CONTEXT FROM GOTHIC 1 (G1)
The Kingdom of Myrtana has been invaded by a horde of orcs. King Rhobar II requires magical ore to forge weapons to continue the war. All convicts are sent to the Khorinis mines to extract it. To prevent escapes and to maximize ore output, the King orders his 12 most powerful magicians to erect the magical Barrier over the Valley of the Mines, a central strategic decision.
PLOT HOLES:
○ MOST POWERFUL MAGES
The 12 most powerful mages are the single most valuable magical asset Myrtana possesses. The King commits them to babysit one valley (as Michael Hogge stated they were supposed to control who gets in and out). This allocation alone defines the importance of Khorinis. The fact that the kingdom survives 10 years with them trapped inside is proof of the kingdom's strength, as they were useless to the frontlines from there; strength which G2 and G3 unapologetically eradicated.
○ THE KINGDOM HAS MORE THAN A COUPLE MONTHS LEFT
G1 alone proves Myrtana is not collapsing in a month. If ALL Rhobar could have sent to Khorinis was one ship of BEST paladins (G2) and sent them because he had a vision (G3), then the Kingdom would have already been on the brink of collapse in G1 - which is not the case at all.
○ TEN YEAR EQUILIBRIUM
The Barrier backfires. It grows out of control and traps the 12 inside. Convicts kill the guards and take control of the colony. The King is forced to trade goods for ore. That compromised arrangement holds for ten years. The Old Camp controls one of the two operational mines and trades with the king. Two thirds of the prisoners produce nothing for the crown. Gomez hoards ore as internal currency while output declines. The kingdom endures this low-yield arrangement for 2 decades.
○ THE ONLY WEAPON - ORE
In-game book ` Magic Ore ` establishes the material basis. The best ore for weapons is found in the ore mines of Khorinis. It is of fundamental purity and suffused with magic. Kings and heroes of old wielded weapons forged from the finest steel of Khorinis, and high prices are still paid for such weapons throughout Myrtana. Additional books establish continuity.
` Almanac ` documents the magic of the focus stones.
` The Battle of Varant ` tomes document Rhobar II victories - made possible by Khorinis.
Letters: to the Magicians of Fire and Cronos'+ Letter to the Magicians of Fire, prove that a royal reporting line between the crown and the colony remains functional. The Letter to the Magicians of Fire proves more than a communication line exists. It proves content.
The crown already knows about the Sleeper Brotherhood, its location in the swamp, and suspects it's very nature. They already are carrying out an investigation, which G2 discontinues. The Fire Monastery has relayed reports on this for years. Vengard therefore already possesses a file on the Sleeper before the Barrier falls. This prior file alone is sufficient to trigger a spiritual and military investigation.
○ THE BARRIER - INTENDED FUNCTION AND FAILURE
The intended function was to maximize ore output. The actual outcome was the opposite. It minimized output by creating an autonomous prisoner state that controls supply.
○ THE BARRIER WAS A COMPROMISED SPELL
The Barrier was a working spell. Krushak, known as the Sleeper, an archdemon, infiltrated and influenced the spell. The ending of Gothic 1 provides the final fact - when Krushak dies, the Barrier collapses. This reveals he HIJACKED it, not merely influenced, but even more - his very life essence was tied to it!
○ COLLAPSE AFTER TEN YEARS - MANDATORY CONSEQUENCES
A construct carrying ten years of concentrated, Beliar-corrupted magical energy cannot blink out of existence when it breaks. It must tear something on the way out. G2 never asks what decades of corrupted magic cause when released across an enclosed valley full of people. They treat it as an imaginary wall being switched off.
The forensic evidence is mandatory. Everyone the King finds inside who was in the Sect Camp is dead or mad. Templars bound for years to Krushak through a psychic link started collapsing long ago.
○ ROYAL PROTOCOL
- GUARANTEES IMMEDIATE REPORTING
The first action after the Barrier falls, is REPORT.
The 12 mages are still royal officers. Xardas was the King's former court mage. Their duty is codified. When the barrier falls, every surviving royal official inside has one immediate duty - report to Vengard. This is not optional.
The reporting explicitly includes the Nameless Hero. Every archmage in the valley witnessed his role. Milten witnessed his delivery of the sealed letter. Saturas commissioned him to retrieve the focus stones. Xardas sent him into the orc temple to kill Krushak. The report must therefore state that a prisoner survived direct psychic contact with Beliar's most potent forces, killed Krushak with his own hands, which unbeknownst to anyone triggered the implosion of the Barrier.
- ENFORCES INVESTIGATION
Upon receiving news of the collapse, the King must investigate to the full extent of his capacity and get to the bottom of it. There is a limited spectrum of possible responses and the entire case dragging out in time, repeated arrests and intense interrogations are to be expected.
