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Corruption Heart Writeup
HOW ABOUT THAT CORRUPTION HEART. I just want to start off by thanking everyone again for playing -- it went even more spectacularly than I could have imagined ♥
Before I started writing the heart itself, made a few notes to myself to keep in mind as I went:
- corruption will appear to be Zorc, but the real problem is Shes's inability to accept that aspect of himself
- so the heart will try to play it up like "you need to defeat Zorc" but in reality doing so would probably be a bad idea
- basic setup will be Monster World as the heart's attempt to mask the real problems
- players will have to get beyond the Monster World overlay to accomplish anything
A basic map of the heart.
For those who aren't canon-familiar, the simple question of "who the hell is Dark Bakura anyway" isn't something that's ever, um, answered. Not in a straightforward way, anyway. In his introduction, he claims to be a tombrobber. In the Memory World arc, he says again that the spirit of the Thief King is in the Ring, but he also flat out introduces himself as Zorc Necrophades -- even though we know for a fact that the bulk of Zorc is sealed within the Puzzle, not the Ring. He talks like the Thief King, he acts like the Thief King, but he's obviously not just some ancient Egyptian ghost with a grudge. I choose to interpret this as meaning that "Dark Bakura" is an entity made up of both the Thief King and a portion of Zorc.
ANYWAY. How this relates to the heart game is that in Aather, I purposefully started Shes off with only Thief King memories, and slowly moved into giving him more modern canon memories, and then finally stuff from the Memory World arc. As a result, an identity crisis has slowlyyyy been building. WHO IS SHES, WHO IS THE SPIRIT OF THE MILLENNIUM RING, WHO DOES HE WANT TO BE, ETC ETC ETC. In canon, Dark Bakura is a great schemer, but he's also single-minded to the point of stupidity: he pushes forward no matter what, often just refusing to acknowledge things that go against his plans. In Aather, Shes can't do that, because he doesn't have the same sort of overriding goal to reach for. So he's ended up actually having to self-examine, and he hasn't enjoyed it one bit. In fact, he's been trying very hard to ignore everything that doesn't fit within his original sense of self.
And so you get the corruption. One part of him was literally refusing to acknowledge the other part, and a result, that second part was not happy. Shes's heart was literally in the middle of an attempt to destroy itself, because he's that stupid. The heart game itself was an attempt by the part of him he accepted to trick the players into destroying the part of him he didn't accept. The only way to actually remove the corruption was to not play along and work on the underlying identity crisis instead.
SO WITH THAT LONG INTRODUCTION OUT THE WAY, THE ACTUAL WRITEUP.
START (MONSTER WORLD):
There's a sense of stomach-flipping emptiness. You're falling into darkness, choking darkness. As you tumble down, you catch a glimpse of a set of double doors emblazoned with an eye. They open, and--
You find yourself in a large, rectangular stone room, packed with jumbled treasure. Assorted pieces of jewelry hang haphazardly from intricately carved pieces of furniture. Gold statues lean against vases of ivory and turquoise. The walls of the room are painted with colorful pictures of people--
No.
That's not right.
That's not where you are at all.
You're standing in an open field, on the outskirts of a village. In the distance, you can see a dark forest, and beyond that, looming above rocky hills shrouded in mist, the twisting spires of a black, evil-looking castle.
The village is small and vaguely generically medieval European in design. The buildings have plaster walls and thatched roofts, with weathered wooden doors and shuttered windows. There are a few stalls with fruit and vegetables in the central square, but no one's manning them. A larger building stands across from the stalls, its sign creaking as it swings in the slight breeze: "The Thirsty Traveller Tavern."
You might find that you're dressed (and possibly shaped) a little differently than before…
The game opens with a glimpse of Shes's actual heart introductory room, as seen in his previous heart game, but is quickly overridden by the Monster World overlay. Monster World is, of course, the combination D&D/boardgame that both Bakuras are fond of. This particular campaign is based off the one in Volumes 6&7 that Dark Bakura traps Yuugi & co inside.
There was a specific heart NPC playing all of the villagers, monsters, and "Zorc," and serving as your IC DM, actually! I don't know if anyone caught on to that, since I only alluded to it very vaguely. The different font for the villagers and "Zorc" was meant to be a hint that this was a game within a game, as was the NPC dropping character briefly when talking to Kozue and Seth. The actual name of this NPC is "The Architect," and his function is to basically make sure that the heart runs smoothly. As such, he has a lot of control over things within the heart even though he's subject to its whims, and generally would not approve of stupid identity crises because he's actually honest about his feelings. But, because of the boost given to the heart's problems by Mira, he was drafted into having to run the Monster World game. He did try to drop hints that something wasn't right, in directly talking to Seth and Kozue, and in having players repeatedly make alertness rolls within the forest so that they could spot the gameboard. I know everyone assumed that the reason I kept asking for rolls in the forest was for random attacks, but I was actually doing all the rolling re: monster encounters! You were rolling to see if you'd notice the gameboard.
