Xenosaga

 

Okay, just like I did after we watched Neon Genesis Evangelion, I'm going to try to look up and summarize the lore of Xenosaga.

 

In the following, I'll put contextual information from real life in brackets [ ], and bold, and the rest will be in-game narrative.

 

[In 1930, the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics, who made many important discoveries, including the concept of "spin" and the Pauli Exclusion Principle, had a personal crisis and sank into deep depression. He sought therapy in 1932, and it just so happened that his analyst was none other than the famous psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. The therapy was successful, Pauli felt much better, and the two men hit it off. Not only did they respect each other, but they started bouncing ideas off of each other, mostly through letters, and eventually developed a whole new theory of the universe together, which was eventually published as a book, "Atom and Archetype". Although both men are deeply respected in their fields, this book is generally dismissed as fringe ideas at best by both physicists and psychoanalysts. 

 

In this book, Jung and Pauli together present their concept of the "Unus Mundus" - literally "one world". According to this theory, we ordinarily look at objects in the world as being separate from us, but there is some kind of primordial world, the Unus Mundus, in which subject and object are not separate, but rather, profoundly one.  

 

This ties in, of course, to Jung's concept of the collective unconscious, but now as a kind of proto-physical explanation for all matter, and also the perennial concept of the Anima Mundi - the soul of the world. Anima is also an important concept for Jung: in his system, all men have an inner, repressed "anima" (more or less, feminine spirit, or consciousness) and all women have an inner "animus" (male spirit, or consciousness). It also ties in to Jung's deep interest in gnosticism and alchemy. In fact, the phrase "Unus Mundus" was not Jung's invention - it was coined by the 16th century philosopher Gerhard Dorn, who was interpreting the work of his famous alchemist teacher, Paracelsus.] 

THE UNIVERSE OF XENOSAGA

 

Let's talk about this universe, the universe of Xenosaga specifically. We hear of two "domains": the Upper Domain, and the Lower Domain. This Lower Domain is, in turn, divided into two parts: the Imaginary Number Domain (also known as Imaginary Space), and the Real Number Domain (also known as Real Space). This lower part of the Lower Domain is what we know as the physical, material universe: the universe of stars, planets, etc., also known as the "dimensional universe".  But every entity in Real Space also has at least some small extension into Imaginary Space. When a person dies (usually), they cease to exist in Real Space, but they continue to exist in Imaginary Space. But their individual existence is unstable in Imaginary Space and they typically spread out and merge into unity with all other beings in Imaginary Space. But there are exceptions to this, as we will see.

 

Beyond this, it's ambiguous whether the mysterious "Upper Domain" is a part of this universe, or whether the Upper Domain is outside of the universe - it seems to have pre-existed the universe. 

 

In any case, in the Real Space of the Lower Domain, there is a mysterious object known as the Zohar, which has existed from the creation of the universe, and which serves as a connection to the Upper Domain.

U-DO, THE ZOHAR, AND THE PEOPLE OF ZOHAR

 

Out in this Upper Domain is U-Do. Clearly the term "U-Do" evokes "Upper Domain," but canonically it stands for "Unus Mundus Drive Operation".  Sometimes U-Do is referred to as the "control system" of the Zohar.  U-Do is a wave being, composed of nothing but waves.  Sometimes people refer to U-Do as "God".

 

Despite U-Do's vast power, for some reason, U-Do does not interact directly with Real Space (the universe as we know it). Instead, U-Do has two forms of contact with our world: first, the "Eyes of God," namely Abel's Ark and Abel himself. (Abel's Ark is Abel's extension in Imaginary Space, and Abel is the Ark's extension in Real Space.)  These are purely "inputs" so to speak - through them, U-Do observes the universe, but does not actually change the course of events, or at least not in any way that we can tell.  Also, for... thousands? billions? of years, Abel and his Ark are "asleep".

 

The second form of contact between U-Do and the visible world is that there are certain people throughout history who seem to have a mental connection to U-Do. This sometimes (though not always) happens as a result of contact with the Zohar, which absorbs the waves of U-Do, but also seems to be a somewhat genetic condition that can be passed down through families.  People with this condition are called "People of Zohar". 

 

However, contact with U-Do typically results in what humans somewhat euphemistically call "acute neurosis," accompanied by dizziness, fainting spells, prolonged unconsciousness, coma, and finally, almost always, death. Along the way, People of Zohar often undergo severe emotional distress - feelings of intense alienation, isolation, anxiety, and depression. Typically, they feel that they are alone in the universe. They feel detachment from the people around them, a profound loss of community, a sense that no one cares about them or will help them, alienation from oneself and a feeling not knowing who one is, and ultimately, at least in some cases, hostility and aggression towards other people, sometimes of an extreme form, before dying.

 

Why does this happen? There is speculation that U-Do tells the People of Zohar some kind of information that causes them to be this way - perhaps that U-Do reveals to them the future of the universe, and this is somehow emotionally devastating - though we never actually see that in the series.

 

Actually, what little we do witness of U-Do presents a different picture of him: that he is just as confused about his own nature as we are, and that likewise he does not understand humanity either, but is very curious about us.  He implies that it's not his doing, but humanity itself that causes itself to be alienated and self-destructive - and he desperately wants to understand why.  (I'm using the pronoun "he" for convenience, but as a wave being, U-Do has no gender.) 

 

[In real life, the Zohar is a book, the Sefer ha-Zohar, usually translated as "book of splendor" (Zohar literally means something like "shimmering," "gleaming," or "sparkling" - the kind of light that might shine off of a jewel).  Considered a foundational work of the Jewish mystical tradition known as Kabbalah, it's a vast book, often published in 12 volumes, or something like 8000 pages.  For centuries, it played an important part of Jewish theology and even some liturgy - and even today, some Orthodox groups, such as Chabad, continue to revere it, and to believe that it was written by the (real, historical) Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the 2nd century CE and "hidden in a cave for a thousand years".  But in the 18th and 19th century, some people in the Jewish Enlightenment began to question its authenticity, and in the 20th century, most mainstream scholars, including the famous scholar Gershom Scholem, concluded that it had been written in the 13th century, possibly by the famous forger Moses de Leon, or perhaps compiled from several different sources.  (Some true believers even adopt a compromise position - that yes, Moses de Leon wrote it, but he received it telepathically from a genuinely ancient spiritual source.)

 

The Zohar is notoriously difficult to translate or understand.  Some passages are so confusing that skeptics simply dismiss them as meaningless gibberish, an imitation of Aramaic (the language of Jesus) written by someone who did not speak Aramaic.  But others are convinced that every passage in the Zohar is meaningful - indeed, some go so far as to say that a person who truly understood the Zohar would achieve total communion with the mind of God.

 

As you can imagine of a book of this length, it covers a wide range of topics.  One of the most famous passages is the "Book of Concealment," a brief, mysterious section, only 6 pages long, very difficult to understand, which seems to have something to do with the creation of the universe, followed by several lengthy passages of various rabbis attempting to interpret the 6-page passage.  As they do, they become more and more ecstatic in their conception of God, until 3 of the rabbis die.]

 

THE GNOSIS

Related to the mysterious "acute neurosis" of the "People of Zohar" is the Gnosis phenomenon.  As already discussed, when a person dies, they lose their anchor in the material world (Real Space) and become purely Imaginary.  But as an Imaginary being, one is exposed to all of Imaginary Space, including all of its negative aspects, and usually becomes diffuse, eventually dissolving into the Collective Unconscious.  But sometimes, in this process, the soul of a person can become afraid, and reject the Collective Unconscious which is trying to absorb them.  This will accelerate and intensify into absolute terror [shades of Evangelion and the AT field?] at which point the person becomes a "consciousness of rejection", utterly alienated from the rest of consciousness and even from itself - in other words, it becomes a Gnosis.  In Real Space, Gnosis may seem to travel in groups and even to be organized into fleets (indeed, they are collectively known as the Pilgrimage Fleet) but from their perspective, as Imaginary beings, they are unaware of each others' existence.  They become brutish, hostile, destructive beings, bizarre monsters, entirely alone in the universe. 

 

There are certain areas known as Klein Points, where Imaginary Space comes in contact with Real Space.  Gnosis are able to enter our world through these points, and we can interact with them there. [The concept of a "Klein Point" may reference the strange geometrical forms described by the mathematician Felix Klein, such as the famous Klein Bottle which has no inside or outside, and certain kinds of Klein Surfaces and other bizarre, seemingly unimaginable shapes that are possible in curved space-time.]

 

THE EARLY UNIVERSE

 

In addition to U-Do and the Zohar there seem to have been other entities present at the creation of this universe.  One of them is a being known by many names, but we know him best as Wilhelm, or Cardinal Wilhelm Heinlein.  His true role is the Guardian of the Lower Domain.  Apparently, in many universes, the Lower Domain is destroyed, and Wilhelm's purpose is to maintain the Lower Domain, by any means necessary.  The Guardian has a device known as the Compass of Order, with which he can monitor the progress of all consciousness throughout the universe.  What Wilhelm was like, what he thought and believed at the time of the beginning of the universe is unknown to us, but by the end of the three games, Wilhelm is convinced that the dimensional universe is doomed to destruction, and that the only way to save the Lower Domain to cause Eternal Recurrence - the universe will be "reset" back to its initial conditions, and will play itself out again, exactly as it did before.  Indeed, Wilhelm seems to be convinced that this has occurred before, perhaps infinitely many times, and each time his own memories are reset so that he does not remember the previous version of the universe.  Notice that Wilhelm is not purely evil - his goal is to save the world, literally, and he has done so many times, even within the history of this particular universe, as we will see.  He is simply dedicated to maintaining the dimensional universe, and is ruthlessly devoted to this goal, no matter the cost.

 

[I suspect that the name "Wilhelm" is a reference to Goethe's novel "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship" - but it was also Friedrich Nietzsche's middle name, and of course it evokes the concept of "Will," which is important in many ways in this story and in the philosophies that it references, such as Schopenhauer's "The World as Will and Representation".  The name "Heinlein" is almost certainly a reference to Robert Heinlein, science fiction author of "Stranger in a Strange Land," among other books.  Eternal recurrence is another reference to Nietzsche - again, this is a big, complex topic, and I don't feel like explaining it here.]

