#if an iterator were to read one of their generated pearls

[bumblewish]

This is Enigma. They’re just a pearl obsessed slugcat who can spit out random pearls for a food pip each. They can also read most pearls without an iterator’s help, with the exception of any pearls they create.

The scavs are obsessed with this silly gremlin and Enigma is oblivious as to why they suddenly have an entire patrol of bodyguards.

[vilhelios]

— I THINK I LOVED YOU IN ANOTHER LIFE .

( WHERE I WAS THE SEA, & YOU WERE THE SHORE . ) ; general fluffy romantic headcanons for rafayel / qi yu from love and deepspace <3

CW: not beta read, general rafayel story/lore spoilers, may be slightly ooc, tooth-rotting fluff, very slight angst !!!

— RAFAYEL is a terribly sweet, loyal, and affectionate lover. sometimes, you think he is something like a lovesick puppy—always ready to greet you at the door with a warm hug when you return from a mission, always eagerly awaiting your phone calls and texts. always at your side. when he calls you darling and holds you close, burrows his head into the crook of your neck, you can't help but feel like your being has been warmed by a pleasant summer sunbeam.

despite this, sometimes he feels like he's drifting somewhere far away from you. a receeding ocean tide, sea foam dissolving from your fingertips as you dip your hands in the waves. he's somewhere you don't understand, when he looks into your eyes and searches for an iteration of you in the reflected image of his own eyes—perhaps he is 800 years away, a lifetime and more. and yet, when you gingerly cup his face in your palms, feel him lean into your touch, you know he returns to you.

— RAFAYEL'S art studio is admittedly, a mess. there are days where you'll enter that room spotless and leave with splatters of some new shade of red and his beloved blues all over your clothes and skin. some days, this happens purely on accident—a trip right into a canvas here, a palm pressed onto wet paint there—and on others, rafayel seems to delight in using you as a canvas.

— when RAFAYEL kisses you (in that gentle fashion, where he cups your cheek like if he doesn't you'll slip like seafoam from his hold), those soft lips of his taste of cherries and grapes and strawberries. and perhaps that best encapsulates what loving rafayel is like, this sweetest red, red, red: the way his cheeks and ears flush when you press a kiss to his cheek; the colour of his eyes when the morning's rose-gold sunlight hits the pink in them just right; the bleeding, beating heart he offers to your awaiting hands. eventually, he pulls away to let the both of you breathe, and when he presses his forehead against yours, glances at you with that charming smile of his, you're enveloped in warm crimson all over again.

"there." rafayel smiles, leans back to admire the flamulla he'd painted on your cheek and the pout that graces your lips. "a cute flamulla for the cutie that keeps distracting me."

"you weren't even painting anything when i came in!" you scoff, dabbing the paintbrush he'd given you into the paint upon the palette. while he painted moon jellies, flamulla, and blowfish on your skin, you'd busied yourself with painting seashells on his. some of the clamshells are too close together, the venus combs look a little too spiky, and some conches don't look quite right. when he looks like he's about to chuckle at the sight of them, you poke him with the other end of your brush; "hmph. you're just a meanie."

"how rude!" he feigns, hand to his heart. "this is how you treat me for making you look like one of my most precious paintings?"

— you notice, eventually, that RAFAYEL always gifts you red jewelry (if not pearls, of course). the little treasures glint in the sunlight; rings with a ruby or red spinel centerpiece, a necklace with a red coral pendant, fire opal earrings... they're beautiful and never gaudy, as to be expected from a man with an eye for aesthetics, but it still perplexes you.

you ask him why, while he helps you put on his most recently gifted necklace as you two get ready to attend his aunt's opera show. your painter answers with a thoughtful hum, deft fingers clasping the necklace for you: "red disappears the fastest in the deep sea, so i never got to see it much." rafayel presses a kiss to your cheek, then, before settling his chin on the crook of your neck. "what better way to appreciate a colour i missed out on for so long than seeing it on you, darling?"

— RAFAYEL'S smug and haughty countenance seems to crumble at the mere press of your lips against his skin, little pecks gracing each beauty mark. the first kiss is placed on his cheek, a little ways away from his eye, his head cradled in your palms; you feel how he heats up beneath your touch, a light blush dusting across his cheeks and a bright vermillion burning at the tips of his ears. the second is placed on his chest, your lips and gentle, roaming hands sparking the rapid thrumming of his heart.

— RAFAYEL sees you in everything. in the morning sunlight that filters into his kitchen, in the cherry blossoms that land on his hair, in the sea breeze that rushes past him as he walks along the shore. the mundane of daily life has become filled with so many traces of you that he cannot see them as anything other than beautiful. there's a piece of you in every one of his paintings now, a streak of your favourite colour intertwined with his reds and blues. he made the pigment himself, of course, extracted the colours he needed from your favourite things.

THE LOVERS ; Rafayel (20XX) ; Oil on canvas

This painting consists of only two colours, and depicts the view of a simple shoreline, with waves lapping at the shore. Although simple in essence, the two paints were handmade (as is the norm for pieces by Rafayel) with pigments extracted from materials that represented himself and his beloved. Upon closer inspection, one may notice the difference in brushstrokes between colours—where they start to blend, so do the strokes, perhaps one hand guiding the other. As per the words of the painter himself, this artwork is meant to represent a "marriage and a transfiguration; the way two souls are forever intertwined and changed by love."

a/n : pretty privilege is real because rafayel acts a lot like marius but i like him infinitely more than i do lu jinghe 😭👍 my love/obsession for this pretty little fish has made me rise from the grave of uni work and writer's block... please fill his tag i need to satisfy this itch in my brain that he gives me <\3 might write some more for him + him as abysswalker <3 (p.s. that final hc is perhaps the cutest thing i thought to do)

[nyuuronfly]

On Rain World lore and it's implementation within the game.

This is kindof a random ramble I went on in a Discord chat and just feel like sharing elsewhere. (also note this is all primarily in reference to the original game, Survivor's story.)

