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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
連続犬
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
Villain
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
Villain
That the symphony had stolen grand island and taken it to their world for some reason
Villain
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
Villain
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