Ah, yes, the classic “Good guy has to fight another good guy because someone on their party is a danger to society” trope. I do have to wonder if this guy’s magic is considered to be of some element or not.
Remember though, Erin said that Emissaries don’t actually talk to their gods like Kendal does, it’s more like they put ideas and commands in their heads, there isn’t a back and forth.
I’ll pitch a vote that he’s an Avatar for another Primordial, probably air. It makes sense with his eyes and the sheer amount of power he has. Regular gods like Vash and that Lake Goddess are area specific, and they can’t really choose avatars outside of whatever bodies they’ve made. Kendal is quite the anomaly here, and given that the Minor God community is pretty tight knit, and that they’ve never head of this happening before outside Vash, and don’t seem to have any contact with the primordials, I think it’s safe to say this guy is talking to someone of the same power range as Walter/VD and the other primordials.
As for the other Paladins, it seems like this guy has the most power in their ranks, i doubt they’re also hosting primordials or other gods.
“Chosen an avatar” my ass. More like “desperately grabbed the first sucker that came along” and that’s working out terribly for him so far. Runs into the Life avatar and one of the few people that can shrug off his disintegration effects almost immediately, then nearly gets his whole plan derailed for good when his host decides to make a suicide-by-cave-monster play. Poor Walter.
Wow all this really does suck for Walter. Imagine you get out of prison and the first people you meet are that guy you tried to kill that one time and the traumatized superhuman she’s traveling with
That assumes that this one Emissary can fight Erin, VD, Vash, and Alinua at the same time. He’s good, Chosen of a yet unnamed Deity good, I don’t know that he’s that good.
…..but as a Dawnblade main I’m kinda rooting for him.
I just hope this guys plan is not ‘kill Walter’s Avatar’ and instead ‘find a way to rip this leech sucker Dragon off of him’.
I’d rather we work on a constructive solution here guys, that’s all i’m saying.
(Also, just a writer geeking out here, what a freaking awesome way to introduce a character! in mere pages we know so much about him and the fact that he a) is a generally kind and dorky person, and b) does his duty to protect people)
Ok, half the comics already made this assumption, but I have a feeling that the wind/air primordial is ahead of the game and has already got him/herself an avatar (champion). The Paladins are probably our power trio. And I also don’t think that this “Champion” guy is going to attack Erin or anything, because his entire introduction was him being all “look at this poor dead soul it didn’t deserve this” to a cave-crawler, which makes it seem that he’ll be understanding toward Erin.
I can see him being hostile to Erin if he assumes that Erin is willingly partnering with The Void Dragon, just like he seems to a have a pretty healthy possession arrangement with the Blue Goddess.
Or at least he could make that assumption before Erin regains control, freaks out, and makes the situation clear.
Honestly I’d prefer that. And from this patrons wording I’d say they are heading in that direction, they know it was a trap, but i don’t know if they can see any other option beyond killing them.
Okay, theory time. The Champion seems like he is to Light-Eyes (who we now know is feminine) what Erin is to the Void Dragon – an avatar or vessel of choice. Light-Eyes is definitely ancient and most likely the Void Dragon’s Other, equal and opposite to him.
As for the Paladins, they seem to be an organization affiliated with or connected to Light-Eyes, perhaps her/their lower-rank emissaries.
The Other seems to be a lot nicer to her avatar than the Void Dragon is to his; she even lets him retain control of his body and brain while using what I assume to be her power
While I do really love this story, I do have a complaint about it at this point: it seems to be pulling the classic fantasy move of ‘Light is unilaterally good, Darkness is unilaterally bad’, which… even if any author who uses it doesn’t tie it with racial coding (I don’t think Red is coding), it’s still heavily overused to the point of cliche.
Of course, things could change down the line; it seems a couple of y’all have already suggested that this Champion dude might be an antagonist, as he relentlessly hunts down Erin to kill him. It’s just, at this point, it’s not entirely clear, so it still looks like a ‘Light good Dark bad’ situation.
P.S. This is one reason why I like Hollow Knight so much; it presents light and darkness as equals and opposites, as when one gets too powerful and manipulative, the other must match its power to stop it before both fade back to a manageable state. That’s a breath of fresh air from all the ‘Light good Dark bad’ media that modern fiction cultivates
P.P.S. I’m not trying to be edgy or anything; I think that both light and darkness hold merit, so seeing one be repeatedly and wholly presented as good and the other as evil gets kind of annoying after a while
I’ll be honest, maybe it’s just the media I tend to hover around, but the subverting Light Good, Dark Bad has happened enough that playing it straight is subverting the expectation.
I guess I could just say “Look up TVTropes’ Light Is Not Good” page, but for specifics, I’ll list Order of the Stick’s prequel paladins, since we have the self-righteous prick from the prequel book that wanted to massacre concert attending orcs for no other reason than alignment issues and the Sapphire Guard who would go around massacring innocent goblins to try and hunt down the Crimson Mantle, and Miko Miyazaki. Then there’s Kore from the Goblins webcomic, who would massacre innocent people just for being exposed to evil creatures and horribly tortures Chief.
I’m just annoyed at the idea that “Lawful Good” often gets presented as “Murderous, intolerant, genocidal, xenophobic zealot”.
While I like to stay in the warmth and safety of the Light-Good/Dark-Bad (or at least Light is Good/ Who knows what’s going on with Dark) camp, I do find it interesting when that’s subverted.
I was wondering, what’s your opinion on Tolkien’s Light-Good-Dark-Bad mythos? Does he do a good job of justifying it with the Hungry Void trope (that’s a trope, right?) and with my first-namesake creating the stars so that the Children of Illuvatar would have something to see by before they got some brighter celestial bodies?
Silmarillion material, but still.
