#aeon path

"You won't hear me pleading. Let us finish this experiment once and for all."

An aeon–a common aeon born of star and light–would have no choice but to enact swift and fatal justice. But you are not a common aeon. You are born of soul and flesh and bone, and you see another way.

"I am not here to judge you, Areelu Vorlesh," you say. "I am here to make you whole." 

You are an aeon, one of the judges of the universe. You can look into the souls of mortals and see their deepest secrets. And though it has been easy to forget these past months, you are mortal, too. A crime against the cosmos–an aeon born of bone and flesh and soul. An imbalance that must be corrected as much as the worldwound must. 

You will correct them both at once.

You look into your own soul, and you see the scars where Areelu tried to use you to patch the holes Pharasma left in her son's soul. She did her work well, but his soul was too tattered and yours too strong, and so the hybrid of the two took the shape of your soul. You see the pieces of his soul, and you look into the past, into the days when it was whole, to find its true shape. There is enough of him left that with knowledge and power, he can be re-formed, if only for a time.

But that will be enough. You think of a dying child who proudly showed off the proof of his ailment as "color I gave Mama to give her good days," and you think of how a day can be more precious than a century if you spend the first with your loved one and the second alone. And so you look at the not yet criminal Areelu Vorlesh, at her cells and her organs and her blood, and you draw out enough–just enough–to build into a body, leaving a wound in her chest that will never quite heal. You rip the foreign pieces out of your soul, ignoring how your wound burns worse than any pain you've ever felt, but you press on still. You feel your power waning, your connection the monad fading as you tear out the foreign parts of yourself. Still, you persist, for as long as you have the power. Your aeonic vision fades, and when you see the form of Areelu's son appear, his soul restored, you see him with mortal eyes. 

Areelu has forgotten you entirely, wrapping her son in a hug and weeping while he freezes, confused and embarrassed, and you know that the danger has passed. Her body is weak from her sacrifice. She will never survive if she tries to use her own soul to open the worldwound–too much of her body's strength now belongs to her son. You don't know how long her son has until his soul unravels, unstable as it is–perhaps days, perhaps years. It does not matter. His soul is too weak to survive the ritual, and Areelu would never trust anyone else with such power. They are no longer a threat. You gather them up, and with nearly all of your strength you send them far away from Threshold to somewhere the witch hunters will never find them–to a too-small house in Finderplain, where they can plan the marvelous adventures they will have with this new time they have been given. 

The burning in your wound spreads out over your body like blood poisoning. You are not an aeon, not anymore. Soon you will not be anything. You have stopped the creation of the worldwound. You have stopped the creation of yourself. It was perhaps unorthodox–a solution no other aeon could choose–but that is why the monad chose you, why it created an aeon from flesh and bone and soul. You do not need to feel the universe humming in approval to know you have done well.

"Tell me we didn't just fight our way through the heart of the worldwound, defeat hordes of demons, and travel through a disturbance in the fabric of time itself just to give a happily ever after to the Architect of the Worldwound?!" Regill shouts in anger, his fury so great you can see the color returning to his features. "After everything–"

"There's been enough hurt, Regill," you interrupt, your voice soft and vulnerable and truly yours for the first time Areelu fished you out of the Sellen River. "If I have to unmake myself, I'll do it with mercy.” You watch as Regill’s rage transforms into naked shock, and then horrified realization as he finally understands. There is no after the Crusade for you because there is no Crusade, and there is no you. This has always been the plan–it could end no other way.

You begin to fade, and the last of your power goes first. Your star goes out and the black hole dissipates, and you see the stars and space fade from your hands, leaving only bleached flesh. Without the aeon’s calming presence, you brace for the flood of terrifying emotions, but for once your emotions are calm. You have done well–you were mortal and aeon, just as you were meant to be, and everything that is not fear and satisfaction has faded into the background except…

Regill is watching. He is watching in horror as you are unmade in front of him. You open your mouth to give him some reassurance, some last inspirational speech to carry him through this moment. But the coldness of the aeon is gone, and all you can feel are fear and pride and love, and of all the things you wish you could have had, there is only one you still can. So you stumble forward, almost falling as you go, and wrap your arms around your brother. He's startled and tenses up, stiff as a board, but you don't care. You gave up your future long ago, and you already feel your past fleeing. The present is all there is, and soon you won't even have that, so you do as you like. You hug your brother and feel his life and know that he will persist long after you've gone, just as you always knew he would. 

“Remember me?” you whisper, putting the last of your power into making it possible. 

“Always, Commander,” he replies, voice strained, and already you have forgotten what plea he is answering, but you can hear he is upset, and you know it is your fault.

"I'm sorry," you say, and you've already forgotten why. There is nothing to be sorry for because it never happened. But it feels right to say, and you know he remembers why, so you say it anyway. "I love you," you whisper, and you've already forgotten who he is. No–you have not forgotten, you simply never met. There was no you to meet him. But still you love him, and that love will be the last part of yourself to fade away.

There is a gnome in your arms. You know he is in your arms and that you love him and soon there will be no you to hold him. You don't know who he is or what he is to you. He is everything and nothing to you all at once, because everything is nothing to you who never were. You think you feel him relax slightly as the last part of yourself slips away into oblivion. You think you feel a hand on your back returning the embrace, but there is not enough 'you' left to be sure. You are not aware of your body dissolving into light in the gnome's arms–there is no you to be aware. There has never been any 'you' at all.

