This place we have chosen for our vigil, this Conclave, it is a cursed land! The veil screams in agony. The whispers from beyond threaten to unravel reality.
Every night I’ve spent here, the visions of the other side came more frequently, and with greater clarity. What I first thought were images of darkness turned out to be much more. Within it were the screams of a million souls, crying out to me. Crying out for mercy. As my dreams solidified, I realized that the darkness moved. It writhed like a mass of tentacles endlessly searching for something. The sight of it filled me with terror beyond anything I’ve ever felt. I awoke gasping for breath and grasping for anything within reach that would remind me that I’ve left the dream, to the chagrin of my fellow seers sharing the tent.
Shaken and unable to sleep, I sought the wisdom of the Oracle. To my surprise, or perhaps I should have expected this, my master was already waiting for me inside his tent. Lanterns illuminated him in their flickering light as he sat cross-legged, without his usual regalia, on a rug with tea set out for us. As he stared ahead with his blank eyes, he gave me a tight-lipped smile and motioned for me to sit.
Before I could utter a word, he said: Yugol. I was taken aback and blinked. The Oracle continued by describing exactly what I had seen in my dreams, as if he had been there to share them with me. The Insatiable Night, he called it, the eternal darkness that exists in the beyond. It is primordial, unfathomable to the human mind. We see it as a mass of writhing tentacles, but what it truly is cannot be described in words. Yugol exists to consume everything, its endless pursuit halted only by the light of the celestial stars.
I was told that it is a gift and a burden to bear witness to the makings of reality. What I had seen cannot be unseen. When I started visibly shaking, the Oracle placed his palm upon my forehead and for a moment I could swear his eye tattoos were staring at me. Yet I found myself instantly calmed.
When I asked what he had done, he would not say, but he offered to teach me a technique to calm myself and banish the darkness from my nightmares. It is a lucid method by which I would conjure my own stars into the dream, brighter than the desert sun.
I thanked him for his wisdom and promised to return the next eve for my lesson. As I stood to leave, I glanced in his direction. He was staring ahead, as before, a somber expression on his face. His tea remained untouched. I said no more and closed the tent flap behind me.
It would seem my visions have disturbed the Oracle as well, but I trust that his judgment and foresight will carry us through whatever darkness looms on the horizon. I pray to Dreeg that the Oracle’s teachings will spare me further nightmares.
This got wiped in the rollback so posting again for those of you who might be interested in how some NPCs became major players in the storyline. From the 19th April stream:
"apouche_ : how do you evolve the lore ? is there one of you that takes the lead and other give input or is kinda of everyone throwing ideas kinda thing!
Some of it is organic as we develop the game, things kind of float to the top that seem fun and interesting. For example, the best example I can give you that comes up whenever this question is asked is Daila Thornsbury from Homestead, was originally just a little flavour NPC. All I did was I wanted to come up with a side quest just to add a little bit more to the world; she wanted her diary back. And in the diary you get a lore note that talks about this, you know, crazy story underneath the weeping oak and people liked that so much that they wanted to know what the next chapter is. So when we worked on the secret quest for the base game I thought, well why not keep going with that. And then we added her brother Dravis and his pursuit of power and that kept building on until Dravis become a core part of the main story in Forgotten Gods. I think that’s kind of awesome.
Similarly with Order of Death’s Vigil and Kymon’s Chosen, those came about organically as well. They were originally this sort of cult that formed in the Arkovian Foothills and all you did was find their abandoned homes because they moved on to some other place. So that was a story that was started then when we were adding factions to the game during beta we thought why not expand on that. So we added Kymon’s Chosen as zealots, the fervent worshippers of Empyrion (or Korvaak) and then we needed some to kinda counter that, offer people an alternative so that’s how the order of Death’s Vigil came about. And playing off of that we already had this character Uroboruuk that was created for the lore of Old Arkovia so why not read that into it and then he became sort of the founder of the order of Death’s Vigil.
In terms of creating the ongoing lore I’d say Medierra has the final say on things because it envokes the world he created originally. I stumped up a lot of the lore for the expansion, the course of where the story went, talking with him, discussing what works and what doesn’t. There are some ideas that were supposed to be in the first expansion, but we cut them because the expansion was getting too big and it was way too big, even after we cut those things. But then some of things ended up in the second expansion, some things didn’t make it in at all yet because they were too big. So yes, a sort of innovative back and forth process, all the designers had their share of writing lore notes as well."
I was still surprised that it turned out that diary was real and she showed up later. When I read it I thought it was just a flavor text about a farmwife writing crazy escapism Fiction where she was an epic adventurer and not stuck on a farm. The story just seemed so absurdly hokey and over the top.
Yeah, but that’s about the only lore entry we have on yugol that I saw, while there’s tons and tons of info on C’thon and the void scattered about.
Hmm, is it me of finally they replaced Mornay’s voice actor? I started listening to his questline with a new character and… he actually sounds good, not like the mechanical line-reader he was before.
I also just met a Shattered Realm boss who is a harbinger of Yugol - a variation of EkketZul.
The Shattered Realm lore notes also give another perspective on Yugol - from that of a world who banished their god resulting in Yugol coming and consuming that world several centuries later.
In simple terms: Only Primordial gods have the power of creation (taken from Chton) - they are only able to create Stars which on their end hold back Yugol.
A world without a primordial god to keep the lights on so to speak - is consumed by Yugol.
Loosing Korvaaks to the Threes machinations and power hunger just fucked up the defences of Cairns vs Yugol. Since he was the only Primordial god still showing some presence. We are left to believe all his other brothers/sisters are either killed in the War of the Gods or vanished.
