#this definitely turned into stream of conscious speculation midway through

[loregoddess]

ayyy there was something tricky about Ochette's final boss, and it was that the final boss has a ton of health and an attack that reduces one party member to 1 hp (which the boss uses to power up and will use multiple times throughout the battle), so having healers is very helpful, bc despite Ochette being lv. 70 I was not able to "deal massive amounts of damage to get through the fight in like, 4-5 turns" my way through her final boss, although I had significantly less trouble this time than I did on my first playthrough when this was the first final boss I took on.

Anywho, thoughts on Temenos and Ochette's final chapters below...

I can add "timeline for when the Kal got wiped out" to the list of things that I just legit forgot from my first playthrough, like I simply did not remember seeing "Thirty years earlier...." at the start of Temenos's Ch4, which is such a weird timeframe (are you telling me Reiza was 7? and she has major guilt from a genocide she participated in when she was SEVEN??), but at least the "Temenos might have been a survivor of the Kal" theory makes so much more sense to me, bc I just thought we got a vague "decades ago" timeframe, not an actual set of years, bc in my head I was like "Well, Reiza's 37, so if this happened decades ago maybe it was two decades and she was 17 bc that would make sense for all the guilt she's carrying" no, no we actually got a timeline and she was apparently a whole whopping seven years old. Anyhow I'm gonna have to unshelve the Kal Temenos theory in my head and turn it over a bit more.

That all said the writing for Temenos's final chapter is...fine. So it's really not that his storyline bugs me so much as his Stormhail chapter specifically bugs the hell out of me (and also I don't like the "genocide survivor joins those who killed her people to seek revenge on them...somehow" as a plot point, like don't get me wrong I love the concept of Kaldena and think she should be in the story, but not as the main antagonist, but that's an entirely different rant).

I still wish we got some sort of timeline for when D'arqest came and turned whichever group of people living on Toto'haha into the beastlings. Like this guy apparently did something on every major landmass, and we don't know when or in which order. (whose name I hate typing by the way, why did the localization team decide to have it spelled like that?)

Also for as...clumsy as the whole "D'arqest turned people into beastlings by taking the evil from their hearts to call up the Shadow, so they can't be corrupted by the Shadow or at least are very resistant to it" is a worldbuilding point (believe me, I understand why this is criticized by fans), I don't think it's as simple as I've seen some analyses write it off as? Like, the Nameless Village is very much Right There, and there is very much something...deeply weird and concerning going on with the "heirs" in the village. Like, I dunno, I wish there was more about exactly what is going on with the "heir" situation in the Nameless Village, bc like what does it mean that the heir is a "vessel"? why does the heir, if they survive, end up with scars across their backs? who do people living there act as guides to outsiders even though those outsiders might end up summoning the Shadow (like what Kaldena was trying to do)? Ochette, Juvah, any of the members of Beasting Village, and also any of the members of Cohazeh's village never bring up the beastlings in the Nameless Village, and even Temenos doesn't have much to say about anything in the Nameless Village itself since he's so laser-focused on Kaldena. I just...have a lot of questions about the Nameless Village.

Ochette's final chapter still gets me like, that is one hell of a tragic battle, and even though I knew what was going to happen I still teared up a bit. (story-wise, not combat-wise, the battle itself was fine mechanically, but the story bits afterwards just get me).

From the perspective of trying to figure out how Vide's influence works and stuff though, it is interesting that one of Ochette's potential companions is able to be influence and corrupted by the Shadow (since we see the purple-y shadow stuff around the companion not chosen back when Ochette was 10, well before Petrichor and Harvey turned the creature into the Darkling), since mostly we only see Vide's influence in humans and monsters.

Juvah also calls Toto'haha's flame the "First Flame" which is a really interesting bit of lore, since we have the Kal who worship the "Azure Flame" and the Order of the Sacred Flame who worship the "Sacred Flame". Can't remember where it was in who's story, but I remember it being said that after their battle with Vide the gods were said to fall into a slumber (potentially literally becoming the various Flames), so it's interesting that we have a religion that seems to have been carried over from Orsterra, a new religion formed by the Kal people, and indications that the ancient beastlings or warden beasts also had some sort of understanding of their island's flame that is separate from the Order's interpretation of the Sacred Flame. I'll have to keep an eye out during Hikari and Agnea's crossed paths Ch2 to see if anything interesting is said in the cave of that region's flame.

