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slugcatmusings · 5 months

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@bitsbug

Hell yeah, more theories! Even if it was a counterargument I wouldn’t mind too much. When I said in my original post that me and a friend were “chatting” about Rot theories, I actually meant “casual debating” lol, it was fun and it lead to me coming up with my full theory above in the first place! Sometimes you need a good debate to throw ideas back and forth in order to get your brain juices flowing.

Anyway, your idea makes sense too! And honestly is probably closer to whatever the game devs had in mind for canon lol. I just like going into very detailed worldbuilding, so my brain is used to making weird connections that probably weren’t meant to be made but make sense anyway.

Especially since I’m going to admit right here and now that my theory probably leans more towards the “spectacle” side of the spectrum over “canonically accurate.” Me and Unnamed Friend were debating over Rot theories because we were trying to come up with ideas for a small Rain World rp I run for a group of my friends, and spectacle creates better, more intriguing stories… also I wanted a potential cure for the Rot, because screw the Ancients for not letting the iterators have that!

Also, just a fun little thought… your theory could potentially work with mine! After all, if the parasite is present in ALL cells now, that includes the gene-modifying purposed organisms – and since presumably the gene-changing ability is linked to the organisms’s own DNA, that means that the Rot parasite has access to those genes and can use them appropriately ;P

@kniloas

Oh, yeah, the Inspector! Honestly the inspector did kinda get pushed to the wayside during my theorizing, whenever I start writing something I’m REALLY into I tend to hyperfocus. Thanks for bringing that up! I HAVE noticed the similarities between the Rot and Inspectors, including how the Rot seems to waste away outside the cans. Though I didn’t mention it (mistake on my behalf) my theory DOES cover the Inspectors. After all, if the parasites are in EVERY cell in the ancients’ purposed organisms, that includes the ones of the Inspectors, doesn’t it? And the wasting away could be explained by the fact that while yes, the cells have been hijacked, they’re still PEBBLES’ cells ordinarily – they’re not meant to be outside his “body” and the parasite can’t (or hasn’t yet been able to) change that.

And at both you AND @raidhosketchonhematite, OWO NSH ASCENSION THEORY HELLO?? I’ve never seen that theory before but it WOULD explain why NSH is so prevalent in Hunter’s cutscene, when any creature ever seen in any of the other ascension cutscenes are kinda ghostly-looking! I never even considered that, that is – honestly an amazing idea! Though how on earth would NSH have come up with the idea of hitching a ride in his slugcat, and in Rot of all things?

What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

So, the Rot is… weird, from a biological standpoint. Really weird, if you stop to think about it. It’s most frequently described as some variation of cancer, and it certainly fits the criteria for it. Caused by damage to DNA? Check. Multiplies uncontrollably? Check. Comes in both benign and malignant forms, one stationary and the other mobile? Big fat check. Heck, even the Rot cysts eating other creatures kind of fits, according to some research I’ve done – there are apparently cancer cells that will eat other cells, which makes sense in hindsight since cancer cells are cells that have lost important genetic restrictions, which may include whatever lets cells identify other cells as “do not eat.”

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, Rot is clearly cancer of some kind, right? Case closed. Except when me and a friend of mine were talking Rain World theories on Discord, she brought up some interesting points that got me thinking.

First point: Rot cells obviously mutate in a way that affects FAR more than just cell replication and termination. Some of the cysts can HEAR. As far as I know, cells in the body do not hear sounds. They communicate via chemical signals and maybe, MAYBE react to temperature. Hearing involves complicated, specialized sensory apparatus to pick up on vibrations in the air. Even if you simplify it and say that it’s only vibrations, that’s STILL a multicellular thing, not a single-cell thing. It’s something that took millions of years to evolve on Earth, if not billions.

And while Rain World’s timeline goes on for long enough that it those kinds of mutations might happen eventually, Rot cysts have the ability to hear pretty much right from the start – because even the Proto-Long-Legs react to your presence like the Daddy Long Legs do, and the Rot in Spearmaster’s campaign, where Pebbles has recently contracted it, reacts the same way as it does in later campaigns. It’s already able to hear.

