Transcript of Above the Lore/Episode 5

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Above the Lore Episode 5: Bigging Up the Dwarves

• Mod Osborne: So hello again, and welcome to Above the Lore, the home of RuneScape's story banter. I'm Mod Osborne, one of the senior narrative designers. Today we have our most prolific quest developer, Mod John A.
• Mod John A: Hello!
• Mod Osborne: He worked on One Piercing Note, Cave Goblin series, Dwarf series... Any more you want to mention?

[Pause.]

• Mod Osborne: That'll do, that'll do! Two series. Joining him is Mod Sarah, our primary lore tester and story enthusiast in the QA department. Am I right with that?
• Mod Sarah: Yep, just about.
• Mod Osborne: Have I bigged you enough?

[Laughter.]

• Mod Osborne: So, we'll be discussing the upcoming dwarf finale, as voted by you in a recent poll. So, just to jump straight in there, do we have a title for it yet?
• Mod John A: Birthright of the Dwarves.
• Mod Osborne: So, what made you pick Birthright of the Dwarves?
• Mod John A: It was actually a quick decision. I had to pick a title at quite short notice. I wanted to keep the format which each title ends with "of the Dwarves" or "the Dwarves." It all ends in "Dwarf" or "Dwarves." It refers partly to the birthright being the rightful king to the throne of Keldagrim, but it partly refers to something about dwarves in general, which I won't spoil.
• Mod Osborne: So for those people who haven't played the dwarf series, whoever they may be, how would you describe them, do you think? In a nutshell, what is the dwarf series about?
• Mod Sarah: I think basically, it's about one of the mining companies wanting a little bit more power, and sort of plotting to take over Keldagrim and Gielinor as a whole.
• Mod Osborne: Yes, the Red Axe.
• Mod Sarah: And the player's sort of stumbling across that when they really shouldn't be, and having to help prevent it.
• Mod Osborne: For me, interestingly, I see it as kind of getting to grips with the new culture and changing it. You don't often get the sense of coming into a city, an established place, and you are forwarding that culture, changing it fundamentally. I think that this will obviously do that more.
• Mod John A: It will, yes.
• Mod Osborne: So, how would you see it?
• Mod John A: It's about this... It's about an enemy that you know little about, and you are stumbling into their path by chance, and you don't know where... Or what its resources are, or what it really wants. And there's a lot of ways in which it's antagonizing you.
• Mod Osborne: Yeah, so it's not about its larks or its humor, or anything like that.
• Mod John A: No, there is some humor, but mostly it's not, and for the finale in particular, I'm making it more... It's gradually been getting more serious over the quest series.
• Mod Osborne: It's a political adventure, I guess?
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: Would you toss out Game of Thrones as a reference?
• Mod John A: I wouldn't, simply because I don't know Game of Thrones.

[Laughter]

• Mod John A: I know, I know, I know.
• Mod Osborne: You haven't followed the fad.
• Mod John A: No.
• Mod Osborne: So, do you enjoy writing the Dwarf quests?
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: You've written some but not all, haven't you?
• Mod John A: I've written the most recent two and this one, so of the five... The first two were written by...
• Mod Osborne: You've now done the majority?
• Mod John A: I will have done the majority. The first two are by a developer who has now left, and the last three are mine.
• Mod Osborne: You've got squatters writing.
• Mod John A: Yeah. It's a bit different inheriting a series like that then it is creating my own thing from the start.
• Mod Osborne: Is it less enjoyable working on something you've inherited?
• Mod John A: In some ways, it is. There are some bits of the first two quests I didn't really like and had to work with, but I also enjoy... I shouldn't say a challenge, because it isn't exactly a challenge. I like working within restrictions. I enjoy having these elements where I know I need to do something with them.
• Mod Osborne: Like adapting a novel.
• Mod John A: So in some ways, it is more enjoyable than having a blank page.
• Mod Osborne: So you've taken the bits that you like and...
• Mod John A: And the bits that I didn't like. All the bits. As many bits as I could. And I'm going to try to work any bits I haven't already used into this last quest.
• Mod Osborne: Drunken dwarfs and all... Cool. Obviously, the poll is finished... What development stage is it then at, the quest?

