Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:07
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.
00:00:22
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,
00:00:34
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.
00:00:44
Garrett
Introduce yourselves, please, guys.
00:00:47
m3rcier
Hey, this is Alan or Mercer on Discord.
00:00:51
Nick
And this is Nick, or Fetty315 in Discord.
00:00:55
Tiago
Yeah, and I'm Tiago, Loot Studios Loremaster, Malediction's Loremaster as well.
00:01:02
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.
00:01:08
Garrett
ah It's been amazing.
Rite of Honor Story and Historical Discussion
00:01:10
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.
00:01:36
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?
00:01:49
m3rcier
I think I'll read this one.
00:01:50
Garrett
All right, Alan, take it away.
00:01:53
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.
00:02:08
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.
00:02:22
m3rcier
Everest, Falken March, Arch Marshal of the Rite of Honor.
00:02:28
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.
00:02:38
Garrett
but the right of honor is not led by lucid. It's led by an arch martial. Uh, and so
00:02:45
m3rcier
but It's it's it's led by a Lucidi. The arch marshal is the septa.
00:02:50
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.
00:03:02
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.
00:03:12
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.
00:03:29
Garrett
Is that correct? An elite battle force, not the main battle force?
00:03:32
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
Military and Political Strategy of the Order
00:03:43
Tiago
regular humans. They had a little bit of ah a special sauce when the Triumvirate created them or blessed them, so to speak.
00:03:53
Garrett
and like And that's why they can wield relics and legacies with ease.
00:03:58
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.
00:04:13
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.
00:04:45
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.
00:05:01
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.
00:05:38
Garrett
Right, right. Yeah, that's a long of ways.
00:05:40
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?
00:05:55
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.
00:06:24
Tiago
The walls of Astaris so far have not been breached.
00:06:30
Garrett
Ooh, I like that so far from the lore master himself.
00:06:34
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,
00:06:54
Garrett
even after the defeat, they have a significant military arm left to protect themselves while they rebuild in the age of strife.
00:07:05
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.
00:07:19
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.
00:07:35
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?
00:07:54
Tiago
No, they are out of charn.
00:07:56
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...
00:08:10
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.
00:08:29
Garrett
Got it. It makes a lot of sense. Duh. Duh for me, right? Nice and charm. Good charm. So... ah
00:08:40
Garrett
let me ah Let me... Lost my place, my notes here. um
00:08:48
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.
00:09:18
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.
00:09:31
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?
Social Class and Rebellion in the Order
00:09:43
Garrett
Because I feel like a Crusade would be very effective in this at this point in the world.
00:09:50
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...
00:10:18
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.
00:10:35
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
00:11:22
Nick
Yeah. Little Philip of Macedon there.
00:11:26
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.
00:11:46
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.
00:11:58
Tiago
And I'm kind of regretting it a little bit right now. So we're probably going to expand it.
00:12:02
Garrett
No, it's it's never too long, never.
00:12:05
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.
00:12:35
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.
00:13:21
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?
00:13:32
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.
00:13:46
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.
00:14:11
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.
00:14:29
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.
00:14:41
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
Loyalty, Rebellion, and the Oathbound Light
00:14:50
Tiago
that generated a lot of ah that generated a lot of friction within the order.
00:14:56
Tiago
And like civil wars are not good for a country, generally speaking.
00:15:00
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.
00:15:17
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.
00:15:40
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?
00:15:58
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.
00:16:10
Tiago
Yeah, but but the order still needs them, right? It's like because they can wield the legacies.
00:16:17
Tiago
So that's the the balance of power there.
00:16:22
m3rcier
I get some, uh, some dune vibes there. The emperor betrays one of his families.
00:16:28
Nick
ah yeah it Yeah, I see it.
00:16:31
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?
00:16:48
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.
00:17:18
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.
00:17:48
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.
00:18:10
Tiago
So that's the the dangerous thing there.
00:18:13
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.
00:18:27
Garrett
Cause that's okay. So they can use it. Oh, wow. Okay. So that would be collapsing.
