The Order of Forgotten Mysteries #14: The underground pyramid in Origins

[anonymous]

Добрый день lovely people! I found it might be time to unearth another forgotten mystery from our story. If it wasn't for @RichKiller and @caljitsu recent notes about the pyramid on the Shadows of Evil wall, this thread wouldn't even exist, so a great thank you for the,! Now let's begin:

 

As you might know, the depiction of the Great War on the wall in the secret city beneath Morg City, shows something that matches the most with the shape of a pyramid building. 

We've got pyramids all over the globe, by some believed to be built (with the help of) god-like creatures from the space above us or the world beneath our soil. The most striking pyramids in our story are those encountered in Shangri-La, and on the loading screen of that map and moon. Those are Vimaña's, Chariots of the Ancient Gods. These flying cities of the demons were believed to have been used in a war between gods, between the two factions we now consider as the Keepers and Apothicans. We know such devices are, or were stationed at Shangri-La, but at what location is the Vimaña stationed seen in this picture? The Great War including Primis was fought in France, right?

 

So @caljitsu observed that this pyramid might very well be stationed in Northern France. He noted that the pyramid is potentially located underneath the pile of dirt we have given the name 'Excavation Site 64'. The stone subterrean corridors under the mound, possibly under the whole area, might actually be the inside of a pyramid! If you look well, you can even see that the four large runes on the top of the mound correspond with the vague blue forms on top of the pyramid on the Shadows of Evil wall.

 

Okay, so there is a pyramid buried in Northern France, at the former battlefields of the Great War (double meaning). What can this tell us? Well, it would explain the pressence of all the unearthly-looking runes and stones, with the same circles and symbols scratched in as we can encounter on other locations that have Keeper-influence such as the undercroft of Der Eisendrache. It explains the excavation of artifacts that seemed to have been crafted by beings much more intelligent than us, such as the Elemental Staves, the "Magic" box and the Weapon-Upgrade-Machine. I also believe that this makes Origins connected with Shangri La via the realm that we call the Crazy Place. Because of this, I believe it are the Original Universe and Dimension 63, of all countless universes, that got connected with each other.

 

Let's go the the moment Ultimis Richtofen had teleported Maxis, Samantha and Fluffy. Richtofen orders the rest of his split faction within Group 935 to search for Doctor Maxis to talk Sam out of the MPD, and upon finding Maxis, the latter speaks the infamous sentence:

Quote

“Schuster! I should’ve known. Where is that rat Edward? Where are we? And how did you get me out of that wretched tunnel-”

This was a popular question for the community to theorize about, and we have considered all tunnels: At Tunguska, at Nacht der Untoten, at Moon and most notably, at Shangri La, as we know that location was discovered and excavated by Richtofen's faction. From the Timeline, however, we've learned that Maxis was teleported to the Crazy Place. As Shangri-La has, just like Excavation Site 64, a pyramid embedded in its soil, I would like to consider the possibility that Shangri La also has a gateway to the Crazy Place. You see, I believe the description of the function of a Vimaña is also used metaphorically: "Flying" can also be seen as in "flying" between dimensions. See this thread for more info concerning that. And thus, the pressence of the pyramids at the location of portals to the Crazy Place are no coincidence: It are the pyramids theirselves that generate the portals. Maxis travelled to the Crazy Place but got back via Shangri-La, walking right in the arms of Richtofen's men. I would also like to note that both Origins and Shang are maps with a vast amount of Element 115 underground, could this be connected with the pyramids/Crazy Place too?

 

Now, what exactly is the Crazy Place? Where is it located, if we even are able to describe that. All we know is that it is inhabited by undead creatures, resembling men but not fully: Having large, carnivorous teeth like Keepers and also wearing the symbol of the Black Sun. We also know that these creatures are able to step into our world when we activate a Conversion Generator, but are unable to when their portals disappear after the Generator is fully activated. The hidden realm beyond also houses crystals that can be used to harness the Elemental forces: Wind, Electricity, Ice and Fire. I discussed the possibility of the forces being merely different applications/uses of Element 115 by the means of different crystals here, and @The Meh explains the possibility of these forces being the driving factors behind our Elemental Multiverse here. But for some reason these cystals are located in the Crazy Place. And lastly, of course, does the Crazy Place guard what is believed to be the very entrance to Agartha, the Aether physical manifestation. 

