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larnax · 5 months

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how i would rewrite the entire story of octopath traveler 2

scenario: the octopath devs forgot to lock the door and i infiltrated the building, assassinating the current writer and replacing their hard work with this. in general i try to write these plots so that they keep in mind octopath's ultimate goals, having eight stories that work on their own, characters that interact with each other interestingly, and the stories all secretly leading up to a fight with a big super evil god while choral music plays. i mean i hope those first two things are priorities, but they do seem to regularly get sacrificed for that third thing. still as a feminist i support womens' rights to be a psuedosatanic force of pure evil that our heroes must kill, so everyones story will still have weird vide stuff happening. that said i am going to be incorporating a lot more mythology around the other gods because 1) you can't stop me

also in general i am trying to rewrite the plots as if im writing an octopath game that has to work in the octopath engine, not take three million years to make, and roughly follows the outline, characters, and tone of ot2.

readmore because this is 50k words

ochette

i love ochette so much ← actually loves the version of ochette he made up in his head where she is completely different

i already wrote a draft for an ochett rewrite but the thing about ochett is that she lives in my brain and i haven't stopped thinking about her.

i have a lot of thoughts about the implementation of the beastlings(bad), but i stand by my conclusion that the first decision made was to have the hunter subclass make characters kemonomimi because that's fun, and then because the writing of octopath is not very intellectually considered they just autocompleted with the first group they thought of when they thought of animal people(indigenous people) and then the first group they thought of when they thought about their island setting for solistia(pasifika people) and then they came up with them acting like animals, because they're animal people, so they're kind of cute and simple, and at no point did anyone punch them in the face so it made it into the final draft completely unconsidered. this is inexcusable and easily the worst thing about octopath 2 and anyone who uncritically accepts it is at the very least not very media literate. i'm not gonna claim that my rewrite is unproblematic not least because ochette remains a beastling, but hopefully it's at least an improvement over the original. if i was doing this as a game developer and not as a thought exercise i would hire a sensitivity reader. but anyway lets try to bail out this sinking ship with this water bottle

as in the first draft we are changing beastlings from a race to an occupation. draefendi's hunters are a subset of hunters who have animal ears, noses, and tails, which give them heightened hearing, smell, and balance, as well as the ability to make the sounds/movements for and understand some animal languages humans can't. they are not exclusive to toto'haha which is why all of the characters can become one. non-hunter islanders are just normal fantasy pacific islanders the way tropu'hopu already is. also if i broke into the ot2 headquarters early enough in game development i would make castti also pasifika to avoid having the Only indigenous-coded character be a hunter who talks to animals.

also as before, because ochette's entire character is noble savage/toddler, most of her original personality is just gone, and like before i'm giving her autism and her special interests are cooking, hunting, and communication. she's still cheerful and likes food but we don't write and treat her like she is 4 years old.

she is objectively very good at cooking and hunting, but she's so interested in communication because she struggles with communicating with both people and animals. ochette speaks multiple animal languages and understands several more. this is partially because juvah's been raising her since she was a child. despite this, juvah maintains the belief that she has the ability to be the guardian(which is no longer a political position bc cohazeh is just a normal leader and not a colonizer, but still requires her to advise/help the islanders), and pushes ochett to develop her communication skills and become a compassionate person.

personality-wise, i must reluctantly give up on swapping bribe with befriend for reasons(couldn't think of a good mechanic to make bribe not identical to hire), so instead i will say that the best way ochette's found to communicate with people is through cooking, because everyone eats, and in-story this is treated more as her sharing a meal with someone than leading them. she's also not a follower of the church and prioritizes draefendi and to a lesser degree dohter and alephan over aelfric as the gods of hunting, food, and language respectively. she has a very good sense for taste and can often figure out what kind of food best fits the person she's talking to but despite her best efforts often fails to correctly understand subtext.

bonus redesign

prologue YOU THOUGHT LMAO. no. setting notes

because language is going to be such a big focus toto'haha needs to have a coherent language instead of giving the places psuedo-polynesian names and then having the speakers of "old beastling" be a joke, we are going to be giving toto'haha a simple but internally consistent conlang by which i mean normalizing spelling, keeping the consonant clusters in "beastling words" and larger consonant inventory, and editing some terms to avoid making it Just Hawaiʻian. otherwise assume all the new words and names are made-up words. well actually im repurposing existing languages i made but i have specifically tried to find words that do not mean anything relevant in hawaiʻian that are also not slurs

toto'haha's ecosystem is not. especially coherent(lions are not native to the pacific islands) but we're just going to roll with it and assume that the animals that spawn in a region are native to it.

prologue for real:

renaming beastling village → "bēlute'u". kid ochett(pronounced the same) walks up to juvā in the ancients' tombs with the ingredients he asked for to find a malom owl and karti jackal. she asks what's going on and juvā tells her it's time for her to pick her partner. she tries to talk to them, but neither of them will respond to her. he asks what she's going to do. you get a choice to [capture] or [befriend]. either ends the cutscene, but if you [challenge] them, they can't be captured and after they faint juvā just tells her that was the wrong answer and fades to black to wake them up. if you befriend one of them, a cutscene plays of ochett choosing which of the dishes she can make from her ingredients best suit an owl or a jackal, and when the correct one comes to eat with her juvā congratulates her on finding the right answer and prompts the animal to introduce themselves, the owl as mala'ina or the jackal as hako. the other animal starts to approach, but suddenly starts glowing purple. ochett tries to talk to them anyway, but they attack her and a fight starts. defeating them leads them to flee. she asks what happened and juvā says he has no idea, but that she did well to protect her partner, and tells the both of them that they'll have to deal with a lot of equally confusing and concerning situations as the guardian. ochett tells him that he does a really bad job of making this job sound fun, and he laughs. scene end.

ch1:

ochett's hunting the king iguana. ochett actually has a joke "boss dialogue" moment with the king iguana except all that happens is that it tells her how hard it's going to kill her and ochett thanks it for telling her its strategy. after that ochett hoists the big captured lad back to bēlute'u and starts preparing it into various dishes when things are interrupted by a scream. kohazē runs up and asks for the guardian, when juvā arrives she says a traveler suddenly attacked a bunch of people in the tavern and fled into the woods, and someone needs to go after her. juvā tells ochett to handle the traveler while he looks over the forest for the source of the issue, ochett is unsure but they don't have time to spare, so she sets off.

when she does find the woman, she's in the tomb, standing in front of the mural and scratching at it. ochett tries to talk to her, but recognizes the scent-- the energy around her is the same as that day, and just like then the woman immediately attacks her, and she's the chapter 1 boss.

initially she has an overworld provoke sprite, but at the midpoint of the fight she turns into the dark entity(it'd be better if she slowly transformed but thats more spritesheets). the latent power unlock is when ochett tries to talk to her again, and this time the woman speaks, but speaks in a cryptic language she can't even identify and charges up her ultra attack. ochett decides that it's time to get serious.

when the fight is over, the woman turns into a mysterious fledgeling and sludges away. ochett is massively confused, but knows that her first priority is to get back to master juvā and touch base.

cut back to ochett and master juvā at the cliff's edge. he tells her that he found an Unidentified Fucking Thing wandering around the forest and she identifies it as the thing from earlier and [...] bubble explains the situation. he asks her what she makes of it. ochett mentions the connection with the companion she didn't choose, but that otherwise she's not sure. both she and master juvā are the product of transformation(ochett into one of draefendi's hunters and juvā into a disciple of alephan who can speak languages he doesn't natively have the mouthshape for, not stated in dialogue bc obv they would both know that), but ochett maintains that the dark entity didn't even seem like a living creature.

juvā tells her that's about right-- this signals the night of the scarlet moon, an event when a different god starts using its transformative powers on living creatures, except that unlike draefendi and alephan this transformation is involuntary and is a form of resurrection. when the night arrives, vide will transform one of her vessels into essentially a transformation plague carrier who will kill and then turn every living creature on the island into a sludge monster. ochett asks how or if this can be stopped, and juvā tells her about the wardenbeasts. they return to their birthplace after the night to rest and recover, but if she goes to find them they'll come to defend the island and buy her enough time to defeat the vessel. ochett asks why vide does this, and juvā tells her that if she can figure that out she will be the best guardian in toto'haha history, but warns her to keep in mind that her first priority should always be guarding the island-- vide's vessel isn't sentient, so there's no way to resolve this diplomatically. ochett doesn't mention that the dark entity speaks, but as an audience member you probably pick up on the foreshadowing. anyway, brief summary of the three guardians and locations, go girl get those creatures.

ch2-acta:

ochett shows up in conning creek and is immediately frustrated by everyone she talks to about a village guardian acting like she's speaking about a mythical beast that may or may not even exist instead of a literal snake who is supposed to live in the cave just outside of town. she ends up leaving and sitting on the beach where she's approached by a mysterious woman who asks what's wrong. ochett says that she's here to find cateracta, but everyone in town seems to think she doesn't even exist. the woman asks if she's a hunter, ochett confirms she is. the woman seems interested, and thinking she's made a buddy, ochett and the woman talk for a bit about ochett's hunting. after hearing that the largest thing ochett's ever defeated was a sun bear the woman stands up, introduces herself as alpione, and says that ochett won't be leaving this place alive. ochett is very confused, but alpione refuses to elaborate and won't tell her where cateracta is, getting more hostile the more she asks even though she very clearly knows something.

challenging alpione results in the same fight as the original story, although like my original rewrite ochett finds that cateracta is entirely gone. this time, however, alpione explains that the dark hunter swept through town when cateracta was weakened from defending against a tsunami and killed her, before resurrecting her corpse as a mindless hostile sludge monster that alpione and the other caretakers of cateracta had to defeat in order to protect the village. they allowed the villagers to believe that the sludge cateracta was a different creature entirely who had killed cateracta to keep her reputation from being trashed, but that led to muddled rumors that attracted hunters from all over the place in search of this incredible one-of-a-kind serpent. alpione tells ochett that she's too late, and to find her quarry someplace else. ochett realizes there has been something of a massive misunderstanding here and tries to explain that she was never here to kill cateracta, but alpione sees this as her backpedaling.

ochett retreats for the moment. her companion advises her to just give up and move on since there's no hope of getting cateracta, but ochett is frustrated that alpione, in her mind, deceived her, and is now continuing to not listen to her. she needs to make her understand that she's Not Like That, but she doesn't exactly think she can befriend alpione with seafood. her companion asks her why she doesn't just make a dish without meat then, and ochett takes 9999 embarrassment damage but decides to make some healing grape agar-agar to apologize for beating the shit out of her earlier with local agar. this just happens in a cutscene.

she finds alpione inside the spiral cave and gives her the agar-agar, and explains fully that she's from toto'haha and came here to ask for cateracta's help during the night of the scarlet moon. alpione finally connects the dots and in the meantime has remembered some things cateracta told her, and understands now that ochett isn't a big game hunter. she apologizes for the misunderstanding and ochett says it's fine, but still doesn't really know what to do without cateracta to help with the night of the scarlet moon. alpione admits that she lied a little bit by omission, and walks into the water to call the fledgeling acta, who she entrusts ochett with. she warns ochett not to expect it to be any help in combat, ochett thanks her anyway and promises to take care of acta.

ochett is left feeling conflicted. this entire thing could've been avoided if alpione had just given her the benefit of the doubt in the first place, but she does understand her distrust in context and alpione is clearly a good person. she also doesn't actually know how much help acta will be in the fight against the scarlet moon's vessel-- should she try to find a way for acta to help, or does she need to try and find a way to compensate for the lack of one third of their expected firepower? to top it all off, what the fuck was up with the dark hunter? was alpione describing something different or is there a version of the scarlet moon's vessel that managed to pass as a person? are they still out there?

ch3-tera:

im still cutting the fat jokes, we are re-using my rewritten plot from the first draft. ochett shows up in crackridge and finds it under perpetual threat from earthquakes. tera is treated by most of the town as a mythical explanation or possibly spirit and again nobody will tell her where the big lava guy is supposed to be, and the entire town speaks in this pidgin between solistian and an unknown language she can't understand. finally, she finds an old woman with a unique sprite who speaks a lot in what must be the original unknown language in response to the name 'tera'. they can't understand each other at all and the woman doesn't know or won't speak the pidgin. she can be provoked, but she is maximum strength. if you investigate the town, you find a young man named kidhaefim also with a unique sprite guarding a house. he speaks in the pidgin, but just directs ochett to talk to his mother. if you provoke and defeat him, inside the house is a chest with a recipe. to make it you need aromatic pork from a buttermeep.

now ochett can befriend the woman, who takes her to tera, but he just shouts at her in the unknown language and attacks.

tera is unchanged except that if you fully deplete his HP you get a game over(also true of glacis). otherwise, after he's captured he calms down when he realizes ochett isn't trying to kill him and recognizes her as one of draefendi's hunters. she asks why he attacked her and he explains that sunawjéug's(her name is sunawjéug, when he realizes ochett didnt even get her name hes even more annoyed) ancestor was tricked by an evil spirit into revealing his location so it could attack tera while he was sleeping. her family has been taking care of him for centuries and sunawjéug has spent a long time helping him recover, but he warned her a lot not to reveal his secret to someone who hadn't spent enough time earning her trust to know the language, and someone who had would've been able to respond to him when he shouted earlier. ochett is a little embarrassed that she didn't think about Why kidhaefim wouldn't just translate for her, but explains that the night of the scarlet moon is like. next month. and tera says yeah that's why i'm going with you anyway. ochett also asks what's up with this evil spirit, and tera explains that a human-shaped creature disguising itself as a hunter attacked him, transforming into a monstrous undead. she asks if it's similar to the blood moon's vessel, and he says that the evil spirit could speak solistian, while the blood moon's vessel doesn't speak at all. ochett brings up that she's pretty sure the dark entity spoke a little. tera admits that it's possible the blood moon vessel might speak some kind of vide-language, but that if she can't even communicate with another human over a language barrier she's going to have a hell of a time trying to converse with that thing, and asks ochett who she thinks she's fooling. she admits that she doesn't know, but it's really eating at her that she doesn't know what's going on here, and she wants to understand how all these pieces fit together. tera tells her good luck, but keep your eye on what's important.

ch4-glacis:

ochett gets to stormhail and finds it absolutely covered in blizzards. due to the church's influence, glacis has been straightforwardly and explicitly mythologized as a vengeful spirit who is probably an ally of vide and the sacred guard is actively planning an attack on her that only hasn't come to fruition because they keep fucking freezing to death or getting their shit wrecked by glacis. ochett initially worries that glacis actually has been killed and revived through vide's might somehow in which case That's bad, but either way she has no choice but to go and see what's happening.

after beating back the sacred guard guarding the place, on her way up the mountain she meets heig, who is doing his damndest to be a harbinger but it's just not working out. he tells ochett that she'll never defeat glacis, emphasizing especially that if a full squadron of the sacred guard got wiped out in an instant one random hunter is absolutely fucked. ochett responds that she's not planning to defeat glacis and leaves anyway. on the way, she passes by the frozen bodies of sacred guards and hunters alike and is horrified at the whole situation.

when she reaches the plateau just before the peak, heig catches up to her. he begs her to leave, and says that whoever she is she doesn't deserve to die like this. ochett wants to know what happened, and he explains:

as the church was first setting up in stormhail, they realized that the guardian glacis wasn't actually a mythical spirit and was a real giant spirit who lived in the mountains and could theoretically turn hostile at any time, and also her presence made people reluctant to convert to the aelfric-above-all-flame since glacis, like juvā, is a disciple of another god, in this case alephan, and the stormhail residents were worried that converting to the church would leave them without glacis' protection from blizzards. so stormhail's bishop... yknow..... slipped a couple posters onto the wall asking for any skilled hunters to.... take care of business. and one day, a hunter came. she recruited a group of big game hunters, including heig, and set the group their task of slaying a divine beast. unfortunately, they were up against glacis, and she quickly killed everyone except the hunter, and heig, who wimped out at the last second. while the cannon fodder was busy distracting glacis, the hunter killed and revived glacis' children and used them as meat shields. glacis managed to pull through and drive her back regardless, but the whole thing angered her so deeply that she went mad with grief and started slinging constant blizzards. the residents of stormhail freaked out and believed the church when they theorized glacis had betrayed them and joined with vide, and heig was too ashamed to admit his involvement in the entire thing and afraid of the church to even try to clear glacis' name, so instead he settles for trying to ward off people foolish enough to try to hunt her.

ochett's mad. ochett is furious. there are so many people and things to be mad at that she nearly goes apeshit on heig just to vent some of it, but her companion stops her. whether she likes it or not, she is apparently the only bitch in town who even wants to fix the situation. she tells heig that she's going to go up there and convince glacis to come with her to help with her thing, but that once she's done negotiating heig is going to take responsibility for his involvement, apologize to glacis, and reveal everything to glacis' people. heig insists that nobody's even going to believe their word against that of the church, ochett says tough luck buddy figure something out i believe in you.

she gets to the peak and finds glacis furious and grieving. ochett introduces herself as toto'haha's guardian in training and asks for glacis' help with the night of the scarlet moon. glacis doesn't immediately attack her, but also refuses to go with her. suddenly, heig appears, and glacis immediately flies into a rage. ochett shields him, and glacis assumes that's because she's pulling the same stunt as the dark hunter and attacks her.

once glacis is captured, ochett tells heig to talk to her. he apologizes, both for his part in the hunter's attack and for not trying to clear her name, but suggests that she's probably better off leaving stormhail altogether. glacis refuses. she already lost her family and her people, she's not losing her home too. she's going to drive the church out if it's the last goddamn thing she does. heig... promises to help her. glacis was originally coexisting fine, there's no real reason the church can't share. he does actually feel extremely guilty, and is a little relieved that he's being forced to make amends. glacis is still vengeful and doubts heig can actually do anything, but has shaken off her funk enough to not want the world to end and says she'll return to help with the night of the scarlet moon. when she returns to stormhail, if heig has managed to ensure her safety she'll do her best to coexist. if he doesn't she's right back to eternal hailstorms though. heig promises to do his level best, if nothing else for the sake of not being buried under an avalanche.

ch5:

ochett returns to bēlute'u just before the night of the scarlet moon. juvā and kohazē have been making preparations while she's gone(they have the defenses up, and there are a couple of hired fighters-- alongside that, several of the villagers have momentarily become beastlings), and the village is ready to defend itself. ochett reveals her group of... cateracta's baby, a wounded tera, and severely depressed glacis. juvā asks what. uh. happened. and ochett explains that a dark hunter apparently ripped through solistia and was maybe specifically targeting the guardians. juvā is understandably concerned by his news, and tells ochett that while it's not impossible for her to pull through, she needs to stay focused and strong. she does not have time to fuck around. they'll need to contend with this hunter eventually if she's still out there but they need to be alive to do that.

then, though, the moon turns red, and a loud, anguished scream in that vide-language stretches over the entire island. it's time.

now this is mostly just bc im a sucker for a roll call, but it's my birthday party so we follow through on the dark hunter having weakened all the guardians.

first, acta has to defend against a wave of marine enemies, but she can't, and ochett needs to move on... until who's that it's alpione she's here to help out! not just that, but she gives ochett something to tell acta in her mother's language. ochett repeats it and acta remembers how to channel her mother's power and gains her ultraboost form. she and alpione stay behind to defend the river while the rest of them press on.

next, tera has to defend against a bunch of enemies in the mountains, but again he's weaker than normal and while they can't kill him he's too slow to get all the stragglers until you fucking guessed it it's sunawjéug and kidhaefim here to support him. kidhaefim translates between the two of them so ochett can thank her for her help and sunawjéug can tell ochett that she should come back to crackridge sometime so they can share a meal again.

as you might've guessed, at the edge of the cliff they have to defend from avian enemies and while glacis actually is able to take care of herself, heig still shows up. it's sort of his fault she almost wasn't here, so he feels obligated to help out, and also the world will end if they fail. glacis genuinely thanks him, and ochett is all set.

she goes out to the cliff and is attacked by the companion she didn't choose. she tries to talk to it, but that gives it a chance to attack her(notably, not her companion), causing her to fall down into the sea.

the ocean scene plays out mostly as normal, although aelfric is replaced by draefendi giving her the strength to pull through and confront the blood moon's vessel on the shoal.

the vessel is waiting on the beach. it speaks to her in the vide-language. she tries desperately to talk to it, but that just gives it an opening to attack her again... until her companion blocks the hit, in their ultrabeast draefendi-boosted form. they ask her what she's going to do, and ochett confirms that she's going to defend the island.

the fight plays out as in the original. at the midpoint, ochett realizes that the blood moon's vessel is crying out in pain.

when it's defeated, it falls to the ground, dying. ochett apologizes for not being able to save it, and hopes that even if she can't understand it, it can understand her telling it that she's sorry, and she hopes this is a relief. her companion asks her if there's anything she wants to do for it as a last rite, and she realizes she knows.

you get the prompt to befriend the blood moon's vessel. all ochett has on her is waterlogged jerky, but the blood moon vessel eats it anyway. (is it a living creature, after all?)

ochett returns to the village. lots of wounded, but none dead. the guardians are waiting with juvā and kohazē, as well as their support. ochett, exhausted, asks if anyone else is starving.

afterstory:

juvā and kozahē are hanging out together at the highest point in town. kohazē is worrying about the forest recovering from the night of the scarlet moon and juvā is advising her to mark some animals as off-limits for hunting so their population can get back to normal.

alpione's next chapter is fine so i'm leaving it.

sunawjéug and kidhaefim hang out in their house, with kidhaefim explaining that sunawjéug has been having fun defending the village in tera's absence. the befuddling greatbow can be bought or mugged off her, but not entreated or stolen.

heig starts hanging out in the cathedral, fighting for his fucking life to convince the church to leave glacis alone when she returns. his info mentions that he's been trying to learn the language of the wardenbeasts by devoting himself to draefendi.

castti

so castti's is one of the only ot2 stories that i think is Good, so this is 100% just me doing something i personally like more, but. im going to be for real with you. i dont think trousseau's motivation is that compelling and what i really wanted from castti's story was the actual mystery solving to be a more prominent thing so instead what i want to do is give trousseau more interesting stuff to do and make castti picking up the pieces of her past a little more reliant on castti, like, figuring things out herself

the problem with trousseau is that in general i find nihilism a difficult philosophy to make an intriguing villain out of and good god does ot2 not succeed for me, hes just an evilbadguy satanist. well whats your more interesting idea, you say, and my proposal is pyramid scheme trousseau. essentially, being an apothecary means a lot of telling people bad news, and often having to make compromises or failing to fix a situation altogether. trousseau is a nice guy, but he just does not have the fortitude to deal with being a doctor who can't cure everyone. initially this manifested as self-doubt, him feeling like an incompetent doctor, but when he meets a follower of vide he's told, instead, that this is a failure of dohter's medicine. it is impure, dirty, messy-- in many cases it only prolongs the lives of people who would be better off dead. this new cool healing power of vide, on the other hand, will not only make you immortal(by turning you into an undead) but also free your mind from suffering(by eating it). trousseau feels like he's found A Better Way, and immediately wants to share the news with the rest of eir's apothecaries, but the vide influencer warns him that apothecaries are notoriously stubborn and while he's open-minded, the others won't believe him without evidence. what's the solution, then? simple. inflict incurable wounds on or kill a large enough group of people that, when trousseau uses vide's healing to resurrect them, it's impossible to see it as anything but a miracle. since the people will receive the benefit of vide's healing too, it's a win-win all around, and trousseau himself will be hailed as a savior. however, in actuality this is all bullshit and all trousseau is actually doing is reanimating their corpses as essentially puppets with his personality. again this is not That different from trousseau's original incarnation because i don't think trousseau is that bad he just could be better.

