The '00s 'minimal' layout

Title of entry

on the pink stuff [which i’ve taken to calling “the wellspring” after that one paragraph of text] and how it relates to the immortal cell/judgement, anubis, and drifters:
note: this is my beta-version spec; i’m working on a significant revision in light of stuff i didn’t know when first making this post, but i still wanted to finish most of this up and put it out there since i spent a lot of time thinking about it :Y

this sorta started when i finally found my way back to the tutorial area/archive room. to me, it seemed the reason judgement tries to prevent you from getting to that archive at the beginning is to obscure any information it can about the immortal cell and its relation to/interaction with that.

i’m not…exactly sure what i want to say the wellspring’s role in the creation of the immortal cell was. certainly, having that much energy available plays a huge part in just being able to build technology or do research to aid in making something like an immortal cell, but i’m starting to think that the cell is was actually crafted directly from the wellspring, through some kind of refinery process.
like, the pink energy is obvious pretty volatile when not handled properly or in some of its forms and i don’t... think you’d want something that reactive in a cell “to be imbued within all sentient life”. failed experiments with beings given beta-version immortal cells is a whole other Thing that i’m not gonna bother getting into though, haha. 

anyway, perhaps they found some way to separate out or process away the less stable elements of wellspring material, making it essentially pure, inexhaustible energy that wouldn’t burn itself out on intense reactions or just outright degrade whatever living thing came in contact with it.

HOWEVER, those reactive parts of the chemical still Exist; i believe at some point that concentrated leftover slurry gained a sentience of its own, becoming Judgement. maybe it was sparked by the huge explosion, who knows. but since judgement is now a sentient being it can freely seek out its counterpart and use that power as it wishes, corrupting it to be put to its own use and preventing mortals from getting to it.
as a side note it really can’t just recombine into the raw wellspring material since both counterparts are fundamentally different substances now and have taken on properties of their own :b 

tldr: the immortal cell is refined pink stuff and judgement is the volatile parts that were refined out of it.

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so, drifters. i firmly believe they are more resilient to the wellspring’s reactivity-not IMMUNE obviously, but they can generally survive its effects way longer than most other species [or most other individuals? depends on how you define what a drifter is; whether they’re just the blue-skinned race, or beings that have a sprite and have taken to a drifter’s job. EITHER WAY.]; they’re the only ones we see affected by the illness ingame, but i think that’s simply because everyone else who had been affected by it already died-see: guardian’s family. their resilience may also be evidenced by that first needle in the eastern area with other corpses blown outward from it. that could be taken…several ways, but as our drifter proceeds to interact with it no problem, i’m going to chalk it up with a resistance to and/or expertise in handling the material. 

from the way stuff on the kickstarter is worded, i don’t think our drifter had ever been to the places we explore ingame before? the events in the opening probably had worldwide effect of some kind [maybe that’s what afflicted him? i really honestly don’t know HOW he got his illness, but that doesn’t pa r ticul a lr y matter for the sake of this post; we just need to know that it’s pretty serious and had been affecting him for Awhile by the time anubis enlists him and the game takes place], and drifter has finally tracked down- or perhaps been led to-the epicenter of them; what we’re playing is the final steps in a long journey. guardian had been living in these parts for awhile though; he’s much older and father along in the sickness than our drifter, but he knows the land and looks to have had much the same quest as drifter’s. i’m not sure why he didn’t collect any of the modules before drifter got there, maybe he was just too far gone to bother trying? if that’s the case, he’s probably pretty glad that drifter came along as someone to pass his quest and findings to haha…

anubis is what I’m having the most trouble concretely connecting with everything else. i don’t think the wellspring is directly the source or output of her power or anything, but as a god [especially the only one we know to exist in hld’s world] she’s in-tune with all the energy in their world, and as it happens the greatest reserve of this resides in the wellspring. mind you, i’m not overlooking that her eyes are the same shade as that energy; color similarities usually mean SOMETHING, but i’m trying not to attribute too much to it.
perhaps, as the four sectors began to figure out how to tap into that power, they caused an imbalance that made anubis come out of stasis and take a more active role in…whatever it is she actually does in that world aside from leading beings to the afterlife. probably an observation/moderation duty of some kind. on the other hand, I can see it as those 4 sectors collaborating to open a path to the world’s core, for whatever lies there. maybe that’s where anubis originally resided, maybe there was a particularly large reserve or a means of production of wellspring material there, who knows. but either way, opening a path to and tampering with the core and whatever was originally there seems to have played a role in anubis’ awakening. my best guess is that the rise of judgement, its taking over of the world’s core area, and corruption of the immortal cell [and tbh probably the creation of that in the first place] likely messed with her abilities and/or connections to the wellspring and its energy, prompting her to start recruiting other individuals [drifters] to give her a shot in restoring order.

i think the wellspring-related affliction plays a big part in why anubis works so closely with our drifter and guardian-it means they have firsthand contact with this stuff. i can even see it as a dual-sided thing, with her being the god of death and all, the sickness could bring them more in-tune with her “element”, while for them it means they’re more open to trusting and cooperating with her.
even without that, perhaps their prolonged exposure to the wellspring just makes them more accessible to her [again, she could have more than a peripheral connection to it given the pink eyes] and more capable of accomplishing the goal of actually defeating judgement and doing Something about the immortal cell to prevent further imbalance [or bloodshed, going by the closing cinematic,] severing the the sectors’ connection to the core and whatever’s in it, and allowing her to return to stasis.