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The Arx Secrets Thread
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So this isn’t a secret but I do briefly want to state.
In my time playing Arx, my character (and myself) developed a theory that primum = potential and magic = story. Essentially beings had potential (primum) and through force of will they enacted their own desires on the dream to gain an outcome (magic). Assuming it was intentional I want to say it’s very clever to make a magical system written in a cooperative RP style game basically run on story. It’s something everyone should be able to understand and it’s just wishywashy enough that you’re not bound to any magical rules lawyering.
That is one of the reasons I thought songs got brought up so much besides being a potential nod to Tolkien with his whole song of creation thing for the genesis of Middle Earth. Songs are the oldest form of storytelling and a bunch of critical information was conveyed via songs or poems and a lot of cool magicky stuff was initiated by songs.
Anyway if it wasn’t intentional than I enjoyed it. If it was intentional than kudos to the staff team for taking that direction.
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@Arik you got it!
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This relates back to Destiny, even. Under Destiny, there was one song, which the Sirens sang. Future was predetermined, everyone had their role, and time more or less had no meaning because no one could change their role and all of the First Children were totally immortal, as Death didn’t exist. He Who Waits was basically there to be Destiny’s enforcer, and was scary enough that dragons were worried about crossing him. As an aside, another clue talks about him planning for time magic shenanigans to put everything back the way it was after Destiny died, but that power was stolen from him by Oracle before he actually got it. I’m not sure Oracle was ever an entity the playerbase really knew about, but that’s a different topic.
Aion and Tehom are the Dream and the Nightmare, basically reality, and the way you work magic is by effectively convincing reality to do what you want it to do, and you’re more persuasive if you’ve got higher potential (aka primum) because you’ve got a greater ability to influence the story. If you want to look at it that way, what Wolf did was basically convince reality to change a fundamental concept of the world and it broke everything, with the very incarnation of “fuck you, I do what I want” choke slamming Destiny out of existence and causing the domino effect of…basically everything else.
As far as I know the Kindly Voices weren’t really a thing during Destiny’s reign. They enforce the Unbreakable Laws of the Dream, which are only unbreakable in that you sure as shit shouldn’t break them, so that requires the choice to break them anyway. I could be wrong on that, though, but either way the Kindly Voices are a sort of…separate unto themselves thing that exist for that singular purpose.
Anyway, by all means, absolutely keep asking about lore secrets.
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As another aside, this is also why the Horned God basically went out of his way to be the Worst. He was a terrible dude to start with, but pissing off the entire world wasn’t accidental. The reason he kept having Daughters and sacrificing them was because it would make him more and more powerful, and the reason it made him more and more powerful is because it increased his importance in the story. By breaking the Unbreakable Laws over and over and over again, and not only that but setting it up so he could keep doing so, he kept building himself up to the Dream as a Big Deal. Making tons and tons of enemies, some of whom devoting their entire lives to destroying him? An even Bigger Deal. His gambit to become a god was more or less “I am actually the biggest deal, bam Destiny is alive again and does what I want”, which is insane, but is also how magic works.
On the other hand, however, righteous revenge is also a very tempting story. You’re a bigger deal to the Dream if your forever nemesis is the guy trying to make himself a god, rather than that asshole neighbor dumping leaves in your yard. So he was also empowering all of his worst enemies in the process, and taking a massive gamble that he would be able to ride that danger tsunami long enough and high enough to succeed.
Edit: Gonna also note that the final Bad that nearly destroyed all of reality itself was known as the Eater of Stories.
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@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
… I’m not sure Oracle was ever an entity the playerbase really knew about, but that’s a different topic.
With respect to Orichalcum, how was he even able to try to resurrect Destiny in the first place? Was he really just that significant to the Dream and it’s as simple as that?
One thing about magic I’ve wondered is whether Writs had some relevance to Destiny, in that Writs “preordained”/enforced your actions; you weren’t able to do anything the Writ proscribed. That is to say, what type of magic is a Writ, exactly, since they seemed to be unaligned (i.e., could be elysian, primal and/or abyssal in nature)? Where I’m going with this is that I’ve been curious whether or not traces of “destiny magic” existed in the world in some form. The moon was Destiny’s skull, so Destiny was kind of still there, and He Who Waits presumably didn’t have a fundamental change in existence when Destiny died, much like Prism didn’t seem to over what happened with Skald, so I feel like there was more to the story about what Destiny dying really means if Destiny could be resurrected in the first place.
