ArcheAge Roleplay

Hey guys,

So I noticed that a lot of people are still citing a thread on the official forums that seems to present some lore information. No, not the one that I recently authored, but one that was published months ago, prior to a majority Alpha invites being disbursed and offered for sale.

The thread in question was first posted here, mostly as a translation of this thread and then amended and presented here and here. While there is some information that is perfectly correct, this lore-dump was based almost entirely on speculation and conjecture. It presents a few claims that I have heard both RPers and non-RPers alike take up as truth without even a shred of evidence to support it.

That being said, my own translations aren't perfect either, being that I speak barely any Korean, have only been able to read and write in Korean for 2 years, and was only able to fumble my way through the translations with a lot of assistance and a little bit of experience with related Eastern Asian languages. However, in my lore dump, I have posted my sources in the event that someone who is fluent can take a peek at them and correct them if need be--or at least others can see that I am getting my information from somewhere other than my own observation and speculation.

So! I wanted to go through a couple of the claims this thread made to just make sure that people know that they are erroneous, and to not use them as a part of their stories. In general, be careful with any of the lore that hasn't come straight from Trion, because still at the end of the day, they may see fit to change certain details to better suit a Western audience (though so far everything has been the same). Also, I want everyone who is reading this to know that I mean to insult to anyone who has taken the time out of their day to try to provide the community with lore information out there. I just am a stickler for accuracy and want to make sure that 6 months in to launch, we don't still have people thinking that the Heroes were called angels.


"To start off with Archeage has a heaven and a hell, with the good gods living in heaven and the evil gods living in hell."

This is, as far as we've been able to determine, totally incorrect. While there is a dichotomous relationship between the Ipnya (Ipna per older fanmade localizations) and the Akasch (Nachasui per older fanmade localizations), there is no "Hell" and "Heaven." There is the Hereafter, which is one realm. If a real world parallel needs to be drawn, it is close to that of the Biblical "Hades," which is the catch-all term for the realm of the afterlife--or an ethereal plane apart from the mundane.

Trion has named the realm of death the "Hereafter." All of the gods come from this place, and this is where one goes when one dies. This is also how people escaped from Auroria, using Nui's powers. Nui is also the Goddess of Death aka the Goddess of the Hereafter. The Korean term for Hereafter is "저승" or "Jeo-seung." This roughly translates to "Hell," which might have been why people assumed that there was a heaven and a hell. The Korean term for the afterlife is equally as non-specific as the term Hades. In a Christian context, yes, it does mean Hell. But, in a secular context, it does not. Some NPC dialogue occasionally references "Hell" in smalltalk and there is, of course, proper nouns that use the term, such as Hellswamp and hellhounds, but there is still no indication of a literal Hell.

Searching the Korean site for the terms for and synonyms of "heaven," almost nothing comes up beyond the name of some sort of order or organization. The "Garden" is a place spoken of in the lore, but we don't have much information on it other than it was what--or where-- the world was born from. It may very well even be Auroria itself, but it's purposely extremely vague and does not seem to exist as a plane in the afterlife.

"People strive to do good to be able to get into heaven, but evil doers go strait to hell when they die."

See above. Completely unsupported, and again, we assume that this was, along with the perception of the existence of "Angels," a conclusion arrived to based on assumptions regarding the connection between ArcheAge lore and Christian lore.

"One day (Thiol) created the First being named Ipna, and gave him a splendid garden to live in. But after awhile Ipna grew board, and wanted a companion.

Thiol gave him a female companion and made her perfect in every single way possible, almost an exact being as Thiol herself, and called her Nui. Unfortunately for Ipna, she was just too perfect and grew bored of him. She left him for the dark and sinister demons that Thiol had created aeons ago. The dark arts intrigue her but they also made her insane. Soon she created a place to live in the underworld called Hell. Nui soon became known as the God of Hell and is associated to the root of all evil that is in the world.

Thiol created another female for Ipna this time not so perfect, and soon they both fell in love and had many children. The family grew so large that Thiol told them they had to leave the garden. So off the family went out of the garden and into the world that Thiol had created for them."

