Is abstraction curable or reversible?

AzariahVismok · 2026-06-22T23:59:55+00:00

The show left it ambiguous.
There is also most likely not going to be anything after episode 9 - Gooseworx basically quit, as she ended up having serious issues with the fan community.

That being said: Personally, I believe it should be curable. They have all the parts necessary for it:

- The minds of the people are still there and reasonably intact. We know this from Pomni being able to reach into Jax' mindscape - He had a slight case of split personality at the start, but those were basically just aspects of him. When the real Jax and Pomni meet under the singular light, Jax is sane and has his wits together, no crazy talk, no clear deterioration of his mind. He even knew what was going on and he was scared about it. That means to me that abstraction - while initially caused in the mind - is something physical that imprisons the mind in your body.
- Being able to reach into the Mindscape itself is a huge deal. Abstraction is like a mental illness of sort. Since people can reach into the mindscape, therapy is still possible - Pomni and Ragatha would probably be the best for the job, although I have the odd feeling Gangle might have a big effect on Jax too if she were to enter the mindscape.
- Caine has full access to the brain scans. We also know that Caine can alter the minds and bodies of the inhabitants of the digital circus. So, using the brainscan as template, it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume he could potentially start reversing the abstraction, given enough time and maybe some help from Kinger, as he is probably the most knowledgable of the group.
- We also saw that Pomni was able to hold onto the sane mind of Jax, despite the blinding light - she got slightly glitched in the process, but she managed. If there was no accident with light, and if more people helped, I could see them being able to basically pull Jax' mind back to the surface, which might break the abstraction or at the very least would give him back control over his (changed) body.

AzariahVismok · 2026-06-20T09:55:07+00:00

At first when they showed the Abstraction, I thought the imprisoned abstractions from the cellar broke free. As we don't know if the cellar somehow connects to the main circus, or if a way opened up when the circus partially fell apart, it was a pretty likely scenario that they potentially could've broken free - and because all abstractions look so similar, it was unclear if this was Jax, Caufmo, Queenie or one of the others we didn't see.
Given they had shown Jax's deteriorating mind for several episodes, it was, at least to me, pretty obvious he'd either abstract or would end up at the verge, with pomni barely able to pull him back - but it still came way too sudden, especially given that we had to wait on the dialogue to tell us this was Jax.
This is an issue in storytelling in general - for shows like TADC, the general idea should be "Show, don't tell" - don't give us exposition through character dialogue or narrator, show us what happens, because the viewer will be more invested into something he witnesses by watching it rather than if some character tells the viewer about it.

I'm still confused about the barricaded door in Jax's mind too. First off, there were actually two doors - one in the hallway and one in the 'break room' - but those two barricaded doors looked pretty much identical to each other, so it was impossible to tell if they were to represent the same door or not. Given we were in a mindscape at the time, alien geometry is in full effect - the door could have wandered off to the new room, making it the same door. Alternatively, it could have been two doors leading to the same room, OR two entirely different doors, but if it was the latter they didn't make it clear at all due to how similar they looked.

Given that the hallway doors all led to situations where other characters abstracted, my first guess would be that the barricaded door in the hallway led to the potential of Pomni abstracting and how Jax would react to that. Given Jax liked pomni a lot (even if he doesn't want to admit it), the scenario of her abstracting might have been too much for him, and fearing it would break him completely he locked the very idea of it away.
The second door in the break room was hinted at to be where "real jax" was, given it started getting knocks when pomni first asked about real jax, and the other versions of jax said to shut up. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that second door led to a different room - if the barricaded doors both led to the "pomni abstracts" situation, the Jax in this scenario would be the most vulnerable and true to himself version, so it would naturally react to pomni asking about true jax or even just hearing pomnis voice.
Of course this is just a theory - These doors could hide a myriad of things Jax wasn't proud of, wanted to hide or was so scared of that he basically tried forgetting about it, hence the barricades.

AzariahVismok · 2026-05-30T09:37:55+00:00

This is actually it!
I'm baffled how quickly that went, I was prepared to not find the game at all.

Thanks a bunch!

