Questions for the game creators: about the lore (SPOILERS)

[esco1979]

Seeing as how EVERYONE seems to be guessing about a LOT of info in this game, I figured I'd try the obvious: ASKING THE GAME CREATORS THEMSELVES AND SEEING WHAT THEY SAY! :D I've read the entire drowned tome on the wiki and while it's a damn good piece of fan work, there are still just so many things that seem off. So here I am.

I wasn't going to do this. But since the series creators said they won't be doing DLC, I figure that this is the ONLY way to get actual answers. Versus than just NEVER knowing the truth.

1)Is the nameless god Azredak and if not, who is he really? Is he just the former "hero" who made it past him, chose dominance, took his helm and then became his new vessel? Because I get the feeling this is some kind of endless cycle that may have happened many MANY times before your character came along. Or am I totally wrong?

2)Who is the woman who cleanses you of sin in front of the tree? She mentions that her soul is made of light and we all know that the player and every other creature on the island is made of salt (which I assume is the body, not the soul). So I thought she was a god at first. But then she says "To be born of light is to be truly living, yet so ephemeral." Ephemeral means "short lived." Why would a god be short lived? Plus Jaret at the end says "His existence is one of insatiable lust for something a god can never have: to be born of light" when referring to the nameless god. Inferring that gods do NOT in fact have light souls. Does this mean living humans have them? And that gods and the undead are made of salt? The fact that the unspeakable deep doesn't explode into salt when killed like the other bosses and just falls over with its body remaining there (like what would happen in the real world; the same happens to your hero if he dies to it) seems to relate to this topic too. Can you just clarify this whole issue and tell us the truth?

3)Why does Murdiela Mal drop 0 salt the first time you beat her? I thought maybe she was the goddess of fire and sky but then in new game+ she DOES drop salt. Over 70K in new game+1. So is this just an oversight and if not, what is this about?

4)The salvation ending: is the player really escaping to the ocean in the living world? Because if so, that means they had pretty much been sentenced to die by eventually drowning AGAIN (since back in the times this story takes place NO ONE would even know the ship had sank or what ever happened to it, let alone WHERE it happened or if there were survivors. Meaning you would just drown again). Is this why there is a new game+? The player escapes, drowns again eventually and ends up BACK on the island? Does this mean that the "dominance" ending where you take the helm and become the new nameless god is the only true "escape" your character has from the cycle: to become the new vessel for this demon/god?

5)The crypt of dead gods and the 3 at the bottom: from my understanding the 3 were just humans who chose to create their own religion.... is this correct? Or am I wrong and they were actually gods, and the nameless god killed them (along with countless others, judging by the # of giant corpses in this area), or did someone else kill them and their corpses just ended up on the island and enslaved to the nameless gods power? What's the story with this whole scenario.


DONE! Sorry for all the questions. ANY answers at all from the developers here would really be appreciated. This game is awesome, and I really enjoy it. But it has been 6 months and we all still just have too many mysteries here that can't be clarified. Open ended interpretation is one thing, but it feels like we just don't have enough info to know the truth here. And I'd really love to know.

[William Wave]

Well, i suppose, even developers doesn't completely know, what happens and who is who. Looks like they created some pieces of the story, linked them in some places and gave the players possibility to finish all this story and figure out, what each piece means.

[Klendt]

Shell and James have their secrets, so I'll leave it to them as to whether they want to spill any beans. They've been pretty busy with their own things of late, so I haven't had a chance to grill them on lore post-release. But the thing about James is, he's the sort of person to have concrete plots in mind and then attempts to tell them bit by bit, sometimes forgetting and sometimes deliberately neglecting to include certain parts. Hearing him talk about Charlie Murder revealed more than a small handful of stories that I had no idea were even in the game.

There's a couple things we DO know concretely.

First: Gods are given existence and strength through mortal prayer and work. They're beings of fire or candlelight. They're fundamentally unlike mortals, and their strength is nothing without mortal graft and toil - the titular Salt. They can't produce worth by themselves, and Salt isn't something they can posess, themselves. They burn it, a fire that they can keep lit forever. Theoretically.

Second: The Nameless God is not a god. Well, not technically, now he's something in-between, with none of the comforts of either. He was a man, saltborn like you. His futile hope is best represented by his armor - it's a candleabra, a sad attempt to hold the candlelight. It's safe to say he's not specifically Azredak - not directly, at least.

Third: The Nameless God is a scary, scary thing. He either killed and zombified the gods, or parasitized them. Those gods, even dead, were still channeling prayers and those prayers were being granted, but those gods weren't being sustained by them as they should have been. All the power in that exchange went straight to him - all the memories, all the effort and hard work. Of course, because he's no longer properly salt-born, he can't create anything with that power, only replicate.

Fourth: Over time, all gods in the Crypt of Dead Gods would be completely withered and worthless. There's even an implication (that you noticed) that not just The Three, but nearly every god in history is webbed up there - the fact that The Three are even fresh enough to fight you is likely just because they're "the new gods".
That's all I've got, for now.

[Medieval Tavern]

There must be something on the island. According to the ending scene, we are born of salt even before the ship scene but we don't disapear after death or being killed (both us and the Unspeakable Deep). At first, i thought that scene is just a fake memories that the nameless god gave us; and then i realise it's too real to be a fake memories. And you know what, It has zero difference between saltborn and the actual souls IN THE REAL WORLD. If the nameless wants to rule the world, why doesn't he just jump into the well and bam, he's in real world, why does he want to be born of light? What's the point?

[gungadin22000]

Ska Software games are notoriously nonsensical. Don't try writing your thesis on the game, just enjoy it for being spectacularly enjoyable.

[esco1979]

Thanks for the reply Old Kobold.

I forget to mention something else above. Something that may relate to the whole "nameless god goes around killing gods" scenario. And that is the Fool. He is obviously one of the 2 gods mentioned by the house of splendor creed (possibly even both at once). Which makes me wonder why the nameless god would not go after him, yet has all those other dead gods sealed away in a tomb.

..........then again, I wonder if he has the power to actually even do so. Considering the fact that when you fight him, other than normal human physical style attacks, the only power he uses is what seems to be a holy one that he has to charge up. For a being who is supposed to be a god able to able to manipulate space and reality I would think he would have been far, FAR more devastating. But he just seems very..... weak, for a supposed god.

Well regardless, here's hoping the 2 developers actually take the time to reply. I'm up to NG+3 now and I'd really like to know for sure what's going on. As a lot of other people would too as well I'm sure.

EDIT: this is an interesting read too. Relating to the nameless god: https://www.reddit.com/r/saltandsanctuary/comments/4chtxj/about_the_lore_itself/

This one even moreso for the overall lore of the game: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Videogame/SaltAndSanctuary

[esco1979]

**LISTENS TO THE CRICKETS CHIRPING**