I'm sorry to link to another site, but the format this personality quiz/story that I wrote about how the old civilization left the Valley of the Dormin from Shadow of the Colossus . . . left the place.
Why You Makin' New Religions.
` But I'll explain it from the third person here.
` A long, long time before Shadow of the Colossus took place (leave alone Ico), we somehow ended up with a shapeless species that could control life essence and light, the Dormin. It's not really a living thing, though, since it doesn't die. It almost is an idea, a God, except that it actually can do stuff itself without people, like resurrect them, and light everything up. People move in, and as Gods that actually exist, the Dormin were easily worshipped, but needed worshipping to truly exist and to take any kind of shape. People build up incredible buildings too. How? There also happened to be a specied of fungus with a chemical in it that was used by the government that was slowly built up to control the minds of all of the other people. Since the Dormin were half idea, this meant they could control the Dormin too, and for the people to believe in the Dormin, statues and temples were needed as constant reminders, keeping the Dormin at full power, and giving the government control of all light and possible ressurection.
` But then there was a change of power. Lower government officials just assassinated the higher ones. But who cared? Everyone was drugged with this mushroom's refigned form. They were just mindless zombies. But the new government wanted more power. They wanted to be controlling everything themselves by making up Gods that were totally idea. They had scouts who'd seen outside of the valley and knew that everything was more inconsistent, like the weather, and the lighting. Rainclouds moved, and the rest of the world moved in comparison the the light source other than the Dormin there. But why not use the excuse of a God who believes in total loyalty instead of the rest of nature? That's what they did. Many soldiers were trained, they even had completely different uniforms from all of the normal workers.
` Everyone was forced out of the valley by . . . force. Those who obeyed weren't killed, and were fed (the previous government took all of the food, it was stockpiled, and redistributed (sounds like extreme a communist dictatorship
plus the extreme brainwashing of capitalism! But this time with drugs), so this new government had total control of all supplies). Those that didn't were tortured for either unanswerable questions, easy to answer questions but the interogator just says it's a lie, or the disobeyer was tortured for info but was prevented from speaking in ways that I might or might not be able to mention here. Then they eventually died in tortue (like in one of the possible endings for Why You Makin' New Religions) or 'released' into some location where they're either too far from anyone else, or just going to die really quickly, or tied to a tree, but at least outside of the torture areas.
` Horns went right from being divine (for many forms of the Dormin were horned) to pure evil
evil . Why? To, in the long run, get any attempt to worship the Dormin to be a hated crime.
` But building? Now buildings included lots of glass since the weather varied more. Also, after finding more ways to generate and channel energy, buildings were made with horribly complicated moving parts. Why? The new rulers wanted to have customized castles to live in. One was into buildings of mostly metal frames, but thick glass walls, and many gardens of water filled with fertilizers (like the area around when you fought the small colossus who charges into and knocks down the pillars, I'm saying it's a hydroponic garden, okay? This castle's construction site is shown in one of Why You Makin' New Religion's ending's). It also contains sacrificial alters and expirimental weapons labs.
` Lemme continue this later, I need to go. I'll soon get to the queen from Ico and the government that Wanda was a militant priest for.
PSIEDIT: Now, we've ended up with futuristic technology in that last paragraph about the rather modern skyscraper type castle. Well, we have a lot of science here that only works with the D&D type laws of physics. What exactly happened to the Dormin? The the old guys at the top were removed, back in that valley with the Dormin, long before everyone was 'evacuated'. After the takeover, which only no one knew of before the evacuation besides the soldiers and officials, there were also labs set up outside of the valley full of mages researching magic that would seal off the Dormin. The new government didn't want any kind of physical component convincing people to worship the Dormin which would cause disloyalty without any drugs. This new government wanted control by making their own God. Now, the mages in those labs working to seal the Dormin ultimately came up with a spell that involved a sword, the special design (eventually put on the ponchos in all of the standard issue soldier most civilian uniforms), and the very statues that people worshipped the Dormin with. Ultimately, they tried to trap as much of the Dormin's power inside of the statues (I don't know, maybe as extra protons making the statues super dense?) That would ward off the physical component, preventing the Dormin from resurrecting anyone (even though a lot of thier lighting powers stayed so the valley still kept a constant day, with no change in weather. The clouds were always stationary, so it only rained in a few areas near the sea, and a lot of deserts formed).
