2.7.16
on April 27, 2026
at 3:00 am
you will also get out of this formative memory without lasting emotional damage if you are truly my son
Aurora
A fantasy webcomic. Updates M-W-F.
you will also get out of this formative memory without lasting emotional damage if you are truly my son
Oh NOOOOOOO our BOOOOOOOOY!
I think I may hate Falst’s dad more than Erin’s dad now…
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: telling a toddler “you have always been weak”, while technically accurate, is still considered in parenting circles to be A Dick Move
Image source: weak
Tumblr text: flashbaaaaaaack yaaaaaaaay
well now i get why falst’s dad is a piece of work
I did not expect to get hit with the “you will find your way if you are truly my son” again today…
And wow, Falst’s dad sucks.
So much valuable theorizing material is being unearthed and/or vindicated right now, but that line. It stuck with me after I read it from the Tumblr, and here, it is absolutely crushing. What a thing to say to anyone, let alone a child, let alone a child who just lost their mother, who will now lose their father. Red has proven herself when it comes to grand tragedy, on the scale of gods and beings beyond comprehension, but this is almost worse. It’s a much more personal scale, but just as painful.
Is that paladin garb? I joked that if they’d just recruited Falst they’d probably have taken out Erin by this point, but maybe they had the opportunity and it’s their own dang fault.
The general halo of light surrounding Falst’s dad is giving Paladin as well. If so, they really missed the ultimate opportunity to fight the vessel of the Void Dragon.
Unfortunately, I do think that working with paladins, famously known for slaying cave-crawlers, was just a recipe for exposing Emira (the name on the tombstone) to cave-corruption.
Oh his dad suuuuuuucked
Emotional Damage! Fatality!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rQMSvqUj0nU
All jokes aside, poor kitty. đ
Right, who wants to join me and give this man an ass-kicking?
ill join
Count me in!
I’ll back you up
LETS GROW A TREE INSIDE HIS LUNGS!!!!
Sign me up!
100% on board, I shall bring my staff
Heâs going in the fâšcking well
Present and accounted for!
I’ll introduce him to the business end of a hammer.
I’ll be team healer.
You have my sword!
Letâs see, should I bring the wooden/slotted spoon, the cookie sheet, a belt, an olâ shoe/sandal, or my old softball bat?
And my bow!
I’m in!
Iâll bring my school bag, it should be heavy enough to clobber him into unconsciousness
I’ll try to keep him restrained for you
And then Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White and Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s black knight and Benito Mussolini and the Blue Meanie and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk and Darth Vader, Lo Pan, Superman, and every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan all came out of nowhere lightning fast and they kicked Falst’s Dad in his leonine ass
I’ll bring the camera, we’ll want to memorialize this ass-kicking
… it’ll be the ultimate showdown for ultimate destiny!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE
You shall have my mace
Falst I think your dad might suck
OH damn! I was not expecting Falst to have a Hohenheim moment?! I thought his dad was just generically shit!
Also…what quest was Falstenheim going off on? I wonder if it’s related to how Falst was able to channel the Light magic in the caves?
Either way, Falst, buddy, we need you to lock in. Nothing bad will happen from just suppressing it.
“Falstenheim” is now my name for him until Red drops his actual name. But yeah, “If I take you with me, you’ll be the reason I fail”? Fail WHAT? And what does he mean by “wasted years”? Does he consider his time with Emira a waste now that she’s dead? I have so many questions, and the whole floof squad need to jump this guy the moment he shows up!
I hope this guy gets void-gooped
can we kill falsts dad he sucks
Okay, we are adding Falst’s dad to the list of people who need to get punched.
I KNEW IT ! I KNEW HIS DAD WAS A PALADIN
MAN WHAT THE HELL IS THIS GUY’S DEAL!!! also the runes we’ve been seeing flash in Falst’s head is the GRAVE STONE? which is insane. And this is the things Falst was hearing when he got hit with Shrike’s smoke bomb… I reiterate, what is this guy’s DEAL why does he write in Ancient Runes, and what is his stupid mission he had to leave Falst for???? I’m gonna kill him regardless.
