Line #114 WMG/TheSecretWorld


1	[[WMG:There is a reason ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'' didn't have a WMG page until December 16, 2012 at creation]]
2	If only because a game of this nature would have had a very long one by then. Specifically, the Council of Venice has been suppressing all speculation on The Secret World, just in case the guess comes too close to reality and risks to blow the masquerade.
3
4	[[WMG:Everything in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=CYHJ-Od5WrM Everything is True Trailer]] will be implemented in the game.]]
5	...or otherwise be the central focus of future content.
6
7	For Simplicity's sake here's is a list
8
9	[X] The Signals disrupting our thoughts\
10	[X] The Host that was here before us\
11	[X] The City on the Moon\
12	[X] The Missing eleven days\
13	[X] The Earth is Hollow\
14	[X] The Wagtails\
15	[X] Portals in time and space\
16	[X] The Bees returning\
17	[X] The Eight that watch over us\
18	[X] Solomon's key\
19	[X] The Tower of Babel [[spoiler: Mentioned in the Phoenician Lore.]]\
20	[X] The Old Gods\
21	[X] Atlantis\
22	[ ] The Ark of the Covenant\
23	[X] Stonehenge's beacon\
24	[X] The Fountain of Youth\
25	[X] Immortal beings\
26	[ ] The Planet's aligning\
27	[X] The End of Days\
28	[ ] The Dark Places\
29	[X] The Filth\
30	[X] The Morning Light\
31	[X] The Dreamers\
32	[X] The Demons marching against us\
33	[X] Lilith's Children\
34	[ ] The Blight in the Garden of Eden\
35	[X] Digging too Deep\
36	[X] Pandora's Box
37
38	[[WMG: The Tokyo Incident Team is alive and well]]
39	However, they have stayed in Tokyo to help contain the filth (with limited success) and are looking for Sarah.
40	* [[spoiler: Partially confirmed as they return in the Manhattan raid zone.]]
41
42	[[WMG:Every hub will have a raid instance in the future.]]
43	With the introduction of the Raid zone in New York, every hub will have to fight the filth, or other hostiles on home turf in similar raid instances. All in very public and highly populated areas. As a result Council of Venice agents will be running around trying to explain the situation to the increasingly suspicious public.
44
45	* The London instance will take place on either:
46	** Trafalgar Square
47	** Buckingham Palace
48	** The Tower of London
49
50	* The Seoul Instance will take place:
51	** Cheonggyecheon
52	** Seoul Olympic Park
53
54	[[WMG:Related to the above: Future Zone predictions]]
55	* Japan
56	** Confirmed. Issue 9 is the start of the Tokyo arc.
57	* New Orleans/Louisiana
58	** Various characters have mentioned it in passing several times as a supernatural hotbed.
59	* Venice, as home of the Council of Venice, could serve as a neutral hub.
60	** If so, then Venice's story segment will also have more focus on Investigation and Sabotage Missions working to smoke out the moles on the Council, Orochi or otherwise.
61	** Confirmed. Issue 8 unlocks the Council of Venice headquarters in the Sunken Library as a neutral hub. No quest-givers, and you don't visit the surface city proper, but it does come with the simulator and its challenge missions, and the story mission in Venice has you chasing down a Phoenician spy.
62	* Greece, see below to the whereabouts of the Sanctuary of Secrets.
63	* {{Area 51}}, with the revelation that the Aliens are actually a type of supernatural creatures the US Government has kept contained 'till now.
64	** One could include the surrounding Nevada desert for some [[TheWestern Western]] influences -- a [[TheWildWest Wild West]] GhostTown turned tourist trap, [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty Donner Party-style escapades]], the ghosts of old gunfighters, a lost UsefulNotes/{{Mormon\|ism}} colony, Native American lore (specifically Paiute or Shoshone instead of Wabanaki), etc. And of course, [[BigCreepyCrawlies giant radioactive (or Filth-infected) bugs]] from the more modern age. (Speaking of, how does radiation affect the Filth?) Alternatively, instead of Area 51, they could use Dulce Base in New Mexico instead for much the same feel, which would also allow them to get in the Anasazi ruins.
65	* Central America, given the importance of the Maya. This could also be where they implement dinosaurs.
66	* Antarctica
67	** According to sources from Issue 11 [[spoiler:a Gaia engine was unearthed from a ruined city in Antarctica.]]