[Transcriber's Note: "The poll" refers to a poll released on April 19th, 2013 to decide whether the gnome, dwarf, or pirate quest series would get continued next. Dwarves won.]

• Mod John A: Right now, I've finished my first draft of the design brief.
• Mod Osborne: I'm reading it today, in fact.
• Mod John A: By the time you listen to this, I'll probably be working on the first round of feedback to it.
• Mod Osborne: It's pretty cracking, everyone. Don't worry, there won't be too many changes, John! It's absolutely fine. I'm thoroughly impressed with it. So, what can you tell us about the quest? Obviously it's at design stage, so things might change. We've got to give the obvious proviso that things might not be as we're talking about, but is there something you can reveal about the quest?
• Mod John A: This one is different from the previous ones in that this one starts with you taking the fight to the Red Axe while waiting for them to strike.
• Mod Osborne: You're always waiting for Hreidmar to get up to his usual tricks.
• Mod John A: The previous ones have always been, "The Red Axe does something, and you react and try to stop them."
• Mod Osborne: That's a very different... There may well have been a change maybe to Veldaban, in that sense. He's feeling more proactive.
• Mod John A: It's driven by his character.
• Mod Osborne: Are we going to finally see the Red Axe leader? Are we going to send them packing, as it were?
• Mod John A: This quest ends with them defeated, definitely.
• Mod Osborne: Will I get any choice in that, if I'm a Red Axe fan?
• Mod John A: You won't get the choice not to defeat the victims, no. Sorry. I am planning an ending choice where there is a more Zamorakian option, but it's not like... Each option for each god... But there's... I'm trying to... Because the villains are Zamorakians, and Hreidmar is a Zamorak worshipper, I want to try and work in some way that you can defeat them while still having your character allied with Zamorak.
• Mod Osborne: So that's really interesting. I can inflect the ending with whatever...
• Mod John A: That'll be a detail of the ending rather than the whole quest changes the way through. You still will be defeating the villain. But I'll still put some kind of...
• Mod Osborne: Would you go so far as to say that somebody might feel like they've had a different ending? Changed Keldagrim in a different way than Player B?
• Mod John A: The final quest in the series does give me room to add player choices that I couldn't in previous ones because I don't have to deal with the consequences in Part 6. So, there will be choices. The classic one is kill or spare the villain or something. There will be choices like that.
• Mod Osborne: Yes. So, are we going to be including... Just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of things that could feed into the Red Axe series. You've got the penguin dwarves, those lost on the penguin iceberg.
• Mod John A: Yep.
• Mod Osborne: Are you going to be tying all of these together? How many strands is that?
• Mod John A: I am going to be trying to tie them together. I'm going to do so in a way that doesn't require a lot of quest requirements.
• Mod Osborne: And a huge amount of translation work.
• Mod John A: Yeah. There'll be some places where I won't require Hunt for Red Raktuber, but there'll be an extra bit of chat if you have done it.
• Mod Osborne: Right. So, there'll be kinds of easter eggs, little nuggets of reward for people who have done that content?
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: Can you give any other examples.
• Mod John A: Other examples... In Fremmennik Isles, there are two dwarves on Jatizso that are Red Axe agents. They'll make an appearance in this quest.
• Mod Osborne: Yes! It's kind of like an treasure hunt. Play every piece of content with aq dwarf in it. You never know.
• Mod John A: This is all from the suggestions forum thread, where I asked "What do you want to see in the quest? What plot threads do you want tied up?" There's a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have thought of myself that I'm going to try and resolve. In particular, things like, "I want this minor dwarf character to come back. I think he's a Red Axe spy." So I can try to resolve whether he's a Red Axe spy.
• Mod Osborne: That's an important point, isn't it? You were looking at the forums after the poll...?
• Mod John A: After the poll, yes.
• Mod Osborne: One of our determinations was that there'd be a lot of player interaction, at least in terms fo its development.
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: A bit more transparency, I guess.
• Mod John A: We're trying to, yes.
• Mod Osborne: With the quest, are there any ideas of what rewards we might be getting?
• Mod John A: I don't want to say what there are exactly. They'll be new dragon equipment...
• Mod Osborne: Ooh, new dragon equipment.

