Belle's Book (lore)

@d3adst1ck said in Belle's Book (lore):

This is probably an old book referencing events that are no longer relevant. Where is this book located?

It's in the Devil's Roar in one of the three new (key word) Eternal Guardian Vaults, the furthest one north, if I'm not mistaken. It's on a small rock next to the alter with the Smuggler's half-disc on it, so it's not out-dated content. Since you have to kill a brand new enemy to get into a newly-added area, it logically can't be just something I was too stupid to notice (this time). I did some more thinking and I'll expound on the theory for those interested. The book is 3 pages:

1. "I can't find the constellation that I'm looking for here (in the Devil's Roar, doesn't say what it is)
2. "I should consult with the one who knows about the constellations, Sudds (mentions him by name). He would know."
3. "I will sail the following routes, and check there for the constellation (again, doesn't say what it is) that I'm looking for."

So, the Scarab/Beetle appears in a few places. It appears on the discs in these new vaults, it's a constellation, it appeared on the Reaper pillars you had to dig up, and it's in Sudds' book with some weird story behind it about fighting with the Shark (among other stuff). The Eternal Guardians ramble on about "the Widow", but the only being that fits this description is the Siren Queen, as the King was killed (I forget why, but it's in the Tall Tales, if you open up the chamber regarding his fate. It wasn't a nice break up). The head pieces are sort of similar, resembling antlers; the Guardian having stone antlers, while the Queen has coral antlers. If we rewind to the book Sudds gives you, the Bear is supposed to be female, and gives birth to everyone, but that doesn't make sense, because there aren't any. The only bear is from Rare's old Banjo/Kazzooie property, wherein the former is a male (don't at me, gender studies students), so this is a dead end, too. So 3 questions emerge: What's this all about, what constellation is she chasing, and is it related to future material?

@cpt-maully said in Belle's Book (lore):

Hey I've never posted on this forum before, but I have been going crazy trying to figure out what she's referring to. There is zero chance it's there by accident, so there must be something hidden. Just not sure what.
So the clue is that she's looking for a missing constellation, and says it isn't here (aka inside the vault in Cinder Isle). There are constellations on the floor of the chamber. Maybe get a list of the known constellations, both ancient and modern and compare them to those vs what is on the floor of the temple to find out which one isn't represented.
So that's step one - narrow down the search for the actual constellation.
Step two has something to do with her retracing Sudd's steps across those islands, not sure if we would need to line up the stars on the corresponding islands or what exactly it is we're searching for. Maybe it is just finding the next journal left by Belle? I will do some more investigation tomorrow and see if I can figure anything out.

I'm so very glad someone else is going nuts over this, too. The floors on the Vaults are all Scarabs, and look like the discs (which also happen to only appear in said vaults) that you bring to the Smugglers that are in league with the masked guys (not the Reapers, the other ones). I had just assumed it wasn't in the sky in that area; the Scarab is referred to in the Sudds book as "The Iron One" or "The Teacher", the totem opens Crook's Hollow, and it's in the South East. There aren't really any other symbols except for the Scarab inside of the Vaults, either (I've open ever inch of those Vaults). The faces that appear in the Vaults are the same as the ones on the huge statues on the Shores of Gold (if you've never been there), so these are clearly excavation sites by...someone (probably Belle), that were digging up treasures of the Ancients.

@cpt-maully said in Belle's Book (lore):

@unseemlytag

I'm trying to link an image of the floor of the temple. But it has a pretty full collection of every ancient constellation. I tried re-doing the initial Sudd's Tall Tale, but quickly realized I'm not smart enough to understand the workings of WHY each riddle leads to a place. I get that constellations mean certain compass directions, but in some of the pictures you are supposed to ignore some stuff and focus in on some things that are not explained. You just have to guess which details are important and which aren't.

I came to the realization that any constellation based puzzle would be based on the extremely specific and arbitrary whims of whoever thought them up, and not on any logical train of thought or deduction.
You would need to do a weird cross-examination of the person who designs the puzzles at rare in order to determine what they actually mean when they say "Go to the North East" because it isn't what a sane or logical person would assume those words mean. It will have some strange caveats and things they arbitrarily decided don't count etc.

I think if there is a puzzle, I'd go mad before I stood a chance at solving it, and I'd rather watch some movies. I will try and check out Sudd's spyglass locations, but I'm not even sure what I'm looking for. And doing that is for another day.

You said something that got me thinking, but it was too late and I didn't want to double-post and annoy the mods. The Ancients have their own constellations that Sudds n' Co. follow (we'll call the the Classics), and then there are the ones in the Skelly Camps where the Burning Blade stops (we'll call them the Expansion Set). Getting irl constellations would be pointless, but there's some overlap between the Classics and the Expansion. I cracked open the image and see the Owl, the Bat, the Lion...all Expansion constellations. I see an eye in a hand, which could be an Order of Souls reference, which makes sense, since there are skulls for them in the boxes. In about 48 hours, Rare's going to release the next part of their Season, but for a limited time. It MIGHT include a new book by Belle somewhere.
Looking at the constellations, the Sea Horse is drawn on one of the rocks on one of the Islands that the Trap Maker gets you to go to. The Fox, Butterfly, Scarab and Owl are all Skelly Camp constellations, and have their own little lore stories. The scorpion is new, and I've been playing since Goldhoarder Compass journeys were new. I'm beginning to think that it's not the Scarab, and actually a Black Widow spider. The leg count and poison motifs make sense.
If you read into the lore, it says that the Ancients did business with certain emmissaries, but eventually it got cut off, and then cue the Shroudbreaker voyages.
My concern is that the new battle will come out, there'll be a book hidden somewhere in Molten Sands, and nobody will care because there's a war going on over some arbitrary treasure there. It's even weirder when you wonder WHY she decided to go there in the first place. Cinder is a pretty arbitrary place to go, and not exactly the safest place. Unlike Briggsy, there's almost nothing about Belle to really tell you what motivates her to go places.
Wildest guess? She's trying to find the "husband" spider constellation, so she can get rid of all these stupid Guardians and the Banished.

Update (sorry mods) :

I went to the source of our new content and found an alter with a triangle key (like the one for the Banished doors), and 3 doors (2 are inaccessable due to rocks). Two have skelly writing on them. I translated the longer one (the one you can probably open after the update, and hopefully contains Belle's next book) and it just says "Skeletons Dig from Sun Rise to Sun Set". The other door in the side of the volcano says "dig when - - " (I couldn't find a translation for the other two symbols). I'm just going to assume that the former is a dumb joke by Rare, but why you'd make all of this stuff just to have it be meaningless is...strange. It's hours of work to do stuff like shoving a huge door into the side of a volcano. Not sure what's in the Molten Fortress Vault, but hopefully someone can tell us. I remember what it used to be, which is certainly different from what it is now.