Mission: Darkness Named (Chains of Promathia, ch.3)
-I have to work my way to the heart of Pso’Xja, where the fourth cache of magicite lies and where I’ll likely find the Pale Kid, Keeper of the Apocalypse. But first, I have to retrieve an item from Pso’Xja for the Tenshodo so they let me pass.
[Note: I personally have trouble juggling these long plots, so if I write these summaries more often than I probably need to, it’s because I’m jogging my own memory at the start of a session.]
-I head to Beaucedine Glacier. The Pso’Xja dungeon isn’t one single zone. Rather, it’s spread out beneath towers across the Glacier.
-This place is kind of trippy. There are swirly colorful portals – one dark blue, one red, one green – and I’m not sure how they connect up. What is this place anyway?
-Hell, even the music here is kind of trippy. Eerie piano (or something – I’m bad at identifying musical instruments).
-I kill a bunch of creepy gray crab things and eventually get the chip. No Tonberries sighted – I guess those are beneath a different Pso’Xja tower. Back to town to turn in the chip to the Tenshodo, and I get a Pso’Xja pass in exchange.
-*10 minutes of wandering the portals in Pso’Xja later*
-Yeah. I’m lost lol.
Now, there’s a map in here that shows where each portal is, but I seem to just be going around in circles.
-Ah! The wiki tells me that it’s a puzzle where I have to go through the doors in a particular color order. The red door, then the black, then the red, then the black. Blue and green portals get no love I guess.
-Like, I’m SERIOUSLY digging the soundtrack here. Not something that gets me pumped up, but more something that makes me feel like… well, like creeping around mysterious corridors beneath a glacier. That kind of lonely-eerie.
[Later edit: knowing now what lies beneath Pso’Xja, I like this musical choice even more.]
-I reach an elevator that takes me down to some kind of sub-basement. No map here. Reached a stone gate and used my Pso’Xja pass to get through. This is the right area.
-A new zone is right behind here called “The Shrouded Maw.” WELL THAT’S NOT OMINOUS.
-Tenzen meets me here. He hasn’t found the Pale Kid.
-The light all of a sudden turns red. Tenzen: “What is this… this chill in the air?” There’s a boss circle ahead of me. First fight vs the Pale Kid?
-Tenzen’s blade starts to vibrate in response to this place. His blade is made of Phoenix’s light, so I’m guessing this room we’re in now is some sort of antithesis to that light.
-WHAT??? PRISHE IS HERE?? She’s lying wounded in the middle of the floor. But she was just in the hospital bed in Jeuno. WTF.
-Yup. Here comes the Pale Kid. Out of some creepy-ass portal.
-The Pale Kid walks up to the now-awake Prishe. He beckons to her to give him her amulet. (Really, my amulet. Remember that the Pale Kid stole hers, leaving her a wreck until I gave her mine.)
So this is one of the things I’m confused about so far. The Pale Kid woke up, gave ME his amulet, and then stole Prishe’s amulet, and now wants my amulet back from Prishe. Or something.
-Prishe hesitates. She’s confused, both as to why the Pale Kid wants her amulet and whether to give it to him.
Another thing that confuses me: why he doesn’t just take it from her! He’s strong af. If he’s really the Keeper of the Apocalypse, yoinking the amulet off her neck should be no problem.
-He hears something. Something is coming from the portal in the room, following him. The Pale Kid flees.
OH SHIT IT’S DIABOLOS
“Traitors! There is no escape!”
We’re traitors? Huh?
-Tenzen calls Diabolos the “terrestrial avatar of dreams.”
TENZEN: “Which can only mean… we are already inside his dream!” Whose dream? The Pale Kid’s dream? Diabolos’s dream?
-I take him down but he pops right back up again. “Your efforts are in vain, for this is nothing but a dream. I am the ruler of the subconscious plane. What you dream becomes my dream, and what I dream becomes your world. Now sleep…”
There are now three of him. Frigging dream-masters.
TENZEN: “I will not let you drag me into darkness.”
HAHAHA TENZEN’S SWORD ERUPTS IN PHOENIX FIRE
THIS IS SO FUCKING METAL
-Interesting!!! Apparently, Tenzen doesn’t want to fight Diabolos. He is here to ask for his help against the Keeper of the Apocalypse.
TENZEN: “Of the five crystals, three have been overcome by the Emptiness… Is is not the duty of the five terrestrial avatars to protect the crystals? Let us join in arms and defeat the enemy of light!”
-Diabolos considers this. A really neat effect is that all three versions of him talk, lending to the surreal quality of this encounter.
“So, Phoenix still remains unwhole…”
“And that is why she continues to feed people false hopes, all the while forgetting the truth that lies in the battles fought ten thousand years ago…”
He must be talking about the battles between Bahamut and the Zilart over the Gates of Paradise. What truth is Diabolos talking about here?
-He continues:
“Listen carefully, children of the dawn. Emptiness is not without reason. Its place is set in the eternal scheme of the universe. And true reason is that which lies deep within your soul. Reason that makes you what you are.”
This is both poetic and confusing. So the Emptiness has a purpose. Is our purpose, our true reason, the need to fight Emptiness?
PRISHE: “So if Emptiness is reason, then our souls are filled with…!?”
DIABOLOS: “To defy the will of the Twilight God is to defy reason. Any attempt to escape from Emptiness is futile.”
Now it’s starting to make sense. I believe that the curse Promathia laid on the ancient ones to bar them from entry to the Gates of Paradise after they tried is this Emptiness. The Emptiness was created by Promathia’s will, and the souls of the five races – Mithra, Galka, Hume, Tarutaru, Elvaan – were filled with that Emptiness.