[Transcriber's Note: It has been confirmed here that a quest reward includes a monster that drops dragon throwing axes.]

• Mod John A: And some other things.
• Mod Osborne: Is that plural?
• Mod John A: It might be.
• Mod Osborne: It might be... Do we definitely see the end of the series?
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: Are we going to see any spin-offs?
• Mod John A: No, no, no. I don't want to because if I deliberately left a plot thread hanging, I'd have no idea when I'd be able to resolve it. I want to make this as clean of an ending as I can.
• Mod Osborne: That's not to say that dwarves won't have more pieces of content.
• Mod John A: This is the end of the Red Axe series, not to all dwarf quests ever.
• Mod Osborne: Do you see this as the end of the story for Veldaban as well?
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: With the Sixth Age, obviously bringing a number of gods and races back in, do you see the dwarves fitting into the sixth age, either of you?
• Mod Sarah: Yes. The Sixth Age is going to be so momentous that I don't think they could avoid it if they wanted to. Even if you tried hiding, it's going to impact you at some point.
• Mod Osborne: Maybe they have to come to terms with the fact that it's going to have some impact on their world. They can't just run away from it.
• Mod Sarah: Definitely, I don't think there's any way to avoid the Sixth Age.
• Mod Osborne: Would you agree with that?
• Mod John A: I definitely agree with that, yes. It's not going to be a major part of the quest, but I am going to try to... ...that the dwarves know that this big event has taken place.
• Mod Osborne: Certainly in terms of the Sixth Age, would you agree, that the dwarves aren't the most god-related faction in the world at all, but they can filter in. There are some Guthixian leanings.
• Mod John A: My idea of what the dwarves are like is that they worship Guthix, but they're essentially secular.
• Mod Osborne: Yes.
• Mod John A: If you look at Keldagrim for example, there's no place of worship in the city. So they're likely to be less bothered by Guthix's death than the gnomes for example, who... ...were more spiritual. That's a generalization, obviously. Some dwarves are very religious. It's more a geopolitical thing than a religious thing, if that makes sense.
• Mod Osborne: No, it makes a lot of sense.
• Mod John A: The head of state of Keldagrim has got to deal with the fact that these new factions have appeared, and there's a war happening.
• Mod Osborne: The dwarf series would be so much stranger if there was so much about the religion, on top of the kings and the consortium.
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: That's what the dwarf series is about for me. Practically, will we see a dwarf rework? I know a lot of players were really interested in a dwarf rework.
• Mod John A: We are hoping to. I don't want to say absolutely.
• Mod Osborne: We've been wrangling this for so long, haven't we?
• Mod John A: We have been wrangling.

[John A and Osborne talk over each other.]

