What's the lore behind Arena Champion?

Hehe. It’s always like this:
Fan theory: Multiple essay-length histories and extrapolations, carefully cross-referenced and meticulously put together
Actual creator/author/Word of God: Dunno. Kinda thought it’d be cool, I guess.

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They don’t look like sisters somehow … not at all.

Isn’t the Arena and its lore somehow interwoven with Tyros and his lineage of being half human, half giant king? Maybe I am confusing this with something else, but I remember him being the only arena competitor to slay the Dragon, which is now the Undead Dragon at the bottom of the Sinkhole. Being that Warmaker Khael is a giant king and that whole dungeon complex is filthy with giant kings, there must be some connection.

Or I could be confusing everything, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Call me crazy, but I also get the feeling, just a feeling, that the Arena Champion is somehow mixed up with the Witch Queen and Razma’s experience.

I guess, I’m not the only one who thinks there is a connection. I just read Khaletohep’s post.

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You are remembering that correctly :slight_smile: He is the son of the Priest King and is the one who defeated the Dragon in the Arena and pinned the Star of the Champion to its body as a sign of respect (I think it’s Warmaker Klael who makes a comment about seeing ‘one of your kind’ (human - so he seems to view Tyros in those terms) defeat a dragon and weep over its body. Maybe it’s the ‘magic talky stick’ that says it was Tyros - I think I’m remembering that bit correctly.

Ok, you’re crazy :wink:
(more serious answer: not a connection I’d ever made in the game, but I also see no evidence anywhere to suggest it isn’t the case. Personally, I rather like @JJDancer’s suggestion, but I suspect the reality is as @Mikey suggests - there may not be any official lore behind her at all. But, that being the case, all theories that can’t be disproved are equally valid, so there’s no reason there couldn’t be a Witch Queen connection. We know Petrusso (the Sandstorm Maniac) is a Lemurian left over from the war against the Giant Kings (he stopped the sandstorm from hitting the Lemurians and set it on it’s circular path ravaging the Giant Kings’ lands) - so it’s perfectly possible that the Arena Champion could be another from that period. Or, as seen with Razma, could be someone more recently ‘converted’ to that role by some item, in the same way as the mask did for Razma.)

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Maybe fan theory is less about understanding reality, uhm, fiction but to expand it.

It would be similar to religion - or understanding when and why Skype chooses to open or move a window. It moves beyond the borders of reality.

Still would love to expand on that story.

To continue the speculation:

The Archivist tells us that to break the bracelet, it need the items that were present at their creation.

Among those are the “tears of two races”.

That opens up a curious new possibility for the timeline.

  • I always understood the tears of two races to actually be tears, not some pair of gems or something. If it’s the latter, the whole point is mood.
  • It is also possible that the Archivist refers not to tears of both humans and giant kings. That’d make the whole search for the Kinscourge irrelevant, though: The player character could provide human tears, and the still-living warmaker could shed a giant king tear - he seems depressed enough.
  • Therefore, one must ask: Was there a giant king/human hybrid present when the bracelets were created? Was it the Kinscourge? Was the Kinscourge even the first one?

If the Kinscourge was present when the bracelets were created, that point of time must have been not before, but during the war between the Lemurian descendants and the Giant Kings. Maybe it was a last-ditch effort to gain control back? But at least I understood things to be different so far from the rest of the lore.

Or… maybe the Archivist is wrong? Or lieing?

What are your thoughts on that?

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Short answer, no.

Long answer, no one is. The exiled lands are an illusory snowglobe of near-reality, manufactured by (presumably) Nyarlathotep to imprison and feed on human souls. The Arena Champion is either a fellow captured soul, molded into this role and forced to battle for eternity; or an illusion designed to harvest weaker combatants.

But that’s all just a theory

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She has a nasty 10.0 (or 9.99, I don’t remember, close enough) Melee Damage Modifier. By comparison, Dalinsia has 2.21

Oh boy what a necro

The snowglobe theory is way too much to try to condense into one forum post, I have a 10k+ word document with the basic outline out it all in the works. But it’s not quite matrix, reality is a lot less solid in the REH/Lovecraftverse, people can be pulled in and out of different dimensions, moving through realities, time and space by various means.

