John Dee

John Dee is the posthumous overarching protagonist of ZombiU, whose Black Prophecy prediction forms the basis of the game's plot. He is based on the real-life historical figure of the same name.

Background[]

John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, and alchemist. He was the court astronomer for, and advisor to, Elizabeth I, and spent much of his time on alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. As an antiquarian, he had one of the largest libraries in England during the 16th Century.

Nicknamed "Britain's very own Nostradamus" by the English media, Dee claimed to frequently hold "Enochian conversations" with Angels, who revealed cryptic messages to him that apparently predicted future events. As a result, Dee was credited with accurately predicting several known events involving England, such as the Great Plague of London in 1665, the Great Fire that stopped it, the Napoleonic Wars, the First and Second World Wars, Britain's loss of India and even the Gulf War.

In 1602, Dee made what was known as the Black Prophecy, a prediction that an apocalyptic event would sweep over London and later the whole of England in the year 2012. This event, which Dee referred to as "The Second Blight" or simply the Blight, was speculated to be some sort of disease or plague that would be incurable by any known means. Dee attempted to warn people of this forthcoming apocalypse, but King James I, who had replaced Elizabeth I following her death, refused to believe him, as he was extremely opposed to alchemy and occultism. He even ordered the execution of anyone who practised these methods, thus forcing Dee to go into hiding. He spent the last years of his life in poverty and out of the public eye before dying of natural causes in 1609.

Some time after his death, King Charles II formed the Ravens of Dee, a secret society tasked with researching Dee's predictions in order to try and stop them from taking place. Centuries went by and, with the exception of the Ravens, hardly anyone believed that the Black Prophecy would actually come true, and Dee's predictions were viewed as largely coincidential. When the year 2012 arrived, speculation fueled among the populace that the Prophecy would finally come true, however the British government continue to refuse it's legitimacy. Finally, in December of that year, an outbreak of a strange disease was reported in South-East London, which quickly began to spread across the city. The disease turns it's victims into undead, aggressive, cannibalistic creatures who feed on the living and infect them with the disease too. At that point, the Black Prophecy was finally realized in the form of an outbreak of zombies in London.