Dauntless Dev Tracker

Is Markus Boehr a mistake or is it on purpose?

Mr. and Mrs. Boehr waited until they were financially stable before they decided it was time finally begin a family. They were fully expecting young Markus' arrival, although he was born almost two weeks after his original due date. At birth he weighed an impressive five-and-a-half kilograms.

John, I told you the thing about the Bosun in confidence. WTF man.

Zebko is riddle cheese wrapped inside an enigma tortilla; slathered with mystery meat and top-secret sauce. Xelya's been trying to figure him out for years. Or not. Don't be weird. Jeez.

So yeah, I should probably go get lunch before I answer any more of these...

First, as a player of Blizzard games and The Elder Scrolls saga, I couldn't be more excited about the new focus on Lore, and what's to come based on that and that I can't express myself, nor ask all the questions I want:

1- First of all the HP: Relics and Ruins, to my taste is the best pass to date and the Uesca, reminded me a lot to Netherstorm (from WoW), for the purple, the ruins, the energies of the Void and the mysticism, however once inside the bioluminescent vegetation I remember certain dungeons in Northrend, like The Nexus. During Rogue Elements, we had the introduction to the following R&R pass, in which the majority of the events related to Uesca took place and Clear Skies were glimpsed, assuming that now they will prepare us for the events of the following pass and Tesca, based on the above, Is Tesca more similar to a place in the Outland like Zargarmash or is it more
like the place in Northrend because it is the anteroom to Fresca?

You guys really got my hopes up when I saw I could press x on hector only for it to be a lore note.

OTOH, there's a lore note because he didn't yet have any other interaction so that made him available. I would love to move that node onto some of his food or something else close by so that, for example, he could push his head up into your hand like my cat Macho does whenever I scratch him between his ears.

The two largest cultural influences are still Ostia and Avellainia, both of which grew up around large intact chunks of the old world. Simply put, those island states exist simply because they got a head start on rebuilding by virtue of still having buildings among other things. Ostia had a lot of surviving industrial facilities, for example, while Avellainia happened to be on a large, somewhat unstable island (at first--see The Artisan and The Savant for more on that) but retained most of what must have been a massive library or university. The Orrery takes its name from an actual surviving aetheric Orrery from the pre-Upheaval days that sits in a sacred hall in St. Avellaine.

Other cultures are all still around, but aren't generally as big. Andar is still up there in the higher, hotter bands of the atmosphere, training ninjas assassins and exploring some of the more exotic ways to manipulate aether. Krolach, which serves as a sort of breadbasket for a ...

One would have to assume that Hector is not too old to reproduce, and since the story of Lonesome George makes me incredibly sad, Hector is probably not the last of his kind.

Not a never-ending threat if a way to find and wipe out these particles, or guard against them, could be discovered. But definitely an ongoing threat for the foreseeable future that can be contained as long as there are Slayers setting sail.

They reproduce this way because they were never meant to be set loose in the wild at all. Behemoths were originally created by other means (not yet entirely understood, though many Orrery scholars would love to get a look inside the Island of Trials to research the subject--if only Lady Luck's crew would let them) and sexual reproduction was simply not included. It's like if the folks behind Jurassic Park didn't try to control the sexual distribution of the dinosaurs by taking away their soy beans, but by simply removing all their reproductive systems. Wild Behemoths couldn't get busy if they wanted to (and "wanting to" was also never part of their design).

Do they resemble animals, and in some cases, plants and fu...

You're not misinterpreting. The pre-Upheaval world could do things with aether that are likely lost (though the extent of the Orrery's archives are closely guarded--the Orrery thinks of itself as something like those monks in A Canticle for Liebowitz, protecting as much of the old world's knowledge as possible but also trying to keep the most dangerous knowledge in the "right" hands (i.e., theirs).

All of which is to say, it sure *seems* like the pre-Upheaval people (P-UPs?) were able to access the Umbral Void somehow, whether through portals like we saw Arkan create with the Driver, or by building someting like Stargates or that interdimensional window thing Walter built on Fringe.

Mwahahahaha

It sure would make sense to see if we can recover any turtles artifacts or items that might have been left behind. Or, if you're so inclined, to see if we can get a little old-fashioned payback.

Oh these are such a good questions!!

I can't answer the first one (Cory can), but for the last one: it varies! Sometimes, especially more recently, we start months ahead with a story we want to tell. Then, we build the world and the gameplay around that. Other times, another team will have a great gameplay idea that needs to be wrapped into the story of the world before it gets to you. Occasionally, those great ideas come at us really quick.

Who decides on behemoth names? Is there a council, a vote, or just whoever finds it first?

Believe it or not I have given a lot of thought to this. Many Behemoth names, especially the ones that are compound words (in English, at least) were likely given to their quarry by more recent Slayers. Names that are more "made up" (for lack of a better term) like Shrowd, Malkarion, or Torgadoro were either inspired by myths and legends, actual archaeological data (in the case of the Thrax), or simply from other languages. (While English (or your local language, as it were) is generally understood in the cities and skyports of the world thanks to frequent airship contact, local dialects and languages exist on many islands.)

So there are pretty much as many ways to name Behemoths as there are ways to name animals, plants, rocks, all that stuff.

ㅋЭЭΠ YΩUㄹ ЭYЭΣ ΩΠЭ𑀦, ΣΛㅏYЭㄹ

How much of the old lore of the game would you say is retconned?

I'd be lying if I said there weren't some biographical details, especially with a lot of our NPCs, that have been tweaked or altered to better fit something we were adding or removing. I recently had a chance to tweak Xelya's original backstory for the Journal, for example, since I knew we would be wanting to know more about her past soon and the original story was pretty basic.

But the lore of the game and its story has remained consistent I'd say around 95% of the time. I have a mental timeline (that I should probably write down) for everything from just before the Upheaval, for example, that I haven't changed but have just been adding to over time. But I have been a little fudge-y on time, I must admit. OG Ramsgate was originally more than a century old, for example, but when we altered the tutorial so that you are playing as young Kat in the ruins of the very first att...

I guess I should elaborate The sword, the old ostian pike thingy, the cavef in cave all clue in that there was someone, I dare to say recently before everyone else moved in

While I won't say we might not explore that later, right now the intention was simply that the Shattered Isles have been inhabited for a long time, and so the detritus of humanity could be found there in places.

Well, except the Sword. No one knows WTF is up with the Sword or why it seems so difficult to extract. That thing's weird.

The "Deeps" are meant to be the interiors of the islands, more or less--the chain itself was moving more or less laterally and by the time it arrived it filled the sky.

Eight known husbands.

I have a list.

In this case (not to shine too much light behind the curtain) it was something I hoped we might be able to try but it was way outside the scope of the current release--but I left it in there for flavour. The idea, then, is that there are data and logs on these being read and interpreted by Priyani, Drew, and other Orrery types to glean what they can.

Audio might remain unlikely for a while, but I do hope to use the lore nodes (discoverable lore items that unlock a nugget of lore for your Journal) to explore more of the idea of found logs and relic-derived information for the Slayers.

YES! And thank you for helping us achieve the dream