Chương 85: 3.10 The Becoming - Nine Inch Nails (5:31)

MushroomCleric I AM LOSING MY ACTUAL MIND RIGHT NOW!!! Zeke, you magnificent bastard! Do you understand what you've just uncovered? The Janus Storm isn't just some random weather system and Marek Vale wasn't just some crazed wasteland hermit living out in the middle of a hurricane. THIS IS HUGE! It's massive. I legit can't wrap my head around just how big of a reveal this is. SignalLoss ^Mushroom. This might just be the single biggest lore reveal that Zeke's made in the story.

It changes EVERYTHING that we thought we knew about Frontiers. HollowHeartsClub I dunno if I'd called it the biggest lore reveal. Don't get me wrong, I'm with Mushroom in that this is a big thing. But Zeke's been dropping tons of insane stuff on us. This is just one more piece of lore. It started with the House of Seasons, which definitely wasn't as big as the Janus Storm stuff. But that wasn't all. He also talked about Corva and the Witness Chambers. I'd argue that Rank 11 was a bigger drop than the pod.

Tenset | I'd argue that Rank 11 was a bigger drop | The church of Zeke is now in session. A merry Eleven upon you all. Eleven. Advent https: //tenor. com/view/count-count-von-count-seasame-street-gif-7738029608745119078 Blazer66 I wonder what magic level 11 skill this ungodly chair will give. Gotta watch out for chairs in this story. Fogbarrel SIT IN THE CHAIR ZEKE DataDatum DO NOT SIT IN THE CHAIR ZEKE. DatCameraMON I've never trusted chairs. Shit, that one chair in Disco Elysium can kill you.

You can never trust a chair. BaryBybax Oooo. Funny you should say that because I've been replaying Disco Elysium and that game is still incredible. I found this website that has the entire script of the game, but you can't really find anything because all the dialogue is so disjointed and out of order that it's impossible to nail it all down. Can you imagine writing something like that game? Can you imagine writing all those different voices, all combining together to make something so perfect?

HonoredBibliophile Okay. The Forum wanted more lore, and Zeke fucking delivered. Though if the pod is alive, he might want to get out of there before it pulls a Mimic and tries to eat him. Assuming it hasn't already psychically turned Elnor into a slave. Shukuen If you've seen Event Horizon, that's the vibe I'm getting from the logs. A living ship with its own intent that's hostile to the crew.

Either we're going to go back and find Jackie is missing/eaten by the pod or Elnor's going to start digging out his eyes to stop the visions. Ulises ^Honored. So Zeke's inside a kinda living, hopefully not conscious, apocalypse engine. Maybe it's time to run? That is to say ZEKE GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE! FopperyandWhim Question, because I'm feeling pretty dumb over here. Why are all of you guys freaking out about the logs?

I'm not trying to argue or anything, it just feels like I'm missing some important context clues. StoryLeech | Why are all of you guys freaking out about the logs? | Anyone who complains that you're asking questions is an idiot Foppery. You've earned at least three mulligans and get-out-of-jail-free cards from me. So, for YEARS everyone has been trying to figure out what caused the Fracture in all the different games.

Nothing has ever really been explained and it's one of the biggest mysteries in the Fracture-verse. Sure, we have theories, but that's all they are. With Frontiers, the widely accepted theory is that the Fracture was caused by some kind of alien thing crashing out where the Rift Scar is. Something landed there and contaminated the area and started mutating all the life in the Deadlands. That's what we knew, but we didn't really understand too much about it.

The game mentions it and there's a bunch of quests that deal with the Rift Scar, but it doesn't really give us any good answers. We don't know what the Fracture was, why Frontiers is a game that is so obsessed with biological mutations, why there's so much living machinery around the Rift Scar, or why the Janus Storm existed. Then Zeke comes along and we're finding out that the pod in the middle of the Janus storm might have caused the Fracture. Or it carried the alien virus that caused it.