As far as I know, cancer just means the same cell duplicating over and over again. Are more mutations possible with each division, as errors are made in the DNA during splitting? Probably. But not to THAT extent. There’s no way a lump of cancer somehow mutated the exact complicated genetic blueprint needed to grow organs, at least not without outside interference.

Second point: Cases of Rot are way too consistent across the board. Now, we don’t have a huge sample size to work from, but from what we see from both Pebbles’ Rot, and Hunter Long Legs, they’re… pretty similar. Hunter Long Legs is basically a mobile Rot cyst. They move the same way, seem to grow the same way (starts as a growth inside/on the body before eventually freeing itself from whatever wall/flesh it grew from in some capacity and moving elsewhere), they have the same senses, and they even eat the same way, via something like phagocytosis (how white blood cells “eat” invading organisms via engulfing them and breaking them down in a sac in their main “body.”)

Now, this doesn’t tell us much, because cancer, when it does emerge, is pretty consistent in symptoms/what the mutated cells do once they start replicating. It’s pretty much the same regardless of whatever organism the cancer is happening in. But what ISN’T consistent is what causes the DNA error in the cancer cell in the first place. IRL, cancer can be caused by all kinds of things – smoking, radiation poisoning, being out in the sun too long, drinking deadly chemicals and whatnot, anything that damages DNA. But in RW, the only time we ever hear Rot talked about, or see it present, is in the context of an iterator having f*cked up while mucking around with DNA. Pebbles was trying to create an organism that could change his own genome, and No Significant Harassment created Hunter as a messenger and probably mucked something up in the process in his haste to get them to Moon.

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes of it, of course, we’re working with a sample size of two in an apocalyptic world with who knows how much potentially DNA-damaging stuff around, but… that’s still awfully consistent.

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

So, with all the context FINALLY laid out, here’s my wild theory: Rot isn’t a cancer. It’s a symbiote turned parasite. Specifically, I believe it’s a symbiotic microbe that lives inside the cells that make up every other creature in Rain World, and is held in check by a specific gene that all species share, and altering or getting rid of that gene causes it to go berserk, taking over and eventually mutating the host cells.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

There is precedence for single-celled organisms living inside of other single-celled organisms. They’re referred to as intracellular endosymbiots (hopefully I got the spelling right there), and the most well-known one is probably the mitochondria. The powerhouse of the cell is thought to be descended from some bacteria way, WAY back that was engulfed by a larger cell and not only survived it, but BENEFITED from it. Since then those ancient proto-mitochondria and eukaryotic cells have mutually evolved to be dependent on each other. So it’s entirely possible for something similar to have happened in Rain World.

However, I don’t think it happened NATURALLY, here. Because something that’s able to take over a cell entirely and begin wildly mutating it is NOT something your average cell wants inside of it. There’s a VERY high chance of extinction if you do that. Which means that of course those funky bio-tech loving Ancients either took a look at a wildly dangerous cellular parasite and went “hmmm we can use this” or made one themselves.

Why did they do this? Who knows! Currently, I’m tied between “they needed a better powerhouse for the cell to power the various weird adaptations they’re building into various creatures,” “there was some sort of disease that this parasite gave immunity against and they wanted to make use of it,” and “it gave their creations massively powerful regeneration factors that made them much easier to maintain.” Possibly it was all three. Whatever the reason, the Ancients either found or created this parasite, and put it into their creations’ cells, hoping to reap the benefits.

Well, they got the benefits, but they also got a microbe that hijacked the cells and harnessed their pre-existing DNA blueprints to build organisms disguised as great big blobs of cancer. Which is not exactly ideal, but hey, they just had to figure out a way of keeping the cell hijacking from happening! And the way they ended up going about it was to alter the thing so that so long as there was a specific DNA sequence in the cell, it laid mostly dormant. All the benefits, none of the risks – so long as that specific string of genes remained intact.

And then BECAUSE it was so beneficial, they spread their artificial symbiote and it’s genetic reins throughout ALL of their creations, from the smallest pipe-cleaning slugs to the iterators. Which meant that as their purposed organisms replaced most of the original ecosystem, they spread the symbiote as well. Thus making it possible for pretty much ANY creature on the planet to come down with a bad case of the Rot. And with the iterators, I wouldn’t be surprised if this symbiote is tied to their self-destruction taboos. Try to cross yourself out? Well, it’s gonna maybe happen now, but it’ll be a slow painful death as you’re eaten alive from the inside and all your own parts turn against you, so was it really worth it?

