Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Assuming that the hair is genetic and rare in Caelondia it is not out of the question that it is rare because it's a primarily Ura trait brought in by the limited number of refugees. That would also explain why it was a source of disapproval and anger among Caels, he is the symbol of intermixing with the enemy. It may also explain the lack of a father, it's not uncommon in times of war for soldiers to take comfort in local girls and promise to marry them only to leave them high and dry with an illegitimate child. Finally who else would the very egocentric Caels steal from and possibly murder? An Ura living in there midst, a frail old women.
- My guess is high-school drop-out, serving a four-year second tour. 17 + 5 + 4 = 26
- I'm going to go with a younger age, the world of Bastion seems to be in the industrial age, where it is not uncommon for a kid at the age of 12 to leave school. Give him 9 years of service, that puts him at 21 for the game, plenty young to be called "Kid."
- That was how I took it, too...but I figured he'd spent closer to a year or two into his second tour of duty, making him more like 19, tops.
- Why does he have to had dropped out during high school? He might've dropped out at age five, and been 14 by the events of Bastion.
- He was patrolling the walls of the city, and probably actively fighting off threats - Rucks implies that no one had ever signed up for more than five years on the Walls, most likely because it's dangerous. I can see him being as young as fourteen or fifteen when he signed up, but it's difficult to imagine a child younger than that being strong enough to scout for days and fight off dangers with a hammer.
This could easily suggest that while The Bastion's true function actually works, its intent fails miserably, both in that it will never be able to truly erase the Calamity and that there is no way to inform the past of this fact, causing a recursive loop until someone breaks it.
- Or, due to Zulf's destroying of the monument, the Kid's failure to get a few cores and shards, and the Ura's attacks on it The Bastion will never have the power to send the survivors all the way back into the past before the calamity. Even in New game +, Rucks will make comments about already saying things or having deja vu on saying them, so the memory function is at least partly functional just like the time travel part, sadly they will never enough power to go back far enough, and thus be stuck in the loop till the kid breaks it.
- Because of this, one could say that the characters are doomed to be trapped in a time loop for as many times as the player chooses to rewind time, the loop only broken when they finally decide to leave the Calamity in place.
- However, another theory could be the Calamity CAN be prevented through repeated timelines, but each time you replay the game, that is the product of a 'failed' timeline wherein the incremental changes where not enough to prevent it. The only way to go back and prevent the Calamity from ever occurring will be from the very game where you choose to reset the world and then, rather than starting a New Game Plus, never play that game file again.
- However, Rucks is old enough to have come by his white hair honestly.
- A oneliner that renders the white hair point moot is that Rucks explicitly says that "he got it off his mother" and the way Rucks talks certainly implies that he never had those problems. This means that white hair definitely isn't something that the Kid got off Rucks, but doesn't elimate Rucks as his dad definitively.
- Always thought all Caelondians had white hair.
- And we're specifically told that "everybody on official business for the City carries the Star of Caelondia," so that's not so useful.
- The question then becomes, since the Crest protected The Kid, and probably causes the "land forming under his feet" effect ("there's a bit of the Bastion's power in the Crest," Rucks tells us), why didn't anybody else's Crest work like that?
- The Kid survived because he was scouting the outer edges of the Wall, not because of the crest. Zia and Zulf survive because they sheltered in Ura Dens. Only Rucks' survival is unexplained in the game. Presumably, anyone's crest would work, as long as they survived the Calamity.
- Rucks was able to survive due to already being at the bastion before the calamity happened. The restoration ending which shows the survivors what they were doing before the calamity, shows him next to the monument.
- The question then becomes, since the Crest protected The Kid, and probably causes the "land forming under his feet" effect ("there's a bit of the Bastion's power in the Crest," Rucks tells us), why didn't anybody else's Crest work like that?
- Somewhat related: the first time I heard about the Bastion's time travel powers, I almost immediately thought Rucks would turn out to be Kid himself, stuck in a time loop.
- "He reminds me of myself when I was his age."
- No, he's the son of Mithra. The white hair skipped a generation.
- After all, the player is sure to pick up that the reset didn't work and since he's an extension of the player...
