Mithos Yggdrasil (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
antreegonist) wrote2011-11-13 10:34 pm
antreegonist) wrote2011-11-13 10:34 pm
Entry tags:
THIS HEART WAS SO FAT
Game happened here! Mithos's heart was pretty huge and sprawling and full of partitions and layers and NPCs! Boy is complicated. Players did manage to access all the vital system areas of it, so to speak; there were seventeen areas that went unexplored not counting team rooms, but some can be saved for a future game and they would shift with new memories anyway.
The moment of inspection at the beginning was Mithos scanning all his heart players with manasense, since you cannot go near him without passing through that. So the heart knew who it was dealing with, even if Mithos will not necessarily. More on that later.
[BEGIN: the island]
The Island actually served as a general overview of the state of the heart! It indicated the structure -- a couple of layers of pleasant facade, then the inner heart rooted in and supported by guilt. The weather in the meadow reflected how Mithos felt going into this game; it was full of thunderheads and rain because ... well, he got an enormously hard-hitting memory on night 95 and then found out Lloyd killed him on night 96 and it has just been an awful week all around. Normally it is pretty sunny in there.
The sky throughout the heart had a weird glassy quality to it; this was an effect of his soul being tangled in his Exsphere.
Beyond the fog were pieces of memories Mithos would not mind sharing with people and True Heart thought visitors might like to experience! There were four: Noishe the giant green dog, the unicorn, a memory of his original party, and a memory of flight over Aselia with said party. You couldn't go very far out into the memory but True Heart thought people might enjoy flying.
The heart is in the sky because it literally has to contain four worlds in it total: Aather, the old Aselia (from when he was young), the broken Aselia (from when he flipped out and smashed the world in half and did all the terrible things) and eventually the reunited Aselia (his need to go home with Lloyd after Aather is fixed.) THERE IS JUST NOT ROOM IF YOU HAVE THIS THING ON THE GROUND OR THE SEA. It did used to be rooted on the ground but then it broke off and flew away. :Da
The door was also the inner heart in microcosm: it's shattered because Mithos's heart has broken several times over the course of canon and Aather and rebuilt itself again and again to cope with change! But it's also grown to have a support system. It's a form that works surprisingly well for him; it's really as functional as he's going to get. He can't have a heart that doesn't break under too much stress or he goes even crazier than he already is -- he just deals by breaking, sucking it up, and making everything anew.
There was really not a lot that could be influenced on the Island, though people yanking veins on the door and getting his guilt all over themselves was not . . . the best idea in the world.
Souya was also dumb enough that he had to have 'Messenger' come in to save his butt from endless freefall. Messenger is Mithos's heart!Lloyd and his job is to go around yelling at the other manifestations if they start behaving stupidly until they get the message and stop behaving stupidly. Or, in this case, at visitors. Messenger can go anywhere in the heart he wants.
-
Changes made:
- Percy and Judith burst veins! This ... okay this actually didn't do much beyond kick off the trend of 'MITHOS IS GOING TO WAKE UP FROM THIS HEARTGAME FEELING BAD.'
- A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE interacted meaningfully with the memories outside which makes Mithos even more willing to share those readily.
- Souya got scruffed by Messenger. +10 Souya why are you dumb.
+
NOW. Identifying players on entering the heart also allowed Mithos to sort them into groups when they went into the inner heart! Group one (Lloyd, Guy, Souya, KK, Sasuke) are people he already trusts enough to let in right away because they know what kind of person he is and have a good idea about what he did. Group two (Hermana, Bonten, Elliot, Judith, Percy) are people he just doesn't know as well! They had to work harder to get in. The grading was weighed to reflect this a-and also Lloyd's presence, because otherwise Lloyd would have scored max points just by existing.
So group one was sent directly to Aatherside, while group two went to the Front.
+
[BEGIN: the front]
The Front had a double meaning: it was literally a front/entrance hall to welcome new visitors and the sense of facade Mithos wears on an everyday basis. Everything was pleasant and abstract and you could sit down and eat delicious food True Heart put out to be hospitable -- but you didn't get a look into anything he wanted to keep private for various reasons. Which is a lot of the heart.
WHICH IS NOT TO SAY Mithos wanders around every day under an unhealthy smiling face concealing his ~inner torment~! He is genuinely pretty happy a lot of the time. Just that Mithos goes around every day without telling people he used to be a supervillain mass murderer, and tends to mask when he's upset in public because it's his responsibility as a person and a knight to be sensible. Damaging the Front would have chipped at that.
The missing book from the bookshelf was just a silly tidbit -- you could find it later in the heart and return it if you wanted, but it wouldn't have done anything. There was, however, a door behind the bookshelf and a trapdoor to the Foundation under the rug.
There were three rooms and thus three ways in: left door, middle door, right door. They were all exercises of sorts: Mithos asking you to trust him before he trusted you with his more private stuff. Trust the food not to be poisoned, trust the presence in the dark room to guide you through it, risk a fall and trust the heart to catch you. There was more than one for reasons I shall get to later.
The manifestation in the middle door was 'Faith,' the person Mithos was with no memories -- it's a pretty weak part of the heart because he shed that persona a long time ago when he accepted himself as 'Mithos.' True Heart repurposed it to do something useful because you don't just throw something like that away, and as his initial knight identity/trust in people, it fit well in this section.
Everyone made it through here just fine, so they also got to land in Aatherside.
-
Changes made:
- Judith ate one of the heart sandwiches. +10 urge to do nice things for Judith.
- Hermana ate one of the heart sandwiches. +10 urge to do nice things for Hermana.
- Judith, Elliot, Hermana, Bonten and Percy all got through this layer of Mithos. He'll be more comfortable talking to them about his heavy personal stuff/his life before Aather, if they want him to.
- Hermana stole a rope! . . . that didn't actually change anything. . .
+
[WORLD: aatherside]
the hub
The Great Trees were here! The black oak is Ratatosk's tree, the one Mithos tried to save before he went mad; the ghost sapling is Yggdrasil, the one Mithos became. It will turn into a real tree once he actually has the memory of his death and transformation back. The Trees are a bridge between the 'worlds' in Mithos's heart and you could go freely between Aatherside and Aseliaside by using them. Yggdrasil was also a guide figure of sorts if you approached it the right way.
Aatherside used to be a more literal representation of Beauty's region, but with Mithos's feelings on teams/knights/Personae coming to a head plus the physical place shift, it got compressed down a lot to five areas, all of which were accessed.
Once you got past the Island and the Front you were in the inner heart, which is where 'Guardian' -- the Mithos with a weapon -- also started coming into play! He was there to discourage physical damage to the heart and also to get people out of heart 'traps' such as the one in the vegetable patch. He could also point you down paths if you asked; both Messenger and Guardian knew the way to True Heart. He is Mithos's competence and not as overtly emotional as other manifestations.
If you insisted on breaking something in the heart, Guardian would paralyze you and send you to the Front. One of the doors would be locked to you. YOU HAD THREE CHANCES and then all doors into the inner heart would close and you would be stuck in the Front for the remainder of the game. No one triggered this, though!
milky stones: the waterfall
Waterfall and basin, with a touch of the cliffs in Three's realm! The heart's thoughtful spot.
If people had made the effort to get up there, there was a sketchbook detailing how he works through things and how he chooses to draw conclusions, as well as an entrance to the Library in Aseliaside. There are no signs of the stairs, the lift, or the basin's bottom because Mithos likes climbing and preferred it when they weren't there. IT'S HIS HEART HE DOES WHAT HE WANTS.
This was also one of the bigger places where clean water filtered up from the Foundation, so there was an entrance to the Foundation in there, which Bonten and Percy accessed.
turritella agate: the lakeflats
MUDFLATS + LAKE because Mithos fucking loved the mudflats before water covered them all. This area contained his sense of fun and childhood play and is the bit responsible for WHEE I AM A DUMB BOY WHO LIKES TO DO DUMB BOY THINGS SOMETIMES. You could find 'Innocence' -- baby Mithos, the aspect of Mithos before he got touched by his hero's journey and everything that happened afterwards. HE WAS PRETTY MOE and his memories of Aather people had to do with who Mithos met during the deaging event. I am sorry Souya did not go here because he would have made baby Mithos cry on sight and throw a frog at his face.
