#dragalia lore

[valeriefauxnom]

Nedrick: Vengeance and Yearning

(Or: "Look I wrote a really long post analyzing Nedrick, please read")

Ahem. You have been warned. Long post ahead!

Nedrick. The world's easiest character to give a pokemon solely because of his Gala outfit design and color scheme.

Nedrick is funny because he tries so hard to be a cool, calm supervillain revolutionary and all that... but is still predominately just an angsty teenager underneath all that.

Why do I say this? First, note how Nedrick speaks during his ch.15 introduction.

He is composed. Eloquent. Speaking with much the same royal cadence as many in the family do, with a rich vocabulary and flowing sentence structure.

Contrast this man who uses phrases like 'incontrovertible proof' instead of more common constructions like 'undeniable' with the Nedrick we see at the Sacred Tree:

Here, Nedrick tends much like Leonidas: curt. He speaks fairly plainly, and briefly when he can. He rarely will construct less common phrasing, but largely sticks to simple and direct words.

And I'll tell you why: This boy has probably been practicing for YEARS for ch.15. I'd bet on it.

Think about it: Nedrick has cultivated this elaborate idea and hatred of Euden. How useless and worthless he is and how much he is unfit to be apart of 'his' family. How he 'deserves' Zethia. And now, for the first time in his whole life, Nedrick has finally been presented the opportunity to reveal himself to Euden.

You better bet he wanted to make his not-so-sterling opinion known and utterly wipe the floor with Euden. So he prepares this elaborate speech with all the words he's hand-picked to represent just what he thinks and feels about Euden. He wants to break Euden's little mind and then kill him triumphantly and revel in the fact that now he can reclaim his status as Zethia's brother.

He's probably rehearsed this conversation in his head so many times. What if they bring up xyz point? Well, he'll need to bring the enchanted seal. So on and so forth.

But when Euden survives ch.15? Well... he's starting to be a bit unsure. The script has been broken. Neddy still wants to play at being an unflappable supervillain, though, so tries to accept the 'loss' with grace.

He's so committed to the principle that he is the cool calm logical one and Euden is the wild emotional one that he's even trying to pretend that he'd be okay if Euden 'accepted the truth' with enough magnanimity.

Problem is... he's not okay with it. Euden gives no real indication that he accepted the truth poorly once he hears it in ch.19. Nedrick seems to think that, -with some reason with his ch.15 reaction, - that Euden would just mentally shut down for good at hearing the full truth, but that obviously wasn't the case.

And yet Neddy still has this deep-running loathing for Euden. He's just shifted the goalpost from Euden's creation to Euden's personality/beliefs as a means of picking his fight with Euden. But somehow Euden is even more annoying to him, because even though Nedrick has tried to shatter him, he's still kicking about with most of his same opinions and beliefs.

So all that planning and gloating gets thrown out the window, and Nedrick is having to start speaking in the moment instead of punching the Euden-sockpuppet he was imagining in his head. He tries his best to reclaim his cool eloquence when Euden does make it up the tree, because we're entering 'the other speech he prepared' territory where he could go on about his master plan and why it's necessary...

But, at the end of the day... Nedrick is still a bit of a petty teenager.

Euden is trying to listen, yet he still tries to delay and shut off because he doesn't want to communicate and eventually foists part of the explanation on a literal tree as he has to gather his words to sound Cool and Eloquent again.

He also introduces little insults for Euden and joins up with Beren and call him 'hollow man'. ch.15 Nedrick really only ever calls Euden by name or by title. His 'above it all' air is slipping.

So. Yeah. Nedrick is very dedicated to appearing high-and-mighty, but I see through it!

That's all I had for his way of speaking, but there's more "Nedrick is just a dumb teenager" food in the form of his plan. How so?

Well, let me start off with a small little footnote: much like he painted Euden, Nedrick was a big fish in small waters and is now venturing out to the sea only to find himself massively outgunned, and he doesn't even know it.

Ch.15 Nedrick is convinced that he's so smart and cool that he knows the breadth of Phares'/Xenos' plots. Calls it 'pathetic', even.

