#salty art | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saltysaltdog · 2 months

Text

Narinder and his relationship to the bishops. What caused their falling out?

The game tells you everything you need to know... (Spoiler, it was Leshy)

"Hapless Leshy" is how Haro describes them. And that just means he's very unlucky, unfortunate... doomed.

Leshy is the youngest god, the god of Chaos and flux. For a lot of people when they imagine Chaos, they think of something ever changing, a sensory overload that's never consistent and with no repeating patterns. Constant change.

Notably, Narinder doesn't have anything bad to say about him. His dialogue is limited to one line. "Leshy fell before you like a grain of sand before a tidal wave." Considering how verbose Narinder usually is this should strike you as odd. He comments about how happy he is with seeing the others fall, but not Leshy. He even holds himself in check if you do something that really upsets him, like sell out Ratau (cough cough) but he can't bring himself to demean leshy in the same way, nor celebrate at all.

He should be a natural ally to Narinder, who wanted change. And yet he's not.

"He was unalike the rest of his kin. While others dealt with flux; chaos, famine, pestilence, war. Things in which their constancy must transpose. And yet he was the inevitable; the obstinate and irresistible. The one who waits. Truly peculiar, 'twould then seem, has appetency to invite the novel and the new, break ancient vow and primordial bond alike. Traditions stagnate and appetites augment, nonetheless. Doubt tears faith asunder."

Switching between two states: change, is the natural order of things, Leshy should be inviting chaos, causing it... And there lies the problem.

Bonds of familial duty, turned instead to chains. Most voracious of appetites, curbed and contained. Most infectious of ideas cut off and cauterised before given chance to rot and spread. Cruel, verily. Alas, what other recourse was given? How does one kill Death? ... Alas. One cannot."

The final lines imply that they sacrificed their power, their growth, to stop Narinder, but what if it wasn't him they were doing it for?

Hear me out. Leshy is the youngest and the weakest, it could be that his powers couldn't handle the rate at which things were changing. If so, then he would only be an obstacle to Narinder. At first it would be fine, but if Leshy didn't get better, if the bishops couldn't cause meaningful change, new things, if change itself was making him sick and "Doubt tears faith asunder": wouldn't it be the one to "break ancient vow and primordial bond alike" be first in line for having the blame cast on them?

We don't have a clear idea on what shenainigains Narinder was up to, but both he and Shamura tell us one thing he was working on.

"The blame hangs heavy 'round my neck. I introduced him to ideas of change..." ".... Death cannot flow backward."

Bringing the dead back to life.

He praises you for doing so in response to one of his quests on his quest line. But that's not to say it's all he was working on.

Hang tight, because this bit is up for interpretation:

These guys.

Cute mushroom guys that infect you and try to turn you into a mushroom too, and once you die you can be replanted, again and again and again and again and a- its basically immortality!

They live in Narinder's domain, and yet they are Menticide Mushrooms from Anura given a follower form. They are unnatural, and fiercely hunted when they visit there, so they are not endemic to the area. If Narinder was playing with Nature's laws, turning mushrooms into people, or people into mushrooms, then what's to say he wasn't trying it on anything else?

Like say maybe... plants?

Yes.

Now technically a lot of enemies you fight have plant like features, so many in fact that it's like they were mass produced, existing everywhere except the silk cradle: Shamura's domain of war.

Now these plant creatures fight for the bishops, but that's not to say they are natural. We get normal frogs, insects, fish, etc, but we only get these plant-like worm followers after Leshy turns them into plant like creatures. I don't believe you can randomly happen across them. Perhaps these constructs were originally developed to ensure protection of his siblings, something to prevent them from wasting followers on defending their realms from weaker gods. Or launching assaults. After all, don't many people have a primordial bond to the land they grew up on? Having your favourite tree attack you would suck.

While maybe not a direct result of Narinder, although I wouldn't put it past him to look at a worm and crown and go "oh this'll be funny", I think it's possible that no other plant creature developed consciousness, that Leshy is special, unique, alone.

Perhaps everyone had different ideas on how to help him.

It's up to personal preference the order of events and the degree of sentience the plant enemies have, and thus the mental age of leshy when he became a god, but I'm inclined to think that Narinder still considers Leshy his baby brother, one who would be spared if he could.

