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1New entries on the bottom.
2
3[[foldercontrol]]
4
5[[folder:Source of the Fateless One's lack of fate]]
6
7* Why precisely does the fateless have no fate? The game gives several different reasons:
8## [[spoiler: Tirnoch ripped his fate out of the universe when she killed him the first time]].
9## He died and was revived by the well of souls.
10## He fulfilled his destiny when [[spoiler: being killed by Tirnoch]]. which is it?
11** Probably a combination of the first two.
12** Well to be fair, 2 and 3 are pretty much the same thing. But doesn't Tirnoch explain that she made you before the fight?
13** The in-game explanation is that [[spoiler:Tirnoch killed him/her so hard that his/her soul was torn out of the Weave of Fate. The power Tirnoch unleashed at that moment was also the missing ingredient the Well of Souls needed.]]
14** But the question is how was the Fateless One resurrected in the first place? He/she was fated to die, presumably fated to be placed into the Well of Souls, but what then? Did Tirnoch first break fate in making the Fateless One come back and have no fate upon his/her return? Or was it the Fateless One's fate in the first place to break fate?
15** It's possible that the fateless one was destined to die against the troll, but the ability to fateshift was unforseen, so fateshifting the troll simultaniously changed Hughes' fate and unbound you from your own.
16** The ''Teeth Of Naros'' has Ethene state that she was aware that someone free of Fate would come (her plan depended on it) so it seems the Fateless One's resurrection was destined for quite some time (and indeed Agarth saw it coming as well). But once he/she is resurrected he/she has no Fate beyond that.
17
18[[/folder]]
19
20[[folder:Tirnoch, Fate, and her prison]]
21
22* The main page stated that Tirnoch could control the fate of the world, or possibly could have been responsible for creating it. How could she do this from prison?
23** It's a pretty common genre convention that the [[SealedEvilInACan sealed evil]] isn't ''quite'' as sealed as everyone would like, and can still manipulate events from within their prison.
24** That depends on Fate. If someone else was controlling the Fate of Amalur (i.e natural fate/god) then 1: Fate is a bastard, 2:causing the crystal war via empowering an ignored wimp to use as a pawn to wage war is pretty standard (I'm looking at you legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess). BUT If Tirnoch is the one shaping fate during the game, than that's far more than simply interfering. that much power basically means she doesn't need to escape prison to destroy the world.
25** A decent metaphor would be a crime boss in prison; he's locked up and therefore limited in his actions but he still make the occasional coded phone call to the right people to get things done.
26
27[[/folder]]
28
29[[folder:Tirnoch and faction quests]]
30* Also If Tirnoch has as much control over fate as we think, she probably caused all the problems with the faction quests. And by that I mean she was getting the guy from the warsworn questline to release the Niskaru Lord. a being of such malevolent power that it was basically described as making the Balor from Mel Senshir look like a cute fluffy bunny in comparison, and who the [[OurAngelsAreDifferent Erathi]] couldn't kill. that sounds like a being that could give Tirnoch a run for her money. Why would she release him?
31** Who says it could actually give her any trouble? He could have just been one of her generals, or any of a thousand different possibilities.
32** Not really. The Niskaru are demons. As per mythos, they're chaos demons. They exist to destroy everything and I doubt a demon lord would like being inferior to anything. Besides, this particular demon lord is a Lord of trickery and deceit. I can't see anyone being stupid enough to let something like that be a leutenant. PLUS Tirnoch is rediculously powerful. She doesn't need generals or an army. If she gets out, we're all screwed, the end. She doesn't need another eldritch abomination roming around helping her kill stuff.
33** I had a thought about Tirnoch's role in Fate (and made a WMG); basically, she doesn't have all that much power over Fate. Yeah, she can cause big changes to the guy sitting on her prison, but she can't actually reach out to the other continent to weaken the Niskaru Lord's bonds. Even if we assume that he was being freed as a side effect of the Crystal War, Tirnoch might not have known, and if she did know, might not have cared. In the final battle, the only way to damage her at all is in Reckoning mode--that is, Fateless mode. The impression I got was that anything bound by fate had no power to hurt her whatsoever.
34** Not what I meant. If Tirnoch had a hand in releasing the demon, her involvement was (if any) in the form of either influencing Fate to either get Lord Besin to try to free it or, if that was already fated to happen, re-write fate to erase the fact that he was originally fated to fail for some reason. If she has that much power......
35** And what I'm saying is she doesn't have that much power. She was affecting Gadflow, Alabastra, and screwing with everything else through that. So either she had nothing to do with Besin's efforts (as in, he would have gotten to that point even without the Crystal War) or it was a side effect she didn't care about.
