” Lifting the hat off his head and running a hand through his hair, he frowned and shook his head. Didn't even have a damn radio on him so he could try and contact anyone in Rapture - just the damn small device he'd found in his pocket on arrival. That wasn't proving to be much use either, he was getting no responses talking into it the way he would a radio.
Best to make the most of a situation though! Getting a better idea of the lay of the land would give him the upper-hand if this did just turn out to be some genius ploy of Ryan's (though he doubted it, old bastard was dead as a doornail). If he bumped into anyone on the way, he was sure Atlas could charm an answer out of them and if not, well, he had his ways.
Anything else? I realise the app may be a little confusing! Sorry! I'll be playing Frank Fontaine as Atlas - this means he will have undergone the facial reconstruction to look like Atlas, but will also have the mannerisms and voice of Atlas, at least most of the time! So I'll be referring to him as Atlas most of the time, but Frank or Fontaine when he drops the act.
Player Name: Feo
Contact: This journal.
Timezone: GMT
Character Information
Character's Name: Frank Fontaine/Atlas
Character Journal: notaliberator
Fandom: Bioshock
Point Taken from Canon: Right as Atlas is about to reveal his true identity to Jack.
Appearance: Passport image | Poster Image | I'm going to use Jude Law as a playby as there just isn't enough images of Atlas or Fontaine
Abilities: At the point in canon Atlas is being taken from, he has not spliced and as such has none of the superpowers that are granted via plasmids and gene tonics. Instead, Fontaine's strength is in rational thinking and scheming. Being able to both think on his feet and also plan ahead.
Atlas has basic knowledge of hacking. But this knowledge is based around the technology - the security systems first and foremost - of Rapture, and as such his knowledge would most likely prove useless when faced with modern day technology.
Weaknesses: A lot of this is probably written into his personality - I tend to try to be quite thourough with personalities so...
Atlas's biggest weakness is likely a lack of proper physical strength, especially in Rapture terms. He doesn't have any super powers and hasn't used any enhancing plasmids and so he is actually rather notmal. Couple that with the fact that he can't have been eating well the past few months since Rapture collapsed, he's likely down a lot of muscle mass.
His mind is his greatest asset and he uses it incredibly well. But he also manages to construct his own downfall. He has to have control of a situation and thinks incredibly far ahead when making plans, so when something changes, when something doesn't go quite as planned, it can throw him, though he often recovers from this and changes strategy. However, it is also likely that he will act rash in situations that he has absolutely no control over - as he does just a little down the line from where I've taken him from.
Housing Preferences: Somewhere that isn't leaky plzkthx ♥
History: Atlas's history begins with that of Frank Fontaine, the man he truly is.
Fontaine came to Rapture in 1948, just two years after it opened. He arrived without a job and not a penny to his name. It is not made clear why he came to Rapture, though it's possible that he did have a plan in mind. Fontaine was a con man, a criminal mastermind willing to do whatever he needed to get where he wanted to be.
Fontaine began his career in Rapture when he created Fontaine Fisheries in Port Neptune. The fisheries started out as just that, and through it, he began to make connections with those who - just like him - were at the bottom of Andrew Ryan's 'Great Chain'. With the aid of these disgruntled workers, Fontaine expanded his business by creating a smuggling ring which brought items branded as contraband by Ryan - items such as religious relic and the bible, films from out with Rapture and even beef, certain brands of alcohol, tobacco and weapons - from the surface. Needless to say, Fontaine began to rake in the cash and for Ryan (oblivious to he true source of his wealth), became the perfect example of the so-called 'Great Chain'.
It was Fontaine's smugglers that first encountered the sea slugs that would later change the fate of Rapture. Brigid Tenenbaum, a German scientist who had arrived in Rapture after WWII, observed how the crippled hand of one of the smugglers was returned to normal function after he was bitten by one of the slugs. She researched the slugs, finding that they could be used not only to heal and even resurrect damaged cells, but to go as far as to 'splice' DNA and allow access to a whole variety of new abilities. The substance which allowed them to do so was dubbed ADAM.
