Abstract
Problem: What background lore did the Arcanum development team treat as canon but never fully express in the game itself?
Approach: Tim Cain shares internal team assumptions, design notes, and unwritten worldbuilding details that informed Arcanum's creation but were never explicitly stated in-game — the "non-expository" lore.
Findings: The team had deep cosmological, racial, and technological lore that went far beyond what the game presented, including cyclical magic, tech beyond Vendigroth, terrifying entities above the ancient gods, and dark gnomish experiments.
Key insight: Arcanum's world was built on an iceberg of lore — the game only showed the tip, while the team operated with a much richer and darker set of assumptions underneath.
1. Magic Goes in Cycles
The most fundamental piece of non-expository lore: magic in Arcanum's world naturally increases and decreases in power over cycles spanning tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Nobody knows why — it just happens.
The game mentions that magic used to be more powerful, but Tim doesn't believe it ever explicitly described the cyclical nature or its scale. These cycles have been repeating for millions of years.
At the time of Arcanum, magic has dropped to roughly 60-70% of its peak power. At its highest point, each magic college would have had 10 spells (not the 5 in-game), and there would have been more colleges than the game presented. At its lowest point, magic drops to absolute zero — no magic, no magical creatures, no elves, no orcs, no vampires, no dragons. The world becomes like ours.
This raises what Tim calls a "huge mystery" the team knew they'd have to solve but never did: where do magical creatures come from when magic returns? If they all died off or disappeared during the trough, how do they reappear?
2. Technology Cycles Opposite to Magic
Tech also cycles, but for a different reason than magic. Magic cycles naturally for unknown reasons; tech cycles reactively — it rises when magic falls because people need it, and it declines when magic rises because it becomes unnecessary.
When everyone can teleport, you don't need railroads. When you can summon minerals from thin air, you don't need mines. At peak magic, tech is pointless. At zero magic, tech is everything.
At its height, technology would have far more disciplines than Arcanum shows. The game goes up to electrical technology, but Tim lists what comes after: nuclear, fusion, quantum, quasi-matter, higher dimensions. And critically — Vendigroth wasn't anywhere close to peak technology. Despite being presented as a pinnacle of tech civilization, it was still early on the curve.
3. Other Continents
The game hints at other continents, but the team had discussed them internally. The key detail: no other continent was undergoing an industrial revolution. They were all experiencing waning magic but hadn't developed significant technology.
The tech explosion was unique to the player's continent, driven specifically by Gilbert Bates and the situation with the dwarves. This is also why the player character was traveling there — the economy was booming from the industrial revolution, attracting workers.
Interestingly, this boom benefited magic users too. Tech couldn't do everything yet, so mages who could teleport ore or goods quickly found plenty of work. Both magic and tech economies were thriving simultaneously.
4. The Ancient Gods and What Lies Above
The game covers the ancient gods and the Age of Legends. What it doesn't reveal is that the team imagined evil counterparts to these gods — equivalent beings on the same power level who were their enemies. The Void hints at this but never makes it explicit.
More significantly, the team agreed there was something higher than all the ancient gods — higher even than Velorien the All-Father. The gods were absolutely terrified of this entity. They refused to speak of it, fearing they would attract its attention.
Tim's mental model: the ancient gods were powerful beings who created Arcanum as a "playground." Their evil counterparts were like bad friends trying to intrude. But somewhere out there was something vastly above them all — something that could take over or destroy their playground. The team never explored what this entity was, but they always assumed this hierarchy existed.
5. Racial Interbreeding
The game features half-elves and half-orcs (both human hybrids), but the team had a specific stance on elf-orc hybrids: biologically possible, but it effectively never happens.
Elves would "always stop this in horrific ways," and most orcs wouldn't want it either. Tim declines to elaborate further, but the implication is clear — the racial politics of Arcanum ran darker than the game showed.
6. The Gnomes Were Far Worse
The quest revealing that gnomes created half-ogres on Half-Ogre Island (which Tim notes "really needed a better name") only scratches the surface. The gnomes were involved in far worse things.
Tim connects this to his recurring game design theme: power corrupts institutions. The gnomes were the wealthiest people on the planet, and they were funding "all kinds of illicit" activities. His notes mention experiments involving kites (the small, hostile forest creatures), though he won't say what those experiments entailed. Beyond half-ogres and kites, there were even darker projects. Tim's advice: "Let your imagination run wild."
7. The Unified Ore Is Fake
Tim adds one final piece that he frames as his personal canon rather than full team consensus: the ore that could combine magic and tech was not real.
This ore, mentioned in connection with a potential Arcanum 2, was supposed to be able to bridge the magic-tech divide. Tim wanted it to be a complete myth — perhaps a fabrication to lure explorers underground, perhaps the result of a flawed experiment. He "didn't like the idea" and would have worked to eliminate it had development continued. He calls this "canon according to Cain" — the ore is gone.
8. References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtwsdb7hasM