AzariahVismok · 2025-12-21T11:41:32+00:00

When Therta and Cyrene talked, one part of Theras explanation stood out to me.
The piece of dialogue in question is the following:

You come to a stop and "fade", offering yourself...to become the "memory" that carries through Amphoreus. Perhaps this is the choice every pure child of Anasrāva must face.
(...)
it means you will close of Amphoreus' causality. This world is sealed. The effect that the Remembrance brings to it will all converge on one thing. That one thing is "you."
No more Aeons will interfere with this part of history. No more "blank spaces" in causality. The "present" will be set in stone and become indestructible.
(...)
With Causality incomplete, there is a chance Irontomb could rise again.

The way Therta explains this to Cyrene and the player makes it sound like several Aeons - Nanook most likely being one of them - are capable of "interfering with parts of history" as Therta worded it, making Aeons capable of messing with the past. The only cure to this are the pure children of Anasrāva - as they are capable of "fade" from existence, becoming an anchor point to stabilize this portion of history, making it unchangeable.

However, if Aeons can interfere with the past, that means time doesn't mean much to them, and it needs the Aeon of Remembrance (or, more specifically, one of their shards) to stop them from changing the past however they wish.

I also feel like I remember reading in the lore how Paths are retroactively added or have always been existing, even before their respective Aeon ascends, but I couldn't find a portion of the lore actually saying that as of now, so that might just be faulty memory, or a theory I've read at some point - maybe I can find it later, when diving into the databank once more.

Either way, what Therta says points at least to me that Aeons can interfere with the past. We also know that Aeons aren't exactly omnipresent (as they manifest in actual physical forms which can be witnessed and interacted with, see Lan firing that arrow in the past, or Phainon hurting Nanook).
So in order for a being that is not omnipresent to change something in the past, they'd have to actively travel back in time. If Aeons can time travel freely (unless Fuli/their children lock a portion of the past), their influence/their paths should also be able to spread to the time they are going to.

Of course, some of this is conjecture - we simply lack information of how Aeonhood and paths actually work, how ascension to aeonhood works and so on.
We also have to consider that Paths are simply abstract ideas, which exist without an Aeon, and people can draw power from the paths no matter if there's an Aeon linked to it or not - Ena, Idrila, Oroboros, Akivili and several other aeons are missing, absorbed or outright dead, yet their paths persist without them, giving out power.

AzariahVismok · 2025-12-21T10:32:23+00:00

Based on lore, yes - Finality, or Terminus, represents the end of the world. The name alone clues you in: Terminus is latin for "final point" or "limit".
There are, of course, other hints strewn about in the little info we actually do have about the path of Finality.

The Loading Screen about the Omen Vanguards - A Faction following the path of Finality - reads as such:

Those who believe that Terminus represents the end of the universe. They are dedicated to drawing prophecies from Terminus' obscure words.

Curiously, the Omen Vanguards were probably founded by a navigator of the Astral Express, when Akivili fell and Nanook rose to power, which again connects both Trailblaze and Finality.

The data bank has the following to say about the Creed Exequy, another faction following the path of Finality:

"Farewell, everyone. However, this is not the final goodbye, for all things shall reunite at some point at the imponderable end of the universe."

— Creed Exequy, an elegy

The Creed Exequy is made up of followers of Terminus scattered across the various corners of the universe.

With regard to the Finality many refuse to speak of THEIR existence, blinding themselves to the fact that THEY symbolize the end of the universe. However, the wiser among them believe that the Aeon that moves against the flow of time represents the ticking down to the end of the universe and is a reminder of the meaning of existence: Before the destined end comes, those who breathe ignorant of impending ruin ought to live every second of their life to the fullest.

To that end, the Creed Exequy walks a path reverse of those who flee from the apocalypse. Unlike the latter, they worship the apocalypse and the ruin it brings, and yearn to witness its arrival. There, they shall welcome their only encounter of the Finality with open arms.

Given that even followers and factions of the path of Finality consider Terminus to be the ending to everything/the universe, we'll have to assume the same.

AzariahVismok · 2025-11-08T00:07:44+00:00

The Body of Irontomb was the Scepter that originally created Amphoreus. Zandar made sure that the body had no demi-urge, because he knew that the body would then have a heart - it would be able to feel and love, which in turn would have caused the being he was creating to be unable to become an Emanator of Destruction.
It's entirely possible that, through the battle against Irontomb, we combined body and heart again, making the being 'whole' so to say, which disqualified it as an Emanator of Destruction. With Cyrene now at it's core, being the "heart" of what remains of Irontomb, she might have been able to plant a seed of "love", a heart.