Problem is...

Nedrick is playing Snakes and Ladders - maybe a shortcut or setback here and there, but a linear path. He needs Zethia -> goes to Tree -> gets Dawnshard -> forges full pact with Bahamut -> remakes world...

Phares/Xenos is playing much more abstractly. Because of Xenos' condition, his plans are less a step-by-step sequence game like Candyland and more a checklist he's secretly and idly ticking off. A chess or go trap forming in the background until he's ready to strike and ruin their opponent. Most any goal of his can be done at any time, he's just looking to meet a certain amount of them for Xenos to return. We're talking plans that span centuries and millennia, like the priming of Grams for his return.

Yet Neddy boy there is convinced that just because he knew PharesXenos there was going to have Beren munch on Morsayati that he had it all figured out. No. No he didn't! He doesn't even know that Phares was possessed by the Progenitor, the big thing he wanted to defeat in the end!

Relatedly, PharesXenos also knows exactly how to ragebait him. This is a skill of Phares by himself, but Xenos surely has only augmented it with his additional knowledge:

So yes, for starters, Nedrick has Severely Misjudged who and what he is up against, for starters.

Secondly, his actual plan borders on a logical fallacy so obvious that even the most average of the main cast can instantly clock it.

He's also not even good at communicating it. I know I've seen a few people think that Nedrick is just another Leonidas - that he hates the weak and wants to be rid of them. The opposite is true. Leo at the start was of the 'strong eat the weak' philosophy, while Nedrick believes he will champion the weak.

His argument is that people are kinda forced into bad fates with no choice. A solid start. Poverty, illness, all that unfortunately wreck too many lives even in our world, merely because of the circumstances of your birth. Your appearance, gender, and so many more factors have determined the hand you got. He wants to do away with that. Good job, Nedrick.

How? Well, he's decided that everyone needs to be given the ability to shapeshift, and that that will somehow allow people stuck in their stations and 'rise up'.

This posits.... many glaring issues. First, why shapeshifting? What inherently would allow that for anyone to escape the misfortune of their circumstances? Power certainly lets people do more things, but it doesn't solve everything. What's your plan if you need money? Take it with that extra power? Well, now there's a good chance that the people with the money have more power than you, so good luck taking it.

If everyone could shift, too, there's not enough dragons in the world for people to turn into. If it's separate from standard pacting, we then run into the next issue, that most people's bodies in Dragalia Lost weren't Built For That.

But let's say that Nedrick somehow wishes so that everyone can handle a shift. Well...

Then the 'milk' of the populace is still going to naturally separate. Everyone will not miraculously have equal power just because they can shift. So even among the shifted, in and out there will be disparate power to separate the strong and weak.

Factor in again the fact that only a small percentage will be able to rise to the top and not curdle, and we have a double whammy: the strong of the weak are going to prosper, and only them. The actual weak are just going to suffer and die as usual.

He writes this off as a 'necessary sacrifice', a one-time payment, but it's still a bit of a halfhearted defense for someone that's trying to champion the weak. This is where people get confused and lump him in with Leo: functionally, his plan mostly just favors the already-strong or those who can be strong.

His dream mostly amounts to a bit of a childish vengeance mixed with some very poorly thought-out social justice attempt with a hint of anarchy seasoning. I'll tell you what's really up: he wants to get back at his family. He yearns to be like them, that he was among them. But since he wasn't allowed to be, he's then decided he needs to take away their special toy of shapeshifting. The 'if everyone's special, no one will be'.

Heck, maybe this is just some super far out plan to try to free up the family to be normal people that he could be with. Unlikely, but hey. I'll throw it out there. In the end, Nedrick's main motivation seems to revolve about

One last loosely related sidenote to this is:

Finlorda is a Jerk

That's right, I said it: Finlorda is by far the one of the good old king trio with the shadiest morals.

