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Specter was explicitly on the run, had finally managed to escape confinement, and had to deliver a message to someone (presumably in Rhode Island).

Skadi is also on the run from this group after escaping and refuses to associate with anyone because she knows they’ll be targeted in order to get at her.

Both Specter and Skadi are explicitly monstrously strong: Their Physical Strength scores are Outstanding for Specter and unquantifiable for Skadi, and both of them are referred to being insanely physically powerful in their Files, totting around their heavy weapons with ease and noting that their styles are suited to fighting massive monsters more so than fellow humanoids, which is why they just turn foes into bloodstains with their powerful swings. Most worryingly, it seems to be direct result of experimentation in both cases.

Specter has a high percentage of Cell-Originium Fusion ratio at 14%, a very high number compared to other Infected. It’s not quite as high as the 19% of Amiya and Ifrit, but unlike them, she shows no physical symptoms of Oripathy… Externally, that is. Specter’s cluster of crystal formations is actually inside of her, on her nervous system.

“While Specter showed no physical signs of Originium crystals, her nervous system has suffered a case of severe Infection, the cause behind which remains unknown.” 

It’s a unique case which explains her deteriorating mental state and her very peculiar behavior (more on that later). Intel appears to confirm that Specter was indeed a nun in a convent, but also that it was this very convent that kept her prisoner and experimented with her, which leads me to believe that Abyssal Hunters are either a religious organization or masquerade as one. 

“In actuality, when Specter first approached Rhodes Island, she was articulate and sincere, claiming she had just escaped confinement and wished to deliver a message. However, she fell silent before she could finish conveying it. In her last moments of sanity, she told the Operator who retrieved her that she has once again gotten entangled in a dark conspiracy. After she failed to tear off her habit, she then descended into madness.”

Apparently, she got close to delivering the message she wanted to bequeath, but ultimately didn’t make it before she lost her mind… For what seems to not be the first time. “She told the Operator who retrieved her that she has once again gotten entangled in a dark conspiracy.“  Notice how she says ‘once again’. That’s one thing, but the other two clues that lead me to believe this isn’t the first time she’s gone mad, and that she’s regained her sanity before, are:

As you build up Trust with Specter, you unlock more lines, and these tend to be regressions and lapses of lucidity.

Though she is described to have descended into madness, she is still an Operator in Rhode Island, follows orders, and, despite her cryptic way of speaking, seems to be otherwise very on top of her actions, not causing any trouble or showing any aggression to anyone that isn’t an enemy.

Now, this is just me theorizing, but I think Specter sought Rhode Island out after escaping the convent for the express purpose of going mad in there and not elsewhere, as she knew she’d eventually be able to regain her senses one day and then finish delivering the message and possibly warning them about the Abyssal Hunters in full, to not trust them. I think the ideal scenario for Specter was to actually warn them before going mad, but that didn’t end up happening, so she’s settling for Plan B, the next best thing.

And this takes us to the next point: I think the Abyssal Hunters are trying to mass produce extremely strong soldiers. This is where Skadi comes in. Skadi, unlike Specter, is fully sane, has 0% Cell Originium Fusion ratio, and 0.013 Blood-Originium Density, lower than everyone else, the lowest of all characters by far and possibly in the world. Her profile explicitly states it should be outright impossible to have such little exposure to Originium. Her physical strength is even higher than Specter’s, who is noted to be monstrously unreasonable already, and she apparently is immune to Oripathy. As stated before, she is being actively pursued by a certain group that is likely the Abyssal Hunters, meaning she is a valuable specimen to them… And most likely, their masterpiece. I theorize that Specter was one of the initial trial subjects, or a “lab rat”, if you wish, used to start trying out this process that:

Involves Originium.

Grants an insane level of physical strength.

Makes obedient soldiers.

And that, after mastering this experiment with Specter (and likely others), Skadi was the result of the refined, polished process.

Why those 3 points specifically? Let’s go over them.

“Involves Originium” and “Grants an insane level of physical strength” -> Specter’s Originium numbers are very high, Skadi’s are impossibly low. The process likely utilizes Originium in one way or another to augment the physical strength, not the Arts strength, of the subject. A high Cell-Originium Fusion ratio directly results in powerful Arts strength, which is why Casters tend to be highly Infected (example: Amiya), however, despite how high Specter’s ratio is, higher than most other Casters, her Files state she has zero Arts aptitude.