00:18:31
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.
00:18:48
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.
00:18:59
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...
00:19:38
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.
Key Figures and Historical Significance in the Order
00:19:54
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.
00:20:02
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?
00:20:15
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.
00:20:41
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.
00:21:06
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.
00:21:17
Nick
it decentralizes a lot of the power.
00:21:19
Tiago
Yeah, and a couple of the rights are not necessarily okay with that.
00:21:25
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
00:21:49
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?
00:21:57
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...
00:22:15
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.
00:22:40
Tiago
ah But they still they still had a king, right? So they they were still and at least partially independent.
00:22:49
m3rcier
So I guess it said that Midrassil was the the seat of the rite of the forge before it fell.
00:22:57
m3rcier
Would that have meant that there was a Lucidia and a Septus that resided within Midrassil at that time too, alongside the king?
00:23:07
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.
00:23:24
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.
00:23:35
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.
00:23:56
Tiago
Lies, slenderous accusations.
00:23:58
Garrett
Yeah, whoa well, let's let's not listen.
00:24:00
Garrett
That was ah that was a big accomplishment of Thunder Steps, all right? Let's not take away this thunder.
00:24:05
Nick
little yeah that's what...
00:24:06
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?
00:24:19
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.
00:24:32
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...
00:24:48
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.
00:25:00
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?
00:25:12
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.
00:26:01
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.
00:26:20
m3rcier
You gave us his name. We have his whole name. yeah
Species and Their Origins
00:26:23
Nick
with the name. okay all right.
00:26:25
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.
00:26:32
m3rcier
it's It's not a hippogriff. It's not a hippogriff.
00:26:35
m3rcier
Hold on. I'll tell you. Unless Chicago wants to.
00:26:38
Garrett
What's the name of it?
00:26:39
Tiago
It's an Aquilare, which is one of the the types of beasts within the world of malediction.
00:26:45
Garrett
Akvilare. where have have i have i Where was that word from?
00:26:52
m3rcier
It is in our our show notes.
00:26:54
m3rcier
Someone put it there for us.
00:26:57
Garrett
ah yeah, I went right over that word.
00:26:59
Garrett
I was like, what is this?
00:27:00
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?
00:27:11
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.
00:27:23
Garrett
Perfect. All right. Well, I've talked a lot. So Alan, you're in charge now.
00:27:29
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.
00:27:42
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,
00:27:58
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.
00:28:07
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.
00:28:22
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.
00:28:34
Nick
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:28:36
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.
00:28:47
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.
00:29:04
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.
00:29:17
Nick
So are the first children all children? that's That's my question.
00:29:20
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?
00:29:36
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.
00:29:50
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.
00:30:01
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.
00:30:29
Tiago
yeah And they lived together in our harmony for a while, until ah a couple of them...
00:30:40
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.
00:31:03
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
00:31:36
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.
00:31:46
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.
00:32:00
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.
00:32:29
Tiago
But it's been, ah what, over 2000 years now?
00:32:32
Nick
A few thousand years. Yeah.
00:32:36
Tiago
So it's very diluted.
00:32:41
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.
00:33:17
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.
00:33:40
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.
00:34:00
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
00:34:33
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,
00:34:52
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.
00:35:13
m3rcier
So the first children blood was very quickly diluted within their veins.
00:35:19
m3rcier
Garrett or Nick, you have anything on them?
00:35:24
m3rcier
Anything you want to say? Any speculation?
00:35:27
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.
00:35:42
Nick
We have a few there, though.
00:35:43
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
00:35:55
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...
00:36:22
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
The Legion and Its Dark Creations
00:36:34
Tiago
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.
00:36:45
Garrett
Okay. All right. Yeah, I mean, that makes total sense. That's all I got in humans.
00:36:54
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,
00:37:13
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.
00:37:28
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.
00:37:43
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.
00:37:59
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.
00:38:09
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.
00:38:30
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.
