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Project Lorica was eaten by scheduling. Here's the big spoiler plurk
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The premise of Lorica is as such
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One day in the year 2130, six college students look up and see a strange distortion in the sky, then lose consciousness
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the next thing they know, they wake up in a facility and are told that they have to pilot three giant robots called Lorica Units to fight aliens
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which they do
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the aliens are the Symphony, a mysterious and extremely varied swarm of strange creatures that are constantly attacking Grand Island
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they were in a coma for a year, it's 2131 and they've lost all contact with the mainland
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the Lorica Units are piloted in pairs, with their power coming from the metaphysical space between the pilots
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as their bonds with each other strengthen, so do the Lorica powers
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after several battles, they face the first Conductor, one of the seven ultra-powerful beings that lead the Symphony
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when facing the Conductors, different party members see other figures in the metaphysical pilot mindspace that their power comes from
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of people close to them, acting cryptic questions
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like "why don't I exist"
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in the second Conductor fight, the battle ended with the party being teleported far away from the island
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only to find a strange, otherworldly landscape full of impossible shapes and skylines
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with the sensors picking up the Lorica base hundreds of miles away
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that was where the campaign ended
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Here's where things would have gone from there
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The next arc is the Lorica Units traveling back to Grand Island, though what should ostensibly be America but looks nothing like it
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they are attacked by mysterious machines that don't resemble the Symphony along the way
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then, when the Second Conductor attacks again, those machines join them in fighting against it
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and it is destroyed
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It eventually turns out that the mysterious machines are feral Lorica Units
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of which there are supposed to only be three
Villain
I have
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but there are dozens of them out in the wasteland
Villain
A theory
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one of the pilots of the feral Loricas is revealed to be an impossible amalgamation of humanoid limbs and features
Villain
Which I will wait for Quinn to confirm
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along the way, another impossible sight is discovered
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holy shit
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in the middle of the desert, a perfectly spherical hole
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several kilometers across and filled with water
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in which they find
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an abandoned, ruined exact replica of Grand Island
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complete with a destroyed Lorica Base
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eventually the team makes it back to the real Grand Island, just in time for them to fight the Third and Fourth Conductors
✶ 天鈿女命
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and confront the Chairwoman about all the weirdass shit they saw
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and she just, deflates
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and concedes to tell them her full story
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She gave a partial explanation of it early on
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there was an FTL experiment in 2120, where a spaceship warp jumped across the galaxy
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and something strange happened to it that drew the Symphony to Earth, but also gave them enough information from its final transmissions to build the Lorica tech
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this is sort of a half lie
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what actually happened was a little different
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when the jump happened, the crew was exposed to an alien information-based sapient lifeform
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the gulf between their mental framework and the Akashic Code's mental framework drove them insane
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When they made contact with Earth, they began transmitting information back to the base
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which would have been a transmission of the Akashic Code to Earth
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
oh
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but Dr. Hiroko Rock managed to contain the infiltration
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by killing the crew who were receiving the information and quarantining everyone else involved
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the ship is now returning to Earth
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and they need to prepare for it
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their weapon against it being hypertech developed using an incomplete version of the Akashic Code
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she prepares for this in multiple ways
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one is to craft weapons that she believed might be able to stop this Thing that is coming to rewrite Earth's reality
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but there's too many unknowns
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so she also oversees the construction of a fully-automated device on the moon
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which has the ability to store physical matter arrangement information down to the molecular level on a huge scale
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then reconstitute it later
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the Akashic Host, the last surviving human from the FTL mission, arrives at Earth, ten years later in 2130
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the fight to stop it failed
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but the six party members were instrumental in humanity's last stand
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and the six of them, plus Rock, were used as the basis for her final gambit
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uploading their consciousness into a self-adapting inorganic system
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designed to wait and survive through Earth being distorted beyond survivability
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then terraform it after the Akashic Host leaves
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until Earth can once again support life
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humanity is wiped out
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all life on Earth dies
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and the Symphony activates to heal the planet
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under the guidance of seven Conductors
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nine million years pass.
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!?!??
