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(+2)

Pondering Lore

Sitting at the current end of content, there are a few things as a player I'm wondering about.

1. Where's the Tea Master? Surely he saw the ending of Act I take place. Surely, he even saw how it all went down as somewhat...inevitable. Is he ignoring the player on purpose, or might there be lessons we have to learn throughout Act II before he feels like speaking with the player?

2. How did we the player end up where we are in Act II? I read the Act I ending text fairly closely, but I'm still left with some fuzziness around the spiritual mechanics and reasons why we're here. Is this an accident, or is this fate truly intended for the player?

3. What is the player supposed to learn in Act II? How will this arc, and the various tyrants, develop our character's understanding of broader spiritual laws / systems, and how will the emotional state / inner drive evolve? Act I was driven by curiosity, and the need to develop oneself sufficiently to both obtain answers and have the level of consciousness needed to grasp those answers. Is Act II just a raw suffer-fest, or is something deeper taking place.

(+4)

The Tea Master is not gone for good. I don’t want to say much more than that yet, because when and why he returns is part of the story rather than something I want to answer outside the game.

The fuzziness there is intentional. You are not supposed to have a complete understanding yet of exactly why the protagonist ended up where they did, or how much of it was accident versus something more deliberate. That will make considerably more sense by the end of Act II.

There is definitely an overarching story to Act II, and it is not intended to just be a prolonged suffer-fest. The current end of content only exposes the first layer of it, which is part of why it can feel flatter right now than Act I did at the same point.

As the Sovereign regions expand, the Tyrants stop being six isolated obstacles and start showing different expressions of the same broader system. The protagonist is learning how power, sovereignty, subjugation and survival actually function in this realm, and what it means to participate in those systems rather than simply observe them from outside.

There is also an emotional progression to the act, but I would rather let that emerge through the regions and characters than summarize where it is going in a comment.

TLDR: yes, there is more going on, yes, the Tea Master still matters, and some of the questions that currently feel deliberately fuzzy are supposed to remain that way for now.

(+1)

I'll give my two cents

1) Hes still in the first realm I guess but he loops alongside us? or maybe we all start the loop at the same time. He was keenly aware of the impact of Wrath on us and gave some cryptic hints before the energy backlash warped the player.

2) Collision of Tribulation Wrath by the heavens and the player's seed influenced core having a backlash. Teamaster seems aware of the result of the energies so it suggests that the event isn't random or teamaster has undergone it himself in his own loop story.

3) I only did 1.2 before going back to Act I but I think the miasma helps temper the player's understanding of what energy is in different forms and how to convert a certain dimension's energy to use what they had developed. Soul forging allows the player to wield expressions of aspects of energy with them as they loop so we go from having a seed with an essentially naked player to one that has essence of apex beasts from wilderness to one that has harnessed aspects of this miasma energy and can don it through incarnations.  I'll have to do the rest of 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 to expand on this but I think this arc is basically helping the player learn how to step away from the structured understanding we had of the world's energy and develop our own structures. This comes in the form of soul forged equipment and  using miasma for qi

(+1)

Quite the breakdown. Some is on point, some is adjacent, some is fully off but that is the fun of watching the story unfold.

(+1)

Haha just guesswork from my first go through of the lore, it'll probably get corrected as we learn more and go through different realms 

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For 1, my honest theory is that he doesn't know where we are. We know he knows that the energies would transport us, but there's no indication he knows where.

If not that, then it's possibly the Tyrants. His modus operandi is to subtly help people improve, which seems to be at odds with the Tyrants' more direct approaches. With how they're tied to the miasma, I could see them having enough power to keep him from communicating with us.

(+1)

That is a pretty solid theory.