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    Fire Emblem Everyone Plays Fire Emblem - Week of November 24, 2019

    November 24, 2019

    Fire Emblem Everyone Plays Fire Emblem - Week of November 24, 2019

    Everyone Plays Fire Emblem - Week of November 24, 2019

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 12:10 PM PST

    Welcome to EPFE! This thread is a casual space that can be used to discuss any Fire Emblem playthroughs you have going on. Unit screenshots, general impressions, frustrations... gameplay stuff that would otherwise be removed as a standalone post under Rule 8 is fair game here. It's the same idea as the Everybody Plays Three Houses posts we had a short while ago, but not just for Three Houses.

    While you're free to ask for advice here, specific questions might get better responses in our Three Houses Question Thread or General Question Thread for non-3H questions.

    And as always, remember to tag your spoilers!

    submitted by /u/LaqOfInterest
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    Wait a Second this isn't garreg mach monastery!

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 11:29 AM PST

    I love the loading screen

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:59 AM PST

    I drew everyone [OC]

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 02:04 PM PST

    I'm late...

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 10:10 AM PST

    [Commission] Tesstament of House Ordelia - The King of Fighters x Three Houses

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 10:22 AM PST

    It's Sumia's Birthday. Say something nice about her.

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 11:17 AM PST

    Shy Marianne

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 03:51 PM PST

    Claude and Hilda from Three Houses, sharing names with Claude and Hilda from Genealogy of the Holy War which actually inspired Three Houses... things are getting complicated

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 01:08 PM PST

    [self] Gaius the candy thief cosplay from Awakening

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 03:09 PM PST

    Happy Birthday, Marianne!

    Posted: 23 Nov 2019 09:08 PM PST

    Just an update from yesterday--which group should I work on next!?

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:35 AM PST

    Drew the cotton candy girls!

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:52 AM PST

    Happy birthday, Marianne!

    Posted: 23 Nov 2019 08:16 PM PST

    I drew dancer Byleth

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 07:49 PM PST

    Got to say hello to some of my favorite classmates at Galaxycon 2019!

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 08:15 AM PST

    One will live. One will die. [OC]

    Posted: 23 Nov 2019 10:39 PM PST

    Finally got to finish drawing Shamir in Sylvanas Windrunner costume (might redo this on PS once I git gud) - OC

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 12:26 AM PST

    When This Game is On, it is ON. (Crimson Flower CH 14 Spoilers)

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 09:24 AM PST

    I know I harp on Treehouse. But when they get it. They do in fact get it. Specifically Claude's line when he summons the Almyran Navy.

    Claude: Now it's our turn, Almyra's elite! Strike the flanks of the Imperial army! Those fangs and claws the Alliance fears so much will now be their salvation!

    Like damn. That is a supremely badass line. My hat tips to Treehouse.

    submitted by /u/SigurdVII
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    Jamke deserved his small break and so I drew him relaxin'

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 12:13 PM PST

    The Cardinals - How to Control the Church?

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 10:02 AM PST

    Whatever your thoughts on Three Houses are by now, I think most will agree that the Cardinals are one of the most mysterious – and quite likely baffling – of world-building elements included in Three Houses. We are told almost nothing about them – other than Tomas/Solon's little expository spiel at the very beginning of the game, they seem to serve no purpose in the story other than to assure the player that, yes, there is some sort of clerical hierarchy in this world that we can't show you or integrate but you can rest assured is indeed there. The Cardinals are the highest echelon of the Central Church under the Archbishop, they have a meeting room in Garreg Mach that is locked until after the timeskip, and intriguingly, their identities are "a closely guarded secret". Why? With all the million other plotlines circulating throughout the game, most players will soon find other things to occupy their attention, and if they ever consider the cardinals again, likely rationalise that this was a bit of cut content due to budget restrictions, or fluff dialogue to explain away the lack of administrative Church NPCs we interact with.

    That being said, after thinking about the Cardinals a bit more, I feel as though there may be enough hidden away in the game's writing to hazard a guess as to why this secretive group exists. Who are they? What is their actual purpose, if people like Seteth can handle the administrative front of the Church without operating in secrecy? And why do they do nothing even when Rhea has been imprisoned post-timeskip? I will offer my thoughts on these questions – and hopefully others will have their own ideas.