Well, when I was still in school, (I’m homeschool now) This book caught my eye, and, as crazy as it seems, it was about…cats. I know, it sounds stupid, but when I looked more into it, it turns out there are like 83 more books in the series. They are very interesting, like I stayed up at night for hours reading the books that I downloaded on my phone and stuff. They are called Warriors, and its about these cats that live in the wild but their divided in clans. (ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, ShadowClan) and they worship this Starclan which is where all the dead cats go and….WHATEVER. The whole point is I only managed to get through 18 books and I quit them cause they were kind of very diabolical for my taste, yet I enjoyed the series a lot. And I began doing my original characters and stuff, and the important thing here is that the cats had really cool names. Examples: Dustclaw, Sandstorm, Fireheart, Silverstream, Mistyfoot, Crookedjaw, Dovewing, Ivypool, Squirrelflight, etc. So I invented this name, because the national tree of my country is the pine and I liked the suffix -wing, hence; Pinewing.
Sorry for this very long explanation. Anyways, I just wanted to clear my name.
@TheUnknownGame It’s been so long, eh? We must be a pair of young whippersnappers to you. 🙂
But who am I to talk. I started feeling nostalgic for Morrowind (a game older than me) as soon as I started playing it.
@Pinewing That sounds a lot like a series I read, Redwall. Anthropomorphized animals, 20 books, the whole thing. And Wings of Fire as well.
That’s a really cool name source, I hope I’m not changing it too drastically when I say “Aile de Pin”. 🙂
@TheUnknownGame I definitely wasn’t expecting anyone else to know about Warriors. That is so cool. Btw did you read the whole series or stopped in some ark? I stopped at Omen if the Stars…
@Varda Alighieri Amazing to meet another homeschooler. Here in my country it was rare to be a homeschooler until the stupid 3 month lockdown. All of my old classmates are asking questions of how it is. May I ask, what method do you use? I use Abeka…also, I searched the French way to say it and got it backwards ? Just for today, I shall change my name…
Pinewing: I read the main 24 books, culminating in this enormous final battle where the four clans fight a common enemy and one of the main characters dies (trying to be as vague as possible in case you become interested). I just felt that the end of the fourth series was a good ending overall (plus, I think the author started making a bunch of prequel series after she finished with the four main ones)
You meant Firestar? Don’t worry about me getting interested, it is in my nature to read ahead and check spoilers. So, I know a lot of cats die beacause of the attack of the Dark Forest. Also, the prequel series are sort of like the beginning g of how the clans came to be…
Don’t get me wrong, I love Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien having written those books in the era and society that he did… a lot of the ‘dark bad’ language that he uses can be seen as, at least subconsciously, derived from commonplace racial discrimination (on numerous occasions, he literally uses ‘black’ as a synonym for malevolent or evil). Even if he didn’t consciously code it that way (which is definitely a possibility), subconscious bias is still a thing, or he used such language because that’s how he was raised and he didn’t know how to change it. I don’t know! The man died decades before I was born. I can’t know his thought process. But it’s stuff like that, the lingering specter of racial coding, why I don’t like the Light Good Dark Bad dichotomy.
Call me SJW trash for holding that opinion, but that’s what I think. And, again, despite the dichotomy, I like Tolkien’s work! (I’m literally in the middle of rereading The Fellowship right now!) You can like something while still disagreeing with aspects of it.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Darkness has long been associated with bad things, it’s an element in mythologies that dates back thousands of years. Makes sense. Humans have crappy night and low light vision, so being out in the dark can easily get less technologically developed or available people eaten. Rot and human waste products are dark, so there is danger in eating them.
I’d be willing to bet racists didn’t try to construct language and tropes to specifically screw over darker skinned people. They took the pre-existing language and tropes and applied it to dark skinned people (not to say they didn’t also do that, but they primarily built on the pre-existing stuff to justify their racism).
You do have a point… apologies for not considering any origins for this trope further back than a couple centuries. Significant sun-eating figures like Apophis (and Huitzilipoctli’s sister, whose name I can’t quite remember) have existed for way the hell longer than that, and I simply didn’t remember at first.
Well, the thing about that is, Red frames it so that this 7th void element is kinda evil, but it’s necessary. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and we don’t know if the other primordials kept themselves in check. Decay, hunger, death, those have been acknowledged as things that are necessary, so much so that the homunculi mages create don’t live for very long because they lack this essential element. It’s also been shown (although a little more so in the lore pages) that too much of any element will harm people, especially with the Chimeric Plague situation. The void dragon is out of control, but I don’t think it’s pure evil. It’s a personification, a force of nature, a natural disaster, like any storm, blight, forest fire, flood, or earthquake. You can’t hold it to the same standards as people, just as the Greeks didn’t hold the gods to the same standards as themselves. Void Dragon isn’t evil, it’s just trying to do what it’s supposed to do: wither. Unfortunately, that contrasted with what the other primordials wanted, so they killed themselves to imprison him, and with his power and theirs, true sentient life was born, with wills, goals, and more. Every primordial is a surplus of something, but together they balance each other out and form something new. Void Dragon isn’t evil, he’s just an element, like all the other primordials.
I’ve got to say I love this interpretation. Walter/VD seems pretty typically an archetypal ‘Pure Evil’ Disney villain, but when you consider this aspect of his character, and the fact they all represent the elements, they have a purpose for doing this, and it goes beyond a basic ambition and lust for power. I like that quite a lot, it makes the villain understandable. Not any less hate-able or do they by any means make you want them to succeed, it just makes you understand them. And that makes them less unreasonable and irrational, and more stable as a villain, and better rooted in their position in villainy.
I’ve very rarely seen this done well, but this kind of reminds me of big bad of Fullmetal Alchemist Mangahood. He does what he does because in his mind, what else is he supposed to do? If he doesn’t like something, he gets rid of it. If he wants something, like knowledge and power, its because he was created in pursuit of knowledge and power, and you can be he’s gonna do whatever it takes to get that.
Question: has anyone ever come across some media or fiction of a fantasy setting told from the darkness’ perspective?