Innocence doesn't leave the Lakeflats because all the other areas aren't as safe for him.
The frogs were DERPHAPPY AATHER MEMORIES of splashing around in the lake or having mudfights in the flats or building couch forts in Sterling or the parties with Emerald and Sterlonyx. If you went here he would offer you one. I'M HAPPY THIS PLACE IS HAPPY DON'T YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY.
The lake was another large source of water that filtered up from the Foundation, so there was a door to head down there inside it. KK accessed this.
clear stones: the vegetable patch
Security, self-assurance and peace of mind! Picking vegetables/fruit and leaving them around the heart would have had an effect. Eating them would have netted you a random memory of an important developmental talk he had with someone in Aather.
Skills were also located here in the form of the impossible vines. These contained his earned skills and his learned skills, which was why there were more than nine and why they were in varying stages of growth and all tangled together -- some of them are interconnected and are attached at the root. The magic-related ones are also rather smaller than they should be because of powercap, though there is no obvious sign of that to visitors. Touching the vines would not have given you Mithos's skills or knowledge, but would have given you a pretty cheerful general impression of what they were.
The notable vine here was the damaged blue glass vine! That vine was his inorganic skill, which is directly rooted into both his soul and his current magical body; he's been working on undoing it but so far has only managed minor surface damage. The sap in it was filled with the memory of being a lifeless being. I . . . am glad no one tried to hack at it more because if they did enough damage to it without knowing anything about what they were doing they would have scrambled that skill badly and messed directly with Mithos's connections to his physical body and his connection to emotions/humanity.
black opal: the doors
Thirteen doors; one for Sterling and Onyx, twelve for the teams. They were not distinguished by team colour but instead personalized, and Sterling and Onyx were mixed, but they were still separated by team and they still led to team cabins and you still accessed individual people by keys! Which is a compromise between Mithos's need to FUCK THE KNIGHT/TEAM SYSTEM and having to acknowledge that he can't actually make the system go away yet because he doesn't know enough.
Everyone ever in Aather was accessible here whether he had a relationship with them or not. The heart did not account for this week's bookings and new folks because it would have been pretty impressive to sense that happening in his sleep. :'D The items on each bed contained his feelings towards that person, and memories/meaningful items/other people's secrets were stashed in boxes under the beds because he is pretty private about that sort of thing. IF you had gone in your own team cabin, though, your box would be atop your bed instead.
Team doors were pretty straightforward and the knight door was a little more complicated since knights are dealt with more individually. You could either look at his relationships with one knight at a time by using that knight's key on the locked door (Elliot did this, but it wasn't super exciting since he doesn't have a close relationship with Elliot), access the Nightmare Path through the blank unlocked door, or enter Lloyd's and Mithos's bedroom through the door straight ahead.
Lloyd's and Mithos's bedroom was the closest approximation Mithos has to 'home' either in canon or in Aather! It was based on a mix of how the real room was, currently is, and could be. The description was actually pretty faithful to how it looks in real Aather except for the walls -- the paintings of landscapes and creatures got left behind in Beauty's realm and the seascapes are probably what they'll be replaced with in Three's realm.
Resting on the couch or the bed was one of the ways to get to True Heart, but once Lloyd opened the door people could enter freely and True Heart could exit his designated area.
silver: the wayhouse (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)
The Wayhouse was in two parts! A castle and a path to Three's region. You could only open up the castle by pairing a Sterling and an Onyx key -- either you got these by pairing up with another player, or grabbed keys from the Doors area. It was closed to visitors because Mithos has been keeping a tight lid on that mess.
The castle contained Mithos's feelings on knighthood as part of a system rather than a set of ideals, Personae, and Personae rules by way of the tapestry. They are terribly messed up right now because of the tableflips he did over the course of the Beauty plot and he hasn't gotten around to sorting them out yet -- and won't be able to without more IC information and time to think. There was a very obvious black box there. The birdhouse was a sign of his contract with/affection for Kiriko, which did not get buried the flips. Beauty and Maleficent's Books represented them, obviously.
The contents of the books by page: the keys were a general record of the teams; the crossed knight keys were a symbol of belief in Sterling and Onyx being basically the same thing; the pancake and waffle recipes are Lloyd and Mithos's personal code for Beauty and Maleficent and the belief that SOMEDAY THEY WILL GET OVER THEMSELVES AND WORK TOGETHER; the fifth page is a more direct representation of that; the sixth page has to do with his confusion, again, over the system and his attempt to puzzle out the Personae vs. the Summon Spirits he pacted with once.
The flower in Maleficent's book represented his crush on her. There were a few of these through the heart that weren't seen: I believe they were in Turquoise, Sapphire, Coral, Zack's room, and Yuri's room.
If the knot had been untangled entirely -- which was extremely difficult -- you would have found symbols of each of the other Personae in the middle of it. The tapestry, which displayed a visual record of the games and the unlocks of the world, could not be repaired by players. HOWEVER if the knot had been undone entirely he would have gotten a lot more zen about it.
The path around the castle led to Three's realm, which was accurate but a mostly empty section. True Heart hasn't figured out what to put in there yet and he's not grounded in it the way he was in Aselia and in Beauty's region! Once it starts being properly incorporated into the heart the nail tree will also be replaced by the heart trees, and it'll stop being such a literal representation.
-
Changes made:
- At the Hub, Guy told Guardian he felt directionless, so that + KK's talk with True Heart means . . . there are going to be signs in future heartgames . . .
- No changes made at the Waterfall.
- At the Lakeflats, KK, Elliot and Bonten talked with Innocence for a while and accepted frogs! +20 urge to get into silly shenanigans with them.
- At the Vegetable Patch, Lloyd touched the sap of the blue glass vine and got swallowed by the memory of being lifeless for a little while before being pulled out of it by Guardian. +20 fear of Lloyd getting consumed by an Exsphere.
- At the Vegetable Patch, Viola drew adorable things in the soil! +10 feeling more peaceful around Viola.
- In the Doors, Elliot went inside his own room in Mithos's heart and accepted Mithos's ability to deal with his own problems. +20 trust in Elliot.
- In the Doors, Viola left a heart of rope on the bed. +20 affection for Viola.
- At the Wayhouse, Percy took a slice out of the door to the castle and got berated by Guardian. +20 thinking Percy is too reckless for his own good.
- At the Wayhouse, Lloyd and Sasuke opened the castle. This meant that Mithos can't put off sorting out his problems with the Aather system for very much longer.
- At the Wayhouse, Lloyd and Sasuke partially untangled the knot in the middle of the castle some. This doesn't make the problem less complicated in Mithos's head, but it did make him significantly less anxious about it.
+
[WORLD: aseliaside]
the hub
Access to memories and canon issues! The trees were here again. The clock represented the way Mithos divides his memories up and his sense of their chronology -- damaging it would have messed that up. The transparent floor and the world maps -- which were all Aselia at different points in its history -- were another way of showing how huge the scope of the heart had to be and also a handy method of pointing people to areas in an organized fashion.
The HOPE mirror used to be the HURT mirror.
There were eleven accessible areas here.
[PAST / HISTORY (Memories from age 0 to 15; the Hero Mithos)]
FOREST
RUINS
@#%54393%#@^%$&sskd!!##
SONG
[THEN / HORROR (Memories from age 15 to 4000+; batshit worldbreaker lifeless being Mithos)]
GARDEN
TOWER
LABORATORY
[NOW / HOPE (Memories at 4000+ until his death; Mithos in Symphonia canon after Lloyd's party came into the equation)]
#!%%EATHROOM#
THRONE
DOLLHOUSE
LIBRARY
Only LABORATORY and #!%%EATHROOM# were accessed! I will detail some of the other rooms if people ask. Some of the names and rooms were very literal and some were not. Each was tied to a certain category of his memories. There was a kitten in one.
horror: laboratory
This room covered memories of being a lifeless being, exspheres and their effects, and 'Yggdrasil' -- the adult form Mithos took when being a supervillain. Yggdrasil was smashed and not an active manifestation because seriously, fuck that guy, and Mithos doesn't acknowledge 'Yggdrasil' as a viable personal identity either in canon or in Aather anyway.