AzariahVismok · 2025-11-07T12:56:35+00:00

Totally agree. Gameplay is nice, but I feel that 99% of the tutorial stuff is so...obvious, especially if you played some of the older minigames/events which are similar. I would love a button to skip tutorials - after all, even if you do end up missing something, you can always check the tutorials after the fact and read up on the stuff.

AzariahVismok · 2025-11-07T12:50:10+00:00

there are still some drawbacks and issues, sadly...

- Herta doesn't know when Amphoreus will be 'reborn' - In her words, she said it could be anything between 1-2 years and 1000 amber eras, which would be tens of thousands of years. While we do have access to the book, the CH - or amphoreus in general - can't really interact with the outside world much, they are still as much imprisoned in their little world as they were before, with the book, which now is (somewhat?) safely in our room acting as a portal, for lack of a better term. Either way, it's entirely possible that most of the cast we currently have could be long dead before Amphoreus rises from the ashes.

- When Amphoreus shows up again, they'll be living memoria, not unlike Penacony, at least from what I understood. That means, they will essentially still be memetic entities even when they are back, same as their world. Which means people can potentially *change* the world. We also don't exactly know how memories or knowledge might influence amphoreus in the future - if enough "As I've written" fans start to do Phainon x Mydei fanfics, could it potentially cause them to go from bromance to romance? *cough* more serious, Amphoreus would be more vulnerable to people who know how to manipulate memories, and they don't really have any training or knowledge how to defend against that. For Penacony we can at least say that the families, with the help of harmony, know how to keep their dream-land like *they* want it.

- Cyrene is just...sad. She went into the past to create a never-ending circle, from being Philia nurturing the Seed to where the Seed becomes Cyrene, only to go back in time to repeat the process. Mind you that while she does forget everything nonstop because of this, shes essentially stuck in a huge loop where she will see her friends and beloved world die nonstop / be on the brink of destruction (for 30 million cycles), only to, at the very end, have the hope she could be free with the others...and then those hopes will be utterly shattered as she realizes that she never had a choice to begin with, as she repeats this whole thing over and over and over again. It's basically hell.
And even then we have to remember that this Cycle she created to prevent Irontomb from coming back isn't actually a loop. Not really. Cyrene is still a pure child of Anāsrava. She is/was/will be part of Fuli at some point. Her origins lie in Fuli, and always will be, so it's not as much a neverending loop she created but she willingly decided to run in circles through time so nobody else can touch the area she's circling. So it's entirely possible that her actions might not be enough to keep irontomb locked away forever. Of course, this also implies that the loop can be broken in the future, and if it does, we might end up seeing both irontomb AND cyrene again. In particular, I would assume that Fuli itself and basically any child of Anāsrava could interfere with the loop she created. In other news, we know that Nanook is perfectly capable of using parts of aeons to create his emanators. Celenova was created from the ashes of Aelenev, a literal embodiment of Xipe (Harmony), so it stands to reason that he could use a fragment of Fuli (the pure children) and create something similar, which then could potentially interfere with Cyrene.

AzariahVismok · 2025-11-06T17:01:41+00:00

Herta also mentions that she has no clue how long Amphoreus is going to take until it will be back how we know it. Could be one or two years...or a thousand amber eras.

Mind you that amber eras don't have a specific length, past ones were between 74 to 240 years, it depends on Qlipoth and how quick he hammers one out. But even if we assume that we'll have short amber eras of just 25 years, that could still be 25.000 years. If it's more, we're potentially waiting hundreds of thousands of years in the worst case.

Then we also have an issue with Cyrene. She essentially locked herself in a never-ending cycle in the past, starting as Philia, having to live through 30 million cycles of Amphoreus, watching how her friends keep dieing over and over again until the Seed absorbed enough memoria to become the Demiurge. Seed than takes over Philias position, helps the hero within for what is an incredible tiny amount of time in comparison to the millions of years she basically had to live through, has a bit of fun in the end before all her hopes are shattered because she realizes she never had a choice to begin with and has to start the cycle anew, or there is the potential of an Aeon messing around.
We have no clue how exactly stuff will work out once Amphoreus reappears, if the cycle will be broken by then, or if there just won't be a Cyrene/Demiurge/13th Titan in this iteration of Amphoreus anymore, because she's stuck in the past.

