Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

Sawyer's (or whoever) intent has never been clear to me and I still don't know what he was/they were going for with the whole idea.

 

[ColonelMace]

Spoiler

'The gods are not real' was a terrible way to present its twist. Because they're very much real. They're actually too real to be actual gods.
'The gods are not gods' would have made a little more sense, but still fall flat as it's of very little significance to what's actually going on in the games.
Either giving the player a way to unearth ancient rites and, through them, ancient divine essences or having the plot strongly revolve around this artificial nature of the engwithan 'gods' would have made it relevant I suppose.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Nigga why are you spoiler tagging a 10 year old game.

 

[ColonelMace]

Because of my pristine sense of responsibility.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Because of my pristine sense of responsibility.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

'God's are not real' is definitely a 'modern day atheist' moment. Whenever God's were once mortal or not would be relevant and worthy of being kept as a secret only if they were claiming to be God in the modern sense, eternal, all-knowing, omnipotent etc. But many gods worshiped before rise of monotheism weren't all that. Take Zeus. He's not all powerful (he gets beaten by Typhon once), he didn't create the world, he's not all knowing etc. This doesn't matter because he's still the king of the world. Gods in POE are immortal, cannot be hurt by mortals and rule over afterlife, what more would people need to believe in them? For them to be considered 'fake' in any significant way at least their dominion over souls of the dead would have to be bogus.

 

[Butter]

It's bad when Skyrim handles it's debate around Talos worship better than Pillows handles this subject.

 

[Technomancer]

Gods in POE are immortal, cannot be hurt by mortals and rule over afterlife, what more would people need to believe in them? For them to be considered 'fake' in any significant way at least their dominion over souls of the dead would have to be bogus. Whenever God's were once mortal or not would be relevant and worthy of being kept as a secret only if they were claiming to be God in the modern sense, eternal, all-knowing, omnipotent etc.

Pretty sure original rebellion was about revealing the deceit. They may be physical godlike things, but people deserve to know they were created by artificial means to make their own choice on what to worship. These beings of supreme power are essentially artificial soul constructs build on the ideals of dead engwith civilization (you worship what some dead foreigners thought sacred) and fueled by collective sacrifice of their souls. This would be at least honest. And massively complicate things and the spread of their religion. I bet some people would vehemently reject something that has no rightful claim to true divinity. As they did in fact, until they killed them all and truth was buried.

 

[gurugeorge]

'God's are not real' is definitely a 'modern day atheist' moment. Whenever God's were once mortal or not would be relevant and worthy of being kept as a secret only if they were claiming to be God in the modern sense, eternal, all-knowing, omnipotent etc. But many gods worshiped before rise of monotheism weren't all that. Take Zeus. He's not all powerful (he gets beaten by Typhon once), he didn't create the world, he's not all knowing etc. This doesn't matter because he's still the king of the world. Gods in POE are immortal, cannot be hurt by mortals and rule over afterlife, what more would people need to believe in them? For them to be considered 'fake' in any significant way at least their dominion over souls of the dead would have to be bogus.

The pagan world always had God with a capital G (well, certainly by about 500 BCE or so when the idea of monotheism first arose in the Scythian empire - the remnant of the Indo-European diaspora - and in the Mesopotamian and Semitic cultures that were influenced by it). The very arguments that support the existence of God on a rational basis (Plato, Aristotle) come from a pagan background. The gods with small "g" were thought of as localized facets, emanations, extensions, refractions, or similar, of the One. The One being too lofty and abstract for a personal relationship, gods were intermediaries the individual could appeal to.

Well it's a bit more complicated than that - initially gods were "the" God to local, relatively isolated groups, because their understanding of the world was sketchy and limited, and they more or less thought they were at the center of it, with only a vague sense of anything beyond, and their sense of God reflected a magnified sense of themselves. (Note that Judaism later retained that quirk, i.e. it was monotheistic, but with an older sense of their God as representing their blood, their ethnic group - "God is a Jew," as Maurice Samuel so aptly put it.) Then with the birth of the great empires, as people were confronted with other groups having similar ideas, gods lost their hyper-localization, as it became understood that God as such is necessarily more lofty and abstract. That's the point at which gods became more like emanations or reflections or flavours of the One, to which a more personal type of appeal could be made by the individual. At that point the transition to the "mystery religions" that culminated in Christianity is smooth and even: the idea of religion as a matter of personal salvation, of a private transaction between the individual and God (whether via intermediaries or not - without being via mysticism, with being via religious cult and ritual).

