Edward Carnby

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Professor Edward Carnby is a recurring playable character throughout the Alone in the Dark series. He is a paranormal detective, and has been the main protagonist in every game to date, with the exception of Jack in the Dark and Alone in the Dark: Illumination.

He was voiced by the late James McCaffrey (who also voiced Max Payne in the titular series) in Inferno.

Biography[]

Background[]

According to Dr. Hartford's identity file, Edward Carnby is an independent researcher and licensed private investigator, graduated in Chemistry, Physics, History of Religions and Arts, and is specialized in unsolved affairs linked to paranormal phenomenon. However, nothing is known about his birthplace, birthday, friends, family, or how he turned into a private detective.

After the events of the trilogy, according to Dr. Hartford's file, Carnby went on a journey across Eastern Europe and India, where he bought several rare objects, then traveled back to the U.S. and left again.

Carnby was last seen in Delhi, where he disappeared under strange circumstances in 1938. His body was not found.

Alone in the Dark[]

With nothing to do, amongst various threats and bills in envelopes, Private Detective Edward Carnby expects some contact from outside his office. This contact was Gloria Allen, an owner of an antique store, who asked for Carnby to find an old piano with secret drawers in the loft of an old mansion called Derceto in exchange for $150. Carnby accepted it, but he knew the mansion was no longer inhabited, so he read the police report on Derceto, and discovered that Jeremy Hartwood, its former owner, hanged himself, confirmed by the coroner as a clean-cut case of suicide. But Carnby gets even more excited when he hears stories about Derceto, such as murders, curses an all sorts of paranormal anomalies.

The next day, he hires a driver to take him to Derceto. When he arrives, he starts walking towards the entrance, along with the constant feeling of being watched. He opens the main door with the key that Gloria gave him, and walks up to the loft, where the piano is located. When he finds it, he opens the secret drawer, and when he discovers Jeremy's last letter, he hears thumping in the trapdoor and a window breaking out of nowhere. So he investigates further, considering Jeremy didn't simply kill himself for being crazy. A journal in the guest room and various creatures walking around the house are enough proof that Derceto is haunted.

Reaching the library, he finds out about the existence of Ezechiel Pregzt, an ancient pirate, who was buried in the region, in an underground tomb. Inside a secret room, locked by a hidden locket, Carnby finds a Talisman that holds the power to cease Pregzt's evil powers. When he opens a secret passageway, underneath Hartwood's study, he crosses a wooden bridge, which falls behind him. Now there's no turning back. he proceeds through the Chthonian's lair, falling in an abandoned tomb that resembles a sewer, with even more ferocious monsters than before.

Carnby eventually finds a treasure chest, which he opens with a key that he recovered in the dance hall, where he finds a strange gem. He pushes away a rock, just so he can enter a dark labyrinth. When he reaches its end, he finds a stone door with a diamond shaped carving, where he puts the gem.

When the door opens, Carnby finally faces Ezechiel Pregzt in person, now incarnated in the form of an evil tree, controlling every single being inside Derceto, earlier trying to drive Jeremy into madness. He goes down to the water level, where Ezechiel's tomb is located. While evading his guardian's fatal grasp, he places the Talisman on top of the grave and throws a lit lamp on Pregzt, lighting him on fire, killing him at last.

He grabs a hook just before making his move. As his tomb crumbles to the ground, Carnby climbs to a rock with an oddly shaped locket, which resembles a hook. He inserts the one he owns, and is back in the maze. A door to his right is opened in the exact same fashion. Carnby runs and climbs back to the Chthonian's lair, where he finds a small hole that leads straight into the mansion's cellar.

Carnby climbs the stairs. Everything is quiet and peaceful, and Ezechiel Pregzt is no more. He opens the entrance hall's door, and as he watches the beam of sunlight, he celebrates, and as he walks away in the crack of dawn, his driver stops by the gate, just in time.

From that day forward, Edward Carnby would be known as "The Supernatural Private Eye."

Alone in the Dark 2[]

It is 22 December 1924, and Ted Stryker finally tracked Grace Saunders down in Hell's Kitchen, and he aims to free her at last. Sneaking inside, he dodges the guards and climbs all the way to the second floor along the windows. He enters a room by the outer window, but his heavy steps attract unwanted attention, and even though he finds Grace, he can't rescue her on time, as a possessed clown chokes him to death with his bare hands. As Grace freezes in fear and terror, Elizabeth Jarret walks inside, laughing at his brutal death.

