Raidercast 5: Endgame - Crystals and Artifacts - The Tomb Raider Podcast

Come with me on an epic journey as I investigate a conspiracy that links together the artefacts from across the Tomb Raider series and the race behind their creation! Get comfortable for this one.
This video required the creation of many 3D assets, and so took the most effort and longest time to make. I hope you enjoy it!
Chris x
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[@fantasticfour1999]

This was fantastic. Thanks for sharing! ❤️

[@fredels9239]

THE ANNUNAKI!! :D This is really some next level conspiracy stuff, and i'm 100% here for it for once. Never, ever thought about that. Yet, it does make some sense. Great video!

[@Raidercast]

I remember the 'MOTHER OF GOD WHAAAAAT' thought that hit me when these things clicked together in my mind, hahah!

[@lionocyborg6030]

Nice touch with the Chaos Emeralds at the start, though you were missing the cyan one. :)

[@Potkanka]

Haha that was pretty cool! I agree that the creators almost certainly didn't plan it - colourful crystals simply look cool so of course they'd appear repeatedly. But taking them as if they were part of a whole anyway, and the theories you came up with, was so fun to listen to! Even the colour-coded powers! That was probably the most interesting part, how it actually kinda all fit. It's one of the things that I wouldn't want confirmed in the games (I'm not really a fan of the whole theory that all myths have one source, at least in classic TR), but I think it's really fun to speculate about, maybe a fanfic about it could be interesting? There is more than one stone of each colour (unlike the Infinity Stones), so there could always be found more, and their powers could be distinguished all the more clearly... I tried thinking of more stones, the Mercury stone was yellow, wasn't it? And along with other artefacts, it opens the door to the Philosopher's stone. If we went by the theory that yellow stones allow teleportation, what if the "door" was actually a portal (it even kind of sparkles right beyond the door) and the Philosopher's stone wasn't *actually* in Rome... Anyway... would this make Lara kind of like Thanos, only if Thanos wasn't trying to kill half the life in the universe but instead was an adrenaline junkie who likes collecting pretty things? :D Aw and it was really cool to see my drawing of The Triumvirate in there!

[@thatnorskchick2]

Me the whole time listening: :O I want to believe... I have thought a bit on the recurring themes of immortality and evolution, but this is some next level shit!

[@Raidercast]

Definitely had my Mulder hat one while writing this!

[@dr.setups2278]

@@Raidercast are you going to make another episode of the quest for stuff

[@dragooncroft]

This is a very interesting perspective! I never noticed that all the artifacts contained gems, and moreover that these gems have color that is possibly indicative of their power. I think Lara was onto something when she referred to "the monomyth". I think you did a really superb job piecing these ideas together and explaining them. The visuals were also very effective. Great video!

[@zackaryabbotts5972]

Firstly, i must praise the time and effort you've put into this presentation and lets not forgot the delivery to your theories around this subject, making a link between the games, you've literally created credible lore for the Core Design series, regardless if its all conjecture, was so engaged in this Podcast, my concentration never dropped for a second whilst i made sense of how you linked all the source material into this outstanding entry to the series, you've really given me a new perspective on the TR universe, absolutely stunning.

[@Raidercast]

Thanks so much! I really loved making this episode.

[@lionocyborg6030]

