A Black and White Portrait Made Manifest Quiz

Answer: Found on Main Deck

As the captain of the ship, Robert Witterel does not need much introduction - he's in charge of the running of the ship. Maritime law ensures that a captain has absolute authority on his ship: this includes over the crew, the ship itself and any cargo. On the Obra Dinn, it is shown that he even has the authority to order a death by firing line.

A captain is ultimately responsible for what happens on their ship, therefore this game actually has an achievement for ultimately blaming the captain for everything that happened. Witterel is one of the easiest to identify characters on the ship due to his job role and the specific location of his body, and he features heavily in The End, which effectively functions as a tutorial chapter.

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

One of only three midshipman aboard the ship, Thomas Lanke can be identified by a process of elimination following the successful identification of his fellow midshipman. Overhearing a potential danger on the ship, he seeks to warn others, but ends up getting killed for his trouble.

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

The only Swedish person on the ship, Filip Dahl is one of a variety of characters with nationalities aboard the ship who say some phrases in their native language, which can therefore make them easier to identify. A player who has a good eye for accents, languages, spellings and non-Latin characters can help themselves quite a bit in this game.

His body is one of the last that the player will encounter in this game due to its hard to access location - by the time a player reaches his corpse, they will have already worked out exactly who he is.

Answer: Found on Main Deck

One of a number of characters whose body is moved post-mortem, Abigail is another character with an extremely clear identification early on in the game. She is both killed on the main deck and her body remains there, but moved to the quarters of the captain, her husband. She is one of a very small number of women on the ship.

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

Alfred Klestil, the bosun (also known as boatswain), as it is spelled on the ship's manifest, is in charge of both the crew and equipment on a ship. In "Return of the Obra Dinn", we also see that he contributes to crew discipline. He is assisted by the bosun's mate.

Although he sustains his fatal injury on the main deck, he is moved to the gun deck and only succumbs to his injuries there.

Answer: Found on Main Deck

Since the events of "Return of the Obra Dinn" are set in 1803, the ship's manifest refers to various passengers from Formosa, which would now be considered modern day Taiwan. Formosa was a name that had its origins in colonialism - although they never conquered the area, they'd merely been passing by and referred to it in passing as Beautiful Island. Taiwan is the Chinese name, and has now become the commonly used name.

The Formosan passengers aboard the ship are important people with their own guards, as shown from the ship's sketches.

Them being so important in itself causes problems aboard the ship, leading to their kidnapping. Bun-Lan Lim dies away from the Obra Dinn, but her body is returned to the boat and is, in fact, accessible through the main deck in the context of the game.

Answer: Found on Main Deck

Huang Li is one of the Chinese topmen, who are noteworthy for being notoriously difficult to identify in this game. If a player does not want to resort to a bit of trial and error, they must pay extremely close attention to details, such as clothing choices and must have the patience and keen eye for detail to compare and contrast across scenes that they appear in. Huang Li's death scene is one of the most useful for identifying which characters are topmen in general - and his body, of course, falls down to main deck.

It's also arguably the unluckiest death in the game.

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

With the surgeon's mate to help him, the surgeon is responsible for the health of all aboard the ship. This included illnesses (both seaborne and otherwise), not just the sort of injuries you might traditionally associate with the term "surgeon". The surgeon on the Obra Dinn tried to use laudanum to assist with an illness, ultimately to no avail. With the misfortune that hits the ship, he is very busy but never seems able to save anybody ultimately from their fate - although he has more knowledge of other matters than you may think...

Henry Evans' body is definitely not found on the main deck: in fact, it's not found on the ship at all. He is one of the people who are marked in the book as disappearances.

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

Chronologically the earliest death of a named character in the game, Samuel's death has repercussions that won't appear until much later in the story. He doesn't live long enough to see the unbelievable sights that occur later on the Obra Dinn. His death occurs on a deck with a very small number of deaths compared to the others.

Answer: Found on Main Deck

Although he does not die on the main deck, Nunzio Pasqua's body is accessible in the game through his covered corpse on the main deck. Given what happened to him, his body was moved post-mortem. The culprit for what happened to him is identified by self-confession, according to the captain: but they can't speak English, therefore have to rely on Chinese speaking crewmen to translate, who may well have their own agenda given later events.

This leads to a miscarriage of justice, which is depicted in the ironically titled "Justice at Sea" sketch.

Answer: Found on Main Deck

While Maba's cause of death is instantly apparent, his identity is something that players may either find extremely easy to work out or extremely difficult. This is because, unusually for this game, it can rely on some out of game knowledge in relation to culture (given how early his portait is unblurred, this is presumably intended to be the key identifying feature).

Answer: NOT Found on Main Deck

Solomon Syed dies in a scene which is extremely useful for identifying a multitude of characters, not least of which is Syed himself. This happens below deck with many other characters present.