• Mod John A: I've been rewriting bits of the brief... ...combined or no rework combined. Right now, it looks like we will get a rework of dwarf NPC's, not a major rework of areas.
• Mod John A: Sarah, you can attest to this. The sheer number of dwarves. We were looking into it. It was hundreds.
• Mod Sarah: We were looking at over 250 dwarves that were unique and old models that needed looking at.
• Mod John A: That's it. And you couldn't get older.
• Mod Sarah: NO. There are loads of them. They're everywhere.
• Mod Osborne: Absolutely. I think it's quite easy to see the contrast with the new dwarves. You go to the Artisan's workshop, you go to Doric, you see the Fishing Contest dwarves. They look so snazzy! It would be easy to think we could just port them onto Keladgrim, but...
• Mod Sarah: Yeah, it's not that easy. Some of them require unique anims, some of them require unique looks, some of them are older than others...
• Mod Osborne: I've been playing some of the older dwarf quests in anticipation of this, just to excite myself, to redo the brief. You just look, and you've got a drunken dwarf who's wandering bout and needs a unique anim set. You've got dwarves with placards, Dondakan and his cannon.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah.
• Mod Osborne: You have so many individual dwarves doing individual things, and we want them to have their own personality.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah, exactly. The guys are trying to get it done, but it might not come with the quest.
• Mod Osborne: Certainly when we last talked with the graphics guys, and I did a quick run to them before this podcast. They said they were determined and they were sure that they could get out with the lore. We're certainly aiming for it.
• Mod Sarah: We're hopeful.
• Mod Osborne: Please, don't take our word for it and come knock on our doors. The same goes for Keldagrim. Are we getting a graphical rework of Keldagrim, do you know?
• Mod Sarah: They're looking to improve the way it looks, definitely. Again, that would probably come with the NPC's at some point when they can because Keldagrim's quite a large area.
• Mod Osborne: The last time I talked to them, it was somewhat like a sheen applied to it.
• Mod Sarah: Almost like a reskin.
• Mod John A: I think the plan is to modify some textures to make it look a bit better, but obviously not a complete rework of the whole thing.
• Mod Osborne: That's right. Obviously with RuneScape 3, you're going to see further. You want to see this fantastic location. To take in the whole of the cave, it's going to need some graphical work. That's what they're doing, really.
• Mod Sarah: They're retouching it.
• Mod Osborne: Indeed. Retouching it. Reimagining it.

[Giggling.]

• Mod Osborne: Will the quest be voiced?
• Mod John A: No, it won't.
• Mod Osborne: Ooh... There are some positives with that, isn't there?
• Mod John A: I am actually quite glad. A voice-acted quest comes with restrictions that I'm glad I don't have to work with in this one. With a voice-acted quest, you want to keep the total cast down, you want to keep the quest in one area, so that everything in the area can be voiced and nothing in outside the area has to be.
• Mod Osborne: That's it! The experience is seamless. You're never going to talk to Sir Tiffy, who has half of his dialouge voiced.
• Mod John A: Yeah. I don't think that a voice-acted quest is fundamentally better than a non-voiced quest. They're both good mediums. They're like separate mediums. I think that when you get a negative experience is when the voice-acting is done badly, or there's a mix of voiced and non-voiced dialogue.
• Mod Osborne: Right.
• Mod John A: What I wouldn't want is Keldagrim as a whole to be non-voiced, but just these NPC's that have a role on the quest to be voice-acted.
• Mod Osborne: I do feel that voice-quest means that people... ...can take in the beautiful music, which of course is going to be orchestral.
• Mod John A: But-
• Mod Osborne: So you get that seamless experience part.
• Mod John A: But a non-voiced quest means that you get the voice in your head created by your imagination-
• Mod Osborne: Which may be jarring with what you think they could sound like.
• Mod John A: I don't think you can say that an animated movie is fundamentally better than a comic book, in my opinion. They're different kinds of things, in my opinion. I quite like reading dialogue and hearing how the characters sound from my imagination, but what I'm glad of here is that it lets me have bits of the quest take place in two parts of the world without voicing everything in that area and it lets me fit in as many character from previous quests as I possibly can without having to worry about who's going to voice0act each one.
• Mod Osborne: Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. A lot of people want to see their favorite dwarf in there, and if there wasn't a drunken dwarf, a lot of people would cry.
• Mod John A: I have been going through and thinking, "Okay, I've got this minor part. Is there any way I can fit him in the quest?"
• Mod Osborne: Absolutely. Hopefully you'll understand if you're a voice enthusiast. Will the players get to affect the content of the quest, aside from the poll? That was one of our aims.
• Mod John A: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: For those of you who don't know, it was "Pirates, Gnomes, or Dwarves?" and dwarves won. Is there going to be any more of that kind of thing?
• Mod John A: There are going to be a couple of competitions. It's a competition to design a bit of content, and the winning content gets put into the game as a small part of the quest.
• Mod Osborne: Hopefully you've heard something by now.
• Mod John A: Yes, I don't know when the announcement's happening, but hopefully by the time this podcast comes out.
• Mod Osborne: That's it! You'll know as much as we do, I'm sure. But that's certainly the aim, isn't it, to get people in there, designing things. To get their idea sin there.
• Mod John A: Yep.
• Mod Osborne: That's what we really want. And hopefully there'll be an additional transparency in the quest, having seen more of the development practices.
• Mod John A: I'm not exactly sure how we'll do that. I'll be active on the forums. It's too late now to suggest anything that would involve major changes to the brief, but I'm always going to be on the forums, looking for suggestions.
• Mod Osborne: The number of player suggestions that made it into the design brief that I saw... There's so many, isn't there?
• Mod John A: It would be impossible to include everything, but I included as much as I could.
• Mod Osborne: Absolutely. This is a hard question, maybe something we can answer together. Will we still see the gnome and the pirate quests? They did lose in the poll. In the future.
• Mod John A: Eventually, yes. It's not the case that they're all in development, and it was just which to release first. None of them were in development, and we began development on the dwarf one based on the poll. I don't know when the pirates and gnome ones will happen. Certainly not this year. Probably not next year either.
• Mod Osborne: That is true, unfortunately. We're sitting down and looking at the quests for next year, at the moment.
• Mod John A: Yeah.
• Mod Osborne: We do want to do them. Even the stories that Lewis and Fred, the developers of those, want to put in are interesting! We still want to tell them. Please don't fell, if you're interested in those quests, that they'll just never be ended. That will never be ended. That will never be the case.
• Mod John A: we never decide "we're going to leave that quest as unfinished." However long it takes us, we always intended to get back to it.
• Mod Osborne: Okay, so, Sarah. Ooh!

