VanToRia Writes

That’s right. New region, new lore and now new timeline. You see, now we know that the Elsword people got a calendar! At least, as far as years and eras are concerned. So far, we don’t know if they’re working with the Gregorian calendar like we do for days and months, but hey, baby steps.

Now, what’s the whole basis of this new timeline? Two dialogues:

With this, we can start piecing some events in Elrios’ history with actual years.

But before we go into it, an important clarification: the Royal Velder Calendar is most likely based on the Elrianode Calendar. Why do I say this? Well, because of the information of the screenshot below, and the fact that if we do the math, the El Explosion doesn’t line up with year zero of the Velder calendar. Not by a long shot.

Since the founders were nobles, you could imagine they kept the old calendar and that it got renamed either by them or at some later point

So, with that in mind, let’s get our chronological events in order

Founding of the Elrian Kingdom — year 0 RVC

So far, the only lore we have is that a General “with the symbol of the sun” was the one to rally people to him and protect others from the darkness and monsters around them. Whether this unnamed general is tied to Solace or to Avarand Solias is yet to be confirmed.

The Great Nasod Wars — after 550 RVC

There were two Nasod Wars, one that started before Adrian, which ended in the El being corrupted, and the one Adrian kinda started, which ended in Adam’s defeat/exile to Altera and Eve’s origins. Nasods were created 550 years after the founding of the Elrian kingdom, So, if the timeline aligns, Eve is the oldest character. She’s most likely close to or over a millennium old. Now, Rena could be older or not, but we have nothing to confirm Rena’s birth year or even begin to estimate it.

The El Explosion — around year 867 RVC

Well, this is the first solid year we have to an important event: Solace’s biggest mist— I mean, Dantelion’s greatest plan against a guy who was totally innocent of all ill-intent. With this date in mind though, we can approximate Noah’s birth year: 852 RVC.

The Cataclysm years — from ~867 RVC to ~1167 RVC

This long period is marked by war, demons everywhere and a desperate attempt by King Melek to kill the demons that are causing a great part of the chaos. Add comes from this time, and, curiously we can know more or less his precise birth year because his lore says he hails from a time period exactly 300 years before the present. That means Add was born on 1067 RVC.

What makes that wild is that, had he not fallen into that hole, and he had survived, somehow, he would’ve been around 80 years old when King Melek is crowned in 1147 RVC. He would have been in his late mid-to-late seventies when the Hero started to go around bringing hope to the world.

The unknown years — from ~1167 RVC to 1367 RVC

From here on, we have no concrete years on what happened where, but the main thing I want to say is that we can estimate Scar’s appearance in Ruben to 1364 RVC. The Velder Civil War happened before that, as did Elkashu’s disappearance, but we have no exact dates for that.

Still, going by the fact Elesis was old enough to fight in the Velder Civil War, then her participation could’ve been around 1360 RVC (she's gotta be old enough to pick a sword and actually fight because her father already believed in her skill, y'know? That's why he brought there and abandoned his son like the good dad he is).

Thus, the start of the Civil War itself was most likely before then. Elkashu got called into it, and although Elkashu wasn't given too much backstory, he also hasn't been directly tied to any known Velder faction, so chances are the fighting was getting bad and they called on him.

As far as Raven lore goes, Seris’ death is still up in the air as is Owen’s betrayal, but the war definitely ended by 1364 because Elesis was back in Ruben 3 years before the start of Elsword's adventure. Thus, Seris had to have died before then and Raven had to also have been taken by the Nasods either around 1364 or before it.

I would hope that Raven got to become a cyborg before 1364 because Adam started his whole plan with the Black Crow and Nasod supremacy to defend humanity from demons and he predicted there was a bigger invasion coming along.

KoG wouldn’t write a reactive bot that just had 3 years or less to build a Nasod army against a demon army, right guys?

Start of Elsword’s adventure — 1,367 RVC

See, we have always been told 500 years passed since the El explosion when the game events starts and so far this hasn’t changed. We just now have a year. So, with that, we have precise birth years for every human character:

Elsword, Lithia and Chung: born 1,354 RVC

Aisha: born 1,352 RVC

Raven and Ciel: born 1,343 RVC

Ara: born 1,350 RVC

Elesis: born 1,351 RVC

With that said, if we take the canonical ages of the 3rd job changes are true, then the current year for the events in the game is: 1,372 RVC. That’s what I used to calculate Lithia’s birth year. Rose’s birth year doesn’t matter because she’s not even from Elrios~

Believe it or not, my headcanon calendar assumed people restarted to count the years after the El Explosion, meaning that would be their year zero. So, it’s nice to know that not only I was wrong but I was wrong in a way I can easily fix and then integrate this knowledge in my future works. Hopefully that helps you guys, too… assuming I’m not the only one writing fics for this game on this platform. But even if I am, this was a fun exercise to do.

Disclaimer: For the purposes of this essay, the new Mirror Del NPC will be considered as a boy called the “Observer”. The official translation refers to the character as a girl called the “Watcher”. My choice is influenced by the fan translation of the story quest, which is what I was exposed to first.

I’m going to say something I never thought I would ever say after Elysion and the Solace tragedy released: KoG is kinda cooking with this one. Now, granted, it’s KoG so it’s not a five-course meal made with immaculate taste and the finest ingredients, but it’s honestly very solid. It was genuinely enjoyable because you can see the attempt at a more experimental, more mature type of storytelling. And one of the reasons why it’s because it explores three things I thought KoG was allergic to: horror, non-linear narratives, and fatal character flaws. The other reason is because the new batch of retcons now give us a concrete timeline which we sure didn’t have for the game’s entire existence. That timeline also helps me place a more complete history of Elrios with concrete years, so expect that timeline to come up later as a separate post. This analysis will be very long as it is already.

So, if you’re down for the ride, get comfy, stay hydrated and let’s get going with the first point.

KoG can do horror? Since when?

Now, yes, I know. Apostasia and Herrscher exist. There’s “ghosts” in Feita, there’s zombie demons in Feita, there’s a demon god that almost got revived in Lanox and other “horror” creatures we’ve seen before. You could count all that under “horror”, but with how cartoony the violence is, I’m amazed KoG even decided to go as far as to deform Herrscher’s model in any significant way to inject a semblance of Cosmic Horror. Still, it’s all very surface level. It’s something you can just basically just chalk up to aesthetics.

The horror in Mirror Del is different because it’s actually crucial to the story. It’s the Elgang actually facing Eldritch horrors beyond their comprehension (in a “safe” simulation) and, I’m not gonna lie, it is structured as proper horror

Ciel (mind-controlled): You don’t have to find [the creature]/Lu (mind-controlled): It’s already here. Next panel is this.

It’s not something that will make anyone jump out of their seat, but I can appreciate the attempt at creating the unsettling beat and reveal. The voice actors help sell this, and I think that it could get some chills out of some if it was an animated cut-scene. As it is though? I wouldn’t have expected it out of Elsword.

The horror structure doesn’t even stop there. It’s also present with a very mind-controlled Chung. The scene starts with a happy-sounding Chung talking to Ara about a wonderful colour, and I think that in this case, the lack of animation and VN-style presentation adds to the horror because it’s not exactly clear what Chung is that excited about and why Ara’s not so keen on seeing it… until you then have this:

Even with just Elwiki dialogues, you can see that the intent was to make this scene at least horror-adjacent.

Ara is completely overpowered because she’s either too weak or too hesitant to truly fight back. She could end up hurting Chung and making it worse for the two of them or breaking free from mind control could have genuinely put her under physical strain. From the way the dialogues are spoken by the korean VAs, I personally see it as a mix of both, but from dialogue lines alone it’s open to interpretation.

In any case, her hesitation is going to end up being her undoing until Eve bails her and Chung out with a slap. It turns out she’s immune to the eldritch creature because Adrian somehow installed an anti-Cthulhu defence module on her for reasons I’m sure nobody will explain until 2036. It’s a bit of an anti-climactic ending, for sure, but let me insist on this point: Since when has KoG hired writers who are willing to fully explore eldritch horror and mind-control like this? Granted, I haven’t looked in detailed to Magmelia and Serpentium, and I think Magmelia also tackles dreams/mind-control, so those of you who know more recent demon-realm lore, pre-Atma’Ram, can correct me and tell me if KoG has planted small seeds of horror in their narrative like this. I genuinely find this to be new narrative ground for the game and I’m all for it even if it doesn’t scare me; I can absolutely respect the horror structure it’s relying on. I would love to see more of it if it was there in the past.

Another thing that Mirror Del does—to a degree of success that’s far above to a certain chinese sci-fi gacha that I’ve talked about before—is tackling a non-linear narrative centred around time-loops in a way that makes dialogue matter a lot to piece the full picture instead of serving to vague and shallow philosophizing dribble that destroys my enjoyment to a degree I didn’t think possible. And that's saying something considering I still somehow bother to give a chance to KoG’s way to write lore.

So, let’s get into that because Elsword’s newest region has a messy, but interesting, semi-coherent story that’s very fun for me to piece back together into a convoluted, but hopefully coherent, whole.

Mirror Del — An unbreakable time-loop?

Mirror Del starts as a very confusing arc. But from the get-go, you know that the Observer is an entity that is watching the happenings around the demon realm by shifting mirrors. He sees both the Henir cult making their moves and then focuses on the Elgang. The story then continues with a somewhat slice-of-life bonding scene and for a good chunk of the quest, I was of the belief that the Observer was just doing that: observing. And then two crumbs hinting at the truth happen:

Elsword is sick and isn’t sure why

Laby gets a dream about people completely unrelated to anyone we’ve ever seen

Point number 1 gets a red-herring explanation, that being the events of Serpentium where he got poisoned and whatnot. Obviously, this sounds suspect if you consider that they had their break in Atma’Ram and Elsword didn’t exactly complain about his health there, especially after the hotsprings. But you know good ol’ KoG like I do, don’t ya? Surely this is just another incoming retcon we’re gonna see later on, right?

Well, surprisingly, wrong. Whether they did this intentionally or not, KoG pulled a curve ball on me. They successfully subverted my expectations in a very pleasant way. Elsword being sick is the key to understanding that time isn’t flowing normally anymore and that raises the stakes far more than a bigger, meaner demon to beat. It’s the kind of existential obstacle that I hope the writers don’t mess up for next patch because in my opinion, Mirror Del could be the basis for making Elsword story become genuinely good.

But I’d rather not hold my breath because it’s still KoG writing this. They have plenty of time to shoot their own story in the face. So, let’s go back to clue number 2.

Laby gets a dream about mages and a swordsman who are trapped in some kind of underground place or building and are trying to save lives. We genuinely have no context for any of this before she just wakes up and wonders what she was dreaming about. So, at least for me, I thought this might be some sort of flashback hinting at her true identity. Reminder that Laby’s with the Elgang in the demon realm to find what she is besides a being a pink child who speaks in 3rd person and mellowed Add out into a tsundere.

There’s a very immediate problem with the easiest explanations to both hints though… it’s never clear where exactly the Elgang is right now. And that’s hint number 3. Which is the very first question I started to ask myself when, later on, when Rose and Raven seemed to awaken in a completely different place: Where was everyone before?

See, it’s easy to assume we’re maybe observing them talk and walk around Atma’Ram through the Observer’s perspective because that’s where they were. That’s where they learnt more about Henir’s cult, so it makes absolute sense, right, that they’re discussing Henir and the cultists as they’re making their way to… where? Where are they? Where are they going?

The answer? Nowhere. They literally cannot go anywhere because they are trapped within Mirror Del. Since when have they been trapped there? That’s one of the existential questions I hope they won’t mess up in the next lore update because the answer could be, dare I say, what would turn Elsword’s story into being actually good.

The important part for now is that the Elgang only realizes they’re trapped once they start appearing in an unknown underground realm with mirrors. The “visible” form of Mirror Del, to put it in simple terms. Raven and Rose are the first to wake up in that realm and the only way “out” is through a mirror they’re guided towards by the Observer. They’re all separated from each other in the beginning and they only reunite because the observer aids them to do so. That is also an important piece to confirm that the Elgang’s trapped once the story ends, so keep it in mind.

But, after all is said and done, everyone follows the mysterious voice to the mirror and reunites. And the voice is that of a young, pale boy: the Observer.

The Observer — An ugly mirror to the heroes’ impeccable image

See, to me, the Observer is the best NPC KoG has ever made because he doesn’t need that many headcanons (unlike Owen) to be a fascinating character. He speaks in broken sentences since his introduction, and he overall shows to be like most Elsword NPCs: helpful, tropey, talks with everyone, gives lore dumps to help them (and the player) understand how the realm works and how they can “escape”… except the game also gives plenty of flashbacks that flesh out the kind of backstory that, personally, made me question the true intentions of the Observer.

See, the Observer has beef with everyone. Very personal beef. Very understandable beef. It honestly baffled me to see KoG try and explore a more “grounded” reaction to the trauma something as violent as a demon invasion can have on someone. Now, sure, I understand, Chung got the right to be angry at Lu, she wasn’t immediately trusted, the new retcons are trying (and imo still failing) to make her alliance with the Elgang more natural than the literal tea and crumpets that convinced everyone to just accept her and Ciel no questions asked. That was the original lore. I remember. It’s seared into my memories.

However, try as they might, KoG inevitably starts to try and make the demons seem as “not that bad” the more they explore the demon realm. It was all a matter of “a few bad apples” and so on. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s a good take because yes, wars are generally caused by a powerful minority and if it were up to the majority, it wouldn’t have happened. But, that’s only a perspective people who didn’t live through the conflict itself, who didn’t lose anything directly, or who had a really, really long time to take a step back and see the other side without hatred in their mind can have.

The demon invasion is fresh on everyone’s minds. Everyone has lost someone, or has at least seen up close and personally what the demons have taken for them. And at least in late Varnymir early Rigomor KoG was at least willing to have Add point it out, but that’s all it is. Someone pointing it out. Chung getting mad at Lu for exactly one minute of dialogue before everyone treats his reaction like an over-reaction. And then, they all move on. Every conflict gets pulled under the rug because the plot must move on without it. That’s something I’ve always disliked about Elsword lore.

But then, we have the Observer.

Bro has Rena, Lu, Ciel, and Eve standing right there and he doesn’t care. Respect.

My eyes widened a little when I saw this dialogue because, much like the horror, we rarely if ever see KoG let anyone openly hate other groups, especially when there’s members of said group in the Elgang. Now, having a character have an emotional reason to hate Elves, Nasods and Demons and openly say so? Now, that’s a first.

As usual, though, KoG gives him his 2-minute hate and then has him talk with Rena with the others and he mellows out. Except I don’t really buy it. You see, from the flashbacks within Mirror Del (part of which was shown in Laby’s dream before), show the life of the Observer when he was the Hero. The flashbacks themselves take a good chunk of the story overall, but the important traits of the Observer are these:

He's unironically Doom Guy and sealed the Abyss and its power from encroaching into Elrios (he and his friends died for that)

Before being the Hero, he was the Rat, a street urchin with little to no future

He had a “blessing” that gave him special insight (which I believe is a type of divine power)

He “created” Mirror Del to make each mirror hold the monsters he and his friends faced to “study” them and find if there was ever a chance where his friends could've been saved

He can travel through the mirrors and move them but it's unclear to what degree he controls them.

Now point number four had me muttering “They should totally use that as foreshadowing for Owen,” but I digress. All these points are important but I put them in order because it's, more or less, the reverse chronological order in which these aspects of his character are unveiled. And yet, I think it's easier to tackle them in this order because that's how they build a full picture of the nuances of the Observer’s character.

The Observer is a character whose hatred towards demons has crystallized for centuries

First of all, he may have softened towards Rena because of the conversation they had, but the Observer generally avoids even talking to Lu and Ciel directly. He helps or at least considers helping everyone who's having a hard time against the monsters in the mirror worlds except for Lu and Ciel. Had Eve not had Chtulhu immunity and helped Ara, Chung and Rena reach the mirror world where Lu, Ciel and Add got trapped, the situation could’ve been more dire. The Observer does watch over what Eve’s group does and notes that in the end they didn't need his help, meaning he would've considered intervening, but we don't know what the situation might've looked like for Add, Lu and Ciel had Eve and the rest come up later than they did. There's a very real chance there could've been no one to save or that it would've ended in an in-group fight that goes beyond a strong slap.

The Observer was willing to gamble that. I don’t think he would’ve cared all that much if Lu and Ciel had died. You see, the reason I say he’s unironically Doom Guy is because of what he does some time after his friends are killed. He has one chance to go back to Elrios after the mission has failed, after he's the only one left alive and he's been fighting alone but you know what he does? He says: Nah. We won't stop until every demon is dead. Don’t believe me? I wouldn’t have believed myself either but it’s there.

Fair reminder that the duties the Observer has left was the Royal Mandate: destroy the demons at their source.

Now, beyond the fact that we’re told that the Observer spent roughly 3 centuries fighting demons and/or being trapped in Mirror Del like Doom Guy, is that he isn’t a clean, selfless, heroic Hero. No, far from it.

That’s why the second point I brought up is what matters. It’s what plays into the feeling I have that the Observer may not be helping the Elgang as much as they believe he is.

The Observer — the Rat who became attached to his image as the Hero

You see, before being the hero who would go with a suicide mission into the demon realm to rip and tear until every single demon dies, the Observer was an orphan, on the streets, in a village with no name who stole and hid like a rat to survive. Hence his first title. The Rat. After he's lost everyone and he's resolute to keep fighting demons, he doesn't do so as the Hero. No, he rejects that identity as much as he rejects his real name. The narration makes clear that he “transforms” back into the Rat. Scowling, feral, stealing and killing both to survive and for revenge. We know he remembers everything about his comrades; their names, their motivations, their stories and why they followed him. And why they died. Yet, he refuses to give that to himself. He even accepts and embraces to return to the worst yet “natural” version of himself—the Rat. Hell, the Observer even introduces himself as the “filthy Rat” to the Elgang, saying that he’s been known by that name longer than by his real name. And that may be true, but for reasons the Elgang doesn’t understand.

I don't know how intentional the dramatic irony here is because I've never seen nor expected KoG to ever try it. But if it is intentional, then this scene gains a whole new meaning because it's very likely that the Observer is lying when he says he wants to help, while telling the truth about what he really feels and how he sees Elsword. He laments that they didn't meet earlier because now he's full of hatred and not afraid to trap them with him even if he feels a certain kinship with Elsword. And the kinship the Observer feels towards Elsword comes from a very specific thing they have in common: they share the same blessing.

I think that blessing has to be some kind of divine power. At the very least, it’s what lets both the hero and Elsword to rally others around them. The Hero learns how to become an excellent swordsman with his gift and defeat enemies many times as big and strong as him, including demons. Now, remember what Elsword did at the very start of Ruben? Oh, right, use his power to overpower Berthe. But the blessing isn’t just brute strength. No, it’s a specific resonance with the El that Ain notes from the moment he sees Elsword go super-saiyan against Berthe.