 

If the consciousnesses of people are becoming Gnosis, this means that the division between Real Space and Imaginary Space is breaking down.  If too many people become Gnosis, if the number goes beyond a certain threshold, the division will collapse entirely and the resulting confusion might be enough to actually damage or destroy the Upper Domain.  So to prevent this from happening, whoever created the universe (be it U-Do or someone else) also included a "failsafe."  The real name of this "failsafe" is Yeshua - but we know him best as Chaos.  Yeshua's role, as a store of anima, is to destroy the dimensional universe if it is becoming so unbalanced as to threaten the existence of the Upper Domain.  But Yeshua will do anything to avoid this most drastic final solution.  Yeshua and Wilhelm should not necessarily be concieved of as antagonists, exactly (though apparently they are sometimes) - they are perpetually in a dance of paradoxical struggle, but their roles are complementary, and could concievably even be cooperative, yet usually at a distance from one another.  For most of the history of the universe, Wilhelm is more active, and Yeshua is more passive.  But even Wilhelm is up to whatever he's up to mostly in the shadows.  He doesn't take on a more visible, obvious role until the very end.

 

[The name "Yeshua" is an attempt to reconstruct the true name of Jesus, in his own language, i.e. Aramaic.  "Yeshua" would be the Aramaic pronunciation of the Hebrew name that we also know as "Joshua".  "Jesus" is what you get when this name goes from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek to Latin to French to English.]

EARLY EARTH HISTORY, MARY MAGDALENE,
JESUS, AND ORMUS

Eventually, in this universe, there came to be the planet we know as Earth, and the Zohar came to exist upon it.  (The order of events gets a little confusing here, but I'm going to do my best to get this straight.)  On this planet, at some early stage, Yeshua knew a girl named Mary Magdalene, also known as "Saint" or "Maria".  She had the power to open her heart draw countless souls to her bosom, in warmth and love.  Yeshua was the embodiment, in the Real Number Domain, of Anima (female spirit) in the Imaginary Domain, whereas Mary Magdalene's body was the Animus (male).  [Besides the obvious Biblical and Jungian references going on here, Mary might be a reference to the alchemist Mary the Jewess.]

 

In addition to this, Mary Magdalene had a special relationship with her maiden - the maiden of Mary.  This relationship was perhaps even more tender and loving than her relationship with Yeshua.

 

But the humans who lived on ancient Earth sought to rise up and defy God [Is this a reference to the Tower of Babel?] and tried to use the power of the Anima to do so - and this threatened to destroy the dimensional universe right away.   (Perhaps Wilhelm averted the destruction of the dimensional universe somehow at this point?)

 

Then, in the year "000X," a Messiah was born.  [Every indication is that this was Jesus Christ.]  The Messiah had 12 followers, or Apostles.  Also listening to his teachings were Yeshua, Mary Magdalene, and, at first, Wilhelm.  But during Jesus's ministry, as Mary Magdalene and Yeshua became more spiritual through his teachings, Yeshua's Anima became much stronger.  Wilhelm became concerned that if the Anima built up too much, this might activate Yeshua's failsafe and destroy the Lower Domain, and so he began to persecute Jesus's ministry and suppress his teachings.

 

At this point, Yeshua entrusted the Lemegeton to Jesus.  In Real Space, Lemegeton sounds like words, but in Imaginary Space, Lemegeton is a program, consisting of pure waves.  In theory, with this program, one can control the Zohar, and make contact with U-Do.  At the very least, Lemegeton will awaken Abel, opening the "eyes of God".  [The Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or "Lesser Key of Solomon" is a notorious grimoire of occult, black magic, with the names of 72 demons and how to contact them.]

 

The Messiah died [presumably, crucified].   At this point, an organization known as Ormus was founded, very much like a church - apparently, from the beginning, under the control of Wilhelm, though at first he had no official position in the church and operated purely in the shadows. [Ormus is pretty obviously modeled on the Catholic Church.  "Ormus" literally means "white gold," and is an important goal in alchemy, which leads directly to the "elixir of life" which grants immortality, but I think there's a pun going on here, on the "Oremus" which is the opening prayer in Catholic mass.  "Oremus" means "let us pray."]  Members of Ormus, who dedicate their lives to the organization, do not seem to know its the ultimate goals, or that the one manipulating them is Wilhelm, who deceptively layers so many plots, strategies, and counter-conspiracies on top of each other that everyone is confused.

 

To help the Apostles, who were now being persecuted by Ormus, Mary Magdalene, working with Yeshua, used the power of Animus to control Yeshua's Anima, and created a device known as Zarathustra, "the eternal circle," at the core of which was the Zohar.  Zarathustra is like an immense version of the Compass of Order - a giant, luminous cube surrounded by metallic/holographic rings.  It has immense powers, impossible to comprehend.  Its purpose was to access the Upper Domain, and its power source was Yeshua.  Mary Magdalene intended to use Zarathustra, presumably to ask U-Do for help.

 

But, according to Wilhelm, at least, "It didn't turn out the way they expected.  God did not permit mankind's actions."  Zarathustra, being so powerful, activated Yeshua's failsafe program in his Anima, almost causing the universe to self-destruct.  To prevent this from occurring, Mary Magdalene divided Yeshua's Anima into 12 Vessels of Anima.  She also apparently removed the Zohar from Zarathustra.  Her intention was to give these "relics of God" or "artefacts of God" to them, one vessel to each of the 12 Apostles, for safekeeping, to prevent them from getting into the hands of Wilhelm and Ormus.  But on her own, she did not have enough power to perform this operation.  She needed the help of her maiden, the Maiden of Mary, to complete the ritual.  Her maiden was willing to give everything to help.  But somehow, the result was that, first the Maiden of Mary died, and then in a deep sorrow and despair, Mary herself died.  Her spirit left this world of Real Space, and merged into the Collective Unconscious - but did not completely dissolve, some remnant of her personality remaining throughout the universe.  

Meanwhile, Yeshua, his Anima removed, had complete amnesia, lost some of his powers, and forgot who he was, becoming a mere passive spectator of the events that would follow for thousands of years, and eventually coming to be known as "chaos."

 

At this point, with Mary Magdalene out of the way, Wilhelm was able to seize Zarathustra, eventually reprogramming it with the goal of Eternal Recurrence - the ability to restart the universe from the Big Bang and have everything play out again the same way.  Now he set about trying to retrieve the Zohar and the 12 Vessels of Anima, which he could not find for thousands of years.

 

THE END(-ish) OF EARTH (THE "ERA OF ESTABLISHMENT")

 

In the 21st century, there was an archaeologist named T. Masuda, working for a foundation that was a subsidiary of a corporation called Vector, which, unbeknownst to him, had been started by Wilhelm.  

 

Masuda went digging in an archaeological site near Lake Turkana, on the border between Ethiopia and Kenya.  Here, for the first time in more than 2000 years, he uncovered the Zohar, as well as the baseplate for the Compass of Order, and an engraving on which the Lemegeton was written. 

 

Humans did not know what the Zohar was or how to use it, but they were able to determine that it contained a tremendous amount of energy.  At first, they merely thought that it was some kind of battery that had been used by a mysterious, ancient civilization - perhaps aliens were involved? - and they set about trying to harness this energy source to power their rapidly developing technology.

 

The Zohar was transported to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it was scientifically studied under the auspices of the Vector Corporation.  The chief researcher was named Grimoire Verum (they should have figured something was off about this guy, just based on his name), who had a small child, a daughter named Nephilim.  Grimoire Verum attempted to partially translate the Lemegeton, in order to learn how to use the Zohar, but he mistranslated it.  The result of this distorted mistranslation was the "Song of the Nephilim," but even in this distorted, mistranslated form, it was extremely powerful and dangerous. He recognized that he needed someone compassionate and virtuous for his experiment, so he decided to use his own daughter(!).  (Note: it wouldn't be called the "Song of Nephilim" until many centuries later.  Joachim Mizrahi (see below) called it the Song of Nephilim because "Nephilim" was the only word he recognized within it.)  [Nephilim is the name, used briefly in the Bible and more extensively in non-canonical literature such as the Book of Enoch, for certain beings, usually concieved as giants, who were the offspring of supernatural beings (sometimes called the "sons of God" and sometimes identified as fallen angels, or disobedient angels) and humans (usually male angels and female humans, though this isn't clearly specified).  This is typically understood as occurring before the Flood, but the Bible also seems to reference giants that lived later, perhaps having somehow survived the Flood, such as Goliath.  There are also, quite different, accounts of "Nephilim" in other religious traditions, some of them older than the Bible, such as the Ugaritic literature.]  But the experiment went horribly wrong.  

 

The details are quite sketchy here, but something like the following happened: perhaps for a while, it seemed as though the experiment was a success, and humanity had access to vast energy source.  Perhaps not coincidentally, a rapid acceleration of human technology ensued, making humanity an interstellar species for the first time.  But somehow everything went wrong, and a large part of the Earth was destroyed, radiating out from Nephilim herself, who seems to have merged with the Unus Mundus, so that some remnant of her consciousness can appear anywhere throughout space and time.  Somehow, the experiment had brought about a "space-time anomaly," and not for the last time.  

 

Once again, Wilhelm became concerned that this was going to result in a destabilization of Real Space and Imaginary Space, having an effect on the Upper Domain and threatening to trigger the "failsafe" and thus destroy the dimensional universe.  So Wilhelm, who had by this time developed almost godlike powers and was able to change the laws of physics, contained this space-time anomaly and prevented it from spreading by shrinking the Earth down to the Planck length (0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 meters, much smaller than the size of a single proton).  It still existed in the universe for the next several thousand years, but was so small that no one could possibly detect it.  But before Earth collapsed to a single point, many spaceships were able to escape, full of people.  The first to leave were the spaceships belonging to Ormus.

 

THE GALAXY FEDERATION 

 

Many spaceships left Earth and spread out across the galaxy, where people settled on various planets.  In the equivalent of the year 2510 AD (Anno Domini, the year of our lord), a new calendar system was developed.  This became year 1 TC, which stands for "Transcend Christ".  

 

The Earth was now a distant memory, shrouded in legend, which now became known as "The Lost Jerusalem".  ["New Jerusalem" is a poetic concept from the Book of Revelation, the 1000 years of the Kingdom of God.  It has become a major theme in western art, such as William Blake's "Jerusalem," which ends "Nor shall the sword rest in my hand / 'Til we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land" - an image evoking fighting for a utopian society.  This reflects a longstanding distinction between "New Jerusalem" and "Old Jerusalem," which was presumably "lost" when the Romans defeated the Holy Land and sent Jews into exile.  Of course, in reality, Jerusalem is not gone - it is a bustling city.]

 

The many people who had their exodus from Earth, or "Lost Jerusalem," eventually formed the Galaxy Federation, a gigantic civilization of more than 500,000 star systems, many of which had their own, densely populated planets.  

