SPOILER Theory: Bob Eventually Becomes Bak'al

So at first, this looks more outrageous then all the "Corruption Serves Dern" posts circulating about and it also looks strange coming from someone who's done a grand total of 4 secret discoveries and has never entered the Silent Expanse. But I've read a lot of spoilers and here is my somewhat logical conclusion.

To begin with, lore enthusiasts know that Bob faked his death and left to a "land of darkness far away" (The Silent Expanse.)
My first assumption is that Bob left to seal the Dern Beast in it's realm, as most people suppose.
So he went to the Silent Expanse about 984AP and never returned. He's been gone for 16 years. Why?

Here's the next section of my theory: The Olm.

They had time magic.
They lived in that same "land of darkness" before the Dern Beast controlled it. They fled from the Olm but not all of them escaped.
Now I'm jumping to my next conclusion: the Dern Beast got time magic from the Olm.
It accomplished this either by killing them and stealing their magic another way, the same way in fact that elemental powders can be applied to weapons, or by just "borrowing" the door of time in the future.

So if the Dern Beast has control over time, the world and the Light is in danger. That's a scary thought.
If that's true, why wouldn't it try to use the magic immediately?

Consider this: The Dern Beast exists. Yes it does. When did it start existing? I'll guess many millennia before the Olm.

Because the Dern Beast is so old, it doesn't think of time the same way we do.
It's likely that Orphion and the Dern Beast were created at the exact same time: the Dawn of Time. Otherwise, time is... I don't know. Honestly it's hard to grasp what time is before light and dark.
They created realms and started to explore and change the world, (If the world existed before them. Can it only be created through the "clash of light and dark?")
Either they knew each other since the time of creation, or they just ran into each other at some point. My theory more strongly hosts the first idea.

Because they knew each other, going back in time to destroy Orphion by surprise may not work.

It may have been that the Dern Beast was afraid of time or time travel. Many things can go wrong in time traveling. For example, simply going forward in time one year might leave time enough for Orphion to purify the Silent Expanse or even Dern itself. And did I mention paradoxes?

Therefore, the Dern Beast hatched an idea. And what a good idea it was.
Two words: test subject.

The problem was that the Dern Beast thought of this idea after all the Olm had left, and so it tried out one of the mindless creatures it created. Let's just say it didn't work. The creature go back in time and... something happens. Let the speculations abound. The Beast keeps trying.

Let's return to Bob. I assume he was captured. Otherwise, he'd return to Ragni, his home, therefore he couldn't return.
As he entered the Silent Expanse, the Eye saw him and reported to the Dern Beast. And the Dern Beast realized that Bob could be next. He is/was an Olm after all. The Dern Beast captured him after a rather difficult battle, I'd guess. Then it darkened him.

Let me explain how. Bob wasn't perfect. All living creatures have light and dark in them. They divide light and dark into "good" and "evil", but that isn't the real case, light and dark are neutral from an unbiased perspective. Light is considered good because most creatures needs light more than dark.
Now, here's this: the Dern Beast can control not only change light into darkness, but manipulate the desire to create darkness in others.
Anyway, the Dern beast increased the tiny speck of Bob's desire to create darkness until it overcame all the desire to do light.
Because he was filled with so much darkness, Bob basically became a puppet to the Dern Beast.

The Dern Beast created a new portal back in time, or simply led Bob to the door of time. The portal leads him back in time to about 126AP.

By this time, both the Dern Beast and Orphion had realized that they could only truly destroy each other if they put other forces at work. The Dern Beast wanted to control corruption. So it sent Bob back in time, in fact, to become the last one to enter the portal, still under the Dern Beast's control.
Corruption is light and dark together, but because of the disproportionate amount of darkness Bob had inside, Bob was corrupted and still under the Dern Beast's control as well as being the first corrupted thing, soon to have the power to command lesser corrupted things.
The portal changed him. Imagine this: if pipes are blocked up, but water keeps running, then the blockage is released. (Like in the Sewers of Ragni quest)
It was all released into him. Because the corruption has the power to change appearances, Bob was heavily changed, enough to be considered a different person. That's why his hair became orange, etc.


-Corruption-

The rest of the world didn't know who he was because he corrupted many miners and the others weren't nearby to witness him.

That's my theory. Btw, as I was telling the lore discord this, they got into argument over whether hair dye might exist in Wynncraft and generally agreed that Aledar and Redbeard were related.

 

I don't know much about lore, but if this is true then it would be epic. The same person, employed by two different people fighting themself, literally.

 

well, yes, i shall repeat again: hair

this part seems kind of far fetched
also, why does bak'al have a new skin tone? why does he look MORE ALIVE after going through the portal and becoming corrupted?

