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dead-ringer-if · 1 year ago

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DEMO (TBA)

The Wardens, stationed within the bustling city of Seattle, were the first proof of what could come from The Scourge, a cataclysmic event that had set off a chain reaction that would forever echo throughout time: Los Angeles falling into the Pacific, New York City being partially taken over by water, the Sahara Desert sweltering in intensity which killed off native fauna in record amounts, were among the most prominent. Years of misery, of fear, transcending over a century, wherein every remaining government strived to figure out a solution.

Which they found in the form of Titan— the first meta-human, Patient Zero, whose natural abilities were enhanced by various procedures. Titan started a new wave, hope beginning to appear, as more and more meta-humans were found— mainly due to the efforts of the Rose Family— and their naturally honed abilities, seemingly derived from the Scourge itself, being able to combat the effects until there’s only fractal remnants of it left.

From there The Wardens were formed, with Titan leading them, a new period of peace fell over the world once more. Of course, that never lasts as more and more villains began to pop up out of the woodworks, threatening the sanctity of the New World. However, without fail, The Wardens were there to answer the call and defend those that couldn’t defend themself.

Titan persevered, The Wardens went on, until a fateful day a decade ago on this date— wherein Titan lost Peregrine, their sidekick and protege. It’s a day that will forever live in infamy, as it’s a day that Titan lost Peregrine, but the world lost Titan.

— Excerpt from the Seattle Times.

The world was your oyster— at least that’s what you were told. By who? You’re not quite certain of that. Everything could be possible if you just strived to reach it… They just never tell you how to deal with the harsh reality of it forever being unobtainable.

Maybe that’s why you fell into a life of crime? Well crime is a stretch, you’re more a prisoner in a heavily guarded fortress than anything else. You’re not quite sure, not being able to remember the majority of what brought you to this moment; only fragments of what used to be visits you in your sleep. Of course, working for Diego Ruiz, the local crime boss in downtown New York City, wasn’t the worst possible job, barring the imprisonment, not that you were truly part of anything nefarious to begin with, but you still saw things you’re never sure you’ll be able to unsee.

When he gets arrested, you can’t say you’re too surprised— after all he took a lot of gambles while not having the intellect to back up such moves— but you are concerned about what the future could mean for you.

Nothing you ever imagined could prepare you for what’s in store, however. Never could have imagined The Wardens would have such a vested interest in you. You’re nothing special, haven’t been for as long as you could remember.

And why the hell do they keep calling you Peregrine?

Play as an MC that doesn’t quite remember their past life. Is it possible that you’re Peregrine? The protege that had been killed in a surprise raid a decade before? Or is something more nefarious going on and you’re simply caught in the middle of it? Why are you suddenly developing powers that you’ve never had before? And why the hell do you feel like you’re in a constant state of deja vu?

Please note that this story is rated 18+ for depictions of explicit language, alcohol consumption, potential drug use, sexual themes, mentions of death, blood, torture, and grief.

Customizable MC: name, nickname, appearance, sexuality, hobbies, bits and pieces of what occurred in the last decade, and more! (The MC has a slightly semi-set personality.) You’ll also be able to partially design your Avian friend: name, gender, and feather colors (it’s a Peregrine Falcon). The MC is 28.

Bond with The Wardens and discover, or potentially rediscover, your found family. The people who thought they lost you.

Uncover the seedy underbelly that lurks beneath the surface of the New World. Will you be able to discover what exactly happened to you? Uncover if you’re truly Peregrine or someone, or something, else entirely.

Romance 1 of 4 romance options— from the newest initiate within the Inner Circle to a suave, if slightly broken, billionaire villain.

Cultivate your powers that are both new and old.

You’re a dead ringer for a hero the world thought it lost… Just make sure you don’t lose yourself too.

Camilo/Camila Osorio — M/F

Age: 29

Power: Chlorokinesis — the ability to create and control plants.

Alias: To the world they’re known as Verdant, partner to Frostbite, a superhero within the Inner Circle of The Wardens.

Appearance: Of Colombian descent, they have richly tanned skin with piercing dark brown eyes to offset it. Ash brown hair is naturally slightly wavy— Camilo has his to his jawline and Camila has hers to her shoulder blades— which brings out the elegant contours of their face. An alluring presence all around, partially due to their powers, they stand at around 5’5” with a lithe body type.

Personality: While not being completely unkind, they’re not the most welcoming person. They don’t detest you, but it’s clear that they’re barely able to be in the same room with you. After all, they were best friends with Peregrine (with you?) and being near you only brings back painful memories. A wall of apathy, and sometimes cutting remarks, separate you from them, but at times, when they think you’re not looking, grief flashes through their gaze— latent pain rising to the surface that they’ve tried to bury for years.

Romance Route: Ex-Best Friends to Lovers, Slightly Rivals to Lovers (in a roundabout way), Lost Love, Finding Each Other Again, and Second Chances.

Airan/Aira North — M/F

Age: 26

Power: Cryokinesis — the ability to create and control ice, while not being affected by the cold.

Alias: To the world they’re known as Frostbite, partner to Verdant, the recent addition to the Inner Circle of The Wardens, a prodigy in the making.

Appearance: Ebony ringlets, that’s strewn with arctic blue and white, fall to just beneath their jawline, complementing the dark brown tone of their skin. Sapphire blue eyes shimmer with warmth despite the coldness that always seems to follow them. With a slender physique, they’re not one to get into fist fights but that doesn’t negate the danger level they could present. They stand at around 5’8”.

Personality: With the warmest smile and a boisterous laugh, they’re the embodiment of a golden retriever. Always wanting to make other people happy and stress free, with a genuine quality that surrounds them. They may be one of your “caretakers” to help you get acclimated with the world once more, and your growing powers, but they truly wish to be your friend too. No matter what they’d always be there to lend a hand if needed, or a shoulder to cry on.

Romance Route: Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Golden Retriever, Stuck Together, Gentle Compassion.

Damon/Diana Ambrose — M/F

Age: 45

Power: Widely regarded as the most powerful meta-human, partially due to their past that’s still shrouded in mystery, they have multiple abilities— flight, invulnerability, enhanced senses, and super strength (to name a few).

Alias: They’re known to the world as Titan, the old leader of The Wardens. An individual that hasn’t been seen in nine years and rarely, if ever, leaves the comfort of Warden Tower.

Appearance: Fair, perfectly unblemished, skin is complemented by the raven black color of their hair. Piercing green eyes, that look almost unreal due to their brilliance, brings out the chiseled features of their face— high cheekbones, a sharp jawline, well defined nose, and full lips. They were made for perfection, but is it truly all that it’s cracked up to be? With a toned/well muscled body, they stand at around 6’3”.

Personality: With a softly compassionate nature, paired with a presence that could silence an entire room by simply appearing, they were born to be a leader. Born to guide and help any that needed it. With a loving demeanor, wherein they have their heart on their sleeve, it’s no wonder that they took Peregrine in, at the ripe age of fifteen, in order to help train the young person that was clearly trying to find their way in the world. It’s also no wonder that they completely lost themself when losing Peregrine, something that they believe could have been completely avoided, and they’ve forever blamed themself for it. The last decade has brought with it a slew of darkness for them, their smiles not coming as easily, their anger at themself growing, and their hope slowly fading. Maybe with your reappearance things will be okay?

Romance Route: Old Mentor, Age Gap, Second Chances, Reunion, Forbidden Love (on their part), and Slow Burn.

Morgan/Morgana Rose — M/F

Age: 38

Power: Shapeshifting.

