The Mural in Prometheus

I think the exact polar opposite of this.

@IndyFront

Then you'd be wrong lol This isn't a speculation but fact.

@ IndyFront & Lawrence of Arabia

...WELL FROM MY PERSPECTIVE THE JEDI ARE EVIL!

@VivisectedEngineer

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. >:-)

In Foster's novel, we learn that David didn't create the xenomorph (he tries to recreate it). The engineers had thousands/millions of years to create the perfect being (David had 10).

I also think that the classic Xenomorph existed much longer than the protomorph in AC. The Deacon might be a creation of the engineers based on the DNA from the Xenos that they refined and store as the black goo.

However, it could be also true that the Deacon is the first form of the whole Xenomorph family and the classic Xeno the enginered variant.

In my imagination, the mural on LV-223 depicts the perfect being (in the meaning of destruction). In the facilities on LV-223 (how many?) they experimented with biological weapons in order to wipe out civilisations. The mutagen/pathogen became the perfect weapon but wiped out the engineers on LV-223 as well.

But, did this creature exist somewhere - the perfect killing organism that we see in the mural or did it only depict what would happen when their chemical experimentation and their mutagen/pathogen came in contact with sacrificial engineers or humans?

Thank friggin lord someone finally posted this!!!! I have been saying it for a while now! Haha I suppose I could have just posted it to try and satisfy myself, but yeah... I mentioned it in a few threads here and there when it came up. Rock on, Lawrence of Arabia!

cuponator3000

Thanks for the props man :) Those who watched "The Furious Gods: The Making of Prometheus" should know this! I've already laid out where people can see what I'm talking about, the mural is of The Deacon which is what the Engineers have made. Yes, they've had a way longer time than David in creating these death bringers but David is a perfect being while the Engineers are not (they are just as fallible/mortal as man). The Xenomorphs are his perfect creation which were reverse engineered from The Deacon. 

I still say that there be the spine tingling scream of a deacon in the hologram/engineer chase scene in prometheus, an engineer is looking back over his shoulder and the deacons scream is clearly audible, david say's "they were about to leave before things went to pot", so something major involving their ungodly experiments happened, which i believe involves a deacon and some black goo(the infected engineer).

This is beauty with Prometheus it is so ambiguous that any theory can apply, as the Mural to my knowledge has never been 100% Explained by RS etc.

I think Lindeloff covered it the most... will have to dig up what he said again, but even this was ambiguous only that it was a Deacon.

This does not have to mean it was THE DEACON as in the one at the END and so i dont think it was a Prophecy kind of Mural

But even this could be used as a Theory... its pretty open to debate.

My Interpretation in a Nutshell?

The LV-223 Engineers are a rebellious Faction and their purpose was either

*Created Clones for a Specific Purpose (Engineered Humanoids/Super Specimens) Who could not Procreate

*They are remains of a older Engineer Race who had lost the Ability to Procreate (or lost/had Females Taken from them) hence the Sacrificial Purpose.

They then either came across a Parasitic Organism, or they had came into contact with it via some kind of Punishment.

The result was that these Engineers saw one or a few of their kind Gestate to and Give Birth to a Organism related to the Xenomorph-strain.  They saw this as some kind of Miraculous way they could Give Birth to Life (which they had not seen for Thousands of years, or if at all If they was Designed Clones).

So they perverted the way of being Genetic Gardeners by Experimenting on this Parasite in a number of ways until they had either.

*Create the Deacon in the Mural, saw it as Perfect and Sacrificed it to create the Mutagen in the Urns.

*This was what they  was trying to create, using the Mutagen in the Urns that they likely obtained by Sacrificing a previous Creation.. that had came about from a Original Parasitic Organism.

Adding on to what Big Dave said, the Deacon we see at the end was the result of a somewhat convoluted and incoherent process begun by David-8 experimenting with what he found on Dr. Holloway and Shaw. The Engineers (besides the Xenovirus they had) played virtually no role in the organism we see at the end of the film. The mural also seems to imply a Xenomorphic being distilled into the pathogenic substance (As it is implied to be 'melting' or 'dissolving'.

