Once upon a Waste Land: Examining the thematic complexities of the Legacy of Kain series

Spirits surround us at every side;
they have driven me from hearth and home,
from wife and child.
-The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920

One of central narrative achievements of the Legacy of Kain series is its ability to frustrate traditional videogame genre expectations, subverting them to overthrow the player’s assumptions. When observing the franchise, one is struck with its decade-long mindset of the developers in placing the story at the foreground of the experience, using the gameplay as a tool to slowly unravel the plot. Against prevailing game-design logic, Kain games attempt to work as a novel or a play would work: if one were to remove the fact that this is actually a videogame, the story would solidly stand as a piece of genre fiction or theatre, albeit squatting on all the realms of fantasy, horror and tragedy. The player becomes an audience, albeit a participative and exploratory one, and the non-interactive story sequences become the dominant factor. The overarching and complex plotline of the five titles is divided in two distinct branches; the Blood Omen games following the anti-hero Kain and his descent into vampirism and despotism, and the two Soul Reaver titles charting the attempts of Kain’s symbolic son to thwart his destiny and obtain revenge upon his ‘father’. A fifth chapter, titled Defiance, unites both storylines into one conclusion.

Kain is an Oedipus figure in that:

He struggles against the shackles of a dark fate that was predetermined long before his birth: although the unseen hands of gods and demons manipulate his path along this destiny, he refuses to surrender to it. Kain also has strong symbolic ties to the “maimed king” of Arthurian legends, perhaps better known as the legends surrounding Parsifal and the “Fisher King”. Like the king of legend, Kain is inextricably entwined with the state and condition of his empire. As long as he remains corrupted as a Guardian, the Pillars cannot be restored, and, therefore, Nosgoth will remain blighted and poisoned.¹

The Pillars which are mentioned are crucial to the game’s narrative. These nine enigmatic structures tower into the clouds and are visual representations of the various elements which govern the health of the land. Each Pillar calls for a Guardian upon birth, who becomes symbiotically bound to the element which that Pillar represents. These nine beings become so attuned to the nature of the Pillar and the element it holds that they are endowed with supernatural abilities. As explained in a book the young Kain reads in Willendorf’s library:

The Circle of Nine served the Pillars, protectorates to the strange power that gives life to our land. At the unlikely death of a member, the Circle remains broken for a time until the Pillars can cull a worthy successor.²

The whole drama is set in motion by the breaking of this Circle. Ariel, the previous Balance Guardian, is murdered in an attempt to break the Pillars. When Nupraptor, Ariel’s lover, finds her corpse, ‘he plunges into a madness which instantly overflows and infects’³ the surviving Circle members, who are mentally linked. This madness taints Kain even in the safety of the womb, and thus the new Balance Guardian, in a sense the King of Nosgoth, is born already psychologically maimed: ‘the repercussions of Ariel’s assassination were expertly calculated…the entire Circle descends into madness and I am tainted at the moment of my birth, instantly rendered incapable of fulfilling the role destiny has prepared for me.’⁴ Thirty years later, Kain, as a vampire, unaware of his destiny to keep Balance in Nosgoth, systematically hunts down the mad Circle members in a desperate bid to halt the decline of the land and in hope of finding the cure for his vampirism. He is promised that by the death of the Circle, the Pillars would be healed, and he would be freed. His choice not to sacrifice himself in this cause leaves him as the sole surviving corrupted Guardian. In a careful act of calculated blasphemy, he sets his throne in the corrupted and broken Pillar of Balance and for the majority of Soul Reaver, the audience is led to believe that Kain’s death at the altar of sacrifice would be tantamount to the parabolic and pagan fertility rite of ancient cultures, returning the Wasteland to its former glory.

The recurrent symbolism of restoration and myth in the story has much to do with the cultural context of Nosgoth as a setting and with the nature and role of the characters as major players in its history. Barely an hour into the story of Soul Reaver, a highly significant and symbolic moment occurs. At the behest of the player, Raziel, the ‘fallen angel’ protagonist, literally manipulates the matter surrounding his reality to breach the gap between the underworld and the world of the living. Throughout the rest of his journey as depicted in the game and narrative, whenever Raziel slips back into the spectral realm (either through fatigue or death) the geographic features of the land surrounding him also morph and become distorted, dark, slanted and confusing. This new world is a weird, twisted and stilted version of the material world, a crazy reflection of the world of the living, where water becomes as thin as air, and corporeal objects lose their physicality, becoming only shadows of their real selves. This rare fusion between story and gameplay mechanics serves as a thematic symbol which runs throughout the whole of Raziel’s story arc as it moves into exploring the tensions between reality and lies, between what is apparent and what is hidden underneath, between true divinity and false gods. As the web of conspiracies and dark character motivations begin to slowly emerge, the nature of the spectral realm – a spiritual purgatory in a waste land – seems relevant also from a thematic perspective, visually constructing the atmosphere of the narrative and giving it validity.

