#;development

You Are a Retrospective Soul 🍇

The most misunderstood of all the soul signs. Sometimes even you have difficulty seeing yourself as who you are. You are intense and desire perfection in every facet of your life. You're best described as extremely idealistic, hardworking, and a survivor. Great moments of insight and sensitivity come to you often. But if you aren't careful, you'll ignore these moments and repeat past mistakes. For you, it is difficult to separate the past from the present. You will succeed once you overcome the disappointments in life. Souls you are most compatible with: Traveler Soul and Prophet Soul

Tagged by: @kcminari​

Cʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ Mᴜsᴇ; Bᴀᴍᴍ-Bᴀᴍᴍ x Wɪʟʟ Sᴍɪᴛʜ- @accepted-rpg

Eeeey don’t worry about it I love getting all questions whether about Sorey or his setting and I needed a break from work anyways! I think the easiest thing is to start off with what we know. Quick review of Desolation’s element wheel: Fire is strong against wind, wind is strong against earth, earth is strong against water, and water is strong against fire. Most seraphim use weapons of the element they have an advantage towards to help amplify their power, except Mikleo who didn’t know any better.

So Lailah’s paper is wind. Maybe because of the fact paper is light and easily manipulated by wind? Dezel and Zaveid’s pendulums are earth because of the minerals in them. Edna’s umbrella is water because of its association with rain. Mikleo’s staff is earth, presumably because of a similar reasoning to the pendulums– it’s made of medals and minerals, or perhaps wood which grows from the earth?

Then we have the Armatus weapons. Fire holds a sword– I think steel and metals that have been forged can have a connection to fire because they were tempered by heat. Water is a bow– to be perfectly honest, I’m stumped on why. I’d peg bows as more of a wind thing personally, but that’s just how it goes it seems. Wind is daggers– specifically throwing daggers I think, considering the fighting style of the Wind Armatus. And Earth is gauntlets, which is heavy, associated with minerals.

Now two things become obvious from these, I think. The first being that weapons don’t have to be weapons. In the Zestiria party, Mikleo is the only seraph who wields what could be considered a traditional “weapon,” although the Armatus’s all are, which makes sense given the origins of the Armatus but that’s getting into Berseria lore. Otherwise we have paper, pendulums, and an umbrella. Elemental affinities probably relate to all things then, to some degree or another.

The second being that the elemental association can be stretched. An umbrella is considered water because its concept is linked to rain, but nothing inherent in its materials is water-based. So an element’s affinity to an element can be pretty…metaphysical?

I just realized I haven’t actually answered your questions directly but I guess it’s just hard to think of exact examples when the game already covered a lot of the more obvious weapons and there’s a lot of flexibility in interpreting what is what. The same object made of slightly different things, or intended for different uses might have different elemental affinities. An umbrella is more associated with water, but a parasol might be more associated with fire because it is intended to block sun, not rain.

My Sorey gave @mikleotheenforcer a staff once embedded with sealed vermilion ore to imbue it with fire properties in order to match Mikleo’s elemental advantage.

So just throwing out some random ideas off the top of my head maybe?

By “modern” I mean as it worked during/before Zestiria, the system that had to have formed some time after Berseria. It does not include those holding the title of Shepherd like Artorius, and is more closely linked to the Oracles of the past ( like Sigfried and Brunhilde )

How it worked was this: The ultimate source of the Flames of Purification is Maotelus. It is the power that is his foundation as an Empyrean: the ability to cleanse of malevolence through the belief in second chances without destroying the source. It is his power and his power alone; before he came into being the world had no non-lethal means to be rid of malevolence.

Prime Lords are powerful Malakhim/Seraphim who formed a pact with Maotelus. It gave them the power to wield Maotelus’s flame to drive back malevolence-- however, there is a catch to the pacts Maotelus forms with them. Prime Lords are unable to wield their power without making a pact with a resonant human, a Shepherd. While this restriction makes times of need even harder ( you needed both a seraph willing to tether themselves to a human, as well as find a willing human with the resonance capable of becoming the Shepherd; trials like that found under Ladylake was a twisted consequence of such a scenario ) Maotelus felt that it was necessary.

If he gave the power individually to each side, they would no longer need the other. Divides between the two races was the last thing this world needed, and Maotelus believed such a system to force cooperation would be the best for the world. He does not allow exceptions to take place, no matter how dire the situation becomes.

The Armatus became a part of that pact between Prime Lord and Shepherd once the arte was perfected. Maotelus worked with a group of Malakhim that had taken up residence near the Empyrean’s Throne to find a way to make the Armatus safe. It seemed that their ideas coincided, as altering the Arte to become one of mutual power, consent, and respect put significantly less strain on both users as they are no longer fighting for dominance. A safeguard was put into the arte that prevented those who can not handle it from armatizing in the first place ( rather than a self-destruct switch when they’ve burnt themselves out )

The Armatus was a symbol of just how much more humanity and seraphim could achieve together rather than individually.

During great periods of peace when the world prospered and the Shepherds flourished, there could be hundreds of Prime Lords and Shepherds at a time. Sub Lords and Squires were incorporated naturally into the existing pacts both to help support the main pact holders as well as acting as an apprenticeship system.

Zui Fuu tells us about the nature of the world. I’m not going to summarize all of it, you can go do that yourself here if you’d like but the important thing that’s got me screaming is Zenrus, because the last thing Zui Fuu tells you is this:

"Zenrus, perhaps there will come a time, as you had hoped for humans and malakhim...and seraphim..."

She also explained that “Prime Lord” was a term used to refer to the leaders of the Seraphim. Another NPC in Berseria called Zenrus a Prime Lord. We hear here that Zenrus must have been one of the Malakhim who descended from the heavens. That he is called Prime Lord makes me believe that he was the one who actually proposed their descent and stopped seraphim from wiping humans out, and lead the Malakhim down to the earthly realm. He was the one who believed they could coexist with humanity.

Holy shit guys. We’ve known Zenrus was old but he is oooooold.

But. He’s never truly given up on his ideals, even after all this time, even with how screwed up the world is. When he found Sorey at Camlann--

Shiron: That child’s human! Zenrus: Are we not all the same when we first breathe this air, save for the vessel we chance into? ... Zenrus: For a human and seraph child raised together, anything is possible