Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General [Ending] What are Source, Sourcerers, Godwoken?

This contains revelations from just before the final boss fight, so if you don't want spoilers, leave.

I would think that after 100 or so hours into a game, I would have a firm idea on what exactly Source is, what Sourcerers are and what makes them different from regular people, and what exactly Godwoken are (and what makes them different from Sourcerers).

Perhaps the fault is mine and I just failed to understand the explanations given. Or maybe it's a fault of the writers for not explaining it very well. The writers might have hoped that repeating the terms over and over again would be just as good as explaining what they actually mean.

Now, onto the ending revelations:
The one who gives the big speech before the final boss fight explains that Source is the veil separating Creation and the Void, and the Gods, greedy for Source, weakened the veil by drawing source from it in their hunger - ignoring the warning no to do so. That is what allowed Voidwoken to enter the world. Okay. That part I can comprehend.

The explainer then goes on to mention that to seal the hole again, all the world's source will need to be taken to seal it. ALL the Source.

This will leave us, the Godwoken as empty shells, Silent Monks. But here's where I get lost: Why WON'T that also happen to literally every living being on the planet?

Up until this point, I thought that Source was something like "Soul-powered magic". After all we see, all over the place, ghosts. Ghosts of both regular people and Sourcerers, and animals too. You can drain them to get a Source point. That is considered Evil for reasons I also don't quite manage to grasp. I guess because the Gods are bad for eating souls, which I don't really understand either. So I guess I fail to understand the point of the Hall of Echoes as well and why its important for souls to go there instead of becoming God Chow. Another one for the list.

So I thought Source was soul-powered magic, but apparently, it's not, and draining all the Source in the world will only negatively affect Sourcerers and not regular people?

On a related matter, I thought I understood what Godwoken were, they were individuals specially chosen by a god to be their replacement, at which point why would become the new god. They were not the same thing as the Divine One, who was chosen by the gods in unison to act as their collective agent against the forces of Chaos. (Speaking of which, the Lord of Chaos mysteriously was absent from the endgame explanation of the creation of the world and the races.)

I thought that was correct right up until Act 3, where there's a literal Academy to train them. I was under the impression that Godwoken were incredibly, super rare, even compared to Sourcerers, but they apparently come by the dozen, and failed candidates remain as guardians and teachers on the island.

So what are Godwoken, and what are they supposed to do?

And why are all these things still unclear to me at the literal end of the game?

I'm in the same boat as you, and understood just as much as you.

2 other things that were unclear for me:

- Why would the god give most (all?) of their source to the Divine ? Shouldn't they be greedy about it, specially since the Divine could (like Lucian) find out how evil they were and rebel ?

- Who are the voidwokens ? are they evil creatures originally from the void that were released when the veil was broken ? Because during the last fight Dallis says that they are "creatures" made from people of the ancient realm.

Hope someone can help us here

A little from column A, a little from column B. The ending has a lot of issues from a writing POV: how much source has been gathered? How much is needed? How much does each individual sourceror have? How much does each individual non-sourcerour have? Do you need all the source or just the source of sourcerors?
Lucian even goes as far as to say that they only need YOUR source, SPECIFICALLY. Unless that's in regard to the whole godwoken aspect then that means they either hunted down all sourcerors EVERYWHERE or you have a proportionally large amount of source; none of which is explained. Definitely the weakest part of the game story-wise. Also the sort of person who can justify genocide to avoid a bloody war is a mentally ill person and the writers should have acknowledged that. I mean, Fallout New Vegas hit the "Man who wants the good ending and willing to do unspeakable evil to accomplish it" character straight on the head with Caesar, don't see why Larian couldn't at least emulate the same.

I think the reality of the situation is that the story writers dropped the ball, and the universe lacks consistency. At least they explained why the elves dying mattered, that they at least handled very well, but that is just one piece of the puzzle.

And I'll repeat until the end of time: Where's Amadia in all this? Did she have a brand change to Astarte or what? IT'S A STORY ABOUT SOURCE WHERE'S THE GODDESS OF SOURCE GONE? JAHAN EVEN ADMITS TALKING TO HER!

