THE CRYSTALLIZATION – THE SARCOFAGUS -THE TOEM(ENEMY)


First let me explain what im talking about here:
By Totem i’m refering to a secret enemy that is located in Necropolis, is an humanoid with a face mutated to look like some sort of bird, his limbs broken and twisted around two metal poles.
Although the wiki state he can be killed, i never experience this fight, i found him hidden behind a solid wall, but never find a way to reach him or damage him, and he never did anything else but keep his iddle animation.

The Crystallization is the process trought the convicion and the wisdom of dead people inside the Old mountain (or anway near the influence of Marrow and/or the Adit entities) solidifie and transform into smooth stone of GRIT and CLARITY..and maybe MORE
Also from now on if you gonna read “Smooth Gems/Smooth warm gems/ or similar” im overall talking about “Spells, Clarity and Grit gems”

The sarcofagus are the numerous little “golden” bust (or half body) that usually hold a Grit/Clarity gem for us to take. We see in numerous occasion that this little statue in reality contain some skeleton and human remain .Although i cant really see into pixel art, a couple of them hold isnide what i think are circuits, very similar to the one you see when you damage a Serf.

All this 3 topics are very related in this theory, so be kind and keep me company while im vomiting in your face another one of my wall text.

-The Crystallization:
One of the first thing that struck with me are the skeletons we meet in early stages of the game that holds our uppgrades, and sometimes show some hidden path. The thing that tip me off was theyr position. They are not dead bodies layng on the ground, no they are in a very specific Funeral posture, ALL of them. But we’ll meet catacombs and graves filled with corpses all around the area…why there are so many skeleton that have been laid down in this position?

My first thought was very simple: what they all do? Hold an uppgrade for us, so probably is some kind of ritual in order to force the Crystallization and the consecutive use of the Smooth warm gems.
We Know that a certain Olnok was below the mountain before the Stulands, and did a lot of experiments himself that later the Stulands try to emulate, but they dont understand/posses the knowlage to build/use a sarcofagus(ill talk more about it later in this post) so they just use a less powerfull version of the procedure and use what the “nature” will give them
In a nutshell: putting skeletons to the air “sometimes” will produce a Smooth warm Gem while the sarcofagus is a guaranteed procedure.

So not nearly as good, but better than nothing. BUT, there was one thing that really wasnt look right. The skeleton are usually WAAAAY bigger than Daniel..but maybe they are just adults..? some of them have 3 eye socket, green/red or even blue color… but thats not what really didnt cut for me…

What make me reconsider my thought was what i call : The Hunter’s Hut
The Hunter’s hut is a secret location on top of windhime. The general area is strange…we have a giant room full of candles, maybe was theyr industry before the stulands? Or maybe they needed causeof all the tombs they were digging.
Than there is a small room full of chairs..it looked to me like a town hall, maybe there they decided what to do about the situation…or…maybe they hide there prayng for salvation.
Immediatly after this the player can reach a hidden room where trough a secret passage (is NOT hidden at all in game) you reach the hunter’s hut. Like a diyng animal, the man who’s resting here deliberatly hide himself in wait for his last moment. He’s surrounded by many weapon and tool (thats’why i call him a hunter) and rest in the classic funeral position.
What i get from here is the idea that people dont need to be dead, they need to be ALIVE for the whole crystallization process to begun, (so sarcofagus now really look worse than they were before).Probably they get infected somehow and know what gonna happen to them. But WHO set the corpe of the Hunter in the proper way? Some friend of him or….
Not all corpse end up in this way, at the end of the honoured refuse area, in the background there are SO MANY corpse (you can hardly see em without the final medallion -_-) layng there (honestly they all look like the patriarch corpse in my hopinion) Are they refuse cause they failed the crystallization process? There are many other corpse in the game that are not treated with the same …”respect”, so why are they Honoured?
As i speculate before in another theory, the Entityes in Marrow are sympatetic and the (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) Pathfinders are theyr messanger. Stulands pray and ask for answers, and they reply. The reply was not fully understanded but nontheless the Stuland just follow the instructions step by step, doing rituals for all the failed experiments in order to dont offend theyr Patrons or cause some unexpected reaction in a scienze that was so beyond theyr comprension to look like magic…
About the Honoured refuse though im NOT so sure… but… they are Honoured refuse, and than we’ll gonna meet the Dying success… are they related? Ill’talk about it in the future? Who knows!

