i only supposed based on what players had been talking since i still havent played the VOV Timeline but yes the plane of undeath is pretty much non existent and i believe anashti sul is currently existing in the fountain of life or i forgot the name of her temple or house or city..............ah the silent city? i think silent hill....well where else she would be? there's some sort of plane where gods stay if they dont have any planar domains? it would be required in the least another god to give a portion of their plane for her to reside but there's no god willing to join forces with her as far as i know......bertuxxulous is not a option in spite of their similliar roles now...undeath and disease walk together but anashti still believes herself to be health incarnate... and bertuxxulous is an enemy for sure to her...as is rodcet nife and along with the other good gods none of them would join forces with her so it leaves only innoruuk and the hounds but it seems unlikely..... there's only few neutral gods but karana is mostly good team now and brell serillis doesnt seem an option veeshan is away always...who else who else? not solusek ro,not the tribunal they probably would sentence her to the eternal prisons as druzzil ro cellmate not the elemental gods, maybe: luclin maybe: terris thule , maybe: cazic thule ? what you guys think?
no Qho Augren might have been a pain in the behind as a child, but he grows up into a fine young man and you can hire him as a monk mercenary, and now you can send him of to his doom, finally some payback evil grin.
I can just see his mother blaming your character too. In which case I would laugh and tell her he deserves what he got and to stop crying and deal with the truth that her son was a spoiled brat . . Rubs hands together in delight*
Karana never acted neutral in my opinion. His enemy in the deity quest line you do for him is even Bertoxx. He just reminds me too much of a god for fury’s that didn’t want to take the Tunare road. I don’t understand why he’s neutral in the story. Maybe I’m missing something.
You could toss all that into the "Neutral Good" category ala AD&D. Everything nature is about balance though, and it's pretty easy to see Bertoxx is hardly about balanced application of his sphere of influence to cull the old and weak, etc... Bertoxx would happily turn Norrath into a graveyard or plague ward from my understanding. Ergo trying to push back against that, even to maintain a balance, could be seen as "good".
A dev once spoke up about this in the past, but the deity of a "neutral" domain doesn't have to have a neutral personality themselves. In both EQ1 and EQ2, Karana takes a rather reluctant role to get himself involved with the affairs of mortals. In EQ1, he had his Staff of Thunder stolen from him from a greater planar being named Agnarr, and you had to destroy this false god parading himself around as Karana himself in order to restore balance in his own planes. In EQ2, he's reluctant to join the Celestial Order, but knows that Lanys T'Vyl is a genuine threat to existence. Sullon Zek is one of the three Hounds of War who rules over the objectively evil domain of War, but Sullon herself is considered neutral because her ascension has everything to do with herself fighting for herself. She sides with Lanys because she feels she's not being taken seriously by Tallon and Vallon Zek. While she does fight against Quellious and Morrel Thule in the great battle, she knows to get the heck out of there before the Dresolisk is detonated. Solusek Ro is the neutral God of the Sun & Flames. Fire is destructive, but it's ultimately a force of nature that also brings life from the ashes. It can't be classified as evil by itself, but Solusek is one of the most selfish and arrogant gods in the entire pantheon. He created the Serpentspine Mountains on the continent of Tunaria pretty much out of spite, and the Eldar Forest ended up turning into the Desert of Ro, and the Elves had to migrate to Faydwer because of it. During the Plane of Time, he said "Screw this, I'm out of here" and bolted off back to his tower instead of sticking around to fight off the mortals. He willingly sided with Rallos Zek in order to start the Second Rallosian War because... reasons, and he sided with the Celestial Order along with his father Fennin Ro to fight off Lanys T'Vyl. He's a wildcard who can hardly be trusted, but his domain is still neutral.
Disease and death, kept in balance, are part of nature also. Bertoxx is just of an all or nothing kind of deity.
All of that was reasonably sound logic. HOWEVER, while a "mythological" deity's personality isn't strictly dictated by their "sphere of influence" (to borrow the AD&D term), it IS largely influenced by it. They are living embodiments of what they represent or rule over. Give me ANY god from any pantheon and I can dissect their behavior and show how it fits within their role in the society that worshipped them. Thor, for example, in classic myth, had quite a temper... a tempestuous one even, lol. That and his love of battle was characteristic of the storms he ruled over. I don't want to ramble here. My point is that the Devs seem to be pushing the boundaries of humanizing cosmic beings. Taken too far, it can become like Aphrodite lamenting that she's seen as only a **** and deciding to become a celestial nun. It'd never happen because it goes against her basic nature as a passionate being. Even Marvel's version of Thor still has that scrappy, loves a good fight or party aspect to him, and just a little arrogance still as well. He's more 3 dimensional, but ultimately still true to the Norse myths.
well he was enemies with disease for aeons......possibly prior to Bertoxxulous arrival he was enemies with the Xul'Varien that's only theory of course since there's not a lot of lore about the old dead gods and their relationship with the other non mentioned gods....by far the only current god with an confirmed relationship with the dead gods is Anashti Sul....and her sullites followers having a presence in the Ever Deep. (there's Brell Serilis too but he's barely in the current story we only know that he created the dhalgar in thalumbra and there are Kobolds around trying to enter to the Underfoot).