Alias: They’re infamously known as Silhouette. The leader of a criminal enterprise known simply as Syndicate.

Appearance: With sharp gray eyes, that seemingly stare right into your soul, and honey beige skin that’s complemented by their wavy auburn hair. They have an aura of danger consistently surrounding them, giving many the impression that they shouldn’t be trifled with. With a lean body type, they stand at around 6’0”.

Personality: Being called a variety of names within the tabloids: “The Lost Rose” or “Wilting Red”, to name a few— due to their abrupt departure from their rather famous family. They’re infamously known as Silhouette; a master manipulator, cutthroat in their dealings, and refusal to backdown over something they want. Of course, that’s simply gossip from individuals that have never truly met them— much like the tabloids that speculate on the life of the lost Rose Heir. Despite what you may think of them, they’re your best bet at discovering what happened to you in the last decade.

Romance Route: Enemies to Lovers (in a sense), Slow Burn (slightly), Age Gap, Villain/Hero, Misunderstood.

#dead ringer #superhero if #interactive novel #interactive fiction #hosted games #choice of games #if wip #interact if #romance #found the cover due to google #no demo #release set tentaviely for august/september

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lullabyes22-blog · 11 days ago

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Snippet - Ghosts - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Vi finds connections between past and future...

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Jinx's room, though. That's a different story.

Vi pushes the door inward. The hinges creak. Pale greenish matchsticks of light fall through the widening gap. They strike the mobiles of scrap-metal and colored glass hanging from the ceiling. Fractals of hypnotic blue and pink dance everywhere.

In the shifting ambiance, Vi makes out the room's dimensions. A vanity, a wardrobe, a chaise and a desk. The bed's an extravagant four-poster fit for a princess: all curlicued brasswork and flounced trimmings. The sort of bed Vi and Powder used to dream about as little girls, staring awestruck at old Piltie glossies scrounged from the junkyard.

Except there's a sad, abandoned quality to the fittings: pillows jammed against the headboard, sheets stirred into restless disarray, stuffed animals taking refuge under the mattress.

It's as if the owner's been snatched from slumber in the middle of the night.

Or swallowed by her own nightmares.

Vi steps inside. Her bare feet sink into the plush rugs. Between her toes, there's a ticklish layer of dust. The room, colorfully cozy, is nonetheless steeped in neglect. Either Jinx hasn't spent much time here the last few days, or Silco's staff have orders not to intrude.

Both, Vi guesses.

Crossing inside, she can't help but stop to pick up the sheeny black leather jacket, dumped in a heap on the carpet, and straighten it. It's the same one her sister routinely sloughs off in her frenetic pacing through the Aerie's corridors. The weave of the silk lining is redolent of chemicals. The acrid whiff of gunpowder, the piercing bite of turpentine, the waxy fug of crayons—all overlaid by the musk of a wild night out.

Yet beneath the olio of adult grime, a sweet, soft note persists.

Eau de Urchin.

A pang of longing seizes Vi's heart. She lifts the jacket, burying her face in its folds. The scent that fills her nostrils is pure Powder. Redolent; unmistakable. For the briefest moment, the years fall away. Powder is in her arms, her heartbeat is music against Vi's ribs, and the world's a safe place.

It's a wish, and Vi holds on to it with every fiber of her being.

Then she sneezes, and the moment shivers away.

Laying the jacket aside, she refocuses on the room. It's a Jinxian miscellany: cluttered, crammed, kaleidoscopic. But also nothing like Jinx at all.

In Vi's mind, she'd conjured a tiny replica of the Aerie. A hotbox of destruction, filled to the rafters with lethal gizmos. A mirror, in short, of Jinx's psyche: distorted and dangerous and dazzling.

Instead, she's fallen into a time-warp. The décor is a mishmash of hard-edged glamor and girlish whimsy: pastel plushies warring with bold posters of sultry-eyed cabaret stars; an antique dollhouse next to a pair of neon-pink go-go boots; a rosy little lampshade offset by a skull-themed lava lamp.

And the walls.

Good gods, the walls.

Every square inch is plastered with pictures. Many are Powderish crayon drawings, exuberantly signed with a monkey motif. Others are Jinxian marvels, surreally skewed. The subject-matter is a grab-bag: comic book heroines kicking ass and flaunting cleavage, cute little animals cannibalizing each other, fiendish caricatures of chem-barons reduced from bloodthirsty tyrants to fawning buffoons.

There is also a riot of photographs. The sort that'd give Caitlyn's forensics team a conniption. Plenty are polaroids Jinx obviously snapped as she'd stalked the streets, their backgrounds murky with the suggestion of flaming wrecks, smoking guns and dead men. Vi imagines she kept a record of her most prolific heists, back when she'd been Silco's top gun, and the Lanes had quaked in terror at the mere mention of her name. Others, more innocuous, are a potluck of the crew—Ran, Lock, Dustin and sometimes a shadowed Sevika—in moments of hilarity, brutality, or simple, undistilled banality: target practicing with beer-bottles, ghoulishly lit with neon during poker games, posing like big game hunters with oversized trophies of squid at the harbor or sump-vole at the Deadlands.

In all, there's a dysfunctional joie-de-vivre. Not family, but the camaraderie born from different lives bound by a single cause.

Not, Vi senses, that Jinx cares.

Each photo, badly angled, imprecise, speaks of a childish ardency to be included in the fun, even as she's excluded from the frame. The crew's not her focal point; nor is the cause. Only a bone-deep dread of being left behind.

Then there's Silco.

Silco, Silco, Silco.

His presence dominates the walls. Even in the smallest scrap of artwork bears his imprint. A set of mismatched eyes coalescing from a cloud of stinging-red ink. Somber graphite slashes of a scarred profile in chiaroscuro. Impressionistic smears of an upturned collar, a pristine cravat, a long-fingered hand. In one, he's a long-legged sprawl on a throne of skulls. In another, an elegant silhouette by a window. In a third, a floating shadow at sea, the city rising up to engulf him like teeth.

A man, a monster. Sometimes both.

But always, always there.

In the photographs, his face is never in full focus. He's a blur of movement, half-turned away, or angled just out of reach. A trick of shadow, a distortion of light. In the rare instances Jinx captures his face, his expression seems caught in a series of fractured emotions: a grimace of annoyance, an unguarded frown, the tail end of a smile.

It's as if he's trying to escape from his own portrait. And Jinx, in turn, is trying to hold him in place. To capture a single, solitary truth, in a single, solitary moment.

It never works. Silco always slips away.

Except once.

It's a photostrip, like from a booth at the carnival. Four squares, two bodies. Jinx, plainly perched on Silco's knee, her arms passed around his neck. Her eyes are sparkly as lit fuses; her smile is ravenously wide. In her embrace, Silco is more subdued. He sits, not idly slouched but straightbacked, as if to keep their faces on a level. In the first square, he's plainly irritated to be there. His expression is walled-off, the shark-eye a chilled blank. In the next, something in his temperature shifts, so infinitesimal that Vi wouldn't have caught it if not for the contrast between the frozen frames. A softening of the good eye, a thawing of the bad. By the third, his arm's encircling the slipping weight of Jinx's giggling body, as if to keep her from falling. By the fourth, their heads come closer, temple-to-temple, and he's smiling.

Smiling.

It's a gut-shock, that smile. Not the smile of a schemer biding his time, or a monster slinking through the dark. It's a smile of simple, unqualified human happiness, stolen from a man unwilling to be caught off-guard but unable to resist the thrill.