If you consider how annoying it must be for the light to be constantly attacked by darkness from the perspective of a ruler of the light lands, how must it be for the rulers of the dark who have to deal with the trope of a chosen one always appearing for the light and striking them back every now and then. If you think about it, the perspective of the light is almost certainly always skewed to think that it’s on the right side, and probably vice versa for the dark. In that situation, neither is probably better than the other, they’re just different.
Hmmm. It looks like this whole plot could have been avoided with some simple communication. Okay, maybe not SIMPLE, since the one communicating is a goddess and her champion is half a world away. Even so, it’s obvious that SOMEONE knew what the storm was for and how it got there. If they’d just told everyone, Erin never would have hubrised himself into his current predicament.
Well, telling everyone comes with two problems. First, an actually malevolent elemental magus could willingly trigger it. Second, in an attempt to prevent the first, zealots could murder anyone shown to be an elemental magus.
A delightful use of divine white hair.
Also: Brinn is so adorable! I love how Red used a tiny translucent speech bubble for ‘I like your wings.’ Hopefully we see this lovely child again; maybe he’ll be the narrator of a 20-years-later epilogue.
I like the Blue Goddess already.
And her avatar must be rather powerful if the Pompous Nitwit can’t compare to him yet.
um um theyre probably not but what if. what if the god talking to them is the theoretical 7th primordial. like its gotta come up at some point right why not now
Honestly, with all the protagonists being introduced, I’m personally hoping for one of my own. No, it’s not an OC, it’s just a general template, and yes, I know 5 protagonists have been introduced, filling out the 5 man band dynamic probably, but I can hope. Essentially, you know how in the lore page there’s mentions of how those without a connection to magic, like the Ancients (I can’t remember their actual names) had no connection to magic but were able to advance as far as they did thanks to rune magic. Essentially, an Artificer. They have no access to traditional magic, and they don’t have any divine gifts. So, to work around this, they become experts in rune magic. An elemental magus with extra steps, if you will, a skill that has many more subtleties, with roguish abilities. All the protagonists are either extremely flashy with their approaches to things, or they’re Kendal. They aren’t really geared toward stealth and espionage. Maybe this tinkerer character could have some Ancients blood, maybe not, who knows? I don’t, and I’m not asking Red to add anything. I’m just dreaming, so let me dream.
Alright, here’s my theory.
The ‘My Lady’ this guy is referring too is a Primordial. Specifically, the wind/air/sky primordial. I think this because ‘Hidden from my eyes’ likely references the caves, and not that big blue dragon Golden Girl was fighting. That was probably there as a physical defence to stop dumbass Elemental Magnuss like Erin from stopping the storm, but obviously they’ve not been doing too well in that department with Golden Girl on site.
It feels like this Primordial is being a bit more proactive than alot of the others too. They’ve got a whole organisation of Paladins, possibly the an enormous F*** you dragon, and their own Avatar/Champion on their payroll and listening to them. They also seem to have at least some kind of plan too, seeing as they are getting this guy there as fast as possibly to strike Walter/VD down before he get’s too powerful. They’ve had alot of time to plan and amass forces to resist this guy, while all life seems to have been doing is trying to get themselves an Avatar and accidentally doing the whole Chimeric Plague deal. It’s possible that some of the Primordials have been out of commission for quite some time, and some are only just waking up one by one.
Walter/VD has also had a lot of time to plan for his escape, but that also means that so have the Primordials. None of them can use their physical forms (Because the Primoridals are using theirs as a cage and VD is still psychically trapped inside it, so they resort to finding avatars and giving them a two way direct access to their elemental powers and their souls. This guy (who really needs a name btw, i vote Anti-Walter for the time being) clearly shares alot of similarities to Erin and his relationship to Walter/VD. The only difference is that while Erin and Walter/VD are constantly fighting for control, this guy is in control and only being directed by the Air/Wind/Sky Primordial.
As for what happens next, Anti-Walter is making his way downtown quite fast, So he and/or Golden Girl are probs gonna bump into the floof squad quite soon. Anti-Walter is going to be expecting Erin, but not Kendal and Alinua, so there’s that, but i’d wager he’d feel conflicted about fighting Erin, because aside from being a pompous nitwit, he had absolutely no intent to free Walter/VD, and we’ve already seen how he reacts to unwilling agents of evil, and he only really killed that corrupted…thing, because there wasn’t going to be much of any hope in bringing him back to normal. But with Erin, he’s still there, and except for a few hiccups keeping VD under control, so there is still hope there, unless his Primordial Patron convinces him there is no other way to stop Walter/VD outside of killing him.
(I’m pretty sure right now i look/sound like a hunched over creepy villain with long hair over my eyes, rubbing my hands together and muttering ‘Angst’ repeatedly under my breath but that’s just how i am i guess)
That’s something i really like about Aurora too. It’s not one big quest, with a bunch of little insigificant side quests on the side, we have a bunch of different plots that are hugely important to alot of different people. For Kendal and Alinua, other minor gods and alot of the people associated with Vash, what’s most important is rescuing Vash; for Alinua it’s going to be at least a bit about finding out what’s going on with their chimerica plague situation. But for Erin, the primordials, the paladins, that dragon and Anti-Walter over here, what matters first and foremost is Stopping VD from breaking out and eating the sun. And that’s not even considering Golden girl over here! We still don’t know what her motivations are but for now it’s pretty clear she’s going to be really influential to the story.
Nice essays. They sound like some nice, probable plot predictions(Haha, aren’t all theories?). However, I’m pretty sure it’s canon that all the Primordials were killed dead by Mr. Void Dragon. My theory is that “My Lady” may be referring to a “Remnant“(Made-up the term to describe mysterious Primordial-like entities like Alinua’s hitchhiker) that has some of the qualities of Primordials but are comparatively less powerful. Feedback appreciated.
