Inconsistencies--specifically timelines, esoteric names, locations, four questionable characters, and an insanely long title!

[Tracer Bullet]

Time

 

1. Sucia Island was abandoned two centuries.

 

2. Approx. thirty years between I and II

 

3. Approx. five years between II and III

 

4. Seven years between III and IV

 

5. Three years between IV and V

 

6. This all makes sense, until you consider that it was said the Shapers held dominion two millenia, and their oldest surviving fortresses, boast of two centuries.

Something is seriously wrong here. Maybe the old ones were the first to go in the chaos.

 

7. The real quirk comes when you consider the ages of the recurring characters. Ghaldring was incubating in part II, and is "elderly" fifteen years later--despite the lifespans of drayks?!

 

Locations and the Esoteric

 

1. Whatever happened to Terrestia being the "lesser of two continents"

 

2. I was under the impression that the Council was formed of three Agents, three Shapers, and three Guardians.

 

3. The "Bound One" of Geneforge II was a demon imprisoned in a stone casing, like a golem. It was made In Taker lands by Barzahl's researchers, and enslaved a random man named Asher. How does this compare with the "Dark Golem" of part V, which was created in Kratoa-Kel by a "Guardian Asher." Huh?

 

4.I may look like a sucker for saying this, but I never got into the caves under the Monastery of Tears. Help.

 

5.Gazak-Uss was a hell. A dump where they locked up the uncontrollable fiends of nightmare and weird chemistry. How does this translate into Gazaki-Uss?

 

6. This brings me to a really obscure but annoying point. Issss-Ta, as of Icy End, claims "Eo" to mean "new" Shouldn't it be "Gazak-Eo"?

 

7. Issss-Ta, as of Zhass-Uss, claims "Uss" to mean "taken". So the names of part II sound OK. Then, later, the suffix "Uss" means "fortress."

 

8. Also, assuming "Uss" to still mean "taken," Khima-Uss makes sense. But why then "Quessa-Uss"? It goes the other way, too. If "Uss" means "fortress" Khima-Uss should still be "Khima"

 

Madmen of mark

 

1. Phariton. He was one of the mutinous cleanup crew sent to Sucia Island. If you ask me, (you don't) he is a main candidate for Shaper Monarch--as well as our beloved Avatar Amnesia, as I call him.

 

2. Geneforge III PC is also the prime candidate for Shaper Monarch, given the way Khyryk (why can no one spell his name?!), Alwan, Greta and Litalia all have a greater-than-normal contempt and disgust for him.

 

3. Monarch, of course. Not likely he is our part V PC, but it's a possibility, especially if you spare his life. He says he will go west.

 

4. The Last, The Greatest, The Most Patently Obvious, our much-esteemed befuddled foundry-worker! Any ideas?

[Milla]

[*]The Shaper colony they had on Sucia was abandoned two centuries before G1. HOWEVER the proto-shapers that had started there abandoned the island millennia ago. This information was lost in time so when that Shaper colony arrived they did not know they were walking on the birthplace of their culture.

 

[*] I do agree ageing is skewy with some of the Drayk and Drakon characters. War could have aged the prematurely.

 

[*]Word of Jeff is he forgot about it. Some people like to try to work with this by saying east and western Terrestia are the two continents. Alternatively, the Shapers on the mysterious other continent could have heard how stuff was falling apart in Terrestia and the higher ups decided to break all contacts. (Those huge ports on the G5 maps were built for a reason.)

 

[*] It was. Though they have had a war going on so people could have been removed and replaced.

 

[*] People can have the same name. It happens in real life all the time.

 

...Screw this I'll look at the other stuff later.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

Time

The short answer is that yes, Jeff did seem to change the time periods of somethings, like how long the Shapers had been in Terrestia.

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

Locations and the Esoteric

1. One continent disappeared. Jeff forgot it.

2. Maybe during time of war the Council changed? But yes, it does seem like it was originally the three by three, and then was different by G5.

