SPOILER Moral Ambiguity Doesn’t Work in Wynn

The "portal" here is most likely the portal in the road to dern, not the portal to the realm of war. That can very much have happened long before 0 AP. I get the confusion though, since the word "portal" is most often used to refer to the portal to the realm of war specifically.

 

This is from Aldorei's Valley Part II:

• The opening of the Light Portal caused a chain reaction throughout the world.
• The Realm of War Portal opened in Wynn.
• The Realm of Darkness Portal was also opened.
• The portals had lied dormant for so many years... This was the beginning of a new era.
• An era of an endless war. All created because of a selfish wish.

 

It wasn't shown what the realm of darkness portal looks like. That very much can be for spoiler reasons, but it also means that the RoD portal has never been canonically introduced. The portal in the road to dern might be just a random portal, especially since it has not always been there.

"Shortly after the portal broke into this hidden land, a beast from an unknown realm laid siege to the city forcing the Olm to his domain."

Right now, the biggest speculation is that the portal in the road to dern was created by Greg, and is not a natural part of the land like the portals to the realms of light/corruption. Again, this can happen way before 0 AP.

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also dang, I didn't know that the diagram is in the wiki. I looked up a walkthrough of the quest and everything lmao

 

It's not a random portal, it's literally THE portal to Dern, the realm of Darkness. It's why the SE is covered in Darkness. It's called the Portal to Dern on the Wiki, and it's territorial discovery lore mentions Dern: Thought to be only a myth, this portal's existence confirms the legends that the Silent Expanse is a road to Dern. How to access it, though, is perhaps a mystery that can't be solved yet... Idk why Greg is the biggest candidate given that the Eye is from the Dern Beast and was put in th EO to watch over the expanse. Greg is just kinda... there. And we already know from Aldorei's Secret Part II that the chain reaction caused the Portal to Dern to open anyway.

 

At this point, speculation won't really do anything. We can only wait and see if the portal in SE is the darkness portal or not, since it's never been explicitly confirmed at the end of the day: the SE is only a road to dern, not the road.

If that were to be the case, then yeah a lot of inconsistencies around the Olm would sprout, which should then be addressed (how did the Dern Beast invade SE through the portal if it was inactive before 0 AP?). It's also pretty weird that the Dern Beast just randomly invaded SE, especially since Orphy did no similar feat and they're supposed to be of equal power before the Parasite invaded Gavel (0 AP).

 

It's not speculation; the Wiki states from Aldorei Secret Part II that in the cutscene, the Portal to Dern was going to be shown, but it was cut from the final version due to feedback about spoiling an area of the Silent Expanse. I really don't know how much more clear they could be. What other portal to Dern could they be referring to?

 

Oh I see. Then yeah, the lore around the Olm doesn't make sense with the sequencing of the events.

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Though I may have misinterpreted this. The Dern Beast here laid siege to the Olmic City. Deusphage's statement that the Olm aren't native to the SE doesn't directly conflict with this, since the Olm can very much have built that city in SE despite it being within dernic territory. While it can be hard to believe that the Olm thrived in a land of darkness, Deusphage also claimed that the "saturation" of darkness in SE just wasn't as strong then. Heck, this can be interpreted that the "invasion" of SE was actually DB reclaiming his territory.

What if Orphion has been winning the war all along, and DB only sought external help to bring back the balance? Why is the corruption portal so close to the darkness portal, when corruption is supposed to be in the middle of the two realms to signify that the two beasts are equal in power? What if corruption exists in the ocean such as Skien's Island because the corruption is supposed to be in the middle of the ocean, and was only pushed further back to Wynn because of Orphion's growing influence? What if... what if Orphion was lying all along? What if-- *gunshot, dies*

 

I was thinking about this, but because it’s not indicated in-game and the Dern Beast is no stranger to conquest (as seen in the Ultimate Light Forest discovery and the Decay), I’m hesitant to accept that.