For those who want to see the scene where Falst is hit by the smoke bomb, here is the page, it’s in the first panel https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-1/
Oh holy crap now I can see the surrounding text says “FIND YOUR WAY IF YOU ARE TRULY MY SON”
Also on 1.21.38 we see the gravestone itself for the first time, pretty much the exact same shot as panel 5 on this page.
OUCH. Ouchie ouch.
…I kind of want to pick apart the “what” in “what you require”, and “we” in “we were foolish” and amount of “years”, and “fail” because fail WHAT exactly, and then I would like to do that while using that man as a bit of a relaxing kick toy…
But I’m content with just keep up reading the comic, too!
Ok at this point the good to at least decent parents representation is all riding on Dainix.
To be fair, Alinua’s adoptive family was probably fine. Same with Tess’s biological family.
Tess was sold as a slave to Erin’s father. That makes for the possibility that her parents sold her. While Erin’s dad is very punchable, Erin’s mom apparently was a good mother and Tess considers her to be her mom.
I think it far more likely that Tess was abducted by slavers as a child, perhaps picked off while she wandered outside to play, and that her biological family is actually pretty great. In that scene with Alinua (“will you let me share my home with you?”) Tess talked about Ironhill being a welcoming place, and there was a memory panel of metalcaste folks greeting her with happiness, tears, and hugs. That being said, I’ll acknowledge anything’s possible.
From several tumblr posts, Red has said that Metal-caste families are extremely protective of their unsparked children. The children are always kept indoors and underground, so she must have been kidnapped.
Hey, Vash might be an absent dad, but it’s not by choice and he clearly cares about his kid.
I feel like he’d [i]want[/i] to object to being called Kendal’s Dad, and then just [i]be unable to.[/i]
Falst Sr.: Sorry son, but the job description clearly says “looking for 3-6 year old with 10 years of experience”. Try again in a few years; maybe an unpaid internship post will come up.
Ancient language on the gravestone, light-coloured robes, blinding white Light halo hovering above; I feel my grand “Falst’s dad is a Paladin” theory from 1-22-37 has been vindicated. And all it cost was Falst’s emotional turmoil.
I acknowledge the level of grief Falst Sr. must have felt over his wife turning into a monster, and him having to kill her, but that’s no excuse for abandoning a child; looks like it’s a two horse race between him and Galen for Aurora’s worst parent. I’m still playing devil’s advocate for Alinua’s parents since we don’t know the full details of her being thrown off the Archipelago Nimbus.
Falst Sr.’s lines are interesting. “Strength is needed for what must be done” and “If I take you with me, you will be the reason I fail”; it sounds like he was on a mission for the Paladins. If Emira was part of this mission too, either as a fellow Paladin or married to one, it may be how she got exposed to cave corruption.
What could be this mission Falst Sr. was on? Did they try to strike some kind of work-life balance by bringing Falst along with them? Where exactly is this flashback taking place? That halo looks like the only light source, so a cave? Maybe THE caves?
Oh, here I am theorising while Falst is crying. No doubt his father’s talk about not being strong enough is playing into how powerless he feels right now; the thought of potentially losing another person(s) very close to him probably isn’t far from his mind either. He needs this moment of alone time to let out his anguish, something I’m sure Dainix would understand, maybe even encourage.
At what point do we need an assholes with a beard counter
Okay, I think that means he’s definitely a Paladin, that’s very interesting. I’ve been thinking Falst might have end up having a revelation of a sort and, “my dad was a Paladin and I can use Light” would definitely work
Well, this certainly reframes some of Falst’s behaviours and general attitudes⊠I initially assumed his “I’m not as strong as my teammates” angst was garden variety imposter syndrome, but it turned out to be unprocessed childhood trauma! Fun!
It explains why Falst is very reluctant to accept help â he hates feeling like a burden. He constantly feels the need to prove himself, prove that he can be useful, that he can carry his own weight. This is why he keeps trying to pull off absurd feats of heroism, like running of the mountain prison in the hopes of rescuing Kendal. Falst likes to project an image of self-reliance, but secretly he’s deeply insecure. I find it interesting that he seems fine with risking his life for others when directed to (see the volcano heist), but when other people actually look to him for advice, treating him as an authority, he panics.
