After some quiet deliberation and reading through the thread again, I feel like this theorycrafting question deserves some love, especially with all the new evidence that has been lain down since that moment.
This image marks the second time Ciro had stared into the void, the first being during the prologue, before the fight against Betweenford. The Void is described as having pulsing connections linking these Lights, and the Lights disappearing and seemingly reappearing elsewhere.
We know of what seems to lurk inside the Void, a being of large proportions and the last of it's kind. What we believe to be the Last Seraphim. Whether or not this event was all in Ciro's head, a ghost of a previous memory leaking through, or a method of keeping Target out of the Council is currently unknown.
The Last Seraphim, hopefully being like the Cherubs they created, would be Dark(or unholy) Element. As stated by the Tipkeeper, creatures would do damage, or extra damage against specific foes; as evidenced by the Spirits in the cleared DL2. As Cain had stated that the Cherubs and Seraphs were immortal, and Oric the AWESOME had destroyed them, Holy or Awesome damage would be one of the few things able to truly damage such beings.
You switch on Combinatorial. You're not sure what it does yet.
(Attack: 19-4, 7*2!) The Astral Influx burns through Horologe's immortal bones! Cherish
SECOND SHIFTS to her fancy staff, ready to bonk the demon in the head. Your Soul Star
cools in your hands.
With this, we see a literal Time Demon get utterly destroyed by the Astral Swordflux. The Influx literally dealing double damage due to Holy.(with combinatorial giving an extra 6 damage on the second turn of the duel) This helps to confirm the hypothesis that Holy/Awesome damage deals against Unholy/Dark enemies as a knife through butter. Slaying the so called immortal Horolage as easily as one might casually push a small puppy aside.(*running out of analogies that deal with ease*)
Now, onto the Lights themselves.
As stated by Polydectes, each Soul Star consists of both a binding and an Essence, separating by the unknown process of Illbirth, which likely makes use of the Seraph's Solace(implied Seraph connections), which is a water-like substance which evidently was able to break connections such as the Party's connection to the Astral Influx's current Viewed Character, allowing them full autonomous actions.
Slog serves as the only current example of Illbirth we know, the process described as:
Slog was off the traveler's sack. Slog was off the traveler. Slog was off everything he knew, falling through a crackling void without end. He felt a wincing pain in his center: a small, all-present hand pulling something precious, something important out from him. A brief light shone in front of him. It was beautiful, simplistic. It was Slog. It was everything Slog was! Every emotion he'd ever felt, every blorb he'd ever orbled, every adolescent Red Slime to ever turn him down. Slog smiled for a second, and it was gone.
The process is described as his soul or essence being removed, shown to him briefly, then removed from his sight altogether. Seeing as we had seen Slog's Essence of Slime, and it seemingly didn't glow, we can assume this would have been part of Slog's Soul Star if he wasn't an Illborn, which have been evidenced on multiple occasions to glow, if the Astral Influx is anything to go by, which has glowed, warmed up, and cooled.
--You're not supposed to go in the water, idiot. Why do you think they say "flush" when they're deleting rooms?--
--It's too pure. Nothing can get through it. Your soul, your connection to your friends, not even your connection to... y'know.--
--The anti-magic field isn't perfect, you know. With enough power, I can disrupt her influence just like your dead pals floating around there. Meet me. I'll tell you all about the voices.--
We come back once again to DL3, discussing water with Cain, and the Seraph's Solace's purity. He states that Souls cannot pass through the Seraph's Solace, and that it separates connections. Cain also says that he, with enough effort can disrupt "Her" influence.
The Thief offered her a trade: use the soul power my system grants you to do as I please, and I'll keep you alive. Thus the Last Devil watched over (and became the conduit for) ALL souls passing through her once-powerful dungeon.[/b][/color][/font]
+>You're closer to who or whatever the nexus of those lights is,
+>so they're much more numerous in the void here. |
Cain refers to the Last Seraphim, as a conduit, effectively made a slave to the very processes she put in place(by proxy) to feed herself. Proxxy, in DL8 refers to something within the Void as a nexus for such Lights.
