Pandemonium Backstory?

[Armozel]

Big problem with stating the universe isn't expanding. Well first of all red-shift measures are pretty accurate. I haven't found a single peer reviewed source that presents a rebuttal to redshift measures. As for entropy not applying to quantum mechanics. Sorry that's wrong. It does apply in a general application model and it does explain several oddities of quantum mechanics such as why many events are irreversible even when a few events in quantum mechanics do in fact reverse... Etc etc. Basically we know the universe is expanding, it's been settled. What hasn't been settled to what rate the expansion is going at and why isn't it stopping or slowing down. Some postulate gravity drops off at a certain point but present evidence and theories suggest gravity has an infinite range. So with all that jazz out there, that's my opinion and all.

-- Bridget

[Cypho]

Finally someone who knows a bit.

Well, red-shift only tells you that light coming from far away shifts to a lower frequency, but that can be because light loses energy over vast distances, it doesn't mean the object is speeding away from you. It's one of the theories, nothing more. The Universe is NOT expanding ( nor will it shrink, ever ), it's just is, even if it's hard to conceptualize. I have not seen ONE piece of evidence to the expanding theory, so as long as it's just a concept I will treat it as one.

( I was referring to the Third Law of Thermodynamics not applicable to the Quantum level and not the General Model. )

[Veg_O_Matic]

Finally someone who knows a bit.

Given the infantile nature of human cosmological knowledge, you're both pretty
amusing..

[Keldros]

If you think the Omega are no longer a secret, you need to re-read the novella.

And if you think they are, you should try talking to one.

[Keldros]

Why would they not claim relation by saying "our divine ancestor" as opposed to
"the ancient" ??

There is no implied connection or relationship. (other than worshipper and diety)

It all depends on whether you think of the Xan as a species or a culture.

I don't claim Thomas Jefferson as a relative, but that doesn't imply that we're from different countries, let alone different species. Clearly we're both Americans, although by no means would I ever be considered a "colonist" or "Founding Father."

Likewise Xan society split into Redeemed and Unredeemed factions. The immortals who were around at the time are ancient Xan and they are also called Redeemed or Unredeemed according to the faction they joined. Those born after the fall of Xan society are only Redeemed or Unredeemed. They may be the same faction (and possibly even the same species) but they were never a part of the original Xan society.

[Veg_O_Matic]

And if you think they are, you should try talking to one.

If the Omega are operating openly then the entire backstory is irrelevant.

And the more I read and play in SL, it appears that Ragnar Tournquist's original
novella has been pretty much forgotten (or never understood by those that
implemented SL) and that very few of the original story elements survive intact.

On a side note:

Min Ji Liu was one of the crew of the Atlantean, is it explained how she got to be a
pocket boss ? (I have not heard what she says or does or whatever)

And is there ever an explanation of what happened to the Behemoth during it's
39 year time dilation ?

[Veg_O_Matic]

It all depends on whether you think of the Xan as a species or a culture.

I don't claim Thomas Jefferson as a relative, but that doesn't imply that we're from different countries, let alone different species. Clearly we're both Americans, although by no means would I ever be considered a "colonist" or "Founding Father."

lol, "founding father" implies relationship, "ancient Xan" does not.

And I was led to believe that "Xan" is the name of a species, not a culture.

[Cypho]

Veg_O,

Min Ji was part of the crew and she died. One of the Omega - with the help of the Unredeemed - successfully prevented her soul from going wherever your particular religion believes dead people go and captured it. What you do in the quest is trying to free her by "summoning" her spririt to the Shadowlands and asking her what happened.

Xan were both a species and a civilization. They split into Redeemed/Unredeemed, changed into something else through the millenia and stopped being Xan, losing their cultural heritage in the process. The actual Redeemed/Unredeemed creatures you see in the gardens/temples are descendants of the Xan.

