Shedding a Little Light

The Wuling region contains far fewer Originium and Ferrium ore deposits than Valley IV, no Amethyst, but copious amounts of Cuprium.

Future regions could shake things up again without needing to introduce any new minerals. Just by greatly changing the ratio of the existing four.

For example, we know that Originium is in such short supply on Talos-II that some crazy bastards are trying to engineer artificial Catastrophes in order to produce more of it.

Therefore, we could conceivably find ourselves trying to establish a new frontier base in a region where Originium ore is rarer than even in Wuling. A place that the Civilization Band struggled to tame before Endfield completed this new AIC technology.

I do think Amethyst will return in the third region, because of how many facilities require Amethyst parts to make, and how we won't be able to draw upon Valley IV anymore.

Thermal banks, packaging units, filling units, planting units, seed-picking units, loaders and unloaders, zipline pylons, easy stashes, memo beacons... Not to mention Industrial Explosives.

Some of those facilities could be replaced with regional variants made with a brand new mineral, but ALL of them?

And yes. I don't think Hypergryph is going to let the time and money spent on the Amethyst-derived Cryston assets go to waste. Cryston bottles WILL eventually have a use, I trust. We still haven't encountered the "aqua mordax" and "localized ferric chloride solvent" that Cryston bottles are used to contain.

=====

Let's lay out this roller-coaster, eh?

The timeline:

Beta: Specter, Blue Poison, Deepcolor, Cuora

Launch: Specter, Blue Poison, Deepcolor, Cuora

[Grani and the Knight's Treasure]: Skadi

[Heart of Surging Flame]: Glaucus and AUS

Chinese : Purestream

[Episode 7]: Weedy and Elysium

[Heart of Surging Flame] rerun: Andreana, Thorns, AUS again

[Great Chief Gavial Returns]: AUS again

Global : Purestream

[Episode 8]: Whisperain

"For a Better Self" in [Beyond Here]

[Under Tides], Gladiia, and Skadi the Corrupting Heart

"Forgotten Lighthouse" in [Preluding Lights]

[Dossoles Holiday]: Mizuki

[Stultifera Navis] (global got this before Dossoles)

"Powered Exoskeleton", Glaucus's Module DEC-X (Lingering Echoes)

"Untouchable", Blue Poison's Operator Record (Dorothy's Vision)

"Hardcore Drink", Indigo's Operator Record (Ideal City)

[Mizuki and Caerula Arbor]

>Beta<

In Arknights’ closed beta, Blue Poison was counted among the Abyssal Hunters. Possibly Deepcolor too.

To this day, Blue Poison retains her “Network” identifications as AA03 despite being neither an Aegirian nor an Abyssal Hunter. Deepcolor is AA04. Specter is AA02, with Skadi being AA01 despite debuting after the game’s launch (and quite possibly despite onboarding after Specter, apparently).

When Gladiia debuted (as AA05), a glitch in her base skill included Blue Poison as an Abyssal Hunter, but also included Deepcolor, Weedy, and Whisperain. This was quickly patched out.

In any case: When Arknights launched, only Specter was counted among the Abyssal Hunters. Deepcolor and Blue Poison were rebranded with the logo of Rhodes Island, though their places in the “Network” map remained close to Specter’s, and Blue Poison had a relationship link to Specter.

Specter

Her race? Undisclosed. Why? Was even the mention of her people's name breaking a secret? Yet her place of birth is clearly listed as "Aegir".

Given this and later factors, perhaps Kal'tsit refused to disclose her race because technically she was half Sea Monster and Kal'tsit wasn't about to lie or reveal that fact.

Fun fact: Specter's 'place of birth' would be the ONLY instance of the word "Aegir" in the entire game, until [Grani and the Knight's Treasure].

If not for the name of her faction in the Network map, there wouldn't be a single mention of the 'Abyssal Hunters'. Her archive files do not contain that name at all.

Naturally, the player base wondered whether the name referred to those who hunted things from an abyss, or to hunters who hailed from an abyss. The ambiguity isn't helped by the fact that the ocean has depths which could seem like an abyss even to those who live at higher elevations of the ocean floor.

Regardless, Specter certainly spoke like someone from under the water:

[Idle] "Hearken... Hear the whispers of vast creation's master, echoing from the deep..." [Deployment 1] "I come from the depth of the ocean." [Battle 2] "Return to the abyss!"

Yet we could only speculate whether Aegir itself were located under the water, or above it. Supposedly, Specter came from a convent on dryland, but we had no idea where it would have been.

We never heard the name "Iberia" until the "For a Better Self" vignette of [Here Beyond]. And it would a little longer until we knew that's where Specter escaped from.

We likewise couldn't count on her buzzsaw polearm being an Aegirian weapon, given the Rim Billiton logo on the saw blade. Only future canon would reinforce the theory that Rhodes Island made this weapon for her to replace a weapon lost either to the sea or the Cult of the Deep.

Was Aegir a coastal nation? Did they have convents? Were the Abyssal Hunters a kind of religious combat order? Did they oppose or serve this "master from the depths"?

Despite her focus on 'ocean depths', in her [Assigned to Facility] voiceline, she says, "May I ask you to assign me to a room where I can see the starry sky?"

What's more, her promotion record features a morbid "folksong of a faraway land" found in her personal belongings, which assigns importance to the night sky, with and without stars.

When she prayed, The stars ceased to shimmer And when she wept, The night let out a smile. And as she lamented, The anguish sprawled upon her madness

While she was still lucid, she said she had "once again gotten entangled in a dark conspiracy" -- as though this had happened to her more than once. She also claimed to want to deliver a message, before she lost her chance along with her mind.

Specter was oddly unique from other operators in lacking any obvious animal traits, except for those mimicked by her clothing. Also, she was the only operator with a 'Weight' listed, though that value is obscured with question marks.

At the time, she was also the only operator with a 'Flawed' Originium Arts evaluation, as well as two 'Outstanding' evaluations in her physical parameters. But at the time, these things seemed unrelated. After all, her medical records gave no hint that anything was being hidden or classified from the rest of the medical department, or from the Doctor.

Given that in her last moments of sanity, Specter attempted to tear the wimple (nun's headware) off, we concluded that either the wimple contained some sort of 'kill switch' that only then triggered and hurt her... or she was not truly a nun, and for some reason only tried to tear apart the facade in a final panic.

Was she really a nun?

Deepcolor

Her race? Also undisclosed. And like Specter, she lacked any obvious biological trait from her basis animal.

Her place of birth? Despite her claims of being from Columbia, this is also listed as 'undisclosed', and we're warned to take everything she's said about her past with a grain of salt.

The clues from the beta, the clues left in the Network, her basis-animal and everything else about her as an operator screamed "FISHY!", in both senses.

But where Specter was physically mighty and magically inept, Deepcolor was the very opposite.

Where Specter came to Rhodes Island talking about messages and conspiracies before apparently losing her ability to reveal anything, Deepcolor came to Rhodes Island concealing everything... even if she was painfully obvious about it.

[Talk 1] "I feel like I'm not supposed to appear here..." [Promotion 1] "Um, could you just... stop caring about me? If you keep treating me like this... like I matter... I-I don't know what will become of me..."

She seemed like a spy sent by someone who (or something that) had no idea how to convincingly lie. As though the best this entity or organization could send was someone who told incredulous stories but at least would remember everything she saw in keen detail.

Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that the Abyssal Hunter logo is piercing an OCTOPUS with a trident?

Blue Poison

Everything about Blue Poison's personal history and origin was kept a secret and not disclosed; not even as much information as Specter's background, much less the tall-tales told by Deepcolor.

But unlike them, her files clearly state her race: Anura. What's more, her basis animal -- poison dart frogs -- are barely amphibious. As arboreal frogs in rainforests, they live most in the trees and the water captured above ground. Definitely not a sea creature.

Yet unlike Deepcolor, Blue Poison not only had a relationship link to Specter in the Network map, Blue's archive files revealed that she even knew Specter's real name. Which not even Specter seemed to know, anymore.

And where Specter was noted to have experience with fighting giant creatures, Blue Poison was rumored to be spotted fighting several clandestine battles against giant creatures.

In terms of abilities, she had neither the brute strength of Specter nor the strange and powerful Arts of Deepcolor.

Cuora

I forget Cuora's location in the original Network map, or whether the Columbia section yet existed at launch. I can't tell you whether she was or was not located near the Abyssal Hunter section.

For whatever it is worth, her network ID is 'IU05". Whatever that means.

Since I started the game at the same time that Skadi debuted, I also can't tell you if anyone initially suspected that Cuora was an Abyssal Hunter, or if that came a little later.

If barely-amphibious frogs could be 'sea creatures', then certainly a turtle could. And like Specter, Cuora's originium infection seemed to be confined entirely to her nervous system. At least in that she had no external crystals, and she had also suffered memory loss.

