ObedienceReport
English：Obedience · Locations
The colossal pit north of the Fog Islands, where the First Empire had the Behemoths walk down into the bottom on their own and then sealed them in place; the ground is one continuous sheet of solid metal, and nothing has grown there since.
Obedience lies at the northern end of the Fog Islands. As you approach, the light noticeably dims; go further in and the terrain underfoot changes into a sheet of metal so flat it is unnatural. This is the least "scenic" place on the entire Kenshi map — it is an execution ground.
The Site
The whole zone looks like an enormous mine or quarry, with the original scaffolding still standing against the pit walls. At the bottom lies something resembling a frozen "lake", and scattered around it are gigantic skulls and upper bodies — the remains of the Behemoths. That "ice surface" is not water: the description a character gives on approaching states plainly that it is one continuous sheet of smooth solid metal, and prospecting it reveals that it is neither iron nor copper. The game never says at any point what the material actually is[V1 0:02:55].
The environmental figures are themselves part of the narrative:
- Aridity and green fertility are both 0%, because the ground is not soil at all
- No iron and no copper turn up when prospecting — which is how the wiki reasons that the metal layer is neither
- No seasons, and no weather spawns in the zone at all
- Characters approaching say it outright: the ground is solid metal, and perfectly smooth
There are no towns or outposts here, and no camps or nests spawn. There is only one Ancient Lab, plus scattered wandering Old Machines, Iron Spiders and Broken Skeletons.
What Happened Here
After the Behemoth wars ended, the First Empire began to fear what it had built. Their method of handling it was not a war of extermination but an order.
The Behemoths received the command and filed down into the pit they had dug for themselves. Some substance was then poured in, fixing them permanently in place, which amounts to burying them alive[V2 0:00:14]. The most piercing part of the whole affair is exactly there: it was precisely because the Behemoths were loyal and absolutely obedient that they walked to their own deaths without resistance[V2 0:00:14][V3 0:14:17].
One video extends the chemical-agent reading a step further and proposes that the fog that never lifts over the Fog Islands is what spread south after that batch of agent leaked[V1 0:03:27]. It gives the fog a tidy origin, but no in-game text directly supports it, and it can only be treated as a hypothesis.
What the Name Means
The place is not called "the execution ground" or "the Behemoth graves". It is called Obedience. The naming is itself the verdict.
A Skeleton player character entering the zone delivers one of the most direct pieces of narration in the game:
After the war the behemoths lost their purpose. Man became afraid of the destructive capabilities of its own creations. The irony is that it was their blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty that walked them down into that pit, entirely unresisting. The price of obedience.
Almost every power in Kenshi demands absolute obedience of some kind — the Holy Nation demands obedience to doctrine, the United Cities uses slavery to demand obedience to a master, and Cat-Lon in the late Second Empire simply beheaded the disobedient and rebuilt them as headless servants. Obedience is the oldest footnote on that thread: the most perfect obedience is repaid with the most thorough disposal, and nobody will resist.
The same set of ideas takes another turn in Stobe — his loyalty to his "children" was identical to the Behemoths', the only difference being that his sacrifice was remembered and deified.
For that reason a good many commentators rank the "Obedience" operation among the most chilling betrayals in Kenshi's history: the First Empire did not defeat its own weapons, it used its weapons' loyalty as the instrument for burying them[V4 0:02:50]. Another reading holds that the episode simultaneously supplies evidence for the inference that "humans really were the masters and the Behemoths merely creations" — the order came down and the Behemoths did as told, without even hesitating; and what was truly exposed was the psychological ailment behind the empire's decline: fear[V5 0:04:32].
Not All of Them
The wiki states it plainly: despite the mass decommissioning, at least one Behemoth was still alive after the incident. Bodies that never went into the pit are also scattered across the world — a hand juts out of the sand in the Skimsands, and partial remains lie in southern Venge near Stobe's Gamble. Stobe's own remains lie in distant Stobe's Garden, though whether he counts as a Behemoth at all is only one of the wiki's several speculations. Those omissions became the variables of subsequent history.
More importantly, the Skeletons watched this purge happen. The conclusion they drew was that humans will slaughter their own creations out of fear, and that they were next. The fuse of the Skeleton Wars and the First Extinction was lit in this pit[V3 0:14:17]. The price of that order far exceeded the empire's own estimate: the weapons were turned on their creators, and a civilisation close to godhood was brought to the brink of annihilation[V6 0:00:33].
One piece of circumstantial evidence is often cited in support of the reading that this is where it all detonated. In the Tech Hunter's Notes series, the volume on the Pool of Obedience has had ink spilled all over it, and nothing of significance is readable any more; some argue this was deliberate destruction by the Skeletons, because that place is the very site where humans slaughtered their fellow Skeletons (the Behemoths), and very likely the true fuse of the civil war and the First Extinction[V7 0:02:43]. The book's own description, however, calls it "likely a simple accident", so the inference only stands if you are willing to overrule that line. (Incidentally, this is the one Tech Hunter's Note that can be found nowhere but the Science HQ in World's End.)
In Game
Obedience has no shops, no supplies and no quests. Beyond the small amount of tech loot in the Ancient Lab, the place has almost no economic value — the local version of the Ancient Lab may not even contain an AI Core.
See Also
Video citations
- Why is Vain Red? - The Science of KenshiHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi: Major Powers | SkeletonsCivilizationEx
- History of Kenshi: Major Powers | DocumentaryCivilizationEx
- The Complete Known History of KenshiHeroInHisHead
- The Whole Story of The First EmpireHeroInHisHead
- The Origins of The First EmpireHeroInHisHead
- Kenshi: Major Powers | Tech Hunters and CannibalsCivilizationEx