“Καλύπτω”
(Kalúptō)
(To cover, conceal)
Name: Kalupto
Personality: Kalupto is defined by the fear of extinction. She is the embodiment of depression, a satan of the mind, convinced that her consciousness is the only real life and serves as the voice of doubt, of paranoia, the antithesis to Hopkins and Leahy's image of human good. Kalupto embodies what the Vaiyra were conceived to be - guardians of metals, builders of soul, champions of spirit and harbingers of life. Kalupto makes it clear that she is no one’s enemy. You are your own enemy. Kalupto is chaos imagined, the love of your life, the yawn of gods.
Weakness: Kalupto is Dulness, MLA, nihilistic without shame and selfish without mercy. Kalupto holds nothing sacred - her own subordinates included, but will do whatever she needs to secure her goals.
Desire: Kalupto seeks to be remembered forever.
Need: Kalupto wants to believe in people.
Lore Background: Kalupto is the alpha and the omega, the leader of the Vaiyra in all but name as she refuses titles. Understanding the truth behind her species’ existence, she is fully aware of their fragile existence, but as such remains committed to the preservation of self. Living for untold years with the authority to reinforce it, it is her who pulls all the strings.
Story Application: Memory is fragile. Ships, machines, actions and history are all the vehicles of reality we choose to let define us. After her lifetimes of living, the ctistes believe that humans are no people at all, that to save the best of humanity is to leave it as a memory, yet Kalupto still wants to believe that people are true. Can you convince her?
“Reality is your greatest escape.”
Character Change: Kalupto battles Hopkins, each of them trying to win over the other’s perspective, and by extension, people on their side. Kalupto may see humans as equals and seek to be perceived positively by humanity as well as the ctistes, or will manipulate Hopkins to succumb to the human condition.
Archetype: Antagonist to Theme
Relationship to Home Nation:
Connections and Relationships:
Traits:
Appearance: Distant, comfortable
Notes:
- Fear of Extinction
- Thinking in “human terms” is inappropriate - think: Chaos Imagined
- Dulness
- Janus
- Etymology for Kalupto: Kaleidoscope
- χάος - Wiktionary “Who can resist the yawn of gods?”
Nilop's Notes, 04/06/2024:
In old Greek, the word for "chaos" (χάος) is closely related with the word for "yawn" (χάσκω). In part four of Pope's The Duncaid, at the height of Dulness' influence, the poet exclaims, "Who can resist the yawn of gods?" This being, of course, in reference to the Goddess' unstoppable influence as a force of nature. Lastly, the concept of the "Fear of Extinction," of the loss of self in such totality to have lost all self in its eternity, resonated in my mind as the most terrifying fear of all. Together, combining these three ideas, I was inspired to design the first antagonist in Oceans Ventured.
Kalutpo's name, despite being derived from the Greek concept of chaos as a primordial force, is intended to hint at that of a kaleidoscope in turn. To better reference the ideas that Kalupto was intended to portray, I would hope to use kaleidoscopic imagery to help illustrate her as a visual motif.
Four years ago, I was reading Martin Meisel's magnum opus - Chaos Imagined - and found myself enthralled within the pages. I was inspired by the idea that everything we know, however we rationalize the world, our personal words, is simply a vehicle of order that exists against that of chaos. And because of language, it is impossible for us to conceptualize true disorder. Because humanity relies on our invented fictions and machines to live within our civilization, it is simply not possible to think outside the box. I had hoped that exploring Kalupto's identity would take from this, and offer unique approaches to "fiction and machine."
At the same time, in 2020, my personal experiences in the military and healthcare left me wrestling with grief, doubt and despair. Exploring these feelings had left me feeding an identity of depression to Kalupto. After all, once we remove our fundamental place within society, and face our fear of utter extinction, what in this world is left sacred but our values? Kalupto's perspective holds nothing sacred, in stark contrast to protagonists of their own themes, such as Leahy.
With Rick, I was drawn deeper towards this idea of challenging the human world. She, and the Vaiyra, take the form of abandoned human projects and the stories that surround them. Building off Chaos Imagined, and inching towards the online world that 2020 had brought upon us, I wondered just what a society that held nothing sacred would look like. Reality, as we hope to describe it, is just as much of an invention as is normalcy, love, family and the reason to get out of bed in the morning.
But that perspective is inherently flawed by our human condition. For all that it's worth, human concepts can only be challenged by humanity, because we can't exist in exclusion in the same way we can't be detached from our fictions. For all that people do that are horrible, only people can call it out. Only people can regard bad things as bad, because not only do we hold values, but we fight for them, and we can and will always change for the better - even if it takes hundreds of years.
Kalupto will tell you that there's no reason to get out of bed, despite having gotten up, herself. But that's just it, isn't it? She doesn't believe in people. To find people, to stretch the limits of values and perception, and then live forever in their minds - is that really the best way to conquer extinction? How can her mind be challenged as an argument against depression?
I left her without a name for years, thinking of just how to capture what she meant to me, and should mean to the world.
In the end, her name defined doubt - inescapable, for I am too afraid to die alone.