And they never told their creations this perhaps even actively hid it, because why tell them the cause of the main deterrent to them mucking with their taboos? They might find a way around it. The iterators were left ignorant of how Rot works, and because of this they never figured out that Rot HAD a cure after all: rebuilding that genome that reins in the symbiote. Because why in the name of the Void would they repeat the same mistakes that gave them Rot in the first place, and potentially make it worse?

#rain world #rain world headcanons #rain world worldbuilding #serious musings #musing responses #essay to essay communication #(i love that tag you used bitsbug I'm yoinking it)#reblog #me banging my head against the table: HOW DID I FORGET TO INCLUDE THE INSPECTORS #also NSH ASCENSION THEORY????

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slugcatmusings · 5 months

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What is the Rot? Why is the Rot?

Spoiler Warning and Holy Wall of Text Batman Warning. I got WAY too into questioning the turbo-cancer here, hopefully my rambling makes sense.

(I ain’t a biology whiz and I’m doing research on the fly while getting my thoughts out here, so take whatever I say about biology with a grain of salt)

So, combining these points and everything we know to be canon, Rot is:

an organism that lives inside another organism

Until a certain condition is met, it cannot harm said host organism.

Once said condition is met, it goes out of control, wreaking havoc on the organism’s systems and mutating, giving it sensory capabilities and an appetite

Said condition is apparently someone messing up when re-arranging genomes, in yourself or others

It is widespread across multiple different species, at least iterators and slugcats but potentially other species as well.

Once you have a bad case of it, it is apparently NOT CURABLE. Pebbles tried everything he could think of but apparently exhausted all of his options by the time of the Survivor/Monk campaigns.

Yeah, I did watch Parasite Eve let’s plays as a kid, why do you ask? Anyway, hear me out here.

#rain world #rain world worldbuilding #serious musings #rain world headcanons #rw rot #the rot #rain world rot #rain world turbo cancer #which is not actually cancer #yes i Parasite Eved the shit out of the Rot #yes that is a verb now I take no criticisms #anywho the Rot is a byproduct of the ancients Fucking Shit Up on Purpose #and it DOES have a cure damn it #I'm not giving the robots not-actually-cancer and NOT giving them at least a chance to cure it #not mentioned above is the fact that depending on the genes altered along with the restraining gene #you might get rot with fun mutations like being able to jump from organism to organism #or Rot that outright assimilates cells from other organisms #amongst other things #plenty of FUN stories to play with there >:D

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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“The Artificer’s campaign has little impact on the overall story” bitch I cannot stress how much of an impact the Artificer had on the entire world. You just need to pay attention to some things.

By the time of the Artificer, Scavengers are basically in the middle of a massive golden age. They have a Chieftain (with a mark of communication (maybe Five Pebbles gave them the mark and citizen ID drone and tried to use them for something but they rebelled and found Metropolis)) with armour made from Red Centipede Scales, they have a permanent home in metropolis above the rain, they figured out how to harvest electrical scrap and broken down Rarefaction Cells from the ruins of Looks To The Moon and pieces of Five Pebbles to make electric spears and Singularity Bombs, they even have specially trained Elite Scavengers, which did exist before in the time of the Spearmaster but it’s still worth bringing them up.

Overall, Scavengers are at a golden age of invention and life in general.

And then they anger the Artificer, who slaughters countless Scavengers, kills their Chieftain and drives them out of Metropolis, locking the gate behind them.

After that, a new Chieftain is never made, armour like the chieftain once wore is never made again, Scavengers suffer a massive population loss, they can’t enter Metropolis without a Citizen ID Drone and Elite Scavengers slowly disappear as the methods used to teach them and the knowledge of how to scavenge and create electric spears and singularity bombs is lost, with the last Elite Scavengers being seen in the Hunter’s campaign, which happens next in the timeline. In other words, the Artificer literally sent Scavengers into a dark age.

It takes until the time of the SAINT for Scavengers to show real signs of recovery, now appearing in larger numbers than before. And even THEN Scavengers never do anything like they did during the time of the Artificer. The Artificer plunged Scavengers into a dark age for countless years, and they STILL haven’t recovered.

