[ChicletPrime]

and now for the myth i've been saving for weeks and weeks and weeks.  lets see what a whole bunch of sand can provide for lore and maybe the odd breathless moment.

His journey through the golden sands is like the God of the Sea walking through the waves.

• okay, that is one hell of a background card. sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way to get a screenshot of it by itself.
  
• oh WOW, we're on Philos?! niiice. i was not expecting that at all. 
  
• okay, i am ONE PARAGRAPH in on the FIRST chapter and... 'her heart, pure and flawless... protects Philos forevermore, granting immortality to its denizens."
  
• well, okay, i just can just stop playing this entire game now, mystery solved! 
  
• mystery not the hell solved, what the hell.
  
• also, i am noble AND princess. fear my little velvet slippers. but also apparently trapped in the palace?
  
• apparently i am a conniving princess and wish to leave my palace. i am guessing this was not an eternal vow i made to stay put and go nowhere if i'm already trying to climb over the wall with some knotted bedsheets... excuse me, 'maid costume'. 
  
• my ninety-ninth attempt! go, me! perseverance is underrated - shades of Hades: The Game. (I should go back and play Hades again)
  
• sadly i make it nearly nowhere. awww.  and i fell into the water for my ill executed boat escape plan.
  
• i am being dragged under by sudden seaweed. i am afraid but.. not? power surges forth, embracing me.
  
• "Order them to leave. Say nothing of there being another person. Nod if you understand."
  
• I KNOW THAT VOICE. hiiii, beloved.  but apparently in this place, you are not to be known? i don't know you yet? 
  
• my name is Natasha. which is oddly close to my avatar's name of "Nieves".  oh no, wait. that's my 'maid costume' name. what's my princess name, i wonder. /taps finger to cheek as if this is a real conundrum
  
• also, the backdrop on this of the palace is really, really beautiful. its giving off a bunch of "Venice" which is strange for a city in the middle of golden sand, but fantasy is meant to be fantastic. i watched Dune; i wonder how many people are dying of thirst in the city so that the princess can sit on a flower boat on a little palace lake.
  
• oh, crap. the city has been infiltrated, nobles are dead and .. hang on. what?
  
• okay, so i drag myself to the edge of the "lake", the guards have rushed off to deal with the insurrection (??), i've made my excuses to another servant that i'm just looking for the princess' lost bracelet... if they didn't know i was the princess, why did they shoot my boat and bring it back to "shore". come to think of it, why was i trying to escape on a boat on a water that is bounded by walls? 
  
• ColdSaturn-laoshi, this better start making sense soon or my inner gyroscope of logic is going to spiiiin
  
• i haul my dripping self up, somebody else hauls their dripping self up... hel-lo, Rafayel! you look.. fucking fantastic. love your earring.
  
• oh, he's wounded. the arrows got him? 
  
• "Do not touch me." oh MAN, are we doomed to always be starting with that? but okay. fair. are you part of the insurrectionists, infiltrating the palace to 1) release the princess from her cage or 2) slay the princess in her cage
  
• "I'll keep my mouth shut if you'll help me!" here we go, one hundredth escape attempt plan! i have a feeling this one is going to work. "Take me with you!" you handsome stranger in a black mask whom i've just met.  i must really be desperate. 
  

[ChicletPrime]

• again, absolutely stellar backdrop of a city market lane. its seeing stuff like this that makes me go crosseyed when they re-use backgrounds willy nilly where they don't actually make sense. hire three more background artists! you can afford them, every time somebody talks, there should be a new angle.
  
• well, i am OUT.  and i have no idea what i'm doing. if Rafayel just wanders off and leaves me here, am going to be ex-princess in no time flat. royalty-pancake.
  
• oh sweet... he won't even tell us his name because it irrelevant to the situation as we're not going to be acquainted long.
  
• HE WISHES
  
• he's my second-most important person, of course he must tell me his name (second most? what, we only know one other person? although.. that almost makes sense in a rather terrifying sort of way). my most cherished wish granting spirit.
  
• "Well, you appeared from the water. Perchance you are like the God of the Sea."
  
• /coughs up rum. mayyyybe, princess! maybe! 
  
• Hello, Rafayel. excuse me, Lord Ra'el. my gosh, am i naive or what. hopefully i'm of actual age here but she's got the personality of a sunny twelve year old. a pampered, spoiled little twelve year old with no money.
  
