Summary: Their god is the Elder and has now become Sirus.
I got a better summary of the game's story. You were never in control of your own destiny, but rather the puppet of everyone else.
You've already read it, but for those unaware:
Spoiler
"
Pizzarugi wrote:
The only time you do anything of your own free will is to go clear the passage into the flooded caverns. Meanwhile, Tarkleigh or Nessa are constantly telling you to kill things. Tarkleigh wants you to clear a way to the mainland by cutting through Brutus and when you do, Piety cuts off the path inland. You continue following Tarkleigh's objective by seeking an alternative route by killing Merveil, trekking through the woods, and unblocking the passage.
In act 2, you're told bandits are terrorizing the villagers, so you're tasked to go deal with it. You do, in a fashion, by either killing them all or sparing one of them. Meanwhile, Gruust tells you to investigate old ruins where blackguards were spotted. In there, you rescue Helena who tells you Piety is up to no good, so you need to make your way to Sarn by going through Vaal ruins. You unleash a dark entity in the process, so everyone guilt trips you into fixing your own fuckup. You make your way up the pyramid and kill the sun-eating monster which somehow breached into Sarn during the time you were there.
In act 3, you're told to rescue Tolman, but were too late. As you head into the sewers, Maramoa tells you to kill Gravy Sauce. Several hitches in the journey lead you to the gemling queen who helps you get around Gravicius's barricade. After murdering him, you're then told to deal with Piety. After murdering her, you're told you still gotta kill the guy responsible for her being here in the first place: Dominus. After you climb the tower and murder him, Dialla shows up and says your ass is still not done murdering.
In act 4, your job here is real simple: Kill Malachai and the beast. You do it, killing Voll for access to the mines then Kaom and Progresso the Soup King for access to the beast. As you murder Malachai and the beast, you're told there's a portal to return to Oriath.
In act 5, you wind up in the middle of a clusterfuck of a rebellion, so you slaughter your way through the carnage. When you get to town, you're sent off to go murder more high-ranking templars because freedom. You do that, and it turns out one was harboring a god with not-so-Innocence intent. You beat the purity out of him before the antichrist shows up and says you fucked up, and now an apocalyptic hunger god is nomming everything. Of course he wants you to fix your own fuckup. You go find a staff to reach him, fight a living statue who beats you by realizing that shiny stick = bad. You're then rescued by the antichrist who says you haven't fixed your fuckup so you gotta go back to Wraeclast and buff up by taking something from the dead beast.
In act 6, you're immediately told to kill undead rich people and Tarkleigh goes back to giving you orders about finding Nessa who fucked off somewhere. You find out she's been corrupted by Mr. Krabs and now you're on a whirlwind adventure to save her and commit deicide. Oh yeah, and collect the soul of one of Malachai's BFFs along the way. You kill the oversized crab god, but you're not done playing Cuphead and collecting souls for the devil, so you hitch a ride with a sassy pirate ghost who's now your best friend.
Act 7 is still the same, go find the next BFF and steal his soul. Oh and by the way, the village went to shit while you were gone, so you gotta kill a god and his puppet who gave you shit the whole time you were in act 2, so that's fun. During the soul stealing adventure, you find out the strange poet in act 2 has a severe case of arachnophilia so Eramir tells you to go slap some sense into him. You find the black widow's lair and discover that Yeena takes "hot fox" very literally and burns you a passage inside. When you get to the bottom of the spider-infested hellhole, you're once again too late to save the mad poet who gets nommed by the overgrown spider. The antichrist is still breathing down your neck about your mission, so you take a fragment of her power and fuck off back to Sarn.
Act 8, Hargan tells you the town, just like the village, turned to shit and there's a deflated balloon of a woman causing it. Turns out it's Malachai's 3rd BFF, so you kill her and steal her soul contract for the devil who tells you to return to the beast. Cool. By the way, two divine twins who control the sun and moon are alive, and vying for control over whether to turn the world into an easy-bake oven or a dark ice cube, so Maramoa tells you to murder both, because that for some reason won't fuck anything up. I forgot to mention Grigor is missing and surprisingly, it's not because your slow ass didn't rescue him in time. You go to praise the sun and moon before killing them before Totally Not Satan tells you to proceed forward.
