SPOILER Importance Of Names

(Don't worry this thread is not info on Skien's island)
As @SPYROHAWK mentioned, though not necessarily a major impacting part of the lore, the names of enemies hold a clue towards their nature. However, the identity of Skien's army is a problem to him, since they are not mentioned to be undead in their name. This could be trivial, but unless proven otherwise, we will assume them to have significance.

In a different thread, I posted a long theory about how they could be corrupted but not dead and @SPYROHAWK suggested I make a thread for it. I've copied and pasted the conversation here.

Warning: Wall of text ahead. Bold contributes to the main theory, the rest is tangential information just in case I needed evidence (I wrote this on the fly).

"Are you sure they aren't just humans that have turned?
We know that proximity to the Corruption can slowly bring a state of insanity (it takes a few years in humans, as shown in "Studying the Corrupt" and "The Corrupted Villager"); this "conversion" is exponentially sped whilst actually in the Nether(more on this later). As shown in "Fate of the Fallen", a mere minute in the Nether is enough to fully turn a person.
In Slykaar's laboratory, there are two bookcases: one that supposedly contains proof of other dimensions (confirmed, Slykaar's dimension, the Nether, the Realms) and one that is a cumulative history of corrupted spires in the province.
The size of the second category intrigues me. As we know, spires(more on these later) tend to be scattered across the Wynn mainland, with a higher density of them near the Portal. There are exceptions, such as those near Naragath's summoning site, and the Heart of Selchar in the past (and the entirety of Selchar in the future). However, such a large collection would imply that the presence of the spires is fluid, or else it would just be one book documenting every appearance of a spire. From this, we can deduce that spires are able to disappear. This is proven when we observe that Selchar has no spires as of 1000 AP.
We know that Skien was a general of the Tromsian army, who left to create a fort isolated from both-
Wait, I had to stop here because I read something in the Skien's island sign thread that intrigued me.
In the maze before the battle room, he mentions that "I cant kill him it phases through", implying that the traitor was not corporeal. If the traitor was indeed Sotqin (wrote signs in Prison of Souls about visiting Skien with a derogatory tone), perhaps he did die while hiding from The Beast (whose identity infuriates me because very little lore is given about him) and was turned into a spirit. My theory is that the souls The Beast have consumed are unable to pass onto Death's Realm/Underworld Crypt. Because of this, Sotqin fulfilled his promise by visiting Skien's island as an incorporeal entity (This has little to no bearing on my theory, but it seemed rather interesting). He was then labeled as a traitor (despite not being a soldier of Skien) because, in Skien's eyes, anything magical (a spirit could count, more on this later) is a traitor to the Wynn province.
Anyways, back to the original theory.
We know that Skien was a general of the Tromsian army, who left to create a fort isolated from both Villagers and the Corruption. There, he built a fort, after which he lost a "siege". Who sieged him? The siege had to have happened sometime after the year 926 AP, due to an interesting part in Bob's lore. It was mentioned that he disappeared at the age of 72. As of 1000 AP, he is described to be 146 years old, meaning that he was born in the year 854 AP and disappeared in the year 926 AP. Since Bob wanted to-
Wait, Nohno is at least 74 years old?
Anyways, Bob wanted to provide a safe place for his three animals. Mooington was sent to Skiens island, likely because it was deemed safe against the corruption and Skien was once a general of Troms. Mooington could not have been sent to help fend off the siege because the purpose of imbuing his spirit into the pets was to promote their longevity (so that a worthy adventurer may seek them out). Sending them into battle could lead them to death. That same reasoning could apply to the timing of the insanity of Skien's soldiers; in the prison, the soldiers in Mooington's cage will try to attack him (Mooington). If the soldiers were already hostile, Bob would've chosen a safer place or a place with hostiles that would not attack Mooington.
The siege happened at most 74 years ago, which led to the turning (and there is a reason I use that word) of Skein's soldiers. They are obviously decomposed; they have the textures of zombies and skeletons. Why aren't they described as such?
Back to the sign written in Skien's insanity, he blames the Traitor for making him lose the siege. Though this could just be insane rambling, this could also have some bearing as to the reason his army fell. Since, in my theory, the Traitor was always undead, the Corrupteds would not attack him.
In the corrupted spots around the province, there is always at least one extra-powerful mob that spawns in the center of it (Evil Eye, Spinwarp Spider, Corrupted Tribe Member, Corrupted Root, etc). Though I've thought that the roots are the cause of the-
Wait, that's unrelated.
In the Discovery at the old Gundalf tower, we see that the Corruption is able to spread underground. This is the easiest possible explanation as to how Skien's island got corrupted. There could've been a cave near the surface, and a spire could've found its way there. This would explain the "effects of corruption" part.
How does this tie into Skien's Army, who are not mentioned to be Zombies?
Back to the usage of the word "turned", I feel that the soldiers, due to exposure to the possible spire, slowly started to become corrupted of mind. Let's get to the Ice Barrows. Though the boss description for Theorick is "Reanimated Son of Twain", keep in mind that he froze himself completely to prevent himself from moving. This could very well be the definition of "Reanimated"; the adventurers coming to seek revenge attempted to use torches to melt him and thawed out his body. He in no way mentions that he is dead; in fact, he says his body is a "corrupted body".
Maybe, out of chance, the potential spire corrupted the soldiers' minds and corrupted their bodies before they died. This is supported by a prison sign, where an inmate mentions that a beast was thrown into his cell. However, he was able to slay the beast with his bare hands. Before you say that he could've been given nourishment, he ate the flesh of the beast right after, implying that he was given no food and maybe even no water. An unarmed and malnourished prison inmate, likely shackled by the feet, was able to kill a beast. The two possible explanations of this: either he had superhuman strength (makes no sense; he could've resisted his arrest), or something about him changed. I feel that this change was a corruption of the body. Additionally, Theorick seemed to have retained enough sanity after his conversion in order to warn you. This would explain why Skien was able to write coherent signs after his death (room after his boss chamber).
Now we head to the Altar of Sanctification. The boss is the Revenant of Skien, who attacks you because you use magic. Because of the Warrior and the Assassin, we will assume that multihits and charge are spells and not merely exertions of strength. Before you argue that the multihit is the "blur" described in the lore of the Helm Splitter, keep in mind that a) the Revenant and the other boss wields a sword b) it's clear that weapons contain magic, so it could not just be the same skill applied to the sword. Even though Skien hated magic, he himself as a spirit uses it anyways. Additionally, the apparently deceased Skien on the island is able to use spells. This supports my notion that the Traitor was merely a specter.
Back to why he blamed the Traitor for the loss of the siege, it's quite likely that the spirit led the horde to the island or distracted/harmed his soldiers.
Finally, to the turning of the mind while in the Nether, I have my own question.
Why, after visiting the Nether, the Player's sanity returns? Theorick mentions there is no cure."

