Legacy of Kain Lore (Part 3 – Blood Omen)
Recap
In the previous instalments we covered the following:
1. The Vampire-Hylden war: a bloody war incited by the refusal of the Hylden to acquiesce to the Vampires’ religion.
2. The Genesis of the Pillars: the Ancient Vampires created nine Pillars which would later be referred to as the Pillars of Nosgoth. Each pillar governed a principle of metaphysical law within Nosgoth and these Pillars also served as the lock to the Demon Dimension to which the Hylden were cast. Each pillar was tied to a powerful sorcerer known as a Guardian and the nine Guardians were known as the Circle of Nine. When a Guardian dies, the Circle remains temporarily broken until their successor is chosen by the Pillar. It is then up to the Circle to find these new Guardians, apprentice them and then induct them into the Circle.
3. The Dark Gift is Passed: as the Hylden were cast out they cursed the vampires with sterility, bloodthirst and immortality. Immortality drove the vampires mad with longing to return to the Wheel of Fate to which they were utterly devoted. This caused them to commit suicide en masse and with their sterility their numbers began to dwindle. As a result the Pillars began to choose human Guardians which distressed the Ancient Vampires. Wanting the fate of the Pillars to remain in their control they began to pass the dark gift onto the humans.
4. The Human Revolt: As the humans were forcibly being turned into vampires the Circle, now comprising of human Guardians deemed the vampires a threat to their peoples and so formed the Sarafan: an elite group of fanatical, vampire-hunting warriors who would purge the vampire plague. As the Sarafan murdered the vampires they eventually incurred the wrath of Vorador, a powerful vampire who sought revenge on the Circle for sponsoring these religious crusades.
5. The Slaughter of the Circle: Vorador storms into the Circle’s domain and slaughters six of the Circle of Nine before defeating Malek, the leader of the Sarafan, Guardian of the Pillar of Conflict and appointed defender of the Circle. Vorador spares Malek to live with his failure to protect the Circle and Mortanius, the Death Guardian, damned Malek for his failure and condemned him to serve the Circle for all eternity as an unliving wraith bound to a set of magical armor.
6. The Fall of the Sarafan: At the same time a wraith creature (learned later on to be a future incarnation of the Sarafan warrior Raziel) travels to the stronghold and murders the elite Sarafan commanders. Without their benefactors, their leader or their elite commanders, the Sarafan are disbanded and humans and vampires begin to co-exist in a state of relative, if uneasy, truce.
Pre-Blood Omen
With the murder of the previous six Guardians, new Guardians must be appointed. At the earliest point in the Blood Omen storyline, the Circle of Nine consists of the following:
1. Nupraptor – Guardian of the Mind
2. Malek – Guardian of Conflict
3. Bane – Guardian of Nature
4. DeJoule – Guardian of Energy
5. Azimuth – Guardian of Dimension
6. Moebius – Guardian of Time
7. Anarcrothe – Guardian of Alchemy
8. Mortanius – Guardian of Death
9. Ariel – Guardian of Balance
Also the land is ruled by a benevolent young monarch, King William the Just who is loved by all within his Kingdom.
The story begins with Mortanius. Being a human Guardian, his appointment to the Circle came some time after the Genesis of the Pillars. Alongside longevity of life he was also skilled in the arts of manipulating death. Ancient and judicious, Mortanius was absent when Vorador launched his infamous attack on the Sarafan Stronghold and was one of the three of the Circle’s surviving members. In the aftermath, Mortanius personally administered punishment to Malek by binding Malek’s spirit to his armor.
However, Mortanius himself would also fail the Circle soon after. He was seduced from his service of the Pillars by a dark power lying deep in the depths of the catacombs of Avernus (one of the cities within Nosgoth where an impressive cathedral stands). There he performed a Necromantic ritual to commune with this entity which proved to be entirely malevolent and possessed Mortanius, controlling his body and turning him into an assassin. The possessed Mortanius sought out the Balance Guardian, Ariel and murdered her in her chamber.
