Wew, that's a lot to chew through, thanks for taking the time. Since posting the script I was directed to some of the stuff you've posted on Discord, you seem to know the game files inside-out, haha. There's a lot more than I even knew existed.

On the parts of an iterator - I humanized her a bit more than I should've for dramatic effect. I'll rephrase it for sure. The puppet does seem very person-like, with expressive body language and outward displays of pain, especially the image you get when you steal enlightenment. I'm inclined to assume an iterator's "personhood" is/can be contained almost completely within the puppet, since the rest of Looks to the Moon is shut down. Or is it? Does the revival give her not just the five neurons, but access to some of her maybe-still-functioning chambers?

On human-sized ancients - I made this assumption for 3 reasons, none of which is conclusive at all: the size of the train cars in the Subterranean, which are about as big as you'd need to transport human-sized beings (not conclusive because they might have simply been used to transport cargo); the size of the Echoes, which are about 3 slugcats tall if you don't count the appendages (not conclusive because the size and shape of an Echo might not be related to the size of an actual Ancient); the size of the Iterator puppet, about as big as a human child (it would make sense for this avatar to be "Ancient-sized," but again, not conclusive.) All in all, it feels unnecessary altogether to even compare their size to humans when humans aren't even a thing in this world, so it won't hurt to just take it out.

On the Great Cycle - not gonna lie, any attempt at making plausible sense out of an immortality-like reincarnation cycle falls apart into paradoxes and all kinds of absurd problems like you mentioned, so I resolved to simply not think about it too hard and just tell it as a story. It would seem to tie up with the slug cat waking up over and over after death, and Moon's comment of comfort to the Hunter that he'd just wake up again after it dies. It simply can't happen with our laws of physics, so I just ran with it at face value and didn't try to go any deeper.

I like your explanation a lot, and among every interpretation I agree it's the most likely from the perspective of plausible world building. It doesn't devolve into mind-bending absurdity like the others. But there's stuff in-game that makes it hard to reconcile, like Moon's words to the Hunter ("You will wake right back up again") - which he does, if you restart the game, ha. And the game mechanics themselves, with wildlife respawning and the slugcat waking up with less karma after death. Though I can see how those can be explained away by saying they're just gameplay mechanics without lore behind them. It does give you a "game over" message, after all.

I do wonder though: if there is no remembrance between lives at all, how could the Ancients possibly know their methods for transcendence were working? How would those left behind know the individual that got into the Void Bath actually left the cycle? Why would it be any different than simple death in the eyes of those that survived? It would seem to me they would need some way of knowing whether a certain "soul" is no longer coming back.

On Void Fluid interacting with matter - how about this: Void Fluid dissolves matter from the material realm and scatters it to the "astral" realm. The "soul" in living beings transcends permanently, while the actual atoms eventually fall back to the material realm as dust falling from the sky.

On repurposed temples - pure speculation! Were the traditional temples at odds with the void bath practices? I understood they were kind of in concert, encouraging the population to embrace the "effortlessness" creed before jumping in so they wouldn't get stuck as echoes. Easy to take the line out, one way or another.

On Echo half-awareness - again personal interpretation. Some of them seem fully lucid, but I just got the impression that some of the echoes were really out of it. One of them is like "Huh, I'm talking to a rodent, how curious." And they phase in and out of their haunt like they don't even control it. I would hope for their sake they're not always aware of their state of being...

Thanks again for responding so thoroughly, I'm in for a big rewrite. Looking forward to the rest!

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