Assassin's Creed Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Assassin's Creed Wiki
"It's nice to be a part of something. Until now I was sort of drifting about the neighborhood getting irate when I saw things unjust. Sometimes I'd intervene, other times I would come here. Now I feel like all my energy is pointed at something."
―Deborah to Connor[src]-[m]

Deborah "Dobby" Carter was a member of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins in the latter half of the 18th century.

Growing up in New York City's northern district, she spent most of her early life working as a courier, helping to provide basic needs to the poor, and protecting them from exploitation by merchants. Her prolific activism made her into a community icon prior to her recruitment into the Assassin Brotherhood. During the American Revolution, she met the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton and joined the organization after he saved her community from Templars who were engineering an artificial food shortage. She served as a key member of his team throughout the American Revolutionary War, with one of main skills she offered being to lure enemies away from the main zone of conflict or infiltration.

Biography[]

Community icon[]

"I was an orphan, pretty common around the ports with all the sailors and whores mucking about."
―Deborah to Connor[src]

Deborah Carter was born to Amos Carter, a merchant in New York who bore substantial debts from constantly bankrupting businesses.[1] By the time she was ten,[1] she was an orphan[2] and was forced to turn to the streets survive.[1] She disguised herself as a boy and taking on the nickname "Dobby" to become an errand-runner. In reality, her employers were not fooled but feigned their ignorance either out of sympathy or because they genuinely valued her services.[1]

Upon reaching puberty, Deborah could no longer maintain the charade, but she kept her "Dobby" alias and continued her courier work. As she became more experienced, she began to lend herself as a mediator negotiating contacts between businesses. She developed a reputation in her neighborhood for helping the poor, always doing her best to ensure that the destitute had access to clean clothes and food. To that end, she often had to resort to fighting merchants to ensure that they were not charging exorbitant prices for these basic needs or threatening her community. By the time she met the Assassin Ratonhnhaké:ton, she had become a local icon, akin to a Robin Hood figure.[1]

Artificial famine[]

Hoarding Provisions 1

Deborah and Connor meeting for the first time

With the outbreak of the American Revolution came greater problems for the people of New York. In 1777, a famine swept through the farms on the northern outskirts of New York City where Deborah lived, and she recognized the source as the usual extortive practices of merchants. These merchants alleged that their higher prices for foodstuffs went to contributing to the Patriot cause, a lie that Deborah did not buy. Meanwhile, British soldiers were frequently preying on farmers to forcibly seize their crops.[3]

One day, Deborah witnessed a young Kanien'kehá:ka man defend a farmer from one of these attacks while he was out harvesting in the field. Impressed, she later introduced herself as he was passing by her residence, asking him to lend more of his help. The young man, whose name as Connor, did not need any convincing. He set off to protect more farmers from British harassment, help starving children to steal food by knocking out their merchants, and protect local families from being evicted by British soldiers.[3]

While Connor was preoccupied with these tasks, Deborah investigated the men behind this artificial food shortage. She tracked their movements to a fortified camp at the center of a lake, the main source of water for the district, where they were hoarding all the foodstuffs they have been stealing to be resold at extremely inflated prices. To her surprise, the culprits were neither Patriots nor British, and yet she could not identify their allegiance. When Connor later reported back to her with his successes, she informed him of her discoveries, to which he indicated that he knew who their enemy was.[4]

Hoarding Provisions 4

Deborah offering her services to Connor

Determined to put an end to this operation, the two then proceeded to the camp to assassinate its leader. Deborah served as a diversion, luring away a few of the guards by pickpocketing one of them then sprinting away. This provided Connor with an opening to stealthily kill the leader.