Wracked with grief and tormented by suspicions of treachery upon finding her corpse, Ariel’s lover, Nupraptor – the Mind Guardian – in his grief-fueled madness turned his psychic powers against the pillars and the Guardians themselves causing the Corruption of the Pillars.
“This is the sublime moment of our undoing, Raziel – the ineffable fulcrum upon which swings the entirety of our history.”
~ Kain
Nupraptor’s psychic scream shatters the sanity of the remaining Guardians, scattering them and turning them from their purpose to preserve the sanctity of Nosgoth. Nupraptor sealed himself away in his Retreat, sewing both eyes and mouth shut so as to deny the outside world. Pilgrims that still travelled to his retreat seeking his wisdom were seldom seen again. Anarcrothe, Bane and DeJoule would head to the furthest Northern mountains of Nosgoth and combine their powers to create a land of corruption and chaos which they termed Dark Eden. Azimuth made the abandoned cathedral of Avernus her fortress and used her skills to summon demons from the depths of Hell to serve her. Malek retreated to his bastion atop a plateau to await the end of Nosgoth. Mortanius is the least corrupted and so begins to hatch a plan in order to save Nosgoth. However, most worrying of all are the actions of the Time-Streamer, Moebius.
“Where Time is but a Loop,
A Loose Stitch
In the Universal Cloth,
A Streamer might Seize
Upon a Chance, a Fatal slip –
And plunge the Fate
Of Planets into Chaos…”
~ Moebius
An intensely devious and conniving sorcerer, Moebius, the Time Guardian, constantly abused his power to further his own plans and situation. Not many in the Circle trusted him despite the fact that he had maintained his post for many years. Moebius constructed time-streaming devices to travel to various ages of Nosgoth’s history. He constructed four time-streaming chambers to house these devices and the largest of them all he termed the Chronoplast. Moebius passed himself as a hermit called the Oracle of Nosgoth – “a wise and benevolent man, proficient in the arts of divination and prophecy.” Holding court in the Oracle’s Cave of the arctic northern mountains, he would influence pilgrims and orchestrate events. Gullible visitors from all across Nosgoth would seek audience with him, hoping to find answers to their questions.
After the corruption of the Pillars, his mind was tainted by Nupraptor’s magic and he would use his role of the Oracle to cause trouble and torment by predicting omens and horrific events, exploiting them to his own ends. However, whilst using the Chronoplast chamber to view the twisting strings of the past and future worlds, he discovers an ancient creature whose voice had not been heard in millennia: The Elder God, lurking in a tomb beneath the pillars. He instructs Moebius that the vampire plague must be snuffed out forever and Moebius does as he is ordered. Taking the Soul Reaver from the abandoned Sarafan Stronghold he travels to King William the Just’s realm.
When Moebius came to King William’s realm, addressing and rallying crowds of William’s villagers with hateful speeches against Nosgoth’s vampire population, his reception among the common folk was rousing enough to ensure a personal audience with the King. In the stronghold of William the Just, the two met for the first time.
The boy-King was mildly suspicious of Moebius’ motives, but the visitor assured him that his only agenda involved vanquishing William’s foes. Moebius gifted William the Soul Reaver and warns him of a vampire assassin. He intentionally omitted his role as a member of the Circle of Nine and Guardian of Time, dismissing the manner by which he came to learn of this encroaching killer as knowledge of no consequence. The duplicitous Time Streamer was supposedly acting ‘only out of concern for your Majesty’s life.’
Thus, William would take Moebius as an adviser and over the ensuing forty years continued to conspire with the Time Streamer. Meanwhile, realizing the peril his unwilling actions had caused and desperate to redeem himself and correct Nosgoth’s imbalance, Mortanius, the Death Guardian, began conspiring with the spirit of the murdered Balance Guardian, Ariel to cleanse the Circle. In the end Mortanius concludes that there was only one way to purge the Circle and that was by murdering them all so that the Pillars would choose new Guardians and thus the pillars and by extension Nosgoth would be restored.
