Commissaire Jules Delaroche
Reconstructed memorial. Delaroche began as one of Savarin’s hostages and ended leading his own police through her front door. Phil’s second character, and the second he lost in a single chapter.
Chapter 2 — Lyon: The Hostage Commissioner
Commissaire Jules Delaroche was the police commissioner of Lyon, a man of law and order ensnared in Savarin’s web through threats to his children, held at the Orphans’ Hospital. He was never a cultist by conviction. He was a hostage in his own authority, forced to use his office to shield the Choir’s Lyon cell, and the strain showed in every public appearance, a locket clutched in his hand and his eyes forever finding Savarin across the room.
Delaroche came to Adrien’s hunting lodge after the Camberonne ball and laid his terms before Gus: rescue his children, and he would turn against Savarin. The appeal precipitated the hospital raid. His children were among more than 240 rescued, and the liberation broke Savarin’s hold over other influential families as well. Afterward, Delaroche arrested Magistrate Béraud when the magistrate was summoned to report. When Jacob died at the Orphans’ Hospital, Phil took up Delaroche as his character, and the redeemed commissioner stopped being an informant and became an investigator.
Chapter 2 — Lyon: The Silkweavers’ Guild
Delaroche’s redemption had a shape, and it was the front door of the Silkweavers’ Guild. In the final assault on Savarin’s headquarters, the party split its forces: the investigators and Moreau’s veterans went in through the sewers, and Delaroche led his own police against the front, fighting the Blue Sashes at their barricades, a man taking his city back with his own hands.
He died trying to scale a barricade, cut down by a Blue Sash on the other side. He did not live to see it, but the raid he led the front half of destroyed the Chakota, killed Savarin, rescued the surgically altered children’s choir, and prevented the Fourvière ritual entirely. The commissioner who had been forced to protect the Choir’s operation died breaking it, with his children safe. See Silkweavers Guild Assault. Phil’s next character, Varrio Harrowmont, joined the party for Vienna.