Since the lore of the game is shrouded in so many mysteries this thread will probably be full of spoilers.
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Ive been fascinated by the lore and decided to piece it all together.
So post on this thread everything you know about the core,the crimson order,Alpha Squad,The relation between the swarm and herex,and most importantly "the sleeper",When i have enough information ill try to fit them all together to make some sort of lore map
Piecing together the lore
Sun, 07/05/2015 - 21:20
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 05:54
#2
recent thread
There's another thread on the front page of General Discussion about this same topic:
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/110802
You might try some of the Google searching I suggested in that thread, because these threads pop up occasionally. Good luck.
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 10:33
#3
The thread isnt really relevant to what im doing..
As far as im considered im not asking for the story,but rather facts about what we know (That may seem similiar,but trust me its not),What im trying to say is that im not looking for an opinionated or "what we know sequence", but rather small plot-lines that can be joint together to form a major story-line..
Moving on,
This Poison that Fishysh seems similar to something that would be found in a scienario room,As for Herex and the swarm we know that they ARE indeed connected due to one small piece of evidence,At the end of "Spark and Roar" we can find pixelated swarm like fog and a green symbol of the crimson order,How Herex knows of the swarm is still a mystery..
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 13:26
#4
We encounter the swarm in the
We encounter the swarm in the shadow lair missions too, i bet there is something hidden in the levels themselves similar to as silver-core said. I can't remember details since i did mine, just throwning that out there
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 18:50
#5
Current Progress
We know that the Spiral Knights crashed on cradle during herex's research,While i can't quite pinpoint where the alpha squad was dispatched,i assume it happened either before or after the player reached haven,It must have taken time to reach the core so we cant say that herex knows of alpha squad YET,Then te adventure of the player continues until the player reaches the core which we know is now accessible,We are then told by parma's scout the sleeper grows weak while the swarm grows stronger.
What we can expect is to actually encounter the remaining alpha squad members and hopefully the "sleeper" And The relation between Herex and the Swarm.
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During the prologue we can see the skylark taken down by a pinkish ray,So now we know that the Swarm made the skylark crash
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 20:26
#6
Upon closer inspection
It would seem that the sleeper is somesort of light being as referanced by This piece of dialogue. .Since we now know that the sleeper is able to "project" light and grows weaker upon the core being weakened by the swarm,i can assume that a)The sleeper is the personified "Core" of the cradle,b)The sleeper is a being connected or rather born to the core.
Tue, 07/07/2015 - 07:24
#7
back by unpopular demand: me
What we know for sure about the sleeper is this:
It needed a safe place to sleep
The architect helped it build cradle as a safe place
The architect betrays the pact and the sleeper is now trapped in the core
The swarm wants to take over
This is all clearly said in game
Tue, 07/07/2015 - 12:53
#8
Gah.
Lots of lore to throw together.
Original lore was as follows: The Skylark crashlanded on Cradle, and now we are searching for a power source strong enough to power our ship to get off Cradle and return home.
Current, evolved lore: The Spiral Knights are at war with a race called the Morai. Morai are winning the war, thus we retreat into the cosmos to find a power source, one strong enough to win this war. As we reach the power source, our ship is shot down by the planet itself, and we evacuate onto the surface.
Now on the surface, recruits break out of their escape pods. While recruits are coming to Haven, the Alpha Squad is picked out to recon the clockworks, but the communication devices are not set up quite yet, so they instead leave recon modules behind. By the time the communication links are set up, Alpha Squad's signal has gone silent. Comlinks are designed to work anywhere and under harsh conditions, and so the fact that they went dead is worrisome.
At this point recruits have mettled with the plans of Herex indirectly, stealing an artifact from a gremlin schemer under Herex's commands. They arrive in Haven, and get started on helping Spiral HQ find out where the alpha squad has ended up.
Now, the recruits end up supplying critical information to Spiral HQ, ranging from the messages of Alpha Squad from the modules, to destroying a gremlin plot to destroy Haven! However, during this time, Herex steals back the artifact and retreats.
