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I can't help you with a "correct" version of the official lore here, unfortunately, because I don't think there is one. However, I should point out that this is an area where the City of Heroes lore deviates wildly and probably, for the most part, unintentionally, from real world history.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
Lastly... the Knights of Malta, when did they form? According to the game, from the text given with the date, it is implied that the knights of Malta separated before the Templars were made heretics, hunted down and killed, and became a secret society... That happens in the 1300s, but the game says 1600s...
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Just to complicate things, in very brief terms, in the real world, both the Templars and the Knights Hospitaller, also called the Knights of St. John (the original name of the Knights of Malta) were founded as separate military orders (essentially, monk-knights) in the 1100's or very late 1000's. When the Latin foundations in the Levant fell, the Hospitallers eventually moved their headquarters to the island of Rhodes, where they became the Knights of Rhodes. This would have been around 1300, with the full move taking place in 1306-07.
Meanwhile, also in 1307, the Templars were accused of all sorts of trumped-up heresy at the behest of the King of France, who wanted control of that order's wealth. The Templars were eventually suppressed. That is, the order lost its papal sponsorship and was dissolved. Some members, mostly in France, were famously executed, giving rise to an assortment of goofy conspiracy theories that persist to this day, but many, particularly in places other than France, were simply told by the Papacy to join other military orders. Many became Hospitallers, i.e., Knights of Rhodes.
Still later, in 1523, the Ottoman Turks took control of Rhodes, and the Knights of Rhodes/Hospitallers ultimately fled to Malta, where they became known as the Knights of Malta. They not only resided there but actually ruled the island. They participated in the famous battle of Lepanto, which dealt a severe blow to Turkish ambitions in the Mediterranean, and in 1565, in their last major military action, they fought off a major Turkish seige of Malta island. During the 1600's, they became less monastic in nature and more involved with European politics than they already were, though also less important in the European political world. They ultimately lost control of Malta and became more of a religious outfit once more. I should also note that the Knights of St. John are still around; from what I can tell, they spend most of their time assisting pilgrims at Catholic shrines, doing charitable work, and contesting the legitimacy of various spurious Orders of St. John, a number of which cropped up after the 1600's for a variety of confusing, political reasons.
Returning to City of Heroes, it appears that one of the people working on the story bible wanted to evoke the conspiratorial rumors that have swirled around the Templars for centuries while using the name "Malta," which, while intriguing, doesn't immediately give the faction's backstory away by screaming "secret society" the way "Templar" would. The reference to the 1300's comes from the dissolution of the Knights Templar in the 1300's. The reference to the 1600's seems to derive from the eclipse of the Knights of Malta as a political power in the 1600's. I suspect that whoever wrote the group's backstory knew more about the military orders than whoever wrote the missions, resulting in some garbling when the sketchy entry in the story bible got translated into in-game text. (See the example of the Minions of Igneous in Manticore's old Cannon Fodder thread for an example of how far the in-game interpretation of something can go from the vague notes that get written down during development; he actually quotes what's written in the devs' notes, and it bears little relation to the Igneous as we see them.)
If I had to reconcile the dates you give, personally, I'd suggest the following, using the real history as a guide. Additions to the real stuff for City of Heroes purposes are listed in italics:
Circa 1100: Knights Templar and Knights of St. John formed.
1291: Kingdom of Acre, last Latin bastion in the Holy Land, falls. Members of both orders scattered.
1307: Templars suppressed on accusations of all manner of evil. Some join Knights of St. John. Meanwhile, Knights of St. John take Rhodes. Some of the accusations against the Templars are true. These Templars escape execution and are among those who join the Knights of Rhodes.
1523: Knights of St. John move to Malta, becoming the Knights of Malta.
1600's: By this time, the moral descendants of those evil ex-Templars control the Knights. With the Order's power past its peak, this group goes underground and becomes a secret society of its own, eventually evolving into the modern Malta Group.
That's the best I can do. I find attempting to untangle this kind of thing a futile endeavor, unless one is one of those, like many on these boards, who simply enjoy calling the devs bad writers.