36** Besin's explicit reason for trying to summon the Niskaru is to defeat the Tuatha. No other reason is given, though admittedly that's enough. If destiny is a web then manipulating one thread influences the ones next to it and so on until ripples effect the whole pattern. Tirnoch might not be able to directly influence every thread but she's smart enough to predict, to a limited extent, how one manipulation will effect the whole.
37** That doesn't mean she always gets it right. As you noted Besin got started trying to defeat the Tuatha. By shaping Fate to create the Tuatha and the Crystal War in the first place Tirnoch may very well have created that situation by accident. However given that only the Fateless One can kill her it's likely she simply doesn't care. So the Niskaru Lord goes on a rampage and kills a few hundred thousand mortals? Why should she give a damn?
38
39[[/folder]]
40
41[[folder:Agarth's death vision]]
42* If Fate up to the point of the Fateless one's resurrection had been following a set, unchanging pattern untll you start messing with it then how did Agarth foresee the circumstances of his own death so accurately? He only went to the place where he was supposed to die because he was accompanying you but you were never part of Fate's pattern, so he shouldn't have seen himself being there. What gives?
43** Agarth mentions that he generally only sees death so it wouldn't have been that detailed. He knew what killed him, where and possibly when but that's it. Maybe in the original plan he just wanted to get a good look at the entire tapestry, since the world was going to hell.
44** He also says he wanted to see the Theater, maybe in the original fate he would have gone there alone and gotten killed. Your arrival may have changed the time of his encounter with the ettin and changed the outcome when you defeated it.
45** Bare in mind that in the original sequence of events Agarth's very good friend Hughes would have just died. That's the sort of thing that would promote some introspection and perhaps a desire to go look at the Theater and try and divine some meaning from it.
46** There are some strong hints that the Fateless One's existence was actually planned out ahead of time, since there's doors and seals in the game that only they can open that were put in place a long time ago, and that mortals and Erathi worked together to make the Theater of Fate. It's possible that while the Fateless One is immune to fate (as in, the force itself) they aren't immune to extensive preplanning by the Erathi.They planned for the Fateless One to eventually go there, and Agarth got caught up and selected by fate as the one who would accompany them, and fate determined he should die there. Since the Fateless One is immune to fate, it wouldn't have determined that they would be with Agarth, just that, for some reason, he'd be in the Theater and would die there.
47
48[[/folder]]
49
50[[folder:The Well works?]]
51* Does the Well actually work? You are the only one for whom it has ever worked [[spoiler: and you had a pretty wierd death what with having your fate ripped off the cosmos by a [[PhysicalGod dragon]]]]. I never really understood all that stuff about [[spoiler: being attuned to Ventrinio's Well]] which sounded significant. Also does any time pass between your death and your rez? I think it was 10 years or something but I was never really sure.
52** I don't think time passes--at least, not a lot. And I imagine the Fateless thing is what allowed the Well to work on you, yes. Basically most souls have a fate beyond death and it doesn't include coming back to life. The Well was useless on them. You, however, were unbound from fate and thus free to be pulled back and revived. If this theory is true that means the Well would work on pretty much everyone now.
53** The in-game explanation is that [[spoiler:Tirnoch's raw power was the missing ingredient that allowed the Well to work for you. With Tirnoch dead this probably means the Well won't work for anyone again.]]
54
55[[/folder]]
56
57[[folder:Tirnoch and prismere]]
58* What is the connection between Tirnoch and the prismere? If she is powering it, why does that mean that Prismere is starting to creep people out when she's about to break free?
59** I got the impression that the prismere was her body, her prison, or both. But on the other hand, its mentioned somewhere that prismere existed before the Age of Arcana, but it was just a pretty crystal then.
60** I got heard about that. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure it was known that prismere was AppliedPhlebotinum (or for the gnomes {{Unobtainium}}) before the game, but it was rare. And it grew in Klurikon in winter faelands. If thats true then I think the answer is in the story. You were [[spoiler: killed the first time by Tirnoch because you "wanted to find the power source."]] I think that prismere always grew in abundance here and, now that Tirnoch is getting free, her power is leaking out of her (underground) prison, and powering all the prismere in the country as a side-benefit. She can probably influence the stone as well, seeing as how its charged with her power, and that would explain how she mutated the fae.
61** ''Fatesworn'' pretty much confirms that prismere gets its power from Tirnoch, as it's noted that since the defeat of Tirnoch it's losing it's effectiveness. It still works for now but in a few years it'll just be a shiny rock.