(As a sidenote, a number of people met The Architect in the previous run. He was the NPC that looked like Bakura Ryou and sent players Kul Elna to fix the trauma loop there.)
I, uh, didn't actually know how obvious the Monster World gambit was going to be or how long people would play with it, so I didn't do a lot of prewriting for it. I definitely did not expect anyone to try to reason with the representation of Zorc! Which, of course, was not actually any conscious part of Shes's "Zorc side" but rather The Architect having to play a…. I don't know. A Zorc voodoo doll? Any injuries the Monster World Zorc sustained would be visited on the "real" Zorc side. If all the players had fought him, it would have killed off Zorc completely and the game would have been over with the corruption winning. So I am glad that did not happen.
Everyone eventually left the Monster World overlay to enter the real heart. Where you ended up in the real heart depended on where you were in Monster World and/or what you rolled. The previous heart game had the background rule that any rolls of 99 would automatically send the player to Kul Elna, so when that actually happened in this game, I decided that I was going to keep that rule in effect. GOOD JOB, KOZUE.
KUNZITE:
You find yourself in a quite luxuriously appointed room with kunzite pink wallpaper and thick, darker pink carpeting, and a curving ceiling at the corners. . . .
. . .On the opposite wall is a huge and ornate fireplace, with Victorian-esque molding and a mantle for knickknacks.. On top of the mantel is a gold keyhole that's been filled in with what looks like plaster. . . .
… in other words, it's a mix between Kunzite's entry for Hatter and Dormouse's game and the current cabin in Camelot, with a few tweaks.
That's a lot of C&Ping that's nearly identical to how this room looked in the first game, so I cut it out. The major differences are that things have shifted slightly in a Camelot direction, and the keyhole that led to The Architect's room has been blocked off because he's busy elsewhere. It was just plaster blocking up the keyhole, though, so if anyone had cleared it out and used the key found Backstage, they still could have accessed that room. It would have looked the same as before, except that on the desk would be a Monster World diorama matching the heart's Monster World campaign. I wasn't expecting anyone to enter this room, and they didn't, but it was technically possible.
Bolin did a lot of exploring in here, but there wasn't anything of particular note. The reason the notebook was illegible was because it was Cirrus's notebook, and Shes didn't have his reading skill back at that time. So he doesn't actually know what was in the notebook. The fact that the game in process was BS is self-explanatory, I think. Moving the memory box so that it wasn't hidden has the possibility of making Shes feel a little more secure about talking about his memories.
BACKSTAGE:
It's dark here.
The only illumination comes from a tarnished and lopsided chandelier hanging in the middle of the room. The candles in the chandelier are of all different sizes, though many have burned low, raining drips of wax onto the large table below.
The table is shaped like an octagon and is covered with a yellowed and stained lace tablecloth that reaches to the floor. Some of the edges are ragged. Fourteen chairs are crammed around the table, white paint peeling and pink cushions faded. A ball-joined doll sits on each of the chairs. They probably look familiar. Most are wearing Kunzite uniforms, but there are a few exceptions.
Also, there's a naked corpse lying on the table, surrounded by a cracked china tea service. It looks like Shes.
Though the room doesn't feel overly large, the pitch black shadows where the candlelight doesn't reach make it impossible to tell where the walls are. Oddly, though the ceiling isn't visible, tangled strands of red thread hang down in places. Many are tied to the chandelier, giving the area above the table the appearance of some sort of net… or spiderweb.
Backstage is another returning area, though it changed more than the Kunzite room. The table isn't circular anymore, because Shes has more confidence in categorizing his various relationships, and the dolls are different.
The seating positions of the dolls are somewhat indicative of Shes's perceived relationship with the person: Snow and Lambda are his most trusted people actually in Aather. He has similar feelings for Meadow, but she's less accessible now. Malik and Host Bakura aren't in Aather at all. He cared for Violet, though not quite to the same extent, and she's moved on as well. Liberty and Bones were important to the team, but Shes didn't really have time to bond with them as strongly, and they're no longer in Aather as well. Cirrus was important to Shes as his first junior teammate, and he still regrets that Cirrus was booked. John and Bolin are teammates, but Shes is still kind of "???" on them. Judai is interesting but also kind of "???". Peach is new, but he's made a definite impression on Shes. And finally, Kira is somewhere between the Snow/Lambda level and the "???" level of teammate-ness.
