Ok, my previous post about cut content did better than I was expecting! So I think that's a sign for me to share more Hogwarts Legacy cut content I’ve found. And boy! I’ve been bursting at the seams wanting to talk about some of this stuff for more than a year! Let’s go!
I’ll start today with all things related to the Dale family because that’s some of the more ‘complete’ cut content I’ve found. We’ll start with just a funny little tidbit and then we’ll delve into the real mystery!
Ilse Dale
Ok, so I present to you, Ilse Dale, President of The Glacius Art Society!
It’s unclear exactly how Ilse Dale is related to Samantha Dale, but I think from the last name it’s obvious he’s somewhere in the family tree. But let’s examine what this Glacius Art Society is!
In the SQL files I found some traces of what they call a ‘World Event’ or WE called ‘Ice Garden’. Other World Events are, for exemple, all the dead NPCs we find in the Highlands, some with notes on them to explain their death. Anyway, it looks like this Ice Garden thing would have been some ice statues we would have been able to find throughout the Highlands, left there as a very… questionable form of wizarding art!
Here is a letter from Ilse Dale himself, explaining everything (the text for the note can be found in the ‘SUB-enUS’ file, in the Localization folder. This file contains all the subtitles for all dialogue in game and also the text for the notes/letters we find, including some notes that are actually not present in the final version of the game):
Dear Mr Spitz,
Thank you for your inquiry regarding our most prestigious organisation. The Glacius Art Society, TGAS, is indeed still taking members and a successful application will be contingent upon the appraisal of an art installation of your making and in keeping with TGAS’s vision.
As you are of course aware, TGAS is not just any wizarding art association, but one that finds beauty and meaning in the temporary freezing of dangerous beasts, caught in their most fearsome states. Any application made to TGAS should be in keeping with this consideration.
We look forward to reviewing your submission and remind you to take care when practising your art, as subjects often tend to thaw out more quickly than one might expect.
Kind regards,
Ilse Dale
President of The Glacius Art Society
And it looks like Mr Spitz isn’t the only one that sent a submission for the society because we find 5 reviews (likely attached to ice statues, though I haven’t been able to find any trace of those assets) for different works of… art?
"Note_IceGarden_Review1": "A playful rebellion against mortality by newcomer to wizarding art circles, Benedictus Dijon, whose work is gaining a reputation for its exploration of magical permanence and preservation."
"Note_IceGarden_Review2": "Elisabet Fargan’s thought-provoking piece is a perfect metaphor for the sensitivities of the half-blood existence, and a fascinating contribution to the fraught discourse surrounding blood purity that plagues contemporary wizarding society."
"Note_IceGarden_Review3": "No sculpture comes closer to examining the magical condition than this masterpiece by president of the Glacius Art Society, Ilse Dale, whose eye for the frozen form is, quite frankly, beyond compare."
"Note_IceGarden_Review4": "Mira Hornbal’s perceptive installation serves as a thrilling exploration into the dual role of magic as an instrument of both beauty and brutality – a bold reminder of our responsibility as the most enlightened of species."
"Note_IceGarden_Review5": "This stark artistic debut by fledgeling witch Jadelyn Oakney holds up a mirror to the wizarding world’s ugliest truths – a brave, bold decision by the new Hogwarts alumnus and member of Gryffindor house."
(I even checked and the content of these cut notes was translated into French so this must have been cut quite late if they took the trouble of translating it)
Personally, I love this and I’m so sad it got cut! This is exactly the sort of little thing that expends what we know of the wizarding world (new wizarding world art form!) and also highlights the chilling supremacy and contempt for other magical species that permeates the wizarding world culture. It mixes whimsy and humour with a pretty chilling dark side and that perfectly embodies the wizarding world imo.
And it looks like the whole story did take an even darker turn at the end as I find some UE Blueprints and animation files that hint at a wizard being crushed and a dead NPC to loot (perhaps this sad fate befell Mr Spitz himself and we find the note from Ilse Dale in his pocket).
Anyway, that whole thing was only marginally related to the Dale family, it just a bit of fun, but let’s dig into the real stuff now!
Marmaduke Dale's journal
As you all know, we have one quest given to us by Samantha Dale.
A quick recap: Samantha was doing some research on her ancestor, Marmaduke Dale. Marmaduke was a famed herbologist who had greatly advanced the field of herbology and potion-making. He discovered the properties of several magical plants and uncovered numerous types of flora. However, in her research, Samantha discovered that his tomb had been cursed by his older brother, Granum Dale.
Granum was jealous of the attention his brother was getting as a prodigy in herbology. And, to add insult to injury, after their mother died, Marmaduke was given the prized family crest. Granum felt this crest should have gone to him, as the eldest child. So, several years after their mother’s death, when Marmaduke died, Granum stole the family crest and cursed the tomb so that none in the Dale family could ever come pay their respects. Hence, the tomb had been abandoned for centuries.
Samantha told her brother William all she had discovered but he did not believe her and laughed in her face. To prove her wrong, he went into the tomb and, right as he passed the entrance,… his feet turned into beets!
Since the curse starts with the crest that was stolen from Marmaduke, Samantha believes that if the crest was returned to it’s rightful place on Marmaduke’s sarcophagus, the curse will be broken and her brother will get his feet back. Somewhat dubious reasoning if you ask me but sure.
Samantha happens to have the Dale family crest with her (even though I thought it had been stolen by Granum… I guess Marmaduke’s descendants got the crest back at some point) and she asks the MC to go into the tomb to return the crest since she can’t go into the tomb herself without being cursed.
After that, the quest is pretty straightforward, we go into the tomb, find the opened sarcophagus at the end, return the crest and the the curse is lifted. The only noteworthy thing in that quest is that the MC runs into the Riparian Troll inside the tomb.
And that seems to be the end of what we learn about Marmaduke Dale. Unless… it looks like they worked on a second quest centered around Marmaduke Dale’s story!
This second quest has a different 3 letter code (code LFM, instead of the code TTR for the beet feet curse quest with Samantha) and we can find several traces of it throughout the game files.
From what I can parse out, during this quest we would have found several Orbs and Orb seeds. Activating these seed orbs would have done something to a ‘Bramblehenge’ tree and it’s branches. I googled the word 'bramblehenge' and it gives me nothing. Might be a magical tree specie they made up. Interesting that they used the word 'henge' in there.
There is also a "RevelioRock" somewhere that is linked to a texture showing the Dale family crest (the one we placed back on Marmaduke Dale’s sarcophagus). All of this would have probably lead to an old study of Marmaduke’s.
We can find assets in the game files for the Bramblehenge Tree (+ branches).
There are also textures for the Orbs (called HerbologistOrb) but no 3D meshes. To see what the orbs would have looked like, we have to turn to released concept art, showing the orbs and what was probably the desk in Marmaduke Dale’s study.
And we also find a description text for the Orbs (in the MAIN-enUS file):
"Quest_LFM_Orb_desc": "A medieval seed pod constructed by legendary Herbologist Marmaduke Dale"
But, more interesting than all of that, there were also several excerpts from Marmaduke’s journal to be found. I haven’t been able to find the full text of these journal excerpts but, from the text describing the journal pages (in the MAIN-enUS file), we know the exact dates of each of the exerpts:
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_01": "Marmaduke Dale's First Journal entry",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_01_desc": "An excerpt from Marmaduke Dale's personal journal, dated May 7, 1388",
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_02": "Marmaduke Dale's Second Journal entry",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_02_desc": "An excerpt from Marmaduke Dale's personal journal, dated June 22, 1388",
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_03": "Marmaduke Dale's Third Journal entry",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_03_desc": "An excerpt from Marmaduke Dale's personal journal, dated October 9, 1388",
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_04": "Marmaduke Dale's Fourth Journal entry",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_04_desc": "An excerpt from Marmaduke Dale's personal journal, dated December 22, 1388",
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_05": "Marmaduke Dale's Fifth Journal entry",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_05_desc": "An excerpt from Marmaduke Dale's personal journal, dated Feb 28th 1389"
"QUEST_LFM_JOURNALPAGE_06": "Esoterica Herbacea Title Page",
"Quest_LFM_JournalPage_06_desc": "The title page of Marmaduke Dale's Herbology textbook"
And from a data table in the SQL file, we learn a little bit more about possible content of these notes:
As far as I can tell, these words (ynogh, pees, plantes, suspecioun, woodnesse and cleernesse) are all middle english or old french, both fitting the time period of 1388 and 1389 when the journal was written.
I’m not an expert in old languages but some internet research tells me that:
Ynogh means enough in middle english
Pees means peace in middle english
Plantes is french for plants (as far as I can tell, it was the same word in old french as well)
Suspecioun is a bit more difficult but it’s apparently a known old french variation for sospeçon, meaning suspicion (which is identical in french and english)
Woodnesse is middle english for madness
For Cleernesse I can’t find an exact equivalent but there is the middle english word ‘clernesse’ meaning brightness or shininess. It could also mean clear-sightedness or perspicacity but also things like magnificence, beauty, glory or even paying off debts.
Anyway, if we read between the lines, this could tell an interesting story of going from a peaceful state of studying plants, to getting suspicious of something or someone, to falling into madness to finally come to a revelation of some sort. I guess we’ll never know the full story :(
It also looks like, after completing this quest, we would have gotten as a reward a Herbology book, described as:
"QUEST_LFM_HERBOLOGY_BOOK": "Esoterica Herbacea",
"Quest_LFM_Herbology_Book_desc": "A tome of ancient Herbological knowledge, thought to be lost for centuries. It was written by the legendary medieval Herbologist Marmaduke Dale, ancestor of Samantha Dale."
And now I’m super curious about Esoteric Herbology knowledge!
That's all I've been able to find about the Dale family and their history. Digging for cut content is exciting for the potential to unearth some new information about this game I've been obsessing about for 2 years now, but there's also some level of frustration because it's hard to get a full picture about what any of those cut questlines or lore details would have been... And it's very unlikely that they will ever bring them back for sequels or other games.
Nevertheless, one thing I take away from all this cut content is that the devs of the game were not short on ideas for interesting stories to tell in this world, which makes me hopeful for anything we might see in the future!
I’ve dug deep into the HL game files during the last 2 years but I don’t usually post any of the things I find in there (unless it’s directly linked to some theory I have from the official game’s story). It’s mainly because I always hesitate to bring up and discuss stuff that’s obviously been cut from the game and therefore is most likely completely irrelevant now.
But, personally, I’m fascinated with finding all these little clues about the game that could have been, or all the different possibilities for story and gameplay that the devs explored on their way to creating the final game we have today. And since lately I’ve seen a bit more discussion start around unused game data (see here and here, there might be other posts I haven’t seen) I though I might give it a shot and post some of the things I’ve found interesting.
Starting today with some screenshots lefts by the devs in some "tutorial" folders that show earlier builds of the game UI and menus and give us a glimpse into other gameplay features that were cut.
Here we have an early version of the gear menu! This image is quite small and blurry but I can’t do anything about it, it’s just how it is in the game files.
Few things I find interesting here: it looks like we could ‘equip’ beasts, beyond just the beast mounts. Like, here, it looks like a puffskein and a phoenix are ‘equiped’, or at least selected. I wonder what they did. Do the equipped beasts give buffs?
If you zoom in and squint we can also see in the different menu tabs above a tab called ‘schedule’. Does that mean they experimented with a class schedule? Some other data in SQL files suggest that they indeed tried implementing some type of schedule for activities but it’s nice to see they even tried out some UI interface for this.
We can also see that, at some point, they had some rings we could equip instead of gloves. I wonder if those had special properties.
Now some screenshots of the old conjuration UI. They apparently tested a way more complex resources system (with timber, yorkstone, galena, rubies in addition to the moonstone we have in-game). I have to say, I’m not mad they got rid of that. Collecting all of these different resources seems tedious and needing to have resources to conjure an object does not fit with wizarding world lore. But being able to collect different types of stone or ore (like galena) would be interesting for things like alchemy for instance.
And now onto nurturing plants!
We can see the use of aguamenti to water our plants. It also looks like plants could give more than one resource. I also note the little blue icon to the left that looks like a bed. I wonder if it appears when the character lacks sleep. We know from the SQL files data that they experimented with some buff/debuff system when the character was well-rested and well-fed.
In the second screenshot we have a whole knowledge level system for the chomping cabbage that we’ll see also with potions. Maybe something like: you first had to discover the plan, then you could harvest it, then plant it yourself? It’s not very clear. We get a bit more info about this system for potions.
First of all, we see two different health potions: skele-gro and the wound cleaning one. We can also see what looks like different knowledge levels that reveal different sorts of ‘secret ingredients’ that can apparently be added to a potion once it’s already brewing. Maybe to give the potion some special effects?