The craziness of the spectral plane was inspired by the need to make it appear surreal and haunting, and much inspiration was drawn from German Expressionist cinema. The sunken, twisted look of Nosgoth as a Wasteland was inspired by the sets of a 1920s silent film by the name of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The producers aimed to create a similar aesthetic between the warped and slanted sets in Caligari and the dizzily twisted aspects of Soul Reaver. The dimensions of existence which Raziel inhabits are twisted reflections of each other. From the start, this duality reinforces the theme of murk and horror that the Legacy of Kain story is imbued with. Yet it is also highly significant as it establishes the gameplay mechanic of manipulation as central to the journey of redemption facing the character, while simultaneously introducing an immersive element which works both as game and as narrative. Just as the player enters the game to discover the twisted world of Nosgoth, Raziel must navigate through the terrain of both planes of existence to reach his objective: slaying Kain, his vampiric master for a thousand years, who had betrayed him out of sheer jealousy. Once he becomes a wraith, a soul-vampire, Raziel traverses a mirror image of the blasted Wasteland which his father-master, Kain, rules, travelling in a limbo of lost souls and scavenging upon them in order to feed his own existence. His hunger for devouring the souls of the damned is ravenous, as he is forced to consume the essence of his victims in order to sustain his physical projection and continue his quest of revenge against Kain.

Revenge, indeed, becomes a dominant force in the Legacy of Kain story, one which reiterates itself multiple times as the plot develops several multilayered character narratives as juxtaposed against a larger background of war and intrigue. Awaking in the Underworld some two millennia before Soul Reaver takes place, Kain suffers from something which he calls, ‘not anything as pedestrian as physical pain, but rather the jab of impotent anger, the hunger for revenge.’⁵ Referring to his assassins, their ‘sneering faces forever etched upon [his] memory,’ Kain hungers to ‘send them back [to] whence [he] came’⁶ and foolishly accepts the curse of vampirism in order to rise from the grave. Once his thirst for revenge is sated, however, he realises how much ‘the world had changed to [his] eyes’, in that sunlight ‘provided no comfort, only malice.’⁷ His quest to claim the land and enslave humanity under his rule is in fact for the most part initially fuelled by his need to be revenged against the atrocities mankind had done him.

On the other hand, Raziel’s self-righteous indignation against the master he had faithfully served but who ‘had wiped him away like excrement from a boot’⁸ plays out on the backdrop of a landscape of a long dead land. The age of the world Raziel finds himself resurrected in is one of decadent apathy: ‘in the instant between [his] execution and resurrection, centuries had apparently passed.’⁹ Nosgoth, beneath Kain’s despotic rule, is now wrecked with cataclysms and natural disasters. The whole journey is shrouded in apocalyptic imagery: huge furnaces belch smoke into the sky to shield the ruling vampire masters against the poison of the sun, while large water bodies (acidic to the vampiric touch) are drained. The land is parched. By the time in which the events of Soul Reaver take place, the unravelling Kain had initiated a thousand years before has nearly played out. The future is bleak, and as Raziel repeatedly claims, he cares not for the fate of this world: ‘my own vengeance is motivation enough.’¹⁰ Revenge is highly regarded by the protagonists as their main driving factor and as a noble intention. In a world of treachery and deceit, revenge remains, at least, a form of honesty. ‘Hate me,’ Kain tells Raziel, ‘but do it honestly.’¹¹

The loss of humanity and what humanity means is a major concern which is developed within the plot of both branches of the franchise. While in the first game, Kain’s urge to claim vengeance on his assassins directly leads to his choice of forfeiting humanity to transform into a vampire, hundreds of years later, his symbolic son mourns his lost humanity only after discovering that, before being resurrected as a vampire by Kain, he had been human as well. The discovery casts his vampirism into a whole new light and he claims that:

It tortured me to see how noble and pure I had been, and what a vile phantasm I had become: and a profound sense of injury, of loss, and betrayal welled up in me, so overwhelming, I could barely contain it. All I wanted at that moment was to find Kain and destroy him.¹²

Again, this reaction is based on the need for vengeance; the need to provide an equal return for the perceived loss of humanity. This in itself is in striking contrast to the older Kain’s reasoning that both vampires and humans are the same, that once a passion ‘transcends all notions of good and evil’,¹³ it becomes divine. Kain eventually accepts his vampirism as the necessary payment for his vengeance. Yet his hunger for power and domination eventually turn him into a dictator-figure, reminiscent of Macbeth, possessive of his throne, and paranoid, seemingly ready to execute even his first born son as soon as he poses a threat. Raziel, on the other hand, as his name implies, is the angel of death, and yearns for a life where he gets to choose his own destiny. His anger at Kain at his unjust execution is still mingled with a sense of respect, but he follows the path of revenge as the only path he thinks available.

It becomes clear that while the tale’s protagonists are indeed vampires, this is not their defining characteristic, but rather complementary to their inherent nature and capacity for introspection and change. While in popular culture, vampires are often portrayed simply as objects of erotic desire by virtue of their sensuous embrace while draining the blood of their victims, the vampires of Nosgoth are sterile and feed on blood merely because they need to survive on it. Nosgoth’s vampires are a completely different breed to what the word usually communicates in popular fiction: they are ‘dark gods’ who are physically beyond humanity, with rigid scales for skin and talons instead of fingers. They lose their allure with which popular culture and literature has endowed them with, and become characters in their own right, rather than by virtue of their nature. They are not simply hunters preying on humanity; they are individuals: deluded, persecuted, self-searching figures, their journey of discovery cast in a new light by the symbolic corruption of death and the subsequent loss of humanity and the complications which ensue.

While the young Kain, recently cursed, eagerly accepts his role of purifier of humanity in the hope of reclaiming his lost mortality, his eventual mentor, the century old Vorador, counsels him not to meddle in the affairs of men. Kain, ever arrogant in his ignorance, privately scoffs at this counsel. While Vorador has long embraced his nature, the fledgling Kain often contemplates his damned nature. This initial meeting with the older vampire, however, plants the seeds of doubt in Kain’s mind and can be seen as the turning point where he starts considering accepting his nature. Throughout Blood Omen Kain struggles to indulge his gift, as instructed by his mentor, all the while attempting to find a cure for his curse. This leads to the eventual climax of the first Blood Omen game, which ends with Kain opting to damn the world, rather than to sacrifice himself for the humanity which had cruelly manipulated him. The ironic ending is the human Kain’s dissolution; he bitterly realises that there is no cure for death but only release. On the throne of a ruined world, he contemplates that ‘once [he] embraced [his] powers [he] realised that Vorador was correct. [They] are gods- dark gods- and it is [their] duty to thin the herd.’¹⁴ This final, powerfully symbolic scene marks the end of Kain’s descent into Hell and his rejection of humanity. It places Kain, as the last surviving vampire in Nosgoth, on the cusp of a realisation, embracing his own nature and rejecting whatever shred of humanity he had managed to preserve until that point.

The idea of what makes humanity weak and unable to serve the Pillars becomes a subjective motif throughout the whole series, as humans are portrayed as either being naïvely self-righteous, ignorant of the greater scheme of things, or conniving, manipulative, inhuman characters. Indeed, in traditional terms, the vampire protagonists are more human then humanity itself. As the ancient vampire Janos Audron sadly observes in Soul Reaver 2, humanity fears ‘what [it does not] understand, and despise[s] what [it] fear[s].’¹⁵ They systematically and ruthlessly massacre thousands of vampires in fanatical Holy Crusades, only due to their inherent predatory nature. In that game, Raziel, observing the fields of slaughter of the Sarafan with hundreds of impaled vampires, observes that ‘this was simply ruthless persecution’ and is shocked by the scale of mass death he observes. While he had seen his fair share of slaughter, Raziel finds ‘this massacre was somehow more chilling’ as it captures ‘the cold blooded righteousness of the true believer.’¹⁶ Fanaticism, in fact, defines humanity as a race within the games, possibly a comment upon our own nature as tending to be entrenched in one perspective and to be reluctant to move beyond it.

