The Mayong Origin Problem

Bertoxxulous and Rodcet are actually some of the youngest gods in the pathenon. According to Rodcet's creation lore he was following the "Xulous force" to Norrath from his native planet, which was ravished by the disease. This is most likely recorded in the book "Rememberances: Prime". If that is the case...void anchors are creations of the Shadowmen to prevent their rocks from being sucked into the heart of the void. As far as we know, they didn't come into existance until after Anashti was banished, the Shadowmen being the banished Jal'Rath seen in EQ:OA but not seen in EQ1 or EQ2 until TSO launched.
Back on topic, Rodcet's arrival on Norrath is recorded by citizens of Qeynos. Qeynos wasn't founded until after the Lost Age, about the time that humans came into existance. Both Bertoxxulous and Rodcet were added to the pathenon at about the same time.
That doesn't mean that the whole Lxanvon story couldn't be involved in Bert's creation. Bert may have origionated there but not become a god. Spirits are lesser beings that are still quite powerful. It could be that Bert had several incarnations before becomming powerful enough (or well known enough) to rise to diety status.
FYI: The whole Lxanvon story perty much contradicts with the whole 'Age of' storylines written by the Sage of Ages. So one source or the other MUST be incorrect. The Age of books appear to be written from the dragon point of view.

Bert definately came into existence wayyyy before qeynos as i showed above with the quotes

Mixxit@Nagafen wrote:

This cannot be correct unless you wish to directly contradict the words of a developer. It has been clearly stated that Mayong is older than any of the common player races, which include the Dwarves, who were among the first races placed upon Norrath by the Gods at the start of the Elder Age. The Ydal, Mayong's race, had to have been created before the First Council of the Gods, which places them during the Age of Scale or before the discovery of Norrath. This also means that the Ewer of Sul'Dae had to exist prior to the Elder Age, as well, since it was used in the creation of the Ydal.

I just thought I'd point out that the events detailed in the story about the Xulos and the Birth of Bertoxxulous seem to match perfectly with "Remembrances: Berrox", including the exact names of people and places. If these two tales are in fact two perspectives on the same story, it would imply that the Shadowed Men were already creating Void Anchors during the era in which the Xulos lived. This would, obviously, mean that either the Xulos came after the Jael'Raeth, or the Jal'Raeth were not the original Shadowed Men.

I know this is just a feeling but it seems so much to me like the Jal'Raeth were two different people
1) Like rodcet much before the Jal'Raeth obsession with death, the xulous and envar and how they are seen in EQOA

2) The corrupted Jal'Raeth version after the Xulous became what they ended up being

Whatever the tower is, it came after Anashti'Sul had been banished (because of her not know about bert) - it lead to the Xulous being corrupted by Bertoxxulous who then (according to the Xulous/Lxanvon/Berrox lore went about tunaria bringing death and pestilence)
Now I don't know where Ultor the Putrid came from originally, but without the Anchor ever arriving he would have never been able to convince King Adan to come to the crypt for him to create Bertoxxulous
The question now is, were the Jal'Raeth corrupted as part of the Xulous raiding the lands of Tunaria/Antonica after their dark transformation or was it specifically that they were dabbling in Envar like on EQOA
All we know is that the Xulous after their rampage were then sucked away into the Crypt of Decay/Ruins of Lxanvon by Bertoxxulous
Maybe after Anashti'Sul was banished for creating the Ewer her old enemy Xul'Varien was banished too and some how he found a way back from the void via the tower and then he became Bertoxxulous but anashti'sul on her recent return said quite clearly she didn't feel Xul'Variens presence any more only Bertoxxulous
Either way, this all relates to Mayong's history as we can place the Ewer of Sul'Dae before the arrival of Bertoxxulous and we can place the dead hills history deathly transformation via the 1001 tales of maj'dul before the time of the Elves meaning Mayong could have been around to see the first brood
Personally I believe the Elves and YDal were created around the same time but long before the Elves had a huge empire across tunaria and probably long before Takish'Hiz was constructed

There was always an implication that the 'Shadowed Men' were some sort of transdimensional borg--what we saw as different creature types were the result of races from different worlds being used as 'vessels' by some force. The lore supporting the purposes of the anchors--the first we knew of was the Obelisk of Lost Souls--was in EQ2 from the start, even if some details were altered slightly come TSO.
Recall, the first known 'invasion' was in the time of the Ethernaughts. It's hard to place Anashti's involvement by those events, because they never confronted each other until they arrived in the Void, where time is a little wonky, to say the least. (See 'poorly patched timeline theory', earlier.) If I remember it right, Theer got involved in the whole deal after that first attempt, resulting in the more subtle 'shadowed men' that was known subsequently; the events leading to TSO were a result of Anashti'Sul jumping the gun on Theer's timeline. (Someone correct or back me up with sources, I don't have immediate access to my usual suspects at the moment...)

