I made a video going over Pilgrim's Traverse lore!

[Cleretic]

https://youtu.be/qSc307Ml4fk

Hi there! I don't typically post my lore and story analysis videos here, but I felt like I'd make an exception on this one just because the lore and story in question hasn't been much talked about, and has an unusual barrier for entry.

The Pilgrim's Traverse, like Eureka Orthos, has infodumps on every single boss if you ask an NPC about them, with some of them being exceptionally unusual, or having some interesting new information! (And some of them are just rather well-written; I do like the Forgiven Emulation's description.)

...Aaaaand then there's the epilogue you can get if you also did the Shadowbringers role quests, which just opens a whole host of further speculation.

Y'all, I'm pretty sure we killed the Zeromus. The real one this time, the namesake!

[Zero-ELEC]

I did the epilogue quest, but never thought of that voidsent as

Zeromus EG....

[Iscah]

I've seen a few people remark on the Church of the First Light only being brought up in the one quest, but it does get more mentions if you worked through all the sidequests, plus being distinctly physically present in a few places -- in Il Mheg you have both the one up in the northeast corner and another down in the drowned valley (which one quest or another sends you into looking for trinkets to make sure you see it's labelled as a church).

More conspicuously, it is highlighted in the sidequest Church Warrant, in which you rescue a travelling historian who was looking at church ruins in Ahm Araeng and he provides some detail about the church:

The Church of the First Light was one of the most widespread religions and had followers in every corner of Norvrandt.

It began with the original inhabitants, the elves, and eventually took root among the other races. This included not only their allies, the Humes, but the Galdjent and Drahn, with whom they shared a tumultuous relationship.

The Church of the First Light's influence grew to such an extent that it surpassed even that of the monarchs and rulers of the various nations.

That was until the Flood of Light changed everything. The Light that they so revered was not their salvation, but their destruction.

As you may well imagine, those who survived quickly abandoned the religion, and its teachings were all but forgotten. I have made it my life's work to see that these people and their ways are not similarly lost to the sands of time.

Though I understand the perils involved with the exploration of ancient ruins, I feel we must do our utmost to retain what knowledge we can of the world that existed before the Flood.

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On a totally separate subject, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the reveal about Feo Ul and how the madblooms come to be (though it does explain why they seem more mature than the other pixies), but I feel like we need a bit more detail on that front. Are the other few unique pixies also madblooms then? Is the role of Titania traditionally taken up by one?

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I don't think the shadow-beast "just wanted to comfort the injured" - the lore sounds to me that it is a deliberate death-spirit who ensures that those who are already doomed to die will do so quickly and gently. (A bit like Ra-la from the Dead Ends but without the cult around it.) The last bit of the description is that by instinct it seeks to end your suffering and usher you through death's door, which certainly doesn't sound accidental.

In fact, given the speculation that the pixies came about because the Church believed in them, I wonder if a personification of a particular kind of death could come about in the same way?

Also note that the rhyme in there is a callback to Titania's theme lyrics.

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One detail which I have not seen anyone else comment on (and it took me a moment to catch on what they were on about) is this remark:

FEO UL
I can hardly wait to brag about your exploits! And I know one friend who will be particularly keen to listen... Shame that he's less pretty without the crystals.

Just casually dropping in there that Feo Ul is still in contact with Raha and apparently the two of them get together and fanclub over what exploits they've seen us get up to!

[Cleretic]

I've seen a few people remark on the Church of the First Light only being brought up in the one quest, but it does get more mentions if you worked through all the sidequests, plus being distinctly physically present in a few places -- in Il Mheg you have both the one up in the northeast corner and another down in the drowned valley (which one quest or another sends you into looking for trinkets to make sure you see it's labelled as a church).

More conspicuously, it is highlighted in the sidequest Church Warrant, in which you rescue a travelling historian who was looking at church ruins in Ahm Araeng and he provides some detail about the church:

Yellow quests are exactly the sort of place this tends to come up, so I'm not surprised it did, or that I missed it; the one time I actually did sit down and take notes all the way through a zone's yellow quests was thoroughly exhausting, and that was Elpis where all the stuff we learn is relatively focused. I wouldn't have known where to start in trying to find stuff on the Church of the First Light outside of the Lakeland ruin I showed.


And the lore on the beast that became the Forgiven Profanity is interesting, in that we're essentially looking at multiple layers of remove; we are speculating on the true nature of a creature that we only found after it got turned into a sin eater, with our main source of information being a fae's paraphrasing of the Church of the First Light's account of and response to it; through all that, it's really hard to get more than just the base facts. Someone in the video comments also compared it to Ra-la, and it's definitely a plausible comparison, but I'm personally inclined towards more lower-key readings, so I look at all of it and think that the beast was maybe either not aware of its nature, or didn't especially care, and the personification was more Aenc Daen and the Church's interpretations of it.

[RedLolly]

On a totally separate subject, I'm not quite sure how I feel about the reveal about Feo Ul and how the madblooms come to be (though it does explain why they seem more mature than the other pixies), but I feel like we need a bit more detail on that front. Are the other few unique pixies also madblooms then? Is the role of Titania traditionally taken up by one?

There is a short story, "In the Beginning, Beyond the End," specifically about Feo Ul's birth as a Madbloom and the very close friendship they have with the Exarch that's new to the "Chronicles of Light II" book. Some important details revealed in it were:

-Feo Ul woke up next to a pile of bones inside the roots of a tree, implying that the tree grew over the corpse, and thought "Those were my bones." And that was it.
-Madblooms are so rare and weird among the Fae that Feo Ul was kind of an outcast
-Feo Ul took to pranking the citizens of the Crystarium before it was really anything more than a small set of tents and enjoyed watching it being built one brick at a time. It was extremely common for the Exarch to literally run himself ragged chasing Feo Ul around the place to keep them from pranking citizens, which is hilarious and adorable. ("Get 'em, Exarch!" is a real line shouted by citizens in the story, and at that point G'raha had already started wearing the cowl and robe covering his face we know. Fully robed 5 foot man chasing tiny pixie around the crystal tower.) and Feo Ul really took a shine to G'raha after seeing how he was also red and magical and constantly played with them.
-Lyna ended up in the Exarch's direct care at 10 years old. Her parents were particularly close friends to the Exarch, and died in a Sin Eater raid, and her mother's last words to the Exarch was to take care of Lyna.
-The crystal parts of the Exarch were not solid. They were actually made from hundreds of pieces of crystal he had to manually shatter and reform several times over to make it functionally movable. if he didn't maintain the spell to golem his arm and other parts of his body around, they just disintegrated.

In my opinion, it's pretty much all but confirmed that the Church of the First Light growing to the insane size it was as much a cause for the flood as Ciella's machinations. Which makes the tribes of Rak-tika, like the group Y'shtola lived with, being worshippers of darkness itself even more intriguing, too. Did they pop up after the flood or was there always an underground faith opposing the First Light church?

As for Madblooms becoming Titania; I think it's irrelevant. Feo Ul is only king because WE didn't want to be. And the story indicates Madblooms are not only rare, they take an age to even awaken as one, but they're considered oddballs even among Pixie-kind. I think Feo-Ul is just *like that,* Madbloom or not.