Larian Studios showed up at The Game Awards this year with a brand-new Divinity trailer. It was one helluva spectucal, treating us to a brutal Source-fuelled Burning Man festival slash orgy, in which a terrified old man – who has a seven-pronged star carved into his flesh – is set alight within a towering wooden effigy that eventually unfurls into an even gorier depiction of the statue we’ve all been debating over.
But this has ignited another discussion entirely among fans: who is that guy? And why are they sacrificing him?
It’s been a while since I’ve had to wind up the ol’ Divinity lore in my noggin, so bear with me. We don’t have much to work with aside from the trailer, but Larian teased that “The gods are silent. Rivellon bleeds. New powers stir”, and fans like u/robad0114 suggest that these merry festival-goers are making an offering to the gods to “break their silence” and bring Lucian back to the world, if not invoke a new Divine through him.
Spoilers for the Divinity series; if you’re new here, go play the games!
While it’s unclear when exactly Divinity takes place, presumably it’s set between Original Sin 2 and Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, which would mean that Lucian is currently imprisoned in the Plane of Hyperotomachia beyond time; the people of Rivellon wouldn’t know this until years later, so all the wanton debauchery and revelling could be their way of trying to reach the missing Divine and connect with their silent gods. That would certainly explain the symbol etched into the man’s chest, and his forked crown, all evoking the Seven.
But the ritual would always be moot if that was their intention, as Lucian won’t be saved for decades, until the Flames of Vengeance expansion for Ego Draconis, and the silent gods cannot possibly be awakened, as they’re all dead. Not that you’d want their help, anyway, as it was found that they had been feasting on the lost souls in the Hall of Echoes to sustain themselves.
That doesn’t mean the ritual was ineffective at summoning gods, however, it just reached the wrong one.
The Lord Of Chaos Returns?
An often unspoken part of the Divinity mythos is the Lord of Chaos, banished from Rivellon by the Seven; with them dead, could he have clawed his way back, thus explaining the “new powers” that have made the land bleed?
“His visuals are fleshy red goo and flayed corpses. The flowers that bloom from spilled blood? The cloud of flesh spewing from the sacrifice in a horrific ritual? Completely match his vibes,” argued u/gorgrath177. “The ‘eclipse’? Seems like a hole in reality forming as a god rips his way free from millenia of imprisonment. Divinity will take place in a world where the only active god is the setting’s Satan.”
As u/Richard_kickam_again noted, the statue at the end of the trailer bears an uncanny resemblance to the demon spawners we find when exploring the realm of Nemesis, and it’s a recurring theme throughout the series’ wider narrative that the Lord of Chaos vies to return. One such attempt saw the Black Ring, a collective of Dark Mages, work with the Lord of Chaos so that he might possess an infant, the same infant who Lucian would adopt and come to call Damian.
Many speculate that the ritual in the trailer may actually be the work of the Black Ring; the seven-pronged crown and symbol could be revering the gods, as we discussed earlier in this article, but it could just as easily be seen as a mockery of them, a symbolic burning of Lucian and everything the Divine stood for. However, u/Financial_Formal_103 argued against this theory, noting that the “religious gesture the mother performs is five fingers in front of her face then another two,” indicating that they are worsippers of the Seven.
TLDR; the sacrifice may be a ritual to try and awaken the gods and Lucian, only to inadvertently summon the Lord of Chaos to the world instead.
It’s a compelling theory ripe for discussion, all of which stemmed from a brief CG trailer. It speaks volumes to the rich world of Divinity and what fire has been lit under the community already, and it’ll be fascinating to see how this narrative unfurls in the coming years as we’re treated to more clues to rifle through.
