this story breaks free here

ALMOST EXACTLY A MONTH LATER, THE WRITEUP

Heart ran here!

( IT'S LONG )

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 ♥ ♥ ♥

JUST A REMINDER THAT THIS IS HAPPENING; my plans are roughly like so:

- take the memory IC night 168 (which should be roughly August 14/15 if I am reading my time dilation ratio right)

- have a little bit to thread him flipping out on people -- if IC night falls on the 14th this gives me a day's leeway; if it falls on the 15th I will be a bit slower kicking off the heartgame because I do want some people to have an idea of what's going on before going in there.

- HEARTGAME STARTS ON AUGUST 15th, 9 PM EST, AND RUNS UNTIL THE 18th. This is out of time! You can enter the heart at any point in this four day period and end your run when you choose! I am leaving it to individual players when they want to stick it happening in their timelines. It's a heart when you can 'help' but not 'completely fix him up' so it shouldn't make too much difference if you put your playing in it an IC day ahead of other people's playing in it or whatever. DREAM TIME CAN BE WEIRD!

- I'll still be running him flipping out in Aather proper at the same time; since he is going to be limiting himself to Sterling/mostly his room this shouldn't be too much of a strain to run alongside heartgame. Unless all of Sterling decides to go sit in his room for some reason idk.

- He'll still be a couple more IC days slowly recovering after that period but gradually emerging more and able to interact more decently.

- Please comment here to confirm if you're playing + the character you're playing with + roughly when you think you'll start your heartrun! ♥

* Martel's assassination and his subsequent rampage. Entrapping Martel's soul.

Won from Knight Game 10: Treasures for Scheherazade.

( this one's long. )

+ 100000 !#(#%&)@*&@#%@#$)*($&%&@#

+ I could write an essay on how it's notable that Mithos's worst memory, the event which drives him to destroy the world in canon, has as little effect in Aather at this point as it does, but I think I have gushed out dere over it a lot already??? basically he is now capable of getting out of this entirely on his own if necessary and this is amazing ilu Aather.

+ The wash of it will still be pretty bad for a few days. A lot of the triggers, temper and irrationalities locked down hard in Aather will have their tops blown off completely for a little while. This memory is a huge tearing wave of grief and insanity, of having all his anchors yanked away, of completely flipping out, of hating everyone and everything in the entire world and acting on that hatred. He will still keep himself together enough to hole up in Sterling for the worst of it! Knights/heroes with access can thread with him some during this time but he is going to be pretty cracked and emotionally seesawing and likely to be weepy as fuck or violent or both. He will be okay, he will come out of it slowly and pack it away, there is just no way I can justify him taking this one without it having an overtly drastic if temporary impact before he heals.

+ SOMEWHAT MORE SAFELY! Because his movement/interaction is going to be limited so badly for a bit but I still want to play with all the people, I will also be running a Mithos heart game between August 15-18! It'll be outside the realm of normal heartgame rounds -- not timed or scored, entered by characters through a dream post and flexibly out of time. It's much more a hangout/exploratory thing than a MUST FIX heart; nothing urgent, though you can also ease the heart up some and nudge it towards repairing the damage more smoothly.

+ There is a lot more possibility to run into legit upsetting memories/imagery than in his previous heart for obvious reasons, but chances of injury and death are negligible! Yes, there are kittens in there too; yes they will probably be happy to see you.

+ Please comment to this post if you'd like to play in the heartgame! So I can get a rough idea to plan around. You don't have to be in there for the whole span, I'm just allotting that much time to it for flexibility purposes :B You can enter the heart whenever you want and play as long as you want!

+ ANYONE CAN PLAY OK my body is maybe not ready to handle all 120+ denizens of aather but it can take a reasonable percentage

* Fandalia quest!

Won from Game 116: Elevators for Three of Three.

HMM LET'S SEE this memory is a smush of the manga chapter from here to page 16 and the gamescript, which is below. Mostly it follows the game version of events, where Lloyd follows Genis and Mithos and beats the monsters up for them, not the manga one where they're alone and Mithos secretly kills the boss monster. However, it does have the manga's smoother dialogue and the bit at the end where the monster dropped two shiny FRIENDSHIP STONES!1 for Genis and Mithos to keep.

Also in this memory Mithos is pretty much aware of Lloyd being there the whole time, just as Genis was in the game.

( gamescript )

+ GENISDERE
+ LLOYDERE
+ THIS MEMORY IS REALLY EMBARRASSING ON SO MANY LEVELS IN AATHER

* The twin stones.

Won from Game 119: Kissing Bingo for Chance.

Ties right into the fandalia memory! It's just this one manga page. BROODY MCBROODBROOD FRIENDSHIP MCBROODBROOD

+ STILL EMBARRASSING

* Gnomelettes are jerks.

Won from Game 120: Kurei's heart.

GNOME IS SERIOUSLY THE MOST ANNOYING SUMMON SPIRIT TO GET

-- I was going to paste some gamescript here but I think this amazing video is a pretty accurate rep of the memory apart from missing a test where Mithos has to cook for a Gnomelette and learns that they have no sense of taste anyway. Thank you fandom.

+ GGGGAAAAAWDDDDDD

* Welgaia's throne room. Receiving reports from Pronyma.

Won from Game 114: Love declarations for the Green Knight.

