Junkyard essay
How the Junkyard actually works, and how it worked before the demon virus came and changed everything, has always fascinated me. Mostly because I’m kind of a whore for worldbuilding, and the Junkyard’s pretty interesting world. And I think I’m addicted to essaying help help. So this is an essay on the Junkyard, and how it worked before the demon virus came! Most of this is headcanon, or extrapolations. If at any point you disagree with me, or want to add something, I'd love it if you told me!
Also this entire thing contains spoilers for DDS1 and DDS2, though only up through before the Airport.
Okay, starting with the basics. The Junkyard is a computer-generated world generated for the purposes of war simulation, to find the best battle AI. The Karma Temple makes rules and restrictions, presumably with the goal of optimum parameters for finding the most effective AI. The Tribes follow these rules in an attempt to reach Nirvana. These rules are essentially: Fight and kill the other tribes. If your leader dies, join the tribe that killed your leader.
Tribes
There are, at the time the game starts, 6 tribes. The Embryon in orange, the Vanguards in green, the Maribel in red, the Solids in yellow, the Wolves in white, and the Solids in blue. However, this is only the number of tribes left after the war has reached a stalemate, and they've had five years to destroy tribes. In a document you read in the real world, the Embryon is the 96th tribe. My guess is that the Junkyard started off with a 100 tribes, just because 100 is a nice even number. Considering this is DDS, if there’s any important numbers in Hinduism around there, though, I’d change my guess to that number.
New tribes can be formed, however, the mechanism for doing so is unknown. My guess would be that if rookies who have not yet joined a tribe kill another tribe’s leader, they become a tribe. Partially from the evidence of the super rookies optional bosses, where they really wanted to kill Serph (admittedly their stated reason was to reach Nirvana, but I’m not sure people can reach Nirvana without being in a tribe), and partially because, logically, if the members of a defeated tribe by law join the victors, if their leader is defeated by a rookie, they must join the rookie’s tribe. So the rookie gains a tribe. Whether that is the only way to form a tribe, who knows? I can’t think of any other plausible ways to make the Temple acknowledge a group of rookies as a tribe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Besides, the temple could just randomly go “Hey, you guys! You’re a tribe now. Have a Dissemination Machine to receive our orders.”
On a side note, this makes me think that the Embryon started off as quite literally just Serph, Heat, Cielo, and Argilla, and POSSIBLY Gale, and that the other members of the Embryon, come from tribes that the Embryon have defeated pre-demon virus. Mostly, admittedly, because I like the idea. I’m not sure how well balanced that would be, though, just because if all tribes started off as just a few people who managed to defeat another tribe, the early tribes would have a major advantage. Unless of course after a while they started increasing the size of new tribes, since god knows the Vanguards’ ex-base has an infinite supply of rookies, and this is at a stage in the world when there are tribes that are large.
Size-wise, the tribes vary hugely. The Embryon has around fifteen members total, assuming we meet them all in the base or elsewhere. While Jinana sent 500 people to attack the Solid’s Citadel, and that was just a diversion. And the Maribel isn’t even that large or strong a tribe. The largest tribes are the Brutes and the Wolves, although we never get any numbers for them. They could anywhere from 3000 to 10 million, really, although I’d guess 5,000 if I had to make a guess. However, the number of officer-class per tribes also vary widely. The Embryon has over double the number of the tribe with the next most officers, at 5. The Maribel, which has relatively weak soldiers , but it has the next most officers, with two officer level soldiers. All the other tribes just have one, the leader. (I define officers as people with authority, names, and an Asura demon as opposed to any other clan of demon. I'm sure the Brutes and the Wolves had intermediate officers, because they're just too big to manage otherwise, but they didn't have the same innate power that the leaders, Bat, and the Embryon did.)
While the Embryon’s large number of officers was a major, major advantage post-demon virus, I’m guessing that before that, when people were fighting with regular weapons, sheer numbers were a hell of a lot more important. The way the Embryon were talking at the beginning indicates that they felt that all the other tribes were stronger than them. They were surviving! Because their base didn’t let too many people in at once and out of sheer luck, determination, and possibly having God on their side. But they weren’t doing well. To me, this suggests that of the mysterious at least 91 other tribes out there, there were probably some who started off with more than one officer, although I’d guess that the Embryon has the most. If only because they’re a group that Sera did not want separated. But they were destroyed in the war, and the officers were probably killed. I’m wondering if Sera occasionally pushed events a little so her Embryon weren’t killed, because I just look at the situation they were in before the demon virus going “Man, I don’t see how they survived with that few people”.
In accordance with the whole trying to find the best AI for urban warfare, each tribe varies in its style of battle. The Embryon all use guns! Anything from grenade launchers to submachine guns to handguns. Their base is a giant crack in the ground, with an elevator letting only a few people in at once. I mean, sure, I guess people could try to jump in, but I would guess it’s far enough down that they’d die. The way their base is eventually overrun is by throwing sheer numbers into it, when all but one of their officer-class soldiers were out of it. The Embryon previously had other bases, but we have no idea what it might have been. They don't really…have the same same kind of defined culture as the rest of the tribes. They're much more individual, and they don't tend to share the same (general) taste in music the way the other tribes do, and their uniforms are usually…blander when seen as a whole, but fairly personalized for the officers. The foot soldiers, at least, tend to wear very basic outfits without any outstanding features. And the others tend not to hugely diverge from Serph. A skirt for Argilla, skirt and boots for Sera, cape and no arm armor for Heat. Gale and Cielo diverge the most, but when compared to how different say, Lupa's outfit is from Serph's, they're practically identical.
