#originium

I haven’t played Arknights, but I’ve researched enough OG lore to raise an eyebrow at Endfield’s premise of corpos terraforming a planet with evil space cancer rocks, all the while the narrative and surrounding characters/npcs diligently partake in what is essentially unchecked colonialism.

They’re the good guys, btw.

EDIT: Observations and opinions seem to be divisive amongst OG Arknights players, from the comments to this post to further research on what long time players are saying everywhere else.

"This is a fresh start, your waifu is dead, fuck you, keep up."

Trying to imagine any other game "like this" pulling the same thing and laughing. "Here Lies Saber Forever. RIP Ayaka Kamisato. Insert any Raid Shadow Legends character who totally has a name anyone knows here whom is also dead and will probably by some definition be missed"

If Endfield weren't still a gacha with the Male Gaze clearly in some of its female characters' DNA, we'd be so much more compelled to read into it as some kind of mission statement.

Not to mention how within the first several hours of gameplay, characters talking basically directly confirms the fate of the as-of-yet-unfinished former game's plot; Oripathy doesn't get cured, but properly medicated and fully destigmatized.

Maybe less of a surprise to others, and of course there's still plenty of mysteries unspoiled (eg, Doctor) but we still find ourselves appreciating the direction that Endfield has decided to hit the ground running with.

The simplest way to describe Originium, as best I can gather, is that it is a possibly primordial element that the precursors discovered/theorized contained a collective universe of consciousness, or could be used for that purpose. Civlight Eterna is an originium art that can tap into this element of Originium to connect to history, providing a potentially perfect understanding to the one using it. This power, passed through the Black Crown, is not unlike the ability of a Newtype, connecting across conciousness through time and without limitations. However, it can also create physical manifestations of power pulled from that history and those connections, as seen with Ying Xiao, Amiya's sword that was created from the memories of Chen's Chi Xiao in Chapter 8.

In an effort to either overcome or escape the threat of some unnamed malevolent force, the precursors created or modified Terra to serve as a garden of Originium, intending to create that collective consciousness for their own ends. The mastermind behind this project, as far as Oracle (the true original Doctor) and Friston have stated is Priestess, who was set up as the next big narrative mystery to solve or explain post-Victoria. The story of Babel shows a version of the Doctor struggling to deal with the moral dilemma created when living, sentient creatures were born on Terra after the start of the experiment.

Kal'tsit went on a whole personal journey to eventually come to the conclusion that the life on Terra has a right to make their own future, and that any of the intentions of the "experiment" should be abandoned. Oracle comes to the same conclusion, with dialouge options the player must specifically click on as they do when speaking for the Doctor in most parts of the story. However, some other voice inside the Doctor's head keeps pushing them to continue the mission, leading to the tragedy of Theresa's murder and Amiya's crowning. Additionally, Theresa took her last moments to destroy the Doctor's memories, an act that Oracle accepts as necessary. It's likely that only be destroying the Doctor's memories could the Doctor be free of Priestess's influence, allowing them to pursue the path that Oracle, their true self and OUR version of the Doctor, would prefer.

Other little highlights of the event for me include: Getting to see Savage in the history of Babel, the Vampire lord continuing to be a repugnant and irredeemable prick, Ascalon defeating a sociopathic enemy by overwhelming his precognition abilities, little Amiya and the Doctor riding a big animal, and Theresis just being the big old complicated walking catastrophe that he's always been.

A long post where-in I try to form a loose time-line of Priestess and Oracle's history together, and try to find when, how, and why they clash.

I've talked about how originium seems to be a form of grey goo, crystalline collections of nanomachines consuming carbon and heat to build more originium, but I don't think that's what it was intended to be.

I mean think about it, it's a pretty bad world-destroying weapon all things considered. It might get there eventually, but anything that has trouble digesting living tissues wasn't built to be an ecosystem devouring apocalypse.

No, I think originium was an attempt to create a different theoretical material. I think originum was meant to be computronium.

Imagine a computer of such monstrously vast processing power that anything could be calculated, and to build it all you have to do is feed it carbon and energy. Just stick that bad boy in orbit and keep tossing it material, let it power itself with solar energy and in a decade or so you could be well on your way to making a jupiter brain.

Then something went wrong. Anything that replicates can make a mistake and pass that mistake along, it mutates, becomes something you weren't expecting. One day a single particle made a mistake, made a single nanomachine in a crystalline lattice of millions incorrectly, and it started to replicate. It began to consume the structure around it, not recognizing it as more of itself. The imperfect crystal spread and fractured the once perfect whole, and pieces fell to the world below.

Now, another such scenario that is easy to think of as completely unrelated to Originium and, hell, most of Terra for the most part is what’s going on with the Aegir, the Abyssal Hunters, and the Seaborn. However, the more we learn and the more you think about it, that is not the case. These are actually very intimately related issues narratively speaking. The troubles of Aegir are a warning to the surface, the biggest warning there is.

