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Unwritten Lores
By Sputnik
Can the conflicting narratives of Subnautica 1 and Below Zero really be fitted together? Let's pull out the sledgehammer and find out!
   
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Sputnik
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Category: Characters, Secrets, Story or Lore
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
10 Nov, 2022 @ 5:02pm
20 Jun, 2023 @ 12:01am
749 Unique Visitors
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Guide Index
Overview
Spoiler's Ahoy! 
Caveats 
Apparent story conflicts between the two games 
Explanation 1 - Kharaa is not so very cold resistant 
Explanation 2: Mongolians have some inherited Kharaa resistance 
Explanation 3: Some Degassi Crew were present in SN1, but no longer "Human" 
Contributors: 
Putative Game Universe 
Comments
Spoiler's Ahoy!
Key story elements of both games are discussed in detail. So best play out both games before reading any of this.
Caveats
Three explanations are offered below for your amusement. They're all slightly bent in different directions, so tend to contradict to one-another. Pick one you like and ditch the rest, or why not try your own hand at a shaggy dog story!

Meanwhile, ff you spot the plot-holes in any theories add them to the comments below.
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Apparent story conflicts between the two games
  • Riley is supposed to be there solo as the 'lone survivor' in the first Subnautica (SN). Indeed, his PDA's long distance scan shows "No human life form can be detected.." Yet in Below Zero (BZ) we meet Marguerit Maida from the Degassi wreck. If Alterra's product line is even half as good as advertised how can she have escaped detection?
  • The events of the BZ occur at least 10 years after Maida's arrival. If the Kharaa disease is really so deadly, how is she still alive & ass-kicking after all this time?
  • In SN Maida was always a righteous bodyguard. But by BZ she's transformed into a terrorist.
    What gives with all that?














Wanted: For acts of Narrative Sabotage
Explanation 1 - Kharaa is not so very cold resistant
  1. Bart Torgal was a biology wunderkind, and we know he deduced the danger of Kharaa and had Maida hunting down specimens for him.
  2. While he couldn't cure it without the Sea Emperor's help, he wasn't about to just throw up his hands. Not with the amazonian Maida alongside telling him just to 'harden up Princess'. Certainly he hoped maybe they could at least slow-up the disease's progression.
  3. The Degassi crew moved camp a lot. First they settled on a topical island, then underwater amongst the jellyshrooms, then deeper still, then eventually way into the ice zone. That's pitching camp across a wide variety of temperature zones. By the time of BZ Bart may have figured out that Kharaa was not well cold-adapted.
  4. Maida's move to BZ's ice zone had already occurred by the time Riley crashed on the planet. There at least she could survive in relatively good health for a decade. Conveniently this was also far beyond the range of Riley's prying PDA scanner!
  5. You never got to find Bart Torgal in BZ, but he always did take his research way too far. Hopefully in Subnautica 3 you get to chip him out of a big-ass ice block with the aid of several Precursor robots you've hacked.









Hmm...
But if the Precursors were so smart, why didn't they just flee into the cold too?
  • Precursors brought khaara to the planet, but only to research a cure. I'd say they'd set up in tropical volcanic crater precisely because it WAS most virulent there.
  • When they had their lab breach they stayed on heroically to try and contain the disease, even if it 'killed' them (knowing of course they might be revived / downloaded later, as was the case for AL-AN during BZ).
  • Presumably the leviathan remains found in the nearby Lost River were infected escapees they managed to destroy before kharraking it themselves
Explanation 2: Mongolians have some inherited Kharaa resistance
  1. We know from SN's relics the Precursors had contact with medieval Mongolia on Earth.
  2. Evidence points to this being a gene-prospecting mission in the service of a cure for Kharaa: Several artefacts you find displayed in the PCF are gear well suited to their deployment amongst hostile tribals on a dangerous bio-hazard planet (Home Sweet Home)
  3. Khaara on Earth? Just finding a related disease would be useful. My guess this was the Black Death - a disease the Mongols had good resistance to it back then (and even loved to use it as bio-weapon by launching its victims over enemy walls!)
  4. So for Maida and the Torgals, all descendant Mongolians, had some resistance at least to Khaara - experiencing the disease like a bad case of flu:: Dangerous for sure, but not necessarily fatal.

