Who (what) do they love truly, 100% unconditionally (if anyone)?
A hard question right off the bat, haha. Unconditionally is a very, very difficult word to ascribe to Jade, as almost everything she deals with has conditions- she is, at her core, a barterer and merchant. So using circumstantial evidence, the closest thing that Jade has an unconditional love (desire) for, is probably hope.
Given how careful she is with her private life, it makes sense that she hasnât revealed anything too personal from her appearance in Penacony- however, what we, the players, have is the name of her Eidolons, and her Light Cone. Her Eidolons all formatted in the same way- in that they name a virtue, and then essentially put it in the terms of a trade: âAltruism? Nevertheless Tradableâ and so on.Â
So- bringing our attention to her Eidolons, there are two that I would like to focus on. E5: âHope? Hitherto Forfeitedâ and âEquity? Pending Sponsorshipâ. E5, because, well, look at that name. Firstly, as mentioned above, all of her Eidolons put some form of virtue and then a term regarding trade. Hitherto Forfeited- lost or given up until a specific time. On top of the general business usage of the term, it also has a sense of loss, which will be elaborated on later. The E6 important as it is often theorized that its image shows the true self of the character in question.
(Honestly, I think Hope? Hitherto Forfeited might be better suited to be the name of E6, but given that the gameplay mechanics of E6 put her as a debt collector when she grants someone else the debt collector state, it was switched to match the name of âequityâ. But I have no proof.)Â
What is Jadeâs E6? Itâs her reflection in the eye of her snake. Forfeit may also be defined as âto lose or lose the right to, especially by some error, offense, or crimeâ. With my previous theory about Jadeâs true name of Eve and her numerous allusions to that particular Biblical story, I donât think I need to spell it out.
Moving onto her Light Cone! (Yippee) âYet Hope is Pricelessâ. Now isnât that an interesting turn of phrase, miss âdo you think everything in this world can be tradedâ? To be honest, that name is what spiraled my search here. If hope is priceless, it cannot be exchanged, even to the owner of the Bonajade Exchange.
On top of this, we have one of Jadeâs only âpersonalâ exchanges, with Firefly in the Penacony story- and I say personal because she says so directly (âConsider it more of a personal offer from myself. It doesn't represent the IPC or the Strategic Investment Department.â), which is important, because she describes the Stonehearts with a particular set of phrases:
However, unlike you Stellaron Hunters or the Astral Express, we band together... merely to obtain what we want. [...] This journey could be either brief or long, as each of us carries a void in our hearts that can only be filled from the outside.
Iâve bolded the parts of her dialogue that I think are interesting here. The usage of merely implies that she doesnât think this bond is as high value or at least not as important as those of the Stellaron Hunters or the Astral Express, which, yes, makes sense to a point- if the Stonehearts are driven entirely by individual goals, their sense of unity is limited at best. Whatâs also important is that âwhat we wantâ is, well, another way to describe desire. Desire, aka the very thing Jade collects- the very thing that she trades for, over and over again. She, too, is bound by her desire. And what does that entail? The void in her heart. Naturally, we donât know how much she knows about all the other Stonehearts, and how accurate her assessment is but what we do know is that she knows herself.
The void in her heart âcan only be filled from the outsideâ. It is not something she herself can innately fulfill, even with her ability to fulfill desires and grant wishes. Maybe itâs a limitation of her own power, that she canât grant it herself (possible) or itâs something truly intangible (priceless), something that she canât even grant Firefly:
Firefly: It's a shame, though, that this pawnshop can't give me what I desire. My last attempt in Penacony... Well, it ends with "hope."










