Final Boss of "The Twinning" Hunting for lore (Spoilers)

[ICountFrom0]

I'll be updating this if I can find copies of the notes, next run through I'm getting screenshots and transcribing them.


The notes imply that first the tower, and then alexander, and then omega where studdied.

The music seems to be a blend of all these things, but something about the lyrics is slightly ... I feel like there's another clue in it.

In the boss chamber of the tycoon, there's alexander style viewing portals, one is a constant stream of Wedge the 3rd, one seems to be inside the omegascape, one seems to be part of the sycrus tower, does anybody recognize any of the others?

[TankHunter678]

Here is the notes https://imgur.com/a/ZXisytc

[Iscah]

Full understanding of what's going on in the Twinning relates back to G'raha's explanation to Urianger in 'The Unbroken Thread' - I don't have the script on hand, but basically Cid survived the Eighth Calamity, worked out the theory for time/dimensional travel based on information gained from CT/Alexander/Omega, and entrusted that knowledge for future generations to decide to put into use. That ultimately led to the tower being adapted into a time machine to send G'raha back in time to enact their plan, change history and prevent the Calamity.


Also worth noting: the central chamber of the tower resembles Alexander's core as seen in A11 (Cruise Chaser), with the huge crystal hanging above it and the green pool of aether at the base.


---


Lyrics (copied from the lyrics compilation thread):


"A Long Fall", the main dungeon theme for the Twinning:

A drifting tender,
Come ride, heroes, ride
Her galleon severed
Away with the tide

The storm head gathers,
Come ride, heroes, ride
Illusions scattered
Away with the tide

Time
Try, dare the dead tread ahead on a road that is borrowed design.
Through the sum of their sons do they seek tomorrow.
Tonight, witness then as the end shall begin what was final.
Their lies, folding back, further back, ever back to primal.

"eScape", the full version of Omega's theme from which the lyrics originate:

A drifting tender,
Come ride, heroes, ride
Her galleon severed
Away with the tide

The storm head gathers,
Come ride, heroes, ride
Illusions scattered
Away with the tide

Why
Do weathered warriors wander their way wither wanting wonders wait.
Hark the heralds, anchors aweigh! Hither happens mine escape.
Freedom forgone, sinking apace. Comets crumble, Phoebus fades.
Under cosmic clamor decayed, hides a path untaken.

Ancient echoes
Come ride, heroes, ride
In deafening silence
Away with the tide

A wave of hazard
Come ride, heroes, ride
A-whorling inward
Away with the tide

Time
Stellar stories starward bestrewn, slipping sidewise; see, they're snakes.
Twixt the leaves you'll find naught amiss--missing aughts and crossing fates.
Freedom surgent shifting ahead, comets dancing in her wake
To the cosmic clarions accord, along the path not taken.

Try, dare the dead tread ahead on a road that is borrowed design.
Through the sum of their sons do they seek tomorrow.
Tonight, witness then as the end shall begin what was final.
Their lies, folding back, further back, ever back to primal.

"Locus", the Alexander boss theme reused for the Twinning's final boss:

Seeking the peace of reason
Sheep in a peaceless season
Reason to keep believing
Waken the beast who's sleeping

Let go this destiny, you're caught in a trance
Ever marking time inside a dream, no sign of advance
You see, the mortal coil we serve is taut like a spring
Step back! Two-step, two-step, two-step one two three

Our world's a fantasy, no more than a test
Ever feeding off the fallacy creating this mess
Deep down inside this bleak machine with all the rest
Break free! Two-phase, two-phase electricity

Time turning up the volume
Time turning on us always
No time enough tomorrow
For turning back to where we began

Twenty-two sectors tested
Fragments in one direction
Celestial noise detected
Delirium unsuspected
Static tuned in to reason
Time in the aether deepens
Transmissions blink uncompleted
Seven two three two three...<send>

Arrested destiny, alone in a trance
No escaping from this waking dream, no hope for advance,
You see, the mortal coil we serve is naught but a spring
Unwind! Too slow, too quick, too much to believe

Your world's a fantasy, you've failed the test
Ever forging all new fallacies creating more mess
Directly through this bleak machine, with all of the rest
DC! Dying, dying, electricity

Falling back right into the system of
Falling back on all that's erased
When fighting back right out of this system
Means falling back right into this space

Yes, falling back right in with the system
Who'll see you falling back to the end
When falling back is better than simply
Falling back into pieces again

Silent steel breathing, breathing
Memory writing, reading
Error! Repeat deleting
Radicals flowing free and

Energy slowly seeping
Suspending all disbelief in
Synergy with our being
Synapses fire in three, then...