- Heck, even without the Kid remembering, it's clear that some variables are randomized since everything doesn't go exactly the same. Provided there was any chance at all of him choosing the second option, do that enough times and you're bound to get it eventually.
- Don't be so negative about that - After all, the background during the Evacuation ending shows the party sailing, Sky Pirate style, towards a small town on the edge of a large, probably solid landmass. Personally, I think that they fly the Bastion back to the Cael homeland. Set their sails and fly back to home, sweet home, and then dock that thing right on their doorstep, so to speak.
- Not to mention that hey, an awful lot of Ura survived the Calamity and it was specifically designed to kill all of them. Granted, they did this by burrowing underground, but surely some people farther from Caledonia would do even better.
- Also, it should be noted that the Calamity is specifically described to only have targeted Ura, with Caelondia added in at the last minute. Assuming that these aren't the only two countries in the world, then presumably the rest of the world is untouched by the Calamity.
- The Calamity was sabotaged to "blow up in their faces," which I interpreted to mean that it actually affected Caelondia more than the Ura; this certainly jives with the number of Ura we eventually see compared to the number of Cael survivors. Still, the point stands that if so many Ura made it, lands even further away would fare even better.
- It's almost explicitly stated that Caelondia is a colony, presumably on a different continent then the Cael homeland. Since distances are never mentioned, and the only other city (If it can be called that) Kid visits is the Tazal Terminals, it seems fairly reasonable that only a (relatively) small area of the world was affected. After all, the Calamity gun was just a weapon of mass destruction, not a full-fledged doomsday weapon.
Meanwhile think about Zia's motives; before the calamity every Caelondian she knew either mistrusted her, played with her feelings and stabbed her in the back or otherwise gave her nothing but Fantastic Racism. While it's possible she didn't hold a grudge (since she was culturally Caelondian anyway), keep in mind that her song/theme is basically (well, see my next WMG, but still) a threat aimed at Caelondia from the Ura. Therefore it's possible that when she slipped away to investigate what Zulf told her, she disregarded her harp for being Caelondian, met the other Ura with the intention of betraying The Kid and Rucks to them, realised that they were still jerkasses (given how well their meeting went) and decided to side with The Kid when he turned up to rescue her.
- I think Zia's statements around the end sort of imply otherwise. She saw what happened since the end of the calamity in a largely positive light. It's unlikely that if she only joined the Kid because she found out that the Ura were just as bad, that she'd really want to stick around for skypiracy with him. There's also a huge difference between disliking a people and nation that discriminate against you and planning to destroy the efforts of a pair of them desperately trying to survive. Where Zulf saw things from a larger diplomatic perspective [having lived as an Ura and an ambassador], Zia's problems were all internal to Caelondia; she might have had a romanticized picture of them in her head but she didn't have a reason to sell out the two who helped save her to the Ura.
- There's validity to this but it misses the critical element of the Caelondians. Caelondia suffers from Hubris, turning the Gods into toys. From this point of view, Caelondia is basically a big tower of Babel; they're building walls to reach the Gods and sooner or later it's all going to blow up in their face whether or not the Ura do anything about it. While the Caelondians are trying to build their great civilization and suffering from the whole Hubris of man, the Ura are living in a humble and maintainable way. The message, "We'll be there before too long" can be taken to either mean "When you collapse and are just a hiccup of history, we'll move back in and pick up where we left of". However just as easily, it could be a sign of mending branching and friendliness, which better fits Zia's role to the heroes; When everything collapses, we'll be there to pick it up and help start over.
This is a theory I saw represented in the main page, but it's not here so I'll add it. The logic goes that the song is indeed talking about how the Ura are going to come and wipe out Caelondia in spite of the Rippling Walls... but if Zia is from Caelondia, where would she learn a song like that? When you first begin to hear it at Prosper Bluff, Rucks says "there the Kid hears something he ain't heard in a long while. How's it go again? Yeah, that's the one." Indicating the Kid's heard the song before, and implying he himself has as well, so where did they ever learn it? The song wasn't written by the Ura, it's form Caelondia. So it's not the Ura saying "OMG we're so badass and we're gonna beat you," it's the Cael saying "OMG the Ura are so scary and we're all doomed." Not to mention, this ties in perfectly with how the Calamity was caused by an attempt to stave off the threat of the Ura, while the Ura were actually trying to make peace; and with how Caelondian-raised Ura like Zia aren't allowed to have contact with their homeland, so neither side knows all that much about the other. To the Cael, the Ura are like some mythic boogeyman, ambassadors be damned.