 

I've considered the Crazy Place to be inside the pyramids, the Mercury Vortex engine of those ancient devices, the crystals being the catalysts. As you can see on the Shangri La loading screen, the Vimana is powered by Wind, Electricity (and possibly more elements). But then I thought about this Hindu maniscript:

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"Strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material. Inside one must put the mercury engine with its iron heating apparatus underneath. By means of the power latent in the mercury which sets the driving whirlwind in motion

The pyramid isn't created by the Elements, the loading screen pictures an old belief of the Hindus. So what could the Crazy Place be, then? Is it really a realm seperated from ours? If it is a gateway to Agartha, why does it also guard the Elemental crystals? And why does activating the Conversion Generators, converting 115 out of thin air into liquid 115, generate Denizen-like portals where the creatures from the Crazy Place come from? Lastly, could Zetsubou no Shima have an underground pyramid as well? For all we know, it does have an old Keeper tomb, and the location is based on R'lyeh, the sunken lost city from Lovecraft's tales also housing a pyramid.

 

[RichKiller]

I completely agree with the excavation site in Origins being the pyramid in the SoE PaP wall.

"All we know is that it is inhabited by undead creatures, resembling men but not fully: Having large, carnivorous teeth like Keepers and also wearing the symbol of the Black Sun."
"Why does activating the Conversion Generators ... generate Denizen-like portals where the creatures from the Crazy Place come from?"

I always considered the blue-white eyed zombies in Origins as guards of the gateway to Agartha.
Those could be the souls of the warriors that died on the battlefield of the great war (those are by the very least the bodies of these warriors). 
Drilling element 115 from the ground triggers them make them try to prevent the drilling. 
They see the generators as a threat. Denizens got the ability to teleport due to mutations caused by element 115.


On a related note, here is a cipher from Origins:
"Warn Messines
Something blue in the earth
Not clay
We grew weak
Thought it was flu
Men became beasts
Blood turned to ash
Liberate tute de infernis (In Latin: Free us from Hell)"

I remember being brought up in relation to the above cipher:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_(1917)

 

[caljitsu]

Really good thread, especially because I've had my own headcanon that relates to this for a while:

 

We know (Dimension 1) Maxis was in the Crazy Place before he was retrieved by the MPD. However we also know that the MPD seemingly moved the Focusing Stone back to its original location - Richtofen's "Tomb" - when retrieving Maxis. Now this used to make sense when most people in the community collectively agreed that this "tunnel" was Shangri-la, and it also fit nicely with the quote in that map that infers that Maxis is the creator of the JGb. However because we know for certain he went to the Crazy Place now after the events at Der Riese facility, his misadventures in the lost city are now surely no longer canon.

 

Or are they? (Queue Vsauce music)

 

In Revelations, for the first time, we get to move behind the temple of Shangri-la, and what we find is a small antechamber with statues of Nikolai, Takeo and Dempsey adorning the centre (why it is just those three, however, probably deserves its own thread, as it's a theme all throughout BO3). At first, it would be very easy to dismiss this as a room from Der Eisendrache, as indeed, that area is right next to the temple, however it was never featured in Der Eisendrache. 

 

In Alpha Omega, we learn that both the site at Northern France, and the temple in the Himalayas (when it's not on Mars), both have been detected as "Potential Gateways (to Agartha)" by Broken Arrow. From our experience with these locations, we know their assessment is correct. The consideration of Shangri-la in this regard is a very nice tie-up of the Hollow Earth mythos, as it seems to imply that whilst you don't literally enter a hollow earth, you descend down until you find this gateway to the realm, interpreted by Ancients with limited science as being literally inside the earth. However only one of these locations we see with this gateway to Agartha (The Crazy Place), and it's not Shangri-la.