We posted this entire excerpt because it is, as far as we've been able to determine, totally and completely incorrect. Once again, we're guessing that the reason the original author (the poster on goha.ru) posted something of this nature was because they had preconceived notions that the lore would closely follow Christian lore. This except is, essentially, the Christian story of Adam and Eve, and in no way ever manifests itself in the ArcheAge storyline.

The Ipnya are a species. Ipnya ("Ipna") is not a single person. They are, in the ArcheAge wiki (linked prior), described as "the first intelligent species born to the world of ArcheAge." The Akasch were a warrior race (presumably less intelligent) that thirsted for war and were eventually sealed away / banished by the Ipnya.

We haven't been able to find any sort of tie between Nui and the Ipnya, but if there is such a link, we'll be sure to provide it. The only thing we can debunk about the author's idea of the relation of Nui to the Ipnya is that she could not have been "his" lover because Ipnya is not a man, but a race.

"Ipna's children became known as the Ipnu and they were very close to Thiol."

See above about the nature of Ipnya as a race versus an individual. Searching the Korean wiki, we found absolutely nothing about a race known as the "Ipnu." What the author of this post attributes to the "Ipnu" is actually attributed to the Ipnya race in the official Korean sources.

"The Nachuaui: The followers of Nui left the Ipnu and set forth to build their own empire.

While the Akasch ("Nachasui") did have their own empire, they were never a part of the Ipnya race, and thus never had to "leave" it. They are described even as being physically unique and from the Ipnya, standing about 2-3 times as large as a Nuian and having a lizard-like appearance. We have been unable to find a connection between Nui and the Akasch as well. There may be something, but we just don't know what it is if there is anything. We'll let you know if/when we're able to translate information about this, if Trion doesn't get to it first. What we do know is that the implication of the above bolded claim is incorrect.

"The Nuon were a race of Nachuaui that didn't believe in the leadership of Antalrone, and wanted to be free in nature."

Korean sources cannot confirm that the Nuon were a part of the Nachasui race. As far as we can tell, the Nuon were a third ancient race, native to Nuia rather than Auroria. The Korean source says that there is evidence they lived, and not much more than that. There are bones and ruins.

"Their (The Nuon's) offspring's became known as the Faeries (The Fairy race)and the Firran(Ferre) (The cat people race)."

There is no evidence to support this claim. The last remaining relics of the Nuon are in Gweonid Forest ("또한 현재 엘프들의 거주지인 그위오니드 숲의 유적들은 모두 누온의 유적이다."), but there is no mention of creating the Faeries or the Firrans. There is also no related claim as to the origins of Fairies and Firrans being related to the Nuon in any of their respective Wiki posts. We're not sure where this speculation came from. We later confirmed that the Firrans existed as a race before the captive Faeries were released from the Garden's gates.

"The Nachuaui decided to create three new slave races to help them in the war effort. They were the Dwarves, Warborn, and the Returned."

This is an inconclusive statement. We can't find any evidence that the Akasch created their own races, nor that the Dwarves, Warborn, and Returned were created to be slaves (although there is evidence that the Warborn were some sort of slave at some point). The claim is possible and we are not totally debunking this one, but we have not found evidence to support such a large claim about the origins of several soon-to-be-playable races.We do know that the first Returned were originally part of the Hirama race, which implies then that the Returned were not simply "created."

"The Dwarves were a small tiny slave race of people who were put to work in the mines to create the machines needed for the war effort for the Nachuaui."

See above. There's no evidence they were slaves, nor that they were involved with the Akasch. The Dwarf and Akasch articles on the Korean wiki lack these details.

"The Returned were actually dead souls brought back to life to serve the Nachuaui."

The same as above. There is no evidence that the Returned had anything to do with the Akasch on either article on the Korean wiki. The Korean wiki does confirm that the Returned are undead, however, and says that their blood is blue. It also says they do not die. The Empress Pavitra of the Perinoor empire (old Haranyan empire) had a son who allegedly became Returned.

