ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by Mod »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:
Mod wrote:Maybe Malkur and Erubor were in it together all along against the other Orakur?
If this was true there would be no need to continue the deception when you reach Karamiklan. There would be no escape for you.
Unless they were trying to get rid of you. It was stated that Hammerlorne and Talushorn were basically suicide jobs. Erubor could have been the one who erased your memory as well, and made you think it was yourself, and still signed the letters with his initial for the laughs. When you still manage to make progress, he sends you to the dangerous heart of the goblins. After you find Karamiklan he immediately teleports you to a big dangerous battle. After what crazy things you made it through, it would too dangerous to let you know the truth because you could cause some serious damage.

He deliberately seems to be trying to get rid of you. Just like he is trying to for the dwarves. He even manages to have dwarves be the first battle wave (to ensure their deaths), despite in book II saying they probably wont help since we slaughtered them to steal their crux. Malkur wants the same thing; he still continues his invasion north despite the crux having been removed from hammerlorne.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:How did Malkur get into Alundar's Dungeon?

He obviously isn't a ninja so there was no way he could have got past Alundar. Malkur must have a special form of the Elemental spell Portal because the original requires the caster to have visited an area and placed an *anchor* point. So if he can teleport anywhere, why didn't he just teleport to the bottom of Hammerlorne Mine or the top of Bastion Spire for the Crux stones?
My notes were written as such: "Malkur enters Karamiklan's chamber via a private entrance." My thoughts on it were that Malkur and Karamiklan were acquainted for many years, and Malkur had visited Karamiklan several times in the past. A secret/private entrance into the dungeon would have been very plausible, although Malkur could have anchored a teleport spot there as well.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:
Lilith wrote:"...the warlord Alundar has closed all the roads leading into the Astral Range, but rumor has it that there is another way. Erubor explained that long ago Malkur constructed a number of secret passes, anticipating the need to move his troops quickly and secretively between regions."
Why the elaborate structure for when two simple pentagrams would suffice? Father Michael did this in Book I for the Goblins.

And what was the deal with the crazy blacksmith? In his part of the dungeon are torture devices with skeleton remains and a place to forge tools and weapons. He can't leave Omentor Temple so how does he get materials or feed himself? What is he doing there?
The blacksmith was a under the mind control of Malkur, enslaved to forge weapons for his goblin armies.

A pentagram portal can only move one entity at a time- this could be used to move a small militia one place to another but not an army (hence the need to open the iron gate at Crackamir. Father Michael wrote in his journal about the horrible accident that occurred when a Goblin didn't wait his turn and teleported on top of another who had not yet left the exit space.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:What about Valx Grayraven and his machine? He has no reason to lie, and I doubt Erubor/Malkur knew you would visit him. And I'm sure the Akadai Kingspawn mentions the impending apocalyptic event as well.
Certainly the event was coming- the question was whether or not it would be the end of the world. A weakened world would be a place where a powerful wizard could easily rise to be the ruler of all.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:
BasiliskWrangler wrote:Certainly the event was coming- the question was whether or not it would be the end of the world.
I thought the question was whether or not it would be the end of all life on Eschalon until the cycle begins again?
BasiliskWrangler wrote:A weakened world would be a place where a powerful wizard could easily rise to be the ruler of all.
Why would anyone want to be king of the ashes?
"King of the Ashes". I like that. Consider that if civilization were to crumble, it would be better to be on top instead of digging through the rubble with the rats and cockroaches.

Look PM, I tried my best to write a solid, leak-proof storyline. It's easy to poke holes in the best plots of any book/movie/game. Instead of trying to find holes, you should look for the solutions. When you begin to question a plot element, consider all the ways it could work while maintaining plot integrity.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by Randomizer »

Baizel was just going to wait out the rebuilding period while nature reclaimed the humanized portion of the world. This was a cyclical part of nature vs humans and had happened before where some cataclysm had restored the balance by reducing humans.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by BasiliskWrangler »

Prismatic Maelstrom wrote:Prismatic: Why doesn't your character use one of the Goblin rafts at Oceana Lowlands to travel north and reach the beach where Captain Morgan is to bypass Omentor Temple?b]Prismatic:[/b] :(
Captain Morgan is a drunk. What he doesn't tell you is that from his location there are reefs and rocks which make it all but impossible to reach the beach he is on, or for him to leave that way. His ship wrecked offshore and by the tiniest bit of luck he was able to make it to shore without getting pulverized upon the rocks. He knows that Alundar would most likely hold him for ransom (at best) or outright kill him (at worst) so he can't get assistance there, and he can't leave, so he makes up a sad story that he is posted as a lookout. The truth is, that beach will be his final resting place.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by Randomizer »

