Welcome to Gaia! ::

Setting and back story.

The realm of Nosgoth is an ancient battleground for which two god-like species have been at war since before history. Firstly the Vampires (not to be confused with their blood-sucking descendants), and secondly the Hylden, with a third faction in the form of the Elder God. The Hylden in earlier times waged an all out war, but in modern times, fight through surrogates and pawns. The level of sophistication their warfare has developed is staggering, and much more realistic for such a protracted battle than the wasteful, exhaustive and ultimately short-term warfare style originally endorsed by both species. Each species moves in some way from behind the scenes, manipulating events slowly and deliberately, molding and preparing the lesser peoples of the world (humanity) to act eventually in their favour, with individual moves often taking centuries or millennia to completely unfold.

In ancient times, the Hylden had attempted to put a decisive end to the war by developing a super-weapon which would extinguish the life of the world. This weapon, apparently, violated a number of the fundamental laws governing the nature of the world and reality, severely upsetting the balance of life and death, which the Ancient Vampires held to be sacred. The Pillars of Nosgoth were erected in order to restore balance and order to the land, and ensure that these governing dynamics (which the Ancients accordingly divided into nine spheres) were never bent or broken again. Each pillar of the nine pillars represents one of the nine orders which the Ancient Vampires divined were the governing forces of the world, and each pillar had a Guardian whose task was to protect and uphold his respective laws. The nine spheres of law were:

Death, being the cycle of life, death and rebirth which the Ancients held sacred.

Conflict, being the interactions of things with other things and the new things arising thereof.

States, being the nature of the physical world and the ordering of the concrete, including chemicals and all the laws governing the physical world, such as electromagnetism and gravity.

Energy, being the vital force which animates creation and allows for the changing of all things.

Time, being the cyclical flow of time and the fated events to take place in order of their happening. (note that, time is neither dimensional nor directional, but it can be altered, with great difficulty, by one possessing sufficient comprehension of the nature of such a thing)

Dimension, being the dual directionality of the fabric of existence, allowing things which exist to exist and preventing things which do not exist from existing.

Nature, being the growth and evolution of living things, and everything which is animated or can be said to have a soul.

The Mind, being the soul itself, or the soul as it perceives itself, including all psychology, the study of the mind in relation to itself. (note that, logically, neurology would be a combination of the Mind and of States, dealing with the functions of physical cellular structures in relation to the soul; furthermore, sociology and politics would be a combination of the Mind and Conflict, dealing with the interactions between living souls)

And finally: Balance, being the interactions of all the spheres of law, and all things which fall under the auspices of more than one set of laws. It allows for the existence of things such as the aforementioned psychology, sociology, and politics. Balance governs all of existence through its governship of the laws themselves.

However, their power is waning and some (most notably the Hylden) seek to destroy the pillars entirely. It is unknown whether there was ever a time of peace in Nosgoth or whether one will ever come to pass. It is also revealed later on that the Pillars served a dual purpose: along with preserving the balance of the land, the Pillars acted as a gateway, banishing the Hylden into a desolate dimension, inhabited by numerous monsters which are known as "Demons" in the games. The Pillars also act as the lock to this gate, and as long as they stand the Hylden are trapped; this is the reason behind the Hylden's use of numerous pawns and surrogates during the games (for as the Pillars weaken they are able to manifest using the bodies of the dead).

Furthermore, nearly every major character, or groups of characters, have both aspects of heroism and villainy, even when some aspects seem to shine through more often than others.

Kain himself, for instances, is a notorious anti-hero in that he is, in fact, not very like-able: he is an unashamedly selfish and brutal megalomaniac, with an obvious relish for bloodshed; though he is not stupid, and while his quite undiplomatic actions might often seem to be the rash products of his rather short and violent temper, it more often turns out that his rage is merely a tool carefully cultivated, revealing his true cunning and subtlety only to those perceptive enough to be his intellectual equals. With his vampirism, coupled with his learnedness, cultured palate and his extremely aristocratic tastes, he could best be described as a cross-over between Hannibal Lecter and Vlad the Impaler; however, his justification is often thrust upon him in that he usually finds himself, usually by his own designs, in such a position that he becomes the lesser of two evils, and one often feels a sense of justice to see the true enemy get what they so richly deserve by falling to the mercy of his better graces.

