#«✫» A Spellbinding Tale Built of Hope and Bravery ∣ PHOS: WORLD BUILDING.

[hclianthi]

So I feel like it’s kind of a generally accepted thing in regards to khux lore, but I just wanted make it official for my blog and expand a little bit for my interpretation of KHUx and how Phos interacts with the world.

Aside from the Foretellers, there are no adults or outsiders in Daybreak Town. As a concept, Daybreak Town is built entirely around nurturing and maintaining that ‘light in the heart of children’ that makes them unique as keyblade wielders. This is to keep corrupting or unwanted influences of parents or other authority figures from affecting a wielder’s heart, or swaying their loyalties away from their unions. 

Be it the original or in its data iteration, it’s set apart and isolated from other worlds in a ‘one goes out but others don’t get in’ sort of way. Normally, only Keykids, Foretellers and the Chirithy are able to move in and out of its realm freely. Of course, this isn’t an iron clad rule; unique and extraordinary circumstances can see strangers enter the isolated town such as the appearances of Mickey, Donald and Goofy via an unstable Gummi Ship or the Star Piece, and Maleficent’s unique case via Time Travel and Darkness’s intervention. So an outsider’s appearance is met with a lot of curiosity or, in some cases, suspicion.

[hclianthi]

I feel like it’s important to note just how sheltered the keykids are and how that affects the way their Keyblade War escalated. And it mainly comes down to one particular fact.

The keykids.....don’t really understand ‘death’. 

It’s easy to assume that all their talk of ‘disappearing’ and ‘going missing’ is just Disney Language™, but no. Throughout the disney worlds themselves, death and dying are constantly used and referenced everywhere except the one place you’d think the idea would be normalized - the one place where dying in the line of duty is almost expected. But it isn’t. To the keykids, to fall in battle isn’t dying. You only disappear. It’s like someone just...moves away. You just stop seeing them anymore, but it’s not a big deal.

There’s a concerning level of desensitization in Daybreak Town regarding the lives lost as a keyblade wielder. This extends even to the post-Foretellers world where, in the Summer Break special story missions, the fact that something in the realm of darkness was swallowing up keykids left and right wasn’t even given a thought until the sheer numbers they were losing was impossible to ignore. 

And I think this is intentional. It’s become increasingly obvious that the chi/khux war was set up in deeper ways than we initially expected. Despite being within the assumed 12-16 general age range, a lot of these kids act a lot younger than they are. There’s an immaturity that you usually see in blatantly sheltered kids, and a tendency towards lashing out when provoked (even in regards to the Player themselves), and that’s why the fights start breaking out so quickly over seemingly nothing. Daybreak Town has no solid emotional support or education system to teach them the levels of control they need in these situations. 

And with no solid emotional or logical grounding, especially with their only adult/parental figures all outright encouraging this with their own agendas and resignment to a fate they refuse to avoid, the children who depend on them for guidance can only follow their lead in the name of their Unions. 

And this I think is exactly the intent behind this portion of MoM’s plan. The truly exceptional are recruited by Ava and kept away from the fighting for ‘what comes after’, while the others go to war - potentially as a summoning method for Kingdom Hearts, which appears after all the kids have already fallen.

After all, if there’s no concept of death, why would they be afraid to go to war for their Unions? Why should they even give a second thought to making those other kids in other Unions ‘disappear’, especially if those kids are the real bad guys anyway? 

[hclianthi]

The option to transfer Unions was something established solely among the Dandelions and the new Union Leaders’ rule. 

Tensions were too high in the time of the Foretellers, competition and rankings the highest priority when it came to drive. Loyalty to your Union and to your Foreteller was encouraged and expected, and to insist on switching to another Union would not have been well received, especially by the members of the one left behind.

But that was one of the very reasons it was suggested and implemented. One of the goals of Ephemer and the others was to reduce tensions between Unions, encourage friendships between them and lessen the chances or reasons for the Keyblade War to ever repeat. So instead of essentially joining an opposing force, this lessened the intensity of competition, moreso like playing on your friend’s team. This worked towards normalizing the idea that the borders between them were not something to build hostility over, but each facets of a single whole united against the Darkness.

[hclianthi]

after 8 billion years, Phos has a tag drop. Part 1: general tags, eyooo

[hclianthi]

    ❝ Your Pursuit of Light Made You the Perfect Candidate                                   for a Keyblade Wielder. ❞

This is one of the first things you hear as you enter this place known as Daybreak Town, a realm of light and color who chose you out of thousands as one to bear the light of a guardian: a wielder of the legendary Keyblade. A grand honor falling to you to act as a defender of light, it’s your duty to chase away the shadows that would threaten the Light and its denizens. After all, the brightest lights dwell in the hearts of children. 

And yet, there is a ghostly imbalance to it all. It’s not a place familiar to you, and yet, at the same time, it is. The reason? 

This is not the first time your heart has seen the world.

The keykids of Daybreak Town arrive seemingly in a daze, uncertain of anything but the giant key in their hand and the need to defend themselves against the shadows that swarm upon them before anything else. They don’t know how or why, what this ‘Keyblade’ is, no word on their life before or what could have been, only that this is their life now. What else is there to do but to accept it as the norm? 

But the lack of a past and the open acceptance of such a life among children is an oddity if given any thought. It’s unlikely that such a large number of children, many of which appear well under 15, are active pursuant of Light, much less understand the concepts that surround it. And with not a single of these young warriors even offhandedly mentioning a family or home they left behind, accepting it all without question as though it was all the only thing they’d ever known, where are the Unions finding the numbers to fill their ranks? 

The answer lies in Kingdom Hearts, the heart of all worlds and the keeper of hearts lost. In an era where the light of all things -- though distant -- is not lost to the darkness, the hearts that sleep are an open book to the select few of this world who understand the paths between and the secrets therein. There, ones whose natures are familiar with the Light from their past lives are drawn back out of the embrace of Kingdom Hearts and brought back to the realms between. They are remade, hearts given new forms and with it their new purpose in the Station of Awakening - a manufactured realm not of their own heart, but one of forging, and there they align themselves to the Union their hearts feel most drawn to, emerging into this walled off society with only a keyblade in hand and a mind free of preconceptions to mold into defenders of the Light.

[hclianthi]

                     “ Which Union Does Your Heart Belong To? ”

    These are among the first words a wielder ‘hears’ when entering the Station of Awakening, a calling to their newly reborn heart that urges these new lights to chose a symbol to bind their hearts to, drawing upon the heart’s true nature to bind together with the core of the Union’s goal with complete loyalty to it and those within:

The strong and unyielding of Unicornis. The fearless and proud of Ursus. The dependable and resolute of Anguis. The shrewd and tactical of Leopardus. The clever and prudent of Vulpes.

                                             This is what grants them Starlight. 

    Starlight is a unique keyblade in that it is neither fully hand-forged nor made from the nature of a person’s heart. It is tied, bound to their wielder each individually upon binding themselves to their chosen Unions, but the heart does not manifest it. It’s a manufactured weapon connected to each wielder’s heart with a singular purpose: tying one’s heart to their Union’s cause.

    And yet the power of the wielder’s heart is only a portion of the keyblade’s power. Magic is not a gift seen among key kids, and so magic and power through medals is artificially amplified to complete one’s mission. And from that connection to one’s heart, to one’s cause and Union, the wielder is granted phenomenal power.

                             So what happens when that connection breaks......?