Hiveswap’s out, and as always, it’s theory time. Today I want to talk to you about the monsters that kick off the game’s plot.

Now, first and foremost people are going to note that with their eyeless faces and green insides, they look an awful lot like the First Guardians. Obviously, they’re much weaker in comparison, with actual first guardians being enough powerful enough to sterilize planets and kill universes. Also unlike first guardians, they seem to black rather than blank white. What’s up with that?

Well, before we can answer that question, we must first answer a different one. Namely, who created them, and why?

We learn while playing through the game that Jude Harley has been tracking the activities of a mysterious cult that appears to have been watching the Claire home for some time. When the monsters show up, he concludes that the two are connected, and he is almost certainly right.

Now, there are a handfull of supernatural beings that the cult could be worshipping, and given the creatures in front of us, Becqurel would be a safe guess, but here’s the thing:** they weren’t trying to scare Joey onto Alternia. If anything, they were trying to cut the power to shut down the portal and eat her before she could go through. **Why does this matter? Because when she did end up there Doc Scratch secured her communication, suggesting that whatever her purpose is, the good doctor needs her in some way to assure that the trolls play the game and universe C is created, something a first guardian would support since their purpose is to make sure the the players survive to enter the session.

It’s not just the first guardians that depend on Joey being there. Pretty much every god-like entity needs them to create the new session. English, Skaia, the Denizens, Billious Slick. There’s only one divine party that outright opposes the start of the game, and if any of these beings would have a cult on modern day earth it’s them:

The Noble Circle of Horrorterrors

Okay, horrorterrors. Makes sense. That’s why the have the tentacles and look so freakish. The cultists don’t want the earth to be meteor’ed, and the horrorterrors don’t want English to be created. Problem solved?

Not quite. We’ve solved one half of the equation, but we still don’t have an explanation for why the monsters look like first guardians. Assuming ectobiology existed in the 90s and the cultists knew about bec, they probably still wouldn’t be able to get his paradox slime since that only gets created if the being you’re trying to appearify is supposed to be somewhere else: not a problem for beings that can teleport.

No, their only option would be to work off the first guardian sequence hidden in the player’s subconscious. But since Rose hadn’t written it yet or even arrived, where the hell were they supposed to get it. It’s not like anyone else had a journal full of repeating sequences of 4 characters, right?