Tenenbaum was turned down by most science facilities in Rapture, but when she came to Fontaine, he saw the value - the business prospects - in her discovery. Fontaine started a new company, Fontaine Futuristics and employed not only Tenenbaum, but other scientists, most notable Yi Suchong, to research and develop Plasmids and Gene Tonics, which allowed the consumer to splice their DNA, giving them the aforementioned superpowers. However, it soon became clear that the ADAM produce by the slugs was not enough to meet the ever increasing demand.
After urging Tenenbaum to find some other way to produce ADAM, she discovered that it could be mass produced inside host bodies. However, for reasons unknown, the only hosts in which the ADAM could be produced, turned out to be little girls. Fontaine had no qualms about this, and as a perfect remedy to the problem of convincing families to give up their little girls, he created the Little Sister's Orphanage. This was masqueraded as a charity, promising safety, education and a bright future for the children of the poorer citizens of Rapture. However, the Orphanage was in fact just a way to get parents to willingly give up their children so they could be turned into Little Sisters.
He also opened Fontaine's Home for the Poor. This provided for the masses of citizens who had come to Rapture hoping for something they could never get. Better still, it provided him with the seeds for rebellion, in one of his audio diaries he states "Who needs an army when I got Fontaine's Home for the Poor?". People living in these poor houses were often subject to testing new combat based plasmids that Fontaine Futuristics was developing.
These 'charity' angles quickly boosted Fontaine's public image. Andrew Ryan was initially proud of him, but with the increasing popularity of ADAM, plasmids and gene tonics, he began to keep a watchful eye on Fontaine. This watchful eye soon turned into panic as he realised that his grip on Rapture was slowly sliding into Fontaine's hands. For by now, ADAM and splicing wasn't just a way of bettering oneself just a little - it was an addiction. And so the man with the ADAM, was the most powerful man in Rapture.
Ryan's discovery of Fontaine's smuggling operations only increased the tension between the two men. In a panic and a rage, Ryan deployed severe methods to deal with smuggling - he introduced capital punishment. He was not worried about the items being brought in, but rather the possibility of surface dwellers discovering Rapture. However, with no proof of Fontaine's connection to the smuggling but knowing he was behind it, Ryan could only instruct Security Chief Sullivan to crack down on the smuggling and do anything possible to find a link.
Fontaine's response to this was to ensure that none of his own men would turn him in. He employed even crueller methods than Ryan. With wage cuts and threats of severe punishment should any of his men even think of turning him in (it is known that at least one worker was killed after hinting that he might turn Fontaine in), plus the leverage of controlling all the ADAM in the city, it was a simple enough task.
For some time, Ryan's security force and Fontaine's 'splicers' were locked in combat. However, non-spliced persons were quickly defeated by the splicers, who with the aid of the new combat plasmids were 'burping fire, spitting ice'. It made it clear just how powerful plasmids were in battle. And this was only a taster of the Civil War that was to come.
As pressure from Ryan increased, Fontaine knew he had to make a back-up plan to guarantee that control of Rapture would eventually be his. The back-up plan he engineered was a cruel and elaborate scheme.
Fontaine had been following Ryan, probably as well as Ryan had been following him. He knew that his rival had an interest in an exotic dancer at Fort Frolic. Jasmine Jolene was Ryan's mistress and when she fell pregnant with his child, Fontaine had the perfect way out for her. Instructing Tenenbaum to buy the embryo from Jolene, Fontaine had Suchong artificially age, brainwash and train the child, who was then sent to the surface as a sleeper agent, completely unaware of the part he would play. Now that he had a person under his control, with Ryan's genetic code - the key to all of Rapture, which could access all areas and get to Ryan, no matter where he was hiding - it was time to disappear.