agreed, iirc during the sig line we're told Mayong traveled the planes and found Anashti's pestle, a planar artifact she had lost that like a real world pestle I assume grinded up magic planar herbs/recipes for whichever elixir or concoction she had been making during her reign as the Goddess of Health. Mayong becomes her emissary and is trying to convince her to become a goddess of a new plane of Everlife/Undeath?... if there was a plane that would be fitting then Mistmyr would fit as the Ydal in it all turned vampiric... and undying. So maybe Mayong's rubbing her towards taking that as her new plane since Elixia (PoHealth) is still securely in Rodcet Nife's hands. Also i think Mayong's plan is to use the Ewer to garner control over all vampirics created by its lines which is quite a bit of them and give himself power to order or slay them with but a thought if he controlled it. The Ewer itself is indeed rebuilt (thanks Neriak!) and is currently down in the Fountain of Life with Anashti the <Avatar of the Forgotten> as she's hiding out down there waiting for her time to strike. I think as for his lovers, currently its Lenya, but he had others, many of which all reminded him of Zanne. Lenya as the queen ruthlessly having adventurers (SPOILERS) slay his two sons is quite the brutal tactic. TBH I don't think the mother was Zanne, the collection book says the boys mother was an Elddar Elf doesn't it?... Zanne was Ydal i thought? One of the other 5 Ydal clans forbidden from crossbreeding with each other in Morguul. Tserrina intrigued him with her experiments at attempting immortality and he went to turn her with his own vampiric blood but Tserrina had already tainted her blood with her experiments and instead she turned into.... well something else. But I do like Tserrina giving him a bitchfit at the one scene in the VoV sig line where she says he's been using these women as pale imitations to Zanne and mentions Savina and Dencarja... that 2nd name holds prestigious meaning to old dark elven rogues and perhaps more to certain royal lines. Anywho... love the thread.. please keep up the speculation!
There are very, very few informations about Zanne ingame and I don't remember her being Ydal - perhaps I missed it? (Or forgot it - also possible haha ) Have to dig deeper in my lore notes, I guess Are there more sources of Ydal-Lore as the stingy chunks we got in the Mistmyr-Inis of Shadow Odyssey? I tried to get some infos about that two other females Tserrina mentioned, but without success. I've never played EQ1, so if they showed up in one of its storylines, I would love to hear more about them. Makes me kinda sad, that the new expa don't continue the VoV-Story about Mayong and Anashti - and I was SO sure about Anashti's popping up with all the desert of Ro-Stuff
A few quests in Mistmyr Manor in TSO given by the ghosts there hint that Mayong may have been one of the early vampire hunters against the genetic scourge of vampirism that cursed the Ydal race. As for Zanne, i think I remember reading in the book we get from the Soulfire EoF questline Eternal Bloom.. mentions she has to be put down, i assume being put down means he had to slay her maybe?... possibly because she had turned vampiric? I'll have to go back and reread it. As for the pair of names... Savina is a name I don't recognize but Dencarja is a name from very very early EQ1. I think the old tale is called The Face Behind the Mask .. and it's not very easy to find anymore. Some claim it's no longer canon while others claim it never should have been in the first place. But most of those voices have long left Norrath's adventuring circles and now we are the retainers of the lore. As for VoV and Mayong and Anashti making their alliance it's also something I'd be interested in seeing where it goes. But have faith the Devs spread out the good stories and leapfrog expacs with them to keep up coming back for more. Though with the "finding" of Takish'Hiz in DOF where Anashti was first introduced to Norrath's player-base it is a little odd they didnt at least give her a mention. But let's remember Anashti's prophet or whatever that found her altar and founded Silent City discovered it in the Elddar Forest well after her banishment, perhaps she had more of an influence in other places of ancient Norrath that we don't know and Ro is just where the elves leaving Tunare to find her teachings happened to be some of the first to find out about her and built the underground city there.
In regards to the original question I don't think the mother of his kids was Zanne, it's implied the kids were a more recent development since the cataclysm. So it would have to be someone between tserrina and lenys.
If Zanne really was Ydal, this may be true, yes. I'm still searching for more clues about her being Ydal, but the lore of SoD and Mayong's love poem about her is too vague :-( But I have to admit that the poem could indeed be interpreted that way ^^ In the book about the birth of the twins it was mentioned that the mother was an Elddar, so I'm not quite sure if the children were born after the cataclysm. Since the Elddar were the first elves and the ancestors of all the Elves that we know today I automatically placed the birth of the twins in the time around Takish'Hiz and the Elddar forest before it was turned into a desert. :O Meanwhile, I'm also not so sure about Zanne was really the mother, but so it must have been someone even before Tserrina Or Zanne was no Ydal but an Elddar ... but ... meh
I found some time during the last days, so I did SoD and the Mistmoore-Instances in LP again, and yes, I have to agree: Zanne was probably not the mother of the twins. As I found Queen Lenya in Mistmyr-Manor she said this: Queen Lenya Thex says to you, "His... words resonated deep within me as he spoke of the murder of his great love from long ago. A love he swore I bore a striking resemblance to. As he spoke of this woman, I could see tears in his eyes and I must admit I too began to weep." Also, as Rezikai mentioned, the ghost-butler in Mistmyr Manor said: Taechun Welby says to you, "Why, none other than Master Mayong, of course. From this Manor, our lord battles the vampire menace that threatens to wipe out all of us Ydal. The least we humble servants can do is present him with a clean home and attentive staff." Reading the love poem again with this background knowledge, it really sounds like Zanne turned into a vampire and was murdererd - by Mayong himself or someone else. Sad story :-( Another detail I had forgotten was the passage in the book about the birth of the twins: "On Norrath he found her, in a city of gilded stone and towering trees. Being around her was so soothing and revitalizing as a cleansing breath, something he had a dim memory of, as it had been hundreds of years since his last one." If we now assume that Zanne was Ydal and probably turned into a vampire before Mayong did, so that he - or someone else - had to kill her, this would fit in time. As he met the mother of his future kids, he was already a vampire for a long time. I didn't realize by now that the Ydal were not vampiric from the beginning. I always thought they were undead from the start through the fact they were created through the Ewer. ^^; Anyway - we still don't know who gave birth to the children. :'D