While this does bring Legend into it, a couple of years ago I theorised to myself that the swords like Excalibur that Lara finds are Nephillim "Weapons of Light" like the periapt shards, but as swords. The shards are just dagger versions used by the Lux Veritatis to hunt the original creators of the technology. They seem to link a couple of things together: Maybe humans were allied with the Nephillim at first but the members of the species who sided with them died and/or were wiped out in cataclysms like the comet strike in Atlantis followed by its supervolcano erupting (which was the IRL cause for the city being destroyed) or whatever happened with the Jormungander mining probe that led to Ragnarok, and the "langoring whimps" as Natla put it who were left behind were scared of the Nephillim and tried to wipe them out out of racism. This forced the Nephillim to take drastic measures, which led to them turning to a prototype mad scientist (Eckhardt) for help repopulating their race. Natla was originally taking measures of her own to allow the Nephillim and/or humanity to evolve past such disaster by crafting an example of the ideal life form with the Great Pyramid on Santorini/Atlantis. She broke the law and paralysed her brother(?) to do it however and was put in the drunk tank as punishment. Her fears were proven right starting with the comet however. By TR1, she changed her plans to make humans better instead, not being the most sane after over 1000 years in forced cryosleep. She was broken further thanks to Lara, at one point going postal in what I like to call "Kyodai Natla Robo" at the canon end of TR1 (as shown in TRAE), hell bent on killing Lara even if she destroys Atlantis' ruins as well. 64.media.tumblr.com/093881db565d0bc5551d6230647d2626/12228ccd9ca7d160-b1/s1280x1920/54ee5d2ddc6eca6e470265868850dee0c7cd60fd.jpg Natla would have returned in the AOD trilogy according to the book 20 Years of Tomb Raider, but what her role would have been is so far unknown. Now, Alister says in Legend that everywhere the periapt swords went, they raised up kings, shaping the course of human destiny. Sure enough, the dais portals are associated with rulers: Queen Tunupa in Boliva, an unknown monk brotherhood in Nepal and King Arthur. No human knows how either the swords or shards worked, other than that the former could be split into 4 fragments each with their own power. Takamoto for example used his fragment like Sophia Leigh in their respective boss fights. The portals seem to be powered by a set of pillars containing a strange stone tablet each, with green liquid flowing through it all, and using the swords as keys. The portal network is likely Yggdrasil, inspiring the myths of the world tree, linking several Nephillim and Atlan sites though the only one we see is the Helheim mining complex/Eitr factory, Midgard Serpent drill still intact. The tablets could be refined versions of the Iris, with the pillars and glyphs acting as "fax number" codes for each gate. Notice that Lara touched one of them before activating it? Not sure about Bolivia but maybe they acted as Jjaro cybernetic junctions (a network of TARDIS') too. Lara ended up "time phoning" her mother because she hit the combination for "gateway & time zone" depending on how many pillars she actually touched after the fade out. Maybe the Nepal Yggdrasil gate was linked to Helheim because the monks used it to gather Eitr, the "elixir of life" and Lara hit the speed dial or something when she found it. It could tie into the monastery in the prequel reboots as well. Arthur maybe believed the Nephillim and/or Atlans could resurrect him, given he planned to return from the afterlife at some point, and he likely mated with an Atlan to create a Nephillim, given that at least one source (the mod Mists of Avalon) says that the Lady of the Lake is the mother of his son. The original Sword in the Stone only broke in his fight with Pellinore when periapt swords are meant to be indestructible because it was either a prototype or a shoddy reverse engineering, and it got stuck in the dais when someone tried to use it. Now, the liquid and energy used in the network is green which implies strong energy source but so are the periapt sword particle pulses so it this is where it starts breaking down. it could be the sword and shard energy are portable versions of a Halo ring's weapon and the green color is a coincidence, especially as another Periapt Sword, the Sword of Omens used by the Resheph/Reshep (where my profile name comes from i.e. the 2011 anime) used red pulses instead of green, as did the Soul Reaver in Legend (albeit that was a fun Easter egg more than anything).

[@Penthast]

My favourite video of you by far, I love listening to you overanalyzing lore

[@kameliyaminkova7333]

Amazing video! So in-depth!!!

[@Raidercast]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun with this. It's something that was bubbling away in the back of my mind for a loooong time before it really inspired me to make this podcast.

[@kameliyaminkova7333]

@@Raidercast I have been thinking about that for ages too. The alien thread with the watchers and the nephilim. Hadn't made the connection with the meteorite gemstones on all artifacts tho!

[@brandonmoore2237]

Even though it was all conjecture, it's brilliant! I can't even begin to imagine the amount of thought and research that must have gone into this episode. My favorite thing about it is that you didn't pull the information out of nowhere. You used what was already present in the games and let it guide you. I completely agree that it's highly unlikely that Core Design purposely laid this all out for the purposes you mentioned, but it is fascinating to think about. Another great episode, Chris!

I'll take this as canon! I love how you link all the Core's TR in a single plot although they're really independent from one to another. I always found this disconnection a bit weird, having only Lara as the main reference (and the mechanics, of course!). Great work, I will listen to all the podcast, it's really engaging 😍.

