History WMG / Bastion

* Or, due to Zulf's destroying of the monument, the Kid's failure to get a few cores and shards, and the Ura's attacks on it The Bastion will never have to send the survivors all the way back into the past before the calamity. Even in New game +, Rucks will make comments about already saying things or having deja vu on saying them, so the memory function is at least partly functional just like the time travel part, sadly they will never enough power to go back far enough, and thus be stuck in the loop till the kid breaks it.

[[WMG: [[spoiler:The Bastion never has enough power to rewind time far enough.]]]]
While it's not explicit, when starting a NewGamePlus, [[spoiler:Rucks' last words to the Kid at the end of the game are heard, right before the narration starts at the very beginning with the Kid waking up.]]

This could easily suggest that while [[spoiler: The Bastion's true function actually works, its intent fails miserably, both in that it will never be able to truly erase the Calamity and that there is no way to inform the past of this fact, causing a recursive loop until someone breaks it.]]

* Or, due to [[spoiler: Zulf's destroying of the monument, the Kid's failure to get a few cores and shards, and the Ura's attacks on it]] The Bastion will never have to send the survivors all the way back into the past before the calamity. Even in New game +, Rucks will make comments about already saying things or having deja vu on saying them, so the memory function is at least partly functional just like the [[spoiler: time travel part, sadly they will never enough power to go back far enough, and thus be stuck in the loop till the kid breaks it.]]

One of the endings allows you to [[spoiler: rewind time to before the Calamity. With this, every time somebody plays the game can be canon, and all cases of NewGamePlus are simply a sign that things happened differently before the Calamity.]]
* Because of this, one could say that [[spoiler: the characters are doomed to be trapped in a time loop for as many times as the player chooses to rewind time, the loop only broken when they finally decide to leave the Calamity in place.]]
* However, another theory could be [[spoiler: the Calamity CAN be prevented through repeated timelines, but each time you replay the game, that is the product of a 'failed' timeline wherein the incremental changes where not enough to prevent it. The only way to go back and prevent the Calamity from ever occurring will be from the very game where you choose to reset the world and then, rather than starting a NewGamePlus, [[ImpossibleTask never play that game file again]].]]

Possibly even his father. Both have white hair, even though Ruck's could be from age it seems to be implied that white hair is unusual in Caelondia as both the Kid and his mother were ostracized for it. Also how coincidental is it that the [[spoiler: man who created the Rippling walls, The Bastion, and helped create the Calamity]] is alive and so is this one other guy who happens to have the city crest which is somehow connected to [[spoiler: the Bastions ResetButton function]].

*** Rucks was able to survive due to already being at the bastion before the calamity happened. [[spoiler: The restoration ending which shows the survivors what they were doing before the calamity, shows him next to the monument.]]
* Somewhat related: the first time I heard about the Bastion's [[spoiler: time travel powers]], I almost immediately thought Rucks would turn out to be [[spoiler: Kid himself, stuck in a time loop]].
* [[spoiler: "He reminds me of myself when I was his age."]]

[[WMG: [[spoiler: The "reverse time" ending goes first, then the "evacuation" ending on the New Game Plus]]]]
[[spoiler: At first, the Kid thinks it would be a great idea to restore time to before the Calamity. When he finds out this doesn't work, he decides to go along with evacuating everyone, since it's the best option for everyone. Besides, the Kid keeps a lot of stuff on the NewGamePlus, but no one else can remember a thing. He clearly knows a lot more that it looks like.]]
* [[spoiler: After all, the player is sure to pick up that the reset didn't work and since he's an extension of the player...]]
* [[spoiler:Heck, even without the Kid remembering, it's clear that some variables are randomized since everything doesn't go exactly the same. Provided there was any chance at all of him choosing the second option, do that enough times and you're bound to get it eventually]].

The Kid, Rucks and co. will link up with them [[spoiler:after they evacuate the Bastion]]. Though this is more of [[WideEyedIdealist the optimist in me]] speaking than anything from the game.
* Don't be so negative about that - After all, the background during [[spoiler:the Evacuation ending shows the party sailing, SkyPirate style, towards a small town on the edge of a large, probably solid landmass.]] Personally, I think that they [[spoiler:fly the Bastion back to the Cael homeland. [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic Set their sails and fly back to home, sweet home,]] and then dock that thing right on their doorstep, so to speak.]]