Indeed i think we need to consider a few things...

The Deacon that resulted from Dr Shaw may have been a one off event that was related to the Mural due to using DNA Pathogenic substance obtained from a Original Deacon (however this was created).

But the Fifield and Hammerpedes also contained that Deacon DNA but did not look similar... (The original Fifield had way more Xeno-DNA).  They had done many concepts for various forms of Fifield too.

But the Actual Deacon could kind of be Re-created, which i think David had done with Dr Shaw.  If we assume the Deacon required a Female Host either for her EGGs or just her Womb....

Then in the past the Engineers could have created a Deacon by similar Method if they had visited Earth and other Worlds and Collected/Abducted Humans....   We even see in AC those Engineer beings had Females.

If David had instead made a good impression on the Engineers instead of bombing them, or he came across Survivors and Spiked a Males Drink... who had sex with a Female Engineer, then its Logical to Assume a kind of Trilobite would be created, that would lead to a kind of Deacon.

We cant be 100% that the Male (Holloway) just transmitted the Pathogen well part of it to Shaw like a Sexually Transmitted Disease... If this is the case then there is no Need for a Male as a Female only needs some of the Black Stuff from the Glass Vials exposed/introduced into her reproductive Organs (Ovaries) and the Result would be a Trilobite.

The Source i had who apparently had information on Prometheus to as far as Work Up to November 2014.. had claimed that David Re-Creates Its (Deacon or Xenomorph?) and all you need to Re-create it, was Knowledge and Tools and David has both... they also hinted that David Re-Creates One Monster related to the Xenomorph... but we see another that David does not directly play his hands in....  Oh and Dr Shaw would play a Small but important Role in this and Technically would not be Dead.

It surely would be interesting if Paglen/Greens Drafts ever come to light.

@IndyFront: Has the pathogen perhaps been derived from a xenogod they sacrificed, and this is what the mural is depicting - akin to Tiamat or Kingu who were killed by the Elder Gods and their remains used to create subsequent races from?

I'm not saying that The Deacon at the end was THE DEACON or that the mural prophesized it but that the process was one that was already discovered by the Engineers. This is how they wiped the slate clean, with an Engineer sacrificing himself to a Trilobite (possibly made through intercourse as with Holloway and Shaw) and give birth to a Deacon which would eliminate all non-botanical life. The Engineers made the Trilobite and made the Deacons. David simply reverse engineered their process and perfected it with the traditional facehugger and Xenomorph. Guys, watch "The Furious Gods: Making of Prometheus" chapter 6 "Demons in the Dark" and click on the Enhancement video when they start talking the Deacon. I'm not speculating.

Certainly looks to me like they obtained it from Sacrificing a Organism Related to the Xenomorph.... The Mural is maybe one of the Experiments that had created by this..

The other Temples could contain slightly different versions of the Pathogen...  so the other Temples could have a Mural with something a bit different.  I think regardless there had to be a Origin to the lot of them.

Which is why i found the Frescos interesting... and what relation it had.. I always interpreted it as the Prometheus Punishment.

@Lawrence of Arabia

Indeed i understood where you are coming from, i was not implying the Mural was a Prophecy as far as thinking this was what you was saying.  I was just pointing out that the Mural is so ambiguous that this is one theory but one i dont buy.

I think they had already encountered or created a Deacon before, but its quite open as far as how/when this happened.

Thats the beauty of the Ambiguity, some see the Deacon as a GOD a Race above the Engineers, i dont buy this though.  Some see it as a Destroyer Created for that purpose.. i think it could in part play this role... but i think the Engineers had came to see the Xeno-origins as something to Worship and they had experimented on it to create the Mural Deacon which they then planned to Seed its DNA on Earth

Thus destroying Life on Earth and starting a event that would lead to Evolution again but would contain Xeno-DNA as opposed to Engineers.

I think many people have different theories, and thats the great thing with Prometheus, i am not sure that creating Deacons to then drop onto Worlds is the best way to eradicate life.