I honestly think too many miss the forest for the trees a bit with RW, in terms of how important the lore is, if that makes sense. I talked with somebody about first-time experiences with the game and they said they'd watched a number of lore explanation videos on YT before starting, because of some reason along the lines of "I didn't trust the game to deliver its own story properly." To me this is almost saddening to hear because I really feel that misses the point of why the game has it's lore to begin with.

To me, while playing, any tidbits i learned about history or other information contributed to a feeling like the world I was navigating had a very real history that saturated it, yet one that I would be unable to grasp fully. It is an illusory feeling of realness, given how it is experienced. The game is mechanically not designed to incentivize collecting many information pearls, especially when in the original game you can literally just drop them off a cliff and lose them forever. You get the feeling often like you are bound to never be able to get everything, nor would you even probably want to put in the effort, so the illusion actually stays stronger because of that. Your mind wanders speculating about every little detail, whether intention truly existed behind it or not, because it feels like it did. You learned that it might have. Maintaining that illusion while playing I think is the primary reason they were included, not actually the experience of "knowing" the history. Rain World in general seems to have a thematic fixation on the simple idea that individuals have limited perspectives. Joar Jakobsson has said that one of the core ideas behind Rain World was to recreate the life of a "rat in Manhattan." That is to say, a creature that understands how to find food, hide, and live in a complex man-made structure, that cannot understand it's structuring purpose or why it was built. The very core issue of the iterators, is that the solution to the "great problem" intrinsically has to lie with knowledge that could only be obtained from "the other side." They are corporeal beings trying to know something that pertains to something outside corporeal reality. Yet pursuit of knowledge is very important to creatures like ourselves. Collecting any individual pearl is mostly an exercise in doing a lot just for little bits of knowledge. There is a lot of understanding of just how significant wanting to know more is, even something unimportant, when you are left in the dark the way you are in the game. Most information pearls you deliver are literally completely useless to know about, but they feel personally important, especially in how finding them relates to your connection to the iterators. My primary motivation to find pearls in my first play was to spend more time with Moon. On a very real emotional level, Moon felt like my only friend in the world while I played. On a mechanical level, she does literally nothing. But Rain World manages to operate on a very emotional, even instinctual level with how it's designed. I wanted to be in her company and have something to give her. Because I am alone, and lost. So something along those lines is why I felt saddened to hear the sentiment like Rain World somehow "fails" to deliver it's "story." The purpose of the game is not to find pearls and hear about some grand narrative. At it's core, Rain World is a game that's design was inspired by nature, and it's use of history within the world relates to us as a player the way history relates to us as people. It is relayed through people reading from records created by parties with their own perspectives, and connects us abstractly to a sensation that there is more out there than our own lives. That is a feeling you have as a player, and ultimately the true story that Rain World tells is the memories you have playing it. What you did, saw, and felt. The same as how our story is that of our own lives. That is the purpose of the game.

[dragonshoardofworks]

DannyMerMay 2024

Day 1: Insect/Anchor

The return of Little Baby Moth! (From last year DannyMay)

Something happened since last time the two of them met, so LBMo is reasonably surprised to see Little Baby Man Mer's new form... or is this just an alternative dimension iteration of LBM (by @tourettesdog)? 🤔

(Keep reading to find the answer!)

@pikakaistudios Little Baby Mer inspired me in doing my own, so Kudos and credits where are due!

More fanarts and lore under the cut because it was getting long...

(^～^;)ゞ

Prompt for DannyMay by @dannymayevent and MerMay by @vladdyissues.

〜(꒪꒳꒪)〜

Since I'm a serial procrastinator and I wanted to be sure the art pieces were at least decent/accurate, I was almost late (but thank CW that I did, because some of them had the wrong orca-pattern and I would have brought disgrace upon myself if I published anything not done right since orcas are one of my favorite animals).

That being said, let's continue the DannyMerMay journey!

Day 12: Time Travel/Seafood

My poor Mer-boy got yoinked temporalily into the past when he was still Danny (so even before the "normal" LBM-fication) and he's feeling reeeaaally distressed at the act of practically cannibalism that his past-self is committing...

(≧∇≦)

Day 2+4+29: Wish/Starfish + Wander/Night + Fireworks/Bioluminescence

Wandering in the night, some interesting encounters are bound to happen...

I wonder what would happen if you wish upon a(n alien) star(fish)...

(≧∇≦)

Day 19+20: Iron/Pearl + Pitch AU/Abyss

LBMer found a his rightful Crown (of Fire) sunk into the depths of the ocean!

But since it was rusty and forgotten, what better way to restore it than ghostly mother pearl?

(Works like ghostly ice, but it's an exclusive power of LBMer.)

(The Crown got bigger than canon, but he smol!)

Day 26: Shoes/Camouflage

They say that imitation is one of the best form of flattery, but when you don't want to get caught by a certain dimensional hopper (and be mistaken for one of his foes), it's the best way to blend in!

(Octopi can camouflage in ways that make you think that magic is real...)

ฅ^≧ﻌ≦^ฅ

(Little Baby Terror unfortunately got caught in the same "accident" that LBM did, so they generally prefer to stick together-ish in case they need help.)

Day 16+22: Glowing Veins/Courtship + Song Lyrics/Songs

I couldn't help myself and sneaked in some Everlasting Trio for the soul.

After all, LBM (and therefore LBMer) is still Danny, even if he has new form(s) and instincts.

They do incarnate the "Would you still love me if I was a worm?", don't they?

(◡̀_◡́)

Song: A Sky Full of Stars by Coldplay

(It feels such a Danny song to use, plus I checked how orcas court and while there's some posturing, they also sing! It felt only natural from there... >:3c)

Day 11: Mutation/Shell(s)

And finally: the answer!

LBM found this weird shell on the beach while they were on vacation, but when he checked it (read: nibbed it), it reacted and tooted a magical cloud that mutated our Little Baby Man into a Mer!

(The same fate happened to Dani/Little Baby Menace and Dan/Little Baby Terror, changing them into a Seahorse Mer and Octopus Mer respectively.

I've got a lineart done of them for another prompt, but I didn't manage in time to clean and color it yet, along with a couple of others... ( ≧Д≦) )

This has two versions because I couldn't decide which was better. @teacupsandstarlight suggested the first because of the transforming smoke around our boi, but since I saved both, I told myself: why not upload both?