And it's not Silco's smile.

Not entirely. There's something about the curve of his lips, the way it softens the eerie luminosity of his shark-eye, and melts the scarred angles of his face, that's so familiar it hurts. Vi's seen that smile before. Seen it refracted through the lens of a whiskey glass in dreams, and split into a swarm of flaming facsimiles in nightmares.

It's Blut's smile.

And Jinx's, mirroring, is Powder's.

#arcane #arcane league of legends #arcane silco #silco #forward but never forget/xoxo #asks #forward (never forget)/xoxo #arcane jinx #jinx #arcane vi #vi #arcane violet #violet

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quantumcartography · 2 months ago

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Just finished the Magnus Archives 39 and I very much appreciate the answers to the questions bugging me.

I always chaulked Jons performances in reading the statements as a character trait, a flair for performance, as well as just being more fun to listen to. I like that the answer is actually more spooky.

Loved the episode where tim basically reads corrections from the listeners and Jon refusing to rerecord them. And I'm very glad they explained the case number system too because that was bothering me.

Insights into the characterization is really nice in addition to a change in format. I'm also really happy that they have a good explanation to why all these recordings are genuinely spooky shit and not just bullshit if the Archive takes statements from just about anyone. I do very much still want to see their tagging system and how they catalog everything.

Also, the fact that Elias put in a CO2 extinguisher system in the archives is a safety hazard and I think Jon should sue. They need better fire suppression than that, they're a god damn archive. But considering he's recording on a tape recorder it could well be a funding thing

Last, I did notice the bit from episode 32 where Jane Prentiss derided "those fools chasing fractals" which I can only assume is a reference to a different entity which reinforces my idea that these entities are not allied with each other, or at least are mildly adversarial to one another

#im hooked #plain and simple #the magnus archives #magpod #tma podcast #tma spoilers

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vickysaurus · 11 months ago

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Happy New Year!

Let's imagine it was the Earth itself that was going into its 2024th year. That is to say, we're compressing the entire history of the Earth into just the past 2023 years. What events would have happened when?

Well, not too much is certain about the first couple decades after our planet formed, until around 50 CE when we were hit by another proto-planet, Theia, and the debris formed the Moon. After a couple years of the planet cooling down again, the oceans formed out of boiling rain. The timing of the origin of life is very uncertain, but there are chemical signs it may very well have happened as early as the second century. Around 200 CE, the gas giants did a big funky orbit-swapping dance, and in the process inflicted the Late Heavy Bombardment on the rest of the solar system, meaning the Earth was suffering a ton of meteorite strikes for the entire third century.

The first indisputable evidence of life is from around 330, and the first stromatolites appear around 470. Those are basically the first fossils, stones created by layer upon layer of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria living and dying on top of one another. But even with oxygen producers evolving, it would take many centuries before oxygen became a major part of the atmosphere: not until the Great Oxygenation Event, which happened during the ninth and tenth centuries. That's also about the time the first complex, eukaryotic cells evolved through a symbiosis between an anaerobic archaean and an oxygen-breathing bacterium. The bacterium became more and more focused on just the oxygen-breathing task inside the larger cell, until its descendants were mitochondria, which as you all know are the powerhouse of the cell. The next seven centuries passed by with only slow, gradual changes, and life continuing to be unicellular and difficult to find in the fossil record.

(1735's Snowball Earth, by me)

From 1704 to 1730, the entire planet froze over. After merely two years of thaw, it happened again, this time lasting from 1732 to 1742. But these snowball Earth episodes set the stage for the evolution of animals that began right after. Across the mid-18th century, the bizarre Ediacaran biota, with its strange symmetries, fronds, and fractal-like pattern filled the oceans. In the early 1780s they went extinct, possibly due to a temporary drop in oxygen-levels, only to be replaced by a great variety of quite different creatures in the Cambrian Explosion.

(Class of 1799, by me)

Starting in 1784 and running for a few decades, the Cambrian period saw the origin of most of the modern animal phyla, reaching its most famous form in the Burgess Shale fauna of 1799. During this time, most animals still lived on the sea floor, either attached or crawling, with relatively few actually swimming creatures. Plants started tentatively moving onto land around 1817, and in 1825, the rising of the great Appalachian mountains caused a severe drop in global CO2 and thus temperatures, leading to the Late Ordovician mass extinction.

(Horseshoe crabs and sea scorpions on a beach in 1834, by me)

Bony fish first showed up during the 1830s, and around the same time plants were getting serious about inhabiting the land, evolving roots and vascular tissues so they could properly grow there. Millipedes and the ancestors of spiders were the first animals to follow them onto land. Our own fishy ancestors did not take their first step until 1857, by which point the arthropods were well established there and the plants had figured out how to become trees. The Late Devonian extinction, partially caused by the evolution of said trees and partially by the south pole freezing, played out in two pulses over the late 1850s and early 1860s.

(Swamp prominently featuring Meganeura and Mazothairos in 1889, by me)

Arthropods and vertebrates continued to gain adaptations to life on land. The insects became the first creatures ever to fly in 1878, and the high-oxygen atmosphere of the time would be especially good to them. Around 1884, a group of vertebrates called the amniotes, after the membrane that kept water inside their eggs so they could lay them on land without them drying out, split into two groups: the reptiles and the synapsids (which we mammals descend from). The next few decades would see the synapsids in particular being extremely successful as the supercontinent Pangaea formed. Until 1912, when a massive episode of volcanism caused the worst mass extinction of all time, the Great Dying, scouring the Earth of a huge portion of its life.

(A 1930 scene featuring the three branches of archosaur: dinosaur, pterosaur, and pseudosuchian, by me)

The 1910s were a period of slow recovery during which strange new forms of animal evolved. Many different, unrelated reptiles, such as the ichtyosaurs and plesiosaurs, went to sea, where they would continue to provide some of the most impressive creatures for most of the 20th century. On land, the dinosaurs first appeared in 1920, though for the next decade or so they'd live in the shadow of their pseudosuchian (crocodile-line) cousins. In 1934, Pangaea began to break up, resulting in another terrible pulse of volcanism that caused a lot of extinctions and left particularly the feathered and furry survivors with a lot of empty niches to fill, allowing the dinosaurs and mammals to diversify greatly. The last common ancestor of all modern mammals lived in the early 1940s, and by 1957 the dinosaurs had figured out flight, with Archaeopteryx usually being considered the first bird. Other dinosaurs took on an incredible variety of sizes, shapes, and forms. Some of the most famous ones include Dilophosaurus (1942), Diplodocus and Stegosaurus (1955), Iguanodon (1969), Velociraptor (1991), and Tyrannosaurus rex (1994).

(A tropical lakeside in the year 2000, by me)

In 1995, the world was struck by a meteorite, wiping out many groups, including the marine reptiles, pterosaurs, and ammonites. The surviving mammals and dinosaurs went on to diversify across the next couple of years and had formed thriving new ecosystems in the tropical world of the turn of the millennium. The first known bat lived in 2001, and the whales returned to the oceans next year. Around 2009, the world's climates turned colder and dryer. Antarctica froze over and grasslands spread widely. Our last common ancestor with the chimpanzees and bonobos lived in 2021, and by new year 2023, our ancestors were getting brainier and more proficient with tools. That's also when the north pole froze and the Quaternary ice age cycle began. The first known members of Homo sapiens lived on 10 November 2023. The latest ice age started on 14 December, and ended at 2 AM on 30 December. The great pyramid of Giza was built at 6 AM on 31 December and On The Origin Of Species was published at 23:22 PM.

