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(Rain World) complete-ish story analysis of The Watcher
The Watcher is a contentious DLC, but it’s also got the richest story Rain World has ever told. This long ass post dissects The Watcher’s narrative with a specific focus on its central question:
When the world beneath your feet cracks and crumbles, will you hold on to all you once knew? Or dive into the unknown?
This post goes through the main story and picks out important elements to form an overarching reading of the whole DLC. It also doubles as a general recap to make sense of The Watcher’s more cryptic storybeats, but it’ll overall be a lot less confusing if you’ve played the whole thing yourself.
⚠️ SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE DLC (v1.5 CONTENT!) ⚠️
Nothing lasts forever. It all decays, crumbles, disappears. Let me re-frame that core question: in the face of great upheaval, will you cling to a dying past? Or embrace the future, and become something new?
Think about this question as you read. It will tie things together.
Spinning Top: childhood lost
Formation of the “watcher” identity in intro
And through the middle of it all, a lonely lost slugcat trying their best to outlast the ravages of a warped world.
Watcher’s story begins with their childhood getting cut short. An unknown slugcat attacks their family. Watcher’s parent and sibling run up to fight the attacker, but Watcher cowers behind a tree, too scared to act.
The unknown slugcat likely killed their targets. But Watcher, who lived due to their fear, learns a violent lesson: to survive, you must distance yourself and hide. Watcher is taught a survival mechanism that involves inaction; passively observing their world—hence the name, “Watcher”.
As a result of the reclusiveness beaten into them by nature, Watcher is lost and lonely. It’s implied that they yearn to return to a safe home with companions, so when they meet Spinning Top, an attachment to the Echo quickly forms.
Spinning Top wanders into Watcher’s reality
Typically, an Echo is a terminally aloof being. They barely pay slugcats any mind, only using them as an audience for the Echo’s strange musings, and then send the rodents off with a small gift.
Spinning Top, the Echo of a child, shares that same deeply detached personality. When Watcher first meets them, they jeer at how funny it is that Watcher excretes, and how the slugcat will eventually meet the same sorry fate as their own shit. Spinning Top is so divorced from corporeal existence that it’s the most interesting thing they see in Watcher.
But Watcher is not deterred. Spinning Top is a potential companion and friend, and despite the Echo’s jaded and strange nature, they embody a spark of childlike kindness that appeals to Watcher. Spinning Top makes an effort to genuinely talk to Watcher despite the latter not having the gift of communication, and Spinning Top’s gifts are greater than Karma, as they attune the slugcat to the ripples that constitute the countless realities of the world.
Watcher resists detachment and searches for their companion
Eventually, Spinning Top pulls Watcher into a complete mess of strands, connected together not by gates but by tears in reality. Here, Watcher is lost. Each world offers a completely unique threat: burning fire, flaying winds, churning floods, and ruthless swarms. None of these places offer Watcher the familiarity or safety of a home. When they do return to the closest thing to home—the base game regions—Watcher finds them consumed by corruption. Watcher will never find any anchor of comfort here.
And as Watcher’s control over the ripples grows, their capacity for detachment becomes even stronger. They begin to actively tear apart the fabric of reality around them, drifting randomly through worlds at their own will. The nature of their camouflage is revealed to be Ripplespace, a layer of reality where Watcher is truly, truly alone. If anything, Watcher’s powers only enable their detached, evasive, and fearful tendencies even further. Why shouldn’t they just resign themselves to hiding in a corner of Ripplespace forever?
In spite of this development, Watcher pushes against their passivity. Spinning Top acts as a sort of anchor against the madness of the strands, a familiar friend who offers kindness. Long ago, Watcher froze in the face of peril. But now, every time Spinning Top disappears, Watcher follows and follows. They no longer simply survive and observe, but actively take risks and explore. And by utilizing the same listless powers as their friend to achieve this, Watcher comes to understand how their struggles overlap and empathizes with Spinning Top.
Spinning Top’s dream - left behind
When Watcher reaches maximum Ripple, they dream of a void. Suddenly, their old family passes by them, happily running up to a great golden light in the distance. Watcher briefly chases after, but like the violent memory from long ago, they freeze in their steps. Their family is gone, and Watcher is alone again.
When Watcher relives their tragic past, their family is quickly followed by hordes upon hordes of slugcats, all darting into the light. This foreshadows Spinning Top’s own struggle, a child whose entire species ascended while they alone remain. Watcher’s ripple powers seem to deepen their empathy, manifesting an impossibly accurate picture of their companion’s pain.
The children move onward
Watcher’s journey to find Spinning Top also begins to affect the Echo as well. The presence of a companion reminds Spinning Top of their long-lost “creche days” among mothers, fathers, and fellow children. Eventually, Watcher even joins them in the lonely plane of Ripplespace, and it is this that prompts Spinning Top to face their past.
In their former bedroom, Spinning Top reveals a sorrowful hypocrisy. They find corporeal life to be an undignified soup of proteins and acids, and yet they endlessly yearn for the warmth and comfort of their childhood. Spinning Top is scared to let go of it all. None of their loved ones stayed behind as fellow ghosts, and the only individuals who did were other aloof, afraid ghosts. Spinning Top is no exception.
One child learns that they’ve stagnated for far too long, and they must move onto whatever comes next. Spinning Top accepts the unknown, and disappears into the white door of ascension.
The other child learns that it’s okay to take action; to embrace the childlike joy and curiosity that they’ve beaten down for so long in order to survive. Watcher dives into Spinning Top’s toys, and old scars begin to heal.
Both children learn to grow and mature. They do not languish in the grief of the past, and accept the hurdle of change that they must bring on their own.
Prince: twisted regression
What if Watcher went the other way? Instead of maturing, what if they clung even more desperately to their old desires?
The Rot is easily the most potent symbol within the story of The Watcher. This section is the longest.
The unfortunate mess
Nothing lasts forever. It is an indiscriminate, all-encompassing fact of life that everything eventually declines and dies. The Rot is the most pure form of this idea: it is a mindless mass that consumes everything it touches. “After a point it’s all like this”, Spinning Top states when in a rotted basegame region.
Watcher’s story develops on this in a very interesting way, where a certain strand of the Rot has evolved and become sentient. The Sentient Rot is capable of spreading across the ripples and consuming the entire world, but most notably it is spread specifically via the actions of other characters. Spinning Top accidentally carries it into the basegame map because they are childish and reckless, and Watcher intentionally spreads it hoping that it will help them reconnect with their past (something to be discussed in more detail soon).
The Sentient Rot holds the “living memory” of the things it consumes, allowing it to “protect” the past—or at least a twisted version of it. As such, Sentient Rot infestation becomes a symbol for a character who is “stagnating”. Instead of accepting losses or looking to the future, they remain attached to old desires and woes. As time passes, these desires become harder to obtain, and slowly destroy the individual who clings tight. This self-destruction is the Sentient Rot consuming their surroundings.
Consider how Watcher’s exploration through the basegame map is quickly consumed by the Sentient Rot. With this in mind, Watcher getting sent across the ripples by Spinning Top becomes a blessing in disguise. Even though the sudden change brought great confusion and commotion, it was their only escape from the infestation. If Watcher was given the option to stick around, they would’ve literally been devoured by their desire to return to the past (that is, their family & home). The whole prologue is a fairly literal depiction of Watcher’s core question: hold onto the past, or dive into the unknown?
Additionally, the Sentient Rot also does not disappear when Watcher hides in Ripplespace, because the rot of stagnation is a fundamental struggle. Watcher can hide from outside dangers in their bubble of isolation, but it’s not enough to escape the festering from within.
The birth of Prince
After performing a wrong warp, Watcher eventually ends up in Outer Rim. No region identifies with the concept of decay quite like the rim. Physically, it’s at the edge of the world. Temporally, at the edge of time. All life, all development is gone. This is the perfect place for the Sentient Rot to fester, which begins to ironically grow a great tree in the bowl of a starcatcher to the west.
Watcher climbs up this tree, named The Throne. When Watcher reaches the top, they are given a Karma Flower that allows them to leave, at the foot of a giant Rot bulb. Whatever thread they escape into is then infested with Sentient Rot. If Watcher returns, they’ll find another flower, and a new path, and a chilling, painful voice. The entity inside the Rot bulb, having suddenly gained a sense of self, now speaks to Watcher, describing how it evolved from a mindless mass to an enlightened, singular individual. And then, when fed enough, the bulb hatches.
Prince, having just been born from the Rot of all things, is too naive to give any weight to the concepts of suffering or conflict. They view Watcher as their savior for “feeding” The Throne and helping bring Prince to life. They dote over Watcher, laughing and cheering even if the slugcat pelts them with rocks and spears. The Throne even grows an entire shelter to cater to Watcher’s needs.
Prince’s dream - Watcher is enticed by rotten comforts
After Watcher meets Prince, they experience another dream. They wake up in a dark sea and swim toward a light, surfacing into a warm forest identical to the one they grew up in. Visually, the sequence reflects Prince’s ascension into a singular individual with a supposedly higher purpose, now able to perceive a world they love and crave.
