Ravager is an arrogant Primal being, he embodies the Wendigo spirit of insatiable hunger within all living beings. He’s certainly not a ‘good’ celestial, even if he helps humanity (with very questionable means such as cannibalism) he only does it for power and his own ends. He needed humans to become a corporeal form again.
Edit: spellcheck is a bitch
I assume you still miss out on some Barrowholm quests ^^
when grim dawn happened, the 3 lost a lot of their powers due to many humans being killed (grim dawn gods need human worshippers to gain powers). they don’t lost as much followers compared to the massacres in major cities due to how hidden their cults are, but they still suffered a lot too. then in their hidden path covenant temple, some dreeg cultist accidentally summoned lots of eldritch monstrosities that ravage the temple just because the cultist desperately want connection to dreeg.
then kymon’s chosen cult gain huge following after grim dawn. the huge influx of worshippers means korvaak gains much more strength to break out of his prison, which also means the 3 used more of their powers to focus in containing him, and so they become absent from the physical world of cairn. they know korvaak will break out eventually due to events mentioned above, so in a desperate plan, they enter the physical world of cairn disguised as their alternate selves which resembles their original mortal forms (note that byscilla’s form is very close to her description as the foreign priestess that seduced ulzuin in one of FG’s lore notes, which supports players’ theory that the 3 cult leaders are the 3 witch gods in disguise)
to lead their cults directly in preparation for war against korvaak and his chosen.
at some point in the main quests of FG, you can ask byscilla, draellus or sagon (depending on which cult you support in the main FG campaign) where is the 3 witch gods and what are they doing now, byscilla and draellus will somehow FLINCH slightly in their answer when asked that question (i don’t recall sagon doing that, he just seemed angry all the time) which imo seemed VERY SUSPICIOUS.
yeah, they don’t join the final battle against korvaak. even korvaak insults them for not daring to face him after all these centuries (which means they use their power to contain him from very far away…) they can only offer the taken a key to open a path to korvaak’s prison (which must also take lots of effort due to korvaak regaining lots of power.
the 3 cult leaders went missing suspiciously after the taken defeated korvaak, presumably to the eldritch realm to repair their domains (of course we can’t meet the 3 witch gods, they prefer working from the shadows, while sending their emissary to conduct business with the taken). it could also be because they are wary too of the taken. what if the taken meets them in their true form and decides to challenge them for lootz… it will jeopardize all the plans they have to make sure cairn survives. so they choose to keep hiding in the shadows. even in the morgoneth’s beacon of the night crisis (FG roguelike dungeon) they prefer to be silent (maybe because riggs already gave the taken all the clues needed to beat morgoneth and stop yugol’s incursion).
and speaking of draellus’s concern about yugol, do note that after the event of grim dawn, the barriers between cairn’s physical realm and many otherworldy dimensions (aetherial, void, eldritch, etc.)got jingle-jangled. many gods went missing or silent. the 3 witch gods are too busy containing korvaak. mogdrogen does whatever he does. ravager just want to return back to cairn in force. ch’thon is still trying to piece himself together through his cult. which means there’s little the remaining gods of cairn are doing to prevent yugol’s incursion. especially when yugol suddenly gains sonic speed due to morgoneth’s special coupon for all you can eat buffet in cairn from his beacon of the night thingamajig. the beacon is a very unnatural construct… who knows the aftereffects it can cause to cairn, since yugol has shown some of his tentacular presence, despite the presences of the 3 witch gods, mogdrogen, ravager, ch’thon, and how many hidden gods remaining in cairn.
sorry i spoiled your expectations about barrowholm people. because i thought people that visit this thread already finished all the campaigns (vanilla gd, AoM, FG) and side quests. the thread title already gave spoiler warnings for that. but i understand if you or other players missed some loreworthy quests, conversations, or details due to how players have to do different playthroughs to understand the lore.
it could be that there is another 3rd party infiltrating and accusing korvaak as usurper. maybe an unknown celestial.. .
who knows. afaik from rion the scholar’s lore notes, the magic that rewrite the texts that describes korvaak and the eldritch throne usurpation in the korvan city library seems… forced, and the parchments used to restore them seems new…
https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Writings_of_Rion_the_Scholar_-_6th_Entry
I have made a startling discovery while on my latest foray into the Korvan texts. While exploring the vast collection of the Korvan City Library, I briefly escaped the attention of its stewards and found my way to a closed-off archive. Among ancient birth records of some of the most prestigious Korvan families, several ascendants included, I unearthed a collection of texts that appear to shatter some of the core tenets of the very faith that is central to these people’s lives.
A large number of the pages were badly damaged, as if whatever ward cast upon them had violently dissipated. Strangely, the parchment itself appeared newer than some of the records I’ve seen; perhaps someone had restored a damaged record at a later date. The bits that I could make out, however, painted a very different account of the early years of the Korvan faith.
Korvaak himself was shown as a usurper, a conqueror of a realm he had no part in making. It is not entirely clear if the Korvaak that is spoken of today is even the same one described in those texts or whether that is the name given to the master of the Eldritch Throne.
Another curiosity was the description of the upheaval involved in such a transition of power, a whirlwind of creation and destruction within which were caught the unfortunate believers. Sadly, before I could complete my analysis of the text, one of the stewards discovered my presence in the closed-off archive and promptly chased me out of the building.
What little I’ve managed to read offers some troubling conclusions. Is Korvaak’s rule destined to falter as it had before? If so, will the same destruction consume these people when it does? It is truly a shame that I could not spend more time with those texts as they represented a fantastic culmination of my research into the origins of the Korvan faith.