• Rafayel does have the patience of a god. i have to be a child, this is wild. 
  
• random worldbuilding: spirit lamps are implied to light when somebody dies.
  
• also, another mention of "gods".
  
• ah, i'm very lonely. nobody wants me for me, just for my heart and what it grants to everyone else.
  
• "If a god does exist, he should claim the heart himself!"
  
• /spit up more drink
  
• jesus lord, this game. some of these themes are railroad spikes
  
• ew, City Guard.  well, at least i got a whole lot farther this time. i even ate some gerbils.
  
• woooo! Rafayel grabs me and RUNS! 
  
• we hide. i love hiding. but oh man, his arrow wound still has a piece of arrow in it.  and there's a much closer shot of his earring, which has detailing matching the decorations on his belt.  that is absolutely gorgeous.
  
• owww. de-arrow-ectomy it is. i guess my heart is good for granting immortality but not wound healing. 
  
• ...where did we get medicine? 
  
• never mind, he turned to the side and he's got little black hoop earrings all up his ear. wound schmound. also some sort of flat ring on his right middle finger, if that has anything to do with anything which it probably doesn't.
  
• oops! i think the maid costume finally wore out its paltry disguise. how he didn't clue in when i dragged him all over First Street trying to get him to buy me everything, i don't know.
  
• "I am not the daughter of the Philos royal family. I am no one's child. I am a person who awoke from the depths of the planet."
  
• what the ... hell indeed.
  
• uh. okay. wut?
  
• i am.. the heart of Philos, not Xavier, which, okay, fair, that was reach and i knew it. my existence grants immortality. but then how does the forest / forest pool eat life if i am the life-giver?  alternate non-overlapping timelines? 
  
• "I always believed my existence and my heart were separate." and i guess they would be, if by "heart" we are really meaning "aether core". and possibly one of, or the strongest. that would certainly require a very special person to be able to withstand it.
  
• i... want to go to the sea.
  
• /oh maaan. of course i do.
  
• Rafayel, musing: "How many years? No one said they wanted to visit the sea since."  SINCE WHAT?  "Your Highness will see it in the future."  I WILL? how much future are we talking here? days? weeks? ten thousand years? asking for a friend. "I am in your highness' debt once more." SINCE WHEN?
  
• i awkwardly ask if he will come back to visit me in the palace, because i am terrible at asking for things that i want, probably because what i want will never be granted me, and "Am I not in Your Highness' memory at all?" 
• /popcorn
  
• "The little fish I gave. Is it well?"
  
• /clutches heart and dies a little. well, a lot. THE LITTLE FISH.
  
• there is honestly so much around and around and around of the things they do over and over and over again that its so fucking delightful to run across it again.
  
• Rafayel return to the alley and "Elder Amund" stands in a corner, waiting. I have heard the name "Elder Amund" before and not in this context / story.  i.. cannot remember, but its very familiar. I am guessing I was returned to the City Guard? 
  
• Amund: "I saw what happened. Was it her?"   "Yes."  oh beloved, you don't sound happy about it at all.  "Why did your Quintessence not do it?"   fuck, that was it. Amund was in the God of Tides storyline. good gravy, all the way from then to Philos?!  "The time is yet to come."  well, i AM only twelve. 
  
• "Your Quintessence is not one to hesitate."  excuse me. Rayafel is amazing at procrastination, how do you not know this after so unimaginably long? "Rafayel, she is no longer that girl. Your Quintessence is no longer God of the Sea either!"
  
• oh fuckity fuck, REALLY? hard to be a God of something that doesn't exist I guess, but I kind of get the impression he's not busted back to regular mortal either. Your Quintessence indeed. 
  
• Amund: "The fire is about to fade... how much time is left? Lemuria's final hope is within our reach." 
  
• i am So Confused and So Intrigued. this is just bombshell after confusing bombshell after watch the other two myths.
  
• oops. fireboy is fire. but.. wrong? "the fire is completely black, its center only carrying a bit of color."
  
• /covers face with one hand
  
• Zayne's ice is shot with black. what the everlovin' storyline is going on here?
  
• "Her powers still slumber. She is unaware of her true self. Acting now would only scare the nobles."
  
• do we... do we care if the nobles are scared? and what the hell ARE my powers if i'm asleep at the wheel apparently and have been through every reincarnation cycle for however long its been.
  
• "Don't forget, we require a complete Sea God's heart. It must also be offered willingly." 
  
• i am being played. 
  
