Krah tey, zeymah

things fall apart and there’s anarchy everywhere; falcons fly freely and can’t be compelled.

Dimming the tide there is blood in the water and everywhere customs of innocence drowned.

Held by the worst is a fervent intensity; lacking conviction the best run aground.

Surely there must be some kind of apocalypse; surely epiphany must be at hand!

Visions unbidden from Spiritus Mundi of something awakening out on the sand:

Head of a man with a leonine frame and a pitiless gaze that’s as blank as the sun;

sleep became nightmare by passage of centuries long before eons of slumber were done.

Higgledy piggledy, beast of antiquity, imminent, just as the prophecies warn,

Ok so roads are important infrastructure. A lot of stuff that's important happens on roads. Now, let's imagine that quadrillionaire Matt Stench has decided that the next big tech innovation is the Wide Car. It's a car that takes up six lanes despite seating only one passenger.

The Wide Car is supposed to be the future, and everyone's going to be driving Wide Cars, even though nobody who makes Wide Cars is turning a profit. Employers are offering Wide Cars as an employee benefit, and getting "nah." Some employers are going as far as demanding their employees drive Wide Cars, and the result is that people take time out of their workdays to get in the mandatory gas usage for their Wide Car before driving home in a regular car.

In spite of the fact that the Wide Car is clearly set to fail, there's an enormous push to expand to twelve-lane roads to accommodate a bunch of Wide Cars that simply will not materialize. This is not an organic response to demand, but a speculative investment that amplifies the existing issues with road development for no good reason.

flowereW

Certain Darkners are more complex and knowledgeable than is typical.

We will call these special Darkners "kernelsprites".

They know about game mechanics that other Darkners don't mention except as one-off gags. They have a working understanding of both Light and Dark Worlds. They know the deal as far as prophecy goes. They are capable of self-reflection and of choosing to follow or not follow their roles.

These Darkners are intended as guides and are created for a particular Lightner.

Ralsei is Kris's* kernelsprite.

Flowery is Asgore's.

🌼🌼🌼🌼

Flowery's fake stats aren't the most suspicious part. It's that he knows what stats are in the first place. He knows what genre he's in. He knows when's the time to play at cool wise big-brother mentor and when's the time for a noble sacrifice.

Flowery feels so fake because he consciously chose a role. Ralsei hates that because Ralsei consciously accepted his role. They're not the same, but they're only one choice apart.

The Lightner crystallers are already familiar with the concept of fiction, video games, portal fantasy and so on. They can handle or ignore the lore dump.

(This part is just my interpretation of shadow crystals in general based on what the game seems to be implying. I don't think it's meant to be a secret. It doesn't rely on kernelsprites being a thing.)