As with before, if you touched the dolls, you got a sense of Shes's feelings for the person they represented.
The Shes corpse-doll is basically just indicative of his identity crisis and the way it was hurting him. Is he only a creature of darkness? Can that be cut out of him (the reason why the spiderweb had scissors and knives this time)? Who is he, anyway?
The key to the Temple could be found inside him, in his turmoil, by his heart. It's made of alabaster because that's what "Shes" means in Ancient Egyptian.
KUL ELNA (DAY):
The first word that probably comes to mind to describe your surroundings is "desolate." The sun is burning hot in the desert, especially up in the rocky cliffs you've appeared on. Not much in the way of vegetation can grow in a place like this — in fact, everything seems a uniform sandy color: the ground, the cliffs, and the buildings of the village in front of you. It's as though the village itself is part of the natural landscape, carved out of the rock and shaped by the sand and winds. The sky overhead is beautiful, a vast deep blue with a scattering of wispy clouds. Behind you, in the distance of the valley below, you can see the dazzling sparkle of the sun reflecting off a great river. There are people out and about conducting their daily business, on the streets and rooftops.
It's a quiet day.
This area was basically here to show that after the previous heart game, Shes is able to have a version of Kul Elna in his heart that isn't just replaying the massacre over and over again. It's still Kul Elna in decline, because that's the only way he knew it, but it's not full of murder and death! … unless you go through the mirror near the ritual chamber, like Seth did, which leads to the night of the massacre. However, it's no longer playing out constantly -- it's more of a memory rather than a visceral flashback. Since Kul Elna is only a memory in general, there was no real way to interact with its inhabitants. Unlike last time, though, players would have been able to enter houses and explore the wonders of ~*~daily life in Ancient Egypt~*~ if they'd wanted.
THE RITUAL CHAMBER:
A large underground chamber stretches out in front of you. Rotting ropes and dusty pulley mechanisms hang from the ceiling and litter the ground. A huge crucible lies on its side, the inside charred dark with ash. Pillars stand in two rows leading to the back of the room. A large, circular stone tablet carved into the shape of a sarcophagus with steps leading up to it holds the place of honor on the floor there.
Those who have been here before might notice that the back wall looks different than before. Dozens and dozens of little alcoves have been hollowed out of the stone, each holding something -- maybe they're urns? Dolls? -- it's hard to tell what they are from here.
Oh, and there are seven dead bodies in the room. Five of them are pinned to the pillars with spears through the center of their chests, like some sort of human insect collection. They're all dressed simply but richly in fine white linen, now stained with the deep red of blood, with golden jewelry. A sixth body is pinned to the steps in front of the stone tablet.
The seventh is pinned to the back wall. He's smaller than the others, and more finely adorned. Channels have been carved into the stone to allow his blood flow down into the alcoves surrounding him.
People were calling this Shes's delusion/wish-fulfillment room in IRC, and that's partially correct. But more than that, it's just representative of the fact that he'll probably never be able to let go of his desire to get vengeance for his people. The items in the alcoves were shabti, and there were 99 of them: one for each person sacrificed to create the Millennium Items. Atem's blood draining onto them is a pretty obvious piece of symbolism. If you touched the shabti, you would encounter one of the heart's NPCs: Fear, who looked like a preteen Thief King. He's "Fear" because he's afraid of a million things. Not being able to get revenge for Kul Elna, failing everything in canon in general, not knowing his exact place and role in Aather, everyone finding out that he's been lying about knowing that he's Zorc and what that means, and so on.
His job is to tend to the shabti, because he's the part of Shes's heart that was created after Kul Elna's destruction, and is therefore very closely tied to it. The shabti are actually only there because Snow talked to him last time about what the souls of the dead might actually want. Snow suggested that they'd want him to move on, and maybe they would rest peacefully despite their lack of a real burial -- which Shes later remembered wasn't the case at all. But Snow's words still had affected him, so he's sort of… tending to their memory in a way that's less destructive.
Yes, having a room full of dead priests is less destructive than other options. Shut up.
Qamar was the only one who met Fear this time, and he was… kind of reassuring? Maybe? In a Qamar way? I'll get into that more once I get to the Temple section.