However, the presentation of the dream shows that Prince strikes a sinister emotional chord with Watcher. The slugcat feels alone and lost, but Prince is an adoring companion who offers a familiar home, not unlike the tree that was ripped away from them. In Watcher’s eyes, The Throne is an opportunity to return to how everything once was. No longer wandering, no longer alone. Would it really be so bad if Watcher strengthens this bond, and helps their new friend flourish?
Watcher spreads the infestation to every pocket of reality that they can reach. By desperately striving to secure a friend and reunite with the past, they have ravaged their whole world. But what do they have to show for it?
Prince, the oxymoron
Prince leads an oxymoronic existence. On one hand, Prince believes they are an “evolved” or “mature” individual. Like the iterator(s) that the Sentient Rot has consumed, Prince tasks themselves with ending the cycle. However, they consider themselves “something new”. They are allegedly aware of how the iterators failed, and they believe that they are more capable of actually succeeding than the iterators ever will be.
This is where Prince’s naivete creates a critical misjudgement. Despite having a technically “evolved” form, Prince seeks to achieve their lofty goal via the most regressive, basal method possible: consume everything, across all spacetime. The iterators sought to create a path for all life, no matter how simple, to grow and improve spiritually. Prince effectively seeks a devolved form of the task by dragging the world down into a primal state of being, driven solely by hunger.
Prince’s most dire mistake, however, is that they want to secure a perfect, unchanging state where everything can be preserved. In their words, “a living memory of all life, forever!”. Nothing lasts forever, not even the horseman of death itself. So when Watcher spreads the Sentient Rot further across the ripples, Prince’s kingdom eventually loses control of itself—and like a balloon popping, Karma Flowers erupt from the Rot. Prince is paralyzed, and their dominion ends with a whimper.
Watcher is tragically left in a worse position than when they started. They chose a path of stagnation: after indulging in companionship and comfort that was too good to be true, they ended up alone in a rotten wasteland of their own making.
Weaver: learning adulthood
Even if the Sentient Rot has infested every region and effloresced, Watcher can continue. It is possible for them to rebound, and follow a greater path.
Watcher stumbles upon a godly mentor
When Watcher tears open their own warps, it catches the attention of another entity. Returning to the region, Watcher finds the warp closed by The Weaver. They are a booming, godly figure who seeks to restore order to reality. Upon their meeting, Weaver thunders forth a strange metaphor to Watcher:
CONSIDER: A droplet of rain pierces the still water. A ripple, A ring, ever expanding.
Within the cosmos, Watcher’s life expands outward like the ripples of a droplet: in every direction there is a different parallel self, a new possibility of Watcher’s existence.
CONSIDER: Movement along the circumference of a ring. From one eye a loop, from one eye a spiral, from one eye the motion of a line.
The cycle is driven by movement along the ring of a ripple. This experience is deeply personal, and it can be perceived in completely different ways. The previous species never came to a consensus on how it worked, after all.
CONSIDER: A second drop. A thousandth. A multiplex of rings, spirals, interacting in countless ways. A froth. A seeth. An effervescence of disruption!
Every single living being has their own droplet, their own ripples, and these countless instances of life intermingle and tangle to create reality itself.
NOW: An understanding. A path. A purpose. Movement along the line, from distant to origin. From spiral to loop. From loop to point. An understanding!
Weaver teaches Watcher about a new path; a higher calling than flitting across strands. Watcher can escape the impending ruin of decay by seeking ascension. Somehow, Watcher can unravel their ripples, pulling them back into the starting position of the droplet, and this will unite their alternative selves into one. Watcher can ascend.
For a normal slugcat, their alternative selves are separated by different physical bodies. By rising their Karma and entering the Void Sea, a slugcat will dissolve their physical body, allowing for all those selves to individually reunite as one at their metaphysical origin point - The Egg.
Watcher’s situation is more complicated. Spinning Top gifted godlike powers to Watcher, but the slugcat is also supernaturally blocked from pursuing ascension. Watcher’s ripples are all tangled by the warps that cross between them, which keeps the slugcat trapped in this not-corporeal, not-incorporeal state.
Watcher grows, and their scars heal
Through their meetings, Weaver passes down their divine gifts onto Watcher. The slugcat gains the ability to banish the Sentient Rot, seal all warps they travel through, and cleanly warp without creating a tear. And for every warp Watcher sews shut, Weaver assists them by sewing another warp of their own.
Consider how the metaphor of ripples connects to the world map; a big tangled ball with the Daemon “droplet” at the center. Watcher’s world map is quite literally an extension of their own self (or more accurately, selves). Watcher is marked by a great deal of trauma and struggle, which twisted and tangled their world into one full of tears in reality. Weaver is effectively a mentor figure who teaches Watcher to both help the world around them whilst healing themselves, which comes in the form of dispelling the Sentient Rot and closing the warps.
After all the warps have been closed, Watcher is transported to... the beginning of time, possibly? The specifics aren’t too important. Here, they find the Weaver, who gives their final teaching to the slugcat:
Two big, beady eyes.
The specific meaning of this reveal is extremely open, but I see it as Weaver trying to convey the similarity between Watcher and Weaver, as the two characters’ eyes are nearly identical. In spite of the immense difference in size, powers, and metaphysical knowledge, Watcher has begun to close the gap. It is possible for a little slugcat to achieve the very same radiance.
And then, Weaver is gone.
Ascension: growing up
In computing, a “daemon” is a background process which lies dormant when not in use. Within the region of Daemon, Watcher can find three pillars which correspond to each of the main characters. The left pillar awakens when Spinning Top departs from the world. The right pillar awakens when Prince is born. The central pillar awakens when all of the warps are closed. Awakening all three pillars causes Daemon to initiate the final act of this story.
When considering the requirements to awaken Daemon, and the events that soon follow, it is implied that the function of Daemon is to unlock Watcher’s metaphysical evolution—the daemon drives ascension.
Watcher gains closure
Movement along the line, from distant to origin. Weaver's teachings become reality. Watcher is torn to the beginning of their journey in Hydroponics, and then Outskirts, and then to the endpoints of their three companions. Spinning Top and Weaver are gone; they accomplished what they wanted and moved on.
Prince’s conclusion is particularly special. Watcher meets Prince in a crumbling, sloughed Throne. Prince is happy to see their friend one final time, and grants them a parting gift: the mark of communication. Prince proclaims that they are more similar to the iterators than they once thought.
Prince granted enlightenment to Watcher. This act is plainly antithetical to Prince’s old ideology of embracing animalistic chaos, but there is beauty to this contrast. Prince was once the epitome of “spiritual immaturity”, and they were gravely punished by the universe for this. But even an individual like Prince can mature and develop, rising from that state of ultimate failure. Now, Prince sits among a bed of Karma Flowers, in harmony rather than conflict.
Finally, Watcher is returned to the tree of their childhood. Overall, this sequence is akin to Watcher gaining closure on their old life, as they approach the cusp of what lies beyond.
The truth of the ripples
In this final sequence, the underlying fabric of reality is revealed to us: the ripples and cycles are caused by rings of countless selves, which orbit throughout the cosmos. These rings are managed by the Daemon monoliths, which are the proverbial “droplet” in Weaver’s teachings.
Earlier, Watcher set the stage for evolution, and now their awakened Daemon performs its function. It rearranges their ripples into equilibrium, making them all truly parallel. Every single one of Watcher’s selves are now in the caves of Depths, on a united path to ascension.
The Choice
As every single instance of Watcher dives into the sea, they are no longer bound to the limits of the cycle. Watcher could ascend, transforming into something new, or they could cling to the decaying old world and haunt it as a ghost.
Watcher is offered a choice: will they hold on to all they once knew? Or dive into the unknown?
Watcher embraces the unknown. In the beginning of the story, Watcher’s childhood was ripped away from them. Here, they choose to leave—and enter adulthood. They ascend, evolving into a young god.
Closing remarks
Watcher's world crumbles around them. Their family dies, their old lands are consumed by Rot, and they are spat out all over the earth. Transformation is thrust upon them.
Watcher can refuse to acknowledge their new existence. They can attempt to "freeze" the progression of the world with the Sentient Rot, but the world simply continues along, now damaged. Ultimately, their best choice is to accept that things have changed, and to look toward the future. By doing this, Watcher helps a friend along their own journey of self-acceptance. They mend the world around them, mend themselves, and eventually evolve into something greater, something that they truly desired.
Through the pain and the confusion, they embrace the unknown.
Thanks for reading! There's a lot of finer details within The Watcher that have their own analytical juices and wonders, but I wanted to only focus on the broad-strokes elements here.
Watcher has a whole lot of pretty crazy lore that simply didn’t fit into this post. Why are worms such an important physiology to this world? Why do I think all ascended beings become Void Worms? What’s the deal with the Elder Ripplespawn? What about stardust? What in the world is a Bone Shaker? I might make another big post like this, specifically about my favorite details and theories.
