There’s enough material in Avowed and the Pillars universe overall for a dozen of these deep-dive articles. In my last review, I was a bit too chop-happy, and was told by some readers (atheists and agnostics, even!) that I didn’t dive deep enough into the theology of Avowed. You don’t have to tell me twice! While I can’t guarantee I’ll have the time or energy to do any more deep dives on the game in the future, I hope to cover a lot in this one. Without further ado, it’s time for Avowed, part 2. There will be direct spoilers for the game, including the endings; see the review if you want a spoiler-free impression.
The Story So Far
Some background (and major spoilers for the Pillars games) for those who haven’t played: in the Pillars universe, creation sprang out of nothing. There was a highly advanced society called the Engwithans who used magic to investigate the cosmology of the world, and they discovered that there were no gods – or at least, if there were, they no longer existed. Having trouble accepting that, they decided they would make themselves gods. (Debatably, this is better than knowing there is a good God and choosing to eat a fruit that you’re told would make you a god. But I digress.)
Avowed changes this by introducing Sapadal: a god that actually did come forth out of nothing, after the Engwithans turned into gods. Sapadal is a god of nature and of The Living Lands, a being that exhibits total wildness and freedom. But they are also, as Marius puts it, a baby god. We learn time and again throughout the story of their tempestuousness destroying entire civilizations, including reshaping the continent. For example, one civilization was brought low because a tree was felled. Late in the game (though it can be intimated earlier), we even discover the Dreamscourge, the plague affecting souls throughout the Living Lands, is caused by Sapadal’s imprisonment by the Engwithan gods. It seems clear that Sapadal is a liability that must be dealt with, but there are…complications.
You are a godlike, a being whose soul was graced by a god while in the womb. However, unlike other godlike, you’ve never known who your patron was – this has never been a mystery before, as every godlike has growths that resemble the characteristics of their god. You’ve spent your whole life as an Aedyran official, where the state worships the god Woedica. You made a vow to serve your country, which implicitly means you have obligations to Woedica as well. But the more you discover on your quest in The Living Lands, the more you question your loyalties. You see Aedyrans making motions of colonization towards The Living Lands. It becomes hard to reconcile the nation you grew up in with the cruel actions of the occupying forces. So the story asks (subtly at first, but more directly later): what does a vow mean, and how beholden am I to it?
What Is A Vow?
The Steel Garrote are also present on the island, and present complications at every turn. An order of paladins fiercely loyal to Woedica, the Steel Garrote makes a pastime of hunting oath breakers. While they are not official representatives of the Empire, they do tacitly represent it simply by being its citizens. The Garrote is tired of The Living Lands being handled with a velvet glove – it’s clear (to them, anyways) that the Emperor has taken an interest in this country only because he is seeking to expand the empire. Their captain, Lödwyn, says you have made vows to your country, likely by the god you grew up believing. We don’t get specific wording on what these vows are – for the sake of the article, let’s assume they are vows of obedience to the Aedyran emperor. You are charged with carrying out the Emperor’s will abroad, and may interpret that as you see fit. The only objectives the Emperor tasks you with is to investigate the Dreamscourge and further establish relations with the country.
According to the Catechism, a vow “is a deliberate and free promise made to God concerning a possible and better good which must be fulfilled by reason of the virtue of religion. A vow is an act of devotion to which the Christian dedicates himself to God or promises him some good work…The Church can, in certain cases and for proportionate reasons, dispense from vows and promises.” (CCC 2102 – 2103) We won’t dissect the whole statement here, but *deliberate and free* is an important part of making a vow. The vow maker ought to seek out as much information as possible about what a vow entails; a vow made in ignorance is vastly more susceptible to extenuating circumstances than one made by an informed person. A vow also can’t be made under duress – it must be freely given.
We have these conditions because a vow is incredibly important. The matter ought to be grave. This is why the majority of modern-day vows are ones of initiation into religious life or marriage. Jesus even reinforces the importance of a vow in Matthew 5:33-37.
Again you have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne, nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.
At face value this could be seen as Jesus instructing one to not make any vows. But then why would we exchange vows in marriage, something Jesus specifically does not denounce elsewhere? Jesus is trying to emphasize how important it is to mean what you say. If you say you’re coming to my party, I trust in good faith that you’ll come. Your word is good enough for that. But we all know people who say one thing and do another. Those types of people we might press even further: “do you promise? Do you swear?”. We know they don’t respect us, so we’re seeking some assurance from an authority that they ought to respect. What Jesus is calling us to is to be worthy of respect ourselves. Our yes should mean yes: live up to that! Don’t involve oaths and swears in small matters. Only use them in important matters, when you mean it, with full intention to follow through.
It should be noted that in the Church, while vows can be dispensed with, they are not in fact dissolved. A marriage vow can’t be changed from valid to invalid; it has to be investigated and discovered that the vows were never valid in the first place. Only death can end a valid vow of marriage. A priest can be laicized, and their vows of celibacy and poverty can be dispensed with (though they aren’t always) – but a priest is a priest forever, even if they are no longer permitted to exercise their office. If the sacrament is validly conferred, their soul is marked, and they can’t remove it no matter how they try. A vow will stay with you whether you follow through or not.
