[LORE] The Conquerors of the Atlas and Their Projections

The Conquerors of the Atlas are empowered by powerful apparitions called projections when we fight them in the Atlas of Worlds.

When they use them, all the Conquerors' bodies float helplessly below their monstrous projection...well, all the Conquerors except Sirus, Awakener of Worlds. He and he alone isn't reliant on his projection. Path of Exile 3.9.0 introduced plenty of lore mysteries to this beloved game; this is one of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYutTXeK-RY&t

The projections are a metaphor for the various Conquerors' fatal flaws.

Baran: The Templar. Beating the Jesus into supplicants since oh, a while. As in the past, when the Inquisitors delegated responsibility for tortures and executions and other brutality to the secular authorities, Baran delegates all his cruelty and brutality to a handy projection while he goes off and "is invulnerable" for the duration.

Drox: The Thin Yellow Line. Police brutality often relies on plausible deniability. In Drox's case, not only is he judge, jury, and executioner, but he's also the cops, witnesses for the prosecution, court reporter, and media liaison. Most importantly, he's also witnesses for the defence, during which time he projects elsewhere to get a sandwich and a coffee. "Did you see or hear anything to suggest the exile was pounded in the face, body slammed, clubbed down, or threatened with same?" "No, Your Honour, I was out getting a sandwich and only learned of it just now." *plausibly and convincingly wipes mustard off his chin*

Vertania: Your Mom. Of all the nerve, telling you to go outside and get some sun? Who does she think she is, your MOM? She uses guilt to wage a constant war of attrition on your budding independence and life choices. You failed to measure up to the charismatic honour student and paragon of filial piety she talked up to all her friends in Pilates class. And for that, you must pay the ultimate price - she's freezing your allowance. And as soon as any doubt creeps into her mind as to whether your shortcomings are familial, her face becomes a mask of frosty malice and she mentally vacates the yelling room. Instead, you face a flying, all-seeing taloned terror.

Al-Hazmat: The Most Dangerous Game. Instead of hunting his sport through his private estate of thickets and parkland, he sits online and snipes and trolls and plays absolutely dumb. He writes no code, attends no rallies, wears no hearts or noxious symbology on his sleeve. He posts. And sometimes the sheer toxicity of what he does becomes too much even for him, or more likely, the po-po come circling about in response to harassment charges, or he got banned from various social media forums. In these extremities, he says to himself: "Hold my protein shake." He goes incognito, invulnerablito, and projects himself into chat and tweet alike as any number of sock puppets that incidentally cannot be targeted, either.

Sirus: The Pusher Man.
The guy who got high on his own supply. He got a bad case of nerves, so helped himself to a pipe full of red grass (that crap that grows only in Caldera, Lava Lake, etc.) before going in to meet the Elder. Thus fortified, he brought in a folding steel chair (the one Zana gave Drox to use to bludgeon the Elder to death with). He promptly forgot what he was there to do, and instead sat down in the chair and started telling the Elder about some of his best bulk deals in arcane substances. "I'm a smuggler, you see." Puff, puff, puff.

The Elder had enough fumes and tall tales, and cracked a window. Unfortunately for Squiggins, there is only one externality to a space known as the Absence of Value and Reason. It's precisely where they had been trying to exile the Elder for decades, a place of being and meaning and continuity, where a thing like the Elder would be cancelled out by his antithesis. This non-Absence plane rushed in and filled the Absence, cancelling it and disappearing the Elder. Sirius, oblivious to the significance of the noises, thought he had failed in his mission and became a classic German-style nihilist. "What's the use? Hey, is there any pizza left?"

He is frozen in time and space, with an endless supply of red lawn clippings. There's no projection, because that's like, work, man.

after the joke that was the "story" panel at exilecon I barely have any interest on poe lore left.. leagues are "different timelines" and I dislike such lame way to write a story.

but as usual it's interesting to an extent to see how much the community speculate on things.

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crunkatog wrote:

Vertania: Your Mom. Of all the nerve, telling you to go outside and get some sun? Who does she think she is, your MOM? She uses guilt to wage a constant war of attrition on your budding independence and life choices. You failed to measure up to the charismatic honour student and paragon of filial piety she talked up to all her friends in Pilates class. And for that, you must pay the ultimate price - she's freezing your allowance.

I LOL'ed. xD

Sirus is resistant to his projection for a similar reason that Frodo was resistant to the One Ring - there just isn't very much the thing can use to tempt them. Frodo was largely content, like all hobbits, so the Ring couldn't use his desires to corrupt him. Sirus, on the other hand, is resistant for the opposite reason - he isn't content like Frodo, but he is still largely lacking in desire. He's basically nihilistic psychopath with no dreams or visions or even much interest in personal pleasure - because he's also emotionally stunted i.e. doesn't feel very much - to tempt him. So where the others were consumed by their own ambitions, Sirus is able to use his projection for whatever he wishes.