 

True, his appearance is completely drastically changed. But some things relating to magic are strange like that.
One thing I didn't mention is that this theory explains why Bak'al serves the dernic entity in AHC.
And honestly, Bak'al's skin could just plainly be outdated and need to be updated in the future.

 

List of flaws:

1: The Olm who had time magic probably killed themselves out of insanity from the Eye's watch, as I believe they developed their time magic in the Time Valley. Old Man Martyn is the last remaining Olm with time magic
2: If the Dern Beast had time magic, he would probably have figured out how it works by now, if he had completed his test. Because of this, I believe that if he DID have time magic, he would have wound back time the very MOMENT Bak'al reported to him that Orphion has been freed. Hell, he wouldn't even need to have it reported to him, he would probably have felt it somehow
3: I like how you completely disregard the possibility of Bob being dead and just say ''he was captured'' Now, this is item lore, so don't quote me on this, but presumably Bob succeeded at his mission into Dern. However, it cost him his life. The Dern Beast was sealed into its realm, at the cost of Bob's life force. It's probably not true anymore, though.
4: Bob is neither light OR dark. I actually think Bob's weapons have something to do with the whole ''the forces are equal so you need both to win'' thing from Fate of the Olm. His weapon skins are called the ''Godly Dern wand/bow/spear/dagger/relik''. In theory, his weapon is designed to destroy the Darkness since it was the weapon he was destined to use, so I think his weapon may have had something to do with the Twilight or whatever. This means Bob could defeat Orphion, Bak'al AND the Dern Beast.
5: If he really had made Bob take the lead miner's place, then there wouldn't be lore about the CoW being the first miner and Theorick saying that the latest person to enter the portal became Bak'al. It's never really stated when Garoth entered, so it's entirely possible that Garoth became corrupted before Bak'al, too.
6: Light and dark, when fused into Corruption, are no longer light OR dark. They become pure corruption, which is a completely evil and destructive force. The Dern Beast and Orphion are just territorial, and are not strictly evil, as stated by the Forest Guardian.
7: How would his Olmic skin change? How did his hair change? Sure, Garoth looks completely different from how he did before, but Garoth is a case of ''ct desperately trying to make this random lizard dude they made relevant to the lore''. Most other corrupted look similar to their former self, and are just like zombies. Theorick, for example, looks like theorick but more frozen and a skeleton.

In short, learn the lore before making insane theories like this

 

50% sure this is a joke theory

 

1. I disagree.
2. It's time for me to do the RoL questline.
3. I jumped to another conclusion.
3&4. What do you mean by defeat? Why couldn't he return to Wynn if he beat the Dern Beast?
5. I didn't know this. Coolio.
6. No flaw mentioned here imo
7. That's the main flaw,

Besides, I'm a writer, not just a lore person. I mean, I could post this in general suggestions.
Btw, How did I have such a divided poll?

 

what? i've seen other people say this too for some reason, but his journal very explicitly says 623 ap and he mentions the twains being gone, so it can't have been before theorick got corrupted, much less bak'al
(also bak'al's first appearance is 162 78 ap, and he's mentioned by theorick in 589)


that being said yes CoW was definitely the first to enter and get corrupted, iirc it was his team that uncovered the portal in the first place too

 

Probably because Studying the Corrupt is not a very memorable quest

 

the olm's time magic is just rune magic, which they had in se

 

Ok, edited the theory to make more sense in these regards.

 

To my knowledge there are several possibilities, all of them have some degree of evidence:
- Bob is dead (either died from sealing or was killed)
- Bob is captured (unsure)
- Bob sealed <fill in your theory> (succeeded)

Nilrem's Sealed Letters are canon unless 1.20.2 didn't change something (which it could)

 

Ok, I didn't point this out before but how can you disagree with a statement that is probably factual?

There are literally signs in the ruined Olmic city from Wynnexcavation site D saying that they came here to escape the Eye's watch and even then it still tormented them. Hell, you can even see it in their buildings, which is something I should cover another time

The only Olm with time magic left that aren't old man Martyn are either insane, dead or corrupted, also as seen in that olmic city.

 

That's not a thing anymore at least as of 1.20.2. Now it only says that they wanted to escape the Darkness but they're going insane because they still think the Dernic Beast is watching them from afar and calling them to its realm (doesn't say anything about an eye though). I believe the Eye was placed there after Bak'al was defeated by Bob

 

Did you check it in 1.20.2?

Also it makes sense, since it is a bit weird for them to live in Dern for 1000+ years and then suddenly escape

 

Yea I checked, the signs are still the same as they are in the wiki.