So what's the lore? -Spoilers-

[andrey_myxomor47]

After beating the game I'm still left with a lot of questions.

For example:
What are the black roots? Do they just disappear when you kill Cain? Where did they come from? Are they corrupting things that manifest corruption?

Where are all the people the Pizza Girl's saving? When did the rebellion happen? Why are there only monsters in the castle and no visible humans? Why are there still people to save when many generations of the player's original character should definetely outlast a human life?

Are all the heirs just clones and they just poof into existence after the one who went into the castle dies?

Is the game a prequel to Rogue Legacy 1? The ending achievement is called a Prequel to a Sequel. Does that mean that RL2 is, indeed, a prequel? Why did Castle Hamson become corrupted then and where did everyone go? Who is Johannes? The games have to be tied somehow.

Were the Estuaries human and we only get to see them as mutants corrupted by roots or something, like when we give the corrupted fruit to Cain and he becomes a coom man? Why did the Estuaries start betraying eachother?

I'll post more questions when they pop up in my head.

[Mechalibur]

Okay, so, here's what I understand. I've only gotten the bonus lore from the first two bosses so far, so my picture is incomplete.

The game takes place in the underground kingdom of Genesis. There's this King named Cain. He discovered the Fruit of Immortality from the Tree in the Garden of Eden. This makes him immortal, and he is able to extend his immortality to his followers if he allows them to consume his flesh. He makes seven estuaries: Lamech, Mehujael, Namaah, Enoch, Irad, Tubal, and Z (based on the biblical naming convention, I think her full name is Zillah).

Cain and his Estuaries conquer the kingdom above Genesis, and the king leaves. He tells his followers to ring the Bell of Return when the Tree of Life bears fruit, and he will return to Genesis. However, bad **** starts happening: the fruit of immortality causes souls to be diverted from the Stygian Ocean - normally they return to newborns, but instead are being recycled through the water. This causes the water to become deadly, but also creates Void Beasts and the Black Roots. At some point before the start of the game, and before the rebellion, Mehujael has to abandon being a captain due to most of his crew being killed by void beasts in the Stygian. He eventually relocates to the Nibiru Deep, but the Stygian swells and floods them. In order to survive, he makes his crew eat his flesh and become Estuaries of Estuaries, which is forbidden. This second generation of estuaries turn into monsters and eventually attack the kingdom. Mehujael is declared dead.

So all this crap is happening, and the citizens of Genesis are becoming upset, naturally. Most of the estuaries, however, want to keep their focus on serving the king and trying to tend to the tree in the Garden of Eden so that it bears fruit. Z sees that her people are suffering, and decides to start a rebellion. She enlists the help of royal knight J (Jonah) to help train the rebellion. Jonah can't bear to see Z come to harm, so he promises to help only so long as Z promises not to fight herself to which she agrees. Unfortunately, Jonah betrayed the rebellion and told Lamech that it was forming. He wanted the rebellion to be cut short so that only a few people would die, but he completely underestimated how many people Z would manage to gather.

Meanwhile, Lamech just sits on the information Jonah gave him, and decides not to tell the other Estuaries. He correctly believes that one of them is responsible for the rebellion, and wants to see them play their hand. He's also sick of serving his king and wants to die in glorious battle. Eventually, the Rebellion does happen and it's a massacre. Z presumably dies here, and Lamech is critically injured, but still alive. Jonah lives because he never actually joined the rebellion, but he's crippled with guilt over what happened.

Here's where things get messy due to the lore I'm missing: While all this has been going on, Enoch has been studying the Black Root and its connection to the Stygian. Tubal is diverting supplies from the Kingdom to construct an army of automatons (the floating weapon thingies). He's also killing boat-loads of people because they seem to be powered by souls (there's a pit of bodies in his workshop). He found out that Cain has created Estuaries on the surface, and it drives Tubal mad, swearing to get revenge on his King for abandoning Genesis for the surface - the surface that he helped conquer. He plans his own rebellion, but Irad eventually figures out what's going on, and he and the other Estuaries capture Tubal and feed him to the dragon.