Raziel, on the other hand, is an anti-hero only in the opposite sense. He is a very upstanding and noble man, with a strong inherent sense of morality; however, the conditions and situations he finds himself in (almost never of his own making, unlike Kain who, though sometimes momentarily taken by surprise, often makes his own destiny for good or evil through defiance of those around him) rarely lend themselves to unambiguous ethical judgments and he often ends up doing the wrong thing for the right reason (unlike Kain who generally does the right thing for diabolic and selfish reasons). As a mortal man, he engaged in the systematic extermination of countless "innocent" Vampires in his fanatical quest to rid the world of evil. As a Vampire he helped Kain establish his empire, under the misguided belief that Vampires deserved (as a higher form of life and thus knowing better) to rule the world; and as The Soul Reaver, he stalked Kain and slaughtered his former brethren, under the belief that he was not only exacting vengeance, but also setting the balance of existence. Ultimately, all his actions turn out to be in some way flawed and generally immoral in the logic or lack thereof in their formulation, as he often finds himself the willing or unwilling pawn of those around him, for good or evil. His systemic redemption is found only in his final act, one of self-sacrifice, his only action dually motivated by good intentions and with arguably good consequences. This puts him in harmonic opposition to the character of Kain, whose actions are always selfish, but generally turn out to be right, because he betrays and defies those around him, most of whom turn out to be directly or indirectly in league with evil.

Destiny and fate

An underlying element of the story is heavily concerned with destiny and throughout fatalism is a strong theme. The idea that a person's destiny can be foreseen and thus altered is presented to the player. Some characters try to use this facet to their advantage by attempting to manipulate other characters' (notably Raziel's) destiny.

Free will is also challenged during the story and a great number of the characters believe that no one truly possesses free will, except maybe Raziel. Therefore these characters believe that Raziel is the key to altering destiny. Manipulation also plays a major point in the progression of the story since nearly every character, at some point in the story, is manipulated by another.

Time travel

Much of the story behind Legacy of Kain contains time travel. It is used as a method for creating a diverse and very non-linear timeline that can, at sometimes, be very confusing. This time traveling ability is obtained through time streaming chambers and the Chronoplast, as well as time streaming devices, all of which are credited to Moebius the Timestreamer, and Guardian of Time (one of the nine guardians of the pillars).

Although much of the story that involves time travel does make sense, it usually requires background reading and replaying of earlier events before a full understanding of the story is acquired. Many paradoxes are introduced during the story, as is commonly the case among stories containing time trave. These paradoxes further add to the confusion, as each paradox that comes up throughout tends to actively re-write history and the course of past, present, and future events (the most notable and consistently mentioned of these time changing paradoxes is the one in the original Blood Omen, where Kain travels back in time and kills a past king (and future tyrant). In the series, the only consistent cause of these paradoxes is the meeting of a past version of the Soul Reaver weapon with a future one. It is interesting to note that the events of Blood Omen 2 (see below) are actually the product of a paradox created in Soul Reaver 2.

Plot

The game features a mature and well crafted story of deception, betrayal and manipulation of the main character. Kain, a nobleman in the world of Nosgoth, is murdered by assassins and offered new life as a vampire by the necromancer Mortanius to take vengeance. Kain easily kills his murderers, but Mortanius convinces Kain that they were mere pawns and that the real perpetrators can be found at the Pillars of Nosgoth, which protect Nosgoth from destruction. There, the ghost of Ariel, the former Guardian of Balance, tells him that the humans guarding the pillars from decay have gone insane, and that they must be killed for the pillars to be saved.

