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Is there any definitive answer on the history of the Player Character in Geneforge 5? I recently played through the GF2 Remaster, and decided to start another run through GF5. I had always grouped 1&2 together, then 3-5 together, but I'm starting to wonder if the PC is actually a past hero from GF2. If you explore The Foundry Repository for the Trakovite Entry Quest, you find out that you're an amnesiac Rawal found wandering in the Drypeak Mountains, who had significant alterations. At first, I thought this refutes the idea that you're reprising the character from GF2, since but later, when you get to the Oasis Fields and talk to Sage Lara, she seems to indicate that you played a significant role in your past (which was in the Drypeak Mountains). To quote her, After thinking about it more, Rawal only found the PC - he didn't see what altered them, and it seems like the Canisters and the Geneforge work the same way. Is it possible that Rawal mistook heavy canister usage for Geneforge usage? I assume that he built his Geneforge in order to repair your damaged character, since the geneforge rewrites genes.

Hello, I am taking a crack at some Geneforge based creative writing and ran into a dilemma. Is there any indication in the games anywhere of how the passage of time is measured? Perhaps data logs or historical writings? They reference days, weeks, months, and years, so I know they have them, but I don't know how long they are, how many there are per cycle, or when (approximately) major events occur. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: I have never played Avernum 4-6. I have no idea in the slightest what happens in those games. In Avernum 3, the plagues created by the Vahnatai admittedly do a lot of damage to Valorim, but the fact remains that they are pretty easily nullified by a single group of people. Later on, the Vahnatai suffer a devastating defeat at Rentar Ihnro's keep at the hands of the same small group. Lore-wise, it is repeatedly shown throughout the series that individual Vahnatai, while dangerous, cannot go toe to toe with larger forces without being wiped out (see: Ornotha Ziggurat). The most powerful Vahnatai was, for all practical purposes, defeated in combat by a single human arch-mage, and their Crystal Souls were easily nullified and destroyed when they were fought in the golem factory. Based on that, I kind of wonder just how dangerous they really are. It seems like in a head-on battle between the Vahnatai and even Avernum's forces, the Vahnatai would probably have lost. Certainly it doesn't seem like they could possibly have stood up to the Empire in a straight fight. They seem more like "very dangerous commandos" who couldn't survive a set piece battle against a real army. It seems like what defeated the Empire in Avernum 2 was less the intervention of the Vahnatai than Avernum completely crippling the empire's logistics by destroying the portal. Curious about people's opinions: 1. Could Avernum have won the war in Avernum 2 without the Vahnatai's help? 2. Could the Vahnatai possibly have survived a war against the Empire?