And I think that the special resonance with the El doesn’t just give Elsword raw power. I think it also makes it so he can gather allies even from unlikely sources. We see it later with Raven, then with Eve. Something about Elsword is just made to “get the best” out of people and, curiously, we also have something very similar with the Hero.

I could go on with examples of everyone who joins the group, but you get the point already, don’t you?

Elsword has a power so big an exceptional he literally fused with the El, at least momentarily, to restore it. That’s something only the El Lady was supposed to do, yet Elsword’s divine gift is so strong it overrides that system entirely until his friends break him out of the crystal. That’s not something the Hero was ever even hinted to be capable of. Had he had such power, then his mission would’ve turned around restoring the El, like now Elsword subconsciously tries to do and hints at from the very early arcs of the game. This is real protagonist power, and the Observer is acutely aware of it. It’s the kind of power that would’ve made him a true Hero.

Reminder that Saving the El Lady implies restoring the El, too. This dialogue is from chapter 2. Elder.

Now, remember that I said that the Observer was at least half-honest with Elsword when he told him all about how he envied them and how they had a totally different attitude towards demons? Well, if that part is true but that his stated intent to help isn't, then what does the Observer really mean when he says he wants to become Elsword’s power? Why does he want him to forget their meeting?

You see, when Elsword wakes up again with the rest, he's very sick and has very vicious scars on his arm. Which is exactly where the Observer grabbed him and made their power resonate to conclude they had the same type of power. The clearest and longest goal for the Observer, formerly the Hero, is to kill the root of all demons. He's just found someone with more power than he had in life, someone with so much power in fact that, well, his goal could be achieved. So, when the Observer says he wants to become Elsword’s power, part of me wonders what the consequence of that will be. Because if it was as straightforward as that, then why the secrecy? Why would it be necessary to want to make Elsword forget his encounter and what they’ve talked about?

Why, because, there's a chance the Rat wants to hide within a new Hero and finish what he couldn't do in life.

That's also a very interesting hidden layer to what the Observer tells Elsword when he’s facing the flesh tree: You must be sometimes a fool and cut down the enemy right in front of you without seeing them as a person, because the more you know about them, the less enemies you’re gonna be able to face and defeat.

It can be read on the surface level as a very concrete advice for the illusion Elsword is set to face, but it also plays on a deeper level if we start questioning the true intentions of the Observer and just how truthful he’s been so far to the group.

Which is why the nature of Mirror Del must be analysed.

The Observer — how his dying wish gave a physical form to a time anomaly that may possibly hide something far uglier

I’m gonna go out and say it: I think that Mirror Del is, deep down, is the closest thing to the actual nature of Henir and his realm the game has ever shown in its story. I say this is because, if you think about it, the trials the Elgang has to go through Mirror Del (defeating monsters of the past) and the fact they’re separated and can only be reunited after defeating every monster is exactly how Henir’s Time and Space has always worked as a dungeon.

You cannot start that dungeon in a party. You go through 20 different stages. Nineteen of which you face old boss monsters, be they from SDs, mini-bosses or dungeon bosses from anywhere from Elder to Elrianode. Even the newest versions of Henir are demon-realm raid bosses you must’ve already faced before. And the final stage is facing a Henir creature directly in its realm. It’s either Obeaazar, Luto or Echoes of Doom. It’s also very important to note that you aren’t allowed to resurrect in any version or difficulty of Henir’s Time and Space. A death triggers an automatic failure and the end of the dungeon. The only way to advance is to defeat each boss and you can exit either by defeating all twenty bosses or by dying.

You know what’s curious about Mirror Del, too? Is that, as the Observer explains, there are only two ways of getting out: defeat the monster or die.

Now, here, the Observer tells Add that if he dies then he’ll get trapped like him in the mirrors, but I don’t think that’s true. The reason being that I think the Observer has already trapped them. He may say that he created Mirror Del like he does here, but this type of environment is way too complex to depend on the will of one person, and if it does, then we don’t know for how long the Elgang has been ‘meeting’ the Observer over and over again. Here’s some lines that hint that Mirror Del might be a prison they can’t just escape from the way the Observer says:

TL;DR: Multiple dimensions exist globally and the only thing the mirrors are doing is making them more visible, kind of really blurring the lines so the Elgang can hop from one dimension (mirror) to the next. The issue is that if true, then the mirrors themselves could be a closed circuit the Elgang can’t break.

Noah says this after Elsword comes back, so everyone is technically reunited again and out of the mirrors but… well… are they really out, I wonder….

The Observer admits to Add he doesn’t control what’s going outside the mirrors, but that’s the issue. It’s never clear what “outside” is, and I’m starting to wonder if it could be Henir’s domain itself. Because, you see, it’s already working under the same mechanics as Henir’s Time and Space, the only stage missing is the last one, where you now fight a Henir-themed monster. And that could be the Observer’s “true” form, if he’s indeed a sort of jailor who wants to become a Hero again. The reason I say this is because, in the last part of the quest, in the flashback, we see that in his dying moments, the Observer wishes for a way to see his comrades again.

Piamen says that the orb has powers that shouldn't be used because it’d cause ruin. The Hero assumes that the ruin will only affect him, but I think that's more his hope than an accurate fact. Why? Because after that the Observer spends his time seeing images of his companions without ever being able to interact with them or change the outcome. So, originally the artifact gave him access to a domain where he could witness all the possibilities and different actions his friends could've taken but never intervene or change their demise.

Meanwhile, what does he tell the El Search Party? Oh, well that he made the mirrors and recreated the monsters they faced within each reflection so he could study them and find if there was a way his friends could've had a chance to make it out alive. Technically, not a lie, but not the full truth either. The realm isn’t just something made from scratch because it has a real influence in the “real world”. It can attract and trap within it people outside of it.

Part of the hint of its true nature lays in the way some non-flashback related dialogues are still contained in brown speech bubbles, which Elwiki translates as pale brown text. The text alternates between the regular white speech bubble background and the brown one and sometimes at places so odd you can’t argue it’s a flashback. It’s something happening in the present moment.

Or, to be more accurate, they are glimpses at other timelines where they're still trapped within the mirrors.

Rose may not get it, but the mirrors are parallel realities, so best not to stare too much at them.

It's like the illusion you get in a room where you have a mirror in front of you and mirror behind you. You have endless simultaneous reflections and while it takes a very long time for the El Search Party to figure it out, if they look too closely at the mirrors, the more they will come to the realization they're only one of countless versions of themselves spread across different alternate universes reflected through Mirror Del.

The Observer also reveals they have something to make them withstand being trapped in the Mirrors. Something that's either a canon interpretation of the Master Artifact or some kind of new mechanic that'll get added later. It's something that preserves and strengthens their souls. You know, the very thing that can persist across dimensions, according to Atma’Ram lore.

After this, the Observer adds that it was a mistake for them to be involved, but the Hero flashback says that he specifically observed them and called them to Mirror Del because he wanted to see if they could overcome what he and his friends couldn’t, so I think it’s fair to say that the Observer doesn’t tell any of the ESP members the truth.

With that being the case, then I think it’s fair to ask just how powerful the Observer is. His control over Mirror Del isn't made clear, but I think that again, it's more than what he explicitly says to the Elgang.

The Observer — Saviour or Jailor?

You see, because we know that the Observer devolved from the Hero to the Rat, that he wants to cling to his old image as the Hero and that he seems to hold way too many grudges to have stayed as sane and as reasonable as the Elgang assumes he is, his role and his help don't come from pure altruism. Not when he admits he resented how the Elgang triumphed where he and his friends failed and how he regrets not being able to become friends now with Elsword.

The end of the flashbacks even go far as to say that when the Observer saw the Elgang and brought them to him because he wants to see if they can truly overcome everything.

That's a little dark. That's a little villainous. And it recontextualizes when he says that the monster dimensions they got sucked in was on accident. He says that he doesn't control very well the outside forces outside the mirrors and that's either a lie because it was all intentional, or it has a morsel of truth and the reason he cannot control the outside forces is because the outside forces is directly Henir and good luck controlling that.

But if he was telling the truth, then, the fact remains that he still trapped them within the mirrors and his curiosity can be seen under an equally grim light: he wants to see if they can break out and vanquish the forces outside and hopefully bring him out with them in the process.

It would make sense for the Observer to mark Elsword and “become” part of Elsword’s power if that means he gets a vessel to escape his entrapment within the mirrors eventually, if Elsword and Co. prove themselves strong enough. If they're not, then he loses nothing. He's already spent 300 years observing from his litle weird dimensional corner. He can't die, he's already a spirit, so nothing changes.

Again, is he certain because he can see the future or because Mirror Del is his closed-loop prison and he knows that?

The marks could be from the Tree (Blight Treant) or… the Observer becoming Elsword’s power. It’s not clear and the fact that, after this scene, we see the full story of the Hero plays more into the ambiguity about what the marks mean

.

The Observer has nothing left to lose and everything to gain. The reverse is true for the Elgang and their habitual trust of the people they meet could very well be their downfall because they refuse to be “fools” that just cut down their enemy with no concern about who they are as a person.

That's the tension Mirror Del is presenting and as much as part of me wants to believe somehow KoG hired writers willing to be bold and make the story darker, there's no guarantee that'll happen. They could flatten the Observer into a helpful force that genuinely erased 300 years of hatred and despair with a few pleasant chats to see the error of his ways. That's been their standard for years. That's why their characters overall feel more like tropes than characters and a big part of why the story has overall been bad overall.

Yet, credit where credit is due. Mirror Del shows a step in the right direction. They could always take it back, but at least the Observer isn’t the only one surpassing my expectations when it comes to KoG’s writing quality. Mirror Del introduces to Ain and Elsword something I thought would be impossible: fatal character flaws.

Elsword is kind and selfless and that's exactly what could get him killed

I've already gone over this point in my breakdown of the observer as a character, but I haven't gone through the most blatant proof that whoever's writing Mirror Del took his shonen-lead kindness and tendency to use talk-no-jutsu as weaknesses of his character, not strengths.

I'm talking about his encounter with the Flesh Tree.

In that scene, Elsword is the only one who hasn't made it out to where the rest are. He's trapped within an illusion caused by the Flesh Tree’s pollen. And it’s quite telling that the first vision Elsword sees is of the desperate fight against the demons in Feita and how much it seems to affect him still. From a guy who has gone to befriend the very same demons who invaded that town and simply kick Berthe’s ass in return, I wasn’t expecting him to be immediately so emotional even when he was warned by the Observer to not trust his senses beforehand.

And although yes, as you see in the dialogues above, the Observer manages to make him ignore what the Tree is showing, he makes the mistake of once again being like a shonen protagonist and say something so obvious the Tree immediately changes tactics.

He shows someone who Elsword can’t have known, someone who only seems desperate and in need of help, like all those kind strangers Elsword has helped along the way. He should know only the Observer has survived. He should know that it’s all an illusion, and yet when he hears Piamen’s voice, he still reaches out to save him and…

I have never seen KoG write something like this. Sure, we know Elsword is self-sacrificial by nature and that the people around him have called him out on it, but he’s always been noble in his self-sacrifice, always knowing what he was putting on the line. It was the case in Velder and it was the case in Elysion/Elrianode.

But here? You see it in his expression, in the way the image shows him freezing. This is genuine fear. This is Elsword at his most vulnerable in canon. I have never expected KoG to dig up Elsword’s trauma and have it matter. I thought that was my job as a fic writer with a penchant for angst.

I’m legitimately impressed by this sequence, because it has good buildup. What it lacks from its presentation as the usual very barebones VN-style it more than makes up for it with that single shot.

It’s almost like it’s not the same game anymore. The shonen-coded Elsword I knew wouldn’t do this to its protagonist and yet here we are. Regardless on where KoG decides to take this moment, whether it’ll matter later or not, I don’t think it takes away from how it lands in this arc. It’s genuinely good, it impressed me and I think it’s gonna stick with me because it’s one of the few times where I feel like some kind of kindred spirit is putting some of what I’ve always wanted for the game to tackle in its story.

Elsword aside, another character that I was sure I was never going to see good development from was Ain, my newest main in this game. I was a firm proponent to have “canon” Ain be Richter for the very simple reason that his attitude overall doesn’t change and, for a character supposed to embrace humanity, Ain rejects it in all but name. He can laugh, he can prank others, he can be sassy and occasionally have his moral dilemmas, but like everything else in this game, it gets swept under the rug. It doesn’t tell me anything about the real depth of the humanity Ain may-or-may-not be developping.

But the Observer challenges that perception I had of an Ain with a humanity so artificial I’d rather have him as an unapologetically inhuman servant of Ishmael.

What are Ishmael’s duties to humanity?

The Observer is not fond of Ain. He says it directly to Aisha when they meet later. He even tells her that he’s not kind like Piamen, the priest he used to know, and makes his dislike very known because Ain “bullied” him.

Ain doesn’t even deny this, by the way, which is in line with his canon portrayal. I was expecting some kind of vaguely humorous exchange with Ain making fun or something he said or making him a new nickname or something minor like that.

While yes, that does end up happening, it’s the way it leads there that makes me believe, for the first time that Ain may genuinely be becoming more human, not just saying he is and using “emotions” as fuel for his magic. Which basically meant to me like emotions to him were a commodity he never truly felt but could emulate and use as a power source.

You see, the Observer comes from an era roughly 200 years after the Primal El and Elrianode collapsed (thanks, Sola—I mean Dantelion) and because the El was the barrier that prevented inter-dimensional and time-travel to protect the balance of Elrios, it’s no wonder that a broken Primal El spread around smaller El Shards doesn’t give at all the same level of protection. Which is why demons can waltz into Elrios because portals keep opening and nobody can stop them.

And so, in such a world, the people who still believe in Ishmael, who still believe that the El is her sacred gift, have the same question the Observer asks Ain: Why did she abandon us? Didn’t she have the duty, as a divinity, to protect mortals like a parent protects their child?

Ain’s response, and especially his expressions in the game as he replies are incredibly telling.

Now, I don’t know why the official translation takes away the ‘wicked’ part of Ain’s reply and contents themselves to have Ain say the Observer’s questions are just ‘very brave’. But where that nuance disappears in the official translation, it adds more nuance to an earlier reply where Ain dismisses the Watcher’s humanity and redefines it as a “mortal who was created”. It’s very dehumanizing in a way we don’t see Ain be often. It’s a more insidious type of disdain.

Although he says that Ishmael “did enough” by giving the El Lady and the El to humanity, he also admits that he’s frustrated that not even he can understand Ishmael’s will. And that, because of that, the Observer is the one asking “brave/wicked/bold” questions.

And before the Observer can ask him anything else or clarify what Ain’s answer entails, Ain shifts to mockingly asked if his friends bullied him.

He closes the door to a line of questioning that’s bound to challenge his deepest character belief: that the goddess is good.

No, seriously. If Ishmael cannot care for Elrios enough even if she has divine powers and will not lift a finger for 5 whole centuries when her creation (the El) and her chosen one (the El Lady) get incapacitated and/or destroyed, then can Ishmael be good? I think Ainchase has no answer to that question that doesn’t involve some kind of ‘maybe’ and that scares him. I think it’s cognitive dissonance and Ain solves it in a very human way that’s also a very familiar way for him to act: deflecting by mocking the other in such a way they change topic.

Now, that’s a very human thing to do and I can respect KoG for finally showing that Ain can show a humanity that actually has depth to it and is not just sass and attitude and flashy healing magic.

Final Thoughts — This is the moment where I trust KoG the least

Remember Elysion? Remember Elrianode on release? Even if you don’t, the Elysion-Elrianode transition is why a big part of me doesn’t trust whatever may come after Mirror Del. Elysion, on release, was about as good as this for Elsword lore, even if, I dare say, that Mirror Del does a lot more that Elysion just didn’t do. However, that’s the problem with it; next patch could break everything like how Elrianode introduced the mess of lore around the El that KoG is still untangling to this day. Just to cite an example. Then there was the whole forced introduction of Henir’s Cult, Seven Tower and again, a narrative mess they’re still untangling almost a decade later.

I know that the chances are, KoG may pull another Elrianode and introduce so many messy variables the story just stops working. They’re already introducing a lot with Atma’Ram and, just to show it as an example, they’re already shooting themselves in the foot. Don’t believe me? Here’s something that bothered me after reading through Mirror Del

So, we know that elves are spirit-adjacent beings that are losing their connection to the spirit realm for unknown reasons possibly not tied to the El because it’s restored now and Rena still says that it’s a problem. Yet, in Atma’Ram, the Spirit Lord herself says that spirits have a non-intervention rule in mortal matters. Ain even receives directly that order from Ishmael when he spawns. Yet, because he gets more and more involved with humans, he is becoming more “human-like”, and his current status with his connection to Ishmael is… well, up for debate to say the least.

So, with that in mind, why does Rena say that it was a bad thing for elves to not get involved with any other people but spirits knowing that spirit-like creatures have a rule of non-intervention, lest they become less spirit-like? Why then say “Well, if they lose their connection to the spirits and their society collapses it’s their fault anyhow”? Didn’t Rena start travelling with the Elgang precisely to avoid such collapse?

This is her initial quest

I’m all for character change, but, much like how the Henir cultists took their importance out of nowhere, we’re having contradictory information between Rena and the Spirit King (which could be explained away) and, to top it off, something that shouldn’t even be that easily achievable for characters that are basically just bare-bones tropes: OOC behaviour.

KoG has so far not given me anything that would explain why Rena would just do a 180 on the plights of her people by the time she reaches Mirror Del and talks with the Observer.

So, if something so major, character-wise, is already going south, it’d be naive to expect everything else to hold.

You know, I never thought I’d get to this point, but if you’ve seen my post about Raven and what I value in a fictional relationship that’s the pivot of any character, regardless of their gender. Also, if you happen to peruse AO3, you might notice there’s some crazy person writing Owen/Seris right now. That’s me. I’m crazy person.

But trust me, there’s a method to my madness and I’ve polished my Owen headcanons for roughly six years now. Maybe even seven since I got disillusioned about Raven with his side-story in 2019. Which would put the delulu headcanoning years to 7 years now.

So, first of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: No, I’m not gonna sit here and rant about how Owen ultimately killed Seris out of jealousy and planned his whole revenge over some petty love-triangle drama. No. That’d be insulting to the sheer potential Owen has and that KoG hasn’t ruined. Yet.

The first thing I want you to understand about how I view Owen is actually not about him at all. At least not directly. It’s something KoG’s been playing with and that I’ve never really thought about until I started to microanalyse Owen. And their Atma’Ram lore drop gave me enough crumbs to think that maybe being delulu for years was indeed the solulu.