The Vanguards use explosive crossbows and have a easily the most straightforward base in the game. They definitely come off as a tribe specializing in long-distance, with the way everyone is wearing those glasses that look like they could be binoculars, but they really don’t seem to have any major advantages. Their base is just a base. Interestingly, their leader’s room has bottles of what looks like alcohol. How you would get alcohol in the Junkyard, where there’s no plants or any sort of sugars to fermet stuff (or yeast for that matter probably), though, I have no idea. Especially since it’s made clear in the second game that the Embryon have never encountered alcohol before. They all wear hoods and glasses. …I was about to make a snarky comment about how Gale should be an honorary Vanguard (he had glasses in a past life! It totally counts), but when you add in the fact that his hair’s their tribe color it’s actually just weird.
The Maribel seem designed for close-combat. Their base is full of trap doors which they can close and leave you trapped and lost to be picked off at their leisure. Bat is known as a knife fighter, and I can easily see Jinana as one too. The rest of the members are weak and basically canon fodder. Aesthetic-wise, they have probably the second most distinctive look, since they’re very much modelled after the punk aesthetic.
The Solids are neither particularly strong nor weak. They hide behind a giant fortress, and their leader usually stays well away from the battlefield. I’d actually guess that the Solids have the highest amount of infighting, at least post-demon virus. Just because behind the fortress there’s not as much need to be wary of attack constantly. We have no clue what their weapons are, but I’d…actually say something like. staves or I dunno, because they don’t seem to have much offensive capability. It seems like they rely on the fortress to do their work for them. I mean, they overwhelm Cielo and the Embryon, but that’s when most the Embryon is already gone. I’d say that when they do abandon their fortress, they can man a much stronger force than you might expect, just because the fortress doesn’t really need that many people to defend it. But it’s not what they’re good at and they probably have a high casualty rate when they leave. Especially when they’re in the Maribel base and the Embryon’s using them as snacks! :D They’re more hip-hop. They even have the Hip-Hop Brothers as members! They all tend to have similar accents to Cielo and Cielo at one point even says that if he hadn’t been part of the Embryon, he’d probably have been one of them.
The Wolves, we have no clue about their style of combat. We know that they're very strong, but that's about all. Since they seem to be modelled after the Noble Savage stereotype, probably something to do with that. Except how that would work with the fact that the Junkyard is an urban warfare simulation, I have no idea. We never see a female Wolf, probably for the same reason we never see a woman wearing Bat’s outfit. Shirtless women tend to make ratings higher!
The Brutes are clearly the most traditionally military tribe. They have a commanding officer, who even demands to be called Colonel Beck, and will choke a bitch if he doesn’t get it. All of them keep their bodies much more covered than any of the other tribes except the Vanguards bother with, with the full hood-body armor-leg armor-arm armor etc. They cover themselves in their tribal color (blue) in camouflage patterns. Their base is Sera’s old house, which…has the benefit of being confusing as hell to navigate? Their leader picked it more for emotional reasons than tactical ones, although I doubt that he missed the tactical benefits of a base that changes and teleports you back to the entrance if you go the wrong way.
All six tribes start off with a rival tribe. Embryon vs. Vangaurds, Solids vs. Maribel, Brutes vs. Wolves. It’s interesting that the tribes that rival each other tend to parallel in some way. Solids and the Maribel both depend on their base more than any of the other tribes for their strength, and both tend to reference music and modify their uniform in ways that’s more designed for appearance than practicality. The Brutes and the Wolves are fairly traditional polar opposites, with the Brutes as a traditional military and the Wolves as a traditional Noble Savage archetype. I don't see the Vanguards really as opposite the Embryon, but then it's harder to peg the Embryon down into a stereotype because well, they're the main characters.
Economy
Each tribe has its own culture and hierarchy, but the temple is above them and issues laws and makes the currency available based off, well, video-game strictures! This is shocking, I’m sure. The more enemies you devour and the faster you devour them, the more macca you will have available. I’m going to say that either it all automatically goes to the highest ranking member of your party, or the Embryon automatically just give all their macca to Serph to buy their weapons. Because clearly the guy who walks into walls is the best guy to buy your weapons. (Wlu, Serph~) I figure this because it’s not like you have multiple sources of cash, but minor members of the tribe do mention having their own macca.
With macca, you can buy things from the Vendors, mysterious shops located in each base, controlled by the Karma Temple. From these you can purchase healing items, attack items, and miscellaneous items that do things like attract monsters. You can also buy ammo, although generally your ammo from the game’s treasure chests is good enough that it’s a waste of money. Unless of course you have 999,999 macca and still aren’t quite ready to face the Demi-Fiend, in which case why not max out your item inventory of every single item they sell in the store including the mutually redundant items and the ammo (which has a maximum of five by the way. Man my macca was so maxed out by the time I beat the game that playthrough.)
You can also, more importantly, buy mantras. Vendors existed before the demon virus, but mantras didn’t, so that probably changed the Junkyard’s economy a ton. Because it is by far more important to buy mantras than it is to buy items, unless you don’t have something like Posumundi mastered in which case yeah, buy some Dis-Poisons.
There is probably some trading around and gifts within the tribe post-demon virus, but before the leader (or probably in the Embryon, the strategist), but I kind of doubt there was before. Everything was undoubtedly arranged in the most logical and efficient manner, because that’s what AIs do. Well Junkyard AIs are a bit more complicated, since they have the seeds at least of a personality, but I think not enough more complicated to be giving gifts to the people they care about.
