Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Some Lore Questions... [spoilers]

Just finished the game, and was hoping that someone could help explain the following...

1) In other Divinity games, the Black Ring had the goal of summoning the Chaos Demon via Damian (eventually). But in DOS2, they have the goal of the return of the God King. Is this just a retcon?

2) Where does Damian fit into DOS2 lore? If the Black Ring are Sworn to the God King - was Damian retconned to be just another God King Sworn? Or is he in the faction of Dr. Daeve / the Advocate? And on that line of thinking...

3) What faction do Dr. Daeva / the Advocate align with? Are they just a separate 'demon' faction that doesn't really tie in with the Source / Void portion of the rest of the story?

4) Can someone explain what is up with Dallis after you defeat Braccus? Even if I finish the fight without Dallis being hurt at all - she still offers that dialogue that seems to imply that she is gravely wounded - what is going on here?

5) Why did Lucian Deathfog the elves? Ifan was in my party (left me on the Nameless Isle, though) and the last I heard was that he had been tricked by Lucian into gassing the elves - and that he must have had a reason - if so, what was it?

6) What did the Seven hope to gain by attacking you after the destruction of the Well? They had been substantially weakened by this point - how would destroying you have improved their situation? Or was it a fit of irrational rage brought on by your perceived failure?

7) Why did the Nameless Isle even exist? The game states that it was something of a training ground for new 'divinities' - however, only one divinity (that we know of) had ever arisen - Lucian. Was it just something new since Lucian had 'died'? But wasn't Lucian's death also extremely recent to the events of DOS2?

8) Why are the Voidwoken drawn to Source usage? Sure - Source is the power of the Veil as well as the power of life (right? as it basically constitutes the spirit of all living things) - and the Voidwoken are stuck behind the Veil (apart from the hole that the Seven tore in the Veil to gain their powers?). But why would the usage of Source draw the Voidwoken? Why wouldn't they just pour through the hole that exists in the Veil and try to take over the world?

9) What are Godwoken? Just people that possess the ability to use Source?

10) What happened to Fane to make him forget his past? I mean - does just being knocked out/sleeping/whatever for a long time mean he forgot his past? Seems unlikely as other Eternals you run into (particularly the one in the temple that Dallis stole the Aeteran from) seem to have been in a similar situation and still remembered everything perfectly.

11) What is Braccus? An Eternal? Is he Sworn? Or was he like, more or less - an 8th to the Seven? I understand he is the ancient 'Sourcerer King' - but I feel like I just want a better idea of where he fits in here.Also, why did Dallis and Lucian need him? I understand that he developed artifacts to help 'steal' Source - but couldn't Lucian already extract Source?

12) Why did Lucian need to fake his death? Why couldn't he have just cleaned up all of the Sourcerers himself? Bad PR - I guess? The only thing I can think of is that his disappearance gave room for the Voidwoken to wreak havoc, which then put a modicum of public support behind the Magisters for the program against the Sourcerers. Which then means they can cook up some story of how he returns in the end and the Voidwoken attacks correspondingly cease?

hahahaha....OS2 deviates from the lore of the Divinity games. Plus it also raises questions when you look at the first game, as well.

I think your questions need your own interpretation as answers, though.

This thread is a bit old, but the answers are worth answering ... for everyone^^.

1) No, not a retcon. D:OS2 plays before Divinity 2. Damian was banished to Nemesis, but nobody knows this at the moment. The Black Ring thinks their god is dead, so they looked for another and found the God King.

2) Damian is the Damned One, the reincarnated God of Demons. Like I said, he was banished and everyone thinks he's death. I guess the next will finally be about the last fight between him and Lucian (and about Redemption, since both did a looot of stupid things the last hundred years).

3) Jupp. He's just a big bad archdemon. They tend to do their own stuff and since Damian isn't there to boss him around, I guess he thought he could get away with it.

4) Don't know either. I guess Braccus breaking away from her costs her some energy?

5) Lucian tells you, that the Black Ring was winning and he saw Deathfog as the only way to win the war. That's why he sacrificed his elven allies and the whole mess started, since Tir-Cendelius lost his followers and the Voidwoken could invade Rivellon.

6) Honestly, they were doing and I think they wanted to absorb what was left you, so they could at least have some source to work with. They were desperate and as good as dead, when you arrived.

7) They retconned it a bit: now there were Divine's before and the Council of Seven was the place were they were created. This happened in the first Divinity, but now we have a real island to work with.

8) Source is the stuff, that creation is made off. It's basically your soul. They are hungry and they need it to survive, since they basically are just very hungry ghosts, that may have originated from the Hall of Echoes.

9) Sourcerers are people who can use source, godwoken are people who are able to get possessed by your god. Since mortals seem to be only weaker copies of their gods, who get auto-cannibalised by them, it makes sense I guess^^.

10) I guess the God King also sealed his memory away or being so weak (read: without source to feast) destroyed also a lot of his memory. I'm not sure either.

11) Braccus Rex was the greatest Sourcerer of all time and knew maybe more about it than, well, everyone. Lucian and Dallis used a lot of his older stuff (like the wands and creating monsters), so having the guy who designed everything seemed to be useful. He's just a very powerful undead sorcerer. And a dick. The biggest dick of the series.

12) Lucian needed to hide himself from the gods, so they didn't pursue him. The Divine Order was a tool of the Seven after all. Same goes for the Voidwoken, who may saw him as a big four star - dinner (and would have sucked him dry, let's be honest).