The same day, Supernatural Detective Edward Carnby receives a telegram from Stryker, saying as follows:

"Hell's Kitchen is cursed. Grace Saunders has been kidnapped by One-Eyed Jack. Help me. Stop"

Two days later, Christmas Eve, swearing to help Grace and his friend, Carnby takes a taxi to Hell's Kitchen. He attempts to ask for his entrance, but he is denied, as expected. Lucky he brought his own entrance ticket: a bomb hidden in his suitcase. Once it blows, he knocks out the bodyguard inside and steals his Thompson, which he uses to kill the other gangsters coming for him.

After he notices that not only the main door is locked, but it's also guarded by two giant gangsters, equipped with pirate pistols, he, then again, notices an unusually positioned sculpture. When he pushes it, it reveals a passageway to a labyrinth, which he follows until he finds an odd group of cards. He had earlier found a rope above a giant Diamond Ace, so he tries it once again.

When he steps on it, it opens, and he falls to the ground. Inside, there is a two-way cave. To the left: a trapdoor , and to the right: some kind of altar, a chest and an astonishingly drunk looking fool. The chest was empty, and as he pushed it, he drunk fool kept grinding at him, so Carnby hit him, making him fall to the ground and vanish in smoke, dropping a torn in half notebook, which Edward picks up. After he is done pushing the chest, he finds a metallic jack of diamonds. When he walks toward the altar, he notices a card looking carving, in which the metallic jack fits perfectly. When it does, the altar rises up and a strange looking spirit appeared, and was ready to attack. Oddly enough, the ghost is solid, and Carnby can defeat it easily with a few jabs.

The odd ghost drops a rusty pirate sabre, and Carnby picks it up on the way out. When he leaves the cave, he explores some more of the maze, and discovered live vines, that were slapping and twirling. The only blade in hand is the old sabre, so Carnby uses it. When the vines give, he follows, only to be surprised by Shorty Leg, who starts shooting him with a gun hidden in his wooden prostetic leg. So, Carnby reaches his revolver and unloads it in Shorty, who falls dead in the ground.

Shorty Leg was near a statue, and this statue seems awfully familiar. Carnby picks up a photo he looted earlier from one of the gangsters, and he can't help but notice that the statue's arm is supposed to be pointing lower. So, he ties a rope at the lower end of a hook he had found earlier and lunges it to the arm and pulls it. A somewhat hidden door opens, and when Carnby looks inside it, there are some ladders, and when he climbs down on them, he slips and falls down a slippery stone wall, leading him to some sort of cave.

Unfortunately, he stopped slipping above a plank, and at a moment of instability, the Thompson slips from his hand, the Revolver falls out of his jacket. He outnumbered and outgunned. He breathes carefully and proceeds, Picking up a lucky dime at the floor alongside a bag, a crank and an odd piece of newspaper. Looking away, he spots a fallen object, and when he gets closer, he notices it's a dead body, and when he gets even closer, he finds out it's the dead body of his friend, Ted Stryker.

Shocked, Carnby says out loud " It's Stryker! They killed him! I'll make them pay for that!" Despite the sadness, Carnby has to go on. In Ted's pockets, there is a pipe cleaner, which could come to be useful at some point, and a notebook. Placing it together with the other piece. It is finally complete, and Carnby can finally read it. It had a very desperate and sad message, as some sort of last testament, telling him to remind of old times' poker games and to rescue Grace Saunders. Carnby is now determined to not only rescue the girl, but avenge his friend as well.

Edward tries to open a metal door, but it's locked. He looks down the keyhole, but he sees nothing but pitch black, so he figures there is a key on the other side. He then puts the torn paper under the door and pushes the key with the pipe cleaner. It clings on the floor, and he pulls the paper, bringing along with it a key, which is used to open the door. Taking a second look at the paper, it was a cheap piece of parchment with a strange pact, and it looks like it was written by a musicman. Strange.

Carnby opens the door, he feels a cold wind, coming from a passageway in the wall up front, that led to the sea. But he can't help but notice the fat, lazy grunt, sleeping behind a barrel. While he's at it, he sees a barrel hooked up on a pulley, which was connected to a lever, just behind the same barrel as before. Edward blows the bag and pops it, making a very loud noise, waking up the grunt. Just after he gets up, Carnby pushes the lever, releasing the barrel, pushing the lazy loaf down the gorge beyond the passageway. Luckily for Carnby, the grunt dropped a loaded shotgun. So much for being outgunned.