Kain embarks of a quest to kill the guardians and visits their fortresses, gaining numerous powers in the proccess, and often encountering strange and deranged characters, like the Oracle, which speaks him of the Nemesis and counsels him to find the help of Vorador -- a powerful vampire. After eliminating several more guardians, Kain learns that an army commanded by the Nemesis -- a corrupted ruler once named William the Just -- is on the brink of conquering Nosgoth.Kain tries to neutralize this threat using a Time streaming device -- which he found in a cathedral in the city of Avernus -- to go 50 years back into the past, and kill the king William. He suceeds, but in the altered history, the killing of William at his hands sets off a genocidal crusade against all vampires, rendering him the last of his kind. Kain discovers that he has been manipulated into changing history by the guardian of time, Moebius, posing as the Oracle, who he finally manages to kill.

At this point, Kain encounters the two remaining guardians, Mortanius, and Anarcrothe the Alchemist, fighting. Anarcrothe is killed by Mortanius and Kain challenges him as the last guardian. After defeating him, he turns into a monster, who is revealed as the author of the murder of Ariel and Kain as part of an orchestrated plot. After defeating the monster, Kain learns that he is the last guardian, the guardian of the Pillar of Balance. He is given two choices: sacrifice himself, restore the land, and free Ariel, but comdemn vampires to extinction. or refuse the sacrifice, and let the pillars fall. Later games in the series were based on Kain's dilemma. In this RP Kain has chosen to walk away, though perhaps future events will lead to a change in his choice.

Background

Dark Gods: A millennium has passed since Lord Kain set his capital in the ruins of the Pillars of Nosgoth and began his conquest of the world. His first act was to recruit a cadre. Dipping into the underworld, Kain snared six souls and thus birthed his lieutenants of which I, Raziel, was one. We, in turn prowled the twilight of purgatory building six legions of vampires to pillage Nosgoth.

The destruction of the major human Kingdoms was inevitable. Within a hundred years, humanity had been thoroughly domesticated. To be sure, there remained some feral humans scattered across the hinterlands, clinging to their hopeless holy war to rid Nosgoth of 'the vampire scourge'. They were tolerated. They made existence for the fledglings more challenging.

After the taming of the humans, our real work began; shaping Nosgoth to our will. Around the Pillars, slaves constructed a shrine worthy of our new age, worthy of our new renaissance. Huge furnaces were built to belch smoke into the sky, shielding the land from the poisonous effects of the sun. Never had the world known a time of such beauty. However, we grew bored.

We allowed the remains of the legions, the lesser vampires, to have their intrigues. They provided amusement and spice to an increasingly uninspired court. As faction fell against faction we bet upon the outcome. We helped and foiled plots at our whim. We were the Council and Lord Kain, our only master.

Raziel: The humans think it is a poison of the blood that makes us what we are. Fools, the blood only feeds the bodies we live in. To create a vampire, one must steal a soul from the abyss to reanimate the corpse. It is the body that demands the blood sacrifice; our souls gain their advantage from the powers of the underworld. As we matured, our earthly bodies evolved into a higher form. We assumed the powers and nobility of the Dark Gods. With each change, the trivial affairs of vampire and man held less interest. Always, it was Kain that would change first. After the master had experienced a new gift, one of us would follow in a decade or so. That is, until I had the audacity to evolve before my master. I was gifted with wings. And for my impertinence I was damned.

The Elder: To us the touch of water is agony; it burns our flesh like acid. My punishment was to be cast into The Lake of the Dead, our execution ground for traitors and weaklings. As my brethren heaved me into the air I could see the bemused expressions on their faces. The transitory thrill of something new. Then the pain. Melting, twisting, burning, falling. A new experience indeed. Time. I have no concept of how long I fell. Only that there was an end to the fall and through the pain I heard the voice. At first I thought it merely the echoes of my own tortured mind, but I grew to understand that it was more. Something primal. Something angry. Something righteous. Something ancient.

The Elder explained much to me. It told me of creation, of death, of souls and of hunger. For eons the Elder fed upon the souls of Nosgoth. Then Kain's vampire dynasty deprived the Elder of sustenance. For centuries his hunger grew and festered in this place.

