The Species of Agnar, with Tiago!

Transcript

Garrett: ah Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Into the Malediction. This is episode 12, a continuation of our last episode, where we left off talking about the short story, The Seven Rites.

Garrett: And we are again joined by our special guest, Chago Bonificio. I think I said that okay. ah Thank you again for joining us. And we left off with the Rite of Honor,

Garrett: um Before I get too ahead of myself, I'm Garrett, a AKA Admiral Tater, joined by my co-hosts, Alan and Nick, and of course our special guests.

Garrett: Introduce yourselves, please, guys.

m3rcier: Hey, this is Alan or Mercer on Discord.

Nick: And this is Nick, or Fetty315 in Discord.

Tiago: Yeah, and I'm Tiago, Loot Studios Loremaster, Malediction's Loremaster as well.

Garrett: So it's is's a huge deal. We're trying to take as as as much advantage of you as possible to get as much information as quickly as possible.

m3rcier: Hey.

Garrett: ah It's been amazing.

Tiago: You're free.

Garrett: If you have not watched the last episode or listened to the last episode, please pause what you're doing and go back and listen to episode 11 first. Um, now, okay. So we're in this episode, we're going to do the right of honor short story, and then we're going to have a discussion about some of the species and, uh, like abominations and beasts of the malediction world.

Garrett: And so, but right of honor, and this was also written, by Chago. And so, Alan, did you want to read this one or do you, did you want me to, uh, take this one as well?

m3rcier: I think I'll read this one.

Garrett: All right, Alan, take it away.

m3rcier: Ours is an unpayable debt. We failed to reach Osrath. Our blades never drank faithless blood, and our gods were lost to us in the very heart of our empire. We failed them, but in infinite mercy they offered us a path to redemption.

m3rcier: May the priests offer solace. Our trade is in blood and still. Some say that those who have lost it all are the most dangerous. We are much worse for we have something to protect.

m3rcier: Everest, Falken March, Arch Marshal of the Rite of Honor.

Garrett: Awesome. Um, so this article immediately opens up super interesting. So in the last one, we didn't really talk about the right of honor because we're going to cover a lot of it here.

Garrett: but the right of honor is not led by lucid. It's led by an arch martial. Uh, and so

m3rcier: but It's it's it's led by a Lucidi. The arch marshal is the septa.

Garrett: Oh, you're right. You're right. My bad. You're right. You're absolutely correct. ah The septa. So no septa. It's the arch marshal. um And they are, you know, and the current one is very old.

Garrett: The current one is very old, over 100 years old, and is on the oh precipice of death, I'm sure. And so the world is in balance of what will happen.

Garrett: ah with the military wing of the Order of the Shattered Throne. ah So this article opens super thematically, where the main, i well, i'm probably not the main battle force, but I say an elite battle force, the Knights of Charn.

Garrett: Is that correct? An elite battle force, not the main battle force?

Tiago: Yeah, I will say that the Knights of Charn and a couple of other elite forces around the continent and you know around the world, they were ah they were special. They were not regular humans. They had a little bit of ah a special sauce when the Triumvirate created them or blessed them, so to speak.

Garrett: and like And that's why they can wield relics and legacies with ease.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Which can make them... It's what's made them a much more lethal. But so this is cool. So Osirith falls, and as the ah the evacuation is happening, essentially, they come to the the ancient fortress in Denysh.

Garrett: And they find this huge host of soldiers, the Knights of Charan, that were waylaid, fighting another enemy force that was blocking them from going to break the siege. And so that quote at the beginning was, you know, their regret because they thought, you know, if they could have been able to break away from the engagement and get to the siege, they could have saved the city and prevented the malediction from being created.

Garrett: ah And so, ah

Tiago: I do have a little tidbit about that particular battle, which is if you look at the map just below Asteris, there's a little, there's a little, know, there are two words, crimson steps.

Garrett: yes, yes.

Garrett: Ooh. Okay.

Tiago: that's the That's the place where the Knights of Charm were held, and those are the crimson steps because those those hills that lead to Astaris, to the pass between the mountains, those that's where the the knights eventually managed to just kill all of the the enemies in in kind of the ah this final battle and just stain that place with blood is the idea. ah But it was too late and they never made it made it past the crimson steps.

Garrett: Right, right. Yeah, that's a long of ways.

Nick: tragic.

m3rcier: whoever the enemy is, they knew that there was a sizable force of the paradox up there. So they went to that pass and guarded it to stop the that military force from coming as reinforcements, what it sounds like?

Tiago: ah Yep, basically. ah the The Crimson Steps also, you know, they remain crimson because whenever a host of the Primal Blood decides to, you know, whenever someone shows up and decides that they want to to join the kids of the Primal Blood and they are influential enough and they make their way north to try to destroy the order, that's usually where it stops.

Tiago: The walls of Astaris so far have not been breached.

Garrett: Ooh, I like that so far from the lore master himself.

Nick: so far.

Garrett: Okay. ah I like that. um Okay. Oh, that's really cool about the Cribs of Steps. I'm going have to note that down as well. Okay. So anyways, so they come back and, you know, they find this huge host and the bright side is for the order themselves,

Garrett: even after the defeat, they have a significant military arm left to protect themselves while they rebuild in the age of strife.

Garrett: Right? ah So I'm guessing, you know these are, ah this is a serious weapon that remains, especially the fact that they have, it mentions they have legacies and relics, which I'm sure go to the reliquary for storage perhaps.

Garrett: um

m3rcier: And Dynas a really easily-to-defend area of the continent. It's just a it's got mountain ranges on all four sides of it.

Garrett: Yes.

Garrett: But continuing here, so ah the Rite of Honor is, like we said, ah led by an arch-marshal, and they are... ah where which Are they out of the Citadel as well?

Tiago: No, they are out of charn.

Garrett: Charm.

Tiago: Because, yeah, that was the original fortress where, ah you know, other there was an initial knightly order of charn, knightly sect, let's say, just to not...

Nick: Yeah.

Tiago: confuse it with the order itself. So there was this initial knightly sect of Charm, then other knightly sects from that were elsewhere in the continent joined, but Charm kind of kept being their rallying point, so to speak, for the right of honor.

Garrett: Got it. It makes a lot of sense. Duh. Duh for me, right? Nice and charm. Good charm. So... ah

Garrett: let me ah Let me... Lost my place, my notes here. um

Garrett: So, essentially, during the Age of Strife, however, the this their new Honor... um was mainly focused on internal affairs and putting down rebellions and i solidifying the rule of the Lucides in that area. Because they had to build up this entire area of Dennis. Because it had some fortresses and it had some cities, ah but they had to build all of this stuff up after the aftermath of the fall.

Garrett: ah Do... what So as far as the Rite of Honor goes, because I know there, we, in the last episode 11, we talked about the Crusade situation.

Garrett: What is preventing the Rite of Honor from doing a second Crusade? Isn't it only the fact that the leader, the Arch Marshal does not want to do it right now?

Garrett: Because I feel like a Crusade would be very effective in this at this point in the world.

Tiago: there's There's a couple of bit of different reasons. It's not like they can the Rite of Honor can just declare a crusade on their own. The political climate within the order needs to be right for it. So the Valkyris specifically are not necessarily interested in it. They think that they can do... They think the time is not right yet and that they can convert a lot of people before they do this. It's like...

Tiago: The Valkyries are not necessarily good guys. They just think it's, you know, at least part of them. They think it's easier to convert half of your enemies and have them fight their other half, right? Instead of fighting fighting them yourself.

Tiago: ah And, you know, a couple of ah of the other of the other rights are not willing to do that as well. And some of it is for strategic reasons, like they, and Everest specifically, the the current art arch marshal, he wants to consolidate power. that That's kind of his... his legacy to the right and the order is that he managed to build up the armies and build up the forces and consolidate the power of the order to set them up he is not necessarily as young as he was so he's not going to be the one to to lead them into the future oh so he's probably going to leave that to the next guy

Nick: Yeah. Little Philip of Macedon there.

Garrett: Yes. Okay. And then the other thing that the article really focuses on is the fact that the right of honor itself is composed of mainly low born order citizens, right? Because they're the soldiers compared to like the other rights you require, like it's like all elite members.

Tiago: I wouldn't say that necessarily. So that there are kind of two parts to this, right? So you you kind of, and it's actually a part that we had to kind of cut from the articles because they were just too long.

Garrett: Okay.

Tiago: And I'm kind of regretting it a little bit right now. So we're probably going to expand it.

Garrett: No, it's it's never too long, never.

Tiago: We're probably going to expand this, and this is going to be its own article little bit later, but what happens is there are the parables, which are the lowborn, and then there are the princeps, which are the highborn. There are families within the order which are part of the rite of honor, and they have these legacies and relics that pass from father to son and mother to daughter and so on and so forth.

Tiago: And as long as those families stay you know in the good graces of the of the order, of the of all of the rights, so to speak, ah those families get some privileges, right? so they get you know they get lands to take care of and they are responsible for training the lowborn into soldiers. Whenever they whenever the you know are considered to be too rebellious or a family isn't able to produce an heir that can wield the the family legacy in a generation, those rights can be taken away from them.

Tiago: so

Garrett: Interesting.

Nick: I really want to know more about what would cause a knightly family to rebel. I really want to know kind of more about like why. Why would she rebel against the Order?

Tiago: Oh, like it it has happened a couple of times in the history of the order. It used to happen more often before the, you know, during the Age of Strife specifically and in the beginning of the Age of of of Legacy.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: But basically what the the thing that was happening is that the the the families, they were, the right of honor was at one point the most powerful right, like that and the most numerous as well. And you know they were the military. They trained the the armies of the order. They had a lot of say-so in how things went.

Tiago: ah And that was really unbalanced and ah and they wanted to have have more say than they had, because technically all the rights have the same weight in the decision making of the order.

Tiago: ah And, you know, in the beginning, you could, you know, the the rebellious families would just gather their armies and march against the rest of the order.

Tiago: Invariably, the loyal families would, you know, stick with the the rest of the order, the rest of the rights and crush them. But that generated a lot of ah that generated a lot of friction within the order.

Tiago: And like civil wars are not good for a country, generally speaking.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: So that's when they set up the system that the that the legacies and relics actually don't belong to these families. they are only the The families are only the caretakers of the the legacies and relics.

Tiago: ah And that has allowed them to, you know, the rights when they realize someone is getting too powerful or too influential, they may start moving against that family to to control them. Some families don't take that too well. They see that as abuse of power.

Tiago: ah And, you know, that still generates conflict from time to time. The Sigrid story, the rebellion she was sent to to Quell in the in the north of Dinas was one such rebellion, right?

Nick: Right, okay. Yeah, so, yeah, and says, like, the order, right, the order determines who is the who acts as steward of the legacy, so that really takes a lot of power away from the right of honor.