` Without the controling chemical from that fungus mentioned earlier, the government created new Gods. First they tried polytheism, but the realised that they could control people better through monotheism. Either way, the Dormin's separate forms were barely refered to, so it never mattered. This new God was otally one sided. The Dormin were every natural pair of opposites combined (light and dark, life and death, man and woman). Now, this new God was just man, just light, and just light, and new opposite was created good and evil, something that was origionally just a human problem. This God was good. Anything to do with death went with a horned weilder of evil. It was horned because the old Gods, the Dormin were evil (this is an analogy to book religions replacing pagan religions in the middle east, I think. I'm making up the new Gods, but horns as a sign of evil because horns used to be devine does fit with Ico and SotC, and real life). Since anything to do with death was evil, and people were told that the Dormin could resurrect, reaching into the realm of the dead, the Dormin and their power to resurrect was evil so people never tried to free them.
` In Shadow of the Colossus, Wanda (or Wander, or whatever, but wander is a verb and Wanda is normally a proper noun, so I'll just be a grammar geek and use Wanda. Even if that's a girls name, the SotC player character looked rather femenine) was one of those militant priests in training. He couldn't have been girlfriends with Mono, because he shows more affection and to his horse and he knows his horse very closely with the kind of loyalty they have. So if Mono is Wanda's girlfriend, then she should have ended up knowing the horse and showing it more affection at the end of SotC. Wanda also has the same uniform as those priests who try to kill him in the end, that Wanda had stolen the sword (used in sealing off the Dormin) from. So I (and actually some gamefaqs.com writers, really) am saying that Wanda is one of those militant priests, he was beginning a romantic relation with Mono who was schedualed as a human sacrifice (by him, another Why You Makin' New Religions ending involves a human sacrifice by the guy from the scyscraper castle). But he sorta loved her, and he felt guilty partly for trying to become a priest, so he goes back into that valley, which was always called a cursed land, with her. He was right that the sword used to seal off the Dormin was needed to be brought in. Now he's doing what no one else dared to do, and the Dormin see his sword, and tell him (all as one entity, but there were two voice actors) to kill the giant monsters roaming around. Why?
` When the Dormin were sealed off, it's essence really didn't end up totally in those statues. Instead, other sections of the valley that once had temples (which were also factories and farms) to forms of the Dormin ended up taking in that extra energy, creating giant monsters resembling the the statues in the main temple that the forms of the Dormin were sealed off into. With that sword, though, Wanda was able to break through the colossi at the points where the esssence of the Dormin was most pushing out. By killing those monsters, the energy returned to the statues and broke them, or something like that. But ultimately the energy was trapped in the monsters and the Dormin want to get out so they even give you hints to get to the monsters (many of them not very hostile) by controlling the way light reflects from that particular sword. They then even help you kill the colossi by telling you how to where to go to get to those weak spots.
` As more and more of the essence of the Dormin gets freed, Wanda gets greater and greater skin problems. He has a good deal of dried blood on him that's been oosing out since his body can barely hold the essence of the Dormin. In the end, Emon, with an his entourage of younger priest, comes in just as Wanda has come back into the temple after killing the last colossus (I'm listening to the music from that one right now!). The essence of the Dormin is now taking over Wanda's body and that's the part in the game where you get to try and smash Emon dead. But there is not alternate ending. This new strange dictatorship is going to continue into another game. But there, they've mellowed out as their systems of suppression just work for themselves.
` The Dormin still get a chance to resurrect Mono, and when the sword used to seal off the Dormin (that now is keeping them up), was destroyed, destroying Wanda, the Dormin also resurrect the poor priest who sacrificed a possible person to be commited to. However, since Wanda's been so tainted by the Dormin's essence which isn't supposed to be in him (extra protons means he's getting radioactive wich means he has a strange form of magical cancer . . . no, I'v had a lot of cancer problems in my family and that's made me insensetive) that the Dormin have to reverse most of his life and so they make him a baby. WITH HORNS! The horns thing is now a genetically natural part of Wanda. Mono eventually raises him (with the immmortal horse Agrol who sounds more like Adom), and since she knows that she isn't his mother, they have a relation. Kids. Kids who eventually escape the valley even though Emon cast a spell to destroy the bridge on his way out. Who knows how many generations of a family exists in that valley. Hopefully few, and no further genetic problems occur. They probably build teleporters. Some end up in the Xen universe, some end up in the Combine universe and take over earth . . . some go to hell and become the satan of our universe . . . but actually that most likely didn't happen. They just escape, and have kids in the outside world. The horn gene continues, though, too. Now we have the merely social curse that Ico goes through.
