Engwithan tombs

[hollerer]

Why do engwithans care about burial if they can master the afterlife? And why are there undead engwithans, if they can control and have power over the afterlife and souls.

[Wormerine]

What do you mean? Engwith mastered soul manipulation well enough to be able to infuse animate objects with souls (animats, Titans, engwithan saints) with their peak achievement being creation of gods. There is one Engwith who was granted an ability to be reborn with his memories intact, and that was Thaos. As I understand it was a pack with Woedica, rather than the result of Engwith engineering. It doesn’t seem they have control over their mortality. Engwith died as any other nation. They mastered some aspects of beyond, but in many ways current animancy is more advanced (remember Josh saying that).

 

Is there any particular area you have in mind? I remember exploring a lot of Engwithian ruins but can’t remember a burial area per say.

 

As far as engwithan undead - they were created on purpose. Description of Engwithan Saint states that they act as guardians of important engwithan sites (such as Pomo Kohara). Same with animats or titans. Throughout the adventure we get to interact with some ancient Engwith, but they tend to be tied and mentained by gods - like Thaos or Faces.

[hollerer]

Is there any particular area you have in mind? I remember exploring a lot of Engwithian ruins but can’t remember a burial area per say.

 

As far as engwithan undead - they were created on purpose. Description of Engwithan Saint states that they act as guardians of important engwithan sites (such as Pomo Kohara). Same with animats or titans. Throughout the adventure we get to interact with some ancient Engwith, but they tend to be tied and mentained by gods - like Thaos or Faces.

 

Well many engwithan ruins in poe 1 and 2 have undead people, assumably engwithan. So if they were put there as guardians, okay fine. I always thought that undeadness was unwanted and unfortunate event that wouldn't happen to people who pretty much had control over souls and death. 

[uuuhhii]

remember the fampyr in od nua?

it was long before creation of gods

[house2fly]

Engwithans as a society had influence over the soul and the afterlife, but that doesn't mean individual Engwithans could do anything about it. The United States has a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, but nobody posting here is likely to get hold of one

[DozingDragon]

So far, Thaos's ability to reincarnate with his memories intact appears to be unique.  Even if it was not completely unique, there is nothing to suggest that sort of ability would be nearly as common or as accessible as becoming a fampyr.  So, becoming undead seems like it may have been the only option available to many Engwithans who desired immortality.  

[hollerer]

Engwithans as a society had influence over the soul and the afterlife, but that doesn't mean individual Engwithans could do anything about it. The United States has a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, but nobody posting here is likely to get hold of one

 

But in engithan culture everyone sort of had their personal nuke: a soul that could turn into a dangerous undead if untended. Since engwithans knew how to manipulate and control souls, they probably also knew how undead were formed and had ways to prevent that. Unless they wanted it specifically. But then there would be a lot more undead engwithans because i bet many rich engwithans would like to live long.

 

It makes no sense why they bury their dead if they know what happens after death. Burial is a cultural ceremony practiced by cultures who didn't really know what happened after death. But when engwithans died, they knew what happened so you might expect them to develop a different culture around death. Entombing, creating monuments of dead relatives and graves mean that you try to make something lasting to uphold a memory of something that is no more. But since everyone knows the soul still exists and goes around, nothing was really lost. It's much different mindset.

 

So in this regard, tombs and the way engwithans controlled souls is sort of contradictory or isn't explained anywhere properly. Neither was soul manipulation some kind of mystery, engwithans put soul-energy in everything. Probably even in their cutlery and furniture.

[handsomenat]

They can still mourn the loss of a specific person. Because while the soul is the same, the person is gone. Also this is what pushed Od Nua to construct the adra statue of his son, Maros. They tried to find gods and found none, figured out that the soul of your beloved child can go to live on as some lowly animal and despaired.

[house2fly]

I don't know how many Engwithan tombs would be from after they found out there are no gods- one can imagine certainly that it wouldn't be long between finding that out and self-destructing their civilisation in the Engwithan Apotheosis.

