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Theories/Hypotheses: What is the player character?


Takata Cheroki

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The merchants look perfectly human, but us? Not so much. Taller, non-human skin colors exclusively, and with some hair color options that don't exist in nature, it seems that the player character isn't exactly human. Sure, it could be that the world of Vintage Story is like other fantasy worlds in that humans just naturally aren't the only sapient, humanoid race, but that would be boring. Especially considering how unique the lore of Vintage Story is coming out to be so far, with drifters, locusts, and elements of temporal displacement.

So far, I have 3 hypotheses:
1.) The player character was thrown sideways in time, and is from a place where their race is present instead of humans. This would make sense, and could make it so that the story premise is along the lines of "get back home". However, I feel like it could be a waste of potential; the lore so far leaves so many questions and unknowns, and being an ordinary, random person from an alternate timeline/dimension/universe would just be kind of plain.

2.) The player character is a human altered by temporal instabilities. This one would also make sense, and wouldn't be as boring as being from another time/place. It opens up the questions of how the temporal elements altered the player character in the way that they did, if the change bring benefits or drawbacks, and if the player character wants to revert the change or progress it. It might not be a plot twist really, but it does have some degree of potential.

3.) The player character was sent by a higher power. Obviously, temporal instability is a big thing. We can't say for sure why it's there, but it is, and it makes sense for some higher power or higher being would somehow be involved. This hypothesis, if true, would open up all manner of different avenues that the devs could take the story through. Tons of potential in this route.

What do you guys think?

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Of course the player character was sent by a higher power. Me. The second highest power. Tyron's the highest power. 😛
In all seriousness I do prefer the last one the most. It could allow for an excuse to have some real objectives in the game, since you would be here with a job to do - whether it's clean up the instability or make it even worse.

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My take is:

- Seraphs are some kind of refugees from the past, fleeing the events that made the world that what we know as the rust world. We know that they were there when the apocalyptic events lead to civilisations fall.

- Seraphs have some kind of telepathic bond to others of their kind and can communicate with any other seraph in the same world. (the chat window)

- Because of their flight through time temporal instabilities, temporal storms and monsters only affect them as time doesn't like tampering in any kind. And only start existing in the world after the first seraph arrives. When a seraphs stability is really low they start to hurt or even kill themself. Which leads me to the possibility that the whole temporal mechanic is actually a mental thing. They might, like many refugees, suffer from a kind of ptsd, and as they share a telepathical bond with each other they face the same monsters. OR seraphs might flee from the origin of the rust world and any "time" they appear the rust world follows, they might be more of some harbingers of doom than actual refugees.

- The loading screen (if not using mods, or maybe it was only earlier versions) describe the world as a living, a feeling thing. And the seraphs "arrive" on it each time you logg on and enter a world or "leave" it "alone again" when going off. Furthermore they physically leave the world with all the possessions they are carrying at that moment each time the player loogs off.

need to leave it there, will post more tomorrow.

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  • 2 months later...

It also occurs to me that the word "seraph" means an angel, so being sent by a higher power (possibly someone who's calling them to "return" to the world over and over and refusing to let them leave forever?) I think the drive to return, as in the intro log, is a driving feature of seraphs, who are the only ones who respawn in the same way every time they die and can only despawn (log off) by their own will, since the player character is the only non-mob life form. So maybe returning is a special feature of seraphs and the reason they are able to survive and create/fight in the ruined world? As opposed to the traders, who have to hide in their wagons, or the drifters, who can only wander and attack, or the creators of the ruins, who seem to be extinct as a society

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Based off of info from the wiki, the Seraphs are an evolved people who originated from the water. This may go a way to explaining why they can breathe underwater.

That said, my impression is that they were a race of people that were in existence during the time noted in the journals and things; because they have detailed lore about clothing, for example, worn by key people who - I assume - were alive during that time. We have an awareness of events that we don't get from the artefacts we find. Also, we can read, which means the seraphs very likely share a common root language with that and the other people of the planet. Further evidence of this is that we seem to communicate well enough with the traders.

One thing to consider is the name seraph - who calls us that? Do we call ourselves that, or is that a name that people like the traders call us? 

