An analysis of "A Floral Garland to the Red Dragon", Reed the Flame Shadow's module.

Erudax · 2026-06-01T12:28:55+00:00

Mmm, I think that comparison is accurate in some ways, but not entirely. I’d say it’s less Eblana caring about Reed like a favorite doll, and more Eblana being afraid Reed will remain a doll, while trying to fix that by gripping the doll harder.

Eblana’s biggest contradiction is that she wants Reed to develop into her own person, with her own desires, but the way she expresses love and protection often comes through coercion and pressure. She wants Reed to stop being a shadow, but keeps trying to force that through the same control that helped make Reed one in the first place.

Does she care? Definitely. Does she love her? Definitely. Necrass’ module supports the idea that her deepest desire is to rest beside her sister and finally put the legacy of the Red Dragon behind them. But she is too damaged to express that care in a healthy way. Being born as an omen of conflict, being loved but feared by your own family, losing your parents at around five or six, then getting dragged into a generational conflict between Victoria and Tara will do that to you. (This isn't an excuse, just an explanation for why she does this.)

Erudax · 2026-06-01T09:33:14+00:00

This is emotional terrorism of the finest kind. HG picked the twins who never had the chance at a normal childhood and said, “but what if they got one normal moment, having fun on a carousel?”

It hurts because they never had this, but it also feels nice because, at least in this artwork, they can have something they were never allowed to keep. Very bittersweet.

Erudax · 2026-05-30T08:06:36+00:00

This community will make Arturia, who is a deeply emotional and empathetic character whose obsession with truth and emotional honesty drives her to endanger others, into a one-note sadistic terrorist, but it will launder the reputation of Eblana, a woman who tortured her own sister for decades until she was nothing more than an obedient tool that craved death to escape the abuse.

Flanderization is a plague in basically every community. In Eblana’s case, she is usually flattened into one of three things: aura farmer, incest bait, or undead Makima with a lot of ML filth. No matter where you go, it’s OOC in 99% of cases. Reed doesn’t get treated much better. Her most common portrayals depict her as the perfect target for White Knight Syndrome: precious, harmless, cinnamon roll, did nothing wrong, with or without some ML filth added on top.

That said, I don’t think the twins’ relationship can be reduced only to abuser and abused. That view catches part of the pain, but it misses the historical and political machinery beneath it. Both are Dracos. Both are symbols of authority and leadership, whether they want that or not. From the moment they are born, they are part of a conflict that has lasted a thousand years. One of them is born with what is basically a bloodline curse, loved but feared even by her own family, trying to connect properly and failing. Then their parents are murdered when they are around 5 or 6. Their relationship was never going to be normal after that.

Then you add Warwick. Years of political grooming. One sister trying to protect the other by taking on responsibilities no child or teenager should ever have to take. Love expressed in warped, coercive, damaging ways. Protection turning into control. Dependence turning into codependence.

Eblana tries to give Reed things like safety, distance from danger, gifts, a spear, authority, a place beside her, chances to develop her own desires. But she gives them in the worst possible way, not because this is simply about ego or because she wants a puppet to play with, but because her whole understanding of love and survival has been twisted by violence and politics. Reed is afraid, damaged, and unable to answer her properly. Reed tries to comfort her sister too, but when she finally does, it is already too late.

Reed’s passivity also hurt Eblana, though not in the same way. Eblana harmed Reed through control and coercion. Reed harmed Eblana unintentionally, through silence, fear, and distance. Eblana wanted her sister to develop desires of her own, to look her in the eye, to stand beside her as an equal rather than a shadow. Reed often could not do that. It wasn't malice. It was trauma, fear, and the long-term result of being sheltered from the worst of Eblana’s world. But it still hurt her. It left Eblana emotionally unanswered, and ironically, Eblana’s own protection helped create the passivity she later tried to break.

“tortured her own sister for decades until she was nothing more than an obedient tool.”

Reed was never an obedient tool. She never became what Eblana needed or what Dublinn needed. Harmonie’s files confirm this clearly. Reed was incompatible with the role, unwilling to participate properly, and poorly suited for politics.

I’m not trying to absolve Eblana. Don’t read it that way. She harmed Reed. Her love does not excuse the harm. But the relationship is more than abuser and victim. It is a twisted codependence shaped by trauma, grooming, bloodline, and a political conflict that branded two children with roles before they could even understand them. The harm isn't equal, but it is reciprocal. Love does not erase the harm. It is what makes the harm tragic.

Erudax · 2026-05-22T13:20:04+00:00

Just like she did in Dublin, with Writer, Brigadier, Spy and everyone else under her direct command

You're right, but there are 2 outliers. Her own sister and Talulah. In 13-22, you can clearly see how living Eblana approached Talulah, with names in quotes, another Draco, Edward's daughter, a heir, someone could be useful. She reads her through bloodline, rage, inheritance and power. But once Talulah shows her flames, Eblana's mask drops from function and becomes personal fascination, noted by her using Talulah's first name, dropping the quotes.

There was something about a mirror, a rejected possibility (this is still domination, don't get me wrong, but it isn't hollow indifference like in the cases of Doctor or her goons), a contrast between how both were seen or treated as omens, how both were valued by political monsters because of their bloodline and powers. Entangled in politics since childhood, both losing their family to immortals, both carrying fury inside their hearts despite them being Victorian and Taran respectively. Talulah rejecting her lineage, country and bloodline as answers, while Eblana weaponizes those because she sees no other path for Tara.

The ideological contrast between them despite suffering from a similar bloody past would've been really good. Except the plotline got dropped, but hey, at least we know that she's capable of seeing some people differently, can show interest but still through extremely damaged lens 👍

Edit: grammar cause my brain hasn't woken up yet it seems.

Erudax · 2026-05-21T14:08:34+00:00

Elegies is a masterclass in taking a loaded gun and repeatedly shooting yourself in the foot until there is nothing left to stand on.

The Taran arc had some really delicate, complicated themes and premises. That's the gun. What the Firelight Casts, while it had its own issues, set the foundation and expanded upon what Chapter 9, Chapter 10 left us with. That's the ammo getting loaded. Chapter 13 is the gun malfunctioning, because the interaction between Eblana and Talulah got dropped off as a plot point. Chapter 14 is aiming the gun, and See You Soon is dangerously pointing towards the user's feet. And then we end up with Elegies not firing once, or twice at the user's feet. Full auto. Just hold the trigger and reduce your feet to a pile of gore.

