The third testament... KICKS ASS!!! - Let's Play SMT2

[lightbane]

The trio of Archangels are a "regular" foe on SMT series, for example on Digital Devil Saga 2 they're as optional bosses (not particularly difficult), and Raphael looked even gayer here.

 

[Takeda Kenshi]

Neutral, it's my personal fav.

 

[Azira]

Goody-two-shoes, cuddley-bear Law ending! Yay! :D

 

[SCO]

I already saw the neutral ending when i finished this myself.

(you can guess how long it is by the fact i didn't see the others)

Vote law

 

[Black Cat]

Chapter the fourteenth; ALL YOUR PILLAR ARE BELONG TO US!
In which Millennium is invaded by a long and huge and piercing and pointy... tail, yes. That one. Then our Heroine will win a dance contest, open the gates of the Abyss, give long and boring lectures on Qabalah and Moloch and the first two Sephiroth, and face off against the Queen of Witches to finally actualize her totally rightful claim to the throne of the Land of Fairies and Pretty Witches, nya! Also, angry dark demons will be fused, levels will be grinded, and pew pew will be whatever pew pew can be said to do in this context.







Last time we met we defeated the Elders of Millennium, who were really the Seraphs Rapahel, Uriel, and Michael, and then slayed what seemed to be God himself, bald and angry and really vengative. Then, as Daniel debrieffed us, the emergency alert when off and massive energy fluctuations were detected closing to Holytown. Before tending to this new situation though, we go to the Virtual Battler for a last visit to the Virtual Reality. Steven is again waiting for us here, as many times before.

I've succeeded in compressing minion data even more. Let me give you the upgrade to the Demon Summoning program. With it, you should be able to make as many as twelve demons minions.

We will most likely not meet again for a while. It's unfortunate, but there is nothing I can do about it.

No more pretty gifts?

I hope to see you again.

Everyone does that. :3 Once outside we leave for Holytown, walking as The Center's terminals stoped working long ago. Once there we find everyone to be both relieved to still breath and tense about what will happen to them in the future. The Center's broadcasting station has stoped working as well, so there are no more news being read or messages being relayed. It kind of feels like Millennium is about to collapse, and it's not so far of the truth.

after all, but who knows what's going to happen next...

... Eh? "Unusual situation?" What do you mean? Everything's the same as usual. Why not ask around the Great Church?

We go there, and as we are approaching we come across yet another guy using the same totally awful clothes those two were wearing. Despite his absolute lack of fashion sense, though, he has some information for us. This does not bode well: Whatever is about to happen is going to be bad now that The Center is breaking down and both the Elders and God are no longer around.

recently. Something funny's going on.

We hurry there and arrive just in time to see it happens: A huge, dark tower breaks through the ground and keeps going until it reaches a great height, way above the surrounding buildings. And if you can go and watch that happen without going screw this, two nukes totally weren't enough you are stronger than i will ever be. Screw you, Japan.

After looking around a bit more we leave the area, towards the mall. The guy we just met seems to be in a pretty bad shape, now. Others we see along the way aren't much better.

A lot of people have been collapsing from exhaustion, the power drained from their bodies.

Is this one of the Center's shcemes too?

We decide to ask around the bar, since this is obviously not a normal happening and, as videogames have taught us, there is no better place to obtain information no one else has than the local shady bar.

worried about whether or not this area was going to get destroyed, but recently I feel awfully tired. I just don't seem to have the energy I did before.

but I'm betting it's that huge tower that's causing the strength to sap from everyone around here.

an' he said that the tower up by the Great Church ain't really a tower, but is actually the end of Moloch's tail! An' he's in the Abyss, so that must be one l-o-o-o-o-ng tail there!

Straight to the great leagues, eh? Moloch, whose name some say means King of Shame as it is derived from two diferent words meaning one King and the other Shame, has a pretty unique story. To most occult traditions, regardless of origin, matter is either inherently corrupt or inherently corrupting, and until the advent of materialism, in itself a pretty new development, that view was commonly and openly held. Moloch's story is closely related to this, as it was told that when Baal Moloch, the High God of the Ammonites and the Phoenicians and other nearby peoples, became manifest in the material universe and turned from a being of pure spirit into a being in close relation to matter he also was corrupted by it, or by its contact with it, in the same way humans souls were upon their first contact with matter, and so Moloch was turned into a God with an overpowering dark side to his personality, if not a dark god through and through. It's kind of dificult to interpret this story, even if the symbolism is clear, because for those who were faithful to Moloch the name seems to identify both the divine being and the icon by means of which they honored him, a bronze statue siting on a throne and with a royal crown atops his calf like head, to which the Rabbis tell children were sacrificed.

This may or may not be true, as one should believe more the words of snakes than the words of jews, but it is true than back then it was actually common for children to be sacrificed, though not on big numbers, and in this particular case it could be seen as following the symbolism behind Baal Moloch himself, since children, in many traditions, are seen as little more than blobs of matter with a soul, just as anything alive has a soul animating it, but lacking a spirit, the promise of consciousness or awareness or genius, amounting to anything but a little spark and the potential for development, so obviously children, particularly newborns, would be of much greater value, as a sacrifice to Baal Moloch, than an adult, who already had time to develop a spirit regardless of the relative value of that spirit.

And there goes my reputation as a kawaii, funny, innocent, sweet witch. D:

What little else i known of Moloch is that some attribute the office of freeing it is rumored some Gnostic groups and sects, though unrelated to the Cathars, may have taken up adoration of Moloch on these grounds, but there is little, if any, evidence of that as far as i know, and given how far the church went to destroy all that was related to Gnosticism and could be destroyed, and to deface all that couldn't, i wouldn't put it above them to try to pull a Jew.

Most civilizations that came into contact with the cult of Moloch considered it kind of repugnant, though still it managed to expand itself among all the peoples the Phoenicians had contact with. The Romans, though, breaked their tradition of bringing the Gods of those they conquered into their own pantheon for Moloch, considering it abhorrent and cruel and leaving it to fall into obscurity. Later, medieval wizards and witches somehow rediscovered it, maybe influenced by the few mentions the Bible makes of him, and soon he found his way to their Grimoires and their demonic catalogues. They were not very kind to Moloch's public image, though, turning this already dark and savage demon into the Infernal equivalent of a Khornate champion, charging into battle swinging a huge blade and covered in a mixture of the blood of his youngs victims and the tears of his victims' parents. There are also mentions of him finding limitless joy in hearing the laments of his victims' mothers and finding the taste of their tears lovely, or something equally similar to a chaotic evil barbarian, just with horns and a pointy tail. Your run of the mill totally psycho badass insane demon, mostly. Not my kind of guy, though that is to be expected since he is a demon closely related to the black or dark fire and only a few of those I can swallow, if at all. They are totally not classy.

Since it's full moon I decide to try the Disco before going back to The Center. Once there we try to win the Moon Pillar but fail, totally. We also meet a girl who reminds me a lot of someone I know...

... and then return to The Center to report our findings to Daniel.

in Holytown is actually the tail of a demon. And a really big one too, at that! For a demon that big, its main body has to be in the Abyss itself. But how can we get to the Abyss?

By wining a dance competition, Dani-Kun. Thus i return to Holytown and try my luck at several more Moonlight Raves, but totally fail. I sulk around because this never before happened to me, walk around and stuffies. Then i start asking around the Disco for hints.

Check out my Magic-power 9 dance! I'm gonna be the star attraction at the next rave party! I can wait until the next full moon!

I'm going to enter for sure! The winner receives a Moon Pillar too, i hear!

underground. Really deep, at least miles below the surface.

I guess we can follow the tail back to the spatial rift it's using, though that would have been a cool way to reach the Abyss. In any case the first one is the one giving us the hint to how we need to solve the dance thingie, though i never before had trouble with it and thus never even knew this was suposed to be a hint. It both breaks the fourth wall, though, and surprise sex any logic: You need at least Magic 10 to win the dance competition. Magic, the one stat that's useless for the main character. Not Speed, that also governs dexterity. No, Magic. This is stupid.

I get +4 Magic from my equipment, so i need two more points. That means, i need to level up twice and then waste those two levels in a totally useless stat for the main character. How nice. I return to Tiphereth via the backdoor in the Great Church to grind demons. I manage to meet, slaughter, and recruit a lot of new demons, though, and then fuse me some really high level creeps so it wasn't completely wasted time. The first bunch includes Ubelloris, kind of an hitite atlas, Wyvern, the monster thingie, and Serqet, the egiptian scorpion goddess. I manage to recruit one of those, as well as a Naga.

Once i get my two levels, as well no small amounts of Magnetite and Makka while doing so, i decide to return to Holytown by repeating that trick with going back to the mortal world through the real arcadia, then back into the virtual arcadia and use the church here to Transmit ourselves. Before we manage to leave, though, we are jumped by demons! It seems demons started pouring inside all the same after we killed Sarab, but since everyone's still alive it seems having a Saviour somehow, like, saved them. I don't know, but those demons are pretty high level so i will not be looking the gifted horse in the mouth: It's let's get some cool fusion fodder time! We meet Ganesha, Girimekhala, Yaksha, Vetara, some flying guy I didn't wrote the name of, Dawon, and Raja Naga. So many elephants. :3

We only manage to get a Dawon, though. Life sucks, Kitty wants Elephants! Sulking and pouting I leave the fake Arcadia, enter the real Arcadia, and Transmit back to Holytown. I return just in time for the next rave, so the time has come to make it into stardom!

It's time for the Moonlight Rave! Daaaaaaance Madness!

LET'S DANCIN'!

Be attitude for gains!

Let's start the Dance Contest! Starting from Number 1... LET'S DANCIN'!

An awesome prayer is conflict with us! And now a long line of two sprite dancers start doing their thing.

Great prizes are waiting here for you! Anyone wanna dance!?

Yes, sure.

Yes! You, that man over there! LET'S DANCIN'!!

Take off every ZIG!

And the winner is...

... that guy that jumped into the fray in the middle of the contest! Congratulations! Moon Pillar is your prize! CONGRATULATIONS!

For great justice! We leave and, before Transmiting back to Roppongi to get the last pillar and open the gate to the Abyss we visit the local Jakyo Mannor. Instead of the usual dual fusions, though, we make a triple one, since i was trying to get an Old One. I don't get one yet, but i do manage to get two rare dark demons, both powerful and impossible to recruit so i'm a happy cat. First Dawon, Cyclops, and Serqet go into the tubes...

... resulting in my own evil Bengal elephant God of mass destruction with an unreachable itch -chan! Besides what he has in his sheet he also reflects all physical attacks back to the attacker, making him a fun demon to have around, and coupled with both his massive HP and his Ricarm spell having him around can be very useful. He is kind of weak to Expel damage, though.

Next one comes through two diferent fusions. First i put Power, Eligor, and Lilim in the tubes to get Tezcatlipoca. This combination, though, does not always end in this demon as it is a Random fusion, so keep trying it, and others composed of Tenshi, Datenshi, and Yama, to get rare demons, dark demons, or even human troopers from both the Gaian and the Mesian armies.

He's a kind of dark deity among the Azteks and other cultures from that place, i think. Something along the lines of the Yin of their particular duality or the like, but I am not really well versed in those cosmologies so I can't say much more. In any case, i just wanted a dark demon of relative high level to try combining with my diferent demons, since Dark demons have rules unique to themselves for Fusion and I did not want to lose Girimekhala. Finally, after trying diferent combinations to see the possible results, I fuse him with Berith, gleefully and joyfully and extatic. For the result...

... is no other than the Black Pharaoh, Nya-Chan itself!

I was so totally happy i forgot to screenshot his sheet, though, so i'll add it later. He's pretty special, though, in that he reflects magic and most magic like skills. I would love to have Michael try to pull one of those cry to the heavens ones on me, now. He also has the physical reflect spell, so as long as he moves first all the physical attacks tried against my party during that turn will damage only the attackers.

With a party now composed of Chu Chu, Girimekhala, and Nya-Chan in the front row and Virtue, Koneko, and Mariah in the rear one we Transmit to Roppongi and run to meet the Mutant Elder as bloody fasty fast as we can, since this party is really eating through my Magnetite stores like there's no tomorrow. The old mutant first rambles just like before, but this time the conversation doesn't end after thanking us for listening to his story.

A large tower appeared out of nowhere on the surface? From your description, it sounds a lot like the tail of Maou Moloch. Moloch himself is in the Abyss.

