And what makes you think you can tell us how to play our game or stop doing so if we don’t agree with your view?
Maybe you’re a bit too invested into the plot if you start attacking other people’s view, that are just as right.
There are different paths in the game for a reason so to yell at us and order us to stop playing is pretty ridiculous.
Eli’s an Arcadian, too, though?
Also, votes: who thinks Eli is the “Plague Doctor” that went around saving Arcadians during the first moonvein plague?
People are complaining that they were brought back to life. I’m pointing out that there’s an easy fix to them not wanting their MC alive. Because if you don’t get brought back to life, then the game is… over?
For sure, i mean it is in her name “plague”
I meant im willing to sacrifice people on my side as well other than eli( or so my character is, since he would be a coldhearted personnafter being “betrayed” by leo-)
Thalia might be a bitch but she ain’t the one who was my best friend then burnt me at the stake when we basically solo won a war for his county. You’d think there would be more consideration on that. If that’s not enough, he also publicly humiliated us before out deaths too lmao fuck Param.
Ooof, now I’m thinking about what would have happened if Param had gotten its hands on the Plague Doctor, and none of the options are pretty.
Ikr, i wonder if the plague doc will become a friend(unless its eli)
I am actually finding it very weird that so many people are stanning for the dude that had them killed and hating the woman that literally brought them back to life. I don’t know if this is about people just loving monarchies for some reason, the Jovian Church being a parallel to the Catholic Church and people stanning for that, a case of First Girl Wins, or something else.
It’s not that the alternative - being actually slave of a women who brought MC back to life (my MC didn’t ask for it and he’s not going to be thankful ) is so great.
But I’m definitely not a Param fan either. Damn…
I’d like the route where MC leaves all that shit and goes their own way. They have their own purpose in life… Because so far it seems that MC lives for others - first, they sacrifice everything to save one kingdom, and then they become Arcadia’s tool.
But it seems that the essence of the game is our poor magician’s involvement in all this politics and playing the hero either for one side of the conflict or for the other :v
That is highly subjective, my mc never viewed himself as Arcadian and his mother was a noble from Salantria, but even after being “freed” from Thaubal Mireil simply stole the mc’s stuff and inheritance from them. But that was a past life in this one he is literally nothing but a slave with no claim to any title or stuff whatsoever. Everything Mireil did while in power in Salantria, she did with backing of Arcadia, which includes the petty act of cheating mc out of their inheritance.
So Thalia supposedly wants justice and restoration for the Arcadians but justice and restoration for the mc is never, ever on the table. And the reason why my mc cherishes his time with the White Fangs, besides Saine and Ilya at least being friends even if Leon no longer is was that it was the only time in his whole cursed life he had any agency of his own at all. And now he’s back to having none.
Unlike with Mireil or Eli, she never offers the mc any real quid pro quo and simply enslaves them. Eli at least got their resources for his own projects and Mireil…well she of course got an entire country.
All the mc gets is an arcane collar and some shitty robes.
Slavery is not “pulling your weight”. I think she really only chose the mc over sister this time because sister was getting to dangerous to her continued control over Arcadia as she and sister were two proverbial peas in the same pot, both wanting power and being highly ambitious. Had sister lived a clash between them would have been inevitable at some point in the probably near future and maybe with sister not being weakened by parasites Thalia would have stood an actual chance of losing there.
For my mc that would be Leon, not Thalia, at least Leon didn’t enslave him or torture him and compared to a lifetime of slavery and torture even death by burning was relatively quick and merciful.
I mean probably because he’s a RO and very popular too, people enjoy the angst route of the romance so that weights heavily on the forgiveness. I’d do the same if he was a female RO, even if I knew Arcadia was on the right on this one.
I just don’t think Tahlia is that bad considering the circumstances even if she’s a low-key full time bitch with us but i understand she’s only doing it to save her people (I’d do the same so i can’t really blame her).
Leon on the other hand had a choice and it was at least run a full investigation. Maybe imprisonment. Between someone who i trusted and straight up murdered me and someone who’s just trying to save her people the best she can I’ll go with the lesser evil.
The only way she enslaves you if you turn to her, a woman who’s running a refuge for the last remnants of a civilisation, and tell her in no uncertain terms that your allegiance lies with the people responsible for destroying that civilisation and enslaving its people*. This is not an unreasonable take, because the other option is letting you tell the people who are bent on killing them where they are.
I disagree here. Note that Sister is dead for like four months before you die, so there’s certainly time for Thalia to at least start the process of bringing her back. I think Thalia brings YOU back and not Sister, because resurrection ** is such an expensive procedure that Thalia needs to be very picky about who she brings back, so she’s reserving the process to people who have phantasmas. I don’t think Sister would ever be a threat, power-wise, to Thalia.
NOBODY runs a magical diagnosis on you to check for magical compulsions, apparently. This after you just had a war that happened exactly because of magical compulsions, at the end of which you were alone and unobserved with the person responsible for said magical compulsions. I’m beginning to think that the reason the White Fangs really needed you wasn’t because they were lacking a decent offensive mage, it’s because you put everyone in the entire palace of Param together and you can’t get a functioning brain between all of them.
