My True Gray Antagonist: Expanding “The Institution” Holozing Fan-Lore
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Hello Holotrainers! Merry Christmas!
You'll probably be spending today with your families, sharing Christmas and opening lots of presents. I'll also be away from Hive for a few days. This week I've been running around all day and haven't had the motivation to write and continue with the fan lore. I wanted to expand a bit more on the future timeline, which seems to be where the developers are focusing, judging by the game.
That world where the creatures no longer exist, now only in their Holo version as very well-designed ghosts that seem to mimic everything the real creatures once were, but now only exist in this virtual space to be an attraction for humans.
We talked about how the company behind this simulation, "The Institution," is actually doing all this with a view to recovering all possible information about these creatures for various purposes, both good and evil. I think that's where the real essence of this story lies, because the protagonist can sometimes see things in black and white, while the world is a little more gray than it seems.
There's something very powerful in that starting point, and it's worth exploring it without rushing. In the future, the world is no longer epic or wild: it is post-wonder (I will expand on this concept later). The creatures didn't die suddenly or in a great heroic catastrophe; they simply ceased to be necessary. Humanity advanced, colonized, regulated, archived... and when it finally realized it, all that remained of them was data.
That's where the Holos come in: not as simple decorative holograms, but as extremely sophisticated echoes. They are not perfect copies, but reconstructions made from remnants: incomplete genetic records, human accounts, behavioral patterns simulated by AI. That's why they feel "alive," but something is always off. They repeat gestures, routines, instincts... as if remembering what they were without fully understanding it. Functional ghosts.
And the key detail:
these Holos don't exist for the creatures, they exist for humans.
They are an attraction, an interactive museum, a nostalgic experience sold as a technological advancement. People visit them, study them, consume them. For most, it's a triumph: preserving what was lost without having to live with it. But deep down there is something profoundly unsettling:
life reduced to a controllable simulation.
That's where The Institution ceases to be just a company and becomes the true gray antagonist. Officially, its mission is noble: to recover all possible information about the creatures to prevent it from being lost forever (and perhaps also to control their power or bring them back to life). But this obsession with archiving is a double-edged sword. ---
Good and bad behaviors can be present, from species conservation to battle simulations or stealing their abilities for human practices, as we already saw in the previous timeline. I have to expand on that a bit more now that I remember.
The Institution doesn't want to save the creatures.
It wants to possess their essence.
I think that gives this set of not-so-conventional villains an AURA, but they aren't complete without a force in front of them to challenge them, so for the next post we'll talk about the protagonist and her allies! Thanks for watching and have a Merry Christmas!
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