Marker 3A as seen in Dead Space Extraction.
Marker 3A was a Red Marker created by the Sovereign Colonies. It was placed on Aegis VII for experimentation purposes[1] and later put in the cargo hold of the USG Ishimura. It was later destroyed following the arrival of the USG Kellion.
History
The First Aegis VII Incident
After the discovery of the Black Marker in 2214 on Earth, EarthGov began researching the extent of its capabilities and structure, in the hopes of using it to discover a source of renewable energy. The research team which originally featured Michael Altman studied the Black Marker.
When the Secession Wars began in 2309, the Sovereign Colonies recovered the Black Marker that Altman buried and reverse-engineered copies of it. One copy, the Marker 3A was sent to Aegis VII for study, research and experimentation. Through an accident in basic decontamination, the team discovered that the genetic code written on the Marker was the code for the Necromorph contagion. Further experiments also observed that the Marker 3A emitted a field or "dead space" that prevented the Necromorph DNA from initiating recombination and made it go dormant.
As time went on, some members of the team for unknown reasons became infected and turned into Necromorphs, leading to their subsequent quarantine. The team members became overrun, with most of them killed by the Necromorph infection. The remaining team led by Dr. Eando Dukaj created a pedestal that one of the members claimed that he saw in a vision, most likely made by the Marker 3A that could amplify the "dead space" made by the Marker in the hopes of stopping the Necromorph infection from spreading and hopefully giving them a chance at survival. The team succeeded in making the pedestal and sealed the Hive Mind and the rest of the infection with it on the planet. The team was killed by Scenario Five and Aegis VII was erased and restricted in 2314.
The Second Aegis VII Incident
Discovered by accident by an illegal mining colony on Aegis VII in 2508, the Marker 3A was hailed among some colonists as proof to their faith's credibility. Shortly after it's discovery, cases of insomnia, depression and later dementia began occurring. Despite increasing cases of violence, colony management overrode P-Sec protests and prepared to bring the Marker inside the colony. When the Marker 3A was removed from it's pedestal, it emitted a red light and simultaneously broadcasted an across-frequencies scream. Apparently taking the "scream" as a signal, fifty Unitologists committed mass suicide. In a similar event of insanity, an extraction team engineer killed numerous members of his team and other colony personnel.
By order of Captain Benjamin Mathius, the Marker 3A was brought to the Ishimura from the colony and a no-fly order was implemented between the colony and vessel. Mathius sought to protect the Marker from any potential danger, as he was in fact sent by the Church of Unitology to recover it above all else, unaware of the truth behind its existence and its connection to the various plagues that had afflicted the colony. The bodies of all of the murder victims are sent to the ship secretly. The bodies of all of the suicide victims are intentionally kept on the colony by the colony manager as leverage to have the Ishimura send him a vessel to transport him to the ship as he felt that he deserved to be a part of the Marker's discovery. Days later, Planet Crack was to commence.
Upon initiating the planet crack, a blackout occurred throughout the entire colony. Panic immediately ensued and people quickly started being slaughtered. It was later discovered by a colonist that the Marker 3A's inscriptions represented a DNA recombinant code for necrotic flesh that resulted in the creation of the Necromorphs. With the bodies of the suicide victims as their hosts, the Necromorphs soon began running amok in the colony, killing off and transforming more colonists. The colony soon fell apart and with all of the shuttles destroyed in a flight accident, it was soon completely overrun with Necromorphs. In the end, only a few colonists survived, most notably, Brant Harris. He was clearly traumatized by the events and provided rich information for the scientists aboard the Ishimura.
Not surprisingly, the Ishimura soon followed the same fate as the colony and more Necromorphs are produced as a result of the Marker 3A's removal.
Unknown to everybody, the Marker 3A had also sealed off "the Hive Mind", a massive creature that seemingly controlled the Necromorphs through telepathy. Upon removing it, the creature was released and went about killing off the humans of Aegis VII, the USG Ishimura and the USM Valor with it's Necromorph hoards. Eventually, CEC Engineer Isaac Clarke managed to return Marker 3A to it's pedestal, causing it to emit an EMP-type shockwave that immediately put a halt to all Necromorph activity, in addition to shutting down the gravity tethers holding the continent sized mass of material extracted by the Ishimura. With the ship's payload plummeting back onto its surface, Issac began his escape, only for Kendra Daniels to return and retake the Marker for herself, reactivating the Necromorphs in the process.