[Giggling.]

• Mod Sarah: Hi.
• Mod Osborne: How have you been involved in the quest so far?
• Mod Sarah: Wow... I got involved quite early on. Graphics were keen, as we said, to update the dwarves, if they possible could.
• Mod Osborne: That almost came first, didn't it?
• Mod Sarah: Yeah. They really wanted to rework the dwarves, then the poll came along, and they were even more excited that they could get it done. So, to help the guys, because like we said there are so many dwarves in-game and they're all over the place, they appear in cutscenes as a one-off.
• Mod Osborne: Just look at Mobilizing Armies. You have tiny dwarves.
• Mod Sarah: They have sidelines in little things everywhere. So, I started off trying to help the graphics guys locate every dwarf NPC we could find, every quest they touched if it wasn't a dwarf series quest. Things like As A First Resort. They appear in a cutscene at the end for a brief moment, but they would still need reworking.
• Mod Osborne: This makes me want to have this as a competition to see who can find more of them.
• Mod Sarah: Almost all of the towns and places where you would find them, like the underground town in Miscellania that they've got. Places like that, and just trying to locate as many as possible they could rework.
• Mod Osborne: And them it became clear that... Sorry, at one point we weren't sure if we could rework all of them. Then it was a case of prioritizing those we felt had a unique personality.
• Mod Sarah: Which did we want the most?
• Mod Osborne: Now that's kind of blossomed back up again. It's interesting to look at our development process in this sense, looking at scoping.
• Mod Sarah: Making sure the graphics have everything.
• Mod Osborne: This is happening more and more, isn't it? That we are getting involved, basically me and you.
• Mod Sarah: Yes.
• Mod Osborne: And a few other people, basically the curator of the projects, and helping the graphics people.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah. I mean, the graphics guys have the whole game to keep in their head. They can't always remember which towns are allied to which god, and the one NPC who runs through this area in the middle of one quest and is never seen again. It's always helpful to them to help them out and say, "Make sure you don't lose this NPC."
• Mod Osborne: Slayer Tower is a good example.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah.
• Mod Osborne: Slayer Tower didn't really have an identity before, and you and I came along and said, "This really suits Viggora." The fact that it's fallen into the swamp and has a sense of folly about it. Then coming up with the story and putting it in game in a beautiful way by Ash.

