"Those Who Dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the Music" . This one allways struck me so good, that i thought the Vaal Nature of Thinking was very deeper then those of any other Cultures around them. Amazing
29 minutes Pog! The amount of time, research, effort and dedication to make these videos is absolutely incredible. This is incredibly informative and extremely interesting, as I was listening I realized how very little I actually knew about the Vaal beyond some obvious details and major named characters. I will admit I'm probably going to have to give this a second watch to have everything fully sink in, but that is more than worth the time invested on my end and a joy to boot. You've done an absolutely fantastic job with this series, and each and every video has been a delight to see finished. I'm really proud of you Noodle, I know you work incredibly hard on these and that hard work shows in the end result. Thank you for giving a voice to most of PoE's complicated lore.
CONSPIRACY! Haha yeah for sure, I wonder if she chose that name? Seems suspicious to be like "oh we have vaal ancestry, let's name out kid...uh...vala? Laav? Alva?"
Very cool video! When you mentioned the singing at 7:30 all I could think of was the flavour text of Atziri's Steps: "Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music" :D I'm definitely going to watch more of your videos
Thank you for reading and researching all this lore and putting it into these neat little packages. Im someone whose read maybe 5% at most of the in game lore to discover because the ridiculously high clear speed meta of POE has pounded into my brain that if you arent killing, crafting or trading stuff you're wasting time lol. I hope the vaal make a huge return in poe2.
25:00 in, This flavor text sounds more like something the Elder would say, and if possible, since it has been shown before, The elder could have interfered with the vaal empire quite easily, especially considering that the Elder is the manifestation of the void's hunger to decay, rot, and corrupt everything pure.
HELL YES! I just finished the rest of your lore videos last night and you already uploaded a new one! So helpful for a new player, I missed easily half of this lore
I did exactly the same last night...now I wonder how many discovered her youtube channel and watch all her lore videos last night and felt blessed today when saw a new video.
Compiling this information definitely took some effort. I already knew a lot of the Vaal history but having the story told chronologically really helps with fleshing things out. I did, however, miss the normal cameo by your cat.
as someone who just plays the game and grind and don't care about blocks of text ingame I really thank you for this. I play the game while listening to you.
Catching up on a lot of the lore - I never really got into it since every new league feels like such a race to get to endgame content. One thing that doesn't make much sense to me from a worldbuilding perspective is why the Vaal, whose technological advancements were built primarily around sacrifice and blood magic, would have peacefully coexisted alongside the Azmeri (even if they never shared much of these things with them). The need for people to sacrifice isn't really self-sustainable, so such an empire would have been ruthlessly expansionist. To me, it would have made more sense for the Vaal to have been ruthless conquerors of the Azmeri, with their fall being entirely of their own doing, and the rise of the Eternals could have been more along the lines of the early Eternal Empire being fascinated with the Vaal's power and trying to emulate them, rather than just sort of continuing along after their peaceful allies fell. It wouldn't affect much else, but that would make much more sense to me than how it was written.
Awesome videos I recently started playing PoE and have been interested in the lore. I’m stoked there is someone doing in depth and very well done lore dives! Thank you.
I am playign this game since alpha. I know the lore pretty well, I know nuances here and there. But boy no joke I have listened every word you were telling in VAAL series, and in act 1-10 series. You are such a great person and provider of information. Really interesting book of facts you have gathered and made it all in uber interesting wrap. I love your work. Thank you. (hiho from 2024)
so... im watching this video ( great content btw, keep up the good work ) and im looking at my inventory wandering what the hell is this item called Kishara's Star, and at that exact moment you start explaining what Kishara's Star is, and to be perfectly honest, it creeped the hell out of me :D so much that i had to leave a freaking comment :)
I'm not sure if I missed it or not in this video. You discussed the temple of Atzoatl, that we help Alva "build" it and then basically explore/raid it. With that said, what about the Vaal side areas + the sacrifice fragments and our character (the exile) using the map device to go and fight Atziri. This seems like it is present day lore related. On the Atziri wiki page, there is a quote from the Sacrifice of the Vaal announcement that reads: "Destroyed by the Cataclysm, she still lingers in a nightmare realm that is leaking corruption back into the land of Wraeclast."