I think the Black Goo or even Urns full of Sacrificial Goo could do that all by itself. In fact come to think about it if the Engineers Seed Worlds to eventually create Humanoids.. but these proved to be troublesome and there was no real ideal way to get rid of the Humanoids and it was better to Wipe the Whole Slate Clean.

While Humanoid Life was their Goal, we can assume.. and they had achieved this... then i think it would have made more sense to Drop down either Engineer DNA containing Urns or even Urns containing the Sacrificial Goo as the result would just break down all Life on Earth and then allow it to be Restarted with the same DNA Building Blocks.

Dropping a Xeno-strain would ultimately lead to Xeno-DNA Organisms Evolving... i think the LV-223 Engineers had grown to Worship and Hold the Xeno-Strain DNA as more Perfect than their own DNA and this is what they wanted to do.. Evolve Life to have this DNA.

I see the Neomorphs, Protomorphs, and others as all different species of Xenomorph. The Deacon, however, had more human DNA than the others and was perhaps the first instance of a Xenomorph taking DNA from its host. That is what I believe David-8 was experimenting to do. Perhaps, the original Xenomorphs (Eldermorphs, if you will) were simply non-DNA-reflex parasitic organisms and David was attempting to upgrade the Xenomorphs to take DNA from their hosts (resulting in the Dragon from Alien 3, for example).

The Deacon, otherwise known as the Ultramorph, is the first in a line of descendants that result in the Xenomorph being the most recent. Ridley says so himself in the commentary for Prometheus and in "The Furious Gods" as well this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq2Caq2O6DI&t=123s

The Deacon isn't just a result of human DNA (remember human DNA and Engineer DNA are the same as proven by Shaw). I believe the Deacon could have been an ancient species if not an Engineer creation.

BigDave
I don't believe The Deacons, Neomorphs, and Proto/Xenomorphs yet have the ability to reproduce which what I think David will perfect in Awakening with an Alien Queen.

@Lawrence of Arabia - "The Mural in Prometheus is The Deacon. In "The Furious Gods: The Making of Prometheus" it states it as so. When watching chapter 6 "Demons in the Dark" there is an Enhancement video that details this."

Nothing in The Furious Gods or the enhancement videos states this, unless you mean Steve Messing's comments. What he said  sounded more like his thoughts and opinions though, not anything canonical.

"The  Xenomorph was, in my mind, a descendant of the Ultramorph…it was the pure form of this kind of, almost this virus that these Engineers had created. They are a lot about sacrifice, so in my mind, there was an Engineer that sacrificed himself with this virus, and it created this horrific creature. This being that was going to eradicate planets. It was this parasite that would destroy the planet and then they could start over and re-birth it. They kind of worshipped it, and that is where you see this relief sculpture, where it’s almost a religious sculpture. As it got kind of, the virus spread and got polluted, the xenomorph was an evolutionary descendant that was not as pure.” Steven Messing

It sounds like he thinks an Engineer sacrificed himself to make the original we see in the mural.

@Kethol

Did you also read the description of the creature in the concept art as well? You do have a point that it could just be his opinion but if it's in the official release as info for the creature, shouldn't we take that as canon as opposed to fan theories? I'm not saying we shouldn't still debate this or have our own notions but where else do we derive facts if not from insiders? I guess we'll have to wait for an official comment by Ridley himself but I still stand by what I think. Doesn't the mural look more like a Deacon and less like a traditional Xenomorph?

I definitely would not take any opinions stated in the documentary as canon unless they are definitively stated as facts, especially considering most of the designers started work with Spaith's scripts, then things evolved and changed with Lindelof's drafts.  I think Steve was just stating what he thought. There are lots of conflicting opinions stated all over that documentary. That said, I agree with some of what he thinks. He designed the relief mural in the head room too, so he probably came up with a whole backs story in his head.

The on-screen text at the beginning of the Deacon enhancement pod is really the only definitive stuff in the documentary -

"Originally known as the Ultramorph, this final incarnation of the PROMETHEUS mutations was always intended to be a missing link of sorts between this film and the other entries in the ALIEN series. Effectively the unholy offspring of all the infected victims who came before it. This creature was originally intended to have more screen time, pursuing Shaw and David to the second Juggernaut ship, narrowly missing them as they leave the planet."

