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Whispers In The Woods DLC Content
This page contains content from the Whispers in the Woods DLC
History
The Original Six founded the Harmonic Fellowship following a LIM experiment they conducted in ARDA's Harmonic Disruption Research Branch that inadvertently summoned the Wave. Seeing the way the Anomalies reacted to the Wave, they understood that the Anomalies had more sentience than ARDA had let on. During the Second Growth Event, five of the Original Six were killed, leaving only the Founder to lead the Fellowship, carrying their wisdom forward.
At some point, Fellowship recruiter and ARDA employee Annie Morris met with the troubled adolescent Jack Whiteside in her office. She convinced him to attend weekly meetings in Gilly's Gas Station with promises to wipe his record clean if he kept attending them, all under ARDA's radar. Jack was eventually manipulated into joining the Fellowship through these meetings, where he met May, another young person who had met with Annie and the girl he'd eventually go on to marry.
After performing many rituals and missions for the Harmonic Fellowship, Jack became the Founder's right hand. At a certain point, 10 years after he had first met Annie, she informed Jack that she was to be his instrument in the next ritual. Jack initially denied Annie's place in the ritual, and confided in Annie that the Founder wanted to stop the rituals, as he didn't think they were working. Jack claimed to have been tuning the ritual, and that the Founder was a coward for wanting to stop at the cusp of evolution. Jack vowed to continue the rituals until he tuned them properly, only then allowing Annie to be used in one, seeing her as of more service to the Fellowship than possibly being killed in a ritual. Howver, Annie convinced Jack to allow her into this ritual, quoting the "Freedom through service" tenet to him and encouraging him to let her final act enlighten him on what the ritual is missing.
During Annie's ritual, Jack began reciting verses along with six other members of the Fellowship, who formed a circle around Annie. But once the ritual began, dark shadows formed around Annie. She began begging and screaming for help from Jack. The six ritualists also died, leaving Jack as the sole survivor from the ritual. Afterwards, he sent out a message to an unknown individual, pleading for them to come help.
Since the Founder continued to push back on the use of the rituals, Jack lured him to a ritual site and used him as an instrument, sacrificing the Founder's life for the benefit of all. Mentor Jack Whiteside would take on the mantle of Edward Bishop.
During or after 1998, the Harmonic Fellowship began putting the Driver through their rites, in an attempt to gain access to the Car, the Driver's remnant, seeing it as the missing piece in their rituals that hadn't worked up until then. After the Driver completed all seven rites, the Fellowship took over the Auto Shop and set up a ritual site in the forest behind it. The ritual began with the Steward as the instrument for the ritual. The remnant worked, opening the Wave to the Steward, however, within the Wave, he saw nothing. And within the nothingness of the Wave, "it" lurks and that it does not care about the Fellowship or anything that they've done in its service. Before the Steward could completely transcend his body into the Wave, the Driver interrupted the ritual, destroying the Harmonic Conduits around the site. Because of this, unlike Annie and many other instruments of the rituals before him, the Steward survived the ritual. Realizing that nothing the Fellowship did ever mattered and that Annie had died for nothing, he shamefully fled from the Fellowship.
Locations
- Olympic Exclusion Zone:
- Reclaimed Trailer
- Reclaimed Cabin
- Reclaimed Commune
- Altars
- Altar of Bounty
- Altar of Duality
- Altar of Passage
Members
- The Orignal Six
- Jack Whiteside/Edward Bishop ("The Steward")
- May
- Annie Morris
Equipment
- Artifacts
- Bounty of Shadows