Mithos Yggdrasil (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
antreegonist) wrote2012-09-14 09:49 pm
antreegonist) wrote2012-09-14 09:49 pm
Entry tags:
[HEART 2.0 WRITEUP]
ALMOST EXACTLY A MONTH LATER, THE WRITEUP
Heart ran here!
ENTRANCE
There's a moment of nothing but light and sensation. Someone's looking you over and the scrutiny prickles and burns – it's nearly a physical pain, like fine little hooks digging past your skin, into the very meat of you. I know who you are, it says, and I know what you are, and that you don't have any business here --
“But you do,” says Mithos behind you. He's a tired, steady voice in your ear, a light hand on your shoulder. “I don't know what Dream's thinking, but everyone is welcome here in my heart; just keep in mind it's a real mess right now.”
Your vision clears.
The initial feeling was Mithos's manasense – his extra ability to feel someone's presence and magic -- which you always have to pass through to get close to him. The second you went in his heart, he knew, and he knew who you were! Because of his memory, the sense was aggressively tuned towards 'what are you' over 'who are you' and it was in 'sense human ==> human bad' mode! So it raked you over pretty harshly compared to his first heartgame, when it just kind of poked at you and went 'oh okay, everything's cool here.'
The Mithos talking here was True Heart. He eased off the burn of the manasense and gave you a warning and a welcome, so you knew that you were in a heart and that there was bad shit around. He was also watching you for your entire heart run, though how much he talked to you was variable (...that is, I played it by ear) and how easily he talked to you was influenced by how near you were to the Truth area.
LAYOUT
This heart was a lot tighter and very differently-shaped from his first heartrun . . . it's basically his final form heart. Things can still flex around and change and be added to, but there is legit nothing you can throw at the heart anymore that will shatter it or bend it out of true. The worst sig neg in his registry didn't leave more than a temporary mess/wound that could be cleaned up and healed with time.
The heart is enclosed and cut off from the sky by a crystal barrier, because Mithos's soul is trapped in his exsphere. The path to True Heart is now straight forward always – it's all the central stuff that doesn't get shaken up very much. You could also loosely call it 'present.' The black tree was Ratatosk's tree; the old world tree he allowed to die. The ghost tree was Yggdrasil, the new one planted in its place. They were pretty obviously themed towards 'looking back at the past' and 'looking towards the future.' Some of the side rooms in both trees were temporarily overwhelmed by pieces of the memory.
You could go through the middle to look around and keep True Heart company if you didn't want to confront the memory much, or go to the sides and help clean it up. Both were helpful to the heart.
I wanted some weird heart physics in here! So everything was interconnected. Going 'up' the trees was the same as going 'forward' on the ground. Things were looped so that if you wandered in a direction that led nowhere in particular (the roads in some of the rooms, or anywhere away from the trees through the battlefield), a door to Resolution would appear, and you could be sent somewhere else in the heart from there.
The overarching symbology for the heart was done largely in plants and water and sky and handcrafts, because that's how it rolls. The format of the heart was meant to be fairly straightforward and open, with the path to the True Heart wide open (and True Heart able to communicate at any time), no overly complex puzzles or symbology, and almost no truly hidden areas or prerequisites to getting in. On an OOC level this made it a bit easier to get a large number of players through in decent time, and on an IC level it's representative of Mithos opening up a lot due to constant perspective and support, and no longer being afraid of showing who he is to people anymore.
GROUND LEVEL
. . . you're standing in the middle of what was once a battlefield, a broad plain covered in the armor and weapons and bodies of soldiers, all of them half-buried in the pale earth. What protrudes is charred black or melted. The standards, and any identifying features, are largely lost under the damage. The smell – burned meat and ozone – is thick in your throat.
Somewhat in the distance are two trees. They're huge, dwarfing the landscape, and so close their canopies touch and intertwine. The one on the left is black-barked, its leaves brilliant green; the one on the right is silvery and ghostlike. They're perfect mirror images. Even from here, you can see vast jagged rips down both their trunks.
Above you the sky's filled with dark clouds; there are continual flashes of lightning within them, and rolling thunder. No rain. You can see hints of a bright, deeply oversaturated shade of blue behind the storm. The whole sky has an unnatural sheen laid over it, almost like you're looking through a polished pane of glass.
There's no solid road, but someone has walked ahead of you here: there are clear bootprints in the earth, picking a relatively straight path through the dead and towards the trees.
The battlefield was, well, the end of the memory; Mithos slaughtered a huge number of people barehanded and felt terrible about this, but it kind of got shunted out of the heart proper because he was too absorbed with Martel dying to immediately focus on the deaths he caused in retaliation. Siscon is a terrible thing! However, if you'd gone anywhere besides the marked-off path, you would have found a door to Resolution, which is where people he's responsible for killing are remembered, anyway.
As Ventus discovered, you could fly through the storm and fetch up against the exsphere barrier blocking off the sky, but it's not something you could fix up in this particular heartgame.
CHANGES MADE:
- Lloyd left a wire flower for the dead on the path and Allen said a prayer over the bodies! This increased the need to find a way to remember the dead and put them to rest.
- Guy had to be reached out to and convinced to go further into the heart. This might have caused a change -- Mithos thinking Guy didn't trust him for some reason -- except it was negated by his actions further on in the heart.
- Ventus tried to give himself to the Exsphere and got pulled back by Messenger. This does mark Ven as a bit more of a Bad Decisioner in Mithos's head, though one who listens to reason.
ROOTS
The ground slopes upward gently. The landscape doesn't blur around you or anything, but the distance is a little strange. You're at the trees much faster than expected.
Well, you're at their foot, and even the roots of both trees are vast where they buckle or arch their way free of the ground – some higher up than Onyx tower, some thicker around than cabins, an imposing tangle. There are three clear entrances where it looks like you could go further in: left towards the black tree, right towards the ghostly tree, or straight forward between the two.
Mithos is standing here . . . a version of him, anyway. If you were present at the very beginning of Aather, this is how he looked back then: younger, a little shorter and softer in the face, hair down and covering his ears. He wears no key and casts no shadow. He looks very angry. He's holding a light sword, though its tip is still pointing towards the earth.
“What do you think you're doing here?”
The roots were an obvious crossroads for choosing your path! The black boxes are a primary mechanic of Mithos's heart I didn't get to play with much in his first heart: they separate and seal away most of the completely irrational harmful bits of him :') They are unbreakable but in times of high stress they can temporarily come unsealed, which was the case here. The Mithoses you met from them were mostly the Mithos from the memory of Martel's death, which is why he looked younger, didn't remember any of you, etc. But there's also some of current-Aather Mithos in them, which changed their behavior a bit: a completely pre-Aather Mithos wouldn't swear like a sailor, for example, and this one did.
People's interactions with the box entities did have effects, which are not going to be obvious at all in Mithos's behavior ICly (besides the obvious 'you put them away ==> he woke up calmer and more lucid'), but will absolutely come up if I choose to run a final heartgame with him later on. I was playing a little fast and loose with them, but in general you could a) make them vanish by completely failing to aggravate them, b) close the boxes and just seal them by force, c) make them vanish by playing on what they were and giving them something new to hang onto that wasn't Martel's death/corpse.
Unless you took the back way in through Resolution, the one manifestation you had to confront to get yourself in the heart was Rage; an internal reflection of the fact that Mithos was flipping the fuck out at every human who approached him in Aather proper at this point. Rage is unreasoning, destructive, irrational levels of anger.
The manifestations from the unsealed boxes, as a rule, couldn't really cause harm to you beyond making you feel REALLY INTENSE NEGATIVE FEELINGS, because they were still locked off for the most part.
CHANGES MADE:
- Emil refused to rise to Rage's bait and tried to calm him down, then closed the box. Guy refused to be deterred and closed the box. Josh tried to reason with Rage and closed the box. Ginshu expressed the failings of humans and accepted his anger at them, making him fade before closing the box. Hazel went ACCEPT MY SYMPATHY YOU JERK!!! and closed the box. Roxas refused to engage and dodged around Rage. Allen . . . knocked him out and left an apple on him . . . Natsume got all his kittens kicked but refused to engage and closed the box. Arry accepted his anger at humans, making him fade, and then closed the box. Flynn tried to reason with him and closed the box. Pascal tried to reason with him, apologized for his loss, and walked away. Van tried to reason with him, and closed the box. Ventus shut the box. Lloyd reasoned with and analyzed him until he faded. Yuri . . . tried to carry him along for a bit . . . and then knocked him out.
- TL;DR BASICALLY no one chose to engage Rage on Rage's terms, which weakened it considerably, and made it carry all this reason and logic and sympathy into the box with it :Ia JEEZ GUYS. A large boost in Mithos's self-control and ability to let other people in and listen to them even when he's furious, overall.
- Van healed Rage and also the ghostly tree! Healing from a human had especial power in Mithos's heart, because Martel was a healer and humans in Symphonia generally can't use magic or heal. This destroyed the remnants of an irrational perception he had that 'humans aren't good for anything'; it might not be noticeable, but it's not something he'll think or express even offhand anymore.
BLACK TREE (PAST)
PAST - BODY
This isn't quite a garden, though it seems like one. This room is filled with banks of blinking silver-and-blue machines with an organic quality to their shapes. They do look rather like plants and trees with strange fruit, if you just look at them out of the corner of your eye. There's also something wrong with your sense of scale, because it looks like a large space and there are wide corridors between the machinery, but you feel cramped and claustrophobic.
If you look up, the ceiling is an opaque blue dome, the same colour as the sky was outside. The air smells recycled and metallic. Soft clicks and beeps resound.
You can feel -- someone here. Maybe several someones? They're lonely.
The Body rooms weren't overtaken by pieces of memory because the memory of Martel's death had nothing to do with them, but they still contained essential pieces of Mithos.
