Legacy of Kain Lore (Part 5 - Soul Reaver 2)
Recap
The structure for this essay will be different to previous instalments. For one, a recap for this particular game would become heavily redundant as Raziel travels through time and witnesses historical events with his own eyes. Therefore, for the recap, I will simply summarize Raziel’s journey thus far, as this game occurs just after the last.
Raziel is cast into the abyss: Fifteen hundred years after Kain’s refusal to sacrifice himself in order to restore the Pillars, he has resurrected the former Sarafan Elite warriors to serve him as his vampiric children. Of these, Raziel, the first born son and Kain’s favorite would eventually surpass Kain by growing wings. In a seemingly jealous act, Kain strips Raziel’s wings and orders him to be cast into the Lake of the Dead.
Raziel is reborn: After an eternity of suffering, Raziel is pulled from the brink of death by the Elder God, hub of the Wheel of Fate, and the God that was once worshipped by the Ancient Vampires. Raziel’s rebirth was orchestrated by the Elder God so that he may become his Soul Reaver and reap the souls of Kain and his former brethren, thus returning them to the Wheel.
The Reaver is shattered: Raziel embarks on his journey and meets Kain within the Sanctuary of the Clans. They fight one another and Kain bests Raziel and attempts to strike him down with the indomitable Soul Reaver which shatters upon contact with Raziel. Raziel’s strength fails him and he slips into the Spectral Realm and finds the spirit of the blade there. He reaches out and touches the weapon so that it coils itself around Raziel’s arm becoming eternally bound as his symbiotic weapon.
Raziel’s Vengeance: Raziel finds four of his five brethren and kills them, absorbing their souls and strengthening himself. The only brother that escapes Raziel’s wrath is Turel. With this newfound strength he confronts Kain and attempts to kill him. He finds his former master in the Chronoplast, a great time streaming device created by Moebius. Raziel confronts Kain and the two do battle briefly before Kain flees through time and Raziel pursues.
Raziel encounters Moebius
Exiting the Chronoplast chamber, Raziel comes face to face with Moebius, the Time Streamer:
Moebius’ staff somehow disables Raziel’s weapon as they confront one another and Raziel, not trusting the master manipulator pins him against the wall and threatens to kill him. However, through his silver tongue, Moebius talks his way free and begins goading Raziel to ally with him in killing Kain. Raziel agrees, but only because it was in line with his own will and sets out to leave the Stronghold. Whilst traversing the Sarafan Stronghold’s halls, he discovers a chapel dedicated to King William the Just, and laying atop his crypt is the broken Reaver Blade, a remnant of the battle between Kain and King William.
The Reaver is Restored
Raziel unwittingly restores the Reaver and suspects Moebius of orchestrating these events. Moebius denies everything and continues to reassure Raziel of his allegiance to him. However, unbeknownst to Raziel, once he leaves, Moebius reveals his true colors and the audience at least can be sure of his trickery and deceit.
Here I’d like to comment that Moebius is very similar both in appearance and mannerisms to a certain tribe of today. This tribe also plays host to master manipulators and schemers and they may possess similar traits to Moebius, namely his large nose and the rubbing of hands as their schemes fall into place. Furthermore, the revisionism of history through Moebius’ tongue is especially striking.
Escaping the Stronghold
Raziel manages to escape the Stronghold and begins his journey to look for Kain at the Pillars of Nosgoth.
Raziel meets Kain at the Pillars
Here Raziel stays his hand upon finding Kain at the Pillars and listens instead to what he has to say. Kain advises him that there is more to this story than he knows and that there are other forces intent on manipulating him for their own ends. He encourages Raziel to find his own truth before leaving. Raziel is determined to do just that and begins exploring the Nosgoth of the past.
Raziel discovers The Elder God
In a chamber beneath the Pillars he finds none other than his ancient benefactor, the Elder God. The Elder God is quick to tell Raziel that he must not believe the murals and the depiction of history that he sees here with his own eyes but must rather trust in his and Moebius’ words that history had went the way that they dictated. In other words, they advise Raziel not to question their version of history, and not to delve and look for the truth on his own.
The Dark Reaver Forge
As Raziel continues he realizes that he is being watched by the vampire Vorador. Upon chasing him he finds himself standing on the threshold of a great shrine related to the Reaver. He enters and after reigniting the forge is able to imbue the blade with elemental darkness. This would allow him to enter the other shrine near the entrance to the Sarafan Stronghold which in turn might give him the means to reenter the Stronghold and perhaps use the time streaming chamber to his own ends.