Personally, I just posted this because I happened to know a fair amount about military orders, and the amount of misinformation and such out there about them just plain annoys me. This stuff isn't too hard to find; I checked the dates I used here in one of the basic works on the subject, The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders, by Desmond Seward (Penguin: 1972).
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See anything related to the council, and it's gotten weirder in newer issues.
The ITF and Requiem's involvement make no sense.
The i15 TFs make the opposite of sense.
There are like 4 different factions in multiple dimensions and their AVs' loyalties and backstories swing wildly.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
I haven't seen anything that contradicts with Requiem and ITF. What you might be talking about is what I'm presuming is a closed loop circle thing...
Requiem goes back in time and makes Imperious into a nictus who either just lives a really long time or jumps forward in time and recruits Requiem into being a nictus who goes back in time...
All the goof-ups and contradictions in Council and Column lore can now handily be explained away by a Time Traveling Requiem having done it. Rommy wasn't the one who contacted Requiem and turned him from a questionably evil Catholic priest into a unquestionably evil Nictus--that was Arakhne, because he was digging around into the Path of the Dark cult that the Vatican had records of.
CoT are weird. I think they'll just pop up now and then whenever a spelunker gets so lost in those purple caves under Paragon that they stumble down into the lost city of orenbega, and accidentally get possessed by a CoT mage's soul because they touched something they shouldn't have.
Malta...ehh. I think they're just a bunch of none-too-sneaky new world order claiming they're descendants of some great order. What kind of supranational men in black secret overlords walk around harassing civilians in broad daylight?
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Don't forget using giant mecha that belong more in Japanese cartoons.|
Originally Posted by Iannis
Malta...ehh. I think they're just a bunch of none-too-sneaky new world order claiming they're descendants of some great order. What kind of supranational men in black secret overlords walk around harassing civilians in broad daylight?
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Just... Seriously... I hope part of the relook into old content includes looking over old villain groups and fixing up some things (like Nemesis and Sky Raiders lack of any normal human bosses, though that might be a hint...) and updating looks.
I think ideally Malta should be a rare spawn in Peregrine, and a special outdoor version would be the only one that spawns, maybe the occasional fully suited up sniper on the roof or secret gatherings on one of the outer islands.
Nemesis could probably employ more automatons for outdoor purposes too instead of endless swarms of soldiers everywhere.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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Wait, Arachne?|
Originally Posted by Iannis
All the goof-ups and contradictions in Council and Column lore can now handily be explained away by a Time Traveling Requiem having done it. Rommy wasn't the one who contacted Requiem and turned him from a questionably evil Catholic priest into a unquestionably evil Nictus--that was Arakhne, because he was digging around into the Path of the Dark cult that the Vatican had records of.
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More to point, the problem with Requiem is that his origin was basically restamped with a different label, without actually altering the story. If you read Jennie Bassie's journals, you can pretty much see the story was written to be mystical and fill in the Column's quota of magic in their Supersoldier/Robot/Monster/Demon circle of evil. It actually reads like an old Raiders of the Lost Arc story, and the werewolf thingy we get from the Path of the Dark story used to be stored at MAGI, instead of SERAPH.
With the 5th Column retconned into the Council with all the subtlety of a V8 Chainsaw, their old stories just went to crap, ESPECIALLY Requiem's story, which went from ancient magic cult to fluffy purple aliens.
As far as Requiem's involvement goes, I still don't know how he manages to be in the past with his old Column powers of Darkness (and it IS Darkness) and still be in the present with his new powers of Purple, all at the same time. Does he commute between the past and the present or something? What is he hoping to achieve with Romulus?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Huh, you know, I'm actually a little disappointed that (though suddenly feel like it makes a lot of sense) Requiem was just originally just another Magical origin Dark power guy.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Wait, Arachne?
