Tales under the New Moon #7: An Abiding Aspiration

This week's story is up!

A little update on Zero and Golbez - still allied, still hanging out with the nixie, still searching for anything salvageable on the Thirteenth. Brings together various scattered details and anchors Zero's distaste for consuming the essences of other voidsent to a specific incident.

I like the way it ties together a few separate ideas while exploring the idea of personal identity. Zero's mother had either not known or chosen not to communicate the end of the tale of Zeromus - a hero who restored the Light to the world, only for the people to turn on him in fear of his power.* She perhaps spared her child the ending because the people ostracized her, too. Growing up alone, she followed in her mother's heroic path but could not find a way to trust others. Even when the voidsent began to consume one another, she couldn't bear the "company" of diluting her soul with another. And though she accepts that she is too weak and alone to save anything, over time she becomes more like Zeromus than she knows - a would-be hero, seen as a monster - and a statue manifests in her domain that she can no longer recall. And yet in the end this inspires Golbez to forsake the one law of the void - not because he feared he might lose his identity, but to embrace fully becoming his true self.

* The claim that Zeromus did indeed save the star (for a time) is fun to consider, too; especially if the Ascians being outdone by a Warrior of Light right out of the gate informs - at all - why Igeyorhm went so hard she caused a Flood. Certainly more fun than putting 100% of the weight on, "I AM ASCIAN, SERVANT OF ZODIARK, DARKNESS WILL CONSUME ALL LIGHT." etc. Nabriales was willing to throw even Lahabrea under the bus to get closer to Zodiark, but Mitron could juggle motivations a little better.

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... I'm willing to predict that if the first story was a companion to the Normal Raid series, and the second story was a companion to the Alliance Raid series, then I feel like there's a good chance that one of the two remaining stories is going to be a companion to the MSQ Trial series of the Zero saga. And given the other element of this being "reflections on stuff from the Ancient world echoing into the present" then I feel like something reflecting on Igeyorhm watching the collapse of the Thirteenth unfold in front of her, setting the stage for the arcs of Golbez and Zero, would feel in line with the first two stories.

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Last week I made the (fairly straightforward) prediction that this week's story would focus on Zero and Golbez, and while I was wrong about the Ancient thread present in the first two stories, I was at least right about the first part. ^_^

To wit, story was great, I have no notes, still looking forward to DOMAIN EXPANSION: THE VOID

Nice little story, nice to know a bit more about Zero's circumstances. I still wonder how is it she fell into the rift when the Flood of Darkness happened.

This one's my favorite so far, and it's not even close... or entirely because this one's not Ancient-adjacent. Zero's a fantastic choice for a focus character of a short story, being a character who rarely expresses herself, but does have a lot of history to work with, she's exactly the sort of focus character I get excited about seeing.

I love the approach to Zero's memory--it's something I've seen come up in other things, I think most prominently Doctor Who, that the human brain just isn't capable of keeping an immortal life's memories in it; eventually, something's gonna give. And it seems like for Zero, and potentially a lot of other voidsent, the way that manifests is just that they remember the emotional conclusion of their experience, but need to have their memory jogged about why they got there; in Zero's case, she remembers that she doesn't devour others, but took actively being asked to remember exactly why. Not entirely dissimilar form Elidibus.

I'm also naturally inclined to be interested in that story of Zeromus, too; myth and fairytales are famously a bit wobbly and inconsistent, so it might not necessarily be that the other voidsent told Zero the 'full story' of Zeromus; it's entirely possible that there's multiple versions of that story for different audiences and ends. Zero was told a story about being able to stand up for what's right, the other voidsent was told one about 'don't stand out from the crowd'. And that's not even getting into the question of if Zeromus was a figure rooted in fact or fiction.

Breaking some additional speculation into a separate spoiler box, because this starts to get a bit tangential:

If Zeromus' story is rooted in fact, as much as I loathe to admit it, it reads as a details-muddled version of the story of either Venat and her crew, or Azem; possibly both in that way mythology gets muddled by history. The 'darkness' in this case being Zodiark, and fighting for the light either being direct opposition, or assurance that there must be another option than mass sacrifice. The Zeromus story then gets right that they 'become pariahs', but miss the fact that it's voluntary... and crucially, seems to end right there, right when both Azem and Venat's crew also stop being easy public knowledge; surely if this were a mortal person who just got told 'get out of our city', there would be additional legends, but if it's a tale derived from either of those Ancient figures, it makes complete sense to suddenly get a 'they were never seen or heard from again'.

I love Zero and I like Golbez too. (I confess, I still don’t understand the complaints about the EW patch storyline beyond possible gripes about pacing issues.) So this was a welcome story choice.

More clarification on the “I ended up in the rift” stuff was appreciated. I mean, it still feels very convenient and like there’s a story there (probably involving an ascian), but at least the order of events has been developed further. Also the refusal to feed, even unto the point of starving to death and just respawning, makes a lot about the state we find her vs her past self make sense.

This story was a fun read. :) Reminds me how very much I look forward to the expac that reconnects us to them. And I hope the interesting information in this short story about Zero’s past struggles is recapped in-game when it’s relevant again.

This was a pleasant surprise. It was more of a check in than a how did this come to be. As I'm sure there were some who wondered why Zero didn't enjoy consuming other voidsent it didn't need to be explained. At least we know who the statue is of. The Zeromus in the story sounds more like an Azem shard that in a way shared a fate akin to Ardbert.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

Reminds me how very much I look forward to the expac that reconnects us to them.

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Don't count on it being an expansion. I've said before, I think it feels like they're setting up a big merger of various optional "fix the Thirteenth"-connected plotlines – Void and Eden quests are already angling for a merger and surely Zero's plotline will be relevant, but it seems like too much prerequisite questing for an expansion.

Zero's story might have originally been planned to be optional too, if the decision to merge it into MSQ came later. (Whether you suspect that to be a cost-cutting exercise or they just thought they needed more room to do the story justice, and get more Void lore out of obscure sources and into MSQ.)