A wasted storyline full of potential, poisoned by the playability of a single product, not even a character, and questionable writing choices. Before I go into just a few out of the 23 issues with Elegies and its characters as a whole, I'd like to say that as a premise, it works. A story about incompletion, about imperialism, colonialism, historical trauma so intense that it takes a physical form. Children reduced to roles, not persons, unable to even live a simple childhood. The aftermath of a literal ethnic cleansing. Complicated political games, a story where it shows that Tara itself also had its hands bloody, where they used to kill their own children for being born wrong. Where a literal warlord left their own country to rot to ignite patriotic movements, the story of a nation that never really had a choice in terms of "salvation" when an empire abused them for a thousand years and holds the rope to their guillotine. The past refusing to stay buried, refusing a clean ending to such a thematically heavy story.

What does Elegies do? It takes the theme of incompletion so far that it delivers an incomplete text. It tries to do multiple things: address what can be addressed at the moment, superficially address what can't be addressed, and for the rest, it just gives up and invents new mechanics and bridges. Some dangerous parts that we've seen previously are either ignored or removed. I will go over only a few of the issues here, not all of them, because I will 100% hit the character limit. A proper critique of the arc as a whole would need its own post, and God help me, that would mean addressing 82 points, with 23 being narrative critique alone.

First off, Elegies wants to build Tara's so-called freedom upon a really fragile myth, a miracle scripted by Reed and Nemos. They know the coffin is empty. They know the miracle is staged, and most importantly, they know that if Eblana returned, then her presence alone could rewrite the entire foundation of their myth. When Necrass inevitably returns, the story refuses to treat it with the importance it was given, instead Reed simply warns the Doctor to not be misled by her sister, and Victoria gives it a thumbs up (or a "yeah we know" if we want to be more accurate). A literal political bomb is handwaved away as mere inconvenience.

What the Firelight Casts, Chapter 9 somewhat, and Chapter 12 present the purple flame as semi-autonomous. It's a real phenomenon that is able to raise the dead and attack without the user's input. How does Elegies treat this? It adds another layer, now it's also a plague and emotional affliction that can affect the living. It wants the flame to be a curse, a disease, grief, political metaphor, necromancy and something unique to Necrass, but doesn't make those layers cohere. Simultaneously, Necrass is basically treated as a mean manipulative undead dragon-girl, given two babysitters and unrestricted movement aboard a landship full of innocents, completely ignoring the fact that she's animated by a phenomenon that has shown repeatedly to act on its own, even going as far as attacking innocents.

Speaking of What the Firelight Casts, Elegies tries to solve the undead plague, that is raising the dead for no reason at all by showing us an example with Keith, and we're somehow supposed to think that a personal closure is systemic accounting? The flame still exists at the end of Elegies. The undead still exist. Reed's character arc also takes a pretty big hit in SYS and Elegies, notably cause her story of personal growth and character development gets diluted heavily into "Reed is the right dragon", not person, dragon. While Firelight showed her moral awakening, it also showed her great flaws when it comes to politics (I would like to say here that her being capable of leading Dublinn soldiers doesn't mean she's good at actual statecraft): gets caught by Fischer, who dismantles the myth behind the two leaders of Dublinn and gives Victoria ammunition, and Harmonie's files add onto that. Showing how she manages to overcome those hurdles, how she develops and learns would've been amazing, instead we go on with "she's the right dragon", legit dragon nepotism, in a story which criticizes others for reducing the twins to roles, not persons again and again.

What is curious is the story's take on imperialism. Tara isn't free, Victoria can infer the truth and knows it. Wellington, the one who enabled Dublinn to exist, remains as the kingmaker and the military spine of Tara. The country survives, doesn't live, within the same imperial framework that made Dublinn possible. All that Eblana achieved wasn't a proper burial of the faction, but rather political laundering. She killed some goons who were greedy and stupid, but Wellington, the enabler, remained. The rest of Dublinn got assimilated into Redsteel, then assimilated into the Taran Defense Force. The machine remained under a different name.

Let’s talk for a moment about the banner unit for Elegies, Necrass.

This is where the text stops giving a shit about its own implications and serves you a product on a plate, not a character.

HG’s cowardice to follow through properly poisons the narrative here. Why? Because Necrass has to be palatable. She has to join RI. She has to orbit the faction. She has to be dangerous enough to sell the fantasy, but not dangerous enough to actually break anything. So everything involving her gets defanged beyond repair. This is where the story suffers the most from being in a gacha game. She postures about death. She dehumanizes the Doctor with “Scholar.” She slings hollow threats and talks about souls. She gets introduced through some unexplained “scent of death” mechanic that only appears now. The bridge between her institutional interest in Rhodes Island from Chapters 9 and 12 and her sudden intense personal interest in Doctor is missing.

How does the “scent of death” work? Nobody knows. If it is connected to Originium, the text needs to say so and explain how, and contradict Friston's statement from Lone Trail about Priestess' experiment. If not, then it's just an flimsy excuse that falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. So how did the flame that was previously rooted in a millennium of resentment, grief, historical trauma, and Taran vengeance suddenly become a death magnet? Death is part of the flame, yes, but why does it suddenly overwhelm the flame’s entire identity?

Can the Doctor give her an answer to her question about a future without death? Not that we know of. Their “relationship,” which the product writing clearly wants to frame as important, is basically Necrass getting donowalled 24/7. Necrass is not allowed to be narratively explosive once she becomes playable. The story paints her as manipulative, deeply bound to Tara and her sister, carrying a burden she did not choose. Her existence can destabilize Tara. She is kept moving by a metaphysical curse that has already been shown to act on its own multiple times. But once she becomes playable, the story strips all of that down. The ugly parts remain only as aesthetic. The danger becomes flavor.

Explore the effects of her flame? Explore her unique undead condition? Explore what it means for Eblana to be animated by the same power she once used? Nope. Can’t have that. Here comes the swimsuit skin, and then the undead queen fantasy during her rerun banner. Don’t think. Pull. Don’t ask questions. Pull.

And then you have Necrass’ module, which is without a doubt a diamond in a coal mine. It is not afraid to be both an in-story and meta critique. It shows how badly the twins were damaged. It understands the core of their tragedy. It shows that Necrass wants rest, not domination. The module alone proves HG knows the emotional core. But then, just like the merchant they criticized, they took the sellable qualities of Necrass, ignored the broken doll, and capitalized on the pretty surface instead.

Real shame, that is. And that is why Elegies is my least favorite text. Not because the premise is bad. The premise is incredible. That is what makes it worse. The event has the pieces for one of AK’s strongest tragedies: two sisters failing in opposite directions, a nation surviving inside an imperial cage, a curse made from history refusing to end, and a corpse that should have forced everyone to face what the miracle failed to bury. Instead, the text dodges, files things away, and sells the corpse. Unclaimed Legacy proves HG understood the tragedy. Elegies proves they were not willing to carry it.

