Revision 7

Sergeant Gaspard "Cannonhand" Dubois is a named boss of Valor Mortis, introduced in the November 2025 "Crimson Plague" gameplay trailer. He is one of the elite human figures the supernatural plague has produced inside Napoleon's corrupted Grande Armée, the in-game Eternal Guard.

Role

Dubois is shown in the Crimson Plague footage as a soldier whose body has been drastically remade by the plague, with his arm functioning as a heavy ordnance weapon, the source of the "Cannonhand" nickname. He stands as the centerpiece of the trailer's darker, nighttime village setting, alongside mutated villagers and an elite enemy unit called The Relentless. Where General Lothaire represents the daylight Gamescom demo, Dubois represents the horror-leaning side of the game's enemy gallery.

Appearance

Production concept art published by the studio in July 2026 shows how far the plague has taken him. Dubois is hunched and hugely swollen, far past the build of the soldier he once was, and walks barefoot in the shredded remains of a blue uniform coat and filthy white breeches. His back and shoulder have split wide open into a mass of violet plague growth and exposed tissue, held apart by lengths of timber driven through the wound like a frame. His right arm ends in a rusted iron cannon barrel fused into a toothed, skull-like housing, which is where the Cannonhand name comes from; the studio has described him as having an entire cannon where his right hand should be. The other arm tapers to a blackened, clawed hand. The art is labelled with that nickname rather than his rank, and presents him as an outright abomination rather than a corrupted but recognisable officer.

Combat Patterns

No attack pattern, weak point or phase transition has been published for Dubois. The November 2025 trailer shows only brief clips of him, and the July 2026 concept-art post pointed players back to that same trailer to see how he will try to kill you rather than describing the fight.

The Cannonhand framing strongly implies a heavy ranged threat alongside whatever melee he carries, which would line up with how the game handles elevated and armoured enemies through the off-hand firearm, but that is an inference from his design rather than a stated mechanic.

He has not appeared in any playable build, and the absence is measurable rather than assumed: he is not in the October 2025 pre-alpha playtest level, and neither level of the 2026 demo contained him. Hands-on accounts of the demo do describe a second boss in its later level, but no source names that boss, so it cannot be attributed to him. Practical tips will be added once he appears in playable form.

Place in the Story

As one of the named bosses revealed across the pre-launch cycle, Dubois rounds out a roster that includes General Lothaire, the Eagle-Bearer from Gamescom 2025, and The Orphan, the sewer abomination revealed at Triple-i Initiative in April 2026. Together they show the kinds of figures William will face in the main path: corrupted soldiers, elite officers, and outright abominations created by the plague. The factional context is covered on the Setting and Story page.

Source

Dubois was first shown in the Crimson Plague gameplay trailer published in November 2025. He has not appeared in any playable build to date, including the October 2025 global playtest, so the specifics on this page are drawn from trailer footage and accompanying descriptions only. The page will be expanded as more is shown.

What Is Still Open

As of September 13, 2026, across the official store listing, the official site, the studio’s Steam development posts, the published trailers and every hands-on account of a playable build, the studio has published no attack pattern, phase count, weak point or health information for Dubois, and has not named the chapter he belongs to. It has not said whether the cannon arm is a ranged weapon in gameplay or only a visual, and has given no account of who he was before the plague reached him. He exists in one trailer, one piece of concept art and nothing else.