This Body room contained everything that binds Mithos's soul to his exsphere and makes him an angel/inorganic magic construct instead of a physical being. Exspheres are alive -- canon says they're 'lonely' and 'a different kind of existence' -- so his exsphere was the presence you felt. The reason it also felt like 'several people' was because it had absorbed a bunch of other folks' souls previously. WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO STICK THESE ON PEOPLE? If you'd tried to get the exsphere's attention it would have tried to make a grab for you and part of Mithos's heart would have stepped in.
The machine readouts were for his exsphere-related skills; the machine imagery in general was an indicator of Something Wrong because Mithos's heart doesn't like using machines to represent things unless it's forced to. You could talk to the machines to get more information, and if you'd messed with the controls a little you'd have seen a bit more of the potential of each ability -- the 'age' readout, for example, would have given you a list of options for other ages Mithos's body could convert itself to. If you'd tried to change the options without knowing what you were doing, though, True Heart would have slapped you silly, because that shit is dangerous.
The cut vine is a symbol of his fusion to the exsphere and his struggle to win free of it. The sap it was leaking contained the worst part of Mithos's exsphere skills: the part that can turn him into a lifeless automaton. The green vine strangling it was a representation of physicality and sensation -- a sort of conglomeration of all the times he's experienced them most strongly in Aather, which is why it wasn't a specific memory.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel and Lloyd encouraged the strangling vine! Lloyd directly fed it affection. They made it stronger and more of an anchor for him to hang onto while he tries to extricate his soul.
- Pascal wiped the sap away from the vine, encouraged it, and tried to leave his key with it. He actively unfused Mithos a little more from the Exsphere, and marked himself as someone Mithos could talk to about this issue.
- Ginshu willingly shared the experience of being lifeless and then spoke to True Heart about it. She reinforced herself as someone who understands this issue and who he can turn to for support.
PAST - MIND
This door leads out to . . . is this a cliff? The lip of a sunlit cliff . . . there's something huge nearby, something that looks like a softly glowing lotus flower with every petal wrought of pink-white crystal, hovering gently in the air. Down below is a broad plain; there are two large companies of soldiers squared off out there in perfect formation, banners flying. One side's in white, one side's in blue: Sylvarant and Tethe'alla.
A small party of figures is making its way slowly towards you from below, about halfway up the cliff path; you can recognize Mithos, and possibly Yuan and Kratos and Martel with him. The other six figures with them are unfamiliar, but three are in white and three are in blue.
(There's a glass box in the shadow of the giant flower thing, upturned and leaking dark liquid.)
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Defeat. He was, well, very defeated in your direction and made only a token effort to stop you shutting the box. This was also where you could watch Mithos's party being betrayed and Martel being mortally wounded -- the moment Mithos went 'it's all useless, what's the point of trying and trying to save a world where things like this keep happening?'
When you closed the box, the room revealed an embroidered tapestry of all his regained memories/remembered experiences. Most of the tapestry is blank because he legit only has ~120 years or so back out of 4000+HA HA PADDING HIS REGISTRY SO HE CAN STAY IN AATHER FOREVER HA. Not a lot you could change in the cleared room, but you could've seen his history, including the fact that he and Lloyd used to be enemies. You might . . . also have been able to infer that he died, because the tapestry has an end, though that was less clear.
Touching part of the tapestry would give you the emotions associated with a particular time period.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel hugged and reassured Defeat until it faded. Ventus did the same! Flynn talked extensively with Defeat, tried to understand its source, and reassured it into fading. Lloyd yelled at Defeat a lot and reminded it what it still had, then gave it a memory to hold onto. Overall they made it much more difficult for Mithos to feel defeated on a complete crushing scale ever again, and boosted his optimism levels.
- Lloyd also drew an arrow on the end of the tapestry. Mithos is a bit less likely to think about the fact that he's dead in Aselia and a bit more likely to turn any conversations about it towards 'yeah, well, but I'm alive now, so. . .'
PAST - HEART
This chamber is small and cramped, made of rough-hewn wood. It's spattered with blood, walls and floor and ceiling; layers and layer of blood. Mithos is here. Martel is here. Neither of them cast shadows. They're in a spreading pool of blood from the wound in Martel's chest; they're covered with it too; it's a mess. Mithos is clutching at her, shaking and silent. The leaking box is clasped between Martel's hands. She's talking, barely audible, airless:
"Please . . . Mithos, go on . . ."
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Possession. It wouldn't let go of Martel or the box, it didn't want you to take them. The easiest way to calm it down was to give it an idea of something else it could hang onto. This was also the room where you could see Martel's last wish and how she died.
When you closed the box, the room's real shape was a hilltop at sunset, and a tiny cuddly kid Mithos NPC who was also present in his first heartgame. This kid is 'Innocence,' and his job is to send out memories of happy times into the heart (. . .shaped like cute animals, because that's how he rolls.) Sort of a sense of optimism, a reminder that there's always good to be found, etc. His role's grown since the last run of the heart.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel told Possession to hang onto his sister's legacy, making it fade, and then was SUPER DERE WITH INNOCENCE. They made an entire turtle of happiness.
- Lloyd did much the same plus whales and happiness math, and gave Possession a memory.
- Allen cleaned the blood off Martel's face, tried to comfort Possession, and told him they'd find a nicer place to bring Martel, which made the manifestation fade. He was then promptly topped by a small child who gave him a hug and a frog.
- Flynn told Possession to hang onto the knowledge that Mithos wasn't alone, making it fade. And then hugs and puppies and frogs.
- Possession was not actually weakened any, but tweaked a bit in a more positive direction ('even if I lose x I still have y' rather than being unable to look beyond 'I lost x.')
- The four people who talked with Innocence will find it a little easier to make Mithos happy '-'a I'm not really sure how . . . obviously quantifiable that is since people normally make him happy anyway, but it is a thing.
GHOST TREE (FUTURE)
FUTURE - BODY
You enter . . . a large garden of sorts; a tangled mass of entwined, flourishing vines. They're very strange...'conglomerations' is a good word. Some have blueberries and tiger lilies growing on them; some have broad leaves and large white flowers with a hint of pale yellow light at their centres; some have black-and-white striped seedpods with bluebells growing from the tips; that one looks exactly like a bougainvillea vine except that it's completely silver, etcetera etcetera. It's a dizzying riot of colour. The scent is heady and intoxicating.
There's another white door across from where you entered, and a large mirror standing in the middle of the garden, more vines climbing its sides.
The other Body room. The vines were all his skills that don't have to do with the exsphere. There were so many because they were earned and learned skills -- he's picked up a lot more in Aather than just what's on his registry. If you touched them you would get an impression of each. You did NOT obtain any of his skills by touching them unless you already had a grounding in the one you checked out, in which case it could act as a refresher + give you one or two additional useful things to know.
If you kept investigating the vines, you would have found two that were dead and tucked away. One was Mithos's right to wield the Eternal Sword (which passed to Lloyd); the other was the ability to contract with and call the Summon Spirits of Aselia (which became void after he broke his pacts with all of them.)
The mirror gave you Aather memories if you touched it! Conversations and times when he's looked to the future beyond Aather and what he'll do when the world is saved/Darkness is defeated/etc. This half of the heart overall was more grounded in Aather. The first memory it gave you was always the same, though -- the disorientation he felt when the exsphere locked him in the adult body he hated for a few days.
CHANGES MADE:
- Emil ate berries from the cooking vine, looked at a bunch of the additional memories in the mirror. Mithos now associates him a little with cooking and with Aselia's future; appropriate enough.
- Emil also . . . replanted and watered the seeds from the dead vine of Mithos's pacts with the Summon Spirits. This is hugely important; it obviously doesn't restore the broken pacts, but he now thinks there's a chance of someday repairing and renewing them instead of just apologizing for their breaking.
- Lloyd watered the dead Eternal Sword vine. This doesn't renew his right to it or even make him think there's a chance of having that right again, but it lets him focus more on the potential of the sword -- what COULD be done with it -- rather than just what he wrecked with it.
FUTURE - MIND
This room is very large and dark.
There is a huge object in the middle, glowing softly, though its light doesn't penetrate far at all. It looks like a multilayered lotus flower made of pinkish-white crystal. From the door you can see there's a blurred shadow caught within it. You can also see the silhouette of another person standing in front of it . . . they're holding a giant glowing violet sword . . .
"I don't understand," you hear. It's Mithos's voice. "I don't understand!"
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Confusion; the memory was when he wished Martel back to life and trapped her soul instead. The easiest way to get past it was to steady it up and give it something to hold onto that wasn't a spiral of constant unhappy questions. It was probably also the easiest one to make disappear before closing the box.
When you closed the box, you got another tapestry room! With memories of Aather, a visual timeline of his stay here since the beginning. Again, touching part of the tapestry would give you the emotions associated with a particular time period. There were also sewing materials and additional pieces of cloth if you wanted to leave reminders or messages or whatever for him in this room.
CHANGES MADE:
- Arry was EXTREMELY SENSIBLE at Confusion and shut its box. Emil calmed Confusion down a little and told it to make its own choice; it went back in the box of its own accord. Flynn calmed and reassured Confusion into fading. Lloyd reminded Confusion of what it had and got it to fade, and gave it a memory. General increase in steadiness and calm and ability to not feel trapped even in heavy situations.
- Arry also left needlework of a happier Mithos next to Sterling House in this room; that's a slight increase in feeling a bit steadier and more supported by other knights, general +Sterling brofeels.
FUTURE - HEART
This door opens out into the sky. You can see a whole world laid out below you.
Mithos is standing in the distance. He has the Eternal Sword in hand. You can hear him saying something, but he's a little too far away for you to make it out.
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was ??? -- I never found a name for it because Making Incredibly Stupid Rash Decisions Under Extreme Emotional Duress is hard to condense into one word. This was the Mithos who destroyed the world for Martel's sake. You couldn't make him disappear and you couldn't stop him reenacting the destruction of the world, though you could beat some sense into him after it was all over. This was the most physically painful manifestation to encounter.