And Christianity carried on exactly the same structure - gods became angels and saints, angels being of the type of god that had always been an immortal being, saints being of the type of god (rarer in the pagan context, more abundant in the Christian context) that had come from a mortal origin and "earned" godhood in some way (like Herakles) - basically Heroes who became deified (deification of emperors also lives here). And again, the gods/heroes//angels/saints are entities to whom the individual can make an appeal, whereupon hopefully they will "intercede" for the individual and make the appeal to the God above gods (Mary, mother of God, an echo of Isis, had a unique place in Southern European Christian cultures in this way). Basically, gods as "interfaces" to God, suitable for different people.

The gods in Pillows are like the classical (Axial Age) gods, specifically the classical gods of the Hero type that had once been mortal (again, Saints in the Christian context); but without any sense of there being a "God of the Philosophers" (a One, Prime Mover, etc.) behind them all, the way pagans would have understood it.

So the Pillows concept is atheistic in one sense (in that there's no One), but fits in quite easily with the concept of some gods having a heroic (or in the Christian context, saintly) origin.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Gods in POE are immortal, cannot be hurt by mortals and rule over afterlife, what more would people need to believe in them? For them to be considered 'fake' in any significant way at least their dominion over souls of the dead would have to be bogus. Whenever God's were once mortal or not would be relevant and worthy of being kept as a secret only if they were claiming to be God in the modern sense, eternal, all-knowing, omnipotent etc.

Pretty sure original rebellion was about revealing the deceit. They maybe be physical godlike things, but people deserve to know they were created by artificial means to make their own choice on what to worship. These beings of supreme power are essentially artificial soul constructs build on the ideals of dead engwith civilization (you worship what some dead foreigners thought sacred) and fueled by collective sacrifice of their souls. This would be at least honest. And massively complicate things and the spread of their religion. I bet some people would vehemently reject something that has no rightful claim to true divinity.

But that's the problem: there is no reason to hide anything or to run the grand conspiracy. They claim to be gods and have all the power they need to back that up. If someone has a problem with it they can just punish him, or wait for him to die and purge him from the reincarnation cycle. What "rightful claim" do they even need? Zeus imprisoned his father who castrated his grandfather hence proving himself to be the top dog. It would be one thing if gods lied about reincarnation and such, but the afterlife pretty much works as advertised. The charade is pretty much pointless as presented in game.

Sure if people learned the truth they might've abandon gods out of feeling of betrayal or just distrust them as they've lied about something as significant, but it wouldn't be a problem if they've told the truth form the beginning.

 

[gurugeorge]

Forgot to add to my above: another interesting aspect of the gods in Pillows is that they can be prayed to and will occasionally grant prayers. That's a hell of a lot of power ofc, but it also suggests something like being able to hive off a whole bunch of parallel subroutines that communicate directly with supplicants.

 

[Technomancer]

What "rightful claim" do they even need?

Basically just being god on your own right. As part of natural order of things. As a force of nature. If you are made up supreme being, you basically can never be seen as truly legitimate, just a temporary power. Why gods and their henchman Thaos try to sabotage animancy research and why they decreed the savages to protect their ruins as holy sites. Because they are acutely aware about one fact - with breakneck speed society and technology develops, one day animancers will figure out how to create new gods, same as engwithans, threatening the status quo and their position. "Real" god has nothing to fear from mortals because its divinity comes naturally and something outside of scope for mere mortals to affect, unless they are somehow chosen to be elevated to godhood directly by the will of the divine. So natural gods are entrenched in position of permanent superiority. Unlike the fakes.

But that's the problem: there is no reason to hide anything or to run the grand conspiracy. They claim to be gods and have all the power they need to back that up.

Well one reason was the deception allowed them smoothly establish global monotheism with no resistance or counter movement because everybody were duped. The other reason is gods decided to abandon their physical bodies and adopted a policy of non interference (which they ignore when its convenient to them).

 

[Lacrymas]

The problem for me is that it's all for its own sake and it becomes a debate of semantics at its core. At the end of the day, the gods are powerful wizards who people worship, but I don't get the whole worship part. I don't understand why people would worship any god, including the Christian one. I'm attracted to the Christian God because He's an all-seeing judge who will right all wrongs eventually, that's why I like Skaen as well, but I don't see where worship comes into it even if it's proven that some god/s 100% exist. Even if we look at Eora's pantheon from an atheistic point of view, I don't see the appeal. What exactly does an atheist gain from the revelation that the gods, who are in fact demonstrably very real, are artificial beings? That doesn't solve any philosophical problem. It could, theoretically, be interesting if the game explored how inconsequential the reveal is, but we'll never get that.