Tiago: Yeah.

Tiago: Yeah, but but the order still needs them, right? It's like because they can wield the legacies.

Nick: Right.

Tiago: So that's the the balance of power there.

Nick: Yeah.

m3rcier: I get some, uh, some dune vibes there. The emperor betrays one of his families.

Nick: ah yeah it Yeah, I see it.

Garrett: It would also be really hard to rebel because, you know, the Oathbound Light is a real thing. And so if you rebel against the Order and you're fighting in Dennis, like you're at such a huge disadvantage because you can't use the Oathbound Light, essentially. Am I correct in saying that?

Tiago: Ooh, that's a very interesting point. ah The lucidity, OK, so when you are set up with the oath bound light, right, when you are anointed within the with no order, like there's a bunch of, as you are growing up, there are a bunch of rituals that are performed to, you know, you swear to oaths and and you are anointed and the oath bound light flows through you and you are bound to it.

Tiago: the same thing that makes it the same oath that makes it so when you die your soul joins the oathbound light also makes that connection permanent in a way that it can't be easily severed right so that's one of the the issues with the with the oathbound light is that technically a ah ah deserter who... and that's the dangerous part, that's the specific dangerous part.

Tiago: A deserter who believes they are doing the right thing for the order and ah following the will of the Triumviroth. So someone who's going against the institution of the order, but who's still faithful to the values of the order, that's someone who can still wield the outbound light.

Tiago: So that's the the dangerous thing there.

Garrett: That is, uh, wow. So, uh, it's kind of, I guess it kind of goes back to our herald discussion where if the, if a herald gets out of control, you know, they've got to put them down and it's the same thing with these, uh, these knightly rebellions.

m3rcier: All right.

Garrett: Cause that's okay. So they can use it. Oh, wow. Okay. So that would be collapsing.

Nick: man, wait this

m3rcier: but the But the Order does not, so and this is where the Order has to stay their hand. it's a little bit harder for them because they're not going to outright kill the rebels because of their lineage. They want to preserve that blood because they can wield relics and legacies here.

m3rcier: So they're not going to wipe them out. They're going to kill enough of them, defeat enough of them, but let their blood keep going. So maybe they kill... the mom and the dad would keep the children or that there's something like that.

Tiago: yeah they're good to make it yeah They're going to make an example out of them, right? And it's not like when the... Also, when you are doing something like the the martyrdom of the the forced martyr martyrdom of a village or something like that, you kind of need to the input of the lucity to do something like that. So even if they wanted to do something like, okay, let's take that knightly family and let's kill all of them through the oathbound light, like we do you know with ah with a particular village or like when we when we need to...

Tiago: the possibility of collateral damage is so high that the lucity have to be involved, and that's not something they that's not a decision they take lightly.

Nick: Yeah.

Nick: Well, this really sets the stage for like, ah we have a lot of we have a lot of ground for internal conflict among the among the rights.

Garrett: Right. Like a whole split. fat Well, I guess Arik Evenhand, you know, um he is not, I would say, is it would you say he's completely loyal to the Order?

Tiago: He is loyal to his people and to the entit entertain to to kingdom of of the Vulkir that he wants to rebuild. He thinks that the best path forward for that is through the order. And he does you know believe that the order's values align with what the the kingdom of Midrassel's values should be.

Tiago: ah So that's where he's at, right? ah I will say that there is some discussion within the Order about the value of letting Auric rebuild a kingdom of the Vulkir, because a lot of the Vulkir of the Order are integrated together.

Tiago: within the order right now. If they have their own kingdom, even if it's like a vassal kingdom to the order of the Shattered Throne, that's a little bit more independent.

Nick: it decentralizes a lot of the power.

Tiago: Yeah, and a couple of the rights are not necessarily okay with that.

Garrett: Right, right.

m3rcier: I got one with with that said I got one for you then so when even hand was defeated by not even hand hammer half is that his name king when he was defeated and he went back if you look on the map his path to get back to Midrassil and this is guessing because he can't really tell which side of the mountain range Midrassil is on

Tiago: Yes, yes. Mm-hmm.

m3rcier: Would he have went up the coast or would he have gone back through Astartes to get back to Midrassil when he was carried back?

Tiago: I think neither. I think the idea is that the the mountains are... respect The Magda's mountains, like the the ruins of Midrassil was the city, like the capital city, but there was a little bit of ah a Valkyr kingdom there. So the mountains are...

Tiago: just chock full of tunnels, both you know natural caves and and and man-made tunnels, and they they would have used those. It would actually be a a procession going through all of the Vol'kir lands at the time, because Midr'zu existed kind of within the order, but as a vessel state.

Tiago: ah But they still they still had a king, right? So they they were still and at least partially independent.

Nick: Hmm.

m3rcier: So I guess it said that Midrassil was the the seat of the rite of the forge before it fell.

Tiago: Yep.

m3rcier: Would that have meant that there was a Lucidia and a Septus that resided within Midrassil at that time too, alongside the king?

Tiago: ah The Septus, yes, the Lucidae, no. As I think we've mentioned last episode, the the movements of the Lucidae are mysterious. People don't necessarily know where they are at all times.

Tiago: ah But yeah, the Lucidae survived, I believe, the Septus died as part of the curse. And they just with the Septus, they just selected and a new one.

m3rcier: A new one. Yeah, because one of my when we started talking about it, one of my theories was maybe it wasn't Thunder Steps. If his body had to go back where it started to get back to the Midrassil, maybe the Order did this on purpose. Maybe they poisoned his corpse to destroy Midrassil to further integrate the Vol'kyr.

Nick: Oh, geez.

Tiago: Lies, slenderous accusations.

m3rcier: Yeah, right.

Garrett: Yeah, whoa well, let's let's not listen.

Nick: Yeah,

Garrett: That was ah that was a big accomplishment of Thunder Steps, all right? Let's not take away this thunder.

m3rcier: Bye.

Nick: little yeah that's what...

Garrett: ah Okay, wow. um Well, and this is kind of off topic, but talking about them not being able to cut off the open light. So like, is Grieza a problem for the Order?

Garrett: His existence?

Tiago: Oh, a little bit. I think we can talk a little bit about Griza and what he is a little bit later on. I think we're going to have an opportunity to talk about him.

Garrett: Okay.

Garrett: Okay, perfect.

Nick: All right.

Garrett: Noted. Moving on. ah well So anyways, I kind of mentioned this at the beginning a little bit, but so the the article ends with ah talking about our current Arch Martial Everest Falcon March and...

Garrett: how we talked about, he's more about, you know, ah shoring up homeland offenses, and keeping everything in the order, making sure you know, your house is in order.

Garrett: But and then you ended on a cliffhanger talking about like, this guy is going to die soon, because he's old. And so what's going to happen after he dies, which I'm very interested in? Is there can you is there any spoilers of what's gonna happen next?

Tiago: Oh, a new arch-marshal must be selected, which means that the the for the right of honor specifically, the way the, you know, for for many of the other rights, the Lucid just appoints a new septus. the For the right of honor, the lord lords and lady marshals of the right of honor, you know, the the leaders of those families. They will come together and select one of one from among themselves to be the mac next arch-marshal, and then the Lucid Valor, I believe, which is the Lucid of the Rite of Honor, will confirm that person. So it's going to be a little bit of ah a, you know, kind of Game of Thrones-y political situation.

Tiago: political kerfuffle when the guy dies. A lot of people are gunning for his seat. One of those people may be his grandson, which you guys actually know, which is Rogarth Falcon March.

Nick: Ah.

Garrett: Ah, okay.

m3rcier: You gave us his name. We have his whole name. yeah

Garrett: Oh.

Nick: Now with the name. okay all right.

Garrett: Yeah, I guess we could have. Wow, okay. Yeah, and he's the guy that's riding the Hippogriff in case anybody's wondering, Rogar the Breaker.

m3rcier: it's It's not a hippogriff. It's not a hippogriff.

Garrett: What is it?

m3rcier: Hold on. I'll tell you. Unless Chicago wants to.

Garrett: What's the name of it?

Tiago: It's an Aquilare, which is one of the the types of beasts within the world of malediction.

Garrett: Akvilare. where have have i have i Where was that word from?

Tiago: Aquilare.

m3rcier: It is in our our show notes.

Tiago: I

m3rcier: Someone put it there for us.

Tiago: i believe was me.

Nick: It was this jungle.

Garrett: ah yeah, I went right over that word.

Nick: All right.

Garrett: I was like, what is this?

m3rcier: yeah

Garrett: And my brain was like, we're not reading that. Okay, awesome. Okay, well, do you guys have any further questions or do you want to tell us any more about the Rite of Honor before we move on to our species?

Tiago: No, no, I think we've covered what we needed to cover about the right of honor. Like, we are going to review more about them later, but we're probably going to to cover the other rights before that.

Garrett: Perfect. All right. Well, I've talked a lot. So Alan, you're in charge now.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

m3rcier: All right, so we have the different species of Agnar, and we've we've kind of broken it down into the actual main species and then some subtypes.

m3rcier: And we do want to make a disclaimer here. There are gameplay classifications versus the in-fiction classifications. So sometimes a unit, what it can do or what it does, or maybe the tag or trait it has,

m3rcier: might not line up with what that what that would be in lore. And that's for gameplay reasons. This this is a game, not just a story.

Tiago: Yeah, I will say that most of these cases are going to be situations where a creature would fit too many, ah too many, it would get too many gameplay tags.

m3rcier: so

Tiago: Like it would have like four or five different types at the same time. So we just kind of pick the most relevant ones and stick with those.

Nick: Yeah, that makes sense.

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: All right. So the the first species we're going to go through is the foundation. So the first species and also the foundation for the vast majority of the rest of them.

m3rcier: That is going to be the first children. They were created by Amiris. We don't know too much about them. i don't think we know their looks at all. We're not sure if any of them are still alive because they did get the curse of death after the wounding.

m3rcier: So they do age and die. we don't know like how long they lived. We know the other species, but we don't know too much about this one.

Nick: So are the first children all children? that's That's my question.

Tiago: Oh, no, no, no, I think those are those are that's just a name for the first children of Ymiris, the first sentient people Ymiris created, and they named this themselves the first children of Ymiris, right?

m3rcier: Okay.

Tiago: So that's that's how kind of how they identified themselves. ah And I think the the idea there, there were you know various generations of first children during the Ymirian age.

Tiago: People didn't die, ah didn't die of natural causes at least. and didn't ah you know They could you know be killed, their bodies could be destroyed and stuff like that.

Nick: yet.

