Is Zana a Villain? A Path of Exile Mystery

zana has many friends

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tolunart wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Dude... we're the villain.

History is written by the winners. [CHARNAME] claws his way up the food chain from a waterlogged exile with a stick, warms up by destroying a city, kills gods and eats their souls, and for his encore conquers a good portion of the multiverse. That's a winner.

Depends on percpective.

I can't believe this has still never been brought up. Has nobody realized how evil Sin and Innocence are? Innocence was slaughtering people for no reason, you kill him, then Sin shows up after seeing you kill him instead of contacting you before, and Innocence is magically good then also for no reason.

It's obviously a ruse to get you to resurrect Innocence, and kill all the other gods that could get in the way of them ruling.

Edit: They could make an awesome boss fight after you've given all of the souls to Sin.

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BloodPuddles420 wrote:

I can't believe this has still never been brought up. Has nobody realized how evil Sin and Innocence are? Innocence was slaughtering people for no reason, you kill him, then Sin shows up after seeing you kill him instead of contacting you before, and Innocence is magically good then also for no reason.

It's obviously a ruse to get you to resurrect Innocence, and kill all the other gods that could get in the way of them ruling.

Edit: They could make an awesome boss fight after you've given all of the souls to Sin.

Not to be that guy, but I'ma be that guy.

Innocence isn't "magically good again". you discorporated him and then Sin stuffed him in the body of a "man that would shore up his kindness and blunt his fragile ego".

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jtggm1985 wrote:

Not to be that guy, but I'ma be that guy.

Innocence isn't "magically good again". you discorporated him and then Sin stuffed him in the body of a "man that would shore up his kindness and blunt his fragile ego".

Yeah but that makes absolutely no sense, it's clearly a lie. Even using god magic logic that makes no sense. This isn't a Disney film or corny anime, you don't just get to say "everything worked out, and people were happy".

According to Sin's dialogue, Innocence's original human vessel only served to radicalize the god further. After regaining deityhood thanks to the Beast's death only to be defeated right after, Sin chose Bannon to contain Innocence. Bannon's personality and dignity helped correct Innocence's behavior, as far as we know.

It's not going to make sense since the gods in PoE don't function off of logic. Until PoE2 gives confirmation that Sin's scheme to reform Innocence was a ruse or did not work out as intended, "It was Sin's doing" is basically the explanation.

Personally I would not be surprised if we ended up allying with Innocence in PoE2, as after PoE1 he still expresses regret and remorse, so we may see further payoff of his character in the future.

Can't tell if you guys spend too much time on this game or if you have severe trust issues, but i'm surprised by the amount of conspiracy theory in this thread.

I don't think Zana is more evil than the average joe (especially if you consider wraeclast's standards). She sure has daddy issues and sent a bunch of poor lads to a near certain damnation but there is nothing that allow us to think it was a scheme. The elder seems like a legit threat to the whole creation and iirc she chose to sacrifice herself by remaining in the atlas after sealing it. Clearly not the best plan if you're a villain.

Regarding her apparent sanity, we can easily guess she hasnt gone nuts unlike the 5 others because she was way more trained in enduring the atlas. And she was probably more mentally stable than a bunch of cutthroats and zealots to begin with.

Despite his name, Sin seems like a legit guy too. Once again, fucking himself with the beast just to expect that some random succession of event will put him on the top centuries later looks pretty convulated.

I really hope PoE 2 won't fall for the trope of the ally betraying you to become the main antagonist. It would be really cheap imo and water down the anti manichaeism of the story (ie your best buddy being a carbon copy of satan with a super chill personality)


tl,dr: Not everyone is trying to screw you, even in post apocalypse.

Loose ends:

--Lilly Roth and the Expedition to Tsoatha. This story arc will need a new tileset, "Hadal Trench". something something magical diving bell, something something creepy bioluminescent or totally transparent glassy creatures that consist of mostly mouths and teeth, crushing hydrostatic pressure and thermal extremes, sinister methane seeps, and It that Dwelt Beneath.

--Go south and fight Innocence on the ice shelf when? He's been down there huffing his own fumes for leagues and leagues. Since there's no timber to start fires to burn heretics, he throws large sea birds and mammals at you instead. (Fight and arena designed by I_NO.)

--IN 3.10, Sin runs out of cigs. Since few other entities in Wraeclast smoke, and since he's incapable of lifting a finger to help himself, he cylons you into sailing to Ngamaka Nui and rolling the most massive doob in the universe, and then trucking it up the side of Lava Peak to get it lit (this is an escort gauntlet). Along the way, you discover that Queen Hyrri's heirs have developed a geothermal weapon, a giant focused ultrasound emitter that can produce earthquakes and volcanoes from afar by focusing a beam on coordinates deep in the earth. You have to stop them! They're gonna blow up Wraeclast.

As your reward, Sin grants you your first non-Lab ascendancy point (for ascending the volcano, or for getting really contact high off the Divine Blunt).

--Zana: the final frontier. Zana and Alva manage to create a hybrid map device and time portal. The idea is, Zana picks a map very close in schematic to the Vaal temple, Alva treats it as though it were the temple of Atzoatl, and opens a blood magic portal to that map as it existed when Daddy first spun it out of his memories. With luck, they'll be able to target the time when Daddy had just created it and was exploring it before warding it with guardians.

Except they miss their mark, and the time portal opens into a sliver of the Vaal pyramid as Zana remembered it as a child, wandering through the museum, the grotesque and brightly coloured scenes of sacred wars coming to life around them. Long before Daddy started working on the map devi---oh crap, they're trapped in time in the atlas with no way to get home! Meanwhile, Doryani, royal thaumaturge, is utterly fascinated by these two strange women and their technology, and is convinced he can get them to spill the beans; but not here, because her majesty's spies are everywhere and they're very jealous on her behalf.

So what does this have to do with you? Um, you're 50 years in the future, lighting firecrackers under the asses of various other exiles in the future atlas. One day you get a drop and it's what looks like a garden variety Vaal Temple, except it's NOT corrupted. And it's tier 18. And it has a very old shape, like super-legacy maps. So you juice the crap out of it, take it to Niko, and run it...and who shows up? Niko, Alva, and Zana all running toward you with a pack of rabid axolotls at their heels...

--You can socket watchstones in your skill tree to gain new ascendancy points by region. This functionally lets you "level" to 120 without grinding. You can buy these specially-marked watchstones in mystery loot packs in the shop.

After beating elder and uber elder solo - for her to conveniently forget this only to grab 5 others whose power grows to endboss levels irritates me.

So what if I can kill those endbosses, I want to feel like a final boss for a change...

After getting all watchstones twice (first in standard, then reluctantly went for it in league) I'm not particularly fond of the new guardians I've had to fight plenty.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

After beating elder and uber elder solo - for her to conveniently forget this only to grab 5 others whose power grows to endboss levels irritates me.

So what if I can kill those endbosses, I want to feel like a final boss for a change...

After getting all watchstones twice (first in standard, then reluctantly went for it in league) I'm not particularly fond of the new guardians I've had to fight plenty.

The new conquerors have better AI and use of area denial than shaper/elder. They're better-designed bosses and have specific crafting materials they drop so it's easier to metacraft specific items for specific purposes. The downside is they don't drop very much now that they've been out in the game for 2 months. They also force more solo play through negation of group or party benefit to atlas progression and have a solo-exclusive drop (the watchstone).

At the end of the day, though, the reason why shelder are on furlough and we're stuck with conquers and Sirius is so that we spend 3 months fixing our atlas in Std instead of 3 minutes digging up a t16 corrupted map and a set of shaper frags. "Player retention".