Story Log Portrait
Story Log Portrait (Pre-Pallidification)
Story Log Portrait (Masked)
Masked
Dying
Queequeg
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–Queequeg, Canto VII: The Evil Defining | ||
Queequeg (Hangul: 퀴케그, Kwikegeu) was a Harpooneer on the Pequod and a supporting character in Canto V: The Evil Defining.
Appearance
Queequeg is a well-built, muscular woman with dark complexion. She has dark brown hair worn in thick braids that reach down to her chest, and that she decorates with golden cuffs. Her most notable feature is the tattoo enhancements from the Middle, broken up by extensive, self-inflicted scarring visible across her entire upper body and head.
Queequeg wears a sleeveless, mud-green shirt underneath a heavy gray vest and thick green pants tucked into boots, as well as two golden bands around her upper arms. As a harpooneer, she also has thick brown ropes tied around her upper and lower arms, midsection, waist, right calf and left ankle. These ropes are also used to securely tie a short harpoon to her left forearm.
During her time in Pequod Town, Queequeg was covered in a pallidification membrane and wore a crude metal mask that only showed her left eye, which appeared wide and frenzied.
Personality
Queequeg is a quiet and slow-talking woman with a generally blunt and stoic way of thinking. Queequeg carries heavy guilt over her actions during her old life as a member of the Middle, and is so strongly driven in her will to remove this stain in her past that she is willing to go to any length to find atonement, harming herself with the goal of removing the mark of the Syndicate and devoting herself completely to her work as a harpooneer for Ahab's crew.
In her time on The Pequod, Queequeg grew to greatly value her crewmates, and particularly treasuring her bond with Ishmael, with the two dreaming of starting a new life together after the end of the voyage. Her devotion to Ahab would never falter after the destruction of the ship, with Queequeg believing Ahab's claim that at the end of the voyage "everything would come to be", and hoping to one day see the surface, as well as Ishmael, for a last time.
Story
Prior to Limbus Company
Queequeg was originally a member of The Middle, having spent many years working under the Syndicate, to the point of receiving the rank of Big Sister. At a point, Queequeg began to hate the violent life she'd been leading, and decided to leave The Middle and start anew: to effectively cut her allegiance, she had to mutilate her tattooed skin, tongue and brain.
After becoming a crew member aboard the Pequod, she became very close friends with Ishmael, with whom she shared a room. During the voyage, Queequeg started building a coffin for herself, so that in the event of her death, her body would be safe from the Whales and Mermaids. She went missing, together with the Pequod's crew, during the shipwreck that followed the confrontation with the Pallid Whale.
She was later revealed to have been swallowed by the Pallid Whale. Thus, Queequeg lived in Pequod Town with other ingested survivors until the events of Canto V.
Canto V: The Evil Defining
Queequeg's first meeting with the Sinners takes place in Pequod Town, after Ishmael tries attacking the Town's leader, Ahab. She is called off by Ahab, who promises Ishmael the chance to kill her after the Sinners help the captain in reaching the beast's heart. Queequeg is sent to follow the Sinner's path in traversing the Whale due to being the only person capable of steering the Sinners' ship, where her history with Ishmael is shown further. After reaching the Heart, Queequeg turns on the Sinners on Ahab's orders due to the pallidification preventing them from attacking the Whale, and needing Dante's head to do so.
She is then absorbed into Ahab's E.G.O to be used as ammunition, but after Ishmael breaks it, she holds on just enough to apologize for not being strong enough to think for herself, and asks Ishmael to say her name again before melting away due to succumbing to pallidification. Her spirit appears to help Ishmael in tearing out the Pallid Whale's heart before passing on.
Gallery
Trivia
- Queequeg shares her namesake with the character from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Much like the Queequeg of Limbus Company, her literary counterpart is a heavily-tattooed harpooneer with whom Ishmael forms a special bond.
- In the novel, Queequeg is the son of the King of the fictional island of Kokovoko in the South Pacific Ocean, and his tattoos are largely inspired by Māori tattoos. In particular, Melville was inspired, in his creation of Queequeg, by a depiction of Māori chief Te Pēhi Kupe.
- The scene in which Ishmael is sent to bucket the oil from the inside of a Whale is directly inspired by chapter 72 of Moby-Dick. In it, Queequeg and Ishmael are tied together via a monkey-rope: Queequeg descends from the ship to skin a whale previously captured, while Ishmael must keep Queequeg safe and pull him up when he slips off the whale's carcass. Ishmael notes that with the two of them being "wedded" together by the rope, if Queequeg should fall, "both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag [Ishmael] down in his wake." The theme is vastly reprised in Queequeg's arc in Limbus Company, as she is forced to cut the "rope" connecting her to Ishmael in order to survive the Pallidification.
- The rope of Queequeg's coffin, which Ishmael refashions as a headband, can be seen in nearly all of her Identities.
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