Government
The Karma Temple is again, the ultimate ruler of the Junkyard. It makes the laws. Traditionally, before the demon virus came, these laws were obeyed without question. They were just… the way the world was. Questioning the laws would be like asking why the grass is green or why cats inevitably throw up on carpet rather than easily cleaned tile. You attempt to kill the other tribes, and after the other tribe’s leader is killed, the survivors join the victorious tribe. I would assume that the Embryon historically has conquered very few tribes, considering their size (although considering it’s kind of my headcanon that they started off with quite literally just Serph, Heat, Argilla, Cielo, and maybe Gale, they probably conquered like. One tribe. Maybe two). Other tribes, such as the Wolves and the Brutes, probably conquered a lot of tribes, since they’re the two largest tribes in the game. Additional evidence for this is Lupa’s necklace of tag rings.
Tag rings are the method by which the Karma Temple tracks them. And when I track, I mean TRACK. They even know how long it takes for each fight to finish, in order to decide how much macca they get. The tag rings are the key to using vendors and Karma Terminals, the only things that sell really important things like magic and healing items. Basically, if you didn't have a tag ring, you would be so very screwed. Sera survives! But only because the Embryon is utterly devoted to her and also she created the Junkyard.
The Karma Temple also seems to have occasionally tweaked things in the Junkyard occasionally. It was not unknown for Serph to be summoned to the Karma Temple, and the only thing I can think of for that would be to strengthen or weaken his tribe to see what happened. Group meetings of all the leaders were completely unknown in the Junkyard before the demon virus.
Each tribe makes its own rules, as long as they still follow the Junkyard rules. They vary from the Embryon, which seems to have very few rules, to the Brutes, who are run by an ex-military control freak and so probably has plenty. I have no idea what these rules would entail though so…whatever.
Religion
I'm not going to cover the more large-scale religion stuff in DDS because I already did that essay! What this is more about is the cycle of reincarnation within the Junkyard. Which I also covered, but it's fundamental enough that it bears repeating.
The people in the Junkyard believe that when people die, their souls are taken up into the rain and reincarnated. A while ago, someone in chan mentioned the possibility that before the demon virus, this actually, literally, happened in the physical as well as spiritual sense. Considering how common dissolving deaths are in videogames and the fact that Sera probably didn't really want to make their deaths really, um, organic, I can see it.
It is, however, canon that they do reincarnate within the Junkyard repeatedly. When you go into the Karma Temple, you see half-formed bodies swirling around the sea of milk, getting ready to be reborn. Either the evaporation cycle is reversed, and they evaporate in the rain which then condenses in the Karma Temple, or their souls are more literally washed away into the sewers and there brought to the karma temple. Or the souls aren't tightly knit to the cycle of the rain.
But it's also strongly implied that once you start reincarnating into the Junkyard, you don't get out. You die there, and you're reborn back into war, until you die again and again and again. And considering there's significantly more people dying in the real world than there are being born at the moment, there's a lot of people who recently died in the real world in there. We meet at least three that we know for certain, and I'd guess most of them reincarnated from the real world at some point. Probably mostly only those who remember really clearly down to their names and the names of their loved ones are the ones who are on their first reincarnation in the Junkyard, though. While I mostly wouldn't define the Junkyard as the worst world in the DDS series, that…really makes its negative qualities a whole lot worse.
Biology
The Junkyard was created so that nothing other than humans lived there. There were no plants. There were no animals. I don't even believe there was any bacteria or viruses, just because I find that it takes away from the fundamental oddity of the Junkyard if I believe that there was something living independently of the humans. Well, besides the cat. The cat doesn't count. Also, with the amount of rain falling, I would imagine that there'd be a lot of mold growing if there were any other forms of life allowed.
…However, this leads to problems with digestive systems! If you'll remember from your high school biology, a lot of the digestive process is done by bacteria in your system. If you don't have them, you'll starve. Personally, I do not believe that the AIs required food before the demon virus. I have no idea if they'd require water or not, but it's not like there could ever be a shortage there. (If you drink water in the Junkyard are you voring someone's soul? DDS chan says hell yes.) More than just working on the biological level, it works on a thematic level, since it means that the demon virus for the first time gave them a definite need. Without hunger, an endless supply of water and the natural difficulties of depriving someone of oxygen means that there's never any real obvious lack. But hunger gives them that, and makes it a very…carnal, physical thing that makes them all much more aware of their bodies and themselves.
Incidentally, this makes it interesting that the only person who gets choked in the series is also probably the neediest. (In the sense that he needs so hard that it's impossible to fulfill, at least.)
But this also means that the Embryon…really aren't quite human even outside the whole "DEMON CANNIBAL IN MY SOUL" thing. I'm not sure that's all that big a deal, considering that a lot of the theme of the series is that the strict definitions of humanity isn't all that important, it's what you do that's important. It also means their demons are basically taking the place of the bacteria in digesting their food for them. This is why I assume that while they pee and crap, they don't do nearly as much as you might expect for the volume they eat. (…Well, mostly for the practical reasons of "well if they're eating someone once every seven seconds logically, and the volume of their stomachs is presumably smaller than a person….screw it all. THEIR DEMON EVAPORATES MOST OF IT THROUGH SHEER HUNGER"). …And no, I can't see there being bathrooms in the Junkyard. They probably just went wherever. I have no idea whether they needed to pee before the demon virus, nor can I say that I really care.
