#in sacred stones it was fomortiis's awakening

[ailheim-art]

Fomortiis fanart!

Also a Divine Dragon Tiki sketch for fun.

[rainbow-firebird]

Fomortiis punching Grima

[randomnameless]

As much as I love the tragedy of Lyon and his unrequited love for both Renais twins, I agree that the banner should've had other characters. Keep Myhrr, add Morva, change the duo to Joshua/Natasha, add Ismaire and then, idk, Caellach or Gerik as the TT reward. But seeing the cyl results and Lyon still doing great even after daddy Fomortiis I'm not surprised they're milking this dry and probably will make Lyon more of a tragic bisexual disaster rather than someone with a hurt ego in an hypothetically remake of Sacred Stones. But the thing I don't agree with is that the trend of dead dads stopped in this banner, I think it stopped with the fates banner as we did not get Valentines Garon (we were ROBBED) and Valentines Mikoto/Sumeragi; and even before the fates banner we can argue if the awakening banner also broke the trend (depends if you count the robins' and chrom as dead parents when they're only dead in a timeline we only get to experience in dlc). And tbh I think breaking trends is kind of nice, wish they did the same with other banners (tired already of the harem jokes on bridal and the playboy/playgirl suits in easter).

CAELLACH ALT

Sing it with me anon!

TBF about Lyon's popularity in CYL... Fomortiis couldn't be voted for!

And FEH feeds itself - by bringing more light to old characters through their own depiction, CYL voters will vote for Lyon based as the version they see in CYL, not the Lyon we got in FE8.

So yeah, I guess people will now remember him as a "tragic bisexual disaster" of a character, and not the egomaniac who thought he could go toe to toe against Satan to "win" the love of the twins and his people.

(heck, FE13's depiction of Lyon was closer to the character than FEH's!)

You're right about the previous Valentine's banner, but it completely escaped me lol, since it was a Fates seasonal and I don't really have a lot of feelings for Fates' cast.

Chrom at least was in his "father" role, because Lucina was there - ditto for Lissa.

I'd say breaking the trend bring more freshness... but those trends are the only occasions to have some characters added in, sure Vigarde was brought in his zombie form last year - but without the "dead parents" Valentine, would FEH really had an occasion to bring Vigarde? Fado? Morva? Ismaire??

That's why I was so pissed at dragonween ending (i know flayn is a lizard) - Dragonween was the only (because I don't have faith in FEH) opportunity to get less known dragons released (the Goldoans!), or even alts for the most serious ones (Duo!Duma lol), but now it was just... a seasonal banner with popular character and maybe one oddball like any other.

I agree on the harem jokes for the bridal banners though, but it's in general tiredness for the bridal banners in themselves, even if I liked bridal Louise and bridal Pent - it's a tiresome banner only to sell characters in white and poofy dresses with, sometimes, a breast modifier and the less is said about the easter banners, the better we are lol

(unless they go full bara for this year's easter banner, with Izuka Daizuke's league of vilains, Bunny!Ashnard, Bunny!Medeus, Bunny!Hardin, Bunny!Fomortiis...)

A trend I would like to see disappear though is the Fodlan summer - I'd love swimsuit!Seteth as much as Mythic!Willy - but this grows really stale. They even joked about it last year in the TT, but damn, let it go IS, please.

[emblemxeno]

Three Houses’ and Fandom’s Discussion On Ideals/Story Rant

My main issue with Three Houses ‘Grey Morality’ discourse and all of the “No one’s truly right or wrong in this war!!! That’s the point!!!’ is that the way the war is written is incredibly lopsided.

How can you reasonably say no side is truly more right or wrong than the other when Edelgard has had a major head start since the beginning of the game, and the Kingdom and Alliance are fighting against being literally conquered and assimilated?

The conflict was not born from some brewing tension between the nations or some continent wide political uprising or any kind of established inciting incident. It literally comes out of nowhere. It’s makes no sense to say it’s a war where each side is fighting for their ideals when it’s just Edelgard fighting for her ideals and everyone else defending their homes because they don’t want to die.

