valeriefauxnom

[valeriefauxnom]

You know, if it's one thing that kinda grinds my gears, it's this... weird persistence some fans of Dragalia had to say that the game was totally angling for this ~Euden/Zethia~ ship all the while.

I mean, sure, I guess I can't stop anyone from shipping anything, but I can speak to the supposed 'canon' degree of a ship by analyzing the broader work and specific lines within.

And let me flat-out state now that, for all of its plot craziness, Dragalia actively made a stand against the Euden/Zethia ship.

Proponents of this argument, joking or not, most often point to four major points in the at least semi-serious arguments I've stumbled upon besides just the people who jokingly meme about it for lols:

-Euden and Zethia act 'too invested' in each other beyond 'normal siblings', which suggests to them that they are romantically involved,

-The truth of Euden's birth gives space to start making it a 'non-taboo' ship, 'wow, we aren't related at all, we don't need to hide anything!' sort of way.

-With Euden's total lack of interest in any of the men or women who become interested in him, they take it as though he is already interested in Zethia and thus uncaring about others' attention

-Euden ends Dragalia as someone that potentially might not be even related to Zethia or remember her, further freeing up the ship to be a normal ship for endgame

Let me address those points in turn.

The 'Too Invested' Argument:

Now, I'm not here to claim that Euden and Zethia had a perfectly healthy dynamic. Euden was hyperprotective over Zethia, and, though it gets less focus, Zethia was hyperprotective over Euden.

Yes, both had problems about being overprotective.

I could list examples all day, but I think I'll narrow it down to a few to just recognize this point:

Here, Euden contrasts the value of his life with not hers, but her mere freedom. Between that, ch.14, 15, etc, Euden paints a very clear picture that he puts Zethia above him in value. Just to add some silliness, he comes close enough in one line of dialogue to inspire me to make this:

(Full quote: No matter where we are, we love and support Zethia always. May those feelings find their way to her...)

And on Zethia's side...

Several times she's motivated to great personal risk to get Euden out of binds, including this case where she willing stays in the demon's den of Agito+Nedrick instead of taking a chance at freedom, because she believes in Nedrick's threat. It's a direct and ironic reversal of Euden's words earlier - she values Euden's life more than her own freedom.

Euden's not alone in starting to lose his head if Zethia's in danger, either. Gala!Zethia (well, technically another Zethia) sees her Euden die, and immediately breaks her ordinarily calm demeanor.

I'll address the reasons for this behavior in brief. On Euden's side, it's a combination of 'big brother protectiveness' and his concerns for her mental state. Euden knew Zethia as sensitive, growing up, but changed after their mother died, and views her current behavior as a facade trying to cover things up. So he fears her suffering in misery with nothing but Morsayati or later Nedrick as company (+ all the other reasons for why you might not be keen on letting a demon overlord keep possessing your twin).

On Zethia's, it's a reflection of Euden's actions. Zethia knows Euden is so recklessly devoid of self-preservation, especially in defense of others, that she feels the need to fix any problem he inevitably involves himself in and the injuries that result. She outright states that she's only as good as healing because Euden gave her so much practice growing up. Part of it is also tied to her self-worth - even though Zethia is, by all likelihood, stronger than Euden at the start of canon, Euden's interventionist personality to get in front of her and stop something from truly challenging/threatening her makes her want to be able to do something instead of feeling like she's always trapped under his protective shadow.

For both of them, it also stems from the fact that they only really had themselves and Notte growing up for same-age friends, so there weren't any others to separate them. Limited attachments means less time to spend with others, which only let them become even more glued at the hip.

And this is where Dragalia had a moment of self-realization that maybe this isn't a wholly healthy dynamic to be stuck in, and that's why there's a surprising-large-if-still-a-small-subplot body of moments in late canon where the two of them start to work on becoming less mutually protective of the other.

Bondforged Zethia's story in part revolves around this idea.

...And where Bondforged Zethia walks with this idea amid its main plot, Advent of the Origin runs with it:

Here, both Zethia and Euden start to acknowledge that they cannot be each other's eternal saviors. Euden tries to recognize that Zethia doesn't need him for everything any more, and Zethia attempts to stand strong on her own without Euden's aid.

While both of their efforts are a bit misplaced (Zethia tries to go too hard to the 'I don't need ANY help at all, mom!' direction and neglects telling Euden of the disturbing, potentially ominous dreams she's having), they reaffirm this again after they both get erased from existence oh what a sentence to write, but that's what you get when going into late Dragalia canon...

To put it in brief: yes, Euden and Zethia's dynamic is not that of an perfectly ordinary, healthy sibling dynamic, and it is a thing that Dragalia actively starts to give them both therapy remedy and get them to a more normal place where they both support each other without becoming overprotective. It's not your standard lovey-dovey nonsense couples oft get up to in media that's viewed as a positive as just an 'expression of love', and instead was more informed by their isolationist upbringing and early difficulties of losing their mother so soon.

As a last note, see Bondforged Zethia's line:

The overall trajectory of their relationship is the both of them finding a happy medium where they mutually support each other whilst growing more independent and less overprotective.

The 'Non-Taboo' / Ending Argument

This one is a lot more straightforward than the last one: Dragalia actively affirms at every interval questioned that Euden and Zethia consider themselves siblings at the end of the day.

We can dance around it all day, but at the end of it, this is the sentiment that Euden and Zethia share at the end of canon:

So, no, no matter what dreams any might have that Euden or Zethia somehow would take the increasingly-muddled bloodline of Euden's (even if not much has changed fundamentally from the simple fact that he has inherited Nedrick's, -Zethia's twin, -blood) as permission to change what they think about each other, that's just flat-out not the case.

And while the ending is high-key ambiguous as to what's going on, as I, who wrote a 300k+ speculatory dragalia fic on the subject would know, there's still nothing to suggest this dynamic has changed!

Questions one can ask about the ending are abundant: did Zethia create a base simulacrum of Euden by remembering him, or is he the real thing? What does he remember? What does she? ...But, ultimately, there's 0.00 evidence to suggest anything has fundamentally changed.

What glimpse we get has Euden just concerned about Zethia breaking down in front of him, and Zethia struggling with feelings she has no memory to tie them to. In fact, with the ending more suggesting that Zethia is remembering more about Euden, the odds of them running with the 'whoop-de-doo, now they don't remember each other' contrivance to 'fulfill the ship' are further decreased.

The 'Euden's Lack of Interest' Argument:

Ah, a classic. I still remember all the people hyper-analyzing over who he had blushed for as evidence of a ship or romantic interest.

I've gone over it several times, but it's never too late to bust out the good old evidence that Euden was seemingly aroace instead of just oblivious or already occupied with another. And for once I'm not grasping at threads to make a funny joke or crazy lore idea!

Euden says at minimum three times that he explicitly 'doesn't ever really think about romance', 'doesn't understand romantic love as a concept', and 'doesn't even think he's mentally ready to even start figuring out if he wants a relationship'.

If one wanted to argue that these come from very Dragalia and that Euden could have since developed, one would still be disappointed, because the middle image here is from Summer Mym, very late in the lifespan of the game.

I know when I first saw that they were doing S!Mym, my first thoughts (and probably several others) were something along: 'ok probably inevitable, Mym is unfortunately reduced to this waifubait character 99% of the time even if there technically is shades of something deeper to her, her story is probably going to be mindless rom-com nonsense with Euden'.

But if they instead choose to take the high road and make the bold decision to let her have mature discussions of love with Euden, replete with her understanding that Euden just doesn't romantically love her and respecting his reaction to her confession now that she finally put it in a way he understood...

(They would continue to disaffirm a Euden/Mym ship in the very last chapter, impressively, too!)

...I can't see them backtracking so hard just for another ship, if that's the maturity of love and rejections that they could take with Mym of all characters. Here, Euden again rejects the concept that he even understands what it means to romantically love, and instead has come to recognize that even if he's capable of it, he needs to figure out this little thing called 'self-love' first.

If they'd suddenly made another Elisanne or Euden alt and immediately backtracked on Euden's blanket refusal to engage in anything romantic, fans of all stripes would be pissed, to put it bluntly. Whether it was diehard Mym/Euden shippers upset that they contrived a reason to sink the ship only to ignore that reason to uphold another, people who appreciated the overall strong body of evidence for aroace!Euden now upset that they decided to needlessly shove a ship in... It would please almost nobody save for diehard Elly/Euden fans just trying to take their food where they can get it.

This has gone on a bit of a tangent, but in short: start to finish, Dragalia strongly rejected affirming any /Euden ship, and not just because they wanted to keep shippers' dreams alive - if they're willing to so thoroughly sink one of the biggest ships in the game, nobody was safe and the course did not appear to change.

Also, at the end of the day, blushing isn't just an expression of romantic love/attraction, ya know? It's foremost one of embarrassment and other strong emotions like anger.

In summation:

No, theoretical internet person, Dragalia Lost did not push a Euden/Zethia ship, so if you're gonna ship it, just know you can't hide behind 'but it was canon!' or 'hey, I'm just going along with what the writers clearly wanted' as a cover.

[valeriefauxnom]

Yet Another Crack Theory: Phares and Elysium

I've uncovered the totally intended deeply hidden lore before, whether it was Leonidas' intended maiming that they backed out from committing to, to Midgardsormr being the dragon that accidentally killed the royal family's mom, and now it's time I do it again, this time even bigger and better for a correspondingly greater level of nonsense I am channeling. Seriously, I would best render myself like so for this one, so consider it your fair warning:

What latest crack theory did I unearth? Well, hear me out:

Were they intending Phares to transform into Elysium, who was dead?

Now, mind you, this theory is inherently a matter of early-game speculation, before Nedrick and Sacred Tree drama kicked up, much less Xenos drama. This is conjecturing for what they possibly might have been planning instead of what we got, as Dragalia was written by several authors working separately that had different visions for the story.

With that in mind, let's assemble the pins on the conspiracy board I've created...