In the SQL data we can find a lot of data tables for a knowledge system that applied to all sorts of things (including astronomy, beasts, spells, conjurations, Hogwarts and more)
I do wish they’d kept some sort of progressive knowledge system. I think it would feel much more rewarding to progressively have to grow the character’s knowledge. The existing plant and potions system feels much too simple.
That’s it for today. A quick and easy post!
But if people are interested about HL cut content, there is much more that I could post. Including more info about the Dale family, all sorts of fun speculation about the Sanguine Circle, possibly more info about the Oakes family (??), more secret mermaid artifacts from the prefects’ bathroom (follow-up on Nerida’s quest ??), maybe more info on the portrait near Fig’s classroom (that people at some point thought could be an ancestor of Sebastian because they look similar) and all sorts of other fun and mysterious stuff!
@the-magiarcheologist I've been digging the game files with Fmodel and DB viewer at last. I've found the devs' commentary on missions. The file in question is: CSV_MIssionList_Phoenix (Content -> Data -> Mission).
Some findings (excuse the formatting, it's a very lengthy cvs file):
We were supposed to learn Oppugno at the very beginning of the game:
"OLI_01_Natsai, OLI_01_Seb",Welcome to Hogsmeade,VS 1D,Hogwarts,Main,Weasley 2,Reparo,2,"UNLOCKED: Spell_Oppugno, *AM Meter + Finishers, Aim Mode (after completed), Dark Arts Combat Challenge (Deluxe and Collector's Editions - after completed)
So goblins do interrupt trade:
Villager asks player for help clearing out a couple of goblin camps interupting the supply of goods to her village.
Very sudden bit of lore about the butterfly lady:
" Clementine Willardsley has a fascination with butterflies and a controlling husband who won't let her pursue her interests. Player must locate and follow the butterflies - and see where they lead.
Arn used to be called Rem (friendly :DD):
" Rem, a (friendly) goblin artiste who dabbles in trade has lost his magic cart. Player must track down the (unfriendly) goblin camp, clear them out to allow Rem's cart to find its way home.
Alexandra's troll has a name and, well, that synopsis is rather grim compared to how it is in the game:
" Alexandra Ricketts is having trouble with Herbert, a Troll she has been trying to train. With the hamlet up in arms, she knows she has to fix the problem - but can't bring herself to do the deed. Player offers to 'take care' of Herbert.
Who's Hyacinth Oliver?
" Hyacinth Olivier needs help with Ashwinders who are infesting nearby castle ruins, disrupting local peace and their trade routes. Player agrees to take out leader of the bunch - Silvanus Selwyn.
Treasure map treasures:
"You find a treasure map in a dungeon. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map in an enchanted well. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map while searching for the lost pages from the book. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map in a dark ruin surrounded by inferi. Where does it lead?
This csv suggests Jackdw dies only 10 years ago:
" The player recieves word about where the missing pages could be. This is different per house, with Gryffindors playing a pumpkin smashing game with the headless hunt, Hufflepuffs going to Azkaban to help solve a decade old murder, Ravenclaws exploring the Owlery for hints the elusive Richard Jackdaw left behind, and Slytherins helping a lovestruck Scrope get back a journal from his previous master. All roads end in meeting with Richard Jackdaw, who instructs the player to go to the forbidden forest to find the missing pages."
The Map Chamber used to be called Haven:
"Player visits Prof. Fig in his office to tell him about the missing pages and show him secret room he discovered beneath Hogwarts called the Haven
San Bakar Tower was Charles Tower:
"Player meets Fig at Charles Tower to begin the first trial. The player learns he/she must adventure alone through and ancient magical test. Fig cannot help him.
The unicorn from the unicorn quest used to be lost, not endangered:
" Betty Bowditch has been searching for her lost Unicorn for years. Word has finally reached her of it's location in the Dark Forest. Player agrees to find Unicorn, capture - and keep in good health.
Florence Green instead of Sacharissa Tugwood was supposed to give the bubotuber retrieval quest:
" Florence Green needs to get her hands on some bubotubers to make her Acne cream for the upcoming student intake. Only problem is, they're hard to find - and in the dark forest. Player agrees to go and find and retrieve them.
Isodora, a shamed keeper (@writeblood):
"Seb and the player follow a clue left by Isodora, a shamed keeper, to her secret lair on the hunt for her personal pensieve. Seb is hopeful it will lead to a clue to help his sister. The secret lair is within a cave by a cliffside overlook. The player finds a portrait piece that fits within the undercroft Triptych.
Relic of the Dead, Cost of Banishment:
"The player and Sebastian enter an old Cairn in search of the Relic of the Dead. After finding it, they return to the hamlet to show Sebastian's sister, Anne, only to encounter a goblin raid. Sebastian saves his sister but at the cost of banishment.
Sebastian's personal quests are shortened to EVL:
"The player and Seb talk about the events of EVL_02 and Sebastian's banishment.
The mountain near the Marunweem lake is called Percival Tower:
"The player and Seb continue their journey to learn more about Isidora and her role in ancient magic and how to use it to help people in pain. The journey takes them to some switchbacks near the coast and within another large cave dungeon, Percival Tower Dungeon. They find the final portrait piece for the Triptych that reveals the pensieve inside the undercroft.
A NEW HAMLET! :
"A secret meeting with Anne and Seb behind Solomon's back - Avatar overhears: Anne divulges Solomon is planning on moving away to a new hamlet! Seb implores her to stall, and promises the reason will be worth it, he's found a breakthrough when it comes to healing curses with this Relic of the Dead! Anne hesitantly agrees, but under the condition that Ominis be consulted.
Relic is used to raise inferi:
"Sebastian is using the Relic of the Dead to raise Inferi. Anne attempts to confront him but it ultimately ends in Solomon's death.
Ohmy, so I was correct about Natty was supposed to possibly die from (Theo)philus Harlow's spell:
"The player and Natsai follow up on another clue about Rookwood's gang that turns out to be an ambush. It ends with a confrontation with Theo Harlow and Natsai taking a potentially fatally blow to save the avatar.
The next entry breaks that supposition (but it still feels like she was supposed to die in Harlow's Last Stand; stakes were too high):
"The player and Natsai talk about her injury and how she cannot blame herself for her father's death.
Hmmm, so it's highly likely Sebastian ends up in Azkaban either way, since there's a warrant apparently (that file is rather old, however, so whether it's true is unknown):
Seb or Ominis conv (EVL_Conv_08a and EVL_Conv_08b) which is about a: thanking player for trusting seb for finding his own way. b: there is a warrant out for Seb's arrest.
I'll say it separately: this file is old so is of very questionable accuracy to the current state of the game. Still, it's an insight in what the devs thought they should include in the game and how the approached it.
The fact that they call Isidora a shamed Keeper is soooo interesting!!
It further cements my theory that the name "Keeper" means something else than just guarding Isidora's repository! They did not become Keepers after Isidora died, they were already Keepers much earlier than that, probably before Isidora even started messing with the pain magic. Isidora was also a Keeper, until something happened and she broke from the group.
In the game files, there is also a json file with all the in-game UI text (like all the descriptions of objects, quests etc. that we can find in our field guide). It includes some text describing the Keepers (called Sanctum Guardians) that I don't think we can actually access from our field guide. But about Percival Rackham, it says:
Percival Rackham recognised the problems that would arise from the wizarding world having access to powerful magic and gathered a team to address them.
The 'problems that could arise' could be Isidora mis-using the ancient magic but, in-game, Percival had already gathered the other Keepers before they met Isidora so I wonder if there was something else the Keepers were fighting against and trying to stop, something that had nothing to do with Isidora.
The descriptions of the other Keepers are also interesting:
Charles Rookwood was a Keeper.
This one is pretty boring 🤣
Twig was an adept student at Hogwarts who was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
Yes, Niamh Fitzgerald was originally called 'Twig' 😂 and she might have originally been much younger than her final version.
San Bakar was a pilgrim who ended up at Hogwarts, and was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
A pilgrim!
Isidora is called "Isidora the Bold" and her description reads:
Isidora is a fierce and powerful witch who was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
And yes, in the game files the Map Chamber is called either the Sanctum or the Haven, which is super interesting also! Why did they internally use these names to refer to the Map Chamber? It makes it seem like there is more to the history of the Map Chamber than what we learn in-game...
Also I have whoooole post to write about the stuff regarding "Percival Tower". It's not just in the game files, in the Art and Making Of book they released with the game there is a picture of the Tower Tunnel dungeon from that mission in Marunweem and it's described also as "Percival's Tower Dungeon" in that book. And if that castle/dungeon belonged to Percival then it kickstarts all sorts of theories like why did Isidora have one of her secret labs there...
Anyway, I had skimmed that csv file and never read it fully but your post made me realize I missed a lot in interesting info. I went back to have a look at it and I also saw this:
The description for the restricted section mission reads:
The player and Sebastian sneak into the restricted section, and due to their skills with ancient magic, the player is able to find Fig's missing book.
And later it says
The player returns the book to Fig.
It's interesting that they refer to the book as belonging to Fig. Like it's a book he lost and asked to player to retrieve. They changed that slightly in the final version of the game where it's never implied the book belongs to Fig in any way.
Also, at the very end, when the player goes to Ollivander to prepare the ancient magic wand to access the repository it says:
The player asks Olivander to repair a special broken wand he needs to defeat Ranrok. While on the journey the player must defeat Victor Rookwood in a battle to the death
In the final version of the game, there is no broken wand to repair, is there? He just crafts and entirely new wand I think. I wonder if this 'special broken wand' is the one we find in the Ravenclaw mission with Jackdaw, the one that Jackdaw stole from Ollivander and that we find near his corpse. If so, it's interesting that the Ollivander family possessed a wand linked to ancient magic and to the Map Chamber and the Keepers.
Soo many interesting things in the game files but, as you say, things changed and such info might not apply to the current version of the game. Still, fascinating to see how the story changed and how we got to the story we have now!
A PROPER YAP NOW!!!!!!!!!! (what's that file btw?)
They did not become Keepers after Isidora died, they were already Keepers much earlier than that, probably before Isidora even started messing with the pain magic. Isidora was also a Keeper, until something happened and she broke from the group.
The concept art of the Map Chamber – used to be referred to as the Sanctum or Haven, aye – implies Isidora used to be part of the group:
And was a part important enough to still be put amongst the rest.
In my opinion, narratively, that's far more interesting than banishing Isidora and putting her memory, knowledge and skills to oblivion, because – ohno – she's evillllllllll. She was not evil, she was not really a mistake of her own (she was that of Percival's), she deserved to be on that wall.
It implies the rest of the Keepers did acknowledge her as well; the secret they kept was not something simple either.
The 'problems that could arise' could be Isidora mis-using the ancient magic but, in-game, Percival had already gathered the other Keepers before they met Isidora so I wonder if there was something else the Keepers were fighting against and trying to stop, something that had nothing to do with Isidora.
I doubt it's any of that or that we should mix two concepts together like this, as HL-at-release and HL-as-a-concept feel like two vastly different things.
The problems that could arise – powerhungry muggles, military men, muggle royalty, powerful curses and magical contamination, etc, to name a few. And if Isidora had been the part of the Keepers, it wouldn't be her to cause all that, I think?..
In-game, we see Percival and the rest as not the Keepers but as a bunch of Hogwarts Professors at first (who I assume were friends of Percival so had, no issue joining him). They became Keepers in response to later events, after Isidora created the repository (see below:).
"Guardian1_10484": "We also realised that until they [repos] could be destroyed, the magic used to create them was a danger to wizardkind.",
"Guardian1_10485": "Hence, we became Keepers. Keepers of an unfathomable secret. We knew that – some day – one with the ability to see traces of ancient magic might be seduced by its power.",
It's very interesting that the OG cause for the Keepers to assemble was to:
address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
That does not say it was a different kind of magic as may seem from everything Fig falsely claims (in-game, AM is an ability of sorts: "Guardian2_10216": "Your ability to see what others cannot will not be enough, Percival.", ).
All it says in the OG bit is that that particular manifestation of magic was ancient and likewise troublesome.
And if that castle/dungeon belonged to Percival then it kickstarts all sorts of theories like why did Isidora have one of her secret labs there…
Oooooooooh, yeah, then it makes total sense! If these secret areas were supposed to be a sort of shared space of all the Keepers – who were not as entangled originally.
It's interesting that they refer to the book as belonging to Fig.
I've noticed that the .csv I was reading was written haphazardly.
It could be an in-door way to call objects like the book, but I won't say it can't be the other way around!
If so, it's interesting that the Ollivander family possessed a wand linked to ancient magic and to the Map Chamber and the Keepers.
I like that idea!! It makes total sense for the oldest wandmaker family – one of the oldest – to have some links to the most peculiar and rare manifestations of magic. Including the ability to sense it better than most. Or any other ability or sensibility to magic or anything of the sort.
I know that in the final version of the game, the Keepers tell the MC that they become Keepers to protect the repositories but... I just don't believe them!
