The Implausibility of Thracia's Deadlords

[Jotari]

I really like that the Deadlords in Thracia can be the playable characters you didn't recruit or who died on you. It just conjures a bad vibe for the people you failed to save. That being said...uh...does it make any sense?

The characters that can become the Deadlords are Galzus, Dagdar, Eyvel, Sara, Lifis and Raydrik. According to the script, Veld turned Raydrik into a Deadlord while Manfroy brought the other five. Immediately that jumps out as questionable. Raydrik died in the previous chapter.  Leif seized the upper portions of the castle yet somehow, when he is under siege, Veld had time to go up, grab Raydrik's body, bring it down to the basement and make him a Deadlord. Now, the paralogue in between these two chapters does afford Veld some more time, as he can make zombie Raydrik while Leif is rescuing Eyvel. However, Galzus would have to die in the same battle as Raydrik. His corpse is going to be just as fresh as Raydriks. If Veld could grab Raydrik he could have grabbed Galzus too, but we know Galzus was zombified by Manfroy. So...while Leif was doing the paralogue Manfroy must have stumbled into the upper room, comically just missed Veld making off with Raydrik's body, noticed Galzus was a particularly jacked corpse, and simultaneously made him a Deadlord there and then and the exact same time Veld was making Raydrik one.

And that's if you do the paralogue and don't skip directly to the final battle. Speaking of that paralogue, if you don't do it then Eyvel somehow becomes a dead lord. Which...yeah that makes no sense unless there's some kind of time skip. It's like a scrhodinger's paradox. If Leif doesn't go to rescue Eyvel, then she's already been unstoned and zombified. But if he does try to rescue her than Manfroy hasn't done that yet. It is cute that they made her a Sniper instead of a Swordmaster though.

Galzus and Lifis are the most sensible ones to become deadlords. If Leif didn't recruit (or re recruit) them then they are captured as bandits and made into Deadlords at any poing over the course of the game. Though, while they do make plausible possibility, it always struck me as kind of a random decision. Lifis in particular you can go through the whole game without ever meeting and, while a memorable character for Thracia's cast, isn't a particularly important one for the plot or world. I guess it worked out that was because of the class balance, Lifis being the only other Thief candidate aside from Perne, but they didn't have to use Porcus as one of the Deadlords.

The last potential Deadlord is Sara. Like Galzus and Lifis there's plenty of time for her to be  made a Deadlord, but it ends up kind of questionable that she did. As she's Manfroy's granddaughter. Why did Manfroy turn his own Granddaughter into a Deadlord? I mean, he's a big enough bastard to do something like that I'm sure, but what prompted him to do it now, at this time to her specifically? It's not like, if left unrecruited, she's any kind of threat to him or working against him. If you do recruit her and she dies it might make a bit more sense as it could actually be Manfroy trying to save her.

So, yeah, I like it as an idea, but it feels like the writers just threw it in without considering the plausibility of how all these characters could end up here at this time.

Edited January 26 by Jotari

[ARMADS!!!]

I won't try to make any sort of In Depth Analysis™ here because I literally just learned my lesson about not trying to make an argument related to a game I don't fully know the story of (or at least enough to talk about) (when I did that Idunn-Veld comparision on the CYL thread), but I'll accompany the thread regardless because I like this sort of discussions (also will try to contribute a bit, but I'm afraid I can't say a whole lot on this specific matter). Well, I guess that if you wanna make the situation even more implausible- gameplaywise- Raydrik has 20 con while Veld has 11, I wonder how did he make to grab his body and drag it down to the basement, do dead bodies have less Con in the Fire Emblem universe or something?

 Also, the only thing that can unpetrify someone is the Kia staff that only Sara can use right?(Or rather, I think Manfroy can use it too but the staff is at Sara's hands by the time Eyvel is unpetrified anyway) Or Veld can unpetrify who he petrified at will too if he needs? Because if he can't then it could become even more implausible cause then Sara would have to go to petrified Eyvel's location and unpetrify her (or to go there, and give her staff to Manfroy so he could do it himself), so manfroy can kill her(Eyvel) and turn her into a Deadlord. I think the most plausible possibility would be exactly what you said: Sara was recruited and died before chapter 24x (thus not getting the Kia staff at chapter 24)  so it was Manfroy who used the staff on Eyvel , or I guess that Sara could have been left unrecruited, then somehow managed to unpetrify Eyvel for Manfroy and then 5 seconds after this, she sutmbled on a banana peel, hit her head on the floor and died by blunt force trauma, and then Manfroy just took the chance and turned her into a Deadlord too because she already died so why not (well, in the case of not having Sara recruited, it could just be Manfroy himself who uses the staff I guess, but she would still have to have died somehow). 