There was also the incredibly suspicious fact that she appeared at Rhodes Island conveniently remembering nothing about herself before she arrived... and no one at Rhodes Island could explain how she snuck on board in the first place. As if she was another spy, but planted in an extremely different way than the other possible spies.

On top of that, she possessed a strangely indestructible and irreproducible baseball bat and backpack-shield. Which would only become more suspicious when...

[Grani and the Knight's Treasure] and Skadi

...introduced us to Skadi's indestructible and irreproducible great sword!

While we now have a fairly solid and rigid idea of what an “Abyssal Hunter” looks like, we did not have such notions until Skadi’s debut in the game’s first side-story event. We would have accepted without question that Abyssal Hunters could have such wildly varying coloration, talents, and weaponry. Also that some Abyssal Hunters would have publicly known races (Anura) and not always allude to sea creatures (tree frogs).

Only when Skadi joined the roster did Hypergryph’s intent (old or new) for the Abyssal Hunters become more clear.

Guard-class Specter never had a faction-buffing Talent; Skadi started that trend. Skadi also established the Abyssal Hunter “look” by matching Specter’s color scheme so completely. Where Specter’s white hair, red eyes, black clothing, and absurd physical condition might have been particular to Specter before, with Skadi it became part of a ‘uniform’.

However, this didn't yet prove that Blue Poison wasn't a Hunter; just not one of the same category as Specter and Skadi. Why should a Sniper supporting melee-combatants with poisonous darts need the same muscle as the melee-combatants?

Why did both Specter's and Skadi's files clearly list their place of birth, unlike Blue Poison, but labeled their race(s) "undisclosed" like Deepcolor?

For a long while, Skadi's fourth archive file was the most we had to go on. Written by a sincere but unreliable narrator (the mysterious "four-squares" of the HR department) who interviewed a reluctant Skadi and came away with inaccurate ideas. Such as unwittingly conflating Aegir / the Abyssal Hunters with the Cult of the Deep, rather than two separate and opposing organizations.

A matter not cleared up by the side-story, either.

[GT-EX-1 After]

The flavor-text for this segment says that Specter is dreaming of a "song of ancient mythos", before she wakes up. It seems to be a sailor's song, composed by people who have never lived under the waves:

...We should stuff him into a sack... and hang him on the mast at dawn... ...We should slit his throat... and offer him to the ocean as a tribute to the raging hurricane...

...As 'cheerful' as the "folksong of a faraway land" found in her personal belongings, as revealed in her promotional record.

Specter refers to the church she left behind as "broken". She doesn't specify who or what broke it, only that it had fallen into ruin before she left it, and that her lost memories were "hidden beneath the shadows" of that church. "When I approach them, they turn into shackles and drag me down into the deep sea."

As though the 'deep sea' (the 'abyssal zone' of the ocean?) were enemy territory rather than her homeland.

Specter has seen Skadi at Rhodes Island before, but either never caught or could not remember Skadi's name. Specter acts as if this the first time they've met face-to-face, mentioning that Skadi shouldn't be able to enter her medical containment chamber without Kal'tsit's permission, or without the fear of being torn apart.

She doesn't even suspect that Skadi once knew her before either of them arrived at Rhodes Island.

Of being forgotten more times than Specter knows, Skadi says it doesn't matter. "Just treat me like any normal Rhodes Island Operator." She actually goes further, and says "you can forget all about me, just like before." Without specifying if this isn't the first time Skadi has had this conversation with her, or if Skadi is obliquely referring to their shared past from before Rhodes Island.

This seems consistent with how Skadi's files, voicelines, and screentime paint her as someone convinced everyone should avoid her, lest they die from the misfortune Skadi brings.

Regarding Specter's condition, Skadi says, "But soon there will be a way to escape your torment."

Specter laughs, and asks why she should trust Skadi. "Your aura... I'm quite familiar with it. No, it's your smell. It's an intense, pungent smell... the smell of blood... 'their' smell. The smell of the deep sea. It's a familiar and abhorrent smell."

Again, Specter is equating the deep sea with enemy territory rather than her homeland. What's more, she's accusing Skadi of smelling like those abyssal enemies.

[GT-HX-3 After]

There are two possibilities for Skadi smelling like Specter's half-remembered enemies: She either kills them so frequently as to have the smell cling to her, or she shares something of their nature.

In this vignette, Kal'tsit makes it clear that there is something seriously cursed about Skadi's blood, such that Skadi doesn't dare allow anything to make her bleed, and wouldn't have considered using her own blood to activate the "key" that Grani found.

I go into depth about that double-blind conversation in this other post.

As I lament about at length, the writer is so coy about having Skadi or Kal'tsit reveal anything that at times even they don't seem to know what they know, or what they think the other person knows. But Kal'tsit ominously ends the segment speaking the Aegir language as if knowing it is a big secret.

For a while yet, even as we learned more, we were left to wonder how Kal'tsit knew about Aegir. We even had suspicions that she might be older than Aegir, before we had the confirmation.

So it hits a little differently now to know that Kal'tsit's most likely source for knowing the Aegirian phrase "Abyssal Hunters are bound by blood", and what it means, was none other than Specter herself. Unwittingly betraying national secrets because that's what the Cult of the Deep brainwashed Laurentina to do, as an 'obedient nun'.

Glaucus

Introduced in [Heart of Surging Flame].

Race? Undisclosed, like Deepcolor, Specter, and Skadi.

Nowadays, I have to scratch my head at the secrecy. She's not a hybrid of any kind, so is this just a case of the writers being coy with us?

Meanwhile, Glaucus' publicly listed place of birth? "Aegir Region". Her profile? Says, "Glaucus was born in the Ægir Region, but left at an early age to wander about."

Neither of these things are still true. [Under Tides] and other future installments made it clear that Glaucus was born on Iberian soil, like all other Islanders born after the Great Silence.

But as of [Heart of Surging Flame], the game hasn't yet mentioned the name Iberia. It doesn't exist as a sector in the Network map. Glaucus's icon is located near the Abyssal Hunters.

As Glaucus herself tells it, her muscular atrophy is due to a hereditary disease passed down in her family. Even in a special ecological environment such as the Ægir Region, incidence of such hereditary disease is rare and there is currently no treatment available.

For a while, we were left to fairly assume Glaucus grew up underwater, especially as such an environment might have been more hospitable to her and the other members of her family whose legs degenerated. Some or even many of us concluded that Glaucus only resorted to her exoskeleton after she ventured onto dry land.

It would take as long as the release of [Stultifera Navis] for Specter to reveal that most Aegir can't actually breathe water, and thus live their lives in domed cities on the sea floor, breathing air and walking on the ground like any other humans.

Paradoxical to the fact that Glaucus is supposed to be a reclusive introvert, her files revealed that she had social connections to almost EVERYONE we considered to be Aegirian or Aegirian-adjacent.

She revered Skadi, which would make sense if Skadi was some kind of national super-hero.

She was friends with Blue Poison.

She was even friends with Deepcolor, which threw into question the theory that Deepcolor belonged to a faction opposing the Abyssal Hunters / Aegirians.

Nothing about Cuora, but like Specter (who is also not mentioned), Cuora didn't really remember where she came from.

Yet the very same file also says:

As a result, I believe that the allegation that Glaucus and her relatives are involved in a secret heretical organization in the Ægir Region is not related to her current operational performance. I hope that the Justice Division has reservations about acting on this.

Which could be a "suspiciously specific denial" that at least hints at the confirmation that such a cult exists, as well as the possibility that Glaucus had a connection to it.

AUS (Alive Until Sunset)

Also introduced in [Heart of Surging Flame] (specifically stage 'OF-EX6'), along with many headaches.

I think this is the first reference to the starpod, when she tells Kal'tsit, "why don't we talk about when we could still see the stars?"

Alty was clearly another denizen of the sea, and Kal'tsit either sincerely or facetiously supposes that Alty herself is Aegirian. Alty says that the feeling of being aboard the Rhodes Island landship, or ark, is both 'mystical' and 'familiar', as if she was 'still at the beach'.

Though Kal'tsit sincerely or facetiously dismisses that as the consequence of having some Aegirians aboard, Kal'tsit also attributes Alty's ability to sneak aboard the ship as "the system only makes an exception for when the guest is important enough".

As we came to realize, Rhodes Island is built around a whale or Feranmut skeleton, which is probably why Ling has a voice-line that goes, "Rhodes Island's interior... I'm lost as to whether I should say it's reminiscent or curious." (emphasis mine)

But we didn't even know Feranmuts were a thing, back then. Alty implicitly makes it clear that she's not an Aegirian, saying that she (or her band, or their whole kin) "don't really get along" with Aegirians. "If anything, I'd say we're far from friends..."

But Alty claimed she didn't know Aegirians first-hand, but only heard about them through her band-mate, Frost. Whom she didn't clarify was or wasn't an Aegirian herself.

"Actually, I kind of hate Aegirians. Of course, I know about how pitiful their past is. But if you didn't show up, these Aegirians would have already been devoured by the abyssal depths by now."