* Also, it should be noted that the Calamity [[spoiler: is specifically described to only have targeted Ura, with Caelondia added in at the last minute. Assuming that these aren't the only two countries in the world, then presumably the rest of the world is untouched by the Calamity.]]

* It's almost explicitly stated that Caelondia is a colony, presumably on a different continent then the Cael homeland. Since distances are never mentioned, and the only other city (If it can be called that) Kid visits is the Tazal Terminals, it seems fairly reasonable that only a (relatively) small area of the world was affected. After all, the [[spoiler: Calamity gun was just a weapon of mass destruction, not a full-fledged doomsday weapon]].

Think about it; The game pretty much spells out Zulf was a diplomat, so making friends with Caelondians was his job. He most likely planned to get back in touch with the rest (now that [[spoiler: he was no longer forced to stay]]) and broker a peace deal between the survivors. When [[spoiler: he found the journal and found out what cause the calamity he was pissed off and tried to restart the war instead.]]

Meanwhile think about Zia's motives; before the calamity [[spoiler: every Caelondian she knew either mistrusted her, played with her feelings and stabbed her in the back or otherwise gave her nothing but FantasticRacism.]] While it's possible she didn't hold a grudge (since she was culturally Caelondian anyway), keep in mind that her song/theme is basically (well, see my next WMG, but still) a threat aimed at Caelondia from the Ura. Therefore it's possible that [[spoiler: when she slipped away to investigate what Zulf told her, she disregarded her harp for being Caelondian, met the other Ura with the intention of betraying The Kid and Rucks to them, realised that they were still jerkasses (given how well their meeting went) and decided to side with The Kid when he turned up to rescue her.]]

Reading the lyrics it sounds a lot like a threat from the Ura to Caelondia. However when you think about the double meanings in the other songs with lyrics ([[spoiler: Zulf's theme is about going home while he's slowly dying, however it also echos The Kid returning home to finding his mother had died and someone had simply pocketed the money he sent back, Coming Home has the going back in time business and The Pantheon is both Rucks having a RageAtTheHeavens and lamenting his own mistakes]]) it could just as easily be a warning (after all, if the Ura had religious beliefs against living above ground and they were on good enough terms to send a diplomat they might be inclined to "warn" the Caelondians. It could also imply an intention to build stronger ties; "So build that wall and build it strong/'Cause we'll be there before too long" could mean "Make sure you're well defended, because we're going to attack" or it could mean "make sure you've got some good housing sorted out for when we join you".

This is a theory I saw represented in the main page, but it's not here so I'll add it. The logic goes that the song is indeed talking about how the Ura are going to come and wipe out Caelondia in spite of the Rippling Walls... but if Zia is from Caelondia, where would she learn a song like that? When you first begin to hear it at Prosper Bluff, Rucks says "there the Kid hears something he ain't heard in a long while. How's it go again? Yeah, that's the one." Indicating the Kid's heard the song before, and implying he himself has as well, so where did ''they'' ever learn it? The song wasn't written by the Ura, it's form Caelondia. So it's not the Ura saying "OMG we're so badass and we're gonna beat you," it's the Cael saying "OMG the Ura are so scary and we're all doomed." Not to mention, this ties in perfectly with how [[spoiler: the Calamity was caused by an attempt to stave off the threat of the Ura]], while the Ura were ''actually'' trying to make peace; and with how Caelondian-raised Ura like Zia aren't allowed to have contact with their homeland, so neither side knows all that much about the other. To the Cael, the Ura are like some mythic boogeyman, ambassadors be damned.

[[WMG: Rucks is actually [[spoiler: the Kid]].]]

[[WMG: The Kid is [[spoiler: Roland Deschain.]]]]

* Alternately, The Kid is [[spoiler: Arthur Eld]].

He's at least 20 years older than the other 3 main characters. So who says one can't move up the ranks of an organization? Maybe the reason no one expects someone to take multiple tours of duty as a Mason is because they expect you to either retire or change career paths. He could have started as a Mason, moved up to being a Trigger [[spoiler:and obviously ended a Mancer]].

*** [[spoiler: But Rucks also designed the Walls. Which is kind of weird since he was a soldier in the war yet was already engineering major infrastructure for the city, and that's if we avoid how old he'd have to be then.]]

