For those who forgot about those, remember the cubes from chapters 10-15, that were EX fights that actually were decently tough at the time of release, with question marks for names and nonsensical strings of attacks that looked like someone was mashing on a keyboard?
These guys?
Well, those attacks weren't nonsensical at all, as you might recall. In fact, each one of them was their own cipher/puzzle, that would lead to solving the true name of each cube instead of just their ??????? in varying strings.
The names in question were tied to space programs:
New Horizons
Jupiter (with accompanying mini-cube Ulysses)
InSight
OSIRIS-REx
Artemis
and
Syncom 3 (we'll get to this one later)
In any case, I never would have been able to crack a single one. I'm not exactly a puzzle guru. But I am good at stringing together niche canon knowledge and coming up with Deep Lore Cuts, and that's the topic of today's rant: Who Made The Cubes?
Now, those still remembering Dragalia's lore might remember that they abruptly brought back the cubes and branded them as 'Xenos' terminals'.
But, let me float you this thought:
Originally, Phares might have been the one they were intending on pinning the cubes to (and still potentially could have even in canon).
This thought, though initially crackish in nature, has just enough evidence to make one seriously consider an even grander conspiracy in Dragalia's world, so buckle in!
The first thing we need to consider is when the cubes were made. I had initially thought before this that the cubes could have been more of the 'ancient tech' that was slumbering around the continent. However, we don't actually have any comment that I can recall that actually says that. As such, they are free to be a modern invention, which again frees up the possibility that Phares could have created them under the Progenitor's influence.
There's more to this than just feasibility, though.
Let's look at one noted aspect of his character:
(Soumarhea notes that in the original Japanese, he adds a third sentence to this that essentially boils down to 'It's good for your brain!' which is not relevant at all but is charming)
And as we know, the cubes notably had some wonky puzzles built-in, varying from Caesar Ciphers to the Vigenère Cipher to unicode emojis spelling out a pictogram.
Most suspiciously, chapter 13's cube key was tied to hieroglyphics from Ancient Egypt.
What was a very quiet part of Phares' character, that they idly noted in his 'fun facts' character sheet much later on?
Talents: ancient languages
Hmm...
This is all a bit suspicious already. Let me add in some more ??? elements to this whole situation.
The final cube was essentially the final test. It used all the previous cubes' ciphers in its own. It rewarded you, in part, with this text:
FIRST, I EMBARKED INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN.
BUT ONCE THERE, I LOST MY WAY.
SECOND, I TRIED CALLING OUT. BUT NO SOUND CAME.
THIRD, I SPIED A GREAT TOWER. IT MADE ME LONG FOR COMPANIONS TO PLAY WITH.
SO DESPITE MY LIFE OF SOLITUDE, I MADE MYSELF SOME FRIENDS.
LET US CONTINUE ON TOGETHER, PLAYING FOR ALL ETERNITY.
This is where my conspiracy brain kicks on, because I'm here to claim that this might be applicable to Phares, in addition to the more overt connection of Syncom3.
Ahem...
FIRST, I EMBARKED INTO THE GREAT UNKNOWN. - The notable catalyst for... everything regarding Phares was that he died. Could that be construed as the 'Great Unknown?'
BUT ONCE THERE, I LOST MY WAY. - The second part of that catalyst was that he couldn't even die quite right, revived by Xenos. In a sense, he's 'lost his way' to even true death.
SECOND, I TRIED CALLING OUT. BUT NO SOUND CAME. - Phares is highly aware (according to Xenos) about Xenos' presence. Could he have attempted to communicate once he realized he was possessed?
Alternatively, we know that Phares didn't exactly like being possessed; The Blood That Binds started from Phares trying to recreate Alberius to try to shuck his possession onto. It could be that Phares wanted to/tried to call for help, but was unable to express it/receive any aid.
THIRD, I SPIED A GREAT TOWER. IT MADE ME LONG FOR COMPANIONS TO PLAY WITH. - Chapter 13, where Phares decides to secret himself away, seems to possess some structures that could be described as 'towers'.
SO DESPITE MY LIFE OF SOLITUDE, I MADE MYSELF SOME FRIENDS. - Phares is a noted loner in the fam despite being perfectly able to be social. Furthermore, the first thing he does once freeing Beren is take him here, to better use the ancient tech here. I'd also like to note one of his lines (again pointed out by soumarhea, ''Beren and I shared an otherness—a burning solitude.'')
LET US CONTINUE ON TOGETHER, PLAYING FOR ALL ETERNITY. - Phares spends the most of his time in the main story before he is freed messing with, -playing with, -others, with Beren at his side. I'm pretty sure he at least once uses the word 'playing' verbatim to describe his actions, as well.
Not exactly a smoking gun, but some more food for thought for sure.
Then, we have to look at where and how the cubes were positioned in the story. They pop up from chapters 10-15... a period where Phares was notably starting to gain presence/steam in the main campaign. In fact, after 14, I'd imagine that it wasn't too hard to guess that Phares and Beren would end up serving as the latest Big Bad, especially after their direct takedown of Morsayati. The classic 'bigger villain takes down the smaller one to show how big of a threat they are' display.
This makes it all the weirder how abruptly they disappear from the main campaign for many chapters on end... until you consider the fact that Nedrick was wholly the director's invention. It's far too easy to see how the Nedrick plot had to be inserted, leaving any Phares plans or arc to be cut+paste for later when he randomly steps in again.
The cubes were also seemingly intended as something important - if they truly were just silly little puzzles they added on a whim, then I'm not sure why they felt the reason to bring them back as 'Xenos' terminals' (again as Phares regains relevance) or for the cast to remember their mere existence.
This could have easily been a 'what the heck are those?' moment, but no, the party is familiar with the cubes:
This makes me think that they always had ties to something in canon, and presuming Xenos wasn't always in the 3 writers' scripts (a bold guess, I know)... the biggest connection is to Phares.
I also might like to suggest that Phares miiiiiight have left these cubes for Euden as a sort of test or hidden message he wanted to say but couldn't bring himself to do so in-person.
The cubes, notably, appeared in an order the exact reverse of Euden's pacts with the Greatwyrms.
His went Wind-Water-Flame-Light-Shadow, and the elemental cubes went Shadow-Light-Flame-Water-Wind.
More concretely, the first cube puzzle's solution was tied to two numbers above all others, as again pointed out by soumarhea:
2...and 7.
In other words, Phares and Euden's positions in the family. We also know that Phares considers Euden 'talented' in some unknown way, and seems to like seeing what he can do. His earliest actions in game are, in part, poking Euden with a metaphorical stick to see what he does and cheering him on all the way.
The cubes are also notably non-hostile. Even if you walk directly up to them, getting the ! of 'notice' from them that signals 99.% of the game's enemies to attack, they will not move nor attack until you strike the first blow.
That's an... oddly permissive design, were they purely just an evil deity's minion. It's not as though they only activate when attacked, either, as again, they're fully aware of you when you first move in the boss fight. And I would generally expect things of that nature to blast everything within a certain radius to stop anyone from messing with them.
Perhaps they were intended in part more as quiet records of secret messages Phares wanted to communicate/record but not say freely instead of beat-em-up targets by Euden.
For more minor, least-likely to be relevant observations from both willofwinnie and soumarhea:
-Phares has a bit of an odd connection with 'things in the sky'. There's Uranus, a heavenly body, but he also notably was in possession of a device called a 'World Ark', which kinda reminds one of the ark in canon, the people living in the sky. Potentially related to the 'things in the sky' the cubes referenced?
-The chapter 11 cube is keyed to Laxi and Masculas' names as the key to unlock the solution. Xenos... really has 0 reason to use these names. Phares, as a human living in a singular world with a smaller outlook and closer ties to Chelle+her archaeology efforts, has better reason than most to know and place any importance in their names.
-We know Phares has been to at least 3 of the places where cubes were found: Clave Loy'elune, Lake Reeve, and of course Sol Alberia. The first cube is found almost immediately after encountering him in Clave Loy'elune, to boot.
So, uh... yeah. I may not have definitive proof where Phares says 'haha yeah I made the cubes, you caught me', there certainly is a number of very odd coincidences that seem like they could point to him as the creator.
The biggest and only point I can really think of against this theory is the sheer number of cubes that seem to be present when Xenos finally attacks with them. While Phares is an Industrious Young Lad Schooled In Many Fields, I'm not sure he'd be casually making as many as seem to be shown.
This, however, could be potentially explained by the decision to reframe them as 'Xenos' terminals' coming so late in canon, if they truly were trying to excise Phares' possible participation in their creation. Or perhaps Phares had felt compelled to make them from Xenos' influence, Xenos trying to rebuild an army of them or something.
#FreeMyEuden - Or, How Dragalia Itself Tried To Run an Elaborate Smear Campaign Against Euden
I think there's a small implied twist to the oft-repeated sentiment/critique of Euden about his proclivity to 'personally' set worlds on courses to ruin. This isn't just Crazy H8ters repeating these sentiments, either, as even the main campaign itself expresses this sentiment through Euden himself:
...However, from looking at Zena in particular, I think she paints a very different picture than the 'Euden -> world-ending fool' that gets communicated. And she's the one who secretly did have perhaps the most world ending of all Eudens, secretly, what with the double possession he had going on that he then used to nuke most worlds!
What does Zena have to say about the mechanisms of all the worlds she's seen go to hell?
These lines are already suspect. When put in conjunction with another line, though...
...This paints a very different picture than the usual 'Euden keeps letting himself get ~possessed~' narrative many run with as the modus operandi for why Euden is the cause of so many worlds' destruction.