At the time, we assumed this meant that Kal'tsit had personally visited and saved an underwater city from some sort of disaster or enemy. Which would fit with how Kal'tsit seemed to know everything that Skadi knew about Aegir, but is somewhat contradicted by the woman herself saying, "I didn't do anything in particular."

Only more recently does it seem like Alty isn't talking about Aegir, or even about the Rhode Island Aegirians, but specifically about the Abyssal Hunters who are being hunted by the Cult of the Deep. Especially since Alty elaborates that she's talking about "special" Aegirians, who "don't show any respect" to Kal'tsit "despite all that you did for them."

Alty thinks there are "several" Abyssal Hunters aboard, but she might only be getting an imprecise sense of "multiple", especially if Deepcolor is already aboard. There's also Thorns, but we'll get to him later.

But what is Alty? She asks, "Do you know who the enemy of the Aegir is? Or perhaps, do you know who I really am?" It's ambiguous if she conflates the two or means them to be separate questions.

Monster nearly attacks but Kal'tsit restrains it. She then remarks that Alty is "still young".

"That's right, we are very young, and we haven't been through any of those tragedies." Which seems to contradict how Alty suggested she had ever seen the true stars, unless she meant "we" in the broadest sense possible, to refer to anyone who had ever walked the planet.

"We have no desire to become the enemies of those little guys [the Abyssal Hunters] at all." She finally implicates Frost as being her kin, rather than an Aegirian.

"Frost is the youngest one among us. Only the four of us can be considered young." So at the time we knew that whatever she was, all of her band was the same. And they weren't Abyssal Hunters, nor Aegirians, and they might not even be what the Aegirians or Abyssal Hunters were fighting.

Or they might have been a rebel faction of those enemies that decided they either didn't want to be part of the war, or would rather side with Aegir against their own kind?

Kal'tist, who boasted to Skadi that there was nothing she didn't know, tells Alty: "I don't think you know any less about the truth than I do."

"[Frost] smelled something from those Aegirians. A scent that didn't belong to them. 'They can't sing anymore. They can't talk anymore. They're drifting farther and farther away from us. They're becoming hungry."

Like, holy shit, were regular Aegirians all lovecraftian hivemind creatures after all?! What did any of that mean?

"How were those special Aegirians born?"

Oh, and despite Alty agreeing that she's young, SOMEHOW she knows Ka'tsit's serial number "AMa-10", and that someone (Priestess) assigned her like a machine to support The Doctor... but also "the bunny", even though Priestess had nothing to do with that, though Alty might have conflated Theresa in there.

Purestream

Purestream wouldn't arrive in global servers until muuuuuch later (after the release of Chapter 8), but in the Chinese servers she appeared after [Heart of Surging Flame] and before Weedy's debut.

She is the first Aegirian operator in the history of the game to have her race outright listed as "Aegir".

Even then, she's surrounded by secrets.

Her third Archive file contains a classified note at the end:

Regarding Operator Purestream's race, it is difficult to find out where they originated from, but we may be able to glean some clues from some local folk songs. Her true hometown must be very far, far away, in a distant land.

[Talk after Trust Increase 2] "There is a legend among my people that we came from a place far, far away. Now that there are fewer and fewer of us, nobody seems to know where we came from, or where we are going..."

In her fourth Archive File, the investigator who visited Purestream's village to investigate her background insists: 'To be honest, her background and experience are as pure as the water she treats, and there are not many things worth delving into.'

Which could be spy-speak, or could be entirely sincere, given how the rest of that file depicts the investigator as more interested in sampling the local food than digging up information.

However, given her physical evaluations,

[Episode 7] and Weedy

Finally introduces Iberia.

[Profile] Weedy, a bioengineering expert who was born into a family of Iberian scientists, is a researcher who has been with Rhodes Island since its establishment. (emphasis mine)

She rates 'Standard' in every category except for her substandard 'Normal' in Physical Resilience and her 'Excellent' in Tactical Planning.

[Promotion Record] Weedy's physical qualities are somewhat at odds with our impressions of the Ægirians. In fact, after she successfully passed the other exams, she spent an entire three months before she was able to pass the physical component.

Episode 7 retroactively establishes that Rhodes Island has ALWAYS had an Aegirian on staff. Yet you have Rhodes Island officials acting like us players in assuming that Specter and Skadi -- the Abyssal Hunters -- are the norm for Aegir.

Part of this can be excused with the understanding that not every super-human freak wants to be a combat operator. Weedy's files make it clear that she is extremely reclusive and a neat-freak who seldom leaves her controlled environment.

Weedy's third archive file, perhaps as a mistranslation, seems to suggest that there is a relationship between Aegir and Laterano, rather than that Iberia has had deeply meaningful ties to Aegir and Laterano, separately.

Elysium

Released in the same banner with Weedy, and introduced us to more of Iberia. Perhaps more in how little he or his files have to say about it, as in what little it has to say.

[Archive File 1] Although Elysium has always proclaimed that there is no way he could have been born in Iberia, he shares the characteristics of unfettered boldness and unrestrained freedom that are so prominent in that area.

So he not only left the place, he swears he was was never born there.

[Beyond Here] and "For a Better Self"

This vignette just barely elaborates on Iberia, being half about some wild rumors that (if I recall correctly) have nothing to do with revealed canon. And the other half is about some everyday conflict in some nameless Iberian village.

I don't know what point any of this served.

[Heart of Surging Flame] rerun, Andreana, Thorns, and AUS again

You'd think that Andreana was the biggest point of confusion in our ever-changing perception of Aegir.

No, it was Thorns.

Thorns was clearly not an Abyssal Hunter, not even to the extent that Andreana was. He didn't have their Talent-sharing/receiving feature. At the time, we thought him to be a "normal" Aegirian.

So when a member of the AUS band, Aya, who was some sort of weird sea-creature took an interest in Thorns, and Thorns seemed to have some sort of bloodborne connection or animosity to a sea monster that emerged from the ocean to eat him... We assumed this could have happened to any Aegirian.

It wouldn't be until Integrated Strategies #3 that we had clarification that Thorns ISN'T normal, and that he doesn't know that. His mentor/teacher slipped him some Seaborn concoction that transformed him into some level of hybrid, which is how he got the special attention of a sea monster and what seems to be one-fourth of a sea-dwelling Feranmut.

[Under Tides] and Gladiia

On the China servers, Hypergryph updated the Network map to either softly retcon or properly clarify some things.

Blue Poison exchanged her Rhodes Island brand for an association with Iberia and lost her link to Specter.

Deepcolor exchanged her Rhodes Island brand for the brand of Aegir, with only Skadi Alter for company. On the one hand, this was weird because Ishar'mla is an enemy of Aegir; did this mean that Deepcolor was also an enemy of Aegir? But even when viewing Skadi Alter as what is left of her after the Corrupting Heart is defeated and returns to dormancy, Skadi doesn't really consider herself an Aegir anymore; she's a Seaborn and kin to the Many.

And, well, there was everything else about [Under Tides], and the archive files for Gladiia, and the archive files that were either for Skadi Original or for Ishar'mla, with voice-lines for Seaborn Skadi after Ishar'mla is rendered dormant.

"Forgotten Lighthouse" in [Preluding Lights]

I wrote too much about this already in my post on Blue Poison, but know that this information appeared at this time, chronologically for us.

Mizuki

Introduced in Dossoles Holiday.

[Stultifera Navis]

We finally get a reasonably clear picture of where Laurentina came from, how she ended up captured, what the Cult did to her, and how she could have become Kal'tsit's primary source of information on everything related to Aegir.

Which thus informs the later Operator Records for Skadi and Gladiia, which both feature how Kal'tsit finds them.

=====

Skadi's conversation with Kal'tsit in "GT-HX-3 After (Once Upon A Time In The West)" is so confusing that I wonder if even the writers understood what they wrote.

(For this post, indented paragraphs will not represent direct quotations, but summaries of what happens in the scene)

Before making any attempt at negotiating value and price, Skadi offers Kal'tsit the crystal key. Perhaps Skadi believes that if Kal'tsit immediately takes the stone, Kal'tsit will be compelled by a sense of fairness to give Skadi whatever information she wants before first knowing what that information is.

Notably, Kal'tsit does not take the key, and instead asks to know what Skadi wants in exchange.

Reviewing the whole conservation, it's not clear if Kal'tsit already knew exactly what Skadi wanted and just pretended otherwise to get Skadi to let something slip or agree to a deal she otherwise wouldn't. But that is where I'd place my money.

It's also part of what confuses me about this conversation, but I'll get to that.

Skadi says she wants information, but doesn't clarify what kind. She still seems to be trying to get Kal'tsit to agree to an exchange before knowing exactly what Skadi wants. Skadi seems to believe Kal'tsit wouldn't voluntarily reveal what she wants to know. She very strongly appears to be correct.

