Philosophical: What are or could be drifters?

[ifoz]

10 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

think the drifters are the corrupted "little metal men" Jonas Falx created

I think this is an interesting theory, but I doubt this is the case.

The 'little metal men' that Foreman Eustace mentions aren't a real thing. He says that he wishes Falx would make them so that they could shovel the coal for him.
Jonas has made locusts, bells and the big Eidolons, but has never made a human-sized robot.
Drifters also make grunting and groaning sounds, and have idle animations for both worshipping and curling up and crying, which are things that I doubt robots would do.
The old alchemist on the library resonator also mentions people "turning" which indicates to me that there is a process in which the rot or the rust turns rot-infected people into drifters.

Edited May 8, 2024 by ifoz

[LadyWYT]

22 hours ago, ifoz said:

Drifters also make grunting and groaning sounds, and have idle animations for both worshipping and curling up and crying, which are things that I doubt robots would do.

I think I found another idle animation to add to this list. Drifters will occasionally examine/sniff themselves, and then throw their arms up in frustration. Or maybe it's despair, I'm not really sure. They don't quite seem like mindless drones, but I'm not really sure what their motive is aside from hunting down seraphs specifically.

[Chuckerton]

I think they are people like our characters but lost in time. They mostly show up in TEMPORAL (relating to time) storms, and they are drifters (one who is continually moving from place to place, without any fixed home). I think some great calamity happened at a different point in time and it has caused (or is continuing to cause) people to get ripped out of their time and suck between two different points in time, which could explain why they flicker during temporal storms, like they keep falling out of and falling back into our time. 

Or maybe time itself is more like a machine that is breaking (temporal gears, the big gears in the background during temporal storms). Time itself is falling apart, and temporal storms are times where its REALLY falling apart. The drifters are just a weird consequence of this process. I think Eldrich steampunk is a possibility in this game. 

bear in mind, i havent gotten far enough into this game to start seeing lore other than what i could gather from a few merchants around, so as i learn my theories might change but to me this seems to be something of a possibility given the names of things happening in vintage story. Im doing what people do when they dont have answers. Guess based on observations. 

Edited May 22, 2024 by Chuckerton
Trying to fix weird text issues.

[Alluvium]

Drifters were once TikTok creators and users of X, before the fall of the internet. Now they lurk in shadows and caverns, desperate for humanoid attention. They will chase down any himanoid figure in hopes of receiving validation, and will even attack each other in their quest for recognition. 

[BiznesTelch]

They aren’t purely natural for one. The weapons got a flavor text, and it explains a bit of what they are.