Abandon all hope for brevity, ye who enter here!
...Or, "I write a lot of really long lore dissections/theories/analyses" here, usually about Dragalia Lost. A dash of Tales of the Abyss or other video games I like also can and will pop up at random.
I'm also on AO3 by the same name (https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValerieFauxNom/works), where I post any fic I've written. Including my little baby Scaling the Walls of a Mystery, a 340k post-game exploration that is currently being rewritten as its own separate fic (but shhhh).
Please also check out my best friend WillofWinnie, also on tumblr and AO3 by the same name. She's the one behind all the art on my fics, and is a fantastic artist and friend! Check out her other works!
Oh, and I'm always down for yapping about Dragalia or Tales of the Abyss!
When Scaling the Walls of a Mystery (or 'Scaling' as I shall refer to it from here on out, because I could not Scale the Walls of My Laziness) was starting to wind down, I decided to make this masterpost to compile some of the extraneous things for anyone who stumbled across this now, since goodness knows me (and my best friend) have had a lot of silliness go on in the meantime regarding it.
That being said, hopefully this is of some use or interest to someone looking back in the future, and/or if anyone decides to try Scaling because of this.
Since this thing was and is a lot to both my heart and just in general, though, there's a lot to cover and thus under this nice read more!
As for general info for 'what the heck even is that', Scaling the Walls of a Mystery is a really big fanfic for Dragalia Lost that I first posted a chapter on February 22nd, 2023! I'm just gonna merge the two summaries that are out on its corresponding fic/series AO3 pages for a description beyond that:
A post-canon exploration of Dragalia Lost, wherein Euden finds himself alive somehow, despite all odds... but with no one save his original pactwyrm Midgardsormr remembering him, he's left to look at the recreated world and those he knew in it plagued by shadows of relationships only he knows now. Unfortunately for him, he strays a bit too close, too often to the royal castle of Sol Alberia where he was raised as the 7th scion, and captures his family's attention as a strange outsider that resembles them uncannily well, and who knows far too much for an innocent 'commoner'.
What's more, just because the world has been restored to a more harmonious state does not mean all is well for Euden, now trapped under the microscope of his siblings' pertinent questions. Though he might try to keep everything bottled up- the emotions, memories... an entire life's worth of feelings and thoughts is not something so easily dismissed.
And while Euden is stubborn, all glass can shatter under pressure.
---
In truth, none of them were entirely sure how things ended up like this, a strange commoner waltzing ever-steadily into their house and hearts. They did not know this 'Euden' before, but he integrated like a crucial cog in their chaotic-and-yet-orderly machine.
Meanwhile, Euden had expected to die with the last remnants of the previous worlds, erased from existence so others could live on. But he found himself made anew, as a nobody in some nameless field. Nobody else seemed to have heard of him. His was a free existence. And yet, when Zethia, now living happily alongside his family and Nedrick rightfully restored as her twin, keeps dragging him into the castle of Sol Alberia, he struggles to pull away. To not try to be there with his family, happy and so much more harmonious in this new world.
Fate has other plans for his attempts at anonymity, though, despite his best efforts. The Royal Family of Alberia would not rest until this latest enigma was solved, after all. With all of them being as stubborn as they are, though, it may take a while to get there.
That being said, it's a 300k+ word monstrosity that I worked on for about a year and a half! T-rated, which for me means more mature subject matter can be on the table but nothing graphic, etc, and Scaling hardly touches much of that to begin with. It's more of a dram-com-suspense thing, honestly, than anything to warrant even that vague warning of Discussions of Mature Subject Matter. Just a bunch of siblings and their father struggling to figure out life and their relationship with this weirdo that they stuck in their admittedly big home! (Plus the slow mental whittling of being trapped with people you loved but no longer know you as you are burdened with knowledge you cannot furnish)
Ahem, anyways, now for the actual meat if you're either interested or looking for an easy return to a particular part!
