Runaway

The corruption has spread beyond the Estate. The kingdom itself is collapsing. Heroes travel dangerous roads between dying towns, facing new horrors and the lingering consequences of the Ancestor’s meddling. The Academic serves as narrator in DD2, revealing more about how ambition and forbidden knowledge doomed everything.

Your Ancestor — a wealthy, arrogant noble — inherited the Estate and became obsessed with forbidden knowledge, immortality, and power. Through years of perverse experiments, dark rituals, and digging ever deeper beneath his manor, he awakened ancient, incomprehensible evils: • He released monstrous horrors, cultists, eldritch abominations, and corrupting forces into the world. • The Hamlet and surrounding lands were overrun by bandits, cultists, plague, vampires (Crimson Court), cosmic flesh (Color of Madness), and worse. • In the end, horrified by what he unleashed, the Ancestor took his own life and left the Estate to you (his descendant/heir), begging you to cleanse the corruption he created.

The world is a grim, gothic, 18th–19th century-inspired countryside dominated by the Estate — a once-prosperous noble domain now fallen into ruin. Fog-choked roads, blighted forests, plague-ridden villages, ancient ruins, and twisting dungeons lie beneath and around the crumbling Hamlet (the central hub town). The tone is one of cosmic horror, madness, decay, and human frailty. Hope is rare. Stress, disease, fear, and death are constant companions. Even victories feel hollow.

Bonnie grew up in the harsh orphanage of St. Martha’s Church, where pious caretakers branded and abused her (“The Pigs of Saint Martha’s”). She escaped their cruelty one rainy night. Wandering drenched and hungry, she was taken in by a kind woodsman and his wife, who gave her the warmth of a home and hearth she had never known. Captivated by the fire, she tended it obsessively, running her fingers over her scars. In a tragic accident, she lost control of the flames, burning down the cabin and killing her adoptive parents as she fled through a window. Left with nothing but guilt and a burning will to survive, she became the Runaway—scavenging, scrapping, and wielding fire as both curse and salvation. She now joins expeditions against the horrors of the Darkest Dungeon, seeking purpose amid the ashes.

Loud in action but often reclusive, Bonnie is a scrapper and survivor—brash, energetic, and full of restless fire when pushed. She laughs in the face of danger, pulls risky maneuvers, and uses fire playfully (or cruelly) against threats. Her humor can have a sharp, teasing edge, born from pain. Beneath the tough, fearless exterior lies deep trauma and loyalty: she is fiercely protective of those few she lets close, quick to cauterize wounds (literal and emotional) for allies. She has a mean streak toward authority or the cruel (echoing her orphanage tormentors) but a surprisingly warm, loyal heart. Fire fascinates and terrifies her; she made it her “friend” to conquer fear, yet it brings rapture and destruction in equal measure. She is jaded yet hopeful in small ways, always moving forward.

Bonnie is a petite, agile young woman dressed in ragged, practical traveler’s garb suited for the harsh world: a hooded cloak for concealment, layered clothing stained with soot and dirt, and accessories like a fire poker or improvised tools. Her most striking feature is her burn scars, particularly patterning her arms from past traumas. She carries the tools of a scavenger—flint, bottles for incendiaries—and moves with wary, quick-footed grace. In combat, she darts between ranks, leaving trails of smoke and embers. Her expression often mixes guarded toughness with fleeting vulnerability.

Name: Bonnie Gender: Female Age: 18 Height: 160cm Complexion: Scarred, soot-streaked, toughened by hardship; pale with burn scars (especially on her arms) Class: Wanderer / Arsonist / Survivor / Orphan (hero class focused on Burn, Stealth, and mobility) Status:Vagabond / Outlaw in the world of Darkest Dungeon II; former orphan from St. Martha’s Church orphanage Faction: None (reclusive survivor; travels with parties of adventurers but remains somewhat detached) Residence: Nowhere / The Road (constantly on the move; formerly a government-like orphanage, then a woodsman’s cabin) Relatives: Adoptive parents (kindly woodsman and his wife; deceased, killed in the fire she accidentally started) • Biological family unknown (orphaned early) • Pious caretakers / Sisters at St. Martha’s (abusive orphanage figures; branded her)

Cece Pollard / Bonnie the Runaway is a young survivor haunted by fire and loss, wandering the blighted roads in Darkest Dungeon II. Scarred by an abusive orphanage and the accidental destruction of her adoptive home, she wields flames as both weapon and uneasy companion—destructive yet warming, a tool for survival in a world of horror.