Question about a certain location (spoilers!)

[StCatharines]

Again: this thread has spoilers for Chapter 2 of the story!

Spoiler

After completing the second story chapter, which was marvelous aside from a head-scratching fifteen minutes of trying to get to the last couple floors of the tower, I was reflecting on one aspect that I'm still puzzled by...

Who is it that Tobias has buried in the secondary chamber of his cave, through the little hidden water passage? Is Tobias actually Tobias? Is Tobias instead Jonas, mourning for Tobias, and trying to make it right by holding his memory high while making himself out to be the villain? Is the hidden body the real Tobias? Is the body Jonas, and Tobias doesn't want anyone to know for reasons unknown?

As far as I can figure currently, it is Tobias in the cave, based on the writing in Return (below) and the dialogue with him.

I woke up in the dark. Everything dark. Everything painful. Every breath in agony.

Waiting changed nothing. I started crawling. I couldn't keep track of how long. Weeks, months maybe. All the tunnels had changed. Not that I could remember the way up anymore.

I'd feel my way forward, finding dead end after dead end. Digging with my hands when I could. Hearing other things down there with me.

[Here the writer appears to be leaving the Lazaret, or perhaps underground in the Devastation?]

Eventually I found my way out. Everything changed. Green again. Brown and red and blue again. Life returned.

I could finally look at myself. Everything still hurt. I was broken. Flesh half gone. Joints missing. No leg. I can't remember what happened after the black sick reached my head. 

It took me many years to regain my focus. Around me, humanity started to adapt and flourish again.

Unaware of their danger. I have set myself to work these past centuries. Though I am no scholar, no alchemist, my mind is strong. I have deciphered and learned much of what Jonas and the others already knew.

I intend to use that knowledge shortly to turn the tide. Perhaps that is why I now reminisce on those dark, painful years after the awakening. May this endeavor be more gentle for you, my friends.

And some of the dialogue which, again, leads me to believe he is in fact Tobias:

"It's been... over five centuries since I first saw him use this. I was young, then. We both were. A mere farmhand and a lord's son in his father's library. By that point he had already turned the room into his own workshop..."

On another matter, why is there a statue of Tobias in Nadiya showing him triumphantly standing on an unknown character? Is he standing on a depiction of Jonas, a sort of Saint George and the dragon scenario? Do people still blame Jonas for the current misery?

If anyone has some lore-based ideas, or if I've missed something blatantly obvious which would fully or partially resolve these mysteries, I'd be delighted to hear it.

 

Edited May 29, 2025 by StCatharines

[Thorfinn]

Spoiler

After maybe 3 minutes of trying to interact with everything, and I mean everything, I went with the old RPG trope -- if you hit a dead end, see if there's any loot from earlier in the campaign you haven't found a good use for yet, and put it to use. I didn't stick the landing on my first glide, but did on the second, once I knew where to aim.

That's the bit you were talking about with the last couple floors, yes?

 

[Maelstrom]

Spoiler

@Thorfinn It's possible to get to the top of the tower without the glider.  I'm horrible at parcour and RPG puzzles like this, so just cheated my way past those floors with the elevator shaft.

@StCatharines I think Jonas died centuries past and we have Tobias.  I recall Tobias saying he constructed the tower and I think the devastation is because the mentor's skill far exceeded the protege's skill. In this case when Tobias attempted to use the Lens it had a few effects.

1. It destroyed the tower.
2. Caused the devastation surrounding the tower.
3. Caused the interesting repeating rooms we saw in the RA.

The lore in this update further solidifies my belief that the rot would not have appeared if Jonas had let well enough alone by not peering through that lens.  Additionally, the temporal shenanigans, drifters and devastation would not have happened and a whole heck of a lot of people would not have died horrible deaths.  

 

[StCatharines]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

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After maybe 3 minutes of trying to interact with everything, and I mean everything, I went with the old RPG trope -- if you hit a dead end, see if there's any loot from earlier in the campaign you haven't found a good use for yet, and put it to use. I didn't stick the landing on my first glide, but did on the second, once I knew where to aim.

That's the bit you were talking about with the last couple floors, yes?

 

Spoiler

I hadn't even considered using the glider! Honestly I just got up there through brute force, ignorance, and sheer stubbornness. 

 

26 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

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I think Jonas died centuries past and we have Tobias.  I recall Tobias saying he constructed the tower and I think the devastation is because the mentor's skill far exceeded the protege's skill. In this case when Tobias attempted to use the Lens it had a few effects.

1. It destroyed the tower.
2. Caused the devastation surrounding the tower.
3. Caused the interesting repeating rooms we saw in the RA.

The lore in this update further solidifies my belief that the rot would not have appeared if Jonas had let well enough alone by not peering through that lens.  Additionally, the temporal shenanigans, drifters and devastation would not have happened and a whole heck of a lot of people would not have died horrible deaths.  

