#avowed speculation

one tiny lore tidbit that is fairly obscure, and actually might have a lot to do with the story of avowed is that the emperor's scepter has an adra jewel which stores the souls of past aedyran kings and queens.

this comes into play in a couple of lines with sargamis from the barbarian gamescom footage, when the player and the oracle speculate a bit on just why the emperor would send our envoy in particular.

could the ancient souls in the scepter, y'know the major icon of aedyran heraldry

could the ancient souls have communicated to the emperor that our godlike envoy might have some connection to the living lands. and could that connection go all the way back to the godless and the origin of the two major ethnic groups in aedyr? both the meadow folk and wood elves are said to have originated in the far north.

north, vitally, being the direction in which lies the living lands. was there some calamity that caused the godless to flee and become the far distant ancestors to the aedyrans?

spoilers under break

i have been wracking my brain trying to figure out just what this mural in the story trailer could mean. what eothas-lookin calamity struck the godless?? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? (also the colors and line work in it is so f'in pretty).

sitting here wondering why i haven't seen this juicy tidbit more in avowed's marketing.

"You must be our Imperial Envoy. Better late than never, I say" - this jobber

my guess is wish dot com hugh grant here is the aedyran ambassador and that he has contracted the dreamscourge.

in this screenshot, he looks to be in an area that appears to be infected with fungal dreamscourge spores and mycelia. that, plus his little quote about the envoy being late, makes me think he had a little hallucinatory episode with the soul plague and wandered astray. then our envoy is sent to rescue him shortly after arriving.

carrie patel describes the progression of the dreamscourge as follows:

"No one knows how it spreads, but many have come to recognize and dread the symptoms: first, victims experience confusion, disorientation, and hallucinations. As it worsens, they become unpredictable and erratic in their behavior, as if trapped in a waking nightmare. In the final stage, they turn into violent “Dreamthralls,” their bodies twisted with fungal growths and their minds and souls overtaken by the plague."

ok so this could be a wild leap of logic buuuuut

in the annual obsidian extralife stream, during the avowed segment with kate dollarhyde, carrie patel, and berto ritger, berto mentioned that his favorite background for the envoy is war hero for a secret choice near the beginning of the game.

enter this screen from gamespot's preview footage

so at the very least your envoy could know lödwyn previously. my memory is fuzzy, but i think i read one other preview talk about lödwyn in a way that implies that you can choose for your former relationship to be a bit more than acquaintances.

while rewatching some of the previews, i noticed that the enigmatic voice, when the envoy gets pulled into the beyond to speak with them, manifests as a tangled mass of light. this is notable because when the engwithan pantheon pulls the watcher in for a chat, they all appear as their most common aspects - mostly humanoid with some exceptions (i'm looking at you wael and ondra).

so about that godless mural and inquisitor lödwyn...