Arclight is... #10

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

**Arclight is about Faith**

Not in the sense of a theological allegory, but in the sense of having to take a lot of moves without evidence to support them.

Marina, the main character, is lost in every way you can imagine. She doesn't know how to get home, or if her home even exists anymore. She doesn't know how she made it to the Arclight alive, or why so many people would willingly die to make sure she got there. Those gaps create a lot of self-doubt.

There's an enormous amount of pressure and survivor's guilt for her to deal with. She tries to balance her life against the nine from the Arclight who sacrificed themselves for her and the untold number of her own people who likely perished in the darkness, so she clings to the idea that her survival was for a reason rather than by chance.

Despite knowing it would take something catastrophic to make her people attempt the escape through Fade-territory that left her stranded, she allows herself to dream about finding her home and family again. She wants to believe they're still alive and looking for her.

Likewise, there's a small number of people inside the Arclight who also want to believe her survival was for a reason. The fight with the Fade has gone on for more than a generation, so that even the adults don't remember a time before the darkness began to overtake the human world. They've been searching for a way to reclaim their lost loved ones, or even to stop and reverse the spread of the darkness itself. In Marina, they find the hope that one day she'll wake up and remember how she managed to make it out of the Fade's clutches, so they can, too.


Her amnesia supplies infinite possibilities to those around her.

She might know...
Maybe she remembers...
Someday...
If only...

Maybe she's the key to defeating the enemy. Maybe she can tell the others what happened to those who went into the Dark to save her. Maybe she knows what's beyond.

Or maybe, she's a scared kid who got lucky.



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