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Some monster designs!

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toby fox at it again with absolute cinema

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Some art

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Fire Breather N

Whaaa >_> so I actually have a bunch of art ready for you guys but here’s something to hopefully tide you over!

The real reason N drank the cologne :>

Commission Prices/Info Here

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Spinning Top's premature ascension

A number of people took Spinning Top's story as one of a child being needlessly forced to a premature death through ascension by a community with extreme beliefs, but I don't think that's the case

First of all, the ancients did value life greatly, the clearest example of this being the shaded citadel pearl; this post explains this point pretty well

One could argue ST's case is part of the mass ascension that ended the benefactors era, particularly the mention of "ever dwindling population", but that doesn't require premature ascension, just a reduction in birth rates

This line of logic would also require Ancient Urban to have taken place during the iterators era, however most signs seem to indicate this place is from before the construction of the superstructures, even if clearly after the start of the void fluid revolution: Ancient Urban seems to be from a time between Shaded Citadel and Outskirts.

So why then, was Spinning Top made to ascend while still a child, while still not ready?

Well, maybe the overwhelming presence of rot in the campaign is a clue

Many aspects of the campaign seem to call back to the Hunter, particularly obvious with the prince's ending directly paralleling the permadeath ending

So is it really a stretch to say that Spinning Top's ending, the one other ending on release, also parallels Hunter's other ending, where they manage to ascend before the disease catches up to them?

When first taking control of the watcher, an echo ping occurs; given that Spinning Top is the only echo watcher can encounter, this ping most likely indicates that the watcher has attuned to their presence

And this is also perhaps the reason for the presence of the rot in the vanilla regions watcher visits when encountering ST: attunement to one meant attunement to the other, a dream slipping towards disease and misfortune

So yeah, I'm proposing that Spinning Top had a terminal illness, one that was incurable and that would quickly lead to death, and their safest way out of suffering would be to ascend while they still can, before they got dragged back into the cycle of rebirth (which could mean anything from reliving their whole life again to being reincarnated into an animal without the commodities of the ancinets or as easy an access to ascension, depending on your personal interpretation) (Reminder that ascension isn't cessation of existence, but becoming whole, moving above and beyond the cycle)

Side note but, while rot seems to be the thematic tie here, I'd like to point out that ancients had multiple diseases which they also tied to misfortune, and Hunter's disease is also "related to the rot", not necessarily rot itself; regardless, they all seem to be related to bad karma and the concept of kegare

And speaking of misfortune, isn't it curious how ST's room is covered in eyes? as if warding off evil eye

^the evil eye in question perhaps? (GodofEyes graffiti near the outskirts pearl, suspiciously DLL shaped)

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When the rot prince blooms into wheel flowers, is that basically him ascending? I thought it was when i saw that scene!

My guesses are coma (consciousness is trapped in the iterator puppet-esque thing, frozen/ensnared by the wheel flower roots basically) or banishment back into the Rot's not-consciousness or whatever he was in before seeing & chasing the light.

Homeboy hasn't exactly done anything positively productive to get Ascension rights, imo. And since he's Rotborn I don't think he can be thrown into the Cycle like normal creatures.

My guess based on *leaks* specifically (or well. stuff hidden in code & files.), the Prince got patched out by the Void weaver.

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I've always wondered if and how iterators ever partake in the Great Cycle. It's easy enough to figure how non-player entities partake in their own personal timeloops, but what of something as vast and long-lived as an iterator?

Presume an iterator is built on the side of a dormant volcano. This volcano is not dormant, and on a particular cycle, it ruptures, taking the iterator down with it. Would the iterator wake up again and experience that volcano that will erupt all over again? Will they hold out until they're lucky enough to only have fallen but not destroyed? Or will its seismic analyses alert them to an inevitable collapse, allowing their own soul to pass on with closure and be reborn as something else?

Is there perhaps a strand where Moon collapsed into the sea, but remained partially functional without the need for the Hunter's intervention? In the weaves we experience in the game, did the slag keys bring her soul back? Was it stuck there waiting for closure? Is the fragment of an iterator we're talking to something that isn't the Moon who fell long ago?

This is a pretty big tangle of questions, I know, but it's been on my mind for a long long while. I apologize if I've gotten something wrong in my framework of the cycle, it's difficult to wrap one's head around.

I don't think there's something like volcanoes in this world, tbh. Cause no magma, only Void down there. So that's one problem taken care of, I guess. Popocatépetl Banned. /lh

Assuming you mean in like. PhS AU specifically, since you used "Great Cycle" which is a term I've floundered about, I will attempt to explain my thought process there (this somewhat applies to my ideas about canon, too):

The Great Cycle thing, aka Ripple change, happens only upon true death. Definitive death is hard to pin down irl legally and such- in RW I imagine death is defined as the culmination of the being (the Void spawn/qualia-soul) physically leaving the flesh vessel (meaning that brain activity leaves with it, and in the case it stays the physical remains would be called a zombie).

