[Slowpoke Lorecrafting] The Conquerors and their associations with our exile character classes

So, ever since Conquerors of the Atlas launched, with the lore sort-of being that the Conquerors are an abstraction of the playerbase's characters during War for the Atlas, I occasionally think about how each Elderslayer maps to a given character class. It's always kind of bothered me that they were never quite exact. Baran is clearly Templar; Al-Hezmin exudes Shadow. That leaves Drox and Veritania in kind of a strange la-la land with Duelist, Marauder, Witch, and Ranger (presuming Scion is an abstraction of Sirus and Zana). Even if we consider them hybrids (Drox = Duelist+Marauder? Veritania = Witch+Ranger?), then it's kind of odd that some conquerors get 1 class associated with them while others are a mix of 2. I always just kind of shrugged it off as, well, the writers wanted creative liberty and didn't want to be bound to the Exile character class mapping, so the matches don't have to be exact or symmetrical.

However, thinking about it today, I thought, well, if we first get Scion out of the way by saying Sirus and Zana are the quirky master-of-all plot MacGuffins who get to share Scion, that does leave 6 character classes to divide over 4 conquerors, and 6/4 = 1.5, which does give us room to say that each conqueror represents 1 and a half character classes. This appeals to me much more now because who doesn't love symmetry?

With that, I settled on the following allocation:

Drox, the Warlord
100% Duelist: The glory of combat drives me. Pride comes before the fall of my foes who dread me in war, with my allies led by my banners, allowing them to tear through flesh and stone under my command.

• Focused on Attacks (Strength and Dexterity aligned)
• Banners = War Banner/Dread Banner (Champion aligned)

50% Marauder: Freedom via Strength.

• Slams (Strength aligned)
• Values freedom greatly (Marauder personality aligned)

Baran, the Crusader
100% Templar: I am the most faithful towards God. His divine wrath is meted through my instruments of zeal and virtue. My hierophants serve loyally, and my mind's devotion to God conquers over all matter.

• God/faith theme
• Wise old man (at least with Baran's projection)
• Melee/Spell archetype (Inquisitor aligned; Templar start passives aligned; Strength and Intelligence aligned)
• Huge Mana theme/Mana drain abilities (Guardian and Hierophant aligned)

50% Marauder: Strength from Passion.

• Slams (Strength aligned)

Al-Hezmin, the Hunter
100% Shadow: The mission is critical. My foes shall suffer swift afflictions from my elusive nightblades. Deadly ailments, ambushes, and assassinations will cull my foes with each strike.

• Dagger themed (Dexterity and Intelligence aligned)
• Poison/Chaos-hit themed (Assassin and Shadow start passives aligned)
• Likes to fight with quick dodging (Trickster and Assassin aligned)
• Influence mods are often Crit themed (Assassin and Shadow start passives aligned)
• Humorous commentary and amusingly egotistic personality (Shadow's voice line wittiness aligned)
• Wants to kill Drox (seriously, Shadow's voice lines and Al-Hezmin's dialogue are the epitome of wit to neckbeards like me)

50% Witch: Fear the Occult.

• Summons Snakes (Necromancer aligned)
• Chaos damage (Occultist aligned)

Veritania, the Redeemer
100% Ranger: The morally repugnant humans around me are unworthy of my purity. Precision, grace, hatred, and haste will allow me to slaughter the disgustingly irredeemable.

• Very cold themed (Dexterity aligned)
• Better-than-you personality (Ranger personality aligned)
• Hates humans (Ranger personality aligned)
• Main attacks are Projectiles (Dexterity aligned)

50% Witch: Frigid is the pure.

• Vortex Cold DOT Map influence effect (Occultist aligned)

That basically ends up with Witch and Marauder getting the short stick, which I think is relatively fair as their character story arcs don't seem to fit well with the kind of story they wanted to tell with the 4 Elderslayers' personalities. Witch is kind of too evil, kind of bluntly/broadly Spell-aligned, so probably can't weave much in the way of interesting stories there. Marauder also is kind of blunt, just a very strong dude who abhors slavery in favour of freedom.

What do you think? Do you think the character classes were divided up this way by the writers? Do you see different class-to-conqueror mappings? Is destroying me as easy as flicking a pest? Is this lore discussion boring and small?

(And yes, I know I'm nearly 2 years late to the party.)

i much rather seem them as the elements of the game, drox being phys, veritania cold , alhezmin chaos and baran lightning, wich leaves sirus as fire though sirus does not use very much of fire abilitys himself, considering on an roleplaying point of view fire is the strongest magic and sirus is deffenetly the strongest of them all. also even if he dosnt use much fire himself, meteors are deffenetly something fire related and the storms are also somewhat of a firery nature burning oriath basicly. that all being said, this is just how i view the conquerers and not divided into classes. but then again i always love to see lore themed threads as i personaly think poe has a very good and great story especialy for a free to play

quick edit: now thinking again, almost all of his spells are somewhat of a fiery nature visualy, even if they dont neccesarly do fire damage

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Terspet wrote:

i much rather seem them as the elements of the game, drox being phys, veritania cold , alhezmin chaos and baran lightning, wich leaves sirus as fire though sirus does not use very much of fire abilitys himself, considering on an roleplaying point of view fire is the strongest magic and sirus is deffenetly the strongest of them all. also even if he dosnt use much fire himself, meteors are deffenetly something fire related and the storms are also somewhat of a firery nature burning oriath basicly. that all being said, this is just how i view the conquerers and not divided into classes. but then again i always love to see lore themed threads as i personaly think poe has a very good and great story especialy for a free to play

quick edit: now thinking again, almost all of his spells are somewhat of a fiery nature visualy, even if they dont neccesarly do fire damage

That's a real interesting take. Sirus does seem to kind of be master-of-all. Searching "nearby enemies" on craftofexile.com shows that Drox is the one who has the "Nearby enemies have -x% Fire Resistance" so it seems the developers may have tried to align Drox with Fire, not Physical.

So actually if I were to take your idea, that would make it more symmetrical/beautiful -

Physical. The basis/foundation of all things. Affects all conquerors. (This "basis of all things" kind of also fits well with damage conversion mechanics, where everything can derive from physical, and physical doesn't derive from anything).
Lightning. Baran.
Cold. Veritania.
Fire. Drox, for some reason.
Chaos. Al-Hezmin.
Physical, Lightning, Cold, Fire, and Chaos. Sirus, Awakening the physical foundational basis to become all elements and chaos.