Curiosities about Sanctus

nidriks

I've been thinking a lot about Sanctus of late. I took a long break from following Ashes before the Peon influx, so maybe I missed some lore.

I know we don't have a complete picture but I find myself wondering what Sanctus would be like.

We know Sanctus has no magic, and the lore I have read makes me think thousands of years have passed since the exodus from Verra. In that time the Verrans have been forced to live without magic.

Is Sanctus like Earth or Verra or is it merely a "space" that the goddess was able to send the Verrans to?

If Sanctus is a world, complete with its own life, would the exiles have advanced technologically in a way that we humans did?

I feel led to believe that Sanctus is merely a "confined" Realm - for want of a better word - the races not able to really advance much beyond merely being.

Or did something else stop them from reaching an advanced state of technology?

Theory crafting is fun, so what do people think?

I do find it fascinating to wonder what the lore has in store for us

mcstackerson

Here is a quote from the wiki which pretty much covers this. :https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Sanctus

A long long long time ago, everybody lived on a planet called Verra. Something cataclysmic happened that forced people from that world to another world called Sanctus. Verra is a place of really high magic. Sanctus is a place with no magic whatsoever. People escaped through these portals into the world of Sanctus. They had to rediscover technology, because so much of their current technology was based on magic, so they had to figure out how to interact with the world. Thousands and thousands of years go by. A long dark age passes. This history that I just told you falls into myth and legend. After this time passes, these portals reopen and the players are going to take the part of people who are coming through those portals once again back to the world of Verra to rediscover that magic, rediscover their history, and try to figure out what happened to this world to force them out of it

TLDR: Yes, it sounds like it's a planet (it's called a world) and they had to reinvent their tech because they didn't have magic which their previous tech relied on.

nidriks

Yeah, that is the block of text that I referred to chiefly. It is the line of text that says "Thousands and thousands of years go by" that has me wondering so much. That suggests to me that something must have inhibited the exiles from serious advancement. If you compare that with how far humans have advanced in the last 2000 years.

So what do we think happened in those thousands of years?

Sanctus just fascinates me. I have this image of Verrans clustered in corridors of some ghastly building. I think it is the sinister looking Vek Orc that gives me that image. Though I now realise that's a forest she has her wagon by. I first saw it as a grey wall with vines.

As for the use of the word world, well I'm not sure it has to mean somewhere like Earth. Could it be a desolate place that just about supports the races? Keeping them alive but being far from a place to support massive technological advancement?

CaptnChuck

Who knows.....Maybe Sanctus might be part of a future expansion. We'll probably get to know a lot about it then.

Beck Altarr

@nidriks Here is my take based on nothing more than what anyone else knows, but having thought a lot about it myself...

I have a post that goes into more detail here:

In Short, Sanctus is Earth Hundreds of thousands of years after we left it due to calamity, be it pollution, an asteroid or war. We build ships out of all the metals we could reasonably find in a short time to leave the solar system. Over that time we evolved and what is left of us were the 10 Gods with almost Q like powers (star Trek TNG). Still mortal-ish, but technology and such far beyond us, so much so it looks like magic...

As the Bible has us believe, Man was created in the image of God. So were the 5 original races. Ancients, Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Elves.

When we were sent back to Sanctus, a world long forgotten by all the Gods but 1. We had to travel through the portals. Sanctus/Earth is on the other side of the Galaxy, so it would take thousands of years at light speed to get there. This fills in some of the time gaps. If it takes 5000 years each way, that's 10 thousand years the Tulnar had on Verra to evolve when the rest of our ancestors were traveling though space and for us when we travel back.

Sanctus was stripped of most of the metals and such so there wouldn't be much when we got there. This would really restrict technological advancement. So even after 10 thousand years on Sanctus we wouldn't develop much past the middle ages. 1200 - 1600 A.D.. We would have learned to do a lot with wood and stone, stuff we don't know how to do today, but our ancestors here on earth did hundreds and thousands of years ago. So this is using our own history as a basis for this theory.

This is my thoughts on Sanctus and why in Verra we are not taking what we know of Technology from Sanctus and using magic to create super advanced things. We were never able to advance much with out the raw materials to do so.

Beck Altarr

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Who knows.....Maybe Sanctus might be part of a future expansion. We'll probably get to know a lot about it then.

I would be surprised if it wasn't.

If the Corruption is spreading on Verra again and we are stopping and slowing it, the powers behind it would want to stop us. The best way to do that is to shut down the portals or trace them back to Sanctus and spread corruption there. This still works with the history I have theorized about above, just no one would likely remember us leaving and people would have stopped going through the portals.