[Transcriber's Note: Mod Ash was the primary developer for the Slayer Tower rework.]

• Mod Sarah: Sort of tying in the portals in the corners of the tower.
• Mod Osborne: This happens in a lot of projects. So, how would you describe your role? You're kind of a secret behind-the-scenes person that doesn't get thrown in front of the players much.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah. I suppose my role is more of an assist to whoever needs it, whether that's content devs who have picked up somebody else's quest series and need to learn how the first ones went and add to it. To give them a hand with any old lore.
• Mod Osborne: Any old lore.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah. Ritual of the Mahjarrat were tied in to so many old quests like Haeel Cult, that are so easily forgotten, but you know the players remember them.
• Mod Osborne: Yeah.
• Mod Sarah: You lie to try and help the devs and the graphics guys fill in all the gaps and make sure it all ties together quite nicely.
• Mod Osborne: You're the kind of person at the end of the quest, "Which post-quest content should we have? Which NPC's should we walk to after the quest?" Like World Wakes. I want to talk to Azzanadra afterwards!
• Mod Sarah: Yeah, I want to go back and report to him, make sure he's completely clued in! I try and pre-empt what the players will be wanting from the lore in their story and make sure that it's all plugged in.
• Mod Osborne: Do you have to memorize it all? Are you the short circuit of lore.
• Mod Sarah: No. I think having the interest in it definitely helps, but I can never remember everything. It's more of an idea who to go, what NPC would possibly have new information for me, any books that you're given in quests that could hold anything.
• Mod Osborne: But you're building that library, basically a story bible as it were.
• Mod Sarah: Yeah.
• Mod Osborne: For other testers. You're building a team of lackeys, aren't you?
• Mod Sarah: Yeah. I'm slowly gaining more and more QA'ers that, like me, love the story lore.
• Mod Osborne: I love it. Every day, there's another one brought over? Another one.

[Laughter.]

• Mod Osborne: Another person brought over who's really interested in lore, really passionate about it, and wants to get involved.
• Mod Sarah: They all play the game at different levels. Some of them are slightly higher than me and know all the high-end, high-level player stuff that I might not necessarily pick up on.
• Mod Osborne: There's one in particular who loves the Daemonheim lore. Wants that final saga.
• Mod Sarah: We've all got different strengths and knowledge and help each other out. If I don't know something, they might.
• Mod Osborne: There you go, players. It's not only you who want certain quests, elves included in that. we have individual people who want to champion certain content.
• Mod Osborne: Okay, that was the group questions, so now I'm going to fire some quick-fire question roulette at you. I've gathered these over from the forums. I've actually noted the players this time. You deserve credit for your questions. I'm actually going to mention you. I'm going to try and make this quick. "Will the goblins of Dorgesh-Kaan play a role in the final dwarf series?" That's from Stretch1028.
• Mod John A: There's so much dwarf stuff I want to cover, I don't think there's room to add the goblins as well, sorry.
• Mod Osborne: Yes. So, there's trade links, isn't there?
• Mod John A: yes, there's the underground railroad between the two cities.
• Mod Osborne: But that's not the end of the Dorgesh-Kaan by any means. Surely that are other stories we want to tell with the cave goblins.
• Mod John A: There are other stories that we'd like to tell, but they're not on the scheduling list.
• Mod Osborne: There we go. An ultra-proviso there. But there are inklings of things we want to do with the Dorgesh-Kaan.
• Mod Osborne: "Will we ever travel to Bordanzan, home of the Arzinian Avatar?" Try to say that right. Strength4Ever4703.
• Mod John A: Who says it's a place?

