Clarifications on the Wheel?

[Unknown_Wilder]

I am fairly certain Iovara at the end of PoE1 mentions something along the lines of: "the Enqwithans found no Gods, or if they had been there they were gone... there was only the uncaring turning of the Wheel".

 

My understanding from the first game was that the Wheel preceded the Engwithans and that it was more of a metaphysical phenomenon.

 

Jumping to the hasty ending of Deadfire I'm extremely confused on the matter: is the Wheel just and elaborate animancer machine? Was it built together by the Engwithans and Huana? What happened to the souls before it was constructed, the gods mention all life would die without it.

 

What do the loremasters of Eora think?

[wRAR]

Wait for Obsidian to return cut lines to the game.

And/or read multiple similar threads.

Edited May 30, 2018 by wRAR

[Tagaziel]

Jumping to the hasty ending of Deadfire I'm extremely confused on the matter: is the Wheel just and elaborate animancer machine? Was it built together by the Engwithans and Huana? What happened to the souls before it was constructed, the gods mention all life would die without it.

 

What do the loremasters of Eora think?

1. Gods are not reliable narrators, as they have an agenda of their own.

2. The Wheel predates the Engwithan gods. It's a natural, amoral, uncontrolled process.

3. The Engwithan Wheel gives the gods control over reincarnation and thus over the long-term fate of the kith. Imagine Woedica using Thaos without that kind of control.

[JiggleFloyd]

 

Jumping to the hasty ending of Deadfire I'm extremely confused on the matter: is the Wheel just and elaborate animancer machine? Was it built together by the Engwithans and Huana? What happened to the souls before it was constructed, the gods mention all life would die without it.

 

What do the loremasters of Eora think?

1. Gods are not reliable narrators, as they have an agenda of their own.

2. The Wheel predates the Engwithan gods. It's a natural, amoral, uncontrolled process.

3. The Engwithan Wheel gives the gods control over reincarnation and thus over the long-term fate of the kith. Imagine Woedica using Thaos without that kind of control.

 

The first two are assumptions / conjectures. The game isn't clear on any of this now due to the Deadfire retcons to the PoE lore / story / Eora world so we shouldn't pretend to know what we don't. You just have to chalk it up to terrible story explanation / design regarding this matter as it's causing enormous confusion, and this is not new to Obsidian.

 

1) Possibly, but we don't know if they're lying, and it doesn't make sense for game designers to have the gods just lie and confuse us regarding fundamental lore of the game. The retcon basically now says after the wheel is destroyed the cycle of reincarnation will stop and eventually everything will become hollowborn and life / gods will all die after the 'reservoir' of souls dries up. So perhaps that isn't true, but it directly contradicts PoE1.

2) Possibly, but perhaps not. Perhaps there was a finite source of souls even in ancient times and it would have ran out if the Engwithans didn't create a wheel to alter it. Also, perhaps the Engwithans permanently altered the natural process once they created the wheel.

Edited May 30, 2018 by JiggleFloyd

[Selky]

Do you want the in-universe answer or do you want the real answer?

[KaiG]

My best guess is that before the Engwithans messed with it, there was a natural reincarnation cycle or sorts, but it was more like a single mass of Essence in the centre of the world that brand new souls were formed from and returned to. The Engwithans streamlined everything, made the same souls cycle continuously through their Wheel while siphoning small amounts of Essence each time to maintain the gods' power. In doing so they created the modern form of true reincarnation but also doomed the system to eventual entropic collapse.

[parnashwind]

 

Jumping to the hasty ending of Deadfire I'm extremely confused on the matter: is the Wheel just and elaborate animancer machine? Was it built together by the Engwithans and Huana? What happened to the souls before it was constructed, the gods mention all life would die without it.

 

What do the loremasters of Eora think?

1. Gods are not reliable narrators, as they have an agenda of their own.

2. The Wheel predates the Engwithan gods. It's a natural, amoral, uncontrolled process.

3. The Engwithan Wheel gives the gods control over reincarnation and thus over the long-term fate of the kith. Imagine Woedica using Thaos without that kind of control.

 

 

The gods are reliable on this account. If you convince Eothas to destroy the wheel and not simply break it, all life comes to an end rather quickly.

[the_dog_days]

I can only imagine that souls were originally being created/produced/naturally occurring individually before the Engwithans broke something. They probably made the wheel so kith didn't lose sapience.

[FecklessFool]

It's because Obsidian has sadly dipped in the writing department. 

 

JS saying they cut out stuff explaining the Wheel from a convo with Eothas just sounds like a hasty excuse to cover for how they forgot what they established in the first game.

 

I mean, why would you cut dialog from a main quest story where you only get to say a couple of things when talking to the gods. It's like, 5 dialog exchanges or so for most interactions with gods in Deadfire. Very sparse content there, no need for cutting. Especially if what's being cut is super vital to the lore. 

Berath pulling you into the bell world to meet the gods should have  been cut instead of the Wheel explanation IMO. Talking with Berath and friends was pretty pointless, so just  explain the  Wheel please.

[Mikeymoonshine]

When you learn what Eothas is going to do the gods speculate on whether or not Kith will be able to rebuild the wheel. This implies that the wheel is needed for life to go on so there must have always been a wheel. The engwithans just broke it to create their new wheel which is needed to sustain the gods. Every time a soul goes through the wheel it loses some of itself and the gods feed off of this energy.