Obviously the solution to the puzzle in here was just to put the Puzzle into the tablet, which would lead down to Zorc (since Zorc's Darkness is the Darkness of the Millennium Items).
THE TEMPLE OF DARKNESS:
The ladder leads down into a room constructed entirely of blocks of smooth, black stone. Grand, decorative pillars carved with hieroglyphics stretch upwards on two sides of the room, and a throne carved of the same stone as the rest of the room sits on a raised platform in its center. The general effect is something between a temple and a throne room. There's something… off about the room, though, in a way that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Maybe it's the way the shadows all seem a little bigger, a little darker than they should be.
For those of you who've been here before, there are a few changes. The blank spots in the inscriptions on the pillars have been filled in. But most noticeably, there's someone sitting -- maybe slumping is a better word -- on the throne now.
Just for a moment, it looks like Shes-- but then the features blur, and it's a pale Japanese boy with long, wild white hair instead. You may have seen him before, but not like this. For one thing, he's dressed in nothing but a long black linen loincloth and golden bangles around his wrists and ankles For another, his skin is an unnatural paper-white. But you're probably more concerned with his other features. Namely, the mishmash of non-human ones he's apparently acquired.
A double pair of black horns have erupted from his head: one set curves gently upwards, while the other spirals downwards like a ram's. A pair of batlike wings are folded carelessly behind him, and an almost crocodilian tail sprouts from the base of his spine. Both his toes and his fingers transition from pale flesh into black, wickedly sharp claws. There's a gaping, circular hole in the center of his chest, which looks painful, and probably why he's breathing a little heavily. He has one hand hovering in front of it, as though covering it will somehow help.
His eyes are slitted and glow red in the darkness. When he sees you, his head jerks up and his lips curve into a hungry smile that shows too many teeth, all of which are dangerously pointed.
Last time, this was "The Empty Temple," because Shes hadn't remembered what aspect of himself belonged down here. This is also why his canon/sadistic self was hanging out in the Game Room instead of actually, you know, being Zorc.
Like I said above, any damage dealt to Monster World Zorc would transfer to this Zorc, hence the gaping chest wound. Because he's the part of Shes that Shes was trying to deny, rather than one of the denying parts, he was actually pretty honest about what the real problem in the heart was. Of course, from his perspective he was blameless, which obviously wasn't true and just about everyone called him on.
If people had attacked him, it would have ended the heart and been a win for corruption. Something very magical happened instead.
Qamar dragged Fear down into this section of the heart, and made the two NPCs confront each other. Qamar, Meadow, and Lambda all basically topped the hell out of both the NPCs in a variety of ways that boiled down to, "you're being stupid, stop being stupid." This was incredibly beneficial! Actually forcing representatives of the two parts of Shes to interact would have been a huge boost to self-integration on its own, but everyone pointing out that both sections needed to calm the hell down and accept each other made it even more effective. Meadow even pre-empted what would have been the heart's next question ("Who am I now?") by slapping Zorc across the face and telling him that he's Shes. Who is Shes? He is part of Kunzite, he is someone that Meadow and Lambda love, he is someone that Qamar cares(?) about enough to claim as his own no matter what.
It basically amounted to COMPLETE CORRUPTION OBLITERATION and as this information gets absorbed and settles into Shes's subconscious, he'll be… remarkably more healthy about his self-identity than he ever has been.
The two-headed snake fighting was BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY A SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF SHES'S IDENTITY CRISIS but it's also basically the closest thing he has to a True Heart at the moment! So it being integrated at the end was a really good sign.
I know this is really scattered and kind of brief despite also being tl;dr, so please feel free to ask any questions you have about what certain actions accomplished, what bits of of the heart represented, and so on :B
Before I started writing the heart itself, made a few notes to myself to keep in mind as I went:
- corruption will appear to be Zorc, but the real problem is Shes's inability to accept that aspect of himself
- so the heart will try to play it up like "you need to defeat Zorc" but in reality doing so would probably be a bad idea
- basic setup will be Monster World as the heart's attempt to mask the real problems
- players will have to get beyond the Monster World overlay to accomplish anything
A basic map of the heart.
For those who aren't canon-familiar, the simple question of "who the hell is Dark Bakura anyway" isn't something that's ever, um, answered. Not in a straightforward way, anyway. In his introduction, he claims to be a tombrobber. In the Memory World arc, he says again that the spirit of the Thief King is in the Ring, but he also flat out introduces himself as Zorc Necrophades -- even though we know for a fact that the bulk of Zorc is sealed within the Puzzle, not the Ring. He talks like the Thief King, he acts like the Thief King, but he's obviously not just some ancient Egyptian ghost with a grudge. I choose to interpret this as meaning that "Dark Bakura" is an entity made up of both the Thief King and a portion of Zorc.