Even after a war with the rest of the Crimson Order is hatched out by the Spiral Order, Herex works alone. He silences other gremlins who speak out against him, and hides his actions from the weary eyes of both knights and other gremlins, the former he doesn't do too well. He knows this however, and toys with us knights, beckoning us to follow him in his quest.
Herex has attempted to harness the power of the swarm already. We see this at the end of Spark and Roar (I believe it is this level), where we come across a hidden back room, and the swarm is emanating from the piping. This is likely to do with the artifact not working properly on the Royal Jelly Palace's artifact room. However, after we return to Firestorm Citadel's artifact room, we see Herex unlock the core.
Herex now has unlimited access to both the core and the swarm, and that is where we come in.
The Alpha Squad is finally in contact after we follow in their footsteps and descend into the terrors of the core. As we conclude our fight, we learn that the core is in fact a prison, a prison for both the sleeper and the swarm. The sleeper keeps the swarm in check, and the swarm is forever trapped within the core's shell... At least until recently.
Recently, Herex has opened the core, and the swarm has begun to seep out in full effect. It had been seeping out due to his actions in the past, causing both the disturbance at the end of Spark and Roar and the Shadow Lairs, but now it is able to infect the entirety of the clockworks.
The Sleeper sees us as the last resort, seeing us fall onto Cradle, after being betrayed by the architect. Euclid volunteered to fight off the swarm himself, Grantz gave his life to make sure the others would stay alive, Parma is trying to get the word out, and Rulen is... Rulen is wherever Rulen is.
We no longer are here on Cradle to win a war back at home. We are here on Cradle to serve as protectors for the Sleeper. In Parma's words "It's our sacrifice."
Until we can seal the core again, the swarm will consume.
TL;DR - We crash on cradle, Herex is already planning on releasing the swarm, we just get involved accidentally. We also unintentionally clear the path for Herex's plans, and have a knack for bad timing. Herex releases the swarm not realizing he does not control it because of his power trip, turns out we're staying on Cradle to protect the Sleeper instead of returning home.
Tue, 07/07/2015 - 22:53
#9
Current Progress #2
Not much progress,But i'd just like to make a non detailed timeline of events that are important.
The architect builds the cradle to defend the sleeper,Blah Blah Blah,The Crash Occurs after the swarm takes down the Skylark,Between these two events we can assume Alpha Squad was deployed due to the fact that the Spiral Order did not setup a comlink connection which we know is activated when you restore power to the camp, A few missions later we find Razwog and the artifact,At this point we can assume Herex would be experimenting with his "Poison",A lot of missions later we see that herex is connected to the swarm,but how and why is still unknown,Meanwhile the swarm would spread,A lot of missions later we learn that parma's scout is broadcasting from nearby yet she cant physically reach us? [Important Factor:The range would be helpful,so be on the lookout for that],We learn the fate of alpha squad and report back to haven.
What we can expect:Another exhibition of the core and encountering alpha squad OR Herex,
The Morai aren't really mentioned in dialogue to know exactly what they are but i found that Morai could derive from Samurai(SA-MORAI),So Samurais vs knights?..As for the planet of the Spiral Knights(Isora),It could be driven by "Azumi-no-isora (阿曇磯良?) is a shinto kami of the seashore. He is considered to be the ancestor of the Azumi people. He is worshiped at a number of shrines, including Mekari Shrine (和布刈神社?) of Kitakyushu and Shiga Shrine (志賀神社?) of Tsushima",Or "the 1374 Isora (1935 UA) is a Mars-crossing asteroid discovered on October 21, 1935 by Delporte, E. at Uccle.With an absolute magnitude (H) of 13.2,the asteroid is roughly 10 km in diameter,1374 Isora (1935 UA) is a Mars-crossing asteroid discovered on October 21, 1935 by Delporte, E. at Uccle.With an absolute magnitude (H) of 13.2, the asteroid is roughly 10 km in diameter,It is one of the largest Mars-crossing It is one of the largest Mars-crossing asteroids."
Also the sleeper may be the "vog" deity we hear about.
Wed, 07/08/2015 - 09:54
#10
I...
I have never thought of the Morai being Samurai... That would actually make a stupid amount of sense.
