The Elemental Reaver Forges - Soul Reaver - Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds

The Elemental Reaver Forges

Soul Reaver was originally designed with six Forges which would give Raziel The Elemental Reavers upgrades. When the Reaver upgrades were deleted from the game, so were the corresponding Forges.

Seven Forges are present in prototype versions of the game up until mid-February 1999:

Raziel's territory features the Fire Reaver Forge (huba 12, containing the object mfire)
The Sarafan Tomb includes the Sunlight Reaver Forge (forge 6, containing the object mlight)
The Drowned Abbey includes the Water Reaver Forge (aluka 13, containing the object mwater), located where the Fire Reaver Forge is in the final version of the game
The Sound Reaver Forge (cathy 44, containing the object msound) is located in the Silenced Cathedral
The Ash Village (Dumah's territory) contains the Stone Reaver Forge (nightb7, containing the object mstone)
A particularly ominous Forge (city 4 - believed to be the Spirit Forge, containing the object mforge) is located in the Human Citadel
One extra Forge (adda 2) is also included, near both the entrance to the Oracle's Cave and the Stone Reaver Forge

The seventh Forge (adda 2) does not include an object, unlike the others. The extra Forge may have been due to relocation of these areas during gameplay testing, or may indicate that some other Reaver ability was intended to be obtained from a Forge in much earlier versions of the game. The Forge in the Citadel has an object named simply mforge. The Spectral and Material Reavers are also separate abilities within the game engine, so perhaps Raziel originally only obtained the Spectral Reaver during his first encounter with Kain, and using it in the Material realm may have required using a Forge.

The Forges in these early versions of the game are only partially functional. For example, the Water Forge can be used to imbue the Reaver with water, and several of the Forges have a cinematic that can be triggered, but most of them do not change the list of abilities that the player has obtained.

Prior to the discovery of the early prototypes, it was believed that the fountain hidden in the Citadel might have been related to the Water Forge, but this is actually a repurposed version of The Spirit Glyph Area.

The "Salvation, Revelation, Deceit" preview video includes a brief shot of the Water Reaver Forge (notice the splashing water at Raziel's feet).

Several prerelease screenshots appear to depict the Sunlight Reaver Forge, which seems to have been modified into the coloured light puzzle in the Chronoplast. It is believed that the stained glass image in the "chapel" room (of a vampire being slain with a sword radiating sunbeams) was originally designed as the breakable doorway to the Sunlight Reaver Forge, due to its stylistic resemblance to the Fire Forge's doorway in prerelease versions of the game.

Several pieces of music available on the Soundtracks page in the Soul Reaver file have titles which are related to the deleted Forges in that they appear to be named after the location where a Reaver would have been obtained: "Cathedral Reaver" and "Tomb Reaver".

The Deleted Forges, Reavers, and the Spirit Glyph video includes footage of the Forges.