⚠️ ((MASSIVE WATCHER SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING AND ALL OF THE POST-GAME))
Some assorted ramblings about Watcher lorestuff. These are mostly concerning the Second Ending; I might make another post later. shrugs. I don't want to posit these as the "Correct" readings or whatever, just the ones I'm currently fond of. Hopefully you get something out of this.
The Kingdom, a Distorted Reflection of The Void Sea
A Triple Affirmative?
The Prince's "Kingdom" exists as an alternative Solution, a distorted reflection of Ascension, as the title suggests. The language used to describe its glorious vision is strikingly reminiscent of language around the Great Problem:
"Imagine: a single substrate… Life!Throughout all time! Nothing lost. No one lost. A living memory of all life, forever! From bug to god, all as one. None above the other. A TRUE end to the pattern. That is my vision."
– The Prince (Rot Friend!)
I mean, I'm not sure how much more explicitly Prince can state it. Its Kingdom is THE solution, in its eyes. A catalog of all things, living forever, free from the struggles of the Cycle. And this Solution is farther-reaching than any we've ever seen; the (Prince's) Rot Engulfs everything. It does not discriminate between bug and god, between rock and carbon, between microbe and macro-organism. All are welcome in its Kingdom, and that Kingdom is ever-growing.
Of course, I am speaking from a theoretical standpoint here; I am not advocating for the Kingdom as a "true" Solution. I don't believe the Great Problem can ever be solved; it is against the nature of the world. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. Regardless, I believe the Kingdom to be untenable.
Certain regions in Watcher cannot be infected, which may suggest this Solution is not as all-encompassing as it seems. But Watcher plays with the fabric of space and time and the realms between the material and the Void, so this may be a moot point. Regardless, I'd rather focus on Philosophy than Practicality.
This "Solution" is Thoroughly Undesirable; we wish to leave the carnal plane of suffering and repetition, not bind ourselves to it forever!
Sure, nothing will be "lost", but who will be there to appreciate the memories of its little amalgamation? The Prince? And what of the ingredients it has ingested? Digested into soup of flesh, where all are one, and all are nothing.
This Solution, naturally, is presented as an alternative to Ascension, a side-stepping of the Great Problem. But I have a slightly different proposition:
The Kingdom is the Antithesis to the Ascension, just like the Rot is the Antithesis to Void Sea.
Ascension Versus Assimilation
The nature of Ascension is vague, but one possible interpretation I find of note is a melding of one's many disparate selves, no longer separated. A fullness of Self, and a fullness of perspective, freed to move on to world beyond the Carnal Plane. Even with more collective interpretations, I do believe each moving part is of equal significance. It is a mural of stained glass; an integration of many pieces arranged to form a greater whole.
Each piece fits together, but each piece is distinct. There is a harmony to this, and no one is above the other. A freedom from the struggles of the carnal plane and the oppression of the Cycle.
In the Kingdom, however, these many pieces eventually blend into an indistinguishable mass, equal by nature of their assimilation, rather than integration.
"Oh, you have brought sundries? You can leave them here if you wish, as a contribution. My processes will dissolve them to their base components and those components will be added to the mass. Nothing to waste, every bit counts!"
– The Prince, when brought an item
Its dialogue does not change based on item. This frustrated me, but in hindsight, I believe it serves to further my point. The details do not matter to the Prince; everything is broken down to its base components and assimilated into the Mass.
A World without Death, but also a Story without Continuation.
Opposing Forces
"As with all great deeds, my work is not without great challenge. It has taken eons and the light fades. The paths close and change. I can almost feel... a will... at odds with my own."
– The Prince
My buddy gandolph said something really insightful about the nature of the Rot we see in the Watcher. They've said it better than I can, so I'll just leave this here:
(this is all inference. just one reading of many)
I find this extremely compelling, and I'm big into the idea of the Rot and the Void Sea acting as opposing forces as well as foils.
"...If you leave a stone on the ground, and come back some time later, it's covered in dust. This happens everywhere, and over several lifetimes of creatures such as you, the ground slowly builds upwards.
So why doesn't the ground collide with the sky? Because far down, under the very very old layers of the earth, the rock is being dissolved or removed. The entity which does this is known as the Void Sea."
– Subterranean Teal Pearl
Rot is an unmitigated growth, often compared to cancerous cells. It is life without termination; a construction with no completion. It builds and builds, grows and grows, assimilates and assimilates...
The Void Sea counteracts this force by dissolving this unmitigated growth and allowing new life to spring forth. To allow for new birth, there must also be space for death. For change.
Where Rot remains, Void moves forward. The Kingdom would keep its inhabited trapped in this world for all eternity, whilst Ascension seeks to ferry them to the next.
Unfortunate Evolution:
Unfortunate Evolution is an interesting segment, and I feel it illustrates this dichotomy between Rot and Void quite deftly. Once you enter, you cannot warp out, giving this a Cinematic sort of feel. I do believe it is meant to parallel the entrance into the Void Sea at the end of the basegame, just... twisted.
The use of zero gravity signifies a relation to Iterator Internals, but I think the drastic shift in movement is a purposeful parallel to swimming in the Void Sea. This movement is harder to control than swimming, though. You can't move very far forward without pushing off a wall or throwing something or otherwise utilizing pre-existing momentum.
You "swim" upwards, in contrast to swimming downwards into the Void Sea
Unfortunate Evolution feels cold and desolate, still and quiet, like a corpse. In contrast, the Void Sea, as liquid, feels brimming with life and movement.
You're teased with a glimpse of the "Rot worm", though it's initially sectioned off from you, rather than a being sharing that same space.
As you venture into the open space, the background is dark and dilapidated. Contrast this with the increase in Light as you venture further into the Void Sea, especially with how many lights you see. Illumination versus Obfuscation.
The biggest difference is perhaps in the results of these meetings.
The Void Worm guides you towards enlightenment, facilitating your journey towards ascension. It interacts with you, bringing you with it, cutting your string, and then it allows you to complete your journey. You swim into the light, ascending, and the game ends.
The Rot Worm, meanwhile, tells you nothing, takes you nowhere, and hardly even seems to acknowledge you. You swim past it and end up at a portal that takes you back to Outer Rim. And then you continue on like nothing ever happened. It's... notably Anti-climactic, at least to me. But I believe that is the point. The Rot Worm (and UE by extension) is only an imitation of the familiar; a fleeting distraction in a much longer journey.
...Or, it was like that for me, at least. Maybe it's not intentional, but I think this reading is very neat. The Prince's Rot has no enlightenment or salvation or even ending to offer you. Just an indiscriminate consumption of all in its wake and the stagnation that follows.
The Conclusion:
Therefore, the Prince's "Enlightenment" is antithetical to its very being. There are many ways to interpret the ending, of course. Perhaps this was a counteraction from the Void Sea, restraining the Prince in its hubris and re-establishing the cycle of death and rebirth. Was this a conscious act, or simply a natural occurrence? I'm unsure. Alternatively, but not mutually exclusive to this reading, is the suggestion that the Prince was "paralyzed from its contradictory existence", as gandolph stated.
The contradiction of the Prince's Self and Ego versus the unification and equality of all life. The contradiction of its pursuit of enlightenment and cataloguing with its mindless desire for consumption and assimilation. The contradiction between their inherited imperative and its implicit nature.
At the Prince's Coronation, its Kingdom crumbles. Karma Flowers engulf its corruption, and so life is born anew. In a way, I suppose its blessed substrate has been achieved, just not in the way it expected. The rot will be consumed, just like the dust before it.
UPDATE: adding these images of Survivor's Ending and Prince's Ending for further comparison.
Side-by-side, you can see the resemblance between the Slugtree and the Throne, though there are also some notable differences:
The Slugtree's trunk is much thicker, making it seem healthy and long-lasting. Throne's "trunk", by contrast, seems sickly and distorted
Slugtree is covered in "leaves" whilst the Throne is (at least by silhouette) barren. Again, the Slugtree appears full of life whilst the Throne is sickly and dying
Slugtree is full of light; Throne's only light is the Karma flowers now growing atop it / consuming it
Also note how the slugtree is full of slugcats that form a greater image together but still exist as their own beings . nothing to add for throne here but it adds to the "Ascension is Integration whilst Kingdom is Assimilation" reading
sorry for poor organization. here are some more thoughts:
A Prince Versus a King
Okay luna this is really cool, but like, isn't the Prince just a datamined name anyways? does it being a 'Prince' instead of a 'King' even matter?
great question guy I made up in my head just now. Everything matters, of course, but here are my thoughts on it being a 'Prince' specifically:
The Prince is likely meant to serve as a foil to Spinning Top (Echo Friend), as the Prince is a nascent consciousness, and ST is a child. Naming it 'Prince' strengthens this connection.
