(The Shorekeeper's Birth, the first character story of Shorekeeper.)
I am going to mostly repeat what I wrote in the notes of my fanfic and what I mentioned somewhere on twt, but I need to put it in here too because this is the site I actually use lol
I know everyone is quite angry at Rover's people for not letting them to at least go back home to see it for the last time, but I think it's quite literally impossible, and not exactly because it doesn't exist.
I believe it's because they're going through the heat death of the entire universe.
[Link]
So this basically means there's no energy that can be used anymore. Everything is 'used up' and thermodynamics basically stops working.
(It's not really used up, as the energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed, but for all intends and purposes it's unusable.)
So with that said, ever since wuwa introduced the time travel, I believe we can assume we know where Rover comes from.
Rover isn't saving some randomly chosen world out of hundreds. They were chosen to save their world.
They come from the future Solaris III, one that is facing the heat death of the universe. The available energy is almost depleted, and now they're facing their 'frozen end', but they have one more card to play before they give up: send back a very special individual on an neverending mission of 'saving the world'. And that person is Rover.
Their civilization uses up all remaining usable energy to equip Rover with the best tools they could ever give them: the satellite mentioned in 3.1 by Aemeath, Exostriders, Sentinels, Tethys System, and the Shorekeeper. They did it to help Rover out the best they can with the very limited resources they have. They send them back to the day the Etheric Sea has engulfed the whole of Solaris III.
(Who knows, maybe Rover's entrance was the thing that triggered the magnetic pole shift of the Solaris in the first place.)
They even prepared a few messages for Rover, becasue once they're in the past, the future civilization won't be able to send any messages back. After all, they used up everything.
And if Rover were to ever come back... that would doom them all. There would be no way to send them back into the past, to finish their mission.
And I think that Rover knew all of that. Otherwise, why would their messages found by Aemeath were 'full of longing', instead of reports about the progress of the mission?
In that situation, their brutal refusal of Rover's request would actually be a cold sort of kindness. Rover knows they can't come back. They knew what they've signed up for, or rather what they were chosen for, but that doesn't mean they are not allowed to miss their homeland, their family and friends. And to help with that choice to remain in place, their civilization made sure they are not allowed to try and come back.
It's impossible to come back, and if they ever succeed in their mission, then meeting their loved ones will also be impossible. They will be either different people whatsoever, or never born at all, because Rover will literally change the past, so their future hopefully never happens. Their homeland is gone, even before the start of the mission.
Only they were spared.
This is why they have this instinct to help people. They weren't able to do anything for their people, so they will do everything they can to at least save the people of the past Solaris III, no matter how exhausting and painful it is, no matter how much they miss their home.
Survivor's guilt is heavy on their conscience, and they also grew to genuenly love this past Solaris, this beautiful world where such amazing people live.
But, even when coming back home is impossible, Rover still has hope. Hope for the better tomorrow.
(Lyrics of Saving Light)
Honestly I have a couple more theories, like one bonkers one where I think Abby might be an echo of Aleph-1 just because Abby is always hungry just like Aleph-1, and the other where the Final Solution to the whole saving the world mission might be something straight out of Madoka Magica, which spooked Rover so much they literally erased their memories to forget about it (it may or may not be true, Shorekeeper's Character Story IV doesn't really support that one, but who knows).
Locking my answer in right now, future weekly boss being Rhein (Luuk's brother) because their situation is uncomfortably close to the Emil and Halua situation.
grand architect/rover hades and persephone au. something about the grand architect masquerading as kharon… he’s hiding in plain sight all to guide his rover to his new gilded prison and death, intending to lay a crown of rotted flowers on his head.
Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.
-The opening paragraph to My Immortal, posted 20 years ago today