Insect Wars: Dark Zone or Light Universe?
All right. Nope, the Time Prophet could not be a renegade Brunnen G who left 3000 years before Kai. Nor could HDS have consumed immortal Brunnen G, either outside Brunnis 2 or at the destruction of Brunnis.
It is very clear from Brigadoom that Kai was the only survivor. The Master of Ceremonies states that “the foreshadow rained sheets of energy down which incinerated the planets surface” this was actuall shown in both IWHS and Brigadoom.
There were no surface actions, there were no escaping refugees. HDS appears to have been located on the Foreshadow. The only people who escaped the planet were those who participated in the suicidal attack on the megashadow.
The Master of Ceremonies in Brigadoom also states that Kai was the first person to go beyond the shield. That seems to kill the Time Prophet theory. It also means that no other Immortal Brunnen G would have left Brunnis 2 to be killed by an HDS prior to the attack on Brunnis.
Further, the Master of Ceremonies in Brigadoom states that the Brunnen G did not unlock immortality until after the shield was established. So no immortal Brunnen G wandering the Universe to get jumped on by HDS.
As for the number of Divine Shadows, Only two Divine Shadows, by the way, mentioned
by rank – The 14th, Marty Simon, and the
16th who got fingered by the other brains in Eating Pattern. But this establishes their minimum number as 16. Neither of these are
the HDS who killed Kai. Which limits us to
17 and up, 15th, or 13th and down.
Because I have no life, I actually counted the number of Divine Predecessors destroyed in the first season. 12 are killed between IWHS and
Eating Pattern. Cluster Lizard 1, Kai 1, Zev 1, Stan 2 in IWHS, Giggerotta 2 in Supernova, Stan 1 and Bog 4 in Eating Pattern. The Gigashadow visibly destroys 5.
Together with the final Divine Shadow of IWHS, that gives us at least eighteen.
None survived the Gigashadow, but who knows,
perhaps there were more than were shown exploding. During the Stanley Tweedle songs, 12 ‘alcoves’ are shown. But the camera doesn’t show them actually inhabited.
It’s possible there may have been another seven shown whose destruction was not shown.
It’s possible that a few may have been lost
or disintegrated through old age, prior to IWHS, but this doesn’t seem likely. The Divine Shadows seemed very fastidious about their predecessors, further, I can’t imagine a situation where a Divine Shadow could not have a predecessor – the whole essence thing. As for disintegration through old age, if they’ve got the memories of people who lived on Brunnis, it would seem to me that they would go back to the very very early days. From what we’ve seen, individual predecessors kept memories that they didn’t share with other predecessors.
It’s possible that a predecessor disintegrating over millenia shared its memories with its descendants, but there’s no evidence for that either way. We can’t rely upon that.
I am relying upon discussions recorded in Lexxplorations as to the age and periodicity of predecessors. You might want to check
that site. The assumed that DP 14 was the one that killed Kai. I have no basis to disprove this, because the voice of HDS
that killed Kai was not identified.