"The Warborn were half Nachuaui and half demon. They made great warriors and generals in the Nachuaui army. After the war they were leaderless and had nowhere to go, so they decided to create their own civilization and are still around to this day."

Once more an unsupported claim unconfirmed in the Warborn and Akasch articles on the Korean wiki. There's no source saying they are half demon and half Akasch. There is very little detail about the Warborn right now, and what we have of the reason behind their conception was basically that they were created to appeal to a North American market, as MMOs generally have one large, bulky type creature. Orchidna had a Warborn general or army titled "Ragnarok."

Miscellaneous information about the Great War and the roles of the races within it...

There is a lot of information in this lore thread about the "Great War," but almost no verifiable information about it. Whatever their source is, it would seem we don't have access to it. That being said, it doesn't mean that the information is false--just that it might not necessarily be true either, and they did not cite their sources. Given the beginning of the article is made up of a lot of speculation, conjecture, and a great deal of guess work, we're not sure it would be wise not to comment on this chunk of the thread to at least let you know that we can't verify it.

What we know about the Hidden Era is excruciatingly limited. Even the wiki article for it is basically a shell. (Yes, all it has is a period on it.) That era is the era in which the war evidently took place between the Ipnya and the Akasch. What we do know is that it spanned several continents, and ended with the sealing away of the Akasch king, then subsequent fading of the Ipnya people.

One Angel, the angel of Destruction (Gene Evernight) could not handle his powers. Maybe it was the torture he received while he was in hell, but non the less he went mad with power.

There are a few errors with this one. I didn't quote the first mention of "Angels" because I figured I'd address it in its own little body. It is a frequent error that shows up in this lore dump. Now, when this author writes about Gene being unable to control either his power itself, or rather implicitly, the responsibility of honing the powers of the God of Destruction, they are perfectly correct and it is congruent with other sources, both Korean and English now. What is never spoken about and may be simple speculation since we have been unable to find support for this claim, is that it had something to do with him being tortured in hell.

See the first line in this breakdown about the existence of a "hell." We're assuming that the idea that he was tortured was pure conjecture linked with the notion that there is a Christian-esque Hell, which we generally accept as being a realm for being tortured. We actually know very little about what happened to the Heroes when they first entered the Gate to the Hereafter in the Birthplace of the World. In the storyline lore that Trion has translated as a part of the single-player story quests, it seems that Gene was not all that insufferable at the start, but then had been manipulated and coerced by another, and gained conviction in his destructive actions by perceived betrayal from his lover.

"With that Thiol's soul split into 12 parts and each part went into one of the raised hero's. From this point on the hero's would become Thiol's ArcheAngles. The new guardians of the world. Thiol didn't want Nui's soul to linger in hell so one of the 12 hero's agreed to carry her soul as well, and what a burden that would be."

The Twelve Heroes did not take parts of Thiol's soul. When they discovered the Birthplace of Magic AKA the Birthplace of the World, they were imbued with powerful magic and some assimilated with gods that had already been in existence. We can't confirm that Thiol willed any of this. There is absolutely nothing that calls them "ArcheAngels." They are Gods and Heroes--both in Korean and in English.

"This marked the end of the Rose Era and brought us into a new Era. The Arche Age (The era of the Arche Angles)."

There is no Age known as the "Arche Age." That is, as far as we can tell, pure and utter speculation about why the game is named as it is. The names of the ages are very clear, and none of them are known as the "Arche Age."

"Upon seeing the Angel of Wind taking the Firran people, Kyrios (Angel of Destruction) grew jealous and killed him. As a consequence, the Firran people left the Lost Continent and were nomadic for a time, eventually settling on the Eastern continent and making it their own."

Both Korean and English sources tell us now that the reason Kyrios/Gene killed Tahyang was because Tahyang attempted to stop him, while allowing for Eanna/Nui to create a Hereafter gate to the continent of Nui for all of Auroria's citizens to flee through, while the magic-drained Auroria crumbled. Gene was not jealous of Tahyang in any respect.

