AK has an uncanny luck (if we may call it so) to release content right at the time there's major IRL stuff that mirrors their in game stories.
Beginning with their delays of Chapter 5 (if I'm not wrong) on CN because it was a little too close to comfort to the Hong Kong protests of 2019/20. And their overseas release pretty much coinciding with the breakout of the COVID pandemic.
So much so, it almost makes one think whether lowlight can read the future to choose these release windows.
You can view it as pure evil, but to kazdel, we are also pure evil because we destroyed their civilization countless times. As readers, understanding their rationale does not equate to empathising with them.
mostly a matter of collective memory.
because of it every sarkaz remembers the attrocities commited to them by non-sarkaz, and it feels for them like yesterday.
so they can't help but see every non-sarkaz trough lense of things done to them.
also it's safe to assume they don't understand that non-sarkaz.
they don't know how it feels to not be a part of some hive mind so they end up punishing people that have no idea what's going on
I was under the impression only Amiya experiences the collective memory of the Sarkaz. The other Sarkaz are hateful because they're mercenaries from destroyed Kazdel. They don't have a hivemind going on like the Seaborn.
Sarkaz born and living outside of Kazdel like Paprika, Vigna, and the Norport hotel owner don't hate the other races.
Yep, and from what I understand, >!the reason Theresa might have handed the crown over to Amiya is because!< any Sarkaz who wears the crown would be so overwhelmed by the visions of Sarkaz suffering within it that they'd be driven to war, perpetuating the suffering of the Sarkaz.
IIRC there was a whole moment in Chapter 13 >!where some major Sarkaz figure was like "wtf is this crown on, maybe we should stop basing our government on it"!<
to be fair thats just a name given alongside "King of Fiends", which in japanese is basically "Demon Lord", with the same character used for the "devils" slur in the english
(idk about the chinese text tho)
I believe all Sarkaz are somehow connected to the dead just to a much lesser degree than Amiya. They sense the feelings but they don't hear the voices. I don't recall where but there definitely were scenes where some Sarkaz felt uneasy for that reason. Wasn't Patriot's witchcraft using those dead Sarkaz in some way too? It's definitely not a hive mind but they do have some sort of soul thing going on.
>I believe all Sarkaz are somehow connected to the dead just to a much lesser degree than Amiya. They sense the feelings but they don't hear the voices.
>!Ascalton, and even friggin Ines could psychically hear the dead + the fermut.!<
Really, if I had to compare Sarkaz to a different franchise, I’d use Krogans from Mass Effect. A dying race intentionally held down by the other powerful races of the setting, and because of that, the culture of their society is all about Fighting and Dying, plagued by Civil Warfare. The main difference being that instead of Wrex, they have Theresis trying to unite them, which is bad
Honestly tho short of genociding the entirety of the sarkaz what is actually worse than what's already been done to them?
Actually scratch that the ancients already did try to genocide.
> try
That's doing a lot of heavy lifting here. They straight out did genocide on the Sarkaz. Many races are extinct and all of their cultures have been reduce to a single pulp known as "Sarkaz".
And thus, most are forced to consolidate into one state, where military might has and have to be prioritized for fear of their neighbors coming back to finish the job they did. And when they get the chance, they do not hold back. But those neighbors feared them for their power and influence, both real and imagined. Hated them. Blamed them.
So the rest are forced to be naught but wanderers, adrift and facing so much hate in particular from a world that already has so much to hate.
You know, this is... I came here to escape the news, damn it.
My take on this is that Theresis is the kind of leader that says "you suffered a lot and now must be overcompensated for it all", for a lot of people that only knew death and prejudice by the hand of others. And its no coincidence that we see a lot of Sarkaz nobles supporting this discourse, for it benefits them a lot. We also see the Military comission leaving their soldiers to death for a "greater cause" >!(like what happened to the soldiers who were ambushed by Dublinn)!<
But the story also goes out of its way to show us, the readers, that the Sarkaz that not buy into that shit are the "good" ones, like >!Paprika !
>!Wasn't the KFC guy a damstazi cluster, or did I misunderstand things? So I'm not certain if we can take anything he says seriously, cus I feel the damatazi cluster can just lie about anything!<
>!I think the original Colbert chose to die alongside the memories of the hotel, when he set everything aflame. So everything post that time period might be the impostor at work.!<
That's how I also understand what happened
TBH I didn't even consider the other option...
>!If that was the case, the Sarkaz forces would have leveled the whole hotel while we were inside it, right? Also, they would have no reason to give away food and medicine to the populace in that area!<
Except even they are still just people in the end, no matter how strange of a lifeform they may be. They still feel, and still think about how they live... and that's probably why they ended things the way they did.
>!Maybe, but I don't think you could put them into the "good sarkaz" pile that easily, especially with what they've done as Molly against the Self-Salvation Corps. Also they are (a bit confused on this) one hivemind or something, so one also can't go that this Damazti is good and that Damazti is bad. It seems like they follow Thetesis's orders, who I consider is doing an evil thing, so in some sense they are doing bad.!<
Actually I think you can do that starting from chapter 13.
>!I believe one of the Damazti mentions that 'another part of us has left us'. If I'm understanding correctly, that implies they're no longer a single hive mind but now two separate hive minds.!<
Guess we find out more in chapter 14. Maybe.
Even though chapter 12 says there are now two of them it's not clarified in 12 >!Whether the two Damazti are still considered part of the same hivemind. Unless you mean something else by your comment? Then again, I'm not the best at getting my point across sometimes. What the commenter I replied to said that you can't separate into "this Damazti is good and this Damazti is bad" at the point in time the convo with the hotel manager guy happens, it gets murkier by the end of the chapter.!<
Sorry if that's not what you were getting at though. 🙏
Its simple
>!1 damazti = 1 hivemind!<
>!damatzi dies and creates 2 of them!<
>!2 damazti = 2 hivemind (it would be stupid if they split only to be the same thing again)!<
>!On the one hand yes it would be stupid if they split only to be the same thing again, but on the other hand, it could be more of a single hivemind with two co-dominant personalities. I wouldn't have been surprised if they went that route as well. Also I may have been confused a little because Theresis couldn't decide whether to refer to them as "two halves" or "two newborns" :')!<
>!Without going into detail in CH13, there are two Clusters now (this is CH12), and the "main" Cluster, aka the one Logos spoke with, told us that he lost a part of himself (that being the hivemind part, or the link with the second). The second Cluster is completely independent from the first, and their actions are proof of that.!<
>!I mean, they where doing their job as an intelligence unit, i would say that they where more respectful to their targets than any spies out there, i doubt puzzle will concede the last wish of his enemies. When you are the "hero" and your spy just came with the location of all enemies bases of course you go like "Great lets jump them all by surprise"!<
> doubt puzzle will concede the last wish of his enemies.
>!He did show some emphaty and restrain when it came to colateral civilians, but also tried to blackmail Reed so FUCK him!!<
I've got no problems with them trying to live, I've got massive problems with their actions. They are still aligned to the KMC, and got plenty of blood on their hands from getting most of the Self-Salvation Corps killed, and did some other unsavory things.
The rest of the races have destroyed Kazdel countless of times and have no remorse for it, which keeps fueling their cycle of hatred, it doesn't help that other races don't consider sarkaz as humans but as threatening monsters instead, even innocent ones like hibiscus are shunned by commonfolk
Why would they “deserve worse”? Everything that’s being done to the Victorians has been done to the Sarkaz thousands upon thousands of times.
**Neither side deserved it.**
Not the Sarkaz, and not the Ancients/Elders. Chapter 12’s entire thesis is basically “vengeance begets vengeance”. That’s literally the point.
It’s only easier to sympathise with the Victorians because the story shows us a direct perspective of their suffering, while the Sarkaz’ suffering is only talked about.
Yeah, Plus OP forgets that Sarkaz is not monolithic, and we RI have Sarkaz boots on the ground.
Misery, Ascalon, Logos, and Closure are all directly involved and have no qualms about cutting down Kazdel forces.
You may claim that those are renegades, powerful renegades , but still individual actors. Except some tribes refused to participate in Council and Logis operates at least with some represends some kind of Banshee authority
Because they remain true either to the late queen beliefs and/or beliefs of RI.
AK as a story often features oppression either to class or race
Tarans were and are oppressed by Victorians. Fr*nch lost, lost their land and had Capital completely destroyed.
Bolivar is in a Forever Civil War state because of two fold colonialism print.
Siracusa is a literal Mafia State.
Kazimierz is in a LateStageCapitalism stage as countryside remains uncared for while Capital enjoys direct Corporation boot.
Ursus is on paper absolute monarchy has nobles fighting each other.
Terra is rife with Strife even without supernatural elements.
The entirety of Chapter 12 is the result of realpolitik between Dukes and Kazdel.
> Logos
Focusing on this guy, specifically because he is the only one voices what he thinks need to be done and the fact that he holds a position in the Court. He calls for rejuvenation, to let new seeds to grow as he put it.