More to point, the problem with Requiem is that his origin was basically restamped with a different label, without actually altering the story. If you read Jennie Bassie's journals, you can pretty much see the story was written to be mystical and fill in the Column's quota of magic in their Supersoldier/Robot/Monster/Demon circle of evil. It actually reads like an old Raiders of the Lost Arc story, and the werewolf thingy we get from the Path of the Dark story used to be stored at MAGI, instead of SERAPH. With the 5th Column retconned into the Council with all the subtlety of a V8 Chainsaw, their old stories just went to crap, ESPECIALLY Requiem's story, which went from ancient magic cult to fluffy purple aliens. As far as Requiem's involvement goes, I still don't know how he manages to be in the past with his old Column powers of Darkness (and it IS Darkness) and still be in the present with his new powers of Purple, all at the same time. Does he commute between the past and the present or something? What is he hoping to achieve with Romulus? |
I came in after issue three, and in all my time playing, I've only seen magic or natural origin characters use darkness, and I had thought that it made Requiem cool that he was a canon example of SCIENCE! origin dark powers.
But I kind of should have known better.
The whole thing always made me wonder 'why did the nictus side with the Center if Requiem had already been one of them?' And there's my answer... He hadn't originally been a nictus, and they changed it for some weird reason when they had brought in Arakhn and could have kept Requiem the same origin and power and so forth.
It's all really sad, I'm a lousy RPer and I thought MY characters' back stories got convoluted.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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Oh, Arakhn! OK, I follow you now. Incidentally, how do you pronounce that?|
Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
The whole thing always made me wonder 'why did the nictus side with the Center if Requiem had already been one of them?' And there's my answer... He hadn't originally been a nictus, and they changed it for some weird reason when they had brought in Arakhn and could have kept Requiem the same origin and power and so forth.
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Arakhn is said to be a recent convert to the Nictus, if I my memory serves, whereas Requiem has been with them since WW2 or thereabout, which would make him her senior by several decades. I didn't get too far into the Kheldian arcs before I hated the AT, so I don't know how it all wraps up, but I do know that that's one bone of contention between the two.
Incidentally, the Kheldian arcs, having been written for the Council as originally envisioned after the change, make a LOT more sense than practically everything else surrounding the 5th Council combined.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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That's why I hate her name. *grumpy face*
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Incidentally, how do you pronounce that?
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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I would pronounce it straight forward like
Ara-k'nnn with the H just vanishing. With the K being hard and short.
Else the H would make it feels like you have a cough or something.
Or think Khan just drop the a?
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I think that you have too much time on your hands. Time you could be wasting playing CoH instead of wasting finding problems with CoH.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
So what are your thoughts on these 4 lore contradictions....
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It's a GAME, have fun. If you question your entertainment too much, it will cease to be entertaining.
Heh, that is best personified by the ITF. Though it makes no sense, it is the most fun TF so far, and probably the most often run.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
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A couple things to keep in mind, first what is on the website is the public information, not all that the public knows is correct (see Emperor Cole vs Tyrant or the "start" of the Rikti invasion which has no mention of Nemesis), Second there are two distinct groups within the Circle, and the website description only talks about the surface/superficial group the "real" circle you learn about mostly on the Villain side missions, but a bit heroside. Potential spoilers:|
Originally Posted by Durakken
Ok here's something... A contradiction in the information.
Circle of Thorns page says all this happens in 1933 in this order... Dream Doctor Debuts. The Circle starts kidnapping children. Dream Doctor figures out what is happening and stops the sacrifice of those children on their anniversary. Dream Doctor then forms the Midnight Squad. Here's the problem The CoT's anniversary is on December 21. The Midnight Squad forms on January 9, 1933. So... this string of events indicates that the events take place in late 1932 with the Midnight Squad forming and them chasing the CoT happening in 1933. What do you think? |
The Circle are ghosts inhabiting the bodies of descendants of Mu. While the cult itself publicly formed in 1933, the ghost have been riding from body to body for a lot longer than that. So while the events on the website are "public" knowledge about what the humans who end up getting possessed went through, they don't at all cover the existence of the ghosts or the effects, impact, knowledge, and actions thereof.
Mu Drakhn's stories are great for getting at this lore.
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| This also leads into another contradiction... did the Circle find Oranbega, find blocked off entrances to Oranbega, or just claim they did? The Rikti finds it in 2002, and the site says allegedly which seems to mean that they just claimed they did but didn't |
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Completely false. The lore and the stories are exactly what make it fun. Questions it and talking about it keep me and many others more interested.
