#this is so long though HERWHWEH

[bells-of-black-sunday]

@axewhirl replied to your post “//literally do not mention t.arhos around me I...”:

tarhos.

​I'm pulling out my pepe silvia board, but it's fine: I honestly think the main reason Tarhos and Vittorio are so hated as characters is just because of click bait youtube videos that proclaimed he could stall out the game until the servers timed when realistically that never happened. I remember one morning playing 10 games against knights back to back and honestly he's not any worse than any other anti-loop killer in the game, I hated playing against Nemesis and Twins far more, he has very clear indications of what you're supposed to do in certain situations we can even see that in the showcase done by a beloved streamer between a top knight player and a top skull merchant player.

I also think the fact that really the only lore channel in the community called Tarhos and Vittorio's lore "boring" also played a role in it, but what is their lore really? Tarhos fundamentally is a deconstruction of the Edwardian romanticism of the renaissance that led to what we see of knights saving princesses and being generally forces of good when at most points in history knights were just glorified gangs to the point where tournaments had to be made and organized to stop them from killing people.

He is a child slave, he's not some noble man who went to go protect the holy land or save people, he's a man whose lived all his life being treated like nothing more than a dog on a leash. He is not rich. He is not pious. Even though he's been groomed into that lifestyle even he sees through the churches bullshit, to him there is no sin there is no right or wrong it's just some big mix of cosmic mud he'll never care to make sense of.

Either all of it is good or none of it is in his eyes. To him the only thing that separates him from other people is he doesn't lie to himself about what he's doing. He is hurting people not that he has or ever had a choice in the matter, he's just grown to cope in a way that he enjoys it. As we can see in his tome he talks about everything that's happened to him like it happened to someone else an example being:

""There was a village quite far from here. A small army advanced on this village on a mission, I suppose, to butcher the barbarians… to make this world a better place. Rather than be killed by a stranger or be taken as a slave these villagers had chosen to die by their own accord."

Tarhos scoops a few more maggots and tosses them into the mouth.

"I remember one mother had poisoned her family without hesitation or remorse. The love and strength of will it must have taken to do that is something I’ve yet to see in all my experiences on the battlefield and off. I have been around nobles and knights my whole life and all I’ve seen is cowardice steeped in the rotten stew of lies and hypocrisy.""

He is very clearly talking about when he was a child and his mother poisoning his family to try and avoid exactly what he's been through. On the other hand you have Vittorio, the survivor he came with, a 13th century Italian lord whose a pacifist who tried to find the fog, because he was told it was a paradise without violence or death. And debatably there could be a part of the entity like that, but that's not what either of them found.

Tarhos didn't even care about what Vittorio was doing until whatever happened over the course of the months they had been traveling together made one simple order, "Find another way", piss him off enough to kill and claim all of Vittorio's land for himself. Granted, could be entity influence after all Tarhos did carry the paradise stone out of those catacombs and it's what Vittorio's been unwittingly searching for the entire time, but Tarhos still makes a comment about how Vittorio only wants him to not be violent so he can sleep well at night.

That he doesn't deserve to hold such ideals Vittorio's entire fortune was secured with nothing but violence and stepping on others to secure such a petty need. He's a coward. The most cowardly lord he ever had served. Yet even in his tome, Tarhos doesn't hate him as much as he pretends to. Not only does he not kill Vittorio, he actively talks to him and thinks aloud telling him war stories and asking if he thinks he's mad, but especially so when other lords take notice of what Vittorio was studying.

That becomes the only reason why Tarhos is keeping him alive, because suddenly this idea of paradise is a much bigger deal than he thought. He's offered money, land, etc. to the people that want him dead, but the only thing they want is what Vittorio has on paradise. Which honestly could be the founding of the Black Veil for all we know. So of course when he gets pulled into the fog with the only 3 people he trusts he's going to see the entity as paradise.

And I can only imagine what he thinks when he sees Vittorio again.