Part 46: The Endless Trolley Battle

The Endless Trolley Battle



Welcome back! Last time on Tides of Numenera we cut open a monster butthole and got a bunch of exposition dumped on us of how the First Castoff also wants to use the genocidal chamber and maybe the Changing God didn't want to kill all the castoffs and look, we know this is going into another half-assed abstract problem of how many people you want to run over with a trolley.



We're going to talk to Steven Dengler's evil self-insert for the last time. Oom really is popular with the ladies, isn't he?

: What will you give me for the Magmatic Annulet?

Remember, Dracogen originally wanted the Annulet back but we traded the Space Marine's nav computer for it instead. He will actually give us something else for the Annulet.



Money is not particularly useful in the end game.

: I'll trade you for the merecaster.

The merecaster is going to bring up our collection of unused merecasters to three. For those who don't remember, merecasters put us into the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure zone where the authors desperately try to convey something about the worldbuilding or their flaccid attempts to convey Colin McComb's beloved themes while the player tries to click fast enough to see if they drop XP or something. They're not great, but you all voted for me to show off everything. Don't worry, summaries will be provided.



I think Dracogen maybe works for the Memovira, but I also know that I don't really care. Thread challenge: name ONE character who was memorable in this game for a reason other than being awful (such as Omahdon and his quest to insert his penis into anime ladies).

: Farewell.


So we have three Merecasters - the Circulating Merecaster I got in the Necropolis and never used, the Fluctuating Merecaster that Mazzof dropped, and the Ovoid Merecaster we got from Dracogen.



Despite these all having their own portraits in the inventory, the game feels the need to describe them in text. It's like some gorgeous yet unattainable woman told the authors she would take one out to dinner if they spent enough words on imagery.

Let's start with the Circulating Merecaster, shall we? Fair warning, these are all, once again, stories about trolleys. It still hasn't sunk in that maybe we actually need investment in these scenarios, and it all becomes once again weighing the abstract pain units. It's kind of amazing that for a game that proposes to explore all these scenarios the only framework they have is utilitarianism.





: [Raises Red, Blue Tides] Demand to know who they are.



So do we want to have sex with Cardogo? I'm asking because that is usually what it means when you feel a flush in your body upon seeing someone. The prose also says "armless" but he clearly has something in that sleeve.

: My condition? Roots? The Wind?



: What's wrong with your side, Cardogo?



I would say they're just good friends, but that "flush in your body"...

: Then there are preparations to be made.





Remember how one of the other Big Colin Themes was Legacy? Get ready to have it hammered down your throat!



I am desperately trying to avoid the Gold Tide options, but we are locked into the Blue/Gold legacy at the end of this update. Sorry goons, I probably won't be able to show the Blue/Silver thing off. Go ahead and spoil it in the thread.

: Seek Cardogo's help.





: How?



Is this venture also run by a Nigerian prince?

: [Raises Blue Tide] Tell me more about this venture.



: [Raises Indigo Tide] This sounds criminal.

I want to point out that gullibly enabling and pointing out he's being tricked both raise Gold Tide, if you wanted more proof the judgement of the Tides is incoherent and unreasonable.



Really, kid?

: Why are you doing this?



I can tell you from recent personal experience this is the sign of an experienced manipulator: all the awful things they were doing to you were actually for your benefit the whole time! Fuck off, asshole!

: No.



Fuck off!



Casca here reminds me of Matkina, and I think it's just the black-and-white?

: [Raises Blue Tide] Why are you here?



: Why should i give you my money?



Another justification I've seen in my recent experience, and I will confess I took far too much pleasure in answering.

: You'll get nothing from me.



This is not to say that helping the suffering is wrong, but your suffering does not entitle you to other people's possessions.





: Prepared? Plans?



: Why do you need more?



: Of course.



Suddenly, a grimdark and deep plot twist! Our boy Cardogo is a crazy child murdering man!

: The Mendicant told me about your children.



Now I don't know about you, but I don't think it's very nice to Kaeli to impregnate hookers in secret and murder your illegitimate children. It's more self-serving bullshit!

I think we can all see where this is going.



: [Raises Gold, Indigo Tides] Establish a trust for Cardogo's children, wherever they are.