Zena is especially concerned about his friends being willing to 'act for his sake'. She has seen how his kindness 'turns on him'. Together, this frames a picture not of that one bad decision, but of his friends betraying him in some way. Alternatively, I suppose one could read these lines/concerns as for his shaky mental state in part because of that 'endless well' of selflessness and kindness, if she has seen him stumble over a metaphorical cliff, but without anyone willing or able to catch or support him.
I would also like to note that the AU versions of the party we see in the last chapter, the ones Beren summons... largely have complaints that are irrelevant to Euden's actions himself.
-Elisanne is just upset that Euden's birthright was a fake, and grew disillusioned with him because of it, as she viewed this false birthright as a deliberate deception that Euden, fully cognizantly, 'named himself' as royal
-Cleo is mad Euden gave a mercy kill to Alberius, only perceiving it as 'killing Alberius' and deciding to turn her grief onto Euden
-Midgardsormr is mad at Euden because an unknown cause started another species war between human and dragon (to be fair, he also has complaints more in line with Ranzal's, and still has a bit more valid ground on the implication that Euden joins the species war on the humans' side/killed him, but part of it is still not exactly something Euden himself is doing to ruin the world)
-Ranzal holds the most direct and reasonable complaint one can attribute to a Euden himself, one that's in-line with the usual framing that all these Eudens supposedly giving themselves to the Other is what causes that many worlds' destruction.
-Alex is doing this pretty much verbatim:
No, seriously, that's her complaint:
-Luca doesn't even specify any particular event, he's just mad that his Euden wasn't 'worthy' of them, which sounds almost more egotistical than anything else even if it could have a valid backing
-Mym also spends her time more trying to convince the canon Mym to abandon her known folly of chasing Euden, with a brief note of him killing her.
In summary, of the 7 people/dragons that Beren pits against the crew to show just how bad Euden is for the multiverse.... Only TWO, 3 if I'm being generous (Mids, as if Euden had started the species war, could have just said that, but he didn't, which leads one to think that Euden was just swept up in the conflict, y'know, how most people are), have any rational dislike of Euden himself for a world ending action he committed.
The rest is all displacement, something that they actually call out, both the party in the faultier logic presented here, and in this brief exchange it surprisingly reinforces the narrative that Zena painted all those chapters ago:
Aha.
They. Abandoned. Euden.
But wait, there's more, as provided by Soumarhea. Much stronger proof that Euden isn't as bad as even the narrative is inclined to portray him!
Elysium, one of the most worldly characters we know of (as a singular existence across all worlds), does not and cannot specify Euden as a singular world-ending cause. In fact, he doesn't even try to call him out as a 'majority' or even a disproportionate contributor. He tells story after story of HUMANITY making bad decisions, but never once specifies that 'oh yeah see that dude over there, Euden, he's almost always behind stupid ideas that kill the world.'
No, it's always humanity this, humanity that. Take a look:
But wait, there's more!
We do see Elysium give this rather strong claim:
So there may be a Alberian Royal Fam -> Game Over pipeline, but again, not even the current generation is specified. It could be Alberius' kids, it could be Aurelius' father as a known bad dude, it could be Chelle or Emile or fifty generations after the canon one, what have you not. But Elysium refuses to specify even that it's Aurelius and his clan of kids as the usual instigators.
It's not like he has any reason to pull his punches here, either. He wants to win, and stop Nedrick and Euden. If his words could have dissuaded one, two, three of their party from following Euden's lead and made the fight easier for him, the easiest thing in the world would have been to say that Euden is the cause of ending worlds, and that they are making a terrible mistake.
He doesn't.
In conclusion, between some of the most world-traveling characters we know, neither actually call out Euden as the person that causes all these problems.
Why is this the case, then? What has contributed to the notion that Euden is some world-wrecking fiend that so many believe?
Well, to that, we have to turn to... sampling!
Welcome to over-representation 101... and cherry-picking bias.
First up, overrepresentation.
As we know, there are an impossible number of worlds in Dragalia. This is the 'population', the entire group of worlds. Every single one, however many millions or billions or so on there are.
Next, if we want to study the causes of the worlds' ends, we can't count every single world! That would take too long. So we sample it, taking data from some to try to approximate the true numbers.
In the context of Dragalia, the 'sample' is the worlds' endings that we are exposed to, the data that we, the players, are given.
What were some of the world-ending scenarios in our sample, then?
-Zena's is tied to her Euden
-Audric's might be contradictory (that's a can of worms for another day) but is initially seemingly tied to Euden
Hm. Between these major characters' worlds sticking in the mind, the canon ch.14 close call, and finally the ch.26 crew of the AU party beating up on Euden verbally, it's no wonder many assume that Euden is a major part in many worlds' destruction. However, this seems like it might not actually be the case.
Even if we look at some of the other worlds, we see...
-Leonidas as the unambiguous world ender in Harle's world, no Euden involvement to speak of
-Gala Zethia's world ended because they lost to the Progenitor at ch.23,
That's already an equal amount of worlds where Euden is not at fault. What about the ch.26 AU party, though, doesn't that add 3 more to the tally of Euden?
Well... yes, but that's where we introduce that little 'bias' part of it. Beren is specifically summoning versions of the party who have died, and died angry at Euden. He was trying to break their bonds by cherry-picking (another statistical issue) the worlds where Euden is more likely to be a problem, at least the sort that makes 'good' people like the party mad at him.
This further contributes to that overrepresentation problem: the worlds' endings we see may well be a 'majority' of Euden's... we have evidence to suggest that it was a flawed sample to start, making it look like Euden is a higher cause of worlds than he actually is per those with a wider 'sample' of knowledge, like Elysium.
That's why Elysium has no particular grudge against Euden, nor is Zena overly hesitant about everything Euden does in case he's going down a familiar bad path, because they both have greater awareness that Euden is not necessarily personally inclined to cause a world Game Over screen.
Let me frame it a one last way, just in case.9
Essentially, if we were to use Royal Family Math, and I'm surveying the royal fam on the prevalence of wyrmscale, and I only ask Phares and Nedrick, my results would be 100%. Wow, how scary, 100% of the family has this terrifying terminal illness!
...But they don't. The ones with wyrmscale (25% of the actual natural children) are overrepresented in my sampling. 100% of the fam doesn't have wyrmscale, but my selection made it look like it.
The same thing is happening with Euden: Euden is a cause of several worlds' end. Euden is also never implicated as a major or notable cause disproportionate to either his family or the multiverse at large.
But with the game favoring exposure to scenes where Euden is addressed as a cause of a world's end, it make it look to the player that he is a greater problem than he actually is!
In brief, to quote soumarhea:
The narrative may have wanted to put #BlameEuden on trending, but from Elysium's recounts alone, the narrative is very unreliable on that front. Elysium blames Possibility, and Euden was catching strays. The narrative was just hell-bent on making Euden the scapegoat.
Finally, this ties into that quote at the very start: Euden himself, already inclined to assume fault and self-denigrate, has been exposed to that same biased sample, and has accepted these results as legitimate. He hears about Euden getting possessed and Euden betraying and Euden doing all these things... so he assumes that to be the case across the worlds and repeats it.
So the actual numbers - the ones that suggest it's more broadly humanity, with a subset of royal family-induced problems and a dash of perhaps his friends betraying him, - go unnoticed and under-recognized.
This all amounts to what feels like a smear campaign, as I realized and assembled these facts. As it is, even Dragalia's writers seemed inclined to frame Euden as a bigger problem than he actually is. Sure, maybe he's a higher odd than the average Joe, but he's not exceptional, and I figured now is the time to say it:
#FreeMyEuden from the faulty statistics Dragalia presented us!
Now, I've already... kinda explored some of the implications/realities of having dragonblood, but I think I've added some new material to my repertoire to gather and repeat! I also wanted to throw out my personal headcanons for how dragonblood could biologically mess with the fam a bit, but will make sure things are clearly noted between that and the more textual-based/evidenced comments we get about dragonblood.
That being said, here's some of the things we got at least some possible proof in canon for how dragonblood shuffles the royal family's bodies a bit.
Buckle up, even if my rate of producing posts has declined, my capacity to write at length has not!
Poison:
Not exactly addressed, but we see several times where the family just... walks out far less affected by poison than what you or anyone else in-universe expected.
We see one instance of this in Valyx's story, where he and several soldiers are exposed to inhaled poison, the Brume. The soldiers go down immediately, but Valyx holds on long enough to not only get himself out of there, but also shapeshift to shield them from a cave in. He then is unconscious for a while, but the soldiers there are later framed as having been in far dire straits than just being unconscious for a while.
Mind you, these were people who were exposed for less time than Valyx. To be fair, as I initially thought when this example was presented to me, Valyx is a Big Strong Dude, it stands to reason that he simply is a bit harder to bring down than more normal dudes, but as we can see with our next example, this seems to be an ability of the fam regardless of their fitness or size...
Exhibit two is Emile, whom we never really see any hints of physical prowess or fitness to him. Emile's story opens up with Werner attempting to fatally poison him with some very fast-acting stuff, and then throwing him in a river.
Emile falls unconscious. He seemingly stays unconscious (or at least, fails to retain any memories of wakefulness) until his floating body reaches SAINT LOTIER. That's half a continent away!
But, somehow, despite receiving no medical attention, no help of any sort, and his past few days(?) being spent floating, Emile somehow manage to survive what Werner fully and carefully selected to fatally poison him.
Hm. There's twice now that we see the family pull through poison after taking a brief few-day nap instead of dead...
