Declan's Corrective is a former member of the New Earth Hegemony who was, at the time of his introduction, a prisoner in Contrition's Figure.
Corrective personally killed 27 Divines, the last of which was Contrition. He has been in prison for at least 200 years, but has never felt the regret for his actions which would allow him to go free.
He is also a poet, and his writing apparently has special Mesh-affecting properties. One of his poems is Second Street Drifting, featured in the episode which shares this title. Another is Thirteenth, which is both written in the episode description and read as the intro narrration for "This Year of Ours: The Mystic". A poem of his, which is untitled, is used as the introduction of The Road to PALISADE 11: Orbital Pt. 1 -- and an episode of the in-universe podcast Perfect Imperfect, recorded some 500 years after he lived.
He chose his name due to his determination to correct the wrongs of his father, the Hegemon Declan, a "deeply despotic Hegemon" who had overextended and invested in military in overzealous pursuit of expanding the Earth Hegemony's sphere during his reign "hundreds and hundreds of years ago".[1]
This section contains spoilers for Twilight Mirage Episode 65.
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After Even Gardner found the final piece of the Divine Gumption, and Kent Brighton stole the completed Divine from the Divine Free States, Declan's Corrective--who had fallen ill from old age at this point--was chosen to be the new Excerpt of Gumption by a committee of Tender Sky (now the Excerpt ⸢Tenderness⸣ of the Divine Anticipation), the Cadent Under Mirage, and other spiritual leaders of Seneschal's Brace. He took the name Engage the crowned gears, drive forward with the pinion and the rack, for though the maintenance may be concluded, there are repairs to perform, or ⸢Pinion⸣.[2]
Appearance[edit | edit source]
In his first appearance, Declan's Corrective is described as a Hispanic man in his mid-fifties with light brown skin. He is modeled after a specific photo of Benicio del Toro, with thick hair that is slicked back and a beard that Austin describes as a mixture of well-kept and overgrown, with its shape maintained to a certain degree but also bits sticking out in ways that seem unintentional, overall seeming "dignified but kind of rough around the edges".[3]