#palaeoblr #happy new year #2024 #geologic timescale #vicky's vritings #one year is 2.244 million years if you're curious #and yes i did exclude both year 0 and 2024 #since 0 doesn't exist and 2024 hasn't happened yet #my art #i rather enjoy having an extensive collection of my art to illustrate my paleorambles nowadays #incidentally the big bang occurred in 4121 bce at this scale #which is curiously close to the date of creation creationists made up #if only they would follow through and insist humanity itself was seven weeks old too

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perpetualexistence · 29 days ago

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A Total Drama Magnus Archives AU

Day 7: Free Day!

Alright gang, this one’s going to be a bit different as this is what I’ve got the energy for right now. Rather than tell a narrative like I usually do, I’m just going to infodump the ideas I currently have about this AU.

The important thing to know is that this AU takes place parallel to most of the events happening in canon Magnus Archives. Though in this case the setting is actually The Usher Foundation, the sister organization in the Americas. Spoilers for The Magnus Archives because it’s going into it.

Everyone’s in their late 20’s here mainly because they need to have full time jobs for this to work. Also, please do check tags.

(It’s also got a very heavy focus on Alenoaheather as villains and I won’t apologize for this)

@total-drama-horror-week

Characters and their Roles

Usher Foundation

Gwen: Protagonist, pretty much takes up Jon's role except instead of recording tapes, she listens to tapes and makes forensic sketches so that the Foundation can actually be able to recognize what they're dealing with. Her sketches are hauntingly accurate. Becomes an avatar of the eye.

Courtney: The foundation's lawyer. Her main job is pretty much protecting the foundation from all the lawsuits about break ins that the investigator types just constantly do. Is a skeptic about all this and just took the job because she needed an in to the field and this is just what she found. Does start believing when she realizes her friend Bridgette is different even though everyone else claims she's still the same. And thus having to deal with Not-Bridgette.

The Antagonist Trio

Alejandro: Avatar of The Spiral. Comes from the Burromuerto family who have aligned themselves with The Buried. After…separating himself from family tradition, dedicates himself to The Spiral. Hypnotizes people into states of mind where they lose sense of self, direction, purpose, you name it. His hair is full of curls and his pupils fractalize when he’s hypnotizing someone, or when he’s feeling extreme emotion.

Heather: Avatar of The Web. Was once a regular spider that was gifted with ascension into avatarhood from the entity that spawned her. Now exists as a drider that tricks humans into coming enough to her so that she can paralyze, cocoon them, and eat them at her leisure.

Noah: Avatar of The Eye. Only surviving member of his family line in the event that saw him become an avatar. Feeds on learning and seeing others' traumas. Scrambles around trying to figure out avatarhood until he meets Alejandro, and later Heather. Works for the Usher Foundation to feed himself and feed his partners intel and vulnerable statement-givers to feast on. Peers into others’ worst traumas and can force them to relive it in their minds. He has an eye each on the backs of his hands.

Miscellaneous

Izzy: Avatar of The Hunt. She goes out of her way to encourage others to give in to predator/prey instincts. She enjoys watching the chaos go down between the Usher Foundation and the antagonist trio. She stays on the fence and would help either side if asked.

Eva: Avatar of The Slaughter. Or at least aligned with it. Offers herself as a mercenary so that she can satisfy her bloodlust. Works a lot with the Foundation but can be persuaded to work against them if someone else can offer her a better fight.

Backstories

Noah

Noah's part of a big human family with a lineage of being involved in supernatural things, from research to hunting to capturing to study etc. Basically a more localized version of the Institute/Foundation. They're more a neutral party rather than just for the side of humanity though, which somewhat puts them at odd with them.

The Mudaliars are one of the safer bets of information for those outside of the Usher Foundation. Of course there is usually a price in terms of exchange of information, corpses of what they kill (one of his sisters really likes dissecting things), just money, etc. Noah isn't the most sociable or the one who's normally 'customer' facing, but he's the one who stays at home the most while the others are out and about. They need to leave at least one person at home at all times to deal with clients that might come in, and that person was Noah once he was old enough to start getting into the family business.

The problem was their extralegal status ar semi-archivists led them vulnerable to those aligned with Entities. The large size of their family also made them a tantalizing target. Thus the family, Noah included, were kidnapped in an attempt at a Mass Ritual to bring forth all the Entities into the realm.

The ritual involves each Mudaliar being sacrificed in a different location for a different entity. Noah is meant to be a sacrifice for The Lonely, so he’s locked into solitary confinement, with his only interactions with the outside world being pictures slid under his door of the corpse of each family member as they get sacrificed for their entity.

He’s able to piece together what’s happening, though with dread realizes there’s little he can do to fix the situation. His one chance is to disrupt the ritual, though his options on that are very limited. Eventually he settles on the idea that he could devote himself to a different entity to disrupt it and save himself.

He knows he’s caught in a trap of the lonely, doomed to die a slow and agonizing death of dehydration and starvation being all by himself with nothing to eat or drink. Thus he turns his attention to attracting the attention of The Eye. His one idea for how to do this is to dedicate himself to keeping track of his own deterioration.

He commits energy he should be preserving writing down everything he’s learned, not sleeping until his body forces him to collapse in exhaustion and then just starting up again when he’s recovered. Running out of pen and paper and thus using whatever he can get his hands on, eventually resorting to his own blood in his commitment to make sure his knowledge doesn’t die with him.

Eventually, it works as he’s granted avatarhood. The downside is that he did this while still connected with his remaining family. Becoming an avatar of The Eye saved himself and the world, but it killed the rest of his family. Leaving him alone anyways.

He wanders around for a while trying to figure out what there even is to do about his life until he comes across Alejandro when he’s trying to feed himself with forbidden information.

Alejandro

The Burromuertos are a family that have served The Buried for generations (similar to the Lukas family). Serving The Buried has led them to getting riches untold from the ground. Their family always lives in prosperity.

However, this gift isn’t without sacrifice. Each generation, the Burromuertos have to sacrifice one of their own to The Buried. In the days of old this involved taking the sacrifice and shoving them inside of a special suit of armor. The person inside would still be kept alive, and slowly crushed to death over the course of their lifetime. The suit act independently of the will of the victim, following the orders of the Burromuertos outside. The victim would power that suit of armor that serves as a guardian.

By the time that victim is used up, they would have been crushed into a diamond. That diamond is then placed into a display room that only the heads of the household know about. It’s part of the guardian’s duty to protect this room, as well as the rest of the mansion and Burromuertos.

Over time, the suit of armor modernized to something more akin to a robot suit. Tradition made it so that the youngest would be the one sacrificed so that more time would last between replacements. It also had the head of the family sire children in threes: The first to inherit the family legacy, the second just in case anything happened to the first, and then the third to be the sacrifice.

Alejandro was led to believe that he was simply meant to inherit part of the family wealth. He knows of his family’s history with The Buried, but not exactly what the sacrifice entails. (Burromuertos are only allowed to know about the ritual once they’ve produced a potential heir since their use as a sacrifice becomes nonexistent.)

His time comes early, just before reaching adulthood, when the old sacrifice fully crystalizes. He’s shoved into a suit and discovers just how much value his family put into him.

He stayed like this for a few years. He learned to have only quick, shallow breaths, as anything longer would see his prison tighten around him. Although he had been conditioned to be loyal the The Buried even in this tortured state, he was always ambitious, and was never quite as loyal as his family would have liked.