+ Blah blah being in adult body blah blah he's the villain blah blah old news.
+ 'Reports' include information about Kratos's suspicious movements against him, Yuan and the Renegades, Zelos, etc -- some things that were mentioned in this long-ago memory.
+ A fairly in-depth memory of living 'timelessly' rather than day-to-day -- canon mentions that the timeless atmosphere of Welgaia, where only inorganic beings live, is extremely unpleasant for organic ones. It's heavy and totally alien and pervading and feels physically and mentally terrible. This is by no means the first or worst memory that includes this, but Mithos hates these memories in Aather because he's fallen back into the values of time and physicality. :'D
+ Some actual appreciation for Pronyma, who was a pretty competent commander when all is said and done! Also an awareness that Pronyma had feelings for him that he disdained, which is going to be unfortunate when he remembers how he murdered her.

* NO MARTEL NO.

Won from Game 115: Sandcastles for Automaton.

+ Montage memory of many, many moments of Martel a) cooking something toxic and trying to feed it to him, b) cooking something toxic and trying to feed it to a different party member, c) falling over, d) getting the party out of an impossible dungeon by tripping, e) derping and switching things around in conversation.
+ There are uncomfortable Colette comparisons to be made here. He knows.
+ G...GAWD SIS ;;;

* Martel contracts crystallizing disease.

Won from Game 111: Secrets for Mother.

Gosh I got the two different dead soul rock diseases mixed up when I wrote this on my registry; Martel contracted Chronic Angelic Crystallus Inofficium, not Angel Toxicosis. This is a montage memory of sorts.

Martel was one of the rare people allergic to Exspheres, and her body reacted badly to having one implanted -- parts of her were slowly turning into crystal, and she was in great pain/weakened by it. If allowed to progress the disease would have converted her entire body into a giant Exsphere statue. There was no existing cure, she kept knowledge of it from the party and tried to treat it herself as long as she could (she was, after all, their doctor/healer) and she was still sick with it at the time of her murder. Mithos knows he eventually created a unicorn to cure her/whatever body he revived her in, but that was several years after her death.

So, basically an entire memory of his sister suffering and not being able to do anything about it. Whoops!

+ :'(
+ Unhappiness with people who unnecessarily pretend they're okay when they're totally not.
+ Sis was super strong though D|

* Inorganic: Agefuck agefuck it's awwright.

Won from Skill Game 20: Build-a-world for Dream.

+ Bluh bluh ability to shift freely up and down in age, anywhere between the small child he remembers being and 'Yggdrasil,' the adult form he picked for himself in canon. Theoretically he could go all the way to babyhood or old age but that takes a lot more work than bodies he actually remembers being in. The change is physical, not mental. Notably, Aather's Mithos allowed to grow up naturally would look very different from Yggdrasil now.
+ This is decidedly more upsetting in Aather than it is in canon and he won't use the skill voluntarily :|a BODYFUCK IS BAD PINGS and he used the adult body solely as a tool for awful. I do want to play with it at least once and wrestle the character ramifications, so whenever he takes it he'll be stuck as Yggdrasil for a couple of IC days. I'll make a posttt with it and stuff.
+ Yggdrasil is like 6'5 or some ridiculous height around there? He's . . . going to walk into doorframes . . . and trip over himself a lot . . . and get tangled up in his own hair . . . and basically have no coordination . . .
+ also zack can you spare him a pair of pants oh my god

* Pact with Ratatosk.

Earned from Game 102: Build-a-bird for Kiriko.

( snip )

+ KIND OF REMEMBERS LOVING RATATOSK A LOT AT THIS POINT? GOD. It's something that comes with time and perspective, too; it's a lot easier for him to recognize the affection in the memory than it would have been for him at the time he was living the memory.
+ 500 more tsundere points for Ratatosk?!
+ 500 patience/"...♥" at tsundere types in general.
+ And then Emil and Mithos were also so much of a walking time bomb it wasn't even funny anymore. THANKS SYMPHONIA!

* "My name is Mithos. Mithos Yggdrasil." Meeting Kratos, pleading his case to the Tethe'allan court and failing.

Earned from Game 100: Cohabitation for Cheshire.

( snip. )

+ This is one of the defining moments of Mithos's life being shitty as a kid, a massive pileup of rejection and racism and failure and the deaths of thousands of people he legitimately tried to save and felt responsible for. It happened well before he ever had any real power or tried saving/destroying the world and it very nearly shattered him back then.
+ This is also what shoved Mithos onto the 'let's be a lone hero doing things normal people would consider suicidally insane' path -- he was completely unable to make either of the warring countries listen to him, and he was weak, so he chose to gain so much power he could make both sides stop in their tracks and quit fighting.
+ The one bright spot in the memory is Kratos Aurion, and this is also the memory that best defines why he loved Kratos so much that it got twisted and obsessive later -- Kratos is legit the only human in that time period who ever believed in Mithos and looked past his race and gave him the chance to make something of himself.
+ Martel is a more steadying presence/voice of reason in this, and he also learns how conflicted their beginning relationship with Yuan was.
+ . . . gosh this is shareable :'D . . .
+ On the whole, though, it's all backstory memory, so he'll have a lot of feelings about it when he takes it but they should be mostly private and he will keep rolling.

* NO ONE LIKES YOU, MIMIC CHESTS!

Won from Game 98: Chariots for Green Knight and Narcissus.

Yeah this one's straightforward. Original party going through some dungeon, looting chests, and one happening to be a mimic monster! Narrowly defeating it but also getting royally beaten up in the process. :'D

+ He already knew mimics sucked, but WHATEVER NOW THEY SUCK MORE.
+ On a more positive note, the first memory he's received where his entire party fought together and covered each others' backs. Kind of cool!