#vertumna

Not just conceptually, but also emotionally, considering that the assimilation is what gave birth to the culture you grew up with in the game and if you were trying to completely oppose it you'd like, be trying to pull the rug underneath you and detach yourself from almost everything cultural that means something to you while not even having any way to connect with much else except for the few things that have persisted.

That would be very hard and harsh on you psychologically, in that situation I would probably instead try to connect with the nature around me more… or I guess the more reasonable option would be to try to incorporate what you can still find out about your parents' cultures and make it part of your life as well.

It's why while I really enjoy the connection between Cal and Islam and have used it to think about where part of his family might be from (and think fanart showing him connected to it in some way could be great, he just deserves more fanart in general…) we don't really know much about the specifics, like the geographical region, or how exactly Islam ties into his background. And with how large and diverse his family is I think it's unfair to try to pin him to one specific culture, considering he clearly loves every parent he has so much. So for me it feels wrong to not just think of him as someone whose background is mixed or maybe ambiguous, until he tells us otherwise! :D

So personally, when thinking of him or writing about him in a story I prefer to think about it as one of many things that subtly influenced him growing up, but not by far the only thing. Not knowing (or being able to know) the specifics of his cultural background is fine with me, maybe he wouldn't even want to talk about it much to not have other people try to define him by that, considering his passion clearly is with his current home and the nature in it and I like him as individual so much that I would want to respect that! It's the least I can do.

He seems like he would still tend towards a more religious outlook despite religion being so downplayed on Vertumna (again, on a meta level I can imagine why even if it's a bit sad, my country is very secular though so I can relate) and inspired by that and some post I saw on here before I think he would tend to a religious view that is more rooted and grounded in the earth he walks on, in the most literal way, something that would see all the xenos, fungi, xenoplants and maybe rivers, stones and like forests as a whole as not just equally having a right to exist and being equally important to life, but also equally sentient, someone you can listen to talk and respond. Some kind of animism that partially grew from his work…

Something I imagine Dys, being much more inclined to scientific fieldwork, would not be able to relate to and maybe slightly criticize or mock him for despite sharing much of his outlook. By the way, I had no idea you could see him in some way as Asian representation, and I really like that actually. I was wondering if there's any in that game and because there are not really any cultural references to Asian cultures I couldn't really think of anything so thank you for telling me about that! I didn't even know there are so many cases of an Asian character being shown as "weird and creative and shunned for it" that it has become a recognizable trope. I agree it's good it's not exaggerated, same with Tangent.

I am actually thinking of ways of leaving some more (obscure) hints to those in my fanfiction! Right now I just have one. I have a post on my belief that the Vertumna Group originated in Estonia (and even an idea for an alternate Vertumna Group that set out in 1910 to search for Atlantis under the ocean rather than Vertumna in outer space) and so I included a reference to the national flower of Estonia at one point:

"And, and these bold blue cornflowers fit really well with both! Their petals look like tiny flowers, surrounding a slightly darker disk. Your mother always called them rye flowers, never even explaining what rye is. But she did tell me they were once important to many of the people that organized our spaceship that brought us here. Symbolized their old home they were willing to give up for their children or something. A reminder of Earth and what we escaped, then?"

With no point of connection to Earth cultures beyond some pop culture like music and having grown up in such a different cultural environment would probably make you have a very different view on what it really means and stands for than someone on Earth, wouldn't it?

Also, on top of that, I feel it would be hard to really do longer segments about reconnecting with Earth culture justice from a writing perspective, since it seems like it would either have to remain very general and not amount to much more but some stressing and depressing moments, or be culture-specific in a way that would be hard to get right and significantly increase the amount of time and effort needed to complete the game and while it's sad it's not in there I can understand wanting to emphasize other themes (like growing up and the friendships and relationships you have along the way, ecology and resistance to militarism and environmental destruction) … but maybe in a potential sequel? or side-quel? Or it can be just a topic for fanfiction, like in the example I gave above.