The crux of this all starts with NPC Phares' art. The siblings had fully designed NPC art with corresponding titles, instead of the generic wooden pedestal. For example, this is Chelle's, and her title is 'The Inferno'.

This is Phares'.

Looks... pretty bland on first glance, almost fitting for a generic 3 star unit, but there's a lot more going on here. For starters, his title. Dragalia Lost brushed over them in-game entirely, but his Japanese NPC titles were 'Dawning Light' (a thing that would later be reflected into his actual unit's 'Dawning Wind',) and 'White Light' (the Japanese has simpler or alternate titles above the actual one, which sometimes gives a different title). Keep this in mind for later.

Next, take a look at the background behind him.

Who is it, though? Well, things are muddy, but there are two possible answers: a proto-Uranus... or Elysium.

You can see it either way, depending on what aspects you choose to focus on. If one is looking at the chin structure, it looks more like Uranus. If one instead focuses on the chest, though, as @soumarhea (whom I will be using additional observations from) has, though, you might find another dragon...

The chest resembles Elysium's ornament.

If we entertain the possibility that this is Elysium, more curiosities open up. Why would Phares have an Elysium carving on a stone behind him? Why, it almost looks a bit like...

A tombstone. And it's breaking apart.

Huh.

This is where we can start pulling in Phares some more. 'Dawning Light' is a suspicious title, in this regard. Dawning carries a certain... 'growing' connotation. Ascending. Elysium is strongly tied to light (in fact, I'm going to come around to that later, as well). So if Phares is the 'dawning light'...

But wait, there's a lot more symbolism and stuff to examine. Take a look underneath the main body of his pedestal, and you'll find a certain hidden light, shining outward. Fairly well-hidden, but it also helps strengthen this 'concealed light' presentation.

Let's also take a look at Phares' design compared to Elysium's. Both share a color scheme: white scales, blue accessories, and gold for further highlights. Phares' messy hair also, -extremely vaguely, mind you, -reminds me of Elysium's horn set, with his strands often turning upward like Elysium's do. Perhaps most damning even if it's still vague, they share chest ornaments of a reminiscent manner:

With Emphatic Red And Purple Lines, hopefully it's easier to see where I'm coming from:

The triangular structure surrounding the circular centerpiece, the point at the bottom, the supporting lines that weave underneath the main body... it's far from exact, but there is something there, I think. Throw in whatever weird white leather offshoots of Phares' outfit (they're separate from his leather tunic) as the lower protrusions on Elysium if you want, too!

Their iridescent green eyes and scale color are also suspiciously close:

So now that I've hopefully established that Phares and Elysium shared surprisingly many traits in their overall design, what else could there be to suggest something as farfetched as 'Phares was going to turn into Elysium'?

I'll crack into Phares and his name a bit more here. As I've gone over in this post, Phares shared some surprisingly deep Greek roots (as did the royal fam in general, with several inspired with Greco-Roman names/theming). The long and short of it are these points:

-Phares' name is quite possibly drawn from 'Phanes', a progenitor god from an earlier strain of Greek mythos. Phanes is strongly associated with light, sometimes called 'light-bringer', and has any number of other connections to other figures/concepts like knowledge, Uranus, and more. Even if I ignore the Greek, his name is literally 'lighthouses' or 'headlights' in French.

-Phares' JP skill names are in Greek. If the DL team had just translated out the sounds, his skills would look more like 'Desmos Orkos' to us, etc.

Hm. Yet more ties to light.

Speaking of light, Elysium (and Ilia) also ties to this Greco-Roman mythology.

Elysium is more of a place than a creature, and is sort of this heavenly plain in the Greek and Roman afterlife. Ilia, meanwhile, is another name for the mother of the founders of Rome, Rhea Silvia, via birthing Romulus and Remus. So we universally see strong Greek and Roman influence between Elysium, Ilia, and Phares, all tied to influential and important figures in its mythologies.

I'll divert a bit to the early lore, especially what we know of dragonblood and certain events.

Specifically, the origins of dragonblood: by all accounts, dragonblood originated from the light of Elsyium's pact/Primal Mark Theft with Ilia shining down and granting people dragonblood.

Note, while Forgotten Truths paints it as a more... violent process, it's originally described more gently:

But even with the more violent take on it, we see a recurrent theme of Elysium's light or the Primal Pactsone being the tying element to what gave the family dragonblood.

Now let's look at one of the great mysteries of the game that never got resolved: Euden's chapter 1 transformation.

Into Elysium, mind you, a thing that only Morsayati seems to inherently recognize. Even Zethia or Elisanne are not freaking out about Elysium being suddenly there. The former is more concerned with if she 'awoke his dragonblood somehow'. They don't recognize him.

But if Elysium was around, wouldn't the world have at least some idea about what he looked like? Even a singular sighting over a century might have spurred many a depiction that carried on.

Enter the 'Elysium's kinda dead' aspect of this theory: he's not been around for a while, long enough that his looks don't cause immediate recognition?

The broader point with this section, though, is that there is very strong ties between the family's dragonblood and Elysium. If Elysium is 'hiding in the blood' enough for people like Zethia to 'awaken' it, is it really so far-fetched to go one step further?

What if wyrmscale is just another 'awakening' of Elysium in the blood, perhaps trying to claw back to life? We know that powerful dragons undergo reincarnation in Dragalia. With Elysium being an unusual, powerful, unusually powerful dragon even among the 'big dog' dragons, it's possible his reincarnation is somehow complicated. His spirit might have persisted past death and is just trying to find another body.

Early!Phares is highly doubtful wyrmscale even is a disease to start with:

Instead, he's become quite enamored with the idea of turning into a dragon, in contrast to his earlier fear. Furthermore, he has been continually dreaming of turning into a dragon:

Here, sourmarhea suggests that this change of perspective is a corruption of perspective a la Xenos - that Elysium is influencing him to take actions to complete his transformation/revival. Speaking of Xenos, this scene is weird in retrospect, as the god would likely care not for being a dragon and would thus not be very encouraging of Phares' dreams of becoming one.

Another point to this possible 'Elysium influence' is Phares' actions regarding the Sacred Shards. We don't know for certain, but Chelle at one point almost seems to suggest that Phares might have been doing ~something~ to, presumably, the castle's Shard.

Note her characteristic 'fan hiding face' expression being used here - the best signal we have that she darn well knows more and is choosing not to comment!

Now, what were the Sacred Shards? Well, they were fragments of the sword Dragalia, forged from Elysium's pactstone. Alberius shattered them to create the Shards.

If they were scattered, it might stand to reason that Elysium is wanting all of them back, to assemble his own power or for some other purpose. Say, like perhaps it would help his latest potential host actually survive the little 'turn into a dragon' thing.

And when the singular castle's Shard has this hint of an unheard-of 'shadow' in it, Aurelius is so worried that he sends Euden to pact to bring back the Mistholt's shard as well as going out himself to get another one:

"Wait! That doesn't make any sense," maybe says the lore-r, "It's not actually Elysium's pactstone that created the sacred shards, it was Primal Mids'!"

Two explanations:

-One, they were originally going to play it straight and that it was Elysium's pactstone, again, this is for what they might have originally been intending instead of how it developed, or,

-Two, that since even ELYSIUM HIMSELF is completely unaware in canon as it was that Mids-0 did a switcharoo,

...It's more than possible that Elysium just hadn't gotten to that knowledge that the Sacred Shards aren't his and was still in the 'gather them' stage.

I would also like to observe that we... never really see the capital swarmed with fiends as is told what would happen if a Shard failed, even before Aurelius is possessed. Even with whatever 'shadow' that had Aurelius so distressed to send Euden out and go himself to fetch two Shards, we see no proof that the Shard itself was truly in danger as Aurelius feared. Thus, it could have been a cosmetic effect meant to spur action from others, like this dramatization and informative diagram shows:

...If this isn't enough crack, let's go deeper!

By that, I mean let me throw more stuff at the wall to see what sticks or resonates with anyone.

First, let's throw out the wyrmprint 'Holywyrm's Advent'. Wyrmprints in Dragalia sometimes came early or late. Whether it was 'Syndicate Mask' outright talking about the Syndicate at launch, or the one wymprint with Nephren, a character that went wholly unreleased, timing was sometimes... off. Referencing things that didn't exist yet.

But Holywyrm's Advent tells a certain story at odds with its debut event, Dawn of Dragalia. It instead regales about Elysium himself coming down from the heavens (also, note how Phares often seems to be floating/flying around and Elysium also likes to fly/float) to look cool and give orders. One small thing about its second stage, though...

So came the Holywyrm, revealing law to all. Thou shalt neither hate, nor kill, nor act out in willful ignorance. And with this decree, order came unto the world.

...Elysium himself didn't really seem to care too much about the truth. He's active in spreading lies and forcing a certain vision of events.

But you know who does? Yup, Phares, the resident 'I want to learn everything' know-it-all in the family. I reckon anyone acting in willful ignorance might get on his nerves greatly to the degree it finds itself in a list forbidding things like murder. Who knows, maybe a new Elysium might be influenced a bit by his newest form if he needed to descend again...

Speaking of, the Summoner. For all we saw of her, the .2 seconds in a summon, we knew 0.00 of her.

...But she sure looks like she'd fit snug in the family, huh? She and Phares even share that blue-gold aesthetics, two running golden threads in their clothes, and a chest ornament.

...Like I said, I know I'm grasping at straws here. I told you I was getting deeper into the crack!

Yes, yes, I know that the Summoner's design is itself reminiscent of the Knight's of Glory design for Tliff, but Tliff was notably brown-haired, from what I'm seeing. Why change it to blond, the signature color of the family as Alberius' genes apparently were pretty good to keep printing his colors 300 years later with great consistency?

Let's just move on to something a little bit more grounded: Phares' Mysterious Moving Book. That one story where the Phares dreaming image came from also has this tidbit, as pointed out again by soumarhea:

Phares' musings regarding wyrmscale and his changing views regarding it all stem from him unexpectedly stumbling upon a book about wyrmscale again, a very old book that he's not seen for a while. How did it move? A spiritual nudge from Elysium to serve as a reminder, perhaps, since we are well aware that even more mundane creatures' ghosts can influence real things? Also note his repeated dream's confusion that his voice is well, his when he transforms - a hint that it would be Elysium more behind the wheel?

Speaking of Phares, let's wind back the clock again to Phanes, the deity that seemed to serve as his namesake.

Phanes is noted for 'hatching from a cosmic egg', a thing that makes me reflexively think of the dragons in Dragalia, who generally seemed to reproduce via eggs as one would expect. It could have been used as a sort of transitional stage for him if the Elysium transformation ever went down. To be fair, though, it's not like we ever had any cases of humans in giant egglike things to transform into dragons before...

Oh wait. Whoops.

In any case, I'll stop with the more crazy observations. This is long and crazy enough as it is.

In summation:

-We have a very strong correlation between Phares, light, and Elysium. Phares' 'light' is additionally 'ascending', growing.

-His design features similar elements to Elysium, ones I might view as suspiciously similar.

-His earlier comments and desires appear at odds with Xenos' interests, as Xenos likely isn't all that fond of dragons and would not support Phares wanting to be a dragon

-Phares has seemingly been doing something to at least one Sacred Shard, things that Elysium thinks are his and might think that he could use.

-Nobody can recognize Elysium in the modern day, except the demon lord that has fought him over 1k years ago.

-The family's dragonblood has very strong ties to Elysium and seemingly originates from him.

-Wyrmscale itself is tied to a person presenting with 'dragon-like' mana

-Phares, mythologically, takes inspiration from a figure just as 'grand' as other central figures in the Ilian church

-Phares' perspective has shifted over time, from initially being afraid of becoming a dragon to welcoming it. Unexplained phenomena are additionally happening around him. Subconscious influence, perhaps?

Let me synthesize this into one possible narrative to wrap this all up...

Ahem.

---

Elysium, through some means, has been killed. Maybe Alberius done it. Maybe he gave his life. But, as such a powerful dragon, his spirit lingers even as his body didn't.

He wants a new one to be reincarnated as he would be as a dragon.

One problem: he's in that pesky category of dragons that seems to evolve through more ordinary creatures (see Kamuy, who awakens through a wolf), like humans. Dragonblooded humans, who already share a strong base of connection with him and his mana.

So he tries to revive through them. He's an important dragon with work to do. But they keep dying. Dragonblooded or not, they're still human. He gets hopeful each time, as his ivory scales start to sprout, but they never can stick the landing and actually transform.

But then he hits Phares, Prospective Wyrmscale Victim 23 (or whatever). And boy, this time there's promise. He might need to be a bit more active. The boy's afraid of dying, afraid of being a dragon. Nudge him a bit, -dragons are cool, after all, and provide hope. Maybe the Sacred Shards would help you him survive?

So he gets his human to start tampering with them on the side, to prompt others to start assembling them for him.

Things go wrong. Even if the biggest chance has done his best to keep his head down and play both sides without really committing to anything, things with the Shards aren't working out.

If they're not working, though, Elysium still needs something powerful to help his little human survive, because 'nothing' isn't cutting it.

One thing might suffice, though, just as holy and right as he is: the Dawnshard.

---

As a final note, I'd like to explain the 'Dawnshard' comment there. Most drama surrounding the Dawnshard centered around Elysium and Nedrick (and Euden's gang as bystanders, of course). Nedrick, notably, probably didn't exist for a while in the writer's minds. Euden not being the true heir was a decision made by the director, not a writer. His existence was probably wholly contrived from the need to make someone be the true 7th scion. But we did see Phares set a trajectory towards the Tree in canon, one that was... threadbarely used. He pops in at random intervals and exits just the same.

I could see him being shoved away in favor of Nedrick, to give him a goal and plan for Euden to contest. Phares as a character was increasingly stressed in the ch.13-14 stretch, almost as if they were planning on focusing on him and his plans... and then Nedrick sweeps in, redirects the plot ch.15-22 around him and how he relates to Euden's identity. Phares vanishes for five chapters in the meantime. Something doesn't quite add up.

If you've made it this far, thanks for entertaining this spot of nonsense. Am I aware that this is likely off the mark? Absolutely. Do I think that there are a number of suspicious elements that make me think that Phares might have had some deeper tie with Elysium, at minimum? YES. But what do you all think?

[valeriefauxnom]

I'm right there with you on the 'I was more willing to accept whatever in the story' after EOS, because at least they were finishing it. That being said, my brain seems to roughly divide Dragalia into parts now that the dust has settled:

1-19 is a narrative. It may not be a perfect narrative. It may inspire debate if xyz character is a stupid dumb dumb who should be punted from the Halidom (as so much of ch.14 discourse went, even if I generally think it wasn't as egregious as some people). But it makes sense, what is happening on screen. People aren't confused about what is happening in the first place.

Ch.20-22, my brain turns exceptionally fuzzy. If someone were going to beat me on a lore check, the material is going to come from here (well or the very end). The Tree is the setting for all three of these chapters, and it blends and weaves together with no massive dividing factor to help me keep track of the chapters or events. I know of big events: Audric vs. Phares, Party vs. Elysium, Euden vs. Nedrick, Euden turning into Volk, etc etc... but if you gave me a list of major plot points, I might well fail to place them exactly in the right order. Here's also, where you say, we see those warning signs of 'let's skip the explanation for the conclusion'.

Chapters 23-24 are a partial return to norm. They're still not as grounded or sensible as 1-19, as we see with more ??? things going on like the whole 'creating other worlds around other stuff' with Beren, but they're not quite as fuzzy as what comes before or after to me. They are in distinct locations with self-contained plots instead of the mini tree arc 20-22 felt like.

Chapters 25-26, though? Well, there's very little I'd be able to tell about 25 casually aside from the climax of the chapter with Zena's Euden and his murdering, and while there's certainly more I can remember in 26, the actual 'whys' of what's happening in both these chapters is where things absolutely fall apart.

So yeah, ch.20 is where things started to fall apart for me in terms of 'does it even make sense what's happening in the first place?'.

As for Phares, if I might hazard a guess as to why he's compelling to the both of us despite so much of him being wrapped up in these more nonsensical parts... I think he's one of the few characters to truly benefit as a character from the way things went. I've repeated on here so many times already when I'm looking at xyz thing relating to Phares, but the decision to just... make him possessed by Xenos unintentionally synced so well with his early game weirdness.

The first writer may well have been planning to play Phares straight, either as the 'Euden severely misunderstood his elder brother all along, he's actually just a different flavor of jerk that you need to put down before he starts xyz mass casualty incident', or as the 'neutral party that can be convinced into helping advance Euden's agenda with the proper incentives'.

"Phares, please, we need your wits to create the Super Demon Destroyer from the recipe we found in the ruins!"

"Hmm... But why would I want to go to such effort? I'm quite content with my books down here."

"...We'll give you the Ancient Cool Thingie and Accompanying Manual if you do."

"SOLD I'M STARTING IT RIGHT NOW!!!"

Sort of character, you know the type, sort of like Chelle in ch.9. But as the writers switched hands, they decided to not just take him as-is. They were forced to finally clarify all his... fuzziness. He gained importance/relevance to the plot, almost probably too much since the game is almost desperate to frame something as ~secretly his/Xenos' doing/plans~. And in not just taking him as-is, they finally gave an explanation that could reconcile the contradicting information about him.

One can definitely view it as taking the easy route out of deciding Phares' ultimate character/plans, but to me it unintentionally smoothed over the contrast. Phares turns back into a person that better fits the other information established about him while his more nonsensical villainy mastermind side gets to be funneled to Xenos, because, well, it does makes sense an evil distant dispassionate god with plans lasting centuries, who doesn't care about explaining himself to 'bugs' is going to be horrifically vague about what they intend in the moment-to-moment. Phares is much clearer in his expression the second he's fully himself, in what he wants, thinks, etc.

This is all expressed very poorly. In short, in splitting Phares' disjunct components up, both sides could gain clarity, I guess??? One as the Very Good Boy that we see in later ch.23, his story, and Blood That Binds, the one that was suggested time and again earlier to exist, and the other as the Scheming Flawless Antagonist to fight.

And yeah, absolutely, Zethia would need a lot of attention, though I'm unsure how I'd handle it. Start to finish, there's always something you can critique about her character. Bondforged, while a nice glimpse into her character and all that, is unearned for all the reasons you say. I think even if they had just instead stressed thematically that there could be a 'new Bahamut/Xenos' formation going on between the two of them, it could have worked a bit better than suddenly trying to stress any bond Zethia had with Euden's gang. Even then, there are things that feel a little bit off even in her story. Like, even if I generally like Leonidas' gradual shift in the story, I'm not sure his lines 100% feel fitting to me here:

Ah, Zethia. So present, but so so in need of some good content. Heck, even Zena can't escape since she sometimes disappears at the strangest times (though lots of characters do that as the cast grew bloated).

Regarding tropes, don't worry on your end either! I was just trying to clarify where I was coming from, in which I know that what appears good/holy/light is sometimes used as the actual bad guy, but still view it as a 'subversion' to the general trend of people still portraying light as an element of goodness even if it has been catalogued enough in TVTropes to warrant its own trope.

I also just get worried about the exact way one corrects another, because, well, 'um, acktually'-ing is one of the fastest ways to get on someone's nerves. So I figured I'd preempt it just in case!

Funnily enough, though, I absolutely did lampshade Scaling on occasion...

These sorts of comments, are, in my way, flagging that I absolutely know that this thing warped into something much bigger and more complicated than I ever would have intended. While I tried to thread it in a way that made sense for the surrounding events/characters, it still is a bit of lampshading from me regarding Scaling's... many plot points. I hoped to, in a way, acknowledge readers for maybe feeling lost or growing tired of the constant xyz new development to distract from the previous.