Or it's only got a small relationship with the Fracture and we're all freaking out for nothing. Honestly, Zeke still needs to investigate more because everything is a little bit fuzzy right now. Luke-da-Lurker I'm with Mushroom. This is insane. It explains SO MUCH of the environmental storytelling in Frontiers. If Zeke is right about all this, it touches on all the weird biological shit that's going down and all the flesh-metal corruption and the living machines and everything.

So many things are starting to make sense now. CrushDaddyXx Yea yea yea, you're all excited about it. But can we talk about my boy Marek for a sec? He went from being some insane storm wizard to possibly the most important man in Frontiers. Dood spent years fighting an alien terraforming engine, all by his lonesome. He basically wrestled an apocalypse and hijacked the controls of a planet-rewriting machine and said "nah, son." UnhelpfullyHelpful | can we talk about my boy Marek for a sec?

| side eye Anyone else finding it odd that Crush is wanting to talk about the lore? You feeling okay over there? Kind of sounds like someone cut off your face and is wearing it around pretending to be you. * *I was watching Silence of the Lambs last night. CrushDaddyXx It's me. I'll gladly talk all day about a guy kicking an apocalypse in the chest, even if he's only doing it metaphorically. Dood was a legend.

ReCoil44 (Primary) Naturally, none of this discovery would have been possible without my exceptional foresight in sending Zeke towards something capable of answering the questions that have plagued this community for years. You are all quite welcome. I shall now pause briefly so the applause may continue. VeneratedWitchHunter Not to be that guy, but people seriously need to calm down.

I'm enjoying the story too, and I like that Zeke is discovering new lore (House of Seasons, Witness Chambers, and Corva) but this pod reveal is NOT confirmed lore yet. There are still major inconsistencies with it. For one, the original Janus Storm lore leaned heavily on religious symbolism and divine punishment stuff. When your character meets with Marek Vale for the first time, he's constantly talking about the storm in spiritual terms.

For another, none of the game files found in either Frontiers or Syndicate's Wake ever referenced anything to do with terraforming. It's entirely possible that Marek didn't know what he was dealing with. Plus, those log entries seem a little too lucid for Marek. He's a ranting mad man, not a scientist making observations. 10161066 Nah. At this point Zeke has uncovered enough hidden stuff that he's getting a free pass from me on this one.

I'm not going to sit here calling fake lore only to be proven wrong three weeks later when Foppery or FarField or some rando finds a hidden questline or secret dungeon entrance that backs up everything Zeke is saying. An alien virus caused the Frontiers Fracture and Marek hijacked a terraforming machine to try and slow it down. That honestly sounds so much more believable than half the original lore theories that people had. ScatterbrainJane | those log entries seem a little too lucid for Marek.

| They read like early log entries. He might have gone more insane over the years. ReCoil44 (Primary) | the original Janus Storm lore leaned heavily on religious symbolism and divine punishment stuff. | Your objections are relatively easy to dismiss. Firstly, the Deadlands has been populated almost entirely by unstable cults, mutation-ridden survivors, and isolated wasteland societies. It is hardly surprising that advanced alien machinery would eventually become mythologized into religious iconography.

Secondly, Marek Vale spent the majority of his life trapped alone inside a semi-living construct while mentally wrestling with its alien intelligence. I believe we can forgive the man his eccentricities. Mr. Frost Does anyone else get the unending urge to slap ReCoil from the way he writes, or is it just me? 1650th Wish I could. He's annoying. But the laws of the universe limit me from attacking through the screen. StoryLeech He's annoying as hell, but ReCoil kind of has a point.

The Deadlands are filled with cults that worship glowing holes in the ground, so of course they're going to turn the giant sky hurricane into a religion. CradleOfMirth Well, the religious stuff still works perfectly from an in-universe perspective. Imagine growing up in the Deadlands. You've got no education and there are mutations everywhere. Reality is breaking around the Rift Scar.

Then suddenly a giant living storm appears and it absorbs people who get too close and there is a crazy prophet who lives inside the storm. Plus, the thing somehow keeps part of the wasteland alive, and everywhere it goes it changes things. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. That's exactly the kind of thing that people would worship. Z3ke (Original Poster) I know you all want me to delve a little deeper into the journals but it looks like you're all out of luck.