Sex and Gender
There wasn't any! Period. There wasn't even any real concept of sex, nor gender. Sure, they could see that women had breasts and men had dicks, but it was pretty much factual "Those are breasts. They are irrelevant to the task at hand. We should ambush the Vanguards."
That said, even before the demon virus, everyone did have at least a little personality ad, and so I doubt that there was never any interactions that involved sex or gender. I don't really envision them rising past the point of someone's hand brushing past someone's crotch and them finding it pleasurable, or say Bat resenting Jinana's strength because she's female for a few seconds before remembering she's his leader. But there was no reason for them to be at all significant, and so they weren't.
Were they capable of functioning sexually before the demon virus? Sure, I can't imagine that being left out. I'm sure there were erections before the demon virus came, and possibly menstruation, although that has enough disadvantages associated with it that I can see it being left out. On the other hand, any woman who was afflicted with severe cramps probably died pretty fast, just because it would be really hard to fight to your capacity in that kind of pain, and there just isn't room in the tribes for that kind of weakness. I tend to assume that healing before the demon virus came was very limited, and if you had more than a scratch, well, your comrades would hate it but odds are they wouldn't be able to keep you out of battle long enough for it to heal completely and you would be killed due to that weakness. (Partially, I admit, because I like the irony of being turned into demon cannibals also including the ability to heal even bad wounds for the first time.) And really bad cramps are just another form of that kind of weakness.
There aren't really any gender-related issues arising from the Junkyard. The people who do have issues with gender always have it coming from their past life experiences outside the Junkyard. At the same time, there are still women who come across as very female (Argilla) and men who come across as very masculine (Heat). But it's just…who they are. They aren't socialized to be that way in this life, and if Argilla chose to say, shave her head and wear an outfit like Serph's that's more masculine, people would be surprised because it's her changing her look, but they wouldn't be surprised because of the gender presentation issues. I imagine there'd be more issues with a guy wearing a skirt, but it would still be echoes from a past life that made them find it jarring, rather than something they've ever experienced in this life. Before the demon virus, I imagine it'd be something like "That is strange. I do not comprehend. But more importantly, the Vanguards have been weakened by their last skirmish with the Wolves. Let us attack."
Home
Home is actually kind of a complicated concept in the Junkyard! Every tribe had their base. And it was generally pretty cool-looking and suited to the tribe. And I will guarantee you that in camp, the Embryon has totally splashed their cabin with orange paint all over because damnit, that's what makes it a proper base.
But before the demon virus came, there wasn't much emotional attachment. (Well, obviously.) The Embryon in particular were used to moving on to new bases. I imagine that since the Embryon were so small, they moved a lot. But even a tribe the size of the Brutes moved bases when they found something better. I kind of envision the Solids taking over their fortress early on and keeping it because they really probably did have the most defensible base in the game, at least outside Sera's old house. But that's special and got changed by the demon virus anyway. Most tribes probably moved occasionally, but not all that often because if a tribe was fucked enough that their base was a liability, they were probably dead. Or severely hurt, probably to the point where they'd lost a lot of their tribe members. (Come to think of it, nothing says that the Embryon were always their size. I can see them getting hit hard at some point and losing half their people. Even if they were twice their size they'd still be a small tribe and that makes them vulnerable.)
But with the demon virus came emotions, and they started caring about their base, just as it got attacked and they had to abandon it. I think Sera was sadder for them than they were sad, because, um…. Hey Sera want to essay on whether or not Sera'd ever had a home? Because I'm not sure. But they were starting to think of the base as a home as well as where they lived, I think.
On the other hand, hell, I think that if the Embryon could have gained significant strategic advantage, they would have blown up their own base themselves. They wouldn't have enjoyed it, and Sera would have been dreadfully upset. But preserving their lives and the lives of their comrades is significantly more important than a place, no matter how important that place is.
Before it was the Junkyard
So before it was the Junkyard, it was a virtual playhouse created by Sera to play in between experiments. Basically, think Barbie dolls. She created a beautiful house for her to live in, a ship to go on romantic cruises with Serph-AI-doll, an amusement park, a beach, etc. All these except the beach showed up in the Junkyard! Essentially, when Sera creating the Junkyard, she couldn't stand to give up all her Barbie dolls, and her Barbie dream house and her Barbie amusement park and snuck them into the war sim. It isn't quite as obvious and jarring as actual Barbie-branded merchandise would be in the Junkyard, but it's usually pretty obvious that it just doesn't fit with the rest of the Junkyard, and everyone remarks on it. The most obvious about it is Coordinate 136, mostly because it includes Twinkerbell giving you puzzle clues and a thinly veiled story about a princess and a good prince and an evil prince that is very clearly a metaphor for Sera, Serph, and Heat. Interestingly, Sera's playhouse stuff tends to be vaguely Western, while everything else has stuff that looks like Hindu temple carvings spread around it (see this post's icon for an example). Except for the fact they tend to be molded into metal rather than carved into stone. I'm not sure what that's trying to say, except maybe this was something that Sera was trying to separate from her work trying to talk to God and so she didn't want to include anything even vaguely religious. And what's less religious than Disney? XD
But even Disney's creepy when it's abandoned and broken in a world at war!
But more than that, it's a signifier that whatever mythology the Junkyard tells itself about its existence just…isn't true. It's roughly equivalent to if the relics of a prehistoric Disneyland were found in place of the pyramids, with no stylistic predecessors. I tend to believe that people in the Junkyard realize that they're living in the ruins of something, as the environment's full of what looks to be the abandoned stuff of a high-tech Hindu civilization, but it's entirely misleading. What appears to be junk is the stuff deliberately created for an optimum fighting environment, and it's Sera's playground that was thrown into the trash.
