#aether analyzes

[planetaryaether]

Blackrock/Dawnlight Exploration: What Was the End’s Plan?

Every time I think to myself "oh let me just jot down my thoughts on xyz really quickly" it turns into an entire essay... anyways here are my thoughts on the End's plan:

Because Blackrock ended when it did, we have surprisingly little information about the End and its plans even though they are responsible for many aspects of both Rythian and (potentially) Zoey’s backstories.

What do we know?

All of the concrete information we have on the End’s war is that Rythian was kidnapped by the end to “become the general/warlord in a future invasion of the Brightlands” And that “the barriers between worlds were fading, and Endermen managed to invade [the Twilight realm] as well, despite … a realm-wide aura to stop their magic from working”

After arriving in the twilight forest, it takes a while for Rythian to realize where they are, even with the aura against End magic which Rythian reveals he knows about by saying that enderman shouldn’t be able to be there (note: he had a similar aggravated tone to when he said the same thing in Dawnlight regarding the Nether). Although at that point he already had his suspicions as to where they were, it is interesting that knowing about the anti-endmagic field and having his magic blocked when he entered the portal did not immediately alert him to where he is. This is especially interesting with Rythian saying at the end of S3E9 that “the only thing that speaks against [this being the Twilight realm] so far is the presence of Endermen”. He also says that he knows “very little about this place” and that much of his knowledge comes from “some ancient texts that… mention it”. The texts he is referencing talk about how the “End is in pure opposition to [the Twilight Realm]”.

Although he says he knows very little about the Twilight Realm, it is likely that this is a lie of omission. In Log 24 in Dawnlight, he mentions that he was told a lot of propaganda by the End, so it is likely that he was lied to about the Twilight Realm. With that being said, those lies are likely justifications for conflict or downplaying the End’s actions towards the Twilight Realm rather than information that would actively help Rythian know if he is there or not. It is also possible that he does have more information that about the Twilight Realm that he is omitting because it could lead to questions about his past that he is not ready to answer.

Furthermore, It is also worth noting that in episode 8 of Blackrock Rising, after it cuts back to Rythian he is staring at the sky/stars of the Twilight realm before saying “holy hell, where are we?” implying that he is familiar enough with the constellations of the Brightlands to be able to notice the difference. Being able to notice the difference, but not being able to recognize what the new constellations are shows his lack of general information about the Twilight realm. 

Additionally we know that he has “...heard stories of a lot of different places, but as far as [he] know-” and then he cuts himself off. Although we don’t know the last half of that sentence, perhaps it was something like ‘this doesn’t quite fit any of them’. He then lists the different realms as the Brightlands, the Nether, the End, and the Realm of Twilight. This could imply that those are the only realms, and if this is true then even with some false information, one would expect Rythian to realize where he is faster. That is unless practically everything he knows about the realm is wildly inaccurate - likely for the purposes of vilifying the enemies of the Twilight Realm to justify, and stop criticism of, the war. This would, then, require his statement about the endermen being the only contradictory piece of evidence he has to be untrue, or at least a lie of omission.

There are several reasons why he could have been given both false information about the Twilight realm and (seemingly) less information about it than one would expect from a warlord/someone important to the End’s plans. 

Option 1: Multi-Realm War

In case 1 the End is at war with everyone/many different realms (potentially beyond what Rythian named previously) independently and Rythian was only ever intended to conquer the Brightlands. This would either require there to be additional realms that Rythian does not mention in S3E9, or an invasion of the Nether. Although there isn’t much evidence for that in Blackrock, the presence of Enderman in the Nether and the comments Rythian makes about it in Dawnlight Chapter 4 could suggest that they had been repelled from the Nether. This could suggest that their previous presence was part of an invasion.

In this situation, he would not need to know much about the other realms they are at war with beyond nationalistic propaganda/justifications for the war. This could imply that there are other individuals with the same role as Rythian for the other realm(s) which does not directly have textual evidence that I can find, although we know very little about the specifics of the Enderborn as a concept. In S2E10 when Zoey is talking to John about the death of King Barry, she mentions that he was "slain at the hands of the Enderborn”. The specific usage of “the” and not “an” when describing the Enderborn implies that it is a specific position or something that only refers to one person (Rythian). 