castti's story doesn't have as much of a strong theme as the others-- "as nice as it would be for there to be a simple miracle cure that solves illness, sometimes you have to sacrifice what you wish existed for what's real" is a theme, but i definitely care more about "what if there were some guys doing fucked up murders", which i feel is in the spirit of castti's original story

so castti is going to be going up against trousseau who wants an easy solution to fix all sickness forever and be a savior and more importantly kill like everyone to do that. initially he attacked healeaks the same way he did in the original, with eir's apothecaries finding him, being horrified at his sicko antics, and all sacrificing themselves to get castti out alive. except the thing is. trousseau can resurrect people.

prologue:

castti wakes up on a boat covered in the effects of poison with no memories, and nothing but her apothecary bag and uniform with a mantle with the insignia of an herb-of-grace.

initially things are fine, but suddenly it seems that the sailors who hauled her aboard are also exhibiting the symptoms of that poison. they're planning to throw castti right back into the ocean before she manages to treat them and, in the process, her own wounds, although she warns the sailors that they'll probably scar. the captain tells her that she wants her thrown overboard regardless, but that she might forget to give the order if she spends the time until they dock in canalbrine to the southwest treating some of the other wounds none of her crew have been able to get treated. castti agrees.

ch1:

castti arrives in canalbrine and meets malaya while Castti is in the process of treating a guy, but then gets kicked out because his brother's heard rumors trousseau spread about how eir's apothecaries actually did totally convert to his "kill everyone now" philosophy and his messengers in the forms of the resurrected members-- specifically, he accuses castti of poisoning his brother so she can pretend to cure him(malaya is still never explicitly acknowledged to foreshadow that she's a ghost). castti is dumbfounded. she seems to have found a clue to her identity, but was she really that kind of scammer? she wants to think she isn't, but... how did she get onto that boat covered in poison in the first place? without her memories, she can't discount the possibility that she did commit atrocities as a member of eir's apothecaries or that if she didn't that she's somehow their pawn. to top it all off, exploring around town leads her to realize that the man isn't alone-- lots of people are showing symptoms of poisoning, and not all of them even have the same symptoms. she treats them, but although her cures work and she doesn't charge them, the people remain suspicious of her when they hear from the man that this could be part of her scheme. castti wants more answers, but he isn't talking to her. she either needs to find the solution to this herself and prove it wasn't her, or she needs to find how she did cause this and prevent it.

investigation start! nobody accepts her curing the mysterious poisoning as proof of her innocence, so castti instead has to inquire around town to find the circumstances of these poisonings and what could be causing it. initially nobody wants to talk to her, but after treating his back pain the chef of the local tavern tells her that nobody who only drank ale or ate non-seafood got sick, but almost all the people who ate fish did. those fish are caught fresh from the canalbrine harbor, so they're usually safer than imported ingredients which can go bad during travel or carry foreign illnesses. after helping the provisioner organize their supplies, they mention that the clothes they washed yesterday ended up discolored. she also investigates more about the specific poisoning victims and finds that those with infections swam in the water recently, while those who had food poisoning symptoms are those who ate raw fish. now, cyrus-style, you have to put the pieces together. first, you have to decide that you're dealing with one problem rather than a set of coincidences, then you have to choose between a disease spread by fish, a disease spread by people, and a disease spread by water, then once you decide it's the water, castti decides to check the water itself by inquiring it(don't worry abt it too much), at which point she realizes that it's probably contaminated. unfortunately, she can't tell how, so instead she just has to find the source.

castti is investigating the water's source when she sees a girl in blue piling disease-ridden carcasses into the water. she confronts her, and the girl addresses her by name. castti recognizes the emblem on her mantle as the same one on hers. castti asks if she's part of eir's apothecaries. the girl confirms that she is, and asks castti to help her. she refuses, confused, and says that elma wouldn't do this. elma(?) says castti's still too stubborn, and attacks.

elma can poison you and heal herself, but is otherwise a fairly straightforward boss. at half health, castti tells elma that she's contaminated the water and that people would have died if she hadn't intervened. elma is upset that castti interfered with their treatment and says they would've been cured if she hadn't meddled. elma's charged attack has a chance to inflict poison or blind and always decreases physical attack.

after she's defeated, elma falls over, dead before castti can find out anything else from her, and she slumps into a sludgey mass that doesn't even seem to be alive. left with infinitely more questions, castti whacks the thing a few times with her axe and uses the most toxic compound she can make to dissolve it on the off chance that it is alive. whatever that thing is, it's not an apothecary. as she does, a townsperson runs in and demands to know what the hell she's doing at the source. castti tries to explain that she found someone contaminating the water supply, but they see eir's apothecary standing next to a giant pile of rotting animal carcasses sitting in the water supply in front of a strange purple mass and calls the guards. castti's preparing to flee or fight her way out when malaya walks in with the guards and tells castti to stay calm and remember what she's good at: talking to people. castti points out that the carcasses are too numerous and old to have been placed there by someone who just arrived in town last night, gives the townsperson instructions for a purebalm compound to disinfect the water, and... lies. she says that she's pretending to be a member of eir's apothecaries and is going around trying to end their group. she doesn't want payment and would prefer that she be allowed to leave town in secret.

the guards admit that if she's trying to create and then cure a plague to improve her image, she's doing a pretty poor job of it, permit her to leave, and say they'll tell the town that an animal was dumping its prey in the water. they warn her that she's going to keep running into trouble like this if she keeps wearing that uniform.

so castti pulls a therion and hides the mantle in her bag for the duration of her story. despite and because of the fact that she's having the increasingly sinking feeling that she really was a part of eir's apothecaries, castti decides she does have to find them, and stop them.

on her way out, she finds malaya, who reveals something to her. she turns around to show castti that she, too, has the insignia of eir's apothecaries. when castti asks what's going on, malaya tells her that she doesn't know either. she hasn't seen any of them since <unreadable glitchtext>. the screen glitches out and castti remembers malaya pushing her into the boat. castti was protesting, but malaya forced something on her, and as she was passing out(? falling asleep? being poisoned?) said that if there was anyone who'd find a way to fix this, it'd be her.

when castti wakes up, malaya is gone. she is left, yet again, with nothing but further questions. still, it seems like she does have memories, they'd just locked away, somehow. she wracks her brain, but all that comes to mind are two treatments: an antitussive used to treat the warrior's cough and an anti-paralytic compound written near the back. castti rifles through her bag and finds a journal detailing treatments for different illnesses. she flips through it to find notes in the margins based on specific cases where she must've treated them, and gets to the section on the warrior's flu, a coughing illness common in western soldiers who fight in dusty battlefields. the only entry is for "sai", and mentions that santanejo blossoms momentarily eased symptoms but was ineffective in soldiers who returned to active combat. later in the book is an entry for 'rosa', with a list of symptoms, a complicated recipe with scalebark leaf as its main ingredient, and an entry for winterbloom mentioning that the symptoms were slowed but not cured.

ch2-sai:

castti arrives in sai to find a tent of sick soldiers who are, indeed, suffering from the warrior's flu. mao welcomes another set of hands, but when talking with castti says that they'll all be back in here by next week as well as a cocktail of other injuries. she asks where the rest of castti's crew is, and nonchalantly clarifies that she means eir's apothecaries when pressed. unfortunately, their conversation is interrupted when edmund comes in and demands the release of any soldiers well enough to move, saying that a scout thinks an enemy squadron is hiding in the sunken caves. castti insists that the soldiers should all be on bedrest, but mao tells her not to bother, and that neither edmund nor the soldiers will listen to her. indeed, all of the conscious soldiers choose to leave, and edmund disparagingly says that she's as much of a quack as before, and that the rumors must be true, but leaves before she can learn more.

when inquired, mao says that a lot of apothecaries come to sai, but she's the only one who's stuck around. it's rough on people, treating wounds that'll be re-opened by the next day. she mentions that [that kid] castti brought with her last time took it pretty hard. the text glitches briefly to [trousseau], before fully glitching to transition into a flashback.

trousseau, who is a glitched sprite himself, kneels next to a dying soldier. the rest of eir's apothecaries work in the background, although all but castti are glitched as well. he's desperately insisting that if the man goes out on the battlefield today he'll die, and begs him to rest here for at least a few days. the soldier laughs and says he'd just go right back out and come right back in. a wounded man behind him cries out that he'd quite like a week off, actually, but are interrupted when the commander comes in and tells them that timberain's army is at the city's edge, so every soldier with legs is expected to get up and fight. as most of the tent clears out, only a few are left, including the man trousseau is treating. he starts to stand, but cries out in pain with a tearing noise. he falls to the ground, dead. trousseau panics, but castti kneels next to him and tells him to compose himself. there are other patients.

castti recovers from the flashback. so eir's apothecaries were apothecaries, at some point...? she asks mao, who just confirms that and says that castti ought to know that, seeing as she's their leader, and asks again what happened to them. castti says she'd love to know that herself. first, though, she's going to go see what's happening in the sunken caves. if edmund dies she can't get any answers out of him.

she follows the soldiers to the mouth of the sunken cave to find edmund severely wounded along with a scant few of his men and the half-eaten remains of a few more. castti treats their wounds and asks what happened. edmund says that whoever was in the cave woke up the sand lion. some of them were wounded in its initial attack, and the rest fell into the caves through the tunnels of quicksand it makes. castti says she's going to rescue them and instructs edmund and his men to go back to sai and lie down regardless of where they'll be next week. he tells her it's certain death in there, but she says she just spent all fucking day treating the lot of them and dohter fuck her sideways if she's going to leave them to die now. edmund calls her an idiot and says he won't bother looking for her body.

the sunken caves re-use the gimmick from that one bridge if you walk onto ledges that are too thin on the top level you fall through into the bottom. once you reach the whirlpool at the center and challenge the sand lion, the fight begins. it plays out as normal.

once it's defeated, however, a strange man[andy] appears behind castti and asks her what the hell she's doing. castti asks andy by name(not commented on) what he's doing here, he says he's trying to round up all the soldiers so he can cure them. castti bets that his cure is the same as elma's. he says she really needs to learn to be a little more patient, before turning into a sludge monster and disappearing.

castti finds the soldiers banged up but alive. she drags them back to town and finds edmund in the tent getting stitched up by mao, along with the commander from her memory. both of them are shocked to see castti alive, moreso when mao goes outside to find more survivors. she asks edmund if he thinks he'd be better off dead. edmund starts to answer, but is interrupted by the commander, who asks if eir's apothecaries really are "like that" now. when she <...> bubble explains her situation to him, he says she's put herself in a rough spot, but tells her that he always did doubt the woman he met in sai could've done what he'd heard. does she know what people are saying about the <rain?>

castti's scars from the beginning of the story start aching, and the screen gets a purple tint. the screen glitches to a town soaked by purple rain covered in corpses. she looks at the scars again. the pattern and texture look a lot like she was sprayed with something caustic. she was there during the rain.

ch3-winterbloom:

castti is greeted warmly in winterbloom. the townspeople tell her that randy's been doing his best, but he's so busy with rosa that none of them can seem to get their problems looked at. she spends some time treating them while trying to casually ask about what's happened.

randy came back to winterbloom about a month ago, alone. he said the rest of eir's apothecaries were busy, but that he was especially worried about rosa, and since then he's been treating her just about every day. it must be hard on him, they say, because it seems like rosa's only getting worse no matter how hard he tries to treat her. castti decides she'd better go check in on things.

she's let into rosa's manor and finds randy treating her at her bedside. when she enters, he greets her brightly and says he was starting to worry she wasn't going to "come back". rosa is relieved, and says that although randy's changed the prescription a few times it feels like nothing's worked as well as castti's first medicine. does she still remember the instructions? randy tells rosa that castti lost her memory in a traumatic accident recently, which is why she's been out. rosa gives her condolences. castti wonders how, exactly, randy would know that. he's part of eir's apothecaries. she Recognizes him the same way she does the others. but she hasn't seen him since [before](glitched, although it doesn't trigger a flashback). castti's suspicions that something is Up is confirmed when she inquires rosa to find what the prescriptions randy's been giving her are. poison. all poison. lots and lots of slow-acting poisons. she doesn't know why he's focusing all his energy on her, but she can't trust him either. castti asks randy if he can head over to the greenhouse with her to check what ingredients they have when someone screams below. melia's been kidnapped! randy asks castti if she can handle them while he keeps treating rosa. she initially tries to suggest the other way around, but randy tells her firmly that rosa isn't going to die in the next few hours, but melia might. castti knows he's onto her, but melia is very twelve years old and she can't just let her die, so she reluctantly follows the ransom note to the thieves' quarter.

greg is surprised to see her instead of randy, but nevertheless assumes she's on the same side and tells her that he's got some hired thieves holding melia in the basement and she just has to tell rosa whatever she thinks will get her to hand over the estate before randy finishes the job. castti informs him that she is very much not on his side and that if melia isn't safe and sound in front of her in the next minute her axe goes through his neck. greg, thoroughly spooked by this, calls out his hired thieves and demands that they protect him, forget the kid. plukk and co. attack castti, but are defeated, and castti asks greg what he gets out of killing all these people. greg has no idea what she's talking about-- all he did was listen to randy's advice that rosa would probably be dead by tomorrow and escalate his plans to get her estate to match. castti realizes she's really, really, really been set up, grabs melia and leaves her with one of the villagers, and runs to rosa's manor.

rosa is already dead when castti gets to her room, with randy beside her. randy asks if she's still a part of eir's apothecaries. she says that she wants no part in this. he tells her that's a shame. she asks why he only wanted rosa dead. randy says that sometimes all people need is one good example. when rosa gets cured, half of winterbloom will agree to be cured as well. castti says a corpse can't be cured of anything. randy says she knows by now that's not true. she drops into a fighting pose, but he asks her if she's willing to take responsibility for rosa's murder. after all, rosa only died the day castti went to see her... if randy doesn't survive to clarify that she passed on naturally, especially if she kills him, she's going to have two murders added to her name. castti falters, and randy takes the opportunity to flee.

she exits the manor to find melia and greg. randy broke the bad news and told them he was going back to their base to take some time off, and told them to tell castti that she's always welcome to rejoin their group.

after you complete both chapters, malaya shows up at the edge of town, and asks if she knows where to go. castti has to put the pieces together.

randy is signaling that eir's apothecaries will be in one place. obviously > they want her to find them. if she wants answers, or to stop them, she needs to find them.

malaya confirms this(she also has wrong dialogue for the incorrect answers but it's all jokes about how castti was supposed to be the smart one), and says that they intend for her to go back to <where it all began.> castti concludes that this means <the rain>. since she was picked up by a ship headed southwest for canalbrine > delsta harbor.

but where?

malaya tells her not to overcomplicate things. the town nearest to the harbor. she knows where that is, doesn't she?

ch4:

when castti arrives in healeaks, elma is waiting for her. castti says she definitely killed her, elma tells her she was cured. don't castti's scars hurt? she can be cured too.

the town is most certainly abandoned and destroyed. castti asks why the townspeople weren't "cured". they're working on it, elma says, but only about half of them have come back. she tells castti to be careful on the way up to meet the others, since most of the townspeople have moved there. she turns into a sludge monster and scales the mountain, leaving castti to move up the path alone. on the way, troops of sludge monsters spawn. none of them seem to be able to take on human forms or talk. are these really the townspeople?

when she arrives at the peak, elma, andy, and randy are all waiting for her. randy says he was pretty worried there for a bit, but he's glad castti's come around. she's seen how incomplete medical healing is, now, so she can be cured too. castti asks where the others are. elma sadly tells her that malaya is lost. she threw herself into the sea, so trousseau hasn't been able to cure her. they thought castti was lost too until elma found her in canalbrine. trousseau is preparing a miracle in timberain. castti asks how elma survived, and she tells her that trousseau healed her. if she's cured, he can always heal her. doesn't that sound nice?

yeah, obviously, castti says. if it were [that easy--]

she remembers.

the original leadup plays out, everyone dies except malaya and castti.

castti is standing in front of trousseau during the purple rain, asking what he thinks he's doing. trousseau explains that this is a necessary step in curing them. once he uses vide's healing magic, they will be effectively immortal creatures who feel no pain. he's already been cured.

castti doesn't buy this and attacks. she fends him off, but in the process gets hit pretty hard by the purple rain, and is forced to flee. malaya is waiting for her at the base of mount liphis, where castti collapses into her arms. malaya carries her to the north delsta harbor, but the purple rain she took combined with castti covering her in more of it is killing her, and she uses all her cures on castti, which might but won't necessarily save her. she repeats what she said in castti's first memory of her.

castti remembers everything, now, and drops the act. she tells eir's apothecaries that she's sorry, but as a healer she has a duty to keep them from hurting anyone else, and charges them.

three person boss fight. all of them have heals. randy does poison including bp poison and sp poison as well as status effects and debuffs, elma does buffs, andy does strong physical attacks. they suck ass, but drastic measures puts in work and you have castti so you have every drop counts ailment heals.

when they're defeated, castti lugs their bodies out to the new delsta harbor and drops them into the ocean. hopefully it'll keep trousseau from reviving them.

she knows where trousseau is now, and if his healing works the way it seems to, he shouldn't be able to revive himself.

castti is exhausted. she wasn't lying earlier when she said she would take a miracle cure if it existed. no sane apothecary doesn't wish they never lost a patient, and she doesn't exactly want to die herself. but they're not right. in her memories, elma has a strong northwestern accent and is always blunt and a little too honest, andy talks informally and talks up how great his patients are to motivate them to get better, and randy talks formally and is much more reserved than the other two. now all of them have the same voice. they all talk like trousseau. dying sucks, but being a murderous puppet is worse.

she finds malaya at the harbor. she's dead, isn't she? malaya confirms it. castti asks if she regrets it. obviously, malaya says, no sane apothecary doesn't wish they could save everyone. but sometimes you have to pick the most effective solution available over the one you wish existed. she tells castti that the snowdrop flowers that grow here recovered, so they should be safe. she should stock up before she goes to timberain.

ch5:

unchanged until she meets trousseau. he asks her why she's preventing the townspeople from being cured, she says turning them into reanimated rotten meat copies of him isn't curing them, and that she really, really thought he was better than this. he says she'll understand after she's cured, and attacks.

trousseau fight unchanged, castti defeats him but starts succumbing to the poison. malaya tells her she already has the answer, she makes the antidote, and barely manages not to die.

it works. she's made it. trousseau turns to sludge, but it dissipates. based on that and the fact that when you go back to healeaks the shadowy monsters are replaced with its normal encounter table, you can figure out that when trousseau died, all the things he made died with him.

like in the original, she stumbles back to town, signals that it's okay to start the festivities, goes to the tavern for a pint and passes out. she dreams that eir's apothecaries are all back, as their real selves. they thank her for freeing their spirits. castti says she wishes she could've saved them, that trousseau's healing was real, that he'd been the person she thought he was when she picked him up. no duh, they say. lucky for them, she's still a good apothecary. she gives them the skybalm and they pass on.

then she wakes up, puts her mantle back on, big party, ori approaches her and she tells her it was a team effort.

as with before, castti's endcard has her sleeping with eir's apothecaries around her.

afterstory:

changing the next chapter recipient from melia to mao, sorry 12 yr old girl i took away most of your story importance. instead mao is reflecting that she really would like it if the constant war made her less busy. conditionally i would like this quest to unlock after the completion of hikari's final chapter, i'm just going to assume that can be done somehow. since hikari is the next monarch the story just assumes he's fine with a truce, so your task is to lead mao to the king's advisor who's now in timberain and have her argue her case which ultimately leads to a peace treaty between the king of timberain and hikari. afterwards mao returns to sai and comments that she has time to practice her axe-throwing skills now. this also changes edmund from being in sai talking about another battle to him and the commander hanging out in the sai tavern wondering what the war was even over. mao gives you the apothecary's amulet which has the same effect as melia's.

throné

the eternal agonies for real throné's story could've been so good if it didn't forget what it was about halfway through

like ochett i already have a draft of throné's story by Me <3 but also i wrote a script that ended up pretty drastically changing stuff bc as youve noticed these are just general summaries so actually having to script things out made me rethink some stuff and also i forgor chapter 2 existed

but yeah i have the same gripes with throné's story as i outlined in the first draft: the story is so concerned with who throné's biological parents are that it completely kneecaps the interesting story about throné trying to break free from her abusive mob family and then completely nosedives at the finale to be about Some Fucking Guy who is an evilbadguy satanist rapist incest guy which just isnt an interesting villain. so instead we're focusing on the mob family, removing the biological angle so Mother and Father are just throné's parents for all intents and purposes and the blacksnakes recruit children by grabbing street urchins nobody would miss, and because pirro is pretty boring i am replacing him entirely with mira who will elaborate on her grieving over mother's death in the original to become throné's foil

what throné's story will now be About is the degree to which you can truly escape being a victim of classism. throné wants to escape the blacksnakes and in turn the poverty that forced her into the blacksnakes in the first place. can she really stop being the person she is now?

also im removing the collar.

bonus redesign

prologue:

throné kneels in front of Father and Mother. Father congratulates her on passing Mother's test, encourages her to grow her fangs so that she might overcome her origins, and welcomes her to the family.

ch1:

throné carries the bleeding pirro(sorry other guy whose name i cant remember) on her back as she follows mira to a locked door. mira tries to unlock the door but it's nothing but clicks. throné tells her to give her a go, but mira snaps at her and refuses to budge, and it's not long before the guards catch up to them. combat starts with a KOd pirro and no way to revive him, but it's possible to win. after the guards are killed, throné kneels down next to pirro's body, and confirms that he's dead. finally, mira lets throné pick the lock, and tells mira to leave pirro behind. they're both dead anyway when they have to report back to mother that they not only failed to retrieve their objective, but also lost a member.

sure enough, when they get back, mother's pissed.... at throné. mira's her golden child, so mother lumps all the blame on her older sister. still, mother says that although throné should rightfully be executed for this, because she managed to keep mira safe, she'll give her one more chance: if she can re-enter the diamante manor and retrieve their objective, mother will let her live. mira gets off with a light whipping.

throné understands that re-entering the diamante manor now is its own death sentence, but she doesn't have much of a choice. she somehow makes it to the room with the jewel she was tasked with retrieving, but just as she's about to grab it she dodges a dagger. it's mira! mother told her to make sure that throné didn't get out of here alive and grab the goods for her trouble.

mira is similar to pirro in combat, but the unlock dialogue instead has throné pointing out that she's winning. mira gets pissed and enters serious mode.

when defeated, mira falls to her knees. throné spares her, and when mira asks why throné tells her that she's not meant for this life either. throné is leaving the blacksnakes. mira should too.

on her way out of town, throné is ambushed by father. he tells her not to worry about the spat with mother, he'll calm her down. she gets like that when she's about to visit her garden, but he never doubted throné would make it out of her little trap. throné thanks him, and he's like aw c'mon say it like you mean it, throné thinks "but i don't", but thanks him more genuinely anyway. he tells her to take some time off while he works on mother, but that in a bit he'll meet her in winterbloom. it's been too long since she did a job with him.

he disappears, and throné is left alone to wish her father had bought her a pastry or something instead of whacking her pressure points. unfortunately, father's diplomacy will be wasted. throné's leaving.

unfortunately, mother and father don't let deserters off that easily. mother will send assassins after her when she realizes throné's ditched them, and father will track her down himself. she'll have to take them down first. the resulting chaos will let anyone who wants to skip town. sure, she has no concrete plan, and neither of them will be easy opponents, but with her hand forced she has to act on a wish she's had for years.

she knows where father is, but mother's orphanage changes locations every now and then. but she knows where mother's supplier is.

so she has a choice to make.

ch2-oresrush:

throné arrives in oresrush to find it split into a fairly harsh class divide(we'll get to partitio). the north of town is dotted with paupers and she overhears a woman telling her daughter that they might be able to afford food every other day soon. this is exactly the sort of environment the blacksnakes thrive on-- plenty of people here desperate enough to see a snake as a rope.

she explores around town to find the horse shop. the clerk tells her they can't afford new horses, but she says she heard a rumor that they didn't buy horses, they just sold them. the clerk asks if she's got something to show him. throné drops into a fighting pose, but he calmly says that's not what he's looking for. she'll have to find whatever he's looking for.

exploring around town finds a suspiciously well-dressed man muttering about poor quality goods with a coin in his pocket marked with a horse. throné swipes it and returns to the shop, apologizing for the confusion. he tells her there's nothing more important in their business than honor, and asks if she's here to buy. she's here looking for someone, actually, she says, is there anyone on staff who could tell her where a customer requested their goods be delivered to? the clerk tells her that the auctioneer'd know, and gives her directions, but warns her that he won't give that information up for free.

as he says, the auctionhouse is at the far north of town, and as he says they let her in when she flashes the coin.

throné arrives in the end of an auction. apparently a textile merchant's fallen on hard times recently, so all three of his kids are up for sale. the auctioneer says that the eldest girl starts at a high price since she can read. all three are sold to different buyers, and the auctioneer thanks the crowd and tells them that the next auction is in a month.

after the crowd clears, he mentions that he's never seen throné here before, and asks what she's sticking around for. she asks him point blank if he's ever sold to the mistress of the blacksnakes. maybe he has, maybe he hasn't, depends on why she's asking. throné says she just wants to have a drink with her. the auctioneer says that there's not a lot of friendly folks in this business, and proposes a little bar bet. she wins, he coughs up. she agrees. he doesn't have to say what happens if he wins.

the auctioneer pours two drinks. one is sweet oresrush ale, one is ale mixed with thiefsbane. he asks if she's feeling lucky, because if she is she should know he's never lost.

you get a choice. left or <right>? picking the right gets you a game over as throné succumbs to the poison.

if you pick the left, throné chugs and jokes that this tastes so bad it must be the poisoned one after all. the auctioneer picks up his drink, and she asks what he thinks he's doing. he's holding up his end of the bet, he says. even he's got his principles. he tells her that the mistress of the blacksnakes asked a couple kids be delivered to wellgrove before pounding back the ale and collapsing.

she scoffs. who are they fooling? human traffickers acting like they've still got their honor, their standards.