68	** [[spoiler: Amusingly, because your character is occupied in South Africa during ''Dawn of the Morninglight'', a [[NoodleIncident crisis in Antarctica]] comes and goes without the player ever taking part.]]
69	* The Congo
70	** Some of the lore in Issue 10 mentions the Congo. Also [[spoiler:a different strain of Filth in Tokyo came from cargo aboard a ship from Africa.]]
71	** Confirmed in ''Dawn of the Morninglight'', the factions have set their sights on the Congo [[spoiler:as it is the reported location of Phillip Marquard]].
72	* The Moon
73	* Norway. The Vikings have played a role in the lore, being the origin of the Draug, and it would also be an opportunity to mine Scandinavian folklore -- trolls, huldras, nattmaras, Myth/NorseMythology, etc. The country's occupation by the Nazis during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII also creates an opportunity to bring in the {{Ghostapo}}, much like how Transylvania was filled with SovietSuperscience. It doesn't hurt that the game's developers, including the original designer Ragnar Tørnquist, are Norwegian.
74	* Scotland, Cassandra King was last sighted there and it is inevitable that she and the players will meet again.
75
76	[[WMG:You are only partially in control of your character]]
77	ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. You're not really your character, you're actually The Bee that stung them. You and your character are in a symbiotic relationship but ultimately two different entities inhabiting the same body. This is also why your character demonstrates different skills than what 'you' selected, why you seem so intuitively directed in most of your missions (I mean, half the missions tend to involve characters not event TALKING TO YOU, they're just making offhand comments). Then again, maybe YOU'RE the character and the bee is you in the cutscene. which sort of segues into my next guess...
78
79	[[WMG:The Bees took our voices]]
80	And that's why we're all Silent Protagonists in cutscenes. The blessing of the Bees comes with a price, possibly as far as losing almost all communication skills. (we don't even nod or shake our heads when it would help)
81	* Incorrect, there are several cutscenes with gestures, as well as quests that require your character to communicate. Also, you can quite clearly ask questions about specific subjects. It is possible that characters are mute, but telepathic, but it is very clear that characters can communicate.
82	* In some cutscenes we're clearly trying to say something only to be interrupted - being mute you'd try to jesticulate or mime, not open oyur mouth, judging by short real life mute experience.
83
84	[[WMG:The whereabouts of the Sanctuary of Secrets and Melissonomoi?]]
85	Considering their importance and involvement before Melissa's trail ran cold in Greece and the launch of the game, the absence of the Sanctuary of Secrets from the game proper is appropriately mysterious and worrying. So the question is what happened to them and are they okay?
86
87	[[WMG:The Dragon initiation ritual's female NPC is a Kumiho.]]
88	The half-demon guard Akma who considers her his mistress, the name of the motel, that she hands out moments of 'perfect clarity', the geographic location, so on and so forth.
89
90	[[WMG:The Pyramidion is an artificial intelligence.]]
91	He is basically the embodiment of the world's public telecommunications network. Which is why he is always quoting memes and random PA announcements.
92
93	[[WMG:Building on the above. He's the spirit of the Architect that built the Labyrinthine]]
94	Geary mentions that the man who built it in the first place went mad and killed himself. What it it was the final step to finish the project. The reason he spews memes is that his spirit is now inhabiting the internet and it's a bit too much for him.
95
96	[[WMG:The Secret World takes place in the same world as Alan Wake, and the Taken are really people infected by the Filth.]]
97	Kingsmouth wasn't the only small town to be affected by occult events. Bright Falls was hit by the Filth and taken off the map, along with one Alan Wake, before the secret societies even noticed. Alan Wake proved to somehow be immune to the Filth's effects, but the rest of the town did not, leaving Alan alone in a Filth corrupted version of Bright Falls with crazy, infected townies trying to kill him to prevent his immunity from ever being discovered and exploited. The Dark Presence is not the eldritch abomination itself, and is instead a single Dreamer sent to watch over the infection of the town. Alan's comment at the end of "It's not a lake, it's an ocean" is him realizing that he has only solved one very small portion of a much larger problem.