Raziel meets Vorador
Upon exiting the Dark Reaver Shrine, he finds Vorador waiting for him. They talk about the fate of the world and explains to Raziel that the only person who might have any inclination as to Raziel’s destiny, would be Vorador’s master, Janos Audron. However, in this timeline Janos had already been hunted and executed by Moebius’ crusade and so Raziel now truly had a purpose for the other time streaming chamber in the Stronghold, however, he still lacked the means to enter it.
The Light Reaver Forge
Returning to the lake before the Stronghold and using his newly attuned Reaver, Raziel now enters another shrine. This forge imbued the Reaver with the elemental power of light and thus armed, Raziel is able to gain reentry to the Sarafan Stronghold.
The Second Paradox
Upon reentering the Stronghold and coming once more to William’s Chapel, Raziel encounters Kain waiting for him. Kain offers him the Soul Reaver and explains to Raziel that the presence of two entities of the Soul Reaver is capable of distorting the timeline, as is evident through his assassination of William the Just stopping his reign as the Nemesis. He then further explains that Raziel’s wraith form of the Reaver can achieve the same effect. He offers Raziel the Soul Reaver and the corporeal blade coils itself onto its physical twin but it is too much for Raziel to bear.
The Reaver begins to act of its own accord and history ‘rushes to meet them’ trying relentlessly to compel Raziel to slay Kain as he is supposed to do. However, Raziel resists the intense pull of destiny and instead plunges the sword into William’s crypt, thus sparing Kain and reshuffling the timeline.
Moebius’ Deception
Raziel leaves Kain to his devices and returns to the time streaming chamber where he finds Moebius. Moebius is seemingly distraught that Raziel has managed to come all this way and refused to kill Kain and Raziel is lured into the false idea that he was still in command. Instructing Moebius to take him to Nosgoth’s past, Moebius smiled sinisterly and instead propels Raziel into Nosgoth’s future.
Note: here is a good stopping point as this article is quite lengthy and these videos can be a lot to absorb. A recap for if/when you return:
Raziel thus far has emerged from the Chronoplast where he was confronted by Moebius. Suspicious of the Time Guardian at the onset he keeps both his advice and his person at arm’s length. Moebius cunningly lies to Raziel, twisting history and stretching the truth of the slaughter of the circle so that Raziel would ally with him. Raziel does agree to a very tentative alliance but only because he too wanted Kain dead.
Upon finding Kain at the Pillars, Kain explains everything to him, of the Dark Forces that caused Ariel’s murder, how Nupraptor corrupted the circle and finally, how Moebius orchestrated Kain’s destiny. Kain, faced with two solutions to his dilemma (sacrifice himself, eradicate the vampires and restore the Pillars; or refuse the sacrifice, destroying the Pillars and allowing the decay of the land) sought a third option, the edge of the coin, he terms it.
Raziel listens to this predicament and is resolved to discover the truth for himself. Continuing his journey he finds murals depicting a winged race that inhabited this world eons before the vampires. He sees their bloody war and how they were afflicted with the Blood Curse, but also how they revered the Reaver. The Elder God seeks to lead him astray by telling him not to believe his eyes and the truth so plainly written out before him, but instead to listen to his own account of history.
Rejecting this idea, Raziel continues to look for enlightenment and finds a path after talking with the vampire Vorador. Vorador speaks to him about Janos Audron, his master, and that how he might have the answer Raziel seeks, especially since he was the Guardian of the Reaver and could perhaps explain to Raziel why the Reaver was his symbiotic weapon. However, in this time, Janos had already been executed by the Sarafan and so Raziel needed to travel back in time using the time streaming chamber.
Finding his way back inside the Sarafan Stronghold, Raziel encounters Kain who tells him how history and the timeline can be diverted by using two incarnations of the Reaver blade. He then offers Raziel the physical Reaver, and Raziel’s corporeal blade coils itself around the blade creating a temporal distortion that allows for an alteration of history. He refuses to kill Kain but also refuses to side with him, at least for the moment. Instead he returns to the time streaming chamber and forces Moebius to operate it for him.
Intending to enter Nosgoth’s past, Raziel throws the switch, only to realize that Moebius had deceived him and sent him instead to Nosgoth’s future.
Truths and Lies
Raziel discovers in this future world that the Elder God’s reach has stretched and his body is now curled around the collapsed Pillars. Raziel wonders whether it was by his hand or Kain’s that truly caused the Pillars to collapse, and begins to suspect that the Elder God also benefits from this chaos and through Kain’s death.
