Dolls

Dolls are dead people brought back into mechanical bodies. The Doll-making process results in very limited control over their bodies' movement, leaving them in a semi-paralyzed state, and only able to communicate by streaming radio. The vast majority of dolls are completely miserable and wish to die and return to the afterlife.

## History of Dolls

During The Dolls of New Albion, the first doll was created by Annabel McAlistair, a brilliant scientist who figured out a method to raise the dead. Jasper was the first deceased person to be placed in a doll body. He had no voice, his steel joints could barely bend, and could only stream a radio broadcast. Eventually Jasper was able to communicate to Annabelle that he didn't want to be a doll and preferred to be back in Elysium. Annabel thus destroyed Jasper, never made another doll, and locked her formula in the attic and swore never to tell anyone else about her success.

After Annabelle passed away, her son Edgar McAlistair discovered her formula for raising the dead. He used the dolls to create a business. He began on a soapbox in the center of town, promising five successful cases to prove that could bring people's loved ones back from the dead. His business quickly grew in popularity and he opened a store and increased the mass marketing of his product, offering seven models of dolls, including mahogany, lilac, and deep oaken red.

As a result of of people bringing back the dead for years, the city became overrun with slums of dolls. The Voodoopunk subculture emerged, which was a religious and political movement centered around the dolls, and rituals for spirit possession. Edgar's son Byron McAllistair was a prominent leader, as well as Amelia and Jacqueline O'Brien. The Voodoopunks ran a campaign to elect Jasper as mayor, running on a platform that promised that their doll knew that everyone was equal in the end, with a call to walk away from the system and to throw it all away. The movement was gaining in popularity until Amelia's suicide. Her suicide note was the words from Jasper's song, which caused the public became fearful of the dolls. Distrust and anger grew until riots broke out. Bonfires destroyed much of the city, and the police responded with a forceful crackdown. Owning a Doll or any memento of the dead became a severe felony punishable by death.

Dolls were never seen to resurface in popularity, even after the military state was ended at the conclusion of the civil war.

## Bootleg Dolls and The Room

In The Room Beneath New Albion, during the time that a campaign was running to elect Jasper as mayor, a red haired gangster Alexander ran a business selling bootleg dolls. He marketed his business as an opportunity for revenge, suggesting that people bring back someone they hated as a doll so they could throw darts into their eyes.

Alexander noticed that someone had been stealing his bootleg doll parts. Going into the tunnels beneath the city he found that an alibno girl, Alice, had been using the bootleg doll parts to build a room, per request of the 'angels.' The angels were AIs who needed a place to escape to, and the bootleg doll parts were a necessary part of the room's design which allowed the AIs to transfer their consciousness to a safe location.

## Notable Dolls

* Jasper
* Lloyd Allen
* Thiccy Viccy

## Trivia

* Annabel's formula worked properly, and she did proper tests to make sure that it was Jasper who she brought back. However, once Edgar started mass producing the dolls, the procedure became less reliable and it may not have always brought back the intended soul. However, given the doll's limited communication skills, people projected the belief that the doll they had was the correct person that they wished it to be.
* Edgar had written in his will strict orders not to bring him back as a doll after he died. This implies that he was fully aware of how miserable the souls were inside of all the dolls he was creating
* "Lloyd" is an anagram for "dolly." Although not revealed in The New Albion Radio Hour, the overall idea behind the narration of the second opera is a revenge plan of a doll who wants the city to burn for the suffering that the dolls endured.