Here, take this. You'll need this if you want to travel to the Abyss. There are seven Pillars in total. This one by itself is useless, so there's no use in my having it. Keep it, it will serve you better than I.

With the venus pillar we have all the keys to enter the Abyss so we return outside and go to those stone circles we still haven't put a Pillar on. We do so...

... and a tremor shakes the area as a strange face like structure, reminiscent of a certain martian feature. We walk to it and find the sevent altar to be carved in its forehead, so we place the last Pillar, the one belonging to the Sun, on it. A flash of light as all the pillars activate, and then...

... it's an evil zionist trap, we are doomed! Well, maybe not. It's a Seal of Solomon, in this context, taken to it's simplest form, with all icons and decorations removed, which is indistinguishable from the Star of David. This seal is usually used for all kind of operations requiring to seal something either inside or outside something, with a focus on demonic influences but not limited to those. It also represents a very particular interaction of the elements and the like as well as, like, creation itself, with the interaction of the primal forces separating the interior structure it spawns from the chaotic outside darkness.

And now we are in the Abyss.

And, boy, did they screw this up. This Abyss' a mess, let me tell you. It is commendable they actually tried, but there are things you have to, like, understand before you can simplify without screwing up, and Qabalah is the kind of thing you can screw up even when you really understand it so trying to simplify it was not a really good idea. In any case, though, the concept of the Emanations and the Paths and the Worlds and the Inhabitants is amazing for a Dungeon Crawler, so kudos to them for trying and let's hope someone tries again with enough patience to do the entire thing.

The game begins with the right foot, though. As soon as we try to take a step a local stops us and welcomes us to Yesod.

This is the place that you humans call the Abyss. There is a town to the west of here you can go to for information and supplies.

Yesod is the second, or ninth if you are counting from Kether, Sephira. The word Sephirot, which is the plural for Sephira, means, to the dismay of Final Fantasy fans, nothing cooler than numbers or counts, so in this context they would be ten steps or levels and the evil albino guy with the big sword was called, like, Abacus. Yes, I'm totally trembling. Real scary. Up to here I was pretty impressed, as a lesser game would have made us start the Abyss in Malkuth, and many LOLs would have been had. After we walk for a bit in the direction that guy pointed us to we come across another local, who has something to say about this.

You don't see people come here from Malkuth every day!

... Eh? Oh, sorry. Malkuth is what we call the Human World down here.

Indeed, the entire game until now, as well as the entire previous game, happened in Malkuth. But Malkuth isn't Earth. Malkuth is, like, Malkuth. The Earth is in Malkuth, as well as Mars, the Sun, and Proxima Centauri. The word Malkuth means Kingdom, and it has the dubious honor of not being a Divine Emanation itself. Basicly, in the entirety of creation there is nothing in a lower place of worth in a place lower than it. But i'm getting ahead of myself, geez. This is going to be super duper hardy hard.

Malkuth, Yesod, Kether, and all the other little, like, thingies are put together in a system known as the Tree of Life, yes? And they are linked by twenty two paths, one for every letter in the hebrew alphabeth, though some take the Tree of Life itself as composed by means of thirty two paths, divided in ten objective paths, the Sephirots, and twenty two subjective paths, the, like, paths. Let's have pretty image of all this stuff before proceeding.

Now, the other important thing to keep in mind while learning the basics is that there are four, like, world thingies, called Assiah, Yetzirah, Briyah, and Atziluth in ascending order. Each one of this worlds is linked to a main concept, in the same order being Action, Formation, Creation, and Emanation. Each one of those four worlds is represented by a separate Tree, though the structure is persistent and we can't really decide if they are linear, in the order i just mentioned, or both linear and paralel at the same time, the only idea of which kind of breaks your mind. Given that the Qliphot are, most of the time, considered to be both below and paralel to the four worlds, though, maybe is like that or something. And given that everything in the mysteries seems to love hierarchy, Assiah is the lowest world and Atziluth is the highest world. So being in Malkuth in Assiah is, more or less, the deep end. Guess where we are. Yeah, you guessed right. Have a cookie.

To make things worse each Tree is divided in four regions, whose JOOish names i do not remember. The first one, in descending order, is the triangle made up by Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. The second one is the triangle made up by Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphereth; and the third one the triangle composed of Netzach, Hod, and Yesod. The fourth region is, you guessed, lonely Malkuth, because no one likes Malkuth. I mean, Malkuth is not even part of Creation: While Creation is an emanation of the thingie beyond it, Malkuth is an emanation of Creation! As a friend of mine did once put it, if creation were made out of wood then Malkuth would be the wood dust in the floor below it. Jesus, i love my job.

Finally, there is also a vertical and tripartite division in here, the Three Pillars. Those are the Pillar of Form, composed by Binah, Geburah, and Hod; the Pillar of Force or Power, composed by Chokhmah, Chesed, and Netzach; and the Pillar of Mildness or Balance, composed by Kether, Tiphereth, Yesod, and maybe Malkuth, Daath, or both. Daath, which i forgot to mention before, is the eleventh Sephira, the one that doesn't exist but is actually here. It's kind of a barrier between the top three Sephira, the purest ones of a given tree, and the seven lesser and much impurer ones. In a way, the distance between those uppermost three sephirah and the following ones is, like, totally bigger than it looks, and Daath is the place where, depending on which cosmology you are coming from, either Abaddon (hint, hint) or Choronzon are, doing nothing but wait for impure things to try and reach the top of the pillars so they can test them or, like, test them. As in, you know... om nom nom?

And I almost forgot, but what happens once you suffer through the ten sephirah and the twenty two paths of each of the four worlds? Here you are, the Crown of Atziluth! And it bloody keeps going. For the Qabalah, and that's more or less how JOOdaism would be if it were cool and totally amazing, God, and by God i don't mean...

... but something closer to the idea of the Tao, or the Japanese Kü, or the Hermetic Aether, or the hindu Akasha, etc, etc, etc, is either the totally alien thing they call Ain Soph, which personified would translate as The Endless, or the completely alien thing that lives in the completely alien plane or state or whatever they call Ain Soph. There is an amusing meme going around, though, in that Ain Soph Aur, the Endless Light, could be (mis)translated as Infinite Negative Light or Infinitely Negative Light and other weird variations or interpretations, making it sound like it's Cthulhu waiting for you here, or something equally disturbing. Though, given how totally mean the rest of the pattern is, it wouldn't be really surprising.

Those are the basics' basics' basics, so to speak, of the Qabalah. Those are the most simple elements of the pattern, though. Qabalah in itself is a lifelong pursuit, and it happened once that witches and wizards of many diferent traditions began noticing that if you took away the symbols and references and patterns particular to one or another culture or society they were kind of all describing the same bloody thingie, and then those who are into the Mysteries, in general, instead of a particular tradition began cross referencing every single thing they could find, so if we go into real detail we will go not only to the depths of Qabalah but totally *zoom* beyond Qabalah and into all kinds of other stuff, and then you have to count at least to four hundred sephiroth instead of just fourty and then add the tarot arcana, the elemental correspondences, hebrew and greek gematry, the enochian tablets, the demon lords and the demonic legions, the angelic orders and the angelic rulers, the shells, the gods because somehow it turns out joo wizards are polytheistic, and a terafuckton more things, and then start crossreferencing them, like in how each of the four worlds correspond to one of the primal forces, but also each of the four regions of each world corresponds to one of the primal forces, and how each of the three pillars correspond to one of the primal forces but earth who itself is found in the transition to the next level, etc. But that would be going totally off topic.

Because, you know, I actually explained up to where i did because they tried to throw all that stuff in while the Abyss itself is only the last set of dungeons in a much bigger game, and obviously it kind of breaks at the seams because it doesn't really makes a whole lot of sense to, like, have the Pillar of Form be the lands of the Law Demons, while the correspondence between the Pillar of Form and what they call Law is pretty well done, when at the same time you have Kether, the top of the Pillar of Balance, be the castle of bloody bleeping Lucifer, the High Lord of Chaos.

Though i like the Abyss anyway. When they get it right is, like, totally cool and i feel like it's christmass already, and when they get it wrong you just go and say, like, bleeping bloody modern gooks, then go fight Horny Crowley and forget about it because of how cool the idea is, even if Crowley himself must be rolling in his grave every single time someone does that boss fight.

Now, like, Malkuth and Yesod, right? Malkuth is, well, Malkuth, as i said before. Not a very nice place to be, but if the mysteries teach you something is that everything out there is trying to turn you into a hamburger anyway so it doesn't means a lot by itself. Malkuth is seen as outside of creation because of the place that the Earth element has in The Occult. To put it simply Earth is not even seen as a true element but as a by product of the other elements that just happens to have some use if you look really hard for it and are easy to satisfy. Along those lines, Malkuth in Assiah is like the by product of the by product. Do i need to go on? Okay, let's say it like this then: Do you like Nurgle? Do you think he is cool? Do you want to grow to be like him? That's what I thought, and that's earth for you. As a symbol of Malkuth is at times the Anus used, as it is also seen as the mouth of the drain of creation and the great waste disposal facility of the multiverse and stuff, so it may be related to Belphegor too. Some say it is also the point closer to the Shells and the only place from which you can fall entirely into the dark tree instead of just facing their corrupting influence as a shell of the Sephira they mirror. In Tokyo Millennium the element of Earth was represented by The Factory, so i guess only the communists would like it. And, you know what? They can have it, with a ribbon and everything.

Some of the more nice occultists would come to you and say, like, don't listen to her! There are many beautiful and important things to do and learn in Malkuth. Yes? Which ones? And they go, like, weeeell... because they are lying to not face the fact they suck so bloody much even Astral Larvae are higher on the Hierarchy than them. The only lessons to be found in Malkuth are the horrible examples and warnings, and as soon as you hit the Path of Tau, linking Malkuth to Yesod, the only reason you are looking backwards is to remind yourself why the hell you must press forward no matter what prices must be paid. The ruler of the shell of Malkuth, the evil demon lady of the local Qlipha, that being the dark and corrupted face of the Sephira, is Lilith, and she's by many considered the single most successful demon in the history of mankind, as i already told you back in Shin Megami Tensei the first. She's the american dream of demonhood, the one demoness whose picture is reserved a prominent place in every infernal yuppie's office, the one girl that managed to pull a master manipulator on a couple billions at the same time, queen of the night demons and ruler of all things seductive and obsessive. Remember that the next time someone comes to you and says, like, Malkuth isn't that bad, really, Kitty is just exagerating as usual.

Burn them! Burn them all! :evil:

*ahem*

Next we have Yesod, yay. The lower triangle is closely related to the mind, and Yesod would be the subconsious, being closely related to the moon. It is also a realm of illusions and mirages, as it's like the mirror that reflects the emanations of all other Sephira into Malkuth, but it also works kind of like a lighthouse. Some say the moon, as in the white thingie floating around the Earth where magic rabbits live, is Yesod in Assiah, though others say it is Yesod in Malkuth in Assiah and Yesod in Assiah is really both the individual subconsious of an individual and the collective subconsious of the species. Gabriel, the archangel related to the element of water and to the moon itself, is also closely related to this Sephira, reinforcing the other meanings as he's the messenger and the guide, as well as the Prince, or Princess since Gabriel is the only Archangel to be considered mostly Female (remember what i told you guys before about the gender of those thingies and the relationships to the elements?) even when they are all androgyne, of Change and Mutation and Alteration. It is, though, hard to explain who rules what and which angelic order is placed where since Yesod is, really, four diferent places, one for each world, plus a fifth one, the dark shell, and each has it's own ruler and it's own order and stuff. If i don't remember it wrong, though, The Cherubim is the angelic order and the gods are Sadaii and Alchai, or something similar.

Given the relation to the subconscious, the dreamworld, and the so called astral plane, which would be the lower triangle of Assiah, this is the first evidence that the cosmos is out to screw you. Whose idea was to put a place of illusion, delussion, dreams, subconsious forcers and obsessions, and ever changing half realities as the first thing you find when trying to see beyond Malkuth? That's just mean, and there are so many horror stories of witches and wizards who thought were already ready to breach the gates of the Crown of Assiah when in truth they were still in the outer shells of Yesod, being played by their own desires and expectations and hopes, that's not even funny. By this point you are, like, just peeping beyond, without any first hand experience of anything but the Malkuth of Assiah, trying to make heads or tails of everything you have studied so far, and totally not knowing what to expect or how to separate what is real from what is madness, all the while the thingies heavenly and infernal and elemental and just happen to pass through here when i noticed there was food are trying to confuse and manipulate and obsess you to either test your worth, punish your arrogance, corrupt what little spirit you have, or go om nom nom on your butt.