 

Over the next several thousand years, the Galaxy Federation became very technologically advanced.  A mathematician named Carnegie developed a method of stabilizing spaces within the Unus Mundus, and eventually humans were able to use this to develop the U.M.N., the Unus Mundus Network.  The details of who developed it, and how, and who owns it, are all left intentionally vague.  In any case, it was a highly commercialized network, with a mascot known as Bunnie - itself a rather mysterious figure, who seems to be a real being that exists in real life, its origin and nature completely unknown.  The people of the Galaxy Foundation use the U.M.N. for instantaneous (faster-than-light-speed) communication: they have messages very much like our email, as well as video chats.  The U.M.N. also seems to be involved in faster-than-light-speed travel, allowing humans to travel between star systems around the galaxy in a matter of hours or minutes, rather than centuries.  It also may be involved in the Encephelon, a device for plugging into human brains and creating what we might call virtual reality, simulated spaces accessing the deeper parts of a person's brain, manifested into a world of objects with some kind of physical substantiality and physics.  Humans also hoped that the U.M.N. could be used for teleportation - more on that later.

There is also Ether, which makes practices possible that look like magic.  Some people seem capable of powers that are something like telekinesis, flight, healing, etc..  (Perhaps Ether is the result of nanotechnology?)  It is claimed that the ultimate source of all Ether is the Zohar.

 

Then there are A.G.W.S. (Anti-Gnosis Weapon Systems, pronounced "eggs") and (much larger) A.M.W.S. (Assault Maneuver Weapon Systems, pronounced "aims"): giant robotic mech suits that people operate.  

 

Finally, there is sophisticated biological/genetic technology, something like what we might call "eugenics".  For thousands of years, many kinds of science and technology of this kind were strictly prohibited. But due to some kind of unspecified crisis of dwindling resources in the 4400s TC, people decided to become more open to this kind of experimentation.  More about this in a moment.

 

MICHTAM

 

As most humans spread out to various star systems to form the Galaxy Federation, Ormus was also traveling in their own fleet of spacecraft, which eventually came to be known as the Immigrant Fleet.  Although they had been the first to leave Old Jerusalem (Earth), it took them thousands of years to find a new homeland.  Along the way, there were many disputes within the Immigrant Fleet, which broke up into separate factions, with certain groups rebelling against the mainstream for their own nationalistic or tribalistic reasons and forming their own, supposedly sovereign orders.  [Perhaps this parallels the Protestant Reformation?  I don't know, maybe that's a stretch.]  But in reality, all are secretly manipulated and controlled by Ormus, and ultimately by Wilhelm.

 

The Immigrant Fleet were carrying with them a floating island known as Rennes-le-Chateau, which included a church and a graveyard in which they kept several of the "Relics of God," that they had managed to gather from Lost Jerusalem before it was shrunk, including the Zohar.  It's unclear whether this is actually a chunk of Lost Jerusalem (the sources I read disagree about this). [Rennes-le-Chateau is a real place in the South of France, containing a church that has been the focus of much speculation by kooky people, especially New Age paranormal investigators, etc., and also neo-nazis.  According to the book "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" - usually dismissed as a conspiracy theory or crank alternative history - after his crucifixion, Jesus married Mary Magdalene and settled here, having children and starting a bloodline that, centuries later, produced the Merovingian dynasty of French monarchs, about whom there are many legends, some of which are tied to the Holy Grail.  This bizarre theory inspired Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" series of novels, and also seems to have influenced the "Matrix" series of movies, which contain a character known as the "Merovingian".]

 

It seems that in the 4000s TC, there were some early contacts between the Immigrant Fleet and the Galaxy Federation, and they did not go well, resulting in some kind of skirmishes. 

 

Ultimately, the core group of the Immigrant Fleet decided to settle on a planet called Abraxas, which they declared their "holy land," eventually renaming it "Michtam" (see below).  [Michtam is a mysterious Hebrew word from the Bible.  No one really knows what it means, though there are many people who claim to know, and ongoing debate for thousands of years.  It appears at the beginning of several psalms, but it's not clear if it's part of the title of these psalms, or a musical direction, or something else.  Guesses as to the meaning of "michtam" based on speculative etymologies, include "shimmering," "golden," and "engraved," none of which really make sense in the context.  But they are all interesting, especially given the commandment against making "graven images," and the idols that disobedient Hebrews are said to have constructed such as the "golden calf".  And they also seem thematically relevant within the world of Xenosaga, given the words "Zohar" and "Ormus," both of which seem to have related meanings.]  [Abraxas, or Abrasax, meanwhile, is the "chief Archon" of Gnosticism.  The meaning and origin of this word, or name, is also the subject of centuries of debate.  Sometimes Abraxas is represented as a figure with a human body, a chicken head, and snakes for feet.  Sometimes it is referred to as a God.  There's... a lot.  Um... just Google it.]  Here they decided to store their sacred relics, including the Zohar and Zarathustra, which was stored deep within Michtam's crystaline structures and seems to have been made out of these crystals, which have a strange spiritual power - perhaps Michtam was the original home of the Zarathustra, which is why Ormus desired to live there so much.  All very mysterious.

 

But by this time, there was already another population living there.  There was a war, or a series of wars, for control of the planet, which resulted in a kind of stalemate during the reign of a leader of Ormus named Patriarch Julius XVIII.  Ormus gained control of most of the planet, which they renamed "Michtam," but a small reservation remained on the planet that was not controlled by Ormus, which came to be known as the Draper Region.  Michtam then joined the Galaxy Federation and an uneasy peace held.  Ormus teaches its followers that Michtam is the "birthplace" of Ormus, though we know that Ormus actually began on Lost Jerusalem (i.e. Earth).  [Is it too much to see the struggles on Michtam as paralleling the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians?]

 

DMITRI YURIEV AND THE URTVs

For a long time, people both in Ormus and the Galaxy Federation attempted to contact the Zohar through various experiments, but everyone who attempted to do this went into a coma and died.

 

In the late 4500s TC, a test pilot named Dmitri Yuriev in the Draper Region [I think his name references Boris Yuriev, the Russian scientist and test-pilot who strove to develop the first helicopter] was attempting to achieve teleportation through the U.M.N..  As it turned out, he was one of the People of Zohar, and since the Zohar was on the same planet, contact was established, and Dmitri Yuriev became the first person to come into contact with U-Do and live.  He survived, but U-Do filled him with extreme terror, and for the rest of his life, he dedicated himself to killing U-Do.

 

He told the government of the Galaxy Federation that U-Do was an AI existing within the U.M.N., but this was a lie.  Nonetheless this lie became the official story - whether because the government was fooled, or because they had their own reasons for covering up the truth.

 

His first step was to run for parliament.  Once in office, in the year 4591 he proposed a law called the Life Recycling  Act which was passed with remarkable speed, and made all kinds of biological experiments and enhancements possible, including cloning, genetic engineering, and "designer children".  Dmitri Yuriev and others wanted to use this to create what came to be known as Uberhumans.  Indeed, Uberhumans were created, like Mary and Shelley Godwin and Andrew Cherenkov, who was genetically designed to be a super-soldier.  Such people are called "Life Recycling Variants".

  

There are also references to a "Life Recycling Law" (not "Act") - whether these are two different things or two names for the same thing is unclear. According to the "Life Recycling Law," a dead body could be used to implant the consciousness of another person.  These people came to have ambiguous legal status, not being fully human and thus not having all of their rights - thus the government could use them as soldiers, not caring whether they lived or died.

 

The real reason for the Life Recycling Act was that Dmitri Yuriev was convinced that his own genes were key to his ability to survive contact with U-Do.  So, in the Draper region, he established his first research station, Jacob Medical Imprinting, [Jacob in the Bible wrestles the Angel of God and becomes Israel] a "placenta factory" in close proximity to the Zohar, where he created 669 "designer children" clones of himself, each time modifying and improving them.  These are known as U.R.T.V.s ("U-Do ReTro Virus").  Each U.R.T.V. has a number printed on the back of their hand, from number 1 to number 669.  They are all capable of emitting waves which are the exact opposite frequency of U-Do's waves, and are thus capable of cancelling them out.  Yuriev told his children that their purpose was to kill U-Do and began training them, through the Encephelon, for a battle with U-Do.  

 

U.R.T.V.s numbered 1 through 665 were all blond boys, like their father, Dmitri.  (It seems like they don't have names, only numbers - or, if they have names, we never learn them.)  U.R.T.V. number 666 and 667 were conjoined twins.  Number 666 was born with red hair and therefore named "Rubedo" ("Red") and was the most powerful U.R.T.V. ever.  He had a power known as "Red Dragon" by which he could amplify the "anti-existence waves" of his brothers.  Yuriev theorized that if these anti-waves were amplified enough, they would kill U-Do.  But deep down, he had great doubts that this would ever work.  He thought U-Do might be indestructible.  But he still wanted Rubedo to build up his power of "Red Dragon" and use it, just to see what would happen, and what he could learn about U-Do.  The Red Dragon is always in danger of coming out, especially when Rubedo is angry or in severe emotional distress.

 

Rubedo's twin, URTV number 667, was born with white hair, and so he became known as "Albedo" [lit., "whiteness"; the albedo of an object is the diffuse light that bounces off an object, such as a moon, planet, or asteroid].  He has a psychic connection with Rubedo, and before they were surgically separated, they shared internal organs.  Albedo has a power none of his siblings do, namely, the ability to regrow tissue at remarkable speed, making him seemingly immortal and invulnerable.  But he was a sensitive, emotionally unstable child, who was bullied by his older URTV brothers.  Only his twin, Rubedo, would stand up for him.  Likewise, Albedo became fiercely loyal to Rubedo.  Eventually, the older URTVs turned against Rubedo, seeing as he was young but got special treatment from his father.  Albedo defended Rubedo, even going so far as to beat another URTV, number 623, almost to death.

 

URTV number 668 was a female, with orangish hair, named Citrine [Citrine is a gemstone with a deep golden color; etymologically, the word is derived from "citrus" and usually interpreted to mean "lemon-colored," though perhaps a different fruit could be implied].  Her existence was kept secret from the other URTVs, for years.  (There's also a suggestion that other female URTVs exist, but we never see any.)  As it turned out, Citrine was designed as a failsafe, to destroy Rubedo, if the "Red Dragon" became too powerful, or out of control.

 

URTV number 669 was a male with black hair, who became known as Nigredo [blackness].  He, too, was designed as a failsafe, to destroy his brother Rubedo.  But, like Rubedo, he rejects his own programming, and defies his father, choosing instead to have a warm, affectionate relationship with his brother, and to be, in general, a kind, generous, responsible person.  But Dmitri Yuriev seems to have regarded this as all going according to his plan in some mysterious way, considered Nigredo to be the perfect completion of his project, and ceased creating any more URTVs.

