Firmament's Story

[Diamond Knight]

After playing through and watching someone playthrough the game, the story kind of grew on me. Once I didn't need to spend cognitive power on solving puzzles, I started to appreciate things more. Here's what I think is going on.


The Atelis is a space ship built to travel to another planet. It was initially built in the 1900s and travels slowly through space. The creators expect advancements in technology to allow for newer faster ships to be built in the future. The idea is that humanity will use these newer ships to catch up with the Atelis and upgrade it with newer and faster technology. The idea is that it will eventually be upgraded to the point where space travel becomes fast enough to not require the crew to be in cryostasis and the ship will just go "immediately" to its final destination.
When the ship is ready for it's final jump, a final crew called the Arrivers comes. The Arrivers are supposed to activate the ship for space travel and they are the only ones who can do it.
Keepers maintain the systems while the ship gets ready through out the centuries. They are taught that they live in some mythical place and to await some divine beings called arrivers. They go to deep sleep every so often to stay alive but they lose their memories. Before a keeper goes into deep sleep they record themselves to be a mentor to a keeper that awakens. The keepers only stay in the 3 realms and the swan.
Another crew is responsible for the ships upgrades and to observe the keepers to ensure all is well. They stay in the command deck and do not interact with the keepers.

The keepers are happily living their lives maintaining the ship and finally their mythical arrivers, Turner and gang, arrive. The arrivers teach the keepers new stuff and are looked up to as gods. They aren't very nice and start to opress the keepers.

One day a keeper, Mata, gets pushed over the edge and kills an arriver. The arrivers kill her in retaliation, amongst other things. A "civil war" ensues. At the end only 12 keepers and Turner are left alive. Turner abandons his mission and decides to rule the keepers with an iron fist. I presume Turner gets everyone to clean up any traces of the "civil war".

Ghost lady wants revenge and gets close to Turner who eventually shows her the truth of the ship. She learns its purpose and everyones purpose and learns how the mission should be completed. She learns that Turner, as the last remaining arriver, is the only one who can start the final procedure for space travel.

Ghost lady devices a plan to complete the mission. She knows there's no other option but to somehow get Turner to the bridge so an Arriver can activate space travel. She convinces Turner to put everyone but her to sleep. She tricks Turner and puts him to sleep too. She doesn't want to forget so she doesn't sleep. She fine tunes her plan and does her recording so she can be Turner's mentor when he wakes. She chooses to die in the command chair.

When Turner wakes she tasks him with learning everything the keepers did, raise the spire and engage the embrace. The other keepers have been asleep for many years now and ghostlady didn't bother to continue maintaining the realms. Anyway once she dies there's no one left to do maintenace anyway so things are collapsed, frozen over, calcified etc. Turner restarts and fixes everything out of curiosity I guess and makes it to the bridge, unknowingly activating space travel.

Edit: Correction from discord. Rereading the memos from the end made me realise that the Atelis is already travelling through space and that other ships are supposed to catch up to them with new upgrades.

[Charis0506]

I think this is spot on.

I like the story, I just wish there had been more in-game exploration of the story. It would have been wonderful, for example, to have all of the bedrooms to explore with these personal effects and journals of the keepers so I would have felt attached to them. And then there could have been more journals in the bunkers about how Turner and the "civil war" was affecting them. Also, some journals in the crew area from Turner justifying himself could have been written to produce doubts about which side was right. Then my emotions would have been more engaged when the reveal happens. I wish, then, there had been a final choice where you could choose how to "redeem" yourself, or even IF you want to redeem yourself, depending on who you think was right after all the journals and information you have read.

[Diamond Knight]

A choice would be nice but it may not fit into the story.

Ghost lady's intentions are clear that she has no intention of giving Turner a choice. She was using Turner like how Turner used the keepers. Unless of course she screwed something up somewhere in her prep. The final launch seems to be automated as well so Turner only needs to stumble onto the bridge. She doesn't really give him anything else to do but enter the bridge.

Perhaps they could have added a "wake everyone up" option before the bridge and Turner starts being a tyrant again. Narratively this would require Turner to realise he is Turner before getting to the bridge. I don't think there's anything in game to make him think that. Even many of us players only suspect it but we don't really know for certain. Not to mention ghost lady needs to be careless and forget to disable the wake up function if it exists before the bridge.