Irad has been going completely loopy since the rebellion as the stress of his position is taking its toll on him. But after the death of Z, he notices the tree of life seems to be looking better, and may actually sprout the fruit. He concludes that every Estuary needs to be eliminated and fed to the tree. He starts to hatch a plan to kill the other estuaries or convince them to give up their lives. Enoch is starting to catch on, and tricks Irad by having him speak to a psychologist under the guise of helping him with his insomnia. As part of their sessions, the psychologist learns what Irad is secretly planning and where the Bell of Return is hidden.

Enoch by this point has fully developed his poison, but he and his assistant Murmur accidentally infected themselves and started a Black Root infestation in the Study. Jonah orders the study to be condemned and has his knights clear the place out. Enoch finishes writing his notes and hopes that someone discovers them to find out what is happening and how to stop Irad. He leads whoever reads it to his secret observatory, where he leaves a memory that can be read with Aesop's Tome. The memory directs the person listening to infect Irad with the poison he developed as it is potent enough to kill even an estuary. Jonah eventually discovers the writing and the memory and takes the poison from the Study. He travels to the Sun Tower, having learned it is where the Bell of Return is. He rings the bell, but encounters Irad at some point. He stabs Irad but gets away before they can get into a full fight. The knife was poisoned with Enoch's concoction, which transforms Irad into the weird eye monstrosity. That's pretty much about where the game starts, I believe.

The main character is Abel, Cain's brother. While Abel is not an estuary (I think), he is in possession of Hestia's Contract, which allows his soul to inhabit the body of his descendants (or extended family members?). He uses this to keep coming back to Genesis as many times as it takes to finally kill Cain and bring the cycle of souls back to its natural state

[phadin]

Originally posted by Добрый упырь:

Are all the heirs just clones and they just poof into existence after the one who went into the castle dies?

I forget where I found the answer to this one.... I think it was the stygian study.

At the beginning of the game you have an Herloom called Hestia's Contract. Estuary Enoch described this as the only man-made herloom. The signer of the contract passes their knowledge and possibly even personality on to the next signatory. Each of the followup characters is your heir not biologically, but in the sense that they were the next contract signatory, inheriting your knowledge and personality.

[Zombie]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Irad has been going completely loopy since the rebellion as the stress of his position is taking its toll on him. But after the death of Z, he notices the tree of life seems to be looking better, and may actually sprout the fruit. He concludes that every Estuary needs to be eliminated and fed to the tree. He starts to hatch a plan to kill the other estuaries or convince them to give up their lives. Enoch is starting to catch on, and tricks Irad by having him speak to a psychologist under the guise of helping him with his insomnia. As part of their sessions, the psychologist learns what Irad is secretly planning and where the Bell of Return is hidden.

Enoch by this point has fully developed his poison, but he and his assistant Murmur accidentally infected themselves and started a Black Root infestation in the Study. Jonah orders the study to be condemned and has his knights clear the place out. Enoch finishes writing his notes and hopes that someone discovers them to find out what is happening and how to stop Irad. He leads whoever reads it to his secret observatory, where he leaves a memory that can be read with Aesop's Tome. The memory directs the person listening to infect Irad with the poison he developed as it is potent enough to kill even an estuary. Jonah eventually discovers the writing and the memory and takes the poison from the Study. He travels to the Sun Tower, having learned it is where the Bell of Return is. He rings the bell, but encounters Irad at some point. He stabs Irad but gets away before they can get into a full fight. The knife was poisoned with Enoch's concoction, which transforms Irad into the weird eye monstrosity. That's pretty much about where the game starts, I believe.

This is a bit of a spoiler as it involves Irad Prime's lore.



Irad was the most faithful Estuary to the king, and he was actually going to basically fix the entire issues of the tree of life himself. The rebellion was currently ongoing and Irads disciple would take letters written by Irad with complex battle tactics to give to the king. With Irads supreme strategies the Rebellion was no match. But eventually finds out that the letters the king has been sending in reply were signed by ''Estuary -disciple-''(I forgot his name).

Irad learns that his disciple had been erasing Irad's involvement in the letters and taking credit for Irad's tactics, even gaining himself a position as Estuary. Irad eventually realizes that the King is going to wonder why Irad is even hanging around at all if he's so useless and can't even give him the proper tactics to defend his kingdom and will eventually just kill Irad off.

