SPOILER An Alternative History of Corkus - a theory

So, in school, we’re taught to verify the credibility of our sources, yes? And I think lore documents in Wynncraft should (eh not really but for the sake of the theory yes) be applied the same scrutiny.



PART I: THE LIBRARY

Let’s take a look at the Relos Library:


From the Secret Discovery description: “This library tells a tale that the government of Corkus has kept secret. Rumors tell that more mysterious libraries like this one are hidden across the world.”

From The Isle of Industry, in the Relos Library: “350 years ago, however, a splinter group left Fruma through the mountains on the northern coastline... These rebels were highly skilled workers who, much like the Wynn recruits, lost the memories of their origins once they passed through the mountains. Confused, scared and vulnerable, they migrated to a large island close to the northern gate: the island of Corkus.”

“...Its sole inhabitants were the Avos, a bird-like humanoid that colonised the rocky terrain and steep cliffs long ago... Avos are truly one with nature and respect all living things, which explained their willingness to grant asylum to any refugees who washed up on their shores, regardless of origin.”

“... They did not possess any magical knowledge when they departed Fruma; such power was restricted only to those at the top of the Fruman hierarchy.”

“... The Avos have enjoyed the advanced medicine and aide from their industrially adept Human guests, while they have maintained their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle.”

“...Although the lands are internationally recognised solely as Avos territory, a self sufficient neutral land, the real story is quite the opposite... While the Avos simply wish to exist in harmony with the wind and waves, this was not enough for the new occupants.”

“... Their ingenuity and industrial progression can no longer be ignored, regardless of the Avos' situation.”


Really? Wow, how interesting! But does this really reflect the truth about things?

First we must acknowledge the SD description. It would seem to imply that this library contains the definitive true history of Corkus Island, but I think that this may just be one iteration of many, of the Corkians’ attempts to rewrite the history of the island. It is partly false, but also partly true—as time went on, the government rewrote more and more of it, replacing this version.

And the book appears in the Relos Library, so the only people that could have written it are the Corkians. Thus, we cannot expect it to be an Avos’ account of things—we are hearing history according to its victors.

The Corkians made their way from Fruma, which is south of Corkus Island. So, most likely, they would have washed up on the southern shores, where it was closest, and thus their first settlements would have likely been in the south. I will elaborate on this point further in the second part.

Then we have this, from The Feathers Fly Part I: “Oh, this is quite the important tome... This book has a signature from all Avos chiefs ever since we discovered ink!”

With this addition, we know that the Avos did not just write, but wrote on paper with ink. If the Avos had been a hunter-gatherer society, it seems unnatural for them to have written documents on paper. And signatures! That would imply that the Avos needed some sort of way to verify a document’s authorship. This all means that it was likely that the Avos’ civilization prior to the Corkians’ arrival was an interconnected nation that spanned across much of the island. Postal systems may have existed (due to the need for signatures), or maybe government officials would often send official documents to other regions as a means of spreading word of official decrees and new legislature and such.

Also, if the Avos are hunter-gatherers, explain this, the largest field in the northern half of Corkus:



I’ll admit, Wynncraft doesn’t have a lot of farmland anyways. And this could have just been an oversight while building. Still—there’s the above-mentioned points.

Now, we then move on to this: “The Avos have enjoyed the advanced medicine and aide from their industrially adept Human guests.” Tell me, does this make sense? A eons-old civilization, adept in shamanism and nature magicks, requiring some confused Corkians’ help in medicine? It was not as if the Corkians were practitioners of medicine who brought with them medical texts and such. They were urban workers, craftsmen. And in an oppressive society such as Fruma in which usage of magic was restricted to the upper classes, one that you can see in Recover the Past likely has poor sanitation, would medicine really have been a thing accessible to urban workers? No—I say no.

