Where do priests get spells? (Huge Spoiler)

[BelgarathMTH]

So, it's become obvious to me after reading a bunch of stuff online and only playing the game up to the beginning of Act III, as well as reading about the beginning of PoE 2, that the "gods" of this setting are completely fake.

 

I'm not seeing the "Engwithans" and certainly not "animancy" as being anything I want to have anything to do with "my" Eora. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, the Engwithans are the "Goa'uld" of this setting, and the "gods" are something resembling the Cylons from the newer version of "Battlestar Galactica".

 

So, my question in light of all of this is, where does magic come from in this setting? The whole setting seems to have a heavy sci-fi tone. But you really can't have it both ways coherently, between sci-fi and high magical fantasy. 

 

Most especially, where do priest spells come from? 

 

I think Obsidian maybe, or maybe not, was trying to make a sci-fi themed point about theism with the meta story, but I think the whole thing may be kind of an epic fail with regards to D&D style fantasy games. 

 

What is going on with mages, chanters, ciphers, and most especially priests in the setting?

 

Go ahead and spoil me to your heart's content, because if this whole setting is as inconsistent and as poorly imagined as I'm worried it might be, I am not sure at all at this point if I'll be buying PoE 2, or maybe not even finishing PoE 1.

[Voodoo]

Gods as presented in PoE are "fake" in term that they are not immortal nor eternal, but the concept of souls and their relation to living ("luminous") adra are very true from the "magical" perspective, and that's what animancy is trying to decypher.

 

The only science fiction here is Engwithans' attempt into manipulation of soul magic (and I don't see any relation to Cyclons which are completely engineered as super-computers, with convincing artificial intelligence due to having enough processing power).

 

But you can't make souls as you can make silicon transistors, and if a soul (as presented in PoE, remember all your Watcher interaction with them) can leave a body and move into another one, that's definitely magic.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Voodoo

[draego]

From my understanding magic is all basically born from souls, yours or others. Even priest dont get their spells from the gods but faith in gods. Its their own faith that generates magic from within themselves. And this is where all the gods come from. They are an amalgamation of souls taken by engwithans with all those machines . So they are real beings but not what you normally would think of as a god in common usage of fantasy or religion. Basically they are so powerful people in the world cant tell the difference between a true 'god' and them.

Edited August 17, 2018 by draego

[dreamrider]

Apply a bit of Arthur C. Clarke logic to the story situation.

 

Even though the current pantheon of gods were 'constructed':

- If it walks like a god, talks like a god, wields essentially unlimited ethereal power like a god, is omnipresent like a god, and manipulates mankind like a god …

     … it is for all practical purposes a god, to an Eoran mortal's frame of reference.

[Mirandel]

Apply a bit of Arthur C. Clarke logic to the story situation.

 

Even though the current pantheon of gods were 'constructed':

- If it walks like a god, talks like a god, wields essentially unlimited ethereal power like a god, is omnipresent like a god, and manipulates mankind like a god …

     … it is for all practical purposes a god, to an Eoran mortal's frame of reference.

 

Small correction:

• "If it walks like a god, talks like a god" - so does any mental patient with self importance disorder
• "wields essentially unlimited ethereal power like a god" - in modern terms, a robot with a nuclear bomb on the back is not considered a god even though he is capable to wipe out civilizations
• "is omnipresent like a god" - actually, not at all, and this was the key problem in both PoE1 and 2, the inability of omnipresence created many problems for the gods.
• "and manipulates mankind like a god" - same as above, all they can do in terms of manipulation is distraction (humankind is fully capable of it on it's own, thank you very much) and souls punishments - the power assigned to them by humans.

 

No, sorry, gods in PoE are still a human creation with powers delegated to them by humans (ok, kith). Very powerful superheroes/villains at best.

 

 

Answering OP question - why can not you combine magic and sci-fi? Remember Shadowrun? It works very well together. And at any rate, judging by existence of mages and chanters, magic is a natural phenomena of Eora - another element of the nature - and divine powers is just another form of it. Draego  suggeted a good explanation for the mechanism of how it works.

[draego]

I found this digging around the wiki 

 

Through a variety of techniques (e.g. martial training, meditation, ritualistic evocation, mortification of the flesh), some individuals are able to draw upon the energy of their soul to accomplish extraordinary feats. These abilities range from the mundanely superhuman to the explosively magical. Having a strong soul seems to make this easier, but sometimes even people with fragmented souls are able to accomplish the extraordinary. The individual's body seems to act as a conduit and battery for this power, drawing in replenishment from seemingly omnipresent "fields" of unbound spiritual energy in the world around them.

Edited August 17, 2018 by draego

[Inertio]

The way I see it, every setting has its primary resource for extraordinary and supernatural feats.
 

For Star Wars, it is the Force;

In Dragon Ball, it is Ki (気);

Chi (氣) in Wuxia-themed Chinese fiction, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon;

For Starcraft, it is Psionics;

Mana is the “go-to” for a lot of settings.
 

Some settings tend to have multiple resources, like the Divine (e.g. the gods), the Arcane (e.g. the Weave of the Forgotten Realms), and the Psionic resources of D&D.
 

The primary resource for Eora is souls. Souls are part of the eco-system and travel through veins of Adra, the titular Pillars of Eternity, and are a primary natural force in the setting, pretty much like electromagnetism and gravity in the real world. Recall how Concelhaut complained that that magic is merely a trickle of soul energy from the Wheel.
 

Now, bearing this in mind, every setting has multiple ways to tap in to the main resource; for instance, in Star Wars, you can be a Jedi, a Sith, or a Nightsister to use force-related skills; in Starcraft, you can be Templar/Judicator, Ghost, or Cerebrate to tap into Psi.
 

In POE, you can use faith, academic study, guile, mortification, or discipline to access the potential of souls.

Souls are, the way I see it, the mana/psi/force of Eora.

[InsaneCommander]

Priest spells come from their faith in "gods". I imagine that even a madman who believed that Korgrak, a Xaurip or the Miniature Giant Space Pig was a god might have some powers as a result, if he had enough faith.

 

The "god" doesn't even have to acknowledge the existence of the priest for them to have spells. See what happened after the Godhammer exploded.

[BelgarathMTH]

So, I get some interesting takeaways from all these responses. I think my favorite is the one comparing soul energy in PoE to "the Force" in Star Wars, as in "Life creates it. It surrounds us and binds us together," as Yoda says.

 

It's the priest's faith in the ideals represented by her god (light, redemption) rather than the god itself (the construct Eothas) that allows her to tap into soul energy and cast magical priest spells. It's the paladin's devotion to the ideals of a cause or principle (kindness and benevolence, making money, ruthlessness) rather than a god that gives her the ability to tap into soul energy to generate auras, heal, and light her weapon with magical fire. 

 

So the focus for the powers comes from the idea of a god, not from the being passing itself off as the god. 

 

Again, I'm reminded of the Goa'uld from Stargate the more I learn about the "gods" of PoE.

[InsaneCommander]

It's the priest's faith in the ideals represented by her god (light, redemption) rather than the god itself (the construct Eothas) that allows her to tap into soul energy and cast magical priest spells. It's the paladin's devotion to the ideals of a cause or principle (kindness and benevolence, making money, ruthlessness) rather than a god that gives her the ability to tap into soul energy to generate auras, heal, and light her weapon with magical fire.

 

Yes, this is a much better description than what I wrote above. More than faith in a god, the faith in the ideals that they represent. And as Iovara or someone else said, ideals are very strong.