    The White Beasts

    The other day, I found myself suddenly struck by a question that had not occurred to me before – what if the Cardinals were, in fact, the "failed experiments" that Rhea had created as vessels for her mother, and their hidden identities were her way of letting them live without giving away what she was doing? Of course, even the briefest consideration shows that this cannot be the case. Rhea was taking the Crest Stone of Sothis out of them after they died, so they can't all be alive simultaneously. Even if they were, there is the matter of the White Beasts – who, if I recall correctly, are Seiros-aligned rather than with the Crest of Flames present.

    Putting that aside, while I cannot remember if the game script ever declares them as such, people seem to have concluded that the Seiros-branded humans that became White Beasts at the end of Silver Snow are in fact the Cardinals. This would seem to indicate that not only was Rhea personally creating the Cardinals, they were masquerading as ordinary knights and priests to keep up their anonymity. That's all well and good, and assuredly Rhea needs some sort of hired help around to do whatever it is she does in her spare time, but this doesn't answer the overarching question of, well, why bother? What is Rhea hoping to accomplish with this clandestine group that is never seen nor appears to ever make decisions?

    How to control a Church, by Rhea

    On the face of it, at least, there is a simple and practical reason for the Cardinals to be anonymous to the general public – they are, if they are like Jeralt, functionally immortal. It would naturally raise questions from the general populace if people were to take notice that the Church's top officials were apparently immortal, and that's something that Rhea for one would be especially keen to avoid. Even given the almost laughable degree to which people in Fodlan are entirely willing to ignore the largest burning red flags if it simplifies their life, I don't think this is something they would miss. And yet, this explanation brings up another question mark that is almost as large – that of Rhea herself.

    Rhea doesn't age. She looks exactly the same when she fights Nemesis as she does 995 years later. And yet, while some of the Church officials like Alois pick up on the fact that Jeralt does not appear to have aged in 20 years, nobody ever makes the same observation of Rhea. So, it is reasonable to assume that, to continue the charade, Rhea periodically "retires" or dies in a freak accident or whatever, waits until everyone who knew her is dead, and then has herself reinstated as Archbishop – under a different name. This would explain both how she has retained control over the Church for so long, and also why she needs an anonymous group of clergymen under her direct control to elect the next Archbishop – her personality would absolutely prevent her from allowing even a temporary Archbishop not under her direct supervision. So, she vacates her position, then the Cardinals install one of their own as the new Archbishop. They would rotate through the different individuals, taking care not to stay too long as to give away their lack of ageing, all the while acting on Rhea's say-so, before Rhea jumps back in the hot seat. This would neatly explain how Rhea retains control of the Church and its doctrine, why she needs the Cardinals, and why the Cardinals must be anonymous.

    As for the Cardinals themselves, why are they so dedicated to Rhea? Well, we've seen first-hand how Rhea can inspire complete and unthinking loyalty in people. Either by instilling it in them from a young age, as with Cyril, or by pushing them to accept her as the ultimate arbiter of what is moral, as with Catherine. Note that I don't think Rhea is some sort of malign manipulator deliberately going around snatching up infants to indoctrinate – I think this sort of loyalty is simply part and parcel of who she is as a person, diving into the mud and going without sleep to save the lives of people like Catherine and Jeralt. Even Jeralt, cynical and jaded though he is, admits that he "used to think the world of Lady Rhea" even after possibly over 100 years in her service. Perhaps given enough time, Cyril and Catherine would have become Cardinals as well. And Jeralt… is a problem that deserves its own section.

    The Jeralt Problem

    The implications of Three Houses' wonky timeline are something that I'm sure people will be debating for years to come, or at least for however long this game remains popular. Still, one such implication is material to the question of the Cardinals and Rhea's control over the Church, which I have come to call "the Jeralt problem". It goes like this: Jeralt is over 100 years old, and he has likely been in service to Rhea for over a century as well. With that in mind, was he the Captain of the Knights of Seiros for that entire time, and was Rhea the Archbishop that entire time, without anybody noticing? How did that work?