Kendra was soon killed by the newly-revived Hive Mind, which was defeated by Isaac. Isaac immediately escaped on the shuttle while the Marker 3A remained behind on Aegis VII. It was obliterated when the tectonic load that the Ishimura previously removed from the planet (With a mass of roughly a few trillion tons) fell back to the planet with a cataclysmic impact. Marker 3A, however was not completely destroyed and many shards of the Marker are left on the ruins of Aegis VII. Additionally, several shards manage to break through the planet's atmosphere and embed themselves into the hull of the Ishimura, which was soon thrown out of orbit following the impact and sent off to drift aimlessly into the far off reaches of space.
Post-Aegis VII Incidents
Three weeks after the events on the Ishimura, the USG O'Bannon was sent to the ruins of Aegis VII to complete two missions. The first mission was to find a way to hold the breaking planet together. The second mission was to recover as many shards of the Marker 3A as possible. The shuttles are sent down onto the planet and one of the crewmen, Nickolas Kuttner found a Marker shard. He recovered it, but it gave him dangerous hallucinations that caused him to kill a crew mate. Only one shuttle managed to make it off the planet before it was destroyed and returned to the O'Bannon.
The Marker 3A shard was examined by a scientist on the ship who became affected by it to such an extent that he unintentionally started a Necromorph outbreak via his experiments. The terrified and hallucinating doctor returned to his quarters where he killed his wife and baby, thinking that they are monsters. The shard of the Marker 3A was eventually thrown into the O'Bannon's reactor core by the surviving crew members and destroyed. This brought about an end to the Necromorphs aboard the ship.
Trivia
- Throughout the duration of Dead Space, the monitors located throughout the game would become "possessed," flashing red and having the symbols found throughout the game moving about the screen erratically. When Isaac approached the monitors, they would turn on and start flashing red with the symbols and turn off when Isaac was at a certain distance. It became apparent in Chapter 11: Alternate Solutions that this was Marker 3A manipulating Isaac when Isaac met up with Nicole after Daniels attempted to escape with the Red Marker.
- The Marker 3A was the only "true" Red Marker in the series as all of the other "Red" Markers possessed a dark outer layer with only the Marker symbols being red. It's coloration, however was subjected to several discrepancies throughout the games and movies that it made an appearance in.
- In Dead Space, whenever Isaac approached the Red Marker, it seemed to emit what sounded like several people chanting which could be a hallucination. What the voices said seemed to be in pseudo-Latin mixed up with English and Spanish: "Sumus here muerte, nostra sanctos deus" which could approximately mean "We are here in death, our holy god". The meaning of this was unknown, but the word "god" may refer to either the Marker, Necromorphs or their ultimate goal. The phrase "we are here in death" most likely referred to the Necromorphs or Convergence.
- There are some discrepancies with Marker 3A between Downfall and the game.
- The Marker 3A appeared significantly larger during Downfall. In Dead Space, the Marker only appeared to be two to three times the size of Isaac. In Downfall, it appeared to be several stories tall, taking up almost the entire height of the Cargo Bay.
- In the movie, the Marker seemed to have the ability to repel the Necromorphs approaching it, though most likely for gameplay reasons, this ability was absent from Dead Space. Although at the end of the game, when the Marker was put in place by Isaac, it created a shockwave that destroyed any remaining Necromorph tissue nearby.
- As of Dead Space: Salvage, the Marker 3A was presumed destroyed as a group of illegal miners found the USG Ishimura with it's hull shot full of shards from the Marker. And in Aftermath, they scoured the planet's unstable surface trying to stabilize it while also looking for the pieces of the Marker.
- According to Cpt. Campbell, EarthGov was willing to pay 2,000,000 credits for a kilo of the Marker 3A fragment.
- The Marker had the ability to monitor the Necromorphs' presence as logs in the game revealed that when the Marker was destroyed, the Necromorphs degenerated into an "Organic Soup" as it was put by an EarthGov scientist. At the same time, the incident on the O'Bannon showed that the destruction of the shard caused the Necromorphs to be reduced to the same organic sludge as the Marker was what created the Necromorphs and was also holding them together. Without a Marker signal, the Necromorphs could no longer be supported structurally.
Gallery
Sources
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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