In several of her journal notes, Isidora calls them "Keepers" too, and that's before she even had the idea for the repositories!
Journal entry #5 is the first time where she calls them "Keepers":
In journal entries before that, she calls them "the others" or "my professors" but after she comes back to Hogwarts as a professor (and she does the demonstration of healing her father) she starts calling them Keepers.
Back then, she already had the idea to store the magic but had not started experimenting with Goblin Silver to make the repositories. The Keepers had only just barely started telling her to stop using that spell, I doubt they had already created a whole identity for themselves, with a mysterious name and everything, just off the basis of one risky demonstration from Isidora.
In her final note (after she takes pain away from Niamh and the Keepers realize she hasn't stopped her experiments with pain magic) she even has a whole paragraph about them calling themselves "Keepers".
So, clearly, what the Keepers tell us in-game is a lie.
What we read from Isidora's note is more coherent with what we see in concept art or old game design files: the name "Keepers" means something else than just guarding Isidora's repositories and this group was not created because of anything Isidora did. It existed before. And if Isidora knew the name, it's likely because they had revealed some of the secrets to her, might have asked her to join them too.
So, yeah, I understand that this is all early game development stuff and likely most of it was changed or abandoned and might not fit the released version of the game but, right now, in absence of any sequel or further narrative, I can't help using this info to try to fill the gaps left in the narrative by the first game.
And this is coherent with Isidora having one of her labs in a tower that might have belonged to Percival (an info that is not just in the old game files but in the official, published Art and Making Of book). When the MC runs through the Tower Tunnel (aka Percival's Tower Dungeon) they even comment aloud to Sebastian:
"playerfemale_33504": "This place can't have belonged to only Isidora."
Like... that sounds to me like a not so subtle hint from the writers!
It would also explain why Isidora had several secret labs. She already had the Undercroft and the other place in the Overlook Mine in the north east of the map. Why also have another lab in that dungeon? Maybe because she was working on different things. Some things she worked on with the Keepers, other things she did not want the Keepers to know and had other labs.
This (the weirdness of her having multiple labs all over the map) is actually something the MC also comments on, while they're exploring the Overlook Mine with Sebastian:
"playerfemale_35191": "But if she was using the Undercroft – and the cellar beneath her manor in Feldcroft – why would she create this space?"
Anyway, I'll stop my babbling there but I'm just convinced there's more the the relationship between the Keepers and Isidora than what the MC is shown/told in-game. It feels like they writers of the game left some hints for some plot twists or revelations that could come if they continue the story... or perhaps I'm just delusional 🤣
@the-magiarcheologist I've been digging the game files with Fmodel and DB viewer at last. I've found the devs' commentary on missions. The file in question is: CSV_MIssionList_Phoenix (Content -> Data -> Mission).
Some findings (excuse the formatting, it's a very lengthy cvs file):
We were supposed to learn Oppugno at the very beginning of the game:
"OLI_01_Natsai, OLI_01_Seb",Welcome to Hogsmeade,VS 1D,Hogwarts,Main,Weasley 2,Reparo,2,"UNLOCKED: Spell_Oppugno, *AM Meter + Finishers, Aim Mode (after completed), Dark Arts Combat Challenge (Deluxe and Collector's Editions - after completed)
So goblins do interrupt trade:
Villager asks player for help clearing out a couple of goblin camps interupting the supply of goods to her village.
Very sudden bit of lore about the butterfly lady:
" Clementine Willardsley has a fascination with butterflies and a controlling husband who won't let her pursue her interests. Player must locate and follow the butterflies - and see where they lead.
Arn used to be called Rem (friendly :DD):
" Rem, a (friendly) goblin artiste who dabbles in trade has lost his magic cart. Player must track down the (unfriendly) goblin camp, clear them out to allow Rem's cart to find its way home.
Alexandra's troll has a name and, well, that synopsis is rather grim compared to how it is in the game:
" Alexandra Ricketts is having trouble with Herbert, a Troll she has been trying to train. With the hamlet up in arms, she knows she has to fix the problem - but can't bring herself to do the deed. Player offers to 'take care' of Herbert.
Who's Hyacinth Oliver?
" Hyacinth Olivier needs help with Ashwinders who are infesting nearby castle ruins, disrupting local peace and their trade routes. Player agrees to take out leader of the bunch - Silvanus Selwyn.
Treasure map treasures:
"You find a treasure map in a dungeon. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map in an enchanted well. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map while searching for the lost pages from the book. Where does it lead?
"You find a treasure map in a dark ruin surrounded by inferi. Where does it lead?
This csv suggests Jackdw dies only 10 years ago:
" The player recieves word about where the missing pages could be. This is different per house, with Gryffindors playing a pumpkin smashing game with the headless hunt, Hufflepuffs going to Azkaban to help solve a decade old murder, Ravenclaws exploring the Owlery for hints the elusive Richard Jackdaw left behind, and Slytherins helping a lovestruck Scrope get back a journal from his previous master. All roads end in meeting with Richard Jackdaw, who instructs the player to go to the forbidden forest to find the missing pages."
The Map Chamber used to be called Haven:
"Player visits Prof. Fig in his office to tell him about the missing pages and show him secret room he discovered beneath Hogwarts called the Haven
San Bakar Tower was Charles Tower:
"Player meets Fig at Charles Tower to begin the first trial. The player learns he/she must adventure alone through and ancient magical test. Fig cannot help him.
The unicorn from the unicorn quest used to be lost, not endangered:
" Betty Bowditch has been searching for her lost Unicorn for years. Word has finally reached her of it's location in the Dark Forest. Player agrees to find Unicorn, capture - and keep in good health.
Florence Green instead of Sacharissa Tugwood was supposed to give the bubotuber retrieval quest:
" Florence Green needs to get her hands on some bubotubers to make her Acne cream for the upcoming student intake. Only problem is, they're hard to find - and in the dark forest. Player agrees to go and find and retrieve them.
Isodora, a shamed keeper (@writeblood):
"Seb and the player follow a clue left by Isodora, a shamed keeper, to her secret lair on the hunt for her personal pensieve. Seb is hopeful it will lead to a clue to help his sister. The secret lair is within a cave by a cliffside overlook. The player finds a portrait piece that fits within the undercroft Triptych.
Relic of the Dead, Cost of Banishment:
"The player and Sebastian enter an old Cairn in search of the Relic of the Dead. After finding it, they return to the hamlet to show Sebastian's sister, Anne, only to encounter a goblin raid. Sebastian saves his sister but at the cost of banishment.
Sebastian's personal quests are shortened to EVL:
"The player and Seb talk about the events of EVL_02 and Sebastian's banishment.
The mountain near the Marunweem lake is called Percival Tower:
"The player and Seb continue their journey to learn more about Isidora and her role in ancient magic and how to use it to help people in pain. The journey takes them to some switchbacks near the coast and within another large cave dungeon, Percival Tower Dungeon. They find the final portrait piece for the Triptych that reveals the pensieve inside the undercroft.
A NEW HAMLET! :
"A secret meeting with Anne and Seb behind Solomon's back - Avatar overhears: Anne divulges Solomon is planning on moving away to a new hamlet! Seb implores her to stall, and promises the reason will be worth it, he's found a breakthrough when it comes to healing curses with this Relic of the Dead! Anne hesitantly agrees, but under the condition that Ominis be consulted.
Relic is used to raise inferi:
"Sebastian is using the Relic of the Dead to raise Inferi. Anne attempts to confront him but it ultimately ends in Solomon's death.
Ohmy, so I was correct about Natty was supposed to possibly die from (Theo)philus Harlow's spell:
"The player and Natsai follow up on another clue about Rookwood's gang that turns out to be an ambush. It ends with a confrontation with Theo Harlow and Natsai taking a potentially fatally blow to save the avatar.
The next entry breaks that supposition (but it still feels like she was supposed to die in Harlow's Last Stand; stakes were too high):
"The player and Natsai talk about her injury and how she cannot blame herself for her father's death.
Hmmm, so it's highly likely Sebastian ends up in Azkaban either way, since there's a warrant apparently (that file is rather old, however, so whether it's true is unknown):
Seb or Ominis conv (EVL_Conv_08a and EVL_Conv_08b) which is about a: thanking player for trusting seb for finding his own way. b: there is a warrant out for Seb's arrest.
I'll say it separately: this file is old so is of very questionable accuracy to the current state of the game. Still, it's an insight in what the devs thought they should include in the game and how the approached it.
The fact that they call Isidora a shamed Keeper is soooo interesting!!
It further cements my theory that the name "Keeper" means something else than just guarding Isidora's repository! They did not become Keepers after Isidora died, they were already Keepers much earlier than that, probably before Isidora even started messing with the pain magic. Isidora was also a Keeper, until something happened and she broke from the group.
In the game files, there is also a json file with all the in-game UI text (like all the descriptions of objects, quests etc. that we can find in our field guide). It includes some text describing the Keepers (called Sanctum Guardians) that I don't think we can actually access from our field guide. But about Percival Rackham, it says:
Percival Rackham recognised the problems that would arise from the wizarding world having access to powerful magic and gathered a team to address them.
The 'problems that could arise' could be Isidora mis-using the ancient magic but, in-game, Percival had already gathered the other Keepers before they met Isidora so I wonder if there was something else the Keepers were fighting against and trying to stop, something that had nothing to do with Isidora.
The descriptions of the other Keepers are also interesting:
Charles Rookwood was a Keeper.
This one is pretty boring 🤣
Twig was an adept student at Hogwarts who was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
Yes, Niamh Fitzgerald was originally called 'Twig' 😂 and she might have originally been much younger than her final version.
San Bakar was a pilgrim who ended up at Hogwarts, and was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
A pilgrim!
Isidora is called "Isidora the Bold" and her description reads:
Isidora is a fierce and powerful witch who was enlisted by Percival Rackham to help address the problem of ancient powerful magic.
And yes, in the game files the Map Chamber is called either the Sanctum or the Haven, which is super interesting also! Why did they internally use these names to refer to the Map Chamber? It makes it seem like there is more to the history of the Map Chamber than what we learn in-game...
Also I have whoooole post to write about the stuff regarding "Percival Tower". It's not just in the game files, in the Art and Making Of book they released with the game there is a picture of the Tower Tunnel dungeon from that mission in Marunweem and it's described also as "Percival's Tower Dungeon" in that book. And if that castle/dungeon belonged to Percival then it kickstarts all sorts of theories like why did Isidora have one of her secret labs there...
Anyway, I had skimmed that csv file and never read it fully but your post made me realize I missed a lot in interesting info. I went back to have a look at it and I also saw this:
The description for the restricted section mission reads:
The player and Sebastian sneak into the restricted section, and due to their skills with ancient magic, the player is able to find Fig's missing book.
And later it says
The player returns the book to Fig.
It's interesting that they refer to the book as belonging to Fig. Like it's a book he lost and asked to player to retrieve. They changed that slightly in the final version of the game where it's never implied the book belongs to Fig in any way.
Also, at the very end, when the player goes to Ollivander to prepare the ancient magic wand to access the repository it says:
The player asks Olivander to repair a special broken wand he needs to defeat Ranrok. While on the journey the player must defeat Victor Rookwood in a battle to the death
In the final version of the game, there is no broken wand to repair, is there? He just crafts and entirely new wand I think. I wonder if this 'special broken wand' is the one we find in the Ravenclaw mission with Jackdaw, the one that Jackdaw stole from Ollivander and that we find near his corpse. If so, it's interesting that the Ollivander family possessed a wand linked to ancient magic and to the Map Chamber and the Keepers.
Soo many interesting things in the game files but, as you say, things changed and such info might not apply to the current version of the game. Still, fascinating to see how the story changed and how we got to the story we have now!
It has been a long while since I have posted anything like this for HL, with some expressing that I have abandoned the game. I have not!!!!! I have been consumed by Hadеs 2!!!!!!!!!! and life, too.
I didn't cover the Scriptorium at all, besides, I think, this post from October of the past year. I should fix that.
As I have demonstrated before with the Undercroft's boards and boards from the Fig's classroom and have discussed with @the-magiarcheologist under the post about pages from the Keeper's Book where I think I've recalled this little post from 2023, seldom will you find imagery bearing a resemblance to medieval or ancient art that has been specifically created for the game.
It is rather underwhelming. I have qualms with it (re: Boards from the Fig's classroom post), but when the team behind the visuals is as big as just seven people, doubtless they should be cut some slack; they had to work with what they could find, and fast. But.
Their choices – the decisions that were made rather – do puzzle me.
This is the Salazar Slytherin's spellbook we find at the end of the Scriptorium. It is said to be as old as had been written in the 10th century AD.
But it bears a galdrstafir (the circular sigil). Galdrstafirs are not so old.
I must warn: under the cut is a wall of text with bits of graphic language, so beware.
