Shameless Art Goes Here

The Cycle refers to the complete cycle of reincarnation. Reapers are part of the Afterlife Association, the department responsible for reaping souls in the human (and occasionally the spirit) realm. Captured souls are then passed over to the Office of Judgment where they are first sorted and then passed to Origin, the Overseer, for judgment. Souls that have commit serious crimes that endanger the cycle require more deliberation on where it goes next. All souls must be judged by Origin and given their signature before it moves to the purifying stage and begin queuing for reincarnation.

Short Lives refer to living beings who typically live a shorter lifespan such as animals and certain monsters. In most cases, living creatures with small souls, such as lesser spirits and insect life, are able to regulate their own cycle of reincarnation because they by and large remain in the same location and birth rates are relatively frequent/regulated. Creatures that live in the wild where the population density is much lower can also regulate their own cycle. On the opposite side of the spectrum, creatures who live in highly dense areas such as cities are easily lost in the large saturation of souls and have difficulty finding their next body. This is why the Short Lives jurisdiction typically covers cities.

Candidates for Reapers are scouted during the sorting phase in the Office of Judgment. Potential candidates are souls with high resilience. Souls are generally fragile and susceptible to corruption which is why they need to be reaped soon after they are released from their dead body. Highly resilient souls have natural resistances to corruption, with the added protection from Origin, reapers are able to operate in soul form without fear of corruption or losing sight of their sense of self.

Souls require anchors to maintain a sense of self. When alive, souls are attached to their bodies. Once a soul is reaped, their captured form as a death certificate compresses them and are anchored to Origin through the reaper by proxy. Death certificates that are lost or abandoned will return to soul form eventually. All reapers are bound to Origin as part of their reaper contract.

Reaper Jude is in charge of the Short Lives jurisdiction. Due to the low risk of this area, he did not undergo technical and field exam like most reapers. Instead, he apprenticed under Julius (and Rideaux). Short Lives are judged in batches rather than individually like human or spirit souls with some exceptions. Animals are less susceptible to impurities so for very short lives, the reaper can pass the soul onto another newborn body right away at their discretion without passing on for judgment.

As a former reaper, Ludger has a highly resilient soul, so just like Jude in the main story of this AU, he can sense the presence of reapers in his peripheral which is why he noticed Jude’s presence in the alleyway even though he can’t see him directly.

Jude does not remember Ludger very well because he only saw him while he was dying. He can tell there’s something about Ludger that he can’t put his finger on.

Jude’s reaper cloak is Ludger’s. Julius gave it to him, with the slight hope that if Jude ever crosses paths with human Ludger that it might trigger Ludger’s memory.

Due to Jude’s jurisdiction, he works a lot with domestic animals which includes cats. And because Rollo eventually becomes their big boss in Trigleph, Jude runs into Ludger more often than not after Ludger adopted Rollo.

The Great Sage Kresnik in Rieze Maxian lore not necessarily Milla Kresnik

 The X1WG doesn’t continue all the scripture about the Sage that you are able to read in X1 so take this with one with a pinch of salt. Milla Kresnik may have been the original Sage but after her “betrayal”, someone else from the clan could have taken up the mantle in her place to serve as a leading figurehead for Maxwell’s believers in Rieze Maxia. The scriptures were fairly vague to the identity of the Sage. There are two big motivations I can see possible for taking up this job: 1) Maxwell clearly did not lead the humans, he likely didn’t appear before them unless he was summoned, a trusted human is needed to start structuring the believers to start new life from scratch within the Schism, and 2) according to the X2WG, knowledge of the Chromatus and the Trial were not passed down to the descendants of Kresnik in Rieze Maxia, someone in the clan who was against the Trial may have used the position to make this knowledge forbidden to pass down and thus keep them from escalating into conflict like their brethren in Elympios.

Neither side had the power or opportunity to properly investigate the Schism during the 2000 years of its existence.

The world map of Rieze Maxia was completed around 200 years before the start of the game so it was likely that Aifread was the first explorer to discover the Schism. Given the highly irregular weather in Rieze Maxia it was probably extremely treacherous to approach the Schism. Rieze Maxia also lacks in technological development, most of which run using the power of spirits and spirit artes. It’s possible Maxwell designed the Schism to absorb spirit artes, making it even more difficult to study.

On Elympios’ side, it was at some point in time, not one single nation but was eventually unified into one. It’s possible that some of these factions had approached the Schism and attempted to study it but were not able to learn much and their discoveries were lost during wars and unification. It took approximately 40 years from the beginnings of Elympios’ power shortage until Elympios was able to find the Schism using ancient texts describing Maxwell and his believer’s disappearance. Since the two nations were close enough to eventually build Marksburg connecting them, it’s possible Maxwell built the Schism to make it undetectable from the outside, kind of like a Bermuda Triangle area, which is why it took so long to ascertain its location and begin research on the Lance. If the unification of Elympios was relatively recent, this could have taken away resources and investment into exploration.

The Reincarnation Cycle inside Rieze Maxia where spirits and humans will often be reborn as the opposite could be minimizing the growth of miasma from human impurities.

Governing the entire world’s rebirth cycle, Origin suffers greatly from absorbing the miasma when cleansing human souls. Maxwell didn’t appear to show such signs even in X2 though it could be the scale being a big factor. Still, it is only humans that are known to have impurities that results in miasma. Perhaps Maxwell designed his cycle to balance out not only the amount of humans and spirits existing at one time both also to minimize the amount of human impurities that need to be continually purified as they go through the cycle. Humans live much shorter lives than spirits so there should be a larger amount of lesser spirits now compared to humans than in the past. On the opposing side, it’s not known if Origin uses a similar system but considering how the acceleration of spirit deaths versus the population density of Elympios, Origin probably doesn’t.

Bisley may have grown up during the great economic depression.

About 17 years before Bisley was born, Elympios fell into a great economic depression following 40 years of a growing energy problem. Spyrites were losing their efficiency, society was falling to ruin as businesses shrank or went bankrupt and the streets grew unsafe. The timeline doesn’t state when Elympios recovered from it but the year the Schism was discovered, Bisley was 11. So assuming up until then that economy remained weak, perhaps with some recovery. While the X2WG doesn’t explicitly state that Bisley inherited Spirius Corp, he became CEO after his father died but was likely not active in the role until Cornelia died a year later during the Trial. It’s possible from this point forward was when the DoDA was created.

Prior to the Schism, the current language was likely the major Lingua Franca and very few other language existed.

Ludger’s uniform is taken from the Elympios Technician Veteran design (minus the gatling gun and power pack). I couldn’t decide what weapon to go with this design since all his light-coloured guns are way too ornate. Blades-wise, I couldn’t decide either but probably the Castor Twins. I couldn’t fit his hammer into the design.