Chapters with links to individual chapters (you can probably tell where naming chapters became hard and I threw in the towel of following that exact pattern!):
Scaling the Walls of a Castle:
Scaling the Stairs of a Tower:
Scanning the Shelves of a Bookstore:
Scrutinizing the Mind of a Mystery:
Scaling the Railing of a Balcony:
Signaling the Start of an Era:
Starting to Shape an Idea:
Surviving a Spiel of Speeches:
Scampering Away from a Savage:
Stealing the Scales of a Scion:
Supping With a Side of Discomfort:
Setting a Course to a New Path:
Starting to Narrow Down Some Ideas:
Writing the Epitaph of Some Enigmas:
The Walls Closing on a Mystery:
Scaling the Walls of a Mystery (I):
Scaling the Walls of a Mystery (II):
Scaling the Walls of a Mystery (III):
Seclusion:
Spent:
Scolding:
Scrying:
Space:
Sweets:
Stillness:
Settling:
Scaled (I):
Scaled (II) [FINAL]:
---
Illustrations:
WillofWinnie, for whom I will be forever and indescribably grateful, has produced quite a lot of things for Scaling, including the book cover thing at the top of this post! All (well, technically sans 1, but that's a split chapter anyways since it otherwise would've been massive!) chapters also all have their own illustrations, which I will assembled in this illustration masterpost since I have other things to show here!
Since 17 pieces weren't enough for WillofWinnie, the resulting 28 have made the actual masterpost cramped and unwelcoming of memes and other
Video: That's right, WillofWinnie also produced a short animation for Scaling off of an event in the first chapter!
I also made a silly video myself, though with far less effort and personal creativity required, regarding Scaling!Euden's various bad lying/escape attempts.
Extras:
For anyone who is interested, "Lost Scales" is an adjacent fic that compiles some segments of Scaling that were discarded or otherwise not used for whatever reason. You can find it here!
As I say in the summary, while it may be 'non-canon' by default to the fic, but in segments there might be little headcanons or ideas that are passively maintained in my head in the fic even if they never saw the light of day. That being said, it wouldn't be very useful to anyone new, since most of the trimmings were from deeper in the plot where I actually had to, you know, make sure the plot made sense instead of going with the first instinct in my head.
For the brave, brave, patient soldiers who endured Scaling the Walls of a Mystery and somehow decided they want more, "Time's Scales" is a sort of historical epilogue thing I wrote here! It is a looser outline written in a vaguely retrospective manner of what historians have learned and catalogued about the fam's lives in the long-run.
A Spot of Tomfoolery:
Scaling also has had much joking about it between me and WillofWinnie, so here are just some of the silly little posts/memes about this thing since it's certainly not all doom and gloom in the fic either.
With all that being said, I would like to thank everyone who has chimed in with comments, critiques, questions, and more about Scaling!
They've really meant a lot, and I can't say I'd have been quite as gung-ho in pecking away at this thing without all the support! It's absolutely baffling to think that Scaling is now the most kudos-ed Dragalia fic in such short time, since it really did start as the mad, probably hyperspecific indulgences of myself imagining a potential post-canon for Dragalia's... unclear ending.
I have never encountered a character that so defied any attempt to categorize him into a DnD style alignment. Yes, Dungeons and Dragons' alignment chart has already been well-explored to have its flaws, but many characters still are able to be classed relatively easy. Even when there are major questions, it's usually only on one axis people have questions about (ex, 'is Guy lawful or chaotic?'). Jade personally runs rings around the alignment chart, depending on how you view him, what time period you look at him, and how inherently you believe some of his traits are intrinsic to him no matter how he behaves.
While I personally might discard some alignments here, there are a startling number of alignments one could argue for Jade. Do you stress the fact that he has a title called "Lawman" and is a member of a military to say he is lawful? Do you look at his unrepentant desire to spread chaos for the lolz as indicative of a chaotic bent? Do you think he merely has put a rein on his evil tendencies to act better even if it still is his 'natural' inclination? Has he transcended to neutral or good as he has aged and has regrets?
So, I turn to you, the Tales of the Abyss community:
If you had to give Jade Curtiss an alignment, what would you choose?
(For those unaware of DnD alignments and still wanting to partake, the wikipedia page here provides a brief overview, starting at 'axes')
These results are both interesting and not surprising to me.
Overall, 'chaotic' took a strong lead here in general, with chaotic options taking the biggest portion of their category. True Neutral took a surprisingly large share, as well!
Personally, I think I've decided to roughly categorize Jade like this throughout his life:
-Neutral Evil for childhood (blatant disregard of others, their lives, but generally without a particular code or desire for mindless destruction behind it. He just wanted his teacher back)
and, when it comes to the actual game...
Lawful Neutral was my vote.
Why? I think, overall, my impression of Jade is someone who, in his regret, has tried to ground himself with 'rules'. "Fomicry is bad, because I forbid it". He's anchored his morality to sentiments like that, plus other people he has determined are 'better' than he is. Peony, as a big one, is sort of a living chain to keep Jade in line. He's put his trust in that, and is generally trying to tie himself to service of the Empire through the military to further ground himself in standards and rules. And orders so that he is inherently limited for what he can do and how. I think he fears that if he's completely left to his own devices, he naturally tends to stray to 'bad' decisions.
As for why not chaos, I think ultimately I put more weight on things like the above than his means of entertainment. He jokes around and trolls, to be sure, as we all know and love, but ultimately that is just a funny little trolling to him instead of his moral outlook on whether he should ultimately follow a creed.
As for the neutral part, I'm with the most of you. Jade has graduated from his questionably moral childhood, but he's not actually crossed the barrier to 'good'.
That being said, I can definitely see the arguments for true neutral or even chaotic neutral!
As a rapid fire last thought, I think I'd sort the party like this:
LG - Natalia (loves her law and order as a princess, seeks to better the lives of her people)
NG- Luke (not particularly concerned about order or chaos, but just trying his best to save and protect.)
(Really the party reactions here are telling overall to where I'm coming from, I think:)
Luke wanted to continue to talk it out and feels like they did wrong, Guy dismisses it as a 'pressing need' thing, Natalia/Ion also don't like it, Tear/Jade/Anise are with Guy)
LN - Jade (as described above), Tear(??)
TN - Guy, Asch (the Very Morally Complicated. Guy tends good and maybe slightly lawful as a general person, but he still shows shades of darker colors when it comes to making the actual hard moral decisions, even later game. His willingness to, say, possibly assassinate multiple heads of state despite this being a Very Important Peace Meeting or encourage Luke to run for the hills and prioritize his own life at the possible cost of literally everything else on Auldrant makes me wonder. I think he generally tries to be a 'good person', but when it comes to his outlook on life, it's mostly a case-by-case basis with a strong lens of 'how does this affect me or the people I care about?' coloring his decisions.
Asch is also pretty muddy morally and is mostly just following the rhythm of what his heart says is right come game time for good or evil.)
CN - Anise (Anise and Guy are actually fairly similar in principle, since their main concern is protecting those they care about and little else even if they aren't personally malicious to the average person, but Anise goes a bit further when it comes to her willingness to break Da Rulez that be in pursuit of her aims. Guy mostly chills with the law whenever he's not decided to do something, Anise can go out of her way to break the rules to make money as a tourist guide in Daath during the timeskip)
So, yeah. Abyss party is also playing alignment darts and are pretty different people.
Not me on my playthrough of Tales of the Abyss years ago playing so crudely and so brute-forcing it (seldom using FoFs, never really touching overlimit or mystic artes) that I never realized that Asch is programmed to apparently counter with a mystic arte before you and thus instakill Luke if you try to use one while he's not like up in the air or something.
The one time where playing dumbly actually makes fights easier? Or, at least, stops a wipe?
Succeeding through sheer incompetence. I've done it!
I have never encountered a character that so defied any attempt to categorize him into a DnD style alignment. Yes, Dungeons and Dragons' alignment chart has already been well-explored to have its flaws, but many characters still are able to be classed relatively easy. Even when there are major questions, it's usually only on one axis people have questions about (ex, 'is Guy lawful or chaotic?'). Jade personally runs rings around the alignment chart, depending on how you view him, what time period you look at him, and how inherently you believe some of his traits are intrinsic to him no matter how he behaves.
While I personally might discard some alignments here, there are a startling number of alignments one could argue for Jade. Do you stress the fact that he has a title called "Lawman" and is a member of a military to say he is lawful? Do you look at his unrepentant desire to spread chaos for the lolz as indicative of a chaotic bent? Do you think he merely has put a rein on his evil tendencies to act better even if it still is his 'natural' inclination? Has he transcended to neutral or good as he has aged and has regrets?
So, I turn to you, the Tales of the Abyss community:
If you had to give Jade Curtiss an alignment, what would you choose?
(For those unaware of DnD alignments and still wanting to partake, the wikipedia page here provides a brief overview, starting at 'axes')
I'll be honest, I've never really liked Gala Chelle's design.
The plum-like purple is aleady not a very favored shade of my favorite color, and the scarlet red does not mesh well with it my opinion. The partial curls are also kinda off about it. The outfit is also shockingly revealing - she has literally no back on the 'dress' and still has perhaps the most egregious sideboobs in Dragalia. Then we have the half leggings and all that, which really just feels like the designers were more just designing her for sex appeal over anything else.