So what are the ramifications of a broken vow? The answer, like usual, is ‘it depends’. First off, in a worldly sense there’s an obvious damage to your communal standing and moral reputation if you break a public vow. But it also damages what you swore on. If you swear on your mother’s grave that you’re telling the truth, and you lie, you disrespect your mother due to your actions contradicting your invocation. So breaking a vow damages how you’re perceived, what you swear by, and what you stand for. (This matter is made even more grave if you swear on a living entity such as your god.) If your vow isn’t dispensed with beforehand, you also sin. The effects of a broken vow go further than one might first think!
So as the Catechism said, what kind of proximate reasons would allow a vow to be dispensed with? We should do it with the greatest scrutiny. A vocation ultimately is a vehicle meant to get you and others to heaven; if it’s expressly doing the opposite, it’s possible it wasn’t your vocation in the first place. As always, Pentiment is on the mind: one of the quotes that stuck with me is “Never think that you must remain in a place that causes you to sin, even if others think it godly.” In Avowed’s case, your vow of obedience to the Emperor is still under the requirement of living one’s life justly and virtuously. It’s (at least in my playthrough) explicitly vague whether the Emperor actually wants to colonize The Living Lands, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we came home with a new vassal colony. Asides from a gnawing conscience, what reasons does our envoy have to actually abandon their vows?
Where Does My Identity Come From?
As it turns out, your mysterious patron is Sapadal. Surprise! You were their godlike all along.
Suddenly everything about your identity is thrown into chaos. All along, the one who shaped your being in the womb is the one who needs your help now. As Catholics, we believe our whole existence is tied to God’s – He made us and sustains us, and apart from Him we can do nothing. Therefore our identities are derived from our relationship to God. It’s wholly different for Sapadal though – Sapadal did not create the universe ex nihilo, nor do they sustain our existence by willing us into being. The envoy’s soul potentially existed before Sapadal did, considering how I understand the Wheel to work. (Listen, there’s only so much lore I can naturally exposit in an article – if you need more info, the Pillars wiki seems pretty good!). This changes the relationship between you and your god – while our identity has a connection to Sapadal, it is still partly independent from them.
And so, we return to our dilemma: Do I choose my country, who, though vying for power, is undeniably a force for order in the region? Do I choose my god, who has known me since the womb, but lacks omniscience and whose unchecked power could spell disaster? Their predilection to nature means things will run more wild, for good and perhaps for ill. Whether you choose Sapadal, the god who’s always known you, or Woedica, the god you’ve always known, is up to you. But there’s no getting out of this choice.
I’ll admit, for a while I was tempted to side with Woedica. I sympathized with the imprisoned Sapadal, but at that point in the story it seemed they were avoiding responsibility for the harm they had caused in the past. Plus, unchecked power without omniscience and the petulancy of ‘youth’ is a recipe for future calamity. But as I discussed things with them, they showed repentance and a desire to learn. This threw me for a loop a bit – the Christian God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. Having to teach a god how to act is nonsensical when you come from a “Creator & Creature” point of view. But once I reframed for a second, it made more sense – it’s not that the creature is teaching the creator, as Sapadal neither created man nor did they exist before all creation. It’s one created being teaching another, with a large power differential between them. Ultimately I think freeing them is the more ethical choice for a multitude of reasons, as we ought to instruct the ignorant and those in power must learn responsibility. But the most important reason to free Sapadal is that it satisfies both justice and mercy: in fact, the reason why teaching Sapadal works at all is because they were shown mercy.
This brings to mind two quotes, one from Scripture and the other from G.K. Chesterton. First:
1 John 4:19
We love because He first loved us.
Simply by setting Sapadal free and resolving to teach them, that mercy has shown them the way to treat others going forward. We can’t be responsible for how people receive truths; all we can do is plant seeds. But some truths are instilled best by our actions, not our words. Mercy is not dismissing sins, but acknowledging and forgiving them even knowing the harm they’ve caused. It’s also not ignorance of justice; reparations must be made, both as an indication of contrition as well as an attempt to undo these wrongs. In Sapadal’s case, they can’t unring that bell. However, they actually have served time in a divine prison for quite a while. Now that they’re in a receptive state, it would be better for them to be guided than left to rot. Then there’s Chesterton’s quote, similar yet different in message:
There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast’; that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.
Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
Knowing what we do of Sapadal, they have committed atrocities. Cities have fallen into the sea over defaced statues. An entire landscape was razed over a felled tree. And their unbridled rage manifests as the Dreamscourge, plaguing the souls of the whole nation. We can’t know how Sapadal will respond to being freed. They could lash out in anger at their oppressors, causing collateral damage in the process. They could be lying about their contrition. Having been hurt by their worshippers in the past, they could tighten the snare and turn all the inhabitants of The Living Lands into Dreamthralls, ensuring their will will always be carried out. But for Sapadal to know love, they must be loved. Love has the power to change. It does not guarantee it; Sapadal will have to freely choose this. Love is an interchange of sacrifice for the good of the other. But in the free gift of self and reception of the other, changes are effected in the lover and beloved. It’s terrifying to love knowing the other is free to abuse it. The power differential between you and Sapadal magnifies this risk exponentially. Eventually, it comes down to faith. Once this happens, as Sapadal often intones, “we grow together. We twine, we twine.”
