So, I have to be honest here. For me, Kerafyrm was a giant bummer. Appearance wise, motive wise, climax wise.. First, not only does this not look anything like what I would imagine Kerafyrm to look like, but his appearance is totally not intimidating. The brow on the guy just looks goofy. His colors are all weird. Green? Really? Plus his motive is what? A new age of scale? By now, half the time, we are helping the dragons fight other dragons. "Dragons" are not even remotely assumed as an enemy. Hell, I'd help along an age of Scale after seeing some of the threats we've brought upon ourselves. But instead of Kerafyrm wanting to usurp Veeshan's throne as a grab for power, or annihilate everyone for holding him captive, he is going to basically liberate dragon kind. You know, the ones we've been killing without much, if any instigation for hundreds of years. What an awful dude. Oh wait. Who is the villain here? And in the final battle, we don't even get to fight him. We have to rely on the Sentinel of Balance, who has become more and more characterized since his introduction. What started out as a True Neutral godslaying force of nature now sounds like Zordon and is cooperating with mortals to stop a non-god from.. upsetting the balance? The balance which, currently, exists as a result of Roehn Theer being banished to the void anyway and unable to act? And the culmination of 15 years of storyline is.. there is none. There is no closure. Kerafyrm is simply trapped in a rock, waiting to be released again in 5 expansions, or whenever they decide Norrath needs a good mass extinction event. Sigh.
Well Corydonn fought off Kerafyrm by dual wielding the Swords of Destiny while Jorlag cast his spell. That's pretty cool in canon!
Excuse me but you discovered neither of the swords of destiny. Not even on your own server. You were carried, sir.
I liked the look of Kera, myself. the Green look was from him stealing the Godslaying power. and it's not about him wanting to just 'restart the Age of Scale' that's like saying Hitler just wanted to 'rebuild Germany'. Kerafyrm wants an Age of Scale, with him as Godking in Veeshan's place, and all things that oppose his rule destroyed, including the other dragons. the only reason Theer has to fight him, is that none outside of Theer can even stand a chance. Kerafyrm's mortal strength alone is more then enough to handle anything we can throw at him, and having the Godslaying power means the Gods can't just sweep him aside without undoing Creation thanks to the power getting loose. Theer can withstand both Kera's mortal strengths, AND the Godslaying power won't work on him. he's far above mortal, but not a god/demi-god. So yes, him and Kera are now locked in an enternal fight in the center of Luclin. neither one can best the other, as they are after Theer uses the Tear on himself/the swords equals in power. Kera can't physically hurt Theer, nor will the godslaying power work...but Theer won't kill Kera for fear of turning him into a creation undoing bomb. I like how it ended, and I like that we weren't the once again Superman ultra killing force against everything. Kera was beyond our ability to beat, beyond or ability to kill, and as such the NPCs/us had to find an alternate method of getting rid of him.
Okay, first of all.. without the green, he is still not prismatic. Second, he can't become a "godking" without slaying Veeshan, which he never even cared about apparently. He didn't remotely come off, in the endgame, as a "power-crazed beast". Dictator, sure. Monster? No. Perhaps he was "too big to fail", but that doesn't change the fact that he failed as a villain. Our hatred for him was diminished by a relatively justified cause, and our victory over him was not fulfilling for two reason: WE didn't get to kick his ***. And he is still alive. Besides arbitrary "Well he has special powers" logic, I don't see any reason why Theer was the only option for facing Kerafyrm. We could have thrown an army at the beast, with every recognizable EQ2 face throughout our travels in Norrath showing up to play a part. Maybe I just don't like Jorlak as much as everyone else.
I thought his plan was to just wipe out everyone that wasn't a dragon because he read a thing. Honestly we've been waiting since Sentinel's Fate to kick his tail and the wait of 5-6 years probably killed it with meh sideplots.... So that likely killed quite a bit of it since we had that long time to cool off of him tricking us into beating Roehn for him.
Can't take that seriously. Pretty sure there is some blatant, misleading paraphrasing going on there. EQ1 Kerafyrm is just not EQ2 Kerafyrm. EQ1 Kerafyrm was literally mad with unrestrained power. Unstoppable wrecking ball of draconic energy who ABSOLUTELY WOULD NOT have been in favor of a "second age of scale", which is why the dragons locked him away to begin with.