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Originally Posted by Westley
I think that you have too much time on your hands. Time you could be wasting playing CoH instead of wasting finding problems with CoH.
It's a GAME, have fun. If you question your entertainment too much, it will cease to be entertaining. |
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I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
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Just as an inconvenient detail, it's mentioned several times during the Moonfire TF that Arakhn is female. It may be simply that Arakhn's current host is female -- there's no good evidence that a Nictus wouldn't just leap from host to host as they age or they find one with better connections that it would be advantageous to become.
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Originally Posted by Iannis
All the goof-ups and contradictions in Council and Column lore can now handily be explained away by a Time Traveling Requiem having done it. Rommy wasn't the one who contacted Requiem and turned him from a questionably evil Catholic priest into a unquestionably evil Nictus--that was Arakhne, because he was digging around into the Path of the Dark cult that the Vatican had records of.
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"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
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Nope. Arakhn has been leading the Nictus for centuries at least. She developed the cyst process, and there's been a cyst on earth since circa 475 CE. She was responsible for sending Ridolfo Uzanno to Ravenna to merge with Dirge of Entropy, creating Requiem.| Arakhn is said to be a recent convert to the Nictus, if I my memory serves, whereas Requiem has been with them since WW2 or thereabout, which would make him her senior by several decades. |
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| Mu Drakhn's stories are great for getting at this lore. |
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Huh... Well, I guess I must have misread something from the Kheldian arcs. As I said, I got about mid-way before I gave up.
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Originally Posted by Venture
Nope. Arakhn has been leading the Nictus for centuries at least. She developed the cyst process, and there's been a cyst on earth since circa 475 CE. She was responsible for sending Ridolfo Uzanno to Ravenna to merge with Dirge of Entropy, creating Requiem.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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CoT lore in my opinion is not contradictory so much as it is badly written and/or convoluted purposely cuz it is supposed to be lost to history for the most part.
As far as the CoT existing as spirits that are inhabitting the descendants of Mu... that is wrong. The CoT are originally Oranbegans who gave up their physical body to escape the wrath of demons. Those with the ability to use magic without being taught are descendant of Mu, because it has become ingrained in them. Any human can use magic at varying strengths. Baron Zoria summoned the Oranbega Circle of Thorns (their leaders) who entered a contract with him of some sort and gave their leaders "thorns" that imbued them with magic powers, beyond apparently what they had already, if they had any.
So theoretically Baron Zoria and a number of the first CoT are descendants of Mu and have not been posessed... however, all or most regular Circle of Thorns are possessed and could possibly be, but more than likely not, descendants of Mu. This does not preclude them from using magic, because magic is taught and the Oranbegans know how it works/how to do it, from the ground up so they don't need to have Mu descendants.
As far as the Oranbegan's knowing "where" Oranbega is... that is not true. The world has changed in 14,000 years and even if t hasn't most of the oranbegans still around were born and raised in Oranbega so they'd have very little clue where it was, but could give clues to it. they also sealed Oranbega during the conflict with Mu so...it was sealed both physically and magically apparently...
The dating thing... I would say that that is due to artistic flair... and or not having the dates written down so it's unintentional and with the dates it's meant to be 1932, instead of 1933 imo.
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Well, my personal advice is try playing warshade. They're challenging and can still be amazingly fun.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Huh... Well, I guess I must have misread something from the Kheldian arcs. As I said, I got about mid-way before I gave up.
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The big trick with Kheldian ATs is that they're a Swiss Army Knife of Batman of ATs, at a high enough level they have a tool for every situation, and they're great for those situations when you're thinking "damn, I wish I had brought my [other AT here]."
But for the lore parts, it's covered on Paragon Wiki, they even have the old version of the souvenir summary for the Path of Darkness.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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The Kheldians are tied with the 5th Column/Council... The Kheldians deal with multiple entity symbioses that extend life for an unknown amount and the 5th Column/Council deals with time travel...|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Huh... Well, I guess I must have misread something from the Kheldian arcs. As I said, I got about mid-way before I gave up.
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I have a feeling that it would be a fruitless effort to even attempt to get the timeline right for them.... but apparently what happened was...
Requiem travel back in time and makes Imperious a nictus and the cysts following Arakhn's orders.
