Ok ok, this is probably crazy. Just hear me out.
I, like a lot of folks still playing this game, was pretty happy to see some progress get announced with the last patch. There appeared to be some improvements that would reduce the time-intensive cycles of grind and disappointment. Perhaps the game was finally going to tip the balance in favor of fun over frustration? …and then I tried Brunt’s Armory…
“Wow wow wow” I thought, “That thing is an insane Skinner Box that could only have been designed by Tzeentch itself.”
And then it hit me… the entire Mourningstar is an insane Skinner Box and the rejects (varlets if you prefer) are the rats. Atoma is not caught up in a Nurgle uprising. It is trapped in a (probably) Tzeentch plot to contain the inquisition while the true threat looms elsewhere. Perhaps in a different part of the galaxy?
What else could explain the Mourningstar? A shopping mall with warp engines attached to it and no food court? A bunch of “rejects” running from feeder bar to feeder bar before returning to liberate the same neighborhood/manufatorum they just left? Praying to the emperor for a patch that offers as much hope as crushing disappointment. All under the direction of an unseen inquisitor and interrogator Zorg - so preoccupied with catching a single traitor that they can’t see the forest of seditious prisoners they are apparently surrounded by.
I mean, where are all the corpses in the streets of Atoma anyway? Hab Drayko is really the only place touched by disease? A Nurgle cultist uprising strong enough to have leave daemon hosts laying about but they need to actually engineer a contagion in an Adeptus Biologis facility in the Hourglass? Why would you bother when there are “poxwalkers” running about?
Only Tzeentch could be responsible for trapping the player in this nightmare. If you strain your ears, you can almost hear Mark Wahlund whispering “Just as planned” from the strategium in Stockholm…
The story of Darktide is one where the meta, developer communications, RNG mechanics, and environment all bleed into each other. I am not saying this is a story worthy of Dan Abnett, but it is a lot closer.
