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As far as how the worlds of Fae and Dran merged, that seems to be one massive, complex mess of various influences. I don't think it could be tied to a single event or person's actions, we have all sorts of background shenanigans making a mess of things in both realms, though that's especially true for the Fae. Faelin/Faerin, the counselors, Nimue, the Nightweaver, probably the Red Prince as well, the outcast colonies that moved out of the kingdom to live free of the King's influence, there are so many variables in the Fae side of the story. I'm sure there could be a simple explanation that accounts for all of them together, but it's a tangled web of politics and magic powers and fae trickery.
If you haven't played through the DLC yet the info below are spoilers.
The Fae world and Dran worlds were separate until the Fey Council grew unhappy with the King's rule and started to plot against him. Eventually they hatched a plot and with Nimue's help had him assassinated. Nimue had a change of heart at the last minute and changed the spell so that it would put him into a coma instead of killing him. Unfortunately for the Fey the King was responsible for more than just governing them and was likely the word's Guardian (or something similar). So when he fell into a coma the Fae world started to destabilize and bleed into the Dran world. The King wakes up, realizes he's been betrayed and goes on a bloody rampage starting with him using his god-like powers to manifest his castle fully into the Dran's world.
I also recall there being dialogue somewhere in the DLC that imply the king was woken up by "outside forces" which in Remnant generally points to the Root and root interference would also explain why the king is now rather insane. If you choose side with Nimue and return to her after killing the King she talks about fixing the world which I take to mean separating the Dran and Fae worlds.
One thing to remember is that we almost never move between worlds using a normal door. We almost always use a magic portal which implies to me that the two worlds are still mostly separate. With the exception of the Mad King's castle my guess is that most Fae structures do not exist physically within the Dran world since we still have to enter them via portal.
Oh, I don't think that's in question. One of the books around Losomn (I think around the Throne Room) directly describes him as such. It would explain why his death would have such an impact on the world. The loss of Yesha's Guardian (the One of Many Faces) during the events of Chronus led to a Root invasion of that world which we've been dealing with for two games now :)
So I believe you're quite correct there.
Right, but I'm still not sure that those were necessarily two separate worlds to begin with. We've never been given a clear definition of what constitutes "a world". Is it another planet, another dimension, or do those worlds not even follow the laws of celestial mechanics? N'erud is the closest we have. That's not just a world, but an entire separate universe with planets, stars, solar systems and black holes. More than that, it's a universe with a completely different timeline to ours, given that it has died in "the big crunch".
That's a considerable amount of time ahead of Earth, which seems to be just slightly ahead of real-world time. I believe that one fell to the Root somewhere during the Cold War, so 1950 to 1980, and it's been 100-120 years since then. N'erud, by contrast, would be untold billions of years later.
Now, obviously, we don't know that this is the case for ALL worlds. We know it was the case for Rhom, though, since the Undying King used power from the sun and I think some kind of installation on the moon to nuke Rhom back to the stone age. So at least two of the "worlds" are a good fit for what we'd expect an alternate-dimension universe to be like.
The reason I'm saying all this is that for two worlds to "merge" like what we see in Losom would involve a lot more than transplanting buildings for one into the other. It would involve collisions of significant land masses, as well. This is what leads me to believe that the Fey and Dran never actually lived in separate worlds. Rather, they lived in two different aspects of the same world. The Dran seem to have coexisted with "monsters they refused to see" for far longer than just the merger.
We have no precedent for such a merger of worlds and the Labyrinth Keeper never addresses. Granted, he doesn't comment on individual worlds beyond Root Earth (the previous Core), but it seems far more likely that Losomn was always a single world divided in some way, rather than two worlds come together.
Of course, I don't know for sure, hence this thread :)
As for the Dran living amongst unseen monsters, maybe, but it wasn't the Fae, as all mention of the Dran, by the Fae, happens after the fall of the king. Even the king makes note of the strange creatures that he's never seen but they would make better servants than the traitorous Fae.