A black box could be found in this room. On closer inspection Souya would have discovered that the bed was all of a piece as well, like the whole room was actually just a stone carving of a room.
There was also a hidden door to Altamira and the Exsphere grave -- this is Mithos's sense of responsibility to the dead human souls who make up his Exsphere, and the stone on the grave was tied to the souls themselves. Damaging that stone would have made Mithos's Exsphere unstable.
hope: deathroom
This entire room was acknowledgment of death and murder. The thousands and thousands of surrounding fountains represented the individual deaths Mithos is responsible for; the white ones vs. the greyed-out ones are his current idea of the scope of deaths he is responsible for vs. the ACTUAL scope of the deaths he is responsible for.
If Guy had checked the pedestal with the Seed, there would have been a marking atop the pedestal to indicate Mithos had died twice (once in canon and once in Aather), and touching the Seed would have triggered a memory ofBEING IN THE LIFESTREAM being part of the Great Tree after his death.
The working fountain on the left was purpose -- the will to move on -- and the busted fountain on the right was acceptance -- dealing with his death before moving on. Acceptance was badly smashed because Mithos has literally not had time to cope with OH GOD MY BEST FRIEND IN AATHER KILLED ME OH GOD THIS IS SO NOT OKAY. The bloody bandages were a temporary measure until the heart could get around to fixing the damage there; the presence of something broken was why the room name was also glitched.
Guy could actually have fixed the acceptance fountain and opened a way to True Heart, but instead he removed the bandages from it and left.
-
Changes made:
- Souya removed the divider between the two sections of the Laboratory. No real effect.
- Guy took the covering of bloody bandages off the acceptance fountain in the Deathroom, thus destroying the last layer of Mithos's control and finally precipitating the breakdown over Lloyd killing him. This is half of the reason Mithos woke up screaming.
+
[FOUNDATION: the cave]
This was the heart's fuel! The overall structure of the heart was a gigantic guilt factory. The black water was the guilt; it runs through 'Resolution' with the Nightmare Room and the Red Room as filters, and came up in the inner heart as clean water that helped it grow and flourish. The lake is infinite.
Resolution was a bit of a bizarre manifestation! He was indestructible. He was injured because he gets hurt every time something happens that punches Mithos in the feelings, but . . . he actually just shrugs it off. Mithos's resolution to do positive things with his guilt has an infinite HP bar. Resolution also used to be Regret but then he evolved.
The missing book from the Front was here, but again it was completely innocuous: Messenger really does just bring Resolution things to do so he doesn't get bored. The half-formed glass object was a black box--Resolution is in charge of making those, more on them later.
Touching the cage literally killed you with grief. There was no door to the cage; it came part and parcel with this manifestation and is a way of Mithos acknowledging and using his guilt without letting himself drown in it. Resolution did not want to kill anyone and thus would warn visitors off the cage repeatedly.
Now. Resolution was actually supposed to be really happy and optimistic. HE LEGIT LOVES HIS JOB, it is a million times more useful and less painful than being simply Regret, and the system of the heart really does work for keeping Mithos functional and happy and largely sane. But! KK and Bonten didn't give him a chance to explain properly or accept that things were actually going pretty great for him right now, which upset him, and then KK -- one of his best friends -- shanked herself on him, which was a HUGE blow. Nothing that would kill him! But still a pretty awful thing to have happen.
Once you got to the Foundation, Resolution would let you out if you asked. Unfortunately, to return to the inner heart from the Foundation, you needed to pass through its main filter -- and so players hit the Red Room.
-
Changes made:
- KK killed herself on Resolution's cage despite warnings and injured him in the process. Mithos woke up feeling that he had just finished hurting or killing someone. This was the other half of the reason he woke up screaming.
- Neither KK nor Bonten were willing to accept the system in Mithos's heart for what it was. -15 'I feel supported by you' points.
- HOWEVER, WHAT DOESN'T KILL RESOLUTION MAKES HIM STRONGER, so in the future it's +100 willingness to sit on KK before she makes a bad decision in front of him. SERIOUSLY THIS IS THE THIRD TIME NOW!
- KK healed Resolution a little with her materia. Negligible effect.
- Percy came down here afterwards, cheered Resolution up some, and accepted his function, THANK GOD. This was the easier and less powercap-smacking way to heal him up a little bit. +20 feeling supported by Percy.
- Percy offered to help take over Resolution's duties for a while like a bro. While Resolution refused, and it would have killed Percy, +20 more feeling supported by Percy.
- Percy also talked to Resolution about bringing the memories on the island into the inner heart. +20 allowing himself to enjoy positive memories from that period of his life without feeling bad about everything that came afterwards.
+
[FILTER: the nightmare path]
Straightforward enough! Mithos should have had nightmares and slept badly almost every night since his first awful memory. He doesn't because Lloyd quested for a dreamcatcher from Dream to cockblock them until Mithos could deal. The manifestation of Nightmare and the gate actually follow Mithos around constantly in almost every dream post, unnoticed by him; it's too bad Judith and Lloyd didn't get to this part, because they might have recognized it.
The sound of water was because this room was part of the filtration system for the guiltwater at the Foundation. BAD THINGS GETTING NETTED.
Nightmare was irredeemably violent and unpleasant, had an inconsistent form -- except for the eyes, every live manifestation in the heart has blue eyes -- and opened a new path depending on how characters interacted with him. You could have gone to the Red Room, the Tower (part of Aselia), or back to the ring! It gave Viola all three choices so she would go away and stop beating it up, and Viola chose the Red Room as well.
-
Changes made:
- Viola beat Nightmare up some, which reduces the frequency/ferocity of his nightmares if the dreamcatcher ever breaks.
- Viola also got attacked by Nightmare, so again if the dreamcatcher ever breaks he is going to get some nightmares about attacking Viola in particular.
+
[FILTER: the red room]
Oh boy.
The three boxes in this room were Mithos's three primary coping mechanisms with TERRIBLE PERSONAL THINGS HAPPENING TO HIM. The amount of bandage inside reflected how readily he uses that mechanism. The teak box was activity: making or doing things to distract himself, ranging from HANDICRAFTS to DEALING WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS FIRST. The silver box was the less practical more unhealthy version of facade: SMILE TO HIDE YOUR INNER TORMENT. The mother-of-pearl box was crying it out.
Mithos employs crying it out the most, activity the secondmost, and facade the least. Shoving the bandages into different boxes would have messed with how much he relied on each mechanism. Destroying or dumping the bandages somewhere else would have ... temporarily cut him off from all three and would have necessitated the creation of a fourth.
The Mithos is this room, the 'Tenant,' was another part of the filter for guilt, and Messenger described his purpose to Bonten pretty well with, "Have you ever done anything where not feeling bad about doing it somewhere would put you over a line?" This Mithos was the manifestation of FEELS BAD, MAN; it's the guilt he allows to touch him in order to keep a leash on himself. It is actually quite necessary; if Mithos was not miserable about doing terrible things then he would be an awful person. The Tenant was kept locked away and suffering so the rest of the heart could keep being functional and happy. If let out of the room and not contained he would go on a destructive rampage.
He is also represented as an exsphere monster because capacity for TOTAL LACK OF EMOTIONAL AFFECT transitioning to MINDLESSLY ANGUISHED DESTRUCTION is a potential effect of mishandled exspheres that Mithos is aware of, and the fear of that was wound up in this manifestation.
Messenger showed up automatically if you released this guy because, again, it is his job to punch stupid heartbits who are misbehaving jfc.
-
Changes made:
- Bonten tried to heal the Redroom Tenant and failed.
- KK, Viola and Bonten temporarily released the Tenant and triggered the start of a rampage. KK and Viola (+ Messenger) knocked out the Tenant before it could do any damage, though! So no harm actually done there.
