Need spoilers. Pls explain The Endless Paths story

[IamNOOB]

OK, so I am in the endless paths level 14 for the first time. I read most of the lore and had all the dialogues with the fampyr king / warlord or boss or how do you call him... I understood that their King got mad after losing his son and that some adra beetles eat their precious adra, also that they wanted to be master scientists in the soul control area of research......

BUT I DIDNT GET the whole picture. Can someone tell me in short what the hell exactly happenned and why? And what was that about an angry mob..... Oooh, damn it. I am too tired after work, I should play RPGs when I m well rested. This is why I didnt get it, or maybe I just didnt get it for no reason at all. Thanks.

[Harry Easter]

- Old Nua used his people to dig deep into the keep and carve a statue out of the adra. Mostly to praise himself.  

 

- It's not clear if he came to Caed Nua before or after the death of his son, but he wanted to bring him back ... somehow. Old Nua became crazy and some of his underlings experimented with Animancy on his subjects.

 

- His subjects grew tired of Nuas antics and rebelled. He forced himself into Adra and his experimenting underlings became Fampyrs and since then they live and fight in the deeps of Caed Nua.

 

- The Master below (the Dragon) was born in the deepest place of Caed Nua and fed of the Adra, the Xaurips and some kith here and there. It can't get out because it's too fat  the Adra weights to heavy on it's shoulders.

That's how I understood the story.

Edited May 24, 2017 by Harry Easter

[IamNOOB]

Oo

[Harry Easter]

Yeah, there wasn't much to understand. Old Nua had a stupid idea and from there, everything went downhill^^.

[Messier-31]

The issue with the Endless Paths is the Kickstarter campaign. They wanted to make this megadungeon based on the amount of backers, so it went on and on and on. Yeah, it was a success, but the entire place was invented before any lore/story was put there to glue it all together. There was a moment where Josh asked the concept artist about his drawing of the statue head emerging in one of the upper levels. The answer was "I don't know, but it looks cool". I think 99% of the Endless Paths of Od Nua was one big "I don't know" and the story came really late in the development process, thus it may be odd at times (odd, get it? hyar hyar).

 

OK. This is how I (don't) get it:

 

• Od Nua was some huge figure in the Engwithan society, some called him even a king
• Od Nua lost his son, but no-one knows how it exactly happened ?????
• Trivia: the son's name is Maros - source: https://twitter.com/jesawyer/status/771475774226305024
• Because of his indescribable grief Od Nua dug deep under the keep and made a huge statue depicting his son, thus trying to quench this grief by commiting to work
• While at it, he was hoping to somehow get his son back to him by means of pushing the Engwithan animancy even further (thus so much adra all over the place)
• Because of his brutal extensive research some of his 'employees' rebelled - some remained loyal
• The souls of his lackeys were used to create animats
• The doors on level 13 were sealed becasue either Od Nua was protecting himself or the rebels wanted to trap him ?????
• During the battle Od Nua somehow cast himself into the adra ?????, probably to avoid being ripped apart by the angry mob
• Survivors were somehow ????? made into fampyrs
• Adra-eating beetles came out of nowhere because reasons ?????
• The Master Below was a little wyrm that was fed with adra since always, thus it became the adra dragon - it couldn't leave the depths because it was so big and heavy - but it's influence over Caed Nua was of great magnitude because y'know dragon

 

Close enough? Amirite?

Please, help fill in the question mark blanks?

Edited May 22, 2017 by Messier-31

[scythesong]

-Od Nua was some kind of noble, yes.

-Od Nua lost his son through some kind of accident (no specifics).

-It was grief that motivated him to use his vast wealth/power/influence to hire the best minds he could and find push the boundaries of animancy (ie, all kinds of brutal and depraved tests because the "normal" method was too slow - he acknowledges that he pressed his people to do unforgivable things). He went mad at some point.

-He built the Endless Paths around some kind of cavern system with lots of adra.

-AFAIK we don't really know what the adra statue is for - it's supposed to have an important role, and it's basically some kind of extremely powerful battery/vessel/magnet for souls, but other than that... we do know it that it was a product of Od Nua's madness.

-Even then, there was already powerful opposition against animancy. We don't know the specifics, but some of Od Nua's opponents (who saw him as a broken man who had gone too far) were able to infiltrate the Endless Paths but they could not completely destroy Od Nua and what he had wrought. And so they decided to seal him in, instead.

-Od Nua cast himself into the adra to cheat death, survive the ages and protect his work - he's in it for the long term, and because crazy.

-The fampyrs were the results of Cabiros' hubris and experimentation. Cabiros was already some kind of mad scientist prior his transformation, presumably he just became more insane after.

-The animats were also the result of some other animancer's experimentation.

-The rise of the adra beetles was a recent development. They're basically just pests (think burrowing rats, so they're everywhere - they were already there in Od Nua's time) but they were driven further above because of the Master Below.

-The Master Below was a wyrmling when she first stumbled into the deepest part of the cavern system that would become the Endless Paths. She's been feeding on the adra since, and at some point became powerful enough to wrest control of the Endless Paths away from Od Nua. Od Nua still thinks he can reclaim the Endless Paths at some point because crazy.

-The Master Below has great control over various aspects of the Endless Paths. That's how she manages to manipulate or even drive the lords of Caed Nua/settlers of the higher levels of the Endless Paths crazy. She's apparently also a very powerful... telepath? She's not exactly a cipher but she has extremely powerful mental abilities. She can even perform the equivalent of astral projection.

Edited May 22, 2017 by scythesong

[smjjames]

-Od Nua was definetly a noble of some kind.

 

-his son: I thought maybe it was some kind of sickness, but that's my own speculation as the cause of death isn't specified, just that it may have been pretty sudden.

 

statue: I thought the statue was in the likeness of Od Nua himself, as for function, we do know it becomes the vessel for a god in PoE2.

 

Adra eating beetles: Yeah, they're pests which became a problem more recently. One possible loophole between PoE1 and PoE2 is that the arm has supposedly been almost completely chewed off from the rest of the statue, how is the arm intact when the statue bursts out of the ground in PoE2. I suppose the adra 'limb' the Fampyr is talking about might not actually be the limb of the statue.

[Messier-31]

One possible loophole between PoE1 and PoE2 is that the arm has supposedly been almost completely chewed off from the rest of the statue, how is the arm intact when the statue bursts out of the ground in PoE2. I suppose the adra 'limb' the Fampyr is talking about might not actually be the limb of the statue.

 

Devs are aware of this and there will be an explanation in-game.

Edited May 22, 2017 by Messier-31

[scythesong]

Well it could be an accident that resulted in a disease/illness or just a really bad wound. The best we have is Od Nua's ramblings that his son inherited his stubbornness and that he regretted not stopping his son from doing whatever it was the Maros was supposed to be doing on the morning of the incident.

Edited May 22, 2017 by scythesong

[smjjames]

 

One possible loophole between PoE1 and PoE2 is that the arm has supposedly been almost completely chewed off from the rest of the statue, how is the arm intact when the statue bursts out of the ground in PoE2. I suppose the adra 'limb' the Fampyr is talking about might not actually be the limb of the statue.

 

Devs are aware of this and there will be an explanation in-game.

 

I was going to assume that the god simply willed the adra to grow back and reconnect or something because, well, you know gods. It's also not 100% clear, I don't think, that the Fampyr is actually talking about the arm of the statue.

[JerekKruger]

'limb'

 

I think we all know how they're going to solve that problem