From all the stuff about zerphi, I am certain he strike a deal with a god of death, and by making some... unique... sacrifices, he probably offered the victims souls and with that, he managed to survive and stay young for a very long time. The exact details of his rituals were lost forever, but from his items, I assume he also had a skill that consumed his life force, so he used spirits powers, his flask, and by offering souls to god of death. Why did he die? Probably either he missed some important variable in his rituals, or the victim died from heart attack of something. So zerphi couldn't "offer" more victim. And he died.
What if, in my opinion as a theory, since the beasts power is corruption, the beast didnt speak or convince them of such thing, but their dreams were corrupted by the beast and they followed it as it was the source of power. the beast is harmless yes their dreams easily "influenced" the beast which causes mans downfall.
With all the Doryani items we better see one badass boss fight when he comes to the game. there HAS to be some sort of revival. considering how Wraeclast works and all.
Just rewatching the video. I Have solid theory on Zerphi longevity and sudden death. Okay first of all the questions that arise and I will try to answer. By the end of the comment. Why was doryiani not able to replicate the results for Atziri (arguably the best thaumaturgist)? Why are there no records of how it was performed? Why did Zerphi AND the last victim died for no apparent reason? Why nothing notable happened during Zerphi 168years long reign? So here we go. Zerphi died becuase he wanted to. Zerphi discovered a way to prolong own life through the physical torture of others inflicting psychological torture to himself. I believe he died because he started the ritual but was unable to do it again because he was againts the sacrifices they did as nation. He inflicted the most horrendeus torture on the victims torturing himself to stay in power of the Vaal to keep them in check. Which also correspond with taking other powerful noble Vaals as Victims. Once the last ritual started he was unable to finish it resulting in the failure of the ritual and taking both the victim and the perps. life anyway. That Is the reason Doryiani was unable to replicate the results. They sacrificed and tormented only the victims with no conscience. No records? The only reason not to record this kind of breakthrough only if it would be limited to certain number of repetition would be shame. Zerphi was ashamed he was no like any other person in the nation which actually rather not go through with any sacrifice. And the last question nothing notable happened during her reign. He kept the Vaal in check. First not to self destruct(like Atziri) and second to not spread the sacrifice culture. Let me know what you think :)
hey, I stumbled on this channel no earlier then this morning and am very pleased :) allways been into lore-videos for games I play. I started with episode 1 "act I" and was about to leave a comment when I decided to check your last first as to see "the evolution" if you will. I was initially going to say I'd love to hear your opnion more, as in; interact with the audience, throw out ideas and speculations as to engage in a more dialogue'ish/debate approach. And glad I checked this first. You clearly do engage and share your own observations, ideas and interpretations, more so then in the first video in my opinion. At some points I need to rewind on the video a little when you go over dates and names, which are presented rather fast and abruptly, but that could just be me needing time to adjust to the setting of this lore, which I'm not super familiar with as of yet. what i "disliked" and it's more a personal situation, is that I did not finish the main story yet and you reference the game rather often... aka. spoilers. But I understand there would be far less content to review if you maintain the "spoiler-free" policy. So I'll likely return when I finish the main storyline :) currectly act 8. In the meantime I'll like, sub and ring the bell on this channel :). Thank you very much for the enjoyable content, and as lore-content video's go, I commend you on the quality of your research and attention to detail... You clarified certain things I misunderstood initially on several occasions despite my own "research".
Hey! Yeah there's definitely a lot of spoilers since I try to cover how everything relates to the game as a whole. Especially in these more "focused" videos. The Acts try to follow the lore as you would learn it while playing; and it can definitely be a lot of names! I figured if I tried to do things totally chronologically, it'd be even worse--there are lots of people existing at the same time who don't really interact and aren't related, so I tried to do it by game-play, and then by history. I know it can be a bit confusing but hopefully by Act 3 a lot of the threads tie together, and I personally think the lore gets a bit simpler around Act 5. Thanks for watching!