You reach act 9, only to discover the town has become TOTALLY FUCKING METAL! The embodiment of your closeted demons tells you that you need to go back into the beast, but you can't go back in the same way you did in act 4 because fuck you. Fetch quest time! Sin Nye the Antichrist is gonna teach you how to make a bomb! Also the leader got abducted by a power-hungry traitor, so rescue her or something. Also more fetch quests by the obligatory twinsies, and a request for revenge by a lady who loved petting an armored reptile-thing 24/7 in act 4. You make your way to the core of a rotted beast, after fetching a gland from a monster that wins staring contests by turning contestants to stone and some powder in storage room guarded by a walking electrical pylon. Satan tells you he's going to make your soul-collection efforts a complete waste of time by freeing them, so you gotta go and kill them again in their own little realms of delusion. You do that, but that's not good enough, so now you gotta go into the corest of cores and kill the trio yet again, except now they're essentially a balloon animal made by an amateur. You kill it, dead beast shits you out of one of its pores, and somehow pirate lady and her sassy granddad were already there waiting for you.
Finally, you're at act 10. Hey look, the town turned to shit while you were away. Who'd have thought? The guy who shouted at you for beating the purity out of his god now needs help, so you're told to go rescue him. After you do, he says he wants to awaken the god lurking in his guts, so you gotta fight your way through Hell City to find the staff of head honcho templar who previously harbored him. Before I forget, Sassy Granddad pirate wants to get his bone on, so he asks you to fetch him a love potion, and his granddaughter wants to go on a pirate adventure and tells you to get her a map, but you don't have to do it or anything. Oh, and the lady-who-totally-wasn't-gonna-betray-you in act 5 totally betrayed you when you left, so you're asked to kill her. You get the staff, dude goes super saiyan and vaporizes himself because this isn't DBZ, and his god thanks you by opening a passage to Hungry Man. You fight your way through the water channels and face the giant once-statue again, but not before the antichrist and his brother admit they're both weak as shit and hide it by saying you're the hero of the story. When the fight's over, it turns out you are a real heartbreaker!
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build!
And the winds will cry / and many men will die / and all the waves will bow down / to the Loreley
Summary: Their god is the Elder and has now become Sirus.
I got a better summary of the game's story. You were never in control of your own destiny, but rather the puppet of everyone else.
You've already read it, but for those unaware:
Spoiler
"
Pizzarugi wrote:
The only time you do anything of your own free will is to go clear the passage into the flooded caverns. Meanwhile, Tarkleigh or Nessa are constantly telling you to kill things. Tarkleigh wants you to clear a way to the mainland by cutting through Brutus and when you do, Piety cuts off the path inland. You continue following Tarkleigh's objective by seeking an alternative route by killing Merveil, trekking through the woods, and unblocking the passage.
In act 2, you're told bandits are terrorizing the villagers, so you're tasked to go deal with it. You do, in a fashion, by either killing them all or sparing one of them. Meanwhile, Gruust tells you to investigate old ruins where blackguards were spotted. In there, you rescue Helena who tells you Piety is up to no good, so you need to make your way to Sarn by going through Vaal ruins. You unleash a dark entity in the process, so everyone guilt trips you into fixing your own fuckup. You make your way up the pyramid and kill the sun-eating monster which somehow breached into Sarn during the time you were there.
In act 3, you're told to rescue Tolman, but were too late. As you head into the sewers, Maramoa tells you to kill Gravy Sauce. Several hitches in the journey lead you to the gemling queen who helps you get around Gravicius's barricade. After murdering him, you're then told to deal with Piety. After murdering her, you're told you still gotta kill the guy responsible for her being here in the first place: Dominus. After you climb the tower and murder him, Dialla shows up and says your ass is still not done murdering.