But yeah more journals would have been nice.

[Erik]

I think most of it is correct, except I don't think the keepers usually recorded themselves before going to deep sleep. They would go to deep sleep on a rotating schedule, so that there would always be one or more keepers still awake to mentor the newly awoken ones. That way continuity was taken care of.

"Our" Mentor made the exception; "I... put them all to sleep". She clearly struggled with that and felt guilt (remember her speech about deceit and "time heals all wounds"). And because she wouldn't live long enough to see Turner awake, she had to record herself.

[kupuguy]

You don't have to guess at most of this, the reading matter you find right near the end has details such as how between 1895 and 1907 they sent 16 million tons of materials into orbit using rail guns and constructed a starship powered by steam and solar sails and how they chose a potential nearby destination but were prepared to select a different more suitable destination once technology allowed. Possibly even too much detail.

[MA-SIMON]

Text and Audio logs were the solution to all these problems. There were less then 10.
So nothing of this story feels earned or lived. Waste of potential.

[Onyx Mystique]

I played the game twice, and did not understand the ending at all the first time. During the second time, I heard some narration that I had never heard the first time, which helped. Also, I missed the reading materials at the end. Now I get it.

The only thing I don't understand is why she is dead. It would make more sense if she had lived out her life until old age as the only Keeper, but she says it had only been seven years. This seems to be just a plot device so we could have a ghost talking, but "mentor monitor screens" at each adjunct point with an actual recording made by a live actor would have fit the story better.

[Diamond Knight]

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

I played the game twice, and did not understand the ending at all the first time. During the second time, I heard some narration that I had never heard the first time, which helped. Also, I missed the reading materials at the end. Now I get it.

The only thing I don't understand is why she is dead. It would make more sense if she had lived out her life until old age as the only Keeper, but she says it had only been seven years. This seems to be just a plot device so we could have a ghost talking, but "mentor monitor screens" at each adjunct point with an actual recording made by a live actor would have fit the story better.

She says it was 7 years since she put Turner to sleep. So it was 7 years from putting Turner to sleep up to her making her final recording. How long it has been from her recording to Turner waking isn't mentioned. Turner was part of the mission from 2118 onwards from the end notes. He reaches the bridge in 2231. She could have put him in much longer than the 12 years just to be sure even his past pre mission memories were wiped clean, which year exacty we don't know. I presume 100 years out of stasis is enough for her die of old age.

Or maybe she just got a skeleton prop, dressed it in her clothes and put it there as a set dressing/joke/prank, while she's fine and dandy somewhere. The skeleton is a bit too "clean".

[kupuguy]

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

I played the game twice, and did not understand the ending at all the first time. During the second time, I heard some narration that I had never heard the first time, which helped. Also, I missed the reading materials at the end. Now I get it.

The only thing I don't understand is why she is dead. It would make more sense if she had lived out her life until old age as the only Keeper, but she says it had only been seven years. This seems to be just a plot device so we could have a ghost talking, but "mentor monitor screens" at each adjunct point with an actual recording made by a live actor would have fit the story better.

She recorded her message seven years after putting him to sleep, but we know it is about 112 years since the he and the other arrivers got to Atelis. I don't think we know how long there was between their arrival and it all going pear-shaped but seems likely he's been asleep for over a century.

[ArchNicholas]

That's about 112 years since his Ensign duties aboard Nikola began, and looks like he has had a hard time holding jobs as he kept winding up in prison. I think he was demoted down to Ensign too. No idea how many years into his Nikola service that he actually got to the Atelis, but considering they caught up to it, they probably used the Space Folding tech to get to it pretty quick. Is the Nikola the ship still at the fore, or was the bridge already part of the Atelis?

[Onyx Mystique]

Originally posted by kupuguy:

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

I played the game twice, and did not understand the ending at all the first time. During the second time, I heard some narration that I had never heard the first time, which helped. Also, I missed the reading materials at the end. Now I get it.