- Viola . . . dumped calming salve on the Tenant, on the other hand. THIS WAS BAD; it means a temporary loss of Mithos's ability to feel bad about doing terrible things.
- KK, Viola and Bonten also failed to remove the bracelets and restart the constant bleeding. THIS WAS ALSO BAD; the bleeding is what keeps the Tenant from getting so strong that guilt starts clogging the system and interfering long-term with Mithos's functionality.
- F...FORTUNATELY THE TWO EFFECTS WILL NEGATE EACH OTHER SOMEWHAT. So what's going to happen is that Mithos is going to feel less bad than usual if he gets a bad memory or fucks up in Aather for awhile! He will probably realize something is wrong and stop taking memories until that effect is gone. And then it will be followed by a short period of feeling EXTRA bad about things, at which point Messenger will figure out something's up and go take the bracelets off the Tenant, fixing the problem.
+
[DREGS: the black boxes]
Okay this one I will just put the description for.
"The sculpture weighing the books down is a copper tree about a foot high; the end of every branch is fashioned into a hand. Clasped in them is a square box the size of your fist. It appears to be made of glass, with the faintest seam of a lid. It's filled with a dark liquid that glitters in reds, indigos, violets. It's very pretty but looking at it makes you uneasy."
There were eight 'black boxes' to be found, though players only came across one. They were hidden in places relevant to them; three were in Aatherside, five in Aseliaside. Each of them contained a sealed aspect of Mithos's madness and they could be opened at will because the heart can do it; Mithos occasionally draws on them when a situation needs plain UNADULTERATED BOUNDLESS RAGE thrown into it. There were, however, numerous signs warning players off of them: you felt uneasy just looking at them, and touching the boxes gave a very clear idea that THIS STUFF IS BAD.
The three in Aather were anger, trauma and frustration caused by Personae, the games and the Aather system; emotional irrationality towards people he loves; and the remnants of just how much he hated Lloyd and Zelos in canon.
The five in Aselia were racial issues; thoughtless power abuse; being a lifeless being with no emotions; the unhealthily obsessed bits of his sister complex; and his unreasonable possessiveness towards certain people at home.
I won't detail their contents because they can be reworked into a future heartgame! But each contained a unique realm, opening the box pulled you into the realm, and depending on the box/aspect your chances of survival were 10-25%. There was nothing redeemable left in those boxes; it had all been filtered out. Opening/entering a box would also have strengthened the fragment of Madness that lived with True Heart.
The statues the boxes were wrapped in -- trees with dozens of hands on the ends of their branches -- symbolized how Mithos depends on pretty much everyone in Aather to keep him sane one way or another! Removing them from the statues would have made them easier for Mithos to access under stress no matter how much outside support he got, which would not have been healthy either.
-
Changes made:
- Lloyd removed the Wayhouse box from its statue. Mithos will now find it harder to not react angrily to Personae and games if he finds them unreasonable.
+
[CONSOLIDATION: true heart]
All of Mithos's available memories, relationships and skills could be found in the glade! It was a thousand times more real and intense than anywhere else because this was where his self is most concentrated. It was where True Heart lived.
True Heart was consciously the heart's architect. He was floppy and FULL OF LOVE. He is also the part of Mithos that believes he can damn well do anything if he puts his mind to it. True Heart was also a shapechanger because he wanted to be; he took a form that was ideal for flopping on people because he loves flopping, and if someone he didn't trust got to him he would have taken the shape of Mithos's sister instead. His real physical form was Mithos exactly as he is in Aather.
True Heart is actually the most powerful force in Mithos's heart, and wasn't...able to be like that until well into Aather. His ability is to pull the entire heart into himself and unite all the divided aspects of Mithos if he needs to -- in order to heal the heart when it breaks, at will, very fast. This is incredibly drastic but it is immensely better that it used to be in canon, where Mithos's heart just broke and stayed broken until he died. True Heart could also exit the glade area to intervene if things got really bad, though generally it didn't need to since that's what it created the heart system and the manifestations for.
A fragment of Madness was also present in the True Heart because it is also inextricably a part of Mithos to be crazy. He cannot just throw it out. But he can reduce its active influence in the heart to a speck and make that speck look like a tiny fat bird. And sometimes he can let the bird go.
-
Changes made:
- Lloyd reached True Heart and got affection all over him. +100 dere points for Lloyd . . . I guess Lloyd already has like all the dere though . . .
- Sasuke interacted with True Heart and got affection all over him. +100 dere points and . . . physical affection for Sasuke . . . that relationship is going to have a lot more hugging in it and I'm not sorry.
- Guy got pointed to True Heart and talked with him and got affection all over him. +100 dere points for Guy.
- KK . . . stopped just before she reached the glade and then True Heart got annoyed and went out to talk with her anyway. +100 dere points for KK, +100 I AM GOING TO CHASE YOU DOWN IF YOU DO NOT TALK TO ME SOON KK OH MY GOD. So a lot of things skewed Mithos to being more assertive in that friendship and less of a passive listener.
+
[MANIFESTATIONS: misc notes]
All manifestations had blue eyes, and the positive ones wore the wooden bracelet Lloyd carved for Mithos. Only Messenger and True Heart wore keys.
Faith was invisible, but wore the wooden bracelet and silver bangles.
Messenger wore the wooden bracelet and a white chain; the white chain is the remnants of Mithos needing Lloyd around to get to sleep once upon a time.
Guardian wore the wooden bracelet and black iron bangles.
Innocence wore the wooden bracelet and rose-quartz bangles.
Nightmare had no wooden bracelet, and god only knows what its bangles are made out of.
Resolution wore the wooden bracelet and diamond bangles. His cage was also diamond.
The Redroom Tenant had no wooden bracelet and bloodstone bangles.
Madness doesn't have enough power to hold a human shape in the heart, but would have worn no wooden bracelet and bone bangles.
True Heart wore the wooden bracelet and Mithos's regular bangles, which are violet metal.
+
[CHANGES, in summary]
Character-specific:
- A little more exasperation with Souya.
- Some need to do nice things for Judith and Hermana.
- Less private around Judith, Elliot, Hermana, Bonten and Percy.
- Urge to do silly things with KK, Elliot, Bonten.
- Added paranoia re: Lloyd and exspheres
- More peace of mind around Hermana, more affection for Hermana.
- More trust in Elliot.
- A lot of thinking Percy believes in him, but also that Percy is reckless.
- Temporarily reduced belief that KK or Bonten believe in him.
- Extreme dere for Sasuke, BEING A DRAPIST IN SASUKE'S DIRECTION
- Extreme dere for Guy
- Gradually more assertive, frank and outspoken towards KK.
- Lloyd and KK should have gotten dereboost points but idk how you make Mithos even more dere for them . . .
General:
- Need to sort out problems with Aather system soon, but reduced worry/stress over it.
- But also less control of temper re: traumatic games, Personae.
- INSTANT BREAKDOWN ON WAKING over his death + knowledge that someone got badly hurt or killed in his heart.
- Reduced nightmares in the event that the dreamcatcher breaks, with some nightmares specifically about hurting/killing Hermana.
- Temporary lessening (not total loss) of ability to feel remorse, to be followed in future by TOO MUCH REMORSE.
- More enjoyment/appreciation of Hero Mithos memories, less sads.
FUN FACT: this heart was designed to be almost indestructible overall -- you could damage things short-term, and causing a total heartbreak event was theoretically possible, but Mithos would always be able to rebuild incorporating the changes as positively as he could manage, because he's done it so many times in Aather. And it worked! No one broke it long-term, only ... short-term as soon as he woke up ... but Mithos's heart is pretty used to that sort of damage so it will rebuild and he will recover.
That said it still helped mess him up pretty badly -- he was due for a total breakdown anyway and a lot of actions taken either released the holds on its factors or aggravated them. So right now he is dealing with fallout from Beauty's game and the region shift + totally intense memory on 95 + finding out about his death for sure on 96 + heartgame on 97 + finding out Zelos has been booked immediately after heartgame. I. Yes.
