What about the traveler corpses?

Archive Atlas Rises v1.3
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A discussion that has so far been very absent: What the hell is up with all those dead travelers in abandoned buildings?

First of all, it would appear that travelers have been a very long-standing phenomenon. judging by the distribution, there’s hundreds of dead ones on every single planet in the universe (bar dead worlds. Nobody ever seems to die on those, but then it’s really difficult with all that Thamium lying around).

And the second weird thing is of course how their (our?) bodies apparently deform after dead. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that our characters are bipedal with two arms, as that seems to be the baseline building plan for intelligent life in the universe. At least the three known sapient species follow it. Judging by the hazard gloves, we also have a homo sapiens shaped hand.

The remains we find in abandoned buildings, however, seems to be more akin to psychedelic fungus (not that roughly human-shaped bipedal sapient fungi would be a completely novel idea, though).

Still, any speculations of what that stuff is, and how it seems to grow out of travelers dead bodies? Also, did the travelers themselves get reborn into a new generation, or were they all playing on permadeath? Reincarnation would at least go a tiny way to explaining why there are so many dead ones.

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Interesting. Nothing about the abandoned buildings ever made me think the corpses of travellers were there. The strange amorphous growths struck me as being more related to things various incarnations of the traveller had seen heard of, etc: The living ocean, the horrifyingly altered or mutated creature, the the merging of the sentinels with the beings who were studying them, the planet of thirsty glass.

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[quote=“Wulf, post:2, topic:1358”]
the merging of the sentinels with the beings who were studying them [/quote]
This is what a few of us are thinking. That when the dissected Sentinel uses the dimensional cage against its captors and merges with them, it causes a chain reaction in all the buildings where scientists, technicians and engineers are watching remotely. They merge with their electronics and become unfortunate amorphous cyber-organisms, a permanent fixture in the ruined structures, unable to tell their tragic tale as we pick our way gingerly around them.

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I agree, I think that is what happened to the various scientists, etc and may well be what we see in the abandoned buildings. I just think the travelers are not the scientists. Might or might not be the same species, but different individuals.

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I think this is all connected to waking titan.

In fact I’ve been thinking the next update will expand upon this ever since I finished the technicians quest line a few months back. One of the very last fetch quest missions (possibly the last) he sends yuou on ends with this line

"You leave, shaken by your experience.

As you go, you feel something right behind you, breathing, watching. When you turn it is gone."

which reminds me an awful lot of what the other travellers diaries refer to, and I think the bio-organism we see in abandoned buildings is part of whatever this, presence is. Like a grave-mind Flood from Halo type scenario.

And all the hints in waking titan have further confirmed to me that we are about to meet the great unclean one, by opening the portals and bridging the gap between players universes, we are going to let something unholy escape into those universes.

Heres that final missions full Transcript.

“You approach the monolith. You are engulfed in its terrible truth. You see its words in the text of a thousand tongues, in the ephemera of countless stars.You witness events that occurred millennia before your awakening. You see two Vy’keen standing before a red glow, asking it of the universe. You see a Gek and a Korvax, waiting side by side before you. And before the vision ends, you see a vision of something you have not seen before. Of something that does not belong in this or any place. Of hatred, grief, despair. Of something that is yet to come.You see all this, and then it is over. The monolith has nothing more to show you.
Know that I heard the word of the Atlas where Hirk had heard nothing. In its rage, in its impotent jealousy, Hirk struck me from the mountain and I saw the truth of what the Monolith had said. That my end would be an awakening. That in this dream, nothing should perish. Or so it would be until the Travellers. So it would be until the destruction of realities. Know this, the final testament of Nal…
You leave, shaken by your experience.”

This is also a huge turning point for Vy’Ken lore in the game as you find out Hirk isn’t all he’s made out to be and that most of their history is a complete lie.

To me the story gained from this quest line was one of the best things about pathfinder and I’m so glad it wasn’t just there for flavor, it did seem to foreshadow Waking Titan for us.

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“This is also a huge turning point for Vy’Ken lore in the game as you find out Hirk isn’t all he’s made out to be and that most of their history is a complete lie.”

Well, you find out that Nal has a different opinion. Also, since Nal had all these experiences just before and during his death dive… How did the story get out? How does the exocraft tech follower of Nal know what Nal experienced if Nal went splat right after experiencing it? I just assume such quasi religious game lore is no different from RL religious lore: bullshit invented by the followers for their own ends. The story of Hirk and Nal just tell us how some Vykeen think, not what happened.

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Hey, according to legend, he had six days and six nights to phone home about it before going splat! :smile:

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Rofl!!! Indeed so the legend says. However, as seasoned travelers, we well know there are no mountains that high in the NMS universe. Clear evidence that, if the legend is true, it happened in a universe outside the simulation where mountains are higher, gravity more varied and / or atmospheres thicker.

:wink:

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My understanding of the monliths is, they are showing you visions of past events so nobody had to tell or write anything down, its a simulated universe were every bit of data is logged, monoliths just hit the replay button I guess?

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Hi Guys!

As other users did (can’t find the person to tag rn) I was watching oldgods profil and the location he wrote (49°51′S, 128°34′W)
I think I found something weird that might just be a complete coïncidence but still interesting.
Wikipedia explanation for the location:
-“R’lyeh is a fictional lost city that first appeared in the H. P. Lovecraft short story “The Call of Cthulhu”, first published in Weird Tales in June 1928.”
-“R’lyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to non-Euclidean geometry”

Than I found this old video game called Penny Arcade’s Precipice of Darkness Ep. 4.

Can you see that there’s exactly the same tentacles we find on mms abandoned site moving on the floor? And what about those colored balls on the ground?? Kinda looks familiar to me.
And what about the last boss we see? Called “The Brain”?

Am I tripping? :smile:

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Nah you’re just seeing lovecraftian influences across both IP’s :slight_smile: The abandoned buildings have always been steeped in a sort of cosmic horror. But I love making all these connections, good find :smiley:

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