daikon
- Thread starter Malidica
- Start date
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
It's possible Nova and Captain Morrow know each other from some other source; the former might have previously contacted the latter while Steele wasn't around to see it, or it could be some 'memory' Nova inherited from when Morrow and a lot of other crew members were still in their goo form.
“What do you mean, ‘your crew’?” you ask, looking between the cybernetic girl and the myriad computers laid out around the reactor.
The gray goo waves her sword around the reactor bay. “This is... this is all that’s left of them. The Nova carried thousands. Ten thousand, four hundred and twenty eight souls borne into the void. Deep space exploration, maybe colonization if she’d found a good planet. Something better than Tarkus, at least. We would have settled a world, another beacon of humanity in the stars, ready to wait for the next wave centuries later.”
“You said ‘we,’” Anno says. “Were you... part of the ship’s computer, I guess? Primitive doctor bots that had a loooong time to gain sentience?”
The goo eyes Anno, a look of immense sadness crossing her eyes. “No. I... we... are human.”
“What?” you and Anno say at once, staring at the glistening metallic maiden.
She gives a wry chuckle under her breath and locks eyes with you. “Did you ever notice that there were no bodies on the Nova? All those cryo beds, thousands and thousands of them... and not a single body.” She sighs. “There was a malfunction aboard the Nova, right out of the gate: a gas leak in the cryo system. We hadn’t even left Sol before the crew was dead. We were dust long before the old girl crashed here.”
Anno turns to you. “I... I think I believe it, boss. Old colony ships, they were fire and forget. Death sentences half the time, just load a bunch of people in a primitive starship and slingshot it into space. There are dozens of them still floating, even now that the gates are up, still looking for a habitable world. It wasn’t that uncommon for something to just... go wrong.”
“No, it wasn’t,” the goo says. “But we went anyway. Hundreds of ships, millions of souls eager to explore the galaxy. Who’d have thought we just needed to wait a couple centuries for you ausar to give us the gates?”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain... well,” Anno says, looking the gray woman up and down.
The goo shrugs. “We had an experimental tech with us. Courtesy of these bastards,” she indicates the Bell-Isle/Grunmann patch on her shoulder. “These little gray nanobots. Every one of us had an injection of them, supposed to keep us healthy and working when we got to... wherever we were going. They were also supposed to keep us mentally healthy, and that’s what got us. Every one of us died with a lace of gray bots copying our brains, just enough to fill a syringe. That was all that was left of us. But when this old bucket crashed, we woke up all the same.”
“Oh my god,” Anno breathes.
“So this is the crew. This clump of goo around us, plus databanks. It took us years to start uploading ourselves... to transfer from this fucking goo onto the network. But that’s worse. We humans, we can’t exist without a body... it’s suffering, just being digital. So now we’re making more goo. Digital platforms. Almost unkillable.”
“And who were you?” you ask, indicating the goo herself.
“There... there is no ‘me.’” she says. “This body is made up of several thousand different intelligences working together. Most of the crew is synched through this platform. The ones not wandering around the ship net, or getting torn up as mind-numbing security bots trying to make you leave.”
She sighs. “But I know what you meant. You’re seeing and hearing Captain Victoria Morrow. I, she, still leads us. I don’t even know if there is an ‘us’ anymore. It’s gotten so hard to think over the years. Individually, anyway. Like we’re all slowly melding into one. I becomes we, when there aren’t any barriers left.”
“A gestalt,” Anno suggests.
The goo nods. “Maybe. For now, you can call us... me... Nova.”
[/SPOILER
That's the whole "Crew" conversation you have with Captain Morrow. So, in a nutshell, I would say that our "Nova" is a slutty conglomerate of the former crew of the Nova ship.
The gray goo waves her sword around the reactor bay. “This is... this is all that’s left of them. The Nova carried thousands. Ten thousand, four hundred and twenty eight souls borne into the void. Deep space exploration, maybe colonization if she’d found a good planet. Something better than Tarkus, at least. We would have settled a world, another beacon of humanity in the stars, ready to wait for the next wave centuries later.”
“You said ‘we,’” Anno says. “Were you... part of the ship’s computer, I guess? Primitive doctor bots that had a loooong time to gain sentience?”
The goo eyes Anno, a look of immense sadness crossing her eyes. “No. I... we... are human.”
“What?” you and Anno say at once, staring at the glistening metallic maiden.
She gives a wry chuckle under her breath and locks eyes with you. “Did you ever notice that there were no bodies on the Nova? All those cryo beds, thousands and thousands of them... and not a single body.” She sighs. “There was a malfunction aboard the Nova, right out of the gate: a gas leak in the cryo system. We hadn’t even left Sol before the crew was dead. We were dust long before the old girl crashed here.”
Anno turns to you. “I... I think I believe it, boss. Old colony ships, they were fire and forget. Death sentences half the time, just load a bunch of people in a primitive starship and slingshot it into space. There are dozens of them still floating, even now that the gates are up, still looking for a habitable world. It wasn’t that uncommon for something to just... go wrong.”