The only thing I don't understand is why she is dead. It would make more sense if she had lived out her life until old age as the only Keeper, but she says it had only been seven years. This seems to be just a plot device so we could have a ghost talking, but "mentor monitor screens" at each adjunct point with an actual recording made by a live actor would have fit the story better.

She recorded her message seven years after putting him to sleep, but we know it is about 112 years since the he and the other arrivers got to Atelis. I don't think we know how long there was between their arrival and it all going pear-shaped but seems likely he's been asleep for over a century.

I'll have to check the dates again, but I don't think there were three additional people who came to the ship at the end of the journey.
[Edit] Oh, I didn't understand that part, either, apparently. So the first three astronauts were in the part of ship that looked like it was from the 70's. Apparently, two were still in Deep Sleep. The lights are still blinking green on their sleep pods. I'm guessing that one was awake when the "recon and augment" crew arrived with the advanced AI system that docked onto the ship. Only one of the older pods was opened.

The print out lists the various roles, but that doesn't mean there were three crew and then three "Arrivers."
[Edit] I double-checked this and the "Arrivers" were also called "crew" on the print out, but they were definitely sent later. Apparently, with new technology, they could "catch up" to the older spaceship with a newer spaceship and dock onto it so it became a part of the ship.

The three crew/astronauts took turns in Deep Sleep for one year, so he would have been on the ship for well over 100 years before appearing to the Keepers in the Realms.
[Edit] The original crew took turns in Deep Sleep. It's unclear what the augment/arrival crew was doing. Turner would have left Earth with the arrival crew in 2118, but it still would have taken some time for the new spaceship to catch up to the older one, unless "space folding" gets you somewhere really fast. The paperwork says he joined the crew in 2118, but it doesn't say that's when they got to Atelis.

The "Arrivers" are the astronauts coming from the cockpit to the realms.
[Edit] Looks like I misunderstood this also. They did come from the cockpit to the realms, but they arrived on a more advanced ship and docked. One older astronaut would have been awake when they arrived, but it never says what year the new ship got there. Maybe the Arrivers went to start the Embrace and the awake astronaut stayed in the cockpit area until Marta killed one of the Arrivers.

That's why we don't see three dead astronauts or see their bodies in hypersleep.
Missing astronauts would be even more confusing. Their three pods are open.
[Edit] One of the older sleep chambers is open, but the other two are still in deep sleep. The three new pods aren't open, but we can assume this was for Turner and the other two Arrivers.

An astronaut would be needed to have authority with the AI to do the final journey, which is why only the "Arrivers" could do it. Why send three more people all the way across space to do something someone on the ship can already do?
[Edit] Because they couldn't! They needed the advanced technology that came with the Arrivers to reach their destination.

I misunderstood a lot because the game was constantly crashing the first time I played it and I didn't get all of the narration. That's why I'm trying to make sense of the story now.

I replayed the game, and she never says she's recording anything. There is only one line where she says "I'm a performer," so I guess we were supposed to infer she's recording from that? And she made the recording knowing that Turner wouldn't be seeing it until after she was dead? So if she made a recording seven years after she put Turner into Deep Sleep, she only needed Turner to be asleep for 7 years to wipe his memory. The ship was waiting for the Embrace to complete it's mission. Why would she wait until old age and death when she could have gone to the new planet? Who woke Turner up? What if he never woke up and the ship just sat there? She could
have made the recording, hid somewhere, and woke him up right after. The fact that she is dead still doesn't make sense to me. There's no reason for her to be dead other than a plot device.

[kupuguy]

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

Originally posted by kupuguy:

She recorded her message seven years after putting him to sleep, but we know it is about 112 years since the he and the other arrivers got to Atelis. I don't think we know how long there was between their arrival and it all going pear-shaped but seems likely he's been asleep for over a century.

I'll have to check the dates again, but I don't think there were three additional people who came to the ship at the end of the journey. The print out lists the various roles, but that doesn't mean there were three crew and then three "Arrivers." The three crew/astronauts took turns in Deep Sleep for one year, so he would have been on the ship for well over 100 years before appearing to the Keepers in the Realms. The "Arrivers" are the astronauts coming from the cockpit to the realms. They were only "Arrivers" to the Keepers. That's why we don't see three dead astronauts or see their bodies in hypersleep. Missing astronauts would be even more confusing. Their three pods are open. An astronaut would be needed to have authority with the AI to do the final journey, which is why only the "Arrivers" could do it. Why send three more people all the way across space to do something someone on the ship can already do?