Knowing that Ryan was hot on his heels (due to the betrayal by Peach Wilkins, one of Fontaine's workers, who turned Fontaine in), Fontaine made use of ADAM for the first time. Ryan had planned an arrest, but Fontaine (with other plans already started) decided to make one last stand. During a raid and shoot-out at the Fisheries on September 12th 1958, Fontaine faked his death. To the rest of Rapture, he was truly dead and those who had supported him began to become even more discontent and Ryan was provided with a false hope that Rapture was safe in his hands once more. But Fontaine's 'death' was just a new beginning.
With a little facial reconstruction surgery and a new voice, Fontaine shaped himself into a new man. This man was Atlas. An Irish fisherman, proletariat hero and family man, who had come to Rapture with his wife and son in search for a better life. Where Fontaine had not appealed to much of the Rapture public due to his status as a thug and criminal, Atlas was loved by the people and generally represented someone better than the increasingly tyrannical Ryan.
In the aftermath of Fontaine's 'death', Ryan betrayed his own philosophy (Rapture had been built to escape the 'big government' which took over private industry) and nationalised Fontaine Futuristics. This foolish move was a turning point in the decline of Rapture, and even without Atlas rallying the people, it probably would have escalated into civil war sooner or later. Civil unrest was rife, and Atlas charmed the people into turning against Ryan, fighting for what Rapture was truly all about - the people who had been a part of Fontaine's poorhouses were some of the first recruits to the cause.
Merely a few months after Fontaine's demise, Atlas had gained control over the angry citizens of Rapture, and on New Year's Eve 1958, a group of revolutionaries attacked the Kashmir Restaurant - a restaurant in the upper class area of Rapture - where a masquerade ball was being held by Ryan for 'Rapture's Elite'. Most of the people there were part of the upper-classes and loyal to Ryan, so the ball was a perfect opportunity. The splicers descended on the party, destroying the building and killing many. This was marked by Rapture historians as the true beginning of the Civil War.
After this attack, the people who hadn't spliced began to do so as a form of protection and sales of combat plasmids such as Incinerate! and Electro Bolt jumped. The real beginning of the War also brought about a huge increase in ADAM usage, and the side effects of excessive splicing became even worse. Before long, the city was mentally unstable and addicted to ADAM.
In answer to the uprising and declination of Rapture, Ryan imposed new laws and a strict curfew. Martial law was imposed on Apollo Square (where many of the poor of Rapture lived). Those suspected of being loyal to Atlas and other criminals were hung for their crimes. Ryan also established a lock-down on the bathysphere network, which connected the city, and the security system - closing them to only Ryan and his closest followers. But Ryan's followers were dwindling, many being killed or defecting to Atlas.
Ryan didn't stop there though. He began to splice his own followers and military, and thus the demand for ADAM increased even more than it already had. Ryan Industries began to use Little Sisters to harvest ADAM from the corpses of splicers. They became the targets of kidnapping and murder by splicers desperate to get their hands on some ADAM. This lead to the development of Big Daddies, mindless subjects in armoured diving suits with only one task - protect Little Sisters whilst they gathered ADAM. These were brutal monsters that murdered anyone who came remotely close to their Little Sister.
Even the Big Daddies weren't enough though, and the Civil War shook Rapture to it's core as the city fell into disrepair and people were killed left, right and centre. The people of Rapture fashioned weapons out of various items found in the city. They no longer cared about making money and expressing themselves - it was now all about ADAM and surviving.
The turning point of the civil war was when Yi Suchong, now working under Ryan, proposed a means of breaking the stalemate. The structure of commercial plasmids was altered to make citizens susceptible to mental suggestion via pheromones. Despite this representing the ultimate betrayal of everything Rapture was about, Ryan agreed to it, and he took control of the majority of the splicers, turning them on Atlas.
Backed into a corner, Atlas had just one more ace up his sleeve. He activated his sleeper agent on the surface and thus Jack came to Rapture.
