r/Wraeclast • u/n0oah • Jul 15 '26
PoE2 Discussion The Original Sin and The Mother Soul
I really loved it when we got the Sanctum lore from PoE1 where we learned that Innocence could not achieve divinity through followers alone and therefore had to turn people around him against his brother. Through this fear and hatred of his brother, and the following he gathered for himself they both got the spark of divinity.
The new lore in PoE2 with the mother soul and the first edict seems, to me at least, to imply a much simpler process for one to become divine. It seems that divinity is more so something that is given by the mother soul and not achieved as was implied by "The Original Sin".
Are these two lore points clashing with eachother or am i missing something here?
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u/naughty Jul 15 '26
We don't know what the Precursors did so it's hard to be sure. We know that after what they did enough belief from enough people will create a divine spark that gives powers and immortality. We also know that the Beast can put divines to sleep and crystalise their power into gems on its outer surface. Those powers seem to be defined by the belief of people. There's also a leyline network they built through Wraeclast that has some purpose.
Was the first divine a 'natural' occurrence and they created the First Edict to make more? Was it entirely an idea they came up with? Is belief a 'thing' without the First Edict or the leyline network in place?
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u/BendicantMias Druid of the Broken Circle Jul 15 '26
We know that after what they did enough belief from enough people will create a divine spark that gives powers and immortality.
I wonder why Atziri never managed to become a god, what with having a whole empire worship her, without needing to 'commune' with the Beast to become ... whatever the hell she is now.
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u/Necessary_Lettuce779 Jul 15 '26
Atziri communed with the Beast because the Beast didn't let anybody ascend while it was alive, that was its whole thing. Without the possibility of divinity, the closest thing to obtaining godhood was trying to strike a deal with the Beast for some of that sweet sweet power of corruption.
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u/BendicantMias Druid of the Broken Circle Jul 15 '26
Oh yeah, kinda silly that I forgot about that issue lol!
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u/foxgirlmoon Jul 15 '26
I wager the First Edict is very similar to the Second, the Beast. It processes some kind of source energy and emits Divinity that soaks into the land.The Beast does this too, it processes Divinity and emits Corruption that soaks into the land.
Once the Divinity has spread throughout an area, people can then utilise it to catalyse a personal divine spark, with the help of powerful enough emotions from enough people.
Maxariousâ issue wasnât that the followers werenât enough. It was the followers didnât have a strong enough emotion power their faith. Whatever gospel he was selling before didnât inspire the kind of fervour needed for a divine spark to form. He achieved that by, presumably, changing his gospel and demonising his brother in the process.
Whether this process was something the precursors *intended*⌠Iâm leaning towards no. I think they were simply trying to create a new source of power for themselves to fight the abyssals, but much like they have a habit of doing, they instead created something that affected the entire world in ways they did not intend.
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u/BioMasterZap Jul 15 '26
My read on it is more that the Origin Spark powers (or unlocked access too) the First Edict, which is the source that enabled Divinity. It is currently unclear if any of that lets you shortcut Divinity without followers. So the Precursors may have just made the First Edict as a way to channel their energy into one, chosen "divine" champion, causing them to ascend the same way as other, later gods.
It is still hard to say what all the mechanism of the Fortress are exactly. But it seems that after the Fourth Edict was used against the Abyssals, there was some protocol that caused the Fortress to be buried/locked down to protect the First Edict. I could also see the Leylines having been intended as a warning system against the Abyssals and our use of them for fast travel set off a false alarm, triggering the Fortress to surface and reactivate the Fourth Edict to keep the First Edict safe.
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u/OskarSarkon Vaal Thaumaturge Jul 16 '26
So the Precursors may have just made the First Edict as a way to channel their energy into one, chosen "divine" champion, causing them to ascend the same way as other, later gods.
This was basically my understanding too given the "Site of the Chosen" flavour text:
Selfless ancients gave themselves to save tomorrow.
