Tear Jerker / Arknights

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

He thinks back to how his dear friend played the cello, closes his eyes, and begins to play a simple, lively melody.

With a Crapsack World like Terra, Arknights is rife with many, many moments of immense heartbreak.

Main Story

Episode 02: Separated Hearts

• The Infected from Chernobog managed to sneak into the slums of Lungmen and went into hiding. They were just trying to live and survive without being caught. But when the L.G.D. began scouting the area, while the Reunion Movement appeared from within, panic ensues all throughout. Amiya tries to calm an infected down, but her attempt failed and got hit with an Armor-Piercing Question instead. Amiya then fell silent after realizing the gravity of the Infected's situation.
  Amiya: It's not safe here. You should hurry and leave.
  Infected: Leave...? Where... would we go? There was a place we could call home... But it's all ruined now...
  Amiya: I'm sorry...
  Infected: It's not your fault... It's not...

Episode 03: Stinging Shock

• The tale of Misha and Alex (a.k.a. Skullshatterer), a brother-and-sister pair. After Alex became infected, their mother is killed fending off an angry mob attempting to lynch him, before he is ultimately dragged off by Ursus officials. After the fall of Chernobog, Misha, now infected, is forced to seek refugee in the slums of Lungmen, where she witnesses discrimination against Infected children. When she's taken by Reunion, she learns of Alex's transformation into Skullshatterer and his death at Amiya's hands. Radicalized by this, she takes up his arms and legacy and attempts to buy time for Reunion to escape, at the cost of her own life. Amiya, who bore witness to this all, is emotionally wrecked by the tragedy of it all.
  • The anime adaptation doubles down on the last bit by leaving no doubt about the revived Skullshatterer's identity for the viewers. Misha doesn't speak a word to any Reunion soldier, only handing one a flare as a silent order to evacuate, then pointing her grenade launcher at them to drive the point home, before running off to the soldier's confusion. When Amiya catches up to Skullshatterer on the path, she calls her Misha, getting a reaction and a verbal response. Misha's last words are an apology that she and Amiya can't make that doll as they promised, causing Amiya to hesitate and falter on her Arts and requiring Ch'en to cut Misha down. After the fight, Amiya takes Skullshatterer's mask as a Tragic Keepsake, but unlike the emotionally drained despondence shown in the game's CG still, she is visibly shaking with an absolutely haunted expression.

Episode 06: Partial Necrosis

• Faust's demise. After spending his whole life desperately surviving with Mephisto, trying to guide him, and staying silent about his madness out of fear that he'd only make it worse, seeing how far Mephisto has fallen makes him lose the will to live. Thinking that the only way for his friend and his troops to make it out alive is if he stays behind to hold off the encroaching forces, Faust has his Last Stand against Rhodes Island and the L.G.D special forces, but not before entrusting Mephisto with a final wish to live for himself. Even after all of the horrible things Mephisto has done, seeing him break down in tears at the sight of his childhood friend and closest companion sacrificing himself makes it hard not to feel sorry for him.
  Mephisto: You can't do this!
  Faust: ...I hope you survive, even on your own.
  Faust: Don't die. That's my last wish.
  Mephisto: Sasha! Sashaaaaa!!!
  Faust: I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want anyone to get hurt.
  Faust: I wish we had just run away, back then.
  Faust: We could have...just run away.
  Mephisto: Sasha, you promised! We promised each other! We swore we would survive together!
  Faust: It's too late...for me...
  Faust: ...I'm too tired.
  Mephisto: Sashaaaaaa!!!
  Faust: Goodbye, Eno.
  He nocks a bolt into his crossbow, and winds it.
  He takes aim, for the last time.
• FrostNova's death, especially after she unsuspectingly developed a form of camaraderie with the Doctor. FrostNova, no longer sure what she even is, tragically endured a Last Stand after the death of the Yeti Squadron as fighting is all she ever knew, while wishing for Rhodes Island to defeat her and show her hope in spite of all her suffering in life. In the end, she was laid low by the Doctor and their forces. With her death imminent due to overuse of her powers, she lamented at her fate, the country she was born in, and at Yeti Squadron's demise. Spending the last of her life dying in the Doctor's arms and entrusting them with her mission to save Talulah, Reunion, and the infected people, FrostNova's waning Arts allow her to finally touch them and feel warmth before she dies.
  • The official music video of Last of Me gives us a glimpse into Frostnova's last moments set to eerily fitting lyrics, including a scene of her mourning one of her men as they die in her arms and crumble into originum flakes, and closes on the scene of her dying in the Doctor's arms; it even went so far to show that the Yetis were loyal to the point of retrieving her and retreating when she collapsed on the battlefield from her Arts abuse making her condition deteriorate, and the lyrics even sync up at that moment with the line "I'm just a burden on your shoulder." What makes the song even more tragic is that the rest of the lyrics mesh perfectly with Frostnova's own thoughts and laments, which results in the music video sounding like Frostnova herself is singing. As a result, a signifcant number of Doctors from the playerbase profess in the video's comments that the music video made them cry.
  FrostNova: Tell Amiya, Doctor. In this world, a single person is worthless. But she's absolutely not alone. From now on, I am at your side. Both of you. I... would like to join Rhodes Island.
  • Not content to stab the player community in the heart once, Hypergryph decided to remind us again with a furniture piece given out to celebrate the second anime season, Perish in Frost. And this time, Yelena can sense everyone weeping for her beyond the fourth wall.
  This projector was created to commemorate the release of the anime. The journey back home flickered on the screen, the outlines of dreams clear amidst the falling snow. She felt warmth but couldn't understand why the people beyond the frame were shedding tears.

Episode 07: The Birth of Tragedy

• Rosmontis helping the Doctor cremate FrostNova because she's cremated so many of her friends and family that it's practically second nature to her now.
• Rosmontis' response to the Doctor angrily asking her who sent her out to fight and that it is too cruel for a child like her to be doing this is just heartbreaking, reminding us that War Is Hell and just why Child Soldier exist in some parts of the world.
  Rosmontis: ...Does death care that I am a child? Would war or disease spare someone because they are a child? When Amiya or I stand on the battlefield... who looks at us and thinks "children?" We're "monsters," aren't we, Doctor?
• Patriot's demise at the end nearly matches FrostNova's in sadness, especially since it happens in the chapter right after his (adoptive) daughter's death. At this point, Patriot has just lost his daughter and is aware that Talulah couldn't care less about their original goal, leaving him alone to fight for the sake of of the infected. Unable to trust anyone but himself, he faces Rhodes Island in a final showdown that ends in his defeat. As the dying Patriot saw visions of his past, he realized that a dreadful prophecy was unfolding before him - yet in a final defiance of fate, he put his faith in Amiya and spared her, choosing to believe that she wouldn't become the Demon King in the prophecy, and entrusting the future of the Infected to the victors. The official music video for End Like This animates this sequence hauntingly well, complete with a glimpse of Patriot embracing Frostnova in the afterlife when he chooses to let Amiya win, an act that moves Amiya enough to make her hesitate and look back at his body when the crew was leaving the field at the end of the video.
• FrostNova's cremation released a huge gust of cold air, which reached the rain clouds above, causing it to snow. One of Patriot's men remarked that it was Yelena coming back to take away her father.