Also this entire thing contains spoilers for DDS1 and DDS2, though only up through before the Airport.
Okay, starting with the basics. The Junkyard is a computer-generated world generated for the purposes of war simulation, to find the best battle AI. The Karma Temple makes rules and restrictions, presumably with the goal of optimum parameters for finding the most effective AI. The Tribes follow these rules in an attempt to reach Nirvana. These rules are essentially: Fight and kill the other tribes. If your leader dies, join the tribe that killed your leader.
Tribes
There are, at the time the game starts, 6 tribes. The Embryon in orange, the Vanguards in green, the Maribel in red, the Solids in yellow, the Wolves in white, and the Solids in blue. However, this is only the number of tribes left after the war has reached a stalemate, and they've had five years to destroy tribes. In a document you read in the real world, the Embryon is the 96th tribe. My guess is that the Junkyard started off with a 100 tribes, just because 100 is a nice even number. Considering this is DDS, if there’s any important numbers in Hinduism around there, though, I’d change my guess to that number.
New tribes can be formed, however, the mechanism for doing so is unknown. My guess would be that if rookies who have not yet joined a tribe kill another tribe’s leader, they become a tribe. Partially from the evidence of the super rookies optional bosses, where they really wanted to kill Serph (admittedly their stated reason was to reach Nirvana, but I’m not sure people can reach Nirvana without being in a tribe), and partially because, logically, if the members of a defeated tribe by law join the victors, if their leader is defeated by a rookie, they must join the rookie’s tribe. So the rookie gains a tribe. Whether that is the only way to form a tribe, who knows? I can’t think of any other plausible ways to make the Temple acknowledge a group of rookies as a tribe, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Besides, the temple could just randomly go “Hey, you guys! You’re a tribe now. Have a Dissemination Machine to receive our orders.”
On a side note, this makes me think that the Embryon started off as quite literally just Serph, Heat, Cielo, and Argilla, and POSSIBLY Gale, and that the other members of the Embryon, come from tribes that the Embryon have defeated pre-demon virus. Mostly, admittedly, because I like the idea. I’m not sure how well balanced that would be, though, just because if all tribes started off as just a few people who managed to defeat another tribe, the early tribes would have a major advantage. Unless of course after a while they started increasing the size of new tribes, since god knows the Vanguards’ ex-base has an infinite supply of rookies, and this is at a stage in the world when there are tribes that are large.
Size-wise, the tribes vary hugely. The Embryon has around fifteen members total, assuming we meet them all in the base or elsewhere. While Jinana sent 500 people to attack the Solid’s Citadel, and that was just a diversion. And the Maribel isn’t even that large or strong a tribe. The largest tribes are the Brutes and the Wolves, although we never get any numbers for them. They could anywhere from 3000 to 10 million, really, although I’d guess 5,000 if I had to make a guess. However, the number of officer-class per tribes also vary widely. The Embryon has over double the number of the tribe with the next most officers, at 5. The Maribel, which has relatively weak soldiers , but it has the next most officers, with two officer level soldiers. All the other tribes just have one, the leader. (I define officers as people with authority, names, and an Asura demon as opposed to any other clan of demon. I'm sure the Brutes and the Wolves had intermediate officers, because they're just too big to manage otherwise, but they didn't have the same innate power that the leaders, Bat, and the Embryon did.)
While the Embryon’s large number of officers was a major, major advantage post-demon virus, I’m guessing that before that, when people were fighting with regular weapons, sheer numbers were a hell of a lot more important. The way the Embryon were talking at the beginning indicates that they felt that all the other tribes were stronger than them. They were surviving! Because their base didn’t let too many people in at once and out of sheer luck, determination, and possibly having God on their side. But they weren’t doing well. To me, this suggests that of the mysterious at least 91 other tribes out there, there were probably some who started off with more than one officer, although I’d guess that the Embryon has the most. If only because they’re a group that Sera did not want separated. But they were destroyed in the war, and the officers were probably killed. I’m wondering if Sera occasionally pushed events a little so her Embryon weren’t killed, because I just look at the situation they were in before the demon virus going “Man, I don’t see how they survived with that few people”.
In accordance with the whole trying to find the best AI for urban warfare, each tribe varies in its style of battle. The Embryon all use guns! Anything from grenade launchers to submachine guns to handguns. Their base is a giant crack in the ground, with an elevator letting only a few people in at once. I mean, sure, I guess people could try to jump in, but I would guess it’s far enough down that they’d die. The way their base is eventually overrun is by throwing sheer numbers into it, when all but one of their officer-class soldiers were out of it. The Embryon previously had other bases, but we have no idea what it might have been. They don't really…have the same same kind of defined culture as the rest of the tribes. They're much more individual, and they don't tend to share the same (general) taste in music the way the other tribes do, and their uniforms are usually…blander when seen as a whole, but fairly personalized for the officers. The foot soldiers, at least, tend to wear very basic outfits without any outstanding features. And the others tend not to hugely diverge from Serph. A skirt for Argilla, skirt and boots for Sera, cape and no arm armor for Heat. Gale and Cielo diverge the most, but when compared to how different say, Lupa's outfit is from Serph's, they're practically identical.
