💫 I have the COD Zombies autism, so let’s yap about the timeline of The Aether story and the cycle! ✨
✨ We can draw out the timeline in two different ways, depending on how heavily we want to track Richtofen’s movements.✨
💫 OR! ✨
💫 We never really know how the cycle started because of those damn blood vials. We know that Richtofen went back in time to give them to another version of himself because our Richtofen has them in Origins, but we don’t know anything about THAT Richtofen. Though, we do know that this is probably not the first occurrence of one Richtofen relying on another version of himself in a different universe to keep the cycle going. In Blood of The Dead, Richtofen says this:
“[…] The voices of the damned and the doomed can get in line behind you three, the warden, the keepers, und the numerous other Richtofen’s now placing demands on. My. Time.” - Primis Richtofen, Blood of The Dead.
✨ This implies that there are various other cycles that all somehow rely on each other to go through certain events to keep the loop going. When Al Arlington breaks the cycle and the mobster’s souls are freed in Mob of The Dead, it breaks the Primis cycle because Richtofen was reliant on getting the mobster’s blood vials repeatedly. With that information, there’s a good chance that the multiverse may look something like this:
💫 Which is AMAZING! When you’re next playing The Giant, or Zetsubo No Shima, or Revelations, there’s thousands of other Richtofen’s scurrying around in the background in their own universes! It’s insane to think about!
✨ I also find it fascinating just how much dimension hopping Richtofen does- We can’t actually track it all on a timeline because a lot of it is off screen, and then when he hops into the main (first) timeline to get Victis’ blood and their aid (after the end of BO2), he sends Victis all over the place to several different dimensions. He also pops out of that dimension for reasons only known to him and pops back in when he needs to- AND, we know he’s been dimension hopping before these events because his memory is already evidently suffering. He doesn’t remember whose plan he’s even following anymore, but knows what he needs to do.✨
✨Ahem.✨
Anyway-
✨ POV you have COD Zombies autism ✨