In the interests of continued playability I am turning to INTERVENTION, ie. calling in one of his questfavors to go camping with Lloyd in a Persona realm where time passes faster than in Aather proper. They will spend a few days there to recover a bit and then come back with only a day or so having passed in Aather! Ooootherwise it would be an entire IC week or more where all my threads are 'Mithos stays in Sterling being forever sad,' which would get old fast.
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ASKING FOR EXTRA HEART DETAILS ETC?
The moment of inspection at the beginning was Mithos scanning all his heart players with manasense, since you cannot go near him without passing through that. So the heart knew who it was dealing with, even if Mithos will not necessarily. More on that later.
[BEGIN: the island]
The Island actually served as a general overview of the state of the heart! It indicated the structure -- a couple of layers of pleasant facade, then the inner heart rooted in and supported by guilt. The weather in the meadow reflected how Mithos felt going into this game; it was full of thunderheads and rain because ... well, he got an enormously hard-hitting memory on night 95 and then found out Lloyd killed him on night 96 and it has just been an awful week all around. Normally it is pretty sunny in there.
The sky throughout the heart had a weird glassy quality to it; this was an effect of his soul being tangled in his Exsphere.
Beyond the fog were pieces of memories Mithos would not mind sharing with people and True Heart thought visitors might like to experience! There were four: Noishe the giant green dog, the unicorn, a memory of his original party, and a memory of flight over Aselia with said party. You couldn't go very far out into the memory but True Heart thought people might enjoy flying.
The heart is in the sky because it literally has to contain four worlds in it total: Aather, the old Aselia (from when he was young), the broken Aselia (from when he flipped out and smashed the world in half and did all the terrible things) and eventually the reunited Aselia (his need to go home with Lloyd after Aather is fixed.) THERE IS JUST NOT ROOM IF YOU HAVE THIS THING ON THE GROUND OR THE SEA. It did used to be rooted on the ground but then it broke off and flew away. :Da
The door was also the inner heart in microcosm: it's shattered because Mithos's heart has broken several times over the course of canon and Aather and rebuilt itself again and again to cope with change! But it's also grown to have a support system. It's a form that works surprisingly well for him; it's really as functional as he's going to get. He can't have a heart that doesn't break under too much stress or he goes even crazier than he already is -- he just deals by breaking, sucking it up, and making everything anew.
There was really not a lot that could be influenced on the Island, though people yanking veins on the door and getting his guilt all over themselves was not . . . the best idea in the world.
Souya was also dumb enough that he had to have 'Messenger' come in to save his butt from endless freefall. Messenger is Mithos's heart!Lloyd and his job is to go around yelling at the other manifestations if they start behaving stupidly until they get the message and stop behaving stupidly. Or, in this case, at visitors. Messenger can go anywhere in the heart he wants.
-
Changes made:
- Percy and Judith burst veins! This ... okay this actually didn't do much beyond kick off the trend of 'MITHOS IS GOING TO WAKE UP FROM THIS HEARTGAME FEELING BAD.'
- A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE interacted meaningfully with the memories outside which makes Mithos even more willing to share those readily.
- Souya got scruffed by Messenger. +10 Souya why are you dumb.
+
NOW. Identifying players on entering the heart also allowed Mithos to sort them into groups when they went into the inner heart! Group one (Lloyd, Guy, Souya, KK, Sasuke) are people he already trusts enough to let in right away because they know what kind of person he is and have a good idea about what he did. Group two (Hermana, Bonten, Elliot, Judith, Percy) are people he just doesn't know as well! They had to work harder to get in. The grading was weighed to reflect this a-and also Lloyd's presence, because otherwise Lloyd would have scored max points just by existing.
So group one was sent directly to Aatherside, while group two went to the Front.
+
[BEGIN: the front]
The Front had a double meaning: it was literally a front/entrance hall to welcome new visitors and the sense of facade Mithos wears on an everyday basis. Everything was pleasant and abstract and you could sit down and eat delicious food True Heart put out to be hospitable -- but you didn't get a look into anything he wanted to keep private for various reasons. Which is a lot of the heart.
WHICH IS NOT TO SAY Mithos wanders around every day under an unhealthy smiling face concealing his ~inner torment~! He is genuinely pretty happy a lot of the time. Just that Mithos goes around every day without telling people he used to be a supervillain mass murderer, and tends to mask when he's upset in public because it's his responsibility as a person and a knight to be sensible. Damaging the Front would have chipped at that.
The missing book from the bookshelf was just a silly tidbit -- you could find it later in the heart and return it if you wanted, but it wouldn't have done anything. There was, however, a door behind the bookshelf and a trapdoor to the Foundation under the rug.
There were three rooms and thus three ways in: left door, middle door, right door. They were all exercises of sorts: Mithos asking you to trust him before he trusted you with his more private stuff. Trust the food not to be poisoned, trust the presence in the dark room to guide you through it, risk a fall and trust the heart to catch you. There was more than one for reasons I shall get to later.
The manifestation in the middle door was 'Faith,' the person Mithos was with no memories -- it's a pretty weak part of the heart because he shed that persona a long time ago when he accepted himself as 'Mithos.' True Heart repurposed it to do something useful because you don't just throw something like that away, and as his initial knight identity/trust in people, it fit well in this section.
Everyone made it through here just fine, so they also got to land in Aatherside.
-
Changes made:
- Judith ate one of the heart sandwiches. +10 urge to do nice things for Judith.
- Hermana ate one of the heart sandwiches. +10 urge to do nice things for Hermana.
- Judith, Elliot, Hermana, Bonten and Percy all got through this layer of Mithos. He'll be more comfortable talking to them about his heavy personal stuff/his life before Aather, if they want him to.
- Hermana stole a rope! . . . that didn't actually change anything. . .
+
[WORLD: aatherside]
the hub
The Great Trees were here! The black oak is Ratatosk's tree, the one Mithos tried to save before he went mad; the ghost sapling is Yggdrasil, the one Mithos became. It will turn into a real tree once he actually has the memory of his death and transformation back. The Trees are a bridge between the 'worlds' in Mithos's heart and you could go freely between Aatherside and Aseliaside by using them. Yggdrasil was also a guide figure of sorts if you approached it the right way.
Aatherside used to be a more literal representation of Beauty's region, but with Mithos's feelings on teams/knights/Personae coming to a head plus the physical place shift, it got compressed down a lot to five areas, all of which were accessed.
Once you got past the Island and the Front you were in the inner heart, which is where 'Guardian' -- the Mithos with a weapon -- also started coming into play! He was there to discourage physical damage to the heart and also to get people out of heart 'traps' such as the one in the vegetable patch. He could also point you down paths if you asked; both Messenger and Guardian knew the way to True Heart. He is Mithos's competence and not as overtly emotional as other manifestations.
If you insisted on breaking something in the heart, Guardian would paralyze you and send you to the Front. One of the doors would be locked to you. YOU HAD THREE CHANCES and then all doors into the inner heart would close and you would be stuck in the Front for the remainder of the game. No one triggered this, though!
milky stones: the waterfall
Waterfall and basin, with a touch of the cliffs in Three's realm! The heart's thoughtful spot.
If people had made the effort to get up there, there was a sketchbook detailing how he works through things and how he chooses to draw conclusions, as well as an entrance to the Library in Aseliaside. There are no signs of the stairs, the lift, or the basin's bottom because Mithos likes climbing and preferred it when they weren't there. IT'S HIS HEART HE DOES WHAT HE WANTS.
This was also one of the bigger places where clean water filtered up from the Foundation, so there was an entrance to the Foundation in there, which Bonten and Percy accessed.
turritella agate: the lakeflats
MUDFLATS + LAKE because Mithos fucking loved the mudflats before water covered them all. This area contained his sense of fun and childhood play and is the bit responsible for WHEE I AM A DUMB BOY WHO LIKES TO DO DUMB BOY THINGS SOMETIMES. You could find 'Innocence' -- baby Mithos, the aspect of Mithos before he got touched by his hero's journey and everything that happened afterwards. HE WAS PRETTY MOE and his memories of Aather people had to do with who Mithos met during the deaging event. I am sorry Souya did not go here because he would have made baby Mithos cry on sight and throw a frog at his face.
