Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms - Lore Overview
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Those of you who would like to know more about the lore of Gamera Interactive's narrative-driven RPG Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms should check out this article that provides a not so concise overview of all the major events that took place in the world of Plamen that was originally conceived by the one and only Chris Avellone.
Here's an excerpt:
Hello Champions!!
A crazy busy week started yesterday for the team, because of GamesCom. The event is on its way end of August, and we decided to go back to Germany, after our last appearance in 2019. We’ll be attending the event to meet all the people in touch with us to know more about our future plans for Alaloth. It will be a good moment to meet press and creators as well and we are cooking something cool for them. We are going to say more about GamesCom in future updates, but we want to focus on something else right now.
We’ve been very active from May on, and we sent out 7 patches following the release.
We gathered tons of feeds and had the chance to talk about things going on, features, fixes, future updates, our roadmap and so on but it’s time to talk about the RPG stuff again. We spent time discussing options to improve the combat sys but there is a whole huge world we’ve worked on and that will be expanded in the next months. We are proof reading quests again right now, playing every single one again and again and iterating. We’ve put in many new quest rewards, polished dialogues, added timelines and tried to make quests more and more structured for players asking about this.
We read your feeds on writing of course and we are actively working on it. 99% of the games around must be considered player-centered: the whole story evolves around the player, his choices, his actions. We do have something like this, but quests are way more streamlined when compared to other big games of course. We did this choice to work on something different, trying to stay in between old and new, as we tried to do for the combat system. The game is world-centered, player just live in Plamen, and things happen. Events could be missed, some chars encounters could be missed during a run, and so on. We thought it was cool to move on with something like this and this is something we really want to push in the future, adding many new different events to the calendar, to be able to give you all massive surprises we are going to discuss for sure, updating the roadmap later this summer. Who said large scale battles? New mobs? New FA? We didn’t. Yet.
Anyway, it’s time to talk about Plamen again, sharing the chronology of events that led to the summon of the best champions of the Four Kingdoms to defeat Alaloth, the Great Betrayer. As you know, the world lore has been created by Chris Avellone [races, cities, pantheon, companions, special chars, legends] and our team started from his work to deliver the game as it is today. This is a timeline of events that you can read about in-game, through Lore Characters, quests, dialogues, and barks all around the world.
BLOOD & BIRTH: THE CHAOS OF CREATION
In the times before the calendars of the Four Kingdoms, there existed only chaos. Swirling raw, elemental matter at war with each other. From this chaos, a consciousness came into being. This conscious became the All-Father. All-Father achieves Consciousness Amidst the Chaos of Creation.
It is said in ancient holy texts that the All-Father existed for some time, unnamed, as a great power fueled only by instinct, but when the first drop of his blood was shed, a new act of creation resulted, and he gained the name All-Father.
From his blood, the gods, beasts, and the mortal races were born. The histories of this time are clouded, for language did not exist in the consciousness as a concept until the Mother-of-Betrayers came to be...and it grew from that moment on. It is believed that the precursor race to the Dwarves was also given form during this time.
THE FIRST ERA
This Era encompasses a time believed to be three millennia before Alaloth’s Descent
The All-Father’s battle with the elements of chaos shed blood onto different aspects of the chaos–stone, shadow, light, and more, creating the First Pantheon. Each of the All-Father’s drops of blood burned into an element, granting it the same passion and desire for battle as the All-Father's.
Each one fused with and took on an aspect of conflict: Storms, Fury, Flame, Purifying Light, Nature’s Wrath, Eldritch Energy, and more. Among them was Vaizmil, The Luminous Spear of Morning, The Champion of Purifying Light: the All-Father’s favored daughter.
The last of the Pantheon, the Mother of Betrayers, was born from the All-Father’s shadow that was cast by Vaizmil’s light. The Mother’s strength, stemming from the All-Father himself, was powerful indeed, and while the others of the Pantheon were considered sons and daughters, she granted herself a greater title and assumed the role of mother
THE ECLIPSE
It is said that when the Mother was created, there was a great eclipse. The Elves called it the Shield over the Sun, others called it the Executioner of Light. When the ecplise passed, the races began to invent their language, all while the first iteration of the group known as the Spectral Circle came to be. The Orcish matriarchs were beset by visions (that they shared with no one, but joined them like a web across the orc tribes), and the Ver’Ethier, the Dark Elves, were born in a world without light.
THE PANTHEON
The new gods fought alongside the All-Father, giving form to the chaos around them. The Mother of Betrayers, however, slowly and secretly brought conflict into the Pantheon, jealous of the power that the All-Father wielded.
THE TIDES OF SPLIT KINGDOMS
The mortal races of the four split kingdoms struggled, forming empires and having them fall over many centuries. The Sariqi Caliphate, the empire to the South of the world map, where Iln-Ashah is from, was one such kingdom. The Split Kingdoms lost contact with them over the years, and then completely after Alaloth’s Descent. Very little is left of the histories of the races, except among the Elves, who kept them hidden, presumably out of shame. Many of the practices of Elves and the layout of their kingdom is unchanged since Alaloth’s descent with some exceptions.
THE RETREAT
The Retreat was once something greater: the promise of a new life beyond the mortal realms. The Elves would construct great ships to carry them to their next life. When the Fifth Kingdom was granted to the mortal races, the Elves took it as a sign that the next life was to be achieved in the mortal realms, ceasing the Retreat. With Alaloth’s Descent, however, the Retreat began again but as a means of ending one’s existence.
The Ver’Quintiss came into being, elven paladins that sought purity of spirit and judgment. They were great soldiers and philosophers in elvish society, but when Alaloth came to the mortal realms, they changed from their purpose to inquisitors and executioners, blaming their own people for Alaloth’s triumph.
It was nearly three centuries after Alaloth’s Descent before their fire for punishment died out. The Dwarves fared better than most kingdoms, for they found homes in the abandoned caverns of a precursor race, who built great roads beneath the earth and then vanished. The Dwarves follow their example, and use the already excavated sites to build cities and practice their trade.