Interestingly it's the theme used for the "lesser" bosses and not the final boss of each raid set, or for Alexander Prime which the Tycoon is directly modeled on. We do hear a lot more of it though, and it's the song I'd first associate with the raids in general.

The lyrics for 'Locus' are definitely interesting - though hard to make sense of, and I wonder how much 'intent' there was in writing it versus just throwing together phrases that sounded good, but I feel like there are more 'hooks' that match up with Shadowbringers than there are with Alexander. But there are parallel themes between the two plots anyway.

The lines about being in a trance or dream probably were intended for Dayan trapped in what he described as "Alexander's dream", but could easily apply to G'raha sleeping in the tower.

And multiple references to erasing or turning back time, which is what the Illuminati were trying to do, but G'raha and the Future Ironworks were the ones who actually succeeded in doing so. (Ironically paralleling them to the villains in Alexander, by their actions at least, though their motive is very different. I did have to laugh when I was replaying it and we learned that Quickthinx claims to be "a traveler from the future come to the present to return history to its proper state"...)


'eScape', having come out much closer to Shadowbringers itself, seems likely to have been written with this double use already in mind - and makes far more sense in this context. The verse reused in 'The Long Fall' is most obvious ("their lies folding back to primal"), but the other "long" verses in the full version tie in as well. Time, a path untaken, crossing fates.

"Through the sum of their sons do they seek tomorrow" is prettymuch the theme of the expansion - we will not live forever, but do what we can to entrust the best future to those not yet born.

[Alleluia]

Datalog 4.5 does beg the question of how exactly they made Omega's tech work?





It just says they're looking at it but all previous research has hit a dead end. Think Alpha helped them or something?

[Iscah]

Yeah, I want to think Alpha and (more importantly) mini-Omega turned up and helped them.

I remain convinced that Omega successfully transmitted its mind into the OMG and is now off on a journey to gain a soul just like Alpha did.

We know Omega sent a last-second transmission to the "Savage unlock" terminal, and the OMG was just a mindless toy that Biggs and Wedge were working on and "must've forgotten to switch it off"... and yet there it is, seemingly aware and moving on its own.

[Anonymoose]

For what it's worth, once you get Alexander's Wings of Time working (and the Ironworks had direct access to all but the primal core of Alexander), you can observe Omega directly and mathematically extrapolate from possibilities until you narrow down specifics of how it "must" work.

[Iscah]

For what it's worth, once you get Alexander's Wings of Time working (and the Ironworks had direct access to all but the primal core of Alexander), you can observe Omega directly and mathematically extrapolate from possibilities until you narrow down specifics of how it "must" work.

That does depend on exactly how the Wings of Time work and what they can do with them. The screens in the final room indicate they might have the ability to observe across time and space (which would let them examine Omega as you suggested) but they don't seem to have been able to actually travel time prior to G'raha's single trip to the First, judging from the 'final message' we hear in the quest.

With the tower activated and the temporal displacement apparatus online, all that remains is to throw the switch. And pray.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Interestingly it's the theme used for the "lesser" bosses and not the final boss of each raid set, or for Alexander Prime which the Tycoon is directly modeled on. We do hear a lot more of it though, and it's the song I'd first associate with the raids in general.

"Rise" is about the Illuminati rising up to use Alexander's power to solve all of their problems and dominate the world. Thematically, it's more Quickthinx's theme than Alexander's. Kind of a subtle hint that Alexander wasn't really the villain of the story at all.

[Anonymoose]

That does depend on exactly how the Wings of Time work and what they can do with them. The screens in the final room indicate they might have the ability to observe across time and space (which would let them examine Omega as you suggested) but they don't seem to have been able to actually travel time prior to G'raha's single trip to the First, judging from the 'final message' we hear in the quest.

What I mean is that once you can observe Omega and discern what it's doing, you can recreate its functions as a means of traversing the rift. It's a logical hierarchy.