I think there might be a third example I've forgotten, but it's not coming to mind immediately. More importantly, we also have at least one possible tie back to dragons for how this could then explain why this is the case for the dragonblooded, as Uranus, an exceedingly knowledgeable dragon, seems to imply that most poisons don't really phase dragons:
Ironically, this was a headcanon of mine in a fic that I hadn't realized there was any suggestion in canon! I had instead speculated that they had some resistance to most chemicals because of their dragonblood. This was handy historically when it came to dodging assassination attempts or other motives for drugging royalty, but also has been a bit of a pain (literally) because it means that many medicines or other substances likewise don't work as well or at all. They can't take Tylenol together :(
Vasculature
This one's pretty cut and dry. We were told even before the game began that the royal fam seems to have a different vasculature than normal people.
"Unique blood vessels" is a notably distinct wording from "unique blood" or the like, if we were strictly talking about the red stuff actually flowing in them, or even just 'altered blood vessels' if it were the same thing but different. It also gives a possible component for the running suggestion that dragonblood isn't a guaranteed (as is also put forth here with the stress of 'have all inherited the blood of dragons' as notable). Passing on whatever genetic quirk that gives them strange veins may be the thing that enables them to actually use their dragonblood. Maybe it helps them channel draconic mana or something, I dunno.
To combine the above two points, we also have the hilarious notion that something about their blood is especially poisonous itself. Euden darn near kills Vania, an exceptionally powerful vampire described as 'nearly immortal' (albeit while young), solely through giving her a little bit of his blood:
Mind you, it's more framed as though dragonblood would also be a cure-all to a fully grown, powerful vampire, and Euden's indeed later acts as more of a magical steroid to Vania in her story, but still. This also makes the first Halloween event all the funnier, what with Ranzal freaking out about Euden potentially letting a vampire in the Halidom and them all being 'doomed'... but Euden is the one person in the Halidom with the ability to kill vampires if they try to bite him.
And since this is more attributed to dragonblood than any of Euden's other... oddities, the rest of the family also likely has this effect on vampires.
For headcanon material, I use the canonical basis of 'they have extra veins' to then hypothesize that because of this, they bleed easier, harder, and longer than the average human. Extra veins means more places to bleed from! It also plays with the prevalence of hemophilia in European royalty, historically, giving them a similar thing without eternally endangering them to minor injuries - sure, they will bleed for longer, but they still do clot and all that. Healing further helps them live through this extra bleeding.
Finally, related to the blood itself, it's shown several times as an ingredient in especially powerful magics. We see this in Delphi's story, Dazzling Defense, as well as the main campaign, where their blood is tied to sealing magics like the book, the monuments in ch.10, and more. It makes sense- we know that there's a black market for dragons and dragon parts in Dragalia, so it stands to reason that anything attributed to and related to draconic power holds power of its own as a magical thing.
Eyes
While my ye olde thought that dragonblood might create the speckle of red or purple that many in the family have in their eyes, that was unfortunately not the case.
However, there still are several characteristics to suggest that there might be a little something different for how the royal family's peepers work.
In short, you know how Morsayati changes the eyes of whomever he's possessing into Scary Red? Well, there's more than once instance of a non-possessed family appearing to do that in art, suggesting it may be just A Thing that they can do. (Of course, this is all informed with a hearty dose of 'taking the art as it is' instead of the possible excuse that we got so many arts of them like this just because it's cool, but hey. )
This leads into the second point, where we similarly see their pupils constrict into more of a lizard- er, dragonlike, pupil, about that same time:
(Also note Leonidas' partial shift here, which is a thing that is never brought up or mentioned...).
It's easy to tie this to their dragonblood, since dragons in Dragalia were often depicted with this sort of reptilian pupil as well:
Soumarhea, some time ago, also speculated that this extends to a broader capacity to just Make Their Eyes Glow with additional examples of Beren and even Emile.
There's actually few components for how this is possibly backed up textually!
First is the continuing tie of eye color changes to dragon mana. Nedrick is a perfect example of this - he outright states that his appearance with his black hair and red circles in his eyes is a result of Bahamut's draconic influence over him:
This is further backed by his colors turning back to his natural blond and green in the ending. So if Neddy, hyped on dragon mana, has part of his eyes permanently changed to red, it's possible that dragon mana gives them this ability to have eye-lights or change their color/pupil size. Note that Nedrick also has the very thin pupils like Euden did in the movie when he shifts his eyes to red. It might be that when they're using or otherwise getting hyped on mana, -usually draconic, -that's how it happens.
Alternatively/possibly concurrently, it could also be a reflection of their emotional state. Most of the times we do see their eyes turning red or glowing when they're not possessed, the fam member is being especially emotional in some way... Usually angry.
Heck, you could even use this explanation to say that's why Morsayati possession turns their eyes red - because Morsayati is a being of such hatred and constant anger that he triggers this response permanently instead of it just being a brief emotional surge.
This also fits well with Valyx, who is pointedly not possessed under the Agito mask. His emotions, however, are very heightened to the point where his logic and self control are diminished. He immediately stops glowing red once he's free of the mask. It also meshes well with whom we don't see shift or glow: Phares and Chelle are generally the most composed in the family, who keep their emotions in check. There never is a time in which either are truly pressed or angered.
Soumarhea also made the good point that this whole thing being a natural capacity of theirs helps to explain how others reacted to the possession of Aurelius and Zethia. It'd be one thing if they suddenly waltzed in, eyes all red when they never were before, but if it truly is a thing that can happen naturally, it raises less immediate flags that something is deeply wrong.
For headcanon territory, I tend to just say that their senses are a bit sharper on average, eyesight included. Nothing especially dramatic, it's not a superpower, but consistent enough to be a noted trait when you're specifically testing them. On the flipside, having weird eyes that simultaneously try to be both rounded and slitted in pupils probably enables some weird problems or disorders.
Also, that this is a thing that they consciously try to not do. If it is an emotional response, well... better to keep that under wraps so others can't see how your mood light eyes are feeling at the moment!
---
So... yeah. That's all the things I recall that we have some possible evidence to concretely suggest. My only other thought I was thinking of throwing in was that a few of the fam that show more than just their first front teeth seem to have more pronounced canines than is usually drawn in Dragalia, but we don't have anything besides the art to back this up.
...I still carry it as a headcanon, though. I say they're not really any more functional than ordinary canines, if anything it just makes it easier to bite their tongue and bite it harder.
That kinda blends in to my next thought regarding headcanons about the fam's biology because of dragonblood: I generally try to make each trait a bit of a wash instead of it being a pure 'upgrade'. Sure, they might have a bit sharper eyesight or depth perception on average, but it also leaves them prone to eye problems. Sure, they have special veins carrying draconic mana, but they're in a bit more danger because all those extra veins make it easier to experience significant bleeding.
I think this also is in line with what else we did know about dragonblood. As previously alluded to...
Here, where I go over some of the other implications of possessing dragonblood, health-wise,
💬 0 🔁 12 ❤️ 21 · A Dangerous Balance · So I was thinking last night (as one does), when suddenly an idea struck me: the Alberian royal fam
and
Here, where I instead show how even using their cool blood is very dangerous
💬 0 🔁 9 ❤️ 12 · The Dangers of Dragon Pacts · So, in a recent post, I commented in the tags that pretty much every functional aspect of dr
...The family seems to have quite a few unique problems due to their blood. It itself is a known danger that opens them to unique diseases, seemingly tampers with their biology, and presents new dangers if they decide to use its unique capacities to pact. It has opened new avenues of gaining and solidifying their power, but has also endangered the bloodline.
Some last miscellaneous headcanons for the road if you like my nonsense:
-The family has the capacity to live longer than the average human's 70-80, with their 'natural' average lifespan around 90-100... but many instead die shockingly young if they draw a bad stick and get smacked with familial diseases or something, on top of the standard risks of being royal.
-The Syndicate is very interested in acquiring dragonblood, ideally with a captive family member. The Doctor's actions in the first Syndicate event would actually have drawn a ton of ire from other higher-ups had he lived, because he was immediately endangering Euden to use as an experiment and discarding his dragonblood as a resource even if it worked. Most of the others would place more value in using the fam as an eternal blood bank for dragonblood. Either because they want to see if they could give it to others through means besides reproduction or simply as a magical reagent. I'm sure they'd also be interested in spreading dragonblood via reproduction to then use descendants as experiment fodder to see if that works better, too.
-People with wyrmscale tend to register as 'dragons' to the mana-sensitive. We know that those afflicted have mana 'nearly identical' to dragons, so this is just saying that a lot of people/dragons have to do a double take when meeting the likes of Phares. Even other dragons have to pause a bit and wonder if this is a fellow dragon for a little bit.
-The family is instinctively a bit inclined to more draconic/'animalistic' expressions (ex: hissing at pain, baring their nonexistent fangs in anger), but they quash it because they are humans and it's considered weird. They kinda let themselves go if they transform because now it's 'acceptable', hence their canonical proclivity to roar in dragonform despite being fully human in mind.
-The royal family doesn't tend to fall ill often but they tend to fall harder when they do. Pros: few embarrassing/un-noblelike sniffles. Cons: More likely to die. A big chunk of this is just the environment - I think that while magic makes Dragalia a much 'cleaner' world than a historical one, they still were born and raised in a castle to harden their immunity systems against the common local threats.
-They're a bit more sensitive to temperature changes and tend to run a lower average temperature. You know how alcohol increases the risk of hypothermia because it makes your blood vessels expand closer to the skin, letting them be cooled quicker? For them it's just the fact that they have more blood vessels, some closer to the skin, which makes it easier for external heat or cold to start influencing their temperature.
-They share similar but generally more mild reactions to things that affect dragons. Bellathorna, a thing that's poisonous to humans but not dragons in Xainfried's story, wouldn't affect them much. Conversely, I find it funny to say that this makes a very common plant used almost constantly in Alberian cuisine very poisonous to them because it is to dragons.
