Darkon’s Elegy of Madness — First Observatory (22 Years Ago)
First Observatory — One Night Before the Wedding
The guide places First Observatory twenty-two years before the present, two years after the preceding Astravia Past episode. The main route follows Liebestraume No. 3: nine tasks from King Darkonis’ Diary lead to two from Alprecha. A separate request from King Drago follows Pisces Ishtar. These source conditions describe the authored route, rather than a recorded playthrough.
Darkon has commissioned a portrait of Suki in her wedding dress, despite the supposed bad luck of seeing the bride dressed before the wedding. He calls her breathtaking; she protests his constant praise, then says he will always be her Prince Charming even after becoming King. She wishes his father could have attended the wedding. Aurola asks about the trial now that King Drakonis has died.
Darkon says he has one night to reach the inner chamber of the First Observatory, where his ancestor first met Alprecha. There he expects to inherit the ruler’s secrets and authority, giving him the power to dismantle the monarchy. Suki believes in him but asks why she and Aurola cannot accompany him. Aurola explains that only rulers know what waits inside, and that younger heirs have often inherited because the eldest failed the trial. Suki asks how they could live with themselves if they were not there to save him; Darkon promises they will never have to face that worry.
Darkon needs them to hold Astravia together. He fears Drago may act rashly, threatening Suki or civilians because he knows Darkon would yield for their safety. He sends Suki and Aurola to an inn whose owner he trusts. When Suki protests about protecting civilians, he assigns that duty to Regulus, Dene and Algie, who will coordinate if Titania sees Drago move. He asks Suki to let him be the Hero this time. She agrees to wait, just this once. Aurola promises to care for Suki and thanks him for trusting her with Suki and his chestplate. Darkon asks both women to stay safe and promises they will be together again the next morning.
In his diary, the dead King addresses Darkon as a son whose safety still worries him. He describes death as returning to their Progenitor’s embrace and a promise of reunion, rather than something he fears. The trial for the crown, however, is harsh and dangerous: it scarred his mind so deeply that he remembers it clearly. His diary is intended to guide Darkon through it.
The diary says an heir must prove worthy of being Alprecha’s Beloved by shedding tears, offering blood and sharing secrets. It describes the first King as meeting his dear wife through the trial. Royal combat training, it explains, was intended to prepare heirs for the Observatory’s beasts and defenses; their ability to conquer was a byproduct. Younger sons and daughters became rulers when their elders failed. The King insists Darkon will succeed.
The King restricts the Observatory’s secrets to the ruler and the ruler’s heir. His own father’s diary gave him no warning about what he would discover. He resented that silence, yet now wants to shield Darkon from Alprecha’s secrets for as long as possible. He warns that the revelations may change how his son sees the world and himself.
Aries Tammuz — The diary directs Darkon through a library into ruins around which the first King built the structure. A wall button takes a stinging blood sample to verify royal lineage; finding that button is the objective. In the completion text, the King admits he does not understand the mechanism. Earlier scholars copied and reverse-engineered such devices, explaining Astravia’s security beyond ordinary locks and keys.
Scorpio — The button’s noise is expected to draw scorpions into an Observatory forbidden to everyone but the ruler. The task calls for eight crushed scorpions. The completion text says earlier rulers feared venom, while the King could enjoy meals without worrying because Alprecha’s protection made a peasant fall ill instead of him. That protection had not yet extended to Darkon. The King also recalls Drago pretending to have been poisoned for attention until his father began ignoring him.
Leo — The diary warns that lions from the surrounding snowfields will stalk the heir after the scorpion fight, assuming he is weakened; eight lions are required. The completion text recalls speculation that the ancestors’ greatest achievements were once killing wild beasts. After Alprecha’s blessing, lion-pelt trophies gave way to foreign rulers’ heads. The King calls that practice tacky and says such trophies are absent from his castle.
Lugal-irra Meslamta-ea — Beyond the unlocked door, the heir must ascend a ladder and repeatedly destroy fast-repairing turrets until their repairs stall. The objectives are one ascent and eight turrets destroyed. The King says two turrets have guarded the route for centuries, while the first King and scholars dismantled a third to reverse-engineer guns and motion detection. They could not perfectly reproduce the self-repair system.