62
63[[/folder]]
64
65[[folder:Sidequest interactions]]
66
67* By the time you go find Alyn at the House of Ballads, you've probably already done the quest to become Sagrell, AND most likely Bloody Bones too. Logically speaking, it should be big news that a mortal has become mixed up in all these ballads - so why do neither Alyn nor Glianal make reference to this? If anything, Glianal at least should be huffy and outraged about the whole business. Likewise, the player's response options don't take into account the possibility that they've already heard about Echostones from the Two Knights quest. I've noticed that some bits of the dialogue are context-sensitive based on the player's gender or race, so the developers don't really have an excuse for this omission.
68** Well yeah, they don't. They didn't even bother making up an excuse, they simply kept the faction questlines entirely seperate from the main plot because it's easier for them that way. Even if you're a Truesworn-Archsage-Chariot-King of Ballads no one in the main questline will so much as mention it. I guess they figured if Bethesda can get away with it then they can too.
69** Oddly enough, a couple npcs related to Faction Quests will note your accomplishments in the Main Quest. One npc in a Warsworn Faction quest will briefly mention the Balor you killed when comparing it to the Niskaru Lord the Faction quest's villain wants to unleash. In the House of Valor questline, you can brag to the champion that you slew the Balor. Also, npcs do occasionally have different first-time dialogue if you belong to certain factions and/or attained the top rank in those factions.
70** The House of Ballads doesn't really get much recognition because ultimately, the only remarkable thing about it is that a mortal is in the place of the King. Keep in mind that the House of Ballads has been repeated on a continuous loop for hundreds or thousands of years, and while some specifics changed in this Telling, ultimately the story still ended the same (unless you joined the Maid's side). Also, the House of Ballads is really just a very hardcore LARP session by everyone involved, so ultimately what you do during the questline doesn't have a massive impact by the viewpoints of the other Fae. They're not really going to remark too much on it because in all honesty, the House of Ballads is just a bunch of Fae engaged in some very hardcore retelling of the old stories. Important but, y'know, not anything pivotal.
71
72[[/folder]]
73
74[[folder:Killing Fae]]
75
76* Does the Fateless One's ScrewDestiny powers actually allow him to permakill the fae? I always thought that all he could do was disrupt their "telling"
77** It's not clear there's actually a difference. Anyway, apparently the Fateless One can kill them for good.
78** The Fateless One cannot permakill Fae. This is shown in the House of Sorrows questline, where you kill Myrcyr, but he comes back in Esharra after you kill him even if you Fateshift him. That being said, it is possible for a Fae's identity to be lost when they die, also shown in the same questline, since the Weeping King died and was reborn but the Fae taking his place doesn't remember much of her previous life.
79
80[[/folder]]
81
82[[folder:Fae Immortality]]
83
84* How does Fae immortality work? From what we are told, dead Fae are reborn in identical bodies some time after dying, and this can take a few years. Fine. Then why does the House of Ballads exist? An entire order of faes who "assume" the mantle of great fae heroes past to inspire their kin and continue the Cyclical History of the Fae. Why are those replacements needed? Shouldn't the heroes whose identities they assume still be around? King Wencen for example mentions he's the fifth Wencen... So where's the original? And the intervening three?
85** Elsewhere. Apparently, normally dead Fae wind up in the other court until they get killed again and when they cycle back the particularly notable ones have new adventures.
86** This raises questions then about the Maid of Windemere. The game is pretty clear she's not a willing stand-in like the House of Ballads. If she changes court with each death, what does the House of Ballads do when she's not around? Since she's their BigBad and most of their ballads involve her? And if she's free to have new adventures, why is she seeking so hard to free herself from the Ballads?
87** An early sidequest suggests some Fae are under compulsions to obey certain stories, particularly antagonists - you force a troll into battle to take a valuable ring from it by acting out the story in which it is the monster. The Maid may be under one of those compulsions and can be drawn into the tale no matter her present court.
88** Perhaps Fae are not able (or allowed) to repeat a Telling or take part in the Telling of their own deeds. It's like the relationship between an author and their work, or a fan and their first experience of it - even if you try to create or experience a story anew, it will never be the same because you're marked by having already done it. Meanwhile, someone new must be Sagrell for each enactment because Sagrell himself is still ''living'' his stories and can't go back to the old ones, leaving his successors subject to the same limits when it comes to embodying him. No recursion allowed.
89** It seems somewhat unlikely, as talking to everyone in the house seems to imply several of them have done most tellings several times. One could handwave it as them just being "in character", but still, a lot of the discussions, including with Wencen who is pretty open about dropping the act, seem to imply they've gone through the tellings multiple times.