And that’s not all. According to the wiki, Scavengers are afraid of Slugpups, most likely because they remember how the last time they killed one they were hit by the full force of an angry explosive lobbing goddess of destruction that slaughtered countless members of their kind. They are afraid of Slugpups in all campaigns, even the Saint’s. So even by the time of the Saint Scavengers know not to mess with Slugpups, presumably because the last time they did so is a legend among Scavengers by that point in time.

Hell, the Artificer’s existence even explains something about the Hunter. The reason that the Hunter starts with a negative reputation among Scavengers is because they look like the fucking Artificer. Scavengers look at the Hunter and see the goddess of vengeance and destruction that they’ve only ever heard of from stories.

Both of them have red fur and a scar on one eye, and will the time gap between campaigns, there’s a good chance that only a few Scavengers that saw the Artificer in person are even alive by that point in time (without even taking into account how the Artificer murdered so many Scavengers that it’s probably rare that a Scavenger saw them and lived to tell the tale), meaning that the Artificer is probably told about in Scavenger stories and her appearance would therefore differ, leaving the most obvious details like the scar on one eye and red fur.

#rain world #rain world headcanons #artificer #yes #this #this is EXACTLY my thoughts about artificer's campaign

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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Horrendous wrinkled beast jumpscare

(also enjoy this doodle of a potential baby vulture yall)

Oh my god it's so ugly, I love it!!!!! :D

#rain world #rain world vultures #rain world art #baby vulture!#it's so ugly its cute #<3

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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Another thing me and my sister also talked about, during our convo mentioned in the last post? Chickens will get broody about anything remotely egg-shaped and sometimes smol animals like kittens, just try to tuck them underneath themselves to keep them warm.

Now imagine a big vulture brooding over their probably ugly hatchlings and a couple slugpups that crawled into the nest too.

#rain world #not-so-serious musings #broody vultures #this could go either REALLY badly for the slugpup #or very well #either way it's weirdly cute to me #weirdly wholesome

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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Vulture Grubs are Mimics

Adghsdjgsdg so - I was not expecting an actual Rain World Downpour dev to reblog my iterators are colonial organisms post. Also they said that the brain organisms in iterators are named CoralBrain in the files so??? Is this??? Confirmation?? About my theory?? O.O

Anyway enough fangirling about that, onto more musings! This time isn’t so grand as the iterators - me and my sis like talking about various rain world worldbuilding stuff (I’ve been coming up with fanfic ideas and I like bouncing ideas off of her in the car when driving her places), and today the topic of “what the heck are vulture grubs” came up!

(Alongside the topics of “is symbiosis with the Rot possible” and “what would a large population of carnivorous slugcats need to survive in Metropolis” which yes are both related to the fanfic idea.)

Our first thought - and the theory that my sister supported for half the resulting debate - was that vulture grubs are just, you know, vulture babies. They make lasers like king vultures when summoning vultures, and when distressed call for help and have adult vultures answer. However, my sister also pointed out that vultures sometimes seem to eat the grubs, and while some species have cannibalism as a thing I’m kinda meh about the idea - it's an actual thing that happens in nature, yeah, but... well, meh.

So what are vulture grubs if not baby vultures? Baby vulture mimics! You know how some animals will imitate other, more dangerous animals to scare off predators? That’s what the grubs are doing! They’ve evolved to mimic baby vultures in order to discourage predators from eating them. The structures on their heads vaguely resemble king vulture heads in shape, and the lasers are DEFINITELY a mimicry of the king vulture lasers. The screech, too, is probably a mimicry - they sound like distressed baby vultures, and that along with the flashy laser light show draws vultures to the noise, which usually means that whatever big predator was attacking the grub is scared away in a panic!

Of course, sometimes that gets the grub eaten by the vulture, but it’d get them eaten a LOT less often by big predators, which would mean they’d survive for longer and in greater numbers than they would normally.

