My Theory from Venge-Rhue

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Postby Kcrazy » Tue May 30, 2006 9:02 pm

@Kcrazy,
How did you come up with the Arctura idea? I didn't find any hints for that. On the other hand, I've missed a lot of stories, poems and clues... Which is a big information hole. :/


Two things helped me come up with that.

1) Other peoples theories which i messed into one, and

2) Some guy in the game say the illuminaties exist but not in a way they once did.
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Postby Bryjnar » Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:53 pm

A theory:

Things go like the man in red says, with the Illuminati being found (except for one) and taken against the Lord of the Pits. He is scarred by them, and so he responds with the "shockwave". Now what if this "shockwave" was actually Venge? "Scar upon the father's brow" could be metaphorical; that was what caused him to be created. Even his name sounds like vengeance, suggesting that he was "born" just at that moment, as a method of revenge against those who had scarred him. The fact that he's referred to as the "son" may just reference the fact that he was created by the Lord of the Pits. This Venge would be essentially just a big aura-void. It's effect would be much like a "shockwave", at first, when the, ah, concentration gradient was at it's strongest, every aura in the area would have been sucked into it. Possibly even some form of aura from the landscape (everything has an aura), which might have led to the sort of destruction which we saw in Estrana (see Side Theory 1). So Venge's first acquisitions are a city full of fairly normal human beings... and the bearers of the Illuminati (possibly he even absobs something of the swords' own auras). The Illuminati are at any rate corrupted, possibly by losing their own auras to Venge, possibly by just being somehow affected by his "evil", and so become the Shadow Swords. Venge, however, is now full of the, presumably powerful, auras of the Illuminati bearers and possibly their swords. This would be the core of his need for justice, and it makes him anathema to his "father", who casts him out into the middle Way. Venge wanders around, possibly at first absorbing auras just by being near them (think concentration gradients), and eventually being drawn to the last Illuminatus (singular of Illuminati?), Arcturus. He takes it up, and the massive conflict in his "soul" with which the sword attempts to bind drives the sword insane, essentially as Venge is, with the dichotomy between the hunger for souls and death and the need for justice (and opposition to Shadow Swords).
Venge goes off, protected from the usual fate of Shadow Sword wielders by the fact that he's already insane, and because of his demonic nature is practically designed to absob souls, and kills Kura at some point (I guess we just don't see him in DE, although he could be one of the random people) and takes his role in the story, killing Kava and the rest of the Guided (he may or may not switch to being Kava, to fit the story of it being Kava come back fromthe dead). Kura seems to be an archetypal figure, and very influential in Rhue's character (he is told to act just like himself on a bad day (or something)), so I think that influence lasts for a while. He may well be the "Mimic", although that could be a different Shadow Sword wielder. It doesn't make much difference. Eventually he kills Midian (who must have done something bad at some point) and so goes after Jeruh, who has a Shadow Sword, which he took from its previous owner, who I think had finally gone insane and killed his companion (again, it doesn't really matter). Venge as Midian meets Gaius, who sees only his surface personality (he needs touch to do a full sense, doesn't he?). Venge kills Jeruh, whose Shadow Sword flies off (they can fly, and Venge's sword hates Shadow Swords, as we've seen), before absorbing his psychotic aura, which was itself fragmented, with it's main personality (Rhue) being a fabrication of Jeruh. Things get generally mixed up and the bits of Venge's personality end up dominated by a conglomerate loosely running as Rhue. Cue Episode 1.