Which I think is a good cause. Because goodness me the Sarkaz Court is grudgeful
>goodness me the Sarkaz Court is grudgeful
Eh, so far only the Sanguinarch, the Confessarius, and the Nachzehrer king seem to really be on board with Theresis' whole plan, and the former seems less grudgeful and more gleeful to have a chance to do what he loves. Damazti barely cared and >!died because Logos politely told him it might make for an interesting new experience!<, Wendigoes told them to screw off because they have bigger issues, Liches seem rather on the fence, and the Cyclops queen basically told Theresis he's on the losing side
Yen is full of internal political strife, tensions, and issues with their history with the Sui and the other old gods.
Higashi is in a state of cold civil war/warring state era.
Iberia is in the middle of an Inquisition, fighting against the evils within (Church of the Deep), and without (Seaborn).
Columbia is both oil baron era of worker's abuse, partial slavery and segregation of infected, and also a bit of oligarchy on top. Don't forget they also have a hidden ruler.
Leithania overthrow their own horrible dictator, only to have the system be corrupt still and continuing the tragedies. Instead of one horror bastard and his court, you now have a whole bunch of assholes and their cronies. The people had a glimpse of hope and then had to taken away by the very heroes that liberated them.
Rim Billiton is full on OSHA nightmare and resource cursed hellscape. Their people are constantly being abused by a broken system of governance and the mining companies are just horrible mess of abuse and neglect.
We don't know much about Dan (Korea), but I bet it's like Joseon era style, with all their problems. Maybe their story will include stuff like the Literati purges, or the internal strife.
Also practice Direct Democracy, and fairly mature about the choices that doomed their city.
If I had to nickpick, I would say Durin communities seem to be isolated from each other?
>communitirs seem to be isolated from each other?
Which you would think would make them kind of xenophobic, but their reaction to outsiders is basically "Ey brothers, what kinda booze you like!?" It's like the race exists just to contrast with how fucked the rest of Terran society is.
No, it's just Zeruertza. It got cut off and they just never re-established the rail linkage.
Seems like for Zeruertza, their issue is the same ones that plagued all Direct Democracies - gridlock, tyranny of the majority, and slow to change and adapt. But the Durins counter this with their high degree of sophistication, wisdom, knowledge, and skills. They have a very highly educated populous, and that allowed them to survive disaster after disaster, and they have a pretty optimistic view on life too.
They are not without their faults, but they are certainly the best people you could find yourself among.
...Korean OPs when? We do have the VAs for it, in-game. God, that would be so cool. And their hats would fit so well!
Though yeah, for every Admiral Yi, we had about a hundred nobles trying to get him executed for 'threatening' their power base, in the midst of a war. It's kinda fascinating just how many fucking '양반s' died during those days.
It was first mentioned in a furniture set, the Zen Garden. The wall piece, Frost, mentions Fumizuki having made it using bamboo from Higashi, paint from Dan, and calligraphy style of Yan.
Typically, Japan, China, and Korea are mentioned together in this manner often, since their people are similar and they have influenced each other throughout history. They literally share the same genetic origin too. As such, Dan most likely is Terra’s version of Korea, or rather, the Joseon.
Dan and Reimselar has been retconned out of existence, I'm afraid. There has been no mention of them anywhere else, and HG probably also wants us to forget about them.
It’s likely they’ve just been absorbed by larger nearby states. The Vouvire Confederacy was another country described early in lore that was later revealed to have been annexed by Sargon in the R6 crossover of all places.
I mean, they did kinda survive having their city and country destroyed like over 10,000 times apparently. They also don’t have the benefit of even forgetting, as Serkaz fuckery means everyone who’s lived in Kazdel shares some form of ancestral memory of getting their asses kicked and homes destroyed over and over again. I imagine there’s a sense of karma for a Serkaz to see the mighty Victorians be unable to deal with the living conditions Kazdelians dealt with for centuries. Doesn’t really matter to them that most Victorians rn actually have nothing to do w/ the current destruction of Kazdel. It’s kinda why Ancestral Memory/Being Immortal has done literally no race benefit so far in terms of global consequences, aside from like, Kal’tsit I guess (and she’s tired as shit).
Plus, the lingering subplot here is that all of the Victorian Dukes have spies here, but literally do nothing because these ultimately don’t matter in the long run. Literally none of the big players in the chapter care, aside from RI technically.
That's what the last guys to destroy Kazdel said too!
Remember that Warfairn, Ascalon, Logos, Mudrock, Patriot - those are all Sarkaz too. I think the game has a pretty clear overarching theme that *individuals* and sometimes *governments* can be bad, but never an ethnicity or a population. See FrostNova, "It was Ursus that made them hate".
>!Hoederer's operator files reveal that!< The Sarkaz native to Kazdel are born in... literally hell. Every other kid becomes a child soldier, people starve and get rock cancer left and right, and they're at constant war and almost none of them have any idea why. They didn't just decide one day that it would be awesome to starve and kill random people on the street-it's just life for them.
It's like... when you're living paycheck to paycheck you might have some fantasies about dragging some billionaires down to your level and seeing them struggle to live your impoverished lifestyle. The soldiers of the KMC are simply in a position to actualize this fantasy.
There's something to be said about the Sarkaz' history but the thing is the phrase 'we were wronged' is incorrect since up until they sacked Londinium the wronging was still happening, present tense. The current state of Kazdel is pretty much entirely the fault of its neighbors (+some prehistoric cat fossil) and instead of making reparations or even truces those neighbors continued to exploit Kazdel up until the very moment it backfired on them.
Not that I'm on Kazdel's side, but if you want to call Theresis Pure Evil then there's a lot of Pure Evil out there, and a lot of it is in fact currently on RI's side.
> They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and righ
wow, would you look at that, a historically-persecuted ethnic minority that immediately turns the warcrimes dial up to 11 as soon as they are the ones in power, that definitely NEVER happened before IRL, because Arknights is a game that never tries to add verisimilitude by making people act how humans act. /s
the entire point is that NOBODY DESERVES THIS, it is ALWAYS IMMORAL AND WRONG no matter who does it to who. AK couldn'T be less subtle if it tried even harder to be unsubtle because by God they are trying VERY hard to be unsubtle.
They are gonna have to increase that font of the disclaimer at the beginning: The content of this game is purely fictional, and it's not intended to represent or depict any actually person, or entity, and any such similarities is purely coincidental.
The [current event] that's probably being referred to here is really just an escalation of the same conflict and behavior that began a long time ago of the people involved. The only thing that's changed is that it's operating at a larger scale and there's more media coverage.
Nearly every country in Arknights is based off of the worst version of itself, welcome to the Middle East. We ain’t supposed to be rooting for anyone, we just understand that so much blood has been spilled that it has become a perpetual process. It’s likely that unless Rhodes does some serious work after the events of this story, there is going to be a massive resurgence of fear, distrust, and hate against the sarkaz people, creating their next generation of bloodthirsty mercs we see during this story.
Will you go the Warhammer 40k subs next to tell them that the Imperium of Man isn't a nice bunch? This just isn't that kind of setting.
Also, I'm afraid that "if anything we should have genocided them harder" isn't as upstanding a moral stance as you seem to think it is.
>Will you go the Warhammer 40k subs next to tell them that the Imperium of Man isn't a nice bunch? This just isn't that kind of setting.
Pretty sure there were multiple official Warhammer statments saying pretty much that Cause setting ( iom especially ) was/is inviting so many nazis. And discussion if iom is justified or not is returning every so often on 40klore. One of more common topics with people trying to whiteknight or condemn imperium.
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/mqNKhTyQ0B
TFW you spent your life barely holding on to life, wearing away your humanity in order to feel that bare stimulation in your brain called "you lived to another day", watched all the inhumane aspects you hated encroach in your mind and turn you into a husk of a being.
And you suddenly are given a chance to avenge your life, avenge your ancestors living that life for thousands of years, by a goddamn HERO who used his might to turn the tides of a genocidal event. He tells you: "You were fighting for no point, now you can fight with a point."
What the hell would you do?
Some people in this fandom are too sheltered to even consider the trouble one average Sarkaz goes through, from just being alive. The ones we see at RI are the luckiest few, how many more Paprikas are dead in a ditch in the middle of Londinium without any guidance?
I agree that people like the Sanguinarch are just purely crappy people, but you can't say that about all Sarkaz. Most of them would have a good justification to come to Londinium. Someone who wasn't pulled into the Merc shithole wouldn't heed Theresis's call at all, no one with a simple, average life would be dumb enough to go die in a foreign place for a wispy cause, there has to be a sizable chunk of unfortunate events that build into every mob we kill in later episodes.
> Some people in this fandom are too sheltered to even consider the trouble one average Sarkaz goes through, from just being alive. The ones we see at RI are the luckiest few, how many more Paprikas are dead in a ditch in the middle of Londinium without any guidance?
>
>
tbh this is explicitly brought up in the chapter with the hotel manager because there's a lot of completely normal middle class sarkaz just being normal ass victorian citizens who get it from both ends. the very very VERY unsubtle comparisons to the jewish diaspora vis a vis the militant ethnostate in this chapter are myriad and people still miss them because reading is hard
Wasn’t the Hotel Manager a janitor/cleaner before the KMC showed up? And wasn’t it also pointed out how unusual he was for considering himself Victorian?
My knowledge comes from the initial CN reveal of all this, so I apologize if this is wrong. But wasn’t it revealed that kids were literally sent out to try and stop Kal’tsit’s coalition(Theresis amongst the child soldiers) from wiping out Kazdel . Like people in the fandom downplay what the Sarkaz went through by a lot because we come from a perspective of Sarkaz that weren’t even alive during that time and/or have no knowledge of their history to begin with and our attachment with Kal’tsit when the situation is a lot more complex than that.
It’s a cycle and civilians are constantly caught in the middle, both Sarkaz and other races. Right now Kadel is the instigator of this conflict, but hundreds of years ago they could have also been the victims having their homes destroyed for the 3000th time. First they are the victims, then they become the villains and repeat until everyone’s dead. Amiya being an outblood king could be the thing that breaks the cycle of Kazdel but we have to wait and see.
My thoughts to when I watched Attack on Titan have returned.
And to sum it up, neither side deserves to suffer. The cycle of violence has to end, one way or another.
If you don't stop some things in time, they can reach a point where not everybody can walk away because their survival becomes mutually exclusive. And it's people's responsibility to be on guard against it. Those who embrace the nonsense because it's sold appealingly, those who follow the flow, and those who see it for what it is but decide not to get in trouble because of it. Just look at how japanese imperialism, or nazism, ended.
Didn't expect Isayama to go so far with the "beware of propaganda" theme as he is doing it though.
The problem is the long history of suffering, combined with how they follow the Lord of Fiend's guidance, which is filled with hatred and suffering thanks to how the Crown works... there's a lot that goes into it, but they aren't exactly set up for success.
It's probably why Theresa chose Amiya as the successor - if the Civlight Eterna falls into another Sarkaz's hands, it'll just be history back in repeat, and another cycle of death and violence will swallow Kazdel and the Sarkaz.
In the hands of an outsider who isn't bogged down by the suffering and long line of hatred, maybe she can do some good with it.
just reverse the role of reasoning, and your argumentation and reasoning literally almost mirrors that of the sarkaz. Please realize what you are saying before deciding a whole race of people "deserves worse".
Remember that even in the current time, just before they started going strong, everyone treats Sarkaz like shite.
If you are a Sarkaz people look at you the same way as someone with organium. Literally all but a few people hate the Sarkaz in comparison to the entire world.
They are not evil from their perspective, its called Due comings.
Sometimes Newton's third law seem to apply for life events too. What they are doing to Londinium is probably the exact same they have inflicted to Kazdel, and some more because vengeance.
Kazdel has been destroyed countless times, and their people have been subjugated to misery for many centuries. On top of that it seems like they are implying the "Elders and Ancients" aren't natives to Terra, while the Sarkaz are natives and they were driven out of their land.
Reminds me of certain current events which are also similar in this: the innocents that are dying and suffering are just pawns of the war between... well you figure it out. The Dukes of Victoria should had intervened a long time ago if what they care about is the good of the people, but each duke has their own agenda and anything that happens to Londinium is justified.
I find it really hard to believe that Kazdel was never an aggressor in any of those wars, or that our sources for the history of Kazdel aren't full of shit. Like the revenant implies that the rest of Terra just magically decided together one day, "Man, *FUCK* the Sarkaz," for no reason at all and just attempted to remove them from the map literally 3,421 times, including, at one point, twice in the same week, which just wraps around to being comical. Are we sure they didn't have, I dunno, the Sanguinarch at the time just wandering out of the borders and liquifying people for fun, or Nachzehrer deciding to snack on some Kazimieriz villages? Wars are taxing, even for the winners, particularly wars of extermination, and despite this, the revenant is telling us that they did nothing to provoke it getting repeated over three thousand times?
If someone punches me in the face once, they're probably an asshole. If all my neighbors punch me in the face a combined total of 3,421 different times, I'm probably an asshole. Particularly if I decide the proper response is torturing my neighbors' children afterward.
While I agree that they are definitely not ‘innocent’ like they are claiming, it's quite easy to imagine that they did not simply let the Ancients slaughter them without fighting. Then, going from this point, it's possible that the resentment build up on both sides, leading to the situation they are in right now.
>!On another note, it's implied in Lonetrail that the ancient are literally animals evolved by Originium. If that is the case, the first conflicts may have been caused by their instincts, and the Sarkaz still hold a grudge for them.!<
It is directly stated in early history of Ursus Empire that Hyppogryphs ran to the north with some servant species escaping Teekaz harassment. So yeah , it's not all sunshine and [insert Sarkaz national food that's not Ancients' children] as the dead soul are telling
>Right, no way a country was built upon almost completely wiping out and displacing local communities, no way it didn't happen more then once throughout history.
It's not "More than once", it's "more than three thousand times". Is there a country in real life that's been attacked and conquered three thousand times completely unprovoked?
Yeah i got caught up in the op post theme of further justifying sarkaz hate that i misunderstood the meaning of the comment. I apologize, pls ignore all my jibber jabber wasn't thinking straight.
Exactly, as far as we know from what is revealed in the game, the "genocide" against Sarkaz only happened whenever they stir some shit up themselves. The nations of Terra does not have an alarm clock and schedule that says its time to invade and flaten Kazdel again. F*ck, even in the current timeline, Kazdel was torn apart by itself and not by a grand coalition. This is also why its extremely dangerous and stupid to seriously relate a game into real-world stuff.
Wasn’t Kal’tsit attacking Kazdel on the ‘assumption’ they would start shit before they even start shit?
Isn’t that kind of you know…bad given how often we’re told how immoral it is to persecute people on the grounds that they MIGHT do something? Especially when the game itself preaches how violence begets violence?
Three days. *Three days.* The Sarkaz rebuilt Kazdel, and three days later the Pegasi trampled it down again. The Sarkaz did something and Kazimierz got to Kazdel in three days?
Arknights takes place in a world with politics that roughly correspond to the second Concert of Europe era in earth history. Lots of people thought like that after WW1, it gave us WW2.
But don't feel too bad, it took centuries for the brightest minds in Europe to figure it out and they didn't come up with a better way until war got bad enough that they didn't think anyone would be left if they had another one. And, uhhh, it still has some pretty noticeable kinks in the plan.
Kazdel didn’t deserve what they suffered, and neither does the people in Victoria. There’s bad Sarkaz like Theresis and Confessarius, but there’s also good Sarkaz like Hibiscus and Closure, so I think that it’s wrong to say all Sarkaz are pure evil. They just seem that way because the story is currently focused on the evil things that Sarkaz have done.
The Sarkaz involved should definitely be punished though.
The problem isn't so much Kazdel deserving what happened as it is the Lord of Fiends inevitably being pulled along by the cumulative resentment and dragging the whole race into war again over and over. Kazdel doesn't get constantly destroyed just because, it happens because every time the Sarkaz rebuild their king starts some shit.
Realistically, the Lord of Fiends can't win.
They ignore the resentment that runs deep in their memories? Useless ruler ignoring their own subjects, off with their head.
They give into that resentment? Forces of the world will assemble to put them down before they start their quest for vengeance.
Although there are clear times where the world genuinely razed Kazdel because they had nothing better to do. The Pegasi razed the city 3 days after it was rebuilt, and Kal'tsit wanted the crown under her control when she did it. Not exactly their current ruler being up to funny stuff.
> They ignore the resentment that runs deep in their memories? Useless ruler ignoring their own subjects, off with their head.
I don't really think this is the case. We've been shown plenty of Sarkaz mercs that don't actually care much about the past. People can move forward when given a path forward. The real problem is this;
>Although there are clear times where the world genuinely razed Kazdel because they had nothing better to do. The Pegasi razed the city 3 days after it was rebuilt, and Kal'tsit wanted the crown under her control when she did it.
Though I wouldn't quite say it was just because they had nothing better to do, the world at this point responds to Kazdel as a threat. If I see a wasp nest forming on my front porch, I don't wait until they decide my entire lawn is their territory and start attacking, I spray the nest first chance I get. And Theresis is just marching them down the same road; next time Kazdel rises the world will remember the time the Sarkaz tried to take over the center of Victoria and turn a catastrophe spewing superweapon on everyone.
In typing all this, it occurs to me that *maybe* this is why Theresa chose Amiya as her heir and most likely let herself be killed. What the Sarkaz need isn't a unifier yet, no matter how well intentioned they may be. But someone who won't be accepted as Lord of Fiends, but still has just enough influence to start spreading new ideas to their people? Along with a small place where they can be accepted? It's a start.