Needless to say, I find Destiny and now Zircon fascinating. >.>
Also, hypothetical food for thought, but imagine if Death or the Wheel somehow reincarnated Destiny as with Calithex killing Baalphrigor, per Apostate’s AMA. Zircon’s reaction would be priceless… and probably very Concerning
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‘Stories are important’ is how I wound up heading two info-gathering organizations and trying really hard to keep the information either character knew separate.
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@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
His gambit to become a god was more or less “I am actually the biggest deal, bam Destiny is alive again and does what I want”, which is insane, but is also how magic works.
…so the real key all along to winning Arx actually was to cultivate, in MU*ing terms, serious Main Character Syndrome?
jk, jk
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@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
… I’m not sure Oracle was ever an entity the playerbase really knew about, but that’s a different topic.
In very short (because I don’t really know much more than very short), Oracle was the one Siren who managed not to go completely insane. She can see through time’s possibilities without giving in to madness or despair. She stole time magic from He Who Waits and gave it to Copper, which is why Copper is/was the only person who was ever able to use it.
A clue!
[Yesterday and Tomorrow: A Khati Bedtime Story] (35 Rating) Tags: copper, Zircon, Destiny, Nefer’khat
A book in the Great Archive that purports to collect stories from other cultures has what appears to be the transcription of a bedtime story to children in the fabled land of Nefer’khat:My children, you must not speak too harshly of those who are not of the Blood. True, they lack the wisdom and strength of the Primordia that flows from mother to daughter, but they are capable of many great things. Attend me, children.
Once, long ago, the twin sisters of Dream and Nightmare created all that is, was, and ever shall be. Nightmare was satisfied, for her stories whispered into every heart, but Dream was troubled, for the peoples of the world were not truly free. It was mighty Wolf who counseled Dream on what she must do, and Destiny itself was slain.
Every child learns of the power of songs. All children are forbidden from heeding the songs of the Deep, for you know that they ring with madness and doom. They were not always thus, for the sweet singers were driven mad by the death of Destiny, and their songs splintered a thousand thousand times with visions of what Never Was and what Never Should Be. But not all, for one alone kept her mind.
We call her Oracle, for she sees all. The greatest servant of Destiny visited her. He lamented, “Sweet Oracle, have you seen what they have done to my father?” She did not weep for Destiny, but Oracle was as clever as He Who Waits was terrible, and echoed the woe of her sisters for him. “You must sing to your sisters and prepare them. They must silence the songs of Wolf, who sings to Destiny in his sleep, and I will travel to a day before the First Choice, to undo the choice that has been made. The First Choice will never be, Destiny will live again, and all will once again be set right upon the Path.”
At this, Oracle was sore afraid, for she knew that he could do such a thing. But Oracle was very clever, and saw what she must do. She went to the very dawn of days, when the sisters were crafting the world. She saw the birth of Destiny and his terrible servants, and saw when the sisters gave gifts to all their children. She saw herself and her sisters as they were given the crown of Songs, that they might sing of all that would always be. She saw her cousins of the sky, as they were given wings, and a crown of Breath through which they could speak of what Now should be. She stole one of the crowns that was to be given to He Who Waits, the crown of Time. She left a small thing in its place, so that he would not know what had been stolen, and traveled far away.
She walked for a long time, looking for what she knew she must find, walking through many tomorrows, many of which were tomorrows from yesterdays we have never known. And finally she found her, a girl with Copper hair, and knew it must be her. “You see as I see, Child of Skald. You see the world not as it is, nor as it was, but as it should be. And so I give this crown to you, so that it must always be so.” And so this Child of Skald would guard all our yesterdays, and ensure that tomorrow would always come.
With respect to Orichalcum, how was he even able to try to resurrect Destiny in the first place? Was he really just that significant to the Dream and it’s as simple as that?
Orichalcum fucked about with magic that already existed and basically turned it on its head. Since Wolf set Destiny’s death in motion, she also took measures to ensure Destiny would stay dead, in the form of the first howl, a song which she later taught her children, the Venandi.
The Wolf Queen one of the previous posted clues mentions was Raksha’hasa, the first Venandi. Orichalcum murdered her, and stole the knowledge of Wolf’s song. He then figured out how to completely twist it, so that instead of keeping Destiny dead, it would bring him back, and he forced the enslaved Mor’ral to sing it over and over again while killing all the Venandi so that 1. they couldn’t counter-spell it, and 2. no one would know the original, un-corrupted song.