For now, that's all! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

I still have some linearts to finish/digitalize/color, but at least I contributed to these two fantastic events, hope y'all enjoyed them and my works!

Hope to type ya soon! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

[sapphicdib]

i wantchu to know my only experience with iterator shpping to this point has been Pebbles/Suns (i guess. whats even the name for that one? idk). But you have opened my eyes here. Lilypad is just so compelling in a way thats hard to describe. Adds so much depth to the whole Hunter Slag Keys thing!

You have just activated an unskippable cutscene LOL

Suns/Pebbles is called sunstone, which I think is very cute ^-^ Most rw ship names are pretty cute tbh :3

ANYWAYS. YES. Lilypad is so so so good…I really like it because Sig seems to actually be a little more emotionally vulnerable with Moon than she does Suns, implying they were closer than Sig and Suns are. Not to mention, Sig barely mentions Pebbles (or acts pretty standoffish) when he does mention Pebbs.

These are two messages it sends to Moon, but it seems to imply he’s sent more, considering “it’s me again” and the fact that there are more than one we are shown. They could have only made one just to show he was worried, but the devs chose to put more than one, just to drive the point home. It shows a panic that Sig is unwilling to reveal to Suns.

And then we have this.

Sig is basically telling Pebbles he hopes he wallows in regret for this. While Sig does express her general disdain for Pebbles’ attitude with Suns, he still makes a point to be understanding, saying “I think a lot of us were like that in the beginning.” Meanwhile, in this broadcast, none of that empathy is present. She is angry, to a point he refuses to reveal to Suns.

I believe that Sig’s biggest fear is being alone. He describes their situation as being “locked up in a box”, and comes up with the idea to use slugcats as messengers in an attempt to make sure when the comms systems degrade, something everyone else seems to have just accepted as a grim inevitability. So it’s pretty understandable Sig would be pissed at the person who took away one of the few remaining friends she had left. If you wanna read my other massive essay that goes more in depth to this point, here it is!

The fact that you can find the green overseer in outer expanse and subterranean during the Hunter, Monk, Survivor, and Gourmand campaigns is also shows how desperate she was to help Moon. If it was only around during the Hunter campaign, okay sure, that’s probably just him looking for her, checking if she made it to the void sea. However, the fact that it stays, likely long after she knows Hunter’s time is up, means he’s probably searching for any sign of activity from Moon. Still waiting and wondering if her plan was all in vain. The reason I think it doesn’t appear during Rivulet is because of the destruction of OE and just…age. Unfortunately, Sig might just not have the ability to send an overseer that far.

Lastly, the pearl he gives to Moon. This seems to contradict my first point, doesn’t this seem like he’s hiding her emotions behind humor again? Well, my interpretation of this is that: Moon just woke up from what is essentially a fucking coma. Giving her a message that’s like “OH MY GOD I WAS SO WORRIED ABOUT YOU AHHHHHH” would probably not be helpful to someone who is likely in a ton of pain, disoriented, and scared. She knows not to overwhelm Moon right now.

And…yeah. Sig seems to hold a lot of genuine adoration for Moon, and looks up to her kindness. I think his jokiness stems from him wanting to emulate Moon’s uplifting nature. He cares about her a lot and also I just love doomed yuri LMAO. SIG AND MOON LESBIANS FOREVER AND EVER.

[the-real-rain-world-confessions]

HAH, That Sunstone is problematic ask come straight for me I swear... But no...

No, I think it's problematic for much different reasons. First this is much to interpretation to be fair, but honestly... I think Suns is kind of... not great for any ship.

TrafficLights I'm coming for you to.

Suns has multiple problematic behaviours that make me just go "My enby fool, you need therapy and now! RSD alert." Also why I am leaning more and more to ADHD Suns...

But namely, the way Suns speaks in everything just itches at me the wrong way. With Pebbles there's this kind of "haha, if you were just a bit smarter" vibe to Suns dialogue and I do point to the Bug in the Maze conversation specifically with this...

"It's not said out loud but if you were better at reading between the lines there's nowhere you wouldn't see it."

And I don't really want to bring up Suns super bad apology pearl, but the best I can call these dialogues is patronizing... and then, oh, there's a reason I would argue until I'm blue that TrafficLights is a problematic ship as well and that reason is guilt tripping back hand. I would also argue that Suns is downplaying their role in the situation(until they swap to "all my fault" play), but that's very possibly just a me reading.

It's just NSH is a lot less tolerant of that stuff.

But seriously, Suns is kind of... dismissive, if not in so many words of Moon's situation, entirely focused on Pebbles, and there's this thread of just desperation... but the things that stand out the most to me...

"I learned from the best. At least I used it for something more... practical."

Suns wording here is like, backhanded compliment or like "Well I done it better" in regards to making Spearmaster(who mind, not practical at all... like Suns please) despite copying from NSH... it just strikes me.

And then... later when NSH gets mad and rightfully defensive/frustrated with Suns there's another bit of dialogue that just triggered me to remember a not so great friendship I had...

"I'm noticing you are becoming more defensive. This obviously wasn't the end result I was aiming for, you know. Please respond to my messages. I don't want to leave it like this. I need someone to talk to."

Nothing about NSH's emotions here, this also just feels... guilt trippy. Or maybe it's me again, but it just... rubs the wrong way. The way Suns dialogue is just immediately reading like "no, don't leave me alone, I can't be alone" vibes.

In any case, I think Suns is a bit of a toxic friend. Maybe not in the way some might, but I think Suns issue is simple, they're just so desperate to not be left alone, have RSD and make bad decisions in general. And also as soon as the situation went as south as it did Suns dialogue turned into it all been their fault... did anyone else notice that?

"I feel like I've doomed not one, but two iterators."

RSD, and trying to swing for sympathy...

Anycase, get Suns a therapist not a relationship. All Suns ships are trashcan ships.

.