Instead, he follows a descent towards The Spiral. With nothing else to do, there’s only trying to mentally escape his current reality of being crushed and trapped. He’d rather do that than acknowledge his family knows he’s alive, but will do nothing to save him because he wasn’t good enough for them to produce a younger child to spare him from this fate.

He’s somewhat aware of the things that happen outside of the suit, though he much prefers to stay inside with his hallucinations.

This is until Noah comes to free him. It wasn’t intentional. Truth be told on Noah’s end, he was just hungry for knowledge since The Eye was making it known he wasn’t feeding it properly. A rich family like the Burromuertos seemed like they’d have just the knowledge he needed. The robot at their beck and call was just another obstacle to deal with.

In trying to flee from and destroy the suit Noah accidentally ended up freeing Alejandro. Noah has a heart so he helps bring Alejandro back to reality. Alejandro has a heart full of hatred and pettiness so when he finds out why Noah’s there, he agrees to help steal from his own family.

Using what he’d learned from his time in the robot suit, he helps Noah steal some wealth, particularly the family diamonds.

Though when he touches one of them to put away he finds out they're still conscious thanks to inherited psychic link of having been trapped in the suit just like them.

The two of them bond through working with the diamonds. Noah uses Alejandro as a conduit to peer into the diamonds and feed off their traumas, while Alejandro gets the knowledge his family denied him without having to relive his own trauma inside the suit.

They stick together for a while, surviving using Noah’s knowledge about entities and Alejandro’s newfound hardiness. Experiencing the pressure of the suit has left him stronger and tougher than before as gravity now as nothing than the gravity he’s used to.

Though the whole time they’re doing so Alejandro still has nightmares from his time trapped in the suit. The terror always comes from The Buried, but then salvation comes in the lies he tells himself. The lies he tells to others to forget things. In fractals and spirals and other.

He gives in to The Spiral so that nothing else can ever claim him again. And life is pretty easy.

Up until they meet Heather.

Heather

Heather started off as a store-raised spider. As a spider she was naturally touched by The Web, enough to have a small form of sentience. Her dwelling was small and cramped, and meals didn't always come on time. She wasn't the happiest with it, but she also didn't really understand what happiness was. It was enough to survive so she lived with it, though the part of her that could think wanted more.

She thought she'd get this when she was bought by a teen. That teen provided her a much bigger terrarium, and went so far as to get her live food. She discovered what enjoyment was when she drained the life out of a fly. She was content. She actually grew to a healthier size for her species since she was malnourished before.

That teen seemed really excited to have her. Something about 'revenge', though Heather didn't know what that word meant. She figured it had something to do with that older sibling that constantly seemed to pick on them. Though that older sibling was squeamish around her, and thus she learned what fear was.

All this came to a head when it came to what her owner referred to as 'the big day'. Heather didn't know much of what was going on. All she knew was that she was placed into the smaller container her owner used when they wanted to carry her out of the house, and stuffed into their pocket. It was dark and cozy so while she didn't appreciate the jostling, it wasn't so bad. The next thing she knew she was taken out of that container and placed onto something with a lot of pink frills. She was pretty confused, but was able to piece together that she'd just been placed onto the ballerina outfit of that older sibling. She was content to stay in place until the performance started and the older sister began to dance.

In order to not be flung off, Heather clung as tightly as she could. Until, eventually, she heard a familiar tune. It was a song she'd heard play every meal time. One she'd eventually learn was called Dance of the Sugar Plum fairy. So, as she took this to mean that despite these circumstances that food was here, she emerged from beneath the folds. This immediately got screams from the other performers and the audience. And eventually that older sister when she realized there was a spider on her during the performance of her lifetime.

Despite Heather's intelligence, she was barely able to process the speed at which she was flung off from that body. Before she could recover from the fall, someone else came and squashed her.

The curtains fell, and everyone was fleeing from her mangled, still living body. Twitching in agony. There was screaming all around. But there was also laughter. One she recognized.

It was from her human. Laughing at a prank pulled off. Uncaring for her agony now that her job was done. No attempt to rescue her despite the love and care she thought she'd understood. The only mercy she received was from the ballet teacher who came to finish the job just so he could salvage the disaster of a performance.

It was in her death that she was able to meet her mother. The Great Spider. She was offered the chance to become the manipulator. It was her birthright, after all. She took it without hesitation.

One by one those who attended that performance went missing.

One by one she perfected her craft of trickery and deceit.

She saved her owner for last.

The look on her face was satisfying.

Thus, Heather started to fully live her life in her new form as a half-human, half-spider. Her human half took inspiration from what the idea her previous owner wished for herself. She uses social media to trick her victims into coming closer, and then when meeting them in real life, webs them up to consume them.

She’s had hunters try to take her down, and other people stumble into her lair, but none of them were really of importance.

Not until Alejandro and Noah, who find their way into her lair in their attempts to get a break from other avatars/humans in between their feeding sessions.

Heather tried to trick them into thinking she was just another victim who needed to be helped to get them to come closer. Unfortunately for her, they were both smart enough to know something was wrong. Noah outright said as much, to Alejandro’s chagrin as he wanted to lure her into a false sense of security thinking that they’d fallen for it.

They have this conversation about how this should have been handled in front of Heather. Honestly, it was pretty hilarious seeing them seemingly not understand the danger they were in.

Still, Heather had a job to do, so she threw away the false pretenses and chased after them.

Despite their banter they do prove themselves rather competent in evading her. Alejandro tries to hypnotize her, though as an avatar of The Web she’s highly resistant to attempts to manipulate her. Still, she’s impressed. So much so that she agrees to let them go.

…And then proceeds to follow them around while disguised as a regular spider in order to see if her hunch about these two having more worth is right.

She starts realizing their potential, though is unaware of the fact that they know she’s watching them thanks to Noah’s connection to The Eye.

Though this time he's smart enough to sneak this information to Alejandro rather than outright say it considering what happened the last time he decided to out her. Alejandro gets the idea to put on more of a show of their capabilities since he can recognize that she's sizing them up.

When it eventually does get public that they’re sizing each other up, that’s when they agree to an alliance. They’ll work together to keep each other fed and make sure they each stay alive.

No matter what.

Domains and Avatars in a Changed World

The Change still happens as it does in canon. Nobody has a direct part in it, though Alenoaheather are a continuous threat to The Usher Foundation as a trio of avatars seeking to expand their influence and victims. They get into fights, though the conflicting parties end up surviving to see themselves Changed.

Gwen

Her sketches take on a life of their own. When she sketches something realistically enough, it’ll come to life. She isn’t guaranteed control of it, but it will be there. In addition, if she sketches an individual, she’ll be able to ask it about things that individual knows. If she touches that sketch up to the original, then that person/creature will be trapped within the drawing. If the drawing is destroyed, so are they. Unlike with other deaths in the changed world, this is permanent.

Her domain is Artist’s Alley. There are booths run by abstract figures that buy and sell art. These art pieces are in fact humans/animals trapped in pieces of art. It represents the fear of being put on display for others to gawk at and commodify. She’s vaguely aware it exists, and when she does find out about it avoids it like the plague.

Izzy

She can turn into prey animals that lure unsuspecting victims into an obsessive hunt that never ends until the person can hunt no more and collapses due to exhaustion, dehydration, or a combination. At which point, she then turns into a predator that rips them apart. She waits for them to reform so that she can start the process all over again.

Her domain is The Opened Season. In it humans are caught in a cycle where they are always hunting someone down, while they themselves are always being hunted. It’s based on the fear of not being at the top of the food chain despite being high up there. Izzy spends most of her time here.

