#cloudstriders

Okay, i was gonna write this a while ago but never did. So, my boyfriend and I were hanging out in the Hall of Heroes after we finished the Strider exotic quest. My bf realized it there seemed to be way too many monuments around the room, considering the few things we knew off hand:

The collapse was 1600 years ago. We know this tidbit from Petra Venj. In the lore entry "Refusal" from Forsaken, there is this line: "She [Petra] bites back the rest: how she wishes that back in two-thousand-and-whatever, when the Darkness hurled mankind off the height of its Golden Age to plummet sixteen centuries into barbarism, it had done just a slightly better job." So we know that Neomuna have been around for approximately 1600 years.

Cloudstriders live 10 years, due to the augmentations they go through.

There are only ever two cloudstriders at once.

Alright, with this knowledge, we decided to count up all the monuments in the room and around it, which gave us 480 monuments. This number might not be entirely accurate, but it gives us a good estimate. Now let's divide this by two (since there are two cloudstriders at once) and we are down to 240. If this is multiplied by 10 (for the max amount of years a cloudstrider could live) we get 2400 years.

2400 years of Cloudstriders. Now, obviously this doesn't take into account that cloudstriders can die on duty (like Rohan), but it seems that the Neomuni live in relative peace besides occasionally dealing with the Vex. This also doesn't take into account the early days of Neomuna. We don't know how many cloudstriders there are at once originally, but it seems like there have never been many. We also don't really know how new/old of a concept cloudstriders are. Was Strider, the first cloudstrider, around 1600 years ago or more recently? So yeah, if we think cloudstriders have been around for 1600 years and you minus 1600 from 2400, that's still a good 800 years. It seems weird that there would be that many Cloudstriders. But who knows.

so !! i did some maths (lemoncat emoji) and calculated the total number of cloudstrider memorials in the hall of heroes (including rohan's) to be 414.

i'm assuming that cloudstriders' lives overlap somewhat like this:

but, frankly, i'm too scared and stupid to calculate the math like this so i just decided to halve the total number of years every cloudstrider was active (putting each lifespan back to back instead of overlapping): 414x10 = 4140/2 = 2070

in conclusion, my guesstimate is the time period of neomuna's establishment until the release of lightfall lasted 2070 years. with the last city having existed for ~500 years, the time period of the collapse until the (rough) end of the dark age/start of the city age lasted ~1570 years.

EDIT: corrected the maths for 4140x2, thank you to @jack-inaboxx

i'll leave all my screenies and calculations below the cut, should someone far braver and more mathematically competent than me want to calculate this for theirself. (spoilers for neomuna's hall of heroes destination)

Like cloudstriders still have to sleep and eat and all the other bodily stuff, so they have to be able to take off most things, but like what's meshed to skin and what's not!?

Ummmmmmmmmm

EXCUSE ME?!

LORD HAVE MERCY ON MEEEEEE