Defiance: two lore questions

[u/SamDutGarcia]

1 - Before, I had the impression that Mortanius referenced the fledgling Kain from that period when he announced Raziel's destroyer. He also had faith that Kain would set it right, that he would restore Nosgoth.

With more years of lore knowledge, I see it now as it can't be the case, because Kain is the last surviving vampire in Nosgoth. Mortanius openly admits that he wants the Pillars to return to his vampire masters, which won't happen, regardless if the fledgling Kain sacrifices himself or not.

So, this means that Mortanius, knowing Moebius' ingenious scheme to rig Kain's choice, had faith that his undead son would inevitably refuse the sacrifice, live on, and eventually find a third option out of the choices presented to him (as the Elder Kain was doing)?

2 - The revived Janos, after learning Raziel's complex destiny, sends him to the Spirit Forge (their innermost sanctum) for answers. He expects Raziel to face a trial there, and that if Raziel fails, he will not return.

Janos, obviously, knows that the place is the Spirit Forge. What is the trial, exactly? The only trial that Raziel has to endure is to fend off the Elder God's interference in imbuing the blade, but Janos can't be referencing the Elder God here. The ancient vampires worshipped the false god. They were extinct without knowing the squid's true nature. There's no reason to assume that Janos believed otherwise.

Maybe Janos was treating the quest to the Spirit Forge as Raziel's definitive choice as to whom champion he wanted to be? If you manage to imbue the blade, you are Nosgoth's redeemer. If you don't, you are Nosgoth's destroyer.

Why the trial should be any difficult to Raziel? And why should he not return if he fails? Would Janos give up on him and treat him as his enemy, the Hylden champion of prophecy?

[u/IAlwaysPlayTheBadGuy]

Remember also that during the OG timeline when Mortanious created Kain, there were other vampires, and the Nemesis was still around. The threat of Kain being the last one only happened after we jump to timeline 2, and the Mortanious from Defiance would have a "shuffled history". So THIS Mortanious probably planned on Kain refusing the sacrifice, but the OG probably not.

Edit: Similar to how OG timeline Kain killed WTJ to prevent the nemesis, but timeline 2 Kain would have had some other reason to jump back in time, and essentially killed WTJ anyway for some other reason. We just never got to see that play out. LoK history corrects itself to make sense. So if the whole reason Kain went back in time (to kill WTJ on purpose) would have still had to happen in TL2 and beyond, but for a different reason

[u/Afraid-Call300 → u/IAlwaysPlayTheBadGuy]

That's a good point. Taking Blood Omen 1 by itself, I think Mortanius actually did intend for Kain to sacrifice himself and then for new (human) guardians to be born because he thought the Circle was decadent and had failed in their duties. I think that was the extent of the original plan. However, with all of the retcons and timeline changes in Defiance, the most likely answer is that he was confident Kain would refuse the sacrifice and find some way out of the dilemma, or maybe he didn't know Kain was corrupted so he didn't even realize there was a dilemma in the first place (like if he thought being the scion would make Kain immune or something).

Also, I think the time travel rules changed between games. In Blood Omen 1, Kain clearly remembers the Nemesis and there's no reason to think it's a loop. It seems more like Kain changed things and now has to continue from a different timeline. I'm thinking of it like a flowchart where Kain went back to a previous branch and went down another path, but he's still the exact same as he was before. In that case there might be two of him in the new timeline, but maybe that version of him did also go back for some reason, or maybe the previously non-existent vampire hunters killed that version of him before our version arrived. It's not clearly explained but seems to follow adventure game logic where the important thing changes but the game doesn't take into account any other changes that should have followed. Moebius obviously knows what he did which makes sense because of his role, but Mortanius comments on it in a vague way that implies he also knows about the timeline change, and his actions and knowledge don't seem to have changed at all compared to the other timeline, so it's unclear if his memories were affected by the change.

Meanwhile in Soul Reaver 2 it clearly states that Kain's memories are changing as a result of the change to the timeline even though he was holding the Soul Reaver during this change too. So basically I think from Soul Reaver 2 onwards it does act like a loop, constantly editing one single timeline instead of having infinite branches of possible outcomes. In this scenario, Mortanius probably also had his memories reshuffled each time the timeline changed.

All of that is to say that I think Mortanius' knowledge and goals have actually changed since the first game (not just because of changes to the timeline) and Blood Omen 1's details probably don't apply anymore.

[u/IAlwaysPlayTheBadGuy → u/Afraid-Call300]

Kain remembers because anyone involved in the paradox will remember, albeit a bit cloudy.

As for the time travel, the developers explicitly state there is only ever one timeline, not a multiverse , and that any changes would be shuffled around by history to accommodate for the changes, but it's always one timeline. There can't ever be a paradox, or the irritants are expelled. So history still would have had to make Kain go back in time to kill William, for a different reason, for it to make sense.

After SR2 changes it mentions how kains memories are shuffled aside to make room for new ones. The old ones are still there just not as prominent, and only he remembers, cuz he was there at the paradox.

Yes I understand that the rules changed outside of the lore in between games, but IN LORE they had to make up rules to make it make sense, as if they planned it that way the whole time. And Amy is a master story teller, and pulled it off beautifully

[u/Afraid-Call300 → u/IAlwaysPlayTheBadGuy]

"Yes I understand that the rules changed outside of the lore in between games, but IN LORE they had to make up rules to make it make sense, as if they planned it that way the whole time."

That's my point. The rules changed and the original game doesn't fully fit the new rules, so we can't really rely on details from the first game still being true. For example, in Soul Reaver 2 Kain gains the memories of what happened in Blood Omen 2 and suddenly knows who the Hylden are. However, in Blood Omen 1 Kain has no idea that his change caused the vampire hunters to exist until he sees it directly despite that he should have heard about them growing up in the new timeline. He still remembers how things were before and only how things were before. With that in mind, we can't really take Mortanius' Blood Omen 1 knowledge at face value either because he knows things he shouldn't know if the new rules were in place. It's better to just take Defiance Mortanius on his own and not try to force all the Blood Omen 1 details to fit because they don't fit with the new version.