Warning: Major story spoilers ahead for Immortals of AveumFar from being a standard fantasy villain whose grand designs for global domination are driven by little more than a desire to watch the world burn, the motivations ofImmortals of Aveum’s Sandrakk are surprisingly human. Though players’ first introduction toantagonist Sandrakksets him up to be the sort of purely evil foes gamers are accustomed to,Immortals of Aveumquickly reveals that there is more behind his efforts in the Everwar than it first appears. As protagonist Jak learns more about what drives Sandrakk’s quest for power, he’ll discover a surprising connection to the Order of Immortals that calls everything he knows into question.
Players get their first clue that there’s more to Sandrakk than meets the eye early on inImmortals of Aveum. After being inducted into the Order of Immortals Jak is sent tothe Pale Forestto investigate the actions of the Hand of Sandrakk, the villain’s mysterious ally. Eventually encountering Sandrakk inside an ancient Leyline Tower, Jak is surprised when the unexpectedly soft-spoken antagonist greets him as a brother in arms. Speaking to his field commander after the encounter, Jak realizes that Sandrakk had been a member of the Order of Immortals before heading down a darker path.
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Sandrakk’s Past With the Immortals is Shrouded in Mystery
Though Jak tries repeatedly to get information about Sandrakk’s time with the Order from his allies, his efforts are repeatedly rebuffed. When Jak encounters Sandrakk duringImmortals of Aveum’s Nocea mission, more information is revealed about the villain’s mysterious past, though even then the details are sparse. What is made abundantly clear, though, is the extent of the deep-seated animosity that Sandrakk and the Immortals’ leader, General Kirkan, share for one another.
At Nocea, Sandrakk claims that his only goal is to end the Everwar and accusesGeneral Kirkanof blindly pursuing the world’s ruin. Standing face-to-face with her former ally, Kirkan replies that she’s still paying the price for not killing him instead of sending him into exile. Later, Kirkan shares with Jak that she and Sandrakk had fought together as friends for 30 years before their falling out and gives Jak a heavily redacted dossier covering Sandrakk’s time with the Immortals. While the dossier fills in some pieces of Sandrakk’s past, it isn’t untilImmortals of Aveum’s final chapters that the full story of his expulsion from the order is finally brought to light.
An Unthinkable Act Led Sandrakk to Abandon the Order of Immortals
The dossier provided by General Kirkan reveals that Sandrakk had been recruited into the Order of Immortals as a child by Thaddeus, the cowboy-styled former leader of the group. ATriarch Magnuslike Jak, the gifted child from Rasharn proved to be one of the Immortals’ most effective warriors until he refused an order from Kirkan and was exiled from the order. The details of the order that led Sandrakk to abandon Kirkan and his allies remain a mystery until he and Jak confront each other once more in the magical realm known as The Path.
Traveling along The Path, which brings the memories of its visitors to life, Jak learns that Sandrakk was exiled from the order for refusing to take part in a brutal attack against his homeland. Seeking to end the Everwar regardless of the cost, Kirkan planned to alter theflow of Aveum’s leylinesover Rasharn to cut its people off from access to magic. Denouncing Kirkan’s plan as the war crime that it arguably was, Sandrakk left the order and returned to Rasharn where he rallied his now magically neutered countryman to take revenge on the kingdom of Lucium.
While the genocidal acts that Sandrakk and his armies carried out in their war of retribution against Lucium are inexcusable, the motivations of theImmortals of Aveumantagonist become almost understandable when his full story is revealed. And although he found himself walking down a decidedly dark path, it was ultimately the actions of one of the self-proclaimed heroes that set him on that journey.
Immortals of Aveumis available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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