Tiago: But what what would happen then is that their souls would return to Ymiris and become part of Ymiris again, because that's kind of how Ymiris created them. Like she she took a part of herself as a mother does, right? She is the own mother. She took a part of her own soul and she made from it life in the world of Agnarr, but more specifically the the first children.

Tiago: yeah And they lived together in our harmony for a while, until ah a couple of them...

m3rcier: Murtos. Murtos.

Tiago: Yes, Mirko specifically, he he went to to a place that was conspicuously... conspicuously ah prohibited by Emiri's, which was not something all that common, and he just couldn't help his curiosity. He went there, and he discovered some things.

Tiago: He discovered that Emiri's may have been, you know, was watching the first children very intently and was expecting a lot of a lot from them uh and he and a lot of his compatriots uh felt that they were going to fall short of those goals and that led to the the great wounding that led to the 13 becoming the everlasting

Tiago: yeah

m3rcier: There may be some truth to that because we have Lee Eystrom, so is Jameeris the only god? you don't actually know. but we can we can speculate.

Tiago: can speculate We can speculate, Yeah, I will also say that the there are no known, at least in Selesia, there are no known pure-blooded first children anymore.

Tiago: anymore the The closest thing that you may have, and that would be you know very diluted by now, since the the the families of the Legion, the necromancer families of the Legion, are descendant from Pithun Ravalum, and she was, you know before she was a Neverlacing, she was a First Children, they have you know the blood of First Children running through their veins.

Tiago: But it's been, ah what, over 2000 years now?

Nick: A few thousand years. Yeah.

Tiago: So it's very diluted.

Nick: Wow.

m3rcier: our next species and from here on out we're not sticking with any order uh it would have been nice to do like uh keep them in the order they were created in but we didn't know enough so we're going to go with the humans they were created by the triumvirate to be soldiers in the everlasting war Most of the humans that we're aware of are part of the order and they are short-lived, but we do have members of the human species within every faction.

Tiago: Yep. ah The Triumvirate created the the humans. ah the it was ah like It was a project that they had been working on for a while before they deployed them. So there were a couple of different versions of them that were created.

Tiago: ah And the first ones were created from first children, and the the process that they used was kind of similar to the process were that they used to create the the giants before the before the the great the first the great wounding.

Tiago: ah Meaning that they took first children and they changed them into to human. So those are the the very first. Unfortunately, that meant that those people were not necessarily 100% loyal to the Triumvirate because they they were their own people, they had their own culture that was not wholly dependent on the Triumvirate, and that caused them that cause a lot of humans to depart and be, in the words of the Triumvirate, seduced by the words of the

Tiago: bit of the bit of the traitorous Everlasting, such as Avakra and Pitan Ravallum. So a lot of humans defected during the Age of the Everlasting and became part of the other factions. One of the the great things about humans is that despite the fact that they are short-lived,

Tiago: and it's weird to say they when it's you know it's us, ah is that one of the great things about them for war is that they you reproduce very fast. And that's kind of one of the reasons that we have so many humans in Silesia to this day.

Nick: Yeah.

m3rcier: So the first children blood was very quickly diluted within their veins.

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: Garrett or Nick, you have anything on them?

Nick: On humans?

m3rcier: Anything you want to say? Any speculation?

Nick: No. Nothing.

Garrett: Nothing super particular. I do think it's interesting that you know they obviously avoid trying to go to the primal blood because they're too fragile to really live there long term.

Nick: We have a few there, though.

Garrett: There is some, i don't know, is I mean, obviously, because we wrote here, you know or you wrote that primal have the least. I mean, is it because humans are just like not as robust as oregon

Tiago: No, it's just that that the Oerikan were the main ah the main people who founded the the Primal Blood. And, you know, most of the humans and the Vulkir who are a part of the Primal Blood now, a few of them were defectors, but a lot of them are are kind of... They are raised with within the Primal Blood, but they were, you know, the children of...

Tiago: ah of caravans that were attacked by the Primal Blood. A kit of the Primal Blood doesn't necessarily just attack a city or a caravan and kill everyone in it. Sometimes they take people, especially small children, and raise them, at least for a while, and then they ke they can become part of the Primal Blood.

Garrett: Okay. All right. Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense. That's all I got in humans.

m3rcier: So Volkir, real quick clarification there, the humans were changed first children. And that's important because as we get down to a few more, Volkir is one of them, they were created, well, i don't know,

m3rcier: If Vol'kyr were, Chagul, you'll have to chime in, but you have the species that are changed versions of the first children, and you have some species that are just wholly new that were created by one or more of the Everlasting.

m3rcier: So the Vol'kyr, they were created by Galdron to help him build the wall. And then prior to that, so that they can learn the skills like we discussed before, they helped or they built Midrashil for themselves.

m3rcier: That's where they kind of perfected themselves and then they built the wall. We do see them, of course, the bulk of them are within the order. They do have a a city that's part of the Sovereign Cities or the Free Cities.

m3rcier: And then we see them in the Primal, but we do not see yeah we do not see them in the Legion or the Conclave within the game right now.

Garrett: The Iron Keep.

Tiago: yeah I will say that the there are not if if there are any Vokyr in the the Legion, they are going to be it would be scandalous for a member of the the Legion to to you know accept a Vokyr into their family or something like that.

Tiago: ah is just that And it's not just like is sort because they are Vokyr, it's because they are not of noble blood in Legion standards. right So that's why the the Legion is a little bit more ah a little bit more uniform in their intercomposition ah It is possible for a Valkyr to become a member of the of the Conclave, we just haven't represented them there yet.

m3rcier: So would the, the Legion would not try and raise fallen Vol'kyr warrior?

Garrett: Well, they're stone, right? They turn to stone as they age.

m3rcier: Yeah, but if I kill, kill them before they turn to stone, they die in battle.

Tiago: but oh yeah yeah i was just when i When I was talking about the Legion, I was just ah talking about the the the living members of the Legion. yeah They can raise a Vokir from the dead and use and use them as a weapon of war, as they do with others. Again, we just haven't represented that yet.

Garrett: Oh, that's gonna be sick, actually, when that is that isn' in the game. That's go be cool. Big ol' zombie.

m3rcier: All right. ah Nick or Garrett, do any y'all want to hop in and take the next few species?

Nick: Yeah, I can jump in. I've been kind of quiet over here. Yeah, so now we get to the Oerican, which, that and that's, Tiago, how you've been pronouncing Oeri, which we've always, yeah, we've been saying Oerican, but,

Garrett: I was gonna make the I was gonna say that same thing, I was like, oh, that's how we're supposed to say that.

m3rcier: Wait, wait. How are we supposed to say it?

Tiago: I say it, I say Oerican.

Nick: Oerican, yeah.

Tiago: But like at like, one of the things that I will say is that, you know, different pronunciations are acceptable. Like there are there are different accents in the world of malediction.

Tiago: And, you know, you can just pick your accent, pick your pronunciation, and just say that. Well, that's how they say it in Quinvala.

Tiago: If you want something more official from me, Oerican, Oerican.

Nick: Oerican. Yeah. I like it. I'm going to try to stick with that. I'll have to get used to it, though. So, yeah. So we know the Oerican are descended from the first children who followed Avakra, or she found them or met them when she traveled to Oeri.

Nick: ah Now that we kind of know that the first children were maybe a little further spread across the pale expanse and maybe populated in other parts of the world,

Nick: You know, we we we've speculated before about did they go with her or did she meet them there, right?

Tiago: A little bit of column A, a little bit of column b

Nick: All right, yeah.

Tiago: Yeah, that that's, there were Oerikhan all over and she, and she had a following, so to speak.

Nick: Yep.

Nick: Right, so we do know that Avaka returned to Silesia. They traveled through and just kind of... um on their journeys basically just like almost like nomads traveled and and preached about freeing uh emiris um which that's more about avaker and the power blood less about the actual orican but we know they settled in paxos paxos and are in that in that area now uh the descendants of the first children uh they returned to wage war on the triumvirate uh and they have

Nick: They have the trait that they seem to adapt rapidly. They evolve like much quicker.

Nick: Now, is that unique to the Oericon, or is that more primal blood?

Tiago: That is Oerikon.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: That's not something that the humans or the Erezir of the Primal Blood are able to do. And they are ah they connect with the magic of Emiri's Erezir as well.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: So that's that's um more of an Oerikon thing.

Nick: Awesome. Yeah, so i knowt I know, you know, we see like Ingor, he has like five hands, right? That's just the nature of him. Now, does that have to do more with his his story into the malediction or is that with him being no Ericon?

Tiago: I will say that that it it plays a part in, like, the fact that he's an Oerican plays a part into the thing that has happened to him, right? So if he was a human, he would be dead already.

Tiago: That's idea.

Nick: yeah okay

Tiago: Like, the only reason he has not died is because of his Oerican blood.

Nick: oh i like that i like the implications of that so he's like he's overcome with the spirits that are like possessing him but his body is actually adapting to the environment that has been created around him right would you would that be fair to say

Garrett: Andrew.

Tiago: Yeah, like the the magic within him is trying to rip him apart, the the spirits that have tried to possess him, and his body is doing its damned hardest to not allow that happen.

Nick: Awesome. Okay. Yeah.

m3rcier: It'd be interesting if in the...

Nick: hard

m3rcier: Oh, go ahead, Nick. Sorry.

Nick: Oh, I just, I, I, the OER kind of have been kind of my favorite, like over the race. It's just got, I find that so fascinating and I just, I'm getting more and more like these guys.

m3rcier: Well, I'm interested in... we have the current ones, which we know have evolved over the centuries or whatever since they came back with Avakra.

m3rcier: And they've also been corrupted because they have direct access to corrupted taint or whatever echo through Avakra's heart.

Tiago: Thank you.

m3rcier: Those that chose not to follow Avakra, so they stayed up in the pale expanse or elsewhere on the world that don't access echo through Avakra's heart, which we don't know how they have access to magic in other parts of the world, but Are they the same Oregon that we have, or are they going to be different because they didn't get evolved and corrupted via the same path as Avakris Oregon did?

Tiago: That's an interesting question. Here's how I'm going to answer it. I will say that in the world of malediction, the the body follows the soul and magic is the power of the soul. So whatever magic you are using has an influence in you know what you are or what you look like.

m3rcier: Thank you.

Garrett: Okay. ah Okay, on top of that, I guess, because we talked about Fallen Volker, do you guys know of any Fallen Orokin in the Legion deck?

Nick: Alright.

Tiago: who i'm trying to...

Nick: so hold Fallen don't typically have a second type.

Garrett: Well, was just thinking, like, you know, just, like, dead Orokin.

m3rcier: i Yeah, they there's Fallen Spirit, Fallen Stitched. I guess, are you are you more asking, can they be can they be raised?

Nick: Alright, I just mean like

Garrett: Yeah, because Yeah. Are they part of the the legions armies?

