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MAJOR SPOILERS ON PRETTY MUCH EVERY IMPORTANT PLOT POINT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Well it's the only way i can make sense out of it. After Kain defeats the Elder God and bring Balance to the world he goes to the past one last time to place the Reaver where it is needed to be, and while Raziel is sane in it a few millenia of bloodshed makes him go insane, this way ensuring a stable time loop

• Uh. Did you miss the thing about the whole series being about changing how time works out? It's not a Stable Time Loop by the end.
  • It is. The timestream has reshuffled itself into a new, better loop. If it hadn't been able to, it's highly likely that Kain and Raziel would have been expleed from the timestream. Supporting dialogue:
  Raziel: They don’t like us unwriting their carefully choreographed history, though, do they?
  Kain: You must understand, Raziel – we haven’t unwritten history, we’ve merely rewritten it. The future flows around our petty actions, finding the path of least resistance while admitting only the slightest alterations. This is the reshuffling you felt, when you refused to kill me. And remember, Raziel, we are irritants in this regard, as well – history will not allow the introduction of a paradox.
  Raziel: And if events cannot be reshuffled to accommodate the change?
  Kain: It is the irritant who’s expelled. Bear in mind that this may be exactly the outcome our enemies are trying to provoke. We must tread very carefully.
  • What I meant is that time is going through differently from how it went the "first" time. It doesn't necessarily have to match up with how things happened in the first game, and in fact it will likely change things; I imagine a subsequent game in the series would involve just how things changed in Kain's original adventure.
  • It's actually fairly likely that the original adventure goes as normal, all of the elements in the games leave Kain's path for the first title clear. It's what comes after that game that is being twisted.
    • Correct. When Kain saves Raziel at the end of Soul Reaver 2, Raziel says he can see Kain react to new memories being formed as his own past is altered (presumably Kain has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory). These memories are the events of Blood Omen 2, which were set into motion by Raziel surviving the Reaver's attempt to draw him in, and going on to resurrect Janos Audron. The events of the first Blood Omen remain unaffected. Presumably, the original timeline and its Stable Time Loop had Kain conquer Nosgoth without meeting Janos and fighting the Hylden Lord, whereas the new timeline with its new Stable Time Loop involves everything Kain does in Blood Omen 2. The end result of Kain conquering Nosgoth and setting up his vampire empire remain unaffected, presumably because changing that would involve too much of a reshuffle, or even a paradox.
    • Agreed, but the original point of this thread still stands; Kain must place his new purified Soul Reaver where his younger self finds it in order to complete the new Stable Time Loop. As a time-traveller, he can use it for an unknown amount of time, )and hopefully use it to kick the Elder God's ass along the way,) as long as the Soul Reaver eventually finds its way to his younger self. It is unlikely that this version of the Soul Reaver being purified will affect the timeline all that much: it remains an extremely powerful soul-eating sword, and if Raziel stays sane he will know what he must do to ensure the timeline survives, and act accordingly, and if he goes mad anyway then the personal timeline of the Soul Reaver and the Wraith Blade continues as it always has/will.

The games have established that when a current Guardian is killed, a new one is born. When Kain slaughtered the other eight guardians over the course of Blood Omen, replacements must have been born. With Kain choosing to rule the world instead of sacrificing himself, the other eight new guardians probably never found out who they were, if they survived very long at all.

Now, though, Kain is back in the past, with the purified Soul Reaver. It's likely he'll seek out his past self, and subtly guide the past version of himself to find the new Guardians, make them vampires, and take on the Hylden in one last battle.

• The Hylden aren't the enemy, though. The Elder God is.
  • The Elder God's dead.
  • Is he? He was damaged by the Soul Reaver, certainly, but the collapsing citadel wouldn't have done any damage to him, and he can manifest in many places.
  • The Elder God is most definitely not dead.

• To address the first part of this, I thought I read somewhere that replacement guardians couldn't be born while Kain lived because of Nupraptor's corruption still being within Kain, the new Guardian of Balance. The only way to get new (human) guardians was for Kain to sacrifice himself at the end of Blood Omen 1.
  • That is correct until the events of Defiance. Due to Raziel's actions Kain's soul has been purified which is what allows him to see the Elder God. now that he is freed from the corruption of the pillars it should now be possible for new Guardians to be chosen, tightening the lock on the prison of the Hylden once that happens.

The Reveal at the end of LOK: Defiance showed that the Cthulhu-inspired Elder God kept all souls as prisoners, eternally bound in a neverending cycle of life and death, always in ignorance... all to keep his "wheel of fate" turning. Basically, The Elder God is a cross between God Is Evil and Cosmic Horror.

• So, um...what's the speculation? That much is clear from the game itself.
  • The Elder God is actually Cthulu.

Please?

• Pretty please?
• They're going to have a hell of a time finding a replacement for Tony Jay.
  • The Elder God's dead. They don't need Jay anymore, as much as it pains this troper to say it.
    • The Elder God is not dead.
    • True, the EG isn't dead. Having said that, most info relating to Dark Prophecy suggests that the hylden would have been the main focus of the game.
  • They could always handwave the EG's voice change by saying something happened to him after he buried himself under the citadel.
    • Honestly they don't even have to go that far. By reusing the ending of Defiance they could simply have Kain hunt down the wounded Elder God and handle him for good before moving on to deal with the Hylden and aiding the new Pillar Guardians.