Pretty much all the files I've found are corrupted and it doesn't look like I'm gonna get more out of the computers here. Also, Elnor is looking a little ragged. He's still talking and walking and everything, but him using his skill seems like it's really messing him up. I don't think that he's fully recovered from all the Veylstone dust he was breathing back in the mines, and with how he's been forcing his skill to pull the memories from this place, it looks like it's taking a toll.

Whenever he touches something important in here, it's like he's getting punched in the brain. I don't plan on pushing deeper into this place if Elnor is about to collapse, so I'm gonna take him back to the garage for a rest. SlothTurtle Booo. But also, I hope Elnor is feeling better. Z3ke (Original Poster) God, I hate this place. I'm pretty much carrying Elnor through the hallways right now, and I've got a hand against the wall to steady myself while we walk and all the walls are still warm and disgusting.

PaperSnakes The fact that you keep reminding us that the walls are warm somehow makes it worse every single time. PixelBaron Zeke, how are you liking this livestream-style posting that you're doing? I kinda love the pacing that it brings. It feels like watching a Let's Play of a horror game. Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… I don't know. I guess I'm liking it a lot less now that you compared my life to a horror game. Also, don't get used to it.

We're pretty safe right now so I can update you all while everything is happening. But I don't know how long that's going to last. Jackie and Elnor have both kinda gotten used to the weirdness of me having a Tech Slate open and typing into it. They're not asking any questions about it. I think they're just happy that I'm still pulling out food and water from my storage space. Z3ke (Original Poster) We're back in the garage now and Jackie and the jeep are still here.

Whoever suggested that the pod was going to try and eat her was wrong. Jackie has been working on the jeep while Elnor and I went out exploring. She said that the suspension was all messed up from our car chase through the storm, but she's working on fixing it. She also found a bunch of filled fuel containers that were stored in the back of the jeep. A few of them got bullet-holed and the gas all leaked out, but we've still got some extra gas for when we get moving again.

Once Elnor and I got back to the garage we all took a break. I handed out some more food and water and we all just sat around eating. I think we have enough of both so we can survive in the Deadlands for a little while. The problem is that we should probably start rationing things. Eventually we're going to need to leave this living alien weather coffin and make our way back to civilization and I don't want us getting low on supplies.

I don't know how much food and water we're going to need for the drive back, especially because I don't know exactly where in the Deadlands we're at right now. Hopefully we won't die from thirst or starvation or run into another gang or get stranded somewhere. Jackalope+Jake Living Alien Weather Coffin would be an incredible band name. Since you're finally becoming a real Rockstar, we're going to need to work on your branding. Moldy-VISIONS Nah. His band should be called: The Warm Walls.

DeadMienWalking Warm Walls sounds like an indie band that only plays abandoned hospitals. ShivSays Zeke and the Redshirts. He's gone through so many party members. Every show he plays can be an in memoriam for Pell or Mikey or whoever else gets killed while following him around. CrushDaddyXx The CrushDaddies. I think I heard someone mention that as a band name and I wholeheartedly agree. It's strong and masculine. Z3ke (Original Poster) Hmm. I'm not gonna touch all that.

I appreciate the ideas but I kinda just wanna focus on not dying first, if that's alright with all of you. Elnor and I told Jackie everything we found out about the place. We told her about the logs and the pod and the fact that it's an alien terraforming machine. She listened to us and nodded along and then told us that we needed to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.

She said that the pod gives her the creeps, and then mentioned that she kept hearing noises echo throughout the place while she was repairing the jeep. Elnor is doing a little bit better. He's got some food in him and some water, and I think the Veylstone dust is slowly working its way out of his system. Between the dust poisoning and having a bunch of psychic visions, the guy's been through a lot. But he said that he can keep going, which means we're gonna head out soon to check out the rest of the pod.

Z3ke (Original Poster) We're back in the main pilot room now. Jackie is staying back with the jeep because she said she's still working on the repairs. I think it's more that she just doesn't want to go poking around in this creep factory. Elnor is walking around under his own power, but he is looking exhausted. He keeps rubbing at his eyes like he's trying to get rid of a headache, and that's not a great sign.

