SPOILER The Olmic City - a Deep Dive

Hello everyone, and welcome to the thread. The story of the Olm has always fascinated me, and I have eagerly looked through all lore relating to them and their civilization. I specifically looked through the Olmic city ruins in the Silent Expanse, finding any bits of lore I could gather. I am by no means an expert or definitive source on the matter, I would just like to share my findings and theories with the community, and if you have any findings of your own, please do share! So sit back, stay hydrated, and I shall begin reciting my research.

Before we get into my findings, the Olmic city can be divided into three time periods: before the attack, during the attack, and after the attack. It is impossible to tell when the Olmic city fell, but I believe it to be around 1400 BP (I will explain this later in my findings).



Pre-Attack
There is little to no information on the Olmic city before the attack. What is known comes from bits and pieces of lore, such as offhanded comments or building designs.


Religion

The Olm are very familiar with runes and runic magic, as underneath their cathedral is a rune altar, possibly used for some religious significance due to its location. According to the notes from Kaen and Adan, there was a runemaster who lived in the outskirts of the city. Anya’s status as oracle also has some religious connotations to it. Because of Time Valley, we know that the Olm are familiar with seeing the past - possibly using the power of runes - but what if they could also see the future? This is obviously rarer than viewing the past, as Anya is the only known Olm with this ability. Because of her title, status, and our knowledge of runes, it is tempting to say that Anya was a religious leader for the Olm, and her ability to see the future using runes is unique only to her and other oracles. However, any other specifics of the religion have been lost to darkness.


Architecture

Within the city is the Cathedral, as well as numerous other buildings and structures. One such structure is overlooked due to its massive size and utter destruction - what I am calling the Palace. From what we can see, the Palace consists of an archway flanked by two Olm statues wielding swords. In front is a courtyard that is surrounded by towers and arches, possibly to keep unwanted people out. Though the inside of the building has been lost to the darkness, the grandiose design of the Palace implies it was used for some important purpose. It is likely this was the seat of whatever government the Olm had in the city. Maybe they had a king, maybe they were a republic. Either way, the government of the city collapsed soon after the attack began.

The Cathedral itself is still mostly intact, with only a few corruption spikes sticking out of the structure. Buried deep below one of these spikes is the Rune Altar, which may have been used in religious ceremonies. The building’s stained glass windows are the only things left in the city that have color. Though the patterns are not known, they could represent the Olm’s religion.


Attack
The Dern Beast’s attack on the Olmic city was brutal, and virtually wiped out the Olm as a powerful civilization. Though not instantaneous, the attack was nonetheless deadly.


The Final Moments

Within the city’s observatory, we can witness a memory of the city’s final moments. Froner, an astrologist, and an Olmic mage are watching out for incoming meteors which were commonplace. However, this time, the meteors were heading straight for the city, which shocks both of the Olm. They were about to report to some higher authority (possibly the government located at the Palace) when the memory ends, presumably because the meteors crashed into the city. This sudden event was probably the beginning of the Dern Beast’s attack on the Olmic city.


Fate of the Olm

The Fate of the Olm tells us the story of the Olm in the middle of the Dern Beast’s attack. The notes left behind indicate that the Dern Beast’s attack was not instantaneous, instead hordes of “creatures of darkness” swarmed the city. These notes were likely written either shortly after the meteors fell, or some time later. By this point, “creatures of darkness” and other monstrosities roamed the city streets. It is not known if these creatures killed the Olm, or somehow “assimilated” them. All of these creatures had one goal: find Anya’s penumbra. Some entity known as the “beast’s follower” was also on the hunt for the penumbra. Anya’s grandchildren, Kaen and Adan, prevented the penumbra from being lost by continuously moving it around. Their descriptions of the locations they moved the penumbra to suggest that at this stage the Olmic city was still mostly uncorrupted, with the forest still having normal trees and houses being relatively intact. Kaen and Adan finished their last note identifying where the penumbra was, also hoping that whoever found their notes could finish what they started.


Post-Attack
The Olm still in the city after the attack had to adapt, and fast. What was once the center of their civilization, the Olm now had to scavenge and commit heinous actions just to survive.