Also, a point @Samsam101 mentioned: it’s ironic that the Corkians claim to have benefited the Avos with their medicine, when in reality the Corkians’ carry out some abhorrent medical experiments on the Avos. Unless “enjoying advanced medicine and aide” means mechanizing injured Avos (Adamastor), it’s just a straight up lie.

Then the second to last excerpt: not just the wind, but the waves, too. That implies they’re a seafaring people too. And it makes sense, with the whole international recognition thing. The Avos have likely had some tiny amount of contact with the Villagers (but maybe not the humans, given the whole situation in Wynn). This contradicts the whole picture of an island of uncivilized people the Corkians are trying to paint. Also see the following post by the gla (@Emogla3):

https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/the-mystery-of-the-ocean-platforms.280504/

And then another comment from Samsam101: maybe they did, in fact, meet the humans. Rymek’s a bit far away, but maybe the Eagle and Owl tribe were created after the local humans saw bird-people moseying around Wynn. But that’s just a little bit of side information.

So what does this sound like? A false history that puts the Corkians in a good light and the Avos in a bad one. A propaganda story in which the heroic Corkians forge a glorious nation in a foreign, uncultivated, uncivilized land. But not one without nuance: the Corkians claim that the Avos only lived in the cliffs, but they concede that the rest of the island was technically the Avos, even if they supposedly did not reside there. Their acknowledgement of the Avos’ claims to the island is a half-truth that is a pretense of honesty. The Corkians’ story is a lie disguised as apology.



PART II: THE CITY

In our quest to make sense of Corkus’ history, we will next move on to the really angry dude, the Phoenix Prince, and the Lost Avos City.

But before we dive into that, I’d like to point this out:



This is the entrance to the Avos temple from The Envoy Part II. It’s built out of stone. And constructing such a thing would require massive organized labor—something that a hunter-gatherer society would not plausibly possess. It also implies the presence of organized religion in pre-Corkians Avos society. Clearly, the Avos were more advanced than the Corkians make them out to be. Also: glass. Glass, not in glassware and such, but in architecture.

But let’s linger no more on proving the falseness of the Corkians’ historical records, and more on piecing together a more accurate history.





Two images from the Lost Avos City. In the first, the architecture is kind of familiar—something reminiscent of the Corkus Docks (and also the Ancient Olmic City, kinda). But then look at the second image, and what do we see? Specks of red—some bricks still retain their original red color, as the rest of the bricks’ color have faded. If all the bricks were red, then it’d look awfully Corkian.

And so, I come to the following conclusion: Corkus City was not built by the Corkians, no—it was the Avos who built Corkus City, and the Corkians mimicked the Avos’ (probably superior) architectural patterns later on. Sure, the Corkians may have made their additions to the city, but it was initially the Avos’.

We should also ask ourselves this: why is the Phoenix Prince, a prince? Not a chieftain? That I will address later on in the third part.

But before we move onto the next part, there’s a related image I’d like to discuss:





The first is from the border mountains across from the Avos territory. It’s another small Avos settlement across the ocean. But what’s interesting is the second: just down from the little Avos encampment, there’s a “Illegal Hunter” camp, with a tiny ruins—one with the signature Corkian (or should I say, Avos) red brick. But why’s it overgrown and all crumbled? And why would the Corkians build a house right there? The answer is clear: that’s an Avos ruins, not a Corkian one—and this furthers my argument.

I said I would elaborate on a point in the first part. The first Corkian settlement would have likely been in the south. That means Relos is a likely candidate. And we have to notice the differences between the architectural styles of Relos (and some other buildings in the south) and Corkus City. Relos is pretty weird—it doesn’t have the signature red brick design of Corkian architecture. So what gives, for this change between the style of the Corkians’ first settlement and their later architecture? My answer is that their later architectural style isn’t really theirs—it’s the Avos’. Relos was their original, their true architectural style.