...who is she fooling here? is she, like them, tricking herself into thinking she can escape the blood on her hands?

ch3-wellgrove:

throné arrives in wellgrove to see a young boy on his knees in front of two guards accusing him of thievery. he insists he's not guilty, but refuses to turn out his pockets, so one of them hits him in the stomach and says they'll kill him if he doesn't, so he reveals a silver-filled pouch. they mutter something about half the kids in town being pickpockets these days and say they're going to start cutting off hands if this keeps up, leaving the kid on the ground. throné walks up and tries to signal that she's on his side, but he tells her to leave him alone and flees.

she follows him to find mother's orphanage, but the guard tells her only nuns are allowed in. conveniently, when she hides behind a tree, a nun heads out to do some shopping. throné swipes her habit and returns to the gates. the guard lets "sister milica" in and throné enters to see mother taking stock of the goods delivered that day.

most of the kids are fine, but four get called forward, including the boy from earlier. all of them have messed up somehow, and mother meets them all with faux sympathy, but their failures reflect on her and we can't have that. the first three get sentenced to a slap, a light whipping and a day in the reflection room with no food respectively, but pavel is not only empty-handed but also says that the guards grabbed him because of his clothes. mother is furious, demanding to know what his complaint is with the clothes she so generously gave him, and as he fails to placate her she hits him hard. he hits the floor and she hits him again. there's a crunch. she tells one of the nuns to clean up. mother tells the rest of the crowd that she loves them and knows that they won't disappoint her again, but that she's a bit tired, so she'll be resting in the garden for a while.

throné tries to ask around the orphanage, but all of the children know better than to say anything but vague pleasantries to a sister. throné has to ambush morozov blocking the door and get out into mother's garden.

when she gets to the end, mother is waiting for her with tea. she says throné is a bit old to be here, even if she doesn't act like it. she knows why she's here, though, and laments that throné shares her father's penchant for bad jokes.

suddenly, mira appears behind her. she wasn't executed. apparently. in fact, she blames throné for her situation. mother tells mira that this is her chance to finish the job, but assures her that she'll help out.

mira replaces mother's minion but combat is otherwise unchanged. however, instead of the mid battle dialogue being about throné's "real mom", it's mother telling throné that the blacksnakes saved her life. is she really going to bite the hand that feeds? throné asks why mother's so upset that she wants to leave. she hates her. mother tells throné that she loves her, which is why it hurts so much to see her act so immature.

when they're defeated, throné goes straight for mother. she flips completely, starts begging for her life, says that she was only trying to teach her a lesson, but throné pulls out her knife. mira shouts for her to stop at the same time mother does, but throné deals the final blow. as she dies, mother tells throné she really is too much like her father. mira cries out and stumbles over to mother, kneeling beside her. she asks throné why she would do this. throné just tells her again that she should leave the snakes too. mira says she'll kill her. she tries to get up, but throné evades her easily.

mira says that a snake who eats its own tail dies, and that no matter what she does she'll be a blacksnake for life. what does she think even awaits her if she leaves the underworld? does she really believe someone with as much blood on their hands as her would be accepted among honest people, that she could even make it when the only things she's good at are killing and stealing?

throné takes a while to find words. she tells mira she's sparing her, but that next time they meet it's kill or be killed. she doesn't answer her questions.

ch3-winterbloom:

throné enters the thieves' quarter tavern. she's approached by the three pickup artists and ambushes them. nobody in the tavern reacts, this is just that kind of place. she tells father that he knows she fucking hates this joke. a hooded figure stands up from the back of the tavern and reveals himself as father, who apologizes and says she's too fun to tease.

as he guides her east, he tells her about the snowhares and explains the situation, tells her that taking out their leader should let the rest of them return to normal. does he know? he reveals that throné will be going in alone. does he know?

throné can't risk refusing his request. the best time to kill him would be while he was distracted during the assassination, but instead she'll be the one left vulnerable. she'll need to find another opening.

bergomi is unchanged, she defeats him and then drops to her knees with a knife in her back. father tells her she had a chance earlier. he always lets his guard down when he's teasing her. she asks why he missed her vital organs, and he tells her that he has a last, most important lesson to teach her before she succeeds him, and tells her to come to montwise. throné is left in a puddle of her own blood to lament that he can't even let her do this by herself.

ch4:

father's always been two steps ahead of her. is this really part of his game too? throné arrives in montwise feeling extremely conflicted, but what else is she going to do?

he didn't tell her where to meet him. another one of his goddamn tests. throné steals a town map from one of the scholars in the libraries and looks for the most dramatic place in the area. apparently there's a church overlooking the town.

she arrives to find father standing in front of the now abandoned church. he congratulates her for finding him, and she tells him he's too predictable. he tells her to let him have this last dramatic speech. she reluctantly indulges him.

father explains the history of the blacksnakes-- he used to be a pauper in delsta. not new delsta. the place it was named after. throné calls him a liar and says that would make him several centuries old. indeed, he says, let me finish.

so he was an orphan. times were tough, and it was almost impossible to keep the will to live in that desperate poverty. their lives were worth less than nothing to everyone except themselves.

one day, a scholar showed up in delsta, and paupers began to disappear. this wasn't the first time it'd happened. nobody investigated it, and even the paupers could only try and avoid being the next victim. father got unlucky, and woke up in a cave tied to a dead girl behind the scholar, who stands in front of an altar with a strange purple fire. he mentions that he knew her-- marietta. she was one of the nicest paupers, the closest thing he had a friend, and yet her life was worth nothing to this scholar. father despaired, but then he heard a voice. it was weak, but he heard it begging for help. he thought that he needed help himself, and the voice, slightly stronger, told him that they could help each other. the scholar had neglected to thoroughly search him, so he managed to cut himself free with his hidden knife and follow the voice's instructions to kill the scholar while he was distracted and offer him as a sacrifice. he didn't know how to do that so he just tossed the corpse into the fire, which turned out to be the right answer. the fire flared to an enormous size, and the much clearer voice thanked him for his help and offered to grant his deepest wish.

father looked within himself and realized that, despite it all, he wanted desperately to live. even if he was nothing but a worm.

the voice, who called itself grandmother, granted his wish-- eternal life, and the power with which to protect it. it told him to climb into the fire.

throné interrupts him to tell him that was a very stupid idea, he complains that he has no idea how someone he raised has so little respect for the ambiance of a story.

anyway, he continues, grandmother wasn't lying. the fire hurt a lot, but when it receded, he had the strength of an adult warrior, and he would only grow stronger.

over the next year, he took over delsta, and created the blacksnakes to raise the rest of the orphans up with him. they were a family, at last, and they were finally strong enough to live comfortably. in gratitude, he turned the cave with the altar into a grand temple, and regularly give the wine and food he'd always wished for and now had plenty of.

eventually, he decided to share grandmother's power with the rest of the blacksnakes.... but something went wrong. though the fire didn't kill them, the pain drove them mad. grandmother apologized. her power was too much for some to handle.

unfortunately, now that the secret was out, more and more of delsta snuck into the temple in an attempt to gain father's supernatural power. all of them died or went mad, and eventually people began to leave, saying that this place was cursed. the survivors founded new delsta.

father wanted to stay, but grandmother instructed him to leave. the world is full of people he needed to save. she told him to use her power sparingly, but that there were others who could become her disciples.

so he moved the snakes to new delsta, and began searching for partners. nearly a century later, he found one. mother. and now, father believes throné is strong enough to succeed them both. she managed to defeat mother, and here she'll defeat him.

throné refuses. regardless of his intentions, the blacksnakes in actuality are little more than another predator targeting the poor and abandoned. father tells her that if she feels so strongly it's all the more reason to take over the organization. once she does, she'll be able to shape it directly. throné refuses again. she's leaving. this isn't her problem.

father is disappointed in her. he'll still fight her, but he no longer intends to lose.

his mid battle dialogue changes. he compliments her, tells her how strong she is, that she could make the blacksnakes everything she wants it to be. throné refuses, insists she's done playing his game.

once he's defeated, father falls to his knees. eternal life, but not immortality. he still has faith in her, he says. go to delsta. meet your destiny. his last words are "i love you". throné kneels beside him, and says "i hate you."

and that's it, isn't it? she's free. so why does she feel so empty?

as she leaves, a strange man comes up to her. he's babbling something about coming home and grandmother, and shoves a piece of paper into her hands. throné reads the message. "mother named a successor too. i'm waiting for you."

mira. god dammit. throné did tell her it was kill or be killed, and she has given up on getting mira to leave the snakes, but she can't leave her to toss herself into hellfire. mira is her little sister, despite it all.

ch5:

delsta's location is mostly forgotten, but sometimes the snakes use it for business, so she knows where it is. the gondola scene still happens, but all the strange man does is confirm that a girl passed through just recently.

throné arrives in delsta. it's the same as lostseed. it seems that the husks have eternal life themselves, although everyone over 100 has forgotten everything but a single sentence, or in some cases a single word. at the edge of town is a temple, with an altar filled with purple flame(the fact that this torch is already lit is a surprise story element that will help(?) us later).

at its end is mira. throné tells her she doesn't have to do this. mira just snaps that throné thinks she's being nice, but she's really just being naive. she's better than that. she's not letting throné have the blacksnakes. throné can't stop her from hopping into the fire.

she lets out a bloodcurdling scream and the fire flares to consume her. when she stumbles out, she's still burning, and mad with pain.

mira's main gimmick is grandmother's flame. her charged attack burns all your items to seal them for the remainder of the battle, she has strong fire attacks, she has an attack called "trial of the flame" that either instakills or grants stat buffs, but she also has an attack where she cries out for help. the first use summons a phantom of mother, the second summons three purple fire elementals(their purple fire is affected by void modifiers), the third fails. on her "do nothing" turns, the fire does chip damage to her.

at half health, mira cries out in glitchtext that "you're hurting me", and throné says she'll try to make it quick.

mira is defeated. she falls to the ground, dead. throné hears grandmother's voice congratulating her, and asking for her to claim her power. throné tells her to fuck off and slings mira over her back.

as she carries her out of the temple, throné thinks. father's right about one thing. she can't just leave alone. she really would have died if not for the snakes, but the blacksnakes only save those unfortunates who can become strong. what about mira? what about pavel? in her heart is planted the seed of a desire for a world where even the lives of the weak have worth. throné sets mira down in a comfortable position at delsta's peak, and sits with her to watch the sun rise.

afterstory:

conditionally with partitio's story i'd want the auctionhouse to disappear after the completion of partitio's story for reasons but since throné's chapter 2 can be completed after his entire story if that can't be done i would have to settle for changing some dialogue.

as for the postgame quest, the guard of mother's orphanage is actually a pretty nice guy, so he wants to run the orphanage properly now that mother is gone, but although she has enough stores of cash that they can make ends meet, all of the sisters were picked specifically because they were incompetent or cruel enough to participate in or at least not interfere with mother's abuse of the orphans, so he reeeeally could use someone who knows fuck all about childcare. the solution is to lead a lonely elder in stormhail whose info says that he spent his young adulthood as a caretaker for children, and despite leaving that career behind for a while now that he's older he would really like to return to that work. the guy meets the guard and shows off his credentials before inspecting the orphanage, realizing things are pretty dire, and starting to give the guards and sisters a list of instructions to make this place less of a nightmare. after that, the guard has dialogue about how he's never heard the children laugh before, but he hopes he gets used to the sound soon. the lonely elder whose name is changed to "orphanage director" says that this is the first time he's been in charge of children so much more well-behaved than their guardians. the sisters are mostly complaining about the new management's tyrannical demands like "no whipping" and "do not force the children to commit crimes". the kids are still nervous but slowly warming up.

mira disappears from delsta's peak after the story is complete, replaced by a grave.

osvald

so the thing about osvald's story is that it suffers from the same thing a lot of stories with fridged families do which is that it is just not that interested in the characters who are the main character's motivations-- in other words, who the fuck is elena?

because elena is a main character. her death is half the inciting incident and her adoption by harvey is the driving thrust of the finale... but who the fuck is she? she's a nice kid, which is. not much. like, if she was a real little girl, i wouldn't want her to get abused the way she is by harvey, but she's not, and so it's hard to match osvald's fury because we're just not given enough to think of elena as real enough for it to be particularly interesting that she's been kidnapped by harvey or for it to be that satisfying when he unlocks the One True Magic through his love for her.

so firstly i will be re-using my trick from the throné rewrite and making elena a much more prominent character. i got this idea by thinking that harvey's line about elena being eager to help with her father's work was gonna, like, go somewhere.

for one thing i'm aging elena and osvald(+harvey, i guess) up. elena will still be 5ish when the fire happens, but when the story actually begins she's gonna be a young adult, 19-23 range. osvald has about a decade tacked onto his age to compensate. yes this does mean that he has to survive in frigit isle for >14 years, but the story just is substantially stronger if elena has grown up with harvey as her father and because she's going to be a villain i want her to be a semi-established scholar herself, so he just pulls through because he's built different

so what's osvald's story About. in this case it'll be About the thing i said was stupid bullshit in throné's story which is the question of who your "real" parents are in the sense that elena ultimately has three parents who all have shaky claims for various reasons. osvald and rita are her biological parents, but rita is dead and osvald missed the vast majority of her childhood and in her mind killed her mother/ends up for real killing her adoptive father. meanwhile, harvey has been her only living parent for most of her life, but he sucks ass. so osvald's conflict is that despite how strongly he cares for elena and how much he wants to be her father, she's grown up into this person he doesn't recognize who doesn't recognize him as her father, who hates him, and even after harvey is dead he has to try and figure out what his relationship with his daughter could even be.

she does know harvey's her adoptive father in this but she still thinks that osvald was the one who did the fire

also, osvald's "inner voices" which are mentioned in that one castti banter are part of the story and elena-the-voice is a character in his head to establish her as an important character and really drive home the difference between his idealized version of the elena that was and reality. this is because its my birthday party and i get to put in the self-indulgent plot point if i want to.

prologue:

the court scene is mostly unchanged, except for one thing: osvald initially doesn't know that it's harvey. all he knows is that Some Cunt did this, and that whoever it was got into his research. all he knows is that based on the prosecution's argument he does think that it was probably another scholar.

ch1:

osvald is stuck in frigit isle, trying to figure out what happened. he goes through memories of every enemy he can think of, along with his council of "advisors" who include rita, elena, and harvey, which appear as ghostly sprites next to him(elena defends the people he accuses and assumes the best of them, harvey is critical and disbelieving, while rita mediates between the two). harvey is present in most of these memories as his friendly rival, research partner, and confidant, and they all have something to do with the one true magic, which is established as an unpopular field of study which made him a decent amount of enemies. his main problem is that he was fairly reclusive and didn't have anyone aside from his close inner circle who would've even known how to get into his lab, which is blocked with a magic circle of some kind you need to solve a puzzle to enter(in the overworld it can't be entered until he later unlocks it)... so it must have been someone in his inner circle. he goes over it for years, before eventually resigning himself to a truth he didn't want to admit: it was probably harvey. rita and elena obviously couldn't have done it, clarissa would've been blacklisted from academia as the assistant of a horrific criminal and deeply loved both rita and elena, but harvey both knew how to access his secret archive and would've been able to actually use his research for whatever reason. he has no clue why, though; harvey is a good scholar, and they were, he thought, on excellent terms. this all happens in like 1-2 scenes, 1 of him quickly going through his memories and 2 of him deducing that it must have been harvey. 2 is done in cyrus's investigation style, "who had the means" > 'someone in my inner circle' > "who?" > rita, elena, and clarissa all have wrong dialogue for picking them, and if you do their options disappear one by one until all that's left is "harvey".

left without the fog of confusion, osvald's anger hits him in full force. why did this happen to him? why did this happen to his family? nothing else matters to him except tracking down harvey, finding out why the hell he did this, and making him pay. elena and rita switch from defending and mediating to ask osvald if he's really going to let harvey get away with it. harvey tries to defend himself but osvald tells him to be silent, and he disappears for the moment. the whole fire in his breast thing starts to burn.

it always bugged me that osvald talked about how he needed a partner because "to bring only myself would rely on my own assumptions" and then he made all the decisions and plans himself and only asked emerald to tell him when to leave, so instead he finds emerald who points out some things he forgot to account for, like the two of them not having any equipment or healing supplies. emerald's shopping list is simple, but actually getting those things takes timeskipped years of doing favors and learning peoples' weaknesses. emerald is friendly towards osvald, but osvald's festering resentment and betrayal make him completely unwilling. rita-voice is concerned about him while elena-voice grows increasingly focused on "the way things were before", reminding osvald of what harvey took from him. she stays eternally 5 years old, and rita-voice also falls silent, leaving only elena as a constant reminder that amplifies his revenge. she motivates him to survive through the years it takes to assemble the plan, cheering him on and thanking him for not forgetting her.

otherwise the escape plays out mostly the same, eventually osvald finishes the collectathon and emerald gives him a date, on which they escape, oh no captain, osvald burns through stone, and then they get spotted, osvald decides to take the ice boat and emerald refuses. emerald just refuses, and when osvald sees him sprinting for the ship he assumes that emerald has betrayed him, vowing revenge on him as well-- that is, until the ship catches fire. like in the original, osvald realizes emerald has now made everyone think he's dead so he can move freely. rita and harvey briefly re-appear, rita to tell him that not everyone in the world is his enemy and harvey to ask what he'll do if he realizes it wasn't him. osvald almost cracks, but elena reminds him why he escaped. someone did this. he has to find who did this. harvey disappears again. osvald asks rita to stay, but she leaves too.

osvald washes up in cape cold, all that plays out the same, and osvald decides to go back to conning creek to look for clues.

the chapter ends on a memory of osvald helping elena understand the elemental systems and giving her a short explanation on the seventh source. she can't quite wrap her head around the idea of what makes elemental magic different from the things it mimics, ie frozen water vs ice magic, and after he tries to explain the use of different elements asks him why he doesn't try making magic that mimics other strong stuff. he's never thought of it that way, and thanks her for the idea. she's clever, he says. she'll be a good scholar someday.

ch2:

osvald shows up in conning creek and attempts to go to his house, but is spotted by the guards. they actually don't think he's osvald because he looks so different, but he's so obviously a criminal that they arrest him anyways. elena-voice despairs at how much everyone thinks he's guilty and reassures him that after they have their revenge he can clear his name, osvald has to reckon with the fact that his home is no longer his home. he gets taken to the captain of the guards and, after beating his ass, scrutinizes out of him that a strange man had shown up during the investigation and told him that it was to be ended early along with a large donation to ease things along, although the captain never saw him again. osvald is fully planning to kill him before harvey-voice appears to argue that the last thing he needs to do right now is actually start committing serious crimes, and he has what he needs(the truth of this is arguable-- perhaps coming to conning creek has reminded osvald of the man he used to be). instead osvald threatens the captain into silence and forces himself to leave. rita-voice assures him he's made the right decision. elena is scared of what'll happen if the captain gets away with it, but osvald decides he has bigger fish to fry.

he returns to his burned out home. no flashback, let the image speak for itself.

he enters his lab to find clarissa. she's shocked, but says she knew in her heart that he was alive and innocent. she's kept her head down all these years to make sure he'd have an ally when he escaped. clarissa's known it was harvey this whole time. she actually saw him coming to conning creek, although she knew him as a friend of osvald's. as soon as she'd gotten back and heard about the fire she'd put two and two together. she tells him that harvey is now a professor in montwise and has mysteriously happened upon a lot of the conclusions in his unpublished research. osvald tells her that he is going to kill harvey and clear his name. clarissa tells him that won't bring his family back. osvald says he can't let harvey get away with this. clarissa blocks the door, and says as his assistant it's her job to prevent him from exactly this sort of stupid decision, now you have to mug her, at which point she reasserts that this is a mistake, but lets osvald go.