BasiliskWrangler wrote:The world of Eschalon is literally filled with side stories, lore, and history that never made it into the games. If Eschalon was actually a trilogy of real books, then I could address some of this somewhere in the text, but as a video game I just can't put it all in there. I am just one person- it's too much work to put a full novel worth of text in there and build an entire game around it.
Jeff Vogel has a similar complaint about the quantity of text in a Spiderweb Software game. That's part of why he likes remakes where most of the text is already written.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by Kreador Freeaxe »

It's honestly amazing how much you did fit into these games, BW, and how much room you left for us to play and make up our own stuff within your world. As one friend of mine likes to put it, the hardest part about writing for games is trying to tell a story while also leaving this great big player-shaped hole in the middle so the person on the other end actually feels like they're affecting what's going on.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by helivoy »

To BW: Actually writing an e-book that contains the larger world mythology and the back stories of characters like Lilith, Baizel, Morgan, Erubor... might make money for Basilisk Games. I believe the Myst books did well. If it contains concept drawings, even better.
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by Kreador Freeaxe »

Um, Alundar is a psychotic warlord. I don't think he worries about such niceties as giving you enough time to solve his riddles. ;-)
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Re: ESCHALON TRILOGY - Q&A (SPOILERS)

Post by qymaen »

For the ending, I see there being several possibilities:

(Here I will refer to the cataclysm that purges Eschalon's surface of its life as the "lesser" cataclysm, and the purported shattering of Eschalon itself (as a result of preventing the lesser cataclysm) as the "greater" cataclysm.)

1: side with Erubor
1a: Erubor is correct; both the lesser and greater catacylsms are averted, the Orakur never evolve
1b: Erubor is wrong; Eschalon is destroyed after the greater cataclysm; everyone dies and the Orakur never evolve
1c: Erubor is lying; neither cataclysm will happen, and Erubor becomes god-king of Eschalon
1d: Erubor is lying; the lesser cataclysm WILL happen, but Erubor rules the aftermath; the Orakur evolve
1e: Erubor is wrong; the lesser cataclysm CAN NOT be averted, safely or not; the Orakur evolve

2: side with Malkur
2a: Malkur is correct; the lesser cataclysm happens, but the Orakur evolve and survive
2b: Malkur is wrong; the lesser cataclysm COULD be safely averted, but is not; the Orakur evolve and survive anyway
2c: Malkur is lying; neither cataclysm will happen, and Malkur becomes god-king of Eschalon
2d: Malkur is lying; the lesser cataclysm WILL happen, but Malkur rules the aftermath; the Orakur evolve

1a and 1b are not consistent with a stable time-loop because the Orakur clearly exist. 1c and 2c likewise preclude the existence of the Orakur. 1d and 2d are both possible, but in the case of 2d, the question is raised of why Malkur wasn't already king of the Orakur in the future, considering his likely immortality. (If he survives the lesser cataclysm in 1e, a similar question arises.) If Erubor is capable of extending his life indefinitely, the same question is raised for 1d. 2a and 2b are effectively the same in their end results: whether Malkur is correct or not is wrong as long as he prevents the lesser cataclysm from being stopped.

The orrery in Old Moonrise and Karamiklan both predict the lesser catastrophe, and the Orakur definitely exist, so it must be assumed to have happened.

Thus, assuming that Malkur's intervention caused the Orakur's time machine mishap in the first place (cf this post), 2a and 2b are the only possiblities consistent with a stable time loop: all life on Eschalon other than the Dwarves that will become the Orakur are in fact doomed. It is impossible in this case for the protagonist to side with Erubor without breaking the time loop, with any consequences attendent to that (if any).

So far in this discussion, the idea that Malkur's actions may have caused the original time machine's problems (sending the Orakur time travel party 200+ years further back than planned) seems to have been largely ignored, which is curious, considering how much sense it makes.

Fringe possibility:
3: the Orakur are not actually time-travellers from the future, but rather come from somewhere else

This possibility is basically that Malkur and possibly also Erubor (unless Erubor himself is misled) are trolling you, the protagonist (and maybe Erubor), big-time, for kicks.

2a and 2b seem the most likely to me, but personally I prefer 3.
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