(SPOILERS) - Concerned about Gorrik

[Pax.3548]

I'll get straight to the point with this post, It'll contain spoilers for sure so be sure if you want to read it if you haven't played the latest episode.

 

So, after the recent episode, at the end when we delivered the news about Blish's death to Gorrik and Taimi, I got some strange eerie feelings with Gorrik's reaction to the news, it may be nothing and just my imagination, but then again, I wonder if Gorrik, who created the golem Blish was in, was more disturbed than we could have imagined.

 

Since the first time when we meet them (Gorrik and Blish) I wondered what happened to Blish, how did he end up in a golem, we haven't heard about it so far, but then after this episode I started thinking that perhaps Blish has always been dead, and Gorrik couldn't let him go so he created a golem emulating somehow his personality, a true Artificial Intelligence with Blish's memories and personality, maybe using the remains of his dead brother to archieve this. I would be shocked if later in the story we learn that after Gorrik left, he went and created another Golem Blish, then comes back acting completely normal with his eccentric personality thinking the first golem never died in the mist.

 

Like I said, though, maybe its just me. What do you guys think?

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

Not unless Gorrik has had some sort of huge breakthrough in golemancy. I don't recall who, but someone reacted with surprise to Blish, asking if that was really a fully-sentient golem...by which I assume that creating a fake Blish-bot is not truly possible in current Asuran technology.

 

I worry more that we're going to face a branded Blish in an upcoming episode. Blish stayed behind saying he was safe because as a golem he couldn't be branded, but "I lied." (On the other hand, he's apparently been swallowed with the tracking device, and if Joko's not coming back, can Blish? One might argue that Blish is undigestable in his golem form, but then, Joko was a few centuries past the expiration date...)

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

That's an interesting theory and would be fairly disturbing storywriting. Now I kind of want this to happen rather than Gorrik going crusade-crazy trying to revive Blish under my theory that Blish isn't truly dead yet.

 

@"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" IIRC, it was Snaff's ghost who asked if Blish was a "fully-sentient golem".

 

And we got quite a few confirmations that golems, for some reason, don't get branded. From Big Snaff in PoF instance, to the DERVs and Bait-o-Tron in Jahai. So Blish wasn't lying about that part.

[Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324]

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" IIRC, it was Snaff's ghost who asked if Blish was a "fully-sentient golem".

 

Are you not mistaking Snaff with the Priory Researcher that we met in Vabbi?

 

Blish specifically said that he was an asuran scientist in a golem's "body".

 

 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Gorgaan Peaudesang.8324" said:

> > @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" IIRC, it was Snaff's ghost who asked if Blish was a "fully-sentient golem".

>

> Are you not mistaking Snaff with the Priory Researcher that we met in Vabbi?

>

> Blish specifically said that he was an asuran scientist in a golem's "body".

>

>

 

Yes, I was mistaken, having just gone through my screenshots for Legacy.

[Castigator.3470]

I think Blish was the real Blish put into a golem. As Oola said in Metrica Province, Necromancy and Golemancy are destined to collide. Oola was working on something, rather similar to Blish, in her words, a Golem that creates life from death, maybe as a receptible for ghosts?

I mean the Exalted and the Forged work on a similar theoretical model to infuse an object with the spirit of a person, but unlike an asuran golem, they cannot be turned on or off, which makes their existence less horror inducing than that of Blish, who is trapped in a dysfunctional body, once the off switch is pulled.

 

The other question we have yet to answer is what it takes to kill a golem in comparison to say, a forged, or exalted, becuase we know that one can kill forged pretty consistently, and the exalted do have a room for the masks of dead exalted.

I mean, going by the Aurene method of brute force, it is more than sufficient to destroy the body, so forged, exalted and golems all die if you melt their bodies down completely, Joko was a bit harder, as he had a spell that recovered his body, but dispelling that did the trick.

 

I say that since the Kralkatorrik sensor is still intact, pinging us the location of the elder dragon. If the sensor is still functional, there might be a small chance of Blish's body being functional enough to repair it. On the other hand, Blish himself may be somewhere in the Mists as an asuran ghost. Maybe he's better off in the asura afterlife than on a Tyria, that's getting progessively more unstable.

 

I mean, should Aurene fail, then Tyria's fate is basically sealed and we may need to evacuate the world's population into the Mists, before Tyria suffers a catastrophic breakdown.

[lakdav.3694]

Blish being shut down at the beginning of Long Live the Lich was a harrowing experience for him, and he was shut down like this for what... hours maybe? Now I don't know how much time is going to pass between Episode 4 and 5 (with Caithe's cliffhanger considered), but I have a pretty strong feeling that anything more than a week would be maddening. If at any point we recover the golem body and try to restart the higher functions... we might not get Blish back.

 

But as for Gorrik's last words in the episode finale, "But I saved him..."