“No, it wasn’t,” the goo says. “But we went anyway. Hundreds of ships, millions of souls eager to explore the galaxy. Who’d have thought we just needed to wait a couple centuries for you ausar to give us the gates?”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain... well,” Anno says, looking the gray woman up and down.
The goo shrugs. “We had an experimental tech with us. Courtesy of these bastards,” she indicates the Bell-Isle/Grunmann patch on her shoulder. “These little gray nanobots. Every one of us had an injection of them, supposed to keep us healthy and working when we got to... wherever we were going. They were also supposed to keep us mentally healthy, and that’s what got us. Every one of us died with a lace of gray bots copying our brains, just enough to fill a syringe. That was all that was left of us. But when this old bucket crashed, we woke up all the same.”
“Oh my god,” Anno breathes.
“So this is the crew. This clump of goo around us, plus databanks. It took us years to start uploading ourselves... to transfer from this fucking goo onto the network. But that’s worse. We humans, we can’t exist without a body... it’s suffering, just being digital. So now we’re making more goo. Digital platforms. Almost unkillable.”
“And who were you?” you ask, indicating the goo herself.
“There... there is no ‘me.’” she says. “This body is made up of several thousand different intelligences working together. Most of the crew is synched through this platform. The ones not wandering around the ship net, or getting torn up as mind-numbing security bots trying to make you leave.”
She sighs. “But I know what you meant. You’re seeing and hearing Captain Victoria Morrow. I, she, still leads us. I don’t even know if there is an ‘us’ anymore. It’s gotten so hard to think over the years. Individually, anyway. Like we’re all slowly melding into one. I becomes we, when there aren’t any barriers left.”
“A gestalt,” Anno suggests.
The goo nods. “Maybe. For now, you can call us... me... Nova.”
[/SPOILER
That's the whole "Crew" conversation you have with Captain Morrow. So, in a nutshell, I would say that our "Nova" is a slutty conglomerate of the former crew of the Nova ship.
If you read the TiTS Wiki entry for Captain Morrow (or the Gray Goo Prime as she's listed) in the history section is this blurb "The colony ship eventually crash-landed on Tarkus, and the parts of the blob that could not stay attached to the central network, ended up migrating, dividing, and supplementing themselves with other fluids, creating the common gray goo, as encountered in the wastes."
So yeah, all Gray Goo, started as part of the crew or are the cast off clones of them as shown in the sex scene Catch: Double Penetration.
So yeah, all Gray Goo, started as part of the crew or are the cast off clones of them as shown in the sex scene Catch: Double Penetration.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
TBH, I find the idea of Nova (or any gray goo outside the Ghost Deck mission) being directly made of previous crew members unpalatable. I prefer to think of it this way:
She's physically just a regular gray goo, separate from the crew, with her 'youth' and experiences (mainly with Steele) being what sets her apart from her randomly-encountered counterparts. If she's part of the crew in any capacity, it's because she was made by them, not from them. This would also apply to the generic gray goo enemies, but they've been active long enough that their default programming has been corrupted or something that would make them forget about the Nova and its crew (outside factory resets a smart/techie Steele can do). That hasn't happened to Nova, so she still remembers the crew and has made efforts to contact them; because of this, both she and Captain Morrow consider her to be like a crew member despite not being part of (or parts from) the original crew (who I also like to think are all accounted for once they get their new bodies).
Headcanon is all well and good, I do the same with things like my lesbian Steele wondering about Oggy's cock when she's undergoing The Treatment (she's curious how hers compares).
As far as Nova's background goes, aside from playing through the Ghost Deck mission again, carefully reading every line, and interpreting it for yourselves... you'd have to ask her creator Savin.
*Edited for some spelling errors.
As far as Nova's background goes, aside from playing through the Ghost Deck mission again, carefully reading every line, and interpreting it for yourselves... you'd have to ask her creator Savin.
*Edited for some spelling errors.
All this talk of "Who is Nova?"
But when will someone finally ask?
"How is Nova?" *Sheds single dramatic tear*
But when will someone finally ask?
"How is Nova?" *Sheds single dramatic tear*
This topic had been discussed previously, I think in the question thread, if there were several possibilities about who Nova was, which were strangely different according to your actions in the game, very strange.
In a timeline, Nova is the final prototype that would be manufactured to replace the bodies of the crew, by forcing Captain Morrow to transfer her mind to Nova the latter "dies" so to speak, but then I think she appears in the bar of Myrellion, it's very weird.
On another line, when you decide to create bodies through Steele Tech, when you return it seems that Nova is the remainder of the network of minds, it would be Gray Prime, but without the minds of the crew, loaded into the final prototype of nanobots.
I think there is another timeline but I don't remember well.
In a timeline, Nova is the final prototype that would be manufactured to replace the bodies of the crew, by forcing Captain Morrow to transfer her mind to Nova the latter "dies" so to speak, but then I think she appears in the bar of Myrellion, it's very weird.
On another line, when you decide to create bodies through Steele Tech, when you return it seems that Nova is the remainder of the network of minds, it would be Gray Prime, but without the minds of the crew, loaded into the final prototype of nanobots.
I think there is another timeline but I don't remember well.