My theory is that the seraphs lived alongside the people who wrote the journals, and were enough commonplace that no one was bothered by different features. Because they lived lockstep with the ancients, they have a basic understanding of the events that happened, but perhaps they lacked in a proper first-hand account from people with more detailed understanding. That, or perhaps a lot of the details have been lost over time. 

Based on what's noted on certain clothing pieces, there were at least two different groups of people - ones that fled to the tunnels, and the ones that stayed behind to guard the surface. Perhaps we and the traders are descendants of the ones that chose to stay on the surface, and unwittingly avoided the worst of the temporal stability. As time passed, again, based on notes on the clothing in-game, another group of people emerged from the tunnels; people who were thrown out of the tunnels for, ummm, behaviour issues, I guess? It was meant to be some sort of punishment, best as I can tell, but maybe it wasn't so awful as the tunnel-dwellers made it out to be, and some of them eventually made it their goal to stay kicked out.

For the moment, my belief is that the ancient people who first went into the tunnels eventually became the drifters, but I don't have much that really backs up that theory beyond the idea that the rust that was spreading was causing the corruption and the temporal instability only made it worse. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The traders are weird. There are no tracks, no animals, no engines, yet here they are, in random weird places, happy to see us to trade with us. We do not understand their language, we just hear tonal sounds from them. We never see two traders interact with each other, and they do not get upset when we mess with their stuff. So are the traders really traders, or just guys that want gears and have things? Are they traders there for people, or are they waiting for Seraphs? Are the gears just trash currency, or do they hold a power that we do not understand or can not use?

Why and how do seraphs spawn into the world, and why can they use temporal gears to change the spawn point. Are they the only ones that get sucked into rust world? I suspect so, because i think i have encountered traders in unstable areas. So what is the connection between rust world and the real world? is rust world where seraphs belong? is the temporal storm in the real world, or rust world? 

Are the seraphs good? Take minecraft Steve. Steve is a monster. Steve breaks the boundaries of reality, simply to kill a dragon that has done NOTHING to merit such violence. Not even hell is safe from steve. If herobrine was real, then herobrine was God's divine wrath upon steve for his crimes. 

Is that the case here? Are the Seraphs invaders, and the drifters the guardians of the world? i have never seen a drifter attack an animal, or a person. They only come after the Seraphs. I have never seen a locust attack a person or an animal, only Seraphs. 

At the same time, the dark kills animals. That is not natural, and the drifters and locusts dwell in the dark. 

The meteorites are too big, and too frequent to be benign. if i understand correctly for them to be that big, and that frequent on the surface would indicate that there was a very destructive meteor shower at one point in the past. 

I am not sure if i want official answers. The speculation alone holds value. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/29/2021 at 5:54 AM, Hal13 said:

- The loading screen (if not using mods, or maybe it was only earlier versions) describe the world as a living, a feeling thing. And the seraphs "arrive" on it each time you logg on and enter a world or "leave" it "alone again" when going off. Furthermore they physically leave the world with all the possessions they are carrying at that moment each time the player loogs off.

This is a huge, and very good point. I suspect the Seraphs are people who have escaped the calamity of the past by learning to walk through time the way we walk through space; probably through use of the "Prima Materia" we learn about from one tapestry. notice how the symbol of the "squared Circle" of Alchemy (and it's covered with wiccan and alchemical symbols in general) in the upper left is the same color as temporal gears? and Seraphs from the Seraph Tapestry? When we Log out we just step sideways in time a bit, Makes sense now that you can configure the server to pause OR run time while you are away!

Perhaps when we read the journal "confession" about someone THINKING they had saved everyone but created something even worse is because we learn that side-stepping time causes the temporal storms and instabilities, maybe those cursed the rot to begin with; a funky grandfather paradox thing.

 

On 4/24/2021 at 3:13 AM, AngryRob said:

At the same time, the dark kills animals. That is not natural, and the drifters and locusts dwell in the dark. 


Wait what? Do Animals take damage at night or something?