ANYWAY. How this relates to the heart game is that in Aather, I purposefully started Shes off with only Thief King memories, and slowly moved into giving him more modern canon memories, and then finally stuff from the Memory World arc. As a result, an identity crisis has slowlyyyy been building. WHO IS SHES, WHO IS THE SPIRIT OF THE MILLENNIUM RING, WHO DOES HE WANT TO BE, ETC ETC ETC. In canon, Dark Bakura is a great schemer, but he's also single-minded to the point of stupidity: he pushes forward no matter what, often just refusing to acknowledge things that go against his plans. In Aather, Shes can't do that, because he doesn't have the same sort of overriding goal to reach for. So he's ended up actually having to self-examine, and he hasn't enjoyed it one bit. In fact, he's been trying very hard to ignore everything that doesn't fit within his original sense of self.
And so you get the corruption. One part of him was literally refusing to acknowledge the other part, and a result, that second part was not happy. Shes's heart was literally in the middle of an attempt to destroy itself, because he's that stupid. The heart game itself was an attempt by the part of him he accepted to trick the players into destroying the part of him he didn't accept. The only way to actually remove the corruption was to not play along and work on the underlying identity crisis instead.
SO WITH THAT LONG INTRODUCTION OUT THE WAY, THE ACTUAL WRITEUP.
START (MONSTER WORLD):
There's a sense of stomach-flipping emptiness. You're falling into darkness, choking darkness. As you tumble down, you catch a glimpse of a set of double doors emblazoned with an eye. They open, and--
You find yourself in a large, rectangular stone room, packed with jumbled treasure. Assorted pieces of jewelry hang haphazardly from intricately carved pieces of furniture. Gold statues lean against vases of ivory and turquoise. The walls of the room are painted with colorful pictures of people--
No.
That's not right.
That's not where you are at all.
You're standing in an open field, on the outskirts of a village. In the distance, you can see a dark forest, and beyond that, looming above rocky hills shrouded in mist, the twisting spires of a black, evil-looking castle.
The village is small and vaguely generically medieval European in design. The buildings have plaster walls and thatched roofts, with weathered wooden doors and shuttered windows. There are a few stalls with fruit and vegetables in the central square, but no one's manning them. A larger building stands across from the stalls, its sign creaking as it swings in the slight breeze: "The Thirsty Traveller Tavern."
You might find that you're dressed (and possibly shaped) a little differently than before…
The game opens with a glimpse of Shes's actual heart introductory room, as seen in his previous heart game, but is quickly overridden by the Monster World overlay. Monster World is, of course, the combination D&D/boardgame that both Bakuras are fond of. This particular campaign is based off the one in Volumes 6&7 that Dark Bakura traps Yuugi & co inside.
There was a specific heart NPC playing all of the villagers, monsters, and "Zorc," and serving as your IC DM, actually! I don't know if anyone caught on to that, since I only alluded to it very vaguely. The different font for the villagers and "Zorc" was meant to be a hint that this was a game within a game, as was the NPC dropping character briefly when talking to Kozue and Seth. The actual name of this NPC is "The Architect," and his function is to basically make sure that the heart runs smoothly. As such, he has a lot of control over things within the heart even though he's subject to its whims, and generally would not approve of stupid identity crises because he's actually honest about his feelings. But, because of the boost given to the heart's problems by Mira, he was drafted into having to run the Monster World game. He did try to drop hints that something wasn't right, in directly talking to Seth and Kozue, and in having players repeatedly make alertness rolls within the forest so that they could spot the gameboard. I know everyone assumed that the reason I kept asking for rolls in the forest was for random attacks, but I was actually doing all the rolling re: monster encounters! You were rolling to see if you'd notice the gameboard.
(As a sidenote, a number of people met The Architect in the previous run. He was the NPC that looked like Bakura Ryou and sent players Kul Elna to fix the trauma loop there.)
I, uh, didn't actually know how obvious the Monster World gambit was going to be or how long people would play with it, so I didn't do a lot of prewriting for it. I definitely did not expect anyone to try to reason with the representation of Zorc! Which, of course, was not actually any conscious part of Shes's "Zorc side" but rather The Architect having to play a…. I don't know. A Zorc voodoo doll? Any injuries the Monster World Zorc sustained would be visited on the "real" Zorc side. If all the players had fought him, it would have killed off Zorc completely and the game would have been over with the corruption winning. So I am glad that did not happen.