During the vision/nightmare/whateveryouwanttocallit Target(alias Vi) had attempted to communicate with what is presumed to be the Last Seraphim, due to the massive, black text, and the inability for it to hear us due to the interference of the Bindings, until we had rhymed, at which point the Seraphim heard us. But before it had heard us rhyming, it had been able to acknowledge communication, just not been able to hear it.
Now, we know that Holy/Awesome damage damages the Unholy, the last Seraphim, like the Cherubs, is Unholy Oriented. And the countless lights in the void exist(and Betweenford speaks of them as if they slow her down/restrain her), bindings exist in the Void, in large number, the Last Seraphim and her influences can be halted/stopped/interrupted via expenditures of power, and Illborn undergo Illbirth where they lose their soul and it is drained away of all Soul Charge.
What is it that ties all these things together?
ONLY YOUUUUUU CAN DECIDE!!!!!
Once upon a time, the Devil herself looked around and said: "Sheeeeeeeeit, if we keep eatin everything, there won't be nothin left! Yo, Devil Jr., find someone smarter 'fore we run out." That someone is the Thief. You may know him as Oric the Awful.
Not long after the Thief found the Warrens, a little cherub approached him and told him he'd been chosen to rule over the place... at a price. See, the Thief had to find some way to fuel the entire underworld, as it needed power to keep moving and consuming. He came up with a genius plan: use HIS cohorts as batteries! A tense alliance was formed between the Devils and the humans.
The Thief was trusted with an unbelievably powerful Soul Star. It granted him dominance over the Devil and ALL her sinister siblings. He could manage them, tell them exactly what they needed to do to run the place HIS way, under threat of retaliation. There were three such Soul Stars, but that's another story.
However... after the first run of his 'experiment', the Devil told him: they know what they need to do, meaning the Thief himself was no longer needed. Keeping him alive was a useless power drain for no return. He'd been fired.
The Thief, gazing up at the quick and permanent death between the Devil's teeth, simply said: "No."
With an impossible strike of his spirit hammer, the Devil's arms were sliced off, a wretched scream erupting from her thousand yard throat. The Thief ascended to Level Seven and SLEW the Devil's sibling there. He ascended to Level Six and SLEW the Devil's sibling there. By Level One, all that remained of this once-powerful race was the crying, mutilated Last Devil herself. The Thief offered her a trade: use the soul power my system grants you to do as I please, and I'll keep you alive. Thus the Last Devil watched over (and became the conduit for) ALL souls passing through her once-powerful dungeon..
The story of Oric's Hammer ties it all together. The Seraphs, instead of mindlessly eating, made Oric and his Lackeys create a system that would ensure "food" for each Seraph, in the form of Soul Charge, using his Sinister Siblings as literal batteries to contain the charge. The process we know as the cycles is little different, besides the divvying up of Soul Charge, as Oric had slain all of the Seraph's literal Sinister Siblings. Naturally, some unlucky Souls, such as Slog would still enter the dungeon after Oric's Cycles had come about, just as they had before, only this time, they probably wouldn't get consumed whole(due to death of Seraphs). The unlucky persons, peoples, beasties and slimes would get their Souls removed from their body, and undergo Illbirth as their Soul Stars are drained of essence.
Slog reconnects with the remnants of his soul, re-gaining consciousness (or the Slime equivalent). The Essence of Slime disappears.
And the resulting essence gets reabsorbed into the resulting Illborn. And the Illborn gets shunted somewhere appropriate, whether it be the mercenary council, or a dungeon level.
With the knowledge that power expenditure can impede the Last Seraphim/her influence, what better power is there for Oric to use against the Last Seraphim to keep her bound, than the Soul Charge that would have gone to the Six Literally Sinister Siblings? Possibly even able to damage the Last Seraphim if needed, due to the possibility of Soul Charge being able to deal Holy damage as Target and Oric can, if needed(like a rowdy animal, bucking against their restraints sometimes needs a bit of enticement to calm down?)
Using all of this combined information, as well as the visual evidence of bindings within the Void, we can safely conclude that the Lights within the Void are Soul Stars, for however brief they retain their star form. Reduced to nothing but binding, after Illbirth concludes/takes place. Their energies used to placate/harm/stun/tranquilize the Last Seraphim.
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Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ??? (Read 3975569 times)