It is important to note that Rythian initially seemed confused when Zoey mentioned the term “Enderborn” so it could be a term the Twilight Realm uses to describe Rythian specifically and in that case the usage of “the” only necessarily reflects that the Twilight realm cares about keeping track of Rythian specifically and the existence of others like him is up in the air.

Additionally, there could be endermen with more or less important roles in the invasion of different realms, but again we don’t have clear evidence for that, so in this scenario there would need to be something specific about the Brightlands that would require a general/warlord. It could just be that the presence of the other Yogs would warrant needing a more coordinated invasion. Although thematically I think a war against every realm fits well for the End/Ender Dragon, there are some issues with (existing) direct evidence for that idea. If certain things are fleshed out a bit more it is definitely a possibility, but not the most likely option at the moment - in my personal opinion.

As a final note Rythian taking a while to recognize the twilight realm, however, could also support the idea that there are many other inhabited realms (even if he didn’t mention them to Zoey in S3E9), with the delay in realizing where he is partially being due to a large number of options (maybe not mentioned because they were ruled out or he didn’t have much information on them). 

Option 2: The Brightlands as a Stepping Stone

In this situation, End’s war is primarily against the Twilight realm, but with the global anti-endmagic field, it is unable to fight them directly anymore. Rythian’s purpose, then, would be to conquer the Brightlands and raise an army to invade the Twilight Realm and disable the anti-endmagic field so that the full scale invasion can take place. In log 24 in Dawnlight episode 6, Rythian refers to himself as a "dutiful soldier” when talking about all of the things he had to unlearn. 

Using the term ‘soldier’ rather than something more specific, or even using the term ‘warlord’ or ‘general’ as in the end of series lore post, suggests that Rythian was not treated as someone who held a high rank, or that his relationship with the Ender dragon was that of a soldier and not of a general regardless of his eventual purpose. A soldier listens to orders while a general gives them. Even if the end goal was for Rythian to manage the occupation of the Brightlands, with where the plan was at the time he defected, he was not treated that way. With that in mind, it is very common for soldiers to only know the bare minimum necessary to complete their objective. If Rythian’s relationship with his role was that of a soldier, regardless of his future purpose, it would explain his lack of knowledge about the Twilight Realm. Considering that Rythian was raised on propaganda and “lies to make [him] a dutiful soldier”, keeping information about the Twilight realm to a minimum reduces the likelihood that he comes across contradictory information - potentially causing him to question the End and its war - while invading the Brightlands.

Option 3: “Deffensive” War

In S3E9 Rythian questions “what are [the endermen] after” in the Twilight realm. This is initially confusing for a few reasons because he understands that they should be blocked from existing in the realm but he does not seem to understand what they would want from the realm even if they could exist there. This implies that he does not see the Twilight Forest as a military target for the End. This combined with the high likelihood that some of his information about the Twilight Realm was false/based in propaganda (and the lack of information he has overall), it is possible that Rythian believes that the war the End is fighting is defensive rather than offensive. 

Endermen existing in the Twilight realm is confusing to him because the End is supposed to be on their back foot. His realization that it actually “makes a lot of sense” would then mirror his realization that the End is the aggressor (which tracks with the behavior of Endermen as well as the attack of Blackrock by the Ender Dragon herself in season 2). The conversation is somewhat cut short by the discovery of the labyrinth, so the direct evidence for this from season 3 ends there. Although this option does not have a lot of direct evidence for it, it also does not have much if any directly contradictory evidence, so it remains a distinct possibility. We will have to see if Dawnlight makes this scenario more or less likely. 

In any of these situations, the question of the End’s goal is still up in the air, so what do we know about the Ender dragon? 

We know from this post that the thought process in creating the character was someone who started out with good intentions but is now “too far gone to really be seen as anything but evil” as well as being “Maybe more a destructive force of nature, driven by a forces she can't really control, rather than an insidious manipulative malicious mind.”.

With her as the Ender Dragon kidnapping and raising a child soldier, it is clear that she - perhaps out of desperation - has grown to be more calculating than just a raw destructive force. 