Aurelius/Audric make the statement that he did not know Nedrick had survived until recently. That was the impetus for Aurelius going crazy and going to the ruins at the start, trying to find a way to help Neddy (in part), by messing about with some very evil powers. So we have a clear statement on his priority: the minute he finds out his OG son is still alive and kicking, Aurelius almost immediately goes into 'get him back get him back get him back keep him safe keep him safe' mode, with his only hesitancy being what it would do to Euden.

But what about all that time before? Finlorda had years. A decade and a half to let one of his oldest friends know that there was a whoopsie daisy and turns out your son's soul didn't even make it in the new box and he's still alive and now struggling with a godlike entity. But he didn't!!!

And the only notion for why he didn't is that he looked at the free dragonblood and wanted it for experiments. We see repeated stress on the fact that Finlorda was obsessed with cracking the secret of dragonblood - he admits it himself, even. It makes far too much sense as it is that he would see his new human baby that's unexpectedly alive again as free real estate, now that he's sent his friend home with a son.

And oh boy do we get some stress that he followed through on his free baby blood bank:

Finlorda's little experiment resulting in Euden doesn't seem to be the only thing little Nedrick got, based on the phrasing. This wasn't just a one-time thing. While I really don't think it was anything like or equivalent to the Syndicate or anything like that, we've got some really ugly ethics going on here. Nedrick doesn't seem to be all that pleased about Finlorda even as a child - Jinlorda wonders if he wants to take revenge on him for it as well as the Euden thing, and he barks at Finlorda for using him.

To be fair, Finlorda does seem generally invested in trying to make things not cruel and keep Neddy fed and clothed and all that (perhaps an ardent task for people who spend most their lives very tiny). If he's concerned about the impact a court testimony will have on a child, I don't think he was tearing out organs while Nedrick's still awake or something. But, again, he was still using a young child for experiments for an unknown amount of time, enough that civilians of the faerie kingdom seem to recognize and identify Neddy as Finlorda's lab rat, all the while not telling his own friend, the kid's real father and family, that he was alive.

He seems very regretful and is trying to do his best, but oof. This man definitely has a very complicated and messy moral system.

This all ties back into Nedrick having an interesting view on Aurelius. For all he seems inclined to rage at Aurelius, by projecting that Euden should curse him as he intends to kill him...

Or with his insistence that he feels nothing for Aurelius because 'he had no expectations'...

...Nedrick nevertheless seems to put Aurelius on a pedestal. Amid all the fighting, the childish hatred, ideological differences, and more with Euden, the appeal that finally wins him over is Audric saying this:

An oath from 'Aurelius', imploring him not to take the same path. Letting him know that Aurelius' absence in Nedrick's childhood was not a voluntary decision. Accepting the hate from Nedrick despite his lacking intent. All these and more proved the exact cocktail to get to Nedrick's head and convince him to work with Euden. And I think that if Neddy truly didn't feel anything about Aurelius or his past, that wouldn't have worked.

Nedrick is just a boy, at the end, who wants to be with his family. He's cloaked it in misplaced rage and poorly-designed plans to get back at them, but fundamentally he yearned for home.

[dragalia-lost-lore]

Main character relationships.

[valeriefauxnom]

Dragalia Niche Things In Weapon Lore You May Not Know

-Emperor Dane, ya know, the dude that Jupiter accidentally set on a brutal conquest where he became a dude that would kill two for fun every day?

He was also a weeaboo:

I knew there must have been warning signs that such a nice prince could be beholden to such depravity...

-Karina's real identity maaaaybe is Miralda, princess of Dargas.

The weapon that bears this description is a water axe, the very same weapon and element she wields, and it theoretically fits within her story. She claims that she ran off, but hardly escaped before she was captured. It would make sense that in a pirate invasion that they'd be crawling over the area enough to instantly get ahold of her.

If true, this would be an interesting case of Dragalia telling the future of a character. It's also one I potentially could see, since Karina's story focuses on her wondering how Euden has kept himself as a Good Boi even if he's a prince among all those Nasty Bois and Girls, so I could see her being inspired to change things in her own land later on.

Granted, it's not 100%, 'I have a definitive section where she clearly states she is Miralda', but I think there's enough 'hmm' elements to warrant a spot here!