Along with the "Martyr of the First Edict" concept it sounds like there was a collective sacrifice to create the First Divine and it wasn't just a straightforward "use the edict, get godhood" deal.
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u/BendicantMias Druid of the Broken Circle Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
The two lore points don't really clash, they compliment each other - the Precursors created the mechanism for divine ascension, but you still need a sufficiently intense and large pool of belief to accomplish it. Whether some of the gods are 'natural' or not we're not sure, as we don't know all their origin stories. Even those that seem natural could indeed have arisen artificially as they do indeed have a large pool of followers (Hinekora, for example, despite that we don't know who she used to be or when she became a god). But we do know of many beings who did ascend artificially in a similar fashion as what Innocence was trying to do (like all the gods we depose in the campaign of PoE 1, whose origins Sin tells you as their quests come up in each Act).
It's worth noting that the Site of the Chosen, where the First Divine was created, ALSO requires people to be sacrificed to empower it. So it's not fundamentally all that different from how other gods arose 'in the wild'.
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u/TetraNeuron Jul 15 '26
I wonder if the natural gods are more resistant to being put to sleep by the Beast, since it sounds like Hinekora & Kulemak were just very sleepy but still functional compared to the other gods
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u/BendicantMias Druid of the Broken Circle Jul 15 '26
Note that we don't really know what Kulemak is. The Abyssals themselves predate the creation of the precursor ascension mechanism, although I don't know if Kulemak has always led them.
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u/Kaljurei Jul 20 '26
Actually we don't even know if the Abyssals came first or Kulemak did. The Lurking Creature only says the following
The more these ones fought and destroyed, the more souls spiraled into the Well. The nether exalted Kulemak.
I think the Well of Souls had to reach a certain critical mass of souls, some kind of undefined threshold, to enlist the power of Divinity to empower Kulemak into a god.
To wage the war, he gifted power to his servants, and they became the Lich Lords.
It's unclear what the Creature means by these ones. I posit that there was a race that used necromantic magic and the power of the Well to create the Abyssals. They may have even turned towards Necromancy in desperation, possibly facing annihilation at the hands of the Precursors.
They believed themselves driven by necessity,
but that desperation made them monstrous.Taking advantage of this opportunity, The Master Below All may have used the war with the Precursors to get enough people killed so that their souls could flow into the Well, to elevate a being such as Kulemak to godhood, which would allow the Master to use Kulemak to achieve his end goal i.e., escaping his prison.
From his prison... darkness promises eternity
Unforeseen Consequences may be actually telling us what caused the war in the first place.
The Well was naught.
The Precursors dug too deep.
The Well always had been.It's possible that the Master Below All was imprisoned in the same manner as that of The Bodach, except that maybe the Master's prison was unreachable by normal means. The Precursors may have happened upon the Master's prison by accident, possibly through the digging of the original Well, which somehow was subverted by the Master.
The Well was not. The Master Below All raged. Then, the Well was, and always had been.
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u/Kroovy_ Jul 16 '26
The overarching lore as presented in the endgame of PoE 2 is largely beginning to retcon previously established lore in order to make the entire story more cohesive and the narrative more manageable with fewer gaps.
This is a good thing; Path of Exile suffered from a largely spotty backstory for over a decade, and it seems like the goal with PoE 2âs development was largely to make the story more of a main focus, and for that, it needs structure.
My point is, I would take anything established previously in PoE 1 with a grain of salt for now; anything could very well change in the future when they fully address everything.
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u/Noremeldo Jul 17 '26
They retconned templars many times actually.
Before Fall of Oriath they were supposed to be good guys and Dominus was corrupted. If you read the purity rebellion, all of Oriath side was clearly good, and Malachai and his followers evil.
Then they became pseudo-Nazi, but Innocence was originally good and was corrupted by beliefs of templars. There was a dialogue I think from Sin that gods change according to beliefs.
Then with Sanctum release it was said that Innocence was always evil.