Other than the obvious relationship to the something-morph shown in the mural, nothing there indicates anything other than the Ultramorph being a new cross bred hybrid created from the family tree shown to be in the movie. Neal Scanlan made that same point in the Furious Gods too -

"Holloway is infected, he then impregnates Shaw, and from that Shaw gives birth, in a sense, to what we call the Medpod Creature. That then grows into the Trilobite…and that, ultimately the Engineer crossed with the trilobite, gives us what we call the Deacon, and he is,  as far as the film is concerned, the penultimate combination of all of this."

He also said this in the Prometheus art book -

"It came from Shaw and Holloway, which then produced the Trilobite, which impregnated the Engineer, which then mixed its DNA with the Trilobite. We tried to hold on to some of Shaw, some femininity since it was born of a female before being born of a male."
Neal Scanlan - creature effects designer

What description in the concept art are you referring to?

I had pointed this out recently that a lot had changed well a bit, between Conception == Alien: Engineers ==> Paradise ==> Prometheus and then how they changed things after.

My last reply HERE simplifies things...

So when we consider all those comments we have to reflect on what Process they was taken from...  The Virus Statement i believe is clearly the Mutagen/Tool they use to Create Life the Sacrificial Goo, which allows for all life in contact with it to basically be broken down into Genetic Related DNA and then Reform into a Virus that passes on the Sacrifices DNA... in effect dropping down a Pile of Sacrificial Goo will Destroy all Life on a World and then allow it to restart within the same Image/Design as intended...  The Black Goo would change that Design.. to something that instead contains Xeno-strain DNA.

I think the Xenomorph and Deacon and thus Black Goo is when the Sacrificial Virus/Tool is accidentally infected with a Organism/Parasite Related to the Xenomorph.

I may have to Post what the SOURCE i had passed on 2.5 years ago as they gave a number of hints...  on Topic... i can pick out how they referred to the Goo/Creation Tool as being a Tool like Nuclear Power that has Good and Benevolent uses, but also can be used for Malevolent and Destructive reasons.

They then also brought up LV-223 and mentioned the Movie the Fly... where a Benevolent Invention for a Good Reason could lead to undesired Results via a Accident...  AKA the Fly Entering the Teleportation Device... so i think the Source was hinting at something Accidentally coming into contact with the Engineers Tool to create those Horrors.

The Source claimed the Xenomorph Origins are a Parasitic Worm-like Organism that is related to Echinoderms and Cnidaria and have a varied Life Cycle.

I think regarding the Ultramorph Comment... we maybe need to consider its Origins was from discovering the Engineers Outpost that had a Outbreak where they was infected by the Creatures they had experimented on... they had created some Evolved Versions of these that then had infected the Engineers.  So the Engineer was Face Hugged thousands of years ago..  and went into Cryo-sleep and was awoken by the Human Explorers who then condemned him to his FATE and he birthed the Ultramorph.

The Holloway/Shaw one is about the Black Goo that infected Shaw through Holloway and created a Hybrid Face Hugger that had some of Shaws DNA as well as the Mutagen Black Goo.

Thus the Deacon was born from a Human/Xeno related DNA Hybrid Face Hugger and why the Deacon had Human Traits included Enamel Teeth, 5 Digits on Hands and Feet and was born with a Placenta etc.

I think some people do misread the Clues... but then i cant guarantee if i have looked at them correctly... but i have seen Prometheus and studied all the material so many times i forget how many lol

Ultimately though regardless of clues, comments we need to remember FOX/RS keep on changing and evolving the course of the Black Goo and Xenomorph Origins and who knows where they Ultimately are taking it.

i don't believe the deacon in Prometheus can possibly be the same type of deacon depicted in the mural. the sequence of events that produced the deacon in the film surely were not taken into account when the weaponised mutagen was being created. a human male infected with just the right amount of mutagen in the required manner then mating with a female? nah don't buy it. the deacon in the mural will be something else. maybe the original creature found on another planet long ago?

