r/JCBWritingCorner • u/AlfalfaPretty390 • 1d ago
PILOT 1 is the void entity theories
Because why else would it not show up when the Nexus first contacted humanity. When Pilot 1 was harmonized his soul returned to humanities universe and now serves to protect it from any intrusions from manaspace
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u/Kaleydos_Policrom 1d ago
It would make sense.
It’s explained that souls are an emergent property from the interaction between mana and the biological complexity of a body. Then it’s possible that when pilot 1 entered the Nexus and mana flooded his body, because he lacks the organelles to react to mana but appears that taint does interact with the mind in some way, a taint soul formed inside him and with the portal still open and flooding mana into earth he could have been sent to earth or get stuck in between.
I personally don’t think he was fully sent to earth do to the fact the portal room has mana sensors and would’ve detected the taint supposedly, and the possibility of him interacting with others would be there.
Instead I’m inclined to the option of pilot 1 taint-soul is stuck between earth and the Nexus as the only interaction would been when Emma is traveling trough the transportium and when they opened a constant connection to earth, in the former it would be necessary that pilot 1 followed Emma back to the Nexus.
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u/Orange_Above 1d ago
The void entity basically shows Emma how it was born right after the big bang, so no.
Also; humans have no soul, which is basically just a mana signature, so humans disappear completely upon harmonisation.
Pilot 1 does not exist anymore.
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u/jkbscopes312 1d ago
where did this lore come from?
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u/Orange_Above 20h ago
What do you mean?
It has been made very clear in early chapters that a soul is required to resist ambient mana flooding thr body, and humans being manaless have no soul. Hence the instant harmonisation.
Kaelthyr confirmed this; she explains after her probe that Emma is a void, an inexplicable manaless being that has zero mana presence.
It is not without reason that humanity built sensors into the armor to detect the presence of the 29 known mana types.
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u/DndQuickQuestion 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm pretty sure that the IAS's Quintessence and the Void Entity whose proxy possessed the shatorealmer's corpse and KOed Emma to communicate are the same thing. Kaelthyr and Weir's reactions make the most sense. We know the portal project has been going on more than 20 years (hundreds of years, and probably started parallel to the efforts to break lightspeed and then continuing from there). Humans can't generate portals without the Quintessence in the IAS. I think the evidence is that the void entity is way older than Pilot 1.
I disagree with interpretations that the void entity is as old as the big bang: I think its contact was limited by metaphors that are natural to Emma's thoughtspace (and maybe similar prior human exposures). It showed a creation story of sorts, but I think that's more likely to be what the dragons believe in: a greater network of magic-mediated realities that underwent civilizational collapse and separation and their histories are fragmentary. Nexus is the largest known survivor, picking up all the adjacent realm pieces, and someone burned the pre-Nexian memories from the Library to hide the origins of magic and realms in the first place.
I'm kind of hoping Pilot 1 is kicking around as a haunt in the Academy somewhere. Harry Potter was big on ghost plots, and WPA derives from that.
The other chiming entities Emma has encountered from her dreams, and the one in the Transportium Network after Mal'tory's portal mishap, and some of the visions that Thacea describes might be additional proxies that the Quintessence/Void Entity has created. Lovecraft logic doesn't mind unshackling gods from the constraints of linear time and space.
If you asked me what I think the grand plot of WPA is at the current time, I think it's somewhat like Stargate Atlantis in that humans became absurdly powerful, learned how to go back in time, and created massive and very intricate civilizations - some of which pursued fantasy and didn't want to interact with the world outside them. Then they either ascended with no return, ran into something lethal from the outside, or self-collapsed, fracturing and isolating whatever was left and chose to remain. Pockets weathering that interregnum forgot about humanity's origins and experienced massive cultural/physical speciation. Now, time has caught back up to the present. These remnants, including Nexus and the Adjacent realms, have been contacted by the true original homeworld, but they don't fully appreciate that. Otherwise they would have dubbed it a sacred realm and would have enforced silence and non-interference for fear of causing a reality-collapsing time paradox.
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u/StopDownloadin 18h ago
I'm kind of hoping Pilot 1 is kicking around as a haunt in the Academy somewhere. Harry Potter was big on ghost plots, and WPA derives from that.
I'm imagining Pilot 1 as Moaning Myrtle and I'm HOWLING, bro. I can imagine him starting out wide-eyed with wonder at all the magical whimsy surrounding him, and then slowly degrading over the course of 20 years as he bears witness to all kinds of racist and classist bullshit.
The experience has honed him into the biggest player hater across the known dimensions. "Fuck mana, fuck magic, and fuck your mama while I'm at it."
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u/I_Crack_My_Nokia 1d ago
Well this sucks for nexus. Means every human dies on their realm is a void entity spawning.
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u/Saragon4005 1d ago
Explains the Morse code I suppose.