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#604509 30/05/17 10:27 PM
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Can someone explain to me what it is?

Kadajko #604623 01/06/17 08:00 PM
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The Source is some kind of Magic in Rivellon. You can learn a bit more about it by playing DD.

In fact, The Source was - as far as I can remember it - originally envisioned as some kind of well located under the town of the healers (Aleroth) there - or the magic was flowing out from that well, I don't remember it anymore.

Further than this I cannot remember any deeper explanation.


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Originally Posted by AlrikFassbauer
The Source is some kind of Magic in Rivellon. You can learn a bit more about it by playing DD.

In fact, The Source was - as far as I can remember it - originally envisioned as some kind of well located under the town of the healers (Aleroth) there - or the magic was flowing out from that well, I don't remember it anymore.

Further than this I cannot remember any deeper explanation.

My mind is a bit fuzzy but I do remember Aleroth-the-village and its well, and then didn't Aleroth-the-city in Ego Draconis also have it? It had Source Square anyway, which sounds like it would be the site of the well and I'm sure there was some reference to it but I forget now.

Raze will know since he seems to indelibly remember all these factlets that the rest of us forget!

Last edited by vometia; 01/06/17 08:39 PM. Reason: names: I shouldn't post when so tired!

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Kadajko #604629 01/06/17 08:41 PM
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I kind of think of it as the magic of creation. Hence "Source." But more generally it seems sort of like "Life Essence" as well, hence obtaining it from souls and whatnot. In the first game (D:OS), Source was corrupted, but I don't know if that was temporary or permanent.

Some guy on Reddit: "Sourcery is a special type of magic originating from 'The first garden' the domain of Astarte, godess of the source."

Take from that what you will. Given how central it is to the game, it probably would be nice to have some detailed lore on source very early on (or perhaps there is and I haven't found it.)

Kadajko #604632 01/06/17 09:02 PM
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Raze i summon you give us the official answer of this question!


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Originally Posted by Baardvark

Some guy on Reddit: "Sourcery is a special type of magic originating from 'The first garden' the domain of Astarte, godess of the source."


I thought it was a form of magic, but it isn't necessarily magic, there are warfare / huntsman source abilities for example.

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It feels like a leftover from creation. Like the cosmic microwave background perhaps - or dust (if you believe Phillip Pullman)

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"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:19)...

Unlike ordinary particles, Dust is conscious. It falls from the sky, is attracted to people, and wears off onto objects made by people. This makes it of great interest to the Church, which believes that it may be the physical manifestation of Original Sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_(His_Dark_Materials)

That's how I visualize it anyway...

Kadajko #604667 02/06/17 03:39 PM
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Originally Posted by Kadajko
Originally Posted by Baardvark

Some guy on Reddit: "Sourcery is a special type of magic originating from 'The first garden' the domain of Astarte, godess of the source."


I thought it was a form of magic, but it isn't necessarily magic, there are warfare / huntsman source abilities for example.


You could argue that even the warfare source skills are magical somehow, or that source magic flows through the warrior as they completely overpower a character, or enables the archer to shoot a ton of arrows in quick succession.

If Source isn't magic, I don't know what it is. It's an ethereal substance that enables acts of great power.

vometia #604726 03/06/17 09:44 AM
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Originally Posted by vometia
My mind is a bit fuzzy but I do remember Aleroth-the-village and its well, and then didn't Aleroth-the-city in Ego Draconis also have it? It had Source Square anyway, which sounds like it would be the site of the well and I'm sure there was some reference to it but I forget now.

Raze will know since he seems to indelibly remember all these factlets that the rest of us forget!


Well, Aleroth was incredibly changed for Divinity 2, wasn't it ?

I only remember someone from around the BD times trying to see EVERYTHING in the original DD maps that were there with the game ... He managed to visit a lot of locations that were still there although cut from the game content due to those infamous time constraints. He managed to do so via using those 2 tgeleport stones, since the player's character could not walk within the cut content maps.

I think his thread might still be buried somewhere in the DD sub-forum here. I'm not sure anymore, but I think his name might have been Barnabus.

So ... there indeed was a place found by him which was actually "the source" deep under that well. He had made a screenshot of that. It was at that time used as some kin d of "parking space" for lots of NPCS - cut ones, too.

This "source" was indeed kind of "infested" or how one could call it ... I'm not sure at all anymore, but I think that there was even a quest to clear it up again ?

The most astonishing part, however, was that there was a cat-like antagonist to Arhu. A little bit like an "evil mirror" of him, and that cat was there at this "source" / well. It had a connection to it, but I don't remember anymore what kind of connection. This is all so long ago now ...



Edit : It might be here : http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=77614#Post77614

Quoted from there :

Originally Posted by kiya
http://divine-divinity.quantentunnel.net/maps/Divinity_53.jpg
And here is the Dreamcat and the Source of Life

This was taken out of the regular game and is only left over in this In-Between-World. You go to sleep in the House of Madness/Iona's dungeon and wake up here, the Dreamcat changes you into a rat and challenges you to a race - if you survive until Polymorph wears off, defeat the cat and drink from the Source, you are a human again. Maybe she should be called Nightmare-cat wink - you can guess, into what the cat will shapechange (hint, in which dungeon were you?) - Bronthion: problems with Polymorph lead to taking that quest out (Hmmm, maybe this is the cause of the trapped chests in the sewers? Kiya think



Last edited by AlrikFassbauer; 03/06/17 09:48 AM.