GnomelandSecurity (Proctor) Zeke, as one of the few people here who is most interested in your health and safety, I'm thinking that it's time you leave the pod. ReCoil44 (Primary) Ignore the cowards, Zeke. Fortune favors the bold, and it is time for you to become bolder than you have ever been before. Do not go quietly into the dark my friend. Go loudly and expressively. Peel back the curtains to the unknown and show us what lies beneath.

You stand at the center of one of the greatest unresolved mysteries in Fracture-verse history. Proceed accordingly. Z3ke (Original Poster) How easy it is for you to say that when you're behind a computer screen and not stuck in a horror show. Z3ke (Original Poster) Elnor's started touching everything again. We're standing over by the giant chair that Marek used to pilot this place, and as much as you all seem to want me to sit in it and see what it does, that's a big no from me.

Thankfully, Elnor hasn't touched anything yet that's messed him up too much. He's frozen for a few seconds after touching something important, but he's not having seizures anymore. The problem is that, after touching a bunch of stuff he's still coming back looking more and more unsettled. I asked him what he's seeing and he said that the impressions he's getting are getting harder to separate. There's a bunch of memories that are starting to layer and jumble together.

Not only are they all layered, but he said it's hard to get a sense of time from them. Some obviously happen before others, but he can't easily tell. Z3ke (Original Poster) E: His emotions are everywhere in this room. Z: Marek's? E: Yes. There's exhaustion. Desperation. I think obsession too. And… and I'm feeling a bit of fear but I can't be sure it's coming from him. Z: Fear? Fear of what? E: I don't know. There are old fears and new fears and they're all stuck together.

But I think that his fears are coming from the thought of losing control over the pod. It kept pushing back against him. Z3ke (Original Poster) E: He knew he was dying. Z: What was killing him? E: I'm not sure. I don't think the pod was directly killing him. It feels more like there was some strain. Maybe the strain of fighting? His older memories, or at least the ones I think are the older memories are a lot more… vibrant than what I'm getting now. Now he just feels thin and frayed.

DuckDetective13 Dood, psychometry is so insanely cool. In the games you just get small ghostly replays of what happened. And they only happen with certain objects. IRL, Elnor's version sounds way more immersive and interesting. Ooo, Zeke, you've got to level your history skill. High-tier history allows you do some weird psychometry-adjacent stuff too. Z3ke (Original Poster) I'm not all that enthused about psychic memory powers.

Elnor is saying that the pod and Marek were basically locked in this running battle for years. The machine kept trying to return to its original purpose, which was to spread the alien virus throughout the Deadlands. Marek would sabotage it and disable a bunch of systems and try to keep it all under control, and then the pod would slowly repair itself and try to course correct what he'd done. The weird part is that Elnor doesn't think that the pod hated Marek.

It's more that it simply couldn't understand why this random human was interfering with it. As far as it was concerned, it had a purpose and a task and it was being stopped from completing its task and it couldn't understand why. Z3ke (Original Poster) E: There's panic now. He was getting weaker at the end and the pod was slowly reclaiming itself. The memories are getting more stilted and fragmented, but I'm thinking that Marek knew he couldn't keep sabotaging the pod forever. Z: Well…

he's not around anymore and the storm hasn't spread the alien stuff sooo, he had to have done something. Right? E: Yea. It's… yea. It's hard to tell. I think I'm at the end of his memories. The storm was getting stronger and stronger but then it just stopped. Z: How did it stop? E: I don't know. I… I think Marek's memories are finished but there's still some other stuff here. It's on a deeper layer or something. These new memories feel restless. I'm getting restless and panicked. But there's also terrified.

And happy. And they're all mixed together. Some memories feel one thing and others feel two or three things together. Z3ke (Original Poster) Okay. I think we're finally starting to piece together what happened after Marek died. This probably isn't everything and it might not even be right. Elnor is basically trying to figure out history from broken memories. It's not like we're watching a documentary here. But we think that Marek realized he was finally losing control of the pod.

