Benjamin Keyes

**Benjamin "Ben" Keyes** is a character in The Smoke Room. He is a miner under CSCG who desperately strives toward a promotion.

## Appearance

Ben is a golden retriever with shaggy blond fur and blue eyes. He wears dark blue overalls over a gray dress shirt and a black belt that holds his mining tools. He also wears a miner's helmet with a lamp attached. In some of his sprites, he is depicted wielding a pickaxe. Ben's facial expressions are frequently described as intense and unsettling.

## Personality

Ben's main goal seems to be rising through the ranks at CSCG to reach a position of authority, and most of his personality is oriented around work and self-advancement. He pushes himself and his coworkers hard despite the risks present in the mine, and often sucks up to his higher-ups in search of commendation. Ben is shown to be careless and even ruthless in his efforts to set himself apart from his peers, and often endangers himself and others. Despite initially presenting himself as warm and helpful, Ben has a jealous streak that can manifest suddenly and violently, especially against those he believes are disrespecting his authority. Sam describes Ben as sounding 'almost manic,' and detects a vengefulness beneath his superficially sunny demeanor that gradually comes to the surface.

## Story

### Before The Smoke Room

Ben was hired as a miner sometime before the start of the game. He quickly came to covet the authority and extra pay enjoyed by those in higher stations and made it his goal to move up the ranks himself. Ben soon gained a reputation for acting like a "secondary foreman" of sorts, issuing commands or "supervising" his coworkers even though he is just a general worker himself. Ben's drive for recognition has caused him to consistently do things that ignore workplace safety, such as entering a tunnel despite the death of a mining canary and forcing his team to work after hours without bonus pay. These qualities have drawn the ire of many of his fellow miners, especially those in the union, but he nonetheless seems influential in the faction of workers loyal to CSCG management and to Briggs in particular.

In addition to being clearly willing to resort to violence at very little provocation, Ben also implies that he has killed people in the past.

### Nik's Route

Ben's first appearance is at The Stag. He encounters several members of the miners' union and antagonizes Dimitri by gloating about the amount of silver he and his team were able to extract from the mines, which Dimitri points out was not without significant risk. Paul punches Ben for his impertinent behavior towards Dimitri, which escalates into a physical altercation that resolves with Ben being banned from The Stag for two weeks.

Ben is formally introduced the next day, when Sam begins his job in the mine. Ben welcomes him to the CSCG "family" and tells him to stay out of trouble, positioning himself as an authority figure to such a degree that Sam is shocked to later learn Ben is not actually a foreman. After partially witnessing a fight between Nik and Nate, Ben accuses Sam of being an 'instigator' before being told off by Dimitri, much to his frustration.

Ben's suspicions and annoyance toward Sam continue to escalate, culminating with him seemingly attempting to hit Sam with a sledgehammer later in the day while the two work alongside Foreman Beckett Moore. Sam notes that Ben seems "out of it," as though he is not aware of what he is doing beyond his malice. The next day, Ben is working with Beckett and comes over to Sam's team to borrow a bag of dynamite. Dimitri lends him his pack, and Ben disappears with it only to return shortly after, claiming to no longer need it.

The next time Dimitri and Sam try to light a stick of dynamite, the fuse malfunctions, causing a cave-in that injures Dimitri's foot. Though Paul and Sam quickly accuse Ben of tampering with the dynamite, he denies these allegations and Beckett breaks the men up, promising an inquiry into what happened.

Beckett calls Sam aside the next day and accuses *him* of masterminding the dynamite incident, which demonstrates to the union miners that if Ben is truly to blame, he acted either by himself or at the direction of an even higher authority than the foreman. That night, Nik's headlamp goes missing from the miners' bunkhouse, sending him into a frenzied panic. As Sam tries to calm him down, Ben appears and announces that he knows who the culprit is.

Sam is confrontational but Ben claims he has only ever been kind and welcoming, and unconvincingly denies ever trying to hit Sam with the sledgehammer. Ben speaks with disgust about the union miners and even tries to insinuate that Yao, whose race he disparages, may have stolen from Nik. He drops this jeering pretense once Nik begins approaching him, however, and admits that Briggs ordered the helmet confiscated and is now holding it in his office. Nik storms off to confront the boss and Ben departs as well, bumping into Sam rudely as he goes.

Ben reappears later, working deep in an unexplored section of the mines alongside Nate and another miner named Rogers, as part of a late-night overtime shift that has been necessitated by the union's strike cutting into productivity. Ben is wantonly relying on dynamite to blast his way through the tunnels, which eventually leads to a cave-in that seems to bury Rogers fatally in rubble. Nate is horrified but Ben expresses no concern whatsoever, even trying to convince Nate that the blood possibly trickling from beneath the fallen rocks is nothing more than groundwater.