Innocence doesn't leave the Lakeflats because all the other areas aren't as safe for him.
The frogs were DERPHAPPY AATHER MEMORIES of splashing around in the lake or having mudfights in the flats or building couch forts in Sterling or the parties with Emerald and Sterlonyx. If you went here he would offer you one. I'M HAPPY THIS PLACE IS HAPPY DON'T YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY.
The lake was another large source of water that filtered up from the Foundation, so there was a door to head down there inside it. KK accessed this.
clear stones: the vegetable patch
Security, self-assurance and peace of mind! Picking vegetables/fruit and leaving them around the heart would have had an effect. Eating them would have netted you a random memory of an important developmental talk he had with someone in Aather.
Skills were also located here in the form of the impossible vines. These contained his earned skills and his learned skills, which was why there were more than nine and why they were in varying stages of growth and all tangled together -- some of them are interconnected and are attached at the root. The magic-related ones are also rather smaller than they should be because of powercap, though there is no obvious sign of that to visitors. Touching the vines would not have given you Mithos's skills or knowledge, but would have given you a pretty cheerful general impression of what they were.
The notable vine here was the damaged blue glass vine! That vine was his inorganic skill, which is directly rooted into both his soul and his current magical body; he's been working on undoing it but so far has only managed minor surface damage. The sap in it was filled with the memory of being a lifeless being. I . . . am glad no one tried to hack at it more because if they did enough damage to it without knowing anything about what they were doing they would have scrambled that skill badly and messed directly with Mithos's connections to his physical body and his connection to emotions/humanity.
black opal: the doors
Thirteen doors; one for Sterling and Onyx, twelve for the teams. They were not distinguished by team colour but instead personalized, and Sterling and Onyx were mixed, but they were still separated by team and they still led to team cabins and you still accessed individual people by keys! Which is a compromise between Mithos's need to FUCK THE KNIGHT/TEAM SYSTEM and having to acknowledge that he can't actually make the system go away yet because he doesn't know enough.
Everyone ever in Aather was accessible here whether he had a relationship with them or not. The heart did not account for this week's bookings and new folks because it would have been pretty impressive to sense that happening in his sleep. :'D The items on each bed contained his feelings towards that person, and memories/meaningful items/other people's secrets were stashed in boxes under the beds because he is pretty private about that sort of thing. IF you had gone in your own team cabin, though, your box would be atop your bed instead.
Team doors were pretty straightforward and the knight door was a little more complicated since knights are dealt with more individually. You could either look at his relationships with one knight at a time by using that knight's key on the locked door (Elliot did this, but it wasn't super exciting since he doesn't have a close relationship with Elliot), access the Nightmare Path through the blank unlocked door, or enter Lloyd's and Mithos's bedroom through the door straight ahead.
Lloyd's and Mithos's bedroom was the closest approximation Mithos has to 'home' either in canon or in Aather! It was based on a mix of how the real room was, currently is, and could be. The description was actually pretty faithful to how it looks in real Aather except for the walls -- the paintings of landscapes and creatures got left behind in Beauty's realm and the seascapes are probably what they'll be replaced with in Three's realm.
Resting on the couch or the bed was one of the ways to get to True Heart, but once Lloyd opened the door people could enter freely and True Heart could exit his designated area.
silver: the wayhouse (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)
The Wayhouse was in two parts! A castle and a path to Three's region. You could only open up the castle by pairing a Sterling and an Onyx key -- either you got these by pairing up with another player, or grabbed keys from the Doors area. It was closed to visitors because Mithos has been keeping a tight lid on that mess.
The castle contained Mithos's feelings on knighthood as part of a system rather than a set of ideals, Personae, and Personae rules by way of the tapestry. They are terribly messed up right now because of the tableflips he did over the course of the Beauty plot and he hasn't gotten around to sorting them out yet -- and won't be able to without more IC information and time to think. There was a very obvious black box there. The birdhouse was a sign of his contract with/affection for Kiriko, which did not get buried the flips. Beauty and Maleficent's Books represented them, obviously.
The contents of the books by page: the keys were a general record of the teams; the crossed knight keys were a symbol of belief in Sterling and Onyx being basically the same thing; the pancake and waffle recipes are Lloyd and Mithos's personal code for Beauty and Maleficent and the belief that SOMEDAY THEY WILL GET OVER THEMSELVES AND WORK TOGETHER; the fifth page is a more direct representation of that; the sixth page has to do with his confusion, again, over the system and his attempt to puzzle out the Personae vs. the Summon Spirits he pacted with once.
The flower in Maleficent's book represented his crush on her. There were a few of these through the heart that weren't seen: I believe they were in Turquoise, Sapphire, Coral, Zack's room, and Yuri's room.
If the knot had been untangled entirely -- which was extremely difficult -- you would have found symbols of each of the other Personae in the middle of it. The tapestry, which displayed a visual record of the games and the unlocks of the world, could not be repaired by players. HOWEVER if the knot had been undone entirely he would have gotten a lot more zen about it.
The path around the castle led to Three's realm, which was accurate but a mostly empty section. True Heart hasn't figured out what to put in there yet and he's not grounded in it the way he was in Aselia and in Beauty's region! Once it starts being properly incorporated into the heart the nail tree will also be replaced by the heart trees, and it'll stop being such a literal representation.
-
Changes made:
- At the Hub, Guy told Guardian he felt directionless, so that + KK's talk with True Heart means . . . there are going to be signs in future heartgames . . .
- No changes made at the Waterfall.
- At the Lakeflats, KK, Elliot and Bonten talked with Innocence for a while and accepted frogs! +20 urge to get into silly shenanigans with them.
- At the Vegetable Patch, Lloyd touched the sap of the blue glass vine and got swallowed by the memory of being lifeless for a little while before being pulled out of it by Guardian. +20 fear of Lloyd getting consumed by an Exsphere.
- At the Vegetable Patch, Viola drew adorable things in the soil! +10 feeling more peaceful around Viola.
- In the Doors, Elliot went inside his own room in Mithos's heart and accepted Mithos's ability to deal with his own problems. +20 trust in Elliot.
- In the Doors, Viola left a heart of rope on the bed. +20 affection for Viola.
- At the Wayhouse, Percy took a slice out of the door to the castle and got berated by Guardian. +20 thinking Percy is too reckless for his own good.
- At the Wayhouse, Lloyd and Sasuke opened the castle. This meant that Mithos can't put off sorting out his problems with the Aather system for very much longer.
- At the Wayhouse, Lloyd and Sasuke partially untangled the knot in the middle of the castle some. This doesn't make the problem less complicated in Mithos's head, but it did make him significantly less anxious about it.
+
[WORLD: aseliaside]
the hub
Access to memories and canon issues! The trees were here again. The clock represented the way Mithos divides his memories up and his sense of their chronology -- damaging it would have messed that up. The transparent floor and the world maps -- which were all Aselia at different points in its history -- were another way of showing how huge the scope of the heart had to be and also a handy method of pointing people to areas in an organized fashion.
The HOPE mirror used to be the HURT mirror.
There were eleven accessible areas here.
[PAST / HISTORY (Memories from age 0 to 15; the Hero Mithos)]
FOREST
RUINS
@#%54393%#@^%$&sskd!!##
SONG
[THEN / HORROR (Memories from age 15 to 4000+; batshit worldbreaker lifeless being Mithos)]
GARDEN
TOWER
LABORATORY
[NOW / HOPE (Memories at 4000+ until his death; Mithos in Symphonia canon after Lloyd's party came into the equation)]
#!%%EATHROOM#
THRONE
DOLLHOUSE
LIBRARY
Only LABORATORY and #!%%EATHROOM# were accessed! I will detail some of the other rooms if people ask. Some of the names and rooms were very literal and some were not. Each was tied to a certain category of his memories. There was a kitten in one.
horror: laboratory
This room covered memories of being a lifeless being, exspheres and their effects, and 'Yggdrasil' -- the adult form Mithos took when being a supervillain. Yggdrasil was smashed and not an active manifestation because seriously, fuck that guy, and Mithos doesn't acknowledge 'Yggdrasil' as a viable personal identity either in canon or in Aather anyway.