In order to fulfil this task they needed someone capable of taking out the Guardians and so Mortanius found a worthy candidate, the nobleman Kain.
Blood Omen
The game opens with Kain sitting in a tavern at closing time. Having his request of another round rejected he leaves the tavern only to be set upon by assassins. These assassins overwhelm Kain and though he is a talented fighter there are simply too many of them for him to defend against. Kain is murdered, impaled through the chest with an Iron Sword. Kain’s soul emerges in the Underworld, still transfixed by his enemy’s blade and struggling to escape. Mortanius approached and twists the Iron Sword loose from Kain’s back, freeing him of his captivity. Mortanius offers him a chance to exact revenge, explaining that he was a necromancer, capable of bringing Kain back to life.
Peering with contemplation into the roaring fires behind him, Kain jumps at this chance for vengeance, heedless of the profound cost. He accepts the Iron Sword from Mortanius and coruscating magic ripples across his body, transforming his living skin to dead, vampiric flesh. Mortanius laughs as Kain strides away, promising him the Blood he hungered for.
Waking in a crypt, Kain begins his odyssey and makes his way out of his mausoleum and into the cemetery. His new existence is revealed, he has been turned into a vampire. Mortanius facilitated this by using the still beating heart of Janos Audron, also known as the Heart of Darkness, which had the power to bring vampiric unlife to Kain’s corpse.
At the edge of the graveyard, he tracks down those who killed him and exacts bloody revenge, sending his slayers back whence he came.
For a moment, Kain is relieved, believing his quest to be finished, however, Mortanius corrects him and cryptically tells him that the true masterminds behind the assassins was yet to be snuffed out. In order for him to achieve enlightenment on his own demise he must travel to the Pillars of Nosgoth.
Kain passes through the small human town of Ziegsturhl, where his murder took place and crosses the forestlands heading North to reach the Pillars. There, at night, he finds a spectre haunting those solemn sentinels. It was none other than Ariel, the murdered Balance Guardian, whose spirit was set to haunt the pillars until a Balance Guardian could be realized and the Pillars restored. Kain seeks only a cure for his vampirism but Ariel suggests instead that the salvation of Nosgoth would be within Kain’s interest. She informs him that for him to be at peace that he would need to restore the pillars. Kain is quick to assert that he cares little for the fate of the world but agrees to undertake the duty.
Ariel warns him of the Unspoken and tells him of Nupraptor, her love, driven mad by her murder. The Mind Guardian was to be his first kill. Pressing northward, Kain bypasses the towns of Nachtholm and Steinchencröe before making it to Vasserbünde, the city closest to Nupraptor’s Retreat. Within the Retreat he navigates many traps and hazards and comes across Nupraptor’s disciples and the monks that worshipped him who are now shackled and being tortured by the Mentalist. Eventually he finds the Mentalist himself being guarded by the Paladin Malek. Malek’s incredible strength was legendary and even with his newfound powers, Kain was not sure he could defeat the Paladin in battle. However, Nupraptor dismisses Malek stating that he would simply fail the Circle once more and fights Kain personally.
Nupraptor is no match for the vampire Kain and Kain defeats him and beheads him. He returns with the head of Nupraptor and delivers it to the base of the Pillar of the Mind to which Nupraptor was bound. The head dissolves into the stone and the Pillar is cleansed of all corruption. Ariel congratulates him and then instructs him to defeat the Circle’s shepherd – Malek.
As he journeyed towards Malek’s Bastion, Kain has to pass through his hometown of Coorhagen which has been infested with a horrible plague causing much death and decay. Battling his way through the undead in his former home, he reaches a mountaintop from which he can observe the clifftop Bastion.