Eva

She can take her own emotions and strengths and project them onto others. This is usually rage and results in others getting filled with the urge for violence. This prevents them from thinking straight, which makes them both easier and harder to fight off.

Her domain is The Battle Arena. Humans are made to fight in an continuous onslaught against each other and other beasts and foes. There are places for training that are still met with violence. Places of rest and relaxation are all potential fight pits. It represents the fear of peace not being an option.

Alejandro

Alejandro's domain is The Lulling Field. It looks peaceful, with nothing trying to attack you. The grass is soft. There is a standard cycle of day and night. During the day it's sunny, but there's always shade among the many trees. It's just warm enough to encourage rest without being overbearing. There are poppies with fractal designs that litter the ground. For those who prefer resting inside, there are cabins with the comfiest beds imaginable.

Those who aren't lured by the temptation to sleep find those strange, beautiful poppies start emitting pollen that forces them into slumber.

That's where the horror begins. Once they fall asleep, they are trapped within a non-euclidean dream that never ends. The dream logic is strange and unpredictable. A person loses their sense of attachment to their body as they grapple with viewing themselves in the third person perspective of their dreams.

There are many times where they're allowed to think they've figured out how to escape the dream and have woken up, back to a reality pre-change where nothing bad has happened.

It's always proven as a lie as each 'wake up' is actually them being driven deeper and deeper into their dream. Until they can't even remember what their original reality was like.

The many peaceful sleeping forms that inhabit the field forever hide the torment the dreaming soul is experiencing. They enhance the illusion that it must be safe if so many are comfortable enough to sleep exposed.

The real world is such a harsh place right now.

Don't you deserve the rest?

As its avatar, Alejandro has the ability to travel through and inhabit dreams. In this form his limbs are much longer than they should be, and he’s closer to 8 feet tall. His fingers curl in on themselves but are capable of slicing. His pupils are permanently fractals.

He'll carry poppies that he blows into the faces of those who are awake to knock them out. He'll often go into those of his victims and insert himself as their dearest, most trusted friend.

Sometimes he'll try to convince them that they're insane for thinking that their dream is anything but reality. Other times he'll help them 'discover' their unreality and help them 'escape'. Truly let them think they're the protagonist trying to free their people. only to laugh when they just go right into the next layer of dreaming thinking that they've finally won.

His realm represents the fear of falling asleep and never waking up.

Noah

Noah's domain is The Library. Which, as the name implies, is a giant library with books filled on every subject known and unknown to mankind. There are cameras watching every shelf.

There are reference desks centered at the entrances/exits with mechanical attendants. Those attendants can answer questions in regards to basic questions about the section they reside over, but anybody seeking specific questions, or who wishes to borrow a book, need to make their way to the main reference desk in the center, which is where Noah resides.

The directions and maps to get to that main desk are confounded by riddles that must be solved using intelligence. If solved properly it's a quick trek to the main desk. Otherwise, it takes ages to stumble to the right spot, though being smart enough to make one's own map that works for them will also get them there quicker, albeit still slower than if they'd solved the original riddle.

Anyone in The Library will want to make their way to that central desk fast, because it has regular hours, and closed time where the lights go dark. The attendants make their rounds at dark.

Any visitor caught by an attendant is dragged to the central reference desk, frozen and put On Hold on a large shelf until Noah can come to deal with them when The Library opens again. The same thing will happen if they're caught stealing a book or damaging anything in The Library, which is nigh impossible to get away with with all the cameras.

Those who have broken the rules have all their knowledge forcibly extracted from them by Noah. His fingers slip through their skull to pull out their brain and spread it into sheets as thin as paper. The grooves of the brain become lines of text as they're separated into neat sheets of paper. Their bodies are used as the leather needed to bind the new book together. They're still alive and conscious through this whole process as they get shelved away into the appropriate section. To stay there until someone feels like checking them out.

Anyone who does make their way willingly to Noah during business hours has the option to ask for a library card. Library card holders are allowed to stay in the library after hours (so long as they hold firm to the no stealing or destroying property rule).

They can stay in the library as long as they like without need to worry about Noah. However, his partners do like to come visit from time to time, and they're always eager for more victims. Noah won't do a thing to stop them. So any humans can stay at their own risk.

Library card holders are also able to borrow books from the library. Regular books can be borrowed without issue. However, more valuable books, such as books that would help them survive and understand the new world they live in or books that were once people that have all their valuable knowledge, require valuable knowledge to be given in return.

A person can either let Noah Behold them for a traumatic memory that they will then be forced to relive as he examines it and determines if it's a worthy trade for the book they want. Or they can give up a cherish memory for him to turn into a book. They'll never be able to remember that memory again.

This domain's fear is about getting caught breaking a rule you didn't know existed. Getting punished in a way that far outmatches the crime. The rules are nowhere to be found so you have to either ask for them and risk somehow breaking them that way, or stumble around and hope you don't break them.

It's a surveillance state with an apathetic watcher. He only care for his books, not people. He doesn't want to be here. If he's made to deal with it he takes it out on the person who interrupted his brief moments of peace before going back to his task.

Noah's also got the ability to peer into someone's immediate future based on their current thoughts. He doesn't pack much of a punch himself aside from his 'blast them with the PTSD' ability. But he can dodge attacks because he can See them coming.

Rather than just have the two extra eyes, he now has eyes covering every part of his body. If he touches a person, he can place one of his eyes onto them so he can see what they experience.

He also has at least a vague awareness of what's going on in each of those cameras at all times.

Heather

Her domain is called The Spider's Den. There are spiders and webbing everywhere. There's evidence that there was once remnants of humanity but it's all overtaken by webbing. Stepping on the webbing sends vibrations to other strands, which is how spiders get alerted to the presence of humans. Only baby spiders are the size of regular ones from Pre-change. Spiders now are on average the size of humans.

Once they paralyze and cocoon their victims, they drag them over to the central web to present them to their queen: Heather. She'll inflict her own venom on them, and only then will she unravel their cocoon. Not to free them, of course. She rips into a person to pull out their nerves.

She turns the webbing into strings and replaces the nerves with them. With the end of their strings attached to herself. She forces them to play along into a fascimile of normalcy where Heather is the main star. Everyone else is merely there to compliment her and revolve around her.

When she doesn't need somebody anymore, she'll cut their webbing. They'll collapse with nothing to hold them up, and stay there paralyzed thanks to her venom and their lack of nerves. They're left to just watch as life goes on without them. Occasionally being used by other spiders as new nests. If Heather does remember they exist and wants them again, then she'll reconnect their strings and start the show all over again.

The domain itself is more about the general fear of spiders, but Heather has also turned it into the fear of being an insignificant player in someone else's story.

Her avatar ability is that ability to connect people to herself via webbing, and then control them as she pleases. Her venom enacts a permanent paralysis. While in her previous drider form her human half was mostly human, now her top half is much more spider-like. She has eight eyes and she has mandibles. She’s also bigger, standing closer to 12 feet.

Endgame

So there’s no concrete endgame for this AU, as it’s more ideas and concepts than anything.

I will say that post-change, Alenoaheather perform an unholy wedding in order to marry their domains together. It involves many a sacrifice, and they ‘invite’ the few outside of themselves that they care about to it. Mind you, they do this with the intention of keeping them trapped forever, but still.

