This thread is for the players to throw out all their guesses and theories, no matter how wild, about Origin's lore, mythos, and, well, it's origin xD Staff don't have to confirm or deny anything here, obviously.

My current theories:
Origin Cave is a giant geode floating in space - This game takes place in an airtight asteroid floating in the void, large enough to sustain a complete ecosystem with it's basis in bioluminescence-powered photosynthesis.
Origin Cave was once the last bastion of humanity - This world was created by humans in the last days of Earth, and launched with the intent of preserving humanity and what animals were left (hence the city in Orion). Anyone who reads ElfQuest will know what I mean. But something happened, and the humans died or or left.
'Magic' is actually an energy source that we wouldn't know about in this day and age - The humans cloned animals using this energy, but they were sterile. This necessitated the creation of the Gembound's magic-fueled reproduction method.

Origin Cave - I like to think that Origin Cave isn't all there is to our world. There's a whole planet's surface to explore, but we're all too deep underground to find it yet. Someday, a hidden tunnel will be revealed and all of our characters will get to explore daylight.

Origin Cave is a Battery - I feel like, outside Origin Cave, the world doesn't play by the same rules. Any creature leaving the cave will be relying only on their own magical source, and thus, hard mode is unlocked.

Origin Cave is an Ark - I like the idea that Origin Cave's whole existence is a response to an apocolyptic event that destroyed all other natural life, and thus, our characters were cloned into existence after a certain amount of time had passed, based on terran (earth) animals programmed into a hidden database.

More as people suggest other things.

OOH OOH just came up with another one:

Origin Cave is not a physical place, but rather something akin to Purgatory or Limbo - The site blurb in Animus Top 50 mentions "wistful afterthought of lives unlived". All our characters were animals (or people!) who were miscarried or stillborn. Their souls emerge here, in chrysali. Golems, in turn, were embryos who died without even making it to the fetus stage, and therefore lack bodies/minds.

NO YOU'RE ALL WRONG

WE'RE ALL PLAYING HUMANS TRAPPED IN BABY ANIMAL BODIES WHOSE MEMORIES ARE LOST BECAUSE HUMANITY MADE ORIGIN CAVE LIKE AN ARK AND I AM RIGHT DON'T SAY I'M NOT I AM OKAY

I know your secrets Madi.
I know.

edit because serious now;

Origin Cave was created to support life after death. An apocolyptic event resulted in humanity being on its last legs and fading fast. The remaining population fled the wrath of the surface and in their underground haven, created a plan for the future. They would download their information into crystals, their genetic personalities and ability to process at a human level. Self-awareness. They downloaded this information into a massive database and set a timer. Some hundred years after their own extinction, this timer would go off, and all of the 'eggs' would begin the process encoded in them. Creating clones of species that was once humanity's whole world... where their own world had ended.

Origin Caves is just a Dream ~ Nothing seems realistic in this place other than simply earthly animals roaming caves. Is the caverns just distant fantasy? A memory warped by imagination? Is it just the dreams of one covering the expanse of a whole world?

All right, bear with me here, but my theory is that Origin Cave was actually created by a handful of humans as a form of entertainment. A game, if you will. They are 'born' into these animals and live out their lives to experience another point of view and to have some adventure--"playing a role," if you know what I mean...

Couldn't resist, sorry xD

In all seriousness I do agree that it seems something post-apocalyptic, somehow. Like a last ark with specific programming that's gone off. The ruins though seem to indicate that humans DID live here. Armor, in a cave? Maybe the last humans had taken refuge here, far from the surface--or one group, anyway--eventually died off, but a few magical shards from their golems or what have you went astray. The magic used what it knew, the animals it'd encountered, to create new "golems"--except these ones were living, based on living blueprints, with minds of their own, though modelled after human intelligence.

Or, same story up until the golems--humans designed the magic/gems to create new life, and it's kind of running rampant now that no civilization is around to regulate it.

It's a fascinating puzzle, anyway :D

This isn't about the cave, but more about DeerDad.

He ether was the real 1st generation, but was born alone in these caves OR we aren't as alone as we think we are. O-O

Maybe the golems and monster aliens ARE the humans!?

There was a giant genocide/war of some sort, which is why there are only a handful of adult Gembound - The Yeti is a nonsentient gembound magically-mutated to be a warbeast. The Beast in Tunnel J is one of the last surviving mutant soldiers, and his deceased friend was a fellow soldier. All the bones/metal in Tunnel J? That was the last battleground.

Another region will be opened up - Note that we have six boards in the South-West, and only five in the South-East. This board will be opened in response to an event/quest, and will either be ruins of some sort, a new wilderness, orrrr an exit out of the Cave.

My thought is that the cave isn't all there is either, but not only that, but there is something IN the cave that is like the essence of all the magic. Like if the gembounds were to leave the cave, they would only have so much magic and maybe run out. Even if they had a small amount of magic, they would be subject to weather and actually having to eat all the time once they were out of the cave's protection. Not only that, but some characters have hearts or whatever that are made of their gems. If they were to run out of magic, they would definitely die.

I think the blurb is like when someone has thought, "I wish I was a (animal name)..." or "I wish I did (this thing)..." before death, the cave giving those wishes life through magic in the stones.

If you guys are trash read something like Homestuck, then it's plausible that the tunnels are a conglomeration of different memories or scenes just kinda connected through tunnels like the tunnels of one's mind. Like the scrapyard place may be a memory of a war place or it may actually be a place where something like that happened in the past.

I think maybe like a self generating game (ie minecraft), maybe the magic source (we'll call it Aki) was part of a dying world and so it (or of course, an outside source) collected "some of each" types of places (icelands, grassylands etc) and formed them in a systematic way to support some life in echo of the old world (dead spirits? unborn spirits? idk)


OH or like like uhhh Saint's Row, I think also Fallout, what if people (children, or elderly, or unborn, or terminally ill) are connected to a system that allows them to be "reborn" in the cave which is some technology and the beasts are viruses or corrupt files? Or maybe the system actually redirects their souls to the cave? Idk.