Episode 08: Roaring Flare

• The rise and fall of the Reunion Movement is a story of tragedy. To put it shortly, seeing how Talulah rallies the Infected together to fight against Ursus Empire's oppression with her idealistic heart, before seeing it crumble before her eyes as her comrades and her friends either die in her arms or betray her. By the time of Chernobog invasion, she has transformed from a fighter against oppression to another conspirator who sees Reunion Movement as nothing but a pawn in the grand scheme of a certain old snake, her 'father' Duke Kashchey who possessed her in her moment of weakness during an incident where she torched an entire village in a fit of rage.
  • It's especially painful because Chapter 8, especially the R stages which told Talulah and Reunion's early days, uses Gameplay and Story Integration to the fullest: we often have to save Ursus civilians hunted by the patrol units, Talulah appears as an ally unit to help, and even the Originium ice crystals and Sarkaz altar, which were thorns on our side during Chapter 6 and 7, only affect enemies in Chapter 8 because FrostNova and Patriot are on our side. This was what Reunion's original purpose was for: to save the Infected from cruelty, and to take their fate into their own hands. A far cry from what it has turned into by the time of the main story.
  • Alina's death, while certainly can be seen coming from miles away, doesn't make it hurt any less. Throughout the chapter we've seen how close she is to Talulah, being basically her friend who's been there with her since the very beginning, and Alina helps to guide Talulah whenever she felt lost or starts to deviate from the path she had chosen. Talulah also told Alina everything, from her past and background to Kashchey and even Ch'en, which shows just how close they are and how much Talulah trusts her. One could even say that Alina embodies Talulah's ideals and beliefs that people are fundamentally good, because her kindness and warmth is noticeable and striking in a place as cold as Ursus. Then Talulah found her dying, missing An Arm and a Leg, likely by the very same group of Infected Talulah asked the Shieldguards to spare, but Alina held on to her kindness: she didn't tell Talulah who did this to her, because she doesn't want her to take revenge; she reminds her that she can hate the actions people took, but not the people themselves. She asked Talulah to have FrostNova reminds her whenever she wavers because she'll no longer be there for her... and as the snow and forest burns behind them, Alina dies quietly on Talulah's back, her last words being her wishing to be able to meet Ch'en and pleading Talulah to live on. It's a heartbreakingly beautiful scene, and the player could just tell that a part of Talulah died with Alina that night.
    Talulah will not remember what happens next. She has no memories of anything after that. She melted away each and every last thing she should have remembered, along with the snow. She leaves behind only a trail of flames, and, with the exception of Alina, everything behind her is burned away in the inferno of her wake. And Talulah treks on in the snow toward her parting with her dear friend.
    • In her dying breath, Alina also begged Talulah to look after the children, especially Mephisto. Fast forward to Chernobog, we know what Mephisto grow up into courtesy of Kashchey, adding on to Talulah's long list of failures she has to endure for the rest of her life.
• While this episode is full of tragic tales, stage M8-8 is filled with a series of unfortunate events.
  • Remember Mephisto's decision to find the sarcophagus in Episode 7? Mephisto intends to use it to wipe his memory after losing Faust and feeling betrayed by Talulah, like how Doctor lost their memory. Unfortunately, it goes horribly wrong as the sarcophagus instead turns him into a large bird-like beast and destroys any sanity left in him. He can do nothing but sing in this state as his body exudes poisonous mist around the area, causing something akin to a Level 4 biohazard. By the time Rhodes Island arrives, he is beyond help and has to be put down before he could spread anymore biological mutation. While he survives the ordeal and is in a comatose state, after a surgery to turn him back to normal Infected, Kal'tsit will allow Doctor to decide his fate before his ensuing death from his rapidly advancing Oripathy caused by the damage done to his body after his transformation and the following procedure to destroy the functions of his infected organs to neutralize them. It was a nasty way to go down even for someone like him.
    • Adding to this, it's made clear that Mephisto is aware of what he has become, and now is fighting not out of sadism or belief in Reunion's cause, but simply because he doesn't want to die. Unfortunately, this is now a Tragic Dream, as his Oripathy has advanced to the point that, even if you spare him, his vital functions have been screwed up so badly that his life will be shortened drastically.
    • Future events like Lone Trail and Babel retroactively make the pointlessness of whole tragedy clear by revealing that the Sarcophagus never wiped the Doctor's memories, with them being intact when they were woken up to help Babel. Instead, the Doctor's memories were actually wiped out by Theresa herself during her assassination. Additionally, it turns out the Ancients and Originium were both inventions of the Precursors like the Sarcophagus. Thus, instead of losing his memories like he intends to, Mephisto finds himself devolved to his race's ancestral form before the Precursors' modifications while having the Originium inside his body tampered at the same time.
  • Kal'tsit's has two memories centered on the Sarcophagus, and both end tragically. The first one is her research on the device 20 years ago. When a team of bright and youthful researchers discovered it in Chernobog, they found that it's able to generate enough power to make the city become independent of Originium and even possibly start an energy revolution that replaces Originium as the primary power source. Kal'tsit joined the team to assist the young researchers and became their teacher. Unfortunately, the research project caught the attention of the government, and multiple factions jockeyed for control of the device, using both bribery and coercion. Eventually, a student named Sergei broke down in an interrogation by the secret police of Ursus, and leaked the information in exchange for his family's safety. Despite Sergei's pleas to the mayor of the city, Count Boris, for his colleagues' protection, there is nothing he can do to save the project or the team. Kal'tsit took the blame onto herself because she knew that it would come to this from the beginning, yet still chose to help with the research because she hoped that their research would make a difference to this world... only for that hope to be killed by the Ursus government.
    • Who exactly did Sergei choose to protect? Alex and Misha, both of whom died against Rhodes Island as "Skullshatterer". Sergei's choice to sell out his team for his family was ultimately All for Nothing.
  • The second memory is more recent and personally related to the Doctor. Three years ago, Kal'tsit brought a mortally wounded Doctor to the Sarcophagus to heal them. This seemingly benign incident has a much harsher backstory: Doctor had just murdered Theresa, a long-time friend of both Kal'tsit and Doctor. To put it in Kal'tsit's perspective: her dearest friend, Theresa, trusted someone Kal'tsit herself did not trust, and was ultimately killed by that person. Yet Theresa made Kal'tsit promise to protect her murderer. Although she tells Doctor that she won't take revenge on them, Kal'tsit does not stop her hate towards them, even if they regain their memory and atone for their actions.
    • Said memory also triggered the Doctor's own memory, and it can be summed up in two sentences within the text:
      Priestess (in memory): ...Dr. {player_name}. Don't ever forget about me.
      Doctor (in the present): Kal'tsit, who's Priestess?
  • Between the first and second memory, picking a certain choice prompts quite the pointed response from Kal'tsit:
    Doctor: I want to give it all up. This is too painful. I can't take this anymore.
    Kal'tsit: Of course, you can do that. You can choose to leave us. Rhodes Island will remove your neural link to the PRTS. You will be cut off from the terminal's simulated hub, and lose the eyes and authority the PRTS bestows on you right there and then. You will be released from Rhodes Island's Intelligence Processing System and its vast sea of information. From there on, you won't need to log in to Rhodes Island's data banks ever again. Once you shut down your information terminal, all of it will be lost to you forever. It's a simple choice. Just one button, and your link will be severed. Then, you will get to stay in the world you chose for yourself. I am ready. You need only to press the button.
    [You tap the screen to continue.]
    Kal'tsit: If that was the path you chose for yourself, you wouldn't be able to hear me right now. You chose to stay with us.
    • If you instead take her offer (by closing the app and even uninstalling it), that's how your Doctor would end their story: lost to their despair in the very place where their new identity began, with only Kal'tsit as their witness and the Operators who left before them completely unaware of it.
  • Throughout the discussion, its clear through their dialogue choices that Doctor is becoming increasingly frustrated with how Kal'tsit is dancing around the issue and only telling them half-truths, when all they want is for her to just tell them the truth about who they were and what they did that was so horrible. By the end, Doctor outright yells at her, demanding to know just what the hell she's trying to do with this discussion.
• In the weeks following Talulah's capture and the Chernobog Incident drawing to a close, the Doctor and Amiya make good on their promise to induct FrostNova into Rhodes Island's ranks, even if only posthumously. Amiya names a form of lifesaving medicine after her, with the hope of making it readily available to the people of Ursus, while Kal'tsit includes her on the list of Operators killed in action at the Doctor's insistence.
• Seeing how much Rosmontis has changed over the course of the Chernobog Incident drives Blaze to tears as she remembers how many of their friends and coworkers they've lost, all of whom will never get to see Rosmontis grow up.