Plus it brings up why the Light can influence the overworld before its portal opened, but the RoW couldn’t until its portal opened. And I feel that’s more so a plot hole and harkens back to the Light being portrayed as natural to Gavel while the Dark and Corruption being portrayed as unnatural to the overworld.

 

Something I don't understand is how the Light managed to create a monolith in an entirely Darkness controlled area.
1. How was Orphion able to put that there? Does he just have the power to do that?
2. Why aren't there more of these scattered all around the world?
3. Why is the monolith not actively creating corruption due to it touching tips with Darkness? Doesn't Darkness + Light mean Corruption?
4. If Darkness is winning the war, why aren't there any Darkness monoliths anywhere?
5. Why did Orphion choose to protect the "bodies" of Lutho's citizens in the first place? They seem to be of no use at all. For an amoral character, this seems a lot like a random act of kindness
6. Why isn't the Darkness trying to (or able to) destroy this monolith? Does it not care?

I also have some questions about the moral stuff because the Dark vs Light fight being a "both sides kinda suck equally actually" issue requires a lot of mental gymnastics. Most of them have been asked already but one that immediately crossed my mind is: why is the light always portrayed as good and nice while anything caused by darkness is evil and terrible? And this isn't just talking about Orphion propaganda, you can literally see it first hand: The Decay wracks a quarter of Gavel - It is objectively bad. The Darkness mercilessly wiped out the Olm and warps anything it touches into its own eldritch design, if it doesn't straight up delete these areas from existence (see void holes). Only evil organizations such as WynnExcavation worship Darkness because they're evil and they do evil things.
If we're trying to establish the "both are amoral" narrative, can we at least get some more "Light/Darkness is not what you think it is" moments? Like, (relatively) normal characters who either recognize (and show disdain for) Orphion's amorality, or side with the Darkness for perhaps logical, non cartoon villain reasons. If that was the case, maybe we wouldn't have such a hard time distinguishing Corruption and Darkness, which are both just equally evil, creeping, ethereal forces atm. They even both have obsidian spikes that signify their power.

 

1) Don't use the fandom wiki. It is outdated.
2) Darkness and Light and Corruption can exist without the portals being open. The Light Forests exist before 0 AP.

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It is still The Silent Expanse in game, just obfuscated.

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We LITERALLY are. The secret discovery you quoted's events take place HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE 0 AP.

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During the Equinox, Light and Dark were able to throw shit at each other. DB threw a bug and Orphion threw an obelisk.

There is. There quite literally is Corruption beneath Lutho.

Monoliths are more Light's things. Light is more fractals and strange geometry and structures while darkness is more body horror. Two different breeds of Eldritch.
That being said, the mountains in the Silent Expanse are known as Monoliths.

If you read the TNA lore, you would be aware of the fact that it is interested in getting rid of the obelisk.

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Because you get most of your information from Orphion and his followers.

Part of why Darkness seems to be worse is because it's simply doing more. It's winning right now, so its trying to do all it can to secure a victory over Orphion, given that the tides of war are prone to shifting-- which Orphion himself states when DB tries to spook him. If Orphion was winning, the roles would be reserved and he would seem to be to be the "bad" one.

 

I use wiki.gg

But Aldorei’s Secret says that the Portal to Dern was opened in 0 AP. And regardless, we don’t see the SE with Darkness before the Olm live in the SE. It’s just assumed that the Olm have always lived in the SE before the Darkness invaded just like humans have always lived in Wynn and Fruma.

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Corruption didn’t exist in the overworld before the RoW Portal opened though.

 

Corruption is red and it's spikes are sharp points. It's anti-life. It is a force of destruction without parallel, and its spawn desire nothing but the extinction of everything-- even themselves. Corruption desires to burn everything down and leave only ash.
Darkness is usually purple and blue, and its spires are curved and bend, and feature a crystallized magic twisting around them. Darkness doesn't seek death or destruction, but ultimately wants to improve the world and the life on it. It mutates stuff to make it better in its eyes, taking life and adapting them to be apart of its sprawling, Eldritch ecosystem. In a way, you can almost imagine Darkness as a strange God, shaping life to create an intricate puzzle of moving parts.

