Questions From Someone Who (regrettably) Hasn't Heard Of The No Man's Sky Before Astral Shards :P

Questions from someone who (regrettably) hasn't heard of the No Man's Sky before Astral Shards :P

What is Atlas? Since they hide from it, is it like Giratina in this au? Or Arceus?

The Atlas is many things.

The Korvax call it a god. An intelligence beyond comprehension and judgment. It created the world and all that reside in it, and the Korvax hope that by worshiping it, they too can obtain similar greatness.

The Vy'keen feel differently. The Atlas controls the sentinels, and the Vy'keen have been at war with them for generations. They do not trust something with that much power, and insist that if the Atlas is a god, then it must be insane.

The Gek are more neutral. They care little for things like higher powers and gods, and are much more concerned with their trades and profits. Still, even they acknowledge the power of the Atlas, of its ever present nature.

(The Korvax, Vy'keen, and Gek are the three main races in No Man's Sky, each with their own language and history)

Adaman and Irida think differently. They call it a liar, a hypocrite, a false god. They have spent most of their lives avoiding its crimson gaze, slipping into the cracks between worlds and leaving its jurisdiction.

The Atlas is all of these things and more. It is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything and the keeper of order. It made the galaxy and all its wonders- every galaxy in every universe. The infinite cosmos is it's garden, and the sentinels are it's gardeners, tending to it's creations and making sure everything is in proper order.

Yet what is the point of a garden without someone to visit? What is the purpose of art if there is no one to view it?

And there in lies the hypocrisy. Because the Atlas craves order, demands assimilation- yet it created the travelers, the antitheses to all that it is. The travelers are the outliers, the mistake, the glitch in the code, yet the Atlas adores them more then any of it's other creations.

The traveler is the observer, the aesthete. Their entire purpose is to behold what the Atlas has made, to revel in its glory.

Forever adrift and aimless, doomed to always move and never stay- no home to call their own.

Is it any surprise that some rebel against that fate?

THEY ARE HERE!!!!!!!!

@antidotesprout thank you so much!

Sorry I didn't write this earlier, but we gotta know what Emmet is going through in the Astral Shards au.. especially after the tags under the sentinels post

Awesome Sneasler ship drawing btw!

Thank you for the ask! This is actually what helped me power through and write the second half to that, so look forward to that.

In reference to the tags-

When Ingo get's Emmet out of the Land of Glass he's not... quite.. natural anymore. He's broken, shattered, literally smashed into tiny pieces that don't properly follow the laws of reality. He physically shouldn't have been able to leave the glass dimension... but Ingo found a way.

The autophage helped with that.

They were familiar with being broken, with being rejected by the Atlas. It was the Void Mother who helped them, who showed them how to use atlantideum to build themselves up from nothing.

But Emmet is a biological being, not mechanical, so they cannot fix him. They can only keep him from falling further apart.

For Ingo to save his brother, he'll need help of an... organic being.

In everyone goes feral in Hisui, I think Akari should be able to bite Arceus, as a treat.

She should. It’s her right.

Tags from @reblog-subway-station:

#do they [the sentinels] mess with Ingo's plans? #i imagine they do because. he probably isn't a big fan of the Atlas either

The Sentinels (Ingo)

“Warning. Sentinel detected.”

Ingo flinched at the sudden voice of his exosuit, his hands threatening to drop his multitool in surprise. That wasn’t a message he hadn’t ever gotten before, although the alien dread and irritation suggested that before his memory loss he had. Getting a better grip on his multitool, Ingo turned to where his visor was directing him, coming face to face with-

A little red drone.

He tensed for one anxious wordless moment… before the drone tuned away with a wirr, floating a ways away to scan a nearby tree. That was…. anticlimactic. For all the hubbub involved, Ingo assumed that they would attack him or something. The warning was still ever present on the bottom of his visor screen and it didn’t look like it was going away anytime soon. But why? The drone wasn’t doing anything- just scanning random rocks and trees as it buzzed around.

