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[grunckle]

(More) Rain World Pearl Writings

Now with some hit-or-miss doodles I made to visualize the pearls. They might be incredibly compressed idk...

Bicker

Interesting… It is a debate forum on the punitive ruling of a homicide. To thrust an enlightened individual across the cycle was considered abominable.

However, the presiding Just Order decided that the perpetrator embodied “The Remorsive Luminance Within”, and recommended her for temporary exile to a temple.

The discourse over the sentencing is… vulgar, to say the least. Many of my citizens did little else but talk, and thus the political landscape mutated into a frenzy of dozens of quarreling factions.

Most systems were commanded by the dynastic Concepts, so the remaining scraps of governance were subject to vicious competition by these factions. Power changed hands constantly.

The perpetrator was lucky. Had it been any other cycle, the ruling Order would throw her in a sensory deprivation tank or wipe her memory. Or perhaps she would be declared unsalvageable and turned into fodder for ritual combat.

It’s a bit baffling that they rarely just transcended their criminals in a Void Fluid bath instead. Probably because it would defeat the point of their bickering…

Mast

Oh? This contains a very old intellectual offering to the 52nd Great Mind, or the Aetherial Mast west of here. It consists of a very flattering, complex riddle.

Since you’ve been to Five Pebbles, I imagine that you’ve seen those grand towers piercing into the sky. They once formed a communication network between iterators, but a few of them - such as this particular one - are actually older than iterators like me.

After the Void Fluid Revolution, people quickly discovered that if any construct got complex enough, it would gain sapience.

So they threw as much computational power as they could into these towers, and waited. They expected the Aetherial Masts to quickly discover a method to implode the cosmos into the earth, achieving global transcension.

It inevitably failed. The 52nd Great Mind was later connected to a larger, more deliberate construct, and underwent apotheosis to become Looks to the Moon. Which is me!

The first of us iterators were reborn from these Great Minds. Afterward, most Masts were created with an iterator already in control.

Thank you, little creature, for this memento from my distant past.

Brain Tree

It's a treatise on memorykeeping. There’s a crypt nearby here, under Five Pebbles - piles and piles of cabinets, holding the legacies of my departed creators.

Through a complex bombardment procedure, the storage components of a person's mind would grow a twin lump, which contained cherished memories. The "memory fruit" was then removed and placed in a cabinet.

When the crypts began to acquire a hefty pile of cabinets, my creators discovered that all the fruits had united via a network of roots. The formation bulged outward endlessly, breaking into a factory far, far away. The cleanup effort was monumental.

Now, a microbe system continually expels the fruits' boundless energy, and kills them if the defenses fail to keep the fruits from getting too large.

Rare as they are, mass fractal neural emissions are a worrying phenomenon. Please keep your distance if you see a fruit that has grown into a tree.

Don't touch it - I don't know what might happen to you.

[grunckle]

Rain World, Classical Planets, Celestial Spheres, (more!) Gnosticism, and the Deep Pink pearl

Sorry for the absolute mess of a title, but seeming as I've already covered all of these topics in previous posts, I figured I could go a bit further into the concepts. If you haven't read the others I'd suggest looking at them to understand the base I'll be building upon here. The ones best suited for that are probably:

and

With that being said, lets get started with Planets and their etymology.

The word planet derives from the Greek word πλανήται (planḗtai), which itself is derivative of πλανάω (planáō,) which means, "to wander." It referred to the 7 classical planets, which included the Sun and Moon, along with the 5 visible to the naked eye, namely, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They "wander" because they move in an irregular pattern against the backdrop of fixed stars, so they themselves were seen as "wandering stars", something to keep in mind later.

It's also good to note that this is why the planets are named after Roman gods, a practice subsumed from the Greeks which was even further borrowed from the Babylonians, of course each putting their own pantheon in the other one's place, (with exceptions to Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto, who were discovered and thus named much later by astronomers in Europe who used both Latin and Greek gods for naming.)

Now with the etymology done, we can look at the roots it has in Gnosticism. The Ogdoad is a concept which simply means a group of 8, and is reflected in Gnostic cosmology and creation myth. Gnostic cosmology as understood today (generally! as of course belief and interpretation varied within the religion) is separated into 7 planetary spheres ruled over by the 7 archons, along with an 8th, "supercelestial" sphere of fixed stars. In the earliest forms of Gnosticism this was the final layer, but again it's important to stress that belief on the higher layers especially varied greatly, with some systems having as many as 365 heavens. In this context the word, hebdomad, meaning a group of 7, refers to the 7 planetary spheres and Ogdoad refers to the 7 plus an 8th sphere of fixed stars.

As for actually relating this to Rain World, it once again comes back to Guardians and Void Worms.

