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Friday, April 26, 2024
Book 3: Convergence - The Mana Core
Hey there, heroes!

This week, Book 3's finale continues as you dive deeper and deeper into the Mana Core.

With the help of Amadeus and Warlic, your dragon has the strength to pursue Akanthus deeper into the Fissure— down to the Mana Core itself.

What awaits in the very heart of Lore? What secrets will you awaken?

Head over to Outpost Yeden to play the next chapter of Book 3's finale: The Mana Core.

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Also this week, the Swiftblade Cloak is now available from the cosmetics shop!

Matching last month's Swiftblade Hood, this color custom cloak is perfect for the forest-y Ranger skulking between the trees!

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Finally, a couple adjustments and fixes.

• Fixed an issue with Ninja's Walk Within Shadows tooltip.
  
• Fixed a couple of typos with DoomKnight's tooltips.
  
• Added an Escelence Swap shop to the Wrath of Wargoth war to swap between existing DA and NDA versions of Escelence items.
  
• The Eclipse of DOOM war is now accessible from Zorbak's room in the Book 3 Guardian Tower.
  
• Anything else I may have forgotten!

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And that's all for this week!

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Where do I start?

The Aequilibria are the Mana Core, as I speculated. Or rather, they became the Mana Core and created Lore (which is what Lock and Key's puzzle and the diagram in the Inn are conveying) after the Exalted used their artillery on them. And now after all this time, they're waking up to end the world again. I have no idea how we're supposed to stop them unless someone has another 'capacitor' to power another impossible super-weapon just lying around.

Ah, speaking of the capacitor: that's what Akanthus was tethered to. A Mechquest-era device that the Exalted used to store their mana and probably build Ehr'Ishin upon. I can almost understand his frustration, being cruelly disconnected from everything. Even so that the gods themselves couldn't neutralise him, so they put him in a ball and sealed him away. Sounds familiar actually. Now we know who the Avatars got their tendencies from!

As for the Magisterium, it seems their history is a little more complicated than we were led to believe; no wonder they were so protective of the Fissure. I'm curious to see how this new information may change the Hero's relationship with them going forward.

Lastly, the one thing that puzzles me: why do the Aequilibria look like Sk'aar? We know they're not the same entity, as we met Sk'aar in Adventure Friends 2 and they seemed to want to usurp the Aequilibria. Was it the Aequilibria that imprisoned Sk'aar within dreams in the first place? Is that why they look the same? It seems there's still more to this puzzle to piece together.

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I like all the callbacks and connecting threads, I am not sorry to be rid (?) of Sobislav, but all in all, I find myself saying craaaaaaaaaap we're in trouble! >_<;

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Sobislav was immune to all things that follow the laws of magic. That means the Aequilibria are beyond those laws as well! How the heck are we supposed to deal with them? They're the core of Lore! We never found Fluffy's egg back after the Maleorum arc!
Speaking of, if the Arquilibria are the apex of DESTINY, then it's no wonder the DOOM from that bomb woke them up.

One small spot of hope: if the Aequilibria cannot detect the location of the Avatars, then Lock and Key and the other surviving Maleorum might be able to help. I certainy wouldn't mind seeing those guys again.

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I find I feel at least some pity for Sobislav, here at the end. All he wanted was to be reconnected to humanity and his soul. Now, he's trapped forever (?) in isolation at the core. Cold...

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To begin, I just love how entering the labs of Project Casca just feels completely ominous as the site betrays the fact that the Magesterium was up to a lot more than they explained to us when retrieving the mana core fragment. The pure whiteness of the area being an illuminated hallway that leads the protagonist to unexpected truths is something I've come to oddly enjoy in stories like this. One of the things standing out though is the assortment of masks arranged on labs' pillars with each one depicting the masks of the Magesterium though what I find interesting is that Voyna's mask appears among the three. It's possible that her mask was at one point just standard issue of those that fought against the dragons but I have to wonder if more is going on there.