Maybe he was just getting older or maybe the pod was starting to adapt to him. We're not sure. The machine was repairing itself faster than he could sabotage it and the Janus Storm was starting to return to whatever its original state was supposed to be. Before he died, Marek did something. Again, we're not sure exactly what he did, but Elnor felt this huge burst of urgency and panic near the end of the memories. He thinks that Marek tried to cripple the pod one last time before he died. Whatever he did worked.

Sort of. The pod is still functioning and the storm is still active, but everything is going wrong with it. The machine isn't diluting the alien contamination across the Deadlands like how Marek had it doing while he was alive, but it's also not trying to use it to terraform anything. What's worse is we can't figure out what happened to the stuff.

We don't know what happened to the alien virus and we don't know what the pod is doing now except that, Elnor thinks whatever it's doing isn't part of the original design. Z3ke (Original Poster) Uh… we found something. What's gonna happen is I'm gonna tell you all what we found and then you're all gonna bug me about it and I'm going to deeply regret not listening to Gnomeland and leaving this pod when I could.

Z3ke (Original Poster) We were poking around the rest of the pilot room and I found a maintenance shaft hidden behind one of the wall panels. I would've missed it completely except that Elnor noticed one of the cables near the chair disappearing into the floor instead of feeding into the wall with the rest of them. We pried the panel loose and found a ladder leading down into a hole. I pointed my flashlight down there and the beam just vanished.

Also, when I was leaning over the hole I felt a bunch of air blowing up from it and it slapped me in the face and felt humid as hell. It was… breathing warm. It was like stepping outside in the Deep South during the middle of summer where you feel like you instantly need a shower. I'm seriously hating this place. Cold_Reboot Nope. Zeke. Don't do it. That's how every final girl in all the horror movies dies. She goes into the dark when she knows she's not supposed to. SixtySix Mmm. Breathing warm.

The feeling of damp air brushing across your skin. Give me more. CradleOfMirth Dood?! What the actual? JimothyTheBarber Zeke, I don't want to tell you what to do. But I will say that I want you to remain safe and definitely not get murdered, so you should probably climb down into the dark wet tunnel. There could be ponies down there. You don't know. It's probably very safe. You're overthinking everything. Again, not trying to tell you what to do. But DO go into the hole.

FarFieldVanishes I think you're going to need to ask Elnor if he's up for going down there. His psychometry is basically the only reason that we understand any of what's going on with the pod. If he's willing to go spelunking then I think you've got to see where that ladder leads. Otherwise, head back to the jeep. Caboodle FarField, aren't you the guy who is always talking about realism and Zeke-runs and what a real person would do in that situation?

Let me ask you this: would you climb down into the eldritch tunnel? FarFieldVanishes Nope. Unless there was a lot of lore down there. In which case, yes. 10161066 It's fascinating watching this forum split into two groups. Group A: THIS IS AMAZING Group B: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! MushroomCleric Hey Zeke, can you pass on a message for me? Elnor, my beautiful psychic detective. Can you please check out the dark hole? I promise it's not as bad as it looks. Z3ke (Original Poster) Fuck you all we're descending.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Okay… the ladder is somehow worse than the walls. It looks metal, but when I grabbed onto it there was a slight bend to it. It felt soft and had a little bit of give to it and when I put my foot down on one of the rungs I felt my heart catch in my chest. The deeper we went, the more humid everything got. There was condensation on the walls and the sounds started changing.

At first I thought it was just old pipes creaking or something like that, but now I'm almost positive that there's a rhythm to it. It sounds like a heartbeat, and I'm not sure if it's coming from the pod or if it's coming from me and it's the sound of my heart trying to punch itself out of my chest. PixelBaron TURN AROUND NOW ZEKE. Z3ke (Original Poster) We got to the bottom and… what the fuck? We're in this massive chamber. It's so much bigger than the pilot room. Uh. Let me try and describe everything.

The walls are still metal, but they're also soft and pliable and, yes, still warm to the touch. The floors have this springiness to them that makes me sick whenever I take a step. The whole place is covered in tubes and cables and machinery that looks like it's living and grown. In the middle of the room is this giant tub that's probably ten feet by ten feet. It's overflowing with some sort of liquid. Well, a kind of liquid.

