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TL;DR:

long ago in ferals history, there was a kirin called lady amaryllis, the rift walker, who advised the queens via info she derived from traversing the betwixt. one day she didnt come back and in trying to rescue her, the queens got their sparks damaged. this made them into the lich and fell queens respectively, and their relationship and magic has been damaged ever since.

later, luka and alder were close pals in a united lakeroot valley, with a third village that is now the blood tundra, and alder wanted to leave to go explore elsewhere. luka felt sort of betrayed by this and i guess their anger allowed the watcher to influence their actions and cause them to kill a wayfarer, which caused a curse to spread across the village. the ogasa and arrowpeak kobolds cut the bt off from lakeroot and sealed it, but that caused a lot of stress to the planet. the queens, connected to the planet, then fell asleep for 150 years as a healing mechanism and the planet was plunged into sleepy stillness for that time, up until present day.

planet related lore

the planet feral is like a spark in that its magic is similar, and its based on something called Imagination code. this draws sparks created from all across the galaxy, because their magic just...links

as sparks forms can change fluidly with their beliefs, identities, and attitudes, the planets form is ever shifting. thats why there are so many floating rocks and stuff, and why none of the lands are accessible just by walking. they rearrange frequently and this necessitates the use of airships and portals to traverse the lands. all creatures can use portals, not just sparks as once suspected. the reason then that the bloodbolds are trapped in the blood tundra is because they are cursed.

city fera is floating on purpose though. apparently it was once on the ground and the planet shifted, cracking the queens buildings in half and causing quite an annoyance. they decided to levitate it after that

the queens are linked with the planet because they are magical powerhouses who were created at the same time as each other, and landed on feral at the same time too. feral at the time was struggling, and their magic rejuvenated it

when the planet is damaged, the queens go into hibernation (seemingly not of their own volition) and slowly fix it. this is what caused them to sleep for the last 150 years

lore related events part one: the rift walker and the event the queens refer to as “that whole thing”

the watcher is a creature from the betwixt who wants to make all of ferals magic corrupted and chaotic. it resides in the betwixt, a realm between reality and corruption, where imagination code gets rearranged into strange amalgamations of objects and twisted beings and like psychological torture apparently. people used to use the betwixt, perhaps for travel and perhaps for divination? (ill get to that)

the rift walker/lady amaryllis was a kirin who came to the queens and they loved her dearly. she guided them and united them and there was a period of prosperity because lady amaryllis brought knowledge and wisdom the queens didnt have

basically, lady amaryllis got this knowledge from traversing the betwixt, and the queens showered her in appreciation for it

one day she got ballsy however and went deeper and never came back and the queens fell into grief and disarray bc of it. they blamed each other and themselves and it made their relationship a lot worse

eventually, later. sparks started disappearing randomly and the rumor was they were taken by the betwixt. the queens dont know if thats true and arent sure what to do

what settled the matter for them is hearing lady amaryllis voice in their dreams and waking up with tears in their eyes. and then they knew smth betwixt related was up

delilah opened a rift in the basement of the castle to try and get to the sparks and lady amaryllis, and she ended up finding and freeing the (now cracked but still alive) sparks, but had to search for amaryllis

amaryllis ended up being there, but she was fucked up and corrupted from the betwixt and might as well have been gone.

its unclear in the document what amaryllis motives were or what specifically she accomplished in this, but she ended up splitting delilahs spark almost in half

aradia came down to see what the fuck was happening after seeing all the cracked sparks flee the castle, and tried to drag delilah away. delilah grabbed her wing, shattering it, and then closed the portal, unfortunately right as aradia was reaching for lady amaryllis. this chipped the part of aradias spark off that corresponded to her hand, and now both of their sparks were fucked up

after that they could no longer shapeshift and delilah lost a lot of her natural magic and beauty, having to compensate with diligent studying and cosmetics, and aradia lost her creative talent and seemingly the usefulness of her wings. now aradia mostly just paints the same symbolic representation of her shattered wings, and theyre both kind of broken. thats why its sad that theyre called the lich queen and the fell queen, delilah lost her vivid beauty which she cared abt, and aradia lost her ability to fly (it seems, this is never stated but its possible to infer)

this is referred to as “that whole thing” and they dont want to talk about it, even though they totally should because they each blame themselves and are overcome by grief.

lore related events part two: the battle of blood lake, and how luka is responsible for a sizable share of the problems in ferals history

its later, the events regarding the queens sparks shattering are in the past i think. lakeroot has a third kobold village: heartwood. (interesting bc runic heartwood....hehe) this village is known for the kobolds red fur, their tall architecture, and the mountain that they live in. their red fur supposedly comes from the trees that grow in the mountains there, which is interesting

there are two young kobolds who seem very promising: luka the clever and alder the brave(same alder from castaway quest). theyre very good friends... maybe more perhaps. “in arms, intertwined” is what they tell each other, and that seems a bit more than friendly to me

alder had big aspirations involving leaving heartwood and going to see the world, but luka did not like that at all. when they asked what could make alder stay, he said nothing short of war

so, luka gave him war

it is sort of implied that their actions were guided by the watcher, because it is stated that they were standing at the bottom of a statue of a great beast, which is heavily implied to be the watcher statue

as a sidenote, this is super interesting imo because it means the village around the watcher statue, the one thats all abandoned and beat up, is the one luka and alder grew up in, and we never seem to see luka around it, except in the castaway quest, where theyre waiting for alder by the village besides the lake. like they knew that was where hed come back to, because that was where they grew up

anyway. what luka did was steal alders sword and rushed to go fight the wayfarer, which is both a sacred and benevolent creature and also extremely big so its impressive luka managed to take it down and also extremely bad.

this caused all the nearby kobolds in heartwood to go into a rage i guess? and start attacking the other two kobold villages. the killing of the wayfarer i think sent some kind of curse through them and throughout the whole land

so the other two villages, ogasa and arrowpeak banded together and severed heartwood and sealed it off so the curse couldnt spread to them. the heartwood villagers eventually calmed down, but they were still cursed, and could never leave

eventually all the villagers began to lose their memories and grow distant and fade mentally, and their fur began to turn white. the only thing that remained the same was luka, who remembered everything and took to taking care of the rest of their new “flock” trapped there with them.

as you can imagine, the cursing, severing, and sealing of a whole section of land caused a deep wound in the planet. almost like its own spark was cracked now

this cause the queens to fall into a deep sleep as the magic attempted to repair the gaping wound, and they have been that way for 150 years till present

none of the feral citizens seem to remember this, and things have been remarkably quiet for that time. the reason no ones come to usurp the throne is because no one seems to have much of a desire to do anything outside the norm. things have just been... sleepy. like the whole planet is asleep and still with the queens

so what about the current betwixt arc?

well, unfortunately, none of this is really specified in the doc

after explaining what we already experienced in game, with the rift to the betwixt being opened and everyone acting suspiciously like they are faking everything being fine, they just say this:

“What awaits the Queens, and Feral now? A daring rescue from the Betwixt? An allegiance to one at the expense of the other? A ploy to wrest power in the Queens' absence? Or, an exploration of the new status quo Feral finds itself in?”

so i think the story was meant to develop as players completed it, and maybe was supposed to be ongoing throughout the run of the game. disappointing, but ah well

some assorted fun facts!

aradias guard, hawke, used to be a bouncer and apparently loves obsessing over her art.

delilahs guard, vivian, used to be a member of the rose guard, a group we have an armor set for in game. apparently they obsess over delilahs beauty lol

the two guards have just been waiting patiently outside the castle, guarding it from absolutely nothing for 150 years. can you imagine

the queens specified personalities in the lore doc are actually more interesting than the ones we see in the little arg thing. aradia was meant to be the passionate, chaotic, energy filled, unpredictable, visionary and rebellious one who leads ferals art world with revolutionary new ideas. her magic is apparently not totally derived from imagination code either, and comes from something else entirely. oh, also she can shoot fireballs i guess

delilah is meant to be the logical, methodical, elegant, well put together one obsessed with perfection and great at talking her way through or out of a situation with her silver tongue. she is great at long term planning and struggles to improvise quickly because she likes to think things through thoroughly before acting, and she likes dealing with things like alchemy that have rules she can use to her advantage. shes a nice foil to aradia imo

i think its interesting because the consequences of their cracked sparks kind of force them to give up things they clearly cared about. aradia cant fly and has to slow down and give up some of her ability and spontaneity, and delilah has to deal with the fact that she is not eternal, and she her beauty is slowly rotting away and wont be eternal. idk i just think it had so much potential for them to love and support one another. you cant create a storyline where these 2 massively powerful sparks were created at the same time and then landed on the same planet and NOT have them fall in love jfc

lady amaryllis being a kirin is really intersting because one of the few (if only) other spark characters we see in game, princess dreambow via the dreambow set, is a kirin. apparently shes some sort of kids show character. very cool

i wonder if the purple character from the concept art of the queens was what turned into lady amaryllis in the end.

seraphs are former sparks that care a lot about material possessions since they can manifest everything else through their form as sparks. so material possessions are a way to show your status, whereas your appearance isnt as much. i guess the thing on their head is a spark

twiggles, valkeri and komodori are not native to planet feral, but kobolds, myrefolk, and the wayfarer are