Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

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Skyknight
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Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by Skyknight »

While poking around the Layer Section wiki (https://layersection.fandom.com/wiki/RayStorm ), I noticed in the description for the Juda Central System said it coordinated everything not directly controlled by humans on Secilia. To the tune of...five billion AIs? That's a lot...

Then I considered that that sounded like a potential estimate for human population back when RayStorm was programmed. Put me in mind of Con-Human's motivations from RayCrisis, no less. We're not dealing with some lurking extraplanar equivalent of Con-Human, are we?

Then the page on Secilia proper noted that it wasn't actually discovered until after a gravitational surge was detected in the vicinity of Seraph. Depending on then-current understandings of physics, was that supposed to suggest Secilia teleported in?

I may have been pretty close to the truth...

This makes certain song names especially ominous:

--Fighter system select screen, "OoPArts". That's short for "Out-of-place Artifacts", archaeological objects whose complexity don't fit their apparent age from their surroundings. Back in RayForce, your fighters were refugee-crafted, not Con-Human-crafted.

--Alaric and Spartacus theme, "Molecular Clock". A biological term referring to determining when two life-forms diverged. Roughly 115 years elapsed between Secilia's settlement and the attempt to efface the Earth. What did Secilia do to its settlers, especially with the implication in the Etruria description that no other life-forms are on the satellite? (Certainly not in Etruria itself...)

--The theme for Yggdrasil's second and third phases, "Intolerance". Intolerance of organic life was part and parcel of Con-Human's plan to protect electronic life forms.

So my hunch is that Secilia is in fact a Con-Human-held Earth from an alternate timeline from RayForce where it survived Operation Meteor, and succeeded in effacing humanity. Meaning that Yggdrasil is the new form of Con-Human's own vessel, and those five billion AIs are the electronic clones it originally made. But in its paranoid concern for its creations, Con-Human wants to thwart organic "threats" even in other universes...and the RayStorm universe is its latest stop...
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by Voxbox »

I can believe it.
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

When I reached the conclusion of RayCrisis, it leads into Operation RayStorm (hence the current events that take place in RayStorm). But isn't RayForce/LayerSection/GunLock/Galactic Attack it's own separate story/timeline aside from the RayCrisis/RayStorm mythos/timeline?

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BIL
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by BIL »

I've no idea if Taito canon says otherwise - it very well could - but casually, I like to think of Raystorm taking place first, setting up Raycrisis, leading into Rayforce.

A catastrophic interplanetary war with a death toll beyond belief (Raystorm) encourages mankind to centralise under one banner on Earth, aided by nascent AI tech, which ushers in a utopia. Then womp womp! Skynet! (Raycrisis) Later, the last of humanity surviving off-Earth realise they are not merely exiled, but are being actively hunted, inciting a desperate counterattack (Rayforce).

Like all good arcade lore, it fits on an A4 sheet and won't make you yell "GET THIS SHIT OUTTA MY FACE" while hammering the "skip" button mid-credit. Image
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by null1024 »

BIL wrote: A catastrophic interplanetary war with a death toll beyond belief (Raystorm) encourages mankind to centralise under one banner on Earth, aided by nascent AI tech, which ushers in a utopia. Then womp womp! Skynet! (Raycrisis) Later, the last of humanity surviving off-Earth realise they are not merely exiled, but are being actively hunted, inciting a desperate counterattack (Rayforce).
Honestly, I really, really, really like this. It's a simple overarching way to tie all three games together into a timeline that fits really well.
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BIL
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by BIL »

Image Image

Slightly OT, I always liked the clear Taito legacy in G-Rev's stagecraft... the massive fleet battle in Border Down, and especially the tragic little vignettes throughout Under Defeat (your allied jets dogfighting throughout st3, the last survivor going out by crashing his burning plane into an enemy tank... and the last boss's absolute no-fucks-given arrival, obliterating your trapped dudes and his own encircling unit with a casual mortar). Always makes me think of Rayforce's second stage finale, one of the genre's most understatedly brutal scenes of war, or Queen Fossil's definitive redshirt massacre. Taito were great at these little reminders that you're the vanguard of a bigger war effort.

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Randorama
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by Randorama »

I believe that Taito gave some kind of canon version in one of the collections for the Ray-series OST's (in Japanese, of course).
I wouldn't in fact be surprised if the Japanese fandom wikis have more material on the matter.
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by Skyknight »

I think there was a later version of RayCrisis, using a particular arcade hardware, where doing sufficiently well would give an ending where Con-Human was genuinely disabled, and from there the plot elided into RayStorm, rather than RayForce. I honestly don't know how much of the RayCrisis explanation of how Con-Human went berserk (being hooked up to a clone human gave it an "understanding" that humanity could be perfected only by downloading their psyches to become electrical life-forms--i.e. a different sort of cloning--and then destroying the organic originals) was intended back when RayForce was first published, but the idea of Secilia/Yggdrasil being an alternate universe (and more ridiculously paranoid than before) Con-Human matches too well for the whole of it to be a later invention.

Well, alternate universe from the RayStorm universe's perspective.

I wonder if the whole thing was a nod to how before Taito decided to dip into 3D graphics, they were going to produce an actual sequel to RayForce, RayGear, rather than the (seemingly) unconnected RayStorm. Effectively a sequel to a RayForce where you don't make it to the very end.
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Re: Unsettling hypothesis about Secilia in RayStorm

Post by copy-paster »

PC Engine Fan X! wrote:When I reached the conclusion of RayCrisis, it leads into Operation RayStorm (hence the current events that take place in RayStorm). But isn't RayForce/LayerSection/GunLock/Galactic Attack it's own separate story/timeline aside from the RayCrisis/RayStorm mythos/timeline?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Very late but it's other way around. Crisis ending directly set up the beginning of Force, and Storm is own/alternate universe really. Arcade mode ending of Storm makes it look like a prequel of Force/Crisis but seems like Taito thinks this ending have too much "happy note" and they changed it in PS1/HD's Extra mode to match per Taito ending standards. The final text won't appear if you're not playing the 13 ship mode btw.
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