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You’re not wrong, the last time a buddy of mine was fighting her, whenever he got hit… MY screen shook, and I was on the other side of the map. I think it was a bug though.

@Jimbo I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing that theory too. Can’t say I really agree with the idea, but interested in seeing the perspective.

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Not really hologram. Again, not matrix. Reality-adjacent dimension, a world outside of our world. Metaphysical extra dimensions beyond our comprehensional 4

Months, years, who can tell

There’s so many layers that need to be researched and fleshed out

Because it’s not a solid reality. It’s warped and shifted, controlled by Nyarlathotep. Perception and imagination overlap and one becomes the other.

Time is subjective in this world, as are the other dimensions

Siptah’s intro is loose enough that it means you’re sailing to stygia from Argos. Not directly into the exiled lands. This could mean all sorts of things, but my theory is some form of ritual site that transports you to it

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  • Geographically impossible, coastline matches nowhere possible in Hyboria given claimed location
  • Historically incorrect. The lore is wrong when compared to the books. I think this is deliberate not an oversight
  • The sun and moon move in unearthly ways, only on EL
  • Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos. Able to move men and monsters from the exiled lands and the outer void into siptah.
  • the avatar of Nyarlathotep is powered by the Shining Trapezohedron, lives in the staff of the triumvirate
  • Nyarlathotep and his avatar were present at the forming of the bracelets, in chaosmouth. The sarcophagus statue center of the altar is of his black pharaoh aspect.
  • Another thing worth noting, both the giant kings and frost giants are literally aliens from outer space
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This isn’t actually true. I’ve seen the sun/moon go wonky in Siptah, too.

Yes, they’re wonky in both.

Just BTW, the Conan comic books have several story line adventures that parallel the “people trapped in an alternate dimension” theme being proposed here.

whip-cool-whip

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Joel. Confirmed in a reddit AMA.

What is this map exerpt from? There is no one concrete map of hyboria and everyone has their own take

I have to correct my previous assumtion about Xalthar and the Sobek cave:

The note in the cave says that

  • the author followed “Xalthar’s footsteps”,
  • was instead inspired by Sobek there, who “shed his skin for him” and
  • started gathering followers to follow Xalthar “north”, but “this time […] not […] out of loyalty.”

I interpret that to mean that

  • the author was not physically close to Xalthar when he followed him, as he or she talks of following his footsteps, not the man himself,
  • but was contemporary to him, as he had “loyalty” towards him before and
  • believed that Xalthar went north, which I will assume as true.

If the author is one of the current followers of Sobek present in the cave, most likely Aridis, that’d mean that either Aridis is very, very old or that Xalthar’s passing isn’t as far in the past as one might assume.

Also, it tells us that Xalthar was moving towards the frozen north, the volcano and/or Imi’s Cradle, not from it, as I’d have assumed.

Maybe Imi isn’t a child or loved one of Tyros, but of Xalthar?

Curious, isn’t it? What shall we make of that? Are there any clues as to what Xalthar did in the north?

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Her daddy was a battle general of great and terrible renown. Her mom was high priestess in the most brutal religion in all of Tamriel (from another dimension). She was raised by Lizard Men in the volcano and was an unknown until she invented Lava Surfing at the age of 12 where she gained extreme notoriety. But that was marked against her and in high school she was the target of ridicule and practical jokes. She became a meme until in gladiator school she experienced menstrual rage so severe that she took out the entire academy. Banished and unwelcome in civilized lands for the extreme animalistic mayhem, she dwelt for a time in the poisonous wastelands known as the Shattered Springs.

Years later she once again rose to legendary fame as she singlehandedly defeated all the armies of the giants. Until the last living member of the race of Giant-Kings, Klael bargained a truce which allowed him to keep his life in exchange for weekly PB&J sandwiches and a sanctum to call home. To this day she can be found in what now is known as the Warmaker’s Sanctum in what once was Klael’s Stronghold. But true caution to all who venture in and may interrupt her PB&J fiendish consumption - for you shall surely die!

Klael himself now stands homeless and defeated outside the Citadel of the Triumvirate at the heart of the Unnamed City tirelessly making PB&J for the champion and telling his story to what passers-by may care to give ear.

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Seems legit except this:

There are living Giant-Kings in Klael’s Stronghold.