(He also made the undead enemies you fight but that's probably obvious.)

But this is all speculation, entities like the gold loving tree exist, so there could be old entities that are plant based kicking around. And the mushrooms could just be from the giant dead god skull being a god of decay. It's hard to know for sure.

It'd be so funny if we could plant that mushroom and grow a giant god. Unlikely though.

So Leshy's existence is unprecedented, Chaos itself to many who see him. But why doesn't chaos help him? Narinder speaks about the "unordered beauty of his realm..." and his attack patterns are technically random, but most Bishops speak on their domain a lot.

Leshy doesnt.

"Winds of change blow; dost thou sense it? Around us, the world creaks and turns. Afore, it stood immobile. Motionless centuries grow rust. Now leshy has fallen..."

His domain was stagnant. Leshy is concerned with Narinder being a heretic, and thus you, because your rituals don't align with the old faith's practices. But since those "traditions stagnate", it makes sense why he is the least revered among his siblings, his grasp on the order, what those rituals are supposed to bring, isn't that good. He's probably just doing them because he's supposed to without understanding the greater purpose of them.

"The worm, it is hungry. It feeds. It partakes of our flesh. But that is the price for safety. For that we gladly give it all we have."

His average followers don't even use his name, or maybe they aren't really his followers at all? It's hard to know for sure.

"I recall Leshy. Prior to yourself, he was the last to bargain with me. Adept as he was, he rose quickly to the challenges of Godhood, aided by his siblings. Many were drawn to his chaotic ways"

He was helped out a lot by his siblings, likely to the point he would have died if he was alone.

do Narinder's siblings really think Narinder could have attempted to kill leshy after being perhaps monumental in causing his existence?

Part 2: yep.

Narinder says that Shamura "could never handle the multitudes of a being such as I" (paraphrased. I'm lazy.) Which we are to take as a statement on what he wanted to attempt with his power. With the sins of the flesh update however it might not be that simple.

Sup you slithery bastard.

What's key here is listening to how the other bishops talk about Narinder. Leshy refers to him as a heretic, Heket as a monster they chained below, Shamura as a brother and Narinder.

They used the term red crown for him, but with the notion of it's own independence Kallamar becomes the most relevant.

Kallamar: "Shamura, the Red Crown grows stronger by the day. Already it has succeeded where he has failed before. Leshy has been slain!"

There's a collective understanding of who "he" is. Narinder. But it is interesting that Kallamar never directly uses the term to refer to Narinder, only using pronouns. Isn't the vessel's success Narinder's success? This makes it sound like the red crown is an entity of its own, succeeding where Narinder failed, at least in Kallamar's mind.

It should be noted that Kallamar doesn't refer to you as the red crown during the events of the game. You are the vessel of it. Then when he needs to insult you, critter, beast. Then as a final plea, lamb. Before that however, after he figures out you arent leaving he tries to bargin with the crown directly.

It seems you cannot be stopped by disease or hunger. And he sends you back from death stronger each time. Please know, it was not my idea to cast out the Red Crown! The other Bishops, my siblings, the blame lies with them. Please, I beg you, spare me. Kill Shamura, but do not send me to my death. Do not send me to him!

Then finally, in post game, likely before seeing Kallamar again, when you have gathered enough sin the seller will ask you:

"I have dealt with Gods, and often pondered; does the Bearer wear the Crown, Or the Crown the Bearer?"

"Stay back! Stay away! Mercy, Red Crown, mercy..."

Of course once you have him as s follower and he realises you are not walking puppet for damnation personified he chills out.

According to the seller "Foolish though he may have seemed, he wielded the power of his Crown without discrimination." Meaning Kallamar might have the most experience with how screwy the crown may be on the minds of followers, and potentially gods if Chemach is anything to go by.

In this sense Kallamar might be the only one who believes Narinder to be innocent- in the sense that he was not in his right mind when he did whatever it was that made the bishops think he was trying to kill leshy- imagining him to be under some kind hypnosis, unable to tell friend from foe. So he always separates the two just in case. That being said, the need to imprison him for was probably encouraged by him.

Of course this all relies on the "he" mentioned being Narinder and not like Ratau or something. Kallamar does know him by name, weirdly enough. "Your friend Ratau was the last vessel sent against us," which begs the much funnier question that how does he know his name? Did they talk? Did Ratau just scream an introduction before every fight? Presumably that was decades ago Kallamar how do you even remember?