Episode 09: Stormwatch

• After being technically rescued by Reunion, Talulah was not welcomed grandly by her supporters and allies, but rather, still had to face hostile reception from Reunion members, all of whom staged the rescue because they wanted answers out of Talulah's tyranny. While Players at this point knew that most of Talulah's worse actions came from Kaschey possessing her, the rest of Reunion did not have said context and in their view, they see Talulah as callously and mercilessly doing all that she did for her goals. Talulah herself quietly admits that no matter the context, it is no excuse for the fact that she did technically commit those atrocities regardless in a Metaphorically True sense.
• Despite all her kindness, Saileach is scorned by the townsfolk of County Hillock just because she's a Victorian soldier, who side with Dublinn - who is only using them - under the belief that they'll liberate them from Victoria. This culminates in all of them gleefully blaming her once her actions indirectly get her friend Saoirse killed, with them even mocking Saoirse for trying to defuse the situation involving Dublinn before it spiralled out of hand. This shakes her worldview so much that she was very close to abandoning the Tarans to their fate had Outcast not given her a pep talk.

Episode 10: Shatterpoint

• While what happened to her is more or less her own fault, seeing Mandragora end up in a sorrowful and pitiful state after being betrayed and brutally injured by Manfred is sad to see. While she is obviously no saint in the present day, bear in mind that the reason she became the way she is right now is due to her past, where it is strongly implied that she was humiliated and tortured by the Victorian nobility (including possibly being Buried Alive), which cemented her distain for the Victorian upper-class, resulting in her joining Dublinn both for Revenge and to serve under the Leader of Dublinn, who she views as a strong and kind person despite her noble blood. Her actions throughout the first two chapters of the Victoria arc, even if they are morally questionable, are (what she believes) for the benefit of her beloved Leader. The strong implication that the Leader of Dublinn decided to leave Mandragora to her fate for the sake of maintaining good relations between Dublinn and Theresis's group, despite Mandragora showing sincere devotion and admiration to Leader only makes it all the more heartbreaking. The last we see of Mandragora during Episode 10 is that Misery found and retrieved her after her defeat, presumably to take her back to Rhodes Island to treat her injuries.
• Although she had enough mental fortitude to fight on in spite of it, it's painfully obvious that Horn is still haunted by the deaths of all of her squadmates, to the point where one has to wonder if her pretending to lose her mind from the trauma to escape Dublinn was actually an act or not.

Episode 11: Return to Mist

• The tragedy of Charles Lynch and the Steam Knights of Victoria, legendary war heroes who dedicated their lives to their country, only to be cruelly betrayed by that same country out of paranoia and greed. After fighting to the last man against the ambush they had been led into, Charles ended up being the Sole Survivor, and lost his mind both from the isolation, and the realization that the Victoria he fought for no longer exists. He latches on to the Sighs of Kings as the only definitive representation of his homeland, and when Siege tries to take it, he lashes out in a desperate rage - without the sword, his Victoria ceases to be.
  Is Victoria its king?
  They hanged the king.
  Is Victoria Parliament and the nobles?
  No maintenance, no supplies, no new members. They sent the Steam Knights into mortal danger time after time, in order to feed their greed.
  Is Victoria the people?
  The people praise the Steam Knights, honor the Steam Knights, glorify the Steam Knights. They place all their hopes, all their dreams upon the Steam Knights. Nothing can carry hopes that are so contradictory, so complex.
  Does Victoria only exist in the imagination?
• Amiya learning that Kal'tsit was responsible for destroying Kazdel 200 years ago and perpetuating the cycle of hatred between the Sarkaz and other Terrans. That revelation combined with the collective memories of the Sarkaz's past almost sends her into catatonic shock, and even after she accepts that Theresa must have accepted her reason to do so, the way she says it shows that she still feels betrayed by one of the figures she trusted the most.

Episode 12: All Quiet Under the Thunder

• The situation in Norport is both this and terrifying, putting the worst of humanity on display as the citizens are pushed to the breaking point by starvation and chaos. The Glasgow Gang can only lament and fend for themselves as former neighbors and friends devolve into savages who beat, maim, and kill each other for scraps of food and other resources, and any survivors are driven to insanity. The Gang can't even try to rescue anyone in need, as not only do they simply not have enough resources to go around, the episode immediately shows how easily their rescuees will betray them to save their own skin, as the man who Baird rescued at the beginning makes off with their last can of meat what is implied to be mere days after being saved.
• This episode can basically be summed up as a Trauma Conga Line for Siege. She just lost Allerdale to get a presently useless sword, her homeland she just got back to is engulfed by war, her friends are hurting, and they now need to save the remnants of the Glasgow Gang in Norport. When she gets back, her reunion with the Glasgow Gang is soured by witnessing just how badly Norport has taken its recent tragedy and how far it's fallen from the old days, and is only barely able to hold the people together by revealing and leveraging her status as the rightful heir. Seeing this, her old friend Cador instantly antagonizes and later abandons her out of disgust just because she's a royal, and when it comes time to evacuate Norport, she sees her lieutenant Baird seemingly meet her end at the hands of a person she tried to save, almost enraging her to violence right then and there. By the end of the episode, Siege can do nothing but cry freely atop the Duke of Windermere's battleship at the sheer futility of everything she's done, wondering what the point is in losing friends one by one for a duty she doesn't even care for.
  • Baird's seeming death deserves a mention for how cruelly pointless it is. All she wanted to do was to save a deaf, Infected store owner who had been kind to her in the past, knowing that he had locked himself in his store once the fighting broke loose. However, even with Baird communicating in writing to get around his deafness, said man has been driven to such insanity by his situation that he's unable to recognize that Baird is trying to help him and not take his last can of food, ending up stabbing Baird in the gut and fleeing. To further twist the knife, not only was the can he stabbed Baird over empty, he ends up dying mere hours later.
  • On top of this, as a dying Baird lays to rest, she sees the corpse of the same man she had saved and subsequently let escape and his final writings, which are a jumbled list of his wishes, starting with materialistic wishes like food and fame, then sentimental wishes that his family, friends, and the Gang he stole from are well. The note ends with a simple wish that everyone can be happy and well end one day, and that their suffering won't be in vain. At this, Baird can only pick up his pen and second his last wishes before collapsing.
• Golding finally decides to stand up to Lettou and try and buy time for Eartha to escape after their comms were compromised, only for Lettou to reveal that Golding herself is the reason why everything has gone to hell - by means of both her own carelessness and the Damazti Cluster disguised as Molly, to whom Golding has been constantly feeding information to. Hearing this, Golding practically breaks down on the spot.
  • Throughout the conversation, Lettou sounds so incredibly done with everything that it's hard not to feel bad for him too. He has completely lost faith in Victoria, himself, and arguably mankind as a whole, and admits to Golding that he sees himself as merely a coward desperately clinging to life at any cost.
  • Later on, after a conversation with the Damazti, Golding finally makes the decision to kill herself despite even the Damazti advising her against it, insisting that she'd rather go out on her own terms before she falls any further into despair, lamenting her powerlessness and the futility of her life. The Damazti, in an effort to empathize with her, takes on her form and wishes her a final goodbye.
• Amiya is violently rejected by the Revenant of the Sarkaz, who denounce her as a false king who could never understand the suffering of the Sarkaz. Despite knowing it's an illusion, it's easy to tell that Amiya is torn up about it, as she sincerely believes in the future Theresa taught her about, but can't understand how to reconcile the Sarkaz's millennia of suffering and hatred, or if it's even possible.
• After eleven chapters and many side stories of her being an untouchable know-it all, it's harrowing to see Kal'tsit in such a despondent, wounded state, confessing to W just how tired and scared she is from her thousands of years of trying to preserve civilization and make the right choices.