The Vanguards use explosive crossbows and have a easily the most straightforward base in the game. They definitely come off as a tribe specializing in long-distance, with the way everyone is wearing those glasses that look like they could be binoculars, but they really don’t seem to have any major advantages. Their base is just a base. Interestingly, their leader’s room has bottles of what looks like alcohol. How you would get alcohol in the Junkyard, where there’s no plants or any sort of sugars to fermet stuff (or yeast for that matter probably), though, I have no idea. Especially since it’s made clear in the second game that the Embryon have never encountered alcohol before. They all wear hoods and glasses. …I was about to make a snarky comment about how Gale should be an honorary Vanguard (he had glasses in a past life! It totally counts), but when you add in the fact that his hair’s their tribe color it’s actually just weird.
The Maribel seem designed for close-combat. Their base is full of trap doors which they can close and leave you trapped and lost to be picked off at their leisure. Bat is known as a knife fighter, and I can easily see Jinana as one too. The rest of the members are weak and basically canon fodder. Aesthetic-wise, they have probably the second most distinctive look, since they’re very much modelled after the punk aesthetic.
The Solids are neither particularly strong nor weak. They hide behind a giant fortress, and their leader usually stays well away from the battlefield. I’d actually guess that the Solids have the highest amount of infighting, at least post-demon virus. Just because behind the fortress there’s not as much need to be wary of attack constantly. We have no clue what their weapons are, but I’d…actually say something like. staves or I dunno, because they don’t seem to have much offensive capability. It seems like they rely on the fortress to do their work for them. I mean, they overwhelm Cielo and the Embryon, but that’s when most the Embryon is already gone. I’d say that when they do abandon their fortress, they can man a much stronger force than you might expect, just because the fortress doesn’t really need that many people to defend it. But it’s not what they’re good at and they probably have a high casualty rate when they leave. Especially when they’re in the Maribel base and the Embryon’s using them as snacks! :D They’re more hip-hop. They even have the Hip-Hop Brothers as members! They all tend to have similar accents to Cielo and Cielo at one point even says that if he hadn’t been part of the Embryon, he’d probably have been one of them.
The Wolves, we have no clue about their style of combat. We know that they're very strong, but that's about all. Since they seem to be modelled after the Noble Savage stereotype, probably something to do with that. Except how that would work with the fact that the Junkyard is an urban warfare simulation, I have no idea. We never see a female Wolf, probably for the same reason we never see a woman wearing Bat’s outfit. Shirtless women tend to make ratings higher!
The Brutes are clearly the most traditionally military tribe. They have a commanding officer, who even demands to be called Colonel Beck, and will choke a bitch if he doesn’t get it. All of them keep their bodies much more covered than any of the other tribes except the Vanguards bother with, with the full hood-body armor-leg armor-arm armor etc. They cover themselves in their tribal color (blue) in camouflage patterns. Their base is Sera’s old house, which…has the benefit of being confusing as hell to navigate? Their leader picked it more for emotional reasons than tactical ones, although I doubt that he missed the tactical benefits of a base that changes and teleports you back to the entrance if you go the wrong way.
All six tribes start off with a rival tribe. Embryon vs. Vangaurds, Solids vs. Maribel, Brutes vs. Wolves. It’s interesting that the tribes that rival each other tend to parallel in some way. Solids and the Maribel both depend on their base more than any of the other tribes for their strength, and both tend to reference music and modify their uniform in ways that’s more designed for appearance than practicality. The Brutes and the Wolves are fairly traditional polar opposites, with the Brutes as a traditional military and the Wolves as a traditional Noble Savage archetype. I don't see the Vanguards really as opposite the Embryon, but then it's harder to peg the Embryon down into a stereotype because well, they're the main characters.
Economy
Each tribe has its own culture and hierarchy, but the temple is above them and issues laws and makes the currency available based off, well, video-game strictures! This is shocking, I’m sure. The more enemies you devour and the faster you devour them, the more macca you will have available. I’m going to say that either it all automatically goes to the highest ranking member of your party, or the Embryon automatically just give all their macca to Serph to buy their weapons. Because clearly the guy who walks into walls is the best guy to buy your weapons. (Wlu, Serph~) I figure this because it’s not like you have multiple sources of cash, but minor members of the tribe do mention having their own macca.
With macca, you can buy things from the Vendors, mysterious shops located in each base, controlled by the Karma Temple. From these you can purchase healing items, attack items, and miscellaneous items that do things like attract monsters. You can also buy ammo, although generally your ammo from the game’s treasure chests is good enough that it’s a waste of money. Unless of course you have 999,999 macca and still aren’t quite ready to face the Demi-Fiend, in which case why not max out your item inventory of every single item they sell in the store including the mutually redundant items and the ammo (which has a maximum of five by the way. Man my macca was so maxed out by the time I beat the game that playthrough.)
You can also, more importantly, buy mantras. Vendors existed before the demon virus, but mantras didn’t, so that probably changed the Junkyard’s economy a ton. Because it is by far more important to buy mantras than it is to buy items, unless you don’t have something like Posumundi mastered in which case yeah, buy some Dis-Poisons.
There is probably some trading around and gifts within the tribe post-demon virus, but before the leader (or probably in the Embryon, the strategist), but I kind of doubt there was before. Everything was undoubtedly arranged in the most logical and efficient manner, because that’s what AIs do. Well Junkyard AIs are a bit more complicated, since they have the seeds at least of a personality, but I think not enough more complicated to be giving gifts to the people they care about.
