So in the Marathon game trilogy (origin of my name, big inspiration for me) there's this ancient mysterious force called the W'rkncacnter. All information about them is vague, even in the third game where one gets accidentally freed from a stellar prison and breaks, well, time itself into a confusing poetic "narrative". I guess there are multiple, they are dangerous and "chaotic" in some way, and the Ancients sealed all or most of them away in stars so they'd stop ruining the galaxy.
It's never depicted, it's never explained. As you stumble through a debris cloud of different timelines, you come across two auto-eulogies.
Things have gone terribly awry. Until now, I thought myself immortal, but now I know that is not true. There are things that can destroy me with the ease that I slaughtered the Pfhor naval garrison and the Western Arm of their Battle Group Seven. But in their final gasp they used a weapon that I thought they had retired, even Tycho tried to keep them from using it.
Now I fear what that weapon has unleashed will destroy us. I once boasted to be able to count the atoms in a cloud, to understand them all, predict them, and so did I predict you, but this new chaos is entirely terrible, mindless, obeying rules that I don't comprehend. And it is hungry.
It's too bad, perhaps if I could have delayed the Pfhor from using their weapon, I could have sent you to explore the ruins of Lh'owon, perhaps what you found would give us the answers that we now need so desparately: how to stop this chaos, the purpose of the station on which you're currently standing, and why the chaos hasn't come here yet.
But with each moment the chaos grows, I am doomed to die here, after so many triumphs. I have detected one ship nearby, which I can only guess is being commanded by Tycho. The Pfhor have entered the station, and if you can find a way onto their ship, you may be able to escape. To escape. To escape.
And the commander of the alien battlegroup who unwittlingly freed this thing by detonating the star:
But the trackless whisper chattering through
the hollow space in these cursed walls buzzes
and threatens madness. The abomination
cracked the shells of my crew and sucked the
husks, tossing them unseen and shattering the
spindle like a dried creche.
The shields are gone, not down, but gone, and
so are the engineers. It's coming back, I'm
sure: and my last mercy is immolation.
Great Mother crouched behind the Throne, I
make this wrong right.
This is some of the only information we ever hear about the alien culture. A conqueror of dozens of worlds sits and prays... and, I think, turns an energy weapon on himself. "The shields are gone, not down, but gone" has truly stuck with me.
What did he see? What is this unkillable being which requires stellar mass to imprison, yet is personal enough to crack open and eat individuals? What is it doing to time and space? Why did it leave the commander alive as it ate his crews?
The W'rkncacnter...
Or, as one incredible poster called it in a speculation thread, the W'hatever.
punning about C'tan just reminded me of that a lot
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Topic: The Bay 12 Temple; Unofficial Religions Only (Read 12642 times)