00:39:02
m3rcier
So would the, the Legion would not try and raise fallen Vol'kyr warrior?
00:39:08
Garrett
Well, they're stone, right? They turn to stone as they age.
00:39:12
m3rcier
Yeah, but if I kill, kill them before they turn to stone, they die in battle.
00:39:15
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.
00:39:36
Garrett
Oh, that's gonna be sick, actually, when that is that isn' in the game. That's go be cool. Big ol' zombie.
00:39:43
m3rcier
All right. ah Nick or Garrett, do any y'all want to hop in and take the next few species?
00:39:51
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,
00:40:01
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.
00:40:05
m3rcier
Wait, wait. How are we supposed to say it?
00:40:10
Tiago
I say it, I say Oerican.
00:40:13
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.
00:40:24
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.
00:40:34
Tiago
If you want something more official from me, Oerican, Oerican.
00:40:39
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.
00:40:57
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,
00:41:08
Nick
You know, we we we've speculated before about did they go with her or did she meet them there, right?
00:41:13
Tiago
A little bit of column A, a little bit of column b
00:41:20
Tiago
Yeah, that that's, there were Oerikhan all over and she, and she had a following, so to speak.
00:41:31
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
00:42:04
Nick
They have the trait that they seem to adapt rapidly. They evolve like much quicker.
00:42:13
Nick
Now, is that unique to the Oericon, or is that more primal blood?
00:42:18
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.
00:42:35
Tiago
So that's that's um more of an Oerikon thing.
00:42:38
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?
00:42:56
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.
00:43:13
Tiago
Like, the only reason he has not died is because of his Oerican blood.
00:43:19
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
00:43:34
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.
00:43:48
Nick
Awesome. Okay. Yeah.
00:43:49
m3rcier
It'd be interesting if in the...
00:43:53
m3rcier
Oh, go ahead, Nick. Sorry.
00:43:54
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.
00:44:04
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.
00:44:16
m3rcier
And they've also been corrupted because they have direct access to corrupted taint or whatever echo through Avakra's heart.
00:44:26
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?
00:44:54
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.
00:45:21
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?
00:45:33
Tiago
who i'm trying to...
00:45:34
Nick
so hold Fallen don't typically have a second type.
00:45:40
Garrett
Well, was just thinking, like, you know, just, like, dead Orokin.
00:45:40
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?
00:45:46
Nick
Alright, I just mean like
00:45:49
Garrett
Yeah, because Yeah. Are they part of the the legions armies?
00:45:52
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.
00:46:07
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.
00:46:21
Garrett
Gotcha. Because I think an Oerican spirit would be pretty neat.
00:46:30
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
00:46:54
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.
00:47:09
Nick
Would that be fair to say?
00:47:11
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.
00:47:31
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.
00:47:55
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.
00:48:06
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
00:48:41
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?
00:48:48
Nick
because she's ooh yeah that's cool yeah ooh that's interesting
00:48:54
Garrett
Like, he's like original.
00:48:58
Tiago
Yeah, or or original recipe, baby.
00:49:03
Nick
yeah so uh the air seer those are um you know our our knife ear elf folk um
00:49:10
Garrett
Hold on. I got to ask question. This is kind of this is unrelated. Can you tell us where the Astrum comes from?
00:49:18
Tiago
Oh, that's ah that's a big ask. That's a big ask.
00:49:20
m3rcier
it It comes from the sky.
00:49:25
Garrett
You can tell us you can tell us another episode. It's okay.
00:49:30
Tiago
can give a little hint. Let's see. So Moloch went out, and I should say this.
00:49:42
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.
00:50:05
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.
00:50:39
Tiago
ah And Molech found the power he was looking for. Merkos did not, and that's one of the reasons Merkos, the
00:50:53
Garrett
Interesting. Okay. All right.
00:50:54
Nick
And Perkos is one of the ones we don't know what happened to him, correct?
00:50:58
m3rcier
Yes, we don't know if he is alive or dead.