In her backstory, the death of her father is “...the first time in her life she didn’t get what she wanted” and that she was “furious” that death “had taken something from her” and that “...even more so than grief, the Princess felt anger”. The combination of the wording around her father’s death being not getting ‘what’ she wanted (although a common phrase) and having had “something” taken from her shows that her grief for her father, although genuine, was less about losing a parent and more about losing an object. That in some ways she saw his death as a slight against her, a hit against her ego and her prowess as a sorcerer. After all, she had “She had surpassed them all” so why shouldn’t she be able to conquer death? 

It is additionally important that her reaction was to “[delve] deeper into her studies – on her own now” because although she was the most knowledgeable with magic, she did not seek to have peers. She, seemingly, only saw other mages as ways to get more information and that they had lost their value to her after teaching her all they knew. This further speaks to her ego because it suggests that she believed that she alone could defeat death and that (at the very least) others could not help her - if not that they would slow her down. 

Her thoughts about the ritual were that ”She would be immortal, as would her mother, and as many of the people in the kingdom as she could save”. The order here is important. First and foremost she cared about securing her own immortality, her personal victory over death. Although this was started due to the death of her father, the immortality of her mother comes second to her own. Only after her mother does she look to save her own people, and not even all of them, just (seemingly) as many as the ritual could handle. This speaks to her extreme selfishness and reflects that her many years of helping the people of her nation were likely because she enjoyed the praise that came along with it rather than out of a genuine drive to better the lives of those she is responsible for. 

Her selfishness also shines through in the structure of the ritual, she used herself as a “guiding beacon for all the magic in the world”, funneling it all through herself - taking magic from the world itself and cramming it where she can use it for her own personal goals. We know very powerful magical artifacts exist in the world of Blackrock (with a chalice of immortality originally being planned to exist in the Cabertown B plot), so the choice of using herself as a conduit is a power seeking move rather than a practical one. If she has the magic, then that secures her role as the strongest for the rest of time.

What, then, is her goal?

Well we know that it is unclear “How much of the Princess remained behind those terrifying eyes” but even before her transformation, she was no longer the young girl who spent her days helping her people. 

If she is waging a war against all other realms, then it is likely a broad scramble for power, seeking it wherever she can find it without much unique reasoning for each front of the war. The only thing special about the Twilight Realm, then, is its relationship to Zoey (and potentially the anti-endmagic field). She could be seeking more power to return herself to her human form, or she could be trying to find another realm to rule over now that her own is desolate and barren. Perhaps her mind has been so corrupted that she does not see the horror in the transformation of her people and seeks to spread her warped version of immortality to others. There are a lot less restraints on her possible motivations in a broader conflict, but each possibility has something compelling about it.

If the war is mostly against the Twilight realm, however, then much more information about the Ender Dragon’s mental state/plans can be extrapolated. This applies regardless of if Rythian believes the war was defensive or not. With the existence of (and seeming exclusion of) the Nether, and assuming the Brightlands is being used as a stepping stone for an invasion to bypass the anti-endmagic field, then there must be something specific about the Twilight realm for her to focus on it. Although we don’t know much about the Twilight realm, from log 24 we know that “The throne has a lot of power”. Assuming that this isn’t a plot twist where the physical throne holds the power, then the ruler of the Twilight realm (Zoey) holds an immense amount of the realm’s power and does not suffer the same kind of physical transformation that the Ender Dragon endured.

With many of the Princess’ later actions stemming from a place of ego, it is not a stretch to say that she likely interpreted the physical changes to her (and to a lesser extent her citizens) as a slight against herself, especially upon finding out that it doesn’t happen to the ruler of the Twilight realm. She could then be seeking that power as a way to return herself to her previous physical form so that she can live immortality as she had imagined it. 

All said and done, her motivations could be varied and I am very interested to get more information about the End/Twilight realm and the chance of better understanding the war that led to Rythian and Zoey being the characters that they are (as well as seeing what themes resonate with Briony and Kirsty’s backstories)!

