Bioshock > Splicers > Aggressors of Fort Frolic
The denizens of Fort Frolic, the arts and entertainment quarter of Rapture, deserve special mention. The level itself is walked through here. This page describes its aggressors in detail.
Sander Cohen is absolute master of Fort Frolic. Cohen was invited by Andrew Ryan, who may well have been a relation, to join him in Rapture in order to set up an arts and culture scene for the city.
At first Cohen was the star of the city until a rival appeared in Anna Culpepper, a British actress who did not think much of either Cohen (whom she charitably called ten parts suckup and two parts hack
) or Ryan (whom she rightly thought corrupt). After failing to discredit Culpepper (whom Cohen called a musical gremlin
), Cohen asked Ryan to have her killed.
When the civil war broke out, Cohen locked down the district and prevented its splicer population from escaping. Driven mad by Adam and by the lack of an appreciative audience, Cohen spends his time inflicting punishment on ex-disciples and creating tableaux out of splicer victims encased in plaster and set in a variety of poses.
Cohen is aware of your mission to hunt down Andrew Ryan. In regret for ever having followed Ryan to Rapture, Cohen promises to let you continue your mission if you complete a series of tasks related to his greatest masterpiece: The Quadtych.
If you complete his tasks and accept his gifts, Cohen lets you leave. If you spare his life, you will meet him again later in his flat at Mercury Suites in the Olympus Heights quarter, where he is hiding a P2P in his bedroom. If you do take him on, you will find Cohen is a very tough but otherwise standard-issue fire-spitting Houdini splicer. If you kill him at Fort Frolic to claim his bizarre muse, you will not be able to access the bedroom of his flat later. If you kill Cohen in his flat, then later return to Fort Frolic to claim the muse, then damage the Quadtych in any way — here he comes, really pissed!
Andrew Ryan is as disappointed in Cohen as Cohen is in Ryan. Now he rots in that neverland, waiting for someone to come and tell him he's still got it. I suppose that's why he let you live.
They were disciples of Sander Cohen until they became disillusioned or hostile with him. They are all Toasty models wearing peacock masks to hide their deformity.
The latest of Cohen's ex-disciples, Fitzpatrick is the first you encounter. You find him on stage at the Fleet Hall theater, playing Cohen's Rapture Requiem on a piano draped with sticks of TNT. When Fitzpatrick tires of playing and of Cohen's abuse, he rises from the piano stool, setting off the explosives. You take a picture of Fitzpatrick's corpse as the first picture of the Quadtych, for which Cohen rewards you with a crossbow.
You can shoot Fitzpatrick during his performance. Cohen will be so disappointed, though: That went quicker than I had hoped.
Finnegan calls himself the Iceman, and for good reason: Cohen locked him in the glass tunnel between the Atrium and Poseidon Plaza, then turned off the heat inside, whereupon the icy sea turned the tunnel into a giant freezer. To survive Finnegan developed a plasmid cocktail out of the other victims that Cohen locked in the tunnel.
Finnigan is also into making ice sculptures of his victims — including you! But you manage to melt your way out to find a set of sculptures that include Finnigan as the only Houdini. Finnegan is vulnerable to your weapons, esp. that shiny new crossbow Cohen gave you. Or, you can melt one of the sculptures to free the splicers to attack him.
After you nail him, snap his picture for the Quadtych. Cohen rewards you with ammo and first-aid packs, and you will be able to reach Poseidon Plaza.
The Texas-born manager of the Rapture Records shop on the upper level of Poseidon Plaza admired Cohen only because Cohen's songs paid his rent. Otherwise his opinions became like those of Anna Culpepper, Cohen's doomed rival, as Cohen discovered to his horror after their mutual clientele disappeared in the war.
Cobb is into creating burning effigies of Cohen: One in the entrance of the South Mall, the other in the record shop. As you approach the record shop effigy, you set off a time bomb. That gets you Cobb's attention as he sents burning spider splicers (his kittens
) after you.
After you get Cobb's photo and mount it on the Quadtych, Cohen goes nuts (more than usual), accusing you of doubting
him, and sending an army of splicers to kill you to the music of Waltz of the Flowers. You must destroy this army before Cohen regains his wits, gives you another gift, and lets you back into the Plaza.
When this pathetic fellow is not sprinting around the quarter — you can just see him through an open door on your first visit to the Atrium and in certain holes in the walls of the Plaza — Rodriguez lounges around the Eve's Garden strip club. Indeed, in his madness Rodriguez thinks the club is still open! You can hear his rants after you rummage through the back room of the stage, where striper Jasmine Jolene lies long dead.
You learn the hard way that Rodriguez is, as Cohen describes him, vigorous
: If you do not quickly fire the right ammo (antipersonnel bullets) agaist Rodriguez, you will have to chase him around the Plaza and (if you are a bad shot) into the Atrium itself. When you do kill him, snap his photo and complete the Quadtych.
Cohen may be a nutjob, but he is also a man of his word: You did his work, so he lets you go.
The Quadtych is not Cohen's only tableau. Here and there in Fort Frolic you will find other plastered statues. One, The Doubters, shows a family around a table, fixed in position at their moments of death. Another, The Wild Bunny, displays Cohen in piano-playing pose in obeisance before a bunny mask; next to it is a tape of the moment when Cohen's mind finally snaps. They are all really creepy, especially when you know that the statues
were once living people.
Indeed, some of them still are!
If you stay out of the Sinclair Spirits bar on the lower Plaza, you will never have to meet these creatures within. But that P2P station in the basement is too much to pass up, right?
The Sinclair Spirits Splicers (SSS) are a group of plastered splicers that you will find in the spirits shop on the far end of the first floor of Poseidon Plaza. Six pose, three to a side, welcoming you into the bar; another stands as if in fear before the door to the basement; another sits facing a corner of that basement. All are motionless — until you use that P2P machine. Then that statue in the corner dances after you. When you come out of the basement, the seven are gone!
What you have unleashed on the plaza are a multiplying plague. The SSS are much faster, more agile and more hostile than your average spider splicer. They move silently (except on the ceiling), so that you don't they are coming until they are upon you. And they attack not just you but any aggressor still at large.
There is a way to avoid fighting more than one SSS. Save your visit to Sinclair Spirits for last, use the P2P, whack the dancer behind you, and then run out the store and straight to the exit!
I would like to give special mention to a Baby Jane Houdini splicer who stands guard at the Cohen Collection gallery. Apart from the grisly tableaux The Doubters, there is hardly anything there, except for a set of three wall safes on the balcony, guarded by a gun turret. But crack any one of those safes, and Jane springs into action.
Normally, you and/or the hacked turret take her out the moment she materializes on the balcony. But sometimes she appears once and then is gone. Where does she go? To the Quadtych, where you can find her standing in front of it, viewing it in quiet appreciation. It is such a charming moment. You hate to have to shoot her, but Cohen insists that you have a task to fulfill, and she will object to your presence.