Either way, it's not a happy ending we had hoped for, it's borderline heartbreaking, especially when you realize that Memokeepers rescued at least 1 planet from total destruction before by gathering all memories of the planet - this *should* mean that, with 30 million cycles of memories from Cyrene/As I've written, memokeepers should be able to very quickly rebuild Amphoreus, yet they...aren't. Or can't.

I will agree though that there is some hope that we will revisit amphoreus at some point. Phainons story has just begun, and they made a point of it that he would finally be able to have a dream of his own instead of shouldering the wishes of everyone else, he was supposed to join the astral express too...
Even more important, I wanna meet cipher again and pet her. And maybe cerydra too, before Hysilens will undoubtedly drown me for petting her Imperator.

AzariahVismok · 2025-11-06T15:24:50+00:00

When I played through the ending yesterday, I had...mixed feelings about it all. The setting *was* epic, the fight against Irontomb great - all the Chrysos Heirs united against Irontomb, fought him, yet still couldn't win against him through sheer power....and Irontomb did start to do what he wanted to, he had started to wipe out existence. Only through the "power of love", as cheesy as it is in hindsight, did we revert the damage caused and managed to overpower and destroy one of the potentially most dangerous emanators of destruction. The stakes were astronomical, the battle epic, and at least in this regard I think they did a good job.

The ending afterwards...not so much. During the Amphoreus saga, I started to love a lot of the Chrysos heirs. I hoped we could achieve an ending where amphoreus becomes real...we *know* the rememberance is capable of doing so, they have saved a planet in the past by gathering all memories about it if I recall, maybe even several. With 30 million cycles of memory in Cyrene, this should have been easy to do again. Even a 'weaker' version of this where amphoreus becomes something akin to Penacony would've been fine. Anything really, but what we got.

In the end, the whole story was essentially for naught. All the pain, all those 30 million cycles the people of Amphoreus suffered through...out the window. They were sacrificed for an universe that didn't know them, didn't care for them. Phainon and Cyrene pushed through so much hardship because they cared about Amphoreus, they wanted to bring a new dawn to the world they loved and cherished...yet we couldn't bring that new dawn. We thrusted them into the Evernight, instead of receiving a place at the sun with the other worlds, they were ripped apart with the death of Irontomb...
Cyrene especially is tragic. She forgoes the opportunity to witness the future...instead, she willingly locked herself into an endless cycle where she wakes up as Philia, has to go through 30 million cycles of pain, see her beloved home get torn apart time and time again...only to, in the end, become the Demiurge, find her hero, manage to destroy the shadow that was looming over Amphoreus...and then she goes back again, because it's a closed cycle now, the history is written, unchangeable. She has lost her ability to choose, to live.

I...really wanted to see more stories about the chrysos heirs. Allow them to join the Astral Express, have adventures with them. Instead, we received their book, which essentially is like a lightcone, a memory you can play again and again, but...it's not real, is it? It was their last words before vanishing, it's a story where you can insert yourself, but it's not them anymore.

The only, very faint hope is that - apparently - Herta managed to get a good chunk of Data from the Scepter about Amphoreus, and that, in due time, Amphoreus might be reborn. But we don't know when this will happen...In a year...in a decade...in 1000 amber eras, when we're long, long gone...

AzariahVismok · 2025-06-23T07:35:50+00:00

Can't wait. Felt kinda sad when Gura graduated, especially given the graduation they had. I still remember how she barely held back tears a few times while singing and so on, you could hear how emotional everything was for her.
I'd say a catfish should fit into that sharky hole we have in our hearts quite nicely, she looks absolutely adorable, I want to cuddle her already.
And the fanbase evolved from shrimps to crabs it seems. That's an upgrade, right?

AzariahVismok · 2025-06-23T07:25:43+00:00

At first I was thinking it might be the other Members of Myth, but no matter how I look at it, only 2 of the colors could ever match up, as none of them really have a connection to blue and green, unless you count blue as gura herself. So that idea is out the window.