• /claps enthusiastically. that was one HELL of a chapter!
  

[Coldsaturn]

AKSJDHLASJDLAKSDJK I didn't realize there was a new thread in this section!
Abysswalker <3333

- 'her heart, pure and flawless... protects Philos forevermore, granting immortality to its denizens."
Needless to say, this is fucking important. She is the one making people immortal on Philos thanks to her heart. This isn't necessarily the same Philos timeline where Xavier also lives. It could be a parallel Philos, or it could be the same Philos but another point in time. What's for sure is that if it's Philos we're probably in the future now.
(I say probably because we could also be looking at Philos before it died and gets discovered by Earth through the deepspace tunnel)

- if they didn't know i was the princess, why did they shoot my boat and bring it back to "shore"
I imagine because at first they thought it was the princess, then they looked better and realized it was the maid. Except it was really the princess lol

- Rafayel! you look.. fucking fantastic.
Abysswalker, you'll always be famous. Absolutely iconic outfit.

- second most? what, we only know one other person?
Or no matter how many people she's met in her life, there's only 1 that is the most important, and now this charming stranger climbed all the way up to position #2

- how does the forest / forest pool eat life if i am the life-giver?
Maybe when Xavier and MC are alive in Philos MC hasn't been given to the planet to eat yet. Or maybe she is already the heart of the planet but doesn't know she is.

- there is honestly so much around and around and around of the things they do over and over and over again that its so fucking delightful to run across it again.
Right before it starts getting heartbreaking as fuck

- "the fire is completely black, its center only carrying a bit of color."
In this case the black isn't carrying a particular hidden meaning that we know of as of now, just that it's not the bright red we've learned to associate with Raf. It has no warmth and no color.

- what the hell ARE my powers
Put a pin on this question!


After playing Submerged Eclipse, try to catch if Rafayel now actually knows and remembers MC from the past timelines or if he's clueless just like Sea God Raf was until he awakened his powers.

[ChicletPrime]

• i am back in the hateful palace and no, i don't care what dress you put me in. whatever. its only my coming of age (which makes this reader immediately think of important dates of auspice and sacrificial knives)
  
• oh, the little blue fish is REAL. in a fishbowl even. that's.. new. but i don't remember who gave it to me. ah, it was a previous birthday gift, littered among all the rest, given by a young Lemurian noble, eyes cold yet beautiful. 
  
• yeah that describes our boy pretty well.
  
•  so our princess has read up on the fables of the lost Lemuria, that there was a God of the Sea, they were blessed with beauty, to create beauty, pearls and wonderous voice, blood that could resurrect the dead. once tamed (niiice choice of words) they were the most loyal, powerful servants, even should it cost them their lives.
  
• "as a symbol of luxury, nobles did everything to acquire a Lemurian. to raise an exotic plaything was to flaunt one's wealth and status.'  oh. yeah. for sure. lets all just invite the tiger to lounge on the living room carpet.
  
• oh NO. fucking no way. was the gift not the fish,  but RAFAYEL? a Lemurian boy for the everlasting princess.
  
• the boy won't talk, even when taken to the palace lake.
  
• 'oh, i heard Lemurians can charm anyone with a song. did they cut your tongue?"
  
• . . . 
  
•  go us! we took off his chains! run little lemurian, run! swim. whatever!
  
• okay, that explains why we wanted to escape on the boat. the lake connects to underground rivers that lead... somewhere. more rivers, i guess. maybe there's still a sea somewhere, and the Deep. 
  
• oh. oh, i can't come with you. you, they'll not miss until I tell them to miss you but me? we'll both be right back here.
  
•  /thinking.  was Older Rafayel in the palace lake again having swum back through the river system, only this time he slaughtered a few nobles on the way to find me again? or was he doing something else and i just happened to turn up at the wrong time? he did tell Amund it was too early yet.
  
• aww, the vow of the sea in the form of a little blue fish. 
  
• i am being warned by my ever loyal, possibly closest jailor in the form of maid Natasha that many Lemurians have "snuck" into the city recently and it would be dangerous to approach "him". 
  
• "Aren't Lemurians easy to tame?"   i am SUCH A PRINCESS. 
  
• oops. suspicious arrow on the balcony. away with you, maid Natasha! I must.. nap, or something.
  
• there's a note on the arrow's fletching! with a "fishtail-esque" item attached. awww. "Three days. Dusk." 
  
