#phares

Now, mind you, this theory is inherently a matter of early-game speculation, before Nedrick and Sacred Tree drama kicked up, much less Xenos drama. This is conjecturing for what they possibly might have been planning instead of what we got, as Dragalia was written by several authors working separately that had different visions for the story.

With that in mind, let's assemble the pins on the conspiracy board I've created...

The crux of this all starts with NPC Phares' art. The siblings had fully designed NPC art with corresponding titles, instead of the generic wooden pedestal. For example, this is Chelle's, and her title is 'The Inferno'.

This is Phares'.

Looks... pretty bland on first glance, almost fitting for a generic 3 star unit, but there's a lot more going on here. For starters, his title. Dragalia Lost brushed over them in-game entirely, but his Japanese NPC titles were 'Dawning Light' (a thing that would later be reflected into his actual unit's 'Dawning Wind',) and 'White Light' (the Japanese has simpler or alternate titles above the actual one, which sometimes gives a different title). Keep this in mind for later.

Next, take a look at the background behind him.

Who is it, though? Well, things are muddy, but there are two possible answers: a proto-Uranus... or Elysium.

You can see it either way, depending on what aspects you choose to focus on. If one is looking at the chin structure, it looks more like Uranus. If one instead focuses on the chest, though, as @soumarhea (whom I will be using additional observations from) has, though, you might find another dragon...

The chest resembles Elysium's ornament.

If we entertain the possibility that this is Elysium, more curiosities open up. Why would Phares have an Elysium carving on a stone behind him? Why, it almost looks a bit like...

A tombstone. And it's breaking apart.

Huh.

This is where we can start pulling in Phares some more. 'Dawning Light' is a suspicious title, in this regard. Dawning carries a certain... 'growing' connotation. Ascending. Elysium is strongly tied to light (in fact, I'm going to come around to that later, as well). So if Phares is the 'dawning light'...

But wait, there's a lot more symbolism and stuff to examine. Take a look underneath the main body of his pedestal, and you'll find a certain hidden light, shining outward. Fairly well-hidden, but it also helps strengthen this 'concealed light' presentation.

Let's also take a look at Phares' design compared to Elysium's. Both share a color scheme: white scales, blue accessories, and gold for further highlights. Phares' messy hair also, -extremely vaguely, mind you, -reminds me of Elysium's horn set, with his strands often turning upward like Elysium's do. Perhaps most damning even if it's still vague, they share chest ornaments of a reminiscent manner:

With Emphatic Red And Purple Lines, hopefully it's easier to see where I'm coming from:

The triangular structure surrounding the circular centerpiece, the point at the bottom, the supporting lines that weave underneath the main body... it's far from exact, but there is something there, I think. Throw in whatever weird white leather offshoots of Phares' outfit (they're separate from his leather tunic) as the lower protrusions on Elysium if you want, too!

Their iridescent green eyes and scale color are also suspiciously close:

So now that I've hopefully established that Phares and Elysium shared surprisingly many traits in their overall design, what else could there be to suggest something as farfetched as 'Phares was going to turn into Elysium'?

I'll crack into Phares and his name a bit more here. As I've gone over in this post, Phares shared some surprisingly deep Greek roots (as did the royal fam in general, with several inspired with Greco-Roman names/theming). The long and short of it are these points:

-Phares' name is quite possibly drawn from 'Phanes', a progenitor god from an earlier strain of Greek mythos. Phanes is strongly associated with light, sometimes called 'light-bringer', and has any number of other connections to other figures/concepts like knowledge, Uranus, and more. Even if I ignore the Greek, his name is literally 'lighthouses' or 'headlights' in French.

-Phares' JP skill names are in Greek. If the DL team had just translated out the sounds, his skills would look more like 'Desmos Orkos' to us, etc.

Hm. Yet more ties to light.

Speaking of light, Elysium (and Ilia) also ties to this Greco-Roman mythology.

Elysium is more of a place than a creature, and is sort of this heavenly plain in the Greek and Roman afterlife. Ilia, meanwhile, is another name for the mother of the founders of Rome, Rhea Silvia, via birthing Romulus and Remus. So we universally see strong Greek and Roman influence between Elysium, Ilia, and Phares, all tied to influential and important figures in its mythologies.

I'll divert a bit to the early lore, especially what we know of dragonblood and certain events.

Specifically, the origins of dragonblood: by all accounts, dragonblood originated from the light of Elsyium's pact/Primal Mark Theft with Ilia shining down and granting people dragonblood.

Note, while Forgotten Truths paints it as a more... violent process, it's originally described more gently:

But even with the more violent take on it, we see a recurrent theme of Elysium's light or the Primal Pactsone being the tying element to what gave the family dragonblood.

Now let's look at one of the great mysteries of the game that never got resolved: Euden's chapter 1 transformation.

Into Elysium, mind you, a thing that only Morsayati seems to inherently recognize. Even Zethia or Elisanne are not freaking out about Elysium being suddenly there. The former is more concerned with if she 'awoke his dragonblood somehow'. They don't recognize him.

But if Elysium was around, wouldn't the world have at least some idea about what he looked like? Even a singular sighting over a century might have spurred many a depiction that carried on.

Enter the 'Elysium's kinda dead' aspect of this theory: he's not been around for a while, long enough that his looks don't cause immediate recognition?

The broader point with this section, though, is that there is very strong ties between the family's dragonblood and Elysium. If Elysium is 'hiding in the blood' enough for people like Zethia to 'awaken' it, is it really so far-fetched to go one step further?

What if wyrmscale is just another 'awakening' of Elysium in the blood, perhaps trying to claw back to life? We know that powerful dragons undergo reincarnation in Dragalia. With Elysium being an unusual, powerful, unusually powerful dragon even among the 'big dog' dragons, it's possible his reincarnation is somehow complicated. His spirit might have persisted past death and is just trying to find another body.

Early!Phares is highly doubtful wyrmscale even is a disease to start with:

Instead, he's become quite enamored with the idea of turning into a dragon, in contrast to his earlier fear. Furthermore, he has been continually dreaming of turning into a dragon:

Here, sourmarhea suggests that this change of perspective is a corruption of perspective a la Xenos - that Elysium is influencing him to take actions to complete his transformation/revival. Speaking of Xenos, this scene is weird in retrospect, as the god would likely care not for being a dragon and would thus not be very encouraging of Phares' dreams of becoming one.

Another point to this possible 'Elysium influence' is Phares' actions regarding the Sacred Shards. We don't know for certain, but Chelle at one point almost seems to suggest that Phares might have been doing ~something~ to, presumably, the castle's Shard.

Note her characteristic 'fan hiding face' expression being used here - the best signal we have that she darn well knows more and is choosing not to comment!

Now, what were the Sacred Shards? Well, they were fragments of the sword Dragalia, forged from Elysium's pactstone. Alberius shattered them to create the Shards.

If they were scattered, it might stand to reason that Elysium is wanting all of them back, to assemble his own power or for some other purpose. Say, like perhaps it would help his latest potential host actually survive the little 'turn into a dragon' thing.

And when the singular castle's Shard has this hint of an unheard-of 'shadow' in it, Aurelius is so worried that he sends Euden to pact to bring back the Mistholt's shard as well as going out himself to get another one:

"Wait! That doesn't make any sense," maybe says the lore-r, "It's not actually Elysium's pactstone that created the sacred shards, it was Primal Mids'!"

Two explanations:

-One, they were originally going to play it straight and that it was Elysium's pactstone, again, this is for what they might have originally been intending instead of how it developed, or,

-Two, that since even ELYSIUM HIMSELF is completely unaware in canon as it was that Mids-0 did a switcharoo,

...It's more than possible that Elysium just hadn't gotten to that knowledge that the Sacred Shards aren't his and was still in the 'gather them' stage.

I would also like to observe that we... never really see the capital swarmed with fiends as is told what would happen if a Shard failed, even before Aurelius is possessed. Even with whatever 'shadow' that had Aurelius so distressed to send Euden out and go himself to fetch two Shards, we see no proof that the Shard itself was truly in danger as Aurelius feared. Thus, it could have been a cosmetic effect meant to spur action from others, like this dramatization and informative diagram shows:

...If this isn't enough crack, let's go deeper!

By that, I mean let me throw more stuff at the wall to see what sticks or resonates with anyone.

First, let's throw out the wyrmprint 'Holywyrm's Advent'. Wyrmprints in Dragalia sometimes came early or late. Whether it was 'Syndicate Mask' outright talking about the Syndicate at launch, or the one wymprint with Nephren, a character that went wholly unreleased, timing was sometimes... off. Referencing things that didn't exist yet.

But Holywyrm's Advent tells a certain story at odds with its debut event, Dawn of Dragalia. It instead regales about Elysium himself coming down from the heavens (also, note how Phares often seems to be floating/flying around and Elysium also likes to fly/float) to look cool and give orders. One small thing about its second stage, though...

So came the Holywyrm, revealing law to all. Thou shalt neither hate, nor kill, nor act out in willful ignorance. And with this decree, order came unto the world.

...Elysium himself didn't really seem to care too much about the truth. He's active in spreading lies and forcing a certain vision of events.

But you know who does? Yup, Phares, the resident 'I want to learn everything' know-it-all in the family. I reckon anyone acting in willful ignorance might get on his nerves greatly to the degree it finds itself in a list forbidding things like murder. Who knows, maybe a new Elysium might be influenced a bit by his newest form if he needed to descend again...

Speaking of, the Summoner. For all we saw of her, the .2 seconds in a summon, we knew 0.00 of her.

...But she sure looks like she'd fit snug in the family, huh? She and Phares even share that blue-gold aesthetics, two running golden threads in their clothes, and a chest ornament.