With Rex I heard that the idea that his parents gave him that augment to make it easier for him to find friends and connections and so hopefully face less marginalization and stigmatization. While it reduces his lifespan they might have hoped it makes the years he does have better than they might have otherwise been, but yeah, I also can't really talk on it myself, I just really liked that idea. Maybe it's also why he can seem meek (although he does stand up for himself, and I think also Cal at one point?) because he doesn't want to turn people against him, or it's part of his experience (trauma…) of growing up on the Helios spaceship, where he was basically alone against all those soldiers from what I can tell.

And yes, I wish you'd be able to find out more about Helios culture, it's a bit kept very general. The way Lum first addresses you as "fugitives" made me think "oh he's some interstellar law enforcement sent by the US government or something and he will arrest us and make us prisoners!" but then it didn't happen. It's probably why I was surprised they still let you go into the wilderness, especially after that one moment where if you try to sneak away a soldier pushes you back into the circle to listen to Lum!

Actually also had some idea for a pre-canon story that would detail exactly what happened before the launch, how the Vertumna Group in Estonia had to somehow "acquire" a rocket in the US and then coordinate its shipment to a Nigerian spaceport via the internet all while traveling on trains and buses there themselves to avoid flying because Russia had made the airspace unsafe (and maybe the US was monitoring it) and they needed to have their departure and trip be harder to notice. I can talk about that in another ask if you are interested!

Anyway, the internalized shame and what not Rex (and Nomi-Nomi) clearly carry with themselves would be worth a lot of talk, too, and also what they are not ashamed about. Clearly for all their faults the soldiers didn't mind gender non-conforming attitudes on the ship as much, which is interesting for an otherwise so evidently strict and spartanic culture. It's the same with the Stratos, yes.

This actually touches back to something I said before: the fact that it represents queerness as something as natural of a diversity as eye or hair color (and even goes further with those as well! I never realized I like blue hair so much…) while also representing (even if maybe not entirely intentionally) some degrees of disability and the lack of understanding and internalized shame they tend to so often carry with themselves (you can view the future visions as representation of anxiety disorders and/or something like schizophrenia, and the belief in past lives can fit in here as well!) and also my favorite occupation is one of the main reasons why this game means so much to me!

- First off, the Convergent Domain was an alien civilization that used to live on the planet now known as Vertumna IV around 20,000 years ago.

- They lived an extremely long time ago but were extremely advanced and likely covered most of the planet, especially the region now known as the Wresting Ridges.

- Their civilization had been around for a long time and was in the late stages of its resource extraction from the planet before its extinction. This is to say, they had developed Vertumna IV extensively, blotting out large swaths of natural areas and destroying many species and much of the planet’s nature.

- This is what the strange rainbow, oil-slick obsidian material that covers the Wresting Ridges is from: it is inorganic, Convergent Domain-made technology/architecture/building material like concrete and asphalt (or more aptly, plastic) are for us.

- It is very likely (though not absolutely certain) that the Convergent Domain lived mostly or even entirely underground. This would explain why there are no ruins found on the surface of the planet.

- The Convergent Domain had and used an extensive amount of power. The entirety of the Wresting Ridges is suspected to be an old Convergent Domain power grid with the vines seen covering the area seeming like ancient power lines while certain semi-organic photosynthesizing crystals acted as solar panels.

- These crystals dot the landscape and fill the lattice of ravines so thoroughly that they look like glowing rivers shining up from the cracks in the ground.

- Sol can break a small one of these crystals while investigating it with Dys and the rock will violently explode, sending Sol flying backwards and injuring them.

- Utopia says that through how the sediment of the walls of ravines are broken up, the Wresting Ridges must have been flat without naturally forming ravines before something happened to create them.

- Additionally, these strange broken layers of sediment can be found all across the planet, not just in the Ridges.

- Utopia says that there must have been a ton of “earthquake” activity to create the landscape that exists today. And she says that they can date the ‘quakes’ to around the same time that many of the ruins found in the Ridges (pyramids and such) were created.

- The expeditions team hasn’t been able to find any ruins more recent than those, implying that the Convergent Domain must have ended around the same time as the quakes.

- The Convergent Domain also created the Gardeners, seemingly shortly before their extinction level event.