Everyone eventually left the Monster World overlay to enter the real heart. Where you ended up in the real heart depended on where you were in Monster World and/or what you rolled. The previous heart game had the background rule that any rolls of 99 would automatically send the player to Kul Elna, so when that actually happened in this game, I decided that I was going to keep that rule in effect. GOOD JOB, KOZUE.
KUNZITE:
You find yourself in a quite luxuriously appointed room with kunzite pink wallpaper and thick, darker pink carpeting, and a curving ceiling at the corners. . . .
. . .On the opposite wall is a huge and ornate fireplace, with Victorian-esque molding and a mantle for knickknacks.. On top of the mantel is a gold keyhole that's been filled in with what looks like plaster. . . .
… in other words, it's a mix between Kunzite's entry for Hatter and Dormouse's game and the current cabin in Camelot, with a few tweaks.
That's a lot of C&Ping that's nearly identical to how this room looked in the first game, so I cut it out. The major differences are that things have shifted slightly in a Camelot direction, and the keyhole that led to The Architect's room has been blocked off because he's busy elsewhere. It was just plaster blocking up the keyhole, though, so if anyone had cleared it out and used the key found Backstage, they still could have accessed that room. It would have looked the same as before, except that on the desk would be a Monster World diorama matching the heart's Monster World campaign. I wasn't expecting anyone to enter this room, and they didn't, but it was technically possible.
Bolin did a lot of exploring in here, but there wasn't anything of particular note. The reason the notebook was illegible was because it was Cirrus's notebook, and Shes didn't have his reading skill back at that time. So he doesn't actually know what was in the notebook. The fact that the game in process was BS is self-explanatory, I think. Moving the memory box so that it wasn't hidden has the possibility of making Shes feel a little more secure about talking about his memories.
BACKSTAGE:
It's dark here.
The only illumination comes from a tarnished and lopsided chandelier hanging in the middle of the room. The candles in the chandelier are of all different sizes, though many have burned low, raining drips of wax onto the large table below.
The table is shaped like an octagon and is covered with a yellowed and stained lace tablecloth that reaches to the floor. Some of the edges are ragged. Fourteen chairs are crammed around the table, white paint peeling and pink cushions faded. A ball-joined doll sits on each of the chairs. They probably look familiar. Most are wearing Kunzite uniforms, but there are a few exceptions.
Also, there's a naked corpse lying on the table, surrounded by a cracked china tea service. It looks like Shes.
Though the room doesn't feel overly large, the pitch black shadows where the candlelight doesn't reach make it impossible to tell where the walls are. Oddly, though the ceiling isn't visible, tangled strands of red thread hang down in places. Many are tied to the chandelier, giving the area above the table the appearance of some sort of net… or spiderweb.
Backstage is another returning area, though it changed more than the Kunzite room. The table isn't circular anymore, because Shes has more confidence in categorizing his various relationships, and the dolls are different.
The seating positions of the dolls are somewhat indicative of Shes's perceived relationship with the person: Snow and Lambda are his most trusted people actually in Aather. He has similar feelings for Meadow, but she's less accessible now. Malik and Host Bakura aren't in Aather at all. He cared for Violet, though not quite to the same extent, and she's moved on as well. Liberty and Bones were important to the team, but Shes didn't really have time to bond with them as strongly, and they're no longer in Aather as well. Cirrus was important to Shes as his first junior teammate, and he still regrets that Cirrus was booked. John and Bolin are teammates, but Shes is still kind of "???" on them. Judai is interesting but also kind of "???". Peach is new, but he's made a definite impression on Shes. And finally, Kira is somewhere between the Snow/Lambda level and the "???" level of teammate-ness.
As with before, if you touched the dolls, you got a sense of Shes's feelings for the person they represented.
The Shes corpse-doll is basically just indicative of his identity crisis and the way it was hurting him. Is he only a creature of darkness? Can that be cut out of him (the reason why the spiderweb had scissors and knives this time)? Who is he, anyway?
The key to the Temple could be found inside him, in his turmoil, by his heart. It's made of alabaster because that's what "Shes" means in Ancient Egyptian.