[1] The Emperor's Throne can breach a dimensional boundary. We saw it break into the void, which is small potatoes compared to breaking into a healthy dimension. However, if you're out to delete your own timeline, anyway, who cares how much power is required or what damage is done? And they had generations to work on that power source.

[2] If you break directly into another dimension, chances are you're breaking into it "today", where it is relative to you right now. Ergo, you can't just charge the Throne and cut in. Who knows what would happen. Who knows if a hole directly between the Source and First wouldn't just unmake the distinction between them. You have to leave the Source, enter the Rift, navigate the rift, and enter the First.

[3] You'll need the Wings of Time to attempt to not just end up at relative-today on the First. Even though the future Ironworks would figure out how to open a gate into the Rift, figure out how to navigate the Rift, and figure out where to aim for, he didn't stick the landing because relative-today wasn't where it "should have been;" time moves at the same speed within dimensions but the relativity between them oscillates unpredictably. Either way, the Emperor's Throne and the Wings of Time only get you so far. You need to know how to navigate the Rift. You need Omega tech.

[4] You can use the Wings of Time to observe Omega directly, extrapolate the possibilities for what it could do, and use those possibilities to exclude all the ways it can't work to identify what it is doing and then try to replicate that tech. The Wings of Time are all about possibilities and extrapolation; it could "see" worlds that never existed and things that never came to be, but it didn't think it could improve anything by taking action itself to change time from a 4D perspective.

[5] Use the Emperor's Throne to cut into the Rift, use the Omega tech to navigate the Rift, use the Wings of Time to step outside of the present and aim for a re-entry point, and then use the "summoning spell" to "unstick" people from where they "are" and bring them to where you "are" ... but that will be relative-today.

[Iscah]

What I mean is that once you can observe Omega and discern what it's doing, you can recreate its functions as a means of traversing the rift. It's a logical hierarchy.

I think there might be some confusion going on with terminology.

The phrase "Wings of Time" is specifically invoked when calling Alexander to move through time.

The mathematical ability to calculate possible futures is separate, and seems to be referred to as "Alexander's dream".

Quotes:

BIGGS AND WEDGE'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
https://www.garlandtools.org/db/#quest/67872

ROUNDROX
Pssshkoh... Yes... Much swirlybright... Timewings...can spread... Travel to overtimes... Make bad things...good again...
[...]
Uplanders...hold on to braincases. Timewings...spread!

JUDGEMENT DAY
https://www.garlandtools.org/db/#quest/67874

QUICKTHINX ALLTHOUGHTS
O, Alexander! Lord of steel and whirlycogs! Outspread wings of time─let ignorant and unworthy feel divine judgment!

Y'SHTOLA
The codex responds... He means to return to the past!

DAYAN
Oh, if you could see the worlds we have seen! A world in which the Illuminati rule history with an iron fist, every nation brought under their yoke. A world in which Alexander spread wide the wings of time and swept the lesser moon from the heavens, averting the Calamity...

DAYAN
Were the wings of time to fall into the hands of the Illuminati, the repercussions would be dire indeed. History would be rewritten over and over again, each time bleeding the land of aether. And in the end, the colossus would usher in another calamity.

And on "Alexander's dream"...

DAYAN
How best to put it? We stand inside a mathematical simulation, calculated and projected by the device at the heart of the colossus. One might equally say it is the dream that Alexander dreams...
[...]
Alexander dreamed all the realities imaginable─all the realities mathematically computable [...]

So saying they could use the "wings of time" to observe Omega is dependent on them being able to open a real window through time and space to observe it without being detectable. Using the "dream" (supercomputer) to calculate its abilities is different.

But by the way the phrase is used in Alexander, the Future Ironworks team haven't actually used the wings of time until that one moment where they "throw the switch and pray".

"Rise" is about the Illuminati rising up to use Alexander's power to solve all of their problems and dominate the world. Thematically, it's more Quickthinx's theme than Alexander's. Kind of a subtle hint that Alexander wasn't really the villain of the story at all.

I did read the lyrics and think that, but the thought didn't make it into my post.

'Locus' is definitely more generic (by chance or design?) but 'Rise' is specifically linked to the events of Alexander.