Not from Thalia’s point of view. You have a phantasma, and only people with strong Arcadian bloodlines get phantasmas, ergo, you’re an Arcadian.
You’re an Arcadian, therefore justice and restoration for the Arcadians is justice and restoration for you. If you want INDIVIDUAL justice and restoration, then you’re going to have along with the Arcadians, because you’re going to have to hit Salantir HARD for your mum’s inheritance. Arcadia no longer controls Salantir. And if you want justice and restoration for being burnt at the stake, you ALSO need to go along with the Arcadians, because, well…
*at least, I presume this is the only way. I didn’t check the route where you declare your allegiance to Arcadia, though it’d be weird if she enslaved you if you do that, considering that if you say “eeeh, we’ll see” she actually LAUDS you for being cautious.
** a word that I swear I will at one point learn to spell in less than four tries
Hopefully there will be a route where i can destroy param without relying on arcadia(or a split in the future)
i can have my MC be unhappy with having been brought back and simultaneously want to keep playing the game.
i feel like your wording may be inspiring some of the hostility you’re getting here, unfortunately
Possibly. It’s a bit too late to go back and change it, now, though - people have responded to it already, and editing after that feels dishonest.
I am befuddled. If you are unhappy with being brought back, then you want to be dead, and if you are dead, then there is no game.
I have been reading these posts since the last one I did and I have much I could say some I’m just going to let go at this point lol. As to the rest I’m going to half to make a few fresh playthroughs at the very least one. I more or less remeber the choices I made for my main playthrough so can get fresh eyes on the words in game.
That being said and while it’s a loose theory at least on my head right now I believe it was Thalia who set Mireil on her course and all that followed. Can I say it with 100% certainty no but there was a scene that Miriel had that this mysterious woman who just seems to give off Thalia vibes to me who frees her from the arcane collar… and then from there destruction of the laboratory and killing of her father and well I think everyone knows what followed.
Now a separate theory and can’t stress enough it’s a extreme theory and very likely totally not a thing. What if Ante is actually a spy for arcadia? It would in a way make sense for how much Arcadians knew so much about MC beyond what’s rumors and here say and we’ll known actions. It was ante’s actions that lead to Leon’s mindset and ultimate choice to execute and of course all the other pressures of the population and nobles. Yet she specifically was mentioned in the jail cell but hey time to head home from work lol
Hope everyone is doing well.
Sister also had one, as one was forced on her by Thaubal, same as with Eli and the mc. The difference is that she and Eli only ever got one and one that was reasonably suited to them, while the mc got saddled with four weakening, useless parasites and now has to sustain a fifth parasite too. That leaves them too weak to ever be a serious threat to any other arcanist, let alone an especially powerful one such as Thalia. But it does leave them more powerful than other, normal people and maybe slightly more powerful than other mages. Which is the balance Thalia wants, an easily controlled, vastly less powerful slave who’ll never be a threat to her, at least not magically.
Which is all that counts to the Arcadians, magical power, which is also the flaw that, combined with paranoia and an ugly for superiority complex, helped bring down old Arcadia in the first place.
Sister and Phantasma as told by Thalia"
The priestess sighs, casting her gaze back out towards the horizon. "I retract my praise of Thaubal Altinier, ${fname}. I had thought him a brilliant man, to have bound phantasma to three different children (Mireil, Eli, mc) with his meager resources. And perhaps he was, to some degree—Mireil and Eli were both resounding successes. Paired with the perfect phantasma for their bloodline, and for their talents besides. Emphasis mine
I don’t think war is the means to get it. If we wage war and the raze mc’s mother’s old estate in process all we can do after is squat in the rubble. Also due to being dead we probably lost any claim to it, certainly after the resurrection. Sister probably had the Duke give it somebody else a long time ago. So little of his mother would probably even remain for him to reclaim anyway.
Anyway my mc’s immediate goal now is to escape Arcadia, not money or power. That isn’t even his long-term goal since that is to rid himself of the parasites one way or another. So, yeah, my mc wants to get rid of the very cursed things that even make him Arcadian in Thalia’s twisted view.
Ante’s the Paramic spymaster, right? No, I don’t think this follows. If you have a knife in the dark, you don’t need to go through all the trouble of the invasion in the first place. They could just have Sister sneak in, put in the detonation without anyone being none the wiser, and then sneak in a thaumer for the blow up and there was nothing anybody could do about it, because nobody would know.
From the moment Thalia shows up after resurrection, it… actually never occurred to me that it could be anybody else?
Is this actually possible? Also, note that now you have YET another friend tagging along - the Earthsworn dude (I suck at names - Gnomaeus?), that you pick up at the tomb to survive the twins. EDIT: Oh, you mention him, too, nevermind. You probably tried it, so I might as well ask: what happens if you try to NOT accept the Earthsworn deal?
Also, I don’t think phantasmas make you weaker - they give you a turbo-boost option that, yes, screws up the engine if you use it due to heightened stress, but you don’t actually have to use that option if you don’t want to (I mean, you have to, because if you don’t use them at certain points then you’re dead and the game doesn’t let you do THAT, for the same reason that you don’t get to tell Thalia’s resurrection attempt to f*ck off and die - doing that would be a “game over, do you want to play again?” scenario - but in an in-universe perspective, you are, in fact, allowed to let yourself be curbstomped whenever you want).