As for the merging, I was thinking that the magical doorways were an artificial startingpoint and the OTK dlc was just the first direct merging. Essentially, that there would be more following, but currently it's just the perceived stuff, so far.
Love the question, though. I love discussing both the mechanics and the lore of games.
1. The Fairy Sisters
The Nightweaver and Nimue are sisters. Nimue was revered as a godess of the fairy people and her sister the nightweaver became evil and started feeding on the peoples dreams causing them to go insane.
2. The one True King
The one True king was a despot who ruled with an iron fist but only helped people who supported him. He brought a fake peace to the world. Nimue supported killing one true king but didn't know the consequences of what would happen when he died.
When the two false kings took over they destroyed the kingdom allowing madness to spread.
in awakened dlc you can see how king castle literaly dropped on top of existing dran structures.
Yes, but that's not how Guardians have worked in any other instance. When Yesha lost its guardian, it didn't merge with another world. Going back farther still - when the "Fuzzies" killed their own Guardian, that world also didn't merge. In both instances, the world remained as it was, but the Root were able to force their way in.
There are more exceptions than just the castle. In the Nightweaver version, Nimue's Retreat is similarly found inside a Fey Castle structure placed within the Dran city. And this one doesn't appear to have fallen from the sky, but rather built in place. It sits right up against other buildings and the street naturally transitions into a courtyard. The impression it gave was similar to...
Have you seen the 1994 movie The Shadow? There, the villain used his psychic powers to "hide" an entire skyscraper from the rest of the city. When people looked at it, they saw an empty lot. Everyone knew the building had been demolished, but nobody knew when, or by whom. Or, if you want a more recent example, there's the Oldest House from Control. It's a massive brutalist box of a building in the middle of New York, dwarfing even the largest skyscraper, yet nobody notices. Nobody can find the Oldest House unless they already know it exists.
Maybe Gunfire changed their minds, maybe I misread the evidence, but theme of Losomn originally felt very Harry Potter. There's the world of the Dran muggles who only see ordinary things, and the world of the fey which exists between spaces. The Awakened King doesn't need to change much, other than moving the Fey world "up" above the clouds where the Dran can't see it.
It's also worth remembering that the painted portals don't just connect the Dran and Fey worlds. In the One True King version, portals are used to access other Fey locations. So we know those don't go exclusively between the two worlds and can be used for local travel.
Hmm... That's a good point. The Fey and the One True King seem to be very surprised at the existence of the Dran. And this isn't new with the DLC, either. The Throne Room event was in the game from the start, and the Council there treat the Dran like a curiosity. It CAN be read as disconnected aristocrats just not caring for the peasantry, but it is consistent with the two worlds only having been exposed to each other for a short amount of time.
With that said, the Fey world seems to have no shortage monsters. Sure, some of what we fight are Fey warriors, but a lot of it is just... horrible abominations. There's that one monster with a lantern and a mouth that goes down to its crotch. It's possible that it's those monsters feeding on the Dran without the Fey necessarily being aware. It's also possible - if we assume that the two "worlds" were always part of the same world - that those monsters existed EVERYWHERE, and neither Fey nor Dran were really able to see them.
Then again... Speaking with the patients in the Asylum (including Dr. Morrow) seems to suggest that the madness started when "the world shifted". Nobody seems to be able to explain what changed. The way they describe it, though, it doesn't seem like change was something new. Rather, the "insane" people became able to see "shadows" which were always there, but somehow invisible or imperceptible.
I see two options here. Option one: the Fey and Dran worlds were fully separate, which means we're looking at a minimum of three sides - Fey, Dran, invisible creatures. Or the worlds were always one but "out of phase", which means we're looking at only two sides - Fey and Dran. The "invisible creatures" were simply "the other side", which wasn't perceptible until the One True King was assassinated. In these kinds of situations, I tend to lean towards the version with fewer variables.