Kal'tsit talks as if the key is worthless, but Skadi calls her bluff by threatening to destroy it. Ironically, Kal'tsit's refusal to simply accept the gem from Skadi seems to put her at a disadvantage here... if Kal'tsit believed Skadi was petty enough to actually do it.

Whatever Kal'tsit thinks, she deflects the question with another accusation about Skadi pretending to act on Rhodes Island's orders. She's trying to manipulate Skadi with fear of losing access to Rhodes Island's resources and losing permission to board the Ark. But if Kal'tsit knows at least as much about Skadi as revealed in the Doctor's files, she should know this would have been an empty threat if not for Specter.

Before befriending the Doctor, Specter should be the only reason why Skadi wouldn't simply abandon Rhodes Island and go find another employer. There's no hint that Skadi cares at all about Rhodes Island's mission or politics.

Skadi also doesn't seem to care about Kal'tsit's threats; she brushed them aside at the start of their conversation and doesn't bother acknowledging them now. Whether she's actually confident or bluffing is unknown.

Regardless, the key is either now in Kal'tsit's hands or lain on a table some neutral distance between her and Skadi, because Kal'tsit gets distracted by inspecting the key and discovering there's already blood in it. She's briefly worried that it was Skadi's own blood before dismissing the idea that Skadi would "dare" shed her own blood on "this soil".

So with that statement (if not earlier from previous conservations) Skadi knows that Kal'tsit seems to know about Skadi's nature and possible "condition". Skadi is not surprised at all that Kal'tsit knows, and merely affirms that the blood isn't hers by identifying it as Grani's.

Kal'tsit is disgusted with Skadi allowing or demanding Grani to do such a thing, but Skadi tells her off and promises to repay Grani for it.

Skadi tries to get the negotiation back on track, insisting that Kal'tsit needs this key, which is also possibly a "core" and/or "memory block".

Skadi tries to ingratiate herself to Kal'tsit by apparently naming three individuals ("Skull", "Flamelung", and "Yellow Smog") whom Skadi presumably killed in her quest to acquire the key. Skadi insists that Kal'tsit never could have gotten the key from them because she couldn't give them what they wanted. Skadi seems to be suggesting that Grani would have failed the mission without her.

Kal'tsit still denies needing the key at all, claiming it's not necessary to "form the full picture".

Neither of them explain what that last bit means, but it doesn't seem to relate to Specter at all, because Skadi seems to think Kal'tsit doesn't already know what she wants and Kal'tsit is still acting like she doesn't know.

So, forming "the full picture" is something that matters to Kal'tsit, not to Skadi. Skadi may know what Kal'tsit wants, but doesn't seem to care since she's only helping Kal'tsit achieve it in return for furthering Skadi's own goals.

For the third time, Kal'tsit tries to threaten Skadi into... surrender? Not making demands? Not asking questions? By pointing out that Skadi is under contract to Rhodes Island, and possibly under a second, secret contract with Kal'stit herself.

Skadi once again insists that Kal'tsit agree to tell her whatever she wants to know in exchange for the stone. It's not clear if Skadi is bucking the terms of their contract, or insisting that their contract is entirely based on the principle of such an exchange.

Finally, Kal'tsit figuratively throws up her hands, marveling that Skadi is being so aggressive right now when she's usually "lazy" and sarcastic.

So Kal'tsit finally reveals that she's known all along what sort of information Skadi wanted to know. Which is somehow a surprise to Skadi.

Why would Skadi be so sure that Kal'tsit knew anything about what Skadi wanted to know if Skadi didn't think Kal'tsit already knew what Skadi wanted to know?

Kal'tsit already alluded to knowing the secrets about Skadi's blood, earlier. Kal'tsit is also one of Specter's personal physicians, so she should be able to tell that Skadi and Specter are somehow related. Furthermore, Specter says that Skadi couldn't have entered her private chamber(s) without Kal'tsit's permission, and the chamber(s) are likely recorded with constant surveilance, so Kal'tsit should know that Skadi visited Specter and should know everything they talked about.

So why ON EARTH would Skadi not at least guess that Kal'tsit would at least guess that Skadi was concerned for Specter?

Was Skadi instead surprised that Kal'tsit knew how Specter was infected with Originium? But surely Specter's physicians would have noticed a detail like that.

Therefore, I just do not understand Skadi's surprise at all.

Skadi being surprised that Kal'tsit could speak Aegirian, or knew anything about the Abyssal Hunters, would have actually made sense, but how would Skadi not suspect that Kal'tsit knew that Skadi wanted to know about how Specter got infected?

Seems to me that the writer was so caught up in trying to have two mysterious characters talk mysteriously about mysteries that they forgot what should and shouldn't have been a mystery to one of the parties involved.

Anyway, now that both women are explicitly on the same page ("I know what you know and I know that you know that I know"), Kal'tsit starts getting manipulative again.

Kal'tsit states twice that Skadi following her every order is the only way that Kal'tsit will even begin to consider helping Skadi. This is apparently something beyond the bounds of their current contract, because Skadi refuses her terms on the ground that she doesn't blindly obey someone so untrustworthy.

Kal'tsit rejoinders that she never goes back on her word.

Personally, I think someone who never lies or breaks a promise still isn't someone automatically worth following. A leader with bad goals isn't exactly "trustworthy", and Skadi may not care for Kal'tsit's goals.

On the other hand, we don't precisely know Skadi's goals relating to this information. If Skadi's goal was simply to cure Specter, Kal'tsit is already treating Specter, and her threats to Skadi never involve Specter.

Skadi may intend to hunt down the ones who infected Specter, and that may be what Kal'tsit is trying to stop Skadi from doing, either by denying her information or by binding the Abyssal Hunter to obey her every order.

Kal'tsit may be trying to prevent Skadi from accelerating a brewing conflict too soon, or from getting herself killed by hunting someone or something too dangerous even for her.

=====

The Emperor started Penguin Logistics with Texas in the year 1092. "Code of Brawl" takes place five years later.

We're not sure exactly when the Emperor hired Croissant and Sora, only that he did so in that order, in the first year.

Croissant: When ya first got here, there was always all kindsa presents pilin' up in front of Penguin Logistics. Mailboxes stuffed to burstin' with fan mail. (source)

The phrasing of this line suggests Mostima was hired before both of them.

Croissant: Tell ya the truth, I barely seen heads or tails of her since they hired me. (source)

But when Mostima asks how long it has been since she last met Texas, Croissant, and Sora, Exusiai answers: "Four years and three months" (source).

As a reminder, Penguin Logistics has been in business for only 5 years at that point, and only Texas was with the company from the start. Mostima could have spent a maximum total of 9 months with the PL girls. And given her regular duties to Laterano, it's unlikely that she did.

Though in that same linked chapter, Sora confirms that she's at least familiar enough with Mostima to have seen her cast Arts more than once:

Sora: No matter how many times I see it, I'm always impressed how Mostima will wave her staff around all light and subtle, only to have some big amazing thing come out.

[Which, when combined with the general sense of familiarity Sora shows towards Mostima at earlier points of the event, leads me to dismiss the canonicity of Sora's lack of familiarity with Mostima in Exusiai's second Operator Record. Which was already on thin-ice with regards to Sora by having this internationally-known idol accuse her agent of treating her poorly "just because I'm an up-and-comer…" (source)]

Mostima leaves Penguin Logistics again after "Code of Brawl", and while she visits Lungmen at least twice more before the events of "Guiding Ahead" in her first Operator Record and in the main story (appearing before Chief Wei Yenwu with a cryptic message about "breakfast"), she does not meet with the girls.

By all appearances, Mostima does not meet them again until Exusiai's second Operator Record, set after "Guiding Ahead", which is two years after "Code of Brawl". And then Mostima vanishes back to her usual duties until Exusiai meets back up with her in Laterano for the events of "Masses' Travels".

Meanwhile, Bison has spent much more time with Penguin Logistics than just that one crazy Sauin night.

By the time of the New Year's Day celebration later that year, Sora and the girls were inviting Bison to join them for their exclusive picnic party. And that was before his father hired them to spend the day trying to get Bison to relax and enjoy himself. (source)

According to many of his voice lines and archive files, Bison spent an extended period of time aboard the Rhodes Island landship at the same time as all four Penguin Logistics girls. His father wanted Bison to get some outside experience and not return "back at his side too early".

During this period, Bison actively sought out contact with the Penguin Logistics girls, and gained something of a reputation as their "poor whipping boy". He would try to keep Exusiai from disturbing the peace too much with her Heavy Metal party music, and help the Doctor clean up her messes, while accompanying Croissant on her shopping trips to try to keep her from making bad purchases, and recommending Sora's latest music publications to the islanders.

Angelina refers to this period in her first Operator Record, when she and Croissant talk about how they pranked Bison.