We would in effect see the corruption enter the portals and go in after it so it wouldn't have a lot of time ahead of us. We'd be strangers to the people on Sanctus which would save a lot of time trying to write around why no one knows us by name from a game perspective for the Devs. No one came back through the portals thousands of years before so they just blocked them off/stopped sending people through, though the portals are still active. That is, until we reversed them and appeared.

I could have so much fun just thinking up all the story lines... I kinda am with the radio and the content I am working on for it.

The only flaw is, if we make them two way and it's suddenly instant transport. But Who's to say the Gods didn't sort out worm holes and such by then. Blink uses a small inter dimensional travel... Maybe the Gods sort that out on a much bigger scale with a better power source then themselves.

nidriks

@Beck Altarr I like it. It's a fun origin story and something both plausible and different.

I can't see Steven giving any sort of hint as to who is right or wrong though.

I wonder how it would be told in game though. The Verran races wouldn't know or understand any of it.

I read a great series of books recently by Adrian Tchaikovsky in which advanced humans created a way to advanced primitive life to be sentient. Long story, short, it worked but not how envisioned. I thought of that when I read your idea.

I am glad you mentioned Shanarra too, because I definitely get a Shanarra vibe from Sanctus. Just without the magic.

I have been toying with my own little short story about how I imagine the return to Verra. I love to write, so maybe I'll work on that. I don't think it hurts to be wrong.

Part of the reason for this thread was to grasp other opinions on Sanctus.

I do agree that Sanctus sounds like a barren world where just surviving is a deal, and that has halted advancement.

My other big query has been with regard to how the races coexist on Sanctus. Whether there has been peace or conflict over thousands of years.

Beck Altarr

@nidriks If the Tulnar evolved from breeding of the 4 races and with the minor races then I would say on Sanctus the 4 races were kept apart. Each of the 4 races has 2 distinct cultures which would tell me that they did not co-mingle much if at all, even among themselves.

Look at Europe as an example, although there are different languages almost everyone speaks English and almost all the cultures are blended. There are some distinctiveness between them, but not as much as there once was an in a few hundred years maybe you likely wont be able to tell the Dutch apart from the Austrians.

U.S. and Canada are good examples of that. So if the races did commingle on Sanctus there would he a 5th mutt like race made up of all the Half Orcs, Half Elves, Half Dwarves and all the mixes of those. With their being 4 portals, one for each race, and limited technology, I am thinking each of the races lives on their own continent. Maybe something happened to separate North and South America. Maybe over those hundreds of thousands of years continental drift really pulled things apart. With out a lot of metal building ships wouldn't be very easy or cheap.

On Verra we would not only meet the Tylnar, but for most of us it would be the first time seeing anyone from the other races as well.

The only other way you wouldn't have the 4 races becoming 1 blended mixed race/culture is if they are all xenophobic/racist. In which case we would be constantly at war with each other and those factions would carry over into Verra. We know that isn't happening so this theory isn't likely possible.

nidriks

The only fact that makes me think they mingled on Sanctus is that Intrepid have said you can start in any starter area.

If we look at the lore it does suggest that the races had been making alliances with each other before the calamity. I read that the orcs had signed treaties that took them away from their more aggressive nature.

I'd like to think there would be both groups of a race that kept to themselves and those that felt the ened to cooperate. Perhaps the game could give us a character creation option to state that we chose to either stick with our own race on Sanctus or live in more mixed areas. Those who chose the own race choice would be agreeing to start in their own race's start area. Maybe players could get a different racial dependent upon that choice. More charisma, for example, for the social orcs and a benefit to prices in orc settlements for the patriots.

I think, if the world of Sanctus is harsh, then there is going to be many that feel the need to cooperate. Early generations would remember past race relationships/transgressions, but that would fade. In 10k years much of what was what on Verra would probably be forgotten, or confined to folklore. That's not to say that there might not be a group of orcs who have had some sort of distancing go down their blood lines and feel the need to be seperate from the other races.

I'm assuming Sanctus has a history as diverse as what Verra would have had. Wars must have happened on Sanctus.

Might find out now that the Gods have had the Verran exiles in some sort of stasis for 10k years, and when they head back they feel as if they just left. That is the beauty of this open ended lore we have. We really don't know. The reality could be anything.

And I want to know...dammit!

Chime

nidriks wrote: »

I have been toying with my own little short story about how I imagine the return to Verra. I love to write, so maybe I'll work on that. I don't think it hurts to be wrong.

Part of the reason for this thread was to grasp other opinions on Sanctus.

This is me too, I've been prowling the forums and wiki because I'm curious about Sanctus. I have the urge to write about my characters before the divine gateways, and I imagine it like a medieval era.

1. Does the entire populace go through the gateway, or just a % of each race?
2. Did each race essentially choose (example, the desert for Vaelune) what resembled what they knew on Sanctus?