….well whatever. Ingo shook his head and went back to mining. He had a brother waiting for him, and his ship was almost finished. Just a couple more materials and he-

A metallic shriek was the only warning Ingo got before a sleeve of bullets got fired into his back. He whirled around as his visor lit up with red, his suit’s shields wailing about the damage they had taken. The sentinel- because it had been the sentinel who attacked him- began charging up another volley. “Hey!” Ingo shouted in alarm as his shield took another round of bullets. “Violence is highly unnecessary! Words would suffice!”

Unfortunately, the sentinel didn’t seem interested in (or capable of) starting a conversation, and Ingo had to dodge another round of ammunition. Irritated (and a bit scared for his life) he turned his mining laser on the aggressive little droid- which did little more the singe it. Still, Ingo didn’t have much other options, so he kept at it, slowly racking up damage while doing his best to avoid as much fire as possible.

By the time he finally managed to take the thing down, his shield was critically damaged and flashing at him aggressively. “Serves you right.” He spat at the exploded shrapnel on the floor, its internal parts fractured and and broken, strewn wildly in all directions. The parts were strange though, hardly resembling the internal circuits of his own ship and looking more like jagged purple shards. ….shards that eerily resembled the message from his brother.

“Warning. Sentinel reinforcements approaching” Oh heck no. Investigation abandoned, Ingo hightailed it out of there, running up the nearby hill and praying he could get far enough away in time. In less than thirty seconds the area he had previously been in was swarming with little red drones, the little buggers having blinked into existence between one moment and the next. Ingo had no idea where they could have come from- but he wasn’t sticking around to find out.

Hello, yes so! Irida and Adaman! I have, So many questions about them in your Astral Shards AU. do you have alien species in mind for them or isit just "not human" at this stage? how did they first meet when the iterations arent supposed to be able to interact? did they create the in-between space or did they just happen upon it and decide to build a station in there? considering they think the god equivalent, atlas, is a liar how does that change their personalities from what we see in PLA (especially irida whose reverence for almighty sinnoh and Vast Hisui seemed to be emphasized even more than with adaman). im curious to know what theyd be like in a world where they not only both know exactly who/what created the universe but also think its kinda a dick and want to avoid it instead of worship it.

Adaman and Irida aren't super duper important for this AU in general, so I probably won't ever draw them or anything- but species wise they are travelers!

That is to say- whatever they frick they want to be. If anyone has any ideas for potential designs I'd love to see them, you can get really creative here lol.

"how did they first meet when the iterations arent supposed to be able to interact?"

We'll see, that's how it's supposed to be. One traveler per universe, and the universe's stay separate. Except they kinda... don't.

On occasion, the walls between realities will grow thin, and travelers echoes will pass though dimensions. They aren't really there and you can't fully interact with them, but you can talk and that's all that Irida and Adaman really needed. The anomaly was created so they could truly interact, truly stand in the same room together, finally no longer be alone.

They did a lot of research to get to this point, to figure out how to open spaces between dimensions and how to gather other travelers together. In that research they learned more about the Atlas... and they didn't like what they found.

"considering they think the god equivalent, atlas, is a liar how does that change their personalities from what we see in PLA (especially irida whose reverence for almighty sinnoh and Vast Hisui seemed to be emphasized even more than with adaman)"

These are all interesting ideas- and actually ones they play around with in text!

This is Nada and Polo, the characters I had Irida and Adaman replace. They serve the same role in the game as I've given Irida and Adaman... including their distrust of the Atlas.

Which is especially juicy when you notice that Nada is a Korvax... aka those guys that worship the Atlas.

(They are also the only people aboard the anomaly who aren't travelers! ...don't ask why I made Adaman and Irida travelers in spite of this, I don't have a good answer lol)

I think Irida probably worshiped that Atlas before, after she learned of her special role in the universe and how much the Atlas loved her personally. I think she started asking too many questions though, which lead to her learning more and inevitably growing bitter with it.

All that being said though, Irida and Adaman are just minor characters in this AU and don't have too much impact on the over arching plot. Knowing how much you like Irida though, I'm sure you would have much more thoughts on the matter than me.

Thank you for the ask!