We're aggressive alien invaders, bent on pillaging the core of the world to fuel our own selfish needs.
We destroy local wildlife and even plants - no bush goes uncut! - in pursuit of our greed-fueled personal agendas of power and glory.
We're cutthroat business dealers, even with one another.
We are, in short, the bad guys.
Rawr.
Aggressive alien invaders come up to you and "ask" for help. With swords and guns out. I don't really blame them. =P
The aliens didn't have the swords and guns until the Strangers taught them how to make them, I think. Or, if nothing else, the Strangers knew how to make better ones, how to use energy, crystals, etc.
To permit an act of violence is an act of violence in itself!
Well, we crash with Proto gear, right?
The strangers just helped us improve it, so they could use our raw aggression in their local feud with the gremlins and other native peoples of the world.
To them, we may be hostile aliens, but we can be aimed at their enemies not only easily, but profitably! Sparklies yay!
True, our equipment must suck, but how many Knights have we seen compared to Strangers? We could probably just charge en masse and make them suffocate [do they breathe?] under a pile of our corpses.
If we rise up against our Stranger allies, we will be forced to fight their Snipe.
I can't do it. There are some depths to which even I will not sink - They're so cute!
Snipes will not fight us if we don't fight the Strangers. Problem solved.
I was thinking the same thing. The gremlins and whatnot have every right to be aggressive with us -- we're just kind of waltzing into this miraculous network of living machinery in the center of the world that they helped to construct, bent on swiping whatever substance is fueling it at the core. Why?
BECAUSE WE'RE ENTITLED TO IT, FOO'!
We DO have a good reason to try to gather the core: We need that material to power our ship and leave. If the denizens of the clockworks would just let us do our stuff, the game would have already ended and the knights would be back in space. But then, why should they let us drill their planets core? That could destabilize the entire thing and blow it up! There are good arguments for both cases.
Well, they DID steal our stuff... They're really the reason we're stranded.
Those bastards kill them all!
*gets sword to slice things to pieces and ribbons*
Given the vastness of space, it'd be pretty hard to randomly land on a planet just as equipment began to fail.... combined with the military organization displayed, it seems that someone back at HQ should know where we are. So why no rescue mission?
And until then- if the clockworks is really that vast, why not set up residence on the surface and make this a mission of peaceful exploration?
I for one am perfectly content in my role as pillager of worlds.
"I for one am perfectly content in my role as pillager of worlds."
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
Because they're us.
Ugh, moral dilemmas! Good points on both sides!
Eh, I like how the Knights are handling it. *Nods sagely.*
Also, best thread ever.
you just figured this out? Our daily hobbies consist of invading kingdoms and slaying the royalty! For TOKENS!
If we ever do get off this planet, will there be other planets to pillage?
We're "liberating" the planet of it's excess resources.
I swear to god, every time I look into those adorible little beaked faces, I'm suddenly overwhelmed by this sudden urge to kill all non-Snipe/Knight/Stranger lifeforms on the planet! And break stuff. But then again, I break things cause the Snipes say it's fun. OMG, the Snipes are making me murder things! What's that, Snipe? Kill the Mewcat?! But it's harmless and cu- *Snipe chirp* Yes master. ::kills Mewcat in cold blood:: Oh my god, what have I done?! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
The Spiral Knights are a society composed entirely of mercenaries: It's clear that the Spiral Knights would have pillaged any planet they landed on. Perhaps Cradle, in its wisdom, caused the Skylark to crash in a sacrificial attempt to spare the rest of the galaxy from their scourge.
am i the only one who wonders who BUILT the clockworks? prior to the knights arrival i mean
i bet it was the Strangers that did it in order to extort all the money from all that came to Cradle with over priced items of everything you need. meanwhile watching knights endlessly go to their doom...
ITS A CONSPIRACY!!!
Alpha Squad must have discovered the factory where Basil orders his recipes from. And now the strangers won't let them go.
According to one of the NPCs in the Town Square, the Strangers and Gremlins are also alien invaders...
...Does this mean the Jellies, Devilites, and Vanaduke are the good guys?
Now I'm imagining Vanaduke and his zombie minions marching on Haven screaming "GEROFF MAH LAWN!"
Two words
Manifest Destiny.
Three Words
Manifest Destiny, Biatch.
You guys have no idea, Basil is the FINAL FINAL BOSS. He has enough crowns to kill anyone.
In a game where the amount of money you spend is directly proportional to your skill level, that /is/ pretty frightening.
Luckily, it's logarithmically based instead of exponentially.
Perhaps there is no good or bad. We're just doing what we have to do to survive and go home, the Strangers are just benefiting themselves and us at the same time, and all the monsters are just being defensive of their territory. The phantoms and undead are a different matter though...