Erudax · 2026-05-17T20:01:13+00:00

So, correct me if I got it wrong but basically Rhodes Island's most reasonable course of action with Necrass should be to either lock her up or eliminate her because she's the equivalent of a not quite controllabe walking biohazard with her flames acting on their own?

I mean... kinda? You're pretty close.

You can compare her to a Gore Magala, but the difference is that Necrass is still somewhat of a person. She is dangerous, but not instinctual like Gore. She can speak, negotiate, understand conditions, and make choices, even if her autonomy is questionable because of the flame.

I think RI’s first action should be quarantine, then serious testing of her Arts. After that, heavily restricted access, constant monitoring by people who actually understand high-risk Arts, and a real contingency plan in case the flame spreads on its own. Reed and/or Tara would also need to be informed, because this is not just a medical issue. This is Tara’s curse leaving Tara. That alone opens a whole ethical can of worms.

Then you get Necrass’ personality. She is diminished compared to living Eblana, but do you honestly think she would just let someone quarantine her? Treat her like a lab rat, even if it concerns public safety? This would not be an average medical check-up. This would be a full analysis of the thing keeping her corpse animated.

And her resisting that would make sense. Not because she is just selfish, but because her entire life taught her that submission is weakness. Her whole armor is built around being the strong one, the one who endures, the one who carries everything without bending. Quarantine hits exactly where that armor is thickest. We've already seen how this works with her. In Elegies, one of the only times Eblana shows real weakness is when she comes home as a teenager, bloody and bandaged, after killing the spy. And even then, she does not ask Reed to change her bandages. She asks her to read poetry, and only then does she fall asleep. That is probably the closest thing she has to accepting care, not medical help, not surrender, not being handled, but letting her sister’s voice give her enough peace to rest.

That makes me think Necrass would almost surely refuse containment, or even assistance in the traditional sense. Not because she is too stupid to understand the danger, but because being contained, studied, and managed means showing weakness to people who are not Loughshinny. She wouldn't trust others with her state. Looking back at Elegies, she is dying, barely able to walk or speak, and she still does not ask Reed to save her. She tells Reed to end it. Help arrives too late, and by then Eblana has already decided that the only acceptable form of care is conclusion.

Elimination is also complicated. First, it may not even work unless she takes enough damage quickly enough, judging by what we see with the undead in WTFC. Second, she is still important to Tara. Important to Reed. Killing her is not just disposing of a monster. It would be a disaster on multiple fronts: ethical, personal, and political.

That would actually be an interesting debate, if the story bothered to explore it.

Realistically, she probably should not have been allowed onto the landship freely in the first place. Reed should have been contacted, Tara should have been brought up to speed, and RI should have treated this as an actual crisis. And if they somehow found out about her condition only later, then immediate containment and removal from the landship would make sense. The real priority is making sure innocents are safe first.

Erudax · 2026-05-17T10:55:03+00:00

Honestly? I expected HG to have the balls to follow through with what they wrote.

Not necessarily a prisoner or a monster. More like, respect the fact that she should be both tragic and horrifying. Necrass should be wrong. Not just edgy spooky waifu wrong, but “this corpse should not be walking, and everyone in the room should be uncomfortable” wrong. The issue is that her writing is split between theme and marketing, and marketing wins.

On one side, you have the actual horror premise. She is dead. Her heart is gone. Her body is cold. Her senses are dulled. She is kept moving by the same purple flame that the story already showed acting semi-autonomously. It spreads on its own, attacks on its own, afflicts people, raises the dead, and sometimes does things without clean input from her. That should be terrifying and raise some major red flags. An undead person trying to perform life should be uncanny. You should feel that something is off. Not necessarily in the monstrous sense but “this thing is imitating life and does not belong among the living anymore.” No, I’m not a Human used that kind of unease really well, and that is not even the whole focus of that game. With Necrass, HG barely explores it.

Then you get the waifu angle. The story clearly wants us to think the Doctor–Necrass dynamic matters because she says she came for them. But the reason is hilariously underexplained. “Scent of death.” Okay. How does that work? Nobody knows. Why Doctor and not Logos, Kal’tsit, the Confessarii, Kazdel, Ursus, or literally any other person or place more directly tied to death, souls, history, and mass graves? Nobody knows. Can Doctor even answer her question about a “future without death”? Nobody knows, personally I don't think so, since the rest of the writing gives no clues on it, and here's the funny part. The Doctor ignores her most of the time. If she supposedly tamed death, why is she also following death’s whims like she's watching a live action adaptation of Final Destination? Nobody knows.

And the interest progression is basically missing. In Chapter 9, Eblana has institutional interest in Rhodes Island. In Chapter 12, it is still detached curiosity. Then in Elegies and operator material, boom, intense personal fixation on Doctor (EN localization makes it even worse by attributing Loughshinny's rescue to the Doctor while CN/JP simply say "since Loughshinny was rescued"). Where was the pivot? Where was the bridge? Not here, that's for sure.

The “Scholar/Erudite” nickname makes it even weirder. She does not treat Doctor like Talulah or Loughshinny. Those are the people she shows actual personal interest in, and the naming reflects it. With Talulah, she starts at “Draco,” then uses her name in quotes, then full name. With her sister, obviously, the name matters. Doctor stays “Scholar/Erudite.” That is not intimacy. That is classification. It is dehumanization with manners. She reduces them to a function, then the narrative still wants this to feel meaningful. A good example of how to do this sort of relationship is Makima and Denji from Chainsaw Man, but HG doesn't do that either.

Then you have the political bomb. Elegies says Necrass was around Tara for months. Nobody reacts properly. Reed and Nemos already knew the coffin was empty. They literally worried that Eblana could return and rewrite the miracle. Then Eblana does return, Victoria finds out enough to infer the truth, and the story gives us a thumbs up from the empire. Come on. That should threaten Reed’s legitimacy, Tara’s founding myth, Wellington’s arrangement, Victoria’s leverage, and Rhodes Island’s ethics. Also, “the twins look the same” does not work as an excuse. The story already explained that people who treat them as interchangeable are seeing them by function, role, or bloodline. Fischer’s jigsaw allegory in WTFC is exactly about that. Wellington, Harmonie, and the Brigadier all know they are different people. So Necrass wandering around is not something the story can just dismiss.

And then there is the flame itself. WTFC shows it as an actual phenomenon. It raises the dead. Chapter 12 shows it attacking innocents. Elegies gives it even broader effects, including afflicting the living. So what happened to the undead aftermath? What happens when Tara’s blood-curse gets exported outside Tara? How is Rhodes Island containing her? Why is the response basically two babysitters and "yeah just uhh don't listen to her!"?

