Corruption

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The Corruption
The Portal, source of all Corruption in Wynn.
Type	Force of Influence
Realm of Influence	Realm of War
Origin	The collision between the Light and the Darkness in the Plane of Influence
Locations	The Nether, Wynn Province
Major Characters	Corrupter of Worlds, Bak'al, Theorick Twain
Information	A force of influence that is created from the clash of the Light and the Darkness in the Plane of Influence. Unlike the other two forces, which represent order through opposites, the Corruption is a chaotic force that indiscriminately spreads and destroys anything in its path. It spread to the Wynn Province thanks to the uncovering of the Portal in 0 AP. The Humans of Wynn are currently at war with the forces of Corruption, a conflict that has been raging on for a thousand years.

“	...The Darkness and Light grew closer, but never touched... At least, not on their plane of existence. They fight for influence over our land from afar. However, when the two touch through influence, it is not twilight that is formed. But a land of corruption.	„
	~ WynnExcavation Site D

The Corruption is a Force of Influence that acts as the Wynn Province's greatest threat and a focus point of many of its quests. Similar to the Gavel Province's Decay, which is also a physical consequence of the everlasting War of the Realms, the Corruption was introduced into the realm a thousand years ago, starting the Corruption War, which still rages on today. It has spread far and wide since then, mostly through its roots, spawning vast armies of corrupted creatures to invade the Human lands of Wynn.

As opposed to Light and Darkness, two forces which both represent order through opposite sides of the same coin, the Corruption can be considered a force of pure chaos: it does not follow a specific plan or agenda, it doesn't have an intelligence, nor does there exist a being that can control it (unlike Orphion and the Dern Beast for the Light and Darkness respectively). Rather, the only ideals it seems to follow are the primal instincts of spreading and destroying everywhere it can, causing indiscriminate death and destruction wherever it goes. Due to this, the Corruption is extremely dangerous, though its capabilities are impaired by the lack of a central intelligence controlling it.

The Corruption's spread and influence has changed the physical world forever, and is the ultimate reason behind most of the major events that have happened in the province of Wynn in the past thousand years. From a loose group of farmers and miners, the Humans of Wynn have become a powerful faction of warriors and legends, trained to kill from a very early age in order to fend off the undead, hardened by the centuries of conflict and tied together through a strong sense of community and national presence. Cities with very strong fortifications or great strategic importance, such as Ragni, Troms and Detlas, have become the beacons of the province and its supporting pillars, and most of the agricultural land is present around the big cities, as is the case with the Detlas Suburbs which are a valuable food supply for Ragni and Troms.

The repercussions of the war waged against this force are also felt in all other provinces of the world: the Villagers of the Gavel Province, for example, have had a strong relationship with the Humans of Wynn for the last hundred years, and their alliance is said to have saved the province. The Villagers invest large amounts of wealth into Wynn and teach the Humans their unique brand of magic, while the Humans offer cheap manpower to help the inhabitants of Gavel. Fruma, an isolated kingdom which bars entry to all outsiders, has also started opening its doors to Wynn in order to offer massive amounts of manpower, usually sourced from the kingdom's prisons, to help fight off the Corruption, as the province wishes to keep the force as far away from its borders as possible. Among the Fruman conscripts sent to fight the corrupted is the Player.

The Corruption and the thousand-year long war associated with it serve as the focal point of the game's story, as it is the motivation behind the Player's arrival to Wynn and most of their actions within the province. It is also linked to the overarching War of the Realms, since the conflict against the Corruption could be considered one of the "theaters" of the war. Despite this, the Corruption has yet to be adapted into a central questline similar to the Realm of Light questline, and is instead represented through several, mostly disjointed quests.

History

Main article: Corruption War

The Corruption's origins

The Corruption is a byproduct of the Light and Darkness clashing, mostly in the Plane of Influence, where the two forces' conflict leads to a volatile third influence that acts on chaos. The Corruption can also be created in the Plane of Physicality, through the clash between Light magic and Dark magic, though in a much lesser scale.

In the Wynn Province, where the Corruption's influence is greatest, the force of influence first appeared in 0 AP, after the actions of the Elven chieftain Elder Prometheus led to the opening of all three Portals that exist within the physical realm, including the one in Wynn. From the Portal, a being native to the Nether, the Corrupter of Worlds, entered Wynn and slaughtered the miners who were digging for emeralds there: thus, the war waged by the forces of Corruption against the Humans began. Afterwards, the Corruption started to spread from the Portal and created the Roots of Corruption, where the Portal resides.