First Observatory — The Ship’s Broken Record
Virgo Shala — The King warns that ancestors lost their chance at the crown by rushing ahead. He asks the heir to scout the strange surroundings without alerting the creatures. The completion text calls the substance coating the floor and walls the Grand Star’s embrace, a sign of approaching her heart. He says it sprang from the same well that nourished Astravia’s soil and protected it from starvation.
Sagittarius Pabilsag — After scouting, the diary calls for eight creatures hunted and their carcasses saved; the malformed creatures would otherwise pursue the heir toward the sanctum’s locked hatch. The King claims the first King was perfectly compatible with the Grand Star, while these creatures show what happens when the unworthy receive her blessing. He says no one knows what they were before. That explanation remains his account of their origin.
Libra Shamash — Removing a red substance and viewing the Black Box are the two objectives. The diary calls the Observatory a ship that supposedly traveled among stars. The King cannot fathom that journey or the recording and hopes Darkon will see a truth he could not. In the completion reply, he notes that its Shadowscythe and dragons differ from current records, perhaps because both have changed over immense time. Dragons, he says, forsook Astravia. He regrets never meeting one and wonders whether his son will.
The Black Box presents an audio-to-text record. Its Navigator warns that only six minutes remain to reverse the ship before everyone dies. The Commander invokes the Shadowscythe’s intolerance of cowardice and threatens the Navigator’s head. The Navigator reports fleet-wide retreat orders: the Dragons have activated a Hyper Ladder to escape, and the ship will be caught in the blast if it stays. When the Commander orders the First Officer to remove the Navigator, the First Officer instead announces a takeover. The Commander’s protest breaks off beside a written impact sound.
The next section has the First Officer declare the Commander incapacitated. Pilots have two minutes to return their mechs to the launch bay or be stranded. The First Officer requests engineers, reports thrusters at sixty percent and gives the Navigator authority to direct the Helmsman. An initial misheard heading is corrected from one hundred fifty to one hundred forty degrees. As the ship accelerates, the estimated escape window is two minutes, but thruster capacity falls to thirty percent. The Second Officer’s warning to turn hard to port is cut short.
After a corruption warning and a skipped record marker, the Helmsman reports complete thruster loss. The Navigator reports casualties in the fifties and tries to contact the Second Officer, whom the First Officer says is down. According to the First Officer, a straggling Dragonoid’s head struck the left wing. The Navigator sees the Dragons climbing the Hyper Ladder and fears the blast. The gate, their last option, still malfunctions. Asked for further direction, the First Officer answers that it is pointless.
Another corrupted skip resumes with the Navigator trapped beneath hull wreckage and all comm lines dead. The Navigator wonders whether they died, then says the Dragons escaped while the ship was caught in the blast and sucked in. The bright surroundings might at first suggest the Sun, but the light seems too gentle and too red. Blank entries remain for an unidentified speaker. The Navigator recognizes the First Officer despite a shredded face, then cries out as that face changes. A final warning says no further records are recoverable. The damaged date and missing speech do not supply a definite destination or explain the change.
Auriga — The final door was modified by the first King’s people at the cost of lives. It no longer opens by key or code, but detects whether enough blood has been shed. The task requests five creature limbs and five turret parts, with renewed destruction if the turrets reactivate. In the completion text, the King advises a pause to reflect: Darkon entered the Observatory as a Prince and will leave as a King.
Pisces Alrescha — The diary says the first King rests beneath his telescope, having returned in hope of finding his Queen. The objectives are to touch the telescope and interact with the monitor beside the gate. The completion text shifts back to Darkon’s father: unable to offer further consolation, he hopes he conveyed his joy in person and bids farewell to King Darkon. Whatever happens to the earth or stars, Darkon will remain his beloved son.
First Observatory — The Truth of Astravia
Darkon asks who is addressing him. An unidentified voice speaks of a connection rustling in his blood, then names herself Alprecha and welcomes him to the truth of Astravia and their family. Darkon calls her the first Queen and asks whether she has been there all along. Alprecha says she always watched over her children, but rejects the title: she and the first King were never married. Most descendants, she says, were surprised and dismayed by that revelation.