When you closed the box, the room's real shape was a hilltop at sunrise, with a road winding down and leading into the distance. Obvious symbolism here -- new day, fresh start, road to the unseen future, etc. If you actually followed the road you would go to Resolution.
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh told the Mithos here that he made the same choice, and closed the box.
- Allen told Mithos how reviving the dead was stupid in a D.Gray-man context and to think about if Martel would even want it 8( And then made him eat beef jerky.
- Emil yelled YOU'RE NOT ALONE at Mithos, told him there were other friends who cared (specifically, Emil), and put him on the path to realizing it was a mistake.
- Guy apologized for Mithos's loss and related his own double loss of a sister, and then . . . carried him off to True Heart!
- Lloyd told Mithos to stop hurting himself, healed him, and told him he was sorry and that he wasn't alone. He gave him a memory.
- Most of the changes here created a general increase in perspective and awareness of other people and their needs and wants! Pretty effective counter to self-centred bad decisions. The exception is Guy hauling the manifestation off -- I'll detail that change in the 'Truth' section of this writeup.
CENTER (CONSTANTS)
KNOWLEDGE
The roots weave on around you, solid and ghostly both. If you're paying attention you'll see them taking on more of a structure -- walls? loose approximations of shelves? tightening up as you go on. They never stop being roots, but after a bit of walking the passage opens out into a huge space, open to the strange sky.
More root-shelves, arranged in neat rows, stuffed with books and scrolls; you're pretty clearly in a library. There are some stacks between the shelves too, and areas that are barred off with a white rope. There's an order to everything -- the shelves and stacks are organized rather than just scattered willy-nilly, some by size or weight, some by colour, some by shape, and some you can't figure out the system for, possibly because not a single book has a title on its spine.
The smell of the battlefield has given way to that of old books, clean paper and ink, and a slight tang of metal.
Near the front, a large section of reading material has exploded out from the shelves. There is a Mithos here; he looks like the Mithos you know in Aather. He also has a sword, but it's sheathed and belted. He's down on one knee, picking the books up steadily. He looks tired.
Knowledge is . . . knowledge! Anything Mithos knows or learns or hears of gets filed away in here; if you'd wanted anything on a particular topic you'd have been pointed to the shelf, but you had to ask first. The restricted area was obviously stuff that Mithos can't just spread around for one reason or another. There were also records of previous iterations of the heart (since it previously broke and changed a lot) if you'd wanted to, idk, go in a heart in a heart in a heart and create heartception.
The manifestation here was Guardian; he gained a voice since the first heart. Under normal circumstances he is still the heart's enforcer and Mithos's sense of competence, less physically demonstrative than the real Mithos, and will kick you out if you try to damage anything.
All the books that made a mess were known methods of hurting and killing people with his abilities, brought to the fore by a memory that . . . involved hurting and killing as many people as possible. It was much faster for Guardian to get them back on the shelves with help since Mithos pulls himself back up much more effectively with others' support.
Nothing in the center was overtaken by memory bits, just a bit of a mess that was cleaned up more efficiently with others' help.
CHANGES MADE:
- Ginshu, Josh, Natsume, Flynn, Van, Pascal, Roxas and Lloyd all helped reshelve books. This helped to reduce the impact and noise and associations of the memory -- the process of pulling it back enough that he stopped confusing it with real life.
- Natsume talked about hurt and friendship with Guardian, and exchanged tokens of the latter with him; Lloyd offered Guardian more dere and then got him to take a break and a nap once that section was fixed. This helped make him more . . . flexible, is the best word I can find for it? idk idk competence not having to be something that works alone or precludes support and affection.
- Dio was really touchy all over Guardian, flipped through the books without helping tidy, and told Guardian he wanted to learn to fight. This kind of enforced an impression of Dio as someone . . . who wanted things from others but wasn't really helpful in turn :|a The heart is pretty tolerant of that kind of thing -- Guardian promised Dio that if he asked, Mithos would teach him to fight -- but otherwise his opinion of Dio in actual Aather will be more neutral-cautious and less friendly than it could've been.
PRINCIPLE
This corridor goes on a little longer, the root walls changing back to a largely unstructured mess. A new scent, fresher, cleaner: is that a sea breeze? The earth under your shoes has changed, at some point . . . if you look down, it's now silver sand mixed with ash.
You enter another huge chamber carpeted with the same. There's a stream of water running through it, from southwest to northeast, and a stream of blood running from northwest to southeast. A large pool lies in the middle where the two mingle: the liquid there is heavy and silver, almost like see-through mercury. Several heavy pillars are sunk into the floor of the silver pool. They're made of some kind of white stone, very solid and straight. You can see then shifting slowly, constantly, though none go so far as to brush the edge.
Lloyd is standing in front of the pool, back turned to you, watching the pillars.
There are white doors to the left and right, both labeled with the word MIND. There is also another corridor leading straight onwards, at the back of the chamber.
Principle was almost the exact middle of the heart! It sat directly above Resolution. The water was drive and purpose, the blood was grief and unburdening, the silver liquid formed by their mixing is the desire to atone.
The eight pillars were Mithos's principles: 'you can always change and make change'; 'dying is the easy way out. You can make change yourself as long as you're alive. After you die, that stops'; 'always look at the truths of a situation. Remember that yours isn't the only one'; 'plan for the future, but if the future is unknowable, take things one day at a time'; 'people are precious'; 'people must sometimes be let go'; 'live as you desire to live. Be the person you desire to be'; 'there is nothing inherently wrong with you as a person.'. They shifted around because he can be fairly flexible in how he enacts them, but still takes care not to bend them and not to cross certain lines (the borders of the pool they were set in.)
Principle and Resolution were not touched by the memory, but the act of taking the time to look around thoroughly here and touch everything strengthened this area.
'Lloyd' was actually another piece of Mithos named Messenger: common sense and outer sources of restraint. He was extremely Lloyd because Mithos knows Lloyd really well. Spoilers I can't actually play Lloyd to any level of accuracy so Lloyd played Lloyd 8Db
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh, Flynn, Ventus, Van, and Lloyd looked around at the principles. They strengthened them somewhat, and Mithos will feel a bit more understood around them.
- Natsume got a lot of topping and an explanation from Messenger! He gave Messenger a bracelet. This is just added dere and motherhenning, I'm pretty sure.
LOVE
The sand in the corridor gives way to lush grass. It smells like the forest after rain here, fresh and sweet.
Another broad space, and this one is a large grove of normal-sized trees -- at least a couple of hundred. They're spaced out a little haphazardly, some clumped close together, some further away from the others. There are team keys hung on many of them, as well as various knickknacks, but not all. Some are just little saplings, some are quite large and sturdy, but they're all carefully tended. In the middle of the grove, notably, are seven of the biggest, most established trees, close together; there's something shining through them.
You know one of these belongs to you, and you know where it is, if you care to look.
There are doors to the left and right labeled with the word HEART, as well as a corridor that continues to lead straight on.
Relationships! Aather and canon. This was a very large room because it includes anyone who has been in Aather ever; anyone who touched the keys on their trees would have seen all the people on their team in the past as well as the present. I was a little loose with how I arranged things, but in general --
- the closer you are to Mithos, the closer you were to the center of the grove
- the stronger your relationship is, the taller your tree was
- if your relationship is extremely complicated it might result in the tree growing oddly, with a sideways tilt, crooked trunk, etc.
- the objects hung all over the branches would show memories and associations with you
- keys/team affiliations were a part of Aatherites' identification but not the main categorizing method because people are people more than they're parts of a team
- touching the tree gave you Mithos's sense of your mana (how he perceives you with it in a physical sense), and the mix of emotional associations he feels toward you, like an extremely personal relationship meme
- you could touch other people's trees
- even if he'd not met you personally, you still had a tree in there, because you exist in Mithos's heart as a person in the community and someone he's responsible toward.
The seven trees surrounding Mithos's tree are his party, but 5/7 of them are gone from Aather proper, which is why they were looking away. The sapling in the very middle was . . . a couple of things: it was a representation of Mithos in general and a conduit for True Heart to talk through; a further representation of how the heart 'remembered' Mithos becoming the new World Tree (though he doesn't yet have the memory and it wasn't a replica of Yggdrasil's sapling at all, it's a shape and symbol etched deeply enough that the heart will still use it when appropriate). It was also . . . I am not super sure how to put this . . . his liking for himself? And a symbol that he's still growing and figuring himself out after four thousand years of emotional stasis.
Touching your tree made you able to see a little piece of Mithos's crazy, which was scattered all through the grove in the form of tiny birds made of hatred for humans :T You could kill them with violence or . . . petting, at which point they turned into tears and a memory item. Violence made the bird leave behind Tethe'alla's burning (an extremely painful memory of being rejected by humans); petting made it leave behind TACKLING KK TO THE GROUND IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP (a memory of being scared of humans in Aather but going SCREW THIS anyway.)
CHANGES MADE:
- LOTS OF PEOPLE LOOKED AT THEIR TREES SOME WAY OR ANOTHER that's a little bit of +dere for errybody
- Josh killed his hatebird and like three hundred other hatebirds with violence. This pushes Mithos's impression of Josh a bit more towards 'he's violent.'
- Enma and Ventus killed their hatebird with affection; Mithos's impression of them now has some 'they're squishy' added.
- Pascal had a lot of feelings, echoes of which will carry over to actual Aather.
- Arry touched Guy's tree before looking for hers; Mithos will think she has a special concern for Guy.
- Lloyd wrote a 'he's back!' note and left it near Fakir's tree, and touched Ratatosk's tree before his; this made Mithos's feelings for Fakir fresher and closer to the surface (why he hugged Fakir when they met again!) and made him think Lloyd has a special concern for Ratatosk.
- Emil looked at Ratatosk's tree instead of examining his. Makes Mithos think Emil has a particularly strong concern for Ratatosk! Fortunately this is . . . already true . . .
- Flynn did not kill his hatebird; this . . . makes Mithos feel a little bit like Flynn wants to be hated . . .