I want this. Through my arguments I will not hide the fact that just because I think that Light and Dark are done right in the story doesn't mean I think it's conveyed well in the game itself.

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The dialogue you quoted is outdated

It sure does. I thought you'd be able to figure it out on your own, but I guess I'll state it outright to you; the Darkness portal is implied to have been open a while ago in the past-- presumably the other portals were as well, given what knowledge can be gleamed from ASP2. So yes, the portals were opened in 0 AP. No, that doesn't contradict the fact that a good while ago when the Olm were in the expanse the darkness portal at the very least was open at that time.

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And where does this confidence come from? There's zero sources in the game that compliment this, only the fact that after 0 AP corruption became an immediate threat to Wynn. There's no knowledge in game if Corruption was afflicting the physical plane before 0 AP. It could've been around, it could've not been-- either way no player knows and thus it's not a valid counterargument.
Darkness was in the Expanse before 0 AP, Light was in Gavel before 0 AP.

 

That just means that the "invasion" of RoD to SE was just Darkness spreading its influence pre-portal, much like RoL did with the Light Forest, no? The only difference is that the "conquest" of darkness is recent, and hasn't made itself look natural to the environment yet.

Besides, the Light Forest only looks "natural" because they resemble real life. That means nothing in fantasy settings, where "natural" can be defined by the writer however they want.

 

Why did it close then? We’ve never seen a portal to a realm get closed before, and given it’s been over a thousand years, it wasn’t even clear if they could be closed.

Because all the corruption that is ever mentioned in game is from the Portal, and all Wynn history we have before the Portal opens never mentions the corruption or anything close to its effects.

 

The Olm is shown to have lived in SE. You assumed that they've always lived there, but there's no evidence that they're native to SE.

 

I am not telling you lore information like that if it is not in game lmfao

 

Okay, but like what else do we have to go off of? We are just shown in-game that the Olm lived in the SE and some parts of Wynn like Time Valley, got killed by the Darkness, and the remaining survivors moved to the Dernel Jungle.

There’s no way that Grian is ever gonna clarify more than that. I also feel like this is similar to saying, “Um, actually, the Native Americans weren’t Native to the Americas because all humans migrated out of Africa!” Even if Grian came out and said all humanoid species (Olm, Elves, Villagers, humans) all descended from some other province hundreds of thousands of years ago, that still wouldn’t change anything.

I’m just saying what makes the most sense and what most people are gonna get the impression of.

 

It's more like a "The natives lived here long ago, then invaders took the place. The natives then took back the land from the invaders, but the invaders lived here for so long and I even met some of them :( so since that's the reality I lived in, I'll assume it's the status quo and the natives taking back their land are actually terro--" you get the point.

The information you have is incomplete. Heck, the information in the game is incomplete. You can piece together something coherent with what you know, but that doesn't mean it's the full picture. It's just what the writer allowed you to know.

 

I’d like to know about this too, I can’t imagine why Orphion would want to save the Lutho citizens for… any reason lol. Maybe in the future he will use them for something? Idk, just feels weird that at that point where Orphion could have done something more destructive to DB, he chose to put that random monolith there. Maybe he just wanted to have some sort of hold to the area so it isn’t fully darkened, and the state of the citizens is just a side effect of the monolith’s existence.

 

Orphion placed the monolith there just like how DB sent the parasite to the RoL: to claim more territory. Idk if Orphion deliberately placed a monolith that allows an escape, or if it's just the nature of the monolith itself. If it's the former, maybe it's to pacify nearby creatures so they don't take it down. Maybe it's a protection from darkness because Orphion doesn't want the humans, who can choose to fight for a side, to be influenced and be a soldier of darkness. No matter the reason is, you can be sure that he didn't do it out of the goodness of his theoretical heart.