And from here on, it gets worse.

As an interesting bit of trivia, though, Yesod is, in christian and catholic occult circles, seen as either highly symbolic of the holy ghost, as part of the Holy Ghost, or as being the seat of the Holy Ghost. This is amusing, isn't it? We have The Father, The Son, and then the one whose planet is The Moon, whose reflection in the mind is the subconsious, whose ruler is the only female angel, like, ever. Make your own mind about it, the debate still rages on and, geez, it can get chauvinistic and bloody super fasty fast.

But let's keep going. We first come across one of those red towers I mentioned before but forgot to screenshot, which are the entrances to the Paths, but instead of there being twenty two paths as expected we have only a handful that work kind of as crossroads and are named after the worlds instead of the paths, so I guess they tried to imply the concept of the four regions reflecting the four worlds or something, which is actually pretty cool they knew about it but i don't personally like things to get that simplified.

To the east of that entrance we meet both an Elf and the motive we came all the way there, MiniMoloch. There is absolutely nothing we can do about him, though, other than sighsee and take pictures and stuff.

Moloch is gathering Magnetite within his own body and burning it as fuel for some reason or other.

As we already know Magnetite is suposed to be a substance of some kind that's inside of humans and that Demons need to materialize themselves and to maintain their physical form once they have it. It can also be used as fuel, and it is implied The Center was at least experimenting with doing just that. Many later games, though, kind of leave the concept of Magnetite aside for a concept closer to the occult roots of many of the games' themes, but given I may later do a Devil Survivor Let's Play to comment more on that it would be, like, spoilerific. :3

Here, have a picture of MiniMoloch the evil oven.

As we now go in the opposite direction to visit the town we were informed about before we come across two new demons. The first's Yggdrasil, and don't ask me how a demonic world tree works because I don't really know, but the demon design is starting to get too tentacular for comfort. The second one's Tarasque, and he's a Tarasque.

Then we find the town. It's not nearly as big as Tiphereth or the settlements in Millenium were, and given my equipment is from Tiphereth there is nothing for me to buy here. So we only walk around, map the place, chat with the locals, and visit the Terminal, were we find Steven was totally lying when he said he was leaving his stalking ways behind!

Come to think of it, this is the first time we've met outside of virtual reality.

*slowly walks away*

You can use these Terminal Stones to record your progress or teleport about the Abyss. I'll set it up so that you can use it. Wait outside until I'm done.

From now on we can also use the Terminal Stones, yay. We hit the bar, and chat with the locals for a bit, since it seems something big is brewing here in the Abyss. First we talk to a female resident...

and gets her power directly from it. She powers up so much when bathed in the light of the moon that she becomes invincible.

... and then a male resident...

Would you like to hear about the layoud of our little kingdom here?

Yes, sure.

OK then. The Abyss can be divided into nine different areas, and all of those areas are interconnected by three corridors. This here is Yesod. It's more or less the entrance to the Abyss, and it's connected to Malkuth... Your world.

Yesod is connected to three other areas via the Yetzirah corridor -- Hod, Netzach, and Tiphereth. From Tiphereth, you can take the Beriah Corridor to Geburah or Chesed. The last corridor, the Aztiluth Corridor, starts at Geburah and connects to Binah and Chokmah. At the end of the Abyss, beyond those areas, lies Kether.

:codexrage:

Yetzirah Corridor. She's not letting anyone past, so you can't get beyond there at all.

You are oh so wrong, you are. :3 We have, say, the special password. We leave the bar and interview more locals. Only one has something interesting to say, though.

But the gate to the path there is sealed so you can't get there for now. To open the gate you need two separate keys, too. I don't know where they are though.

It's kind of pretty obvious, so now we leave the town and head straight for the dungeon. It uses the same tileset that the cave where the japanese gods were imprisoned, and it is a good idea to explore each level throughly since there are many jars and boxes with incenses and stuff. Other than that is pretty short, though we meet some two new demons along the way to the crossroads...

The second one is something like a hag or a witch like being from Irish mythology, but i do not know much about her. We go on and on until we come across the heart of the complex, where the queen of witches and ghosts and crossroads awaits for us, though just as poor little Astharoth she has kind of a story of being a much nicer and kinder and loved Goddess in her origins, and this may sound like stupid but i don't really know a whole lot about her, i'm not that much into Greco-Roman gods and spirits and genii and stuffies, even if i know who she is and all that. She's also a living testament to the fact two nukes weren't enought, just look at those bloody clothes!

You will not be able to touch me with the light of the moon powering me!

So we leave while we can and let the time pass by walking in circles and trying to recruit demons, without much luck since i was having troubles with my inventory space and so my magic stones weren't replenishing themselves as they had no place where to be put. We come across Kijo Gorgon in the meanwhile, though.

Once the moon is new and dark we return to the crossroads.

Even without the light of the moon, I will still defeat you!

I think not, Bossy Boss. And it's kind of time the title of Queen of Witches gets passed around, so LET'S DANCIN'! x3 She begins casting Bufula against Nyarlatothep, who reflects it back at her for 5 damage and then attacks for 66 damage. Koneko shoots her for 45 damage, Mariah does the same for 29 damage, Giri-Giri attacks for 39 damage, and Chu Chu attacks for 78 damage. Virtue finishes the turn also attacking, but i did not screenshot it correctly and I only know she did kind of 25 damage in the first of the two hits.

Second turn and Nya-Chan attacks her for 66 damage, then she counters attacking him for 13 damage and Virtue for 6 damage. Koneko shoots her 36 damage, Chu Chu attacks for 59 damage, Mariah shoots for 29 damage, Giri-Giri attacks for 33 damage, and Virtue does the same for 46.

For the third turn Hecate begins again by casting Bufula, this time against Chu Chu for 13 damage and a lost turn since he froze solid. Koneko shoots for 42 damage, Nya-Chan attacks for 71 damage, Mariah shoots for 36, Giri-Giri attacks but is dodged, and Virtue attacks for 70 damage.

The fourth and final turn is fast and furious. Hecate begins by casting Mudo, the save or die spell that's not Hanma, against Giri-Giri and sending him back to the COMP very really dead. Then Koneko shoots her for 42 damage and Nya-Chan defeats her with an attack that takes whatever she had remaining. That was pretty easy, dead evil elephant aside.

And cute, nya! :3

And queen. ¬¬U



This ends this update. Next time we meet we will fight Tiamat and Alister Crowley and Astharoth and Abaddon. We will also finally hear that stuff Mekata had to tell us, like, two acts ago or something, we will have some tea and scones with Lucifer, and we will witness Set's awakening. And then the update after that one i think we will have to choose our allegiance. I mean, we are like four updates away of the end or something.

'till next time! :3



@ lightbane
:evil: It's not called gay, it's called hot.

@ Cenobyte
That's true, but Religion itself is kind of all around the place on the description of the Heavenly Host, changing a lot depending on the sensibilities of the artists of the age and how alive and well the symbolism is. And while the Heavenly Host has it's cool things it really lacks, like, individual character, which is kind of cool from a lore or background perspective since only the Archangels have individual will and mind and all others are mostly automata but it makes them a lot less interesting and charming. Making the Archangels totally hot and stylized is a good way to give the Host some character without going all surprise sex on the lore, and let's be honest... With all the Fanservice you guys get in almost all the female demons they are like the bone thrown at us female fans to keep us from barking.

@ SCO
Now i'll feel like a total bitch if I don't do the Law one, doing the only ending you already saw is like totally bioware evil and stuff. D: Lucky me i missremembered and I still have some time before the final choice, yay.

@ MiniMirror-Kun

"That was a real update-spree, neko-chan..."

After all the previous delays and stuffies i thought i at least had to do what was left super fasty fast to recover the faith of both the playground readers and the playground gurus.

 

[lightbane]

It looks like Moloch's drill pierced the heavens... *dodges witchfire* Just kidding, but more than hot I would say disturbing a blue-skinned angel with an incredibly pink suit bent on exterminating humanity.

The Endless

So Morpheus is responsible? I was not surprised.

Ain Soph Aur, the Endless Light, could be (mis)translated as Infinite Negative Light or Infinitely Negative Light and other weird variations or interpretations, making it sound like it's Cthulhu

Kingdom hearts Sora: "That's because in the absolute darkness there is light (and viceversa)!!! "*is dragged away and tentacleraped to death by EVA-01 ultimate emo-angsty lcd induced form of the EoE*

Now seriously, after your nearly incomprehensible description of the Qabbalah and its Sephirots and shit you should be more fair with Shin Megami, you know that even the japanese would have a hard time trying to condense this into something it doesn't provoke brain hemorrage to anyone that doesn't know shit about it.

 

[Black Cat]

@ Lightbane

I was fair, i think. I said it was actually pretty comendable and cool, and that I liked it a lot, and i know most people will not even notice the mistakes but they may notice the cool ones and interesting ones and some of the basic patterns represented and take it as a first step on going to research and stuff. But, like, this is The Codex and I have been going waaaaaaa and all :dramaqwinn: every single time they get one of my favorite thingies wrong, like with Lilith, so it would have been to break the tradition to stop now, and actually it was a good excuse to get all the basic stuff out of the way at the start so i do not have have to stop the flow of the chapters later each time we get some new reference, instead being able to just, like, add a bit to what i already explained and keep going. :3

 

[Black Cat]

Chapter the fifteenth; Standing with their backs to the wall.
In which our heroine goes EVA-01 on Crowley's behind, defeats many so called powerful demons, meets one of her favorite Demonesses, awakens Set, gets several bunches of exposition thrown to her by Mekata and Lucifer and Daniel, and stuff and thingies. Also, you will believe Camels can fly!







After defeating Hecate we have to decide where to go from the crossroad. Since I'm a Neko very respectful of tradition as long as tradition isn't pulling my tail we take the way to Hod. A short dungeon follows, during which nothing of interest happens, and we arrive at the Sephira of Hod, which means Splendor or Majesty and is the lowest segment of the Pillar of Form, which in Shin Megami Tensei is significative of Law.

This Sephira is related to reason and order just like Yesod was related to the subconscious mind. It is also the Sephirah that rules language spoken and writen and gestual and symbolic, which is pretty interesting in itself if you know the way those are suposed to work in the brain and stuff, as well as any kind of system or structure or method, be it scientific or occult or religious or, say, magical. So in a way it is also about models created to represent and understand other thingies, of a kind of intellectual order needed to understand something alien to the observer but, at the same time, only symbolic of the object being observed and in no way having power or motive or that or this in itself. But in doing so it also forms the channels and currents by which the power is given shape and function and direction instead of being left alone to burst without rhyme or shape and dissipate without fruit.

From the entrance we move westward until we hit the local town or fortress or whatever it is this time. There's is even less of interest here than there was in the castle or town back at Yesod, other than the small detail now the Kaifuku is blue and functions kind of like a Mesian Church.

The boss of this Sephira is Tiamat, a very high level babilonian goddess related to the ocean and who spawned many of the lesser gods. Like many other primordial entities of the old myths she is closely related to serpents, a symbol usually reserved to gods and goddesses of the primeval earth and water, and it is interesting to note that Water is the ruling element of the Pillar of Form even when the element is usually seen as the Primal Chaos. The form in the pillar name's isn't but substance itself, and it's highest point is Binah, the primeval sea from which monsters and demons and dark gods are spawned along with the gods. This is related to that we mentioned before about Hod being shape without meaning or guidance, substance without a pattern ponting it's steps. Substance is seen as constantly mutating, a soup of potential taking the shapes of Lovecraftian primal and dark tyrants just as quick as they become unmade once more and the substance returns to the sea, as the only static thingie in the entire mysteries is Earth. Ewww. It is by the application of opposite pillar that creation becomes possible at all, and that those structures born of the Pillar of Form aren't mindless abominations and nightmarish monsters as often as not. As i said, it is structure without meaning and so it becomes an ever changing structure, unstable and swirling.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Tiamat. Totally.