- I'm pretty sure Guy and Lloyd killed their hatebirds by existing, which is less a changeprompter and more just funny.
TRUTH
Grass grows thickly all the way through this corridor -- when you emerge, it's not into another chamber, but away from the roots themselves. You're in the sheltered spot between the two trees.
Flowers in a riot of colours dot the grass here; all kinds. Some of them, white ones with yellow centers, might be recognizable as fandalias, if he's ever shown or described them to you. A little stream runs through here, the water clear and running fast. By the stream grow much younger, more reasonably-sized versions of the two trees.
There's a little wooden house in the distance; it's rather larger than a cabin, cozy-looking. There's a garden out front.
You're aware of an intense sense of presence here: while the rest of the heart feels real and solid, everything here is consciously, intensely, vividly alive.
TRUE HEART OBVIOUSLY there was a lot in this area.
The trees and river were 'normal' here, just everything was incredibly vivid and full of concentrated life and wildlife.
The house and garden were where Martel and Mithos lived when he was young, and were mostly accurate to memory, except that their bedrooms were replaced by Mithos's Aather bedroom. There was a lot of . . . the concept of 'home' in general, which is pretty damn important to him, wrapped up in here.
The white cat was the piece of Mithos aware that other people want to and do help him every day (it used to be the tree statues that held the boxes in game one). It had Genis's voice. The big black hawk it was watching was the little bit of crazy that stays with True Heart instead of all in the boxes, because when all is said and done Mithos's madness is a legit part of his truth and identity too. It was very large because of how the Martel memory unstoppered everything -- it's usually much tinier. It could talk, but mostly chose not to.
The herbroom and kitchen in the house were about support and remembrance; there were little mechanisms for remembering Martel (like planting more fandalias) and sharing memories of her scattered throughout. The bedroom is Mithos and Lloyd's bedroom because that's 'home' in Aather, and there were a lot of complex feelings and associations in here too. Climbing up to the roof from here would have taken you somewhere quiet to think, touching the materials on the table would have given you an opportunity to make a candleboat for Martel and/or the people Mithos killed, touching the vine gave you some sexuality/sensuality stuff (the overall associations Mithos has with that rather than an actual memory since an actual sex memory would be skeevy), and examining the dreamcatcher would have brought you face-to-face with Mithos's embodiment of nightmares, which are sealed off in Aather by said dreamcatcher.
The backyard is the road to the future/possibility/potential again. True Heart was here, holding down the overall memory and preventing it from doing any more damage. You could place any closed boxes you brought along directly into the memory to bring it more under control.
Mithos's True Heart was not actually that different from Mithos in Aather, just more concentrated -- he is pretty honest to himself nowadays! The concept of the 'truth' was pretty much that the entirety of the heart is the truth; even if he compartmentalizes a lot, in the end it is just . . . all Mithos. One is all, all is one, and what you have when you pull it all together is someone who's done a lot of both good and bad things; who's gone through a lot of both good and bad things; who still shook out in the end to be genuinely pretty decent; whose desire is to help and to fix; who loves a lot and loves hard.
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh gave True Heart power, stuck a closed box into the memory, opened up the herbroom, and planted fandalias; he also told True Heart in detail about making the same choice to essentially destroy a world in the past. + understood feelings and empathy, + easing and sharing of burdens, + feeling like Josh helps in difficult times
- Hazel talked about floating things and threw two boxes into the memory. He also agreed to talk a little about sisters with Mithos in Aather. + floating things is awesome, + sharing burdens, ++ feeling like Hazel helps in difficult times
- Van supported True Heart and then they had a Deep Discussion about how hearts worked! They also got into the Score a little, and Van told True Heart he'd ask Mithos about getting accidentally caught up in a story on the Aurora. + bemusement, + interest and thoughtfulness towards Van (if not necessarily feeling understood), + lack of surprise if/when Van finally asks about that.
- Lloyd looked at a Martel memory, made sandwiches in the heart kitchen and shared then with True Heart, put a memory into Rage's box, threw all five boxes into the memory, planted some fandalias, touched the bedroom vine, feelings feelings feelings. +++++ if he starts loving Lloyd Irving any harder he will probably implode
- Emil threw two boxes into the memory. ++ feeling like Emil helps in difficult times
- Syaoran told True Heart his real name and wanted to ask a question but didn't get to. + knowing Pascal's real name, + feeling like he's forgotten something around Pascal :|a
- Natsume named the derefox from his tree! Shared feelings with True Heart! And got invited to come stay over sometimes. + paying more attention to Natsume, + ddddere
- Flynn let True Heart show him a memory of Martel, talked extensively with True Heart and agreed to talk to Mithos outside the heart as well; Flynn also closed all the boxes first! + sharing burdens, + feeling more understood, +++ feeling like Flynn helps in difficult times.
- Guy brought the Bad Decision Dinosaur manifestation all the way to True Heart, and gave him some strength in the form of a memory. True Heart also ate the bad decision dinosaur instead of reboxing it 8D; And explicitly promised never to throw Guy away in the same thread. This . . . this is actually kind of a biggish change in that it . . . makes him much less likely to bad decision in general! But if he feels like he's turning onto a path where he has to leave Guy, he will go pretty far to try and keep that from happening! This doesn't affect the actions he'd take in that situation as much as it ups the level of fervency and force behind those actions!
- Though that said, the promise also boosted his possessiveness feels towards Guy. Good job Guy Cecil.
RESOLUTION
You find yourself in a vast, peaceful garden, grass and flowers lush underfoot. It's filled with fountains, several hundred thousand of them in every shape or size you can conceive. A great deal of them are white, though many many many more are grey. Some are plain, some are beautifully sculptured, some are downright ugly or laughable. Some have missing pieces and some are whole. Each fountain has a basin set somewhere in it, filled with something heavy and silvery, like clear mercury. Little vines are creeping up their bases, moss growing on their feet.
If you look up, the sky is strange, but not in the same way it was outdoors. It looks like a starry night at first glance, but if you look long enough, you'll notice the dark ripples like water, and that the stars drift and flicker like very distant, floating candles.
There's a hush laid over this whole place, a great calm silence. There seems to be no limit to it, no walls, but if you stand still a moment, you can feel a very faint tug drawing you to the center of things.
. . .
In the middle is a fiercely seething pool of thick dark liquid. It's bordered by a rim of something rather like glass, but with strange rainbowed reflections. Four channels lead from the pool, out through the garden, to northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest, feeding the garden. The water seems to flow through the rim into these channels, and what runs away from the pool is changed, no longer dark. The channels leading northeast and southwest are filled with clear water. The ones running northwest and southeast are filled with red blood.
You might notice that the fountain nearest the pool (fashioned like a spreading tree itself) is distinguished from the rest, just in a very subtle way: there are five small objects in the basin, under the liquid.
Mithos is standing by the pool, looking down into it. He appears the same as in Aather, but he's covered in scars and a couple of visible fresh gashes on his arms. There's an odd internal light to him too; something white and bright and steady.
The foundation the heart rests on, the system on which it runs. It's a merging of the original 'Resolution' area and the 'Deathroom' area from the first heart.
The whole place is a memorial garden for the crimes and deaths Mithos is responsible for; in time fountains for the soldiers he killed will appear there too. Mithos's five deaths are also present here, but they're no longer the center of attention, because putting them on a pedestal above the ones he caused felt pretty wrong.
The sky is an ocean filled with candle boats, something the Masked Lady taught him about and which he and Lloyd and Guy have used to send off their dead before.
The black pool is all the bad shit, all the crazy and terrible experience and unforgiveable deeds. It flows through the rim of the pool, which is a filter (perspective, support, awareness of others, resolution), to become the blood/water/silver mix that fills the fountains and the heart up above.
The Mithos here was also Resolution, who used to be Regret; he was no longer horribly wounded or caged as he was in the first game, though the memory temporarily damaged him a little and he's heavily scarred as a memento of that shape. He was pretty unshakeable, possibly the most philosophical if you could get him going, steady as hell. The boxes were actually made by him, of the same stuff as the rim of the pool.
CHANGES MADE:
- Syaoran had a conversation about losing things and relationships, and dipped his hand in the blood and water. + feeling more strongly resolved around Syaoran.
- Ventus touched the fountain of a Tethe'allan noblewoman who died in the burning of the capital, healed Resolution's wounds with a spell, touched two of Mithos's deaths, the blood, the water, the rim of the pool. +++ feeling more strongly resolved around Ventus.
- Flynn healed Resolution using WORDS SUPPORT AND AFFECTION, discussed how this part of the heart worked, got shushed for a moment and told Mithos trusts him, and offered to clean the heart up as much as he could. + feeling helped by Flynn Scifo's justice, + realization that sometimes Flynn covers up being unsure with tl;dr, + willingness to shush him as needed
- Emil talked a bit to Resolution. + feeling more understood by Emil.
- Lloyd talked about what was in the area, left Mithos a flower for all the deaths down there including his own, healed Resolution with AFFECTION!, reinforced the structure of the area, and shared a memory of his own resolution from the sequel game. +++ feeling more strongly resolved around Lloyd.
REMORSE
No one went here! Thankfully. The door was set into the bottom of Resolution's black pool where it wasn't obvious to visitors anymore, and jumping in there was a terrible idea. True Heart wanted it out of sight because it doesn't actually need intervention and things ended badly when people tried to 'fix' it last game.
I didn't write the flavor text for this one, but it contained a constantly-bleeding Mithos (Remorse) who was continually cleaning his own blood off the walls and floor and throwing the blood-soaked rags into some sort of representation of coping mechanisms. Like in last heartgame, if you'd tried to haul him out of the room he'd have turned into a monster, whoops. It's perhaps the most unpleasant non-box part of the heart, but a necessary one.
CHANGES MADE: None.
-
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS CAN GO HERE, or you can tell me if your character did something that I missed, or ask for more symbolism details that I forgot to cover in-depth, or ask me for your relationship tree, or whatever you want! THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO PLAYED! You made the heartgame pretty damn magical and I hope you all had as much fun with it as I did, ahhh ♥ ♥ ♥
Heart ran here!