[Keldros]

eh, on the current subject, Ergo.....
just lately i've finished the ring quest for access to Scheol *coughyeswithmymaincough* and i've been talking to Ergo a whole lot there and from what he said (too bad i was too lazy for screenshots) he was actually just a "normal" (meaning without a consciousness of his own) computer system in charge of controlling the flow of notum but over time hackers (well he calls them hackors or something but come on) put in more and more small pieces of code that the official maintenance people kept trying to remove (Ergo himself doesn't really get it though and he thinks this is some sort of game they've been playing, sorta like chess or something. he said "i'm sure it must have been fun for everyone involved" or something to that effect) but then, after it was completed and started running it gave Ergo a sense of self, existence, consciousness, whatever you want to call it.

I just remembered this old post. Is it coincidence that some of the aliens are hackers?

[Sylverbane]

I just remembered this old post. Is it coincidence that some of the aliens are hackers?

Now that is a connection i havent seen before. Were aliens even more invovled than we think?

FC need to make an ingame libray hall where people can go look up information to make sense of all of this

[kranden]

Zodiac brave story anybody? Nobody played Final Fantasy Tactics?

[Rukus]

lol

[Sup4L33t]

Anyone ever notice the redemmed and unredemmed garden statues buried in rubbles inside the Crypt of Home?

[Zemkarik]

Just a couple of thoughts that I've had don't know if other people have thought of these before...

But it was said that the aliens came here because they started dying all the sudden and found the source to be Rubi-Ka so they come here and start killing us.

1st it could be that it took them a long time to get here and we just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

2nd it could be that it's the notum being mined and they are dying because of that. But I do not think it is this because the Notum has been being mined for a long time, and it's been said that the aliens just suddenly started feeling danger. It wasn't a gradual shirt to feeling this fear.

3rd and I feel this to be the most likely. The creatures in the SL have a link with the real world. There have been hints that if you affect something in the SLs that something happens in the real world. So lets just do an assumption that if we kill something in the SL that something dies in the RL. But what is everyone killing in the SLs? Is it the end boss that everyone is killing? No no not at all, not everyone is killing the end boss, and as a matter of fact it kills alot of people.

No what we are killing in the shadow lands are the Hecklers. We all kill them, from low level to high level people are killing Hecklers.

So there is some food for thought for you, what if the aliens don't care one bit that we are mining notum, but care more that we are killing hecklers because every time we kill a heckler one of the aliens dies.

[Whisperwill]

I've just noticed this thread recently, and some excellent points have been made. I think I could add something to the discussion because no one has mentioned the importance of the Channelers to Pandemonium and the overall story.

According to information gathered in the Bazzit quest, the most psychic of the aliens are known as Channelers and are able to maintain psychic connections spanning entire galaxies. As previously mentioned, the aliens have a way to reach the source from the edges of the universe, and the only method mentioned so far with that kind of range is through these Channelers.

The shades have already shown that a being can be psychically drained of its energy through the use of the spirit siphon. Now imagine a much more powerful being able to use this same type of effect over vast distances to channel enormous amounts of spiritual energy. An entire network of channelers could exist, funneling the source energy to the aliens in the far corners of the universe by passing it from galaxy to galaxy.

Assuming this is how the aliens tap into the source, what would be the focus of this channeling? To tap into source energy, what if the aliens were able to psychically drain the Beast itself?

Also revealed in Bazzit's quest, the scientists who discovered the first alien crash were driven insane when the aliens committed psychic suicide. The significance of this may be that the psychic abilities of the aliens have the potential to distort the minds of whoever comes into contact with them. How much more so if this being is drained of energy and used as a resource?

The original cataclysm that split the Shadowlands from Rubi-Ka was presumably caused by the Unredeemed draining too much source energy, but the corruption did not end with the split. Since both Redeemed and Unredeemed were cut off from the source, this either means that the increasing corruption is nothing more than the result of this ancient mistake or that someone is still taxing the source, just as the Xan did.

It would seem that the aliens have the exact ability that the Unredeemed have been searching for -- direct access to the source energy through the Channelers. This might also explain the continuing corruption of Pandemonium and everything inside it. The corrupted Redeemed and Unredeemed in Pandemonium might have been the first few failed attempts by both factions to secure the source, before they realized that they needed another plan. So why have both Redeemed and Unredeemed failed where the aliens have succeeded?