-Beren actually has worse eyes than the average person because of their pink color and his, uh, developmental circumstances. Also, his turning red was his 'natural' ability, him turning to pink was that then getting hyped on black mana (also why his eyes were pink to begin with)
-Phares' eyes instead would flip to the purple color he has in his eyes instead of red if he got furious enough
That's all I have for now, but yeah, that's the summation of both the evidenced and the headcanony stuff for how dragonblood might affect them! Hopefully both the more canonical stuff and my own spins were entertaining!
Making Sense of Nonsense: Trying to Straighten Out Dragalia's Story
As we all unfortunately know, Dragalia Lost's story went a bit... off the rails, especially by the end. Between hurriedly trying to conclude various storylines, condense whatever plan they might have had (or just invent a quicker end to the story in general than they had in mind), and more, things got very very confusing fast.
You know it's bad when the characters themselves are constantly saying iterations of 'I dunno what the heck is going on, but let's do x!' or 'I understood none of that!'
(Trust me, this is far far far from the only quote, but it's a good example for what I mean)
Problems didn't exclusively start at the end, though, as there's another overshadowing problem I think is a big contributor for how things started to go wrong.
Namely, character bloat. Many have noted that the 'main cast' at some point just kept growing and growing, but all this did was increasingly stifle the 'free lines' for people to be actual contributors to the plot.
Sometimes characters would vanish for literal chapters, say a few lines, and then vanish again for the rest of the chapter. There was some attempt to remedy this with the main five, at least, since they had little 'chapters' with them taking a stronger lead. Ranzal in 17, for instance, Luca in 18, etc... But for the likes of Alex? Laxi? Who were they, again? Are they even with the group? Who knows.
So how can one possibly start to glue together some pieces of a more coherent plot?
Well, that's a massive question. I'm certainly not going to rewrite the whole game. But I can give some ideas for where things were going wrong, and where I have some ideas for how to piece things together in a way I think overall makes for a stronger plot.
Let's get started!
Okay, first things first, character bloat.
The solution is simple, if probably unfortunate: get rid of many from the 'main party'. Now, I don't mean delete them. No. These characters often have moments or are useful supports/additions to the main crew in certain moments, and I am trying to broadly 'stick' whenever possible to the original plot.
As such, my idea more boils down to letting them tag along for a few chapters and then leave, where they can maybe take up an 'important B party' role. Let Alex start to be more involved with Halidom intelligence operations, let Laxi be there to help defend the Halidom.
Since it'd take a while to go down the whole list for every party member, here's a quick tierlist for my general thoughts about each party member as it was:
While these generally correlate to my overall liking of these characters, it's not absolute. Mym would be bottom tier otherwise.
So what are my standards here? My look is their overall impact on the plot, how they change it, etc.
What I consider a good addition (and a good model for what I'd change for the others), are characters like Chelle. She joins the party, is an active participant for several chapters, gives a different angle to help the party (as in ch.17, where she tames Euden's band of 'we will immediately fight anyone doing wrong' for a spell), and then leaves.
Beautiful. Gatov and Nedrick, while not as good, still are more active in the plot (or sometimes are the plot for a little while with Nedrick, as the antagonist). Gatov is a strong presence in 17, also giving perspective and is an active force in the chapter's plot. He continues to help guide the group, and chimes in at relevant intervals as when he and Chelle recognize Audric as Aurelius.
Nedrick admittedly fades a bit once he joins Team Euden, but he still sneaks in to being a more active voice than some other older additions.
Next tier is 'characters that have their moments but generally don't do much'. Unfortunately, Zena falls into this category. She has a few moments, and is most active in ch.1-5, but then fades so far into the background you forget she's there until ch.25 comes and it's time for a brief little gut punch. Aside from 1-5, 14, and 25, she is a very quiet presence for someone who is in reality another Zethia might generally imply on the plot and character reactions. What, Chelle has nothing special to think about being able to meet another version of her sister?
Laxi and Mascula have a moment or two in 11 and 14, but that's about it aside from the 'let's throw Gala Mascula in for a second' moment.
Same for Mym, as she's mostly regulated to useless fawning over Euden. Her moments come in 3, 8, and, if I'm feeling exceptionally generous, when they're fighting Jinlorda and he steals her form.
Sheila for a while can hardly be considered a character, and what she has afterwards doesn't really impact the plot (or is an impact in a way that ties to the major problems the lowest tiers bring).
Oh boy, but when it comes to Ilia and Origa... these characters actively wreck the plot and even the other characters. These again aren't 'delete the character from existence', but they need to be removed from the main party prompto.
So what do we do, if we model characters more around Chelle's presence?
Alex (oh Ilia I forgot to add Alex to the tierlist, she goes in minimal impact) joins chapter 8, sticks around to the start of 13, when she already left with Leonidas. Easy to make that 'leaving' more permanent, as it's a natural place already. Exceptionally natural, I dare say.
Heck, let her have a talk or two to help start nudging Leonidas in a new direction/perspective to help bridge his changes from 12 to 16. To quote one Notte, BOOM.
Laxi/Mascula joins 11, sticks to 14, perhaps leaving to organize the retreat from the capital or defend the Halidom.
Brunhilda... 3-8. In a broader rewrite, I'd like to rotate the Greatwyrms between chapters like they vaguely seemed like they wanted to do (as Mids technically is in ch.2, the dragons popping up in 6-10, etc), but again if we're sticking closer to canon, that's her range of additions to the plot. And even that is really just '3. maybe 4. 8.' You can maybe have it to where absorbing Mars' power makes her need to separate for the others' safety or something, chill out in a lava bath for a while, anything.
Gatov/Sheila, the most natural place for them to leave is at the end of 23/24. Perhaps Sheila needs time to recover after getting her soul back or something, and Gatov wants to check up/meet the rest of the family after he promised Aurelius to look after his kids.
Nedrick is exceedingly tough to quantify, since he's not really a 'party member' in the same way as most of these are for the bulk of his time in the plot. He can stick around though, as I do think there could've been room for him as a longer-term member as a foil to Euden.
Zena is also exceedingly tough. I think the best and quickest thing is just to use some of the space freed from the removal of the other party members as more space for her to talk about things and interact.
Time to address the elephant in the room: Ilia, Origa, and the entire late chapter plots need to go. At least be heavily changed.
I've already ranted a bit about Ilia here for why her character is frustrating and often nonsensical from a lore standpoint, but this is a problem that extends to Origa too.
Let me take a small exert from soumarhea, who has cultivated something of a vendetta against the blue-haired lady...
Take all of Euden and Beren's pain, tenfold it, and pass it to Origa. I'm promoting her from the 'I couldn't care less if you exist or not' tier to the 'I'm acknowledging your existence just to hate on you' tier. Kudos to the writers for sloppily writing a character so ass, I am actually experiencing feelings. For the wrong reasons! Just thinking about how she was written made my blood boil!
What has soumarhea so frustrated? Well... Origa is a fine case of a character that has no business being with the heroes, and one that the writers attempted to do a 180 on but royally failed to stick a landing.
Let's summarize Origa before the 180:
-She's planning (and carries out) a mass sacrifice of 666 presumably mostly innocent individuals, all for an uncertain gain of control of a massively powerful demon lord, whom she is also freeing, so good luck if that 666 gamble didn't work (it didn't)
-Is the undisputed boss of the authoritarian caste state of Grams, where we're regularly reminded is so stratified on class ("The Canon") that commoners can't even worship in its churches, which you'd think would be a priority for a religious theocracy.
She, despite moping and groaning in her lines about how hard everything was for her, how cutthroat and brutal this is, shows 0.00 interest in fixing dink about this, making her come across as the epitome of 'screw you I got mine'. See her comments in ch.17, where she pointedly notes that 'her church has no place for ineptitude'. This is not a woman invested in fixing anything wrong with the society she now controls.
-A very uncool lady who wants to kidnap Euden and maybe Zethia as a bonus for unknown, nefarious reasons for personal gain and satisfaction, risking war with not just 1 but up to 3 regional superpowers and incensing more (Alberia and New Alberia under Leonidas, and even Dyrenell if Emile is incensed by someone taking away his ability to harass Euden).
-Does this sound like a good person, trying her best in a dog-eat-dog world that she's been forced into?
When Graht is expressing more restraint in his evildoing, something is wrong. Also note the nationalistic fervor.
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Intermission fun fact:
Ch.17's plot has this under-running thread that the Apostles might be getting fed up with how things are in Grams and, being decent human beings who want to better things for others, are scheming with the Archbishop Basel and the royal family of Grams to wrest power back to the King (implied as a good person who actually is trying to use his limited power to do good in the world/change things) and institute a better order.
Cool side plot that would've been, huh? One that actually might've made sense, too!
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All of this is to say: Origa is a very clear villain, and one that would absolutely work well in the main campaign as another force hounding the party. Euden chases Nedrick and Zethia, and is hounded in turn by the Northern Church authorities pressing him deeper into the north.
This makes her baffling reversal into a party member almost disgraceful.
Are we seriously thinking that Zethia, morally considerate, justice-motivated Zethia, would like to run carefree in the flowers with a mass murderer? Would Euden watch, knowing well just how much human suffering has been wrought by this lady? A more reasonable, in-character reaction for the both of them, were Origa forced to join up with them, is for them to be at least somewhat wary, distant, and serious.
Are we seriously trying to use this character to lecture Beren (and in another instance Euden) by shoving in a half-thought connection between them, but doing so so poorly that some of her lines almost make more sense in reverse?