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the wondrous world of Geneforge. If you'd like to learn about the world without having to play through the game and learn everything, or without having to piece together stuff from all the different threads on here, this should prove fairly useful to you. However, SPOILERS! ALL THE SPOILERS! LITERALLY EVERY SPOILER OF WHICH I CAN THINK! Geneforge (GF1): Welcome to Sucia Island, a Shaper research facility abandoned some two centuries ago. It is here that the problems in the world started, in more ways than just one. Sucia Island was an enormous research facility, industry, and school all in one. In its mines remain machines that can create powerful tools out of raw materials in but a moment. At one end, near one its three huge docks, lies the remains of a school. In the remainder of the island are crypts, holding cells, administrative centers, and most importantly... the location of the Geneforge. It all starts with the discovery of the gene. Shaper scientists had discovered the existence of a 'tiny scroll' in your body that holds the information to its entire structure. No longer would Shapers have to experimentally mutate creations to make them better. Now, all they had to do was figure out the corresponding code to do something, and make it so. However, they began to go too far. The Shapers discovered how to 'safely' reShape themselves, and give themselves powers in a single moment. Though this began to concern Shapers on the mainland of the 2 only continents, they only truly began to address their concerns upon the near-completion of the Geneforge, a tool that could give a person enormous, godlike powers in a short moment. All Shapers were recalled from the island with great haste, leaving behind many of their augmentation canisters, tools, waste, and most importantly... all of their serviles. Those that survived formed three distinct factions. The most pliable and docile Serviles - to Shapers, at least - were the Obeyers, loyal to the Shapers to the bitter end. They cruelly used their resources in Pentil, a former Shaper fort, to repress the other villages as best as possible. Their neighbors were the Awakened, who did not wish to serve the Shapers any longer, but wanted to deal with them as equals. They inhabited Vakkiri, in the southwest corner of the island. The poor, doomed "Takers of Free", known best as the Takers, inhabited Kazg, the former administrative center of the island. The Takers grew to hate the Shapers as a result of waste in the South Workshop poisoning them and their land. One day, everything changed. Outsiders landed on this barred island, outsiders from a distant continent far across the sea. They learned the secrets of Shapers, gaining great powers from the canisters. There, on Sucia, they discovered the Geneforge. Trajkov, their leader, decided that they needed a Shaper to unlock its power. The Shaper he selected was a man named Goettsch, someone about as charming as Sage Taygen. Goettsh gained Trajkov's confidence, then stole the shaping gloves needed to unlock the Geneforge's power and fled. An already formidable Shaper, he used all the canisters he could find, eventually causing a great stalemate between the two factions: rogue Shaper and Sholai. Trajkov decided that, though he still needed a Shaper, a different kind would be needed to unlock the power of the Geneforge. An apprentice Shaper. And so the player enters this situation, stranded on the island by an attack by the Sholai's last remaining ship. The player would wander the island, seeing the serviles. Perhaps he would kill them, perhaps he would help them. In his explorations of the island, this apprentice gained great powers from the canisters, and discovered a MASSIVE SPOILER about Sucia. This island was, indeed, the birthplace of the Shapers. Through uncontrolled use of Shaping to kill their enemies, the Shapers accidentally created monstrosities and diseases that drove them from Sucia for centuries. The apprentice, feeling some kind of loyalty to the Shapers or something who knows killed Trajkov, killed Goettsch, and escaped Sucia to land in Dillame, warning the Shapers about what had happened. They were impressed by this apprentice, and sent him off to his training while they burned Sucia Island to the ground. This Shaper became a famous and important traveling Shaper who eventually dropped off the face of the world since it was too hard to put him in later games. Geneforge 2: And now welcome to the Drypeak Mountains, a place that appears to be even more boring than the state of Montana. This massive desert is the combined result of a failure of Shapers to bring life to it and the failure of Zakary to not be a piece of- However, when an Agent, Shanti, and an apprentice assigned to her show up to take stock of the miserable failure of Drypeak, it becomes clear that all is not how it seems. Zakary, the Shaper in charge of the settlement of Drypeak, gives some unconvincing lies to the representatives of the Shaper council that almost make it seem as though he wants them to intervene. After a short period of investigation, Shanti is kidnapped by Barzahl's agents, the other Shaper who had come to Drypeak, and the apprentice finds that the claims of Drypeak's failure were a complete lie. The Shapers had, using knowledge stolen from Sucia Island during its purge, filled a hidden valley with life and brought elements of the Awakened, as well as some drayks from Sucia, with them. A few dozen Shaper apprentices had accompanied Zakary and Barzahl, and had split between the two as both diverged into two factions: wimpy loyalists of Zakary, and insane canister addicts of Barzahl. Meanwhile, the creations had once again split among familiar lines, with drayks and the newly created drakons fomenting war against the Shapers, and the Awakened being naive fools. Unfortunately for basically everyone present, the Shaper apprentice, whatever his misgivings about the absolute rule of the Shapers, remained loyal and reported back to the Shaper council. The response was immediate and ruthless. ALL TEH SHAPERS KILL EVER ONE. Massive armies, including one psychopathic... apprentice... named Litalia came to burn everything. The Takers pretty much all died. The Awakened pretty much all died. The Barzites all died. Zakary probably also died, but nobody missed him. Some elements survived, namely the greatest creation ever shaped, and this by another Drakon. For behind a sealed door in the mountain complex of Gazak-Uss was Eass' greatest creation: Ghaldring. TO BE CONTINUED

So I've finally decided to replay GeneForge 1 and go through the effort of touching all the stone pillars. And I found the lore behind the Shapers and Sucia to be incredibly fascinating. How the Shapers went from shooting magic radiation at their enemies to give them cancer to discovering Genes and self-sealing (although not many people know either fact) I love the irony when the Shapers denounce the natives as backwards savage, only to not only be their descendants but some have also repeated the Sucians' mistakes (attempting to transcend death via necromancy). I'm sad that there wasn't more lore. Are there any more explorations of Shapers' history in later games? I hope I was missing something.