unless he's the ONLY ONE TO HAVE EVER THOUGHT THIS.
Of course he isn't. Thaos' whole point is to continually extinguish any such doubts for all eternity. Anyway, I decided to backtrack a bit to expose my the whole of my point of view.
Spoilers ahoy!
A question to everyone: What do you think the point of the story is? And how do you justify your reasoning?
I think this is simple enough. Pillars is a hero's journey in the search for survival. Bound as a Watcher, the protagonist is made to relive memories of past lives over and over again until they lose all sense of identity. As such, they must travel the world in a bid to understand their condition and avert madness. If one is to search for
purpose in this story, however, it can be found at the climax: to deliver karmic justice. What binds your motivation together is your relationship with Thaos. First as the strange apparition who triggered your burden; then as a political opponent and only real clue as to your survival; finally as kindred spirit over (many? two?) incarnations. Both in that past life and in the present story, it was Thaos who bound you to your path and to his own ultimate destruction. The whole story and your character are both made as the final punchline to Thaos' own.
All of these however are mere plot devices. Masks and tropes which dance around the greater story. A more important question, I think, is the search for meaning. Even if one is meant to deliver justice, doesn't mean their story is simply one of lawliness. What themes, if any, bind Pillar's story together? I believe it is Death.
Death and its derivatives -- loss, closure and most importantly people's expectations for the living and the beyond after they die -- tend to drive most of the world and a majority of the best characters is the game. Dyrwood is a land rife with war and Waidwen's Legacy is like a plague in reverse. In preventing reproduction, it signals the end of all community. Social order unravels little by little and people become desperate. A ruling lord executes naysayers in a fit of religious mania. A city of
paranoid yankees truly exceptional individuals turns on itself out of fear of science. The gods themselves quarrel over the souls of those denied their reincarnation.
That drama is at the center of Pillar's narrative. The means to that end is a certain form of pastiche Spiritualism. The game's portrayal of reincarnation and the way the past clings as living memory onto the world itself is similar to some superficial esoteric beliefs that some areas of american pop culture likes to represent, as well as some deeper beliefs that can be found elsewhere in the world. Animancy is the plot device, the fantasy gimmick that is meant to keep things interesting.
To illustrate this reasoning: I like to see Pillars as a three act story. In each Act, the PC interacts with the themes of death and eternity from a different viewpoint.
The first Act is much more personal. Its a short trek of self discovery. In Gilded Vale you are confronted with much more personal tidbits of human drama. The basics of Dyrwood's history of war against Readceras, the issues of Waidwen's Legacy and Raedric's tyranny. Towards Caed Nua you meet many companions who tie in very well with the game's themes. Éder is simply a war veteran who wants for closure in regards to his brother's death. Aloth is a wizard who suffers from emotional trauma and 'copes' with it by invoking a past more asserive personality. Durance is not so different, except that his own brokenness is ironic. The damage his beliefs and faith call upon others is what happened to him. I don't know much about Kana and Hiravias, but Sagani seeks the soul and wisdom of her tribe's elder. Whereas Grieving Mother is this almost folkloric figure of an universal midwife. Of the characters I interacted with, Pallegina is the only one I couldn't tie in with the others thematically which is a damn shame since I actually kinda love her portrait.
The second act goes political. Your only clue after Maerwald's death is a masked man and his secretive cult. So you have to investigate them. You still interact a lot with the local tragedies that are derived from Waidwen's Legacy, but the city of Defiance Bay is mostly about the political ramifications of
Necromancy Animancy and people's relationship with the beyond. And that's where, I think, Pillars start to occasionally digress from its own themes. Whereas the climax of the first act has you decide the fate of Maerwald's immortal soul, the Trial is about public policy. The only real reason to care being your pursuit of Thaos. As part of that, the Hospice, the lighthouse and the neighborhood filled with ghouls add a lot to the greater story. You keep meeting these apparitions bound to the earthly plane, sometimes by intent but mostly otherwise. Then you get to things like the Automaton subplot with the Dozens and the City Guard. Interesting enough on its own, but a simple change like making the living armors act like Robocop would bind them much more strongly to the game's themes.
The final act is about the gods and their rules. You are still chasing Thaos and the actual main quest here is short. This last third of the game is mostly about navigating the gods' traditions and rules to curry their favor. All four avaiable god missions are about delivering judgement in accordance to each god's portfolio. The god of volition and natural selection wants you to decide on the new king of the jungle. The god of entropy wants you to keep some people from knocking into the frozen hells. And so on. But what matters the most is that in the end odds are that your final choice in regards to the souls of a million unborn babies conform to the wishes of one of the gods. The final act is also the final confrontation with Thaos, the climax in which your character truly understands his past incarnations and fulfills his role. He ends the creature who determined his own path many lives before.
So why mention all of this? Well, because the 'final twist' of the manufactured nature of the gods has a repercussion in each of the angles described above.
On a personal level, consider Durance's character arc. He begins the game with a very special relationship towards his own goddess. Magran is both his whore and his muse. She's full of defects but she can also do no wrong. Durance's path is everything that Magran's creed requests of him. Especially when it comes to the vengeful treatment of enemies. Her judgment is swift, cruel and eternal in breaking apart the souls of those who do wrong. Towards the end, Durance realizes the whole deal with the Godbomb and how he himself was marked by it. He is plagued with doubt. With your help he manages to make the transition:
"Whatever desire I had to be redeemed in her eyes was a weakness purged by the Watcher's sight." His relationship with Magran is forever changed. She's no longer a goddess but rather a queen. One to be served but also one to disagree with.
Politically, the potential power of Animancy as demonstrated by this simple truth is capable of sending shockwaves across the world. Just in Dyrwood, the tenuous peace between settlers and the tribes could be shattered should any ruling Duke decide that destroying Engwithan ruins is more important than anything. Or perhaps that in enshrining them from the prying eyes of others lies the future of his people.
And, finally, theologically. Well, there are only four characters in all of Pillars' story which have been in a position to act in accordance to the truth that the gods were manufactured. One of them is the PC, who spends most of his time reacting to Thaos. The other three are Iovara, Thaos himself and, perhaps, Waidwen.
Assuming the latter knew of Eothas' nature, its interesting to imagine that out of all four characters, its possible that three of them chose to serve the Engwithan gods. Most of the PC's options are in accordance to one of the god's wishes. Thaos' whole existance is, apparently, to uphold the Engwithan system of belief. Iovara is the only one who chose to ignore it all.
It becomes apparent then that non belief or a change in the nature of belief itself isn't what is at stake here. People's relationship with the gods don't change most of the time. What changes are its foundations. A worshiper does not question god. A servant occasionally does question sovereignty. Few characters in the game have the gall to position themselves in a liberated manner as that of Hiravias, or Éder and Durance at the end of the game. You can do it yourself when questioning Hylea's quest.
But if one is to believe Thaos, then he was there for every time somebody or some nation came even close to threatening the order of things. In fact, speaking of Thaos his methods betray his true purpose. Its not so much that without the Engwithan gods people would become lost. If that were the case then whatever happened to Eothas would be much more pressing than Woedica's fall. Thaos is about fighting change. The moment the gods or the hierarchy of the gods become 'programmable' entities then they are liable to change. One could in theory crown any of the gods into Woedica's throne. One could become god. Or kill the gods. If everyone became liberated players in the chessboard of belief, then the system would collapse rather quickly. Something which, in Thaos' own view, can only be prevented by crowning a supreme lawgiver, above even death and entropy. Whatever the costs.
Let me guess, you come from a secular society without any real religious discipline?