 

Meanwhile, other biological experiments elsewhere were producing other clones, designer children, uberhumans, super-soldiers, etc., and at a certain point, only a few years after passage of the Life Recycling Act, political winds shifted the opposite way, and in 4754 a new law was passed, the Species Preservation Act, once again making this kind of genetic tinkering illegal, in the hopes of preserving the human race.  Socially, biologically engineered people, who became known as "Life Recycling Variants," became outcasts, rejected by the rest of society as "mutants".  

 

In response, Dmitri Yuriev relocated to a planet called Zavarov.  Here, he secretly continued his studies, and at the same time he became a leader of a political movement within the Galaxy Federation known as the Salvator Faction, ostensibly to protect the rights of Life Recycling Variants (or "enhanced humans") against discrimination.  His army of URTVs became soldiers for the Salvator cause.  In addition to this, Yuriev's contact with U-Do had given him certain powers, including the ability to transfer his consciousness to other people's bodies, in effect "possessing" them.

 

[Okay, major Jungian and alchemical themes here - way too much to summarize easily.  In alchemy, there is what is known as the "Magnum Opus" - the great work - which usually refers to the process of rendering the prima materia into the philosopher's stone.  This has four phases: nigredo or blackening (melanosis), albedo or whitening (leucosis), citrinitas or yellowing (xanthosis), and rubedo or reddening (iosis).  After the 15th century, this was shortened to three phases, and citrinitas was left out.   Carl Jung took this concept and reinterpreted it.  For him, the importance of alchemy lay not in base metals but in the development of the soul or psyche.  Nigredo is the death of the old consciousness (the "shadow" in his archetypal vocabulary), Albedo is the discovery of a deeper self (and the interplay of animus and anima), and Rubedo is the integration and individuation of a self-aware life.  Sometimes he added back in the Citrine stage, identified with the "wise old man"/"wise old woman" archetype.]

 

REALIANS, TESTAMENTS, E.S.s, AND PIED PIPER

Another form of technology developed by the Galaxy Federation are the Realians, also known as "Synths".  These are artificial humans, quasi-biological, made out of various materials, but requiring food like other living things.  Like the "mutants," Realians sometimes suffer discrimination from humans.  They were first invented by Vector Industries, but now a wide variety of corporations manufacture them - but Vector is still the most innovative corporation, with others essentially copying their Realian models. 

 

But Wilhelm had one more trick up his sleeve: the creation of "Testaments".  Testaments seem to be something like lke U-Do Syndrome (aka "Acute Neurosis") or the gnosis phenomenon, but a little different.  Again, humans have one portion in Real Space, and another portion in Imaginary Space, which could be considered the "spirit".  Under very special circumstances - perhaps only produced by the will of Wilhelm - a person can die, and thus lose their "anchor" in Real Space, but then the Imaginary component can go on to live a different kind of life, one that is far more powerful than anything a physical human could achieve.  Perhaps one might say that the gnosis phenomenon is a disorderly version of a transformation, which in a highly orderly form, can produce a "Testament" - an extremely powerful being, though one that is ultimately under the control of Wilhelm.  The purpose of Testaments has to do with controlling the Vessels of Anima.

 

About that - at some point (when? how? by whom?) E.S.s ("Ein Soph") are built - each one is like an A.M.W.S., but with a Vessel of Anima installed in it, giving it massive power.  Each one is named after a different child of Jacob (and thus a different tribe of Israel).  Testaments pilot E.S.s, but as we will see, they're not the only ones. [Ein Soph (there are many variant spellings), which literally means something like "without limit," is a term from certain forms of Kabbalah, where it signifies the highest portion of the tree of life, the unknowable essence of God, from which all other, lower and more knowable emanations of Godhead originate.]

 

In the year 4667 TC, a soldier named Jan Sauer, with his team, tracked down a terrorist who went by the name "Voyager" to the planet Michtam (at that point still called Abraxas).  To this end, he worked together with a young policewoman named Melisse and one of the very first Realians, who was named Lactis.  They didn't know it, but this Lactis had been installed with "Program Canaan," a program to seek out people who would make good candidates for connecting with Vessels of Anima (perhaps the true purpose of Program Canaan was to determine who should be made into a Testament?).  Realians installed with Program Canaan often didn't know that they had this program, which might supercede their own minds and cause them to betray their friends.  ["Lactis" means "milk" and "Melisse" means "honey". In the Bible, the land of Canaan is known as the "The Land of Milk and Honey," and it is the promised land that is promised to Moses and the people he lead out of Egypt.]

 

The investigating team determined that Voyager had been hired by Dmitri Yuriev, but did not know his identity.  But then Sauer discovered that Voyager was a member of his own team, Erich Weber.  But Voyager managed to kill Jan Sauer's wife and children, sending Sauer into a deep depression, and also injured Sauer, almost killing him.  [This, I gather, is the plot of the game "Pied Piper."]  

 

Voyager himself died in the course of this episode, but Wilhelm found him (or his Imaginary component), and decided to make him into the very first Testament, known as the Black Testament.  He piloted an E.S. named Dan, equipped with one of the Vessels of Anima. [There is a tradition that the antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan.]

 

After this, Lactis, who had been destroyed, was rebuilt as a new Realian named Canaan.  Sauer was rebuilt as a cyborg, Ziggurat 8, who was a soldier for a time, and then became a mercenary.  

 

Melisse, meanwhile, became convinced that all of the problems that were going on had to do with the U.M.N., and so founded an organization known as Scientia, whose purpose was to shut down the U.M.N..  

 

 

JOACHIM MIZRAHI, AND THE DESTRUCTION OF MICHTAM

  

[The name Joachim Mizrahi is a multilevel tangle of references.  The Mizrahim are the group of Jews who never left the Middle East, unlike the Ashkenazim who settled temporarily in Italy and then in Eastern Europe and spoke a German dialect called Yiddish and the Sephardic Jews who went west to Spain and learned to speak a dialect known as Ladino, before the Spanish Inquisition forced them back into the Ottoman Empire. Thus Mizrahi is a common Jewish last name - see, for instance, Isaac Mizrahi, the fashion designer.  Ironically, the Mizrahim were sometimes discriminated against in Israel in the 20th century, though they sometimes see themselves as the true original inhabitants of the "holy land".

 

Joachim has several meanings, all of them relevant.  The name means "established by God".  There was a King Jehoiakim in the Bible, who was disobedient, incestuous, and had tattoos(!) and was denounced by the prophet Jeremaiah.  God punished him by having the Nebuchadnezzar's Bablyonians invade and conquer Jerusalem and during the battle, Jehoiakim's body was flung from the top of the wall (see below).  The result was the famous exile in Bablyon, during which much of the Bible is said to have been written.

 

Named after King Jehoiakim is the Christian Saint Joachim, who was the father of Mary and thus the grandfather of Jesus (as well as John the Baptist).

 

Then there's Joachim of Fiore, the mystic theologian of the 12th century who reinterpreted history as a series of stages, and thought that the Age of the Spirit was coming soon.  His end-times apocalyptic visions inspired a vast movement that changed European politics forever.]  
 

Joachim Mizrahi was born on the planet Michtam.  He had a wife, Juli, and a daughter, Sakura  He was genetically one of the People of Zohar, and he was also a genius scientist.  In the 4740s TC, he created the Mizrahi Research Institute, which included the Mizrahi Cerebral Sciences Research Center (CSRC), which was, at first, funded by Vector Industries..  Here he developed a machine capable of the Hilbert Effect.  

 

Before Mizrahi's invention of the Hilbert Effect, gnosis could pass through solid objects like ghosts, and it was impossible to touch them, let alone fight them, except at Klein Points.  During this time, soldiers had to use devices known as D.S.S.S. (Double Slot Sensory System, or "D-triple-S") even to be able to detect gnosis.  With Mizrahi's device, capable of activating the Hilbert Effect, gnosis are made into solid objects in Real Space, which allows soldiers to fight them.  Thus the Hilbert Effect became an absolutely crucial form of technology for the military of the Galaxy Federation, in their battles against the gnosis.  

 

Thus Mizrahi's lab was more or less taken over and became a top-secret military project.  At the same time, its research was now partially financed - and surreptitiously controlled - by the Hyams Group, which was the main rival to Vector Industries and in reality a front for Ormus.  The Hyams Group's chief scientist was Dr. Sellers, who was deeply jealous of Mizrahi's genius.  Ironically, Mizrahi was from Michtam and Sellers was flown in from elsewhere in the Federation, yet it was Sellers who was actually more connected to Ormus.  The CSRC was renamed U-TIC (Unknown Territory Interventing and Creation), with Mizrahi as Director, and Sellers as Assistant Director.

 

U-TIC became involved in the Zohar Project, trying to research and understand the nature of the Zohar.  The Zohar was transported to Miltia, in a laboratory deep down in Labyrinthos, in Miltia's capital, Dasgupta.  Lacking the 12 Vessels of Anima, Mizrahi created 12 Zohar Emulators - artificial Zohars that could enhance the Zohar's resonance with the waves of U-Do. 

 

But in the year 4747, something went horribly wrong in the Zohar project.  The details are very sketchy, but the experiment went out of control, and there was an emergency evacuation of the planet Michtam - but too late.  A woman, who was carrying the crystal key to Zarathustra from the interior of Michtam (who she was and how she got it, we don't know), ran to the escape pod bay with her small child.  Here, she put her son in an escape pod with the crystal, in the form of a pendant, on a chain around his neck - and sealed him in, with him pounding on the glass and crying.  His escape pod launched, just in time for him to watch his mother transformed into a gnosis.  

 

Eventually the child, whose name was Kevin, was retrieved, put into an orphanage, and eventually was adopted by a family known as the Winnicots - thus he came to be known as Kevin Winnicot.  

 

OLD MILTIA AND SAKURA MIZRAHI 

 

After the destruction of Michtam, the Galaxy Federation discovered the Zohar in the rubble and transported it to a planet called Miltia.  Kevin Winnicot is sometimes described as the sole survivor of Michtam, but we know this not to be true - in fact, several people survived, including the entire U-TIC organization.  In an attempt to gain back control of the Zohar, Ormus Patriarch Sergius XVII decided to relocate U-TIC to Miltia as well.  

 

Miltia was at that time in an independent star system, not part of the Galaxy Federation. Since 4730 TC, (i.e., the mysterious "Zoar Incident") Miltia had been under attack from a planet called Zoar (not to be confused with Zohar... unless?), which seems to have been an independent settlement of the Immigrant Fleet.  The exact circumstances of this conflict with "Zoar" is never revealed in the games, and we are given several contradictory rumors.  Maybe there never was a "Zoar Incident," and this was just a cover-up for U-TIC's activities - they were the ones behind the violence, using it as a pretext to pressure Miltia to join the Galaxy Federation for defense against this illusory "Zoar" threat?  I don't know, I'm just spitballing here. [There is a Zoar in the Bible - one of the 5 "cities of the plain."  There is some kind of battle of Zoar, in which the Hebrews fight against them.  2 of the other cities of the plain, Sodom and Gomorrah, are destroyed with fire and brimstone, but Zoar is spared. (Zoar can be interpreted to mean "small" or "insignificant" in Hebrew.)  It becomes the place of refuge for Lot.]