    First off, let's consider the theory from the previous part. With this in mind, it stands to reason that Rhea was either the Archbishop or masquerading as some other clerical figure when she saved Jeralt's life, in his teens. Then, at some point she retired, and only became the Archbishop again over a century later, at least 20-30 years before Jeralt's absconding from Garreg Mach. Likewise, Jeralt would have perhaps had a whole life, then "retired", and returned as the Blade Breaker around the same time. This raises an obvious question – was Jeralt himself one of the Cardinals? I would venture to suggest that, if Jeralt was indeed participating in the masquerade to this extent, he would have had to have been one. Of course, this would only have meant that he would perhaps be called upon to assist in Rhea's orders, rather than any possibility that he would have been installed as Archbishop at any point (which I presume would be delegated to one of the more, shall we say, clerically-orientated Cardinals).

    Naturally, there are still problems with this, and my theories on the Cardinals do not quite fix the issues with the timing of events. We know that Rhea was, at the very least, going by the name "Rhea" some 20 years prior to the beginning of the game, which implies she was publicly in that character. She was also definitely the Archbishop when Catherine was at Garreg Mach, about 10 years prior to the beginning. If that is the case, it still does not clear up the question of why nobody asks why Rhea is not ageing over that time while they definitely do for Jeralt. Perhaps this was indeed an oversight, or possibly Rhea was still incognito and not yet acting as the Archbishop at that time – I cannot for the life of me remember if Jeralt's diary mentions her position at the time or just that he knows her (where do people get their script dumps from, anyway?). But other than that, this would explain how Jeralt was able to operate without question for over 100 years.

    Are they the Golems from CF Endgame?

    When I initially got to the endgame of Crimson Flower, I, like most people, took note of how the creepy Roman doll mechas had names where all those prior had generic titles. I thought it might mean something, and upon starting New Game+, I thought I had found it. I remembered the name "Chevalier" as one of the golems, and the Crest of Chevalier was right there in the Crest Stone options. So, the golems must have been powered by the Crest stones of the murdered Nabateans, I thought. It was only after a second Crimson Flower playthrough (got to fill out that Support list, right?) that I realised that I must have been wrong. There was a Chevalier, but the other names – Luca, Wilhelm, etc. – were entirely different. So, what is going on?

    In addition to that, we have the issue that the Cardinals never show up in Crimson Flower. I mean, they don't show up in any route, but it's weird that they aren't summoned as such by Rhea to defend her and trample her enemies even when she has fully revealed her identity as the Immaculate One. There is, however, the possibility that these golems were, in fact, the Cardinals, or some of them. The White Beasts were not named likewise, but perhaps that is because they had lost their minds entirely, whereas the Cardinals were still sapient even after having been made into golems? There are a few lines of evidence to support this. Other than the fact that they are named enemies tied to Rhea's last line of defence, they are also buffed when Rhea roars – a possible explanation is their link to the Crest of Seiros – and they do not show up in any other route, where Rhea is imprisoned and does not have the means to turn them into golems.

    An intriguing observation has been made by many others beforehand, that one of the golems, Wilhelm, shares his name with the original Adrestian Emperor and the one who saved Seiros from Nemesis, Wilhelm von Hresvelg. If the Emperor, the Cardinal, and the golem are all indeed one and the same, this would suggest that Wilhelm was Rhea's first Cardinal – after giving him Seiros-immortality, he would have abdicated the Adrestian throne in favour of his heir, and gone on to be one of those who would continue the cycle of Cardinals in and out of the position of Archbishop. The others might also have been her companions from that time or have been others who she added to the Cardinals over the centuries. In which case he really needed to have a talk with Edelgard. Seriously.

    A possible rebuttal to this theory is, somewhat ironically, the existence of Chevalier as both a golem and a Crest bloodline. This would suggest that, rather than having Seiros-immortality he was the progenitor of his own bloodline. What is the explanation here – and why is he the only Crest-bloodline who turns up in CF endgame? Maybe one of Seiros' Cardinals was in fact a Nabatean. Or maybe Chevalier was a descendent of one of the Elites whose blood mutated to become its own thing. I am loath to believe the naming is a coincidence, personally. Maybe the new characters introduced by the DLC will shed some light on things.