[aegagrusscholarship]

fuck you [fastballs your ghosts directly into rain world]

general idea i have going on is. genetically modified subspecies of slugcats. ancestors were modified by an iterator (travels upon silver wings) who just wanted to give these guys the understanding of the world they were in- sure, slugcats and scavengers would eventually learn the scenery they took for granted was the ruins of an old civilization, but they could be given the knowledge earlier. anyways, these guys are biomechanical in the way vultures are. they've got built-in pearl reading and general device connectivity. they also have an instinctual understanding of ancient language.

one specific colony of these guys got led to another iterator who modified them further. they're bioluminescent now!

also i shoulda drawn the other side of fynchcat's face he's missing his eye. and ear.

bonus Mean To Him

[hdra77]

hello hi I hope you don't mind me rambling to you but here we go anyway!! I'm brainrotting so hard over rw I need to ramble to someone From the deep magenta pearl from Shaded Citatel:

Trying to decipher the date system, this one seems to be yyyy.dd, or year.cycle. since there are three 0's on the cycle part, we assumed it goes up to 999 (since there are some numbers about as high as 700 in iterator chat logs) before resetting- like 1000.999 -> 1001.000. Now, here is the date on a log from the "I struggle to accept being a bug" conversation between 5P and 7RS. Takes place after the ancients are gone. (from dark blue pearl/dark green pearl in sky islands, the logs are chosen randomly from the ones i'll add below).

So, ancients left somewhere between 1514.008 and 1591.290. Here, the date on where Erratic Pulse participates in some silverist group. (I don't remember if it's actually sylverist or not, a (also from dark blue pearl/dark green pearl))

Here, when they find out about Erratic Pulse. (also dark blue pearl/dark green pearl)

Here, Moon announcing to the local group about Pebbles' increased water consumption. (from dark blue pearl/dark green pearl too)

BSM: Two cycles ago, my neighbor Five Pebbles drastically increased his water consumption to four times the normal amount. He has been unresponsive for a period of time longer than that. The two of us share groundwater, and I have been without water for almost a cycle.

On 1654.110, Moon announces that it's been two cycles since Pebbles increased their water intake. It happened on 1654.008.

Moon did the forced broadcast on 1654.116, 8 days after the increased water consumption started. 8 days of suffering Moon endured before she had no choice other than force communications.

On 1681.662 (keep in mind, we're assuming that each year is 999 cycles), 7RS and CW have a conversation about how badly rotted Pebbles is becoming, and about how Moon has been unavaliable for quite some time. From 1654.108 to 1681.662, which is 26975 cycles (and the average person lives about 29200 days), Moon is suffering with the lack of water degrading her structure (assuming she hadn't collapsed by that point,) and lost any way of communicating with somewhere between those dates.

Where am I going with this? I'm honestly not quite sure, but wanted to share with you just how incredibly long this all takes. All this time, all the effort Pebbles put into reaching ascention, fighting so hard for a freedom he couldn't even be certain he'd obtain- all worth nothing. And in the end, Moon still forgives him.

Ohh interesting!! I never even thought that those numbers were actually dates to begin with 💀 now i feel even more bad for moon

Also feel free to ramble! This is a safe space for any rainworld theories or just rambling about them in general! 👍 i love reading them

[exceedboundaries]

Probably one of the first things I've made for Apricity: two iterator OCS and a slugcat OC! Hidden Dreamer and Fourth Tide Dreaming are a few months old, while Rain on Dawn Glass is newer and from when I actually started thinking about the AU. Both are part of a local group somewhat adjacent to the canon group's, and they're both slight oddities when it comes to, well, being iterators.

Fourth Tide Dreaming and Rivulet are both connected within this AU; while Tide is a companion to Dreamer, Rivulet is a slugcat from Tide's original community with a thirst for adventure that Dreamer set out towards Unparalleled Innocence's can upon request.

Read more below; they're all characters near and dear to my heart. (Especially Tide!)

Hidden Dreamer (or Youngest Dreamer, which was their original name), is the youngest iterator of any known in the broader region. They were created as a last minute replacement for their can after its previous iterator, First Spring Risen, severely malfunctioned and had to be decommissioned. Dreamer's ancients loved them dearly in the short time they had with them.

They're still considered young by many iterators who know of them, barely set in the ways that other iterators had many cycles to develop. They spend less time on what their fellow iterators do and spends more time on understanding the flora and fauna--mostly fauna--of the world, as well as on their companion, Fourth Tide Dreaming. They're easily excitable and chatty, and prone to loneliness. The string of colored pearls around their body in this form makes up just a piece of their treasured collection and catalog of information and messages.

Fourth Tide Dreaming, a slugcat that stumbled into HD's can, eventually became their companion. Their internals have been severely modified since then, mostly synthetic with effort put into longevity of life and survivability. Tide needs little food to survive and is slipperier than most predators expect--and more durable to match--which has often made them the messenger of choice whenever communications are slipping. They're also from Rivulet's original community, as mentioned above!

Rain on Dawn Glass is perhaps one of the tallest iterators of the lot, and one from the last normal generation of iterators. Her can is specialized towards communications, and as the greatest hub of its kind in the area, connects many local groups and regions of iterators together. Her can serves as the basis for most forums and points of connection between iterators today, as the most polished communications hub of the ancients, and most of her duties revolve around its maintenance.

She's a busy iterator, as her body effectively routes all current communications to recipients. She's used to being ignored for who she is in favor of what she can do for others, although it grates on her, and it's most often just her local group that talks to her as an actual person. She has a fond spot for Dreamer--perhaps something more--because Dreamer has never treated her with any distance or unthinking manner.

Dreamer and Rain's local group has utilized the iterator-off-the-string technology to band together to maintain Rain's can, which often leaves them dealing with nearby local groups to source ever-scarcer and ever-particular materials. They have a small contract with SRS to obtain specific compounds that Spearmaster helps retrieve.

[faelingdraws]

what's your take on seven red suns and five pebbles relationship? not as ship, just in general

divorce-core

Jokes aside, I see their relationship as a complex one, and I tried to write it as such.

I saw it in the vein that Seven Red Suns was Pebble's best friend, and one of the few people Pebbles felt they could confide in - if not the only person, as while Pebbles and Moon were close, Pebbles knew Moon would fret over him. (Which would make it harder to come to her, because he does not want to be babied.)