I immedietly got the impression that he meant "save" as we save a document. Which is disturbing in its own way. "I'm just gonna reload his personality into a new golem. Mk II this time, maybe."

Gotta remember that Gorrik is not a master golemancer or even a necromancer (afaik) to just transfer his brother's soul and consciousness into a golem like it was nothing. If if was that simple, asuras would do it left and right. No, I think this will be a rude wake-up call for all the fan theories about possible ways to save Taimi via golem infusion. It shouldn't be that easy. When we know everything about Blish's story, then the real moral dilemma can be debated.

[Malediktus.9250]

> @"lakdav.3694" said:

> Blish being shut down at the beginning of Long Live the Lich was a harrowing experience for him, and he was shut down like this for what... hours maybe? Now I don't know how much time is going to pass between Episode 4 and 5 (with Caithe's cliffhanger considered), but I have a pretty strong feeling that anything more than a week would be maddening. If at any point we recover the golem body and try to restart the higher functions... we might not get Blish back.

>

 

I think it is poor story writing. If you power down a machine nothing happens in it anymore, so it cannot have any experiences while being shut down.

 

Also it should have been possible to do constant backups of Blish. That should be easy enough since he was an anorganic machine now (magnitudes easier than turning him into a golem in the first place). If Blish is so smart they should have just build thousands of golems with his neural network data and go for a technological singularity.

 

[lakdav.3694]

> @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> > @"lakdav.3694" said:

> > Blish being shut down at the beginning of Long Live the Lich was a harrowing experience for him, and he was shut down like this for what... hours maybe? Now I don't know how much time is going to pass between Episode 4 and 5 (with Caithe's cliffhanger considered), but I have a pretty strong feeling that anything more than a week would be maddening. If at any point we recover the golem body and try to restart the higher functions... we might not get Blish back.

> >

>

> I think it is poor story writing. If you power down a machine nothing happens in it anymore, so it cannot have any experiences while being shut down.

>

> Also it should have been possible to do constant backups of Blish. That should be easy enough since he was an anorganic machine now (magnitudes easier than turning him into a golem in the first place). If Blish is so smart they should have just build thousands of golems with his neural network data and go for a technological singularity.

>

 

These are true if "Blish" is indeed 100% machine, a fully sentient golem as it were, instead of being an asura scientist in a golem body. When you turn off a machine nothing happens to it (even though that is disregarding the widespread application of "sleep mode" semi-shutdowns), but what if there is more to the machine than the sum of its physical parts with an On switch? Blish's shutdown experience is likely inspired by sensory deprivation experiments, where scientists aimed to shut down all input a waking brain would receive. Now I don't know how magitech constructs work exactly, but if there is a small chance that a soul or sentience or some sort of mind essence/whatever can experience the Nothing that is going on in a shut-down machine, then it would likely go mad.

[draxynnic.3719]

It kind of depends on HOW anorganic Blish is. Is his asura brain still in there? Is his spirit still there, still able to experience time despite a lack of sensory perception?

 

Broadly speaking:

 

First, I think Gorrik's comment about saving Blish is more of a "saved him from death (by transferring his conscious into a golem)" than a "I have a backup of his personality".

 

Second... golems having a personality through fusing an asura's consciousness with the golem is nothing new. The initial personal story arc if you choose the College of Dynamics, for instance, is exactly this: someone gets fused into a golem, and at the end of the arc, you either unfuse them or choose to fuse their partner into another golem.

 

Now, in each of those cases, the organic body is still present for as long as we remain involved in their story, but the reason that the initial victim can't simply be unplugged is that her consciousness has already started mixing with the golem's programming. It's possible that there's a point at which someone's consciousness can be so fully ingrained into the golem that the organic body is no longer needed at all - and in an emergency life-or-death situation, this process can probably be accelerated. It's also possible, though, that Blish's brain was housed within the golem body somewhere (with a life support system set up so it can't be turned off without someone knowing what they're doing).

 

I think the more likely "going in a direction that some might find disturbing" turn is that Taimi seems to be showing a strong interest in the concept. I suspect she's considering it as a way to escape her likely terminal condition herself.

[Pax.3548]

Thank you all for your opinion, though the theory I posted would be interesting, disturbing as it sounds, it doesn't seem to correspond with anet's style, after giving it more thought. So I think Gorrik will just go away to deal with his brother's passing, or he's gonna try to find a way to rescue him.

[Pax.3548]

> @"Castigator.3470" said:

> I mean the Exalted and the Forged work on a similar theoretical model to infuse an object with the spirit of a person, but unlike an asuran golem, they cannot be turned on or off, which makes their existence less horror inducing than that of Blish, who is trapped in a dysfunctional body, once the off switch is pulled.