"Kyrios then went after Melisara, Tahyang and Aranzeb. Killing them all, and taking their part of Thiols souls into himself. Later he would banish their mortal souls into hell. With each killing he became more and more powerful, and soon the rest of the Angels had to do something before it was too late."

Kyrios didn't go after them--they went after him in order to stop his war. We still cannot confirm anything about Thiol's soul, and doubt it would be quantitative. There are no sources that confirm that any exchange of Thiol's soul was performed. Additionally, Gene could not banish people's souls. He simply killed them. What remained of them were memories passed on to those who still lived, and passed down, diluted, through generations.

Note: Still working on researching the following claims from these threads:

• That Thiol is dead.
• That Thiol and Nui fought / were enemies.
• That their fight created the hole which is the Birthplace of the World
• That the Ipnya and Akasch created all of the playable races.

We should also be extremely wary of Wiseman's posts because he claims to have translated the lore himself, but word-for-word used many of my own translations, which I have had posted since 2012 on ArcheAgeSource.com. He did not translate anything himself, it seems, but did take information from several other sources and compile it together without sourcing or verifying any of the information he took.

Ah, The Returned sound awesome! I want to play as one :(
I love playing as Undead characters lol.

You know instead of adding them as a race xl could make it a questline that activates after the first death you get after the patch,..that way players can awaken as a new race that is similar to there own but not the same.

Also from what the firran storyline reveals returned may be tied into some necromantic religion as there are alot of undead in the firran storyline.

As for wiseman i kinda pegged him as a faker early on as his so called translations seemed very similar to others i found.

As knowledgeable as ever, Wanderer thanks for the clearing that up!

Nice post Wanderer, thanks for the read ^^

Awww that's discouraging. Can see it being true though.

But I do have a question: there's a quest that states you need to collect hell hound collars so if there's no hell...then where the heck are they getting hell hounds from?!

Unless it's another mistranslation?

#9812119 Stalkingrike wrote:

Awww that's discouraging. Can see it being true though.

But I do have a question: there's a quest that states you need to collect hell hound collars so if there's no hell...then where the heck are they getting hell hounds from?!

Unless it's another mistranslation?

Well, there's also a zone called Hellswamp. It's more alluding to the concept of -a- hell or something hellish, than -the- Hell.

I fear I probably need to re-bump this. The old source in question is still getting quoted.

I fear it will continue to be quoted until such a time as Trion or xl games make an effort to point people to the correct lore and declare it a bad source....since neither give a damn from what i can tell folks like us will just have to steer them to the corrected lore instead :)

Allot of this actually cleared up misunderstandings I had about the ancient history of the lore, extremely useful thread! I gotta retconn some of my characters perspectives on history because of it.

But some explanations don't make allot of sense to me, Like your.... I dunno, "Dismissing" maybe? (Dismissing' maybe not the best word to use) some swathes of lore that there's vague speculation on because there's just simply not allot of information clarifying a story. It's like we don't know for sure, but it's best to er on the side of caution and dismiss it as false until we know for certain. Not a bad policy to do that but at the same time it leaves a bit of a bind to fully understanding some elements.


I guess to a degree I'm looking for validity that some of my characters perspectives would be acceptable lore wise?

There is no Heaven or Hell, Angels or Demons, but for the sake of simplicity maybe there's various realms within the Hearafter or even other dimensions that could be conceived as a 'Heaven' or 'Hell' because obviously these words are coming from some kind of knowledge that's accepted by the common man sense these words come up in the rare quest dialogue on occasion.

It's not a literal biblical sense obviously but I always for the sake of simplicity refer to the monsters and crimson army so on etc that invade from the realm of Kyrios as demons.

The 12 gods aren't gods, there just Mortals given Immortal powers that each to varying degrees have there limits, It was always easier for me to think of them as 'Arche Angels' and that we live in the Arche Age, the age of the 12 Arche Angels. This as you've debunked not the literal case but would it be wrong to perceive it as such?