Tiago: Yeah, the they they can be raised, yes. yes I will say that you know one of the reasons that it's not it's not showing up in the cards right now is that once you're once you're a corpse, your type is corpse.

Tiago: right like That's your main thing now. It doesn't really matter. like once you're worm food, it doesn't really matter. It's the But yeah, I think we're we're going to play with that a little bit more in the future.

Garrett: Gotcha. Because I think an Oerican spirit would be pretty neat.

Nick: we'll cover that when we get to spirits but i'm curious about what tiago's going to say about that talk about primal blood spirits so uh moving on though and i just to just to follow up uh also ericun only appear in primal blood for now uh which may not change i don't know um but moving on we're gonna move on to the ericeer

Garrett: Yeah. ah yeah

Tiago: Thank you.

Nick: So the Erisir were created by Moloch to aid in his the Astrum research. They are naturally resistant to the corruption and that makes them the best at being mages.

Nick: Would that be fair to say?

Tiago: uh yeah yeah the so mage is ah it's ah done um a uh the nomination that we are using specifically for spellcasters of the conclave so whenever we're talking about you know When we're talking about a mage, we usually talk about the mages of the the Conclave.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: ah The Erezir are more resilient to Liastrum corruption than any of the other species. They were kind of made for that, ah but they are not completely immune. In fact, one of the things that has kind of happened with their their species over the the centuries is that they used to be more long-lived.

Tiago: as a species, right? So they used to be able to reach like the 200s, 200 something year years old. Now they are all the way down to 100 something.

Tiago: And that may be because of their exposure to Liastrum over the last 2000 years. It's one of the the main suspicions. In fact, one of the reasons that the Erezir of the Conclave were, you know, there were a lot of different reasons why people of the Conclave were interested in Londriel. One was her legacy, which is Crystallized Leastrom, but another one is that the Erezir specifically are looking at Londriel

Tiago: And she's kind of young now, but they're kind of waiting to see, is she going to age like ah likely we age now? Or is in she going to age like we used to age?

Nick: because she's ooh yeah that's cool yeah ooh that's interesting

Garrett: Like, he's like original.

Tiago: Yeah, or or original recipe, baby.

Nick: yeah so uh the air seer those are um you know our our knife ear elf folk um

Garrett: Hold on. I got to ask question. This is kind of this is unrelated. Can you tell us where the Astrum comes from?

Tiago: Oh, that's ah that's a big ask. That's a big ask.

m3rcier: it It comes from the sky.

Garrett: I know, I know.

Tiago: I

Garrett: You can tell us you can tell us another episode. It's okay.

Tiago: can give a little hint. Let's see. So Moloch went out, and I should say this.

Tiago: The conclave wasn't founded by Molech alone in regards to the everlasting that founded it. He was the one that stayed. Mercos was also a part of that experiment and was also also had a hand in the creation of the Erizzir. He was less interested than Molech, but he also did help.

Tiago: Mirkos was a scientist at heart, just like Moloch. They both participated in the creation of the original version of the of the what would become known as the Moloch Oracle. ah And, you know, they pierced the skies looking for a power beyond Emiri's ah beyond, you know, what Emiri's was, something more pure, more untainted bit up by the whims of a god.

Tiago: ah And Molech found the power he was looking for. Merkos did not, and that's one of the reasons Merkos, the

Garrett: Interesting. Okay. All right.

Nick: And Perkos is one of the ones we don't know what happened to him, correct?

m3rcier: Yes, we don't know if he is alive or dead.

Nick: Ooh, spooky.

Garrett: Hmm. Hmm. Okay.

Nick: Okay, so.

Garrett: right. I can't wait for our next episode in the Astrum.

Nick: Yeah, so finishing up on Eerysir, we do know that most of the Eerysir are, well, they are native to the Conclave, but the Order and Primal both have units in the game, Eerysir units.

Tiago: Yep.

Nick: However, we do know that there is at least one, we we confirmed one Erosir in the Legion, and that is a corpse that we get in both Voradhal and Morida's lore.

Nick: Akrafeesta.

Tiago: Yep. yep

Nick: So...

Tiago: ah I will say that one thing about the Legion is that they have a lot of corpses in their corpse vaults. ah There is the Necropolis, of course, ah but the Whispering Mountains during the Age of the Everlasting, they are ah there are a lot of... and Let me just pick pick them up up here.

Tiago: ah The Whispering Mountains has a lot of caves ah which are just filled with frozen corpses and not even the necromancers have catalogued all of them. So there may be more corpses there from other species and, you know,

Tiago: Deep, deep down, there may even be corpses ah of first children, but one of the reasons that they don't bring those up is that they are considered kind of sacred. Like, the they are going to be... Some of those first ones are only going to be awakened when the Legion figures out the curse of death.

m3rcier: They can believe them a bit. So guess question would be, because when we delete we did the episode on Legion and Anushva, the lore states that it's it's very hard to raise someone that's already it's been deceased for a long time.

Tiago: Mm-hmm.

m3rcier: Would that mean that these these corpses that are frozen, they've already been raised and then were frozen, or they were frozen upon the time of death?

Tiago: Oh, a little bit of ah of a a little bit of of B. To preserve, like, one of the things that the Legion tries to do is to preserve the bodies as best they can to stop decay.

Tiago: ah And, you know, you can give, even though the decayed body has some uses, it's you're not going to be able to converse with it as you would if it was pristine, but you can still use it as fodder, right, in your armies.

Tiago: the you know the the location of Belios is kind of strategic because it allows the Legion to conserve bodies for kind of indefinitely. like It's very much like permafrost in the Whispering Mountains, and Legion would like to keep it that way. until they are ready to bring back you know to the ancient corpses.

Tiago: Kind of like the mammoths in permafrost or so stuff like that.

Nick: Awesome.

Garrett: Yeah, I like that. I like the whole idea that everything's frozen and preserved bodies. and did we even I don't even think we thought of that when we were talking about it.

Nick: No, we just talked about how cold it was.

Garrett: Yeah, wow, that's really good. Okay, A+.

Nick: Garrett, you want to take this next one?

m3rcier: I think this one is yours, Garrett.

m3rcier: Pigeon hole you know you some more, buddy.

Garrett: wella Well, well, well. Thunder Steps. Big Daddy himself. ah So, yeah. um Tell us about Thunder Steps. What's going on with this guy um what's What's his story? Why is he here? What's he made of?

Tiago: Okay, ah during the War of the Everlessing and during the the Siege of Osterath, a lot of people were involved. There were the Triumvirate and their allies, such as Galdron, but there were a bunch of enemies, and some of these enemies came from very far away.

Tiago: And when the fall happened, they got stuck here. Does that answer your question a little bit?

Garrett: Okay, so we're saying Thunder Steps is potentially from, like, there's people living in the malediction that were at the siege. Like, that is there people living in the malediction that have procreated and survived this whole time? is that what you're saying?

Tiago: No, no, not necessarily. the that

Nick: I'm thinking.

Tiago: Thundercept specifically, like like he came out of the malediction 500 years ago. So Thundercept specifically is has been alive for a long time.

Garrett: Right, right. So, but you're saying, like, his species, the Tyran. Tyran, how would you say that?

Tiago: tiron Tyran, Tyran, yeah.

Garrett: Tyran? Is, and like, that's a ah naturally occurring species in ah on Angor?

Tiago: on Agnarr.

Nick: at NARPIT.

Garrett: Agnar? The Angor? Gosh dang Agnar.

Tiago: Okay, what what I will say is that whatever version of that, you know, maybe they started out like that, but thunder their steps is not a naturally occurring thing.

Tiago: like you know Even if he started as ah as a as a person as a natural person somewhere else in the world, Thunder Steps himself is more of a weapon than a person at this point.

Garrett: Right, right, right, right.

Nick: Mmm.

Garrett: Okay.

m3rcier: and The malediction, you know, we talked about it.

Garrett: Hmm.

Nick: So it could have come. Mmm.

m3rcier: It's reality, bending, breaking and all that. So maybe whatever wanted him here grabbed him from somewhere else and then hoofed him into the malediction to get out with with a legacy embedded in his face.

Garrett: Because our idea was that like Emory's might have been responsible for him, but maybe another everlasting responsible for him.

m3rcier: what purpose?

Tiago: I will say, I think in Thunder Steps' story, there's a little bit of a flashback, ah and he remembers the... Thunder Steps remembers the the War of the Everlasting.

Tiago: He's that old.

Garrett: Oh, okay. Well, that's even more interesting. Um, Man, okay, so what I'm hearing is there's gonna be more information on Thunder Steps in the future.

Tiago: Yeah, eventually, eventually.

Garrett: Okay, okay.

Tiago: like um like i don't I don't want to give too much away because I think we have a ah cool story for him. and um I don't want to spoil it.

Garrett: Okay, that's fair.

Nick: Sure, sure.

Garrett: All right, all right, moving on, moving on. Okay, this is the one I bungled earlier, the Ophanim. Am I saying that right, Ophanim?

Tiago: ye Yep, yep.

Garrett: Amazing. So this is the one we talked about, the ones that are made from the flesh of the everlasting themselves. And the order has one, which is pretty awesome, and which is in the lore book.

Garrett: You can see it's it's like a giant angel looking thing ah that's chained up looking down on all the small little bodies. If you look at the lore primer. ah what do you What do you have to say about the Ophanim?

Tiago: ah I think we've we've talked a little bit about the Ophanim in the last episode, you know, what what they are, what where they came from. ah There are still some of them out there in the malediction, or at least the Order believes that there are.

Tiago: ah you know I think there are stories about of a couple of them being felled during the Everlasting War, but the locations is the order does not know the locations of all of them, the fates of all of them.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: I think it would be interesting to talk a little bit about about the Haloud that they create. ah you know There are two types of Hallowed that we have ah at least mentioned so far. There are the Herald and there are the Hushed.

Tiago: ah And the difference between, you know there are different levels of of power of the Hallowed that are created. And that's one it's one of the criteria to determine if something is going to be a Held or a or a Hushed.

Tiago: Another thing is, you know, how presentable you look when you come out. So the order doesn't necessarily want to have it have, you know, monstrous beings being called their heralds, you know, the... the Yeah, based that's basically it. There are also different levels of cognition of the Herald. Some of them are ah of another of the Hallowed.

Tiago: So some of them are a little bit more conscious. Some of them are a little bit more bestial. Some of them remember a little bit more of who they were before they were they went through the process of becoming Hallowed.

Tiago: ah But for kind of all of them, it's a it is not a ah perfect existence. to In fact, there have been, and people notice because their appearance appearance changes, there have been multiple heralds of salvation over the over the years.