Good catch. I don’t recall Sister ever using hers, though. Wait, is it the claws? The same way F’s got the snake?
I kinda like to think of Miriel as the bull in the china shop kinda of equivalent sneaking isn’t exactly in her style at least feeling I get and hence a invasion one thing we got to remember is that Miriel was given a very long leash and had her own plans. While Thalia and other higher-ups never stopped her infact stood to benefit from events because it weakened both there principal rivals/threats to arcadia.
They were in fact aware of what sister was doing by reference of conversations with Yu. Sorry can’t recall the full name off the top of my head in regards to the saint for the saint who was the head of the jovian church was infact a relative to him.
As well what Miriel did wasn’t some simple detonation spell this was something she spent those three years or so preparing and the catalyst for its going off was the saint hence why the MC had to kill her for if hadn’t then the spell would have gone critical mass so to speak killing everyone in the town even those Arcadians whom might have been there none the wiser. Not to mention what remained of the param royal family Leon and Saine along with what was to be the new saint Ilya along with any number of nobles whom might have been around further weakening param. So thaila and company would not have stopped her hence Yu’s guilt for the death and worry about telling his aunt…
So yeah Ante is params spy master hence why I said it was a extreme theory yet in its own sorta way would fit and follows along into another theory but as I said it’s all one not likely to be the case lol
Edit: as to the Miriels magical thing I don’t think it’s ever named through the course of the game but yeah I think the shadow claw thing and abilitys that were showcased were tied to her magical power not the mundane magic
Miriel is, in fact, EXTREMELY good at sneaking. It’s how nobody found out she was running the Duke of Salantir for years and how she managed to infiltrate the heavily-guarded banquet to the point that she scored a personal audience with the Saintesse.
If she had the spymaster on her side, it’d be trivial to plant the detonation ritual in the city and then getting an Arcadian mage to serve as the trigger. You don’t need the Saintesse, specifically, for the trigger. You just need a powerful mage willing to get themselves blown up. The Saintesse was a particularly good trigger, because she’s exceptionally powerful and nobody would suspect her of anything, but she could’ve used any number of Arcadian mages, with a lot less fuss, losses, and risk than going through an all-out war if she had the head of Param intelligence working with her.
I don’t know my mc doesn’t know, but if he had any agency and resources to pursue any of his own project he’d try to find a way.
The only one I can think of currently is deliberately overloading the mana-ducts past the point of collapse. That would leave the mc completely without magic, but it would also force the parasites out or let them die because you cut their sustenance.
I don’t think the author is going to let the mc attempt that one except maybe as an epilogue choice.
The only other possibility seems to be the mysterious benefactor of the weird twins who seems to have a much deeper understanding of the parasites/phantasma than any current Arcadian, even Thalia. Though we’d probably have to torture such knowledge out of them, assuming the story will afford the mc such an opportunity. But maybe, just maybe they do know how to get rid of one too.
By Thalia’s own admission they do make the mc weaker. And there are more than a few hints that even normal magic use is particularly draining and unpleasant for the mc. For other mages using their powers seems both less draining and not unpleasant at all. And that can really only be attributed to the mc having to sustain three wholly and one mostly incompatible, draining parasite(s).
Thalia's admission on the mc's parasites
The priestess notes your pensive silence, but presses onwards. “Alas, for all that Mateus blood runs through your veins, there is not enough of it to sustain four phantasma; and so your mana ducts wither with each calling.” (emphasis mine)
So, yeah, my mc wants to get rid of the damned things as his highest goal at present, even if the immediate one is escaping new Arcadia. Of course now he has to sustain yet another one of the damned things.
Maybe hers provided a more passive boost, like the Wellspring one of the weird twins?
And maybe the mc is/was magically weak enough that she felt she didn’t need it and by the time mc is torturing themselves by using the only one of their damned parasites they can use it may have been too late for her to call on hers.
But my favourite theory is that hers is one of the more passive ones and may have just strengthened her normal magic use in some way since she takes on the mc’s Phantasma “ostensibly” on her own.
What always happens in the mc’s life. The spirit of Augur forces it on them anyway.
Yep, probably only the mysterious benefactor of the weirdass twins still knows that one. If we’re lucky.
Or maybe the mc could create one, given huge amounts or resources and decades of research, but that would at best make it an epilogue thing as much as the other desperate choice.
Well, not necessarily the mc was very much dead and it didn’t kill their parasites, unless they got resurrected along with the mc.
Also Augur is very much (un)dead, yet his phantasma is very much not.
So this again is something the present Arcadians seem to have at best a very feeble understanding of.
Therefore I’d amend this to the knowledge that in certain situations a phantasma can die with its wielder, but that certainly doesn’t seem to be a universal rule. The real question is whether the mc and Augur are the exceptions, or if the modern Arcadians have no understanding of the real rule(s), much like how some of our forefathers thought the Earth was flat and sun revolved around it.