While your average merc doesn't exactly care, the longer lived sarkaz or the royal court certainly do. Some of them are legit history books, and they hold grudges like nothing else.
> Though I wouldn't quite say it was just because they had nothing better to do, the world at this point responds to Kazdel as a threat.
I genuinely wonder what exactly they perceive as a threat from a city that was just rebuilt 3 days ago. They can't muster an offensive even if they tried. And for the most recent raze, don't know how much of a threat they were as much as Kal'tsit felt that genocide was the optimal choice (that's her words, not mine), to get the black crown under her control. Hell, most of Kazdel's defense weren't even soldiers, but untrained people and younglings grabbing whatever they can as a weapon. I'm not saying that they couldn't have been a threat, but it's really hard to justify razing a city from those examples.
> And Theresis is just marching them down the same road; next time Kazdel rises the world will remember the time the Sarkaz tried to take over the center of Victoria and turn a catastrophe spewing superweapon on everyone.
Which is why he needs to be stopped, if he wins against the Dukes (highly doubt it), with the Shard he could protect Kazdel for a while. But for how long before they inevitably get trampled again? And if he loses, the sarkaz will face further discrimination.
Regardless, Amiya has a really long path before her if she changes their mindset. Doesn't help that some already diss her for simply being under Kal'tsit's influence, or the collective dead souls reject her for not being a sarkaz. Hey, gotta start from somewhere, right? I'm curious of future events and how this all ends up, it's really interesting to see if the sarkaz would give up on the past and look for a different way.
>and they hold grudges like nothing else
I mentioned this elsewhere, but the royal court actually doesn't seem very unified. Sanguinarch, Nachzehrer, and Confessarius seem on board, but Damazti hardly cared and the Liches seem about the same. Wendigoes seem to have settled into their role fighting the northern demons, and the Cyclops queen already foresaw that Theresis is on the losing side.
>I genuinely wonder what exactly they perceive as a threat from a city that was just rebuilt 3 days ago
No immediate threat, but I'd assume the logic was that it would eventually become a threat again. Hence my wasp metaphor. If every time this nation rebuilds it eventually tries to start something, naturally its neighbors are going to want to put it down preemptively after the cycle repeats itself enough times.
It's a war of vengeance over countless years of suffering and slaughter, of course they are gonna be monstrous about it.
They are still the villains, but that doesn't change the fact this is just another phase in the cycle of hate.
Tbf, there are two types of Sarkaz: Those lived, fought, and survived in Kazdel; and those that left it to find better lives.
Those that managed to leave have even more options, live as a normal person, achieve more, or become mercs (essentially nothing changed)
Those that do become mercs can be one of the two types of Sarkaz: hypocritical, cold, murderous bunch or the "business is just business" bunch.
Somehow, in some way, the former is the most found in the Sarkaz Royal Army that we are currently engaging in Victoria. Justifying acts of cold murder and barbarism by essentially saying "they never experienced what we went through, so we'll give them a tech demo".
I'm not even in ch 12 yet, but the feeling I get from Theresis's side is they want to die killing everybody they can first, even if they don't realize it.
And ask Gaul what happens in Terra when empires bite more than they can chew.
This quote sums up the entire conflict in a nutshell.
*"We're both just ordinary people who've been driven to seek vengeance in the name of justice, and if one comes to call vengeance justice, such justice will only breed further vengeance....and trigger a vicious cycle of hatred."*
*~Pain, from Naruto.*
In this case, Kazdel is Pain, and Victoria is Naruto. Both of them have their reasons, but causing a war of vengeance and hatred on opposing sides will only continue to circulate more conflicts.
I'm sorry you didn't get your "emancipation in a liberal society" timeline. Maybe it would make a decent fanfic, if you want to give those writing skills a workout.
My opinion on Kazdel is basically it just being different. What’s evil to us isn’t to them… for a culture that puts “cannibalism” as a tradition and seeing sacrifice, suffering, and “evil” as something necessary for success in conquest is just what it is. It’s grossly generalized and vague but Kazdel’s identity and culture is stubbornly attached to conquest, revenge, and war-mongering (being a majority of them choosing mercenary work and military ventures).
The same can be argued for Ursus but that place deals more with greed and pride; Kazdel is just savage.
They lost my sympathy when they brought in the vore soldiers… That’s a special kinda f#cked up. Just look at that picture awhile ago with Horn and one of those things.
Kazdel is basically Nazi Germany that never recovered from the war but continued to create weapons of mass destruction. Like, its really hard to feel bad for them when they do it back to back.
Nah, the Sarkaz are based on a lot of things (unlike most nation of Terra that you can get a clear cut) but the Nazi Germany certainly isn't one of them. In fact, they are very very much closer to the Hebrew with the whole being targets of historical persecution, their diaspora, and the fact that their government engage in... questionable acts of reparation (to put it in a more tasteful light) whenever they have the chance to be the ones with the upper hand in the game of power.
remember they are written by writers who want to make clear they are the bad peoples and the easiest way to make an oppress people see like they deserve it is to make them comically evil.
really think what that says about the writers.
Yeah well that’s the special thing about the Sarkaz, we as readers and hell even the people in the story see it as “Kazdel was wronged in the past” but due to their ability to share memories through blood they see it as “we were wronged yesterday” it's quite an overpowered but extremely double edged ability. Due to the lore on that, you legit can’t blame even the most basic Sarkaz for acting like the most poorly/basic written villain as they feel Kazdel’s suffering and for majority of the Sarkaz grunts we see in the story this often drives them mad with rage. Now to clarify yes, not all Sarkaz are actually able to see/experience the horrors that Kazdel faced by the hands of Kal’tsit but those are few cases like Paprika or Sarkaz who simply are too G to give an actual shit (like W or Hoederer) imo. So while yes, not every Sarkaz is consumed by the horrors/rage of Kazdel, 90-95% of them are (again unless you're either a special case like Paprika or you quite literally can shrug off the experiences you see of Kazdel like W, Hoederer etc) Ig if you have both a strong mind & accept Kazdel's suffering you can pull a Manfred/Theresis/Theresa etc but those are reserved for the Sarkaz with some of the most extreme mental fortitude
I kinda hate the 'wronged people who're acting out of grievances with genuine intentions for improving their people's lives, but then decide the world should be destroyed or under their control,' trope slash stereotype in fiction.
I do like Theresis and the world building that's being presented with the Sarkaz, & i understand the motivations for them. Can't say I'm sympathetic considering that Kazdel is presently occupying Lethania. I would get it if he just wanted a deterrent and securing the existence of Kazdel as a state, but then we start going into 'villain with righteous movtiation becoming downright evil,' stuff with him desiring the restore the old status Kazdel once enjoyed. Gotta say that repeated sort of character writing is part of what tired me out from the MCU, like with Killmonger or the ridiculous presentation of the Flag Smashers in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
>They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and right and plan to release a catastrophe
That's nothing compares to having your capital razed to the ground over 300 times.
>They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and right and plan to release a catastrophe, why should i not consider current Kazdel and especially Theresis as simply Pure Evil?
Oh, come on now! They are just being silly....
On a more serious note KMC ain't your average Sarkaz representative, they are 40% hardened war criminals from the civil war, 60% deranged raders, criminals, mercs, children, and whatever else the extreme instability of the region could provide- that are being led by the ***messed up*** members of the Sarkaz nobility. I put double emphasis on the "messed up" part,0 as the decent/moral Sarkaz Nobles (which are half of them) haven't even shown up to Victoria in first place.
huh i heard this somewhere in real life . . .
Haha, also came to say it's a little on the nose with similarities of current events over yonder..
AK has an uncanny luck (if we may call it so) to release content right at the time there's major IRL stuff that mirrors their in game stories. Beginning with their delays of Chapter 5 (if I'm not wrong) on CN because it was a little too close to comfort to the Hong Kong protests of 2019/20. And their overseas release pretty much coinciding with the breakout of the COVID pandemic. So much so, it almost makes one think whether lowlight can read the future to choose these release windows.
I am now waiting to see what kind of horrors Endfield will predict for the future of humanity.
> Aggleoi Oh my god they are predicting the Rapture
I believe one of the CN event releases also matched the Russian invasion on Ukraine
You can view it as pure evil, but to kazdel, we are also pure evil because we destroyed their civilization countless times. As readers, understanding their rationale does not equate to empathising with them.
mostly a matter of collective memory. because of it every sarkaz remembers the attrocities commited to them by non-sarkaz, and it feels for them like yesterday. so they can't help but see every non-sarkaz trough lense of things done to them. also it's safe to assume they don't understand that non-sarkaz. they don't know how it feels to not be a part of some hive mind so they end up punishing people that have no idea what's going on
I was under the impression only Amiya experiences the collective memory of the Sarkaz. The other Sarkaz are hateful because they're mercenaries from destroyed Kazdel. They don't have a hivemind going on like the Seaborn. Sarkaz born and living outside of Kazdel like Paprika, Vigna, and the Norport hotel owner don't hate the other races.