The glyphs on the Guardian halos differ from the rest of the written language we see in game as they represent numerals, (I believe this is confirmed through internal code, but if you're (reasonably) not in favor of using code as evidence I still believe it can be inferred through the surrounding context.) They show 7 logograms from 0-6, along with an eighth symbol.

Here's a chart which I unfortunately don't know the creator of.

I've already covered the relation between the Demiurge and Void Worms previously, (see the posts) but It's important to note that I'm not drawing any definitive conclusion here, part of why being I don't have one. Rain World does not strictly adhere to any one concept or religion, and we can only infer what they wanted to convey with the things they did use. It's also a piece of subjective, moody art and so evocative use of outside concepts such as this may only be a tool for interpretation.

With that being said, I believe it may be more fitting to view Void Worms not as a "collective Demiurge" so to speak, but rather as collective Archons. (Noting that Archons traditionally are not represented similarly to the Demiurge, as they're frequently depicted more anthropomorphically and in a way that bears more resemblance to the general cultural view of Demons.) This is for two reasons:

The pearl describing "moving stars" and the correlated dream we have likewise. Indicating the "wandering stars" and subsequently the planetary spheres.

Oh, interesting. This is a diary entry of a pre-Iterator era laborer during the construction of the subterranean transit system south of here. In it they describe restless nights filled with disturbing dreams, where millions glowing stars move menacingly in the distance.

And the Deep Pink pearl in Farm Arrays, of which I'll give an excerpt of.

"On regards of the (by spiritual splendor eternally graced) people of the Congregation of Never Dwindling Righteousness, we Wish to congratulate (o so thankfully) this Facility on its Loyal and Relished services, and to Offer our Hopes and Aspirations that the Fruitful and Mutually Satisfactory Cooperation may continue, for as long as the Stars stay fixed on their Celestial Spheres and/or the Cooperation continues to be Fruitful and Mutually Satisfactory."

I believe the stars (Void Worms) that "move" (wander), described above may be equivalent to the classical view of planets, and therefore the planetary spheres and the Archons that rule over them. The Benefactors viewed them as "disturbing" and "menacing", in stark contrast to fixed stars within their celestial spheres being seen as a good omen. A contrast seen at the highest and lowest points in the game;

Above, we see perfectly still stars.

Below, a raging inferno of wandering stars, "Planets".

[grunckle]

Airframe Ultra's upper Megacity West

Second part in the series of cataloguing the regions of Megacity West in Airframe Ultra we've been shown. These ones appear to be in a higher, wealthier district, and most of what we see of it seems to be inside some sort of abandoned mall.

Strange glitching at the top of the towers as well.

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Airframe Ultra's city parking lots

First part of a series compiling screenshots and videos from Airframe Ultra's Megacity West. These ones are mostly taken from the new trailer and Joar's twitter posts. They have got to be one of my favorite environments we've seen, really reminds me of Joar's pencil sketches he posted a while ago.

It's possible some of the, "night", areas such as this one could take place in one of these city slices. But It's also possible these could be located under some of the other large structures we see, or it is just night time.

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The Ripple...

Chaotic rambling ahead, I'm just putting out my thoughts after the latest Watcher trailer.

Here's a transcript of the beginning text.

Consider: A droplet of rain pierces the still water. A ripple. A ring, ever expanding.

Consider: Movement along the circumference of a ring. From one eye a loop. From one eye a spiral. From one eye the motion of a line.

Consider then: A second drop. A thousandth. A multiplex of rings, spirals, interacting in countless ways. A froth. A seethe. An effervescence!

Reality is still water, unmoving, quiet. But with experience, a droplet, a ripple travels across it, never dissipating, ever growing. Now what happens if there are thousands of droplets, a downpour upon the waters surface: it loses form, and reality turns into a bubbling, frothing, wobbly mess. Countless ripples crossing paths, perception intersecting and joining together only to fall back and knot with another. Like a boiling pot of water, this is the nature of reality.

So then how is this reality perceived? It's a ring, the surface wobbling, but the perspective matters.

You can see it as a loop, it's edges moving.

Or, you can see it as a constantly turning spiral.

Or, if you were to view it from the side, it would appear as the motion of a line, like looking at the ocean with your eyes right at sea level.

This is what I think the cycle is, the constantly moving and rippling surface of perception, the endless struggle on an effervescent plane. If so, then maybe ascension is going below, deep beneath the surface where the downpour can't reach. A peaceful, still water.

I wonder what the first droplet could have been, maybe the beginning of life? Or maybe something greater...

[grunckle]

Just finished this, and I can safely say it is the best Rain World lore video out there right now. It draws entirely on canon content, and not heavily cemented fanon conceptions that have made their way into the common consensus. It’s also presented beautifully! Definitely give this a watch if you have time.

[grunckle]

New Watcher teaser!

