The Test Subjects and the Golden Rod

[NaBrZHunter]

Since the release of The Giant trailer, the community has debated the "Test Subjects:" who they are, where they are, and why they are of interest. Takeo's first words to the Richtofen we encountered in The Giant trailer, "the future hangs by a thread: you must awaken the test subjects" gave the phrase buzzword status, and with the release of The Giant, "awaken the test subjects" theories abounded, with theorists suggesting that said individuals would be found there and released in the mythological and nonexistant Giant Easter Egg, and when, after two months of searching, none were found, and Der Eisendrache was announced, theorists suggested that they would, instead, be found and awoken at this new map. However, what many seemed to neglect was the wealth of information that we have had on these Test Subjects since the release of Call of the Dead. I've felt strongly that the answers to many of the questions can be answered by the radios and activities that took place at the Group 935 Siberia Base, and and glad to finally see some new evidence.

First, let's review the story according to Black Ops 1. We know for certain that Richtofen kept the ORIGINAL 4 test subjects at the Siberia Base until sometime after October 1945, after he had betrayed Dr. Maxis at Der Riese. It has been confirmed that the Mexican test subject, one Pablo Marinus, did indeed die, another hotly debated subject. For more info that, visit this thread by my good pal @Tac here: Pablo Marinus, the Mexican.
How or when Dr. Richtofen originally retrieved the remaining three, "Tank" Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, and Takei Masaki from the Siberia Base to begin his mission to extract Sam from the MPD is unknown. However, there is never any indication that they were transported to Der Riese in any universe we have yet encountered until after they had first been woken and fought together at Shi No Numa, the first thing that the three test subjects remember, before which they can recall nothing else, and even though they hate Richtofen, aren't sure why.
Secondly, in BO1, Richtofen deliberately returns to the Siberia Base later, during his quest to collect the artifacts needed, where he and the others are trapped inside a vault, and he muses on his good fortune, saying he is glad that the others can see nothing that might spark their memories of being held there.

Richtofen convinces the actors, brought to the site by George Romero, to carry out the process of sending the secret message "VRIL," in morse, along with a combination of horn blasts and other signals to a Soviet submarine waiting in the bay, which has been holding the Golden Rod for him, and trades it for a "returned" zombie, presumably for experimentation purposes. 
How the Russians got the Golden Rod may be explained by the fact that the Russian Ascension Group was made up of known Nazi scientists adopted by Soviet Russia after the war. Presumably, one of them may have worked with Richtofen at the Siberia Base and arranged the rendezvous that occurs in the Easter Egg for whenever Richtofen found himself able to return for the device.

In Black Ops 3, however, the Origins 3 arrive at The Giant (Der Riese) to interrogate Dr. Richtofen, and attempt to persuade him NOT to open the teleporter and release Origins Richtofen, whom none of them trust. Dempsey clearly indicates in the first 3 rounds at The Giant that Origins Richtofen killing The Giant Richtofen destroyed their chances of finding out where The Giant Richtofen was keeping the test subjects. How they learn of the transportation of Dempsey from Siberia to Austria has yet to be determined.
Richtofen clearly never returns from Der Riese to the Siberia Base to awaken the test subjects, and whether news of his death at the hands of his younger self reaches the other officers, or whether it is done as a precaution, the test subjects are loaded in trucks and, as seen in the Der Eisendrache in-game cutscene, shipped off to different locations. 
Dempsey, particularly, is sent to the Group 935 base, Der Eisendrache, where he is placed in a rocket and sent into space, bound for the Moon and Griffin Station. When his capsule is later shot down, however, we find that this time, since Richtofen was dead and therefore, unable to arrange his future rendezvous at the Siberia Base, whoever held the Golden Rod had instead attempted to send it with Dempsey aboard the rocket to Dr. Groph, at Griffin Station, who would likely use it in his continued research on the MPD, a project that Dr. Richtofen had put him in charge of on the occasion of the MPD's unveiling.

Where the other test subjects were sent has yet to be seen; but now, without the Golden Rod, we have no reason to ever return to the Siberia Base, nullifying any reason for returning there in Black Ops 3, as the destruction of the Moon has done with Griffin Station.

With no further words to summarize, I'm stepping down now.

"Ahaha! It bites my shins. IT BITES MY SHINS!!!!"

[Stop Mocking Me0]

But what about the focusing stone.... Ah? There's a question. 

Two artifacts must be used to gain access to the interior of the MPD: The Golden Rod, and The Moon Ball Artifact, which in this case, appears to be the summoning key. 

The golden rod in it's normal form: Does it have the capability to awaken a keeper's ghost? And if so, why? Surely right now it's just a rod made of rare materials with no supernatural influence whats so ever... Or at least not enough to swap souls. Let alone resurrect them. 

 

Would this universe also account for the focusing stone being obtained from shangri-la? 

[NaBrZHunter]

1 hour ago, Stop Mocking Me0 said:

But what about the focusing stone.... Ah? There's a question. 

Two artifacts must be used to gain access to the interior of the MPD: The Golden Rod, and The Moon Ball Artifact, which in this case, appears to be the summoning key. 

The golden rod in it's normal form: Does it have the capability to awaken a keeper's ghost? And if so, why? Surely right now it's just a rod made of rare materials with no supernatural influence whats so ever... Or at least not enough to swap souls. Let alone resurrect them. 

 

Would this universe also account for the focusing stone being obtained from shangri-la? 

The Black Moon Egg and the Summoning Key are similar in some ways, but not the same. @Tac, this is your forte.  

Yes. The Golden Rod is an Vril device. What all it is capable of, we are uncertain. But a conduit for living energy seems to be a common them of its uses. 

No, I don't believe the focusing stone is necessary in this Uni. But I am open-minded in that regard. 

[anonymous]

Just found out what Dempsey in the der Eisendrache trailer truly means with: "suicide mission", he is gonna kill himself, from an other dimension.

Anyway, great explaination.

It fills up some dark spots which I never understood from the zombie story for me.

[Stop Mocking Me0]

Well the MPD from moon and the MPD on Der Eisendrache are similar, but not exactly the same either. That being said, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn from this easter egg to the moon one. 

Ball gets put in pyramid, ball gets taken out, ball gets used with computers to send off rockets to destroy the moon or earth.  I really don't know how they could spell out any more that the Ball from moon is the summoning key unless there's an actual document, or radio, or quote, which I don't think we'll get... 

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Stop Mocking Me0 said:

Well the MPD from moon and the MPD on Der Eisendrache are similar, but not exactly the same either. That being said, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn from this easter egg to the moon one. 

Ball gets put in pyramid, ball gets taken out, ball gets used with computers to send off rockets to destroy the moon or earth.  I really don't know how they could spell out any more that the Ball from moon is the summoning key unless there's an actual document, or radio, or quote, which I don't think we'll get... 

But the Summoning Key is unique and not the ball in any way. The MPD's are also different due to it being another universe, which makes me wonder why people get so sad over Dempsey's death when he isn't one we have ever seen.

[Tac]

4 hours ago, NaBrZHunter said:

Yes. The Golden Rod is an Vril device. What all it is capable of, we are uncertain. But a conduit for living energy seems to be a common them of its uses. 

No, I don't believe the focusing stone is necessary in this Uni. But I am open-minded in that regard.

I'm going to say that the Vril Device has powers beyond the Focusing Stone; it does not need it to perform an activity. It merely needs it to perform this activity. With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Focusing Stone returned in some fashion.