Elster: the Replika Who Crossed Leng to Keep a Promise

Elster is the Replika you play in Signalis, an LSTR unit with the serial LSTR-512 who once crewed the scout ship Penrose-512 with the human pilot Ariane Yeong. The game opens with her waking alone on that ship, crashed in the snow, and follows her down into S-23 Sierpinski on the planet Leng as she looks for someone she has lost. Her name is German for magpie. (Signalis)

What is an LSTR unit?#

LSTR stands for Landvermessungs-/Schiff-Techniker Replika, a land survey and ship technician. The model's overview describes a combat engineer built mainly for orbital service, a tough and stoic loner suited to work as a sapper or scout, with an iconic white and blue heavy combat configuration that adds armour plating to the chest and forearms. Elster wears that configuration for most of the game. (Signalis, "Replika Overview: LSTR")

The same overview says the original neural pattern for the model was lost when the central Neural Archive on Vineta was destroyed, and that new LSTR units have been produced from a decommissioned unit from the Penrose Program. A separate warning for Penrose pilots adds that the Elster pattern came from a soldier of Vinetan origin, and tells officers not to talk to the unit about the war, show it photos of soldiers, play it music or films, or try to befriend it. (Signalis, "Replika Overview: LSTR"; Signalis, "Replika Known Issues, Penrose Program")

Elster and Ariane on the Penrose-512#

Ariane's notes, found aboard the wreck, trace the relationship. Early on she is glad the quiet Elster unit leaves her alone. By cycle 648 she is talking to her and feels they have "run away from the world together". She hears a Vinetan accent in the way Elster says "ship", and secretly slows the ship's clock so each cycle matches a Vinetan day. Another note mentions Elster laughing at her for running out of ochre paint, and that Elster doesn't like the war films in the ship's library. (Signalis)

At cycle 3000 the ship received the Penrose Program's final briefing: no suitable world had been found, life support and reactor shielding would soon fail, and pilots were advised to ask their Replika to spare them a slow death or to enter the cryogenic pod. Ariane's later notes describe losing teeth and hair, insomnia, and constant pain. One of the last begs for it to stop. (Signalis, "Penrose Phase 3"; Signalis)

What Elster does in Signalis#

Elster wakes on the crashed Penrose, passes a strange gate and climbs down a hole into a room where an old book is waiting on a desk. Picking up The King in Yellow takes her to S-23 Sierpinski. There she tells Adler she is looking for a Gestalt and shows him a photograph. He names the woman in it as Alina Seo, says "You shouldn't have returned", and pushes Elster down a lift shaft, where she lands on a heap of dead LSTR units. The full plot is in Signalis story explained. (Signalis)

She works down through the facility's floors and the mines into the flesh-filled maze below, then meets a wounded Adler at the red gate, who warns her that Falke went beyond it and came back sick. Elster goes on anyway. Past more dead Elsters she reaches the Penrose, the game asks "Who are you? What are you looking for?", and she falls from the hull and dies. This is the false ending. The game then restarts on the Penrose and carries on: Elster relives a memory of a cycle 3000 celebration with Ariane, remembers her, and dives back in, through a dreamlike version of Rotfront and on to Falke. (Signalis)

How Elster's story ends#

In Rotfront, Elster reaches the room from the opening, now revealed as Ariane's. If she takes The King in Yellow, she goes on to kill Falke and pass Adler at the gate, and one of three endings plays. In Leave, she strips off her armour and walks out across the planet's surface, now under a blue sky, until she collapses. In Memory, she wakes Ariane from the cryo pod, but Ariane doesn't remember her, and Elster stays with her until her own body gives out. In Promise, Ariane remembers and begs Elster to kill her; Elster does, then dies beside her. A fourth ending, Artifact, needs three hidden keys and a code for the safe in Ariane's room; opening it skips the book and the fight with Falke, and the ending closes with Elster and Ariane dancing in the wreck. (Signalis)

What the game leaves open#

The game never states outright that the Elster you play is LSTR-512 herself rather than a later LSTR unit carrying her memories. The most common reading is that the S-23 Elsters are built from the pattern of the decommissioned Penrose unit named in the overview, and that each one inherits the search for Ariane. Another popular reading is that the whole of S-23 is being reshaped by Ariane's bioresonance, the setting's word for psychic power, as she lies dying, so Elster is moving through a world partly made of Ariane's memories. Neither is confirmed. (Signalis)

The identity of Elster's original Gestalt is also unconfirmed. A photograph of a Vinetan infantry unit, found in the Yeong photo shop in Rotfront, links her to Alina Seo's old squad, but the soldier is never named in the game. (Signalis)