I am currently at the phase with my character where he is trying to learn/understand what the creatures and/or denizens of the maw are. Upon his research, things like Stygia, the mawsworn, anima and other things come up.
This is all well and good but since I skipped all quest dialogue save for few bits of Revandreth, I actually realized my view on what the mawsworn are, how they are created, and what Stygia is is pretty patchy and probably wrong, hence I turn to you, the wonderful community, to help me find the truth of this.
I’ll start by explaining how I’ve understood things so far, and I’d like to be corrected if I am wrong.
As far as I understand, Anima is a byproduct of a soul, sort of the potency of a soul. Both good and bad souls have it, and the more extreme they were, the more anima they have. Anima is then used for various purposes in the Shadowlands, including death magic. Equally, anima can be harvested/extracted from souls in several fashions, as all the covenants show. The venthyr in particular seem to extract a kingly amount of anima by absolving souls of sins.
The Mawsworn to me appear like these shades of souls that are forced into servitude by the jailer and the rest of his minions. Good or bad, the souls are essentially subject to such unimaginable levels of torture and pain that not only do they supposedly give out all their anima, but also their very “self”. It seems to me almost like a kind of Kyrian purification/ascension ritual, but instead of being done with consent, it is done with torture of the soul until they “break” and lose all identity and/or sense of self, and just become these malevolent shades that then play host to the suits of armor that the Runecarver made.
The process seems to me essentially like purifying the soul until nothing remains but a shade of pure malice and obedience for the creator (e.g. The jailer).
Stygia, then, seems like the byproduct of this process, and you can see stygia forming and even growing in the maw, on top of it being carried by nearly all of the mobs there. I don’t remember where I read/heard about this but I think it’s one of the maw quests that explains to you that Stygia is like the remains of a soul after it’s been twisted into a shade- Kind of like once all the Anima has been extracted from the soul, all the remaining things that make the soul up form into stygia in the process of the torture- Which could also help to explain why there is no stygia among the Kyrians.
So yeah, that’s my understanding so far and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, since as I said I am very much working on patchy memory and experiences here. Thanks in advance.
From what I understand of the Mawsworn, they are weapons / suits of armour imbued with un/willing souls via death magic. Some are simply corrupted versions of their Shadowland selves too.
I’d also quickly pop in to suggest that whatever information you may get from Ve’naari may not be correct - after all, we’ve been constantly told not to trust her, so she may be an unreliable narrator.
Basically correct on all fronts OP, except Stygia is less the byproduct of souls being tortured and more the byproduct of souls being destroyed within the Maw; through some lore pick ups you find in the Maw and in the Soulforges, you discover that because the Maw is itself not rich in resources they essentially break down souls to create many of their armaments. This process takes place at Zovaal’s Cauldron and in the Soulforges, where souls are broken down and forged into suits of armour or weapons for the tortured shades to then inhabit or use. The player has the option of completing this process in the Soulforges wing of Torghast for a brief buff.
There’s no stygia among the Kyrians because their souls are still intact, albeit corrupted, and so they haven’t gone through the process of being destroyed like the majority of the Jailer’s servants will have.
Stygia that is dormant and has yet to be utilised takes the form of crystallised stygia which, aside from still possessing some power, has no known uses yet.
Thank you for the help! Really useful, I didn’t even think of how the armor itself is made and what materials are used!
So essentially, if I am understanding this right, the way you become a mawsworn is that you are essentially put to such a hellish amount of torment and torture that you spirit “breaks” into its most basic form, which is just an amalgamation of base consciousness, which appear to us as shades.
Basically, yeah. Souls are tortured and tormented until there is so little of them left they become near-mindless shades, but (so far) all are universally willing servants to the Jailer. Either that, or you’re infused with the power of the Maw as the Mawsworn Kyrian are. This might also be the case with the few humans and other folks we see in the Maw that serve the Jailer, but that can only be speculated on for now.