In the cavern where the rockfall has trapped them, Ben and Nate are shocked to find Nik, Sam, and possibly Yao and demand to know what they are doing in an unmapped section of the mines after working hours.

If Yao is present, he feigns stupidity to bluff that the mine's management has sent them on what is clearly a fool's errand to find valuable dinosaur bones deep underground, hoping to leverage the preconception that he is a gullible foreigner. Nate seems to buy this, and accepts when Yao then offers to pool their resources and escape the cavern together. Ben is insistent on using more dynamite to blast back the way they came, however, even as Nate grows fed up with his pride and disregard for safety. When Nate begins walking over to join up with the other miners, Ben fatally stabs him in the back with a pickaxe for his insubordination. Ben then reveals that he never bought Yao's ruse, since he noticed Nik is still wearing his contraband mining cap and therefore cannot be on official business. He says he is certain that Briggs has no use for them, and so knows that whatever they are doing in the mines must be criminal and against company interests.

If Yao is absent, then instead Nate once again steals Nik's mining headlamp and vengefully tosses it into a nearby fast-flowing subterranean river. Sam leaps after it and falls into the water, but manages to grab a stalagmite to avoid being swept away by the current. Nate then begins jeering and throwing rocks at him to knock him loose, leading to a physical altercation that ends with Nik accidentally striking Nate dead with a single punch to the head, much to Ben's fascination. After Nik saves Sam, Ben points out smugly that Nate is dead, horrifying Nik. Ben observes that now Sam and Nik both have 'the look of a killer,' which he calls the final step to becoming a man. He remarks that a man has to kill to provide, and that it gets easier each time.

Either way, Ben then issues an order at gunpoint for the others to try and either murder each other or kill themselves while he watches, with the assurance that he will allow whoever is the sole survivor to escape with him. Moments later, however, a huge spider-like monster descends silently from the ceiling of the cavern and lands behind him. It is covered in mouths that begin singing, speaking, and screaming, and when Ben hears them he turns around to look. He is so shocked that he stumbles backwards, twisting his ankle on some rocks, and then falls into the river. He does not surface, and is presumably carried away by the strong current.

## Relationships

### Sam

Ben quickly takes on a dislike toward Sam, finding his sudden presence to be suspicious and accusing him of being an instigator. He has little trust toward Sam and, whether of his own volition or under the influence of something else, soon attempts to physically assault him under the guise of a workplace accident.

### Beckett

Ben holds a great deal of respect for Beckett and often tries to look his best in front of him. However, his feelings toward Beckett seem to be based purely on his position as foreman, and he appears frustrated when Beckett does not listen to him or give him recognition for his actions. Though he listens to Beckett when ordered, he occasionally second-guesses the foreman's directions. Beckett himself notes that Ben wants to take his job, though he does not seem worried by these ambitions until mounting evidence begins to reveal just how far Ben is willing to go.

### Briggs

Ben is loyal to Briggs, although it is unclear whether this willingness to collaborate with the management of the mine is purely in the interest of advancing his own standing in the company, or if Ben looks up to Briggs as a kind of role model because of his ruthless ideology. At one point Sam refers to James as the mine's boss and Ben scoffs, declaring Briggs the "real boss."

Ben seems to have fully embraced the same cutthroat worldview espoused by Briggs, in which the only way to advance oneself and provide for one's family is by destroying others, and is therefore extremely willing to use violence as a means to get what he wants.

### Dimitri

Ben is often at odds with Dimitri, whose habit of putting Ben in his place and reminding him of his relative inexperience tends to infuriate him. Ben seems to feel that Dimitri has stagnated in his career, and looks down on the contentment he feels for his life presumably because it clashes with his own goal of rising through the ranks. Unlike Dimitri, who empathizes with him, Ben lacks the ability or does not care to see things from other perspectives, which leads him to express exasperation and disrespect even as Dimitri tries to smooth over their relationship. Ben also seems to have a low opinion of the miners' union, for which Dimitri is a prominent advocate.

### Nik and Yao

Ben looks down on Yao and Nik for being immigrants and for allying themselves with the union, which he considers a group of lazy agitators. He expresses disdain for them both, and is eager to see them, along with Sam, try and kill one another once he manages to corner them in the mines.

## Trivia

* If Sam chooses to name Ben as one of his companions in the mine, Porter refers to him as someone to "keep close."

## Gallery

DefaultEyes closedAnnoyedAngryHolding pickaxe