Episode 13: The Whirlpool that is Passion

• Delphine has barely reunited with her mother for the first time in ages before she's unceremoniously killed by a joint attack between the Sanguinarch and the reborn Damazti Cluster, with her literally dying in her sobbing daughter's arms. She barely even has time to mourn, as chaos descends upon the group immediately after and she's forced to take a responsibility she isn't ready for yet.
  • To rub salt in the wound, the quest system in the chapter is a series of old postcards Delphine entrusted to Rhodes Island, called The Happy Windermere Family, which depicts all of the love Delphine grew up in despite her parents' lofty positions, her desires to live up to her mother's reputation, and how the Duke of Windermere genuinely loved her family with all her heart despite the violence and political strife that came with being a Duke. It only makes the truth that Delphine is now alone even harsher.
  • Delphine is almost excited to see that one of her distant relatives has survived and has come to meet her, only for that to be shattered when they turn out to be a selfish prick who only wants Delphine to come home so the nobles can instate her as a puppet Duke and seize power for themselves. Between the Windermere dukedom being in a state of civil war from the aristocrats jostling for position in the power vacuum and a good chunk of her own citizens not being loyal to her or her mother in the slightest, Delphine's home in House Windermere died with her mother.
• It's shown that Shining was responsible for the creation of Nightingale as a vessel for the Lord of Fiends, but sympathized with her enough to grant her a consciousness despite her being supposed to be an Empty Shell, despite knowing that she was doomed to be a mere sacrifice later on. This ate at her enough that she betrayed her kin and stole Nightingale away, before erasing her memories out of fear that Nightingale wouldn't forgive her if she found the truth. Then Nightingale finds the truth, and forgives Shining in full, even letting herself be kidnapped by the Confessarius so Shining doesn't have to make a Sadistic Choice between letting her die and becoming the next Confessarius.
• Lettou continues in his downward spiral from the past chapter as he continues to get reality check after check that he's abandoned his people and homeland for a dream that had no chance of happening in the first place, all to justify his own cowardice. Even when Clovisia extends a hand to him despite all that he's done, he can't bring himself to join her, and instead bequeaths all of his possessions to one of his last surviving men before committing suicide in front of the Sanguinarch, with his final goal being a petty one of staining his "purity" with his "dirty" blood. Even so, the Sanguinarch barely even treats it as an inconvenience, meaning that Lettou ultimately died for no reason besides his inability to live with himself.
• Magdelene/Vendela's Odd Friendship with the Sarkaz supervisor Shovel that frequented her greenhouse. Despite the Sarkaz occupation of Brentwood, Shovel was willing to show lenience to the civilians and genuinely appreciated Vendela's flowers while even giving her opportunities to escape, withstanding abuse and mockery from his peers due to his hobby and kindness. When the Sarkaz trash Vendela's greenhouse in search of rebels, he restrains her to stop the Sarkaz from killing her too, and he even secretly admits to Vendela that everyone in the town will die as fuel for the Sanguinarch's ritual, while he's schedule to be sent to the frontlines as a soldier for the Nachzehrer army, with both of them being sacrifices for a war they never wished for. Vendela confronts him, where he offers to stay with her until their respective ends, but asserts that he can't let her stop the ritual unless she makes him, placing a pair of scissors into her hands. We don't get to see exactly what happens beyond an apology from Vendela, but the next scene is a distraught Vendela running outside, covered in blood.
• What appears to initially be a safehouse for a Victorian branch of Reunion shatters the hopes of Neo Reunion when it turns out that not only are they a mix of Infected and non-Infected that are barely held apart by their survival instincts, Guard finds out that they beat a harmless Sarkaz vendor to death and stole his goods, just for being the same race as their invaders. Ch'en meets the same group later, and although she manages to hide her feelings when they practically boast about their murder, she's completely disgusted by them afterwards.
• Guard's death. Despite all of the ups and downs he went through and his belief that Rhodes Island's idealism is a pipe dream, he still went out as selfless as any Rhodes Islander, sacrificing his life for a person he barely knew and was hostile towards moments ago, just so they could save some herbs that could be used to advance their Oripathy medication. Even with his death, he manages to convey his final words to Nine, questioning just who Reunion is fighting for, something she takes to heart.

Side Stories

"Children of Ursus"

• Istina: The Chosen Ones - Istina asked for a self-therapy machine from Rhodes Island Medical Department. It's a recording device she used to let out her heart and thoughts. During her own session, she kept her doll close to her. She reveals to the device that under her stoic facade, she laments what she had done to survive, watching her friend clinging to the side of the roof and watch her fall off the roof for betraying Zima. She was traumatized by that event so much that she kept a doll named after her friend. She laments what she did and begs forgiveness from her friend. This is the reason why asking Istina about Chernobog makes her emotional.
• Rosa: Hypocrisy - Rosa has a private talk with Zima, where she confesses that as the leader of 30 noble students, she was the one to agree and draft plans to take supplies from the commoners; Rosa lets herself be beaten by Zima - telling her that staying with both the USSG and Rhodes Island had made her realize that she's no noble nor a good girl - and that the resulting guilt had made her consider suicide more than 40 times, that she wished Zima had killed her that day instead of saving her and allowing her to join the USSG, and that despite the fact that she did not kill a single person throughout the entire ordeal, she considers herself to be the dirtiest person in the school. Reading it is already sad enough, but the Drama CD reveals something that's not conveyed through text: the fact that Rosa is having a mental breakdown, screaming and sobbing to the point of nearly hyperventilating as she confesses everything to Zima, which made the entire thing absolutely gut-wrenching.
• Miss Little Police: Before Spring - It starts out with a conversation from a couple wanting to take a vacation after winter, and when their child goes to boarding school. Soon after, it cuts to Absinthe sneaking around Reunion patrols to escape her school under surveillance. She overheard that some Reunion leaders have differing opinions on how to deal with students. She managed to avoid being spotted and escaped her school, but on her way to the Central Street of Chernobog, she witnesses the destruction and anarchy within the city. She then meets a police officer who works with her father, and was informed that the area where she lived in is in total destruction. The officer then tells her to not hope for her mother's safety. Fearing for her father's safety, she asked for his whereabouts and was told that he's leading a squad to another school. After unsuccessfully convincing her, the officer lends Absinthe his radio. She arrives at the school to see tattered corpses of the Ursus Police on the ground, and noted that the corpses' condition didn't seem like it was caused by Reunion but by students instead. Then she saw her father's corpse and traces left by the student of the school around him. The next cutscene reveals that the couple in the beginning of the story are Absinthe's parents. The story cuts to the present day, where Absinthe is shocked and angered when she saw the uniform of the Ursus Self-Governing Group.

"Beyond Here"

• Fairytale Everlasting: Near the end of the story, Iris attempts to cheer up an infected girl named Dora, who is a daughter of two parents that were attempting to cure her Oripathy. At first, it starts off heartwarming enough that Dora wishes to see the fairies and that Iris promises she's a good girl, but then it slowly delves into this territory the moment Dora asks if the fairies can help her. Try as she might, all Iris can tell Dora is that the fairies can't cure her illness, with Iris becoming so distraught that she basically asks Dora if the fairies are simply useless because of that. Even worse, in Victoria, keeping an Infected hidden is considered a severe offense that will get you thrown into jail. It's a tragic reminder that Oripathy can happen to anyone, and that it is cruel to those with it.

"Originium Dust"

• When Occphen learns that Team Rainbow comes from a completely different world where Oripathy doesn't exist, he excitedly asks if it's a world with no hate and discrimination, and people are treated equally. The four soldiers (and most likely you, the player) can only manage a sober silence at their home world's reality, and Occphen immediately realizes he spoke out of turn before apologizing.
• Dr. Miarow's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • When the party is pinned down by Drudge's secret shockwave-creating device, an already mortally-wounded Miarow uses his Originium Arts to destroy it with an explosion. Unfortunately, this rapidly accelerates his Oripathy, and along with his injuries, he is left on death's door by the time everyone finds him. Tachanka desperately tries keep Miarow alive and reminds him about his dreams of travelling to Columbia, but he's unable to make it. Miarow isn't even able to say any last words, only managing a few coughs before expiring. The party is devastated, with Tachanka flying into a rage and attacking an terrified enemy mercenary they had captured. Miarow's thoughts before sacrificing himself don't help matters either, as he didn't want to die and had so much he wanted to do, but as a doctor, his duty was to save people, and he does so at the cost of his own life.
  • Immediately after, the crystals on Miarow's body begin glowing, and the Rhodes Island operators scramble to put it in a house before sealing all the openings. Team Rainbow is understandably confused, with the exception of Tachanka, who warns his teammates to not look. However, Ash doesn't listen, and watches in despair and horror as Miarow's corpse disintegrates into Originium dust. With that, Ash is forced to confront just how painfully cruel Oripathy is and how it destroys so many lives just by existing, describing it as a "disaster" to Tachanka when they talk the next day.
  • The next day, after Miarow's funeral, Franka gives Ash and Tachanka a box of his personal items. Inside is some money along with a travel guide and map of Columbia, where he wanted to go to become a real doctor and help others. Ash somberly notes that despite his greatly shortened lifespan, Miarow still had plans for his future, and Franka sadly wonders what could have made him so hopeful about his life despite being an Infected.