The Mendicant seems like the only good dude among the bunch if we are being honest with ourselves. We've already given him a ton of stuff, and he asked us to help the little mutant kids. Our family is a bunch of terrible leeches who came to watch us die, and nobody came up and asked us what they could do to help or expressed sorrow that we were dying. Fuck them. Cardogo may be a weird child killing dude, but he also is our friend who threw himself in front of the Iron Wind for us.

I take it back, there was one guy in an officer's uniform. I wish we could have left him something cool.

Also, I know I wasn't gonna pick the Gold Tide, but man. I can kinda relate to this guy here. It's not very well written (I dislike the longwinded lawyer line) but I can definitely relate.



Hooray! We didn't run the kids over with a trolley! Toot toot!


That wasn't...awful? I guess? I will confess I related a lot more to it thanks to recent life events. It wasn't written very well, and it was more trolley bullshit, and Cardogo's secret hooker and murder section was...actually, you know what, that was kinda stupid. Moving on!



: ::rrrrrrsk::

: Well, that's a relief. I'd hate for someone to suggest that you and I are related.

Next up, the fluctuating merecaster we got from Mazzof. This is probably the most in depth the game goes with the Endless Battle, and I'll be honest - I skipped it in my initial playthrough, because I was done with the game at act 3.





: How did the massacre at Miel Avest happen? How did the shields come down?



: What are the Reconciler of Truth and Heaven's Rejoinder?





This is actually a concept that could be used to say a lot about the delusions of the powerful, but because this is Numenera, will only be tapped for surface weirdness. More on this later.

: [Raises Silver Tide] I'm happy to do what you need, so long as there's opportunity for glory.



This sounds like a propaganda war, but that idea was explicitly shot down by George Ziets.


It's weird, because that changing history side literally alludes to history being written by the victors. We'll talk more about this once the CYOA is done.



: Tell me more about these White Nests.



Moths. Sure. Moths.

: Tell me about the reality storm.



Oh look it's the Fake News.

: I will find the saboteur before he breaks the Reconciler, no matter what time or reality he does it in.



You might be asking "if this mission is crucial to winning the war, why don't they send some of the many sci-fi power armored soldiers we saw in the other flashbacks," and my reply is "because a different writer remoted this story in."





This is the general structure of the reality storm - you keep clicking until the game determines you've hit the right path, and then it spews descriptive text at you.

: Choose the moonlit lake.



: Choose the storm of swirling chaos.



: Choose the sunny canyon.



: Choose the rolling farmland.



: Choose the muddy battlefield.



: Choose the glittering swamp.





: Choose the roaring arena.





Cute.

: Choose the gloomy battlefield.



...why does Paj Rekken care? When we last saw her she was committing werewolf genocide and enabling the rape of Matkina. I imagine whoever remoted this in was under strict instructions to conform to the "war bad" theme.





: Tell me.



: Go and I will consider it. Otherwise...

Wait, hang on! The endless war that has raged across half the world didn't kill more than the 10 or so castoffs that were hanging around Miel Avest? Whatever.



: Zerronth told me Commander Rekken was the one who turned off Miel Avest's shields, allowing the Sorrow to kill our siblings.



: Thank you, sir. I'll head to the Bloom now.







: Paj, Zerronth told me the Sorrow did not break through Miel Avest's shields. He claimed the shields were lowered on purpose...by you.



Now, remember how we activated the teleporter before any of the named castoffs died? I remember. Despite having at least 3 references to "enhanced reactivity" in the stretch goals, this game doesn't.

And of course here are the mandatory trolleys. To save all the castoffs the First pulled the lever that sent the Sorrow trolley running over Aardiris and the rest.



It's funny, because they never bothered actually trying to recruit us to their side of the Endless Battle.



Despite us teleporting Aardiris out before she could get killed by the Sorrow, Paj and the First Castoff, despite having a reality rewriting machine that lets them see what happened, do not know this.

There is only one answer that makes sense to me here. Is the game hardcore enough to let us break it?

: [Raises Red, Indigo Tides][Attack] You are a traitor to the castoffs. You must die!

God, it's so melodramatic.



This is a big hint for a future combat I am definitely skipping.


So unlike most of the rest of this game, there is actually some meat on the bone in this one. The Endless Battle is a pointless stalemate involving weapons so powerful the warring leaders can literally rewrite reality as they see fit so nothing and everything is true. Both the First Castoff and the Changing God are shrouding themselves in the "savior of all castoffs" rhetoric while seeking to fire off the Resonance Chamber that may or may not destroy either all the castoffs or the Sorrow.