ENTRANCE
There's a moment of nothing but light and sensation. Someone's looking you over and the scrutiny prickles and burns – it's nearly a physical pain, like fine little hooks digging past your skin, into the very meat of you. I know who you are, it says, and I know what you are, and that you don't have any business here --
“But you do,” says Mithos behind you. He's a tired, steady voice in your ear, a light hand on your shoulder. “I don't know what Dream's thinking, but everyone is welcome here in my heart; just keep in mind it's a real mess right now.”
Your vision clears.
The initial feeling was Mithos's manasense – his extra ability to feel someone's presence and magic -- which you always have to pass through to get close to him. The second you went in his heart, he knew, and he knew who you were! Because of his memory, the sense was aggressively tuned towards 'what are you' over 'who are you' and it was in 'sense human ==> human bad' mode! So it raked you over pretty harshly compared to his first heartgame, when it just kind of poked at you and went 'oh okay, everything's cool here.'
The Mithos talking here was True Heart. He eased off the burn of the manasense and gave you a warning and a welcome, so you knew that you were in a heart and that there was bad shit around. He was also watching you for your entire heart run, though how much he talked to you was variable (...that is, I played it by ear) and how easily he talked to you was influenced by how near you were to the Truth area.
LAYOUT
This heart was a lot tighter and very differently-shaped from his first heartrun . . . it's basically his final form heart. Things can still flex around and change and be added to, but there is legit nothing you can throw at the heart anymore that will shatter it or bend it out of true. The worst sig neg in his registry didn't leave more than a temporary mess/wound that could be cleaned up and healed with time.
The heart is enclosed and cut off from the sky by a crystal barrier, because Mithos's soul is trapped in his exsphere. The path to True Heart is now straight forward always – it's all the central stuff that doesn't get shaken up very much. You could also loosely call it 'present.' The black tree was Ratatosk's tree; the old world tree he allowed to die. The ghost tree was Yggdrasil, the new one planted in its place. They were pretty obviously themed towards 'looking back at the past' and 'looking towards the future.' Some of the side rooms in both trees were temporarily overwhelmed by pieces of the memory.
You could go through the middle to look around and keep True Heart company if you didn't want to confront the memory much, or go to the sides and help clean it up. Both were helpful to the heart.
I wanted some weird heart physics in here! So everything was interconnected. Going 'up' the trees was the same as going 'forward' on the ground. Things were looped so that if you wandered in a direction that led nowhere in particular (the roads in some of the rooms, or anywhere away from the trees through the battlefield), a door to Resolution would appear, and you could be sent somewhere else in the heart from there.
The overarching symbology for the heart was done largely in plants and water and sky and handcrafts, because that's how it rolls. The format of the heart was meant to be fairly straightforward and open, with the path to the True Heart wide open (and True Heart able to communicate at any time), no overly complex puzzles or symbology, and almost no truly hidden areas or prerequisites to getting in. On an OOC level this made it a bit easier to get a large number of players through in decent time, and on an IC level it's representative of Mithos opening up a lot due to constant perspective and support, and no longer being afraid of showing who he is to people anymore.
GROUND LEVEL
. . . you're standing in the middle of what was once a battlefield, a broad plain covered in the armor and weapons and bodies of soldiers, all of them half-buried in the pale earth. What protrudes is charred black or melted. The standards, and any identifying features, are largely lost under the damage. The smell – burned meat and ozone – is thick in your throat.
Somewhat in the distance are two trees. They're huge, dwarfing the landscape, and so close their canopies touch and intertwine. The one on the left is black-barked, its leaves brilliant green; the one on the right is silvery and ghostlike. They're perfect mirror images. Even from here, you can see vast jagged rips down both their trunks.
Above you the sky's filled with dark clouds; there are continual flashes of lightning within them, and rolling thunder. No rain. You can see hints of a bright, deeply oversaturated shade of blue behind the storm. The whole sky has an unnatural sheen laid over it, almost like you're looking through a polished pane of glass.
There's no solid road, but someone has walked ahead of you here: there are clear bootprints in the earth, picking a relatively straight path through the dead and towards the trees.
The battlefield was, well, the end of the memory; Mithos slaughtered a huge number of people barehanded and felt terrible about this, but it kind of got shunted out of the heart proper because he was too absorbed with Martel dying to immediately focus on the deaths he caused in retaliation. Siscon is a terrible thing! However, if you'd gone anywhere besides the marked-off path, you would have found a door to Resolution, which is where people he's responsible for killing are remembered, anyway.
As Ventus discovered, you could fly through the storm and fetch up against the exsphere barrier blocking off the sky, but it's not something you could fix up in this particular heartgame.
CHANGES MADE:
- Lloyd left a wire flower for the dead on the path and Allen said a prayer over the bodies! This increased the need to find a way to remember the dead and put them to rest.
- Guy had to be reached out to and convinced to go further into the heart. This might have caused a change -- Mithos thinking Guy didn't trust him for some reason -- except it was negated by his actions further on in the heart.
- Ventus tried to give himself to the Exsphere and got pulled back by Messenger. This does mark Ven as a bit more of a Bad Decisioner in Mithos's head, though one who listens to reason.
ROOTS
The ground slopes upward gently. The landscape doesn't blur around you or anything, but the distance is a little strange. You're at the trees much faster than expected.
Well, you're at their foot, and even the roots of both trees are vast where they buckle or arch their way free of the ground – some higher up than Onyx tower, some thicker around than cabins, an imposing tangle. There are three clear entrances where it looks like you could go further in: left towards the black tree, right towards the ghostly tree, or straight forward between the two.
Mithos is standing here . . . a version of him, anyway. If you were present at the very beginning of Aather, this is how he looked back then: younger, a little shorter and softer in the face, hair down and covering his ears. He wears no key and casts no shadow. He looks very angry. He's holding a light sword, though its tip is still pointing towards the earth.
“What do you think you're doing here?”
The roots were an obvious crossroads for choosing your path! The black boxes are a primary mechanic of Mithos's heart I didn't get to play with much in his first heart: they separate and seal away most of the completely irrational harmful bits of him :') They are unbreakable but in times of high stress they can temporarily come unsealed, which was the case here. The Mithoses you met from them were mostly the Mithos from the memory of Martel's death, which is why he looked younger, didn't remember any of you, etc. But there's also some of current-Aather Mithos in them, which changed their behavior a bit: a completely pre-Aather Mithos wouldn't swear like a sailor, for example, and this one did.
People's interactions with the box entities did have effects, which are not going to be obvious at all in Mithos's behavior ICly (besides the obvious 'you put them away ==> he woke up calmer and more lucid'), but will absolutely come up if I choose to run a final heartgame with him later on. I was playing a little fast and loose with them, but in general you could a) make them vanish by completely failing to aggravate them, b) close the boxes and just seal them by force, c) make them vanish by playing on what they were and giving them something new to hang onto that wasn't Martel's death/corpse.
Unless you took the back way in through Resolution, the one manifestation you had to confront to get yourself in the heart was Rage; an internal reflection of the fact that Mithos was flipping the fuck out at every human who approached him in Aather proper at this point. Rage is unreasoning, destructive, irrational levels of anger.
The manifestations from the unsealed boxes, as a rule, couldn't really cause harm to you beyond making you feel REALLY INTENSE NEGATIVE FEELINGS, because they were still locked off for the most part.
CHANGES MADE:
- Emil refused to rise to Rage's bait and tried to calm him down, then closed the box. Guy refused to be deterred and closed the box. Josh tried to reason with Rage and closed the box. Ginshu expressed the failings of humans and accepted his anger at them, making him fade before closing the box. Hazel went ACCEPT MY SYMPATHY YOU JERK!!! and closed the box. Roxas refused to engage and dodged around Rage. Allen . . . knocked him out and left an apple on him . . . Natsume got all his kittens kicked but refused to engage and closed the box. Arry accepted his anger at humans, making him fade, and then closed the box. Flynn tried to reason with him and closed the box. Pascal tried to reason with him, apologized for his loss, and walked away. Van tried to reason with him, and closed the box. Ventus shut the box. Lloyd reasoned with and analyzed him until he faded. Yuri . . . tried to carry him along for a bit . . . and then knocked him out.
- TL;DR BASICALLY no one chose to engage Rage on Rage's terms, which weakened it considerably, and made it carry all this reason and logic and sympathy into the box with it :Ia JEEZ GUYS. A large boost in Mithos's self-control and ability to let other people in and listen to them even when he's furious, overall.
- Van healed Rage and also the ghostly tree! Healing from a human had especial power in Mithos's heart, because Martel was a healer and humans in Symphonia generally can't use magic or heal. This destroyed the remnants of an irrational perception he had that 'humans aren't good for anything'; it might not be noticeable, but it's not something he'll think or express even offhand anymore.
BLACK TREE (PAST)
PAST - BODY
This isn't quite a garden, though it seems like one. This room is filled with banks of blinking silver-and-blue machines with an organic quality to their shapes. They do look rather like plants and trees with strange fruit, if you just look at them out of the corner of your eye. There's also something wrong with your sense of scale, because it looks like a large space and there are wide corridors between the machinery, but you feel cramped and claustrophobic.
If you look up, the ceiling is an opaque blue dome, the same colour as the sky was outside. The air smells recycled and metallic. Soft clicks and beeps resound.
You can feel -- someone here. Maybe several someones? They're lonely.
The Body rooms weren't overtaken by pieces of memory because the memory of Martel's death had nothing to do with them, but they still contained essential pieces of Mithos.
This Body room contained everything that binds Mithos's soul to his exsphere and makes him an angel/inorganic magic construct instead of a physical being. Exspheres are alive -- canon says they're 'lonely' and 'a different kind of existence' -- so his exsphere was the presence you felt. The reason it also felt like 'several people' was because it had absorbed a bunch of other folks' souls previously. WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO STICK THESE ON PEOPLE? If you'd tried to get the exsphere's attention it would have tried to make a grab for you and part of Mithos's heart would have stepped in.