[planetaryaether]

Dawnlght Ch 6 Line-by-Line Breakdown

I finally got the motivation to finish by first (posted) line by line breakdown for dawnlight!

I put the lines referenced for each part in bold so you can easily go through and find whatever parts you are most interested in since it is a Lot TM, but this was a lot of fun to put together so please lmk if this is something anyone is interested in me doing for past/future chapters!

[planetaryaether]

When The Other Shoe Drops: KRB Dawnlight Theorizing

With Dawnlight being a continuation of the Blackrock Chronicles both in terms of plot and the themes it explores, I have been thinking about character flaws. The Blackrock Chronicles in many ways is a story about a disastrous feedback loop of poor coping mechanisms and trauma responses, and Dawnlight gives a version of Rythian that is free from the knowledge of his trauma - but who is still, nonetheless, impacted by it both internally and externally. With the characters reacting really well to the horrible threat of TEEF in log 24, it counterintuitively creates this tension that eventually they will not react so well - eventually the other shoe will drop. Although I have absolutely no idea what the specifics of the events that might cause that breakdown, we have enough information where I can start to think about what *kinds* of situations might be its catalyst.

So far in Dawnlight, Rythian has not been put in any situations where the combination of his coping mechanisms and support system have been overwhelmed, so we don’t have much information about how this version of the character would react differently to Blackrock!Rythian. From how he has reacted to the memory flashes in his dreams and with log 24, he still retains the impulse to obsess over a problem until he has a solution to the point of forgoing his own wellbeing (in the former case). Unlike his predecessor, he has always had others around him to help pull him out of the spiral and encourage him to take care of himself. Because this tendency to spiral still exists, it is reasonable to assume that he would react similarly to Blackrock!Rythian if the support system was removed.

Blackrock is full of negative feedback loops of interacting coping mechanisms. So far, the Dawnlight crew seems to be relatively well balanced. Now that Kirsty is more trusting of Rythian, she is rather level headed and strategic when faced with a problem, and Briony excels in keeping the tension in the group down so that no one is overwhelmed - and that no one retreats to unhealthy and conflict-inducing coping mechanisms. Out of the three, Rythian is the largest source of instability, likely a combination of the deep lack of control amnesia leaves him with and the feeling/knowledge that whatever is happening is (in part) directly his fault. 

All of this leaves two major types of situations that would lead to the emotional dam overtopping: 1) the gang gets split up and each person no longer has the others to rely on, with Rythian is left to spiral, Kirsty is not given the time to process and assess threats, and Briony is not able to avoid direct conflict or 2) the plot moves in a direction that hits Kirsty or Brony’s weak points *hard*. This could be Kirsty needing to face what happened in Peony either directly or through feeling that it (whatever ‘it’ is) is happening again. Rythian’s tendency to spiral combined with an overtaxed Kirsty adding fuel to the fire either by regressing in their trust of Rythian/others or even two members of the group being so stressed that they refuse Briony’s attempts to lower the emotional temperature.

The case where Briony is the other domino to fall is a little more difficult to try and predict, but we do know that she has been lying about her pilgrimage. There could be more that she is lying about/hiding from the group and that being revealed at an inopportune time could easily lead to her breaking down, especially if her attempts to cool the situation are interpreted by the others as attempts at deflection. Alternatively, as the scale of things continues to get bigger and bigger and the threat of TEEF becomes harder and harder to ignore, Briony (as someone from a seemingly idyllic small community) could easily be overwhelmed by the scale of the threat/destruction. 

It is, of course, possible (although perhaps less likely) that Rythian is the one attempting to be level-headed while the others are overwhelmed and that would likely be due to a similar situation. Kirsty and Briony get overwhelmed by everything that is happening and perhaps Rythian has gained more control of the large stores of magic within him, giving him confidence in the moment that the others lack. They could want to abandon the quest because, at the end of the day, it is way beyond what they signed up for.