SRS, then, struggled to accept that honor. FP is known as a relatively difficult iterator to get along with, and here's SRS, in the position of being close to him, able to care for him and protect him.

I see SRS as being overzealous in the desire to make FP happy or proud, and that the original pearl containing the self destruction taboo was one given out of a moment of emotional weakness or immaturity. Instead of putting his foot down on FP's safety, he focuses on his emotional need to see FP happy, potentially even happy with him, over the logical (that FP is too high risk to have ever done well with the taboo to begin with)

In SM's campaign I see FP as feeling especially burned and even betrayed - He trusted SRS fully, and in that I think he also trusted that SRS would have kept him safe and made the proper judgement call. He is sour over SRS' 'benevolent charity', and hurt by the realization that SRS' gut feeling was that FP could not do the taboo safely. It tells him he is infantilized by even the one he thought would not treat him that way. FP starts off reading the pearl with a "I trust you understand me..." which tells me plenty about their relationship.

[yasashiinaya]

So this is probably gonna be a long post about how rain world changed my perspective on life and death. There'll be references to in game lore as well as my personal thoughts on real life. I'll assume you're familiar with most of the lore.

So where do I even start?

Rain world is probably the game that has had the most profound effect on me. On its surface it's just a game about poor slugcat exploring this dangerous world, but under the surface it is deeply philosophical. Reading all the pearls, visiting all the echos, and playing through all the campaigns (including downpour) really made me appreciate it.

In rain world we have an answer to the afterlife. We know there is one and we know roughly what it entails. It's unclear how the ancients knew reincarnation was real. Maybe they remembered past lives, maybe there was some feature that made it obvious it was them again, we'll never know. Perhaps one purpose of the data pearls was to store knowledge of past lives for them to learn through.

So.. why did they want to leave the cycle? A great question. It's clear that the ancients cared a lot about life after all. We get some insight into them in the shaded citadel pearl (dark pink). It's a pearl from the memory crypts. A list 620 items long about Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel's accomplishments. Maybe they were a summary of one life, maybe of all lives. We can assume it was put in the crypts after they ascended. Considering there are engineered organisms patrolling the memory crypts, surely this all meant a lot to them. Why did they want to ascend? Well it's clear not all of them did. Rhinestones beneath Shattered Glass (undergrowth) tells us this:

"Do you see the same as me? Beauty continuing to bloom even in a place long forgotten. I did not have the will to depart, nor the desire. Why did they always search for an escape, as if we were imprisoned? What offering from the void could usurp the gift of life already given? This moment, right here! It is where we are meant to be."

Echos exist cause they were not done with life. It's not some sort of punishment, it's just what happens when ascending is not something they truly wanted. The Farm Arrays pearl (pink) says that there were horror stories that if your ego was too big, the void fluid couldn't ascend you, leaving you an echo. Is it truly ego? Maybe being echos has changed the ones that remain but most don't seem like they have massive egos. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections thinks that they remain cause they can't let go of their memories. Four Needles under Plentiful Leaves asks if they should be ashasmed that they envy our flesh prison. A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads still contemplates the same fields they once did. In the saint campaign, they theorize that they remain cause they feel the land has yet to reveal all of its secrets. They still hold onto the place despite it changing so.

They're imprisoned because they clearly didn't want to go. There are probably countless echos that exist merely because they felt pressured to cross themselves out. The iterators are stuck trying to find the triple affirmative. Some iterators want to ascend themselves but are incapable due to their biology. So.. if an iterator were to die, what would happen to them? Would they be stuck in a sort of limbo since no new iterators were made? Perhaps. If ascended by the saint, Looks To The Moon and Five Pebbles can see the entire loop of their existence, while also mentioning that it is only a dream. If both are ascended at the same time, it's clear they don't understand the afterlife at all. They don't know if they've broken free or not. They wouldn't have known if they found the right solution.

Let's talk about saint. It's unclear what they really are. They are an echo yet they are stuck in a repeating cycle. Or are they? Is it a cycle begun anew? They are a triple affirmative in all senses. A portable solution that is generally applicable. Upon ascending both iterators, they say this:

BSM: Only those who have seen the other side can know the answers, but by definition they can never venture back to deliver the knowledge they have gained.

FP: Perhaps that is why you need to wake up, little visitor.

Are we stuck because we have seen the other side and must help the others? Is the saint's purpose to ascend everyone? Did we see the first cycle or did we see one of countless? Are they wrong and we are stuck because our ego convinces us we can "fix" the world. Are we even right in ascending those who did not ask for it?

Crossing the Rubicon is an idiom that means passing a point of no return. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, it led to a civil war and him becoming a dictator. Saint passing the point of no return did not mean that they couldn't come back afterwards, it meant that they became something else. What is the rubicon in rain world even? The iterators suggest it is a dream, is it? Why are the guardians trying to keep us from crossing? Perhaps the void sea itself doesn't want us to cross. Perhaps it's a test to see if we're worthy.

Is ascension even meant to be? Why would there be a method of ascension that could be mass produced? The void sea almost seems like a cop out, no? the pearl in the filtration system (teal) tells us that the void sea is an entity that dissolves the rock. Maybe it just crosses out anything it comes into contact with, including creatures. I don't think it's meant for us.

When I first ascended as the survivor I was left in awe. I went in blind and had no idea what the ending would be like. It took reading a lot of the lore for me to somewhat understand. These mysterious creatures lived in the void sea and for some reason helped us? Did we really ascend? What even is the purpose of the void worms? The sense of mystery is captivating