Do you have any plans to cover the storyline related to Zana's questline? They're replacing it next league and I have a friend who may not have time to experience it before then. I'm probably gonna show her all these other videos too actually but that one would be the most helpful.
This serious of lore is great, as I constantly try to take the time to listen to the NPC to learn/admire to Depth of the story, but gosh I can never keep myself to keep going through after spending and or being in act one for 1-2 or maybe possibly even 3 full hour’s when I could’ve been at maps by the time or 3-4 hour’s OR I can be in the same FIRST ACT still… I choose map’s…
But kitten! The pronunciation of alva’s Temple it’s AT-ZOLE is the pronunciation of the Alva temple not “At-zo-OTTLE” just a little head’s up/ Letting yuu know of the pronunciation of Alva’s temple :) EDIT: I stand corrected! I looked it up! There is actually an L in the name of the temple. I was not aware I am SORRY! For speaking out of my ass ma’am I’m sorry!
Three years too late and I'm guessing you've already addressed this in one of the forthcoming videos, but I have to ask: Only the vaal effects of the vaal gems are powered by sacrifice. They also contain the normal effect of the gem, which still runs on mana. Does this change your theory in any way (e.g. it's not a case of the modern gems being more sophisticated, rather less so since they miss the extra effect)? Vaal gems are also created in-game if you use a vaal orb on a regular skillgem, so I'm not convinced it's one of the things that you can easily put down to a question of mere game design.They seem to make very clear that the vaal effects are an evolution on, or a layer above the regular gem's effects.
This is a rather recent addition to the game, actually. When they were initially introduced in the "Sacrifice of the Vaal" mini-expansion, vaal gems were separate from their more modern counterparts. This was only changed during patch 3.3.0, Incursion League.
The Vaal give me the creeps so much. I mean, their whole civilization is founded in death, blood, torture and gruesome stuff. Queen Atziri herself a genocidal psycho, admiring a killer. I was reading the PoE Visual Comics and I can't understand how they saw beauty in those monsters deformed by thaumaturgy.😅
"Zerphi changed his status from Thaumataurgist to Serial Killer" Some people say Facebook got worse but in my opinion it was way out of line even back in the day.
Few tips to this clusterf.. that poe is made of: Should always let us know which reigned and doesnt anymore, so we could get a sense of when this empire existed and not anymore. Because there are like what.. 8 empires or so, very difficult to understand which are current and which are not anymore. Second: dont say "fun fact" or "sorry for pronouncing" and "more of this later"
Poe 2, is out and is heavy into vaal lore
"Those Who Dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the Music" . This one allways struck me so good, that i thought the Vaal Nature of Thinking was very deeper then those of any other Cultures around them. Amazing
29 minutes Pog! The amount of time, research, effort and dedication to make these videos is absolutely incredible. This is incredibly informative and extremely interesting, as I was listening I realized how very little I actually knew about the Vaal beyond some obvious details and major named characters. I will admit I'm probably going to have to give this a second watch to have everything fully sink in, but that is more than worth the time invested on my end and a joy to boot. You've done an absolutely fantastic job with this series, and each and every video has been a delight to see finished.
I'm really proud of you Noodle, I know you work incredibly hard on these and that hard work shows in the end result. Thank you for giving a voice to most of PoE's complicated lore.
Thank you so much Xeno!! You of all people know how much I've put into this
Couldn't have put it better.
Your video made me realize that Alva is an anagram of Vaal and Kishara is an anagram of Shakari. That... took... a while...
CONSPIRACY! Haha yeah for sure, I wonder if she chose that name? Seems suspicious to be like "oh we have vaal ancestry, let's name out kid...uh...vala? Laav? Alva?"
Me looking at the suspicious lava
Very cool video! When you mentioned the singing at 7:30 all I could think of was the flavour text of Atziri's Steps: "Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music" :D I'm definitely going to watch more of your videos
Thank you for reading and researching all this lore and putting it into these neat little packages. Im someone whose read maybe 5% at most of the in game lore to discover because the ridiculously high clear speed meta of POE has pounded into my brain that if you arent killing, crafting or trading stuff you're wasting time lol.
