*SPOILERS* Lore

[MAK777]

So I've finally finished this gem of a game, but I'm still a bit confused about a few points.

So the game is set in a valley which has this crazy tree that produces a Lifeseed every century.
There are tons of ruins around the place, and it's hinted that they were created by a group of peoples (normal humans) who may have deified the tree and had a special reverence for giants, as evident by the large amount of giant statue parts scattered throughout.

That part, I follow.

What I dont understand is, what happened to those people? And is it related to the creation of the daemons/wendigos?

If I understand the ending correctly, the daemons evolve into wendigos (hell of a plot twist; cute floaty thing becomes flesh-eating monster), and the wendigos lay eggs (the amrita orbs) which hatch out into daemons, and the cycle repeats. And somehow there's an Alpha wendigo that killed everyone from both facilites?

So where did the daemons come from? There's no actual link between the Lifeseed and them.

Feel free to post any theories you have, as I'm just left a but puzzled by it all.

[MAK777]

Update: And if the amrita orbs being used to power everything, including the LEAF suit, are daemon eggs, then isn't consuming them a good thing, because they end up becoming evil wendigos anyway?

Also, I just had another recollection, isn't it hinted at some point that the wendigos were whatever became of the original human civilization in the valley? In which case, they have nothing to do with the daemons at all.

[Shooble]

The daemons are part of the cycle of life in the valley. I'm not sure what their actual role is, but they do not naturally evolve into wendigos. They go about their peaceful existence helping the valley maintain it's balance.

The way I theorize it is this:

The daemons are much like the amrita swarms. When they're starved of amrita or life energy, they evolve into something very hostile.

So perhaps Fisher's constant testing of bombs and ways to increase amrita production started sucking the valley of life, the daemons were also sucked of life and transformed into hostile wendigos. The only way to defeat the wendigos is by firing life energy at them, right? So they must be daemons that are starved of life energy and became hungry, hideous creatures that wanted to feast on the thing that was sucking life from them.

Or something like that.. who knows.

[Alcator]

The lifeseed is spawned once per 1000 years, not once per century.

Regarding what happened to those who built all the statues and the pyramid - chances are they vanished due to good old societal decay. When you consider the Aztecs or the Mayans or even the Romans, pretty much every society, once it gets too comfortable, starts devouring itself - human sacrifice, vanity, greed, silly rituals that do not help anything but consume a lot of resources...

And all it takes then is one or two bad years, and they are all destroyed.

One of the recordings even mentions that the land in the valley is not suitable for agriculture, which, if you remember, used to be the job for 85% of population to feed them. This means they must have had a huge logistical operation to haul food to the valley for those who stayed there - if they actually stayed there. Another recording mentions that this was most probably just ritual place, where they didn't live, but only visited to worship the "deities". So it makes sense that at some point, they were destroyed outside the valley (by conquestors or some natural disaster), and the information about the valley was lost for centuries.

[iFantazy]

I like the theory that daemons starved of life energy evolve into wendigos, especially since when you drain the life from a daemon they do greatly resemble them much more.

[tuxdelux]

I just listened to the Algernon Blackwood story, "The Wendigo". I wholeheartedly encourage any fan of this game to check out this short story. Even though the writing style is dated, it is the Public Domain, so easy to find online. I listened to the audio retelling on Librivox, which was really great. Blackwood was an inspiration for Lovecraft stories and other weird fiction

[Atlas the Small]

I think that the deamons don't turn into wendigos but they were created by the vally because of the greed of the humans, one wendigo per greedy human (i'll bet that the boss was Fisher) And the eggs are only for deamons not wedigos, on the other hand why don't the deamon attack you or anything when you take thir eggs...

Edit:
Didn't see this before

Originally posted by author:

I like the theory that daemons starved of life energy evolve into wendigos, especially since when you drain the life from a daemon they do greatly resemble them much more.

I does seem possible that the widegos are deamons starved of life for too long and deamons with plentiful life remain cute and happy.