suddenly, we flash to harvey's perspective. he's in his lab in montwise, working on a shining stone. elena enters and tells her father that osvald has supposedly died in an attempted escape from frigit isle. harvey asks if elena believes that, she says of course not, and that no doubt he'll be coming straight for her to "finish the job". he asks if she's scared. she says of course not, and reassures him that together osvald is no match for them. harvey is genuinely offended at her assuming that osvald would beat him alone in a fair fight, elena assures him she just wants to support him, harvey says her mother would be proud of her. then harvey shows her the stone and elena puts a drop of her blood into it, creating a lumina blood soulstone. harvey tells her to stand back in case it melts the floor again.

ch3:

osvald arrives in montwise. he's immediately spotted by elena, although he doesn't recognize her as an adult. she approaches him in the library(dialogue labeled "Scholar") and asks him if he's looking for a particular professor. osvald asks if she knows where professor harvey would be at this time, the scholar tells him that he's doing research in his lab and won't be back in the office until tomorrow afternoon. osvald knows harvey's private lab-- as harvey could get into his in conning creek, osvald knows where his is in montwise. he's shocked when he realizes that harvey hasn't changed the puzzle to get in.

he sets out for harvey's secret lab and walks right into harvey's set piece. osvald demands to know if he set the fire. harvey tells him that of course he didn't: osvald set the fire. osvald tells him to stop bullshitting and that clarissa already saw him and the captain admitted that he paid him off. suddenly, harvey launches into an alternative story: harvey learned that osvald was planning to kill his wife and daughter and burn the evidence. harvey managed to rescue elena by hiding her, but after an altercation where osvald realized harvey was planning to stop him, osvald fought him off and he was forced to flee with only elena, although the guards were told who set the fire and how. osvald, furious, demands to know who the fuck he thinks he's fooling, when the scholar from earlier runs out and says she's done with the preparations. harvey thanks "elena", and tells her that it's no lie that elena didn't die in the fire.

osvald is furious. he decides that this elena must be a fraud, and tells harvey that he'll die for this. elena is furious. harvey steps back and says it's not the time yet, and asks elena if she thinks she can handle osvald while he finishes one last thing. elena tells him of course, and attacks.

elena phase 1 is only as difficult as clarissa. at the end of it, she asks him if he hears that, and the fight pauses. a cutscene plays of the grieving construct busting into the room. harvey tells osvald to bear the weight of his sin, and phase 2 of the fight starts with a fully healed elena and the grieving construct, who cries out in rita's voice.

phase 2 elena is substantially harder. she uses strong flame magic and buffs the construct, who does heavy physical damage and debuffs your party. elena and osvald have a mid-fight conversation where osvald again demands to know why she's pretending to be his daughter, and elena assures him that she's not his fucking daughter after what he did to her. osvald demands to know why she let harvey create this horrible imitation of her mother, elena says her mother would still be here if not for him. her charged attack is called "burning vengeance" which does x3 aoe fire damage and inflicts dark fire on your entire party, so don't let her do that.

once they're defeated the construct disappears and elena is left crouching. osvald moves to kill her, but he stops. what if it really is her? he tells elena that harvey set the fire, but she asks him why she would believe him over her father, and goes to stand next to harvey, who asks elena if she's alright. she says she's a little scratched up but that's it, and harvey tells osvald that they'll be waiting for him in duskruin, where he'll finally show him the one true magic.

osvald is left alone with the remains of the construct, confused and frustrated. he knows harvey is lying, and it seems more obvious than ever that he's the one who set the fire, but what the fuck is going on? what does he mean elena survived? why does she believe harvey? how didn't he recognize her? she looks so different from the elena he knows. which one is wrong-- his memories, or the woman he saw? she's so big now. he does the math, she's the right age-- if she did survive, she's lived most of her life without him. with harvey. what does he do? he is pained and sad. he tries to talk to rita but she doesn't respond.

elena responds, though. she tells him that it'll be okay. he just has to kill harvey and clear his name. she'll believe him, then, if it's really her.

ch4-5:

yeah that's right we're moving the double feature from the start to the end.

so osvald arrives in gravell. mostly unchanged, everything is fucked because of the miasma and after freeing the townspeople from the crystals osvald arrives in duskruin.

elena and harvey are there. there's no altar though. harvey tells him that this is it-- this is his revenge for all the ways osvald has wronged him. harvey first says the obvious, reasserting his story from earlier, but osvald demands "a real answer", and harvey says he may as well tell him: he hated osvald because osvald hated him.

harvey knew that osvald considered himself intellectually superior to him, and that he agreed with all the people who deemed harvey the weak link of their partnership. he thought he was doing poor little harvey a favor by indulging him and sharing his research. but harvey's overcome all that. now he's mastered the One True Magic, and on top of that he has elena. he's won. and first, he says, he's going to let elena take revenge for her mother.

elena attacks you first. she's stronger than she was in ch3, although onl the low HP side of a final chapter boss.

when you defeat her, osvald spares her again. elena is too wounded to stand up, but conscious. she crawls over to harvey and tells him to "take as much as he needs." harvey whips out a knife and osvald yells for him to stop, but harvey cuts elena, and tells him it's funny, actually. the seventh source is blood, and lumina blood is especially potent. in a sense, he says, elena herself is the One True Magic. elena collapses. osvald says she'll die, insists he needs to get her to an apothecary, but harvey drops the mask-- this is more important. she's served her purpose.

after that, a similar set of events leads to osvald unlocking the one true magic. harvey readies his ultrablast and osvald shields the collapsed elena with his body and miraculously doesn't die. he flashes back to the scene of elena from the start and knows he needs a power beyond what he currently has, and he finds it. he unlocks the one true magic.

the harvey fight is also mostly the same. he deals a lot of damage but is not especially complicated. when he's defeated, he's left dying on the ground. osvald tells harvey that he was his best friend, and that if he had ever told him any of that before he would have helped him. harvey tells him to piss off. osvald asks if he has any last words, and harvey says to tell elena that he's sorry, and that the truth is in his secret archive. he dies. osvald picks up elena and runs.

this is where the double feature kicks in. elena meets osvald back in conning creek. she survived, mostly because osvald gave her a fairly substantial blood transfusion. he's type O don't worry about it. either way, she's been to harvey's secret archive and found a letter he wrote to her explaining the truth, written just before they left in case he died and she survived. osvald asks if she believes him now.

elena is somewhat conflicted on the matter. harvey wasn't a very good father. she knew that his revenge on osvald had more to do with his inferiority complex than her mother, and she had suspected he was only keeping her around because she was useful. osvald asks why she stayed loyal to him then, and elena says that he's her father, and she was all he had, and he was all she had. osvald says he's her father. elena says she knows he's her biological father, but that he didn't even recognize her in montwise. she wasn't completely wrong-- elena is, in a lot of ways, no longer osvald's daughter. she wonders if he even wants her back, or if he wants the little girl he remembers back.

elena-voice appears in front of her, and she's the little girl he remembers. she tells him that she loves him, and if elena's really his daughter she'll understand eventually, but osvald realizes that she's not elena. she's osvald's idea of elena. he tells her that he loves her, and that he's sorry, but she needs to leave, too. osvald tells the flesh and blood elena that he still wants to be her father, but elena asks what that means, exactly, for an adult woman. she's not that old, he says, she hasn't even graduated university. piss off, she responds. elena heaves a big old sigh and says that if she believes harvey's last confession, everything she's ever known about her family is wrong, and if that's the case she needs some time to think on it. she says she's going back to montwise to finish university. she'll give him the letter and he knows where harvey's lab is, so he should be able to find enough evidence to clear his name. he should leave her alone until then, but if he comes to her graduation she'll tell him one way or the other.

osvald asks for the letter, and she tells him to take it from her if he can. What, he says. she wants a fair fight, one-on-one. not a deathmatch, obviously, but like harvey said, the power behind his blood magic was the lumina bloodline, and she learned blood magic too. she wants to test her proficiency. osvald reluctantly agrees.

elena is mostly hard because you have to fight her one-on-one. while she has blood magic, which damages her, she also has heals, and she can still inflict dark fire on you, but she has less HP and fewer shields because she's not taking this dead seriously. after she's defeated, elena gives him the letter and admits that he's stronger than she is. osvald says she puts up a hell of a fight for a university student and says that she really did grow up to be a good scholar. she thanks him.

afterstory:

elena returns to the montwise library. she can't be scrutinized or mugged.

despite rewriting ochett's story to remove the racism subplot i'm still rewriting their quest. instead she and elena have a sidequest. clarissa wants to check up on elena, who is refusing to talk to her. solution one is that you can talk to elena and find out that she misses the kingfisher meunière conning creek is famous for, which clarissa will then make for her, but while elena will thank you, she'll tell clarissa that she's not ready to talk to her until she's talked to osvald. you can also just escort clarissa to elena, which will result in elena telling her to leave her alone, at which point clarissa mentions that she's inherited her stubbornness from her father and that he only let her become his assistant after she beat him in the colosseum, except that elena decides that this is actually a good idea and says that they ought to enter-- if she wins, clarissa leaves her alone, if clarissa wins she'll at least talk to her. clarissa ends up pulling through and from then clarissa moves to the montwise library. elena's dialogue is unchanged, but clarissa tells you things are going well, overall.

partitio

so the first thing you have to understand about partitio's story is that it is capitalist propaganda. by the books no frills no twists, it is a story about how capitalism is great actually, all poverty in the world is caused by individual mean people, and if the rich just charity hard enough they can fix the world. yeah partitio wants to make the boiler open source, but that's him making a business decision after legally purchasing the copyright at its requested price. yeah he's a nice guy-- that's the point. the story is using him to represent what capitalists are Really Like, very nice charitable guys who just want to make all the money in the world so they can use it to make it a better place.

now if you are experienced with my temenos haterisms you might think i am going to make partitio a heel. it wouldn't be hard. all i would have to do is give throné class consciousness. and i am definitely going to make him a more morally complicated character than the original, but im going to at least try to send partitio to the communist re-education camps.

but the problem is that partitio is a merchant. so under communist analysis a merchant like tressa who works for herself and only sells goods she herself collects would actually be classified as self-employed petite bourgeoisie, a class which exists between the working class and bourgeoisie as while she is not directly exploiting labor as she is in the selling position she shares interests with the bourgeoisie(ROUGH SUMMARY). now tressa doesn't exist in a capitalist system, she exists under feudalism, but she still serves as a useful comparison to papp, who owns a silver mine and sells the silver his employees mine(before roque buys it). tressa isn't exploiting labor because she has no employees, she sells the fruits of her labor(gemstone she fought a big cat for). now this technically applies to any subclassing merchant because merchant ochett is doing the same thing, but partitio is a business owner. he sells the silver his buddies mine. at the end of the story, he owns roque's company. honestly you could say hiring people to give you discounts isn't too different because paying 4800L to a guy once so partitio can drag him around for the entirety of the game saving you tens of thousands of leaves is not not exploiting his labor. so if this was a novel, obviously the answer would be for partitio to see that being bourgeoisie is bad, give ownership of his ventures to the workers, and go get a real job. but merchant is an ingame class and changing partitio's path actions or class just isn't realistic. you can make it so he doesn't inherit roque's company and gives ownership of it to the employees, but the absolute best you can do is reduce him to the level of a self-employed artisan, only selling things he himself creates or at least finds. even that is complicated because under a truly critical analysis we would not simply accept that solistia just has all these interesting sellable artifacts and objects spawn out of thin air, we would acknowledge that certainly some of the natural goods he would find would be better in their natural environment and that the artifacts ought to be returned to or kept with the people who created them. you could have the story clarify that partitio only sells Ethically Sourced Treasures or that he only buys peoples' self-made goods, but that first thing is just a different kind of "the only way to stop bad capitalism is good capitalism" and if he's a merchant the second thing would require him selling those goods as a profit which just makes him a middleman profiting off the fruits of others' labor while contributing nothing himself. even if we ignore that and just assume anything he found on the floor that he sells is Fine or require him to somehow modify any goods he sells to increase their value we have still only elevated him from the haute bourgeoisie to the artisan petite bourgeoisie. a working class partitio is impossible without removing the merchant class entirely or having him cease being one. in any case making partitio genuinely revolutionary would require octopath to go disco elysium on your ass and spend a significant amount of time outlining partitio's political radicalization and as cool as that sounds im actually still working on state and revolution so i will instead be taking the coward's way out and just have him end as petty bourgeoisie but at least self-employed instead of a business owner. this is still going to be insufferably moralizing though

so partitio is a good man. well-meaning, morally upright, if there was a heaven he'd probably get into it. but he was raised by two capitalists and to him capitalism is not only normal but the best system. he begins the story genuinely believing that all the evils of capitalism are the result of bad actors. but as the story continues, he slowly realizes that even the "good" capitalists run businesses where class antagonism continues to oppress people. the idea is for partitio learn throughout the story that the evils of capitalism are not evil men being able to exploit it to their benefit. no, things suck under capitalism in the worst possible way-- the usual way. at the end of the story, he decides that maybe... maybe there shouldn't be CEOs at all.

which is where the first major change comes from. rather than making roque a schemer, he will instead just be partitio's kindly mentor. papp built the town with roque's financial support and roque has been a figure in partitio's life all this time and he's heard all this stuff about how great a man roque is, but as he travels solistia and sees the failings of even good capitalism, and when he confronts roque about them, he realizes that roque is aware of them and simply has reasons he dismisses them, and so partitio has to make the tough decision in the finale to take roque down and make him get a real job. roque tells partitio that theyre not so different and the goal of partitio's profession is to someday become rich enough to be a man like roque-- in roque's position, partitio would've done the same thing. so partitio is like ok so youre saying nobody should be in that position

so anyway we'll give it a go but if youre looking for genuinely communist video game narratives. wait until i put the state and revolution into renpy where cyrus albright spends several hours complaining about liberal philistines masquerading as communists.

oh also because papp, roque, thurston, and partitio himself are all brown in canon and im making all of them morally complicated or straight up villains while im turning giff into a miner and floyd into the leader of a protest, im going to sidestep the reverse racism implications by just making all of oresrush incl. giff and floyd+a decent amount of the background factory workers brown also. alrond remains comically white

prologue:

kid partitio is just starting his apprenticeship under the guidance of papp, the kindly owner of the local silver mine. today's the day he finally gets a chance to help out, this time by giving the workers their wages. everything goes well, since all he has to do is count out 2000L for each worker. he's a cute kid, and papp is a well-liked boss. he'll even forgive it if sometimes a worker doesn't make their quota so long as they have an excuse and are a good sort-- one man's kid is sick, so papp has him sneak in an extra few leaves to his wages. in fact, when papp goes through the list and realizes one of the workers didn't get their wages, he tasks partitio with going to the north side of town to give them their money.

partitio cheerfully walks through the north district. in sharp contrast to the south, where bright stores and their owners live in bright, if dusty buildings, the north side of town is filled with dilapidated buildings where large clusters of miners are all crammed into places where they have a mat to themselves and not much else. he finds out that the worker didn't come to pick up his wages because he was sick(there are kind of a lot of sick people). as a kind young boy, partitio offers to go pick up some medicine for him, on the house. so he does, but, while it's not commented on, the medicine costs more than the month's worth of wages papp gave him.

partitio goes home and tells papp about his good deed, and papp congratulates him. when he becomes the owner of the mine someday, hopefully he'll keep that kindness.

ch1:

roque is in town! he's the man who gave papp the startup capital to open the mine that's oresrush's beating heart, and he's a mentor to both papp and partitio. he compliments the now adult partitio, saying that papp's been talking his ear off about his great business son and how talented he is. in fact, he's actually come here to give partitio a test-- if he passes, roque will task him with helping out roque company itself, and possibly even make him a higher up if that works out well. papp is overjoyed for partitio and urges him to take the offer, which partitio does. so roque and papp tell him the situation: a thief's been hitting papp's reserves and they're starting to hit the other shopowners too. it was negligible for papp, who's wealthy enough that a few thousand leaves missing a month isn't much for him, but the provisioner's had some expensive medicines go missing. if partitio can use his merchant's eye to fish out the culprit and give them a fitting punishment, he'll pass roque's test.

partitio goes to the north side of town. it's just a quest marker. where else would a thief be? he investigates around, and nobody on the north side's had anything stolen(although some of them joke that they don't have much to steal), but when he asks around, several of the kids admit that one specific man has been buying them candy and toys recently, and when asked who they all name the same guy: giff. now partitio knows all his workers by name, and so he knows giff is a miner. what on earth would possess him to steal from papp, let alone the provisioner?

he goes to confront him. giff denies it outright, says he's just been smart with his money lately, but partitio notices that he's got a bright new pair of boots and somehow has money to buy every kid on the north side candy. he's not buying this story. giff breaks, admitting he's the thief, but he says he's only done good with the money. partitio says that's no excuse. he'd forgive it if giff was only stealing from him, in fact they'd buy the candy themselves if he had just asked, but he stole from the provisioner, who can't afford to have medicine go missing. giff asks why he doesn't just cover the provisioner's losses if he's got so much money to go around, but partitio says he's not going to cover for a thief. giff is fed up and attacks.

the mid-battle unlock is giff insisting that the money went to good use and asking how it's different from partitio throwing a few extra leaves around every now and then. partitio says that charity is different than stealing.

after he's defeated, giff falls to his knees. as a last resort, he tells partitio that the medicine went to people who were sick but whose wages didn't cover the medicine. none of them asked him to do it and he told them he bought everything himself, so please don't punish them. partitio kneels down next to him. he tells him it's alright, and that his intentions were pure. partitio will add to his quota to compensate for the losses, and once he meets them it'll be forgiven. giff thanks him, but then stops. partitio is a kind man, he says, so he should know that the miners don't make enough money to afford medicine when they're sick, and those with families can't afford to feed them well. if they raised their wages, the parents could buy the kids candy themselves, and the sick could've paid the provisioner fairly. partitio is a kind man, so he agrees. with all oresrush's prosperity, prices have gone up, but the miners' wages haven't, and they're firmly in the green. he hires giff and takes him to roque and papp.

giff admits he's the thief and partitio says the thing about raising his quota. roque congratulates him on finding a compassionate solution. giff is dismissed, and partitio mentions that giff was only driven to steal in the first place because the miners' wages aren't enough to live well, and that this wouldn't have happened if they were raised. they can afford it, can't they? papp gets a little awkward, but roque steps in and kindly, calmly explains.

he explains that papp's company is in the green precisely because wages are kept relatively low. if they raised wages enough for all their workers to buy luxuries, they wouldn't be able to grow their business because they would only ever be able to break even, and they wouldn't have the capital to absorb losses like charity work, or protection if something bad happens to the mine. partitio is convinced. he apologizes for being so short-sighted, and hopes he didn't look too dumb in front of roque. roque tells him not to worry about it-- being willing to understand and learn from his mistakes is the mark of a good businessman. he's passed his test.

partitio is thrilled, and roque explains the details. he has two sticky situations he'd like resolved: a local lord who refuses to let roque company set up in wellgrove, a strike in clockbank, and finally a test to see if he has what it takes to join roque company's higher-ups: doing good enough business to impress roque himself(scent of commerce, unchanged). partitio agrees, and papp hugs him. he's real proud of his kid, and he thanks roque for the opportunity. partitio's a little embarrassed, but still excited.

then he goes outside, and giff is waiting for him. he asks if he asked papp about the wages. partitio starts to explain, but when he sees the look on giff's face, the words no longer feel so convincing. he apologizes. the answer's no. giff sighs, and walks away.

partitio is left alone. he tries to shake it off. he handled things well. roque is a good man. he knows what he's talking about.

right?

ch2-wellgrove:

level recommendations switched.

partitio arrives in wellgrove to find it not doing particularly well. there's a small market, but the place overall seems sort of depressing, and it's crawling with scammers and pickpockets. no wonder roque wants to invest in this place.

initially the other merchants won't talk to him, so he throws around some money to prove he's one of them, and they start talking. they agree that this place is kind of a shithole, and that the lord is a total bastard. quickly partitio is surrounded by merchants and peasants complaining about the taxes and the goddamn guards everywhere who only catch the pickpockets so they can take their stolen goods for themselves and the lord sitting pretty in his glorious mansion while the rest of them live in squalor.

confident, partitio tells them about roque company's plans to expand into wellgrove and inject capital into it. under roque's management, merchants would be supported in making businesses in exchange for much lower taxes than lord alrond provides. the merchants are interested, but the peasants aren't so convinced. one of them(im naming her evelina) says that she heard from her sister who went to study in the east said that all roque company does is make merchants into lords, while the peasants never seem to get any richer. she asks if it's true.

partitio disagrees. it's much better to be a worker than a peasant. workers have class mobility! papp was a peasant himself, a mere miner before roque gave him the capital to found the entire town of oresrush, and that because he was once just a peasant he runs the business with his workers in mind. plus, if roque supports the merchants, they can import goods from all over solistia.

she asks what that means, though. if roque company invested in this town, could she afford to buy medicine from the provisioner whenever she got sick? could she afford to add a bath to her house? could she buy sugar? what kind of money are they actually talking about?

partitio's about to describe his life, where he can afford all of those things, but he remembers evelina's not a merchant. he's an honest man, so he tells her that no, most workers live multiple families to a house, they bathe with a bucket, and the only sweets most of them eat are grapes. but if she becomes a merchant, she can have all that and more.

but if we're not we can't? the townspeople ask. how's that better? isn't that worse? a peasant's life isn't great, but they have their own houses, at least, and most of them want to stay farmers or carpenters. who's going to harvest the grapes if everyone has to be a business owner to see any of the benefits roque's bringing to town?

partitio's an honest man. he doesn't want to force a situation on these people that'd make their lives worse. the merchants are trying to shut the peasants up, but he stops them. a good businessman listens to everyone involved before he makes a deal. he'll make sure to think about their perspectives before he makes a deal.

the people, for the most part, believe him. that's good. so what's this uncertainty?

does he still feel guilty for not being able to raise giff's wages? roque already explained it to him. he's a good man. partitio will do his best to negotiate with alrond with the townspeoples' needs in mind, and if that falls through then he's worse than roque no matter what. he reassures himself and goes to meet alrond.

partitio introduces himself to alrond's guard as a representative of roque company. the guard is visibly irritated and says that he'll let him in, but he will also drag him back out if he gets snippy with the lord. partitio promises he's here to negotiate.

when partitio meets alrond, he's pleasantly surprised. alrond is nice. he invites partitio in, sits him down on a fancy couch, and greets him warmly as a representative of roque company. partitio is friendly in turn, the townsfolk's concerns receding as he meets with someone who actually reminds him a lot of roque.

partitio explains that the roque company wants to invest in wellgrove to help it, and that towns that it develops become much more prosperous-- if he joined in on the business, he wouldn't just be rich, he could get richer. the merchants' business would thrive, and that money would trickle down to the peasants. everyone happy!

alrond refuses. he's not paying taxes to roque, he's not a peasant, he already gets enough money from the people, and economic inequality is useful for him. if the farmers could afford swords, they might use them on him.

partitio is gobsmacked. alrond's still acting friendly while he's saying such cowardly, villainous things. he insists that economic inequality is bad actually. anyone should be able to be successful!

alrond doesn't buy that. the capitalists like inequality just as much as he does. or does every worker in his hometown live in a two-floor house?

he falters. sure, anyone can become rich, but most people don't.

he's humiliated. he's fucking up roque's tasks pretty badly. why's it so hard to just be honest when capitalism's such a good system? is he really so bad with words all of a sudden?