KUL ELNA (DAY):
The first word that probably comes to mind to describe your surroundings is "desolate." The sun is burning hot in the desert, especially up in the rocky cliffs you've appeared on. Not much in the way of vegetation can grow in a place like this — in fact, everything seems a uniform sandy color: the ground, the cliffs, and the buildings of the village in front of you. It's as though the village itself is part of the natural landscape, carved out of the rock and shaped by the sand and winds. The sky overhead is beautiful, a vast deep blue with a scattering of wispy clouds. Behind you, in the distance of the valley below, you can see the dazzling sparkle of the sun reflecting off a great river. There are people out and about conducting their daily business, on the streets and rooftops.
It's a quiet day.
This area was basically here to show that after the previous heart game, Shes is able to have a version of Kul Elna in his heart that isn't just replaying the massacre over and over again. It's still Kul Elna in decline, because that's the only way he knew it, but it's not full of murder and death! … unless you go through the mirror near the ritual chamber, like Seth did, which leads to the night of the massacre. However, it's no longer playing out constantly -- it's more of a memory rather than a visceral flashback. Since Kul Elna is only a memory in general, there was no real way to interact with its inhabitants. Unlike last time, though, players would have been able to enter houses and explore the wonders of ~*~daily life in Ancient Egypt~*~ if they'd wanted.
THE RITUAL CHAMBER:
A large underground chamber stretches out in front of you. Rotting ropes and dusty pulley mechanisms hang from the ceiling and litter the ground. A huge crucible lies on its side, the inside charred dark with ash. Pillars stand in two rows leading to the back of the room. A large, circular stone tablet carved into the shape of a sarcophagus with steps leading up to it holds the place of honor on the floor there.
Those who have been here before might notice that the back wall looks different than before. Dozens and dozens of little alcoves have been hollowed out of the stone, each holding something -- maybe they're urns? Dolls? -- it's hard to tell what they are from here.
Oh, and there are seven dead bodies in the room. Five of them are pinned to the pillars with spears through the center of their chests, like some sort of human insect collection. They're all dressed simply but richly in fine white linen, now stained with the deep red of blood, with golden jewelry. A sixth body is pinned to the steps in front of the stone tablet.
The seventh is pinned to the back wall. He's smaller than the others, and more finely adorned. Channels have been carved into the stone to allow his blood flow down into the alcoves surrounding him.
People were calling this Shes's delusion/wish-fulfillment room in IRC, and that's partially correct. But more than that, it's just representative of the fact that he'll probably never be able to let go of his desire to get vengeance for his people. The items in the alcoves were shabti, and there were 99 of them: one for each person sacrificed to create the Millennium Items. Atem's blood draining onto them is a pretty obvious piece of symbolism. If you touched the shabti, you would encounter one of the heart's NPCs: Fear, who looked like a preteen Thief King. He's "Fear" because he's afraid of a million things. Not being able to get revenge for Kul Elna, failing everything in canon in general, not knowing his exact place and role in Aather, everyone finding out that he's been lying about knowing that he's Zorc and what that means, and so on.
His job is to tend to the shabti, because he's the part of Shes's heart that was created after Kul Elna's destruction, and is therefore very closely tied to it. The shabti are actually only there because Snow talked to him last time about what the souls of the dead might actually want. Snow suggested that they'd want him to move on, and maybe they would rest peacefully despite their lack of a real burial -- which Shes later remembered wasn't the case at all. But Snow's words still had affected him, so he's sort of… tending to their memory in a way that's less destructive.
Yes, having a room full of dead priests is less destructive than other options. Shut up.
Qamar was the only one who met Fear this time, and he was… kind of reassuring? Maybe? In a Qamar way? I'll get into that more once I get to the Temple section.
Obviously the solution to the puzzle in here was just to put the Puzzle into the tablet, which would lead down to Zorc (since Zorc's Darkness is the Darkness of the Millennium Items).
THE TEMPLE OF DARKNESS:
The ladder leads down into a room constructed entirely of blocks of smooth, black stone. Grand, decorative pillars carved with hieroglyphics stretch upwards on two sides of the room, and a throne carved of the same stone as the rest of the room sits on a raised platform in its center. The general effect is something between a temple and a throne room. There's something… off about the room, though, in a way that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Maybe it's the way the shadows all seem a little bigger, a little darker than they should be.
For those of you who've been here before, there are a few changes. The blank spots in the inscriptions on the pillars have been filled in. But most noticeably, there's someone sitting -- maybe slumping is a better word -- on the throne now.