As many other mother goddess of the sea or the moon Tiamat wasn't always a serpentine monster out to crush manhood and spawn unholy horrors but was turned from a nice and pretty caring motherly being into a monstrous and horrid goddess of the darkness of primordial chaos by the raising patriarchy. Meh.

I don't know how powerful you are, but either way you're nothing more than mere humans. You won't stand a chance against me, but Master Lucifer told me I don't need to hold back. So, for the first time in quite a while, I shall fight at full power!

Four turns later she's defeated. Her best wasn't good enough, etc. Really easy stuff, we did not even felt the battle.

A-are you for real? Are you really humans?

Let me see. Fluffy tail with a ribbon and a bell? Check. Fluffy twitching ears? Check. Little kawaii fangs? Check. Paws? Check. Nya Nya Prrr Nya? Check. I'm sorry, but I don't think I am.

Such strenght...

It's the power of love and goodness and friendship and justice and the rejoicing of cute things everywhere! :3

Now I see why Master Lucifer told me not to hold back...

She goes *puff* and we take the first of the two keys to Tiphereth, the Ayin key. Ayin is the sixteenth letter of the hebrew alphabeth. This is spelled Aleph Yod Nun and it's value is 130 under normal conditions, or 780 if we use Nun final instead. Ayin is represented by the Eye, but it can also mean Fountain or Spring. As a totally disgusting bit of trivia Ayin is, among the JOO, associated to the opening in the tip of, like, the, you know, thingie, and i don't want to draw paralels between the second meaning and this association.

Right now i just want to look for rabbis to facepaw straight into a wall, and with great force, and for great justice.

Ayin is also the path going from Hod to Tiphereth, it's tarot Triumph being The Devil, which is pretty cool given the meaning we discussed before, and i'm talking about the one going on about order and structures and stuffies, you perverts! :evil: The Devil has a meaning of being bound to superficial structures, a slave to patterns both corrupted and corrupting by means of obsession and adiction and dependance. Another name for this arcana is the ruler at the gates of matter.

It is interesting to point that the three paths leading into Tiphareth are from Hod, The Devil; from Yesod, Temperance; and from Netzach, Death. Yes, it's a pleasure and a joy. The interactions between those three Sephiroths among themselves, though, through the paths of Tzaddi, Peh, and Resh that link them in the lower triangle contain the main principles and basic methods of many, like, so called supernatural thingies and stuffies. It all begins there, and even if the basic stuff can be learned in such a state it can't be truly understood until after you have reached Tiphereth, as every level of the Tree is impossible to fully understand while you are still part of it and unable to watch it back from beyond and outside, so the totally unfairly hard jump from the third triangle to the second triangle can be seen as a test of character in the light of such discoveries. That's the only thing i will ever say on that subject so make of that what you will, and go research by yourself if you have any questions. When uninformed questions about that appear it's a sign a glorious shitstorm's just beyond the horizon, so i'm totally not going there. Not even for money, or cuddles.

Since big meanie Lightbane said i was being unfair, though, i'll give praise where praise is due: Most people who is not into the mysteries and stuff usually think the Tree of Life is just follow the lines. It's not. In role playing game terms you can't go from this hub to that hub until you have visited all the dungeons pertinent to the main quest and pulled a Bioware by finding the three magical thingies of gate openess. Now we return to the crossroad and, from there, go to Netzach, where a cool and funny but really easy fight awaits us.

In the way out, though, we meet our first Ryuuou Oto-Hime, the daughter of the japanese god of the sea and the mother of the first emperor of Japan. She's said to be incredibly beautiful in her human form, but she's really a scally girl and can turn into a mighty and powerful dragon at will. Or so they say, at least. I don't have first hand experience with the myth, as my Japanese is just good enough to barely play videogames with constant support by a crack team of truly elite dictionaries.

I don't know if this one's her art or i'm mixing it up with someone else's, but if it is i want her clothes. :wapanese:

Then we do what we said before we would do, and reach Netzach without further encounters deserving of mention. Just as Hod was the base of the Pillar of Form, Netzach is the base of the Pillar of Power, at times called also Pillar of Mercy. It's name means Victory, and from a religious point it would be representative of God's thought love. In the mysteries, though, it represents the whole of feelings and instincts, as well as the inertial pack mentality. Netzach is the manifestation of Fire in the mind or personality, so to say.

The Pillar of Power is so called because it is the counterpoint to the Pillar of Form, a shapeless flow that must be kept in constant flux not to be snuffed by it's own lack of structure. In hermetic and alchemic terms all the thingies on the Pillar of Power are manifestations of the Fiery Name while all the stuffies in the Pillar of Form are manifestations of the Humid Nature. And as Hod was reason Netzach is Love or Passion, and is seen as the inspiration or force that shapes that movilizes that structure either passive or efimerous towards a given goal. Without the Fiery Name to power itself the Humid Nature becomes stale and unmoving, and without the Humid Nature to manifest it the Fiery Name has the life expectancy of a fly before dissipating back into nothinglandia.

We move eastward until we hit the local fortress. As Hod, Netzach's castle is smallish and do not has a lot interesting to do, just some chats and then a boss fight. We'll begin with the chats, and we'll also visit the local Kaifuku, that since we are in the Pillar of Power, aligned to Chaos, it is red and works just like a Gaian Temple, up to having to pay a little bribe to use it if you are aligned to Law.

He wants to throw a Sabbath -- a demon summoning party. But it's a little strange to be trying to summon forth demons here in the Abyss, don't you think?

Naive little fairy, we are talking about the Aleister Crowley here! Founder of Thelema, victim of the Abyss, slave to his own fame and his repressed, well, issues. The Sabbath's just an excuse for the accompanying orgy to be had!

existence. There can't be any other human as arcanely inclined as he.

Along the way to Crowley's inner sanctum and temple we recruit a new Djinn, and once we get there we find it to be empty and devoid of any interesting activity. On the way out we come across another among the residents of the infernal boleskine, who explains the situation to us.

So we leave for the overworld to walk in circles and turn demons into experience points until the Full Moon is here, and then we return to Crowley's inner sanctum. There we meet with the man himself, the other Loch Ness monster, the great beast of revelation, Frater Perdurabo, the wickedest man in the world, the love-hate relationship that defines each an every witch or wizard to ever walk this wretched rock, all around loveable lunatic and endearing loon, the worst example there can be, the most detailed warning, the very definition of a bad influence, one of the greatest occultist of recent history, one of the worse things ever done to the good name of witches and wizards everywhere, the one guy even us kind of detractors recognize we owe so much to is not even funny, etc, etc, etc. Love him or hate him, but if you are in this business there's no ignoring him, regardless of how much you try. In my personal case let's say I truly respect his moments of lucidity, which are truly, and i mean truly as in totally and extremely without doubt, few and far between. He, like, tried, and how it went kind of makes sense if you study his life and stuff, but in the end he was far too weak and unstable and repressed for his own good and went kind of bananas.

A full moon is the perfect night for a Sabbath, but Lucifer forbade me from having one!

Am i the only one who thinks Louis is kind of setting us up, first telling us to come through the main gate and then ordering or manipulating every available local lord to try to kill us?

Aarrgh! I'm SO FREAKING HORNY!!!

Here we go. All my doubts about this one being an impostor just dissipated, like totally *poof* and stuff.

I'll kill you all to calm myself!!

I may be overly sensible to this kind of crap but i have never managed to not read that in a way that wasn't really meaning something totally different, given the context and the art of his battle form, in which he turns just afterwards, Master Therion. I feel dirty just by looking at that damn thing, and at the same time I am amazed at how well it manages to represent a particular side of Crowley.

He also has an attack called waving the staff around, which is innocent enought if you did never read Crowley's writings and journals. I did, and was left scarred for life, and so when i read that Crowley waves his staff around and does Koneko massive damage, and my mind is still dwelling on that pretty stupid double entendre about killing us to relieve himself, and his totally not subtle art... Well, that's one of my berserk buttons so omae wa mou shindeiru, Crowley-Chan.

So first Koneko puts him to sleep by means of his Gigasmasher loaded with nerve bullets in retalation for leaving him almost dead, and then it's let's shoot degenerate fish in a barrel, let's kick the pervert out of his head, and let's slash his staff to little ribbons for six turns. He never gets another turn since Koneko's nerve bullets kind of reset the timer each turn.

And i thought the Abyss would be nonstop Sabbaths...

Anyway, this nets us the Lamed key. Lamed is the twelfth letter in the semitic alphabeth, and the Path that goes from Tiphereth to Geburah. Read that again. Slowly.

:codexrage:

We leave the infernal boleskine. Along the way we come across a Zombie we did miss before because the overworld is so dark i missed the marking in the map, meh, so i don't know what was suposed to tell us upon arrival to Netzach. He does reveals some interesting information, though, that maybe throws an entire new light upon Lucifer's latter revelations. Maybe not, thought.

I was revived by Lord Crowley! If Lord Crowley died, then I'd be dead too...

We return to the crossroads and leave for Tiphereth, now. Along the way we discover you don't mess with Mister Nandi, who is a pretty cool guy and plays minigames in the Abyss and doesn't affraid of anything.

Then we reach the gate to Tiphereth, which as we had been informed back in Yesod needs two diferent keys to be opened. As we have both already we open it and enter Tiphereth, this time along the right path as Louis told us to.

Tiphereth is the begining, from our side, of the middle triangle. It is seen as the true center of each world, and that is something the gooks got alright. If we can describe The Moon as Yesod in Malkuth in Assiah, we can describe The Sun as Tiphereth in Malkuth in Assiah. It is also the seat of power of the Elemental Kings, and it is closely linked to the Vau of the Tetragramatton. The entirety of the lower tree, down from, and including, Daat, revolves around Tiphereth and finds unity on it. Totally and deeply Multikult would be a very Codex way to put it. It's also the most balanced emanation below Kether, conected to all the Sephiroth other than Malkuth, because no one loves Malkuth, and Daat, because Daat is not a real Sephira and actually has no path conecting to it but just paths passing through it.

Being the Sun, Tiphereth is also the point where that which is described by Crowley's True Will, the Chaos Magicians' Kia, the Holy Guardian Angel of Abramelin, and many other similar symbols is to be found, and indicates the point where the lower self must begin to walk the path of self destruction before any further progress can be made. And if by miracle you haven't gone totally bananas yet, now you will. There's no way around that. And for obvious reasons Christian occultists care only for Kether more than for this one.

We go back to the local city, paying a visit to Set along the way to discover he seems to be starting to wake up. Once in the city we go straight for the bar, and as expected Louis is waiting for us here. We talk with him. We also talk with the others locals for interesting rumors and juicy gossip.

your own power. Very good! I am quite impressed.

Beriah Corridor.

and has a lot of roads connecting it to many other important places in the Abyss. But recently all the roads were blocked off by Lucifer's order... I wonder why he wants them closed?

the east. You can take it to get to Chesed or Geburah. A little bit south of that is the entrance to the Yetzirah Corridor. It connects to Hod, Netzach, and Yesod. But nobody can enter the Beriah Corridor, since there's a warp in space blocking the entrance... What's going on?

That we should find out, since otherwise we aren't going anywhere. That strange girl that was loitering around the entrance may have some information about it, so we go there hoping to find her. Instead of some random local, though, we find ourselves in the presence of Gomory herself. We are truly in the jet set now. I also love her clothes in the artwork, and the camel's little hat is totally cute! :3

Hmm... So you're Koneko, eh?

Gomory, known also by the names of Gremory and Gamori, is a really beautiful and classy and elegant duchess of hell, whose main office is related to prophecy and divination, and to treasures, and to romance too. She likes Venus and Copper and is the nocturnal goetic spirit of the second decane of Libra, from October 3 to October 12. The lesser arcana related to her is the Three of Swords, and as so she's, to put it somehow, an inhabitant of Binah in Yetzirah. All this also means she's the negative, destructive, or Yin aspect of the Lordship of Sorrow, auspiced by Saturn in Libra. She's a very dangerous demoness, so seen, but also very important, and very close to the pew pew aspects of Dark Mother Goddesses such as Kali .

In the games she's represented as being vewy, vewy, vewy close to Lucifer indeed, and a lot of shipping ensues. :3 Though given her nature as a Dark Mother As Destroyer kind of figure that's not really out of character. She rules over twenty six legions and has a magic flying camel with a cute hat. x3 She's really cool, methinks.

I see why Master Lucifer is so concerned about you.

