Al-An

Al-An, also referred to as Alan, is a member of the The Architects who is present as a character in Subnautica: Below Zero.

When Kharaa broke out, Al-An's mind was stored away, while their architect body was destroyed. Al-An appears to be unique in that their mind has remained conscious unlike other stored minds which are in a dormant state.

Story
Al-An, like the rest of their species, had their consciousness uploaded to a Data Hub. Their physical body was likely disposed of afterwards, although for an unexplained reason, Al-An's mind remained intact, capable of thought and speech, unlike the other Architects encountered in The Crater. This might be explained by the fact that Al-An was the project leader of the Kharaa's research team, giving him access to a better storage technology. At some point in time, he sent a distress signal to Marguerit Maida, but she didn't answer the distress call. He sent a distress signal to the Alterra employees, but as soon as Alterra found them, they hid themselves, claiming that Alterra's motivations didn't align with theirs. When Robin Ayou enters their Data Hub, she offers to download Al-an into her PDA. Al-an misunderstands and thinks Robin's equipment is part of her body, and accepts her help. As a result, Al-An gets downloaded into Robin's head/cerebral cortex.

Following the transfer, Robin will have to find and scan parts of Al-An's Vessel throughout the story, including an Architect skeleton, Architect tissues and Architect organs, which can be found at the various Architect Caches laying around Sector Zero. Even between the transfer to Robin's head and getting transferred into a new body, Al-an speaks with Robin a lot. Once Robin has all the blueprints and materials, she can construct a body for Al-An at the Fabricator Base. It is revealed there, that they disobeyed the directive from their network when collecting the Sea Dragon eggs. That resulted in the mother of the eggs destroying the laboratory in which its eggs and Kharaa was experimented on, thus setting the Kharaa loose. They say, that it was their mistake that Kharaa was released onto 4546B. They says that they must return to the Architect world, to repair the damage they're done. Robin accompanies them to the Architect world.

Robin Ayou
Al-an was downloaded into Robin's head, and one of Robin's goals is to construct him a new body. Al-an understands that them being in their head is undesirable to Robin, and helps her create them a new body by locating Architect facilities, in some of which Architect body parts can be found and scanned. Robin is committed to help Al-An, even after learning that the Kharaa escaping to the planet was their fault, and comforts Al-An when they reveal this, and trusts them enough to leave with them. Al-An calls humanity inefficient many times, but that is most likely because of their lack of awareness as an Architect. Robin often responds to this by being sarcastic. The two of them sometimes talk about biology related things, for example when Robin first sees the Frozen Leviathan. Al-An helps Robin accept her sister's death and find closure.

Marguerit Maida
Marguerit doesn't respond to Al-An's distress call, and while in Robin's head, Al-An is afraid of her when she is in her Prawn Suit, and says that they hope that Robin will stay away from Marguerit in the future.

Lillian Bench
Lillian was tasked by Alterra to research and try and communicate with Architects. Despite Lillian's best efforts, she didn't make any progress with her research, because Al-An hid themselves from her. They claimed that theirs and Alterra's motivations weren't aligned, therefore Al-An distrusted Alterra.

Gallery
Concept Art=

Trivia

 * The name "Al-An" or "Alan" is likely a play on the word "alien".
 * The name “Al-An” was a combination of Alterra’s assigned name for their species which was “Almanac” and what Al-An refers to as their “seed code” which is “An”. However the name Almanac has been changed to Architects so the future meaning of this name is currently unknown.
 * It was previously stated by story writer Tom Jubert that the Architects would not be seen. Ironically, it would be Jubert who later unwittingly revealed the existence of Al-An on the developers’ public Trello board.
 * Al-An's distress call is Morse code for S.O.S.