Though Malek’s stronghold is bitterly cold and deprived of life, Kain succeeds in dodging the wraith’s traps and disabling his mechanisms. He then fights the famed Conflict Guardian. Initially, they prove to be evenly matched, however, Malek gains the advantage by unleashing a wall of deadly magical force against Kain. Left with no choice but to flee, Kain escapes the Bastion empty-handed. Ariel then advises him to seek out the Oracle of Nosgoth for aid.
The labyrinthine Oracle’s Cave in the arctic wastes leads Kain to a larger enclave where he finds an old man standing by a roaring fire. He welcomes the ‘nobleman’ and digresses into musings on the Legions of the Nemesis and King Ottmar. Irritated, Kain demands information on Malek. The Oracle recounts that there was only one to have ever defeated Malek in combat. At the Oracle’s instruction, he follows the glow of the Ignis Fatuus to the Termogent Forest where the vampire Vorador dwells. Its swamps are perilous but he manages to access Vorador’s Mansion and soon finds the elder vampire himself.
Kain is initially repulsed by Vorador, seeing in him a vision of what he was to become should he let his Dark Gift consume him. Vorador takes kindly to Kain imparting his philosophy that vampires are gods and that mortals offer their blood as sacrifice so that they can enjoy their supernatural powers. To his dismay, Kain realizes that Vorador is right. Pondering this, he listens to Vorador’s account of the slaughter of the Circle, punctuated with a reminder to not concern oneself with the affairs of man. Kain acknowledges this to a small extent and Vorador gifts him his Signet Ring so that he may summon his newfound ally should the need arise.
Before visiting Uschtenheim, Kain is notified by Mortanius that ‘a triad congregates at the roof of the world’ – three sorcerers of the Circle of Nine, plotting to reshape Nosgoth from Dark Eden, their ‘garden of horrors’ in the north. Allured by the promise of vengeance, Kain fends off the mutants created by these three corrupt Guardians and breaches the sanctuary of Anarcrothe the Alchemist, Bane the Druid, and DeJoule the Energist, the three conspirators. Anarcrothe flees to summon Malek, but Kain counters using Vorador’s Signet Ring to call his own ally in response. The two pick up their ancient battle where they left off whilst Kain pursues and kills Bane and DeJoule. When Kain returns to the place where Malek and Vorador was locked in conflict, he finds the Paladin defeated.
He then returns taking with him Bane’s Antler Headdress, DeJoule’s Insulating Cloak and Malek’s Helmet so that the Pillars of Nature, Energy and Conflict are restored. Ariel then advises him to seek out the Planar Azimuth in the Avernus Cathedral. She also foretells that there he will find powerful artifacts that will aid him in his journey.
Here is a good stopping point before continuing. I admit that this article is quite lengthy but in the interest of organization and having all the facts in one place, I elected not to split the article in half. Instead, I’ll leave this note here to advise persons to take a break before continuing.
Kain travels to Avernus only to find it in ruin, the city on fire as demons summoned by the Planar rampaged through it murdering all within but leaving the cathedral unharmed. Within the depths of Avernus where the boundaries between planes of existence are blurred, Kain would discover the legendary blade, the Soul Reaver, forged by Janos Audron before he was murdered and the blade stolen by the Sarafan. How it ended up within the depths of Avernus is a mystery, however, one could make the argument that at the end of the final game, Kain can place the sword in the past for himself to acquire. (*However, since I’ve not yet reached that point in the lore let’s take this statement with a pinch of salt.)
Using the all powerful Soul Reaver he slays Azimuth and returns her Eye to the Pillar of Dimension, thus restoring it. Whilst investigating the Cathedral, Kain also discovers a time-streaming device which Azimuth had stolen from the time-streamer Moebius. Ariel explains that it could be used to deliver Kain in time. Then she turns his attention to the legions of the Nemesis.