98
99	[[WMG:The Bees either carefully influence which faction finds the player character, or choose player characters to fit nearby factions]]
100	Three parts to this guess:
101
102	1. If the bee chosen people are to effectively fill their expected roles of protecting the world from filth issues, it makes sense to make sure they join the right faction. (The most extreme example of this might be, say, a rule focused "know your place/bonds of loyalty" person joining the Illuminati, but certainly having a more independent minded person in the Templar might not go well either. The Dragon could maybe work with most personalities, but some would likely be better fits as well for that faction.)
103
104	2. The bees have been gathering all sorts of personal information about all sorts of people for a long time, and with this history likely have the ability to accurately determine who would work well as a secret worlder and which faction each of those people would best fit with.
105
106	3. In a metagame sense, it would be a useful back explanation for why many players will dress, act, and think of their characters as having the personality of the factions, but almost no players will act as if their characters are misfits.
107
108	There are two ways I could see this working: either bees simply choose people of a particular personality who are at the right place/time to get noticed by the appropriate faction, and/or they influence faction communication to ensure the "correct" faction is chosen.
109	* Then what does that say about the Bee Infused that are [[spoiler:taken by The Hive]]?
110
111	[[WMG:The Dreamers are the [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Outer Gods and the Filth is a manifestation of Nyarlathotep]]]]
112	After all who else could it be?
113	* Literally anyone else. Nyarly's already been referenced and conflated with Akhenaten, who is, like Nyarly, called the Black Pharaoh. He even serves as the Mouthpiece of the Outer God Aten, just as Nyarly serves as the mouthpiece of Azathoth.
114	* Since Lovecraft was on Solomon Island visiting the Franklin mansion at some point of time it's likely that he knew about the Secret Word. However, this knowledge was given to him indirectly because of a deal with Dr Armitage. In RealLife he confessed that he got inspiration from his nightmares, just like Sam Krieg. So in his dreams Armitage revealed to him certain things about the world, like the existence of the Deep Ones, the Ur-Draugr and the Ak'ab, the Black Pharaoh and the Dreamers but didn't explain anything, allowing him to fill the holes with his own theories, explaining how he was aware of the existence of previous Ages but wrote them as when the Dreamers were awake and before mankind and was completely oblivious to Gaias or the Host's existence.
115	* Since the release of Tokyo, we can say that Nyarly's role is solely occupied by John. He fits both in role and personality, outside his cowardice.
116
117	[[WMG:Carter's first name is Jack.]]
118	It's a rare girl's name. It completes the Film/GetCarter reference made with her Twitter image. It'd make sense that she's embarrassed enough by it to go by her last name.
119
120	[[WMG:Amatsu Mikaboshi is one of the many historical/mythological manifestations of The Filth]]
121	In Myth/JapaneseMythology Amatsu Mikaboshi is seen as a primordial chaos which existed before creation, was shattered and broken, and became part of it upon the creation of the world. There have been cults dedicated to it in ancient Japanese times (the mythical queen Himiko was thought to be amongst them), it is said to be a corrupting force turning love into obsession, anger into hate, etc., and finally, Amatsu Mikaboshi means "The August Star of Heaven". All of these run parallel to many themes of when a cult forms around The Filth and The Dreamers.
122
123	[[WMG:Cassie is Ishtar]]
124	She is shown to have power similar if not more powerful than the Protagonist. She is very flirty but gets incredibly angry and vengeful the second she gets scorned. She seems to know a lot more than Even Loki/Beaumont knows. And she is wearing a shirt that says "Love" on it.
125	* {{Jossed}} according to the Buzzing Lore in Issue 11 Ishtar is identified as being [[spoiler:Lilith]]. Additionally, the same person was also implied to be [[spoiler:[[Myth/ClassicalMythology Athena and Juno]]]].
126
127	[[WMG:Orochi is infected by the Filth]]
128	The plot kicks off with a Filth bomb at Orochi Towers. What if some Orochi executives were subtly infected, as there are levels of Filth infection. When they evacuated they are the reason Orochi keeps messing, and failing horribly, with the Filth.
129	* Somewhat {{jossed}} in Issue 11. There are individual sections which may be infected. But as a whole the organization is surprisingly filth free. That doesn't mean things don't go horribly wrong for them despite that.
130
131	[[WMG:The Dragon are a front of [[Literature/{{Illuminatus}} the Legion of Dynamic Discord]].]]
