ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello I love tome, but I have a problem. In the new expansion you take control of orcs and you kill all the people from the Sunwall.

Is this a cannon Sequel, that the gates of the morning gets destroyed and Aeryn gets killed? If so makes me not want to play original because even after you beat game I feel like it doesn't matter because orcs kill everyone anyway.

Do Gates of Morning really have to be destroyed? (cannon) Maybe a way to make peace?

Plz DarkGod, comment here and say that Embers of Rage is alternate timeline and sunwall being destroyed is not canon. Or could update end of game text if player chooses not to destroy Gates of Morning?

Another reason I think that it is a alternate time, if Yeek wins, how could expansion even take place, since the Way has united everyone. Or if Charred Scar is failed Gates of Morning wouldn't even survive.

Also, High Chronomancer Zemekkys. I realized now he is the SAME person as the Grand Keeper of Reality. He mentions to not tell his past self that you met him. How could he become Grand Keeper, if the orcs killed him in Embers of Rage?

I think Embers of Rage is just an alternate timeline/spinoff? Mayb Zemekkys has something to do with this?

judging from this code bit... (which makes a default winner called Maltoth if you don't have one for the current version or you had a yeek one)
it seems that yes, this is the canon sequel
anyways, AFAIK you can skip the gates of morning but nothing really happens if you do (no special message)

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A little bit of a starters guide written by yours truly here.

Already in the code I see some alternate timeline stuff going on though.

So if you sacrifice yourself, or Aeryn does, or you play a yeek this "alternate timeline" is completely gone. Why would huge portions of game be considered non-canon? answer: alternate timelines.


So Paradox mage involvement, the plot thickens...
There are many timelines and they are not easy to understand, maybe they stepped in to fix this broken alternate timeline? To preserve the orc race? Along with Zemekkys being alive and evidence you give I think even more likely this means it is an alternate timeline. Why would the default replacement be a chronomancer? To fill in plot holes to make the alternate time split "work". EoR goes against the ending text of the first game too that says your character lives happily ever after and sunwall prosper. More alternate timeline evidence.

But 1 thing though, even if its an alternate timeline which I hope can be confirmed

DarkGod please add ending text reflecting if you choose not to destroy Gates of the Morning, I know I have seen some people asking for it before. Thanks

EoR is canon. However there is plans to put in an alternate ending if you complete the game without destroying GoM.

Would love some kind of a lore content patch with additional endings and some quests fleshed out could be included with one of the upcoming paid DLC or even be released on it's own if one prefers Paradox Interactive style of DLC.

Hello thanks for the reply. Glad to see some of the dev's have not forgotten about the Gates of the Morning

Okay I agree, EoR is mostly canon. But could not my idea of it being one of many different timelines be true as well? If EoR events are considered the *only* canon, well that breaks the first games ending text, makes many characters from the normal game simply "nonexistent" or "noncanon". Along with the fact it makes playing a sun paladin/anorithil pointless since everyone dies in the sequel anyways.

But if my differing timelines theory is true, (which would go along with many of the chronomancer timeline lore in game, Zemekkys being alive, and the chronomancer info in the code) then that leaves all the different endings and lore making sense, since they are all different versions of reality. It would also leave room for future expansion packs/sequels/DLC without breaking lore.

I always felt that each character is his own different "timeline" and own world. So many timelines in TOME, you can even get killed by your future self! And sorry to question you or sound like I disagree, I just want all the lore to work and all characters be satisfied.


I guess ultimate confirmation one way or another would need to come from DarkGod himself since he has the final say, so if you read this DarkGod plz take this into consideration and confirm the timelines, and thanks!

Some of them have shared worlds.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=48228

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Wyrmic "The static pain" - easy training dummy kill
So, apparently, this is why we have Fixed cooldown talents

So, it's *technically* possible to win EoR without even clearing the bridge. There's a few frankly punishing difficulty jumps, but it should be at least technically doable. Would that lead to a different different ending?

Its definitely canon, but the Gates of Morning being destroyed does not mean everyone died.

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My feedback meter decays into coding. Give me feedback and I make mods.

I did shortly after EoR's release. There wasn't even so much as an achievement. In fact, I dimly recall the game's text referencing events that would have only taken place if you did cross the bridge. The game was not written with this sequence break in mind.

The game seems to agree with you... Embers of Rage makes the Eidolon canonically real and easily accessible (at least via telepathic message or whatever it is) in potentially every ordinary run, even one done in roguelike mode, and if the Eidolon exists then lots of alternate realities exist. Every character you make seems to have his/her own universe, more or less. That's my impression, anyway.

According to that, I think you are free to think that worlds in which Aeryn dies of old age, happily and in love, are just as canonically real as ones in which she is slain in her ruined home by Kruk-aligned tinkers.

However, it's also very clear that this is a setting primarily characterized by violent strife. And the encounter beneath Eruan goes so far as to establish that even within the fiction, there are very powerful forces working to keep it that way. Outside the fiction, too, the basic mechanics of the game tend to keep it that way. If there weren't endless violent conflict, then what would the player character even do? This is a game about killing thousands of strangers, after all. It's a serial murder simulator. It's not very hospitable to stably happy endings.

I think it's probably safe to assume that, on the one hand, whatever characters, races, or societies you like can be supposed to succeed and live peacefully for a very long time in many canonically real settings... but that in the longer run, all (or very nearly all) will reliably fall back into violent, tragic conflict, in most if not all timelines. I don't think this is a setting where long-term peace and happiness are ever going to be normal, except possibly when DarkGod retires from developing the game and writes an epilogue to its story, in which (if he wants) he will finally be free to make a happy ending that doesn't block his future work.

But yeah, the text within the game seems to support the thought that a Sunwall rescued by a hero from the Maj'Eyal campaign is not guaranteed to fall to a hero from the Embers of Rage campaign - and that this would be true even if attacking the Sunwall in Embers of Rage were NOT optional. Maybe the Eidolon has even told stories of heroes who defended the Sunwall against the Kruk uprising! And the fact that there don't happen to be any ToME campaigns built around those stories is no indication that they are false stories.

Until DarkGod specifies otherwise, that is how I will think of it, anyway.

(Regardless, yeah the ending should always acknowledge the major story-altering choices you made within your run - whether or not you crossed the bridge, whether or not you attacked Aeryn, etc.!)

I think zemekkys escapes through the gates of mornings far portal with the rest of the civilians so theres no paradox there.

also massive wars that screw over everyone is kinda the point of tales of maj,eyal I mean we canonically have both the eidolon and the weisse trying to direct dozens of factions across the galaxy into nigh if not outright genocidal conflicts for their own ends across countless timelines.

I mean were in the early part of a long running series of picking up the banner of a nigh utterly doomed faction in order to secure their existence against some powerful foe that you likely just played.

heck the spydre campaign coming after forbidden cults is definetly gonna involve beating the chronomancers cause it canonically almost has too.
the weisse are intentionally rigging events to create a scenario where every possible force that could beat them after their resurrection is out right destroyed or utterly exhausted.
the chronomancers as a faction will never allow that to happen and if they survive to become aware of the weisse's plan they can undo all their work through timey wimey bull excrement.

so the chronomancers have to go down early on before any serious slaughters problem is only another time traveling faction could do that and the only candidates are the spydres or the horrors and while I won't rule out a horror upset the spydres get the first shot and they have to force some eyalite faction aside to escape their dying world.

and their probably gonna do that on var'eyal so zemekkys past self on maj'eyal doesn't become aware of the spydre menace and consequently prepare the keepers of reality to take it down early.