History is written by the victors. Whether the Spiral Knights are the ravaging aliens bent on taking everything or the monsters are the a hostile force that just wanted to kill the Knights is left entirely up to who wins. And seeing as the players always wins it means the monsters are a hostile force instead of us being the invading aliens.
Personally though... my bets are that the Strangers are a lot of snipes in suits and are the evil masterminds of the planet. The created the Clockworks using their ungodly powerful cuteness to suck up different parts of worlds to add to their hodgepodge world.
~Gwen
First, amazing theory. Second, what about the times people look back and realize that some things that the victor did was bad. Like the Europeans colonizing the Americas.
We're space America, we take what we want, because we can.
Yea, all this is pretty glaring, but the game goes to a lot of effort to vilify the gremlins whenever it can so we don't feel too bad about it.
Minor spoilers ahead:
The peaceful Almirian Kingdom was smashed sometime before our arrival, embroiled in a civil war that was probably incited by demonic forces aimed to destabilize the military might of the planet's defenders for some nefarious gain. Vanaduke, for one, has been possessed by the occult, and his formerly splendid castle reduced to a province of hell. It will no doubt in time be revealed that our presence here is one of celestial saviors.
This of course was pretty convenient timing for us. If they hadn't been in trouble when we showed up we'd probably still be doing what we're doing, just feeling a little more guilty about it.
Not sure where Chromalisks and Wolvers fit into this, though. Seems like they're the real victims here.
Doesn't Cradle eats planets? I assumed that was why there were so many different environments inside and why there are "Deconstruction Zones." I can't imagine how that would make US evil.
obiously theres something going on with this planet or there wouldnt be so many ships landing on cradle that they made an entire rescue camp. theres like what, 15000 knights that landed here in the last year yet before that there was only like 3. and on top of that we're killing both the poor little native animals that only attack in self-defense, the zombies that are actually the spirits of the dead strangers, and the two nice royal leaders vanaduke and the jelly king. the poor jelly king was just sitting there with his jelly friends and all of the sudden a group of 4 nights with swords bombs and guns come in and destroy him for what... tokens to use to buy more weapons and then what to they use the weapons for. we we use them to defeat the jelly kings heir or his close friend vanaduke.
Actually, all the knights are from the same ship, Skylark. When the Skylark crashed all the knights got into individual escape pods and were knocked unconscience upon crash landing. Everytime a new player is made it is really another knight regaining conscienceness.
Seriously? If we all escaped here, what is our real purpose. How do we know we weren't supposed to fight together in a hostile takeover of Cradle? And where is Skylark? Maybe that's what broke down in the core of the planet, and we're here to retrieve it. Or it could be we're intergalactic minions of King Tinkinzar, here to destroy his enemies, a.k.a. Jelly King, Vanaduke, Strangers....and......SNIPES!!!!!!!!! I can see it now, storming Vanaduke with a...... Ok I can't see it. But I think we're just intergalactic soldiers of King Tinkinzar with amnesia, and now we're killing Gremlins, like the annoying pests they are.
Or maybe it's a training simulation. The clockworks is filled with the most random levels so that knights will be prepared for anything in the real world, why else would we be able to revive?
You can revive because the Knights are mechanical life forms. They can't really die, they just need energy to get back up.
Are they truly mechanical? You can't see what's under the armor so you can't really tell.
I feel sorry for the monsters. They just want to defend their turf against hostile invaders and end up getting slaughtered by the thousands.
Especially for the devlites and a little bit for the gremlins. The devlites are just trying to run a business and the bosses aren't even aggressive. The gremlins are just trying build stuff and destroy whatever is not needed. I just love those 2 monster types and kind of wish to be allies.
"You can revive because the Knights are mechanical life forms. They can't really die, they just need energy to get back up."
-LoneKnight
From what little in-game lore exists for Spiral Knights, NPC's tell us that the Energy is to power our suits, not our life essence. However, there is this line for the Ironclaw Munitions Factory Recon Module. Take from it what you will:
SPOILERS
...Grantz took the full blast of a rocket twice, reacting only with a stagger as if he had discovered a stone in his boot. Sometimes I think that beneath his iron suit is a body of equally heavy iron. It wouldn't surprise me.
I think that if the Spiral Knights are automated, they don't know it. It might be like dreams. Maybe they've never considered what is under each-others helmets. Maybe they were programmed to ignore that line of thought and go on without even considering it. I personally don't think they're bots. I think it would be awesome if this game's lore took a serious turn towards the dark side of storytelling, but it seems too friendly and cartoony at this juncture.
Aren't Strangers the true villains for not only letting these acts go unpunished, but also abiding and even aiding in them?
Or maybe snipes are to blame.