When Irad confronts his disciple about this, the disciple basically tells him he's screwed because if he stops letting him send the letters the kingdom will fall due to having no strategist to save them, but if he continues to aid the disciple he will keep stealing his credit and Irad will die as a useless nobody to the king.



Irad decides that it's time to betray his kingdom at this point, if the king is such an idiot that he can't even defend his own kingdom and kills the one who has been helping him all this time, why can't Irad be the king instead? Surely it would fare much better under his rule.




I also think Irad was always a monstrosity as well. The developers were very clear on this because once you beat Mehajuels estuaries in their prime form, the picture that appears on the door to Jonah actually shows the original Estuary Mehujuael(he looks really cool). But Irad even ''before the poison'' in his prime form still maintains the eyeball portrait.

[Mechalibur]

I wouldn't take the portraits as an indication the estuaries always looked like that. The original portrait isn't even of Mehujael, so it's not really showing you a before vs after comparison.

[andrey_myxomor47]

Well you guys wrote a lot here. Really interesting. Thank you for answering some of my questions. Hoping for more.

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

I wouldn't take the portraits as an indication the estuaries always looked like that. The original portrait isn't even of Mehujael, so it's not really showing you a before vs after comparison.

That's why I asked whether they've always looked like monsters or were at some point at least partially human, but I think that it's kind of a stupid question. Who would hire three gigantic eyeballs as their strategist?

[Zombie]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

I wouldn't take the portraits as an indication the estuaries always looked like that. The original portrait isn't even of Mehujael, so it's not really showing you a before vs after comparison.

They are his estuaries, containing his blood. it stands to reason they have a right to be on the portait as they are in essence Mehujael himself but they are corrupted before you fight the prime variant which happens ''before'' the corruption.


Also, why wouldn't you want Irad as your strategist? He literally can ''see'' everything. In his prime form you literally fight him across multiple planes of existence. He is the kings eyes.

[Mechalibur]

He's physically writing in a journal, prior to the poisoning. I'm not sure 3 giant eyeballs could do that. Or even move to another location to discuss strategy with other estuaries.

We already know from Cain that the poison has a significant effect on physiology- he has his own monstrous transformation. It stands to reason that something similar happened with Irad.

[Derpykat5]

Adding on to the whole Irad thing; the prime burden's description states that you're fighting Irad "after the transformation is complete", so there is some transformation going on here (also I doubt Halpharr and Byarrith were the size of giants in life, they were just normal dudes, remember?)

[Ryukan]

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Okay, so, here's what I understand. I've only gotten the bonus lore from the first two bosses so far, so my picture is incomplete.

The game takes place in the underground kingdom of Genesis. There's this King named Cain. He discovered the Fruit of Immortality from the Tree in the Garden of Eden. This makes him immortal, and he is able to extend his immortality to his followers if he allows them to consume his flesh. He makes seven estuaries: Lamech, Mehujael, Namaah, Enoch, Irad, Tubal, and Z (based on the biblical naming convention, I think her full name is Zillah).

Cain and his Estuaries conquer the kingdom above Genesis, and the king leaves. He tells his followers to ring the Bell of Return when the Tree of Life bears fruit, and he will return to Genesis. However, bad **** starts happening: the fruit of immortality causes souls to be diverted from the Stygian Ocean - normally they return to newborns, but instead are being recycled through the water. This causes the water to become deadly, but also creates Void Beasts and the Black Roots. At some point before the start of the game, and before the rebellion, Mehujael has to abandon being a captain due to most of his crew being killed by void beasts in the Stygian. He eventually relocates to the Nibiru Deep, but the Stygian swells and floods them. In order to survive, he makes his crew eat his flesh and become Estuaries of Estuaries, which is forbidden. This second generation of estuaries turn into monsters and eventually attack the kingdom. Mehujael is declared dead.

So all this crap is happening, and the citizens of Genesis are becoming upset, naturally. Most of the estuaries, however, want to keep their focus on serving the king and trying to tend to the tree in the Garden of Eden so that it bears fruit. Z sees that her people are suffering, and decides to start a rebellion. She enlists the help of royal knight J (Jonah) to help train the rebellion. Jonah can't bear to see Z come to harm, so he promises to help only so long as Z promises not to fight herself to which she agrees. Unfortunately, Jonah betrayed the rebellion and told Lamech that it was forming. He wanted the rebellion to be cut short so that only a few people would die, but he completely underestimated how many people Z would manage to gather.

