JimmytehHand8 on 1/9/2006 at 05:02
Quote Posted by jtr7
That's why they need a Cultivator. Apparently the gas condenses into a solid after its reaction (perhaps mixing with water and settling in tiny clumps), and the cultivator atomizes it. It may even separate the heavier compounds (and water) from the Mutox through centrifigal force, but this is pure speculation.
It's important to note that the Necrotic Mutox is called a
desiccant. So... it probably drives moisture away (and/or bonds with it and falls to the ground as a kind of dust), then continues to break molecular bonds, causing the cell structures to crumble.
Maybe it's a multiple stage reaction, with the removal of water as the first stage, the removal of carbon as the second stage, a third stage that allows it to turn organic matter into more of itself, and a fourth stage to cause it to precipitate as a dust, ready to be used again, but only if it is passed through a Cultivator.
I was always under the impression that Karras was going to turn himself and his minions into machines. Through this they would have achieved "perfection" in the eyes of the new Master Builder.
june gloom on 1/9/2006 at 18:16
even if you were to assume that the major continents were connected by land (like how mongolia was connected to the americas by a landbridge that no longer exists, which is how the native americans got over here, and the velociraptors before them), it's a bit of a stretch- especially if there's a lot of arid, or at least grassless, land in some parts of the world.
say, that reminds me, isn't there a map of the thief world laying around somewhere?
jtr7 on 4/9/2006 at 21:23
Quote:
I was always under the impression that Karras was going to turn himself and his minions into machines. Through this they would have achieved "perfection" in the eyes of the new Master Builder.
Karras just uses everybody to his advantage, tricking them into creating the very means of their own destruction. According to the texts, it looks as though Karras intended to hole up in his protective chamber, send everyone into town, activate the Masked Servants, and kill every living thing but himself. Soulforge was not immune to the effects of the rust-gas. Karras only trusted his chamber to protect him.
In the final cutscene the 'bots are seen to run down, out of fuel. We don't ever see exactly what happens to the Masked Servants, but it's implied that they are consumed, as well. That would take care of all the Masked variants.
We're never told how Karras expects to stay alive in the Builder's Paradise. Nor are we told how he expects to fuel the Builder's Children. The developer's didn't know, either--unless they just decided that Karras was too insane to think about that. An unused wave file has Garrett asking: "What does he eat? Metal rivets?"
Also, another text (also unused, I believe, but still insightful) has Karras writing about how the areas of effect for each of the Masked Servants, stationed in each of the Nobles' houses, overlap and join at the center of The City. The implication of this text is that Karras is content with the complete "cleansing" of The City, and doesn't give the lands beyond another thought. Cyric and Bohn, the Esse mountains, Blackbrook... he never speaks of them, only the Nobility of The City.
Lumpy on 5/9/2006 at 06:25
jtr7 - no, the Cathedral was air-tight. He sent the mechanists out, and kept only the robots, and the mechanist servants (the ones he made to replace the mechanists in jobs they couldn't perform). No gas was supposed to come in, but in the final cutscene, we see a small amount of gas coming out of the door (maybe due to the large pressure accumulated in the cathedral).
And the last briefing made me wonder what cultivators are for. In Viktoria's experiment, we see gas coming out of the rust gas container, and taking its effect. Some passes through the cultivator, and comes out much denser.
And cultivators were Precursor artifacts, while the rust gas was Karras' invention.
And this whole servant story makes no sense. Wouldn't it have been easier to create some little rust-gas bots which would be sent on that night to the nobleman's houses? Or to put the gas in the watchers? Why find a way to enslave human beings using a mask, and go through all that trouble of finding subjects? Or rather, just send a large rust-gas container to a forest near the city.
june gloom on 5/9/2006 at 17:04
because karras is crazy and wouldn't have thought of that in his drive to teach the whole city- starting with the nobles- a lesson.
Raven on 7/9/2006 at 14:11
he also had them spying on the nobles didn't he?... it was a built in feature that they could return to soul forge for upgrades and reprogramming/repair... and also to be equipped and prepared to be harbingers of doom for all organic life in the city...
jtr7 on 7/9/2006 at 19:51
Yeah Soulforge was airtight, after all, but even Karras didn't trust the structure to protect him, so he put himself in that chamber. He talks about it in one of the texts.
Lumpy on 8/9/2006 at 07:10
IIRC, the lower part of the door to Karras's chamber was a metal grill. So no, it wasn't air-tight. If gas could kill him anywhere in the cathedral, it could kill him there.
jtr7 on 8/9/2006 at 21:31
An appalling oversight on Karras's part. Or a developer's part.
Maybe we could chalk it up as a further display of Karras's mental decay.