The most obvious reason would be that neither Redeemed nor Unredeemed can get close to the source without being corrupted themselves, possibly by the same type of psychic distortions that drove the scientists insane. If this is true, it might mean that the aliens had successfully blocked access to the source to anyone but themselves.

So, how would the Redeemed and Unredeemed solve this? If the aliens had established a psychic lock-down on the source, the most logical solution would be to engineer a race of servants that was powerful and intelligent enough to reach the source but not psychically attuned enough to be affected by the corruption of Pandemonium.

The Redeemed, believing that the source is not something to be exploited, would have no reason to directly control whatever successors would eventually reach the source, as long as they would not exploit it in the same way as the aliens. And so they would travel abroad, seeding life in the hopes that a worthy race would eventually return to them, then returning to the Shadowlands themselves to guard access to the source to be sure that those who returned would be worthy.

The Unredeemed, seeking to control the source, would take a different path. They would not risk just anyone returning to claim the source; they would want to control the progress of whoever returned, molding the perfect servants.

If the aliens do tap into the source as the Xan once did, whether this began before or after the seeding is unimportant, only that it occurred sometime between the cataclysm and the twentieth century, when the Unredeemed began to make humanity into their servants.

The event that leads me to believe that the aliens were a model for the Unredeemed's plan for humanity is the emergence of the Empaths. Their similarity to the Channelers seems too unlikely to be coincidence, especially considering how deliberate the Unredeemed are in their directing of human progress. I would tend to believe that the Empaths show the manifestation of the same types of psychic abilities that allow the aliens to channel the source and that this is the role that the Unredeemed had planned for humanity all along -- to serve as their own Channelers.

However, before the Unredeemed could execute this plan to channel the source for themselves, they would need to remove the Beast, who both guarded the source and served as the source of energy for the aliens. A race evolved enough to possess the psychic aptitude of the Channelers would likely be as sensitive to the corruption of Pandemonium as the Unredeemed themselves, and a lesser race would likely be too weak to remove the guardian. And so the Unredeemed chose the moment that humanity would destroy the Beast just before they had evolved enough to fall to the corruption, empowering them in their journey through the Shadowlands and preparing them for their task. The Redeemed also wanted humanity to access the source, presumably to remove the alien exploiters, and so both factions moved their creations in the same direction.

At the moment when the Beast was killed, a thousand voices screamed out as the psychic connection with the universal network of Channelers was severed, causing a massive psychic backlash powerful enough to kill most of them and cripple the aliens by removing them from the source. This tragedy caused them to search for the event that caused the death of these Channelers, and they discovered that their focal point had been destroyed. Without their connection to the source, the basis of all their power was lost, and so they invaded Rubi-Ka to reclaim their power.

Omni-Tek had prepared for this alien invasion from the time the first portal into the Shadowlands was opened. How did they know? Since it has been revealed that the Unredeemed manipulated them all along, it would be logical to assume that the Unredeemed knew that their servants would succeed, that the aliens would be crippled, and that they would need to fight for the right to claim the source for their own.

Of course, this is all speculation, but there are several strong clues in the game that this is at least generally true. The aliens' connection to the source, Omni-Tek's preparations for the invasion, and the Unredeemed's goals to gain control of the source through humanity all point to these events leading to our current situation on Rubi-Ka.

And so what is next? Will the aliens successfully defeat humanity and re-establish their connection to the source? Will Omni-Tek prevail and secure access to the source for the Unredeemed as they planned? Or will humanity find their own path and become benevolent guardians of the source as the Redeemed seem to want? I'm anxious to see.

[Whisperwill]

On another subject, in relation to the temple in home...

Number Nine clearly seems to be placed at the portal from the source by the aliens, just by the way it looks, although when it warns of the coming invasion, the voice clearly switches to another speaker who identifies himself as the Beast, or at least the one who became the Beast.

If this is not just a recorded message, then Number Nine might be part of the technology that allows the aliens to access the source, possibly amplifying their psychic reach in addition to being a monitoring droid.

It could be that the spirit of the Beast simply used the most available means of communication, or it could be that this was actually a pre-recorded message. In that case, the Beast might have been somewhat sane at the time of the recording. Number Nine mentions (possibly as a joke) that it has been modified in the past. Perhaps the Beast modified it to send out this message before he became completely corrupted.