Time-loops and time travel are canon - Here’s how they work

The first true time traveller we all know about is Add. He got yeeted into a library, spent years there like a NEET, and popped out of there while thinking he just spent a few hours tops; meanwhile, it’s 300 years in the future. Nobody he’s ever known is alive. And that’s why Diabolic Esper (Mad Paradox) is the more narratively interesting path if we want to analyse Owen. It’s not that timeline hopping or rewinding time is impossible, but it’s more like that, once you’re in that road, there’s no way for you, the timeline hopper, to directly enter or interact with the timeline you want. It’s always out of reach.

And from then on, KoG didn’t really touch time-loops or time manipulation… until Noah’s release in 2020-2021. And Noah’s time-looping is very interesting because, unlike DiE’s willful time travel, Noah’s is involuntary and depends on death. He dies, he wakes up again in the ruins of the Dimension of Sinister intent.

With his memories intact.

And the real interesting thing is that Noah, too, gets a pseudo-DiE/MP path with his fourth job path (Morpheus). A path where he… drumroll tries to save Clamor’s life in the past, over and over, and keeps failing. And he can’t let go of it. Noah himself can only time-loop because of the influence the Henir cult and the Moon priestess left over him.

So, from these events, we can gather a few things about how “canonically” time can be manipulated:

It depends to an extent to Henir shenanigans

It can be involuntary and triggered by death

The person time-looping/time-travelling cannot change the outcome of the events of their/the past.

Got it? Excellent. Because it’s the last point that makes DiE and Morpheus lose their minds. Also, you might argue that technically Noah does get to rewrite the past because he gets another chance to save Yuria and himself even when he dies and has to start over, but remember… Noah has something neither Add nor Owen have: The power over the Moon El from the Ebalon lineage. So, he can get some things changed, just not all.

Atma’Ram is interesting, too, because it reveals some of the reasons why time-travel/loops work under these rules. Only spirits, who aren't bound by physical forms can travel between dimensions and interfere with them. However, according to the Spirit Lord, if they interfere too much, their power will wane and they will inevitably die. That's why there's the unspoken rule between spirits to not interfere with the physical/mortal realm.

Another thing spirits know is that the actions in one realm influence the others. So, if a mortal were to try to influence other realms and jump between them like a spirit, they would, in all likelihood, not be able to do so at all. And we don't exactly know the consequences of the increasingly desperate attempts. However, if we look at Add, once he becomes Mad Paradox, his age is listed as unknown, as is, say Ain’s. Who is a spirit.

There's also something Owen says about that that hints about the possibility of a human/mortal messing with time/dimensions becoming more spirit-like, but more on that later.

Now that we have all this lore out of the way, let’s actually analyze Owen Felford as he’s presented through the Academy flashbacks. Because my entire theory can be summarized by this: Owen, much like Noah, is a time-looper that restarts his life after he dies. However, unlike Noah, Owen time-loops thanks to Henir’s power, not the power of the Moon El. And that makes all the difference.

Owen - the highschool student speaking like someone at least twice his age

So, one of the things the highschool flashbacks make sure is to really say that Owen’s the brain. He’s the smort, intellectual young guy who’s read all the books. All of them. However, there’s some things, like fighting for example, that really don’t learn themselves until you’ve practiced them to a degree. And you see this even with “brainy” shonen characters like Midoriya in HeroAca. He makes a lot of observations, but he’s not necessarily experienced or mature enough to make accurate assessments of visible skill until he actually sees it and has more experience in battle. It’s partially used as a gag because of how much he overanalyzes things, not to mention how he’s often wrong, too.

So, from what we know, Owen doesn’t really have any actual fighting experience because he’s no muscle and all brain. He says so himself. He makes it very, very clear he's extremely bad fighting… in a military academy. So, what's keeping him there? Surely it can't be status because it's also extremely clear that the Felfords have very little prestige.

Now, we all know KoG and good writing mix as about as well as oil and water, but it's not like a broken clock can't be right twice a day.

So then, let’s suppose that while the highschool flashbacks tear everything good about Raven’s lore, they are also laying pieces that make Owen more intriguing. And it all starts with this question: how can Owen say this with such certainty and be 100% correct and treated seriously by someone who’s, understandably, weary of nobles and knows more about actual fighting because of where he grew up in?

Maybe he has experience, just not the kind anyone would even guess, and certainly not the kind he’d ever disclose publicly to anyone, lest he be sent to the insane asylum. But if you thought I only had this to back me up, then I got something that’s even harder to explain if you think about it more than a gag about how cold and indifferent Owen is (which again, doesn’t make much sense for a teen that speaks already like a veteran or a tactician with enough experience to compliment Raven’s skill at the level he does).

I don't know about you, but there’s being a stoic, brainy teenager for a gag where he doesn't react to a prank or a joke, and then there's being so stoic that a perfectly normal startle reflex doesn't even kick in slightly when it absolutely should. The latter makes me raise an eyebrow way more than the former. But, if you think that's all that made me start falling down this rabbithole, you'd be mistaken.

You see, while yes, we can say that Owen may have an uncanny ability to keep his cool “for a gag” and that he has something to gain from Raven, be it favour from the Cronwells or from the other nobles who hate Raven’s existence, some of his actions make no tactical sense coming from a character who should be known and only focused on tactics and gaining the advantage. This is Mr. “Valuable chess pieces”, right?

So, befriending Raven Cronwell, understanding his skills and training him all throughout the years makes perfect sense. After all, the better he gets to know how Raven thinks as a warrior, the more blindspots he gets to know and his physical strength, too, the better for an ambush, right?

It'd be entirely to Owen’s advantage to make any other ally Raven might make weak or incompetent, if we really take Owen at face value and think everything he does is to ensure Raven’s downfall. So, riddle me this: Why does Owen take the time of day to train Seris, too? Why would he know her so well to not only call her by name (no last name) when he calls Raven by his full name and, to top it off, know her well enough so his “[training] routine was difficult but it was structured methodically to fit individual's strong and weak points so Seris's skills were increasing day by day”?

And this is an observation made by Raven.

For someone who, even while being generous, can be read as an opportunist who has everything to gain by befriending Raven, there's no need to go through the same effort for Seris. In fact, it's rather odd for Owen to be on a first name basis with her (when he's not with Raven when they meet) and also be unwilling to put her on their team but not because she's a girl. He actually only verbally hesitates (a little em) when Series surmises he is refusing because of sexism.

And, weird thing is, Seris herself, for someone being supposedly destined to be Raven’s interest, is more on equal grounds with Owen. Owen is the one who trains her to excel, he's the one she wants to spook to “crack” his façade, and, most importantly for me and my personal ship biases… he's the only one who challenges her beliefs and lets her be more Miss “smiles innocently and makes me happy”.

Granted, Owen acts like he doesn't care or notice her at all, yet he still shows he understands her at a level Raven certainly isn't shown to do. Raven is there to find her pretty because she smiles and is “optimistic”. The one who actually makes Seris competent and gets her closer to her dreams is actually Owen. The only reason why Seris was strong enough to still walk by Raven’s side and be part of the Crow Mercenaries is because Owen helped her reach that point. Not Raven.

Congratulations, KoG, you played yourself.

Time-looper Owen is my crackpot theory that Atma’Ram is now aligning itself with

You see, while we get in chapter 79 Raven talking about how useful Aisha is as a water heater, chapter 81-1 shows us a familiar face. Oh, and what’s this? What’s he dressed like?

Honestly… out of all the ways to bring Mr. Chess-pieces back, they choose to tie him to Henir and his little cult. And that’s not all. Whether you check the fan translation or the official translation on Elwiki, Owen is saying some things that nothing about his previous characterization can explain. And he does it with a smile… which is rare, considering the kind of stoic, cold, heartless bastard he’s portrayed as before.

So, we have Owen being in a poisonous land in the demon realm with no protection, curbstomping Ricardo and yapping about Wings and spirits while presumably doing something that makes Ricardo’s “wings” go CRACK! CRUNCH! And he’s doing that with that smile.

He’s specifically talking about how he heard that dying and being reborn in one’s own body (what Noah does) makes one closer to a spirit than to an undead. And he says that like that's a fact, on the same breath he talks about golems which exist in-game as early as Ruben, mind you.

First of all, why would that knowledge be relevant enough to Owen that he’s willing to torture to some random-ass demon he’s never met before? And second, why the smile?

What could make that very specific knowledge on a reincarnation process that so far is only relevant for Noah, someone who, like Ricardo, has no direct ties to Owen or any of his known goals and relationships?

Not that Owen’s goals beyond betraying Raven are all that clear, but from Mr. “Expert” manipulator that’s still unlikeable after he stabs Raven in the back. Actually, we know from Elesis’s Before Joining quests that he’s somehow still involved in the military, now more aligned with the Red Knights, or at least willing to lend his advice to them, Elesis included. But is he respected? I’d argue he’s not, particularly because of how Penensio talks about the guy.

What a strange way to word things, Mr. Felford

These are not the words you say to someone you respect/like.

For someone who could’ve seemed a hero and had every plot convenience bent to his favour to become the one who “squashed the rebellion led by Cronwell”, he has tangibly nothing to show for it. Not the status nor the respect of someone who, considering the conspiracy worked in his favour, was poised to be lauded for his efforts. And also, curiously, he continues to be obsessed with books and reading. Considering it more important than even showing the most basic etiquette to a heroine like Elesis. Which is… strange to say the least. It would be to his advantage to show a modicum of decorum, even if he doesn’t mean it, towards someone so influential.

So, why is his endless reading still something that defines him way past highschool? Surely there’s a finite amount of battle tactics to be learnt and he probably already went through those in his Academy days considering he read stacks of books each night.

Owen, by all accounts, is written like a mystery box. But he's an interesting mystery box so far because his dialogues mean more for the player than they'd mean for the people in-universe. Speaking with such existential certainties could simply get brushed off as “Ah, intelligent, broody guy philosophizes, much wow”, but then you have to reconcile the fact that we all we know is that he's a “traitorous tactician” speaking in existential platitudes and then shows up as a minor Henir cultist with an inexplicable obsession that comes out of nowhere. Why would that very specific type of reincarnation be interesting for a guy as obscure and emotionally flat as Owen?

I’ve seen some Chinese fans debate as to what could be pushing Owen to make such a big leap, debating if he’s doing all of this to restore his family honour, but that really doesn’t fit. We could debate on whether the Henir cult has or not some kind of secret status in Velder because of the cultist and Laudus, which we see in Lithia’s quests, but that’s a recent development only possible because the demons captured the nobles prior to that.

KoG could very well retcon that and say they were there all along, but for now they haven’t, so let me show you that the correct move, as the lore currently stands is to ask yourself: What exactly do Owen's broody, flat, pseudo-existential platitudes point to?

That's what I started asking myself in 2019, and I built something that, up until Atma'Ram dropped, was my little, fun, crack theory. But Atma'Ram changes things. I don't want to say this essay has the correct explanations, but they're plausible explanations.

You can take one over the other depending on how comfortable you are with Seris/Owen as a ship. Trust me, it doesn’t involve “cucking” Raven in any tangible way, if that’s your concern. I'm actually of the belief that Owen, like Noah, loops through time when he dies. And, because he's not an Ebalon, he can't do that using the power of the Moon El and retain his humanity. So, what's the alternative route? Relying on Henir, of course. That's more or less what DiE/MP does, even if it's not exactly 100% confirmed either. However, his surviving family, like Friedrich, is already associated with Henir, too, so it's not a huge leap either.

But in any case, this is about Owen, not Add.

So, let’s get the least controversial time-looper Owen theory out of the way.

Time-looper Owen who wants to save Raven and Seris no matter what after originally betraying them - A Theory

Owen is so interested in books and acts older than his age because, like Noah, he’s trapped in an involuntary loop where his death causes it to reset. He is “reborn” with all his past memories and thus wants to understand it better by any means necessary. It’s not that he’s a military genius or whatever, but he’s been living through the same life events enough times that he even knows the exact day and moment Seris will try to jumpscare him. That’s also why he can say with certitude nobody (not even himself) learns from the past and that the future is evident based on the past without making Elesis wonder if he’s not just a little cookie.

More importantly, if we accept that he’s time-looping desperately to prevent the events he may have caused originally leading to Raven’s doom, you can view his open hostility as something different: He actually doesn’t want to end up with Raven’s blood on his hands. The moment he gets sentimental and say he appreciates Raven and Seris is tainted by the knowledge that if he doesn’t push them away by any means necessary, he’ll end up with their blood in hands. He likes them as friends, wants them to be strong enough to fight off the forces that will eventually come for them, but remember rule #3 of Elsword time-travelling mechanics?

The person time-looping/time-travelling cannot change the outcome of the events of their/the past.

The reason this interpretation holds weight not only because Owen suddenly appears as a Henir Cultist, which is most likely his only way of even understanding how to get out of the time-loops or—at the very least—end his existence for good, is the fact that… Raven doesn’t even remember what kind of expression Owen had when he came. The Man with a Machine Arm could’ve shown Owen grinning as Raven believes he does, but they show a faceless Owen.

Raven interprets (under Adam’s control) Owen’s expression as a smile, but mind you, KoG gives us faceless Owen and the plausible explanation that it’s Raven’s memories being tainted by the hatred Adam’s using to control him. So, now, even the moment of the betrayal can be questioned. Because Owen, even back then, doesn’t seem to speak for himself. And Raven’s memories are unreliable at best at the moment where this flashback happens.

If Owen’s now canonically tied to Henir regardless of my 2020 headcanons already making the connection in advance based on lore crumbs, and that he’s obsessed over souls and reincarnation, is it not plausible to think that the reason he keeps looping (whether it’s voluntarily like DiE or involuntarily like Noah) is to save his friends? Because he wants to undo whatever unfortunate mistake that led him to be the one bringing down the sentence he knew, above all else, was unfair?

He never achieves that outcome, so obviously he becomes more jaded, and perhaps his own desperation makes him more willing to be the one to ultimately doom his friends because at least “it’s the most merciful outcome” until he can figure out how to permanently avoid that, or, should it be impossible, find at least a way to erase his current existence.

Food for thought.

Onto the second theory, which needs your understanding of the “platonic Owen” theory to be shorter to explain. But first, I want to first explain some basic parallels between Berserk and Elsword. Whether they’re intentional or not doesn’t matter because they’re still there and they’re the key to understanding Owen/Seris as a tragic, plot-relevant (yet doomed) ship.

Raven is to Griffith what Owen is to Guts

Not the most direct parallel, is it? If anything, you’d expect the opposite association because of how physically similar Owen is to Griffith and how physically similar Raven is to Guts. Trust me though, the reverse is what works best and some fans have even thought so as far back as my magical year number—2015.

RIP Elsword forums

Now, to understand why fans back then would’ve connected the dots between one of the most infamous villains of manga to Raven, I must remind you that Raven started as an antagonist. An antagonist who, from what the lore hinted, could have committed war crimes. The Man with a Machine Arm quest series backs me up rather nicely on this to this day.

As we’ve discussed, however, more recent rewrites of Man with the Machine arm add the line how the village was evacuated “after several warnings”, but bear with me for a minute… Raven still burned the village down. Even if nobody died in the fire, we don’t know what the “warnings” looked like or if every villager made it out. There’s still the possibility for casualties, and even if we assume they’re zero, Raven still targeted civilians, still burnt all they had and turned them into refugees in a desert. If I were a villager there, I wouldn’t like my odds of survival past my home being burnt down by a bunch of armed cyborgs.

The point is that Raven, under Adam’s control, is capable of doing disproportionate harm against humans (like burning a village just to get some El Shards) as long as Adam gives him the green light.

Which is why old lore becomes important again. Raven is said to be on a journey to redeem himself after the “chaos” he caused to the world. And, 2015 Raven lore gives you exactly the kind of chaos he causes.

Now that we know Raven had the power and (at least by 2015) the means to create the equivalent of an Eclipse, who would he turn that violence to?

After all, if Griffith had to sacrifice and massacre The Band of the Hawk, his dearest friends and comrades, to ascend into the Godhand and become Femto, what does Raven destroy that could still be on the same level as The Band of the Hawk is for Griffith? Sure, Raven turns against Velder, but his (nameless) fiancée and mercenary order are all dead. So, who else would he target?

The only one, and rather, the main objective of his indiscriminate violence, would be no one other than Owen (or Alex, as he was known at the time on NA).

See, the advantage of old lore giving no name to Raven’s beloved fiancée at the time was that, by all accounts, it creates the possibility that Owen also had a woman he loved. Raven’s fiancée, at the time, could fill a role similar to Princess Charlotte, who’s still a woman Griffith at least cares enough about to consider her suggestions in Falconia. It’s also Charlotte who triggers Griffith’s downfall, albeit indirectly, so Seris could remain out of this original picture.

And, just like the Eclipse wouldn’t have hit the same without Casca being the woman at the core of Guts’s guilt and future desperate fight to protect her and take Griffith down, Owen and Raven are missing a Casca figure. Seris fills that role perfectly.

As much as I complain about KoG retconning their lore every week, they have maintained the Berserk-esque parallels between Raven, Owen and Seris quite well despite all the years that have passed. Sure, Raven is now less openly monstrous as he was now eleven years ago, but his arc still mirrors Griffith’s and, so, it follows that Owen’s and Seris’s should as well.

Owen is a Guts-like figure broken by time-loops and despair - A theory

Owen is a Guts-like figure from the get-go, and remains as such, because he comes from a family with so little prestige and money they’re on the brink of losing their title. That’s something the highschool flashbacks make abundantly clear. Now, Owen doesn’t have much in the way of brute strength, but if he made it out and became friends with someone like Raven later in life, entered the Crow Mercenaries like how Guts entered the Band of the Hawk, there could be a very reasonable complot to have Raven discredited and have Owen betray him, not out of malice, but precisely because the Felfords are on the brink of ruin and looked down upon.

However, the question thus becomes: would Owen be cowardly enough to cave in out of self-preservation alone? If he’s meant to be like Guts, which he is, then he originally wouldn’t just bend over something so flimsy. Unless, of course, it put at risk the one person neither he nor Guts would endanger no matter what: their beloved.

That is why Seris being a Casca figure matters. Owen, before becoming a time-looper, wouldn’t have put family honour or self-preservation above his alliances with the group he was welcomed in. Those are his friends, and, more importantly for Seris, that is the woman he loves. That is the woman he’d risk life and limb for.

So, when Raven falls, when the Crow Mercenaries get killed, Owen could tell himself he had no choice because Seris was more important. And that’s also what makes him Guts-like, but not a perfect Guts, besides his more cerebral character. In fact, I’d argue that because he’s more brains than brawn, it’s easier for Owen to throw Raven under the bus if it means saving Seris. He doesn't have the brawn nor the influence to fight a war against the nobles without risking endangering Seris’s life. So, he makes his choice. He thinks it’s the good one.