-Zodiark had a cult around him, who called themselves Meggidothians! Also, they liked sacrificing humans.

...Of course, not officially sanctioned, but that didn't stop them!

Meggidoth might have also been a real person, but it is unknown how much he was involved or responsible for the cult's creation/tenets:

They also have an alternative cosmology:

-This isn't really a hidden lore or fact, but I find it curious that the weapon 'Blackwing' bears such a strong resemblance to Zodiark, without being attributed to him in any way. It looks more like him than his actual high dragon weapon:

-Alberius had a lance made when his kingdom was created and promised to personally kill anyone with it that threatened the formation of the new nation. He meant business, I guess!

-Tartarus may have been cut in half by the Greatwyrms, which is the reason he's now half-steel:

-Humans once got so nutty over a spear that Mercury put it at the bottom of the ocean

-There may be more than just one ark of humans living in the sky and at least one may have fallen and did a whoopsie destruction of a kingdom:

-Kukris are a weapon tied to the southeastern-most part of Grastea:

...And this is another instance of 'very niche lore that the writers kept track of', as Nevin's story also reaffirms this lore that kukris aren't really used except in the SE:

-This is just a funny intermission, but I find it funny if you take the many many many weapon descriptions literally, Euden's handing out weapons left and right quite skilled in delivering torture and otherwise painstaking deaths and subsequent commendations to a similarly terrible afterlife. Oh yeah and some also can destroy the world. Here's a small sample of what I mean:

And trust me, despite the 3/4 examples being shadow weapons, this is far from exclusive to the shadow element. So, uh, yeah.

Don't mess with the Halidom unless you want to face a whole bunch of people capable of sending you and your soul into endless agonies?

Intermission over! Back to the actual lore parts instead of just the 'oh boy you're gonna love to hear what this beauty's capable of...' likely exaggerations.

-There's a prison called Odo somewhere in the world, who seems to have a lot of executioners who predominately execute by the good old axe or by a bow in a proto version of a firing squad, judging by their weapons.

It's unknown if it still exists, however, as Odo was the place Stribog the dragon protected until Agni destroyed it with a firebomb disguised as a Trojan Horse. Maybe it was rebuilt and eventually repurposed as a prison town?

As bonus related lore, the death penalty is very much still active in Alberia, and usually takes the form of beheading or hanging. It can be commanded by local lords (as feudalism is in full effect with local lords having much control over the workings of their endowed region) as well as through courts.

There's also this bit of lore regarding it in another weapon:

-There may have been another race in Grastea, possibly their equivalent of halfling or gnome-esque races:

-This strays into other niche lore, but there was a band of elite Alberian knights called the Alberian Ironsides who seemed to love tower shields:

-Also another crossover between wyrmprints and weapon lore, the Battle of the Thelodian Plains was one at least 300 years ago in which eventually 23 armies unaffiliated with a formal state came together in a senseless battle, with a casualty rate of 80% (quick reminder that 'casualty' counts both injured and dead).

-There was a dude called Count Logan the Brave who seemed to like collecting weapons and bringing them back home. There's three weapons that mention him.

-Interestingly, Troy, the one adventurer dude that pops up a bit frequently in weapon lore, the wand from his last supposed adventure seems to bear a bit of a resemblance to Bahamut...

...Who, by the way, was indeed the explicit creator of the earth, as Xenos crafted sky instead!

-Last but not least, Zodiark really just seems to be involved in a lot of weapons that are Not Good for their wielder:

That's all I have right now, but I do hope that you learned something about the eternally-batty Grastea, through the weapons its residents use!

[valeriefauxnom]

'Fun' Dragalia Fact!

Some dragons consider humans as a viable food source in Dragalia!

There are at least two dragons playable in the roster that hold this opinion, one that we outright see attempt to eat a human!

And no, I'm not talking Nyarlathothep and Hastur since their 'sacrifices' aren't necessarily food instead of just ritual sacrifice to the Ancient One and all that. Though it's entirely possible it does, too. Nyarla does ultimately intend for the sacrifices to be 'sustenance' on the Ancient One's 'dining table', so it's not like he's adverse to Serving Man.