Ariel didn't mean Kain's soul, or the Raziel and the reaver, but actually was referring to the Hylden and the Ancients. They were at one point either the same species, or were living togeter in harmony in a peaceful and lush Nosgoth, until the Elder God appeared from the demon dimension to suck the life out of their world. He sparked a war between the two races in order to feed off of their death, while also devouring the life of the land. When they vampires sealed the Hylden with the pillars, they also sealed the Elder God partially, and that is why the landed is wooded and fertile until after they fall.

• If you chose to have Kain sacrifice himself at the end of Blood Omen 1, the land is wooded and fertile in that ending. I don't think the Hylden had anything to do with that.

Raziel will remain himself in the sword and not go "mad as the eons pass" because the blade has been purified. Raziel and his brethren were made with bits of Kain's soul. Kain was tainted when he was born, his very soul. The madness of the Reaver was Kain's madness. With him purified by Raziel, Raziel was never tainted in the first place. Ergo, he can remain sane.

• I think the idea was that Raziel's madness doesn't have a mystical cause, it's just brought on by never-ending solitary confinement over thousands of years. The Elder God specificially says that he intends to trap Kain in the Citadel so he can share this fate with Raziel, after all.
  • There is still the crucial difference in the sword that Raziel put himself into it willingly, rather than being eaten by it. Contrast the end of Defiance with the end of Soul Reaver 2.
  • Raziel went willingly because he knew he couldn't avoid this part of his fate, and though Kain had postponed it, Raziel knew it would happen regardless of whether he was willing or not. The reason why he was trying to avoid it was because he didn't want to become the deranged soul within the sword. The reason why he let the sword consume him was to show Kain who the real enemy was, and the only way to do that was to transfer the purified Reaver to Kain through healing him.
  • The important thing to consider is that his prison may not be eternal in this timeline. The reason the Reaver needed to be kept intact in Kain's timeline is that he was waiting for his chance to flip the coin. Now though he should be able to find a way to free Raziel from the blade after dealing with the Hylden.

This is actually a somewhat serious theory. We know why the Hylden want to destroy the pillars, but what is in it for the Elder God, who feeds on souls to survive? The world is actually the prison that holds the Elder God; as long as he is imprisoned, he needs to feed on souls to sustian himself. We do not know for how long the world has existed, but he has been doing this for ages and has seen civilizations rise and fall, including the one that constructed the Eternal Prison and probably the Lost City as well.

When the Ancient Vampires and the Hylden come around, he realises that these races have the power to ruin the land enough for him to escape, so he sparks a war between them. The land is devastated, but then two things happen that he did not anticipate: 1. The pillars that the Vampires use to lock away the Hylden also restore the land and, 2. The Hylden inflict the blood curse upon the Vampires, including immortality and sterility, depriving the Elder God of souls. To get rid of the Vampires, the Elder God incites Moebius and Mortanius to rebekl and seize the pillars for their own. Moebius then has a hand in founding the Sarafan, furthering the Vampire persuction. In the meantime, the Elder God patiently waits for the pillars to decay.

When the binding has decayed far enough, the Hylden Lord possesses Mortanius and murders Ariel, thereby causing Nupraptor to corrupt the Circle. Mortanius realises what is happening, Vampirises Kain and instructs him to kill the corrupted guardians, intending to return the pillars to Vampire rule. The Elder God and Moebius decide to use this to their advantage and arrange for Kain to travel back in time, kill William the Just and so ignite a new Vampire genocide. The results are known: Kain either sacrifices himself, causing the Vampires to die out forever, or destroys the pillars by choosing to live.

Choosing to condemn Nosgoth, it is only a matter of time before the Elder God will break free of his prison. When the Soul Reaver era comes around, Nosgoth is on the brink of collapse, as he informs Raziel (However, this does not dismay him, as he claims it does). However, Kain has one more plan up his sleeve. To stop him, the Elder God releases Raziel because only he can kill Kain (And in the original timeline, he does). Unfortunately, as seen in Defiance when the purified Soul Reaver is created, this backfires spectularly. Kain's final task is to destroy the Elder God and restore balance to Nosgoth, probably in a manner that will make the pillars obsolete.

The Destined Battle between the two heroes ended with Raziel's victory when he tore the Heart of Darkness from Kain's chest and sent him into the demon dimension. Kain didn't die though. Most sources seem to just say that he "inexplicably survived", but before the battle, Kain said that the only weapon that can kill him is the wraith blade wielded by Raziel. He didn't die when his heart was torn out because the reaver had only been used to wound him.