132
133	[[WMG: The Dragon will become a real life conspiracy theory]]
134	Whether by MemeticMutation of an inside joke, or not, the Dragon will over time be considered a real life secret society by ConspiracyTheorist.
135
136	[[WMG: The Tokyo Bomber becoming the Black Signal came out of the left field for all the parties involved, including [[spoiler:Lilith and Philip Marquard]]]]
137	I just like the idea that nobody saw it coming and now there is unexpected player. Especially since [[spoiler:after Issue #11 John has been freed from all previous obligations to stay in Tokyo and it's anyone's guess what he's going to do next.]]
138
139	[[WMG: The fallout from the Tokyo arc will eventually lead to a CivilWar in all of the factions]]
140	This is most obvious with the Templar, as the Player and Richard Sonnac are both stated to be the "New Templars", and that they have earned the ire of the "Old Templars". Likewise, Kristen Geary makes similar (if more subtle) remarks about an "Old vs. New" dynamic at play in the Illuminati after [[TheOmniscientCouncilOfVagueness The Talking Heads]] give her a PsychicNosebleed. As for The Dragon, while getting [[spoiler: Daimon Koyota]] as the new [[TheConsigliere Voice of the Dragon]] seems to be a big score for them, [[AnarchyIsChaos his more "aggressive" approach to creating chaos]] is perilously close to JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope, and he's just a single MoralEventHorizon away (such as, say, [[NukeEm deciding to nuke a city off the map]], [[TheVirus or unleashing another filth bomb]], [[ForTheEvulz just to see what kind of "chaos" ensues]]) to make a FaceHeelTurn.
141
142	[[WMG: There's more to an Age than time.]]
143	Lilith says "time moves strangely when the ages flip," and she can't put a number on how many years are between the Third and Fourth Ages because of it. Given that the Third Age ended because a Dreamer woke up just a little bit, and a Dreamer is a CosmicHorror that eats stars and does bad things to reality itself, the Ages may be distinct from each other in more abstract ways than the passage of time, resulting in the radically different ways technology developed in previous Ages, among who knows what other differences; perhaps in a previous Age, the Earth was flat or the center of the universe. At the very least, it may be more than the occurrence of an extinction event that ends an Age and starts a new one going.
144	* [[spoiler: CONFIRMED: Buzzing Lore indicates that the end of the Third Age was so bad that Gaia had to do a CosmicRetcon to repair the damage made by the Dreamers. Worse, it's stated that the Gaia Engines had to do that previously and, giving the strain that work makes on the Engines, it's unlikely that it would work again. What this means? If a single Dreamer manages to awake GAME.OVER.]]
145
146	[[WMG: Cassandra King is related to King Solomon in some way]]
147
148	[[WMG: The Zmei are not real]]
149	This sound strange so let me explain:
150
151	1. When explainig about the Truce that Cucuvea enforces the Zmei are NOT mentioned.
152
153	2. In the Lore they are stated as ''characters of fairy-tales''.
154
155	3. The Bees seem to NOT know what they are, explaining that ''Whatever they were, between story and reality, has been corrupted by a parasite''.
156
157	4. Connecting with the former, ''all of them are infected with the Filth''. Of course the Bees say that they bathed in the Filth-infested hot springs.
158
159	5.Lastly, the last line of the Lore is ''Where once they were the dreams of frightened children, now they are the walking dreams of the Dreamers who sleep just beyond space''. What other things were Dreams until the Dreamers infected them? '''The Draug'''.
160
161	It's possible that, following [[spoiler:the kidnaping of children by Dr. Schreber's minions]] the Dreamers connected with them and manifested their boogeyman in reality, turning a tale with no truth into predatory reality. If they did it before, why not again?
162
163	[[WMG: Dr. Schreber is[[spoiler:NOT the first one to discover how a werewolf transformation works]] ]]
164	In Shamain 2012 Event the final boss is an antropomorphic cat called Irusan who rules over a pack of werewolves and is considered another Werewolf as type of enemy. This makes no sense...until you remember that werewolves[[spoiler:only have that form because millenia of folklore makes them believe it's their only form and the experimented children on his laboratory had other animal shapes because they weren't that limited]]. Obviously, considering his use of clothes and magic, he must be very old and had pass the 50 years required to become calmer again. Also, many places that didn't have wolves have oral traditions about werejaguars, werebears, weresharks, werespiders and more. In the Secret World they may be accounts of local werewolves taking shapes in imitation of sacred and/or local animals.[[spoiler:Of course, since Lilith didn't even think very high about her creations is possible that she was unaware of this until Schreber experiments and the Nephilim capturing her made her unable to use this, since she would be using that hability to create different specialised forms of werewolves for her, and likely Samael, army Ages ago.]]
