Just a smol doodle of (mostly) everyone's critters as little potatoes :3
Really had fun with drawing them out- it's interesting to play around with different shapes and designs on everyone's different take on Architects- makes for quite the rainbow ^w^
I never see anyone mention this, but the spy pengling blueprints have a date on them! Assuming the game takes place during the 22nd century as told by an old voiceline from the PDA during the first game, with the date provided by the blueprints we can assume that Subnautica BZ most likely takes place in 2163/2164 depending on when Robin arrived on 4546b.
(It isn’t clear whether or not the date means December 6th or June 12th.)
With this, let’s go over some dates and general timeframes we know.
BZ, set two years after the first game: 2163/2164
SN: 2161/2162
the Degasi crashed 10 years before the aurora: 2151/2152
Mercury ii at least 30 years before the aurora: 2131/2132/???? (Dates start getting unclear here as we only have ranges.)
The habitat builder was created more than 50 years ago.
Unfortunately things start getting a little bit inconsistent when you consider the ancient blade from the first game
This is stored within the quarantine enforcement platform. It’s databank entry as you can see says it dates back to the 13th century. So either AL-AN was only stored for 900 years and not a full millennium, or he was stored for a millennium, but there was other Architect activity on 4546b up until an unknown period of time where the rest left/went into storage.
(That or whoever was writing just forgot. Which is the most likely explanation. I’m just being a nerd about the exact dates. No need to linger on it right now.)
So, AL-AN gets put in storage around a millennium ago/900 years ago by the time Robin finds him (At the very least sometime in the 12th-13th century range.)
There is an extinction event on 4546b 1,000 years before Architects arrive as suggested by fossil records.
Sea emperor is born around 1,600 years before Architects start cure efforts on 4546b.
Architect discovered fossil records on 4546b go back 10,000 years.
And thats as far back as we get with provided dates/numbers to go alongside them!
Unused aside dialogue about Lilypaddlers between AL-AN and Robin
Transcript under the cut
AL-AN: The Lily Paddler looks like it belongs in a Tworlock parade.
Robin: A what?
A: On my home planet, once a year, when the Tworlocks arrive at the spawning grounds, they are captured and paraded throughout the science pavilion. The best Tworlocks have similar appendages to this creature. Leading Architect scientists have first pick of the best Tworlocks. For research, or, pets.
R: Wow. That’s really… uh…
A: If you are hoping for a Tworlock of your own you should not get your hopes up. You don’t have nearly enough seniority.
The way AL-AN talks mixed with the fact that Architects are more technologically progressed than humans in the Subnautica universe leads him to seeming ‘smarter’ than the average human. He has a wide range of knowledge and despite his lack of experience with human social cues he is able to articulate himself extremely well. He also has access to tons of information due to his prior position as a scientist, but also because of what comes with existing as an Architect in the first place.
I mean, if your brain had direct access to all information available currently, you'd of course seem smart, but is that just you retelling what things have already been discovered or is this you being ‘smart’?
In that case you are only as smart as Google allows you to be (and the proverbial Architect GoogleTM is damn good). If you took an Architect never connected to the network and a human with no access to the internet how would they compare with their baseline intellect?
Wait a minute—what does that even solve? You could also argue the fact that because Architects are (usually) always connected to the network that this hypothetical is entirely unfair because it strips Architects of something that defines how they function. Being connected to the network is their normal existence, which would indeed imply that they are smarter than humans, yes? As they normally should have access to this advantage.
The average Architect has all the available knowledge that their species has learned available to it at all times while the average human has to rely only on things they’ve learned and how well they can research a certain topic. Again, being connected to the network for Architects is like if your brain was connected to Google and also literally everyone that currently exists and those that existed in the past. Just because a singular Architect may not have learned something for themselves doesn’t mean they can’t implement and use that knowledge. Just like how humans don’t need to have been the one to discover something for them to learn about and understand said thing.
Except then we go back to the issue of are they smart or do they just reiterate things they have available information on without actually having had studied or learned about said things? Even that fails to acknowledge the fact that they’re a hivemind! Trying to measure just one Architect is pointless when the only Architect mind that exists singularly from the rest of the network is AL-AN—besides he was never supposed to exist individually in the first place… and we have gone back around in a circle.
How could you even begin to compare the two species at all when they are so inherently different? Architects have senses that humans cannot begin to comprehend as we have never experienced them and vice versa. Their perceptions are very different from ours. Differences that make them seem so otherworldly to the other that it’s difficult to ascertain where you begin to measure which is ‘better’ and which is ’worse’.
To complicate things even further you would have to consider what each species considers to be intelligent at all, and then both would have to agree on these requirements. Is a fish lesser than a human just because it experiences existence in a way unfamiliar to us? What even is ‘smart’ or ‘intelligence’ and who decides what that means? It’s always going to be biased when the beings who created the definition also makes the rules and the criteria that must be met to fit that definition. An IQ test would mean nothing to a species that evolved under entirely different circumstances and whose minds work in entirely opposite ways to our own. Just as whatever they use to measure intelligence might not apply to how our brains work…
…Oh my god, it’s a loop that never ends. I can’t even remember which side I was arguing for, or if I was ever even arguing for one at all. Quite honestly, there’s no answer to my original question. I’ll be frank with you I cannot come up with one anyhow. I tried, but the more I kept writing the more I realized that each point contradicted itself again and again until we end up here. Back at the beginning.
I really would love to learn about the other species that made up parts of Architects vessels. As well as learning a bit more about the planets and ecosystems they came from and how the Architects ended up coming across them.
areudirty
yousharknotpass
titsay
origamiaround
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