At some point, Penguin Logistics returned to Lungmen and Bison parted ways with them to visit various nations on behalf of his father's business: Kazimierz, Laterano, Columbia, Sami, Siracusa... And at the end of it, he returns home to Lungmen for the PL girls to throw him a welcoming party. When rival gangs attack the party, Bison resolves to himself that he will make Penguin Logistics operate like a normal company for at least one month, maybe even a year. (source)

After the events of "IL Siracusano", according to Texas Alter's third Archive File, Croissant reaches out to Bison for help in connecting Nuovo Volsinii to the rest of the world through his international logistics company.

Though it is called Mountain Dash Trade at that time, the timeline suggests that it is actually MountainCom Trade, after the events of "So Long, Adelle".

During those events, the Emperor meets Bison personally for a conversation. (source)

One year later, when Texas arrives back in Nuovo Volsinii for the events of "I Portatori dei Velluti", she explains that the reason Croissant didn't come with her is because "Croissant is busy pushing Bison into organizing some new international project". Which is apparently different from the previous one involving Nuovo Volsinii.

Later, during the events of "Masses' Travels", Bison comes up repeatedly as one of Exusiai's close friends. A gift from him is given equal attention as gifts from the girls, and his is the first she opens. When she rattles off the names of these close friends, Bison's name is not the last of the list (source). Nor is it when she rattles off the names to her sister. (source)

It is canonical, according to that scene, and her conversation with Agenir, and Texas' comment in Exusiai's promotion archive file, that Exusiai "seems to get along fine with anyone, but lets very few people close to her."

She has apparently allowed Bison to get close to her.

So, for all of these reasons, if Mostima qualifies to mechanically belong to both Lungmen and Penguin Logistics as well as Laterano, and Titi gets to be a honorary Minoan in both story and gameplay, then Bison deserves to belong to Penguin Logistics as well as Lungmen.

=====

Ch'en initially thought it did, when she failed to do more than partially draw and use it in defense of Lungmen. This is what most people read and repeat to each other.

But she later decided she had been wrong.

Ch'en comes to a realization. Chi Xiao possesses no will of its own. Its will is the will of the wielder.

It wasn't that she was unable to draw Chi Xiao before. She just hadn't reached a point where she needed to use it.

Her uncle had impressed upon her that she should not draw a "dragonslaying sword" against "trivial things". But his final words on the subject were:

"Who you choose to draw this sword upon is entirely up to you."

To her. Not to the sword.

...And yet she kept trying to draw and use it, and she kept failing.

Her uncle spoke as if she could draw it and cut anything she wanted, no matter how trivial. But he warned her it was "no ordinary weapon".

If Ch'en was right the second time, and Chi Xiao has no will of its own, but it has only the will of its wielder, then she failed to draw the sword because she treated it as an ordinary sword. Something which requires no special effort of will to draw or use.

At worst, a rusted sword might demand some extra elbow grease to unsheathe, but that misplaces her focus on her arms rather than the sword itself. She becomes distracted by the resistance, and loses focus on what she wanted to draw the sword for, in favor of focusing on forcing the sword to draw.

The sword still responded to her exertion of will, but since her focus was on forcing her arms to pull harder, and not on setting aside all desires besides drawing the sword, Chi Xiao did not receive her willpower directly and so could only partially activate.

Like trying to drive a car with the parking break still on, and rather than spare any willpower for releasing the parking break, you focus all of your will to step on the gas-pedal as hard as you can. You're trying harder, but not in the way that yields the best results; not in the way the car is designed to work. Your will is misplaced.

Fighting her own sister finally made Ch'en desperate enough to WANT to draw the sword badly enough, so that she finally provided the sword with enough willpower to activate. So it would finally unsheathe without resistance, and she would not get distracted by wrestling with the scabbard as she did before.

And when she feels the unsheathed sword trembling in her hand, it is not from its own will. Rather, it is either from her own hand trembling (as she canonically considers), or from the sword responding to her own desires.

Which is precisely why her uncle warned her against becoming the kind of person who could or would draw Chi Xiao to cut down "trivial things". Because that would mean becoming a bloodthirsty, indiscriminate maniac.

========

In a different forum, someone once opined:

I feel like the event was pretty clear in the fact that Candela enjoys the city being the corrupted cesspit it is and doesn't care about what happens to it as long as people always come back to indulge their vices.

But that didn't seem accurate to me, so I responded:

While she clearly takes what pleasure she can from Dossoles' corruption, does she really have a choice about it being a cesspit?

This is what Ch'en struggled with in her second Operator Record. She accepted Hoshiguma's advice that increased paychecks would motivate the police of Dossoles to do a better job, but she struggles with that fact emotionally because in Ch'en ideal world, the police should do their best because it's the right thing to do.

What Candela did was accept the fact that humans have base desires for security, control, and pleasure, and decided to exploit all of those desires to her advantage.

Ch'en wants a city to resemble or surpass Lungmen, but Ch'en takes the relative stability of Yan (or Victoria, the only other nation she's lived in) for granted. Bolivar has nothing approaching that stability, so a city like Lungmen is impossible there.

Dossoles isn't the best that Bolivarians can hope for, but it's the best that they can realistically achieve until the three-way civil war ends. It's not the best they could potentially achieve in a peaceful future, but it represents their best hope for surviving as a people until they achieve that future.

Hell, contrary to my fears, it sounds like Candela actually pays the laboring class well! Bolivarians willingly immigrate to her city to work in its farms and factories and no one says they're being worked to death for nothing in return.

We've never seen Candela deny or dismiss or denigrate the idea of virtue or altruism. She wholeheartedly believes that Ch'en is an idealist who wants to help people and promote social order, and she encourages Ch'en to do it.

Hoshiguma doesn't suggest that money alone will motivate the local police to improve, which is why she keeps talking about the example Ch'en is setting for them, and why Hoshiguma helps so much with the law enforcement seminars that Ch'en puts on.

Ch'en had a rough life, but she's never lacked for material security. She's never worried about her home getting blown up in the middle of the night. She's never gone hungry for months with no hope for food.

But she also recognizes that she can't judge Bolivar and Dossoles based purely on her own experience, and that's why she spends so much time and energy talking to Bolivarians and trying to understand where they're coming from.

=====

The mine dries up, and with it the nomadic town's source of income.

The entire town's economy and community was built around the mine, so no one knows what else to do. If any of them had the foresight to plan ahead for this change, no one wanted to listen to that person.

But someone outside of the community was more than willing to look ahead to the plate's future, and decide on a plan FOR the residents. But as someone outside of that community and unaccountable to it, that plan was not for the resident's prosperity.

Someone decided that the nomadic plate still held immense value, but that they wanted to seize that value for as little cost as possible.

Maybe the originator of this idea worked in the government, or a tech company, or even the bank itself.

But the bank became the executor of this evil plan.

The government, the tech companies, the PMC, or the bank itself COULD have told the residents about the scheme. COULD have promised the town a new start.

The bank could have refused to issue loans to those who refused to find new sources of income. Those who had mined all of their lives and didn't want to change. The only reason to issue loans to people you know will refuse to find a way to pay you back is to either give the money away for free (with extra steps) or to have a legal pretext to take everything they own as repayment.

The bank could have still done that, but while honestly telling the residents what their collateral was worth. But the bank deliberately undervalued their property.

With what her diner should have been worth in the future, the bank could have kept Coldshot in the black long enough for her to pay them back. But the bank didn't want what it was owed, it wanted EVERYTHING she had for as little as they could trick her into selling it.

The residents of Davistown were too stubborn, but that stubbornness and empty hope was built on despair.

Only the bank knew what Davistown's real-estate was truly worth, and it lied to the people and told them their homes were worth nothing but the memories.

When all you own is worth nothing but the memories, then memories are all you have left to your name. When there's no hope for the future, what do you have left to cling to but the past?

If Davistown had known its future worth, more people would have sold and taken away enough money to start new lives. Business-owners would have stayed and enjoyed new prosperity from the influx of new customers.

But the bank had the advantage of foreknowledge and secrecy, and it exploited those advantages for as much as it could steal.

Just because the manager lady was deliberately sadistic, doesn't she was comically, unrealistically so.

Everyone colluding in the scheme to defraud the residents was realistic as hell. They had the advantage, they had the opportunity, they had the obscurity, and they had no scruples. Literally no one who wanted to stop them could, and those who could stop them didn't because they all also stood to benefit.

Heck, even the manager lady's sadism was realistic because who else but a sadist would work so directly to advance the bank's scheme? Everyone above her and below her didn't need to be so "hands on" about what the bank was doing, so none of them needed to be so deliberately cruel.

She's more pointlessly evil than even the Victorian officer who prepared a dirty bomb to use against the Tarans before Dublin appeared to cause him grief.

At least he saw the Tarans as ENEMIES. As a threat, or as outsiders. They at least (once upon a time) had a different language and cultural identity than his own.

The bank manager was dealing with her own countrymen. But she saw them as ignorant rubes who deserved to lose everything because they didn't have the full picture and trusted that the bank was telling them the truth.

Can you be more despicable than despising people for TRUSTING you?