Side Thory 1: The three "levels" of the Way are in fact related to their aura "density", i.e. the further "up" you go, the more aura there is in, well, everything, until you reach the point where it becomes infinite. Bang, there's your Purpose. And vice versa, the "lower" you go down into the Reaches the scarcer aura is, until at the very bottom there no aura at all: the Lord of the Pits (don't ask me how it can be conscious). The Lord of the Pits embodies Chaos and abscence, and so continually hungers for auras to fill the abscence (I'd guess that souls which perish under torment are easier prey or something, hence the "evil" aspect of it). Venge as I see him would therefore be a part of the Lord of the Pits released into the world. As a side note, this can be linked with the Illuminati and the Shadow Swords. The Shadow Swords "hunger" for auras, because they are a reflection of the hunger of the demons. The Illuminati, which are the Sacred Swords of Justice, not necessarily good, are the Purpose's force for the consciouness ordering system of auras and order in general. The middle Way is the battlefield, a plane where aura and abscence coexist. Aura would therefore be integral to the stability of the plane, so the appearance of Venge causes massive destruction around Janwen. If the Lord of the Pits were to triumph, the whole middle way would be destroyed. I'm not sure whether the Purpose could win, or whether Chaos enters the idea of balance, but if it did then the middle Way would become an aura-filled area; a type of heaven?
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Postby Sarcasm » Tue Jun 13, 2006 9:01 am

You, Sir, are a genius.
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Postby Bryjnar » Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:11 am

A few notes I've thought of since posting that:

Firstly, that should have been entitled "A hypothesis", because really this is all speculation. There is a vexing lack of evidence.

Rhue/Venge's mixture of the demonic and the divine makes him a perfect exemplar of the middle Way. He's like a normal wanderer, but with the problems of the "human condition" amplified.

As a demonic being, Rhue/Venge may not have a soul, per se. Aura seems to be the effect that thought and feeeling have on the world, but it's often implied that this is seperate from the soul. Rhue's attitude throughout most of the Way has been farily amoral: he seems to have no instinctive reaction to do things that are right, rather than things that benefit him (as players, representing Rhue's consciousness, our own fragmented understanding reflecting his own, we can force him to make moral decisions, but when he is out of our control he is almost uniformly selfish). However, Rhue seems to go through a definite transformation at the end of Episode 6 (normal ending). I think this may be the birth of his "soul". He's forced to confront the fact that he has feelings of love for Lexus (and to an extent, Serena) that are not defined by the auras he has absorbed: they are his own. The Rhue who leaves with Chloe may just be human, finally. The implication to me is that the soul is the moral repository for people, and as such is not in fact related to the Purpose, which is purely a force for order. So, where do souls come from?

On this note, looking at Rhue's defeat of Kavax is actually quite worrying. Kava represented a force leaning towards Chaos, yes, when he released Luma against their agreement, but he was also doing what was seen afterwards as the "right" thing. Venge as Kura cared only about the fact that he had transgressed the "law" of their agreement. Rhue defeating him implies his mastery of the deisre to do "good" within himself, and we can see that right up to the end this is the case; see his offhand execution of Sacrifica, who was just standing by. However, the truth seems to be too much for his amorality to handle.

The other endings are interesting. The Lexus ending is actually more "nihilistic" than the Reaches ending, actually, as we lose the part of Rhue which has gained a moral undersanding into the sword (although that may now become the dominant aura in the sword, with the Phantom Slasher and Arctura suppressed), while the amoral, demonic part flies off to possibly wreak havoc. In the Reaches ending, Rhue/Venge's potential is lost, as he dies (or possibly is reabsorbed by his "father", depending on how far he falls), which admittedly does suck a lot.

We don't really have any information on the actual powers of the Illuminati, but we can try and infer some. The Shadow Swords absob auras; could the Illuminati give them? I can't really see how that would work, but perhaps they amplify them in some way, which would help explain Rhue's incredible strength of aura

Also, I've just realised upon going through the Reaches ending again that there's that little scene with the sword at the end! I missed that in the other two endings! Someone tell me what happens, please :?
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Postby yoreliter » Sat Jul 01, 2006 1:56 am

Alright, I, unfortunatly, do not have the intelligence to prove, expand, or argue such a well thought-out and elaborated theory. But there is one thing i did realize.

The theory of Venge/Mimic with the void-aura seems perfectly true. Since in Jopaga's Lab, when Jopaga expells the aura form our "Rhue's" body, he goes on a killing rampage. This probably caused all of our "Rhue's" souls to fight for the dominant aura, and while aura's were fighting, our "Rhue" was slaughtering. When our "Rhue" wakes up, our "Rhue" still had the strongest and most easily usable aura, so he re-emerged as he dominant aura.

Seems to make sense to me.