One of which being Carlos, who has to grapple with the fact that his little brother has now become this monster. Carlos is just a human caught in all of this. Despite Alejandro’s best efforts, his abilities do overtake Carlos just with his sheer presence and Carlos becomes closer to a vegetable than anything.

Alejandro refuses to acknowledge this and treats Carlos as if he isn’t talking to a shell of a man.

Gwen and Courtney are traveling about trying to fix the world in whatever way they can. Mostly by killing off other avatars.

Eventually, the change gets reverted, though I can’t decide whether Alenoaheather gets defeated by Gwourtney before the change gets reverted, or if they become normal after the change and get hunted down by everyone else.

Either way, that’s all I have for this AU for now! Don’t know if I’ll decide to expand upon it more but hope you guys enjoyed it!

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zabala0z · 3 months ago

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I’m very scared to watch the next episodes. Anyways hi, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood host. I got a lot of thoughts and I’m dying here 😭

MAG 72: Takeaway

Another meat thing oh god. Like I physically grimaced when Goodall had his Achilles heel cut like genuinely that’s one of my fears. Also another direct connection to like Christianity and meat. Or like kinda because in Rations I think, that guy made a prayer that was originally a Christian prayer I believe but altered it to put meat in. ALSO, Haan killed his wife but apparently she had self-inflicted wounds as well. I’m thinking this is maybe cult or some kind of like sacrificial thing going on. Maybe the wife wanted to die.

We also have Haans nephew who appeared in “Killing Floor”. He had his own meat sort of story. Guess it runs in the family 💀

MAG 73: Police Lights

I feel like Maxwell Rayner is not dead simply because it’s not the most implausible thing considering Michael Crew pops up in a couple episodes after jumping out a window. But who knows maybe Rayner is truly gone (I am betting not) also Natalie was there which definitely made me feel a little sad. I always feel a lot in terms of cults. I’m trying to figure out what Rayner and like the cult was planning on doing to the kid. Maybe kill him? But I feel like that’s too basic, they were probably doing something else. The fog seemed to hurt when it hit that one police guy like it burned him. Came out of that dusty old man’s mouth after all.

Also Basira quitting? Queen shit. I cannot blame her.

MAG 74: Fatigue

Oh yeah this is good. Something about the disjointed events really adds to the sleep deprived perspective I love it. Also MICHAEL. What is Michael I swear to god. Every appearance of this weirdo makes me more and more confused. What does he get out of this? Is it just for fun? He didn’t seem to benefit at all, like he even told Lydia she looked terrible 💀

It was said he was making spirals out of grass blades. What is with this creature and spirals, like that corridor was trippy too. I’m wondering if spirals are fractals. Lydia was drawing them for some reason. Similar to Evo’s dad in Burned Out.

And I KNEW Sasha was going through the tunnels. Like duh. I think she was the one who screwed up the quality because multiple times have electronics have been screwed around like tape recorder and the computer. I have no idea who that man is though.

MAG 75: A Long Way Down

This statement takes place after Michael jumps out the window. I guess he changed a lot. And he got some drip because why is he wearing a full suit?? I can’t tell if he actually contributed to Grants disappearance because maybe he was doing something else y’all 😭 (I’m in denial.) I am wondering what his little spell did back in Literary Heights. Did he like- bind himself with the lightning thing? I don’t know how that would work. He did say “I am yours” so did he like..sell his soul. That’s what I’m thinking.

Feeling really bad for grant. I don’t have a major fear of heights but the way the situation is described, I’d develop one.

MAG 76: The Smell of Blood

Wooo Melanie King! First time a character gave two statements which is cool. I’m wondering what kind of meme she ended up. Someone draw that.

Not much to say about this episode but oh my god I’m so happy someone noticed Sasha. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. I miss Sasha dude 😭

One thing I’m curious about is like…what is going to be the ending. Because right now, the institute, or technically Jon, has so many probable enemies right now. Like you got the Church of yada yada, the circus, Fake Sasha, all those diseased people, Michael, the Lukas family, etc. Who is going to drop the other shoe? Because right now, they all have the other shoe istg.

#the magnus archives #tma #tma podcast #my next post will be about the ending of season 2!#I’m very excited and terrified.#praying my man Jon is left unscathed (he will not)#I just want to finish this podcast so I can read the fanfics #do you know how painful it is to listen and not being able to read the fanfics #like I could but I’m terrified I’ll get spoiled #that’s most of my scrolling rn #zabala0z thoughts

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kolibrieren · 1 year ago

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I had to see some foolishness come across my dash the other day, so I'm having another rant:

Replika designs being very bland and samey is INTENTIONAL. There are two major reasons for this deliberate design choice by the authors of Signalis, both of which are central to the game's themes:

The Eusean Nation is a totalitarian facist shithole where people are forced to contort themselves into conformity, or face retribution from the state. The state craves power through removal of individuality in their citizens, and reduces living to a repetitive, mass-produced nightmare as part of this process. Homes are the same. Tools are the same. Food is the same. Jobs are the same. The only people who experience variation from the mean are outsiders like Arianne and her mother, who were so far outside outside the Eusean Nation (physically and socially) that they were outside its' control. At this point, the only personal identity a person has left is their name and their face. The Rotfront medical records show a diverse and distinct list of citizens who are easily distinguishable from each other by what they look like and who they are - which is where Replikas come in. A mass-produced android workforce is the ideal new frontier of oppression and control for the Eusean Nation's leadership. Replikas are built to look the same, act the same, even think the same. Even between models, which must be different by virtue of their different roles, distinctiveness is erased. If the nation could do this to their human citizens as well, they would. They've settled for replacing humans workers with Replikas instead. This also reinforces conformity for human citizens as well - every single police officer is the same woman with the same face, every bureaucrat, every construction worker. Human citizens see the same things every day, and now they see the same people too. It is endlessly repeating, a state-enforced fractal nightmare to break people down into powerless, interchangable parts. .

During the course of the game, you are playing as Elster. You are not merely observing her, you ARE her, and you see the world through her eyes. Because she is experiencing psychosis caused by persona degradation, she frequently has flashbacks and hallucinations that twist her world into a repetitive nightmare. The same locations, the same obstacles, and the same people, over and over and over. At the bottom of the mineshaft, Elster sees rooms from Sierpinski 23. As she trudges deeper into the nightmare, Elster sees Penrose 512 again and again in different states of repair. Elster sees Lilith in Arianne and Arianne in Falke. All STARs look the same and use the same subtitle colour (dark green). All EULRs look the same and use the same subtitle colour (brown). It all repeats. Elster cannot tell them apart, especially when they're all mass-production models, and so neither can the player. The Replikas look the same for the same reason there are a hundred LSTR corpses in the elevator shaft. Her nightmare is cyclic, and repetitive, and never-ending.

#signalis

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infinitewarden · 1 year ago

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The Vex, the Black Garden, and Mercury's Conversion. (Alt Title: I am going insane)

There's always something going on with the Vex in the background and I can't believe I didn't pay closer attention to it when these weird single-celled organisms have always been right up my alley right there beside Osiris.

Anyways. What's been on my mind lately is Brass Gardeners from the Inspiral lorebook (dropped from Root of Nightmares.) I was so caught up in the interesting implications and continuation of Unveiling that it completely flew under the radar for me.