Honestly, given how much there was I'm surprised that I was able to resolve as much as I could, however rushed it may be in ways. And I didn't even have to burst out some completely incomprehensible plot points to do it!

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

I think a lot of it with Ilia and Meene is that they wanted to have everything both ways. Like, it's 'actually Meene' that ran the church, but it was ~actually secretly~ Ilia that decided to start it. Ilia 'actually died' and then inexplicably came back to life, but then since she still needed to be out of the scene got sealed in the otherworld. They keep playing Ilia as 'the Goddess' with even she herself using it like in ch.23 to Emile, that went something like 'who are you? -A goddess- BWUH' when it full well wasn't really her that ever assumed the role or ever really being worshipped, it was Meene.

She just... never really was interesting to me, because it felt like Ilia was just a glorified GPS to give the late-game party some direction since nobody knows what's going on. It felt like there could have been some topics of interest to explore, like the initial meet-up with Leonidas, but for me Ilia falls completely flat as a character, impressively.

Heck, where's the moral conflict of her having to come to terms with alchemy's reduced presence/acceptance in the modern age? She uses it and talks about it constantly, is the prodigy of even her age, but now so much of it is deep taboo. Let Phares talk with her, let her be upset about being stuck in a less-advanced civilization with much fewer conveniences, struggle with the morality of what alchemy is and can do.

It could be my personal bias coloring things, but it feels like she warps everything around herself even when it's not needed or really adding anything. She warps Gala!Zethia's entire story into her story, warps the main campaign into 'let's let her inexplicably explain what's going on' (see her randomly popping in to rat out Nedrick's bigger goals, despite there not really being a reason to my memory why she would know it?) and 'let's just do what Ilia says'.

How does she even know what the Gran Fiore is, let alone be able to rationalize for why it'd be ok to infiltrate Xenos' stronghold????? This is just the tip of the iceberg of the broader problem!

Sidequest: I was curious about how literal the G!Zethia comment was even beyond the broader plot that make it 'her story' to me, and turns out it's quite literal - Ilia speaks more than Zethia in her own story. I counted every line attributed to one of them (even ones like ??? in the first story when it's just Zethia), no matter how small (ie, both Zethia's 'nnngh' and Ilia's ?! are counted), and Zethia has 97 lines. Ilia has 109. I think that speaks to an imbalance even when it's not exceptionally egregious in raw numbers. Yes, characters can be quieter, but to be upstaged in what ought to be your story while the story itself serves to advance another character's plot isn't the way to do it, in my opinion.

Worst of all, Ilia doesn't really add any emotional weight to the story either because she's adrift to 99% of the cast since only Zethia knows her in any capacity. Closest she gets is when Mordecai dies, and even then, a few sentences and she's back to her usual self.

Now, all of it isn't her fault, and part of it goes to the writers getting bogged down in the mass of characters and mess of the plot they were trying to utilize/channel through her, but still. I think a lot of coherency could have been gained by just... cutting out Ilia in the main story, rewriting to not need the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE! plot line, etc etc. That would allow one to trim the fat in other ways too like getting rid of Origa who similarly makes the story fall apart.

I need to get off my rewriting horse. It's entirely possible that I'm missing something, but as it stands now to my recollection, Ilia is like the original sin of exactly where and why Dragalia's story went off its rails as much as it did.

You know it's getting bad when the characters are constantly expressing that they have no idea what's going on.

Ahem. My analogy of Phares from oh-so-long ago was yes, that he's 'slightly to the left'. I more meant it in the sense that Xenos has warped Phares in the way that all the 'roots' remain, but the way that he expresses them or thinks about them has changed. Like his earlier canon doggedness about finding morality useless, while Phares actually is concerned about doing the right thing and just thinks that right and wrong are complicated and relative to the situation. Stuff like his curiosity remains, but the scope of his experimentation and all that widens with the Progenitor's callousness.

Ah, my apologies for the confusion re. tropes. I was less using subversion in its official TVTropes sense, and more just talking tropes casually. Though, please take this with a grain of sand, seeing as how it is from someone not 100% familiar with the site...

Wouldn't neither Leonidas' insistence on the 'Call to Agriculture' or Phares' circlet be a lampshade hanging? Reading that trope it seems to be more of a 'deliberate invocation by the author through the characters that whatever going on is nonsensical, or otherwise recognizing the use of another trope.'

In other words, Dragalia's last chapters with the aforementioned parade of characters going 'I don't get it but I'm just here to kick butt how Ilia says' would be the perfect example to me: the writers/translators are actively acknowledging through the characters that otherwise aren't intellectual slouches that the plot has become almost farcical in complexity and now makes no sense but must be driven forward.

Neither of those cases are Leonidas or Phares recognizing a trope or expressing how ridiculous it is. Leonidas has no clue of Euden's past and thus cannot call out the 'call to agriculture' trope even in the 'oh, the hero settles down to farm, of course' way. It as a trope more seems based around the person being 'called', ie, Euden, and Euden... isn't really feeling a Call to Agriculture from his grumpiness at Leonidas, nor did one himself since he did not take up farming before the fam got him.

Likewise, Phares does not view his circlet as ridiculously convenient or otherwise narrate about it as some 'super secret spy device' to invoke some other trope. To me, it's as you say, just a Chekhov object that comes back around for Phares' case, though I suppose you could argue the lampshade on the ch.19 use of it, even if I wasn't intending on it. It was just more of a 'remember this? I haven't use it in 9 chapters, so I figured I'd remind you of much earlier events to show that I haven't forgotten my own story' than anything else.

On a lighter note, did you know that you don't need Scaling for a Call to Agriculture for Euden's desires? See Halloween Elisanne:

For more fun around tropes, here's some ones that I think would apply to Scaling in a general sense:

-Plot-Driving Secret: Well... everything wouldn't be happening if Euden didn't have a battalion of things he wants to keep quiet on.

-Locked Out of the Loop: I think it's funny that in this case it's not one person being locked out as usual, but most everyone in the entire world locked out of Euden's loop.

-Poor Communication Kills: Hopefully in the good way and not the Idiot Plot way, but since much of the dramatics is the family for various reasons not being the best at talking to one another, it fits.

-Ret-Gone: Euden, of course.

-Power Nullifier: The Kingshalter, a thing that never existed in canon but I created to fill in the gap of the world's probable historical question of 'what can you do to stop royalty when they can shapeshift into a dragon?'... and also have a way to keep Euden in check for the early chapters.

Of course, there's probably 100000000 more, but hey. Figured I could have a bit of fun, too!

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

Phares: I'm contractually obligated to inform you of my allegiances by international law. Grastean Codex of War, page 2354, chapter 192, article 2-

Plot twist, Phares had his army ready to ambush in ch.12 in support of Leonidas/Chelle if that was what he thought would be the best, but since the dragons came together so quickly he just kinda told them to go home so General Phares can play with his new dragon toys quicker! Euden was just being a bit too interesting since he talked down Chelle and beat up Leonidas. Gotta send those soldiers away so he can have more control about who lives and dies then.

I still say his conversation with Chelle there was bonkers, and can and will drag out this ancient meme that was one of my very first posts on Tumblr:

My boy was Concerning Chelle so much that she needed to take a break to think about what the heck he just was offering. Yes, he was desperate, but darn, Euden, you're not exactly proving that you have a healthy sense of self-esteem.

(It's technically more that Chelle realizing that Euden is giving her such a good offer that the cold self she's trying to portray ought to take up, has no excuses why she wouldn't, but doesn't want to reveal that maybe she doesn't want him to die and so 'retreats', but shh. I like to more think it was her getting her first big dose of how batty he could be. She seems Very Concerned for him in ch.19 in her way, -offering to let the answer that they were chasing this whole trip to slide away because she's not sure Euden could mentally handle it.)

And yup, 100% on the Apostles not being main characters. Even with no other logic, there's a reason that none of them appear on the final 'thanks for playing' big art that served as the 'here's all the big names together'. Yes there's some weird ones ) in their omission/inclusion (Sarisse, while a notable character, has .000001 main story relevance), but by and large it is the picture if you were trying to tell someone who is important in the story:

Even Origia (look, I can't even spell her name right half the time, it's Origa) here is mostly a result of her being shoehorned in when they decided to go with the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE plot line at the end. Speaking of, am I being dumb or was that (gestures broadly) dumb, too, with things like Ilia as an Auspex when it historically was more Meene anyways with the church with Ilia locked in the otherworld???

Sigh. Honestly it all went downhill with me the more they did with the Northern Church and the more importance they got, even if it brought funny memes like 'the Satan incident'.

"Finlorda in the main party" - dude didn't exist long enough for people to go to the effort to translate his unit name in the portrait viewer, in a niche fun fact that I've never gotten to use:

I just wished that they addressed the fact that even people like Nevin seem to know details on Euden's true origins, and how the people of Grastea and the leaders of its churches would react. Even just Conservationist vs. Perditionist drama re. what to do with what could be construed as a 'child' of Morsayati or version of him would be juicy.

Oh, oh, I know! In this hypothetical rewrite, shove it in the post-16-17 range. Word spreads and grows too intense regarding Euden being possessed by the Other, enough that the Church is demanding an investigation/trial and to the degree that the fam, vaguely still pretending to be Ilian and locked in their partial theocracy, can't wholly refuse without major consequence.

Conservationists are of the 'let's get a kangaroo court and kill him' mindset to this trial, while Perditionists are just salivating over Euden as a conduit for Morsayati, whom their whole thing was that they believed he ought be just as worshipped as Ilia. Leo, Chelle, and crew recognize that if they just punted Euden to the Southern Church, he's probably going to be either executed in short order, assassinated, or (insert 12382 unfavorable outcomes here). So they come up with an alternate idea to try to stave off some ire and get a better outcome:

Punt him to the Northern Church instead, free of the church civil war there, by pitching it as a 'more neutral' side to both parties to stop those nasty (insert disfavored faction to whichever side you're talking to here) from messing with a vote!