 

[Parabalus]

What exactly does an atheist gain from the revelation that the gods, who are in fact demonstrably very real, are artificial beings? That doesn't solve any philosophical problem.

It would be an inspiration to animancers if the pinnacle of their craft is ascension to godhood. It moves it from a philosophical problem to a human one.

 

[Cohesion]

The problem for me is that it's all for its own sake and it becomes a debate of semantics at its core. At the end of the day, the gods are powerful wizards who people worship, but I don't get the whole worship part. I don't understand why people would worship any god, including the Christian one. I'm attracted to the Christian God because He's an all-seeing judge who will right all wrongs eventually, that's why I like Skaen as well, but I don't see where worship comes into it even if it's proven that some god/s 100% exist. Even if we look at Eora's pantheon from an atheistic point of view, I don't see the appeal. What exactly does an atheist gain from the revelation that the gods, who are in fact demonstrably very real, are artificial beings? That doesn't solve any philosophical problem. It could, theoretically, be interesting if the game explored how inconsequential the reveal is, but we'll never get that.

Yeah, castrated paladins are much better.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Basically just being god on your own right. As part of natural order of things. As a force of nature. If you are made up supreme being, you basically can never be seen as truly legitimate, just a temporary power.

The divide between what is artificial and part of natural order of things is kinda arbitrary. They didn't always exist and didn't always rule the world but neither did many other gods, and that didn't make them any less legitimate. Nordic gods weren't even immortal by their own powers, they needed golden apples, and once they've lost it they grew weak. How can they bee part of natural order of things if they die without artificially boosting their powers.

Why gods and their henchman Thaos try to sabotage animancy research and why they decreed the savages to protect their ruins as holy sites. Because they are acutely aware about one fact - with breakneck speed society and technology develops, one day animancers will figure out how to create new gods, same as engwithans, threatening the status quo and their position.

The entire scheme seems counter productive. Only a rapid development in animancy which is beyond comprehension of any mortal being might if gods did nothing theoretically in the future spawn another god which could threaten the current order. Why not just ban it? Almost everyone seem to be following some god and it seems reasonable to ban mortals from trying to mess with gods.

"Real" god has nothing to fear from mortals because its divinity comes naturally and something outside of scope for mere mortals to affect, unless they are somehow chosen to be elevated to godhood directly by the will of the divine. So natural gods are entrenched in position of permanent superiority. Unlike the fakes.

"Read" god has nothing to fear from mortals because he's leagues more powerful than any mortal being, not because laws of nature say so. Take Thor, he needs to his hammer to fight giants and when he loses it he needs to use his cunning to recover it before he can beat them in fight. How is his power natural if he can be stolen from him. And not by magic, by removing a physical object which grans him his power. Thanatos gets tricked and trapped by a mere mortal. Seems like some gods can be treatened by mortals.

It all comes to a difference in power. The reason why mortals cannot challenge gods is not because they cannot ever be challenged, but because no human might be strong enough. Which is true for pretty much all fantasy settings.

Also I don't see why Zeus overthrowing Cronus and establishing his rule is "natural", while POE gods coming into being and creating afterlife would be artificial. Zeus gets a pass because he's related to a leader of previous order which he completely demolished?

 

[Technomancer]

The entire scheme seems counter productive. Only a rapid development in animancy which is beyond comprehension of any mortal being might if gods did nothing theoretically in the future spawn another god which could threaten the current order. Why not just ban it? Almost everyone seem to be following some god and it seems reasonable to ban mortals from trying to mess with gods.

Preaching to the choir brother, ask Sawyer about his plot holes. I guess for ban, it is kinda suspicious and would make people dig even more. But yeah, its something that realistically would be enforced with the first purge and inquisitions. If gods had any foresight. Total ban on animancy. Rather than trying to do it all sneaky like, taking risks, potentially botching it etc. Can't stop progress. But it would be trivial to sell the idea and then turn into dogma; that domain of souls belongs exclusively to gods and mortals are forbidden from meddling in it under pain of death, make mortals believe it to be the vilest most profane act of blasphemy.

POE gods coming into being and creating afterlife

Don't recall it well at this point but I think in 2 it was revealed that they only refined the mecnanism of the wheel. But it already existed before them as natural if somewhat chaotic force of soul reincarnation. Which makes you wonder why engwithans were so upset that they found no gods and no evidence for them. Because this thing could be seen as one sign.

"Real" god has nothing to fear from mortals because he's leagues more powerful than any mortal being, not because laws of nature say so.

