The Many

The Many is one of the two main antagonists of the Irrational Games/Looking Glass Studios computer game System Shock 2. It is an artificially created biological collective that has infested the space ships Von Braun and Rickenbacker, the setting of the game.

History

The Many is an indirect creation of the malevolent artificial intelligence SHODAN, the primary antagonist of the original System Shock. During the events of System Shock, the protagonist jettisoned Beta Grove, one of the four wildlife groves aboard Citadel Station, which SHODAN had been using for experiments with bio-engineered viruses.

As the grove hurtled through space, the mutagenic virus and the mutated creatures stored aboard Beta Grove evolved at an accelerated rate, eventually coming to an apex as a species of parasitic annelids with distinct personality, telepathic mind control, and genetic modification abilities. Beta Grove crashed on the fifth world of the Tau Ceti system after thirty years of traveling through space, and the creatures on board thrived and evolved further. The annelids developed a hive mind, becoming a monolithic entity that called itself The Many.

Twelve years later, during the events of System Shock 2, humanity's first Faster-than-light ship, the Von Braun, was launched on its maiden voyage as a joint venture between the TriOptimum Corporation and the Unified National Nominate.

Five months into the trip, sensors aboard the Von Braun and its attached escort vessel, the UNN Rickenbacker, received an apparently intelligent signal from Tau Ceti V. Eager to claim credit for the discovery of extraterrestrial life, the commanding officers of both ships, captains Anatoly Korenchkin of TriOptimum and William Bedford Diego of the UNN Navy, accompany an exploration party to the planet. There, the captains and the majority of the party fell to The Many's influence. Korenchkin ordered the hydroponics deck of the Von Braun cleared of personnel without explanation to his crew, and a large number of annelid eggs were shuttled on board from the planet and stored there.

Within days, a large portion of the crews of both the Von Braun and the Rickenbaker had been infected, and most of the two ships fell under the control of The Many. Crewmen under The Many's psychic influence seized control of Von Braun's security systems (including XERXES, the ship's main AI), turning them over to The Many's purposes, and began capturing and exterminating remaining resistance, sending some to be consumed to further increase The Many's biomass. The Many itself, growing quickly, eventually began clogging the insides and enveloping the outsides of both ships, and later manifested a "brain" deep within itself. The Many intended to use the Von Braun to spread throughout the galaxy, including Earth, where it intended to incorporate all life, including humanity, into its collective, as it has the Von Braun's and Rickenbacker's crews.

In-game

The Many, being a psionic hive mind, has the ability to broadcast psionic signals and messages across vast distances, and contacts the player directly several times throughout the game. Its voice (or rather, voices) comes across as a mix of a deep, threatening male voice, a calm, gravelly male voice and a higher, emotionless female voice. All three voices speak as one, although at times one is slightly ahead or behind of the others, and they alternate speaking over each other. The relatively calm, soft voice of The Many can be contrasted with SHODAN's chaotic, metallic speech patterns, and The Many spends much time preaching the beauty and warmth of the flesh while denigrating the coldness of metal and machine. They refer to SHODAN as "The Machine Mother", claim that they have become more powerful than she, and repeatedly request the player (a cybernetically enhanced human, and thus straddling the line between flesh and machine) to embrace his biology instead of her technology.

Late in the game, the player uses an escape pod on the Rickenbacker to launch himself into the body of The Many. Eventually the player reaches the chamber containing The Many's brain and destroys it. The Many live long enough to leave a parting message, warning the player to "beware the machine mother".

Much of The Many's personality can be summed up in the first psionic message they send to the player:

Forces

The hive mind of The Many controls the extant branches of its species. Most of the information found in-game about the nature of The Many and its subordinates is gleaned from research performed by the player on organs found on various enemies, as well as several logs left by a man named Prefontaine, who was a scientist on board the Rickenbacker.

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See Also

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