Why is the story suddenly about ideals? There doesn’t need to be some broad moral discussion about why you’re fighting, you literally got taken by surprise and now your homes and families are being threatened because of one person’s vision for the world.

Compare to other games in the series.

The Tellius games, most notably Radiant Dawn. The major conflict at the end of Radiant Dawn is predicated on the folly of Ashunera’s creations and the inevitability of conflict, and is ignited when all nations engage in war and Ashera’s judgement is released in response. It took two games worth of build up and backstory for this to come to fruition, this was an overarching plot with a goal.

The Jugdral games? The war in Part 2 of Genealogy as well as Thracia 776 are the result of Sigurd’s actions being manipulated in Part 1 by the Loptr sect and Arvis’ own goals. Not only that, but it beautifully ties into the rest of the world’s isolated struggles, such as Travant’s goals for Thracia and the civil war in Silesse.

Awakening? Ylisse and Plegia had tension for years before the game started, with Chrom’s dad launching his crusade, as well as bandit attacks, kidnappings, and an attempt on Emmeryn’s life. This eventually leads into Validar’s later machinations as well.

Fates? Hoshido and Nohr have been in conflict ever since the time of the First Dragons’ fight to control the world. Humans were selected to wield the legendary weapons specifically so they could be dragged into the conflict. And all it takes is 6 chapters and Corrin’s backstory to give a solid foundation for the beginning full scale war.

Hell, even with the other games in the series which have a surprise war, the difference between those and Three Houses is that they don’t try to make the war or story about something it’s not. Sacred Stones is strictly about Lyon’s insecurity and desperation for power to protect his people leading Fomortiis to corrupt him; Binding Blade is strictly about Zephiel’s disgust for humanity leading to the resurrection of dragons; the Archanea games are strictly about Gharnef fuckin around with manaketes and dark magic because he was scorned by his teacher.

Three Houses’ conflict tries to be both a surprise and an inevitability but imo fails at both. I really think there needed to be more people involved in reviewing the story, to fact check, and to keep consistency/cohesion, especially for such an ambitious project.

[gascon-en-exil]

Hm, if you could, how would you rank the final maps across the series?

I can’t really rank them, but I can give my opinions on most of them. I don’t know how much value it’ll have though since I freely admit to not playing on the higher difficulties where gameplay conversations are seen as having genuine merit. Anyway:

FE1/11 and 3/12 - only reached the end of the DS remakes, and as is the case with most of Archanea I don’t remember them very well except that Medeus is a pain in both. Shadow Dragon’s last map is also incredibly long as I recall...assuming you don’t just warpskip to the boss of course.

FE2/15 - never got to the end of Gaiden, but Echoes’s last map is an interesting mix of entertaining and frustrating. The layout is certainly distinctive, as is the novelty of using Alm and Celica’s armies together for the first time. Jedah’s gimmick is a nuisance though and I don’t care for Duma and his AoE attack and invulnerability to most attacks.

FE4 - the longest map in a game infamous for long maps, but unlike Chapters 2 and 7 Endgame offers a decent challenge to help cover up the tedious distances and backtracking. There’s also a good increasing scale of difficulty from one castle to the next, with the only real letdown being Manfroy whom is technically optional although I’ve never skipped him. Hate fighting Ishtar and the falcon knight sisters and most of the Deadlords, and it does suck a bit that the sudden rush of enemies with skills and holy weapons makes a fair number of your units dangerous to field on the front lines.

FE5 - also don’t remember it too well. The map itself is a nightmare like most of Thracia’s maps tend to be, but Veld is a joke in more ways than one. Also more Deadlords...whee. 

FE6 - all of the GBA games follow a pattern of a two-part final map with the first being a gauntlet ending in a major story villain and the second being your army rushing the final boss. Binding Blade’s is the worst in both regards. First you’re trudging your units from altar to altar fighting dragons and getting an awkward backstory dump after each one, then you finally kill Jahn at the end, and then you get to Idunn who’s a joke and isn’t even that hard to kill with Roy for the secret best ending. Three Houses gets flak for clumsy lore dumps in its lategame, but I think I honestly prefer them to what we get here. At least Rhea manages to be sympathetic.

FE7 - the best of this trilogy, mostly on account of it kicking off with a boss rush of Blazing Sword’s greatest hits reincarnated as OP morphs. Nergal is pretty standard, but the second part deserves comedy points for pitting you against a generic and calling it a final boss. 

FE8 - the monsters of Sacred Stones aren’t the most engaging of enemies, especially if you play the postgame Creature Campaign at all since there it’s nothing but monsters. This drags down the last map in my opinion, since it’s just a monster map with some mildly creative architecture and Lyon waiting for you at the end. Fomortiis is nothing special either apart from the originality of his not being a dragon.

FE9 - may be my favorite final map aesthetically, in large part due to the ironic contrast between the still tidy and peaceful Crimean palace gardens and the massive Daien army awaiting you. Similarly it may be the most mundane final map in the series with nothing much supernatural going on unless you’re playing on Hard (or Japanese Maniac) mode where Ashnard goes berserk and you have to kill him twice. I never do though, and Ashnard moving with his colossal range in higher difficulties means you don’t get to experience a good half or so of the map. I’d rather not deal with that, especially since he’s got the same nigh-invulnerability issue as Duma going on.

FE10 - depends on if we’re talking only 4-E-5 or the entirety of the Goddess Tower. The true last map is kind of bland and is more about having a good setup and positioning than dynamic tactics, because Ashera and her auras and AoEs are nothing if not predictable. The maps ascending the tower on the other hand offer a nice mixture of quick challenges that let this game’s massive cast come together for the first time (so like Gaiden/Echoes only with a roster over twice the size) and show off what they can do at their best...on Easy anyway. In Normal and Hard it’s Ike and the laguz royals and maybe about a dozen other viable units all the way up.

FE13 and 14 - I barely remember any of these to be quite honest. Awakening’s is as mediocre as every other map in that game and ends with the horrible non-choice for Robin that underscores how FE13 is terrified to have any genuine stakes. Fates’s three final maps each approximate the general tone of their respective routes: Birthright’s is the most series-typical, Conquest’s is the most creative, and Revelation’s is the most gimmicky and tedious.

FE16 - probably what most people reading this came for, so I’ll go ahead and break it down further by route.

SS - horrible by every parameter but the music, which is nothing special since all three final map tracks are excellent. There’s no setup worth mentioning to explain why Rhea is suddenly attacking you, and you’re stuck fighting enemies on all sides including a ton of flying monsters that hit extremely hard and also have to be taken out to do any serious damage to the Immaculate One. The map architecture is more of a hindrance than a help, and Rhea’s long-range attacks are if I recall the most deadly of any of the final bosses. The NG Maddening LTC crowd can have this one.

AM - feels more dangerous than it is, until you realize that you can skip large chunks of the map including Myson trolling you with his HP-to-1 spell on the right. Funneling your units through the smaller chambers on the left skips the worst of it and lets you right off into the throne room, where the Hegemon is overall less threatening than the horde of magic users surrounding her. I dislike the non-final version of this map in VW/SS more, if only because you have to move faster there if you want to stop Dedue from committing suicide by gremory/mortal savant. 

VW - deserves a nod as the only wholly unique final map in Three Houses, even if conceptually it’s just Deadlords in a swamp (that you can get rid of, a nice touch). Nemesis is without question the weakest final boss as the only one without multiple health bars, and it’s not like you wouldn’t have taken out all of the zombie Elites on the way to him anyway. At least he puts up a pretty good fight when he’s by himself, although it’s still not hard to swarm him.

CF - comparable to AM’s in that you can skip large chunks of the map to make it easier, in this case by concentrating all your forces right up the middle to kill the Immaculate One before the enemies on the side can get to you. The faster you do it the fewer enemies you have to fight and the less fire you have to wade through, which is all a plus in my book. It helps that the Immaculate One here is weaker than she is in SS, and instead of being surrounded by monsters and constructs the other enemies in her immediate vicinity are ones like Cyril and Catherine who are still a pain to deal with but nowhere near as durable. 

