DomZ

The DomZ is the main antagonist faction, in Beyond Good and Evil. The collective name of a parasitic, alien species that has waged war over Hillys for the past 20 years, setting their base on Hillys' orbiting moon, Selene. They attack the planet every 14 hours relentlessly, usually with violent meteor showers.

Very skeletal and insectoid in appearance, the DomZ come in various shapes and sizes, and thrive off the energy of other living beings. When they first attacked Hillys, the Alpha Sections took over the planet's defense, although despite their propaganda and popularity, their tactics proved ineffective and ill-responsive.

Origins

Nobody knows where the DomZ initially came from, though they seem to have been around for many years. They initially attacked Hillys about 20 years ago, sometime after Pey'j and a newborn Jade arrived on the planet. Along came the Alpha Sections, an elite military organization, claiming to be the only ones able to defend the Hillyans from the DomZ. The reason for the war is never specified to the Hillyans, though they assume that the DomZ are after the planet's resources, such as the materia crystals excavated from their mines.

It is later revealed that the DomZ are not only interested in the planet's resources, but mainly the Hillyans themselves. They kidnap them to suck them dry of their energy, which permits the DomZ to live much longer than their normal lifespan would let them.

Behind the Scenes

When the war first started, it appeared as though the DomZ were acting alone. However, the IRIS Network discovers that the Alpha Sections have been puppets of the alien race from the start: every Alpha Sections soldier is mutated by the DomZ into a slimy green form that is single-mindedly obedient to the DomZ's every order, the sole exception being General Kehck, the public face of the Alpha Sections, who consciously chooses to side with the aliens in order to benefit from the DomZ's ability to extend their lifespans. The DomZ attacks and the Alpha Sections' so-called counter-operations are merely a cover for their true objective, which is conducting human traffic. The Hillyan victims they kidnap are transported to the Nutripils Factory where they are sedated and taken to the Slaughterhouse, where they are tortured into submission, placed into boxes, and shipped to a base on Hillys' moon, Selene, aboard Alpha Sections' cruisers. There, the victims are placed into organic pods lining the walls of the chamber of the DomZ Priest, who absorbs their vital fluids to keep himself alive, and grant him energy he can use to draw out the lifespans of his minions.

Moon Base

Shortly before the invasion of Hillys in 2415, the DomZ set up their base on the planet's moon, Selene. From there, the DomZ strike the Hillyans with meteor showers and send bloodthirsty beasts to destroy everything in their path. The base's architecture is a mix between the fleshy and skeletal appearance of the DomZ and the Alpha Sections' advanced technology.

This is also where the Alpha Sections take the many victims of Hillys. Upon arrival, they are stored in a chamber called "The Great Crypt" where they are drained of the last of their energy and die. By the time Jade reached the chamber, she discovered that several hundreds of Hillyans had already succumbed to the DomZ.

Methods of Attack

The DomZ are extremely violent creatures that have no respect or pity for human life (going as far as to call them the most miserable of sacrifices ). The DomZ rely on many different ways to spread havoc on Hillys, their monsters being their most dangerous weapons. Their main method of attack is to send DomZ meteors crashing on Hillys' surface. These meteors can be of different sizes, ranging from the height of a human adult to a several meters tall boulder. Though the Hillyans are equipped with shields, the meteors have been known to break through them from time to time.

At the very beginning of the game, one of the largest meteors comes crashing at the base of the lighthouse and causes the ground to collapse. Inside were a bunch of Sarcophogi Domzii and a Spirit Eater that immediately attack Jade and the orphans; this shows how the DomZ go about capturing their victims.

The DomZ armada also uses members of their own species to directly attack the Hillyans, with Sarcophagus DomZ making up the bulk of the pawn units, and Teratosauri to bombard the civillians, left vulnerable by the lockdown system.

Breeds and Abilities

For some reason, the DomZ that appear throughout the game rarely have the same shape and form. It is possible that the DomZ race has more than one breed, though they remain similar in terms of physical look and abilities, and the fact each one's life force derives from its Pearl. Only the High Priest differs significantly in these terms, being without a pearl and looking significantly different than the others in appearance including the lack of a pearl, however it is skeletal in looks like most other breeds.

Sarcophagus Domzii

One of the main creatures the DomZ send to Hillys are the Sarcophagi domzii, which resemble floating rib cages with arms. They can hold other creatures in this cage, such as the lighthouse orphans at the beginning of the game. Once they have captured their prey, the victims appear to enter some sort of trance, their eyes glowing, and are unable to fight back. The reason for this is unknown, but it is presumed that the sarcophagi drain the energy from their victims to fuel themselves and give them more life.

For more information on this monster, please refer to the Sarcophagus domzii article.

Teratosaurus Imperator

These skeletal and spine-like serpents attack Hillys on three different occasions when Jade gets an essential upgrade for the hovercraft at the Mammago Garage. They descend directly from the moon and immediately attack the cargo ships sailing on the ocean. They are quite large and are able to spout lasers from their mouths. They also drop torpedoes and floating mines behind them.