[Continues ranting forever]

Here is what I understood of the whole story :

In the beginning, only the Eternals existed. The Eternal King at their head, the Seven Lords/soon Gods under him.
Fane discovered the Veil between Reality and the Void, a dome of pure Source, some sort of cosmic energy.
The Eternal King said to Fane "DON'T YOU DARE STUDY IT MORE OR BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN"
Fane said "fuck off" and went to inform the Lords about his research.
The Lords are greedy bitches (all seven of them... wow, that's bad luck for the King), so they drained the Veil and confronted the King, poor guy was casted out into Oblivion.
A war ragged between the pro King and the pro Lords (I guess the pro Lords were... only the Seven Lords themselves lol), but because they had Source as a weapon, they destroyed/sent a lot of the Eternals into the Void with the King.
For whatever reason, they all survived : the most powerful of them all, the King, became the God-King, some kind of Void God, the rest was transformed into Voidwoken (Fane say to us at the beginning "Eternals were from many shapes and sizes", and we can see it very well with the many Voidwoken species). But they ALL became corrupted by the Void, the God-King being the most resilient, he's still able to speak and stuff. The God-King wants to come back as the ultimate ruler of the world, and yes he's the victim... but now he's a mad and corrupted ruler who wants to enslave every mortal

Back into the present : the Seven Gods are awful beings, they created the mortal races (mortal for a good reason) to feed upon their soul/source (really similar) --> it's like if you use a bit of your power (Source) to create more food (mortals), and later you will feed upon this greater source of power (your original source imput x 1 billion of dead humans for exemple). The Hall of Echoes is basically a fast food for the Gods.
But because they drained the Veil, the world of the bitchy Gods is under the pressure of the Void, and that's why they all give a bit of their power to a Divine, their ultimate agent who must protect everyone against the Void while the Gods do nothing and feed upon the mortals.

But ONE DAY, Lucian the Divine was so badass that he discovered by himself that the Gods are evil (after all, they drained the power of the creation for themselves even if it meant the end of everything because of the Void, aaaand they provoked the extinction of their race). His plan is "simple" and... how do I put it... oh yeah, CRAZY : with Dallis, he wants to GENOCIDE EVERY PERSON WITH SOURCE IN IT. Every living person ? I guess not, so more like every person with a lot of Source in him (Sourcerers and Godwoken). Then, he will use the Source of everyone to repair the Veil, ending the Void threat.

And here is the main plothole : EVERYONE HAS SOURCE. PEOPLE WERE CREATED TO SERVE AS SOURCE FOOD FOR THE GODS. So if Lucian needs ALL the Source, nobody will be left alive ??
In the end, I guess Lucian meant "I need all the Source possible, from the Gods first, then Sourcerers THEN Godwoken, normal people are nothing". But I'm pretty sure the Source of millions of people is still a big deal in a plan to harvest nearly all the Source...

Problems : if mortals still exist, so too the Gods, so they will ALWAYS drain people in the Hall of Echoes. And they will also always drain the Veil... so Voidwoken will come back anyway. Nice plan Lucian.



And OP, you don't understand why "eating the soul of a person, destroying it forever" is evil ? Really ?
The universe of the game has an after life ! Eating a soul is like in our irl world : void/oblivion/non existence/nothingness.
It's like if in the real world, someone said "hey, after life exists, it's a really nice place where you can sleep/live with your dead family, for as long as your want... BUT the Gods will eat you one day". That's not nice.

I don't like Lucian. Looks like a wannabe hipster. Not my idea of a supreme being (even if he is a weak one).

Anyway (unless I read it wrong) the decision was to give up all source (not just your own) so everyone turned into silent monks.

I could well have misunderstood it though.

It seems that Amadia is Astarte, because she is depicted with small horns on every altar (however she doesn't have horns when Fane speaks with her in his visions). Plus, in the first Original Sin game all Source came from First Garden and became corrupted when that place turned into a battlefield between Astarte and the Void Dragon. And Amadia is called the goddess of Source in DOS2.

It also seems that the gods created living beings to be Source farms of sorts. They are born with some amount of Source in them and when they die, their Source is sucked by gods in the Hall of Echoes which serves as a reservoir of sorts. However, Sourcerers can channel Source and thus store much higher amounts of it compared to a normal being. So when you take all Source from them, they become brain-dead, and when you take Source from general population, they don't feel it (but maybe they are denied the afterlife). I also think that the Magisters were able to use the Aetheran to suck all Source from common folks. At least this is how I explain this, the game itself does a poor job in that regard.