Falst has internalised the belief that he is weak, and that his weakness will get others hurt. He probably blames himself for his mother’s death â sure, his father may have tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but actions speak louder than words.
(I need to reread the whole comic to see just how much stuff can be reframed by this moment)
I think it’s also a matter of ability: Falst has no magic (at least that’s what he thought, that’s changing due to his Paladin powers awakening) while literally everyone else on the team has some metaphysical ability. To him, as the team member with the least utility in combat or otherwise (Kendal and Tess seem to both be able to match his physical prowess) his only use is to take hits that the squishy members without built-in healing factors can’t take. I do think that’s why he’s breaking down now: he’s too limited to break himself and the team out of the corner they’ve been backed in to, too limited to protect Dainix and Erin from risking going underwater, too limited to stop Caliban from sending Kendal to fight a god wounded. It’s too familiar for him to have to sit and watch people he cares about get hurt. He can justify his inability to stop his mom from turning at least logically: he was a child and had no way to stop an illness even now (I’m sure he still has some sort of guilt from it, especially with the way his father pressed this idea of weakness on him on this page), but now he’s tough, hardened and trained by years of living alone and surviving everything the wilderness had to throw at him, and he still can’t do anything when it matters.
OH. Okay so we’re getting more backstory hints here. Namely: Falst’s dad is an asshole. Holy crap. What a thing to say to anyone, let alone a grieving child. He’s also almost definitely associated with the paladins, judging from the pale garb, bright white backlight, and timing of this flashback.
I FUCKING KNEW IT i fucking knew it he’s a paladin and he’s evil I fucking KNEW IT I love being right
Falst’s dad is a paladin!! Now, the burning question: is Falst AWARE of that, and is it a relevant fact to his current crashout?
ok so now at least part of my crack theory is right and he’s a paladin I have to wonder- why didn’t he recognize cave corruption if he’s a paladin? Why did he “leave to find medicine” if he knew it was cave corruption and therefore knew it couldn’t be healed?
one option is the paladins have some way of healing cave corruption that no one else can access, which would be interesting but seems odd they would keep it a secret if they really want to stop the Void Dragon influence from spreading.
the other option, which is my personal theory because it’s way more fucked up, is that he DID know it was cave corruption and left Falst alone with her on purpose as some sort of test. bonus points if he also got her cave corrupted on purpose for that reason. I don’t think this page is direct evidence of this theory, but it does give me more confidence in Falst’s dad being the kind of person who’d do something like that.
anyway. this is much bigger of a reveal than I was expecting to get today. I figured he’d abandoned Falst at some point, but I wasn’t confident it would be so soon after his mom died, i didn’t anticipate the villain monologue, and I CERTAINLY didn’t expect that reveal right now. i hope this means we’re gonna meet Falst’s dad soon in the regular timeline, and i hope he gets his shit kicked in when we do. anyone telling a grieving and traumatized toddler that he’s a failure who deserves to be abandoned needs to get their shit kicked in immediately, even if I’m wrong and he’s not an evil mastermind.
It could be that at the time he was a rather inexperienced paladin, and just didn’t know to recognize cave corruption, or the early symptoms may be similar to some ordinary disease.
Wait hang on. We know cave corruption can be cured using void magic, and some time ago Erin figured out light and void are the same thing or at least two sides of the same coin. Maybe that was the cure Falst senior was looking for?
Cave-corruption can be caused by severe illness so it’s just as likely than it wasn’t cave-corruption when he left and became as such while he was gone. Especially since the way Falst phrased it when explaining to Dainix made it sound like his dad was gone for at least a week, probably several.
I don’t think Falst actually knew why his dad left. “He left to go find medicine or healers or something.” It doesn’t sound very certain, and with our knowledge about cave corruption, which Falst probably didn’t/doesn’t have, it doesn’t make any sense. I think it’s more likely he was gone to do something else, we’re yet to see what.
listen, if Falst’s asshole dad doesn’t want him i’ll take him, show me the adoption papers
I think youâll have to fight almost every single person in the fandom for that opportunity, lol
*opens bilewater theme in new tab*
Oh and also I found the PERFECT Collector theme:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=beMqdpzmaa4&pp=0gcJCdQKAYcqIYzv
Distorted choir? Funeral march for phase 2? Itâs very fitting.
