>take a break for a week
>thread has grown nearly a dozen pages
...not that I'm in any position to say anything about this, but - ye gods.
Speaking of lore autism: did anyone already bring up Lovecraft's Crawling Ones?
Most people in this thread just assume that TCO = Nyarlathotep one-on-one and leave it at that. Which isn't necessarily wrong - but there's some stuff about the Lovecraftian Crawling Ones that lines up really well.
I mean, the Lovecraftian Crawling Ones? That's what happens when worms and maggots eat the corpse of a sorceror. The residual unnatural energies in the corpse will contaminate the critters, and then they will become a hivemind shaped by what's left of the sorceror's mind and memories.
Now look at TCO. Suppose TCO is a messy hivemind that became Alice (sort of) in much the same way as that a Lovecraftian Crawling One becomes a messy reflection of the sorceror whose corpse it ate.
Of course TCO is an Outer One instead of a mere maggot swarm. But if you picture TCO as a hiveminded swarm of eldritch horrors that works much like a maggot swarm Crawling One, then the comparison still holds up pretty well. Not to mention that what we see of TCO during the backroute and the H ending certainly looks a lot more like a swarm than a singular entity.
Then there's Prickett. During one of the bear stories in Winterbell, Node matter-of-factly states that Prickett used to be 'part of' TCO. That part would also work best if TCO is a hiveminded swarm. Each entity is a node in the network, and is thus both its own thing and part of the collective. Most of these nodes/entities are subsumed into the collective, and are thus little more than a distorted reflection of Alice. Prickett is then simply a node/entity that managed to disentangle itself and go her own way.
...but then, what about the TCO = Nyarlathotep stuff?
I'll admit that there's solid arguments in favour of that one, too. TCO originally being a trickster (as per Mabel), and the monsters that Alice can turn into if you choose to kill her at 0 SEN. The part about having a black void for a face is another hint.
But the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, though. Toro happily merges and conflates major characters (Lorina Liddell and the Queen of Hearts; the White Rabbit and the White Queen, and also with Nodens; Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and prince Leopold) - so he's probably not above merging different Lovecraftian things as well.
EDIT: speaking of the 'has a black void for a face'-thing - the same is true for the mental ward patients... What does that say about them? Could they be minor fragments of TCO? Or are they previously normal people who are slowly being absorbed into TCO?
>thread has grown nearly a dozen pages
...not that I'm in any position to say anything about this, but - ye gods.
Speaking of lore autism: did anyone already bring up Lovecraft's Crawling Ones?
Most people in this thread just assume that TCO = Nyarlathotep one-on-one and leave it at that. Which isn't necessarily wrong - but there's some stuff about the Lovecraftian Crawling Ones that lines up really well.
I mean, the Lovecraftian Crawling Ones? That's what happens when worms and maggots eat the corpse of a sorceror. The residual unnatural energies in the corpse will contaminate the critters, and then they will become a hivemind shaped by what's left of the sorceror's mind and memories.
Now look at TCO. Suppose TCO is a messy hivemind that became Alice (sort of) in much the same way as that a Lovecraftian Crawling One becomes a messy reflection of the sorceror whose corpse it ate.
Of course TCO is an Outer One instead of a mere maggot swarm. But if you picture TCO as a hiveminded swarm of eldritch horrors that works much like a maggot swarm Crawling One, then the comparison still holds up pretty well. Not to mention that what we see of TCO during the backroute and the H ending certainly looks a lot more like a swarm than a singular entity.
Then there's Prickett. During one of the bear stories in Winterbell, Node matter-of-factly states that Prickett used to be 'part of' TCO. That part would also work best if TCO is a hiveminded swarm. Each entity is a node in the network, and is thus both its own thing and part of the collective. Most of these nodes/entities are subsumed into the collective, and are thus little more than a distorted reflection of Alice. Prickett is then simply a node/entity that managed to disentangle itself and go her own way.
...but then, what about the TCO = Nyarlathotep stuff?
I'll admit that there's solid arguments in favour of that one, too. TCO originally being a trickster (as per Mabel), and the monsters that Alice can turn into if you choose to kill her at 0 SEN. The part about having a black void for a face is another hint.
But the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, though. Toro happily merges and conflates major characters (Lorina Liddell and the Queen of Hearts; the White Rabbit and the White Queen, and also with Nodens; Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and prince Leopold) - so he's probably not above merging different Lovecraftian things as well.
EDIT: speaking of the 'has a black void for a face'-thing - the same is true for the mental ward patients... What does that say about them? Could they be minor fragments of TCO? Or are they previously normal people who are slowly being absorbed into TCO?
Last edited:
