#khux thoughts

Funny how that works, doesn’t it... man, I love the irony in these games. 

I think there’s another factor in play here, though. What if the Foretellers thought they were following their hearts? Or maybe they actually were? That can be a hard thing to judge, and hearts can lead you astray. 

At least, that’s what Xigbar in DDD (funnily enough) points out to Sora. That his heart led him into the Organization’s trap. He brings it up again during a run-in at Thebes in Kingdom Hearts 3, about being careful about carrying so many hearts. 

So, of course, this is gonna mean that drama is gonna happen to Ven, Ephemera, and Skuld. We already know that Ven is sent to the future...so what about the other two?

Someone is probably going to die...

Tension gets in between the two, so they decide to go their own separate ways into training other apprentices, and sooner or later...they just forget about the friends that they loved so much.

Or even better, the other two probably get involved in the (real) Keyblade War (because I’m 99% sure that the Foreteller’s war was not the war that everyone in the future knows about), and kill each other off, ending the war ultimately.

Or you know...just settle down after the war, in some settlement and give birth to some of the characters we know today.

I’ve been chewing this over for a bit, because this kind of ties into my thoughts on Legacy and the role it plays in Kingdom Hearts. 

We first get glimpses of a wider history, beyond legend, tied to the Keyblade in KH2FM with the appearance of the Keyblade Graveyard and an armored ghost sitting in the middle of it, holding a Keyblade itself. Holding it and using it so effiectively that the reputation of hardest secret boss in the series was well-earned for quite some time. 

That Legacy is further fleshed out in Birth By Sleep due to the revelation of Keyblade wielders before Sora and Riku, due to the Lingering Will being one of those wielders who handed down the legacy of the Keyblade to Riku. Explaining clearly for the first time why Riku was supposed to have the Keyblade instead of Sora, among with a number of other things like Xehanort and Castle Oblivion and etc. 

I would say that pretty much every Kingdom Hearts game since then has tied itself heavily to that Legacy. The return of the Keyblade War, Unions and Foretellers and old cities full of Keyblade wielders and the X-Blade, so much. 

But what is that Legacy? What does it mean? Is it simply to fight Darkness wherever it may be, fight Heartless? 

Those questions may be answered in future games, but they don’t really matter so much as what the heroes in the games do with that Legacy. Because there’s another theme of the next generation doing better than the last. 

We have Sora and Riku and others succeeding where the Wayfinder Trio failed, bringing that trio home as well. We have the Wayfinder Trio being able to stay together as friends where Eraqus and Xehanort failed at that. Dark Road will most likely touch on how Eraqus and Xehanort (among others?) change the Keyblade Legacy of Scala de Caelum. 

Xehanort even hands over the X-Blade, the weapon he’s spent his entire life trying to get, the symbolism of reshaping the world to become better, a Legacy, to Sora himself as the end of KH3.

But most importantly for what you’ve pointed out, we have the new Union Leaders taking over the Foretellers’ positions. Maybe they do correspond directly to Foretellers in their roles. But I think it is more vital that we don’t know what Unions the kids actually came from, only that apparently Ephemer and Skuld were in the same one. 

Because they are putting aside the boundaries that the Foretellers made up themselves, boundaries the Foretellers allowed themselves to fail prey to. The world they will build, to make Scala de Caelum, well. It won’t be perfect. Otherwise we wouldn’t get a Xehanort out of it. 

But those Union Leaders are fitting heirs to what the Foretellers tried to do, in protecting the World and the people of it. Because in the end, it will lead to Sora and his friends. 

Oh, that Foreteller confrontation is seriously the best! The multiple Foreteller confrontations are all very good, along with the Player refusing to become a Dandelion. 

Because they’re right, this war is wrong and the Foretellers should have been trying to fix that instead of feeding the flames. Agreeing to just vanish with the rest of the Dandelions doesn’t fix the problems with the system!

My idea on what the Player character might value and their characterization changes on what Union they’re in. I love the differing ironies of various Foreteller confrontations depending on what Union they’re in. 

The short answer? Inexperience. 

The longer answer? Every problem looks like a monster you can kill if all you have is a Keyblade. 

From what I can tell, from my impression, the Unions are the first big thing or possibly the first thing ever, that the Master of Masters has left to his Apprentices to take care of. 

Leading large groups of people is difficult enough with experience. They were definitely going to screw something up in the process. It’s just unfortunate, really, that the Foretellers’ screw ups lead to the end of the world. 

The situation with the bangles is an example of that. The Foretellers see the problem and decide, under the pressure of an impending world-ending event ahead of them, the best and quickest thing to do to take care of the nightmares is find the source of the bangles: the traitor. 

If the traitor is gone, no more bangles will be given out. Since the traitor is the one to bring Darkness to the World, then the World is saved if they take out the traitor. Thus is the Foretellers’ logic. It’s not bad logic. It’s the logic of individuals who are used to fighting Darkness head-on with their Keyblades, as they were trained to. 

Which is, unfortunately, not the correct way to prevent the Keyblade War. That is the Keyblade War, fighting head-on with Keyblades. 

Out of all of the Apprentices, it appears that Luxu would have been the best equipped to play the shadow games rooting out a traitor requires (if there is one...). I say this in the hindsight of MoM telling Luxu about Darkness’ tricks, how they can look like people and such. But he’s not a Foreteller. 

But for Luxu to succeed in his mission, the Foretellers have to fail. For MoM to see the future, the present has to fall apart. 

Looking back at everything, there's something hilarious about how a number of us were especially suspicious of Brain being the traitor, when he is the only one that we know of who actually dressed up their chirithy.

Is this not canon?