“Now that the Emptiness encroaches on your soul, you can hear its voice…and the voice that calls back…”
So the Emptiness cast by Promathia was sort of a delayed reaction? Like, maybe the seeds were planted in us, and as the outer Emptiness grows, the Emptiness within us calls back. Wanting to join it.
-So is that it? Are we fucked?
DIABOLOS: “However, there is no need for despair. Ten thousand years ago, the Kuluu [who became the Tonberries], too, lost all hope. It is then that I was born here, in the depths of their city.”
So THAT’S what Pso’Xja is. Pso’Xja lies beneath the heart of the old Zilart city that was destroyed in the Meltdown ten thousand years ago.
“I am the ruler of dreams, and within my dreams – within my kingdom of Dynamis – people can escape the harshness of reality.”
I’d heard the name Dynamis before somewhere, but had no idea what it is. Now I know. It’s a sanctuary from reality, a dream world.
“Emptiness consumes the body, but the soul lives on – it lives on in my world.”
This is so frigging cool! I like that Diabolos isn’t just some RAWR EVIL 666 demon. He always was a bit more complicated than that, seeming more to be about void than evil. Whoever gets consumed by Emptiness still lives in his dream world, almost as a benign afterlife.
“If the Keeper of the Apocalypse is truly on his way, there is nothing left on Vana’diel for the children of Altana – nothing but annihilation. Now come… save yourselves while you still have the chance… Let go of all you know and enter my world, as have many others.”
Diabolos rocks. I mean, I can’t imagine we’ll actually take him up on the offer to find sanctuary in the dream world, but he legit wants to help us.
“The realm of dreams is a paradise, free of pain and strife.”
Assuming he’s telling the truth. But I believe him.
-And NOW it makes sense why he called us traitors! He saw Prishe talking calmly with the Pale Kid, and thought we were with the Keeper of the Apocalypse, on his side.
-Btw, Prishe is having none of this. “Shut up, you monster! Why would anyone want to live in your prison, anyway?!”
Prishe, I love you, you know I do, but Diabolos is offering a lifeboat. No need to be rude to him even if you don’t want to take it.
PRISHE: “How do you know we can’t defeat the Emptiness!? Have you even tried?”
DIABOLOS: “Fool… you have heard the voice of the Emptiness, so you are aware of what lies beyond my dreams. And even so, you tell me you do not fear what you heard?”
The Emptiness sounds powerful af. Like a terrifying force of nature.
PRISHE: “Why would I be afraid of that? I’ve survived beastman attacks, huge explosions, and the fall of Tavnazia. People can do anything if they don’t give up hope!”
UR THE BEST!!111!
-Diabolos now has a moment of confusion… he wonders if he’s in the dream world or in ours. He sees the light of a crystal. Our encounter breaks, and we wake.
-Tenzen and I. Prishe is still in the Jeuno infirmary. Dreaming. That’s how we met her.
-Whew. That was WILD AND AWESOME.
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-I return to Jeuno to touch base with the hopefully-okay-and-awake Prishe.
-Whew. Prishe is awake.
-She’s arguing with Ulmia about the Cardinal.
-So we saved Prishe in her dream, but don’t know what happened to Prishe’s amulet.
-Tenzen takes this moment to bust in, enraged. He thinks Prishe and Ulmia have been friends with the Pale Kid, who Tenzen blames for the Emptiness.
-Wait. Wait wait wait. Prishe’s response to this isn’t enraged. It’s relaxed. She thinks the Pale Kid… SAVED HER? The Pale Kid saved her. He saved her.
-Diabolos was the monster trying to take Prishe. The Pale Kid saved her from Diabolos? I don’t know if I buy this… but I do trust that Prishe didn’t feel threatened by the Pale Kid, which is something.
-Tenzen explains. The “terrestrial avatars” are the five gods born of Vana’diel and entrusted to protect the world. Long ago, the five avatars fought agaianst an evil presence (the Emptiness?) that attempted to suffocate Vana’diel.
1)Phoenix, fiery bird of resurrection.
2)Diabolos, ruler of dreams.
3)Fenrir, the guardian of the moon. WOLFY HI FENRIR YAY!!
4)Carbuncle, bringer of rainbows.
5)Bahamut, conqueror of the skies.
-I’ll be honest, this roster surprises me. Bahamut aside, the other four avatars are a bit esoteric. I was sure it’d be Ifrit, Shiva, Leviathan, Ramuh. The classics. I like this.
-Now we know that Tenzen has come to gather the power of the five avatars to stop the Keeper of the Apocalypse. Including Bahamut.
-Prishe says that before we came into her dream, Diabolos talked about the song that sang of the keeper. Memoria de la Stona. Nag’molada’s favorite.
-Diabolos also said that when the Keeper arrives, “our pact will be fulfilled.” Huh? Whose pact? If my earlier theory was right and Prishe is some kind of unwitting embodiment of Promathia, then it could be a pact between Promathia and the avatars. Or maybe it’s a pact between the five terrestrial avatars to stop the Keeper of the Apocalypse.
Yeah, that sounds more likely.
-Diabolos asked Prishe to see Bahamut ASAP about this pact.
-So now we have a new mission. Tenzen, Prishe, Ulmia and I all will head to find Bahamut and learn more about this “pact.”
-They leave, heading back to Tavnazia.
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Next time: the next chapter begins in Chains of Promathia: “The Cradles of Children Lost.”