Arna and the Caches

While there is no solid proof when Arna lived in the timeline of events, it seems more likely than not that Arna lived during the aftermath of the attack due to where Arna’s caches are located. The locations for all of Arna’s caches are:

• Under a gazebo
  
  
• Hidden room in a manor
  
  
• Under a different gazebo
  
  
• Closet of a mansion
  
  
• Basement of a building

Three of these caches are located within grand buildings, residential or otherwise. The other two are located under gazebos, which could have been very public places. It would have been very difficult for Arna to create all of these caches before the attack when there was still order, unless Arna happened to own all of the buildings the caches now reside in. It is also doubtful that the Olm would allow Arna to create caches in public areas like the gazebos. It is more likely that, after the attack concluded and the city was incorporated into the realm of Dern, some Olm managed to survive in the city. Arna most likely sought out locations that can offer some protection against the creatures, or in public well known areas for easy access to materials. Arna then hid the keys to these caches in ancient constructs, possibly Olmic versions of safes. However, because the caches appear to all be untouched for centuries, it may be that Arna soon fell to the darkness after creating these caches. There is no way to know for certain when Arna lived, it is entirely possible Arna lived in the pre-attack city and set up the caches as part of some smuggling ring instead of survival caches.


The Cancereater

Within the eyeball forest is a mysterious creation, the Cancereater. It is an unholy contraption made of flesh and metal, and its purpose is to convert foul Larbonic shells into useful ingredients. The instructions for the creation are in ancient Wynnic - the language of the Olm - providing proof that this was created by the Olm. However, this could not have been created before the Dern Beast’s attack, as Larbonic stone was a byproduct of the corrupting of the landscape, and didn’t exist before the attack. Therefore, it is almost certain that the Cancereater was created by the Olm after the attack, thus proving that some Olm did survive. However, the Olm who created this had regrets, writing: “This is not research. This is ritual. How may I look upon my loved ones with eyes that have seen such things? How may I caress the faces of my children with hands that have issued such actions? I ask myself now, staring before my work”. The Olm still in the city were forced to adapt - Arna may or may not have created caches after the attack to help in survival, while this unnamed Olm made the Cancereater to refine Larbonic stone into useful materials to help him, his children, and any other Olm survive in the Silent Expanse.


A Wynnic Excavation

In 800 BP, humans from Wynn managed to find crystal shards embedded in a cavern within the Olmic city that they were mining in. The mining manager orders the crystals be covered up, saying they are “dangerous”. After the Dern Beast’s attack, many of the Olm used the power of the crystals to escape into the Dernal jungle, but the crystals drove them all insane over time. If the human miners were aware of this, that would mean the Olm fled the city and went to the jungle long before 800 BP, since the Olm in their writings said they had been in the jungle for a long time. With that in mind, it becomes possible to pinpoint the Dern Beast’s attack to some time between 850 BP and 1000 BP.
Edit: However, we must look outside the Silent Expanse for a clearer answer - the deserts of Almuj. After the fall of the Desert Empire in 1400 BP, the Pharoahs took over and one of them - Nabak - guards the Yellow crystal to this day. It is likely that the Olm did not use up all the crystals in the Silent expanse, leaving some behind for the human miners to discover in 800 BP, and subsequently re-hide. This means that some time between 1400 BP and 800 BP, the Olm escaped Dern into the jungle, became mad, and scattered the crystals for the yellow one to end up in the desert. If we were to consider this, the Dern Beast's attack on the Olm could have happened as early as 1400 BP, lining up perfectly with the Gylia meteors crashing in Gavel and the fall of the Desert Empire in Almuj. It is because of this I believe the Dern Beast's attack took place in 1400 BP.

The Olmic City's Monsters

When you think of Olmic city mobs, one of the first to come to mind is the Omnispective Wanderer. As of the Rekindled update, the Wanderer actually has some "dialogue", albeit it seems to be telepathically sending messages to you. Among the messages I heard are the following:
- ...Don't leave me
- ...wanderer?
- Don't be afraid
- ...come here
- Strange thing
- Please don't run
- I don't want to be alone
- Let us show you
- What are you?
- Unknown to us
- Stay with me?
For a creature of darkness, the Wanderer has a lot of human-like emotions - loneliness and curiosity to name a few. It genuinely doesn't seem like it wants to kill you, but in the process does anyway. My theory is that the Wanderer is made of either one or multiple Olm, who were changed by the Dern Beast's darkness either during or after the attack, forced to walk the city for eternity.

One creature I encountered on my journey was especially unnerving. While traveling the city streets, I noticed an Olm NPC. When I went to interact with it, it turned into a mimic monster. I forgot the name and cannot find any mention of it elsewhere on the forums, but it appears to be an especially rare mob. The existence of this monster would be even more terrifying for the Olm who could not even trust one another, in case they were one of these mimics.
(Edit: It turns out, this creature is called a "Form Deceiver", a very rare mob that mimics Olm NPCs and turns into a monster with a gigantic mouth. It is apparently different from Obsessors, who mimic human NPCs because Obsessors don't turn into mouth monsters)

Conclusion

The story of the Olmic city and its inhabitants is one of the most tragic in all of Wynncraft. Not only was it so thoroughly destroyed that not even the city's name survived, but there is no one left alive to avenge or even remember the Olm from the city. For this document, I only explored the Olmic city in detail, and did not include anything from the Eldritch Outpost or any Olmic sites apart from this one. If you have anything related to the city you would like to add, please do!