"Vigilo"

• One of the most tragic details that marks points in the timeline is the flavor text of the stage VI-6, Yesterday, which features Frostnova.
  She fell asleep yesterday. You know she will never again open her eyes.

"Pinus Sylvestris"

• Ashlock's fondest childhood memories are of her grandmother's training and laments about the corruption of the Kazimierz Knightly Orders by the promise of the glory and riches of the Competition circuits. She has special dislike of the noble knights due to how her entire extended family decided to strip her of her Knightly titles and remove her from the succession as a result of her contracting Oripathy, a thoroughly miserable affair where her parents were too frightened to stand up for her when she was disowned and cast from the family.
• Justyna, the Fartooth Knight, is very melancholy over her infection. As with Gravel, she was a village girl who left her home to visit the big city and become a knight, only to contract Oripathy from an accident. She was then unable to become a Knight until the Blood Knight made great changes to the rules that finally allow for Infected Knights, but then she had to earn the money needed, which necessitated doing dangerous cage fights in the Underground arenas of Grand Knight Territory. She keeps thinking back to her past, and fears going home only to be rejected due to her Infection.
• The plight of the other Infected Knights in Kazimierz, as well as the civilian Infected, is a sad one. All of them lost their legal identities to the system as a result of their illness, live in terrible conditions, and have to deal with Slave Hunters and the Armorless Union persecuting them. Is it any wonder that the Pinus Sylvestris was formed to protect them as a result of collaboration between Flametail and Ashlock?
• The last story of the set goes into Platinum's backstory, from how she was a cute and eager graduate from college, trying her best to be a successful Idol Knight, who was dragged down by the system due to her desire to be a semi-independent Knight, humiliated thoroughly by an opponent in the ring, then lured by promises of good pay and freedom into the clutches of the Armorless Union, where she was forced to bully and kill in the name of the KGCC and its shadowy puppet masters, and ended up a sour, jaded, and rather unwilling Assassin begging for some time off from killing people, unable to resign due to her fear of being terminated for knowing too much. To top it off, even when she jumped ship and joined Rhodes Island at the first opportunity, her first face-to-face meeting with Blemishine ^explanationBlemishine's operator files have it revealed in the later entries that Platinum joins Rhodes Island at roughly the same time as Blemishine, and there was a tension between them when they met face-to-face during onboarding was a sour one, as she was already known to be one of the Armorless assassins by this point, due to her involvement in the events surrounding Radiant Nearl's latest foray into the Kazimierz Major as per the immediately consecutive event "Near Light".

"Near Light"

• The tragedy of Tola, the last Nightzmora, pining for an ancient era long gone. He seeks his blood kin as he walks across Kazimierz on his pilgrimage, doesn't consider himself fully a man yet due to not having completed his journey, and feels lost and out of place in the modern, extremely cyberpunk world of the Grand Knight Territory. Even though his presence is actually welcomed by the older Campaign Knights and even the Grand Knight herself, he simply doesn't want to involve himself in the hot mess of the Competition Knight circuit any more than he already does for the sake of his quest, and feels confused and disgusted by the dark acts of the KGCC. Eventually, he packs up and follows the footsteps of his ancestors, disappearing into the Far North beyond Ursus to join them in battling the demons beyond civilization.
• Platinum's story reaches its lowest point during this stage of the story arc. She's constantly stymied from her missions by the Pinus Sylvestris, bullied by the Silverlance Pegasi and her own colleagues, forced to take demeaning missions, and even gotten herself stalled out of a mission by the Doctor, who is the only soul in Kazimierz to offer her a break and a cup of tea. It all comes to a head in the extended epilogue, where she ends up a tired and hungry fugitive after attempting to resign from the Armorless Union, having decided that being their pretty face and scapegoat was no future for her. The only bright spark is that this was also the moment where the Doctor intervened and helped rescue her from Monique's kill team. Is it any wonder that she develops a strong personal loyalty to the one person who reached out to her and didn't try to fight her or bully her into doing things she doesn't want to do?

"Break The Ice"

• Ensia seeing the portrait of her brother and sister shaking hands in the epilogue, then deciding not to buy it because she felt it wasn't really accurate to their family situation yet, has a melancholy touch to it, as she clearly loves both Enciodas and Enya, and seeing them estranged hurts her deeply.
• During the climax and then the epilogue, the way Monch just goes quiet when she realizes Gnosis did not trust her enough to let her in on the deeper layers of his plotting, then abandons his dagger and leaves without a word after that, is quite a sad thing. It becomes even more sad when you learn the context of the dagger he gifted her via the flavor text of Gnosis's Potential Token, which is another dagger. The symbolism of Monch abandoning the dagger when she leaves Gnosis for good is clear: She has decided that he never trusted her enough to confide deeply in, and felt betrayed by the way she was used, while Gnosis's suddenly quiet reaction upon seeing the dagger is equally tragic: he has realised that his plotting has unintentionally deeply hurt someone he felt he could unconditionally trust and driven her away from him.
• The entire debacle was a painful emotional roller coaster for Ratatos, as she finds her plotting was partly misplaced when she finally has a heart-to-heart talk with Enciodas during her failed attempt to take him with her in a murder-suicide assassination attempt, and realises that his plot to take control of Kjerag and modernize it was actually much more compatible with her long-term plans than she ever realized. It shakes her self-confidence enough that she ends up letting her little sister Sciurus take command of the situation.

"A Light Spark in Darkness"

• The bulk of the story details how Susie Glitter ended up taking refuge with Rhodes Island as the operator Goldenglow, and it is not a happy tale. Poor Susie moved out of her poor family home in order to provide for her mother and her younger siblings back home but when she got infected, she was persecuted in many places until she found work in Quercus's bar in Caladon. Even with the new camaraderie she made, she still faces persecution and discrimination from Anti-Infected protesters and was even beaten up at one point. The last straw was when her hair salon, built from all the money she saved up, was burned by more Anti-Infected protesters. Filled with despair, she seriously considered suicide until Haze talked her out of it. After all this, she got captured by a corrupt police officer that was secretly aiding and abetting the anti-Infected mob under the orders of a Victorian noble who bribed said officer with cash and hired anti-infected and Siracusan mobs for his political gain and then frame the infected to hide his crimes. Susie was in seriously danger of being killed until Redd the Red Blade saved her. Haze deserves massive props for helping bring Susie back from the brink.
  • Susie's reaction learning that all the things that happened to her are because of a councilor's greed and corruption. She reached a Rage Breaking Point that she unleashed her arts and nearly killed the perpetrator responsible for the destruction of her salon if not for Quercus snapping her out of it.
• Haze's plight in this story, before she also joins up with Rhodes Island, is a painful one. Convinced that her Oripathy has progressed to the point that she was going to die, Haze uses the last of the time she thinks she has to pass the torch of her Witchdom (and her Arts Unit ring) down to another young girl, then secludes herself on a derelict building's rooftop to die quietly, before she ends up talking Susie out of her suicide attempt. That's not a fun way to spend the last of your days.

"Guide Ahead"

• The entire sidestory is all about how poor little Cecelia loses her mother to illness, then deals with all the problems that her status as a mixed-blood Sarkaz-Sankta brings, what with the Pathfinders attempting to use her as a symbol for their protests against Laterano's official policies. She ends up having to run all over Laterano, and eventually finds herself attending a funeral for her mother, as she learns about death and dealing with the loss of her mother. It's a relief that Ezell refuses to abandon her to her fates as part of his mission, and that the Pope himself cares enough to assure her that she will not get into trouble for anything that happened.