Then, comes the dreaded Eclipse. Raven and the Black Crow under King Adam, terrorizing Velder. Raven hasn’t forgotten what Owen did, and his priority, mind-control or not, is still revenge. This is even true in the Man with the Machine Arm flashbacks EVEN THOUGH the reason the nobles disappeared has now been unequivocally tied to the demons. Back in the day, there was no confirmation and with the backstory Raven had, you could've argued Raven enacted his revenge by just killing all the nobles and thereby destabilizing "human society" to be controlled under Adam as the lore implied that he was set on subjugating humanity.

And so, comes the in-universe Elsword equivalent of the Eclipse. Owen, captured. Seris, captured. Both aboard the Black Crow. Raven comes in and… well, if you read Berserk, you can imagine it was violent as the actual Eclipse, or maybe content yourselves to imagine that it was the most PG-13 version of it.

The point remains: Owen is left broken, Seris is undoubtedly killed (because that’s how Raven would get his ultimate revenge, let’s be serious) and he’s left with no purpose. His choice didn’t protect Seris and, worst of all, he barely made it alive himself. Raven either couldn’t or didn’t want to kill him after crippling him and making watch his entire world—the one he chose to protect instead of Raven—get torn to pieces.

And if that’s not reason enough to turn himself towards Henir, the god who’s said to have control over time and dimensions, then I don’t know what is.

So, he makes his second bargain and starts looping. Over and over. Save Seris, protect her, no matter what. This time’s the right time. No, maybe this time. No, try again… and again, and again, and again.

Over and over.

It's one of the rare moments where the retcons could be made to retrofit the current lore in a very satisfying way, if KoG ever chose to play with it. But, as satisfying as it'd be for me and players to see retcons be still kind of canon under "past/alternate timelines", it's what makes the tragedy between Owen and Seris even more profound. Because, let's not forget, the spirit (soul) persists across dimensions, which is why the Elgang got the attention of the Spirit King. Even through their different paths, they still somehow end up choosing the path of saviours of the world. And if their goals are a constant, then so is Seris's soul.

Her clinginess and interest in Owen and his coldness towards her could be a sign that even if she personally doesn't and could never fully remember all the other timelines, it still shapes her attitude. It also explains their banter. Owen remembers and still yearns for her; of course someone who’s looped and seen different versions of Seris know exactly how to rile her up, how to make her stronger and also when to back away so she never gets too close.

At some point, I’d think, he can’t bear loving her back knowing there’s no changing her death, be it at Raven’s hands or otherwise. So, he ignores her. He even tries to not make her join the group for the Mock Siege exercise and explicitly says it’s not because she’s a girl, he just says “...It's not because that... ehm, ehm... Anyways, no is a no-...”. It’s only because Raven says she can join that she does. He might say “we’ll let her join”, but ultimately he’s overriding Owen’s will. Owen even stares or glares at that decision enough that Raven finds his stare “bothersome”.

It’s quite baffling someone that opposed and angry at Raven letting Seris get closer to them would then know her enough and care enough to train her.

Unless, at the end of it all, it’s all he feels comfortable doing—making her strong enough so that maybe she gets to live once. But even that is useless. So, what’s the next best choice?

Well, make sure her spirit lives on with him.

If there’s something that’d give Owen all the motivation to search reincarnation, get more openly involved with Henir and keep reading and reading on anything he can find regarding spirits and that topic is a chance to bring Seris back to him, somehow.

That’s why I say Owen is like Guts, but he’s not a perfect Guts. He’s a broken Guts whose love and devotion become an obsession. A singular purpose for which he’s ready to torture demons for at the drop of a hat. An obsession for which he’s already turned inhuman and can breathe toxic fumes in the demon realm without a care in the world while overpowering Ricardo far better than Raven who, let me remind you, has an upgraded, superhuman body due to Nasod technology.

Before Atma’Ram, I genuinely only had Elesis’ and Raven’s backstories to build this Time-looper Owen theory. I accepted I was cooking up some crack ships and crack headcanons because there’d be no way KoG would ever make Owen more relevant than a simple backstory villain.

And I was happy with just having that little crackpot theory until the day I died. I wouldn’t have written an essay about it because I considered I was reading so much between the lines I probably would sound like I was snorting some lines. But then Atma’Ram dropped.

Imagine I had posted this ten years ago. Imagine it’s 2016 again and I’m here shitting on Raven. Me, someone who actually liked Raven, before well… the side-story update. Because man, was that a letdown. Let’s be honest, KoG has never shown me good lore besides one time between Harnier and Fenriart, but even they had to retcon that into Fenriart actually not being the objectively bad guy who made the El go boom to save Harnier’s life. No, it was some rando called Dantelion who made it explode. Because we can’t have any decent tragedy be canon in this game. Unless it involves a shota being killed.

Which is why, I suppose, I should’ve kept my expectations low when I jumped into this game and saw Raven’s bio. What’s not to like about an underdog who rose to nobility through merit alone, got bitches, then got betrayed by a man he called “a brother”? What’s not to like about that character then accepting a deal for revenge (willingly) coming from the in-universe equivalent of Skynet only to then see, after many years, the error of his ways and try to redeem himself by fighting with the good guys?

Well… what’s not to like is the fact that KoG does nothing interesting with the sheer narrative gold spilling from that premise. In fact, just like they did for Harnier and Fenriart, they have this character archetype that’s practically begging for narrative nuance and complexity and just either ignore his backstory or make said backstory more and more implausible just so it can be as PG as possible.

Here’s what I mean.

When no lore was actually good lore

I started playing Elsword around Sakra Devanam’s release on NA. Do not remind me how long ago that was. I feel old enough by writing this in current year. I remember that the early game was quite longer because each job change had a story quest accompanying it. And, granted, nothing about the story was fascinating or particularly breaking narrative ground, but let’s just compare the background associated to Sword Taker and some quotes from Weapon Taker, which are, respectively, the first job change leading to what you kids now call Furious Blade and Imperator.

Weapon Taker circa 2015 - from Elwiki

Weapon Taker now - from Elwiki

I don’t think I need to add more to this, but in case you’re curious, WT goes from the Raven who decides to revive the name of the Crow Mercenaries to be a force people can trust instead of a name stained in both ruin and fear (let’s not forget it’s the Crow Mercenaries you fight in Altera) to… well, just a guy who modifies his arms so he can fight down his redemption path better. So, what about Sword Taker? Well, back in my day, that used to be the Raven who was so horrified to know what he became under Adam’s control he decides to never use his Nasod arm ever again. And I have the receipts right here:

Sword Taker’s lore in 2015

Do you see why, with this blurb alone and the fact that Furious Blade was the first Raven third job change path teased, why people wanted that Raven to be the “canon” Raven? If you look at the fanart/fanfics of the Elgang back in the day, a lot of the group art or fics involving Raven travelling with the Elgang had Blade Master Raven as their “canon” Raven. If there was one Raven who could’ve embodied a good, safe redemption arc where we don’t have to expand into “ugly” territory about what Raven might do, it was the Raven who understood he had to separate himself from any Nasod influence—as much as he can. Over Taker (Rage Heart’s first job change), by comparison, be it then or now, is a constant danger to himself and others. This is not the Raven who can safely travel with other people, be it in 2015 or as how the lore stands now.

OT lore (2015)

Granted, the new lore retconned the “rage” part (ironic since the third job has rage in the name), but I still wonder who was the genius who decided that a man with chronic pain from battle and a potentially dangerous arm that might cost him his life more than Imperator’s overheat mechanic was the Raven to choose to make canon.

You could say that maybe Rage Hearts’ story was more ambitious than FB’s, but that’s exactly what plays against it. By all means, I was ready to have a Raven who struggles against his own body for a greater ideal (that’s why I mained Veteran Commander back in the day), but this is KoG writing. Not only do they retcon lore every few patches because they can’t deal with their own plotholes otherwise, but sometimes… sometimes those retcons just makes my entire investment in a character go up in smoke.

2016 had me too distracted with Ain, but by 2019, I noticed what the Raven Side Story was about

Let me enumerate what I liked about Raven pre “Side-story”, which I will now refer to as a highschool flashback because that’s what it is and you don’t get to pretend otherwise. You cannot read that and tell me it’s anything other than Owen/Seris/Raven in highschool. So, here’s what I loved about old Raven (the Raven with no stupid surname):

Rose through nobility as a military man for his achievements

Had a mercenary order (the Black Crows) under his command and was charismatic enough to at least seem well-respected. Also, he got Seris as a fiancee.

Was stabbed in the back by “Alex” AKA Owen, someone who “was like a brother” to him

Hurt a lot of people under Adam but wants to redeem himself in the name of who he used to be and his loved ones

And right off the bat, point one goes up in smoke. Why’s that? Well, because nepotism. Raven gets privilege handed off to him because his dad was well-connected and gets him adopted by General Cronwell. Now, keep this bit of “new” lore in mind:

So, disregarding how high my eyebrow goes up when I read how Raven supposedly gave up “many things” to upgrade his life from commoner to nobility, this story establishes that not only General Cronwell is a hero, but that Raven is going to a place only nobles can go and that the Cronwell’s status is so high just uttering it makes grunt 1 and 2 go away and not contest it.

And this is the guy who later gets framed and thrown in jail. The guy now cruising the privileged high-life so openly nobody can do much but throw petty “harrumph! Commoner!” at him while they turn tail, eventually gets betrayed and loses everything to all the losers who couldn’t even be openly hostile to him because the Cronwell name protects him.

You know what? Maybe we should trust KoG. Maybe Owen will be this really suave, intelligent, manipulator who will help the jealous grunts strike where—

Oh.

Oh, he wasn’t even hiding it. He straight up just said it. And this is the man who Raven considered “a brother” to him? This is the “Alex” I've been ready to despise for being a snake? Frankly, now I kinda respect him. Imagine being openly hostile to the adopted son of the most powerful (or implied most powerful) noble family besides the Velders (royalty) and the guy doesn't even push back!

So, let’s check how my list is: Commoner who rose through nobility by sheer badassery? Objectively incorrect now. It’s pure nepotism now, regardless of what the tiny blurb in base Raven’s background says. You can’t have it both ways. Stabbed in the back? Nope. Owen was very open about what he was gonna do, so even if we assume Raven considered him a “brother”, that can now be held against him because why would you trust someone who tells you, to your face, out in the open, that you’re a chess piece to them?

But surely, surely, we can see the relationship that has been the core of Raven’s personality, the core wound that Adam took advantage of, be developed, right?

Eh. Maybe for some people, but not me.

Seris fell in love with an idiot and that’s now an objective, canon-approved fact

You know, maybe it’s me and my girl brain wanting more out of a romance that marks a character, regardless of their gender, in a very important way. That’s why I can’t really get behind things like, say, NaruHina or SasuSaku, where the pining is only going one way.

If I had to point to a realtionship in the shonen genre (which fits the Elsword lore, more or less) that I thoroughly enjoyed the development of, it was EreHisu. This post isn’t about the finale or whatever else, but if you focus only on the Uprising arc, how both of these characters got to save each other, talk, get closer and overall (especially on Eren’s part) be willing to save each other from fate itself, you get the vibe I like. I like fictional relationships—insofar as the relationship is crucial to a character’s journey—to feel more than a one-sided crush. So, how does Raven/Seris fare?

Well, not very well, that’s for sure.

It’s, as far as the highschool flashbacks go, a relationship only dictated by Raven’s feelings. His interactions with her don’t draw anything more than her smiles and her gentleness and whatnot.

And he’s saying this to a woman who fought and won with him. A woman who was, first and foremost, seeking to be his equal and probably has good instincts for battle.

Even when we’re told Seris has her own goals for independence, what she wants to prove and her opinions over what objectively is odd and we know for a fact marks the beginning of the end for the two, is ultimately secondary to Raven’s feelings and drama. That is bad enough to me as it is, but the more I read the new lore on Elwiki, the more implausible their relationship becomes.

From Chapter 79 in the story quest

This is Raven Cronwell, Rage Hearts, 29 years old. And this is the man Seris loved? A man who speaks like an awkward teenager at 29 even if he was supposedly adopted by cream of the crop nobility, lead a Mercenary band, and was engaged to a noblewoman before he even says these wonderful lines. Trust me, they’re funny at first because “haha, Raven’s such a dork”, but then you gotta rewind and sit with what you just said. Raven. Out of all the characters. Is such a dork.

And I wish my complaint was just that, but the more you look at the flashbacks, the more it becomes clear that Seris isn’t really a person with goals, with things she’ll fight for, argue about or anything when she’s with Raven. Raven is the one who holds her character back and clearly doesn’t respect her enough to let her follow her goals or respect them in any meaningful way.

And all he heard was “wow, she’s such a positive girl who sacrificed an ‘easier life’ for the battlefield”. Nothing about her right to choose for herself or her sense of camaraderie in battle. No, that’s not important you guys.

So, that’s point #2 of the ingredients that made Raven’s backstory work for me. I cannot believe for the life of me that the guy who will compliment Aisha for being the Elgang’s designated water heater and who never helped Seris achieve her goals of actual independence and fierce need to prove herself, is the same guy who actually loved (and was loved by) Seris and lead said mercenary band on merit alone.

In fact, the sad part is that since now Raven is functionally a nepo baby, Seris’ engagement with him feels like the opposite of what she wanted—a choice imposed on her by her family. Because why wouldn’t it be? The Cronwell name has a lot of influence, Seris met him through the military academy so she gets to “settle” for an illusion of choice and liberty she was actually never given. The only one who got to choose was Raven. He got to choose her, his mercenary army and all the rest.

And that really, really makes him look all the worst when you get to the part of his backstory where he leads an assault on Velder under King Nasod’s control.

Raven won’t say sorry to anyone, and the worst part is that the writers won’t demand that out of him

Why do I say Raven led an assault on Velder when the lore technically doesn’t say he ever did? Well, because it’s not hard to infer that with the lack of lore around the matter. Here. Current Raven lore:

New lore glosses over this fact, but if you read the Altera lore (even more so back in the day), the Black Crow mercenaries the Elgang fights against is, in fact, experiments made by Adam fusing humans to Nasods. Now, the new lore wants you to infer it’s all Raven’s former comrades and whatnot, but that doesn’t really work because Raven doesn’t even worry that Seris might be among them. Which is why the lines I highlighted in the screenshot are important. If he wants revenge against Velder and he caused chaos in the world in the name of revenge (which he doesn’t do much of in Altera, at least not visibly), then it stands to reason Velder was part of that chaos. Not that the game would ever wish to imply this, but it’s not a stretch to think Raven and the Black Crows may have turned people into yet another member of their group until they filled an airship full of them.

Now, that’s dark. But it’s possible to read this only because Raven, for all his tragic pining over his fridged fiancee, never… actually mourns her.

No, really. I had to go back through all the versions of the lore I remember, and nope. There’s not a single moment besides some dungeon clear quotes (the kind of blink-and-you-miss-it dialogue you may as well not even pay attention to because the game doesn’t demand you do so) where Raven even mentions her.

He doesn’t mourn her, people don’t really remember him either, and the one odd line where Ciel mentions how people in Lanox would take bets on who could beat him (we don’t know if this is pre or post-betrayal, which makes it more interesting to me) isn’t enough.

We have a Raven who fused with his arm, let it become more and more part of him, to the point of near madness (original lore) or becoming a permanent liability (new lore), and could not once. Not even once, through 70-something chapters of story, ever make a gesture of remorse or mourning to Seris nor to anyone in Velder or any other place outside saying “sorry” once to the heroes. And with Adam now being downgraded from in-universe Skynet to “oops, I was actually trying to defend you from demons and got carried away”, is it any wonder Raven just waltzes into Velder and nobody says a thing?

Ultimately, I think that KoG made a catastrophic writing mistake by making Raven a playable character. Because they don’t really want to tackle anything that might scream “mature themes” too loudly, they have no choice but to flatten Raven so his story gets to be as “uncomplicated” as possible. But, in doing so, they also shot the very appeal any villain-turned-ally must have: a believable and nuanced redemption arc.

In a game so hellbent on refusing to have any of their playable or growing cast of allies have the tiniest dirt on them (the Harnier/Solace retcon still hurts my soul), Raven has no place as the character he deserved to be. Instead, the more the game says about him, the more the characters around him become far more compelling. He’s outshone by the very characters who were supposed to be the supports of his character arc, the basis and foundation of who Raven was meant to be.

And that, sadly, is something Raven can’t ever come back from. Which is why, now, of all times, I must make another post…

(Note: I didn't proofread this, sorry if it's hard to read at times)

Maybe I should claim the title of “Amphoreus’s biggest hater” at this point, because I’m as willing to scream about how lazy a fix this is just as much as I’m honestly willing to laugh at the fact this bleak solution is probably just in my head. I’m willing to admit I read too deep into things, but when the writing has pretended to be deep only to show me how incompetent it is, overanalysing every little thing has become second nature.

Now, for full transparency, after 3.4 I pretty much became a faithful devotee of the skip button, because honestly there’s a limit to how much I’ll let this game aggravate me on any given day. From the story summaries and the few “lore” videos I watched, nothing in those patches changed the deep rooted problems I’ve already thoroughly pointed out in my previous critiques. In fact, sometimes it made them worse.

3.5 - Justice for Caenis

I’ll call myself unironically a Caenis fangirl. I’m not a fan of her canon depiction though, it’s more that I see her canon self as the cowards’ way out of any meaningful grey morality the game might’ve had. In fact, 3.4 vindicated my point about Caenis having a point even harder than 3.3. And the reasons for that are simple:

What do the Cleaners want? Stop the Flame-chase journey because they believe it’s just the excuse godly tyrants use to shed the people’s blood (checks out for Seliose, checks out for Cerydra)

How do the Cleaners want to go about their goal? Kill three heirs and destroy their coreflames: Death, Strife and Trickery. By doing so, humanity will hopefully return to their golden age (Era Chrysea).

What does Irontomb need to be freed? The completion of the flame-chase journey, which can’t be completed if, say, 3 coreflames were eternally destroyed.

By 3.5, Caenis was either a goldmine for actual grey morality or the biggest threat to the Heirs’ moral superiority in a black-and-white conflict.

Which is exactly why they had Cerydra kill her right at the start of the story of 3.5. I wasn’t surprised that the writers would choose that route, but it’s the way that they did it that irked me. First because they confirm that the Caenis that Cerydra kills and tosses like a sack of potatoes isn’t the Caenis we knew from 3.0-3.3. It’s the “original” Caenis, which implies she wasn’t consumed by hatred. And then there’s the banquet scene where Cerydra pretends that Caenis wanted to get sacrificed and thrown as a “gift” to the Deliverer. To me, that made Cerydra despicable.