There are vague hints that the Changing God had a somewhat inappropriate relationship with Maralel, if them staying up all night and talking was any indication, and their intense personal dislike when they're starting the war makes me think it's a bit more than a scientist-castoff relationship. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but all of this points less to a world-spanning war than a weird internal struggle between the masculine and feminine halves of the Changing God. Remember, the Tides associated with the Changing God are Blue and Silver, or knowledge and egotism respectively. It would explain why no conflict in the Endless Battle ever goes anywhere plot important, such as no one going to Sagus Cliffs despite the Resonance Chamber - the object the war is supposedly being fought over - being present and Sagus being a major recruiting ground for the Changing God's armies. The reality rewrites in this interpretation would be something like The Autumn of the Patriarch where the dictator has so much power - or so little - that he lives up his own ass and his delusions come out as magical realism rambling.

The problem with this interpretation is that it doesn't jive with the rest of the game at all. The Changing God, while egotistical, never really came across as someone who was deluded about his abilities (even resurrection is possible if you want to kiss an anime girl enough). There are vague hints about internal conflict, where the Changing God felt bad about killing all the haters with his sweet Tides Powers, but everything we've seen of the Changing God is that he was a driven realist with a hunger for power and knowledge to try to reshape the world in his own image and an excellent knowledge of people. Maralel is certainly not his conscience or even a bearer of the traditionally feminine attributes like compassion, she's just as ruthless if not more so than he is.

This leads us back to the Endless Battle being a commentary on the futility of war, but it's a terrible commentary because it's written like a superhero cartoon where no one dies. If we look at Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front that book shows us an awful war because it's a stalemate where young men are killing each other for a cause no one believes in and no one is able to achieve, commanded by people who are out of touch with the front lines of the war and needlessly endanger their soldiers by ordering idiotic charges and handing out sawtooth bayonets. This is a war where literally no one dies because the rewind machines fire up every day. Go back and look at what Tybir said about the Endless War - Auvergne fought in it, and was resurrected on a near-daily basis. The saboteur told us that those 10 or so people who lived in Miel Avest were more castoffs then had ever died in this supposedly apocalyptic reality-destroying war. The only victims seem to be Matkina and maybe Werewolf Village, who people didn't like anyway because the werewolves would occasionally get out of control and murder people. The game is insistent on presenting us with groups of NPCs fleeing the Endless War, but there are maybe 10 in all - Artaglio's tiny mercenary company, and the three people in the corner of the Necropolis. There are no refugee caravans or great musterings of troops marching from Sagus Cliffs to the front lines, there's no rationing, there is no diversion of resources to the military. It's like someone tried to write about World War II, but from the perspective of an American civilian during the Iraq war where the US military fought and died with no impact on the situation at home. You're never going to be able to write about war convincingly with that perspective because you aren't interacting with it.

Lastly, I want to once again make the observation that the Numenera setting ruins every story this game tries to tell. I am one hundred percent serious here. The game wants to have a hellish offscreen world war, but also needs to fulfill the Numenera weirdness quotient of having some poorly understood science thing that leads to a contradiction or something the authors think is really unique or mindblowing but has been done before in other science fiction properties. This leads to a war that doesn't really affect The Last Castoff or her party at all, and it's a shame, because if this is supposed to be a crucial examination of the value of human life a war is the perfect opportunity to do that! What are all these men and women dying for? Why does the average trooper in The Changing God's armies care about any of this Sorrow or Resonance Chamber bullshit? What, if anything, is worth dying for? What is worth killing for? Are there things worth trading the lives of others? Before you accuse me of hypocritically invoking trolleys despite criticizing them all game, I will submit to you that the Trolley Problem is the lowest form of this. The Trolley Problem as presented doesn't analyze lives as anything more than "five people are on this track."

Let's compare this to Moby Dick again. Is this fair? No. Am I going to do it anyway? Yes.