Meanwhile, Lamech just sits on the information Jonah gave him, and decides not to tell the other Estuaries. He correctly believes that one of them is responsible for the rebellion, and wants to see them play their hand. He's also sick of serving his king and wants to die in glorious battle. Eventually, the Rebellion does happen and it's a massacre. Z presumably dies here, and Lamech is critically injured, but still alive. Jonah lives because he never actually joined the rebellion, but he's crippled with guilt over what happened.

Here's where things get messy due to the lore I'm missing: While all this has been going on, Enoch has been studying the Black Root and its connection to the Stygian. Tubal is diverting supplies from the Kingdom to construct an army of automatons (the floating weapon thingies). He's also killing boat-loads of people because they seem to be powered by souls (there's a pit of bodies in his workshop). He found out that Cain has created Estuaries on the surface, and it drives Tubal mad, swearing to get revenge on his King for abandoning Genesis for the surface - the surface that he helped conquer. He plans his own rebellion, but Irad eventually figures out what's going on, and he and the other Estuaries capture Tubal and feed him to the dragon.

Irad has been going completely loopy since the rebellion as the stress of his position is taking its toll on him. But after the death of Z, he notices the tree of life seems to be looking better, and may actually sprout the fruit. He concludes that every Estuary needs to be eliminated and fed to the tree. He starts to hatch a plan to kill the other estuaries or convince them to give up their lives. Enoch is starting to catch on, and tricks Irad by having him speak to a psychologist under the guise of helping him with his insomnia. As part of their sessions, the psychologist learns what Irad is secretly planning and where the Bell of Return is hidden.

Enoch by this point has fully developed his poison, but he and his assistant Murmur accidentally infected themselves and started a Black Root infestation in the Study. Jonah orders the study to be condemned and has his knights clear the place out. Enoch finishes writing his notes and hopes that someone discovers them to find out what is happening and how to stop Irad. He leads whoever reads it to his secret observatory, where he leaves a memory that can be read with Aesop's Tome. The memory directs the person listening to infect Irad with the poison he developed as it is potent enough to kill even an estuary. Jonah eventually discovers the writing and the memory and takes the poison from the Study. He travels to the Sun Tower, having learned it is where the Bell of Return is. He rings the bell, but encounters Irad at some point. He stabs Irad but gets away before they can get into a full fight. The knife was poisoned with Enoch's concoction, which transforms Irad into the weird eye monstrosity. That's pretty much about where the game starts, I believe.

The main character is Abel, Cain's brother. While Abel is not an estuary (I think), he is in possession of Hestia's Contract, which allows his soul to inhabit the body of his descendants (or extended family members?). He uses this to keep coming back to Genesis as many times as it takes to finally kill Cain and bring the cycle of souls back to its natural state

Lots of wrong stuff.



*Spoilers*!!














The King allowing other people to consume his flesh and become estuaries was a mistake, it actually started to kill him, thats why he was seeking for another fruit.

The king was on the surface, he just send his estuaries to grow the tree and a new fruit. "Z" is not a estuary at all, she is Pizza Girl and the daughter of Enoch and Naamah.

And the rest is so wrong im too lazy and sleepy to bother finishing. If you wanna know anything just ask...

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by Ryukan:

Lots of wrong stuff.

The King allowing other people to consume his flesh and become estuaries was a mistake, it actually started to kill him, thats why he was seeking for another fruit.

The king was on the surface, he just send his estuaries to grow the tree and a new fruit. "Z" is not a estuary at all, she is Pizza Girl and the daughter of Enoch and Naamah.

And the rest is so wrong im too lazy and sleepy to bother finishing.

Do we have any kind of evidence that the pizza girl - a random, shy, slightly awkward person with a name that starts with M - is Z, a charismatic rebellion leader who turned a fruitless resistance into a full-blown uprising?

[Ryukan]

Originally posted by derpykat5:

Originally posted by Ryukan:

Lots of wrong stuff.