As a thanks for reading this far: Have a drawing I made

Moving on to section 2: my own personal thoughts

I really started to think about life and death after wrapping up everything. Is there an afterlife in the real world? Should there be one? Do I even want to know the answer? Some background on me: I grew up in a family that knew no religion. Fairly spiritual but it wasn't a big part of their lives. I was aware christianity was a thing but my family didn't believe in any gods and didn't teach me any of that stuff. I didn't start learning about the afterlife in other cultures until religion class in school. My dad passed away when I was a kid so I was kinda left theorizing on what lies beyond the veil. No one tried to tell me what the right answer was cause no one knew. So.. what do I think? I'm not sure. For the most part I've just kinda figured my spirit returns to the earth once I'm gone, but will there be something left of me? Will I move on? I.. don't know. For a long time I didn't really mind the idea of dying. I didn't care what was on the other side. I didn't particularly care about life either. It took me a long time to see how precious things actually are. Heck, it took me until just this year to figure what afterlife is most desireable to me. So again, what do I think? The idea of heaven just feels wrong. Is it just life part 2? How cruel is that. An afterlife of happiness and no negativity? What's the point of that? Without my flaws and my pain, am I really me? An afterlife of eternal happiness would just leave me as an empty shell devoid of any real depth. A cruel prank by the gods to collect hollow mortals to spend time with them perhaps. Is reincarnation much better? Must my memories disappear, leaving me with no idea I was someone else? All the hurdles I overcame and connections I made, gone? For naught? Just to start over? I suppose I wouldn't know anymore, I wouldn't remember, but it feels like a sad fate. Perhaps I'm more attached to the world than I realize.

Maybe the ancients weren't so wrong. Maybe being crossed out is the answer. I think the afterlife I want is no afterlife at all. An end I wouldn't even be aware of. Unaware I ever existed. When we go to sleep, we don't know we're actually gonna wake up, do we? When I went under for surgery, the world just faded away. No memories of my last moments, no memories of it happening. That's what I hope the end will be like. Unaware in peaceful bliss. Falling asleep and never waking up again. Is it the happiest of endings? Perhaps not, but it is a fair ending. I guess I'm not so different from the ancients. Perhaps they were right in seeking a way to just disappear and never come back, but I suppose we won't know if that's what they actually got.

Farewell internet stranger, I hope you enjoyed my theories

[shkika]

read something in the teal pearl that got my brain thinking

"My creators, or rather my creators' ancestors, figured out a way to use Void Fluid."

i always was under the impression that the whole Void fluid revolution-> first echoes-> iterators was rather quick, like in under a generation, it seems i was wrong!

Oh it was absolutely NOT a fast change.

What was a fast change was the technological advancement aka the move from structures looking like those in the outer expanse to machinery and building we see in the iterator complexes (Outskirts and Industrial Complex).

Aka all ancients lived on the ground still! People were eager what this new void fluid stuff can do. But even then you can tell which areas were build later in the game even by things as simple as the karma gates! Older karma gates use running water to power their mechanism.

Later, when iterators were build, so places like Sky islands (Communication towers and such) and the Exterior (Five Pebbles obviously), they have gates that run with steam if I'm not mistaken... Very cool stuff!

But if that's not enough for you, here is some canon confirmation that Moon took A LOT OF TIME to build by one of her makers' echo!

I imagine younger iterators took less time to build given they are so so many of them, but sheesh!

I think they were even more hints and such in the game about this taking place over a long period of time, but I think this is enough to get the point across.

[funkytrashsuperstructure]

Disconnected - Chapter 8: Lapse

Where was she? Why was her chamber a mess? What were these creatures?! Where were her pearls? Where was her left eye? Why was her memory conflux popping up with errors? Why was… why was everything popping up with errors?! What… who was she, even?

She had to be missing something. She had to think! She had to… be…

Her puppet seized, listing over onto its side. She couldn't help but groan. Everything was hurting, nothing made sense…

An armored and decorated creature stepped out of the crowd and approached her. She looked up in fear, body shaking.

"No, no, no…" she muttered, eye darting back and forth.

However, the creature simply lowered itself to her level, before grabbing her hand and placing a pearl into it.

Her concentration shifted. Her hand squeezed the pearl lightly, and she began to read it on instinct.

…a conversation log, all plain text.

“1681.662 - PRIVATE Seven Red Sun, Chasing Wind CW: Have you had any contact with Five Pebbles recently? SRS: Not in a long while actually! Unless worrying about him counts. CW: One of his neighbors, Unparalleled Innocence, sent an overseer to his can and got some images. They were made public in the local group, in an effort to be mean I suppose. There's no other way of putting it - he looks like he's about to explode. SRS: Tell me. CW: He's belching out a lot of steam, far more than what would indicate normal operation. His labs especially seem to be operating above capacity. He does listen to you, and few others by now, so you should talk to him. SRS: I will try to contact him. Does Moon know? CW: Moon has been unavailable for some time.”

Moon stared at the maroon pearl, turning it in her hand. She had sat up at this point, the panic receding from her mind and a newfound, albeit temporary, clarity replacing it. She took a moment to look around at her surroundings and get her bearings.

Right. She had overheated, generated slag buildup, and collapsed. Her puppet had sustained damage during to the fall, including to her eye, umbillical, and arm. These were the creatures… the scavengers… that had made their home in her chamber, the lanterns they made washing the place in a warm, homely glow. And…

Well, she was Looks to the Moon, an iterator. Tasked with finding the Great Problem for people who no longer existed.

Not that that mattered, now. She was in no state to solve their problem. There wasn't much else to focus on, other than her… her…

"I… I'm going to die, aren't I?" she asked aloud. The scavenger's leader, who had been staring at her the whole time, looked at her with confusion.

"I mean… I don't know the state of… of the rest of my facility. My puppet has very little… little processing power, not enough for me to function. And my neurons… they're probably being eaten by creatures. If they all get destroyed, or my connection gets severed to them, then… then I will die, probably."

Suddenly, a projection of a neuron appeared next to her. It startles her for a moment, before she gives herself a facepalm. "Yes, Iggy… that's what a neuron looks like."

The leader pawed at the hologram for a moment, before turning to the other scavengers and gesturing at them. A few handfuls of them joined up into groups, grabbing spears and bombs from their stashes, before climbing up and out of the chamber.

The leader then turned back to her, nodding.

She couldn't help but stare back in disbelief. Had it decided to help her? Was it giving her a lifeline she didn't know was possible? She'd have to entrust her fate in these wild creatures. It wasn't like she had much of a choice.