In act 4, your job here is real simple: Kill Malachai and the beast. You do it, killing Voll for access to the mines then Kaom and Progresso the Soup King for access to the beast. As you murder Malachai and the beast, you're told there's a portal to return to Oriath.
In act 5, you wind up in the middle of a clusterfuck of a rebellion, so you slaughter your way through the carnage. When you get to town, you're sent off to go murder more high-ranking templars because freedom. You do that, and it turns out one was harboring a god with not-so-Innocence intent. You beat the purity out of him before the antichrist shows up and says you fucked up, and now an apocalyptic hunger god is nomming everything. Of course he wants you to fix your own fuckup. You go find a staff to reach him, fight a living statue who beats you by realizing that shiny stick = bad. You're then rescued by the antichrist who says you haven't fixed your fuckup so you gotta go back to Wraeclast and buff up by taking something from the dead beast.
In act 6, you're immediately told to kill undead rich people and Tarkleigh goes back to giving you orders about finding Nessa who fucked off somewhere. You find out she's been corrupted by Mr. Krabs and now you're on a whirlwind adventure to save her and commit deicide. Oh yeah, and collect the soul of one of Malachai's BFFs along the way. You kill the oversized crab god, but you're not done playing Cuphead and collecting souls for the devil, so you hitch a ride with a sassy pirate ghost who's now your best friend.
Act 7 is still the same, go find the next BFF and steal his soul. Oh and by the way, the village went to shit while you were gone, so you gotta kill a god and his puppet who gave you shit the whole time you were in act 2, so that's fun. During the soul stealing adventure, you find out the strange poet in act 2 has a severe case of arachnophilia so Eramir tells you to go slap some sense into him. You find the black widow's lair and discover that Yeena takes "hot fox" very literally and burns you a passage inside. When you get to the bottom of the spider-infested hellhole, you're once again too late to save the mad poet who gets nommed by the overgrown spider. The antichrist is still breathing down your neck about your mission, so you take a fragment of her power and fuck off back to Sarn.
Act 8, Hargan tells you the town, just like the village, turned to shit and there's a deflated balloon of a woman causing it. Turns out it's Malachai's 3rd BFF, so you kill her and steal her soul contract for the devil who tells you to return to the beast. Cool. By the way, two divine twins who control the sun and moon are alive, and vying for control over whether to turn the world into an easy-bake oven or a dark ice cube, so Maramoa tells you to murder both, because that for some reason won't fuck anything up. I forgot to mention Grigor is missing and surprisingly, it's not because your slow ass didn't rescue him in time. You go to praise the sun and moon before killing them before Totally Not Satan tells you to proceed forward.
You reach act 9, only to discover the town has become TOTALLY FUCKING METAL! The embodiment of your closeted demons tells you that you need to go back into the beast, but you can't go back in the same way you did in act 4 because fuck you. Fetch quest time! Sin Nye the Antichrist is gonna teach you how to make a bomb! Also the leader got abducted by a power-hungry traitor, so rescue her or something. Also more fetch quests by the obligatory twinsies, and a request for revenge by a lady who loved petting an armored reptile-thing 24/7 in act 4. You make your way to the core of a rotted beast, after fetching a gland from a monster that wins staring contests by turning contestants to stone and some powder in storage room guarded by a walking electrical pylon. Satan tells you he's going to make your soul-collection efforts a complete waste of time by freeing them, so you gotta go and kill them again in their own little realms of delusion. You do that, but that's not good enough, so now you gotta go into the corest of cores and kill the trio yet again, except now they're essentially a balloon animal made by an amateur. You kill it, dead beast shits you out of one of its pores, and somehow pirate lady and her sassy granddad were already there waiting for you.
