Reality Revision

After Honya has agreed to take upon the design of the Sofiya path, I’m merely responsible the Aorin path now. This is a good thing since I’ve been far too lazy this week (darn you Brawl!) and procrastinated too much for the deadline today.

I should note however that one of the ideas I’m fooling around with is that Aorin’s scenes will not only be limited to her own path, but many of them may be selected even during the other paths (up to the First Sword scene), although his exact lines and thoughts will differ.

Major spoilers for anyone not involved in the storyline development.

[TIP Spoiler Alert]

Before the Insurgency

• Aorin has the earliest starting path of all the characters, mainly as she is the first of the Imperium Heirs Exelar meets ingame, and the two has a stable early relationship. After all, she is his osananajimi. She makes her entry into the game in the first scene by dragging Exelar out of bed.
• Unlike the other heirs, Aorin will partake in a good portion of the scenes prior to the Insurgency, a number of them focusing on developing the two’s early relationship. However, the Exelar-Aorin relationship is still established as ‘best friends’ at this point in plot, although Aorin does show some minor signs of liking Exelar, whom does notice this (I do not believe in the concept of male main leads who are insightful about everything, but completely oblivious to girls). Exelar hasn’t developed any particular feelings yet, most likely since he’s far too comfortable and used to being around her. He does tease her a lot, probably more than the others at this stage.
• While Aleksandra tries her best to be a good mother, she’s simply far too busy, and Exelar being the understanding one knows this well. It was the reason why Aleksandra chose to delegate some of the works to Aorin in taking care of Exelar’s daily life. Aorin’s squads official task is to guard Diedrich’s family, and thus she literally becomes Exelar’s personal bodyguard and sticks around daily even after entering the Legion (as Exelar reminisces).

During the Insurgency and the Earth Arc

• Everything between Aorin and Exelar gets shot to hell after she loses control, weaponizes, and not only kills almost everyone, including Diedrich, but blows off Exelar’s right arm. Exelar becomes distant and cold towards her because of this, and Aorin has nothing to blame except herself. She’s consumed by an immediate shock after the incident, and falls into a deep depression afterwards. Exelar’s excruciating scene of attaching the fake arm (although it looks rather real) leaves behind a legacy that only causes her to spiral downwards further.
• After the Insurgency, Aorin’s eyes seems to be marked by a perpetual sadness, which only darkens upon seeing Exelar. Her sight has a tendency to be drawn towards his arm, in which case a glimpse of absolute horror seems to pass through her eyes. Her voice takes on a more monotonic state as she tries to hide her emotions from Exelar.
• It becomes obvious that not only is Exelar avoiding her, but she seems to be matching it, except she continues to try tending to his needs, most notably leaving food at Exelar’s desk. He asks several people about it, who claim to have no clue.
• Three keys scenes in this chapter would include: 1. Lothair trying to persuade Exelar to allow Aorin to take up Aleksandra’s artifact sword Basileur, as it is a powerful weapon they need to make use of and it’s functions doesn’t fit any of the Arcanum’s spellcasting needs (as the Arcanum blades do); Exelar can either agree, and decide that Aorin is far too unstable for that (screws the path over entirely). 2. Exelar will catch Aorin bringing in food at one point once they get on the ship, and has an internal conflict on how he should feel about this whole deal. 3. Exelar will have the option to ask Lothair about what exactly is Aorin; Lothair replies that he’s not sure, although he did hear that her mother Tae has a destructive inherent ability and is also immune to magic, which gave the Arcanum a lot of trouble when they were still enemies with the Federation; he suggest Exelar ask one of the Zanaikin siblings himself.