No, I'm talking the explicit food drive, no ifs ands or buts. Like these:

Who are these dragons?

Juggernaut and Nimis.

Yup, Mister Pancakes here is not adverse to eating humans. By the animation, he seemed to pick up Euden and was wanting to drop him straight down the hatch. No hesitation or regret whatsoever on that big guy's face. Juggernaut at least has the decency to try to suppress his natural urge since he's grown to like Euden, but it still is eminently obvious that there are dragons that casually consider humans as food. Not even as a special treat or something. Just another possible food.

In fact, it seems like it might be a broader cultural understanding, since we have several incidents of sacrifice popping up in a likely food context. Some, like we see in Tobias' story, are an unknown whether the dragon was actually demanding human food, -but even if they were lying, the fact that the Church felt comfortable in demanding humans as sacrifices for an unknown purpose to appease it indicates it might not be too far out of the question in regards to dragons...

We also see someone leave a literal newborn by Agni's door in a likely sacrificial snack.

At least, that's what I'm interpreting for why a person would leave a newborn at a dragon's doorstep who is noted to have a voracious appetite for rare flavors instead of literally anywhere else.

Garuda provides another point on the chart, even if she was just being coy about wanting to keep Lowen as a friend forever by demanding him as a sacrifice. Her best thought for how to obtain a human was to demand the village use him as a sacrifice, which, again, kinda reaffirms that this isn't so far out of the cultural norm for either human or dragon.

So... yeah. There is a decent chance that no, humans are not being paranoid in Dragalia when they fear and worship dragons so, as they just might happen to live in an area with a dragon that can and will hunt and consume them!

A last little bonus round for actual fun: Giovanni doesn't seem to want to eat Euden but nevertheless is willing to have him inside his gullet:

[valeriefauxnom]

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.

---

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!

---

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:

---

-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?

---

-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.

---

-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):

Post by @valeriefauxnom · 10 images

💬 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:

Post by @valeriefauxnom · 11 images

💬 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.

---

So yeah, there you have it! I hope you have enjoyed this lengthy foray into the nitty-gritty of Phares!

[valeriefauxnom]

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:

Visit Original Link

Visit Original Link

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!

Visit Original Link

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)

Visit Original Link

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!

[valeriefauxnom]

I've gone over various questionable elements or decisions in Dragalia before, but this is less a pure 'mistake' and more just me going 'did the writers or translators get confused about their characters?' regarding Beren and Nedrick in one teenie tiny way.

What way?

Mana.

I feel like a decent portion of the fandom could tell you about Nedrick's mana-draining self. How he, if he's lacking in Human Resources like food and water, tends to start absorbing mana like a vacuum around him to compensate.

After all, they even made a comic revolving about it:, no.442:

But what if I told you that Beren was also seemingly mana-hungry, dependent on draining things around him for a little bit? Yup.

Oh, but don't worry, they fixed that in ch.14 for him.

...And they just kinda left it at that. I don't even recall them establishing that Beren was also dependent on external mana. So, let's get this straight:

-They introduce a problem Beren apparently had at the exact time it is solved for him

-Never bring it up before or after

-And introduce another royal family member with black hair who also has that same problem the very next chapter

...Yeaaah, like I said, technically it's not an official 'error' that I can point to, some outright contradiction in the plot, but it is a very big 'hmmm' moment where I seriously wonder if something got lost in the character notes.

[valeriefauxnom]

Things You May Or May Not Know And/Or Remember About the Royal Family

Exactly what it says on the tin, here's at least 3 things for each family member that you may not know!

Leonidas:

-I'll use my freebie here to cheat and pull out the 'he has a pet panther that has given jewlery and metal to wear' because I want to spread this niche detail about. Evidence for that one you can find in this link here. But yes, by all accounts Leonidas seemed to have a pet panther, and no he does not talk about it once. It also explains his sudden competence to know that cats shouldn't have grape juice in the comics when correcting Emile, because he has one... a big one, mind you, but he's got a cat!

