Lightbearer Empire and their systematic erasure of history
So by now, it is probably no surprise to see yet another lore-related post on my page. And it’s probably even less of a surprise that we’re talking about yet another unethical terrible thing connected to the Lightbearers. But this piece of lore, I think, is very important because it is very common in irl societies as well and it is something to take into account when you read history books or learn about the past from a singular source. I will be mostly drawing information from the lore compilation in the AFK Arena art book. If you have any questions or want me to take pictures of specific parts of the book and lore, please let me know.
At first, I didn’t understand why we needed about half of the faction information in this book. It opens with an overview of the whole history of Esperia as well as the brief history of the multiverse Esperia is a part of. And yet, every faction also opens with a short historical overview. At a glance, they are very similar – the same general events, the same general timeline – but if you look closer, you will be able to spot a couple very important differences. The objective historical overview tells you how things happened while not taking sides and without bias. But faction-specific historical lore will tell you how each specific faction views its own history, what they see as their greatest triumph and what are the worst slights done to them. Obviously, all of these are extremely biased, but this time, I want to talk about the Lightbearers and their interpretation of their history.
We already knew, from the game, about the erasure of Zaphrael’s name. Despite him being a literal god, and despite him reaching divinity by saving the life of another god, Zaphrael was effectively deleted from history because his wife became a demon, and because Zaphrael never managed to truly kill her. This is especially jarring when you consider that the demons whose souls fused with Lucretia’s are the Twin Terrors – two demons of legendary power, bolstered by the faith of countless cults spread around the land. Lucretia, in the lore, is a demon who can fall armies all on her own. Yet, Zaphrael got mistreated and erased for not being able to kill her on his own. All of this because the church refuses to accept a god who failed to “control” his own wife.
But there is another, perhaps even worse, instance of the Lightbearer history being changed for the sake of an agenda. During the Era of Man-Gods, Annih proposed to the other gods to introduce humans to alchemical practices that would certainly lead to their doom. This lead to the creation of the Ya, people with animalistic features who would later go on to split into Maulers and Wilders... Except that’s not how the Lightbearer history goes. According to the Lightbearers, the Ya never existed. Instead, the transformed humans who went through so much pain because of the alchemical experiments, were simply all Maulers. Now, I know what you may be thinking, that’s not that big a difference, right? And what agenda would this even be pushing? Well...
Lightbearers originally founded the Astral Academy to be a place to study the arcane. But back when it was founded, it was an institute that was human-only. It wasn’t until much much later that the humans realized how powerful the Wilder magic is and how they could use it to their advantage. In the current timeline, Lightbearers as a whole strive to forge good relationships with the Wilders because they are extremely useful. Do you see the issue now?
By erasing the term Ya from their history and swapping it up for just Maulers, Lightbearers get to act as though they have never caused the Wilders any harm. And Wilders, while they do have some orally passed records of their history, have very little in terms of written records, so there is little more than anecdotal evicence of the violence, discrimination, and horrible mistreatment that their ancestors were subjected to from Lightbearer hands. Not only that, but this also works to drive further vedge between the Wilders and the Maulers since the Maulers already see the Wilders as cowards who would rather forget their past than fight to avenge it. And going even further, since Graveborn do actively use the term Ya, by erasing it from Lightbearer books, they shift all the responsibility for the violence on the common ancestors of the Maulers and Wilders, to Bantus. And since every other faction already kind of hates the Graveborn, it again only serves to fuel the fires of hatred more and more.
This is probably far from the last time something like this will happen but it is an interesting bit of information. I thought this was a mistake at first but after checking again, the text from the objective historical overview is practically copy-pasted into the Lightbearer history EXCEPT the mention of Ya, which is changed to specifically say Maulers, so I have a feeling it was done on purpose. It is really not too different from how many authoritative regimes will erase events from their history to try and look better in the public eye, we see it everywhere. But it really makes me happy to know that so much thought went into this book and how well it fleshed out the world of Esperia.
Church of Light, Mauler Temple, and the characters associated with them – Part 1
I thought I was done with all the stuff I had to say regarding the Church of Light, Mauler temple, Antandra, Lucius, and Belinda, but apparently I still have more thoughts on the matter. So here’s a more detailed breakdown of why I think the AFK lore is amazing and nuanced and why I don’t think a single character in the Church of Light or outside of it is objectively morally correct or wrong. And why I don’t think Antandra is as much of a moral authority as people seem to like to think of her. But let’s take it one by one.
This is gonna be a long post, so I’ll be putting it under Keep reading.
Church of Light
The Church of Light sucks. That’s once consensus we can all agree on. It’s corrupted and terrible and absolutely doesn’t deserve to hold any sort of moral high ground over anyone at all. But regardless, it exists, and the general idea behind is not an evil one. CoL is meant to guide humans to humility and to enforce peace and prosperity with the help of celestial magic. They take in orphans, give them education, jobs, and some stability in life despite them not having families. Outside of the church, the only other organization we now of that sort of does something similar is the Violet Orphanage. But where the VO focuses on forcing children to enter life-threatening situations to bind to demonic powers, CoL raises children in the presence of the divine and allows them to grow their own connection to it at their own terms. Furthermore, CoL roots out demonic cults and violent groups across the Lightbearer Kingdom that could, and often do, threaten the peace of the common people. They track their origins to the first worshippers of Dura and the celestials during the first Hypogean war, and they strive to give hope to people and allow them to live in faith that something or someone is watching over them. All in all, the general idea behind CoL is a noble and good one. It’s just that, much like everything ran by imperfect people, it got horribly perverted over time.