"Why did you surrender all hope?! Why did you not keep looking?! For hope will never come to one who does not bother to seek his own salvation!"
Beren's entire argument he literally just made was that he, trapped for like two decades, has searched every line of possibility and still found nothing better for him. "Why did you not keep looking?!" Is a farcical question when he just explained he had. He did. He kept looking, and still came up short. He was expressing that hope for something better, but was never rewarded.
It makes more sense for her to question his reasons and him respond with his tale, because as it was, Origa sounds dangerously stupid.
To further quote soumarhea:
Origa keeps dying because of situations killing her, but Beren keeps dying JUST BECAUSE HE EXISTS. Possibility made it possible that he was born, but Possibility also doesn't want his continued existence.
Also, it was literally Satan showing Origa those worlds where she ends up dead because he wants to break her spirit so he can take over, but Beren went out of his way looking for a world where he survived.
In short: Origa damages the integrity of characters around her, is card-carrying villain that they awkwardly shoved into a heroic role in their quest to seek out every important pretty magical girl in the game, and even in this forced role still doesn't add any good interactions with other characters.
The biggest to-do for fixing these problems is just to get rid of the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE! plot line, and letting Ilia and Origa fade into roles they can actually succeed in, the ones they were intended for. It's awkwardly shoved in from the start, with some mumbo-jumbo being spewed about how 'actually, Auspexes are imperfect copies of the Progenitor and are able to contact him(????)' then trying to usurp Euden and the Greatwyrms' bonds, all in service of the nonsensical 'creating worlds' thing that goes on between them, Beren, and Xenos.
They don't even really chew on any of the implications of that. Like, for instance, are we supposed to take this revelation of Auspexes just being able to contact the Progenitor as proof that Phares would be considered an 'Auspex' (Where's my Auspex Phares alt/AU?!?)
(Another sidenote, if we are supposed to consider Phares an Auspex, what made them select Zethia over him as Auspex? We already knew that Phares' mana would likely come off as a mini dragon to others, which with dragons being so holy and all, might be a draw to the Church. Now, it's beyond easy to say 'because he was sick with terminal illness', and I agree that would probably disqualify him, but then I would want a throw-in line that he or other siblings were considered for the role for it to propely tie this canon lore implication together)
What about Beren, is he an Auspex too? What do they even mean, 'contact the Progenitor'? When? How? Why???
I'm not even going to try to understand the whole nonsense about 'creating worlds'. That should be a simple concept, but when it's bogged down with exchanges like these, well... AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE plot lines have a way of making even simple things like that obtuse.
Are we saying that the Auspexes (+Beren) are just... creating world-ception and somehow making a location be marked as 'another world' when it wholly exists on another? How does that work with things like chains of causality?
Other plot points/events that I'm not quite sure I like include:
-Trying to force a link between the AUSPEXES ASSEMBLE members and the Greatwyrms. Let Euden have his dragons, mmkay? His whole special thing was an abnormally high ability to use draconic power.
-Mordecai, somehow wandering away from Ilia and in that timeframe somehow becoming Super Sage, Knower of All Truths. While his is at least a little bit more targeted/'reasonable' knowledge about Xenos than Ilia's I Know Absolutely Everything, I find the sudden flip bad. Mordecai as a character was defined by his innocence and trying to learn about life as it is, so having him suddenly in the campaign as this enigmatic cool rescuer feels like a jump.
-Theoretically, one could have had a cool/nice little moment where the gang rallies around the Halidom. It survived, why not just have at least one little thing of everyone being relieved that their current allies are ok, and are cheering them on/defending things?
-Relatedly, as I have discussed before, I feel that the royal family's deaths in that timespan went... completely unnoticed. I mean, really, by the text, almost every single member of the family died right there in that ch.25-26 bridge. You know, the family that the entire plot's drama revolved around for the first half of the game? Even when it outright doesn't make sense for them to be gone, as textually at least Phares was at the Halidom from his trajectory after parting in ch.23, but is strangely absent with everyone else at the Halidom.
Even if you want to keep this exactly how it is, at least have Euden and Zethia, maybe even Nedrick for a bit of flavor, feel a bit rattled that their entire family is just... gone. Like, yes, so is everyone else they knew, but that one is a bit more personal.
-Again harkening back to my first post regarding some of the nonsense of late Dragalia, the whole idea of the Gran Fiore needs to be changed. Both for how it gets brought up by Ilia, and its mere existence. The Gran Fiore was never a part of the Halidom, and has no reason to be either spared the destruction or be parked right beside it for the group to use (and if it was in the canon world when it was protected, add Chelle and other siblings as likely people that ought have survived the rest of the world going boom)
Sigh.
This is getting way way too long as it is, so it looks like this ongoing series is going to get a part three. If the first two were rants about characters, their damage on the plot, and various harmful elements, part 3 will be more of a focus for what potentially could've/should've been done instead.
A Mostly Comprehensive Guide To Niche Phares Details
...Because trying to sift through Phares as a character can be challenging at the best of times and because there are a bevy of details I have assimilated as a given that many may not know about.
If I had to describe the goal of this post, it's to disseminate information so I feel less like this whenever me and soumarhea talk Phares, as resident Phares Scholars(tm):
Because, boy, if you dig deep, you can noodle out some rather hidden fun facts about Phares, in much the same vein that there are a few funny facts about Leonidas that he never talks about but the game indicated, like his pet jaguar or the manor he owned in Sol Alberia.
I especially want to share because Phares is particular among the family for having so much of his actual character obfuscated for a large portion of the game, leading to many wrong impressions of him as a person (understandably).
So... here we go!
I'll start lazy and use the first fill-in-the-blank up there: Phares' fields of study and expertise.
Phares is generally shown or implied to be skilled in:
-Archaeology
-Alchemy (it was his job before canon world started going nuts, Court Alchemist)
-Ancient Languages (also seen in main campaign by him being able to use all those ancient machinery)
And last but certainly not the least complicated,
-Medicine
This one... is more evidenced by a collection very small things, so between that and the fact that I've come to treat this as a 'given' when writing adult Phares, am going to be a little more thorough on.
First, he seems well-read enough and studied in it to allow him to estimate how he's deteriorating. This overall is a minor thing, since who knows if he was given guidance for markers to watch out and estimate on his own.
However, his meeting with Uranus as a child led to him creating the antidote to a poison and then 'nursing' Uranus, which is a bit of a more... involved process than just a one-time, 'take the cure and everything is instantly fine again' sort of thing. Mind you, he was fairly young while doing all this, as he was young enough that they couldn't use his adult portrait for it and didn't want to create a child/teen one just for his story we were robbed.
But let's assume he just did standard good kid stuff that anyone could figure out, bring the dragon a drink, food, etc every so often. What else do we have?
Phares claims he files medicinal treatment as an 'experiment', which, with his above interest in actively conducting experiments instead of just leaving that work to others and reading about it, suggests a bit more direct involvement/interest.
The real silver bullet to me is this line:
Phares is capable of producing medicine to cure previously-incurable illnesses that whatever sum of physicians, apothecaries, etc, were not able to. If one wanted to be as uncharitable to him as possible, one could say that he just got exceedingly lucky in his alchemical process somehow or that the answer was stupidly simple that even someone outside the field could find it... but, like... which is more likely? Phares having actual competence enough to make educated progress in search of a cure, finds something promising, and it ends up working, or Phares stumbling on a plant no one has tried or his cauldron blew up in a new and interesting way that he somehow jumped to wanting to use it to solve this illness?
Even more so, he's willfully trying to create more medicine for himself. Once might be an accident. But if he treats it as just another task he can do... I would think he is educated enough in the field to be making logical progress on what the creation of medicine involves.
Back to the more vague elements for one last point, I suppose one could even lean into things like him being the one left behind to guard Euden in ch.23, after he was majorly hurt. Zethia and Zena are purportedly occupied with the general infirmaries, so they're out of the picture, but why would the family designate who they were just trying to kill and who was just possessed as the watcher over their injured?
I dunno about you, but I still might be a bit wary to ensure that the sibling that has been possessed for like a decade plus is not susceptible to repossession before leaving him in charge of the person most incapable of fighting back right now, unless they felt like there was no other option.
For the 'why' of why he'd even pick that up, I believe that one stems from his earlier interest in alchemy. Alchemy historically has had a lot of interest in panaceas and medicine, so it stands to reason (especially as his wyrmscale developed) that he might have branched out to that area of study as well to better his odds he actually could find a way to help himself. Gotta know how the body works to actually find a cure and all that.
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Now, for something I can show a lot of pictures for to break up all that text: his handedness.
In short, Phares is seemingly left-handed, or at least ambidextrous. He almost always seems to be doing things, -and especially things that require more dexterity, -with his left hand. Examples include:
Seemingly flipping pages with his left...
Most damning, having his ink quill on his left...
Even things as silly as pulling his shirt down, he does with his left!
For another stronger piece of evidence for his handedness, the art of him as a child has his left hand over the book. Mind you, he's describing how weak he is and how difficult everything is for him anymore as he's writing. He likely doesn't move his journal too much and wants it right there for him to be able to write in.
But wait, there's his unit art! He's holding his book in his right there!
Well... note the size of that book. He's going to need another hand to do the finer task of, ya know, actually flipping the page. In other words, his left hand.
At least, if I as a rightie were given a massive book and told to flip pages, I would hold the book with my left and flip with my right. Maybe I'm just weird!
Now, this admittedly does not translate to his actual unit, but that's because literally every unit was right handed, so as to keep things easy for both devs and players not being thrown off for where they thought they were striking, all that.
Also admittedly, sometime he does seem to be using his right for other activities like drinking tea, but overall there's a startling number of times where Phares is caught left-handed in activities like writing especially that usually implicate the preferred handedness.