Could this goddess be VD’s Other? VD said that his Other stopped him from being able to control the Ancients, and now this goddess(?) says that her battle with VD “has raged since the birth of your species.”
i just noticed something.
on the page 1.6.27 which was a couple chapters back, golden lighting lady was fighting a dragon. then the dragon saw erin go kinda nuclear with VD’s purple energy
the dragon then ‘said’: “NO! the dark avatar is risen! The paladins must be warned!”
i wrote ‘said’ like that because the speech bubble was written like this goddess’s speech bubble. so what im saying is that the dragon must have been one of the goddesses’s creatures or something
not to mention, originally the dragon’s eyes were red. when it noticed the purple energy, its eyes glowed blue
This Champion does seem set up to be a direct counter to Erin: same godly possession, albeit voluntary; switched personality, altruistic and duty bound rather than arrogant research bound; contrasting colours of their hair, eyes and powers. Every part of him seems designed to clash with Erin, but he also showed some empathy in the previous page to that monster. If the two can talk without V.D. or anything else getting in the way they could come to an understanding. … Maybe.
As for the mystery god I think it is V.D.’s “Other” he alluded to i.e. Bright Eyes. I don’t think the Other is one of the six primordials but another very old being with different powers. It was shown in the prologue that and V.D.’s monologue that Bright Eyes was responsible for giving mortals their wills, so maybe Soul power is her dominion? Could you consider souls to be an eighth element? Does this guy have some kind of soul rune tattoo on his body?
I agree that I think the mystery “Lady” is VD’s Other, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they’re some sort of Light Dragon. Though their Avatar’s eyes started out glowing completely blue, they then turned black with blue-white irises and slit pupils (resembling VD possessing Erin). Alinua’s eyes never gain slit pupils when she channels Life’s power, they only glow.
Furthermore, each element that we know of has a specific color associated with it- water is blue, stone is grey-white, air is purple, lightning is yellow, life is green, fire is orange-red. The closest color match for this avatar person is blue or white, but those are for water and stone, and don’t fit the powers we’ve seen them use. Lightning or air seems like it would be the closest, but those are yellow and purple. So the Other has to be a different Primordial, and it really does seem that their dominion is something like Soul or Consciousness or Free Will (VD said his Other awoke the mortals’ wills).
Finally, VD, in story, has been called the Void Dragon throughout the years. The “Lady” called him the DARK Dragon, implying a non-Dark Dragon. Given the similar design of wings and eyes, I think the “Lady” is the Light Dragon.
It’ll be interesting how these fit into the story. Maybe we’ll get that paragon-doing-what-they-think-is-the-right-thing-but-actually-they’re-making-things-worse-and-they’re-too-paragon-to-see-it-and-are-determined-to-stick-to-their-morals-and-whoops-they’re-an-antagonist-now?
Is this voice (the “my lady”) connected to the Light Dragon? So, the Light Dragon is real and the Void Dragon’s “other”? The one that awakened consciousness in mortals? And so Erin’s prideful assumptions were very wrong…. I like that.
TheUnknownGame—
This is my main complaint with many fantasy settings so far. My take on the idea is that Shadow is secrets and hidden things in their purest form, as it exists to obscure. Light is truth and honesty in their purest form, but they can go to bad lengths to get truth and may be harsh with it, exposing things you may wish to keep hidden for good reason. They aren’t universally “good” or “evil”, but the Shadow does tend to lie and manipulate more than the Light, which strains for truth to a corruptive degree.
cont- I don’t think there was any racial coding in Tolkien’s works. He drew the “Light good Shadow bad” from ancient sources, as he drew basically ALL of his world. The only evidence that there was any racial-political stuff in Tolkien’s works are people grasping at straws, especially because we never get any character descriptions. (Almost never, unless it’s a elf.)
SPOILERS
So now that we know that this is the Light Dragons champion and that that bright spark at those weird first pages of the comic was the light dragon giving the races souls, is anyone gonna point out this guy looks like the floofy boi who was going to be VDs champion?
volvi certavi et vici. nunc iuvat ire per altum
Optime.
My latin grades are mocking me.
Nice quotes aside, this is going to be interesting 😀
Also don’t mind me I’m just going to call him Michael from now on.
You know with the wings and stuff.
Well, that is awesome :3
I wish there were a world map ^^
The floofy squad …..caves………..caves………………. ocean…….caves………………. shiny winged floof
Ah, yes, the classic “Good guy has to fight another good guy because someone on their party is a danger to society” trope. I do have to wonder if this guy’s magic is considered to be of some element or not.
Oh no, he’s really smug and I love him already
Maybe he’s the air/wind/sky primordial’s avatar? But then what are the Paladins? They can’t all be primordial avatars, can they?
Remember their are also gods in this world, plus I have a feeling that the sun has a bigger role than what has been revield so far.
My personal theory is that this is the Other’s champion. The other being Walter’s opposite and possibly the sun.
Remember how we were told that there where certain people who where attuned to a deity instead to the elements
Emissaries? Yeah, he could be one. Maybe in this universe, Paladins are emissaries with magical powers.
Remember though, Erin said that Emissaries don’t actually talk to their gods like Kendal does, it’s more like they put ideas and commands in their heads, there isn’t a back and forth.
I’ll pitch a vote that he’s an Avatar for another Primordial, probably air. It makes sense with his eyes and the sheer amount of power he has. Regular gods like Vash and that Lake Goddess are area specific, and they can’t really choose avatars outside of whatever bodies they’ve made. Kendal is quite the anomaly here, and given that the Minor God community is pretty tight knit, and that they’ve never head of this happening before outside Vash, and don’t seem to have any contact with the primordials, I think it’s safe to say this guy is talking to someone of the same power range as Walter/VD and the other primordials.
As for the other Paladins, it seems like this guy has the most power in their ranks, i doubt they’re also hosting primordials or other gods.
Ooo It would be interesting if the actual villan was a chosen one hero guy!
