Please sir, may I have some lore?

[Seethe Lord]

A question to the Devs, will we ever get more lore or background info on the world?

Between the intro, the art design and the various bits of flavor text, there's a strong outline of a world here - a dieselpunk/fantasy hybrid, possibly post apocalyptic. Descriptions makes mention of trench warfare and there's a tank in the first stratum, but there are also fantastic beasts and magical spells. Alchemy is a career path, but people are traveling by rail. Plate armor side by side with an exoskeleton.

I wonder where the rot came from, same as I do with all that furniture in the first stratum. What level of technology is the average civilian living with?

I hope you guys expand on this stuff a bit some day. I quite like the look & feel of Thysiastery's world, and would love a chance to explore it in greater detail.

[Null Winter]

I was under the impression the world went through death cycles, and each floor you travel through is the dying ruins of a given cycle.

There also seems to be some sort of randomly selected sacrifice pact in play, based on the name, brands, and boss dialogue.

The rare survivors return to the current living cycle with new knowledge and technology in tow.

[Seethe Lord]

Originally posted by Null Winter:

I was under the impression the world went through death cycles, and each floor you travel through is the dying ruins of a given cycle.

There also seems to be some sort of randomly selected sacrifice pact in play, based on the name, brands, and boss dialogue.

The rare survivors return to the current living cycle with new knowledge and technology in tow.

That's a neat take, I like it.
That explains how the labyrinth seems to exist outside of time (with all sorts of tech), or how some victims "walked through an out of place door" and ended up in the labyrinth.

[SheSleeps]

I'm gonna cite the intro, pillars, and steles in this post.

Who are we:
We are the Branded. As the intro says "The entombed dead open their gates and draw down the unfortunate Branded," and from a stele "[NAME] swears covenant. They and their blood shall bear its brand until <unintelligible>." Note that I use [NAME] here, as having two screenshots of this stele, it had different names each time. It's possible that many people have sworn this covenant.

The final boss tells us "The Dead laid you upon our Thysiastery. By covenant of the brand, you should have given your life." We're not [NAME] (as far as I can tell), and we're not dead (again, as far as I can tell), so the gist of it is that someone offered up their people, and the Dead are eager to accept. We're victims without a choice in the matter.

How we enter the Labrynth:
In short, Ravenloft rules. You pass through a threshold (like a doorway), and you're taken. You walk through a mist, and you're taken. Who takes you? The Dead, offering you up to Grace.


What the Dead want:
The pillars are helpful here. They tell us that "The Sea of Suf [is the] source and destination of Everything." The Sea of Suf is from the gnostic religion Mandaeism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Suf), and exists in a place called The World of Darkness. The game universe seems to go through cycles of creation and destruction (the pillars use the phrase "Even as Kalpas turn," with Kalpas being an aeon of creation). The destructive mechanism seems to be a flood by the Sea of Suf. One stele reads "Yet another world on the precipice, ready to be buried by the flood like the others."

The Dead do not want to return to the Sea of Suf. They want a "mighty dam against the Sea of Suf." They want "warmth, cold, and thunder." They want to continue existing.

Enter Grace.


What is Grace:
Grace is a god-being that stands upon the shores of the Sea of Suf "drinking upon its unending power." Through the ages, "Life and Death are entwined within Grace," and "it remains immaculate and eternal." And the Dead's dream? "By Grace, power made manifest, dream turned into reality." And "By the Grace, the Dead are Purified, to never return to the Sea, nor have to, living forever under its Benevolence." Grace is not the end-boss of the game, or at least, not in total. The Speaker and the Harvesters may be emmanations of Grace (I'm not sure), but since Grace is immutable, we cannot damage it.

My best interpretation is that Grace made a deal with the Dead, preying on their desire to not be subsumed into the Sea of Suf. Grace then made a number of deals to get families Branded. The Branded get the "Secrets of the Dead," and may "draw upon the blessings of the <unintelligible>." The Dead then capture the Branded and use them to build up the Thysiastery. Grace, being Living and Dead, gets some sort of empowerment by all of this.


What is the Thysiastery:
This is a broad guess based on the Greek roots of the word. Asterion or Astery is a word used to designate a (holy) place, like a monastery. Thys is probably linked to Tethys, which is Greek for "sea." So the Thysiastery is the monument built by Grace and the Dead to stop the Sea of Suf from subsuming the Dead. The Branded are fed to it to build and sustain it. Grace, as a godlike being, has no idea why a Branded wouldn't want to follow through on the deal their ancestors made.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by SheSleeps:

-Length snip-

Yep, that's the extended cut of what I gathered.

The random "[Name]" pool is also interesting, as it pulls famous mythological figures from multiple mythos and religions. Prometheus is probably the most recognizable name from the Greeks, though inserting him in the steles' text is extremely contradictory to his "canon" lore if it's meant to be the same non-human dude from Greek myth; he pretty much didn't have time to do anything aside from upset Zeus when he handed fire off to the humans and then got eternal punishment.

Some dictionary sites summarize a "Thysiastery" as a dedicated site for sacrifice, named after a sacrificial altar in ancient Greece, specifically in Tethys; the name was likely also chosen for its more literal meanings of "holy place" and "sea". The only known use of this word in formal useage was in the writings of Church Of England's clergyman Thomas Reeves; he said "The Altar of Haliæus defended all that fled to it, and so would such a Thysiastery raised up in your City." some time around 1657.

Ignoring direct lore quotations, the whole "branded and then sacrificed against your will to cosmic forces" thing smells of blatant Berserk fanboying.

The unique characters you can rarely be handed seem to be based on Finnish/Northern European mythology when you consider their names and unique personal skills.

[masterofflys]

Not much to add, but I'm not entirely sure the [name]s are random. I think they're associated with the stratums in which they tend to be named - Prometheus for the second, Augrlyn for the third (where the sealed door boss is Fist of Augrlyn). I'd suggest that these characters are the rulers of these stratums, and by 'blood' they don't just mean family - but their entire civilisations.

Re: Voice/Harvesters as aspects of grace: it's not conclusive, but I'm inclined to believe they're merely servants. Dialogue with the merchant refers to them (the three harvesters, Yearning, and Voice) as 'the five angels'. Since this sort of language and classification is often murky in fiction, it could still be that they ARE aspects of grace, but taken literally... well, they're 'angels'. Servants, and messengers of the divine.

[Seethe Lord]

Thanks for the posts, everyone. This sort of thing helps the world come alive.

Originally posted by masterofflys:

snip

Your post immediately puts the first stratum boss in a different light for me. The way he fits the WW1 theme - the mass of churned bodies which real-world survivors of those battlegrounds have described seeing in the bottoms of trenches.

[talkslow4me]

I really hope we get more in game tidbits that help tie these theories together.

Right now it feels like we’re grasping at fragments, and while I get that mystery is part of the appeal, it leans a little too far into being obscure. When a game is this secretive and esoteric, it starts to feel less like discovery and more like guesswork.

At times it almost comes off like the world was built purely for the creator’s vision rather than something meant to be understood by the player. I love the atmosphere and direction of THYSIASTERY, I just want a bit more to hold onto so it feels like I’m uncovering something real instead of trying to decode something intentionally out of reach.

[Seethe Lord]

Originally posted by talkslow4me:

I really hope we get more in game tidbits that help tie these theories together..... I just want a bit more to hold onto <snip>

THIS
fr fr ong

[IanMcMian]

Wouldnt mind some lore books laying around.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by IanMcMian:

Wouldnt mind some lore books laying around.

The steles effectively act like this; they simply have little to read.