Before we begin, it's important to piece together what little we know about the actual structure of the Warrens of Oric the Awesome.
ONE: Most who enter the Warrens are drained of their soul charge immediately, becoming Illborn. Some such as Yaos, Al, and Cherish are not.
How has no one noticed this!? I didn't see it until I walked over here but it's the size of a few hundred houses!
Why did you say this was "extremely sensitive" property?Huh?
What does that mean? "Extremely sensitive?"That's what I was told to protect. This area. If I knew there was something like this in it...
TWO: The Warrens seems to source all its inhabitants from "the multiverse." It has some way to teleport people in and out of different worlds. On Al's world, this appeared as a large, opaque barrier. Wilford guarded the area around it. When they fell in, they were drawn to the Warrens. Both of them were separated from their Soul Stars (even Al didn't recognize his at first), and as Wilford was an Illborn, we can assume his was drained on entry. We can assume, from this, that
people entering from other worlds in the multiverse, through portals, are a source of new energy in the Warrens. Cain's story implies this was the
only source of energy of the Warrens before Oric took over.
THREE: Those who enter the Warrens feel themselves to be "falling," as with Slog and - pictured from the stream - Al. At some point, after falling for a while, they find themselves on a Dungeon Level.
FOUR: The Dungeon Levels are not stacked vertically as their design suggests. There is empty space or sky above the "real" DL4. In fact, most inter-level travel appears to be teleportation: the porta-ladder on DL1, Proxxy's portable door to and from her Hub, Checkpoint travel, Warp Point travel, and so on. The only real staircase we've seen went from DL2 to DL3 after allying with Proxxy, and it closed behind us in time for DL2 to changed to Cleared DL2. All inter-level travel seems to consist of movable portals, suggesting the locations of the Dungeon Levels relative to each other is always shifting.
FIVE: The void seen in all Dungeon Levels is filled with empty Soul Star Bindings, and these are more dense in DL8 than on the earlier Dungeon Levels.
From this, we begin to piece together an image of the Warrens of Oric the Awesome.
Now, this
highly scientific portrayal of the Warrens is probably wildly inaccurate and bears little resemblance to its true form, but it's good enough. We know from the above facts that the Warrens appears as a portal in multiple worlds, has some kind of attraction or gravity pulling people and things toward the Dungeon Levels, and that this attraction always points in the direction of lower Dungeon Levels (when we free fell from DL3, it was to DL4, and this would explain why the Void was brighter in DL8: the Bindings ended up around it).
This does leave the location and purpose of a ventilation system (the Underside) up in the air, but it would explain one other point in the Warrens: the sub-dungeons.
If you are Betweenford: my last trip through the subs was under ten minutes. So much for 'superior travel!' I believe you owe me one River Dollar. Please exit through the double doors.
Though Dungeon Levels are "randomized," rooms or areas unfit for a Dungeon Level proper are "flushed to sub," or sent to a sub-dungeon. The Blue Chick sometimes seen in the Underside seems to travel through sub-dungeons much like how the Angels create and walk through doors with their rainbow keys. As we saw in the sub-dungeon Ciro found Riltia in, these sub-dungeons may connect to proper Dungeon Levels or even the Underside (somehow), but the most reliable way of accessing them seems to be portals. Since these sub-dungeons possibly floating out in the void somewhere, waiting to be recycled, are unfit for use, and the Bindings in the void are already consumed of their energy, we can infer the nature of the void:
it is the garbage dump of the Warrens of Oric the Awesome, the resting place of trash material waiting to be re-assembled.
Since it's possible to travel through the void (via portals), and we always see a faint grid when we look into void, it's reasonable to assume the lines on the grid are connections between portals: we never saw any connections to or from Cleared DL2 except our own Checkpoint, and the void there was dark. Notice, too, how the lights in the void are always on the grid lines. Combined with the knowledge that Soul Stars are broken as people fall into the Warrens, we can infer that
each light is a Soul Star in the process of splitting, stolen from its owner as they travel to a Dungeon Level or elsewhere.There are many questions about the structure of the Warrens left unanswered, and I tried to write this using only knowledge available to the players. We'll find out more about the dungeon as we progress through the remaining Dungeon Levels.
As a prize for completing this theory craft, the
Asynchrony Catalyst gains a "Z" box for its second set of coordinates.
meta bonusThough javierpwn got the bulk of this answer right, monk12 wins alongside him on a technicality. PoV characters are controlled by the players who are represented by the ghosts (memories?) of dead adventurers, dragons, etc. The PoV ghosts are all who have entered the Warrens and died. Since the number of these ghosts is increasing - Ciro even saw this happen - this must mean the number of suggesters/readers is going up, and
it always is! The lights in the void
are us, though not for the exact reasons monk12 said.
In other words, every time someone starts playing TWoOtA, some random fictional character has their soul eaten.
Thank you for your contributions.
Poll
8 (16%)
Author
Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ??? (Read 3975517 times)