There is an ever ongoing joke (several, in fact) about dead Orochi. They are the Red shirts of the Secret World.
Anyway, the thing I came to discuss is this: During our climb of the Orochi Tower, when heading though the Boardroom, Samael says the following:
Did you ever wonder why so many Orochi personnel seem so unprepared for the dangers they faced out in the field? Did you really think you were the only one who could cheat death? Did you think your organization was the only one that could find those individuals whose lips taste of honey? Allow me to introduce you to the Mitsubachi.
And my response is: Yes, and? It’s not like the dead Orochi we met are Mitsubachi. They’re dead. Dead dead. How does Samael having bees of his own (in the tower) explain anything regarding the botched Orochi operations we’ve seen up until then?
PS: I am so sorry if you got stuck at TV-Tropes for hours after clicking the second link.
I interpreted this bit as the confession that Orochi’s muscle isn’t simply full of incompetent goons you have faced over your adventures. The Orochi personnel we commonly see are unprepared because they are just cannon fodder that Samael doesn’t care about. The real investment goes into his Bees and the Bees handle the stuff that need real care.
I always thought the botched operations we come across were largely disposable to begin with. All located near filth sources. Seemed like Samael just sent those teams on suicide missions to gather data and die. Unbeknownst to them.
I still don’t get any of those explanations to fit with the words he is uttering. The first sentence in particular.
Did you ever wonder why so many Orochi personnel seem so unprepared for the dangers they faced out in the field?
I can’t wrap my head around it. Unless there is something lost in translation here. Yes, I wondered, I still do. Orochi having bees give no answer to the incompetence/recklessness/stupidity/ we’ve witnessed in the previous zones.
That still does not connect with the first question. It does not fit. Something like “did you ever wonder why Orochi had operations all over the globe?” or “Did you ever wonder what we got with the cost of all those dead agents you met?”
Not to mention, NONE of the camps we visited had anything to do with bees as far as we can tell. Not in KM, BM, SD, CotSG, BF, SF, CF or Kaidan. They we studying filth for the most part.
Yeah, they’re not being sent out to study bees or anything, they’re just letting stuff go sideways intentionally and anyone who comes back to work the day after being killed in a meth-lab explosion or whatever gets to join the Mitsubachi.
The Mitsubachi lore doesn’t make it sound like “send Orochi personnel to certain death, repeat as necessary” is how he got Bee recruits.
“Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see…
TRANSMIT - initiate the anima signal - RECEIVE - initiate the headhunter protocol - A COMPETITIVE SALARY AND FANTASTIC BENEFITS PACKAGE - when my enemy resembles me - WITNESS - The Mitsubachi.
Do they seem familiar to you, sweetling? Did you think the only Bees wear Red or Blue or Green? Samuel Chandra has talent scouts too. They are not cast as wide or have an infrastructure as intricate, but they are focused. And he is very convincing. He can talk and talk till molecules nod and let go.
Chandra has had more practice at this, but he was just as limited by the factored surprise. He had no more knowledge, no more head start, in regards to when this latest explosion of the imbued would occur. He had to dash out just as madly. But he does know what happens to those imbued in the long run. He knows what happens after the sunset. After the sun-death. He remembers. Thought that must be the haziest of blurs, by now, we would wager.
We see his scientists toiling like termites in grand termite mounds. They are trying to emulate the Third Age, trying to recapture that demiurge spark. Portable technology. Portable Anima wells. Anima on tap. Orochi’s Bees coming to life wherever they like.
What do you do with an enemy who can die as many times as you? What do you do when you understand the enemy as well as your reflection, and they you? What do we whisper in their ears? Do we whisper in their ears?
Sweetlings. Sweetlings all.”
The Orochi operations that have gone completely sideways have been part of the Promethean Initiative, which is big into Filth research. At least some of them directly disobeyed orders from Samael, which makes me think that the Initiative could have been more of Lilith’s project than his…
That all makes me wonder how Bee can not know they are Bee. Like, we our character had magic flowing once they wake up and it took a week to make it follow their wish. But somehow you need to kill someone first to know? Or how does it work?
I’m not sure it’s possible. The intro pretty strongly suggests a newbee is going to be making a massive show of themselves. How do you not notice you’re leaking uncontrolled magic everywhere and that the static on your TV is calling you Sweetling?
Which is likely how bees get found so fast. “Someone just lit up like an occult 4th of July out in Truck Stop, Nevada, send out the recruiters!”
No reason to need to kill someone first; many creatures can see/smell/whatever bees as easily as we can tell a dog from a crocodile. There are plenty of signs of bee-ing.
Yeah, that does make his line in the tower sound like a non-sequitur. I’d just assumed there were varying degrees of “beeness” and our characters were at the high end but that it was equally possible to have a much more subtle awakening (“All Alone Together” hints that one of Amaya’s children could be a bee but there’s no mention of them starting any fires involuntarily).
My next guess is they had a fieldwork budget of seventy dollars american because the entirety of Orochi’s budget was being spent on futuristic crash helmets and doors that stop working during a power cut, but that seems like an odd thing to use as a reveal - “Hey, you know how all of our global operations were straight up trainwrecks? It’s because we’re a garbage corporation being actively mismanaged by idiots!”
I view the large number of dead Orochi personnel as the results of a few factors: 1) Simple hubris. Man assumes they can control forces beyond their understanding. Orochi just happens to have a corporate culture that fosters that sort of attitude. 2) Expendability. Samael and Lillith don’t actually care what happens to the people conducting fieldwork, as long as they live long enough to upload their findings. Any deaths fall within acceptable losses as a trade-off for the knowledge obtained. 3) Wrong place, wrong time. Can involve factors 1 and 2, but sometimes it’s just bad luck.
Samael is asking us if we thought about the contradiction of Orochi being such a massively influential corporation despite having such goons on the field. The idea is that the goons are not Orochi’s only muscle (and they just go on suicide missions) and the actual investment goes into the Mitsubachi who get things done. At least that’s my take.
i havent been to tokyo or anything but this is just my assumption: Dead orochi thats being sent to fields especially camping near filth areas were there because they were inspecting filth, they were even experimenting on it and this is not an assumption its a fact we know what Dr. Klein did. He infused himself with doses of filth. so maybe beside that they were (already or after that i dont know) started to do otehr experimentations on filth like fixing it. because we know filth is corrupted anima and Dr Klein says -as he get crazier in his audio records- what filth is doing to him in such short notice is what anima is doing to us bees in a geological timeline. so maybe that how they got their own bees? Send out expendable orochis near filth wells to protect scientist while they’re experimenting on filth to turn it into anima that they’re gonna infuse their other -maybe worthy- guys with.
My thought on this is that they are creating filth events to force Gaia into making more bees. By shear numbers some of their personnel or those within their personal circles will be chosen and that is Orochi’s gamble.