So, yeah, Phares seems like he might have been a leftie!
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Phares has some hidden Greek roots in his overall name/unit - his skills in Japanese are all JP spellings of Greek, so his skills were like 'desmos orkos' and all that (that the translation cut through to give us the English equivalents, like that one is 'Oath of Bonds'). His name is similarly a more complicated matter, as my various thoughts about its origin circle around:
-Literally, his name is 'headlights' or 'lighthouses' in French, or one could also use 'Pharos' as a more historical rendition of that, see "Pharos of Alexandria"
-Phanes, a progenitor light god in an earlier Greek mythos, who shares some other thematic curiosities that make me wonder if he was the name inspiration, especially since the family/Alberia seems to take some inspiration from the Greek/Roman era.
-Technically Phares is an alternative rendition of Peres, a biblical figure
-Unlikely but I find it funny there was a highly-educated historical dude in the USA with the last name Phares so it leads to funny wikipedia article reading:
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-Of all things, one of the pre-canon relationship trees decided to label that Phares and Leonidas considered each other 'worthy rivals' and leave it as the only sibling-sibling relationship chart note that wasn't Euden's with the rest of the fam.
I'll mostly defer to past-me if you want some of the quiet ways this was expressed since they definitely don't have the sort of loud, violent, dramatic rivalries we see a lot in fiction!
Another interesting tidbit to this is that in the original Japanese, Phares seemingly neglects to use any sort of honorific for Leonidas and instead just calls him by name. Most of the other siblings are pretty dogged about honorifics, even Chelle, whom I maybe could see her brand of teasing irreverence dropping it. But no, she seems dogged in referring to her elders as -sama.
Mind you, I'm not exactly any kind of cultural expert or language expert, but soumarhea, some good months ago, who seemed a bit more versed in this, -suggested it as an expression of particular closeness or familiarity, especially since Leonidas doesn't kick up any fuss about it (and we all know that Leonidas is probably going to be steadfast about being 'respected') and accepts it as-is.
It's these things that make me think that they might be especially close in age and general relationship. Sort of like the emergent 'we need an heir ASAP!' race with the subsequent 'we need a backup heir STAT!' that tends to occur in royal families, before they slowed a bit for Chelle and so on.
...This is something I might make another post about for how I view the family relationship dynamics when writing them in things like Scaling and why, but yeah. Sneak peek, I guess?
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-Speaking of sibling relationships, Phares and Euden also seemed to be fairly close. Obviously not like Euden and Zethia, but if I had to guess overall 'family friendliness familiarity' ranking for Euden at the start of the game, he'd probably be no.2. (Technically Emile would probably be more 'familiar' than Phares, but we know that Emile's relationship with Euden was already strained at the start before he left, so... I guess it depends on how much weight you want to put on 'familiarity' versus good relations with?)
Why do I think this?
First, I'd like to point out an adjacent phenomenon: Euden, very early Dragalia, is utterly convinced that someone is impersonating Aurelius and that his father needs 'rescue'. He comments or narrates things like:
"I was certain my real father back at the royal city knew the answer..."
and
"The impostor posing as my father was at Mount Adolla..."
This is because Euden just knows that there's no way his father could suddenly turn on a dime to be acting like he is now. Technically true, since he's possessed and not 'himself', but the fact remains. Euden holds such faith that his father just would NEVER act like he is now, that he 'disbelieves' his eyes and comes up with a more magical/convoluted explanation for how someone who sounds and looks exactly like his father is doing all of this.
However, by the time the rest of the sibling chapters roll around, Euden is... overall much more accepting of their sudden slant towards villainy.
Emile, while it's a surprise he's going to the depths he did, isn't a massive shock that Euden refuses to believe he could ever do. Again, their relationship was already growing strained at the start.
He doesn't really spend any time hesitating or disbelieving what Leonidas is doing.
Similarly, he's not really all that perturbed by Chelle. Kinda like with Emile, he's more 'how could you stoop to using this?' than doubtful of, ya know, the actual stooping.
Valyx comes with no surprise at all, -because he's not really doing too much out of the ordinary to start with. He made it clear he was there to preserve order and take care of a threat that the nation is perceiving - both things Euden finds natural for Valyx even if he wishes for him to have decided something else.
This, to some degree, is natural. They're less dramatic about their entire personality swapping or anything else that might lead Euden to think they, too, were possessed.
But for Phares?
Oh boy, Euden digs in his heels again in the same vein as Aurelius when it comes to believing he could be up to no good. And he carries this much longer than one chapter.
Euden truly is just a never-ending chorus of questions whenever Phares is in the picture, far more than any other sibling. I never realized just how prevalent this pattern was until I scanned over the earlier chapters.
He's doubtful he could ever join the Empire. He's doubtful he could ever be behind the void dragons. He's keeps asking 'why' over and over again, trying to put gain inkling possible for why Phares has suddenly decided to act in a way that seems impossible to him. This speaks to a deeper familiarity than most of his family, for him to be this confident and incredulous about how Phares has been acting.
Relatedly to the questioning, Euden seems to be attempting negotiations much more than he usually did with the siblings. He worries,
And still is trying to stress that 'they have no reason to fight' despite generally, yes, having a reason to fight. All in all, Euden seems much more dogged to dodging/stopping/negotiating through fights.
And, just like with Aurelius, Euden's instincts here are on the money - Phares is indeed 'not himself' throughout most the campaign.
For the 'why' about how they were able to be closer, it's mostly just proximity, I think. Leonidas and Chelle have been distant for a little while due to the whole city-running thing, Valyx is off often leading troops... meanwhile Phares still explicitly lived in the castle as his default location. Aside from Zethia and Emile, he's the most present sibling.
So... yeah. There's a surprisingly long-lasting and prevalent pattern early Dragalia to suggest Euden knew Phares better than a good chunk of his other siblings.
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-Emile seems to similarly rely on Phares a bit more, who in turn often tries to rein Emile in, which I'll again punt to the me of several years ago to save space (thank you, me):
💬 0 🔁 6 ❤️ 7 · So, of course in Dragalia there were royal siblings that were seen together more often, usually those clustered in the more
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Next, as for people he hates, I will again defer to myself from the recent-er past, with this post here:
💬 0 🔁 2 ❤️ 4 · Phares Wants To Know Your Location: A Guide To Why and How Phares Has Two People He Loathes · Analyzing Phares as a charact
...For evidence that Phares has it out for Yurius and especially Harle in particular.
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For some nice little silly meta stupidity, Phares is quite likely the most American of the cast.
How? His English VA seems like he might be American instead of the usual Canadian we got for the English dub... but his JP VA also was born in America.
Make of that what you will. I wish I had a crude little drawing of the most aggressively stereotypical American things/iconography with Phares
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-More silly minor things, Phares is one of the few family members whose portrait allowed them to blush. He actually lost the capability in his actual unit portrait. I don't think he actually used it in-game, but he does have some general 'embarrassment' sounds and noises built into his voice bank.
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Last but not least for what I can recall/know right now, bringing back the notion of child!Phares' voice lines... Well, the general noises that the JP dub used to express emotions in stories without fully dubbing the story....
Care to guess whose lines they used as the sounds for child!Phares?
Going once... going twice...
....
If you happened to guess CHRONOS, you are correct.
Chronos' little cute baby form dragon form was the originator for the little voice clips that young Phares gets! What a random choice. They had general 'child' voices, too.
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So yeah, there you have it! I hope you have enjoyed this lengthy foray into the nitty-gritty of Phares!
For as beloved a character as Audric was, he was... fairly mum about the specifics of his family.
We know his Beren died very young... we know he gave an instrument to Euden as he did in canon... we know he overall was 'sterner' than Aurelius, and instead stressed following duty to Emile...
(We also know that he thinks Emile is a dumbass [true], a fact that I never will stop laughing at)
But, when it comes to Euden, if you asked 'what happened to Audric's Euden?' you might get two answers:
-Euden in his world became the Other and is terrorizing as he usually can do when he is possessed
-Euden died from an insect thought extinct in an old royal tomb
...These are two very different conclusions about what is supposed to be a singular character!
And you know what? I do honestly think it's another case of 'Dragalia writers rolled a natural 1 on their own lore check'.
The evidence for the first one lies in Audric's first appearance in Fractured Futures. I could dance around and slowly draw the conclusion, but the quickest and most direct evidence can be summed up as:
-A Euden created Chronos
-Audric was pacted specifically to the Zodi inside of Chronos
-Ergo, Audric's Euden is possessed, created Chronos, and is destroying the world.
Easy enough, cut and dry, fairly conclusive... Enter the contradiction:
The evidence for the second lies in Gala Audric's story, where he recounts a tale in the first section that amounts to 'I told the Euden of my world about a tomb that he visited and he got poisoned there by an insect thought extinct'.
Now, the astute may note that Audric never claimed his Euden died from this disease, potentially freeing up the two narratives to coexist... right?
Nope. His story ends with him angsting about his impending mortality, then shows this:
This is called a 'deliciously angsty double meaning'. Audric is moving to the canon Euden and Zethia's locations. However, the implication is also that he soon will be 'returning' to his (dead) children once he dies. The Zethia and Notte of his world seem to be already, so lumping Euden in with them is further suspect proof.
So Euden is seemingly just flat-out dead, in contrast to the initial narrative of him terrorizing a world.
The insect then gets thrown in as the only real thing we have to suggest a potential cause of death + it kinda being something of a 'full circle' as the matter of it is entirely addressed in the first story, and Euden being implicated as dead in the last one. Plus, Audric wasted no time in rushing to inform Cleo about the specifics of canon Euden's illness, which means it must have been serious, right?
