#i like that the sarkaz arent a monolith though

[myrfing]

i like that theresis is portrayed as unchosen and not very special among the sarkaz. among all the heritors of the old blood and whatever he’s kind of your run of the mill sarkaz, just older than most, and was not chosen as the sarkaz king; his sister, miss theresa who haunts the whole narrative, was. his sword is described as unremarkable and those not directly at his side either question his origins or inherent worth, or believe in him deeply for his promise in a way that lets them ascend beyond their kill-or-be-killed every man for himself state. i dont know exactly what theresa’s plan was but it seemed like she had hoped a powerful ideal would have spurred great change on terra with her as a sort of messiah leading people into a future of coexistence, while theresis is obviously the more radical sort of “they will never let the sarkaz live in peace; killing and at-all-costs warfare is then necessary”. and to be honest his approach, despite the unfortunately obvious inspiration from like, holy-land-jerusalem shit being projected onto a fantasy scenario with much different elements and stakes and histories (people shouldn’t really use such heavyhanded inspiration if you are going to misrepresent the situation, even in fantasy imo), kind of makes some sense to me; all other sarkaz leaders we’ve seen only have managed to provide refuge to very few sarkaz, with most of them still not freed from being frontline fodder for war, RI included, and from facing extreme persecution. Terra is seemingly ruled by a compound of business interests, the Lateran church, and expansionist countries like Columbia or Victoria, all of which will always put the sarkaz at the very bottom of the hierarchy and to be the scapegoat in hand with the infected to be used for their greed. in real life, this justification doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, and it doesnt quite for fantasy londinium’s situation either; most the people there are just sort of living their lives and have been for generations, and returning the mass death and displacement to a generally clueless and mmmostly powerless population is wrong no matter how you cut it. but i think the situation for the sarkaz is so abjectly miserable in this fantasy world that lol theresis provides a sort of hope they’d not seen since kazdel fell.

on top of all that every single death of a sarkaz seems to add pain and grief to their collective conscious, and it’s now weighed so heavily that the mere echo of it paralyzes anyone who experiences it. it’s a building thing that’s all. also it’s just weird to argue against from the protagonist standpoint because RI is a paramilitary org that has no effective qualms with killing the most powerless and desperate to achieve its goals but Lol. imo it would have been more interesting if theresis had not been the one implied to (?) have been responsible for theresa’s death w/ driving babel to a corner as the opposing regent and that having added to his disillusionment with a peaceful approach but that would uhhh really damn RI and RI is the one thing in the game they want to portray as always virtuous and of the best intent so probably not