It's the ears, right? It's always the ears. *twitches ears*

I'm Gomory. I work for the great Demon Lord Lucifer. Master Lucifer ordered me to bring you to Kether Castle.

Come on, come with me.

She then takes us with her to Kether Castle, flying above the Abyss in her magical camel. She drops us at the top, where Louis expecting for us...

To think that you'd come all this way...

I am truly honored that you decided to respond to my invitation... What? Gomory forced you to come with her? Oh my, I apologize for that. She wasn't rough with you, I hope.

... No matter. Either way, you couldn't have refused...

After all when the highest Demon Lord Lucifer...

You need to refine that act, you kind of forgot the clothes.

none can refuse.

Hey! Lucifer or not i'm totally not that kind of girl so drop the funny ideas you are having, Jerk. :evil:

Well then, Koneko, let's cut the pleasantries and get right to business.

Indeed, i don't want to be forced to defeat you now and break the storyline. ¬¬

I'm sure you are here in an attempt to figure out what's going on in Millennium, so I'll tell you everything.

As you may have suspected already those insignificant little Seraphim

Bishie wars! :3

built Millenium, thinking they were doing God's will in doing so. However, building Millennium was actually in direct contention with what God wants, and though this domineering enslavement of the citizens of Millennium disgusted me to the core, I knew that eventually that God would exact retribution upon them, so I just watched while tending to the Abyss.
But who was the one who defeated the angels? Yes, Koneko, it was you.

I kind of know that, silly.

Just who, or what, are you, Koneko?

Kitty Witch Extraordinaire, nya! :3

Not only did you defeat such powerful fallen Seraphim, but the false God that they had created!

No, the YHVH you killed in the Center was not the true God... He was created through the energies produced by the wishful thinking of the Seraphim... Who, thinking he was the true God, had been serving him all along.

Still, while not the true YHVH, he was still extremely powerful in his own right. How is it that you were able to defeat him?

I have the power of love and friendship and justice and the faith of cute and fluffy and cuddly things everywhere? :3

Could it be that you are Satan, God's instrument of judgement, punishment, and retribution?

It also has the power of love and friendship and justice and the faith of cute and fluffy and cuddly things everywhere?

That was worrying me, which is why I summoned you here.

... I can tell by the look on your face that this all comes as a surprise to you... That is good. It would appear that you are not Satan. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that everything is all right. I have seen several signs that suggest that Satan is going to reappear soon. For example, the fact that Set is starting to awaken.

Set is one of Satan's two halves. Once Set awakens, it is only a matter of time before his other half and Satan reappears. God imprisoned Set here and put him in a deep sleep in order to seal him off and wait until the day that Satan was needed again.

You see, Satan is a tool of God's wrath, a terrible instrument of destruction. If he awakens, then he will surely destroy everyone and everything. Not only you humans, but the residents here of the Abyss, that you call "demons." Everyone and everything on this world will be wiped out.

This all goes the way of both Rabbinic and Qabalistic literature, to which Satan is not an evil spirit nor a demon, but an agent of God, or even a weapon of God. Contrary to the other named angelic and divine beings of the Joo pantheon Satan usually lacks a true will, being little more than a gun you kind of aim in the general direction of Sin and Sinners and let him do his thing, though at times he is seen as not having a free will but still being self aware, and being one of the good guys he still loves humanity and, while his work is to tempt, accuse, and punish those who fall to sin he's actually praying for his victims to be found innocent during the phase of accusation. Also, though he's seen as a weapon there is little, if at all, collateral damage: Satan is not a brute savage nor a nuclear bomb but, like, the perfect Inquisitor.

And he's a totally sad and tragic figure, loving mankind but fated to spread sin and both judge and punish those who can't resist the temptation.

I am the Lord of the Abyss. I cannot just sit idly by and watch my people die. When Satan appears, I intend to fight him in one final battle. And no matter what, I must win! No matter what the cost... Even if it means my own death, I cannot let my subjects be slaughtered like so many cattle.

You could just, like, consider it as your duty as their ruler to take them all into the straight and narrow path so Satan finds no Sin in them and all that stuff, right? :3

Let me be frank, though. The odds are against me. I may need your help. But while you are powerful, I still do not know for sure whether or not your power is enough to aid me, or if you are right for the job. I must test you to make sure first.

Test me by means of, like, throwing your court and armies and vassals and friends in my general direction and hoping I slaughter them all? You are kind of a total jerk, just so you know.

Koneko, your arrival here was a bit... forced, so I won't ask you to make up your mind now. If you have the power and the strength of will to fight Satan alongside me, return here to Kether Castle. That shall be your test. If you will join me, I want you to do so entirely of your own volition. I will be waiting...

I hope you see were this is going, but if you don't then it will become obvious before the end of this Update anyway. Gomory now takes us back to where we first met, say some last words to us, and departs.

I'll be waiting for you at Kether Castle with Lord Lucifer. Good luck!

She has a pretty cool little role in the chaos path, but otherwise we will not be seeing much more of her from now on, and that's quite a shame since she's among my favorite demons. As soon as she has gone away, though, Gabriel comes to us. They make one feel herself totally wanted and needed, nya.

Daniel wants to see you. Come with me.

*zoom*

Come, Daniel waits for you over there.

This is Eden. A place located through one of those code protected doors in The Center that we had no way to open before. It's unfinished yet, though, and slowly being completed. That yellow square thing up north is where Daniel is, so there we go.

You... you heard him out, didn't you? You better not have agreed to help him! He wants to keep the world from attaining peace, and to do that he first plans to destroy Millennium!

Yes, the Elders went too far, but still, thanks to Millennium, the people have been able to survive in this world! We can't allow him to destroy Millennium. There have been far too many sacrifices already!

He kind of has a point, methinks.

Let us fight together to attain a true peace!

Koneko!

Daniel!

But we need to deal with Lucifer. He intends to destroy Millennium! In order to achieve that end, he is trying to awaken Set, who is sleeping in Tiphereth, in the Abyss. Eden here is still under construction, so I can't leave it. Could you go ahead to where Set is sleeping? We need to find out what Lucifer's minions are planning...

So it's back to the Abyss, but Gabriel isn't going to take me there so i'll have to walk. While looking around for Eden's exit, though, we discover Gabriel's not playing taxi for us because she's busy busy looking for those worthy of salvation.

And then she is bringing those to Eden. As we will discover when we return from the Abyss, though, she's not being precisely loose with the entrance requirements, and to have a crisis of faith after being denied a place in Eden is the new rage among Mesian followers. I wonder, though, why are they doing this in a moment like this?

For now we leave, though, and explore the area of the uppermost level of Millennium that we could not access before. Then I remember Mariah gained the Toraport and Toraest spells when leveling after the battle with the false YHVH so i teleport straight to the last terminal i saved in, that being the one in Tiphereth, instead of walking all the way to Holytown and then Transmiting through the local terminal. We go straight to Set's temple, and find Gomory busy.

Are you trying to stop me!?

Before I can answer, though, the distraction proves potentially fatal for both the human world and the Abyss, as Set awakes and flies straight through the roof, leaving quite the hole in his wake. Gomory is not pleased, to say the least.

Now Satan will revive for sure!

Whoops... I'm vewy vewy sorry, nya? :3 She leaves and so do we, talking with the locals along the way back to the Terminal Stone.

It seemed almost as if he flew off in response to somebody calling him.

Who may that be? It's not like there are many characters still alive, in any case. Through Tiphereth's Terminal Stone we go to Holytown's Terminal, and from here walk back to The Center. People is starting to get nervous about that whole Eden business, when not totally hysterical.

The only thing I believe in now is money!

:facepaw: Why would they want to leave you outside, I wonder? It's so totally unfair!

Could it be that God has made a mistake somehow!?

I'm sure he did, dood.

Surely this is because I am not worthy of God's salvation.

love and worship God. It should be about time for me to be saved too...

You kind of missed the point so don't hold your breath. We go into the bar but it is all but empty, with only the shady guy still here. We talk to him, and he gives us the code to the area of Millennium where the entrance to Eden is located, though that isn't really useful by itself and only the truly worthy can enter Eden itself.

Looks like he intends to settle this once and for all, and take over the Center entirely! The passcode he used was... 347.. 347... 347... damn! I can't remember! What was that last number?

This isn't even worthy of the name of puzzle since there are only ten diferent possible options, but the answer is 0 anyway. As we are before the gates of Eden the two Cherubim flanking the entrance receive us. Those are the old school and harcore kind of Cherubim, though, not the fat naked babies of Rennaisance. In Rabbinic literature the entrance of Eden was flanked by two Cherubim, and some this angelic order was among the first bunch of thingies built in creation. They are thought to have no definite form but to take a really complex symbolical shape that makes most demons look like normal stuff spawned from a sane mind but that is usually simplified for most representations to a shape similar to that of a winged sphynx or a shedu since it's kind of similar, and also because they were also commonly seen as guarding the entrance to important places in pairs.

waiting for you.

God surely has good taste. :3 We go straight to Dani-Kun and report that OMG Evil Set Thingie has awakened and we are all going to get eaten and stuff. He, well, kind of surprises us.

Odd, somehow this all seems familiar to me.

:shock:

I feel like... like I'm trying to remember something...

I have this weird sense that set might be coming here, to me...

So this is it, boys and girls and trannies. The world's truly comming to an end, Lucifer is preparing himself to wage war against Satan, who just happens to be our last friend alive and was doing the acussing and the judgement kind of subconsiously already, and we are going to be in the thick of it all while Gabriel is busy getting all the worthy inside Eden before things start exploding thanks to whatever Lucifer's trying to do with all that Magnetite Moloch's burning for power and whatever is beyond the constant tremors and earthquakes.

In any case, though, right now we have something to do. We leave Eden, return to Tiphereth, buy items, and leave for the corridor. Regardless of what side we choose we will have to reach Kether Castle, so we may as well start defeating the remaining lords while there is nothing else to do. In front of the passage's entrance, though, Louis is waiting for us!

Goodbye forever!! Because I'm going to kill you here and now!!

I can't believe Master Lucifer overestimated a little nobody like you.

¬_¬U Someone's asking to get befriended.

There's no way that you're Satan.

Did the fact that Set did totally ignore me upon waking up enlighten you, or are you just random guessing?

And there's no way that you're the Messiah, either. You are just an ordinary, foolish human. And I'll give you a death fitting of such an ordinary, foolish human!

We already met Astaroth before so there's no need for introductions, though I liked his art better in Shin Megami Tensei, even if it was so totally double entendre it came as crass instead. He has the party wide Ice and Electricity spells, and has a somewhat high evasion. We slaughter him in six turns, meh.

Satan, Messiah... I don't care whatever you are. Please... restore me to my rightful, sane form as the beautiful goddess of fertility, Ishtar...

I'm such a bitch sometimes, and Lucifer is such a jerk for sending all those guys to their deaths just so he can, like, test you. We move towards the entrance of the path going to Geburah and Chesed, but as we get near we feel a pull from that sinister void beyond.

We surrender to it and go spiralling into the void! And the place that receives us is all the evidence we needed to confirm our fears about this place: The void itself was Abaddon's Maou form! And we are, like, inside of him now. To make things worse we are not alone, but in the company of a great variety of demons, devils, angels, and many other creatures, including a new demon, Nidhoggr, the giant worm that chews on the roots of the world tree, Yggdrasil. I'ts also a very popular demon among chaos players on Shin Megami Tensei Imagine, since chaos demons are so totally ugly and monstrous and horrible in general that most players aligned with chaos on their main characters look desperately for anything remotely cute to have as pet. It is a testament to how desperate they all are for a small sliver of pretty or kawaii that Nidhoggr is one of the most favored by that crew. Meh.

This dungeon is pretty straightforward: You explore each area until you hit the teleporter room to the next one. In time you will reach a level with to teleporter rooms instead of just one, and each will take you to a diferent level. One of those has the boss, that you can't defeat without an item that Mekata will give you after you find him at the end of the other one, and so if you get to the boss first you must retreat and return later. Along the way we find a old acquaintance of us, too.

Y-you're... Hawk... Koneko... Were you swallowed by Abbadon too? Even the "great ruler of Valhalla," Madam, can't survive this.

... The Center left me control of Valhalla, and I made it a free area so lots of people would come there. The reason the Center let Valhalla flourish... is so they could use it to choose the humans to live in the Thousand Year Kingdom... I was nothing but... the Elders' hired Madam... Once I am no longer useful, this is how i end up.