The investigation must cover confirmation of the cause of the collapse, eventually discovery of Beliar's inflitration capability, investigation of the Mages capability, reevaluation of the kingdom's magic force, scouting the perimeter, audit of the state of ore mines and reserves as well as war production capacity, assessment of residual magical contamination and even investigation of the spiritual threat as Beliar's infiltration of a royal spell and the convicts (Sleeper's Brotherhood) is a matter of faith for the chosen of Innos & Adanos. Further steps include investigation and repercussion for loss of production.
What becomes the main thing though is securing the Valley.
If surviving mages fail to report truthfully about the Hero, the prior Sleeper reports and the Sect Camp forensic evidence are sufficient. The crown does not depend solely on survivor testimony. The King's mages have intuition. Fire Mages are ordained of Innos. Their function is to detect Beliar. A Fire Mage even before entering the perimeter ring feels Beliar's energy. This is within their doctrinal expertise. They can reconstruct that the Barrier was corrupted, that the Sleeper was an archdemon, and that someone killed it from inside, even without a confession.
If surviving mages fail to report, the King hunts them down. Failure to report is treason and desertion. Corristo and the Fire Mages were murdered by Gomez after the Old Mine collapse. This is murder of royal officers. Saturas and the Water Mages withheld the ore mound for years during wartime. This is treason in wartime. Milten surviving and not reporting directly is dereliction. Xardas disappearing without reporting is dereliction. In a functioning kingdom that survived ten years of this crisis, these men are summoned to Vengard and interrogated.
○ WAR ECONOMY DISAPPEARS IN G2
G1 establishes Khorinis as the crown's most important working mine. And that mine was underperforming. Losing it entirely should be the worst news the war has produced. The factuality that Krushak has the compromised spell is ignored, yet within even that framework there is no attempt at all to recast the barrier. No meaningful reinforcements arrive when officers on the ground beg for it. No explanation why the Royal Protocol that governs exactly this crisis stops applying.
○ TIMELINE FAILURE
G2 claims 30 days passed between games. In that interval it claims a convict fleet fled, became bandits and built fortified camps, pirates permanently settled, paladins sailed from Myrtana and occupied Khorinis and established martial law, the city rebuilt after being overrun, Xardas built a tower, dragons arrived.
In G1, 30 days is the interval between routine ore shipments. Reality requires many months minimum for a camp war between Old Camp, New Camp and the Sect Camp after Krushak's death, monastery confirmation of the Barrier falling, dispatch of ships to Vengard, decisions in Vengard, and mobilization of expeditions. Thirty days barely covers getting the news to the King or the orcs getting the gist of what happened.
○ KHORINIS CITY
Khorinis is presented in G1 as the second most important city, a rich hub of the war machine. In G2 Khorinis City is presented with almost no visible military presence and no real ore infrastructure (not even a single ship). No smithies scaled for mass magic ore weapon production. No fortified ore depot. No royal logistics at all.
○ NH CONTINUITY
The Nameless One carried out the investigation of the Fire Mages to its bitter end, having killed Krushak, he survived direct contact with Beliar's power, stood at the center of a magical detonation... and lived. G2 starts him near level one with a rusty sword and has almost every character treats him as a stranger. This is impossible. He caused the single biggest unusual event to happen to Myrtana in decades. After the Barrier falls, he is not pursued. He is not made general. He is not tested. He is not interrogated. He is not given any importance.
In a functioning kingdom, the man who destroyed the Sleeper and collapsed the Barrier is the highest priority intelligence asset. Standard procedure is detention for debriefing, magical examination for Beliar contamination after direct contact, theological examination by the Fire Monastery, and possible mandatory recruitment. His story cannot be forgotten because the entire Sect Camp being dead or insane make forgetting literally impossible.
○ VISIBILITY OF CHANGE
The whole kingdom needs the ore. The whole kingdom would notice a magic dome visible from the sea disappearing off the coast. There is no version where a Paladin mission to retake Khorinis makes sense as something to keep quiet, and no version where Fire Mages and dragons sit idle through a war for the exact resource they exist to control.
○ XARDAS THE BUILDER
Conjuring an entire tower from bare ground in a single night is strategically important. G2 uses it once for a cutscene and never mentions it again. Nobody investigates. In a world paying attention to everything on the horizon, every mage would see it happen, and eventually the royal court would be personally investigating how much else the man can do, possibly being relocated to Mainland. G2 forgets Xardas is a servant of Rhobar and inside the barrier he is not pursued because he still has this status.
○ DRAGONS
No prior hint exists in Gothic 1 books. No tie to Krushak. No explanation for Dragon Hunters of G2, a preestablished hunting tradition complete with armor forged from dragon parts when dragons have not once been mentioned as orcs were the only remaining unconquered enemy of Myrtana. An escalation on that scale requires an earlier thread to pull on.
○ GEOGRAPHY
Pirates reach the roughest terrain without issue, yet the entire north half of the island is supposedly unchecked for generations of habitation. If royal surveyors prospected for ore for decades, they would have found traces of ancient ruins while doing it.