I think most of the rewrites go into Act 3, so I hope all will be a bit clearer .

8) Doesn't Fane's story somewhat explain at some part, that the voidwoken were basically the banished eternals, who were drained of their source? And to return they'd have to get back that source.

I've got my own lore question, and I might as well piggyback off this thread...

...but how on Rivellon does the Red Prince's plot line actually make sense without retconning sections of both Dragon Commander and Divinity II? Its the end of the line that is the problem, because it doesn't make sense when compared to establish lore - we know dragons existed in Rivellon for a very, very long time (books through Divinity II make a point of this constantly, what with stuff like "everything we know is the dragon's bequest") and so much so that even Maxos calls Aurora ancient in DC:



...as does Corvus...



...as does Henry...



...and as does pretty much everyone in Divinity II. Now, one of the main things behind the Red Prince's storyline is how the Lizards used to be dragons - that's actually somewhat possible if you believe that the Dragon Commander's descendents eventually married Lizards and had children with them - and so much so that it seems hinted that the Ancient Empire is actually a stray fragment of the now defunct Empire of Rivellon.

But why are they able to turn back into dragons, or have the Red Princess lay eggs that turn into dragons? It seems like someone at Larian wanted to make a Game of Thrones joke about the Mother of Dragons, but it comes off really strangely when you remember that Divinity!Dragons are much, much more powerful (remember, the Commander was only half dragon and was tossing around the Eye of the Patriarch as though it was candy, vaporizing armies with nuclear-esque blasts) to the point of being basically gods in their own right if you take the mentions of their power in Divinity 2 as true, and that becomes more pointed when you realize that the events of Divinity 2 cover in detail how the last true dragons actually left Rivellon ages ago, leaving only the Patriarch as the last dragon...which shows that the Red Prince's ending can't be one of the canonical ones because it doesn't line up with the events of that game.

Huh, I think I just answered my own question with the Red Prince's line being a "what if" scenario, but we'll continue

As I was saying before, it just doesn't seem to make much sense for that to line to happen as it does; even if the prophecy is that the Red Prince and the Red Princess both have enough of the DC in them to make dragon children, this is easily...what, eleven thousand years since the events of that game? And if its by pure prophetic magic, then how the hell did it happen, considering the sheer power of true dragons? Are the children they have "false" dragons in that they have the appearance of the true kind without the power? That has to be impossible, because we know from his ending that they let him conquer other worlds or something like that.

Am I missing something somewhere? The Red Prince's quest line has got to be, by far, the weakest of any of the origin characters storylines because it either makes no real sense or contradicts existing material, and that seems really, really strange for Larian to make that kind of mistake even if it is just a bit of ASOIAF meming on their side.

If I remember correctly, all the lizards were once some kind of dragons created by Zorl-Stissa but then had to be turned into lizards because of the impending extinction caused by a conflict between them and the other 6 races which was later undone by the Red Prince and the Red Princess.

It could be that Zorl-Stissa created these dragons in the likeness of the omnipotent, universe creating dragons like the Patriarch, but less powerful.
There was also put much emphasis on these lesser dragons being red, like the Prince and the Princess, probably to differentiate between them and the Patriarch, who has a much darker complexion.

But yeah, in the end, nobody knows what really happened, as a consistent timeline is pretty much inexistent.
It would be really nice if Larian would clear up these questions by presenting an updated timeline or, at the very least, tell us which games are still canon and which are retconned (please don't retcon Divinity II: ED)
The only information regarding the continuity I could find was this tweet by Swen: https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/919812290098147328
If I understand it correctly, this would mean that Div II: ED is still canon, but I'm not really sure.

As far as I'm aware it is: even if that does involve more wishful thinking than actual knowledge and certainty! I guess in which case it's also canon that Arhu survives his ordeal since he appears right at the very end. In feline form, of course.

I don't think they will retcon Divinity 2, since it ended with a good spot for the third game. So I assume the "sacrifice" - ending is canon.

@CaekDaemon

I think we can assume that there are three kinds of dragons:

- The old ones, like the Patriach and Aurora. They were there when the universe started and are really powerful and old.

- The dragon Knights, who get infused with dragon-/sourcemagic through breeding or transformation (which means, that Maxos had a godlike knowledge of creationmagic).

- The "fake" ones by Zorl-Stissa. Since it is implied, that the races are based on stolen ideas by the Seven, we can assume that the seven major races are massproduced copies. This also seem to mean, that the gods could change their design on a whim on the peak of their power. That's why we have now lizards ... but there is the question why we already had lizard-democrats in Dragon Commander. It could mean that the Lizards just turned their democracy into an Empire, because the Commander left a big impression on them.

Yeah, it's a good thing that the Divinity-Lore is mostly very vague about it's details. I really hope, that after Divinity 3 they will build a new franchise or take the next game so far into the future, that all the old lore will be just legends and vague references .

I just hope that the Definitive Edition patches the continuity up, but I'm a bit sceptical about that as fixing the continuity hasn't been specifically mentioned, neither in the Kickstarter update nor the video.

It would be a shame if these issues remain unresolved, given that these plotholes concerning the overarching storyline have been brought up multiple times in this forum.

...that's genius. I'm honestly surprised I never thought of that.

Head canon acquired, and here's hoping this is the actual lore canon as well, since it ties it all together with a neat little bow!