partitio brings up the peasants again. they're suffering. they hate him.

alrond sighs. the lower classes always resent those above them. their envy is precisely why they can't be given power. he tells partitio that he's a good guy, and it's admirable that he wants to help people, but he's not going to make it very far in the world if he doesn't understand that nobody likes someone bossing them around and taking their money, even if they have a good reason to. it must be hard for new money types not to have someone to teach them the ways of the world, but that's not really alrond's problem. partitio's welcome back for tea, but that's it. he does have to go out now though, or alrond's calling the guards.

partitio snaps. this guy sucks ass and partitio hates him. he's gonna beat some sense into alrond, guards or no, and charges.

alrond can use hired help(only up to thespian), will sometimes summon guards to protect his weaknesses, has lots of money-based attacks, and can use small soulstones of every element, but otherwise you just have to hit him until he dies.

when defeated, alrond asks if he's going to kill him. partitio says of course he won't, but he is going to make alrond accept the roque company's help. alrond muses that might be a fate worse than death, but grudgingly signs the contract partitio draws up for him.

when he gets back to town, partitio is approached by some people from before excited that alrond is getting removed from power. partitio automatically explains that no, alrond is becoming a partner. oh. well is he at least going to have to return some of the money he's taxed from them over the years? uh, no, and they still have taxes under roque, since it costs money to develop and run the town. didn't he say he would address their concerns?!

partitio realizes he hasn't addressed any of their concerns. but it's not like workers are ever invited to their bosses' meetings, and it's not like he didn't tell alrond...

he hasn't done anything to address their concerns. he lied to them. just like he lied to giff. how is it that pursuing his interests as a businessman keeps failing to align with protecting the people he's always been told he's responsible for the safety of, the people who will work at the businesses he runs?

but that's not fair! that's not right.

partitio asks the townspeople what their demands are. fuck the contract, he can renegotiate.

so they draw up a new list of demands. namely-- alrond will cover any and all expenses of development out of his own pocket, with the remaining wealth distributed over his land to the people he's been squeezing dry all these years. additionally, he will not be a partner. he will start as a worker, so that like partitio says, he can gain the experience of the underclass, and if he really deserves to be at the top, he'll have to work his way back up. elvina offers to take him in as an apprentice weaver. partitio goes offscreen, alrond cartoon screams, partitio reappears with a new contract.

roque's emissary comes the next day. she(ori) heard from a source that partitio had successfully negotiated with The alrond, and when partitio shows her the signed contract she reads it over and congratulates him for negotiating such generous terms, especially once he tells her it now has the unanimous support of the people.

so he leaves. he's done good! capitalism wins the day again. now alrond will have to actually work for once in his life, and roque's development won't put any strain on the people-- in fact, alrond's wealth will be given to them as capital the same way roque supported papp.

ch3-clockbank:

partitio arrives in clockbank to find that the industrial district is almost inaccessible, so blocked is it with workers protesting their conditions(though they disappear at night). they shout about low wages and workplace injuries.

partitio realizes what roque must have called him here to do-- fix the workers' conditions so that they can safely get back to work. he asks to be let through for that very reason, but they hold the line. nobody's seen him around before and he sure doesn't look like a factory worker. they don't trust him. he asks to speak to their leader and eventually one of them reveals he knows where the leader is, and when hired he brings partitio to floyd.

floyd's not very happy to see him, especially once he introduces himself as a representative of roque co., but when partitio says he's here to negotiate for better conditions for them floyd decides he might as well let partitio try, under a few conditions. firstly: the protesters set the conditions, and partitio isn't allowed to compromise without their say-so. secondly: floyd will be going with him to ensure he doesn't pussy out.

partitio is a little put off by floyd's hostility. he considers himself an amicable guy and he's only approached floyd with good intentions, so why are these workers so distrustful of him? it's the first question he asks.

floyd asks him point blank if he thinks he's the only representative roque's sent. most of them were very nice and every last one of them came back with negotiated conditions that addressed none of their concerns and often including the workers compensating the company for the time and money the strike cost them. partitio says they probably will have to compensate roque somehow, but floyd tells him that's their strongest principle. they're striking because roque is exploiting them-- if they let him paint himself as the victim, they lose. partitio thinks this must all be some big misunderstanding. roque is a good businessman and a good guy. there's some corrupt higher-up that's doing this and if he gets them fired everything will be good.

floyd might as well have a jokerfication meter floating next to his head, but while partitio absolutely does not understand the situation well enough to be negotiating, it actually might be a huge help to have some kind of important looking guy to sit next to him and agree with him when the higher-ups he's negotiating with insist that an engineer can't possibly know how to run a business. he tells partitio that roque inspects the factory himself. he knows exactly what is happening. floyd tried going to roque directly during one of these inspections, and it doing fuck nothing is why he organized the strike in the first place.

partitio wants to argue back. he feels like he has to. but some of those guys were missing arms. if roque company is a good thing, surely it can handle improving its workers' conditions. partitio asks floyd to tell him what they want to do, and how he can help.

floyd's demands are that 1) all workers be given protective gear while working with hot or heavy machinery and breaks to avoid overheating or choking, 2) treatment for injuries sustained at work be treated for free and without docking their wages for missing work to recover, 3) wages be adjusted at an equal rate to inflation, 4) workers receive two full days off a week without threat to employment or treatment, and 5) that these conditions be met such that every member of roque co. has the means to live comfortably and support those who depend on them, because if not then 6) the workers may strike when the terms of these conditions are broken with guarantee that management will negotiate with them.

the workers already know what they want, but the management refuses to listen to mere employees and insists their demands are unreasonable. floyd explains that it's possible that they'll listen to partitio saying the same things. he asks what partitio thinks.

partitio is confused. what's unreasonable about it? the goal of capitalism is that everyone should have the means to support themselves if they work hard. of course he'll help.

so partitio goes into the office with floyd. days pass, and every day partitio and floyd come out to the crowd with bad news.

then partitio is confronted at night by a man who introduces himself as the big boss of the factory, thurston. he demands that partitio stop making a fool of himself and either do his job of breaking the strike or get out of town. partitio is offended. thurston must not know mr roque at all if he thinks he would want his workers treated poorly. thurston tells partitio to meet him at the back of the factory, alone.

unchanged dungeon, but the room at the back of the factory has been changed to like a brainstorming hovel with a chalkboard and some prototypes. partitio arrives to see thurston, who shows partitio the plans for a steam locomotive. it's almost complete, he says. all the workers need to do is buckle down and put some effort in to get it ready in time for the convention on roque island. he says that actually the workers are probably involved in corporate espionage and intentionally trying to sabotage mr roque by slowing things down. partitio doesn't want that, right?

partitio's not buying that, though. he's spent the last, like, week hanging out with the factory workers. he knows they're good people, and he trusts his instincts, which tell him that they're being honest.

thurston tells him he doesn't have what it takes to succeed in the free market, and even if he got that little twink in wellgrove to agree to a contract or he's roque's old buddy's kid, there's a limit for how much of a rampage thurston'll let some upstart go on in his town. he steps back, and the steam engine next to him flares to life.

this allows the thurston boss fight to play out mechanically unchanged bc i do think it's quite cool.

after he's defeated, thurston is pissed, but says that partitio's meddling is all for naught. roque's arriving tomorrow, and he's gonna be pissed. partitio says they'll see about all that.

after resting at an inn, the next day arrives, and so does roque, who meets partitio, floyd in front of the strikers. partitio is relieved. floyd is not. roque asks, politely, what partitio's strategy is to resolve the strike, and partitio explains that the workers have promised to stop the strike as soon as their conditions are met. roque, disappointed, asks if partitio's already forgotten what he learned in oresrush-- roque co. can only stay profitable, can only have the money to do good in the world, because it does not dump all of its capital into luxury goods for every single one of its employees. perhaps he should reconsider partitio's spot in his company. partitio tries to fight back-- these aren't luxury goods, these are basic needs-- but roque isn't having it, and floyd asks partitio if he believes him now.

...he does.

partitio tells roque that if he's a good businessman, he should be able to spend his money so that he can afford to pay his workers and do good in the world. roque reiterates that in that case, partitio is a hypocrite, and roque is rich enough to buy a country. what he's doing works. partitio knows that, doesn't he? it's time for him to grow up and accept that good business requires making sacrifices.

partitio turns to floyd. what does he think? floyd agrees with roque. to be a good businessman, you have to turn a profit, and that profit gets smaller with every leaf that goes into floyd's pocket rather than roque's. so the question is which is more important to partitio-- being a good businessman, or being a good man.

partitio makes a decision. he decides that being a good man is more important. he'll take roque down alone if he has to. roque has an attack of the giggles and tells partitio he is welcome to try, but he should know that roque is heading to roque island, and he's got a lot more money for hired guns than one pissed off guy. roque peaces out, and partitio thinks that he . might have placed a bigger order than he could fill. but floyd calls him an idiot. why did he say he'd take him down alone? since negotiations are a bust, every roque co employee in clockbank has some free time, so if partitio can find a way to get them on a boat, this is their fight too.

on his way out of town, ori comes to find him, this time introducing herself as a scrivener. partitio asks if she's quit working for roque. ori is shocked he recognizes her, but says that the job wasn't what she'd hoped it'd be. partitio says he's hearing that a lot these days, and your last task is to hire ori and take her to the workers so they can break the story together.

ch4:

partitio arrives on roque island with the full force of the roque co clockwork branch. they are greeted by a full squad of soldiers. they charge, but the workers charge back at them, and the soldiers are no match for the time-honored strategy of having more dudes.

they continue throughout the island, with another chunk of the gang staying back at every checkpoint, until finally only a small group including floyd arriving at roque's Presentation Parking Lot. he's showing off new textiles from wellgrove with GASP.... ALROND!!!! and he's wearing new fancy clothes! partitio demands to know what's happening, and roque apologizes for the interruption before re-introducing his new partner, alrond wellgrove, who generously spent his entire fortune on developing the wellgrove branch of roque co. and inspired roque to grant him a managerial position. partitio realizes this whole fucking thing was rigged. he lied to those people for nothing?!

except.. if you'll remember from my ochett rewrite..... i love a roll call. and what better time is it for the peasants from wellgrove to bust through the door, lead by elvina! and not only that, but the workers from oresrush itself are here too! how?

ori's leading them. partitio asks how she got here, she says that they hate roque too. he doesn't mind having them here, right? of course not, partitio replies, not getting the coded message.

so even though roque calls more soldiers, they're holding on. irritated, roque tells alrond to hold partitio off while he prepares plan B. alrond confidently agrees, but his stats are unchanged from ch2 so he doesn't put up much of a fight(his sprite is just his overworld sprite to avoid having to redo it).

suddenly, roque busts through the gate with the train! the train scene is so fucking funny even at my most annoying i will not write out the train fight. unchanged its perfect

roque is defeated, his train punched into smithereens. alrond is in the family guy death pose. the soldiers are in shambles. partitio and the guys stand above them all, triumphant.

suddenly, roque puts the kindly mentor face back on. he's proud of partitio for forging his own path, but surely he's not delusional enough to think that when he takes over roque co, he'll be able to just magically do everything nice without running the company into the ground. sooner or later he'll learn that roque did everything he did for a reason, and when his workers come to resent him just the way roque's did, he'll be sorry he lost himself an ally.

partitio buys roque's certificate of ownership(you need that in solistia, don't worry about it) for 1L, cutscene of roque saying that's far too little, partitio saying sometimes you gotta know when negotiating isn't an option, roque reluctantly hands it over, and partitio rips it to shreds.

he doesn't want roque company. if what roque says is true, if a company really can't survive without exploiting its workers, maybe there shouldn't fucking be companies.

roque asks who's going to make goods, then. floyd steps forward. we are, he says. they've always been the ones making stuff. then the sailors take it around the world, and the people use them. all roque did was overcharge for slapping his name on things. well who's going to run wellgrove? we are, idiot, elvina says. they've worked the land and maintained the town all this time.

but who's going to run oresrush?

nobody steps forward this time. partitio is forced to make this decision himself.

but he knows.

the workers, he says. the ones who make the silver and the medicine and the ale and the tools.

ori does step forward then. is he really going to give up all his father's money? all his? what's he gonna do if he falls on hard times, or if he wants to buy new boots?

partitio grits his teeth and steels his nerves. he'll figure it out, the way everyone else has had to.

everyone starts laughing at him, fade to black.

epilogue:

back in oresrush, partitio is drinking with some of the miners when giff busts in and says some guys are here looking for partitio.

he walks out to find floyd and some of his gang. he asks what's up and they say that they've finally finished the second model of the steam locomotive, but the track they want isn't going to build itself. partitio wouldn't happen to know any miners, would he?

afterstory:

the north side of town doesn't change much, but a lot of people who previously had dialogue complaining about being poor now have dialogue talking about normal townsperson #99 matters and some of them are really thrilled about this new "steam locomotive" thing, although they're still working on ending the poverty around here.

like i said with throné's afterstory i want the auctionhouse to leave after oresrush's class divide improves, but if it can't it is at least less packed after partitio's chapter 5 and dialogue changes to complain that it's much harder to find goods around here these days. because the poverty is meant to be improving but not fixed it hopefully shouldn't completely break her story. that lady talking about how they might be able to afford food every other day soon was actually aspirational and it really will happen soon.

part of that is that giff is in papp's office still negotiating the terms of wealth redistribution. papp feels like they shouldn't be allowed to take his old money since they already take all the money the silver mine makes from now on, giff says he got that money from them in the first place.

alrond returns to wellgrove. he's standing in the tavern, his info says that he's been bouncing around apprenticeships. misha's become an assistant at the dance school and is having a jolly old time.

elvina's next chapter has her asking for your help creating a market with all the money they eventually got from alrond, the wellgrove market replaces alrond's department store. while we can't have everything be fixed because it would break throné's chapter 3 if everyone was like "wow, now every kid in town doesn't need a side hustle!" we just use the same excuse as oresrush where elvina at least can mention that they're still working on addressing the economic inequality. yes this undermines the communist messaging.

floyd is hanging out in the former managers' office during the night with a selection of factory workers and engineers. during the day he's hanging out in the factory working on new stuff.

floyd's next chapter has him looking for the pieces to complete what turns out to be prototypes for a welding visor, strong new gloves, and a safety apron. thanks! now he can safely work on new projects, including his neo-bow.

roque and thurston are on roque's island. thurston complains that they'd have already taken back control of roque co. if the workers here hadn't followed clockbank's lead. roque concurs, but his info says that he's come to accept his loss, and that he's considering training as a conductor once the clockbank factory gets the mk II steam locomotive up and running.

agnea

i really like agnea's story! its fun and sillay and especially since most of my rewrites get stupid dark i feel like aggie is even more necessary as a breath of fresh air. i wouldnt even be taking a crack at rewriting it if i wasnt doing everyone

my only goal is to have fun and be myself.

ch1:

i think the fact that agnea takes down a dourdour boar with a fruit knife is way too fun not to be commented on so im going whole hog on this. cuani was known as the legendary dagger dancer, so skilled that she could flipkick off remnants with her famous Ruinous Kick, and agnea has inherited her skills, so the town guards have ended up relying on agnea for trickier threats to the village since she was like 11, and she's so beloved and relied on by the villagers that she keeps failing to find a not super awkward or inconvenient time to tell them that she actually wants to dip. now you might say "isn't dancer a support class with low hp and atk" to which i say "osvald gets to be buff without it being reflected in his stats so there".

anyway, as far as she knows gus is the only one who knows about her secret.

the story begins as agnea performs in the tavern, singing one of cuani's songs about her fight-dancing with a giant bear. when it ends, everyone applauds, agnea picks up tips for the night, and aggie sits down to get a free snack from gus, who asks her when she's going to tell her dad she wants to leave. agnea guiltily says she really does want to, but the festival is coming up and everyone in town is going to want her to perform and need her around in case the noise attracts monsters. gus tells her that everyone in town loves her, enough that they'll find a way to get on if she follows her dream of traveling the world. aggie kinda half-heartedly agrees and goes home.

pa and pala meet her. pala insists agnea's way too tired from dancing to cook dinner and that she and pa will make something, but agnea brushes her off and makes unidentified pot contents for dinner before going to sleep. the scene pans over to pa and pala, who meet each other grimly and talk cryptically about their progress. they're both almost done.

the next day, agnea starts escorting people to the festival grounds and is hanging around helping out when one of the guards busts through and announces the worst case scenario. a dourdour boar! agnea knows what must be done, and goes to confront the beast.

when she's about to face off, gus appears behind her. he's here to help too! agnea tells him to get lost so he doesn't get hurt, but gus insists that he's been training for the last few years. she won't have to save him again!

the dourdour fight is unchanged. agnea's unlock has her still being worried that she's not going to be able to protect gus, but she acknowledges that he's holding his own, and that it's... actually kind of nice to fight by someone else's side. this awakens a power in her she's never felt before... 1, 2, 3, all together now!

when the dourdour is defeated, agnea does a stylish pose as it flees back into the forest, and gus stands up out of his battle pose. agnea turns to him and says that he scared the daylights out of her. what was he thinking?! gus tells her that she's holding herself back from her dream because she thinks the town needs her, but he's been working all this time to get strong enough to help fill her shoes if she leaves. it's the least he can do as her friend. agnea is touched, and returns to the festival grounds, where she notices that some of the guards are still missing. to her horror, they tell her that There Was A Second Boar!!!... but what's this?! the guards return, led by pala, who whips out a dourdour tusk! pala reveals that she was actually working on the same thing as gus, and now she and the guards can take down even a dourdour. gus and pala are a little shocked and embarrassed to realize they've doubled up on surprising agnea, but she's so touched that she starts crying and the two of them rush to comfort her.

suddenly, pa appears, and he hands her some folded fabric. she unfolds it to reveal a new dress, with light leather underarmor sewn right into it! pa tells her she'll might a lot of foes even more harrowing than the dourdour on her journey, so she'll need all the protection she can get. then he tells her to dry her eyes and give them one last dance before she sets off. she performs to the festival music and the scene ends.

first meeting:

agnea is actually met outside cropdale. the road into town is initially blocked by a giant boar, which has the same popup as a boss, although before it actually attacks you agnea kicks it in the face to death. she says it's lucky she came along just then and asks if the two of you can travel together, asserting that she'll be able to pull her weight. this references that its a level 11 monster if you pick her up early and becomes a meta joke if you pick her up late

ch2:

agnea's in new delsta! she's never been in a city this big before, and she's kind of intimidated. she goes to the backstreets which she feels more comfortable in and ends up scaring away a gaggle of ruffians who are menacing the tavern owner, gil, who initially refuses her request to perform in his tavern but relents after she gathers a crowd(including the ruffians from earlier), joining her on the piano to reveal his mad skills. the crowd cheers.

when the crowd disperses, agnea asks gil how his tavern isn't more popular, and he tells her not to worry about it, thanking her for the performance and recommending that she stop by the theater to see dolcinaea's show before she leaves town. she does(although the staggering 500,000L entry price means she ends up needing to entreat a ticket of a wealthy audience member), and is entranced by dolcinaea's performance.

however, she stops back by gil's tavern to find that it's been trashed by la'mani's goons. after she scares them off again, gil admits that la'mani maintains the popularity of his theater by making sure it's the only show in town. he's been targeted ever since he started performing in the tavern, and even though he's stopped, la'mani doesn't seem like he'll be satisfied until gil's driven out of town completely. agnea is enraged by this and resolves to come back after beating la'mani's ass. gil tries to discourage her but agnea's already out the door

agnea busts into la'mani's theater. he blames gil for trying to steal his business, but agnea tells him that he's going to leave gil alone and pay for the repairs to the tavern Or Else. she beats his ass the same as the original. agnea is about to straight up kill la'mani like a dog when dolcinaea stops her. she calls la'mani off and tells him that he insults her by assuming that she needs match fixing to win a popularity contest and also that this theater is too small for her and she's leaving new delsta, deuces. agnea thanks dolcinaea for her help, dolcinaea thanks "the bar maid" and tells her that gil ought to be able to run his tavern in peace now. agnea assumes this is an innocent misunderstanding and tells dolcinaea that someday they'll be dancing on the same stage, before leaving. dolcinaea thinks that the girl is better suited to the tavern than the theater... really, agnea ought to be beneath her notice, but...

anyway. agnea returns to the tavern and gives gil the good news. he drops the jaded facade for a second and genuinely thanks her, giving her the instrumental for the song of hope.

ch3:

the chapter is completely identical! no boss battle no dungeon. the only change is that agnea asks if there's, like, a giant squid they need her to fight or anything. they say no. instead she ends up doing a dagger dance with one of the troupe members.

ch4:

hey so why are dolcinaea and laila not asian. theyre from sai. copout cowards move to make them both white. also i don't like lailas original design, among other things she has a bad case of the "coward's tomboy". no your cool girl character actually isnt allowed to be feminine she Has to wear pants. also dolcinaea recolor or whatever

agnea shows up in sai. the sai tavern doesn't have a stage. agnea does a dagger dance with some of the warriors but ultimately ends up at the orphanage. she sees a mural of a dancer resembling cuani performing under the moon, and stops to stare at it when laila pushes her aside and dumps paint over a bunch of it, saying it looks terrible and telling agnea to beat it. she does, and visits the orphanage where the directors recognize her as cuani's daughter. laila teleports behind her and does her whole Dancing fucking suuuuuucks act, but agnea later finds her repainting the mural(gleaning information from a townsperson will tell you that it just kind of appeared one day, you can also find some of laila's other graffiti around town), and laila admits that she's kind of jealous of agnea. she points to the mural and says that she tried painting cuani based on the stories people told about her, but that she sucks at dancing and can't even paint it. agnea tells laila that she can't know that without a teacher, and offers to show her some moves. laila's not super convinced by this but agnea insists on showing laila that she has potential by teaching her a leaflands partner dance. initially laila is slow, but soon they're dancing in sync. they look up at the mural, and agnea says she's missed partner dancing, because it's one of her only memories of her mother.

absolutely destroying the atmosphere, dolcinaea's goons bust into town and oh no dolcinaealand. the orphanage directors recognize her as 'sahar', but dolcinaea says she has no idea who that is and leaves to watch the town burn. after laila says she'll hold off the goons, agnea goes to confront dolcinaea and tells her that bulldozing an orphanage is bad actually. dolcinaea insists that it's an eyesore and that "nothing of worth ever came from there". agnea is furious and charges her, but is parried by veronica. dolcinaea says that agnea has a lot of nerve walking around wearing "her" face when her skills are so weak, and tells veronica to get rid of her.

veronica fight unchanged. when defeated, dolcinaea, haunted by memories of cuani, refuses to drop the mask and simply admits that agnea is strong enough to be worth competing against directly, and invites her to the gala. she'll call off dolcinaealand for now, but if agnea chickens out that might be a temporary thing.

agnea returns to the orphanage and relays what happened, the directors are sad. when cuani first came to sai they tried very hard to encourage sahar learning to dance from her, and that they always wanted her to be proud of where she came from. agnea decides that things have gotten personal, and she's for sure going to merry hills.