It was found on Akupara's monthly devlog. This is what surrounded it.

BUT, there is something huge here. A few seconds into the video, text appears on the upper lefthand side. It says September 19. It's a little hard to see but if you bump of contrast it's clearer.

Maybe the date of the next teaser? We'll see!

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hey Rain World fans. I'm gonna show you a lore interpretation that I personally have never seen anyone talk about except myself. If you know me as Sliverist, then you know what's up.

Everyone knows the first five Karma glyphs represent the so-called Five Natural Urges. Violence, reproduction, trade and social connection, eating, and self preservation. People generally believe the next Karma glyphs before the tenth are meaningless, but this is WRONG. Understanding this revelation requires seeing the big picture, which I will guide you through.

Rain World really likes to blur the line between organic and inorganic, with the most obvious example being the Iterators themselves, these biomechanical superstructures whose function in large part is outsourced to their "microbe strata" (Purple SL pearl), but it goes even further, into the very world design.

Five Pebbles' internal structure resembles a brain with its many sections all divided into specific regions with specific purposes. His chamber makes the resemblance even more obvious, where you can clearly see the brainstem.

Within Five Pebbles' dark interior swim swarms of colorful neurons which turn white in broad daylight, each one a carrier of information. Often, they are brushed along by cilia lining the computer halls.

The Void Sea writhes with a swarm of beings enormous beyong reckoning which closely resemble real neurons. The void worm that takes interest in the slugcat uses a dendrite to make a tether to drag the slugcat to its final destination.

As the slugcat swims and swims, it is joined by countless many just like it, and together they swim toward the light, referred to in the code as "TheEgg" (VoidSeaScene.cs)

This is the table of Karma, showing every level above Five. Doesn't it look rather like..

dividing cells being crossed out?

In Rain World, birth and life, cognition and enlightenment, death and ascension are all inextricably connected concepts. You might even say they're connected in a cycle. The imagery and themes are rich and complete, integrated fully into the world. This is even without mentioning the voidspawn which also resemble sperm, swimming to the same place. This is why Ascension is the best ending :artiyoy:

[grunckle]

Slightly terrifying thought! What if the void worms aren't normally right under the Void Sea's surface?

There's a method to call earthworms from the ground in real life called worm grunting or worm charming. It involves sticking one stake with carved grooves called a "stob" into the ground, and rubbing it with another stick to create the vibrations that causes the worms to come to the surface.

This idea seems to have already been floating around Joar's mind around the time he was in the early days of Rain World development. One piece from his portfolio in 2013 was called, "Calling the Spirits" and involved the concept of worm grunting, though with an expected weird and surreal aspect to it. It was also reminiscent of other concepts and even designs that made their way into Rain World.

I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. The drills definitely evoke the same vibe, extending all the way down to the Void Sea shore. Moon even states how the benefactors tried putting them deeper, but they were broken by a "force" unknown to them. Maybe void worms normally reside in the depths of the Void Sea, but were called up by the actions of the Benefactors.

What this would actually entail? I genuinely have no idea, it's just a thought I had, but I'd be interested to hear if people could expand on it.

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doodles

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Theres was a bit of new Watcher promo text I thought was interesting.

“Explore undiscovered regions layered with creepy, crawly, never-before-seen creatures that’ll be sure to test the strongest of wills. When the world around you starts to crumble will you succumb to the sinister shadows or stand up stoic awaiting the evercoming, consuming darkness that grips your feet?”

This really piqued my interest, especially on parts relating to shadows. The first thought is void of course, but I never thought it was presented in a particularly “sinister” way. I wonder if this could be referring to some new, void-adjacent concept introduced in Watcher?

I also think this gives a little more evidence to my theory that Watcher will include some kind of fissure or “earthquake” mechanic, possibly as a replacement for the rain. There’s lots of talk of the ground “cracking and crumbling”, and here they mention an evercoming darkness gripping your feet.

Other than that the mention of “creepy, crawly creatures” is definitely interesting, but it pretty much falls in line with Rain World’s marketing. Though it does make me wonder if Watcher will take a slightly more unnerving approach, if so I’ll be even more excited.

[grunckle]

i LOVE your theories and writings about rain world, i can definitely see them influencing the development of my mod (which delves into rain world's cosmology, specifically the aspect of dust building up and the void sea eating away from the bottom)

Love that. Recently I’ve actually been writing some pearl dialogue for mods, though most of them have been smaller in scope and talk more about little bits and bobs of machinery or architecture rather than large overarching cosmological ideas. It’s really cool having theories concretely put in something though, beyond the disjointed and mysterious implications vanilla gives us.

