Niarudi wrote:ok. so I haven't bothered with Dust 514 for a long time, (and only messed around here and there after the rouge wedding), but I used to be on a lot on my main account and all the numerous alts I made (although, now, this is my main account). For awhile I even ran a "lore" survey team corporation. btw, most of our findings were deleted, thrown away, or we just stopped caring.
Dust 514 had a couple of uses. Several were just slang or codes the development team used (and most will remain in obscurity forever unless a dev bothers to respond).
It was also used as a promotional event, as the official release of Dust 514. Also, and I'm not going to bother looking up the dates, but if memory serves, it also had something to do with the release of the ill-fated Legion.
Story-wise, and it's been so long since I've destroyed my notes, so sorry if I can't remember the proper names, But!!!
the races (I think the Amarr did it first) figured out how to make clones using alien technology that they found from a highly advanced race of beings they called the sleepers. The sleepers had given up their physical life and entered a different form of existence (can't remember if it was something spiritual or some sort of VR world).
What we were doing was harvesting their body for an implant that existed inside their brain. This implant allowed the use of our minds to travel large distances in an instant, making clones possible. That's why, when you die, you instantly "wake" up in your new body. Some theories point to 514 being a reference to this implant.
Anyways, without meaning to, we were actually doing mass genocide to the sleepers. But also, we had inadvertently opened ourselves up to the "one" (lol. I don't know what it was called, but I'm just going to call it the "one" because it is spoopy).
This being might have been a sleeper at one point. Or it could have been created in the alternate world. Or have been something else entirely. But it could body hop and take control of people who had this implant, and it was the enemy (satan?) of the sleepers.
The Templars were created and they were the first clones. Everything was going well, until the "one" decided to exert control over some of them. The sudden "psychic" backlash the clones had resulted in them going mad, killing everyone around them, and scrawling "514" in blood on walls and stuff and then they either killed themselves or were killed. The 514 was the Templars trying to warn everyone what they had just experienced, but having gone crazy, it was the best they could do.
Lots of theories on what 514 actually means. (also some nice biblical verses coincide with it) but generally the survey team came to the conclusion that the 5 meant something to do with the implant/ or the sleepers, the 1 was the being, and the 4 were the four remaining races that were in danger now, because we opened pandora's box.
Then the game happened, the Empress cloned herself, got possessed, and Legion was supposed to take off with (possibly referencing the One, now exerting control, and essentially making itself "legion").
mystery (sort of) solved. hope you like it.