Diablo — My Own Season 1 — Archival Knowledge

Season of Archival Knowledge

“Not all knowledge is meant to be found…
Something that only a very few select scholars in activity today across all Sanctuary know, is that the famous Lorath Nair lived through the events that led to the shattering of the Soulstone by the Archangel of Death, together with Tyrael and a very powerful group of Nephalem.
He witnessed, firsthand, demonstrations of power that other scholars can only ever aim to read in books that detail secondhand accounts of dubious claim.
While working under Tyrael, he was as determined in his actions as in his writing.
While the fallen archangel and the group of Nephalem were tireless forces that were capable of fighting off the hordes of demons tirelessly with barely any rest or nourishment, he used his mortal limitations to his advantage.
Every night, after the duties of the day, while the angels and Nephalem schemed, Lorath would just write.
These writings held power… Real power, unbeknownst even to Lorath himself.
When you think you know something by reading it, if you’ve never experienced it yourself, words will only further dilute the feelings, emotions, and hardships you want your readers to become intimate with.
The story changes when you are there. When you’ve seen it with your own eyes when your cold hands wrapped around the hilt of a sword so mighty that nobody would believe it’s real, and when that sword swung right into the guts of real demons…. Words carry power…
Diligently, Lorath wrote and wrote, across several years, long after all the battles were fought and all his body energy spent. His intellectual energy was at its peak. A sense of urgency that would only be meaningful to the most dedicated of scholars… So he wrote…”

Welcome to the Season of Archival Knowledge!

Khejistan, and more specifically the Parched Wanderer Inn, will be the place where the new journey will start.

Lorath guided many scholars after he parted ways with Tyrael and the ancient Nephalem and, now, one of those students, a prodigious young scholar by the name Selena will be your guide on the new seasonal adventure that lies ahead.
While staying at the Parched Wanderer Inn, Selena uncovered what she thinks is a bind for at least part of the book Lorath wrote.
The leather felt dry and hard on her hands, and there were only three partial pages, one of which was half of what it once was, and the other two were in very bad shape as well.

The cursive writing on the inside of the leather bind was partially worn out, but she could at least make out the word Kyovashad clearly and a haunting passage near the end: “… better apart… darkest dungeons….”.

The season journey will take you and Selena to Kyovashad, where you will learn about Selena’s past, studying and learning under Lorath, and, how she felt that the book’s words were more than just simple words, that they held power.
Upon reaching Kyovashad, you both realize that the Sunken Library will be the more likely place to start the search for the book.

The first incursion of the player in the Sunken Library allows for the retrieval of the first two pages of the book, which gives Selena the context she needs to understand exactly just how powerful they are. And how much of a genius scholar Lorath truly was.

He scattered a total of 20 pages of the book across multiple locations within Sanctuary.
From the heights of the Fractured Peaks to the depths of the darkest dungeons, it’s up to you, together with Selena to find them all.

However, Lorath proved his wits and value as a scholar, because he used a specific dialect within old texts that has yet another power: it can be interpreted differently depending on who transcribes it, almost like a translation that changes the meaning of the text itself.

Whenever you complete a dungeon and find a page at the end of it, that page will also point you to the locations of different scribes across Sanctuary, and, there are always three scribes that constantly travel the continent that you can reach out to:

- Brother Mador: an adept of religious ways and garnering good favor with monks and other scribes, he sees the good and just in everything he reads: If you offer him a page for translation, your armor will be increased by 50 or your health by 3%;

- Kelana: A warrior at heart, she has always only known brawling and knuckle-fisting as a way of life, so, she will offer you a very different perspective on the texts: You will either get a 3% increased attack speed or +20 to your primary class attribute;

- Sabor: Attuned to the spiritual realm, a mysterious character that nobody really knows a lot about, she will grant you a boost to your vitality, adding +50 to it, or, she will increase the effects on all your gems by 0.5%;

Which of the two effects offered by each scribe you can get is random upon each re-read.
If you want to re-spec the effects, you need to run dungeons on Torment II or higher for the chance to find “Primal Ink”, which allows a re-read to have a renewed effect on your stats; It grows exponentially with each time per page, so, for a single page, you pay 1 unit of ink, then 2, then 4 and so on. You are limited to 3 re-specs per page across the season, so, after the third re-spec the effect will become permanent on the page and can no longer be changed.

Every page can only, at any given moment, be seen as translated by one scribe only so re-spec is needed, but the effects can not be stacked on these regular pages.

Upon imprinting your first page at any of the scribes, a new quest will appear where Selena will tell you about two “sacred pages”, which were seemingly written in an ink that seemed to imprint fire into the book, embedding the texts into the very essence of the book.

These two special pages are only available in Torment IV, and they appear only on Tier 20 Nightmare Dungeons or higher.

Once retrieved, you will learn from Selena that they are special in the sense that no single scribe can decipher all the text alone, and they all require primal ink to do it. So you will need 3 units of “Primal Ink” to decipher a full sacred page.

Once deciphered, the page gets three affixes in it, one per scribe, which you are free to choose, as opposed to the regular pages where they are randomly assigned.

Sacred pages can not be “re-read” by the scribes, the permanent fire ink sealing the fate of the meaning of the texts forever.

So, gather your weapons and your ink, and venture throughout Sanctuary on a quest to become empowered by the knowledge of ancient scribes - the Archival Knowledge!