 

Suspending any disbelief for a minute, if we lay out the steps, it makes a lot of sense:

• Maxis is teleported to Richtofen's Temple in Shangri-la
• He journeys down through the inner sanctum where he reaches the Gateway (The Crazy Place)
• Here he gains the ability to merge with Electricity (note the pseudo-keepers here with electrical abilities, again a theory for another thread)
• The MPD is able to find his location using the Focusing stone as a sample, swapping the two
• Richtofen then has to re-accquire the Focusing Stone.

 

tl;dr The Crazy Place is under Shang

[anonymous]

@RichKiller From the map seen in the Origins intro, it seems like the map takes place near Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. Messines is a whole different area of the WW1 west front, with even different nations fighting the Germans (Messines had British while Verdun had French troops based). But as they say 'warn Messines', maybe the French (or Germans) messaged this to the British (or Germans) stationed at Messines. That liberate us from Hell part got me, could be about the overall condition of the fight against the undead, or aboutbthe souls already perished (and trapped in the Crazy Place?). Do the Knight zombies have the same eye colour as the Crazy Place zombies, or are they yellow like the other 'normal' zombies?

 

@caljitsu I like that part about the Focussing Stone. How would you imagine the MPD "swapped" Maxis with the stone? It also brings us into a paradox: The Focussing Stone seems to have come into existence after Ultimis' actions at Shangri-La, no? How could Richtofen already have acquired the rock in 1945?

[caljitsu]

15 minutes ago, anonymous said:

@RichKiller From the map seen in the Origins intro, it seems like the map takes place near Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. Messines is a whole different area of the WW1 west front, with even different nations fighting the Germans (Messines had British while Verdun had French troops based). But as they say 'warn Messines', maybe the French (or Germans) messaged this to the British (or Germans) stationed at Messines. That liberate us from Hell part got me, could be about the overall condition of the fight against the undead, or aboutbthe souls already perished (and trapped in the Crazy Place?). Do the Knight zombies have the same eye colour as the Crazy Place zombies, or are they yellow like the other 'normal' zombies?

 

@caljitsu I like that part about the Focussing Stone. How would you imagine the MPD "swapped" Maxis with the stone? It also brings us into a paradox: The Focussing Stone seems to have come into existence after Ultimis' actions at Shangri-La, no? How could Richtofen already have acquired the rock in 1945?

With Shang, we're entering a wholly separate, pre-existing loop, as with the Alcatraz dimension (pre-BotD). Because of this, causality in the traditional sense goes out of the window. It's the reason why you can repeat the easter egg multiple times in a single game, because you're not particularly changing anything, provided Brock and Gary continue to exist within their loop.

[anonymous]

14 hours ago, caljitsu said:

With Shang, we're entering a wholly separate, pre-existing loop, as with the Alcatraz dimension (pre-BotD). Because of this, causality in the traditional sense goes out of the window. It's the reason why you can repeat the easter egg multiple times in a single game, because you're not particularly changing anything, provided Brock and Gary continue to exist within their loop.

Hmm, would that mean Richtofen solely or with his Group 935 split 'saved' Brock and Gary earlier

[anonymous]

Also, to add on that is this interesting wikipedia page I found about the 'etheric plane': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheric_plane

 

On the wiki page of Shamballah, another name for Agartha, I found te following: "Alice A. Bailey claims Shamballa (...) is an extra-dimensional or spiritual reality on the etheric plane, a spiritual centre." We already considered Agartha to not literally laying in Holow Earth, but to be accesible via portals in subterrean tunnels. This Crazy Place, however, may literally lay in the caverns beneath Shangri-La

 

Certain Buddhists regard the gateway to Agarthi as a vast complex of caves underneath Tibet inhabited by evil demons, called Asuras. This instantly reminds me of the gateway called the Crazy Place. Asuras are Hindu demons with superhuman powers, which reminded me of these fellas.

Could these caves under Tibet be the Crazy Place and these electric zombies be what ancient Hindus considered demons?

 

Another argument I havent mentioned yet that the Crazy Place can be accessed via Shang is that both Origins and Shangri-La are, on the Alpha Omega map of Broken Arrow, referred to as "Potential Gateways". Is this in both cases a reference to the Crazy Place?