Leone and the other "ignorant rubes"

It's also worth mentioning that Leone's stubborness is also partially the bank's fault.

He invested his entire life into his community and property. The bank, which was the foremost expert and authority on material worth, told him it wasn't worth anything.

How could he have felt like he could rebuild somewhere else in his middle-age, with his best years behind him?

If Leone had been offered everything his property was actually worth, maybe that would have been a high enough amount that he would agree to sell and retire on the money. He could have followed everyone out into the frontier and worked part-time to keep busy, while using whatever funds he thought he didn't need to help others.

Certainly, he would have thought about leaving his generational wealth to his surviving son. But the bank denied him even that.

What Should Be (What Actually Is)

A Bank "should" be neutral, but never can be. A bank is staffed with human beings, and humans beings always have self-interests.

Just because a bank can be better than this, doesn't mean banks aren't this bad as often as they can get away with.

I appreciate how it's mirrored exactly in Blacksteel Worldwide, staffed with self-interested people who work for a paycheck and foist all of their personal responsibility onto the "system".

I agree that it is better that Leone and his fellow citizens weren't perfect. They were stubborn and fearful, and that led to their doom, but that didn't justify the way the bank, the bandits, the mercenaries, or the government treated them. Because none of those enemies were perfect either; they were just more advantaged.

Power reveals rather than corrupts, but the corrupt seek power in concealment. Power must always come with accountability.

Had the bank owner been a religious man, he might have felt accountable to a god who would punish him for his actions. Much as Arctosz Paleroche feels accountable for Kjerangandr for how he treats his clansmen and countrymen. He wants to die knowing that he pleased his goddess as well as his people with his responsible leadership.

Had he at least been a patriot, he might have felt accountable to his own conscience for his actions against his fellow countrymen. Much as how Enciodes Silverash, who has no faith in Kjeragandr, nevertheless ensures that the Infected of his country receive medicine and fair treatment.

But the bank owner, and certainly his bloody-minded manager, did not believe in god, or country, or in their government, and certainly not in the residents of Davistown. They believed only that they, personally, deserved as much as they could take.

Imperfect Heroes

Much as it pains me to say it, even our beloved heroes Liskarm and Franka placed their own self-interests above those of Davistown.

For Liskarm, her ultimate goal is to start her own PMC for the sake of returning to her home in Sargon to provide better (and perhaps more ethical) protection for her people. She at least placed the good of her own people ahead of the good of the people of Davistown. This is regrettable and tragic, but it makes an ethical sense.

The only member of Blacksteel to fully and openly rebel against the treatment of Davistown was Jessica, the only woman on the whole plate who was set for life no matter what she did, the only woman who didn’t need to work a day in her life to survive, and the only one who could get out of jail free thanks to her family connections.

And the story even makes sure to have Blacksteel members more lowly placed than even Liskarm and Franka comment on how she can afford to act so privileged and principled. They’re denying their own personal responsibility, but they’re also not entirely wrong.

=====

In Arknights’ closed beta, Blue Poison was counted among the Abyssal Hunters. Possibly Deepcolor too.

To this day, Blue Poison retains her “Network” identification as AA03 despite being neither an Aegirian nor an Abyssal Hunter. Deepcolor is AA04. Specter is AA02, with Skadi being AA01 despite debuting after the game’s launch (and quite possibly despite onboarding after Specter, apparently).

When Gladiia debuted (as AA05), a glitch in her base skill included Blue Poison as an Abyssal Hunter, but also included Deepcolor, Weedy, and Whisperain. This was quickly patched out.

In any case: When Arknights launched, only Specter was counted among the Abyssal Hunters. Deepcolor and Blue Poison were rebranded with the logo of Rhodes Island, though their places in the “Network” map remained close to Specter’s, and Blue Poison had a relationship link to Specter.

When Hypergryph updated the “Network” map (for [Under Tides] on CN servers, and [A Walk In the Dust] for Global servers), this changed further. Deepcolor exchanged her Rhodes Island brand for the brand of Aegir (with only Skadi Alter for company); Blue Poison became associated with Iberia and lost her link to Specter.

While we now have a fairly solid and rigid idea of what an “Abyssal Hunter” looks like, we did not have such notions until Skadi’s debut in the game’s first side-story event. We would have accepted without question that Abyssal Hunters could have such wildly varying coloration, talents, and weaponry. Also that some Abyssal Hunters would have publicly known races (Anura) and not always allude to sea creatures (tree frogs).

Only when Skadi joined the roster did Hypergryph’s intent (old or new) for the Abyssal Hunters become more clear.

Guard-class Specter never had a faction-buffing Talent; Skadi started that trend. Skadi also established the Abyssal Hunter “look” by matching Specter’s color scheme so completely. Where Specter’s white hair, red eyes, black clothing, and absurd physical condition might have been particular to Specter before, with Skadi it became part of a ‘uniform’.

Andreana’s design would later violate that ‘uniform’ in smaller and more deliberate ways than Blue Poison. Though Andreana would also be a Sniper, she would have a much darker coloration, be an actual Aegirian based on an oceanic creature, have a “faction-buffing talent”, be physically stronger, and use a weapon that required brute strength rather than clever toxicology.

Alternatively: Blue Poison was never meant to be anything more than an “honorary” member of the Abyssal Hunters, for possible reasons I’ll get into later. But before the game launched, Hypergryph had decided that Skadi and future Abyssal Hunters should have faction-buffing Talents, so “honorary” members would only introduce confusion.

“Laurentina”

The only way it could be significant for Blue Poison to speak Specter’s real name is if it happened before [Under Tides], or at least [Stultifera Navis].

It’s my current theory that Laurentina is the first Abyssal Hunter to onboard with Rhodes Island. Since the primary purpose for imposing the ‘Specter’ persona upon her was to make Laurentina obedient and willing to divulge information, Specter would inform Kal’tsit of everything she knew regarding Aegir, the Sea Monsters, the Deep Cult, and the Abyssal Hunters. Canon has given us no other reason why Kal’tsit would have known to look for other Abyssal Hunters on land, and thus seek out Skadi and Gladiia.

If my theory is true, then we could assume Blue Poison onboarded Rhodes Island before Skadi, and well before [Grani and the Knight’s Treasure].

In fact, it might be that Blue Poison brought Specter to Rhodes Island herself.

See, the problem with Blue Poison knowing Specter’s true name is that Blue Poison has never visited Aegir, and Laurentina never visited dryland until she was captured by the Deep Cult. That means the only way that Blue Poison could have met Laurentina before Rhodes Island, before Laurentina lost her mind completely, is if Blue Poison met her while she was still being held captive, or just after Laurentina escaped.

If Blue Poison helped Laurentina escape the Deep Cult, then the Deep Cult might plausibly seek revenge by sending ‘giant monsters’ to hunt her. Both situations could merit future Abyssal Hunters considering her an honorary member, at least before Hypergryph decided to emphasize the importance of the “bond of blood”.

But how did Blue Poison run across the Deep Cult? Before I continue that line of thought, we need to step back into Blue Poison’s history.

Background

The Anura people, or at least the specific tribe from which Blue Poison descends, lives in the Kerthun Valley in one of the vast rainforests of Sargon. Sargon’s lords ameer have always tried to conquer the region for its natural resources, but have always failed. Though they appear to have at least succeeded enough to take some Anura captive and sell them as slaves.

Despite this history of unprovoked aggression against their people, and despite the tribe’s terrifying ‘toxic’ ability to give them a fearsome reputation, modern guides claim that the folk “aren’t too hard to get along with”.

100 years or so before Blue Poison left Iberia to join Rhodes Island, and 30 years or so before the Profound Silence, some of the Islander Aegirians living in Iberia traveled to Sargon and purchased many Anura slaves.

[“Untouchable”] “We were sold to Iberia as test subjects.”

“Forgotten Lighthouse” [Preluding Lights] “The bones of the Aegirs who took my ancestors away to Iberia have long been eroded by the sea waves.”

These Aegirians brought back to Iberia enough Anura that the captives could breed stably with each other until Blue Poison’s generation.

Most Islander Aegirians knew nothing about this, especially those born on land. As Blue Poison explains in “Forgotten Lighthouse”, the Islanders decided to collectively suppress discussion of, and forget about, the Sea Monsters. Those refugees not involved in researching how to deal with the Sea Monsters would not tell their children, and only those children inheriting the research would be told.

“Forgotten Lighthouse”

BP: Do you know why the Aegirs came ashore?

G: I… don’t know. I thought we were meant to be here to begin with, though it seems most Iberians don’t agree with that.

BP: I’m not too familiar either.

G: Yeah… but you know more than we do, at the very least.

BP: It’s funny. The history slowly disappeared from the Aegirs’ memories, and we are the ones who still remember any of it.

BP: My ancestors were taken away by the Aegirs some hundred years ago. They wanted the ‘toxic’ ability that we are born with.

G: Why… is that?

