Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Course Of Events: Difference between revisions

::::::::::::No, we're actually using the terminology quite differently. Perhaps this is responsible for a lot of confusion. I think we both assumed the other was operating off the same definitions. To me, the term "phase" simply describes the state of an object — what "dimension" is it in? Phase tech is technology that manipulates the phase of objects. The "phase veil" that Hardy spoke of is simply the boundary between this world and another. Neither term is referring to a place. I'm quite confident about that reading of Oni's premise. There is no term given in the game for the actual "other side" that Screaming Cells are drawn from. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::Strange thing to disagree on, but I think you're reading me wrong (my bad?). At this point in time, I am clearly rationalizing the Phase as a "boundary" or "fringe" immediately adjacent to our world, as opposed to an "actual" world on the "other side". I am not too keen on calling it a "veil" because the word doesn't occur in canon, but that's the only difference I can identify. In slightly different terms, my Phase (your veil) is a "hub world" (or non-world) not unlike Star Wars' "hyperspace" (you can warp/travel through it, but you can't live there permanently). That said, I still think it's fair to say that Screamers come "from the Phase", and to assimilate the Phase (to some extent) with the world(s) that lie beyond it -- because, as seen from our world, there isn't much of a difference between the other world(s) and the "veil" that leads to them (because all we ever see is the latter). We most definitely agree on the interpretation of lowercased "phase" as a measure  of "Earth-closeness" or "here-and-now-ness". Regular Earth objects are "in phase" with "our" Earth, and paranormal phenomena/entities are more or less "out of phase" or "phase-shifted". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 14:34, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::P.S. About the Phase/veil -- "you can warp/travel through it, but you can't live there permanently" -- except maybe if you're immaterial? In the case of Screaming Cells and Daodan entities, there are no clear rules that would prevent them from living "in" the veil, so to speak -- as temporary/timeless disturbances of this ever-changing "fringe/hub world". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:42, 20 June 2020 (CEST)  

:::::::::::Just so you know (or remember), projected weapons for "my" Oni2 included a "halver" (something that would decrease your presence in this world with every hit, and shifting presence to "another world" (or to immaterial "limbo presence"); while "halved" you would be less visible to others, and you would get visions of the Phase (and/or of the "other" world). Same for teleporting -- while "phased out" your vision of the "real world" is blurred and augmented with "phase visions", not unlike wearing the ring in Jackson's LOTR. I also wanted to have "screaming swords" and "screaming whips" -- life-draining, blood-less "cold weapons", which would operate and look similarly to Spirit claws/tentacles from Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:24, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::::A couple more things: I don't understand how the variety of life in the Wilderness has anything to say about the presence or absence of a Daodan in that life. Also, I'm not sold on the idea that everything in the Wilderness is poisonous. That seems illogical under both the "industrial pollution" theory and my "Daodan Wilderness" theory. Hasegawa only makes the statement that "the world outside the Atmospheric Processors is poisonous", which is clearly a generalization or they wouldn't have survived out there at all. All we really know is that the bush that scratched Jamie is inimical to human life, and air emanating from the Wilderness apparently is linked to the BioCrisis. In my opinion, my explanation actually works better with Oni's notion of a BioCrisis than the "straight" reading that it's all just a lot of industrial waste making everything toxic. (Also, Hasegawa says he's going to do something about "the nightmare that killed her", which would be an odd way to describe a toxic waste dump.)  --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::The variety of "natural" Daodan symbiosis occurring throughout the WPs (per your theory) is completely missing from Daodan science as it is exposed in Oni -- that's all I'm saying. As for pollution, we all agree that Hasegawa's "we are all doomed" is a bit of an exaggeration (at the time of Oni's events, both Kerr and the rest of the Daodan team seem to think that Hasegawa's response was somewhat disproportionate). The WPs are poisonous enough for Jamie to die a gruesome death from her first scratch, and poisonous enough for a ban on WP flyovers. No more, no less. