[Spoiler] Dragonspine lore

Age of Conan General Discussion
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[Spoilers concerning Dragonspine below]

I am unbelievably late to the party, so to speak, but I only recently did the Dragonspine quest chain that ends with the acquisition of the Otherwordly Flute.

It was an absolutely epic questline, as far as story goes. The Lovecraftian theme, whenever it is present in AoC, is always fantastic. I have also always liked the rather subtle storytelling in AoC in contrast to the more overt, in-your-face-story driving of, say, SW:TOR. But I digress.

Anyway. So, Nyarlathotep mentions both the Lurker in the House of Crom and the Entity in the Jade Citadel of Paikang (although the exact phrasing is beyond me at the time of writing. How do they, however, fit together with Nyarlathotep and his presence and intentions in Dragonspine?

Furthermore: How is Nyarlathotep related to a) the serpent-men of Yig, b) to the Entity and the Lurker and c) what manner of being is the Lurker in the House of Crom, and what is his intention there?

I remember mostly the Vile Nativity and the prince (? the end boss, but it’s been years since I was there and my memory is cloudy).

I’d be very happy if any knowledgeable sage would care to shed some light on the matter.

Kind regards,
Neferit

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I’m trying to recall about HoC, and isn’t the Lurker Yog-Sothoth? (edit: My hunch came from a recent re-reading of Lovecraft, and the book may be said to confirm this).

Still, the question remains - how do Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep relate here? Is Nyarlathotep in this questline, by refering to the Entity and Yog-Sothoth, in their respective locations, simply hinting at portents that herald a doomed world?

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Well Nyarlathotep has basically been very busy in Hyboria. He was the one whispering in the Atlantean queen’s ear that she could worship other gods when her god Valka stopped listening and Atlantis fell.

About the Entity and Khitai it is a bit more vague as to Nyarlathotep’s involvement. but the rare boss in Enigmata of Yag is called The Spawn of Nyarlathotep and he does sort of celebrates how the Entity is now causing havoc in Khitai.
His involvement with the Serpent men is about the Serpent men is cast out by their God Yig due to them starting to make experiments on themselves to get supernatural or alchemical powers. In Coils of the Ubah Khan you encounter their experiments such as the Bio titan.

So The serpent men starts praying to Nyarlathotep asking him for powerful gifts and he gives them the Shining Trapezohedron (A powerful artifact which can open portals to other dimensions) .

Well Nyarlathotep is basically Lovecraft’s version of the Devil or Loke or the Joker :slight_smile: A trickster who loves to toy with humans (and serpent men), he brags to the player about how he has set all these events in motion all over Hyboria and he is happy to give everyone powerful weapons and artifacts if they want them.

Seems like he enjoy watching people use this powerful stuff to “blow themselves up or others”.

Btw. did you know that if you are playing a Hox at the entity boss fight then you will get a special message from the entity because you serve another elder god (Xotli) ? :slight_smile:

Also, if you jump into the abyss at the Little Prince boss in Vile Nativity you will get a special “Cthulhu message” in your chat box.
Also the ghosts outside Vile Nativity will sometimes talk about the little prince is dreaming of R’lyeh.:smiley:

Oh, and the Custodian of Yoth boss in Sepulcher of the Wyrm is also some sort of elder being (not a god) but one who is actually keeping the portal to Yig’s domain sealed so when you kill it you actually let Yig into this world :slight_smile:

Oh I forgot. to answer your question about the Entity. He is a lovecraft inspired being of funcom’s creation. He seems to be related to the Yag Kosha aliens from Tower of the Elephant and they had some sort of civil war on their own planet so those who opposed the entity fled to Earth (Hyboria) and the Entity and his followers came here as well and landed in khitai creating that Crater in Kara Korum.

As for the Lurker in house of Crom. That is one of Lovecraft’s elder god’s called Yog Sothoth aka The Lurker at the threshold. If you pay attention to the whole story about House of Crom explained in the quests inside HOC you will find that funcom more or less adapted Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” into aoc.
The Queen getting pregnant with the Yog sothoth’s child is basically the same as the story of the Dunwich horror.
In aoc, the little prince is the same as the Wilbur waitely, the child of Lavina waitely. and same thing happens, the child grows into this tentacled monster.

Aaaaand I am spent! for now :smiley:

might have forgotten some details or whatever. I am sure someone will be eager to correct me :smiley:

ps. will come back with a mention about Nyarlathotep and the T6 raid. short version. t6 and it’s story is an adaption of the Conan and the Emerald Lotus novel

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Thank you! Especially regarding the Yig stuff; I haven’t run Coils or Sepulcher in over three years so my memory is really cloudy.

I remember the Spawn (oh the hours spent looking for the Spawn during pants-hunt…), but its real connection to Nyarlathotep always seemed strange since Nyarlathotep never really, as I understood it, involved in the Conan - Yag-khosha event.

Thanks for the tip on HoX and Crawling Chaos! It’s the character I actually intended to run the quest on next. It’s not the only unique HoX message: It’s the same when the Entity is initially pulled in T4.

I really do have to run Sepulcher and Coils again soon. It’s been too long (I loved those places) but people so rarely seem to run them now.
On that topic: Is there really any story associated with Slithering Chaos? I’ve completed it a fair few times but never really noticed any story/quest relating to it.

Kind regards, and again thanks,
Neferit

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Just to clear up confusion about the Hox and the t4 Entity. Any other class gets the same message, but the hox gets a special one for him only and only at the entity in t4.

Slithering Chaos is about the players trying to banish Yig after he has been let into the world following the events of Sepulcher of the Wyrm. So you will face the avatar of Yig.