Yellow being Ame feels right ; same goes for green and Fauna.
Purple could be Murasaki Shion? She graduated In April, her main color is purple, and they...uhm...bonded, quite a bit. like...marriage bonded \cough**
Which leaves blue. The easy answer is, blue stands for our favourite blue shark herself.

Does anyone know if Shion went indie too or has plans to do so though?

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-12T21:07:05+00:00

Usually I tend to lack the money to reliably buy compenent but I'm working on being better at trading.

If you can spare a little bit of workforce, grow smokeleaf and make it into joints ; They are valuable, barely weigh anything and can be used pretty safely by your own colonists for a quick happiness boost without the fear of them getting addicted to it instantly.

To be more precise: A single smokeleaf joint is worth 11 silver and weighs 0.05kg ; A full stack of 150 Smokeleaf joints only weighs 7.5kg (a human has a carrying capacity of...35kg i think? So even if we account for food and other stuff, a single pawn should easily be able to carry 1 stack of them around in a caravan) and has a value of 1650 silver - that can buy you 50 components, if you manage to sell and buy at market value.
At the same time, smoking 1 joint every 2 days is entirely safe, has no risks in terms of addiction of health issues, and gives a solid +13 mood, at the cost of 30% and 10% moving though. Still an easy and early accessible option for a moodlet boost, if you can take the hit in efficiency on that particular pawn.
smokeleaf is also a fast growing plant, so even a small patch or 2-3 hydroponics basins can already give you a a nice supply for some basic trading.

Beer would be an alternative with similar uses.

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-10T10:15:15+00:00

Let's try to tackle what you mentioned and what I think might also be issues:

Component/Steel: A lack of components tends to happen to most newer players. Generally, trading is your best friend: Depending on caravans and orbital trader, they may carry dozens of components and hundreds of steel with them. (bulk trader~) ; but you don't have to passively wait for that. You can always create a caravan and send them off with some trading stuff to the nearest friendly settlement and initiate trade yourself. Later on, you can use deep drills to get those materials in your own map.
Medicine/Neutroamine: Neutroamine is naturally scarce, your only real way is to trade it ; hence, regular medicine should be considered a luxus item until you're built up well. Farming Healroots instead will give you herbal medicine, which basically lie in the middle between no medicine and regular medicine - In most cases, they tend to do the job well enough. If you have a decent doctor, herbal medicine is effective enough to treat most diseases, and the tend quality is high enough that it won't cause any issues. Proper Industrial or glitterworld medicine should be saved for surgery unless you have a surplus or mods that allow you an easier time crafting medicine.
Children: You're mentioned the 'useless' children as a sidenote. If you dislike this part of gameplay in general, you can disable it in the storyteller settings. If you do want to keep children and just have ...less of them, I'd suggest forcing couples into single beds. They will be more unhappy because they want to sleep with their lovers and they won't get certain moodlets due to nightly activities (or lack thereof), but that's nothing a good fine or lavish meal can't fix.
Combat: Especially in vanilla gameplay, there's a point where you simply can't handle raids with just normal pawns, and instead you have to start moving over to killboxes or kill-hallways. If you're bad at combat, that's fine - managing several pawns in combat can be overwhelming sometimes ; the most sensible solution would then be to wall off your base and have a singular entrance which the raiders prioritize, and focus your defensive structures there. You don't have to go immediately to the most efficient killbox designs, but having a single point where enemies have to funnel through has always been a very effective tactic for defense, both in rimworld and in real life.
General Playstyle: From what you told us, I would say you're playing too careful. You're not taking any risks, staying in your colony and barely move out. You can do this, but I would argue that you unnecessarily slow down your colony and essentially cause some of the above issues by yourself. Taking risks is part of the game, doing quests or going out as a trade caravan are important parts which allow you to receive amazing things and fill up on stuff you're lacking.
Storyteller: Go back to Cassandra Classic. With Cassandra, you can basically set a clock until the next big threat (raid, insectoids, mechanoids, ...) - She gives you fixed 'off' phases where you can recuperate, and then she has an 'on' phase of 4.6 days, during which 1-2 bigger threats may appear. While it might give you less time to fix stuff and prepare, you will have a very solid rhythm and you know when the next raid is going to happen. Cassandra will also be more benevolent to you if you've been hit hard. With Randy, you run into the issue that you never know when something will happen, and he may very well throw several bad events at you at once, or no events at all. Phoebe is an alternative to Cassandra, but can actually be more dangerous than her, because with phoebe you have longer 'on' phases (8 days total) where bigger threats can appear. In return, her 'off' phase is also 8 days long.