 

So Eothas hopes Kith will be able to restore the old wheel I guess.

[Unknown_Wilder]

Do you want the in-universe answer or do you want the real answer?

 

Why not both?

[CENIC]

When I found out (at the end of Deadfire, from the Guardian) that the Huana had established a great empire based around Ukaizo BEFORE the Engwithans showed up, and then the Engwithans conquered it, my immediate assumption was that the Huana empire had been using their native luminous adra to recycle souls. The Engwithans thought they could do better - hence the gods and the wheel-machine.

[Tagaziel]

The first two are assumptions / conjectures. The game isn't clear on any of this now due to the Deadfire retcons to the PoE lore / story / Eora world so we shouldn't pretend to know what we don't. You just have to chalk it up to terrible story explanation / design regarding this matter as it's causing enormous confusion, and this is not new to Obsidian.

"ur wrong cuz retcon" is not an argument. Especially when you're using it to bash Obsidian.

 

1) Possibly, but we don't know if they're lying, and it doesn't make sense for game designers to have the gods just lie and confuse us regarding fundamental lore of the game. The retcon basically now says after the wheel is destroyed the cycle of reincarnation will stop and eventually everything will become hollowborn and life / gods will all die after the 'reservoir' of souls dries up. So perhaps that isn't true, but it directly contradicts PoE1.

Why doesn't it make any sense? Why wouldn't the gods, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, lie and cheat you?

 

Eothas and the rest of the gods have their own agenda and secrets, secrets that include intimate knowledge of how the system really works. What is more likely: Obsidian retconned PoE1 or the gods simply lied and manipulated you in PoE1 as well as PoE2, much like Thaos and the Leaden Key manipulated the world?

 

2) Possibly, but perhaps not. Perhaps there was a finite source of souls even in ancient times and it would have ran out if the Engwithans didn't create a wheel to alter it. Also, perhaps the Engwithans permanently altered the natural process once they created the wheel.

 

See, this is what doesn't make any sense. "Finite source" doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it. How is it a finite source? Is all life drawing on that finite source? Where does it come from? If it's a finite resource, why the hell does Rymrgand exist, whose entire purpose is entropy and soul decay in both games?

 

The gods are reliable on this account. If you convince Eothas to destroy the wheel and not simply break it, all life comes to an end rather quickly.

Operative word: Convince Eothas. It's the difference between disabling a device attached to the process and destroying the process.

[flamesium]

Souls are made of essence which is probably a finite resource. A lot of the story so far doesn’t make a lot of sense if there’s an infinite supply of essence to tap into.

 

If Rymyrgand gets his way the world returns to a lifeless rock in a cloud of essence, which is how other planets began, including I would assume Eora.

[JiggleFloyd]

What is more likely: Obsidian retconned PoE1 or the gods simply lied and manipulated you in PoE1 as well as PoE2, much like Thaos and the Leaden Key manipulated the world?

 

 

I don't even think it was an intentional retcon; I think it was simply a 'retcon' that came up due to limited quality assurance, editing, and customer feedback, which is no surprise in the entertainment industry. The fact that so many threads about this topic exist and that a great many people are confused is evidence of that. If Obsidian intended for us to come to the explanation and conclusion you're selling, then this confusion wouldn't exist and there would be no debate.

 

Many movies, games, and fictional stories have contradictions and missing information which forces users to 'plug in the holes' themselves. You and many PoE customers are doing exactly that, plugging the holes in the story. I respect your explanation and certainly find it plausible that the gods have been deceiving us all this time, but until the game confirms this with upcoming DLCs or PoE III, this is just one of many conjectures.

Edited May 31, 2018 by JiggleFloyd

[JiggleFloyd]

I think this is a good thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/98322-ending-spoilers-the-ending-of-deadfire-and-what-it-means-for-the-lore/

Edited May 31, 2018 by JiggleFloyd

[Utritum]

I think the implication is that there once was a natural system of reincarnation, but when the Engwithans created the gods and modified this system to continuously feed the gods with soul energy, they somehow also disabled or destroyed the natural system, perhaps even in an act of intentional sabotage to ensure that if their gods were to die, the world would die alongside them.

 

I mean, "A world without the guidance of our gods is not a world that deserves to live!" sure sounds like something that would be a part of the Engwithan ethos.

[Mikeymoonshine]

yeah as I said I am pretty sure there was always a wheel it's just the game doesn't properly explain it. So it isn't a retcon just an unfortunate descision to cut main story content. I really don't get it, those scenes go on and on and are full of fluff writing that is nice to listen to once but really isn't needed. Why didn't they just cut down the word count rather than just cutting out important parts of these scenes?

[JiggleFloyd]

yeah as I said I am pretty sure there was always a wheel it's just the game doesn't properly explain it. So it isn't a retcon just an unfortunate descision to cut main story content. I really don't get it, those scenes go on and on and are full of fluff writing that is nice to listen to once but really isn't needed. Why didn't they just cut down the word count rather than just cutting out important parts of these scenes?

 

Good story, bad writing basically, at least regarding the lore of Eora. The writing besides that is impeccable, but they really miss the ball regarding the high level lore / phenomenon of Eora.