90** Then there may just be certain rules among the Fae (at least those in the Houses) preventing the originals and their successors from coming back to retread the stories after a point, unless you're one of those forced into repetition like the Maid. Say if you get killed while off-duty and so can't be there for the next Telling, so a new successor is needed, meaning your time as that character is over.
91** It is implied that Fae are immortal, but not eternal. Various Fae tell you something about Season "fading", and while yes, it could mean the whole thing about Tuatha winning and bringing Winter with them, it could also mean that Age of Fae ( or whatever it's called ) is nearly over. By the way, there was that Flowering quest where the second acting Fae didn't return from the Cycle, and your quest giver was very surprised.
92** ''Why are those replacements needed? Shouldn't the heroes whose identities they assume still be around? King Wencen for example mentions he's the fifth Wencen... So where's the original? And the intervening three?'' This is discussed in the House of Sorrows questline. The Winter Fae who accompanies you through that questline is actually the reincarnated Weeping King, but she barely remembers any of her past life. She only became aware of her past by meditating in a place associated with the Weeping King, and even then she mostly identifies with her current self and not her old life. So most likely the ancient Fae heroes are around, but they've come to live under new names and identities and may have left their past lives behind completely. Any given Fae you encounter may well be the original Sir Sagrell or King Wencen, but they just abandoned or forgot that past and live under a new name and role.
93*** Except that doesn't mesh with the Maid of Windemere ''always'' being the Maid (Nor does it explain what the House of Ballad does when the Maid is in Summer). Or the quest where a troll will always answer a summon if you repeat his tale.
94** Fae's immortality is BornAgainImmortality and House of Ballads's Reenactment invoked LegacyCharacter. Any overlap is the exception and not the rule. When Fae died, their souls return to Esharra while their physical body reborn in "hollow" . Every time they come back from Esharra, they just have to follow their own nature and they live again nearly the same way they have lived previously[[note]]wiki[[/note]]. Some Fae comes back retained their memories [[note]]Sagrell[[/note]], some takes time to walk the live of their previous incarnations before regaining their memories [[note]]Taibreah[[/note]]. How the current Fae view their previous incarnations is split between those consider themselves the original born again [[note]]most fae[[/note]] and those who are more detached from their original (ala ClonesArePeopleToo)[[note]]Taibreah, though given time, even she may start to consider herself the Weeping King[[/note]]. The compulsion that drive Fae to live again nearly the same way they have lived previously is called "ballads", every fae has one though only the most important ones are reenacted by the House of Ballads which was recorded within "lorestones" and later "Fae Cairn".
95** Most "citizen" fae can relive their ballads just by following their nature, the more they do it, the more Fate align to make their circumstances as much like the original as possible[[note]]the same way replaying the game the exact same way cause the game world to be exactly the same at that point of progression in your previous playthrough[[/note]]. Theoretically, if a mortal shadow a fae and do what that Fae should have done, they would face the same circumstances as the Fae [[note]]Which is what you did in every fae quest and what Penri Kell and you did with the Ring quest[[/note]]. For the House of Ballads, "Lorestones" and later "Fae Cairn" are no mere recording but powerful artifacts used to recreate the circumstances of the ballads exactly, which include compelling other faes to follow their roles. This would explain why the Maid of Windemere is so bitter about her lot: One day she was Magwyr, heroine of the Winter Fae, the next day, Hallam decided that it's time to reenact her trilogy and she became the Maid.
96[[/folder]]
97
98[[folder:Scion in Dead Kel]]
99
100* If the whole point of the Scion in the Dead Kel DLC was so Akara would finally have someone go properly kill Dead Kel and the Scion was able to communicate with Akara then why, after all these generations, were the castaways unaware of this fact? Why didn't Akara ever mention it to anybody? Even if the current Scion was in no shape to go out and kill Dead Kel, Akara's blessing or not, why wouldn't Akara at least make them aware so they knew what to look for in a new Scion and started choosing some fighters?
101** Akara is a tree. He's not always going to think like a human. Maybe it never occurred to him.
102*** Added to that, Akkara is also a God. The weave of Fate, the flow of time, all that may not flow the same to him. To him, the Scion arriving was fated, and that's that.
103
104[[/folder]]
105
106[[folder:Jorielle's spying]]
107* Since Jorielle is having you watched when you enter Adessa so she can find out who wants to abuse your power, how does she not realize that you have a bodyguard she didn't hire? What kind of observation job is she doing?
108** Said "bodyguard" stayed inside Sandstone Villa the entire time, and got there before the player ever entered the city and wouldn't have been seen by her spies.
