Avowed does lore the right way and this quest shows why

Avowed is simply brimming with lore. A bundle of fantasy nations, a pantheon of gods, crystals of magic soul energy — it’s a lot to learn if you haven’t already played Obsidian’s two Pillars of Eternity games and their associated expansions. Luckily, Avowed is designed to make learning that lore as accessible and optional as possible.

While there are plenty of books to read, for most players, it’s the elegant conversation system that will jump-start their lore education. At any time, the player can pause a conversation to click specific, highlighted keywords of lore to learn more. This has the added benefit of keeping most of the dialogue free of clunky info dumps.

But all that lore wouldn’t matter if it wasn’t relevant to your quest, and while the main story is more about the Living Lands, it’s the side quests that teach you about greater Eora and your place in it. These optional missions range from serious explorations of tangible, real world issues to… less serious subjects, but the most illustrative of Obsidian’s approach was “Dawntreader.”

[Warning: The rest of this article contains full spoilers for the quest “Dawntreader” and descriptions of some mid-game discoveries from the second chapter of the game. Here’s a comprehensive guide to completing this quest.]

“Dawntreader” is centered around an Oracle of the god Eothas named Sargamis. Pillars of Eternity players would immediately be familiar with Eothas, and in Avowed you can read a book or click on the word mid-conversation to learn he’s not a very popular god at the moment. But just from your conversation with Sargamis, impeccably voiced by Matthew Mercer, you quickly learn a lot of lore that’s directly relevant to your player character.

As Godlikes, your character and Sargamis have something in common. You can see for yourself just how different each god’s Godlike looks, learn how the Godlikes are dying out, and consider how strange it is that you don’t know who your patron god is. All of this primes you to wonder even more about the voice in your head.

No matter how familiar you are with the lore of Eothas, this quest eventually flips your expectations. Yes, Sargamis is a religious fanatic who’s murdered innocents, but no, he’s not doing that to resurrect an evil god — it’s part of his plan to punish Eothas for his sins. You see firsthand how a Godlike wrestles with the crimes of his patron. You think more about that voice in your head…

While later you can eliminate Sargamis for the crimes he readily admits to, offering to assist him leads to some wild choices. The game will let you literally obliterate yourself in order to help Sargamis create a god prison, and your reward is a game over and a hilariously named achievement. Alternatively, you can convince Sargamis to sacrifice himself… which also doesn’t work.

But in a final twist, the voice in your head — whom you later learn is the god of the living lands — requests the statue for their own devices. If you follow through on this request, this time the machine… works! Ironically, Sargamis’ theory was correct, he just had the wrong god. Even before you know the truth about the voice in your head, this hints at how different the adra is in the Living Lands, and how detached it is from the rest of Eora’s pantheon.

Whether you go into this quest knowing everything there is to know about Eothas or you’ve refused to ever read a book in-game, “Dawntreader” itself will teach you a lot. Depending on your choices, you may even see a callback to this quest at the very end of the game. The best part is that the amount of lore you need to enjoy it is entirely up to you.