September, 2016 - [
No Link]
Q: What was the Third Sending of Darkness? The description from a Pack Doll states that the Third Sending is the Empyrean Shadow War. I’m not sure if this is was always the case, if it was a retroactive continuity change, or simply an error.
A: That's either a canon change after I left, or an error. The Third Sending, as originally described in the old lore documents, was Asheron's discovery of portal magic, and the subsequent release of the Olthoi.
The logical question to ask here is, what do the Olthoi have to do with the Nameless? In the pre-ship version of the backstory, the portals Asheron experimented with had wards such that they could only connect to "safe" locations. The portal that ended up opening to the Olthoi's world was affected during casting by a portalspace "aftershock" from the entrapment of Bael'Zharon, which ripped those wards away. Asheron and his adepts investigated that portal anyway, were immediately attacked by Olthoi, and ran back without being able to close the portal.
In the canon as of my departure, the concept of the warding spells never existed. The Olthoi were brought to Auberean deliberately by the power-hungry Kellin II, who planned to harness them for use as an interplanetary army of conquest.
So what qualifies the Olthoi as a "Sending" in the final analysis? I see two possibilities. The first is that portal magic is directly connected to Bael'Zharon's capture. Without that, there would be no portals, and the Olthoi would never have arrived. This isn't a satisfying interpretation to me, but the argument can be made.
The second possibility is to interpret Kellin's villainy as indicative of his corruption by the Nameless, or by forces aligned therewith. I don't recall anything in the AC1 story that suggests this - Kellin's evils appear to be due to his own ambition.
However, in the early iterations of AC2's backstory, the Empyrean returned between games - before the Fifth Sending. Shortly before the Fifth Sending occurred, one of Kellin's closest advisors, "Sa'resh," was revealed to be Black Ferah in disguise. She slew the Emperor, splintering the Empyrean into factions fighting over the throne when they most needed to work together.