The printout says they sent the Nikola to upgrade the Atelis to have the space-fold technology which was not something the original (steam and solar sail) ship could do and therefore also not something the original crew knew anything about. Turner was part of the Nikola crew, not part of the original Atelis crew so I think they were arrivers to the Atelis crew as well as to the keepers.

Oh and there are two closed sleep pods (presumably operational given the green lights) near the printouts as well as one open one. I wonder who's in those.

[Diamond Knight]

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

Originally posted by kupuguy:

She recorded her message seven years after putting him to sleep, but we know it is about 112 years since the he and the other arrivers got to Atelis. I don't think we know how long there was between their arrival and it all going pear-shaped but seems likely he's been asleep for over a century.

I'll have to check the dates again, but I don't think there were three additional people who came to the ship at the end of the journey. The print out lists the various roles, but that doesn't mean there were three crew and then three "Arrivers." The three crew/astronauts took turns in Deep Sleep for one year, so he would have been on the ship for well over 100 years before appearing to the Keepers in the Realms. The "Arrivers" are the astronauts coming from the cockpit to the realms. They were only "Arrivers" to the Keepers. That's why we don't see three dead astronauts or see their bodies in hypersleep. Missing astronauts would be even more confusing. Their three pods are open. An astronaut would be needed to have authority with the AI to do the final journey, which is why only the "Arrivers" could do it. Why send three more people all the way across space to do something someone on the ship can already do?

I don't rememeber if anywhere says how many people came but the final notes describe the arrivers as "the arrival of a final crew". The arrivers and the initial crew are 2 different sets of people. The crew mentioned in the notes I believe is a generic crew that lives and dies on the atelis and gets replenished over time. The crew will die a lot faster than the keepers as they only sleep for 1 year. Maybe as upgrades come it brings along a new set of people. If you sleep just 1 year. You'll die before halfway through from 1910 to 2118

The Atelis was specifically programmed to allow only an arriver to start the final jump and the astronaut crew could not do it themselves. The arrivers signature is probably programmed in at a future date. You don't really want any of the earlier astronauts to be able to do it either. The people in charge of the mission (mission control), wherever they are, decide when the mission is done. You don't want any astonaut getting cold feet and lonely intefering with the plan trying to jump early, turning the ship around etc. It's not their job.

Moreover, the Atelis launched in 1910 and Turner was only assigned to the Atelis in 2118. So he is not part of the initial crew also.

Don't remember seeing if the pods were open. Will check again. It's not entirely unreasonable that turner tampers with the pods so the crew doesn't wake up or just kills them outright as they may not agree with his methods.

I checked: none of the pods look open to me.

[Onyx Mystique]

Originally posted by ArchNicholas:

That's about 112 years since his Ensign duties aboard Nikola began, and looks like he has had a hard time holding jobs as he kept winding up in prison. I think he was demoted down to Ensign too. No idea how many years into his Nikola service that he actually got to the Atelis, but considering they caught up to it, they probably used the Space Folding tech to get to it pretty quick. Is the Nikola the ship still at the fore, or was the bridge already part of the Atelis?

The materials say that they built the 1900's ship with docking for future upgrades, so it looks like part of Nikola docked onto Atelis to upgrade it when the Arrivers got there. I didn't realize "Nikola" referred to the ship that traveled to Atelis, so that makes sense. Now I have to go back and look at that again.

[Edit] Yes, he joins the crew of the Nikola in 2118 with the mission to "recon and augment" Atelis. So, the timeframe partly depends on how long it took for Nikola to reach Atelis. If they already had the technology to "space-fold," it might have been a matter of hours, but then it seems like there wouldn't be a need for the three sleep pods on Nikola if that was the case.

