#kaptar

Cryptid of the Day: Kaptar

Based upon the previous discussion and much head scratching I think I’ve finally got the narrative of what happened in Kaptar figured out.

The simple (and obvious in hindsight) answer is that the seeds weren’t paired! Farley’s plan was anything but perfect and relied heavily on the intel provided by Rookoh and Chavar. She writes in the note outlining the plan…

“The locations and times in this document are based on the information leaked by Rookoh and Chavar. Our lives depend on the accuracy of the information we received from them.”

The Mofang didn’t use an already paired seed as that would be easy for the other species to anticipate the entry location. The ONLY reason the humans etc knew where to be was down to the intel they’d received. Unfortunately there was no real way to be 100% accurate with the placement of the seeds. Again Farley writes…

“Trigger Locations: As prescribed. (All location should have small error allowance. Maray has largest margin of error potential - BE ALERT)”

So basically they placed the seeds where they were told the Mofang would be coming through but it wasn’t ever going to be exact since the seeds weren’t paired. C.W. writes in his swap machine note…

“Without a pair seed defining the destination swap location, the destination coordinates match the source.”

The Kaptar seed was very close but not perfect so when the Mofang swapped in their weapon their sphere came in a little to one side. Then when the Aria swapped back they took a little of Soria with them and the Soria sphere left a little bit behind in Kaptar, creating the pattern that we now find. The Mofang must have tripped and fallen whilst trying to prevent the Arai from swapping back and been caught in the radius. One last desperate move to prevent their own destruction. Kind of creepy when you think about it, that moment of realisation that they’d just killed themselves…

I made a little info-graphic to try and show how it happened…

This scene is never really explained in-game so we’re left to infer what we can from the elements. The main thing I didn’t quite understand while playing the game was why this swapping machine was connected to a scale. I came up with some idea about one of the people standing on the scale so that they could quickly activate the swap. Upon later consideration and observation I realised the real reason. This is Kaptar. The “Remainer” in Kaptar is one of the Polyarchs. It’s the Polyarch’s job to swap the Mofang’s weapon back to them as soon as it is swapped in. The Polyarchs use the beetles to interact with the environment. It’s kind of obvious in hindsight. This swapping machine is activated when one of the BEETLES lands on the scale, not a human. When I was taking this screenshot for this post I then noticed that the markings on the scales weren’t just a random “smooch”, they are an imprint in the shape of the beetle that landed on it, confirming my theory.

As for the rest of the scene it’s hard to know exactly what happened but it’s at least clear that the Mofang swapped into Kaptar. I’d say the Mofang in Soria saw that the beetles were going to swap the weapon back and tried to stop them. The beetles triggered the swap-back and one of the approaching Mofang was caught mid-sphere. I’m not sure why the radii are different though (besides it being a cool effect) or where the seed went after the swap was complete.