[@topixtor]

The more you think about this, the more it makes sense. Let's throw the gold games in for good measure: UB doesn't add much, but some cat statues do shapeshift into enemies in the egypt levels (similar things do also happen in TLA) and the atlantean ones openly refer to the mutants as "aliens" to my knowledge; Golden Mask features a... shiny golden mask that maybe was made from the Philospher Stone? Even the gold vein-like things look similar. Look, if we speak about teleportation, time travel and pocket-dimensions, maybe the whole sencond half of the game was another planet/age where gold flows like water; could even be the native planet for the Phil, and let's add a bit of immortality since the mask awakens Tornarsuk from an eternal sleep (just like... the GOLDEN Talion from TR2 and its near-same guardian). In TR5, Lara kinda enters a portal open from, guess what, planet-inspired artifacts that semmingly push her back in time to find the Phil! And yeah, they feature at least yellow traits. Lost Artefact needs no introduction since it's just another meteorite-crafted object, however it seems the most powerful (and big) of them all; while Sophia uses it almost in the same way as it's original trinket, it seems capable of creating more time and space travel/pocket dimension shenanigans, which also do feature MORE metorite-like planets in the background of the Reunion level. My guess would be that, being energy sources and semmingly raw-taken from the original source, they can kinda do whatever the other crystals can based on how big and powerful they are (maybe also on how they are shaped?). And yes, the Floating Islands are linked to the dagger, made from bright GREEN "jade", and massive. It's just one giant floating self-powered dimension, so big that it can auto-governate itself and open up when the time comes to let the dagger/whatever get inside. And that's my headcanon now, thank you sir.

[@TheDoctorOfThrills]

I love all of this and is my new headcanon. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. It's so intriguing

[@TheDoctorOfThrills]

oh god i cant stop thinking. this has recontxtualized the enitre series for me

[@Raidercast]

@@TheDoctorOfThrills Hahaha, it was a bit of a fun eye-opener for me when I started piecing this together. Even if headcanon I was sat there thinking "Mother of god.. it's real. It all fits.."

[@FleaBug09]

This was so awesome to watch. Incredibly thought out and fun. I'm sure the developers didn't mean to do All of this.. but the extent of some of these details?! Wouldn't surprised me if at least one bit of it was on purpose. Overall, very well done. Very interesting. Subscribed.

[@Raidercast]

Thanks so much! Yeah, I had a lot of fun with this, and some of the connections only started forming once I'd written half of the episode. I'd love to see some more crystals and meteoric artefacts in the series. I wonder if they'd fit the theory?

[@seanjones9159]

Also one of the 4 keys Lara picks up in level 11 of Tomb Raider 1, (Obelisk Of Karmoon is called The Eye Of Horus, The Amulet Of Horus is in Tomb Raider The Last Revelation. Tomb Raider The Last Revelation and level 11 in Tomb Raider 1 both take place in Eygpt.

[@Raidercast]

The significance and importance of the Eye of Horus is discussed in Episode 6! (Spoilers!)

[@seanjones9159]

​@@Raidercast I just discovered your vids last night. I'm a fan of Tomb Raider franchise especially the classic ones. The observations you made that connected each of the artefacts from the games together were really impressive and could all potentially be linked. Hope you don't mind me asking but do you do your vids regularly and are they at specific times during the week/month, say for example are they around the same time every Sunday perhaps, or do you do the video's on a Whim. I've enjoyed the video's you've done so far and wouldn't mind keeping up with them or watching them live.

[@jasonchester9109]

Mate!! You couldn't be more on my wavelength ahah I did some random speculation myself like a year ago and tried drawing these sorts of ties together with the artefacts too! I also brought In excalibur and Thors hammer as if Legend and Underworld were part of the classic Timeline (Without the same backstory and what not of those games though). Loving this Podcast mate!!

[@Terenete]

I love this theory! You've done a proper TR analysis. Don't know if you've seen Murti's notes he wrote to accompany Kurtis' journal, but there's some really cool info about the Nephilim there.

[@Raidercast]

Thank you!!

[@Terenete]

@@Raidercast here you go trdarkangel.com/2020/03/22/kurtis-journal-background-documents/

[@thelewismiles]

Ohh man!! That’s honestly an awesome theory.

[@Raidercast]

Thanks! I'm really proud of this episode. (It's very underrated, even if I say so myself!)

[@joshuajackson4742]

THIS. VIDEO. 🤯🤯🤯 this has got to be the true overarching plot right?

[@Raidercast]

Glad you liked it! This one was the first one I wrote, and it's one of my favourites.

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

Why is the Scion necessarily a power source? It can be a simple key.

[@TheDoctorOfThrills]

Christ I never noticed the spelt Antarctica wrong

[@Raidercast]

Whoa, me neither!!