As always, this is not an attempt to try and predict what direction the story is going to be written in. It is just looking at possible versions of the story through the lens of the gang's responses to stress. Also as always lmk what y'all think or if there is anything you want to hear my thoughts on! This was initially a smaller part of a larger post but it got long enough to be its own thing, so here it is lol

[planetaryaether]

Today on Aether Picks Apart a Tiny Detail: Hair Color

So in episode 2 Rythian mentioned that he sees a “girl with red hair” most often when he is dreaming, and with the Zoey character design that we have for her future appearance in DL (assuming nothing changes behind the scenes/with the plan for the series which is always possible), DL:Zoey has brown hair.

This is the hex code for her hair color in the concept art.

And these are the colors of her hair on the actual skin.

Unless it is another coincidence (which is always possible) that the Zoey in his memories has the same color of hair as Blackrock Zoey only for her to have brown hair for her presumed appearance in Dawnlight, then I think it is another decent sign that Dawnlight is going to be canon to Blackrock (or Blackrock is going to be canon to it).

Now, in the panda episode, Zoey called attention to that she had brown hair and had apparently “always wanted brown hair”. There is a lot of fun character analysis to be done there but it is both difficult and feels a little futile without any information about her character’s lore/behaviors/feelings/anything beyond her appearance, so I will hold off on that for now. I bring this up because (beyond hair dye and end magic bleach/toner) there seems to be some sort of mechanism for Zoey’s hair to change color (I have a theory for this but the details of that go way beyond the scope of this post, so I’ll go into that another time)

[planetaryaether]

I’ve Connected the Dots (I Haven’t Connected Shit): Dawnlight Theory

Okay so most of my theories so far have had to do with a world where Dawnlight becomes explicitly canon to the main timeline but this theory works just as well for an independent canon Dawnlight!

So, as many of you know/remember, blazeborn!Zoey was a really popular theory back in the day for Blackrock (with Zoey’s eyes being golden for parts of season 2 as a nod to that). With a lot of the death imagery floating around (Zoey’s design being necromancy themed and ‘Styx’ ‘crematorium’ & ‘dead book’ being mentioned in rythian’s tattoos), it would be interesting if the Nether was less another realm like in a planar cosmology, but more of an underworld (like Styx implies). It could be interesting then for Zoey to be associated with warped mushrooms and basically be the princess of the underworld (or potentially just a strong necromancer depending on the structure of the nether).

With Kirsty’s backstory, being one of the only survivors of the destruction of Peony, the death theming extends throughout the first 4 episodes and the combination of aesthetics and already established Dawnlight lore, dealing with death/grief seems like it is going to be a major theme as the series continues. Having a character with a very different relationship to death, then, creates so many interesting dynamics for characters. Assuming Dawnlight!Zoey’s personality is not radically different than any other versions of the character, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a descent amount of tension between her and Kirsty due to a flippant/much more casual attitude towards death. This is doubly true if Zoey is (at least initially) an obstacle in achieving whatever the gang’s goal is at the time of her introduction.

It is harder to theorize further than this right now with how little information we have about the world and also about what the plot of the story will be. Yes there is Rythian’s End Adventure but the very vague nature of Briony’s pilgrimage is really interesting too.

It could just be an easy way to allow for the plot to be whatever it needs to be, but that feels a little unusual to me considering the audio drama component of the series. If it was the usual LP/RP mixture then it wouldn’t catch my attention as much. With already knowing the basics of Kirsty’s backstory and the current plot following Rythian’s story, knowing so little about Briony feels intentional. The passing mention of “[her] people” but no mention of a name of them, the pilgrimage all combined with the lack of details about the goal of the pilgrimage when Briony’s quest is established as the base plot that the story will return to is very unusual (in the way that it suggests that that information is being hidden for a reason).

It could be that Briony is hiding it from the others for some reason or that the story is intentionally hiding it from the audience but not the characters. Every instance of dialogue that reinforces this could be used for either interpretation at the moment since we have so little information to use to rule things out, but it is definitely something I am keeping in my mind as the series continues.

I bring this up because the specific word choice of “pilgrimage” has been used to describe Briony’s journey *and* was mentioned in Rythian’s tattoos. Considering that the portion of the tattoos that the word was contained in was similar to “the alphabet used in the capitol”, Briony choosing to translate the word as pilgrimage is also interesting and suggests some sort of link there.