So... yeah. There's a seeming contradiction in what they wanted to do with Audric's Euden - whether he was alive and well and destroying a world or dead and gone from an insect.
However, let's take this one step further for overthinking, because I am not convinced that the narrative in G!Audric's story is as straightforward as the 'insect -> Euden death' pipeline.
Let's take a close look about what he commented about Euden:
Here, Audric says Euden was healthy 'until sixteen or seventeen'. This is... very strange. We'll come back to why a bit later.
He also says this:
If Euden had truly just died outright from this insect, I don't think Audric would be talking like this. 'Feverish episode' is a much more mild depiction of what ostensibly was his son's death. And yes, this phrasing exists in the original JP text, too, so it's not a translation error. It would have been easy to substitute, "It led to his demise, and how I regretted it." or something like that.
I would also point to the fact that Audric knew the cure. Euden is the only one noted to be poisoned in his world. Sure, I guess you could say that they could have found an ancient text after he died or something, but even then, that might have been phrased by less certain verbiage. 'We discovered a cure too late', or, to Cleo, 'I think the cure might be-'. Audric is very certain about the cure, which makes me think that Euden lived through the insect bite.
So what is the exact narrative here?
Here's where I bring in that other comment. Audric notes a major change in Euden's health in his late teens... but cannot name even the year it started. If the change in health was due to the insect, that would've been a specific, memorable event he could point to. Something to bring up as a point of urgency for why Cleo needs to give him the cure right now because he knows exactly how Euden's health is going to fall apart forever if it's not given in time.
As such, I think that Audric's Euden actually was ill before the insect. My guess for a timeline is this:
-Euden fell ill with some chronic illness later in his teenage years, the sort of 'on again off again' disease that hides and people only realize belatedly that this has been going on for a while, huh, slowly getting worse. Hence the floating age and uncertainty for when his son actually fell ill.
-Euden, perhaps in a stretch of feeling better, visits the tomb, is envenomed by this insect,
-The poison further ravages his health, perhaps because of his already-poor health, but Audric is eventually able to find and secure the cure for his boy,
-However, between the damage the poison did to him and his previous infirmity, Euden was never able to fully recover again and eventually dies
Personally, I almost gravitate running towards G!Audric's version of events as 'canon', despite the chaos it throws into Fractured Futures. Both because it's something a little bit different than the common, (*cough cough*) biased narrative presented to us of ''Euden possession ruins everything'', and because Audric sometimes seems... wistful, for want of a better word, when Euden is happy.
He additionally doesn't really seem to be nervous or on-guard for Euden to potentially be following down a road that leads to the the Other's possession.
He was willing to leave for long long stretches of time on solo missions Euden sent him on (That Which Remains), trusting that nothing would happen to his son in the meantime. If Euden were possessed in his world, I think Audric would be inclined to keep a closer eye on him just to try to meddle in that before it becomes reality, because he knew exactly how bad that would be for the world. It's exactly why Zena was meddling early Dragalia, after all, trying to throw off Euden from the same spiral.
And... I dunno, if he's not antsy about that very real possibility of Euden possession (while that threat exists) and is particularly sentimental about his son being happy, I could see it fitting with the narrative of illness, the slow miserable drag to death from sheer bad luck, no matter what he tried to do.
Really, since it again is a contradiction, it's up to you for which 'version' you prefer to put stock into: Fractured Futures, or how Audric generally acts beyond that event/adventurer story.
More Dragalia Minor Mistakes (Or, when Dragalia's writers and/or translators failed a lore check)...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Dragalia was surprisingly astute to the general mass of lore it had. That being said, it's only natural that a few mistakes or lore contradictions would slip through the cracks over years of development, perhaps staff coming and going, yadda yadda. Consider this just the second of small logs of whatever I've noticed, throughout my meanderings through the wiki and more!
First up, we're starting today's category with 'technology', namely, the humble abacus. Dragalia's mishmash of technology is understandable, since they've been artificially kept in a state of technological limbo until canon time. And of their technology, we know that the abacus is something that's been lost to most of the world, it seems.
It's Xiao Lei's whole thing, for the rest of the cast to be amazed at how fast she's able to do math with, how cool that is, etc etc. It's this special Taiwuan thing that might save the scientists in Alberia a lot of work!
One problem: this random NPC, very Alberian, shopkeep also is randomly using one, to no amazement by the cast.
Whoops.
More relevant to the main story, though, Phares once incurs a small case of brainfog and mistakes the name of his own terminal illness:
This one I think I can reasonably provide a rationale for this being a translator's error, perhaps one who hadn't dealt with Phares or at least dealt with him for a while. Why? Wyrmscale is more literally in Japanese 'dragon scale - itis', (or, 竜鱗病, ryu urin byou, ryu=dragon, urin=scale, byo = character for 'sickness'), so a translator might have read that and just translated it literally instead of checking whatever lore docs they might have had that they'd already called it 'wyrmscale' in English!
Also related to the lore, this next one's more of a case of later lore contradicting the earlier one, and boy is it petty quibbling on my end.
In short, take a look at this dialogue from Elysium:
See anything wrong? No?
Well, my problem is the use of the word 'young' here! It is the singular word that goes against lore here, as I can't exactly argue against his opinion claim of 'immature!'
We've no less than three other canon sources at least that instead frame humans as a species as among the first in the universe, right along with dragons!
So, yes, Elysium, you're not wrong to call humans 'immature', but to call their species 'young'???? You know better than that! (no he didn't, since this dialogue came before any of the other contradictions here, I believe, but it's still technically an error!)
If we're on a dragon kick, pop quiz: who was Alberius' first pactbound dragon?
Some of you might be yelling 'MIDGARDSORMR' as others yell 'CHTHONIUS', and then you both might hypothetically look at each other and feel confused. Well, you may be glad to know that this was a genuine lore contradiction instead of one of you being 'wrong'.
It's understandable why people thought both options, even aside from the lore confusion. Midgardsormr as the first to really start hanging out with him, or Chthonius as the dragon he was tied body and soul to in the end, who literally merged with him?
Overall, I'm more of the 'Chthonius' side for what they ultimately intended, as we also see other descriptions painstakingly spell out that Mids was the 'first dragon to personally meet Alberius' instead of just saying 'pact with Alberius', and one slipped through the cracks, but still! These minor lore slip ups are what I'm cataloguing here. Honestly, between this, the non-pact slip-up with Brunhilda in the previous post I made, and other things like Alberius slapping Jupiter, he sure had a lot of pacting 'fun' and drama, huh?
Now I'll return to the royal fam lore drama. A long long time ago, I made a post explaining how the family says their names, as is said by their siblings. Some (Phares, cough cough) shooketh me greatly, as the aforementioned example's name might more phonetically be rendered 'Farez' to me instead of the 'Fairays' I was running with more since in my brain I was connecting it to words like "pharaoh" instead.
But I realized I overlooked their father's name. From what I'm seeing, only Audric says his own real name, as everyone else wants to call him His Majesty, Father, or the King.
And here's the doozy: his dementia aura he gives everyone has also been affecting he himself, because he says HIS OWN NAME two different ways!
Here's the relevant soundbites to demonstrate what I mean:
Here, we see one 'Or - Ray - Li - Us' and one 'Or - Rel - ii - Us'
I thiiink we see 'Ray' version twice vs the one time of 'Rel', but this more seems to be a division between his base form and Gala form.
I did a bit more digging, and we've also Gala Gatov... but his pronunciation is so foggy that it's remarkably hard to tell if he's saying 'Ray' 'Rel' or 'Ril', though I overall lean towards 'Rel' on a slowdown!
So... yeah. I guess it's ultimately up to you guys how you wanna say his name, because they sent mixed signals in English!
(As a bonus I'll just throw this other soundbite out here for any of you guys curious about how to say Vio Rhyse Alberia, since it's become a minor battle cry for the fandom in their grief)
Huh... you know, that might actually be a great place to meld into my final example!
'Vio Rhyse Alberia' is suggested once to mean 'Glory to Alberia'. Presumably, it's not just their modern language nor another real one, since we don't really see them bust out other similar phrases. Heck, even Audric's pronunciation here is a slight warp from the standard 'Al-beer-ia' with whatever little roll he's doing with the 'r' in there.
Specifically, it's likely 'Ancient Alberian', a language that Elisanne ID's as existing in ch.13, and one Phares is also likely able to read for him to be able to get the stuff it's written on up and working (+the fact he's specifically talented in 'ancient languages' plural).
This is... well, a big 'Hum' moment, in that while I cannot think of a way in which it makes sense, it's not as cut-and-dry as the others for 'this says x, this says y'.
If we're talking early Ilian church, specifically, this dates this machine to about 1k years ago, during the golden age of humanity and Ilia. It makes sense, since alchemy was also in its heyday then.
The thing is that Alberia just flat-out didn't exist until 300 years ago, until Alberius created it. With how similar 'Alberius' and 'Alberia' are in name, one might have presumed he named it after himself. But let's excuse that little bit, and just say it's a root that stems from earlier language in the same way humans are often named after objects even to this day.
It's still a bit confusing - this puts Ilia in a weird place to where she's fully comprehend-able to our modern crew and vice-versa despite seemingly speaking this different language. Ilia even seems to share a similar slang culture, with her joining the crew in occasionally butchering French on purpose (toot sweet in place of tout de suite). I might be tempted to excuse it like how English has developed, from a point where its written variety has greatly developed even when most of the words they were saying/writing are understandable, but this again is troubled by the existence of 'Vio Rhyse Alberia', a phrase that is clearly not a 'normal part' of their language.