We're talking about the common person who has no advanced knowledge on history, and even archives, Librarys, and historians in-game don't possess such in-depth or accurate knowledge on the origin of the 12 Gods so it makes sense that there would be filler made up by the common person, a different perspective, as a easier way to accept these divine things there seeing done.

There's other things I'm curious about in the debunk, but I don't want to dribble on, more or less my TL/DR: Would some of my above perspectives be acceptable as a filler for things we don't know as absolute? Or should I explore another perspective for my character just to I can stay within the guidline of lore?

There is no Heaven or Hell, Angels or Demons, but for the sake of simplicity maybe there's various realms within the Hearafter or even other dimensions that could be conceived as a 'Heaven' or 'Hell' because obviously these words are coming from some kind of knowledge that's accepted by the common man sense these words come up in the rare quest dialogue on occasion.

Something that big, I'd avoid speculation on. I think there is some room in the lore for a touch of fanon, but concerns about the afterlife and what's in it as so essential to the lore of the game that I fear speculation and acceptance of fanon could totally ruin potential future expansions. Since there's no lore that says that there's a section of the Hereafter for the sinful or evil or what-have-you, and no section for the good, just and peaceful, it would be strange to appropriate an unrelated real world religion to it like that.

It's not a literal biblical sense obviously but I always for the sake of simplicity refer to the monsters and crimson army so on etc that invade from the realm of Kyrios as demons.

Kyrios isn't behind the Crimson Army. Rather, Anthalon is. Kyrios is still sealed away, and Anthalon is trying to utilize the magic held within the Ayanad Library to free him, and he personally is sending the Crimson Army to battle. The Crimson Army is also an army of undead, rather than demons. The "demons" spoken of in the Demon War that Orchidna waged in Nuia are Warborn (a race that will likely be playable in patch 3.0).

The 12 gods aren't gods, there just Mortals given Immortal powers that each to varying degrees have there limits, It was always easier for me to think of them as 'Arche Angels' and that we live in the Arche Age, the age of the 12 Arche Angels. This as you've debunked not the literal case but would it be wrong to perceive it as such?

I mean, you can chalk it up to your character's subjective personal beliefs, but it's not the objective truth. The Library Expedition were a mix of gods and heroes. Not all of them were gods. Additionally, we're not living in the "Arche Age." There is no such age as the "Arche Age" in the official timeline of events for this game. The reason the game is called "ArcheAge" is because it was meant to be a sandbox game with heavy emphasis on architectural customization, or so they say. But the "age of Arche" thing is another one of Wiseman's bad lore posts that has 0 foundation in canon lore.

We're talking about the common person who has no advanced knowledge on history, and even archives, Librarys, and historians in-game don't possess such in-depth or accurate knowledge on the origin of the 12 Gods so it makes sense that there would be filler made up by the common person, a different perspective, as a easier way to accept these divine things there seeing done.

The common person would probably know enough that they wouldn't need to totally make things up. Like that Nui died to ensure our survival, and that Kyrios brought about the destruction of Auroria and killed Aranzeb and Tahyang as well. Limiting your character's knowledge of things is fine, as is having them make things up, I suppose, but I think it would be a mistake to use the debunked lore as an outlet for that, because it can confuse people OOCly and muddy the already murky water that is AA lore.

I hope that answers your questions. ^^

Very much so, thanks. This helps allot!

I wish I had seen this sooner > , < Ah.. I have to make a new story again ;_________;

Bumping! Pretty much required reading if you're simply googling ArcheAge lore.

maybe pin it that way it wont need bumping and will be easy to point folks to?

-casts dubious resurrection magics upon the thread-

may be worth loking into any new issues in lore that have cropped up since this thead was last active...given how xlgames and trion drifted over time.

Indeed! I have a ton of lore to catch up on myself now. x.x;

I'm so glad this thread exists. I was watching the Reddit wiki update its lore section and it was confusing as all hell before someone pointed out it was incorporating a LOT of this invalid info. Now that's been excised and it mostly sources your original posts and some developer posts, as well as Orchidna's journals.

Awesome~ That's really good to hear.