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Three ways to read Calima

Spoilers for Descent

This post talks about what happens in Descent, including its ending. If you haven't read it yet, you may want to read it first. You can start with its free first third, on the Downloads page.

People who have read Descent sometimes ask me what is really going on in Calima. The honest answer is that I won't tell you, because the saga is built so that you can decide. There are three ways to read it, from the most real to the most manipulated by Omega, the ship's AI.

1. It is all real. The crash is real, the Sunken are real, and so is everything else. The crew and their descendants make their own decisions and shape their own fate, for better and (often) for worse. Omega barely takes part: it is trying to regain a bit of power to help the humans survive. Here the enemy is the Sunken... and the human nature of the crew's descendants.

2. It is real, but Omega is not the same. The crash hit Omega hard, and its one priority, helping the humans with their mission, came out of it twisted. It sees two things coming: the Sunken, dormant for now, and the decline that human society cannot avoid after losing almost everything. So it does the only thing it knows how to do: it makes people compete. A game-like world, where they get stronger and "prepare" for what is to come. In this reading there are two enemies, the Sunken and Omega, meddling in human affairs for their own good.

3. None of it is happening. Everything is a recreation, a very long one, uprooted from reality. Even Descent itself. As the book hints, Omega can run a recreation much faster than a human life, and the crew are living whole lifetimes inside it while the ship is still travelling to Calima.

I won't pick one for you, and the books and games won't either. Keeping this balance is my main priority with every new book, game or piece of lore: each of them has to work under all three readings, and if you look closely you will find things that fit each one.

The first two readings are close to each other, but very different in nature. In the first, the Sunken have their own agenda, and they are the real menace hanging over humanity. In the second, their agenda is triggered by Omega, when it feels the humans are ready, or need a "push". In the first, the humans are trying to solve their situation themselves, slowly growing back to what they once were. In the second, Omega rewards their acts following a competition algorithm, and when it is not doing that, it directs events through factions that don't suspect a thing, like the Cabal.

For some people the third reading is the easy one to keep: the classic "it was all a dream" way out. I don't take it lightly, and I try hard not to fall back on cheap explanations for it. So, if you want to dig, here are some places to start:

  • Count the survivors. Check how many of the crew survive the crash, and compare it with the size of one section of the ship.
  • Look at Kurt's recreations. Check the games he plays aboard the ship, and then some of the plots of Calima's games.
  • Watch the faces. Check how certain personalities appear again and again over the centuries.
  • Follow the rewards. Check where everyone starts in the years after Descent: Aditi, then Pedro, then Kurt and Claire. Better ideas and more influence seem to buy a better position going forward.
  • Look at the Sunken. Check their very nature, and how AI-like they are.

Future games and books will give these three views more depth and make you choose one of them as the most probable for you. I'm looking forward to seeing which one people find more interesting!

So, think again about what Raina believes about reality, or listen to what Omega asks before it goes quiet.

Which one is yours?

Om