Talk:Fillip Dahl/@comment-172.221.253.120-20200303203657

There are a couple pretty decent possibilities for Dahls motivation to cut up Naples.

1. If he thinks the Mermaids are such a curse, perhaps he is attempting to gain access to the Lazarette and Naples is guarding it. He may want to enter the lazarette simply to kill the mermaids and end the curse. This is similar to what the captain actually ends up doing.

2.  Perhaps he sees it as self preservation. In this case he would be right. The lazarette is the most impenetrable room on the ship. Perhaps he kills Naples, because he knows he'll be locked in there.

3.  I had it in my mind going into the final chapter that the gruff, shortish, bearded man who mans the ferry to the Obra Dinn was actually Dahl. This doesn't turn out to be the case, but it was a tantalizing possibility for a minute: That one of the two unaccounted for was actually right there the whole time, and that he accomplished surviving by getting himself locked in the lazarette.