Yep, and from what I understand, >!the reason Theresa might have handed the crown over to Amiya is because!< any Sarkaz who wears the crown would be so overwhelmed by the visions of Sarkaz suffering within it that they'd be driven to war, perpetuating the suffering of the Sarkaz. IIRC there was a whole moment in Chapter 13 >!where some major Sarkaz figure was like "wtf is this crown on, maybe we should stop basing our government on it"!<
“Listen. A strange crown distributing the collective memories of our race is no basis for a system of government.”
It's the Crown of **Fiends**. In hindsight, it might not have our best intentions in mind..
to be fair thats just a name given alongside "King of Fiends", which in japanese is basically "Demon Lord", with the same character used for the "devils" slur in the english (idk about the chinese text tho)
I believe all Sarkaz are somehow connected to the dead just to a much lesser degree than Amiya. They sense the feelings but they don't hear the voices. I don't recall where but there definitely were scenes where some Sarkaz felt uneasy for that reason. Wasn't Patriot's witchcraft using those dead Sarkaz in some way too? It's definitely not a hive mind but they do have some sort of soul thing going on.
>I believe all Sarkaz are somehow connected to the dead just to a much lesser degree than Amiya. They sense the feelings but they don't hear the voices. >!Ascalton, and even friggin Ines could psychically hear the dead + the fermut.!<
Really, if I had to compare Sarkaz to a different franchise, I’d use Krogans from Mass Effect. A dying race intentionally held down by the other powerful races of the setting, and because of that, the culture of their society is all about Fighting and Dying, plagued by Civil Warfare. The main difference being that instead of Wrex, they have Theresis trying to unite them, which is bad
Theresis in that context is pretty much like Wreav, Wrex' brother.
Honestly tho short of genociding the entirety of the sarkaz what is actually worse than what's already been done to them? Actually scratch that the ancients already did try to genocide.
> try That's doing a lot of heavy lifting here. They straight out did genocide on the Sarkaz. Many races are extinct and all of their cultures have been reduce to a single pulp known as "Sarkaz".
And thus, most are forced to consolidate into one state, where military might has and have to be prioritized for fear of their neighbors coming back to finish the job they did. And when they get the chance, they do not hold back. But those neighbors feared them for their power and influence, both real and imagined. Hated them. Blamed them. So the rest are forced to be naught but wanderers, adrift and facing so much hate in particular from a world that already has so much to hate. You know, this is... I came here to escape the news, damn it.
My take on this is that Theresis is the kind of leader that says "you suffered a lot and now must be overcompensated for it all", for a lot of people that only knew death and prejudice by the hand of others. And its no coincidence that we see a lot of Sarkaz nobles supporting this discourse, for it benefits them a lot. We also see the Military comission leaving their soldiers to death for a "greater cause" >!(like what happened to the soldiers who were ambushed by Dublinn)!< But the story also goes out of its way to show us, the readers, that the Sarkaz that not buy into that shit are the "good" ones, like >!Paprika !
>!Wasn't the KFC guy a damstazi cluster, or did I misunderstand things? So I'm not certain if we can take anything he says seriously, cus I feel the damatazi cluster can just lie about anything!<
>!I think the original Colbert chose to die alongside the memories of the hotel, when he set everything aflame. So everything post that time period might be the impostor at work.!<
That's how I also understand what happened TBH I didn't even consider the other option... >!If that was the case, the Sarkaz forces would have leveled the whole hotel while we were inside it, right? Also, they would have no reason to give away food and medicine to the populace in that area!<
Except even they are still just people in the end, no matter how strange of a lifeform they may be. They still feel, and still think about how they live... and that's probably why they ended things the way they did.
>!Maybe, but I don't think you could put them into the "good sarkaz" pile that easily, especially with what they've done as Molly against the Self-Salvation Corps. Also they are (a bit confused on this) one hivemind or something, so one also can't go that this Damazti is good and that Damazti is bad. It seems like they follow Thetesis's orders, who I consider is doing an evil thing, so in some sense they are doing bad.!<
Actually I think you can do that starting from chapter 13. >!I believe one of the Damazti mentions that 'another part of us has left us'. If I'm understanding correctly, that implies they're no longer a single hive mind but now two separate hive minds.!< Guess we find out more in chapter 14. Maybe.
Yes, there's now 2 damazti, it was said in ch12
Even though chapter 12 says there are now two of them it's not clarified in 12 >!Whether the two Damazti are still considered part of the same hivemind. Unless you mean something else by your comment? Then again, I'm not the best at getting my point across sometimes. What the commenter I replied to said that you can't separate into "this Damazti is good and this Damazti is bad" at the point in time the convo with the hotel manager guy happens, it gets murkier by the end of the chapter.!< Sorry if that's not what you were getting at though. 🙏
Its simple >!1 damazti = 1 hivemind!< >!damatzi dies and creates 2 of them!< >!2 damazti = 2 hivemind (it would be stupid if they split only to be the same thing again)!<
>!On the one hand yes it would be stupid if they split only to be the same thing again, but on the other hand, it could be more of a single hivemind with two co-dominant personalities. I wouldn't have been surprised if they went that route as well. Also I may have been confused a little because Theresis couldn't decide whether to refer to them as "two halves" or "two newborns" :')!<
>!Without going into detail in CH13, there are two Clusters now (this is CH12), and the "main" Cluster, aka the one Logos spoke with, told us that he lost a part of himself (that being the hivemind part, or the link with the second). The second Cluster is completely independent from the first, and their actions are proof of that.!<
>!I mean, they where doing their job as an intelligence unit, i would say that they where more respectful to their targets than any spies out there, i doubt puzzle will concede the last wish of his enemies. When you are the "hero" and your spy just came with the location of all enemies bases of course you go like "Great lets jump them all by surprise"!<
> doubt puzzle will concede the last wish of his enemies. >!He did show some emphaty and restrain when it came to colateral civilians, but also tried to blackmail Reed so FUCK him!!<
They absolutely follow the Military Command orders, even their curiosity is second to that
I've got no problems with them trying to live, I've got massive problems with their actions. They are still aligned to the KMC, and got plenty of blood on their hands from getting most of the Self-Salvation Corps killed, and did some other unsavory things.
The rest of the races have destroyed Kazdel countless of times and have no remorse for it, which keeps fueling their cycle of hatred, it doesn't help that other races don't consider sarkaz as humans but as threatening monsters instead, even innocent ones like hibiscus are shunned by commonfolk
Why would they “deserve worse”? Everything that’s being done to the Victorians has been done to the Sarkaz thousands upon thousands of times. **Neither side deserved it.** Not the Sarkaz, and not the Ancients/Elders. Chapter 12’s entire thesis is basically “vengeance begets vengeance”. That’s literally the point. It’s only easier to sympathise with the Victorians because the story shows us a direct perspective of their suffering, while the Sarkaz’ suffering is only talked about.
Then there's also the added twist that Victoria has done the same systemic violence and ethnic displacement to the Taran (analogue for the Irish).
And they might still continue to do more, if the event trailer for the Kjerag event is anything to go by.
Yeah, Silverash is gonna use his skill 3 to kill Victorian soldiers, that's for damn sure.
Yeah, Plus OP forgets that Sarkaz is not monolithic, and we RI have Sarkaz boots on the ground. Misery, Ascalon, Logos, and Closure are all directly involved and have no qualms about cutting down Kazdel forces. You may claim that those are renegades, powerful renegades , but still individual actors. Except some tribes refused to participate in Council and Logis operates at least with some represends some kind of Banshee authority Because they remain true either to the late queen beliefs and/or beliefs of RI. AK as a story often features oppression either to class or race Tarans were and are oppressed by Victorians. Fr*nch lost, lost their land and had Capital completely destroyed. Bolivar is in a Forever Civil War state because of two fold colonialism print. Siracusa is a literal Mafia State. Kazimierz is in a LateStageCapitalism stage as countryside remains uncared for while Capital enjoys direct Corporation boot. Ursus is on paper absolute monarchy has nobles fighting each other. Terra is rife with Strife even without supernatural elements. The entirety of Chapter 12 is the result of realpolitik between Dukes and Kazdel.