Oh and also I found the PERFECT Collector theme:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=beMqdpzmaa4&pp=0gcJCdQKAYcqIYzv
Distorted choir? Funeral march for phase 2? Itâs very fitting.
I found a really good Collector theme:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=beMqdpzmaa4&pp=0gcJCdQKAYcqIYzv
Dang it it posted multiple times. Never thought it would happen to me but here we are I guess.
Aurora Question #61: wooo been a while. Who do you think so far is the worst parental figure in Aurora?
I’ll say the Void Dragon is a pretty bad parent. Dunno if he’s worse than the mortal ones, but creating two beings with the express purpose of using their talents to break out of your cage, destroy everything they created, and leave them to the cold void of space for all eternity (should they survive) is pretty bad. Plus he’s an ass to them.
Alright, I *need* to write this.
The how-not-to-be-a-dick version:
“Strength is needed for what must be done, and you are too young to have found your strength yet.”
“I do not know how to guide you on your path, so you must find it on your own. I am sorry that I have failed you in this.”
“You are not the reason she died, but if I take you with me, I will fail in my mission, for I do not have the strength to protect us both.”
“You are my son, and in time, you will find your way. You will find your strength, and hopefully, become stronger than I am. Strong enough to not fail the way that I have.”
There; positively phrased motivation, a goal, admit to not being perfect, etc. The key information is still there, and the core message is very similar, but it is much nicer, and much less traumatic for a child. Also, less likely to have the child angrily reject some part of what you have taught him, because of spite.
WAIT! Evil Tree pointed out there are runes on the gravestone. SOMEONE TRANSLATE THEM!
Please
I think it’s the name of Falsts’ mom.
It says “Emira”, and yes, that’s her name.
Poor falst. T-T also my favorite catboys seem to all have these things in common: Losing most of their family members to bad diseases and be left with below average caretakers.
….Ok, you know he sorta looks like Stefan here. Same mane-like beard and hair combo. But I don’t think Stefan is
1) a Ferin
2) this much of an asshole.
Still, if Falst gets a look at the Paladin’s commander, that might trigger some additional rage.
What is upwith his dad’s hand?
Claws. He’s a ferin.
Poor falst T-T.also my favorite catboys seem to all have these things in common: Losing most of their family members to bad diseases and be left with below average caretakers.
Us? Foolish of us? He and his wife, Falst’s mother? Or are we talking about a different “us”? How much does Falst know about the Paladins via his father?
HE’S JUST A BABY!!!
You know, Falst’s dad appears to have a much floofier tail. Is that because Falst is half-human? Or is it possible that he was adopted because his mom insisted? That would explain the “foolish to think otherwise” comment.
Pretty sure it’s because he’s older, hence the thicker mane as well. Ferin breed true, meaning if one parent is a ferin, the child will always be a ferin. There are no half-ferin.
Yes, Falstâs Dad is very Dropkickable, but at least he didnât blame Falst for what happened to his mama (guess someone gets the âNot As Big Of A Jerk As You Could Have Beenâ Award).
Also, you KNOW buddyâs gonna have an OP power-up sequence. Can only imagine how many bricks the Paladins are gonna crap when they realize The Elemental Magus has a âVessel of Lightâ on his side, lmfao
That is fucking BRUTAL.
wh-atttt (omg what the fuck asjkfhd)
Hey guys? So, when Falst was in the zombie dungeon, the scanners thought he was an ancient, right? I’d assumed that a ferin’s modified soul is woven so dense that a scanner that discerns ancients – notoriously magic-immune because of a dense soul weave – from not-ancients – beings with loosely-woven souls – just lumped him in with them. And it’s hard to tell how tall Falst’s dad is in absolute terms, particularly because of forced perspective in panel 3. But… we know ancient blood ended up mixed with human blood in some places, and we know that at least one ancient touched by draconic magic lived way, way longer than she should have. Could Falst’s dad have been part ancient? Could it be more than a small part?