[[spoiler: It's heavily implied in the game that this isn't the Kid's first go 'round. Why would it be Rucks'? Just as the game has kid return his next attempt with improved weapons, Rucks' might come back remember another career path in his life that somehow helped lead to the calamity]].

[[WMG: Caelondia [[spoiler:eventually becomes the city of Oneiros, seen in ''VideoGame/CliveBarkersUndying'']]]]
[[spoiler:Think about it. Both were once magnificent cities destroyed by a mysterious disaster, and remain as chunks of masonry floating in an infinite void. Both also feature pieces of land spinning up to form walkways for the player's convenience. Sure, Oneiros looks a lot more decrepit, but that's because it's been in such a state for so much longer.]]

[[WMG: [[spoiler:Zia was deliberately manipulated to give Caelondia a reason to use their new weapon.]] ]]
[[spoiler: The young man who befriended/seduced Zia was an agent of the government, who was engineering an opportunity to do what many of the people of the city still wanted to do - attack the Ura and eliminate the threat of war once and for all, and/or take revenge for lost loved ones. He might've been motivated by lost family, or they might have offered him some form of payment. Either way, he won Zia's trust with deception, deliberately turned Venn against Zia, gave Zia the idea to run away, and told the guards where she'd be so that the government of Caelondia would have something to point at when people criticized them for attacking the Ura during what was apparently peacetime. ("He was using his own daughter to sell City secrets to the Ura! Surely they were planning an attack!") Since the Ura were making overtures of peace - see Zulf's presence there - they needed something like this so that they could act with impunity, and Zia was just a convenient pawn to them.]]

* I'm not sure this makes a huge amount of sense, but it wouldn't surprise me if beneath the Monument [[spoiler:(the bit where the Kid can choose which Protocol to implement at the end)]] was the business end of the full-scale Calamity Cannon. Having a rewind button on your WMD and a safe place from which to activate it and watch the fireworks are both fantastic design decisions.

* Don't be so negative about that - After all, the background during [[spoiler:the Evacuation ending shows the party sailing, SkyPirate style, towards a small town on the edge of a large, probably solid landmass.]] Personally, I think that they [[spoiler:fly the Bastion back to the Cael homeland. [[CrowningMusicOfAwesome Set their sails and fly back to home, sweet home,]] and then dock that thing right on their doorstep, so to speak.]]

Assuming that the hair is genetic and rare in Caelondia it is not out of the question that it is rare because it's a primarily Ura trait brought in by the limited number of refugees. That would also explain why it was a source of disapproval and anger among Caels, he is the symbol of intermixing with the enemy. It may also explain the lack of a father, it's not uncommon in times of war for soldiers to take comfort in local girls and promise to marry them only to leave them high and dry with an illegitimate child. Finally who else would the very egocentric Caels steal from and possibly murder? An Ura living in there mitts, a frail old women.

Rucks states that the Kid joined the military because "School ain't workin' out." Assuming shared school-ages between Earth and Caeldonia, he would drop out of highschool (age '''17'''), opt out of college (age '''18-19'''), or drop out of college ('''19-20'''). That gives us a four-year age-range. After his five-year tour (I think it was five), that puts him at '''22-25''' years old. His second tour was interupted by the Calamity, which gives us a range of 0-5 additional years, but more likely 1-4 (at least one full year served and at least one full year left). This give us a final range of '''23-29''', not a child by any means, but still young enough that fifty-or-sixty-something Rucks would be justified calling him "Kid."

* Or, due to [[spoiler: Zulf's destroying of the monument, the Kid's failure to get a few cores and shards, and the Ura's attacks on it]] The Bastion will never have to send the survivors all the way back into the past before the calamity. Even in New game +, Rucks will make comments about already saying things or having dejavu on saying them, so the memory function is at least partly functional just like the [[spoiler: time travel part, sadly they will never enough power to go back far enough, and thus be stuck in the loop till the kid breaks it.]]

[[WMG: Zia planned to betray the Bastion to the Ura survivors, while Zulf was completly sincere]]

Meanwhile think about Zia's motives; before the calamity [[spoiler: every Caelondian she knew either mistrusted her, played with her feelings and stabbed her in the back or otherwise gave her nothing but FantasticRacism.]] While it's possible she didn't hold a grudge (since she was culturally Caelondian anyway), keep in mind that her song/theme is basically (well, see my next WMG, but still) a threat aimed at Caelondia from the Ura. Therefore it's possible that [[spoiler: when she slipped away to investigate what Zulf told her, she disgarded her harp for being Caelondian, met the other Ura with the intention of betraying The Kid and Rucks to them, realised that they were still jerkasses (given how well their meeting went) and decided to side with The Kid when he turned up to rescue her.]]

