???? SPOILER WARNING: Read at your own risk! These preview blogs WILL SPOIL some of the surprises in the expansion. ????
Today’s preview blog talks about the less-obvious and more-insidious threats you’ll face in Anomaly. Terror comes in all shapes and sizes. Also, check out our previous blog posts below:- Anomaly expansion and update 1.5 announced!
- Anomaly preview #1: Fleshbeasts, fleshmass heart, pit gate and dreadmeld
- Anomaly preview #2: Containment facilities, creatures, and release date
- Anomaly preview #3: Cultists, hate chanters and rituals
- [HERE] Anomaly preview #4: Cubes, spheres, obelisks, soundtrack and languages
THE CUBE
Obviously, the golden cube is no threat. It’s no more than a beautiful gift sent by a good friend. This hand-sized cube shines like gold, but is impossible to scratch. As everyone knows, cubes make perfect companions.
It’s always invitingly warm to the touch, like a trusted pet or a hug from a good friend. If you look closely, you’ll see more than gold in the delightful way light plays across its surface. If you love the cube like we do, why not make a sculpture of the cube?
Don’t listen to the others who say that we’re unhealthily captivated by the cube. Ignore those who claim that our curiosity progressed to fascination and into obsession. That we’re psychically compelled to interact with it, and we feel sick if we can’t. They’re just jealous of our perfect, wonderful cube.
THE NOCIOSPHERE
The nociosphere is very much not as lovable as the cube. Even being near it hurts. It’s made of dark metal, covered with curved and jagged grooves, and emanates sensations of pain. More worryingly, when it appears, the sphere appears to be increasing in activity. It’s not clear what will happen when this peaks but, if you capture it, you can decrease its activity by suppressing it. Then, you can study it.
If you study the nociosphere, you can learn that it has a single purpose - to inflict pain. If you can keep it suppressed, you will learn how to intentionally activate it, turning it into a weapon to use against your foes.
When activated, the nociosphere will teleport to a remote location of your choice and unleash a barrage of pain on anyone nearby. The nociosphere will continue to hunt down living creatures until it is destroyed, or it chooses to depart. This leaves you free to love the cube.
THE OBELISKS
We’ve gone from squares to circles and now to triangles. There are three varieties of obelisk, each with a different horrific effect. They all arrive from space, and they all radiate the same putrid psychic energy, which gradually intensifies as it approaches some dangerous limit. You can send colonists to suppress an obelisk to prevent it from activating. You can also mark it for study to try to learn its purpose and perhaps make use of it. Or, you can attempt to destroy it - but doing so may unleash dangerous phenomena.
Once you’ve completed your research, your colonists will discover that it is a fragment of a much larger archotech structure that can act on organic matter at a distance. You may discover its function sooner than that, though - sometimes the obelisk self-activates, and sometimes merely suppressing or studying it is enough to unleash its power.
Love the cube.
The warped obelisk can turn living organisms including animals and people and trees into bloody flesh monsters. A colonist can be mutated in several different ways, from growing a bone-bladed tentacle to twisting their internal organs into something thoroughly alien.
Less monstrous but just as terrifying is the twisted obelisk. This doesn’t change an organism. Instead, its crackling energy seems to pull on nearby living things, eventually snapping them away to “somewhere else”. If a colonist is taken, you’ll have to hope they can find their way out of the endless rooms and hallways.
The final monolith-wannabe is the corrupted obelisk. This uses its inhumanly complex power to duplicate intelligent creatures, theoretically without limit. Your colonists’ twins are not always hostile, but the duplication process is imperfect and any twins will need the finest medical care to survive.
THE ENDGAME
The monolith is the source of everything. The monolith is the conduit. Its power must be defeated. It threatens to twist and destroy everything we know.
But the only way out is through. You must grow the monolith’s power, widening the conduit that leads into the void, until you can finally crack it open and face the world-twisting hell it unleashes. Only then will you be able to step through into a place of nightmares, touch the machine god, and choose your fate.
