#and a little bit of exposition from Ralsei

[lynxgriffin]

Eldritchrune - A Dark Offer

1 | 2 | 3

Story Setup Eldritchrune Masterpost

After a long cry out, Ralsei tries to get Kris to open up a bit. What Kris wants does have a cost, though!

Second part is here, and third part will be up tomorrow!

[mymarifae]

sorry if you’ve already done this but thoughts on ralsei?? people seem quite divided on him

omg ralsei. love that lil thing

the divide on his character makes me a little sad because omg. guys. he's not a mastermind with evil ulterior motives. look at him. he's a cotton ball. YEAH he's hiding something, absolutely definitely 100%, but skfjfjfkfjgjs he's another weird slightly off-putting 16 year old with too much responsibility/knowledge thrust upon him. he just wants friends

if he comes out at the end of ch7 or something like "MWAHAHA i was the bad guy all along !!!!!!!" i think susie would just be like "? no you're not. get back here." and he'd be like "yeah okay. sorry." and that would be the end of that!!!!

i think his kindness is very very genuine... he's beyond ecstatic to meet susie and kris and finally talk to someone his own age - he's been alone!! for his whole life. and for this reason, he doesn't. get It. he doesn't understand the nuances and complexities of friendship and he doesn't get that kindness can take a lot of forms, and that servitude =/= kindness. he's learning though, and he's learning pretty fast. i think we're going to see ralsei go through a lot of changes. i've talked about this before though

now, like. he's hiding Something. i kinda refuse to believe it's out of maliciousness. i think it's more likely he's not aware that he's hiding something, orrrrr there's just some pieces of information that we, the player, cannot know about just yet, or maybe not ever should we prove ourselves unworthy of the knowledge. if he's purposefully concealing something from us, i think it's probably stuff he discusses openly with kris whenever we go off to watch susie.

he. knows a lot. a lot more than a kid his age should know. he knows about us and he knows the controls of the game. and then there's his damn prophecies - angel's heaven and the roaring... two very different events. the fact that he never elaborated on what the angel's heaven Is stresses me out a tiny bit, and i can't help but assume it's what happens when there's not enough darkness to balance out the light, and you know like. im concerned. and, hey, ralsei, who opened castle town's fountain? why can it sustain darkners from every dark world? why don't YOU turn to stone outside of castle town? why do you know the layout of the school.

there are a lot of questions that i guess no one in game is asking, so idk if he would honestly answer if someone did ask, and he's not giving any exposition for our benefit....... maybe he thinks he doesn't have to; considering the power we've demonstrated to him, why wouldn't we already know these things? idk. i assume he's had a considerable amount of contact with gaster. or at least someone else close to gaster.

i've seen the theory that gaster reached out to jevil and spamton with the intent to give them the knowledge to be third-wall-breaking guides for kris (and us), but neither could handle it and thus were failures, and ralsei was a Success. im not sure how to feel about it. i just can't like... gauge the probability? i don't think we've seen enough of the game.

but i do think it provides a very interesting foundation for both jevil and spamton's characters... gaster looked at both of them and thought they had the potential to be what ralsei is. makes you wonder what they used to be like, if you think about it in these terms, and why ralsei was able to handle all this life-shattering information while they couldn't. i don't think ralsei is okay with ANYTHING he knows by any means, but he's certainly got a better hold on it. at least for now 😐

anyway i love ralsei. i dont think we're going to get a master plan reveal from him at any point but i do think there's a good chance we'll see him Snap . if anyone's gonna say fuck (uncensored, i guess) in this game it's going to be him. like he'll just get a little fed up. he wants his own life and he wants to eat cake with his friends and he wants to take a NAP and none of this is fair and just leave him alone already !!!!!!! for fuck's sake. and susie's like RALSEI?????

[madamecricket]

Some afterthoughts on Ralsei and the identity of the Knight (Deltarune Chapter 2)

Yeah, I know I said the last one was going to be final! I was lying, okay? Spoilers for Deltarune chapters 1 and 2 under the cut!

*Deep breath* Okay, so I was pretty sus of Ralsei throughout my playthrough of Chapter 2. Not for no reason - we get to the Dark World and immediately learn that the Dark World from the previous game has been destroyed, but all the NPCs we like from that place (and some we don’t) are conveniently now his citizens. Not to mention him building “dream rooms” for his new friends inside his castle. Once you think “oh, hey, isn’t that what the Other Mother did in Coraline?” about a character, you don’t STOP thinking it.

Briefly I even thought that Ralsei was probably the real identity of the Roaring Knight, the one creating all these Dark Fountains. It’s just a little too convenient for me that Kris and Susie found a Dark Fountain in the library right after Ralsei insisted they had to go and do homework. It’s also convenient that the goal he sets for us - sealing the Dark Fountains and sparing the Darkners we find along the way - just happens to grow his Dark Kingdom since the spared Darkners now literally rely on his own Dark Fountain to live after theirs gets destroyed. And he absolutely gives me the vibe that he’s deliberately not telling us something important, even after the exposition he provides in this game about the role the Dark Fountains could play in the end of the world (only once our friends decided they wanted Dark Fountains of their own, though)

That being said, after having played through the whole pacifist run of the game, I don’t think Ralsei is going to wind up being a huge villain or the knight or anything. I think his desire to be everyone’s friend is genuine, even if it feels a bit deliberate on his part, and it doesn’t make much sense that he’d be the one encouraging us to go seal the Dark Fountains, and stop us from making our own Dark Fountains, if he’s the one opening all these Dark Fountains in the first place. He’s still a bit sus, I just don’t think he’s secretly a cannibal or whatever.

...you know who could be the Knight, though? Kris. In fact, given that we’ve now seen Kris making a Dark Fountain on screen, I think I can say that with some confidence. 

Now the fact that it appears any Lightner with determination can make a Dark Fountain means Kris still has a shred of plausible deniability here; maybe they just really wanted their own fantasy world. But Kris is if anything more sus than Ralsei, given... you know... the whole heart-ripping thing? The whole literally-just-snuck-out-of-the-bathroom-to-slash-their-mom’s-tires-and-snuck-back-in thing? Do I need to explain why Kris might turn out to be the ultimate villain, I mean really.

Also, has anyone else notice that the kids’ “Darkner” costumes seem to take after popular fantasy RPG archetypes? Let’s go through the list:

Susie is a brawler or barbarian;

Ralsei is clearly a mage, with a specialty in healing magic;

Noelle is also a mage, with ice in addition to healing;

Berdly goes in more of a sci-fi direction with his space pilot/power armor getup;

Oh, and Kris?

Kris is a knight.

Armor, sword, and all.

As for why Kris would want to do something like this? Well, though Kris does seem to have a thirst for reckless destruction (RIP Toriel’s tires) I think the motive here probably boils down to escapism. Kris doesn’t seem to have the greatest life in the Light World, living in Asriel’s shadow and being fairly isolated from the monster community, being widely considered creepy and/or a weenie. And the finale of Chapter two almost explicitly points out, the Dark World(s) exist as a form of escapism for Lightners, to give them a world from their fantasies. 

And Kris? Kris strikes me as a person who’d possibly be willing to throw it all away for a world of fantasy...

Thoughts, anyone? Make sure to tag your spoilers, the game hasn’t been out long!