TBH, with a build up of that long, anything short of Veeshan's return to lay the smackdown on Kerafyrm was bound to be at least somewhat disappointing. It's kinda like DNF - it reached a point where the anticipation was greater than the technology in existence could support - and given the source material, it couldn't help but be outdated as soon as it finally hit the shelves. Likewise, by the time it came to finally get rid of Kerafyrm, many of us had enough of him and wanted to move past him. The actual end was almost bound to be a bit anti-climactic.
The "Lore in a Minute" omits some things, glosses over others. It's part of why Jeff Bard did the longer form lore roleplay.
in Eq1 his whole deal was a second eternal age of scale. he waged a war against the other dragons for that very purpose, because he considered all non-dragon races nothing but pests to be destroyed, and wanted all dragons under his rule. his eventual goal then was the death of Veeshan. and he was winning his war, with just him and his four generals, until they put him to sleep. Kera in Eq2 is for all intents and purposes, the same thing. he just doesn't look like he's made of glass...and actually looks like a flesh and blood dragon. his first order of business is conquering the dragons he knows would fight against his ideals, and kill everything that isn't a dragon. Age's End is him, if he'd succeeded, destroying and remaking Norrath in his own image. one can easily assume that his whole thing with getting the Godslaying powers was to take on Veeshan once he'd established himself and conquered norrath. his Cult/army already worshipped him like a God. it's not far fetched to think he'd go after big V once Norrath was well in hand. He may be powerful and meglomanical, but Kera was NOT stupid. he knew what to deal with and the manner to deal with it. In all honesty of seeing the event, it's pretty clear that had Theer not supercharged himself with the Tear, and Jorlak not sealed them in the moon, that Kera WAS going to win. we didn't have the ability to stop him. even with the Lifeguide and the Twin swords, we couldn't hurt Kerafyrm himself. He was beyond our abilities, and we we found a last ditch desperate attempt to seal him thanks to Jorlak...who gave up all his chronomantic powers to do so. much like the Dragons did during his civil war, when it was pretty clear that facing him in combat just wasn't going to be a viable solution, and they were going to lose without taking him out of the fight.
It would of been nice if they could of done something a little closer to the first version of Kerafyrm. Say the same base model as our Kerafyrm but with the white/prismatic coloring. It would of been painful to look at, but a nice reminder of what we saw in EQ1 when the Sleeper awoke. I don't think Kerafyrm's goals were really spelled out for us. We're left guessing. Even the Awakened were guessing and Kerafyrm told his lieutenants what they wanted to hear to gain their loyalty. So hearing what they have to say isn't a real answer. Kerafyrm stole Godslaying. Why? Three possible reasons. The first is maybe to get rid of Veeshan and take her place. I have to ask, how is he going to get her within striking range? Nobody on Norrath has seen Veeshan since she deposited her brood and left. We don't even know if the Plane of Sky exists anymore. Heck, we don't even know if Veeshan exists anymore. Her laws were being broken left and right, her true worshipers slaughtered. What does it take to get her attention? No one will ever know. Second possibility is that he could of done it to make sure the other gods don't interfere with his plans. It is fairly obvious that if he went around trying to destroy or enslave the minor races the gods that created them wouldn't stand for it. They would eventually stand against him and stop Kerafyrm. Which leads to the third possibility. Maybe Kerafyrm's plan was to use Godslaying to get rid of every god that might oppose him. Every god that created a mortal race and ever god that depends on mortals for their power. In other words: the gods of Influence would be his major target. He might of left the Elemental Gods alone...but a few of those Gods of Influence are related by "blood" to the Elemental Gods. Kerafyrm probably felt that if he went against most of the gods, he should probably wipe them all out just to be safe. Except he might not attack Veeshan. Either because she is a dragon, or because she isn't interfering in his plans. Possibly both. Or if Veeshan did appear to stop him, he would confront and slay her as well. Either way if she isn't around he could try and become the King of the Gods and attempt to promote other dragons to fill the rest of the pathenon. And if that didn't work out the first time, slay the new gods and try again until he gets it right. So really I think Kerafyrm was trying to take over all creation, and in the end he might of let the lesser races continue to exist...as long as they worshiped him. Just like the remaining dragons would.
