Achron/WMG

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Vecgir are Proud Warrior Race Guys

It's a little early to be very sure, but there is a bit of evidence stacked up:

  • Hazardous Software has released banner ads of each race with a small tagline.
    • CESO: Retroactive Preemption
    • Grekim: Retroactive Prevention
    • Vecgir: Retroactive Revenge. Why would you take revenge when you can preempt or prevent? Because you think that preventing it would be admitting weakness.
      • Alternatively, they could just be extremely leery of time travel. In the 'unit voices' thread on the Achron forums, the devs said that the Vecgir would have the most incredulous voices when it comes to cross-temporal commands.
  • The Vecgir are described in this blog post as having "themes of brokenness, freedom, individualism, and tribal instinct." "Tribal instinct", in particular, sounds like part of a Proud Warrior Race Guy. (Right?)
  • Confirmed.

The Grekim have biological abilities instead of technology

This seems a little less likely, because HS is going for the hard end of the Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness, but assuming it could fit somehow, we have:

  • The Grekim are the only race that does not have teleportation. This suggests a lower tech level than the other two races.
  • The Grekim are the only race with melee units. Further, they use melee weapons because of biological advantages.
  • Most Grekim units can chronoport themselves, but some cannot, and they cannot build chronoporters. This means that there are certain units that can never chronoport; it seems like if they had chronoportation via technology, they would have an "emergency chronoporter" for at least these units. Also, the ability of individual units to chronoport suggests something innate.
    • I thought the Grekim had chronoporters? Also, maybe they have units that can bring others along for the ride through time? Chronal transports would be interesting and would fit well with the Grekim theme.
  • There has been speculation that the Grekim "buildings" reproduce sexually or in a manner similar to slime molds. This would imply that they do not actually "build" at all.
    • The devs have stated that they've never seen a race in any prior RTS build like the Grekim do. This certainly points towards an extremely bizarre construction system...
    • Information in the data files points to actions listed as MATE_UP, MATE_DOWN and SPLIT, though this is likely to get a different name to keep a Teen rating. According to an art blog (not sure if linking it is okay) some buildings will be able to morph back to their builder units. The art blog also indicated that their distinctly technological weapons are in some ways part of them, but they aren't like Zerg as they are artificial.

Note: This has been confirmed as of the v0.6.0.0 release. Grekim units and structures are constructed very biologically (sporing and morphing, respectively). However, it's interesting to note that the Grekim appear to be techno-organic... meaning they still have metal armor and plasma weaponry.

  • From talking to the devs, apparently Grekim actually have small teleporters inside their bodies which they use to build their structures around themselves like shells, rather than a biological metamorphosis.

The Grekim are an artificial race created by some kind of Big Bad

This goes along with the above, since it is unlikely that chronoportation could appear through evolution. This would seem to invalidate the above theory unless there is some sort of justification. Unfortunately, no evidence yet.

  • However, achronal evolution would be a very strange thing indeed.
  • Well, evolution is about advantages, so if it is possible to naturally evolve time travel, I doubt that it would get bred out of the species.
  • Now that v0.6 is out, there's a lot more evidence for this theory. Grekim units breed on the battlefield and are all born with armor and weaponry. Grekim units require massive centralized control nodes to organize and operate (Arctici). It certainly looks like they're some sort of advanced biological weapon or something.
    • Furthermore, they have physiologies and psychologies perfectly adapted to morph into military buildings. They also lack teleportation (which would make sense, you wouldn't want a rogue self-replicating bioweapon teleporting from star system to star system would you). Also, to expand on the Arcticus, the other race's units can enter hierarchies with themselves unaided but Grekim units can only enter hierarchies with the Arctici. If they really were an advanced bioweapon this would make sense, you would deploy Grekim onto a planet, use the Arctici network to control them, and then, when their mission is complete, shut down the Arctici to aid in retrieving them.

All the races are really humans far into the future

All the races are able to use human technology based resource crates. They are humanoid, except for the Grekim that are described as heavily into augmentation and fusion of biological and technological components.

  • Unlikely. It has been stated that time travel (for military purposes) has a range of a few minutes, not thousands of years. The Vecgir are vaguely human-shaped (head on top and suchlike), and I would believe them to be future humans if it were established that they had Bio Augumentation, but it hasn't - in fact, that's the Grekim area of expertise. Speaking of which, there is no way in heck that the Grekim are anything near human. Having said that, if the Grekim are such masters of biology, they could conceivably have abducted humans and used them to create a race of super-soldiers (Vecgir) so they don't have to risk their own lives in combat. Perhaps these soldiers went rogue, forcing the Grekim into combat anyway.
    • However, the devs also went out of their way to not shoot down the concept that extremely long range chronoportations (on the timescale of millenia) are impossible. They stressed a difference between "military, tactical" purposes and more long-term strategic operations. Which probably means that long-range chronoports are possible, but only during cutscenes.
  • Asking the devs about this, it got quickly Jossed. It'a still possible that Grekim are from the far future, since they are based on a species of sentient squid speculated to be a possible evolution of squid 200 million years from now, and time travel is only limited by available power. However, they aren't former humans.
  • The Vecgir are almost certainly related to humanity in some way. Their three classes of unit are named after Jewish alphabets (Zayin, Teth, Shin)!
    • They were probably just first discovered or classified by a Jewish explorer or scientist.
      • The Vecgir are still very similar to Humans. They use vehicles similar to us, use gates for chronoporting, call their upgrade to get the slip gate "Gate Tech" like us, and the Vecgir infantry even look similar to us (humanoid in shape, just bigger and with an extra set of arms).
      • Heavily implied to be true. See the Transhuman Aliens entry on the main page. Basically, Vecgir are probably Human Prisoners of war captured by the Grekim after everything gets sent back to 10000BC, and over the millions of meta-years until the events of the game the Vecgir have evolved under Grekim direction.

