SPOILER SPOILERS FOR 2.0 FANTASTIC VOYAGE: Theory: What happened to Bob?

It should be noted that he writes those letters to Nilrem on Gateway Island, as that's where you find the unfinished letter that he scrapped to Nilrem.

 

and bak'al is also in dern, and the dern beast is also in dern

 

and dern is in dern

 

Very cool theory, Samsam101. I am revitalized by these genuine posts.

I very much agree with it, but here are some possible alternative explanations or counterarguments to bits of your theory:

1. A lot of people got caught by the Eye
Given that an entire civilization of people lived in the Silent Expanse and was attacked by Dern, it's not unlikely that some of the Olm had tried to escape, only to be seen by the Eye. This doesn't really disprove the Bob theory, though.

2. There's not really much point for Dern to keep hostages
You mentioned interrogation; the thing is, I don't think there's really much information that can be gleaned from some sailor. Bob, maybe, but still, I highly doubt Bob has some sort of "secret weapon" against Dern. If Bob posed a threat to Dern, it'd be a lot safer for Dern to just straight up kill him.

And if Dern can easily (and remotely) incapacitate and teleport Bob, I don't think Bob actually poses that much of a threat against Dern. Bob isn't just some random guy who decided to go to Dern, though; he spent years honing his skills and gaining wisdom. If I were Bob, I'd probably go the route of the player; that is, to help Orphion recover and hope that Orphion can gain the strength to then push Dern out of the realm for good.

3. Aledar and others
Someone would have had to have come back to Wynn for Aledar and the Gang and that would explain how Aledar and the gang have information on Dern. No one else is known to have gone to the Silent Expanse (besides the Order of the Grook) so if Bob had never come back, then there would have been no one to give others information on Dern. Maybe, he might have come back and gone into hiding, perhaps trying to stay out from the Eye's gaze after being seen by the Eye on his trip to Gateway Island. He realized that he was outmatched, and made his escape.

But, then Bob would have had to have someone tell him about the Silent Expanse or Dern, so... :/

4. The Order of the Grook
The Order of the Grook is pretty explicitly shown or stated to have gone to Dern. Also, they're based in the ocean, so it would be logical for them to have traveled around to all the islands there are to travel to, Gateway Island being no exception. So, it could have been them who were caught by Dern. Given that they're mages, they likely have powerful healing spells, so a good amount were able to survive and return to Grookwarts. Though, this doesn't really make too much sense; no journal entries really mentioned them having trouble while IN Dern; it was only when they tried to put down an aggressive specimen when they realized they couldn't even scratch creatures of darkness. A giant eye watching them, speaking Wynnic, and slaughtering their group members would definitely be noteworthy enough for them to write it down. So, this one isn't actually that strong of a counterargument.

5. common ct L
Maybe the CT didn't think twice about the dialogue, and just wrote it because it sounds cool.

 

The Eye was only placed in the Eldritch Outlook after Bob defeated Bak'al outside of Ragni, so the Olm would not have been trying to evade its watch.

This is a fair point, however, Bob does have a sort of "secret weapon" of sorts which presumably would help a lot against the Dern Beast; his shapeshifting weapon. This theory never really says that Bob is alive because we have no evidence of this, but there are various ways he could be. I would like to point out that Lari will probably be found in Dern, and if she can survive then Bob definitely can

Bob probably either didn't know about Orphion, or met Lari and trusted her to be able to deal with that issue. The only problem is that I feel like Lari would have mentioned him to the player at some point.

I have another theory that I didn't include in this thread that was too big and too unimportant to include, and I can't really see myself making any seperate threads on it, so I'll just put it in this spoiler. This isn't a definitive explanation for how the Silent Expanse map exists, but I like it and it works with some of the bigger Bob theories

Spoiler: Theory: Old man Martyn made the map

I am going to start this by establishing a key detail: Old Man Martyn is Bob's friend, Nilrem. This has been theorised by many people and there's plenty of evidence, so I won't go any further. I believe that Old Man Martyn is a human who researched time magic in Time Valley and achieved immortality thanks to it. I used to think he was an olm, but he'd have to be a human-olm hybrid for that to make sense, as he doesn't have the correct facial structure.

If you go to Tempo Town, you'll find a Mysterious Merchant NPC who wants to buy Time Fragments. If you analyse his details, you'll see that he appears to be an olm wearing makeup or a mask to look more human. This means that there are at least a couple of Olm still living in Time Valley. My theory is that Old Man Martyn has been protecting the scarce amount of Olm left ever since they hid in Time Valley, and is very knowledgeable because of this. This also explains why the Mysterious Merchant wants time fragments, they probably help Martyn in some way. Martyn said that the Time Troubles were meant to stay sealed so he probably didn't intend for the player to release them, but thought he'd make something of it and had one of his hidden Olm friends go and trade with the player. This also explains why Bob came to him, maybe Bob knew he was partially Olm and went to Time Valley to investigate, then meeting Martyn who knew more and could help him

How does this tie into the Silent Expanse map? Well, when Bob told Martyn that he had a plan to go to the Silent Expanse and then to Dern, we know that Martyn became one of the most involved people in his plan, thanks to all the letters and the fact that he made fake bob memorials in Nesaak. He probably asked the Olm what the Silent Expanse was like before they fled and made a map with them based on what they said.

The only MASSIVE issue with this is that the Olm weren't around for the establishment of Lutho, so it's more likely that the map was made by a miner who left the Expanse, maybe even the Mining Chief from A Wynnic Excavation.

Another detail is that Lucio, Elphaba and Aledar knew that the Eldritch outlook requires a sacrifice, which is only something that came to be probably after Bob defeated Bak'al. Maybe Bob physically went THROUGH the Silent Expanse, saw the sacrifice requirement and decided he was going to need to do more research to get around this.

It's possible that the first and third ideas combined. Martyn gave Bob a map that he and the Olm had made, Bob added newer things to it, and also added the detail that a sacrifice was required. Since we know Bob enjoyed visiting archives and libraries to read about the Wynncraft lore, it's possible that he donated his map to some archive, which was then found by Lucio, Elphaba and Aledar when they planned to go to the Silent Expanse.

Honestly the Silent Expanse map is just a massive plot hole so I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being retconned in the future

They are never stated to have gone to Dern, they only knew about its existence. They did go to the Silent Expanse though. The monster they captured is known to have lived in the Silent expanse (it appears in The Olmic Rune) and since their documents mention the Silent Expanse being what they studied, that's probably as far as they went. They likely went to the Olmic City, found their creature there, were almost completely overpowered by it, and went back. They had enough visual evidence that it was related to Dern. The only issue is how they knew about Dern or its name. I would point out that the Llevigar Library also inexplicably knows this detail but the Dern book is apparently being removed later in 2.0 for not making much sense lorewise. Maybe this document will be changed too? I doubt they went to dern and saw some sign saying "Hi, welcome to Dern!"

This specific dialogue is written in Wynnic and then has to be translated from Irish. This was very deliberate.

 

Yo samsan do u think this has anything to do with activating the portal2dern

 

The portal to dern is already active so I'm not sure what you mean

 

i mean activating the portal so the player can go to dern

https://wynncraft.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_to_Dern

 

Nope. There is lore here. The dialogue is very intentional.

 

interesting theory