    You know nothing, Seteth

    Other than Chevalier, there is one more character whose existence is something of a question mark as regards this theory – Seteth. Seteth is the only one of Rhea's generation that we know is with her at Garreg Mach, and yet he seems entirely unaware of most of the information I have been talking about. In fact, he seems unaware of an awful lot that you would really expect him to be – contrary to his claims to share in Rhea's full confidence, he doesn't know about Rhea's experiments, nor Jeralt, nor the Cardinals, nor why Edelgard would possibly think of rebelling against the Church (come on mate it's not that hard). I get the impression that this ignorance of most of the important bits of the plot that it would be really useful for us to know is probably a mixture of a) his having only been at Garreg Mach for probably around 5 years prior to the beginning of the game, b) his description of his job duties in his support with Byleth, which mainly seem to concern the day-to-day running of things in Garreg Mach and its dependent Churches rather than the actual business of deciding doctrine or participating in the management of the Cardinals, and c) the clear and obvious degree to which Rhea hides stuff from him.

    Seteth is, like Rhea, pretty good at feigning ignorance when needing to, so trying to work out what he actually doesn't know from what he is fully aware of but chooses to appear unaware of for whatever reason is a difficult task. I think under a reasonable interpretation it's entirely possible that Seteth is unaware of the true nature of the Cardinals and of the Church's leadership and has enough faith in Rhea to just coast along without asking difficult questions, or that he knows and simply does not feel the need to bring it up in any of the routes.

    Miscellaneous points

    Could the Cardinals be other Nabateans? This would also explain their need to be anonymous, their functional immortality and how Rhea cycles through individuals to maintain control of the Church. That being said, I think this is unlikely purely because of Rhea's declaration that she is "the only one left" in Crimson Flower after the disappearance of Seteth and Flayn.

    Are the Cardinals as strong as Jeralt? If Jeralt's strength is indeed partially attributable to his Crest of Seiros it would make sense that the other Seiros-branded would have similar abilities; that being said, I think Jeralt was already an extremely strong individual in his own right, which the Crest's abilities would have augmented, but the other Cardinals would not necessarily have reached that level.

    Why aren't Wilhelm's descendents also nigh-immortal? Jeralt's longevity does not appear to have been passed down to Byleth, so it seems to be the case that the longevity simply isn't heritable. There doesn't appear to be a reason for this.

    Could the other Cardinals be the original Imperial Nobility? I thought about including this theory as I was curious if the other Branded Imperial Nobles – Duke von Aegir presumably having a blood pact with Seteth/Cichol in the same way Wilhelm did with Seiros, and whether this meant they too had increased longevity – could be the other golems we see in Crimson Flower. But there's no other evidence to suggest this is the case, and we don't know their names either.

    What about the golems in the Sealed Forest? Still thinking about that one.

    How come the Cardinals are nigh-immortal but the Vessels aren't? Three Houses is somewhat inconsistent with its handling of the mechanics of Crests versus the dragon blood we see in previous FE games. The additional longevity imparted by infusions of Seiros' blood is consistent with previous entries – we never get to see the Slithers do anything with Flayn's blood, so it's hard to say if she would have the same effect, and we don't know how exactly members of the original Imperial nobility got their Saint Crests either – whereas the Vessels created by Rhea are more akin to the Morphs and War Dragons created by Nergal and Idunn. In short, this just seems to be the way it works.

    That being said, it does create some uncomfortable implications – would Rhea have wanted an immortal Vessel, in the case that it was a failure and she needed to retrieve the Crest Stone of Sothis in order to try again? Would she have intentionally made the Vessels have shortened lives? Hard to say honestly.

    submitted by /u/bugmaniacbob
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    FE6 Hard Mode Armors Only: Final Chapter

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 12:11 PM PST

    I did it bois

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 04:46 PM PST

    Another doodle page! One for Caspar this time (yes I messed up both of the linhardts because I was being impatient)

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 05:39 AM PST

    I got bored and did an Edelgard sketch (ignore that I did this on lined paper like the buffoon I am)

    Posted: 24 Nov 2019 07:38 AM PST
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