ack in June, Knightmare elaborated on creating lore, and different ways of bringing it to the players.

However, lore is not static. You could probably say that it has a life of its own. It is constantly growing, and also changing to include new stories and characters. It provides the framework to build an immersive world on, and gives this very world a reason and a purpose.
This month, Knightmare shares his thoughts on the concept of ascension in Tibia lore, and how it helps to expand the lore.

With the Tibia genesis, we had a solid base to expand upon. Many concepts that came up later, reflected game reality and needs in harmony with this foundation.I built the lore in a way that I hoped would allow and explain (or at least excuse) a lot of future expansions to come. If you give it a close look and play around with some interpretations, even changes of game rules are somehow explainable in that context.
I gathered a couple of rather flexible concepts and moulded them into something that would hopefully be adaptable in the long run.

One of the most basic concepts is the idea of souls that inhabit Tibia's adventurers. While it is highly up to interpretation, it is an attempt to explain why there is this immortality of players whereas there is also "true" death in Tibia. It still feels a bit like a crutch but is certainly better then ignoring that fact altogether. So in theory, there are two kinds of inhabitants in Tibia: the immortals that can die and die again, and the kind you hear about in stories and books, those who died a noble or tragic death, never to be seen again afterwards.
This is not heavily referenced in the game, though, for certain reasons: it should be an explanation - yet every game death ultimately kills the immersion a bit, and so does the mentioning of this fact. The lack of information about it could probably be ascribed to the gods planting some kind of ignorance in all sentient creatures, or maybe it is some kind of taboo. Perhaps the vortex of souls is a harrowing experience, and so is the act of reincarnation so that no one wants to talk about that subject. Probably, it is a mixture of both. Yet, there are cults in Tibia that refer to those circumstances. Right now, they are not as prominently present in the game as I had originally planned, but perhaps sometime in the future we will find the time and space to expand the idea. It should be obvious that such a thing as reincarnation is rife with superstitions, and the likelihood that some more or less strange believe system evolves from it, is high.
Loosely connected to this is the fact that there are certain races in Tibian cosmology that cling to the idea of ascension through certain deeds within the context of their belief system. Now this is where it gets complicated since there is no one who can say for sure if someone or something is only extremely powerful or maybe even a god. Let me elaborate on the concept of ascension in Tibia?

Ascended gods, no matter if a reality or just a possibility, are probably different from the original gods. Yet, this says nothing about their power. An ascended god - let us refer to those entities as ascendant throughout this text - could have a better connection to and understanding of the world, and therefore influence it more heavily. On the other hand, the original gods probably have access to resources that are too abstract for ascendants to comprehend unless they have grown incredibly old perhaps. Whatever the metaphysical result of ascension might be, if successful, it certainly gives birth to an extremely powerful entity.

Many races that lost faith in their creators have looked to ascendants for guidance and perhaps power. Yet, for whatever reason, the results of worshipping ascendants are arguable at best.
The elves, for instance, firmly believe in a number of ascendants. There are tales that relate to the mortal days of them, but the tales of visions or help granted by them is up to debate. Yet, this is not truly different than the result of worshipping the original gods. There are only a few miracles that are associated with them, and even those are up to interpretation as coincidence. It may seem as if the gods brought some order to the world and then left it alone for most of the time, after having seen the devastation that their mingling with worldly affairs had caused in the past. Ironically, the creatures that are assumed to have the closest contact to their creator are the demons - and even that is disputed by many, discarded as demonic bragging.

It is up to the players to interpret the will of the gods in a way that best suits their play style. It is their choice whether they believe in ascendants, or maybe even invent their very own myth of ascension.
In the actual Tibia timeline, the influence of ascension and ascendants is most prominently seen in Ankrahmun and Zao. In Ankrahmun, the god king Arkhothep patiently works on his own ascension via mystical means. Around him, a whole cult has sprung up that sees being undead as the one true path to ascension. In Zao, someone, or something, makes his own move to ascend (for a second time) whereas another creature there might be on a path to ascension on its own.

Both stories are based on those old concepts that date back to the earliest days of Tibia. Even with little obvious interaction of the gods, there is no real doubt about the existence of the original gods, at least. People usually just know about their existence although their nature might be disputed. Various races also believe that it is not necessary to be a sentient being at all in order to ascend to godhood. So according to them, it is possible for some force of nature to ascend. That is why the barbarians believe that the frozen north wind which they call "chyll" is some godly force.
This theory is dismissed as superstition by many others, though. They argue that those forces are still present in the physical world, while real ascendants are not. Yet, this might be attributed to a number of effects. Also, just because there is no sentient ascendant known that has remained in the world of mortals, does not mean that there cannot and will never be any of them.

Of course, many obscure sects, cults, and secret societies have embraced the idea of ascension in some way, the already mentioned worshippers of the undead in Ankrahmun being only the most widely known of them. In the future, we will surely see more of those cults and their actions, of ascendants and those who are yet on their path, may it be right or wrong. The outcome of ascension is probably as varied as the means to achieve it. For some it may be becoming one with the principle they champion, whereas others aim to achieve an ethereal state to fuse with the subconscious mind of their people. Others again try to create their own realm of "heaven" to reside there more or less physically. The possibilities are endless.

Storytelling wise, this whole concept is quite handy: It allows you to come up with and incorporate a limitless number of lesser gods, whether real or not, whenever there is a new race or something like that without having to break the rules of your own cosmology. You need a cult of shape-shifters worshipping a scorpion? No problem, here is just the ascendant you are looking for! So it really provides a stage for your own stories and imagination.

Well, of course, there is also an underlying secret? the question about what really is happening, and who is scheming to what ends. This is something no Tibian is aware of, though, so the references are extremely sparse and so much up to interpretation that they could mean anything by now. It is quite unlikely that someone would accidentally guess the sub-plot I am speaking about. But that is not truly necessary as when time arrives and it grows in importance, the pieces of the puzzle will come together.

What do you think about the concept of ascension in Tibia? Does your character worship a certain deity, or do you consider the genesis a mere delusion? Are you a member of a Tibian cult maybe?

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