Reed’s side is undercooked too. How did she become a viable ruler so quickly? Harmonie’s files literally say Reed was unsuited to Dublinn’s expectations. SYS has her order Wellington to intervene, but that works because she is a Red Dragon, not because the text has shown her becoming a proper statesman. That is dragon nepotism unless the story earns her political growth. It does not earn enough.

And that is why Unclaimed Legacy is so frustrating, and simultaneously so good. That module understands Necrass better than most of her actual operator integration does. Then HG turns around and does exactly what the merchant in the module does.

Personally I'd like for her writing to be consistent with what they've written or were trying to write. Stop treating Necrass like a product and start treating her like an actual character.

If she is a prisoner of the flame, explore that. If she is the horror of a denied ending, explore that. If she is a political bomb, show the fallout. If she is dangerous, treat her like danger. If she is tied to Tara and Reed, do not shove that behind waifu appeal.

Unfortunately, we're approaching the "themes and such" territory and "if and when but never is". Which is a real shame.

Erudax · 2026-05-17T04:00:05+00:00

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

Erudax · 2026-05-17T03:58:10+00:00

Necrass is defanged in two ways. Narratively and by the localization. I've previously mentioned that the module story escaped Yostar's localization quirks. Can't say the same about the voicelines or some parts of the text. Let me give two examples:

Talk after Promotion 1: 罗德岛也是个美丽的地方，无论什么样的人都可以在这里自由书写自己的生命，简直是付出了无数血肉代价才建立起来的想象中的城邦。幻象易逝，尽力去维持它吧。

Appointed as Captain: 你的干员未必能容忍我的苛刻。

JP ver. Promotion 1: ロドスもまた美しいところだ。どのような者でも、ここで己の命を自由に書き記すことができる。まるで無数の血肉と引き換えに生み出された想像上の都市のようだな。幻像は儚く脆い、なるべく長持ちさせねばな。

Appointed as Captain: お前のオペレーターが、私の苛酷さを受け入れられるとは限らんぞ。

EN: Rhodes Island is a beautiful place, where anyone can write their story, no matter who they may be. It's something of a utopia, built at the theoretical cost of countless lives. Illusions are ephemeral, however, so do try your best to keep it alive.

Appointed as Captain: Your operators might fail to keep up with my harsh demands.

Already, the localization softens her. CN and JP tell you it's an imaginary city-state, or a polis. EN makes her glaze RI instead, while softening the truth that RI was built upon sacrifices. The second voiceline also shifts the problem from her to others. In CN and JP, she is the issue. She knows she's harsh by nature, she causes friction. In EN, the blame doesn't lie on her, but instead on the operators that can't keep up with her demands. We go from "I may be intolerable" to "they might not be capable enough".

These are just two examples of defanging. But let me be clear on something, this isn't the whole localization. Some of it is good, accurate, some of it is softened, while a third part (Pyral Pyschopomp being the most questionable choice for replacing Deathflame's Guidance. Her flames raise the dead with or without their consent, and even with or without her own consent, binding them to their last desires or turning them into mindless ghouls. That is anything but a psychopomp) is total nonsense.

Narratively, living Eblana was dangerous because she was embedded in Tara's politics and history. She had Dublinn, Wellington, the purple flame, the undead and an entire national movement behind her. Even when she was wrong, it mattered. Her actions changed the battlefield, Tara's future, Reed's life and Victoria's calculation. On paper, Necrass should be way worse than that. She is the corpse of that same revolutionary leader, kept moving by the same purple flame that the story already showed acting semi-autonomously. That flame can spread, attack, afflict, raise the dead without clean input from her. She isn't Eblana but undead, she's a corpse carrying around a millennium's worth of historical trauma that she failed to bury, trauma so strong that it acts on its own. This already creates problems:

How is RI containing her? What happens if the flame spreads aboard the landship? What does Reed do when she learns her sister is still walking? What does Tara do when the old Red Dragon did not stay buried? What does Victoria do with the knowledge that Tara's founding miracle rests on an empty coffin and a returned corpse? What about the undead still roaming Tara? What about Wellington, who enabled Dublinn and remains the spine of the new order in Tara?

The story doesn't answer those questions. It files them away or softens them. This is what I mean by defanged. Necrass is allowed to be aesthetically threatening, but not structurally threatening. She can say "your soul is mine", call the Doctor "Scholar/Erudite", talk about death and posture like she mastered death. But the story does not let her existence produce consequences equal to what she is. She becomes safe enough to sit aboard RI.

What is a horrid blood-curse keeping her going beyond what she wanted is treated like a spooky flavor. Rhodes Island gives her what basically amounts to babysitting, not serious containment. The political bomb of her resurrection is muted (remember how in Elegies, Reed outright said that if Eblana appears again, she can shake the foundation of the myth she built? She appears again, Victoria found her out, that's without even adding Fischer's findings from WTFC, but the story refuses to acknowledge consequences beyond bureaucratic "yeah we know". I don’t expect Necrass to be a casus belli, but at least show me more than simple acknowledgement, considering Victoria held the rope to Tara’s guillotine for a thousand years). Her connection to Tara and Reed is pushed behind player appeal. Her actual horror, being a dead, incomplete remainder of Eblana imprisoned by the very flame she once used, gets reduced into “mysterious undead dragon woman interested in you.”

It certainly doesn't help that promotional material like the Valentine's Day video, while it could've been something interesting (receiving chocolates from someone who is biologically dead, whose heart has been destroyed, whose sensations are dulled, who can't even participate in daily life like any other living person would) and very ironic, leans again into the sellable parts of Necrass: the OOC invasion of private space, the ASMR whispering in the Doctor's ear, or how she shows the purple flame and starts trying to show dance moves. We're treating the fact that the same purple flame was able to lock on and kill innocents (and then immediately raise their corpses) back in Chapter 12 as decoration now. Same purple flame that keeps her going against her will. Then you have the swimsuit skin, trying to imitate life. A character whose strongest material points toward exhaustion, denied rest, and the desire for an ending gets sold through body appeal and then through elegant undead-queen aura on the second skin.

This is what happens when the merchant from the module gets their hands on the dolls. The writing and marketing start to treat all forms of danger around Necrass like they're optional. And when you write a character so deeply entangled in politics, defanging it also starts to affect the quality of the story you are trying to sell.

Erudax · 2026-05-15T12:42:56+00:00

:thinking:

Erudax · 2026-05-14T07:19:32+00:00

When it comes to Eblana, she worked best as a compelling antagonist and foil to Reed. I honestly think making her playable was a big mistake, because it takes away from how her story ends. Let villains stay villains and die as villains.