So for FE16 specifically I’d probably go AM > VW > CF > SS.

[asmexus]

aether, rightful god, swap, and misfortunate! 💗

Thank you for the ask!  💗

Aether- Favorite lord?

Lyn! I know she’s not the best character but I have a soft spot for her and I feel like I can relate to her. She is both kind and determined and I admire her love for her parents and her homeland! 💚 

Rightful God – Favorite boss in the series?

Either the Grima fight from Awakening or Fomortiis from Sacred Stones!

Swap – Did you ever sacrifice a unit in order to save another?

I don’t think I ever have! Most unit deaths were either accidents or poor placement ):

Misfortunate – Unluckiest moment in game?

Probably Ch. 15 in Sacred Stones when Valter got a crit on both Saleh and Innes

[randomnameless]

Sunday musings -

Bar the plot important infodumps - Claude’s infodump, Rhea’s infodump and Edel’s S-support - are children of the goddess ever mentionned anywhere?

They’re mentionned in the info bubbles when you click on the IO or her bros, or on phantoms. 

Given how Rhea modified history, she could have banned any mention of the Goddess and her Children. After all, in the Book of Seiros, the Goddess came from above (space) and “breathed life to the world”. If she created everyone, everyone is, technically, a child of the goddess.

However, in the Forbidden Library, the monk who wrote his piece about relics surmises the children were involved with the relics - he knew children of the goddess, a specific race different from humans, existed? Who told him? Mole People? The Church itself - which would contradict its scriptures, unless this person wasn’t following the scriptures or the general “the goddess created everything” came after his research?

And yet, if Rhea really wanted to erase mentions of her brethrens, this person couldn’t have mentionned the goddess’s children. Also, it seems even odder, but Rhea didn’t destroy buildings where she and her people used to live. Zanado is off-limits for anyone who isn’t authorised by the Archbishop herself, and yet the ruins still stand. The Lords (Edel?) will note how different the architecture is from the rest of Fodlan. I’m not saying there’s a sign where it’s written “Cichol’s room - do not disturb” or “Welcome to Zanado, the village of the Children of the Goddess” but keeping ruins will obviously raise questions, who lived there, why did those people leave, where are they, etc etc.

In this tweet, someone posted pictures of Lake Teutates - with the background and all, without the fog. There’s a... giant castle with a lot of towers, lot of columns and arks.

When Linhardt asks Billy to hide the expedition to Edel and Hubert, he claims it’s because Lake Teutates is a place that concerns the Saints of the Church - is Lake Teutates just like Zanado, a religious site? But it’s not under the Church’s juridiction... Why and how is it tied to the Church? Indech apparently died after the war... But then, who built the castle, the temple and the arks? Did Indech wrote a sign “children of the goddess here, trespass and be prepared for the funniest game of your lives!”? And then, if this temple was retconned as “part of the Seiros faith” even if Indech built it after the war (he wouldn’t have built it during Nemesis’s era since it’s in the north - or he built it before Nemesis’s party to Zanado?), how could they retcon a similar temple in Sreng?

Rhea’s IO is a known entity in the Church, but Indech and Macuil’s alternate forms also have names, were they known in the Seiros myth too?

And then, Petra bursts the bubble saying people with green hair who can fly are stuff of legend in Brigid.

Still, even with all those clues (weird ruins + temple + legends about magic people) no one, bar Rhea, Edel and Claude, mention children of the Goddess. Is it because, despite everything, we do not learnt what the Church of Seiros actually preaches? Rhea completely erased any mention of her kin in her fake historia - but couldn’t bring herself to destroy her old home and her brother’s houses?

In a world where roaming demonic beasts are legion and giant animals are found on the streets, why is no one talking about Children of the Goddess? Are they a secret, a legend or just an oversight?