One question I had is regarding the mention of ‘auras’ in the fight scene between Seeker, Aki, and Forlorn towards the end of chapter 6. We seem familiar with them, but I don’t recall them making an appearance earlier in the story. What exactly are these things, and what do they do?
As for theorizing, the biggest one I have is with respect to the nature of the alter egos that Latooni and the player have been interacting with. It clearly doesn’t seem to be something shared by anyone else, and is likely related to the revealing of our powers at the same time. I wonder if it is the Broken King who is responsible for this, and it is him that we are seeing in our heads.
The MC does seem familiar with them, even though they admit they’ve never felt anything like them before. The narration says as much:
The whole room feels like lead. Nobody moves, and yet it feels like you’re choking. Seeker and Forlorn shine in your mind’s eye, the former a crimson red, Forlorn an azure blue.
You’ve never felt it from them. You’ve never felt it from [i]anybody,[/i] and yet you know exactly what it is. Every cell, every memory, every single one of the thousand silent voices in your soul tell you exactly what you’re facing off.
Killing intent strong enough to almost send you into shock.
So the MC perceives it as a physical manifestation of Seeker and Forlorn’s willingness to kill. That’s not entirely what it is, but it’s certainly an aspect of it, and the fact the MC sees it that way says things about them.
If I had to put it in my own words, I’d compare it somewhat to a dog raising his hackles. It’s a physical, visible manifestation of someone’s willingness to fight, and the marshalling of their strength to do so.
So, in a way, it’s like… the equivalent of when Goku starts yelling to go Super Saiyan.
There’s a lot of fun implications for the future in that scene. I think my two favorite ones are the fact that the MC’s own aura gets described as being made up of the dead, and…
Well, isn’t it weird that everyone but Ignis can sort of sense the killing intent in that showdown? I may be tipping my hand a little, but even if you ask Seeker about it, he’s not being entirely truthful about his explanation…
So I take it from the cryptic response that this is something which will be elaborated on later. Hm. Interesting. I wonder if everyone has an aura, or just the three of us.
Yeah, there’s a lot to Ignis and Seeker that hasn’t really been revealed yet. It’s clear that they are really dependent on each other, and there is a lot of history that we may never really be privy to. Seeker seems to be communicating with a dead mentor of some kind, and Ignis has a lot of baggage herself beyond her cold upbringing. She gets really uncomfortable when a romanced player comments on her body. It’s also an open question how she ‘has more money than most countries’ when her relationship with her family is quite strained and it doesn’t look like she relies on their fortune.
There’s that kind of history about all the characters, frankly. Aki may be Forlorn’s cousin, but fraternal protectiveness doesn’t explain their relationship either, on either side. Mars obviously has a lot going on as well.
I’ve been skimming through some of the posts on this thread, and it’s clearly evident that this work has been in development for six years now. Even a very cursory glance shows characters that haven’t been introduced yet, personality traits, backstories and beliefs that haven’t yet been discovered in the game, and lots of theories based on much more solid information than what I have.
Apparently there’s a character named Victoria in here somewhere who’s very powerful, the League is going to get a recruit named Iris, Aki grew up extremely wealthy, Ignis and Seeker are going to end up together at some point… I kind of enjoy being in a position of only knowing the dregs of information that are in the story as of yet, so I’ve been kind of holding off on reading the 3000+ posts of politics and character personalities and so on that are here.
This is actually in the story already. You can learn about this if you meet her at the plushie station during the Tokyo downtime.
I wager this is because the Coltellos are the kind of people that think cutting off their daughter would be gauche. Perish the though. At any rate, we should get more info on this at the infamous dinner, which should be the next part. Remember kids, you start with the outermost cutlery and move in.
Something that was in the game and now isn’t (but will eventually be again, I believe): If you think Ignis’s relationship with her parents is strained, just wait until you see the one between Nova and any family that isn’t his sister.
Not in the game yet, Seeker-related: the one that Seeker keeps communicating with is Victoria, aka V, and apparently she’s powerful enough to kick Seeker’s ass without too much trouble, making her the most powerful super we’re aware of short of the King and Queen.
I still think this thing where we let Gloria rile up the Broken King for shits and giggles is a bigger strategic error than invading Russia in Winter, and I intend to not intervene when Gloria finally pushes him too far and the King just comes up to inflict about seven different Mortal Kombat fatalities on his ass in the space of three heartbeats.
Of course, Gloria has done basically nothing this entire game but give me reasons to distrust and dislike him, so, y’know.
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