Hmm...
Ok, but what's with Maida's career-move from bodyguard to terrorist?
  • Riley's success on 4546B puts an uber-bio-weapon in Alterra's amoral hands - along with a monopoly on its only cure. By the time of Below Zero they have very likely negotiated a galaxy-wide 'corporate take-over' (= blackmailed the Galaxy into accepting their hegemony)
  • Now only a few Kharaa-resistant rebels like Maida exist - fighting a guerrilla independence war though acts of sabotage. Hopefully in Subnautica 3 she'll let you wear her outfit!
Explanation 3: Some Degassi Crew were present in SN1, but no longer "Human"
  1. Bart was a biology wunderkind alright - I reckon he even had gene-splicing skills!
  2. He had Maida collecting specimens. No doubt concluding that surviving local fauna must have some innate resistance to Kharaa, if not the full immunity shared with the Sea Emperor
  3. In my world he spliced some of that into the genomes of himself and Maida (Paul was doubtless otherwise preoccupied - bellyaching over some complaint or other)
  4. After Riley's arrival, it is possible his long range PDA scan did in fact detect them: But not as creatures with unambiguous human DNA patterns, so it categorised them as 'Fauna' and misinformed he was the sole survivor.
  5. Equipped now with Kharaa resistant genes Maida lived out the intervening 10 years into BZ.
  6. By Subnautica 3 you notice now she has small gill-slits in her neck, but somehow the old girl seems even more sexy to you, and you realise you have been far from home for WAY too long now. Later you come across some enigmatic half-fish-man-beastie - going by the unlikely handle of 'Bart'


















    "Your ink sack is infected.
    Dr. Torgal will remove it for you"

Hmm...
Wasn't the Sea Emperor the only source of immunity?
  • Other organisms on 4546B must have some resistance at least. Otherwise the Aurora would have just crashed into a giant bowl of Bouillabaisse (a tasty dead-fish soup).
  • Not immunity sure, but resistance - lets' face it the place was looking pretty lush in SN, so there must been plenty of useful genes about.
Contributors:
  1. @dragonbornzyra - Plot-hole spotting (I'm sure he missed some though)
  2. @ ]MS-06S ZAKU II (ditto)
  3. @Citrakayah (ditto)

16 Comments
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Sputnik  [author] 29 Jul, 2023 @ 9:24pm 
Hi DB!
dragonbornzyra 29 Jul, 2023 @ 8:36pm 
Reapers and other leviathans are intended to be infectable by Kharaa, but weren't given infected models for aesthetic reasons (they didn't look good stretched out over the larger creature models)
dragonbornzyra 29 Jul, 2023 @ 8:35pm 
What a splendiferous contribution you've made. This is such a well summarized piece. Lovely.
Sputnik  [author] 11 Feb, 2023 @ 9:32pm 
Fair point
MS-06S ZAKU II 4 Feb, 2023 @ 2:10pm 
About the resistance of native life, there was a series of tubes going into the sea emperor area which cycled peepers in and out to distribute the enzyme into the biosphere. This is what kept life from all dying to the khaara, but wasn't enough to cure it.
Sputnik  [author] 2 Feb, 2023 @ 2:28pm 
Roger that. Thx.
Citrakayah 2 Feb, 2023 @ 9:20am 
"Bacterial Mechanisms: Attaches to healthy living cells and mutates the basic genetic structure.

Symptoms: Stage 1: None. Stage 2: Gradual immune system failure. Stage 3: Unpredictable alterations to biological structure. Stage 4: Complete shutdown of executive function."

That's from one of the data downloads.
Sputnik  [author] 1 Feb, 2023 @ 6:34am 
@Citrakayah. Yeah, I may have said somewhere my theories were half-baked!

What's this about Khaara altering your DNA? Not disputing that - it may be a bit of in-game lore I've overlooked.
Citrakayah 31 Jan, 2023 @ 6:19am 
They're often very deadly, but any that can survive for long outside a host can survive in much colder environments than a human body. Khaara is transmitted in the water and found in very cold environments in the game; it's not that cold sensitive.

I find it more likely that she got a particularly massive dose of the enzyme. Alternatively, while Khaara bears no similarity to the Black Death (the Black Death didn't change your DNA), it's still possible that she did have resistance for some reason.
Sputnik  [author] 29 Jan, 2023 @ 6:26pm 
What's your view on tropical diseases?