Previous | First | Moving Updates to AO3

[sevenrs]

if you're gonna talk about your ocs unprompt let me prompt you to talk about them

seriously i wanna read anything on ur ocs i am very interested

thank you for the interest! my guys mean a lot to me so it's very touching someone else would want to hear about them

i usually work on my ocs one at a time. and it is flight of the crows' turn

i dont have a proper reference outside of my iterator lineup so this is the best picture i have (that i did draw)

crows IS named after the jhariah song of the same name. im kind of obsessed with jhariah's music and i wanted an iterator inspired it. flight of the crows is also a kickass name. design is also inspired by the colors that he uses in his albums and i do have art of crows (and lost. but i will get to her later) using album palette

crows is one of the older iterators out of my guys (not one of the first few ever made but more like. 2nd-3rd gen iterator, maybe a bit higher depending on how many generations there really were)

crows' city was home to a large population of engineers, which helped improve and revise newer iterator designs. naturally, crows would lean about this as well, and became very invested in the subject

they were eventually skilled enough to alert their ancients to problems before the automated systems they made, or routine checks by the ancients. crows became pretty self-sustaining while they were around

but with them gone, they continued their learning by themselves, designing their own mechanical blueprints in simulations or using their puppets' hands to work with real materials. i imagine their can seems a little dangerous at times, with tools and spare metal and wires, but it is kept organized like pearls are (having control of gravity and all)

personality wise, crows is very reserved. quiet type, really doesn't speak unless prompted to by someone else. when prompted, has very detailed and seemingly well-thought out, calm responses. a great listener, but they tend to keep people at arms length

everyone except 2 people

before the ancients died, crows made contact with an iterator of a different local group (meatcatt's) lost in the dark.

lost's ancients discovered that she was build right on top of a huge pool of void fluid, and was being converted into more of a drillsite. lost was expected to come up with efficient solutions for how to do this, but she wasn't familiar with void drills.

and therefore asked for help in broadcasts. crows responded because they like building things and the two of them worked together on the projects, and also began to naturally know each other beyond the projects. and then were also gay

one day, lost requested assistance with enhancing herself. and crows, a mechanic, naturally agreed. they made and passed blueprints to lost in order to alter her puppet, and eventually their whole structure

however lost's ancients did not take kindly to this at all. and they decided to cull lost before she got very out of control. i imagine it is something crows feels a lot of guilt about, and it is very bottled up

their relationship with my other iterator, chains by summer, was a very close friendship. maybe almost dating but im going to say friends. i think crows often gave advice to summer when his ancients were overbearing or got into spats that they made him decide. i think the others in crows' local group would also come to them for advice, but summer made an attempt to get to know crows better as a person. i imagine he was very persistent on asking how they were feeling and what they were up to in their projects. and crows would share, also choosing to trust summer with a bit of their own feelings. mostly.

there was one project that they kept a secret from them-- and it honestly ended their friendship

with no more ancients, their structures were dying. it would eventually fall, killing some of the older model iterators and leaving the newer ones to rot in a fate worse than death. crows wanted to see if they could escape their rotting body, and live simply as the puppet. it was a very risky ordeal, and crows, knowing summer, knew that he wouldnt take kindly to an idea that had a very high chance of sudden death regardless

so as they were making preparations for their plan, they stopped talking to summer, saying that they were being distracted from their work, and the two of them should just stop.

and after cutting it off with summer, and the rest of their local group, they would lure creatures with dexterous hands (mainly scavengers and slugcats) to find them scrap metal pieces and wire so they could build their own, autonomous tools that they could write code to automatically preform actions (can't reach their umbilical with their hands!)

and eventually it would work. crows needed to learn how to walk and balance with gravity involved, but they could leave their can. as long as they were around centipedes or had electric spears to charge

crows would then go on a journey to free the iterators of their own local group, as well as the local group nearby where lost used to be

summer was the last iterator they freed because they felt awkward. which was really torturous for summer because suddenly all of his iterator pals stopped talking to him and that boy lives on social interaction day to day

[oceanremnants]

black pearl, written by a traveling administrator. the newest data on it is the temperatures of each place described, which were hastily added on near the end of the pearl's creation.

topography report

first cycle r.1 - generic jungle area, nothing out of the ordinary. i saw exactly one legless lizard - blueberry, i think. makes sense even they'd escape. its 23c r.2 - lot of lizards i've just been calling "vanilla" for now. some weird jumpy blue ones, too.. must be the cyan lizards ea mentioned? the cyan lizards are sticking pretty close to our regions... must like the cold. r.3 - these regions have a lot of creatures in them. also a lot of predators. saw some big noodly things which were fighting with a flying centipede, probably over territory? there's also a few fire-flingers or whatever theyre called, which is interesting considering the fact that they only live at the tops of trees in our regions. r.4 - there are also a lot of lizards here.

second cycle r.1 - have to move inland for the quickest actually walkable route and it's even warmer here... yuck. around 25-28c. r.2 - actually nevermind. it suddenly got a lot colder. looks like the trees that keep all the heat in are a lot thinner here... around 20c again. r.3 - there's more lizards. honestly considering how many lizards there are and the state of our retaining wall i can only assume they're actively avoiding our regions. wonder why. r.3.5 - that was a joke. r.4 - i should make a list of lizard tastes.... they all taste pretty different, especially for something that looks so similar. or maybe the stuff in our regions is just sorta plain.

third cycle r.1 - turns out some unknown cousin is in my way, which is why there are basically no trees here. their retaining wall's open for business, so i'm going through instead of around. r.2 - there's this weird cold white substance all around the area. it melts when i put my hand in it... i wonder where it came from r.3 - okay i absolutely know where the substance came from. cold. -32c

fourth cycle r.1 - gonna try to be a bit quicker with advancing this time. i don't want to get stuck in whatever that was again. really really sucked. also, there are a lot of torches around here, sort of like the ones some ancients used to put all around the place - especially those that lead to the void sea... r.2 - i gotta wonder if the cousin who lives here knows about this white cold stuff? it's probably pretty annoying to them. unless this is how they output rain... some sort of double coolant system, maybe. r.2.5 - actually i could see that working pretty well. it'd be devastating for most iterators now obviously, but if you could find a way to ensure the water vapor entered the upper atmosphere and cooled down enough it could theoretically doubly cool someone down. would be good for anyone who really wants to avpid overheating i guess.. r.3 - i've seen a few weird frilly pink lizards around, but only like.. three. they're probably the smallest legged lizard i've ever seen r.4 - turns out these pink lizards mainly eat batflies, so after my first scuffle with one i've managed to get the rest to leave me alone.. nice r.5 - this sort of reminds me, actually, of the pearls winter read to the group about his namesake. then that'd make all this white stuff the "snow" he mentioned i guess? it sounded a lot nicer in those pearls... r.6 - my fur isn't cutting it as much anymore. i should be around the other side of the retaining wall about now, at least... still no sign of any superstructure, though, which is pretty concerning. lots of buildings, bone ash factories and etc. but no iterators.