 

Really interesting stuff to say about this. Two comments I have about this:

The spikes are spikes of darkness. Corruption doesn't really appear in the SE aside from the area under the light monolith.

I think you're talking about Obsessors. They normally impersonate players, but if they can also impersonate Olm in the form of actual NPCs, then that could imply that they coexisted with the Olm, which could imply a variety of things.

 

Cool thread! Like Da Homeboi said, this sounds like an obsessor. It's the same creature that attacked Lucio in AJB and you can find it in the Olmic City as a mimic. But it is very peculiar that this specific one was impersonating an Olm instead of a player, like normal. The ones I have seen (not in-game but elsewhere) have just been human miners or players. I wonder if the creature you saw was a different one, not an obsessor, though I'm not sure what else it could be. Was the creature you saw something like this:

I'm nearly sure you are describing an obsessor since afaik it's the only SE creature with the known ability to mimic other creatures. But if it was not an obsessor and something else entirely, even rarer, that would be very very interesting. But tbh this just sounds like an obsessor that happened to mimic an olm instead of a player or human miner.

 

On further research I have found out that it was not an obsessor. It was instead a lootrun event in the ruined olmic city involving a fake olm that turns into a fleshy mouth-like creature called the Form Deceiver.

 

ohhhh shit that's cool

oh, yea there's some talk on the discord about it. pretty neat, and it does make you wonder what other crazy shit is out there lmao

 

Would like to reply to this thread, as I am back from my hiadus. Most likely, this is what I found in the city, though it's weird how it usually mimics humans because I assumed it would mimic Olm as well considering they were probably made to hunt the Olm. A shame I could not screenshot it, I was just so flabbergasted seeing an Olm NPC in the middle of the city ruins.

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FORM DECEIVER! THAT'S IT! Seeing that name just unlocked a memory for me, the Olm NPC turned into a Form Deceiver, a kind of mouth monster thing.

 

I will compile a timeline of what I believe could be the Olmic civilization. Outside of one specific date, everything is up in the air and the result of educated guesswork. I will include information from Time Valley and the Ancient City.

• 2000 - 1400 BP - The Olmic civilization is centered on the Olmic capital, which may have been called Expanse City or some iteration of that, due to the Olm at Time Valley referring to the area as the Expanse.
• 1500 - 1400 BP - Construction of Time Valley might have taken place and may have even been operational for a time before being abandoned due to a cosmic event.
• 1450 BP - Anya, the Olmic Oracle, predicts the Dern Beast's attack and prepares Anya's Penumbra to combat the Beast, but the plan doesn't work. It may have been around this time that the city's observatory was constructed to keep watch for the prophecized attack.
• 1400 BP - The Dern Beast attacks the Olmic Capital. Fireballs crash into the city as the Dern Beast summons hordes of eldritch monsters to kill or "assimilate" the Olm. Many of the Olm use the power of the crystals to teleport to the Dernel jungle to escape the Dern Beast, which succeeds.
• 1400 - 1300 BP - The Olm who did not escape to the jungle had to adapt to the Silent Expanse and all its creatures. An Olmic inventor made the Cancereater to try and utilize the new resources of the land, Arna stashed supplies across the ruins of the city in case of emergencies. However, it is unlikely any Olm remaining survived for long.
• 1400 - 1000 BP - The Olm in the Dernel Jungle slowly grow insane, believing the Dern Beast is watching over them. Eventually, they realize the crystals were making them go insane, and spread them across the land, though this doesn't reverse the insanity most Olm now have. One of these crystals - the Yellow Crystal - ends up in the custody of the Desert Pharaohs, who guard it until Wynnexcavation discovers it in around 1000 AP.
• 800 BP - having realized the dangerous potential of the crystals, when human miners discover another deposit of crystals, their manager tells them to cover it up and keep them hidden

 

Thank you for all of this information! I really like digging into the lore of Wynncraft.

 

You can find a variety of creatures that are guaranteed to have once been Olm (Risen Ancient One, Bonic Pincher, Blazing Soul, Biblioclast) or could potentially be Olm (Form Deceiver, Repurposed Host)
Darkness doesn't kill like Corruption does. It mutates, warping life and land to create its alien utopia where all things have their own bizarre place in an Eldritch ecosystem. Creatures that were in the expanse alongside the Olm that did kill them likely did so out of hunger as opposed to any urge to kill for the sake of bloodshed.