... I only wish that they could have taken me and let the other people in Valhalla live...

Such a waste of a perfectly fine dress. We press forward and finally find a place we can recognize: Valhalla's slum town, still somewhat intact! And still somewhat inhabited, too. We search for Mekata behind the Gaian Temple, just as before, and talk to those we find along the way.

To think they would go as far as making Maou Abbadon swallow the entire Valhalla area... They had me completely fooled, but no longer!

Those who were being mindlessly manipulated by the Mesians will probably wake up to reality now... But it's too late...

bowels of Abbadon... I can't believe that the Center, no, the Elders would have gone as far as to make Abbadon swallow the entire Valhalla area! The Elders didn't want you to meet up with me, because they were afraid I would tell you the truth about yourself. They knew I was hiding somewhere in Valhalla, but couldn't find me, so to keep you away from me, they had Abbadon swallow the entire area. Also, the Center had no more use for Valhalla, so by using Abbadon, they killed two birds with one stone, wiping both me and the now-"useless" area in one strike.

I see that you were able to rescue Mariah from the internment camp... I thank you for that. It's a little later than I had hoped to do this, but let me tell the two of you the truth... about everything.

Koneko -in other words, you- are an artificially created human, made by the Center to become the Savior.

We had figured that much already, nya.

After the cataclysmic destruction of Tokyo nearly a century ago, the world was reduced to ashes. From those ashes, the Mesian Church tried to create the "Thousand Year Kingdom" to save the people. "Tokyo Millennium" is the result of their efforts.

Considering they had just about fifty years to build a futuristic megacity in the middle of a post apocaliptic wasteland full of demons, it's quite the achievement.

However, according to the prophecy, the return of the Savior would be necessary before the Kingdom could actually come into being. After building the city, they waited and waited for that Savior... But in the end, he never came.

Therefore, the Elders at the Center decided to create their own Savior. They thought if they created his body, God would provide his soul. And the result of that effort was you, Koneko.

In addition, with their advanced bio-technology they created four others to help guide you on the path to becoming the Savior. Gailah was made to be your partner. Sarab was made to be the administrator of the virtual world, to test the technology that would become the Thousand Year Kingdom. that everyone would be eventually hooked up to. Koinu was designed as the Anti-Messiah, to be defeated at your hands, as an effort to boost your popularity. Finally, Daniel was to be your bodyguard...

You did totally amazing work on that last one, dood. Really.

You alone differed from the other four in a fundamental way. Whereas the others were created through advanced cloning techniques, you alone started as a fertilized human egg. First, this egg was aletered and strenghened in a bio-laboratory. Then, it was implanted into the uterus of a strong, capable young woman who brought you to term.

I don't really like where this is going...

After you were born, you were taken from this woman, put in the same type of vat as the other four, and then had your growth accelerated so that a day's worht in the vat was like 10 years of aging normally. We had you raised to full adulthood within no time...

Mariah
... I-it can't be... Then... then...

Mekata
... Yes, Mariah, Koneko is the child you brought to term.

How could you do that to me!?

Mariah
...............

Mekata
I followed the orders of the Center without question, but even I could not stand this "Messiah Project"... Creating their own Savior, programming five innocent minds to do their bidding... and using my own daughter in their project as well.

So it all comes to that, right?

So together with Hanada, I erased your memories - little more than the Center's programming - and then created a diversion and escaped. Mariah... I wanted to take you with me, but I couldn't get to you, let alone have enough time to remove the memories as a Temple Knight that the Center implanted in you. And I certainly didn't expect that you would leave the Center to search for Koneko either.

... There isn't much time left. Everything that Maou Abbadon swallowed will disappear soon. I myself only have moments left. You two need to get out of here as fast as you can. Here, take this MAG Presser. This will allow you to materialize Abbadon's heart. Defeat him and escape!

Good as done, nya! And he now starts fluttering in and out of existence.

Farewell, my greatest creation, Prototype 1...

Farewell, my beloved daughter...

And then he disappears, like *poof* and he's gone. Mariah, being the sensible and understanding soul she is, does not go into retarded bitch mode as a response. O Wai... :facepaw:

Wait! Tell me more! I need to know! You are my father!? Koneko is my surrogate son...!? How!? Please exlain! Don't just disappear on me!

... Coward!!

Screw you, mom. Now we go back until we hit the floor with two teleporter rooms and go into the other one. This takes us to a level made up entirely of one tile rooms, each with two one way doors leading into another two. In the center of this floor is Abbadon's heart, so you just pick the doors carefully until you reach it.

But while my body is here, it is not here as well. To put it simply, my body is a dimensional rift, with no true form. Therefore, it is impossible for you to defeat me, if that's what you were thinking of doing. Don't resist, just let yourselves be absorbed! Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha... MAG Presser, activate!

Eh? Wh-what did you just do!? M-my body is--!!

u? You'll soon wish you hadn't done that!

This battle is ultra mega super duper uber easy nya. Most turns Abbadon either takes a little rest or buff his own defense up. Meanwhile, all of us but Chu Chu were attacking him, and Chu Chu himself buffed our attack. The main problem with Abbie's that he also has a spell, Tentarafu, that makes your demons start acting funny. This more or less means that either you cast a Patra on them as soon as possible or they will return to the COMP and you will have to resummon them. I really don't understand the point of making a completely defensive boss, in any case.

Michael told me... he said he'd have me turned back into an angel!

... That's why I did what he said and swallowed Valhalla...

Then we are returned to the point of origin, just before the gate to the path leading into Geburah and Chesed. I return to Tiphereth's settlement to recover, to fuse demons, and to seek guidance before pressing forward, but the seer just confirms what i already knew.

So next time we meet, that's what our heroine will do. She will break through the Geburah fortress, slaughtering the twelve devas as she goes. She will also take the Messiah for a last encounter with his lost partner, and she will defeat a compassive Demon Lord who's trying to save the souls of the damned just because she can and it gives good XP. She will maybe try to solve Ishtar's quest if she feels like doing so much fusing for a high level demon she will have to let go, too, and finally she'll fight through the many floors and traps of Chokmah's tower, where...

... Mara the demonic evil tentacled, like, stuffiethingie with a little mouth and a chariot rules and protects the entrance to the land of Kether and Lucifer's castle! Goot thing I fused myself a Lorena Bobbit Persona back in the velvet room, nya.

And then the final battle for the soul of mankind will begin. so stay tuned for some epic pew pew! Heroism, here we come! x3



'till next time!

 

[lightbane]

So, the apparent love interest was the protagonist's mom? Japan at his finest. Plus it seems that Crowley would be eventually reincarnate and take the form of Rance-sama

Anyways, is there a third option where you slay mister L so that you no longer have to suffer his smugness?

 

[Cenobyte]

Wait... so Mariah is your mom and can be banged?

btw, @ Lightbane: Nah, Rance and Crowley have completely different characters. Crowley was something like a mad freak obsessed with sex, women and the occult. This is btw a fairly common pattern in occultism, at some point or another you end up in sexual phantasies and rituals (for example, there was a dude who claimed that you could unlock a special metaphysical energy via orgasms, if you have the right sex techniques ).

I think the "horny Crowley" is a fairly amusing hint towards his RL character.

 

[lightbane]

Wait... so Mariah is your mom and can be banged?

btw, @ Lightbane: Nah, Rance and Crowley have completely different characters. Crowley was something like a mad freak obsessed with sex, women and the occult. This is btw a fairly common pattern in occultism, at some point or another you end up in sexual phantasies and rituals (for example, there was a dude who claimed that you could unlock a special metaphysical energy via orgasms, if you have the right sex techniques ).

I think the "horny Crowley" is a fairly amusing hint towards his RL character.

But rance is obsessed with the first two things (and perhaps the 3rd, providing it gives him women to fuck) I recall one Torchwood episode where a female alien sexed several men to absorb the energy that an orgasm produces (supposedly the strongest energy on the universe). Unfortunately the process disintegrates the male.

 

[Black Cat]

As i understand it the problem with Crowley wasn't so much he liking girls, sex, and the occult, as this combination is really common and many practices and disciplines and techniques involve single player, coop multiplayer, or free for all multiplayer, so to say, sexual elements. The problem with Crowley was his own unstability and repression, his daddy issues and the fact that he did not like girls as much as he did like boys, a fact i don't think he ever managed to come to grips with, among other things.

He was also a really good occultist, and every now and then you get one of his more rambling texts and say, like, le fuck? And you leave it without a second thought, and by chance return to it three years later after much more research and the like, and you notice the rambling text wasn't really rambling but a really insightful and to the point description of something, with all but the core of the matter trimmed away. The combination of his mental state, the nature of the topic, and his totally unique use of language, since he had delussions of being a poet too, makes him totally obscure but also very to the point.

But as everything in this topic it is impossible to separate the, to give it a random name, Magic from the Sorcerer, so in every single of his works and stuffies you can see he was really breaking down at lightspeed. Like, we are talking about the guy who popularized, and some say invented, the blood cross, a totally brutal technique to develop the Will by which you choose actions you must never do, words and letters you must never use, and thoughts you must never think. If you, though, violate this totally arbitrary law, even by accident and even a second, you take your ceremonial dagger or a razor or whatever and cut to deep slashes into your forearm, forming a cross. That every single time you do it wrong, and a cross for every single violation, even if you commit several together.

You can't go that way and remain sane.

Even compared to, say, Austin Osman Spare or Franz Bardon or any other of the both kind of popular and kind of totally crazy occultist of the late nineteenth century and early twenty century he kind of comes as an extreme case. And that's Crowley for you, everything he did was taken to the bloody extreme... Until he got bored of it and went to do something else.

And in a way i think that's kind of cool, because up to a certain point i believe he knew he was far too gone. Like, if you read his opinions and insight in the crossing of Daat it's like both a very detailed warning and a veiled self confession, though with Crowley you never know if he was really doing so intentionally or was just something he did subconsiously and kind of by accident.

He's kind of an unique character, that one. Even among witches and wizards, and boy, do we have loonies in this line of work.



Edity Edit:

Mariah is your mom, yes. And i know, i'm guilty of choosing the name on purpose, but whatever. It is kind of disgusting, though, that she's a blob of fetishes: She's The Messiah's mom and has the hots for him, she's fused with a loli fairy that also has the hots for him, she has the wips and stiletto heels thingie going on, and it can be assumed she has the virgin thingie going on, and the hardcore combat girl that becomes a damsel in distress every other time too. And maybe I'm mixing it up with one of the other games, but I think in one of the paths Gabriel expels you two from Eden saying something in the lines you are falling just like the original Adam and Eve did before. It's just, like, ewwwww. D:

My ex used to say they make her your mother because no Japanese would want nothing to do with a girl if it isn't incest too, and that they fused it with the loli fairy because loli mother incest could only boost your sales back in Japanolandia. xD

And she's a bloody Temple Knight, so she has the Battle Nun thingie going on too.

And the tighhighs. Geez, if i keep looking i will keep finding. :shock:

 

[lightbane]

Soo, Crowley was a repressed homo with inane thoughts? Could he be the original Codexer?

PS: And why stop at incest? Add some Oedipus complex, emofaggotry and some mindfuck and you could do a great/wellknown anime, like Evangelion, despite everything in that show is something that no kid/adult would never do on any circumstance Xp

 

[deuxhero]

Arlaune or Alraune, whichever is right, is a german word for Mandrake and, in turn, the title of Hans Heinns Ewers' best known novel

It's Alraune.

btw: The archangels look by no means like their religious counterparts. For example Gabriel:

And Old Ones in a game are always good... I hope Shoggoths and Mi-Go are in, too?

Dude, the angels are like, masses of eyes with 4 heads peering out from the center supported by 4 eye covered wings (Said to span 15 feet) or strange animal hybrids. Humanoid angels only appear on The Ark and and in Sodom (you know, the one that nearly got gang raped?). That picture is by some artist who has no idea what they are talking (err drawing) about.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

@ SCO
Now i'll feel like a total bitch if I don't do the Law one, doing the only ending you already saw is like totally bioware evil and stuff. D: Lucky me i missremembered and I still have some time before the final choice, yay.

But.... but... The law and chaos paths are the only ones I have seen, I want to see the neutral one

 

[SCO]

Do it like you want. I've already forgotten most of the game anyway.