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the moon station determines that Earth has been repaired to the point that humanity can survive there
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loads up its saved copy of Grand Island
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and pastes it back on the surface
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the Symphony is alerted to the presence of humans on the planet
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and over millions of years, its memory of the purpose of its mission has distorted
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and all it remembers is
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when humanity is restored, their purpose for existing is over
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therefore, it sees the return of humanity as a herald of its own death
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and it reacts by attacking the new human city with overwhelming force
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the city is destroyed
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all humans are killed
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but the Symphony can't leave the Earth
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so, the moon station begins accumulating energy again
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to reconstitute another Grand Island
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jesus
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with the only difference being that Rock has access to all the data from the previous reconstruction and how it ended
RobotApocalypse
holy shit
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meaning this time she can prepare to stop the Symphony from killing them
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
holy shit.
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she fails.
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again.
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this goes on
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for thousands of iterations
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of Rock trying and failing to keep the Symphony from killing everyone
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until we finally reach the start of the campaign
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attempt 8745
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the last one
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because the Akashic Host is returning to Earth
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in order for humanity to survive into the future
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they must communicate to the Symphony that they are not enemies
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My theory was wrong
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and then reach an understanding with the Akashic Host
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to stop it from glitching Earth out again
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the final twists being the nature of the Akashic Host
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which is that it's a fractal identity data lifeform
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It perceives identity fundamentally from how humans do
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in that the whole of the Code is an individual
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and also every subset of the Code is an individual
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and if any of it simulates in its mind anything with intelligence, that simulation/thought is an individual
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which means that when it sees humans
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So wait what is the Symphony
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it sees a human thinking about someone
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then, stop thinking about it
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Where did they come from
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and from the Code's perspective, that's murder
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they're the terraforming system created by Rock to repair the Earth after the Host left
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Ok
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when someone sees his father in the Lorica metaspace saying "why don't i exist"
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Separate from the moon base
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yes
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that's not his father
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it's his mental construct of his father, in his mind
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which to him is just an idea
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but to the Code is a living entity
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and it doesn't understand why he won't let it exist
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holy fuck
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(this was in the Symphony because the Symphony was built using incomplete information from the AC)
✶ 天鈿女命
this is sooooo fucked i LOVE it
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so the finale would have been, functionally
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both an end of eva apocalyptic surreal kaiju fight
RobotApocalypse
that's such a cool sci-fi concept, goddamn
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and trying to communicate with the Akashic Code to get it to understand how human consciousness works
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and I just want to say
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13sar spoilers
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V FJRNE V pnzr hc jvgu nyy bs guvf orsber V cynlrq 13 fragvaryf
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so that's what Project Lorica was about
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Villain
what was your theory
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
god this is all so cool
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That the symphony had stolen grand island and taken it to their world for some reason
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And we hadn’t been on earth for the whole game
RobotApocalypse
so what was the deal with the feral loricas?
✶ 天鈿女命
LMFAO I WAS READING ALL THIS LIKE
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The real question I have is whether the fact that all of us were super fucked up would have contributed to the final battle, since, as I recall, pretty much all of us had people we DIDN'T want to think about and presumably the Akashic Host is VERY confused about this
✶ 天鈿女命
dhvaa zhfg unir orra FB CVFFRQ jura gurl jrer cynlvat 13 fragvaryf
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the feral loricas were previous copies of the PCs who had escaped from their Grand Islands and continued to live in the wild
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using the Loricas too much draws the identities of the pilots closer together
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until eventually they fuse into one mass
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who had presumably gone insane due to overstaying in their Loricas beyond the time limi- yea
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thus the one hour limit
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the party all having fucked up emotional baggage was mainly to make the fractal consciousness confrontations more dramatic
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So they were literally us
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yes
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as were the Conductors
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six + the chairwoman
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Fucking wild
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
oh shit
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
I missed that the conductors were the pcs too
RobotApocalypse
oh man
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The conductors were ALSO us???
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as the leaders of the first fight against the akashic host and therefore the ones closest to it
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the seven of you uploaded your consciousness into the symphony to oversee its reconstruction of earth
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GOD
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ITS TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
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so when you saw that sky distortion at the start of the campaign
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that was the akashic host
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then when you blacked out
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there was a ten million year timeskip
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JESUS
Princess Emily
yyyyyyup wild shit
go тo вread
woooooooow
dragon time
Yo what the FUCK
dragon time
Holy shit
Love Snake Kaja
Amazing