First of all- Thank you Alex... And second, of course, who am I to deny someone Arvale lore?
But beware:
This’ll contain major spoilers for the first game,
Arvale 1 Journey of Illusion.
Usually this is irrelevant. But unlike Arvale: Short Tales, I don’t have to be the sole player! This one can still be played on a normal windows computer by others. Here’s an archived download link, and yes, the game really is that small.
Despite his villainous appearance, Tsilon is the most benevolent creature in Arvale I can think off. And it is his benevolence (and the benevolence of the other Dragons) that gets him used and abused to a calamitous degree. Despite this, he never turns bitter or hateful.
Tsilon has an immense fondness of humans. He gives away his magic for free, teaches them how to use it, befriends them, and becomes close friends with one in particular named Blynt. Together they built the great city named Arhaeldem, with Tsilon as the caretaker and protector.
Unfortunately, a crafty kid by the name of Kryphen had the world’s worst case of envy, ever, and proceeded to ruin it all.
You see, Journey of Illusion takes place 2000 A.D.
After Dragons.
Long ago, Kryphen was friends with a Dragon who taught and gave him magic, as they do.
However, he got so ultra envious, asking himself why they were gifted with these powers while he and the other humans had to struggle to survive, which, okay, fair.
But then he betrayed the Dragon during a magic lesson by reversing it’s own magic onto itself, putting it in a stupefied sleep. He figured out that he can siphon their magic and then sell it in bottles...
On top of that, this fucked up alchemist poisons the Dragons he doesn’t siphon with his own brand of turbo rabies one after another. Artificial Scarcity! How was he gonna be able to sell his product and start his magic potion comapny »Sorcynth« if people could still get magic for free after all?
Now, when dragons are poisoned by Kryphen’s turbo rabies, they turn into the classic evil very-much-hostile-to-humans-and-devouring-them fairytale monsters we know.
Dragons started attacking Arhaeldem, and Tsilon as it’s guardian has to defend his city.
And… I always wondered how terrible and confusing that must have been for him, to have to fight and most likely kill his own kind. Enough that I made a whole comic about it.
Kryphen ends up poisoning Tsilon. In the end it is Blynt who has to take down Mad Tsilon. This was The Calamity of Year 0 :
But Tsilon is not killed:
He becomes one of the 4 Dragons left, that Sorcynth continues to siphon the magic from for 2 millennia.
Now, there’s a slight 🤏 issue in his business model here, and it’s the fact that Tsilon seems to stir from his sleep after around 2 decades.
So what does this alchemist who is starting to control the entire continent/world and control the beliefs and people’s way of life with his magic corp. do? Every 20 years some unlucky bastard is chosen by ‘destiny’ to go on a Legendary Hero Quest™ to administer a knockout potion to the ‘Evil Dark Dragon’.
Why doesn’t Kryphen/ Sorcynth do this himself? Well, for some reason, this knockout potion has the nasty, or probably intentional, sideffect of making Tsilon briefly wake up, go mad, and consume the unlucky ‘Legendary Hero’.
My ongoing theory is that Krpyhen is feeding Tsilon a ‘Hero’ every 20 years on purpose to just barely keep him alive- and/or keep his entire business model secret, leaving no witnesses.
Now your player character, Duncan Forsythe, the last of those Legendary Heros, does not do the same mistake and just wakes Tsilon straight up. Tsilon confuses Duncan for Blynt briefly when he wakes up, which is totallyyy not foreshadowing something, nooo…
At the end of Arvale 1 Journey of Illusion, Tsilon is one of the final bosses, and only after:
1). Being drained for 2000 years
2). Being additionally extra drained right before the bossfight
3). Only eating a single 'Legendary Hero’ every 20 years
Only THEN Tsilon is so weakned that he becomes vulnerable to normal weapons.
So just IMAGINE the calamity he caused when he first went mad 2000 years ago, when he was still in his prime? One of the survivor’s entries described how the entire city was engulfed in flames, which, hey, another neat reference to classic evil fairy tale Dragons.
When you visit Arhaeldem in Journey of Illusion, despite 2000 years having passed, the earth around it is still pitch black, barren, and there’s no plants anywhere unless you go to the very edge of the level, where you can spot a measly few. Nice contrast to the flora filled Arhaeldem to back then. My guy practically nuclear bombed his own city!
Just before going mad again, Tsilon begs Duncan to kill him, even if Tsilon’s death results in a world without magic… which brings up some questions:
What are Arvale Dragons, and by extension Tsilon, anyway?
They’re… almost like laws or powers of nature with sentience? They are responsible for the magic in the world, not only being it’s source but also being able to generate seeimgly an infinite amount. There are 4 major ones, the ones Sorcynth/Kryphen kept alive:
There's Malzubed, The Dragon of Fire.
There's Hyandine, The Dragon of Water.
There's Klaetrocus, The Dragon of Earth.
And finally Tsilon, who not only possesses all 3 but is also The Dragon of »Everything Else.«
Which seems silly at first, and probably is supposed to be because Arvale is intentionally silly. But it starts to make sense when you take a closer look at the magic that’s being sold.
Because Sorcynth sells Fire, Earth and Water magic for offensive battle purposes. You attack with them. Obviously they get the fire magic from Malzubed, water magic from Hyandine, earth magic from Klaetrocus.
But they also sell potions that heal, boost your attack, defense, magical resistance, dexterity, magical intuition… And, well, they probably get that all from Tsilon. They get Everything Else they can’t get from the other Dragons, from Tsilon.
In the good ending, Tsilon returns to the ruins of Arhaeldem. You can see Duncan visit him. I always wondered how that conversation went…
Tsilon is said to be the oldest and strongest Dragon. And in Treasure of Memories, DeMenchev figures out how magic, such as remnants of a cast spell, likes to concentrate in a place. How it attracts more magic and how from that mass, even in completely inhospitable places with no water or sun, lifeforms can spawn. It also allows for otherwise impossible lifeforms such as water, earth or fire elementals to exist. They don’t have organs, flesh, bone and blood and yet they are still alive!
So... Where did the other dragons come from? It is said gods created them, but I’m not sure if I believe that, because if Arvale 2 Ocean of Time & Treasure of Memories taught me something about gods in Arvale, it’s that they are usually just selfish, lying and power hungry entities cosplaying that are not as almighty as they make themselves out to be.
If Tsilon dies, not only does all magic vanish, so do the remaining Dragons. And Tsilon has every type of magic, so… maybe he created them? But why?
This is extremely speculative theory posting on my part, it’s err, pretty much fanfiction. But… imagine…
Eons ago, there was a lone person. The primordial person. They look like a creature, with wings and horns and claws and limbs resembling the animals around them, maybe they modelled themselves after them. But unlike those animals, they were sentient, and they were alone. Through their primordial understanding of the world, they observed how life needs 3 elements to exist:
Energy, Water, and Mass. And after lots of trail and error, they figured out how to make more of themselves. Could you imagine a young Malzubed accidentially creating the volcano on Aphote? A young Hyandine toying with a sea serpent and mutating it into The Leviathan? A young Klaetrocus making the tectonic plates shift and create the cavernous mountains of Melonchi? I imagine whatever Dragons came after, Tsilon made sure they were not nearly as powerful to not further endanger the enviroments of Arvale.
But eventually, Tsilon came across a species of apes that acted different from the other animals. There was something familiar about them… and over the millennials Tsilon observed how they evolved, and began to understand what it was that made them feel like kin: Every one of them was a person. No wonder Tsilon was so enamoured.
Could you imagine DeMenchev, on one of his many expeditions, stumbling across a cave painting of hand stencils, and among them, is a Dragon’s hand?