When you are forced to create or continue to develop a setting that isn't yours under crunch, to do that without a hiccup you should be familiar with its inspiration and sources. Otherwise, if we think of the narrative as of a river you set loose and of your audience as of people travelling on a raft downstream, you will have to rely on ignorance of the topic of theirs – and hope they will take rapids for terrain and not a dismembered corpse of missed potential.
Why? It sits on the eye level yet usually carries no meaning.
We scrutinise medical drama for its flummoxing overuse of heavy CPR routine each time someone flatfucks on the floor; when people are walking anachronisms in period dramas we don't shy or cower and we say harsh things about art directors; when duduk is heard whilst dunes comes into view how's not to wonder when will this idea of using duduk for desert scenes will finally be abandoned. Likewise, the pieces put in this game are as confusing as those are often used simply to create a visual idea of something the audience may feel like has an association with magic than serve as an element of the visual storytelling.
It's a filler.
Whilst I am able to recognise and understand the intent and I am well-aware of the use of literary devices, I prefer things that are made into importance not to be a full equivalent of the 'sesame chicken' tattoo (i.e. something that only looks cool for as long as no one in the room is familiar with, in this case, Chinese).
The game uses symbology and pieces of art found in real life. And it creates a problem as it always carries historical context of its use.
An example before I move on to the items from the Scriptorium.
I am not sure this particular bit of text is found in HL, although I recall thinking it is commonly used as a placeholder text; just look at it:
It is not a fragment of some obscure manuscript about magic.
It is a fragment of a page from the Auraicept na nÉces, a manuscript written in Old Irish and compiled in 14th century, some parts dating back as far as 8th century. Contains genealogical, topographical, biblical, and hagiographical material, including variations of Ogham.
Yet, because it uses unfamiliar language written in a bygone script, some might think it could be used so crudely. I say it shouldn't be.
As I have said, magical insignia has Context. Context so far has been dictating magic as thus: the manifestation of ill will, therefore the very engagement with its numerous practices is forsaken thereby forcing its practitioners to hide not only their work but contents, too.
It is not the influence of Christianity; the very word 'magic' comes to Europe from Old Persian 'magus' (where it meant 'Zoroastrian priest') through being picked by Ancient Greece. In his book Defining Magic: A Reader, Bernd-Christian Otto writes about it as (as it is better at explaining that the word magic has its roots in xenophobia):
During the lаte siчth and eаrly fifth cеnturies ВСЕ the tеrm maguš was picked up and Grаecicized (into μάγoς, μαγεία) by ancient Grееk authors and thereby developed a life of its own.
The Grееk adaptation of the concept implied some fundamental semantic transformations, which may be particularly due to the fact that the Greek city states faced serious military conflicts with the Pеrsian Empire at that time. To the Greeks, the magós represented the religious specialist of a threatening foreign – “barbаric” – culture so that the concept quiсkly assimilated a variety of negative stereotypes. The mágos was regarded as a charlatan and “magic” (i.e., the ritual art of the mágos) a mere fraud (see, e.g., Sophocles, Oedipus Rex 387f; Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 1.10f). “Magical” rites were perceived as strange, unconventional and dangerous (see Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 1.39f; Gorgias, Encomium of Helen 9–10). The extrаordinary, miraculous abilities allegedly possessed by mágoi were regarded as sаcrilegious and suspiсious (see Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 1.28f; Euripides, Orestes 1493f). In line with these notions, the Greek concept of “magic” came to signify all sorts of unsanctioned rites performed by private ritual entrepreneurs outside the institutionalized cults.
That specific ew notion has never gone away. Things historically taken for magic in the following centuries would include writing as an action in and of itself, of all things. Hence you'd always have magic as an underthought for any given magical symbology; removed from its Context, it effectively loses meaning, because hiding is either not required any longer, or the symbology had changed once more with the rise of another practice. That, in turn, include quite a hefty corpus of theological and philosopher text, cultural influences and taboos.
Especially when that symbology is something pertinent to cultures, like writing systems (futhark runes) or art (monograms). In and of itself, these are not magical. If you are a scribe and want them to be magic? Then magic it is. This flexibility is distinctive of magic; it is not dogmatic like religion nor it is rigorous in the same vein as science.
I realise it all may sound funny as magic should feel inexplicable as, strictly speaking, magic does not even have a unanimously agreed upon scholarly definition.
Such deep understanding of the topic isn't really all that necessary to create magic for a setting either. Even for HP, where magic perhaps sits the closest to what it invokes in practice rather than a colloquial idea of what magic kinda is. Yet again I say – But.
We are not playing as a muggle to whom magic sits distinct from science and religion, is about archaic thinking, and that's about it.
We play as a student of the school in the vestige of our world where magic is understood sufficiently enough to be made into a seven year curriculum, that's packed full with both practice and theory, so much of either of them in it, that two levels of exams were introduced.
If you must add a drop of magic to the air, just title boards with things like 'Muggle Ideas of Magic' and you are free to draw anything on the boards. Otherwise you have to explain exactly how a very particular kind of magic – say, goetia, necromancy, apotropaic magic, theurgy, etc etc etc – are practiced within the setting, if at all.
All of this could've been avoided if it didn't sit on the eye level.
Now, about galdrstafirs.
Many of galdrstafirs are found in the manuscripts written in the 17th century, a significant amount had been discovered in manuscripts from 18th and 19th centuries, and the oldest found had been written in the early 16th century.
The triangle and the circle on the skull's forehead is perhaps the Triangle of Solomon.
It's found as a part of the Circle of Solomon in Lemegeton, also known as The Lesser Key of Solomon; it's a fairly well-known grimoire, compiled of a few texts in mid-17th century (its oldest text, Ars Goetia, dates back to 16th century).
Solomonic magic in the form of the infamous Seal of Solomon in and of itself is ancient; it used to be called goetia. However, the current form of this branch of magic, the very idea of granting control over demons and angels alike in the way described in both Lemegeton and Heptameron, is only a little older than galdrstafir.
It's Renaissance magic. It is only a tad bit younger than superstitions of the Medieval period and remnants of pagan rituals – and it is practically a toddler compared to the likes of Greek magical papyri.
So for a book that has supposedly spent almost a millennia in the Scriptorium – Salazar Slytherin's personal study! – it's too modern.
The book's contents though – necromancy – is an ancient art.
But it isn't connected to galdrstafirs. Not directly.
Galdrstafir is s form of apotropaic magic – it is used to ward against evils and to promise luck. It is not a seal that seals an objects shut. You should use it as a talisman for your per aspera ad astra kind of journey and carry it along with yourself. It has nothing to do with necromancy, albeit it can be argued that since few Icelandic magical staves have been inspired if not informed by Christianity, creators of the staves may had meant protection from exactly what Christianity deems evil. Yet. As I have just said. You don't put it on a book.
Moreover, that particular one is a variation of the Ægishjálmur stave – Lukkustafir (found at the bottom of the page). It is designed to bring you luck, specifically.
Solomonic magic has no connections to necromancy either. If you need to be granted workforce of divine origin to build a temple, summon it with the seal of Solomon. No corpses used. Only demons.
Here it is where I say: whilst neither of these things have connections to necromancy through that particular symbology, there is a tiny and indirect one – goetia magic.
Now, these four symbols:
are a bit of a mystery.
I will be bold; I will say these possibly are house marks bar the first one (it looks like another lukkustafir).
The runic shape that does only resemble a runic alphabet is usually the dead give away of a monogram, a mason's mark, a merchant's mark, or a house mark, since all of these would also be carved in to the stone, just like runes. Neither of those are really related to magic.
And there are whole entire catalogues of them.
About goetia and necromancy…
Necromancy is not necessarily about raising the corpse of the dead. Necromancy has never been about this, in fact. This is a very recent development in contemporary culture of ours.
Necromancy was a form of divination: The caster sought assistance of the dead through summoning them in a spiritual or corporeal form.
It was quite widespread in the ancient world; to seek guidance of the deceased, to achieve their hindsight, to try and foretell the future through the atsral astral realms may ring a bell as it sounds like a shamanistic practice or something spiritists do but it's known since times of Babylon and Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Greece as well.
Stories about Orpheus and Odysseus include katabasis – a physical visit to the Underworld. Ovid's Metamorphoses mentions it as well.
Conversing with the spirits of the dead was called nekyia. The rituals pertaining to nekyia would include sleeping on the grave, enter into trance near places of burial or on battlefields, or place a katadesmos – a curse tablet – near it and, usually, buried. These rituals aren't all there were; the biggest hint of them is being at somewhere where someone had met their (untimely) demise.
Granted, the practice of placing curse tablets perhaps should be renamed into swearing tablets because often people would scribe these to insult other people, usually, dead people.
Imagine being a Greek person who had done nothing wrong in their life and died in peace at the relatively old age but once you enter Hades and check your neat little mailbox you see an anon hate sent by your neighbour who wishes ill on seven generations of your family because uh your house stands in a cosy shadow.
Expansion of Christendom eventually lead to the condemnation of necromancy as it was forced into association with summoning of demons and evil spirits guised as the spirits of the diseased.
I am focusing on this seemingly minuscule detail, because it matters in the context of this game's reality.
People in it take ancient for archaic and freely conflate the two despite either meaning the rift between the old and the obsolete. This distinction warrants an explanation, and I could only wish the game's art would nicely and favourably play into this debate, but alas.
What we have are two symbols that call for very thematically different things in history of magic besides one – goetia.
Goetia doesn't exclusively refer to the book of the Lemegeton, Ars Goetia. According to Blavatsky, it is the counterpart of the branch of magic called theurgy in Ancient Greece. It along with the natural magic were referring to the benevolent magic, e.g. healing, whilst goetia was the black magic – the low magic, of malevolent intent.
Another excerpt from the book Defining Magic: A Reader (p.250):
I quote it thus because technically that wink at Solomon could be extended into a glint on the katadesmoi mentioned here.
This practice is although not linked to Solomonic magic, yet either thing has been linked to invoking spirits and deities and in case of the katadesmos – potentially, the dead. Thus it is a hint at necromancy in the sense I've mentioned.
But I have a very… aye, it feels like fitting a square peg into the round whole. Especially that if you view it thus you practically shoehorning. I don't enjoy any such stretches.
I do not suppose it was the intent of the art direction; the intent likely was built on an expectation that people often associate Ars Goetia specifically with Very Evil Things as – well – he target audience has grown up with certain influence on how to view demonology. As an evil, satanic thing – dark magic.
This is why throwing everything into the sauce can cause a disaster.
This is why you should be clear with your symbology, or one tumblr peep will summon demons by sneezing on a manuscript at just the correct hour of day.
I will say one more thing.
In late Anglo-Saxon England, necromancy was among the witchcraft practices condemned by the abbot Ælfric of Eynsham:
Witches still go to cross-roads and to heathen burials with their delusive magic and call to the devil; and he comes to them in the likeness of the man that is buried there, as if he arises from death.
It happens around 10-11 century AD.
So far I've been writing about necromancy as of what it was.
The game, however, gives us the Relic. To which that book is key, as far as I am able to remember. The necromancy of the Relic would've been considered a desecration even by the ancient standards as the Relic grants the control over inferi – quite literally, walking corpses.
This implies that Salazar Slytherin could've been a desecrator, not a necromancer.
This claim, however, could be disproven by the notes scattered about Feldcroft catacomb, if to assume the diligent student was none other than the Salazar's student.
The note found near the Relic says:
The relic contains abundant potential. Its possibilities could benefit not only wizardkind, but the world. But the Dark sacrifice involved to realise its intent may be too great. Until we know more, please, do not remove this relic.
If Dark sacrifice implies to sacrifice another living being to be granted loyalty of inferi or a wish to cure a curse fulfilled (how so?), early medieval people would've called it utterly demonic and destroyed the tomb altogether, I think. And I don't mean muggles.
I will fit another peg into the hole: may Dark sacrifice imply blood sacrifice or a some kind of promise similar to described in Odyssey?
However, this Relic works surprisingly in line with how the seal of Solomon was supposed to work, except Solomon is granted legions to complete a certain task and Relic offers control over inferi exactly for what – what's the price, where do I say here's the catch?
Neither did Solomon need a sacrifice for the seal to work as it was a contract between him and the Divine (which kinda makes that story of his less exciting as magic turns into a bureaucracy lmao); yet the Relic requires an one. So goetia. Much malevolence.
Anyway.
I already wrote a lot. But all that is necessary to say: everything about this book is dreadfully anachronistic and casts weird shades on the Salazar's grave. Not to defend the man; someone of such murderous mind and a hint of desecration is a strange pick for a founding father.
Three relatively normal people and a tar pit. It must be a joke.
Anyway 2.
One last thing about the book. It was supposed to look like this:
Why must they changed the design and create a hodgepodge of weird contradicting and unrelated symbology is beyond me.
And besides, why an Icelandic stave of all things?
Salazar is implied to have come from Ireland (from fen, as the Sorting Hat put it). Letters R and C sit a bit far on the qwerty keyboards, too.