I get that Caenis is easy to hate, but this treatment felt spiteful for no reason. It’s not as if Caenis hadn’t had gotten her due in 3.3 already.

3.6 - The AE trio reunites… and Lygus is around, I guess.

I don’t have much to say about 3.6 other than the fact I don’t particularly like the way the writers decided on one hand have Dan Heng have flashbacks about the Quintet only to have him show that whatever he got out of it wasn’t enough to remind him that we’re playing a dangerous game that will end up in the Xianzhou getting wiped out.

That’s very cute, Danny, I'm glad you at least got to say RIP in Peace to the Quintet metaphorically before they get Irontomb-ed.

Whatever Evernight was supposed to be, it didn’t really grab my attention. It’s a bit too late to weave March’s role and her past where she spent whatever many years alone. 3.4 introduced it, I doubt 3.5 expanded much on it and by 3.6, well, it’s just tacky. There’s too much going on already.

Oh, there’s Lygus, too. Honestly, I think he’s the real goofy character. If he’s supposed to be this great member of the genius society, the almighty creator of Nous with this level of control over Amphoreus… then he’s more worthless than Jing Yuan without Sunday.

So you mean to tell me he could’ve glitched us out of existence at ANY point and he just… didn’t.

The most hilarious thing about seeing some of the discourse about Lygus is that some think “arrogance” excuses every dumb decision he takes. Viktor Frankenstein was arrogant, too, and his creation was his downfall. However, Viktor’s downfall doesn’t happen because Viktor ever lets his ego get in the way of chasing Frankenstein to the ends of the earth to hopefully kill him before it kills him. I can’t say the same about Lygus. He’s incompetent and powerless unless the plot requires him not to be. It’s not a thorough list but does this sound like the arrogant creator of Nous to you?

Creates Nous, regrets it, hijacks one of their neurons, modifies it to calculate destruction, not the reason for life, somehow can’t hardcode every heir to obey him. Let’s not forget that Amphoreus is just a virtual world meant to unleash a mega computer virus against Nous. Every heir is just ones and zeroes and somehow the creator of the god-computer themselves (Nous) can hardcode a scepter but not the bots that inhabit it. Somehow.

Has absolute control over the scepter and even organic life that steps into it (otherwise glitching Caelus out of existence isn’t possible), doesn’t do it until the plot demands him being almighty and dangerous.

Why does he side with the Council or the Cleaners at all when the flame-chase journey is the mechanism by which the plan will succeed? If anything he’d be gladly pushing Caelus and Dan Heng along to complete the Flame-chase, isolate the Flame-Reaver and Mem the moment Caelus shows control over Oronyx.

He somehow has to “convince” Cerydra to give him the Coreflame of Law instead of using his admin privileges to force the transfer of the “Coreflame of Law” from her files to his and, to be real smart, give a dummy to her so nobody notices immediately. And even if they do, the smart programmer of a god-computer would probably have so many encryption and obfuscation protocols to make the real coreflame next to impossible to find.

One of the reasons I think that Lygus/Zandar can’t be allowed to be smart is that it’d make winning against him impossible as the plot stands. The other reason is that Hoyoverse established that Amphoreus is just a giant computer preparing itself to release the worst computer virus ever, only to then act as if it wasn’t. If it were up to me, I’d make Amphoreus a pseudo-Tron world. In the sense that yes, we can have the Greco-roman illusion of a world, but the real fight is in a futuristic world between programs where you need Herta and Screwllum to guide you towards your Tron-like weapons and find your way out of the many labyrinths Lygus puts in your way. Instead, we get, uh, well… nothing that’s as cool as that.

And anyways, like I said in my Destroying Amphoreus series, writing smart characters is hard. After seeing how the writers failed writing Anaxa as a genius scholar, I wasn’t expecting Lygus to be a success. But I wasn’t expecting him to be this bad either, and for every reveal about him to make him the goofiest antagonist since Skott.

3.7 - I sleep… but then ‘Hello World’ was real shit

I gave 3.7 the “Skip dialogue” treatment until the “Hello world” cutscene. There was something about it that made me pause. It was close to midnight, so I was more in the mood to get some last jades to pull for Castorice than using my brain, so back to the skip button I went.

I came back to that scene through a trailblaze quest playthrough, and I began to piece together why I had felt that the “Hello World” sequence had finally sparked some sense of wonder in me: it’s the perfect excuse for all the horrendous writing I’ve been subjected to. It’s a bleak solution, but it’s so air-tight I’m amazed Shaoji stumbled upon it on accident.

You see, I’m perfectly capable of understanding that this way of interpreting 3.7 won’t ever be acknowledged by Hoyo because it can get too meta in a way that doesn’t make them look good, but I couldn’t dismiss it once I saw it. It’s maddening to be forced to admit this excuses bad writing, but it really does.

A while back, someone told me that Hoyoverse used gnostic themes for Penacony, but I had a hard time seeing that. For this though? Well, I see the gnostic influences right here, and it’s not just Amphoreus. There’s a perfect Demiurge right there, one that might’ve been there from the very beginning.

Fuli is the Demiurge

I don’t think Gnostic Christianity is well understood as a concept, so to simplify it, it was an old branch of early Christanity (before the Bible was even standardized) that held the belief that the god who created the world, the god of the Old Testament is a false god. That’s what they called the Demiurge. Some tended to believe that the Demiurge was foolish; he wanted to replicate the divine world and basically made an imperfect copy of it. Some say that the Demiurge is envious of God and wanted to trap divinity in a material realm. It was, in essence, the earliest answer (that I know of) to the question “if God is good, then why do bad things happen?”. The Gnostics believed that the god of the material world wasn’t a good god. At most, all he desired was praise and obedience from humanity without caring for their morals or their suffering.

Now that I’ve given you a half-assed Theology 101 lesson on Gnosticism backed by Wikipedia and other cursory research, how does the Demiurge apply to Fuli?

Well, because Fuli hasn’t yet been born. They’re born at the end of time so that they can remember the universe. Fuli’s an Aeon that hasn’t been born, yet we have Memokeepers, we have memoria and, most importantly, we have the pure children of Anāsrava.

For something that hasn’t been born, Fuli does seem to want to ensure their future existence as much as they can, don’t you think? Akivili only has the Astral Express, Idrila has most likely nothing at this point, Long’s remnants are Dan Heng’s people…Why is Fuli the “non-existent” Aeon with the most anchors to the present universe out of all the “non-existent/dead” Aeons?

I think this is implying that the birth of Fuli is a certainty. There can’t be a timeline where they aren’t born or remain incomplete at the end of time.

In my opinion, for such a certainty to exist, it’s because what we perceive in the game as the present moment is made of Fuli’s memories of the universe, from its birth to its end. Naturally, their presence permeates the universe at all times and their survival is guaranteed because that’s the basis of the universe’s existence.

The pure chidren of Anāsrava weren’t given too much lore so far, but it’s not a stretch to think that all of them need to survive for Fuli to ascend, regardless of which individual child gets to ascend to godhood.

Fuli needed us to save and love Cyrene

If we accept that Fuli’s ascension is a certainty because they’re remembering what the universe used to be like before their birth, then is it any wonder we forgo all critical thinking for Cyrene’s sake? I know that the latest Exotales has had many “forgive” Black Swan for giving us the “least bad” outcome, but did she do it for us?

If you decide to leave in 3.0 after Aglaea threatens you, Black Swan isn’t there upon your return. So, her interest was your presence in Amphoreus, not March’s condition (which doesn’t get better) or the Express overall. And what could possibly interest her in Amphoreus? Well, Cyrene, a child of the Remembrance, who has to survive for Fuli to exist. The game doesn’t say where Black Swan goes, but the fact that many Memokeepers are invested in Amphoreus besides Black Swan herself is now, in hindsight, understandable. They don’t care about Irontomb as much as they care about Cyrene getting out to fulfill her role.

The trailblazer’s involvement in the events of Amphoreus ensures that Cyrene survives, and because Fuli remembers ensuring that all their pieces are there for their ascension, the trailblazer gets no choice but to obey Cyrene and go as far as giving her a way to survive until Fuli needs her. That’s the point of the “romantic” story. Whether or not Cyrene becomes Fuli, the point is that she’s “martyred” yet beloved and her story gets retold to all of our friends who vow to praise her too, because that’s how she ensures Fuli’s existence.

If Fuli needed us to do that, then he also needs us to care to the same degree for March, and when they finally awakens at the end of time, is their act of remembering the universe a rebirth of the universe?

I’d argue it is. It’s not a true rebirth though; it’s just a dream that the Aeon of Remembrance has, and why would they dream a different dream every time? They could risk creating enough variation that they’d create their worst nightmare: a universe where their birth isn’t guaranteed.

And there’s nothing scarier than that. So, every Fuli remembers the same universe. The game has already questioned the existence of free will before. So, does free will exist?

Elio says no, and I’m inclined to believe him now

Let me bring you back to better narrative days, back to Kafka’s companion quest in the first Luofu quests. What Kafka says here felt pretentious before, but now it rings truer than any “allegory” to Plato’s cave that Mr. Genius Zandar ever said:

Not my gameplay

The Stellaron Hunter’s script has never been proven wrong when it matters most. Not with Firefly, not for the main events of the Luofu. The only time you can make Elio be wrong is for Kafka’s companion quest, which doesn’t add anything. What’s also special about the Stellaron Hunters is that they appear in Amphoreus, too, whenever the Trailblazer gets the closest to Fuli. Kafka and/or Firefly, but specially Kafka, speaks directly through the vision, aware that you’ll see this because Elio’s script predicted it.

The fact that Exotales also has them, not Memokeepers or other characters, predict what would’ve happened if we left/didn’t go to Amphoreus opens the possibility that Elio has a link with Fuli as the Demiurge. We don’t know whether he’s a child of the Remembrance or something else, but for his script to be so infallible, it’s good to consider he might have a deeper connection with the Aeon who dreams this universe into existence.

Elio’s title, Destiny’s Slave, is also more interesting now that when I dismissed it as a cheap AoT reference (looking at you, Eren, Mr. Slave to Freedom). If he can predict the future, yet he’s also bound by it, then it means that even he and the Stellaron Hunters are remembered as contributing, whether they want it or not, to Fuli’s birth. As everything else in the universe, but especially those who are involved with either the Memokeepers or the Children of remembrance, they will tend to all serve the Fuli’s birth in some way or another.

Tend to are the key words here.

Believe it or not, there might be a way to escape being a slave to Fuli’s dream, but you might not like it. And the devs would definitely not like it. It’d make the entire plot of their game pointless, and that’s the beauty of it.

This is where another aspect of Gnosticism comes into play. The control of the Demiurge is not isolated. There’s a higher god, a higher truth, a gnosis, which then makes one wonder: where is the gnosis in HSR?

Well, it’s there; but in this universe, Fuli’s control is so absolute that gnosis only leads to meaninglessness. You are either content to be remembered by Fuli or your existence is touched by the only other Aeon that exists as a direct consequence of Fuli’s Remembrance: IX.

IX’s shadow extends across the universe, yet nobody understands Nihility

Nihility is the most mysterious of paths we’ve heard of thus far. And, considering everything that’s going on, one could hardly believe that Nihility would have a reason to exist. Why would the universe need or create an Aeon that is apathetic to its existence? Dr. Primitive even questions why a path led by an Aeon like IX would persist. His hypothesis about self-annihilators like Acheron might be correct; those beings might be spreading the shadow of IX after encountering it themselves. Their end is clear, however. They lose parts of their existence and end up being consumed by meaninglessness until they die.

The other thing that we know about IX, or at least those who encounter it, is that they hold the belief that everything in the universe is meaningless and that Aeons don’t care about humanity. In a world where Aeons give part of their power to humans, holding such a belief to the point of self-deletion seems a bit extreme. And ridiculous, too.

In a world where Emanators of all paths exist and where miracles only made possible by pathstriders and Emanators happen, why would anyone hold nihility as a belief?

Well, what if nihility was the gnosis that Fuli, the Demiurge, wants to hide? If we accept that the universe is Fuli’s dream, there’s two reactions people might have: either worship and serve Fuli body and soul to regain control over your remembered existence (like, say, a Memokeeper), or fully embrace the gnosis and fall into IX’s decay.

I don’t think IX would ever taint Aeons just by the way paths and Aeons are restricted, but what IX could do, if given enough self-annihilators to spread its shadow, is turn most if not all living creatures to the realization that their existence is meaningless outside of Fuli, thus leading to the universe’s complete collapse.

This would make Acheron technically the only one to have any power to change the fate of the universe, not us, but the devs wouldn’t risk having the Trailblaze be a “remembered” journey set on the same path every time. And yet it’s the most elegant solution to every gripe I’ve had. It explains everything so neatly it made me realize that, despite being a “lazy” fix, it’s also the most compelling narrative this game has ever let me see since its launch.

However, like all I’ve seen in Amphoreus, it won’t be relevant in any meaningful way. Why? Well, because this level of existential despair doesn’t sell well. Why care about your self-insert if your journey isn’t about overcoming insurmountable odds and saving the galaxy, but rather just ensuring that the collective of pink-haired waifus ascends to godhood?

Well, some might be into that, but it takes away from the power fantasy.

fandom: Honkai: Star Rail

pairings: Cyrene/Caelus if you squint

characters: Caenis, Cyrene, Caelus

tw's: massive 3.7 spoilers, existential despair, no beta, so typos and poor synxtax ahead, sorry not sorry.

summary: At the end of existence, in the garden the Demiurge created, lay the last breaths of the living.

A/N: 3.7's soundtrack should've been Komm Süsser Tod. ------ The gardens were beautiful, peaceful, forever trapped in spring. Everlasting, never changing. The one who brought the Remembrance into existence looked up with wonder, his breath caught, golden gaze wide. His last true heartbeat was seconds away, just on the edge between existence and memory. Everyone, everything, all that was now memory began to appear around him—all a recreation from dust that can  no longer breathe anew.

The avatar of Remembrance–the Demiurge–appeared. She was both the avatar and the architect of a reconstruction so vast it could almost pretend it was alive. Her white dress fluttered in the wind. And then, there was the narrator; she had once been part of the Demiurge, its counter. Its measure of true change.

But change was unwelcome in this garden. Still, the narrator sent a wave, a whisper, towards the only being who had yet to become a replayed memory. 

A swirl of darkness, a whirlwind of cold, winter wind beckoned the golden-eyed man.

The avatar of the Remembrance noticed. Her rainbow gaze narrowed at the narrator, but, this time, she did not intervene.

Of course, she did not need to. The narrator knew it all too well. 

Change was dead. 

Life was never going to become.

It was only going to be recalled.

The narrator expected the fury in the young man’s gaze; she expected to see his bat blazing with golden flames. Still, she waited. In the garden, the narrator had recalled who she was supposed to be. It was the only moment where she could show her true self to the young man.

“What are you scheming?” 

The empty flames of the Destruction, as it was recalled by the Remembrance, almost felt real. Almost. The narrator felt their heat, and her blue gaze reflected the golden glow that had nothing left to burn. 

“There’s nothing left to scheme, Caelus.”

The narrator put her hand over the bat, extinguishing the flames, for she could only be burned by what could still become. She nudged the weapon aside, her peaceful resignation reassured the young man. He didn’t notice his weapon vanishing.

“This is the only moment we ever get to talk. Thank you for accepting my invitation.”

A furrow troubled the young man’s expression, and it pushed away his last heartbeat by one last second. The narrator almost wished she could weep, for she was the architect of the universe’s last struggle to live.

“You… you don’t speak like her at all. Are you really Caenis?”

The narrator closed her eyes and nodded. “I’m the original Caenis. I was part of the first Nouspore until it calculated the moment of its ascension. Once it did, it modified me until I was no longer a threat to its perceived destiny.”

The young man scoffed. The narrator was expecting doubt and mockery, too. It was inevitable after his last true heartbeat. Now, he was memory—the tool and the fuel of the Remembrance. The young man disbelieved her, recalling her own misguided struggles, her madness, her failure. 

“Cyrene suffered because of you.”

Venom. All Remembrance felt for true change, for true life that moved past memory, was hatred. Venomous hatred.

“Indeed. And, should you choose to restore the universe with her, it’ll happen all over again. I’ll kill Aglaea, I’ll kill countless other heirs over millennia, and fall to madness again. Or, perhaps, should Mythus decide to obfuscate memory, I’ll be the one behind your death, trapping your soul in the River of Souls.”

Anger was overcome by confusion, but all of this was memory. It had happened before and it would happen again. 

“How do you know about Aeons?”

“I told you who I was, didn’t I? Why wouldn’t I know about Aeons?”

He remained silent and sat down, finally open to listen. The narrator’s only regret was knowing that she never reached this moment before all was lost to the 4th type of Finality. The young man invited the narrator to explain what she knew.

“Seeking knowledge from me is pointless, Caelus. I was only modelled after the ultimate truth, which is what your friend has spent almost her entire existence obfuscating.” 

The narrator paused, her blue eyes told countless stories of failures, all nails in a coffin of ice that would never melt. The young man seemed to understand, or at least, feel the weight of the truth, but she could not let it crush him.

If it did, then Nous’s calculation would end up pointing to IX.

“All I can do is push your curiosity to find an answer to this question: Can life truly exist if it’s pieced together by the Remembrance?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, a chuckle full of fear cut through his words. “Why couldn’t it? If we do things right, the universe will come back.”

“It will, of course. But if you combined the recollection of all existence perfectly to restore what once was before Irontomb destroyed it, would it ever be capable of forging its present and its future beyond what Fuli recollected at the end of existence?” She tilted her at the young man. “Mythus may rearrange or corrupt what Fuli recalled, but can they create something truly new? Something that can, without a doubt, be called ‘Life’?”

“What are you saying?”

The narrator fell silent; IX’s existence had been remembered. It would be dangerous to push the young man to realize the true purpose of what he had helped the Demiurge—the first Nouspore and Fuli’s awakened form—to create.

“Even in this form, my madness lingers, Caelus,” said the narrator. She gestured with her hand. “Please don’t take it too seriously. All I wished to know is why you never deviate from what your eternal friend wants. I had the impression that the Trailblaze, of all paths, would be a bit more rebellious towards so-called saviours.”

The young man spat his reply at her. “The trailblaze helps those in need, not those who crush others.”

“Didn’t Phainon crush his friends for far longer than I have crushed Aglaea?”

“He had no choice!”

“Indeed. But you did. So, why did you help the Demiurge without looking at other choices?”

“What other choices did I have?”

The narrator had an answer to give, but the young man’s reaction would beckon IX’s strongest echo. Such disruptions to the perfect recollection of what had been would not be allowed. Not even by Mythus.

“Maybe none that you could’ve seen, given what you’ve become,” she said, letting out a long, tired sigh. “But I’ll leave you with what I have always thought from the moment I was separated from the first Nouspore.”