4. What exactly do you need help with? It's a bunch of really hard monsters, though it helps if you have high mechanics and turn off the generator that makes more. You'll have to be more specific on where you're stuck.

5. I think the idea was that Gazaki-Uss was built near where old Gazak-Uss was, not that it was same kind of place.

6. No. Gazak-Uss was the dumping ground. The main Taker base in G2 was actually Beneri-Uss. So Beneri-Eo in G3 was named after Beneri-Uss of G2.

[Aoslare]

Sucia Island was where shaping began... MILLENIA ago, when it was the tribal ancestors of the Shapers doing it. Then Sucia became unimportant for a long time, and then at some point Shapers rediscovered whatever was special about it, and it became a research center. I'm not sure it's ever specified how long it operated for -- I'd guess somewhere between 50 and 200 years. THEN Sucia was totally abandoned, and that's the 200 years before G1 point.

 

It's very unclear how this is connected to the Mera-Tev, but it must be somehow.

 

As regards duplicitous -uss, two different words can be spelled and spoken the same way, and that goes for suffixes too. For a simple example look at English -er, which is commonly used both to denote agency (a lighter lights things) or a comparative (something is lighter if it has more light to it). So while I agree that -uss is probably an unintentional conflation, it actually is quite realistic as it is.

[Randomizer]

There is also the possibility that Monarch was the mad guardian at Kratoa-Kel Stoneworks that decided to try a different line of research. There are indications that he fled to start over.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

5.Gazak-Uss was a hell. A dump where they locked up the uncontrollable fiends of nightmare and weird chemistry. How does this translate into Gazaki-Uss?

On this point, specifically, Alwan mentions that Gazaki means "little Gazak," though he didn't know what Gazak meant. This means that, instead of being the New Gazak-Uss, it's translation comes out closer to Little Gazak-Uss, explaining the lack of an -Eo.

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Monarch had three years since the end of part IV. Implications had it that "Guardian Asher" had liver six or seven decades back.

[A less presumptuous name.]

So what if he had liver a few decades ago? We're not here to judge people on their eating habits!

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Master1

So what if he had liver a few decades ago? We're not here to judge people on their eating habits!

Ah, but what if Guardian Asher was actually part of the evil corporate conspiracy of Big Liver, and his shaping activities were only a front for far more nefarious schemes? Then his liver consumption decades ago becomes a vital clue!!!

[Tracer Bullet]

Geez, do ya have ta jump on me fer a typo?

"lived"

[Tirien]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

Geez, do ya have ta jump on me fer a typo?

Yes, we do. It's one of the many reason's that you should have left your sanity at the door. But since nobody gave you the offical welcome yet (I think)...

Welcome to Spiderweb Software, leave your sanity at the door. (The Fluffy Turtles must be appeased!)

[Tracer Bullet]

If you're looking for my sanity, look for Doc Brown and ask if he'll ferry you to '97. Then go to Tennessee, and look in a hospital bassinet in Nashville. See my signature.

[Tracer Bullet]

Actually I just realized you can fix several story quirks by adding thirty-five or so years between G2 and G3. It would explain why Litalia says she was an apprentice, going into the Drypeak mountains for field work, when she is an elderly woman in G5.

 

As for insanity, never fight a land war in Asia.

But second, and only slightly less well-known...

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yeah, I was gonna say regarding the time between 2 and 3. 35 years seems a bit much (I had expected 15 to 25, but it's hard to say), but 5 is unequivocally far too little for some of the stuff Litalia and company describe happening between 2 and 3.

 

Agreed, the aging of drayks and drakons is handled in weird ways, not to say badly. Several of the G1 drayks have been alive since Sucia Island was barred, and other games occasionally mention that drayks live longer than humans, but then there's Iss-Ta, who is described as young in G2, old in G3, and ancient in G4.