BP: They kept extracting the toxins for experiments. They were trying to figure out whether these subterranean [infernal? hellish?] toxins could be used as some kind of weapon…

G: What were they trying to attack with that?

BP: I have no idea. How could I have seen it? From what my elders tell me, it was an enormous, terrifying monster that doesn’t exist on land.

G: It’s from the sea…

BP: All I can say is that it is extraordinarily likely.

These Anura, too, experienced their own generational forgetfulness. If ever the captives could have found their home on a map, or retraced their captor’s journey to Iberia backwards, their grandchildren could not. Still, the Anura tried to pass on as much knowledge as they could, keeping hope and home alive in stories. But after the Profound Silence, the captives’ situation changed again, and even their captivity became a story.

“Truth is, I’ve only heard about those experiments secondhand. Ever since the disaster [Profound Silence], Iberia’s been too busy sorting out its own mess to deal with outcasts like us. That cruel past is now nothing more than stories passed down by the older generations, and Kerthun is even more of a legend to us.”

Her grandmother, the oldest Anura Blue Poison knew, admitted on her deathbed that she had never seen Kerthun herself. She had only known passed-down stories, and told her own stories based on those and her own wishful thinking.

In "Forgotten Lighthouse" Indigo states that the Profound Silence happened something like 70 years ago. So the Anura slaves might only have been held captive for around 30 years before escaping into Iberian society. Which would give Blue Poison's elders roughly 10 to 20 years to achieve some kind of living before she was born, depending on how old she is now.

Freeborn Upbringing

Blue Poison says very little about her childhood. Clearly, she didn’t grow up as an Aegirian’s captive, test subject, or toxin milking-cow. Perhaps as the Iberians turned on the Islanders and shut down their research, the Anura managed to escape into Iberian society. The Inquisition perhaps ignored them in favor of dealing with the supposedly-treacherous Aegirians as well as actual big problems.

(Certainly, Blue Poison speaks about the Inquisition as something that frightens native Iberians more than it concerns her, personally.)

But even after gaining their freedom, Blue Poison’s family didn’t really know how to go home after generations born and raised in Iberian captivity. So they apparently attempted to integrate into Iberia in its years of greatest civil unrest. Neither fully foreigners nor truly native citizens, not Aegirians but still tainted by any hint of association with them, and feared for their toxicity.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, her family continued to pass down legends of Kerthun to keep up their spirits.

“My grandma always said our life of ostracization and fear was just a trial for us to endure. Once we were back in Kerthun, everything would be better.”

“Only there are we not treated as outsiders. Only there can we truly live a peaceful life. Only there are we not burdened with being a ‘poison’.”

Whatever their economic situation, Blue Poison grew up as an expert baker, whom Ambriel says could out-compete half the dessert shops in Laterano. Despite her alarming ideas about what colors her baked goods should be.

(In “Hardcore Drink”, Indigo reveals that if Bloop’s ingredients don’t naturally produce a dessert with an alarming color, Bloop will resort to food-coloring to achieve her frightening artistic vision. Though Glaucus and Blue Poison are not above acting like the food-coloring is actually a poison, as a joke, before coming clean.)

[Archive File 3] In her spare time, Blue Poison is interested in much more mundane variety things, such as baking. Operator Gummy, currently assigned to kitchen duty in Logistics, has claimed that Blue Poison’s desserts are so good, they could ‘convert someone who hates sweets!” Another unnamed operator who has also tasted her treats echoed the sentiment that Blue Poison is proficient enough to start a bakery — if she made better choices in visual presentation.

Whether Blue Poison’s elders had learned anything about toxicology from their captors, received tribal knowledge from their predecessors, or relearned everything from scratch, we don’t know. Whichever way, Blue Poison’s family raised her as a skilled toxicologist, with the knowledge of how to extract her own toxins and turn them into various poisons, antidotes, and medicines.

Whether under their guidance or independently, Blue Poison additionally trained in marksmanship with a small one-handed crossbow for self-defense. She attests that she has no combat experience, and all of her evaluations score her as substandard (‘Normal’) except for her ‘Standard’ Mobility and ‘Excellent’ Combat Skill. With her poisoned darts as both a threat and a promise, she wouldn’t need much in the way of brute strength to protect herself.

Her Originium Arts evaluation also ranked ‘substandard’, but her performance in “Forgotten Lighthouse” confirms that she canonically can duplicate her projectiles in flight to increase her chances of hitting her targets.

[Archive File 1]

The small crossbow she uses has proven to be a powerful long-range weapon, and the tips coated with her toxic serum make a hit even more lethal.

{Forgotten Lighthouse}

A bolt whizzes through the air. It strikes the fuzzy white light. No, not quite. Just as it was about to strike the object, its trajectory curved to the side. It’s no problem. No one can see it. The bolt split in two soon after it was shot, one in the front, and one in the back, capturing the white light.

Geneva Suggestions

Blue Poison loves toxicology as much as baking, and she does not have the slightest qualm about using her poisons to kill enemy combatants or to destroy their mortal remains. Neither is she shy about using the threat of her poisons to taunt and intimidate the enemy.

[Watching Battle Records] “I think I hear the sound of toxic liquid boiling, like music to my ears.”

[Enemy Spawns / ‘Begin Operation’] “I’ve prepared a ‘gift’ for you. Like it?”

[Battle 1] “My toxins will slowly burn your life away.”

[Battle 3] “Honey to me, poison to you.”

[Battle 4] “Poison Kiss.”

[3-Star Victory Result] “I’ve got a poison to melt all these remains away in an instant. Want me to show you?”

“Forgotten Lighthouse”

“Thinking back, after all these years, I haven’t once thought of giving up my abilities to use my toxin.

“Perhaps I’ve never managed to break free of the souls of those Aegirs who enslaved my ancestors, and, deep down in my heart, I believe that the toxins in me will get the enemies they’re meant for.”

...

"I've got ways to make you talk."

However, Blue Poison is merely ruthless, not sadistic.

[Archive File 1] …her personality is quite lovely…

...when she finishes her combat work and quietly undertakes the medical task of curing poison, the sincere, peaceful girl behind her deadly abilities shows through. …Blue Poison never lets an enemy die in agony, deeming that far too cruel.

To this end, Blue Poison habitually carries antidotes to her body’s natural toxin in her daily life, and brings antidotes for her combat toxins when she goes on armed missions. She also gladly assists the Medical Department on a regular basis.

[Talk 2] “Actually, the toxin in my body is an ingredient in some high-quality medicines. That’s why Dr. Kal’tsit needs me in her lab a lot.”

Furthermore, Blue does not love toxicology to the point of reveling in chances to test her products on other human beings, or approving of others doing the same. As she states in Indigo's second Archive File, in regards to Indigo's unusual tolerance to Blue Poison's serums:

"No, please don't get the wrong idea. I'm not planning to run any experiments on her. She's my friend, and I'm not like that either. Of course... I ask you to please not have any funny ideas either."

Highly Venomous, But Only Mildly Toxic

For all that Blue Poison values the field of toxicology and her efforts within it, she hates the fact that her body uncontrollably produces a contact poison, as well as how people tend to respond to that.

Rather than hating other people for their instinctive revulsion, Blue Poison admits she hated herself. [Forgotten Lighthouse]

Across her archive files, her Operator Record, and Indigo’s Operator Record, it is repeatedly made clear that making minor, brief contact with Blue Poison is not enough to transmit her natural toxin.

But when Blue Poison responsibly warns people that she’s toxic and that prolonged contact with her (such as Goldenglow offering to cut her hair) has an unlikely but non-zero chance of transmitting some dosage of her natural poison, most people reflexively shy away from her. Especially if they have seen her techniques in battle.

While understandable, this is an overreaction.

“Archive File 3” In fact, her ‘poison power’ manifests mostly in her skill with and knowledge of poison.

In other words, her natural toxins are merely one ingredient in the serums she uses against enemies with her crossbow, and therefore not nearly on the same level. Most anyone giving Blue Poison a hug isn’t going to keel over and die like someone shot with several of her coated darts.

Ambriel eats one of Blue Poison’s alarmingly-colored cakes with no side-effects, as Blue Poison expected.

Of course, when dealing with someone as highly-ranked and medically-unique as the Doctor, Blue Poison’s fears rise to the surface and she treats herself as though she were as toxic as others believe. She warns the Doctor against eating the same cake that Ambriel enjoyed, at least until she offers them a preventative dose of antidote (then hesitates, wondering if even her antidotes might poison the Doctor), and even when the Doctor (ignoring the offered antidote) keeps happily eating more cake with no apparent ill-effects, she remains ill at ease. She later freaks out over her hand briefly brushing against the Doctor’s.

Acid Wit

Sweet personality aside, Blue Poison isn’t above being a little bitter or a little mean.

It seems to be (or at least I imagine) her habit to relate her own experience as a toxic pariah to anything else people avoid or shun out of fear. Such as the ruined coastline infrastructure that common Iberia avoid in the present day, rather than seek to loot or squat within.