Asked how Astravia and its people began, Alprecha calls the familiar love story a beautiful fairy tale. The first King, a common man who found the ruins, loved her blessings rather than her. The Observatory was a cosmic vessel belonging to an ancient race. Before the beginning of time, that race fought the Dragons—or, she qualifies, the predecessors of today’s Dragons. The gate was intended for that war, but its technology never fulfilled its intended purpose.
Alprecha says a final confrontation caught the ship in an explosion that tore space. It entered the realm of a Primordial, the Arcana; the domain swallowed the vessel, synchronized with its systems and coalesced with its crew. Darkon asks how a ship lost in another dimension reached Lore. Alprecha says few know that this world began with the slaying of the Dragon of Time. She says its shockwave reached across dimensions and shattered the Arcana’s realm and body into twenty-two pieces. The ship may have fallen through the cracks onto Lore, she says, while retaining its connection to the Arcana.
The first King accidentally activated the gate and opened a portal to the Empress’s realm. Darkon recognizes that as Alprecha’s realm and asks what his ancestor promised in exchange for her blessings. She hears his fear and asks whether he is ready for the truth, then proposes to test his resolve.
Alprecha tells the visitor that fear will make their resolve too weak to fulfill the promise if they cannot pass her test. Earlier descendants shared that terror; those who failed returned to her. She envies emotions she has never felt and cannot understand, but insists that the fear must be overcome to earn the truth.
Pisces Alpherg — Alprecha contrasts the daylight image of her as a blessing with the truth seen at night, which the first King warned would change her descendants’ regard. The objective is to activate the portal and see her true form and their origin. In the completion text, she lists terror, sadness and disappointment, calling the last the worst response from her children. They were not above or below their subjects, nor even cut from the same cloth. She identifies herself and her children as Outsiders to Astravia, perhaps to all Lore.
Pisces Ishtar — Alprecha says asking the heir to defeat her would be unfair: survival alone will pass the test. Kinship does not prevent death on failure. The objective is one test passed. The completion reply praises the result, grants the truth and wishes that the heir’s gentle heart may beat forevermore.
First Observatory — The Price of the Grand Star’s Blessings
Alprecha congratulates Darkon and calls what follows proof of his claim to the throne. She describes him as the descendant of a child she created from a pound of the first King’s flesh. When he asks what is in his blood, she says it is the means of returning her and her brethren to their original form.
An illustrated account explains Alprecha’s bargain. The first King promised to put the Arcana back together in exchange for her blessings. She describes those blessings as spatial debris from her body sewn into Astravia’s soil. Onyx crystals nourish crops through their roots; the account says the strengthened crops would grow even if the Kingdom burned. With starvation removed, the population could flourish and draw newcomers. The drawings echo the earlier history’s castle, great eye, hands and crops, now accompanied by this different explanation of their prosperity.
Alprecha says any mortal can become Astravian by eating its food, which carries her debris into the body. Natural death returns the crystals to the soil, beginning the crop-and-food cycle again. The illustrations replace the food above two figures’ palms with falling star-like marks, then leave the marks after the figures disappear. This is the account’s explanation of the cycle, rather than a separately demonstrated biological process.
The alternative is to use Astravians as vessels for Alprecha and her brethren—a state the first King called being ready for harvest. Alprecha says the royal descendants carry special debris linked directly to her core. The protection known as Alprecha’s Beloved is meant to sustain their work: gathering mortals, turning them into Astravians and summoning the Arcana into their bodies. She presents that as repayment for feeding the people, and offers Darkon the eventual power to reshape the Universe, its inhabitants, time and space.
Darkon rejects the idea that anyone should have such destructive and creative power. Alprecha replies that no mortal has achieved it: the first King could not find a way to summon Judgement without sacrificing his own life. The ritual cannot continue without a living person named as her Beloved, so another ruler must attempt it. She wonders whether the first King died looking at the stars for answers; Darkon instead imagines him desperately seeking forgiveness.
Darkon apologizes in his ancestor’s place and refuses the ritual. People are neither tools nor fodder; they deserve long, happy lives, and the royals owe them rather than the reverse. Alprecha asks whether he understands that Astravia will lose her blessings. He accepts that consequence, saying an Outsider taught him they can survive by standing together, and asks forgiveness for breaking the promise.