Finally, you're at act 10. Hey look, the town turned to shit while you were away. Who'd have thought? The guy who shouted at you for beating the purity out of his god now needs help, so you're told to go rescue him. After you do, he says he wants to awaken the god lurking in his guts, so you gotta fight your way through Hell City to find the staff of head honcho templar who previously harbored him. Before I forget, Sassy Granddad pirate wants to get his bone on, so he asks you to fetch him a love potion, and his granddaughter wants to go on a pirate adventure and tells you to get her a map, but you don't have to do it or anything. Oh, and the lady-who-totally-wasn't-gonna-betray-you in act 5 totally betrayed you when you left, so you're asked to kill her. You get the staff, dude goes super saiyan and vaporizes himself because this isn't DBZ, and his god thanks you by opening a passage to Hungry Man. You fight your way through the water channels and face the giant once-statue again, but not before the antichrist and his brother admit they're both weak as shit and hide it by saying you're the hero of the story. When the fight's over, it turns out you are a real heartbreaker!
Oh man yeah I do remember the post - memorable because..
Spoiler
Gravy Sauce
However I did not see that video before that was actually enlightening. I need to watch some of her other lore stuff now.
I do remember the harbinger thread. I contributed by asking if anyone recognized:
... but that was about the extent of it.
✰CARD✰ The Survivalist
I can’t buy any more big supporter packs because the forum only supports showing 7 legacy tags.
"it's true my father wants me death and he's using that rabid dog to do it"
the exile is just a puppet in the story, you're constantly doing someone elses chores until you're done with killing sirus after that it could be considered that your will is your own..
"Parade your victories, hide your defeats. Mortals are so insecure."
Poe 0.2/10
Returning to poe in 3.27: ATROCIOUS game performance, 5/10 league and I apprently missed the loot back in the last league. The more things change the more they stay the same..
What does the fo... eh sword say, when you kill whom?
Piety: Finally! Die in My fire, you bitch, just die! ...Wait, where's the body? She got away again?! Argh!
Piety in Black Core: Stabbed right through the guts. Screaming. Impaled. Twitching. Now that is a proper way to die!
Gruthkul: Poor old mother Ursa. I take no delight in what we have just done.
"
Foreverhappychan wrote:
THAT was your breaking point? Not the Auschwitz-invoking piles of emaciated corpses in Lunaris, not the seemingly endless pools of blood, not the flayed skin corpse shrines, not the massacre of citizens and totally-not-WW2-inspired design of the Templars' icon in Act 5, not the slaughter of animals in a literal cage match in Bestiary, not the plundering of a Mesoamerican civilisation's treasures in Incursion...but the John Wick-ripped idea that killing someone's pet is excuse enough to go on a slaughter spree.
Really?
Spot-on, Forever. I remember during my very first playthrough with Agrahaval 5 years ago when I got to Lunaris Level 2. I had to stop a bit because I was gagging. I mean, I was used to hellish view and all, but that... that was oddly disgusting.
Not to mention the whole gull things. I hate Tokyo Ghoul precisely because cannibalism. I didn't even did that Daedra mission in Skyrim because of that (I am not vegan, mind you. Just don't like the idea of devouring human flesh)
And for you,
"
xNagato wrote:
[Removed by Support]
Absolutely no need, and to put the visuals in aswell and make it a big part of the story, you are sick.
First off, thank you for the spoiler. Did it today but I knew for a fact the cat would not have survived. At least now I know she had a name. Pretty similiar to Ina, which was the name of my cat, who died 8 years ago. And I still miss her and see her in many other cats my friends have.
Second:
Pray tell, how many Labora-dore your character has killed so far?
You know, those dogs who wanders in Laboratory and Forbidden Library biomes in Heist, near their Tane Cosplayer owners.
They are not dogs as in "hellion dogs", which have ben gifted a human face because "they are scarier now", as GGG said. Not dogs like Wolves in Caer Blaidd. Not even dog as in Purge Hounds. Dogs as in, Dogs. Actual PET dogs. You know, those nice things you have on a leash when you walk around in towns and in maps.
What did your character did to them?
Made them bleed to dead with a bow?
Shattered them in many little pieces after deep freezing them?