Garrett: Okay, so they can only be one at one at a time.

m3rcier: sort of crush

Tiago: Yeah, the held like Herald of Salvation or Herald of Frontiers, those are titles that are given to specific hallowed, and they serve for a time, and then they are replaced.

Garrett: And like, it are they slowly refining them? Do they get better each time?

Tiago: ah I will say that they are making more of them. You know, trial and error bears truth.

Garrett: Awesome.

Nick: I like that

Garrett: Awesome.

m3rcier: the So question, this is the first one where they're not, well, the Tyran, we don't know, both of them, we know that they were not made from the first children.

Garrett: Okay.

m3rcier: These, they were specifically made from the three triumphant, maybe with a cauldron in there, or how how were they drawn?

Tiago: Yeah, the ah the Ophanim were created from the flesh of the Triumvirate. So the Triumvirate, and I'm not going to going to go into specifics about the process of creating them, but yeah, they were made from the flesh of the Triumvirate, which is first children flesh infused with a lot of power, that enough to make them divine.

m3rcier: but it's three versus our next species, which was made from the flesh of all 13 of the everlasting.

Tiago: ah yeah Our next species is the giants, ah and they weren't necessarily made with the the flesh because they they were created before the ah before

Nick: Before the fall, right?

Tiago: not before the Great Wounding, before the Everlasting were the Everlasting.

Nick: Oh, yeah. Oh,

Tiago: They built thorn.

m3rcier: Oh, okay.

Nick: ah because they built the they built the thorn.

Tiago: that they build a thorn

Nick: Right, yeah.

Tiago: ah it was ah It was an involved process, I'll say that, ah and they were first children, and they volunteered forta for the process. like the The everlasting, the 13 at the time, right? They laid out their plan for what was going to happen and why it needed to happen. And some of those people volunteered.

Tiago: Some of the first children volunteered to be transformed, to become something else.

Nick: because that was still during the emirian age so like the magic was much more powerful and and potent for them to do that

Tiago: Yep.

m3rcier: Yeah, and they had full access. Like, they could do whatever they wanted because Ymiris wasn't stopping them. They just had to hide it from her.

Nick: so miriam saw them make giants and they're like huh what are they what are these guys doing

Tiago: Yep. As far as Emiri is knew, the Thorn was just a great monument to her glory, just like many other great monuments that the that the first children had erected.

Nick: ah The more we talk about the sadder I get about everything.

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: Good

Garrett: No, these giants are... remember I was going to say, um we still talking about giants?

m3rcier: Go ahead.

Garrett: We're still going giants, right?

m3rcier: Yeah.

Garrett: Okay. ah Are there giants like in the churning sea, like under under the under the water? Just alive, drowning constantly?

Tiago: some Some of the Conclave Masters have ah have wondered about that. No one has gone down to check.

m3rcier: Yeah, I mean. If they do, they probably haven't come back.

Garrett: Yeah, it'd be really hard.

Tiago: Yeah. it yeah but There's a reason people don't go down into the Churning Sea.

Tiago: ah with it

m3rcier: So what what are the good.

Tiago: ah just was just gonna say, in fact, you know one of the the reasons... but like The Churning Seas, there are all those sea monsters in the map, I should say. Some of those were kind of already there. The the seas of Agnor have great beasts in them. But the but the Conclave is not also not helping matters by dumping all the refuse of their experiments into the Churning Sea.

Tiago: So it's a little bit like the <unk> so a little bit like the Simpsons movie when they pollute the lake. ah If you guys had seen that.

Garrett: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: it's It's the Paxos of the sea.

Tiago: Yeah. Yeah.

m3rcier: There we go. A little few notes on the giant. the It's going to create some questions, though. ah Moloch, I'm sorry, not Moloch, the scourer, who is an everlasting that we know little of, awakened the giant.

m3rcier: and then sent them, uh, sick to them on Moloch. And then, you know, the giants ripped him from his tower, threw him into the ocean and killed him. Uh, I guess two questions there, or at least one for me. Uh, the giants were put to sleep. We don't know where or how, and then the scour awakened them.

m3rcier: Can you, are you able to, uh, share any info on how they were, you know, put to sleep and where and so and such stuff?

Tiago: i I will say that so after the after the Great Wounding, the giants are a little bit a little bit weird, a little bit different, right?

Tiago: Because they are immortal. They were not afflicted by the curse of death as others were.

m3rcier: Yes.

Tiago: So they one of the things that happened after the the Great Wounding is that the Everlasting kind of looked at the giants, and saw that the giants were also for children, the giants were also immortal, the giants were very powerful, the giants were dangerous to the everlasting and their rule and the plans they had for the world. And they weren't necessarily on, you know once the people of of the city of Olam at the time perished during the Great Wounding, the giants weren't necessarily happy with the with the everlasting.

Tiago: So that's kind of what happened. The the Everlasting were, the 13 at a time, were forced to put the to put the giants to sleep.

Tiago: Eventually, during the Everlasting War, one of them kind of decided to ah two mess with things and mess with the the spell that the Everlasting had used, and he decided to use the giants as a weapon, which at the time, even his allies were like, ooh, this is a bad idea. This is gonna come back to bite us.

Tiago: ah what happened in the end is that the fall happened. And, you know, if the Scourer was still around, which i I'm not saying he was, and I'm not saying he wasn't, but when the fall happened, the the giants kind of went back to a comatose state, but they're still there.

Tiago: They're still in the Noxious Flesh Gardens. And, you know, Maybe the secret to reawaken them lies somewhere within the malediction.

Nick: Awesome.

Tiago: does that Does that answer the question?

Garrett: Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot of giant info.

m3rcier: All right, there's

Garrett: Wow. And there's also that giant in Avakran.

Nick: desk.

m3rcier: dust

Nick: Yep.

Garrett: That's there, that they're actively harvesting all the time.

Tiago: Yep.

Garrett: um So that one's alive. we got the ones in the Malediction, the ones under the Turning Sea, and then the other giants I want to ask about. Maybe these aren't giants. It's on the art the ah cover of the Lore Primer.

Garrett: There's a city. i don't know what gate or city that's supposed to be, but there's it looks like giants next to it. Are those giants or is that just ah carvings of giants that ah Galdron and the Volker did?

Tiago: Those are part of the wall of Galdron.

Nick: So they're just stone statue.

Tiago: ah Yep.

Garrett: And can you tell me what gate that is? Do you know? Is is it decided?

Tiago: I believe that's the Triumvirate Gate. That's the one that Veloma controls.

Garrett: Oh.

Nick: It's the free city, yeah.

m3rcier: with Loma Gates.

Garrett: Okay, that's cool. That's cool. All right.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Thank you.

m3rcier: I'm just going to say when, when the giant and Valkyra's dusk wakes up, he's probably not going to join the primal. He's probably gonna try and wipe them all out for, for centuries of, uh, torture.

Garrett: Right.

Nick: We'll see what happens. He's got a locker's heart in him.

m3rcier: Yeah, but they were tortured him for god knows how long.

Nick: Yeah, but you know, it's a vestige.

m3rcier: All right, so ah our next ah next section, i think, Tiago, unless you have any other input, I think that is all like the the main prime species.

m3rcier: From here on out, it is either traits or variations on a on one of those species.

Nick: Like some species.

Tiago: No, I don't have any other input on the species there.

m3rcier: Nick, you want to take the first one?

Garrett: Awesome. Okay. Let's do it.

Nick: yeah Yeah. so Yeah. So let's talk about the Fallen. So Fallen are the risen corpses. They are created from raising the dead.

Nick: they The first Fallen were created when after the fall of Abisola when Tom Ravallum used Anishva to raise the city.

Nick: And we have I know we talked about it when we talked about Vol'Kir. We believe... or I'm pretty sure all races can be raised as fallen.

Nick: Even though we don't really see card arc specifically of like Vol'kyr or anything like that, we do know that if it's a corpse, it's good.

m3rcier: Well, not just if it's a corpse. If it is a living entity that was brought back from the dead, it's fallen, be it a spirit stitched or a whore.

Nick: Yes. Yeah. Well, I was going to get to that one, but yeah. So, and so ah yeah. We only see the Fallen in the Legion. Legion of the Fallen, it's in their name. And it is a yeah general term for everything, including Spirit, Stitch, and Horrors, which we will cover right now.

Nick: But, I mean, do we really need to... do We want to talk about the Fallen a lot and we talk about the Legion.

m3rcier: Yeah, we did.

Nick: So. really do We don't really need to go back into the details of the Anishvah. Do we have any questions for Tiago?

m3rcier: I mean, only question would be, and I think it'd be more of I don't know be on the lore side or if it's on the gameplay side, going assume that, oh no, because there's spirits in other factions.

Nick: I don't think I have any.

m3rcier: was going to can Fallen be part of other factions, but we do have spirits that are part of the order, so we know they can be part of other factions.

Tiago: Yeah, they're just not going to be called Fallen in those instances. you know, we may have an exception here or there, but it's it's just because, you know, in-world Fallen is a specific term that the Legion uses.

Nick: Yeah.

m3rcier: Yeah. And again, when it comes to gameplay mechanics, guys, some of these, like if it's a spirit and it doesn't say fallen on it, you could assume it's fallen.

Nick: Yeah. cause

m3rcier: He chicago said, Shago said that some of them might have five or six traits or tags. I don't know what we're calling that on the cards. So they don't put all of them on there. They're probably just going to put the the ones that are the most dominant.

m3rcier: So...

Garrett: So my question about the fallen and spirits and stitched, like all around the things that have to be powered by the, Amatrix, Aminatrix, when they go into the malediction, because we're going into like, like have as you've described it, like reality's breaking.

Garrett: And I know on the outside, if you get too far away from, you know, Abysola, how does the distance and the power with that work when like Virondil or the Countess or Ingor or Griza goes into the malediction?

Tiago: the Most of the the legacies of the Legion work as kind of, you know, ah ah Wi-Fi repeaters for the Amatrix.

Nick: yeah

Tiago: They can channel little bit of the power of the Amatrix to them.

Garrett: then the show of that.

Tiago: It's just their connection with the Anushva allows them to do that. ah beyond that, you know, it's not impossible for for, even if you don't have one of those legacies, it's not impossible for you to take an army of the of the dead beyond the boundaries of of values or into the malediction, it's just that they are going to decay much faster than they would if they if you had that that connection, right?

Garrett: Ah, I see

Tiago: So it's ah if you have to i guess you know if you have the the mullah to spend in in ah an expedition like that, you can, ah but some some sects of the within the the legion, some families, would consider that kind of disrespectful to the dead.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: You know, just because you're not making use of them in a respectful manner. You're not doing everything you can to take the most advantage of them. You're kind just wasting what they can offer you.

Tiago: So that would be thing.

m3rcier: Definitely sounds like something Vorindahl would do.