Alas, I must prepare to leave this land and, though I have learned a great deal, I am certain there is more than a lifetime of knowledge hidden away here. The devotion and machinations of the Korvan people have proven to be one of my most fascinating studies.
imo, solael is the one that forcefully broke the ward to those texts (he’s a violent sorcerer that likes dangerous darkflame magic) and rewrite the contents of those texts, with the guidance of dreeg to avoid the guards there. and perhaps dreeg also secretly confounded the stewards so that rion could unknowingly wander innocently into those texts and perhaps spread the words that korvaak is a usurper that gains the eldritch throne through violent means that cause great cataclysm to cairn in the past. if any unknown celestials infiltrate the place to do something like that, dreeg would have known due to the seer power korvaak bestows to him.
regardless, unless the unknown celestial infiltrators’ existence are revealed or not, dreeg and solael are the most likely culprits that vandalize these texts.
anyway, does anyone notice that rion the scholar’s name is basically empyrion without the empy part? this could mean empyrion had some worshippers in cairn at that time. who knows how many they are compared to korvaak followers though.
If Yugol wins, will it also consume Ch’thon and the Void?
the answer to that question would probably never exist (because yugol is about nothingness)
most likely not. They both seem to be the two sides of the same coin, existance/non-existance, wich is rather fucked up given how much either side of the universe wants to screw us.
wow I dint notice that…humm…that is intresting indeed…
I’m sorry if someone has suggested or done this, but it seems it’s time for the Encyclopedia of Grim Dawn, which details the timeline of events and the relationship between the characters. While there are other reasons for this Archived Lore, i have my own reason.
I have discovered the modding tools and LOVE creating maps (except for the damnable bugs)! I am a creative writer and have developed a side storyline in the world of Cairn involving the Rovers. In researching their history, i found little info on the subject.
I dont know about other modders, but it’s important to me that i dont run afoul of the given history of the established saga – what everyone else would call the canon. Modders want to develop stories that work within the established story, so it’s more easily accepted and “believed.”
Perhaps someone could compile all the knowledge of the Grim Dawn world into a pdf or webpage, differentiating between the “truth” and “fiction” of the lore, so that we modders have something we can use to work in our stories. This will also inspire smaller, more compact mods with more limited storylines that would maintain interest in this franchise, so to speak.
Small subject I’ve never considered or seen mentioned but want to touch upon. It’s a little lore-related but also gameplay/developer related but I’ve only now taken notice of the Avatar amulet descriptions:
A pity that virtues four through seven don’t have items. Would have made for more avenues for interesting concepts for skill modifiers and stats, and it would be curious to see what principles they represent or if any have been corrupted like the Avatar of Chaos by the forces beyond like the Aetherials, Yugol, Korvaak etc. 
+1, I always wondered about these! For a long time, I thought I was just missing the rest of the seven. 
Would have been extremely cool to see the rest of them, for sure.
they remind me of dreeg’s nunbered series of plague items. sadly, like many artifacts of cairn and beyond, they got lost due to grim dawn. which also makes me wish the 3 witch cults do historical and record keeping of cairn seriously, because the resistances certainly don’t have the spare men and time to do that considering the enemies all around.
the avatar of chaos amulet was perhaps a corrupted form of the virtue freedom. because freedom is like the good version of chaos, and there’s no way chaos would be called a virtue among all them good names.
Avatar od chaos would be corrupted version of avatar of order in my opinion.
Freedom have nothing to do with chaos.
At least that’s what I think 
but that means the second and third sacred virtues of cairn’s humanity are both avatar of order… one is the pure order while the other is order…?
imagine avatar last airblender aang intro:
water… earth… fire… wind… also another wind…
thats derpy. its like if chaos damage in grim dawn had a twin named chaos-y damage…
or maybe its like the twin opposite alignment of lawful good and lawful evil. both want order and laws but through different style… while lawful stupid is the 3rd unwanted sibling to confuse people even more…
Chaos and Order imply no intrinsic good or bad. Neither is a ‘corruption’ of the other and having elements of each would be a virtue. Chaos - Change, Growth, Creativity. Order - Foundation, Strength, Tradition.
Taken to an extreme they would be both equally terrible. Chaos - Wanton destruction, anarchy, cancer. Order - Unadaptable, Rigid fragility, Merciless.
yeah, thats what i meant by freedom is the family friendly name for chaos. because they’re both about changes, adaptability and choices. maybe in grim dawn’s case chaos is considered a virtue, but that amulet of chaos was also corrupted by void dimension’s chaos damage.
so… the chaos amulet of virtue has been chaos-ed by bad kind of chaos so its a corrupted chaos amulet now, which means the previous virtue of changes choices freedom and such good labels became twisted into horrific mutations, anarchies and freedom of choices in methods of torture (void dimension in grim dawn is about pain and torture).
i wonder what kind of chaos damage the original chaos amulet offers. by default, the chaos damage of grim dawn is about destructive entropic energy that looks like red black pinkish lightning…
cue memes like “this is my pure ruby colored chaos damage build! there are many like it! but this one is mine!”
I am still reeling from the depth of the game’s lore, on my last playthrough I read everything I could and put attention to detail and wasn’t expecting many things from the aetherials being that cruel because they were contaminated by human emotions and that they have a council that functions on another timeframe due to being on a different dimension.
Really the story on the malmouth dlc was awesome and the forgotten gods dlc only got better with the added mechanics and what not. This game is truly a masterpiece for me.
forgotten gods adds A LOT to the lore of grim dawn universe. especially about the celestials and the 3 witch gods. sadly the aetherials are lacking presence in FG for unknown reason. i was really wondering how’s the relationship between korvaak and the aetherials, and more insight about the aetherials’ history like how they’re made by the celestials, their original forms and cultures etc. it seems crate wants to save that up in the sequel or spin offs.