She stood and took the golden crown of laurel off her head. “That god, the Demiurge, can only love a world where humanity never ceases to love them in return.” She combed some of the young man’s messy, grey hair away and placed the crown on them. “That’s why the Demiurge prefers a world recreated through their memory.”

Caelus awoke in his room with something digging on the sides of his head. The piercing pain jolted him awake and he threw the instrument of torture away; it was a crown of golden laurel, with his blood now tainting the tips of the leaves. He looked at it, trying to recall where he had gotten it, but nothing came. His vision blurred, his ears rang, but his pain went away.

He blinked a few times and saw the crown of laurels on the ground; the trailblazer sighed, reminding himself that he shouldn’t have left something given by his friends in Amphoreus in his honour so carelessly on the ground. He picked it up and put it on his shelf, next to all the tokens of appreciation he had received through his travels across the cosmos.

Caelus looked at every single one and smiled to himself; he and Cyrene had succeeded.

All that was left to do was celebrate with his friends on the Express. 

A loud rattle coming from the bathroom startled him. He raised an eyebrow. 

If something was broken, he’d have to tell Pom-Pom right away.

However, all that he would find would be his friends—Cipher and Castorice. Later, he’d find all the Chrysos Heirs and understand Cyrene’s “sacrifice”. He’d promise her eternal Remembrance, for that was all that he could offer.

So, I’m back. It’s me, the same person who made an entire series on Amphoreus back at it again for round 6.

I’m not here to beat a dead horse. I'm here because I think it’s important for the fandom (or at least whoever is willing to read this with an open mind) to see that 3.4, even if we ignore Myriad Celestia, is nothing short of a fabricated tragedy that, in my opinion, delivers a very troubling message: It is your duty, and it is noble, to forsake the universe for a single friend.

But first, I want to address something right off the bat.

There's nothing wrong with being the villain of the story

Before HSR, I've played my fair share of other games, including things like Modern Warfare 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Skyrim, GTA San Andreas, and way too many visual novels of all kinds to list them all without muddying the point of this section.

I list all these games because they give you the choice of doing some of the most abhorrent acts you could think of and that, personally, I just find fun to do in an environment where nothing is real and, most of all: I get consequences for being evil.

Yes, me going on a city guard killing spree in Skyrim should get every new town I step in on high alert. Same thing happens if I decide to abolish the police one cop at a time in GTA and it’s totally understandable.

Yes, me deciding to kill all the refugees in the first town I get to in BG3 should make Halsin absolutely pissed and disgusted. He has every right to see me as an enemy, because, well, technically I am.

Yes, the point of the No Russian mission should be that Makarov is an even greater manipulative asshole than the CIA expected; my role in the undercover mission should backfire and trigger everything nobody wanted to happen.

I enjoy being an asshole even if I'm not being a villain in games. It’s part of my fun, especially with characters I find to be annoying. Having the freedom to be as evil as I want or as nasty as I can be to one or multiple characters is part of what makes games fun.

On one condition.

Being evil isn't fun when you are treated as the hero

And I don't mean this as in “hero guy goes off the rails and becomes the villain while nobody notices”. Player agency and the game punishing bad actions is part of what makes grey morality work, especially in cases like No Russian in MW2. It's shocking. It's sickening, but again, the game doesn't shy away from showing that the very act you're committing is in fact disgusting and evil. Nothing good came from it. It was a gamble and you lost it from the start because Makarov knew who you were and how to use you. Even if you didn't fire a single round at the airport.

Honkai Star Rail has never been very good, like most gacha games, at handling player agency, especially because its plot is less like an RPG and more like a visual novel where you only have one route. Still, even within this forced narrative framework, the game manages to reward the good choices it lets the player make on their own. They even have a way to condemn the most foul choices the players can make. How? Well, through a very minor but interesting item.

The mechanics of the Praise of High Morals

Remember these?

From the Spaces Station up to the Luofu, you could gather these almost exclusively by doing the right thing throughout various missions or encounters with NPCs. And it was worth going through a few good actions because it then let you do the really interesting stuff.

Really interesting stuff like, say, dropping a neutron bomb in the lake where Dan Heng's people spawn.

You don't make it go boom, you just drop the thing there. It costs six Praises of High Morals to unlock the option to do such a reckless and possibly destructive act. The dialogue itself even makes you reconsider what you're about to do, noting how dangerous and sacrilegious it is.

Not my gameplay. But it’s the only images I have of this quest.

But well, if you, like me, had the required Praises of High Morals, then the game still doesn't let you go from its judgement. And it's excellent because it shouldn't. Even if you say that in theory it should be fine. Even if, after the fact, nothing happens, you are not immune from having the game reminding you that what you did could've been catastrophic. See the images below.

This was fairly minor but I liked the mechanic. It was a fun way to be the best chaotic neutral you could be within the very limited agency you have within the game.

Until, well, they made the Praises of High Morals something you could buy. Like how the Catholic Church did Indulgences. It’s no longer fun to drop the bomb in the Luofu even if you didn't do so before for lack of Praises of High Morals because now you can just buy your way into this outcome.

I could've brought any of the actions that cost you some Praises of High Morals, but I chose this specifically because it had the potential to bring unimaginable destruction aboard the Luofu.

And, back in 1.2, the game didn't let you forget it.

Dropping a neutron bomb into the lake could've made you an enemy of the Vidyadhara and the Luofu, had things gone wrong.

So, why is it that, in 3.4, we no longer have the same accountability?

On the one hand, we could say that it’s because we're just naive. The trailblazer doesn't know what the player does and thus this is just a tragedy in the making.

Except that doesn't work.

There are no excuses for any character to not question what the trailblazer is about to do, even if we believe the part that we are too naive or not “heroic” to begin with.

The potential costs of saving Phainon and Amphoreus are not a secret

The trailblaze quest starts with a bang; I will admit that I was intrigued, especially considering what Screwllum tells us right off the bat about the “fate” of Amphoreus.

Based on Lygus’s monologues, we know that Amphoreus itself is the Lord Ravager. The Scepter was corrupted in its entirety and repurposed to serve Nanook, as Lygus first tells us, the players, but he also tells this to Caelus during the many flashbacks we're subjected to as we follow Phainon Prime become Khaslana then become the Flame Reaver.

There are many characters who speak about how fate is unavoidable. The game itself says that we have two options:

Preserve the loop.

Break the loop.

Preserving the loop means Khaslana and Cyrene continue to foil the objective of the Chrysos Heirs, but it also buys time for external actors like Screwllum and Herta to study Amphoreus from the outside and find ways through. Now, granted, they might be betting on us, the protagonists to find a way to break Amphoreus from the inside, which should, in theory also destroy Irontomb because, again Amphoreus = Irontomb. As far as we know, there are not that many other effective containment mechanisms for Irontomb.

On the other hand, breaking the loop, should Cyrene's and Phainon’s plan work could also end up with the destruction of Irontomb and… a “true Dawn” for Amphoreus; this implies there is a way for Amphoreus to not only continue its existence without being Irontomb, but also become a real, tangible world, not a buggy SU.

What evidence do we have that Phainon and Cyrene's plan has a chance to work? Well, none. At least none that’s explicitly stated beyond the “we maintained the loop until an external variable came in and hopefully does what we want it to do”.

Meanwhile, what do we know for sure will happen if Phainon and Cyrene are wrong? Oh, right. Irontomb. A Lord Ravager strong enough and with enough hatred for Nous to kill them.

3.4 doesn’t end with a hopeful note in that regard. In the admin terminal we’re given, we see that the liberation of Irontomb is halted, but it hasn't failed or been disabled. It's simply stuck. Phainon’s idea to burn Irontomb from within with the power of the millions of Coreflames he gathered as Khaslana could work. But then we open the terminal and we find that... Whoops! Khaslana merged with Irontomb.

Irontomb is having quite the epic meal time right now.

Now, this should be ringing alarms. Even if we assume Phainon is now the main drive of Irontomb, he's still a Lord Ravager strong enough to kill an Aeon. And, by all measures, he has a bone to pick with Nanook. He’s perhaps strong enough to still trigger a cosmic conflict that will end in Nanook’s destruction.

We haven't solved the problem.

The risk of having a Lord Ravager go out and tear galaxies apart—including those where our friends and allies in Penacony, the Xianzhou and Belobog are— is not lessened by what we just did.

In fact, we might've just made it worse, given that Irontomb/Phainon has more power than it ever had access to before.

I can understand that maybe this is a necessary moral failing from the Trailblazer. This is the one time where they chose wrong. They got carried away by misplaced sympathy and now everyone is fucked because of it.

Except there's not a single character who frames this a bad or at least risky choice.

Why is ‘saving Amphoreus’ a duty?

I would expect the word ‘duty’ to carry the same weight as it does during the No Russian mission. The whole “you will lose a piece of yourself, but you are doing this for the greater good, soldier” kind of mentality.

It could be easy to frame the choice to take Phainon and Cyrene up on their extremely risky gamble as the only shot they have to actually destroy Irontomb. All they had to do is have Screwllum insist that, yeah, the risk to freeing Irontomb is very bad, but they have no way to act from the outside. The only way to defuse the bomb, so to speak, is doing it from within. Then, if we had a hint that the loop was only increasing Irontomb's power, then it would be very logical to take the gamble. There is no other way, after all.

Alas, that is not how the story is presented. Instead, we have Lygus himself tell us this:

So, what is Phainon’s destiny, exactly? To usher in the “pale dawn?” Or, as he later says, to “Bring Nanook a dawn where the stars will die”?

Over and over, we are told to stay and witness or usher in the “Fate of Amphoreus”, even when said fate is quite grim for everyone else outside of it. Even Screwllum does this.

And I keep asking myself… why would he wish for this? Why would anyone want this?

Caelus, though stupid or reckless or villainous as he might be, still has friends outside of Amphoreus. There could be at least one line where he could question just how solid Cyrene's and Phainon's plan is. Like the quest of the neutron bomb in the Luofu said, we can't just say “in theory” or “we hope” when the alternative is blowing up the stability of the universe as we know it.

Besides, do we have any concrete reasons to trust that our new friends even care about the galaxy the way we do?

I would argue that we have proof of the contrary.

Cyrene doesn't care about the galaxy, and if she doesn't, then why would Phainon?

Let me put you a quote from Cyrene that unsettled me from the moment it began to dawn on me that the game was pushing the release of a Lord Ravager (be it Phainon or Irontomb) on us, the player.

“it's okay if we blow up the universe if we get to hold hands at the end!”

See, the reason why I think it's important for someone foreign to Amphoreus to at least ask these two how they know their plan has a shot at working, it's because these people know nothing of how the galaxy is like beyond Amphoreus. They have nothing to lose, really, even if they allowed Irontomb to be released.

From the start, their quest to stop Irontomb is less about the greater good for the rest of the cosmos and more about their right to self-determination. They don't want to have their destiny be prewritten by Lygus.

That’s it.

It’s an understandable goal, but, we, the players, should be allowed to at least have some doubts creep in.

As sad as Phainon’s arc is, the moral weight of helping these two defective bots is just not the same for the trailblazer. It’s not just a matter of freeing two friends from an unjust fate. It's about also keeping all our other friends safe from an existential threat.

The trailblazer has friends all over, starting by the Astral Express being parked right outside Amphoreus. These are real people. Unlike Phainon and Cyrene, the souls of everyone outside of Amphoreus can't be stored in a USB key as a backup. Once they're gone, that's it. Even Dan Heng's next reincarnation won't remember a thing and will be, for all intents and purposes, a completely different person.

So again, I ask you: if in 1.2 we were admonished by the game itself to not do something potentially catastrophic to the Vidyadhara… why are these our only choices in 3.4?

Why paint this as something we should regret as the player character? Mind you, this is a little before Screwllum talks to us, but even after that, we are told to stay. Because it is our “mission”, our “duty”.

The only answer 3.4 offers to my question can be read in two ways:

It's our duty because Phainon is friend-shaped and he has the benefit of recency bias. When was the last time we saw anyone from Penacony, the Xianzhou, Herta's Space Station or Belobog? Forever ago. This ain’t about them. They don’t even deserve a single thought.

The writers said so. This is their “tragedy” in the making. Everyone believes we're doing a great thing when in fact it's very “morally grey”. Nevermind that we never get any actual grey morality because said thing can only come when a disastrous, risky gamble is allowed to be questioned at least once.

Both interpretations don't help the cause the game is trying to sell to me. I think it's a betrayal far worse than the valuable lessons patch 3.3 left me about lies being “noble” or genocide being a product of a “boundless love” for humanity.

Nothing is allowed to be questioned, not by the player nor any other NPC. When the stakes aren't just the survival of some buggy SU but the survival of the cosmos as we know it, I'm sorry, but I can’t endorse the writing behind this "tragedy".

Phainon’s existence doesn’t hold any weight compared to the lives of everyone else and Myriad Celestia gives us a very dark and depressing glimpse at what we've just done.

And all of that because the game frames it as a “duty”.

It is not.

It is a choice.

And, just like any other choice, we must be condemned immediately for choosing it. Or, at the very least, have one moment of doubt. A single line where we question the ramifications of what we're doing.

Hoyoverse, not so long ago, was capable of condemning the player for reckless choices.

To celebrate 10 reblogs, I'll get my 10th post out. Yay~

I don't have in mind a super-detailed, in-depth structure like I did for my Destroying Amphoreus series. Typos and grammar mistakes ahead, proceed with caution.

So, let's begin.

I honestly don't watch any of the YT/Insta/whatever-other social-media posts of any of the games I play. HSR is no exception.

Until a friend DMed me the latest Myriad Celestia with a skull emoji.

Now, I gotta say... IF (key word) all my Destroying Amphoreus posts, especially those about Cipher, are true and canon (which they are hinted to be, but I don't wanna jump the gun in case we're in for another round of retcons in 3.4)... Cipher really has set a gold standard for Worst Girl.

It's not just Amphoreus. Her one lie is putting the entire universe in jeopardy. If that's not absolute cinema, you guys, I don't know what is. Such noble lies must be heard throughout the cosmos, apparently.

I don't really talk about my opinions on the game with the small fandom circles I'm in, but at least for this one, I felt the urge to get my opinion about Cipher known. Not that it was accepted, but I'm fine with it. After all, it may be too "clean cut" for the "complex" narrative HSR has always had. Apparently.

But the simplest answer is usually the correct one, no?

It makes sense to me. Phainon comes back to Okhema in ruins and he tries to fuse with Kephale's Coreflame, but... it just doesn't work. The Soul of the titan is fractured, perhaps even all gone. Then comes Lycurgus with his speech about "leaving the cave" as he does at the end of the Myriad Celestia Trailer.

Those last few seconds are very, very interesting to me. I see it as a soft confirmation that I'm on the right path; but again, I might just be delulu at this point, so I don't wanna say "Boy, did I call it or what?" just yet.

You see, since Amphoreus is supposed to be all greek-themed, it's normal for Hoyoverse to make references to philosophy. Hence Anaxa, for example.

The Allegory of the Cave was proposed by Plato. It essentially pushes the idea of a world where people live imprisoned and under an understanding of the world that is inherently flawed. All they perceive are the shadows of objects carried around by "sign bearers". It's not objective reality, and all they know are, essentially, illusions.

Which is exactly what Cipher's role now seems to be. She is the sign bearer deceiving the world... and now Phainon will be given the chance to break his chains, leave the cave and look at the world for what it truly is.

Once Phainon sees that there is no salvation, and there has never been any hope for the past 7 centuries (minimum estimate), well he has every reason to take Lycurgus' offer and become a Lord Ravager.

And he will also probably destroy the Erudition, but that's still up in the air. I'm sure that's where we'll come in as plot-devices—I mean, protagonists and save the day.

Don't forget the writers wanted us to clap and cry for Cipher's noble lies.

Link to part 1, Link to part 2, Link to part 3, Link to part 4

I want to dedicate the last post of this series to all the good Amphoreus had. Whether the writers squandered it or they simply made some amazing, unintentional comedy gold. So, let's get into it.

The writers could've made the politics make sense if they focused on Kremnos vs Okhema

There was an opportunity to make a political plot work, to show that there could be a divide between the Heirs without rewriting everything. There was a group of people the Council could exploit to their political advantage… the Kremnoans. Krateros tells us that the Kremnoans agree with Caenis. To them, Aglaea is a tyrant.

The writers knew they could not have Mydei be the first to betray the Flame-chase (that place belonged to Anaxa), which is why they had Tribbie stop Aglaea from judging Krateros right when they found him in the Vortex of Genesis. But let’s disregard that and assume she had at least passed some kind of sentence to him.

Krateros’ sentence (possibly the death penalty) would have made Mydei reconsider his allegiance to Aglaea and what that would mean for his desperate people. It would have also been the perfect chance to show Caenis achieve or at least try to make some cracks in the alliance between the Chrysos Heirs.

Instead, we have Anaxa and Castorice being temporary allies of the Council for reasons that, frankly, were plot-contrivances. The rivalry between Anaxa and Aglaea remains unexplained, and Castorice’s reasons for her involvement are equally vague. Speaking of Aglaea though…

Aglaea, I really wanted to like you as an antagonist

From the moment she threatened Caelus and Dan Heng with death, I had expectations for her to be the tyrant everyone else thinks she is. To have us align not with the people, but with the tyrants that cause their suffering for some grander design would’ve been a refreshing narrative direction for the game.

Picture this. Throughout Amphoreus, we have to negotiate our place in the oppressors’ scheme, possibly braking through eventually and play a role in the resistance led by Caenis, or perhaps discover that Caenis and her resistance are equally fanatical and flawed. To me, that sounds like a great story to play through. It would’ve naturally lent itself to politics, to difficult choices for the player which could’ve led to more bad ends through every new patch. Most of all, it could’ve helped fix 3.2’s plot-twist.

Had Aglaea been a tyrant, she would not have let us leave. We know too much and she has no guarantee we won’t bring more “people from beyond the sky” into her carefully calibrated system. If she was what everyone claims she was, then Dan Heng could have many reasons to avoid investigating how to get us back in contact with the Express, let alone repair the ship. Maybe he saw and felt those threads against his neck while he was on his way to meet Lygus, or maybe a nymph showed itself, transmitting Aglaea’s voice when he was near the crash-site and blackmailing him to stop doing anything, or else she will kill Caelus.

But, well, I suppose that to have any of that, I will have to write fanfics. Unless someone has already written something like it. If so, please drop the title or the link. I’d love to read it.

There were some funny things in Amphoreus though

If there’s anything I could say that I liked about Amphoreus, is that there are moments of genuine comedy-gold. Unintentional ones, but I want to highlight them. They got some genuine bouts of laughter out of me. To be clear, I play with the JP voice-over.