when she's leaving, she passes by the mural, where laila is painting. agnea notices that not only has the dancing woman been redone...is that agnea? laila is embarrassed, but says that after seeing a real dancer she realized how off the figures were before. agnea is super embarrassed but also flattered. she tells laila about merry hills and says it'll be a good place to witness more dancers firsthand.

ch5:

agnea arrives in merry hills and you fucking know you fucking knowwwwww we're doing a roll call. dolcinaea sends a huge crowd of minions, agnea fights three waves before she realizes shes gonna be late to the show!!!!! but what's that?! it's gil, laila, and giselle+co.!!!! they put on a huge performance with gil's music, laila's dancing, and giselle+co singing and directing the crowd. agnea slips past and gets to the stage, where the la'mani sequence plays out completely unchanged except that agnea is getting ready to punch him when veronica kicks him and tells her she's late. agnea gets onto the stage, and dolcinaea is already there and... what's that? she wants to do a dagger dance?! but this isn't just any ordinary dagger dance, they're fucking dance battling!!!! dolcinaea warns agnea that she's up against the dancer who made cuani bristarni stagger at only age 11, and agnea replies that dolcinaea's up against cuani's true successor. those are fighting words, and the battle begins!!!

agnea wins, and dolcinaea falls down, defeated. she concedes that it's agnea's victory, and that she's cuani's true successor. agnea tells her that it's not actually a competition. cuani would just be disappointed that dolcinaea's forgotten that the most important part of dancing is having fun and being yourself. dolcinaea laughs, and reminds her that they literally are in a competition. she gets to her feet and leaves the stage for agnea to be crowned the victor.

when agnea gets out, the whole gang is there to congratulate her. it's very cute, she promises to visit all them on her travels, everyone happy, good end.

afterstory:

i love veronica's next chapter. completely unchanged.

laila's mural gets finished! agnea, gil, and laila herself are all putting on a performance under the moonlight, with cuani dancing in the stars as a constellation.

temenos

so. the challenge of rewriting temenos is that temenos' story and character as-is are complete garbage and actively destroy everything they touch and because on top of that his character is treated with absolute reverence to the point that he is essentially the protagonist especially in the endgame, the only way to fix him is to write a different guy. so there are a couple of different guys i could write

ive talked about this before but my primary issue with temenos is that his story unquestioningly treats his """deductions""" as valid and despite temenos' smug insistence that he's not a sheeple he never actually does anything to challenge or even articulate problems with the church outside of wanting to find the evil infiltrators, which combined with the mystery's solution being "the real enemy was the indigenous people all along" means that temenos' story is 1) a bad mystery, 2) a boring story, and 3) wildly racist.

so the different (octo)paths to rewrite temenos. option 1 is to try and make him better. demote him from inquisitor to Just Some Guy so he is a weird little freak in a place he is not supposed to be instead of an inquisitor abusing his systemic power to be a police detective who's gonna catch Baby Eater Mike regardless of the dumb laws about "human rights" and "testimony under coercion not being valid". rewrite the mystery to Not be that the indigenous people were the real villains all along and make it interesting so that seeing him solve it is fun. fix his personality to be a weird little freak instead of a guy who constantly smugly insists you debate him on whether brown people should be allowed to leave their houses after 6pm. option 2 is to partitio him and try to make this a story about a member of the oppressors realizing that he's a tool of systemic oppression and trying to overcome it. option 3, though, is to keep temenos the same and just make the story understand that he sucks. make him a heel! yes temenos is a myopic conspiratorial smug piece of shit whose power has completely gone to his head and convinced him that his hunches are objective fact and all he needs to do is get people to confess to what he decides they've done, and this sniveling little shitheel is going to bumble his way ass backwards through a situation fucking everything up and being terrible. everyone hates this white boy but due to the power he wields if he decides to stick onto you you are stuck with him because he can just lock people up if he decides they're guilty with no proof! as you may have guessed this is what im going with and unfortunately you cannot stop me as this is my birthday party

so as is, coerce is treated with the same accuracy and reliability as inquire. all glean information path actions are. additionally, the player is allowed and sort of incentivized not to read the long blurbs too closely especially because the important parts are always summarized at the end. but... what if coerce could be wrong? what if some of the coerced people's info was just a lie, or what if it was the truth but temenos took completely the wrong conclusion from it, or what if the story marked coercion targets didn't have the information that actually related to the mystery? that way the game itself could be telling you without telling you that temenos is an unreliable narrator. in the same way, his dioramas could just.. be wrong! they could work together too, you coerce all the story targets for evidence and then temenos comes up with a diorama, but if you glean info from an unmarked npc you find evidence that disproves his theory. use the video game engine to have temenos mislead the audience as to what's really going on in a way that a player who's paying attention can pick up on. if possible it would also be really fun to have the other glean information skills actually have different information than coerce, but that might be extremely complicated to program so instead i'll settle for story targets. also fuck you temenos you don't get a special boy minigame you will get osvald's mug but for information and you will like it.

i know all this makes it sound like im doing a character assassination to Kill Temenos and make no mistake i am a little hater but i need you to understand the energy im writing this with is the sicko rubbing his hands together and going yesssss.... YESSS!!!! and that this is probably the one i had the most fun with.

so temenos: bad detective. temmy is going to be put on the case of a mystery, wildly speculate and come up with an increasingly out there interpretation of events, before confronting the culprit who reveals that none of that was happening even a little bit, what are you talking about. the culprit is still kaldena, but instead of our twist villain, she's our twist hero. the real villain.... was the church all along!

now admittedly the actual mystery i have planned isn't very complicated. kaldena infiltrated the church in order to change things from the inside out. she learned in her early days that exposing the corruption of higher ups to the archbishop did fuck nothing, so now she's decided to take things into her own hands by taking out the corrupt herself, but she's starting to realize that the church just replaces them with new also corrupt people. temenos' grand conspiracy is either connecting completely unrelated murders or the church's own surreptitious activities because supporting agents of vide actually benefits them to a degree by using vide's growing presence to increase their power.

"but wa wa in octopath canon the church of the sacred flame is objectively correct about everything" shut up dont be fucking boring

first meeting:

initially the situation seems like a bandit is menacing temenos, but once you defend him and agree to let him join your party temenos thanks you and explains that the man was walking around town claiming to be an innocent traveler when his gait clearly indicated that he was a serial killer in disguise, and unfortunately in the process of extracting a confession the man got a little violent. his last line is commenting that based on the look on your face you must have been very disturbed by that display so he assures you that the culprit will be dealt with.

ch1:

the intro is unchanged. the gods' designs are offensively boring and the story is terrible, which is the true villainy but isnt like commented on or anything. temenos fucks up the story, the kids laugh at him, mindt is obviously irritated but pretends it's endearing, then temenos hears that he's been instructed to visit the pontiff. on the way he finds a traveler, but through his empath powers deduces based on his clothes and the way he avoids looking at the church that he's a religious insurgent and attempts to coerce the truth out of him. the man resists. his coerce info is a long backstory about how he came here seeking revenge but as a follower of vide he knows he must avoid looking directly at the holy power of the church to avoid his faith in the god of evil wavering, but he verbally insists that he's innocent and is just here to visit his family. the two are interrupted by crick's arrival, who helps subdue the man once temenos explains that he's a religious insurgent. they call over the local sacred guard to have him arrested for heresy. temenos deduces that crick is here to see the pontiff, surprising crick who compliments him on his powers of logic.

just outside of the cathedral they meet kubaryi. temenos and kubaryi have a longstanding dislike of each other because kubaryi works for kaldena, who temenos has long suspected, but she is actually too high on the chain of command for him to accuse her without evidence. the two tersely discuss kubaryi's reason for coming-- several important members of the church have recently passed, so the pontiff called her here to discuss the situation. when he reveals the pontiff called him here too, kubaryi sees the writing on the wall and grimly goes to meet her fate.

indeed, the pontiff gives temenos the names of vados, a missionary who was sent west to show its residents the light(as most of western solistia worships the eight gods as an essentially equal pantheon, this is not mentioned because they would obviously all know that), and bishop lucian who headed the stormhail cathedral, asking him to investigate their deaths. kubaryi tells the pontiff that their deaths were already investigated and found to be unsuspicious, but the pontiff insists that a thorough investigation by the actual inquisitor be carried out regardless. she gives up, unable to directly insult the pontiff's hound in front of him, and only asks that temenos please attempt to work with the sacred guard, which he only agrees to on the condition that they do not interfere with his investigation. kubaryi leaves, and the pontiff asks temenos and crick to assist him with a little problem he's having. see, he got this note a bit ago that says "your night will fall on the eve of the full moon", which strongly implies that an assassin is coming to get him tonight, so if tem could get on that that'd be stellar. crick is assigned to guard temenos because the pontiff says he's been harassed a lot by religious insurgents recently, temenos says it's no big deal but crick enthusiastically thanks the pontiff for letting him work with temenos.

so temenos is sent out to solve the mystery! kubaryi is still in town and is extremely unimpressed when crick tells her about his assignment, saying that all he'll really be doing is protecting the hound from the consequences of its own actions, but crick asserts that temenos is renowned as a genius detective. yeah sure whatever kubaryi says and skips town. (OR DOES SHE?!)

when coerced, a townsperson says that gun to his head if he had to find someone suspicious he guesses maybe the lady who cleans the cathedral at night is kind of weird? she sleeps through the whole day so nobody really sees her. that's kind of weird, <a suspicious woman>. another says that a traveling apothecary was complaining about how places who rely on clerical healing always have a ton of untreated infections and illnesses to deal with, from which temenos concludes <there's a traveling apothecary who despises the church>. the guard says a man has been sneaking into the cathedral to meet with the cleaning woman which he says is to treat an illness she's suffering from, <the apothecary visits the cathedral at night>. the last story target says that the apothecary is staying with his family..... the same family the religious insurgent from earlier said he was here to visit!!!

temenos deduces via diorama that the apothecary is actually another religious insurgent in disguise who came to flamechurch to spread distrust of the church's healing. the cleaning woman is faking an illness because she is also an insurgent who's been playing a long con to give the apothecary an excuse to visit her and ultimately assassinate the pontiff. crick is stunned that temenos was able to deduce the insurgent from earlier was guilty based on his avoiding looking at the church alone.

that night, crick and temenos lie in wait until the apothecary comes to visit the cleaning woman, when they leap out and temenos says that he's here to foil their little assassination attempt. the apothecary and cleaning woman have no idea what he's talking about, but when he charges a boss fight begins regardless.

the apothecary im naming him haider can inflict poison sleep and blind, which since you have no way to deal with status effects is pretty tough unless you have some herbs, but all the cleaning woman who im naming celia does is physical attacks, so just hit them until they go down.

when defeated, the two give up. temenos coerces out of them that they do both dislike the church and that haider can read and write, so he could have written the note. investigation complete. temenos guides haider to the pontiff to find him, uh. dead.

wuh oh.

temenos and crick are shocked. how could this be? his deductions were foolproof. the culprits confessed! could there really have been a second assassin?!

temenos finds another note, in the same writing.

"may the gods give you your fair trial at last."

indeed, this is the work of heretics. the church does not forbid the worship of other gods so long as they acknowledge aelfric as the highest of all, but to insinuate that high-ranking church members whose appointments are formally blessed by aelfric are less worthy than the opinions of minor gods is blasphemy. something is afoot.

haider, who is still here, asks if he can go home on account of not having committed any crimes. crick charges him with conspiracy to assassinate and says he'll meet up with temenos at canalbrine.

ch2-canalbrine:

temenos arrives in canalbrine, met by crick. crick warns him that the townspeople haven't been very helpful, but temenos is used to working under those conditions.

he asks around town and is repeatedly told by the townspeople that vados was a public nuisance who went around trying to convert people to only worship a god who is treated as primarily the god of the sun outside of church-controlled areas. he's not unimportant and most of them pray to him regularly for good weather but he's much less relevant than draefendi who controls the quality and quantity of fish they catch or bifelgan who allows the traders who pass through their port safe passage. none of them wanted to risk angering the gods they primarily rely on by renouncing them as lesser, so vados spent most of his time having the same protracted theological arguments with townspeople. temenos is deeply concerned and suspects vide's involvement in turning the townspeople against the flame. unfortunately there are just too many people who might have killed vados. he goes to inspect his house.

vados' body has been removed by kubaryi's original investigation. it was reported that he died of food poisoning, but temenos suspects otherwise. he looks for clues and finds graffiti on the outside of vados' house of a crude figure attacking another crude figure in missionary robes with a moon overhead(a symbol of vide!!!), a letter to vados from "your friend" mentioning a meeting at fellsun ruins, and from asking around town that there have actually been other deaths from "food poisoning", including the only two people who were thinking of converting. CLEARLY a mass murderer has been going around poisoning people sympathetic to the church! they must have come from fellsun ruins! and the murderer is still at large! temenos investigates and finds out that vados was very fond of a dancer who performs at the local tavern, who is obviously the next target. he goes up and starts coercing people in the crowd, but none of them give him any useful information until he notices that one of the other dancers is wearing a moon necklace. when confronted about her plans to assassinate the dancer, she flees, prompting temenos to chase her down. also crick is there, and if you've already played castti's story you know the real source of the food poisonings, since they happened before the events of the game begin.

she asks how temenos knew her plan, and temenos identifies her as an agent of vide. she's a little confused, but temenos tells her to drop the act, and that he'll get a confession out of her yet.

the dancer im naming her viorela is a skilled elemental magic user with fire, wind, and dark attacks, can buff herself, and is very fast. her ultracharge is a wild dance that does random elemental damage to your party.

when defeated, viorela admits that she was planning to assassinate hermes because hermes was threatening to expose the fact that she's been stealing from customers. she also admits that she was planning to convince vados to do it because everyone in town knew that he loved hermes but that hermes never gets involved with an audience member so it wouldn't be that unbelievable, but when he died suddenly she got desperate enough to try and take her out herself. temenos demands to know what she knows about the fellsun ruins. she has no idea what he's talking about.

suddenly, kubaryi and her squad appear, demanding to know what the hell temenos thinks he's doing. temenos reveals viorela and shares his entire theory. kubaryi irritably says that she guesses they can report her to the guards for stealing from customers, but that neither wanting to do something bad nor wearing a moon necklace is illegal in canalbrine, and he has no proof that this isn't an unrelated spat. temenos accuses kubaryi of having tried to cover up the evidence by saying vados died of food poisoning and that viorela has killed several people. she would've been arrested on his charges if this was flamesgrace, but instead the guards have been called and just arrest her on thievery after kubaryi explains that they have no evidence and viorela only confessed to stealing. in other news, since the pontiff is dead, she relays that the new pontiff, Jörg 2 youri has decided to reassign crick to canalbrine permanently in order to protect the new missionary, Vados 2 rickard. they just replaced both of them within a week. temenos doesn't comment on this, he replaced roi after he died. he suspects that kubaryi is isolating him on purpose, but ultimately he doesn't really need crick. crick is upset at this reassignment, but kubaryi tells him to take it up with the pontiff, and peaces out.

temenos decides to check out crackridge first.

ch3:

temenos arrives in crackridge which if you'll remember is entirely populated by people who speak in a pidgin. unlike our main girl ochett, temenos is above translations and instead simply deduces that the peoples' distrust of and irritation towards him is because the fellsun ruins have some sort of vide business going on. eventually, temenos finds the only solistian speaking person in town, an extremely unsuspicious woman in cleric robes so you know you can trust her wearing a necklace with a crescent moon where the dark side has been turned into an eye. now thats a vide symbol. guiding her has her lead temenos to the fellsun ruins, where he's met by a strange group of clerics who sure aren't acting like clerics. they speak with him cryptically at first, but when he realizes they're feeling him out he pretends to drop the facade and tells them they're all friends of vide here. they buy this, although one of them chastises him for forgetting his emblem. he says he's here to figure out who got to vados. they confirm his suspicions that his death wasn't natural, but say that they had nothing to do with it. actually, they figured it out when vados never responded after he rsvp'd to a meeting to help out with his missionary work. see, the god of the sun doesn't have much relevance to the lives of harborlands fishers on on a good day, but if the god of eternal night gains power, suddenly you could really use as much help from the god of light as fast as possible, so sometimes the church slips them a little casheesh on the side to make sure that vide is always powerful enough that people need defense against her, although of course vide's followers ultimately plan to use that stepping stone to step over the church too. for example, if an inquisitor sent to investigate the suspicious deaths of church figures were to tragically die himself not days after he said vide was likely behind it, that might cause a panic. that might give the church an excuse to send a permanent section of the sacred guard west. and in exchange, the followers of vide get the northern-central wildlands to turn in a cesspool anyone would want the church to save them from.

temenos laughs and says that sure is bad news for that inquisitor guy, unless of course he survives to expose this whole operation. bet, the followers of vide say, and charge.

archetypal boss with two unique minions. the Dark Bishop and two Dark Clerics use dark magic, debuffs, and life leeching attacks. evilbad satanists, you get it.

when defeated, the dark clerics all take themselves out before temenos can coerce them. he's left exhausted and battered, reflecting that maybe he shouldn't have been so cavalier about losing his guard.

but still, he's stumbled upon a juicy little mystery, hasn't he? someone in the church needs rooting out. and he has a silly funny idea about who that someone might be.

ch4:

stormhail sucks ass. regardless of whether or not glacis is actively freezing the townspeople to death, the town is small and cold while an enormous opulent cathedral takes up half the goddamn map, the place is crawling with guards, and someone picks his pocket while he's considering how bad things must have gotten that they need this level of security. unless, of course, his suspicions prove true about the true identity of the agent of vide. he doesn't really care about the opulence or the wallet it's mostly just the guards.

anyway he shows up in the cathedral to find that unlike vados' house, the cathedral most certainly has been cleaned up and any evidence on bishop lucian's death has been removed. luckily, temenos is such a good detective all he needs is his mind powers, so he gets to investigating.

or tries to, anyway. the new bishop ingram and kubaryi are both there. ingram doesn't really care either way since all that matters is that he has the job now, but kubaryi actively tells him that he's wasting his time. lucian died in a blizzard, open shut. temenos says that would certainly be more convenient for her, but that doubting open shut cases is what he does.

anyway, temenos is increasingly certain of the culprit, so he does another reconnaissance mission, coercing kubaryi's schedule out of a sacred guard despite them being strictly instructed not to tell him shit, and lies in wait to see where she goes. lucky for him, she's headed right into the cathedral's secret archives. temenos stealthily follows her.

right up until he's hiding behind a bookshelf when kubaryi just tells him to come out. she asks what he's convinced himself of this time, temenos confidently accuses her of being the agent of vide who's been assassinating members of the church in order to spread fear so that the sacred guard's power can overtake that of the pontiff's.

kubaryi drops the act. it's true that she killed lucian, vados, and jörg, but his obsession with heresy has long blinded him to the fact that there are plenty of other reasons that people do things. the lot of them deserved to die, and, her voice grows dismal, it didn't change much anyway.

temenos accuses her of heresy. how could she possibly think the pontiff deserved to die?

the pontiff was the agent of vide, kubaryi says. he knew how to use fear to control people. after all, he managed to keep control of flamechurch for decades just with one very loud barking dog. the sacred guard, missionaries, vide followers, he used all of them to expand the reach of the church and cut off peoples' avenues for resisting against it. and now the new pontiff is doing the same. temenos is free to try and kill her, but there'll be a new deputy next week.

temenos refuses to accept this. he's smart enough not to fall for her lies. for his pontiff, his mentor, he will strike her down.

kubaryi tells him that she's always wanted to cut his head off, and charges.

her fight is unchanged, and when defeated temenos asks if she has any last words. kubaryi tells him that kaldena is in the nameless village(kalsuīnye'usois). if his doubt was ever worth anything, he'll listen to what she has to say. temenos whacks her over the head, and she falls from her knees to the ground.

temenos feels... frustrated. they always confess at the end, usually. he always imagined his longtime enemy breaking down into a cathartic crying apology for always doubting him, but instead she just went out in this dignified frustration with an insult to boot.

still, he has confirmation of her guilt, and on top of that he knows where the true villain is.

ch5:

temenos arrives in kalsuīnye'usois to find... no sacred guards. instead there are only toto'haha residents, all of whom either don't know or cheerfully lie to temenos about whether a kaldena is or is not hiding in the village. that is until he coerces the nervous shirlutto into telling temenos that she is in the village and guiding him to force him to show him the way. he enters the tomb to find kaldena with a mixed group of villagers, some sacred guards, and what appear to be just some random dudes. he tells kaldena her mad conspiracy is at an end, and kubaryi already gave up her location. kaldena apologizes to the group and asks if temenos minds them taking things up the path to the dramatic cliff's edge.

you can talk to the people, none of whom can be coerced, they all have dialogue either being annoyed with kubaryi for sending this dude to their door or hoping that this at least gets resolved more quickly than the moonshade guys.

following kaldena to the dramatic cliff's edge has temenos accuse her again, kaldena interrupts him and asks temenos why he follows the church. temenos says that he believes in it because it's true. kaldena goes all I Used To Believe That Once and launches into her tragic backstory.

kaldena is a native of kalsuīnye'usois which has the dubious honor of being the point through which the church attempted to take over toto'haha a few centuries ago, but the sacred guard was repelled by the guardian and the wardenbeasts. despite that the church continues to try and introduce followers of vide into toto'haha so they have an excuse to invade. as a young girl, kaldena, pure of intentions, decided to join the sacred guard and change things from the inside out so that the church came to understand that toto'haha and the church could live in harmony. however, although she quickly distinguished herself and ended up rising through the chain of command on the sacred guard, she still found herself unable to actually change anything. reforms she proposed were ignored, secrets she uncovered were covered right back up, and the only reason she wasn't quietly disappeared was that she was too strong for the assassins to take her out. as she realized that even the kindest seeming higher ups would sacrifice not only her personally but her entire island for more power, she despaired, and decided that if they knew no language but violence, she had no choice but to translate.

and yet... even that failed. she would slay a member of the church who was committing atrocities and he would be replaced the next week. she would send the sacred guard with orders to protect the innocent and her orders would be overwritten by the local bishop. she couldn't even stop the church from colluding with vide's followers, because if she had them killed more would be summoned or created. despite her high position, she found herself incapable of true change. though she found allies, though she grew ever stronger, none of it mattered. when she slew the pontiff himself and it didn't even slow things down, she finally accepted the truth. the church can't be reformed. the only way to fix things is exactly what the church wants: a war.

in the present, kaldena tells temenos that she doesn't like him much, but while the church can't be redeemed, she would welcome an ally. he prides himself on his analytical abilities. can he really not see what's going on here?

temenos doesn't even think about it, he's smart enough to know when someone is just bullshit spitballing. she just killed a bunch of people because she was influenced by vide to want to destroy the church.

kaldena does a comedy pause and is like. well. don't say i didn't give you a chance.

