Stormwaltz 2016 Q&A/Question 10

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Question 10: Jhirvall and Auraken

September, 2016 - [No Link]

Q: You mentioned two specific beings: Jhirvall, the Kemeroi that changed Ilservian, and Auraken, a cursed Gromnatross. Both of these are only mentioned by name once in AC1. Was there more information about either of them in AC1 or AC2?

A: I don't believe there ever was. Which is odd in the case of Jhirvall, now that I think about it.

The Gromnatross were proto-content I intentionally mythologized during my time on the game; they were not archangels in the original 1996-1998 vision of the lore. Before alpha, the intent was that Gromnatross would be actual creatures in the game world, with gromnies representing their juvenile form. The engine wasn't up to handling anything as large as they intended, and it was abandoned early on.

Jhirvall, on the other hand, is one of the oldest names in the lore. Even in the oldest internal Empyrean history doc (by Toby Ragaini, Eri Izawa, and Michael Howrilka - a developer who left before I was hired), Jhirvall appeared as the figure who tempted Ilservian:

Ilservian met that black night a being that named itself Jhirvall (the name was actually that of a type of underground spider), which at first crept up on five legs and then took the shape of a man. (Ilservian saw this through the light of a lone candle.) Jhirvall spoke (hissed) in the old tongue of Dericost to greet Ilservian.

Ilservian learned that, just before Dericost’s fall, his ancestors had made contact with a shadowy race of beings. The race of beings was, Ilservian fancied, the original lords of the world, who had reigned in dark splendor. But needing servants (Ilservian was told), the shadow people had somehow brought the Empyrean to the world. But the rebellious Empyrean had brought light instead.

We called you; we brought you; you shall bow to us and we shall make you part of us like you were meant to be, Jhirvall chanted.

In the early production of AC2, the artists concepted a Gromnatross based on the lore that had built up in AC1. It was beautiful, though it appears I never saved a copy of it. It doesn't seem to be on the internet, either, so I have to imagine it's lost.

Chris "Stormwaltz" L'Etoile