In the obscure past, an ancient seer once prophesied the march of an enormous army that would lay waste to the last havens of peace in Nosgoth and bring about the end of civilization. This seer explained that it would gather in Northern Nosgoth and would crush all who opposed its expansion. This entity would be dubbed the Legion of the Nemesis by the people. The prophesy foretold rape and torture, death and destruction on cataclysmic levels, and that it cannot be stopped. Kain cannot continue his cleansing of the circle until the Legions of the Nemesis were dealt with and so Ariel advises him to seek the current King of Willendorf, King Ottmar, and rally the army of hope so that they could war with the Legions of the Nemesis.
Kain travels to Willendorf and infiltrates the Provincial mines in order to drink the blood from the tomb of one of Ottmar’s forefathers. This enables him to cast a powerful spell known as Beguile which would give him a visage of nobility and allow him to enter Ottmar’s court and hear the tale of the King.
In order to celebrate his daughter’s birthday, King Ottmar held a contest, bidding all within the realm to produce the finest doll for his daughter and that the victor would be granted a royal favor of their choosing. Of the hundreds of submissions, the winner was obvious – Elzevir the Dollmaker created a toy of such beauty that all were captivated by it. The doll that he created was a likeness of the Princess herself and as a reward for the contest he asked for a lock of hair from the Princess. Once the King handed over this gift, Elzevir used his sorcery to take the soul of the Princess and trap her within the body of the doll he created. He then stole away from the Kingdom, leaving the King in a fit of despair and despondency which then led the lands to suffer. Ottmar proclaims that whoever restores the Princess to her former self will be granted rulership of Willendorf and so Kain seizes upon the opportunity.
Kain travels to the domain of Elzevir hidden within the Lake of Lost Souls where he kills the dollmaker and retrieves the second doll with the Princess’ soul imprisoned within. Kain then returns to Willendorf with the doll and Elzevir’s head. With the doll in their possession the court sorcerers would be able to restore the Princess and King Ottmar offers his kingdom in gratitude. Kain refuses the title of ruler of Willendorf but instead accepts control of Ottmar’s army, the Army of the Last Hope. The legendary battle ensues with the Army of the Last Hope battling against the Legions of the Nemesis in the famed Battle of the Last Stand.
Kain participates in the battle, feeding on warrior of Horde and Hope alike. Advancing northward, Kain realizes that the Nemesis armies were far more skilled than he had anticipated and they showed no signs of subsiding. King Ottmar is killed in battle, creating a rippling wave of despair amongst his army. Ottmar begs Kain to destroy the Nemesis with his dying words and the tide of battle turns in the Legions’ favor. The Army of Hope flees and Kain is quickly cornered. Desperate, he uses his only means of escape; the time-streaming device he took from Avernus.
The landscape morphs around him and the battlefield disappears. After killing a man Kain reads his victim’s thoughts and receives a vision of Moebius the Time Streamer rallying crowds in preparation for an onslaught. It becomes clear that Kain is now stranded in the past, during William the Just’s reign some fifty years before the Battle of the Last Stand. Realizing this, Kain supposes that he can alter fate by eliminating William the Just in this time period before he can assume the form of the Nemesis. Kain ventures through Stahlberg and north to William’s stronghold. Within he overhears as Moebius provides William the Just with the Soul Reaver and assures the King of his good intentions by warning him of an encroaching vampire assassin. For over forty years, Moebius was fated to influence and conspire with William, ensuring the future devastation of the land.
With his own incarnation of the Soul Reaver from the future, Kain battles the young William the Just. The presence of the two blades triggers a Reaver convergence, compromising the time-stream and enabling history to be written.
* Reaver Convergence *
“The Reaver is the key. Two incarnations of the blade meet in time and space – a paradox is created, a temporal distortion powerful enough to derail history.”