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, ARMADS!!! said:

I won't try to make any sort of In Depth Analysis™ here because I literally just learned my lesson about not trying to make an argument related to a game I don't fully know the story of (or at least enough to talk about) (when I did that Idunn-Veld comparision on the CYL thread), but I'll accompany the thread regardless because I like this sort of discussions (also will try to contribute a bit, but I'm afraid I can't say a whole lot on this specific matter). Well, I guess that if you wanna make the situation even more implausible- gameplaywise- Raydrik has 20 con while Veld has 11, I wonder how did he make to grab his body and drag it down to the basement, do dead bodies have less Con in the Fire Emblem universe or something?

 Also, the only thing that can unpetrify someone is the Kia staff that only Sara can use right?(Or rather, I think Manfroy can use it too but the staff is at Sara's hands by the time Eyvel is unpetrified anyway) Or Veld can unpetrify who he petrified at will too if he needs? Because if he can't then it could become even more implausible cause then Sara would have to go to petrified Eyvel's location and unpetrify her (or to go there, and give her staff to Manfroy so he could do it himself), so manfroy can kill her(Eyvel) and turn her into a Deadlord. I think the most plausible possibility would be exactly what you said: Sara was recruited and died before chapter 24x (thus not getting the Kia staff at chapter 24)  so it was Manfroy who used the staff on Eyvel , or I guess that Sara could have been left unrecruited, then somehow managed to unpetrify Eyvel for Manfroy and then 5 seconds after this, she sutmbled on a banana peel, hit her head on the floor and died by blunt force trauma, and then Manfroy just took the chance and turned her into a Deadlord too because she already died so why not (well, in the case of not having Sara recruited, it could just be Manfroy himself who uses the staff I guess, but she would still have to have died somehow). 

It is possible there are multiple Kia Staffs and that Manfroy had one on him the whole time anyway. Alternatively, Draco is like a golem and is still made of stone. Manfroy just needed to animate her.

[Acacia Sgt]

I like how you bring up the time concerns as if Rewarp didn't exist.

[Jotari]

17 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I like how you bring up the time concerns as if Rewarp didn't exist.

It's actually really less time constraints and more space time constraints. Like, for three of the Deadlords corpses Leif is already in the building and gunning for them. Barring some unmentioned time skip (or getting caught in that teleport trap for hours on end, though that doesn't help Eyvel's case) it's just bizarre they'd have the inclination to go after these three people right now when Leif is right there. And presumably it takes some amount of time to actually make a Deadlord as Veld says he's just finished preparing Mus.

[Acacia Sgt]

55 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's actually really less time constraints and more space time constraints. Like, for three of the Deadlords corpses Leif is already in the building and gunning for them. Barring some unmentioned time skip (or getting caught in that teleport trap for hours on end, though that doesn't help Eyvel's case) it's just bizarre they'd have the inclination to go after these three people right now when Leif is right there. And presumably it takes some amount of time to actually make a Deadlord as Veld says he's just finished preparing Mus.

Well, for starters, both Galzus and Eyvel/Briggid have Mayor Holy Blood. So they're likely high in consideration to be turned into Dreadlords.

Second, it likely is a Schrödinger's situation, but not as narrow as you think. It's much more likely that, if you don't unlock 24x, that Eyvel had long been turned into Draco. There is a year's span of time between her petrification and Leif laying siege to Münster, after all.

[Jotari]

16 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Second, it likely is a Schrödinger's situation, but not as narrow as you think. It's much more likely that, if you don't unlock 24x, that Eyvel had long been turned into Draco. There is a year's span of time between her petrification and Leif laying siege to Münster, after all.

That's exactly what I'm saying. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense for Leif's decision to impact what happened weeks or months ago outside of some Zero Escape style metaphysics. There's also a scenario where you can do the Gaiden and not rescue Eyvel and she still manages to become a Deadlord in the time it takes Leif to get from one side of the building to the other. If the Loot sect's ability to repwarp is that amazing then it's a wonder they managed to kill Veld at all.

Edited January 27 by Jotari

[Acacia Sgt]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's exactly what I'm saying. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense for Leif's decision to impact what happened weeks or months ago. There's also a scenario where you can do the Gaiden and not rescue Eyvel and she still manages to become a Deadlord in the time it takes Leif to get from one side of the building to the other. If the Loot sect's ability to repwarp is that amazing then it's a wonder they managed to kill Veld at all.