• oh boy oh boy oh boy escape attempt #101 in the offing! i hope i have something other than party dresses to sneak out with. hang on. when was my coming of age ceremony again? today? four days from now? 
  
• i am a terrible liar. always have been. always will be.
  
• its three days from now. of COURSE.  can i pretend to be bedridden, is the real question here.
  

[ChicletPrime]

i am trying to put this together in my head and its a jigsaw all right.

-- Philos has to be Earth, not another planet that just happened to be colonized after Earth died. If the Lemurians are here, along with myths and legends about them (The Deep, the God of the Sea, pearl tears, etc) then this is Earth, even if they're now calling it Philos.

-- this is just my brain spining, but are we sure Philos is in the future, not the past? There's just something about that thought that is really nagging at me.

-- Rafayel might remember God of the Tides ("The fire is about to fade... how much time is left? Lemuria's final hope is within our reach."), and therefore should also remember City of Mirrors (Tears of Romirro). Amund deliberately reminds Rafayel "Your Quintessence is no longer God of the Sea," and there's no reason to say that way if neither of them have any 'past' memories. Unless of course we've had a complete reset of Lemuria and its playing out its destruction one more (countless) time in the loop.

-- /stares at the ceiling

-- re/Philos and Xavier -- maybe the girlfriend in the forest timeline was wandering around with a fragment of the aether core, and it wanted itself to be whole again, so it killed her to bring the shard back to the planet.

[Coldsaturn]

- was the gift not the fish, but RAFAYEL?
They went all out with the slavery trope in Abysswalker
Which is an interesting 180 from Forgotten Sea where sirens were free to eat a human or two if they wanted

- Philos has to be Earth
That's what I believe as well. It would mean that at a certain point the Earth's core will die, and it will be revived artificially, thus birthing Philos.
That we see it through the Deepspace Tunnel can be explained by the fact that the tunnel lets us look through time, which is also tied to space since everything in the universe spins and moves. So we might have seen the Earth but in a dead state.
The alternative is, of course, that Philos is an alternate universe Earth, and the fact that we have the Lemurians along with myths and legends about them is explained by the fact that it's a parallel timeline.

- are we sure Philos is in the future, not the past?
That Philos is in the future is deduced by fans from the fact that Xavier comes from Philos, they count years starting from the birth of Philos (Xav is 200 something years from the birth of Philos), and Xav explicitly travels /back/ in time to reach us on Earth.
Now, whether Abysswalker's Philos is also in the future is a little less obvious. If you try to put it in a linear timeline, Raf will tell how long it's been since the seas have dried up, and that will go in direct conflict with Xav's chronological timeline. So Raf must be AFTER Xav. Or he could be from a very distant past of the planet, before it died (the dead planet we see in the tunnel) and then got revived as Earth 2.0. Or it could be an alternative timeline entirely.

As of now all the textual reference to Philos is always in the context of after-Earth.

By playing this myth you'll see a few other references that will help you put things in order. But the exact placement of Abysswalker in the timeline is a fan theory.

- and therefore should also remember City of Mirrors
Unless Romirro is a branch ending, while Main Story and Philos' Abysswalker are another.
Also, Sea God Raf lost basically 99% of his memories because of how much time passed. He felt the bond with MC but didn't remember /who/ she was, longed for Lemuria but he seems to not know what happened to it (since its fall is directly related to the ceremony, MC, and what happens after it, all things he doesn't remember), but he still immediately recognized the authority of the Tome. Only after interacting with the Tome and going the trial in the tomb did he remember who MC was, and it was only after Hawkern's potion that he fully remembered who sealed him away (which proves that he can recover certain past memories and not more recent ones).
Abysswalker might be in the same position. He has all the memories from his current life, knows he has a bond and a bride, longs for Lemuria, recognizes the authority of the Tome, has an elder Lemurian guiding him, but he could be missing vital info about everything else.

- MC's heart
you said, and I quote, "that would certainly require a very special person to be able to withstand it."
Maybe her mortal body is a little too much for the heart it contains, so it's destined to slowly consume her. Even present MC isn't all fine, since she suffers from Protocore syndrome.

[ChicletPrime]

The whole thing's a fucking ouroboros loop, eating its own tail.

Earth lives until its core dies, an artificial core is created and Philos is born, only to break apart into pieces, then Philos dies and...then Traceback returns to try again on Earth of the past?