* I think Zia's statements around the end sort of imply otherwise. She saw what happened since the end of the calamity in a largely positive light. It's unlikely that if she only joined the Kid because she found out that the Ura were just as bad, that she'd really want to stick around for skypiracy with him. There's also a huge difference between disliking a people and nation that discriminate against you and planning to destroy the efforts of a pair of them desperately trying to survive. Where Zulf saw things from a larger diplomatic perspective [having lived as an Ura and an ambassador], Zia's problems were all internal to Caelondia; she might have had a romanticed picture of them in her head but she didn't have a reason to sell out the two who helped save her to the Ura.

* There's validity to this but it misses the critical element of the Caelondians. Caelondia suffers from Hubris, turning the Gods into toys. From this point of view, Caelondia is basically a big tower of Babal; they're building walls to reach the Gods and sooner or later it's all going to blow up in their face whether or not the Ura do anything about it. While the Caelondians are trying to build their great civilization and suffering from the whole Hubris of man, the Ura are living in a humble and maintainable way. The message, "We'll be there before too long" can be taken to either mean "When you collapse and are just a hiccup of history, we'll move back in and pick up where we left of". However just as easily, it could be a sign of mending branching and friendliness, which better fits Zia's role to the heroes; When everything collapses, we'll be there to pick it up and help start over.

** It's an interesting enough theory that could be salvaged as Rucks is the Kid from an early run of the Bastion from a timeline where the Ura really did overrun Caelondia. Or some other tragedy occured where he was the sole survivor. In this instance, the Bastion sent him further back than the later cases and things played out differently, so that he managed to delay things a while and grow old why trying to ensure the peace. The Kid this time around is doing much the same but until he manages to push back the tragedy even farther, the same characters will keep looping over and over. The main issue with this is that Rucks doesn't seem to identify with the Kid's past which, mysterious and unreliable as his narration is seems odd if he is infact the kid.

*** That isn't as odd as it sounds. As it says on TheEngineer, before a certain point in history all engineers were military engineers. It's quite possible that the project to build the walls was spearheaded by the Triggers and the Masons (Rucks amoung their ranks) split off as an engineering corps (since every other public service branch seemed to be militarised).

** Rucks outright states it in his narration. While he does generally paint the Caelondians in a good light, the fact that he admits a few minutes later that they were building railways over their lands [which you later find out are subterreanian implying that they may have been causing cave ins], it seems pretty reasonable to assume that this was the cause of war and the Ura are ready to take back lands taken from them by Caelondian settlers.

** That seems a bit like launching a nuclear missile from a fallout shelter. Granted, this is done, but it severely jeapordizes your "safe haven" to make it the one place the enemy would need to attack first. Especially since it doesn't seem to be very well defended.

Judging by the beginning of New Game Plus mode, the rewind point starts just as the Kid is waking up in his bed, the time when the Calamity happens. We know her father was working for the Mancers who were also designing the Bastion if Rucks is to be believed. He sabotaged the Calamity Cannon out of a desire for revenge for what the Caelondians put him through, and if he knew they were also designing a failsafe to undo its effects, he'd most likely break that too so that his revenge couldn't be recovered from. Disabling it entirely would have risked drawing attention and made them avoid using the Cannon long enough to find his sabotage, so he just set it to only go back to just as the Calamity happened. This would work perfectly - not only would they not be able to do anything about it, but the people who had made him suffer would have to relive him killing them again and again, forever. Talk about a dish best served cold.

[[WMG: The Distillery works by The Kid taking a shot of each beverage before taking the skyway of the The Bastion.]]

[[WMG: The game is partially an homage to BloodMeridian.]]

[[WMG: The game takes place in the [[Franchise/BioShock Bioshock]] multiverse]]

Think about it; The game pretty much spells out Zulf was a diplomat, so making friends with Caelondians was his job. He most likely planned to get back in touch with the rest (now that [[spoiler: he was no longer forced to stay]]) and broker a peace deal between the survivors. When [[spoiler: he found the journal and found out what cause the calamity he was [[CaptainObvious pissed off]] and tried to restart the war instead.]]