Yeah but in most of IRL legends there is a permanent metaphysical abyss between gods and mortals. Meaning no mortal can transcend without outside help and become a god themselves (often enough there is no way period). There is certain immutability and perpetuation to the nature you were born into. This is what I meant by threat, their status and essence, that was never earned or taken from somewhere, they were born into existing as such. Miraculously, unexplainably and naturally. Something else, something separate from humanity. Something unique and forever out of reach of grabby fingers of mankind. Since pillars gods are constructed with mortal science and mortal hands, that process can eventually be repeated, the gods replicated. So the gap between mortals and fake-god is much shorter and is measured in technical know how, soul knowledge and time. Ultimately there is no mystical separation here between these two kinds of beings because both gods and mortals came from one source. There is no true divinity here, only an illusion of it build on human made soulcraft. Meaning these are no gods but just another obstacle for humanity to overthrow, usurp or exploit.

 

[Sweeper]

Don't recall it well at this point but I think in 2 it was revealed that they only refined the mecnanism of the wheel. But it already existed before them as natural if somewhat chaotic force of soul reincarnation. Which makes you wonder why engwithans were so upset that they found no gods and no evidence for them. Because this thing could be seen as one sign.

This is what happens when you let an atheist worldbuild. Never let them do it.

It's bad when Skyrim handles it's debate around Talos worship better than Pillows handles this subject.

kek

 

[Skinwalker]

This is what happens when you let an atheist worldbuild. Never let them do it.

Hey, that's what *I* said! But yes, this shit setting is the epitome of atheistarded small brain syndrome. They can't even conceive of the transcendent as anything other than yet another natural phenomenon to be discovered, catalogued, and exploited for profit/power.

 

[Sweeper]

This is what happens when you let an atheist worldbuild. Never let them do it.

Hey, that's what *I* said! But yes, this shit setting is the epitome of atheistarded small brain syndrome. They can't even conceive of the transcendent as anything other than yet another natural phenomenon to be discovered, catalogued, and exploited for profit/power.

From which stems the biggest problem if you're gonna go religion heavy in your worldbuilding, if it's all materialism who or what created the first material thing?
Deadfire is akin to D:OS 2 for me, in that I can't recall shit about it plotwise apart from going after Eothas, but if what Technomancer said is true, the cycle of reincarnation existing prior to the creation of the "Gods" would still imply the existence of an actual God.
>Gods are manmade things bro, we invented religion

 

[Skinwalker]

From which stems the biggest problem if you're gonna go religion heavy in your worldbuilding, if it's all materialism who or what created the first material thing?

That's the part in the debate where atheistards flip the table and start shitting their pants while shaking their fists furiously at the sky. Or try to play it cool with meaningless phrases like "I am comfortable with not knowing that" while screaming internally.

Deadfire is akin to D:OS 2 for me, in that I can't recall shit about it plotwise apart from going after Eothas, but if what Technomancer said is true, the cycle of reincarnation existing prior to the creation of the "Gods" would still imply the existence of an actual God.

Like I said in the other thread, if you're going with "the gods in this pantheon aren't real, they are just man-made technomagical AI", then you're pretty much obligated (as a minimum) to imply that there once existed (or still exist) a connection to the real God or multiple divine powers, and that the Engwithatarians tried to recreate with their skill the connection with the real divine that they had lost.

 

[Sweeper]

I pirate PoE way back when, then bought the definitive edition on Steam a year or two ago and it's just been sitting in the library.
I've been meaning to start another playthrough, but man this thread sure as fuck makes it harder to do so. I'm starting to remember why I didn't like the fucking thing in the first place.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, out of all the zlibrary shit i got when i typed Pilars in the search i found a Shacknews 1000 pages long write up about the history of Interplay and all the RPGs leading up to Pillars. I'm having more fun reading that than reading up the lore of this game.

I just finished going through all the gods and there's an element of ambiguity there as well as everything else in this setting since even after going through a direct explanation of the lore it's still difficult to understand what the gods are actually about. I think the problem is there's no actual metaphysical foundation in how they are concieved. I mean i understood what Rymrgand is because the concept of entropy is easy enough to wrap your head around. A lot of the others however feel out there.

Never read anything about the "lore" of the gods in D&D, but then i never needed to, since it's just easy to get what they are about at a glance. For all i know the "lore" of the Pillars gods may be more interesting since a lot of the D&D gods seemed kinda of silly to me, but the point is that you don't need to know much about the "lore" to play D&D. Same cannot be said about Pillars (i mean if you are planning to actually understand WTF is going on in the game).

 

[Lacrymas]

Only Skaen is about anything substantial. Everyone else is straight up D&D-tier and as straightforward as they come. Some of them aren't about anything at all, like Wael.

 

[luj1]

I think there are around 7 people who find Pillars lore interesting.