The Aerian Court Intrigue 1 - Child's Play

I've been streaming Quintessence on odd days, usually the weekends, in my chatroom, and it's been quite enjoyable going through it with someone else. While the game has some noticeable flaws, especially with its really confused and slow start, it still remains a very intriguing and compelling story, especially for being Kan's first outing. 

Of note, the middle portion of the story is a large, delicious pile of scheming, intrigue and revelations. I plan to cover it through my small series here, hopefully highlighting its great moments well for everyone else to see.

The Setup

The story centres around a drug, naturally called "Quintessence". It was developed by a brilliant physician for Aeria. Aeria is one of the two huge empires of this setting, the other being Prion. We're not given much information about the latter, though it is implied to be roughly similar in power to Aeria. Anyhow, they had plundered a foreign land(which looks roughly like a fantasy take on ancient Egypt, for what that's worth) for a powerful alchemic component and hired said physician, Kardian, to their court.

These developments were enough to encourage them to wage war with Prion, and during said war Kardian, alongside other royal officials, freely used the prisoners of war as test subjects while developing Quintessence from the plundered alchemic component. Many people died during them, and Kardian had a crisis of faith seeing the effects of these experiments.

Eventually, he felt remorseful enough to elope alongside his sister, Kaire, in tow. He got rid of his research and work, and made it look like both of them had died in an accident. Unfortunately for him, some samples of Quintessence survived the incident, and work on it continued. However, some time after he left, both Aeria and Prion signed a peace treaty, likely because neither had made much progress.

Sometimes afterwards, Lunair was sent to spy on Korbin, the protagonist's village. What makes this notable is that Lunair is the direct heir to the Duke of Aeria's Third Quarter(essentially a prominent duchy of Aeria) and a subject of Quintessence herself. As for the drug, we see that it has four main effects: it lets users move extremely fast, sense things much better, quickly heal any bodily injuries, and transform to anyone, as long as they are in contact with a part of their body, usually a strand of hair.

However, since Kardian didn't complete his work on it, it also has a particularly nasty side effect - it speeds up the body's workings drastically, wearing them down much faster than normal and consigning the user to a early death. Her dad was well aware of this, in fact he was the one who hired Kardian in the first place! So him agreeing to administer her the drug regardless speaks volumes of how little he cares of her life.

Getting back to Kardian's story, he ended up moving to Korbin and working as a pharmacist there. Lunair nearly had her cover blown one day and decided to kill Revier, the protagonist, to try and cover her tracks. However Kardian caught her attempting this and incapacitated her in the nick of time. In a fairly long sequence, he explained his backstory and also dropped information about Quintessence's side effect on a shocked Lunair. Both he and Kaire had taken it to disguise themselves among the Prionese, accepting their eventual fate, but Kardian cared for Lunair when she was a kid and so vowed to look for a potential cure in the foreign lands looted before(I'm going to call this location "Is-fahr" in all future sentences to make it easier to reference).

Naturally, Revier has an extremely complicated relationship with her. He isn't happy that she impersonated his wife to spy on his village, nor does he approve of her poor attitude towards others, especially the Prionese. However, he knows that she's the only one who has any idea where Serai, his wife, is held - she was taken as a prisoner of war, and is still held somewhere in Aeria. He steals some Quintessence from Kardian to disguise himself, and somehow convinces her to help him rescue Serai.

During their adventures, they discover and briefly fight someone with an advanced version of the drug, which lets them take the form of animals in addition to all other aforementioned effects. Not much is known of them however - they were another Aerian spy stationed in a different Prionese town who took to stealing their stuff frequently, and only showed up fully cloaked in black robes outside of battle.

The Intrigue

So that was a lot of setup to take in. Then again, I just summarized roughly three and a half chapters' worth of story there, most of which is required to understand what happens for the next few parts.

For this, we start somewhere unexpected - all the way back just after Kardian and Kaire escaped. Lunair, still a child at this time, understandably remains upset about their apparent death. She tries to console herself by visiting Kardian's room, asking her father to attend her piano sessions, and playing her favorite songs, but nothing works. It's worth noting that even this early in her life, we get to see just how poorly the Duke, Rayne, treats his daughter. Here's how he reacts to her request:

Rayne: I will come and listen after you learn some songs other than that "To Realize".
Rayne: (slamming the desk with his fist) It's a folk song from Prion, and we're at war with those mongrels.

Lunair: (shocked) But-... I thought you said you liked my playing...!
Rayne: Just leave me now, would you? I got a lot of work to do.

Daddy of the year, right here.

Anyway she gets fed up and sneaks out of her palace, curiously seeking to observe what life outside looks like. On the way, she runs across a few boys playing sports, and muses about what a carefree life they lead. One of them notices this, and coaxes her to join. The other boys are reluctant to accept her, but the boy, Huey, sticks with her. Eventually the two form a friendly bond with each other.

In response to this, Dirk, a high ranking general in Aeria's military and Rayne's right hand man, raises concerns about Lunair becoming too socialized and slipping out of their grasp. All he says is this creepy line in response:

Followed, of course, by a few reassurances.

Shortly afterwards, we cut to Lunair and Huey having a moment on a rainy day. Huey talks about how his parents are both involved in the war, then cheers Lunair when she complains about how little time anyone in the palace gives her, pointing out that she's pretty wealthy and that most kids would envy her position greatly.

Anyway, Lunair invites him to come to the Duke's place to hear her piano, then visits Kardian and Kaire's graves to reassure their spirits that she's gotten over their death now, because she has a friend to talk to. Naturally, this is when things go wrong - Huey gets imprisoned for allegedly stealing, and she desperately tries and fails to get her out. She then spends her days visiting him in his jail, until one fateful day.

Lunair finds a music box that plays "To Realize", and decides to make him listen to it, in lieu of playing it for him on the piano. But by the time she arrives, he's gone, and his cell is all bloodied. She's completely broken from this, and relegates herself to the piano room from then onwards, continuously playing "To Realize". Dirk is concerned about her, but Rayne calmly states that everything is going to plan. Huey then steps in and reveals that all of this(well, at least the false imprisonment and execution part) was arranged by Rayne - he was paid to act like a prisoner and vanish before she could get the music box to him.

Thoughts

All in all, this is a very solid start to the intrigue, and a great play of various characters' relationships. We get to see a lot of Lunair's early motivations; how she was manipulated emotionally to shut herself off from everyone, and to grow into a really distrustful person willing to engage in shady dealings herself. Her dad, Rayne, is also characterized incredibly well, as this dirty scheming head of his province willing to play schemes with even his own daughter. There are aspects of this story that stretch credibility somewhat, like Lunair finding a music box playing a folk song of her empire's enemy or Rayne having detailed information on Lunair's whereabouts even after she sneaks out of the palace, but for the most part they are minor flaws that don't affect the story that much.

Next time, Lunair enters her province again, this time an adult! I'll see you then.

Next: The Aerian Court Intrigue 2 - Royally Arranged