• This has been pretty much confirmed by Amy Hennig: "His nature as Scion of Balance allows him to survive."
  • That does make sense, but it's a bit vague.
  • Another way to look at it: Kain is a 1500 year old vampire made from magic instead of being sired; even if he wasn't the Scion of Balance, he doesn't need a heart to survive.
    • Actually that explain why EVERYONE wants The Soul Reaver (again). Not only you can place it in the way of Raziel to introduce a paradox to change history but ALSO The Soul Reaver is powerful enough to overkill anything, even if your body regenerates its wounds you soul will always be trapped forever in The Soul Reaver to slowly being devourer or become deranged by Time Abyss
• My argument for Kain's survival and Hennig's comment goes as follows:
  • 1. Ariel states that the Spirit Forge summons the souls of all Scions of Balance to itself for the purification ritual.
  • 2. Kain is the Scion of Balance, and after escaping the demon dimension he says he feels "compelled" to return to the Spirit Forge, confirming that he is drawn to it.
  • 3. Janos stated that the curse of vampirism "imprisons our souls in this flesh", meaning that the only way Kain's soul could reach the Forge was if his body brought it there, thus reanimating his body.
  • 4. By the time he completes the purification ritual at the Forge (thus meaning that the Forge has accomplished its purpose and might let him drop dead again), Raziel has purified him and healed the gaping hole in his chest, meaning that his body can continue to be "alive" even without the Forge forcing him to reanimate.
  • Actually it summons the souls of all Guardians of Balance. Scion of Balance is a different entity. Kain is both. Otherwise, it's a cool theory.

Raziel’s encounter with Rahab in his mutated form was unique among Raziel’s battles with his brothers. While the others ranted on about how great they had become and/or how they were going to kill Raziel, Rahab remained calm and collected. He responded to Raziel’s taunts with rational answers. He even knew that he was gong to die, as Kain had told him so. Despite this, he remained faithful and understanding. I think that Rahab became Kain’s closest lieutenant after Raziel’s execution. It would make sense that Kain would trust him with his knowledge and thoughts gained from time spent in the Chronoplast if he could safely tell Rahab that he was going to die. Maybe Rahab even contributed to Kain’s plans and machinations with his own observations. It would explain his comment about Kain saving them “from (themselves)” if he knew the true place of humans and vampires in Nosgoth’s history. If he knew what Kain knew, he would willingly face his death, knowing his soul (and the powers bestowed) would help Raziel (and Kain) save Nosgoth.

• Green skin, Magnificent Bastard overtones? Good stuff.
  • Kain's skin is more yellow-ish than green.

He got off easy that time. So, the Hylden actually invade Nosgoth instead of rogue demons seen in Soul Reaver 2. They end up just as dead, and Raziel and his kin are still raised. But Kain looked in the time windows to see the possible futures before raising Raziel. Now, with the timeline altered so radically, he saw that the Hylden would return in force after the events of Soul Reaver 1. What he couldn't see was that he himself would probably facilitate their return so that they would join him in the battle against the Elder God. "The Pillars are the lock, and the Reaver is the key." Now that the Reaver's true destiny is restored, it will be used.

Think about it for a second. The Reaver was forged as a vampiric blade to sustain their champion, and it is a BLOOD drinking blade. The twinned soul of Raziel attached to his arm as a wraith blade has nothing to do with his entrapment despite being visibly entwined with the physical Reaver at the time Raziel is stabbed. The reason Raziel's soul was trapped? In Soul Reaver 2, his body is still a PHYSICAL manifestation of his spirit's undying will...his blood IS his soul. The Wraith Blade was actually trying to fight against the Reaver, but the hunger of the Wraith Blade only made the Reaver stronger in the end. The Wraith Blade was trying to SAVE Raziel by wrapping around the Reaver in an attempt to mimic the events of SR 1 when Kane shattered the Soul Reaver on Raziel's back. Throughout the game the Wraith Blade is parasitic rather than symbiotic, but even a parasite does not try to kill its host consciously. Furthermore, we can infer that the Wraith Blade has been slowly awakening further throughout the game, and as the event was transpiring, it suddenly remembered what was about to happen, which is why it TRIED to save Raziel by overlapping with the Reaver, hoping to create a paradox effect.

• The Wraith Blade is trying to free itself from Raziel by completing the loop.

After all, they choose the guardians. Maybe they are much more intelligent than they seem, and have outgrown their builders, thus identifying the Elder God as the worse threat to Nosgoth while the vampires still worshiped him in ignorance. Although they are limited in what they can do, the combination of all the successes and mistakes in each guardian's efforts will lead to the Elder God's defeat.

If I remember correctly, we see four characters with Prophet Eyes: Mortanius, oldest Turel(who seems to have bad eyesight, if any), Janos(who has colored irises until he's possessed), and at least since Soul Reaver 2, Moebius...

When Raziel accepts his destiny and gets absorbed into the Reaver, where do you think other six souls go? There are another Raziel's soul (wraith-blade) and 5 of another lieutenants. Do they go into Reaver? No. They, now purified, rejoin Kain's soul, completing and healing it (don't forget that Kain had to split his own soul to resurrect lieutenants).

Enemy mine, huh?

Neither The Elder God nor Moebius knew he will be back because he is now free from Wheel of Fate.

Left 4 Dead

WildMassGuessing/Video Games

The Last Guardian