Government
The Karma Temple is again, the ultimate ruler of the Junkyard. It makes the laws. Traditionally, before the demon virus came, these laws were obeyed without question. They were just… the way the world was. Questioning the laws would be like asking why the grass is green or why cats inevitably throw up on carpet rather than easily cleaned tile. You attempt to kill the other tribes, and after the other tribe’s leader is killed, the survivors join the victorious tribe. I would assume that the Embryon historically has conquered very few tribes, considering their size (although considering it’s kind of my headcanon that they started off with quite literally just Serph, Heat, Argilla, Cielo, and maybe Gale, they probably conquered like. One tribe. Maybe two). Other tribes, such as the Wolves and the Brutes, probably conquered a lot of tribes, since they’re the two largest tribes in the game. Additional evidence for this is Lupa’s necklace of tag rings.
Tag rings are the method by which the Karma Temple tracks them. And when I track, I mean TRACK. They even know how long it takes for each fight to finish, in order to decide how much macca they get. The tag rings are the key to using vendors and Karma Terminals, the only things that sell really important things like magic and healing items. Basically, if you didn't have a tag ring, you would be so very screwed. Sera survives! But only because the Embryon is utterly devoted to her and also she created the Junkyard.
The Karma Temple also seems to have occasionally tweaked things in the Junkyard occasionally. It was not unknown for Serph to be summoned to the Karma Temple, and the only thing I can think of for that would be to strengthen or weaken his tribe to see what happened. Group meetings of all the leaders were completely unknown in the Junkyard before the demon virus.
Each tribe makes its own rules, as long as they still follow the Junkyard rules. They vary from the Embryon, which seems to have very few rules, to the Brutes, who are run by an ex-military control freak and so probably has plenty. I have no idea what these rules would entail though so…whatever.
Religion
I'm not going to cover the more large-scale religion stuff in DDS because I already did that essay! What this is more about is the cycle of reincarnation within the Junkyard. Which I also covered, but it's fundamental enough that it bears repeating.
The people in the Junkyard believe that when people die, their souls are taken up into the rain and reincarnated. A while ago, someone in chan mentioned the possibility that before the demon virus, this actually, literally, happened in the physical as well as spiritual sense. Considering how common dissolving deaths are in videogames and the fact that Sera probably didn't really want to make their deaths really, um, organic, I can see it.
It is, however, canon that they do reincarnate within the Junkyard repeatedly. When you go into the Karma Temple, you see half-formed bodies swirling around the sea of milk, getting ready to be reborn. Either the evaporation cycle is reversed, and they evaporate in the rain which then condenses in the Karma Temple, or their souls are more literally washed away into the sewers and there brought to the karma temple. Or the souls aren't tightly knit to the cycle of the rain.
But it's also strongly implied that once you start reincarnating into the Junkyard, you don't get out. You die there, and you're reborn back into war, until you die again and again and again. And considering there's significantly more people dying in the real world than there are being born at the moment, there's a lot of people who recently died in the real world in there. We meet at least three that we know for certain, and I'd guess most of them reincarnated from the real world at some point. Probably mostly only those who remember really clearly down to their names and the names of their loved ones are the ones who are on their first reincarnation in the Junkyard, though. While I mostly wouldn't define the Junkyard as the worst world in the DDS series, that…really makes its negative qualities a whole lot worse.
Biology
The Junkyard was created so that nothing other than humans lived there. There were no plants. There were no animals. I don't even believe there was any bacteria or viruses, just because I find that it takes away from the fundamental oddity of the Junkyard if I believe that there was something living independently of the humans. Well, besides the cat. The cat doesn't count. Also, with the amount of rain falling, I would imagine that there'd be a lot of mold growing if there were any other forms of life allowed.
…However, this leads to problems with digestive systems! If you'll remember from your high school biology, a lot of the digestive process is done by bacteria in your system. If you don't have them, you'll starve. Personally, I do not believe that the AIs required food before the demon virus. I have no idea if they'd require water or not, but it's not like there could ever be a shortage there. (If you drink water in the Junkyard are you voring someone's soul? DDS chan says hell yes.) More than just working on the biological level, it works on a thematic level, since it means that the demon virus for the first time gave them a definite need. Without hunger, an endless supply of water and the natural difficulties of depriving someone of oxygen means that there's never any real obvious lack. But hunger gives them that, and makes it a very…carnal, physical thing that makes them all much more aware of their bodies and themselves.
Incidentally, this makes it interesting that the only person who gets choked in the series is also probably the neediest. (In the sense that he needs so hard that it's impossible to fulfill, at least.)
But this also means that the Embryon…really aren't quite human even outside the whole "DEMON CANNIBAL IN MY SOUL" thing. I'm not sure that's all that big a deal, considering that a lot of the theme of the series is that the strict definitions of humanity isn't all that important, it's what you do that's important. It also means their demons are basically taking the place of the bacteria in digesting their food for them. This is why I assume that while they pee and crap, they don't do nearly as much as you might expect for the volume they eat. (…Well, mostly for the practical reasons of "well if they're eating someone once every seven seconds logically, and the volume of their stomachs is presumably smaller than a person….screw it all. THEIR DEMON EVAPORATES MOST OF IT THROUGH SHEER HUNGER"). …And no, I can't see there being bathrooms in the Junkyard. They probably just went wherever. I have no idea whether they needed to pee before the demon virus, nor can I say that I really care.
Sex and Gender
There wasn't any! Period. There wasn't even any real concept of sex, nor gender. Sure, they could see that women had breasts and men had dicks, but it was pretty much factual "Those are breasts. They are irrelevant to the task at hand. We should ambush the Vanguards."