In fact, it's almost like having an apron on and almost nothing else-
NO LEONIDAS, GET OUT OF HERE-
Ahem.
So when I see that instead of that, we could have had this A design to the left:
It's almost maddening how much better it fits.
Chelle's whole 'argument' regarding why she's wearing these clothes is this:
She argues that this is purely 'function' and style, while her actual dress isn't functional at all, much less for travel. Even her disguise as a rich merchant is at odds with its design. I wonder if they were wanting to use her massive skirt as like the means by which she smuggles her gun, because that would at least be something functional about it... but even that doesn't seem to be the case.
She was keeping it in a bag.
Really, its only function is enraging Leif, which, to be fair, is a Chelle thing to do, but I imagine there are other ways to do this and in better style.
This is where the A design checks all boxes. That is 'rich merchant' look, classy and more fit for travel as she (pretends to) carries on the business of the family. It's easy to add additional layers to help herself against upcoming frigid climate, and is warmer to start with. The color scheme is a coherent purple-white.
Also the hat is cute.
This has been me raging against the much better design we could have gotten for Chelle that actually works. Thank you for tuning in to this message.
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:
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):
💬 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.
---
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
---
-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.
---
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!
Going Way Too In-Depth About a Single Conversation in Tales of the Abyss
We're talking deep deep endgame material here, folks, so consider this your only spoiler warning! I'm warning you!!
There's something interesting that goes on in one of Abyss' late game conversations that I wanted to dissect a bit, hoping that maybe something in this is new and interesting to people, since I know there have been many similar deep-dives into characters in this ye olde fandom.
What conversation? I'm not talking Tower Troubles here or Ending Engst (or Spurious Spelling as I misspell 'angst' in the vague attempt to Add Alliteration), but it's not far off: it's Asch and Luke's confrontation in Grand Chokmah.
It all stems with these two lines:
When I first saw this scene, I think I was almost laughing. Because it's so immediately hypocritical on Asch's part that it leads one to think that the writers forgot what he just said. First he's saying things that in any other game would be a heroic affirmation, a friend's reassurance... and then like two lines later devolves into base insults.
But, the more I thought about it, the more it has to say about Asch, his worldview, and what he thinks of Luke.
Guy and Jade do a decent job of getting the gist of what's going on in the subsequent skit, but I think there's yet more to unpack.
While this scene is very much a reflection of the more or less static Asch versus Luke's growth in literary terms, Asch has a lot more angst going on inside than just being angry at Luke for straining against him.
It all stems from his behavior changes later in the game after he learns that he is going to die. All his vague comments about lacking time and other stuff like this:
...Paint a picture that Asch is rather struggling with his imminent mortality and is just desperately trying to kill Van and ~fix things~ before kicking the bucket. But he's upset about it - who wouldn't be? A seventeen-year-old young man in the making (even more so since Abyss defines adulthood at the big 20), dying because his once-beloved teacher decided he wanted to Control+C, Control+V him. There's still so much he might want to do even if he tries to pretend he doesn't care about his past anymore.
This all wraps around to those two lines again. In a very real sense, Asch is trying to prepare his family for a world where he's no longer around. That's why he's so dead-set on Luke being a replacement, a balm to soothe any grief he leaves behind, and why he's upset that Luke denigrates himself.
Asch wants Luke to be a perfect substitute. It's why he holds the contradictory attitudes at being upset at Luke thinking himself inferior and why he calls Luke the very same. Luke's personality is a divergence from his, his way of thinking is, his opinions are. This is a 'bad copy' of him, one he views as insufficient to leave behind. He can't ignore those differences that make him 'inferior' in Asch's eyes, and that includes Luke's inferiority complex.
Luke is not exactly an object in Asch's mind, a robotic puppet to use and discard as Guy and Jade believe, in the same way that Van did. Instead, he has graduated to the (still objectifying, mind you) role of a function. Asch doesn't want to die, but since that doesn't seem to be an option anymore, has decided that leaving behind a second 'him' so they won't miss him will just have to do.
It's his way of 'living on' in a sense, I feel, in that if Luke grows to do all the things Asch might want or dream of, well, that's kinda like Asch was able to accomplish all of that himself. He's trying to entrust his future to his replica because he's not going to live to see it himself.
As such, Luke has been elevated to a 'person' because he will need to be Asch, whom Asch of course understands as a person. Luke is just being the wrong kind of person since he's supposed to be Asch.