...Like I said, I know I'm grasping at straws here. I told you I was getting deeper into the crack!

Yes, yes, I know that the Summoner's design is itself reminiscent of the Knight's of Glory design for Tliff, but Tliff was notably brown-haired, from what I'm seeing. Why change it to blond, the signature color of the family as Alberius' genes apparently were pretty good to keep printing his colors 300 years later with great consistency?

Let's just move on to something a little bit more grounded: Phares' Mysterious Moving Book. That one story where the Phares dreaming image came from also has this tidbit, as pointed out again by soumarhea:

Phares' musings regarding wyrmscale and his changing views regarding it all stem from him unexpectedly stumbling upon a book about wyrmscale again, a very old book that he's not seen for a while. How did it move? A spiritual nudge from Elysium to serve as a reminder, perhaps, since we are well aware that even more mundane creatures' ghosts can influence real things? Also note his repeated dream's confusion that his voice is well, his when he transforms - a hint that it would be Elysium more behind the wheel?

Speaking of Phares, let's wind back the clock again to Phanes, the deity that seemed to serve as his namesake.

Phanes is noted for 'hatching from a cosmic egg', a thing that makes me reflexively think of the dragons in Dragalia, who generally seemed to reproduce via eggs as one would expect. It could have been used as a sort of transitional stage for him if the Elysium transformation ever went down. To be fair, though, it's not like we ever had any cases of humans in giant egglike things to transform into dragons before...

Oh wait. Whoops.

In any case, I'll stop with the more crazy observations. This is long and crazy enough as it is.

In summation:

-We have a very strong correlation between Phares, light, and Elysium. Phares' 'light' is additionally 'ascending', growing.

-His design features similar elements to Elysium, ones I might view as suspiciously similar.

-His earlier comments and desires appear at odds with Xenos' interests, as Xenos likely isn't all that fond of dragons and would not support Phares wanting to be a dragon

-Phares has seemingly been doing something to at least one Sacred Shard, things that Elysium thinks are his and might think that he could use.

-Nobody can recognize Elysium in the modern day, except the demon lord that has fought him over 1k years ago.

-The family's dragonblood has very strong ties to Elysium and seemingly originates from him.

-Wyrmscale itself is tied to a person presenting with 'dragon-like' mana

-Phares, mythologically, takes inspiration from a figure just as 'grand' as other central figures in the Ilian church

-Phares' perspective has shifted over time, from initially being afraid of becoming a dragon to welcoming it. Unexplained phenomena are additionally happening around him. Subconscious influence, perhaps?

Let me synthesize this into one possible narrative to wrap this all up...

Ahem.

---

Elysium, through some means, has been killed. Maybe Alberius done it. Maybe he gave his life. But, as such a powerful dragon, his spirit lingers even as his body didn't.

He wants a new one to be reincarnated as he would be as a dragon.

One problem: he's in that pesky category of dragons that seems to evolve through more ordinary creatures (see Kamuy, who awakens through a wolf), like humans. Dragonblooded humans, who already share a strong base of connection with him and his mana.

So he tries to revive through them. He's an important dragon with work to do. But they keep dying. Dragonblooded or not, they're still human. He gets hopeful each time, as his ivory scales start to sprout, but they never can stick the landing and actually transform.

But then he hits Phares, Prospective Wyrmscale Victim 23 (or whatever). And boy, this time there's promise. He might need to be a bit more active. The boy's afraid of dying, afraid of being a dragon. Nudge him a bit, -dragons are cool, after all, and provide hope. Maybe the Sacred Shards would help you him survive?

So he gets his human to start tampering with them on the side, to prompt others to start assembling them for him.

Things go wrong. Even if the biggest chance has done his best to keep his head down and play both sides without really committing to anything, things with the Shards aren't working out.

If they're not working, though, Elysium still needs something powerful to help his little human survive, because 'nothing' isn't cutting it.

One thing might suffice, though, just as holy and right as he is: the Dawnshard.

---

As a final note, I'd like to explain the 'Dawnshard' comment there. Most drama surrounding the Dawnshard centered around Elysium and Nedrick (and Euden's gang as bystanders, of course). Nedrick, notably, probably didn't exist for a while in the writer's minds. Euden not being the true heir was a decision made by the director, not a writer. His existence was probably wholly contrived from the need to make someone be the true 7th scion. But we did see Phares set a trajectory towards the Tree in canon, one that was... threadbarely used. He pops in at random intervals and exits just the same.

I could see him being shoved away in favor of Nedrick, to give him a goal and plan for Euden to contest. Phares as a character was increasingly stressed in the ch.13-14 stretch, almost as if they were planning on focusing on him and his plans... and then Nedrick sweeps in, redirects the plot ch.15-22 around him and how he relates to Euden's identity. Phares vanishes for five chapters in the meantime. Something doesn't quite add up.