Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999 Video Game)

Michael Bell: Raziel, Melchiah

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Quotes 

• [Raziel confronts Kain in the Chronoplast] 

  Kain : At last. I must say I'm disappointed in your progress. I imagined you'd be here sooner. Tell me, did it trouble you to murder your brothers?

  Raziel : Did it trouble *you* when you ordered me into the abyss?

  Kain : No. I had faith in you. In your ability to hate, in your self-righteous indignation.

  Raziel : Lies! You cannot have foreseen all of this.

  Kain : Eternity is relentless, Raziel. When I first stole into this chamber centuries ago, I did not fathom the true power of knowledge. To know the future, Raziel. To see its paths and streams tracing out into the infinite. As a man, I could never have contained such forbidden truths. But each of us is so much more than we once were. Gazing out across the plains of possibility, do you not feel with all your soul, how we have become like gods? And as such, are we not indivisible? As long as a single one of us stands, we are legion! That is why, when I must sacrifice my children to the void, I can do so with a clear heart.

  Raziel : Very poetic, Kain. But in the end, you offer no more than a convenient rationalization for your crimes.

  Kain : These chambers are for insight for those *patient* enough to look. In your haste to find me, perhaps you have not gazed deeply enough. Our futures are predestined. Moebius foretold mine a millennium ago. We each play out the parts fate has written for us. We are compelled ineluctably down pre-ordained paths. Free will... is an illusion.

  Raziel : I have been to the Tomb of Sarafan, Kain. Your dirty secret is exposed. How could you transform a Sarafan priest into a vampire?

  Kain : How could I not? One must keep his friends close, Raziel, and his enemies even closer. Can you grasp the absurd beauty of the paradox? We're the same, Sarafan and vampire, with our holy wars, our obsession with Nosgoth's domination. Who better to serve me than those whose passion transcends all notions of good and evil?

  Raziel : I will not applaud your clever blasphemy. The Sarafan were saviors, defending Nosgoth from the corruption that *we* represent. My eyes are opened, Kain. I find no nobility in the un-life you rudely forced on my unwilling corpse!

  Kain : You may have uncovered your past, but you know nothing of it. You think the Sarafan were noble? Altruistic?

  [chuckles] 

  Kain : Don't be simple. Their agenda was the same as ours.

  Raziel : You are lost in a maze of moral relativism, Kain. These apparitions and portents... what game are you playing now?

  Kain : Destiny is a game, is it not? And now, you await my latest move.

• Raziel : [upon first seeing his body]  I would choose oblivion over this travesty.

  Elder God : The choice is not yours.

• Morlock : Heretic, you shall not pass!

  Raziel : Such loyalty, to one who has you guarding this outpost like a chained dog. Tell me, do you prosper on the scraps he casts you?

  Morlock : Your insults will do nothing to blunt the agony of your demise!

  Raziel : Kain killed me once, behold the results. I have no more to fear from you!

• Kain : Raziel... the Abyss has been unkind.

  Raziel : I am your creation, Kain. Now, as before, you criticize your own work.

• Raziel : Damn you, Kain! You are not God! This act of genocide is unconscionable!

• Raziel : I would choose integrity, Kain.

• Raziel : Am I reduced to this? A ghoul? A fratricide?

  Elder God : Elevated, Raziel... not reduced.

• Raziel : You are lost in a maze of moral relativism, Kain. These apparitions and portents... what game are you playing now?

  Kain : Destiny is a game, is it not? And now you await my latest move...

• Raziel : I knew my opponents' weaknesses, having suffered them myself. Physical wounds are fleeting - a vampire's immortal flesh begins to close as soon as it is cleaved. Vampires need only fear those wounds that impale, or inflame. Water scorches like acid, and fledglings are devastated by sunlight's touch... I would have to modify my tactics to suit my foes.

• Melchiah : Everyone is afraid, sibling. You awake to a world of fear. These times of change are so... unsettling. Do you think I feel no revulsion for this form? Do you believe for a moment that our Lord would risk his empire upon an upstart inheritance?

  Raziel : Enough riddles - what are you saying?

  Melchiah : You are the last... to die...

• Raziel : Tell me, Melchiah - where can I find Kain?

  Melchiah : The master is beyond your reach, Raziel. He makes himself known when He sees fit - not when commanded.

• Raziel : A crevice in which to cower, only scuttling from the shadows to devour a victim already ensnared in your cowardly trap. But you've made the mistake of leaving me unbound, and it is *you* who must succumb to *my* will.

  Zephon : Will... instinct... reflex action... the insect mind finds little difference. I warn you, brother - as my stature has grown, so it is matched by my appetite... step forward, morsel!

• Raziel : Seraphan, Rahab. The antithesis of all we ever believed.

  Rahab : Does it matter? We were lost. He saved us.

  Raziel : Saved us? From what?

  Rahab : From ourselves.

• Dumah : Not even Kain is my equal.

  Raziel : Even the strongest vampire is vulnerable.

  Dumah : We shall test your thesis, Raziel.

• Raziel : The descent had destroyed me... and yet, I lived.

• [when trying to grill Melchiah for information] 

  Raziel : Answer me *little* brother, or I shall beat an answer from your horrid lips!

• Elder God : I know you, Raziel. You are worthy.

  Raziel : What madness is this? What pitiful form is this that have come to inhabit? Death would be a release next to this travesty!

  Elder God : You did not survive the abyss, Raziel. I have only spared you from total dissolution.

  Raziel : I would choose oblivion over this existence!

  Elder God : The choice is not yours.

  Raziel : I am destroyed!

  Elder God : YOU ARE REBORN! The birth of one of Kain's abominations traps the essence of life. It is this soul that animates the corpse you *lived* in. And that, Raziel, is the demise of Nosgoth. There is no balance. The souls of the dead remain trapped. I cannot spin them in the wheel of fate. They cannot complete their destinies.

  Elder God : Redeem yourself. Or, if you prefer, avenge yourself. Settle your dispute with Kain. Destroy him and your brethren. Free their souls, and let the wheel of fate churn again. Use your hatred to reave their souls. I can make it possible. Become my "soul reaver"- my angel of death.

• Raziel : Kain is deified. The clans tell tales of him. Few know the truth. He was mortal once, as were we all. However, his contempt for humanity drove him to create me and my bretheren. I am Raziel, first born of his lieutenants. I stood with Kain and my bretheren at the dawn of the empire. I have served him a millennium. Over time, we became less human, and more... divine. Kain would enter the state of change and emerge with a new gift. Some years after the master, our evolution would follow, until I had the honor of surpassing my lord. For my transgression, I earned a new kind of reward...

  [Kain tears the bones from Raziel's wings, and Raziel screams in pain] 

  Raziel : Agony! There was only one possible outcome. My eternal damnation. I, Raziel, was to suffer the fate of traitors and weaklings, to burn forever in the bowels of the Lake of the Dead.

  Kain : Cast him in!

  Raziel : Tumbling, burning with white hot fire, I plunged into the depths of the abyss. Unspeakable pain, relentless agony, time ceased to exist. Only this torture and a deepening hatred of the hypocrisy that damned me to this hell. An eternity passed and my torment receded, bringing me back from the precipice of madness. The descent had destroyed me. Yet, I lived.

  Elder God : Raziel. You are worthy.