 

In any case, the independent government of Miltia was overthrown and replaced with a pro-Federation government.  But the people of Miltia were not happy about this, and on the verge of revolt.  Nonetheless, Miltia joined the Galaxy Federation. 

 

Mizrahi went on to produce many more inventions for Vector, Hyams, and the Federation government.  At one point he was the main designer of the 99-series Realians, known as the Kirschwassers ["cherry water" - a kind of German brandy made from fermented cherries.  It sounds very much like Kirchwasser, that is church water, i.e. holy water].  He also created "transgenic" Realians, half-human, half Realian - notably, Febronia and her cloned sisters Cecily and Cathe.  

 

Meanwhile, Joachim's daughter, Sakura Mizrahi, had some kind of disease, described as an "oversensitivity to the synchronicity of the U.M.N." which made her incapable of speaking or communicating in any way.  The waves of U-Do seemed to reverberate in her mind.  Her parents were concerned that she might become catatonic, comatose, or worse.  So Juli took her to the Yuriev Institute on Zavarov.  Here, Dmitri Yuriev sent his URTV clones, Rubedo, Albedo, and Negredo into her subconscious mind, using the encephelon device.  The theory was that they could use their anti-U-Do waves to subdue the U-Do waves and cure her.  Undoubtedly, Yuriev had his own reasons for this that had little to do with Sakura's health, but in they went.

 

Inside her subconscious, they found an inner version of Sakura, who was friendly and communicative, and who had been trying to communicate with everyone, but no one could hear her.  Using the encephelon, they went into her mind many times, and became good friends... and gradually, Sakura and Rubedo fell in love.

 

But Albedo became jealous of Sakura, feeling that she was stealing his twin away from him, and he grew to hate her, and eventually started abusing her.   

THE UZUKI FAMILY, MARGULIS, AND KEVIN WINNICOT

 

On (Old) Miltia there lived an old man named Ouga Uzuki, a master swordsman, a sensei, a deeply spiritual man with a collection of rare books.  He had a son named Suou.

 

As a young man, Suou Uzuki met a woman named Aoi from the Vassilios system, populated by people from the Immigrant Fleet.  She was one of the People of Zohar.  They fell in love, got married, and had two children, Jin and Shion, who was, unbeknownst to everyone (except, presumably, Wilhelm) the reincarnation of the Maiden of Mary (remember her?).  

 

Suou got a job as inspector for the Energy Department of the Galaxy Federation, and he was assigned to inspect U-TIC.  

 

His son, Jin, decided to be a swordsman, and accepted his grandfather, Ouga, as his sensei.  Ouga already had a star pupil, a young man named Margulis.  Margulis came to feel that Sensei Ouga was giving preferential treatment to his grandson, and passing him over, failing to recognize his own great talents.  Eventually he came to feel that Ouga was an "old fool," quit his apprenticeship, and joined the priesthood of Ormus.  But Jin completed his training and went on to become a soldier for the Galaxy Federation, eventually becoming a Captain in the Special Forces.

 

Margulis rose up quickly through the ranks of Ormus, eventually becoming the Chief Inquisitor, answering directly to the "Pope," or more accurately, Patriarch Sergius XVII.  (Also hovering around is the mysterious Wilhelm Heinlein, who seems to be a lower-ranking bishop - when the game starts, no one suspects that he has been the power behind Ormus, secretly manipulating it from the beginning.)

 

Meanwhile, Aoi Uzuki, through her Vassilios bloodline, had inherited an ability to resonate with U-Do.  But it was taking its toll on her.  She had fainting spells, sometimes extended periods of unconsciousness, and was in danger of slipping into a coma.  Suou didn't know what to do, but in the course of inspecting U-TIC, he began to realize that there was more going on there than met the eye.  Apparently he somehow sold out, or co-operated with them in some way, and became corrupt, but the deal he struck with them eventually became more than he had bargained for.  Whatever it was that they demanded of him, he did it in trade for them accepting Aoi into the Mizrahi Research Institute's "Acute Neurosis Treatment Facility."  U-TIC now hired Suou to participate in experiments on his own wife's unconscious mind.  But her condition worsened, and she did indeed slip into a coma.  Meanwhile, Febronia, the transgenic Realian desgned by Mizrahi, became the Uzuki family nanny (perhaps as part of the deal) and helped raise Shion, babysitting her at a local, abandoned church.

 

Somewhere around the same time, Kevin Winnicot also joined U-TIC.  He was a child prodigy who graduated from a top-tier university with some kind of extremely advanced degree by the age of 15, but he was profoundly apathetic about the world, seeing no value in anything except his own prodigious ambition.  That is, until he met Shion.  When he first met her, she was a small child (perhaps 8?) growing flowers in the garden outside the Mizrahi Research Institute.  She seemed so pure and innocent, such a far cry from the men inside the building.

 

THE MILTIAN CONFLICT 

 

Meanwhile, public opinion around the galaxy swung against Miltia and the Realians.  People found them creepy and fake, and there was extreme prejudice against them.  Just as Dmitri Yuriev, as leader of the Salvator Faction, had been an advocate for the rights of "mutants" - people who had been genetically altered through the Life Recycling Law - Joachim Mizrahi became an advocate for Realians, that they were people who deserved rights.  At the same time, his research into the Zohar had reached a point where he was able to unlock an ancient technology known as Proto-Merkabah.  There also seemed to be some tension between Joachim and Juli, probably related to their sick child, Sakura.

 

Despite Rubedo's attempts, he had not been successful at curing Sakura's illness and allowing her to communicate with the outside world.  Instead, she sank deeper into her illness and became effectively unconscious for a long time, though her mind was still active.  Her father, Joachim, came up with a new plan: he would build a Realian that would act out the movements that Sakura's inner mind was trying to perform, thus providing her a kind of conduit through which she could interact with the dimensional universe. 

 

At U-TIC, which was gradually becoming more and more dominated by Ormus, Cardinal Wilhelm Heinlein took a special interest in Kevin and took him under his wing, gradually letting him in the complex secrets that were going on here.  He also told Kevin to watch over Shion.  It's not clear how much he told Kevin at this point.  As the reincarnation of the Maiden of Mary, she had the power to summon the gnosis.  Wilhelm probably didn't tell Kevin all of that, but just intimated that she was very important for some reason.

 

Kevin took Febronia's code and used it to produce a "horde" of Realians, known as the 27-Series Asura, designed for combat.  Kevin learned about the Song of Nephilim, (i.e. the distorted version of the Lemegeton) and thought it could be used to somehow activate the 27-Series Asura, who would resonate with it and activate the Zohar, potentially making contact with U-Do.

 

By this time, the conflict between Zoar and Miltia had escalated to an all-out war.

 

In the year 4753, the U-TIC organization staged a coup d'etat and took over the planet, expelling the pro-Federation government.  The Federation responded by declaring war on U-TIC.

 

Kevin came up with the idea of using the Song of Nephilim to activate the 27-Series Asura, which were on the front lines of battle, though they had not yet been properly calibrated.

 

With the Song of Nephilim playing, Dmitri Yuriev seized the moment.  He thought this was the perfect time to try to kill U-Do.  So he sent all of the URTVs down to Miltia (except, apparently, Citrine?).  The URTVs descend into Labyrinthos, surround the Zohar, all hold hands, in a circle, and prepare the ritual to summon the Red Dragon.  Rubedo is holding hands with Albedo.  But at the last minute, Rubedo had a vision of the world ending in calamity and something horrible emerging.  He was filled with terror and broke the psychic link with his brothers, opening the circle and causing the frequency of his brothers' anti-existence waves not to match perfectly with U-Do's waves.  The result was a chaotic dissonance in wave-energy, which blasted out. 

 

This blast of dissonant wave-energy affected the URTVs in various ways: some simply died on the spot.  Others were driven insane, and went on a killing spree.  Albedo, already emotionally unstable, now went completely insane.  Negredo was knocked unconscious, and seemed to be on the verge of death.  Rubedo tried to carry him, his brother, to safety.  Only he seemed mostly unaffected by the wave - unless the vision he had received was the beginning of the onset of insanity? - and he would have terrible nightmares for the rest of his life.  Plus, he felt overwhelming guilt for everything that was happening.

 

Above ground, the 27-Series Asura also went insane and went on a murderous rampage, as did almost all of the other combat Realians on Miltia.  Whether this was due to the anti-existence waves of the URTVs, or simply because of the Song of Nephilim, or the combination of the two, is not entirely clear.  The 27-Seres Asuras not only started killing everyone at random, but they even became cannibals, eating both humans and other Realians.

In the resulting chaos, Sakura died.  It's not entirely clear how - it is claimed that she "sacrificed herself, trying to save Albedo".  Later, Albedo claimed to have murdered her.  But again, whether this is true, and what it means, is unclear.  He certainly felt jealousy toward Sakura, but also his goal was to enrage Rubedo to the point that he would awaken the Red Dragon.  This, Albedo thought, would please his father.  

 

Mizrahi was stricken with grief at the loss of his daughter.  He used the Zohar to instantly create Proto-Merkabah, a gigantic space station and orbiting satellite of Miltia.  He told his superiors at U-TIC, such as Margulis, that this had military applications, and would eventually be the flying fortress of a super-warrior known as Omega, but Mizrahi's real purpose in building the Proto-Merkabah was as a gigantic research lab and factory, the goal of which was to somehow resurrect his dear, departed Sakura.  The Proto-Merkabah created a new line of Realians, the 100 Series Realians, the first of which was M.O.M.O. (Multiple Observative Mimetic Organicus).  From the surface of Miltia, he attempted to transfer the consciousness of Sakura into Momo - and that's not all.  He also transferred what became known as the Y-Data into Momo's mind - a complete record of all the research he had been able to achieve, throughout his life, including his entire understanding of the Zohar, U-Do, and so on.  But the transfer was interrupted, and only an incomplete version of the Y-Data was stored in Momo's mind.  It's unclear if Momo ever met Mizrahi, face-to-face, but she seems to have memories of him, in particular him telling her that if she is a good girl, one day she will become a real, human girl.  (At some point, Juli also seems to have left her husband, or at least they became estranged - perhaps because they argued over the way Joachim had expressed his grief, and her doubts that an artificial human could ever truly replace their little girl.)

 

I'm guessing that what happened is that Margulis figured out what was going on, interrupted the transfer, and then stole the (complete) Y-Data for himself.  But he never got a chance to find out what the Y-Data said.

