Lore Errors[spoilers]

[Stoned]

If you are to ask Sembelbin in Edana about either the Orcs or Lor Malgoriand, there are some tid bits that contradict what the Lanethan has to say. The examples would be:



Lor Malgoriand wasn't an apostle, he was just some random necromancer that Torkalath chosed to be empowered. Here is a direct quote from the Lanethan explaining Jiro's first encounter with Kurgoth:

"With a sudden flash of crimson, a bolt of what seemed to be red lightning struck the ground not ten feet from where Jiro was standing. Now, smoke rising from his body, stood a terrible shape, a horrible demon with glowing red eyes. Jiro orders his skeleton to attack it, fearing that the dwarves had summoned him as a last ditch effort, but the skeletons were neatly torn in half as they approached. Slowly, the figure approached Jiro.

You are Jiro, the necromancer? it said in a deep, slicing voice, but it seemed to be coming from inside Jiro's head. The mere sound of it created a sharp, stabbing pain which shot down his spine. Blood poured from Jiro's forehead.

Y-yes, yes I am, he said, cowering.

Stop your groveling! Screamed the voice, which hurt even more. Jiro stood straight.

I am Kurgoth, apostle of Torkalath. My master wishes to have a Disciple on this plane, someone who will do his bidding while I am indisposed, it said. Jiro stammered, and Kurgoth knocked him down with a fierce backhand.

In return, much power will be given to you, so that you may enforce chaos wherever you find it.The mention of the word power seemed to clear Jiro's head, who immediately stood up again.

I accept, he said, his eyes flashing with greed."

And the next example:


Felewyn killed Lor Malgoriand:

"Oh evil spawn of the lost Loreldians, your power cannot hold here! The power of harmony will overcome you, wretched creature. Begone now, forever from this world, and trouble my children no more! said her voice, and it was like a thousand choirs singing in unison. Lor Malgoriand, cringing in fright, was lifted off the ground into the sky, and with one fell swipe of Felewyn's mighty sword of light, his body split in half. A great black soul, like a wraiths shadow, emerged from the body, and the great Loreldian snatched it quickly into her hands."

And the last example:


Lor Malgoriand himself did not create the Orcs; Torkalath did:

"We shall make you a new army, from a new creature which my master has prepared. Look out of your window, and you shall see them awaiting your command. They are brutal, and hate all living creatures other than yourself, and their strength is much. Pray you do not waste these! said Kurgoth, and he disappeared. I noticed that Lor Malgoriand's fate line was ever increasing in strength, dangerously large: it nearly mimicked those of the great kings of old."

That's all for now. This isn't a gigantic deal, but it would be lovely if it was changed.

 

[Thothie]

Revised lore > older lore.

There be differences from the older Lanethan works and some of his newer stuff and more differences still in the various efforts to revise and streamline the whole beast. There's been a great deal of butchering going on.

So... In answer to above...

• Lor Malgoriand was an Apostle. Kurgoth was actually deposed before he was born in the newer lore, but Lor Malgoriand "inherits" Kurgoth's amulet as part of the Apostle deal, which allows him to control the dead (in the later Lore, Jiro isn't an evil necro from the start, so much as he is a really angry farm boy.)

• While it is Felewyn who struck the final blow, the Apostles did fight a great battle against him, actually losing one of their own.

• The ability to create Orcs is amongst the very first powers granted to Lor Malgoriand. Granted, any power Lor Mal had, outside of those granted to him by The Lost, are Torkalath's, so I suppose you could still say that.

Where the older lore and Sembelbin depart, Sembelbin usually has it right. Getting the rest all ironed out and into in-game books has been a slow-going process (in addition to technical issues with graphic format sizes).

 

[Orochi]

Don't worry, since MS:S takes place after MS:C we can retcon stuff like that in the sequel anyways if we find it doesn't fit.

 

[thesupersoup]

But we'll try our best to maintain consistency.

 

[Srgnt Rehab]

I don't see this as a lore error, its just that Sembelbin has no clue what he is talking about... the stories have been orally recited through the generations and things get a little messed up here and there.

 

[Lanethan]

And note that I fully (but quietly) support these retcons. The "Lanethan" story is literally 13 years old now, and shows its age and my inexperience as both a storyteller and a designer. The analogy of treating it like an oral history where some of the details have been fudged over time is an excellent one.

...though I am humbled that even now people still quote it.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

The muse has returned!