That said, even before the demon virus, everyone did have at least a little personality ad, and so I doubt that there was never any interactions that involved sex or gender. I don't really envision them rising past the point of someone's hand brushing past someone's crotch and them finding it pleasurable, or say Bat resenting Jinana's strength because she's female for a few seconds before remembering she's his leader. But there was no reason for them to be at all significant, and so they weren't.
Were they capable of functioning sexually before the demon virus? Sure, I can't imagine that being left out. I'm sure there were erections before the demon virus came, and possibly menstruation, although that has enough disadvantages associated with it that I can see it being left out. On the other hand, any woman who was afflicted with severe cramps probably died pretty fast, just because it would be really hard to fight to your capacity in that kind of pain, and there just isn't room in the tribes for that kind of weakness. I tend to assume that healing before the demon virus came was very limited, and if you had more than a scratch, well, your comrades would hate it but odds are they wouldn't be able to keep you out of battle long enough for it to heal completely and you would be killed due to that weakness. (Partially, I admit, because I like the irony of being turned into demon cannibals also including the ability to heal even bad wounds for the first time.) And really bad cramps are just another form of that kind of weakness.
There aren't really any gender-related issues arising from the Junkyard. The people who do have issues with gender always have it coming from their past life experiences outside the Junkyard. At the same time, there are still women who come across as very female (Argilla) and men who come across as very masculine (Heat). But it's just…who they are. They aren't socialized to be that way in this life, and if Argilla chose to say, shave her head and wear an outfit like Serph's that's more masculine, people would be surprised because it's her changing her look, but they wouldn't be surprised because of the gender presentation issues. I imagine there'd be more issues with a guy wearing a skirt, but it would still be echoes from a past life that made them find it jarring, rather than something they've ever experienced in this life. Before the demon virus, I imagine it'd be something like "That is strange. I do not comprehend. But more importantly, the Vanguards have been weakened by their last skirmish with the Wolves. Let us attack."
Home
Home is actually kind of a complicated concept in the Junkyard! Every tribe had their base. And it was generally pretty cool-looking and suited to the tribe. And I will guarantee you that in camp, the Embryon has totally splashed their cabin with orange paint all over because damnit, that's what makes it a proper base.
But before the demon virus came, there wasn't much emotional attachment. (Well, obviously.) The Embryon in particular were used to moving on to new bases. I imagine that since the Embryon were so small, they moved a lot. But even a tribe the size of the Brutes moved bases when they found something better. I kind of envision the Solids taking over their fortress early on and keeping it because they really probably did have the most defensible base in the game, at least outside Sera's old house. But that's special and got changed by the demon virus anyway. Most tribes probably moved occasionally, but not all that often because if a tribe was fucked enough that their base was a liability, they were probably dead. Or severely hurt, probably to the point where they'd lost a lot of their tribe members. (Come to think of it, nothing says that the Embryon were always their size. I can see them getting hit hard at some point and losing half their people. Even if they were twice their size they'd still be a small tribe and that makes them vulnerable.)
But with the demon virus came emotions, and they started caring about their base, just as it got attacked and they had to abandon it. I think Sera was sadder for them than they were sad, because, um…. Hey Sera want to essay on whether or not Sera'd ever had a home? Because I'm not sure. But they were starting to think of the base as a home as well as where they lived, I think.
On the other hand, hell, I think that if the Embryon could have gained significant strategic advantage, they would have blown up their own base themselves. They wouldn't have enjoyed it, and Sera would have been dreadfully upset. But preserving their lives and the lives of their comrades is significantly more important than a place, no matter how important that place is.
Before it was the Junkyard
So before it was the Junkyard, it was a virtual playhouse created by Sera to play in between experiments. Basically, think Barbie dolls. She created a beautiful house for her to live in, a ship to go on romantic cruises with Serph-AI-doll, an amusement park, a beach, etc. All these except the beach showed up in the Junkyard! Essentially, when Sera creating the Junkyard, she couldn't stand to give up all her Barbie dolls, and her Barbie dream house and her Barbie amusement park and snuck them into the war sim. It isn't quite as obvious and jarring as actual Barbie-branded merchandise would be in the Junkyard, but it's usually pretty obvious that it just doesn't fit with the rest of the Junkyard, and everyone remarks on it. The most obvious about it is Coordinate 136, mostly because it includes Twinkerbell giving you puzzle clues and a thinly veiled story about a princess and a good prince and an evil prince that is very clearly a metaphor for Sera, Serph, and Heat. Interestingly, Sera's playhouse stuff tends to be vaguely Western, while everything else has stuff that looks like Hindu temple carvings spread around it (see this post's icon for an example). Except for the fact they tend to be molded into metal rather than carved into stone. I'm not sure what that's trying to say, except maybe this was something that Sera was trying to separate from her work trying to talk to God and so she didn't want to include anything even vaguely religious. And what's less religious than Disney? XD
But even Disney's creepy when it's abandoned and broken in a world at war!
But more than that, it's a signifier that whatever mythology the Junkyard tells itself about its existence just…isn't true. It's roughly equivalent to if the relics of a prehistoric Disneyland were found in place of the pyramids, with no stylistic predecessors. I tend to believe that people in the Junkyard realize that they're living in the ruins of something, as the environment's full of what looks to be the abandoned stuff of a high-tech Hindu civilization, but it's entirely misleading. What appears to be junk is the stuff deliberately created for an optimum fighting environment, and it's Sera's playground that was thrown into the trash.