Tiago: yeah Yeah, yeah. I will say that Tenuschwa is the power of of death, right? and you know You can technically ah keep filling, ah keep, you know, keep your army... How do I put this?

Tiago: You can keep your undead army filled with the Anishvah as long as you keep on killing as well. ah So, but it's not necessarily is not necessarily very efficient, right? some point, a corpse is going to be so decayed, one of the fallen is going to be so decayed, that you're going to need to kill two people to keep them going for a week. And at that point, you know, just take those two people and bring them back.

Nick: Just get a new model. yeah

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah. Okay. what Okay. And then what's the difference between when Countess Moretta does soul stitching and normal necromancy in the lore? Like what's why is her thing special?

Tiago: Oh, it's because of what what you can do for spirits. And the Umberland has spirits, and and that's a nice segue actually for the spirits. The spirits are are a little bit different because, you know, while the A corporeal fallen, your regular skeleton or zombie or whatever, a corporeal fallen, ah their state of mind depends a lot on the the decay state of their body. So if they if their brains are rotted, it's like you can you can push power through broken hardware, but it's still going to be broken, right?

Tiago: ah So their free will, it varies from you know from model to model, so to speak. some ah Some of the Fallen retain more of themselves than than others.

Tiago: Acryphistar, for instance, retains a lot of her knowledge, and that's one of the things that the necromancers are looking for. in in some of the corpses, like corpses that are well preserved to preserve their knowledge, ah but that comes with a price that they have a little bit more free will.

Tiago: ah not and Usually not enough to resist the commands of the necromancers, but enough that sometimes they are, ah you know, they... they make it hard on the necromancers who are talking to them.

Tiago: Spirits are different. Spirits are, they maintain their will, but they are not necessarily, ah you know, it's not necessarily, in the world of malediction, it's not necessarily one person becomes one ghost.

Tiago: ah it's It's a little bit more nuanced than that. So we have stuff like the we have stuff like Christ murdered, which is a tragedy. And a tragedy is when a lot of people die in the same place, usually for like a mass execution, or a lot of people die for the same reason. And those souls coalesce into a single spirit, which is you know ah just a non-corporeal manifestation of the soul. What Morda can do, and sorry if I'm taking so long to get around to this, what Morda can do for the spirits is that she can bind them into corporeal bodies. ah

Tiago: And that lets them experience the world again. so So that's what she can do.

Garrett: Oh.

Tiago: And other people in the Legion have tried this, but but it's not... is It hasn't always gone according to plan and it has caused some some kind of disastrous results.

Tiago: The spirits are not happy when you try to bind them to corpses that appropriate or the magic goes wrong and then they can turn against you.

Tiago: ah Yeah, I know it's a lot, sorry.

Nick: No, no, it's ah that's awesome. No, I'm really, it really gives ah even more oomph to like Morda and her talent um and just like the power of the legacy.

Tiago: Yeah, yeah.

m3rcier: When I'm going to, so we covered the stitch with that one. And then you said that other than Morita and whoever she's taught to soul stitch, the other necromancers have tried that before with disastrous results.

m3rcier: Could we assume that horrors are some of those disastrous results?

Tiago: ah No, horrors are are a little bit different. They are considered an art form within the Legion. And, you know, there are a lot of different things that you can do to a corpse to preserve it. ah And then you prepare to create a new a new fallen, a new undead. ah But horrors are are a little a little bit different.

Tiago: The necromancers have figured out ways to shape the flesh, so they don't necessarily need to take just one corpse and make that into a fallen anymore.

Tiago: They can take a bunch of corpses, kind of take a mass grave, kind of melt the flesh into a single material and then they sculpt the flesh and bone into the into the form that is appropriate the task.

Tiago: That is a horror. ah It is controversial with Intellegion, but it's widespread enough that it's not condemned.

m3rcier: And with that, FAM, we have the dark side of the Legion.

Nick: Now, would that cover something? So I know in the game right now, the like Flesh River is fallen and it's technically called a Stitched. But would that have been, is that kind of like falling, do Stitched and Horrors kind of overlap a little bit in that regard?

Tiago: A little bit, but the the thing with the stitch is that the stitches are not necessarily so solely the creations of Mordida. A stitch is whenever you take multiple body parts and from different corpses and you bring them together you stitch them together and create a new one. So that's a stitched, right, in its very basic form.

Tiago: Morda creates kind of liastrum stitched, right? Like she stitches them with liastrum cred, which is the thing that allows lousster the spirits to inhabit those bodies, even if not permanently.

Tiago: permanently

Nick: Yeah, okay. Okay. So we have the stitched, we have the soul stitched, and then we have the horrors. and So horrors are are kind of like stitched, made with like purpose, beyond like just putting a body together.

Tiago: Yeah, the the technique we used to create them is a little different. that it's ah And there's actually some contents coming up that it will shed some light into that.

Nick: Hmm.

m3rcier: the art So the artwork on the Horrors article has the this big behemoth thing. There's no stitches. Like on the Flesh Ripper, you can see where the body parts were stitched together.

Tiago: Nope.

m3rcier: i would say Horrors are probably welded together more than stitched together is what it looks like.

Tiago: Nope.

Tiago: Yeah, you can imagine that the necromancers are able to, and this is something that they can do with their initial magic and a couple of very ancient techniques, actually.

Tiago: They can take flesh, the flesh of the dead, And they can make it into almost like puddy, molding clay. And they mold that.

Tiago: And then they can sculpt the the fallen into the shapes that they prefer. And don't that's what horrors are.

Nick: all right and all this from the uh nick seal of approval uh official good guys of malediction and uh before we move on from the fallen i do want to go around back to spirits So we do know that spirits in the Fallen, or Legion of the Fallen, are, you know, they sometimes have the Fallen keyword and spirit.

Garrett: Hey, it's it's an art form.

m3rcier: Yeah.

Garrett: They said art.

m3rcier: be

Tiago: It's like they they are already corpses. It's not like they were using those.

Garrett: Exactly.

Tiago: Yes.

Nick: We do also see Revenants in the Order.

Tiago: Yep.

Nick: And then I think also, yeah, Tragedy Agreed is of Order and and Legion spirit.

Tiago: Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. ah Spirits, I will say that spirits can kind of happen anywhere in the world of monoliction, naturally. They happen way more often in Balios than anywhere else because of the Amatrix that prevents their decay.

Tiago: And when they happen in the order, they are usually oath-bound spirits, which creates revenants. they they are ah revs They are spirit constructs because revenants are always bound to a physical object that it it was important to them in life.

Nick: Ah, okay.

Tiago: Sometimes it's their armor, sometimes it's a weapon, sometimes in case in the case of effort, the setting sun ah is their own ashes. So what happened with Ephr is that much like happens with, ah sorry, we much like what happens with everyone in the Order, the Order burns their dead. ah

Nick: So it can't be used by the Legion.

Tiago: Yes, and then what happened is that Ephra's oath kicked in after he had already been been burned and he inhabits his own ashes and those are the ashes that are filling the armor that you can see in his art.

Nick: ah okay yeah okay i i've seen you know you look at the art and you're kind of like oh it looks really cool but now that you're saying that i see like oh those are his ashes coming out of the top of the artwork

Tiago: Yeah, like the the armor is kind of his burial urn.

Nick: yeah okay and that tracks too at uh grisa is you know bound to the helm

Tiago: that's That's why they made it for him.

Tiago: Yeah.

Nick: So that makes lot of sense. So Revenants are always go be constructs bound to Neat.

Tiago: Yes.

Nick: Oh, cool.

Tiago: Yeah, the the thing with Griza is that Griza is a special case because he's both a revenant and a tragedy.

Nick: And a tragic, yeah.

Tiago: Yeah.

Nick: Oh, I love Grease so much. He's so cool. Okay. ah And then um I do want to bring up, so we also get a little text blurb about Primal Blood Spirits.

Tiago: Yep, and I believe I know which card you are talking about. ah Is it the choice of brutality?

Nick: Choice of Brutality. we got just those little text box from the Lore Primer.

Tiago: Yeah, the the idea of that one is that that's at least one representation of the of spirits within the primal blood. We may have others later on, but the idea is that the these are fleeting.

Tiago: It's like they they approve they perform one last act of defiance against their enemies before eventually fading away. They fight literally until the last drop of blood. It's a spirit possessing the spilled blood of its own corpse and then fighting on until there's nothing left.

Nick: Awesome.

Nick: Yeah. Now, so we haven't seen it yet. Are we ever, do you think we're ever going to see a conclave spirit?

Tiago: Ooh, that's an interesting question. ah We haven't created one yet. It's not impossible, but you know for reasons that I can't talk about right now, the circumstances for the creation of ah of a conclave spirit are a little bit trickier.

Nick: Okay, I can take that.

Garrett: I bet it's because it's where Leastrom comes from.

Nick: Ooh, dimensional spirits.

Nick: Okay, so.

Tiago: I can either confirm nor deny.

Nick: and We won't push on it. Alright, so we can move on from that. Speaking of the Conclave.

m3rcier: Yes. Or are you going to get that one? Sorry.

Nick: Yeah, so, um. So it's Spellbound are another subspecies we see. So Seer Chimer in the Conclave create the Spellbound, and they kind of manage their their use.

Tiago: Yep.

Tiago: Yep.

Nick: Yeah, I don't don't have much to say. We already did we did cover the lore article on Spellbound. We've covered the Conclave. Let me see. Is there another anything we haven't really talked about with the Spellbound?

Tiago: It may be better to wait for a bit to talk more about the Spellbound until another episode, because we the Spellbound will feature in the in the second short story that we will release. It's going to take a little bit, but they will be a part of it, and we are going to reveal more information about them.

Nick: Okay.

Garrett: Awesome. Okay. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. ah Okay.

m3rcier: real Real quick, I want to ask there. That way you can you can clarify. You said the second short story. So the current articles we're getting, and I had to look this up because I'm not a writer anything like that.

m3rcier: The current articles we're getting are between 500 and like 1,000 words. So they're more of like flash fiction. So when you say a short story, you're talking about a what a writer would call a short story.

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: Okay.

Tiago: Yes, yes. So they are going to be much longer, like 5,000 to 7,000 words. And they are going to be, you know, these ones, the articles that we are doing right now, that we are releasing right now, are more about world building and lore. The short stories are much more character focused and narrative.

Tiago: Does that make sense?

m3rcier: Yeah. Yeah. And it means we will probably take entire episodes on the short stories.

Nick: I can't wait.

m3rcier: right.

Nick: So...

Garrett: Constructs.

m3rcier: Constructs.

Tiago: OK, class traits.

Tiago: Yeah.

m3rcier: These are art artificial life. oh you If you want to take this in Chicago, you can.