When time ceased to be a limitation
Philos civilization was unable to escape its inevitable decay
Strife raged tirelessly across the land
And the regime could only cling to life by relying on the secret weapon

My favorite of all my theories so far is that the combination of Caleb and the girlfriend made the Deepspace Tunnel somehow. What if, in the Fallen Cosmos trailer, that's what we're seeing? They appear to suicide-pact as Philos is struggling to stay alive/using them as living weapons - maybe they resonated so hard trying to escape, they made a path to where they could be together again.

I don't know! Between past / present / future and alternates of all of them, split between somewhat conflicting storylines from all five boyfriends. its like that one gif of the sun and all its spiraling planets.

Like this sucker:



I had this thought while I was walking in to work this morning - if the girlfriend is the heart of Philos, and her avatar/incarnation is what grants longevity to the people around her because of the aether core (fragment?) she carries (not yet awakened / not yet whole) -- what if the boyfriends are other aspects of that core and they're all struggling to come together into harmony again / be whole again? 

Something like "Voltron! Assemble!" 

It also could be that since the boyfriend storylines are mostly parallel to each other (although there is crossover in the present, yes) there is "The Core" and then there is the fragment in the heart of the girlfriend and another fragment in the heart of the boyfriend? 

Okay, maybe that doesn't work because in Sylus' storyline, you get "the other half" of your aether core and now you don't have Protocore Syndrome anymore because its now stable.  But still! Maybe its a supercluster sort of thing - the boyfriends need to have their aether core complete so they can merge with yours - or vibrate together and make beautiful music or something. 

I'm overthinking it, I know.

EDIT: oh, other point i meant to mention -- Philos is in pieces and its difficult (or near impossible anyways) to travel between the segments. who's to say that Abyss walker and Xavier's forest don't exist at the exact same time, just on different parts of the planet, separated by literal distance and not time? there's no reason not to think that Philos' avatar couldn't spawn multiple fragments in different places, trying to attract its other, lost pieces back to itself.

[Coldsaturn]

- The whole thing's a fucking ouroboros loop
It could very well be! It would tie very neatly into the mythology and religious background it uses as reference (all things I'll love to send your way once you've cleared the main content)

- the combination of Caleb and the girlfriend made the Deepspace Tunnel somehow
That's also a theory I could easily buy into.

- what if the boyfriends are other aspects of that core
On one hand, I have to remind myself this is an otome and they're not trying to bring all the 5 LIs together at once, assuming that MC romances 1 as her Ultimate Soulmate, and all the others are dear friends. On the other I have to wonder why them specifically. The more content is revealed, the more it's clear that these dudes are not normal dudes, and there's a reason why them and only them end up tied to MC. So we could really end up with a Sailor Moon situation lol

- the boyfriends need to have their aether core complete
The problem is: only Sylus officially has an aether core inside himself

- separated by literal distance and not time?
Because Xav is 200 something years after the birth of Philos (in the anecdote where he meets MC for the first time she narrates "It was the Year 214. Two hundred and fourteen years have passed since Philos' birth. It also means 214 years have passed since Earth's demise."), whereas Abysswalker is 30000 years after the seas dried up on Philos. Unless two different parts of the planet count days in a completely different way (and have astronomically different geological situations), Abysswalker is in the distant future. Same way we can assume Caleb's limited myth is also in the distant future, because the technology and the political situation is so different compared to Xav's who is the closest to the foundation of the planet.

- there's no reason not to think that Philos' avatar couldn't spawn multiple fragments in different places, trying to attract its other, lost pieces back to itself.
This is entirely possible and most likely the reason for the multiverse we're in. MC is spawning simultaneously in different timelines. But we still don't know if Philos is trying to attract MC back into itself. We do know now that MC's heart can work as a battery (which is also what she was supposed to do as the follower of the Sea God, feed the flame).

[ChicletPrime]

i have no time to comment (leaving work in ten minutes) but City of Mirrors (i've decided to leave "Romirro" in the dust as a terrible english option) also gave "millions of years" at one point for a time line before referencing "tens of thousands of years" somewhere, so its all just a big ball of timey timey stuff.

maybe this is just Special Relativity with glitter on - your perspective of time depends on where you're standing to observe it.

[Coldsaturn]

The tens of thousands of years suddenly switching to millions was noticed by other fans as well and I'll check the Chinese direct translation as soon as it is available, because /that/ sounds like a slip up.
The numbers we're talking about in relation to Philos and Earth stay consistent.