Speaking of unexpected truths, we learn important facts as Akanthus monologues as to why it's a fine idea to risk the lives of everyone on Lore just so that he can get what he wants. I have to say it's deeply troubling that the mana core itself is capable of, in theory, being completely depleted had the Magesters continued carving fragments of it to use to bolster the strength of their empire. It makes sense I suppose, if everyone is given life by the core with the expectation the mana they received be returned upon their deaths and thus that cycle is disrupted by simply carving out a chunk of the Mana Core it without putting anything back. The end result being obvious if it went too far. In knowing this truth however, I do not believe we should risk the Magesterium cutting out another shard, even to reclaim their homeland from the Shapeless if they can't see treating the core of the planet like an Ignomonious is going to have disastrous consequences for all.

On another note, so we finally learn the reason behind Akanthus' invincibility, eh? Who would have thought it would have been the combined technology of the pre-rest tech from Mechquest and the ingenuity of the Exalted, and the very thing that helped power the Exalted Artillery to boot? It explains both why he's basically immune to the laws of this world while also being blessed with an incredibly strong body. We've seen remnants of MQ based tech be able to cut through the reality of this universe like butter when properly directed but there's also the fact this entire time Akanthus' soul has been hooked up to a battery configured by beings that poured all their mana into a cannon that knocked out the very gods themselves. The cost here being of course, as Akanthus laments, not being able to manipulate magic one bit. Now while I admit this must suck, especially when considering all the hardship both he and the other oprhans that died had to go through to achieve this state, I cannot stand Akanthus justification for this in the face of all he's done while commanding the Rose and I'm glad the Hero calls him out on the fact that all the harm he caused is not washed away by the point that he suffers in a way other do not. None of what he faces makes up for all those he killed, allowed to be killed, or brutalized the moment he got to Greenguard.

Which makes his "containment" at the hands of the Aequilibria all the more fitting in my eyes. He got the audience he wanted but as a result he has been even more removed from the world as he has been classified as an impurity and thus cannot be allowed to have a place in the world in the eyes of the gods.

On the subject of the Aequilibria,

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The Aequilibria are the Mana Core, as I speculated. Or rather, they became the Mana Core and created Lore (which is what Lock and Key's puzzle and the diagram in the Inn are conveying) after the Exalted used their artillery on them.

Yeah you definitely were right on the money on this, I was almost postive we were going to find out the remains of the Exalted were the core itself but I guess it honestly does just make more sense they all simply got used up in the firing of their artillery. What concerns me now though is the fact they just woke up and assessed within seconds that their system is way off course from where it should be and honestly that quick assessment is terrifying alone. The real terror I think though is not just that they determined that everything on Lore needs to be refreshed but also how its conveying diaoluge; their speech is oddly mechanical and very matter of fact. I'm not sure we're up to the task of facing the literal deities of this universe but that manner of speech is making me feel like we can't even begin to have a reasonable discussion with them. If they decide upon a course of action it may be nigh impossible to talk them out of it unless certain parameters demand they do so but debating or speaking with conviction is something I doubt will convince them to change course.

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Lastly, the one thing that puzzles me: why do the Aequilibria look like Sk'aar? We know they're not the same entity, as we met Sk'aar in Adventure Friends 2 and they seemed to want to usurp the Aequilibria. Was it the Aequilibria that imprisoned Sk'aar within dreams in the first place? Is that why they look the same? It seems there's still more to this puzzle to piece together.

Now there's an interesting question right there. I'm not so certain that Sk'aar wanted to usurp Aequilibria, just usurp us as the master of our own thoughts and dreams, as the entity said that with us working together, or more accurately it subsuming us, that we would "unleash that which slumbers" heavily implying it was attempting to have something be woken back up and I think we can safely say they were referring to the Aequilibria. Thinking upon it further, perhaps it is the case that the Aequilibria don't look like Sk'aar but that Sk'aar looks like the Aequilibria? Something that's been nipping me is the difference in the initial response of Sk'aar in the Wolf Route in comparison to the other routes in AdventureFriends: Edelia. It is noticeably much more robotic and very much like how the Aequilibria manner of speech functions and I assume that is no coincidence especially given within that same dream we see the end of the Mechquest universe in one of the other routes. Additionally, there is the fact that the only reason we dream of Sk'aar to begin with is because the love poiton Big Daddy gave us had Quintessence added in its ingredients and quintessence clearly contains all eight of the prime elements within it and Sk'aar very clearly had eight eyes prior to appearing before us.