A black box could be found in this room. On closer inspection Souya would have discovered that the bed was all of a piece as well, like the whole room was actually just a stone carving of a room.
There was also a hidden door to Altamira and the Exsphere grave -- this is Mithos's sense of responsibility to the dead human souls who make up his Exsphere, and the stone on the grave was tied to the souls themselves. Damaging that stone would have made Mithos's Exsphere unstable.
hope: deathroom
This entire room was acknowledgment of death and murder. The thousands and thousands of surrounding fountains represented the individual deaths Mithos is responsible for; the white ones vs. the greyed-out ones are his current idea of the scope of deaths he is responsible for vs. the ACTUAL scope of the deaths he is responsible for.
If Guy had checked the pedestal with the Seed, there would have been a marking atop the pedestal to indicate Mithos had died twice (once in canon and once in Aather), and touching the Seed would have triggered a memory of
The working fountain on the left was purpose -- the will to move on -- and the busted fountain on the right was acceptance -- dealing with his death before moving on. Acceptance was badly smashed because Mithos has literally not had time to cope with OH GOD MY BEST FRIEND IN AATHER KILLED ME OH GOD THIS IS SO NOT OKAY. The bloody bandages were a temporary measure until the heart could get around to fixing the damage there; the presence of something broken was why the room name was also glitched.
Guy could actually have fixed the acceptance fountain and opened a way to True Heart, but instead he removed the bandages from it and left.
-
Changes made:
- Souya removed the divider between the two sections of the Laboratory. No real effect.
- Guy took the covering of bloody bandages off the acceptance fountain in the Deathroom, thus destroying the last layer of Mithos's control and finally precipitating the breakdown over Lloyd killing him. This is half of the reason Mithos woke up screaming.
+
[FOUNDATION: the cave]
This was the heart's fuel! The overall structure of the heart was a gigantic guilt factory. The black water was the guilt; it runs through 'Resolution' with the Nightmare Room and the Red Room as filters, and came up in the inner heart as clean water that helped it grow and flourish. The lake is infinite.
Resolution was a bit of a bizarre manifestation! He was indestructible. He was injured because he gets hurt every time something happens that punches Mithos in the feelings, but . . . he actually just shrugs it off. Mithos's resolution to do positive things with his guilt has an infinite HP bar. Resolution also used to be Regret but then he evolved.
The missing book from the Front was here, but again it was completely innocuous: Messenger really does just bring Resolution things to do so he doesn't get bored. The half-formed glass object was a black box--Resolution is in charge of making those, more on them later.
Touching the cage literally killed you with grief. There was no door to the cage; it came part and parcel with this manifestation and is a way of Mithos acknowledging and using his guilt without letting himself drown in it. Resolution did not want to kill anyone and thus would warn visitors off the cage repeatedly.
Now. Resolution was actually supposed to be really happy and optimistic. HE LEGIT LOVES HIS JOB, it is a million times more useful and less painful than being simply Regret, and the system of the heart really does work for keeping Mithos functional and happy and largely sane. But! KK and Bonten didn't give him a chance to explain properly or accept that things were actually going pretty great for him right now, which upset him, and then KK -- one of his best friends -- shanked herself on him, which was a HUGE blow. Nothing that would kill him! But still a pretty awful thing to have happen.
Once you got to the Foundation, Resolution would let you out if you asked. Unfortunately, to return to the inner heart from the Foundation, you needed to pass through its main filter -- and so players hit the Red Room.
-
Changes made:
- KK killed herself on Resolution's cage despite warnings and injured him in the process. Mithos woke up feeling that he had just finished hurting or killing someone. This was the other half of the reason he woke up screaming.
- Neither KK nor Bonten were willing to accept the system in Mithos's heart for what it was. -15 'I feel supported by you' points.
- HOWEVER, WHAT DOESN'T KILL RESOLUTION MAKES HIM STRONGER, so in the future it's +100 willingness to sit on KK before she makes a bad decision in front of him. SERIOUSLY THIS IS THE THIRD TIME NOW!
- KK healed Resolution a little with her materia. Negligible effect.
- Percy came down here afterwards, cheered Resolution up some, and accepted his function, THANK GOD. This was the easier and less powercap-smacking way to heal him up a little bit. +20 feeling supported by Percy.
- Percy offered to help take over Resolution's duties for a while like a bro. While Resolution refused, and it would have killed Percy, +20 more feeling supported by Percy.
- Percy also talked to Resolution about bringing the memories on the island into the inner heart. +20 allowing himself to enjoy positive memories from that period of his life without feeling bad about everything that came afterwards.
+
[FILTER: the nightmare path]
Straightforward enough! Mithos should have had nightmares and slept badly almost every night since his first awful memory. He doesn't because Lloyd quested for a dreamcatcher from Dream to cockblock them until Mithos could deal. The manifestation of Nightmare and the gate actually follow Mithos around constantly in almost every dream post, unnoticed by him; it's too bad Judith and Lloyd didn't get to this part, because they might have recognized it.
The sound of water was because this room was part of the filtration system for the guiltwater at the Foundation. BAD THINGS GETTING NETTED.
Nightmare was irredeemably violent and unpleasant, had an inconsistent form -- except for the eyes, every live manifestation in the heart has blue eyes -- and opened a new path depending on how characters interacted with him. You could have gone to the Red Room, the Tower (part of Aselia), or back to the ring! It gave Viola all three choices so she would go away and stop beating it up, and Viola chose the Red Room as well.
-
Changes made:
- Viola beat Nightmare up some, which reduces the frequency/ferocity of his nightmares if the dreamcatcher ever breaks.
- Viola also got attacked by Nightmare, so again if the dreamcatcher ever breaks he is going to get some nightmares about attacking Viola in particular.
+
[FILTER: the red room]
Oh boy.
The three boxes in this room were Mithos's three primary coping mechanisms with TERRIBLE PERSONAL THINGS HAPPENING TO HIM. The amount of bandage inside reflected how readily he uses that mechanism. The teak box was activity: making or doing things to distract himself, ranging from HANDICRAFTS to DEALING WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS FIRST. The silver box was the less practical more unhealthy version of facade: SMILE TO HIDE YOUR INNER TORMENT. The mother-of-pearl box was crying it out.
Mithos employs crying it out the most, activity the secondmost, and facade the least. Shoving the bandages into different boxes would have messed with how much he relied on each mechanism. Destroying or dumping the bandages somewhere else would have ... temporarily cut him off from all three and would have necessitated the creation of a fourth.
The Mithos is this room, the 'Tenant,' was another part of the filter for guilt, and Messenger described his purpose to Bonten pretty well with, "Have you ever done anything where not feeling bad about doing it somewhere would put you over a line?" This Mithos was the manifestation of FEELS BAD, MAN; it's the guilt he allows to touch him in order to keep a leash on himself. It is actually quite necessary; if Mithos was not miserable about doing terrible things then he would be an awful person. The Tenant was kept locked away and suffering so the rest of the heart could keep being functional and happy. If let out of the room and not contained he would go on a destructive rampage.
He is also represented as an exsphere monster because capacity for TOTAL LACK OF EMOTIONAL AFFECT transitioning to MINDLESSLY ANGUISHED DESTRUCTION is a potential effect of mishandled exspheres that Mithos is aware of, and the fear of that was wound up in this manifestation.
Messenger showed up automatically if you released this guy because, again, it is his job to punch stupid heartbits who are misbehaving jfc.
-
Changes made:
- Bonten tried to heal the Redroom Tenant and failed.
- KK, Viola and Bonten temporarily released the Tenant and triggered the start of a rampage. KK and Viola (+ Messenger) knocked out the Tenant before it could do any damage, though! So no harm actually done there.
- Viola . . . dumped calming salve on the Tenant, on the other hand. THIS WAS BAD; it means a temporary loss of Mithos's ability to feel bad about doing terrible things.
- KK, Viola and Bonten also failed to remove the bracelets and restart the constant bleeding. THIS WAS ALSO BAD; the bleeding is what keeps the Tenant from getting so strong that guilt starts clogging the system and interfering long-term with Mithos's functionality.