~ Kain
Now you will remember that in the previous instalment in the commentary section I spoke briefly about the time-stream within the Legacy of Kain game series. To recap, the time-stream is immutable, past and future were already decided and all souls within Nosgoth whether it be within the Material, Spectral or Demon Realm are bound to this predetermined fate. None can escape it, leading many to understand that free will is an illusion. However there is one exception to the rule and that is the Wraith, Raziel.
After Raziel is killed in his days of being an elite Sarafan warrior, Kain would eventually resurrect him following the events of Blood Omen 2. Raziel would become his first lieutenant and one of his most powerful allies. However, after Raziel developed wings, a mutation that surpassed even Kain, Kain stripped him of his wings and ordered him to be cast into the Lake of the Dead.
“Tumbling, burning with white-hot fire, I plunged into the depths of the abyss. Unspeakable pain…relentless agony…time ceased to exist…only this torture…and a deepening hatred of the hypocrisy that damned me to this hell.”
~ Raziel
After what Raziel described as an eternity, his torment receded and he settled to the ‘bottom’, to the seat of the underworld. Here an entity had his own designs for Raziel. Saving him from damnation, an otherworld voice greeted Raziel, pronouncing him as worthy. The Elder God, hub of the Wheel of Fate, the Engine of Life itself had prevented Raziel from being killed. But his rebirth into the world had done something unexpected. This rebirth had untethered Raziel from the Wheel of Fate, it had removed him from his predetermined path and gave Raziel true free will. But what does this have to do with the Reaver?
Well the Reaver was originally created as a devouring weapon that fed on a person’s blood as they were killed with the sword. However, the Reaver also had a soul bound within it and this is what facilitated the Reaver’s soul-thirst and allowed it to devour the souls of its victims also. This soul trapped within the Reaver blade is none other than Raziel’s. It was his destiny to become bound within the Reaver blade and this meeting and constant presence of two incarnations of the same soul-devouring entity attempting to devour one another causes what is known as the Reaver Convergence, which can actually alter Nosgoth’s timeline.
This may sound rather convoluted and a bit difficult to understand, but that may be because we had to delve a bit into Raziel’s story ahead of time. For now it is important to understand that the convergence of two Reaver blades (or to be more accurate the proximity of Raziel’s twin souls which attempt to devour one another) can cause the timeline to change, and this is central to the story of the games. Now back to the story of Blood Omen.
Blood Omen (Continued)
As Kain slays the young William the Just and the Legions of the Nemesis were wiped from history, Kain was jubilant. However, this victory was short lived as Kain returns to the present only to discover that he had been tricked by the Time Streamer Moebius who had foreseen all of these events and orchestrated it to play out just so. In this new timeline, William’s murder had given Moebius the catalyst necessary to change the nature of the destruction prescribed by history, suiting his own ends. He was able to ignite a genocidal war against the vampires since Kain killed the beloved William the Just and no one knew that he would later become the Nemesis. Kain had become the author of his own species’ extinction: he had destroyed a tyrant only to create one far worse.
“I found myself once more in the Nosgoth I knew. The carnage from the battle was gone. Yet there was something amiss. From the distance, I heard cries and a breeze from the south carried with it the faint odor of vampire blood.”
~ Kain
Moebius was able to create a new order dedicated to exterminating the Vampires, igniting a second great vampire purge; led by the Time Streamer himself. The order would come to use the former Sarafan Stronghold as a base and over a period of ‘mere decades’ the vampire purge would be successful enough to have eliminated the majority of Nosgoth’s Vampire population.
Kain followed the screams and the scent of blood to a garrison south of Stahlberg where he finds Vorador being guillotined before a bloodthirsty mob. Recognizing the leader of the mercenaries as ‘the Oracle’, Kain realizes that Moebius had manipulated his quest all along to eliminate the vampire race. Moebius identified Kain to the mob as the last vampire left and they turn on him, but Kain is able to fight off the crowd and confront the Time Streamer himself. Moebius then summons enemies from past, present and future for Kain to battle, including a future probable illusion of Kain, but the younger Kain is victorious and kills the Time Streamer.