fifth cycle r.1 - managed to get out, although it took a bit of a climb which is pretty interesting. surrounding area's about as cold as inside, almost no trees here. i still don't miss how hot inland was, but i can sure pretend i did. not sure why i didn't see the cousin this place was presumably built for... maybe i'll ask around later. r.2 - this place has a ridiculous amount of weird blue yeeks. the food they like doesn't even grow here... they're cute though. r.3 - nevermind, found about ten billion throweends, which is where most of them ended up being... nature sure is beautiful. r.4 - decided to use my current elevation to get a better look around and aside from already being able to see ea from here i can also see what looks like a massive deadzone. i guess that must be glories? even that cold iterator's place was less barren than that. what a loser. r.5 - looks sort of foggy and gross. like everything in it's rotting...

sixth cycle r.1 - found some sort of relatively intact - if a bit hard to navigate - railway. anything of interest inside the cars is long since rotten but it's still pretty cool. r.2 - further i go on it the more it's messed up. seems like the roots of the trees around here are helping some of it stay intact, like the ones on winter's can. but thanks to the deadzone's influence i guess they're a bit thinner here. yeesh. r.3 - staying as far away from that deadzone as i can, managed to jump onto another track which'll make it take a bit longer to get to ea but is probably a bit safer. harder to see below on this one, but i don't really need to. maybe not the coolest thing to say in a topography report though. r.4 - went into one of the cars for shelter and it is so fucking pretty here... looks like it must've been used to transport decorative flowers and they just.. kept growing. there's a window specifically so that they wouldn't die or anything, which thankfully isn't broken enough to let the rain in. really nice. not sure why i've described this more in detail than anything else in this report.

seventh cycle r.1 - getting a lot warmer again, which makes sense since i'm practically at ea's already. not too warm though which is nice and probably means something about their regions... i'd say it's gotten to 20c at most. r.2 - following the railway lead me to a pretty big farm array. didn't realize that any of those could even survive outside of a retaining wall for that long but this one isn't in such bad shape. fruipt. r.3 - fruit hasn't killed me yet and didn't have anything poisonous in it either way. i should probably mention it in the plant report for quiet but i'm too lazy r.4 - surveying the area a bit, seems like several of the shelters closer to ea are locked. guess i'll have to find the closest one and force myself out during precycle. still got a ways to go... r.5 - think i'm at the closest shelter. it's a pretty big one, although not as pretty as the plant one i found earlier. gonna look around a bit more... r.6 - more vanilla lizards, which is cool. they don't seem super bothered by wormgrass... and they have this sticky glob attack i didn't see earlier cause i managed to catch most of them by surprise. saw them take down one of the big noodle things to eat. pretyy cool r.6.5 - turns out lizards are really good at communicating how much they hate people. Ow.

eighth cycle r.1 iim gonna sleep for 2billion sun cycles ok? okay. r.2 final report ea looks pretty. okay done.

[kakyogay]

Saint is on board with preventing sos' death for its own reasons although it does have to take a pit stop to looks to the moon for directions and pebbles' reunion + any possible supplies before booking it

It calms down once past pebbles translates to current pebbles that they’re going to sos and current pebbles relay the message to sos so they're no longer in a massive hurry

Did I mention that past pebbles and saint hadn't explained about what happened in the future? Yeah, they didn't.. they said they need to meet sos before they can explain but the local group (and then the general iterators since innocence leaks out the information) learns that

Pebbles kills moon, they don't know how he did it or why but past pebbles clearly regrets it although moon is still alive kind of?? They're not really sure

It has to do something with sos but they don't know that sos found triple affirmative

At a later time when pebbles found the golden pearl that was somehow displaced in time, he reads it to saint but all the iterator knows is that the pearl has information on how to circumvent the self-destruction taboo, that information led to death of moon, and it was given to pebbles by a friend

:)

Anyways, saint ping-pongs from iterator can to iterator can, dropping off pebbles for playdates (and emotional breakdowns) with the iterator inside for a few cycles until they reach sos

I haven't written down the exact reactions for all the iterators but I know that pebbles remembers moon the most but not her in her prime, doesn't really remember nsh or suns and completely forgot who wind or Innocence are

Nsh is definitely not ready for when past pebbles drops into her can since like, he KILLED moon and he loves moon with all their heart and he had been creating this image of past pebbles but then they look at pebbles' state and they don't know what to feel?

Pebbles' puppet is old, the pink has faded, there’s hundreds of scratches, one of his antennae is snapped off, there’s this blank look in his eyes when he looks at her but also pebbles is fucking tiny

Does she make fun of his height? Should he yell at him for killing moon? They don't even know the full story. What happened to him? this pebbles doesn't look like the one he was teasing a few cycles earlier.

He'll pebbles remember the local group by showing past message histories and probably convince him to play some games together (come on, he has the once in a lifetime opportunity to get pebbles to play games together)

The only idea for suns is that past pebbles tells them that they were the catalyst to past pebbles state.

Sos may had been spark but suns laid the timber that burned everything into ash

That flings them into reality about current pebbles' hero worship and that they should talk to him actually, don't make the same mistakes suns

2/2

holy shit I am so sorry I spent so long not answering this I got caught up in an absolutely insane roleplay in the roblox rain world rp game.

Anyways once again eating this up. I love how sig convinces him to play games. Also love how you used the term playdates it's so silly ^^

I'd give more of a reaction but its super late and want to make sure anyone else who is interested gets to see it

also for time I'm just gonna drop this one here too. Awesome sauce ships and hell yeah angst