the stranger suddenly appearing and changing your velocity when you go near it reminds me of when you enter a dark bramble seed

Speaking of heating the river, there are heat panels like radiator just before the Resevoir area (those 2 weird tunnels) If you wait for the dam the break, the water levels go down and it unveils those heat panels that burns the player when touching it! I think this is what makes the water have current.

I think the "Solar Sails" work as follows (as well as how it ties into the Dam breaking):
- There is an automatic system that detects whenever the nearby sun is about to go supernova (can be inspected in the room below the viewing platform that shows the status of the sun)
- Once that automatic system kicks in, it expends some of the stored electrical energy of the Stranger (certainly it has batteries somewhere, that are charged by the Dam using hydrokinetics; this is likely the main reason for the dam to exist) to unfurl the giant green panels
- The giant green panels ("Solar Sails") act like any other green surface in the Stranger: It collects light to create Kinetic Energy using unknown technology. More specifically the Kinetic Energy required to push the Stranger out of the range of the supernova by using the Sun as the light source
- The expenditure of energy to unfurl these sails causes a strain on the dam's hydrokinetic systems which, with the dam being thousands of years old, causes structural damage to it which causes small cracks that, under the pressure of the water, increase over time and cause it to break shortly later  

EDIT: As a bonus explanation, I believe the reason for our spaceship suddenly slowing down when we get close to the Stranger is that the cloaking field itself has a mass to it that our ship has to push through, which causes the ship to slow down; kind of like slipping through a membrane

I'd say the stranger doesn't project the sun likely for energy reasons. It has to get energy from somewhere, likely it does so from solar power. If it then had to make projections of the sun it'd in turn lose all of that power.

Ive always thought stranger works by bending light in some way, and the reason why it can't show the sun is because it's absorbing energy from the sun to power itself.

Man, it never occured to me that the panels might not be solar sails but instead are light-activated things like all the other stuff we see, but you make a compelling case!

I've always viewed the owl folk as an extremely technologically advanced, but much more metaphysical species than the nomai. I think you may have something with the sails being the same light material as the other green glass, but, to me at least, there seems to be more of an element of the supernatural involved with these guys.  I don't think there was proton projection or whatever involved when they used their green light to literally have a vision of the eye's purpose. That looked like straight up clairvoyance to me.  They're like genius space druids, where the nomai were scientists.

Definitely the best OW youtuber out there

11:36 This actually explains everything, including the power fluctuation!

I think the owlks can speak to eachother. the can definitely write, so I believe the projection device is for things that can't be said in words

- The green flight panels are to the Stranger exactly what the green orbs are to rafts. This isn't obvious, because the panels aren't orb-shaped! Consider the green dots on the airlock entrances for comparison. Solar sails would be mirrors -- the flight panels are not mirrors, but are "Stranger green" because they are the Stranger's "raft orbs"
- The Stranger can't be invisible to the sun, because the Stranger uses the sun for propulsion. In other words, if the sun's light were allowed by the cloaking device to pass uselessly through the Stranger, then that light couldn't be used for anything
- You're spot on about the river, in fact this would be a "coriolis river," and you get one if you try to build an O'Neill Cylinder in space and put a river in it. The rotating ground tries to leave the river behind, giving the river an antispinward flow. A dam is nice for slowing down the river and making it less dangerous, as we see when the dam breaks and much of the river dangerously speeds back up

What i like is that the Strangers artificial gravity is like the ATP's Artificial Gravity its spinning around :D

Here is a really interesting lore theory about why the "Owlkin" showed anger towards the eye even though they destroyed their home moon themselves. Basically their society got divided into those who hated the eye and those who more blamed themselves. In the slides about the eye you can see close to 30 people gathering to witness the incineration of the eye-church. This means there were at least 30 people living on the stranger, and 30 is more people than the amount of available "dream world" sleeping spots that we encounter in game in the "fire rooms".

So maybe only a select few were privileged to enter the dream realm/simulation, like an Owlkin elite. To support this theory, if you look at the slide reel you find in the room with the maps to the secret slide burning locations, you see that the group (not all 30) of owlkin who burn the slides and imprison Kaepora (the prisoner) ALL wore green necklaces and bracelets as if they were rich/elite (not all Owlkin have these fancy accessories).

So basically, the elite/powerful were arrogant and would blame the eye instead of themselves, with their riches they created the simulation for themselves and other select few. One of them (Kaepora) realised that he/she were wrong to blame the eye and thus deactivated the eye signal blocker. The rest felt betrayed by this and imprisoned Kaepora along with destroying all real world evidence of the sensitive events and went to an eternal sleep and left the rest of the Owlkin to die out on the stranger (Why else would they hide the "fire rooms" if not to ensure that no one could disturb their sleep/extinguish the fire).