00:51:03
Garrett
right. I can't wait for our next episode in the Astrum.
00:51:06
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.
00:51:19
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.
00:51:34
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.
00:52:00
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,
00:52:21
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.
00:52:46
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.
00:53:02
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?
00:53:12
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.
00:53:25
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.
00:53:41
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.
00:54:12
Tiago
Kind of like the mammoths in permafrost or so stuff like that.
00:54:18
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.
00:54:24
Nick
No, we just talked about how cold it was.
00:54:25
Garrett
Yeah, wow, that's really good. Okay, A+.
00:54:31
Nick
Garrett, you want to take this next one?
00:54:32
m3rcier
I think this one is yours, Garrett.
00:54:36
m3rcier
Pigeon hole you know you some more, buddy.
00:54:38
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?
00:54:52
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.
00:55:15
Tiago
And when the fall happened, they got stuck here. Does that answer your question a little bit?
00:55:23
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?
00:55:41
Tiago
No, no, not necessarily. the that
00:55:44
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.
00:55:59
Garrett
Right, right. So, but you're saying, like, his species, the Tyran. Tyran, how would you say that?
00:56:06
Tiago
tiron Tyran, Tyran, yeah.
00:56:07
Garrett
Tyran? Is, and like, that's a ah naturally occurring species in ah on Angor?
00:56:18
Garrett
Agnar? The Angor? Gosh dang Agnar.
00:56:20
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.
00:56:32
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.
00:56:49
Garrett
Right, right, right, right.
00:56:52
m3rcier
and The malediction, you know, we talked about it.
00:56:53
Nick
So it could have come. Mmm.
00:56:55
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.
00:57:16
Garrett
Because our idea was that like Emory's might have been responsible for him, but maybe another everlasting responsible for him.
00:57:23
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.
00:57:43
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.
00:57:50
Tiago
Yeah, eventually, eventually.
00:57:51
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.
00:57:59
Garrett
Okay, that's fair.
00:58:00
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?
00:58:11
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.
00:58:23
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?
00:58:34
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.
00:58:53
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.
00:59:08
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.
00:59:24
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.
00:59:40
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.
01:00:13
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.
01:00:29
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.
01:00:54
Garrett
Okay, so they can only be one at one at a time.
01:00:57
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.
01:01:13
Garrett
And like, it are they slowly refining them? Do they get better each time?
01:01:18
Tiago
ah I will say that they are making more of them. You know, trial and error bears truth.
01:01:29
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.
01:01:40
m3rcier
These, they were specifically made from the three triumphant, maybe with a cauldron in there, or how how were they drawn?
01:01:46
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.
01:02:17
m3rcier
but it's three versus our next species, which was made from the flesh of all 13 of the everlasting.
01:02:26
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
01:02:37
Nick
Before the fall, right?
01:02:38
Tiago
not before the Great Wounding, before the Everlasting were the Everlasting.
01:02:45
Nick
ah because they built the they built the thorn.
01:02:46
Tiago
that they build a thorn
01:02:48
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.
01:03:20
Tiago
Some of the first children volunteered to be transformed, to become something else.
01:03:26
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
01:03:33
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.
01:03:42
Nick
so miriam saw them make giants and they're like huh what are they what are these guys doing
01:03:42
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.
01:04:01
Nick
ah The more we talk about the sadder I get about everything.
01:04:06
Garrett
No, these giants are... remember I was going to say, um we still talking about giants?
01:04:11
Garrett
We're still going giants, right?
01:04:14
Garrett
Okay. ah Are there giants like in the churning sea, like under under the under the water? Just alive, drowning constantly?
01:04:24
Tiago
some Some of the Conclave Masters have ah have wondered about that. No one has gone down to check.
01:04:34
m3rcier
Yeah, I mean. If they do, they probably haven't come back.
01:04:37
Tiago
Yeah. it yeah but There's a reason people don't go down into the Churning Sea.
01:04:37
Garrett
Yeah, it'd be really hard.
01:04:45
m3rcier
So what what are the good.