 

This is because, at this point, the Federation Army invaded (this is known as the "First Descent" of the Miltian Conflict), and Captain Jin Uzuki of Special Forces managed to steal the Y-Data from Margulis.  But Jin's father, Suou, told him that there was more going on than what appeared.  So Jin was unsure what to do with the Y-Data.  He suspected that he was being lied to, by several sides, including his own government, which he served.

 

But Margulis, Sergius, Sellers, and other key personnel within Ormus and U-TIC used the chaos of the gangs of marauding combat Realians as an opportunity to escape.   Just as everything in Real Space has an equivalent in Imaginary Space, the reverse is true as well.  So the Song of Nephilim, which was a program of waves in Imaginary Space, exists at the same time in Real Space as a gigantic vessel.  The people of Ormus and U-TIC boarded this vessel and used it as a spaceship to escape from Miltia.

 

Meanwhile, Negredo, who had recovered by this point, murdered his father, Dmitri Yuriev (it seems he did so in defiance of an order - perhaps he had been ordered to kill his brother?). 

 

Unable to suppress the Miltian Conflict, the Galaxy Federation sent a "Second Descent" down to the surface of the planet, a much larger force.  

 

Somehow, after all this time (like, the entire history of the universe up to this point), chaos became a soldier for the Galaxy Federation and Lieutenant General Helmer sent him, along with his new partner, a Realian named Canaan, from planet Zavarov into Miltia.  Their mission was to recover as many URTVs as they possibly could.  They only found 2: Rubedo and Negredo.  (Apparently, Albedo escaped separately.)  During the course of their mission, they came across Jin who decided to store the complete Y-Data inside Canaan's mind, not knowing that Canaan was a rebuilt version of Lactis, and still had the Canaan program (installed, presumably, by Wilhelm or one of his minions).  Thus Lactis/Canaan was preprogrammed to betray his teammates, and also a "shadow" passed over his mind, preventing him from remembering all of this.

 

Another soldier in the Second Descent was a man named Lieutenant Luis Virgil.  He was wounded in battle.  At first, he hated the Realians, whom he regarded as cold, emotionless killers.  He was particularly horrified by the 27-Seres Asura's practice of cannibalism.  But then his injured body was dragged back to an old church (perhaps by a time-travelling Shion and her friends, from the future!) (or perhaps by young Shion, and Kevin...) and here he was cared for by Febronia, who offered her own organs to replace his own in order to nurse him back to health.  Thus, he gained a new respect for Realians, and even began to fall in love with Febronia.  For the first time in his life, he knew peace.  

 

But that peace was ripped away when Combat Realans stormed in an killed Febronia.  Virgil responded by going berzerk, and going on a killing spree of his own.  Perhaps his body in some sense consumed Febronia's Realian flesh (?), and in any case he became addicted to Realian flesh, a condition known as DME (I don't know what DME stands for).  DME is both a physical condition and a psychological one, slowly driving its victims insane.  Eventually, as the DME progressed, Virgil became a cannibal, eating the Realians, just as Realians once ate people. 

 

Meanwhile, Kevin came in and saved young Shion from the Realian attack on the church, bringing her back to U-TIC headquarters.  But here he seems to have lost track of her, and here she witnessed 27-Seres Asuras killing her father and mother.  Her extreme grief, as a trauma response, triggered her to recover her powers (briefly) as the reincarnation of the Maiden of Mary.  She destroyed the boundary between Imaginary Space and Real Space and invoked the gnosis.  The result was the largest ever incursion of gnosis into our reality.  They flew out and started wreaking havoc.  Any person they touched would either simply die, or, themselves turn into gnosis.  So the gnosis started spread out into the universe from Miltia like a plague, all radiating out of Shion's childhood grief.

 

Despite Margulis' and Sellers' misgivings, Patriarch Sergius decided to remotely activate Proto-Omega, so that it would dock with Proto-Merkabah, producing a super-weapon capable of defeating the Galaxy Federation forces.  Whether or not that's exactly what happened is not totally clear, but apparently as a result of this action, Miltia sank into a twin black hole system known as the Abyss, which had been created during Mizrahi's experiments with the Zohar emulators.  Apparently, Proto-Merkaba, orbiting Miltia, fell into the Abyss with it.  The only way out of the Abyss (the "gate") was a secret stored within the Y-Data.  (Presumably, Sergius did this under influence from Wilhelm, who once again worried that if the gnosis escaped and the boundary between Real Space and Imaginary Space continued eroding, the failsafe in chaos would be activated and the dimensional universe would be destroyed - so he wanted to sink Miltia into the Abyss in order to contain the crisis.)

 

Presumably, in the course of the Miltian Conflict, Joachim Mizrahi died - whether because he was killed by combat Realians, died when Miltia sank into the Abyss, or for some other reason, is unknown.  (Perhaps he was killed by Margulis when Margulis stole the Y-Data?)  Later, Momo would have a vision of Mizrahi shouting, reciting the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelation, and then falling from a high wall during the Miltian Conflict - whether this was Mizrahi's ghost, a memory of real event she witnessed, some recovered information from the Y-Data within, or simply a hallucination created by the encephalon isn't clear.  Even if we assume that this was a real event, it's not clear what happened - did he simply fall? Commit suicide?  Or perhaps someone shot him off the wall?  If so, who?  Did he survive the fall?  We just don't know.  We never see him again.

 

AFTERMATH OF THE MILTIAN CONFLICT

 

Starting from the Miltian Conflict, the Galaxy Federation was sucked into a decades-long, slowly escalating war with the Gnosis.

 

As already noted, Joachim Mizrahi was now dead.  Mizrahi's wife, Juli, however, survived the Miltian conflict, and became a powerful politician in the Galactic Senate, the leader of S.O.C.E. - the Subcommittee on Close Encounters, tasked with investigating the Zohar and the gnosis phenomenon.  (By the way, Helmer survived as well, and was regarded as a hero - and soon he was elected Representative of Second Miltia to the Galaxy Federation - a position something like President.)

 

With Mizrahi out of the way, his rival Sellers of the Hyams Group now took over research at U-TIC, including the Zohar Project.  

 

It was Kevin's idea to cover up the true events of the Miltian Conflict, and Ormus's involvement and responsibility for it, by covering up the connection between Ormus and U-TIC, and blaming the whole thing on Joachim Mizrahi.  According to the cover story, Joachim Mizrahi was a relgious fanatic who went insane and sought to end the world, and to that end started a terrorist organization called U-TIC, created the Proto-Merkabah, initiated the Song of the Nephilim, which simultaneously made Realians go crazy and start murdering everyone, released the gnosis into the universe, and caused Miltia to be utterly destroyed.  In reality, Joachim Mizrahi had done none of those things - he was not a religious fanatic but a man of science, and though perhaps not a morally perfect person, he was motivated not by apocalyptic fervor but simply the love of his family, especially his daughter. 

 

After achieving this cover-up, the conspirators went their separate ways.  Sellers was now free to pursue the Zohar project, but he had lost the true original Zohar in the Proto-Merkabah which was now orbiting Miltia in the Abyss.  He now only had the 12 Zohar emulators.  To continue his experiments he now made a cheap fake 13th Zohar out of spare parts.  But he also had an idea - in his mind, the problem with the U-Do contact in the past was that every human who made contact with U-Do went into "acute neurosis" - either they went into extreme horror and terror, and wanted to destroy U-Do, like Dmitri Yuriev, or they sank into themselves and became incommunicative like Sakura Mizrahi, or went into a coma like Aoi Uzuki, or they simply died like other unnamed contactees.  The problem, he felt, was human emotion.  What was necessary was a being incapable of human emotion, but nonetheless capable of compassion and altruism.  What was necessary, in short, was a Realian.  He chose Febronia's two clones, Cecily and Cathe, to be the test subjects.  They were captured and experimented upon against their will, and in the course of his experiments their bodies slowly deteriorated in a horrific way.

 

Many of the people of Miltia survived and evacuated to a new, recently terraformed planet, which was named Second Miltia.  The government of Second Miltia, for some reason, disguised its funding and activities as the "Kukai Foundation", which gradually became a distinct entity.  (Helmer was one of its founders.)  Second Miltia also became the headquarters of the U.M.N. as well as the second research division of Vector Industries.

 

Rubedo decided that he no longer believed in his father's ideology, and refused to release the Red Dragon.  It seems that developing Red Dragon to its fullest extent required going through puberty, so with the help of Second Miltia technology, Rubedo arrested his own growth, to remain in the body of a 12 year old, forever.  His younger brother, Negredo, who recovered completely from the blast wave, continued growing, and became an adult.  For the public, they decided that Negredo would adopt the name "Gaignun Kukai" and Rubedo, who appeared to be a child, would be called "Gaignun Kukai, Jr." or simply "Jr." for short (or "Little Master").  They became co-directors of the Kukai Foundation.  

 

At first the Kukai Foundation was a government project dedicated exclusively to stamping out the terrorist organization known as U-TIC, but as time went on, it grew and took on other goals.  It built a gigantic moving base where thou, which was, like the Salvator Faction, nominally dedicated to protecting the rights of enhanced humans, but without Dmitri Yuriev's baggage of wanting to kill God.  The Kukai Foundation was allied with the Galaxy Federation government and Vector Industries, whereas the Salvator Faction became allied with Ormus, the U-TIC organization, and the Hyams Group.

 

Kevin and Shion were among the survivors of Old Miltia who were relocated to Second Miltia.  (Apparently, Shion's parents also had a house on Second Miltia - maybe they went back and forth between the two planets, before Old Miltia was destroyed?)  (It is claimed that, like Shion, Kevin's parents were killed in the Miltian Conflict, but we saw his mother turn into a gnosis on Michtam - unless that was Old Miltia? But that doesn't make sense. Maybe this was part of the cover story?)  Kevin joined Vector Industries, where he impressed his superiors, who had no idea that he had ever had anything to do with Ormus and U-TIC.  Around the same time, Wilhelm bought out Vector and became its CEO - likewise, no one knew that he was a Cardinal in Ormus (he seems to have been maintaining multiple identities?).  When she came of age, Kevin helped Shion get a job there as well.  

 

KOS-MOS, T-ELOS, AND ANDREW CHERENKOV

 

At Vector, under Wilhelm's direction, Kevin developed an E.S. known as Dinah, with its own Vessel of Anima.  As Shion and Kevin worked together, they became closer and closer and eventually a deep romantic relationship bloomed between them.  For the first time in her life, Shion was in love. 

 

Not only did Kevin love Shion, he was changed by her.  He began to see hope, and a sense of morality, and to regret his former decisions.  He came to feel that men were intrinsically evil and guided only by their ambition and desire for power, whereas women were capable of something more, and so he sought to build a new creation, with a female form.  He discussed this with the leadership of Vector, who gave him the go-ahead.  

