#the sentients hld

[carnivoured]

RANDOM THOUGHTS AGAIN!!! FEATURING ALTIE, THE SENTIENTS, AND THE TECHIE!!!!

altie straps the bodies of the sentient that are still somewhat intact onto her back and teleporting back to central town one by one. she drags them to the tech shop, asking if the techie is able to access whatever was used to code and program the sentients. since he has a lot of experience with this kind of technology, hes able to access its coding and A.I. or whatever is going on inside of the machine’s core. the two work together, trying to see if they can rewrite its code somehow and get them to become allies (or let them live like the tall robot in town next to the mini garden)

it takes them several days and a lot of tries to create a program they can use to do this. when they do get it eventually, the dash master and apothecary got curious, watching the two as they work for days on end, studying the coding style and making an entire book full of notes on how the lab lizard-folk had used their technology (and altie eventually realized she should’ve gotten the red papers put on the wall that tracked the sentients development. so she went back into the facilities and returned with a bunch of them).

they print out mini photos of the posters altie brings in, pasting them into the book. the dashmaster aids in recreating parts for the sentients, especially for the summoner which had lost part of its torso and an entire leg…

when techie and altie finally get it, they celebrate by going out to drink. next day they get everything ready, preparing to turn them on and see if it actually had worked..

just some random thought,,,

I love the sentients!!!!

[riftiee]

hi I got you on my tl because I follow the hld tag and saw the ask talking about what the game is about! I've beaten the game myself but I have pretty much no knowledge of the lore , I know you weren't wanting to talk about it bc spoilers but do you know where I could learn more? I don't think the wiki is a good place is it? is there a wiki that's not the Fandom one that might be better? :0

[SPOILERS FOR HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER]

Forgive me, I’m pretty sleepy and typing this on my phone, but I’ll take a crack at it ;]

sadly Hyper Light Drifter doesn’t really have a great comprehensive lore wiki that is all in one place. The game itself is very interpretive and the lore is pretty ambiguous, a big part of it is a lot about filling in the blanks.

An important thing to note is that the game itself was inspired by Alx Preston’s (the creator) congenital heart disease. There is a lot of symbolism relating to this concept throughout the game.

One of the most important parts of lore in the game comes from the Monoliths. Once you locate all of the Monoliths, you reach a library room containing every monolith plus a bonus walk of text. The bonus wall of text, after being translated, reads:

“HARNESSING A GREAT WELLSPRING, A PERFECT IMMORTAL CELL WAS CRAFTED TO BE IMBUED WITHIN ALL SENTIENT LIFE A NOBLE GOAL, THOUGH SUCH A POWER TERRIFIED OTHERS, AND BROUGHT RUIN AS ITS PURPOSE WAS TRANSMOGRIFIED THE ABHORRENT CELL STILL FESTERS DEEP IN THE CHAMBERS OF THIS WORLD”

Knowing that Judgement is also known as the Perfect Immortal Cell, we are able to figure out that HLD is set in a world where scientists (?) created the ‘immortal cell’, Judgement, by harnessing the power of something called the Great Wellspring [Anubis]. I believe the Perfect Immortal Cell’s original intention was to, well, grant the people of the Land of Light immortality… but some people were fearful of of this power, and so eventually, a war broke out, which caused the Immortal Cell to become corrupted, creating what we now know as Judgement.

It is unclear what the four Titans came from and what their intended purpose is, but we do know that they were somehow involved in the war. It is often theorized that Judgement was the one who ‘activated’ the titans. The four Titans ravaged the land, wiping out almost everything in their path, and completely wiping out the South zone, leaving it as an uninhabited desert. They were all eventually ‘killed’, leaving their ‘skeletons’ to litter the Land of Light.

After the Titans ravaged the land, in order to try and contain the Immortal Cell/Judgement, the remaining population gathered together and trapped the Immortal Cell in an underground cavern in order to prevent it from being able to harm anyone anymore. This same underground cavern under the central town is where the final battle of the game takes place.

The Immortal Cell (at least up until the events of the game) has festered beneath the earth ever sense, waiting. However, for some reason which is unclear, Judgement still haunts the Drifters, giving them frightening, violent visions and presumably causing them their illness.

Again, as I’ve states before, there is seriously just a TON of extra stuff that I can’t even begin to dig into… This game is absolutely full of little secrets. Alx Preston has also done a lot of Heart To Heart streams in which he talks about the lore of Hyper Light Drifter, so if you’re ever interested, those are a cool thing to check out; He gives a lot of interesting little details that we otherwise may not have every known!

Overall the game is intended to be pretty vague, and is extremely symbolic. A lot of it is meant to be left up to interpretation, so take it as you will…! There’s some really great posts out there on Reddit, as well as this Youtube video which does a MUCH better job than I could ever do at explaining the lore in much more detail.