The nature of the Labyrinth and the keeper is a whole kettle of fish all its own. The Labyrinth is not Core of this multiverse. That's actually Earth, which is something that the Keeper spells out in the previous game. There's the Core, the Labyrinth is built on top of that, and everything else is built on top of the Labyrinth. The Core doesn't need a Guardian and its people see the universe as "from without". Not outside of their own world, but outside of all worlds.
That sounds like the entire thing is a simulation... except for what's revealed at the end. The Core from the original game fell to the Root, the Keeper quarantined it and somehow replaced it with a new Core from backup, which is the Earth in the actual game. The Labyrinth and other worlds can't be a simulation if the Keeper can just system-restore Earth.
But that's also a separate issue.
Definitely not. The Fae and Dran worlds were separate. It's stated so many times in different places, there's no need for another twist to it. E.g. the Nightshade description (referring to the Nightweaver):
From the Fae point of view, the merging happened after the Imposter put the King to sleep, but they don't know for sure that it's the cause (they're all surprised by the consequences of removing the King). Without the King, the Fae start to revert to their terrible nature (more below), including the Nightweaver. She's not the cause of the merging.
From the Dran point of view, they don't really know what caused it, but the nightmares, insanity, and monsters (which includes the Fae) started after the merging.
The merging was not a literal physical collision of worlds, like two planets crashing into each other, or tectonic plates shifting. There's a lot of damage but nothing like an earthquake or other major physical disaster mentioned, the words used for it are more subtle like "shifting", "twining".
One unexplored idea that seems obvious to me is the Root / corruption as the cause of the merging. A filesystem error, one world partially overwrote another.
The monsters in the Fae world are just... monsters in the Fae world.
The Fae themselves are monsters. There's a book seemingly written by the King about their terrible nature, and a book that mentions their bloodthirst in a historical or evolutionary sense (I can't remember if it hinted at cannibalism). There's also a letter about some Fae living in their own lawless society outside of the King's influence (probably long before the merging). Note that some books have multiple versions with slightly different contents in the light/dark Fae worlds.
The second half of the Nightshade description also hints at this nature:
In a tightly-controlled, almost utopian society with your god literally watching over you, who knows what horrors existed outside of the castle, in the basement, or... within yourself?
To the Dran also, the Fae are monsters. Some Fae feed on the Dran (hence the cages in various locations). Those that don't still look down on the Dran as a lower species.
Which is why I argued for a definition of what constitutes a "world". Yes, from the perspective of the Fae and Dran, each world was separate and unknown to the other. The same is true elsewhere in the game, though. To the Pan, the world of Yesha is a separate one from the old world they left, but they didn't have to travel through a Worldstone-equivalent to get there. They sailed there on wooden ships, so it's safe to assume that what they refer to as "worlds" are in fact just different continents.
Remember what the Labyrinth Keeper said. The gates come first, and with them the Guardians, then the world follows, and then life is created from within the world. If we consider the worlds of Fae and Dran to have been different in terms of the game's cosmology, that would imply that the Dran would have a gate of their own and a Guardian of their own, neither of which appears to be the case. Only one gate exists, and that's found in the Dran city in 2 of 3 scenarios, yet the Guardian is found within the Fae world.
It would also imply that the Fae are capable of travelling between world freely and without fanfare - something that's been established to be exceptionally difficult. The Labyrinth Keeper can do it, but only because he has access to the actual world gates. Besides those, we know of only two types of inter-world travel: the Worldstone and the Immortal King of Rhom's device. This is treated as a major event. So for a random Dran to scrawl a portal onto the wall of an attic and travel to a whole other world seems... unlikely. And exactly the sort of thing which would invite the Root.
I'm trying to distinguish between the metaphorical use of the word "world" to describe what the denizens of said world know, and the cosmological term "world" used to describe alternate dimensions within the context of the Labyrinth. This is why I wonder if Losomn really is the merger of two alternate dimensions, including planets and stars and supermassive black holes, of it it's one planet in one universe with two societies previously living apart and without awareness of each other which were brought closer together by a major event.
