There’s a lot of things about the Silent Construct region that screw my head up but just the simple fact that it replaces part of the shaded citadel and the entirety of the memory crypts hits especially hard. It screws with me the same way it does whenever I remember why both regions prior were cast in shadow. Why Five Pebbles’s construction was so abhorred he was decried as an “apostate superstructure”.
It’s that his location, alluded to many MANY times through pearl and dialogue and map layout, was so… poetic and appropriate retrospectively, even if seen as an abomination to the citizens of Luna.
The memory crypts were a sacred site to the benefactors, and they as a people, even despite the eventual search for ascension that devoured their civilization, were a vain and sanctimonious society in their own ways. They cherished their earthly memory and possession archives so much that they set mirros birds to guard the grounds for lifetimes after there was no longer even a civilization to access and view them. They did this because even the thought of wild animals witlessly disturbing them was unthinkable. There’s even theories about the cabinet beasts being purposed organisms to also somehow facilitate this long term memory preservation. People expressed so much rage over Five Pebbles being created just because his can would have cast that holy ground into darkness by blocking out the sun.
And it was not Five Pebbles who had any say in the matter of how and where he was built. You would think for it he would have a lot of right to be pretty disdainful of the entire impractical debacle and how kind of pointless the investment into the surface infrastructure was in the face of what direction the benefactors would eventually head towards. It was entirely their decision to cast their precious memories and worldly items into shadow. It was their choice (and arrogance) to then abandon these things believing that they had designed systems and assurances immune to time itself.
Yet completely and accidentally, Five Pebbles in fact becomes the final crypt keeper of all they valued this dearly.
His can shelters the pearls in the crypts from the fade of the sun and elements. He saves his own archives of qualia, documents, artistry, culture. There’s nothing left of the people whose history he is enamored with but echoes and ruins. The only other beings that could comprehend let alone appreciate such things are other iterators, who by and large aren’t really ones to think of their absent makers in any much positive light. Even if so, Five Pebbles is very evidently doing this for his own love of the practice. He too hates how the scavengers carve up and destroy the data pearls scattered all around the facility grounds. He’s genuinely grateful for any new and interesting finds the Artificer decides to bring to him. He slightly encourages her to recover more from the memory crypts. He enjoys poetry and old hymns and learning about the eras before himself.
And what became of all those artifacts and history as soon as they were crushed beneath a mountain of rot and scrap?
What happened to all of those preserved lifetimes, protected so fiercely, when the final mind to remember them was devoured neuron by neuron, first by an unfortunate development, and then by tragic entropy? When parents’ tombs and their child’s grave became one and the same?
He never chose to cast what they called sacred into shadow. They did, and he still preferred for it all to be seen in the light.
I’m saying that I can’t stop thinking about how their last remains died when he did. Figuratively. Physically. Both.
