Chapter 5: A Manor Unchanged - Shinra Manor
-We’re now in the basement with the library and lab that we know so well. And unlike certain places that the FF series liked to revisit over and over (I’m giving you my death stare, FFIV Sealed Cave and Underground Waterway), I don’t mind this at all because the context and story is so different each time.
-A light green materia rolls from nowhere to Vincent’s feet before erupting into light in his hand.
-He turns around, and… Lucrecia? Wtf? What are you doing here and not encased in crystal?
-She acts strange, like being there is nbd. “Vincent, right? Have you come to check up on me?” Oh, and then she walks RIGHT THROUGH HIM.
A ghost or an illusion or a projection or some similar shenanigans are at work here.
-Lucrecia starts to blink in and out of existence. “Omega. His awakening is upon us.” That sucks. That’s the giant arm dude in the green pool back at the mako reactor.
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Crystal Cavern
-And now Lucrecia is walking up to the woman in the crystal, who I think is Lucrecia, talking about “purging the stream.” It could be that one of them is an impersonator, or it could be that Lucrecia is really in the crystal but her projection/soul is walking about and talking, making this basically a monologue. I really don’t know.
LUCRECIA: “Behold mighty Chaos, Omega’s squire to the lofty heavens.” This is sounding very cultish, like Lucrecia is trying to resurrect Cthulhu or something.
-She says that passage was from “the Chronicles of Yore.”
-Oh, hey! I actually don’t see a woman encased in the crystal. Maybe this is earlier in time, before Lucrecia got locked in there.
-Omega’s purpose is to cleanse the planet of living things, but he’s still born of the lifestream. I’m getting a real Vaatu feel from what I hear of Omega.
-Omega doesn’t actually sound like a terrible guy. I mean, sure he wants to destroy the living, but Lucrecia says it’s to “lead their immortal souls through the abyssal aether to a new beginning far, far beyond the neverending sea of stars.” So… he’s more Aslan than Vaatu?
-Btw, while all this is going on she seems to be channeling a green, lifestreamy power thingamajig from the giant crystal in the middle of the room.
-All that “new beginning” stuff is just theory though for Lucrecia. Really long term stuff. All that she’s sure of is that Omega waking up will be the end of all life and the end of the planet. Maybe not so bad if the planet gets recycled in the universe for some greater purpose.
But still. It’s the planet and all life getting extinguished.
So… probably not great.
-Through the end of this scene, the background changed from the crystal cavern to just Lucrecia standing in the middle of a star-filled sky.
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Shinra Manor
-We’re back now with Vincent and Lucrecia. It’s just a recording of Lucrecia’s thoughts. Something left behind to bring him up to speed.
She apologizes and fades away, leaving what looks like a floppy disk or keycard. Maybe It’s the thing that held her recording. Vincent takes it.
-The mission now is to collect all the files related to Omega around here, but before that I want to process what we just saw. That was a pretty huge info dump.
-Chaos and Omega. Chaos is Omega’s “herald” somehow, and Omega will bring the end of the world. This gives a pretty big hint about why Deepground might be so hot for Vincent, and why they see him as the “Keeper.” Maybe also what Azul wanted from Vincent. Something about the Chaos gene within Vincent is supposed to feed Omega or lure him or awaken him or something.
-This also allows me to make a guess that’s both educated and likely incorrect about what Deepground is about. Maybe they’re some kind of end of the world cult that aims to bring Omega about and thinks that if they’re… I dunno, super soldiery enough he won’t destroy them too?
-But there are too many holes in this. Like, I don’t see how an end of the world cult is the natural successor to Shinra, unless Shinra started trying to summon Omega because they thought they could use him for a power source or weaponized him, like the company that kept trying to harness the xenomorphs in the “Alien” franchise.
-It also doesn’t really help explain Weiss’s… oh. Nm. I think it does. It explains Weiss’s “the tainted will be cleansed” talk because it seems to align with Omega as a cleansing force. Again, I’m still not sure why Weiss would feel he and his Deepground forces would be spared.
-No real idea yet also how Nero the Sable is Omega's "brother." Maybe some kind of Jenova shenanigans, where he (and perhaps even Vincent) were created from Omega's cells.
-Going to stop here for now. This was an interesting session for me.
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Next time: Collecting the Omega files in Shinra Manor.