SO. for kaldena's bossfight i absolutely want her to slowly become the avatar of one of the other gods because it would 1) be sick as fuck and 2) if i go this entire thing without worldbuilding for the octogods i will die.

yes i know none of these are canon motifs of the gods, unfortunately the canon motifs of the gods are nonexistant so i get to make up my own.

but anyway in her first form kaldena is just a sword lady, her attacks are just high damage sword attacks that inflict debuffs or hit aoe or do multiple hits, but she also has light magic. default sacred guard fight.

at the midpoint, though, kaldena and temenos speak. kaldena notes that she's losing, and wonders how much time she's wasted, modeling her strength after the sacred guard. temenos asks her if she's planning to keep committing heresy until her dying breath. kaldena replies that that's not a bad idea, actually. her transformation dialogue says that kaldena feels strength swell within her, transitions her sprite, and then says that kaldena has been gifted the power of the gods.

kaldena's second form is mary sue ass broken. she has no weaknesses until 75% so you have to break her with latent power(or ruinous kick or vengeful blade or OTM etc etc), she has every element except light, high e.atk to match, can buff her stats and debuff yours with her attacks, can use rest, can inflict any normal status effect with her attacks, can steal your items/hp, still has her high damage sword attacks, and can use cleaving strike to inflict various positive effects on herself(tem-hp restore and light rune, ochett-atk up and crit up, castti-immunity and hp regen, throné-evasion and speed up, osvald-e.atk up and e.def up, partitio-hp restore and evasion up, agnea-speed up and double turns next round, hikari-atk and def up). she actually can't be beaten, hang tough at 1HP the dialogue says <I think we're done here.> and the fight ends. temenos' end of battle dialogue is the most primal and infuriated "WHAT?!" the VA can get out.

kaldena's divine augmentations disappear in the overworld, and she sighs, falling to her knees. temenos is stronger than he looks. it's a shame he won't join her fight.

temenos, for the first time in the story, breaks his cool not-mad-just-annoyed personality. he's angry. he shouts ARGHHH! with a spiky text box. this sucks! how could he be wrong?!

kaldena would be rolling her eyes if the sprites with big enough. everyone's wrong sometimes, she says. he would be a much better detective if he realized that.

temenos does not say she's right. he doesn't think she's right. all he says is that he needs some time to deduce how she pretended to channel the powers of the gods, and then he'll be right back here to prove her wrong. he also doesn't believe anything she says about the church and he's going to go and find all the evidence that proves her wrong.

to his irritation, kaldena just wishes him good luck with that. she doesn't even care if he reports her to the church, she's already been their target for a long time now, and so has the village. she doesn't even seem to be taking his threats seriously.

temenos tells her that the truth will always be revealed in the light of the flame, and walks off as the scene ends.

afterstory:

missionary rickard, pontiff youri, bishop ingram, and the new additions captain gustava and deputy kizel are indeed all doing basically the exact same thing their predecessors were doing. as a minor cross-story joke, heig's dialogue does not change when he's talking to Unnamed Templar or when he's talking to the bishop even though he does change to stand next to him.

viorela was released and has decided to become a fisher instead of a dancer. her info says that she realized the pressure and high of performing for an audience was twisting her personality and decided to follow in her mother's footsteps after all. she says that hermes was nice enough to forgive her, but she's so nice that she actually feels really awkward.

you can actually go back and see kaldena. her and her crew are holding a meeting explaining how to effectively fight against members of the sacred guard.

crick's next chapter is the postgame quest. crick's fucking bored and he hates canalbrine, so he's started getting in fights with missionary rickard. you can either glean from someone in crackridge that the dark clerics are trying to set up shop again at which point he moves there and wonders how there are so many of them, or you can lead him to kaldena who will recruit him. either way your reward is the sword of oaths.

hikari

hikari's concept is top tier, prince from a wartorn military obsessed kingdom except hes a magical girl who just wants everyone to get along and also he inherited a curse that gives him an evil sicko alter is SO funny. i love him.

that said it is of course monarchist drivel and the moral implications are horrific HOWEVER, have you considered: this story is all fake anyway.

with that out of the way lets focus on theeee most important guiding star of hikari's story. 1) hella sick forms for both the villains and heroes, 2) that the whole thing feels like real as fuck. unironically ironic. whole pussy stupid. hikari's story is going to have minimum moral complexity with everyone being either Hikari The Magical Girl, jaded bros whove done wrong but have become allies, and Mugen who is a total sickopath.

also "other hikari" is Not just going to be hikari with red eyes i refuse. his evil alter will have a bitching design or else. however until i learn enough abt japanese cultural symbolism to actually come up with a fitting cool guy im just going to have other hikari be a fucked up twisted shadow guy. Here is my proposal

prologue:

mostly unchanged, hikari gets ritsu and rai mei and the two fight through the battle, except that hikari only ever wounds the soldiers. ritsu is like cmon man how long do you think that's gonna keep working, hikari says that hopefully it'll work until the war is over. once your hands are bloodied, it never truly washes off. other hikari appears briefly with his hands around hikari's throat when he says this, and hikari stops for a second but then shakes it off. rai mei and ritsu both clearly find that kind of ridiculous but they do have bigger things to deal with.

he fights the enemy general and says that it's not too late to end things peacefully, but the general just taunts him about running from his own blood and says he's always wanted to fight a ku royal in their berserker mode. hikari vows that this will be a fair fight, actually, and the general charges.

the general's the same, you knock him out without using shadow's hold, although for just a second when the general taunts him mid-battle the gauge appears full and hikari's shadow form starts to take over, but he refuses and things return to normal.

when defeated, the man insults him for holding back, but hikari spares him anyway, only for mugen to come through and whack him on the head. he tells hikari he's still too naive. like a little baby. and tells ritsu and rai mei that they're poor babysitters for letting him get this far without growing up. hikari is angry that his buddies are being insulted, but mugen coolly gallops away and rai mei tells him that mercy to a man intent on killing you does little more than give him an opening. hikari is like yeah an opening for the two of you to reach understanding, ritsu and rai mei both sigh and rai mei tells him he's lucky this stuff is one of his good points.

later at the after-battle meeting kazan reports a victory and says that overall it was fought well, although it would certainly have been convenient if the general had been captured rather than killed as they are lacking reconnaissance at the moment. mugen says it was important to teach his little brother a lesson, and kazan replies that while hikari's outlook on life is rather simple, so is mugen's. the true way to win a war is to know both when to use violence and when to not use violence. mugen tells him to shut the fuck up and ends the meeting. hikari tells everyone he's not giving up on peace and promises they'll end the conflict, but kazan and rai mei take that opportunity to hand in their two week notices.

also unchanged until jigo calls in his son to explain the whole thing about hikari being the successor to the throne in hopes he'll end the wars but that mugen will obviously try to take the throne by force and, if he does, he flat out says that mugen is stronger than him, and won't stop unless he's killed. hikari says he hasn't given up on his brother yet. jigo says that regardless mugen is likely going to have him assassinated soon and tells hikari that the respect in which he is superior to his brother, the reason jigo thinks he's the better king at all, is that he's good at talking to people. he asks hikari to foil mugen's plot.

hikari does all the bribing and then goes to the crest of heroes but oh no ritsu the betrayal. shadow hikari leaps out of hikari's body between the two of them to shout that ritsu should be slaughtered for this, but hikari switches to his status effect sprite(the status is headache) and tells ritsu that he'll forgive him the way he would anyone if he decides to rejoin the path of peace. ritsu laughs. he likes hikari, but he also likes being on the winning team in a life-or-death situation.

hikari and ritsu fight. in the mid-battle unlock ritsu taunts him. ritsu knows him well enough to know that hikari's blood is screaming to go sicko mode and tells him to give into it, which works. hikari's gauge unlocks.

still, even when ritsu's defeated, hikari just barely manages to hold himself back, though the effort brings him to his knees. ritsu stands up, pats hikari on the head, tells him that this whole thing was a ploy to waste his time, and peaces out. hikari stands up and chases him to find that the entire city is burning. the scene briefly flashes to mugen with jigo forced onto his knees and mugen holding the sword to his neck. jigo asks mugen what he's waiting for and mugen says that he's still trying to teach his brother the lesson jigo failed to. jigo asks how uh. how long it's going to be until hikari gets here. mugen tells him to shut up and thinks that he specifically informed ritsu not to kill hikari, but wonders if being betrayed by his closest friend would have finally been enough to force hikari to accept his true self.

hikari busts through the door and before he can even stop his feet mugen stabs jigo, whose last words are telling hikari that there's still a way for him to win on his own strengths. mugen thinks this is hilarious and tells hikari to go on, have a little head start. other hikari says that mugen's guard is down, that this is the perfect time to strike, but hikari turns tail and flees, helped by benkei, who covers his escape to ryu. benkei tells him that mugen will likely frame him for the regicide to fan the flames of war further, and advises him to find allies and return to ku when he has an army comparable to mugen's. hikari says he never wanted it to come to this and benkei says he's always wished hikari was born somewhere else, but that maybe ku needed him most. they arrive in ryu, and benkei asks him if he's alright. hikari admits that he isn't, and benkei sits next to him while he cries. benkei's gotta bounce, but hikari knows what his first step is. kazan and rai mei left the army, which means they shouldn't be on mugen's side. he decides to go to montwise in an attempt to recruit kazan.

ch2-3:

these are fine! no major changes. uh, except that bandelam is a girl.

ch4:

everything up to the bridge collapse is unchanged. hikari wakes up in jail and kenzo says rai mei knows he's planning to fight mugen and just doesn't think he has what it takes. if he wants her aid he'll have to prove that he's stronger than her, and that he could kill mugen.

other hikari is offended. rai mei of all people should know that if hikari let himself, he could take down mugen's entire army on his own.

left in jail, hikari is tormented by vague, fuzzy memories. most of his victims were generic npc bandits, but hikari views these as murders just like the rest of them, and not all of them were. some of them were citizens who got in the way. when he was younger, he didn't have the control over himself that he does now. other hikari tells him not to be so vague, and shows him a clearer memory.

hikari was hanging out with his mom and rai mei when bandits attacked... and rai mei, who was meant to be guarding kura, was hit, allowing them to get at kura. hikari flew into a rage and killed most of the bandits before turning his blade on rai mei, but while he was distracted one of them managed to strike his mother down.

back in the present, hikari says that he is well aware of that, when other hikari shares an observation-- rai mei was assigned to guard his mother specifically because of her reaction time, and she was wearing armor. no way could she not dodge, no way a dull knife would be enough to actually take her out of commission, and indeed there was no blood. the reason hikari really lost control, the discovery he suppressed, was that rai mei failed on purpose.

hikari is pained enough by this that other hikari takes over and fuckin rips apart the bars. he's about to beeline it for rai mei when hikari drags up another memory.

rai mei managed to fight him off, hikari(?) screaming that she'd killed his mother, but kura was just not dead enough to shout for hikari to honor her memory by doing good in the world, and for the first time in the middle of a rampage, hikari stopped himself.

this returns him to his body. other hikari demands that he stop being a coward, that he accept that rai mei is his enemy, but hikari refuses. suddenly, the purple fire is replaced with red fire, and other hikari is driven back, fading away for the moment. the fire disappears and hikari says that the path of peace is a difficult one, but that he believes in rai mei. he believes anyone can change!

hikari gets through the castle to find rai mei at its peak. she says that hikari is a fool, and that she would rather kill him than get dragged into any more of ku's pointless wars.

when she's defeated, hikari holds out a hand to help her up. rai mei is frustrated that even now he won't kill her and confesses that she was ordered by mugen to allow his hired men to kill hikari's mother, that she left the army because she was tired of being his puppet. hikari reveals that he knows, and that he wants her as an ally regardless. rai mei asks how, how hikari can always forgive, can always extend a hand, and he says that he has to. if everyone deserves a chance to set things right, deserves forgiveness, then maybe even someone with as much blood on his hands as him deserves those things too. rai mei takes his hand, and gets to her feet. she'll fight with him.

ch5:

mostly unchanged, rai mei, benkei, and kazan meet him at the outskirts of ku and enact kazan's master plan to let hikari sneak into the city.

first, hikari meets ritsu. they still confront each other. ritsu says that hikari's grown stronger, but that he's still no match for mugen, and asks if he still really thinks he can end things peacefully. hikari says that he will always try, and offers again for ritsu to ally with them. ritsu tells him that this stopped being cute a long time ago and charges.

at the halfway point, hikari's dialogue says that he doesn't want to fight ritsu anymore, and the fight ends. but in the following cutscene, ritsu is infuriated and charges again, starting the second phase.

at the end of this, when hikari spares him again, ritsu tells hikari that he will kill him. if hikari lets him go, lets him recover, he will come back to kill him. he will never stop, will dedicate his entire life to ending hikari's unless hikari kills him right here, right now.

hikari refuses, the red fire starting to form around him again.

ritsu laughs until he wheezes and then pulls out his sword, stabbing himself in the chest. as he bleeds out, he tells hikari that mugen is waiting for him.

mugen is in fact waiting in the throne room, holding the reins of the horse he got into the throne room. he tells hikari that he's awfully slow, strongly implying that he again set up this entire thing.

hikari asks him how he can resolve this, and mugen tells him that he can't. you know why?

mugen just fucking loves war. he loves fighting, he loves bloodshed, the high from going sicko mode is intoxicating and there is nothing in the world that he wants more than for the entire world to be embroiled in constant messy bloody conflict. he doesn't even give a fuck if he loses so long as ku can pick itself up and start a counter-war. and it's so frustrating, because he was so thrilled when he got a little brother, when hikari turned out to have such a strong connection to the royal family's blood, because at last he thought he had found a worthy adversary. he's spent their entire history trying to raise hikari into the perfect warrior so that the two of them could wage the most awesome kickass war for succession of all time. he killed hikari's mother because she was a bad influence on him, and he ordered his bestie rai mei to do it so he could drive hikari into a rage wherein he would have everything taken from him, and yet in her dying words his mom cemented his stupid, stupid pacifism, pacifism that continued even when his other bestie betrayed him-- he knows hikari didn't even kill ritsu. but at long, long last, he's forced hikari's hand, forced him to gather an army to face mugen, and now they're going to fight to the death. mugen is going to put every last drop of blood in his veins into this deathmatch, and hikari has no choice but to fight back just as seriously.

other hikari appears behind him. hikari understands mugen, he says. he too feels the constant call of war. here, now, other hikari can feel what hikari feels, and hikari is excited.

mugen does an evil laugh and says not to hold himself back any longer. he's free to enjoy this as much as mugen will. he charges.

king mugen fight unchanged except "know your place" is changed to "that almost hurts!"

when defeated, mugen is pushed back. hikari is struggling harder and harder against his shadow self and mugen talks to other hikari. he's already embraced his curse, become one with it. he knows it has a mind of its own. if hikari is too weak to accept his destiny, the curse can accept it for him.

other hikari pulls hikari into a challenge. the battle is unchanged, other hikari takes over but hikari breaks through with the power of friendship.

except that when other hikari is defeated, hikari holds his hand out to him, too. other hikari is furious. he's not even a corporeal being, he's not a real person, he's a curse, he's the manifestation of hikari's darkest impulses, what the fuck does hikari think he's doing trying to turn him into an ally?!

but hikari says that other hikari is part of him. he's always felt like he's only half a person, but only now does he realize that it's because other hikari is his other half. hikari's darkest impulses are part of himself, and the part of him that has them deserves a chance to get better.

he looks at mugen, who's already gotten to his feet. hikari says that everyone's right. mugen is stronger than he is, but that's because hikari's always been fighting himself. if he and other hikari work together, they'll be his equal match. maybe even his superior.

other hikari shouts out in frustration, purple fire flaring to an enormous size, before it turns red. he takes hikari's hand and rises to his feet. fine, he says. if there's anyone insane enough to actually maintain this alliance, it's hikari. he disappears into hikari.

mugen asks if hikari is done talking to himself. hikari apologizes for the delay. mugen says he'd better not think that things are over, but it seems like he's decided to get serious, so mugen will get serious too. he unsheathes the darkblood blade. as purple fire flares around him, he says that he's spent his entire life waiting for the right moment to unlock the true potential of the first king of ku.

the enshrouded king fight is unchanged, but hikari's radiance of light unlock is different. other hikari appears behind him in the same position a summoned npc would, and he looks basically the same but is standing up and human shaped. hes a person now. hikari's latent power gauge is full and he is immediately prompted to attack. when he does, other hikari again appears as a summon, attacking for him rather than consuming him. again i'm just gonna assume this can be done somehow.

when mugen is defeated, the energy of the darkblood blade leaves his body. mugen says that he must not have failed after all. this was the fight he's always wanted. mugen tells hikari to deal the final blow.

hikari refuses, but mugen says that the amount of power he used has a heavy price. he's already dead, his body just hasn't caught up with it yet. hikari can't save him.

indeed, mugen dies soon after. hikari kneels next to him, and has a bit of a cry. then he stands up and walks outside to call a ceasefire.

coronation unchanged, hikari announces that ku will end its ownership over its conquered nations, that he's going to organize peace talks with nations they're currently at war with, and that after that he's going to massively downsize their army and focus the former soldiers' efforts on rebuilding ku.

hikari returns to the crest of heroes where other hikari appears. he tells hikari not to expect him to change his nature. he's still a curse, and he will always desire for hikari to fight. hikari says that the path of peace requires plenty of fighting. they look over ku together. it's a new day.

afterstory:

rai mei and benkei stay in ku coordinating rebuilding efforts. kazan has disappeared, but that's probably fine.

since mikka's next chapter has yuri in it i would be remiss not to have rai mei's next chapter have something going on, so rai mei is suggesting to benkei that to vent some of the soldier's bloodlust without them actually killing anyone, maybe they could start holding mock battles, would anyone happen to know of some trained show fighters who are recently out of a job. you lead bandelam(girl) to her, the two have a battle where they compliment each other a lot, and then rai mei decides she's perfect for the role. after that they can be found practicing their performance together with rai mei saying that it's been a long time since she enjoyed fighting like this and bandelam saying that she thinks she might want to stay by rai mei's side for a while yet. its reward is the clan mei amulet which has the same effects as mikka's amulet.

crossed paths

castti & ochett

pt1

ochett's eager to try cooking with local ingredients and castti's trying to top up on some herbs, but when they try to enter the forest they're stopped by guards who inform them that nobody except the guards are allowed in on account of some Unidentified Fucking Things that ended up seriously injuring a couple of villagers. defeating/soothing them gets you into the forest where ochett confirms that the animals are scared of something that shouldn't be here, and that her senses are telling her that it's not just a predator that's wandered too far outside its birthplace. suddenly, though, they're attacked by the dourdour, who refuses to listen to ochett.

after its defeat, the dourdour calms down enough to let castti treat its wounds(castti asks if it has a name, ochett says yeah its name is [series of noises humans can't reproduce], castti asks if it has a nickname, and ochett says yeah its buds call it wooly-ooly). ochett relays that the dourdour's mate was killed by a shadowy Thing which it insists wasn't alive. both castti and ochett at this point have some experience with that type of creature and reflect that this is troubling, but the region of the forest where the dourdour says the attack took place is shrouded in shadow, some of which is blocking the path.

pt2

they return to cropdale. this time the guards recognize them and are pretty pissed that they snuck into the forest, but when the two of them explain that they'd like to help out the guards admit that they can clearly handle themselves, and tell the two that the only thing they've found that can clear the parts of the forest currently blocked off by shadow is skybalm, and it only lasts for a little while. castti thanks them for the tip and they go to unblock the path.

past the original roadblock, the forest is fully covered in shadow. as they continue, ochett's heightened senses begin to get overwhelmed by the shadowy miasma, and castti is also not doing great. eventually castti is mostly carrying ochett forward, until she comes upon the shadowy being. it charges, and things are looking kinda bad when suddenly the attack is parried by ochett's companion, who also wakes her up. with her head in the game, ochett stands between castti and the shadowy being and says she'll take it from here. castti insists she'll help too, but stumbles and falls to her knees, so ochett has to provoke the creature alone.

after it's defeated, ochett finds that castti's collapsed. she has to identify and use the purebalm on castti to wake her up and the two continue on to find wooly-ooly injured from defending the rest of the forest creatures. although castti manages to perform first aid and ochett learns that the shadowy being they just fought is actually new and the original is still out there, wooly-ooly barely manages to finish telling her that before the original arrives. boom, creeping shadow! this time, though, everyone's conscious.

when the shadow's defeated, the darkness over the forest lifts. still, castti and ochett know that the thing appearing at all is bad news, and they don't have any information on where it came from or why it came to cropdale. ochett's companion breaks the tension by complaining that they're hungry. ochett says she's starving too, and castti says that she could fuck up some herb roasted mossy meep right now.

agnea & hikari

pt1

the existing pt1 is good already. hikari and agnea do a couple errands for yomi and then hear her sing

pt2

basically fine also, just add in a bit where after yomi and hikari's challenge agnea compliments her sick moves and asks if they can dance battle too. yomi finds this cute and quirky and accepts their offer to dance at the festival where she does indeed do a mock battle with agnea and hikari. the fact that this is the only crossed paths which doesn't directly mention vide is a subtle allusion to the fact that hikari and agnea are the chill ones whose stories are mostly meant to stand on their own.

throné & osvald

swapped bc i think this pairing is more interesting

pt1

throné and osvald are exploring the new delstan streets when they find a body. throné wants to leave it be but osvald says it seems familiar and, upon scrutinizing it, finds that it's the body of a former colleague, a religious scholar named regulus, who's clutching a strange box with the emblem of a crescent moon where the moon's been replaced with an eye. he's been stabbed. throné picks the lock to find that inside the box is half of a strange, cloudy mirror. she asks osvald if he knows what it is, and osvald says that all he knows is that it's not the symbol of the flame. genuine religious scholarship outside of aelfric is so rare in the east due to the risk of being accused of heresy that it's likely that regulus is the only person who would actually know anything about the mirror. throné says it seems like they've picked up something pretty worthless, and osvald doesn't disagree, but says that regulus was a weirdo, but one who had a knack for finding incredibly valuable artifacts. he plans to investigate things himself just to sate his curiosity, but throné stops him and says that you can't just drop "this might be the most awesome treasure of all time" in front of a thief and expect her to let you keep it all for yourself. osvald scoffs, but says that he supposes another pair of hands wouldn't hurt.

pt2

regulus' lab in montwise is a small, crowded room in a house with several similarly crowded labs where osvald says that scholars who were dedicated enough to live full-time in montwise but not socially acceptable or skilled enough to work at the university/library lived. throné says osvald ought to be more respectful to his dearly departed colleague, and wonders how they even became friends. osvald brushes off both comments and directs them to the right room.

regulus' lab has been trashed. initially both of them think it's just messy, until they realize that someone's left a black snake on the wall. osvald is shocked to learn that this is the work of the blacksnakes, but throné corrects him-- the blacksnakes aren't usually stupid enough to announce which crimes they've committed. this is the work of a specific blacksnake. scaracci. he's arrogant, sloppy, and mother only keeps him around because he's suicidally loyal, but she also doesn't send him on just any mission. for whatever reason, regulus was specifically targeted. osvald muses that the plot seems to have thickened, and throné agrees. osvald scrutinizes the other residents of the building for information about where scaracci went and track him down to the manor at the edge of town. throné ambushes the guards and they go inside to see scaracci partying with some other thieves in town. he's shocked and irritated to see throné, who he's already learned has flaked from the snakes. scaracci says that throné's dumb as hell if she thinks she can steal the twin-flames mirror off him of all people. throné thanks him for telling them what the mirror is, and scaracci is like Ah shit. osvald says he'll take care of it and mugs what turns out to be the other half of the mirror off him. when he's defeated, scaracci flees, vowing revenge on throné. the rest of the thieves, completely unfazed, ask if they wanna party, but the two of them retreat back to regulus' lab.

