#dutp sov

So let's start off with our recap, and my biggest point of speculation! You notice how in the above loading screen for Saga of Viera there is a dragon? Unless I am going crazy, there is no dragon yet in this story, so clearly they should introduce the dragon in part two.

The story thus far has followed Zoya, a con artist seeking a magical cure for a family curse that will kill her once she reaches a certain age. I do not remember what that age was, but I seem to recall its in her 20s and she's only got like a year or two left. To find a cure she ends up getting the Holy Maiden to agree to swap places with her, so a disguised Zoya is now part of the human embassy going to visit the elves!

While there we pick up on some tensions between the light and dark elves. As in, the dark elves appear to be fighting a guerilla tactic style campaign against the light elves and have been banned from living in the elf cities, and have their own secret underground society. You can choose to befriend the dark elf Salvia, or you can side with the light elf Reuel and seek to stop the dark elves from their nefarious plot, whatever it may be.

At the end of the story the elves have a wonderful tree ceremony that goes horribly wrong, and depending on your choices this is more or less your fault. Essentially the magic tree that appears to form the centre of the elf's religion and power is blown up by the dark elves, and the story ends with you in the middle of that chaos. The endings part two will start from are the endings where you swear to find the dark elves and avenge the tree, or where you've teamed up with Salvia and presumably are now running and hiding from light elf society. You are no closer to figuring out your curse, but you do have a whole international incident now! So let's discuss how this could continue.

A key part of book two is going to be the motivations and plans of the dark elves being revealed. Currently we know very little about them, so I'd expect either story path to give us more backstory. I'll start off with my theoretical continuation of Salvia's route, because I'll be able to explain it from that perspective.

Remember that dragon? My theory is that dragons are what caused the split between dark and light elves. Dragons were this huge powerful magical creature, and light elves sought to destroy or harness that power while dark elves wanted to cooperate with the dragons and live in harmony. But then the light elves found a way to siphon the power from a dragon egg, and ended up trapping it and making themselves powerful enough to defeat and banish the dark elves. The dark elves have been covertly trying to find this stolen egg and rescue it, and also have their own cache of dragon eggs kept hidden from the light elves, but they can't hatch them. I'm thinking some magical crystal or water or something is the hatching ingredient only the light elves have, and they've been controlling it, so the dark elves have all these eggs and nothing to do with them.

The way this leads into the main plot is the tree that you just exploded at the end of the last book. The tree has actually grown around that stolen dragon egg, and that's how its the source of power for the light elves. By blowing it up I want the dragon egg to hatch so we can get a dragon, or at the very least the dark elves have swooped in and stolen the egg. This means its now top priority for the light elves to find the dark elves and steal their egg cache so they can power themselves up again.

If you choose Salvia's path, then you get to learn all this information. I think Zoya should be a little upset that the plan has been kept from her for so long, especially since exploding the tree was pretty destructive and shocking. Zoya complains that the elves haven't trusted her, and Salvia can defend herself by saying that if Zoya knew they were hatching a dragon surely she'd have backed out, because that's really scary and she a human cannot possibly understand the risks they've had to take. I'm fairly certain Zoya's been living with her Holy Maiden disguise up til this point, so I would like Zoya to reveal her identity and con artist past to Salvia, which shocks and surprises her. Then we can have Salvia grow as she admits she should have trusted Zoya more, and been more willing to divulge the plan, and apologize for treating Zoya like a tool rather than a friend.

This path is going to continue with you and Salvia teaming up for the dragons, and Salvia can tell you some nice stories about her past and trusts you more. At one point Salvia will take you to the dragon nursery where they've got all the eggs. Maybe Zoya can figure out the missing ingredient and hatch a bunch of eggs, so now they can show up to the light elves and demand peace while riding an army of dragons. It's mandatory that we have at least one album picture of riding the dragons, and one of you meeting the dragons for the first time a la the How to Train Your Dragon movie, and also an explicitly romantic ending with Zoya and Salvia.

Now onto the other side of the coin! I will have to start off here with a bit of a serious retcon, but it's absolutely necessary. Reuel has been a rather poorly utilized companion, and he's got no good conversations with Zoya. He's always been stiff and formal to her, and even a bit rude at times. There's this power dynamic where Zoya is kind of in awe of the elves, who have been very haughty about it. This all makes it difficult to see Reuel as a viable love interest. To fix this, I propose we do a reveal in my second book, where we use what I call the "Mr Darcy" method.