I figured a problem with this theory is that we don't encounter any skeletons on the stranger except in the fire rooms. I mean, we've seen Nomai seketal remains. But perhaps the Owlkin died out so long ago that their bones have decomposed/been buried except for the fire rooms which were so well sheltered from the elements that they were preserved.

This is ofc just a theory but it would be interesting to dive deeper into this to see if there is more information to confirm, or maybe debunk, this theory.

Loved the series btw and I can't wait to see what juicy EOTE lore you will uncover in future videos!

4:22 - I have an idea! What if the stranger is using powerful magnetic fields to slow down spacecraft that come nearby? That could be explained with Lenz's law if it's trying to affect conductive materials, which comes from Faraday's law of induction, which is all about the interactions between electricity and magnetism. Alternatively, the stranger could just be applying magnetic forces to ferromagnetic parts of your ship, making it decelerate. Since the Owlks are masters of light, which IS electromagnetic radiation, they may have a really good understanding of electromagnetism in general! A good enough understanding to make some kind of motion-dampening system using Lenz's law, or project the electromagnetic force in very unorthodox ways to push your ship to a stop!

6:42 - Small error: In fluid dynamics, there's things called boundary conditions. Basically, when you transition from one fluid to another, or from a solid to a fluid, certain rules apply in almost all cases. In the case of a flowing river, one boundary condition that is usually satisfied at all times is the "No Slip" condition. Basically, at the point where a fluid meets a solid, the fluid is assumed to be stationary at all times. It's very likely that the No Slip condition applies here, but in case it doesn't, then ignore this point. Otherwise, there's always going to be some friction between the fast moving water of the river, and the slow moving water at the river's boundaries, since water has some viscosity. If we were talking superfluids, like liquid helium or something, then this wouldn't matter, since superfluids have zero viscosity. To sum: the river should be slowing down at all times, losing energy. The only way for the river to flow continuously is if it were pumped around the stranger somehow. That could be a reason for the thermal panels after the canyon... maybe they're using thermal convection currents to drive the water forward! Or the panels are there for cooling the stranger's computer systems.

12:12 - I believe I mentioned this in a comment thread on a previous EotE video of yours, but considering the fact that the Owlks can make rafts that have seemingly no propulsion system, but can still move themselves, and they're light-sensitive, suggests that the stranger has some kind of engine hidden somewhere, which the solar panels are designed to activate. It's possible that this engine requires a loooot of power to start up, so maybe the Owlks just decided it would be easier for the panels to be large enough that they could provide for the engine's start-up needs, before tapping into internal energy reserves for running the engine. However, if this engine were to exist, it would either: A) Move the stranger without expelling any matter, breaking conservation of momentum, or B) Expel invisible by-products, such as gases, for propulsion. We already know that the rafts' engines work well when submerged, but they don't seem to do much outside of the water. If the two engine designs are using a shared mechanism, somehow pushing material out one end, then the rafts would work in water, but not work so well on land. Or, even better: they should not work in space either! If the rafts work in space, then we can conclude that the rafts, and therefore the stranger possibly break conservation of momentum. If the rafts don't work, because they have nothing to push on, then the stranger would have to expel matter like a rocket engine, since the Owlks likely don't have the ability to make such an engine otherwise!
I feel like someone should test this! This is awesome!

i dont think they expected many people to achieve 0 g inside the stranger, but adding detail to it would be standard I think. especially since there's an achievement for landing the scout on it, which you can use to take pictures of it lol

I know I’m late but with the green lights it’s similar to the orbs on the rafts, so they may use the sun to power themselves forward, because over time they move farther and farther away from the sun, and since the sun is always shining it would keep moving.

Here's what I think. So yeah, those are definitely solar sails. It never occurred to me what they were until realizing that the green panels came out in one of the slide reels as well, when they traveled from their home moon to the Eye. In that reel, you can see the panels extend before they travel, and then after traveling you see them retract. That makes it clear that it was their method of moving the Stranger. But I also think the Stranger is not running off of solar power. My reasoning for this is that they already knew our star would go supernova, as they programmed it to get out of proximity. Obviously they would have no power without our sun. So because of that, they must be using power from another source

i think the stranger only blocks light from the sun because it needs that light to power the solar sails or maybe because the cloaking field can't replicate such a bright light

The Lore King has blessed his subjects. Praise be.

Edit: ah THANK you for explaining the cloaking field!!

Just some theories that came to mind when listening to your video:
What if the stranger was bending light around itself instead of projecting light out. Similar to how gravity can warp light. Also this fixes the problem of a projection being inaccurate from different angles in the solar system.
-It also helps explain why the stranger slows your speed as you approach it.
-Also this might fit thematically with the solar sails. Where the Elky bois basically use invisible forces from the sun for everything in their society.

idk, just brainstorming