Astraea Arc

• During the Astraea arc, Aorin will remain pretty much the same, although she changes depending on whose route you choose. She continues to try avoiding Exelar, but at the same time seems to stalk him. If Exelar goes through her route, her attitude changes depending on what you do. If Exelar selects another path however, she’ll seem to literally run away from him after any meeting.
• Exelar may take up Lothair’s advice and approach Aoric, where Aoric sees no reason except to tell Exelar the truth: that the Zanaikin siblings are what they call ‘half-virtuals’ or ‘half-uncarnates’, a trait inherited from their mother Tae due to a psionic experiment performed to, ’save her life’ she claims, during the Storm Wars. It is a trait that made half their physical bodies replaced by pure psionic ‘data’. It offers them several abilities, including most notably, the ability to modify their body structure to anything they desire. This allows them to ‘weaponize’ by modifying their body to become the parts of advanced weapons. However, the weapons that are made are always far more advanced than human technology allows, and the designs almost seem to appear to them at a subconscious level. Aoric also tells Exelar that Aorin has always tried to pretend that she didn’t have such a ‘feature’. But in the end… they just aren’t humans.
• On one occasion Exelar catches Aorin stalking him, and questions what she’s doing. She comments that in case he forgot, she is responsible for his security and well being, as that is her only true purpose in life. Exelar may retort to make her stop at this point.
• During one day, when Exelar was going to visit Aoric but instead finds him having a heartfelt conversation with Aorin, where she was unloading all the sorrows she buried over the past week. She cries that she understand her vows as a Guardian, she knows her job, she can learn to accept it all even if Exelar only sees her as a tool from now on. But, she couldn’t even do that, for she not only failed to protect him but nearly killed him. Forget being a sword, no, even being useless would be better, for at least she wouldn’t be a curse to those nearby because she can’t control herself. Aorin claims that ever since that day, she felt that another her has awaken, only sleeping below the surface, cold without a single thread of human emotion; she’s afraid that’s precisely what she’ll become in the future. Aoric tries to comfort her in his own way, except he was failing badly. Exelar may try to come out to say something, but his arm seems to be almost refusing to push open the door, and he leaves instead.
• Following the last event, Exelar reminisces about his days with Aorin before everything happened, about all their happy times together, sharply ended by the first image he saw when he regained consciousness on that battlefield: his shattered bloody right arm, severed and lying in front of his face. But could he really blame Aorin for it? yet no one else could hold responsibility.
• Exelar asks Farad if maybe his arm is broken, and tries to describe the situation the other day without revealing names or details. Farad says the thing with attached ‘half-golem’ limbs is that because they’re magical and receives the magic of their ‘wearers’, they’re also influenced by the underlying emotion affects that the wearer’s magic flow over the course of their life. Maybe his subconscious, either current or in the past, does not wish to open said door to perform whatever action he had in mind.
• Exelar seeks out Aorin on one night, telling her that the details on what exactly happened during the breakout has been bothering him, and he’s afraid he may have been making too many assumptions and judging wrongly. Aorin tells him that when she saw Aleksandra cut down by the enemy, she seems to have broke. In the next moment, it felt as if her body was breaking apart and being shattered, and when the pain stopped her body no longer responded to her, but another presence in her mind, one that was almost machine-like in nature, without a single thread of compassion and filled with only one thought - total annihilation of the enemy. She could only watch as herself began to deploy weapons that cleansed the battlefield of life, and that Diedrich yelled something to her before being killed by a near hit. Afterwards, the room falls to silence, before Aorin says that no matter what, she acknowledges her responsibility, and whatever the punishment he wish to hand down, even if it’s her head. Exelar tells her no such thing will be done. Before going out the door, he tells her that she is neither a curse nor tool, and that if it were not for her, he’d be dead before the Arcanum found them.
• After the coronation, Exelar calls forth the ones who helped him escape Earth and was worth of the title of Centurion, Captains of the Legion. During this ceremony in which he arranged privately, he calls Aorin and gives her the title of Saber, the very same Aleksandra had. Aorin was barely able to hold her tears back through the ceremony.

First Penthiae Arc and Afterwards

• If you went with Aorin’s path, she stops avoiding Exelar by the Penthiae path and tails him within sight instead. They could have conversations every once a while, but still awkward and incomparable to those back on Earth.
• From then it becomes a slow character relationship development once again, the key being go to her events, make the right decisions, select her for the same battles as Exelar, don’t use her weaponization ability, but allow for it if she asks for permission. During the scenes however, every time the mood develops towards advancing the relationship it seems Aorin backs off, as if purposefully doing so.
• If the relationship score grows enough by a certain decisive battle on Penthiae (decided later), she’ll take off during the middle of a fight into the skies without warning, and begins to thank Exelar for everything he’s done for her. Exelar immediately notices something wrong and has the HQ scan the overhead space, where they notice a Kingdom battleship preparing to rake the battlefield with its primary beam armament. Aoric then takes off and tries to catch up but notices he was too far behind. Despite Exelar’s orders, Aorin goes into high altitude, and for the first time weaponizes without losing control to her other self. She spreads her shields and charges a counterfire against the attack, telling Exelar during the final moment that she loves him. (This event will happen even in another path or if your score was not high enough, although she’ll lose herself during weaponization, and her final messages will be completely different).
• If you went with Aorin’s path, she’ll survive the blast, but only by a thread and falls from the skies with critical injuries. Aoric manages to retrieve her and kept her alive via psionics aid. Her recovery was slow, but around the time she regains consciousness Exelar makes a decision. Some days later, after it was announced that she would be released in a few more days, Exelar takes out a ring and proposes to her, which causes her to start crying again, saying that she doesn’t deserve love from him. It takes some convincing before she’ll accept. Exelar tells her that accepting also means she needs take care of herself more.

Path Ending

• Before the game’s ending, Exelar and Aorin get married and she becomes crowned the Empress Consort of the Terran Imperium.

Finished it by the deadline! Well, close enough.