01:04:48
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.
01:05:15
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.
01:05:25
Garrett
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah
01:05:26
m3rcier
it's It's the Paxos of the sea.
01:05:31
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.
01:05:47
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.
01:06:06
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?
01:06:16
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?
01:06:27
Tiago
Because they are immortal. They were not afflicted by the curse of death as others were.
01:06:36
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.
01:07:20
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.
01:07:35
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.
01:08:01
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.
01:08:24
Tiago
They're still in the Noxious Flesh Gardens. And, you know, Maybe the secret to reawaken them lies somewhere within the malediction.
01:08:39
Tiago
does that Does that answer the question?
01:08:39
Garrett
Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot of giant info.
01:08:44
m3rcier
All right, there's
01:08:44
Garrett
Wow. And there's also that giant in Avakran.
01:08:51
Garrett
That's there, that they're actively harvesting all the time.
01:08:55
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.
01:09:08
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?
01:09:22
Tiago
Those are part of the wall of Galdron.
01:09:25
Nick
So they're just stone statue.
01:09:29
Garrett
And can you tell me what gate that is? Do you know? Is is it decided?
01:09:33
Tiago
I believe that's the Triumvirate Gate. That's the one that Veloma controls.
01:09:36
Nick
It's the free city, yeah.
01:09:38
Garrett
Okay, that's cool. That's cool. All right.
01:09:40
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.
01:09:55
Nick
We'll see what happens. He's got a locker's heart in him.
01:09:58
m3rcier
Yeah, but they were tortured him for god knows how long.
01:10:02
Nick
Yeah, but you know, it's a vestige.
01:10:02
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.
01:10:16
m3rcier
From here on out, it is either traits or variations on a on one of those species.
01:10:29
Tiago
No, I don't have any other input on the species there.
01:10:36
m3rcier
Nick, you want to take the first one?
01:10:36
Garrett
Awesome. Okay. Let's do it.
01:10:38
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.
01:10:50
Nick
they The first Fallen were created when after the fall of Abisola when Tom Ravallum used Anishva to raise the city.
01:11:02
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.
01:11:15
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.
01:11:23
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.
01:11:34
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.
01:11:54
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.
01:12:00
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?
01:12:12
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.
01:12:12
Nick
I don't think I have any.
01:12:23
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.
01:12:32
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.
01:12:47
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.
01:12:59
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.
01:13:12
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.
01:13:29
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?
01:13:49
Tiago
the Most of the the legacies of the Legion work as kind of, you know, ah ah Wi-Fi repeaters for the Amatrix.
01:14:00
Tiago
They can channel little bit of the power of the Amatrix to them.
01:14:00
Garrett
then the show of that.
01:14:05
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?
01:14:36
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.
01:15:00
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.
01:15:16
Tiago
So that would be thing.
01:15:19
m3rcier
Definitely sounds like something Vorindahl would do.
01:15:21
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?
01:15:42
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.
01:16:15
Nick
Just get a new model. yeah
01:16:16
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?
01:16:30
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?
01:17:14
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.
01:17:27
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.
01:17:46
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.
01:18:03
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.
01:18:19
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
01:19:08
Tiago
And that lets them experience the world again. so So that's what she can do.
01:19:14
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.
01:19:27
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.
01:19:43
Tiago
ah Yeah, I know it's a lot, sorry.
01:19:47
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.
01:20:01
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.
01:20:17
m3rcier
Could we assume that horrors are some of those disastrous results?
01:20:22
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.
01:20:49
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.
01:21:02
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.
01:21:21
Tiago
That is a horror. ah It is controversial with Intellegion, but it's widespread enough that it's not condemned.
01:21:32
m3rcier
And with that, FAM, we have the dark side of the Legion.
01:21:37
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?
01:21:53
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.
01:22:17
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.
01:22:33
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.
01:22:47
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.
01:23:03
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.
01:23:15
m3rcier
i would say Horrors are probably welded together more than stitched together is what it looks like.
