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Richard Morton is the founder of the Morton family dynasty and is the older brother of Robert Morton. Much of his details are written in the Morton family history book.

Background[]

Originating from the small town of Whitechapel, Richard went into the oil industry while his younger brother became a linen merchant.

Richard Morton was born in 1852. Married to Susan Chalmers, the youngest daughter of a fallen aristocrat and addicted to opium, he has his son Archibald. At the age of 37, on March 23, 1889, he founded the Morton Oil Company which became the basis of his family's financial fortune. The company entered into several agreements for the exploitation of natural resources with various countries, including Pueblo, in Venezuela. Over the next four years Richard himself led several expeditions around the world on behalf of the Morton Oil Companyand in one of these, between 1891 and 1893, he found the body of a man with a tablet with mysterious engravings, buried in the ice of Greenland. The discovery deeply marked Richard, leading him to spend several nights troubled by an unknown fear that pursues him even during the day and making him increasingly reserved, finally making him stop attending Boston's high society in favor of new expeditions that, from time to time so much, they brought him back to the place of his first discovery. Several Swedish and Norwegian sailors and mercenaries accompanied him on his travels but among them one Judas De Certo, an adventurer accustomed to black magic, took an interest in Richard to the point of writing him a letterpromising him enormous powers if they collaborated in exchange for a promissory note drawn with his own blood. Taking advantage of the fears of the patriarch of the Morton family, De Certo ensnared him with the black magic once he received the promissory note and in the years following the competitors of the Morton Oil Companythey were struck by an inexplicable series of disasters (staff accidents, mental problems of directors etc.) while Richard's company grew more and more by taking possession of several markets including Venezuela, Indonesia and the North Sea. By now with a boundless heritage at his disposal, Richard and De Certo hired the young student Samuel Gibson to translate the "Man of the Ice" tablet found in Greenland. These took service on June 20, 1899 and recognized a similarity between the symbols on the tablet and some ancient engravings found in the basement of Shadow Island , an island on the coast of Maine, which Richard purchased from the state of Massachusetts. In the same year he had his nephew Jeremy from his son Archibald and his daughter-in-law Jennifer Pritchett. After trying in vain to sneak into the old fort on the island, Richard opted to build a villa on the southern side of Shadow Island to continue his research, he took particular care of the construction of the library, considering it the work of his life. During this time he found an Abkanis energy stone, the tribe that once inhabited the island, and who will leave it to his nephew. In the following three years relations with Gibson deteriorate, the student is terrified of the extent of his discoveries while Richard is increasingly determined to make new discoveries on the kingdom of darkness under Shadow Island, going to imprison Samuel still alive in the family crypt and then to write to his mother that he was dead and his body was not found. Subsequently, starting in 1903, he and De Certo began to kidnap young girls from the poor neighborhoods of Boston to practice macabre rituals of black magic, including human sacrifice, at the ancient 17th century chapel on the island. The kidnappings continued with a certain cadence, which increased in periods of equinox, until 1905.

Involvement[]

Features[]

Although it does not appear in the game, many documents may suggest that Richard Morton was a man with a strong business sense and absolutely dissolute. He manages to successfully start a financial empire from his oil company but the discovery of a man buried in the ice with a tablet in Greenland leads him to develop a particular paranoia that is conveyed by the promises of power made to him by De Certo, although it is presumable that he used black magic to ensnare him. Like all members of his family he becomes obsessed with the creatures of the nightof which he learned thanks to the tablet found in Greenland, but he also proves totally unscrupulous in sacrificing young girls kidnapped in Boston to support De Certo and in walling alive the student Samuel Gibson . His fixation will lead him to draw up a testament in which he gives his son Archibald the task of continuing his work of opening the gate that separates the earthly world from the realm of darkness.

Trivia[]

  • In the Morton family biography , as well as in the Official Strategy Guide[1], Robert Morton is said to be his younger brother and, who emigrated to the United States, opened his first paper factory, Morton Papers, in 1823 however Richard was born only in 1852. It is probable that, due to a transcription error, Robert Morton is to be understood as Richard's father and not a younger brother. Also this would move Richard's birthplace from English Sussex to Boston, Massachusetts.



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Portrait of Richard Morton

References[]

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