 

Remember the soul in this setting isn't a person. A person is a person; a soul is a component of a person. Maros Nua's soul now is Maros Nua's soul, but if it gets reincarnated into Jimmy the tiger, it's now the soul of Jimmy the tiger.

 

It's also worth bearing in mind that the question of how many Engwithans knew the truth is open. The people in charge did, the upper crust of society, but how much did your average Engwithan Joe going about his daily business know?

 

Even if they did know, how freely available was the technology to manipulate your soul? How much would it cost to go to an animancer to get it done?

[hollerer]

Remember the soul in this setting isn't a person. A person is a person; a soul is a component of a person. Maros Nua's soul now is Maros Nua's soul, but if it gets reincarnated into Jimmy the tiger, it's now the soul of Jimmy the tiger.

 

If I'm correct, it's the person's consciousness. So the consciousness can die, lose memories and reincarnate elsewhere to gather memories again.

 

But if the engwithans knew this as a fact and fabricated machines and gods that managed the consciousness, collected it and redistributed it based on their needs, the entire concept of death and attitude towards life and death should change dramatically. Quite frankly, people might even become very careless and disregarding of life. Life sucks? Big deal, just suicide and reroll. So no wonder engwithan society collapsed.

 

What of the knowledge about souls and ongoings with them among engwithans, well they had machinery that ran with soul energy and those animated adras. As far as I understand big part of their society worked with soul and adra manipulation. So it seems like basic knowledge everyone was aware of.

Anyway, to me this is very plain plot mistake that the devs just didn't think about. It's quite complex and deep one, because it takes a lot of thinking to figure out. So devs just probably thought that "let's just put these scary things in this dungeon" just like in any fantasy rpg.

 

Even if they did know, how freely available was the technology to manipulate your soul? How much would it cost to go to an animancer to get it done?

 

 

Who knows, but it's more like the attitude towards tombs. There wouldn't be tombs in a culture that had such knowledge and control over death. And there wouldn't be any tomb-related undeads either.

 

There's probably other plot holes too but this one is special one.

[house2fly]

Not really. There are no Engwithan tombs in either game, and no undead populating them

[Yria]

So far, Thaos's ability to reincarnate with his memories intact appears to be unique.  Even if it was not completely unique, there is nothing to suggest that sort of ability would be nearly as common or as accessible as becoming a fampyr.    

 

It wasn't even an ability iirc, Lady Webb states that he reincarnated just as anyone would, but Woedica returned his memories when he reached adolescence each time. 

[DozingDragon]

 

So far, Thaos's ability to reincarnate with his memories intact appears to be unique.  Even if it was not completely unique, there is nothing to suggest that sort of ability would be nearly as common or as accessible as becoming a fampyr.    

 

It wasn't even an ability iirc, Lady Webb states that he reincarnated just as anyone would, but Woedica returned his memories when he reached adolescence each time. 

 

 

Here's what Lady Webb says, "What scraps of evidence exist suggest that he has died many times, only to be reborn each time, exactly the same man, Awakened during adolescence with all the knowledge and experience of all his lifetimes. The plots he orchestrates sometimes take hundreds of years to bear fruit." 

 

So it could be that Thaos's abilities are derived from Woedica, or it could be that Thaos, who was present during the Engwithan apotheosis (and survived), and who can also separate his soul from his body to possess constructs and kith, might have some special abilities associated with his soul as the result of Engwithan animancy.  Either way, we have yet to see another individual who can do the same things that Thaos did.  

Edited January 3, 2019 by DozingDragon

[Yria]

So it could be that Thaos's abilities are derived from Woedica, or it could be that Thaos, who was present during the Engwithan apotheosis (and survived), and who can also separate his soul from his body to possess constructs and kith, might have some special abilities associated with his soul as the result of Engwithan animancy.  Either way, we have yet to see another individual who can do the same things that Thaos did.  

 

The Watcher seems to believe it was Woedica. From Aloth's quest in Deadfire, reply 4:

 

 

 

 

But yeah, he was clearly an exceptional case either way.