Under the pretence that he only wanted to escape Rapture with his family, Atlas lead Jack (who was completely unaware of everything, since Suchong implanted false memories within him) through Rapture via a short-wave radio. In this time, he never allowed Jack to see him.
Just as Jack was about to reach Atlas's family, trapped in Fontaine Fisheries, the submarine in which they were hiding was blown up by Ryan. After this, Atlas's goal became revenge and he enlisted Jack to assassinate Ryan. Of course, the family never existed, and the entire act was simply a ruse to eventually convince Jack to kill Ryan. He was helped along in this by the control phrase 'would you kindly' which Suchong had imprinted on Jack.
Ryan by then had pieced together the puzzle and discovered who and what Jack was, and had set the self destruct mechanism on Rapture, unwilling to hand it over to Atlas no matter what. When Jack reached Ryan's HQ at Hephaestus, Atlas asks him 'Now would you kindly head to Ryan's office and kill the son of a bitch?' When facing Jack, Ryan gives his famous 'A man chooses, a slave obeys' speech to prove that Jack had been under Atlas's control and then orders Jack to kill him.
After Ryan is dead and Jack has disabled the self destruct mechanism, Atlas begins to laugh as he intends to reveal his true identity to Jack. It is here I will be taking him from, right before he does so.
Personality:
Andrew Ryan once said about Fontaine that; “Once, he was just a menace, to be convicted and hung. But he always manages to be where the evidence isn't. He's the most dangerous type of hoodlum... the kind with vision.” This is probably as close as one could get to summing up Fontaine.
Fontaine is a man unafraid of doing anything to get what he wants. He is first and foremost out for himself. To make money, he has no qualms about leading or taking part in criminal activity - this is proven by the fact that he starts a smuggling business in Rapture to bring in the cash. He will cheat and lie where he sees fit, masquerading scandals such as building a rebellion as offering a home to the poor and using charity angles to boost his own public image. He will also take part in business deals that would be unethical or wrong to others, and if those profit him he will not back out, even if his business begins to have a negative effect on others - such as with ADAM and splicing.
As both Fontaine and Atlas, he has his sights set high. Rather than simply take over Rapture, his plan is to use his control of Rapture to move to the surface with ADAM and plasmids and the splicers, and take the entire world for himself. He doesn't bother himself with measly goals, but instead the grandiose, and perhaps even that which he knows is within his power, one way or another.
Fontaine knows how to manipulate a person - as both himself and as Atlas, he managed to bring many people around to his way of thinking, convince them that Ryan was the enemy and that he needed to be taken down. Of course, this was much easier as Atlas, since Ryan was slowly causing his own downfall. He does not make friends, but rather allows people close enough when they are his greatest assets, and even then, he does not care so much about them that he cannot simply throw them away. To him, the people who support him are just a stepping stone to get to where he is going, and he will gladly kill anyone who decides they don't like that idea. Proof of this is that he docks pay and threatens his workers with numerous punishments, including death, when Ryan is trying to prove he is behind the smuggling ring. His controlling nature is best shown with Jack, who he goes as far as to genetically modify to do as he says using the phrase 'would you kindly?'.
He also seems to be able to weigh up a person well. He is able to predict how Ryan is going to move, predict how the citizens of Rapture would react to his demise, and know exactly what the would need when he returned as a new man.
He is a con-man who loves nothing more than the power of a good grift, and much of what he does in Rapture is all part of a massive scheme to seize control. He tells Jack that 'Hell, once I was even a Chinaman for six months!' hinting at just how skilled he is at pretending to be someone he isn't. Atlas is what he refers to as 'the longest con', as by becoming Atlas he changed himself completely, while keeping all the same goals in mind. And indeed, Atlas is testament to just how skilled a con-man he is.