ALSO THOUGH because the Scarlet Moon only happens every 400 years, this might actually help me if I ever sit down and sort through the in-game lore to set up a potential timeline bc like, the Scarlet Moon is basically an astrological occurrence (lunar eclipse? that makes it possible for Vide's power to seep through from "another world"); the fact that Toto'haha is a weak point that connects to Vide's "world" isn't really that surprising when we consider that the island is located sorta halfway between where Vide is fought in the endgame, and the isle containing the Gate of Finis. We also know the legendary creatures prevented the calamity of the last Scarlet Moon before dispersing over the world, and Tera shows up in the Kal's mural.

So it's possible the Scarlet Moon occurred, the legendary creatures dispersed, D'arqest began his conquest of the world fighting against Kal and Tera, fighting against the first leader of Ku and possibly the Lumine clan on the western continent, fighting...someone on the eastern continent (the kingdom of Fjall? someone else?) and causing the Pit to open up in the wall, and attempted to summon Vide or obtain Vide's power on Toto'haha, resulting in the beastlings (he might have done this before fighting Kal, since D'arqest had the power of the Shadow when he fought Kal, and actually might have been at Toto'haha first? maybe Kal and Kal's people managed to kill D'arqest and that's why he's buried in Gravell so close to where the Kal people lived). We know he also had to obtain Vide's power or blood somehow to make Claude into a vessel for Vide, so Toto'haha might play into that as well (maybe the beastlings found a way to seal the power of the Shadow that seeps through the Rifted Rock, and that has something to do with the "heir" tradition that I have so many questions about).

I'm pretty sure D'arqest had to happen after the first Scarlet Moon though, just bc of Tera being in the Kal mural, which would place D'arqest's activities sometime in the last 399 years before the game, which wouldn't be that far stretched (Lyblac was only active for like, less than 200 years in Orsterra which is hardly any time). It also makes me wonder if the gods' original battle with Vide didn't occur 400 years before D'arqest, since Vide has to be sealed in another world in order to try breaking through when the planetary alignment is just right during the Scarlet Moon, and a lunar eclipse would have been the height of Vide's potential power (the night side of the planet is in shadow and the moon is in the shadow of the planet, unable to reflect as much light) which might explain how 7 of the 8 gods ended up dead or as close to dead as a god can get. It would then place the timeframe for Vide getting sealed at roughly 800 years before the events of the game's story, which follows the 8 theme pretty nicely.

Which is all wild speculation on my part, but I can't see D'arqest being active more than 400 years before the story events. Also the legendary creatures disperse from Toto'haha, whose flame is protected by the warden beasts and the beastlings (who are, if not immune to the Shadow, at least very resistant to it and therefore ideal protectors), and one creature ends up in the area of each of the other three flames, as if they're protecting those flames as well--and there seems to be a group of people who come to worship/protect each of the three flames as well: the Order of the Sacred Flame, the Kal, and the Lumine clan (potentially, since the current Alpates says she has to "return to her people" and then she's found dead in Conning Creek, which is very near Hinoeuma's flame; one of Ori's journals mentions that Alpates and Rita both come from the Lumine clan, and it's possible Kura was related to that bloodline as well). This might explain why Arcanette has Petrichor hunt the three legendary beasts, to weaken the defenses around each flame? (it would make sense for Crackridge at least, since Tera seems to be connected to the Kal people, and Arcanette could have had Petrichor try to kill Tera before ordering the slaughter of the Kal people, since Tera would have been unable to defend them).

Anyhow this is all just unorganized rambling now, and I may be going absolutely nowhere with all this, but I wanted to get my thoughts written down bc I dunno if we'll ever get an official timeline to clear up at least a few things about Solistia's history.