The foreign language in question: *choking noises*

The best part is that I don’t think Phainon realizes how dumb he sounded.

“Go to the gym, Anaxa. You’re weak.” - Cerces.

These brief moments don’t save the story, but I’ve focused enough on the bad. I still think the story is unsalvageable, but I can’t say that it never made me laugh.

The good

If there ever were two characters I found tolerable throughout this entire mess of a story, it would have to be Mydeimos and Castorice.

The Prince of Kremnos had a somewhat simplistic, but mostly serviceable arc about accepting his responsibilities as the demigod of Strife without becoming the god-king of Kremnos. I also like that, unlike most characters, Mydei talked the way I think a normal person would, for the most part. There was rarely any moment where the writers made him go off tangents and use every synonym in the book to muddy the message behind his words. I appreciated that.

I had no strong feelings for Castorice until 3.2. I think the developers made an excellent choice and encapsulate her backstory, her dreams and motivations as a character in the short animation video… which they miraculously included in the patch! Had the video been, like every other one, lost in some social media website, Castorice would’ve been as forgettable as everyone but Mydei has been. So, kudos to Hoyoverse. I hope they learn and add more of the character short videos to the game in a way that feels as natural as Castorice’s.

That’s it. I have no more praise to give.

So, what’s next?

Whether the Fate collab takes 1 or 2 patches doesn’t matter. The game has already told me that the fate of Amphoreus is an “Everybody’s already dead” scenario. Everyone’s dead, except Phainon, who’s undoubtedly the Lord Ravager Lygus mentioned to Herta. The only other mystery is March, but considering Cyrene just appeared promising a “romantic story like none that has come before” to Phainon, I have my theories…

Not that it should be worth much, but if Cyrene is supposed to be Elysia of HI3 and that there was one Elysia stream where March called Elysia “mom”, I think there’s a chance we discover we’ve been travelling with Phainon’s direct descendant.

If that theory becomes reality, it’d be funny to imagine how the end of the patch will look like.

I can’t wait to wake March up from her ice tomb and say “Yo, your dad turned into a Lord Ravager cuz a cat-girl doomed his world. But don’t worry cuz Dan Heng, Herta, Screwllum and I killed him for good. The universe is safe. By the way, here are some pics.”

In all seriousness, the whole situation with March is just sad all around. At least, with the bad end in 3.0, Caelus and Dan Heng had some plausible reasons they couldn’t investigate Amphoreus any longer and Sunday is still there to help, even if Black Swan isn’t. It gave some hope, at least.

But with the “true” end, I can’t even imagine how either Dan Heng or Caelus will explain to the rest of the crew that they got tangled in problems and never really tried to get back into contact with them. No matter what kind of lie they come up with, it’s still a lie. They could’ve tried. Aglaea wasn’t a tyrant and didn’t try to stop anyone from harming her or her power.

Link to part 1, Link to part 2, Link to part 3

Ret-cons have their time and place. Sometimes it’s a necessary move to integrate part of the lore, other times, it’s just to modernize a game’s story. Although some fans may disagree, writers don’t change the lore in bad faith. Usually. I think HSR is one exception.

The ret-conning in Amphoreus is very much made in bad faith. It happens almost from one patch to the next. It's too fast, and also too blatant. Honestly, it feels like gaslighting. There are two prime examples of this.

The plot-twist of 3.2 never made sense. It makes even less sense if you consider 3.0’s secret/bad end.

Anaxa’s entire “theory” only holds up if you ignore what the entirety of 3.0 established about Gnaeus.

So, let’s tackle the first point because not every player might’ve chosen the “secret end”.

“You’re already dead!” What?

When Oronyx talked and said that Caelus’ life was “cast away [from the moment he crossed the sky]”, I thought it was an interesting choice. It definitely sparked a tiny sense of wonder in me. It’s quite an abrupt, game-changing revelation. But then, there’s the conversation with Dan Heng that activated my memories of 3.0.

Really? You just didn’t even react when you saw Caelus being fine; no checking for injuries, no asking “how’s the bleeding”, not even an “we need to have a physician check you ASAP,” or an “I’m glad you’re fine now.”… nothing?

Now, the game wants me to believe that while Caelus was allegedly bleeding out in front of Dan Heng, our dragon boy sent this text message to the Express.

Dan Heng: Caelus is bleeding to death, and the cart is up in flames, but they don’t need to know that part.

This chat made me raise an eyebrow in 3.0, but it wasn't a deal breaker. 3.2’s reveal makes it a deal-breaker.

I mean, really. There's no reason Dan Heng—as a character—would tell the rest of the Express nothing’s wrong while he knows that’s not the case at all. But, as I've already said in part 2, the writers stopped seeing Dan Heng as a character.

And I wish that the OOC complaint was all I had against the plot-twist.

Do you know what the worst part about this plot-twist is? That I played the “bad end” of 3.0.

Now, I call it a “bad end” because it leads you to a game over. In every game that has them, bad ends don’t break the overarching narrative of the good/true end of the game. They're just scenarios where the protagonist fails in some important way. Usually through death. But in HSR’s case, death isn't part of the secret end.

It’s something that essentially kills everything that comes afterward.

Leaving Amphoreus resurrects you, apparently

In 3.0, after Aglaea tries to kill you (but not really, because we can’t have anyone seriously posing a threat to Caelus unless it's the final boss of the patch), Phainon apologizes and gives you the chance to leave.

The game makes that choice a little harder for you. Still, you can do it if you insist on leaving after receiving death threats from those in power. So, how does that part go?

Wow. It was that easy all along?

Well… that just messed up the 3.2 plot-twist more than Dan Heng’s rather startling lack of concern.

This is illogical, completely incompatible with 3.2, unless we're willing to assume that Amphoreus is such a metaphysical anomaly that, if you died entering the planet, you resurrect when you leave it.

At the very least, this creates a logical gap that the game doesn't even try to address. If Caelus was already dead, his soul trapped in Amphoreus’ River of Souls, and only Castorice could retrieve it… why can we leave before solving that entire problem?

The other problem that arises with this “bad end” is that 3.3 keeps making a point about how Aquila is the only thing preventing us from leaving, let alone communicating with the outside world. How Dan Heng “feels powerless the more he finds out” because he can’t understand the “curse from beyond the sky”.

Meanwhile, if we had kept looking for ways to regain contact with the Express—which should be priority number 1—, we could've just asked Lygus about it.

We could've left at any point, or we could've at least re-established the cart as a functioning base, if we had talked with Lygus. Something that Phainon could've helped us with long before 3.3. If we asked, of course.

Had we at least gotten a functional base, we could've had contact with the rest of the Astral Express and gotten some updates on March. But again, I suppose that the writers really need that padded runtime and make the search for a link between outer space and Amphoreus completely one-sided.

Which it shouldn't be, if Dan Heng and Caelus were characters acting on intrinsic, internal motivations instead of just plot devices going along with whatever plot point the writers want them to go through.

But, speaking of characters, maybe it’s a good thing that the writers don’t make many characters feel like one. Their attempts to do so with Anaxa were not even worth it.

Anaxa—When you're wrong about something, it actually proves you were right all along

Writing smart characters is hard. There’s a reason the Bleach community clowns on Aizen and his “All was part of my plan” schtick. Smart characters can either be smart and act like it, or they can be an accumulation of plot contrivances that only happen because they have to be ahead of the pack. To prove their “smartness”.

I think you can guess, by the title of this section, where I think Anaxa falls.

Does Anaxa even know what the Flame-chase journey is about?

What exactly does the Era Nova prophecy tell us? Well, in 3.0, Phainon explains it to us. The Chrysos Heirs must shatter the pillars of the world, meaning the Titans. A Chrysos Heir must hold each Titan’s authority (their “seat”). Doing so will give the Chrysos Heir divinity, making them demigods. This divinity will last until the Era Nova comes. AKA: 12 different Chrysos Heirs reclaim all the 12 Coreflames. Then, the miracle happens. We don't know more than that from him, but I can deduce what the miracle is from the rest of the story in that patch.

Remember Gnaeus? The whole Kremnos quest in 3.0? I do.

I remember Gnaeus became Nikador. Does the game tell us that? No, but it’s the only logical inference I can make.

When we see his soul again in the Vortex of Genesis before Phainon takes the trial, Trinnon tells us that’s Nikador. For that to be true, Gnaeus’ soul must have fused with that of the Titan. He must have fully ascended into godhood and taken Nikador’s full divinity. Even before that moment, you could argue that if one mortal man can hold a fraction of a god’s soul (as the game tells us), then this mortal man’s soul is inherently divine.

Thus, if we add this knowledge to Phainon’s explanation of the Flame-chase journey, we can conclude that yes, one can fuse a human soul to a Titan’s and thus make that human soul ascend into divinity. That's the miracle and the beginning of a new cycle.

Anaxa doesn’t believe in the Flame-chase journey, so what exactly does he believe in? What is his theory on the soul that he wants to prove, no matter the cost? Let’s see…

Oh, so just like Gnaeus did. Just like the prophecy implies.

Do you see the similarities?

It aligns so well with what we know of the prophecy I have to question whether he knows what the Flame-chase journey’s goal is. Does the idea of becoming a demigod with a Titan’s Coreflame not give him any clues? Apparently not.

He dies laughing, saying that he alone will ascend into godhood, but, I mean, why would that be the case? Every Chrysos Heir will do so. That's what the prophecy is about. It's not his theory, and yet…

Anaxa steals the credit for the prophecy that he didn’t believe in

Let's look at one of Phainon’s dialogues in 3.3.

The writers want to make Anaxa seem like an intellectual, and in some ways, they succeed. The way he talks and interacts with the rest gives the right characterization, but his “theory” doesn't hold any water as a “ground-breaking discovery”. It’s just the prophecy they’ve all been following from the get-go.

I could chalk this up to the writers being clueless about how to make Anaxa's hypothesis feel like it's actually ground-breaking and insightful from the perspective of someone who doesn't believe in the Era Nova.

Ockham's razor, as some might say. This might just be incompetence.

I don't think so. I think it’s gaslighting because we see active ret-conning in the very summary of 3.2 before we launch 3.3’s quest.

Anaxa “broke free” from Aglaea's surveillance. Or did he?

The 3.2 recap has this extremely bold claim about Anaxa. Reading it like this, I would forgive anyone for thinking Aglaea actually tried to imprison him, or spied on him, or limited his movements, who he could talk to, and he—being the genius that he is—broke free from her grasp.

In 3.1, there's a conversation between Aglaea and Tribbie, which happens while Caelus is still exploring the Grove. Aglaea says that she will “try to keep [the Black Tide crisis in the Grove] under wraps” otherwise, the Council will use it as ammo against her. Fair enough. We don't want people to panic. Aglaea has every reason to silence any survivors from the Grove.

So, what is the first thing Caelus and Castorice do with Anaxa once they're in Okhema? Let’s look at the quest dialogues straight from the wiki for the sake of saving space.

The quest goal immediately after this is to talk to the bereaved. So much for preventing Anaxa from talking with the victims, am I right? Her inaction towards Anaxa leads to the very thing she feared. It’s not Anaxa outsmarting her, or doing things outside her knowledge (which, realistically, he never could if Aglaea used her powers like she should).

Throughout 3.1 and 3.2, after his return, Anaxa is free to roam the city, talk to whoever he wants. Including Caenis. Let me remind you of what Lygus says when he goes to meet Anaxa.

And what does Anaxa say to this generous offer?

So, tell me, at what point is any of this “breaking free” from Aglaea’s surveillance? Not that her surveillance means anything, mind you, but for the game to be so bold and claim that Anaxa broke free from “the surveillance of the golden threads” and sought refuge in the Council… it’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s gaslighting.

They’re lying about their story to manipulate me into perceiving something that was never there.

I think that making the quests over 7h long and being mostly made of dialogues is part of the tactic. After 4-5h where I spend 80% of the time hearing people talk and still having 3-5h of the same thing left, yeah, I think the intent is to have me turn off my brain. The dialogue, especially, being so convoluted instead of being straight-forward only adds to the need to stop trying to make sense of it and just go next.

It’s therefore easier to take the summaries at face-value, or the simplest dialogues at face-value. But when everything is made intentionally to be long, confusing and tedious, I have grown very wary of the rare moments where it’s not. For good reason. I can’t trust these writers being honest about their own story.

Link to part 1, Link to part 2

It takes time to set a stage for politics. Unless writers detail power structures, their portrayal will seem trivial. That’s exactly where Amphoreus fails.

The HSR writers don’t set the stage before shoving politics in. To make matters worse, the way they try to make the political antagonists feel like a cartoonishly evil force that the player must hate at all costs backfires spectacularly on them by the end of 3.3.

So, let’s tackle the first flaw of the political plot in Amphoreus.

There was no setup

Aglaea and the Chrysos Heirs are the ones taking the important decisions all throughout the patch. From 3.0 and most of 3.1, the Council is not an issue. As far as we know, the Council of Elders in Okhema guards Kephale’s Coreflame, and their relationship is at least diplomatic. Roughly 6h into 3.0, there is a tense conversation between Elder Caenis and Aglaea, but it’s never brought up for the rest of 4h of that patch and, as Aglaea says, “It’s an empty threat”. I have no reason to believe Aglaea is downplaying the situations for reasons I’ll get to later. So, let’s continue exploring the next patch, which is 3.1.

As Aglaea explains to Krateros when she catches him in the Vortex of Genesis, “by agreement between the Chrysos Heirs and the Council of Elders, those who trespass upon the Vortex of Genesis need not be tried by the Council. I am allowed to pass judgment alone.”

Never during the first fifteen hours of Amphoreus’ Trailblaze Quests are we led to think that these two governing forces are opposing each other. If anything, besides ONE council member, it seems both factions have settled comfortably in working in tandem, or at least negotiate the power they have between each other.

Fifteen hours. That’s all of 3.0 and roughly two-thirds of 3.1. The only “hint” of conflict is a single Karen doing what Karens do best for roughly 2 minutes.

And then suddenly…

"Somehow, Palpatine returned!" kinda moment

This feels like Aglaea’s talking to the player. She’s doing the writers’ work to tease what 3.2 will be about.

3.1 puts far more effort into fleshing out the grievances from the Kremnoan refugees towards Aglaea and Okhemans as a whole than the grievances of the Council towards the Chrysos Heirs. So, I wondered if some Kremnoans are in the Council of Elders; however, the game paints a very tense relationship between Okhemans and Kremnoans in particular. No Okheman would elect a Kremnoan to the Council, even if it were possible. Though Mydei has power as a Chrysos Heir, he never wields it. His entire character arc in 3.1 is all about renouncing to his political power.

For the rest of 3.1 and about half of 3.2, we’re not led to believe there are exceptional individuals among the Council. They say Caenis killed a Chrysos Heir during her prime, but now she’s much older. An older woman, such as she, has virtually no chance against any Chrysos Heir. And it’s not just because she’s physically weaker.

Which brings me to my second point.

Aglaea has every means at her disposal to eliminate the Council

Remember that one of the first things 3.0 establishes is that it’s only thanks to Aglaea that Okhemans have something akin to cellular networks and the internet as we’d know it. That’s huge. Controlling the means of communication is not that dissimilar from having absolute control of the population.

Subsequent patches show us that not only does she own and control the means of communication, she can also use her threads to monitor people’s movements and words. Otherwise, how could she know Caenis’s intentions, or apprehend the photographer and then both Caelus and Dan Heng so quickly for blasphemy? Why would Lygus point out to Anaxa that Aglaea has a thread on him?

Aglaea can turn public opinion against the Caenis’ faction in the Council in the blink of an eye. Caenis’s faction has a crucial disadvantage: lack of secrecy. The Seamstress can track them all in real-time. Aglaea’s nymph-tracking negates any safety outside Okhema; she’ll find them, regardless.

And that’s not all. After Caenis comes to complain to Aglaea like the Karen she is, Aglaea tells Tribbie this: “Would you like me to slit their throats with golden threads? It would be done in a flash.”

If Aglaea, at any point between 3.0 and 3.1 (after the reveal that Caenis is becoming an issue) used the means at her disposal, 3.2 would’ve only had half of its runtime—perhaps less. Which the writers can’t let us have because, well, every patch now has to be as long as a work shift, if not longer.

Considering what happened in 3.3, I believe the writers realized how weak and pathetic the Council was, but the way they tried to make them “menacing” again was laughably bad.

Let’s clean up the Cleaners… and Aglaea’s death

The Cleaners came out of absolutely nowhere. Seriously, did anyone mention them prior to 3.3? Nope.

The idea itself isn’t bad. Of course normal humans, especially what Seliose did, would look for means to defend themselves against demigods. However, they’re not presented as an effective force. Phainon beats them up. Cipher beats them up. Dan Heng probably also beat them up. They don’t even break a sweat or say they were worthy opponents. They’re just the newest evil minions, or at least they should be.

So, why didn’t Aglaea fight back?

The writers set up a point in 3.2 all about how Aglaea was “losing her humanity”, how her “soul was eroding” because of the divinity she’s inherited. Let’s not forget that Cipher has held onto Zagreus’ divinity for as Aglaea has held Mnestia’s, and Worst Girl still won against a dozen Cleaners. The entire point of Aglaea losing her soul in 3.2 was because the Council believed she was a heartless tyrant who, like Seliose, would be willing and able to crush Okhemans under her thumb. Aglaea could crush them, yet she never tries.

There’s no reason Aglaea had to let herself get Julius Caeared against Caenis and her oh-so menacing Cleaners. The letter left to Phainon scrambles for reasons to make her death seem like a noble sacrifice, but it’s not. At any point, Aglaea could’ve found a dozen different ways to discredit Caenis, to oust her from power since Okhemans elect the Council. Her death was pathetic, made only for shock value.

What makes it even worse is that the absolute political genius of Caenis gained nothing from it. Her very public assassination was the dumbest move she could've made if she wanted to dethrone Aglaea.

So why make such a genius move? Because the writers must make her look as evil as possible. Otherwise, Phainon would look bad.

Remember Phainon’s speech about how violence wasn’t the way and that they all should look to become better people? In the next scene, the hypocrisy is on full display:

“Let’s become a better people, you guys… by killing the bad ones.” 😄

Ironically, the rest of the quest vindicates Caenis and the Council.

Caenis did nothing wrong

Remember that Cipher told no one they only had 300 years to complete the Flame-Chase journey? We’re, at the very least, 700 years too late. The argument Caenis and the Council had against the Chrysos Heirs was that the Flame-Chase Journey was only a vanity project from Aglaea, “the heartless tyrant”. Well, that checks out. There won’t be an Era Nova. It’s too late now.

There can’t be a return to the previous age (Era Chrysea) by killing death and deceit either, but had they done so, Okhemans would’ve realized that Worst Girl doomed them. They deserve this information. But they won’t get it because Worst Girl died alone to the Flame Reaver.