I hope the vaal make a huge return in poe2.
25:00 in, This flavor text sounds more like something the Elder would say, and if possible, since it has been shown before, The elder could have interfered with the vaal empire quite easily, especially considering that the Elder is the manifestation of the void's hunger to decay, rot, and corrupt everything pure.
HELL YES! I just finished the rest of your lore videos last night and you already uploaded a new one! So helpful for a new player, I missed easily half of this lore
I did exactly the same last night...now I wonder how many discovered her youtube channel and watch all her lore videos last night and felt blessed today when saw a new video.
I've been playing PoE for years and I know fuck all about the lore lmao
Compiling this information definitely took some effort. I already knew a lot of the Vaal history but having the story told chronologically really helps with fleshing things out. I did, however, miss the normal cameo by your cat.
I know! She left me alone for the whole recording. It's almost unheard of!
as someone who just plays the game and grind and don't care about blocks of text ingame I really thank you for this. I play the game while listening to you.
Catching up on a lot of the lore - I never really got into it since every new league feels like such a race to get to endgame content.
One thing that doesn't make much sense to me from a worldbuilding perspective is why the Vaal, whose technological advancements were built primarily around sacrifice and blood magic, would have peacefully coexisted alongside the Azmeri (even if they never shared much of these things with them). The need for people to sacrifice isn't really self-sustainable, so such an empire would have been ruthlessly expansionist. To me, it would have made more sense for the Vaal to have been ruthless conquerors of the Azmeri, with their fall being entirely of their own doing, and the rise of the Eternals could have been more along the lines of the early Eternal Empire being fascinated with the Vaal's power and trying to emulate them, rather than just sort of continuing along after their peaceful allies fell.
It wouldn't affect much else, but that would make much more sense to me than how it was written.
Always happy to see more of these, especially as a new PoE player.
Keep up the good work and we will keep listening!
It's been great finding your channel, binging this series and see number of your patrons go up with every video. You definitely deserve it!
In Poe 2 Doriyani comes with you into the future and it is the queen that causes the fall of the vaal
This makes playing POE so much interesting
I was looking up lore videos trying to explain to a friend some lore, and man your content is quality.
love these noodle binge watching the whole lore series again. They are great to listen to
This lore series is so good! I'm definitely doing a story/lore playthrough before 3.9! Thank you for these =)
Awesome videos I recently started playing PoE and have been interested in the lore. I’m stoked there is someone doing in depth and very well done lore dives! Thank you.
Thank you for doing this, because I was looking for someone covering the lore :D
Glade I found this video. Part 2 has a lot more of their story in it.
thanks alot for covering those nice topics!
please do one on trials of ascendancy/Izaro! Love the vids
Another amazing video. I'd love to hear your commentary on real-life ancient history.
Very in depth and enlightening eyh! Thank your for such an amazing lore escapade ha.
i enjoyed every second of this, I find the Vaal and Atziri very interesting. My favorite lore in PoE ty love
I am playign this game since alpha. I know the lore pretty well, I know nuances here and there. But boy no joke I have listened every word you were telling in VAAL series, and in act 1-10 series. You are such a great person and provider of information. Really interesting book of facts you have gathered and made it all in uber interesting wrap. I love your work. Thank you. (hiho from 2024)
Nice work! Keep it up!
so... im watching this video ( great content btw, keep up the good work ) and im looking at my inventory wandering what the hell is this item called Kishara's Star, and at that exact moment you start explaining what Kishara's Star is, and to be perfectly honest, it creeped the hell out of me :D so much that i had to leave a freaking comment :)
Yoogle sounding like serial killer Freud
I'm not sure if I missed it or not in this video. You discussed the temple of Atzoatl, that we help Alva "build" it and then basically explore/raid it. With that said, what about the Vaal side areas + the sacrifice fragments and our character (the exile) using the map device to go and fight Atziri.