The Elder offered me a solution to my sorry existence - if I would stalk the Material Realm slaying my former brethren then I would have the chance to avenge myself against Kain. How could one refuse such an offer?

Story

The game begins where the first Soul Reaver game left off. Raziel confronts Kain in the chronoplast, a time machine. Raziel attacks Kain, who escapes into the time machine. Raziel follows Kain and is met by Moebius the Timestreamer, and finds himself thirty years before to the events of the first Blood Omen game. Moebius reveals Kain is at the Pillars of Nosgoth, and while Raziel distrusts and threatens Moebius, Raziel seeks Kain out there regardless. On his way out of the Sarafan stronghold, he finds a broken relic - the Soul Reaver as wielded by William the Just during the first Blood Omen. Taking the broken weapon augments Raziel's wraith blade, triggering a cutscene with Moebius.

Raziel eventually confronts Kain at the Pillars, and Kain reveals he has plans to redraw the lines of history to avert the consequences of his decision. Kain previously refused to sacrifice himself to purify Nosgoth because that would cause the extinction of the vampire race. Kain alludes to a monumental secret of Raziel's existence and disappears. Raziel continues northward, and finds himself again in the lair of the Elder God. Emblazoned here are enigmatic murals depicting the existence of an ancient race and iconography of the reaver. The Elder God chastizes Raziel for not killing Kain at the Pillars, and disregards the murals that Raziel has found.

Raziel presses further through a swamp (Termagent forest) and finds another area of ancient construction - a reaver forge adorned with murals telling the story of an ancient war. After exiting the forge, Raziel finds a conciliatory Vorador, who (like Kain) hints at a profound secret, but (like the Elder God) disregards the value of the murals. Vorador reveals that the deceased vampire Janos Audron knows this profound secret, and leaves.

Raziel, now equipped with a dark-elemental soul reaver, backtracks to a shrine he saw near the Sarafan stronghold. The Elder God says little more of the ancient race other than they were attempting to manipulate history for their own purposes. At the light-elemental forge, however, it becomes obvious to Raziel that they were far more benign - they were the architects of the Pillars of Nosgoth. After attaining the light-elemental soul reaver, Raziel finds his way back into the Sarafan stronghold. Here he again meets Kain - and it is here he is destined to kill Kain. The reaver seems to act of its own volition, and Raziel is faced with a dilemma: kill Kain and submit to fate, or establish his own free will by refusing. Raziel refuses, allowing Kain to deliver some exposition on the nature of causality, and disappear.

Raziel proceeds further and encounters Moebius in his timestreaming chamber. Raziel forces Moebius to operate the timestreaming device and send him through time. Rather than arrive during Jano Audron's lifetime, as Raziel was hoping, Raziel finds himself far into the future. Demons and mutants have overrun Nosgoth by virtue of Kain's corrupt and continued existence. Moebius at this time is dead, haunting a memorial to himself (note: because of the events in Legacy of Kain: Defiance, this is not Moebius' actual soul but an illusion to manipulate Raziel).

Raziel travels again to the swamp. Along the way he finds Ariel, the ghost of the previous balance guardian who now blames Kain for the degeneracy of Nosgoth and her continued purgatorial existence. He also visits the Elder God. Raziel is surprised that in the corruption of Nosgoth, the Elder God is not only alive but thriving. Elder God simply reasserts his role in the existence of Nosgoth: the hub of the wheel of life, and the devourer of death. Raziel believes the Elder God is simply a parasite, like the vampires. When Raziel finally reaches the Termagent Forest, he finds a pathway to Janos Audron's mountain retreat. The retreat itself is inaccessible for now, although the surroundings can be investigated.

Here, he again meets Kain. Again Raziel stays his hand, only this time because he doesn't believe the damage can be undone by killing Kain. Kain alludes to a vague malevolent "they", expressing confidence in Raziel's ability to see through their deception. Raziel has been thus far immortal, and is confident in his ability. Kain warns him that they shouldn't be underestimated, and that when time cannot accommodate the changes in history fate itself will expel the irritant.