This question is the transition to the rest of the Scriptorium, because it is… mostly Irish design-wise, early Medieval period Ireland (7-10 centuries AD).
This segment of a wall:
has been copied off the surviving shaft of the high cross from Kells kirkyard, more specifically, it's the west face of the West Cross; the site dates back to the 9th century. Many thanks to this website – irishstones dot org – as well.
Other source is Irish High Crosses (Irish Heritage), by Roger Stalley:
The panels depict, following bottom-to-top order of registers: 1) Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; 2) the Ark of Noah; 3) Moses and Aaron OR Daniel in the Lion's Den; 4) Moses, Pillar of Fire.
The east face of the same cross has also been placed in to the game:
The panels depict, following bottom-to-top order of registers: 1) baptism of Christ, with two streams representing rivers Dan and Jor; 2) marriage feast at Cana; 3) Magi questioning Herod? 4) Christ the child is bathed? 5) Magi questioning Herod again?
The 6th panel isn't present at the existing shaft of the cross. Possibly taken from another cross.
I haven't been able to identify from which, and I've looked through the entire catalogue on irishstones, Peter Harbison's book Irish High Crosses: With the Figure Sculptures Explained, on megalithicireland, in in the article by Éamonn Ó Carragáin, High Crosses, the Sun’s Course, and Local Theologies at Kells and Monasterboice.
Granted, the collection on the megalithicireland is so vast I have likely not found it yet.
Also, nevermind!! :D
This panel is the flipped and 'blurred' variant of the bottom panel:
Whilst searching for the most informative source for the art on the crosses, I've stumbled upon this 3D exhibition of the Market Cross! Fantastic demo. Someone also uploaded the model of the West Cross and the rest of the Kells High Crosses to sketchfab. Fabulous!!
This isn't all. Next, we have a panel depicting horsemen with shields:
The horsemen are from the east side of the Market cross at Kells:
These statues:
are from the bas-reliefs of unknown people situated at White Island, Lower Lough Erne, County Fermanagh, at the ruins of the 12th century church (but the relief dates back to the 9th century).
In the corridor after the second gate lies another replica of the cross found at Kells, but it also shows that decorative panels on the northern and southern sides of the cross weren't forgotten to be featured:
This distinguished wizard? I don't think he's been nicked. 100% original to HL along with the head of Salazar at the entrance.
This little pillar:
has art from the Kilnasaggart pillar stone, the oldest stone monument in Ireland.
A thing about the shaft of the high cross that sits in the wall.
It isn't two separate textures. It's quite literally the wall.
Very accurate to the construction of later churches and settlement buildings (high crosses would sometimes be used in lieu of bricks).
Now.
One last thing.
The relief at the start of the Scriptorium.
I am not sure that it has been taken from somewhere.
My thoughts: it depicts a Cretan woman, possibly a Goddess. Link 1, Link 2. Headwear is the biggest hint but I admit my defeat with this one. Very possibly HL original; uncertain of its source for inspiration.
I've been really missing my HL theory-crafting days lately...
Everything is pretty quiet these days, understandably so as we enter the long wait for any news of HL2 so I've been quiet too but I'm still lurking around :)
Wanted to share a really well-written article I found a few weeks ago about the realism of the night sky in HL
As an astronomy professor, I’m always on the lookout for accurate depictions of physics, math, and astronomy in the movies I watch and video
It really illustrates the level of detail and realism in HL💙 (though juxtaposed with some baffling inaccuracies including the fact that the sun does not even rise in the east 😂)
Isn't it a bit funny that we know about the history of Salazar Slytherin more than we know about the history of Godric Gryffindor, the founder of the house that our beloved hero is sorted in? We don't even know if Godric had children or descendants, unlike the other founders of Hogwarts. I'd seriously love to know more about Godric. But Salazar's history and legacy really did fill the audience in more than any other history of the other founders.
Like, what we know about Salazar Slytherin is also questionable. Like, the Founders lived around the 990s, a thousand years before the books. If you ever read early medieval history you know there are a lot of unknowns in the information we have. Ancient authors that wrote histories in which they made shit up, heavily biased information, family genologies where people claim to be descendant of important figures to strengthen their claims even though that connection probably isn't real, people writing thri-hand accounts as if they've been to the even themselves. Historical writing from long enough ago can be a mess (not to mention the lack of standardized spelling and words with meanings lost to time that cannot be translated).
That being said, history in the Wizarding World is weird. We have Helena Ravenclaw and the Bloody Baron at Hogwarts, two people who knew the Founders, who probably spoke Old English (which begs the question of ghosts learning new languages). There might be portraits left behind from these times, which allow a mostly accurate (if filtered through personal bias) view of history. Many of the above problems I mentioned will still exist since you're basing your information on word of mouth and not archeological evidence, but it's way better and more extensive word of mouth than what we muggles can get our hands on.
I know you asked more about the narrative and the fact that the narrative doesn't go much into the founders (especially ones that aren't Slytherin), but I think this question of why JKR wrote one thing over another isn't as interesting as how historical research works in the WW. Since I personally prefer to do Watsonian analysis over Doylist.
Becouse, for JKR, it was probably that the other founders weren't as important to the plot, or not as interesting. Which is a legit reason not to mention them. And, honestly, this is a hole in the world-building I don't mind. It doesn't disrupt the narrative and allows space for headcanons and fanon. Which is good for me. I don't mind when a story leaves some space for the reader to fill in blanks, especially when it's background details like this, which aren't actually all that important. And it's good for stories to leave out some stuff to the readers' imagination — that's part of the fun.
My best guess is that Gryffindor's name died out pretty early like Ravenclaw, who doesn't seem to have any heirs since Helena died. The Smith family are descendants of Hufflepuff. The Gaunts are descendants of Slytherin, but we don't really know about him much more than any of the other founders. Like, we don't even know if the purpose of the Chamber was really to kill muggleborns or if it's an intention that was attributed to him post mortem.
We know in the early Middle Ages the sentiment regarding muggles wasn't as negative as we see later on (after all, witch hunts wasn't a medieval problem, it's an early modern problem):
Shrewd enough to see that their Muggle neighbours would seek to exploit their powers if they knew their full extent, witches and wizards kept themselves to themselves long before the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy came into effect.
(QTtA)
Early medieval wizards and witches worried over muggles requesting magic from them and exploiting their good nature, not that they would be hunted down. That concern only appeared later in the Renaissance (which is when Beedle the Bard lived, btw). So there is some doubt regarding Slytherins' personal opinions about Muggles, muggleborns, and dark magic (since "Dark Magic" as a term is kinda weird. It's a legal term more than a magical one and most spells that the ministry considers "Dark" aren't so (creating Infri and Horcruxes is dark magic, but a jelli-legs jinx is not actually dark, come on). I mean, the Unforgivables only became such in 1717, so clearly, before then, public opinion was different about them and other curses).
But back to the more interesting question of how historians in the WW work. Like, do they question ghosts? Do they have archaeologists? How do they know what happened in the past? Binns isn't a thousand years old; he lived at least 500 years after the founders, so what is his source for everything about the Chamber?
Well, for this, Quidditch Through the Ages comes in clutch. The book includes an extensive section of the history of Quidditch and explains that wizard historians actually don't work that differently from muggle historians. And that their methods to find out history don't actually involve as many ghost interviews as I would've expected.
Records show that witches and wizards in Europe were using flying broomsticks as early as A.D. 962. A German illuminated manuscript of this period shows three warlocks dismounting from their brooms with looks of exquisite discomfort on their faces. Guthrie Lochrin, a Scottish wizard writing in 1107, spoke of the “splinterfilled buttocks and bulging piles” he suffered after a short
broom ride from Montrose to Arbroath.
A medieval broomstick on display in the Museum of Quidditch in London gives us an insight into Lochrin’s discomfort (see Fig. A).
(QTtA)
Early wizarding writings and paintings give us some idea of the games our ancestors played. Some of these no longer exist; others have survived or evolved into the sports we know today.
(QTtA)
The famous painting Günther der Gewalttätige ist der Gewinner
(“Gunther the Violent Is the Winner”), dated 1105, shows
the ancient German game of Stichstock.
(QTtA)
Scotland was the birthplace of what is probably the most dangerous of all broom games – Creaothceann. The game features in a tragic Gaelic poem of the eleventh century, the first verse of which says, in translation
(QTtA)
We owe our knowledge of the rude beginnings of Quidditch to the writings of the witch Gertie Keddle, who lived on the edge of Queerditch Marsh in the eleventh century. Fortunately for us, she kept a diary, now in the Museum of Quidditch in London. The excerpts below have been translated from the badly spelled Saxon
of the original.
[...]
It is immensely interesting that there was a “big Scottish warlock” present. Could he have been a Creaothceann player? Was it his idea to bewitch heavy rocks to zoom dangerously around the pitch, inspired by the boulders used in his native game?
(QTtA)
We find no further mention of the sport played on Queerditch Marsh until a century later, when the wizard Goodwin Kneen took up his quill to write to his Norwegian cousin Olaf.
(QTtA)
These are some examples from the book and the methods for historical research are pretty much the same as we have. It's based on diaries, writing, paintings, and archeological evidence (the medieval broom). No one is asking ghosts who lived back then how Quidditch was played. No one is talking to magical portraits. They rely on physical or written evidence and speculation based on logic, just like we Muggles do.
I mean, magical portraits might have only been invented later, but it doesn't explain why ghosts aren't asked. I mean, Helena and the Bloody Baron were alive in the 10th century. They would be familiar with some of this history; they would know about 10th-century brooms, so how come no one asks ghosts? For that matter, why did no one ask Helena about the whereabouts of Ravenclaw's diadem until Tom Riddle in the 1940s?
And all these questions led me to two new headcanons/theories:
1. Magical portraits were invented in the 1400s or later. The fact that paintings from the early Middle Ages and into the 1100s are referred to as "paintings" and not "portraits" and implied to be non-speaking, suggests the talking portraits we see are a newer magical invention, and therefore history before the early modern period cannot be learned from portraits.
2. Ghosts are considered "unreliable" sources of history. My guess is that most ghosts are more like Binns than they are like Nearly Headless Nick. Binns doesn't know which class he is talking to, what the students' names are, and what year it is. He is stuck in his own unexistence. If most ghosts behave this way, it could explain why it's a frowned-upon practice among magical historians to use their accounts as evidence.
But if that's the case, it's even more bizarre that Binns is teaching history. But then again, teaching history isn't the point of these lessons, and he's been at his post so long, all the parents have been taught by him. Not to mention he isn't teaching his own experience, but that from books, so his own biases/memory issues that are the problem with getting history from ghosts are irrelevant. There would only be a few magical historians (like Bathilda Bagshot) who might object to his position, but most of the wizarding population probably doesn't care.
These are just some thoughts I had regarding how history is written in the WW, and how, therefore, all the in-world history we know is inherently flawed since it is based on surviving written/oral accounts and physical evidence. They clearly don't have any magical method to learn more about their history, and for some reason, no one is asking the ghosts. But this all is great, since it means their history can be taken with a grain of salt the way I usually treat their in-world history.
Interesting tidbits I learned in my recent HL playtime before the game crashed again:
Samantha Dale’s worst subject is Transfiguration
Besides the Ashwinders, there’s another dark wizard operation that call themselves “the Pack.”
Ronen once had his sandwich levitated by a student, but he didn’t mind and actually found it funny.
Kogawa and a then-curse-breaker Weasley first met in the Yokohama harbour
Evangeline Bardsley has some very consistently blood-purist voice lines. She casually expresses her disdain for Muggle-born students and admiration for Headmaster Black
Shah has been assisting M. P. N. Carneirus, an American wizard, in writing and publishing a book. It is likely the Atlas of Celestial Anomalies, which was published in the 1900s
There is an Alchemy Centre in Egypt
Samantha Dale is half-blood. She comes from a family line consisting generations of Ravenclaws, but she also practices lots of Muggle traditions from her mother’s side.
Black isn’t any better as a husband and a father than he's the headmaster. He's not abusive (as far as I could tell) he just doesn't bother to show his face at home, despite his wife talking about how much she and their younger kids miss him
misconceptions about real world history and how they affect interpretations of wizarding world history
misconception of magic and witchcraft in western europe pre-modern era
application in HP world building
a: inconsistencies in the text
b: what this means for magical history (feat: Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco)
1: misconceptions of magic and witchcraft in western europe
there's a huge cultural misunderstanding of how western europe thought about "magic" and "witchcraft" pre-modern era, including the function of the witch trials. laws against magic were specific, and usually involved the practicer causing certain harm or worshipping pagan gods.
folk magic was practiced across cultures and across the centuries by the lower classes. ritualized chanting, amulets, prayers to saints, rituals of protection (sometimes from witchcraft), and medicine all contained elements of knowledge beyond the observable.
most people would have considered something condemnable and witchcraft if the power came from the Devil. other practices that we lump into that specific version of witchcraft would have been miracles, or cunning, or maybe a prayer answered.
it went against church doctrine to believe magic existed in any form for much of this time, but we know that doesn't mean it wasn't still part of the cultures.
the witch trials, which peaked in the early modern era, were simply targeting women. there was a rise in unmarried women, women were marrying older, and nunneries were being shut down due to the protestant reformation. i've spoken before about how the conception of what a woman is was changing rapidly in the early modern era.