The Northern Mountains
The passage of time carved a way through the mountains for Raziel so that he arrives at Janos’ Sanctuary, just one hundred years too late. The Sanctuary has long since been abandoned but exploring the ruins he comes across yet another shrine to the Reaver and enters it.
The Air Reaver Forge
Here is yet more cryptic murals depicting Nosgoth’s history showing another player, one that has not yet been introduced in this story but as we, the reader, know them as the Hylden. Still, Raziel is ignorant of this faction and continues onward in the hopes of finding enlightenment. He reawakens the Air Forge and imbues the Reaver granting him the power to destroy walls that were cracked or compromised. Using this, he could enter the sealed time chamber in the swamp that he had discovered earlier in his journey.
Upon entering and using the time chamber, Raziel is propelled to the exact era in which he sought, however, it seemed all too convenient to be mere coincidence.
Janos Audron
Janos explains that Raziel is indeed the true wielder of the Reaver, and that his destiny was to restore Nosgoth. However, he is followed by the Sarafan and Janos seeking to save Raziel transports him to the heart of the Fire Forge. Raziel stood helpless as the Sarafan attacked Janos and sought to rekindle the Forge so as to gain passage back into the main chamber and save Janos.
The Fire Reaver Forge
After activating the Forge and imbuing the Reaver with elemental fire, he quickly races back to where Janos was being attacked. He witnesses as his former self tears the still beating heart of Janos from his chest. The Sarafan both triumphant and mocking, see Raziel and decide to flee as the chamber is collapsing. Stealing the Reaver blade they escape the chamber and Raziel approaches the fallen Janos.
Janos implores him to claim his destiny, to take the Reaver and save Nosgoth. Resolved to do just as Janos suggested, Raziel leaps from the Sanctuary and hurriedly chases the Sarafan back to their Stronghold.
Return to the Stronghold
On his way there he encounters demons, the very same demons that were unleashed in Nosgoth’s future after the collapse of the Pillars. But they had followed Raziel through time in order to slay him. They taunt Raziel before attacking him but Raziel is stronger still and manages to fight his way past them and reenter the Stronghold where he is confronted by Moebius and Malek, the protector of the Circle. Raziel encounters them in the same room where the Reaver blade was being kept.
Moebius has dropped his façade of the helpless old fool and confronts Raziel with his staff, disabling his weapon and setting Malek to stave him off. He waits just long enough for Raziel to pick up the Reaver blade against them before sealing the door and fleeing. Now armed with the Reaver, Raziel goes forth to find the Sarafan elite commanders and his former brethren.
Full Circle
Raziel finds and slays Melchiah, Zephon, Rahab, Dumah and even the human Turel. He was drunk with the power of the Reaver blade and practically invincible while wielding it. Then he meets his former self and the two do battle. Note the image of the ouroboros upon which they fight, the snake devouring its own tail, indicative of Raziel’s full circle, the beginning and end of his history. He murders his former self and is left alone with the Reaver.
The Third Paradox
With all other enemies vanquished the Reaver turns itself on Raziel and here it is revealed at last that the soul trapped within the Reaver blade, this voracious and insatiable being that fed on blood and soul alike, was none other than Raziel himself. The Reaver threatened to take his own life when Kain appears at the opportune moment. Just as Raziel can feel himself giving in to the will of fate, the temporal displacement occurs and Kain saves Raziel by pulling the Reaver from his chest thus freeing him of his grim fate.
However, as Kain changes history, Raziel sees that the new memories dawning in Kain’s mind are not at all what he had anticipated. Kain remarks that they’ve fallen into the Hylden’s trap and encourages Raziel not to resurrect Janos Audron. However, the warning is never received by Raziel whose strength fails and he slips into the Spectral Realm, finding once more that infernal wraith blade, coiled around his arm. The game ends where Raziel concludes that there was no escaping his fate and that history abhors a paradox.
Commentary
Once again I must stress that this game’s story is quite unique, rather than use the tried and tested trope of hero versus villain, there are various shades of gray, mystery and suspense and a real feeling of discovering who the true villain really is. Throughout the campaign of this and the previous game, one is constantly reminded of the question, who is the real villain here? Was Kain’s refusal to sacrifice himself a selfish and egotistical act that damned all of Nosgoth, or are there larger forces of work at play here?
Underpinning this story is also the question of fate, destiny and free will. At every turn it feels as if Raziel is exerting the will of others and not his own, or even if he believes himself to be enacting his will, he is often deceived by others who understand the course of history and time within Nosgoth. Raziel is still under the naïve delusion that just by simply acting of his own accord that he can alter history and other events, but Kain instructs him otherwise.