And to Bryjnar and Kcrazy, amazing theories............. simply amazing.
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Postby Elachim » Sat Jul 01, 2006 12:05 pm

Bryjnar, one question... Are you Lun in disguise? 'Fess up!
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Postby Bryjnar » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:49 pm

No, I'm not Lun, and my theory holds about as much water as the prototype Sieve Mk I. Seriously, the lack of real evidence for most of the metaphysics of the Way mean that this can only be speculation that sounds cool to me.

On DE:
DE appears to contain all the auras that the sword has absorbed. As such, it seems like it may just be a metaphor for the inside of Rhue's mind; with the destructive aura of Jeruh "repressed" - imprisioned in the tower - as traumatised people often do with bad memories. And I think Rhue goes beyond traumatised. This is wonderfully paradoxial: we have a person whose soul/aura is so large that the more condensed part that makes up his consciousness can actually explore it. That's really quite cool when you think about it. However, if this is Rhue's mind; what indicates who is the dominant aura. If is was nice and straightforward, we'd have some kind of doppelganger scene where another "Rhue" was the ruler of DE or something, but we don't. The only explanation that I can think of is that someone else is choosing - that it is not just a random stuggle. And who pops up when Rhue's consciousness (i.e. his dominant aura) subsides back into DE (the Lexus ending)? Someone who "has no end". I think that there we are seeing Venge, or whatever Rhue's original soul is. The question then is: if this soul is controlling which personality dominates Rhue to serve it's own purposes, why doesn't it just control him itself? I suspect that Venge's consciousness is severely limited, in the same way as that of the Shadow Swords - they hunger, but do not think, being creatures of pure aura (see below). Venge needs a human aura/soul to run his (or whoever's) body for him, and so has to allow semi-consistent conglomerates of auras to form personalities, presumably those that follow his goals, that is to say, killing loads of people.
Interestingly, the PS seems to kill a lot more people than the other Shadow Swords when we see them, is this evidence of a deeper hunger coming from Venge?


Errata (i.e. bits I've changed my mind on): I think Gaius probably has that last Illuminatus that wasn't at Janwen. It seems too likely. From there on, follow that Gaius is the Harbinger etc. In this case Rhue/Venge probably just has a normal Shadow Sword, a corrupted Illuminatus he picked up post-Janwen. We're informed that different Shadow Swords have "preferences" as to how they absorb souls; I would guess this is indicative of how strong the Illuminatus element is in them. For example, the PS won't kill children, but the Night Reaper or whichever one Jeruh uses for the Landorin Massacre seems to have no problem with that. There may be some that will barely kill at all, the ones that prefer to just be nearby when people die, just the kind of twisted, literal morality you'd expect from a corrupt Illuminatus.

Vis a vis souls and auras. An aura is the "shadow a soul casts upon the world". Taking this into account, I speculate that "souls" are the ultimate concentration of Order, dispensed by the Purpose to humans, it's way of disseminating Order through the Middle Way (you can imagine the nice balance here, many seperate cores of pure order, some brighter than others, shining amongst the chaotic world). Thus far, it seems fairly standardly religious: souls come from God. Now, since the Middle Way is neither intrinsically Ordered nor Chaotic, a powerful source of order may well have an actual noticeable material effect (Chaos by its nature is far to spread out to have noticeable effects, unless you count the "randomness" of the elements and such on the Way), and bam, you have an aura. Shadow Swords then, absorb soul "shadows" (is that the source of the name?), but have no soul themselves, so are not truly conscious. Venge and the Shadow Swords therefore need people intrinsically, as do Chaos and the Lord Below - otherwise they cannot remain conscious. They literally need to feed on souls to survive. Looking at it this way, the demons and even the Lord Below are probably desperate to escape the Chaotic pit below - they don't want to die (paradoxically, those closest to extinction are probably also the strongest and most capable of stealing souls, hence the Lord Below). This would explain their greater prescence in the Middle Way, if they are there to try and get closer to the Purpose and the source of Order, and hence consciousness. Chaos itself is completely unconscious, and Venge/the Lord Below's shockwave was probably a lump of pure Chaos, which rapidly gained auras, but never consciousness, as it had no soul (I would guess that souls can only be maintained, not created, so the demons were probably once human, and have managed to keep their souls alive, but something without a soul cannot gain one, only auras).
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Postby Sarcasm » Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:02 pm

I nearly completely agree with you. your original post had most theories supporting it, but this one had very few.

your newer theories are possible, but have very little support, unlike your original one.

