there’s something to be said about the jarring inaccessibility of information regarding the permanence in the data bank, especially considering its fervent upkeep by a scion of long themselves.
i don’t think many people realize just how wide the disparity is, either:
granted, i made this sometime right after 3.6, so i might’ve glossed over some of the more more recent developments for other aeons. either way, though, the fact remains that we have nothing (and there’s a lot of reasons why this is Weird, but it’s a bit of a hefty read, so i apologize in advance).
first of all, it has nothing to do with long being (allegedly) a fallen aeon, nor with the permanence being a so-called ‘inactive path’ — the data bank has entries for the order, trailblaze, and propagation; idrila has their own entry; several of these paths have associated factions with designated data bank entries; etc. plus, dan heng values recording information abt concepts or places regardless of whether they still exist/will exist in the future, and says that he likes to compare and contrast those records with existing ones.
beyond that, the claim that dan heng simply doesn’t know enough about the permanence, or “isn’t comfortable” writing about it, is total bs on SO many levels. i mean, he literally regards his aeonic ancestor as “the great long” and rather proudly proclaims its powers to be inseparable from himself (read: DHPT ult voice line; basically all of the 3.6 story; etc…), not to mention that he didn’t author all of its contents; i’m really not sure where this misconception came from, but dan heng did not write everything in the data bank!!!! long is one of the oldest aeons to date, and THEY left behind several branches of scions, of which at least two are known to be humanoid (aka capable of regular communication). how is it that, in all the time since THEIR death, nothing has been recorded about this path by the innumerable generations of nameless that have come before?
well, funny enough, that’s because it actually isn’t the case — the recorded information just isn’t accessible to us. for example, dhil’s greeting voice line explicitly tells us of a vidyadharan custom recorded in the data bank, which implies not only the existence of an independent entry, but also that he’s committed it to memory (and possibly even wrote it). that’s not even the extent of his internalized knowledge; in one of the time-limited anniversary events, there was some conditional dialogue where the TB quizzes dan heng on details in the data bank. in one of the options, you get to ask him about the species of the infernalians (another branch of long’s scions), to which he replies, “they are of the draconis subspecies, same as the vidyadhara.” so we know that the data bank has info about:
-the vidyadhara, including the name of their subspecies and cultural practices
-the infernalians, including the name of their subspecies
so, yeah, it’s not a matter of him not having the information; the knowledge is quite literally there. WE just can’t see it, for whatever reason.
also, he’s absolutely recorded his own thoughts, collective speculations and arguments, etc. in his entries before — despite his desire for objectivity, he seems to value providing context for future reference above all else; personal experience definitely constitutes as a valid form of information for the data bank in his eyes. for instance, his first entry for the pure children of anāsrava (note that it updates after the completion of a specific tb mission, so for anyone up to date on the game’s story, it’s no longer available) included what’s essentially an internal monologue where he just. kinda questions their existence.
you can read it for yourself here:
like, dan heng literally states that he isn’t sure whether the entry should be included at all, because it was (at the time) based on very unreliable information. if it were truly a lack of credible info preventing his usual record-keeping, we’d still be seeing some semblance of proof of their existence in the archives, but we don’t.
ALSO, speaking of the pcoa, that entry was written and made available during the same patch they were introduced!! meanwhile, the vidyadhara have been an established race/faction since 1.0; we were informed of more branches of long’s scions in 1.3, which is also when we got our second (*technically* third) playable character of said race; there have been multiple focused arcs which touched specifically on the vidyadhara — one of which took up the better half of 3.6 — and yet we still don’t have even a summary of their lore? the timing of that honestly solidified my suspicions— had hoyo simply forgotten to add their entry (listen, benefit of the doubt), it would’ve been a perfect opportunity to reintroduce that information — but they didn’t. this is 100% intentional, but i can’t figure out why they’d do it like this.
sure, it’s building up to future development for the path, but the same can be said for just about all of them. we have less information about the finality, for example, than we do the permanence, and both are undoubtedly “endgame” story arcs, so to speak— yet only the latter has records available to us currently.
i have many thoughts about this, but i’ve said a lot already; thank you to anyone who got this far. i’ll post more about this in the future, but i’m always open to discussions in comments/reblogs/DMs if anyone is interested.