Furthermore, we have the Sk'aar head statues littered throughout the game for a while now but one that I've never been able to get my mind off of is the ones that are present in the Exaltia Tower as there are even some crying out pools of mana in the Reliquary section. As you'll recall from the The Last Stand of Ehr'Ishin , it is mentioned that the Exalted had structures that used to act as temples for the Elements and a Reliquary is typically a place in which holy relics are kept. At the time, when the world building was still new to me, I believed that the imagery of what we knew of Sk'aar may have been the reason the Aequilibria sought to destroy the Exalted, for worshipping another entity you see over them. Based on what we know now though, I suspect this part of the tower was just one of the older parts of the structure that was dedicated to the Elements, to Aequilibria. So how does Sk'aar fit into this? Well, and I'm really spitballing on this one, it might be that Sk'aar might be a piece of Aequilibria or an entity that is subservient to it, if we keep in line with the idea that Sk'aar did want to see Aequilibria be reawakened as it is beginning to do so now. This doesn't really explain why they look like one another though beyond the fact that it might just be emulating the greater whole or its master.

It will be interesting to see what the connection here is though regardless.

@Sumbrosus

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I find I feel at least some pity for Sobislav, here at the end. All he wanted was to be reconnected to humanity and his soul. Now, he's trapped forever (?) in isolation at the core. Cold...

On one hand there's much to feel sorry for in regards to Sobieslav's condition, at least when he first got it. However every action he's taken since then makes it impossible to feel anything for him in regards to all those he's cruelly and coldly has harmed or killed across this saga. Wanting a piece of himself that was lost is fine but the suffering he's inflicted made the fate he's received all too deserving. Though I do imagine there is no getting him out of the containment he's in or if he's even conscious now that he's just a disembodied soul but it is possible.

< Message edited by Vaalirus -- 4/27/2024 16:10:04 >

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Oh, Sobislav was a ruthless monster, no doubt. I detest him. But it would have been kinder and safer to just wreck the battery and let his soul return to the cycle, imho. Like this, he's just a potential calamity waiting for his second chance. Evils just won't stay buried on Lore unless they're put down decisively.

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On one hand, it's a little disappointing that they pulled another Sepulchure and we don't actually get to fight the villain. On the other hand, it's kind of fitting that such a do-nothing villain just got unceremoniously one-shot and probably won't be mentioned again lol. Maybe the disappointing part was his decade of white noise screentime.

I'm not sure exactly what his plan was, though. He thought awakening Aequilibria would somehow give him a soul(?), and that this would somehow come at the expense of causing death/destruction for everyone else? He knew what Aequilbira is, but thought Jaania was capable of supplanting its will? Or cutting it off from Lore? He knew about Hawkscry and Project Casca, but didn't know that the Fissure led to the Mana Core until Jaania's scouts found out about it after the Gala? He doesn't know what Doom/Shadowscythe is, but knows that Amadeus can manipulate it and thinks that it can awaken Aequilibria? And this is just something he came up with on the fly, after years of deciding that joining an anti-magic movement and occasionally bullying squirrels/gnomes/goats for ??? reason would solve his issues? He also thought that Jaania cutting off the Mana Core from Lore would somehow solve his problem?
Also, like, he starts seething at the protag about how his plans kept getting thwarted after he met them, but that hasn't happened at any point? Mostly because he hasn't actually had any plans? All he's done is find the Doom Bomb and sabotage the rifts (which I don't think he ever gives a reason for either), neither of which were thwarted.

Guys... I think Akanthus was just an idiot.