The WGs despite syphoning Korvaak`s faith/divine power - dont have the power over creation like him (how he created the Eldritch realm for example).
Perhaps in XP3 the Taken together with Ulgrim go on to find Empyrion (who is probably investigating into how to thwarth Yugol/prevent Chton`s return)?
With the information provided to us so far, who do you think guys will win in an all out war, Aetherials or Chthonians?:undecided: which faction is more powerful?:undecided:
In my view - the Void will win anytime - their numbers seem to be implied are infinite. And from lore perspective Void powers >>>> Aether ones.
Though i really would like to understand what is the difference between the portfolio which Yugol stands for (cosmic power of chaos) vs Chton/Void (which seems very similar).
The void is a hellscape, a place of misery and pain, the antithesis of life. It is where the dying god was cast out when he was torn asunder, never quite capable of fully dying.
Yugol on the other hand is nothingness, the antithesis of existence itself. It has no goal, it simply is; and where it spreads, nothing remains.
Appreciate taking the time to reply man, thanks for clarifying!
In lamers terms - Void is GDs Hell. But how does the Void interract with Yugol? Meaning can Yugol take over the Void? Or is the Void like Yugol - always to exists and not susceptible to the Insatiable hungers reach?
The name’s are off with those names though-- Void implies nothingness by its literal definition, which your description of Yugol is, while your description of void isn’t “void” (Nothingness) but rather “Death/pain”.
On that note, I kind of like to headcanon that the void IS nothingness, but the demons and other hellscapes you encounter are what becomes of matter warped into a state of nothingness-- the Demons being born from C’thon’s Bloodless flesh and the Obsidian hellscapes being parts of reality that were sucked into the void (See how lots of the obsidian areas contain what appear to be human dwellings and objects halfhazardly placed around like they were sucked in indesriminately)
So the void really IS nothingness, but the forces “of the void” that you encounter are essentially matter mutated by exposure to nothingness so that they seek to destroy existence as well now.
You can understand it more symbolically. The Void is what exists outside of the planes of reality, a little bit like the Void of space. It’s a lonely place where living things are dying and must transform to adapt to its rigors, so they became corrupt, surviving in an endless state of suffering.
Yugol does not exist, it’s the opposite of existence, it’s not even outside of Reality, it’s just the absence of reality. It’s not even the Void, because for the Void to exist, matter has to exist. So I see Yugol more akin to anti-matter. You can’t interact with it, it’s just an abstract concept you’re confronted to, and its depiction as some kind of tentacle-monster is the attempts at rationalizing it from a human perspective.
That’s why I don’t think we’ll ever be able to interact with Yugol, because it would just be insta-death for the Taken. Cht’hon is a primordial God, so I could see us interact with him, but Yugol is more a natural phenomenon than a character, imho.
Edit : the world “void” can refer to both significations, that’s why it’s confusing, perhaps purposely from Crate’s writers.
speaking about obsidian… there’s also obsidian stones jutting out from the ground in satyrs, jackals, and tigerman (and similar soldier beasts) encampments in titan quest. there’s no explanation about those obsidian in titan quest, yet its deduceable that those obsidian are typhon’s mean of terrorizing/mind controlling the beast in titan quest. the bloodsworn and void creatures in grim dawn are closely related to the obsidian crystal from the void, just like aetherials are closely related to the aether crystal.
sounds like grim dawn has taken a lot of inspiration from titan quest.
So now that I finally have a character who did NOT ally with Barrowholm (their gear and augments are too good to miss out!) I wanted to ask, whatever happens to Scorv? If you re-visit the village, all the other wendigo cultists you killed before are there, but Scorv isn’t. Also it was strange that he turned into a wraith. We know he made a pact with Ravager, but I guess this means he claimed Scorv’s soul?
And any notes on who Namadea the Screecher is?
I did notice that unlike with Kymon/Death’s Vigil, you encounter the Barrowholm heroes right away without needing to reach Hated.
It’s explained as Typhon’s corruption of the various beasts, but around halfway into the game they kinda forget it. I honestly don’t remember the obsidian appearing after Act I.
It does appear. And it even appear in act 4 and I dare to say it appear more in act 4, so maybe its less Telkien’s stuff and more Hades doing, like he felt th
at gods somehow became weaker and started slowly moving on
Anyway, can someone help me with Grim dawn timeline? So grim dawn striked and then how muc htime game take? As far as I understand, Taken was caught not to long after attack on Burrowich village and it clearly passed several weeks if not months between end of main quest and start of AoM, but is there more correct and concrete details about game timeline?
No clue about the timeline myself. There were some folks trying to figure it out few posts back.
What I find weird is -
I can see why aetherials didn’t invade this place as it was Korvaak’s resting place and they knew better than to piss off a Primordial. But how come Korinia and Annie didn’t get any dialogues regarding Korvaak.
I get that Korvaak is extremely weak but the Chthonians only sent Ketan’Thunn to kill him. Isn’t that weird? To make matters worse wasn’t even that powerful. You’d think we’d have atleast found a few more Chthonians in that area.
Because FG can happen before Malmouth, so it cannot have serious consequences past Act 1.
Chtonians reside in the Void and only appear when summoned. They don’t really display any kind of strategy, it’s the cultists that do, and there aren’t any in the Korvaan Bassin (it’s a ruined area, not much blood to be collected I suppose), aside from potentially the ones we spare in Act 5, that then will summon Ketan’Thunn, but he isn’t there to counter Korvaak, it’s just a coincidence.