The Prince is not a child, however. Children learn and grow. Children eventually become adults, and they move on. We see this with Spinning Top. As we accompany on them on their journey throughout space-time, we prompt the self-reflection necessary to process their memories and accept the next chapter in their life. (There's a whole post I could write about ST and their insight into Echoes, but that's for another time.) By its very nature, the Prince can never move on. It does not have Self reflection, because Self is all it can ever truly know. All it learns is assimilated into the mass. Like I said, its attempts at enlightenment are contradicted by its nature as Rot. Hence, they serve as foils.
The term 'Prince' may suggest an attempt at humility, which is deeply ironic, but understandable. Prince proselytizes about its world of equality, but inherently this cannot be, because it has placed itself at the top of everything, implicitly, by assuming its way is best for everyone. A Kingdom needs its ruler, and Prince has graciously accepted such a role.
I think my favorite reading, however, is that the Prince is simply yet to succeed its Throne. That there is some point it hasn't reached, something still left to achieve. Perhaps once its Kingdom's construction has completed?
The Ending, then, serves as its "Coronation." A crown of Karma flowers for the freshly-appointed King. An Elegy to Ignorance.
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EDIT: also want to make a nuance disclaimer that rot in General is not inherently the same as Prince Rot / Kingdom specifically yay . and im just a little guy make sure to read lots of different posts 🙏👍
there's also much to be said about the Throne and the Rot and the Brain Trees and etc but someone else can do that much better than me. And also another disclaimer that this reading may become outdated with future updates yay. happy watching everyone
I've seen a number of people claiming that the Watcher DLC has no story and that the slugcat has no characterization, but I definitely think it's there.
(SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE DLC!)
There are no spoilers for the secondary ending until about halfway down, where there is a warning.
Adventurous...
Since this post gets a bit meandering, I will spell out the general framework of the story here:
The Watcher is a shy, lonely individual who desperately struggles to find companionship after their childhood was cut short. They will go to great lengths to achieve this connection.
Timid mouse
"And through the middle of it all, a lonely lost slugcat trying their best to outlast the ravages of a warped world."
Why are they called the Watcher? It's due to their nonconfrontational, withdrawn demeanor. This is immediately apparent in the intro dream:
When Watcher's parent steps up to fight the aggressive slugcat, Watcher's sibling joins in. But Watcher just hides away, afraid to confront the danger. It's unclear if their family survived the tussle, but they never reunite again. Watcher's shy demeanor has severed them from their family.
Time passes and Watcher grows a bit older, wandering around in what seems like a futile search for their family. Here, they meet Spinning Top, the child Echo.
A desire to bond
Within the DLC's story, youthfulness is tied to a fear of isolation & loneliness.
Spinning Top has been lost & drifting for a long time. When they ascended, they feared the loss of connection to their old life and their loved ones. So they remained on world, searching for a sign that their loved ones still miss them.
This desperate pursuit has led them to travel across reality for eons and eons. By the time Watcher meets them, Spinning Top is now combing through places that have no relation to their life. Spinning Top won't find any sign of grief or remembrance in Coral Caves or Rusted Wreck, so why are they drifting along these pointless locations?
Spinning Top's loneliness and persistence arose because, as a child, they lacked the experience of maturing and could not handle the radical acceptance required to ascend. They are scared to accept the truth: their childhood has come and gone. Their loved ones eventually moved on and also left the world behind. Spinning Top is the only one holding onto this long-defunct family.
Shadow reflecting radiance
Watcher and Spinning Top are very similar characters. Both are lonely children that have been severed from their parents and siblings, and wish to revive the childhood that was ripped away from them. They're desperate to rekindle some kind of connection.
Throughout the campaign, Watcher continually searches for Spinning Top because they're the only individual that Watcher has seen who could bring a greater connection than chomping, fleeing, or stabbing. They even give Watcher the gift of infant godhood!
These childlike characters both find companionship in each other. In fact, Watcher's companionship is what gives Spinning Top the strength to return to the location of their actual memory, and confront the truth of their loneliness.
"All my mothers and fathers and crechemates who went along without me… Do they note my absence? I've traveled from the furthest future to the very seed of our past, and I see no evidence. Only echoes and strays. Aloof. Alone. Afraid."
Spinning Top accepts that it is best to grow up and move on, and so they disappear, finally ascending for real. Watcher, however, does not seem to learn the same lesson from this journey.
While they may seem happy playing with toys, it's still a symbol of juvenility. Despite everything that has happened to them, they still embody a desire to recapture their lost childhood.
And now, Watcher is alone once more. Soon, they will seek out a new companion.
Ripplespace as a symbol of isolation
Before I discuss the second ending, I want to talk about Watcher's abilities and the symbols they embody.
The ripple-world that Watcher is (accidentally?) transported to by Spinning Top is a continuation of the aching, drifting nature of these two characters. They are unable to stay in place for long, constantly seraching for a sign of connection.
Watcher's "gift" of invisibility is a clear extension of their characterization. They tackle threats by hiding away, slipping past unnoticed. As their Ripple level rises, the cloak begins pushing Watcher further out of their typical plane of reality, creating tears into a wholly different plane. And when they reach the (as of now) maximum Ripple level, Watcher is fully pulled out of the material plane and into Ripplespace. Here, they are truly alone except for the primitive, gnawing voidspawn.
Every gift seems to give way to a curse of isolation. Watcher has to detach themselves from reality itself to survive, and the gift-giver Spinning Top leaves them behind.
Endless hunger
SPOILERS FOR THE SECOND ENDING.
SPOILERS FOR THE SECOND ENDING.
Here's a cool divider.
While the purple Throne Rot seen across the campaign may not play by the same rules as Five Pebbles' Rot, its behavior is equivalent. The Rot is the ultimate embodiment of primal struggle, a collective consciousness of brain meat that forever hungers to consume as much of the world as it can reach. It is not unintelligent, but it is very one-minded.
From The Throne itself, a giant flower blooms and gives birth to the Prince.
The Prince is a piece of the Throne Rot that has partially separated itself from its collective consciousness. It is an individual connected to the Throne Rot, but it has its own mind.
"STARVING, pressing, grinding, SQUEEZING against... us? But now... I? A... SELF. And… an OTHER."
The Prince is an imitation of an Iterator puppet. This part of his identity causes him to believe that he was born to solve the Big Problem, by assimilating the entire world into the Throne Rot.
"The imperative that was in THEM [the Iterators] remains in me."
"Imagine: a single substrate… Life! (...) Nothing lost. No one lost. From bug to god, all as one. A TRUE end to the pattern."
I personally don't believe this was the original goal of the Throne Rot, but rather the Prince instinctually assigning purpose to his new life as an individual. He rationalizes his intrinsic hunger to consume in the lens of a "higher" ideal.
You can see how the Prince reflects Watcher's desire for connection in a deeply twisted manner. They're both in an endless pursuit to connect—Watcher offers itself to others as a companion, while the Prince takes companions and forces them into himself.
Opposing will
The Prince loves Watcher. He considers them to be a great friend, as they are the primary individual responsible for spreading the Throne Rot and the only one to have witnessed their genesis.
"You have done so much for me, I will not burden you with my troubles. Please, rest here as long as you wish. You are always safe here, my dear friend. You, who were there for me."
Watcher has finally found it—a new companion, who showers them with praise and affection. Out of an acute desire to retain this friend, they go on to spread the Throne Rot across all the threads that connect the ripple-world. Every viable world is corrupted.
Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—something goes terribly wrong for the Prince.
"I can almost feel... a will... at odds with my own."
Karma is antithetical to corruption. When the Throne Rot sufficiently engulfs the "fringes" of the ripple-world (Outer Rim and the Rotted vanilla regions), these regions become unstable and you cannot create a warp to escape them. However, there are pockets in The Throne where a bed of Karma Flowers allows you to exit. It's unknown if the phenomenon is natural or intelligent, but Karma inherently opposes the Rot.
When Watcher returns after corrupting all the regions, Karma Flower begin sprouting from the ground of The Throne. The Prince attempts to keep them in, but he ultimately fails—he freezes up, and countless Karma Flowers sprout from the corruption. The Throne Rot might not be outright dead, but its power has clearly been drained. The Prince has failed.
Karma Flowers are all over the map now. The "unstable fringes" have also been stabilized by their presence. You can create a warp to leave Outer Rim and the Throne from anywhere, and the same goes for the Rotted vanilla regions.
Going by the tone of the select screen art, Watcher just seems to mourn their loss. Another new friend, unceremoniously ripped from them.
Moving forward
Watcher cannot seem to find connection. Their family left and possibly died. They helped Spinning Top mature, but Spinning Top left—given that they viewed corporeal and primal life as absurd, they were bound to do this.
Watcher may have attained infant godhood, but their powers encourage them to hide away and detach themselves from the world, concealing them in the desolate Ripplespace with nothing but occasionally violent voidspawn.