As Moebius lay injured he admitted to altering history to create The Nemesis and gave Kain a final prophecy of his future death before Kain beheads Moebius and recovers his Hourglass. As Kain travels back to the Pillars in order to restore the Pillar of Time, he finds Azimuth and Mortanius conversing. Azimuth accuses Mortanius of setting Kain upon the rest of the circle and Mortanius admits that he did so in order to restore Nosgoth. Mortanius then kills Azimuth and Kain emerges, stating that Mortanius himself must be killed as he is also a member of the circle. Mortanius embraces this but warns Kain that after his death there would still be one more to be killed.
Kain kills Mortanius and restores the Time Pillar using Moebius’ hourglass, he also places Azimuth’s Scales on the Pillar of States and Mortanius’ Death Orb on the Pillar of Death, restoring those as well. However, as Mortanius fell, the creature that he had been possessed by was released. The demon that had possessed Mortanius confronts Kain and the two do battle. Kain had learnt very little about the entity that he was fighting. Ariel had called it the Unspoken and was part of her first warning and he also found rumblings of this entity within the catacombs of Avernus and within the Library of Willendorf, where there were mentions of the Cult of Hash’ak’gik.
Kain defeats the demon only to then realize that he had restored eight of the nine pillars and there was but one more guardian to defeat. As a reminder of this Ariel, the previous Balance Guardian appears before him once more. All that was left was for the Balance Guardian to perish so that the Pillar of Balance could be restored. And here at last Kain must face the pivotal choice.
“I am the last Pillar. The only survivor of the Circle of Nine. At my whim the world will be healed or damned. At my whim.”
~ Kain
Kain was the new Balance Guardian, corrupted even as he was in his mother’s womb by Nupraptor’s mental scream. And so only his death would restore Nosgoth. Therefore Kain was now granted a choice. Sacrifice himself to redeem Nosgoth and also ensure the vampires’ extinction, or refuse the sacrifice, prolonging his own life and that of the vampire race but securing Nosgoth’s damnation.
“Once I embraced my powers I realized that Vorador was correct. We are Gods – Dark Gods – and it is our duty to thin the herd.”
~ Kain
Concluding with the epiphany that Vorador had been correct all along, Kain refuses the sacrifice and embraced his Dark Gift at last triggering the collapse of the Pillars. Kain then fashions the unrestored Pillar of Balance as his throne, the seat of his new empire and sets out to reclaim his birthright as a nobleman, to rule over all of Nosgoth. But what he will come to realize is that the health of the Pillars was tied to the health of the land and with the pillars left unrestored, corruption would seep slowly into the land like a poison, turning his empire into an irredeemable wasteland.
Commentary
Legacy of Kain Blood Omen is overall a very unique masterpiece. The game is always acclaimed for its interesting story and its impeccable voice acting. In this instalment we had a fair share of Simon Templeman’s voice acting skill, but really all of the voice actors do tremendous jobs with their roles. The game’s story is also one that is quite unique, rather than the tried and tested stories of past and even future games, this is one game that delves into the concept of free will and whether men really do have the ability to change history on a grand scale.
Kain himself represents a sort of Nietzschean superman, a nobleman of high birth and intelligence and also given vampiric powers making him almost unmatched in combat. His overt masculinity, assertiveness and ambition can sometimes come across as arrogance, but I don’t believe Kain to be arrogant, when faced with Malek he recognized that he could not best him and when faced against the forces of the Nemesis he admitted that he would be defeated by them. If he was extremely arrogant, both of these losses might have scarred his ego, however, he doesn’t even make much mention of it, admitting that he was bested in both instances and looking instead for a way to overcome this obstacle.
Each member of the circle and their corruption is very interesting. Firstly the Balance Guardian is murdered. With the absence of proper balance, the mind is driven to insanity. And once the Mind decays then so does all else. Nupraptor also sews his eyes and mouth shut, blocking out the outside world, the very world that he damned. He could not see the consequences of his actions and to some extent he did not want to see, he did not want to face what he had done.
