Innocence and Sin

For the coming expansion, I've been doing some thinking on the backstory of these two. Everyone knows by now from the stained glass windows that innocence and sin apparently "switch" places. Here's what I think.

Note: I will refer to these deities by their birth names for now. This will change later.

Innocence was born with no desire to suppress his true feelings at all. Hence he was hiding nothing, and being himself. Technically one could argue that he expressed no guilt for his actions, as they all reflected his personal beliefs. Hence, from this perspective, he was "innocent".

Sin was born suppressing who he truly was. This can be seen by him always trying to impress his mother and others. However, when he ordered the death of innocence, he apparently changed. He claimed it was for the best, but after innocence's death he became more controlling, more assertive in making the world to his vision. This is especially important because he was not doing this before.

Also consider how after innocence died, he became focused with suppressing the gods, as seen through the creation of the beast. So now we have innocence hiding who he and the other gods truly are, and sin expressing himself for who he truly is (by trying to control and shape the world to his vision). As such, innocence is behaving as sin used to, and sin is now behaving more like innocence. In essence, they pretty much switched places. Furthermore, this "switch" occurred immediately after innocence died, and if you look at the stained glass windows, their eye colours switched at the exact same moment as well.

Now onto the templars. After the switch, they began referring to innocence as sin and sin as innocence. I will now refer to these two deities as "the original innocence/sin" and "the original sin/innocence" to try and avoid confusion. My guess is that the original sin deemed the original innocence as unworthy of such a title, and claimed the title of innocence for himself. This makes sense, as the templars would be more likely to follow a deity named innocence, and he had just seized control. Hence the original sin dictated the name swap, and rose as the god the templars now refer to as innocence, labeling the original innocence as sin and condemning him.

Ultimately, considering the power innocence now wielded, he helped aid in the shaping of the current theocracy of oriath, claiming the worship of the templars for his actions. This worship was presumably given as a result of the though process: "he built our society, he must be good, therefore we'll worship him".

All this raises the question: "is innocence truly a good deity?". Sure, he managed to temporarily seal kitava, and yes he built the society. But considering the original innocence's behaviour and what the name of the deity could represent (as someone who conceals nothing), is he truly acting for the good of all, or is he obsessed with control? Considering how he refers to himself during the avarius fight ("I am the order, I am the one and the eternal, I am innocence" (something like that)), and considering how his title is "innocence, god emperor of eternity", this may be the case. Furthermore, considering how the actions of sin in suppressing the beast gave humanity hope (just look at the mess the gods created when the beast died), and considering how the original sin was essentially a "wonderchild" before the death of the original innocence, this leads me to question whether or not sin is truly an evil deity, as innocence claims.

I think their labels are a product of their situations. True, both innocence and sin did some bad and some good things throughout history, but they are not the representation of "good" and "evil" as the templars claim. They are just two fighting deities, and ultimately sin got the short end of the stick and lost, allowing innocence to rewrite history to his pleasure.

As a Templar player, one thing that escapes me entirely is why we are fighting Innocence and even more importantly, why are we helping sin?

Is he not responsible for the creation of the beast and by extension this whole situation?

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HerrDave wrote:

As a Templar player, one thing that escapes me entirely is why we are fighting Innocence and even more importantly, why are we helping sin?

Is he not responsible for the creation of the beast and by extension this whole situation?

The way I read it, Sin created the Beast to keep the unruly gods in check. Sin's story is that unlike all the other gods, he did not vie for power or want to engage in petty struggles. Even his brother, Innocence, constantly tried to curry their mother's favour. If his behaviour in act 5 is anything to go by, Innocence is a little bit of what we call an egomaniac. Fitting for a local god.

The beast didn't 'create' this whole situation; it's just a step within the process. From what I can glean of the lore, there was no real intelligence or force behind the process. Certain mortals just became very powerful and experienced apotheosis. Mortal squabbles became immortal ones. There is definitely something Luciferian in Sin's position, in that he seems to care far more about the mortals than the other gods, but in doing so he pits himself AGAINST the other gods, whom the mortals worship. Bam, instant Adversary/Accuser in the monotheistic 'Satan' sense.

Getting back to Innocence, the Templars of Oriath fanatically worship him, of course, at least until he's 'dead' and his influence fizzles in an instant, at which point many of them become (or perhaps are revealed to be, deep down by in their ambitious heart of hearts) devotees of the Ravenous One. Before that happens, the Templar player character is cast out. And you have to remember that the Templar player character is considered a heretic, an apostate. We don't really know the conditions of the apostasy but we do know that it reached very high in the ranks: the templar PC and High Templar Dominus are known to each other. So the Templar PC's fall from grace is probably quite high profile.

By the time this exile from 'God's' grace returns to the seat of God's power, he has killed *a lot of people* and seen *some very real shit*. He has learned that his former 'friends' Gravicius and Dominus were behind a lot of it, and that they in turn were manipulated by the long-enduring spirit of Malachai...who in turn tried to enslave/awaken the Beast but instead became embroiled in its slumber, trying to corrupt it from within.