-His curry obsession in the comics is implied to have been a thing passed on and or learned from Aurelius, which is perhaps the only thing Leonidas seems to like about his father!

-Leonidas is 99% of the time Very Serious in his wording of things, but I gotta hand it to this line for being probably the single silliest thing he's said in canon entirely on his own volition (ie, not being heavily coached by Mym/Siren):

-Mars is not his first dragon

-Is actually the first to exit the main campaign at ch.16, though he does a good job of acting as Euden's secretary afterwards by directing Ilia to him at the Sacred Tree and requesting Emile's army at Grams

-Has either bought or built a completely separate manor in the capital despite being the crown prince and thus likely king

-Declares Valkaheim the new capital of a re-established Alberia (not to be confused with New Alberia) mid-canon, in effect making himself King of Alberia

Phares:

-At some point in canon, Phares crept back to Clave Loy'elune, snuck back in the cave where Everything Went Down, and stealthily did a little cutting of Alberius/Chthonius' corpse

-Phares is not actually the first sibling to dive into alchemy, even if he ultimately does end up the most learned in it - Leonidas actually was the first, and it's more implied Phares' initial interest was out of the slight rivalry they have

-Per the 'meet the cast' thing they did at the end of the lifespan, Phares is skilled at reading ancient languages

-Is the direct reason for guns manacasters re-emerging in the modern day, or at the very least the reason they emerged as early as they did. How?

He's apparently also schooled enough in archeology to then be able to teach Chelle... which then gave her the knowledge and ability to start finding manacasters and restoring them:

Chelle:

-Has sent her betrothed (Elua) to be executed

-When younger, used to harass Leonidas and Phares trying to chill out together, which they did not like

-Was devoted to the idea of getting Cat Sith as her dragon long before she ever could pact

-In one wyrmprint, suggests she still dreams of ascending Alberia's throne, which raises Questions of how she intends to do so since she seems to get along very well with her elder brothers and vice-versa:

-Liiiiittle bit shaky here since it's based on my observation/memory and not a concrete fact as the others, but if I'm right, Chelle is the only member of the currently-pacted family who does not shapeshift. Phares is not pacted for at least a good bulk of canon, Leo does in ch.12, Valyx 6, Euden... everywhere, Zethia and Nedrick in tree drama... The closest she gets is in her gala story, but decided against it.

Valyx:

-Valyx may seemingly need glasses, as every time he dons them in canon and in the comics, they seem to be of a more functional variety than Chelle's clearly decorative one. They also seem pretty consistent in design.

-His battle standard isn't 'just' a bear - it's a 'greatbear', which I'm guessing is just a Really Big Bear

-His journey to pact with Thor was seemingly fraught - not many wanted to come, and of those that did, many got smote by Thor and died

-Prior to Euden, his forces were undefeated

-Has nearly executed Malora for espionage (after she ironically convinced him into doing so over lifelong imprisonment after correctly pointing out she'd just seduce her way out of a prison cell)

-Became the military leader of, essentially, Grastea's NATO, at the end of canon before he and the most of the siblings got smote in ch.25

Beren:

-Has said 'okie-dokie'

-Canon's variety of him is the only one to get as far as he has in life in the entire span of worlds:

-This isn't hidden knowledge at all, per se, but I never will get over the fact he chooses his alias to be 'Ed'. Like. Ed????

-Beren's problems with black mana began at birth; Leonidas wanted to kill him but by the time he gained the authority to do so had somehow grown 'too strong' for him to manage that.

-Somewhat surprisingly per the character intro, likes 'quiet places', which is both understandable as the only thing he's known and shocking, since I might have otherwise thought he wouldn't for the reminder of his previous imprisonment

-Has brass knuckles dangling down from his straitjacket (and is not wearing pants), which makes me dream of a playable Beren that's not a spellcaster and instead just beats people up with fisticuffs

Emile:

-Explicitly had the hots for humanoid Mercury, making him one of the three royal family members that even so much as hinted towards any romantic inclination

-His Gala portrait has several hidden details, including a ghost Aurelius hiding/watching over him and the dome above him depicting his regular form leading soldiers

-Is so insensitive to spiritual matters that he cannot perceive ghosts in the slightest!