165
166	[[WMG: Lilith was not a common human woman in the First Age, but a [[FallenHero Bee]]]]
167	The Djinn and other creatures existed before humanity and were pissed off about the talking monkeys having the blessing of Gaia, so they attacked them. In their defense, Gaia created the Bees and Lilith was one of their first Chosen, with Cucuvea as another one, but the battles traumaticed her and eventually killed Cucuvea's sister, a common mortal, because of PST. Following this she had to escape, furious with Gaia and everyone for among other things made her unable to die, and found the Host.
168
169	Samael met her and decided that having a Bee as bodyguard and helper was not a bad idea, with her being distracted by his good looks and the plan of the Nephelim to create a New Gaia using the Dreamers. Eventually they took a RelationshipUpgrade and Samael betrayed the Nephelim, making them lost the war as the First Age was destroyed around them.
170
171	During the next Ages they continued researching how to harness the Dreamers power and creating monsters, most of them being considered failures, until the end of the Third Age. Watching how Lilith's arrogance nearly cost the end of Gaia, Samael realiced that they must guide humanity to a point where they will be able to at least imitate First Age Tecnology to repair or even create Gaia Engines. However, Lilith was blinded by her need of revenge over Gaia and that strained their relationship. It's only then when Lilith began to take other lovers like Mozart and the brothers of Babel along with experimenting and creating cults like Sol Invictus and the Deathless, still believing she has a chance of controlling the Dreamers to have her revenge.
172
173	Considering that she A)is inmortal; B) can travel to Agartha without problems; C) her attacks during the fight against the minions of the Black Signal are very similar to the ones the player character does; D) her obvious resistance to the Filth; and E) her absolute betrayed look when Emma choses the player character and the rage and sadness she shows when talking about her relationship with Samael, this story seem likely. The sad thing? If she had follow her husband sugestion and just rule the world using Orochi the events of the game would likely never happened and the two would be still happily married.
174	* Most likely she actually predates the Bees - she's one of 'the' first humans ever. As to her abilities - her body was remade by Samael to better suit his needs, and later by herself in her experiments. After all, they both had access to knowledge and powers, surpassing what we in 4th Age would call god-like.
175
176	[[WMG: Lilith will be back in future issues]]
177	Because we know that Samael will do everything in his power to free her and she wouldn't let the Nephilim stop her from A) Get back with Samael, B) Taking her revenge on Philip Marquad and the Morninglight and C) Taking her revenge on YOU.
178
179	[[WMG: ''The Secret World'' [[CrossOver shares a universe with]] ''Videogame/{{UntilDawn}}''.]]
180	It's just that this is happening outside of any of the instances. The Wendigos look, behave and have the same origin in the Buzzing Lore: an emaciated spirit that preys upon minds in sleep or insane, like Josh or Hannah, and convinces them to eat human flesh. The Wabanaki of Solomon Island just kill the Wendigos but the Cree discovered that killing tham just duplicates the problem because it frees the Wendigo spirit and the ghost of the possesed as another one, so they made a ritual to lock them into the mountain whitout bodies following the instructions of their totems, and likely also the butterflies(who are just one of the Bees many shapes), making everything OK until some minners broke the seal...
181
182	[[WMG: The Fallen King is King Solomon]]
183	He can make you get a vision of Tokyo without help and he is right telling you it's a vision from the future since he is from 3000 years ago. Also, the Bees confirm he managed to travel back in time to another Age so travelling to the future wouldn't be any problem to him once he resurrected himself and escaped the prison where the Djinn put his corpse. This revelation will be a WhamEpisode to everyone, since the Illuminati and the Dragon just don`t know who he is and the Templars whould be shocked to have had him so close and don`t discover his real identity. Relating with one WMG above he maybe frees Lilith form the Host's prison for some reason like an alliance with Samael and gets you to help him whitout knowing anything until the end.
