What did I miss?

Recently completed the AoM Sig Quest and I am curious, why is the expansion called Altar of Malice? Is it possible I took a wrong turn somewhere and missed a sizable portion of the story arc? The hints provided by the Teir'Dal quests were interesting but seemed to lead nowhere, for me at least ("good" HalfElf 'zerker). If anyone knows why they put the spotlight on Lanys (note, if there is a largish portion of lore hidden behind the raidwall, I am not a raider so that might be it...) Anyway just curious with the emphasis on The Farseas Trading Co. and HK, why call it AoM?

appparently there are 2 major forces in AoM to be 'worried' about. one is the Akhevea. the other is the Primordial Malice. they are gearing up for a ceremony, you first hear about it in the Sig line at the Ossuary. it's called the 'ceremony of rising malice' it's their intent to bring Lanys T'vyl the Demigoddess of Envy, back to Norrath and possibly/potentially give her a huge power boost utilizing the necromantic/Hate based power in Kithicor, which according to the one quest giver has only been getting stronger and stronger over time.

the sig quests you do with the PM. involve you getting Lanys remains to them, when you see what they have in the instance, it's her armor/and other artifacts like her blood and some of her bones I think. the rest of the body they teleported over...and her 'daughter' or at least that one that claims a blood relation, may be looking to become her new host/avatar utilizing Blood Magic.

I suppose any further information to be had is probably gleaned either form the Ossuary Heroic/Contested or even more likely, locked behind a Raid Wall again.

This was a ridiculously "busy" xpac from a lore standpoint. I tried to do a roundup post Saturday but gave up because it got so convoluted.

Quick recap: Par for the course, the reformation of Luclin is causing all you-know-what to break loose. First, the shissar there have now completely slipped their fate and decided it's a dandy time to re-establish their Norrathian empire, using the various relics that either remain there or fell there (I'm still not entirely clear on the origins of the key items in the quest line). Next, a previously isolated group of lizardfolk have decided the reformation of Luclin is an omen marking their conquest of the upper world. (And they have kind of an unorthodox view of Cazic Thule, which I presume their deity to be from the hints given.) Third, the Primal Malice also seems to have decided the omens dictate it's time to resurrect Lanys T'Vyl, though whether or not this is with Cristanos' blessing is an open question. On top of this the Far Seas Trading Company, having been whipsawed by all these events, is reeling and looking to re-establish itself in the wake of the loss of its top leadership.

So yeah, it was either "Altar of Malice" or "Lots-O-Stuff Happening". I can deal with the choice made.

I would of been good with "Everquest 2: Tropical Island Vacation" actually. Generally speaking, if we did go on a T.I.V. this is what I'd expect to happen. Well it is missing the luau, babes in swimwear, and the erupting volcano but details!

I think the "god" of the lizardfolk is a false god/high priest taking advantage of Luclin appearing and using that as a way to spure them into invading the upper world. If they can't knock off a bunch of pygmies they aren't taking over the entire surface world....unless their world view says the surface world consists of the 6 islands you can see.

I'm thinking the Book fell and was recovered locally. The other artifact (one responsible for corrupting the spider bears) was recovered from the hidden instance by the Brokenskull pirates. The transference artifact...less sure. It could of been found on the isle of refuge and just happened to have activated and transferred the books spells to the boy. I think its more likely that the Akavah had a long term plan that involved getting an agent into the Far Seas Trading Company (our betrayer in Castle High Hold) and attempting to locate the book. The transference artifact could of been sent as a tool to help locate the book (which the boy just happen to be studying at the time) and the Akevah/agents could of been killed in the disaster that happened when the two artifacts met.

The two pieces of evidence for that are fairly obvious. All the twisted Far Seas Company men, and all of those grimlings appearing on the Isle of Refuge. If a possessed FS agent and a grimling were sent with the artifact the magic disaster could of caused both the magic used to possess the agent and the grimling to be cloned and reassembled in a jumbled fashion.

As far as our Layns loving neighbors (aka the 'get out of my sky' crowd over there) they explained a few things but not enough. The body we helped summon. (FYI: That ceremony keyed US for something important. If they summon Layns we're going to be involved, again. Maybe as an important sacrifice...or something. Heck, we could be Layns' new avatars because we got involved. ) The armor they recovered (or did we recover it? I kinda remember a quest about doing that). The blood was from the high priestes, who claims to be the daughter of Layns and so a direct blood connection. We do ruin this ceremony as part of the sig line. Kinda like we pwned Rallos and Cazic Thule as part of the CoE sig line.