It's almost scary how this godlet is willing to go such great lengths to secure companionship, falling for the Prince and corrupting the entire accessible ripple-world to make their friend happy. This friendship ends fruitlessly, too.
Watcher will eventually have a full conclusion to their story. So where will they go from here?
Narratively, I don't think Watcher will get what they want. Their next (and final, I believe) venture for companionship will end in ruin once again... but possibly, Watcher will recognize that while other people come and go, the only constant who will always be there for them is Watcher themselves, and they will learn to overcome the trauma and yearning of their lost childhood.
That's my slightly blunt prediction for the overarching theme of the Watcher.
Extra thoughts
Scav Prediction
I personally believe the next arc will involve Scavengers. In the old pre-release Watcher concept, Watcher journyed with an enlightened Scavenger. While James Primate has stated before that Downpour kinda stole the old concept's thunder (i.e. with Artificer), I get a strong indication that the next arc will still involve Scavengers because of the new Acolytes.
Acolytes are Scavengers who are BRIMMING with attributes that reflect a knowledge of Karma and Ripples.
Acolytes wear glowing golden masks and clothes
A faint Karma symbol between 6-10 surrounds them, suggesting that they are already enlightened (or their armor is imbued with some kind of karmic concentration)
When they are grabbed by a predator, they initiate a crazy karmic retaliation blast to free themselves (which I failed to get a GIF of)
The blindfolded Disciple Acolytes emit a sort of karmic echolocation ping that detects entities from a distance
The definition of an "acolyte" is "a person assisting the celebrant in a religious service or procession". The celebrant is someone performing a rite; often a priest. This implies the acolytes are carrying something out for a leader who is almost certainly not the Chieftain Scavenger in Downpour.
Overall, these guys know something, and I think we're going to find out why.
⚠️ Here is a reading of the Watcher's primary ending that I find MUCH MORE COMPELLING than the one I wrote. Courtesy of @characteranalysisthethird.
Spoilers for the primary ending, of course.
In summary, Watcher's ending shows that they were able to accept their isolation in the same way that Spinning Top did, and now they enjoy themselves without a pressure to fill the void that was created by the traumatic end to their childhood. Watcher does not simply ignore the lessons of ST's journey, like I claim in my original post.
When I was forming my reading of the Watcher's story, my reading was influenced by an analysis that had the bias of "ascension is evil" embedded within it. This caused me to interpret the Spinning Top ending in a way that is an utterly unsatisfying ragpull in comparison to the one here—because under this bias, how could the story not be a bad ending?
If there's any particular reading I want to advocate for, it's this one. Love it.
looking to finally post some of my mostly pre-written lore analysis so that I can get it out before Watcher releases but there's so much ground to cover that it's SO HARD.. :')
like right now i'm hoping to push out a post explaining why I don't think the benefactors were suicidal, but it also builds up off of other information like: everything we know about the cycles, karma flower significance and benefactor history, all of which require entire posts dedicated to them and it's just ARGHHH...
I have a lot of crudely compiled stuff that I could share, like 4 pages of explaining the cycles, and although it already circulates as a resource on the official rain world discord, I'm not satisfied enough to share it here yet :( perfectionism is my greatest enemy
when and why did people start calling the Ancients "benefactors" instead??? did someone see that one line from Pebbles and decided it was a better name????? im so confused.
long story short its a community movement to seperate people who are interested in lore from downpour fans, and also because "ancients" is a misnomer taken from an incorrect reading of an echoes line (and it wouldn't make sense for an echo to talk about their own kin as ancients)
Actually, pebbles uses the term "ancients" and "benefactors" in the same speech, when speaking to Survivor the first time they meet
(screenshots taken from the wiki)
Some people slowly switched from using "ancients" to using "Benefactors" because it's likely "ancients" doesn't actualy refer to the beings who built the iterators but rather a previous civilization
"Benefactors" likely isn't the actual name of their species either but the term at least directly refers to the individuals who built the iterators
Basically the switch is made to prevent that potential lore mix-up
I think it's a few posts that started it up- one mentioning how Joar never refers to the beings who built the iterators as "ancients" but used other names, and one mentioning how the "ancients" in pebbles' speech is probably about a previous civ
I don't have the posts on hand so if anyone knows the ones (or one- it might be one single post that mentions these two points) I'm talking about, feel free to link them somewhere
Side note : the echo dialogue from subterranean
it doesn't mention "ancients" but it does speak of previous civs, likely the "ancients" pebbles actually meant to speak about in his dialogue section
I personally use the two terms interchangeably because I got used to "ancients" first and it's a bit quicker to write, but I started using "benefactors" not to separate myself from downpour fans but in an effort to avoid the potential lore misunderstanding
I think actually there's a lot of really interesting discussion to be had around the relationship between the iterators, their creators, the civilizations before, and the creatures of the current cycle, because there's nuance you can extract. Pardon my dust because some of this is grasping at semantic straws and it's largely unnecessary deep reading into the text, but that's part of the fun.
My ultimate conceit is that both "ancients" and "benefactors" to refer to the creators of the iterators is fine. While it's possible that the ancients did call themselves that, they probably didn't, but it doesn't matter because because the term "ancient" has always been with respect to what's most relevant to us as players and creatures of the current time. They are an ancient people. It could only be a misnomer if we assume that it is the peoples' endonym, which isn't even impossible, strictly speaking. It's not outlandish for the iterators' creators to have called themselves Ancients. And besides that, it seems rather mean-spirited to try to frame the divide as "downpour fans vs people who care about lore".
"Benefactor" is useful for disambiguating the iterators' creators from other ancient peoples, but I've seen people coming away with the misconception that benefactor is actually the real name of the ancient race. In truth, Five Pebbles is using the word in a very plain and straightforward way; a benefactor is one who gives gifts or aid, and the iterators were the creators' gift to the world to help it ascend (as it is mostly comprised of Rock, Gas, dull witted Bugs and Microbes). There is no other time in which a pearl or iterator refers to "benefactors".
Now there is something interesting on that topic, in the teal pearl found in the Subterranean.
Moon goes out of her way to specify that she is talking not about her creators but the ancestors of her creators. I would assume that this is because the gulf of time between the Void Fluid Revolution and her creation is vast enough that she considers the founders of the Void Fluid Revolution to be separate from her creators, probably not as a racial or ethnic divide created by time, but rather distant enough that they're not the same people or culture, the same way we wouldn't consider ourselves the same as people five hundred years ago, even if geographies and ethnicity haven't changed in that time.
More on that point, in the bright blue pearl found in the Industrial Complex and in one of the entries in the random white pearl pool, you can see Moon refer to "ancient times" and "the "ancient farmer-poet Pel". We can already see from the teal pearl that Moon is willing to make a distinction between those who created her and those who came before, and the practice of wearing masks was definitely something that started before Moon's time, back when monks still regularly used the Shaded Citadel and the people lived on the ground; the industrial complex itself was used in the production of these masks and automated the work that the monks originally did by hand.
What I mean to point out with this is that yes there is some ambiguity when Pebbles says "where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals", he could be referring to any number of civilizations that came before, but there are timeframes within the existence of the iterators' creators that even the iterators consider ancient. The people who made physical pilgrimages to the void sea, built their temples, and did their silly little rituals would have been ancient even by the iterators' outrageous timeframe reference.
But what's most important is that these peoples, the iterators creators and their ancestors are ancient relative to the current time and the creatures of the current cycle, and by extension, us the players. One could argue that because we are understanding the world through the lens of the slugcat, that we only understand the iterators' words once they understand the iterators words through the mark of communication, there is the very real possibility that the mark diegetically has to adjust and reinterpret the language we hear to be intelligible to the slugcat (possibly explaining some of the sillier terms that appear like "noise milking" and "rock swatting"). It could be that the reason we never hear the actual name of the ancient people is because the mark adjusts that incoming linguistic information to make sense to us, and that might involve replacing the ancient people's name with "ancient". But I think the real answer is a lot more straightforward, we never hear their name because it's not relevant to us, and because it adds mystery to the game.
The iterators never have a reason to refer to the ancient people by name because it's not relevant to us. "The ancients" "noble benefactor" "creators" "parents" "skin parasites that also ask for advice and have opinions"; what they did and their relationship to things are far more important than their name. To us, they are ancient. To the iterators they are parents and creators, and in turn that makes them our benefactors. "Benefactor" clarifies that we are talking about the people who created and lived on the iterators, but "ancient" works just as well because that's what they are, and so what if someone writes a story where the ancients call themselves Ancients? Strictly speaking, the term "benefactor" actually has less textual basis as a replacement endonym for the people who created the iterators, but in the end, there's no clear answer, and no reason they can't do either or even both.
Also this isn't strictly related to the topic, but while I'm here being really nitpicky about the use of language:
Isn't it interesting how Moon says "their cities" here? Like, the cities were built directly on the iterators, integrated into them. Part of the iterators' function was to sustain these cities and their inhabitants. By all rights, these cities are just as much the iterators' as they are the ancients if not moreso on account of being a literal part of their bodies. But, this is right in the middle of Moon expressing her distaste for her parents. The cities were built on and into the iterators, but in this moment, she doesn't claim them. The use of "their" creates distance, it makes it the ancients' project, not the iterators'. They are her parents, but they are also skin parasites to her.