The machine readouts were for his exsphere-related skills; the machine imagery in general was an indicator of Something Wrong because Mithos's heart doesn't like using machines to represent things unless it's forced to. You could talk to the machines to get more information, and if you'd messed with the controls a little you'd have seen a bit more of the potential of each ability -- the 'age' readout, for example, would have given you a list of options for other ages Mithos's body could convert itself to. If you'd tried to change the options without knowing what you were doing, though, True Heart would have slapped you silly, because that shit is dangerous.
The cut vine is a symbol of his fusion to the exsphere and his struggle to win free of it. The sap it was leaking contained the worst part of Mithos's exsphere skills: the part that can turn him into a lifeless automaton. The green vine strangling it was a representation of physicality and sensation -- a sort of conglomeration of all the times he's experienced them most strongly in Aather, which is why it wasn't a specific memory.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel and Lloyd encouraged the strangling vine! Lloyd directly fed it affection. They made it stronger and more of an anchor for him to hang onto while he tries to extricate his soul.
- Pascal wiped the sap away from the vine, encouraged it, and tried to leave his key with it. He actively unfused Mithos a little more from the Exsphere, and marked himself as someone Mithos could talk to about this issue.
- Ginshu willingly shared the experience of being lifeless and then spoke to True Heart about it. She reinforced herself as someone who understands this issue and who he can turn to for support.
PAST - MIND
This door leads out to . . . is this a cliff? The lip of a sunlit cliff . . . there's something huge nearby, something that looks like a softly glowing lotus flower with every petal wrought of pink-white crystal, hovering gently in the air. Down below is a broad plain; there are two large companies of soldiers squared off out there in perfect formation, banners flying. One side's in white, one side's in blue: Sylvarant and Tethe'alla.
A small party of figures is making its way slowly towards you from below, about halfway up the cliff path; you can recognize Mithos, and possibly Yuan and Kratos and Martel with him. The other six figures with them are unfamiliar, but three are in white and three are in blue.
(There's a glass box in the shadow of the giant flower thing, upturned and leaking dark liquid.)
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Defeat. He was, well, very defeated in your direction and made only a token effort to stop you shutting the box. This was also where you could watch Mithos's party being betrayed and Martel being mortally wounded -- the moment Mithos went 'it's all useless, what's the point of trying and trying to save a world where things like this keep happening?'
When you closed the box, the room revealed an embroidered tapestry of all his regained memories/remembered experiences. Most of the tapestry is blank because he legit only has ~120 years or so back out of 4000+
Touching part of the tapestry would give you the emotions associated with a particular time period.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel hugged and reassured Defeat until it faded. Ventus did the same! Flynn talked extensively with Defeat, tried to understand its source, and reassured it into fading. Lloyd yelled at Defeat a lot and reminded it what it still had, then gave it a memory to hold onto. Overall they made it much more difficult for Mithos to feel defeated on a complete crushing scale ever again, and boosted his optimism levels.
- Lloyd also drew an arrow on the end of the tapestry. Mithos is a bit less likely to think about the fact that he's dead in Aselia and a bit more likely to turn any conversations about it towards 'yeah, well, but I'm alive now, so. . .'
PAST - HEART
This chamber is small and cramped, made of rough-hewn wood. It's spattered with blood, walls and floor and ceiling; layers and layer of blood. Mithos is here. Martel is here. Neither of them cast shadows. They're in a spreading pool of blood from the wound in Martel's chest; they're covered with it too; it's a mess. Mithos is clutching at her, shaking and silent. The leaking box is clasped between Martel's hands. She's talking, barely audible, airless:
"Please . . . Mithos, go on . . ."
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Possession. It wouldn't let go of Martel or the box, it didn't want you to take them. The easiest way to calm it down was to give it an idea of something else it could hang onto. This was also the room where you could see Martel's last wish and how she died.
When you closed the box, the room's real shape was a hilltop at sunset, and a tiny cuddly kid Mithos NPC who was also present in his first heartgame. This kid is 'Innocence,' and his job is to send out memories of happy times into the heart (. . .shaped like cute animals, because that's how he rolls.) Sort of a sense of optimism, a reminder that there's always good to be found, etc. His role's grown since the last run of the heart.
CHANGES MADE:
- Hazel told Possession to hang onto his sister's legacy, making it fade, and then was SUPER DERE WITH INNOCENCE. They made an entire turtle of happiness.
- Lloyd did much the same plus whales and happiness math, and gave Possession a memory.
- Allen cleaned the blood off Martel's face, tried to comfort Possession, and told him they'd find a nicer place to bring Martel, which made the manifestation fade. He was then promptly topped by a small child who gave him a hug and a frog.
- Flynn told Possession to hang onto the knowledge that Mithos wasn't alone, making it fade. And then hugs and puppies and frogs.
- Possession was not actually weakened any, but tweaked a bit in a more positive direction ('even if I lose x I still have y' rather than being unable to look beyond 'I lost x.')
- The four people who talked with Innocence will find it a little easier to make Mithos happy '-'a I'm not really sure how . . . obviously quantifiable that is since people normally make him happy anyway, but it is a thing.
GHOST TREE (FUTURE)
FUTURE - BODY
You enter . . . a large garden of sorts; a tangled mass of entwined, flourishing vines. They're very strange...'conglomerations' is a good word. Some have blueberries and tiger lilies growing on them; some have broad leaves and large white flowers with a hint of pale yellow light at their centres; some have black-and-white striped seedpods with bluebells growing from the tips; that one looks exactly like a bougainvillea vine except that it's completely silver, etcetera etcetera. It's a dizzying riot of colour. The scent is heady and intoxicating.
There's another white door across from where you entered, and a large mirror standing in the middle of the garden, more vines climbing its sides.
The other Body room. The vines were all his skills that don't have to do with the exsphere. There were so many because they were earned and learned skills -- he's picked up a lot more in Aather than just what's on his registry. If you touched them you would get an impression of each. You did NOT obtain any of his skills by touching them unless you already had a grounding in the one you checked out, in which case it could act as a refresher + give you one or two additional useful things to know.
If you kept investigating the vines, you would have found two that were dead and tucked away. One was Mithos's right to wield the Eternal Sword (which passed to Lloyd); the other was the ability to contract with and call the Summon Spirits of Aselia (which became void after he broke his pacts with all of them.)
The mirror gave you Aather memories if you touched it! Conversations and times when he's looked to the future beyond Aather and what he'll do when the world is saved/Darkness is defeated/etc. This half of the heart overall was more grounded in Aather. The first memory it gave you was always the same, though -- the disorientation he felt when the exsphere locked him in the adult body he hated for a few days.
CHANGES MADE:
- Emil ate berries from the cooking vine, looked at a bunch of the additional memories in the mirror. Mithos now associates him a little with cooking and with Aselia's future; appropriate enough.
- Emil also . . . replanted and watered the seeds from the dead vine of Mithos's pacts with the Summon Spirits. This is hugely important; it obviously doesn't restore the broken pacts, but he now thinks there's a chance of someday repairing and renewing them instead of just apologizing for their breaking.
- Lloyd watered the dead Eternal Sword vine. This doesn't renew his right to it or even make him think there's a chance of having that right again, but it lets him focus more on the potential of the sword -- what COULD be done with it -- rather than just what he wrecked with it.
FUTURE - MIND
This room is very large and dark.
There is a huge object in the middle, glowing softly, though its light doesn't penetrate far at all. It looks like a multilayered lotus flower made of pinkish-white crystal. From the door you can see there's a blurred shadow caught within it. You can also see the silhouette of another person standing in front of it . . . they're holding a giant glowing violet sword . . .
"I don't understand," you hear. It's Mithos's voice. "I don't understand!"
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was Confusion; the memory was when he wished Martel back to life and trapped her soul instead. The easiest way to get past it was to steady it up and give it something to hold onto that wasn't a spiral of constant unhappy questions. It was probably also the easiest one to make disappear before closing the box.
When you closed the box, you got another tapestry room! With memories of Aather, a visual timeline of his stay here since the beginning. Again, touching part of the tapestry would give you the emotions associated with a particular time period. There were also sewing materials and additional pieces of cloth if you wanted to leave reminders or messages or whatever for him in this room.
CHANGES MADE:
- Arry was EXTREMELY SENSIBLE at Confusion and shut its box. Emil calmed Confusion down a little and told it to make its own choice; it went back in the box of its own accord. Flynn calmed and reassured Confusion into fading. Lloyd reminded Confusion of what it had and got it to fade, and gave it a memory. General increase in steadiness and calm and ability to not feel trapped even in heavy situations.
- Arry also left needlework of a happier Mithos next to Sterling House in this room; that's a slight increase in feeling a bit steadier and more supported by other knights, general +Sterling brofeels.
FUTURE - HEART
This door opens out into the sky. You can see a whole world laid out below you.
Mithos is standing in the distance. He has the Eternal Sword in hand. You can hear him saying something, but he's a little too far away for you to make it out.
Temporarily overtaken by a piece of memory/box manifestation. The one here was ??? -- I never found a name for it because Making Incredibly Stupid Rash Decisions Under Extreme Emotional Duress is hard to condense into one word. This was the Mithos who destroyed the world for Martel's sake. You couldn't make him disappear and you couldn't stop him reenacting the destruction of the world, though you could beat some sense into him after it was all over. This was the most physically painful manifestation to encounter.
When you closed the box, the room's real shape was a hilltop at sunrise, with a road winding down and leading into the distance. Obvious symbolism here -- new day, fresh start, road to the unseen future, etc. If you actually followed the road you would go to Resolution.
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh told the Mithos here that he made the same choice, and closed the box.
- Allen told Mithos how reviving the dead was stupid in a D.Gray-man context and to think about if Martel would even want it 8( And then made him eat beef jerky.