In “Forgotten Lighthouse”, Glaucus compares the way Iberia abandoned and neglected its surviving structures along the coastline to the way she would avoid looking at her deteriorating legs as a child.

Blue Poison chides her, tongue-in-cheek, saying, “Look at you, using yourself as an analogy again. I’m starting to feel bad.” Blue Poison knows she’s acting hypocritically, because Glaucus was only responding to how Blue Poison herself bitterly analogized people’s avoidance of the defunct tower with how people avoided “toxic” things… by implication, herself.

But Glaucus brushes Blue’s comment off as her friend’s sense of humor. “Hm, I can tell you are joking, this time.”

Inside the spooky tower, Blue Poison deliberately spooks Glaucus by saying, “Say, if we don’t talk, do you suppose we’ll hear ghosts screaming?”

G: ”At least there isn’t another pair of eyes staring at us.”

B: “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

G: “Stop trying to scare me.”

B: “Okay, okay. I’ll stop.”

In Indigo's Operator Record, when Goldenglow weighs the risks of eating a lake-blue cake, Blue Poison and Glaucus pranked her by pretending the alarming color resulted from a poisonous ingredient, before they come clean that it's just food-coloring.

Revisiting Laurentina and the Deep Cult

Did the Deep Cult seek out the Iberian Anura? Blue Poison’s elders would have no love for Iberia, but neither would they have much love for the sea and its monsters. Perhaps the Anura heard rumors of the Deep Cult and did their best to steer clear of it, so that the Inquisition might continue to ignore them.

We have no evidence to suggest that Blue Poison ever joined the Deep Cult, or knowingly interacted with them. Perhaps Laurentina escaped the cult entirely on her own, or perhaps slipped away during an Inquisition raid on the convent where the cult hid her away.

Perhaps, like other Iberians, Blue Poison had heard about Rhodes Island and reasoned she could get a job at a pharmaceutical company, and on her way out she coincidentally happened to run into Laurentina, who had regained enough lucidity to introduce herself by her true name, and then the two of them escaped to Rhodes Island together. And perhaps Rhodes Island then agreed to keep Blue Poison’s role in this escape a secret, to protect her from possible attention from the Inquisition.

Perhaps the Deep Cult nevertheless managed to learn about Blue Poison’s interference, and sent large Sea Terrors after her in reprisal, if she ventured too far away from the landship. Thus explaining the first half of her fourth archive file.

According to a report leaked from certain sources, Blue Poison has been spotted in several battles against gigantic creatures. There are no images or any concrete evidence to corroborate these accounts, however.

Blue Poison has indicated no signs of involvement in such battles, nor has she mentioned them.

Perhaps, because these monsters were not so large as the Leviathans that Blue Poison had only imagined based on her family’s legends, she never made the connection between them. Or maybe she simply refuses to connect the dots.

“Forgotten Lighthouse”

BP: I thought about asking the Doctor or Dr. Kal’tsit [about the Leviathans]… or even the [Abyssal] hunters directly.

BP: Once, I happened upon Operator Skadi. This question immediately rose to the top of my mind.

G: I doubt she’d tell you.

BP: Right, I don’t think so either, and I didn’t ask her in the end.

BP: I’m not sure I have the courage to find out the truth…

Rhodes Island

[Archive File 3] Aside from dessert making, Blue Poison has a keen sense of and passion for fashion, having already made several suggestions about her costume to Logistics and Trade.

I imagine that it’s hard for the Iberian working class to indulge in much fashion, right now, and thus that Blue Poison could only really pursue this passion after joining Rhodes Island.

[Archive File 2] Blue Poison feels better about Rhodes Island's diversity, and the group's open-mindedness to her abilities such that she can use them to her full potential.

If anyone would be willing to believe the Infected aren’t as hazardous as most people say, it would surely be Blue Poison. Furthermore, if Blue Poison didn’t want to hire out her skills to work as an assassin or an assassin’s supplier, there are few better options than reaching out to a pharmaceutical company.

[Archive File 2] The toxin produced by her venomous abilities is monitored and sampled daily by Dr. Kal'tsit personally.

[Talk 2] “Actually, the toxin in my body is an ingredient in some high-quality medicines. That’s why Dr. Kal’tsit needs me in her lab a lot.”

[Module "Standard Color-Chart"] As of now, though, Medical has developed several successful formulations with this operator's help. Making use of her precise grasp on flavor and color, she's not only been able to conceal the uniquely offputting taste of these drugs, but has taken full advantage of the opportunity, using these medical flavors as a base to create aromas that make your mouth water. Following strict safety tests, these preparations have been provided to the children to immediately fantastic results. According to the little patients, taking medicine on time has suddenly become something to look forward to.

Kal’tsit would surely try make Blue Poison feel good to be Anura, but she’s not the cuddliest person. Offering comfort isn’t her strength, and it certainly isn't a part of her busy schedule.

She is more defensive on the issue of describing herself as 'toxic.' The question was if would she accept her poisonous nature if the other operators accepted her and no longer kept their distance? Blue Poison didn't give a straight answer, politely deflecting the question as usual.

Does she still hate her powers? Or has she accepted them while still feeling [] about her relationship with other people? It's something only the Doctor can figure out with Blue Poison.

Blue Poison struggles with the paradox of hating her poisonous self while loving toxicology. She doesn't enjoy combat or hurting people, but she knows that using her abilities to the fullest means employing them in battle.

Furthermore, she has become a true believer in Rhodes Island and its mission of making the world a better, more accepting, more peaceful place. So when Rhodes Island needs to fight, she is willing to fight for it.

[Promotion 1] “Thank you so much… I’m glad I get to help out in all of these battles. It’s like a dream come true.”

Even when, by surprising accident, Rhodes Island discovered her ancestral homeland and tribe in the Kerthun Valley, Blue Poison only filled out a request form to transfer to the safehouse Rhodes Island was constructing in the area, rather than contemplating leaving the company entirely.

Ultimately, it was the Doctor who unwittingly convinced Blue Poison against submitting the transfer. The Doctor willingly employed Blue Poison as a combat operator, placed trust in her to lead teams as a captain, did the research to know the difference between Blue's serums and toxins, showed nothing but enthusiasm and appreciation for her baked goods, and wasn't afraid to make casual contact with her despite having a delicate condition and no special resistance to poison.

Glaucus

Glaucus Archive File 3: Something worth mentioning is that Glaucus was born with antibodies that fight against irritants and poisons. Apart from conventional poisons, nerve paralyzes and hallucinogens are essentially ineffective. Glaucus is eager to accompany the medics’ research. To put it more precisely, she pretends to understand what they’re saying and nods along. Sometimes they are concerned whether she is even really following along with what they’re saying…

“Forgotten Lighthouse” makes it explicit that Glaucus is practically immune to Blue Poison’s natural toxin, and possibly even her combat venoms. Therefore, she is one of the few operators who regularly keeps Blue Poison company, eats her desserts, and voluntarily joins her on missions.

Indeed, Indigo’s Operator Record confirms that Blue Poison makes special, color-coded foods and beverages for Glaucus. Anyone else consuming these would be severely poisoned, but for Glaucus they are merely spicy delicacies.

Glaucus sympathizes with Blue Poison and her Anura ancestors, apologizes on behalf of the Aegirians, and makes it clear that Blue Poison doesn’t have to talk about her past if she doesn’t want to.

Blue Poison, for her part, dismisses the idea that Glaucus or the Aegir and Iberians in general share any responsibility with the specific people who wronged her family.

[“Forgotten Lighthouse”]

“What are you [Glaucus] apologizing for? The bones of the Aegirs who took my ancestors away to Iberia have long been eroded by the sea waves.

“I don't hate Iberia, nor do I hate the Aegir people. Now, I suppose I don’t even hate myself as much anymore. This is all thanks to the Doctor and you, Glau.”

It’s unclear if Blue Poison means that Glaucus and the Doctor helped her get past any generalized hatred for others, or only Blue’s self-directed hatred.

Glaucus's friendship alone was not enough to dissuade Blue Poison from transferring to the new safehouse in Kerthun Valley, even when Glaucus showed distress over the idea that Blue Poison might consider it.

After all, having just one friend who happened to drink her toxins like wine couldn't make Rhodes Island a place where Blue Poison could feel accepted by anyone. Thus the importance of the Doctor's wholehearted acceptance.

Blue Poison and Glaucus would not meet Indigo until after this crossroads. But also — and this might be my imagination — Blue Poison does not seem to value Indigo's companionship as much as Glaucus'.

The length of time she has known them aside, Glaucus is wise to the ways in which people can be cruel, and thus she and Blue Poison share an understanding. They both consider Indigo, while intelligent and learned in her fields, to be woefully naive and gullible, as well as clumsy.

There's also the fact that Indigo is merely resistant to Blue's poisons, rather than practically immune. A risk compounded by her clumsiness and lack of caution.

=====