Nosgoth’s vampires are not cursed because they have to drink the blood of the living but because of their immortality, their ‘imprisoned soul within the flesh, expelling [them] from the purifying cycle of birth, death and rebirth.’¹⁷ This whole process, known as the Wheel of Fate, is subsequently revealed to be the work of a parasitic being, a metaphysical creature of the Underworld in the shape of a giant squid which gorges upon the souls of the dead and self-styles itself a god. Nevertheless, the essential lie that the whole belief system is based on does not reduce the psychological torment of the vampires who are cut off from what they perceive to be the essence of existence. Rather, it casts it into a whole new light, so that the corporeal physicality of the world is questioned. The Elder God feeds upon the souls of the dead and grows as a ‘spooling parasite, buried deep in the heart of the world,’¹⁸ and its hatred of vampires stems from their immortal nature: it cannot consume their souls. The whole process which leads to the accumulation of the knowledge which reveals the ultimate falsity of an established belief has been described as the story’s Gnostic thread; the reward of which is true enlightenment. Upon acquiring this knowledge, Kain muses that since the ‘masks had fallen away[, t]he strings of the puppets had become visible, and the hands of the prime mover exposed.’ He is now equipped with the deadliest weapon of all: hope.¹⁹ This metaphysical theme about the enslaved nature of the human soul, and its doomed and cyclical nature is the main, subtly-altered religious motif within the story. Having defeated armies and physical monstrosities, defied prophecy and destiny, Kain’s final retribution is not a corporeal but a spiritual one. This immediately moves the story away from what, until now, has been referred to as a ‘vampire drama’, and takes it into the realms of historic and epic tragedy, with Raziel’s final sacrifice and Kain’s ability to see his true enemy being the catharsis. While Nosgoth is still a waste land, Kain is no longer its maimed king: healed of all metaphysical corruption, Kain’s spiritual freedom and purification in his rejection of the Demiurge and its minions signify at least the potential for a resolution to thousands of years of strife.

Legacy of Kain boasts a tale which is epic in nature and scope, with characters which manage to be both unique and archetypal at once. Kain and Raziel’s relationship with their world can be paralleled to many a classical Greek myth, with the writers referencing many of these timeless tales of tragedy in their online musings as sources of inspiration. Undoubtedly, careful theoretical analysis of the narrative and characters will be able to draw further literary and cultural parallels than those made evident in these observations, with the stories being so universally applicable in their themes and motifs. The characters themselves are of such mythic proportion that it may be possible to project their natures, ambitions and motivations upon historical or mythical figures, creating further allusions which would enrich and flavour an already rich lore.

Endnotes

¹ Kyle Mannerberg, ‘Developer Diary, Part 3’, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, <http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/features/article/73/Legacy-of-Kain-Defiance-Developer-Diary-Part-3.html>

² Silicon Knights, ‘Library of Willendorf’, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (Crystal Dynamics, 1996).

³ Crystal Dynamics, ‘The Corruption of the Pillars’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 (Eidos Interactive, 2001).

⁴ ‘The Corruption of the Pillars’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

⁵ ‘Kain awakes in the Underworld’, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

⁶ ‘The Graveyard’, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

⁷ ‘The Graveyard’, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

⁸ Crystal Dynamics, ‘Raziel’s Clan Territory’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Eidos Interactive, 1999).

⁹ ‘The Sanctuary of the Clans’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

¹⁰ ‘The Reaver Convergence’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹¹ ‘The Corruption of the Pillars’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹² ‘The Sarafan Stronghold’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹³ ‘The Chronoplast Chamber’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

¹⁴ ‘The Choice’, in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain.

¹⁵ ‘The Tenth Guardian’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹⁶ ‘Fields of Slaughter’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹⁷ Crystal Dynamics, ‘Return to the Vampire Citadel’, in Legacy of Kain: Defiance (Eidos Interactive, 2003).

¹⁸ ‘The Elder God’, in Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2.

¹⁹ ‘Epilogue’, in Legacy of Kain: Defiance.

References

Mannerberg, Kyle, ‘Developer Diary, Part 3’, Legacy of Kain: Defiance, <http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/features/article/73/Legacy-of-Kain-Defiance-Developer-Diary-Part-3.html>

Crystal Dynamics, Legacy of Kain: Defiance (Eidos Interactive, 2003)

Crystal Dynamics, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Eidos Interactive, 1999)

Crystal Dynamics, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 (Eidos Interactive, 2001)

Silicon Knights, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (Crystal   Dynamics, 1996)

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