[Onyx Mystique]

Originally posted by kupuguy:

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

I'll have to check the dates again, but I don't think there were three additional people who came to the ship at the end of the journey. The print out lists the various roles, but that doesn't mean there were three crew and then three "Arrivers." The three crew/astronauts took turns in Deep Sleep for one year, so he would have been on the ship for well over 100 years before appearing to the Keepers in the Realms. The "Arrivers" are the astronauts coming from the cockpit to the realms. They were only "Arrivers" to the Keepers. That's why we don't see three dead astronauts or see their bodies in hypersleep. Missing astronauts would be even more confusing. Their three pods are open. An astronaut would be needed to have authority with the AI to do the final journey, which is why only the "Arrivers" could do it. Why send three more people all the way across space to do something someone on the ship can already do?

The printout says they sent the Nikola to upgrade the Atelis to have the space-fold technology which was not something the original (steam and solar sail) ship could do and therefore also not something the original crew knew anything about. Turner was part of the Nikola crew, not part of the original Atelis crew so I think they were arrivers to the Atelis crew as well as to the keepers.

Oh and there are two closed sleep pods (presumably operational given the green lights) near the printouts as well as one open one. I wonder who's in those.

Yes, I edited my post after I went back and re-read the materials (again). My game was crashing every 30 seconds and I was just trying to get to the end the first time I played. I didn't have narration for a lot of it and I missed the reading materials, so I totally misunderstood the ending the first time. Everyone is so sure she was recording. I thought she was a literal ghost! I also thought the realms were imaginary, like the Matrix. I knew I had missed something, so I replayed the game, but it still doesn't make sense that she wouldn't want to wake up Turner after his memories were wiped and go with to the new planet. The ship was just sitting there waiting for the Embrace and upgrade activation. She knew this and just dilly-dallied in the conservatory? And for decades, she doesn't clean up the paint or pick up the chairs? The only thing that makes sense is she lived out her life and programmed his pod to open soon after she died, but she was a skeleton, so she had to have been dead for a while. Why would she die and not leave anyone Keeping if Keeping was so essential?

[Onyx Mystique]

Originally posted by Diamond Knight:

Originally posted by Onyx Mystique:

I'll have to check the dates again, but I don't think there were three additional people who came to the ship at the end of the journey. The print out lists the various roles, but that doesn't mean there were three crew and then three "Arrivers." The three crew/astronauts took turns in Deep Sleep for one year, so he would have been on the ship for well over 100 years before appearing to the Keepers in the Realms. The "Arrivers" are the astronauts coming from the cockpit to the realms. They were only "Arrivers" to the Keepers. That's why we don't see three dead astronauts or see their bodies in hypersleep. Missing astronauts would be even more confusing. Their three pods are open. An astronaut would be needed to have authority with the AI to do the final journey, which is why only the "Arrivers" could do it. Why send three more people all the way across space to do something someone on the ship can already do?

I don't rememeber if anywhere says how many people came but the final notes describe the arrivers as "the arrival of a final crew". The arrivers and the initial crew are 2 different sets of people. The crew mentioned in the notes I believe is a generic crew that lives and dies on the atelis and gets replenished over time. The crew will die a lot faster than the keepers as they only sleep for 1 year. Maybe as upgrades come it brings along a new set of people. If you sleep just 1 year. You'll die before halfway through from 1910 to 2118

The Atelis was specifically programmed to allow only an arriver to start the final jump and the astronaut crew could not do it themselves. The arrivers signature is probably programmed in at a future date. You don't really want any of the earlier astronauts to be able to do it either. The people in charge of the mission (mission control), wherever they are, decide when the mission is done. You don't want any astonaut getting cold feet and lonely intefering with the plan trying to jump early, turning the ship around etc. It's not their job.

Moreover, the Atelis launched in 1910 and Turner was only assigned to the Atelis in 2118. So he is not part of the initial crew also.

Don't remember seeing if the pods were open. Will check again. It's not entirely unreasonable that turner tampers with the pods so the crew doesn't wake up or just kills them outright as they may not agree with his methods.

I checked: none of the pods look open to me.

I edited my earlier post, so I understand now that the Arrivers were sent to "catch up" to the Atelis. I didn't understand that part when I first read it because I didn't understand anything when I first finished the game. Like the technology difference because I thought it was all like the Matrix and they were just lied to about everything (including the realms) by advanced people and were dreaming about everything in the sleep pods.