184
185	[[WMG: King Solomon is Daimon Kyota]]
186	He is Chessmaster beyond Dragon and even Lilith, he has some sort of divination artefact from previous Ages, and Lore for Issue#14 states that Solomon was a huge trickster, just like Daimon. Also, Solomon's title is "smiling magus", fitting with near constant CheshireCatGrin of Daimon.
187
188	[[WMG: Ricky Pagan will suffer a FaceHeelTurn]]
189	Amongst his holy trinity is Amaterasu, a sun goddess and The Secret World has a terrible habit of making worshippers of sun gods fall in with the Dreamers.
190	* Dreamer cults worship scorching and cruel sun, while Amaterasu possessed mercy and kindness.
191
192	[[WMG:Bong Cha was being 'phased out' long before Tokyo]]
193	Going through the Dragon storyline, there are several times when Bong Cha seems to trail off or generally seem frustrated as if she's having trouble remembering something and her usual 'fortune cookie koan' debriefings become increasingly generic as the Tokyo arc goes on (basically becoming 'keep pushing forward' sometimes even just that). Given that TSW seems to play certain things like brainwashing relatively realistically, it's possible the Dragon has slowly been doing things to pick away at her memories and consciousness bit by bit until Daimon Kyota could be brought out of Tokyo/proven himself to take her place.
194
195	Somewhat alternatively, Bong Cha wasn't brainwashed, the stress of being the Voice of the Dragon caused her to have a stroke that genuinely caused her to suffer from amnesia. Even more alternatively...
196
197	[[WMG:Bong Cha is faking it]]
198	On the flipside, Bong Cha might not have been the best faction handler, but you don't get to be the Voice of the Dragon by being naive. She might have seen the writing on the wall and prepared an out for herself if the need arised, even sabotaging whatever process the Dragon uses to make people forget.
199
200	Seriously, there could be a whole page of WMG just on The Dragon.
201	* Or she was just a figurehead, meant to distract factions with more traditional structure from how the Dragon really does their job.
202
203	[[WMG: A future chapter will take us back to Solomon Island]]
204	At the end of Tokyo (or rather towards the end of it), Lilith mentions that it's possible to cure Filth infestations, even ones as severe as Tokyo with Emma/Anima and a Gaia Engine. So naturally, we might follow up on this and want to test the theory first, possibly find a substitute for Emma/Anima. Solomon Island has a few things going for it, namely that you know where the Gaia Engine is (and they don't look portable) and the infestation in Solomon Island seems relatively low-key compared to everywhere else (there's a noted lack of massive filth vines and cysts), but the situation is severe enough in Solomon island that if it kills everyone, it would be kind of a mercy (the fog having infected everyone on a cellular level). Excalibur might also prove an important key as a substitute to Emma.
205
206	Of course, the big question the becomes whether or not this will be successful in cleansing Solomon Island the way we hoped.
207
208	[[WMG: Shared Universe]]
209	The Dreamers, [[Literature/DresdenFiles Outsiders]], [[{{ComicBook/Hellboy}} Ogdru Jahad]], [[Videogame/{{Destiny}} Darkness]] and [[{{TabletopGame/Shadowrun}} Horrors]] are '''ALL''' the same beings.
210
211	[[WMG: Lorraine is Emma Smith's real mother]]
212	During the climax of ''The Park,'' Lorraine stumbles upon a note from Don, in which her long-dead boyfriend discusses possible baby names: Callum for a boy and '' '''Emma for a girl.''' '' Now, this might just be coincidence: after all, it's just a name. However, there are a few interesting points in what backstory we do know: Lorraine apparently set out to permanently kill herself in December 1998, and though Emma's precise age isn't specified, she might just be in the 12-14 range, assuming that she even ages at the same rate as ordinary human beings [[note]]plus, the game is technically still set in 2012[[/note]].
213
214	Now, "The Seven Silences" reveal that Lorraine possessed latent supernatural traits that, combined with her exposure to the Park's eldritch aspects, made her very desirable to the Council of Venice as a test subject: we don't know how long she spent as a test subject and how long she worked as an agent of the Council, but it's not unfeasible that she might have had another child at some point in either stage. Maybe she was artificially inseminated as part of the Council's experiments, maybe she had a desperate and loveless fling with a fellow agent, or maybe she actually managed some kind recovery from her depression long enough to start a committed relationship. Suddenly very interested in seeing what happens when Gaia's Chosen breed, the Council put Lorraine under observation until she finally gave birth, and then took the child away from her - naming the baby Emma as a token nod to the mother's wishes. Unable to track down her lost daughter and haunted by the loss of another child, Lorraine [[DespairEventHorizon descended into the final stage of her depression]] and set out to make her suicidal impulses permanent.