[grunckle]

This is very true and something seldom talked about when Mass Ascension is brought up. Rain World dips into a lot of Cyberpunk ideas and themes, but the largest by far is Transhumanism and ascension. Though it does take on more of a spiritual/alien aesthetic the core idea is still the same, transcend past the burdens and limits of nature. But what Rain World tackles is the idea that, in a world where this is possible, and widely known about, going beyond wouldn’t be some large societal push but rather a road of class struggle, elitism, and social exclusion.

thinking about ancient society and how a civilization might cultivate something like mass ascension. i think itd be interesting if void baths required some sort of application and even a vetting process-- after all, if your occupation is too "essential", it would be more fitting for you to stay behind and care for your society until more people are gone, wouldn't it? like surgeries, you probably get shoved into a wait list even after acceptance and have to wait months to actually get a bath reservation (i imagine they'd book a private bath room and do some sort of ceremony with friends and family present for the ascension) of course all the wealthy elites would be jumping forward in line and get into the baths immediately. moon mentions the baths being "cheaper," so price is baked into them from the beginning. i think it would absolutely be a class thing--- only the wealthy get the privilege to move on from the world, and the working class are stuck continuing to care for the city and their iterator until the population shrinks enough. it would be interesting to think about how counterculture and class warfare would cultivate in such a setting, where moving on from the world is seen as desirable but the poor are denied it. void baths would probably have really beefed security, and i bet many people tried to break into them at some point or another. fun to imagine social movements calling for government regulation of void bath prices. maybe there were even private corporations who advertised "cheaper void baths" that turned out to be some kind of acid or other fluid that wouldn't ascend you but would certainly injure you.. idk just many interesting things to think about

[grunckle]

Some of my work from this semester at art school

Total amount of drawings is about 200 this year so far. Worldbuilding digital art for my OCs, watercolor, marker, studies from life and pastel drawings- I’m glad to try nearly every medium!

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you seem to know a lot about rain world, so please answer me these riddles three: if slugcats are the same size as puppets, how tall were the ancients? also, would iterators have multiple puppet rooms? the one we access in 5P seems pretty out of the way, almost off-center.

third and finally, please explain how shoreline (shoreline my beloved) is lying to me

Yeah sure!

1. I don’t have a direct answer to this question but I do have some thoughts on Benefactor sizes. For benefactors, I think they varied wildly in size. The architecture we see throughout the game is purposefully vague, but they give an indicator on how sizes could have varied between them. For example, some bricks we see are considerably smaller than others, while others are scaled for significantly larger beings. I think with how common Biological Engineering was for Benefactors, it’s not a big stretch to assume they altered this too.

2. I don’t know? It’s possible, but in vanilla at least I don’t really think there’s much indicating that, when moon talks about her puppet it sounds like she only has one so. Still an interesting idea though!

3. Shoreline is the sea, a reservoir, and a bog all at once. Hope this helps!

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Neural

[grunckle]

I think something that gets misinterpreted a lot in the Rain World community is what purposed organisms actually are. Theres a common interpretation that they were like “beasts of burden” and looked like or were the creatures we still see today. But this isn’t what Moon tells us, here’s what she says.

“Most purposed organisms were considerably smaller than me, and most barely looked like organisms at all. More like tubes in metal boxes, where something went in one end and something else came out the other…When I came into this world there was very little primal fauna left. So it's highly likely that you are the descendant of a purposed organism yourself!”

This dialogue paints the picture that most purposed organisms were closer to machines, or machine cogs, with biological parts than actual animals.

Of course most people are aware that creatures like leviathans and miros birds have mechanical aspects, but I think that most if not all creatures have some sort of blending of the biological and mechanical; it’s more of a spectrum than a dichotomy with cyborgs in between.

This idea is also based on some of the old Rain World concept art by Joar.

Here, it looks like melting globs of flesh, (or fleshy rubber and plastic) mutate over a metal “skeleton”. I think this can show the possible intention for purposed organisms and evolution in this world. Organic and mechanical transition seamlessly, and organic parts grow rapidly. I believe most purposed organisms started off on the more mechanical side of things, but evolved their organic “cover” in this way. Maybe everything we see, including us, have some mechanical components that are hidden by the flesh exterior.

This sort of, life overabundance and rapid growth is shown through Five Pebbles’s rot in game. His rot globs are able to grow legs and become mobile in an incredibly short amount of time, and even proto rot grows from innocuous metal walls.

My friend over at Darthzz-Ploo-World really coined this interpretation (and many others) in my opinion and did a wonderful art piece showcasing it.

My friend Re also did some great art showcasing a theory on orange lizards evolving from those computer boxes in Sky Islands and the exterior.

I also did some doodles on my own theories in the same vein. This time on the origin or Shoreline leviathans from Moon’s collapsed iterator components.

But yeah, I think Downpour leaned more into the “beast of burden” interpretation, but I also don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. Not everything needs to be a tube-box descendant I suppose.