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 14:34, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::::I wouldn't advise trivializing Oni canon and implying that the "straight" reading is that a WP is "just" a toxic waste dump, or that the origin of the waste is 100% industrial. We Do Not Know. Some elements of canon hint at a military origin for the waste (ghastly bioweapons that were either developed, tested or dumped in "easy to ignore" areas), or at unethical "rogue science" during the years preceding the WCG's firm technology control. A "phase twist" is also possible, like teleportation/annihilation experiments gone wrong, or phase-induced mutation of Earth organisms (not as elegant as the Chrysalis, but enough to make an impression on Hasegawa). You said "good points" to all of this down below -- when I said that Contaminated Zones weren't reduced to industrial dumps in Oni canon, and that there were lots of ways to detail them without resorting to alien ingerence. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 14:34, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::On a sidenote, I don't see a strong correlation with Nausicaa's and my work, so perhaps this Miyazaki manga is just an obsession of yours. I could easily reduce your ideas to references to existing works as well, but haven't done so. "There is nothing new under the sun." All we can do is try to present old ideas in a new light. Presuming that you can create anything truly novel is vanity. And putting words in my mouth to make my ideas seem more Nausicaa-like is especially rude, so please stop. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:27, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::Here you've caught me in a contradiction. At one point I planned to make the Daomen aquatic creatures. This would be compatible with the notion I had of making them as large as possible, bigger than dinosaurs even, which I thought would be nice and unsettling. Then I realized, as you point out, that the above-ground world shouldn't matter much to them. So I am also considering making them land-dwelling. One could argue that an oceanic environment still depends on the air outside the oceans being of a certain composition. Also, they could be amphibious! --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Land-dwelling/amphibious Leviathans/Diluvians/Whoever can't be much larger than dinosaurs, unless they have adamantium grafts or are held up by blimps/antigravity/etc. Ocean-dwelling looks fine to me, and -- if I may -- you can actually make the ocean into the main tool of their strength. Each individual could be kaiju-sized -- large as f##k, but not so large as to dwarf a skyscraper --, but the aquasphere would connect all the individuals together and make them into a planet-sized hivemind, capable of mind control (like Lem's Solaris) or large-scale "waterbending" (tsunami and the like). So, something like whale-sized midichlorians. ^_^ --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Pushing that idea further, the "phase veil" can be seen as a side effect of the Diluvian hivemind, and the improbable emergence of Phase tech in human scope (around 2000 AD) may be directly linked to the Diluvians awaking from stasis. In that view, the "other worlds" (if any) and "transdimensional" phenomena are not created by the Diluvians, but their planet-sized hivemind is what makes it all apparent and "tangible" to us. Thus, if we were to kill all the Diluvians, phase phenomena all over the world would shut down and portals to other worlds (if any) would be closed permanently. In that case it wouldn't be as clear-cut as "destroy or be destroyed": the WCG placed its bets on Phase tech (and scrapped most of the old tech), so they wouldn't be too keen on going back to the Stone age. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::The malevolence of the Diluvians (i.e., how and why they would pollute the above-the-surface world) isn't entirely clear to me, but here are a few thoughts. If you are linking the "invasion" to the P-Tr extinctions, then it would look like the Diluvians would just need a world with much less acidity in the oceans, and much less CO2 in the air, and that's about it -- i.e., essentially, they'd try to reverse the massive emergence of oxygen-breathing lifeforms. Supposedly they could achieve this by seeding the surface with a super ecosystem (super-plants that would eat up CO2 very quicky -- and thus leave regular photosynthetic plants to die --, while producing not plain O2 but various organic compounds, some of them hazardous). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::As a complement to that theory (and a deviation from yours), perhaps the Wilderness is not a planned xenoforming leading up to an "invasion", but rather a more or less regular process through which the Diluvians regulate the ocean's acidity? In other words, they do not intend to destroy the above-the-surface world so that they can "roam it once again", rather they are just "lending a hand" so that we can keep the CO2 levels in check. Perhaps they're quite content with their meditative semi-stasis on the ocean floor, and wouldn't have gone to the trouble of "waking up" and infecting the WPs if it hadn't been for the XX century surge in greenhouse gases? And perhaps they're not keen on killing us either, it's just that we're like bugs to them, and all they care about is the CO2. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::Re: xenoforming, I definitely think that life (self-replicating machinery) is the best way to do this, rather than something as laborious as digging channels through the earth up into volcanoes, and pumping air produced by massive machinery. In real life, terraforming another planet via plant life would take many generations, but the Daodan's influence is my excuse for vastly speeding up the process. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Actually, I wasn't thinking tunnels and pumps, more like teleporting stuff directly into the volcanoes, or messing with submerged rifts and other tectonically active regions. But if the goal is to "eat up" the excess CO2 (without bothering much about byproducts), then seeding the Earth with "super-plants" makes sense (see my elaboration above). I am still not sure that we should be bringing the Daodan into this, though. To me it still seems more comfortable if WP-based terraforming (if any) is one thing (a super-effective rival to photosynthesis, with poisonous byproducts, possibly "engineered" by Diluvians or "maxi-chlorians" or whatever), and the Daodan -- like the Screamers -- is another phase entity, one of many, discovered by accident and unrelated to the terraforming/invasion/whatever. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Then again, upon rationalizing the "CO2-regulating" motivation of the Diluvians, and how the supposed super-plants would merely be optimized for eating up CO2 as fast as they can (with no regard for side effects), rather than for some elaborate xenoforming -- that's actually close enough to the Daodan concept of enhancement and hyperevolution, and perhaps even more straightforward than your initial xenoforming theory: the alienated plants just do what plants do, only better. And if it's only plants that are targeted (with CO2 control in mind), then WP containment is not as tricky as it would have been with insects and birds, and the "enhanced"/alienated (daodanized?) nature of the WPs may have eluded WCG scientists this far (with the possible exception of Hasegawa himself). In that view, the Daodan as discovered by Hasegawa is "just" an emanation from the Phase and, being immaterial, it is not readily identifiable as the "same" kind of aura that permeates WP plants. This would give some credibility to the "WP denial" displayed by Kerr and the other Chrysalis scientists. Finally, it may be revealed (later, post-Oni) that WP plants have the same "phase hooks" in each cell as in a Chrysalis, and that they're powered by the same kind of "aura", although not in the exact same way as for humans. The way I see it, the Diluvians are themselves Daodan-enhanced to a point where they can be seen (at least collectively, as a hivemind) as Earth-resident "phase gods", i.e., they are not a proxy/avatar of a Daodan presence that leaks in from the Phase, instead they ''are'' akin to Daodan entities themselves, and they ''are'' the origin (rather than a catalyst) of the "smart cancer" that alienates WP plants. For Konoko and Muro, it would seem that the "integration" is coordinated not by the Diluvian hivemind, but by "original" Daodan influence emanating from the phase, i.e., ''new'' instances of "phase gods" that pair up with human hosts. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:34, 20 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::In other words, in Permian times (or even before that?), some "extremely favorable conditions of germination" allowed a Daodan entity to come through and "exalt" the most evolved lifeform at the time, which hyperevolved into the Diluvians, and became so large (both individually and collectively) as to host the Daodan presence in its entirety, i.e., the Daodan(s) that "exalted" the Diluvians migrated through the "veil" and now reside in our world, permeating the bodies of the Diluvians and (to a lesser extent) the ocean water that binds them together. More Daodan entities remained in the Phase and were locked out after the "extremely favorable conditions" vanished and the Diluvians went into meditative stasis. The stirring/awakening of the Diluvians in the second half of the XX century (following a CO2 surge) caused the Phase to re-emerge. First it allowed the Diluvians to use their own Phase presence to exalt plants in the WPs, merely as a means to regulate CO2 levels (which, through Jamie's death, provided Hasegawa with enough motivation and insight for Daodan research), and eventually allowed "original" Daodan entities (from the Phase) to exalt Hasegawa's test subjects, up to human hosts. In the simplest terms, the Diluvians are the Earth's dormant Chrysalis (planet-sized), and the WPs are the metastases that it spawned upon awakening. Would that work? --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:34, 20 June 2020 (CEST)