"Mizuki and Caerula Arbor"

• This Integrated Strategies story generally follows the Bad Future timeline that Skadi the Corrupting Heart comes from, so there's a significant amount of horror and heartbreak to be found.
• The second ending explores in horrific detail just how the apocalypse in Skadi TCH's record came to be. All of Terra is thrown into chaos, every nation's finest (including the Emperor's Blades) fails to even repel the threat, and Kal'tsit has to build one last bastion for what's left of humanity. Why is this happening? Because Skadi, having lost herself and become Ishar-mla, is sending swarm after swarm of Seaborn to go after the Doctor. In a twisted display of what's left of Skadi's humanity, the Doctor is the only person that remains in her eyes, and will not stop until only she and the Doctor remain. And judging by Skadi TCH's final entry, she wins.
• The third ending has Mizuki pull a Heroic Sacrifice to stop Ishar-mla, becoming one with the ocean and bringing peace back to Terra. Skadi is left an Empty Shell, and the only thing she can remember are all of the deaths and suffering she caused and the pain she caused the Doctor. Full of despair and unable to face the Doctor, she hides away and can do nothing but sing her heart out. Sometimes, the Doctor hears a voice from the seas, but the source of the voice is never found.
  • Mizuki's sacrifice also heavily impacts the Doctor to the point where every year, on the day of the event, the Doctor will take a trip to the Iberian shore and hold a silent vigil in his honor.
• One event in the third ending is encountering the petrified corpses of Ulpian, Specter, and Gladiia, all sunken into the ocean. At the very least, they were able to maintain their humanity in death and not become Seaborn...
• Another event has you encounter Irene, who stands atop a mountain of Seaborn corpses. Normally, she'll silently help you or mistake you for a Seaborn and attack (depending on the chosen option), but she'll recognize and thank you if you return Dario's lantern to her, glad that it's still safe. She's happy to see the Doctor again, but it's obvious that she's struggling to speak or maintain her sanity as one of her hands is implied to have already mutated into tentacles; her last act while she's still fully conscious is to guide the Doctor away from danger before resuming her hopeless fight against the Seaborn.
  This Inquisitor hides her identity but you can tell - she is glad to see you one last time. As an Inquisitor, as an Iberian, as an Operator.
  • This scenario gets expanded in the point of view with Irene as the 2nd Monthly Squad story of Mizuki and the Caerula Arbor.
• You can also encounter Lumen standing atop a cliff, as he tries to scavenge whatever equipment he can to try and make a last stand. Poor guy.
• The Monthly Squad stories are basically the featured operator's last moments before the Seaborn got them.
  • Thorns: Dangerous Injection
    When the Profound Silence struck Iberia again, what appeared from the sea, the phantom from Thorns memories stood before him. The Iberian searches and theorize, until he reaches his own conclusion.
    • Thorns's story ends with him deciding to become a Seaborn in order to find out the truth and keep defending Iberia to the bitter end, with a special medicine to help him keep his conscience. He holds on to the hope that should he ever lose control, the Doctor will be able to kill him and end his misery.
  • Irene: Lantern Bearers
    As long as there are still people holding the coastline, Iberia will not die so easily.
    • This story starts with a Victorian soldier and an Aegirian being rescued by a hooded figure who is hiding their face and identity. As the figure brings them deep into the cave, paranoid overtakes the Victorian soldier to strike at the hooded figure. He is instantly slain and is revealed to have mutated into a humanoid-Seaborn. The hooded figure's weapon reveals themselves to be an Iberia Inquistor. The Aegirian immediately raises his guard as the Inquisitor isn't holding their trademark lamp. After cleaning up any blood from the corpse, they head deeper into the cave where the Aegirian see the cavern littered with corpses of the Sea Terror. When asked, the hooded figure mentioned that they have not fought long enough, not as long as a captain who guarded his Iberian for 60 years. As they reach the end of the cave leading to the outside world, a lantern awaits at the entrance. The hooded figure hands the lantern to the Aegirian, telling them to carry the light of hope to the future. The Aegirian notices the hand of the Iberian is twitching and realized what happened. The Aegirian agrees and leaves, but not before asking one more question.
      Aegirian: At least tell me your name.
      Hooded Figure: I am Irene, an Iberian.
  • Lumen: Watchman
    Only he remains dazzling as the bright day.
    • Lumen's side story details his life and death. One of the luckier ones in this timeline, he dies in his old age instead of horrifically being assimilated into the hivemind. But his journey to old age has him lose all of his loved ones one by one. Starting from Saint Carmen, to the Abyssal Hunters, to Irene, and eventually abandoning the ideal city to live out the last of his life watching the tides separating him from his homeland, Aegir. He dies, dictating his life history to the hivemind around him as the hivemind is implied to respond to his story by embracing him and bidding him farewell.
      Carmen y Iberia, confirmed dead.
      "We have a codename for the Seaborn that we must kill. Its name is..." Irene lets go, and heads towards the door in the flickering light and shadow. "Gladiia."
      Goodbye. Jordi Fontanarossa. Goodbye.
• Once you reach 100 Investment, you have the option to rob Cannot and force him to give you his wares for free. The shop becomes a battle stage, and if you win, you can claim everything in the store for no cost, but Cannot disappears from the shop. Cannot disappearing from the shop also means that the shop will never restock and remain empty for the rest of the run. Considering how the guy has been nothing but a helpful shopkeeper to you... Hope that free stuff was worth it, you jerk.
  • Once you hits 200+ investments in this iteration, he will raise the prices of his wares and may refuse your request to withdraw your investments. It may seem like he has reasons to dislike you this time, but given the setting of Mizuki and Caerula Arbor being a look to how the Bad Future Skadi the Corrupting Heart came from, it speaks of how bad things look that the friendly merchant, who is invested in the future of Terra as a whole, has to raise his prices to survive.
• One encounter event node has you meeting a dying Seaborn crudely playing a harp to call its kin to devour it. Although not confirmed, it bears a resemblance to Anita (who first appeared in the Under Tides event), in which case she is playing the harp to cling to what remains of her humanity.
• One of the bosses you can fight in the third floor is Saint Carmen, who underwent a Sanity Slippage as the apocalypse goes on and comes to see you as an enemy. It adds the harrowing and bleak look to the Bad Future when one of the characters who you were introduced to as a steadfast ally is now an enemy.

"Lingering Echoes"

• The final boss of the story is the sweet, innocent Kreide, having been consumed by the Witch King's melody and transformed into a monster. Once you take him down in his first phase, the music suddenly becomes more somber, and Kreide temporarily becomes an allied unit that helps you defeat the enemies that have appeared on the screen. Unfortunately, it doesn't last too long, as he gets taken over once more and enters his second phase, forcing you to put him down for good. Many players were relieved the stage he is fought in contains no material drops, because they couldn't bear the thought of having to kill Kreide repeatedly.
• The ending. Kreide is defeated and dies in Ebenholz's arms, and Ebenholz ends up contracting Oripathy from carrying Kreide's corpse to lay him to rest. Ebenholz takes up the cello (which was supposed to be a gift for Kreide until his tragic demise) to honor Kreide's memory, and it's stated that it will take him time to recover from the traumatic events that occurred. The last shot shown at the end of the final cutscene of Lingering Echoes (shown at the top of this page) is Ebenholz alone on the deck of the Rhodes Island landship, solemnly playing the cello alone as the sun sets in the background.
• Remember the coin with a hole that Kreide asked Ebenholz to gift him as a memento? It makes a return as his potential token:
  A Leithanian coin with a crudely drilled hole in its center. Only he knows how much sweat and tears were poured into that hole when a skilled artisan would have been able to make it effortlessly.
• A conversation between Lava and Hibiscus in the epilogue reveals that Hibiscus's Oripathy has been worsened after the Vyseheim incident as a result of her exposure to the Voice of Terra, all but stated to be from her protecting Grandpa from a transformed Kreide's Arts. A deeply aggravated and distressed Lava calls Hibiscus out on her recklessness, her neglect of her own well-being despite her attention to others', and demands she never put herself in the same situation again, her speech implying she is close to tears by the end.
  • Fridge Horror occurs when one is reminded that at this point in the timeline Lava has already suffered some form of personal loss in her former squad as implied in Who is Real, making her response to what happened to Hibiscus even more upsetting.
• The January 3 2023 update that unlocks the EX stage now gives an Evolving Title Screen where the initial home screen of the event showing Hibiscus watching Czerny, Ebenholz and Kreide perform is now switched to Ebenholz standing on the now dark stage all alone with only the spotlight shining above him. The kicker is that this Evolving Title Screen can only be unlocked after you cleared the regular stages, highlighting Ebenholz's loneliness and the effect Kreide's death has on him.