This works, because of the characters and because it's building up to the climax and isn't just hastily stuffed in as a desperate aside that touches on Colin's Themes (pay me by the word, please!) Starbuck and Ahab have been clashing ever since Ahab decided that he was going to defraud the ship's owners and the people of Nantucket and lead the ship on a damned crusade against the White Whale and, by extension, God himself. The thirty people Starbuck proposes to save aren't some street randos rambling about stupid interdimensional bullshit, they are the people Starbuck is directly responsible for as first mate of the ship, in addition to his responsibility to provide for his wife and child. The conflict isn't just "Ahab is one life unit, the ship's crew are thirty life units" either like all the trolley quests in this game are. Starbuck is afraid of Ahab and his terrible charismatic power, and is actually unsure of what to do like a real person, instead of just spewing death sentences for Red Tide points. The question isn't just one versus thirty, but whether Starbuck has the right to judge.

Melville isn't afraid to opine on right and wrong either, unlike this game.


Melville makes it quite clear that rather than letting the reader "find their own answer" or whatever, this is the wrong thing to do and it shows how lost and damned Ahab is. Rather than postpone his revenge against Moby Dick to save a missing child, Ahab abandons the child and leads his men to their prophesied death against the power of God.

Why do I bring this up? This is the story that Tides of Numenera wants to tell. The Changing God overreached and despite his mastery of the fearsome technologies of the ancient world he is not a god and is contending with the Angel of Death or whatever the Sorrow is. It runs smack-dab into the Numenera setting having no spiritual significance whatsoever despite us descending into hell and meeting demons who want to spread evil and whatnot. Numenera further craps the bed by jamming in as much pointless weirdness as possible that it gets in the way of the story it wants to tell because of all these mysteries. Want to tell the story of a man seeking to steal the power of God? Too bad, there is no God. Want to tell a story about an endless war caused by two very similar people draining the world's resources to fight for centuries? Too bad, there's a reality rewriting machine that ensures no one actually dies in this war and also the causes are so abstract that no one outside the Castoff Club will actually dedicate their lives to it. Want to tell a story about a woman who is in psychic communion with legions of her selves from other worlds? Sure, why not! It's not relatable at all, nothing about it makes sense, and it offers no insight into the human psyche or condition, but that's the kind of stories Numenera enables. Want to examine the value of a human life? You sure as hell can't do it here, because there's enough reality-writing, dead-resurrecting, time traveling bullshit that there are no clear consequences for any of your actions. This is the reason we have garbage like a centuries-long war that's killed...nine people. It's absolute and irredeemable trash!

Oh, there was a third merecaster, wasn't there? Let's do this.



Guess what?



It's another fucking trolley problem!

: What's your opinion on Arxalin, Iom?



Oh look. The wounded fish guy is 1 life unit. Can you jeopardize your sweet, sweet cash for 1 life unit?

: How did you get sick, Arxalin?



I don't know who these people are, and frankly I don't care.

: [Raises Silver, Gold Tides] We'll leave Arxalin and keep exploring. Saving the Harrows is more important.





Hear me out...what if you used a common term for your warriors, like...I don't know...warrior?



: Some kind of charging device? Sounds like something *you'd* be interested in keeping, Iom.

Who are these people? Why do I care? For everyone bitching about me not roleplaying in a roleplaying game or whatever I'm literally playing as a lady watching a past viewer and changing the past of some randos based on the imperfect information available to her at the time.





Oh no, the dumb girl kept the nuclear reactor that was giving the scavengers radiation poisoning!



Silver Tide option! I'm not reading this shit!

: [Raises Indigo, Silver Tides] I promised the people of the Harrows a profit on this expedition. I have to keep that promise. We continue exploring. Ion, drop Arxalin in the Voil.

Oh, yea, just killed step-daughter through radiation poisoning. Whoops. In my defense, it's not like some middle ages idiot is going to know how to treat it.



Oh. Woops. I guess we are the world's worst castoff stepmom.

: Sorry, Iom. You're going to have to get rid of it. It's too dangerous.





I see the time honored method of "drooling on the keyboard to come up with a name" has triumphed again.

: Get out of here! Run! Run!



: Marit isn't looking so good. Let's make camp and rest until morning.





THE ROBOT RAN US OVER WITH A TROLLEY! WHAT AN IMAGINATIVE TWIST FROM THESE IMAGINATIVE PEOPLE!


Ugh. There are not many updates left. 2, maybe 3 depending on how much crap I stuff in the next update. I will be foolishly allowing you to vote on the game's final big choice. Think carefully about what rail the trolley should ride!