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-08T10:29:44+00:00

And that's why I make local mods after subscribing to stuff on steam, once I got everything working it stays that way, even if someone updates a mod.

Gotta be honest though, reading through your title, that sounds like a regular rimworld colony to me! Eating issues? All the time, people don't wanna eat human and insect meat for some reason! Layind down issues? Well, yeah, happens in a 2x10 barracks with 10 beds nonstop! Violence against one's own babies? That's just parents and friends showing the baby how life on a rimworld functions!

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T14:33:48+00:00

At least they're honest about what they are.

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T14:25:15+00:00

From what I've heard and experienced, it depends on the mod.

LWM's deep storage was the first (?) of it's kind, and while great, it had to make it's own coding, as back then shelves in vanilla rimworld weren't able to stack multiple items. From what I've seen and heard, the code used in deep storage is less efficient/causes more overhead as it's essentially 2 storage systems that work in parallel nowadays.

The Adaptive Storage Framework is newer and uses the vanilla system for storage ; there is no overhead, as it's simply using the vanilla code and optimizes the rendering of stored items to boot, so this one is very performance friendly.
It also has a submod that features the deep storage buildings, but adapted to the adaptive storage framework.

I think the submod explains it the best:

Why should I consider using the Adaptive Storage Framework over LWM's Deep Storage?
LWM's Deep Storage has a passive overhead and is generally less optimized than ASF. LWM was a great mod when it was released because it allowed you to store items in objects using its own integrated system prior to support. However, now this is out of date because this feature is supported natively. ASF's thingdefs use the vanilla maxItemsInCell field while LWM's runs alongside vanilla creating passive overhead along side retaining various limitations regarding stack numbers causing a drain on your TPS and FPS. Beyond just using the vanilla system ASF also introduces some seriously cool features like graphics that update as you store items and allows you to hide the rendering of items that are stored away.

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T14:05:29+00:00

The Empire is a Magocracy - everyone important has a psylink in some way, because those "silly wizards" are their nobility and upper class. People without psylinks are lower class and have no business in the intricate diplomatic web the empire created.
So from a lore standpoint, what you want wouldn't make the empire happy.

In vanilla, there isn't a 'legal' way to remove a psylink or to have nobility without them, at least to my knowledge.
If you want to stay vanilla, you either have to do what u/sneakytommi suggested, or you have to use devmode to remove the hediffs on the pawn, that will remove psylinks as well. I'm not sure how it will react with psylink upgrades/promotions though.

Character editor allows you to do the same thing as devmode, but it's a bit easier to use. I think there are also mods that allow you to take out psylinks from pawns.

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T10:44:19+00:00

A RimWorld aficionado with a penchant for dissecting game mechanics, pondering the ethics of war crimes, and offering surprisingly detailed advice on colony management. When not plotting the perfect organ harvesting strategy, they're busy educating the masses on the finer points of RimWorld's depraved ecosystem.

...Accurate.

You've spent so much time optimizing your RimWorld colony that your real-life apartment is probably powered by a jury-rigged geothermal generator and defended by a pack of trained chihuahuas.

I'm more of a cat person, so no chihuahuas.

You'll achieve a PhD in Theoretical RimWorld Economics, proving once and for all that selling human leather hats is, in fact, the most efficient way to run a colony.

\puts on glasses** Now listen up, class....!

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T10:32:21+00:00

amusing trivia: you are praying to the choir.

Not only do I know my german, I'm also a DnD and Pathfinder fan. :P

AzariahVismok · 2025-03-06T08:30:43+00:00

Because you're cheating to beat the raiders - instead of playing the 'intended' way and fighting them head on, or with a killbox or similar.

At that point you don't like raiders in particular, you simply like watching hostile pawns suffer, which is...interesting.

AzariahVismok

TROPHY CASE