There's one last step further to all this, in my opinion - Asch doesn't just want to leave behind an identical him, he wants the idealized him. The perfect him. Hence his distaste for Luke identifying himself as 'inferior' to Asch - he's supposed to be the better one! He's supposed to be the one that's so good at being Asch while being even better that nobody will miss the more flawed, messed-up Asch!
In fact, presuming Asch has already talked to Spinoza, there's another reason why he's supposed to be better, as he believes Luke is draining him away physically. If he's going to drain him away until he dies as Asch believes, he better be putting that to good use.
But he's not: Luke is defective from his purpose, his function, because he is not being Asch. He's also markedly worse at being Asch, since Asch knows what Asch is like and Luke is not like Asch - he's inferior.
So there we have it, a whole ball around expectations and the failure to meet them. It's no longer just the hatred for what Luke represents for what was done to him, but there's a new element coming in the fact he believes that Luke is killing him without the decency to shape up to replace him. It's endangering his ability to live on as he wants, his ability to 'console' anyone who might care about Asch after his death, and it's all because Luke is not performing the most fundamental duty a replica has - replicating who Asch is and improving it.
So... yeah. Hopefully my rambling was somehow insightful or new, coherent, and hasn't already been said a million times over!
It really is uncanny, the amount of parallels these two have in common.
-Royal in a position of power that eventually ascends to a throne
-Obsessed with upending previous order
-Frames dragons as the origin of the modern world's woes, seeks to eliminate them either via genocide (Edelgard) or by displacing them from worship and respect, (Leonidas - while an AU version of him in-game also decided to seek/achieves genocide, but raw canon version of him never outright calls for genocide)
-Despite starting life on a relatively silver platter, has become infatuated with the concept of a meritocracy. Naturally believes that they are the best qualified to lead said meritocracy as an absolute ruler, of course
-Many siblings
-Childhood trauma has Changed Them
-Part of a particularly special bloodline that grants them special powers
-Has Major Qualms with local continent-wide religion
-Leader of a 'revolution' that somehow would end up with the same person in charge as before because they were already the leader
-Imperialistic (whether through already starting wars in some dream of regaining the territory the Empire previously had, or by merely scheming one day to start making moves as in Leonidas' case)
-Willing to sacrifice others to get their way, including via experimentation
-Themed around fire
-Likes dressing in red with their golden weapon, a relic from the past...
...And yet, despite all these similarities, somehow the one with the crazed expression is the one that can actually adapt and become a better person and learn from mistakes!
Leonidas is such a stickler to the idea of 'might makes right' and meritocracy that when his youngest brother actually ekes out a win over his forces, he goes, 'damn, maybe there is something more than I thought about your worldview and strategy', and incorporates his brother's more diplomatic, kind approach.
Make no mistake - he does not flip on a dime to be a perfect little angel. Leonidas here is putting on airs, in a sense - these lines are not the way he normally speaks, which is usually curt and pointed.
He is trying to win friends and influence people, because that is what he has learned works (in this case, he is trying to dissuade a mob forming against his little brother and reestablish respect and trust for the royal bloodline).
But, notably, he is changing by, ya know, trying to be a better ruler. It extends to his personal relationships, as he starts protecting, entertaining, and helping more of his siblings in ways he never had before instead of dismissing them out of hand. He legitimately is starting to grow and care for his siblings, not even as another means of manipulation.
He also has shifted his views on meritocracy. Now that one of the weakest family members has risen up far beyond what he anticipated. Where before he ruled Valkaheim, -the city he was charged with overseeing before the game started, - with an exceedingly lax, almost anarchistic hand that let the strong trample over everything, he now instead thinks the division of 'strong' versus 'weak' endows the strong with responsibilities:
Even before this change of heart, Leonidas still somehow manages to express his Lawful Evil alignment in a less evil way.
The suicide squad he uses that can activate superstrength for a battle and then die? The dragons he's made into effective thralls to his will with little of their former capacity to think and express themselves? These are willing participants, by all indications, with no hint of coercion.
Evil nevertheless, of course, since unlike some people I've happened about, I'm not here to claim Leonidas is actually a good person and what's right for the continent, but at least Leonidas has the decency to use the willing in his mad science era.
He also isn't making excuses about who is doing/enabling these things, that he's just 'happening to partner with people less moral than I for the time being (I will use all their evil stuff nevertheless and let them run wild because I need it, but I actually disapprove, really!).