That doesn't mean Layns' followers would give up. I actually expect them to succeed because it would be good for the story. Maybe in one of those "the adventurer's win causes the ceremony to succeed" kind of situations. Like us fighting and killing all those followers causes enough hate and envy to empower an already summoned Layns. Who knows? I'm betting it will come out in the raids (that I won't ever see in person).

well with the ceremony in Charnel Grove, we provided the Spiteweed/components for the ritual. the body they summoned was supposedly Layns. then we get found out, but go into the Ossuary becuase we find a that the weapons used on the FSTC folks had vampiric magic in it. (and since Tserrina is listed as a raid mob....guess who gave Ghorrkal that) we go in there, find some bones, blood, and Lanys armor. her 'daughter' shows up and claims that us screwing around won't stop the 'Ceremony of Rising Malice' and that they are going to bring lanys back..though how, we're not sure. the implication from the similar ceremony that Kyle tried with Antonia is that the 'daughter' will become the vessel/avatar for Lanys' spirit/power.

so in the sig line all we really do is find out that something serious is going on with the P.M. but not exactly what, or how to stop it, and that it involves Lanys

as to the Shissar/Akhevea...we dunno how that happened. the Ssra Temple is on Norrath, so how they are still on Luclin is kinda up in the air. wether or not the Akheva are allies, or servants..also up in the air from the Sig line. Greymast's son though. not sure how that worked. what it seemed to me, is that the Book itself was a transfer item. it held powerful spells, like the one that sent the Temple to Luclin in the first place, and Dargan triggered the transferance part, which cause a huge overload of magical power.

cause they said the book wasn't blank when they first got it. so all the spells/powers contained in it is what got transfered to Dargan. and they thought all the Shissar relics were 'inert'. it could be, since the FSTC folks had no idea with the grimlings were (one of the side questlines is about finding out what they are) that the transferance happens, the tower goes BOOM which enough of a magical explosion to corrupt the island, freeze the tower bits in time. and that got the attention of the Akhevea. who went after the magical 'source' which happened to be Dargan who I imagine lit up like a firework magically.

In the crafting line you get two items from your home city to investigate. Both are Shissar relics. One is the blank book, one is another artifact. Through investigation you find out that the book is inert but the artifact has strong transference powers. So following the story the boy was studying the book when its powers were transferred to him and that caused the explosion/reality collapse at the tower. It also is responsible for the twisted creatures and Far Seas crewmembers. It is probably responsible for either teleporting a large number of grimlings to the Isle of Refuge, or creating them. The grimlings seem to be searching for shissar artifacts.

So the real question is where did the transferal artifact come from? Or why did it suddenly power up? That isn't made clear as far as I know.

The Akheva keep mumbling about Masters in the Ssra temple. I'm thinking they are serving the Shissar. How and why are of course unknown. Why the Akheva are speaking common in the first place is a big unknown as well. They really should only speak their own language or Shissar.

Its a good call on the whole revival, except I don't think Layns would want to be trapped in a mortal body. She'd be just like Lucan at that point.

I have read a lot of posts expressing disappointment with the CoE expansion, most seemingly due to it's emphasis on solo play. I found it enjoyable, and the access to the storyline was nicely done, being able see it through to a logical conclusion. I missed that with ToV, the storyline was good, up to the requirement for a raid to get the "whole" deal. I can see the reasoning behind it, not complaining about it, merely commenting on the differences. But AoM seems very disjointed, and predicating the title on an aspect that occupies a relatively early niche in the SigQuest has left me feeling like I sidestepped some major storyline element somewhere with the Teir'Dal.
I do appreciate the many responses, and the theories presented.

Y'know, every time I look at the Altar of Malice lore, I imagine a REALLY hilarious fantasy novel being played out faaaar more specifically than the usual EQ2 lore, by being lightly mixed with other media tropes. Especially the fact that we're like "Whew, a break" and our leaders laugh their ***** off and go "Oh hell no, you get out there and secure our supply lines!" resulting in pretty much a way bigger discovery.

I'm hoping we get some extra stuff though, and at least this part of the story finishes outside of a raid. The raid locks are kind of annoying when we don't have an ongoing in-game lorebook like EQ1 does.