There’s a lot of clues about it, but I wrote the majority of them and I don’t want to flood the thread with my lengthy nonsense (well, THAT lengthy nonsense).
Most relevant clue (that I didn’t write!):
[Howling at the Moon] (30 Rating) Tags: The Horned God, Venandi, Destiny, Mor’ral
The Elven War was a cataclysmic event through which humanity only barely survived, but the Scholars of Vellichor did not forget their mandate. Even after the Great Archive burned, they continued to fulfill their duty of gathering and curating knowledge, writing and storing all that they could. Many of the records of the grim reality of life after the devastation of war have since been lost to obscurity, as the victors were in no rush to remember all they had endured. However, sometimes rare bits of useful information can be found in even the most dry of sources, and such it is with “A Study on the Effects of the War Upon the Abandoned”, which largely consists of a small team of scholars who sought out and interviewed any shavs who would speak to them. One chapter was dedicated to shav tribes that had nearly been obliterated in the war, and one section was designated “Last of the Mor’ral”."I was too young to fight, but not so young that I knew the fighting was not going well. When the battle was lost, I was told to run, and I know now that I was the only one to escape. His voice called to them, called them all back, and your kind has never helped us. No help would be coming - you made that clear enough in the war, turning on us when we tried to ally. My family was gone. All of them, now enslaved to the master of chains. But that’s not the worst part. The part that scares me, and should scare you, scholar, was the howls.
I see your confusion. You don’t know that howls are songs, do you? You don’t know the story of Death and the Wolf? Well, let me tell you. A long, long time ago, we were all bound by the chains of Destiny. Wolf made a choice, and the Dreamer did too, and Destiny died. Death was born of that. Death came to us first, but not in the way you think. She came to thank our mother, and to warn her. She pointed to the moon, the same moon you see above us, scholar. In those days it was there every night, not just some of the time. And it was trying to wake up. You don’t believe me, I can tell. But it was. She told our mother that it was the skull of mighty Destiny, and that he was sleeping. We had to sing to it, to give it dreams that it must never wake, that it never again dictate where our paths must lead. So Wolf and her children would forever sing to the moon, howling our song night after night, singing Destiny to sleep, keeping our choices to be our own.
The Horned God took my brothers and sisters, and he has changed their song, scholar. I’ve heard it once, and my blood runs cold. They sing a different song to him now. Have you never heard howls that frighten you?
You may not know the words in their howl. You could never know. But somewhere, deep down, you know the meaning. They sing to the sleeping god, hoping to infect his dreams with chains and bindings, hoping to guide us on a path from which there will be no escape. They sing most loudly when the moon is over Farhaven, the tomb of their master.
My brothers are sisters are gripped in madness now, their minds bound in chains, their voices now a single voice that belongs to an evil you cannot fathom. And they sing with a single voice, a single purpose.
They sing for him to rise."
One thing about magic I’ve wondered is whether Writs had some relevance to Destiny, in that Writs “preordained”/enforced your actions; you weren’t able to do anything the Writ proscribed. That is to say, what type of magic is a Writ, exactly, since they seemed to be unaligned (i.e., could be elysian, primal and/or abyssal in nature)? Where I’m going with this is that I’ve been curious whether or not traces of “destiny magic” existed in the world in some form. The moon was Destiny’s skull, so Destiny was kind of still there, and He Who Waits presumably didn’t have a fundamental change in existence when Destiny died, much like Prism didn’t seem to over what happened with Skald, so I feel like there was more to the story about what Destiny dying really means if Destiny could be resurrected in the first place.
Needless to say, I find Destiny and now Zircon fascinating. >.>
Also, hypothetical food for thought, but imagine if Death or the Wheel somehow reincarnated Destiny as with Calithex killing Baalphrigor, per Apostate’s AMA. Zircon’s reaction would be priceless… and probably very Concerning
.There were traces of Destiny magic, though that’s not really anything I personally messed with, so I can’t really answer any questions about it. Writs, though, originated from Legion, as they couldn’t pre-ordain stuff, but they absolutely 100% removed someone’s ability to choose to do anything otherwise. They were also extremely hard to break, which is why they ended up being used so often by so many different actors. This is how the Horned God managed to deliberately tangle himself up in all of them to the point that he couldn’t actually be killed unless the actual concept of a writ was removed, thus breaking every single one of them. He could have been imprisoned…at the cost of every soul he’d threaded himself through being enslaved and kept from the Wheel forever.