What I think should happen to the lore, in as many cases as possible, is for conflicting elements in the various writings to be merged together. For example, if you read a number of Lanethans writings you are left with this question: is The Wall one massive wall-foretress like the great wall of china built to defend against Lor Malgoriands army? Or is it a series of ancient fortresses (a "wall" of fortresses) designed to defend against the wyrms and dragons that live in The Bleak?

In my mind, it would be ideal if the lore was changed so that The Wall was a series of fortresses built long before Lor Malgoriand to defend against the Wyrms and Dragons that lived on the bleak. During the Age of Blood, the Elves united all of these ancient, abandoned fortresses into one giant wall-fortress for use as a line of defense against Lor Malgoriands armies.

Also, I have come to agree with Thothie in regards to Pathos. He is too similar to Urdual and muddles the story. Editing that sequence of events, however, needs to be handled with great care as it is a pivotal point in the story (the Loreldians finally have to admit that their presence on the mortal plane does more harm than it does good).

I disagree quite a bit with what is being done to the character Lanethan, though. His story should change as little as possible, if at all. It's especially wrong to make the severe changes that seem to have been made. If I recall correctly, the priest in Edana now claims that Lanethan became an apostle during the age of blood. This severely warps, even makes impossible, some of the important events that happen during this age. If Lanethan has only recently ascended to apostleship how is it possible for him to journey to the soul well in an attempt to revive his old friend Idemark who became an apostle literally eons before the age of blood?

You could just say that Idemark also became an apostle at the same time as Lanethan, but if you are going to do that you might as well just write a different story. Edits like these are at best completely superfluous. At worst, they destroy the story entirely.

 

[Thothie]

to defend against the Wyrms and Dragons that lived on the bleak

Four dragons on whole planet
They can fly
Build wall to stop them
Wat?

Nevermind that, of the four dragons, only two have been actively hostile (yet fail to share any goals or faction), one has sided with Felewyn, and the remainder just wants to be left alone.

Lanethan and Idemark are about the only part of the story we haven't been messing with. Sembelbin's lines regarding the time of Lanethan's apostlehood were written up well before I got here, but I fail to see how, in either case, his age makes any difference on his ability to retrieve/merge with his friend's soul, given the source of his power, and the immortal nature of souls. It doesn't really have anything to do with the dramatic nor symbolic structure of the story at hand.

In any case, the goal is to consolidate the variations of the story in such a way that emphasizes the morals of the story and provides a solid symmetry to the conflicts that make up the backdrop of the universe. Minor details such as those don't factor into such an effort. (Especially when attempting to boil down the story to a series of religious texts short enough to fit in game.)

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

Four dragons on whole planet
They can fly
Build wall to stop them
Wat?

There are four dragons left alive during the time period in which the game MSC takes place. That was not the case eons ago.

I am also preparing a rather long wall'o'text regarding my favorite things about the msc lore, but i've not finished typing it yet and will post later.

 

[Thothie]

There are only four dragons left alive after the War of Fate, which predates the elves and anyone else who might bother building a wall there, said dragons being created by groups of like-willed Loreldians as engines of destruction during said war.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

According to this segment of the "History of Daragoth" document there were more than four dragons alive after the war of fate and, moreover, some were even killed by enlightened races.

Syrrus (SEER-us) and the Dragon Krathor (KRAY-thor)

An elf who was born a poor peasant, his schoolings in life were focused around
becoming a warrior. He left his family in Melanion, a city built south of the ruins of
Kray-Edoralad, when his training was complete, and he wished to wander the world in
search of fame and fortune.
From his journals, it can be learned that he stumbled upon something vastly
important, which even he refrains to name, hidden in some secret place. He returns home
to announce his triumph to his parents only to find that a Dragon named Krathor had been
terrorizing the city, killing many (his parents included). Stricken with grief, he returns to
his treasure and removes it, taking it with him to Deralia, in the hopes of finding out
exactly what it is. He sketched it in his journal:



A rock with golden spots, and a light source shining golden light from within. He took it
first to a smith, who said the gold was worthless. Determined to find the answer, he took
it to a Wiseman, who is not named. This wiseman immediately recognized the light of
gold coming from within of the rock, and recited this poem:

Hidden in the grasses and waters of Daragoth,
lost in the sands of time�s immortal dance,
a hero will be born at the discovery of the light of gold,
a hero will find the blade of the Fyrlance.