01:23:19
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.
01:23:32
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.
01:23:44
Tiago
And then they can sculpt the the fallen into the shapes that they prefer. And don't that's what horrors are.
01:23:57
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.
01:24:04
Garrett
Hey, it's it's an art form.
01:24:08
Tiago
It's like they they are already corpses. It's not like they were using those.
01:24:30
Nick
We do also see Revenants in the Order.
01:24:35
Nick
And then I think also, yeah, Tragedy Agreed is of Order and and Legion spirit.
01:24:42
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.
01:25:02
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.
01:25:24
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
01:25:49
Nick
So it can't be used by the Legion.
01:25:51
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.
01:26:09
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
01:26:21
Tiago
Yeah, like the the armor is kind of his burial urn.
01:26:27
Nick
yeah okay and that tracks too at uh grisa is you know bound to the helm
01:26:27
Tiago
that's That's why they made it for him.
01:26:36
Nick
So that makes lot of sense. So Revenants are always go be constructs bound to Neat.
01:26:41
Tiago
Yeah, the the thing with Griza is that Griza is a special case because he's both a revenant and a tragedy.
01:26:51
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.
01:27:04
Tiago
Yep, and I believe I know which card you are talking about. ah Is it the choice of brutality?
01:27:10
Nick
Choice of Brutality. we got just those little text box from the Lore Primer.
01:27:18
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.
01:27:34
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.
01:28:04
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?
01:28:12
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.
01:28:34
Nick
Okay, I can take that.
01:28:37
Garrett
I bet it's because it's where Leastrom comes from.
01:28:41
Nick
Ooh, dimensional spirits.
01:28:47
Tiago
I can either confirm nor deny.
01:28:49
Nick
and We won't push on it. Alright, so we can move on from that. Speaking of the Conclave.
01:28:55
m3rcier
Yes. Or are you going to get that one? Sorry.
01:29:00
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.
01:29:19
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?
01:29:30
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
Storytelling and Fiction Formats
01:29:46
Tiago
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.
01:29:55
Garrett
Awesome. Okay. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. ah Okay.
01:29:59
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.
01:30:11
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.
01:30:25
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.
01:30:53
Tiago
Does that make sense?
01:30:53
m3rcier
Yeah. Yeah. And it means we will probably take entire episodes on the short stories.
01:31:14
m3rcier
These are art artificial life. oh you If you want to take this in Chicago, you can.
01:31:19
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.
01:31:36
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.
01:31:48
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
01:32:06
Nick
That'd be like the Arcane Sentinel.
01:32:08
Tiago
Yes, the Gateway ah calledtway garden
01:32:12
Nick
Oh, the Gateway Guardian, yeah.
01:32:13
Tiago
yeah Guardian is one of those. That's why his design is a little bit different from what the Calm Clay generally does.
01:32:18
Nick
Oh, because he's like from... Yeah. Cool.
01:32:23
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.
01:32:35
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.
01:32:44
Garrett
Well, they're not sentient, I think is the biggest thing.
01:32:47
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.
01:33:04
Tiago
It's it's like, that's that's absolutely not happening.
01:33:08
Tiago
The Council of the Nexid denies it.
01:33:11
Garrett
Our products are not going wrong.
01:33:14
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.
01:33:29
Tiago
Magic does weird stuff.
01:33:33
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.
01:33:52
m3rcier
The reason they're called abominations is because most people on Agnar find them repulsive.
01:33:58
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.
01:34:21
Garrett
Well, we we do have two really cool abominations.
01:34:24
Garrett
I really like the Spellbound Devourer. The art and model for it are outrageous. um That thing is really cool.
01:34:35
m3rcier
Really good unit too.
01:34:35
Garrett
For the Conclave.
01:34:38
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?
01:34:56
Tiago
That's what happens when a berserker of the primal blood gets too deep into the battle concoctions.
01:35:08
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.
01:35:22
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.
01:35:36
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.
01:35:54
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?
01:36:14
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.