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Animals die if they enter a cave or dark space and cannot pathfind back to light higher light levels. Also in my experience they will not pathfind back to light if they have no way of escaping a cave at all (for example, rabbits regularly fall into holes I leave behind when clearing surface copper, since they can't use my ladder to leave so they run away from the ladder to the surface and deep in where I've cleared out to look for diagonal ore spawns and not bothered to open up back to the surface. They die in there so often that I turn copper digs into pit traps to farm redmeat and pelts, although I assume AI will be improved eventually so that animals are less stupid about running into dark caves to die). Animals will survive a night, but running into a cave at night and not leaving will kill them pretty fast, and animals you keep in your house need constant light either from a skylight or lanterns. I have an in-house chicken coop that I made because a family of chickens got into my house when I left the door open, and a single lantern keeps them all alive in the roughly 5x5 space.

To tie this back into the topic of seraphs, maybe lasting light sources could explicitly be part of the lore? Having light be the domain of Seraphs, and sound the domain of the temporally disruptive mobs (like the bell, the distorted music of temporal storms, and anyone who's listened to drifters growl at them all night has learned that the sound of ever-present danger is part of their strength as enemies) would be an amazing thematic move, since sound is always all around while light is volatile. Days end, water drowns torches or they burn out, temporal storms clog your sight, but sound is always there to serve the lovecraftian horrors.

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  • 1 month later...

I've created a lore to explain all these things, and posted in some places:

The ancient vintarians, let's just call them "The Ancients" (Stargate inspiration), were an advanced civilization that developed a series of new technologies centered around their greatest achievement - the discovery of an inexhaustible source of energy called "lux aeterna" (or whatever you wanna call), that enabled the creation of walking machines, advanced tools and the powerful matter-energy conversion units that powers the network of teleporters and translocators (Atlantis inspiration). Lately they were experimenting with the possibility of using this technology to time travel. During the test of a time-traveling bubble, a huge pulse of high energy violently radiated outward, destroying their world with great loss of life.

It turns out that this cataclysmic event opened several temporal rifts to this alternate dimension that would later be known simply as "The Rust". This creepy realm is a reflection of current reality, but somwhat different, toxic and rusty - (à la the "Upside Down" of Stranger Things). During this terrible accident, some "Ancients" were transported to "The Rust". These quickly died of starvation or intoxication in this inhospitable place. At the same time, many horrendous mechanical creatures and other non-biological forms of life invaded "Vintaria" (the world of Ancients) and killed everyone along the way. Those who managed to escape being sucked into the "Rust" realm and not being killed by that alien creatures, were affected by the residual energy radiation from the temporal explosion and went mad or lost their memory completely.

Over time this radiation lost energy and dropped, the portals gradually closed, most of the creatures returned to "Rust" and those that remained are trapped in this world, and life is blooming again in Vintaria. The zones of temporal instability and temporal storms that still plague this world are remnants of the old temporal rifts that destroyed the world of the Ancients. When a temporal storm passes over these areas, a power surge happens that reopens these portals once again. Those caught in the middle of the storm are momentarily transported to "Rust", where those fiendish creatures arise once more to take their victims.

As a result of these terrible events, all ancient knowledge was lost and all memory of the former glory was forgotten, only to be rediscovered again by a magnificent new species, descendants of the "Ancients", who roam again in this wonderful world: the "Seraphs"

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  • 4 months later...
On 4/11/2021 at 8:07 AM, Brynn Bernstein said:

[..] who are the only ones who respawn in the same way every time they die[...]

not correct, traders respawn too, in their wagon/hut everytime you kill them and they retain the memories from before they died (and stay mad at the pc for quite some time), it takes a bit more time than for seraphs though (a few ingame days instead of instant).
 

On 7/5/2021 at 8:29 PM, ravnuz said:

[...] At the same time, many horrendous mechanical creatures and other non-biological forms of life invaded "Vintaria" (the world of Ancients) and killed everyone along the way. [...]

monsters don't attack anything but seraphs though... and nobody but seraphs are bothered in a temporal storm/unstable area, even when they are in that area i mean... animals/NPC ignore monsters and monsters ignore animals/NPC... and it does not explain the world speaking in the log/loading screen either...
and there is no actual network of teleporters, i mean theoretically yes as the code does look for any unpaired teleporter, that has to fulfill certain requirements, and randomly selects one out of the pool of possible candidates to pair it with the teleporter that is used for the first time, but after that these two are connected and the connection can't be broken without destroying one of them (not sure anymore if that is even possible outside creative).