Like I said, it's unnecessary deep reading, but it's part of the fun.
As one of the people that helped spread the term “Benefactor,” @opashoo you put it into words so well,, I still plan on making my own post explaining it one day but you got most of the important points I want to make, especially the misconceptions about it being some “true canon term." They've been a little sad to see and I'm happy someone addressed it.
At the end of the day Benefactors is a neat community-made term that can be useful for addressing the layers of history within rain world, but I need more people to realize that you don't need to correct people just because they use the term ancients :')
The intention is to help widen the scope of RW lore discussion not narrow it!! It's not meant to be a replacement as much as a potential tool, anyways that's all I have to say, loved your analysis!
an interesting implication in rain world is that igneous (and possibly metamorphic) rocks simply don't exist. Like, it's an obvious implication of the cosmology but it's fucked up to think about.
with such a limited selection of rocks to experience, it's no wonder the Noble Benefactors decided to leave the material world tbh. i would do so also
I assume you have some level of knowledge about the void sea, but i'm going to go over the part that's most relevant. As described by Looks To The Moon, the Void Sea is an entity that erodes at the bottom of the world at the same rate that dust descends from the heavens. The nature of this dust is unspecified, but it's actually the force that Moon talks about with more certainty. The Void Sea is effectively known in theory, but Moon, ever skeptical, says that there's "believed" to be a point where rock gives way to liquid void fluid. The dust, on the other hand, is mentioned as something directly observable, with the Void Sea being its counteracting force rather than vice versa.
As such, the world is formed primarily of sediment deposited by this mysterious dust, as well as the accreted ruins of past civilisations. (an established part of the world's bedrock since long before the Benefactors/Ancients were around!) This is directly supported by the lack of any non-sedimentary rock in the game.
Now let's unpack that a bit. There are a few materials that can be construed as stone. Here is a render of them each, using a desert palette from The Exterior for clarity. In order, left to right: Dirt, Chaotic Stone, and Ridge.
Here we can see the three forms of rock or rocklike matter, dirt being a loose mass of clods, chaotic stone being masonry that appears to be sandstone or mudstone of some kind, and ridge appearing to be either sandstone or shale with strata highlighted by erosion. (Of note is that ridge is a later addition, created for the Downpour DLC for the depths of submerged superstructure and retroactively added to depths to make depths less overwhelmingly dominated by dirt.) (another thing of note is that of all the options here, the cut stone masonry is the one most commonly used for caves and cliffs!)
Note how these all lack igneous features! there is no sign of granitic crystals, nor is there the flowing shape of extrusive rock such as basalt. These all appear to be at least vaguely sedimentary.
Considering the void sea, it would be very strange if there *were* igneous rocks, anyway. Unlike our world, the centre of Rain World isn't a vast mass of extremely hot crystal olivine that only "flows" on a geological scale, but a genuinely liquid sea of... some strange form of matter or unmatter that erodes ties to the material world itself.
Hey everyone, I HIGHLY recommend this video from @consumerofuranium!! it goes over some of the most prevalent lore misconceptions, and it looks like this may be a turning point for Rain World lore discussion on YouTube! Me and some lore-obsessed friends got the chance to review it before it was posted so we can absolutely stand by its quality :)
Hey all, I’m planning on making a review of most well known rain world history summary YouTube videos, if you have any you want me to specifically check out, leave a comment and I’ll check it out. I want to be fair and to help shed light on prevalent misconceptions while also recognizing what each video does well, and where there’s room for interpretation :)
So far I’m reviewing Solemn Sunday’s summary, Dazombes short summary and UraniumEaters latest video, they don’t have to be well known for me to look at them though!
That Tale Foundry video on Rain World still ticks me off. It’s so egregiously badly researched it cheapens all their other videos by comparison. The admittance that they only watched other video essays, did not play the game, did not even read the official wiki. God! Awful!
They talk about the ending saying “this ending is neat but… I don’t get what it has to do with slugcat’s family <:(“ like Jesus fuck when you’re writing that line does it not occur to you to do any fucking research. Like at this point you’re a few cool PNG poses from a goddamn content farm.
You know, I do actually want to elaborate on this. Rain World is a game where death is, as far as you are concerned, inconsequential. It doesn't mean anything except that you lose a karma level, which you can get back anyway. It gets hard sometimes but there's no money involved, it's not competitive. You're not even losing time when you die because it's just part of the time you spend playing the game.
When I say don't fear death, it's because fearing death in Rain World means that you avoid making decisions. If you always play to the safest options or panic when danger appears, you lose out on the opportunity to explore and learn what's possible. If you die, that's fine because unless there is a specific gate you're trying to get through and you need to preserve your karma, chances are you're not going to lose anything significant trying make that jump, apply that tech, fight that vulture, make that shot. You learn the game by interacting and interfacing with the worldspace and death is just another mechanic by which you do that.
Hunter's campaign is considered hard more for a reason. Beyond the more difficult enemy spawns and fact that dynamic difficulty is at maximum by default, your cycle timer counts down. They are the only slugcat that has to pay attention to their deaths, karma, and remaining cycles. Every other slugcat can take their time.
My point is that you can use that time to your advantage. Familiarize yourself with the cycle timer, maps, food spawns, enemy behaviors, how to use a grapple worm effectively. Move on when you're ready. More than anything, the most useful baseline skill for a Rain World player isn't killing lizards or pounce rolling; it's understanding your options and limits. Dying is a part of the learning experience. Learn what does and doesn't work so you're prepared for next time.
(For the record, the first time I beat the game, it was on Survivor. 45 deaths, and a large number of them were because I spent my first five hours playing the game ever just throwing myself at the outskirts lizards intentionally trying to figure out how to fight them without rocks.)
The target audience for this was for people who don't know too much about the game as well, so I'm going to explain things that a normal player might already know.
Rain World is known for how it simply throws you into the world with almost no tutorial, and is often praised for it.
But this lack of explanation if you do not go out of your way to find it has also lead to a lot of misinterpretations from those who did not read all the game’s available information, or misunderstood what they were being told. I used to watch some RW lore videos that would explain and summarize these things, and in the past I believed them.
I’ve since stopped doing that after having some time to actually process what I’ve been reading, and I’m here to say...
YOU ARE ALL WRONG ABOUT RAIN WORLD.
Ok, hyperbole. Not everyone believes these, and art can always be interpreted in different ways by different people, and I won’t stop you from having these beliefs. But also, there’s plenty of ingame content which completely disproves most of these unsubstantiated points from those who do not fully research the game before making videos about it.
Looking at you Tale Foundry…
The purpose of this is to pick apart some of the sadly far too common points I’ve heard many times before from Youtube videos, to Tumblr posts, to people I’ve spoken to on Discord.
Starting with my least favorite…
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“The 5 karma were seen as sinful”
Obvious westernization of a game based off fucking Buddhism aside, there’s no ingame text directly supporting this claim. There isn’t any that says otherwise, but we have good reason to believe this isn’t the case.
The 5 natural urges, as they’re sometimes called, were NATURAL. They were what bound you to the cycle. They never worsened your life or made you a terrible person should you keep following them, but an aspect of life on the same level as suffering or ecstasy.
Hey, I’ll break down the 5 karma and their meanings to show you that they're not just "sins"
I believe the natural urges have 2 different meanings: an animalistic one, and a more “human” one.
KARMA 1
This obviously represents violence, as you see one guy stabbing the other.
I believe it also represents competition and intense emotions, For example: Artificer experiencing intense grief and lashing out in violence as a result. It was not the violence that started it, but her emotions. (Yes, its Downpour. But it’s a good point.)
KARMA 2
They’re having sex. They’re fucking. They’re- ok you get it. Karma 2 represents reproduction.
But, I also believe it’s desire. Joyful bodily experiences, and such. The 2 figures seen here are in a much more playful pose than if they were simply doing this only to reproduce. No, they’re having fun.
KAMRA 3
Connection. Bonding with others.
Yet also trade and personal belongings. Attachment to things that are not yourself.
KARMA 4
It’s mentioned ingame that this represents gluttony
It’s overindulgence, you know. Similarly to karma 2, it can also be searching for fulfillment. I'm not particularly good at telling what the meaning of this could be.
KARMA 5
Self preservation.
Self preservation can come in many forms, from an animal running away from a predator or somebody getting defensive after being accused of something or being threatened, this one is rather vague about its meaning.
I do this to show that the 5 urges have very NEUTRAL meanings. It being positive or negative is entire dependant on context. They’re not sinful, get out of here with that Catholic shit!
The 5 karmas have both positive, negative, and neutral contexts which they can fit into.
