The Melding

The nature of the Melding is still clouded in secrecy. In the cinematic trailer the Melding is supposedly the big, looming cloud, but the exact nature of this cloud is still unknown.

The Melding, it says on the Firefall front page, is an "inadvertently" invited "enemy". This seems to imply that the Melding is some sort of lifeform, but this has not been confirmed. In a thread concerning the name of the game, Firefall, it was explained by a Red 5-employee that Firefall was an event preceding the Melding. Thus some think of the Melding as a description of the event where the gigantic cloud arrived on earth, although the term is apparently also used to refer to the cloud itself.

It is also speculated that the Melding (the cloud/organism) has some sort of connection to The Chosen and to the Aranhas that now inhabit the planet, although this is unconfirmed.

In an audio file found on www.themeldingwars.com (Website no longer online but the audio file can be heard here), the reporter Ines Whitney says "We've been told for years that Melding is a harmless, safe exhaust," which makes it appear that the Melding may have actually been created by using crystite, rather than arriving from somewhere else.

According to information released on article 2229.6 of the The Firefall Timeline, the term 'melding' was coined by Dr Mitra Batsheba:

"During my time at Cambridge, I was fortunate enough to work on many projects for Omnidyne, including the in-depth study on the properties of crystite exhaust. It was quite fascinating. The exhaust would, under the right circumstances, absorb and transform microscopic levels of carbon. I came to call the process 'melding' in my notes."