The temple seems to be built specifically for the purpose of connecting to the Source, and it was almost certainly built on the surface of Rubi-Ka before Omni-Tek arrived. This is indicated not only by its contents, but by the Shadowlands runes in its entrance.

What exactly those runes mean, I haven't figured out yet.

A good portion of the runic alphabet has been deciphered by Dyna18 at http://ao.stratics.com/content/shado...es/index.shtml

A few missing pieces can be picked up from the glyph items in-game. Each glyph corresponds to the first letter of the one it represents.

White Sun Glyph of Xum gives 'X' as the 4th and 7th letters of the top word.
Purple Star Glyph of Bhotaar gives 'B' as the first letter of the bottom word.
Orange Moon Glyph of Roch gives 'R', but this is not used.

An interesting thing about the runes on the temple of Home is that they are all reversed, showing mirror images of their Shadowlands equivalents. Whether this is to show that the two are mirror worlds, a graphics glitch, or if it has some other meaning important to understanding the runes is unclear.

So the message over the temple of Home reads (with similar characters inserted for unknown runes):

I<NXYGX\
BAI^

From the resources available, only "F," "J," "K," "Q," "W" are unknown in rune form.

The "<" symbol is almost equivalent to the Shadowlands "L," but if that is what it is meant to represent, it would be the only non-reversed character in the message, which wouldn't make much sense.

Other messages in the Shadowlands might have the key to these missing letters, but even with all the letters, it would still appear to be meaningless. If anyone wants to take a crack at decoding it, I'd be interesting to hear what you think.

[Rukus]

It's impossible to decode. I've got a notebook full of attempts.

[Whisperwill]

Hmm, I was afraid of that.

I did look inside the temple more closely this time, and I noticed that it's spelled the right direction inside, so there's probably not too much significance to its being backwards, but you never know.

I did also notice GXNI spelled on a few banners inside. Also, I wonder about the other pictures in the temple. The most interesting is a human form almost in the fetal position in a box surrounded by A's on all sides. "A" for aliens? May sound too simple, but the runes might have other symbolic meanings. If what's written in the temple isn't a foreign language, maybe it has some direct meaning, like the pictures showing the "A" and what looks like an "N" symbol in a relationship to what seems to be the pyramid in Home and the source.

My guess? Behind the north door of the temple, in the pyramid, there will probably be another boss waiting, related somehow to the aliens, elightenment through the source, etc. etc. Maybe even the gateway to the next expansion.

Most likely the aliens had been watching humans for a while -- maybe as a neutral Xan faction, maybe as an early creation of the Redeemed, maybe even as something that came before the Xan. There's probably some meaning beyond the asthetics of the words written in the temple that will reveal itself in time, maybe only decipherable by knowing what the symbols represent beyond letters. Not much, but it is interesting.

[Citann]

I haven't got through the whole thread yet but

as far as i can tell, humans aka homo solitus are the direct implementation of the old Xan form as seeded by the Redeemed but without the power , and the Red/Unred also have a solitus form as evidenced by looking at any piece of thar's armor

"Thar decided to meet the Lady Xum, and he invited her to meet him in Elysium. They agreed on wearing their ancient shapes, the shapes of the Xan. For 250 man-years they dwelled there in each others arms. A long time for man but just a moment for the ancients. They parted and went back to their homes, saturated with love, agreeing that they should never meet again. "

and something i thought about, continously the brink is referred to eating away at SL and falling down into a vortex, now while it's probably assumed that the vortex leads to nothingness , what if the shadowlands are falling onto the Alien's home world, or that the Aliens home world is composed of the fallen pieces of the shadowlands , and until JAME and the rest of rubi ka started poking their heads into it it was almost stable , but now with the fall of the beast the Aliens are now able to detect where the source of their castrophe (assuming parts of SL are landing on their homes) and decide to put a stop to this

just some musings............anyone besides me think that the birth of the shadowlands would be a movie?

[TakeV]

Now, I'm only at Ely so far, but has anyone ever notest that the Vortex is always north? Where Pandmonium would be.