A Path In The Marshlands

Rant and Spoilers incoming:

Valere and Zale might be the protagonists of the game, but they aren’t the heroes. Garl is.

Valere and Zale are soldiers. They were trained to fight to the point that they weren’t able to see their best friend for years. They don’t have parents, a family, or any other friends. They are divinely ordained, dropped from the sky, super powered soldiers just like all the Solstice Warriors that came before them.

They grow up, get sent out on a mission, and the first thing that happens is Garl, their grade school best friend, shows up and gives them their first hug and home cooked meal in a decade and it feels as if they were never separated.

They climb a mountain, pass every trial, then boom. The equivalent to a divine messenger descends from the clouds and says Garl can’t come on the mission. He’s weak. He’s not special. He will die.

But Garl says screw you, these are my best friends, I’m going with them. Forget destiny, I’m going to help my friends.

Every. Single. Problem. Zale and Valere come across, their first instinct is to fight. Of course it is, fighting is all they’ve ever known. They want to fight Malkomud. They want to fight Seraii and her crew. But it’s Garl that suggests another way. He gives Malkomud a pep talk and tells him there’s nothing wrong with him, that’s it’s his community that mistreated him. He suggests that they help Seraii and her crew. And these people become allies.

It’s Garl that keeps collecting people, who gives them a hug and says “it’s okay, you can come with us, we could use your help.” He tells these people about your mission and they join, because you helped them. An entire journey with your best friend, your brother, and the stakes keep getting higher. Every person you collect is a super powered warrior, but Garl is just Garl. He’s a normal person. No magic, no tricks, nothing.

Then the worst happens. You fuck up, a monster is unleashed. You royally piss off God and he’s a flesh abomination who doesn’t care about you because there are millions of other versions of you, other worlds, other universes. But YOU care because these people are real. Garl is real and so so incredibly small.

A town is burnt down, and Garl picks everyone up, comes up with a plan, and gets everyone out. You find another island to place these people so they can rebuild their lives. Garl gives everyone a hug and a meal while you’re talking strategy. When the people name the town, they don’t ask you to name it, they ask Garl.

You meet God with a capital G and he spits in your face. You think you’re special with your magic and weapons? He’s lived for a billion years, seen a billion worlds you’re just a piece of sand in his infinite sandbox. Your universe is just another experiment to piss off his ex, to see how far he can go. This universe is marked for death and you’re just living in it.

Garl steps forward and everything stops. He doesn’t know or care about gods and monsters and you realize that he doesn’t know just how fucked you are.

Now Garl is dying. It happens fast, God snaps his fingers and there’s no way to go back. Garl uses a clever loophole in the universe to extend his time with you, but he is going to die.

He uses his borrowed time to bring everyone you met together to make one more plan. He figures out how to rip between worlds, open a path to God, and give you one more push to rewrite the universe and make it a little less cruel.

His last act is to give you a hug.

Now he is dead. He has a funeral.

Every person in your party, every person you interact with, is a living ghost of Garl. You wouldn’t even have friends if it weren’t for him. He rewrote destiny for you and all the world is a reminder that he is gone. And he wasn’t even special

You travel to another world to God’s evil castle and you don’t even get to fight him. He’s the one who killed your best friend, Garl, the first person who looked at you and thought “person” before they thought “soldier”.

But you don’t even get to fight him. You’re too small and insignificant and he is infinitely vast. You fight your mentor who betrayed you instead and God watches with an amused smile.

God leaves to play in another universe and you’re left to protect this one. You look about you, see nothing truly left. If you return home now, all you’ll be reminded of is Garl.

Valere and Zale become gods and it doesn’t even matter. They never return home, only watch from a distance, because Garl was their home and he is dead. And gods can’t undo death. And the game ends, the universe is saved, but it doesn’t matter because Garl isn’t there.

(And then you can get the true ending and save Garl, and then actually fight God and change the laws of the universe)

Garl is the key to the whole game. He makes Valere and Zale actual people in the face of God’s system of sending automated preordained soldiers to die.

Without him Valere and Zale would become the same loveless monsters their mentors become, the ones who join the demon legion because the world never thought to treat them as people instead of the soldiers it demanded they become. They would never have the friends that help them rip a hole in the universe to save everyone.

Even with the true ending, Valere and Zale still have to leave. They have to become gods, fight the good fight, and be cursed to outlive everyone. To outlive Garl.

Garl builds a temple to them, does everything to make sure the world remembers to Guardian Gods so that when the demons come back that they’ll be ready.

The world remembers the Guardian Gods. But only the guardian gods remember Garl.

And when the new hero descends into the Sunken Temple centuries later, the Guardian Gods give him the Key of Love.