2: application in HP worldbuilding
a: inconsistencies in the text
this is why i get irritated when i see people take the persecution of magical folk as presented in HP text at face value. there is no historical basis for this until the early modern witch trials, which is stated in the text to not have a big impact on magical folk's safety.
to quote a history of magic:
"Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognising it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in various disguises."
so, which is it? Muggle suddenly turned on magical folk and scared them into hiding with their persecution, or they were no real threat. we know jkr just needed a reason for the magical world to be secret, but for those of us who choose to take this way too seriously, this is an inconsistency.
b: what this means for magical history
an inconsistency that reminds me of two components of fascism as described by Umberto Eco. one is "obsession with a plot", an obsessive fear that some outside enemy is trying to harm your group, and two, the creation of enemies who were "at the same time too strong and too weak".
not to say the WW is fascist. i think this comparison makes it clear that the mythology around magical history is a way to maintain power and control over the population. the mythology creates a justification for the SoS and later the development of pureblood supremacy, which i view as a form of nationalism.
i don't think we really know what happened to cause the SoS. i suspect it was due to the witch trials, sure, but also because of the same anxieties and upheavals that caused the witch trials. like all things, it was fucking complicated.
we have pureblood propaganda in the supplementary text in the form of the sacred 28. this was published anonymously in the 1930s. no sources. meaningless. who was included and who was excluded was arbitrary. i don't think it's a stretch to say there is more historical myth-making going on in the text. we'll never know bc jkr hates history and is horrible at writing it!
overall, headcanon what you want, world build what you want, but it is useful to identify authoritarian and propagandist elements in the text you're analyzing. people seem to fall for the WW in-universe propaganda often, in pursuit of making blood supremacists more sympathetic. i'd rather we not.
NEW and FREE update coming to Hogwarts Legacy on January 30th! PC Modding will now be officially supported with the release of the Creator Kit and in-game Mod Manager!
Don't know if that is a real mod they've made or just a little joke but it's dangerous for them to tease that and not deliver on the promise considering how many people have been asking for this!
I want to try to do something a bit different today. I usually come in with some in-depth analysis of some details in the game. There is an element of speculation to everything I post but I usually try to stick as closely as possible to some canon events/elements found in the game to deliver an analysis that is as plausible as possible. And there will be in-depth analysis today too! We will be having a look at Isidora’s journal entries.
But I also have a theory. It’s perhaps a convincing theory or perhaps a completely crazy theory, hard for me to judge at this point because I’m so deep into it! So I want to try this: we’ll start with the analysis. All very reasonable and based on facts. And then we’ll plunge deep into the harebrained theory and I’ll see if you follow me or not.
Let’s go!
(Also, a warning if you’re planning on clicking that "read more" button: this is a loooooong post. So be sure you have some minutes to spare!)
The Analysis
Ok, so, we find 7 excerpts from Isidora’s journal throughout the game and, if we read them all together, they tell a pretty clear story of where she went and what she did after she graduated from Hogwarts and how she came to be able to take someone’s pain away.
First journal entry
We learn that she is at a camp treating people suffering from the bubonic plague. This, in and of itself, is fascinating because this gives us a glimpse of how things were before the Statute of Secrecy went into effect.
We don’t know exactly when Isidora lived but the Hogwarts Legacy Artbook tells us the Keepers lived during the Tudor period (1485-1603), which is in line with them being around close to the creation of Gringotts (in 1474). Anyway, this means Isidora most likely lived a century or more before 1692, when the Wizarding World broke off from the Muggle world. And we learn here that, back then, muggle doctors and witch healers worked together to heal those afflicted by the plague!
What’s also interesting in this entry is that Isidora seems more worried about the grief and mental pain these people may be experiencing than their physical ailments that can be healed. (Although we know healing these physical ailments is not as trivial as she makes it sound considering how many people died!) And here she first introduces her meeting with a man that reminds her of her father and that she wants to help get rid of his grief.
She also mentions "the others are wrong." This indicates, to me, that even back then she had already talked to the other Keepers (not just Percival) about her desire to take away people’s pain using ancient magic and they had already told her not to do it.
Second journal entry
This follows directly from the first note. She is further debating whether she should help people with their psychological pain or not.
It’s interesting here that she mentions "I travelled to learn" and also mentions some research that she is doing. Is this research the reason why she came to this camp? Is she even helping heal the patients at all (physically healing them from the plague I mean, not the taking-away-pain thing that she’ll attempt later)? Or is she just a passive observer (hence why she feels so frustrated about not doing anything)? And if so, what is she observing? For what purpose? Or is the research she mentions something completely different than what she initially came to learn at this camp? She could have more recently started to research the possibility to take away someone’s pain, after experiencing all the grief from the plague.
All interesting questions but not something we ever get any answers about and not the focus of this post. What I take away from this entry, mostly, is that we also learn that the man mentioned previously, the one who reminded her of her father, just left camp. So he’s not under the supervision of other doctors or healers anymore. She also directly mentions wanting to help him. This is important for what Isidora will do next.
Third journal entry
Now this is the pivotal entry! The first time Isidora ever attempts to remove someone’s pain.
Re-reading these journal entries after I first finished the game, I though this note described what happened with her father, how she lost control of the spell and how he came to be the empty husk we see in San Bakar’s memory. Reading the notes in order again after some time, it’s pretty clear that this is not about her father. We will see further evidence of that in future journal entries but considering that the order of the entries follows chronological events in Isidora’s life, this happened during her travels, before she came back to Hogwarts and before she healed her father.
I think it only takes a minimal amount of connecting the dots to understand that this is Isidora attempting the pain-removing spell on the man she met in the plague camp who reminded her of her father. He had just left camp, was completely alone and unsupervised. She likely followed him and, with or without his consent, attempted to heal him of his grief. Of course, we learn here that it completely failed.
It worked at first and she did remove his pain ("I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish.") but then she lost control of the spell and lost consciousness ("But then everything started to turn." and "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze. How long had I been unconscious?") The result is that she completely emptied the poor man of all this emotions and perhaps even more (his soul? his spirit?) ("I only remember his eyes. Empty. Empty of sorrow, yes, but also – "). The way she writes "I only remember his eyes" even implies the man could be dead because, if he was still alive in front of her, she would not need to remember his eyes, she would see his eyes. Or perhaps he just left while she was unconscious. Unclear. It could also imply the spell had an effect on Isidora’s own memories (as well as her emotions: "I recall feeling a sense of euphoria as I watched the pain vanish."), giving her some amnesia episode which makes it hard to recall what exactly happened after she performed the spell (hence why she also asks: "How long had I been unconscious?")
We also learn that Isidora’s head hurts. She immediately supposes it is because she hit her head when she fell unconscious but it is just a supposition on her hand ("I must have hit my head"). It’s also likely her head hurts because she just attempted dangerous and powerful magic and it had an effect on her as well as her patient. Hence why she can "neither feel nor see a mark" because she never actually hit her head, the pain is caused by something else. Also, an important detail that, in my mind, confirms that this happened while she was travelling helping plague patients: she worries that her headache could be the plague (the "Black Death"). She would only worry about that if she had recently been exposed to it, ergo if this journal entry was written when she was still working in that camp.
Also, last detail I want to note, she says: "The world floated back to me as if in a watery haze." I point this out because I have another post I’ve been meaning to write for some time now about ancient magic appearing as water. We see ancient magic appearing as blue water droplets floating around the Keepers wands whenever they use ancient magic. Whenever the MC activates an ancient magic hotspot, it appears like water surging out of the ground. And when the MC crosses one of the ancient magic portals it’s like they cross a very thin watery film with little droplets following in their wake. All of that is a topic for another post but I just note the use of that vocabulary by the writers here.
Fourth journal entry
This is where everything starts to make sense. She says she had a breakthrough and finally understood exactly how to remove people’s pain without emptying them of all emotions. The key is that one must not use too much power but instead be very delicate in the application of the magic. This, to me, further confirms that the man with the empty eyes in the previous journal entry is not her father. She lost control of the spell with that first man and then worked to understand what went wrong and how to control the spell properly. She is now able to remove "the merest whisper of pain from just above the heart" which is what we see her do in all of the Keeper’s memories, including the instance where she applied the spell to her father. This is what she does to Niamh and, likely, what she did to the Hogwarts student she dragged down to the repository cave. We don’t know what harm this does to the people it is used on but it certainly does not empty them of all emotions.
And speaking of unintended side-effects, it seems that this spell, even much better controlled, could still be having some effects on Isidora’s own emotions ("I sensed a surge of peace myself, as though I knew instantly that what I was doing was right.") Although it is hard to tell what is the spell and what is just Isidora. We know this research means a lot to her and she is certainly very emotionally invested in succeeding in this so these could be entirely natural emotions. And yet, considering the strange effect inhaling that haze has on her later on and how it turns MC’s eyes red at the very end of the game, we should not discount quite yet that the spell may be doing something to the caster themselves.
I want to also again note the specific vocabulary used in several journal entries to talk about what she is extracting. "Whispers of pain." Is this a metaphor or is she hearing literal whispers? Whenever we see this spell used in the Keepers’ memories we do hear actual whispers along with it so I’m inclined to take this literally. And do you know where else one can hear whispers? Near any ancient magic portal (conjured by Percival and Charles in their trials) or any ancient magic hotspot! And the whispers heard may very well be "whispers of pain". Near the ancient magic portal, I and several other people agree we can hear a voice say "Avada Kedavra", hardly a joyous thought. And if you pause next to an ancient magic hotspot before activating it, you can hear two voices (who sound like children’s voices to me) and one of them sounds very much like moans of pain.
So is the source of the ancient magic used by the Keepers and the one we find existing in the world "whispers of pain" like the ones that Isidora extracts? And yet, ancient magic existed and was used by the Keepers before Isidora ever invented her pain-removing spell! Indeed in the memory of the Keepers using ancient magic to save Feldcroft from the drought no whispers are heard. Percival confirms directly to Isidora that there are different kinds of ancient magic (because the magic she saw them wield was : "a particular kind of ancient magic", implying there are other kind, and when he first sees her pain-removing spell be performed he says that "the traces of that magic are different from what I’ve seen before"). So, perhaps, the magic used on Feldcroft is different than the magic found in the inter-dimensional portals and the ancient magic hotspots. And yet that leaves a pretty big gaping interrogation along the lines of: why were the Keepers using the "whispers of pain" kind of magic when creating their portals?! We will come back to that but keep that in mind because it’s pivotal information!
Fifth journal entry
This is where she finally healed her father. And this happened after she had mastered the spell to avoid any complete mind-wipe.
Not much to say about this because we see these events happen in the Keepers’ and her own memories. I do find it interesting that she says that Niamh seemed to understand what she was doing. We harldy see Niamh’s reaction either in Percival or in Isidora’s memory but, from what little we see of her face during these scenes, she looks more wary than interested. But ok.
Also, to note that all of that likely happened before Isidora started inhaling the "pain haze" that escapes when the spell is done.
Sixth journal entry
And here we have it: she started inhaling the pain-haze!
And we’re once again faced with this question: is the ancient magic affecting her emotions and thoughts or not? This "sense of purpose" that she mentions feeling, it’s hard to tell if this is an actual effect of the magic or if this is just Isidora’s hubris and her convincing herself, when faced with the opposition of the Keepers, that the magic itself is giving her signs that she is on the right path, in a sort of cognitive dissonance effect. This sentience she attributes to the magic, is it real or is she imagining it? I don’t think we ever get a clear answer to that question in the narrative.
All of that is made even more complex to disentangle by the fact that inhaling the pain-haze also makes her magic stronger. I think this effect is real and not just an illusion on Isidora’s part. We can explain that by the fact that she is absorbing a piece of someone else’s raw emotion and we know that strong emotions felt by the caster makes their magic stronger. We see that happen several times with Harry in the books. So, when she inhales these strands, Isidora stews in other people’s emotions and that lends her magic power (but also likely volatility).
And lastly, another little "vocabulary" section: often when she refers to the people she is helping, Isidora calls them "souls", even in some of her earlier journal entries ("number of souls I have been able to help" and "I have the power to help these souls" in her second entry). Does that mean that her pain-removing spell is acting on people’s souls? That would certainly explain why this magic is so dangerous and why the Keepers fear it so much. We know that splitting any part of one’s soul is extremely dark and complex magic (Horcruxes) so removing any part of someone’s soul must be equally so…
And also, does that mean that our emotions are part of our soul? The way Dementors work tends to confirm that.