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So the Mana Core is actually the sleeping form of Aequilibria. Hmm, some observations, in no particular order:
-The Mana Core clearly isn't made out of the Exalted of Ehr'Ishin, which reformats our understanding of Infernals'/Celestials' relationship with mana... Why can Warlic/Wargoth generate his own mana if mana comes from Aequilibria?
-Draco seems to have been what awakened Aequilibria, not the bomb. So if we hasn't gone after Akanthus, or if Amadeus hadn't helped us power up Draco, Akanthus would just have been trapped down there without accomplishing anything. So, actually, this is all Amadeus's fault.
-We know from Golden Eggs that Aequilibria created Draco, Fluffy, and the Avatars before it went to sleep... if Draco can wake it up, why didn't he do so at any earlier point in history? Such as right when it went to sleep?
-The Idiot insists that the weapon that put Aequilibria to sleep was a MechQuest remnant, but we know from The Last Stand of Ehr'Ishin that it was powered by the lives of the Exalted.
-I don't think Aequilibria's call for a reset is the same thing as a capital-R Reset. The Stranger and Kathool are both older than the Reset and say they've watched the Elements form the world / the birth of magic - which clearly (retroactively) refer to Aequilibria.
-Kathool also refers to the Elements as 'Dragonheart Shards;' does this give us some insight into the nature of Aequilibria, or is he just referring to Fluffy/Drakath?
-Kathool is now one step closer to his lofty and respectable goal of eating God. Rooting for him.
-Akanthus's "soul" is a repurposed Drakylon Cube from MechQuest. Lore™, or asset reuse?
-It's very funny that overanalysis of 2007 background asset reuse eventually turned into God lol.
-Aequilibria's elemental "eyes" resemble the elemental lights in the background when we fight The Engineer.
- Pride uses all eight elements and wears a mask resembling Aequilibria. Pride, indeed!
-The continued refusal of the main story to acknowledge ongoing side stories is a bit frustrating - where have Lock and Key been for this entire arc? Why doesn't the protagonist recognize the name Aequilibria?
-If Aequilibria represents Order and resembles Sk'aar, is Sk'aar the evil/whatever version of the same entity?
-Aequilibria created Draco and Fluffy 'in their image' - how do Drahr'Hatir and Drahr'Dolaas fit into this? Are they supposed to be Aequilibria (and Sk'aar?), or just alternate versions of Fluffy and Draco? Maybe it's a metaphorical 'image' in that they just represent creation and destruction - which could give us room to hypothesize about Sk'aar. Need more dating sims to explain this one I think

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I haven't been following the lore quite as closely as a lot of other players, so I could only piece together some bits and pieces about the exalted and wastes and possibly MQ era stuff, but my main comment is on Akanthus. His death was very well done - great impact seeing the guy with a decade worth of plot armor and build up fall in one pathetic shot. I understand some may be dissapointed there was no boss battle, but we've already fought him, he's plain unkillable. I think this was the right choice and carried a great deal of gravitas. At least for me it had the intended effect.

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What concerns me now though is the fact they just woke up and assessed within seconds that their system is way off course from where it should be and honestly that quick assessment is terrifying alone. The real terror I think though is not just that they determined that everything on Lore needs to be refreshed but also how its conveying dialogue; their speech is oddly mechanical and very matter of fact. I'm not sure we're up to the task of facing the literal deities of this universe but that manner of speech is making me feel like we can't even begin to have a reasonable discussion with them. If they decide upon a course of action it may be nigh impossible to talk them out of it unless certain parameters demand they do so but debating or speaking with conviction is something I doubt will convince them to change course.

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Yeah I quite like how the team has handled the 'apathetic gods' concept. The older and more powerful the being is, the more inhuman and less capable of introspection. The first generation Great Dragons, though incredibly powerful as they are/were, are still able to develop interpersonal relationships with lesser kinds like humans as we saw with GenoKratos. The Avatars, their creators were emotional to a fault: egotistical, scornful and sometimes downright irrational, but were nonetheless able to perceive their own shortcomings. The Aequilibria though are basically Lovecraftian in their perception of Lore and its denizens: mere pieces of a machine they created, to be dismantled and rebuilt however they see fit. It makes for some good existential horror.