When Kain leaves again Raziel continues into the air forge. It is here that he learns that the ancient race were vampires, and had sterility and the bloodthirst inflicted upon them by their enemies. These ancient vampires constructed the reaver, Pillars, and were the original guardians. Kain's assertion that the Pillars did not belong to the humans had been right all along. Using the air-elemental soul reaver, Raziel finds another timestreaming device, and with suspicious coincidence finally arrives during the time of Janos Audron.

Raziel finds a means of entering Janos Audron's mountain retreat in the time of the Sarafan. He ascends the labyrinthine tower (clearly meant for working wings, not Raziel's tattered ones) and finally meets Janos Audron. Janos recognizes Raziel immediately. Janos is then revealed to be the tenth guardian - the keeper of the reaver, and that vampires (and vampire guardians) are necessary for the purity of the Pillars. Janos, far from being the monster as depicted, is a benevolent and forgiving individual. Raziel feels no temporeal displacement as he did previously, however, and it repells him from bearing this time's corporeal reaver.

All of this was a trap. Raziel had blazed a trail for other non-winged creatures to get to Janos. The Sarafan elite, consisting of all Raziel's former brothers (Turel, Dumah, Zephon, Melchiah, Rahab, and the human Raziel himself) attack Janos. Janos' only reaction was to save the future Raziel by teleporting him to the nearby fire forge. Raziel tries quickly to solve the riddle of the forge and escape, but it is too late. Janos is dead, his heart removed, and all Raziel can do is get revenge.

Raziel breaks into the Sarafan stronghold, encountering a few anachronistic demons who had pursued Raziel through time and the Elder God again (who makes clear his displeasure) along the way. Raziel is ambushed in a small room by Moebius and Malek. They overhear Vorador's massacre of the other guardians. Raziel's wraith blade is disabled by Moebius' staff, and Raziel takes up Janos' (suspiciously) conveniently placed corporeal reaver. Moebius and Malek escape before he can attack, though, and Raziel finds himself incapable of letting go of the weapon. Despite this setback, Raziel continues ahead and slays his Sarafan brothers in the delirium of power the weapon gave him.

After the wraith Raziel kills the human Raziel, the effect of Moebius' staff wear off. The wraith blade, with its parasitic augmentations, entwine with the physical reaver and they turn themselves on Raziel and impale him. The soul reaver, it is revealed, was not forged to be a soulstealing weapon at all. Raziel's own soul was the soulstealing element of the blade. A soul devouring its own soul created a paradox. Kain, at the last instant, pulls the soul reaver out of Raziel and saves him from the paradox that would destroy Raziel.

Note that although the Soul Reaver was seemingly destroyed by Kain's action, as Raziel's essence fades back to the Spectral Realm, Kain mentions something about the "Hylden" (see Blood Omen). Raziel finds himself still bound to the Spectral Reaver despite Kain's calculated plan, and realizes that Kain has not rewritten his apparently inevitable destiny, merely postponed it. Raziel's last words before the end are:"History abhors a paradox."

Pillars of Nosgoth

The Pillars are nine white columns that are made of an unknown, marble-like substance arranged in an eight-point semicircle with the ninth in the center. The Pillars extend far into the sky and deep into the ground. Each Pillar represents a thing or concept by which the world funtions. The Pillars are Mind, Conflict, Nature, Dimension, Energy, Time, States and Death. At the center is the Pillar of Balance, which binds them all. Each Pillar is served by a sorcerer, selected at birth, who acts as a guardian. For serving the Pillar, the guardian obtains immortality and magical powers related to the Pillar they serve. This group of sorcerers is known as The Circle of Nine.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Unknown to the guardians in the time of the first game, the Pillars were risen by the ancient vampires as a way to bind their enemy, the Hylden, in the realm to which they had been banished. Upon banishment, the Hylden race cursed the Ancient Vampires with bloodlust, immortality and sterility. The Pillars were originally served by vampires. They chose their own servants from birth and as vampires were no longer being born The Pillars started choosing human guardians. The Vampires started passing on the Dark Gift to the human guardians of the pillars, until a rebellion rose lead by Moebius the Timestreamer and Mortanius the Necromancer who claimed the Pillars for humankind. This lead to the downfall of the ancient vampires, with Janos Audron as the last remaining representative of his kind.

