[2020] Dauntless | Lore AMA - Today at 3 PM PT.

Are cells illegal in this universe? Why is The Middleman so shady if everyone uses his cells openly as part of their equipment? The wiki says that "he learned the value of trading in anything and everything on the

black market

", but I don't get why he couldn't do it on the

regular market

. Is it just for the aesthetic?

They're not "illegal" in the usual sense. It's more that cells are valuable and relatively rare (sure, Slayers have tons of them, but Slayers aren't ordinary people) and that the Middleman has perfected the process of working with them--and he isn't sharing his techniques.

That's not to say he may not have cut his teeth on the black market--which in this sense is really more literal in some ways then we normally think of the term. I.e., black market deals aren't usally done out in the open, for example.

Can Moyra actually deadlift more than Wills?

They weren't able to test this before the old Ramsgate crumbled into the Umbral Deeps, taking Wils' rarely-seen weight set and gym with it. For now, the question must remain unanswered. But I will say that Wils spends a lot of time barking at his muscular assistant while Moyra is a one-woman show--so it's likely that she is at the very least in somewhat better shape. (Wils can also never resist eating all the Dark Harvest treats in one night.)

Will we ever get to the heart of the maelstrom at some point?

No definitive plans for that right now, but it's something I could see us tackling in the future. Ever since I've been working on this game, for example, we've talked about the possibility that there could still be ancient Behemoths out there of staggering size--and if they're out there, odds are that's where they are.

The thing about the Maelstrom's heart is that it's sort of like the center of a spiral galaxy, but in microcosm. There are tremendous pressures, bizarre gravitational fluxes, things that would tear even the toughest Ostian ironclad to shreds even as it charges the hell out of the many of the Escalation islands (the Arbourhome Blight is a bit different in that regard, though who knows where Agarus evolved? The Maelstrom's heart is one potential place.)

Ostia is cool. But have you ever heard of St. Avellaine??

Also - yes, I think it's safe to say you'll have a chance to learn more about the Ostians as time goes on!

WЭ ㅏㄹЭ 𑀘ΩㅁИ𑀦Γ

Say hello to the Farslayers hiding out in Ramsgate right now. With a little effort from some Slayers, I think they've got a good shot at building a brand new home very soon :)

Can behemoths possibly use 2 elements or more?

Possibly? Sure! But such hybrid feeders don't always survive for long unless they eventually favor one aetheric frequency over the other. This is simply a matter of sustenance, really--finding blaze to feed on isn't that hard for a blaze-feeder, nor is finding radiant something a radiant-feeder struggles with that much. But a (purely hypothetical) blaze/radiant Behemoth might find it difficult to find their preferred food of choice and would slide inevitably into one or the other to stay alive. (This is, lore-wise, the story of the Escalation variants--they have initially mutated from their source species due to charged aether, but were not able to maintain the divide without sliding into the variant flavor.)

This is all because the primary aetheric frequencies with which we're familiar are also the most stable, like the notches in the circle of aether. These frequencies are the most commonly found naturally occuring, as if the aether itself wants to sort out this way, and so most Behemoths have evolved over the last thousand years (aether accelerates mutations and evolution in Behemoths, and so does their strange asexual form of reproduction).

As living aether creatures, though, it's certainly possible and even probably that in harsher places (like the Maelstrom's heart, potentially) such dual-element Behemoths could grow strong enough to maintain their preferred diet and overcome the limitations the variants faced.

To my knowledge, however, no such Behemoth is currently in the works. Just saying that within the lore it is possible but very rare.

See my reply to u/XDAVID1! I think that should cover it.

I am around 90% sure you will be learning more about Ostia, Avellainia, Krolach, Andar, and many of our other cultures/states--especially those first two as they're what pass for "superpowers" in the Shattered Isles. Think of Ostia as the industrial/tech power, and Avellainia as the culture/knowledge power, more or less. Not that Ostians don't make art and Avellainians don't produce inventions, far from it. More that each of those island states simply has those resources most in abundance. (I think I've covered this elsewhere before, but Ostia grew from islands where ancient industrial tech survived the Upheaval, while the Orrery in St. Avellaine protects all the knowledge they can--ancient or otherwise--and is said to be built on the foundations of a great library that also survived the Upheaval intact.)

As the citizens of Ramsgate explore more and more of their new place in the Ram formation, they may well (read: will) also encounter cultures we haven't met yet--and have perhaps been isolated for a long time from the rest of the Shattered Isles.