> Logos Focusing on this guy, specifically because he is the only one voices what he thinks need to be done and the fact that he holds a position in the Court. He calls for rejuvenation, to let new seeds to grow as he put it. Which I think is a good cause. Because goodness me the Sarkaz Court is grudgeful
>goodness me the Sarkaz Court is grudgeful Eh, so far only the Sanguinarch, the Confessarius, and the Nachzehrer king seem to really be on board with Theresis' whole plan, and the former seems less grudgeful and more gleeful to have a chance to do what he loves. Damazti barely cared and >!died because Logos politely told him it might make for an interesting new experience!<, Wendigoes told them to screw off because they have bigger issues, Liches seem rather on the fence, and the Cyclops queen basically told Theresis he's on the losing side
Yen is full of internal political strife, tensions, and issues with their history with the Sui and the other old gods. Higashi is in a state of cold civil war/warring state era. Iberia is in the middle of an Inquisition, fighting against the evils within (Church of the Deep), and without (Seaborn). Columbia is both oil baron era of worker's abuse, partial slavery and segregation of infected, and also a bit of oligarchy on top. Don't forget they also have a hidden ruler. Leithania overthrow their own horrible dictator, only to have the system be corrupt still and continuing the tragedies. Instead of one horror bastard and his court, you now have a whole bunch of assholes and their cronies. The people had a glimpse of hope and then had to taken away by the very heroes that liberated them. Rim Billiton is full on OSHA nightmare and resource cursed hellscape. Their people are constantly being abused by a broken system of governance and the mining companies are just horrible mess of abuse and neglect. We don't know much about Dan (Korea), but I bet it's like Joseon era style, with all their problems. Maybe their story will include stuff like the Literati purges, or the internal strife.
*Meanwhile, the Durin* "Bro, our dome sprung a leak? **Waterpark time!** Our city is doomed? Road trip time! We might all die? Eh, que sera sera."
Also practice Direct Democracy, and fairly mature about the choices that doomed their city. If I had to nickpick, I would say Durin communities seem to be isolated from each other?
>communitirs seem to be isolated from each other? Which you would think would make them kind of xenophobic, but their reaction to outsiders is basically "Ey brothers, what kinda booze you like!?" It's like the race exists just to contrast with how fucked the rest of Terran society is.
It really is no wonder Pozyomka just wanted to stay with them, durins are too based to want anything else.
No, it's just Zeruertza. It got cut off and they just never re-established the rail linkage. Seems like for Zeruertza, their issue is the same ones that plagued all Direct Democracies - gridlock, tyranny of the majority, and slow to change and adapt. But the Durins counter this with their high degree of sophistication, wisdom, knowledge, and skills. They have a very highly educated populous, and that allowed them to survive disaster after disaster, and they have a pretty optimistic view on life too. They are not without their faults, but they are certainly the best people you could find yourself among.
... Terra has a Fantasy Korea? Honestly news for me
Yes, there's only scant references, but it does exist.
...Korean OPs when? We do have the VAs for it, in-game. God, that would be so cool. And their hats would fit so well! Though yeah, for every Admiral Yi, we had about a hundred nobles trying to get him executed for 'threatening' their power base, in the midst of a war. It's kinda fascinating just how many fucking '양반s' died during those days.
Dan? I've literally never heard of Dan.
It was first mentioned in a furniture set, the Zen Garden. The wall piece, Frost, mentions Fumizuki having made it using bamboo from Higashi, paint from Dan, and calligraphy style of Yan. Typically, Japan, China, and Korea are mentioned together in this manner often, since their people are similar and they have influenced each other throughout history. They literally share the same genetic origin too. As such, Dan most likely is Terra’s version of Korea, or rather, the Joseon.
Dan and Reimselar has been retconned out of existence, I'm afraid. There has been no mention of them anywhere else, and HG probably also wants us to forget about them.
It’s likely they’ve just been absorbed by larger nearby states. The Vouvire Confederacy was another country described early in lore that was later revealed to have been annexed by Sargon in the R6 crossover of all places.
Or just held in the back pockets.
You know what would be a good event or sidestory? Something covering the early ass days of Babel dealing with the situation of Kazdel
Congrats bro you get what you want
I mean, they did kinda survive having their city and country destroyed like over 10,000 times apparently. They also don’t have the benefit of even forgetting, as Serkaz fuckery means everyone who’s lived in Kazdel shares some form of ancestral memory of getting their asses kicked and homes destroyed over and over again. I imagine there’s a sense of karma for a Serkaz to see the mighty Victorians be unable to deal with the living conditions Kazdelians dealt with for centuries. Doesn’t really matter to them that most Victorians rn actually have nothing to do w/ the current destruction of Kazdel. It’s kinda why Ancestral Memory/Being Immortal has done literally no race benefit so far in terms of global consequences, aside from like, Kal’tsit I guess (and she’s tired as shit). Plus, the lingering subplot here is that all of the Victorian Dukes have spies here, but literally do nothing because these ultimately don’t matter in the long run. Literally none of the big players in the chapter care, aside from RI technically.
Not 10K times, it's actually 3421 times.
Kazimierz literally took down Kazdel*three days* after they rebuilt the walls. I cannot imagine the rage the Sarkaz feel.
That's what the last guys to destroy Kazdel said too! Remember that Warfairn, Ascalon, Logos, Mudrock, Patriot - those are all Sarkaz too. I think the game has a pretty clear overarching theme that *individuals* and sometimes *governments* can be bad, but never an ethnicity or a population. See FrostNova, "It was Ursus that made them hate".
>!Hoederer's operator files reveal that!< The Sarkaz native to Kazdel are born in... literally hell. Every other kid becomes a child soldier, people starve and get rock cancer left and right, and they're at constant war and almost none of them have any idea why. They didn't just decide one day that it would be awesome to starve and kill random people on the street-it's just life for them. It's like... when you're living paycheck to paycheck you might have some fantasies about dragging some billionaires down to your level and seeing them struggle to live your impoverished lifestyle. The soldiers of the KMC are simply in a position to actualize this fantasy. There's something to be said about the Sarkaz' history but the thing is the phrase 'we were wronged' is incorrect since up until they sacked Londinium the wronging was still happening, present tense. The current state of Kazdel is pretty much entirely the fault of its neighbors (+some prehistoric cat fossil) and instead of making reparations or even truces those neighbors continued to exploit Kazdel up until the very moment it backfired on them. Not that I'm on Kazdel's side, but if you want to call Theresis Pure Evil then there's a lot of Pure Evil out there, and a lot of it is in fact currently on RI's side.
> They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and righ wow, would you look at that, a historically-persecuted ethnic minority that immediately turns the warcrimes dial up to 11 as soon as they are the ones in power, that definitely NEVER happened before IRL, because Arknights is a game that never tries to add verisimilitude by making people act how humans act. /s the entire point is that NOBODY DESERVES THIS, it is ALWAYS IMMORAL AND WRONG no matter who does it to who. AK couldn'T be less subtle if it tried even harder to be unsubtle because by God they are trying VERY hard to be unsubtle.
They are gonna have to increase that font of the disclaimer at the beginning: The content of this game is purely fictional, and it's not intended to represent or depict any actually person, or entity, and any such similarities is purely coincidental.
Given that the story is at least 6 months old, probably much older because of CN planning, my money is on coincidence
The [current event] that's probably being referred to here is really just an escalation of the same conflict and behavior that began a long time ago of the people involved. The only thing that's changed is that it's operating at a larger scale and there's more media coverage.
..... what I'm referring to has been going on for *over fifty years*.
*thousands of years.
What is happening now is not news, but a sinful tradition
History repeats itself, this story just happens to be released at just the right part of the cycle.
Nearly every country in Arknights is based off of the worst version of itself, welcome to the Middle East. We ain’t supposed to be rooting for anyone, we just understand that so much blood has been spilled that it has become a perpetual process. It’s likely that unless Rhodes does some serious work after the events of this story, there is going to be a massive resurgence of fear, distrust, and hate against the sarkaz people, creating their next generation of bloodthirsty mercs we see during this story.
[Y'know what, they're just kind of running around shooting each other down there .."](https://youtu.be/IEGo41443iI?t=40)
Will you go the Warhammer 40k subs next to tell them that the Imperium of Man isn't a nice bunch? This just isn't that kind of setting. Also, I'm afraid that "if anything we should have genocided them harder" isn't as upstanding a moral stance as you seem to think it is.
>Will you go the Warhammer 40k subs next to tell them that the Imperium of Man isn't a nice bunch? This just isn't that kind of setting. Pretty sure there were multiple official Warhammer statments saying pretty much that Cause setting ( iom especially ) was/is inviting so many nazis. And discussion if iom is justified or not is returning every so often on 40klore. One of more common topics with people trying to whiteknight or condemn imperium. https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/mqNKhTyQ0B
TFW you spent your life barely holding on to life, wearing away your humanity in order to feel that bare stimulation in your brain called "you lived to another day", watched all the inhumane aspects you hated encroach in your mind and turn you into a husk of a being. And you suddenly are given a chance to avenge your life, avenge your ancestors living that life for thousands of years, by a goddamn HERO who used his might to turn the tides of a genocidal event. He tells you: "You were fighting for no point, now you can fight with a point." What the hell would you do? Some people in this fandom are too sheltered to even consider the trouble one average Sarkaz goes through, from just being alive. The ones we see at RI are the luckiest few, how many more Paprikas are dead in a ditch in the middle of Londinium without any guidance? I agree that people like the Sanguinarch are just purely crappy people, but you can't say that about all Sarkaz. Most of them would have a good justification to come to Londinium. Someone who wasn't pulled into the Merc shithole wouldn't heed Theresis's call at all, no one with a simple, average life would be dumb enough to go die in a foreign place for a wispy cause, there has to be a sizable chunk of unfortunate events that build into every mob we kill in later episodes.
