MurmurLilies

improved/updated Obelisk model

Added 2022-07-10 02:00:29 +0000 UTC

been working on a new iteration of my Obelisk model for a while now, and I'm finally ready to show off my progress! 👀 maybe it's time I explain some things about them... but bear in mind, some of this is "endgame reveal" territory, so hush hush!!

The Architects (known to humans as "the Obelisks") are an array of colossal sentient machines that arrived on Earth in the year 2115 AD. Appearing as 10,000 meter tall towers made of alabaster, they are in fact composed of massive colonies of radiozoa, microscopic lifeforms born in a far-off extradimensional ocean that have fused together into a gestalt intelligence. Effectively being enormous quantum supercomputers, they're capable of incredible feats of engineering and data processing - the latter of which allows them to "catalog" the consciousnesses of other sentient beings within their shared thought-mesh.

Very little is known about the dimension the radiozoa came from or the circumstances that led to their coalescence. It's believed that their evolution was accelerated by the formless entity known as Judgment, which gifted them the power of a Black Star, and the Architects in turn gifted Judgment with a physical shell to inhabit. At some point they decided to leave their home universe in search of other worlds and forms of life, eventually arriving on Earth for some unknown purpose...

now, if you've played Destiny you can probably tell where part of the inspiration for the Obelisks came from! but the Obelisks are wholly different from the Vex, and radiozoa (also called radiolaria) actually exist in nature! their ability to combine into silica/glass, the very same stuff used in computer chips and fiberoptic internet connections, was the basis for a lot of my ideas on how the Obelisks would work.

so yes, the Obelisks are machines, but they're also alive, in ways that seem so incredibly alien to us.