This gives Origa access to Euden to tie that plot together. Insert whatever other Northern Church shenanigans you might like here, maybe the Satan Incident goes down, Euden is freed in the chaos/destruction, maybe helps beat up Satan and runs into the sunset once it becomes clear that none of the Churches are willing to let Euden go after his good deed of the day.

He stumbles into Nedrick's stomping grounds, too far north, and uh-oh, bing bang boom, out of the frying pan for him again and the story can continue again on its 'normal' path.

(Mind you, this probably has umpteen kajillion plot holes of itself somewhere, but that's what you get for stringing together this thought as fast as I did.)

Ironically, my friend has cooked up a separate AU where Phares has much more negative feelings re. King Dad, but I'm going to keep mum on it so she can voice it if and whenever she chooses to share.

But in a purely canonical sense, I'm not sure that Phares dislikes him. Xenos is using the knowledge that Aurelius cares deeply for Phares as a weapon against him in their duel.

Xenos possibly picked up on this information from Phares, and if Phares knows that Aurelius loves/cares for him deeply (or, heck, even if Xenos acquired it otherwise, that knowledge is now being spread to Phares anyways), I'm not sure he'd loathe him or even be indifferent.

Plus, as he learned more of the means that Aurelius went to for Euden, namely the whole evil magic+demon stuff and all that, it's easy to see why Aurelius was likely regretting it over the years and did not want to profane/sin again like that. He himself regrets his lot with the Progenitor enough as it is, which offers another route to sympathy for Aurelius not wanting to tamper with evil stuff.

Finally, there's the simple reality that it's a lot lot harder to replace a vague tween or so than a newborn. Aurelius set out on this wild goose chase to cure Euden with ~crazy faerie magics my friend surely knows~ at first, true, but once Finlorda dropped the news that even he couldn't do dink for the baby, quickly turned to the 'let's create a copy and cram my boy's soul in it'. And then when it comes around with Phares, he now knows that crossing country with him won't fix anything and so doesn't try.

All this is a lot to say that yes, there's certainly room for Phares to have some... complicated thoughts about Aurelius, I'm not sure he actually faults his Father for it much in the end as he learns of what he did.

My off-topic sideshow, in a bullet pointed list:

Luca is so right for this

Euden is channeling me (and probably you) right after, in a request that is probably impossible for Phares to wholly answer, given... 'everything' he has on his mind.

This line, in retrospect, could be construed as the Progenitor rearing his head a bit more and influencing him!

Off-topic complete!

But yeah, while I know light as the 'bad guy' is more and more often being used as a subversion trope, it still is a bit of an oddity to me somehow. He just strikes such a weird contrast in his ch.7 debut. Like...

Look at him standing there menacingly, multiversal enemy no.1

Jokes aside this is probably one of my favorite comic!Phareses

Even in the pre-game fam relationship chart, he was the sibling most suggested to be 'good', after Zethia. The others all had stuff like 'overlooks' 'torments' (fun fact, in JP I believe Chelle's to Euden is 'Mr. Horse' instead!) 'thinks him feeble', while Phares and Euden were labeled with 'thinks as talented/perceives as kind'. Combine that with Euden's absolute doggedness in refusing to believe Phares is up to ~bad stuff~ in the same way he's certain that Aurelius has been replaced with an Impostor and needs rescue, there's just this... weird stress. And yes, a polite antagonist isn't a new trope either, but it's not usually to Phares' degree, if that makes sense?

You could ironically consider it as though they were planning the Phares possession plot far far ahead, as something for Euden to shake out of him or tragically kill, etc etc. Either way, I don't think they were 100% on that Phares, Himself, As A True Antagonist train ever.

This is all nonsensical nonsense, and I need to cut myself off here.

On a final note, what I meant by 'reverse Scaling' was more 'everyone in the fam except Euden remembers' for that sweet sweet angst about how they are left with the knowledge that they have 0 chance to make up anything because now he is Gone.

Random little exerts from the draft as proof of my angst channeling:

(It's only 3k words, it's not like I've got much more, but sometimes you just jot down ideas to maybe return later because you have Thoughts, ya know?)

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

Now see, I always took Morsayati's threat to Valyx as one more to possess Phares, mostly just because of the convenience factor. Leonidas seems to love holding up in his Lavaland, because that's his where he can quietly plot and build up his own forces, whereas Phares' ultimate 'default' location is technically Sol Alberia, even if he likes wandering out from time to time. Have to be at least somewhat in proximity to your main job, after all.

I just find it funny he got saddled with or chose to take up the military title of general after Morsayati ascends. He's like 'guess I'm a high-ranking military commander now'... and just proceeds to never direct any actual force even if he's probably capable, what with Aurelius' stress on his kids' military/war education. Phares' soldiers are the most bored or grateful ones there are because they were left doing exactly nothing the entire war.

So yeah, I found that line weird, too, but chose to take it the opposite way just because Morsayati only has one convenient brother at hand to threaten.

It is really strange how they dodged using his proper title so much. Maybe writer no.1 decided against it once they started having formulations of Phares being 'bad', since 'Dawning Light' or 'White Light' isn't exactly a title you often see on a terrible person? I'm still just giddy how well it connects to the potential inspiration for his name/character in Phanes.

That is funny that the siblings joined in perfect order, though. It would almost make one think that their joining was planned a lot better than it was.

Re. Phares dismissing council, there's several thoughts as to how that could come about. First is just Morsayati's proclivities, in that he seems to like keeping everyone on an invisible leash. They have perfect freedom to run about or do things on the side, but be careful not to accidentally discover the end of the leash. So he might be amused about Phares' meandering away and let it slide if it was still in that freedom on his leash.

Another thought is that it could be that court expectations are that people other than the sovereign take more hands-on control of the council. They could view the king or queen as being more of a facilitator or overseer to the conversation rather than the ultimate boss of it, even if they are over the broader government. As such, Phares as Court Alchemist may well be in a high-enough position that he could call for council end, especially if Morsayati or someone else didn't dissent.

There's nothing more I can really add to the whole 'who is Beren talking about' thing. It's just another unexplained comment in the end, like all the repeated echos of 'Zodiark's ancient grudge' and all that. But it does touch on another minuscule subplot with Beren - that he seems 'mana hungry', which leads to his early proclivity to drain people like a tick, and that he was 'satisfied' after doing so to the Other.

This ironically puts him in a very similar situation with Nedrick - I wonder if that was the writers accidentally bumping into each other again as they crafted their own little stories or what.

Faustina would be an interesting choice, but not going to lie, my first connotations with that name is more going 'Faustina-> Faust->Devil'! It's also funny with the historical Faustina having 14 children with Aurelius even if only 6 survived (ironically, a reversal of the royal family's gender dynamics, 5 daughters and one son). They also had had two sets of twins!

Hm, curious about what makes you think that Phares sacrificed Aurelius to the Other? Is it because of the one conversation with Chelle prodding him about the Shards?

In any case, for the hypothetical 'Euden gets got' by Neddy timeline, I think you could shuffle it around to make it work. For the barrier, you could have it so that Euden's demon flesh and all that somehow could corrupt its 'pure mana' thing and thus weaken it, or, heck, tie in that abandoned timeline of Origia after Euden while we're at it. She was desperate to capture Euden in ch.17, as I've gone over, so I do think there was something more she had in mind for him than just base jealousy.

Maybe she/her forces get ahold of him for a time, Euden hot potato style like the walking nuke he potentially is, and whatever ~things~ she wanted with/to do to Euden imbue him with some quality that Nedrick's like, 'sure we can make this work...'. at the Tree.

As for the ending, I'm not sure I'd have liked to see the 'who is it' angle for Nedrick/Euden. As cute as it might have been to maybe get a glimpse of the whole famiy in their varying ages, that tantalizing glimpse of maybe Queen Mom, I don't think I'd be satisfied with it. Even if I do recognize the value of the occasional vague ending, I like having a more concrete direction for where the story is going and what happened, especially after the massive shake-up Dragalia had.

That's why it was so nice to have the one shot of the fam walking together, because it was just so valuable to see them whole, with their faces/posture giving hints to their continued personalities.

Leo, for instance, still looks like he's grumpy at Chelle for something, which became one of the cornerstones I used in conjunction with his late game attitude regarding the fam to form the cornerstone in Scaling about his identity. Beren is still in pace with Phares and looking up to him, which I took as though they still were close, Valyx trailing behind awkwardly while keeping a watchful eye, etc etc. Plus I think there's merit in the notion of reaffirming Nedrick and Euden as individuals, separate from each other.

If they had the babies angle, I think, I might have instead done it so that everyone's happy there's the twins, look, both made it out healthy... only for them to discover that a third had been present all along. They thought they were getting twins, nope. Triplets. Cue the nervous excitement of 'I'm not sure how the heck that happened, but look new baby!'

But yeah the ending did accidentally give major fodder for the people inclined to jumping towards incest, even if I think that's not what they were ultimately intending. I think they were more going for Euden eventually (re)joining the fam, in that Zethia seems to be starting to remember Euden, they just wanted the speedbump of 'oh no is he gone gone???' for some last-minute angst. They were stuck on an ending, read the title screen's lyrics like the 'a traveler searching for feelings in an unending world', and went 'bam that's what we do with Euden'!

I think I would have died if they had just kept Euden as dead dead though. It would have been beautiful, I'm sure, all the invariably sad scenes, maybe the fam making a pretty memorial, lamenting it all, but darn. We already saw the effects of people having Feelings at this ambiguously bittersweet ending (I say, as if I were an impartial observer who did not write over a third of a million words regarding the ending), I can't imagine what people would have done if they fully nailed the coffin for Euden.