The Morai are a race similar to our own, with land and presumably air vehicles that surpassed our own apparently. We can group this together from weapon and costume descriptions, starting with the Iron Dragon set and ending with the breach blaster (as far as I've seen).
Herex messing with a poison is not very critical to the story. His name is the "whispering venom". All of his constructs and levels have a poison theme (Crimson Chaos has his robots take over the facility, they are all poison. The Herex fight we have right now have poison constructs, and compound 42 is poison themed with a side of fire), and he has ghostmane stalkers to aid him (keeping the whispers in). His whole theme is cloaking and poison, so there's no real need to emphasize on the poison. Also, the swarm is not his creation, nor his poison. The swarm is a completely separate entity that Herex has learned about or suspects something of, and wishes to control it for his own bidding.
Wed, 07/08/2015 - 12:16
#11
zzz
It seems that everything regarding the main storyline has been covered here already, so I'll talk and speculate about one piece of the lore that gets ignored frequently. The Fiends.
If we go by the part of the story that says Cradle is made of pieces of several planets, the Legion of Ur was an army of Trojans on their homeworld that conquered several kingdoms with their immense power. Once the Architect (who I'm presuming is King Tinkinzar, or possibly a previous king of the Gremlins) created the Clockworks and the Gremlins became the first "guardians" of Cradle, before they became power hungry, they found a way to banish nearly all of the Legion to the Underworld before they put Cradle in danger. But here's where the Devilites come in. They found the remaining Trojans in the Clockworks, and learned about how the rest of Ur was sealed away. Thus, they decide to try to bring back the original army in the mission Return of Ur, but this plan fails when we infiltrate their city in that mission.
Still, the Devilites aren't willing to give up, so for the time being, they temporarily take an alternative approach to reviving the Legion; instead of bringing back the original Trojans, they make more Trojans. There first known act of doing this is shown in the mission The Silent Legion, when Guardian Knight Arkus is partially transformed into one. While the details of how this happened to him are left up to speculation, here's how I think they create Trojans:
When an emotionally vulnerable knight enters the Clockworks, the Devilites take advantage of their fragile states and whisper falsehoods into their mind, that are something along the lines of "Come to us, we'll make all the pain go away." Arkus' mourning and guilt for his dead squad is one example of emotional fragility. Once the knight succumbs to their influence, they are turned into a Trojan with a constantly overlooked plot device: Dark Matter. Ever seen those rooms in Clockwork Tunnels full of Minerals with mysterious symbols drawn on the ground? That shows that the Devilites were there, looking for Dark Matter to make more soldiers.
In fact, the Trojans aren't the only monsters the Devilites are trying to take control of for themselves. They've also used Dark Matter to revive and corrupt another ancient group of fallen monsters: the Tortodrones.
So, what do we know about the Fiends? Well, all that we can say at this point is that they're more important than we've been lead to believe, and whatever they're after, they seem to want to resurrect forgotten legends to get there. In the future, we could be seeing them try to enter the race to claim the Core.
Thu, 07/09/2015 - 06:01
#12
back by unpopular demand: me
Silver we still don't know who shot down the skylark, it being the swarm is speculation
Alpha squad was sent out after the crash, we has only just to cradle and conducted a partial scan, no teams had been deployed yet
Thu, 07/09/2015 - 12:17
#13
Eh...
Devilites aren't trying to corrupt knights. They capture knights and force them to do office work. If they really wanted to turn knights into trojans, they would just do that.
I would assume Devilites simply know how to make Dark Matter work well. They stick it in any orifice of a stone structure and with a bit of underworldly power, the statues are reanimated. This is why breaking the dark matter on Trojans is important, as that kills their life source.
With Arkus, he is not a reanimated statue. This is why he does not turn to stone when defeated, and also why he still takes damage from the front. In all likelihood, he was just seeking peace for his grief. Perhaps the ruinous crystal on his back gave him power, or perhaps he had it jabbed in him while searching for the squad he was sworn to protect.
Most probably the crystal on Arkus' back is just a gameplay element though. We've fought horses and they resist all damage from the front, so Three Rings wanted us to know we need to flank Arkus for a bonus.