There is a gnome in the heart of a prison hugging himself because a body turned to light just as he began to return its embrace. He drops to his knees, the weight of all that never was too great to bear, whispering words he never said, not even in the never-was. The poor thing is mad–he remembers someone who never existed; he speaks to someone who is not there. Perhaps that would give you comfort if you existed. The world is made of stories, after all, and someone remembers yours. Maybe someday that will be enough to let you exist again. Maybe then you will both say the things you should have said but never did in the never-was. Maybe then there will be a happy ending.

But not today. Today there are no demons and there is no worldwound. The mad gnome is gone, returned to his proper time and place. Now there is only a prison that will continue to exist, and a family that will live again, and a country full of people who will not be wiped out. 

This is not The End. It cannot be The End. A story cannot end if it never began. And so instead, looking upon Sarkoris and Mendev and Finderplain and all of Golarion and seeing the millions of stories that will not end today, we call it something else.

-

This half existence works for sixteen years. But the daughter of a Count is expected to be presented to society and her father cannot keep her hidden forever. And so for the first time in her life, the manor doors are flung open to her, the ballroom lit and scrubbed.

She wishes to wear red like her mother’s portrait. She is dressed in blue.

Ophelia is presented. She is paraded around. There are so many people. She cannot remember half their names and maybe she doesn’t want to. Is she haughty? Is she shy? She only knows herself via what she has been told she is.

Dancing is expected. She can dance–she has been tutored as befitting the education of a noblewoman– but never has with strangers. The touch of the young men makes her feel… something, but she is scared to examine it. They are courteous, kind, and attentive, but she keeps her eyes low as she has been instructed, the better to avoid scrutiny of their color. From every corner she is watched to make sure she adheres to the script.

And she does. Ophelia plays her part perfectly as always. Until the end. It’s not even her fault it all goes wrong. In the pressing of people, a lady’s hatpin brushes her cheek leaving a line of red. Before she can refuse, a young cleric of Pharasma brushes her face with a healing spell. Her flesh rots underneath his touch. He draws back. Several people utter screams. The word passes among the room.

“Dhampir.”

She has misstepped. She will be punished.

-

Now, with the scandal out in the open, her father gets rid of her. Ophelia is packed off to a Pharasman convent in the Ustalavan countryside. The sisters are not pleased to receive her, but her father is too important to refuse. The undead are anathema to Pharasma. But Ophelia is not dead or undead. She breathes. She retains her original soul. So they take her in.

They teach her to hunt. They teach her to kill. She wears the blue of Pharasma and hunts her progenitors. Maybe Pharasma will judge her soul harshly for her vampiric blood, but she can still save their souls by putting them to rest. May they find justice for the horrors done to them in the Boneyard of the Lady of Graves.

-

So she passes years with the Sisters of the Gray Lady until one day she finds herself dying on the streets of Kenabres. Someone yells for a healer and Ophelia tries to protest, but instead of the burn of healing she feels the soothing cool of negative energy. She has been identified. At least she doesn’t need to hide that here.

Somehow she is not in blue. She is in a long, red coat that she doesn’t remember buying, with bracers engraved with “Ophelia” that she doesn’t remember owning. But the coat is sturdy and comfy and secretly red has always been her favorite color. Pharasma can forgive her.

It all happens so quickly after that: Deskari, the holy sword, the wardstone. How she ended up in Mendev she doesn’t know–she has no memories of leaving Ustalav–but there’s never time to examine her past. There is always something pressing.

While they may not be the walking dead, in some respects demons die easier.

With her skills, Irabeth trusts her to push into the Market Square, and it is then and there that Ophelia marks the beginning of her life. She finds it. She finds the Aeon. It sits inside her and she knows that she is no longer alone.

When they find Hulrun and Ramien, she finds herself–or is it the Aeon?–growing more and more incensed with the Desnans. Flagrant disobedience. Breaking and entering. Meddling with power beyond their ken. Ophelia has never been allowed to disobey. And these people believe they can just follow their dreams and their feelings and not have any consequences? There are always consequences.

I speedran Acts V and VI because I was already level 20, had already done the sidequests in my previous two games, and didn't care about companion outcomes because history was getting rewritten anyway.

Because of this, it's worth noting that the Hand of the Inheritor shows up in Threshold if you don't rescue/face him in the Ivory Labyrinth.

I did do Daeran's Act V quest, and I did have enough influence with him/good reputation to hand him over the Inquisitors and have the best result from that.

I didn't choose for Ophelia to leave memories of herself in her companions because it didn't feel in character.

I'd seen Arue's true Aeon ending slide elsewhere, but because, I'm assuming from her not remembering me, the one I got wasn't as bad as that one (I mean she's still evil and trapped in the Abyss, I'm so sorry babe ;_;).

Story-wise, Aeon was really cool but I had a hard time playing it. It took me approximately two years from when I started Ophelia's game (October 2021) till finishing it now. In between then and now (besides all the other games I played) I played Trickster all the way through and Demon and Azata up to the end of Act III.

I'm glad it wasn't my first game, I think the time travel aspect is more impactful knowing how the story is "supposed" to go.

Mechanically I found it very underwhelming compared to Angel, Trickster, and Azata. Mechanically I think it's still above Demon.

Overall, I'm glad I played it, I think it was really well done, but it was a tragedy and I'm not really sure I can say I "enjoyed" it. Appreciated, at least.