215
216	Elsewhere, Emma was found to be possessed of improbable magical powers as a result of Lorraine's numerous supernatural traits, eventually making contact with Gaia and becoming the Immaculate Machine's emergency successor. Trouble is, all this got the attention of the Dreamers and their followers (hence the Issue #7 comic featuring tentacles creeping towards a young Emma) ultimately resulting in the fire that features so prominently in her dreams of the past: in the aftermath, Emma was put up for adoption, and the Orochi Group snapped her up before the Council could move to retrieve her.
217	* Her name before the fire is unknown - she's called Emma because firefighter misheard "Anima", and the name before the fire, if it was different, is never mentioned at all.
218	** Yes, but the theory here isn't that Emma is her real name: it's that Lorraine might be Emma Smith's biological mother, the illegal Bee unwittingly serving as a means of producing Gaia's daughter/substitute. In any case, "Emma" is just a codename, adopted out of apathy by the Orochi Group, and out of a cynical attempt to honor Lorraine's wishes by the Council - if it ever ''was'' used by the Council. As far as the theory goes, Anima is the name she's been given while adopting the role of Gaia's daughter: in this theory, Anima might not be her birth name, but it's the only one that matters - perhaps because it's the only identity that hasn't been forced on her by human agencies.
219	*** Too convoluted, sounds like Brazilian soap-opera, and so far the game shown no signs of being one. Orochi knew very little about the girl - they just followed reports about her powers and picked her up, with Emma the only name known, and that name comes directly from firefighter's report on rescued now-orphan, and it's misheard Anima as we can see in Issue 7. Anima isn't her birth-name, it's the name imprinted in her mind by Gaia, either at birth or during the Infusing, whatever the way she's made. And if she really was a Council's experiment, she wouldn't be so easily lost, since she would've been under observation, and she would've had a file in Council's database, which would be mentioned in one of her missions. Even if that was really secret business with none of factions allowed in, Lumies and Dragon couldn't not sniff it out, but earliest info they have comes stolen from Virgula Divina project and Orochi group.
220	John implies she's just like queen bee larva - chosen at random amongst the other and given special treatment. In that case - Infused, like players, but granted greater powers. Chosen as child, because children are more receptive - remember Dr Schroeber notes.
221
222	[[WMG: Humanity was created from Gaia's dream with help from the Dreamers]]
223	In the lore it is mentioned that the reality/Gaia was created by [[OurAngelsAreDifferent The Host]] and humanity appeared near the end of the project to the consternation of some of the world's inhabitants. It is also mentioned by the Buzzing that humanity was created by Gaia. Now this could just be a metaphor for humanity's evolution but like with Lilith (where she both created her "children" in a lab and birthed them herself), multiple ideas could be true at the same time. So how do the Dreamers work into this? Throughout the game it is mentioned that the Dreamers can alter reality with their lucid dreams, such as creating the Draug from the dreams of Vikings and at the other end [[spoiler:recreate reality in the event of the ending of an Age]]. This means it is well in their scope to create a new species, using the local fauna as a base - such as some primates. This [=WMG=] suggests that the newly formed Gaia dreamt of something like humanity and the Dreamers responded. From the disdain beings like the Nephilim, Hellspawn and Jinn have for humanity, it could be an implication that humanity's creation was not part of the Host's plan but since they were created by the "Mother" Gaia they didn't simply wipe them out at once.
224	* Jinn lore says the First Age means "First Age of the Man", with Jinn predating it. People were born as "accident" from the primordial chaos of possibilities (it can be read as accidental modification of existing apes, yes), and later chosen for reasons explained by Samael in Issue 11. Most likely the system wasn't finished yet and the Host and Gaia intentionally tapped the potential of Dreamers for more ideas before locking edits and imposing more strict rules of the actual First Age.
225
226	[[WMG:The Big Three are the three main factions in Thief]]

Context WMG / TheSecretWorld