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
He Who Waits became the Herald of an Archfiend though, it was a bit of a demotion and he’s been making it everyone else’s problem ever since. Terrible coworker.
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@Wizz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
His gambit to become a god was more or less “I am actually the biggest deal, bam Destiny is alive again and does what I want”, which is insane, but is also how magic works.
…so the real key all along to winning Arx actually was to cultivate, in MU*ing terms, serious Main Character Syndrome?
jk, jk
lol basically.
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@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
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@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
Aww.
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Do people have favorite clues? Did someone already ask that?
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@crawfish said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Do people have favorite clues? Did someone already ask that?
I have a favorite revelation, which is Fable Knows Your Name. Best visceral revelation I ever received. I literally went oh shit out loud when I got it.
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I had a Megalomanic goal to get the Oracle’s crown. Gianna had some link to the sirens I think, which I am very curious about (@clue 2227). Mostly when I brought it up the response was NOPE you’re gonna DIE so I eventually stopped pursuing it. I always wondered, though.
There was also the thirteenth crow dream (3033), which made Gianna decide she wasn’t going to tie herself to team good guy or team bad guy but instead try to… bridge between them.
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@crawfish Inspiration Says, ‘Thank you’
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@Quibbler I wanted to try and do the bridging thing too, but I don’t think I ingrained Bhandn into things enough to pull it off.
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@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
When did Skald step down, and who/what, if anything, filled the role?
@dvoraen said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
What was the world even like when Destiny was alive?
If you talk to a hard determinist IRL, they’ll tell you it was exactly like our own.
ETA: From Seth Dickinson’s EXORDIA (recently released, quite good):
“Anna, I came to Earth tracking a very old story, a story that goes back to the dawn of time. it’s very unlikely that you’ll die right now. It wouldn’t be narratively complete.”
bird's still the word
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@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
When did Skald step down, and who/what, if anything, filled the role?
In the finale months, after Orichalcum was killed and writs were removed from the Dream, Azazel was real PECKISH and went and ate Legion (and Fable and Ruin). That meant that Skald either needed to kind of mash together with Vellichor in some fashion, or give up his divinity and power to Vellichor. He chose the latter, because Skald likes being himself and being embodied in the Prime because it’s more fun. But he did save a bit of power for Aleksei and Prism (although Prism, as mentioned earlier, declined hers).
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@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
When did Skald step down, and who/what, if anything, filled the role?
In the finale months, after Orichalcum was killed and writs were removed from the Dream, Azazel was real PECKISH and went and ate Legion (and Fable and Ruin). That meant that Skald either needed to kind of mash together with Vellichor in some fashion, or give up his divinity and power to Vellichor. He chose the latter, because Skald likes being himself and being embodied in the Prime because it’s more fun. But he did save a bit of power for Aleksei and Prism (although Prism, as mentioned earlier, declined hers).
Azazel ate Fable? Huh. I thought… Huh. I am either misremembering or never knew correctly. I thought the Devourer worked for Fable. Was he his own agent the whole time?
bird's still the word
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@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Roz said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@kalakh said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Re: Prism: Prism had a bit of her own thing going apart from Skald, but when Skald stepped down from godhood he granted a share of the power he retained to her, so she’s still got power, but yeah afaik she’s no longer a Seraph.
Prism actually decided not to accept that power. She and Skald are instead living as a comparatively normal, undivine couple instead. It’s very sweet.
I assume she still has magical ability, because she had also been a mage, but she’s no longer divine.
When did Skald step down, and who/what, if anything, filled the role?
In the finale months, after Orichalcum was killed and writs were removed from the Dream, Azazel was real PECKISH and went and ate Legion (and Fable and Ruin). That meant that Skald either needed to kind of mash together with Vellichor in some fashion, or give up his divinity and power to Vellichor. He chose the latter, because Skald likes being himself and being embodied in the Prime because it’s more fun. But he did save a bit of power for Aleksei and Prism (although Prism, as mentioned earlier, declined hers).
Azazel ate Fable? Huh. I thought… Huh. I am either misremembering or never knew correctly. I thought the Devourer worked for Fable. Was he his own agent the whole time?
He was Fable’s Herald, yes.
And then he ate it.