 

The exalted and the forged are essentially different from golems, both are constructs, but the first two are basically infused armor-gear, while golems are construct with a "computer" like mind, basically very primitive robots. One uses souls and magic to animate the construct, the other uses technology and magic. If I were to support my theory, I would say Gorrik used the inquest technology to scan his dead brother's brain in order to, somehow, create an artificial"blish brain", which to place inside a golem. The golem thinks and feels like the real Blish, but in essence, it is simply a golem with an artificial "cloned" brain.

 

I used very simple language here, forgive me if I can't explain my idea clearly.

[Castigator.3470]

I get the Idea, but I doubt there's a golem CPU strong enough to handle an asura's thought processes. And it may be easier to make a soul jar from bloodstone dust, like a small version of the real thing in Bloodstone Fen. Remember all the ghosts from 250 years ago? They were bound in a similar manner to Blish, which is to say they they assumed the first thing they met were the White Mantle priests, who sacrificed them.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

> @"Castigator.3470" said:

> I get the Idea, but I doubt there's a golem CPU strong enough to handle an asura's thought processes. And it may be easier to make a soul jar from bloodstone dust, like a small version of the real thing in Bloodstone Fen. Remember all the ghosts from 250 years ago? They were bound in a similar manner to Blish, which is to say they they assumed the first thing they met were the White Mantle priests, who sacrificed them.

 

Except that Blish isn't the first it was done to. The asura Dynamics PS has this exact situation going on where an asura's mind is imbedded into the golem. The dialogue during the story even says that the MIG is the same direction Inquest were going, but it's the first time such was done without killing the host. When the Inquest does it, they "accidentally" kill the host.

 

We also see a number of events where souls are used to power golems, and sometimes even adopt the soul's personality. Oola for example possesses the final golem in the event chain to investigate her old lab.

 

So we know full out that a golem can house and be controlled by a soul / asura's mind.

[Zaraki.5784]

Gorrik new villain!

"His mind was already borderline, the definitive death of his beloved brother made him fall into a state of complete evil-madness".

[draxynnic.3719]

> @"Pax.3548" said:

> > @"Castigator.3470" said:

> > I mean the Exalted and the Forged work on a similar theoretical model to infuse an object with the spirit of a person, but unlike an asuran golem, they cannot be turned on or off, which makes their existence less horror inducing than that of Blish, who is trapped in a dysfunctional body, once the off switch is pulled.

>

> The exalted and the forged are essentially different from golems, both are constructs, but the first two are basically infused armor-gear, while golems are construct with a "computer" like mind, basically very primitive robots. One uses souls and magic to animate the construct, the other uses technology and magic. If I were to support my theory, I would say Gorrik used the inquest technology to scan his dead brother's brain in order to, somehow, create an artificial"blish brain", which to place inside a golem. The golem thinks and feels like the real Blish, but in essence, it is simply a golem with an artificial "cloned" brain.

>

> I used very simple language here, forgive me if I can't explain my idea clearly.

 

Are they?

 

ArenaNet tends to downplay it to the point where I'm not sure if it's even canon any more, but there was information (before GW2 release, I think?) that indicated that most golems are in fact animated by nonsapient magical spirits, such as from elementals, with the golem's programming controlling what the golem does. The distinction between Inquest and regular asura is that the Inquest will do this to sapient spirits as well, while regular asura generally do not enslave sapient beings to power a golem (efforts to put an asura directly in control of a golem are usually intended to be temporary and voluntary in nature - as seen in the Dynamics arc (which goes wrong, but nevertheless) and Snaff's control relays in Edge of Destiny).

 

Even putting that aside...

 

There's no physical reason why a technological golem couldn't _also_ be a soul construct akin to an Exalted, Forged, or Shiro'ken. Unlike some settings, there's nothing to indicate any form of incompatibility between asura magitechnology and soul-based animation magic. The golem's circuitry might even enhance the final result, supporting the spirit by making control over the body easier by operating through the circuits, or even allowing automation of some actions.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

> @"Malediktus.9250" said:

> > @"lakdav.3694" said:

> > Blish being shut down at the beginning of Long Live the Lich was a harrowing experience for him, and he was shut down like this for what... hours maybe? Now I don't know how much time is going to pass between Episode 4 and 5 (with Caithe's cliffhanger considered), but I have a pretty strong feeling that anything more than a week would be maddening. If at any point we recover the golem body and try to restart the higher functions... we might not get Blish back.

> >

>

> I think it is poor story writing. If you power down a machine nothing happens in it anymore, so it cannot have any experiences while being shut down.

>

> Also it should have been possible to do constant backups of Blish. That should be easy enough since he was an anorganic machine now (magnitudes easier than turning him into a golem in the first place). If Blish is so smart they should have just build thousands of golems with his neural network data and go for a technological singularity.

>

 

What makes you think it'd be easier to make a sapient consciousness from scratch rather than transfer souls in a setting like this? It's confirmed that Inquest looked into putting people into golems and the reason regular Asurans don't do it is because of how unethical it is. IIRC golems themselves involve binding souls of elementals into them to begin with. Remember it's magi-tech not sci fi.