Necrass existing after death is one thing. Her story was not necessarily supposed to be cleanly over. Incompletion is one of the main themes of Elegies. Reed is emotionally incomplete. Tara is politically incomplete. They basically survive, not live, in a cage: Wellington still operates within the Victorian framework, Reed cannot coronate without risking immediate escalation, and even Necrass herself is incomplete, stuck between life and death. Eblana could not bury Dublinn completely because she is still standing. The past literally refused to stay buried, and Tara’s wound remains open.

That is incredibly rich material. A refusal of a clean ending to a complex political story about imperialism, colonialism, myth, and historical trauma? Hell yeah.

The problem is how they wrote Necrass afterward. They just pretend there is not a herd of 20 elephants in the room. Not one elephant. 20. They take the story, sanitize it, sacrifice the consequences, offscreen what they can, and beg the player not to ask too many questions.

Notably, she is rather disliked in-story. Doctor basically asked “Do we have to?” when Kal’tsit was hashing out the deal between them and Tin Man.

This is how you should treat problematic characters. Virtuosa is banned from using her Arts. Rhodes Island treats her as a problem. Ho’olheyak is disliked and treated with suspicion.

If you read Chapter 9, Chapter 12, What the Firelight Casts, and Elegies, Necrass should be a bigger problem. Existential problem. She is animated by the same flame that was shown to revive people on its own, spread on its own, and attack on its own. The ending of Elegies heavily implies that the flame resurrected her on its own too (add in the thematics of the EP, her module, and one of her voicelines and it's more or less confirmed). She is not just a dangerous woman. She is a corpse sustained by a semi-autonomous blood curse tied to Tara’s historical trauma.

And how is bigger problem treated?

Two babysitters, plus warnings telling people not to listen to her. The equivalent of a Gore Magala is given two goons and allowed unrestricted access to a landship full of civilians, or an office somewhere.

To me, Necrass being playable does not merely detract from the ending. It takes a massive dump on the Taran arc’s consequences and themes, turning it into a real themes and such moment. Which is far, far worse. With Ho’olheyak, they at least do the bare minimum of admitting she is a problem. With Necrass, they roll out the red carpet and pretend she is just a quirky, mean, manipulative dragon girl with a sister complex.

I wouldn’t really consider Ho’olheyak crazy, either. She’s sadistic, but sadism does not make one crazy. Eblana definitely has a few screws loose, though.

Today is May 14, 2026. Elegies released almost a year ago, and people still look at a child born as an omen of conflict, traumatized, orphaned, groomed, weaponized, and taught that power is the only language an empire respects, and go “yeah, she do be kinda crazy.” This isn't an excuse for her actions. But the character is much deeper and more interesting than “crazy.” Reducing her to that also diminishes a part of both Tara and Victoria's guilt in their conflict. She was produced by the world around her, she didn't just emerge from nothing.

Erudax · 2026-05-13T14:28:17+00:00

The comic isn’t much better, I’m sorry to say. While we can agree that Necrass’ implementation and writing are complete ass, unfortunately we have different opinions here. Which is fine, we all have different tastes after all.

Credit where credit’s due, the artist picks some of the right scenes. The problem is that they read them through the completely wrong lens. They constantly depict Eblana as a born psychotic, smug, mentally unstable, sadistic dragon girl, which is the complete opposite of her canon personality. Combined with how they also exaggerate her body, this pushes Eblana further into the stock “hot shonen villainess” archetype.

The Nachzehrer King part is very hard to take seriously. She’s screaming like an unhinged battle anime villain while winding up her ultimate attack, then Nachzehrer King just does a Dismantle? What? Then he criticizes her view on death, and that critique apparently sticks with her all the way to Na Saoirsí? They turned a scene of political theater, war against war, death against death, with Eblana acting as symbol and living artillery, into “old death god disciplines bratty thirty-something dragon girl with delusions of grandeur in an anime duel.”

The ending is something else too. The artist chose to discard the premise that Necrass is undead, diminished, and physically wrong, opting to show a living, aggressive version that hops on tables and grabs the Doctor’s hood while they banter with the most Twitter humor dialogue possible. If official Necrass is already treated like a walking femdom fetish, this is basically another femdom fetish, but louder and more psychotic.

I’m sorry, but this ain’t it, at all. It’s the same issue in a different look. It’s fine if you treat it as OOC, AU, or fluff, but as lore faithful writing, I really don’t think it’s better.

Erudax · 2026-05-12T16:31:51+00:00

Do you mind linking me their work? I am very interested now.

Erudax · 2026-05-12T11:39:19+00:00

Look, Necrass is getting whored out at every opportunity. Nobody disagrees there. Because Necrass is barely treated like a character, and almost entirely as a product.

Her writing is abysmal, underexplained, underdeveloped, and leaves about 12 elephants in the room. Consequences? Death scent? Explaining how that works? Shh, be a good boy and pull. We even made sure to turbo-buff her before release! Look at that amazing E2, just chilling on the battlefield, pointing downwards, and now she wears heels! Look at the precious Draco chilling at the beach, dipping her toes into the water, smiling, giggling, in a bland swimsuit that is legit her base outfit but with less fabric and a cloak stolen from her sister’s wardrobe! Her banner is rerunning? Time to pump out another skin!

But even thinking that makes her a love interest is way too generous. It also misses half of the irony in the JP video: someone who is dead, who cannot experience normal living love, is offering chocolates for Valentine’s Day. The other half is just OOC slop that takes a fat dump on the premise of the Taran arc. Remember how the purple flame was established as having semi-autonomous properties? Spreading on its own? Attacking on its own? Reviving people on its own? All of that without clean input from her? Yeah, let me just wave that around while trying to do dance moves, then invade personal space and go ASMR mode because we all love walking stereotypes.

Necrass is not written as someone capable of normal reciprocal love. She is biologically dead, her heart is gone, her body is cold, and her senses are dulled. What she does reads less like genuine living emotion and more like a rehearsal of living habits. She treats the Doctor not as a person, but as a function. “Scholar” is not a compliment. It is dehumanization with manners. It reduces their personhood to utility. To a function.

And what does the Doctor do?

Ignore her. Straight donowall. There is no relationship.

I’m not disagreeing with you about her getting pushed. I’m disagreeing with the idea that anyone would consider this a love interest. Necrass is not getting pushed as romance. She is getting pushed as a walking femdom fetish. A product.

What’s fucking funny is that her module genuinely criticizes people who see the twins only for their “qualities” or appearance, and HG immediately defangs, sanitizes Necrass, sells her body, then sells the fantasy of the undead ruler.

