Path of Exile - Lore Stories: Siege of the Atlas

Posted: 20 Feb 2022 12:44 PM PST

In Path of Exile: Siege of the Atlas, threats from beyond the stars have arrived and seek control of the Atlas. Our lead narrative designer, Matt Dymerski, has written an overview of this new situation from a lore perspective.

They... are coming.

It was impossible to miss the Envoy's warning. Over the past year, exiles were continually told that eldritch abominations had noticed the Elder's absence and were on their way. With the release of Siege of the Atlas, to quote Carol Anne from Poltergeist: They're heeeere.

Or, at the very least, the first four are here. In a manner similar to the Elder serving a force called the Decay, the entities we fight in the Atlas serve higher powers. The Black Star and The Searing Exarch serve a cosmic force called the Cleansing Fire, while The Infinite Hunger and The Eater of Worlds serve the Tangle.

The Envoy gives us a bit of information, in his own unique way, about why we are facing these four bosses instead of simply being destroyed outright by the cosmic forces they serve. He refers to a concept called the Struggle, by which forces as tremendous as the Tangle and the Cleansing Fire cannot and do not clash directly, lest they 'rend the very cosmos asunder.' Instead, conflicts are settled through duels between mortal champions. These can safely do battle without rupturing reality.

In that vein, the Exile is directed by Kirac to act as the Maven's champion. Without us, she would lose to much older and more powerful entities, and without her, we would have no recognized claim on the Atlas, because we are nothing to them. The Tangle and the Cleansing Fire would simply move in and begin consuming everything, and no force we could muster could possibly defeat their true forms.

Speaking of their true forms, the Envoy's descriptions — and numerous flavour texts on new unique items — spell a very grim picture. The Cleansing Fire seems to be a colossal brain composed of 'blazing suns and black stars' that developed the ability to think, and has spent eternity voraciously seeking knowledge at the expense of disintegrating everything it studies. Somehow, it even keeps a library of minds, refusing to let those it has annihilated actually cease to exist. Meanwhile, the Tangle is some sort of horrific mass of organic beings melded together, and every one of those beings is pulling and clawing away eternally, trying to escape the pain and pursue even the smallest pleasure or consumption to distract themselves from the agony of their horrible existence. The more those trapped in the Tangle reach out, the more beings get absorbed, making the whole thing even more painful and cacophonous. Needless to say, death would be preferable to becoming part of either of these horrific entities.

But how did we reach these designs? Well, we knew this was coming for quite a while because the Envoy hangs out in our break room giving us very long warnings every time we enter. So, we began work on a massive list of horrible entities with varying motivations. This could serve as an entire Lovecraftian cosmos, one in which humanity is meaningless and existence is filled with fundamental forces manifested as enormous eldritch abominations. Design realities meant we had to pick one or two for 3.17 and leave the rest hidden for now. The Tangle and the Cleansing Fire were chosen early on, and were initially quite different. Their themes remained consistent, but their look and feel evolved quite a bit as we got a handle on the art and storyline. Without NPCs or glyphs to convey the lore, the bulk of the heavy lifting had to be done in the theming and flavour of their unique items. Item-focussed Exiles might notice that the uniques the pinnacle bosses drop are very connected to their themes. No room for random unrelated uniques this time!

And, of course, the Maven was hovering around the office demanding things throughout this process. In pinnacle boss battles, we gave her a sixth tier of dialogue that can be unlocked by defeating her as part of her own questline. This means she can finally take what she learns from that defeat to heart and be a little less callous toward our Exile. Astute players might also notice that she is the only eldritch entity that acknowledges us. The pinnacle bosses only talk to her, not us. We're beneath their notice. Fortunately, our connection to the Maven allows us to understand the eldritch language they're using. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to understand them when they conveniently call out what attacks they're about to use! For a time, we planned to give the Exile a buff that they could hover over to see that the Maven was actively giving them the ability to understand, but that didn't make it through the iterative design process.

By the end of the current Siege of the Atlas storyline, our Exile earns the Citizen Vanguard a moment's respite, but the Envoy is quite clear that this war is far from over. The Tangle and the Cleansing Fire are just two of many in a universe filled with horrors that 'outnumber the stars.' As Kirac puts it, a bunch of half-trained volunteers, an Exile, and a psychopathic hatchling are all that stands between humanity and an unimaginable fate.