As things stand, CoL is a horribly misguided organization. This is an important detail because I don’t actually believe most of CoL members are malicious or causing suffering on purpose, even though I agree that the people in charge probably are terrible and disgusting and deserve to be wiped off the face of Esperia. Their first crime would be how overly careful they are. Someone who hid a criminal is not necessarily a criminal but the chance is always there, and for the CoL, even that chance is too big a risk. In a way, I believe this comes from a place of fear. They know how easily humans are corrupted, and thus they don’t trust the local authorities to deal with violent dangerous criminals on their own, and they don’t believe they would put them trough honest trial either. Just the possibility of a violent criminal escaping justice thanks to their money or talking skills or just because they don’t seem like they would be one of those people is too much of a risk for CoL to take, and it is really not that hard to see why.
The church protects people and connects them to the gods. That’s their entire purpose and the reason for their existence. It’s only natural for people to try and justify their own importance in the world, to try and prove that they are needed. Now, should this ever come at the cost of purposely creating enemies and ruling with fear and iron fist? Of course not. But at the same time, you can’t blame an organization based around protecting an insanely large amount of people for being careful and trying to eliminate potential threats as soon as possible. Sure, the people hiding the cultists may not be a part of the cult now but if they were left alive, they might decide to continue the work of said cult, sewing more evil and distress to society.
Another thing that I think doesn’t get brought up enough is that there is a place within the kingdom where CoL has close to no influence. That place is the city of Rustport. And far and wide, it is known as a hellhole of chaos where you will get robbed or murdered in broad daylight if you’re not careful or powerful enough. Anything from petty crimes through illegal alchemy to slave trade is on the market here and the absolute freedom is terrifying. The survival of the fittest is the only law that applies here, only further highlighting the importance of CoL for the kingdom. Twisted as it may be, CoL provides stability. The good priests and priestesses shine as beacons of light, hope, morality, and humanity while also teaching others to be humble and considerate, and supporting the ruling power’s laws.
Mauler Desert Temple
The Mauler society has a very different set of rules and codes than the human-based Lightbearer kingdom, and what more could we really expect? The Maulers are a people who were treated less than poorly, and were nearly slaughtered by their own creators before they decided to fight back for their lives and honor, and both of those remained a huge part of their culture ever since then. Maulers are a tribal society that has very little in terms of centralized structure. There is the Mauler Chieftain who can order the other tribes to unite against a common threat but such alliances inevitably fall apart when the Chieftain dies. The only other constant across all the Mauler tribes are the voodoo priests working for the Desert Temple.
The Desert Temple, much like CoL, has many roles and comes from a very good place. It heals the sick, it provides support and wisdom to the fighters. It can help settle disputes in a non-violent way in a culture that is very much based around violence. And unlike CoL, it has a deep understanding of both life and death and a great respect for both, that can clearly be seen in its practices. The game even directly tells us that voodoo magic is one of the oldest forms of magic that exist in Esperia, one that is not bound to a god or an element but rather one that is innately a part of the world and that allows itself to be seen and used only by those who are familiar with and respect the natural order of life and death. Even the Wilders were not able to tap into it, and it might be because they chose to run to save their lives rather than to fight for them and embrace the possibility of dying for the cause they considered right. Furthermore, DT has proven itself as the helping force to drive back calamities and natural disasters, with its members willing to put down their lives to protect or help others. However, even here we see many imperfections.
As with most things with Mauler society, DT is inevitably based around usefulness. If you aren’t useful to the temple, you aren’t welcome in it. If you are a burden, you are better off dead. Emotions aren’t useful, only raw power is. The temple demands children from many tribes be sent there to serve as temple warriors from a very young age, and then trains them to only be loyal to the temple. In the process, they strive to destroy their empathy and stun their emotional growth, essentially crippling them in that regard. This is one of the reasons why Antandra never hesitated to kill someone she grew up with for something she considered the right thing to do. These children are raised as killing machines, doing simply what the temple tells them, or what the temple instilled in them as the “right” and the “just” causes. It demands blind obedience though, especially from the temple warriors themselves. Antandra gets banished not because she killed but because she drew her blade without an order. The DT is authoritarian and absolute and doesn’t allow for any free will.
Sadly, we don’t have nearly enough lore on the Maulers as a whole to talk about a place without their influence to see whether they have some wider role in the society like CoL does, but a lot is likely going to come with the promised artbook. Until then, I will go off the note that nearly all the tribes seem to have deep-rooted respect for the temple. Aside from the Chieftain, the temple really seems to be the only thread connecting the wild and untamed Mauler society and possibly to be the only organization capable of making it work closely together, although they are yet to properly use this power of theirs. Or perhaps it is good that they didn’t yet. The religious zealotry that CoL pursues would end up devastatingly when combined with the Mauler temperament and sense of honor, so perhaps a part of their role is making sure the religious tensions never reach such an insane high. All of this is just pure speculation though.
I could go on and on and talk about all the characters in a single post as well but this is already getting long and Tumblr text editor has horrible delays on posts of this length, so we’ll end part 1 of this massive analysis here. I might post the next part tomorrow or later or I might not get to it at all but I needed to get at least this first part off my chest. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and I’m looking forward to seeing you at the next one!
The idea of aging and death doesn't scare him – it offends him. Why should he meet the same fate as the common unwashed masses? No no no, he is a noble, and he will make the difference clear to all. And if he can't live forever, he will at least live longer than all of them. Undeath? Necromancy? Why turn to something so repulsive when all he needs is a little bit of alchemy, magic, and a generous donation to the Church of Light to keep things quiet and supply him with enough of their little acolytes?