With this victory, the Kanien'kehá:ka explained the true nature of their adversaries as a group who pledged themselves to a dangerous ideology and that he was someone who fought to extinguish their power. Ever grateful for saving her community, Deborah assured him that she was his to call upon if he ever needed an extra fighter at his side.[4]

Fighting for the Assassins[]

It was not long before Connor took her up on her offer, revealing to her that he was an Assassin and that the ones responsible for threatening New York were Templars,[2] opposing shadow organizations in a millennia-old conflict for world peace,[5] and in this way, she was recruited into the Assassin Brotherhood.[2]

ACIII-Laststand 3

Deborah with Duncan and Connor in the New York tunnels

Deborah found her new affiliation to be a refreshing experience. She served on Connor's team alongside Stephane Chapheau, Duncan Little, Jacob Zenger, Clipper Wilkinson, and Jamie Colley, and they were deployed by Connor on missions across the fledgling United States and in Quebec throughout the American Revolutionary War. On occasions during downtime, she met with Connor at taverns, where she shared with him her upbringing and flirted with him.[2]

During the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, Deborah, Stephane, Duncan, and Jacob helped the Marquis de Lafayette clear the tunnels to New York's militarized district as part of Connor's plot to infiltrate Fort George and assassinate the Templar Charles Lee.[6]

Personality and traits[]

Given her early orphanage, Deborah Carter grew up with an assertive spirit fending for herself. While survival was a need, she also desired as a child to be out in the world busying herself with action rather than meandering in idleness, and this was one of her main motivations to offer herself as a courier, disguised as a boy. Her employers were never really fooled even then, but as her body developed in puberty, her charade only became, in her own words, a "bad joke". When she began to experience sexual harassment by men she grew up knowing, she refused to stand for it in silence, provoking numerous beatings with her acts of defiance. Even despite these early injuries, she never relented to abuse, instead adapting by honing her self-defense skills each time until she learned to fight back against those who wished to hurt her.[2]

These martial skills transferred over to means of protecting others in her community. The challenges she faced growing up instilled in her an empathy for the destitute around her, and she devoted much of her time securing their lives from those who wished to deprive them of their needs. She became a local heroine, but until she joined the Assassins, her mind and energies were never truly focused. Rather, she felt like a reactive force who happened to intervene whenever she became vexed at the sight of injustice. On occasions, she would instead go to the tavern as a reprieve from these ills. It was only after she met Connor and was recruited into the Assassin Brotherhood that she felt her compulsion for activism was refined into a tool with a distinct purpose. For that, she was grateful for belonging to their cause.[2]

Relationships[]

Ratonhnhaké:ton[]

"Of all the lecherous and deceitful men out there who are fathers, you'd be a godsend. But I suppose that's how it is, the good ones are too busy for it, and the louts have nothing better to do. In any case, if you ever think it's time, make sure I get the first crack!"
―Deborah to Connor[src]

As a young woman, Deborah had troubling experiences with men who reviled her with their perversions, their dishonesty, their irresponsibility, and other common flaws, but she found Connor to be a noble contrast to such men. She respected him for not hesitating to save her people, for his strength of character and skills alike, and for introducing her to a cause that gave her purpose. Once while sitting at a tavern together, she expressed this admiration, even asking him how it was that he did not have a wife and openly offering to be his first partner should he ever consider settling down.[2]

Behind the scenes[]

Deborah Carter is one of the six characters who can be recruited as Assassin apprentices in Assassin's Creed III via the Liberation missions. She is based in North New York, where her Liberation mission "Hoarding Provisions" can be unlocked after completing the side-mission "Rationing". "Rationing" involves three activities which must be done three times each: defending farmers while they're harvesting, beating up merchants to help starving children, and protecting families from eviction. The first encounter with her can be initiated after completing one of these tasks for the first time, and she subsequently encourages the player to accomplish the other tasks. Upon the completion of "Hoarding Provisions", her unique Assassin skill Lure is unlocked and she is recruited.

Players can complete the main story missions before her Liberation mission. If this happens, she will not appear in the memory "Lee's Last Stand" where she and other Assassins would otherwise help Connor clear the underground tunnels for his infiltration of Fort George.

Age discrepancy[]

After recruitment, she can be found at a tavern in New York City where she can be interacted with to trigger casual conversations. In the second of these conversations, she flirts with him. Her database entry, however, gives her birth date as 1736, making her almost twenty years older than Connor who is born in 1756.[7] Since the game is set in the American Revolution, this would also make her in her 40s, but she is visibly quite young in her character model. Her romantic interest in Connor combined with her physical appearance makes her birth date in the database a likely error.

Appearances[]

References[]

Advertisement