 

Regarding the council: this one has an easy answer, and I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. Nine shaper councilors corresponds to eight provinces and one high councilor. By G5, two provinces (Illya and Burwood) are apparently under complete rebel control. The councilors for these provinces may have been killed in the fighting (I think Alwan mentions something like this for Illya in G4 by way of explaining how he became commander of the Shaper forces there). Even if they weren't, the shaper government wouldn't have much use for governors of provinces that are no longer in shaper hands. That leaves seven, for the six remaining provinces & high councilor.

 

As for the suffix "-uss," does anyone besides Alwan say that it means "fortress?" He could just be mistranslating, based on the fact that the most prominent places with that suffix are fortresses.

[Tracer Bullet]

Good try. However, five of the Council are Shapers, one is an Agent, and one is the Guardian . It was originally three of each. I don't see how such a change could have taken place. You would have to kill off all three Guardians from the Council in part IV to make room for Alwan, then two Agents, then two more Shapers would have to be promoted. To much change for three years.

 

As for "Uss," it becomes apparent that a replay of G2 and G3 would do you good.

[Dikiyoba]

The big picture of the Shaper Council clearly shows that there is a Guardian besides Alwan. However, Dikiyoba agrees with you that the new Council structure is a retcon.

[Tracer Bullet]

And Calvin the Bold commends you on the third person usage.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Five shapers on the council? Perhaps you would benefit from a replay of G5. The seven council members are as follows: Guardian (Alwan, Nawaz), Agent (Astoria, Sharissa), Shaper (Rawal, Taygen, Shema). This is abundantly clear from the in-game graphics and descriptions.

 

I can't see how a replay of G3 would relieve me of my ignorance, given that there are no locations in G3 with the "-uss" ending. As for G2: Zhass-Uss doesn't seem much of a fortress, that's true. Benerii-Uss and Gazak-Uss are certainly fortified complexes. They're not free-standing, constructed buildings like Gorash-Kel and the forts of the line, but neither are Haria-Kel or Isenwood's Spire, and the game refers to the former as "Haria-Kel, ancient fortress."

[Tracer Bullet]

Issss-Ta discusses linguistics, briefly, in Icy End.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

Yes, she does. And the fact that she says things like "[benerii-Eo] is the successor of Benerii-Uss, the mighty fortress far from here" reinforces my point. Of the 6 locations with "-uss" at the ends of their names, 4 are fortresses, and so it seems plausible that Alwan could have simply gotten the term wrong. Further, the two he would likely spend the most time thinking about (Quessa-Uss and Gazaki-Uss) are clearly such.

[Aoslare]

It's very plausible that Alwan got it wrong. He never seemed particularly smart. It's also plausible that there are redundancies in the Drakon lexicon. Heck, it could be both.

[Tracer Bullet]

No one is taking into account the other proposed definition for "Uss"

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor

No one is taking into account the other proposed definition for "Uss"

On that note, I'd argue that Uss can mean "fortress" as well as "taken," as a sort of Drakonian lingual trick. Taken can be specific to a military context, for instance, and, giving that it arose from the Takers of Free, it's entirely possible that it has been taken of free. The Rebels have done this before (after, really), for instance, with the freeholds.

[Tracer Bullet]

Oh yeah, whatever happened to the cultists? They were cool, for monomaniacs.

[Txgangsta]

Why are we debating the minor historical discrepancies in a fictional world?

 

Edit: Oops, didn't realize it was dead. I was probably in the search function and saw this.

[Tirien]

Why are we reviving dead threads when we have nothing to add?

[Tracer Bullet]

I've got something to add: Phariton's dialogue sounds a lot like Gollum.

[Txgangsta]

"NO! ITS MY CANISTER! ...My precious..."

[Ceiling Durkheim]

We weren't, until you reanimated the thread. Oh bitter, delicious irony!

[Aoslare]

Kaboom! Adios, thread.