Alprecha says she understands. She cannot force his hand and does not wish to. She begins proposing a new promise under which she might remain incomplete while Astravia prospers, but an unidentified voice interrupts. Drago then complains that he has listened to Darkon for hours and demands they get to the point.
First Observatory — A Crown Taken by Blackmail
Darkon recognizes something as Suki’s and demands to know what Drago has done to her. Drago calls it blackmail: he claims to have the fiancée caged and threatens to throw her into boiling tar unless Darkon gives him the throne. Darkon argues that Astravians will reject a ruler who has committed a grave crime and broken tradition. Drago counters that Darkon broke tradition too and says civilians helped capture Suki.
Drago recounts exploiting the news that Darkon intended to abdicate. He says subjects saw it as abandoning them for an Outsider, and that the Generals, however powerful, would not strike the supposedly innocent. He arranged for peasants to cry for help, drawing Suki to them; his soldiers then ambushed the women, and he boasts of stabbing Aurola in the eye. Others, he says, were too afraid of their neighbors to interfere. The accompanying images show an armed crowd confronting warriors, Aurola prone in blood, and distressed people behind a shop window. His explanation of their motives remains his own account.
Alprecha calls the family conflict unprecedented and says the first King taught her that families should not fight this way. Drago mocks her as a freakish space lump, then orders Darkon to persuade her to bless him if he wants Suki back. Darkon begs the Grand Star to comply, repeating his plea. Alprecha answers only with an ellipsis.
The next view places a vast pale-and-red hand above Drago, whose figure is drawn in red. Drago declares things as they should be and mocks the idea that abolishing the monarchy could happen without opposition. He says he does not care about goodness: he wants wealth, which cannot last while he has competition. Suki is shown surrounded by armored soldiers. Darkon cries out her name and begins an unfinished protest.
Darkon’s cry ends at “SUKI! NO, I’M-”. Later the scene shows him and Suki prone on a bloodstreaked floor. Drago exclaims that Darkon can bleed, treating this as confirmation that he himself is Alprecha’s Beloved and King. He remarks on their matching cuts, calls them a perfect pair for the first sacrifices, and wishes his brother a burning farewell.
Against a white background, Suki asks whether the person with her is Darkon and says she is glad he is safe. Darkon begs her to stay with him. She says it is not his fault and that the Astravians were tricked. With sunrise approaching, she urges him to stand up for the people and begins to say she loves him. Darkon refuses to leave her again and says he does not want morning to come. Her final reply is an ellipsis.
Darkon wishes this moment could last forever. The final embrace is presented against white; the closing image leaves Suki beside a faint outline where Darkon had been. Neither his wish nor the image explains the change, establishes a completed ritual or gives a final account of either character’s fate.
First Observatory — King Drago’s First Orders
In the post-Pisces Ishtar phase, Drago demands a soldier’s salute as the new King. Before planning his Coronation Feast, he orders teams back into the Observatory to clear monsters and harvest samples. Clerical work already irritates him, but he considers it preferable to Darkon surrendering royal power. He plans to appoint an advisor to do the boring work.
Drago says the civilians helped remove Darkon and his companions but may turn against him next. Technology has made Astravians less dependent on royal magic, allowing even people without magic to threaten the throne. He proposes disconnecting the monster-shaped battery beneath the capital and disguising this as a precaution against Outsiders copying Astravian technology.
Drago expected a beast to appear after what he calls the sacrifice of Darkon and Suki. None did, and he complains that his brother ruins things even when dead. He plans another test of the ritual during an invasion westward, with Astravia extending from coast to coast and new art filling the castle. These are Drago’s claims about the sacrifice and failed summoning, rather than independent explanations of the preceding white sequence.
Taurus Gugalanna — In this separate repeatable request, Drago orders intact research samples because Darkon’s scattered creature remains are too damaged. He is indifferent to how many soldiers must die obtaining them. The objectives are six creature samples, twelve turret pieces and one Alprecha observation. In the completion reply, he mocks Darkon’s sensitive-poet image, treats the slaughter as exposing it, insults both Darkon and Suki and anticipates the rewards of his research. The task’s captured repeatable flag does not establish a live completion or unrestricted access.