About the "Slayer of the Queen" - that one's a bit of a red herring. Back when Open Beta launched, the queues were totally overloaded. The error message that folks got when they got stuck in the queue was a compound word (all of them were, if memory serves) that included the word "Queen." So if you happen to have been stuck in that queue at the start of Open Beta and eventually got out of it, you earned that title. (This answer courtesy of Chris "C4" Cleroux, our live design lead, whose memory is better than mine.)

Hi, I missed the time of the AMA last time, so I'll try my luck this time.

So the Ramsgate is called the "Heart of the frontier of the Shattered Isles". My question is, is there only one frontier? Ramsgate is located on the edge of civilization, but what is on the opposing side? The world of Dauntless is different from ours in the way that there is no kind of landscapes that would prevent expansion, like oceans or mountain ranges. Do people expand in that other direction as well or is there some kind of natural barrier to prevent that? What would that barrier be?

If I wrote that phrase I used "of" one time too many, first of all. :) Yikes.

The Shattered Isles all orbit and move around a central core. Not all bodies move at the same rate or in a consistent direction, but larger island formations are held together by gravity and poorly understood aetheric fields that appear to grow exponentially with a body's mass.

This means that the larger archipelagos like Ostia, Avellainia, and the Ram Formation (where Ramsgate still resides--it used to be on the far side) tend to hang together in their own little microcosms while moving through lighter, more scattered rogue islands that may be moving at a different pace. These same aetheric fields generally repel or simply capture smaller bodies that could otherwise cause a rock-storm.

This also means that accurately mapping the Shattered Isles in a permanent fashion is a fool's errand. The (small-o) orrery at the heart of the (big-O) Orrery tower in St. Avellaine is the nearest thing to an accurate world map that exists, but a smaller, scaled-down version of the Ram Formation and its wide surroundings can be found in front of your landing zone in the middle of Ramsgate Plaza.

The "Frontier" in this case is a broader, more conceptual frontier than necessarily a set location. The Ram Formation is distant from both Ostia and Avellainia, and has remained that way even as the Maelstrom surged and grew in the Skyquake. So "frontier" is a catch-all for towns, outposts, and cities that aren't part of a major island-state and are generally surrounded by wild, unsettled, or overtaken islands.

And what prevents expansion? Resources and Behemoths. The Behemoths must be fought more or less constantly to keep them at bay (without Slayers, they'd overrun pretty much everything without a year or two) and the settlers who head out to build those towns, outposts, and cities are among the bravest or most foolhardy people in the world--depending on your perspective.

What's the water cycle in the world of Dauntless? Water is one of the most important resources of survival, and on many islands it just flows down into the Sky Below, being lost forever like everything else that falls there. In the old Ramsgate, there was a sewer system that was leading down from the island, now we have a few large waterfalls, and literally no one is trying to prevent all of this water from being wasted. And it also flows from somewhere on the top of the island. Where do the civilizations and other life get their large enough supplies of water from? What happens to it after it falls down?

Eh, more or less like it works today. The water falls down, sure, but then evaporates, turns into clouds, those clouds rain on the islands (especially in the temperate Helic Risers zone), and the cycle repeats. Are there lakes or oceans below the Sky Below? No one has ever been able to find out, but either there are water bodies down there from which H2O can evaporate or it evaporates in mid-air due to gravimetric and aetheric pressures.

Who is older, Granny Strega or Hector?

A lady never reveals her age, and neither does granny.

Is there going to be a double element behemoth

More on this topic in my reply to u/XDAVID1 !

Will the unseen return again this year?

They do seem to emerge with some regularity this time of year, so I could... see that.

Do we really kill Agarus?

Agarus, like all Behemoth names (so far) refers to the species, not an individual, generally speaking. There are Malkarions, Torgadoros, Thraxes, and the Agarus. What's different about that last one is that it's both a Behemoth and a colonial organism of sorts. Have you heard of aspen colonies or the armillaria "honey fungus" in Oregon? And much like a piece of mold on cheese or bread, a big ol' fungus is very difficult to fully eradicate. There are spores, roots, tendrils, and stems lurking in the ground and they can rebuild themselves without expending too much effort as long as it's in a terra-rich environment like Arbourhome.

So in a sense, you killed (or slew, in the parlance of our times) the Agarus, yes, but then it comes back to be slain again and again. This is really why the Farslayers eventually gave up and fled their city--even they couldn't stop it from returning, and they're the terra experts.