Now that the lazy loaf is gone, Carnby can explore a bit more, and that's when he notices a grandfather clock, just laying in the side of a pile of boxes, and it has a hole, where the crank fits exactly, and when it does, he turns it in the clockwise direction, and as the clock rings, half the pile of boxes move aside, opening a secret passageway. Inside it, there is an elevator, Carnby enters it, going up.

When he reaches the upper floor, he is in some kind of basement, judging from the stairs to his left.

Alone in the Dark 3[]

In Alone in the Dark 3, Carnby receives a phone call from Greg Saunders, from Hill Century film studios, who asks him to find evidence about a missing film crew in the Mojave Desert and Emily Hartwood, who were shooting a western.

After he realizes the town is haunted, he travels through the buildings, searching for Emily in every possible bit, learning more and more about the town's past and the corruption of its leader, Jed Stone , while still having to avoid the Elwood Brothers, former infamous bandits. When he finally stands before Jed to exchange Emily for a suitcase of money, Carnby is betrayed and murdered.

However, he returns, as he was carrying an Indian Medallion, which brought him back from Wasicum, the land of the dead, but in the shape of a cougar with jackal eyes. He's given the task to return an eagle statuette to it's proper place, so he can return to his human form once again.

After he does, he wakes up while being buried by former town sheriff Jack Dawson. He pops out of his grave and goes to an underground search for Emily and Jed, having to fight multiple creatures and solve various puzzles. He eventually finds out where Emily is and rescues her. Carnby reaches a boiler room, where he faces Jed Stone and the Elwood Brothers one last time, defeating them at last.

Him and Emily discover an abandoned locomotive, which can get them out of Slaughter Gulch. After Carnby puts the proper fuel in it and lights it up, they finally escape, abandoning Slaughter Gulch to its fate.

The New Nightmare[]

In the 2001 reboot, Carnby is a paranormal investigation agent, looking for answers about the death of his friend, Charles Fiske, who had gone to Shadow Island to learn about the Abkani tribe. Carnby and an archaeologist, Aline Cedrac, both end up on Shadow Island, where they encounter the crazed Morton brothers, and manage to save the world by collecting the Abkani tablets that had been scattered across the island.

Alone in the Dark (2008)[]

The game begins with an amnesiac Edward awakening from an exorcism. After overhearing a brief conversation between two robed men, one of the men is ordered by Crowley to take Edward to the roof of the building and kill him. The guard is killed by an unseen force, allowing Edward to escape. As he wanders the building looking for a way out, he witnesses several people being killed or possessed by demonic forces.

During his search for an exit, he meets Sarah Flores, an art dealer. Together, they make their way to the parking garage, where they find Theophile Paddington, an old man who claims to know what’s going on. He says that the chaos in the building was caused by a stone that, until recently, was held by Edward. It had been taken from Edward by Crowley, who released its power. Paddington has the stone now, and finally states that in order to end the chaos, Edward must follow the Path of Light, before it is too late. The three of them take a car from the garage and head out into the city, finding it in the same kind of chaos as the building they just left, after outrunning an apocalyptic earthquake with giant fissure wiping out the streets.

As it follows them, they crash the car in Central Park, there Paddington claims that he lacks the strength to continue, he hands the stone over to Edward and tells him and Sarah to meet him at the museum, then kills himself. On the way to the museum, Edward finds out that his last name is Carnby. He tells his name to a doctor that he meets who tends to his wounds. As the doctor checks Edward’s medical history, he informs Edward that the only Edward Carnby in his records disappeared in 1938.

At the museum, the ghost of Paddington explains more about the stone. It contained Lucifer after he was cast out of Heaven, until Crowley released him. Lucifer now wants to use the stone to bring the end of the world. Paddington tells Edward that there is a secret in Central Park that will allow Edward to stop Lucifer. As Edward makes his way back to Central Park, Sarah remains at the museum, e-mailing excerpts from Paddington’s diary that she believes will help Edward.