To which @SPYROHAWK had two questions:

"1) If Skien is present on his island, and you fight him, then what exactly are you fighting in the boss altar? Why are there two of him?
2) The process of being corrupted (without dying) is a long process unless sped up by the Nether. So... umm... if we are going to say this is what happened to Skien, which is why the undead don’t attack him yet he’s still alive and thinking, how did it happen instantly to him?"

My answers:

"1) I've always thought that when you defeated General Skien on his island, his body was destroyed, "freeing" him, not unlike Theorick. The badge is a plot device ensuring you killed him. The Altar allows you to fight the spirit of Skien, now released from his mortal prison.
2) If we look at the signs around the island, we can see that he started to slowly become insane and punishing little crimes severely. This belligerence is rather similar to the NPCs in the Angry Village. The corruption slowly turned his mind, and his collapsing "from" starvation, rather than "death", was the true conversion of his body. Theorick knew he himself would go insane, but after his corruption, his consciousness was separated but bound to his body."

Discuss your thoughts on this here!

 

dark theme ples
when switching off of pink text, select color "none" instead of black, that makes it visible for everyone

 

My eyes are burning, black and pink, wow.

 

Done.

 

Not related to what you're talking about, but just a note on the readability; the black text is really hard to read on dark themes. Is there any other color you can use instead of full-on black? It's just that a lot of people use dark themes and it makes it really hard to read. now on to actually reading this

edit: rip everyone has already said it and is being edited

 

Also will fix this.

 

Did you ever hear the tragedy of the "None" colour option? I thought not. It's not a story the light theme would tell you.

 

It's a dark theme legend.

 

True :D

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Get out of here yo!

 

I don’t have anything to say yet, but I am going to watch this thread. Once other people start leaving comments that aren’t dark-themeers complaining about the text color, then I’ll come back and pick up discussion. I don’t want to try to take over your thread, but I do want to follow this discussion closely.

 

There's fundamental holes in this theory borne from assumptions and lack of details.