[Collective "Ooh..."]

• Mod John A: If I'm right, all you know is that it's the Arzinian Avatar of Bordanzan.
• Mod Osborne: Right.
• Mod John A: What that means, we're not sure.
• Mod Osborne: I'm trying to think of what else that could mean... Cool, that's cool.
• Mod Osborne: "Is Veldaban absolutely trustworthy?" A very suspicious Aterivus. I had this. I talked to you about this after the King of the Dwarves. He seems to take it all too readily.
• Mod John A: This quest is going to be driven by his character flaws.
• Mod Osborne: Right.
• Mod John A: I don't think the question is whether he's trustworthy or not, but...
• Mod Osborne: I question whether or not he's able, f or example.
• Mod John A: Possibly.
• Mod Osborne: I actually already half-answered this. "Are there any dwarves that follow Saradomin?" From Bonzara.
• Mod Sarah: There is one we can name. Brother...
• Mod Osborne: Bordiss.
• Mod Sarah: He's at the Edgeville Monastery. He's an active worshipper of Saradomin.
• Mod Osborne: The examples are more systemic, kind of?
• Mod Sarah: Yeah, we kinda have hinted in the past...
• Mod Osborne: That was in your content, wasn't it?
• Mod Sarah: In the Goblin Holy Book, it mentions dwarves worshipping Saradomin during the god Wars. What I thought was most dwarves live in Keldagrim, shut themselves off. A minority of dwarves, still on the surface, would follow Saradomin because Guthix isn't around. That seemed logical to me. I don't know if we established this in-game or not, but the Imcando dwarves are the descendants of those who followed Saradomin during the God Wars.
• Mod Osborne: That's interesting. Actually, I didn't know that all. That's interesting.
• Mod Osborne: "Do dwarves and humans share a common ancestor, since they can interbreed?" That's Bonzara again.
• Mod John A: I'm not sure we know they can interbreed.
• Mod Osborne: That's true. They've just got eyes for barbarian women.

[Transcriber's Note: A reference to the quest Gunnar's Ground, which revolves around a dwarf marrying a barbarian.]

• Mod John A: They may be trying to. If they do share a common ancestor, it's so long ago it was before they were brought to Gielinor.
• Mod Osborne: So it may not be important to us
• Mod John A: Definitely wouldn't be important to the quest.
• Mod Osborne: Certainly not a topic we 'd necessarily go nit the Sixth Age. Not one I'm particularly intrigued by.
• Mod John A: It would make sense that they would. It would be an odd coincidence for them to look so similar and not share an ancestor.
• Mod Osborne: Yes.
• Mod John A: That's a kind of hard science fiction argument rather than s fantasy argument.
• Mod Osborne: We're certainly moving from a kind of planar system where there were lots of dimensions and alternate universes to a kind of coherent notion that there were almost solar systems. It's very possible that they were kind of connected or close.
• Mod Sarah: You kind of hinted at it during Gunnar's Ground, with the dwarf who...
• Mod Osborne: I don't know if we want to get into the biology of Gunnar's Ground.

[Laughter.]

• Mod Osborne: But yes, there is the hint towards that.
• Mod Osborne: "Will we see any Fremennik in the new dwarf quest?" That's Pupppy II. I don't know how to say that, three p's. Pu-p-p II.
• Mod John A: Uh, no.
• Mod Osborne: But you'll see Fremennik Isles...
• Mod John A: You'll see the two dwarves who were on Jatizso, but human Fremenniks, no. Pretty much all the characters are dwarves, rather than humans.
• Mod Osborne: I think there's only so many connections you can make to other quests. You can go on forever.
• Mod Osborne: "Do the Black Guard have any allies outside of Keldagrim?" That is from Xeroxmaster.
• Mod John A: part of the quest is establishing an alliance between the dwarven Black Guard and another group. They may have other allies that aren't mentioned involved in the quest.
• Mod Osborne: That forms that pivotal moment in the quest.
• Mod Osborne: "Now that Guthix is dead, are the dwarves likely to follow another god?" That is from WarpScape. What do you think, Sarah?
• Mod Sarah: ooh... I think they might have been an affected by it.
• Mod Osborne: With a gnome...
• Mod Sarah: You would hope so, the amount of trade that they've got with other places, people of Falador, stuff like that...
• Mod Osborne: That's true. Stanky would have told them.

