[Lore] Legion Symbols (long post)

While playing legion league I can't help but realize that not only the 5 factions represents the 5 corresponding act in the story (A1/6 Karui, A2/7 Vaal, A3/8 Eternal Empire, A4/9 Maraketh, A5/10 Templar) but It also becomes apparent that, whether you are a lore fan or not, may or may not have noticed that some legion symbols are only exclusive to a certain factions. I do believe that GGG did not just randomly assigns them and is using them to tell the story of Wraeclast in a very interesting way.

Now we all know there are some generic symbols like the armor/ring/monolith/map/etc ones that exist across all factions so there is no point detailing them.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to know all about the lore as I have just recently actively reading on it. If anyone has any better interpretation please feel free to correct and enlighten me.



Maraketh is a special one so I will explain them last.

Prophecy, Abyss and Bestiary are unique to Karui.
Fragment, Gem and Breach are unique to Vaal.
Coin, Gem and Labyrinth are unique to Eternal Empire.
Harbinger and Fossil are unique to Templar. (There may be another one but I have not encounter templars too much since they spawn somewhat rarely).

As to Maraketh, it embodies all the above and also Scarab, Talisman.

Karui:
Prophecy - This one is easy. Prophecy is a Navali thing and Navali is a Karui.
Abyss - This may be a reference that when after the purity rebellion was over Kaom was corrupted and lead men to the underground and saw a vision of Tukohama and lost the last bit of humanity thereafter. And Abyss = underground.
Bestiary - This may be a reference to lore object Kitava's Hunger I in Act5 The Reliquary.

Vaal:
Fragment - This one is simple. Atziri.
Gem - They are known to be the first civilization that uses the virtue gems or as the Vaal calls them, Tears of Maji.
Breach - The Temple of Azoatl has a Vaal Architect researching them.

Eternal Empire:
Coins - The Perandus family plays a major role in the history of Eternal Empire.
Gem - Also the only other civilization that actively took interest in virtue gems.
Labyrinth - Labyrinth is the creation of Izaro, an Eternal Empire Emperor, and was used as a method to determine his next successor due to his inability to have children to succeed the throne. Also it was because of the labyrinth that Chitus Perandus replaced Izaro as Eternal Empire's Emperor.

Templar:
Fossil - Delve, Niko was tasked to mine azurite for the Templars.
Harbinger - Now this one really got me thinking. What does the Harbinger has anything to do with Templars? It wasn't until I ran the beach head map and realized this:


Now if you still haven't quite figure out what this has to do with the Templars, how about this?



That's right. Shaper influence. Harbinger gate and Shaper Influlence shares the same space-looking background. And we all know Zana's father, who was a Templar, was responsible for unlocking the Atlas secret. I can't say for sure but I think this is GGG way of telling us that Harbinger and Shaper are related and we may see elaboration of that in the future contents.


Maraketh:
Maraketh is an odd one. It contains all the unique symbols to each individual faction. So that means all factions have something to do with Maraketh. And the only thing I can think of is the the Maraketh faction is the embodiment of the Purity Rebellion. It also contains Talisman and Bestiary, which is the representation of Ezomyte and Scarabs which has many reference to the Maraketh culture.

Now you would be saying, but Maraketh also has Fragment symbol which is a Vaal thing but Vaal already died off long before all that happened.

This is true. Vaal has long died off before the Purity Rebellion even happened so why does the fragment symbol exists in Maraketh, a representation of Purity Rebellion? While on the surface they may seem unrelated but they actually shares one important detail:

Both the Vaal civilization and Purity Rebellion, and subsequently the crowning of Voll being the very short-lived Voll Empire Emperor, was ended by "The Cataclysm". This may be a bit far fetched but the only thing I can come up that can relate to them both.

If any of these are known information then I'm sorry I wasted your time but if not, I hope you find this interesting read and if there are more information that you can provide to correct me, I welcome you to do so.

nice read

Huh, I never noticed that rewards are assigned to factions. Nice catch.

Excellent post, will read again to glean the finer points.

to me maraketh and beyonded are somehow close together..

again in another thread like this I wish GGG would throw resources into legion lore like they did in synthesis..

I think the only relation between Maraketh and Vaal is because the history of Deshret and The Beast.

The Beast itself is a source of power, a source of thaumaturgy. Queen Atziri of the Vaal Empire was the first that tapping into The Beast power, and ordering Doryani to utilize it and thus virtue gems created. But the beast corrupts everyone that getting intouch with it, and corruption likely to spreads among the Vaals. "The End of Vaal Civilization" also seems to suggests that Doryani waking up The Beast from its slumber, and Vaal Empire ended because of internal event rather than external conquest which could be the result of The Beast's corruption among the Vaals and making them turning to each other.

The Vaal Empire fallen, and another Empires rose and one of them is Eternal Empire. During Chitus's reign, a thaumaturgist named Malachai trying to augmenting humans with virtue gems and also have a knowledge about The Beast exsitence. A rebellion to overthrown Chitus happened and led by Voll. He sought to cleanse the world from thaumaturgy and create a theocracy empire. He succeed in overthrowing Chitus, and also receiving help from Maraketh Leader, Sekhema Deshret in the process.

After he successfully took over the empire, Voll purged all thaumaturgist, but he spared Malachai. Malachai talked his way to be not executed, deceiving Voll that he could purge thaumaturgy by creating a device called Rapture Device. The device turned out to be a drill, used to tear a hole and make an entrance into The Beast lair and Malachai successfully entered the lair to take control of The Beast's power. The Cataclysm events happen, chaos and corruption spread in Wraeclast.

Voll's Empire fell with happening of cataclysm event, and people of Wraeclast looking a way to stop the madness. One of them is Deshret, she wandered through Wraeclast and found out that The Beast located in the mountain near Highgate. She went there and managed to seal the beast in its lair. From there after, The Maraketh is the one that in charge to guard the entrance.

SO tl:dr, Vaal Empire made virtue gems from the beast's power. The beast corruption is too strong that everyone that in touch with it will be corrupted. Deshret, The Red Sekhema, is a Maraketh Leader which managed to seal the entrance to the beast lair, hoping that nobody will go there again and create further chaos.

Nice read. Not a big lore player, so it is nice when things get spelled out like this for me to consume. Thanks!

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Spoiler

I always suspected that Harbingers were future versions of either Exiles or the Templars. The fact that they used souped-up versions of familiar skills was a big flashing red light. Still, given how dimensions work now, they could just as easily have been alternate dimension versions of Exiles, Templars or something else entirely.

Very nicely done.

I feel like they left us hanging with the Harbingers, like a show that ends a season with "To Be Continued" but then is cancelled (I'm looking at you "My Name is Earl").

The conclusion I came to was somewhat similar to the OP in that the celestial stuff with harbinger and shaper were somehow linked and it was actually somehow connected to the initial introduction of the Shaper/Elder storyline, which came in 3.1 (Harbingers came in 3.0). Almost as if the Harbingers were providing a warning about the Elder coming in the next patch.

Who knows. I personally feel a little let down. What were they a harbinger of? If it was just the Elder, that's also a let down.

well reminder that the elder and the now shaper with wiped out memories are banished trying to get back to the atlas they can still comeback someday..
perhaps it was the shaper without memories that created the harbringers?

I wish there were more explanation on the lore for alot of the league just like again synthesis.. so many resources into it but not on other leagues.

time travel? when?