Sorry if this was a bit convoluted or not what you asked for, but I do hope this helps “:] Thank you for the ask, as always!!!

[beatcroc]

on the pink stuff [which i’ve taken to calling “the wellspring” after that one paragraph of text] and how it relates to the immortal cell/judgement, anubis, and drifters: note: this is my beta-version spec; i’m working on a significant revision in light of stuff i didn’t know when first making this post, but i still wanted to finish most of this up and put it out there since i spent a lot of time thinking about it :Y

this sorta started when i finally found my way back to the tutorial area/archive room. to me, it seemed the reason judgement tries to prevent you from getting to that archive at the beginning is to obscure any information it can about the immortal cell and its relation to/interaction with that.

i’m not…exactly sure what i want to say the wellspring’s role in the creation of the immortal cell was. certainly, having that much energy available plays a huge part in just being able to build technology or do research to aid in making something like an immortal cell, but i’m starting to think that the cell is was actually crafted directly from the wellspring, through some kind of refinery process. like, the pink energy is obvious pretty volatile when not handled properly or in some of its forms and i don’t... think you’d want something that reactive in a cell “to be imbued within all sentient life”. failed experiments with beings given beta-version immortal cells is a whole other Thing that i’m not gonna bother getting into though, haha. 

anyway, perhaps they found some way to separate out or process away the less stable elements of wellspring material, making it essentially pure, inexhaustible energy that wouldn’t burn itself out on intense reactions or just outright degrade whatever living thing came in contact with it.

HOWEVER, those reactive parts of the chemical still Exist; i believe at some point that concentrated leftover slurry gained a sentience of its own, becoming Judgement. maybe it was sparked by the huge explosion, who knows. but since judgement is now a sentient being it can freely seek out its counterpart and use that power as it wishes, corrupting it to be put to its own use and preventing mortals from getting to it. as a side note it really can’t just recombine into the raw wellspring material since both counterparts are fundamentally different substances now and have taken on properties of their own :b 

tldr: the immortal cell is refined pink stuff and judgement is the volatile parts that were refined out of it.

-

so, drifters. i firmly believe they are more resilient to the wellspring’s reactivity-not IMMUNE obviously, but they can generally survive its effects way longer than most other species [or most other individuals? depends on how you define what a drifter is; whether they’re just the blue-skinned race, or beings that have a sprite and have taken to a drifter’s job. EITHER WAY.]; they’re the only ones we see affected by the illness ingame, but i think that’s simply because everyone else who had been affected by it already died-see: guardian’s family. their resilience may also be evidenced by that first needle in the eastern area with other corpses blown outward from it. that could be taken…several ways, but as our drifter proceeds to interact with it no problem, i’m going to chalk it up with a resistance to and/or expertise in handling the material. 

from the way stuff on the kickstarter is worded, i don’t think our drifter had ever been to the places we explore ingame before? the events in the opening probably had worldwide effect of some kind [maybe that’s what afflicted him? i really honestly don’t know HOW he got his illness, but that doesn’t pa r ticul a lr y matter for the sake of this post; we just need to know that it’s pretty serious and had been affecting him for Awhile by the time anubis enlists him and the game takes place], and drifter has finally tracked down- or perhaps been led to-the epicenter of them; what we’re playing is the final steps in a long journey. guardian had been living in these parts for awhile though; he’s much older and father along in the sickness than our drifter, but he knows the land and looks to have had much the same quest as drifter’s. i’m not sure why he didn’t collect any of the modules before drifter got there, maybe he was just too far gone to bother trying? if that’s the case, he’s probably pretty glad that drifter came along as someone to pass his quest and findings to haha…

anubis is what I’m having the most trouble concretely connecting with everything else. i don’t think the wellspring is directly the source or output of her power or anything, but as a god [especially the only one we know to exist in hld’s world] she’s in-tune with all the energy in their world, and as it happens the greatest reserve of this resides in the wellspring. mind you, i’m not overlooking that her eyes are the same shade as that energy; color similarities usually mean SOMETHING, but i’m trying not to attribute too much to it. perhaps, as the four sectors began to figure out how to tap into that power, they caused an imbalance that made anubis come out of stasis and take a more active role in…whatever it is she actually does in that world aside from leading beings to the afterlife. probably an observation/moderation duty of some kind. on the other hand, I can see it as those 4 sectors collaborating to open a path to the world’s core, for whatever lies there. maybe that’s where anubis originally resided, maybe there was a particularly large reserve or a means of production of wellspring material there, who knows. but either way, opening a path to and tampering with the core and whatever was originally there seems to have played a role in anubis’ awakening. my best guess is that the rise of judgement, its taking over of the world’s core area, and corruption of the immortal cell [and tbh probably the creation of that in the first place] likely messed with her abilities and/or connections to the wellspring and its energy, prompting her to start recruiting other individuals [drifters] to give her a shot in restoring order.

