Lore Questions

[Benedictous]

So I beat the game twice now. Once on hard and once on normal, but there are a couple things I didn't seem to catch regarding the lore and maybe a kind soul can fill me in.

 

1. I still don't know what the Pillars of Eternity are (Adra things that loop souls? i dunno)

2. Magran seems inconsistent.  Through your priest's subplot you learn that she was actually on the side of The Queen (Woed?) and Eothas was actually trying to stop them from carrying out their plan.  Yet at Twin Elms she councils you to stop The Queen and return the souls to the land to strengthen it. What? Maybe I missed something.

3. What exactly happened to the Eogathewhothewhatsit civilization? Are you telling me ALL of them were sucked into Thaos?

[SeferZohar]

None of those questions are directly answered in game as far as I know, but:

 

1. My guess is they're the soul towers/machines of the Engwithans, but they could also be the soul prisons as you suggest. The towers are more important in the story, though.

2. This is a bit of a mystery. Magran's being a little dishonest when she's talking to you alongside Galawain, I think, because they're annoyed by Woedica's intervention in mortal affairs yet Magran's construction of the Godhammer was itself such an intervention. (Yes, it was ostensibly directed against Eothas breaking the pact, but Magran still tried to conceal her involvement so she evidently thought she was doing something dubious.) It might be as simple as Magran siding with Woedica temporarily against Eothas and then aligning against her when Woedica's getting too close to power, but this nonetheless strikes me as one of the biggest unresolved questions, and it might be being deliberately left for the expansion.

3. There were still Engwithan missionaries operating at the time of the inquisition against Iovara, and we know from past-life-Watcher's confrontation of Thaos at Sun in Shadow that this took place after Thaos's "ascension" -- so the Engwithans didn't all die out at once. The most likely answer it seems to me is that the remaining Engwithans simply died out like any civilisation does.

[PBJam]

About the Pillars of Eternity, you see some glass-green pillars right at the beginning of the game, in the Encampment

 

I assumed that has something to do with it

 

If you ask Odema about it, he tells you about the strange properties of the rocks and how soul butchers in Defiance Bay use it for weird stuff

 

so am assuming that has to do with the "Pillars of Eternity" since we are introduced to it straight from the start, or it could be a coincidence and those are some just random pillars

 

Thoughts?

[durbal]

2.  Pretty sure it had to do with the gods not being real, i.e. Magran wanting to conceal that fact.  Paradoxically, she does this by blowing up another god.  This is revealed through conversation with Durance after Magran ignores him in Teir Whateveritscalled.  He was supposed to die with the other 11 so people wouldn't discover her plan.

Edited April 7, 2015 by durbal

[SeferZohar]

2. Pretty sure it had to do with the gods not being real, i.e. Magran wanting to conceal that fact. Paradoxically, she does this by blowing up another god. This is revealed through conversation with Durance after Magran ignores him in Teir Whateveritscalled. He was supposed to die with the other 11 so people wouldn't discover her plan.

Is that specifically stated in the conversation? If Eothas only intervened in the first place to try to prevent Woedica's plan from coming to fruition, it doesn't seem to me that there'd be any obvious reason Magran would want to kill him unless she was already implicated in the plan in the first place, in which case it can't have just been a reactive attempt to conceal the secret about the gods, right?

[Khrysophylax]

Another possibility is that it didn't have to do with the big secret, per se, but merely that Magran felt Eothas had 'crossed a line' in incarnating himself and in making war (which is her portfolio). She 'overreacted' a little and ended up killing Eothas, which nearly blew their cover, then tried to cover up her mistake by killing the 12 priests who worked on the Godhammer.

It's remarkably petty if true, but then again we don't really have a very glowing report of Magran's character, either.

[durbal]

 

2. Pretty sure it had to do with the gods not being real, i.e. Magran wanting to conceal that fact. Paradoxically, she does this by blowing up another god. This is revealed through conversation with Durance after Magran ignores him in Teir Whateveritscalled. He was supposed to die with the other 11 so people wouldn't discover her plan.

Is that specifically stated in the conversation? If Eothas only intervened in the first place to try to prevent Woedica's plan from coming to fruition, it doesn't seem to me that there'd be any obvious reason Magran would want to kill him unless she was already implicated in the plan in the first place, in which case it can't have just been a reactive attempt to conceal the secret about the gods, right?

 

 

She was implicated as being an Engwithan construct, as all the gods were.  Eothas' victory would've allowed that to be discovered which Woedica was trying to ensure would never happen (hence the Leaden Key).  Yes, it is revealed in the conversation with Durance.  If you prod him about the other 11 being dead he eventually comes to grips with it and renounces his faith (and uses Magran's power to help defeat Thaos to spite her). 

Edited April 7, 2015 by durbal

[Messier-31]

So I beat the game twice now.

 

In less than 2 weeks? Some people.

[SeferZohar]

 

 

2. Pretty sure it had to do with the gods not being real, i.e. Magran wanting to conceal that fact. Paradoxically, she does this by blowing up another god. This is revealed through conversation with Durance after Magran ignores him in Teir Whateveritscalled. He was supposed to die with the other 11 so people wouldn't discover her plan.

Is that specifically stated in the conversation? If Eothas only intervened in the first place to try to prevent Woedica's plan from coming to fruition, it doesn't seem to me that there'd be any obvious reason Magran would want to kill him unless she was already implicated in the plan in the first place, in which case it can't have just been a reactive attempt to conceal the secret about the gods, right?

 

 

She was implicated as being an Engwithan construct, as all the gods were.  Eothas' victory would've allowed that to be discovered which Woedica was trying to ensure would never happen (hence the Leaden Key).  Yes, it is revealed in the conversation with Durance.  If you prod him about the other 11 being dead he eventually comes to grips with it and renounces his faith (and uses Magran's power to help defeat Thaos to spite her). 

 

 

Well, I know what happens at the end of The Trials of Durance; I mean specifically whether there's anything in the conversation that points to the desire to keep their origins secret as the issue at stake. I've just re-read it in the game files and it doesn't seem to me that there is, at least not directly. As I understood it, Eothas was aiming to prevent Woedica's return to power. Now either Magran secretly outright supports the return of Woedica, which seems wrong, or she only intervened independently to destroy Eothas after his precipitate action and was otherwise uninvolved with Woedica, but I'm not sure that's the case either -- the conversation makes it sound like there's a deeper scheme going on between Magran and Woedica, which then contradicts Magran's stance at Teir Evron.

Edited April 7, 2015 by SeferZohar

[gkathellar]

1. I believe the Pillars are the Engwithan soul-capture machines. Alternately, it could be referring to Adra in general.

2. Magran probably wanted to GTFO, at that point. The plan had gone to crap, and she wanted to end up on the winning side.

3. The big catastrophe precipitated a more gradual decline and disappearance.

[Katarack21]

I think the pillars are the adra. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the origins of the Adra didn't get addressed, right?

[Gallenger]

Yeah nobody knows what adra even is - or if it was once growing.

 

The Magran issue, is that she, and the rest of the Gods, wanted to blow up Eothas for his transgression of trying to directly control worldly events.  Woedica wanted to use the Engwithan machines to repower herself, but ti's never *really* established if Woedica and Magran got together to kill Eothas for his transgression, or if Eothas was actually invading so as to stop Woedica's plans - it's just conjecture.  The game could be lying to us .