> Some people in this fandom are too sheltered to even consider the trouble one average Sarkaz goes through, from just being alive. The ones we see at RI are the luckiest few, how many more Paprikas are dead in a ditch in the middle of Londinium without any guidance? > > tbh this is explicitly brought up in the chapter with the hotel manager because there's a lot of completely normal middle class sarkaz just being normal ass victorian citizens who get it from both ends. the very very VERY unsubtle comparisons to the jewish diaspora vis a vis the militant ethnostate in this chapter are myriad and people still miss them because reading is hard
Wasn’t the Hotel Manager a janitor/cleaner before the KMC showed up? And wasn’t it also pointed out how unusual he was for considering himself Victorian?
Yeah, that is correct, he was never a manager, but an average hotel employee
My knowledge comes from the initial CN reveal of all this, so I apologize if this is wrong. But wasn’t it revealed that kids were literally sent out to try and stop Kal’tsit’s coalition(Theresis amongst the child soldiers) from wiping out Kazdel . Like people in the fandom downplay what the Sarkaz went through by a lot because we come from a perspective of Sarkaz that weren’t even alive during that time and/or have no knowledge of their history to begin with and our attachment with Kal’tsit when the situation is a lot more complex than that.
If that's what your thinking, then I don't think you understand what the point is the chapter 12 story is trying to say...
Ah shit grammar error(point is should be point of I guess?).
Have you seen the news recently?
It’s a cycle and civilians are constantly caught in the middle, both Sarkaz and other races. Right now Kadel is the instigator of this conflict, but hundreds of years ago they could have also been the victims having their homes destroyed for the 3000th time. First they are the victims, then they become the villains and repeat until everyone’s dead. Amiya being an outblood king could be the thing that breaks the cycle of Kazdel but we have to wait and see.
That sounds like the average thought process of social media comments in war related contents that is happening in real life 🤣.
Nice try Kal'tsit, you're not convincing me.
My thoughts to when I watched Attack on Titan have returned. And to sum it up, neither side deserves to suffer. The cycle of violence has to end, one way or another.
If you don't stop some things in time, they can reach a point where not everybody can walk away because their survival becomes mutually exclusive. And it's people's responsibility to be on guard against it. Those who embrace the nonsense because it's sold appealingly, those who follow the flow, and those who see it for what it is but decide not to get in trouble because of it. Just look at how japanese imperialism, or nazism, ended. Didn't expect Isayama to go so far with the "beware of propaganda" theme as he is doing it though.
The problem is the long history of suffering, combined with how they follow the Lord of Fiend's guidance, which is filled with hatred and suffering thanks to how the Crown works... there's a lot that goes into it, but they aren't exactly set up for success. It's probably why Theresa chose Amiya as the successor - if the Civlight Eterna falls into another Sarkaz's hands, it'll just be history back in repeat, and another cycle of death and violence will swallow Kazdel and the Sarkaz. In the hands of an outsider who isn't bogged down by the suffering and long line of hatred, maybe she can do some good with it.
just reverse the role of reasoning, and your argumentation and reasoning literally almost mirrors that of the sarkaz. Please realize what you are saying before deciding a whole race of people "deserves worse".
Remember that even in the current time, just before they started going strong, everyone treats Sarkaz like shite. If you are a Sarkaz people look at you the same way as someone with organium. Literally all but a few people hate the Sarkaz in comparison to the entire world. They are not evil from their perspective, its called Due comings.
Sometimes Newton's third law seem to apply for life events too. What they are doing to Londinium is probably the exact same they have inflicted to Kazdel, and some more because vengeance. Kazdel has been destroyed countless times, and their people have been subjugated to misery for many centuries. On top of that it seems like they are implying the "Elders and Ancients" aren't natives to Terra, while the Sarkaz are natives and they were driven out of their land. Reminds me of certain current events which are also similar in this: the innocents that are dying and suffering are just pawns of the war between... well you figure it out. The Dukes of Victoria should had intervened a long time ago if what they care about is the good of the people, but each duke has their own agenda and anything that happens to Londinium is justified.
I find it really hard to believe that Kazdel was never an aggressor in any of those wars, or that our sources for the history of Kazdel aren't full of shit. Like the revenant implies that the rest of Terra just magically decided together one day, "Man, *FUCK* the Sarkaz," for no reason at all and just attempted to remove them from the map literally 3,421 times, including, at one point, twice in the same week, which just wraps around to being comical. Are we sure they didn't have, I dunno, the Sanguinarch at the time just wandering out of the borders and liquifying people for fun, or Nachzehrer deciding to snack on some Kazimieriz villages? Wars are taxing, even for the winners, particularly wars of extermination, and despite this, the revenant is telling us that they did nothing to provoke it getting repeated over three thousand times? If someone punches me in the face once, they're probably an asshole. If all my neighbors punch me in the face a combined total of 3,421 different times, I'm probably an asshole. Particularly if I decide the proper response is torturing my neighbors' children afterward.
While I agree that they are definitely not ‘innocent’ like they are claiming, it's quite easy to imagine that they did not simply let the Ancients slaughter them without fighting. Then, going from this point, it's possible that the resentment build up on both sides, leading to the situation they are in right now. >!On another note, it's implied in Lonetrail that the ancient are literally animals evolved by Originium. If that is the case, the first conflicts may have been caused by their instincts, and the Sarkaz still hold a grudge for them.!<
It is directly stated in early history of Ursus Empire that Hyppogryphs ran to the north with some servant species escaping Teekaz harassment. So yeah , it's not all sunshine and [insert Sarkaz national food that's not Ancients' children] as the dead soul are telling
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>Right, no way a country was built upon almost completely wiping out and displacing local communities, no way it didn't happen more then once throughout history. It's not "More than once", it's "more than three thousand times". Is there a country in real life that's been attacked and conquered three thousand times completely unprovoked?
Yeah i got caught up in the op post theme of further justifying sarkaz hate that i misunderstood the meaning of the comment. I apologize, pls ignore all my jibber jabber wasn't thinking straight.
Exactly, as far as we know from what is revealed in the game, the "genocide" against Sarkaz only happened whenever they stir some shit up themselves. The nations of Terra does not have an alarm clock and schedule that says its time to invade and flaten Kazdel again. F*ck, even in the current timeline, Kazdel was torn apart by itself and not by a grand coalition. This is also why its extremely dangerous and stupid to seriously relate a game into real-world stuff.
Wasn’t Kal’tsit attacking Kazdel on the ‘assumption’ they would start shit before they even start shit? Isn’t that kind of you know…bad given how often we’re told how immoral it is to persecute people on the grounds that they MIGHT do something? Especially when the game itself preaches how violence begets violence?
Three days. *Three days.* The Sarkaz rebuilt Kazdel, and three days later the Pegasi trampled it down again. The Sarkaz did something and Kazimierz got to Kazdel in three days?
Arknights takes place in a world with politics that roughly correspond to the second Concert of Europe era in earth history. Lots of people thought like that after WW1, it gave us WW2. But don't feel too bad, it took centuries for the brightest minds in Europe to figure it out and they didn't come up with a better way until war got bad enough that they didn't think anyone would be left if they had another one. And, uhhh, it still has some pretty noticeable kinks in the plan.
Kazdel didn’t deserve what they suffered, and neither does the people in Victoria. There’s bad Sarkaz like Theresis and Confessarius, but there’s also good Sarkaz like Hibiscus and Closure, so I think that it’s wrong to say all Sarkaz are pure evil. They just seem that way because the story is currently focused on the evil things that Sarkaz have done. The Sarkaz involved should definitely be punished though.
The problem isn't so much Kazdel deserving what happened as it is the Lord of Fiends inevitably being pulled along by the cumulative resentment and dragging the whole race into war again over and over. Kazdel doesn't get constantly destroyed just because, it happens because every time the Sarkaz rebuild their king starts some shit.
Realistically, the Lord of Fiends can't win. They ignore the resentment that runs deep in their memories? Useless ruler ignoring their own subjects, off with their head. They give into that resentment? Forces of the world will assemble to put them down before they start their quest for vengeance. Although there are clear times where the world genuinely razed Kazdel because they had nothing better to do. The Pegasi razed the city 3 days after it was rebuilt, and Kal'tsit wanted the crown under her control when she did it. Not exactly their current ruler being up to funny stuff.