With Briony learning witchcraft, the story could have chosen to have Briony remember some symbols she saw in old manuscripts or something instead, but the story chose to have it be tied to a language she knows. It feels very intentional to hint at her backstory in such a way that implies some sort of connection to the truth behind the runes.

By connecting these two storylines, it begins to focus the story closer to its focal point and I will be really interested to see how Zoey will fit into this picture even if I don’t have enough points to connect her to it all quite yet, I think it is really fun looking at how much you can try and construct so early on in the series!

[planetaryaether]

What’s the Deal With Dawnlight Endermen: A post where I overanalyze a single sentence

Rewatching episode 4 of the audio drama, I am thinking about how Rythian says the endermen ‘shouldn’t be here’ about the nether which is really interesting for a few reasons. The first one is that it makes it like 2% more likely for Dawnlight to be canon to the main timeline because adding ‘endermen shouldn’t be in a specific realm’ into the list of similarities between Dawnlight and Blackrock ties them together even more.

Of course it isn’t impossible that it is a coincidence, but a coincidence strikes me as meta-narratively odd. Like retreading such similar ground to Blackrock season 3 (especially with the scripted nature of the audio drama making it a very intentional addition) so early in Dawnlight feels like a weird choice to make if it isn’t canon. Not that it would be a bad choice, especially as we get more lore it could definitely branch out or just be a reference to Blackrock and isn’t intended to be anything deeper. Only time will tell there. Most of this is looking at a canon Dawnlight because then I have more information to work with to try and piece things together, but Dawnlight being non-canon to the main timeline is equally fun and interesting (just harder to theorize with atm)!

With that said, if Dawnlight is canon then that has some interesting consequences for that line because, as far as we know, the anti-end field was specific to the Twilight realm. This leaves us with two major options:

1) Rythian’s memories aren’t exactly reliable right now so getting wires crossed wouldn’t be that unusual (but that could have happened in the overworld so them going to the nether basically for the enderman scene and then leaving makes me think that the Nether was chosen for this moment for a reason)

2) the anti-end field was extended to beyond just the twilight realm between where Blackrock left off and now. This is also interesting because it implies a much bigger plan than just ‘kill the ender dragon’. There would have been some sort of attempt to isolate creatures of the end. Now, it is also interesting that he didn’t have this sort of reaction when talking about the endermen in the overworld earlier that episode. It could be possible that it was the adrenaline or muscle memory of battle that helped jog a bit of his memory surrounding endermen. It is, however, also possible that, for an unknown reason, that the endermen were barred from the Nether but not the Brightlands.

Outside of combat, Rythian’s memories seem to be more like feelings (like the feeling that he would be okay in the mine rather than knowledge of why he would be okay). This is also interesting to me because it would have been very easy for that to be included in the earlier part of the conversation, but it wasn’t. It was only brought up in the Nether.

We really don’t know a lot about the magical cosmology of Blackrock since a lot of that was hinted at for later in season 3 before it ended, so it is difficult to say what the reason would be for why the anti-end field could be expanded to the nether but not the Brightlands. My first thought is that it has something to do with the mushroom forests, especially with the endermen in the episode being in a warped forest. (I admit idk how mushroom islands in the Brightlands would fit into this). Specifically choosing to associate mushrooms with locations that endermen can’t go has a lot of potential.

With the audio drama format they could choose literally any nether biome (or not specify any biome because for the purpose of combat it isn’t relevant), so in a format where everything that is done is chosen (even if specific meanings/interpretations weren’t intended), there is likely *some* reason for this choice even if you disagree with my analysis.

Note: if Dawnlight is not canon then it is likely just because hostile mobs cannot spawn in the warped forest so by ‘here’ Rythian was referring to the biome and not the nether as a whole. It is still interesting because Kirsty has some basic knowledge of the nether from her studies and so it feels like an active choice to have Rythian mention that rather than Kirsty. Yes it could just be an easy way to show Rythian having some memories/knowledge can come to the surface but it is a really interesting choice of information to me. Like the story has other ways of conveying that information to the audience/to the characters so there is still the question of why that specific information was what was chosen to be what Rythian remembered.