109
110[[/folder]]
111
112[[folder:Kollosae hair]]
113* How do Kollosae cut and style their hair? Aren't they made of stone too?
114** Talk to the armorer in Idylla and she comments they just look like they're made of stone, but are creatures of flesh and need armor as much as anyone else.
115
116[[/folder]]
117
118[[folder:Foreseeing the Fateless One]]
119* If the Fateless One was truly beyond fate, how was it possible for his/her creation to be foreseen by Agarth? This implies that in some sense Fate itself had become suicidal and had engineered the means for its own demise.
120** Or maybe Fate was bored and decide to allow a wild card to be created just to see what'd happen if he let someone he had absolutely no control over run amok in the world. Think of it this way, knowing exactly everything that's going to happen in advance makes for a pretty boring existence.
121** I think that it was less the Fate of the Fateless One, but rather the Fate of the Well Of Souls. So Agarth or the other Fateweavers would see 'Yes, the Well of Souls will work once, and then get blown up.' It's just when they look at the fate of the person that did get resurrected do things go off the rails.
122*** Agarth explains it early in the game - It was the fate of Hugues to die after the Well of Souls worked successfully for the first time. His cards never foretold what that might entail because that wasn't what he was looking at. This means that he knew the Well would work but didn't know what might come out of it, which is why the Fateless One surprises him.
123** That seems to be it. Note that the Fateless One's creation immediately changed things, such as [[spoiler:indirectly preventing the death of Hugues]].
124** Also I think [[spoiler: Tirnoch needed the Fateless One's power to escape from her cell. She saw that the only way for her to escape was to have a Fateless One show up with plenty of power, suck them dry, and then break free. So she let the Well work, once. She just didn't count on her key to escape, also having the power to beat her once and for all.]]
125** This last one is actually borderline Fridge Brilliance. Even if she knew the Fateless One was the key, she couldn't foresee the result of their second meeting, because of him being, well, fateless.
126** Worth noting: Nothing suggests that Fate is a sentient entity. It's a force not person, guessing at its motives is pointless; it doesn't have any.
127** Note that fate is distinctly different from being foreseen or anticipated, and the ancient Erathi apparently knew that someone like the Fateless One would come along at some point, since several places and objects int he game can only be manipulated by someone who is immune to fate. The Erathi seem to have known that Tirnoch would cause something like the crisis in the game and were ready to have someone able to take advantage of it.
128** There's no contradiction in the Fateless One being predicted; his/her rebirth was predicted but that's it, nothing beyond that is guided by Fate. And as noted above Fate isn't an entity but a force so it being suicidal is a mismatch of concepts, like gravity being bored.
129
130[[/folder]]
131
132[[folder:Resurrection or birth?]]
133* All the [=NPCs=] keep telling the Fateless One that he's been resurrected. But he wakes up with complete amnesia and at no point does he regain his memories, and it's also implied that the original had a markedly different personality. So is the Fateless One truly BackFromTheDead... or a completely new person who merely looks like him?
134** Given that the story hinges on a returned individual, it's unlikely. Amnesia often results in a personality change.
135** Also he/she presumably looks ''identical'' to his/her former self, tattoos and all, not merely ''like'' them.
136
137[[/folder]]
138
139[[folder:Faction Questlines]]
140* After the Scholia Arcana questline why can't you just free the previous Archsage? You have everything you need to do it sitting in the courtyard because you ''literally just used them''. They clearly retained their power, you know how to use them, and you know it works. Why not just do it again?
141** You don't actually know how to use the keys and the spell, though. When you're placing the stones you can see that the Archsage is also casting a spell while you're doing that, presumably as part of the process of freeing the Empyrean. While the Fateless One is named Archsage, their magical abilities are fairly limited and they clearly don't know how to cast the kind of magics that were involved in the creation of the Empyrean's prison so they wouldn't be able to free the Archsage even with the keys, at least not yet.
142* Why did the Warsworn appoint Grian Shane as Castellan of Helmgard Keep? As good a soldier as he may be, it doesn't make sense to put a pretty-boy with no use for books or history and a general disregard for personal responsibility in charge of guarding your ancient reliquary full of dangerous artifacts that have never even been catalogued. It's hardly a surprise this bit them in the ass in a major way.
143** Grian Shane wasn't directly in charge of guarding the Vault. Helmguard Keep was the waypoint for Warsworn troops to join the Crystal War, and all it needed was a competent administrator. The Vault had its own full-time defense force, but the pressing threat from the Crystal War kept pulling Warsworn troops off of protecting the Vault until it only had a single caretaker.
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