Seventh journal entry
The most interesting tidbit in this entry might be that we learn that the Keepers were already calling themselves "Keepers" before Isidora died! This contradicts the explanation they give to the MC. Here is what Percival says in the last scene in the Map Chamber before opening the way to the repository:
"You see, we could not destroy the strands of emotion Isidora had stolen from so many. So we did all that we could to keep them safe.
"We also realised that until they could be destroyed, the magic used to create them was a danger to wizardkind.
"Hence, we became Keepers. Keepers of an unfathomable secret. We knew that – some day – one with the ability to see traces of ancient magic might be seduced by its power."
This strongly implies that they became Keepers after they realized Isidora’s stored strands of magic could not be destroyed, so after they discovered the repository.
This could be just a harmless simplification on Percival’s part. They could have become "Keepers" shortly before Isidora’s death, maybe after Niamh learned that she was continuing her experiments and using Goblin Silver to store that sort of evil, dangerous magic. But then, it’s strange that Isidora knew they called themselves Keepers. Surely they would not have told her that they were forming a super-secret alliance to move against her! Did Isidora find out anyway? How? This is just another one of these things that does not quite add up about what the Keepers tell the MC. I wonder if there is something else they are "keeping"? Another magic-related secret they’ve been keeping for a long time and that they, at first, asked Isidora to keep with them (hence why she knew about the name of "Keepers") before she broke away from them. Maybe they are just keeping the secret of how to wield ancient magic (because we know it can be wielded even by those who don’t see traces of magic, so, logically, there must be a way to teach it even when it does not come naturally like it does to Percival and the MC).
And this is also where Isidora mentions she left a trail to follow (much like the Keepers later did with the portkey). This trail must be the entrance to the Undercroft that lies under her house, the tryptich and canvas pieces, her memories and her portrait. I actually have a lot to say about the trail Isidora must have left behind (and how the Keepers must have actually "stolen" a part of that trail for their own purpose) but I’ll leave that for another post. Though I will still note here that it’s interesting that she had already left this trail behind very early on in her life. She says: "I confess I have begun to wonder if I will ever find another in my lifetime with whom I can share this work." And sure. But, by all accounts, Isidora still had plenty of time before her at that point in her life. Plenty of time still to teach others her pain-removing spell, plenty of time still to find a worthy successor. So why was she that worried that her knowledge would be lost? Why create a secret path to her research right now when her research had barely begun? Did she know she might soon be killed or silenced? Sure, the Keepers had made it pretty clear they were opposed to what she was doing but had they threatened her? Did she know something else that she knew she might be killed for? Isidora’s paranoia is all the more striking because she turned out to be right! She would not get to live much longer.
From San Bakar’s memory we know what must have happened shortly after she wrote this journal entry: her father was found, emptied of all of his emotions, in their cottage. The same night, Percival found out that Isidora had been removing pain from her students. This convinced the Keepers to confront her. Percival attacked first (an Expelliarmus on Isidora) and, when retaliating, Isidora hurt Niamh. San Bakar then decided to permanently neutralize her when it became apparent that she was too powerful and might overpower both Percival and Charles Rookwood. The end.
...But I haven’t even come to my theory!
Ok. Here goes.
The Theory
What happened that night
There is one thing in this whole chain of events, an especially in light of my re-reading of Isidora’s journal entries, that does not make any sense to me: why was her father emptied of all his emotions?
We’re given to think that Isidora did this. This is certainly what San Bakar thinks when he finds her father and hence why he runs to Percival to warn him. And yet, with everything we know about Isidora, her motivations and her journey, I don’t think she could have been the one wiping her father’s mind like that.
First of all, I don’t think she would ever do that intentionally. She cared about her father too much. She wanted to see him come back to life, not become even more apathetic than before! And even if we suppose that a) she had entered a state of madness and started loosing control of the pain removing spell or b) that she became so obsessed with ridding people of their pain that she considered that wiping their mind of all emotions was the ultimate act of salvation from any negative emotions, then why did she not wipe the mind of the student she dragged down to the repository that same day? She says she is healing her students of their pain, Percival says she is using her spell on them. And yet, that student was just fine when the Keepers found them. Why would she loose control/abuse of the spell on her father, the person she cares about the most, but not on her students?
The only reason I can think of why she would wipe his mind like this is if her father had somehow turned against her. If he has started telling everyone around him that the pain-removing spell was a bad idea, then, yeah, maybe she would want to silence him. But that’s a big "maybe". We know she loved her father and all that she did, she did for him. It’s pretty unlikely she would turn against him like this.
But there might be another explanation for what happened to her father...
Ok. This is where we really leave "analysis" territory and enter into "crazy theory" territory. None of what I’m about to say is strongly supported by canon events in the game. It’s just a theory I have and you can agree or disagree but hear me out: another ancient magic user attempted the pain-removing spell on Isidora’s father.
We know from Isidora’s journal (entry 4) that this is a very difficult spell to control. What happened to Isidora’s father (empty eyes, empty of sorrow but also everything else) is exactly what happened to the first man Isidora attempted the spell on. In other words: what happened to Mr. Morganach is the work of someone that is a novice in the practice of the pain-removing spell. It cannot be Isidora. She had mastered that spell a long time ago and would have been even more unlikely to slip up with her father, considering how much she cared about him.
In fact, we know that until the very end of her life, despite all other forms of madness she exhibited, she still had precise control over the spell because she used it on Niamh and on her students without wiping their minds.
If we accept that to be true – the fact that someone else was using (and abusing) the pain-removing spell – then the list of suspects is pretty short: we only know of 4 other people that were able to use ancient magic at the time.
I don’t think it’s Bakar since he seemed honestly shocked when he discovered Isidora’s father. Of course, he could have falsified that entire memory but I think falsifying memories is something really hard to do and would usually leave some traces. So let’s take him off the suspect list for now. That leaves the other 3 Keepers. And that’s when Percival starts looking really suspicious…
It’s pretty much implied that Percival was the one to send Bakar to check on Isidora in her home. When Bakar enters Percival’s office he just says: "Isidora was not at her home," implying that Percival already knew he had gone there to look for her. And if Bakar reports like this to Percival it makes sense that Percival was the one that asked him to go check. Percival then says: "I’ve just learned that she has been wielding that magic on students." How exatly he knew that is never explained. Finally, Bakar says: "We must gather the others." So Bakar and Rackham had been investigating Isidora on their own, the other two did not know yet that anything was wrong.
Of course, there is the "innocent" explanation: Percival was looking for Isidora, perhaps to talk to her, but could not find her. He sent Bakar looking for her in the most likely location for her to be: her home. Percival, in the mean time, might have been interrogating her student to know where she was/what happened and that’s how he discovered everything. They then gathered the others and confronted Isidora, killing her to stop her madness. It’s still unclear how they even found the repository, though, again, it could have been the student who told them where Isidora was taking them to remove their pain.
But, if we go by the hypothesis that another magic user had just mind-wiped Isidora’s father (accidentally or not) while Isidora was not at her home, the story starts to look quite different. So let’s contemplate another scenario: Percival, for as-of-now unknown reasons, finds himself experimenting with the pain-removing spell he told Isidora not to use (making him quite the hypocrite). He goes to test it on Isidora’s father, either with the explicit intention to hurt him (we will explore later on some reasons why he would have wanted to do that) or just because he knew the spell had already been used on him so if there were any bad side effects, Isidora’s father would have already been suffering from them making it less risky to use the spell on him again than on someone else not suffering from any side effects yet. The spell backfires because it’s a very difficult spell to control and it requires practice. Now Percival knows he is going to be found out. He knows that as soon as Isidora gets home she might realize what happened (because of her extensive experience with that spell) so he puts his plan into motion: he goes back to Hogwarts, tells San Bakar that Isidora has disappeared and that he needs to go to her home to see if she is there. He knows Bakar will find her father and immediately think Isidora did this to him because she is already known to experiment with dangerous spells.
By that point, Percival might have already known what Isidora was up to below the castle (but he had not stopped her because, secretly, he was actually interested in knowing more about the pain-manipulation magic, hence why he had already been experimenting with it himself). Or he does interrogate her student in an effort to find her so he can move against her when Bakar comes back. Either way, Bakar does come back horrified by what he saw, suspects nothing of Percival’s involvement and Percival enrolls him to convince Niamh and Charles of Isidora’s evil so they can all go kill or subdue the only one who could possibly have exposed Percival’s lies: Isidora herself! Isidora being dead, Percival’s crime against Mr. Morganach is covered up and he gets away with it!
Now... I see the sceptical eyebrows raised! You might think that this makes as little sense as Isidora herself harming her father. There is nothing to support that Percival would have wanted to use the pain-removing spell. And I agree with that. But I would like to bring up the repository that sits under Charles Rookwood’s castle. Because what the hell is a repository doing there?
The Rookwood Castle Repository
I have actually already had this discussion with @superconductivebean who had some compelling arguments to explain why Isidora might have put a first test-repository under Rookwood Castle. Charles Rookwood likely wasn’t living in that castle at the time (the castle was already a ruin when the Keepers came to Feldcroft during the drought and Charles calls it his "former residence"). Buried below an abandoned ruin actually seems like a pretty good place to hide a magic repository you don’t want anyone to find. So, ok, this repository was likely built by Isidora without the Keepers’ knowledge (just like the Hogwarts repository).
But, at some point, the Keepers (or at least Charles and Percival) did find out about it. By the time they are creating their trials and their portraits to communicate with a future ancient magic user, they know about it! Charles Rookwood, talking with the MC in the Map Chamber, with Percival present, says about Rookwood Castle:
"Not only is it the location of the next trial, it is home to a source of power that would be devastating in the wrong hands."
And here is why this raised all kinds of alarm bells for me: why is the repository not as well protected as the one under Hogwarts?
This repository is not buried nearly as deep as the Hogwarts one is! Hence why Ranrok found it relatively easily once he had a vague idea of where to search. We know the Keepers cannot destroy the repositories but surely they could have moved it to a more secure location? Say, under Hogwarts with the other well-guarded repository? And if they could not move it then surely they could have devised other strong protections for it! Why not post a few of those pensieve guardians around? Another locked door that only opens to the one wielding a very special ancient magic wand? When we find that repository open, there is nothing to suggest it was strongly protected. No broken down pensieve guardian statues, no obliterated doors. It seems that repository was only hidden by a few stone wall in the Rookwood Castle basement. Sure it’s somewhere behind the door that open with the magic runes thing but those runes are activated by any old spell. And it’s just a set of doors, just one layer of protection compared to the many layers they put to protect the Hogwarts repository. None of this makes any sense!
To make matters worse, as @superconductivebean pointed out in a recent post (yes this post is in Russian. No, I don’t speak Russian. But I would encourage anyone to bust out the online translators to read these analyses, they are always so in-depth!) they left this repository just by the path to Rookwood’s trial! Even if it had not already been busted open, the chance that the one going through the trial would stumble upon it was pretty high. Why would they take that risk? Before going through Rookwood’s trial, the person doing the trials knows nothing of this magic and why they should not use it. So putting them on the path of forbidden, highly volatile magic is just stupid! This goes against everything else they do to ensure this kind of magic does not fall into the wrong hands!
@superconductivebean suggested (in a last ditch attempt to explain this madness! 🤣) that they might have left this repository here to act as a beacon to lure someone able to feel magic to Rookwood Castle so that they could find the Portkey and be set on the path. That’s a possibility. But it’s a very reckless one! Because someone did stumble upon this badly protected repository and did use it for the wrong means: Ranrok! I just don’t understand them taking this kind of risk.
Unless… Rackham and Rookwood were doing some secret experiments of their own on the "whispers-of-pain" magic from the repository.
Maybe Rackham and Rookwood did not want to lock this repository away like the other one because they were actually interested in that kind of magic. They took the risk of leaving that repository accessible in order to study (or even possibly use) it.
(Although, even if they wanted the repository accessible to study it, they could still have made sure the path to their trial was away from where the repository was buried, say… on the other side of this massive castle! This is still an inconsistency.)
'Whispers-of-pain" magic
So let’s talk about the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic I brought up earlier! This "whispers-of-pain" magic must be closely related to Isidora’s pain-removing spell. It’s the same whispers we hear during Isidora’s spell and near portals and ancient magic hotspots. And yet the Keepers use it! They use the pain-whispering inter-dimentional portals in their trials. And the pain-whispering ancient magic hotspots, were left behind by the Keepers! Charles Rookwood straight up says that these hotspots are:
"Evidence of the Keepers' efforts to manipulate the power of ancient magic during our time."