The game is set on a planet/moon with no atmosphere

The humans and the Vecgir spend all of their time in buildings with no visible doors or in armoured vehicles. There are no trees or plants on the ground. Aircraft look like fighter jets, but they are all hover-capable and don't move nearly as fast as their aerodynamic shape would suggest; whatever is powering them certainly doesn't involve propellers. Grekim don't wear armour, but they have a good excuse.

  • Judging by the textures, it's possible that the game will be played on multiple planets. Then again, there are no water textures...
  • This is only true for some tilesets. There is at least one tileset that is meant to be grassy, and has many trees that can be used.
  • Partially Jossed, the planet Drasil in the Remnant system does have naturally occurring liquid water oceans, an Earth-like water cycle, and native flora and fauna (none deemed intelligent though, but it has the same amino acid chirality as that on Earth, and some of the flora and fauna are edible by and nutritious for humans). Some levels in the game will occur on Drasil.

A good chunk of this game's purchases are from people who may not necessarily play it, but do want to support a new idea

Including me, somewhat. I've also read a suggestion somewhere else to do the same thing.

The Vecgir are really us in the far future and the Grekim are a bioweapon/soldier race thing they made

The Vecgir are very similar to us (for example they use vehicles similar to ours, use gates for chronoporting, call their upgrade to get the slip gate "Gate Tech" like us, and the Vecgir infantry even look similar to us (humanoid in shape, just bigger and with an extra set of arms)) and the Grekim do look like some sort of artificial race (the Arcticus control system, lack of teleportation etc). Perhaps the Humans evolved into the Vecgir at some point and created the Grekim as soldiers so they didn't have to fight. The Grekim then broke free from Vecgir (our) control and took off into the distant past (from their perspective, the future from ours and the present in the game) to eradicate us in the past (for whatever reason). The Vecgir then followed them through to defeat them and preserve history. If this is true then the whole game may be an example of Help Your Self in the Future.

  • Jossed As far as Vecgir using Grekim. Confirmed about Vecgir being Humanity: The Grekim and Vecgir are together at the start, and the Vecgir are actually Grekim slaves. However, Vecgir are really Humanity after a billion meta-years of directed evolution at the hands of the Grekim.

The Grekim are like Shivans for time travel, as opposed to subspace.

An idea off of the forums. The Grekim wait till someone discovers time travel, then dogpile the entire system and exterminate all sapient life. Which is why the Vecgir are leery of their own time travel capabilities because it draws Grekim like moths to the flame.

  • A recently released screenshot where the player is Grekim and against some Humans has the victory condition of "Find and destroy all chronoporters"
  • Strictly speaking, we don't actually know what the motivation of the Shivans is, but attacking species for using subspace is certainly one of the major theories, and if them, why not the Grekim (at least unless the game turns out to joss it)?
  • Confirmed. Guardian, the main Grekim character, wants to eradicate the humans from history to keep them from discovering chronoportation and mucking up the timeline.

You are the only achron in Achron

From the forums:

File:Cquote1.svg

Hm, I just realized that there is a "1" option in this poll and no one has voted for it.
The reason is obvious. You are an achron, you are fighting at least one achron. That's necessarily at least two, right?

File:Cquote2.svg
File:Cquote1.svg

Wrong. You are an achron, remember?

File:Cquote2.svg
  • This one appears to be Jossed
  • Not strictly-speaking confirmed, but close. 'Elders' are a specific subrace of the Grekim, each with some achronal ability. Further, other AI in possession of temporal transceivers (Nocturne, Echo, Jormun) are all achronal. However, the player character is confirmed to ultimately become the Coremind, the leader of the Grekim.

Achron has at best a Bittersweet Ending that is inevitable despite the protagonists best efforts

The main menu theme is called "All is lost". Apparently there is a reason for this.

  • A snippet of dialogue has just been released, it includes the line " The future is blank. I can see the crash. Or the parts of it that happen before impact. After that... nothing."
  • There's also another music track called "End Of All Things".
  • Confirmed. Tyr/Lachesis defeats the Grekim and saves the Colonies... but is revealed to be caught in a perpetual loop of defeating the Coremind down to it's barest essence, being defeated by the remaining Grekim, and then the Coremind rebuilds itself in Lachesis's image. However, the events change slightly on every iteration, and so may eventually be able to escape. Also, all of humanity that was not destroyed prior to the Remnant invasion is safe from the Grekim.