Damara Carver

Doctor Damara Carver was a data archaeologist assigned to the planet Uxor to study the Shroud 4 Marker, and the wife of John Carver and mother of their son Dylan. Her work uncovered a vast government cover-up surrounding the history of the Markers, a discovery that would draw Ellie Langford and the survivors of the Sprawl into the search for the artifacts' source. Though she was killed in the outbreak that her own research helped expose, the records she left behind set in motion the expedition to Tau Volantis.

Life and family#

Damara and her husband John Carver met the former heavy pilot Ellie Langford on Haven Prime, where the three became friends and Damara learned that she was pregnant with her first child. The couple lived for a time on Keyhole Station before being assigned to Uxor, where Damara took up the study of the planet's Marker. Their marriage grew strained over time, worn by John's difficulty adjusting to civilian life and his inability to control his temper, and his frequent absences during patrol duty left Damara feeling that she was raising their son Dylan largely on her own. She remained hopeful that he would eventually settle into his role as a father and husband.

Marker research and the cover-up#

On Uxor, Damara was assigned to study the Marker on the planet, and her work as a data archaeologist soon carried her far beyond her brief. She uncovered information dating back to the Sovereign Colonies and their research on the Marker replicas that predated the Earth Government, and further investigation revealed a massive government cover-up unlike any she had heard of before. She enlisted the help of Ellie Langford and Robert Norton to gather more, and her skill in reconstructing destroyed records proved vital in unearthing the buried secrets of the former Sovereign Colonies government.

Damara learned that the Sovereign Colonies had detected a master Marker signal perpetuated from somewhere in deep space, and she located their triangulation station, Ptolemy Station, using data she rebuilt from purged files. Aware of how dangerous her research had become, she kept it secret from her husband, knowing that John would try to stop her if he found out. As a safeguard, she recorded a message detailing her findings and the importance of stopping the Markers and the Unitologists in the event of her death.

Death and aftermath#

The danger Damara had sensed reached her family directly. While on patrol, John discovered a sabotaged scanner and then a long-sight laser triangulated on the Shroud 4 test site, and he tried to warn his wife and son before a missile struck and destroyed the shroud covering the Marker. The Marker's blast knocked out all electronics and machinery and brought a ship crashing down onto the residential area where Damara and Dylan lived. Unable to raise his wife over their RIG link, John feared the worst.

When John reached the room where his family had been, he found that both Damara and Dylan had been transformed into Slashers, and, too late to save them, he ended their suffering by killing them both. He afterward claimed that Jacob Danik, the Unitologist leader who had been hunting the Marker researchers, was responsible for their deaths. Years later, on Tau Volantis, the Markers used Damara's image against John, conjuring bloodied and freezing visions of her and Dylan to torment him, much as they had used Nicole Brennan against Isaac Clarke. John eventually confronted and destroyed the imaginary Marker within his own mind, severing the connection. Through it all, the records Damara had left behind survived her, and her recovered research became the thread that led Ellie Langford and the others toward the world where the Markers had come from.