 

Okay stay with me, because this is a little complicated.  The official secret goal was to build a robot called T-elos, and toward that end, a series of two robots would be built: first the "KOS-MOS Archetype," and then KOS-MOS, which would be the prototype for T-elos.  But the the staff working on the KOS-MOS Archetype and then KOS-MOS would not know that they were actually developing a prototype for T-elos - they thought KOS-MOS would be the final model.  But - secrets within secrets - although Kevin told the leadership of Vector that this was his plan, he secretly, inwardly had a different plan: he would use KOS-MOS as a vessel to bring together the consciousness of Mary Magdalene, which still existed in the "Collective Subconscious". BUT, secrets within secrets within secrets, Wilhelm knew that Kevin was using KOS-MOS this way, and this was all according to his plan - indeed, he had planted the idea in Kevin's mind in the first place.  T-elos would be designed to be the true vessel of Mary Magdalene, and KOS-MOS would be only the temporary vessel for Mary's will.  BUT, secrets within secrets within... you get the idea... actually it was the plan all along for KOS-MOS to absorb T-elos, for some reason... I guess...?

 

Meanwhile, there was this guy named Andrew Cherenkov.  I've already mentioned him as someone who was created during the period of the Life Recycling Act, and he was designed to be a super-soldier, programmed to kill.  He fought in the Zoar Incident and the Miltian Conflict, and then was retired to civilian life on a planet called Ariadne.  But his killer instincts could not be suppressed, and he soon murdered someone (it's not clear who).  Then he was subjected to "Level 7 Personality Reconditioning".  Nanomachines were inserted into his spine and entered his brain, creating a Hebrew letter on his forehead.  This rendered him gentle, docile, obedient.  But his wife was only using him to have a child, and then became successful and could afford to have herself cloned, and so, having no use for him anymore, had an affair, and then when he found out, cruelly rubbed it in his face.  This pushed him over the edge, the nanomachines failed, and he murdered her.  So he was subjected to experimental and risky "Level 8 Personality Reconditioning" which caused him to completely forget who he was, at which point he was assigned a new identity and a new life.  But then he saw a woman he recognized, who called him garbage.  He murdered this young woman, who turned out to be his murdered wife's clone.  The authorities attempted to give him personality reconditioning again, but it failed - apparently his brain had developed a resistance to the procedure - and he murdered everyone at the lab who was attempting to wipe his brain.  At this point, Margulis took an interest in him, as a biologically enhanced supersoldier who couldn't be brainwashed, he could be very useful as an agent.  Margulis recruited him for U-TIC, which by now had completely transitioned into being a terrorist organization, pure and simple, secretly run by Ormus, which had retreated into the shadows.

Kevin secretly met with Andrew Cherenkov and gave him a device (very much resembling a game controller) which turned out to be a remote control for the KOS-MOS Archetype.  Then U-TIC soldiers invaded the Vector research lab on Second Miltia where Kevin and Shion were working.  At that moment, the KOS-MOS Archetype awoke, and went into battle mode, imprinting on Shion and protecting her at all costs.  The KOS-MOS Archetype went berzerk and started shooting at almost everyone, killing Kevin and several other Vector employees, but all the U-TIC terrorists as well, before eventually being shot down, herself.  Apparently, Andrew Cherenkov was attempting to use this version of KOS-MOS for a terrorist attack, but then he himself lost control and KOS-MOS's programming itself started to glitch out, without any moral grounding.

 

Shion was devastated.  Not only had she lost the man she loved, as well as many other people she worked with, but the project they had been working on for years had gone terribly wrong.  She sank into deep grief and depression.  At the same time, something had happened when the KOS-MOS Archetype first awoke - Shion not only was proud that her project was coming to fruition, but she felt a deep connection with KOS-MOS that she herself didn't fully comprehend.  She couldn't believe that KOS-MOS was evil.  She was conflicted, but when Vector decided to go ahead with the project despite this catastrophe, Shion agreed and insisted that she herself continue the work.  Accordingly, they promoted her to be their new chief researcher, and to lead a team, including Allen.  She had felt a fundamental moral goodness within KOS-MOS.  If only she was given enough time to train KOS-MOS on the difference between right and wrong, she felt confident that a problem like this would not happen again, and KOS-MOS could be a great asset to Vector and the Galaxy Federation in their war against the Gnosis.

 

Meanwhile, Kevin's extension in Imaginary Space separated from his physical body.  Wilhelm found him, and made him into the second Testament, the Red Testament.  In his Testament form, he came to pilot an E.S. known as Judah.

 

As already indicated, it was Kevin himself who had set this chain of events in motion.  Why?  It seems like he knew that he would die.  Maybe he wanted to die, so that he could become a Testament.  Maybe he wanted the connection between KOS-MOS and Shion to form, with KOS-MOS imprinted as Shion's protector.  Maybe he thought that if this happened, the maternal, protective instincts within KOS-MOS's circuitry would make her more effective as a vessel and attract the dissolute consciousness of Mary Magdalene to gather within herself.  Maybe he was being manipulated by Wilhelm.  Probably all of the above, though it certainly seems like a risky plan.

 

Following Kevin's blueprints, Shion and her team, including Allan, built a new body for KOS-MOS.  Also, apparently, some people (within her research team?) added some features to KOS-MOS that even Shion did not know about, such as a device for the Hilbert Effect, in her chest.

 

Meanwhile, somehow the Kukai Foundation manages to get ahold of the Zohar Emulators, all except one, which is lost...? 

 

THE THREE GAMES 

Whew!  Okay, that's most of the backstory - that brings us, more or less, up to the time when the main games start.

 

A very quick summary of the three games, skipping a lot:  

 

Shion and her team are working on KOS-MOS in a mobile lab aboard Federation starship Woglinde, when it comes across the lost Zohar Emulator, floating in space.  In reality, unbeknownst to them, Margulis had sent Commander Cherenkov to retrieve it, and he was using their ship to do so.  But once they bring the Zohar Emulator on board, it begins to attract Gnosis.

 

The Gnosis attack.  The Federation army takes control of the ship, including not only Cherenkov but also Lieutenant Luis Virgil.  Vector decides that KOS-MOS will be used in the fight against the gnosis immediately, despite Shion's objections - though she has been training KOS-MOS through the encephelon, she has not yet been able to teach KOS-MOS right from wrong, and fears that another catastrophe will occur, like the one that killed Kevin.  But KOS-MOS indeed awakens, and goes on a series of adventures with Shion - I won't list everything here.  But one thing that happens fairly early on is that KOS-MOS mercilessly murders Virgil, simply because he is in the way, when they are fighting against a gnosis to secure the lost Zohar Emulator.  At this point, Wilhelm finds Virgil's soul and turns him into the third Testament, the Blue Testament.  Later, they fight Cherenkov, who transforms into a giant Gnosis before they defeat him.

 

They bring the Zohar Emulator to where the other 11 Emulators are, on a Kukai Foundation ship called the Durandal.  Aboard are Negredo (now known as Gaignun Kukai), Rubedo (now known as Jr.), Mary, Shelley, and many 100-Series Realians.  Meanwhile, Ziggaraut-8 rescues Momo, who nicknames him "Ziggy".  Shion, KOS-MOS, Ziggy, Momo, chaos, and Jr. form a heroic team.  Later, they are joined by Jin and Canaan.

 

Albedo returns and manages to gain control of the Proto-Merkabah.  The gang manages to kill him, eventually, at which point Wilhelm renders him into the fourth and final Testament, the White Testament.

 

Patriarch Sergius XVII summons Proto-Omega, and the gang fight both of them, defeating Proto-Omega.  Then the Testaments arrive and murder Sergius, who dies shouting "I am all power!"  Now there is a power vacuum within Ormus, and Cardinal Wilhelm Heinlein soon takes over as the new Patriarch.  In a cut scene, we see Margulis apparently giving his assent to this shift in power before it happens, implying that it was all planned out ahead of time.  Margulis says he has "only one master" - interpret that as you will.

 

Also, apparently, at some point (???) Wilhelm has become the "Federation Executive Committee Director."  This means he is now in charge of Vector, Hyams, Ormus, U-TIC, and the entire Galaxy Federation - in other words, just about everything.  

 

Meanwhile, it turns out that when Nigredo (aka Gaignun) shot Dmitri Yuriev, he didn't really die... (maybe his consciousness continued to exist in some form on a computer? In the U.M.N.? In the Collective Subconscious?) and what's more, Gaignun has been in contact with him, seems to have somewhat reconciled with him, and is running the Kukai Foundation in accordance with Yuriev's wishes while Jr. goes off on his adventures.  But he still is somewhat resistant to some of Yuriev's demands.  So Yuriev invades Gaignun's body, possessing him so to speak, and suppressing Gaignun's (i.e. Nigredo's) own personality.

Yuriev, in Nigredo's body, tells Jr. that Albedo plans to contact U-Do, and that Jr. must stop him by "eliminat[ing] the target." Jr. assures him that he'll make Albedo pay.  Nigredo manages to gain control of his body to tell Jr. not to trust what Yuriev is saying, but too late - the call has already ended.  In Gaignun's body, Yuriev gains control of the Zohar project and oversees the building of Omega Res Novae and the Merkabah. 

 

Shion finds out that the apparent competition between Vector and Hyams is an illusion, that they are in collusion, connected to Ormus.  She resigns from Vector and joins Scientia, so Allen becomes the chief researcher at Vector.  (A character named Doctus appears.  Doctus is a mechanical body being operated remotely by a real human. There's a fan theory that this is actually Melisse, though this has never been confirmed.)

 

Through a series of adventures and the progression of her "illness," Shion recovers her memory of summoning the Gnosis on Old Miltia.  The recovery of this memory is, itself a form of trauma, leading to its own emotional devastation, and during this one, like the earlier one, her trauma manifests as herself contacting U-Do and summoning something into the (physical) universe from Imaginary Space.  But this time, instead of Gnosis, what Shion summons is Abel's Ark - something that looks like a gnosis, but which is the size of an entire star system.  

 

THE END 

 

I think it's worth discussing the end of the third game in a bit more detail. 

 

Somehow, the gang winds up back at Michtam.  How is this possible?  Wasn't Michtam destroyed?  A few possibilities: maybe Michtam wasn't totally destroyed - it just became uninhabitable after the Zohar was misused and gnosis began to emerge.  Or maybe Shion and the gang went back in time to before it was destroyed?  Or maybe there's something more abstract going on... a memory, or a continued existence in the "Collective Subconscious".... or... something.

