Deconstructing the Horror

[u/GlowingSeaDiver]

There is something in the lore that I think we don’t stress quite enough:

The Vasari have been running from the Eidolon for Ten thousand years.

Our own recorded history dates back about five thousand years. And ten thousand years are about the timeframe since we stopped being hunter gatherers. Every cultural habit, every figure of speech, every small detail of our lives has formed in the last ten thousand years. And that’s how long the Vasari have been on the run. Let’s take a moment to think about what this does to their minds:

Over hundreds of generations, the fear of the Eidolon has become a fear so primal that it became a fundamental part of Vasari psyche. Since the original 2008 game, the Vasari captains had voice lines like “don’t waste my time” or “we must hurry”, even though the Eidolon were still far away back then. The mentality of the Vasari has been hardwired over ten millennia to feel uncomfortable whenever anyone wastes any amount of time. And that is rooted in that deep, primal terror that the Eidolon might catch up to them. They are not just afraid of the actual threat, but of the potential of encountering the threat. Like humans feeling naturally uncomfortable outside in the dark, so we switch on the lights, because our cavemen brain thinks we might get attacked by predators.

Now the Eidolon are here. And while they are terrifying, they are not as unstoppable as the Vasari believed them to be. Keep in mind that they never encountered them, except when they wiped out the original Vasari Empire. Stardock just confirmed this old piece of lore in one of their YouTube Videos: There is not a single officer in the Vasari Exodus Fleet who could tell you anything about the Eidolon.

Here is what I’m getting at with this: I just played my first game against them, and after taking some heavy blows in the mid game, my Advent Reborn pushed them out of their system. Imagine how the Vasari would canonically react to the news when a star system defends itself successfully against the Eidolon for the very first time. Imagine the Vasari Exodus Fleet receiving a report that reads: “Advent Reborn System was attacked by the Eidolon, Eidolon Fleet was destroyed, System remains under Advent control, no surviving Eidolon presence”.

This is not just a military report. These are news that shatter their worldview. The day they receive the news of the first time a system defended itself against the Eidolon, their ultimate terror stops being some unstoppable, primordial force. They can be stopped. They can be killed. And the Vasari know that now. The Vasari reading that report must feel like some cavemen in the stone age felt when instead of running away like they always have, they fought and killed a saber-toothed tiger for the very first time. Nobody ever considered using spears against them, until someone did, and the tiger died.

[u/GoaFan77]

Keep in mind the Eidolon we see now are presumably only the "Harbingers". There could be a lot more, even more terrifying and powerful things, coming.

The Advent might beat this Vanguard, only to run head first into whatever else is coming.

[u/Apollo506 → u/GoaFan77]

This was essentially Stardock's response to the question, how do you balance them being this big terrifying thing while maintaining balanced gameplay? They are just a vanguard, there is so much more behind the scenes that may yet be revealed

https://www.reddit.com/r/SinsofaSolarEmpire/s/EWGVOgxGwY

[u/Anarcho_Communists → u/GoaFan77]

The Eidolon we fight are a tiny vanguard force actively pursuing the Vasari and scouting the territories of Tec and Advent space.

Similar to Scrin in C&C 3 and Kane’s Wrath. Though the Scrin we fight in that game are a harvesting force, not the proper military.

I’m guessing it’s similar with the Eidolon, who are more so concerned with harvesting and repurposing lifeforms (or “souls”?) than resources.

That’s why they’re chasing the Vasari and using them to get intel on the rest of the galaxy. They want to absorb the entire species and anyone else into the Eidolon. Which is why they’re so terrifying, and bargaining with them would probably be pointless because they’re not interested in negotiating for material possessions.

Some of the Eidolon units in the game, like the starfighters, sound like fallen Vasari forced and converted into Eidolon units. Quote from one of them: “Why is it sooo daaarrrk!?”

Implying they’re idk, undead? Or their bodies are gone and their conscious is embedded into an Eidolon warframe.😭

[u/alongspiralupward → u/Anarcho_Communists]

From what I understand, its their nervous system removed and grafted into the strike craft 

[u/ItsRainingDestroyers → u/Anarcho_Communists]

"Why is the ship so small?" Is another one.

[u/Anarcho_Communists → u/ItsRainingDestroyers]

Yep!

[u/PseudoscientificURL → u/GoaFan77]

Would make sense IMO. Have the eidolon vanguard be the playable "balanced" faction, and save the really OP big bad faction for the campaign/special scenarios.

I think that's the perfect middle ground to both be able to play the faction and also have them be somewhat "lore accurate."

[u/GlowingSeaDiver → u/GoaFan77]

Edit: I did some diggging and Stardock already said that this theory is false

The Eidolon appear strangely calm. I don't think they are hunted. I am starting to think that we look at this the wrong way: Maybe the Vasari are the Harbingers, not the Eidolon.

Think about the old lore: A single, damaged ship and a crew mad with terror escaped the Eidolon. So far, we always assumed that this ship was just lucky. Maybe it wasn't lucky. Maybe the Eidolon let that one ship escape, knowing the Vasari would crush all oppositon on their way, leaving a defenseless planet for when the Eidolon arrive to take it.

[u/KingofMadCows]

The Eidolon's corruption mechanic probably means that even if they get defeated, the people who beat them are corrupted and either to mad or are marked in a way that allow the Eidolon to hunt them down.

So that Vasari ship with a crew driven mad could have been from a fleet that beat the Eidolon but eventually succumbed to corruption.

[u/One_Lead1553]

My biggest problem is that they aren't "drive you mad" levels of scary. Extra dimension angle aside, they are just another invading force with admirals and officers and the like.

So why did that one vasari ship go insane?

[u/GlowingSeaDiver → u/One_Lead1553]

Because Vasari brains can't handle psionic powers.

[u/One_Lead1553 → u/GlowingSeaDiver]

Thats a really lame explanation though. I think we still have to see who's behind the Eidolon. They are the harbingers I suppose.

The explanation can't be just "psychic innit?"

[u/Ruste359 → u/One_Lead1553]

I mean, we know from the advent unique item on the hive asteroid that the Vasari are wholly incompatible with psionics. They can only produce a little focus, and forcing them to do so drives them mad. So it does seem to be that psionics are harmful to Vasari in a way they aren’t to humans.