Each monster family has its own lore tagged onto it. Fiends are not a unique case. In fact, the gremlin story arch is much more involved, whereas fiends are pretty much just the underworld leaking.
Thu, 07/09/2015 - 16:35
#14
Why its most likely that the swarm shot down the skylark
Sure,we might not have tons of evidence to back this up..But in the prologue of the game we can see the skylark getting shot down,by what? a redish pink color,Know what else is a redish pink color? The Swarm..I might be wrong but at this point im convinced that The Swarm (Or something similar to the swarm)shot down the skylark..As for the trojan discussion,It might seem possible that Devilites may or may not be able to turn knights into trojans..
Well, just for some random info, at the end of the mission crimson chaos, it seems as though Herex's foot soldiers (ghostmane stalkers) killed some rebel gremlins who seemed to be studying a green liquid, with some valestone in it, the green liquid could be Herex's poison. At the end of the mission spark and roar (i think) there is a depth where there are a few notable things, one being that there is a large, green crimson order symbol on the ground, blue viles and a module. The colour of the viles is important as blue is the colour of remedy caps and the other mineral that hasn't been used for a pet (Moonstone). The ghostmane stalkers could have been sent here, as the gremlin corpses are probably more rebels, trying to find a cure to Herex's poison (as remedy caps heal poison, and the viles are the colour of remedy caps). As for the module, There are some VERY STRANGE capital letter placements. I will write the exact module below:
The Iron Law is Broken!
The Crimson Order is False!
The Nine are blind, they cannot see the Truth that lies below.
The Nine are deaf, they cannot hear the Resonance that beats within this world.
Herex no longer serves as one of the Nine.
Only Herex sees and hears the Truth. Only Herex will prevail.
Follow Herex and you will be spared.
The word "truth" comes up a couple of times, and is capitalized. What is said Truth? Well, it lies below, and the mission "it came from below" clearly means that "it" is the swarm. The module also states that the Nine are blind from the Truth below and deaf from the resonance that beats within this world (aka the swarm).
Herex apparently is the only one that can see and hear the swarm, so only he will prevail. Before i go on, i just started wondering, who wrote this module? Anyways, Herex probably usurped the throne from the king tinkinzar and/or killed him, as you must follow him to be spared. Near the end of the DLC, a sign says that the King Tinkinzar alone holds the iron law, but in the module it says that said law is broken, so the king must be dead. Another sign says that the nine "hear all, see all", but only Herex can (as stated in the module), as the thing they cannot see nor hear is the swarm.
In the mission compound 42, at the beginning of the second depth, you learn that the production of the poison at the compound is to be ceased as it can provide useful in achieving a..."higher" power amongst the order, but is to dangerous to be held in the compound. It then says to destroy all traces of the compound right away, and any gremlins who aren't part of the "inner fold". This shows that this compound is where Herex found the special poison in the first place, and the "higher" power is using it for the swarm.
I feel as though there isn't enough info on the Sleeper to for sure say what it is, although near the end of an unknown passage some blocks do spawn and save you, as they lead you to the elevator to the sanctuary.
I shall now try to go over every echo stone
The snarby echo stone states that "it" opened the void. "It" could be Herex using his poison. Nothing else in this stone matters.
The iq stone states that it saw the spiral knights crashing into cradle. It also states that the spiral order is the only thing holding back the swarm.
The rrt stone is the sleeper talking. It explains that many worlds were stitched into one to protect it, but now make up its prison. It then says how Herex used his poison to corrupt the core, and that it now devours any who go into the core.
All the stones mentioned above represent dreams that the sleeper had. The vana one is different, it's not stating that its dreaming of something, it's saying that while it was dreaming, the swarm was consuming absolutely everything. It also says "What it was before, it is no more" what was the swarm originally? Poison? I don't know.
Now onto a different subject, and the last I'm going to mention, even though there's so much more i could ;_;, when the spiral knights got shot down, was it gremlins who shot them down? I'm actually guessing it was the Sleeper, in an attempt to find something to save it.
Sorry about any grammar mistakes i might have made, way to lazy to proofread :3