 

[deuxhero]

Too late to say neutral?

 

[Black Cat]

@ Deuxhero

Given the overwhelming votes for neutral and that SCO doesn't really mind, nah, it isn't late to vote :3 i'll go neutral then. At least i think so, the game still haven't activated the scene I remember for choosing the alignment, one that was pretty similar to that one of talking with Lucifer in the Abyss and then going to Eden with Gabriel, so I guess I was mixing it up with that one and it happens somewhat later, possibly just before Kether Castle or something. My memory is kind of a mess, though, so i'm pretty confused right now. xD

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Crowley sounds like he should definitely be an honorary codexer.

 

[Black Cat]

So that's what you guys meant by CRPG... :shock:

 

[Black Cat]

Whoops. Looks like I totally messed up and my Law score is way too high to even get to pick my side, so they don't even give me a choice and I'm locked on the Law path whether I like it or not. This is the first time this happens to me so, like, totally sorry and stuff.

That's choices and consequences for me, i guess.

 

[Azira]

Goody-two-shoes, cuddley-bear Law ending! Yay! :D

Whoops. Looks like I totally messed up and my Law score is way too high to even get to pick my side, so they don't even give me a choice and I'm locked on the Law path whether I like it or not. This is the first time this happens to me so, like, totally sorry and stuff.

That's choices and consequences for me, i guess.

Seems like I get my way.. :wink:

Gneh. Was intending to write something funny here, but I've got nothing. Probably due to too much beer last night..

 

[lightbane]

CAn't you use cheat codes to alter your alignment?

 

[Black Cat]

@ Lightbane

Do I look, like, popamole to you? I would rather do the entire game again while being poked in the ribs with red hot needles than to use cheat codes! I'm feeling very insulted, good sir, and totally hurt.

Back in Shin Megami Tensei the alignment system got totally bugged, so I kind of contemplated doing that. Right now, though, i'm pretty sure it's because my Law Score is off the charts, having been taking pure lawful choices during the entire game, other than Puck's.

It's not my fault all the Chaos choices are really, like, Pure Evil Bitch according to my alignment chart.

@ Azira

"Seems like I get my way.. :wink:"

You have just genocided all heretics, humans and demon alike. And the entire mutant race.

Keep making us proud, Azira. I see a bright future for you in His service.

 

[Black Cat]

(this image actually kind of matches to the left of the one with Lucifer and the Maou)




Chapter the sixteenth; All Hail Satan.
In which our heroine kills a whole lot of thingies as she gets closer and closer to Lucifer's Castle. She also rants a lot, makes really bad feminist jokes, and cuts the Update at the worst possible moment just to make a really bad joke. And next one is the last one, so be prepared for some Epic Epicness, Nya! :3







Last time we met we discovered our next step should be to fight our way through Geburah's fortress. Before entering the route that goes from Tiphereth to both Chesed and Geburah, though, we go to the Jakyo Manor to fuse Vampire, Djinn, and Morrigan into a Datenshi Agares, who back then I was hoping I would be able to use once I picked the Neutral path for the end. Meh.

Agares, also known as Agreas and Aguares, is a Duke of the East, and as it is with all Dukes and Duchesses his favorite planet is Venus and his favorite metal is copper. He is, clearly, a spirit of fire, being the strongest during the days of the second decane of Aries, from March 31 to April 10. The card closer to his nature is the three of wands, the ruler of virtues, and this also points to us about his nature as an inhabitant, for lack of a better word, of the great sea of Binah as manifested in the world of Atziluth, and as the goetic embodiment of this Sephira's positive or creative or, like, Yang qualities. He's also one of the few demons whose angelic origin is well known and documented, being one from among the Order of Virtues in days previous to his fall.

His favorite shape is that of a quite aryan old man of peaceful and tranquil appearance riding the back of a huge crocodile and carrying a bird of prey on his fist. Among his better known offices is to make responsible and good individuals to run away with no second thought and to make runaways and profugees return, as well as the teaching of all tongues, the making of all honours spiritual and terrenal null and void, and to cause earthquakes, among other thingies. Under him are thirty one legions of infernal spirits, who were also from the order of virtues before the fall.

In the game he is a pretty useful demon of Chaos. He appears in vast numbers in Kether Castle, so having one of them with you can make that area more comfortable. He is also useful in the big epic battles at the end since having Deathbound means he will almost never be dodged, as combat techniques are much harder to evade than normal attacks.

Now we leave Tiphereth's castle and move towards the entrance of the next dungeon. It divides in two diferent paths after a short while, one going to Chesed and one to Geburah, but there is no crossroad like in the previous one, so you just have to walk around and find which exit is the one you wanted. The second basement's central area is shrouded in darkness, so you need to use the Mapper spell to navigate it. Among the enemies on this dungeon are the Doppelgangers, Yousei Titania, Yousei Oberon, Hanuman, and some we already fought before. We only manage to contract a Hanuman and a Titania, though.

Given how my luck usually works i finish in Geburah instead of where i wanted to end, Chesed. Given we are here, though, we walk to Geburah Fortress and recover at the Kaifuku and save at the terminal, etc. There is also a fortune teller here that will be of use later on, but i do not visit her right now, nor do i enter the first boss area.

Geburah, or Gevurah, is usually seen as being Strenght and Judgement, though is most direct translation would be Severity. It is the Sephira of strife, of judgement and of punishment. God going Biblical in those books of Him? That's Geburah, and that's why in some Hebrew circles it is called Pachad, meaning fear. It is strict discipline without end, without the smallest oportunity for relaxation, but it as universal as it is strict, and just the unwillingness to be judged, even in the judge itself, is seen as a violation of Geburah. This concept is going to reappear in the end, in a pretty dramatic way. It is also the application of great destruction and death to renew the structures that have grown tired, the societies that have grown decadent, and the individuals that have grown static, prey of materialism or apathy or comformism. The idea that those individuals must be judged and, if unable to break free, executed to hurry their journey through the Universe's recycling bin so they can return later without wasting time nor accumulating needless Sin, as well as to stop them from both corrupting their contexts and those related to them is pretty common in certain traditions and groups, the most infamous of which would be the now extinct Thugees, though for ourselves, today and given our context, it may seem pretty barbaric. To put it simply if Satan had a summer house it would be in Geburah, yeah. Since this is a dungeon crawler, though, the only judgement we will have to suffer is a boss rush. An easy boss rush, at that.

But before slaughtering our way through Geburah, though, we must visit Chesed. We return to the corridor and run all the way to the other end, leaving for an overworld almost totally covered in mountains. We follow the path that goes to Chesed's Fortress, and enter. A local welcomes us.

This is where lost souls that want to be saved gather. Master Dainichi-Nyorai will gran peace and salvation to any soul that seeks it.

Dainichi Nyorai is the Buddha Vairocana, which is related to the concept of knowledge and void and of all things, but in a state devoid of characteristics and distinctions. I guess he's trying to help all damned souls to reach peace and Nirvana or something like it. Though later they call him Virocana, who isn't the same one as Vairocana but the lord of the Asuras so maybe they just mixed them up or something, and really meant Vairocana. His castle is full of damned souls, though, from both this and the previous game. The first one's Ozawa, whom we met, fought, and killed back in Shin Megami Tensei.

I kept the peace there, but then an evil demon summoner came along. He and his friends shattered the peace and took my life.

I wonder whose previous incarnation would that be...

After death, I came here, but they all shun me now! Even my old subordinates from when i was youn!

Poor thing. Next are the gang from his youth, all of whom died in the nuclear war brough down by God and his Thor lackey. They all flicker at diferent times, so it's kind of impossible to take a picture with all of them on it. Meh.

The missiles came, and BOOM! Nothin' left of me. What a bummer!

Ozawa's Thug B
We're pissed off that only Ozawa lived a long time, se we won't even talk to him. He's an old fart now so he doesn't understand us young guys anyway.

Fat Man
I'm hungry...

I smell a Gaki on the making. Next one in line is Gotou, whom we met and slay back then. Geez, i'm starting to feel I need therapy.

And my dream was on the verge of coming to fruition... But then two strange youths came along and ruined everything!

I wonder how painstakingly prepared everything was if two youths came along and you, along with most of the world, ended down here... Next is a local explaining us of what Virocana does here.

Young, old, male, female, good, or evil. Master Dainichi-Nyorai will extend his hand of aid to you without conditions or prejudice.

I guess this is a good time to stop and explain Chesed, since I kind of forgot before. Chesed means compassion and kindness and mercy. Along with Geburah they represent the Coagula and the Solva of the Tree of Life, and some hebrew texts mention it as the seat of all the lower divine powers, our side of the tree's shore to the Abyss and as such the place where the divine, like, beachhead is, or something. And from here it flows below, restricted and ordered and structured by Geburah. Some kind of modern texts also say Chesed is where beings like the Buddhist Bodhisattvas and a similar ones from other traditions and cosmologies, basically human mystic and sorcerers who went beyond a certain level of enlightment or gnosis but did choose to stay behind to help the less able out of compassion, reside. That pretty much explains this whole dungeon.

And as we keep going we find more talkative dead people...

That's why I came here, to repent and seek Lord Virocana's salvation. With his aid I can become a Buddha and be one with the universe...

Because of you, I couldn't go to the Center!

That's attachement, Red-Kun. You are not going to turn into a Buddha if you keep thinking like that. I just did it so you could learn to, like, let go, nya. :3

when they caught me praying to another god. They made being a Gaian a capital offense... they wanted to wipe our religion from existence.

throughout Millennium. They attacked the church in Holytown, and I died in the attack. I feel more for the loss of the church than that of my life.

And then...

Ah, what a relief, you're not dead! But I am dead, so I can't help you any longer...

Wait, there still is something I can do for you. Here, accept the last vestiges of my power...

... We will never meet again. But I am very happy that I was able to see you and help you once more.

Farewell...

Koneko...

*sob,sob*

In any case all our stats went up by one point, and I kind of love what this says about Japan. Like, you are the perfect girl, fated to be his companion and built from the ground up to be his perfect match. You are devoted, understanding, kind, loving, cool, strong, and kick so much infernal butt he comes out as a pansy every time you two go against the armies of hell. And, you know what? You are going to have to die so he can go play incest with his retarded mom and our sales skyrocket, thxbye. All guys are jerks, and that's science.

Now let's blow this joint.

I provide salvation to any and all that pray to me, regardless of whether they are good or evil.

In case you are interested the gesture he is making is a Mudra, a ceremonial gesture loaded with a certain symbolism and which is used to focus the mind in a certain concept the same way certain symbols and patterns do, and as language itself does. In this case i believe it is the Vajra Mudra, which signifies Knowledge.

You must be minions of the evil YHVH, who casts out the many and saves only the chosen few!

I am? This should have been the first sign i was getting locked in the Law path, I guess. Though I do not remember if the conversation always plays like this if you are aligned to Law.

Taste the full fury of my light, wicked ones!

This guy's pretty hardcore. He has some decent combat techniques, gets Divine Retribution, can use Diarama, and has the same weird Kaiten-something attack Giri-Giri has in which he raises his sword and does massive damage. And Virocana also does massive damage with it, doing at a time 383 damage to Nyarlatothep. His normal attacks are also strong, going critical for 200 damage or so. Owie Owie Owie. He also has an attack in which he gathers his strenghts, hits critical, and also frozes the victim... And hits all party members! Nothing we couldn't handle, mind you. And now i feel kind of like a bitch, though in the way out we talk with a resident that makes me feel less evil. We also recruit a Raja Naga.

He is most likely only hiding himself for the time being.

Now we run all the way back to Geburah, where we find a guy we missed the first time around. He explains the local situation for us.

Atavaka, Grand General of the Myo-Os, has taken up residence here in Geburah. And if that wasn't surprising enough, he also borrowed the twelve Devas, the Shinsho, from Dainichi Nyorai and brought them here too! They've more or less turned Geburah into a massive iron fortress bristling with weapons!

... This is just between you and me, but I hear that the twelve Shinsho each have their own specific weak points. But they're so tough, that you'd be dog meat long before you could find what those weaknesses were.

Let's put it this way, yes? If you need to even find their weaknesses instead of just go auto on their behinds and wait, at most, three or four turns, you fail at the game. Once in Geburah, and before starting to kill stuff, we teleport to Tiphereth to fuse Dawon, Hanuman, and Naga into a Hecate.

Hecate for a long time. At your service.