Alternately, perhaps being at his disposal IS how the projection can best win over Sirus. Since his interests are fundamentally fickle and capricious (he has no overarching goal, dude is just bored and insensitive), the projection can't tempt him by manifesting itself as a singular, focused entity, since such an being could never embody desires of such fluidity. So instead his projection - and his projection alone - manifests simply in his own image (unlike the others, whose projections had distinct looks that did not resemble the actual exiles they arose from) and makes itself available to do his bidding and cater to his every whim.

Either way, neither explanation requires any appeals to any lingering effects of his fight with the Elder. Perhaps all that his fight with the Elder did was leave Sirus insensate by frying his nerves so he couldn't enjoy sensual pleasure anymore. Or maybe he was always like this and chose to go with with Zana's expedition merely for the challenge so as to stave off all the boredom (he does say he feels 'alive' when he finally faces a 'real challenge' i.e. us, as well as when he comes close to death), and it wound up making him even more powerful by the end and thereby leaving him even more bored.

Basically, there are explanations for him that don't require any Elder magic.

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Basically, there are explanations for him that don't require any Elder magic.

I haven't watched this new video, but doesn't Zana outright say that it is the Atlas itself that causes people to go mad and that is clear now that the Elder's influence is no longer present? It would make sense, the Shaper had became engrossed and obsessed with his ideas of perfection separate to what the Elder was doing.

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Exile009 wrote:

Sirus is resistant to his projection for a similar reason that Frodo was resistant to the One Ring - there just isn't very much the thing can use to tempt them.

In LOTR One Ring doesnt "give" any power it only enhances it. Hobbits are weakest species among all and thats why One Ring has least influence on them. But in hands of for example Gandalf it would be very different thing because Gandalf is a Majar (something like angel). That is where its corruption power is. And because it is a part of Sauron every holder of One Ring will become Sauron-like being no matter who he/she was before.

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

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Basically, there are explanations for him that don't require any Elder magic.

I haven't watched this new video, but doesn't Zana outright say that it is the Atlas itself that causes people to go mad and that is clear now that the Elder's influence is no longer present? It would make sense, the Shaper had became engrossed and obsessed with his ideas of perfection separate to what the Elder was doing.

Perhaps, in that the Atlas is a pliable echo chamber for the ego of anyone who wanders along. If you're a religious fanatic, you can mold the microcosm around you into something resembling a religious organization with yourself at the helm. If you're a giant crustacean, you can entrain your corner of the atlas to be a mud flat populated by ragged, sunburnt scavengers and top-heavy, stolid seabirds and other tasty morsels.

You could even warp the reality around you by obsessing on a disturbing event from your past, like having to face Doedre and how it was emotionally harrowing and all, such that you create what you expect to see as if you're going through Doedre's putrid base of operations all over again. You'd not enjoy being in that place and you'd abandon it at the first opportunity; but because of how the Atlas might be expected to work, it retains your phobias, hangups, traumas, and nightmares just as you left them, and someone else may stumble into them.

It would take a superhuman effort to NOT have your subconscious emotions and drives shape the malleable material of the atlas; even the Shaper left signs of his insecurities, regrets, past traumas, and personal demons writ large in various tilesets.

And like any ecosystem, these microenvironments can sicken, corrupt, and be lost to follow-up. They can be effaced and rebuilt by newcomers with a new set of hang-ups, obsessions, desires, hatreds and fears.

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VolcanoElixir wrote:

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Basically, there are explanations for him that don't require any Elder magic.

I haven't watched this new video, but doesn't Zana outright say that it is the Atlas itself that causes people to go mad and that is clear now that the Elder's influence is no longer present? It would make sense, the Shaper had became engrossed and obsessed with his ideas of perfection separate to what the Elder was doing.

I mentioned the Elder because that's what the video speculates about. But you could just as well substitute the Atlas. My basic point is that Sirus' personality doesn't lend itself well to being consumed by some single driving ambition. Either he isn't easy to tempt, or he can only be tempted with more power to do anything. He doesn't have any one grand motive, like the others do.

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de99ial wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

Sirus is resistant to his projection for a similar reason that Frodo was resistant to the One Ring - there just isn't very much the thing can use to tempt them.

In LOTR One Ring doesnt "give" any power it only enhances it. Hobbits are weakest species among all and thats why One Ring has least influence on them. But in hands of for example Gandalf it would be very different thing because Gandalf is a Majar (something like angel). That is where its corruption power is. And because it is a part of Sauron every holder of One Ring will become Sauron-like being no matter who he/she was before.

I could be wrong, but my understanding of LOTR is that while the power the Ring grants you is indeed based on your own power, its corrupting visions are based on your desires and/or convictions. So while yes, hobbits gain the least amount of power from the ring, the reason they're also least tempted by it is cos of how contented they are with their lot in life. They aren't as susceptible to being blinded by pride (like Elves), greed (like Dwarves) or ambition (like Men).