“Chosen an avatar” my ass. More like “desperately grabbed the first sucker that came along” and that’s working out terribly for him so far. Runs into the Life avatar and one of the few people that can shrug off his disintegration effects almost immediately, then nearly gets his whole plan derailed for good when his host decides to make a suicide-by-cave-monster play. Poor Walter.
Wow all this really does suck for Walter. Imagine you get out of prison and the first people you meet are that guy you tried to kill that one time and the traumatized superhuman she’s traveling with
When Walter inevitably bumps into this guy, They’re gonna be like “Of course! and here i though things couldn’t get any worse!”
oh no they gonna try to kill Walter, *and the other dude I supose* But walter!
I’m just confused that this guy appears to not be human.
Welp, Erin’s gonna die
That assumes that this one Emissary can fight Erin, VD, Vash, and Alinua at the same time. He’s good, Chosen of a yet unnamed Deity good, I don’t know that he’s that good.
…..but as a Dawnblade main I’m kinda rooting for him.
I believe I spy a fourth party member. Will this be a five man band instead of a power trio?
I just hope this guys plan is not ‘kill Walter’s Avatar’ and instead ‘find a way to rip this leech sucker Dragon off of him’.
I’d rather we work on a constructive solution here guys, that’s all i’m saying.
(Also, just a writer geeking out here, what a freaking awesome way to introduce a character! in mere pages we know so much about him and the fact that he a) is a generally kind and dorky person, and b) does his duty to protect people)
Ok, half the comics already made this assumption, but I have a feeling that the wind/air primordial is ahead of the game and has already got him/herself an avatar (champion). The Paladins are probably our power trio. And I also don’t think that this “Champion” guy is going to attack Erin or anything, because his entire introduction was him being all “look at this poor dead soul it didn’t deserve this” to a cave-crawler, which makes it seem that he’ll be understanding toward Erin.
I can see him being hostile to Erin if he assumes that Erin is willingly partnering with The Void Dragon, just like he seems to a have a pretty healthy possession arrangement with the Blue Goddess.
Or at least he could make that assumption before Erin regains control, freaks out, and makes the situation clear.
Honestly I’d prefer that. And from this patrons wording I’d say they are heading in that direction, they know it was a trap, but i don’t know if they can see any other option beyond killing them.
Okay, theory time. The Champion seems like he is to Light-Eyes (who we now know is feminine) what Erin is to the Void Dragon – an avatar or vessel of choice. Light-Eyes is definitely ancient and most likely the Void Dragon’s Other, equal and opposite to him.
As for the Paladins, they seem to be an organization affiliated with or connected to Light-Eyes, perhaps her/their lower-rank emissaries.
Red, can we have a world map, please?
(Geography nerd incoming) Yes. Yes. YES. YES! WORLD MAP PLEASE!
(Universal cool stuff/fantasy nerd incoming) Maps! Everything! Please!
Btw the Atlas of Middle Earth is amazing.
Yassss world map
i love how he responded to the kid
The Other seems to be a lot nicer to her avatar than the Void Dragon is to his; she even lets him retain control of his body and brain while using what I assume to be her power
An interesting take on the Good Wings/Evil Wings trope. His wings are more skeletal/batlike than the feathery kind.
Unless those are dragon wings. Then the trope guidelines on their morality are ‘F#$% you, imma dragon, imma gonna moral alignment however I want.”
While I do really love this story, I do have a complaint about it at this point: it seems to be pulling the classic fantasy move of ‘Light is unilaterally good, Darkness is unilaterally bad’, which… even if any author who uses it doesn’t tie it with racial coding (I don’t think Red is coding), it’s still heavily overused to the point of cliche.
Of course, things could change down the line; it seems a couple of y’all have already suggested that this Champion dude might be an antagonist, as he relentlessly hunts down Erin to kill him. It’s just, at this point, it’s not entirely clear, so it still looks like a ‘Light good Dark bad’ situation.
P.S. This is one reason why I like Hollow Knight so much; it presents light and darkness as equals and opposites, as when one gets too powerful and manipulative, the other must match its power to stop it before both fade back to a manageable state. That’s a breath of fresh air from all the ‘Light good Dark bad’ media that modern fiction cultivates
P.P.S. I’m not trying to be edgy or anything; I think that both light and darkness hold merit, so seeing one be repeatedly and wholly presented as good and the other as evil gets kind of annoying after a while
I’ll be honest, maybe it’s just the media I tend to hover around, but the subverting Light Good, Dark Bad has happened enough that playing it straight is subverting the expectation.
Examples, please? I’m curious now
I guess I could just say “Look up TVTropes’ Light Is Not Good” page, but for specifics, I’ll list Order of the Stick’s prequel paladins, since we have the self-righteous prick from the prequel book that wanted to massacre concert attending orcs for no other reason than alignment issues and the Sapphire Guard who would go around massacring innocent goblins to try and hunt down the Crimson Mantle, and Miko Miyazaki. Then there’s Kore from the Goblins webcomic, who would massacre innocent people just for being exposed to evil creatures and horribly tortures Chief.
I’m just annoyed at the idea that “Lawful Good” often gets presented as “Murderous, intolerant, genocidal, xenophobic zealot”.
While I like to stay in the warmth and safety of the Light-Good/Dark-Bad (or at least Light is Good/ Who knows what’s going on with Dark) camp, I do find it interesting when that’s subverted.
I was wondering, what’s your opinion on Tolkien’s Light-Good-Dark-Bad mythos? Does he do a good job of justifying it with the Hungry Void trope (that’s a trope, right?) and with my first-namesake creating the stars so that the Children of Illuvatar would have something to see by before they got some brighter celestial bodies?
Silmarillion material, but still.
That reminds me…I really must read that book this summer….and perhaps increase my arachnophobia a little with the all-horrible Ungoliant.
I’m excited for you to read it! And at the same time I await with foreboding the frustration and heartbreak it will surely instill. 😀
Whenever I say ‘Pinewing’ in person, my mum thinks it sounds like Chinese. Solution: translate to French.