This probably means that the species will soon expand beyond the Arbourhome Blight, even if it's eventually driven from Farslayer territory.

What happened to the weekly quests? Are we just going to have one journal entry as well?

The weekly quests were only for that season, so they're gone--but the quests for the new Arbourhome Blight content and the story missions with Granny and Xelya are sticking around.

That said, this time we just have the one Journal entry. We're still working on finding the right amount of lore to add each time around and how best to employ our art resources (our artists are friggin' geniuses and I could never do what they do but we only have so many of them). But I will keep doing my best to add more of them as we go.

I suspect the season after this one will definitely be filling out your journal a bit, to be sure.

Oh and I should mention that in addition to that Chronicle we do have the new Agarus Journal entry and you can expect one for a new NPC (spoilers?) very soon, and we'll be using lore nodes (those are the Journal entries you get from clicking on an object like the Sword or Moyra's Tongs) in a fun way for an upcoming seasonal event that I shouldn't name but c'mon you can probably figure it out. :D

Correct--and honestly, I would love to see this happen but I don't expect it to for a while if ever, and don't want to set inaccurate expectations! Also, as the writer, it's one of those things that I can support and perhaps inspire with lore--but the hard work of balancing power and elements and all that jazz is the work of designers who are WAY better at math than I am.

Is the terra esc going to be as big in story like umbral esc or just not? Cause I want the farslayers to get their home back

Get their home? Yes. Get their home back? A trickier question. But odds are the Farslayers won't be fardown in the fardumps forever.

I see you're the kind who, when confronted with a genie, always asks for more wishes. I respect that, and so I will do my best to tackle all of these--and without copping out by saying "because it looks cool" or "because it's more fun." Because there is always a lore reason, even if I have to bend space and time a bit to fit one in. :)

How closely does the in-game usage of the weapons reflect their in-universe fighting styles? Does the sword rework reflect a canonical change in sword usage?

I think Trainer Rosk, Kat, and your other mentor figures are always studying and learning new techniquest themselves, and this shows in how weapon use can change and evolve. But tbh it's not a major part of the story right now--but it's an intriguing idea to pursue!

There's a statue of the first slayer in the Ramsgate plaza. What behemoth's head is he standing on?

It's a "best guess" impression of a legendary Behemoth the First Slayer faced, but which is described in different ways in many cultures. In a way, it sort of represents an Ur-Behemoth. Most cultures call it some variation of "Leviathan."

One of Strega's voicelines mentions that she hasn't worked "this hard" in this life or any past life. Does she really remember living past lives? If so, how can she have those memories?

I've searched and searched and can't find the line in question. But if she did imply she remembered "past lives" that was a figure of speech.

When Skraev got remodeled, did the Skraev population in-universe canonically change as well?

Sure looks like it! In lore terms, this is a realignment event for the species--certain traits becoming rapidly beneficial and (thanks to the weirdness of living aether) influencing the physical forms of individuals in precisely the way actual evolution doesn't work.

How much do the various weapons actually weigh?

Light enough to carry, heavy enough to do damage. Give me a specific weapon and I can come up with a number :)

Why are the weapons shaped the way they are? Something like the Quillshot axe should be absolutely horrendous at cutting much of anything, but it seems to work fine in-game. Would behemoth weapons be useful in regular human warfare?

In lore terms, the power gained from using Behemoth parts combined with Slayer weapon training (and study of Behemoth weaknesses) means weapons needn't necessarily look like a traditional example of their type. The terrawoven weapons of the Farslayers, for example, look like carved sticks, but thanks to the way they're made they're as functional and sturdy and anything made from metal or stone.

The Quillshot sword, for example, is more of a spiked club in appearance, for example. But the techniques used to forge the weapon and the way aether is worked into its structure affords it a cutting edge,

How do different behemoth reagents change the perks and UEs of their respective gear?

I think I'd need some examples on this one.

We find blueprints for exotics (except TS, which are Lady Luck's own design) in patrols. Does that mean someone left the schematics for these items lying around? If so, who made them, and why?

Different exotics were designed by different smiths for different purposes (each one unique). Conceptually when you recover them in the wild you are finding either copies of the original schematics that were lost for whatever reason over the years (remember all those Ositan harpoons on islands? Most of these were probably fired decades if not centuries ago--people have been sailing these islands for a long time).

