Was Odyssey Kayn originally meant to be a Templar in the early concepts?
Looking closely at the splash art concept, we can see that instead of long hair, Kayn's silhouette features a hood with tassels and likely a mask covering his face. Similar details, including the floating Ora plates, are present in Sona’s design.
Overall, it’s a pretty intriguing concept that not only logically ties into his pursuit of the Templar but also demonstrates a radical shift in his worldview from an atheist to a believer or, more accurately, an "enlightened" one, since Ora does indeed have esoteric properties but this information is simply hidden from Kayn. The reason behind this is that either Templars cannot prove the authenticity of their faith (assuming Sona is the only gifted one who can contact the Ora entity in this timeline) or they simply refuse to reveal their knowledge, considering Demaxians unworthy of their existential truth and physical proof. Thus, by hunting the Templar and consuming Ora, Kayn eventually discovers the truth himself and accepts the worldview of those he previously considered lunatics.
I like that in the final version they made him a cosmic entity and a doomed emperor rather than a Templar, but it’s still a very interesting topic for discussion. At least now it's clear what inspired that hair tassel in his final design :)
Addition: Kayn about Templars from "The Lure".
"As far as he was concerned, the Templars were a sect, and nothing more. A quasi-mystical affiliation of subversives who believed they were the true “guardians” of ora, that they understood the material better than anyone else, and were protecting it from the abuse of other parties. Kayn had interrogated many Templars in his long career. He found them generally ridiculous. Their manner was obnoxious and condescending, exhibiting the sort of tolerant sympathy one got from any religious order. They believed they were privy to some great existential truth locked within the ora, something too good and refined for the likes of the Demaxians, who actually got on with the business of keeping society running. They had naively mistaken a singular natural resource of undoubted value for something more spiritual, as if ora was somehow a manifestation of the gods, or of creation, or a universal soul.
Kayn had seen that kind of lunacy before. Primitives on edgeworlds worshipping trees or nature or ecosystems, or a cargo-cult so astounded by a standard fightmek that they hailed it as a god.
It was childish and ill-informed."