OK……..
I think its time to explain this alias…
Well, when I was still in school, (I’m homeschool now) This book caught my eye, and, as crazy as it seems, it was about…cats. I know, it sounds stupid, but when I looked more into it, it turns out there are like 83 more books in the series. They are very interesting, like I stayed up at night for hours reading the books that I downloaded on my phone and stuff. They are called Warriors, and its about these cats that live in the wild but their divided in clans. (ThunderClan, RiverClan, WindClan, ShadowClan) and they worship this Starclan which is where all the dead cats go and….WHATEVER. The whole point is I only managed to get through 18 books and I quit them cause they were kind of very diabolical for my taste, yet I enjoyed the series a lot. And I began doing my original characters and stuff, and the important thing here is that the cats had really cool names. Examples: Dustclaw, Sandstorm, Fireheart, Silverstream, Mistyfoot, Crookedjaw, Dovewing, Ivypool, Squirrelflight, etc. So I invented this name, because the national tree of my country is the pine and I liked the suffix -wing, hence; Pinewing.
Sorry for this very long explanation. Anyways, I just wanted to clear my name.
Aw, hell yeah! I loved reading the Warriors books when I was in 8th/9th grades… I still have a lot of nostalgia for them
@TheUnknownGame It’s been so long, eh? We must be a pair of young whippersnappers to you. 🙂
But who am I to talk. I started feeling nostalgic for Morrowind (a game older than me) as soon as I started playing it.
@Pinewing That sounds a lot like a series I read, Redwall. Anthropomorphized animals, 20 books, the whole thing. And Wings of Fire as well.
That’s a really cool name source, I hope I’m not changing it too drastically when I say “Aile de Pin”. 🙂
And high-five from another homeschooler!
@TheUnknownGame I definitely wasn’t expecting anyone else to know about Warriors. That is so cool. Btw did you read the whole series or stopped in some ark? I stopped at Omen if the Stars…
@Varda Alighieri Amazing to meet another homeschooler. Here in my country it was rare to be a homeschooler until the stupid 3 month lockdown. All of my old classmates are asking questions of how it is. May I ask, what method do you use? I use Abeka…also, I searched the French way to say it and got it backwards ? Just for today, I shall change my name…
Pinewing: I read the main 24 books, culminating in this enormous final battle where the four clans fight a common enemy and one of the main characters dies (trying to be as vague as possible in case you become interested). I just felt that the end of the fourth series was a good ending overall (plus, I think the author started making a bunch of prequel series after she finished with the four main ones)
You meant Firestar? Don’t worry about me getting interested, it is in my nature to read ahead and check spoilers. So, I know a lot of cats die beacause of the attack of the Dark Forest. Also, the prequel series are sort of like the beginning g of how the clans came to be…
Don’t get me wrong, I love Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien having written those books in the era and society that he did… a lot of the ‘dark bad’ language that he uses can be seen as, at least subconsciously, derived from commonplace racial discrimination (on numerous occasions, he literally uses ‘black’ as a synonym for malevolent or evil). Even if he didn’t consciously code it that way (which is definitely a possibility), subconscious bias is still a thing, or he used such language because that’s how he was raised and he didn’t know how to change it. I don’t know! The man died decades before I was born. I can’t know his thought process. But it’s stuff like that, the lingering specter of racial coding, why I don’t like the Light Good Dark Bad dichotomy.
Call me SJW trash for holding that opinion, but that’s what I think. And, again, despite the dichotomy, I like Tolkien’s work! (I’m literally in the middle of rereading The Fellowship right now!) You can like something while still disagreeing with aspects of it.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse. Darkness has long been associated with bad things, it’s an element in mythologies that dates back thousands of years. Makes sense. Humans have crappy night and low light vision, so being out in the dark can easily get less technologically developed or available people eaten. Rot and human waste products are dark, so there is danger in eating them.
I’d be willing to bet racists didn’t try to construct language and tropes to specifically screw over darker skinned people. They took the pre-existing language and tropes and applied it to dark skinned people (not to say they didn’t also do that, but they primarily built on the pre-existing stuff to justify their racism).
You do have a point… apologies for not considering any origins for this trope further back than a couple centuries. Significant sun-eating figures like Apophis (and Huitzilipoctli’s sister, whose name I can’t quite remember) have existed for way the hell longer than that, and I simply didn’t remember at first.
Yes, even the Norse had myths of the sun getting eaten. During Ragnarok a giant wolf (maybe Fenris/Fenrir, it’s kinda unclear) eats the sun and moon
Well, the thing about that is, Red frames it so that this 7th void element is kinda evil, but it’s necessary. Too much of anything is a bad thing, and we don’t know if the other primordials kept themselves in check. Decay, hunger, death, those have been acknowledged as things that are necessary, so much so that the homunculi mages create don’t live for very long because they lack this essential element. It’s also been shown (although a little more so in the lore pages) that too much of any element will harm people, especially with the Chimeric Plague situation. The void dragon is out of control, but I don’t think it’s pure evil. It’s a personification, a force of nature, a natural disaster, like any storm, blight, forest fire, flood, or earthquake. You can’t hold it to the same standards as people, just as the Greeks didn’t hold the gods to the same standards as themselves. Void Dragon isn’t evil, it’s just trying to do what it’s supposed to do: wither. Unfortunately, that contrasted with what the other primordials wanted, so they killed themselves to imprison him, and with his power and theirs, true sentient life was born, with wills, goals, and more. Every primordial is a surplus of something, but together they balance each other out and form something new. Void Dragon isn’t evil, he’s just an element, like all the other primordials.
I’ve got to say I love this interpretation. Walter/VD seems pretty typically an archetypal ‘Pure Evil’ Disney villain, but when you consider this aspect of his character, and the fact they all represent the elements, they have a purpose for doing this, and it goes beyond a basic ambition and lust for power. I like that quite a lot, it makes the villain understandable. Not any less hate-able or do they by any means make you want them to succeed, it just makes you understand them. And that makes them less unreasonable and irrational, and more stable as a villain, and better rooted in their position in villainy.