This seems like it is present day lore related. On the Atziri wiki page, there is a quote from the Sacrifice of the Vaal announcement that reads:
"Destroyed by the Cataclysm, she still lingers in a nightmare realm that is leaking corruption back into the land of Wraeclast."
From all the stuff about zerphi, I am certain he strike a deal with a god of death, and by making some... unique... sacrifices, he probably offered the victims souls and with that, he managed to survive and stay young for a very long time.
The exact details of his rituals were lost forever, but from his items, I assume he also had a skill that consumed his life force, so he used spirits powers, his flask, and by offering souls to god of death. Why did he die? Probably either he missed some important variable in his rituals, or the victim died from heart attack of something. So zerphi couldn't "offer" more victim. And he died.
Great video looking forward to izaroo
Keep going love ur videos
these videos are great, keep it up!
What if, in my opinion as a theory, since the beasts power is corruption, the beast didnt speak or convince them of such thing, but their dreams were corrupted by the beast and they followed it as it was the source of power. the beast is harmless yes their dreams easily "influenced" the beast which causes mans downfall.
what up girl! Keep on keeping on! Nother lovely video as always.
isnt Alva just a mix of the letters VAAL
With all the Doryani items we better see one badass boss fight when he comes to the game. there HAS to be some sort of revival. considering how Wraeclast works and all.
Just rewatching the video. I Have solid theory on Zerphi longevity and sudden death.
Okay first of all the questions that arise and I will try to answer. By the end of the comment.
Why was doryiani not able to replicate the results for Atziri (arguably the best thaumaturgist)?
Why are there no records of how it was performed?
Why did Zerphi AND the last victim died for no apparent reason?
Why nothing notable happened during Zerphi 168years long reign?
So here we go. Zerphi died becuase he wanted to. Zerphi discovered a way to prolong own life through the physical torture of others inflicting psychological torture to himself.
I believe he died because he started the ritual but was unable to do it again because he was againts the sacrifices they did as nation. He inflicted the most horrendeus torture on the victims torturing himself to stay in power of the Vaal to keep them in check. Which also correspond with taking other powerful noble Vaals as Victims. Once the last ritual started he was unable to finish it resulting in the failure of the ritual and taking both the victim and the perps. life anyway.
That Is the reason Doryiani was unable to replicate the results. They sacrificed and tormented only the victims with no conscience.
No records? The only reason not to record this kind of breakthrough only if it would be limited to certain number of repetition would be shame. Zerphi was ashamed he was no like any other person in the nation which actually rather not go through with any sacrifice.
And the last question nothing notable happened during her reign. He kept the Vaal in check. First not to self destruct(like Atziri) and second to not spread the sacrifice culture.
Let me know what you think :)
hey, I stumbled on this channel no earlier then this morning and am very pleased :) allways been into lore-videos for games I play. I started with episode 1 "act I" and was about to leave a comment when I decided to check your last first as to see "the evolution" if you will. I was initially going to say I'd love to hear your opnion more, as in; interact with the audience, throw out ideas and speculations as to engage in a more dialogue'ish/debate approach. And glad I checked this first. You clearly do engage and share your own observations, ideas and interpretations, more so then in the first video in my opinion. At some points I need to rewind on the video a little when you go over dates and names, which are presented rather fast and abruptly, but that could just be me needing time to adjust to the setting of this lore, which I'm not super familiar with as of yet.
what i "disliked" and it's more a personal situation, is that I did not finish the main story yet and you reference the game rather often... aka. spoilers. But I understand there would be far less content to review if you maintain the "spoiler-free" policy. So I'll likely return when I finish the main storyline :) currectly act 8. In the meantime I'll like, sub and ring the bell on this channel :).
Thank you very much for the enjoyable content, and as lore-content video's go, I commend you on the quality of your research and attention to detail... You clarified certain things I misunderstood initially on several occasions despite my own "research".
