Empire of *Stars* - Ancient Aliens in Aranna

You are correct Lady Femme I had not forgotten about the Archon's and the creator gods. But I figured it was just bull spouted by Zaramoth to scare the Dwarf clans into doing his work. Remember I am an Elf
The Empire of Stars was a mighty country that stretched across Aranna in the days before the First Cataclysm. It was the second-largest empire to ever exist , surpassed only by that of the ancient Utraeans. While I myself do not believe this entirely some say the Empire of stars was founded by Gods from the Stars. Here is what I found:

The Empire of Stars it's capital was Iliyara, which sat at the center of the lake known as the Chalice of the Stars, and housed the imposing Palace of Night, where the Stellar Emperors themselves lived.

These Stellar Emperors believed themselves to be descended from a race known as the Archons, who supposedly descended from the sky alongside the Creator Gods in ancient times. Empress Iansha, the first ruler of the Empire, was said to have been the child of an Archon and a tribal chief.

The Utgard conqueror, Zaramoth the Unmaker, was the last of the Stellar Emperors, and ruled in the final centuries of the Empire, until his fateful clash with Azunai the Defender.

The Empire was originally protected by four powerful legions, although this number would increase to fourteen with the passing of centuries. The 10th Legion was said to be the bravest and most loyal amongst them, founded after helping to reclaim the imperial throne from the traitorous 3rd Legion. For centuries, these legions maintained imperial control across the disparate holdings of the Empire. However, the devastating civil war known as the War of Legions, coupled with the ravages of the cataclysm, brought about the eventual doom of the Empire of Stars.

Iliyara, as depicted on a map of Aranna

Humans living in the modern-day Plain of Tears claimed to be descendants of imperial citizens, but the Elves believed that they instead hailed from Lescanza, suggesting that the Empire of Stars was destroyed so thoroughly that none survived. This proved untrue however, as the people of Ehb are known descendants of the Empire.

yeah. i recommend u hold that thought and play ds2 and bw too before commenting further on this. ds2 and bw adds some lore books that answer some of those questions.

For 300 years, the Staff of Stars was used by the Grand Mages of the kingdom of Ehb to empower the wards that bound the Seck within the Vault of Eternity, located deep beneath Castle Ehb.

However, in 1144, an ambitious Goblin leader, known as the Goblin Inventor, brought havoc to the kingdom by stealing the Staff from Grand Mage Merik, and imprisoning him within the Alpine Caverns north of Glacern. This series of events would lead to the chaotic period known as the Seck Resurgence.

With the wards around their prison weakened, the Seck escaped from their magical shackles, and slaughtered the royal court within Castle Ehb, save for King Konreid, who was imprisoned and tortured on the orders of their leader, Gom. Meanwhile, one of Gom's commanders, a necromancer known as Gresh, set out in search of the Staff of Stars, in order to rid the Seck of the threat that it posed to them. He sent the barbaric Krug into the lowlands near Stonebridge to search for the Staff, while he himself laid siege to Fortress Kroth.

When a farmer and her band found their way to the Overseer of Glacern, Ibsen Yamas, he informed them of Merik's disappearance, and after they found and freed the Grand Mage, he himself told them of all that had happened to him. They quickly set off to the Goblin hideout in the depths of the Eastern Swamp, where they stopped the Goblin Inventor's plans, and finally recovered the Staff of Stars.

Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna
En route to the town of Arhok for selection of a new Arch Mage, the Shadowjumper, sensing the staff's power, attacked and destroyed the caravan transporting it, and stole it for use on the Great Clock on Utrae. The Hero of Arhok had to fight past various armies of the Shadowjumper, including Zaurask, Hassat, undead, and enslaved Goblins. The Shadowjumper was defeated in the mechanism of the Great Clock, and the staff was secured once more. It was still undecided, however, who became the Arch Mage.

By this time, the staff had been updated. Its trident prongs had been shortened, and its energy field replaced with an orb suggestive of a star. Its combat upgrades were removed, in favor of enhancing the mental capacity of its user. It was also simpler to operate.

Dungeon Siege III
The staff was eventually locked away with Merik's corpse in the Heroes' Crypt, but was unearthed later.

Here's a nice resource of lorebooks: https://dungeonsiege.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Books
Seems to be incomplete tho. Also contains books from DS2 & DS3.

History of the Empire of Stars

Seems that Gas Powered Games already had in mind that the EoS was only "the second mightiest empire in all the history of the world" when they created vanilla DS1.

I always thought that LoA's creation of the even bigger and older Utraean Empire was kind of a lame attempt to create epicness - this lorebook reconciles me a bit

A Guide to Jherkal's Crown

Here is even talking about "maybe some [displacers] from BEYOND the world". This might or might not mean stars, and is only speculation. Nevertheless...

Now that's rather annoying: If you were to make DS fanfic of interstellar travel, I'd prefer it to be based on the Empire of *Stars* not the Utraean Empire. But maybe both were starfarers, okay. Also, the only way to pull off such travelling in a DS map would obviously be teleport platforms, which in DS lore only ever belonged to the Utraeans.

Ah, err. We'd been putting the hours into the lore timeline on the wiki very recently, and are disabused of the idea that the Warding Staff is the Staff of Stars. It isn't that they are explicitly declared to be different; basically you hold to the notion that hoofprints mean horses, not zebras. The models of the staves, the times and places, and the nature of what they actually do in the lore are all different, so there is no good basis for saying it is the same staff moonlighting two jobs for two kingdoms.

Except one thing: A man using Merik's model is killed in the LoA opening cutscene. It is likely he is not Merik but the caravaner referenced by your first partymember Jondar, named Kale Fenster. But it looks like Merik.

Much to Sadowson's frustration (the guy doing the timeline), there are no official dates or timespans given in LoA for the Zaurask rebellion and the destruction of the utraeans' empire, nor the hero of Arhok's expedition. Like it's very purposefully vague. That could have narrowed the possibilities real quick. There is also a beta version of the LoA's in-game overhead map, which has Arhok being part of the Kingdom of Ehb. So Arhok might definitely not be in Ehb, since that idea was discarded before release. In any case, moving Merik's bones from that snowy canyon to the Heroes' Crypt sounds iffy.

...
What did I get out of this? I learned that the Utraean Peninsula map is set 100 years before the Ehb campaign! And I bet the reference in the Jherkal pamphlet is to the peninsula's HUB, which is in dimensional space.

Tristan it is possible that the warding staff and the staff of stars are the same weapon with two different names. They could also be two different weapons that where confused over time as the same weapon. I think the story line is vague and fuzzy because the game developers, came up with two slightly different story lines for Kingdom of Ehb and Legends of Aranna. So the lore books had to either modified or destroyed before the release of DS1. I understand the storys for KoE and LoA where developed in tandem, one by Mad Doc and the other by Gas Powered Games after being given a concept and flow chart of the basic elements by Micro Soft Games. I would almost bet they did not compare notes so the ehb map could be completed first even though the LoA was to be first.