The last two expansions have me a little confused. I thought we killed the Sovereign at the end of Ro? Or was that yet another, "This isn't over!!!" enemy mentality that so many villains in this game (and in early 90s cartoons) seem to have? I kind of remember the mirror, so I'm assuming that he got away then until this expansion? 2. Are they just after world domination in Norrath? Why else would you attack the Hooluks, who are soooo cute (btw)? I guess as much as I tried to read the dialogue when I did the timeline while I was playing, it didn't exactly sink in. Plus, I didn't play much of Ro until this expansion was about to come out. 3. Did the game update with Unrest in the air exploded apart have ANYTHING to do with this timeline? And if so, what? (I'm a little lost as to the Doctor and who he is, all I know was he seemed to show up around the PoP expansion from what I gathered.) Help!
1) The final boss of Renewal of Ro was Aldys, Sultan of Daggers. She was a very powerful earth djinn, but she was not The Sovereign. It's implied in the Ballads of Zimara story that she was working directly for the Sovereign during the events of RoR. 2) The Sovereign has long enjoyed vast power and control in the Plane of Sky and possibly other regions. When the Plane of Sky began destabilizing, his reign began falling apart physically and metaphorically. While I doubt he would be content with any amount of power or empire, the universe used to be large enough that we didn't need to interact with him. Now, The Sovereign is fighting to keep what little empire he has left and force his way through to other realms. So yes, world domination is his ultimate goal, and the Hooluks were easy targets that lived nearby. 3) The only link I've noticed between this expansion and Shattered Unrest is the metal shards. The prelude events all focused on metal shards raining down from the sky, and Unrest took the bulk of the damage. The same kind of metal shards found in Unrest and on the beaches of Thundering Steppes and Nektulos Forest are the same design of metal shards used throughout Aether Wroughtlands. Most Norrathians wouldn't even care that Unrest was destroyed. 3b) Doctor Arcana first appeared in Planes of Prophecy as "the public quest guy". He encouraged adventurers to participate in the public quests, and he gave hints as to what the next public quest would be. He continued in this role through Chaos Descending and Blood of Luclin, but he didn't participate directly in any of those three storylines. He appeared again at the end of Reign of Shadows, to inform adventurers of new threats and new treasures within Vasty Deep (now controlled by a coven of witches). He provided some background on the coven, but again, he didn't really participate. Most recently, he appeared with Shattered Unrest, providing some background on the new dungeon. His actions are much more direct in the setup of this dungeon, but he again just leaves it to adventurers to solve. Who or even what he may be has never really been established.
A *LOT* of prelude content in this game has always had some sort of *thematic* element to what is about to be included. Shattered Unrest may have nothing to directly do with Ballad of Zimara's storyline, but the fact that we saw metal shards falling from the sky was the clue that had to do with something relating to the Plane of Sky/Overrealm. The fact that the final raid boss from Renewal of Ro was a Djinn with implied nefarious goals was the clue that a future expansion would expand up on this by getting more involved with Djinn in general. Back during Reign of Shadows, Dr. Arcana summoned us to the Loping Plains to tell us that a coven of witches and warlocks had taken over the long-abandoned laboratories located in the Vasty Deep on Odus after us adventurers had killed Perah'Celcis-- the mad lich who formerly lived in there. The goals and knowledge the Coven was trying to learn from within wasn't the important part, but rather the fact that this new faction of witches suddenly showed up meant that we could expect to see more of them in the next expansion (and we did in Visions of Vetrovia.) A good large portion of this game's storyline follows the school of thought of slowly building up seemingly unimportant elements to build up to something bigger. The big bad dragon Kerafyrm wasn't properly reintroduced to the game until 10 full years of expansions that each had something tiny and minor that told us players that he was coming. Prismatic dragon eggs in the original vanilla content; the armies of Kerafyrm inhabiting the Overrealm; the Qeynos Claymore and the Soulfire being revealed to be swords used by an avatar who had the power to kill gods; an ancient Shissar calendar that predicted the end of the world by Kerafyrm's hands; the establishment of The Void as an extra-dimensional realm where gods could be banished to (and where previously-said avatar had been banished to for aeons); the two swords being proven to have the power to kill Rallos Zek and other gods; Kerafyrm himself literally absorbing the power of that avatar who had the power to kill gods... it all built up.
I'm going to get my tin foil cap on: Dr. Arcana is an agent of some other bigger force, potentially a god, who wants to eliminate the adventurers As to take the cap off, there could be a bigger story going on. They had some filler expansions like Desert of Flames that didn't really have anything to do with the story, I'll suggest Luclin as one of those. At this point it's hard to guess what exactly could be going on, (on a more serious note) but Arcana may have something to do with it due to his frequent appearances. So far everything has been part of a major storyline, Shattered Lands to Tears of Veeshan was Age's End, Altar of Malice to Chaos Descending was whatever the Lanys thing is called, and now we have this new arc. I might make a post to discuss what story stuff could be happening later
Luclin was a shorter arc, but I wouldn't say it was filler. Chaos Descending ended with Najena's vague omen that the Shissar would soon return, which we saw in Blood of Luclin. The Shissar story was wrapped up by the end of Reign of Shadows. Vetrovia felt like a filler arc though.
Desert of Flames was a very unique case, what with it literally being the first expansion of the entire game. It's purpose was more to establish Anashti Sul and the Djinn as future players in the storyline (The Shadow Odyssey and Ballad of Zimara, respectively). Many of these things don't really become obvious without hindsight, though, so some of them only become apparent when it's finally relevant again. The Luclin arc was by no means filler or lesser important. We learned that Emperor Ssraeshza was able to stay ten steps ahead of everything by using his ability to see into the future to literally predict everything that happened to the Shissar Empire including travelling to Luclin in the first place, building the temple to withstand impact after the moon's destruction, and creating an entire calendar that made us think that the world would end by Kerafyrm's hand. It may not have had as much build-up as Kerafyrm himself did, but in a way it had build-up since the original EverQuest.