Syrrus noted that he had been unable to break the rock open, proving that he must
not be the hero. The wiseman saw it was more a fear what the prophecy might entail than
a truthful observation, so the wiseman chanted the words of opening, and behold the
Fyrlance was revealed. Insisting that Syrrus must know of some great deed that needs to
be performed, Syrrus� mind recalled that the Dragon was still probably around Melanion.
Bidding farewell to the Wiseman, Syrrus returned to do battle with the Dragon, wielding
the Fyrlance, which still shone with a fierce golden light.

The Dragon Krathor was a Green Dragon, of Fire Breath, and his perch was atop a
mountain a couple dozen miles outside of Melanion. Scaling the mountain, Syrrus was
badly injured in a fight with a Cave Troll, bursting out of its lair and grabbing him from
behind. Coughing blood up, his left leg nearly useless and gangrenous, he reached the
summit. His battle with the Dragon was obviously fierce, as an onlooker from below
notes:

�And I saw the moutaintop blaze, and a hideous dragon scream, the likes
of which I had never heard before. Lights and flashing, the fierce screams
of a young man echoed into the forest below. And suddenly, in a blinding
flash, I saw the Dragon rear back, a gold light shining from a point emblazed
in its chest, and it flew off towards the sea. I heard no more of the man.�

South, about 50 miles, the people of Seaside recalled this:

�A green streak across the sky, tinted with flashes of gold, and the thing
hit the water with such force that many of our boats were torn apart
by the force of the waves. The splash reached a hundred feet into the
sky!�

Syrrus was found a couple of days later, when a brave group of explorers,
including the one who had seen the effects of the mountaintop fight, scaled the mountain
themselves, knowing the dragon to be gone. His body was torn to pieces, but on his face
a smile was worn. He will forever be remembered as a hero in his age.

And also:

Elderath (ELL-dir-ath)
An elf king, he founded the city of Kray-Edoralad near where Melanion is now. He was
the first of mortal race to slay a dragon, and the first of mortal race to behold one of the
Apostles, an apostle of Felewyn, who reffered to him as one of her children. He forged
the blade known as �Fyrlance�, and it is said that as long as the elven race exists, this blade
shall not break, nor show sign of wear.

Not to say that this doesn't conflict with other documents that we do not have access to. But documents like "History of Daragoth" are all any of us players have ever had to go by. As much of these public documents should be salvaged or reconciled as possible so that people don't get confused.


Also, there is one other thing to clear up: what I have read does not say that a wall was built to defend against dragons on the bleak. It says either A) A wall, presumably similar to the great wall of china, was built during the age of blood to stop the advancing armies of Lor Malgoriand or B) a series of fortresses built in ancient times to defend against the abominations that lived on the bleak (like dragons and icewyrms). It formed a metaphorical 'wall' that said abominations could not realistically pass. It would take some real digging to find these exact passages though.

My suggestion was to merge the two ideas so that the ancient series of fortresses were united into one superfortress duirng the age of blood as a line of defense.

 

[Thothie]

That old leaked document is a collection of random ideas that, for the most part, never made it into the lore themselves, which is why we don't have it officially linked anywhere around here.

Besides, the rarity and near god-like status Lanethan eventually gave the dragons, allows players to have world-shattering conflicts without doing anything so dramatically inappropriate as battling the gods themselves. Treating them otherwise, just demotes them to random boss monsters, and removes that buffer. (Which would be a real shame, given the quality of the models we have pending for them.)

 

[Stoned]

This is semi-relevant to this thread, but why was Master Sword named after the nickname for the Atlas blade o _O? The blade doesn't really encompass what the story is about, it's not like MSCDude is donned in a green tunic and is in search of this mythical blade :| Legends of Fate or Fatesworn or even Era of Legends would have more relevance than Master Sword.

 

[Thothie]

You know... I have no idea why the name was chosen, but the name of the game predates the lore (or at least, the introduction of the lore), including the Atlas Blade. So my first thought was Zelda.

 

[Lanethan]

The game was called Master Sword long before there was a story. I joined the team when it was a half-life mod with a dagger and a staff.

The lore for the Atlas blade was made, partially, as an attempt at retconning the name of the game into something meaningful.

 

[Gorynych]

The game was called Master Sword long

I love you Lanethan.

Yes, I know what he said - I know what it was initially supposed to mean.