- The Gardeners were a very advanced and mostly organic and sentient AI created as a practical cleanup crew to restore the planet to its former natural and balanced state after the wreckage caused by the overconsumption, overindustrialization, and overdevelopment of the planet.

- Although Gardeners have very sufficiently restored the planet to almost as good as new, and they can become any creature, fluidly integrated into the natural planet and its workings, they think very rigidly about their mission and aim to eradicate any change to the planet that would disrupt the balance that has been achieved.

- Not only humans—when they arrive—are the targets of the Gardeners ‘pest extermination.’ The Gardeners have thoroughly suppressed different invasive Vertumnan species that became problematic for the balance of the planet in the past.

- Sym suggests their rigid thinking, which disallows them from seeing humanity as any different than a common weed, is due to how long the Overseer (the main leader/core of the system) has been alive and stuck on their mission. Sym suggests that because they have been around for so long, doing the same things for so long, they think “like a tree”, stuck in their ways.

- Of course, a certain kid too curious for their own good might change that.

- We don’t really know anything about the culture of the Convergent Domain, other than that towards the end they had regrets about what they had done to the planet and tried to fix it despite knowing they wouldn’t be around to see the restoration.

- Additionally they may have worshiped the wormhole, though that is just speculation based on the carvings in certain ruins like long-collapsed obelisks. 

- As for their extinction…

- Based on the damage to the planet, all Sol has learned about and from The Array, and the reaction that a single small crystal had to being broken (the violent explosion) it seems as if an error in The Array overloaded the solar crystals powering it. This basically caused the equivalent to an extinction level nuclear explosion, an explosion so powerful that it killed most or all of the Convergent Domain immediately and obliterated the surface of the planet.

- But the Gardeners seem to suggest that some of the Convergent Domain survived and left the planet to explore the stars for a new home (much like another species we know), leaving the Gardeners behind to restore Vertumna IV.

- There is also evidence to suggest that there was radioactive fallout from this event, or perhaps something the Convergent Domain did before its extinction caused a lot of radiation on the planet as it’s unclear if/how that would come from the solar crystal power grid overload.

The Convergent Domain is a direct parallel to humanity. Both civilizations were like locust swarms to their planets, leaving them barren of resources, polluting them with an inorganic mess that can never fully degrade, and fleeing to the stars as they went extinct.

The Vertumna Group, the Earthen Heliosphere and the Convergent Domain and their Gardners each represent a different way that dying civilizations who have already made too many mistakes to undo can choose to proceed in.

In the case of the Heliosphere, the dying civilization can dig it heels and bury its head in the sand. They can try to maintain the rule of law that their societies created. They can ostracize and attack anyone who tries to plead for some sort of change to save the lives of everyone. They can belligerently continue to pillage their planet’s dwindling resources and destroy its other species.

In the case of the Gardners/the Convergent Domain, the dying civilization can do what’s right despite knowing they will not live to see the fruits of their selfless labor. They can set the events in motion for their planet to heal and they can accept their fate, going extinct but allowing their planet and other species and ecosystems on it to live on into the future.

And in the case of the Vertumna Group, the civilization can try their best to save their planet, and can refuse to give up even if they fail. They can try, fight tooth and nail, to begin again. To survive and to fix the past mistakes that led to the mass extinction of their ancestors.

The Vertumna Group is certainly not perfect. Even before the Heliopause arrived the Vertumna colony was clear cutting forests around their new settlement. They were farming animals in order to eat and planting alien plants with less than acceptable regard to how this would affect the native wildlife. But at the same time, these were survival tactics. Much of what they did had to be done because of tragedies outside of their control and the scar left on the planet of Vertumna IV by the Convergent Domain in the form of the Gardeners.

The Vertumna Group planned for the longterm to create a society on this new planet where renewable resources powered their lives and all humans were equal and worked together for the common good of both their own species and the planet they live lived on. They chose farming over hunting, planting over pillaging, and planned to learn to live with the land after their tools and machines broke down.

That’s all! This is just stuff that I’ve picked up from playing the game over and over and over again. Let me know if I missed anything! I’ll put the soap box away now. I just love the story of this game and I think the parallels of the Convergent Domain to the humans and the messages taught by their stories are very cool.