Moyra mentions seeing something other than behemoths tearing into Ramsgate, as well as each other. Is there any chance you can tell us more about these guys? Are these the "Aetherbeasts" taken off the roadmap so long ago?

I need more context on which line you mean here. It could have been environmental danger (if she's talking about the Umbral Deeps, falling umbral boulders tore into the city quite a bit), packs of dangerous fauna that have since seen their numbers reduced, even warships, depending on the point in history.

The journal confirms that humans made behemoths. When, why, and how did they do this? And how do modern humans know about the behemoths' origins?

I'm not going to delve too deeply into this one right now because this question in particular is something I want to work on answering in-game. But the last one I can answer--the Orrery has preserved not just all the knowledge acquired since the Upheaval that they could get, as well as a surprisingly large collection of pre-Upheaval documents. They jealously guard these and only the highest-ranking members of that institution can gain regular access to this knowledge.

How long ago did Janek and Lady Luck bone? Because we all know they boned. Each other, to be exact. Also, what base did they get to?

Sorry, getting a lot of static on the line. Could you repeat that, but like, classier?

We've heard a lot about the "aetheric spectrum." What exactly does it look like? Is it something like the electromagnetic or visible light spectra? How well-understood is it? If blaze and radiant aether can "resonate" at the same frequency, what exactly does that mean?

It is very much something like the electromagnetic and light spectra (and high-five for the proper plural, my friend). But it's not exactly light, not exactly magnetism, it's a thing tht honestly I will someday go into in MUCH greater detail, but think of aether as something that can exist in every form of matter known--but it's ultimately a source of energy, even when it's solid in the form of archonite.

The Orrery and specifically aethersmiths like Arkan probably understand the spectrum the best, as they don't just work with these materials but study them and aether itself extensively outside of their practical uses. (I.e., they will study aether's effects on various elements, the half-life of aetheric isotopes, that sort of thing, not just "terra opposes shock and vice versa.")

How big can a behemoth get? How much do behemoths weigh? What substances are their bodies made of?

No one is entirely sure how big Behemoths can get--some Orrery scholars believe there are truly massive Behemoths lurking beneath the Sky Below, deep within the heart of the Maelstrom, or even encased within some giant, unsettled rogue island that's drifting through the skies waiting to crack open and unleash hell.

As a basic rule of thumb, though, they tend to reach an average mean size that is around what you see in the game, since their access to resources (and the amount they can eat) doesn't really change, at least not in the parts of teh isles that we're hunting. But if a Behemoth was left to its own devices, had a steady source of aether, no Slayers to threaten it or other Behemoths to compete with, and plenty of time, it could theoretically start nearing kaiju size.

Behemoths have been around for a long time supposedly even before the first slayer so I wanted to ask how old Malkarion is exactly? Is he primordial and what about thrax? The umbral depths/void is still very mysterious to slayer and scholar alike so is thrax an ancient behemoth once only know to the void runners before their extinction or was Malkarion the first?

The Malkarion species was thought extinct long ago, but was rediscovered when the shock escalation isles (that was back before I was giving them proper names, natch) emerged from the heart of the Maelstrom. So it's an ancient species, for sure, and probably closer to the original Behemoth form its progenitor possessed (or was designed with), but not "primoridal" in the sense you mean, I think.

The Thrax, though, that's a weird one. It appears to have evolved independently within the Umbral Void, yet it shares many traits with traditional Behemoths that we know to be of manmade origin. This has led scholars like Doctor Priyani to believe that either... -Such creatures can independently evolve in the right environment and happen to take on similar properties and behavior as manmade Behemoths, which implies that perhaps ancient humans discovered Behemoths and adapted them (a contentious theory within the Orrery) since they still dissolve when slain, reproduce asexually, etc. -The Thrax might be evolved from an ancient, extinct Behemoth species that disappeared into the Umbral Void centuries ago and was released by the Void Runners' hubris.

Is Agarus even a real behemoth? Or just a shrub that was tainted by aether because he doesn’t dissipate into the aetheric spores like most behemoths do after they die, he petrifies.

I think I answered that one in another thread, but I'm not sure which.

How old is Hector the tortoise? Because, that tortoise has been munching on the same pile of apples for like 3 years now...

Definitely older than three years.

Hey friends! I'm closing in on the end of hour two here and I fear my time has run out. Thanks for everyone who submitted a question! I hope I can get back to this later and answer a few more, but if I don't then hold on to them for next time.

You are all rock stars. Thanks again for caring so much about the lore and world of Dauntless!