This is giving me weird ideas where Ilia is speaking in this really ancient dialect that's just barely understandable to the modern day crew, kinda like how we can kinda piece out even some Old English or Latin with vocabulary even when it's written entirely differently. Take the good old people doing Old English covers of songs, where we see 'Irish-made' in a Pumped Up Kicks translation turned to 'Írisc-worht', which to me I can piece together 'Irish' from the first word and get reminded of 'wrought' from the second, which is a word that means, well, made from.
I digress. The best way I can really excuse the name is honestly a bit funny: that historians and all those scholars retroactively decided to call this language they (re)discovered 'Ancient Alberian' just because the land that they discovered it on or something is now Alberia, long enough before that the Church was able to pick it up again and start teaching kids it.
Alternatively, that there was a historical Alberia that Alberius stole the name from, that Euden would then go on to steal from Alberius when naming his own kingdom. "That's Alberia, this is Alberia, are there any more Alberias I should know about? Meow (says Leonidas' 'Alberia' reformed under his sovereignty)"
Sigh. Make of it what you will. But there's something funky going on in the linguistical history of Alberia here. The way I've personally decided to sweep it under the rug is treating them as spoken similarly enough for Alberius-Ilia-Euden to all mutually comprehend (Alberius additionally trapped in a cave and serving as a perfect time capsule of his language at the time), but the written form has warped far too much for any of them to understand each other. Still doesn't explain Vio Rhyse but hey, blame other lost language's influence or something and boom.
That's enough rambling on my end, however. If you've any other plot holes or lore failure checks, though, please let me know!
Phares Wants To Know Your Location: A Guide To Why and How Phares Has Two People He Loathes
Analyzing Phares as a character can be challenging, for reasons including:
-Much of his time on screen isn't even fully him in the first place
-Part of the remaining time is him not being there at all
-Phares does not seem to like being fully direct/truthful in regards to matters about himself despite his general candidness when sharing knowledge
And more!
It's like a character concealed in like 3 different boxes. Ironically, this mess of writing him/his character led to him being a stronger and more consistent character overall even through the mess of broader canon, though that's a topic for another day.
Point is, if you're actually interested in Just Phares instead of Xenos!Phares or Xenos, sometimes it requires some noodling to figure out whether things Phares is doing are driven by himself, a corrupted self, or Just Xenos.
This can be difficult, but occasionally this brings fun little gems.
What gems? See the title: there are two people that we seem to have reason to believe that Phares as a person loathes.
The first is Harle.
Well... let's take a look at Harle's story. It gives that glimpse into the real Harle's life, how he got sent to the other realm, all that. The first story, though...
Phares hires Harle as his personal guard only to isolate and tear apart every lie he's been telling like paper. This is already fun for how much Harle is a Chelle-like character who charms his scheming little way through everything all sneaky-like.
He then proceeds to call out Harle's motives, show him his replacement in Loki, and Harle gets sent to the other world, where he then would go on to have fun wonderful adventures with the other other Harle and Leonidas and Cassandra and all that.
This might sound dry in plain text. But, if you hash things out a bit, things get more complicated than just Harle getting duped.
Let's look at some suspect lines by Phares here. For as much as Harle seems to believe that Phares is being controlled by the Progenitor in this scene...
Phares' response to that, while outwardly just playing dumb, could also be just a flat denial.
He also shares quite a bit of personal information that I'm not sure Xenos would feel the need to even in the interest of keeping up the Phares act. These feel like genuine comments.
But what about his decision to banish Harle to another world? Surely that has some possession influence going on in there.
To that, I say, yes... but not much.
Enter this quote:
This is, to me, the proof that this is not the Progenitor, but Phares. Here Phares is referring to that aforementioned dream by Harle to kill/replace the fam and upturn the kingdom.
Xenos... doesn't actually care for the royal family, though. They are useful tools at best. Phares, though, has many reasons to care about why someone might want to kill the family he's very protective of and dismantle the kingdom. Hence, he describes Harle's ideas with some very negative words here, because that is Phares' opinion, not Xenos'. 'Twisted' and 'festering' aren't exactly expressions of neutrality!
Even if the Progenitor would be inclined to intervene in the possible upheaval of the royal family because it serves his purposes that Phares still has its power, influence, all that, there's any number of ways to express that in less emotionally charged terms than Phares is using, more cool ones to reflect the colder scheming.
Maybe it's just me, but this is where it gets funny. The broad impression we get of this scene is that Phares loathes Harle (a feeling that becomes very mutual after Harle gets thrown to the other world).
Speaking of...
Oh yeah, Phares' initial plans for Harle was just to murder him outright!
This man was motivated enough by this hatred to try to murk Harle right then and there in his own precious lab! Phares does not care about some grand orchestra of trying to break his spirit or anything as Loki did, take any amusement in his triumph in outwitting another very intelligent man. He just wants him dead, and yesterday!
Theoretically, one could even read his decision to first hire Harle as something else from his stated reasons. After all, Loki doesn't need to be in close proximity to Phares stay alive or something. Phares didn't need to hire Harle.
However, with him nearby, it also lets Phares monitor and control his activities better. More importantly, reduce his ability to plot and endanger the family.
And maybe plan his murder for later. That too. But hey, at least he's guarding his family.
I think part of the reason this is so funny is that it's just so directly aggressive for Phares' usual behavior. When Phares acts, he usually does so in at least a little bit more roundabout of a way. Sending the dragons, what have you not.
Note how he's like... the only brother Euden did not directly engage in fisticuffs with (despite Euden probably being willing a few times, as in ch.13 or Tree Drama).
Closest was ch.23 and that was less of a true fight and more of 'Phares tries to get the fam to kill him, they try to oblige, but Xenos then takes over and returns via Beren'.
And sure, sure, his family is involved, but it would have been just as feasible to report all relevant information and proof and get Harle clapped in chains and judiciously executed.
This scene takes place seemingly before canon (even though I hold the opinion that Harle should have been only stuck in the other world for months, not years, for narrative sense), so it's not like the justice system has broken yet.
It's not like the guards are going to ignore the second prince's claims and laugh him off either. Need be, Phares has the power to order him arrested no matter if he had any proof or not.
But Phares jumps straight to bloody murder. That's about the only thing I could see the Progenitor having any influence in, in that I would think Phares generally would be inclined otherwise to trying to do things 'the right way', but the Progenitor, that much more willing to jump on the 'just die now' train, could be enough weight in his mind to push that teetering moral compass alternating between 'follow the law' and 'murder' over to 'you know what, murder sounds cool today' direction.
Or maybe threatening his family is just that quick to get Phares on a murder quest.
If so, I think that's beautiful. It's not exactly a side to him that is exposed, and one you might not have immediately thought of him. After all, it's not like his surrounding siblings in Leonidas or Chelle are particularly motivated to aggressive murder in defense of their siblings either. Chelle has other ways if she feels the need to eliminate a danger, and Leonidas for the longest time didn't really care for the most of his siblings.
But Phares? Phares saw Harle being a scheming little traitor pre-canon and regicide-wannabe and said 'nu-uh, not today, buddy.'
(Also, since Harle still is likely gunning for Phares especially after he gets back since he is THE biggest threat to his desires, and Phares still would want Harle gone regardless of Xenos, it's fun to imagine the dramatic fireworks that could start from there. In a serious sense, I don't think they're going/willing to let each other live...)
That's way too long about the Harle beef, but what about persona number 2 for the number 2 scion's beloathed list?
Well... Enter Yurius.
I'll copy from text I've already written myself a while back (with some additions) to give the long and short of it:
-Yurius and Phares have met before, but Phares doesn't exactly seem thrilled to see him. He feels a bit curt, especially since Phares is overwhelmingly polite and occasionally verbose when he does speak.
-Yurius seemingly has been trailing Phares a fair amount to track him to one of his many hidey-holes. Stalking, really, when you think about it. Not exactly something that's going to endear him to Phares.
-Phares seemingly is curious for the sake of it, just wanting to know more and use that knowledge to help everyone else. Yurius, however, has a whole complex about power and all that, and most of his interest in research and the like revolves around means to gain it. As such, there could be some professional outrage on Phares' side for besmirching the field.
-Yurius confronts Phares after said stalking to request he give up a powerful artifact (even if it was a 'trade' instead of a demand or the like)
-Phares deliberately gives him that powerful object... incomplete. He's clearly not wishing Yurius good fortune in his intent, and more is like 'let's see what happens when this invariably blows up'.
-Yurius in general is a bit of a weirdo. See all his tentacle comments in his unit lines.
This is something that Phares, -who, while he is a little weird himself, still is overall fairly normal in general sentiment and taste, which could be perturbing. Example rendered by soumarhea (using a real quote of Yurius'):
-Oh yeah, Yurius was on the hunt for Euden and his shapeshifting potential in his quest for power. As seen with Harle, threatening and endangering his family is one, if not the quickest way to agitate Phares (when he's actually himself) to violence.
Even better, there's a pipeline to them being able to meet again to get all that drama cooking again.
-Yurius is injured at the end of his story, is treated by Sophie.
-Sophie also would go on to talk to Phares and form a bond.
-Phares ends his adventurer story at the Halidom... where Yurius is. It's possible she could share one's location/existence with the other even if they didn't stumble upon each other accidentally in a science meeting.
Even better-er, Yurius may not even know Phares dislikes him. He didn't know that it was incomplete!
Oh boy, though, he probably would find out fast, since as I've hopefully demonstrated, Phares is a bit more, shall we say, proactive, when it comes to eliminating threats he sees.
So... yeah. Phares seems like he might've really really not liked Harle and Yurius, and I find it disproportionately funny.
