Lore-related questions, I am sorry to say to everyone on this forum used to me rambling about how some game mechanics are terribad.
There’ve been a few things mentioned in the game that seem like they’re supposed to sound mysterious and foreign, but to me, if there’s no info to go off of other than “it exists and we don’t talk about it”, it’s not interesting. There’s nothing to theorize about and therefore nothing to waste my time on.
A small list from short-term memory:
Loner Psyker’s “Five Rusting Spires”
That second hive city what gets mentioned every other mission
Whatever conversations are happening in the warp echoes after picking up skull collectibles
The Moebian 6th being a “symptom, not a cause”
I’ll be honest, the warp echoes are probably the most interesting of this motley little bunch. They seem to recount events within the 6th leading up to the insurrection and lockdown of Tertium - Wolfer becoming more irritated by the day, the troops watching the Karnaks tear it up on the battlefield, and being deployed on an uninhabitable world that’s quite literally called “really poisonous” (Nox Alpha, was it? Not very nice.) This probably ties in with the 6th being a symptom, seeing as how the populace was already down on their luck, making them easy pickings to convert or keep quiet.
The second hive city is probably just teasing at a Chaos Wastes mode that’ll come 4 years in the future which will see the rejects being deployed to grab loot and a key relic from the city and skedaddle.
As for the Five Rusting Spires? At first I thought it was a cheeky reference to Malal, nonexistent guy that he is, but GW probably wouldn’t like having material they don’t own the copyright to being referenced in the game - and besides, none of the Big Four are particularly rusty, save Nurgle, but Loner psykers are probably the most repulsed of Papa Nurg’s gifts out of all the characters. A google search also turns up nothing save a post on reddit, so I have nothing to work with here, and thus must presume that it’s a Whole Lotta Nothing that’s supposed to sound mysterious.
Now I implore you all to discuss this word vomit I’ve written here while I take a glorious nap in the service of E-money. I expect to see a flame war and a locked thread by the time I wake up.
IIRC it’s a remnant from whenever the Rejects were supposed to be actual characters rather than Your Dudes (similar to the Enforcer psyker, Cadian vet, Judge Zealot, et cetera). It’s a reference to Necromunda, which has five spires in one of its primary hives.
From the wiki:
Quinspirus Cluster
The Quinspirus Cluster is situated on the edge of a virtually solidified sludge sea called the Worldsump Ocean. At one time, when the sea was still navigable, the area included vast dockyards. These now remain buried deep within the undercity of the centrally located Quinspirus Hive.
This hive city has five great spires – hence its name, which means “five towers” in the local dialect of Low Gothic and which gives its name to the whole hive cluster in the region.
The cavernous warehouses of the ancient waterfronts have been the scene of many savage gang wars, in particular between gangs subservient to Houses Orlock and Delaque.
The warp echoes do paint an interesting picture but it’s hard to put it all together by oneself. The complete list can be found here along with summaries and a certain amount of supposition based on additional information. Lots of stuff about Nox Alpha.
(Some of the wildest yet plausible supposition I’ve seen so far is a theory that Zola might in fact be the Captain Helmag from the 6th. Just with her mind wiped and a placeholder personality in its place. We know from her special mission and related journal entries around the Orthus Offensive that she is likely related to the 6th’s officer corps in some way and this was a female captain that apparently suffered a mortal wound and wasn’t heard of again. There was also a Commissar that is likely dead and a Colonel that went missing but they were both men.)
Speaking of the Second Hive City, I really hope that if they do introduce a rogue-lite mode a la Chaos Wastes that it is based in Nox Alpha rather than this Second Hive City, which is what everyone has been supposing about it since the betas.
There are other places mentioned in VO lines too. The Ash Wastes between cities come up a lot. Apparently the camelid racing scene is superlative there. Some psykers mention a great evil deep below the city down in the deepest foundations. That agrees with some of the original Wyrmwood’s observations. And, of course, the upper spire comes up a lot but hard to say if anything will come of it.
As long as we’re on this lore hunt, in one of the new mission VOs, one of the handlers mentions one of the cult leaders by name. All I remember is that it came at a really bad time for concentration and was gone before I could read the subtitles. Anyone catch it?
There’s all this talk about Morrow being stuck in a warp storm and carrying this heavy sadness or however they phrase it that I suppose isn’t necessarily that mysterious or confusing but I think the game would be better served if it explored some of these nuances in some characters in a direct way (ie, not posts on social media that link to a website).
I’m sure there are other things that fit that same bill too but I can’t think of anything because it’s too damn hot.
I have a hard time caring about any lore this game is attempting to establish because the overall narrative (shambles that it is) is virtually non-existent to the point where it quite literally is the most disappointing thing about the game. Big selling point name-dropping Abnett and yet, with how the “final product” turned out, it feels like they just threw everything truly interesting or coherent out the airlock.
None of the game’s current structure provides a solid narrative focus beyond our journey from “Reject” prisoner to warband member and the Karnak twins bit of story that I recall so vaguely that, again, it hardly matters.
it’s a vaugely insulting reference to part of the imperial cult, the other psykers mention the five something or others but the loner calls them that because he’s constantly talking about the empire of man crumbling.
this is the single most common urban myth on hive cities, because most hive cities have been rebuilt a number of times and sometimes they’re built slight off of the original hive city’s site. the name tertium means it’s the third hive city, but the first two are probably just the lower levels of tertium that they built new hive cities on. they talk about it like that because on necromunda there IS a second hive city on the other-ish side of the planet that genestealers infested and the rumor kind of spreads from place to place because gossip.
the warp echos are links to ehatever happened to the moebian 6th’s when they went traitor. the only bit that’s important is it happened on a place called nox alpha that has little to no light.
actually the story moving along, the inquisition find out in the carnival maps that the scabs didn’t bring the cult with them, but that the cult recruited/suckered the scabs into their crusade.
A lot of the chatter clashes with the established setting of the game too.
We play as rejects, conscripted into an Inquisitors pet-project as expendable bodies to get stuff done… Yet the characters often chat about things which would be VERY privileged information within the Inquisition, and they’d probably be executed on the spot for even mentioning
I always accepted this as a necessary lore break because it creates more interesting discussion between the characters other than “hey how’s your day going” “good man, you?”. I imagine for most people, Darktide is gonna be the first 40k media they’re actually engaging in, so it would probably make sense from a marketing standpoint. Give an extremely basic overview of Event That Happened in 40k, and maybe someone will be interested and buy a book about it… or just browse it on 1d6chan. Cough cough.
Nah, most of the voice lines are just reference grabbing, nothing more, when voice lines refer to new things (Urmal, other Hive…) those are likely things that they want to introduce in the future
Fatshark did this in other games, hinting upcoming content via quotes.
If you hang around in the Meat Grinder Sefoni will tell you a good deal of things, like more vessels approaching trought he warp. Brahms has a line in the lobby ordering weapon operators to stay alert, which lines up with Sefoni’s incoming ships quote.
The Vox announcer mentions deep hive locations being off limit to operatives.
These are small breadcrumbs in my opinion, second hive could mean new mission/locations , deep hive could mean “chaos wastes” (VT2, rougelike gameplay)…only question is when? The game needs new stuff desparately.