r/HadalShenanigans

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This post includes discussion of religion. Before we get into things, its important to remember that people follow and genuinely believe in many different religions, and there is no one "correct" way to believe or practice religion.

We're all going to be RESPECTFUL and MATURE about this, okay????? Okay!

You can also read this on my AO3.

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What do you suppose Sebastian's religious views are?

Let's start from the beginning. He's Chilean-American, and grew up in Washington state, so he probably was raised as some flavor of Christian. Possibly Catholic, as a high percentage of Hispanic people are, but he just as likely could have been raised in a Protestant denomination too. Either way, I wonder how religious his family was. Were they the sort to show up to church every Sunday, no exceptions? Or did they attend only on Christmas and Easter, maybe Ash Wednesday if they weren't busy with other things? It's possible that they may have been culturally Christian rather than devout, many Americans celebrate Christian holidays, believe in God in a general sense, and think there is an afterlife where one's actions while living affect their soul, but don't really pray or attend mass regularly, so there's a pretty wide base of what Sebastian could've personally believed growing up.

What about as he got older, like high-school or college age? Many people form a relationship with faith that's unique and meaningful to themselves, as opposed to a direct mirroring of their parents’ beliefs, while others have doubts or crises of faith that lead them to follow a new religion or even lose their faith entirely. This is especially relevant during the part of Sebastian's life when he was first arrested and incarcerated. Did he double down on attending mass and studying scripture in hopes God could save him from his fate? Or did his arrest on false charges lead him to feel abandoned, and instill a belief in a fundamentally un-just and uncaring universe?

And then the real curveball: the Blacksite.

The Blacksite sits at the estuary between the oceans of the mortal world and the river Styx. Death is not a tragedy, but an inconvenience, and spirits of the recently killed linger like passengers milling about at a ferry's dock, staying or departing at their own leisurely pace, sometimes turning ‘round and deciding their final destination can wait for a later day.

The Blacksite is a warehouse of abundant anomalous artifacts, each with their own supernatural effects and sources, and each of them a testimony that the universe doesn't function in a wholly scientific or empirical way.

The Blacksite houses Painter, a thinking, feeling AI with a mind just like any human's, emergent from only computer hardware and software that was commercially available in the 90's. Can an artificial person have a soul? If they didn't, what's the tangible difference between an entity with a soul and without one if they both can think and create and care for each other? Can an entity gain a soul if it reaches a certain level of person-ness? Can an entity lose its soul if it falls below a certain threshold of humanity?

The Blacksite is a prison to a literal angel. An angel, an envoy of a higher power, living evidence of a divine plane of existence, a being made manifest and physical in the mortal world and TRAPED in such a way that even God cannot rescue His messenger from their human-made cage.

The Blacksite houses and is powered by the Crystal, first found in the Let-Vand's depths and the reason the Blacksite can persist. That Crystal was extracted from the corpse of Thor, being the heart of the Norse god of thunder. Not only does that confirm the Norse pantheon is real, or at least was at a prior point in history, that also opens the door for other cultures’ pantheons to be real as well, whose gods may yet still be alive. How does that square with Christian beliefs? Does that mean that the world runs by the will of pagan gods alone, with no room for a “God” with a capital G? Or does that mean there's a hierarchy of higher powers, and domains of divinity can be shared or in contest between deities?

In the Eddas, Thor dies after slaying the World-Serpent Jormungandr, succumbing to the serpent's venom. This battle occurs during Ragnarok, the Norse end times where the Earth is burned then flooded to be born anew. Does the finding of Thor's corpse mean that the events of Ragnarok have already come to pass? Or is humanity still in the middle of the end, with humanity on the surface still in danger of the prophecy's foretold disasters? Does Mr. Shade know one way or the other? Is Sebastian obligated to inform anyone about this, or should he keep his mouth shut to prevent people from thinking he's gone completely psychotic while imprisoned down below?