Let’s put it this way:

What’s the deal with Originium? It’s a scarcely understood substance that exists in Terra, explicitly, in the surface. It can be harnessed for great industrial power and is even the root of the so-called Originium Arts, where Terrans harness the residual Originium in their bloodstream to bend the laws of physics or radically alter the chemistry in and around them to produce “magic”: Psychic colossi, fireballs, pure darkness, power over gravity and time, you name it. And the more Originium one has in their bloodstream, the stronger their Arts. However, Originium is fundamentally dangerous, with Oripathy, or Originium Infection, being a lethal, terminal illness one can only stave off, and the sheer abuse of Originium has led to the residues directly causing Catastrophes, intense weather events that can include thunderstorms, tornados, earthquakes and even meteor showers. That’s not to talk about how Originium’s sheer industrial utility has resulted in incredibly morally bankrupt practices despite how dangerous it is, being one of the most used and abused substances in the setting for practically everything and anything. It’s a society that has largely grown dependent on its own poison. Worse still, it’s implied Originium is sentient and actively wants to kill Terrans very, very much, and those who are particularly badly infected tend to hear voices that try to command them to do horrible things to others.

Now, let’s think about the troubles of the world beneath the water’s surface: Aegir has incredibly advanced technology, what little we’ve heard has made it obvious that the level of technology and quality of life of Aegir was far, far superior to anything the surface world has ever seen. Skadi and Specter, separately from one another, have complained that the surface doesn’t even have automatic toilets, and when Ventus, in his fully transformed Seaborn form, starts charging a beam, Skadi immediately identified it as a “particle beam”, meaning that Aegir not only likely has plenty of research involving molecules and particles, they may even have particle beam cannons themselves. In fact, Gladiia confirms that the reason Abyssal Hunters use weapons such as swords and spears instead of their supertechnology is so Seaborns cannot copy it and adapt to it. However, think about what Seaborns are: A barely understood, sentient cluster of organisms that exists to evolve, expand, and reproduce, even if it means taking over the Aegir capital. There was no space for dialogue. To combat this incredibly dangerous threat that only grew stronger day by day, Aegir decided to create the Abyssal Hunters: Aegirians spliced with Seaborn genes. This resulted in incredibly capable supersoldiers capable of defeating even the biggest Seaborn monstrosities without the aid of their supertechnology... At the cost of possibly becoming Seaborn themselves, if the mutations got out of control or if their mental stability was sufficiently compromised, turning into one of the enemy. It is unknown what has become of Aegir, with only a few confirmed survivors of the Hunters (a mere four as of Stultifera Navis: Skadi, Specter, Gladiia and Ulpian).

Aegir is a warning to Terra.

Both Aegir and Terra are fighting enemies they barely comprehend, enemies that cannot be identified as people, but rather, as a force of nature, sentient and hostile and utterly incomprehensible. The closest thing to communication to either of these forces is Mizuki, who comes from a specific group of Seaborn that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Enemies that encompass the environment itself, enemies that can’t be identified as a unified army under a ruler with a clear, predictable intent. Aegir and Terra might as well be fighting the world’s will, for all they know. The Ocean is sentient and hates Aegirians’ guts, and it’s so pronounced that you don’t even need to be a Hunter to reciprocate, as we learned with Thorns: He heard the Ocean call him out, saw a Seaborn popping out from the water, and without really understanding it himself, strongly felt “I am meant to kill that thing”. There’s nothing to suggest the soil itself is any different. For all we know, Originium might be a way in which the Earth is trying to kill off those who deal it.

But regardless of the truth behind Originium, it is fact that comparing Originium to the Seaborn is very easy:

They both grant incredible power to those who harness them, at the cost of subjecting themselves to incredible danger. Originium grants powerful Originium Arts, Seaborn genes turn you into a nigh-unkillable, exceedingly strong Abyssal Hunter, but Originium is a terminal, deteriorative illness, and Seaborn genes will eventually, inevitably turn you into a Seaborn, another vehicle with which to kill your loved ones. The Corrupting Heart is a hypothetical case of Skadi not being able to resist her Seaborn blood, turning into an all-assimilating apocalypse scenario. Ifrit, on the other hand, can potentially be an all-destroying force of nature if she’s not kept in check and under treatment diligently.

They both chew at the sanity of the subject. Skadi and Gladiia both struggle in different levels to keep their Seaborn mutation under check not unlike how Ifrit and Ptilopsis struggle to keep the voices inside of them from making them harm themselves and others.

They both are sentient yet incomprehensible, hostile and alien existences that humans cannot communicate with or relate to in any way, and could even be considered to be the will of the very environment or planet itself, depending on how you read them. *Mizuki being a very extreme exception.

Perhaps one could consider the tale of Aegir, lost in the depths with nary a peep in decades, to be a warning for the rest of Terra: Harnessing the very power that wants to kill you might not be the best idea, and a direct fight against the very nature around you can only result in defeat, perhaps instant, perhaps prolonged, but defeat nonetheless.