-You might have noted the lack of mention of him in my shapeshift spiel.... and that's because he technically did shapeshift once, but it wasn't when he was pacted. Instead, he did it from tapping into Euden's pacts with his and Mercury's permission! So yeah, it's... complicated.

-His Gala form gains a single earring suspiciously similar to Leonidas', which makes me personally think he was trying to copy Leonidas' overall presence/grandeur, but chickened out at the pain. Funnily enough, he and Leonidas are the only ones in the fam consistently depicted with earring(s) in unit art, as Chelle only rarely features them in other art! ...Zethia may technically seem to be wearing them in 'Endless Waltz', but this event is, well, dubiously canon, as there never really was a time in which she could party with Luca and then become Empress (even if Emile playing ocarina will never get old).

Euden:

-Is so terrible at using knives in the kitchen that Cleo seems seriously concerned he's about to faint from blood loss and orders him to lie down

-Did ask Leonidas pre-canon where the heck Beren was, only for Leonidas to tell him that he went 'missing' despite knowing full well the truth

-Hobbies include writing and seemingly playing violin, even though that latter bit was sidelined for a while as Aurelius instead forced him to learn piano

-His royal fam t-shirt that's part of the running joke in the comics is actually pink and red, the one time we see it in color:

(By the way, Leonidas' is orange-red, Emile's is green, and we never see the colors for Phares' but I'd guess blue since 2/3 are tied to their usual color schemes/theme)

-Also a silly comic fact that he has a little wallet with his face on it that he sometimes gives to people, and his seal also bears his face (as WillofWinnie recreated the latter here)

-Was so bad at swordplay that even after years of practice, complete novices could beat him

-Likes taking walks with the doggy in the woods when he's feeling bad

Zethia:

-Has her own bank of quotes even as an NPC adventurer for her brief stint in ch.1 as a 'party member', one of which is 'I admit, every now and then, I wonder how *I* would look in a suit of armor...'

-She also notes that she's not 'wholly unfamiliar' with the sword due to watching Euden practice so much

-Has said the word 'damn' before

-Literally almost beat up Morsayati with just her and Zena in ch.5, impressively

-Likes wildlife/nature and making flower crowns

-In a mix of other lore and her, birds are a holy symbol in the Ilian faith, which might explain why she's often depicted with them and why comic!Zethia feels the need so often to help chicks back to their nest

-If I can include Zena, Aurelius actually was alive in her world for a while, and was the reason she was able to cross into all the others she did

-Kinda personal, kinda lore, but Zethia did kinda break her vows as Auspex when pacting with Bahamut, as a pact is something that puts her in the line of succession when she forswore ascending, in a thing I wish was addressed.

Also, she'd technically be higher than Euden in the line of succession to the Alberian throne because they seem to operate on a 'pact+age' determinate of order, and she is a month or two older.

Nedrick:

-With Zethia, seems to have a line of scales running down part his leg after formally pacting with Bahamut

-Relatedly, his Gala unit still has the faint hints of the Alberian dragon symbol oft used to tie characters to the land and the royal fam on its base

-Nedrick seldom speaks or even thinks of Euden's name, which, while that very well might be deliberate in the sense of him not wanting to acknowledge Euden's replacement of him down to the name (a thing he seems also dedicated to pretending he doesn't care about his 'abandonment'), but he does make an exception the moment he realizes with Zethia that Euden is going to die:

-Likes quiet forests, which theoretically means he could jive with Zethia and Beren rather well in this regard

-Really doesn't seem to like people not talking to him if he wants an answer:

-Seldom eats or sleeps and instead supplements this lacking self-care by just absorbing mana around him

So, yeah, there's some of the quirks and little moments of the fam! All of the plain statements of fact come from moments in Dragalia instead of them just being individual headcanon, which I'd be happy to point out to any who are curious where they come from!