 

In any case, on Michtam, the gang defeats Pelligri, the gang defeats T-elos and KOS-MOS absorbs her, and the gang defeats the 4 Testaments.  Along the way, Kevin attempts to convince Shion to join his side, and for a time, she is willing to join him, so the rest of the gang has to fight Kevin and Shion.  Presumably, the reason Shion is willing to join Kevin is not only because she loves him but also because she is strongly feeling the effects of the "acute neurosis" of U-Do contact - this is indicated by the fact that she keeps saying that she feels none of her friends are helping her.  In any case, they (especially KOS-MOS) win her back over - perhaps the deep emotional connection between KOS-MOS and Shion was the key that allows a person to have a successful contact with U-Do? - and defeat Kevin and the rest of the Testaments.

 

Now the gang faces Wilhelm, who has Abel and Abel's Ark, the original Zohar and all of Mizrahi's Zohar Emulators, and most importantly, Zarathustra, which he has reprogrammed to reset the universe.  With a snap of his fingers, he brings all 12 E.S.s before him.  He says that they [presumably the Vessels of Anima] have all "awakened".  He removes the Vessels from the E.S.s, at which point their bodies crumple like puppets whose strings have been cut.  The Vessels of Anima, as shining points of light, all orbit Zarathustra.  He tells Shion to start up Zarathustra with her "key".  

Shion refuses, and he says, Yes, I expected that.  You chose to give up your time with Kevin.  "You are intoxicated by that narcissism.  Such an incredibly human choice."

 

He reveals to Shion, KOS-MOS, and chaos their true identities.  He also reveals that his plan is to "cover the eyes of God" [i.e. Abel and Abel's Ark] to "remove his influence from this world" and use Zarathustra to reset the universe.  He also says that when Shion uses her "key," Mary [i.e. KOS-MOS] will usher "wills" into Zarathustra.  It seems that he assumes that he has some kind of mind-control ability over Mary.  He says that wills have come from all across the universe to enter Zarathustra.  "They all reject the world as it is now and long for days long past."  He then clarifies that he means the Gnosis, which are wills that choose to "return everything to the beginning."

 

What he means by the "key" is slightly ambiguous.  Using the Compas of Order and Chaos, he causes Shion to levitate and begins to torture her.  He seems to be drawing something out of her - some kind of energy, which is being absorbed by the compas.  Visually, it becomes clear that the "key" that Wilhelm seeks is the pendant on the necklace given to her by Kevin.  But in the dialogue, he says "I only need her desire to use the Key.  Even if I have to force her."

 

This is a clever paradox on several levels, tying into the game's themes of free will and determinacy.  If he "forces" her, then is it really her "desire"?  Maybe!  He's trying to torture so intensely that she will give up and consent to restart the universe to avoid this pain.  But if she does give in, then the universe will play out again, exactly as it did before, leading her right back to this spot, where she will be tortured again - eternally, in the eternal recurrence.  Therefore, to avoid this torture, she must accept this torture.

 

All the other characters are apparently incapacitated by Wilhelm, and cannot help her.  All except KOS-MOS, that is....

 

Wilhelm tells Mary/KOS-MOS "Mary, I forbid you to interfere, understand?"  Mary/KOS-MOS replies, "Nhh..." as if she is somehow forced to obey his wishes - the look on her face seems to imply that she accepts that it is her moral duty not to interfere, as much as it pains her.  Allen, uncomprehendingly screams at Mary to stop Wilhelm.  Welhelm replies, "You're wasting your breath.  Mary understands what must be done to save the universe."  Is the idea here that Mary/KOS-MOS is programmed to protect Shion at all costs, and since Shion exists in this universe, to protect Shion she must protect the universe, and at this point the only way to save the universe is to cause it to reset itself - otherwise, with the Gnosis breaking down the boundary between Real Space and Imaginary Space, chaos/Yahweh will destroy the universe?

 

There's a cut to a different scene, in which Shion is at home enjoying a glass of wine.  Kevin walks in, partially naked, and tells Shion that "It's alright."  Cut back to this world, where Kevin is saying the same thing.  Shion asks, "Kevin, are you there?  Help me, please, help me!"  Kevin, overcome with passion, cuts off Wilhelm's hand, thus releasing Shion from her torture.  Wilhelm is undeterred - he says that everything is progressing as expected, including Kevin's act of betrayal.  Now he goes back to absorbing the life-energy (or whatever it is) from not only Shion but Kevin as well.  Then he orders Mary to bring Shion to him.  "Shion will continue to suffer eternally.  You're the only one who can release her from her pain."  Against Allen and Kevin's objections, KOS-MOS begins to obey, carrying Shion to him in a pose that is reminiscent of the pieta.  "That's right," says Wilhelm, "This fate has been destined from the time you sealed the Anima.  How does it feel to be betrayed by someone you once trusted, Shion?  In order to save you, Mary intends to ignore your will and activate Zarathustra."  KOS-MOS tears the necklace off of Shion's neck and seems to offer it to Wilhelm... but then, at the last minute, she squeezes her hand together and crushes the pendant, destroying it.  

 

Wilhelm is taken aback: "You fool! Now the universe will be utterly destroyed.  Is this what you wanted, Mary?"  But KOS-MOS, her eyes red, replies, "I am not Mary.  I am KOS-MOS."  

 

What happens next is a little difficult to see.  That "life-energy" or whatever that had been coming out of Shion and Kevin now seems to be going in to Wilhelm - the light is so bright it's hard to tell what is lighting up- perhaps his wrist, where his hand was cut off?  Or maybe his heart.  Or maybe Kevin is stabbing him in the back?  In any case, Kevin chooses this moment to attack, both physically and verbally, telling Wilhelm that humanity has rejected both Wilhelm and Kevin.  Wilhelm think this is impossible, that humanity is not strong enough to reject him.  But Kevin delivers a speech praising humanity and our heroic desire to go forward on that "thread," knowing that one day the universe will be destroyed and there's no going back.  Wilhelm denies that humanity is capable of this, and just then chaos pipes up saying that maybe we are - the universe is more flexible than Wilhelm thinks, and even now, ripples of change are expanding through the universe.  In the ensuing dialogue, it's implied that chaos will challenge his own fate resisting his own tendency to destroy the universe, with the help of his friends.

 

Just then, Zarathustra goes out of control and absorbs the bodies of several E.S.s and forms a gigantic battle robot.  The gang tells Wilhelm to shut it off, but Wilhelm says, If I did, what would you do with all this energy?  What will you do with countless wills that reject each other and have nowhere to go?  

 

Sacrificing himself, Kevin absorbs a huge amount of energy and pulls both himself and Wilhelm into an immense light, never to be seen again.

 

The gang defeats the giant robot.   Yay!

 

In the same white space where Kevin and Wilhelm disappeared, Nephilim asks a crouching Abel: "So, is that your wish?"  He nods. They emerge into dimensional space.  Chaos asks, "So, it's decided?"  Nephilim explains that yes, all of this is being caused by the Gnosis, the wills, which are gathering into Zarathustra.  She will gather those wills into herself, and dimensionally shift this space (Michtam) back to Lost Jerusalem (Earth).  She tells them that they cannot stop the dissipation of the universe, but that the potential of your (Shion's? humanity's?) will is unlimited - if humanity has enough "time to build upon your feelings" - time which Abel and Nephilim will provide them.

 

Chaos tells the rest of the gang to escape, because this dimensional shift will cause the present space they are in to cease to exist.  He tells Shion that he, Abel, and Nephilim, will do something to slow down the dissipation of the universe.  Then the universe will have, at best, a few tens of thousands of years before it dissipates.  But the key to saving the universe in a more permanent way lies on Lost Jerusalem (Earth).  The wills (i.e. the Gnosis) will all return there, together with himself.  Her tells her "You must do what must be done in this universe, and then come find Lost Jerusalem."

 

Shion and KOS-MOS have a farewell scene.  Interestingly, during this time, KOS-MOS speaks with the full emotional inflection of Mary, yet her eyes are red, like KOS-MOS.  [Perhaps her personality has reached a full Jungian integration?]  Then Shion and the rest of the gang get on board Jin's E.S., Asher, and leave KOS-MOS, chaos, Nephilim, and Abel behind.

 

KOS-MOS apparently now has the full power of Mary, and can release chaos's full power (the power of Anima).  She releases a kind of spirit body of herself (Mary), who gathers the 12 points (formerly the Vessels of Anima from the E.S.s and reforms the spirit body of chaos (i.e., Yeshua).  The spirit body of Mary seems to give something (presumably Anima) to Yeshua, and then holding hands, these figures descend to the physical bodies.  Yeshua enters chaos, but instead of KOS-MOS, Mary enters Nephilim.  

 

"Wandering wills, come to the cradle within me!"  The original Zohar rises up out of Zarathustra.  The Gnosis all are pulled toward the planet's surface. Abel's Ark, which now resembles a crucifix, seems to open a giant hole in the fabric of space-time.  Entire planets fall in.  Apparently, the shockwave wipes out the entire U.M.N..

 

But the Gnosis refuse to go in. They're terrified.  

 

Shion is with Jin and the others, aboard their spacecraft, escaping.  She's worried that if the Gnosis refuse, they may attack KOS-MOS and the others down inside.  She insists that Jin turn around, go back, and save them.  But Jin refuses.  The mission of saving the universe is too important.  But he finds a compromise: Shion and the others will escape on the Elsa, but he, personally, will go back in Asher and fight. 

 

As they escape, Jin sacrifices himself in battle, saving chaos and the others.  (Allen also proves himself a capable warrior, and seems to mature.)  KOS-MOS also collides with a gigantic Gnosis, seemingly destroying herself.  Chaos and Nephilim (containing Mary's spirit body) cause something to enter the mind of Abel, and the three of them disappear in a white-golden flash of light, which spreads out, engulfing Abel's Ark and several planets.  The voices of chaos and Jin seem to awaken something in Shion's mind, giving her the idea for the way out.  Apparently chaos is protecting this "column" or path.  To the tune of Wagner, Shion and the others aboard the Elsa escape by the skin of their teeth.  

 

Momo and Scientia begin to create a new network to replace the U.M.N..  Ziggy and Juli take care of her, as a family, while Shion, Allen, and Jr. go in search of Lost Jerusalem.  Shion has a brief reverie with a lot of philosophical musings that are worth getting into in depth, and then the credits roll.  As the credits roll, we see that chaos and KOS-MOS still exist, floating out in space.  KOS-MOS is "asleep".  At the very end, we see Lost Jerusalem - Earth - and it's not a single point, it's full size.  Apparently, Wilhelm's "spell" wore off when he disappeared into the light - or maybe he deliberately allowed the Earth to come back, some time before?  A lunar eclipse has just ended, the sun is rising, and the Earth now has rings.  KOS-MOS seems either to be in orbit around it, or falling to its surface.