i think the wellspring-related affliction plays a big part in why anubis works so closely with our drifter and guardian-it means they have firsthand contact with this stuff. i can even see it as a dual-sided thing, with her being the god of death and all, the sickness could bring them more in-tune with her “element”, while for them it means they’re more open to trusting and cooperating with her. even without that, perhaps their prolonged exposure to the wellspring just makes them more accessible to her [again, she could have more than a peripheral connection to it given the pink eyes] and more capable of accomplishing the goal of actually defeating judgement and doing Something about the immortal cell to prevent further imbalance [or bloodshed, going by the closing cinematic,] severing the the sectors’ connection to the core and whatever’s in it, and allowing her to return to stasis.

[carnivoured]

IDK if some canon story or background for the characters mentioned here has ever been released but here’s me talking about the sentients and what happened to the hanged man (sorry if there’s grammar or spelling issues)

the sentients recalling memories of their creators. maybe even their fellow sentients (specifically the main four rather than the random robotic enemies scattered across the map) if they had seen each other before for purposes related to a restriction on ‘friendly fire’.

maybe they do know each other, but they seem a lot more irrational than other fellow sentient machines. theres the automaton in the central town praying (it should be. the response it gives you is the same as when you interact with the hovering drones in the south). either the four boss sentients are underdeveloped or hostility is completely natural and intentional after their development. to be honest I doubt that though… I feel it’s an error and they’re underdeveloped when it comes to how to distinguish enemies from others… they were still in those liquid(?) tanks after all

it might just be for the game but the sentiments attack you immediately after seeing altie/drifter (like every other boss in the game) but I don’t known how it would benefit/would make sense to them like it did the other bosses. to the hierophant, drifter/altie is there to eliminate them because they're murderous frauds… the hermit (or big toad) is crazy. that thing is also controlled by whatever fungus has taken over his body… and then there’s the hanged man or the last general. the drifter is a blu, the people who he has been at war with all those years ago. hanged also has to be going through something… he’s just been through war and looks to have no idea what to do with his life… I mean his people are still encased in crystal and it seems that for whatever reason he’s also able to will the soldiers out of them but he hasn’t for the rest. so of course he’d attack any other non-tanu that enters his arena which is another reason why he’d fight the drifter but likely the primary reason he would attack altie. like the other three, I don’t think hanged is really evil. he’s broken by the tragedy of his land and people

aaaaanyways. now that I think about it, maybe they’re not underdeveloped (well they still could be but) and just haven’t had the right commands given to them before the fall of their creators. but going back to the underdeveloped thing,the sentients are war machines and it’s illogical for them to just destroy the first thing that approaches them right? even if they have enough power to overwhelm the enemy they’re facing the sentients were made to be weapons by their creators (maybe. or maybe they exist to… coexist with them. but I doubt that too)

thinking back to hanged man…. the poor guy,,, i really don’t think he’s evil. there are so many of his people still stuck in crystal but he hasn’t went on to release them. has he just broken out from his own crystal prison?? i think maybe he’s been out for a while, but maybe the time spent in there or just the thought of what happened to his people and him has broken him. or a mix of both. this isn’t the immortality they’ve been searching for. sure, their bodies can be immortalized in crystal for a certain time but of course that’s not the most ideal.

there are so many still trapped. while some soldiers may have the will to break free, so many others can’t or haven’t found out how yet. i don’t think the hanged man would be so selfish and keep his people there, the man has lost himself. that’s probably why he’s so blinded by rage at the sight of the player. he can’t let it happen again. also I feel like it just makes sense. the hermit is controlled, the hierophant is completely aware of what they’re doing, and the hanged man has lost himself.

+little headcanon here… I like to think he had a wife. maybe a child or children idkkk. but i like to think that maybe he lost them either before or after the war with the blu and it plays a huge part alongside the loss of his land and people in how much the guy has suffered

i might rewrite this in the future nd focus on the hanged man but oh well

[carnivoured]

I love the drunk hld they’re all I think about if anyone has headcanons for them pls send in asks or comments or whatever idk i just like him a lot.

or about any hyper light drifter character actually. i love the game and every single character so much like the sentients are on my mind too. please be insane about hld with me I’ve explored so much of the game and its story it’s in my. head

[beatcroc]

hld bosses: a summary

toad: piss bird wizard: annoying. hectic but doable crystal king: please chill false needle sentient: AAAAAAAAAAAAĄ́A͟͠À̧A̧A̶͜A̧̕A̡͘͠A̛̕͜A̸͜ energy orb sentient: STOP  scythe sentient: for the love of jackal don’t get close to it archer sentient: for the love of jackal don’t let it get far away from you final: easier than several of the preceding ones but holy shit