All these things i wrote is told to the players via quests or clickable tablets in house of crom or cutscenes in the game.

And about the Entity and Nyarlathotep. It’s only implied that Nyarlathotep might have had something to do with that. I remember Nyarlathotep mentioning the entity like he is happy it’s there causing problems.

And there is a quest in khitai where someone mentions that the entity came down to earth on a crawling chaos. (that’s the wording used).
Other than that it’s not really clear. But it seems like funcom at some point when Khitai was created planned for having Nyarlathotep being in their game doing what he always does. travelling the world causing chaos :slight_smile:

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Yes, that’s what I wrote.

This was very interesting. I believe I have some work to do in Dragonspine – I’m not much of a quest completionist in general so I had skipped most except the CC questline. But it seems there is much more to do :slight_smile:

Thanks again for the conversation!

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sure np! Have had this stuff in my head for a while anyways. should have typed it out long time ago :smiley:

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There’s a reference to Nyarlathotep in the cutscene that you get when you click the crystal on the floor, after you defeat the boss in Enigmata: “Perhaps this log will find you. Perhaps the Messenger, the Crawling Chaos will find it and deliver it to you.”

Link to Cutscene

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yeah! forgot that part. you are correct! :slight_smile:

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A great piece to the puzzle, thank you! I had forgotten the cutscene - again it’s been years since I did the instance let alone clicked the clicky…

So, then. Who is the Entity communicating to? If he suspects Nyarlathotep may act as an intermediary, could the recipient of the message be Azathoth, father of Nyarlathotep? It may be a far-fetched theory, but hey. At least it is beyond clear that Nyarlathotep is involved in many events in Hyboria.

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if you are thinking about the message in Yag, then i think it might be a case of poor writing because it does not seem to have anything to do with the rest of the events in the game.
Or if not poor writing then just intentionally vague. Always felt that there was something missing in Entity story in khitai. where house of crom and dragon spine seems more solid.

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Perhaps there was never really any need to know more – just knowing that the Entity came from space to hunt Yag-Kosha is by itself an explanation that I bet most Hyborians wouldn’t really grasp as such :slight_smile:

But it certainly lacks that Lovecraftian creeping, omnipresent terror feel of Dragonspine and HoC.

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As explained in this article, Yag-Kosha and his fellows tried to fight the Kings of Yag, but lost and had to flee. Then those Kings sent the Entity to pursue them. It seems that the Entity is referring to one (or more) of those Kings during that dialogue.

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Fantastic, thank you very much!

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You can get more informations from another quest in Celestial Necropolis. You have to find 3 crystals, and from each one of them you get a piece of the story when Yag-Kosha and his group left the planet Yag.
Luckily, I have some screenshots. :wink:

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Yawgmoth_picture281

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Thank you yet again! I had completely forgotten about these.

For something different: You mentioned that T6 is loosely based on the Emerald Lotus story. That makes sense given the quest Zelandra gives you outside T6, in the courtyard.
But what is the story otherwise there? Ethram-Fal is supposedly the purveyor of the lotus she is addicted to, but there are snakemen bosses and other things which I can’t really fit in.

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There’s a quest in T6 that briefly explains why the Serpent Man are inside the Palace. Basically, they are looking for the Emerald Lotus, to increase their magical power. You get the quest from the Aquilonian Envoy that is near the caravan to Khitai, in Khemi.

The 1st part of the quest is solo, but to finish it you have to enter the palace and kill all the bosses there, the only one that is not needed for the quest is the 3rd one (Igneus, Brittle Back and Stone Coat), and indeed no explanation is given about the reason why they are there. We could assume that they just used the palace as their home when it was abandoned.

After you free Zelandra from the lotus, the Envoy appears again and summons Cetriss. The dialogue suggest that the Envoy is Nyarlathotep, and that he was the one who gave Cetriss the Emerald lotus, giving him power, but also binding him to servitude.

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I always thought there could be maybe a further reference to Nyarlathotep in Age of Conan, even if not explicit: the Piper in Northern Grasslands (btw the same character, with the another name, caging the children in Conarch Village). His story in NG is clearly an adaptation of Pied Piper of Hamelin’s legend, but there are some quotes in the dialogue when you complete without mistakes his riddles quest sounding very close to Nyarlathotep words and way to act in DS. I can’t be more accurate cause the Piper quest is not repeatable, but I had always that feeling doing that.

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I like this speculation. I recently did that quest on an alt and I remembered then that I had believed the Piper to be Old One-esque when I first did the quest many years ago as well.

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What Yawgmoth just said about t6 is ofc. correct.

Also if you read the novel conan and the emerald lotus you will learn that Cetriss was once a mighty wizard who had the palace built. and he worshipped one of Nyarlathotep’s forms, The Faceless sphinx. and inside the palace is a giant black sphinx statue with an altar. In the book, the people who look at the statue starts hearing whispers in their head.
The stature demands sacrifices so when Conan explores the palace he and Zelandra and her soldiers find dead bodies around the statue. Later when people are sleeping, soldiers are kiled by a little gollum like creature who turns out to be what is left of Cetriss. He has been sacrificing lone victims who explored the palace and he only says one thing, “Nyarlathotep! You die!”.

Can’t remember much more other than some soldiers go mad in the palace and starts fighting each other, because of the statue.
And Ethram Fal is an evil wizard in the book who ends up being devoured by the emerald lotus turning him into this weird plant monster and that’s his form in T6.

Well if you have done the Faceless god encounter in T6 then you will have seen a Certain Black Sphinx statue with an altar, and the player’s have to sacrifice each other during the fight with cetriss. No idea why Cetriss looks like he does in the game but whatever.

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