- It doesn't really sound like it's from a Caelondian perspective, though - it's basically saying that all their effort to build their walls and cities are for nought, without really going into what the Ura would do to them; it's more about demoralizing rather than demonizing people. Considering Rucks says that Zia "took to studyin' arts. Learned more from music than from history books", it's probably an old Ura song that was widely sung after the war, found its way into Caelondia through Ura immigrants like Zia's father, and then sought out and learnt by Zia who was eager to discover more about her heritage in spite of her father's silence. Also, if it was meant as anti-Ura propaganda it would have been sung a lot more in the run up to the calamity - the fact that the Kid hasn't heard it in a long time implies it's not that popular among Caelondians, which makes more sense if it's an Ura song.
- Wait a minute. If The Kid gets preserved in each Restoration, how did we end up with two? Also, Rucks advises The Kid in the game... if he knew that much, wouldn't he have fixed the problem when he was still young enough to get around?
- It's an interesting enough theory that could be salvaged as Rucks is the Kid from an early run of the Bastion from a timeline where the Ura really did overrun Caelondia. Or some other tragedy occurred where he was the sole survivor. In this instance, the Bastion sent him further back than the later cases and things played out differently, so that he managed to delay things a while and grow old why trying to ensure the peace. The Kid this time around is doing much the same but until he manages to push back the tragedy even farther, the same characters will keep looping over and over. The main issue with this is that Rucks doesn't seem to identify with the Kid's past which, mysterious and unreliable as his narration is seems odd if he is infact the kid.
- That doesn't explain why there are two of them. If Rucks is older than the Kid because he was "sent back further," then there would also be two versions of Zia and Zulf, except they would be identical twins. Not to mention that if that's how the Bastion works, there would be an extra version of everybody for each time time is rewound - which is implied to be several times, and the player can make it so by their actions - not merely two. (In other words, if the Kid is sent back and becomes Rucks, then what happens to the older Rucks in the "new" timeline, or Zia and Zulf for that matter?)
- It's an interesting enough theory that could be salvaged as Rucks is the Kid from an early run of the Bastion from a timeline where the Ura really did overrun Caelondia. Or some other tragedy occurred where he was the sole survivor. In this instance, the Bastion sent him further back than the later cases and things played out differently, so that he managed to delay things a while and grow old why trying to ensure the peace. The Kid this time around is doing much the same but until he manages to push back the tragedy even farther, the same characters will keep looping over and over. The main issue with this is that Rucks doesn't seem to identify with the Kid's past which, mysterious and unreliable as his narration is seems odd if he is infact the kid.
- Alternately, The Kid is Arthur Eld.
- I consider this canon simply because I imagined Ruck saying "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
- When choosing the Cael Hammer/Army Rifle combo he comments that this is his own favourite set from the past. Given that both weapons seem to be EXCLUSIVE for a particular guild (The Masons and Triggers respectively) it's possible that he worked his turn on the Walls, then enrolled into the Army.
- But Rucks also designed the Walls. Which is kind of weird since he was a soldier in the war yet was already engineering major infrastructure for the city, and that's if we avoid how old he'd have to be then.
- That isn't as odd as it sounds. As it says on The Engineer, before a certain point in history all engineers were military engineers. It's quite possible that the project to build the walls was spearheaded by the Triggers and the Masons (Rucks among their ranks) split off as an engineering corps (since every other public service branch seemed to be militarised).
- When choosing the Cael Hammer/Army Rifle combo he comments that this is his own favourite set from the past. Given that both weapons seem to be EXCLUSIVE for a particular guild (The Masons and Triggers respectively) it's possible that he worked his turn on the Walls, then enrolled into the Army.
