What are the "Great Arks"?

[LadyWYT]

On a whim, I decided to leaf through all the trader dialogues again. When talking about the human settlements/survivors, there's a reference to some devices/entities called the "Great Arks", that seem to be capable of traveling great distances with ease, if not through time itself. Whether that title is a carryover from the Old World, or new terminology coined by survivors isn't clear. Likewise, it's not entirely clear whether the Arks are actual things that survivors have seen, or whether they're simply the new legends of the era. Assuming they are real though, I think it's safe to say that the Arks aren't populated by seraphs, given that the traders don't really seem to know anything about seraphs when questioned by the player.

As for what the Arks themselves could be...I think it's more likely that those are mostly a legend derived from the Salvation Engine that was created by Jonas Falx, intended to save mankind from the Rot. The Salvation Engine seems to be a machine capable of transporting entities through time, and is presumably a rather large device given how it's depicted in the Salvation tapestry. Both are qualities that fit the description of the Arks, however, I doubt Jonas managed to build more than one Engine. So if there are indeed multiple Arks, then my guess is most likely wrong and they probably aren't related to the Salvation Engine.

While I'm speculating, I suppose it's possible that in the event of multiple Arks, they may vary in size, or perhaps be the equivalent of a steampunk RV. In which case, we might possibly be finding one, or what's left of one, in the next story update. If I recall correctly, I don't think the next handful of story locations are supposed to be quite as grand as the Resonance Archive.

Edit: grammar

Edited Wednesday at 03:30 AM by LadyWYT

[ifoz]

I was thinking about this the other day, and I have a theory.
Arks, in real life legend, are probably most commonly associated with the story of Noah's Ark - wherein a man builds a boat that saves himself and his family from a global calamity.
I believe that the Great Arks are much the same.
The Hanseatic league, said to have "great navies" are mentioned to have sailed away from the land in an effort to evade the Rot, with their fate unknown.
I think that some Hansa actually survived, allowing their descendants to eventually become the human traders we see today. Over the many, many years, the tale of the Hansa ships saving humanity has been turned into the tale of The Great Arks - massive boats that are worshipped religiously / viewed as holy as humanity's salvation.

Edited Thursday at 08:58 AM by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, ifoz said:

I was thinking about this the other day, and I have a theory.
Arks, in real life legend, are probably most commonly associated with the story of Noah's Ark - wherein a man builds a boat that saves himself and his family from a global calamity.
I believe that the Great Arks are much the same.
The Hanseatic league, said to have "great navies" are mentioned to have sailed away from the land in an effort to evade the Rot, with their fate unknown.
I think that some Hansa actually survived, allowing their descendants to eventually become the human traders we see today. Over the many, many years, the tale of the Hansa ships saving humanity has been turned into the tale of The Great Arks - massive boats that are worshipped religiously / viewed as holy as humanity's salvation.

A great point! I hadn't even considered that it could be a reference to the Hanseatic League sailing to the rescue. After all, we never learned what happened to them after they sailed away, and the game is rather fond of using questionable narrators and letting the players draw their own conclusions from the pieces.

Assuming some of the ships still exist though, or rather, that the League's descendants continued their seafaring traditions, I wouldn't be surprised if they adapted to the post-calamity world by spending most of their time at sea and only visiting the mainland to resupply or acquire trade goods. While a life at sea might be harsh, it might be easy to avoid the rifts and supernatural monsters that way, given the mobility ships offer and the fact that we haven't yet seen any aquatic monsters(though that could easily change). Even if it's a hard life, the human survivors on the mainland might prefer it to dealing with the monster threat, or they might have just created fantastic tales of how much better that life is/the paradises they could sail away to.