I think this is where Gameplay and Story Segregation comes in. Just because the game allows for the scenario, doesn't mean it has to be plausible from a story standpoint. After all, you can have the would-be Dreadlords killed off in 24x itself, and there they are in the Endgame. It's likely the game itself only has an IF condition (checking the if-or-not-in-party flag or something like that) to change the unit data, after all.

Edited January 27 by Acacia Sgt

[Original Alear]

I mean I see how it's overall implausible with what can happen over the course of the game, but it is also possible for Galzus to die in the chapter he appears early on in the game. So if you do kill him then, it does kind of make sense for him to be a deadlord. Unless Galzus gets to retreat even if you kill him?

It's not that hard to kill Galzus even that far back in the game, and if you have him capture a character without a weapon he gets easier to kill.

Also, can we really be sure that the deadlords are who they appear to be? Holy War had palette swaps. I don't remember if Thracia had them, but...Maybe the reason they look like familiar faces is just to scare the heroes with similar looking people.

Edited January 27 by Original Alear

[Jotari]

18 minutes ago, Original Alear said:

Also, can we really be sure that the deadlords are who they appear to be? Holy War had palette swaps. I don't remember if Thracia had them, but...Maybe the reason they look like familiar faces is just to scare the heroes with similar looking people.

Well given that they only use these portraits if the characters are killed or unrecruited I think we can safely say yes, they are meant to be who they appear to be. Otherwise they would always look like that even if the characters are alive and fighting them.

[ARMADS!!!]

6 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I like how you bring up the time concerns as if Rewarp didn't exist.

Oh yeah! Also Warp would eliminate the problem of how they carried the bodies (specially in such a short time).

 Of course there's still the paradox with Eyvel though, I think there's no argument against that one. The only thing to say is that it's probably just because the canon (or at least intended) way is that you save Eyvel so the game just wanna make you feel bad if you don't, like in the Master System version of Sonic 2 where Tails dies at the end of the game if you don't catch the 7 emeralds but then he keeps showing up in the future games, yeah that doesn't eliminate that the paradox is there, what I mean is they the writes probably didn't think throught it and how it'd fit into the canon because the point was just to make you feel bad.

 

5 hours ago, Jotari said:

That's exactly what I'm saying. It doesn't make a huge amount of sense for Leif's decision to impact what happened weeks or months ago outside of some Zero Escape style metaphysics. There's also a scenario where you can do the Gaiden and not rescue Eyvel and she still manages to become a Deadlord in the time it takes Leif to get from one side of the building to the other. If the Loot sect's ability to repwarp is that amazing then it's a wonder they managed to kill Veld at all.

 I always think this about Nergal, he teleports away whenever he wants to, so why the hell he doesn't just teleport before you kill him too?(or you know, to avoid your attacks, or at least to take up your time until the Gate is open).

4 hours ago, Original Alear said:

I mean I see how it's overall implausible with what can happen over the course of the game, but it is also possible for Galzus to die in the chapter he appears early on in the game. So if you do kill him then, it does kind of make sense for him to be a deadlord. Unless Galzus gets to retreat even if you kill him?

It's not that hard to kill Galzus even that far back in the game, and if you have him capture a character without a weapon he gets easier to kill.

Also, can we really be sure that the deadlords are who they appear to be? Holy War had palette swaps. I don't remember if Thracia had them, but...Maybe the reason they look like familiar faces is just to scare the heroes with similar looking people.

I don't think any FE uses palette swaps for playable characters and there's not even much of a palette difference here (I mean, they are all yellowish but you can see for example, that deadlord Sara's hair is purple and her eyes blue just like the normal Sara), see the DeadLords faces here (you just have to scroll down a bit, also this is a page for the final chapter or FE5 so don't read anything else on the link if you don't wanna be spoiled, just look at the deadlords portraits and leave). Also what Jotari just said about each of them only showing up if the corresponding character is dead, I think it's safe to say they are the who they appear to be.

Edited January 27 by ARMADS!!!

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, ARMADS!!! said:

I don't think any FE uses palette swaps for playable characters 

Oh no, they did. At least on the NES. Can't think of any SNES examples off the top of my head, but they're probably there. Off the top of my head, Gharnef shared a portrait with Bantu and Deen shared one with minor boss Blake, who surprisingly kept the old design in the remake. Sonia also shared her portrait with her sisters but that might have been slightly more intentional.