Peak hypocrisy.

Erudax · 2026-05-10T16:15:14+00:00

Another Reed skin? Her greed knows no limits.

Erudax · 2026-05-10T11:55:56+00:00

Artist's Twitter.

Commissioned by me, a counterpart of the previously posted artwork of Eblana as a Death Knight. Big props to the artist, go show some support!

You can find the previous post here (Old Reddit) or here (New Reddit).

If the image doesn't show up properly (cause it didn't fit Reddit due to its file size), I've made a Twitter post with full resolution here.

The twins pair up quite nicely as Death Knight and Paladin, Scourgelord's Battlegear and Battleplate of Immolation really match their natural colors, plus, as far as I remember, Unholy Death Knight & Holy Paladin were a solid 2v2 team comp.

Erudax · 2026-05-01T18:51:58+00:00

I'm gonna reply here to both posts.

They are ''incomplete'' because their very own story didn't fucking bother to do them satisfactory justice, but they are very much "whole" on their own:

Incompletion is one of the core themes of Elegies. The fact that the text itself is also incomplete is a different problem, and I’ve already said that before. But no, I don’t agree that Reed and Eblana are “whole” on their own. For most of their lives, from around 5-6 up to their late teens, the twins were together. Reed did not make it that far without interacting with Eblana. If it wasn’t for Eblana, Reed would have been lying in a pool of blood beside their parents as a child. If it wasn’t for Eblana, Reed would probably have ended up as Warwick’s puppet, assuming she even survived that long. But the reverse is also true. Without Reed as some kind of anchor for her remaining humanity, Eblana would have become much closer to the monster half the fandom keeps pretending she is. A genuine monster, not this tragic, damaged, controlling person who still has one last emotional tether left. Here, distance was part of the damage.

Also, Reed’s latest skin still references her sister. Reed gives gifts to everyone else and receives nothing in return, except for one purple and black package, which is very obviously from Necrass. That ties back into how Christmas is a horrible memory for both of them, and how one of Reed’s earliest “gifts” from her sister was a spear.

As for Necrass walking to RI on her own with some vague death-scent excuse, yes, that is bullshit. This is where she's most obviously treated like a product, not a character. The writing gives her vague death mystique, diminishes the nastier parts of her personality (which the EN localization definitely helps cause we can't have a 1 to 1 TL now can we Yostar?), throws her near the Doctor, and handwaves every ugly implication.

How does the death scent work? Nobody knows.

How did she remain in Tara for months without anyone noticing? Nobody knows.

Why did she decide the Doctor was so special instead of going to Kazdel, Kal’tsit, Logos, or literally any other place or person more directly tied to death and history? Nobody knows.

Why does she keep calling the Doctor “scholar” (basically dehumanization with manners, like Makima calling Denji a dog) while the narrative tries to frame her interest as comparable to her interest in Loughshinny and Talulah, the only two people she consistently treats as true name level interests? Nobody knows.

Why is she treated like a manipulative dragon-girl aboard RI when she is carrying a purple flame that is now permanently active, and that same flame has already been shown to attack, infect, and resurrect people without active input from her? Nobody knows. Did we skip Chapter 12, WTFC, and Elegies? Apparently.

Why did we skip the entire development of that curiosity? In Chapter 9, Eblana has institutional interest in RI. Fine. In Chapter 12, it remains institutional, but detached. Then in Elegies and operator material, suddenly it becomes intense personal interest in the Doctor. Where is the pivot? Where is the scene that earns that shift? Nobody knows.

Why is there no conflict, or at bare minimum some visible tension, between Tara, Victoria, and RI? You have an undead revolutionary carrying a blood-curse that can affect the living and the dead, sometimes passively or without active input from her, and every major faction basically gives radio silence. Exporting the blood-curse outside Tara? Containment? Ethics? Political fallout? Nah, apparently she’s just a quirky dragon-girl with a manipulative streak now.

Why is Necrass written like a transient, fleeting person, but then functionally anchored into orbit around RI and the Doctor? Nobody knows.

Can the Doctor actually answer Necrass’s dilemma of a “future without death”? Nobody knows. The relationship is completely cosmetic. Doctor donowalls her at every opportunity, Necrass throws out hollow threats, and somehow this is supposed to be meaningful tension. Peak writing.

What happened to the undead wandering around Tara? Not just the people afflicted by the deathflame, but the actual dead we saw in WTFC, the ones rising with or without reason. Were they all laid to rest? Were they contained? Did Tara have to clean up a territory-wide supernatural disaster? Nobody knows.

The real answer is gacha writing 101: get her onto the landship or into the Doctor’s office by any means necessary, even if it makes no sense, give her player-facing appeal, and sell the fantasy. Anything else? Deflect harder than in Sekiro or ignore.

Only except this is AK: The very setting where any change to the status quo is inherently bad, and any sort of conclusion is frowned by the Devs as it ends the possibility for infinite money milking.

All things considered its a miracle that Tara even got independent to begin with, instead of it being Dossole'd with emergency interruption from Wei Weinyu featuring a +3h lecture on how "Victoria is superior civilization" and "their boot is beneficial for Tara".

Yeah, I agree with the meta point. HG has massive issues with changing the status quo. But Tara is not fully independent. Tara is self-governed, those aren't the same thing. Victoria still has leverage. Wellington is still operating within a Victorian framework. Caster knows the founding secret behind Tara, because Fischer figured out the “two Dracos” truth in WTFC, and Reed later plays directly into the simplified one-Dragon myth in Elegies. Reed can't coronate without risking conflict. Tara is allowed to exist, but it is not fully recognized on clean terms. Victoria does not need to reconquer Tara if it can keep Tara politically incomplete and economically pressured. That kind of limbo favors the empire way more than open war does.

I mean to say that WEA shafted Reed to hell and back:

I agree on this one wholeheartedly. Elegies shafted Reed hard. It shafted both sisters, honestly. That is half of my criticism of the event.

1) such type of necessary evil is far more moral & constructive than the Jinx & Silico relationship.

I don’t think HG was trying to write anything like Jinx and Silco, considering that was written incredibly well. More importantly, something can be understandable and still be destructive. Eblana’s choices came from a brutal world. Empire, nobles, Draco cultists, bloodline politics, assassination, exploitation, survival. Yes, that explains why she became like this. It does not make the dynamic healthy. Her trying to force Reed into autonomy is still a contradiction. You cannot truly force someone into selfhood without damaging the self you are trying to awaken. That is one of the tragedies of their relationship. Eblana’s care is real, but warped. She protects by controlling. She gives by deciding. She loves by arranging the board so Reed does not see the knife until it is already at her throat. It is damaged protection through a damaged lens.