The writers also make a hundred different parallels between Aglaea and Seliose regarding the “hateful” people who scheme against them. But these two demigods are not even comparable.

Seliose was objectively someone who needed to get killed, preferably before her fusion with Aquila. The Chrysos Heirs are not an inherently friendly force if Seliose was the one who started the Flame-Chase journey after two mass killings. People ought to fear demigods like her. The plot also grants Caenis and the Cleaners demigod lifespans via “reincarnation,” revealing, incidentally, that Seliose wasn’t the only monster.

Humanity felt, for the past millennium at least, the need to have people who could not only monitor the demigods but also hold them accountable. That makes sense. Aglaea, however, poses no threat to humanity. Yet, the Council hates her with every fibre of their being. Why?

You see, I have a theory. The Council being cartoonishly evil could make sense if, since they’re not made to reincarnate over and over, they lose more and more of their soul every time they do. Caenis is at her 27th reincarnation. We could theorize that only her hatred for the Chrysos Heirs remains. The writers probably never thought they just wrote an unintentional tragedy, but this interpretation makes Caenis’ death hold far more weight than Aglaea’s.

Think about it; a powerless mortal gave everything away so she could keep watch over humanity for a thousand years. She vowed to not let demigods like Seliose destroy humanity, only to lose herself in hatred and be ultimately powerless to stop the destruction of Amphoreus at the hands of a Chrysos Heir—Cipher.

What a shame.

Link to part 1

I think we’ve all encountered a piece of media, no matter its form, where we rolled our eyes and thought, “Okay, I get it already!” Sometimes, the preaching is so blatant it’s like the creator wants to bash your head against it until you agree. That’s precisely what makes preaching so intolerable.

Preaching becomes even worse when the reader, or in this case the player, is directly or indirectly addressed, usually through dialogues.

In Amphoreus, there's one very glaring example of a character becoming an adept at 4th wall breaking.

Dan Heng, what happened to you?

From the first 4 minutes of 3.1

Dan Heng’s far from the only character who says lines in the same vein, but it’s far more irksome because he is a familiar face for the player. The writers obviously no longer view Dan Heng as a character to weave into the story. They're making him whatever tool they need him to be.

Case in point, the screenshot above. It doesn’t feel like something the Dan Heng from previous patches would say.

But no line is unintentional for a project as big as HSR. If this line made it into the final product, it must have a purpose.

I have to ask myself: What is the purpose of this dialogue? The very first words are a rather pointless reminder of what’s at stake. The rest is a poorly disguised attempt to force the player back into the quest, even if they made Caelus refuse at first.

And we see it so often it’s disheartening….

Why keep all these lines in? I can’t find a reason; unless it's imagining that, somehow, the writing team thinks I’m an imbecile.

But then, when I looked at 3.2 and especially 3.3 in more detail, it hit me. It's not that the writers take me for an imbecile. It's that they want to deflect my attention from the gap between what they've actually written and how they want me to take it. They’re trying to fix the gaps by making me look at the bricks from the 4th wall they just broke.

This was obvious with Seliose and Cipher. So, let's start with the former.

Seliose — When you love humanity so much, you wanna crash the sky into them

The first important piece of Seliose’s lore comes from Hyacine’s grandmother, Jacyntha. It’s a retelling of the heroine’s legend. Much like other stories told with the same faceless, 2D art sequences, this legend is to be taken mostly at face value. The part regarding Aquila’s “hateful gaze” is a lie, as we find out the Sky Titan was apathetic towards humanity. But the consequences of their slaying are truthful.

Legend says that “the wounded Titan’s blood poured down like boiling rain upon the world and converged into scalding torrents. […] the Titan’s divine body crashed to the ground, and with it, the sky tore apart like fabric, about to fall with its god.”

Quite the cataclysm for something that’s supposed to be heroic, wouldn’t you say?

The first clue that helped me understand such a catastrophe was most likely true was what the Resentful Sunfolk says later on: “Aquila forged the sky — nay, they are the sky itself! If they fall, what will this world turn into!?”

Notice Seliose’s answer. She speaks of the Era Nova, and how she “chooses” to believe in it, but does she address the immediate consequence of having the sky possibly crashing into the earth unless she fuses with Aquila’s corpse? No. No, she does not.

So, with the legend in mind, what can we say about the people’s terror when they saw Aquila fall, as Solabis and Lunabis recount? Was their terror only over their shattered faith? I would argue that witnessing the sky rip apart and have god blood fall “like scalding torrents to the ground” would make anyone pretty damn terrified.

We did it, Patrick! We saved the Skyfolk from Aquila!

Keep Seliose’s answer to the Resentful Sunfolk in mind. It tells us most of what we need to know about her character.

“I must believe in any sign that promises to break the chains imposed on us by the old era…”

The Sunfolk are trying to make her reconsider killing Aquila. They also hesitate to aim their bows at her, even when she threatens to kill their god if they don’t stop her. Her willingness to paint the people who were pleading for her to stop — begging for their lives, really — as cowards worth less than shadows is not what “boundless love for humanity” looks like. Her answer to their concerns about what killing Aquila will entail is selfish. It’s about her, about what she believes and why she “must” believe there’s no other way. There's nothing about them. Even when she speaks to the Rainfolk, everything she says is about her. Her ideals. Not their worries, their concerns. She believes she's righteous and so do the writers. Seliose's only flaw, as many different characters keep saying is "her boundless love and faith in humanity". But is that the case?

What kind of love would lead someone to ignore serious worries about what Aquila’s death would mean for the world?

The “love” everyone claims Seliose had for humanity was nothing but self-righteousness. Which makes me question Phainon when he says he “can’t condemn [Seliose’s] choice”.

Why? What she did was unspeakably evil. And what she later did to her people was even worse. She went mask-off. Try as they might to call it “disillusion”, I have more than enough reasons to argue that she was always the kind to pull another mass killing.

But hey, at least she didn’t take the truth to the grave. I can't say the same about Cipher.

Cipher — Worst Girl is so allergic to accountability she doomed us all~ <3

I will get this out of the way: I don’t like Cipher’s archetype. I have a genuine dislike for characters whose only purpose is to make me waste time as a player for their amusement. In that regard, I have to praise HSR; their first “prankster” characters were less obnoxious than I expected. Sampo has some himbo charm to him, and Sparkle was, at least at the beginning, a somewhat ominous force in Penacony’s story.

Cipher has none of that.

Her introduction in 3.2 felt like padding added to round up the quest runtime to what a 9-to-5 shift should look like, but she thankfully got something to make her relevant in 3.3.

Her powers being introduced early is a very good narrative move. I hate her as a character, but I find the idea of her illusions being so powerful and instant as an interesting avenue to raise the stakes. It also adds something interesting to her fight against Dark Phai—I mean, the Flame Reaver.

There’s also this line that stood out to me:

This is dangerously close to what a certain 1930s German Propaganda minister whose last name rhymes with Gobbles said…

The concept of “Lying” is something that people hate under most circumstances. Honesty is indeed the best policy, especially for serious matters. The last words from Kephale are, without a doubt, a serious matter. Let’s go over her flashback where she steals the Gem of All Worlds from the Chaplain’s death bed to show me just how committed she is to having no morals.

The dying Chaplain tells her that, according to Kephale, now that the prophecy has arrived, the dawn device will sustain the “children of humanity poised to create miracles”. But only for 300 years. The Era Nova itself is the miracle. I can only presume that the Chrysos Heirs have a three-century long deadline to complete the Flame-chase journey. The Chaplain says that he was too cowardly to tell the people of Okhema that they’ve got a deadline to start another cycle and save their world. It lies squarely on Cipher’s shoulders to relay the message to keep the hope alive.

But is that what she does? Of course not. She has no morals. The worst part is that, once again, the writers insert every platitude in the book to make me believe Cipher did a good thing by not only lying but running away from the consequences of her actions.

“Sometimes lies are nobler than the truth.”

This line, spoken by Aglaea during one of the many Cipher flashbacks, rings hollow. Lying certainly isn’t noble when the survival of the world depends on whether people act on the truth.

Perhaps because Zagreus’ power of lying works so good, we must believe the writers when they use Aglaea’s ghost to tell us that Cipher is a heroine that saved the world. Yet, that’s not how the power works. The illusion doesn't make reality change. A lie remains a lie. The fact that everyone believes in it doesn't make it objective reality, and the game backs me up on this. Let’s consider the state of every place that’s mentioned during the events of the game:

Castor Kremnos? Full of Black Goo and in ruins.

Januspolis? In ruins.

Styxia? Oh, definitely in ruins. And flooded.

Sky fortresses? Melted by Seliose’s boundless love.

Aedes Elysiae? Scorched off the map by the Flame Reaver, who’s totally not Dark Phainon.

The Grove of Epiphany? The Black Goo killed everyone, save for the one guy studying it. Weird how that works.

Aidonia? If Castorice’s video was to be believed, there’s nothing but graves left.

So, tell me, what did Cipher really save? Okhema? Well, I’d argue she didn’t manage that either. She lulled the Okhemans into a false sense of security, and that’s all. Let’s not forget that in 3.0, part of Aglaea’s worries is seeing the Black Goo crawl from “deep underground”. She contains it, but she can’t suppress it because of how strong it is. Aglaea can’t explain why the Black Goo is there. But she also doesn't want to worry the citizens by telling them that they're not fully protected by the Chrysos Heirs. Remember that Zagreus is nearby when she discovers it. The purple jello ghost can’t fool me now. This is something he knew of. He failed to tell anything to Aglaea, but why? If there’s a moment to ring the alarm and have everyone retrieve the Coreflames ASAP, it’s right now.

Except… with 700 years past the schedule and Cipher’s lie being now void after her death, what we come back to after killing Aquila is the worst-case scenario. Even if Zagreus had spoken up in back in 3.0, it was already too late.

I can’t congratulate Cipher for choosing to “extend” the current cycle while dooming the chances for the survival of Amphoreus through other cycles. No matter how much the writers want to pat her on the back, I can’t shake the feeling that Amphoreus’ permanent destruction is more or less guaranteed because the time to carry out the prophecy has long passed.

The worst part? Nobody will know why the Era Nova won’t come even after all the Coreflames are there.

Do you understand why I think Cipher is Worst Girl? I can’t think of many other characters who doomed a planet because they just couldn’t handle telling the world they had a deadline to save themselves.

Well, it’s been three years since my last post, and five years since I last posted game-related content in this blog. I think it’s pretty obvious that I'm not a social media person. When I do post, it’s because I have something I need to pour out into the void of the Internet, even knowing that it won’t go viral, it won’t get attention, and it certainly won’t be something that most people agree with.

I’m not looking to change your mind. I’m not gonna give you a plethora of “facts and logic” to destroy your opinion. You may think that I am wrong, and that’s fine. We are all entitled to our own opinions. If nothing else, I just want to believe I'm not alone in feeling so disappointed in what HSR's story-telling has become. You're free to prove me wrong, though.

Why I liked HSR and why I’m talking about it

With that said, why change from talking about Bleach and going to HSR? Well, I’ve played this game since launch. I even pre-registered because, believe it or not, I like my sci-fi anime and games. I thought that this new Hoyo game, on its premise alone, would win me over. And for a while, it did. I was head over heels. Belobog was a strong start for the adventure, setting just enough characters, jokes, and a self-contained narrative that allowed for me to find HSR enjoyable to play.

I'm not a “lore fanatic”, so I've almost always explored HSR through its Trailblaze quests and, if I got time, some world/companion quests. This is the way the casual playerbase interacts with the game's narrative. I'd argue that most people are casual players and play the game like I do. So, it's not unfair to critique the story purely from what's shown in the Trailblaze quests. Which is what I'll do in this series of posts.

My goal is to break down every gripe I have with Amphoreus. How it fails to be a satisfying story to read. How it makes me even less willing to deepen my knowledge on the lore, the world quests or anything else HSR has to offer from now on. Save the fate collab. I am looking forward to that.

Then why not just quit?

The core issue is the simple principle: “Don’t like it? Don’t play”. I understand the sentiment; I even agree with it. Yet, I won’t quit the game just yet. I want Amphoreus to leave me so disillusioned that I’ll disregard any subsequent storylines. That's the point of the subtitle of this article. I should stop caring about the story, because it's not made for my sensibilities as an audience. If I fail to do so, then, yeah, I'll quit the game. I've quit Genshin over similar gripes.

Let me say it again: my goal with these blog posts is not to shame or prove anyone right or wrong. If you can enjoy Amphoreus and think my analysis is downright insane and a huge misinterpretation, know that I envy you. A heck of a lot. I wish I were you, bestie.

Unfortunately, I am me.

Recently, I watched a video essay detailing how the fullbring arc was, in fact, the best arc in Bleach. The reasons given were somewhat compelling before I read the arc. I mean, I don’t think I could’ve enjoyed the Soul Society arc as much as I did if it wasn’t for the Substitute Shinigami arc, which still is, to me, the main reason why I got hooked on this show/manga. I daresay that the first arc of Bleach is even more enjoyable in manga format. There’s a bunch of cut content that makes it all the more addicting to me, even now.

When it comes to my impressions of the Fullbring arc in the anime, I was surprised to know it wasn’t yet another filler arc. I think that, like many others back then, ending Bleach after Aizen’s defeat was a good decision. It was the culmination of the story, and I really wasn’t sure where the story would even go after it. The Fullbring Arc was interesting as a time skip and how Ichigo would deal with being a completely normal human being while all his friends were not, but I would not have “dragged it” for an entire arc, however brief it could be.

My feelings towards this arc have somewhat changed with the manga, but not that much. I think that, in hindsight, it is a necessary arc for TYBW and it introduces a “power-up” for characters like Orihime and Chad, which will become useful for the upcoming arc. I think Ichigo’s introspection about where he would go with no powers is rather powerful, and it gets to shine a little bit more in the manga, but it is not part of my favourite arcs in this manga. Again, I don’t think the magic of the Substitute Shinigami arc will ever be reached again, though I will admit the Fullbring Arc gets very close.

I will give the manga credit where it’s due in that it made the stakes about Ichigo’s character and how poorly he could handle ever coming back to being a nobody, basically. I think it’s something not a lot of shonen manga have tackled something as heavy as “what would happen if MC lost his powers but the threats didn’t stop?”. His dependence on Ginjo and Execution built a good betrayal plotline but, and I do feel bad to say this, I don’t find any of the new characters all that enjoyable. And that’s my main issue with it. The first arc introduced a varied and interesting cast of side characters, but there’s not much of that in this arc. Tsukishima is somewhat interesting as a villain due to his power, but not much else. The same goes for the rest of Execution, who, at least to me, don’t stray too far from being tropes.

It’s a shame, really. I appreciated the flashbacks for Ginjo and Tsukishima in particular, but man do I wish we had more. Then again, that would have perhaps played against the mystery/betrayal plotline that was decently built over the span of the arc.

I don’t think I’ll continue reading the manga from this point on. I hated the Quincy arc for how rushed and outright bad it was. The anime is airing right now and I’m honestly more interested in revisiting the arc by watching the adaptation. From what I’ve heard, Kubo has the reins and will add some anime-original content to improve the arc. So far, I like the anime and I hope a certain captain does not miraculously come back to the battlefield. If he does, for any reason at all, I’ll have to wonder if the rest of the arc will be improved or just rehash the mistakes from the manga. I don’t want it to come to that.

Before I begin, I wanna say this: I’m not structuring these long rants, nor am I expecting to make a lot of sense. If anything, these are just really long shower thoughts.

Watching the anime, I did not really fathom how bleak the entirety of volume 40 and the final Lust chapters in volume 41 are. I’d argue it’s the darkest Bleach has ever been, manga-wise. From the poem at the beginning of the volume to the title of the chapters themselves and the finale, which is chapter 353. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call the entire set of chapters I’m referring to as the “Deadly Sins” arc.

I’m not one to take too seriously the poems are inherently significant to the characters themselves. I think that they should be mere accessories to what’s being shown in the story and not necessarily complementary material. I generally consider symbolism to be a very complicated thing to handle, and conveying any element of narrative significance through symbolism is rather hard. Plus, I don’t think that generally speaking, Bleach is a series that is driven by symbolism, which is why I don’t give too much importance to the poems nor to the non-jokey additional drawings at the end of each chapter in a manga volume.

But that changes when it comes to Ulquiorra, and the Deadly Sins arc is a brilliant exemption to the rule. In the anime, once again, most of this is lost and I only remember Ulquiorra as being a very powerful villain that had a great final fight against the main character. It was impactful and dreadful by how it reverted classic shonen tropes. He was a powerful villain for sure, but even then, Aizen and Ichimaru were more interesting villains than him, even though Ulquiorra is the only villain who has killed Ichigo. Hell, even Starrk, Grimmjow and Harribel were more interesting to me back then.

As I finished chapter 354, I realize that Ulquiorra might as well be one of the most interesting Arrancars. And all of that changed through some very subtle, symbolic story-telling in the poem in volume 40 and the two end-of-chapter drawings in chapters 353 and 354 in volume 41.

I think that he’s the only character where it makes a lot of sense to give more importance to what would otherwise be accessory symbols to his characterization within the chapters. And it’s because of the nature of his conflict with the aspect of death he represents as well as, paradoxically, the sin he’s not aware of until the very end of his existence. His inner conflict is hidden, maybe even bottled up, up until the point it unambiguously manifests to both him and the reader.

The Deadly Sins are in and of themselves full of symbolism, whether that is through classical literature like Dante’s Inferno or more secular interpretations of the theme. Sins are as human as they are a transgression to God’s will. I’m not very religious, but I believe that part of understanding why Ulquiorra is so interesting as a character is that he transgressed the laws that brought forth his very existence. God’s will, to put it that way.

His insistence on understanding what “the heart” is, let alone being confronted by that foreign concept in any way, goes against the aspect of death he is supposed to represent. Despair leaves no room for love, hope or any human connection. The source of his obsession with it, his Lust if you will, is the heart. The concept he cannot quite wrap around. The poem at the start of volume 40 is a realization of his yearning and interest in humanity. For what he can never hope to come close to. It is no wonder, then, that he ceases to exist the moment he comes to fully understand what the heart is. In the moments leading up to his understanding of the heart, Ulquiorra starts being more emotional than I’d even ever thought imaginable. I mean, as far as my memories go, the emo Espada was a wall of ice with minor cracks in it.

The manga, however, makes a point to approach him as close to the heart as possible even before his eventual demise. And even his last thoughts are centred on just how close the heart had always been. And the image at the end of chapter 354 is only the culmination of those final, soothing, yet forever haunting final thoughts. The broken English almost seems intentional, almost as if to say the remnants of his conscience got cut mid-way before truly picturing for the reader what the heart is besides that single, scribbled black dot on the page.