:::"As long as that plant contained the Daodan, it doesn't matter if anything else did." As I said above, the similarities between Jamie's cellular breakdown and Daodan symbiosis are actually minor, and even Hasegawa's notion of a "poisonous world" doesn't quite describe the Wilderness as you see it (in my opinion), as well as Muro's "dead air and foul water". But, even if the bush was Daodan-enhanced, Hasegawa would want to know if it was just that one bush that was "poisonous", or that particular bush species, or, as he actually puts it, the whole "world outside the Atmospheric Processors". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 11:46, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

:::One thing that you're not making clear in your Wilderness theory is how it spread a lot at first, engulfing large areas, and then seemingly stopped. If Daodan symbiosis propagates upon contact, and each affected cell becomes a new source, then wouldn't the WCG need to build new rings of fences every week? Also, it it's so good at spreading-upon-contact, then wouldn't it have hit Hasegawa too? Airplanes flying over a Zone notice contamination in the air -- spores? pollen? -- and Hasegawa is down there breathing that stuff... And, for that matter, if it causes noticable contamination on aircraft then why hasn't airborne propagation caused generalized Daodanization yet? --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 11:46, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::The fence's energy field needn't be anything stronger than a bug zapper. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Erm, if it has the range of a bug zapper, then nothing's keeping bugs or birds from flying over the fence (or wind-carried spores/seeds, even), allowing the Wilderness to cross the fence just as if it wasn't there. Either the containment needs to be "germ-tight" somehow, of the Wilderness isn't as volatile as you've been suggesting. I think I'd prefer the latter. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::I'd actually like to back up to a higher level and address what I think is your largest single question, which is, "Why complicate things when it's clear that Hardy just intended the Preserves to be waste dumps?" I felt it was necessary to diverge from this approach precisely because of the derivative feeling of the "social commentary". Industrial pollution, large corporations, yada yada. Been there, done that dystopia. Likewise, if Oni's world was said to be warming dangerously, I would find some way to subvert that narrative into a more interesting, less "concern of the moment" type of problem. Star Trek IV was entertaining but nowadays nobody has any idea what it's going on about with all that whale stuff. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:27, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::Well, alien-engineered global warming sure would come in handy if it made Earth more "waterworldy". I may be getting it wrong, but your Daomen/Diluvians would actually be at home in a world with no icecaps and a significantly higher ocean level. It's still be a reference to the modern-day issue of global warming, but with an alien-initiative twist that could possibly act as a redeeming factor (if done right of course). As for Hardy's take on pollution, I think that there's not a lot to diverge from, actually, because canon Oni is no longer hammering it home as "industrial pollution, large corporations, yada yada". Jamie was killed by an unidentified "virus", there are mad scientists doing ghastly stuff (Navarre), bioweapons are hinted at in the manual, and Phase tech can "enhance" man-made pestilence further, power-of-seven-fold if needed. So it's not like WPs are pure eco-activist cliché and can only be redeemed through alien ingerence. At least that's how I feel about it. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 19:18, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::Good points. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::As you have seen above I am more or less ready to embrace the Diluvians as a possbility (my real-time brainstorming approach is flexible like that), however I still don't regard "alien ingerence" as a necessary plot device. Oni canon has enough potential for man-made (and phase-enhanced) pollution of the Contaminated Zones, and having them engineered by an alien race seems like a "last resort", storytelling-wise. From here on out, I will design TNZ so as to accommodate the xenoforming hypothesis, without favoring it. I will be calling the "maxi-chlorians" Diluvians, will pretend that they're merely stirring in their sleep in reaction to CO2 increase, and WPs are just their way of "scratching an itch". No connection between WP flora and the Daodan will be implied, but I'll try to leave a door open for that kind of interpretation. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 17:05, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

===Daodan Genesis===