after some investigation, osvald finds an entry in regulus' notes for the twin-flames' mirror. apparently it's an artifact of the vitalists, a religious sect that believe that aelfric and vide are originally twins, and that the church's mythology arises from aelfric betraying his sister to take the sum of both of their power for himself. it has... some kind of something to do with the twin flames of vide and aelfric, but god knows what.

huh! crazy. osvald asks if she has any idea why the blacksnakes would want this mirror. throné says it was probably a request by a client, but that both the church and followers of vide are regular clients of the snakes. osvald is a little shocked at that, but since they have no further leads they decide to leave it there. throné comments that she still has no idea if this thing is valuable or complete junk, osvald jokes that that's the quintessential scholarly experience, and throné says that maybe thieves and scholars have more in common than she thought.

partitio & temenos

this one ended up being way longer than everyone else's

pt1

partitio and temenos are in flamechurch, with temenos explaining the various mysteries around the town until he touches upon one that claims an incredibly valuable treasure known as the alpates is hidden in the church's roof. partitio, as a merchant, wants to get his eyes on the thing. temenos doubts his abilities, but partitio immediately tricks temenos into helping him by saying it'll be easy with the help of the great detective and also think how impressed everyone will be.

temenos just knows the people in the church so at first they're just talking to pontiff youri+co, but the only person who actually seems to know where alpates is... is celia, who flat out tells temenos that she's not going to tell him anything even if he beats her up again, and indeed when coerced all temenos can theorize is that celia is hiding something for Unknown Reasons. partitio, though, has an idea. he asks her if she needs money for anything and finds out that she wants enough to move back to conning creek, so he hires her for about 5000L to buy enough supplies and passage through new delsta harbor(temenos says celia's clearly scamming him, but partitio says that they're not in a position to haggle), and she leads them to alpates.

alpates is... weird. she's very surprised to see someone other than celia, and speaks cryptically about night and the dawn. celia explains that she really is the rumored treasure. she has mystical powers that allow her to sense the flow of divine influence in the world, but they mostly block her senses to anything else, so she needs full-time care. the pontiff had her kept here so he could use her to predict things, although he left her actual care up to celia, but now that she's leaving she feels sorry for alpates and intends to take her back to conning creek to keep taking care of her and let her go outside.

both temenos and partitio are shocked, partitio especially is outraged that the pontiff would lock alpates up just because she was useful. temenos defends pontiff jörg, but alpates interrupts him to ask celia if she's really going outside. temenos has a moment of weakness and lets the two of them go.

later, partitio thanks temenos and says that he knew he was a good guy, really deep down. temenos says that ultimately they've probably done more harm than good by taking away a valuable informational tool for the church. they should at least check in conning creek to see that celia was being at all truthful.

pt2

the body shed has been replaced with a small fisher's hut where celia is indeed taking care of alpates, who seems to have a clearer head, although she's still reliant on celia to meet her basic needs. alpates mentions something about a cave where the sun meets the moon that shows the path of the flame, but when temenos approaches her celia blocks him. partitio asks again if there's anything she wants. celia sees where this is going but admits that taking care of alpates is hard on a single housekeeper's budget and that she's run out of the money to treat her own unnamed condition that haider was helping with before he got arrested. partitio buys medicine off someone in the apothecary's guild and brings it back to celia, who reluctantly agrees to let temenos guide her.

alpates brings them to the cave of the moon and sun. they get through the cave to find an altar with strange carvings and four stones. they realize that the carvings are a map and solve the riddle, at which point the four stones shine. one in flamechurch, one in bēlute'u, one in delsta, and one in gravell(this is changed because they make more sense with the main story i'll crowbar in how they work in the postgame). alpates is agitated, starting to talk about the night which approaches and switches to a language neither of them can understand or even identify. partitio manages to calm her down and temenos leads her back to celia. temenos says alpates' information is valuable and that while he'll let them be, she should cooperate with him the next time he visits asking for information. celia suggest partitio trains his dog before he hurts somebody(whether or not partitio has any fucking clue what this means is up to audience interpretation) but that she's willing to trade that for alpates being freed from her imprisonment.

partitio and temenos reflect on what they've found out. temenos says that those four locations are the locations of the four original flames. whatever "night is coming" means, it might be really bad.

postgame

alright the real challenge starts now. and by challenge i mean "making the postgame not cement temenos as Octopath 2's Protagonist" because good gravy is that where octopath's commitment to making their boring ass fantasy catholicism the beating heart of the game's mythology becomes an issue because it makes it feel like the game doesnt give a fuck about any of the other characters and also importantly is mad fucking boring. im keeping the general structure but i reserve the right to change stuff

so firstly the fire scene! we're keeping this as the inciting incident it's very cute. hikari and partitio are making a fire together when ochett returns from hunting with a giant boar. castti arrives next with some new herbs and starts prepping some medicines. osvald and throné arrive together. hikari asks how it went and throné says it was another bust(referring to the mirror, which they've been trying to find a use for). temenos arrives after that and says that he supposes they should enjoy this moment, but he still feels uneasy. agnea arrives last after having visited cropdale, saying that everyone's doing well. the whole gang works together on butchering the boar and preparing the meal. after they're done, agnea puts the fire out and everyone goes beddy bye.

wuh oh nightmare. the change is that since there are already cutscenes of everyone sacrificing a guy to have their torches turn from the flame to vide's fire, except for delsta which is already lit, have those at the beginning to set up the intrigue. why the fuck is kazan doing a torch? why the fuck is Ori in front of vide's torch in delsta? why the fuck is mindt feeding a bunch of clerics into a wood chipper? is that the fucking dark hunter?! are those purple flames?!

everyone wakes up and realizes that they all had the same nightmare and also it's eternal night now. ochett says that she smells a ton of shadow creatures and no regular animals. agnea looks around too and is shocked when she looks up at the moon. as everyone else follows her, the screen pans up to reveal that the crescent moon has had its shadow side replaced with an eye. Holy Shit.

something flashes in osvald's pocket and he pulls out the mirror to reveal that it's shining, seeming to reflect light no matter how he tilts it.

partitio and temenos reveal that they saw the four locations before, and that this was predicted.

throné mentions the thing about the mirror turning vide's flames to aelfric's. that's probably their best bet for undoing this... but they should be careful.

duskruin torch - kazan

as they enter, hikari and agnea find that all the villagers are collapsed, although hikari confirms that they're not dead, just asleep. he's shocked at kazan's betrayal, and can't tell why he's here. also kazan doesnt have a secret name reveal until ori's bc i couldn't find a good place to put it.

as they enter duskruin, you get a cutscene. kazan and cuani meet at sai's peak, he flirts with cuani who tells him that she's not into men who are hiding knives behind their back. he's surprised she noticed, and the two fight. cuani wins, but spares kazan's life, asking him why he attacked her. kazan says he can't let sealticge's avatar just walk around. she seems to know what this means, but deflects by saying that she told him to stop flirting with her, and that he'd do well to leave her be.

agnea always thought "sealticge's avatar" was a compliment about her dancing skills, but hikari clarifies that the avatars are people who have been blessed by the gods to have superhuman abilities, that's right they have SSS divine skills. kazan is the one who taught him that. they wonder why kazan would want to kill(?) cuani for being one.

the next memory comes at the base of the stairs. this is an older memory. a young kazan is instructed by a dark cleric to find and capture the avatar of sealticge so they can use her to pierce brand's shield in duskruin. he asks what's in it for him, and the dark cleric tells him that they found the first king of ku's body. if he does this, they'll give him the darkblood blade.

hikari realizes kazan is the one who gave his brother the sword that turned him into a war-obsessed sicko and used that to orchestrate the downfall of ku. he was using all of them the entire time. he's distraught at this, and agnea comforts him, but she has something else on her mind. the last time she saw her mother, she was headed to gravell.

indeed, as you get to the site of harvey's last stand, you get another memory, this one of before that happened.

cuani approaches kazan. he asks if she got his message. she tells him to stay the fuck away from her family, and he says that he wouldn't have had to resort to this if she'd just cooperated with him from the beginning. all she has to do is use sealticge's kodachi to help him out a little. if she does, he swears she'll never see him again. she reluctantly agrees. she dances, and as she does her dagger lengthens into an ethereal shortsword made of light. she uses sealticge's lightsaber to strike the back wall, which shatters the magic circle that appears and reveals a secret door. as soon as she does, kazan throws a dagger that lands fatally in her chest. cuani falls to her knees, using her last power to say agnea's name. kazan laughs, says even sealticge's blessing won't matter once their plan comes to pass, and disappears.

now it's agnea's turn to be heartbroken, but this memory has given them important information. they go through the secret entrance and find vide's altar.

you get the last memory. kazan finds harvey's body and says that he really was the weak link right up until the end. he picks it up and takes it through the entrance, wrapping it in preserving fabric or whatever until it's time to use it as fuel for vide's flames.

hikari and agnea look at the purple flame. they don't know how to undo kazan's sacrifice, until agnea hears her mother's voice, telling her to dance.

agnea remembers what kazan said. could she be...?

she starts dancing. as she does, warm yellow light begins to shine down on vide's torch, and the flame dims. as she does, other hikari appears behind him, and tells him it's cruel to expect her to do this all on her own(strongly implying that either the curse is a form of brand's avatar or hikari is his avatar through some other means). come on, help out. hikari stops agnea and tells her that they should do a sword dance.

as they do, the light from earlier begins to gather into a circle, joined by a ring of red fire. the tiny sun touches the purple fire, creating a burst of light that settles into the light of the sacred flame. agnea and hikari stop, both exhausted, but victorious.

bēlute'u torch - dark hunter

castti and ochett arrive in bēlute'u to find everyone similarly collapsed, with castti confirming that they're just sleeping. ochett just knows where the torch is. it's to the north of the tomb of the wardenbeasts.

on the way they find more shadow creatures, and ochett wonders if they truly stopped the night of the blood moon castti reminds her that everyone is still alive, and not to give up yet.

they reach the tomb of the wardenbeasts. ochett realizes something is wrong and pulls castti back just as the grotesque monster jumpscares them.

after it's defeated, the monster turns to sludge that dissipates. castti says that it felt like the creeping shadow, but ochett says that it's more like the blood moon's vessel... this used to be a living thing.

a cutscene starts. the dark hunter when she was still a human. she was once a beastling hunter from toto'haha named ze'unslei, but during the last night of the blood moon, her companion was turned into the same kind of thing as trousseau(this can only be done with beings who have a lot of negative energy, otherwise they just become mindless shadowy creatures, since this just happens you have to infer), and ze'unslei chose to join her rather than live on alone. she lost draefendi's blessing, turning into the dark hunter. to ensure that the next blood moon took everyone, she needed to take out the guardians.

vide guided her to find the companion ochett didn't choose, and she decided to groom it to become the blood moon's vessel by giving it to trousseau, instructing him to bring it so close to death that only vide's healing could cure it, so he spent a bunch of time medically abusing the creature until it was full of strong enough anguish to become an active vessel.

originally the moonshade's order was set to come to fruition during the night of the blood moon, but when ochett managed to not only drive it off but also free the blood moon vessel's spirit so that it couldn't be resurrected as a living vessel, the dark hunter decided fuck it if you need a job done right you've gotta do it yourself and throws herself onto the flame, vide using the last vestiges of her identity to light her torch and transforming her into the grotesque beast.

castti and ochett both have a lot of feelings, but they also have to resolve this. initially they don't know what the hell they're supposed to do, but when ochett's wracking her brain semi-praying for assistance, she hears the voice she heard in the ocean that day-- draefendi. dohter's here also. the two of them tell the girls to lay ze'unslei to rest.

they don't have a body, but castti still has some skybalm and ochett has some jerky.

ochett says a prayer to make the food a sacrifice to give ze'unslei's spirit the strength to reach the afterlife, and they toss it and the purebalm into the fire. within the fire, a voice cries out, and it flares, before turning from vide's fire to the sacred flame.

castti's pissed that ze'unslei did all that, echoing her grief over trousseau, and ochett, also pissed, says that ze'unslei's probably gonna have a pretty rough time during alephan's judgement.

delsta torch - ori

delsta's actually unchanged. everyone here's already a husk, so they aren't affected by the night. throné and osvald aren't especially comforted by this. in front of the temple, they come across a strange empty notebook. osvald scrutinizes it and finds "a hidden item", which lights up what turn out to be torn pages of the notebook left as a trail.

it's still ori's. she relays that she and kazan are siblings, their true names being miyako and oboro, that they were recruited by the moonshade order, promising that it would destroy ku. oboro killed and replaced the son of a minor noble named kazan so that he could become a tactician, and miyako took odd jobs, working as a courier, a scrivener, and a few others, under the fake name 'ori'.

she was eventually assigned to help harvey out. the order helped him cover up his whole thing and funded his research. this was meant to be in exchange for harvey researching and ultimately giving them the power of the one true magic, but he quickly became the black sheep of the order because he was not very good at his job and very clearly more concerned with his revenge fantasy, much to miyako's frustration. elena got involved and was mostly tasked with trying to keep her dad on track, although she kept finding ways to wiggle out of joining the order herself and managed to keep most of their progress secret including the power of her blood, also much to miyako's frustration. when she arrived in gravell on harvey's orders and found him dead on the ground, she burst a blood vessel and told her brother that gravell was his fucking problem.

harvey did however tell the order about regulus, so miyako contracted the blacksnakes and hired them to retrieve the mirror. when they failed, with miyako realizing they had also tipped off osvald and the planned successor of the blacksnakes that the mirror existed, she hit rock bottom.

mixed in with this, however, were her accounts of castti and partitio's stories. castti's determination and kindness made her faith that everyone in the world would buckle to an easy answer even if it was wrong waver, as did partitio's willingness work with the lowborn and lift them up even if it meant giving up his power and wealth, and both of their success in making the world a better place meant that when she did hit rock bottom, her faith in the moonshade order broke enough that she didn't throw herself into the delsta torch the way she was supposed to.

throné and osvald arrive at the torch to find miyako still there. she tells them this is pretty pathetic, huh? she always looked down on harvey, but at least he had the commitment to die for his convictions. if this torch wasn't already fed by years of the snakes' sacrifices, she would've brought the whole order down with her. it doesn't matter to vide's success, but when vide eats the world ori will disappear instead of joining vide's consciousness.

throné feels like miyako is a mira she can save, and osvald similarly feels the urge to help her. throné says that she shouldn't give up. not like this. osvald pulls out the mirror.

miyako's shocked. they really do have the mirror. it's true that it'll be able to undo even the blacksnake's torch, soaked with centuries of sacrifices, but surely they don't think it'll be that easy. do they really think they can take on a risen god?

osvald says that the only way to test a hypothesis is to do a practical experiment. throné says that if the world's going to end anyway they might as well give it a shot.

miyako steps out of the way, and throné and osvald use the mirror on the torch, restoring it, although the force of the overfed flame destroys the mirror in the process.

miyako comments that she wouldn't even have bothered hiring the snakes to steal it if she knew it was that flimsy, then starts walking away. osvald asks where she's going. miyako tells him that her brother's waiting in vidania. she won't survive, of course, but they've convinced her to give it a shot.

flamechurch torch - mindt

everyone knows there's a flame in flamechurch. in the name innit. partitio and temenos arrive to find the entire town asleep except for mindt.

partitio begins to approach her, but temenos stops him. this is insanely suspicious.

mindt turns around and tells temenos he was always a conspiratorial little eyesore. luckily, he was so obsessed with exposing kaldena that he never even thought to consider sweet, innocent sister mindt. he was, apparently, an extremely useful idiot. temenos asks who she really is, and she says "arcanette". it's a name he knows, and although he says that'd make her about 500 years old, that's not the most unbelievable thing about this.

temenos is outraged, as is partitio, who demands that arcanette tell them how to fix this. arcanette is like ".....no?" and says that it's too late anyway. vide's already risen. all they'd do by snuffing out the torch is buy some time.

still, she doesn't want them buying time, so she is going to be killing them now.

the arcanette fight is unchanged. when defeated, she falls to her knees. temenos again drops his usual tone and sounds genuinely betrayed. he didn't suspect mindt because he thought she of all people was his friend. does she really...?

shes like yes obviously i meant everything i said. you're nothing to me. you suck. temenos whacks her over the head and she falls to the ground, dead, turning into sludge that dissipates.

partitio asks him if hes okay. No, temenos says, but they've got bigger problems.

temenos prays to aelfric and manages to purify the flame, although it takes a lot out of him. partitio manages to get him back on his feet with a drink of Unidentified Liquid, but temenos says that he's not strong enough to do that for more than one of the torches, and his faith that he can do this starts to waver. partitio says that it's alright if he can't do this himself, because he's not alone. temenos thanks him, and his confidence returns. the two of them agree that things can't, won't end like this.

vidania

after all four torches are restored, the scene transitions to the eye-moon, which blinks. an unholy cry sounds, and on the map, vidania rises from the ocean.

sailing up to it puts you at the base of the stone stairs, where miyako and oboro are facing off against each other. oboro sees the travelers and is like Are you fucking kidding me miyako did you do this too you goddamn traitor??? but miyako says that she didn't do anything. they were just strong enough to restore the torches on their own. oboro tells all of them they're too late, that everything they achieved before was just part of the moonshade order's plan, that they're idiots for trying to fight a god.

the gang steps forward though. ochett says that she hasn't come this far to fail in her duty as the guardian. castti says that an apothecary doesn't have the luxury of ignoring a solution just because it's difficult. throné says that she still needs to see a world where even the weak have lives worth living. osvald says that if the moonshade order had done their research they would know he's far too stubborn to let things end like this. partitio says that he's gotten a taste for overcoming these kinds of odds, and that he still needs to ride that steam locomotive. agnea says that it'd make a terrible song if she gave up halfway through the last verse. temenos says that his power comes from his vow to combat evil in the world, and that he knows better than anyone that vide can be beaten. hikari tells oboro that he's too smart not to have seen this coming from hikari, and says that oboro surely wants to live to see the peaceful hinoeuma he brought about.

oboro is shocked, but then starts laughing. theyre fucking kidding. theyre joking. they really believe all that, huh? he starts to monologue, when miyako charges forward, pushing him back with a flash. she apologizes for her brother's rudeness. they don't have time to stand around any longer. she tells them to go meet their fate, whatever it turns out to be, and that she'll hold him off.

vide fight! so my problem with vide's current design is that she's so mudddddyyyyyy. so much of her is just Dark which like yes shes a shadow creature but you should put things on the boss to make it visually interesting

i've already established that vide has the power to "resurrect" things, and an eye motif(also you know The Name) so i'm going to have the first phase of vide be a person...?

she's supposed to emulate the god fights from 1, so she's masked and obviously not Human human, but she's humanoid.

anyway she still has the tentacles and the fight doesn't mechanically change. honestly im not that happy with this design but i like it slightly better than her original phase 1

vide's second form is an enormous misshapen Thing made of sludge, barely humanoid, featureless except for a bunch of eyes dripping bright red sludgey blood(?). a white, scarred and bleeding octopus-like thing sits on top of her head(vide's sludge is implied to be her ink and the octopus is her true head), behind which sits an isotoxal halo made of purple light. her left hand is outstretched, holding a crumbling moon. her left arm is covered in purple flames, and her body decays into a misshapen mass that drips offscreen into nothing, full of the same more rounded agonized souls as humanoid vide's curly hair. otherwise, again, fight unchanged. the torch hand does dark/fire attacks and the moon hand does space-themed physical attacks. the line about a "sinister smile" obviously wouldn't make sense so it's replaced by "vide's eyes focus in on you".

but anyway then you beat her ass and she disintegrates. vide down! the voices of the gods sound down from the heaven: get the fuck out this place is coming down with her.

you have to run while the screen is all shaky and get back to the grand terry, where a scene of vidania collapsing back into the sea plays, leaving the horizon visible. the sun peeks over the edge.

you're left in the overworld with the map all back to normal.

finale

everyone groups back up and they decide to have one last meal before all of them go back to their various business, leaving one by one.

some time later, it's time for agnea's show! your protagonist is your only party member yada yada.

ochett is in town with kohazē. juvā stayed behind to watch the island. kohazē says he was probably just putting on a brave face since the new delsta theater said they wouldn't let in a giant lion, but ochett says he seemed pretty happy to take a nap instead.

castti is treating some rando's wounds and says that it's been a while since she had a break. she's been helping to rebuild healeaks and train some new eir's apothecaries, so she's been extremely busy.

throné's helping out with the orphanage! since wellgrove's much better off, they're trying to get all the kids into decent situations. it's hard work, especially since they've had such a hard time up to now, but she says it's funny-- she finally feels like part of a real family.

osvald, elena, and clarissa are all in town. elena's just recently graduated from university. she's still deciding what she wants her scholar specialty to be. osvald's considering returning to being a professor now that his name's been cleared. clarissa is a little tired keeping up with two mad scientists, but says that she wouldn't have made it this long as osvald's assistant if she wasn't up to a challenge.

partitio is here with papp like twenty guys led by floyd and giff. they just finished the train tracks from new delsta through montwise, so they managed to get all the boys who wanted to go down to the city. papp says all these tickets are awful expensive, but partitio tells him the miners are free to spend their money how they like. despite his complaints, papp seems to have made peace with the situation, and admits that they did build a hell of a machine.

temenos and kaldena are both there. they made up! sort of. temenos left the church after realizing just how much of it was made up of vide followers or people who didn't mind working with them, deciding that he cared more about following aelfric than following the church. he insists he's not, like, with kaldena or anything. kaldena says things are going pretty well. really, she should thank vide for taking out like half of the church's higher ups by eating them all during the apocalypse. big help to her movement. temenos says that's textbook heresy, kaldena cheerfully tells him she doesn't have to take that from an apostate. temenos takes 9999 psychic damage.

hikari, rai mei, and bandelam are in town. everyone else was busy. rai mei's never been to the theater before, but bandelam it tells her it's just like a colosseum except they get very mad if you kill the performers. hikari confirms that everything's going well with ku. they're providing what penance they can to ku's former conquered kingdoms and trying to rebuild hinoeuma generally. it's tough, but he's decided that he's going to put his all into ensuring ku never creates another oboro.

agnea's in front of the theater itself with pala, her dad, gus, laila, and gil. her family and gus are very intimidated by new delsta, laila says she's excited to have a new scene to paint, and gil lives downtown so it would have been weird for him not to come. he is also happy for aggie though. she herself says that she's been having a lot of fun, and that she thinks her mom would be happy with the songs she's written about her travels. her octopath trave[GUNSHOT]

anyway, big ol sappy performance, Thank You For Playing, ending cg.

notes

originally i was gonna do travel banters too but look at this fucking thing its already so long. just imagine fun interactions between these characters.

thank you to behindthename.com for having my back when i realized that even thought i re-purposed as many characters as i could i still needed to name so many new guys. since im trying to stick to octopath canon i did my best to name literally everyone i could something to do with "light" or "day" or "shadow" or "night" or whatever. originally i had dolcinaea's childhood name be mitsuki before i realized there was already a character named tsuki and i realized i'd been outplayed before the game even started.

#c.paradisi #octoposting #theres some more art mostly gags and character designs that didnt fit in the image limit

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