Akin to Mr Darcy, while we think he's been rude the whole time it turns out he's actually desperately trying to stop falling in love with Zoya. She gave him a book and offered him some food once and he's fallen irrevocably in love, and is absolutely terrible at flirting. I'd like him to break down at some point and confess that he's tried not being in love with her but he just can't do it, she's too kind and her smile makes his heart race and he does not know how to deal with these agonizing feelings so would she please love him back! And Zoya gets to think back over all their previous interactions and see them in a very different light. They're not going to kiss right then, because Zoya is not in love with him yet, but now that his shell is cracked we can have more conversations with him and actually get to know him, and fall in love along the way.

Essentially we're going to get to learn that Reuel is actually just really bad at expressing emotions, and works hard to seem stoic and polite at all times. Maybe part of this can be because he's half human, as shown by his non pointy regular human ears; I'm not certain if this was confirmed in the actual story or just on a social media Q&A, but I do remember hearing this canon at some point and want to do something with it. Maybe he's been teased about being overemotional for so long, and is tired of being called an improper elf so he's learned all the etiquette and is determined to be the Best Elf. He also looks up to elf society and has not really questioned it before, and thus has been kind of naïve about the whole dragon egg thing.

The tree exploding has kind of put a huge damper on Reuel's worldview, and really shaken his beliefs that the light elves are as powerful and good as everybody thinks. Zoya too will be shaken, and also be realizing that maybe they're not the all wise people she thought they were. Together they can do a covert operation to investigate what was up with that dragon egg. The good ending here is you guys getting to defeat the elf queen together. I've attached her picture below to emphasize that I want her design to be exactly the same, because she looks like a disney princess and I think it would be really fun for her to be evil. She can justify the elves' actions by saying dragons are too dangerous and only the light elves can control their power, and it's going to good use this way, and they're the wisest and best and how dare Reuel and Zoya question them. To which Reuel can stand up and defend you and also all humankind, and say the elves have made some serious errors and cannot magic those away, and he's learned a lot from humans and can no longer blindly support the light elves.

You may remember that in this story, the MC Zoya has a curse that is killing her. Fear not: I too have remembered this, and it's going to be tied into this plot. Especially when doing research with Reuel, you can learn about why your family was cursed in the first place. I'm thinking one of Zoya's ancestors was actually hired by the light elves to steal that dragon egg and put it in the tree, and promised great wealth and power if he did so. Unfortunately after he was successful he got cursed, and all of his descendants too, and the light elves kind of just kicked him out because they didn't want to deal with that, and also didn't want any humans running around talking about their hidden dragon egg where they're getting all their power.

This allows Zoya herself to kind of redeem her family's history, by being a thief and trickster who ends up stealing the egg back for the dragons, and righting that wrong her family was complicit in so long ago. She can find a cure that can be brewed with a dragon scale, one that's given to her at the end of the good endings. But we can also throw in some temptation here, and give Zoya an opportunity to steal a dragon scale (either off a live dragon or off the ground) to try and make this cure. It won't work though, because the magic only stays in the dragon scale when the dragon consents to giving it away, and this is because thematically you can't undo theft by stealing more from the wronged party. Only by selflessly returning the dragon egg and reinstating the dragon's freedom is Zoya and the rest of her family healed.

In all these cases I think it's best if the light elf society crumbles, at least a little. The light elves have sequestered themselves from dark elves and also humans in pursuit of power, and have put themselves on a pedestal they must be knocked down from. Maybe now the humans and light elves can live together in peace, and depending on your choices the dragons and dark elves can also be a part of your society, or maybe they get their own country and you've just got delegates but they're not willing to be neighbours yet. And there has to be at least one path where you get to bond with a baby dragon and have it as an animal sidekick, like Corey from The Sacred Beast. Cute dragons are always popular.

Is this actually how SoV part 2 will go? Probably not. It would be a very satisfying story, but quite often DUTP has gone in directions I have not anticipated. Because those directions are bad, not because it's a pleasant surprise. I'm going to be very annoyed if at the very least the dragons don't figure into the plot, and I hope they address the elf superiority complex, but I really have no idea. I haven't even looked at the promotional material for the sequel, and I also have no idea how mechanically this will work. Will we have new lantern characters? How many new outfits will we get? Will they update the previous Saga of Viera book to be longer, or have a new one you need to unlock, and if so how are they going to set stage requirements so you can't play these stories out of order? Will they provide a recap for the first part?

I feel like I always look forward to the new DUTP releases with a mix of curiosity, eagerness, and dread. I really hope this second part is good, at the very least because a bad conclusion will probably ruin the beginning for me. But no matter what I've built my own story, and I can always come back to this if I'm dissatisfied with the actual canon.