The Portal opening.

Start of the Corruption War

The first city to be destroyed by the Corruption's spread was Ancient Nemract, shortly after the opening of the Portal. The miners who first unearthed the Portal were buried here, and many of them had to be executed due to the insanity brought to their minds by the Corruption. After the city's inhabitants were massacred, the undead ferryman Charon created his domain within its ruins, using the souls of the dead to create his army known as the Forsaken Legion, which threatens the modern city of Nemract to this day.

Sometime later, a Human soldier today known as Bak'al entered the Portal, the first known individual to do so and come back. In 78 AP, he moved an army of Undead against the agrarian town of Old Detlas, forcing most of its inhabitants to flee to Ragni or Troms. Some three hundred years later, in 347 AP, Bak'al besieged the city of Akias and destroyed it, leaving only one survivor. Besides small raids on settlements and houses, it is unknown what the Corrupted warlord did for the five hundred years after this event.

The city of Akias before its destruction at the hands of Bak'al.

Rise and fall of the Twain family

Around 500 AP, seeking to build a team of gifted mages to help the Wynn Province fight the Corruption, Marius Twain traveled around the land searching for children with magic powers who had lost their family to the Corruption War. With these children, he founded the Twain family, which lived in a manor owned by Marius located far from the Portal. Among these orphans, four of them grew to be the most powerful, and Marius' protégés: Theorick, Mael, Dwendle, and Rickeo. For many years, this family selflessly protected Wynn from the forces of Corruption without payment, accomplishing things such as successfully sealing the Corrupter of Worlds within a cave near Troms using rune magic, and were posthumously considered to be the main reason why the province didn't fall to the corrupt. However, since the beginning, the Twains were not on great terms with each other, and when the patriarch of the family, Marius, died in 570 AP, it fell apart after a quarrel, with the Twains going on their own separate ways. Dwendle and Rickeo would later succumb to either Bak'al directly or to his forces.

After the family's separation, the ice wizard Theorick began protecting his hometown of Nesaak, using his ice magic which possessed an extremely powerful and useful property: it could slow down the spread of Corruption, nearly grinding it to a halt. For decades, he successfully protected the village from attacks by Corrupted hordes, possibly including those led by Bak'al. However, in 589 AP, after yet another attack on Nesaak by the undead, Theorick decided to take out the problem at its core by freezing the Portal from the inside, which would thus permanently stop the Corruption from spreading in Wynn. Despite the mage's strength, the plan was a failure: once in the Portal, Theorick became corrupted and slowly lost his mind to the insanity brought on by the chaotic force. While he still could, Theorick prevented himself from causing death and destruction all over the province by sealing and freezing himself inside the Ice Barrows, where he still remains in cryostasis.

The Ice Barrows, where Theorick froze himself.

Intensification of the war

In 831 AP, at a time when the great jungle fortress of Troms was at its knees due to protracted attacks by the Corrupted hordes, the government decided to invite Slykaar, an exiled shaman from the Iboju Village, to the city and asked for his protection. Slykaar agreed, as long as he would get a steady supply of human sacrifices which he would siphon the life force out of to fuel his magical defense. In secret, the shaman was also working on experiments underneath his house that would allow him to enter a dark realm and use its immense magic to create monstrous creatures working under him as his soldiers.

The legend of Bob

The warlord Bak'al began conducting raids against Human settlements again starting from around 854 AP, when he led a large Corrupted horde against the fortress of Ragni in order to capture it. Many of Ragni's inhabitants were forced to hide in the city's sewers, which oftentimes also functioned as a prison for its worst criminals. Here, an unknown woman who clearly did not hail from Ragni gave birth to a boy and then died in childbirth, making the boy an orphan. After the raid had ended, the boy was taken in by a poor woman named Momo who named him Bob. Many more raids were conducted by the undead armies against Ragni afterwards, though none were as massive as the first.

The Decrepit Sewers, where the citizens of Ragni hid during the Corrupted raids.

During one of these raids, in 866 AP, Momo was attacked by an undead and infected with Corruption, forcing Bob to take his adoptive mother out of her misery. Before dying, however, she left him with instructions to travel across the province and train with masters of the four arts of Wynn so that Bob may become a refined warrior who would fight against the Corruption. The boy later set out on his mission to train with the masters Mael Twain, Chak, Ethe and Fier.