` Now, forget the first castle I mentioned. Another one of the top men in the takeover was not a man, but a woman. She developed ways to only partly exist in the physical world. She also builds a castle designed just to confuse anyone who enters it. Logically, she's gotta keep most of her subjects outside of her castle. But this horns gene? MORE FREAKIN' CONTROL!!! With people thinking that kids with horns are causing all of the problems in the world, she can also have fun with religion just like the guy from the scyscraper castle. Both rulers used excessive arbitrary rules and systems. Some, people are simply convinced are the way things are, others are enforced with the possible wrath of God. Or the wrath of the curse of the kid with horns. It also is a great way for her to test out her methods of gaining total control of people's souls. It's those horrible tombs that Ico was very lucky to get out of. Priests living nearby (around her castle, it was smaller villages instead of other similar scyscrapers that the other guy had) brought in these kids with horns. They were left in the tombs where they died of dehydration or something so horrible that it would take many paragraphs to properly describe. Then Ico turned twelve, was sent in for sacrifice, and found (after escaping the tomb due to disrepare and agressiveness) what the queen would use as her replacement body: her daugher: Princess Yorda. Then the game Ico happened . . . to find Yorda in her cage after escaping his tomb. Yorda was also half in the spirit world, so she could unlock a lot of the special gates in that castle. Somehow, the game reminds me of Feel Good Inc., but the Gorillaz. Somehow every song in the CD Demon Days makes me think of Ico. They spend a lot of time going through the castle, unlocking a thousand doors and taking a googleplex detours to get out. And the entire time . . . rember those other horned kids who got sacrificed? The queen has total control of their souls which come in through portals and try to abduct Yorda while Ico isn't looking. They nearly escape the castle, eventually, but the queen just takes Yorda away herself, and Ico falls off of the bridge out of the castle a distance that would have gotten him killed otherwise if this weren't for . . . who knows, but he would have died otherwise. Anyways, Ico gets to the queen and kills her with the sword used to get into the castle by the priests who were going to sacrifice him. The castle crumbles, and now for the part that I totally get to make up!
` The king in the scyscraper liked to keep stuff under his control. He wore a suit and a tie, but soldiers continued to wear the same outfit that you might remember Wanda wearing in SotC. He continued to be very carefull about everything. Many incredible weapons were built. He always used a magnum human sacrifices which he somehow enjoyed. He also had other techniques for stayin' alive. He actually died of old age a few decades after the evacuation from the valley of the Dormin. But magic was researched to leave him as a poltergeist to haunt his scyscraper. He could continue to influence his successors. He didn't care who it was, as long as that ruler kept the castle working, and that that ruler lived there, and it's one ruler at the top who has control but is not too visible.
` The ghost would take over the body or just give suggestions to any successor. Lots of really big scyscrapers were built up. About fifty years after Ico took place, some future rule had put in a building that dwarfed the castle. But the main scyscraper continued to expand vertically and horizontally as the king's ghost continued to want more stuff to be near him. Even though the empire expanded, more and more stuff was near the king in that scyscraper. Tons of arbitrary rules. Things weren't stockpiled and redistributed either. It added another great complication to peoples lives as to where to get all of the stuff that they didn't make. The government just taxed specific amounts, and it had agencies that worked to increase the amount of things that people couldn't make themselves. Eventually people made nothing for themselves and never had any time to conquer the king's ghost!!!
` However, there is the possibility of the Dormin coming back. When Emon destroyed the sword and the bridge, he didn't seal of the Dormin.
` Anyways, centuries after Ico takes place, everything is being covered over by scyscrapers except for the cursed land. Anyone with horns now gets sent over to the scyscraper castle for expirimentation for new ways of creating super soldiers or something like that. I'm ultimately setting this up for a forum RPG.
