I just assumed it was something shiny that was used for making the ring.....although it would be pretty hilarious if this is what was screwing up the DFA. Torg did pick it up in the prehistoric age, after all.

Edit: I wonder if that means cupidine would get succesfully transported back to sluggy prime. She didn't have the ring on her. Ha!

I wonder if they really would have problems with any other Cupidine-level anima collectors. After all, it is perfectly possible that she is the last- ANYWHERE- because there is a kind of Highlander style "In the end there can be only one" nature to this.

Didn't Torg use some of that golden vine to make the ring for Zoe? That and a gemstone from the medieval period?

Spec: the robots use golden vine wiring, and it turns out to be a way to channel the ambient psionic energy in useful ways, so Riff ends up using it to properly calibrate the DFA and send them home.

Not really a mega level sort of speculation, but Riff isn't being too logical in his assumption that not login into the animesh (my name for their network VR things ) will prevent a cupidine. It seems that there is already a lack of security preventing remote access to local networks, and that any "cupidines" would be able to log in to find if there is any medical unit active.

Hell, I'd suspect that possibility of being their principle way of finding victims, because any post-apocalypse society that is trying to evade "cupidines", which exists if "cupidines" are still searching for prey to hunt, would be trying to stay away from the animesh and would likely only ever show up if they are injured and brought in for diagnosis and treatment by the bots.

If anything, if I were Riff, I would be trying to find out everything, like how "cupidine" was able to find them in the system. Presumably she couldn't use her psychic powers, so it had to be purely technical. Then riff could attempt to secure them with a firewall or some sort of closed update loop to hide their presence.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be in character for Riff right now, because I'm sure he feels pretty responsible for what happened, since he likely blames himself for not knowing better.

edit: Hey, this sort of does end up leading to a megaspeculation! Zoe or someone else will eventually log in to check up on Torg's treatment and instead find that a small chat of "cupidines" have crowded around in animesh space puzzled why such an obvious prey could couldn't have been consumed by cupidine and whether it might imply that Torg is being used as a trap.

edit2: Ok, I'll take a bit out of the proverbial red heranima now. Cupidine never had mixed bedeviled-blue anima, and in the panel that she seems to have them in, it's just because it seems like it from far away. The post-apocalyptic survivors aren't people who are bedeviled, like in my previous speculation, they are people who splice bedeviled and normal animas together. It is a literal survival adaptation. To survive, everyone will have to splice themselves with bedeviled animas.

Torg kept part of a vine and used it later as part of the engagement ring. That's probably why it was 'highlighted'. I don't think there is anything more to it...

Ohhh. I wonder if that ring will end up saving the day somehow....? Like maybe it can be used as a psionic conduit?

I haven't been keeping up with this thread, but I just wanted to say, I bet Cupidine said Hi to a certain Destroyer Demon(tm) on her way to the future of anima world....

Twist: Cupidine is fluxed to where Riff has been trying to port to all this time because she wasn't carrying the ligare, a manifestation from the net, the yellow binding, of timeless space within this dimension, represented by the blue moon, that the crew has been carrying with them all this time that pulls them back into the dimension but into a different time period. She appears on Earth, keeping her powerful telekinetic powers and her sociopathic demeanor, but no longer able to simply rip anima off of people. Since she spied on Riff as he was repairing the dimensional flux agitator, her high intellect quickly begins to sort out what has happened, and she begins to see an opportunity, a dimension full of prey.

It's pretty incredible that it's been over a year and there are still so many open questions about the fundamental workings of this dimension


My running assumption is that her mask was her interface. Like an AR sort of thing, which is why she was present in the system but not visible - it was running in the background as she was using that data to narrow in on them in the real world, and only jumped in when Frog called her out. Although I guess this won't be important info unless they encounter more of her.



Yes! I've been thinking about this for a while, and assuming (again, a running assumption) that every dimension uses the same high-level mythology (the eh...salt and pepper shakers), they've gotta be closing in on the end of this Spark pretty soon. If Cupidine got dumped into the next Spark, she's gonna be quite disappointed by the lack of anima. On the other hand, if she gets really lucky and gets dumped at the very end of the Anima Spark, there's a chance she'll get picked up as a god. Which...well, we know from the DoP that gods aren't always a good thing.

That gold vine is an oddity. Pete put so much emphasis on it. But nothing really came up as to why this was such a "thing" he pointed out.

The last time we had the vine mentioned was the engagement ring Torg made for Zoe. Who knows, maybe that's the only reason why the vine existed.

Spec 1: Riff will chance the DFA.
Spec 2: An anima superhero will swoop in to save them.

Speculation: The two Anima-hunters will be somewhat distracted for a time by trying to kill each other. (Maybe two, three minutes?)

Unrelated speculation: The animas are in some way caused by the Blue Moon. If the Blue Moon goes, so do the animas (and all that goes with them)

If both of the above are true, then (follow-up spec): Riff will solve the Cupidine Problem by fluxing away the Blue Moon. This will mean that everyone and everything psionically flying will crash to the ground. Riff will be able to get home, leaving the shattered remains of the Psionic World behind. Said shattered remains, now lacking in their animas, will be forced to work together to survive. Fortunately, there's enough people left to maintain a population, especially with the robots still around. Civilisation will eventually (with time) recover, and even eventually thrive.

Then Cupidine will reappear, collapse to the ground without her Anima Cloud... and then a few minutes later the Blue Moon will reappear and Cupidine's anima cloud will reappear with it.

That will not be a good day for the future of Psionic World.

I personally suspect a shower will play a role in stopping at least one of the cupidine type figures.

Slight variation on your Spec 2: one or both of the approaching anima clouds is said superhero.

Alternative spec: Zoe grabs Chaz to defend Torg.

Speculations: I think the Riff kicking the DFA damaged it, so they won't have an easy way out of this one. I think there are more "cupidines" that may have been alerted, but they are holding off on the possibility it's a trap.

However, the moon comment .. the moon might be a treasure trove of power for the "cupidines" ... following that train of thought, what if they wanted to research how to get there? They might need to set up their own post-apocalyptic bubble of a society as a means to an end in, say, a flying city full of survivors to act as researchers ...

I think this is one of the dimensions where timeless space has dissipated.or been irrevocably damage somehow. Maybe claiming that the "animesh" they access through the neural interface is a recreation of fractions of timeless space is a stretch, but "blue" and "yellow" were also significant in timeless space.

Hmm, I'm guessing bedevils are in line with The Bug. (Just WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY down the totem pole.)

Cupidines just want Anima, they don't care about the color of it, they just want it.

Once they suck up a red anima though, bad things start to happen.