I also mostly disagree with the newer post (though I agree up to the part where you speak of shadow swords)

Do recall, that for pure chaos to be truly what it is called, It will have to adopt patterns and act lawfully eventually.
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Postby Bryjnar » Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:09 pm

I thought I'd already disclaimed all this as pure speculation :P

The stuff about Shadow Swords is just an effort by me to see how they could fit in with my current theory about the rest of it. Like I said, there isn't enough evidence to draw a real conclusion, and I'm kind of clutching at straws: if Rhue doesn't have the last Illuminatus, then it must be similar to the other Shadow Swords, so they must also have an Illuminatus presence, and we haven't seen enough of them to see if that's the case.

Re: Chaos, the "pure Chaos" at the bottom of the Lower Way would be the chaos that leads to entropy, in the same way that chaos will eventually lead to the heat death of the universe - everything equally spread out from everything else, no information, only random flickerings. The Chaos that can mimic order would be higher up, the demons and the Lord Below who have a physical presence, and probably some sort of soul. In the same way that ripples in a pond will occasionally join together to form a larger peak just after you've disturbed them, but as you get further away from the source of the energy (i.e. later on), that becomes less common. The "pure Chaos" would be somewhere between void and a soup :?
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Postby Sarcasm » Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:16 pm

Hmm, Thats true if you follow the mainstream chaos theory, but it is most likely that Lun does, so you are most likely correct, my apologies.
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Postby Telephalsion » Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:21 pm

Does venge have a soul? If venge is the son of the lord below, "chaos personified" then wouldn't he be lacking order within him?
Perhaps he would have an unsateable urge to obtain order, absorbing other souls. But as he absorbs different souls they mismatch.

One person might be as peace with himself and be conidered to be very "ordered" but his inner order might be very unlike the next persons inner order. If you would mix them they would blend into something not as ordered and more unbalanced and chaotic.

So as he absorbed more souls thet start to nullify eachother and his urge continues.

[/spontainious thoughts]
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Postby Kcrazy » Mon Jul 03, 2006 6:33 pm

Yea thats was the whole basis to my theory. I probaly should have left a lot of that out for awhile because that Venge not having a soul or an aura was the point of my theory. I think you described it much better then i attempted.
And the word "chaotic" has been used to describe Rhue, and other personalities of his we believe such as Kura.
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Postby Bryjnar » Tue Jul 04, 2006 7:36 am

Venge has no soul. That's why he's not "conscious" as such, and so cannot control his mortal body directly. Otherwise, if Rhue is Venge, we would expect to see Venge playing a far greater role in determining what goes on... as it is, we see something that might be Venge making an ambiguous statement once the dominant personality has receded and flying off. Venge is more like a clever machine than a person; he has a need, and does what he has to fulfil it. He is intelligent, and capable, but perhaps not imaginative or creative, and so needs a human soul for optimal... efficiency (of course, when I say soul, he is merely absorbing auras, which would be why his front personalities are so dysfunctional: they are only the memory of a soul, shadows, even if they think they are more).

Just want to make that point again: Neither Venge nor the Shadow Swords absorb souls, only auras. Re: Telephalsion, tt is true that different auras conflict inside him, but that is why we have the idea of a "dominant aura". If we take DE to be an accurate model of the inside of Rhue's head, then it seems that there is not even an awful lot of conflict: the auras are quite self contained and interact peacefully. It's that freaky idea again of having auras inside other auras; a person whose mind is a city...

As for Rhue being "chaotic", that's a word mainly used to describe a lack of adherence to the human-created laws and suchlike, rather than the sort of fundamental chaos that makes up his soul. One may be symptomatic of the other, but Rhue probably just doesn't care about laws: he follows his own devices, and if he has to break the law, destroy stuff, or whatever (killing people is slightly different, as one might say that that is his purpose) to do so, then he will.
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