Right, and that's what I mean. This merger is far too small-scale to really feel like the merger of two entire dimensions. Remember, under that model there is no longer a Fae world or a Dran world. There is only Losomn. There's no pocket dimension where the rest of those worlds are held. And from what we've seen, the vast majority of Losomn is Dran territory. The Fae presence is restricted to individual enclaves superimposed over a much larger world.
This is consistent across all three scenarios. In the One True King, the Fae world is restricted to the castle. In the Nightweaver scenario, it's restricted even farther to one large structure holding Numue's Retreat. In the Awakened King, we're once again back to just one castle. And in that last one, we know that the castle was flying before falling onto the Dran city. It was seen in the sky for days if not weeks, descending slowly enough for people to write journals cataloguing it.
I don't know that this is necessarily THE correct interpretation, but... setting the world of the Fae on floating islands above the clouds, too high up for the Dran to see and too high for the Fae to see down, would be consistent with what we see. The Fae structures are either entirely disconnected from the Dran city, or have been placed on top of it.
Yeah, that's what I was saying, as well. It's entirely possible that Fae and Dran have shared a world all along, but just never knew of each other. Only once the One True King was assassinated that the two finally became fully aware. At least this way, the logistics at least somewhat make sense. I have a hard time figuring out how a full merger of parallel dimensions would work, otherwise.
*edit*
Actually, speaking with Nimue - she describes the world of the Fae before the assassination as... well, a standard fantas world. Not just castles and cities, but also forests and glades and wilderness areas. That right there puts the kibosh on my idea of a Fae world on floating islands in the sky. I mean, it could be but it starts to strain credulity, I think.
*edit*
Well, speaking with the Oracle of the Dran... she also believes this was an entire other world that got "stitched" into the world of the Dran. And she would know, being she's an oracle. She literally describes it as adding a patch to a quilt, though obviously those are the metaphors she speaks of.
Speaking with Nimue, she in turn talks about how the wilderness of the Fae world doesn't exist any more... Well, "doesn't exist" is how she puts it, the "any more is mine". So it sounds to me like this isn't necessarily an equal merger of two worlds. Rather, Losomn is the world of the Dran, into which small pockets of Fae world have appeared.
At least, that's my current theory after replaying bits of it.
But once he got sleeped, the balance between worlds crumbled and they metaphysically collapsed together. In case of OTK's palace, I don't think it fell out of the sky, I think it suddenly appeared, but this was so drastic, that to the Dran it seemed like it fell from the sky.
In the second overworld in Losomn in Nightweaver's quest, where we can see aurora borealis, I think we are in a Dran quarter, which is actually phased into Fae world, because we see Fae structures in the distance and literal magic in the air.
I don't think this collapse and two worlds can be described by dynamics we found in other worlds. Losomn is simply unique in that it was two worlds existing together, but separated, more in a metaphysical, than physical/spatial sense.
There's a text log which describes the palace floating in the air for days, with the writer speculating that it looks to be dropping lower. So less of a "fell from the sky" and more of a "descended from the sky", but it certainly seems to have been floating for at least some time.
Then again, Nimue talks of grasslands and forests of the Fey world, and some of the books talk about creeks and ravines and far-off villages. So I don't know. Unless the Fey world was all floating islands, I don't know what to think.
It could mean that it was simply floating above the clouds where it couldn't be seen, and subsequently descended slowly when the One True King got put to sleep.
Besides, two worlds are always described as being merged, not crashed. Everything points towards this being primarily metaphysical merger, not a physical one. Spacial intertwining is only the result of the metaphysical merge.
Also, OTK's castle is the only mention of buildings falling out of sky. Nowhere else has this been mentioned, even though we see many Fae buildings among Dran buildings as well. They began suddenly appearing, not exploding out of sky.