- Emil yelled YOU'RE NOT ALONE at Mithos, told him there were other friends who cared (specifically, Emil), and put him on the path to realizing it was a mistake.
- Guy apologized for Mithos's loss and related his own double loss of a sister, and then . . . carried him off to True Heart!
- Lloyd told Mithos to stop hurting himself, healed him, and told him he was sorry and that he wasn't alone. He gave him a memory.
- Most of the changes here created a general increase in perspective and awareness of other people and their needs and wants! Pretty effective counter to self-centred bad decisions. The exception is Guy hauling the manifestation off -- I'll detail that change in the 'Truth' section of this writeup.
CENTER (CONSTANTS)
KNOWLEDGE
The roots weave on around you, solid and ghostly both. If you're paying attention you'll see them taking on more of a structure -- walls? loose approximations of shelves? tightening up as you go on. They never stop being roots, but after a bit of walking the passage opens out into a huge space, open to the strange sky.
More root-shelves, arranged in neat rows, stuffed with books and scrolls; you're pretty clearly in a library. There are some stacks between the shelves too, and areas that are barred off with a white rope. There's an order to everything -- the shelves and stacks are organized rather than just scattered willy-nilly, some by size or weight, some by colour, some by shape, and some you can't figure out the system for, possibly because not a single book has a title on its spine.
The smell of the battlefield has given way to that of old books, clean paper and ink, and a slight tang of metal.
Near the front, a large section of reading material has exploded out from the shelves. There is a Mithos here; he looks like the Mithos you know in Aather. He also has a sword, but it's sheathed and belted. He's down on one knee, picking the books up steadily. He looks tired.
Knowledge is . . . knowledge! Anything Mithos knows or learns or hears of gets filed away in here; if you'd wanted anything on a particular topic you'd have been pointed to the shelf, but you had to ask first. The restricted area was obviously stuff that Mithos can't just spread around for one reason or another. There were also records of previous iterations of the heart (since it previously broke and changed a lot) if you'd wanted to, idk, go in a heart in a heart in a heart and create heartception.
The manifestation here was Guardian; he gained a voice since the first heart. Under normal circumstances he is still the heart's enforcer and Mithos's sense of competence, less physically demonstrative than the real Mithos, and will kick you out if you try to damage anything.
All the books that made a mess were known methods of hurting and killing people with his abilities, brought to the fore by a memory that . . . involved hurting and killing as many people as possible. It was much faster for Guardian to get them back on the shelves with help since Mithos pulls himself back up much more effectively with others' support.
Nothing in the center was overtaken by memory bits, just a bit of a mess that was cleaned up more efficiently with others' help.
CHANGES MADE:
- Ginshu, Josh, Natsume, Flynn, Van, Pascal, Roxas and Lloyd all helped reshelve books. This helped to reduce the impact and noise and associations of the memory -- the process of pulling it back enough that he stopped confusing it with real life.
- Natsume talked about hurt and friendship with Guardian, and exchanged tokens of the latter with him; Lloyd offered Guardian more dere and then got him to take a break and a nap once that section was fixed. This helped make him more . . . flexible, is the best word I can find for it? idk idk competence not having to be something that works alone or precludes support and affection.
- Dio was really touchy all over Guardian, flipped through the books without helping tidy, and told Guardian he wanted to learn to fight. This kind of enforced an impression of Dio as someone . . . who wanted things from others but wasn't really helpful in turn :|a The heart is pretty tolerant of that kind of thing -- Guardian promised Dio that if he asked, Mithos would teach him to fight -- but otherwise his opinion of Dio in actual Aather will be more neutral-cautious and less friendly than it could've been.
PRINCIPLE
This corridor goes on a little longer, the root walls changing back to a largely unstructured mess. A new scent, fresher, cleaner: is that a sea breeze? The earth under your shoes has changed, at some point . . . if you look down, it's now silver sand mixed with ash.
You enter another huge chamber carpeted with the same. There's a stream of water running through it, from southwest to northeast, and a stream of blood running from northwest to southeast. A large pool lies in the middle where the two mingle: the liquid there is heavy and silver, almost like see-through mercury. Several heavy pillars are sunk into the floor of the silver pool. They're made of some kind of white stone, very solid and straight. You can see then shifting slowly, constantly, though none go so far as to brush the edge.
Lloyd is standing in front of the pool, back turned to you, watching the pillars.
There are white doors to the left and right, both labeled with the word MIND. There is also another corridor leading straight onwards, at the back of the chamber.
Principle was almost the exact middle of the heart! It sat directly above Resolution. The water was drive and purpose, the blood was grief and unburdening, the silver liquid formed by their mixing is the desire to atone.
The eight pillars were Mithos's principles: 'you can always change and make change'; 'dying is the easy way out. You can make change yourself as long as you're alive. After you die, that stops'; 'always look at the truths of a situation. Remember that yours isn't the only one'; 'plan for the future, but if the future is unknowable, take things one day at a time'; 'people are precious'; 'people must sometimes be let go'; 'live as you desire to live. Be the person you desire to be'; 'there is nothing inherently wrong with you as a person.'. They shifted around because he can be fairly flexible in how he enacts them, but still takes care not to bend them and not to cross certain lines (the borders of the pool they were set in.)
Principle and Resolution were not touched by the memory, but the act of taking the time to look around thoroughly here and touch everything strengthened this area.
'Lloyd' was actually another piece of Mithos named Messenger: common sense and outer sources of restraint. He was extremely Lloyd because Mithos knows Lloyd really well. Spoilers I can't actually play Lloyd to any level of accuracy so Lloyd played Lloyd 8Db
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh, Flynn, Ventus, Van, and Lloyd looked around at the principles. They strengthened them somewhat, and Mithos will feel a bit more understood around them.
- Natsume got a lot of topping and an explanation from Messenger! He gave Messenger a bracelet. This is just added dere and motherhenning, I'm pretty sure.
LOVE
The sand in the corridor gives way to lush grass. It smells like the forest after rain here, fresh and sweet.
Another broad space, and this one is a large grove of normal-sized trees -- at least a couple of hundred. They're spaced out a little haphazardly, some clumped close together, some further away from the others. There are team keys hung on many of them, as well as various knickknacks, but not all. Some are just little saplings, some are quite large and sturdy, but they're all carefully tended. In the middle of the grove, notably, are seven of the biggest, most established trees, close together; there's something shining through them.
You know one of these belongs to you, and you know where it is, if you care to look.
There are doors to the left and right labeled with the word HEART, as well as a corridor that continues to lead straight on.
Relationships! Aather and canon. This was a very large room because it includes anyone who has been in Aather ever; anyone who touched the keys on their trees would have seen all the people on their team in the past as well as the present. I was a little loose with how I arranged things, but in general --
- the closer you are to Mithos, the closer you were to the center of the grove
- the stronger your relationship is, the taller your tree was
- if your relationship is extremely complicated it might result in the tree growing oddly, with a sideways tilt, crooked trunk, etc.
- the objects hung all over the branches would show memories and associations with you
- keys/team affiliations were a part of Aatherites' identification but not the main categorizing method because people are people more than they're parts of a team
- touching the tree gave you Mithos's sense of your mana (how he perceives you with it in a physical sense), and the mix of emotional associations he feels toward you, like an extremely personal relationship meme
- you could touch other people's trees
- even if he'd not met you personally, you still had a tree in there, because you exist in Mithos's heart as a person in the community and someone he's responsible toward.
The seven trees surrounding Mithos's tree are his party, but 5/7 of them are gone from Aather proper, which is why they were looking away. The sapling in the very middle was . . . a couple of things: it was a representation of Mithos in general and a conduit for True Heart to talk through; a further representation of how the heart 'remembered' Mithos becoming the new World Tree (though he doesn't yet have the memory and it wasn't a replica of Yggdrasil's sapling at all, it's a shape and symbol etched deeply enough that the heart will still use it when appropriate). It was also . . . I am not super sure how to put this . . . his liking for himself? And a symbol that he's still growing and figuring himself out after four thousand years of emotional stasis.
Touching your tree made you able to see a little piece of Mithos's crazy, which was scattered all through the grove in the form of tiny birds made of hatred for humans :T You could kill them with violence or . . . petting, at which point they turned into tears and a memory item. Violence made the bird leave behind Tethe'alla's burning (an extremely painful memory of being rejected by humans); petting made it leave behind TACKLING KK TO THE GROUND IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP (a memory of being scared of humans in Aather but going SCREW THIS anyway.)
CHANGES MADE:
- LOTS OF PEOPLE LOOKED AT THEIR TREES SOME WAY OR ANOTHER that's a little bit of +dere for errybody
- Josh killed his hatebird and like three hundred other hatebirds with violence. This pushes Mithos's impression of Josh a bit more towards 'he's violent.'
- Enma and Ventus killed their hatebird with affection; Mithos's impression of them now has some 'they're squishy' added.
- Pascal had a lot of feelings, echoes of which will carry over to actual Aather.
- Arry touched Guy's tree before looking for hers; Mithos will think she has a special concern for Guy.
- Lloyd wrote a 'he's back!' note and left it near Fakir's tree, and touched Ratatosk's tree before his; this made Mithos's feelings for Fakir fresher and closer to the surface (why he hugged Fakir when they met again!) and made him think Lloyd has a special concern for Ratatosk.
- Emil looked at Ratatosk's tree instead of examining his. Makes Mithos think Emil has a particularly strong concern for Ratatosk! Fortunately this is . . . already true . . .
- Flynn did not kill his hatebird; this . . . makes Mithos feel a little bit like Flynn wants to be hated . . .
- I'm pretty sure Guy and Lloyd killed their hatebirds by existing, which is less a changeprompter and more just funny.
TRUTH
Grass grows thickly all the way through this corridor -- when you emerge, it's not into another chamber, but away from the roots themselves. You're in the sheltered spot between the two trees.