Made them explode in a lightning blast, courtesy of an explody chest?
Or blasted their corpses for Sacrifices and Zombie fodder?
Meme cat with monocole and bowtie can't even be killed with one quite-clean stab (I expected her to be beheaded, given KarstXGianna's comment), but labradors with two vats on their spines filled with pus getting detonated in the name of Queen Atziri are A-OK, apparently.
Gruthkul: Poor old mother Ursa. I take no delight in what we have just done.
Definitely one of my favourite lines. I'd written so many snarky ones, so many angry ones, so many...scornful ones, when it came to Gruthkul, I just took a deep breath and sort of asked myself if there were something OG might empathise with in Wræclast, what would it be? Not gods of war. Not genocidal femme fatales. Not this seemingly endless stream of *genuinely* stupid men, each setting themselves up as some sort of authority when all they are is one more rung in a pathetic ladder. No, none of those. But a mother driven mad by grief? Now that resonates with a Goddess who thinks she knows all about love.
If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between.
But a mother driven mad by grief? Now that resonates with a Goddess who thinks she knows all about love.
It is indeed a strong quote, grief can give you a strenght most unearthly. After all, what do you have to lose when everything you care about is already lost?
Still, I believe one of the most powerful lines you did for OG in order to represent her [softness|humanity] was the one for Ralakesh.
"What injustice that such horror be so freakishly fertile, while others cradle arms and sing lullabies but to themselves."
The idea that a Goddess of Love, no matter how twisted is her way to show affection, no matter how much delight she gets to set the world ablaze and no matter how cynical is her point of view still has a maternal side... makes me shudder to read it even now.
Last edited by Maxtrux#0762 on Oct 11, 2020, 11:21:58 AM
"What injustice that such horror be so freakishly fertile, while others cradle arms and sing lullabies but to themselves."
The idea that a Goddess of Love, no matter how twisted is her way to show affection, no matter how much delight she gets to set the world ablaze and no matter how cynical is her point of view still has a maternal side... makes me shudder to read it even now.
Oooh you got that one eh. That's not for Ralakesh the many faced; that one's for the disgustingly productive Puppet Mistress, Ryslatha. Again, I could have gone the easy route and put some variant of 'eeww bugs' but as if a sword, a goddess at that, is going to say something that lame (she doesn't hate giant spiders or scorpions, she just finds them unpleasant to penetrate).
Also I think the wiki has it wrong. It should be 'cradle empty arms' to drive home the image of 'others' (by implication, her) quite pathetically rocking an imaginary baby to sleep.
I don't know the details yet; I haven't gotten that far into unearthing her story, but I just struck me as the sort of thing she'd say to a mother taking her kids for granted. Whether she's sincere or not...who the fuck knows.
Anyway, nuff derailing. Back to pointing out the seemingly expansive catalogue of casual gut-churners thrown into PoE for shock value. Or, if we're being a little less savage, genuinely good gross-outs.
Here's one of my favourite: fucking Maligaro made his own Map out of his own entrails, and we enter it to kill his ego, which has taken refuge in a fairly bland setting despite the limitless nature of Maps. That's really good game design in that you have the narrative, the mechanics, the character and the gameplay all working in harmony to offer up an appropriate player experience. It tells you without a word that for all his bluster about being an artist, Maligaro's imagination couldn't do any better than lacklustre mud, mush and some variants of his beloved Black Death and Fidelitas. And that's even after using his own body as a canvas. What a fucking tryhard little emo-goth he really was.
But the cake for me goes to the Belly of the Beast: what could have been three levels of just grossness and gore is actually an aesthetic expression of decay and pathogenic invasion: each level of the Belly is increasingly rancid, going from sanguine tones to the tell-tale yellows and green of infection, and then finally to the grey of very contaminated meat. You can almost smell how rancid it is. And of course this is all a result of Malachai corrupting the Beast from its hearts, which therefore is once again full of vitality and blood because, I suspect, it's the last part of the Beast to resist Malachai's presence. Ah, that series of areas is SO damn good.