As I posted above, Steve Messing, who designed and 3D sculpted the mural, said that in his mind the alien form in the mural is the ultramorph, an earlier version of the xenomorph, created when an Engineer sacrificed himself using the virus to create it, and he thinks the Engineers kind of worshipped it.

How did David make the Ovomorphs in Covenant? With Shaw's eggs and manipulation of the black goo, correct? The Engineers share the same DNA with humans, as proven by Shaw in Prometheus, so despite the unorthodox combination that resulted into the Deacon/Ultramorph at the end of the film it would have come out the same way. I believe the Engineers already knew about the process and created their brand of Ovomorphs (which would be made with female Engineer eggs) that would result in Deacons. David 8 found an Ovomorph on Paradise in Covenant and reverse engineered their process with Shaw's eggs and perfected their creation into the Xenomorph. He saw the survival instinct in Shaw, part of the reason he's attracted to her, and wanted it for his perfect organism. That's my hypothesis.

Xeno eggs are shown in the Alien DC to be made by a xenomorph cocooning a host, then the cocoon transforms the host body into an egg.

Considering we saw Shaw's body, she was not consumed to make an egg. The ultramorph, or whatever something-morph David bred to make cocoons to create those eggs either cocooned Engineers or some other large animal.

Regarding the 'Engineers share the same DNA with humans thing' - Shaw says "Their DNA predates ours. We come from them" and on screen we see this silly graphic that says DNA Match. That graphic is a bit of mumbo jumbo, but saying we share the same DNA is technically sound. It does NOT mean we are identical however.

Even DNA from two humans is not an exact match. It's about 0.1% different from person to person, but we still call it a match. There are still millions of differences on the genetic level. Millions of those genetic switches are turned on and have specific protein making instruction that are relatively the same from human to human.

What makes the difference between a human and Engineer is which of those switches are turned on a which are turned off. We may both have the same DNA and same switches, but if they have switches turned on that we do not, and vise versa, they will look and function differently than us. They will also affect a DNA-using parasite that grows in them differently than the same parasite growing in us.

That mural only prove that Xeno's exist long ago !!!  And prove my theory about AVP movies to get canon with alien movies !!!

>>>

Predators exterminate snakes/xenomorphs one century ago. AVP movies !!!

Engineers create virus/bio weapon - black goo of them...  David revive xenos through black goo !!!   He don't create nothing !!!   

Hi everyone. Here’s my theory. I love reading everyone elses. I’ve just joined this forum. I’ve been watching Covenant over and ove again recently on 4K, it’s amazing. Not sure how many times I’ve seen Prometheus. Both amazing movies that you want to watch over and over.

I think there was a early version of what we may know as the Xenomorph on the Engineer outpost planet in Prometheus. The Aliens in Covenant were perfections created by David. I don’t think any retcon has happened like others may say.

My assumption and theory come from the following:

1. The visual record of the Engineers running from something. They were running from a Xenomorph

2. David found the “green alien saliva goo” that we all know and love on the control systems of the door which opened the prayer / missile chamber room. The same room we find the jesus/xenomorph and cracked green looking egg. The alien chased the engineers to the prayer room.

3. The crew of the Prometheus stumble upon a pile of dead engineer bodies, and one of those bodies had its rib cage cracked open from the inside. (This means there were some form of face huggers around). And this also means an alien was born. Whether or not that was the same alien(s) chasing the other engineers remains to be seen

4. The Engineers did seed life on earth, and they were about to go back to destroy earth when things went wrong and got that engineer ship stuck. That’s why he was angry when he woke up and plotted his ship to earth. He was supposed to be there 2000 years ago. I think the fact they end up killing Jesus was the last straw for the Engineers and they decided to wipe out the planet. Or. Earth was just an experiment for them anyway and he was going to wipe them out either way. The engineers are also literally engineered to be soldiers by the “monk” engineers. The “monk” engineers are actually the real race who created the “space jockey”.