Then, in 881 AP, Troms was struck by perhaps the biggest attack ever waged by the Corrupted hordes against it. During the fierce battle, the general of the Tromsian army, General Skien, was betrayed by one of his subordinates, who had become Corrupted himself, and severely wounded to the point where Skien was unable to defend the city. Thus, the undead were free to march into Troms and decimate it. The disgraced general was exiled to Skiens Island due to his failure, but not before taking most of the army with him. The spirit of the man who had betrayed Skien also followed him to the island, corrupting it with his influence.

It was then that Bob, by then a young man, appeared, fresh from his training with the other three masters. Having found Troms in ruins, he helped rebuild the city while training with his master Fier in the ways of the warrior. The soldier became very popular among the people of Troms, to the point where he was worshipped as a hero. Thus, not seeing any use in Slykaar's vile magic to defend the fortress anymore, he was banished and sealed away in a dungeon where he, bitter and resentful, experiments with monstrous beings to this day, hoping to one day raise an army and destroy Troms for its betrayal, as well as the rest of Wynn.

Between 882 and 886 AP, Bak'al, leading an army of thousands of undead he had raised, began marching through the Nivla Woods in the direction of Ragni, bent on destroying the city once and for all. As he marched, he burned down the forest and overran the many watch towers set up there, getting closer and closer to Ragni. However, when he reached the gates of the city, he was stopped by Bob, who had just finished his training with the last of his masters, and was decisively defeated by the young man for the first time in history. After his failure, Bak'al would never again appear in Wynn and attempt more incursions, and the forces of Corruption were decisively weakened due to the lack of a central leader. This battle marked a turning point in the war of Corruption, with the balance slowly shifting to the Humans' side, and their population recovering.

Bob and Bak'al clash outside Ragni.

Arrival of the Villagers and the present day

Another major event in the history of the Corruption happened in 900 AP, when the Villagers, the native inhabitants of the Gavel Province, discovered Wynn after the Ocean's waves had been calmed by the mages of Mage Island. These first explorers founded the settlement of Maltic on the coast of Wynn, and eventually, formal relations between the two species began. The Villagers invested their immense amounts of wealth into the province, helping found the modern trading city of Detlas, and taught the Humans new types of magic which they could use to better fight against the undead hordes; in exchange, many Human adventurers travelled to Gavel where they served as cheap labor for the province's inhabitants and a great source of profit. This mutual relationship went on to essentially save the Wynn province, thanks to the massive influx of wealth and power brought on by the Villagers. Furthermore around this time, the province of Fruma, which up to this point had been completely isolated from the outside world and closed off, opened its borders to Wynn to allow fresh recruits, mostly in the form of prisoners sent to die with their memories having been removed, to flow into the province, generating more manpower to help fight the war.

The city of Detlas, a symbol of the alliance between Humans and Villagers.

The constant influx of Fruman soldiers into Wynn has not stopped, as more and more recruits are being sent to the Wynn province to help fight the Corruption. Amongst these recruits are the Player, Aledar and Tasim, who arrived in the land in 1000 AP.

Effects

The Corruption is capable of twisting any land it comes into contact with, turning it into a hellish landscape mostly defined by the colors red and black. It can also raise the dead from their graves, turning them into mindless zombies known as Undead which can be controlled by users of Corruption magic, and alter any living being it touches in several ways, in an either physical or mental way. Its effects are especially powerful in or around the Portal, as is the case with the Roots of Corruption, and with how the Portal bends the minds of those who enter it: even the most powerful mages, like Theorick, are at the complete mercy of the Corruption's insanity-inducing influence, and none can exit the Portal with their mind or body intact.

Theorick comes out of the Portal, visibly broken and corrupted.

The Corruption spreads in incomprehensible and unpredictable ways: while humans normally cannot become infected through proximity to a source of Corruption or through contact with another corrupted individual, animals can, as is the case with the Pigmen; pigs who have had their physical appearance altered by the Corruption's influence. The most vulnerable, and thus useful, vessels that the force can infect are corpses, who are raised from their graves merely by being close to a source of Corruption.

The most viable way for the Corruption to spread, however, is through land, namely by using its iconic roots. These roots are usually not visible due to the fact that they are deep underground, although sometimes they surface above the ground in the form of black spikes that protrude into the sky. Besides the characteristic red-shifting of the nearby landscape, another effect the roots may have on the environment is the creation of Hearts of Lava, constructs that look like anatomical hearts which pump out lava and often cause it to rise to the surface, creating springs of lava that are also vehicles the Corruption can spread through.

The Roots of Corruption, where the Corruption's distortion of the land is at its greatest.