[Transcriber's Note: Stanky is a dwarf near Seers' Village.]

• Mod Sarah: Yeah, maybe like the druids.
• Mod John A: It's common knowledge, isn't it?
• Mod Osborne: Yeah. Tribute to Guthix was our way of saying that everybody knows now.
• Mod Sarah: Maybe like the druids, they've been questioning their faith with him, or the fact that htey've been worshipping him and he didn't want that.
• Mod Osborne: Yeah. John, what do you think?
• Mod John A: They might be pleased that he didn't want worship, since they haven't worshipped him much at all.
• Mod Osborne: That' true. They've been laid back. They haven't put on their Sunday best.
• Mod John A: I don't think they will as a bloc decide to follow another god. If they did, that would be them siding with a military faction rather than with a god for religious reasons. They'd be doing it for political reasons rather than being devoted to such-and-such a god.
• Mod Osborne: That's it. It would feel so strange for a culture that wasn't particularly interested in the gods to suddenly develop a religion.
• Mod John A: As with Brother Bordiss, they may be individual dwarves who will be devoted to this god or that god.
• Mod Osborne: Grand.
• Mod Osborne: This is a completely unrelated question. "Why does brassica Prime not get any lore or hsitory?" from Fswe1. Do either of you want to go for this one? I have my reason. I'm probably going to get lynched for this. I have been around RuneScape for a long time, but I think my passion for Brassica Prime is less than for other long-term RuneScapers. But I'm realizing that people certainly do love their Brassica Prime. I intended Brassica Prime to be a holiday event god, somebody who wouldn't fit into the canon.

[Laughter.]

• Mod Osborne: I couldn't imagine a bouncing cabbage.
• Mod John A: It would be tricky to get Brassica Prime into the canon without making the rest of the cabbage ridiculous by association.
• Mod Osborne: I think there are certain things that I've lessened my thoughts on. God Emissaries, for instance, we definitely said no. There was not going to be a Brassica Prime Emissary.

[John A and Osborne talk over each other.]

• Mod John A: ...every god, you couldn't have them for all the... ... as well.
• Mod Osborne: No, we had to work a layer down. That is the sort of thing where I'm thinking, "It's okay to worship Brassica Prime? Why am I saying that we cannot? Why are we, Sarah, saying that we cannot?" I think that's where we're loosening up a little bit. But I couldn't see a quest, couldn't see a world event, with Brassica Prime in it.
• Mod John A: You could have Brassica Prime as a minor ally for one of the other gods, perhaps. Not a god in its own right.
• Mod Osborne: Strangely enough, there is a reference to Brassica Prime in an upcoming piece of quest content, look out for that.
• Mod Osborne: Thank you very much, that is the end of the quick-fire question roulette. Thank you for joining us with Mod John A and Sarah. In three weeks' time, we'll have another Above the Lore podcast to make way for some RuneScape 3 shenanigans. That podcast in three weeks' time will be called the story behind the world event. I'll be talking to Mod Moltare and Mod Raven for a third time. And for our final moment, for those of you who like hints to future content, the Chaos Elemental hint.
• Mod Osborne: "In the black wind the stars shall die and still be gold, here let them lie till the shadow lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land." That again is, "In the black wind the stars shall die and still be gold, here let them lie till the shadow lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land." Kinda obvious really, isn't it? Thank you very much for joining us, and hopefully you'll join us in three weeks' time.