Now what I want to focus on is these key aspects from this lore entry:

Garden state: neutral garden&&gardeners==root&&branch==leaf&&flower //intrinsic, inextricable, inescapable

And

anomaly One = leaf|invasive; Garden state: active (gardeners attend)

And

anomaly Zero = infinite|witness; archive data retrieved. Zero = infinite|witness == (a seed was planted here.) Recorded referent: "Black|Heart" Zero : seed :: One : DANGER [SIMULATION BREAKING. VISIBILITY NARROW. FRACTALS DISINTEGRATING.] anomaly Zero, absent. anomaly One, DANGER remaining. Garden state: acting (gardeners in unison)

And

//There is a majestic thorn. The anomaly is gone. The garden is peaceful. //It is known|seen|predicted that a primary function of irresolvable|irrecoverable presences is to trample. Flowers growing / damage repairing / threat unresolved Function called: escalation. Iteration. Function: winnow. Function: simplify. Function: flatten. //The first defense is offense.

Now I'm no expert at coding. But I know a little bit about logic algorithms, especially ones that are presented here. (This is an if-then type of algorithm. These kinds of logic equations are also used in Philosophy which I know much more about.)

The gist of this entry is that, from what I can glean, the Traveler visited the Vex once, and while the Vex considered it invasive they were not actively hostile. An indeterminate amount of time passed, presumably up until the Collapse (our time), and the Witness visited the Garden these Vex have created. (It very well could be that the Black Garden was not the Black Garden until the introduction of the Witness.) It left them a "seed" (or... a code...) that would become the Black Heart.

Or, as we now know, a failed attempt at recreating the Veil.

After this introduction is when the Vex became actively hostile. They did not stay gardeners, the Sol Divisive became winnowers only when the Witness introduced the concept. Which is an incredibly fascinating implication.

So what does this mean?

Well I have a couple theories. Remember this is just speculation, it's not canon.

So we know the Vex have been in our system for... a while. Ever since the Ishtar Collective and Clovis Bray decided to be stupid about them. But this idea of total conversion didn't seem to be the end-all state. I mean the Ishtar Academy was still intact despite some Vex conversion. It doesn't seem like Europa's conversion went very far either.

So why did they go into a frenzy with Mercury during the Collapse? Why did the Vex make Mercury their simulation engine for a Vex end-state? If they wanted to they could've made any of the thousands of planets they inhabit into a simulation engine to the degree of Mercury's but there's no evidence they did. Why target Io? Or Nessus? Why only planets the Light has touched?

Well... The answer is a little complicated. We don't know, really, how the Vex began to terraform Nessus and Io, but we do know how they got to Mercury.

So, let's remember this line:

anomaly One = leaf|invasive; Garden state: active (gardeners attend)

Now, let's look at how the Vex were introduced to Mercury in Trials and Tribulations (for the sake of clarity I will be cutting out the Witness lines save for one vital line):

It was a garden world. The phrase, uttered in confidence. The expanse above, a cup—rimmed in gamma-ink radiance—dammed against the Mercurian sky at the Kármán line. Against the howl of star-wind, the black fell open. Within the rip convulsed and excreted coils of shimmering life. Probing, clattering tendrils slithered down to make landfall. Chrome-hooked appendages stretched for miles through sun-soaked atmosphere. They bored into the marigold sands. From the great temporal chasms flowed an ocean of radiolarian fluid. Across the horizon the scene was resonant and multiplicative. Each injection site fostered a new lineage in stone and steel and fluid. The new age in sub-routine and observation. They would foster the seeds of a generation in time. From the sites bubbled pools that murmured chaotic, and wrung the Traveler's Light from Mercury. The Light coalesced within the pools. The planet transformed into a machine of prediction. The arms retracted, and returned to temporal hovels, suspended just above Mercury's influence. With them rose the spires. From the core, threads of iron fused reinforcement into the spires and brought them high. A surface driven flat by eons of solar erosion had risen. A million open mouths curled plated tongues in completion. Across the world grew a terrible consciousness that yearned to find its progenitor. The hulking vessels pulsed with light. The pools and spires pulsed dull tones in recognition, and the black sealed once more, restoring the sol-dominated sky |awaiting an angular shadow|. Illumination left the spires, and the Light was erased.

Okay, this one is a big one and might be a little difficult to grasp, but the gist of it is that a portal ("the black") opened and implanted the first Vex seeds into Mercury all while draining the Light. This portal was created by a Pyramid. This happened during the collapse.

The Vex were artificially implanted onto Mercury by the Witness for the purpose of creating a prediction engine. And not only that but they were meant to wait for the Witness's return.

Which they responded to in the last chapter of Trials and Tribulations:

Vance stood in the old Lighthouse, frantically assembling the Infinite Simulacrum: a machine formed from bits of simulation seeds and connective Vex architecture to mimic a pocket forest. Textured notes and schematics derived from Osirian lore guided his hand. He heard stories from passing Guardians of increasingly frequent coronal mass ejections. Vast bursts of charged particles whipped into space and furled around a gravitational monster buried from sight and sense in the roar of the star-wind. Passage to Mercury had become more dangerous for the uninitiated. These unnatural motions were heralds of speculation, and he had read the signs. He knew the prophecies by heart and mind and intention. Ruin. Something new |and so very old| emerged, brother to a shriveling star: An angular |hungering patient yawning deep| shadow reached across Mercury. Uncounted |known| spires fell under its grasp |with uniform relief|. Dulcet tones brought low under lightless breadth and the weight of dark |salvation| hummed beneath the shadow. Their echoes spilled out |awakened| and flowed over crumbling spires |in conversation|. One singular spec of illumination blinked into being, |an end| seen by none, and then |many| spread as the shadow did. The old Lighthouse |spire's collective| beamed |rose| and flared as shadow overtook it |to meet the underbelly|. Vance |the implement| could hear |their inspired voices| weeping, not with tears, but in the |voracious| low |ceremonial| hum he had come to associate with death. He closed his eyes |and saw what was to come|. This day had many names. None would suffice.

We know now that memory and consciousness is linked to the darkness, and in turn links to simulations. Is that why they made a prediction engine? Were the Vex on Mercury meant to help the Witness expedite the path to the final shape? Were they left in limbo because of Savathun's betrayal? Osiris saw what the Witness's final shape would result in within the Infinite Forest, was this the end goal the Vex were meant to look for? Was the Witness using the Vex as herbicides on Mercury,

I don't know what's going on with the Vex or the Black Garden or Mercury and its implications are driving me fucking insane. I don't even know what I'm getting at here anymore I just need you to understand that there is Something Here and I Can't Fucking Touch It. I started off trying to find meaning behind the change in the Vex if they changed at all but the rabbit hole just kept getting deeper.

Do the vex not understand Paracausality because the Traveler and the Veil were once one? I mean I made up this whole apple metaphor about how if you knew everything about an apple but then suddenly the apple was split into two separate things and the apple simply did not even exist as a concept anymore wouldn't you be just as confused? Also they say the Vex need to Veil in order to finally understand Paracausality. Is that why they don't? Because they only knew the two when they were one?

Does anyone hear me. What the fuck is happening. What's going on. What is the purpose of the Lighthouses. Why did the Witness plant the Vex there. Why did the Witness call Calus specifically to the Mercury anomaly. What's so important about Vance and the Tones for Osiris's memories of them to have possibly been removed!? (ANOTHER POST TO BE MADE.) Why was Sister Faora mentioned? WHAT DOES IT MEAN. I'm losing my train of thought there's just So Much Here.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE VEX AND MERCURY

#lore.exe #cyrus.exe #destiny the game #destiny 2 #destiny vex #MAN I DON'T EVEN KNOW #I CAN'T BE CONCISE WITH THIS LIKE I WANTED TO THE MORE I LOOKED INTO THINGS THE MORE I FOUND

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