Once at Central Park, Edward meets Hermes, who holds a stone similar to the one that Edward has. Edward is then revealed to be the Light Carrier, the holder of the Philosophers Stone, the walker of the Path of Light, and, subsequently, the perfect vessel for Lucifer. Edward and Hermes return to the museum to find Crowley holding Sarah at gunpoint, demanding Edward’s stone. Edward shoots Crowley in the head, then Hermes opens a cavern in the museum that leads to Lucifer’s gateway to reality.

Hermes combines his stone with Edward’s, and tells him that Lucifer will soon be reincarnated. As Lucifer begins to take Edward’s body, Sarah grabs the stone to prevent Edward from being possessed.

If the player chooses to shoot Sarah, Edward becomes possessed by Lucifer.
If not, Edward and Sarah hug each other, he says goodbye as Sarah is taken over. Lucifer, who possessed Sarah, taunts Edward and asks him: "How does it feel to be so alone?", to which Edward responds: "I'm used to it", and walks away as the game ends. It is unknown what happens to Edward, Sarah, and Hermes after the occured.

Illumination[]

Edward Carnby, from the original Alone in the Dark, mentored his grandson, the Hunter, telling him about his adventures as the “Supernatural Private Eye”. He taught him all the details of every case, including the notes of the strange creatures encountered. The Hunter vowed that he too would help rid the world of the evil Darkness.

Personality[]

Throughout the whole trilogy, Carnby is really arrogant and admits to be pretty bitter towards other people, as shown in Alone in the Dark (1992), when he tells that he holds an exaggerated disdain towards his banker (even considering himself a victim) and doesn't have much friends, and lacks empathy, this being shown with Greg Saunders' phone call, hiring him to rescue Emily Hartwood, and,despite knowing she's missing, and being friends with her, only asks for more money.

He alleges to have made some enemies, receiving various threats by mail, which is a reason he thought Gloria Allen intended to blackmail him at first, revealing that he is really paranoid, and could have a troublesome past or holds a bad reputation around where he lives, specially concerning his behavior and attitude.

Carnby shows to have a sense of humor towards the most unusual circumstances and is sarcastic towards others' observations and opinions (An example being his fight with Sarah Flores, when they first met).

During the gameplay throughout the Trilogy and Inferno, Carnby shows to be really intelligent with the finest memory, as he's capable of solving puzzles, disarming traps and quicky finding the meaning and/or use for a specific object, and is really skillful with basic martial arts, swordplaying ability and gunplay mastery, he's also able to transform everyday objects in powerful weapons, such as flamethrowers and molotov cocktails with spray cans, fuel bottles, rag pieces and duct tape.

Trivia[]

For what all indicates, Carnby doesn't trust anyone but himself, revealing some similarities with Sherlock Holmes.
In Alone in the Dark (1992), Carnby claims to be known as "the Reptile". However, the motive is unknown. It is possible that it is because he is not very social, or it's because he's a cold blooded character, as described above, in Personality and Traits. But even though Carnby himself claims it to be so, this odd nickname is not mentioned or even repeated in other games by any character at all, not even by himself.
A background legend was made in order to explain the sudden change in Edward Carnby in Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. It is said that he belonged to a lineage of Shadow Hunters who were born the 29th of February in every 40 years and raised as orphan children in St. George's Orphanage, all of them going by the name of Edward Carnby. The name is depicted as a literal anglicized form of "El War Qarn'bi", which means "the one who battles evil incarnate and hunts out the shadows". According to this legend, the original Edward Carnby was born in 1888 and went out of record after engaging several uncommon affairs in the years 1920 to 1939. The Edward Carnby in Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare was born in 1968.
Edward Carnby's profile page may cause some confusion, as Alone in the Dark 3's events aren't included in it, making it hard to tell when he traveled around the world, and as there is no specific date for these, it is hard to say for how long he stayed in the USA after the events of Alone in the Dark 2. There are two possibilities:
- Carnby stayed in the USA for at least half a year, and searched for Emily on July 1925, when Alone in the Dark 3 takes place. Some months, weeks or even days later, he traveled to Europe and India. Came back, stayed for a while, and left.
- Carnby started travelling pretty soon after Hell's Kitchen, went to Europe and India. Months later, came back to the USA, investigated Slaughter Gulch, stayed for an unspecified period, and left. That still leaves the question: "When did Carnby leave the USA?". As he disappeared in 1938, and Alone in the Dark 3 takes place on July 1925, his departure could have happened anytime between July 1925 and the year of 1938.