-The Sarcofagus: https://imgur.com/a/XxUqqoV
This contraption are basically a very small coffin where an alive human were stuffed inside. I like to think Olnok “fold” and “crample” humans inside it and than selaed it while they are still alive. Devoured by pain and madness (they are basically buried alive) theyr essence (?) were slowly converted into the Dark warm gems.
Opposite to the “naked” skeletons left layng around, this process can probably be repeated a couple of times before a new sarcofagus need to be crafted. In some part of the game we see many old and used sarcofagus, so trowing them away was for some reason out of question.
All Sarcofagus have socket for a gem (many of the have been already collected and used) but some have been lefted as spare, or even formed afterward in the last cycle of this terrifiyng machine.
So.. why so many? Why cant the old one be trow away…and what happen if a sarcofagus get crack open? Some of them are, revealing to us what was inside.. but nothing was around them out of ordinary (the ordinary been the usual horror monstrousity of the old mountain)
At certain point Olnok probably realize that reliyng of human bodies were not efficent, they lost theyr usefulness to fast, or maybe the human supply cant keep up with his need. So he’ll try to build artificial life very much like the Serf in order to have something easier to replace or can theorically last longer inside the machine, recyclable infinte times!
Now.. i’ll be honest, i dont really remember if this few sarcofagus in game held a gem of any types… but since there are very few of them, ill assume that this experiment was a failure and he switch back to humans (Also, lets be Fair to Olnok here, where is the horros if he’ll not use humans to this stuff? Come on!)
In the laboratories there is a room filled with old sarcofagus. A strange “vegetation” cover the room and some elemnt in the background that remind me of an oniscus(kinda) moves away when we step closer. After collecting the power up in the room, a Zealot appear as a jump scare, but than stay passive. Zealot guard the area but most of them are passive, but still watching our moves around..still they arent that many to be what come out of the broken sarcofagus… and so all the rest of the other creatures.
…unless…..

-The Totem:
Apparently, creating precious artifact from living been is a very good buisness pratice so Olnok probably though; “why dont take this one step forward?”
Now, we all know that the statues that held the medallions for us in game are clearly Metroid cameo, but lets assume that theyr aestheticin game is on pourpose beside been a reference.
Same as “infecting” living been to force theyr grit and clarity to crystallize, Olnok infected others with what i think is something coming straight from the Echo realm (why the echo realm? Ill come back to this later), and of course…some Marrow (like cheese, you can put Marrow everywhere)
The experiment subject will than start a slow transiction, while they begun to “phase” between the two planes of existence

I ‘d like to touch on very quickly that my first though about the “phasing” enemies in game was that: they did try this solution themself in order to escape the situation, and than get stuck in a limbo of they own creation. Escaped the monstuos mutation theyr “collegue” faced, but force to share the same horrible prison and fate nontheless.


There is a “group” of creatures that share the similarities of:
Been totally or partially immune to damage, and the one that can be damaged can only sufferer the one that comes from magic “ source
And a (monstruos) Bird-like Face. Part of this group are: the messanger, the Veil Walker, The lamb(i think…) and of course The Totem.
One exception is the Vacant,that dont share the physical appearence buti s not exactly physical and can only be damaged reflection his own attack.. maybe he’s not connected to this group, but i kinda like to speculate about him been a “successfull” failure. Emptied by his own will (or soul..or mind who knows!) he cannot become an artifact anymore, but this unluky souls have naturally developed an “immunity” to the Echo influence, becoming a empty husk that cannob be further mutated or killed by the process but can still operate and even conjure magic.
Sorry for this digression.. the one of the many.

Many will fossilize, becoming living statue (the lamb) and be placed around as defense system. They are probably very related to the lumious orb(ill tralk about it maybe in ANOTHER theory)
But few others, were the good one! The term “Totem” immediatly call in our memory picture of wooden pole carved in various animal and monster shapes, and the monster is a guy impaled with two sticks, BUT totem was an animal, a person/spirit/entity of HIGH importance, an animal that cannot be killed or hunted,an item object of veneration, and it also may refer to a family member (it can be transalte vaguely as Brother/sister).. i di just quote a wiki.

So once a victi… sorry a TEST SUBJECT start his path of becoming a totem, the attitude toward him changed, cause now he MUST be treated with CARE. The only totem we find in game is hidden, and probably for a good reason. But why?
Cause becoming a Totem is not the end of the process, Becoming the Bird Statue IS. And what’s the ONLy thing this statues does in game? They Hold the Medalions.
The medallions provide light and protection against the Marrow radiation..but there are very few in game, opposite to the lumious orb, that even if not active anymore, there are PLENTY scattered all agourn the old mountain, but the Medallions and the Bird Statue are few.
My take on this is that: the statue are the only safe way to hold the medallions, or like the Sarcofagus they can slowly produce some gems that work like the one of Exoder (that we know is inside the fianl medallion) So maybe Olnok just discover how to produce that kind of gem, but not very efficently.
The Haunters of the broken sphere possess a medallion each (maybe also olnok’s eye..not sure) and they are Marrow mutantns..powerfull mutants..why they do need a medallion? So is clearly a very importat item, and therefor the statue that hold it, is very important as well