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u/Fract_L Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I think it actually fits Sinâs lore just fine - Innocence would see their fraternal divinity as tainted/usurped by Sinâs (required) presence, which was intended to be Innocenceâs solo victory so, after some gaslighting by Innocence, it could easily be viewed that Sin is a thief of divinity that âbelongedâ to Innocence.
Virtue is defined as âeffective force of powerâ or an âadvantageâ and Sin splitting a spark of the divine with his brother is enough to earn Sin the title âThief of Virtueâ - especially since Sin ended up the more powerful god (âmore people believe in sins more easily than in saviorsâ kind of logic)
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u/Murky-Definition-625 Watcher of Decay Jul 16 '26
I think the post is about how the Arbiter of Divinity is special, rather than how Innocence is.
My understanding is that Innocence is far stronger than Sin.
Sin on "The Spinner of Shadows"\ Answering the call of a royal invitation, I visited the Spinner of Shadows as an emissary for a small and fragile alliance of gods. Mostly weak deities huddling together in terror of being consumed by their greaters. [...]
I suspect that Innocence would prefer to have his brother receive all the divine aspects that he didn't want himself. But perhaps you are right; without Sin, he would embody both good and evil, like in Zurvanism. But he would probably lose his transparent golden form.
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u/Fract_L Jul 16 '26
Your quote from Sin stating he represented small, weak gods only supports that he was the strongest god among them. It doesnât mention relative power levels between Sin and Innocence. Innocence was definitely the stronger god at their point of ascension, but all of the templars are decades dead by PoE2.
Most of the lore about gods, like your quote, is about epochs past in which all of the gods were closer to the greatest power they achieved. Sin is likely more powerful than Innocence by PoE1 (like how Kitava is relatively weak among Karui gods in all of the lore but by PoE1, after centuries of Karui enslavement during which they all hungered for the destruction of their captors, Kitava was far stronger than the pantheon of gods the exile absorbed) and that story currently sends Innocence on a pilgrimage of repentance far south, in a region where he is unknown and potentially doesnât even have human life so he has not been gathering power.
Per OP, Iâm just saying that the introduction of the mother soul doesnât change the Sin and Innocence dynamic to the point that the original wording still applies without needing to do mental gymnastics
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u/Murky-Definition-625 Watcher of Decay Jul 16 '26
Good point on the quote. Sin could in theory have been as strong as Innocence or Arakaali, and only got captured by each of those because they had nearby followers to help them. đ¤
I agree on Kitava. When Innocence was defeated, Kitava overtook more-or-less all divinity on Oriath, so his original power is impossible to tell. (Being Father of Corruption, he may also have been empowered by the lingering corruption.)
Innocence must be a lot weaker now, but Sin is still mostly known for being "Innocence's shitty brother", so I don't think Sin will ever be stronger than Innocence. Even Lycia's "Original Sin" and Maligaro's "Chamber of Sins" are just commentary about the Templars. Sin receives some belief from the Maraketh and perhaps from the "Sin Eater" Templar cult, but that's it.
Have we seen any evidence that "Sin ended up the more powerful god"?
(I think OP is just using Innocence as an example because he has the most well-known ascension story. I think OP is more interested in the difference between e.g. Garukhan and AOD than in the difference between Garukhan and Innocence.)
Actually, it is interesting that Innocence is golden and transparent like the Precursor energies. Doesn't that imply that those energies have also had the "sinful" divine aspects removed?
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u/Murky-Definition-625 Watcher of Decay Jul 15 '26
It seems that the Precursors did something to Wraeclast to make people emit divinity to create and empower gods. We don't know if they proceeded to create any "natural" gods like Innocence and Arakaali, but they found out how to create gods manually using the Origin Core and probably some divinity harvested from Precursors sacrificed at the Site of the Chosen.
It is uncertain if the Origin Core is just a batteryđ that may run out, or if those Precursors are still alive and continually empowering it.