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“The ancients hated being alive”
The ancients simply hated the cycle itself and its unknowable properties, as well as being much more aware of things like karma and the urges. Rather, they valued being effortless to disconnect themselves from this cycle.
“This was an eternal dilemma to them - they were burdened by great ambition, yet deeply convinced that striving in itself was an unforgivable vice. They tried very hard to be effortless.” – Bright Green Pearl (DS)
Some practices did of course include things like starving yourself, but as mentioned by Moon, these methods proved to be mostly obsolete. Void Fluid fundamentally changed their culture from what we see. Rather, we do see the ancients enjoying life and valuing it in their own way, which is INCREDIBLY important to some of the games themes, but I’ll get into that later.
"[...]'In this vessel is the living memories of Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel, of the House of Braids[…] Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel nobly decided to ascend in the beginning of 1514.008, after graciously donating all (ALL!) earthly possessions to the local Iterator project (Unparalleled Innocence), and left these memories to be cherished by the carnal plane.The assorted memories and qualia include:Watching dust suspended in a ray of sun (Old age). Eating a very tasty meal (Young child). Defeating an opponent in a debate contest, and being applauded by fellow team members (Late childhood/Early adulthood).’...and the list goes on. I'm sorry, little creature, I won't read all of this - the list is six hundred and twenty items long.” – Deep Magenta (SH)
There’s quite a lot to pick apart here, I had to cut down some parts short, but even the cut parts have important details. Just not important enough for me to bring up here.
The Memory Crypts we see ingame are… well where memories are kept. The qualia (personalized experiences) is stored within these mutated fleshy neural organisms referred to as “cabinet beasts”. These of course, contain the “living memories” or qualia of those who have ascended. There are people smarter than me who have already covered these ideas of course, so I won't go TOO indepth.
The ancients greatly valued titles and achievements just as us. They still lived normal lives. As well as this, they valued personal experiences and memories of the carnal realm so much they built an entire citadel to store memories.
As we can see as well, Seventeen Axes has quite a lot of enjoyable memories from throughout their life. Eating nice food and winning a debate contest and getting validation from their peers? That sounds rather… complacent with the 3rd and 4th natural urges, doesn’t it?
I do not believe this screams “I hate being alive!” as much as people have made it out to be, and is honestly ruins part of the game’s messages of compassion and personalized experiences, especially in the game’s ending where Survivor dreams of home.
“You have no name.
I once had! I was embalmed, adorned, readied for the journey.
So proud. There was jubilation! My name was sung, loud and clear.
Did they know? That I didn't quite leave, didn't quite stay?
Should I be ashamed? That I linger here, where my memories are kept?
Should I be ashamed that I now envy your flesh prison?” - Four Needles under Plentiful Leaves
This is leaning into personal theory territory, but...
I personally believe that the ancients were somewhat terrified of the unpredictability of the cycle and the fact that life would always have more suffering in it.
RW’s religion is heavily based off Buddhism. This is well known of course. The Cycle is a variation of Samsara. Now, I’m not Buddhist, and I’ve tried to do my research about some of these topics. Feel free to correct me, I’m simply going off what I know. (Also I'd love to hear what you have to say regarding your thoughts on the game!)
In Buddhism, each new life you could be taken into the body of an animal, or even end up being tortured in hell for a very, very, VERY long time if you made the wrong decisions, which made escaping it as soon as you could seem like a rather reasonable thing to do.
The ancients never fully grasped the scope of the cycle, and the prospects of having your soul wake up in the body of some miserable worm with no memory of your past or any ideas of your future might’ve seemed bleak.
Suffering is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean they hated being alive, like I said before.
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“Rain World is post-apocalyptic.”
It really isn’t. There was never any apocalypse. The ancients simply left on their own accord, leaving behind their mark on the world that will slowly be buried once again in the ever so present cycle.
“The bones of forgotten civilizations, heaped like so many sticks.” - Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets
The world is thriving, even. The purposed organisms left behind have evolved and taken over and become it’s own ecosystem.
The iterators are dying though. Dying very slowly, but soon they’ll all decay and everything will move on.
It’s all just another manifestation of the cycle.
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“The creatures in Rain World cannot die”
This is definitely something I hear from people who haven’t played much of the game and only hear about it from outside sources and watch the gameplay.
Yes, it is easy to believe this. As slugcat, when you die, you wake back up again. This is entirely a gameplay thing and not actually related to the lore. Saying this might seem like I'm avoiding the question at hand here, but the rules that apply to you do not seem to apply to other creatures.
Every creature in the game has a 4 integer ID (it can go higher, but not in a standard playthrough).
This makes every creature you see an individual of sorts with its own randomized values or appearance.
As well as this, creatures spawn from specific marked dens. When you kill a creature that spawns from a certain den, the next cycle, that creature’s ID will never appear again. Instead, the den spawn is replaced by a creature of the same species with a different ID, or a new species entirely.
Through gameplay, you see that the respawn rules that apply to you do not apply to other creatures. I’ve heard many points about how these dead creatures are transported to another alternate universe where they are alive, but I really do not want to delve into that theory. You do that yourself.
Excuse my unprofessional language, but this is kind of stupid. Billions and billions of little timeline splits accounting for every single insect and microbe that dies seems far too complex of a solution. Occam's Razor and all that.
With this gameplay element you see, I also want to give LORE explanations as to why this is incredibly stupid.
1) If death had no impact, the 5 natural urges would not matter
If no creatures died, there would be no point in eating (karma 4), competing with other species (karma 1), or any form of self preservation (karma 5). Reproduction (karma 2) has no role and there would be absolutely no reason to do anything any longer. All natural processes would be useless.
2) Light Blue Pearl
The information received from the cycle is most likely from the Light Blue Pearl, found in Outskirts.
“[...]The repeating mantra is important because it symbolizes the cyclical nature of life and death, and the termination verse is a symbol for ascension above and beyond it. I don't know how familiar you are with the nature of life and death, but I imagine like all living creatures you have some intuitive knowledge?
Then you know that death isn't the end - birth and death are connected to each other like a ring, or some say a spiral. Some say a spiral that in turn forms a ring. Some ramble in agonizing longevity. But the basis is agreed upon: like sleep like death, you wake up again - whether you want to or not.
This is true for all living things, but some actually break the cycle. That doesn't apply to you or me though, you are too entangled in your animal struggles, and for me not breaking that cycle is an integral part of the design. Our mantras keep repeating.”
“Then you know that death isn't the end - birth and death are connected to each other like a ring, or some say a spiral. Some say a spiral that in turn forms a ring.“
This line is very misunderstood. Moon specifically mentions birth and death. She mentions death. She never brings up the notion that nothing truly dies either.
As well as this, Moon says that “some say”, implying that even the ancients weren’t sure what the cycle was either. This is more important to my point regarding how the unfathomable nature of the cycle was why the Ancients were so averse to it from above, though.
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“Sliver of Straw found the solution.”/"There is/isn't solution"
No she didn’t.
.
.
Ok fine I’ll explain.
If you’ve played Rain World you know that the purpose of the iterators is to find the solution to the “Great Problem”, the problem of how to ascend ALL living creatures.
You’ll also know Sliver sent out the Triple Affirmative…
“[...]affirmative that a solution has been found, affirmative that the solution is portable, and affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable. She's also one of few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily.[…]” - Pale Yellow (SL)
After sending out this affirmative, the iterators became conflicted. They never could figure out if she really ascended and had found the solution, or if it was some sort of catastrophic error.
The answer to the Great Problem is clearly intended to be as obscured as possible. There cannot be an answer one way or the other. The themes of it and the endless tolling of the iterators would not be as impactful if we knew there was or wasn’t a solution.
“[...]Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effort to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.[…]“ - Pale Yellow (SL)
Here’s my favorite way of explaining what I mean…
Imagine Schrodinger's Cat, the famous thought experiment. There’s a 50/50 chance that when you open the box, you either find the Solution, or find out there is No Solution.
Except you cannot open the box. And the box is entirely theoretical and nobody’s seen it. It seems impossible, but maybe one day you’ll find that box. That’s what the Great Problem is.
Sliver apparently having found the solution would have completely broken everything. Five Pebbles wouldn’t have ended up hurting himself and Moon had Sliver finding the solution been known with certainty. He was taking a shot in the dark.
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“Ascension is akin to suicide.”
I strongly believe this point harms the role that ascension and the void sea play in Rain World’s narrative. Ascension is meant to be a final destination, a goal you build up to and prepare for when you’ve lived every bit of life you possible could, and can now move on.
Bringing up the Memory Crypt pearl from earlier, Seventeen Axes lived an incredibly fulfilling life from what we see, and ascended happily.
As well as this, Buddhism strongly encourages those who wish to liberate themselves to discover their own path, which is also subtly shown through the gameplay, as there are many many routes you can take to Five Pebbles, Looks To The Moon, and The Depths.
I do also think this is why Five Pebbles failed. He tried to brute force his way to ascension.