 

Spoiler

Ah-ha! Alright, the Devastation isn't a product of Jonas and Tobias working together? I thought it had been, and Tobias built/created Erel to assist their endeavor at the time. Once it was used, the Devastation began, Tobias got hit, badly, with the rot, and that led to the rest.

As far as the drifters go... I had the oddest thought last night. What if the moments of horrible lucidity we see, when a drifter kneels and beseeches an all-powerful Creator to end their suffering, when a bowtorn gazes longingly to the heavens as if in prayer, when a shiver simply falls to the ground and beats itself against the stone... what if that's all due to every last drifter, each bowtorn, and all of the skittering, awful shivers being the same exact person?

A man kept in an endless hell, a loop of eternal suffering, perhaps self-inflicted as atonement for his realization of being the cause behind the Rot?

What if they're all simply Jonas. Living, suffering, dying, again and again.

Yeesh. I just creeped myself out with that. 

 

[Maelstrom]

13 minutes ago, StCatharines said:

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Interesting things you find out when goggling things.  Like the word Lazaret

1. A hospital treating contagious diseases.

2. A building or ship used as a quarantine station.

3. often lazarette A storage space below deck or between decks on a ship or boat.

 

  Hide contents

Ah-ha! Alright, the Devastation isn't a product of Jonas and Tobias working together? I thought it had been, and Tobias built/created Erel to assist their endeavor at the time. Once it was used, the Devastation began, Tobias got hit, badly, with the rot, and that led to the rest.

As far as the drifters go... I had the oddest thought last night. What if the moments of horrible lucidity we see, when a drifter kneels and beseeches an all-powerful Creator to end their suffering, when a bowtorn gazes longingly to the heavens as if in prayer, when a shiver simply falls to the ground and beats itself against the stone... what if that's all due to every last drifter, each bowtorn, and all of the skittering, awful shivers being the same exact person?

A man kept in an endless hell, a loop of eternal suffering, perhaps self-inflicted as atonement for his realization of being the cause behind the Rot?

What if they're all simply Jonas. Living, suffering, dying, again and again.

Yeesh. I just creeped myself out with that. 

 

Spoiler

Not what I was thinking.  Here's my thoughts on a generic timeline:

1. Jonas uses the lens to peer into places he shouldn't.
2. Rot appears and spreads.
3. Jonas and Tobias work to save humanity.
4. The great machine is activated, *cough*saves*cough* humanity, creating drifters and seraphim.
5. Tobias claws his way out of the Lazeret, founds Nadiya, begins construction of the tower.
6. Activates the tower, it explodes (freezing in time) and the devastation forms around the tower.
7. We show up.

 

Edited May 29, 2025 by Maelstrom

[ifoz]

6 hours ago, StCatharines said:

Who is it that Tobias has buried in the secondary chamber of his cave, through the little hidden water passage? Is Tobias actually Tobias? Is Tobias instead Jonas, mourning for Tobias, and trying to make it right by holding his memory high while making himself out to be the villain? Is the hidden body the real Tobias? Is the body Jonas, and Tobias doesn't want anyone to know for reasons unknown?

Spoiler

The body to me just seems like an easter egg. The clutter found around it makes it look like it used to be an underground shelter before the cave got flooded.
The idea of the body being Jonas is more credible to me than the idea of Jonas posing as Tobias for no reason and amputating his limbs to keep up the charade, though I feel as though the reveal of Jonas' fate is going to be a big story beat and not left up to a tiny hidden room that only a very small percentage of the player base is ever going to find.

 

6 hours ago, StCatharines said:

On another matter, why is there a statue of Tobias in Nadiya showing him triumphantly standing on an unknown character? Is he standing on a depiction of Jonas, a sort of Saint George and the dragon scenario? Do people still blame Jonas for the current misery?

Spoiler

The thing he's standing on looks like a souped-up drifter of sorts to me. He does say that the creatures that came from rifts were worse back 500 years ago, so that checks out.

 

4 hours ago, StCatharines said:

Ah-ha! Alright, the Devastation isn't a product of Jonas and Tobias working together? I thought it had been, and Tobias built/created Erel to assist their endeavor at the time. Once it was used, the Devastation began, Tobias got hit, badly, with the rot, and that led to the rest.

Spoiler

Nah, the devastation was built well after the grand machine was activated and Tobias emerged from the Lazaret. It was made by Tobias and generations of Nadiyans in an attempt to bring the Seraphs back into the world.

 

4 hours ago, StCatharines said:

What if they're all simply Jonas. Living, suffering, dying, again and again.

Spoiler

It's a very interesting concept, but given that Tobias says on the RA resonator "they can't all have perished and they can't all have turned" it seems like this "turning" is something that can happen to multiple people, which I'd wager is the process of becoming a monster.