random gods

this page is about the 2017 video game rain world, where you play as a little creature in an unforgiving ecosystem. i'm too ass at the game to play much of it myself so i just watch lets plays and stare really hard at the parts of the wiki that list all the lines of dialogue.
the easiest way for me to infodump about rain worlds story is just. trying to write out the entirety of the downpour timeline from beginning to end without looking anything up asides images. here goes ! take parts of it with a grain of salt, from my own interpretations of more abstract things or not just remembering them right. hefty spoiler warning of course. i have a lot of rain world fan characters, but i'm working on a separate page for them !

pre-game

the society that set up everything else here is long gone by the time you have control of anything, but it's probably important to start with them..!
the ancients were very aware of the Cycle of life and death, and came to desire an escape from it. at some point, they uncovered a substance called void fluid at the very bottom of the world. this was an excellent power source that lead them into an industrial revolution. more importantly to their quest, those who were dissolved in it seemed to escape the Cycle, although they risked being trapped between life and death eternally.
to solve their great problem, the ancients created the iterators, gargantuan supercomputers. when the copious amounts of water they required to function (and disposed of, as an almost constant rain heavy enough to crush anything caught in it to death), made the land uninhabitable, they built cities on their creation's backs to live in.
eventually, every ancient entered the void, leaving the iterators to their work and to communicate amongst themselves over broadcast. many shifted focus to achieving ascension themselves- something they were very much not designed for. there was one who claimed to successfully do so- and she died almost immediately after doing so. it is almost impossible for an iterator to die, so many eventually believed that surpassing their own programming to do so was the way to follow her. their idol's name was sliver of straw, and so her followers came to be known as the sliverists.
from here we focus on a small group of iterators. looks to the moon, big sis moon to her friends, is the eldest in her group. before the grand ascension, she began to struggle to attend to her citizens from her age. in response a second iterator was constructed to support her, and to evacuate her citizens to. this is around the time she picked up the nickname, as she was given administrative permissions over her new neighbor, five pebbles.

(a good chunk of the fandom has interpreted this as that all iterators are divided into groups, and that the eldest has some degree of authority over everyone else, and it's spread to the point i think a lot of people don't know it Isn't explicitly canon. in game we have that moon is old, and that she has authority over pebbles specifically. it's still a fun concept, though, and i use it with my own ocs :] )
after sliver of straw's death, five pebbles became a sliverist. being so close together, moon and pebbles shared a water supply. during the closest he got to successfully ascending, pebbles began to use so much of that he deprived moon of water until she began shutting down from waste build up, ignoring any effort made to communicate with him and all of moon's pleas for him to stop. as a last-ditch, far too late effort to save herself, moon exercised her admin privileges to force him to read her messages...
at the perfect time to ruin his efforts and corrupt the parts of himself he'd been modifying into a cancer-esque sickness, dooming them both eventually. he isolated himself further after another member of the group, unparalelled innocence,

the spearmaster

much of five pebble's sliverism was encouraged by a close friend/mentor of his, an iterator called seven red suns.
the.. rain world? has no native fauna left, the wildlife around being descended from the ancient's bio-organic creations. you play as a slugcat, a ferret-shaped ommnivore that is very vaugely implied to be mutated from a pipe-cleaning organism. the iterator no significant harassment experimented with using trained, modified slugcats to carry messages when the iterator's communication networks began decaying- being able to swallow and regurgitate objects with ease, they could carry pearls with messages and data written on them. after 6 failed attempts, suns successfully created a messenger of their own, and used it to send five pebbles the instructions he was following. we never learn why they did this. they say they didn't expect pebbles to use the detailed instructions on how to off himself to try and do so, but, really, what did you think would happen? i'll write a big piece on my own thoughts at some point (i really like suns).
whatever seven red sun's reasons for sending their first pearl to pebbles, they come to regret it after moon sends out a distress signal and another friend, chasing wind, tells them about pebble's illness. they send their messenger back to pebbles to try to talk sense into him. this fails spectacularly, with pebbles snapping at the messenger, roughly tearing the pearl out of its chest. moon is still standing at this point, although Cycles away from collapse. it visits her, too, and she has it carry her final message to somewhere where it can be broadcast.
seven red suns' messenger makes its way back to them, and is last seen snuggled in their arms.

the artificer

some time has passed since the spearmaster made its journey. moon's superstructure has partially collapsed in a way that blocks off entry. the artificer lived with its two pups in a dump in five pebble's grounds. the dump is inhabited by the other more sapient species around in the game, the scavengers. both species are figuring out tools, and the scavengers have bartering. you meet the occasional trader, and run into tolls where you may pass peacefully in exchange for a pearl. one of the artificer's pups innocently stole from a toll, and was speared to death for it. the second drowned while it and its mother fled from their pursuers.
after this, the artificer devotes its life to exterminating the scavengers, using its explosive saliva to craft bombs. it is unable to gain karma (locked at level two-wrath) and use any left in the bodies of those its killed to pass through gates for holier sorts. the artificer's bloody path of revenge takes it to five pebbles (as said, moon is unavailable at the moment), who encourages clear the city atop his superstructure of scavengers, who keep damaging him for supplies. artificer has accidently been bonded to an identification drone that once belonged to one of his citizens and is legally considered one, which prevents him from killing it if it annoys him too much (like he will for most of the other slugcats you can play as). he decides he may as well make some use out of their situations.
the artificer makes its way to the home base of the city scavengers and kills their leader, claiming its mask as its own. it's unclear if it's gotten what it wanted.
alternatively, the artificer can attempt to ascend as the ancient ones did, crawling to the bottom of the world. the void rejects it, but allows it to see its pups one more time before it dissolves.

