Headscratchers / Hexen

• Why is the original Hexen the only game in the series with no Tomes Of Power?
  • I guess you could say there just happens to not be any on Cronus (the world where the first game takes place) or they just never invented them for some reason but that really doesn't explain anything.
• Why are the three Masters you have to fight in the final hub of the first game all in tombs?
  • I guess the implication is supposed to be they are undead but why this would be the case is never explained.
  • Another possibility is that their "gift of unlife" comes with either a lengthy transition period or requires more charge from the Chaos Orb than Korax can or will immediately provide, so at least for now while they aren't aging or dying they also aren't actually free to roam around. They're still clearly able to run the corrupted versions of their organizations, and possibly the reason they're so theoretically killable is that you caught them early and weakened, before they could leave their tombs.
• The Cleric's Serpent Staff really begs the question of how an enemy of the Serpent Riders ended up with this as their weapon. Sure they don't have the weapon by default, but assuming this is part of their standard arsenal, the backstory could be very interesting like who they slayed to acquire this staff, and their motivation (perhaps mocking-revenge) for turning it against its makers. Neither the Fighter or Mage appear to have any weapon with such implied backstory.
  • Is there a reason we assume there's a more complex backstory beyond 'find it laying around, figured it was useful, took it with us'?
  • It could have no connection whatsoever to the Serpent Riders. A caduceus is a symbol of a healer to begin with, and it wouldn't be that odd if the Cleric's church simply had independently developed that tool/weapon before the Riders ever showed up.
• Why are the dark bishops called that? A bishop is usually a pretty high church rank, and they are mere Mooks. Did the designers just think it sounded cooler than "dark priest"?
  • It's conceivable there are fewer dark bishops than the game suggests at first glance; if their phasing, hard-to-track travel technique and tendency to appear in swarms actually was an indicator of a single dark bishop manifesting multiple projected bodies, you might only be fighting a handful of them across the entire game, and in storyline terms that would make them far more effective agents than common mooks.