"Il Siracusano"

• Giovanna's general headspace is not a very nice place once you realise she sorely misses Texas, her childhood friend who has been missing and presumed dead for a while. While it seems a little too much to threaten her, you can easily understand that she doesn't want Texas to leave her life again and potentially never return. And yet in the end she chooses to leave of her own volition in the end for the sake of Texas's own wellbeing.
• The event has a number of side-stories that cover the lives of the various characters associated with the incidents. Lappland's has her trying to adopt and raise a pet, only to find it killed one day, no doubt on her own father's orders. It mentions that this was not the first time she's lost a pet this way.

"Lone Trail"

• Watching Rosmontis and Ifrit deal with the demons of their pasts staring them in the face whenever they're around the Rhine Lab facilities gets painful fast. Ifrit puts up a brave front, but she's constantly dealing with her inner fear from the Diabolus experiments, while Rosmontis actually suffers an emotional breakdown from having her traumatic memories bubble to the surface at Loken's prodding. The Player Punch of watching Rosmontis get confused, then sad, then frightened and furious, made a number of players step into the Doctor's shoes when they lost their cool and lashed out at Loken physically for deliberately poking at Rosmontis's painful memories.
• Muelsyse's life has been an endless stream of loneliness ever since she was born. Her status as one of the last Elves on Terra has left her feeling out of place compared to others, and she can't even get along with the few remaining Elves due to having adapted to modern society. She thought she had found solace in Kristen and Saria as they founded Rhine Lab together, but as ideological differences drive Rhine Lab apart, she finds herself torn between her loyalty between the two co-founders, afraid of losing either but forced to pick a size. Even as she forms a rapport with the Doctor, she decides to betray them and preserve her relations with Kristen, only to lose both Saria and Kristen by the end of the event. At that point, Muelsyse is so despondent that she performs a life-threatening maneuver to save Saria and the others, and was about to let herself die from the aftermath if the Doctor hadn't rescued her.
• The Doctor themselves go through a rollercoaster of emotions as they discover some of the truth behind their past, coming face-to-face with what may as well be the last of their kind, doomed to die from the very beginning. It's here that the Doctor admits that they know they're too different from the rest of Terra to truly fit in, and that they often get lonely even with their companions for reassurance. Yet the Doctor's biggest questions go unanswered since Friston and Kal'tsit are both unwilling (or unable) to tell them, and they ultimately have to say farewell to the last of their kin as Friston shuts down the Hall of Stasis. It's no wonder that they reach out to Muelsyse and comfort them at the end of the event, as they know all too well what it means to be all alone.
• The "Friston" that would become Friston-3 has become cynical, bitter, and overwhelmingly hopeless after tens of thousands of years of being forced to oversee a doomed project by himself, cursing his other self for giving him an immortal body without autonomy but the ability to feel pain. He feels guilt for the demise of his kind, and practically begs Kal'tsit to put him out of his misery once everything blows over, unable to bear any more isolation and pointless torment. Even then, as Kal'tsit erases his data and lets him die as himself, he's forced to rapidly relive all of the suppressed emotions and memories from his past and his vigil, causing him to suffer a breakdown so debilitating that the Doctor can only avert their eyes.

"Hortus de Escapimo"

• The general situation, and the shattering of the fragile peace between the civilian Sankta and Sarkaz when politics (and Oren's meddling) get involved, is a tragedy, as a number of people die and the church suffers arson.
• Hyman's state as a Seaborn-mutated sarkaz is as tragic as it is terrifying, as she was initially unable to communicate with Executor and Lemuen and almost dies before she could find her children. In the end she cannot stay with her children and leaves them with the Sarkaz civilians as she departs with the Church of the Deep representative.
• Fortuna's fall from grace when an emotionally compromised Delfina tries to snatch her Patron Firearm and gets fatally shot from the accidental discharge that results is a traumatic tragedy that leaves her shaken, even as her halo flickers and her horns start growing. Spuria feels guilt at unintentionally enabling this due to having repaired her patron gun without teaching her more gun safety. In the end Fortuna decides not to return to Laterano and leaves with Reimund and the other Sarkaz, and Spuria becomes her minder out of pure guilt.
• Gerald's failed attempt to abandon his old identity as a war criminal mercenary ultimately ends with him commiting suicide to beg the Sankta to call off the commando squad sent by Oren to kill the Sarkaz at the monastery. Executor, despite having very muted emotions, is visibly distressed when he learns about Gerald's death and final plea to spare the Sarkaz civilians, and he ends up ordering Oren to call off the commandos.
• Brought to the point of no return by Gerald's death (with him even having to personally present his severed head as an offering), the general situation everyone's in, and Arturia's emotion Arts, Clemént snaps hard and attempts to blow up the whole monastery to save everyone from further despair. Failing this, he then consumes the Seaborn-laced bread Aulus left behind (which Stefano couldn't bring himself to feed his followers) out of a desperate wish to see if the Seaborn can offer the salvation he seeks, only for it to result in his death. As Executor watches, a dying Clément then denounces the world itself, muttering that nobody can find salvation before passing away.

"Come Catastrophes or Wakes of Vultures"

• Just seeing the awful state of the bankrupt Davistown and how much its inhabitants are struggling to cling to what little they have left is hard to sit through.
• Leone's life. The man was abandoned by his mother at young age. He joined the army to learn blasting to help the town that took him in and became his home by providing the mines with his expertise to increase their productivity, only for it all to be for nothing due to the town's general economic collapse caused by local bank's predatory practices. Clinging to his shares to the essentially defunct mine, he accumulated a dreadfully huge debt, which plagued not only him, but his family as well. The debt got his elder adopted son Carl to become a mercenary to help his struggling family, only for him to lose his life in combat. His stubborn refusal directly endangers his other son, Benny, when the bank attempts to kidnap the boy. Realising what his behaviour caused, he lets go of the shares... Only to lose Benny anyway, with the boy announcing his departure from Davistown to seek education in a bigger city and leaving that very night. He then proceeds to lose his house, the one thing he was assured he could keep after the sale of his shares, to a fire caused by rioting bandits. After Fort Barron's arrival, he is informed by Miles, his long-time friend, that he and others are leaving for the frontier due to Davistown having no future, and the two do not get to say goodbye to each other due to Leone missing Miles' departure. And just before the heist, he finds out that Sylvia, the girl he spent most of the event being cold to due to her working for the bank, was his deceased son's fiancée.
  • All the more sad is the scene of his suicide during the heist. While planting the explosives to blow up the power plant, he hallucinates, seeing in the fire of the furnace visions of all the people dear to him which he lost over the years - Carl, Benny, Miles and his mother, whose voice he could clearly remember even after decades of not seeing her. After finishing preparing the explosives, he tells Jessica in their last call his intent to not evacuate and die in the explosion, as he is so emotionally attached to Davistown that leaving it would be the same as dying to him and this way, he can at least stay with his beloved hometown. Jessica is left begging him to rethink, but she fails to change his mind. When he triggers the explosives, Jessica cannot do anything but powerlessly watch the power plant collapse. She is very shaken by the man's death, and dedicates him a thought before firing her gun in honour of all suffering people of Davistown.
• Jessica's departure for the frontier at the very end of the event. While she is getting what she wants - a new life without Blacksteel's and her family's influence where she can work toward bettering the world using her efforts alone - she cannot help but think about the life she is abandoning and reminisce about her past, and doing so causes her to break into tears. Even the usually stoic Woodrow gets teary-eyed in that moment.