PART III: THE TRUTH

So, piecing this all together, what might be the true story of Corkus? Below I outline what I think is a more plausible version of Corkus’ history (with some revisions not necessarily related to the above points):


The to-be Corkians escape Fruma in 650 AP. They somehow make their way across the waters to Corkus Island, and build their first city, Relos. They coexist with the Avos of the south, and are successful to some degree. At the time, the Avos are a nation that has spread out across the entirety of the island, and they are advanced in their architecture and such.

In this theoretical version, the Avos nation comprises three major cities. The Phoenix Prince is the sovereign monarch of the confederation, but each city has some level of autonomy. I will now give creative names to them: the Capital, the Southern City, and the Northern City. Addressing the point I said I would mention from the second part: why are there both princes and chieftains? I say that this is because the chieftains are the leaders of the Northern City, while the princes are the rulers of the confederate nation.

The Prince leads the people of the Capital underground some time later, into the now Lost Avos City, out of distrust of the Corkians. Not everyone goes—not because the Prince allowed them the choice or whatever (he doesn’t seem like a very nice guy idk) but because the other major cities had the political power to resist the capital’s royal decree. Perhaps they see opportunity—if the Capital is abandoned, it is then free for them to take over. The Prince cannot just kill the Corkians because they are, officially, under the jurisdiction and protection of the Southern City. And so he finds that his best option is to just leave.

The Capital is left empty after the Prince leaves. The island then erupts into civil war, between the Northern and Southern City, which are fighting over control of the former territories of the Prince. The populations of both cities are decimated.

Without this civil war the Corkians could not have possibly overpowered the two remaining Avos cities. Even if the Avos nation was at two-thirds its full strength, it would have still completely crushed any of the Corkians’ attempts to take over. But now that they have been weakened by civil conflict, the Corkians can seize the opportunity and clean up the survivors of the civil war. That’s why I believe something like a civil war would have happened.

The Corkians rise up against their former hosts and massacre the remainder of the Southern City’s population. The Corkians burn the Southern City to the ground and take over the Capital, which they rename to Corkus City. They then march on to the Northern City, and pillage and burn it. However, a portion of the Northern City’s population is able to escape the slaughter by fleeing to the mountain temple from The Envoy Part II. Because it is accessible only by the land bridge that is summoned at the Avos’ shamans’ will, or by looping around and coming up the other side of the mountain, the Corkians give up and return to the Corkus City. Thus the temple is the only building that survives the Corkians’ destruction, besides those of the Capital. And the Corkians do not want the cliffs anyways, for they are uninhabitable to them, and they believe that the remaining Avos do not have the resources or ability to retaliate after they have been devastated by the Corkians’ pillage—to this day, they still live in their thatch huts, as they do not have the labor power to build another city of stone.


Thus we arrive at where we are today. This is the history of Corkus I theorize to be true, given the above information. Maybe the CT didn’t intend for things to be interpreted this way, but that’s part of what makes free interpretation interesting, no? The CT presents to us some information, and then we can decide ourselves how to interpret and see things.

Thanks for reading! I hope this theory has given you a new viewpoint on Wynncraft lore.

 

bump :( morethan10chars

 

My real question is that if everyone who leaves Fruma gets amnesia, how does Corkus know that only the higher ups can use magic?

 

love these threads

 

Maybe the Corkians received the CT's divine words on stone tablets atop a mountain.

 

> Maybe the CT didn’t intend for things to be interpreted this way

Yeah???

 

hey I mean I can't just say "yeah my theory is totally incorrect these weren't the CT's intentions at all" y'know?

+ bump

 

This could be explained by the Corkians discovering it later from Wynnians or even direct contact with Fruma.

Good theory, makes sense.
can we use it for the rework?

 

Your theory on Adamastor is pretty strong. Apparently during the festival of heroes, Dr. Legendary has the following dialogue: "He's making tracks on his research into prosthetics. In fact, I hear he and some of his engineers saved the life of an Avo who was, er...assaulted." (He refers to Cerid, the engineer who built the Factory)

 

You mean @Samsam101 's

 

bump exceeding 10 characters