For more information on this monster, please refer to the Teratosaurus imperator article.

Pterolimax

The Pterolimax is a giant slug-like creature, it attacks via the use of its noxious breath and by rapidly spinning its head around. It only appears on Black Isle where Jade is hired to photograph it and defeats it as part of her initiation into the IRIS Network.

For more information on this monster, please refer to the Pterolimax article.

Reaper

This monster is actually an extinct species, the Cyclopeus palustris, controlled by a DomZ infected pearl. It only appears in the Nutripils factory and is the only one of its kind. It has a bulky humanoid shape and has been trained by the DomZ to patrol the factory and capture any intruder it may find. When it is defeated, the pearl used to control it can be retrieved.

For more information on this monster, please refer to the Cyclopeus palustris article.

Spirit Eaters

The term "Spirit Eater" is mainly used by the IRIS Network to identify the regular DomZ breed (probably referring to the fact that they eat the "souls" of other species to live longer). A few of them are encountered in the game, though they often come in different shapes. They usually appear as an odd mix of floating bones and dark flesh that resembles the form of a spider. They have a pearl stuck in the middle of their bodies, which serves as their eyes. Some are also rooted to the ground with dark root-like tentacles.

The pearl they possess (turned green by their influence) is the source of their power and life, as well as their weak spot. They can use it to sap the energy of an organic entity (such as humans), fire laser beams, and give life to inanimate objects, such as mechanical parts. They can also call Sarcophagi Domzii as reinforcements and cause skeletal arms to sprout out of the ground and swipe at enemies. The only way to defeat them is to hit the pearl until the DomZ disintegrates. When they die, they usually wiggle their legs around and shrivel up like spiders in pain.

The DomZ in general have the power to corrupt other beings, possibly even just by being in their presence for too long, similar to an indoctrination effect, shown by DomZ-like growths appearing on the infected's skin. The soldiers of the Alpha Sections are the first to undergo this transformation. When they remove their helmets, their faces are revealed to be distorted with tentacle-like organic matter, and are no longer recognizable as human beings. Double H also becomes infected with a DomZ spore later in the game, though he is cured by the IRIS Network who apparently developed an antidote against it. The infection seems rather painful (as evidenced by Double H's experience), though the effects could be different for each individual.

For more information, please refer to the Spirit Eater article.

DomZ High Priest

The DomZ High Priest is the leader of the DomZ Armada surrounding Hillys. His main reason to attack the peaceful planet is to get hold of Jade (whom he calls Shauni) who, according to him, possesses the source of his power. He seems to know a lot about Jade's past, though the information he gives remains cryptic.

For some reason, the High Priest has a significantly different look than the Spirit Eaters. He appears to be entirely composed of bones while his counterparts are a mix of bone and diseased flesh. In the middle of his body is a skull with three yellow cat-like eyes. He resembles more of a cross between a centipede and a scorpion rather than a spider. Unlike the Spirit Eaters, he doesn't rely on a pearl to survive, but solely on the life force of others.

For more information on this character, please refer to the DomZ High Priest article.

Language

The DomZ language is incomprehensible to the Hillyans, and seems to be mostly gibberish to the untrained ear. It is mostly spoken with a deep, snarling voice and features prominent rolling "r" sounds.

It appears to have an effect on Jade when spoken, or more specifically Shauni seems to be vulnerable to some DomZ phrases when aimed at her, for example, the rooted Spirit Eater Jade encounters at the beginning of the game says "Shauni Ourhbaiths metheud", and the 'metheud' in particular puts her to sleep, however this phrase is uttered multiple times again throughout the game and it has no effect, perhaps this is because the other times the phrase is not specifically aimed at her.

Again, when the DomZ high priest uses the phrase "Shauni DomZ Thindrah" at Shauni, she is completely under its control, up until Double H breaks the connection, whereas every other time the phrase is uttered it does nothing, again this is perhaps because the phrase is not specifically aimed at her the other times.

The language itself was most probably developed using references from other real-world languages, or perhaps it is simply all gibberish. The former is partially backed up by the fact that the language itself does seem to have some sort of structure, as well as sounding genuine, however the latter is also very probable, because for example in the game the word OemphaKanh is also spelt Ohmpahkhan later on in the game, according to the script, meaning the developers were not too knowledgeable on its definite spelling (due to it possibly just being gibberish). This could also be due to the word meaning two different things however, or could most likely be a typo.

The DomZ language also makes a habit of having words that also use capital letters within the word itself in places other than the beginning ("DomZ", "OemphaKanh", "DorthKaul", "ouhrDomZ"). This is possibly similar to how french works, where the word de meaning "of" can be combined with a word that begins phonetically with a vowel, for example "Pearl of Aramis" (a phrase used by Secundo) is spelled "Perle d'Aramis" as opposed to "Perle de Aramis". This phenomenon could also function as in the Klingon language of the Star Trek franchise, where some upper case letters represent different sounds than those expected by English speakers for their lower case counterparts when transliterated into the Latin alphabet.