Nothing has been shown to be able to permanently stop the Corruption, although there are some methods to slow it down: Theorick Twain's ice magic has the unique and powerful ability to grind the Corruption's spread to a halt, nearly stopping it completely. The ice wizard used this to freeze the entirety of his hometown Nesaak, creating a tundra through which the Corruption cannot spread. As such, Nesaak is one of the only places in Wynn that is almost completely safe from Corruption. Another method, though lesser used due to the difficulty, is by simply destroying the Corruption's underground roots with high-yield explosives.

There exists a brand of magic, usually known as Corruption magic, which can replicate the powers and effects of the Corruption, such as raising the dead to create armies, raising Corruption spikes out of the ground, and creating powerful fireballs. So far, the only known individual to have successfully harnessed this magic is the corrupted warlord Bak'al.

Bak'al uses his magic to raise a Corruption spike out of the ground and destroy a house.

Notable Corrupted Individuals

• Corrupter of Worlds - The first Corrupted being to have ever set foot in Wynn. A beast hailing from the other side of the Portal and waged the millennia-long war against the Humans. It acts as a ravenous beast who only relies on primal instincts, and seemingly has no intellect of its own. It is currently sealed in a cave near Troms thanks to the Twains' rune magic.
• Bak'al - Leader of the Undead armies in Wynn and powerful mage, who specializes in Corruption magic. Led many successful raids and incursions against the cities of Wynn, destroying Old Detlas and Akias. However, he was defeated by the young soldier Bob in 886 AP and never returned to Wynn. Currently serves the Dern Beast, the Beast of Darkness, and shares its wish to purify the world and unite it under the Darkness.
• Theorick - One of Marius Twain's four protégés, along with Mael, Dwendle and Rickeo. Specialized in ice magic; in particular, his brand of magic had the property of being able to stop the Corruption. Tried to permanently put an end to the Corruption by walking in the Portal and freezing it from the inside. When this failed, he imprisoned himself inside the Ice Barrows and entered a state of cryostasis which persists to this day.
• Witherhead - One of the women who hid in Ragni's sewers during the raids conducted by the Corrupted hordes. She died within the sewers and was reborn as an undead. She now serves as the sewers' guardian, still wishing to be let free so that she may wreak havoc against the Humans. Is implied to be the mother of Bob.
• General Skien - Former general of the Tromsian army. Was betrayed by one of his own subordinates during a raid against Troms, and failed to protect the city, which led to his exile. Unlike the others who went through the portal to be corrupted, Skien was corrupted upon his death by the ghost of the man who betrayed him, which came to the island with him to haunt him. Unlike most corrupted, he retained his mind once he became undead, which is the reason why he still fights and kills the other undead around him, still believing that he is defending Troms from them.
• The Corrupted Dungeon Bosses - These characters, while not being part of this space or time, can be encountered through The Forgery, a place which its anchors seal is a fracture in reality, and are all either newly corrupted or further corrupted. They all seem to have memories of your last encounters with them. These include:
  • Corrupted Witherhead
  • Corrupted Arakadicus
  • Corrupted Garoth
  • Corrupted Charon
  • Corrupted Hashr
  • Corrupted Theorick
  • Corrupted Slykaar
  • The Corrupted Mutineers
    • Corrupted Argus
    • Corrupted Karkun
    • Corrupted Martim
  • Corrupted Captain Redbeard

Trivia

• As of 2.0, the Realm responsible for Corruption is officially known as the Realm of War, finally cementing its nature as a Realm of Influence, similar to the Realms of Light and Darkness.
  • Although the Realm of Light and the Realm of Darkness both have a Beast representing them, it is unknown if the Realm of War does. It can currently be presumed to be without a Beast, considering the Corruption's nature as Chaos.
• A common misconception is that Bak'al is the leader of the force of the Corruption, and, due to his servile nature towards the Dern Beast, that the force of Corruption serves the Darkness. However, this is not the case: Bak'al is merely a Human who gained Corruption magic after entering the Portal and coming out of it.
• Bak'al is the only known human to have come out of the portal with his intelligence completely intact and with new powers. How he accomplished this is currently unknown.
• Beneath the Lutho Obelisk, in the room where the obelisk's Light clashes with the Silent Expanse's Darkness, corruption blooms at the meeting points between the two forces.
  • Something similar can be seen on the path leading to the entrance of the Nexus of Light, after the Parasite's dark forces infect Orphion and the Realm of Light, with Corruption's signature patches of red.