Everything I can see in-game leads me to believe that Kerafyrm was trying to bring about another age of scale for Dragon kind, and the opposition was those who weren't going to have a slice of the pie. Human rulers, dragons who don't get along with Kerafyrm, etc. But for me, the fact that he has a cause and a claim to legitimate conflict, it diminishes him as an "evil monster". Hell, he even seems more like a Napoleon than a Hitler to me. And neither of them live up to the "power crazed beast" status that Kerafyrm could have held. I believe "Cult of the Awakened" was used at least at some point.. implying that they were following his interests out of mindless fear and desperation. Not that he was wielding them like an organized military force. I just think "dictator" is a little less intimidating than "Cthulhu". And Kerafyrm had sufficient build-up to BE that level of a menace.
I have to disagree that not being a "power crazed beast" (as you put it) made Kerafyrm less of a villain. It made him less of a one-dimensional villain, but that is to be desired. A good (quality, not alignment) villain isn't one whose only motivation is world domination, being the opponent (i.e. existing only to give the protagonists someone or something against which to struggle), or any other single defining characteristic. Instead, the best villains are those that have values and goals that are in opposition to those of the protagonists, but that are justified from the villain's perspective. In short, the best villains are those that don't see themselves as the antagonists. (Of course, it is perfectly fine for that to be because the villain has a warped set of values.) Cthulhu represents the essence of unreasoning fear and terror (bordering upon madness) of the unknown - that which cannot be banished through application of reason and, indeed, is (by definition) not amenable to defeat. Any time that a person in a game battles against something that is strictly defined, even if the game names that thing Cthulhu, that person is not really battling Cthulhu. Cthulhu isn't definable. Cthulhu isn't knowable. And even if someone thinks that they have diminished Cthulhu, that person is severely mistaken. The guys at Extra Credits do a really good job of explaining the ways in which games mess up this concept: The point is that any attempts to turn Kerafyrm into something as intimidating as Cthulhu were doomed to failure at the moment Kerafyrm stopped being a concept and started being a tangible opponent.
I'm not saying it wasn't doomed from the start. I'm saying that they went the wrong way in defining the type of villain for Kerafyrm to become. Of course he cannot be Cthulhu because, as you said, Cthulhu is by definition intangible and unobtainable. However, Kerafyrm is not. He is a physical being, and he can be made into an "icon of destruction" without a single line of dialog or any type of constructive motive. A force of nature that needs to be stopped. Especially given the fact that, pretty much every being on Norrath except a handful of cultists were on the same side for this one, that is the type of villain that would probably have fit most in line with things.
So you wanted Kerafyrm to be the Greenmist? Wow. I can see how that plays out: Act 1, Sceen 1: Kerafyrm engulfs the Awakened Cult. All of the non believers die. Act 1, Sceen 2 : Kerafyrm engulfs Skyshrine, everything dies. Act 1, Sceen 3: Kerafyrm engulfs Kael, everything dies. A few Coldain scouts and Ry'gor witness this event. Act 2, Sceen 1: Coldain scouts rush to Thurgadin just in time to witness Kerafyrm emerging from the city. Act 2, Sceen 2: A montage of Kerafyrm visiting every city on Norrath and everything dies. Act 2, Sceen 3: A sceen of all the gods choking on Kerafyrm's gasses. Act 3, Sceen1: A montage of Ry'gorr, Dragons and Lizardmen worshiping statues of Kerafyrm. End. In case your wondering, the Greenmist is EQ's version of Cthulhu. The most disappointing thing about the Greenmist is that it made a deal with things it was suppose to kill off. It makes it significantly less terrifying because there is a hope it might spare you. It was better when it wasn't something that reasoned. Or it would of been better if some of the Ogres had been spared and they desperately looked for an answer. All of them driven mad. That would of been better.
Okay, arguing that Kerafyrm is a better villain BECAUSE of his recently-acquired humanity is one thing, but that might be a little far. Truth be told, when Kerafyrm was awakened, he basically did do most of those things.
actually I thought the Greenmist sparing the Thullosians made it even more frightening. because it didn't really 'spare' them. the sotry makes it seem like they are in a constant state of pain and fear from the fact that anytime the Greenmist entity decides to feel like it, it can eat them. it's like taking home a doggie bag from a resturant, if the leftovers in the doggybag were sentient to know that you ate everything else, and as long as you don't get overly hungry, they'll be spared..give you a reason though, and your the snack if your tummy rumbles.