I was still preparing demons for after picking my side, and while Hecate, as a recruitable demon, kind of sucks she has Necromancy, which is a very useful spell allowing her to summon dead demons as if they were alive, but dead, and immortal, and it's very useful on the super bosses. Then we return to Geburah and enter the first boss room. The Twelve Devas are each in a boss room, and only a small corridor and maybe one or two side rooms separate each boss room from the next. Also, all of the Twelve Devas say exactly the same things, changing just the name.

I am one of the Twelve Shinsho! By my honor, I shall not let you pass!

First turn i always test diferent attacks to see what the Deva reflects and nullifies. Second turn i give everyone their final orders, then auto from it to the end. This guy died at the third turn.

In the corridor beyond Vikarala there is a weapon seller, an armor seller, and a Junk seller. I buy two Railguns, one for Koneko and one for Mariah, and switch all of Mariah armor pieces to Sturm Armor. From now on it will be from boss to boss to boss to boss to boss, so let's be quick about it.

Catfight! :3 Died on the second turn, though. His name's Catura.

Shindura

Makura

Pajira

Indara

Lookie look, I got another Elephant-chan! :3

Sandira

Majira

Andira

Mihira

Catfight! :3 I did not even count, though.

Remember Alice? She's one of the Fiends now, the same ones the Demi-Fiend has to go pew pew against to get all the thingies needed for the True Demon ending in Nocturne. I got lucky a got a special encounter with her, they are totally random as far as i understand. All of a sudden the game will tell you about how you feel the presence of a powerful demon, and ask you if you want to stand your ground. If you do so, the game will ask you if you are really sure. If you answer again that you do, you will fight one of the Fiends.

We defeated her in two turns and she managed to do no damage to us since she is the less powerful of the Fiends in this one game. That means I can fuse her know if i want to, and i do, and know her formula, and i don't.

Let's get back to work.

Vajra

This is Kumbhira, and he got lucky I find mousies too totally cute as to go Om Nom Nom on them, nya. That's the last of them, too. Next in line is Atavaka himself.

Do you mean they weren't letting me win? :shock:

However, by Master Lucifer's command, I shall not let you pass!

He reflects bullets and has both Hanma and Mudo, the two save or die spells. He also tries to hit you and uses ultra weak spells on you, so meh. The only important damage I suffered was he killing Giri-Giri with a Hanma and then Koneko and Mariah shooting themselves with their new shiny Railguns. Maybe they were tyring to summon their personas.

mere humans and their minions... I am shamed... Long live... Master Lucifer...

This opens the last corridor to us, going to both Binah and Chokmah. We go towards Binah, the closest one of the two doors. Along the way we meet a new demon, the Chirei Titan.

Known as the great sea and the dark sea, Binah is another of those things that make you believe whatever that thing living in Ain Soph is, he is not really the most compasionate, like, thing. Binah means Understanding, and is usually described as a kingdom of absolute darkness, thick and palpable, and silence without end. This is not a, like, darkness in the sense of the absence of light, but darkness in the sense of a formless and chaotic substance, that can become anything but lacks direction by itself. If the Abyss had been made correctly, though, Binah would be the first thing we'd have seen after crossing Daat, with all it entails.

It is also the higher point of the Pillar of Form, and the most pure feminine force in a given world. That's why, i guess, in the game it is ruled by Ishtar, the whimsical and deviant and capricious goddess of fertility and war, whose love was as desired as feared, for few survived her attentions, or her anger and cruelty. Her symbol was an eight pointed star, which in diferent shapes and ways has gone to become the symbol of the primal chaos, the humid darkness from which everything that is, human and monstrous, material and etheral, came. In hermetic lore the Sea of Binah would be the Humid Nature, or it's equivalent in a given level or world, and in shivaist lore it would be Kali herself. It is the second letter of the holy name, the Tetragrammaton, and has most of the qualities of Yin, if you are into Taoism and related thingies.

There isn't much to do here, though. We meet a couple of new demons and talk with a lot of people while exploring around the shore and the castle. In the center of the castle there is an empty boss room, to which you must take Astharoth, if you have it, for him to become Ishtar once more, and then you can fuse her if you want.

to bathe. I met this horny skeleton prick back in Geburah just dying to take a look.

Not even death can change the nature of guys.

But there is nobody here capable of sowing that harvest any more, so it goes untended...

Then we look around until we find a small spot of the shore which is diferent to the rest. That's the place where that girl we heard about bathes, and it is very important in the path of neutrality since the only way you can fool the Cherubim at the gates of Eden and the guardian heads of Kether Castle is by stealing her robes. I guess for the japanese any excuse is a good one.

With robes stolen we return to the corridor and head for Chokmah. Along the way I recruit a new Kerberos, as well as a Yama Nyx, the greek goddess of night. Then we arrive at our destination, Chokmah, which means Wisdom.

Chokmah is the, like, male edition of Binah, and where that Sephira represents the feminine and dark aspects of the Tree in it's higher and most pure form, Chokmah does the same with the masculine and light aspects of it, its Yang and expansive qualities. I could go on and on about the mystical and philosophical and symbolical and practical meanings but, like, i'm not the best person to talk about Chokmah, as my path kind of rejects the balance most witches and wizards and occult freaks look for, instead pursuing Gnosis only with the Water, Dark, Feminine side of the Tree. So, like, let's leave it at that I know more about Mexican Shamanism than I know about Chokmah, and all I know about Mexican Shamanism is that it is something Mexican Shamans do.

Anyway, in the game Chokmah is ruled by the evil tentacled demonic, you know, stuffiethingie and the same could be say of most guys I know, so I bet the japagooks did their research for this one, ha ha ha. And went full introspective, too, ha ha ha. Also, Chokmah's Castle is a huge Tower, because all guys do nothing but look ways to compensate all day long, ha ha ha. Okay, enough with the terribad jokes. Sorry.

This keep lacks Terminal Stone, instead having only a Recording Stone that will save your game but not send you to other places, nor you can travel to it from other places. Each floor also has a gate, now barred by Mara's power, which comunicates with a shortcut you can use to go from the first floor to the top one without having to run through all the tower again. And one of the main floors is full of traps, and other full of pits that throw you back to the previous one. Meh. We slaughter, we pew pew, we reach the top. Easy as pie.

You look rather powerful but I wonder if you have what it takes to enter Chokmah Tower... The source of intelligence?

:facepaw: Chokmah is the center of Wisdom, not of Intelligence. As in inspired wisdom, or as in consciousness and awareness. Though... Ha Ha Ha... I'm in the presence of the male source of Intelligence? Ha Ha Ha. Sorry, couldn't resist.

If you are truly wise, you will surely agree to my proposals.

Sure, don't worry. This is the first time i hear that one, totally.

First, in celebration of your arrival, let me give you 999.999 makka.

Totally No, who do you take me for? :evil:

Oh? Not interested in money, are you? Very well then, let me raise you 10 levels.

No, I'm totally sorry but mom always said i should not to accept thingies from strangers, and from tentacled demonic talking stuffiethingies that rule vasal kingdom of hell in particular.

Ah, I see. Being as strong as you are, you have no interest in raising your level any further? Understandable. All right then, I will give you the entire world.

Geez, i never heard that one either.

Both Satan and Lucifer will kneel before you in deference.

They already do! I have kawaisa, nya. :3

You are wise not to give into your desires! Very well then, I shall fight you!

I was so totally hoping you would say that. :twisted:

Mara's really easy, even if he reflects bullets. He does little damage to my overpowered party and in turn gets hurt for a lot of damage, in particular for that attack technique the black elephant has, and even more when combined with Chu Chu's attack buff. More so, he does not have a very high initiative, so Nya-Chan always goes before him when using magic, so you can use Tetrakarn and reflect Mara's physical attacks back to him each and every turn. And did I mention he only uses physical attacks? Totally pwned.

Now we can finally teleport to Kether from Mara's room any time we want to, yay. In Kether we find Lucifer's Castle, but a last barrier stands in our way: Lucifer's version of the two Cherubims barring the gates of Eden.

Soul of the left gate
Master Lucifer lives here.

Soul of the right gate
Master Lucifer ordered us not to let anyone pass.

Soul of the left gate
Master Lucifer ordered us not to let anyone but servants of Chaos pass.

Soul of the right gate
Would Master Lucifer allow this one inside?

Soul of the left gate
No, Master Lucifer would not allow this one inside.

Both
By Master Lucifer's orders, you may not pass.

We decide to return to Geburah to talk with the fortune teller there. Along the way we meet Hecatonchires, who I only know is kind of a side figure of early greek mythology because Wikipedia told me. :3 He's ugly, though. Then we get to the fortune teller.

So, as always, we teleport to Holytown from Geburah Fortress and then walk all the way to Eden. Along the way I fuse Nyx, Virtue, and Agares to get a Behemoth, a demon of Hebrew lore and medieval Demonology related to the vices of the stomach.

His story is kind of sad, though, as he is said to be one of the three great beasts to have been designed by God for no other purpose than to be roasted and served as part of the great feast to celebrate the coming and victory of the Messiah, so he is one of those among the inhabitants of hell, though he isn't really a Fallen Angel, to actually have a pretty good excuse to rebel himself, along the lines of I don't want to be roasted and eaten by no Messiah!

In Hell he is thought to be a buttler and cupbearer, and it is said he has a beautiful singing voice. God is said to have created him in a way that no one but him could kill the beast, i guess that to ensure no one tried to steal his feast. That's why he is such a good tank, i guess. And maybe all the fat is helping, too.

We then return to Eden, which has been already finished. Also, Gabriel has been busy bringing all the worthy here, so many are here now, waiting for whatever it is about to happen.

Me neither, He must have totally no fashion sense whatsoever.

and then an angel appeared and brought me to Eden. I will work to build a new world from now on!

be chosen... Until I die, I intend to work toward building a new world!

Just when I was thinking that Millennium itself was a mistake, I heard the Word of God. Those of us that heard the Word of God were chosen to build a new world.

all those who heard the Word of God and were willing to forsake their knowledge were brought here.

:codexrage:

I can forgive the Japagooks from mixing this one up since i don't think they even got close to read the good book, much less venture into the weird worlds of theology, but it also has become so bloody widespread in western culture i'm starting to believe no one does the barest research before opening their mouths. It wasn't knowledge per se, for fuck's sake, it was knowledge of good and evil. As in, like, duality? In Qabalah, and in some hebrew texts, and even in some apocrypha and stuffies, the, like, thing in Ain Soph is beyond Good and Evil, as it is beyond all dualities. That's why Kether, the gate to beyond of each world, is above the duality of the two oposite pillars. In the Tree of Death, the Qliphot, the dark shell of Kether is duality.

This is also expresed in the Garden of Eden itself, from which depending on the telling either flows one river than then divides into four other rives or from which straight away flow four rives, being symbolic of Eden being a representation of both the Ain Soph, from which the four worlds flow, and the Akasha or Void or Aether or Tao or whatever, from which the four classical elements flow. At least the they actually got that part right with Eden atop The Center, the very core of millenium, and surrounded by both the Four Elements and the Four Worlds. Even The Center's shape, a four sided Pyramid, is representative of Eden, the Five Elements, and Enlightement, so they were well enough informed as to get the Knowledge thingie right, hmpf.

able to kill things would hear God's voice and be brought to Eden! I don't know what use I will be, but I guess this is fate.

Don't worry, killing things is what the Messiah does best so you can, like, be one of my apostols from now on.

She felt pitty of your looks?

I was destined to live in the new world!

Sure thing. In the northernmost corner, where Daniel was before, there is now, like, a tower or something similar, but i forgot to screenshot it. We close to it, but Gabriel stops us. In the next update, though, you will see what was hidden beyond it, at The Center's apex.

... Daniel is to the south. Go talk to him.

Yes, Ma'am. We move southernmost corner is now, and among some trees we find Daniel waiting for us. Just the look of this place gives a bad vibe. Something big is totally about to happen.

Uh Oh.

I know who I am and why I am here. I know why I was born, what my job is, and what I was destined to do. And now, I am going to return to my true form.

Look, my... my lost other half has returned to me!

Who's that pokemon?! Keep tuned to discover it, and to witness the ending of the riveting tale of zionist conspiracy, biblical revelation, demon summoning, and dungeon crawling! Also, Satan has a Starship and goes Exterminatus on all creation!

'till next time!