Speaking of evidence, that’s a pretty damning one against the Keepers! First of all we learn that the Keepers were experimenting on "manipulat[ing] the power of ancient magic" (something that, by the way!, they directly caution the MC against doing at the end of the trials!) but they were not trying to manipulate the power of any kind of ancient magic, this one is specifically the "whispers-of-pain" kind! I don’t know how to record video from the game so I can’t link some evidence of it but, really, go stand above an ancient magic hotspot before activating it and listen. Tell me you don’t hear the whispers! What were they even doing experimenting with that kind of magic? And what kind of experiments were they doing that left traces centuries later?
There is a possibility that these experiments were them trying to see if they could destroy or weaken the magic left in the repository. But then, why does Charles not say so? And why are the traces of these experiments all over Hogwarts Valley and the Coast, i.e. far away from where the repositories are? And why are they encouraging the MC to go and absorb them? It still does not add up.
We know that the Keepers can wield another kind of ancient magic: the one they use when they save Feldcroft, or even the one they use when building pretty pillars, which is not followed by any creepy whispers. In fact, if they wanted to create inter-dimensional portals, couldn’t they use the "crystallized stone" kind of space-bending doors? Like the ones Isidora uses on the mirror as entries to the Undercroft? No creepy whispers around those, as far as I can hear!
So when did the Keepers start using the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic? And I say "Keepers" but, really, I mean Charles and Percival. I don’t think there is any clear evidence of Niamh or San using the "whispers-of-pain" magic. There are no inter-dimensional portals in their trials and they are not present yet in the Map Chamber when Rookwood explains what the ancient magic hotspots are so it’s unclear if they really know about those or what they are. It’s just Charles and Percival! Always just those two! At the center of everything that does not make sense about the Keeper’s path! The only two Keepers that for sure knew about the repository under Rookwood Castle. The only two we know for sure used the "whispers-of-pain" kind of ancient magic in their trial in the form of inter-dimensional portals. And the only two Keepers that were present at the very end when finalizing the path for the MC to follow by hiding the container and leaving their memory in the Gringotts pensieve. Why were Niamh and San not present that day? Why always just those two?
And to all of this evidence, your honor!, I add even more!
Isidora's warning
Isidora wrote "Percival is hiding something" on the boards of the Undercroft.
Did she know that Percival was looking into the pain-removing magic he had forbidden her to use? Was Percival doing some other secret ancient magic experiments unbeknownst to the other Keepers?
Remember Isidora’s paranoia in her seventh journal entry? Her leaving a trail to follow, a path for others to learn as if her days were counted and she soon would be unable to pass on her knowledge herself? Well that would certainly explain that! If she knew some dangerous secret about Percival she might have feared that he would discover that she knew and come after her. Percival might even have mind-wiped her father as a way to plant evidence against her, and to give the other Keepers a strong enough motivation to move against her with him.
And, lastly, I bring to the stand: Niamh!
Niamh's warning
It always struck me that Niamh’s lesson during her trials applied just as much to the Keepers as it applied to Isidora. She says:
"But there is no light without shadow as there is no shadow without light. Simply because you can eliminate darkness does not always mean that you should."
Of course, we all understand how it applies to Isidora: she saw people suffering and sought to remove that pain (i.e., darkness) but did not anticipate the consequences of that. Because, as one of the writers for HL puts it: "If you take someone’s pain away, what do they feel? Can you really feel happy, then?" I think this is what we are supposed to take away from Niamh’s trial, as a first reading.
And yet, Niamh’s lesson also applies to what the Keepers did! There is no denying that ancient magic can be used for good, we see as much when the Keepers save Feldcroft from the drought using ancient magic. But when they saw ancient magic used for evil (i.e., Isidora using it to remove people’s pain without their consent, something that might be volatile soul-magic and that they think will have bad consequences and should not be done), what is their reaction? To take away ancient magic altogether! To seal it away, never to be used again by anyone! They removed the darkness entirely. But, as Niamh explains, without it the light (as in: the good that ancient magic can do) dissapears too! In that respect, in the context of the narrative of HL, Niamh’s lesson applies more strongly to the Keepers’ actions than to Isidora’s because we do not actually see any "light" that Isidora’s action has taken away. It is implied several times that taking someone’s pain away could have negative consequences but we are never shown these consequences. (The only negative effect we see is Isidora’s father’s complete mind-wipe but, in my theory, this did not actually happen because of Isidora’s actions). We are, however, clearly shown the consequence of ancient magic disappearing from the world because we have clear exemples of the good it could do (saving a village from a drought or all the protection charms that Hogwarts offers).
But what does any of that have to do with my theory? Niamh also says during her trial: "nothing is what it seems". She even says this two times! Once at the very beginning of her trial and once at the end when we are walking through the mourners before we get to her tomb. And, as I’ve already explained in that post, I don’t get what she means by this because her trial is actually pretty straightforward. There’s nothing hidden. There’s no plot twist or huge revelation. But what if she was trying to warn the MC about the Keepers (specifically Percival and Charles)? What if she had realized, at the end of her life, that Percival and Charles were hiding something? Or what if she disagreed with their decision to seal ancient magic away entirely and suspected they had hidden motives to do that? (Such as keeping all the power of ancient magic, including the "whisper-of-pain" magic, to themselves?) She might have been afraid to go against Percival and Charles herself (especially if she knew they had been playing around with repository-magic from the secret repository under Rookwood Castle and were therefore more powerful than her) so she instead tried to sneak a warning to the next person coming along with the ability to wield ancient magic, to encourage them to not take everything at face value and to not blindly trust what Percival and Charles were telling them.
(And if I add to all of this my theory that Niamh is a time-traveler, I argue that she could have come back in the future (after Percival and Charles had already died and could not interfere with her actions anymore) and actually modified her trial to include this warning to the MC.)
Concluding remarks
Okay. So, that was a lot I just unloaded here. Let’s take a step back a little bit. My theory is, of course, not the only explanation for what happened to Isidora’s father.
There is a possibility that Isidora’s spell does not immediately empty people of emotions but that it happens over time. Maybe the spell opens something, creates some kind of leak and they progressively loose themselves. Her father is the first person we see her use the spell on and maybe that’s why he is the first one to get the empty eyes. Perhaps Niamh ended up just like him after some time. Isidora may have hid what was happening to her father and she was already too far in to walk back or admit that she was wrong, even after realizing her spell was not working and basically killing those she wanted to help. It could explain why she gave into the madness towards the end. But that would mean that all the students she used the spell on also ended up completely empty of emotions. Surely, if a bunch of Hogwarts students ended up as soul-less husks as a result of Isidora’s actions we would have heard about it? The Keepers would mention it, if only to even more strongly illustrate the danger of Isidora’s spell. Or someone would remember that episode form Hogwarts' history.
It’s also possible that, even when well controlled, the pain-removing spell, when used too often, would still end up wiping someone’s mind. Isidora, seing that her father was not getting better even after she removed his pain (because what could her father feel once his pain was taken away? how to fill the emotional void of all the years he spent in deep depression?) just used the spell again and again, hoping each time for a different result, until it was too much, her father was completely gone and she succumbed to madness. But I wonder then why the writers did not explicitely state that this is what happened. This could have added to the emotional weight of Isidora’s tragic story. Why leave the whole thing so vague?
And even if we find an alternative explanation for Isidora’s father’s fate, that still leaves open all the other questions I brought up: the unprotected repository under Rookwood Castle, the whispers of pain heard in the Keepers’ magic, Isidora’s inscription, Niamh’s cryptic warnings.
But, I’m sure many of you will have other ideas about what could have happened and how to resolve all these little mysteries! So please do come and argue with me!
Tl;dr because that was a very long post: I argue that Isidora couldn’t have been the one to mind-wipe her father. She had already experienced loosing her grasp on the pain-removing spell and completely wiping someone’s mind and she had found how to avoid such a consequence and I find it unlikely that she would have relapsed like this, especially with someone like her father that she very much cared about.
So I argue that another person who could wield ancient magic wiped Isidora’s father’s mind through a badly executed pain-removing spell and the one who had the strongest motive to do so is none other than Percival Rackham!
I was researching canon information about Squibs today and I came across the full story of Angus Buchanan, a Squib who wrote the bestseller book My Life As A Squib.
His story is very interesting but there is a particular detail which jumped out at me because it gives us pretty important information about the ‘canon’ location of Hogwarts Castle and yet I have never seen anyone bring this up in any analyses of the castle’s location that I’ve read.
I recommend everyone go read Angus Buchanan’s story but, quick summary, he was a Squib child in a family of 11 children living in the Scottish Borders. His brothers and sisters helped hide the fact that he was a Squib from their parents and his brother even went as far as taking him to Hogwarts on the first day of school when he turned 11. (This was before the Hogwarts Express existed so children would make their own way to the school and that’s why his brother was able to take him to the school on his broom). Angus therefore became the first and only Squib in history to actually go through the sorting ceremony and got the Sorting Hat placed on his head.
The Hat, however, declared to everybody that Angus actually had no magic and Angus, humiliated, left Hogwarts Castle crying. And here is where the interesting info comes in: he went home to his parents on foot!
They don’t mention how long it took him to get home (we only know that his parents had already received news of what happened by owl by the time he got there), but what distance could a child of 11 realistically walk with no food? If we suppose a walking pace of 4.5 km/h (slightly slower than the average adult) and say that he walked for about a day (a pretty incredible feat! but we could credit his psychological distress for that) that would put us at a very maximum of 100 kms walked between Hogwarts and his home.
We know his home is located in the Scottish Borders, which is an area of Southeastern Scotland. Even if we suppose his home is near the northern border of the Scottish Borders, and if we draw a radius of 100 km around that, this puts Hogwarts no further north than the southern half of current-day council areas like Sterling or Perth and Kinross or, perhaps, the very south-eastern tip of Argyll and Bute. That’s far away from the usual assumed location of Hogwarts in the Scottish Highlands.
I really like the analysis of the location of Hogwarts by cj_whitehound. Based on a detailed analysis of every possible detail she could find in the canon (including trajectory of the Hogwarts Express, climate, mountains, sunrise time differences between Hogwarts and Cornwall, etymology of place-names like Hogsmeade, tree species found in the Forbidden Forest and more) she narrows down 2 possible locations for Hogwarts: the West Highlands and Galloway. She ultimately argues that the West Highlands is the most likely location and the location JKR imagined for Hogwarts.
But based on this new information of a boy from the Scottish Borders being able to walk home from Hogwarts, the West Highlands are too far north. The Galloway Hills (a remote area of Galloway which could conceivably hide a big castle like Hogwarts from the Muggles) are just about feasible. The eastern border of the Galloway Hills lies about 60 km away in a straight line from the western border of the Scottish Borders and google maps tells me it could conceivably be ~100 km to travel on foot from one to the other, depending on the exact locations one is trying to go.
So, what do we think? Hogwarts is in Galloway confirmed?
I think this is a very interesting video! It gives behind-the-scenes info into the work that went into creating HL. It’s an interview of Lee Neuschwander who was the gameplay designer on the team working on Hogwarts Castle and he gives some info on the development of different parts of the castle.
The most shocking to me is that the team working of developing the castle only had 7 people! I don’t know anything about games development but that seems really small! And to develop such a huge castle too! There were only 4 artists on that team (including one that only came in on contract) to create all the textures and model all the objects in the castle. And some of these artists also ended up working on Hogsmeade because the Hogsmeade team only had one dedicated artist! To create the whole village!
He also keeps saying how tight the budget was for the game. The Arithmancy puzzle doors almost got cut entirely because they thought it would not fit the budget and they only made it in after some of the team put in extra hours just to finish developing them. He mentions several time how devs had to work overtime just to get some cool features into the game because they were passionate about it.
I think this really puts things into perspective. I know there’s been a lot of discussion about all the things that should not have been cut from the game and all the things that could have been more polished, that could have been done better etc. And I’m including myself in this! I have expressed frustration that Ancient Magic is not explored deep enough in the main storyline, that some world building elements (like the hooded statues, like the crests, like the murals/symbols that can be found everywhere) feel meaningless, etc. But this video made me realise how difficult it probably was to bring such a massive world and story to life with so few people and a tight budget.
Hopefully they are going to expand the team for the sequel so they don’t have to compromise so much on quality, thoroughness and all the things they want to include in the game vs. the time and budget they have.
happy new year ! need hogwarts legacy Fandom have reasearch more in 2025 New year
Thank you! Happy new year to you too! 💙
I was very busy through all of December so I've been pretty inactive. But I'm really itching to start posting again! I have 2 or 3 posts at least that I've been wanting to write for several months now and I should finally have a bit more time now :)
Although I also feel like I've kind of done all the theorizing I could do based on the content we got so far. Any other theories I have are really more personal speculation and headcanons and not strongly supported by the canon events of the game.
At this point, I'm really hungry for any type of new content!! I'm really impatiently waiting for the definitive edition to come out because I'm hoping this will give us a better idea of where the devs are planning to take HL next (are they ever going to get deeper into ancient magic/Hogwarts' history/any character's story or is the story going to stay surface-level?)