the hunter

the hunter was the "hard mode" of the vanilla game, with stronger enemies, a carnivorous diet, and a time limit of 20 Cycles before it loses the ability to respawn and the save file is deleted with the next death. it is the creation of no significant harassment, carrying repair software as a last-ditch effort to save looks to the moon.
it is.. very sick, hence the time limit. on it's last Cycle the hunter becomes noticably paler and weaker, and becomes prone to seizures. were you to end a hunter save file this way and come to the same place as the next slugcat along, its hostile, swollen corpse will attack. evidently the hunter's sickness (at least in the downpour continuity) is the same rot that has been steadily spreading across five pebbles with each slugcat, since similar enemies appear in his superstructure where the infection is at its worst. it's never really made clear exactly how hunter contracted the rot. my theory is that NSH was rushing out of desperation to save moon when he created them, causing genetic defects.
if the hunter meets five pebbles, he expresses remorse for moon's fate and helps it on its journey, granting it a few extra Cycles. moon has collapsed further by now and the hunter can enter to find her puppet comatose in what's left of its chamber. she's far beyond repair, but the slag keys NSH sent wake her up, at least, with 5 remainining neurons. if the hunter has time, it swims to the void sea, and feels like it's in its master's arms again for a moment before it ascends.

the gourmand

rain world is a tragedy. there's still room for a little bit of whimsy, though..! the gourmand is a clever, cheerful slugcat living in a large colony outside of five pebbles' grounds, able to craft and use tools with ease. it has far too many earthly attachments to really ascend, but it doesn't really care. it's here as a scout, seeking out a new nesting site for its people, while gathering as much food as possible for the journey. it visits the sibling gods, and five pebbles reopens the gates to his grounds just to get it to leave faster. triumphant, the gourmand returns home and regales its colony with tales of its adventures. there's a line from moon if you craft something implausible implying that their campaign is their own retelling of events, heavily exaggerated to boast or to entertain the little ones. if you completed their shopping list, eating at least one of a long list of edible items, the colony set off on their migration.

the survivor and the monk

these two are very close together and not very different, so i'll put them together. the survivor and the monk are littermates travelling with their family (perhaps during the gourmand's migration?) who are separated in a storm. survivor falls into the outskirts of pebbles' grounds, and the monk jumps down after them. this is the vanilla game, and an "easy mode". separately, but not long after one another, they visit the two gods. it's implied that the monk gives moon two neurons stolen from pebbles (he has plenty to spare) and what remains of her old cloak, as she has these by the next slugcat in the timeline.
there's a choice from here. the slugcats can enter the void, where they see their old home and family before it takes them. if you've completed the gourmand's campaign, which has five pebbles unlock his gates to chase them out, they'll still be open. the siblings can reunite, on the other side of the walls. the rest of their home and family is still long gone, but they'll still have eachother.

the rivulet

there's a very long timeskip here. the rot has almost fully overtaken five pebbles, although he still stands. to compensate for the infection, the rain he produces is much heavier and frequent, a fruitless effort to flush it out.
an amphibious slugcat appears, getting into a scuffle with a scavenger. it's never really made clear who- if anyone at all- sent the rivulet. it has swallowed a pearl with instructions on how to reach an iterator's vital components. this comes to be useful for it when five pebbles asks it to tear out said components and use them to repair moon. its high lung capacity lets it do this, granting her far more processing power than she has had for eons- and access to her communications, even if she can only reach her neighbor. for a little while, the two iterators finally reconcile.
the rivulet, ruffles to its friend moon, spends its days as her companion as the rain slows and stops.

the saint

another big timeskip, and the world is almost unrecognisable. few iterators, if any, are standing. in their absence the world enters an ice age, like it was before it was filled with giant, warm computers. moon's... doing alright, still. pebbles has collapsed, far worse than moon's collapse was.
many creatures have developed fur to withstand the cold, and so we control a fluffy slugcat. the saint is weak and feeble, refuses to raise a weapon, seizes if it tries to eat meat in a world too cold for most plant life. it has a long, sticky tongue to evade its predators.
we start with it's ascension, before it wakes up in what was once called the sky islands.
...a lot of things get a bit confusing and metaphysical here. i have my own interpretations on what the saint is but i'll keep them for another page at some point. the saint visits the echoes of those who failed to ascend, and with the final one, something.. changes about it. it comes to what's left of five pebble's chamber, approaches his barely-coherent puppet. he listens to an audio pearl of an ancient hymm, that jitters and skips.
it puts him out of his misery.. somehow, permanently ending his Cycles. it does the same to moon, and can do the same to any other creature it desires. once it's done, it climbs down to the abyss, and finds nothing but an empty pit. it jumps down, and falls.
and falls
and falls
and falls
the "confusing and metaphysical" increases tenfold from this point. the saint visits a strange, dreamlike amalgam of areas throughout the game, where it's forced to use its new abilities to fight its way through. if you ascended the two iterators, they appear on screen together for the first time in their long, long lives. the saint reaches the void sea from below, ascends its guardians, too. it swims up, and up, closer to the surface-
it wakes up, in the place where it's campaign begins. the cycle starts anew.
...and that's it for now! i'm writing this about a month before the watcher dlc comes out, so i'll add that in at the appropriate point in the timeline then.

this one got really really long i'm adding another page for thoughts on particular characters/worldbuilding bits.