Requiem betray Arakhn
Arakhn and other kheldians get the idea to set up on earth and travel there.
Imperious is sent to turn Requiem into a nictus by Arakhn from the future.
Requiem makes Arakhn a nictus.
Requiem goes back in time.
Arakhn goes back in time.
Or something like that... of course i haven't really explored their history yet, but that's what i think from what little i know.
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"Fun" is not how I would describe my experience with Kheldians, I'm afraid. And rather than try to badmouth the AT or talk about changes, I simply accepted the fact that I don't enjoy Kheldians of any kind and left it at that.
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Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Well, my personal advice is try playing warshade. They're challenging and can still be amazingly fun.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Don't a few of those points contradict each other, though? For instance, we know that Requiem had his powers before he went back in time, partly because Jeannie Basse's journal describes him getting his powers for the first time pre WW2, and partly because we see Requiem with his powers before he goes back in time at the end of the Fall of the 5th Column TF.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
Requiem travel back in time and makes Imperious a nictus and the cysts following Arakhn's orders.
Requiem betray Arakhn Arakhn and other kheldians get the idea to set up on earth and travel there. Imperious is sent to turn Requiem into a nictus by Arakhn from the future. Requiem makes Arakhn a nictus. Requiem goes back in time. Arakhn goes back in time. |
And yet we have "Imperious is sent to turn Requiem into a Nictus" as an event after Requem's time travel experiment. How does that work? And why would Imperious even want to turn someone into a Nictus? Isn't he fighting the things to save his empire?
Also, when is Imperious at all turned into a Nictus? Do you mean Romulus Augustulus?
I'm really not sure I can follow the last few steps of the timeline, but that's likely me missing vital information.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Yes Romulus...I get him messed up with Imperious all the time.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Don't a few of those points contradict each other, though? For instance, we know that Requiem had his powers before he went back in time, partly because Jeannie Basse's journal describes him getting his powers for the first time pre WW2, and partly because we see Requiem with his powers before he goes back in time at the end of the Fall of the 5th Column TF.
And yet we have "Imperious is sent to turn Requiem into a Nictus" as an event after Requem's time travel experiment. How does that work? And why would Imperious even want to turn someone into a Nictus? Isn't he fighting the things to save his empire? Also, when is Imperious at all turned into a Nictus? Do you mean Romulus Augustulus? I'm really not sure I can follow the last few steps of the timeline, but that's likely me missing vital information. |
And yes almost everything in that contradicts from a linear timeline point of view, but all possible from a multi-looped timeline point of view.
Romulus would have been a Nictus before Requiem and Arakhn ever set foot on earth, transformed by a future version of Requiem who was turned into a nictus by an order from Arakhn who did not exist yet in her current state in the game by Romulus who is from 1600 years in the past...
It be all confusled.
Ok here's something... A contradiction in the information.
Circle of Thorns page says all this happens in 1933 in this order...
Dream Doctor Debuts.
The Circle starts kidnapping children.
Dream Doctor figures out what is happening and stops the sacrifice of those children on their anniversary.
Dream Doctor then forms the Midnight Squad.
Here's the problem
The CoT's anniversary is on December 21.
The Midnight Squad forms on January 9, 1933.
So... this string of events indicates that the events take place in late 1932 with the Midnight Squad forming and them chasing the CoT happening in 1933.
What do you think?
This also leads into another contradiction... did the Circle find Oranbega, find blocked off entrances to Oranbega, or just claim they did? The Rikti finds it in 2002, and the site says allegedly which seems to mean that they just claimed they did but didn't
And of course... was Zoria actually Rasputin's apprentice or not? It, again, says it's rumor in the paragon times article and if you look at the timeline, they would either be contemporaries or Zoria would have to be the mentor if they met.
Lastly... the Knights of Malta, when did they form? According to the game, from the text given with the date, it is implied that the knights of Malta separated before the Templars were made heretics, hunted down and killed, and became a secret society... That happens in the 1300s, but the game says 1600s...
So what are your thoughts on these 4 lore contradictions...
PS. I hate the Circle of Thorns...I can foresee there being more contradictions in the lore around them.