#rain world #serious musings #rain world worldbuilding #rain world headcanons #rain world vulture grubs #vulture grubs #vulture grubs are mimics #this makes more sense to me than vulture grubs being vulture babies in all honesty #but i still think the vultures might be partially insect-like #if only because of the way their beaks look like pincers to me #couple that with the big ole eyes and the sort of segmentation they've got going in their wings #wings that resemble centiwings a bit in shape i might add #they're definitely part bug #they're just part other things too probably

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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... less serious follow-up to the last post. Iterators are arthropods. They have big metal exoskeletons with all the squishy bits inside, lots of eyes and legs, and have “segments” in their bodies in the form of rooms. Thank my sister for THAT image.

#rain world #rain world iterators #rain world shitpost #not-so-serious musings #iterators are arthropods #Five Pebbles is definitely crabby enough to be one lol

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slugcatmusings · 1 year

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Iterators = Colonial Organisms

I’ve been thinking a lot about the iterators lately. Not any one in particular, nope, I’ve just – been thinking about their biology/structure. How they might’ve been built, what they’re made of, how the frick the Ancients made them so big that they built entire skyscraper cities on, etc. First two things are most interesting to me though, how do you build an iterator? What’s the process there? How do the metal and organic bits fit together? Are their metal parts even metal at all, because Pebbles’ robot cancer seems to be mutating directly out of the metal????

Probably not, honestly. Because metal can’t get cancer. It’s probably, I dunno, weird bone or something.

ANYWAY I think iterators are colonial organisms, like siphonophores. Think the Man ‘o War jellyfish – it’s actually not one creature, but a bunch of physically connected creatures, each with a specialized purpose that helps all the other creatures around it survive, and all working together. You’ve got critters that work as a digestive system, others for respiratory or circulatory, others that act as the outer shell/layer/skin, others that act as a skeletal framework, that kind of thing.

Iterators are like that, but on a MUCH larger scale, built by human(?) hands, and maybe with some fully mechanical parts mixed in here and there. I mean, just look at these examples of what all we definitely know they have:

Neuron flies, which store memories and I think carry signals/messages between other neural organisms.

Those weird red squiggly things that grow out of some walls and free-drift in other places – I’ve seen neurons connect to the tendrils coming off those things and give off little electrical flashes so those are more neural organisms.

The small hair-like tendrils that glow blue growing out of the wall are probably another version of the red squiggly things.

Inspectors are DEFINITELY acting as the immune system here. They attack you if you grab/harm neuron flies, they just throw spears and toss you around instead of eating you alive like OUR immune cells usually do.

Those weird red structures attended to by lil white spidery things in the Memory Conflux of Five Pebbles are probably some kind of long-term memory storage, considering the title of the sub-region.

On top of these, we’ve probably got some sort of circulatory system equivalent – in some places you can hear what sounds a bit like a heartbeat pulsing in the background. (Just, you know, if you were hearing it from right outside the vessel walls and hearing all the liquid rushing past on every beat.) There’s probably some sort of specialized system for sucking up and processing the water that the iterators canonically use as coolant, ending in some sort of respiration that lets out all the water vapor from that process. There’s GOT to be some sort of digestive system equivalent because I seriously doubt that the “bio” part of “bio-tech” can survive without SOME sort of nutrients, but Void if I know what that might be. Maybe they’ve got some of that glowy mold being cultivated somewhere in their structure, that stuff seems to grow on their probably-not-metal framework pretty well.

Then there’s whatever the rarefaction cell in Rivulet’s campaign is plugged into... it’s called the “Heart” in Moon’s structure, maybe it’s connected to a circulatory system, or maybe that’s a mechanical part versus an organic one, I don’t know. More food for thought.

About the only thing I think the iterators DON’T have is any kind of reproductive system. Iterators too close to one another can suck up all the water and leave another high and dry, so too many iterators in the same region would probably cause a drought. On top of that, lust is one of the earthly urges the Ancients are trying to let go of in order to ascend – no way they’d leave their giant holy supercomputers with the ability to do THAT. They’d probably have aneurysms even thinking about it.

#rain world #serious musings #rain world worldbuilding #rain world headcanons #iterators #iterator biology #rain world iterators #how the frick do the giant supercomputers work #this feels like the only thing that makes sense #colonial organisms have lots of lil parts that work together like a computer's parts #so it would in theory be easier to build something that freaking big #instead of trying to just grow it all out of the ground like a tree or something #...seriously tho what is the metal in their structure #it's not actually metal there's no way

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