So again, I just recently finished Disco Elysium, and there's this big important piece of lore called The Pale - a tissue of nonreality that surrounds the entire world. You may not realize it, but you can even see it in the start screen artwork - inky blueness slowly swallowing up the sky of Revachol, creeping in inch by inch.
It's an existential zone of non-life that covers 72% of the world of Elysium, and is growing, leading to the eventual disappearance of the world itself. The game gives us a big old loredump about The Pale, and then some nice little implications about how it relates to the specific plot of Disco Elysium, and I kinda want to write about it here under the cut.
First, some facts that the game tells us about The Pale:
- Instead of having continents surrounded by ocean like our world, Elysium has islands of mass and reality called "Isolas", surrounded by a connective tissue called The Pale. Revachol exists on the Isola of Insulinde, an oceanic archipelago Isola.
- The Pale is an area of nonreality, in which the laws of the world begin to falter. Languages, physics, sound, and even numbers start losing meaning as you go deeper in.
- The Pale also seems to be inundated with human memories of the past. Lingering too long in the Pale will irradiate your mind with these memories and sensations, dissociating you from the present, eventually destroying your sanity.
- The place where the world transitions into the Pale is called "porch collapse".
- Travelling through the Pale to other isolas is possible, by bouncing radio waves between isolas in order to compress the latitude of the Pale. This quite literally shortens the path of travel by temporarily forcing dimensions on the Pale.
- Airships that travel through the Pale don't have motors or propellers, due to the effect of the Pale on physics. They're simply launched very very hard in the right direction, with enough momentum for them to land on another isola.
- Civilian travelers are only permitted 6 days of Pale exposure per year, for health concerns. It is possible to be cleared for more through training.
- If the conversation with the Phasmid is to be believed, the Pale only began existing when humanity did as well.
- Study of The Pale is called "Entroponetics"
- 72% of the world is covered by The Pale. One day, it will cover the entire world.
Fanmade map of the world of Elysium, taken from this reddit post. The white spaces are The Pale.
We meet some characters in the game that have been affected by The Pale. One obvious example is The Paledriver, a lorry driver stuck in Revachol who takes on trips through The Pale that no one else will take, and is constantly dissociating into memories that belong to other people and other times due to the long term exposure. Joyce Messier is also cleared for 22 days of Pale exposure per year, and suffers degraded early memories due to it.
We also encounter a small seed of The Pale in Revachol itself - in the abandoned Church past the waterlock, which can be found starting on Day 3. A 3 mm wide cylindrical space of complete silence exists in this Church, which has erased all of Fortress Accident's game data, and has nearly erased all of Tiago's memories, who lives closely to the hole at all times.
I find it easy to believe as well that this Pale seed is the cause for Harry's memory loss (besides his heavy drinking, of course). He crashed his motor carriage not far from the Church during his drunken bender, after all. Erasing Harry's memories and replacing them with dozens of inner voices and thoughts not his own would be incredibly indicative of exposure to the Pale, as explained above. While some of these voices may just be fragments of Harry's intuition and personality, there are also some that are entirely prophetic in nature - such as the Shivers checks which show Harry things that people are doing and feeling in completely different places which he would have no way of knowing, as well as his conversation with the phasmid.
Thoughts about the relationship between humanity and The Pale
This is all just "Lyra gets really silly with conjecture and literary themes" here, so please bear with me. Again, the phasmid told us that The Pale only began existing alongside humanity. Furthermore we know that The Pale is inundated with old human memories, experiences, and emotions (so much so that we experience multiple ghostly conversations through radios , phones, and intercoms with people from unknown times and places because of it).
My thought about The Pale is that it feeds on humanity's obsession with the past, and reliving what has already died and gone. All around Revachol, everyone is clinging desperately to the past, or fearing it without rest; the old soldier Rene still wears his old uniform from a war that ended decades ago, and still mourns old kings. Harry constantly has nightmares about his ex that left him seven years ago. The bookstore keeper Plaisance is constantly paranoid about the other shops that've failed in her building, ignoring the successful business she runs right in front of her. Klaasje is constantly running away from her shady past, always looking over her shoulder. Dozens of other characters cling to old, outdated, harmful racist views and ideologies. And finally, the killer that we spend the entire game searching for is still fighting a war that ended 50 years ago.
As The Pale consists of so, so many memories and old feelings, it would stand to reason that human obsession with The Pale is in turn what is enabling it to continue growing, until it swallows the world.
It would also stand to reason then, that progress and the future would in turn serve to push The Pale back. We see this somewhat in the church, once the new rave club is set up. The new "aniodic music" or whatever it's called tempers and tames the Pale seed within the church; because young people dared to create something new, instead of clinging to what existed in the past.
It'd be nice to then say that there's hope for the world of Elysium, that the Pale may one day be repelled, but I think that this world is characterized by its gloominess, and its melancholic nature, and its resignation to its fate. This world won't have a happy ending, but instead serves as commentary for our own world (especially when you compare The Pale to something like global warming.)
Anyway that's all the loredump and crack theories I had. I dunno why, but existential threats like The Pale just really get my imagination going. One more thing - apparently there's official concept art for Paleworkers, people that man the buoys within The Pale which relay the radio signals which make travel within The Pale safe and possible. They seem to go insane and disappear within a few years, but at least they have sick armor. Check this out.
