Arcanum and the Underworld

I was recently doing the Whytechurch Murder quest when to my surprise, the demonologist in Tarant (Professor Eakins), mentioned that L’anamelach was not only from the Underworld but all demons were. Demons were apparently the ones who had toiled in whatever firey things there are in the Underworld to make the Blade of Xerxes as well.

I had previously seen this post:

http://terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/view...rt=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=demon

So I was curious, do we know anything else about the Underworld? Is it mentioned by any other character in the game or is Eakins the only one to make a throwaway reference to it?

 

Eakins indeed said that the underworld is the origin of L'anamelach and fire demons which forged the Blade of Xerxes, but he didn't really say whether it is where all demons come from or not. It is possible that the underworld is the source of all demons, as it is possible that it isn't.

I once pondered the presence of demons in Arcanum myself. They seem to always be either summoned (Demons from the Summoning College, L'anamelach, possibly Gorgoth, who came out of nowhere during the Age of Legends) or tied to cursed places (Greater Demons at the Ruby Glade, Grim Shades at the Broken Cathedral), so my guess would be that they aren't simply a native species living in Arcanum. Somewhere else - possibly, but not necessarily.

Their origin (as well as our knowledge about it) is similar to the situation of the Familiars (which could very well be considered a type/subspecies of demons, I'd say) - they are either summoned from (a) different dimension(s) or created by means of powerful magicks, yet which is truth we do not know. Perhaps the first can be said about some demons while the second about other ones.

Returning to your original question, from my knowledge Professor Eakins is the only one ever mentioning the underworld in vanilla Arcanum. It is anyone's guess whether it is a different dimension or even literally a place located deep under Arcanum. After all, the fact that Arcanum's sequel was planned to be called "Journey to the Centre of Arcanum" indicates that something is down there. Journey to the source of demons, perhaps?