“Furthermore, Specter lacked both the necessary aptitude and knowledge to wield Originium powers. This is puzzling and greatly impacts her combat ability. Despite her difficulties, Specter was still devastatingly powerful during her missions, to the point of unsettlement. She undoubtedly has incredible room for growth and improvement.”

To put it in other words, Specter should be, in theory, an incredible Caster, yet, not only does she not know how to tap into that power, she also has zero aptitude for it. Instead, she showcases downright unsettling levels of physical strength. The Abyssal Hunters do not want Arts strength, they want physical strength specifically, perhaps because of the nature of their enemies: I theorize that whatever it is that the Abyssal Hunters hunt, they have very high Arts resistance or perhaps even immunity to Arts. Immense physical strength, massive weapons, and a style of combat suited to fighting large monsters instead of humanoids all seem to point towards their usual foes being large, Arts-resistant monsters. Maybe they are not immune or resistant to Arts, maybe the environment in which they are fought makes Arts unwieldy or ineffective (perhaps underwater? We have no information on how Arts function underwater to my knowledge), we need more information here.

“Makes obedient soldiers” -> Specter has a very peculiar behavior in combat.

“Even more important is her polarizing attitudes in combat and in her daily life. She is demure and quiet in battle (other than a few occasional mumbles to herself), with a mindless tendency to follow orders to the end, completely unaware of potential danger and obstacles. Her inability to react has endangered her safety more than once. It can be concluded that Specter is a vital part of the squad, but a commander must also adapt to her single-mindedness and plan accordingly.”

She is not a laughing-mad berserker, she’s not running into the fight screaming louder than the roar of her mechanized circular saw, she stays perfectly silent and mindlessly follows orders to the letter with no regards of what happens to her. This is actually embodied in her Skill 2, “Bone Fracture”: 

“During the skill duration, Specter’s HP will not drop below 1; ATK +100%”

While it is active, Specter cannot fall down by any means, period. She’s immortal for the duration, and she also gets a massive attack boost. The “Bone Fracture” of the title doesn’t refer to her breaking her opponent’s bones, it refers to her own fractured bone and how it doesn’t impede her at all. It’s a chilling mindlessness to complete the task at any cost, to fulfill the order no matter what. Thus, I think that’s part of the experiment, too, to be able to make not only immensely strong soldiers, but also soldiers that will faithfully obey any order to the letter, no matter how badly they get hurt.

Finally, I theorize Skadi escaped after she was given the super strength, but before they could actually do things to her mind and nervous system to make her a perfectly submissive soldier.

That’s the thing, honestly? Arknights does gray morality really good.

Reunion is definitely not good at all, but the Ursus Empire and Lungmen are horrible as well. The Bigger Entities being overall vile while having good people in there is always a very good way to go about it, if you ask me. 

I wasn’t expecting Reunion, however, to get this treatment, at least not so early in the game’s life! It’s very good to see that, yeah, even among the Nominated Villain Group, there’s obviously dissenters. That’s what Big Bob’s group was: Deserters who realized Reunion was just not playing the game right, so they decided to go get themselves a better tomorrow.

Big Bob as a character is very telling, very interesting: He’s a good guy. He shows up in a heavy duty bomb suit, shows his talent with explosives and traps, and yet he never once actually throws a real bomb at anyone, because he didn’t want to cause collateral damage: His Reunion buds attack only once they are way out of range of the village, and he explicitly states he didn’t want to hurt any villager over this, he just wanted the funds to be able to make the trip to Columbia. The two times he throws any sort of ‘explosive’, it’s flashbangs, especially noteworthy at the end stretch because he could’ve easily hit Skadi and killed Carol if he wanted, had that been a real bomb… But as he stated, he didn’t want to harm Carol, he just wanted the money for the sake of his ‘brothers’.

This bounces off Grani perfectly: Grani is an idealist, one that puts her money where her mouth is. No armchair activism, no hollow ideals, Grani says “I WILL protect you and any Infected”, and that’s what she’s gonna damn do. It shows you that, yeah, end of the day, the Arknights world is a horrible place to be… but not devoid of good people, and not devoid of aspirations to goodness. Grani is the goodness of this world that Big Bob desperately wanted to believe in.

First of all, obviously, you have Amiya leading Rhode Island in support of all Infected and trying to work alongside Lungmen to subdue Reunion.