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I'm not so certain that Sk'aar wanted to usurp Aequilibria, just usurp us as the master of our own thoughts and dreams, as the entity said that with us working together, or more accurately it subsuming us, that we would "unleash that which slumbers" heavily implying it was attempting to have something be woken back up and I think we can safely say they were referring to the Aequilibria. Thinking upon it further, perhaps it is the case that the Aequilibria don't look like Sk'aar but that Sk'aar looks like the Aequilibria? Something that's been nipping me is the difference in the initial response of Sk'aar in the Wolf Route in comparison to the other routes in AdventureFriends: Edelia. It is noticeably much more robotic and very much like how the Aequilibria manner of speech functions and I assume that is no coincidence especially given within that same dream we see the end of the Mechquest universe in one of the other routes. Additionally, there is the fact that the only reason we dream of Sk'aar to begin with is because the love poiton Big Daddy gave us had Quintessence added in its ingredients and quintessence clearly contains all eight of the prime elements within it and Sk'aar very clearly had eight eyes prior to appearing before us.

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...I hadn't even considered that Quintessence could've been what enabled us to make contact with Sk'aar. Given their now-revealed connection to the Aequilibria, that makes a lot of sense. And I admittedly could've been mistaken about Sk'aar's intentions. Wresting control of "this world" could just mean taking control of the Hero's dream.

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As you'll recall from the The Last Stand of Ehr'Ishin , it is mentioned that the Exalted had structures that used to act as temples for the Elements and a Reliquary is typically a place in which holy relics are kept. At the time, when the world building was still new to me, I believed that the imagery of what we knew of Sk'aar may have been the reason the Aequilibria sought to destroy the Exalted, for worshipping another entity you see over them. Based on what we know now though, I suspect this part of the tower was just one of the older parts of the structure that was dedicated to the Elements, to Aequilibria. So how does Sk'aar fit into this? Well, and I'm really spitballing on this one, it might be that Sk'aar might be a piece of Aequilibria or an entity that is subservient to it, if we keep in line with the idea that Sk'aar did want to see Aequilibria be reawakened as it is beginning to do so now. This doesn't really explain why they look like one another though beyond the fact that it might just be emulating the greater whole or its master.

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Now that's interesting. To think that Sk'aar may be some waking remnant of the Aequilibria... as you pointed out, Sk'aar seems to want to awaken the Aequilibria. Would doing so release them from their imprisonment? It may be no coincidence that Sk'aar only exists in dreams and that the Aequilibria "slumber, but never dream" according to Remthalas. Sk'aar could be a manifestation of their dreams. Maybe when they became the Mana Core, they lost their physical form and could only appear in dreams as Sk'aar. A piece of themselves that wants to be whole again. Now we're really getting unhinged...

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-The Mana Core clearly isn't made out of the Exalted of Ehr'Ishin, which reformats our understanding of Infernals'/Celestials' relationship with mana... Why can Warlic/Wargoth generate his own mana if mana comes from Aequilibria?

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-The Idiot insists that the weapon that put Aequilibria to sleep was a MechQuest remnant, but we know from The Last Stand of Ehr'Ishin that it was powered by the lives of the Exalted.

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-I don't think Aequilibria's call for a reset is the same thing as a capital-R Reset. The Stranger and Kathool are both older than the Reset and say they've watched the Elements form the world / the birth of magic - which clearly (retroactively) refer to Aequilibria.

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-Kathool also refers to the Elements as 'Dragonheart Shards;' does this give us some insight into the nature of Aequilibria, or is he just referring to Fluffy/Drakath?

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-Akanthus's "soul" is a repurposed Drakylon Cube from MechQuest. Lore™, or asset reuse?

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-Aequilibria's elemental "eyes" resemble the elemental lights in the background when we fight The Engineer.

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-Aequilibria created Draco and Fluffy 'in their image' - how do Drahr'Hatir and Drahr'Dolaas fit into this? Are they supposed to be Aequilibria (and Sk'aar?), or just alternate versions of Fluffy and Draco? Maybe it's a metaphorical 'image' in that they just represent creation and destruction - which could give us room to hypothesize about Sk'aar. Need more dating sims to explain this one I think

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I interpreted it as saying the Engineer sacrificed themself in order to activate the weapon, and all the other Exalted were caught up in the blast as well as much of the Planes. I don't think the book specifies where all of that mana was coming from; now we know.

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New glyphs and runes were drawn around the artillery, connecting it to the city, the mass of mana available.

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This miracle weapon had a cost to win the war. The power to quell our creators required a source. The people of Ehr'Ishin would defend it with their lives, and push back the onslaught of the Elements.