Burned Book of Law

Burned Book of Law
General
Slot	Unequippable
Item type	Quest item
Category	Other item
Quest item
Sell value	0
Buy value	0
Technical
Item ID	laxi_burned_book
Guid	2c977c84-12cb-45cd-9610-90f32a9d94a6

Burned Book of Law is a quest item in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire.

Description

The binding of this tome reeks of smoke. What few pages remain are crinkled and black. Based on the few chapter headers that survived the fire damage, this might have been a book of antiquated laws. Now it's nothing more than a charred relic of authority.

Acquisition

• Upon leaving Neketaka for the first time, a mysterious figure will deliver a book to the player.

Usage

The following points are taken directly from the patch notes, though additions that do not relate to this item have been omitted:

• The player may open and interact with the book at any time. Doing so initiates a conversation with Woedica through our Scripted Interaction interface.
• She and the Watcher can discuss the motives of the gods, the mechanics of reincarnation, and why the Watcher and factions matter on a grander scale than the player might otherwise assume.
• Woedica responds to a number of player choices, world events, and quest states. This means that the book can be consulted a number of times in a given playthrough to unlock new conversation branches.
• Woedica responds to players who empowered her in PoE1 and Steel Garrote / Priest of Woedica players.

Reveals

The books serves as a means to reveal major lore additions/clarifications. Woedica speaks of the following topics:

The Wheel prior to their intervention and why they took control:

• "Much of reincarnation's 'mechanism' exists in the idea space of the Beyond. You wouldn't find a wall of cogs and levers unless we conjured one to illustrate a point."
• "The Wheel has but one material component in all of Eora - something we built to channel essence through luminous adra and into the Beyond with reliable continuity."
• "At the height of our power, we recognized the potential of the soul. We knew that it could be bound, split apart, diverted like a river, and hammered together. Hammering was trivial."
• "Before we intervened, the flow of essence was directionless, unpredictable. We succeeded in widening the gap, diverting it, giving it an efficient path to follow."
• "Before we took control of the Wheel, reincarnation was error-prone, lacking forward momentum. Hollowborn were fairly common, and hardly the worst of the soul maladies."

Their rise to godhood and why:

• "When we ascended to godhood, we did so to provide for a savage people. Our goal was to craft a society whose values were made to last."
• "Control gave us the power to strengthen the souls of intelligent kith over generations. We made you wiser, stronger, more likely to develop the society we thought you deserved."
• "It was an ambitious plan, our utopia. Perhaps too ambitious. We ascended to power responding to a need inadequately satisfied."
• "Those of us who agreed with the apotheosis project, and many who did not, submitted to a violent and horrible erasure of our individuality."
• "After the dust settled, we adopted the forms of beings from Eora's most prevalent myths. There were other faiths and legends, but we labored to strike their names from history."

Skaen is specifically mentioned:

• "Only one member of the apotheosis project spoke out against the concept of an eternal, enslaved Guardian. She was quietly reassigned to Skaen."
• "Detractors, mutineers, would-be agitators - they were a perfect substrate for the foundational contours of what would grow to become Skaen."
• "A suitable punishment. For those of willful, insubordinate temperament, Skaen was a convenient receptacle."

Roles of the gods:

• "The Wheel is our shared responsibility, and each of us serves it in our own fashion. I am the axle upon which the gods balance their power."
• "Eothas keeps the Wheel in motion. He was our promise to mortals that time and labor would yield a deserving reward on the next turning of the cycle."

Confirmation that they took Ukazio from the Huana:

• "The Huana empire didn't conform to our idea of societal perfection, and neither did its trajectory. They came close, but some unfavorable habits were woven in the fabric of their culture."
• "The last emperor was fond of boasting that an army had never claimed Ukaizo by force. He was easily blinded by pride."
• "Unfortunately, that didn't protect Ukaizo from deceivers within. We feasted and delighted the old ruler, winning his support long enough to activate our machines."
• "From that moment, and up through the millennia that followed, Ukaizo has been ours."

Insight into their current conflict:

• "On the outset of the plan, some believed that mortals would outgrow us - as if that was a favorable outcome! To me, our eternal pantheon was always a critical fixture."
• "My siblings desired to influence mortals and steer them in a proper direction. Even if that direction led to places we could not follow."
• "If our pantheon found that mortals had cultivated a perfect, lawful system to maturity, I would not voice a word in protest. I would merely stand aside and await the inevitable collapse."
• "Thanks to Eothas, we're pulling the dough from the oven before it's had a chance to fully rise. You unfortunate bastards never had the chance to prove me wrong."

Bugs

• Woedica's VO can only be heard if the player opens the book on the world map due to "technical limitations".

Behind the scenes

• Also known as "The Book of Woedica", as mentioned in patch notes. The book, along with some other additions/changes to god dialogue (especially during your final conversation with Eothas), was added to the game in patch 5.0.0 to address some narrative issues which "could have been presented better or required some clarification". In the patch notes, narrative designer Paul Kirsch gives comment on the additions:

“

After Deadfire's launch and public reception, leadership and the writing team closely scrutinized some of the narrative issues which could have presented better or required some clarification. We distilled the most prevalent issues down to a couple of core factors: a lack of clarity regarding the metaphysics of Eora, and missing connectivity between Deadfire's "god plot" and "faction plot," for lack of a better term.

Shortly before launching The Forgotten Sanctum, those of us still attached to the project had some availability to address these concerns. A handful of developers pooled their efforts to execute on a plan that seeks to address these story problems through modestly-scoped, unobtrusive changes to the core game experience. What follows behind the Spoiler gate is a broad outline of the solutions we pursued. We hope you enjoy them. Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing!

”

~ Paul Kirsch, narrative designer for Deadfire