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Kadajko #604730 03/06/17 10:08 AM
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Such a shame that stuff was cut: sounds like a few unanswered questions may have been answered! I should fire up the Developers' Cut and see if that enables any more exploration options of vestigial bits.

Aleroth is certainly very much bigger by the time of ED, not to mention the slightly more interesting topology of the area. I did wonder about its sudden expansion but I guess that's what cities often do... I played ED and DD in the reverse order so I was equally surprised to find out how much smaller Aleroth was just a few decades prior!

It's a pity that site has gone: the text is still on archive.org but most of the images aren't, it seems.


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Kadajko #604736 03/06/17 12:31 PM
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I vaguely remember that Aleroth was changed during some sort of cataclym during which the fjords came to exist, too ... I read that somewhere as an explanation during the Divinity 2 times ...

What I find most interesting, however, is this expression :

Quote
Source of Life


I remember that it ran dry ? at one point before Divinity 2 took place, which was why people (like one certain NPC in the first or second village of Divinity 2) had begun looking for replacements ...



I never played Divinity 2 / FOV to the end, and D:OS only to a part, so I'm not familiar with additional information.

Last edited by AlrikFassbauer; 03/06/17 12:35 PM.

When you find a big kettle of crazy, it's best not to stir it.
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"Interplay.some zombiefied unlife thing going on there" - skavenhorde at RPGWatch
Kadajko #604738 03/06/17 12:59 PM
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The "some sort of cataclysm" is what I was trying to think of: that created the fjords too? I guess that could have consequences for the Rivellon Map Project, although I guess the general landscape didn't change that much since a lot of the locations around the fjords (as well as Broken Valley) are evidently a lot older than the past 50 years.

I guess the NPC is Richard of Aleroth? I had to fire up the game as I couldn't remember his name, but he's the annoying Champion guy who's strutting around Broken Valley Village trying to obtain things for either Aleroth or Rivertown, I forget which offhand. Now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall him saying something about Source, though my memory is as unreliable as ever. Maybe we should try harder to summon Raze. biggrin


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Kadajko #604800 04/06/17 07:10 AM
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In Divine Divinity the Source was used by healers, discovered by the "meditation-explorer" Ruganol during the Age of Deception (roughly 1000 years before the Age of Chaos, when DD takes place. The Age of the Damned and the Renaissance were between those 2 ages, and the first 3 were 4-600 years each. The historian that first divided recent Rivellonian history into those ages also predicted that after the Age of Chaos would be the Age of Lies, a time of great trouble for the 7 races.
A ship carrying Ruganol (and others) landed on the northern coast of Rivellon when demons and wizards had Rivertown under siege. Ruganol offered his services to Duke Dylan Ferol, and taught other healers how to make a mental connection to the Source. When the war against the Damned was won he was given the tile 'The First Healer', and left to teach those in other countries about Source.

One of the books said that some healers thought the Source was a minor deity (calling it a "primitive belief"), while most believed it to be an extra-dimensional energy field.

The 'cataclysm' was the magic unleashed in the war with the Black Ring, after Damian's return to Rivellon.

Aleroth being built up quickly isn't surprising. Gold rushes have built cities in a couple decades, so 80 years for Aleroth, with a similar boom in healing potion production, can easily explain the change.

Kadajko #604806 04/06/17 07:54 AM
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Isnt source explained in the Original Sin as a power-energy that Astarte gave to humans and other races?
But she got tricked by the void and so source became corrupted.

Im pretty sure thats what the Time weaver reveals to us and so on.


Kadajko #604822 04/06/17 10:33 AM
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Yes. In DD and D2:DC there was no source give for Source, and healers were no longer able to connect to it for unknown reasons.

Kadajko #604827 04/06/17 11:24 AM
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That is why im conflating Source and magic. I just took those explanations from Astarte to mean its all connected, for some reason. Probably zoned out and havent really listened.
But the setting and the games doent make a clear distinction either.



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Source as I understand it, is basically divine magic. Its directly linked with the gods and when the gods are weakened or attacked it can become corrupted.

Kadajko #605614 19/06/17 04:01 PM
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I'm curious if they will explain it more in D:OS2 or the coming lorebook and if they deliver an explanation for it's absence in a (possible) Divinity 3.

Last edited by Zelon; 19/06/17 04:02 PM.
Kadajko #608969 04/09/17 01:16 PM
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The source is made up of midi-chlorians young Skywalker, all life is.

You have been chosen to bring balance to the source.

Kadajko #609064 05/09/17 04:19 AM
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It seems to be 'Animating Life Force'. You can find it gathering in places as a liquid, and using this kind of Source empowers your spells and abilities (Aleroth used it for healing). When Source is inside a person it is effectively their Soul, since you can do terrible things like rip the Source out of someone and make them stop existing / no longer able to go to the Hall of Echoes. Or enslave people by taking their Source.

But you can also add more Source to an already living thing, which gives you immortal wizards. Or keep Source inside a corpse (or soul jar) so that they continue to be animated even after death as Undead. Or pump them so full of Source they become a weapon.

Last edited by Incendax; 05/09/17 04:23 AM.
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