- That's horrible. And probably true.
Gon' build that wall until it's done/but now you've got nowhere to runandSo build that wall and build it strong 'cos/We'll be there before too long
So the Ura took on a target too big for them and lost in the end. Of course, it's hinted at that Caelondia was a colony of an empire somewhere far away, so the Ura had good reason to want to attack them, but it sparked widespread fear and hatred of the Ura that made a weapon that could cause the Calamity something that the people would want. It's possible everything could have been avoided if the Ura had just left the Caels alone.
- Technically possible, yes, but suggesting it would have been a good idea is like suggesting the Native Americans should have rolled over and let the Europeans slaughter them and drive them off their lands. Bastion is fantasy, sure, but it's not so fantastic that it contains human beings who take kindly to that sort of un-neighborly behavior.
- Rucks outright states it in his narration. While he does generally paint the Caelondians in a good light, the fact that he admits a few minutes later that they were building railways over their lands [which you later find out are subterranean implying that they may have been causing cave ins], it seems pretty reasonable to assume that this was the cause of war and the Ura are ready to take back lands taken from them by Caelondian settlers.
- Also this fails to address the sparking event of the Calamity. Rucks states that Venn was forced to "press the button," but we're never told of any Ura attack that led to that decision. Basically the Caelondians fired a nuke at a neighboring people who had surrendered to them.
- I'm not sure this makes a huge amount of sense, but it wouldn't surprise me if beneath the Monument (the bit where the Kid can choose which Protocol to implement at the end) was the business end of the full-scale Calamity Cannon. Having a rewind button on your WMD and a safe place from which to activate it and watch the fireworks are both fantastic design decisions.
- That seems a bit like launching a nuclear missile from a fallout shelter. Granted, this is done, but it severely jeopardizes your "safe haven" to make it the one place the enemy would need to attack first. Especially since it doesn't seem to be very well defended.
- Only issue is that it is a massive design flaw to put a rewind button on a weapon to the point that is just after it is used. Ruckus could maybe be exaggerating his role and not understand as much as he lets on [maybe he is only a grunt after all and the Mancer stuff is made up] but I can't understand why anyone would set it up like that. It's possible Zia's dad did it while sabotaging the weapon. Don't know how Ruckus having a deathwish would put him anywhere near the monument though.
- Venn is the genius who devised the Calamity. Rucks worked on it but didn't get anywhere, instead focusing on the Bastion. They're two separate things, made by two separate individuals. And since Venn set the Calamity to "blow up in their faces," it seems like the Bastion should have been more ravaged than anything.
- Rucks said himself that they can't test it, though, so perhaps the Mancers never realised it'd work that way. And they didn't have much chance to do extensive research what with the events leading up to the Calamity; time was running out as far as they knew, so they had to just strap on a prototype solution and set it running. Not to mention the rewinding of time was probably an afterthought; they didn't realise the thing was sabotaged and as far as they were concerned they were just going to wipe out the Ura scum - the potential to undo it wasn't the most important thing to them at the time. Which makes me think:
- The voice on the Transistor isn't a built-in feature, but a man who has been assimilated, and somehow took over the weapon instead of just becoming a function like every other assimilated person. Red knew the man when he was still human.
The Aperture sentry turret was right. After the calamity all the human characters died off, along with most of the wildlife, leaving only the creatures you see in Half-Life, who live in a different part of the continent than you see in the game. Whatever sent the turret also sent it back in time to before all this happened.
There's a city (Caldonia). There's a man (the Kid). And the Bastion's the lighthouse
Decades/centuries pass and the Ura rebuild themselves, renaming themselves to Darcsens in the process, the Caelondian survivors become the (mostly) normal people that inhabit most of Europa and the Cael discover smaller quantities of a material that is termed ragnite either by them or the newly encountered Darcsens, discovering that several members of their race possessed mutations that allowed them to metabolize the miraculous substance. A side effect of this mutation is premature albinism.
The Cael eventually find out that an Ura were responsible for the utter destruction of one of their most prosperous colonies, and they wage a bloody war of revenge that ruins both great nations.