So it's not that the grotesque or the macabre is in itself bad storytelling or 'gore for gore's sake' -- it's when it's done in a shallow, specious way that people, gamers, should take umbrage. Not because it's offensive, but because it's lazy. Both of the examples I gave recycle assets very efficiently and effectively -- it is not inherently lazy to reuse what you've got. It is lazy to casually use established imagery to evoke real-world horror in your fantasy setting -- for example, piles of corpses on carts, tri-tone armbands reminiscent of genocidal fascism, or sacrificial altars in Mesoamerican-inspired pyramids.
If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between.
I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period.
Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on Oct 11, 2020, 8:16:44 PM
Yep, sorry, that was Ryslatha. Ralakesh's quip is about how unpleasant are relatives' visits. Relatable.
"
Foreverhappychan wrote:
It should be 'cradle empty arms' to drive home the image of 'others' (by implication, her) quite pathetically rocking an imaginary baby to sleep.
I don't know the details yet; I haven't gotten that far into unearthing her story, but I just struck me as the sort of thing she'd say to a mother taking her kids for granted. Whether she's sincere or not...who the fuck knows.
I would agree on the part of "offensive quip against a mother that takes children for granted", were it not that the first part is about that. Ryslatha's quote seem very introspective, and paired with the one for Gruthkul, conveys (at least to me) the idea of an everlasting will to allow life - the pretty, educated life, not the prolific and parasitic one - to keep living even in the grimest of the places, even those so crawled of violence and negativity like Viridi Wraeclast.
The best part is that, considering your answer, it seems you did not even wanted to convey, that feeling. And that's even more brilliant :D
---
Agree with the Maligaro part, and how it managed to convey its low ability as an artist. I can think of a certain Lucio Fontana guy, a "painter" that became famous because its "painting art" didn't revolve around paintbrush or fancy colouring, but rather careful slashes. That's right, its art is ripped canvas. No color, just slashes. Were we to compare it to Malachai, we would expect the map carved from its entrails to be just a black void with a few cuts here and there. Of course there are other kind of reasoning behind it, of course we can believe Lucio to have a different, personal idea of what is "beatiful" or "artistic". Maligaro, on the other hand, just wanted to be in his own little world of gore and poison, and looks like he wanted to be considered an "artist" in order to justify his brutality.
If I need to think about Creation in Flesh, I can think of Sarkicism (hello to any SCP reader) which can be easily explained as the last stage in Ashes of Ariandel expansion of Grim Dawn: tumoral masses of ever-expanding flesh, crafted with ill intent given by a Flesh Shaper (hey look, Shaper!). The Beast attempts to do it with the Eye Hatchery, Skeletal Archers and Gut Flayers, but I can think of them more like the Beast's immunitary system trying to get rid of the virulent Malachai, more than his creation. Now that you bring attention to it, it was indeed a good level design - I should have felt it when I did not gag the first time I went in there, despite being in something else's gut should be more digusting than seeing a landscape of Blood And Gore (tm)
Agreed, indeed, that body horror can be used as a new way to express unease or unnerving. That said, I find right now a bit difficult to think, right now, about some body horror that does not plagiarize either our own human history (with the examples you gave me) or the concept estabilished by Fleshcrafting I've read around. Granted, I know there are, but can't think of them right now
Huh, never heard of SCP. That's really fascinating. Emergent, organic horror fiction on the internet is not really my cup of tea but when it's done right, it can be truly unsettling.
Another derail however, one best left unfollowed for now.
No sign of OP, so I suspect this is nearing its end. I wonder which they'd find more offensive: what GGG have done here in using a new character as a sacrificial motivation, or the way Blizzard disposed of their legendary Horadric scholar Deckard Cain.
If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between.
Meh, it's just a cat. They can go extinct. Honestly, I rather have rats, than cats shitting in my garden and catching/chasing the wild birds that visit my garden.
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die. " ~ Hunter S Thompson ~