The thing that makes Iterators harder nuts to crack (makes them hard to kill, as Moon says, which equals to Ripple change being harder to achieve) is not their longevity or vastness (well, this one kinda, actually.), it's the fact they don't have a qualia-soul like this.

An Iterator is made out of millions of little organisms (maybe or maybe not including the puppet) and technology. The little organisms that come together to form the Individuality of the Iterator have souls, but the Indivituality (aka what we actually recognize as Moon, Pebbles, Euros, Boreas) do not have their own souls that carry their defining traits.

The technological aspect functions most importantly (in this topic) as memory/qualia storage. The stuff that dictates people's identity (predominantly it's development, basis of it [equivalent to a newborns personality] is offered to the Individuality through the Hivemind's qualia-souls combined with pre-programmed desired traits [like for Euros is his hyperactivity and lesser patience], which are then digitally "locked" in the memory drives). Therefore even when pieces of the hivemind die and are replaced- qualia-souls change Ripples or reincarnate- the Iterator stays the same personality-wise locked within the one Ripple they were born in, granting them technology-based immunity while still possessing humanity (Anemonity??). They basically don't exist for the Cycle.

(Them showing up in other Ripples spawned by death of full organics doesn't matter, the experiencing of a Ripple change is what the Ancients aimed to bypass. Which was a success.)

To give a definitive death to an Iterator, one would have to not only kill all the organisms within the can (that are replenished by inner factories, I imagine), but would also have to destroy all hardware obtaining traces of an Iterator's identity. Which is difficult cuz of vastness.

Moon herself has never truly died (PhS or canon), she *did* remain partially functional. If she didn't, we wouldn't be able to do what we did as the Hunter. (This can be attributed to the mix of hivemind system/technology fusion and the sheer scale of an Iterator.)

The structure still takes labored breaths, weakly crunches through half formed thoughts and clings on to the saved memories that weren't destroyed in the crash- all blind, in a coma-like state, half dead half alive through technology solely (because I don't think any organic component could survive for long outside of its man-made habitat. technologically alive, not organically.). This is nicely visible in Downpour during Rivulet when swimming through her ramshackle innards (I applaud that fact, very canon compliant 👍).

I imagine the slag reset keys cleared some kind of pathway/the neuronflies in the chamber that allowed the puppet to be powered up and connected, giving Moon a certain chance at awareness that is still somewhat torn away from the rest of her. That is the case because of the severed umbilical cables.

So

I've been thinking lately about her and honestly we might as well have two Moons on hand, one of which we never get to know because of the severance. The puppet Moon isn't 100% Looks to the Moon (as we already know with the memory inaccessibility she mentions, it's just a bit more physical, too). She's got some out of body experience going on even though she's physically Inside her body.

So yes to ,,is the fragment of an iterator we're talking to something that isn't the Moon who fell long ago", just still within the same Ripple.

Canon-wise, I've no idea what it would take to properly kill an Iterator and what would happen with it next. And if they really don't have their own souls that could do a Ripple change or pull it into the reincarnation cycle. (beside the Rot, ofc. p sure that is a complete slow erasure. like yeah, Pebbles figured out what he wanted I believe.) AU-wise, it doesn't really happen that an Iterator manages to completely die, especially the models we are familiar with (the only one who did was the first Iterator and that one was Very different from what normally shows up).

What ends up needing to happen is Théta coming down as Saint. Saint's bang ability forcefully pulls Everything that an Iterator's identity consists of into one place, creating them a proper qualia-soul. Then he ferries them down to the Void, below Rubicon, where their enlightment level is judged and according to that they either Ascend or are put into the Cycle to achieve the needed enlightment there.

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I am happy because everyone loves me

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can you draw the rot leviathan in Five Pebbles’ can? Its from the watcher DLC!

Oh, I know this man well. I got stuck in UE for 15 goddam minutes. Reality door Stuck. Bonus sketches:

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Your art popping up on my feed is what got me into rainworld. I love your interpretation of the ancients and the way you draw iterators. You're art looks so good it makes me wanna take a bite of them.

Coolio 👍

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My cnidarian agenda (,,Ancients and Iterators are sapient cnidarians" stuff) is so strong, it's starting to spread to the Rot. Look at this natural nonsense-

-and tell me it doesn't smell of rl inspiration for the Rot.

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RW art month day 9: echoes