I think you got it. Normal people don't have enough source to feel a drain... at least it's the most logical thing.

Thanks for your explanation, it it much clearer now.



Maybe regular people do not have source until they die ? In this game, you cannot source feed on regular NPCs, only on their ghost, so maybe they are only "charged" in source when they die, before reaching the Hall of Echo ?




I think the Hall of Echo is just a creation of the gods. A place where dead people go before they "really" die after gods eat their source.
As Lucian will destroy the seven by eating all of their source, the hall of echo will be destroyed too and the veil will be repaired.
No more pseudo-paradise, only a world where when you die, you die


Edit: is DOS2 story a follow-up to DOS1 (never played the 1st) ? How does the story chain together ?

I guess I'm seeing it as a sort of entanglement between source and soul similar to the effect of weeds in the garden: if it's a small amount, like a couple of dandelions, you can dig it up with no harm done; if it's a Japanese knotweed type invasion you end up having to napalm the entire garden. So if source is more of a weed, parasite or infection than anything useful then the worst cases will ultimately kill their victim.

I think all the confusion just goes to show that if key plot points of your story revolve around metaphysical gobbledygook, at the very least it should be clear and easy to understand. If you can't do that, then stick to things within the level of understanding of ordinary human beings (ie. your players).

I also completely fail to understand what is so "evil" about the gods eating souls for Source. As opposed to what, going to the Hall of Echoes where your memories are eaten until your soul dissolves into nothingness? That's different from becoming God Chow... how, exactly?

Between genociding the elves, to brutally murdering the people at the academy, to his plan to genocide Sourcerers, to his shameless exploitation of his worshippers and his plan to miraculously "arise from the dead", Lucian is the truly evil one here, which is not a thing I expected to say.

Personally speaking, I'm probably going to personally consider this game as non-canonical instead of Divinity 2: Dragon Knight Saga.

I hate it when people just say "this", but this.

The first segment of the game in Fort Joy I was quite captivated by: the down-to-earth aspect of people in power being horribly but matter-of-fact evil was compelling and disturbing, and gave actors' stories some point and poignancy.

But once it moved beyond that, I dunno. The OS2 universe really seems to sit apart from the rest of Divinity, both in the style of its retelling and its lore. I've really struggled to make sense of it and I simply can't. DD, D2 and DOS made sense to me; BD I can't comment about since I never finished it, but nothing about any of them seemed difficult or incongruous. But unfortunately a lot of OS2 was both difficult and incongruous. It's not what I would to consider to be the definitive Divinity: not only does it not work, it's kinda depressing.

I worry I'm being overly negative in saying that, but I really don't like the way it pans out.

Isbeil notes in her writings that a sourceror's brain is much better preserved after a longer exposure to toxins, compared to a normal person's brain. May be a small nugget in the grand thing of os2 lore, and explain a little about silent monks and the difference between ordinary beings and sourcerors.

But I am not trying to excuse any studio here ;D.

I would have loved to see mature and well crafted characters opposing the party.

I am willing to accept that she had an image change over the course of 1000 years. Let it hereby be known that I take your explanation as canon.

Actually, just remembering, didn't we have quite a lot of evidence that the silent monks weren't simply a result of having their source drained but because of the use of the rather charmingly-named "mind maggots"? I mean as well as the chap in the Fort Joy cells spelling it out, there was also the woman you could attempt to heal in Act 2 as well as the jars of the horrible things, as well as the tell-tale scars on the foreheads of all of the monks.

I admit I'm still waiting to do my second full play-through so I may be missing something obvious, but it seems that draining the source from someone is just a part of the process and may not really be all that significant. Though admittedly that doesn't quite explain the few wandering souls.

In Fort Joy high judge Orivand transforms a Sourcerer into a Silent Monk instantly just by purging her with a wand. So I don't think it actually requires mind maggots. But since you can craft a mind-control grenade from them, maybe Magisters just use them to turn Silent Monks into Silent Watchers? Most of the monks in Fort Joy are passive while the Watchers are actively fighting for their masters, and maybe mind maggots are needed for that.