Tiago: and I was just going to say that, you know, the construct here is very broad. Basically, anything that is not alive in the strictly strictest sense of the word, but is still moving around and acting as a unit is a construct.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: There are a couple of different times types. You know, revenants tend to be constructs. the The conclave tends to make constructs as well, astral power constructs.

Tiago: uh but there are also constructs there are uh that are older from the age of the everlasting uh one of the things that the conclave does is that they go into malediction they find these and then they try to power them up and use them again the the

Nick: That'd be like the Arcane Sentinel.

Tiago: Yes, the Gateway ah calledtway garden

Nick: Oh, the Gateway Guardian, yeah.

Tiago: yeah Guardian is one of those. That's why his design is a little bit different from what the Calm Clay generally does.

Nick: Oh, because he's like from... Yeah. Cool.

Garrett: Yeah, that is neat. I've always wondered, because he always has, it's like he has a weird hat. His head is that the way I always see it. It's like that round cylinder on top.

Nick: Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah, there's not much to say about consciousness. I think i mean we all kind of get it. They're just ah designed.

Garrett: Well, they're not sentient, I think is the biggest thing.

Nick: Right.

Tiago: yes At least, and I think this is one of the things that we have in the lore primer, anyone that's anyone that says that the that the constructs of the conclave are becoming sentient is going against conclave doctrine.

Tiago: It's it's like, that's that's absolutely not happening.

Garrett: Oh yeah.

m3rcier: hello

Tiago: The Council of the Nexid denies it.

Garrett: Our products are not going wrong.

m3rcier: Same thing with the ah the primal, correct? The shamans are noticing that Karmarmok appears to be more and more independent when Lyanna slumbers than he used to be.

Tiago: Yep. Yep.

Tiago: Magic does weird stuff.

m3rcier: All right.

m3rcier: Next one is abominations. They're not really a species. It's just a trait given to members usually of something that's been created or would say transfigured, but yeah, maybe be transfigured.

m3rcier: The reason they're called abominations is because most people on Agnar find them repulsive.

Tiago: That's fair. That's fair to say. ah there There is a more specific definition that you we are using now, but you guys are going to start seeing that in future content. ah So I think it's better that we wait for that content to come out. You're not off with that description.

m3rcier: okay

Garrett: Well, we we do have two really cool abominations.

Nick: All right.

Garrett: I really like the Spellbound Devourer. The art and model for it are outrageous. um That thing is really cool.

m3rcier: Really good unit too.

Garrett: For the Conclave.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: And then and I did want to ask, the Muktavor for the Primal, is that like... He's an abomination, but like... Is he like a a sentient, awake, like active... Is he just a monster or is he like a person?

Tiago: That's what happens when a berserker of the primal blood gets too deep into the battle concoctions.

Garrett: Ah.

Nick: Ooh. who

Tiago: it's ah In fact, there's this is not the first time that it happens that it has happened. Mukhtovar specifically, he has a name so he and he has kept his his mind.

Tiago: ah Some of them don't, some of them just become wild, and there are a lot of them that run away, either to the forest of Paxos, into forest of Paxos, or even beyond.

Tiago: So one of things that happens is that the the mountains around the order, It's one of the places that the Primal Blood won't go hunting down these abominations, these these creatures, so they hide out there.

Nick: Okay.

Garrett: As that is cool. And then the the third one is the the the borrowed defiler. ah The thing that it's like it's it's like gathering more corpses to itself. Is that thing is something is like Countess Morita helping that thing along or is it just on its own out there just gathering corpses up and growing?

Tiago: That's something that the that's something for the it works for the Legion, right? doesn't work necessarily specifically for Mordor or anything like that. ah It's a thing that has been created by the Legion. I would say that it's a it's a bit of ah of a new model, right? A new thing that they have created and that they have found very useful.

Garrett: you New for $12.71.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: me

Nick: Yeah.

Garrett: Check out our brand new Corpse Gatherer. Okay, awesome. ah Okay, well, I think that's it for the abominations. Let's go let's go on to beasts.

Tiago: yep Does anyone want to take those one?

Garrett: I'll say it. So... Now, primarily, i would say most beasts are in and around Paxos. Would that be, with and then obviously in the Malediction. Actually, that's a good question I have.

Garrett: Inside the Malediction itself, are there more beasts, kind of like how Thunder Steps crawled out, are there other beasts that are third-party actors inside the Maledictions?

Tiago: Okay.

Tiago: There are things in cytominal addiction. Yes, there there are dangers in cytominal addiction that are

Tiago: There are dangers inside malediction that are coming to get you ah in ah in a very real way. like Generally speaking, the malediction is coming to get you, kind of metaphorically. There are things in inside the malediction that are coming to get you for real.

Tiago: And that's one of the dangers.

Garrett: That would be really interesting gameplay-wise, is seeing like a third-party beast that an action happens or something, and it gets spawned and attacks whatever's closest in entrance or something.

Tiago: Yeah, that may be, and you know I won't put the game design team on a spot here, ah but that may actually need to be a ah a secondary mode.

Garrett: Right, right.

Tiago: But yeah yeah, I like the idea as well.

Garrett: Um, and then the, and then of course the aquilar, which we talked about, I think last episode where I tried to call hippogriff and I was corrected.

Tiago: me

Garrett: Uh, this thing's awesome.

Nick: Thank you.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Are, so are there lots of these or are they rare? Where do they come from?

Tiago: ah They come from the the mountains. I believe it's the expiratory mountains and around the the order on the and the left side there. And the idea is that, you know,

Tiago: There are beasts all around the world of malediction. I mentioned earlier today the kind of sea serpents, like sea monsters type of stuff. There are beasts as well. There are some beasts within the malediction. There are the beasts of Paxos. The Echolars are beasts that the Order takes from the wild, they break them, and they then they make use of them.

Garrett: Right, right. Okay.

Nick: Neat. I wouldn't mind seeing another beast unit in the future for the Order. Just trained Aquilares.

Tiago: Yeah, you know, generally speaking, to the the order sees something like an Eculary as a tool, right, to accomplish a goal.

Nick: Right.

Tiago: The Concl... not the Concliffe, the Primal Blood sees something like a Terek Beast as a as a hunting partner.

Tiago: So that's kind of the difference that they have in how they view the the these creatures.

Nick: Right, right.

Tiago: ah I will say that, you know, some creatures like the chimeras, we classify them as beasts because their creation process within the primal blood are as close to what Ymiris did as we can possibly have in the world today.

Tiago: uh like it is inspired by emiris right through the the dreams yeah uh and after a while if something is out there for long enough and if it can you know mate uh with things similar to itself and produce offspring for long enough it kind of just becomes part of the world and become and it's just a beast it's not it's no longer an abomination or anything like that right

Nick: that kind of creation. Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah, so most beasts are coming out of Paxos and then spreading across the world.

m3rcier: Yep.

Tiago: Yeah, the biodiversity in Baxos is kind of crazy.

Nick: It's off the charts.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: And then i I really love the Blood Feast Raptor. Is that a unique like animal on the continent, or is there more of those?

Tiago: There are more of those. i would say

Garrett: Oh, nice.

Tiago: I will say that they are fairly they are fairly rare in that most, ah they don't, yeah, there's a little bit of an alerted bit as an aside. They don't like to be captured and trained. They don't like that. ah So most of them will will struggle against the their captors until they die.

Tiago: So you need to take them and raise them from from the egg. That doesn't always work either. So that's it's one of the reasons you don't see many of them. in the Even in the paranormal, you can have one because it's it's just that involved of a process.

Nick: Right. Cool.

Garrett: Yeah, it is cool. I like dragon like things. That's it actually, here's a question.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Are, will there be dragons in malediction?

Tiago: No comments.

Garrett: No comments?

Tiago: No comments.

Garrett: Oh, confirmed everybody confirmed.

Tiago: yeah

Nick: first

Garrett: um Oh man. All right. And hallowed is next. Alan, we've talked about hallowed a lot. Is there a, I don't even remember. Did we finish saying the other hallowed or can we say them?

m3rcier: but So you have the so the hallowed is the general term. And then your your two versions that we're aware of are the heralds and the hushed. ah And we actually, i think we were talking about the last episode, but went back in between episodes. we have We know of three heralds, the herald of purpose, the herald of frontier, and the herald of salvation.

Tiago: Yep. And I would like to point out that so far, all of the blurbs, the the quotations, the in the beginning of the articles, the even the ones that even the articles that I wrote, those quotations were were written by Arturo Montezuma, which is a member of the team, and he wrote some of the the text. I would say that he has a better... ah he's better at waxing poetical than i am.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

m3rcier: Yeah, the only thing, i mean, in one of the flavor texts, and it's not a there's not much to it, but one of the flavor texts has Siggy talking to the Herald of Salvation. So one of the, I guess, Lord tidbits that I'd love to see expound in the future is Siggy talks to that Herald as if she knew her before she was a Herald.

m3rcier: At least that's my take on on the comment Siggy makes to the Herald. So I don't know if if that's the truth to it or not, but...

Tiago: that That's an interesting take on it.

Tiago: I'm sorry, man. I can't give you any more.

Nick: No comment.

Tiago: Yeah, no comment.

Nick: Yeah, no comment.

Garrett: that's yeah

m3rcier: ah and that's We expected it.

Garrett: and then our

m3rcier: were you know We knew what we were going into. i think we got one more subspecies left.

Garrett: Yeah, I don't even remember this. is this

Nick: there is one

Garrett: Did you guys add this new? Shifter? shifter

Nick: There is one shifter.

m3rcier: The gore hound.

Garrett: Nick, you take this. I got no idea what's going on with this. I don't remember this at all.

Nick: so So shifter is mentioned once. Is it mentioned in the Lord Primer at all? No, i don't think so. But so the...

m3rcier: The gore horn is the one we know of.

Nick: The Paxos gorehorn is the one that we know about. Yeah, sorry, I didn't repeat exactly what Alan just said. So it's a sub-species of the Oerican that is like rapidly, rapidly evolving, like more so than normal.

m3rcier: but

Nick: or but that's what we we take from that.

Tiago: Yeah, the the Pexos gore horn is a good example of a shifter. there's a There's a particular, much like the, he's a little bit like Muktavor, but in a more specific sense, one of the things that sometimes the berserkers of the primal blood do is that the whatever they kill, ah they take that into themselves through a ritual to gain the character the the characteristics and abilities of those of those creatures, right? So they may want to gain their strength or their ability to fly, stuff like that. So that's something that some members of the Primal Blood can do.

Tiago: They can lose themselves through to this process and then they can become a shifter that is kind of permanent permanently locked into a transformed state.

Tiago: ah

Garrett: you

Tiago: that is ah That is a tough one for the Primal Blood to to deal with, because technically the person still there, but they are also a monster now, and they are not necessary they are not necessarily going to help the Kith, help the clan willingly, right?