And so one of the most pressing questions attempting to be answered within the game’s story is whether someone has the ability to manipulate history and to what extent. Sidestepping this question momentarily, let’s look at the game’s story itself. Moebius the master manipulator is one of the most cunning and interesting characters in this instalment, at every turn he manipulates and lies to achieve his own ends.
Some of the things that are very similar to reality is the way in which the vampire crusades are reported on. Moebius fixates on the six members of the circle slaughtered by Vorador whilst justifying the crusades which murdered and all but wiped out the vampire race. Also the vampire race are not the demons and blood sucking parasites that have caused the world’s destruction, but rather were the descendants of a winged race, who were Angelic, pure and beautiful, not to mention the protectors and saviors of Nosgoth. This revisionism of history, alongside Moebius and the Elder God’s constant need to subvert Raziel from discovering not only his noble ancestry but also his true destiny is all quite reminiscent of particular events of today, namely WWII.
The parallels to be drawn can be as follows:
Moebius becomes a Churchill/Jewish figure, firstly recommending the war on the vampires and creating many casualties as a result, but rather than focus on these he focuses on the six (million?) members killed by Vorador in retaliation for the mass murder of the vampires. He also partakes in revisionism, stating that the vampires were a scourge that needed to be purged from the world because they sought to prey on humans however, Janos Audron corrects this misconception in his meeting with Raziel. Furthermore, Moebius subverts Raziel by obscuring these truths to him, before using him to his own ends.
The vampires are demonized similar to how whites are demonized today. After being slaughtered by Moebius’ crusade, and his propaganda ensuring that everyone shuns the vampire race, they are the most oppressed of the races in Nosgoth.
The demons behind the scene represent the elites. The Elder God, the demons and the unseen Hylden are all representatives of the true evil, whereas Moebius and the Sarafan are merely their agents.
Kain and Raziel, the Prodigal Sons, are our Nietzschean supermen, incredibly skilled, intelligent, powerful and strong, though lacking a certain physical beauty admittedly, they seek to restore Nosgoth and fight against the unseen players which is why they are apt to be our protagonists.
But now we return to that question of changing history. Here Kain and Raziel exert the Nietzschean idea of Will to Power, trying to change the course of history by sheer will. This is true to the extent that when the moment presents itself it takes a considerable amount of determination and willpower to resist the pull of history as we saw when Raziel struggled against the Reaver trying to kill Kain, but there is the opposite where with the third paradox Raziel must instead succumb to it. I would argue that Kain’s setting up of events to create these temporal disturbances and thereby change history through them is more akin to a game of chess between destiny rather than just the Will to Power. Indeed Kain even alludes to this at the beginning of Defiance.
“…one can only match move by move, the machinations of fate and thus defy the tyrannous stars.”
~Kain
Against all odds and even defying the nature of the world of Nosgoth, Kain and Raziel do change the timeline, however, thus far it seems that their enemies had counted on and had even orchestrated some of these events to suit their own wills. Even the edge of Kain’s coin turned out to be a trap by the Hylden, the true consequence of which would only be made apparent in the next instalment Blood Omen 2.
Applying the same question to real life, it is obvious that one man can change history, when we look at the likes of Nikola Tesla, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nobunaga Oda, or even as humble a thing as writing an incredible novel like Tolkien did. However, the bigger question is whether this was done by free will or was it their destiny to do these things? Personally I believe in destiny, that they were destined for greatness is undeniable and these things were fated to happen, but I also believe in free will. Now though this may seem paradoxical, it doesn’t have to be. We do make choices, sometimes ones that may seem trivial or small in gesture, to help someone in need, or to perform some small and random act of kindness, but these choices are perhaps our most powerful.
Before I close, I would like to mention that I believe this game to be perhaps the best in the series, simply because there is a lot of interaction between both of our protagonists. Both Kain and Raziel get to debate their ideas and even collude across time trying to set Nosgoth to rights. In Defiance they will have some dialogue together, but far less than what is presented here. This game is not one that is played for gameplay, but rather to listen to the story and dialogue, and the player’s main motivation is to hear what happens next in the story, rather than progress in any other way (either by grinding materials, weapons or levelling up characters for example).
Also I must apologize for the wide gaps between these articles, I know that this one is long overdue and it may be some time before I revisit Blood Omen 2 in order to capture footage and create that article. My life has become quite busy but I still try to find some time to work on these, although the progress will be quite slow for a time. Thank you for reading and I’ll be back next month with the sixth instalment looking at Blood Omen 2.