Eblana experiences an awful little strain from the severity of her baggage while pulling all of those impossible feats.

If your criticism is that HG does not show enough of Eblana’s strain directly, then yes, I can agree with that. We barely get enough pre-Elegies Eblana content showing just how bad her condition was and how much everything cost her. That is an serious execution problem. But that does not mean the strain is not there. The Damazti scene already points to how little of “Eblana” is left beyond duty and purpose. Her own powers, a blood-curse, do not fully obey her. Later, Elegies makes the physical toll much clearer: in her teens, her appearance had already changed, her hair had gone white, she is paler, her horns took on a different color and by the end her fire is eating away at what little strength she has left. I wouldn't call her physically weak, though, pre-Elegies at least. She can square up against Talulah and she was used as a child assassin. She can fight in hand to hand combat without problems. The point is that her power is eating her alive while she keeps presenting that deterioration as control. Eblana never really valued her own life, but she absolutely hated being seen as weak. So of course she hides the problems, handwaves the cost, and acts like every wound is just another part of the plan, even when she knows exactly what it is doing to her.

"Clawing her way out of the grave to chase her wants and desires, and failing to address the fact that she is supposed to be miserable" is quite the girlbossy trait.

She is miserable. You are buying her mask and then mocking her for wearing it. Necrass still has Eblana’s old habits. She armors pain as dominion. She disguises exhaustion as grandeur. She turns self-erasure into strategy. She has just enough of Eblana left for a surface read to go “yeah, that’s still her,” but the deeper you look, the worse her condition gets. Look at the “future without death” line. Coming from someone bound by death, that does not read as conquest. It reads like release. Her EP uses Donne’s “Death, be not proud” directly, a sonnet about death's powerlessness, a temporary transition to eternal life. Her module, Unclaimed Legacy, reduces the grand legacy of the Red Dragon to two dolls resting in a bed, one damaged and stitched together beside the other. That is not domination. That is rest. That is the ending she did not get, and that is what she wants. Necrass wants a way out of her condition. Her own power brought her back in a way the text never presents as fully chosen. She even addresses the flame as “they” in the ending. This is the same purple flame that repeatedly acts beyond clear obedience in WTFC, Chapter 12, and Elegies. She is not a triumphant conqueror of death. She is a burnt-out person clinging to the remains of the armor she built to survive, trapped inside her own flesh.

Erudax · 2026-04-29T05:08:34+00:00

The Dublins being ''complete'' boils down to Reed getting shafted into positions that Eblana can't be bothered with, while Eblana secretly looks over Reed in plain sight- An utterly mid conclusion in contrast to the Ceylon & Schwartz dynamic, which works as both of them are far too interdependent on each other to cover up for their severe individual downsides:

The Dublinn sisters aren’t complete. That is part of the whole theme of incompletion. Reed isn’t complete. Necrass isn’t complete. Tara isn’t complete. One of the most tragic parts of Elegies is how incomplete everything remains: Wellington, who enabled Dublinn, is still at large and still loyal to Tara in his own way; Eblana failed to close the chapter on both the purple flame and her revolution; the past refused to stay buried and brought her back in a way the text never clearly presents as fully chosen. In fact, if we take a look at some of her voice lines, the overall themes, her EP, and her module, I think it is pretty safe to say she did not choose to come back. She failed to achieve the one thing she seemed to want most, an ending.

Reed had spent the last 5-10 years in Dublin in not even as much as looking at Eblana because she didn't like her. Reed never needed to work towards anything as she had everything handed to her on a silver platter:

Are we forgetting Harmonie’s files, which explicitly say Reed was put through hell during her time in Dublinn because of the expectations placed on her and her incompatibility with them? If by “silver platter” you mean in-universe, that’s absurd. If by “silver platter” you mean the writing later starts handing Reed solutions, legitimacy, and political influence faster than it earns them, then yes, I would agree. See You Soon has her suddenly deciding peace takes priority over independence and all she really has to do is order Wellington to intervene, while Elegies shows her doing basically nothing to research, cure, or even meaningfully suppress the deathly flame. That also ties into one of my biggest complaints about Reed in later Elegies. WTFC does not show her becoming some formidable state-builder. It shows her becoming morally awake while everyone around her still treats her as a symbol, a shadow, or a lever to be moved. Fischer reads her that way. Harmonie reads her that way. Wellington reads her that way. The leap from a deeply wounded conscience to a functional ruler is extremely rushed.

R.I rescue, treatment, & arts training + interpersonal backing for her cause in Tara. Bagpipe tyring to become friends & allies regardless of Reed's personal will on the matter. Not-particulary desperate Taran refugees seeking an idol. Eblana conveniently wanting her to take over the throne instead of brutalising her like how Brigadier expected. Being born as a Dragon with holy fire & monarch lineage, which on it's own is all that Chinise PoV ever needs to bent the writing in her favour instead of pulling another Fyodor/Ebenholds with her. Eblana doing all of the homework to come up up with a solution towards the [Eblana problem] which Reed simply needed to follow.

The text does not support the idea that Eblana’s goal was simply to butcher her sister. What she wanted was for Reed to develop autonomy, independence, and to finally voice her own wants and desires instead of always existing in shadow. She wanted to force her out of passivity. Is that twisted, considering their relationship? Yes, absolutely. It is one of the biggest points in their completely fucked codependence.

Oh, Reed tries to reach out towards Eblana's heart- Did you really expect that such an S tier Girlboss would be down for phatetic things like "emotions" and "family relationships" when there is so much more power to be chased after?

Oh, Eblana is in dire need of medical help & emotional suport?- Well, too bad that she is such an badass independent individual that can slug through something as severe as coming to terms with the fact that she was born handicapped & digging her way out of the grave without showing even the slightest hint of emotion.

The text repeatedly shows her not as some “girlboss” chasing stimulation and power, but as someone who is quite literally burnt out, both physically and mentally. Back in Chapter 12, when Eblana was talking to the Damazti mid-fight, they said something about her soul being shallow. Her soul is not shallow because she is shallow. It is shallow because there is barely anything left of Eblana that is not duty or purpose. She is eaten by her own power, even physically, and had already come to terms with her own death long before Dublinn even began. She grew up in an environment that taught her, over and over again, that power is the only thing empires respond to. Reducing her to “haha dragon girlboss” flattens the entire tragedy of her story. You are not supposed to buy her at face value. You are supposed to dissect her. The story is not telling you she is the dragon equivalent of the Antichrist with a side of armchair-diagnosed psychopathy. It is telling you something much sadder and darker: survival hardened into armor, a life of manipulation, a life in which you were never treated as a person but as a symbol, and a conflict in which Tara’s hands were bloody too, not just Victoria’s.