I flashed my light over it and it was all black and somewhat gooey, looking like watery jelly. Right there in the middle of the tub is this… thing. I honestly don't know what I'm looking at except that it's massive and curled in on itself and I think it's where the heartbeat is coming from. Z3ke (Original Poster) I've been staring at it for a couple seconds and I think it's moving. It's not all that fast but it's kinda pulsing, and whenever it pulses the walls around us all twitch.

Z3ke (Original Poster) OH SHIT OH SHIT. ELNOR TOUCHED THE TUB. Z3ke (Original Poster) He did it before I could stop him. He walked over to it and the second his hand touched the edge of the tank he just fucking collapsed. It's not like the seizure that he had before either. His whole body locked up and he started screaming and his eyes went completely white and blood started pouring out of his nose. I pulled him away from the tub and I swear the liquid stuff inside it moved at him.

It was like it tried to reach out and grab him. I dragged him back and he's alive but only barely. He keeps shaking and screaming and mumbling things and I don't know what to do. GnomelandSecurity (Proctor) Just hold him steady and make sure he doesn't thrash and hurt himself. And then when he's better, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. Z3ke (Original Poster) Okay. He's okay now. He can talk again. I gave him some water and I'm sitting beside him now trying to make sure he doesn't touch anything else around here.

I don't know what's gonna happen to him if he grabs the walls or anything. After a couple minutes of just sitting there and trying to catch his breath, he finally looked at me and I could see some blood that was drying on his face and my first thought was: oh, that's not good. But then he said something and it came out in a croak.

"I saw them. I saw them all." He gave off this involuntary shudder and I couldn't tell if he was scared or cold or in shock or what.

"What did you see? Who is…who is all of them?" He stared at the thing floating in the reservoir and then turned back to me with a haunted look on his face.

"The victims. I saw them. I saw the ones that the Storm took."

"Wait…you mean like the people who got caught up in it and everything?" He nodded at me.

"Yes. But it was more than just them. It was all the pilgrims and the raiders. It was the scavengers and the storm chasers and the cultists who willingly fed themselves to the storm. It was all the people who were staked out by the Shard Choir. It was all of them." He took another sip of his water and I could see his hands shaking as he brought the bottle up to his lips.

"The pod was…it was collecting them. Marek had sabotaged it. He knew he was dying and he knew he needed to do something drastic. So he broke a bunch of the machinery in the pod. He took all the stuff that would slowly dilute the virus, and he broke it so that the storm couldn't scatter all the contamination across the Deadlands."

"That's good, right?" I asked him.

"I mean, if he figured out a way to completely stop the alien virus from spreading through the Deadlands, that's good." He shook his head and just looked at the tub with a haunted expression.

"No. He couldn't destroy this pod completely so he crippled it. He broke the dispersal method and instead the contamination started collecting. He was hoping that someone would eventually come here and finish what he started.

"But he also knew that the pod would fight back and adapt. And that's what happened. The pod changed over the years. It adapted. The Janus Storm kept gathering all the contamination from across the Deadlands, but it was collecting more than just the virus now. It was grabbing mutated biological matter and corrupted tissues. The Shard Choir was still feeding it people. And there were travelers and pilgrims who got lost in it. Even the Black Teeth that chased us into the storm. They're all here."

"What? They're here? What are you talking about?"

"The pod. It's using them. It's using everything that it absorbed." Elnor was basically rambling at this point. His hands were shaking so hard that he could barely hold the water bottle and his eyes were dancing around the room, scanning the walls and the floors.

"The pod is using them. It took all the virus and the meat and the victims. It separated everything into neat little piles, and then it jammed it all together to try and grow a workaround.

"It didn't just grab their bodies either. It grabbed their minds. It grabbed their emotions. It grabbed their memories. The pod took all of it and started piecing it all together and tried to build a replacement for what Marek broke." My mouth didn't want to ask what my brain wanted to know. I could barely force the words out.

"And that thing in the tub over there?" Elnor was silently for a while, just staring at the tank that had almost killed him.

"It's what the pod was growing. It's a second Fracture."