Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning/Headscratchers

• Why precisely does the fateless have no fate? The game gives several different reasons:
  • 1: Tirnoch ripped his fate out of the universe when she killed him the first time.
  • 2: He died and was revived by the well of souls.
  • 3: he fulfilled his destiny when being killed by Tirnoch. which is it?
    • Probably a combination of the first two.
  • Well to be fair, 2 and 3 are pretty much the same thing. But doesn't tirnoch explain that she made you before the fight?
  • The in-game explanation is that Tirnoch killed him/her so hard that his/her soul was torn out of the Weave of Fate. The power Tirnoch unleashed at that moment was also the missing ingredient the Well of Souls needed.
• The main page stated that Tirnoch could control the fate of the world, or possibly could have been responsible for creating it. How could she do this from prison?
  • It's a pretty common genre convention that the sealed evil isn't quite as sealed as everyone would like, and can still manipulate events from within their prison.
  • That depends on fate. If someone else was controlling the fate of amalur (i.e natural fate/god) then 1: fate is a bastard, 2:causing the crystal war via empowering an ignored wimp to use as a pawn to wage war is pretty standard (I'm looking at you ledgend of Zelda: twilight Princess). BUT If tirnoch is the one shaping fate during the game, than thats far more than simply interfering. that much power basically means she doesnt need to escape prison to destroy the world.
• Also If Tirnoch has as much control over fate as we think, she probably caused all the problems with the faction quests. And by that I mean she was getting the guy from the warsworn questline to release the niskaru lord. a being of such malevolent power that it was basically described as making the balor from mel senshir look like a cute fluffy bunny in comparison, and who the Erathi couldn't kill. that sounds like a being that could give tirnoch a run for her money. Why would she release him?
  • Who says it could actually give her any trouble? He could have just been one of her generals, or any of a thousand different possibilities.
  • Not really. The Niskaru are demons. as per mythos, they're chaos demons. they exist to destroy everything, and I doubt a demon lord would like being inferior to anything. besides, this particular demon lord is a Lord of Trickery,and deceit. I can't see anyone being stupid enough to let something like that be a leutenant. PLUS Tirnoch is rediculously powerful. She doesn't need generals or an army. If she gets out, we're all screwed. the end. She doesn't need another eldritch abomination roming around helping her kill stuff.
  • I had a thought about Tirnoch's role in Fate (and made a WMG); basically, she doesn't have all that much power over Fate. Yeah, she can cause big changes to the guy sitting on her prison, but she can't actually reach out to the other continent to weaken the Niskaru Lord's bonds. Even if we assume that he was being freed as a side effect of the Crystal War, Tirnoch might not have known, and if she did know, might not have cared. In the final battle, the only way to damage her at all is in Reckoning mode--that is, Fateless mode. The impression I got was that anything bound by fate had no power to hurt her whatsoever.
  • Not what I meant. If tirnoch had a hand in realeasing the demon, her involvement was (if any) in the form of either influencing fate to either get Lord Besin to try to free it, or if that was already fated to happen, re write fate to erase the fact that he was originally fated to fail for some reason. If she has that much power......
  • And what I'm saying is she doesn't have that much power. She was affecting Gadflow, Alabastra, and screwing with everything else through that. So either she had nothing to do with Besin's efforts (as in, he would have gotten to that point even without the Crystal War) or it was a side effect she didn't care about.
• If Fate up to the point of the Fateless one's resurrection had been following a set, unchanging pattern untll you start messing with it, then how did Agarth foresee the circumstances of his own death so accurately? He only went to the place where he was supposed to die because he was accompanying you, but you were never part of Fate's pattern, so he shouldn't have seen himself being there. What gives?
  • Agarth mentions that he generally only sees death, so it wouldn't have been that detailed. He knew what killed him, where, and possibly when, but that's it. Maybe in the original plan he just wanted to get a good look at the entire tapestry, since the world was going to hell.
• Does the Well actually work? You are the only one for whom it has ever worked and you had a pretty wierd death what with having your fate ripped off the cosmos by a dragon. I never really understood all that stuff about being attuned to ventrinio's well wich sounded significant. Also, does any time pass between your death and your rez? I think it was 10years or something, but I was never really sure.
  • I don't think time passes--at least, not a lot. And I imagine the Fateless thing is what allowed the Well to work on you, yes. Basically, most souls have a fate beyond death, and it doesn't include coming back to life. The Well was useless on them. You, however, were unbound from fate, and thus free to be pulled back and revived. If this theory is true, that means the Well would work on pretty much everyone now.
  • The in-game explanation is that Tirnoch's raw power was the missing ingredient that allowed the Well to work for you. With Tirnoch dead, this probably means the Well won't work for anyone again.
• What is the connection between Tirnoch and the prismere? If she is powering it, why does that mean that Prismere is starting to creep people out when she's about to break free?
  • I got the impression that the prismere was her body, her prison, or both. But on the other hand, its mentioned somewhere that prismere existed before the Age of Arcana, but it was just a pretty crystal then.
  • I got heard about that. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure it was known that prismere was Applied Phlebotinum (or for the gnomes Unobtainium) before the game, but it was rare. and it grew in klurikon in winter faelands. If thats true, then I think the answer is in the story. You were killed the first time by tirnoch because you "wanted to find the power source." I think that prismere always grew in abundance here, and now that tirnoch is getting free, her power is leaking out of her (underground) prison, and powering all the prismere in the country as a side-benefit. she can probably influence the stone as well, seeing as how its charged with her power, and that would explain how she mutated the fae.
• By the time you go find Alyn at the House of Ballads, you've probably already done the quest to become Sagrell, AND most likely Bloody Bones too. Logically speaking, it should be big news that a mortal has become mixed up in all these ballads - so why do neither Alyn nor Glianal make reference to this? If anything, Glianal at least should be huffy and outraged about the whole business. Likewise, the player's response options don't take into account the possibility that they've already heard about Echostones from the Two Knights quest. I've noticed that some bits of the dialogue are context-sensitive based on the player's gender or race, so the developers don't really have an excuse for this omission.
  • Well yeah, they don't. They didn't even bother making up an excuse, they simply kept the faction questlines entirely seperate from the main plot because it's easier for them that way. Even if you're a Truesworn-Archsage-Chariot-King of Ballads no one in the main questline will so much as mention it. I guess they figured if Bethesda can get away with it then they can too.
  • Oddly enough, a couple npcs related to Faction Quests will note your accomplishments in the Main Quest. One npc in a Warsworn Faction quest will briefly mention the Balor you killed when comparing it to the Niskaru Lord the Faction quest's villain wants to unleash. In the House of Valor questline, you can brag to the champion that you slew the Balor. Also, npcs do occasionally have different first-time dialogue if you belong to certain factions and/or attained the top rank in those factions.