I need. To talk about how I think all of the Second Sentinel’s siblings were executed because of the haunting. I am SO brainrotted over that I can’t function.
Okay, so. The order of the sentinels was tasked with protecting the Citadel, right? Twelfth Architect helps explain what their original purpose was before the Citadel fell to ruin and the haunting started:
“A gleaming order, cogwork sentinels, so impressive-majestic in function they were charged-b-b-bound to the highest holy duty. Long before the c-c-creation of the core, the sentinels ventured, even beyond these walls, to see all bugs brought-forced safe to serve the Citadel.”
They had a pretty dark purpose all things considered. Back then, the Weavers were still putting their snare for Granny Silk together, and they needed as many bugs as they could get their claws on to make sure the mechanism would work, and the sentinels were there to basically round those up. Since the Citadel’s whole purpose is explicitly against the higher being it was created to imprison, all of the sentinels’ duties reflected that.
Over time as the Citadel’s influence grew and the effects of the silk experimentation spread, the haunting must have slowly started up because of all the silk present in almost all the bugs there. At that point, the sentinels started culling haunted individuals in the hopes of stopping the spread of Silk’s influence. Which was no doubt fine originally, expected even, but the sentinels were just the executioners following the orders of the bugs in charge of the Citadel. The ones who’d “bound them to the highest holy duty.”
But at some point, those must have become haunted too.
Since the more powerful bugs of the citadel were probably the ones who’d undergone the most extensive experimentation with silk to prolong their lives, I think it’s safe to assume they’d have to fall to the haunting eventually. At least the ones with weaker wills. I assume Silk would have wanted to find a way to get rid of the sentinel nuisance too, stop them from continuously snipping at her hivemind and the control she was trying to reestablish.
So she ordered some haunted conductors to gather up all the sentinels in that chamber where they’d be decommissioned. Have their coghearts destroyed. In-game, all the sentinel corpses are clustered in that one room and effectively sealed inside, inaccessible to anyone but whoever knew the original location of the chamber and had the strength or incentive to break through the wall.
(There’s cut content of a sprite of a sentinel trapped by vines which is super interesting, but honestly that might’ve been cut exactly to streamline this feeling of “all but one were executed in this singular room.”)
As for why the Second Sentinel was spared, I think that's very much pure speculation, but I’ll make some educated guesses (read: be biased towards headcanons I like the most). The pieces of their cogheart are stored all across the citadel in rooms that are easy to find and well maintained. The puzzle mechanisms there are very big too, so most of the overseers of the Citadel must've been aware of their construction.
“[The cogheart pieces] were scattered about the citadel, each seemingly laid with purpose. Someone wished the thing dismantled, but showed respect enough to see it stored safe.”
To go through all the options: it could have been whichever architect was active at that point in time, probably one of the later ones given many generations must have passed for the silk to have become widespread enough in bugs’ shells for the haunting to start. Maybe they wanted to preserve at least one of the First Architect’s masterworks. I assume all the other coghearts were destroyed, so wishing to keep at least one disassembled but still intact would make sense, if for nothing then for someone to marvel at its intricacy. The fact the Second Sentinel’s shell was stored in a hidden section inside the Cogwork Core points to that possibility too.
It could have been the vaultkeepers or the conductors too of course. A vaultkeeper to immortalise a very important part of Pharloom’s history? A conductor to keep at least one of the sentinel order in case they'd be needed again, just take away their ability to wake up on their own?
There's fun headcanon potential for Romino to be the one who'd ordered Senti preserved and not discarded. He seemed to be one of the older Conductors, very much willing to call out the Citadel's true nature in Pharloom’s Folly, so doing something like this feels like it could be in character for how little we know of him. Maybe he wasn't haunted himself and while he couldn't oppose the others fully, he ordered the cogheart dismantled but kept locked behind simple puzzles so at one point, someone might come and wake the protector of the Citadel again to rid it of the haunting.
(I've seen theories around that Romino is actually Old Penitent, and I have no idea if that confirms or overthrows that headcanon, but it doesn't really matter, it's a fun one either way, and fuck would I love to write a fic about it.)
Lastly, there's also the possibility that Senti wasn't preserved for any practical reason at all. Maybe some bug powerful enough to make it happen just grew attached to them specifically, enjoyed their company or personality enough to take the risk.
Hornet talks about Senti as: “The talent and intelligence of this construct goes far beyond others I have witnessed. They seem less built as a tool to serve than an attempt at life itself.” It’s not clear whether this applies to all sentinels or just them in particular, but it’s interesting. Maybe that aspect of them is what ended up saving their life as they’d inadvertently formed a bond with someone just by existing as this unique life-like creature.
Going back to my Romino headcanon, he might’ve started to recognise all the sacrifices that had been made in order to keep Silk trapped, all the workers toiling to keep the citadel running, bugs sacrificed in Whiteward and souls trapped in automatons. Maybe he saw this one automaton bound to a singular duty in spite of the potential their intelligence and personality provided them. Maybe he wanted to give them a small chance at life after all this was over too.
I think there's something poetic to an automaton created with a single purpose in mind being kept alive because of pure sentiment that has nothing to do with their directive.
Regarding Senti themselves … they don’t hint at what happened back then at all, not even in their thoughts.
I wonder if they knew their siblings were gone when Hornet woke them up. Their thoughts could hint at the fact they'd only just recently found out about it. For all we know, they might not even have been in the chamber when the execution took place, just taken separately to their little resting place in the core, unaware of what was being done in High Halls. Maybe they thought they were the only one judged redundant and were okay with being decommissioned if that was the edict of their superiors.
But their thoughts could also imply they hadn't had the chance to process their loss before they were put to sleep. Maybe they knelt on the ground in that cramped chamber and shook while their siblings’ hearts were being crushed by their haunted superiors. They didn't know how to handle the betrayal of the bugs whose orders they'd spent their whole life following without a thought of doubt and did nothing to stop them.
I need to fucking hug them.
What their relationship with the other siblings looked like is pure headcanon material. But the very faint implication is that, since their singing seems to be a small part of a larger ensemble, they all used to sing together. The practical reason for that was probably because the early Citadel needed as many voices as possible to sustain its song, so having a little choir of automatons help out was only reasonable. Past that, it might've been a bonding experience for the siblings too <3
Whatever the intent of their “saviour,” all of that must’ve caused Senti so much survivor’s guilt and grief … Losing all of their family in an instant, themselves probably spared for reasons they couldn’t guess at … Returning right to their duty after waking up (and requesting Hornet give them orders, seeking some sense of normalcy), must’ve been all they could really think of doing at the start before it all set in and they made a beeline for the sealed chamber. The way is torn open by the time Hornet arrives to meet them, so Senti must've thrown themselves at the wall with a lot of desperation, only to find their siblings dead inside.
I imagine them. Staring at the scene. Before they move and start checking their siblings one by one, trying to see if they’re just powered down, just resting in uncharacteristic heaps on the ground. They open one chestplate after another to find their coghearts crushed.
Afterwards, they probably just sit beside them for a while, wondering if they should power down and stay like that until cobwebs cover them and they stiffen in the arms of their siblings.
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