There are many similarities in some known words, the word "Pahkahn" is more commonly attested with the prefix Ohm- or Oem- (possibly a typo, or just a different way of spelling the prefix). Similar-sounding words include Ouriel and Doriel, and also Shauni and Khauhi.

Perhaps the phrase we can understand the most would be "Shauni DomZ Thindrah", we know Shauni refers to the power/entity within Jade and DomZ is the name of the collective species or Empire of the alien races, but we do not have any reference to what Thindrah could mean, perhaps it could mean "is" or "belongs" or something similar, in which case the sentence would be literally structured "Shauni DomZ Is", but meaning in English "Shauni is DomZ". This would suggest the DomZ language may be very similar to Latin/Japanese where the verb is placed at the end of the sentence, and would thus possess a preferred SOV (subject-object-verb) word order.

Assuming that the DomZ language does have the word order suggested above, we may deduce from the phrase "Shauni Ourhbaiths metheud" that the metheud component is a predicate of some kind acting on the object Ourhbaiths via the subject Shauni. However, it is also possible that metheud forms only part of the predicate, functioning as a modifier of the verb Ourhbaiths. Another possibility is that Shauni Ourhbaiths constitutes a noun phrase, with metheud serving as the full predicate. Meanwhile, the phrase "Shauni ouhrDomZ" hints at a likely prefix *ouhr- which might also be present in Ourhbaiths, albeit spelled slightly differently due to the lack of a standard orthography for the language. This would in turn imply the existence of a potential *baith(s) root, whose further interpretation is dubious. Moreover, the attestation of the forms Ourhbaith's and Ourhbaith may indicate that the final s in Ourhbaiths is an inflectional element with an unknown function, although the lack of any other examples of its use make any definite conclusions impossible.

With the previous assumptions in mind, the phrases "Shauni Ouriel" and "Doriel Shauni" are unlikely to be expressing complete thoughts and seem more like chants. As such, the similar words Doriel and Ouriel might serve as adjectives or perhaps titles attributed to Shauni. However, the similarity of those two words may be deceiving and it could very well be the case that the phrases do in fact qualify as full sentences, since the DomZ language might in reality possess free word order.

Furthermore, there are several songs in the soundtrack with lyrics entirely in the DomZ language, such as 'DomZ Attack!' which plays whenever there's a full-on DomZ invasion. There have been tentative attempts at transcribing the lyrics of 'Dancing With DomZ'; see for instance this video.

A (possibly) complete list of phrases uttered by the DomZ:

"Khauhi OemphaKanh"

"Shauni Ourhbaiths metheud"

"Ozbeuyt betreudh"

"Shauni Ourhbaith's metheud"

"Shauni DomZ Thindrah"

"Anar Napart"

"DorthKaul Pahkahn"

"Ourhbaith Ohmpahkhan"

"Shauni ouhrDomZ"

"Shauni Ouriel"

"Doriel Shauni"

Defeat and End of the War

Since Jade has defeated the High Priest at the end of the game, it is assumed that the rest of the DomZ as well as the Alpha Sections were forced out of Hillys and that the war finally ended.

During the ending credits, photographs of Pey'j, Jade, Double H and the orphans playing around at the lighthouse are shown, which hint to things returning to normal after they come back from the moon.

However, it is revealed at the very end of the credits that Pey'j is infected with a DomZ spore growing on his left hand. It does remind us of something that happened a few moments before the final battle. When Jade saved Pey'j from the DomZ' hands, she cried over his body while Double H discovered that he was not breathing anymore. Jade then concentrated her energy with both of her hands on... His left hand. Maybe it was the price to pay in order to bring someone back from the dead. This is another hint that Jade is intimately linked to the DomZ and their power.

Trivia

• The DomZ only talk in their own language, except for the High Priest who can also speak English;
• The Alpha Sections, when speaking to a DomZ, refer to them with high status greetings, such as "Your Excellency";
• The DomZ are able enter Hillys through a wormhole that opens directly above the atmosphere above Hillys, they also use this to attack the population directly.
• According to the IRIS Network, Hillys is not the only planet which has been a victim of the DomZ or their attacks.
• The IRIS Network can detect the presence of Spirit Eaters thanks to the Sigma rays they emanate;
• Double H is the only person known to survive the DomZ torture and infection.
• In one version of the story, the original antagonists of the game where known as the Nazh, the DomZ existed but as a proposed 'Bloodthirsty race' by Hillyan propaganda, it was later revealed that they are actually a peaceful extra-hyllian race, and one named Toy'l (also the name of Jade's brother when she was known as Sally in the very first incarnation of the game) helps Jade, Pey'j and Double H broadcast the truth and heal the injured Hillyans.