01:36:42
Garrett
you New for $12.71.
01:36:48
Garrett
Check out our brand new Corpse Gatherer. Okay, awesome. ah Okay, well, I think that's it for the abominations.
Beasts and Their Roles in the Lore
01:36:56
Garrett
Let's go let's go on to beasts.
01:37:00
Tiago
yep Does anyone want to take those one?
01:37:04
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.
01:37:17
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?
01:37:30
Tiago
There are things in cytominal addiction. Yes, there there are dangers in cytominal addiction that are
01:37:40
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.
01:37:58
Tiago
And that's one of the dangers.
01:38:00
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.
01:38:12
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.
01:38:27
Tiago
But yeah yeah, I like the idea as well.
01:38:31
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.
01:38:39
Garrett
Uh, this thing's awesome.
01:38:41
Garrett
Are, so are there lots of these or are they rare? Where do they come from?
01:38:45
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,
01:38:57
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.
01:39:25
Garrett
Right, right. Okay.
01:39:27
Nick
Neat. I wouldn't mind seeing another beast unit in the future for the Order. Just trained Aquilares.
01:39:38
Tiago
Yeah, you know, generally speaking, to the the order sees something like an Eculary as a tool, right, to accomplish a goal.
01:39:50
Tiago
The Concl... not the Concliffe, the Primal Blood sees something like a Terek Beast as a as a hunting partner.
01:40:02
Tiago
So that's kind of the difference that they have in how they view the the these creatures.
01:40:09
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.
01:40:30
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
01:40:34
Nick
that kind of creation. Yeah.
01:41:00
Garrett
Yeah, so most beasts are coming out of Paxos and then spreading across the world.
01:41:05
Tiago
Yeah, the biodiversity in Baxos is kind of crazy.
01:41:08
Nick
It's off the charts.
01:41:09
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?
01:41:19
Tiago
There are more of those. i would say
01:41:21
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.
01:41:47
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.
01:42:06
Garrett
Yeah, it is cool. I like dragon like things. That's it actually, here's a question.
01:42:10
Garrett
Are, will there be dragons in malediction?
01:42:15
Garrett
Oh, confirmed everybody confirmed.
01:42:19
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?
01:42:30
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.
01:42:50
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.
01:43:26
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.
01:43:49
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...
01:43:57
Tiago
that That's an interesting take on it.
01:44:02
Tiago
I'm sorry, man. I can't give you any more.
01:44:05
m3rcier
ah and that's We expected it.
01:44:09
m3rcier
were you know We knew what we were going into. i think we got one more subspecies left.
Shifters and Community Challenges
01:44:17
Garrett
Yeah, I don't even remember this. is this
01:44:20
Garrett
Did you guys add this new? Shifter? shifter
01:44:22
Nick
There is one shifter.
01:44:26
Garrett
Nick, you take this. I got no idea what's going on with this. I don't remember this at all.
01:44:28
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...
01:44:42
m3rcier
The gore horn is the one we know of.
01:44:44
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.
01:45:00
Nick
or but that's what we we take from that.
01:45:04
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.
01:45:48
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.
01:46:05
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?
01:46:26
Tiago
ah So yeah, it's it's a little bit sad when that happens.
01:46:31
m3rcier
the difference from Mokshvar, he went too far into the berserk, the blood state, and kind of changed a little bit.
01:46:39
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.
01:46:55
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.
01:47:15
Tiago
So Paxos is chock full of, you know, horrible, horrible things. Don't go into Paxos, guys.
01:47:25
m3rcier
Yeah, I live on the other side of the continent, preferably.
01:47:27
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.
01:47:39
Tiago
The Primal Blood kind of like it kind of fine. you know It works for them.
01:47:45
Garrett
That's true, because they're a bunch of weird, weird guys scooping flesh and bile out of this giant...
01:47:47
Tiago
Yeah, but the but the yeah they are kind of built different, right?
01:47:53
Garrett
Yeah. Yeah. ah yeah That's one way to put it.