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

I honestly would have no idea how anyone would portray the siblings a la Inside out, because not many of their default emotions are a part or otherwise more complex than the core five, I'd think. Leonidas you could portray with anger/disgust, happiness as a distant third, the rest of the emotions practically kicked out, Phares probably has a dedicated 'curiosity' to lead the general operations with happiness as a secondary head, for as much as he is inclined to amusement, etc. Other than that? Sure, maybe you could say Euden defaults to happiness, or that Emile's are constantly in a fistfight over the control panel and as such is constantly oscillating between extremes, but the fam isn't very easy to pin down!

Speaking of Zodi, he sure was gunning for Zethia in ch.5, too, even if Aurelius was still strong enough to taper his violence meter to 'I am somehow going to kill the Other and save my daughter'.

Oh, for Valyx and Zethia, I did forget to mention, his own story generally portrays that he might be a bit more invested in the fam than he initially tries to appear.

When he figures out that Aurelius is not being piloted by Aurelius anymore, he threatens him, but Morsayati immediately shuts him down.

Moreover, he does so by threatening the siblings, with a particular note of the younger ones as further deterrent.

Also can we just talk about Phares staying out of Morsayati's notice? Like imagine if the Other thought he would just try a different body, only to find that it's already a bit busy there. Morsayati and Xenos can coexist, too, from what we see in Zena's Euden, though Xenos is admittedly much more 'hands-on' with Phares. Imagine that Inside Out mental space. Still, Phares was just probably kinda awkwardly going 'oh, no, our sibling, possessed by an evil god-like entity? Wow, who could have ever imagined that? How shocking. To think this has never happened before..."

All this being said, I really don't disagree with the broader comment about how Zethia is treated, since she was really done dirty start to finish in one way or another. Even what were supposed to be impactful moments kinda fell flat, with the shenanigans like 'Oh no I can no longer see, what terrible toll Bahamut's power takes from me... except now I can functionally 'see' even better like this anyways, and my vision returns to normal when I'm not actively using his power!'

Really, I think that just combos into the 'they were or grew really afraid to maim the fam'. I do think that the first writer might have been intending on a Euden fratricide crusade at some point, slowly culling down the ranks, since the overall trajectory of the fam was just down down we go, until the other writers decided to portray them in a more complicated light.

Don't worry Euden, these people are your friends!

Enter some of the plot points or decisions that could be considered a 'cop-out', see Valyx's careful shuffling in his story into a more sympathetic character than just 'supreme lawful neutral', Phares' possession, Emile's... light treatment versus the depths he could gleefully go. Heck, even Chelle - she seemingly participates in the killing of a dragon in ch.11 with Emile.

Now, that's much less of a true 'backpedal' than it is with some of the other family members since Chelle is extremely flexible morally for how you want to run with her, I could have seen a heated argument with Euden later about how she needs to be convincing that she's on Dyrenell's side if she wants to keep her head/the collaboration going while Euden argues she's going too far, but still. It's another moment that just passes quietly in the night, if that makes sense.

I just imagine warping to the past and telling people things like 'Leonidas will fall off a cliff to protect Emile', '7/9ths of the siblings gladly team up to beat up Alberius, possessed', 'no.5 is the only irredeemable one to be killed (more complicated since most the fam technically dies too offscreen, but the sentiment is there)', because it's stuff like that that makes me consider how the family's portrayal shifts, as people would probably be baffled by all of those.

Back to Zethia though, and... well... she already wasn't on to a strong start with her relegated to the damsel role, even if her exact flavor was a bit more active both times than the purest expression of it. The rage was heard around the internet when ch.14-15 hit and it became clear that Zethia had traded the Other for Nedrick in her keeper.

Add in the even scarcer knowledge of her and the rest of the siblings' dynamic/thoughts about the other, and it's a recipe for disaster. I know they were trying to keep things secret regarding who the siblings were as people early on, see even Euden's relationship details kept minimal, but it really doesn't help.

I think it's part of the reason why so many were and are so dogged that Dragalia Lost was your average incest anime angle with the twins when it was the exact opposite (as I have a draft churning in the back proving...), because the only true relationship they had and we knew was Euden and Zethia.

Long story short, Dragalia writers knew that their mutually dependent relationship wasn't exactly healthy and had a mini arc to get them more independent/branched out, all the while they reaffirmed post-Nedrick that they consider themselves siblings. But most people zooming through the text just see that Euden is desperate to rescue Zethia and even more reckless/selfless than normal and go 'IT MUST BE INCEST!', a thing not helped with aspects of her design and players' tendency to project their desires onto Euden as the 'player character' despite him not being a self-insert in any sense of the word.

At least she can rock a suit every so often as a treat.

Ugh, I'm getting ahead of myself. But yes, Zethia was largely done dirty in presentation, even if she starts getting better late-game. Sigh. I still say a wild dream might have been having Nedrick take Euden instead, and have Zethia pick up the pieces from there. Then you can force extended, juicy Nedrick-Euden interpersonal drama, especially since Nedrick oscillates between trying to appear 'high and mighty' above Euden and all that, and then getting enraged at him as teenagers do. There's a lot of potential meat in Euden's tendencies forcibly humanizing him to Nedrick, trying to view him as some demon-spawn he can ignore and hate, and so much more.

Plus it's just a good old classic reversal. It's not like they were going to remove Euden from the playable roster and make everyone mad. Even death can't stop anyone in Dragalia! Heck, Zethia expresses interest in armor and swords, let her grab Euden's, maybe she's hesitant to use her magic because of the Other's contamination and what he's done with it, burst it out for suitably dramatic plot moments were she can show her conviction.

Also, another tragic dropped thread was Nedrick and Valyx, here:

Let Valyx and Nedrick fight 2025

Ah, Dragalia. Even when just looking at royal fam hours, it was held together with tape. It's impressive how well they thread so close to something that makes perfect sense and so far, all the while making the fam as compelling as it is.

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

Please enjoy this totally-not-relevant doodle by WillofWinnie...

...That is in any way not related to the most recent chapter of a certain fic. I shall certainly not be uploading it to the author's note either to expose more people to this wonderfully silly little thing.

In any case, do visit @willofwinnie for more cool art.

That is all.

[valeriefauxnom]

Maybe he was just really grumpy about Chelle's 'upset tummy' comment and decided that he could just track down her later when she wasn't 'mocking' him!

I almost take this exchange, when combined with another of Chelle's comments about her being concerned about Phares' movement for 'some time', was testament to just how ~weird~ he's been behaving, even more than his usual self. And since he's a loner it's much harder to track him down than Chelle or Leonidas is to the other, since they're practically neighbors, so they prioritize scraping whatever hint they can from him.

Honestly though Leonidas is probably constantly annoyed to have Chelle so close to him all the time. She TEASES him while he's trying to be a BIG, STRONG prince! No diplomacy between the two cities... until Leonidas needs to send a letter to Chanzelia anyways eventually. Rinse and repeat for sibling 'I'm not talking to you' dramatics on a city/territory-wide scale.

Though, regarding Leonidas and the others in regards to Zethia... I'm not sure the elders wholesale dismissed her. Leonidas, Emile, absolutely, as we see in B!Zethia's story, but when she tried to go see Chelle, the rejection from her butler was less framed as a matter of 'Chelle doesn't want to see you' and more 'she's in studies and I don't like young children':

Chelle also seems more than pleased to meet her again in the present, what with the good old infamous comment she makes that accidentally is way too easy to read as though Phares is a princess.

Speaking of, Phares is the first to express interest in Zethia's presence. He might have fallen into a weird 'too sick to give her time of day -> too busy in studies -> too possessed to care much' trap that left her mostly ignored. Valyx is in another weird spot, but I think he might have come to view her like he did Euden - someone 'weak', to be guarded, but not someone he needs or wants to spend time with.

To be fair to him, too, he is protective of her during their shared captivity with Nedrick. It might fall into a similar category as Phares' protection of Emile throughout the game, or maybe he had character development after he got beat that maybe he should consider all siblings regardless of whether he thinks them weak or not.

Poor twins though couldn't catch a break, all in all. Only major constant source of good familial affection was Aurelius, who seemed to keep them more or less trapped in the castle. It's not addressed often, but there are hints that it's the big reason Euden needs a bit more catch-up than most the cast for things ranging from Jack'o Lanterns to how commoners lived. Heck, even in the wyrmprint 'Happier Times', the only reason the twins can have fun making flower crowns is because they explicitly snuck out, which, well...

All in all, Aurelius was keeping them pretty darn close at home. Wonder why. Was it just overprotective instincts over his youngest children? Was he afraid something could go wrong with Euden (be it his natural instincts or his creation finally going awry)? Whatever the case, it only further reduced the odds that they could meet a sibling once the elders started gaining control of territories and the like.

Oh, as a last note, I think I finally answered my personal question of 'whom does Chelle align Chanzelia with, after Leonidas splits the former territory further?'

Apparently the answer is Leonidas.

Her Gala story continually addresses Chanzelia as 'Alberian'. Not 'New Alberian'.

And with Leonidas apparently (re)establishing Alberia earlier than this... well, Chelle's made her stance clear. So we finally have a decent territory idea for the continent!

I'm presuming Murgia to be considered New Alberian because we see no signs that Saint Lotier is in any way invested in it, and that Euden is when it comes to defending it. I'm more unsure of places like the Dornith Mountains (+Kleifheim by extension), Mt.Adolla, Myriage, etc etc. Based on implication through the Imperial Onslaught, and heck, even events, we get the idea that these are contested territory, where the war is probably most intense. So Euden's territory could expand or retract at times as control of these areas changes hands.

Relatedly, with so much of them being main story-relevant spots (Rovetelle, Myriage, Mts Adolla/Dornith...), it might actually be fair to assume that the true name for the Binding Ruins is the Wartach Ruins, as that would complete the ch.1-6 speedrun of locations!

Ch1&6 - Rovetelle

2 - Myriage

3 Mt. Adolla

4 - Dornith

5- Wartach?

I'm getting off-track, though, so I'd better call it before I go too wild here...

The adventures of Chelle and her "I'm totally paying attention to you" eldest brother. (a.k.a. Poorly summarizing Leonidas during Sibling Assembly.)

Literally all of the questions he asked in the chapter were directed to Phares.

"I have things I would ask of you both." his ass. Leo didn't even try to act invested in the conversation with Chelle (it's either "…" or "ask your kitty" or "idk" with her lol).

Clearly, Leo was the one who "called Chelle a nuisance and drove her hence." because Phares seems to at least humor her a bit.

[valeriefauxnom]

Chapter 13 of "Does It Get Easier with Time, for the Immortal?" is up!

In which Leonidas sees a spider or two, uses his Fashion Knowledge, and remains dead cool even as others might not be.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63950467/chapters/171434569

As mentioned last week, though, this thing is shifting to more of a Scaling update schedule, by which I mean I'm pretty sure there'll be something regular but not at any nice and neat 1 week intervals to structure your life around!

[valeriefauxnom]

You Have Inherited: Character Flaw!

I think there might be something interesting in the idea that Aurelius' kids each have inherited something about him and taken it to 11. Some are of course clearer cuts than others, but I do think you can see elements of his character (and occasionally his many problems) spread out to all of them.

Leonidas embodies the image he portrays to the world, someone strong, a resolute leader able to protect the country. Both seemed very driven to be the best they could be in terms strength, and both suceeded - Leonidas is probably among the strongest of his siblings before his youngers started dabbling in God Drugs and Powers of Friendship, and Aurelius was no slouch either. This also reflects their mutual desire to project an image of strength on the nation, as both Leonidas and Aurelius position Alberia as a mighty wall, metaphorically, though Aurelius wished for other options in the long-run.

In a more silly sense, I could also just point to comic!Aurelius' cooking and curry prowess that Leonidas absolutely picked up from him.

Phares embodies his father's wisdom and cautiousness. Cassandra herself notes as such:

After all, he wasn't known as the Sage King for nothing. By all implications, he was a very good king before everything went down the drain, especially compared to his father. We also see it in action, with Aurelius' sending of Leonidas and Chelle close to the north out of cautiousness regarding the several hostile countries there.

Chelle could represent, in a way, his double-faced nature, between what he says and portrays versus the parts of his life that he might rather not let loose, be it his wild adventures with Finlorda and Gatov or the other skeletons in his closet. Both keep substantial parts of themselves deliberately hidden in order to protect themselves, especially not to show weakness.

However, there's an interesting reversal here: Chelle was seemingly a more average 'petulant child', very emotional, but changed gears to hide it all away and quietly calculate. She instead fronts a 'bad' side of her, pretending to be a hedonistic and wholly selfish personality. Aurelius, meanwhile, fronts the 'good' side to him, the just king, the kind man, as he secrets away the uglier sides.

Valyx, his strong moral code that leads him into difficult situations much as Valyx faces himself. Both decide to bend their morals or ideals in favor of trying to 'fix' a wrong they perceive, be it Valyx bending to Morsayati to try to minimize the damage from within or Aurelius compromising his morals in the attempt to right what he sees as wrongs - see his meddling with Bad Magics in the Other in regards to Euden's creation and later Nedrick with the Other.

Beren is in an unfortunately literal way his 'sealed off' nature and the fear to cause it. Even aside from Beren's initial... 'life' caused from Aurelius' fear of killing his own kid, Beren keeps himself distant is afraid of changing, afraid of reaching out to others and opening up to form bonds. In the end, he doubles down because he's still too afraid and stuck in his ways to change sides, even as he starts to recognize that things actually could have turned out differently:

Emile his seeming appreciation of the arts, from what we know of both him and Audric. Aurelius forced Euden to learn at least one instrument, implying he greatly values it in a royal education, and has hope that a more artistically-inclined sovereign might better the nation. Audric (and Aurelius) seemed to have given Euden(s) an instrument, as well, further supporting the idea that he seems to strongly appreciate the arts.

Euden is addressed explicitly as his all-encompassing love and, I would say, selflessness!

We again see this in things like Aurelius biting the bullet for Euden in ch.5 or his readiness to risk himself all for a chance to help Nedrick. Both can become exceedingly reckless when it comes to themselves when others are in danger or otherwise worse off.

Zethia, I feel, is almost the reflection of the faith and conviction Aurelius seemed to have for the world. Whether it's in small glimpses like in 'To My Dear Child' or Audric's.... entire character, the Aureliuses we saw overwhelmingly seemed to always have faith in a better world and the conviction to keep trying to make it so, no matter the odds. Not just those two, Zena's Aurelius himself was the one to bring her the Dawnshard that she used to world hop in search of aid for their world. This then gets shown as Zethia being portrayed as one of the most dogged siblings when it comes to not giving up in the face of adversity.

Though many of them are stubborn in various ways, most of the will fold at some point. Whether it's because they have come to a 'logical' conclusion to believe themselves cooked, Emile's oscillating between easily-cowed and suicidally-stubborn, or even just Euden's tendencies to lay down and die the second he doesn't have his friends to keep him on a leash, Zethia consistently devotes herself to moving forward, a thing well-shown in her Bondforged:

Last but not least, Nedrick is his individualism. Aurelius is, if nothing else, doomed by his doggedness to never give a hint to anyone around him about anything going on. As Nedrick was dying of wyrmscale, he runs away (as the KING, mind you) all alone with a dying newborn cross-continent without telling anyone. Between stuff like that and the aforementioned Binding Ruins Incident, we overall get a picture that Aurelius is just so darn stubborn for several reasons that he never really lets anyone 'in' his mind and heart to help.

This ties with several aspects of him, but I'll just put it here for something:

Back to Nedrick, though, and we see the exact same patterns. Nedrick is greatly adverse to the idea of allowing anyone to help him, anyone to bond with him, anyone that's more than just a mutual tool. He pretends he doesn't have any affection for Jinlorda, is for a long time unable to trust the idea of Zethia having the pact despite his own struggles with just half of it. He's stubborn about letting go of the primal powers in ch.24 despite knowing it's probably killing him.

That's the crux of what Audric has to argue to Nedrick in ch.22, he repeats again and again how Nedrick needs to stop trying to do everything on his own.

To be fair, this is an issue with many in the family. Euden has it too, often addressed as someone who tries to shove all burden and difficulty down, carry far too much on his own, but he's also a bit quicker to be prodded into relenting. Phares remarks on this in the Blood That Binds, too!

But yeah, Nedrick is among the best exemplifiers of the degree Aurelius was adverse to letting people know he had the common cold or that he wanted to deal with the devil to help his kid. Heck, he must have stayed up late when the twins were born and only went to sleep when nobody was around in yet another display of independence and adversity to show any weakness.

I'm getting on a tangent here so I'll cut it off while I'm still ahead to say: yeah, the fam is in part just little microcosms of their dad's issues whether they knew it or not!

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia Lost Speedrun: Nedrick Arc (2:37)

Please please watch (and with audio), though I worked really hard on this!

Read more for a bunch of silly details about this and its making:

-Leonidas' face changes to a more usual blood-lusting one because, well, he doesn't mind Nedrick's 'addition' all that much.

-Leonidas and Nedrick are not 'dancing' in most the fam shot scenes because they're really not happy to be there

-Look, the color orange is the bane of my existence and I eventually had to settle with Audric. He was on the Sacred Tree anyways. In a vague canonical sense, he's also the one with the most luck in questioning Nedrick why the heck he's being... him.

-Emile's placement was jointly because this boy doesn't use much of his braincells very often and was additionally Most Likely To Be Poisoned By Leif in the comics, so I threw it in as a fun little extra. Also, he's most likely to both illegally buy ivory and celebrate his siblings getting beat up, methinks...

-Phares has such a buttery smooth portrait shift to a displeased face when Nedrick's portrait is on top of his layer, I'm earnestly impressed with myself

-Speaking of, remember Stranded Scions? Yeah. The ship that Chelle, Leonidas, Euden, and Emile were on was named the Titan, so it fits way way way too well.

-I really wanted to use Halloween!Euden's model to get some actual purple in him, but needed the Traumatized Euden face for when Neddy zaps him with 'the book' (ie, the documents that he was the 'fake')

-Valyx gains an Agito mask after Neddy got him good. I'm sure he's fine.

-Yes, Nedrick switching to Gala!Nedrick was intentional, I meant it as a little joke to him becoming an ally after Euden beats him up to conclude the Nedrick arc.

-Gala Zethia is also intentional; she's gained Bahamut's powers (what they were fighting over in their section).

-Pay very close attention to the very ending for a minor twisted little joke I threw in to make this conclusion even more 'canonical'...(RIP Audric)

[valeriefauxnom]

Chapter 12 of "Does It Get Easier with Time, for the Immortal? is up!

In which I accidentally almost published the shiny toy of ch.13 instead and Euden takes a dirt nap (nah, he's fine for now)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63950467/chapters/170663800

Also, just in case, I'll repeat my little note at the end that my weekly chapter updates will likely be coming to an end next week, unless I have a sudden eureka and churn out several more chapters so I can stay ahead, alas. 13 hopefully should give you some good cud to chew on for a bit, though, I hope!

[valeriefauxnom]

Hallelujah! You cracked the code! Thank you very much for solving this absolutely minuscule, completely irrelevant 'issue'!

I'm just so glad it wasn't a random NPC after all, because my gut instinct was telling me that it just wasn't. The little soundbites... somehow more distinctive, if that makes sense, than just a random generic NPC. Like he was trying to play a role instead of just giving the devs some generic characters that could fit anywhere.

Nicolas, though, huh? Honestly with how much he was ignored in general as a 3 star, heavily outclassed wind unit, I'm inclined to just say it really is him just to give him that scrap of content more!

So Nicolas was trying to enter the costume contest, maybe trying to broaden his experiences in life since that's a point of his reason to stay at the Halidom, and didn't quite fully grasp the energy of the costume contest.