- F...FORTUNATELY THE TWO EFFECTS WILL NEGATE EACH OTHER SOMEWHAT. So what's going to happen is that Mithos is going to feel less bad than usual if he gets a bad memory or fucks up in Aather for awhile! He will probably realize something is wrong and stop taking memories until that effect is gone. And then it will be followed by a short period of feeling EXTRA bad about things, at which point Messenger will figure out something's up and go take the bracelets off the Tenant, fixing the problem.
+
[DREGS: the black boxes]
Okay this one I will just put the description for.
"The sculpture weighing the books down is a copper tree about a foot high; the end of every branch is fashioned into a hand. Clasped in them is a square box the size of your fist. It appears to be made of glass, with the faintest seam of a lid. It's filled with a dark liquid that glitters in reds, indigos, violets. It's very pretty but looking at it makes you uneasy."
There were eight 'black boxes' to be found, though players only came across one. They were hidden in places relevant to them; three were in Aatherside, five in Aseliaside. Each of them contained a sealed aspect of Mithos's madness and they could be opened at will because the heart can do it; Mithos occasionally draws on them when a situation needs plain UNADULTERATED BOUNDLESS RAGE thrown into it. There were, however, numerous signs warning players off of them: you felt uneasy just looking at them, and touching the boxes gave a very clear idea that THIS STUFF IS BAD.
The three in Aather were anger, trauma and frustration caused by Personae, the games and the Aather system; emotional irrationality towards people he loves; and the remnants of just how much he hated Lloyd and Zelos in canon.
The five in Aselia were racial issues; thoughtless power abuse; being a lifeless being with no emotions; the unhealthily obsessed bits of his sister complex; and his unreasonable possessiveness towards certain people at home.
I won't detail their contents because they can be reworked into a future heartgame! But each contained a unique realm, opening the box pulled you into the realm, and depending on the box/aspect your chances of survival were 10-25%. There was nothing redeemable left in those boxes; it had all been filtered out. Opening/entering a box would also have strengthened the fragment of Madness that lived with True Heart.
The statues the boxes were wrapped in -- trees with dozens of hands on the ends of their branches -- symbolized how Mithos depends on pretty much everyone in Aather to keep him sane one way or another! Removing them from the statues would have made them easier for Mithos to access under stress no matter how much outside support he got, which would not have been healthy either.
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Changes made:
- Lloyd removed the Wayhouse box from its statue. Mithos will now find it harder to not react angrily to Personae and games if he finds them unreasonable.
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[CONSOLIDATION: true heart]
All of Mithos's available memories, relationships and skills could be found in the glade! It was a thousand times more real and intense than anywhere else because this was where his self is most concentrated. It was where True Heart lived.
True Heart was consciously the heart's architect. He was floppy and FULL OF LOVE. He is also the part of Mithos that believes he can damn well do anything if he puts his mind to it. True Heart was also a shapechanger because he wanted to be; he took a form that was ideal for flopping on people because he loves flopping, and if someone he didn't trust got to him he would have taken the shape of Mithos's sister instead. His real physical form was Mithos exactly as he is in Aather.
True Heart is actually the most powerful force in Mithos's heart, and wasn't...able to be like that until well into Aather. His ability is to pull the entire heart into himself and unite all the divided aspects of Mithos if he needs to -- in order to heal the heart when it breaks, at will, very fast. This is incredibly drastic but it is immensely better that it used to be in canon, where Mithos's heart just broke and stayed broken until he died. True Heart could also exit the glade area to intervene if things got really bad, though generally it didn't need to since that's what it created the heart system and the manifestations for.
A fragment of Madness was also present in the True Heart because it is also inextricably a part of Mithos to be crazy. He cannot just throw it out. But he can reduce its active influence in the heart to a speck and make that speck look like a tiny fat bird. And sometimes he can let the bird go.
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Changes made:
- Lloyd reached True Heart and got affection all over him. +100 dere points for Lloyd . . . I guess Lloyd already has like all the dere though . . .
- Sasuke interacted with True Heart and got affection all over him. +100 dere points and . . . physical affection for Sasuke . . . that relationship is going to have a lot more hugging in it and I'm not sorry.
- Guy got pointed to True Heart and talked with him and got affection all over him. +100 dere points for Guy.
- KK . . . stopped just before she reached the glade and then True Heart got annoyed and went out to talk with her anyway. +100 dere points for KK, +100 I AM GOING TO CHASE YOU DOWN IF YOU DO NOT TALK TO ME SOON KK OH MY GOD. So a lot of things skewed Mithos to being more assertive in that friendship and less of a passive listener.
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[MANIFESTATIONS: misc notes]
All manifestations had blue eyes, and the positive ones wore the wooden bracelet Lloyd carved for Mithos. Only Messenger and True Heart wore keys.
Faith was invisible, but wore the wooden bracelet and silver bangles.
Messenger wore the wooden bracelet and a white chain; the white chain is the remnants of Mithos needing Lloyd around to get to sleep once upon a time.
Guardian wore the wooden bracelet and black iron bangles.
Innocence wore the wooden bracelet and rose-quartz bangles.
Nightmare had no wooden bracelet, and god only knows what its bangles are made out of.
Resolution wore the wooden bracelet and diamond bangles. His cage was also diamond.
The Redroom Tenant had no wooden bracelet and bloodstone bangles.
Madness doesn't have enough power to hold a human shape in the heart, but would have worn no wooden bracelet and bone bangles.
True Heart wore the wooden bracelet and Mithos's regular bangles, which are violet metal.
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[CHANGES, in summary]
Character-specific:
- A little more exasperation with Souya.
- Some need to do nice things for Judith and Hermana.
- Less private around Judith, Elliot, Hermana, Bonten and Percy.
- Urge to do silly things with KK, Elliot, Bonten.
- Added paranoia re: Lloyd and exspheres
- More peace of mind around Hermana, more affection for Hermana.
- More trust in Elliot.
- A lot of thinking Percy believes in him, but also that Percy is reckless.
- Temporarily reduced belief that KK or Bonten believe in him.
- Extreme dere for Sasuke, BEING A DRAPIST IN SASUKE'S DIRECTION
- Extreme dere for Guy
- Gradually more assertive, frank and outspoken towards KK.
- Lloyd and KK should have gotten dereboost points but idk how you make Mithos even more dere for them . . .
General:
- Need to sort out problems with Aather system soon, but reduced worry/stress over it.
- But also less control of temper re: traumatic games, Personae.
- INSTANT BREAKDOWN ON WAKING over his death + knowledge that someone got badly hurt or killed in his heart.
- Reduced nightmares in the event that the dreamcatcher breaks, with some nightmares specifically about hurting/killing Hermana.
- Temporary lessening (not total loss) of ability to feel remorse, to be followed in future by TOO MUCH REMORSE.
- More enjoyment/appreciation of Hero Mithos memories, less sads.
FUN FACT: this heart was designed to be almost indestructible overall -- you could damage things short-term, and causing a total heartbreak event was theoretically possible, but Mithos would always be able to rebuild incorporating the changes as positively as he could manage, because he's done it so many times in Aather. And it worked! No one broke it long-term, only ... short-term as soon as he woke up ... but Mithos's heart is pretty used to that sort of damage so it will rebuild and he will recover.
That said it still helped mess him up pretty badly -- he was due for a total breakdown anyway and a lot of actions taken either released the holds on its factors or aggravated them. So right now he is dealing with fallout from Beauty's game and the region shift + totally intense memory on 95 + finding out about his death for sure on 96 + heartgame on 97 + finding out Zelos has been booked immediately after heartgame. I. Yes.
In the interests of continued playability I am turning to INTERVENTION, ie. calling in one of his questfavors to go camping with Lloyd in a Persona realm where time passes faster than in Aather proper. They will spend a few days there to recover a bit and then come back with only a day or so having passed in Aather! Ooootherwise it would be an entire IC week or more where all my threads are 'Mithos stays in Sterling being forever sad,' which would get old fast.
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ASKING FOR EXTRA HEART DETAILS ETC?
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