Tiago: ah So yeah, it's it's a little bit sad when that happens.

m3rcier: Okay.

m3rcier: the difference from Mokshvar, he went too far into the berserk, the blood state, and kind of changed a little bit.

Tiago: Yeah. Yeah.

m3rcier: The shifters wasn't necessarily that they used their concoctions or anything. They just consumed something to try and absorb it, absorb the traits from it, and they got stuck in that due state and lost their minds.

Tiago: yeah yeah

m3rcier: Okay. Okay.

Tiago: Yeah. Shifters can, also much like that happens with the chimeras, shifters can, you know, escape into Paxos ah and, you know, just mate with each other and create ever more weird stuff.

Tiago: So Paxos is chock full of, you know, horrible, horrible things. Don't go into Paxos, guys.

m3rcier: Yeah, I live on the other side of the continent, preferably.

Garrett: Yeah, like, what a terrible place. Like, you've got the the gate, the storm gate, that's open, leaking into the water, and then Paxos right next to it. i mean, what a terrible corner of the map.

Tiago: The Primal Blood kind of like it kind of fine. you know It works for them.

Garrett: That's true, because they're a bunch of weird, weird guys scooping flesh and bile out of this giant...

Tiago: Yeah, but the but the yeah they are kind of built different, right?

Garrett: Yeah. Yeah. ah yeah That's one way to put it.

m3rcier: All right.

Garrett: ah Oh my gosh. So that's the last subspecies.

m3rcier: mar

Garrett: um ah Nick, you have this is your chance. This is your last chance for your last questions.

Nick: oh man i gotta make it a good one so okay i got my my my one question for you uh giago one thing we've talked about so we're getting away from species now one thing we talked about before talking about the legion the fallen

Tiago: Yeah.

Nick: And we've speculated, we've gone both ways. can you Can you clear this up for us? The population of the Legion. Now we know that Tom Ravallum's three children created the three noble houses and those are persisting. It's been like a thousand years.

Nick: um What is the overall demographics of the rest of these cities? How many people are just living normal average lives in the Legion?

Tiago: o I think I actually need to talk a little bit about the overall... ah give you ah an idea of you know the populations of the factions in general.

Tiago: ah I'm going to start with the most populous factions. ah And the Primal Blood is the most populous factions.

Tiago: But, yeah, yeah, yeah, ah the they are there's just a a hell oh of a lot of them.

Garrett: Really? Okay, that's really surprising actually.

Tiago: ah And you know, they are in Paxos, but they are also elsewhere in the continent. They roam. And they are also in the Ash roots, right?

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: They they do exist elsewhere in the continent. ah the But there's a caveat to that. That is only true if you don't count the the fallen of the Legion as part of the population.

Tiago: If you can't count all of the fallen that the Legion have available to them, you know including the ones in the vault, then the Legion is the most populous one.

Tiago: If you don't count the Fallen, the Legion is the least populous faction. They have even less people than the Conclave.

Nick: Ooh.

Tiago: There is something like 40-some-odd noble families within the Legion who claim descent from Ptun Ravalum.

Tiago: And those families have a lot of members. But that still only comes up to something around 10,000 people of aristocracy. something around ten thousand people of their aristocracy Beyond that and beyond the the Fallen, the Legion also has a fair bit of people who who work kind of with with the Fallen.

Tiago: It's kind of a, I will call it a blue-collar middle class. There's no, like... really poor people in the Legion because of all of the like more brutal manual labor is performed by the Fallen.

Tiago: ah

Nick: Right.

Tiago: But you still have, you know... ah And you do have farms in Valios that are not as productive. The Legion does have to buy food from from elsewhere because even if you have basically free labor, it's hard to make things grow in, you know...

Tiago: in a marsh, like a giant marsh or in a tundra, stuff like that. So when you count those people, you get to around a couple hundred thousand.

Tiago: ah And that's kind of the whole population of Balios kind of everywhere. and And they are spread out around a huge area. So the cities of Balios are actually not that...

Tiago: They are not, ah even the the larger cities, they don't have a lot of living people. They do have spaces for the fallen, which makes it so they have to be about as big as cities in other places.

Tiago: Does that make sense so far?

Nick: Yeah, yeah. I think that's really in line with kind of what, well, at least what I was kind of speculating on, you know, having ah the almost, I mean, like you said, very little of like a lower class because it's just replaced by the fallen.

m3rcier: Yeah.

Tiago: yeah yeah uh oh and and just a complete thought uh after the primal blood the order has the most people uh and after after them the conclave uh especially if you count the cities in the wistral uh and the

Nick: um Yeah, okay.

Tiago: You know, the the people who live on the islands, the mages, don't always do. But the people of of the Wistaraw consider themselves citizens of the conflict.

Nick: Okay, yeah. Yeah, we kind of, ah I mean, again, it's all speculation when we did our conclave episode, but we talked about how the coastline, like the conclave basically has to have influence in those cities in order of for them to have any kind of meaningful footprint on the mainland.

Tiago: Yeah, yeah. The islands are fairly small.

Nick: So.

Tiago: and they The Conclave needs people. The the Conclave needs you know apprentices for the mages, right? And they need to draw those people from somewhere.

Tiago: So yeah, especially the city ah of Gateway serves for that. And a lot of the factories and laboratories of the Conclave are in the Westrom.

Nick: Okay. Cool. So now we know something about the Wistrel, too.

Garrett: We do. So many notes to take.

m3rcier: Yep. All right.

Nick: Yeah.

Nick: yeah And then I guess my last question for you is, a so we talked about sailing, especially the Conclave does lot sailing. I imagine there's not a lot sailing going on by any other faction.

Tiago: A little bit by the Legion, and they do trade with the with the Conclave ah through to the the city that they have in the Bay of Theures.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Nick: uh, Vale Shore.

Tiago: Yeah, Vale Shore.

Nick: Yeah.

Tiago: Yeah.

Nick: Yeah. Okay. Um, my question for you, this ocean of glass at the very bottom of the map, is it called that because it's solid? Is that frozen down there?

Tiago: Lots of icebergs, very dangerous to navigate.

Nick: Mm-hmm.

Tiago: sticked If you are going to do it, stick close to the coast. It's what the it's what the Conclave does when they you know when they need to go around the continent to reach Stormcrash Rest and Leravo, stuff like that, places like that.

Tiago: uh but yeah it's very dangerous it's very uh even the legion doesn't have too much stuff uh around there uh because there's kind of no point uh yeah

Nick: All right. Yeah. Ooh. Well.

m3rcier: And then that bullet point number five, will we take care of that for you?

Tiago: um

m3rcier: If you're looking the show notes.

Nick: Yeah. Well, I think we actually talked about that. It actually came up organically.

Tiago: and

m3rcier: Okay.

Nick: So

m3rcier: All right. We are, now we're at hour 55.

Nick: I think pushing our time.

m3rcier: We're, yeah, we're we're way up there.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Yeah.

m3rcier: This is our longest one yet.

Garrett: Yeah.

Tiago: so Sorry, guys. I think I talked too much.

Garrett: Yeah, absolutely not.

m3rcier: Oh, don't apologize.

Nick: Oh, no, no.

m3rcier: We,

Garrett: No, this is no good.

m3rcier: Yeah, I know. It's thank you for taking the time.

Garrett: This is going to like people's favorite episode, just to sit back and listen to you just talk about all these things. So I just thank you so much for doing this with us.

Nick: Yeah, we appreciate it. it

Tiago: Oh, no problem.

Garrett: um

Garrett: This is like more info than the lore primer and like all the other stuff combined. Like this is just an absolute treasure trove.

Tiago: I think, and here's the thing. We are trying to keep ah a lot of the lore content that we release compact enough that people, you know not just lore hounds like us, but an average person will be able to take it and read it and understand it. So that's why we're not going too deep. With the more recent articles, we we expanded them a little bit because we realized, okay, we can push it a little bit more.

Tiago: ah And yeah, we're gonna have more articles like that for the Conclave, for the Legion, for the Primal Blood, and we're just gonna keep pushing them out.

Garrett: Yeah, this is great. Especially if I i implore people, but if they play the game, they're really, i mean, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably really into this stuff anyways, but it it just makes all the units and the cards and like the actions that are happening much more exciting on the board because like you know the background of, like you know ah what's his name, Effer, the setting sun. and it's like his whole He's got a whole story behind him of why he's on the board with you.

Garrett: But, or Rogar at the break here, that we know he's the grandson of the arch marshal, like, let's just, this is neat.

m3rcier: Yeah, we know his last name now. All

Garrett: Yeah.

Nick: Yeah, this has been this been great.

m3rcier: right. Well, uh,

Garrett: Yes. So let's, we're going to try and conclude here. ah Read off our events rapidly, Alan.

m3rcier: yeah. So, when you're hearing this, the trials the everlasting for July would have already started. Uh, so loans are open in Dallas on August 1st. I am the TO.

m3rcier: It'll be a 1v1 on that Saturday with open play on Friday evening. That same weekend, my two co-hosts will be at Gen Con playing in and running demos. The 2v2 is on Friday, the 31st, and the 1v1 is on August 1st, which is that Saturday.

m3rcier: And then August 29th and 30th in Denver, Colorado will be Tacticon. I believe that is going to have a 1v1 tournament in it. If you're a Herald or a store owner and you listen to the podcast or you're just a member of the community and you have a Herald or a store, send us in the show notes. We'll have an email. Send us that information and we'll talk about your event on the podcast.

Garrett: Awesome. And then to wrap it up, another huge thank you to you, Chiago, for joining us and and doing all this stuff with us. It's been amazing.

Garrett: And I really hope you enjoyed it as well. And you might come back again later.

Tiago: Oh, I have enjoyed it. And I do hope you guys invite me back in at some point.

Garrett: Excellent. what Will you perhaps be at Gen Con?

Tiago: I don't think so. No, no not this year.

Garrett: Oh, dang. Okay.

Tiago: Yeah.

Garrett: Okay. We'll look forward to meeting you someday.

Nick: Not this year.

m3rcier: but Got to get him to sign the primer, the lower primer.

Tiago: Yeah.

Nick: One day.

Garrett: Oh yeah. Wouldn't that be sick?

Nick: I

Tiago: yeah

Garrett: Actually. Yeah. Uh, okay. Well, thanks again. does anybody have any last words?

Nick: think i think I've had all my questions thoroughly answered.

Garrett: That's it is a lot. Uh, well in that case, uh, thanks again for listening to into the malediction. Uh, I've been Garrett.

Nick: This is Nick.

m3rcier: I've been Alan.

Tiago: Yeah, and this is Thiago. Goodbye, everyone.