Although the Xulous infection must have occured a long time ago and that's what lead to the Jal'Reath becoming vessels and the shadowed men we see today
The first tower, the one mentioned in Berrox, would have stood there so long ago before even the construction of Takish'Hiz and still stands there in Feerott today so it predates the ethernaut story by hundreds of years
Whatever the entity is that consumed the xulous and then the jal'raeth does indeed seem not of this world
But going back on topic, if the Ewer was created before the time of the Xulous then the YDal would have been around to see events like this, assuming they had wondered beyond the plane of hate by that time

For those interested in the EQOA Jal'Raeth rodcet quote
EQOA Plague Event

Kvanilya wrote:

Um technically the ewer made the d'morte vampires directly. So she did create vampirism.
Mayong is ydal
The ewer needs blood to work.
Mayong was created using inny blood and as a result is a special vampire.
The d'morte vampire clan used the sul'dae blood(sacrifices). obviously they are weaker vampires then mistmoore clan.
All this is pretty much canon. The only issue is conflicting stories between mayong statement of seeing the first brood(dragons) placed n norrath and the fact he is a creation of tunare (elf) and inny(ewer). The only explanation is the ydal was created first in the gods of influence planes. Which is exceptable since ALL gods of influence NEED followers to exist. They draw thier power from worship by mortals even from thier respective planes.
Veeshan was stated to be more powerful then the gods of influence, but yet below the elemental gods.
My guess is that she is the ONLY creation(god of influence) of 2 conflicting elemental gods.
Crystaline= earth, Dragon= Air
She as far as i know controls the 'plane of sky".

Mary the Prophetess wrote:

This is not canon. The ewer very well could of been created to give eternal life to planar creations within the god of influences plane.

Gungo@Crushbone wrote:

Why would the gods need that? Luclin's first creations were made immortal. If the gods desired for their races to be immortal, they could just make them that way to begin with. Anashti'sul did it for her mortal worshipers, and the curse of undeath was the result. I'm perty sure that the curse of undeath isn't a probem in the planes of influence. You don't see spontanious undead in the Plane of Valor or the Plane of Disease. Only on the planes where undead are welcome do they appear. Only in the moral realm do you find undead rising in unwelcome places. That is the reason Anashti was banished.

The_Cheeseman wrote:

And we're back to my only solution for this being Time Travel. Flash forward one year from now where you see Miragul disguised as Christopher Lloyd walking up to a young teir'dal "Mayong! Oh, its bad. Its terrible, you've got to come back with me to the past to save the future!"

why cant it be at the start of the elder age just before the dwarves and elves?

As I understand it, when Vhalen moved from EQ Live to EQ2 in 2004, Vahlar took up his mantle of 'lore developer' at EQ Live (even though in actuality 'lore developer' was never an official job, just something that these developers chose to do in addition to their other responsibilities) She stayed as the lore developer in EQ Live until 2007.
ALL of our problems in this thread rest with that single sentence she made in 2007 concerning Mayong's age. It has been a thorn in our side ever since it was made, because it contradicts other official lore. This is not the only time mistakes in the lore or in geography has forced some rather transparent and convoluted ret-cons to be mad to explain away the inconsistencies. The incorrect facing ot the original Qeynos gate in the Elddar grove, the 'lifting' of Befallen out of the Commonlands and it's appearance in Antonica as Stormhold, the mis-translation of the location of Ardathium in the in-game books all come to mind.
*IF*, for the sake of argument, we assume that Vahlar mis-spoke about Mayong's age in this instance, then everything else falls into place neatly.
Unfortunately neither Vhalen nor Vahlar are going to return from the dead to tell us, nor does it seem likely that any current developer wpold want to walk into a potential lore minefield with any type of clarification; *especially* one that contradicts a previous developers assertions.
To me, it seems simple. Reject Vahlar's statement as a mistake, and all of our problems concerning Mayong, the Ydal, the Ewer and Anashti disappear.

Also the maps of myrist says it (another unreliale source)

Mary the Prophetess wrote:

Personally, I don't see any of these major problems of which you speak. In my estimation, we've been making some major headway in figuring out when and where Mayong came from, and what his motivations could be. Thus far, I can't see any retcons, only ideas that challenge commonly held assumptions that never really had any significant support from in-game lore, anyway.
You say we should, ignore specific information directly from the mouth of a developer. You also claim that there have been mistakes in the in-game lore as well, which is true. I say, given the fact that the game is created by humans, and humans are fallible, there are bound to be some errors and inaccuracies in the lore both in-game and out of game. Knowing this, when the words of a developer contradict the text of an in-game source, which one should we believe? I would say that it is best to believe the developer, since the "lore dev" is the one in charge of keeping the lore consistent, so that person should have the most complete picture of how the myriad of elements fit together. The in-game books could have been written by interns in the data-entry department, for all we know.
However, as I said above, I don't think there are any contradictions so severe that we have to start writing-off any sources as mistakes. We just have to keep an open mind and understand that we are working with limited data, some of which is kept intentionally vague, so some aspects will not be easily understood.
Personally, I believe that the Ewer was created before Norrath was populated, and I think both Theer and Anashti were banished before then, as well. Likewise, the Ydal were created on the Plane of Hate either before or during the Age of Scale, and Mayong came to Norrath at some point later. This would leave plenty of time for Anashti or Theer to begin their efforts in the Void so that they could have begun building obelisks during the era of the Xulos (as mentioned in "Remembrances: Berrox").

Meirril wrote:

in answer to your question:
pure theory, but i think of planar beings (and dieties) as functions of that particular plane, or the universe in general-i dont see earth elemental having a ghost cuz it has no soul, only thing it could have would be an echo, an anomoly of its extinquished existence.

whereas mortals are wandering souls who temporarily materialize in this existence. they were neither born here, nor will they be obliterated here. In 1 aspect, they transcend this universe, and are above it.

planar beings can have their entire existence begin and end within this universe. mortals pass to ethernere and till yonder.

blocking the flow of souls is a major corruption of the universe dynamics. turning mortals, on the hero plane, immortal or undead (or deified) violates conservation of souls or net soul count.

if the nameless can see beyond into more advanced forms of existence, he might have a negative perspective on mortals being 'held back' by becoming undead, but not have negative perspective on indigenous(to norrath universe) lifeforms(planar life) with limitless lifespan. their full creation started here, whereas mortals are in different category.

imo, immortal planar races, elemental gods,(maybe gods of influence) demigods(not of mortal origin) dont violate sanctity/conservation of life and death.

this is what makes mayong so curious to me. no physical process of creation has been described for mortal races afaik. but some creation processes for demigods have been. often they are result of actual physical body of dieties. ydal are actually blood of inny blood. they are blood like a parent and child. makes me think they are a demigod race, not part of the flow of life to ethernere.

i would have not problem with ydal not being demigod, since that may be how mortal races come into being. maybe taking raw piece of flesh but not incorporating innate powers, or dividing their essence into it?

but on topic: i think this forum has isolated the offending lore fragments that conflict for mayong origin. time travel would be 1 solution(easy way out). i like a mayong who is really old and has a special purpose here but without time travel. time traveling back to see veeshan is pretty lame claim if you just timetraveled...

to have old myong without time travel means anashti needs a retcon, and after that, more specific ewer lore would help too. so much room to elaborate in lore with 4 slain gods of 4rune theer, which do not include previous god of disease...xul'whatever
plus there are 4 elemental planes between the original 4 elemental planes(8 total elemental planes), and 16 planes of influence total. that makes 24 combined t1 and t2 dieties, plus 5 who were killed. granted not every god has to come to norrath, there are more planets in the cosmos, but some of these other planes are only defined(lava), and their corresponding dieties not even mentioned. what seems bizarre to me is the universe could be destroyed (if zek screws with kerafyrm)without the other gods visiting norrath, where this is really unfolding. if other dieties exist, and havent been killed by theer, the only plausible explanation for not getting involved is they dont know its happening. gods of influence meddle, its in their nature. i would venture a guess that the reason more gods arent brought in is based on game mechanics/too complex of a pantheon.

if eq2 ever goes offworld exploring, the unused space for new dieties is very handy.

The_Cheeseman wrote:

i like your timeline. i do disagree about necessity of retcon tho. anashti was banished for actions on norrath (with elves afaik). for her to not know of bertox, she would have to be banished before Lxanvon, before tunaria became tunaria, before elves existed on norrath. wouldnt that require retcon?

she would have to be working with different races when she unleashed undeath, such as the xulous, who passed on her religion to steward races since they would be unable to carry torch forward.

i think a retcon of her statements of bertox would be better(or play it off that she was ashamed to know him/allow his installment as puppet god of pestilence), since retcon of point in time of her banishment alters 'nights of the dead' and probably even more.

i don't think we need a retcon since the end of the age of scale could fit neatly with the xulous and jal'raeth
ydal and very young elddar race the start of the elddar age
it would mean that anashti'sul would have been banished at the end of the age of scale though just before the xulous
for all we know when brell first found the planet he might have dropped some creatures then returned with the other gods and a deal
pretty sure there was that lore about 'The Kings' of brell that could work with the Adan lineage in an age filled with scale which would explain the Xulous lore about the floating jungles of the desolation

Dumb question but...
What happened to Vhelen? I never did find out. Think I've asked too, but no dice :/