Hey! Yeah there's definitely a lot of spoilers since I try to cover how everything relates to the game as a whole. Especially in these more "focused" videos. The Acts try to follow the lore as you would learn it while playing; and it can definitely be a lot of names! I figured if I tried to do things totally chronologically, it'd be even worse--there are lots of people existing at the same time who don't really interact and aren't related, so I tried to do it by game-play, and then by history. I know it can be a bit confusing but hopefully by Act 3 a lot of the threads tie together, and I personally think the lore gets a bit simpler around Act 5.
Thanks for watching!
Do you have any plans to cover the storyline related to Zana's questline? They're replacing it next league and I have a friend who may not have time to experience it before then. I'm probably gonna show her all these other videos too actually but that one would be the most helpful.
Yes! That will be 2 videos from now! Hopefully itll cover everything and itll be good timing before the end game changes
Nice! I'll keep an eye out!
This serious of lore is great, as I constantly try to take the time to listen to the NPC to learn/admire to Depth of the story, but gosh I can never keep myself to keep going through after spending and or being in act one for 1-2 or maybe possibly even 3 full hour’s when I could’ve been at maps by the time or 3-4 hour’s OR I can be in the same FIRST ACT still… I choose map’s…
But kitten! The pronunciation of alva’s Temple it’s AT-ZOLE is the pronunciation of the Alva temple not “At-zo-OTTLE” just a little head’s up/ Letting yuu know of the pronunciation of Alva’s temple :)
EDIT: I stand corrected! I looked it up! There is actually an L in the name of the temple. I was not aware I am SORRY! For speaking out of my ass ma’am I’m sorry!
Had no idea about Arakaali actually being semi-decent - at least to her own people.
Me neither! Doing evil acts to others to provide for her people. The sex dungeon is more than it seems! Haha
A L V A - V A A L - I see GGG, I see :))
With all the sacrifice and murder did the vaal reproduce like rabbits how did they hold up as long as they did.
Aztecs say hi
More seriously, it's an interesting question. With enough of a food surplus, humans can sustain incredible feats of sacrificing ourselves.
Three years too late and I'm guessing you've already addressed this in one of the forthcoming videos, but I have to ask: Only the vaal effects of the vaal gems are powered by sacrifice. They also contain the normal effect of the gem, which still runs on mana. Does this change your theory in any way (e.g. it's not a case of the modern gems being more sophisticated, rather less so since they miss the extra effect)?
Vaal gems are also created in-game if you use a vaal orb on a regular skillgem, so I'm not convinced it's one of the things that you can easily put down to a question of mere game design.They seem to make very clear that the vaal effects are an evolution on, or a layer above the regular gem's effects.
This is a rather recent addition to the game, actually. When they were initially introduced in the "Sacrifice of the Vaal" mini-expansion, vaal gems were separate from their more modern counterparts. This was only changed during patch 3.3.0, Incursion League.
Doryani beating the allegations
The Vaal give me the creeps so much. I mean, their whole civilization is founded in death, blood, torture and gruesome stuff. Queen Atziri herself a genocidal psycho, admiring a killer.
I was reading the PoE Visual Comics and I can't understand how they saw beauty in those monsters deformed by thaumaturgy.😅
"Zerphi changed his status from Thaumataurgist to Serial Killer"
Some people say Facebook got worse but in my opinion it was way out of line even back in the day.
PRAISE
Good content... I hope POE will turn into TV series.. or movie
Please add some background music or ambiance it would be so much better.
Pancreas.
We gonna ignore 4 beweebs.....
💖
It's so weird that there is lore in Poe. Usually...I mean always I just rush everything until maps.
POE also have comics and....book? Not sure about the book tho.
I love your lore videos. There is hope females exist that like poe lol
Few tips to this clusterf.. that poe is made of: Should always let us know which reigned and doesnt anymore, so we could get a sense of when this empire existed and not anymore. Because there are like what.. 8 empires or so, very difficult to understand which are current and which are not anymore.
Second: dont say "fun fact" or "sorry for pronouncing" and "more of this later"
Should be Vaal like "Veil". Just like in D2 Baal was "Bail".
You cute, me like, nice vid
This gxyme is too easy and not challenging enough so its boring.