Not the worst ship I've seen.

All fun aside, some of Heket's lines can also be interpreted this way.

Heket: "So it is true. The Red Crown sits upon the brow of another."

"The Bishops… my family. Have they not suffered enough? Have I not suffered enough? We fought, pathetic vessel. We bled. We grieved. And yet the Red Crown wants more. No more."

"Pathetic, sniveling, vile puppet to the Red Crown. You have felled the youngest of us. We are the Bishops of the Old Faith. We protect against heresies such as yours. /....We will not tolerate such blasphemy. Your sins are many, and for that y... "

"You there, vessel of the Red Crown! Bow to me, or you will regret it!"

"It was not so long ago that we cast out the Red Crown. A mere thousand or so years. The heresy it preached could not be tolerated. Such noxious ideals... it could not be allowed. For this most damning of sins_"

The mention of sins and heresy is interesting because more less or we just got here. There's the idea that the crown itself is heretical, perhaps not just as a symbol. Since you know, it tells us to gather sin. But of course, in typical play you have murdered her followers in at least four crusades against Leshy then her so, plenty of heresy and sin there.

Theres no much we can gleam about Narinder's actions, but her dialogue suggests her battle with Narinder stemmed from what he wanted to accomplish/his vision for the future, rather than any attempts on Leshy's life- at least not directly- and considering Narinder says "Heket's words were more toxic and foul than the mushrooms that grew in her domain." I think they may have fought over policy and doctrine a lot. After all, nothing would be so wounding to Narinder than himself to be wrong and someone else to be right.

He calls her "arrogant" but Haro called her "temperamental". The two may not conflict, since haro also says she's "afeared by none" which is to say scared by nothing, not that in her rule nobody was scared of her. The seller calls her "vicious" and a "wicked beast", but also amusing in a way, which I'm more inclined to believe is him saying she was annoyingly persistent in trying to get past him into his portal thing than any form of true disdain. Then again she might have just eaten the god tears to see what they do instead of trading them. So many fun possibilities.

That being said, how do we reconcile Kallamar's belief that Narinder tried to kill Leshy with Heket's main complaint being his ideas?

Shamura.

Part 3: the tl;dr.

Shamura introduced Narinder to change, but according to Haro this should have been something he already knew from being around his siblings since their domains "transpose". Famine: feed. Plague: cure. War: peace. Chaos: order. So this has to be something different.

Shamura's domain used to be knowledge but now she is known for war. Her aspect changed, and it's likely this is what she means.

Narinder wanted to change Leshy's aspect. It would solve all his problems, allowing his other siblings to experiment instead of just stamping out anything new. Once he was set on his course Shamura couldn't stop him.

If leshy was already struggling and tried listening to Narinder and changing how everyone saw him, already having issues with cult management, this could have killed him. A god is nothing without followers. If Narinder started his plan without letting Leshy know, it definitely could have killed him.

The plan would require everyone's cooperation to work, rituals rewritten and spreading word of the change fast enough to keep it from being changed back. Shamura would have argued against it, noting issues that if brushed off by nari would set off Heket and they'd argue viciously, probably about Narinder's character and how callous ignoring the risks are. If Kallamar was put on the spot, already being a cowardly person he wouldn't be of any help. And the fight would continue.

It's possible leshy would have tried it just to stop his siblings, and done catastrophic damage to himself. After all, he's the only one who is said to eat the sacrifices directly. It's possible whatever happened forced him to need to eat food, something the gods usually don't bother with.

This would have cemented his belief in the rules as they are now, instead of however lax he may have been before. He may have liked the mushroomos or learning to make plant people before then and might have been the only one who was interested in what Narinder was doing and not trying to stop it.

You may think yourself righteous in your service to HIM. But you should not be so trusting of the Chained One.

He's the only one to comment on how your quest could be perceived as the right thing to do. He's been there himself and suffered for it.

Even so, Camellia still grows in the dark woods. They are the flowers that grow around any red crown rooms you may find, making them explicitly tied to Narinder.

And with Narinder's inability to celebrate his demise....

They couldn't quite bring themselves to hate the other.