The Black Marker, also known as the Prime Marker, was an alien artifact discovered on Earth by DredgerCorp and the government in 2214. It was hidden to discourage alien belief, but was brought to public knowledge by Michael Altman who had been contracted to research the Marker. It was the source of the codes that the Sovereign Colonies and later EarthGov copied to create their own Markers which had the same devastating effects as the original.
The leader of the Circle, Jacob Danik, speculated that the Black Marker forced evolution on Earth to create an intelligent species capable of creating more Markers with the ultimate plan of initiating a Convergence Event.
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Overview[]
The Black Marker was found by Michael Altman and a team of researchers from DredgerCorp and the military in the asteroid impact crater off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It was later concluded that the Black Marker landed on Earth approximately 65 million years ago and is what caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The existence of the Black Marker was known to the locals that lived near its resting place for generations, but was never spoken about to outsiders and was referred to as "The Tail of the Devil". The locals tended to cross their index and middle fingers when speaking about it.[1]
Altman's discovery spawned a religion known as Unitology that grew faster than any other religion ever formed on Earth. According to official sources, Altman was mysteriously assassinated by the government to silence the truth and he became a martyr figure to the religion's believers. In reality, the government had him killed by a Necromorph created by the Marker so they could intentionally use him as a scapegoat. The Black Marker was revered by Unitologists as an immensely powerful holy object which God sent to show that death was not the end. Various tests on the Marker led to it being reverse-engineered. The result were functioning copies known as the Red Markers.[2]
The Black Marker was classified as government property and although the Unitologists worshiped it, they only appeared to have pictures and possibly the leaked vidlog from Altman to base their beliefs on. As most of the data was classified, their conjectures and the comments of Altman caused irrational, hysterical ideas about the Marker to gain momentum. The Unitology religion offered vague promises of immortality and unity in death, backed up by apparent scientific credibility which excited many previously purposeless and depressed people in the dry and impoverished world.
After seeing the horrifying effects of the Black Marker and the creation of Necromorphs, Altman appeased the Marker by showing to it that he could replicate it as instructed by a vision of his late girlfriend Ada, and then sank it along with the floating facility that it was housed on so it could never cause harm again. However, two government officials who supervised the project, Craig Markoff and Stevens, made sure that the data of the Marker from Altman was copied so they could make their own Markers for more research.
The Black Marker's influence was similar to the influence later seen with the Red Markers, although Altman speculated that there was a different force surrounding it that seemed to be opposed to the Black Marker. Altman thought that there was something in the human mind that caused some of the hallucinations, a kind of defense mechanism that was activated in the human brain when it was in the Black Marker's presence. This was shown when many people exposed to the Black Marker claimed to hear two voices in conflict: one of these voices, presumed to be from the Marker, told the people that it offered salvation through Convergence and encouraged suicidal madness in order to "make [it] whole", while the other voice warned about the danger of Convergence and implored humanity not to study the Black Marker lest they succumb to its plans. Whether this second force was in fact opposed to the Black Marker as Altman theorized or was actually manipulating them into starting a Convergence Event under the guise of stopping the Necromorph threat was unknown.[1]
The symbols on the Black Marker and later its copies apparently represented DNA and the double-helical structure of the Marker itself alluded to this.
The Sovereign Colonies managed to recover the Black Marker data and use it for their own experimentation, eventually leading to their own Red Marker copies such as Marker 3A on Aegis VII. Eventually, however, a council within the Sovereign Colonies decided that it was in everyone's best interests to invoke Scenario Five, an emergency directive that would be made in the case of an Extinction-Level Outbreak due to a First Contact Scenario.[3] This meant that all related equipment would be disabled and all involved personnel sought out for termination with the goal of suppressing and severing all knowledge and contact with the Marker tech and at all known Marker sites. The Black Marker's status after Scenario Five became unclear as the directive aimed to not only erase its copies and data but also the Black Marker itself.
In 2508, Vera Cortez spotted on her monitor the newly-found Red Marker on the Aegis VII Colony. She quickly likened it to the Black Marker, which she was ridiculed for, as the Black Marker was known to be colored black.[4] Later, Engineers Sam Caldwell, Sterling and Egan of the Concordance Extraction Corporation were called to work on the Marker site. There, Egan noted that the newly-discovered Marker looked just like the Black Marker. Sterling skeptically noted that the Black Marker and its being located on Earth was more of a fanciful claim made by the Unitologists, and that even if it was true, the presence of a Marker on Earth was more likely rather than on some remote place like Aegis VII.[5] Upon entering the site of the Red Marker, Hanford Carthusia stated that he regretted not having studied the Prime Marker more.[6]
Trivia[]
- The Black Marker was completely unaffected when a piece was taken from it; however, it seemed to "think" it wouldn't be because it made one of the people on the submarine taking the piece go insane and kill both himself and his partner and write symbols all over the walls with their blood.
- The piece that Michael Altman owned was copied by Harmon and may have been used in combination with the information saved from the sinking platform that contained the Black Marker to make the Red Markers.
- According to Michael Altman's analysis of the core sample taken from the Black Marker it has several unusual physical properties. Its structure is smooth both outside and within, the edges featuring a strangely uniform mineral vein structure. This substance is like granite in appearance but almost as hard as corundum, one of the hardest minerals on Earth. Due to the robustness of the Marker, it can be assumed all other Markers based on the black one are physically similar as Marker 3A could not be destroyed easily either.
- Red Markers are speculated to be color red because the element Bismuth was used to replace certain elements present in the duplication of the Black Marker. It remains unknown what materials the Black Marker is made of.
- The Chicxulub crater is a real-life crater. True to its location in the book, it is the crater caused by the asteroid impact that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs. In the book, the Black Marker was carried by the asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago.
Appearance[]
- Dead Space: Martyr
- Dead Space: Catalyst
- Dead Space (Comic) (mentioned)
- Dead Space (mentioned)
- Dead Space: Extraction (mentioned)
- Dead Space 2 (mentioned)
- Dead Space 3 (mentioned)
Gallery[]