Perhaps his greatest asset after his skills as a con-artist, Fontaine has an incredibly sharp mind. He is capable of thinking on his feet and objectifying, so that he find solutions to almost every problem ensuring that nothing gets in the way of his goal. He is also known for thinking very far in advance, predicting his opponents moves and countering at every turn - his entire plot to take over Rapture including Jack shows this.
It is rare that Fontaine messes up. When his life is threatened, he may think irrationally and act stupidly, however he quickly takes control of the situation and finds a way to maintain the upper-hand in these sorts of situations.
Fontaine was a coarse man, and not just in looks and accent. He would step on as many toes and break as many rules as needed to, getting rid of every obstacle in the way right up until he faked his death. He has no objections to violence what-so-ever.
As Atlas, however, Fontaine was a different man. Atlas is a family man and a people's person. A charismatic and yet humble freedom fighter. He was a figurehead in the rebellion which lead to the eventual destruction of Rapture; the people who had been repressed by Ryan's increasingly dystopian society looked up to Atlas and followed him. Yet Atlas claimed that he was not a liberator; he was not there to liberate the people, but to help them liberate themselves. As Atlas, he would act kind towards those who came to him, rather than harsh. He would lure them into a false sense of security and keep them close to use for his own deeds.
In the end, Atlas is no different from Fontaine - it is simply that he has a different way of dealing with things and a different way of treating people. As Atlas, Fontaine is still the manipulative scumbag that he once was, only now he has a welcoming smile on his face.
Character Quote: Never play a man for the short con when you can play 'em for the long one.
Journal Sample: {The device in his hand was not entirely unlike the short-wave radio he'd been talking into moments ago, or the audio diaries he'd been keeping. While smaller and with more buttons, it didn't take long for him to figure out how to work it. Not sure what to do, he tries speaking to Jack through it, speaking in an Irish accent.}
Boyo? Are y'still there? Would you kindly give me some sign that yer alive?
{No reply, so after a few more minutes - just to be sure - he gives up being Atlas and lets out a long sigh. The next voice that comes over is a thick Bronx one.}
Damn, kid. And here I was about to spill the beans. Seems someone don't like the thought of that.
Prose Sample: Fontaine hadn't been here - wherever here was - for long, but he'd been here long enough to know that Jack wasn't here. Nor was Andrew goddamn Ryan or the splicers or any other poor bastard from Rapture.
He'd already tried the pinching himself, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming (damn, if only he was - he had a fucking fantastic victory to start celebrating!). Since he didn't suddenly jolt awake in that damn chair he'd been sitting in for so long, he knew that the reason the ground felt so solid was because it actually was. After all, he couldn't be dead and in heaven - like hell he was going to heaven after all he'd done with his life. That and he'd never heard of people being branded with numbers in the afterlife.
Yet what he couldn't deduce was why the hell he was there. There he'd been, about to reveal his biggest secret to Jackie-boy, tear the kid's world apart with the revelation then set the splicers on him, and suddenly he was here. Someone apparently didn't want him breaking the news just yet.
“Fuckin' hell, way to ruin a guy's fun.” Lifting the hat off his head and running a hand through his hair, he frowned and shook his head. Didn't even have a damn radio on him so he could try and contact anyone in Rapture - just the damn small device he'd found in his pocket on arrival. That wasn't proving to be much use either, he was getting no responses talking into it the way he would a radio.
Best to make the most of a situation though! Getting a better idea of the lay of the land would give him the upper-hand if this did just turn out to be some genius ploy of Ryan's (though he doubted it, old bastard was dead as a doornail). If he bumped into anyone on the way, he was sure Atlas could charm an answer out of them and if not, well, he had his ways.
Anything else? I realise the app may be a little confusing! Sorry! I'll be playing Frank Fontaine as Atlas - this means he will have undergone the facial reconstruction to look like Atlas, but will also have the mannerisms and voice of Atlas, at least most of the time! So I'll be referring to him as Atlas most of the time, but Frank or Fontaine when he drops the act.