 

found it that's what happens from the worlds sentient perspective (can be found in logs/server-storyevent.txt):

Quote

12.11.2021 17:11:01 [Event] It begins...
12.11.2021 17:11:01 [Event] It senses...
12.11.2021 17:11:01 [Event] It remembers...
12.11.2021 17:11:01 [Event] ...all that came before
12.11.2021 17:11:02 [Event] A world unbroken...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Animal cages...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Glimmers in the soil...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Taste and smell...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Grand inventions...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Burning sparks...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Molded forms...
12.11.2021 17:11:08 [Event] Simple tools...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] The center unfolding...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] ...the carved mountains
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] ...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] It remembers...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] ...and calls to you.
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] Return again.
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] It pauses.
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] One last gaze...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] ...then all goes quiet
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] The waters recede...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] The mountains fade...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] The dark settles in.
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] It sighs...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] Alone again...
12.11.2021 17:11:10 [Event] Time to rest.

until "Return again." it's the world loading, from "It pauses" onwards it's the world saving all states and session ending. There seems to not be much difference through the versions but i only looked into 1.12.14 and 1.14.8 just now...

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1 hour ago, Hal13 said:

monsters don't attack anything but seraphs though...

yes in game but in stories they do so we can safely say that its a feature that most probably will be introduced later.

as for world sentience i feel more like if it was some sort of dimensional consciousness that needs seraphs to experience time , like if seraphs presence was an energy or fuel of its existance , or maybe it knows that "The Rust" is contagious , maybe "The Rust" is a disiese of that type of beeing and seraphs have the ability to prevent/cure/mitigate it so when they are gone it goes to sleep so "The Rust" can't progress (because there cannot be any change if time is stoped).

And as for the original 3 possible explanations i would go for #3 as well it just feels the most logical and leaves the most space to further expand on it , well it would depend actually on details but still... 

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3 minutes ago, AdrianNumbers said:

seraphs have the ability to prevent/cure/mitigate it so when they are gone it goes to sleep so "The Rust" can't progress (because there cannot be any change if time is stoped).

problem i see with that is: the world obviously must have changed since the apocalyptic events and considering that only several days after the first seraph enters the world temporal storms and monsters start entering it, i'd say they are not the cure, and neither do they prevent the intrusions from the rust world... i mean time only stops if you set the server to stop when there is nobody on it, default for singleplayerworlds, if anyone owning a server could take a look how that log looks when the server doesn't stop without players on it, that could make it more clear.

Though perhaps the world can only be sentient if there lives a seraph on it and maybe it's not the seraph but the worlds sentience that causes the intrusions by the rust world? outgoing from the game mechanics i still think the rustworld events and monsters the player characters face are psychological (nothing other cares for unstable areas, monsters and storms), though there seems to be the darkness kills animals mechanic (the ai culling mechanic), darkness mostly is underground, more deeper = more unstable, one could argue it's an abstraction of monsters/instability killing animals too (though if you look closely it could just be animals killed by that mechanic underground as they "got crushed" got hit by rocks from the ceiling, while the bitemarks on animals killed by darkness above ground indicate other animals killed them)... on the other hand VS is advertised as lovecraftian horror, and there what kills you is rarely physically harming you directly, most often people aware of the dangers drift into insanity and that gets them killed in one way or another, similar like seraphs hitting their head against walls (you automatically take damage when the gear is empty only near walls not in the open last time i checked) when their stability is depleted...

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  • 5 months later...
On 11/12/2021 at 11:48 AM, Hal13 said:

seraphs hitting their head against walls (you automatically take damage when the gear is empty only near walls not in the open last time i checked) when their stability is depleted...

This is not true.  Seraphs take damage from low temporal stability regardless of their proximity to walls.  I've seen Seraphs take damage in wide open fields after spending too much time in a rift and depleting their temporal stability.

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  • 4 months later...

Pretty sure one of the tapestries shows something entering a seraph body which looks rather soul-like. Considering the whole mess with the Prime Materia that seemed to cause some sort of apocalypse involving an unstoppable, spreading tide of "rot" to cover the world I suspect it was either an attempt to get humanity to live on in a body better suited for a rot-y world, or an attempt to make something that could help them survive. Or by that point they'd given up and just wanted *something* to survive into the future that was intelligent, even if it wasn't humanity.

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