Flowers in a riot of colours dot the grass here; all kinds. Some of them, white ones with yellow centers, might be recognizable as fandalias, if he's ever shown or described them to you. A little stream runs through here, the water clear and running fast. By the stream grow much younger, more reasonably-sized versions of the two trees.
There's a little wooden house in the distance; it's rather larger than a cabin, cozy-looking. There's a garden out front.
You're aware of an intense sense of presence here: while the rest of the heart feels real and solid, everything here is consciously, intensely, vividly alive.
TRUE HEART OBVIOUSLY there was a lot in this area.
The trees and river were 'normal' here, just everything was incredibly vivid and full of concentrated life and wildlife.
The house and garden were where Martel and Mithos lived when he was young, and were mostly accurate to memory, except that their bedrooms were replaced by Mithos's Aather bedroom. There was a lot of . . . the concept of 'home' in general, which is pretty damn important to him, wrapped up in here.
The white cat was the piece of Mithos aware that other people want to and do help him every day (it used to be the tree statues that held the boxes in game one). It had Genis's voice. The big black hawk it was watching was the little bit of crazy that stays with True Heart instead of all in the boxes, because when all is said and done Mithos's madness is a legit part of his truth and identity too. It was very large because of how the Martel memory unstoppered everything -- it's usually much tinier. It could talk, but mostly chose not to.
The herbroom and kitchen in the house were about support and remembrance; there were little mechanisms for remembering Martel (like planting more fandalias) and sharing memories of her scattered throughout. The bedroom is Mithos and Lloyd's bedroom because that's 'home' in Aather, and there were a lot of complex feelings and associations in here too. Climbing up to the roof from here would have taken you somewhere quiet to think, touching the materials on the table would have given you an opportunity to make a candleboat for Martel and/or the people Mithos killed, touching the vine gave you some sexuality/sensuality stuff (the overall associations Mithos has with that rather than an actual memory since an actual sex memory would be skeevy), and examining the dreamcatcher would have brought you face-to-face with Mithos's embodiment of nightmares, which are sealed off in Aather by said dreamcatcher.
The backyard is the road to the future/possibility/potential again. True Heart was here, holding down the overall memory and preventing it from doing any more damage. You could place any closed boxes you brought along directly into the memory to bring it more under control.
Mithos's True Heart was not actually that different from Mithos in Aather, just more concentrated -- he is pretty honest to himself nowadays! The concept of the 'truth' was pretty much that the entirety of the heart is the truth; even if he compartmentalizes a lot, in the end it is just . . . all Mithos. One is all, all is one, and what you have when you pull it all together is someone who's done a lot of both good and bad things; who's gone through a lot of both good and bad things; who still shook out in the end to be genuinely pretty decent; whose desire is to help and to fix; who loves a lot and loves hard.
CHANGES MADE:
- Josh gave True Heart power, stuck a closed box into the memory, opened up the herbroom, and planted fandalias; he also told True Heart in detail about making the same choice to essentially destroy a world in the past. + understood feelings and empathy, + easing and sharing of burdens, + feeling like Josh helps in difficult times
- Hazel talked about floating things and threw two boxes into the memory. He also agreed to talk a little about sisters with Mithos in Aather. + floating things is awesome, + sharing burdens, ++ feeling like Hazel helps in difficult times
- Van supported True Heart and then they had a Deep Discussion about how hearts worked! They also got into the Score a little, and Van told True Heart he'd ask Mithos about getting accidentally caught up in a story on the Aurora. + bemusement, + interest and thoughtfulness towards Van (if not necessarily feeling understood), + lack of surprise if/when Van finally asks about that.
- Lloyd looked at a Martel memory, made sandwiches in the heart kitchen and shared then with True Heart, put a memory into Rage's box, threw all five boxes into the memory, planted some fandalias, touched the bedroom vine, feelings feelings feelings. +++++ if he starts loving Lloyd Irving any harder he will probably implode
- Emil threw two boxes into the memory. ++ feeling like Emil helps in difficult times
- Syaoran told True Heart his real name and wanted to ask a question but didn't get to. + knowing Pascal's real name, + feeling like he's forgotten something around Pascal :|a
- Natsume named the derefox from his tree! Shared feelings with True Heart! And got invited to come stay over sometimes. + paying more attention to Natsume, + ddddere
- Flynn let True Heart show him a memory of Martel, talked extensively with True Heart and agreed to talk to Mithos outside the heart as well; Flynn also closed all the boxes first! + sharing burdens, + feeling more understood, +++ feeling like Flynn helps in difficult times.
- Guy brought the Bad Decision Dinosaur manifestation all the way to True Heart, and gave him some strength in the form of a memory. True Heart also ate the bad decision dinosaur instead of reboxing it 8D; And explicitly promised never to throw Guy away in the same thread. This . . . this is actually kind of a biggish change in that it . . . makes him much less likely to bad decision in general! But if he feels like he's turning onto a path where he has to leave Guy, he will go pretty far to try and keep that from happening! This doesn't affect the actions he'd take in that situation as much as it ups the level of fervency and force behind those actions!
- Though that said, the promise also boosted his possessiveness feels towards Guy. Good job Guy Cecil.
RESOLUTION
You find yourself in a vast, peaceful garden, grass and flowers lush underfoot. It's filled with fountains, several hundred thousand of them in every shape or size you can conceive. A great deal of them are white, though many many many more are grey. Some are plain, some are beautifully sculptured, some are downright ugly or laughable. Some have missing pieces and some are whole. Each fountain has a basin set somewhere in it, filled with something heavy and silvery, like clear mercury. Little vines are creeping up their bases, moss growing on their feet.
If you look up, the sky is strange, but not in the same way it was outdoors. It looks like a starry night at first glance, but if you look long enough, you'll notice the dark ripples like water, and that the stars drift and flicker like very distant, floating candles.
There's a hush laid over this whole place, a great calm silence. There seems to be no limit to it, no walls, but if you stand still a moment, you can feel a very faint tug drawing you to the center of things.
. . .
In the middle is a fiercely seething pool of thick dark liquid. It's bordered by a rim of something rather like glass, but with strange rainbowed reflections. Four channels lead from the pool, out through the garden, to northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest, feeding the garden. The water seems to flow through the rim into these channels, and what runs away from the pool is changed, no longer dark. The channels leading northeast and southwest are filled with clear water. The ones running northwest and southeast are filled with red blood.
You might notice that the fountain nearest the pool (fashioned like a spreading tree itself) is distinguished from the rest, just in a very subtle way: there are five small objects in the basin, under the liquid.
Mithos is standing by the pool, looking down into it. He appears the same as in Aather, but he's covered in scars and a couple of visible fresh gashes on his arms. There's an odd internal light to him too; something white and bright and steady.
The foundation the heart rests on, the system on which it runs. It's a merging of the original 'Resolution' area and the 'Deathroom' area from the first heart.
The whole place is a memorial garden for the crimes and deaths Mithos is responsible for; in time fountains for the soldiers he killed will appear there too. Mithos's five deaths are also present here, but they're no longer the center of attention, because putting them on a pedestal above the ones he caused felt pretty wrong.
The sky is an ocean filled with candle boats, something the Masked Lady taught him about and which he and Lloyd and Guy have used to send off their dead before.
The black pool is all the bad shit, all the crazy and terrible experience and unforgiveable deeds. It flows through the rim of the pool, which is a filter (perspective, support, awareness of others, resolution), to become the blood/water/silver mix that fills the fountains and the heart up above.
The Mithos here was also Resolution, who used to be Regret; he was no longer horribly wounded or caged as he was in the first game, though the memory temporarily damaged him a little and he's heavily scarred as a memento of that shape. He was pretty unshakeable, possibly the most philosophical if you could get him going, steady as hell. The boxes were actually made by him, of the same stuff as the rim of the pool.
CHANGES MADE:
- Syaoran had a conversation about losing things and relationships, and dipped his hand in the blood and water. + feeling more strongly resolved around Syaoran.
- Ventus touched the fountain of a Tethe'allan noblewoman who died in the burning of the capital, healed Resolution's wounds with a spell, touched two of Mithos's deaths, the blood, the water, the rim of the pool. +++ feeling more strongly resolved around Ventus.
- Flynn healed Resolution using WORDS SUPPORT AND AFFECTION, discussed how this part of the heart worked, got shushed for a moment and told Mithos trusts him, and offered to clean the heart up as much as he could. + feeling helped by Flynn Scifo's justice, + realization that sometimes Flynn covers up being unsure with tl;dr, + willingness to shush him as needed
- Emil talked a bit to Resolution. + feeling more understood by Emil.
- Lloyd talked about what was in the area, left Mithos a flower for all the deaths down there including his own, healed Resolution with AFFECTION!, reinforced the structure of the area, and shared a memory of his own resolution from the sequel game. +++ feeling more strongly resolved around Lloyd.
REMORSE
No one went here! Thankfully. The door was set into the bottom of Resolution's black pool where it wasn't obvious to visitors anymore, and jumping in there was a terrible idea. True Heart wanted it out of sight because it doesn't actually need intervention and things ended badly when people tried to 'fix' it last game.
I didn't write the flavor text for this one, but it contained a constantly-bleeding Mithos (Remorse) who was continually cleaning his own blood off the walls and floor and throwing the blood-soaked rags into some sort of representation of coping mechanisms. Like in last heartgame, if you'd tried to haul him out of the room he'd have turned into a monster, whoops. It's perhaps the most unpleasant non-box part of the heart, but a necessary one.
CHANGES MADE: None.
-
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS CAN GO HERE, or you can tell me if your character did something that I missed, or ask for more symbolism details that I forgot to cover in-depth, or ask me for your relationship tree, or whatever you want! THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO PLAYED! You made the heartgame pretty damn magical and I hope you all had as much fun with it as I did, ahhh ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
'-'
I mean, Mithos you are my favoritest mom ever okay. THE SYMBOLISM IS AMAZING AND I LOVE THE MAP OMG. I don't have questions unless there is something you were surprised at? I'd like to knoooooooow if there was.