Just for a moment, it looks like Shes-- but then the features blur, and it's a pale Japanese boy with long, wild white hair instead. You may have seen him before, but not like this. For one thing, he's dressed in nothing but a long black linen loincloth and golden bangles around his wrists and ankles For another, his skin is an unnatural paper-white. But you're probably more concerned with his other features. Namely, the mishmash of non-human ones he's apparently acquired.
A double pair of black horns have erupted from his head: one set curves gently upwards, while the other spirals downwards like a ram's. A pair of batlike wings are folded carelessly behind him, and an almost crocodilian tail sprouts from the base of his spine. Both his toes and his fingers transition from pale flesh into black, wickedly sharp claws. There's a gaping, circular hole in the center of his chest, which looks painful, and probably why he's breathing a little heavily. He has one hand hovering in front of it, as though covering it will somehow help.
His eyes are slitted and glow red in the darkness. When he sees you, his head jerks up and his lips curve into a hungry smile that shows too many teeth, all of which are dangerously pointed.
Last time, this was "The Empty Temple," because Shes hadn't remembered what aspect of himself belonged down here. This is also why his canon/sadistic self was hanging out in the Game Room instead of actually, you know, being Zorc.
Like I said above, any damage dealt to Monster World Zorc would transfer to this Zorc, hence the gaping chest wound. Because he's the part of Shes that Shes was trying to deny, rather than one of the denying parts, he was actually pretty honest about what the real problem in the heart was. Of course, from his perspective he was blameless, which obviously wasn't true and just about everyone called him on.
If people had attacked him, it would have ended the heart and been a win for corruption. Something very magical happened instead.
Qamar dragged Fear down into this section of the heart, and made the two NPCs confront each other. Qamar, Meadow, and Lambda all basically topped the hell out of both the NPCs in a variety of ways that boiled down to, "you're being stupid, stop being stupid." This was incredibly beneficial! Actually forcing representatives of the two parts of Shes to interact would have been a huge boost to self-integration on its own, but everyone pointing out that both sections needed to calm the hell down and accept each other made it even more effective. Meadow even pre-empted what would have been the heart's next question ("Who am I now?") by slapping Zorc across the face and telling him that he's Shes. Who is Shes? He is part of Kunzite, he is someone that Meadow and Lambda love, he is someone that Qamar cares(?) about enough to claim as his own no matter what.
It basically amounted to COMPLETE CORRUPTION OBLITERATION and as this information gets absorbed and settles into Shes's subconscious, he'll be… remarkably more healthy about his self-identity than he ever has been.
The two-headed snake fighting was BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY A SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION OF SHES'S IDENTITY CRISIS but it's also basically the closest thing he has to a True Heart at the moment! So it being integrated at the end was a really good sign.
I know this is really scattered and kind of brief despite also being tl;dr, so please feel free to ask any questions you have about what certain actions accomplished, what bits of of the heart represented, and so on :B
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Basically all of the NPCs like Malik/Qamar (?!). They don't see him as a threat, and I don't mean that in a devaluing his danger way -- they're just fairly certain he'll be threatening at people who aren't them. Fear, for example, wasn't really... afraid of him... at all. In fact, Qamar being possessive was very reassuring, since Fear is an NPC who's so closely tied with being alone and no one caring. Qamar's comments about delusions didn't really do anything because as I mentioned in the main writeup, that room wasn't really about delusion, and Shes isn't about to go off and murder Yuugi when he gets home or anything -- he just will probably never be able to let go of the desire for... hm, not even so much revenge as... an acknowledgement that NO REALLY WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM AND KUL ELNA WAS REALLY AWFUL AND NO ONE EVER TOOK RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT.
The Temple Zorc NPC is closer to canon Dark Bakura than any of the other NPCs, so you might think that him recently remembering getting toasted by Ra would have made him more wary of Qamar! ... no, not really. Again, there's this underlying understanding that "Qamar isn't going to off me, if only because then he couldn't have fun cutting me up anymore." He's also the NPC who comes closest to having the masochistic tendencies I usually play canon Dark Bakura as having, so... I don't know if Qamar successfully upped Shes's general masochism a noticeable amount or not, I guess we'll have to see what happens in the future! But I think he might be more open to the idea? I mean, not that Shes or the Zorc NPC are really... bothered by the concept of making out with a bloody chest wound... it's just a question of "would he enjoy it more now" and I don't know for sure!
I should also probably note that The Architect was quietly despairing over having to play Monster World Zorc off Malik because no Malik omg it's rigged stop that. HE DID NOT ENJOY ATTACKING MALIK AT ALL, UGH :/
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is what you are telling me
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But I'm glad you enjoyed reading it ♥