Malek the Conflict Guardian’s decay came from the fact that this powerful warrior-priest had become nothing more than an animate suit of armor. Stripped of his flesh and body he is no longer a man but a wraith filled with vengeance and hatred for vampires. This is why he cannot protect the Circle any longer and why he falls so easily once more to Vorador. Similar to the military and the police of today who are becoming more effeminate and, for lack of a better word, wimpy, our guardians have also failed us, becoming nothing more than the devil’s hands doing the dirty work of their masters. In fact our own police force would sooner turn against us and no longer protects the average person.
As for the three that created Dark Eden, Anarcrothe, Bane and DeJoule, they disfigured the land and its inhabitants, creating monsters by grafting human torsos onto disgusting insects, and yet the resulting image is a Lovecraftian creature and even Kain had to admire the architects’ vision. Compared with the monsters we face today, the trannies and the drag queens, one almost wishes that our demise was more Romantic as it is in Nosgoth. These monsters in Nosgoth were still created by Guardians, whose vision of nature had been twisted and evil, but who still took care with their craft in comparison to the wholly destructive and ugly decay that we see in the real world.
The Planar Azimuth took over the cathedral and used it to summon demons which destroyed the town of Avernus. A good parody for the churches and other religious institutions that have abandoned their traditions and their Gods, and instead embraced evil purposes and means. Moebius is a bit of a complex character and is one that will enter the story several times before its conclusion. He will make appearances in three of the other games and so I will reserve my take on him for the end.
There’s also King Ottmar, the pathetic and useless King sitting on his throne in mourning for his daughter. Kain comments that someone so frail and weak as he would have been usurped had they been in Kain’s own court, however the people of Willendorf continue to worship him even in his weakness. This causes the army to wither and eventually leads to their crushing defeat at the hands of the Nemesis which, if Kain hadn’t travelled back in time, would have meant the complete annihilation of Willendorf as well. Our current rulers are weak, even in the decline of Nosgoth, King Ottmar picks up his mace and leads his forces headfirst into battle and dies on the battlefield fighting alongside his men. Could anyone imagine it of the leaders of today? The likes of Justin Trudeau or Rishi Sunak, Humza Yousef or Joe Biden, the thought of them leading a battle is so far-fetched it’s laughable. In this we are worse than Nosgoth, and anyone who continues to worship and support these weak rulers only contribute to the demise of their own lands.
Then there’s Mortanius, least corrupt of the nine and the Guardian of Death. He is the one that embraces his calling still, calling for the death of the nine and seeing to it that they are destroyed. When it comes time for Kain to defeat him, he welcomes death gladly and dies by Kain’s hand. And only then does the underlying evil present itself. Thanks to my telling of the story, you, the reader, knows that Mortanius was the one that killed Ariel because he was possessed by a demon, but the player only obtains this revelation in the final few moments. The true enemy revealed at last, the puppeteer behind the strings. Again this reflects the real world where the true puppet masters try to remain hidden as they manipulate and connive behind the scenes (although more and more are beginning to pull back the curtain and look upon their faces).
In the end it would appear that Kain’s sacrifice is what people might term ‘the bad ending’ of the game. But really Kain wanted to challenge fate and forge his own destiny. All the manipulations and machinations of the Circle and even the hidden players had all led him to this moment where he would sacrifice himself, essentially damning the vampire race to extinction but restoring the pillars and Nosgoth to its former glory. So Kain, trying to retain some sense of freedom and embracing another Nietzschean idea chooses his own path. But does one ever truly have a choice?
This article has taken some time to put together so I hope you will forgive me if I take a brief break from the Legacy of Kain lore and see about some other writings of mine before returning to it in May for Blood Omen 2. Thanks for reading and have a good one.