01:47:58
Garrett
ah Oh my gosh. So that's the last subspecies.
01:48:02
Garrett
um ah Nick, you have this is your chance. This is your last chance for your last questions.
01:48:08
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
01:48:23
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.
01:48:41
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?
01:48:51
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.
01:49:07
Tiago
ah I'm going to start with the most populous factions. ah And the Primal Blood is the most populous factions.
01:49:22
Tiago
But, yeah, yeah, yeah, ah the they are there's just a a hell oh of a lot of them.
01:49:23
Garrett
Really? Okay, that's really surprising actually.
01:49:32
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?
01:49:42
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.
01:50:00
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.
01:50:12
Tiago
If you don't count the Fallen, the Legion is the least populous faction. They have even less people than the Conclave.
01:50:20
Tiago
There is something like 40-some-odd noble families within the Legion who claim descent from Ptun Ravalum.
01:50:31
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.
01:51:02
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.
01:51:20
Tiago
But you still have, you know...
Conclave's Influence and Future Lore Plans
01:51:23
Tiago
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...
01:51:39
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.
01:51:55
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...
01:52:08
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.
01:52:24
Tiago
Does that make sense so far?
01:52:27
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.
01:52:39
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
01:53:03
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.
01:53:16
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.
01:53:32
Tiago
Yeah, yeah. The islands are fairly small.
01:53:35
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.
01:53:48
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.
01:53:59
Nick
Okay. Cool. So now we know something about the Wistrel, too.
01:54:04
Garrett
We do. So many notes to take.
01:54:11
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.
01:54:22
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.
01:54:37
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?
01:54:49
Tiago
Lots of icebergs, very dangerous to navigate.
01:54:56
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.
01:55:13
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
01:55:30
Nick
All right. Yeah. Ooh. Well.
01:55:34
m3rcier
And then that bullet point number five, will we take care of that for you?
01:55:40
m3rcier
If you're looking the show notes.
01:55:42
Nick
Yeah. Well, I think we actually talked about that. It actually came up organically.
01:55:49
m3rcier
All right. We are, now we're at hour 55.
01:55:51
Nick
I think pushing our time.
01:55:54
m3rcier
We're, yeah, we're we're way up there.
01:55:56
m3rcier
This is our longest one yet.
01:55:58
Tiago
so Sorry, guys. I think I talked too much.
01:56:01
Garrett
Yeah, absolutely not.
01:56:01
m3rcier
Oh, don't apologize.
01:56:02
Garrett
No, this is no good.
01:56:03
m3rcier
Yeah, I know. It's thank you for taking the time.
01:56:05
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.
01:56:14
Nick
Yeah, we appreciate it. it
01:56:20
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.
01:56:26
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.
01:57:01
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.
01:57:11
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.
01:57:41
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.
01:57:45
m3rcier
Yeah, we know his last name now. All
01:57:51
Nick
Yeah, this has been this been great.
01:57:54
Garrett
Yes. So let's, we're going to try and conclude here. ah Read off our events rapidly, Alan.
01:58:03
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.
01:58:15
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.
01:58:36
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.
01:59:03
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.
01:59:14
Garrett
And I really hope you enjoyed it as well. And you might come back again later.
01:59:19
Tiago
Oh, I have enjoyed it. And I do hope you guys invite me back in at some point.
01:59:24
Garrett
Excellent. what Will you perhaps be at Gen Con?
01:59:27
Tiago
I don't think so. No, no not this year.
01:59:29
Garrett
Okay. We'll look forward to meeting you someday.
01:59:31
m3rcier
but Got to get him to sign the primer, the lower primer.
01:59:35
Garrett
Oh yeah. Wouldn't that be sick?
01:59:36
Garrett
Actually. Yeah. Uh, okay. Well, thanks again. does anybody have any last words?
01:59:44
Nick
think i think I've had all my questions thoroughly answered.
01:59:46
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.
01:59:57
Tiago
Yeah, and this is Thiago. Goodbye, everyone.