Suicide implies that ascension is only meant to be a fruitless escape and that it’s wrong to ascend. I… do not want to go into why suicide is bad. It’s a strong topic and I’m just here to talk about video games. But ascension is a neutral thing that you can choose to do or not do and to wait until you’re ready.
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Conclusion...
I really only have the time to cover these 6 misconceptions, and I believe it should be enough. There have been many others I’ve seen, such as the ancients being malicious or that there weren’t any civilizations before them, but there’s not as much to say about them, and they aren’t as common.
Rain World is a very confusing game. I’m not upset at people who think these things to be true, and I do not believe they’re stupid or don’t have any media literacy. I just wish that the people who did actually cover this game did some more looking into it, and actually discussing it with Rain World fans.
Also I should say, that during this entire discussion I have avoided talking about Downpour- RW’s DLC- as it’s more of a official fanmade project. And so much of what it says may not be entirely in line with Vanilla. Because my life isn’t easy and of course there has to be an incredibly divisive and confusing thing like this that I need to avoid bringing up so that way the conversation isn’t muddled.
Thanks if you managed to make it through all this by the way
i love this, it actually got me thinking about stuff.
my family is buddhist and im adding on to some part about being reborn as an animal.
people say that what you get reborn as depends on the choices you made in life. if you made good choices, you could be reborn as a wealthy person. if you made bad choices, you could be reborn as an animal or even an insect. Thus, people were encouraged to be good to others and reduce suffering to yourself and others. Doing those things help you achieve enlightenment/nirvana.
Emphasis on “reduce suffering”
There were many things done to do this, such as going vegetarian, reducing cravings/desires/greed for worldly pleasures etc, paying attention to oneself, and meditation among many other things.
Maybe that part sounds a little familiar. I can talk to my father and try to get him to tell me more, as I don’t remember much.
Discussions about interpretations and misinterpretations of the natural urges are always really compelling to me because I feel like the way a person interprets them tells a lot about how they view these things, or at the very least, the primary framing of these ideas that they were raised with. It's especially telling when someone compares the natural urges to sin or some other kind of moral failing.
Ascension is moving on and leaving the world behind, and in order to do that you have to be willing to leave the world behind. Existence is complicated and there's both good and bad in the world, but living within this world for all of the good in it means tacitly accepting the suffering that comes with that. Desire isn't evil; rather, it is in the most pragmatic sense something that keeps you bound to the world. You cannot wholly leave the world behind when you still want something from it, or else that desire will draw you back. These things, family, love, connection, emotion, desire, aren't evil, and under most circumstances, I'd consider them inevitabilities if not outright good reasons to live. Instead, they are simply things that keep one tethered to existence. As long as you allow the desire to keep you bound to the world, then you tacitly accept the suffering that comes with it. I don't think one has to deprive themself of these things to ascend, but you need to be willing to leave it behind when the time comes.
The Metropolis echo telling Arti to find a way out was not the echo wagging its finger at Arti and saying "You need to be a better, less sinful person or you won't make it into heaven". I'm sure there was a moral imperative involved too, but more practically, it was saying "If you give into your urges this final time, you will never be free of them; by doing this, you give up your chance of ever being free of this world." I think the Ancients drank bitter tea and ate gravel not because wanting things is inherently evil or "sinful" but because they wanted to distance themselves from those desires, to remove the want by removing the source of want. Self preservation is the final natural urge to shed because you cannot leave the world behind if you are still invested in continuing to exist within it and unwilling to face whatever comes after. All of these have practical ramifications for someone's connection to the cycle; as long as these desires control your actions, you will never be truly ready to leave this world behind because your want will hold you back.
I do think that a lot of the views on Rain World's lore, the natural urges, ascension, and specifically the comparisons to sin and suicide come from interpreting the game through and backlash to specifically Christian ways of thinking. When ascension is depicted as a better world after this one and the natural urges are barriers that prevent your entry, it's intuitive for someone coming from a Christian perspective to understand ascension as heaven and the natural urges as sin, but the problem is the additional baggage that that interpretation brings. That includes backlash against repressive Christian ideas that condemn things that people enjoy about living, and that in turn gets projected onto the Ancients and the idea of ascension. Why should someone have to deprive themselves of happiness for the uncertain promise of something better after death? Isn't it unfair that eternal happiness is gated behind needless suffering? Why is it morally wrong to enjoy life? When ascension is heaven, life after death, what else could ascension be but wilful suicide?
The thing is, you do not need to leave this world behind, you do not need to ascend. At the same time, the game frames it as desirable because it is freedom from the suffering of the cycle. Ascension is a kind of death, sure, but more specifically it is release from the cycle of rebirth and from the suffering of this world and it's something you take when you are ready. It's why the context of Survivor's original campaign serves as such an important baseline through which to interpret the game's themes. The first half of Survivor's campaign involves trying to find their family, but in the second half, Pebbles misinterprets Survivor's arrival as them searching for ascension. The game's difficulty speaks to the struggle of existence while the search for family is an impetus that compels Survivor to continue struggling. Many players believe that you only ascend because Pebbles tells you to, but in truth, ascension only becomes an option once you accept the idea that you may never find Survivor's family and allow both yourself and Survivor to move on. Otherwise, that desire, the natural urge for connection, the hope of finding family, keeps you bound to the game world.
But even once you've accepted that, there's nothing that forces you to ascend. You can spend as long as you want exploring and enjoying the world. Once you're ready to move on, you are free to do so at any time, but nothing forces you to ascend before you're ready. I think the reason ascension appears to be what each slugcat wants (For Survivor, the companionship of other slugcats; for Monk, to be reunited with Survivor; for Hunter, to be reunited with NSH) is because it is freedom from suffering, which can take all kinds of forms. But in the end, ascension is not a carrot on a stick, some ultimate reward, and the natural urges are not sin. There is the world, the struggle of the cycle—which includes both the good and bad—the desires that keep you bound to it, and leaving it all behind.
Diverging into more speculative territory, I think this understanding of the natural urges and ascension honestly creates more interesting implications about Ancients, their culture, and echoes. From Moon's own dialogue, echoes typically understood to come from people whose egos are too big, but I think in truth they are made when people ascend who aren't ready. In the game's files, echoes are referred to as "ghosts", and popular believe is that ghosts are formed when someone dies and some unresolved business or regret bind them to the living world. For the echoes, that is whatever it was they weren't willing to leave behind when they ascended. I believe that the reasons echoes are associated with ego is because those with the biggest egos, for reasons probably relating to status or self-importance, were more likely to ascend before they were ready. While the Shaded Citadel and Subterranean echoes definitely exude some great amount of ego, the Farm Arrays echo, A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads, doesn't even know why they're trapped, but they have a fixation on the location and almost fondly recall the swaying of the worm grass.
"This is an official decree of cultivation sent from the twenty-second Subsistence Council ordering the eastern spoke Farm Array administration to "immediately harvest and process all viable crops, despite whatever misgivings they might have." A short-sighted endeavor for sure. I would assume this was sent sometime during the final cycles leading up to final public ascension, when interest in biosphere sustainability was at an all-time low." - White Pearl (Misc.)
It's a bit of a reach, but perhaps Eighteen Amber Beads was one of those with misgivings, who was yet unprepared for the days leading up to the final public ascensions. They don't read to me as someone whose ego was overinflated, but rather someone who tried or was made to ascend before they were ready to leave the world, more specifically the Farm Arrays, behind.
On the other side of the coin, it's not hard to imagine that ascension in general, but specifically the mass public ascensions, wasn't something universally popular or agreed upon. Rhinestones Beneath Shattered Glass, the Undergrowth echo who revels in the beauty of life wherever it blooms, reads as someone didn't even want to ascend in the first place, who still had business in this world before they could move on. I love Rhinestones' message personally, but a lot of people like to use them as a sort of "gotcha" against ascension, as if it's proof that the Ancients were wrong and you shouldn't want to ascend, and that the whole system is flawed for punishing someone's love for the world. I think that's a big misreading of Rhinestones' situation.
From Rhinestones, you can extrapolate all kinds of conflicts that may have arisen between the regular populous and people with influence, power, and access to legislation and the means to ascend. If anything, I think Rhinestones, like the Shaded Citadel echo, speaks more to complicated social or political pressures that could have caused someone to go through with the ascension ritual even if they themselves were uninterested or unprepared. Ascension is something Rhinestones was clearly uninterested in and they outright criticize the other Ancients for seeking it, so how did they end up going through the process and becoming an echo themselves?
Anyway, my point is that Rain World and its natural urges aren't about the good of asceticism vs the sins of desire, and to read it that way is a huge disservice to its themes, I think. The world is a complex, interconnected thing, and suffering is inherent to it. Ascension is part of a process that seeks to reduce suffering—which many would consider a good thing—but otherwise doesn't moralize. Instead there is simply the world and all the good and bad and people in it, the struggle of the cycle—which you can always help to alleviate—the desires that keep you bound, and leaving it all behind.
