Helldivers (2015) veterans have been warning for some time that we have yet to see humanity’s most implacable enemy. While the Terminids and Automata are fearsome, they are nothing compared to the Enlightened Ones. In evolutionary terms, they are much more advanced than all those mentioned: robots, bugs and humans.
Many of us believed that The illuminated They would knock on our galactic door after the first great Automaton defeat. However, Arrowhead Game Studios had other plans: they announced that we defeated an advance party and a huge fleet arrived just a few hours later. Since then, the galactic war has been escalating on both fronts.
The story so far: Automata, Terminids… and The Illuminati
The Automaton Front has given us sweat, blood, and new Stratagems like the Exo-49 Emancipator Exosuit mecha. On the other hand, the Terminated front has only given them headaches and perhaps that was SuperTierra’s main motivation for making a radical decision: to completely destroy a planet, an action that the official report itself indicated as irreversible.
Meridia was part of a planetary defense wall. It became home to a super colony of Terminids due to the toxic gases we deployed over several days using large towers and defense missions. They mutated and grew stronger, so SuperEarth made the decision to pressure the planet’s critical mass through injections of dark fluid.
Result of our actions? Meridia imploded. No longer exists. It has gone from being a planet to a huge black hole. At the time of writing these words, any helldiver can travel to the site with his destroyer to marvel at the darkness and purple hues of the great hole.
The arrival of The Illuminati: who are they and why should you fear them?
Who are The Illuminati? Why should we expect them to use the Meridia black hole to reach our galaxy? The Helldivers 2 community is almost taking it for granted, so I want to prepare you in case this time we get the plans of Joel, Game Master at Arrowhead Game Studios right. Luckily, we have a lot of information thanks to the Encyclopedia of Helldivers (2015).
The Enlightened Ones are an extraterrestrial or alien race far superior to humans, bugs and robots. It is extremely sophisticated (they dress in elegant ceremonial robes) and very old, enough to have technology much more developed than humans. Their origin is aquatic and they called themselves Kal’Mar. Some veterans compare them to the Eldar of Warhammer 40K.
They are also far ahead of humans in evolutionary terms. They managed to create a huge and complex neural network to develop space travel. They are a race that is connected to each other even across galaxies, which shows that they are very intelligent and value information. This shows that they are a formidable enemy in an open war.
They are very far from being peaceful and, in terms of weapons, they pass humans to the right. Our 500kg bombs and nuclear missiles? Mere firecrackers to them. The Enlightened Ones have access to large-scale weapons of mass destruction, which in other words means they have enough weapons to blow up planets at will. “It’s something the people of SuperTierra can’t ignore,” says the official description. Oh, did I mention that they have also developed teleportation technology?
Not only do they pass us by on the right in terms of weapons of mass destruction, but also in the equipment used by their troops. They have observers and guards in their exploration sections. The infantry ranges from hunters specialized in stealth and guerrilla tactics, to regular troops with melee and energy weapons, to drones and robots of different shapes.
Needless to say, they have elite tanks and troops that can control and influence other sentient beings thanks to their mastery of nanobot technology. The helldivers have reported symptoms such as hallucinations, apathy, loss of will to fight… To top it all off, their most dangerous troop is called the Great Eye and is basically an AI that “monitors the Enlightened society and corrects any discrepancies in behavior and even thought. They are believed to have access to weapons of mass destruction.
The most fun thing about all this is that The Illuminati use weapons and energy shields during combat, while most of the weapons in our arsenal use ballistic ammunition. Or put another way: we continue shooting pieces of metal at high speed to kill our enemies. We’re going to need a lot more firepower to take on this alien race.
If you thought the war against the Automata is Vietnam itself, then pray that The Illuminati don’t end up going through that black hole to establish their new home in our galaxy. In any case, humanity Helldivers 2 has shown that it is ready for a new level of war and the most obvious step would be this faction… although it could be a new and much worse one.
The only discrepancies with this theory are the colors of the black hole: purple and not the blue characteristic of Los Iluminados. However, the concepts that have been leaking for months have mixed blues and purples, so it would be wise to prepare to have to fight another front. If we have already had quarrels with two, perhaps a third will be too much for the community… or not. Maybe it will unite us much more. The ball is in Joel’s court.
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