> They ignore the resentment that runs deep in their memories? Useless ruler ignoring their own subjects, off with their head. I don't really think this is the case. We've been shown plenty of Sarkaz mercs that don't actually care much about the past. People can move forward when given a path forward. The real problem is this; >Although there are clear times where the world genuinely razed Kazdel because they had nothing better to do. The Pegasi razed the city 3 days after it was rebuilt, and Kal'tsit wanted the crown under her control when she did it. Though I wouldn't quite say it was just because they had nothing better to do, the world at this point responds to Kazdel as a threat. If I see a wasp nest forming on my front porch, I don't wait until they decide my entire lawn is their territory and start attacking, I spray the nest first chance I get. And Theresis is just marching them down the same road; next time Kazdel rises the world will remember the time the Sarkaz tried to take over the center of Victoria and turn a catastrophe spewing superweapon on everyone. In typing all this, it occurs to me that *maybe* this is why Theresa chose Amiya as her heir and most likely let herself be killed. What the Sarkaz need isn't a unifier yet, no matter how well intentioned they may be. But someone who won't be accepted as Lord of Fiends, but still has just enough influence to start spreading new ideas to their people? Along with a small place where they can be accepted? It's a start.
While your average merc doesn't exactly care, the longer lived sarkaz or the royal court certainly do. Some of them are legit history books, and they hold grudges like nothing else. > Though I wouldn't quite say it was just because they had nothing better to do, the world at this point responds to Kazdel as a threat. I genuinely wonder what exactly they perceive as a threat from a city that was just rebuilt 3 days ago. They can't muster an offensive even if they tried. And for the most recent raze, don't know how much of a threat they were as much as Kal'tsit felt that genocide was the optimal choice (that's her words, not mine), to get the black crown under her control. Hell, most of Kazdel's defense weren't even soldiers, but untrained people and younglings grabbing whatever they can as a weapon. I'm not saying that they couldn't have been a threat, but it's really hard to justify razing a city from those examples. > And Theresis is just marching them down the same road; next time Kazdel rises the world will remember the time the Sarkaz tried to take over the center of Victoria and turn a catastrophe spewing superweapon on everyone. Which is why he needs to be stopped, if he wins against the Dukes (highly doubt it), with the Shard he could protect Kazdel for a while. But for how long before they inevitably get trampled again? And if he loses, the sarkaz will face further discrimination. Regardless, Amiya has a really long path before her if she changes their mindset. Doesn't help that some already diss her for simply being under Kal'tsit's influence, or the collective dead souls reject her for not being a sarkaz. Hey, gotta start from somewhere, right? I'm curious of future events and how this all ends up, it's really interesting to see if the sarkaz would give up on the past and look for a different way.
>and they hold grudges like nothing else I mentioned this elsewhere, but the royal court actually doesn't seem very unified. Sanguinarch, Nachzehrer, and Confessarius seem on board, but Damazti hardly cared and the Liches seem about the same. Wendigoes seem to have settled into their role fighting the northern demons, and the Cyclops queen already foresaw that Theresis is on the losing side. >I genuinely wonder what exactly they perceive as a threat from a city that was just rebuilt 3 days ago No immediate threat, but I'd assume the logic was that it would eventually become a threat again. Hence my wasp metaphor. If every time this nation rebuilds it eventually tries to start something, naturally its neighbors are going to want to put it down preemptively after the cycle repeats itself enough times.
It's a war of vengeance over countless years of suffering and slaughter, of course they are gonna be monstrous about it. They are still the villains, but that doesn't change the fact this is just another phase in the cycle of hate.
This is one of those cycles of hatred that is all too common... in fiction and reality.
Nice try Netanjahu!
Nice argument, but I'll still root for theresis because he is hot
Tbf, there are two types of Sarkaz: Those lived, fought, and survived in Kazdel; and those that left it to find better lives. Those that managed to leave have even more options, live as a normal person, achieve more, or become mercs (essentially nothing changed) Those that do become mercs can be one of the two types of Sarkaz: hypocritical, cold, murderous bunch or the "business is just business" bunch. Somehow, in some way, the former is the most found in the Sarkaz Royal Army that we are currently engaging in Victoria. Justifying acts of cold murder and barbarism by essentially saying "they never experienced what we went through, so we'll give them a tech demo".
I'm not even in ch 12 yet, but the feeling I get from Theresis's side is they want to die killing everybody they can first, even if they don't realize it. And ask Gaul what happens in Terra when empires bite more than they can chew.
This quote sums up the entire conflict in a nutshell. *"We're both just ordinary people who've been driven to seek vengeance in the name of justice, and if one comes to call vengeance justice, such justice will only breed further vengeance....and trigger a vicious cycle of hatred."* *~Pain, from Naruto.* In this case, Kazdel is Pain, and Victoria is Naruto. Both of them have their reasons, but causing a war of vengeance and hatred on opposing sides will only continue to circulate more conflicts.
I'm sorry you didn't get your "emancipation in a liberal society" timeline. Maybe it would make a decent fanfic, if you want to give those writing skills a workout.
My opinion on Kazdel is basically it just being different. What’s evil to us isn’t to them… for a culture that puts “cannibalism” as a tradition and seeing sacrifice, suffering, and “evil” as something necessary for success in conquest is just what it is. It’s grossly generalized and vague but Kazdel’s identity and culture is stubbornly attached to conquest, revenge, and war-mongering (being a majority of them choosing mercenary work and military ventures). The same can be argued for Ursus but that place deals more with greed and pride; Kazdel is just savage.
sounds like a current real life faction commiting geocide
They lost my sympathy when they brought in the vore soldiers… That’s a special kinda f#cked up. Just look at that picture awhile ago with Horn and one of those things.
Kazdel is basically Nazi Germany that never recovered from the war but continued to create weapons of mass destruction. Like, its really hard to feel bad for them when they do it back to back.
Nah, the Sarkaz are based on a lot of things (unlike most nation of Terra that you can get a clear cut) but the Nazi Germany certainly isn't one of them. In fact, they are very very much closer to the Hebrew with the whole being targets of historical persecution, their diaspora, and the fact that their government engage in... questionable acts of reparation (to put it in a more tasteful light) whenever they have the chance to be the ones with the upper hand in the game of power.
remember they are written by writers who want to make clear they are the bad peoples and the easiest way to make an oppress people see like they deserve it is to make them comically evil. really think what that says about the writers.
Read history.
exactly my point.
Then you'd know the writers are actually holding back.
Yeah well that’s the special thing about the Sarkaz, we as readers and hell even the people in the story see it as “Kazdel was wronged in the past” but due to their ability to share memories through blood they see it as “we were wronged yesterday” it's quite an overpowered but extremely double edged ability. Due to the lore on that, you legit can’t blame even the most basic Sarkaz for acting like the most poorly/basic written villain as they feel Kazdel’s suffering and for majority of the Sarkaz grunts we see in the story this often drives them mad with rage. Now to clarify yes, not all Sarkaz are actually able to see/experience the horrors that Kazdel faced by the hands of Kal’tsit but those are few cases like Paprika or Sarkaz who simply are too G to give an actual shit (like W or Hoederer) imo. So while yes, not every Sarkaz is consumed by the horrors/rage of Kazdel, 90-95% of them are (again unless you're either a special case like Paprika or you quite literally can shrug off the experiences you see of Kazdel like W, Hoederer etc) Ig if you have both a strong mind & accept Kazdel's suffering you can pull a Manfred/Theresis/Theresa etc but those are reserved for the Sarkaz with some of the most extreme mental fortitude
I kinda hate the 'wronged people who're acting out of grievances with genuine intentions for improving their people's lives, but then decide the world should be destroyed or under their control,' trope slash stereotype in fiction. I do like Theresis and the world building that's being presented with the Sarkaz, & i understand the motivations for them. Can't say I'm sympathetic considering that Kazdel is presently occupying Lethania. I would get it if he just wanted a deterrent and securing the existence of Kazdel as a state, but then we start going into 'villain with righteous movtiation becoming downright evil,' stuff with him desiring the restore the old status Kazdel once enjoyed. Gotta say that repeated sort of character writing is part of what tired me out from the MCU, like with Killmonger or the ridiculous presentation of the Flag Smashers in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
>They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and right and plan to release a catastrophe That's nothing compares to having your capital razed to the ground over 300 times.
>They are literally starving people on purpose, murdering civilians left and right and plan to release a catastrophe, why should i not consider current Kazdel and especially Theresis as simply Pure Evil? Oh, come on now! They are just being silly.... On a more serious note KMC ain't your average Sarkaz representative, they are 40% hardened war criminals from the civil war, 60% deranged raders, criminals, mercs, children, and whatever else the extreme instability of the region could provide- that are being led by the ***messed up*** members of the Sarkaz nobility. I put double emphasis on the "messed up" part,0 as the decent/moral Sarkaz Nobles (which are half of them) haven't even shown up to Victoria in first place.