But also, simultaneously, you have the Church trying to get the drop on SilverAsh for not being a slave to tradition via full-on subterfuge shadow war and political powerplays, such as making his sister, Pramanix, the Pope just so they have control and “supervision” over her, and thus a way to hurt SilverAsh.

ALSO, Specter, Skadi, Deepcolor and Blue Poison sneak out of Rhode Island without telling anyone every other night in order to live out their very own Bloodborne hell, fighting giant deep sea monsters in secret for some purpose we do not know a thing about, and then they return to Rhode Island and pretend they don’t know each other.

BUT WAIT, MEANWHILE, at Rhine Labs, Saria, Silence, Ifrit, and possibly Ptilopsis were involved in Some Stuff that apparently resulted in Ifrit becoming as she is right now, and then they broke her out of there, BUT Saria and Silence don’t talk anymore unless it’s to fight, with the former taking some distance from Silence and Ifrit, while Ptilopsis is just a very enigmatic presence.

AND THEN there’s the whole incident that occurred to Zima and the rest of her friends at Chernobog during the Reunion uprising that led to its destruction. We know they survived it, obviously, because they are now at Rhode Island. We have no idea how they survived it, we have no idea what they survived, all we know is that it left some nasty mental scars on everyone involved and they refuse to speak about it.

And this is not getting into Kazimierz having sunk so low that the more distant villages, such as the one in the Grani And The Knight’s Treasure event, outright get completely neglected to the point it’s more accurate to refer to them as an independent settlement by now, and the formerly glorious Knights of Kazimierz have become petty bandits with government permission to just do whatever they want, and it’s become so bad that a group of people in Kazimierz formed the Scionless Order, which expressly dedicates itself to assassinating Knights due to how terrible they’ve become to the people they were supposed to protect. The shadowy order of Knight-Assassins is considered the good guys.

Okay bear with me here because this just a messy theory I’ve been thinking about.

But as far as I’m aware (please correct me if I’m wrong) this is the official look of Edmond Dantes before his tragedy unfolded:

Note the healthy sun kissed skin and brown hair. (To be fair we can’t see his eye colour here, tho I assume it’s a natural one like brown)

And then we have Edmond Dantes as he currently is:

Note that his eyes are only red in the first art and remain gold even in official art:

He’s become significantly paler, his hair has turned white and (suspectedly) his eyes have turned yellow/gold.

Now where else do we similar changes happening?

In alters.

Now before y'all come for me, I realise this isnt a concrete or completely consistent occurrence. Saberfaces tend to just get lighter blonde hair rather than all out white, Atalanta’s eyes seem more green, Okita Alters only look gold in her april fools art, and Cu alter’s hair and eyes dont change at all. So admittedly not exactly a fool proof rule, though there is enough to set a precedent - enough to start associating yellow/gold eyes and white hair as alter characteristics.

But anyway, for the sake of the post, let’s just pretend it is a sign of alters. Then obviously, Edmond Dantes ticks all the boxes for being an alter

Has white hair that he previously did not have

Gold/yellow eyes (that we assume he didnt have beforehand)

Cruel/flipped version of his previous morals

A flair for the dramatics and a personality so edgy you could cut diamonds with it

But what he doesnt have is what canonically makes alters possible: being exposed to the grail mud

According to the fate wikia, this is a process called “blackening”

So it’s fair to say that if we assume my Dantes Alter theory is credible; Dantes would be an alter like Jalter or Cu alter, one made not within normal circumstances/rules, and therefore may have some differences that other alters dont share.

It could be possible that the horrible torture and trials Dantes went through in the prison Château d'If acted as the standin for the grail mud, because it was so brutal that it could match “All the World’s Evils”. Submerged within the torture, he went through a twisted/unconventional replication of the blackening process, turning him into a pseudo alter like being within his own lifetime.

But yeah, that’s my theory on Edmond Dantes being a pseudo alter existence while he was a human.

It’s not without holes; I’m assuming correlation between hair turning white/eyes gold and alters but that’s not confirmed. His hair turning white could be reference to Marie Antoinette syndrome, and perhaps his eyes were gold from the beginning.

KUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA intensifies

My Okita catalyst worked so I made an edge lord catalyst. 

And as the last remaining human, he can cherish and protect nothing else. You are his last hope of existence and like he had before he will struggle through rats and mud to crush his enemies. He acts as your proxy, maintaining your hope and helping you climb to a freedom where you can wake up to a future.

I just .. love him