The Hylden masterminded their escape by having Mortanius murder Ariel, the Guardian of Balance, thus throwing the Circle into chaos. Nupraptor, the Guardian of the Mind and Ariel's lover, found her body moments after her death, and was driven mad with grief. His powers over the mind flew wildly out of control with the loss of his own control over his, and his blind hatred and desire for vengeance against an unknown enemy led him to unleash a psychic assault against the other Guardians, shattering their minds. At that moment, the Pillars cracked, and began to lean unsteadily. However, at the moment of Ariel's death, a child was born to a nobleman and woman in Coorhagen, to take her place as Balance Guardian. Named Kain, he too was affected by Nupraptor's mind blast, and as he grew into a young man, this became more and more apparent. Eventually, Mortanius, now temporarily of his own free will, realized what he had to do to restore the Pillars, and had Kain murdered, while having control over life and death, brought him back as a Vampire, and convincing him, with the help of Ariel's spirit, that the only way to release himself from this curse was to kill the corrupted Guardians, restoring the Pillars with each death. When finally they were all dead and only he, the Corrupt and unknowing Guardian of Balance was left, Ariel revealed to him that his release would come only in his death, and with his death, Nosgoth would be healed. However, by this time, Kain had become quite accustomed to vampirism, and refused. At this point, the Pillars corruption had become complete, and they toppled at Kain's feet, thus releasing the Hylden from their prison.

[ Message temporarily off-line ]

Janos Audron


In ancient times, Janos fought in the war between the original vampires and the Hylden. When the war ended and the Pillars of Nosgoth were raised, Janos became the secret Tenth Guardian, of the vampires' holy weapon, the Reaver. As his fellow guardians died out, Janos continued living so as to carry out his duty.

As the last surviving member of Nosgoth's original vampire race, Audron was hunted down and murdered by the Sarafan at the height of the vampire purge. They tore the heart from his living body, and bore it away as a trophy, christening it the "Heart of Darkness." The Heart became a legendary relic, reputedly imbued with the power to restore vampiric unlife. As the Reaver Guardian, Audron alone knew the truth behind Raziel's terrible destiny, charted for him when the Reaver was forged. When he was murdered, his secrets died with him.

Centuries later, Raziel fought Kain and tore the Heart of Darkness out of his chest (Kain did not know he was in possession of the heart). Raziel then returned the heart to Janos' body, which had been kept by Vorador for 500 years in what was almost a shrine (his body is explained as never decaying as a result of its heart being separate from it). After reviving Janos, the ancient vampire took Raziel to the Citadel of the Ancients. Soon after their arrival, Kain made his fateful decision, and the Pillars collapsed. The Hylden leader, who called himself Hash'ak'gik, was then able to take control of Janos' body. The Hylden-possessed Janos fought and defeated Raziel, then headed off to conquer Nosgoth.

This led to the events of Blood Omen II, in which Janos' blood was used by the Hylden Leader to break the seal on the Pillars (the blood of their ancient enemy that he claims they needed) and thus allow the Hylden to physically enter Nosgoth at last and establish a foothold in the world. The Hylden Leader during this time was under the guise of the Sarafan Lord, who had revived the ancient warrior-priest faith after Kain had damned the Pillars.

Kain encountered Janos in Blood Omen II, although he did not realise it at first. Janos had devolved into a monstrous beast, as a result of being drained of his blood by the Hylden which was fed into their deadly weapon, The Mass. After Kain destroyed the Mass, Janos reverted to his normal form and aided Kain and Vorador in defeating the Hylden. During the battle with the Sarafan Lord however, Janos was cast into the Nexus Portal and is pressumably now trapped in the Demon Dimension, his final fate thus far in the series unless another game is made.


Preceded by:
The Original Circle of Nine Lord of Vampires (unofficial title)
unknown - 500 BBO Succeeded by:
Vorador