...So when this Templar PC, who has been literally transformed by virtue gem usage and exposure to the savagery of Wraeclast, exposed at the behest of his former comrades, returns to Oriath, I think he should be more than willing to embrace...alternatives to Innocence, such as Sin, who displays an incredible capacity for seeing the bigger, possibly the biggest, picture. I am very much looking forward to hearing what the Templar PC has to say in act 5, and trust GGG/Edwin will encapsulate a very interesting crisis of faith.

__

As an aside, the OP did a great job predicting a lot of this.

Very well said, though I'm not entirely sure I like playing the roll of what is effectively a villain on a metaphysical level.

If I'm getting this right, this implies that while the Templar character was ascending the ranks in the Order, the Order was indeed teaching their followers to do good (being charitable, merciful, etc) and at some point there was a change. The Templar character must have been around when the Order began to change.

"They spoke the same words, but now they had a different meaning."

While this bit is purest theory, I believe it holds water and explains the Templar character's righteous dialogue through the game.

I believe that the Templar character was exiled for calling out the changing nature of the Order, it's members were rapidly becoming crueler and rabidly zealous. For his "crime", Dominus (under the influence of Kitava or perhaps Sin) had the Templar character exiled as he had become an obstacle.

In a sense, I think the Templar character is an old-school Templar. He holds the teachings of the Old Order above even the lives of his former (now corrupted) Templar brothers in Oriath.
However, with the way these events transpire - there is still room for him to betray the order entirely, and ally with Sin or another god entirely - it's all up to player decision.

I saw a rather appealing suggestion by someone else a while back, but I can't quite recall who said it originally.
Allowing the players to choose between allying with their chosen deity or Sin, rather like the three bandits in Act II.

I think that'd probably just be too much work for GGG and, well, it's not really in the scope of an ARPG that is 95% A to 5% RPG to give that sort of narrative flexibility.

And I hate to break it to you but all of the Exiles are villains not necessarily on a metaphysical level but certainly a very literal one. PoE has always been about antiheroes and the will to power above all else. The salvation of the world is almost incidental to that pursuit. Part 2 is almost, *almost* atonal with part 1. Oh, it's very close.

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The_Scourge wrote:

I think that'd probably just be too much work for GGG and, well, it's not really in the scope of an ARPG that is 95% A to 5% RPG to give that sort of narrative flexibility.

And I hate to break it to you but all of the Exiles are villains not necessarily on a metaphysical level but certainly a very literal one. PoE has always been about antiheroes and the will to power above all else. The salvation of the world is almost incidental to that pursuit. Part 2 is almost, *almost* atonal with part 1. Oh, it's very close.

Isnt the templar kind of good guy? He's exiled for hersay against the current regime correct? And pretty much everyone else was a murderer or child abductor.

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gladiatorpie wrote:

Isnt the templar kind of good guy? He's exiled for hersay against the current regime correct? And pretty much everyone else was a murderer or child abductor.

Witch - mass murderer
Shadow - professional killer and likely drug addict
Ranger - poacher
Duelist - murderer
Marauder - not quite sure, but I guess murderer aswell or some sort of vandal
Scion - murderer
Templar - heretic

So I guess dominus was pretty harsh to the templar and ranger and rather lenient with the witch and shadow.

PoE is almost immune to good guy bad guy simplification. People needing that in their vidya game stories should look elsewhere. The moment Chris said it was about getting stronger the good guy bad guy setup was out of the picture.

"There is no good, no evil, no light, no shadow... only power!" -Archbishop Benedictus

I don't buy that, but that's just me.

In amongst the characters there are gray morals going on, namely with the Duelist and the Ranger.
However there are some clear lights and darks, a fine example being the contrast between the Templar and the Witch.

One was expelled from a corrupt holy Order for questioning it's changing ways
The other was exiled on charges of witchcraft and the (potential) murder of a great many children.

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FCK42 wrote:

Witch - mass murderer
Shadow - professional killer and likely drug addict
Ranger - poacher
Duelist - murderer
Marauder - not quite sure, but I guess murderer aswell or some sort of vandal
Scion - murderer
Templar - heretic

So I guess dominus was pretty harsh to the templar and ranger and rather lenient with the witch and shadow.

You infer a liberal stance on criminal justice upon a medieval feudal theocracy. If you look into ancient and medieval history of the real world, crimes against property (of nobles ofc) and against the "sanctioned belief" are among the most heinous crimes. Just look at the atrocities the christian church commited against heretic cults like the templar or the arian christs or look at the thousands of pogroms against jews. From the perspective of theocratic feudalism all those crimes commited by the exiles pretty much deserve capital punishment potentially including torture - so they all got off the hook.

Regarding the issue why we are helping Sin. Well, a man lost in the desert must take such water as he is offered, no matter who it comes from. Besides, Sin could be regarded as being in the same situation as we, the exiles, are. Basically we are just siding with another exile against majority rule. His creation of the beast was in fact a noble act. Freeing man from the rule of gods, making him into the shaper of his own destiny. This aligns pretty well with most of our exles personal goals and beliefs.

regards