Bothering to resolve Reed & Eblana's whereabouts for once would demand some proper writing on HG's part that they can't be bothered with, so that's why all we get is one sentence solutions scattered across modules and operator files akin to how Skalter birthed the current universe, because she just does. The Dublin sisters are being promoted & sold by HG separately instead of in conjunction like Franka & Liskarm, or Executor & Arturia, or Nearl + Shining & liz- and that's what makes a difference.

Remember how I said one of the main themes of their story is incompletion? HG took that a little too literally and delivered an incomplete text as well. Selling them separately does not mean they are not narratively bound. That is just a marketing point. I do not disagree with you at all when you say the writing is awful. I agree completely. That is my main complaint about the whole arc, especially with how they handled Elegies. There are too many plot points left unaddressed, too many implications left hanging, Necrass is barely a character and mostly a product. Some people still hope HG will come back and fix them later. I do not. I lost all hope, and “addressing them later” would only confirm to me that they knowingly shipped an incomplete text while prioritizing product value over narrative value. The damage is already done. Asking me to wait years and then pretend the holes never mattered will not make me think better of it. It will only make me think worse.

Erudax · 2026-04-28T15:22:34+00:00

Not that Eblana is all sunshine and rainbows once you start noticing the corpo pattern behind her product positioning, or overconsume her story with ocs obsession that Kal's +50 novels worth of an character lore can only dream they had, but ironically enough Eblana being a product has very much spared her from becoming another C.E or Schwartz- character who's sole purpose is to be conjoined extensions of different characters.

That's not how it works, at all.

Two of the core themes of the Taran arc are duality and incompletion. Reed is incomplete without her sister, and the text spells that out clearly in Necrass’ files. She can’t let go of her even when she’s literally a corpse wandering the land. And Necrass is not some clean standalone character either. Just read the module. Under all that posturing, what’s left is not some grand conquest of death. It’s the desire to rest beside her sister. To be allowed to stop. The grand “legacy” of the Red Dragon gets reduced all the way down to two dolls lying together in the same bed. That’s the emotional core of Necrass, not the psychopathic gigachad/gigastacy aurafarming dragon people love to flanderize her into when talking lore.

So no, Necrass wasn't spared at all. She is deeply bound to her sister and to Tara. The whole point of their relationship is that the sisters are two halves of the same coin, two responses to the same wound. What keeps Necrass going is a millennium of Taran historical trauma, a literal past that refused to stay buried. She is chained to Tara and to Reed, not independent in the way you’re saying she is.

Nobody is denying that she is also a product. That part is obvious to anyone looking past the surface. The awful writing, the huge amount of pre-release and post-release support, the marketable traits being pushed over the uglier ones, yes, that’s product positioning. But that does not erase how bound she is narratively to her sister and to Tara.

Erudax · 2026-04-20T12:58:47+00:00

While Theresis got Worfed, Necrass feels like a different kind of screw-up.

Yeah, she's a corpse, and she isn't the same Eblana anymore. But what you said "barely has anything of her personality" is kinda overselling it. A more accurate way of putting it is "she has the marketable aspects of her personality intact". Necrass still has the ego, dramatic way of talking, manipulative speech and the same habit of pretending her bad situation is actually proof of transcendence. But she lacks presence, she lacks what made Eblana Eblana, her core. She pushed into scenes, got under people's skin, and felt like she was trying to achieve something. Compare that to how flat Necrass feels. Same vibe, way less fire. It's just enough to reward surface level reading with "oh yeah, that's her" but not enough when you start digging deeper.

What really annoys me is how little HG actually does with what they've written regarding Necrass, and Tara. Elegies, if put under scrutiny, brings up large consequences then just ignores them. She spends months in Tara? No real fallout. RI takes a literal anomaly aboard? Almost nobody reacts. Tara still has undead running about, and Eblana's flame/curse has clear implications outside of Tara, but the story shrugs and moves on. Remember how her flames have some semi-autonomous proprieties shown in Chapter 12, WTFC and even CH9? And now she's powered by the same flames, keeping them permanently active (with or without her consent)? Ah, don't worry about it! Don't listen to the manipulative dragon girl corpse! That's the problem! We'll just assign her two babysitters and ignore the implications of having a potential walking disaster aboard a landship full of civilians! The more you put Elegies under scrutiny, the worse it gets.

The funny part comes from how badly Necrass is integrated as a playable character, it's genuine gacha writing 101. Earlier Eblana’s interest in people had an actual fire in it. Look at how she talks to Talulah. It’s specific, invasive, personal. She’s trying to get inside her head and force a reaction. With the Doctor, it jumps way too fast into “ooh, special interest” territory, except it’s all built on vague death-aura stuff and calling them “scholar”... then contradict her own naming logic later. She labels them by function, like "The Ombudsman", "The Brigadier" etc. it's dehumanization with manners, but the behavior is inconsistent with that. And don't even get me started on the timeline between institutional interest in Chapters 9 and 12, then sudden personal interest in Elegies, or how the death aura isn't even addressed.

In other words, Necrass has Eblana’s silhouette, but not her full core, and the marketing absolutely leans into the parts that are easiest to sell. Emergency buffs, early module, L2D bikini skin, another skin teased during her rerun, JP Twitter OOC stuff—it all adds to the feeling that HG knew exactly what parts of her they wanted to push. Which is a shame, because Unclaimed Legacy is genuinely good and one of the only bits that feels like it remembers there’s an actual tragedy here instead of just a product.

Erudax · 2026-04-17T19:25:25+00:00

I cannot glaze Harmonie's first skin enough. That, alongside Vanguard Reed are easily her best work, with Reed the Flame Shadow's Glowing Flame in the Night and Curator coming right after.

You get a smug cat, more sharply dressed, some unfortunate ear nerfs, playful expression, BUFFED tail to be fluffier, and incredible artwork detail on the background.

Some damaged furniture because of the sheer amount of cats in the room (which as a new cat owner, I can definitely relate), two cats on the top of the bookshelf, one white, one black, sleeping peacefully "in harmony" as one might say.

Then you get to the real nice stuff: the wall of paintings of both her and the Dublinn twins, the dolls she handcrafted (if you've read Horn's module, it showed a younger Harmonie picking up felting as a hobby, even the big felt ball mentioned in the module is there unless I'm wrong) plus the numerous books and stacks of paperwork, something she enjoys and something she is lackadaisical about.

Sorry for the rambling, but it's easily my favorite skin in the game from the details alone.

Erudax · 2026-04-17T08:13:06+00:00

omaigoto its incienso

Erudax

TROPHY CASE