I’ve very rarely seen this done well, but this kind of reminds me of big bad of Fullmetal Alchemist Mangahood. He does what he does because in his mind, what else is he supposed to do? If he doesn’t like something, he gets rid of it. If he wants something, like knowledge and power, its because he was created in pursuit of knowledge and power, and you can be he’s gonna do whatever it takes to get that.
Question: has anyone ever come across some media or fiction of a fantasy setting told from the darkness’ perspective?
If you consider how annoying it must be for the light to be constantly attacked by darkness from the perspective of a ruler of the light lands, how must it be for the rulers of the dark who have to deal with the trope of a chosen one always appearing for the light and striking them back every now and then. If you think about it, the perspective of the light is almost certainly always skewed to think that it’s on the right side, and probably vice versa for the dark. In that situation, neither is probably better than the other, they’re just different.
Hmmm. It looks like this whole plot could have been avoided with some simple communication. Okay, maybe not SIMPLE, since the one communicating is a goddess and her champion is half a world away. Even so, it’s obvious that SOMEONE knew what the storm was for and how it got there. If they’d just told everyone, Erin never would have hubrised himself into his current predicament.
Well, telling everyone comes with two problems. First, an actually malevolent elemental magus could willingly trigger it. Second, in an attempt to prevent the first, zealots could murder anyone shown to be an elemental magus.
Yes he kind of misjudged his host’s personality just a hair. Spitefullness beat out arrogance and self-preservation.
A delightful use of divine white hair.
Also: Brinn is so adorable! I love how Red used a tiny translucent speech bubble for ‘I like your wings.’ Hopefully we see this lovely child again; maybe he’ll be the narrator of a 20-years-later epilogue.
I like the Blue Goddess already.
And her avatar must be rather powerful if the Pompous Nitwit can’t compare to him yet.
I already love Brinn. Gimme that good shining hero content pleeease.
Though, this interlude does have me wondering what Tess is up to. Can we see our lightning lass again, please?
um um theyre probably not but what if. what if the god talking to them is the theoretical 7th primordial. like its gotta come up at some point right why not now
I think the seventh primordial is the Void Dragon
Everyone else on the planet, INCLUDING the Dark Avatar: The Dark Avatar has to die as soon as possible!
Kendal and Alinua: Nah
Honestly, with all the protagonists being introduced, I’m personally hoping for one of my own. No, it’s not an OC, it’s just a general template, and yes, I know 5 protagonists have been introduced, filling out the 5 man band dynamic probably, but I can hope. Essentially, you know how in the lore page there’s mentions of how those without a connection to magic, like the Ancients (I can’t remember their actual names) had no connection to magic but were able to advance as far as they did thanks to rune magic. Essentially, an Artificer. They have no access to traditional magic, and they don’t have any divine gifts. So, to work around this, they become experts in rune magic. An elemental magus with extra steps, if you will, a skill that has many more subtleties, with roguish abilities. All the protagonists are either extremely flashy with their approaches to things, or they’re Kendal. They aren’t really geared toward stealth and espionage. Maybe this tinkerer character could have some Ancients blood, maybe not, who knows? I don’t, and I’m not asking Red to add anything. I’m just dreaming, so let me dream.
Do we have the Wind Avatar here?
Alright, here’s my theory.
The ‘My Lady’ this guy is referring too is a Primordial. Specifically, the wind/air/sky primordial. I think this because ‘Hidden from my eyes’ likely references the caves, and not that big blue dragon Golden Girl was fighting. That was probably there as a physical defence to stop dumbass Elemental Magnuss like Erin from stopping the storm, but obviously they’ve not been doing too well in that department with Golden Girl on site.
It feels like this Primordial is being a bit more proactive than alot of the others too. They’ve got a whole organisation of Paladins, possibly the an enormous F*** you dragon, and their own Avatar/Champion on their payroll and listening to them. They also seem to have at least some kind of plan too, seeing as they are getting this guy there as fast as possibly to strike Walter/VD down before he get’s too powerful. They’ve had alot of time to plan and amass forces to resist this guy, while all life seems to have been doing is trying to get themselves an Avatar and accidentally doing the whole Chimeric Plague deal. It’s possible that some of the Primordials have been out of commission for quite some time, and some are only just waking up one by one.
Walter/VD has also had a lot of time to plan for his escape, but that also means that so have the Primordials. None of them can use their physical forms (Because the Primoridals are using theirs as a cage and VD is still psychically trapped inside it, so they resort to finding avatars and giving them a two way direct access to their elemental powers and their souls. This guy (who really needs a name btw, i vote Anti-Walter for the time being) clearly shares alot of similarities to Erin and his relationship to Walter/VD. The only difference is that while Erin and Walter/VD are constantly fighting for control, this guy is in control and only being directed by the Air/Wind/Sky Primordial.
As for what happens next, Anti-Walter is making his way downtown quite fast, So he and/or Golden Girl are probs gonna bump into the floof squad quite soon. Anti-Walter is going to be expecting Erin, but not Kendal and Alinua, so there’s that, but i’d wager he’d feel conflicted about fighting Erin, because aside from being a pompous nitwit, he had absolutely no intent to free Walter/VD, and we’ve already seen how he reacts to unwilling agents of evil, and he only really killed that corrupted…thing, because there wasn’t going to be much of any hope in bringing him back to normal. But with Erin, he’s still there, and except for a few hiccups keeping VD under control, so there is still hope there, unless his Primordial Patron convinces him there is no other way to stop Walter/VD outside of killing him.