I can spin things for longer like this, but at the end of the day, it truly is shocking how similar these characters are set up to be but how different directions they go in.
The writers for FE3h may have tried their darndest to soften Edelgard's image, because fully acknowledging the very real, widespread harms she does would damage her waifu/sex appeal (a topic for another day regarding the bad portrayal of women in media, but I digress), but the cracks shine through nonetheless.
Let it be clear - Leonidas is not exactly handled 'ideally', either. It is clear that the several writers who worked separately on the story had very, very different ideas about what to do with most of the royal family (that being flavors of evil to do some light fratricide against for the one true good heir to shine through at first), -but something is different between them, what they do, how they do it, and how they are portrayed.
(A large part of that on an offhand guess is their honesty - Leonidas even post change, is unabashed about intending to be an absolute ruler, while Edelgard pretends the commoners will be empowered by meritocracy,-a system that famously does not empower the commoners, -and still somehow manages to appoint her school/war buddies to positions of power and refuse democracy to the people as she chooses the next Supreme Leader.)
There is a reason why one is capable of growing to walk in peace with their family at the end of the game, grumpy at his family presumably poking his buttons, -and one gets a dictator-style 'power portrait' of people having to supplicate while she tramples nations' flags as Lady Justice(?) despairs:
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!
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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!
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.
Behold, my latest (probably bad) late-night shenanigan!
In which I compare and contrast how Leonidas feels life is always like at the Halidom for his youngest brother after he was conscripted into a silly boy band (in war, sure, but far too child-friendly and happy-go-lucky everywhere), and how said youngest brother is actually faring emotionally half the time (Not Well)!
Royal Fam Stickers We Should Have Gotten (And Those We Did... But Not In Dragalia):
As we know, surprisingly few stickers of the fam ever made it in the game. Of course, there were plenty Eudens, a few Zethia/Zenas, one Emile, and a Nedrick + Chelle, but... for being very important characters for much of the main story, I'm surprised we didn't get at least one for each family member. Heck, most of those fam member stickers we did get were added exceedingly late into sticker-hood.
It's not like we didn't have material, either, even just for already-existing comics:
As an 'oho?' or 'I see!' or something scheming! Leonidas and Chelle just mutually plotting is just so fun.
Honestly, Leonidas had a lot of sticker potential in general!
I could see a triumphal 'hmph!' or 'ha!' thing for the former and a '...really?' for the latter.
Speaking of Phares he's also got good sticker material. While they never would have done this one for several reasons (it's not in the main body of comics, primarily), but I still think we could have used a good old 'ha ha!' sticker, darn it! Look at him, he's precious.
Chelle is tragically not as inclined to the sort of faces that work well in stickers, but she does have a few:
See, sticker potential aplenty! But what if I told you that they effectively created colored stickers for most the fam... for LINE chat? I was informed of this probably a month or two ago by @soumarhea, and forgot I never put these in a post for easy findings instead of our long long long chat.
The fam stickers even include one that I'm sure some people wanted in one of the voting competitions:
Here's the rest, in the hopes that someone else finds enjoyment in Stickers That Never Were In The Game But Should Have Been:
(Yes, that is a "CURRY!" and "Boom" Leonidas, there...)
((Also, I want to flip that Phares, as his scales are on his left side... is what I would say, because Soumarhea also already 'fixed' that with this image for all your Very Canonical Silly Sticker needs a while ago too:))
So... yeah. There are some royal fam sticker material we never got, plus some stickers they made for LINE that we still never got! Hopefully this is a new sight for people, and if you want to see the full body of LINE stickers they made (a good chunk of which were stickers that we did get already, fair warning, here is the link to that google drive:
have you see this interview with some of dragalia's writers? might be of interest
I have!
I'll be real, though, I am very confused about how that might tie into anything I wrote on my most recent post (what I presume this is related to?). I read it like five times in several different translators just in case one was skipping over the holy grail or mistranslated it and came up with no new insight.
The vast majority of it is a rough summary of some highlights of the early story, ch.4 Emile, ch.10 fam betrayal, ch.12 Leonidas... ch.15 Euden/Nedrick drama kicking up... and then the only things they seemingly said about ch.26 is that they wanted as many characters as possible to be able to express their thoughts/motivations and that they wanted to have the theme of Euden moving on as a human instead of a prince.
I just... fail to see how that relates with my critiques at all. Am I missing something?
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!
---
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.