The King allowing other people to consume his flesh and become estuaries was a mistake, it actually started to kill him, thats why he was seeking for another fruit.

The king was on the surface, he just send his estuaries to grow the tree and a new fruit. "Z" is not a estuary at all, she is Pizza Girl and the daughter of Enoch and Naamah.

And the rest is so wrong im too lazy and sleepy to bother finishing.

Do we have any kind of evidence that the pizza girl - a random, shy, slightly awkward person with a name that starts with M - is Z, a charismatic rebellion leader who turned a fruitless resistance into a full-blown uprising?

Yes.

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by Ryukan:

Originally posted by derpykat5:

Do we have any kind of evidence that the pizza girl - a random, shy, slightly awkward person with a name that starts with M - is Z, a charismatic rebellion leader who turned a fruitless resistance into a full-blown uprising?

Yes.

Care to present this evidence?

[Ryukan]

Originally posted by derpykat5:

Originally posted by Ryukan:

Yes.

Care to present this evidence?

I almost spoiled a bunch of stuff cuz i understood your question wrong, i thought you wanted to know why she is Naamah and Enoch daughter. Uh, yeah she is "Z" for sure, just play the game and its pretty impossible to loose it, the game ll just throw it on you in the "True End".

[Ryukan]

Originally posted by Добрый упырь:

After beating the game I'm still left with a lot of questions.

For example:
What are the black roots? Do they just disappear when you kill Cain? Where did they come from? Are they corrupting things that manifest corruption?

Where are all the people the Pizza Girl's saving? When did the rebellion happen? Why are there only monsters in the castle and no visible humans? Why are there still people to save when many generations of the player's original character should definetely outlast a human life?

Are all the heirs just clones and they just poof into existence after the one who went into the castle dies?

Is the game a prequel to Rogue Legacy 1? The ending achievement is called a Prequel to a Sequel. Does that mean that RL2 is, indeed, a prequel? Why did Castle Hamson become corrupted then and where did everyone go? Who is Johannes? The games have to be tied somehow.

Were the Estuaries human and we only get to see them as mutants corrupted by roots or something, like when we give the corrupted fruit to Cain and he becomes a coom man? Why did the Estuaries start betraying eachother?

I'll post more questions when they pop up in my head.

1- The black roots are the roots of the tree of life, they are trying desperatly get souls due to nearly all the souls in the world being stuck inside the King and the Estuaries.

2- Hidding somewhere out of the 'danger zones" the player is going trough, its been several years since the rebelion. People there live for several hundreds of years and the "Heirs" are pretty much anyone qualified to sign the Hestia contract, not necessarily another generation, they are just regular people used to become the "vessel" of the king brother.

3- The games are only connected through the castle Hamson ( the player castle), pretty much the stories have no connection at all. Everybody just left the castle since Charon took possession of it and probbably all died many thousands of years before rogue legacy 1. The castle became part of the stygian river due to the Kind fusing with it. Johannes is tottaly not related to RL2, he is just a the guy is told to be in RL1 game diaries.

4- The estuaries were all "human" at the beggining. Only Tubal and Irad truly betrayed the estuaries. irad got desperated and thought becoming the ''King" would be the only option. And Tubal was greed and jelous and wanted to become the "King" as well. Both wanted to kill all estuaries in order to grow the tree of life fruit. Irad wanted to save his own ass and give the fruit to the King. Tubal wanted to eat it and become the "New King".

[Gnodab]

Originally posted by Ryukan:

Johannes is tottaly not related to RL2, he is just a the guy is told to be in RL1 game diaries.

There are a few heavily implied connections between Johannes and this game.

1. In a final journal entry it's heavily implied Maria is pregnant with Jonah's child.

2. In Maria's Docks dialogue she says she has a naming tradition within her family where the child is always named similarly to the parent, for instance her mother was named Miriam. Jonah > Johannes.

3. Jonah's armor is undeniably similar to Johannes', that is no coincidence.

So in other words, the real question is who is the King in RL1? Is it Jonah himself, gone back to Castle Hamson knowing the Fountain is there, or is it his child of an unknown name, who later fathers Johannes? How many generations may have passed? I think it's intentionally left up to the imagination.