So with Awakening out, how has the lore progressed?

Now that we know more about Malachai and supposedly the Beast, along with what happened to Kaom, Daresso, Voll and other prominent figures, has anyone compiled a little story of what's actually happened?

I haven't, but I would love to see that! What interests me a lot is Piety, I'm still not sure if she is the good guy or the bad guy. Seems like she did not regret what she did to the innocent people she tortured, but at the same time maybe it was for an ends that was good? I quite like the game and the lore - I think it is very engaging and enjoyable.

Most of what I've gathered together is speculation so I won't do a big writeup, but sparknotes version is that I'm pretty sure the Beast is supposed to be the originator of Virtue Gems and as such has incredible power. It's likely that disturbing the Beast by mining in the mines created the Cataclysm in the first place (dead rising). Malachai attempted to invade the beast and control it like a parasite using power he had accrued from Thaumaturgy (which is essentially experiments involving Virtue Gems) and you infiltrated the Beast and prevented him from following through.

Some other interesting tidbits I've picked up -

The game talks a lot about gemlings. Dialla is referred to as the Gemling Queen but it's obviously been a thing to put virtue gems inside of people for awhile. The "Pockmarked" individuals in the mines could quite possibly be former gemlings who had their virtue gems removed and went a bit crazy/transformed as a result.

Dialla constantly mentions that she was supposed to die to prevent the Cataclysm but was selfish and chose to live. The rapture device was created with that in mind. Her fear of dying again, in act 4, led to gathering the Gems of Desire and Envy which she used to prevent herself from dying upon using the Rapture Device, but obviously it didn't hit hard enough as a result. I believe it was intended to kill the Beast and Dialla but instead it just punched a hole so you had to do the dirty work.

This also ended with the Beast surviving so that could have repercussions later (Act 5?)



Anyways those are just my speculations. Wouldn't take them too seriously.