Of course, it really could've just been intended to be 'mysterious NPC voice of the day', since, again, if they're throwing things like Chronos on Phares, they might have played it a bit loose with other things too, but hey! Now we know the answer to this very important query!

As a stupid little addition, I can give the fun fact that Euden actually uses the Mystery Man portrait at least once... kinda.

It's in the background of High Zodi's story:

I have no idea why this has stuck in my head, but there. Euden was marching out on a suicide mission, all cloak-and-dagger but got ambushed by Zodi.

16 Seconds (Or: Please Help)

Don't worry, nothing dire here, but can someone who knows the JP audio of Dragalia Lost better than I possibly place the mysterious person in the castle story 'Costume Contest'?

The relevant section, for the source of my fruitless search:

I honestly have no earthly idea who it could be. The main cast doesn't seem to quite fit, since Luca and Ranzal both are very distinctive in JP and it doesn't quite sound like either of them to me, and I think I tried looking through JP!Euden's brief voice line files, the sort of generic utterances they used to fill up most the non-important stories, I wasn't hearing anything in here in there.

But, then, who is it?

At first I tried glancing at the cast of characters to see who this younger-sounding boy is... but the problem is that this person's tone and personality (in all of their three lines) seems at odds with the likes of Lowen, Elias, Wu Kong, or even Marty. I thiiiink I've also checked their story bites and found no trace of the sounds being made here.

Ricardt I've admittedly not checked since he appears in the very same story, dressed as Berserker, so I figure he's out of the running. (Scratch that I did check and sure enough, it's not him either).

Is it just a random NPC? I really wouldn't think so, since this isn't in their usual range. Just in case, I think I checked darn near all of their lines as best as I could and wasn't finding any matching lines here.

Then, I thought I might have had a breakthrough in this on-off quest for the true identity of this stupid 16 second existence of this figure:

Beren.

He's young in appearance and voice. He's pretty flat, as is the mystery person. He first started officially existing on 4/20/20 (ch.13 release), well before this castle story came out. He appears in at least one other castle story to my knowledge (Forte), and has these sort of sound bites. It also would line up in a joke sort of way: Beren would later go on to try to sneak in to the last Halloween's play event only to bump into Euden acting as staff.

Those eyebrows signal he is ready for murder

What's to say he hadn't tried to crash another Halloween thing involved with the Halidom? The figure explicitly says he 'can't say' who he is... perhaps because he is an enemy of the Halidom????

With this beautiful evidence in a row, I went hunting... only to run afoul of the shared doc's occasionally questionable sorting. It was only through the slim grace of the portrait viewer recording his ID at 100038 that I even had a chance to track down his sound bites.

Was this to be it?

Was my torment finally over?

...No.

Because I listened to Beren's soundbites several times over, and he does not make the sort of noises the mystery figure does.

So, by all ready appearance to me, Beren is not the mysterious Halloween figure.

I am officially at my wit's end.

To that, I turn to the community.

Do you somehow recognize this as your unique little JP blorbo? Do you have any clue who else it might be in this 16 second clip???

Please help. Let me solve the mystery of who the heck this person that only exists for 16 seconds is.

[valeriefauxnom]

Darn it, I knew my addled brain had to mixing something up! Guess Beren is well and truly out of the picture. I am wholly unsure how I managed to do that.

Regarding Phares/Chronos...

Euden teleports to the past, sees Young!Phares, hears Young!Phares speak... cue Chronos PTSD flashbacks

I remember I also thought it funny that Chronos first appeared to Euden like that, because, well, he's trying to appear non-threatening and all that... and somehow realized or knew that the best way to disarming Euden's heart would be a tiny, cute, fluffy dragon. This is doubly funny when we consider that Chronos does not truly consider Euden as-is as his master, instead the possessed Euden of his world, and yet still knows how to get to Euden-as-himself.

As for the hunt, here's some other sound bites I've eliminated (from their 'story' section that seems to have their bites) from listening to all of them, keeping an especial eye on the falling scream from mystery man:

120076 (NPC Wu Kong)

120198 (NPC - Dunefolk Young Man)

120073 (Summer Boy NPC)

120061 (Little Boy 2 NPC)

120038 (Sylvan Boy NPC)

120017 (Little Boy NPC)

120068 (Summer Man 1 NPC)

100001 (Euden)

110336 (Delphi)

I tried looking for Shion in the NPC files, but he doesn't seem to have a unique soundbank?

110393 (Farren, while he may be far later in the timeline than this, I figured it never hurt to check in case his lines were used earlier than him)

120019 (Male 2 NPC)

This... is quite a bit but still isn't all of them, but I figured I'd help cut down any other intrepid explorer's jobs!

16 Seconds (Or: Please Help)

Don't worry, nothing dire here, but can someone who knows the JP audio of Dragalia Lost better than I possibly place the mysterious person in the castle story 'Costume Contest'?

The relevant section, for the source of my fruitless search:

I honestly have no earthly idea who it could be. The main cast doesn't seem to quite fit, since Luca and Ranzal both are very distinctive in JP and it doesn't quite sound like either of them to me, and I think I tried looking through JP!Euden's brief voice line files, the sort of generic utterances they used to fill up most the non-important stories, I wasn't hearing anything in here in there.

But, then, who is it?

At first I tried glancing at the cast of characters to see who this younger-sounding boy is... but the problem is that this person's tone and personality (in all of their three lines) seems at odds with the likes of Lowen, Elias, Wu Kong, or even Marty. I thiiiink I've also checked their story bites and found no trace of the sounds being made here.

Ricardt I've admittedly not checked since he appears in the very same story, dressed as Berserker, so I figure he's out of the running. (Scratch that I did check and sure enough, it's not him either).

Is it just a random NPC? I really wouldn't think so, since this isn't in their usual range. Just in case, I think I checked darn near all of their lines as best as I could and wasn't finding any matching lines here.

Then, I thought I might have had a breakthrough in this on-off quest for the true identity of this stupid 16 second existence of this figure:

Beren.

He's young in appearance and voice. He's pretty flat, as is the mystery person. He first started officially existing on 4/20/20 (ch.13 release), well before this castle story came out. He appears in at least one other castle story to my knowledge (Forte), and has these sort of sound bites. It also would line up in a joke sort of way: Beren would later go on to try to sneak in to the last Halloween's play event only to bump into Euden acting as staff.

Those eyebrows signal he is ready for murder

What's to say he hadn't tried to crash another Halloween thing involved with the Halidom? The figure explicitly says he 'can't say' who he is... perhaps because he is an enemy of the Halidom????

With this beautiful evidence in a row, I went hunting... only to run afoul of the shared doc's occasionally questionable sorting. It was only through the slim grace of the portrait viewer recording his ID at 100038 that I even had a chance to track down his sound bites.

Was this to be it?

Was my torment finally over?

...No.

Because I listened to Beren's soundbites several times over, and he does not make the sort of noises the mystery figure does.

So, by all ready appearance to me, Beren is not the mysterious Halloween figure.

I am officially at my wit's end.

To that, I turn to the community.

Do you somehow recognize this as your unique little JP blorbo? Do you have any clue who else it might be in this 16 second clip???

Please help. Let me solve the mystery of who the heck this person that only exists for 16 seconds is.

[valeriefauxnom]

16 Seconds (Or: Please Help)

Don't worry, nothing dire here, but can someone who knows the JP audio of Dragalia Lost better than I possibly place the mysterious person in the castle story 'Costume Contest'?

The relevant section, for the source of my fruitless search:

I honestly have no earthly idea who it could be. The main cast doesn't seem to quite fit, since Luca and Ranzal both are very distinctive in JP and it doesn't quite sound like either of them to me, and I think I tried looking through JP!Euden's brief voice line files, the sort of generic utterances they used to fill up most the non-important stories, I wasn't hearing anything in here in there.

But, then, who is it?

At first I tried glancing at the cast of characters to see who this younger-sounding boy is... but the problem is that this person's tone and personality (in all of their three lines) seems at odds with the likes of Lowen, Elias, Wu Kong, or even Marty. I thiiiink I've also checked their story bites and found no trace of the sounds being made here.

Ricardt I've admittedly not checked since he appears in the very same story, dressed as Berserker, so I figure he's out of the running. (Scratch that I did check and sure enough, it's not him either).

Is it just a random NPC? I really wouldn't think so, since this isn't in their usual range. Just in case, I think I checked darn near all of their lines as best as I could and wasn't finding any matching lines here.

Then, I thought I might have had a breakthrough in this on-off quest for the true identity of this stupid 16 second existence of this figure:

Beren.

He's young in appearance and voice. He's pretty flat, as is the mystery person. He first started officially existing on 4/20/20 (ch.13 release), well before this castle story came out. He appears in at least one other castle story to my knowledge (Forte), and has these sort of sound bites. It also would line up in a joke sort of way: Beren would later go on to try to sneak in to the last Halloween's play event only to bump into Euden acting as staff.

Those eyebrows signal he is ready for murder

What's to say he hadn't tried to crash another Halloween thing involved with the Halidom? The figure explicitly says he 'can't say' who he is... perhaps because he is an enemy of the Halidom????

With this beautiful evidence in a row, I went hunting... only to run afoul of the shared doc's occasionally questionable sorting. It was only through the slim grace of the portrait viewer recording his ID at 100038 that I even had a chance to track down his sound bites.

Was this to be it?

Was my torment finally over?

...No.

Because I listened to Beren's soundbites several times over, and he does not make the sort of noises the mystery figure does.

So, by all ready appearance to me, Beren is not the mysterious Halloween figure.

I am officially at my wit's end.

To that, I turn to the community.

Do you somehow recognize this as your unique little JP blorbo? Do you have any clue who else it might be in this 16 second clip???

Please help. Let me solve the mystery of who the heck this person that only exists for 16 seconds is.

[valeriefauxnom]

Chapter 11 of "Does It Get Easier with Time, for the Immortal?" is up!

In which Valyx is still on the hot seat (I swear I like him) and Emile attempts Art(tm).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63950467/chapters/170043253