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History of Wraeclast
An attempt to piece together the history of Wraeclast from clues dropped in NPC text in version Path of Exile 0.11.0.
There's probably more information that can be extracted from unique items' flavour text and the like, but I don't have that collection to hand at the moment.
Vaal
The Vaal are the oldest known race in Wraeclast, almost completely forgotten in modern times[1]. They built the Vaal Ruins that entombed the weird darkness the player releases in Act II[2], they built the Ancient Pyramid at the end of Act II [3], and presumably they also built the Vaal Oversoul, or at least its mechanical frame. A number of the monsters in the Vaal-created areas are called "constructs" (Ancient Construct, Vaal Construct, Serpentine Construct) so presumably they had some biological or thurmatological technology.
The Vaal were also the first to use skill (virtue) gems[4]
The Eternal Empire
The Eternal Empire was founded by a race called the Azmeri (Eramir: "The Azmeri. The culture that descended from the Azmerian Mountains and founded the Eternal Empire, so long ago.") Helena suggests that the Azmeri civilisation was at least beginning while the Vaal were still around: "A people who, to the stone age Azmeri, appeared godlike."
Maligaro was a thaumaturgist at some point in the history of the Empire (his equipment and laboratory is found in the Chamber of Sins, whose architecture resembles Lunaris Temple in the Empire's capital). Maligaro's research centred on virtue (skill) gems and transferring them to humans, although it never seemed to work out terribly well (Helena: "Maligaro injected Raulo with both immortality and deformity in equal measure."). He invented Maligaro's Spike "to inject the essence of the Virtue Gems into living subjects" (Helena) and at the end of his life invented the Baleful Gem for an unknown purpose (Helena: "Maligaro was mortally ill, degenerating in body and mind. It was in this state that he created the Baleful Gem. His final words are burned into my mind. 'This gem is my salvation. Today I join Fidelitas.'"). Apart from the Spike and the Gem, other thaumaturgical works of the Empire in this period include elementals (Helena: "Maligaro and his kind warped the very earth and water with thaumaturgy. The masters are long gone, but those poor golems must continue to obey their instructions.") and a mysterious darkness (Helena: "This twisting of our surroundings, it's happened before. Maligaro conjured up a creature of the purest, darkest thaumaturgy.")
- Malachai, gem-mining, and sulphite
The Last Days
- Hargan: "roughly two-and-a-half centuries ago"
- Malachai and the Gemling Queen
- Malachai used surgery, rather than a spike like Maligaro
- Chitus
- Victario, the poet
- Voll, the High Templar of Thebrus
- Purity Rebellion
- Ezomytes? Maraketh?
- Lioneye, Shavronne (with Brutus) and Kaom
- Voll as Emperor
- The Twist (and the Gemling Queen)
Karui
- Post-rebellion, in Act 1
Modern Times
- Oriath, Theopolis
- Dominus
- Piety
- Dates (IC?) are much larger than 250, so they're probably from the founding of the Eternal Empire, or perhaps something from the Templar faith.
References
- ↑ Eramir: "a culture I've seen mentioned here and there in some of the most antique of texts"
- ↑ Eramir: "These artifacts, and that ancient gateway to the northwest... crafted by the same hands, I'd venture. Vaal hands."
- ↑ Helena: A man-crafted mountain of four sheer sides? Sounds like a pyramid. That's Vaal architecture."
- ↑ Eramir: "It is the Vaal who began the use of Virtue Gems, well before our imperial ancestors."