Do we know if that was the only part of the process or was it the last stage of the transformation? She may have already had her visit to Kniles and stripping away her source may have been the removal of her final line of defence against the whole process. I mean I dunno, I'm just speculating, but I'm guessing the torture chamber was a significant part of the process, as Wendigo's now deleted dialogue about the subject also indicated.

the story is remarkably unclear and tonally all over the place after act 1, and by the time act 3 rolls around, all consistency sort of goes out the window. i don't know if the writers intended this, but the game certainly attempts to frame lucian and dallis as being a certain flavour of 'noble' for what they're intending to do

when really they're just the same old type of "the ends justify the means" genocide advocates who are willing to kill tons and tons of people in order to accomplish what they consider to be the 'greater good' (which the game does not at all make out to be the only solution to whatever problems the universe of this series has), without showing any form of remorse for it. the final scene in particular notes a tonal shift with dallis in particular. she commits some seriously atrocious acts throughout the game that don't accomplish much of anything other than displaying public cruelty. but then at the end she's all like "i respect you and sorry and stuff but anyway, lobotomy time!" i didn't buy it at all. nothing about lucian just showing up sitting in some chair with glowing eyes was compelling either

i don't want to keep disclaiming (retroactively) my criticisms of the game with "i still love the game", but i do think this game is great. it just has a lot of issues writing-wise after act 1. i agree with a number of people in this thread that act 1 did a really good job setting the stage for the game, but then the acts after that failed to follow up in any meaningful way and fall into "you're the chosen one!" tropes real quick


i'm pretty sure that encounter makes mention of 'mind maggots', and that they may have already put one in her head, but i'm not 100% on that

What I find the most ridiculous about this idea of Lucian really being all noble is that what seemed to set him off on the path to genocide was that the gods eat the souls of dead people.

I just totally fail to understand what the problem is.

Okay, the gods are eating dead souls. And what, exactly would happen to these dead souls otherwise, if uneaten? From what I recall of what the Hall of Echoes is as described in lore, it's a place where the souls of the dead have their memories and identities consumed slowly over time as they merge back into the plane. ...I'm not really seeing the key difference in the fate of the souls.

I don't think Lucian had a problem with gods eating souls. I think he tried to preserve the lives of mortal races and avoid a full-scale invasion from the Void (which happens if you become the new Divine one). The invasion was possible because of the gods who teared down the Veil and left the world vulnerable. Yeah, sure, they created mortal races, so he seems like an ungrateful bastard at this point leading a revolt against them, but I think it's actually kind of a Prometheus story - Lucian tries to save our lives (at least, you know, in mundane sense, I think people drained of Source won't turn into spirits ever and are denied the afterlife) and at the same time he frees mortals from the gods and gives them the power do make their own decisions.

I also see some funny parallels with Legacy of Kain series, where (spoilers) the local god also feasted upon souls and instigated wars and conflicts to increase the size of his meal (more dead people = more souls to feed upon). Maybe it's the same in DOS2 - gods are the reason behind if not all, but many conflicts, because they need to feed and thus need dead bodies.

So, bottom line, I think Lucian's motivations make sense in the end. But, again, the writers could have articulated it better.

It does seem very in-congruent with Divinity: Original Sin.

In the first one Astarte created source in the first garden. This could be Amadia and her creation of source in the first garden could be an allegory for them taking the source from the veil in the first. There is not indication of that though; it is just us trying to connect the dots for the Larian writers.

In the first one it seems that demons come from the void, whereas now it seems like only voidwoken come from the void. The demons and voidwoken/eternals are at odds with each other (Adramalikh vs God King), whereas in the first one the demons seem to be minions of the void dragon. What I've read on Divine Divinity implies that the leader of the Black Ring is in fact a demon? Did they just incorrectly think the God King is a demon? Are all demons actually eternals? Is the void simultaneously inhabited by demons and eternals? Are there different factions within the void..?

Why is there no mention of the source hunter guardians defeating the void dragon? What happened to them? Are they still guarding the void dragon box? How was the void dragon actually related to the void as we know it?

Also Braccus died three times now? Can he be dead for good please? I was expecting him to follow his own path instead of serving the God King. Braccus seems like the kind of character who believes he should be at the top of the food chain. Seeing him as just a minion in the end made me lose villain respect points for him.