(I’m pretty sure right now i look/sound like a hunched over creepy villain with long hair over my eyes, rubbing my hands together and muttering ‘Angst’ repeatedly under my breath but that’s just how i am i guess)
That’s something i really like about Aurora too. It’s not one big quest, with a bunch of little insigificant side quests on the side, we have a bunch of different plots that are hugely important to alot of different people. For Kendal and Alinua, other minor gods and alot of the people associated with Vash, what’s most important is rescuing Vash; for Alinua it’s going to be at least a bit about finding out what’s going on with their chimerica plague situation. But for Erin, the primordials, the paladins, that dragon and Anti-Walter over here, what matters first and foremost is Stopping VD from breaking out and eating the sun. And that’s not even considering Golden girl over here! We still don’t know what her motivations are but for now it’s pretty clear she’s going to be really influential to the story.
Nice essays. They sound like some nice, probable plot predictions(Haha, aren’t all theories?). However, I’m pretty sure it’s canon that all the Primordials were killed dead by Mr. Void Dragon. My theory is that “My Lady” may be referring to a “Remnant“(Made-up the term to describe mysterious Primordial-like entities like Alinua’s hitchhiker) that has some of the qualities of Primordials but are comparatively less powerful. Feedback appreciated.
Could this goddess be VD’s Other? VD said that his Other stopped him from being able to control the Ancients, and now this goddess(?) says that her battle with VD “has raged since the birth of your species.”
waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait
i just noticed something.
on the page 1.6.27 which was a couple chapters back, golden lighting lady was fighting a dragon. then the dragon saw erin go kinda nuclear with VD’s purple energy
the dragon then ‘said’: “NO! the dark avatar is risen! The paladins must be warned!”
i wrote ‘said’ like that because the speech bubble was written like this goddess’s speech bubble. so what im saying is that the dragon must have been one of the goddesses’s creatures or something
not to mention, originally the dragon’s eyes were red. when it noticed the purple energy, its eyes glowed blue
I saw that tooooo! Maybe the dragon was being possessed by the VD’s ‘Other’?
This Champion does seem set up to be a direct counter to Erin: same godly possession, albeit voluntary; switched personality, altruistic and duty bound rather than arrogant research bound; contrasting colours of their hair, eyes and powers. Every part of him seems designed to clash with Erin, but he also showed some empathy in the previous page to that monster. If the two can talk without V.D. or anything else getting in the way they could come to an understanding. … Maybe.
As for the mystery god I think it is V.D.’s “Other” he alluded to i.e. Bright Eyes. I don’t think the Other is one of the six primordials but another very old being with different powers. It was shown in the prologue that and V.D.’s monologue that Bright Eyes was responsible for giving mortals their wills, so maybe Soul power is her dominion? Could you consider souls to be an eighth element? Does this guy have some kind of soul rune tattoo on his body?
I agree that I think the mystery “Lady” is VD’s Other, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they’re some sort of Light Dragon. Though their Avatar’s eyes started out glowing completely blue, they then turned black with blue-white irises and slit pupils (resembling VD possessing Erin). Alinua’s eyes never gain slit pupils when she channels Life’s power, they only glow.
Furthermore, each element that we know of has a specific color associated with it- water is blue, stone is grey-white, air is purple, lightning is yellow, life is green, fire is orange-red. The closest color match for this avatar person is blue or white, but those are for water and stone, and don’t fit the powers we’ve seen them use. Lightning or air seems like it would be the closest, but those are yellow and purple. So the Other has to be a different Primordial, and it really does seem that their dominion is something like Soul or Consciousness or Free Will (VD said his Other awoke the mortals’ wills).
Finally, VD, in story, has been called the Void Dragon throughout the years. The “Lady” called him the DARK Dragon, implying a non-Dark Dragon. Given the similar design of wings and eyes, I think the “Lady” is the Light Dragon.
It’ll be interesting how these fit into the story. Maybe we’ll get that paragon-doing-what-they-think-is-the-right-thing-but-actually-they’re-making-things-worse-and-they’re-too-paragon-to-see-it-and-are-determined-to-stick-to-their-morals-and-whoops-they’re-an-antagonist-now?
I believe the Other may be a dragon or dragon shaped entity
TL;DR: Bright floof copies superman, is called by somebody without a phone (oh how far technology has come), is probably gonna go to Nerd floof.
The avatar??
OOOOOOHHhhhhh, he’s in league with the dragon metal lady punched!
Michael Scott’s monster removal service
*spoilers*
Is this voice (the “my lady”) connected to the Light Dragon? So, the Light Dragon is real and the Void Dragon’s “other”? The one that awakened consciousness in mortals? And so Erin’s prideful assumptions were very wrong…. I like that.
alt text 1: and he’s REALLY SMUG
alt text 2: there is ALWAYS time for character foils, my child
I wonder how fast this emissary is going.
TheUnknownGame—
This is my main complaint with many fantasy settings so far. My take on the idea is that Shadow is secrets and hidden things in their purest form, as it exists to obscure. Light is truth and honesty in their purest form, but they can go to bad lengths to get truth and may be harsh with it, exposing things you may wish to keep hidden for good reason. They aren’t universally “good” or “evil”, but the Shadow does tend to lie and manipulate more than the Light, which strains for truth to a corruptive degree.
cont- I don’t think there was any racial coding in Tolkien’s works. He drew the “Light good Shadow bad” from ancient sources, as he drew basically ALL of his world. The only evidence that there was any racial-political stuff in Tolkien’s works are people grasping at straws, especially because we never get any character descriptions. (Almost never, unless it’s a elf.)
Image source 1: champion
Image source 2: avatar
(avatar: The Last Airbender)SPOILERS
So now that we know that this is the Light Dragons champion and that that bright spark at those weird first pages of the comic was the light dragon giving the races souls, is anyone gonna point out this guy looks like the floofy boi who was going to be VDs champion?
The wings are pretty and serve him well
A voice informs him of Dragons that dwell
rereading this and I’m loving how far back this whole conflcit has been set up.
I see no smugness in this Champion… I think Red’s alt text is referring to Erin. “The Dark Dragon has chosen an avatar… and he’s really smug.”