Vincent Ross Arc (Spoilers)

Indeed. And it is surely not connected some other crystalline, crimson coloured substance of mystic nature that gets referred to as 'coral'. For it would indeed be insane to believe that this so called 'Red Coral', known for it's magical properties and it's mysterious connection with the creature known as the Leviathan could possibly be similar in any way with this other (and I insist, the likeness of the names must surely be a coincidence) 'Blood Coral', known for it's magical properties and not-quite-as-mysterious connection with the creature known as the Leviathan... right?

And we pretty much did know there was a direct Merulina->Leviathan connection. Check out what Renault has to say:

Remarkably close to the truth, I'd say.

I didn't get the impression that there was an "entity" behind Merulia from the Vincent Ross arc, aside from the Well of the Furies, which is being written to be behind everything. It stands to reason it would be behind her, as well. The "shadowy figure" she fought could also be the letter writer dude.

I do believe Merulia was connected to the Leviathan, because she was a goddess of the Coralax, and it was the Coralax who summoned the Leviathan to destroy the Mu after Hequat appropriated their island by pulling it out of the deep. Calystix the Shaper keeps forming a cult to try and awaken the Leviathan not unlike how the Banished Pantheon keep trying to wake up Lughebu, or how they attempted to try and capture Tielekku. I can buy that.

The Blood Coral, on the other hand, is made up on the spot, and for no real reason. The "Shapers" are an outright travesty to Coralax lore, specifically because they crap on the idea of THE Shaper who appears immortal and keeps turning up throughout history.

Methinks no-one ever sat down to write a history of the Coralax and to establish their society and world like what was done with the Oranbegans, so writers are making it up as they go. Which isn't a bad approach, per se, if it didn't trample over content that IS established, or otherwise completely ignore it.

But again - who and what are he Legacy Chain, above and beyond good guy mages? What is their history? What do they stand for? Never explained. Who are the Coralax? Where did they come from? What do they want? Never explained. Never, it appears, explained to the writers, as a point of fact.

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.

Yes Sam, that is the entity I meant. That stupid Well, which was originally a hotline to the gods, has been retconned into....what? The source of the gods' power?
I don't think it's explicitly made clear, but the previous lore makes it sound like the Coralax summoned the Leviathan because Merulina wasn't helping them out much against the Mu. Either she was sleeping (cause you know, if you're going to rip off Lovecraft you have to have a weird alien god sleeping under the sea somewhere) or otherwise incapacitated.

The Coralax blurb on the official site does mention the Shapers, plural, as priests of the Coralax. Calystix is just like the high priest or something.

When AE was released I believe Hero One stated in an in-game Q&A that they'd allow the players to influence the canon story of the Coralax through AE. Players didn't really step up. There haven't been a lot of player-created arcs dealing with the Coralax, and the only one that I've found memorable doesn't really go into the hows and whys of them, only furthers their Lovecraftian theme. And it uses Krylov as the contact, so it's played for comedy somewhat. Surprisingly, it works. But it's not really useful as something to base canon on. But it's still way better than what Vincent Ross gives us. Huh, what do you know, you don't need to pull a bunch of story elements out of your butt to make for an interesting arc.

Or, sourced a bit further back.

To be honest, I'm a lot more receptive to the ret-con of the Well of the Furies than I am to the Origin of Powers heresy. The Well is A source of power, be that for the Gods, for the planet, for the stars or what have you. Where it wins out over Origin of Powers is it isn't explicitly stated to be OUR original source of power. If I was a super-smart genius before, I'm a super-smart genius with God on speed dial now, but my original powers remain, they are just enhanced. This is FAR superior than trying to explain why my 7-billion-year-old alien insect queen from another planet got her powers from an event that took place on Earth within recorded history.

I've seen the arguments for why the Well is "magic," but given no other intrusion, I can reason the origin of the Well's power to be a pointer to our own origin. What is the origin of my Incarnate Powers? Well, the same one thing that my primary, secondary, pool and epic powers point to. Simple as that.

We'll see how the story develops, but this I can swallow a LOT easier than that mistake which came out of Powerset Proliferation.

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.