The Blacksite is the place Sebastian had his humanity stripped from him. In a literal sense, his body was mutated beyond anything one could consider human-shaped, his human genetic code corrupted with whatever animal DNA Shade's scientists felt suitable to splice him with. But more than that, Sebastian was made a slave, made property of Urbanshade and whose life was contingent on following their orders. Would defying them and accepting the consequences be taking his life back into his own hands, if only for his final moments before the executioners’ guns fired? Or was there still meaning and worth to be found in this life, even after everything had been taken from him? Not only that, but every expendable sent down with no hope of coming back, every prisoner of every rank Urbanshade owned forced to do tasks mundane to monstrous, every scientist and administrator left to compromise their morals for a chance to return to their life on the surface, all of them lost a piece of their souls down there. All of them were forced to leave some part of their humanity behind to survive evil on an industrial scale, and then went on to perpetuate that evil, all under the direction of one lunatic CEO. Mr Shade may be mortal, but his near-limitless capital and his physical distance from the Blacksite makes him as unreachable, and as un-killable, as any God in heaven.

If there's a God out there, one that cares about His children and works miracles in the world, then why did His plan include everything that happened to Sebastian? To all the people down there? Just, why?

Seriously, how is this guy not permanently howling apostasy at the heavens when his life is such a conveyor belt of scenarios seemingly hand-crafted to send someone into crises of faith?

Or maybe he just throws up his hands and goes, “Wow, those are a lot of big questions! For someone ELSE to deal with.” He does have a lot on his plate after all, maybe it's best to just shove all these quandaries into a box in a closet in the back of his mind and forget about it. He'll deal with it once he's free and safe on dry land again. Maybe. Y'know, later. He's not making any promises.

A robotic, dead guardsman under the control of a robotic piece of his head taken over by a parasite that can only be found in (currently) the administration roomtype. It has a rare chance to spawn when the roomtype loads in. The rooms the doorman will lead you through are all completely dark (no visual entity cues)

The doorman has complete control over the doors between rooms. The NAVI-path is completely disabled by the parasite. Doors between rooms (rooms that would usually have the room number) cannot be opened by the player.

The Doorman will be standing near the doors into the first room, holding a lantern on a stick being the only source of light. When you approach it, it will open the door and begin pathfinding to the next room, it can loop through offices and meeting rooms and backtrack.

The doorman itself will not hurt you and is friendly, the main threat is anglers/pandemonium. No lights are in rooms the doorman leads you through, and the audio cues are the same as normal (Not like the ridge). An entities spawn will be indicated by the doormans lantern flickering like the normal lights. When an entity spawns and the lantern flickers, the doorman stops his pathfinding and lets you find a hiding spot, once the entity passes the doorman continues his pathfinding. The lantern will also flicker randomly without an entity spawn, but will be less intense and shorter in duration. (The flickering for an entity spawn will be 2 seconds or more of steady flickering.) If a wall dweller spawns he will stop and turn around, this is your cue to turn around to scare the dweller off.

When he reaches the door to the next room, he opens it and continues leading you through.

At the end of the roomtype he opens the last door and you can proceed as normal.

you do not need to stay around the doorman, you can wander off and loot side rooms as usual, but the door to the next room will not open until the doorman reaches it. If it reaches the door before you, it will wait for you to get to it before opening the door so you dont lose track of it.

Z-057 "The Doorman"

Officer ██████████ was the first to undergo a procedure aiming to create a half-cyborg guardsman, the robotic part intending to be an aid in the officers duties by detecting threats that the human eye cannot see. A headpiece was surgically attached to the guardsmans head and brain and proved successful. Unfortunately approximately 30 minutes after Z-13 initiated the lockdown, a computer virus was injected into the robotic part of ███████'s robot head, this virus, generated by Z-779 took complete control over the equipment and was used by Z-13 to locate the officer and kill them. The virus however, evolved and seized full control over the body using electrical signals. Despite initial thoughts, the virus is not hostile. It was observed guiding guardsmen through dark rooms. revival of ████████'s corpse has been marked as not a priority upon return to the blacksite.

It is noted that the virus has seized full control of the NAVI-Path in certain roomtypes and will not unlock doors out of the section until it has reached the door itself. It's lantern also appears to be able to indicate the arrival of Z-283 and Z-367 instances using its lantern which has proved useful for those following Z-057. Once the blacksite has been secured, we will begin study of the virus

https://preview.redd.it/j556skpm8gah1.png?width=1794&format=png&auto=webp&s=5459eae8eab6d9b6c6a8b68ebdf0cc0ebfe1e919

literally came to me in a dream lol

Im tryinv to get the dancing skeleton achievement The wiki says that its at room 22 but it just never appears for me Does anyone know if this is a bug?