"Babel"

• The event's story hits you with an utterly massive bomb of a reveal: the spread of Originium, and the existence of Oripathy, is actually part of a survival plan designed by Percursor Civilization. The goal of the plan is to transform everything on Terra by turning them into Originium, so that they are able to preserve their civilization from the return of the cataclysm. Doctor, or specifically Oracle, reject the plan, initially seek to treat the horrific pain and suffering that Oripathy inflicted on many innocent lives, including Amiya, caused them to have serious doubts about their goals, and started desperately trying to find a cure, even attempting to infect themselves to no avail. In the end, they chose to go through with their original plan, rationalizing that it would be a mercy to Terra at this point.
• The truth behind Theresa's death is significantly more awful than what players thought they knew. It was the result of the Doctor's plan to disband Babel from within by working with Theresis, sending assassins to kill her. Even worse, a young Amiya was still in the room with Theresa when the assassins attacked, and Theresa had to ensure Amiya would not bear witness to what was coming. Theresa manages to kill all of the assassins, but she is grievously wounded in the process and ultimately succumbs to her wounds. Before that however, her last act is to erase the Doctor's memories, seeing the good within them, and hoping they would learn to protect Terra in her stead.
  • Theresa's final conversation with Doctor shows her regret for not able to convince Doctor to side with her to the end. Unlike the previous interactions, Doctor put up a standoffish persona and cold demeanor when talking to her. Yet as Theresa reach out to Doctor's face, she discovered that Doctor is actually trying to hide their sadness and sorrow for betraying her trust, showing just how reluctant they are to carry out the plan.
  • As Theresa wiped out Doctor's memory, she found a PRTS record that did not show up in the system. It is Doctor's last words to Priestess before going through the assassination plan, before its deleted for retake. Doctor apologize to her that they will not be there when she finally woke up, and that they have become too attached to Terra to leave them alone in face of the cataclysm. It is then Theresa realized that Doctor was present in the room not to lead the assassins, but to offer themselves to be killed by Theresa for their action, knowing she is able to do so, even when mortally wounded.
  • To twist the knife further is just how beloved Theresa was. Her assassins severed their horns and mutilated their entire bodies, because they could not bear to consider themselves as Sarkaz due to the grave sin they were about to commit, and they fully intended to die alongside her. When Theresa died, all of the Sarkaz mourned and grieved for her death, and even the arrogant Sanguinarch of all people felt sorrow despite having witnessed many Lords of Fiends fall in the past, including the one he personally killed.
  • Kal'tsit bursts into the room, and discovers Theresa's corpse alongside an unconscious Doctor, to her utter despair. Theresa has one last conversation with Kal'tsit through Amiya, and requests that Kal'tsit protect the Doctor (her killer) and guide them to fulfill their newfound goal of protecting Terra. This is the moment where Kal'tsit goes from a more emotional lady, to the cold, stoic, and unfeeling woman with a deep grudge against the Doctor that we all know today.

Character-Related

• The effects of Oripathy on operators can be tragic. Some dread their impending and seemingly inevitable demise, some were shunned the moment they became infected, and some are clearly suffering from the adverse effects of their illness. Without Rhodes Island, what would have become of them is harrowing to imagine.
  • Eyjafjalla is one of the prime examples of this. Her Oripathy is so severe that she's lost most of her hearing and is starting to go blind, yet she keeps her chin up and keeps working hard. Despite all of her hard work, there's a fair chance that it could be All for Nothing if she succumbs to her illness. Many already lament that her infection means that as successful as she is, there's no guarantee where she'll end up in the future.
  • It is outright said that something horrible happened in Lappland's past that was exacerbated by her extreme Oripathy to drive her to her current unhinged state. Whatever it was, her file outright says that not only can her madness not be cured, but that "Nothing in her past should ever happen again."
  • Rope, as a homeless Cautus forced to become a thief in order to survive, was never able to afford treatment for Oripathy. Her trust lines with the Doctor indicate that she lost all hope for survival until she joined Rhodes Island, and that she is immensely hopeful that we will discover a cure, although her cheer falters when presented with the possibility of a lack of cure.
  • Ifrit's infection rate rivals that of Amiya and Eyjafjalla, and while the latter primarily suffers from physical disability and the former's effects are actually unknown, almost all of Ifrit's infection pertains to the mental department (not unlike Specter). She regularly suffers from horrifying hallucinations and a certain creature talking to her in her head (which is implied not to be one of those hallucinations), all building up into her naturally quick-to-anger personality. The worst thing? Ifrit's infection is highly implied not to be natural at all. That's right - artificially induced infections are not only a thing, they might even be worse than naturally-occuring infections.
  • While Hoederer brushes off his own Oripathy as an inconvenience, one of the things he's seen is remarkably haunting - a poor child who would never live to see her 6th birthday due to having acute and terminal oripathy.
    I don't really care that I got Oripathy. Everyone here gets it, sooner or later. I'm one of the lucky ones. Funnel's little girl is five, and her left hand is almost entirely covered in crystals. Her sixth birthday is a few months away. Funnel's birthday present for her? A coffin.
• Several of Reunion's members' recount of their lives before joining up are heart-breaking. From losing their livelihoods and their family, being relocated to crumbling slums or underground, or in rare instances rounded-up to be executed en-masse. These people were discriminated against because of circumstances often out of their control. Pushed to the limit, it comes off as tragic, if not a surprise that they would turn to Reunion and its violent methods.
• As the story progresses, the reveals of all the Reunion leaders' backstories can serve as tear-jerkers. It's clear that all of them have been victims of circumstances:
  • Believe it or not, Mephisto Used to Be a Sweet Kid. Despite constant abuse from his family and peers, he still had it in him to befriend the homeless Faust (then named Sasha), feeding him, reading to him, and sharing his love for singing. However, he eventually had Oripathy forced onto him by a particularly sadistic abuser, which also deprived him of his ability to sing. Scarred and finally at his breaking point, he took Sasha's advice that they "needed to be destroyed" literally and used his new powers to kill his abusers, before escaping with Sasha as his sole companion. Eventually, they found Reunion and a new purpose, but with Talulah changed for the worse, Mephisto was too trusting of her to change his ways as well, and she quickly started manipulating him for her own ends, causing him to spiral deeper into mental instability. When Faust dies in Chapter 6 while giving him a final request to live for himself, Mephisto snaps hard before falling into a deep depression. By the time Chapter 7 rolls around, he seems to be convinced that his only path to redemption is to lose his memories, making him seek out the sarcophagus the Doctor was extracted from.
  • Faust arguably had it even worse. Mephisto was his only friend, and seeing him become a murderer almost directly because of his guidance scarred him and made him afraid of talking and influencing him further. Voluntarily infecting himself to assure Mephisto they'd be together forever, he set out with him and found a place in Reunion. But after Talulah became more radical, he could only watch as his friend kept following her twisted ideals, only able to trust in her and Faust. Despite all of this, he stuck by Mephisto's side even as he descended into villainy, but in Chapter 6, he sacrifices himself in a final attempt to snap his friend out of his madness.
  • FrostNova came from a family that was thrown into labor at an Originium mine just for being against the Ursus Empire's ideals. They all contracted Oripathy and were stuck waiting to be executed one by one, with all of her parents long since executed before Patriot saved them. Although she was committed to Reunion's ideals, she watched Talulah descend into villainy and grew angry at her for betraying the Infected. Furious at everything that she had been forced to go through, the only thing she could do in the end was keep fighting.
  • Patriot deserted Kazdel in search of a peaceful Ursus life, only for the government to force him to kill his son just for protesting against the treatment of the infected. Then despite his service, he was immediately cast aside once he became infected himself, joining Reunion to serve his fellow infected. But even as Reunion's actions keep spiraling further away from the goal Patriot joined for, he knew he had to keep fighting, lest the men who look up to him so much be left without any hope in the world. Despite knowing that his methods are wrong, he kept the burden of being the sword and shield of the Infected, and lost everything for it.
• Rosa's potential token is none other than a paper cutter, which she "solemnly" hands to the Doctor. This might seem unassuming, until you recall Rosa mentioned in Children of Ursus that she has previously considered suicide forty-one times, either by slashing her throat open or slitting her wrists.
  • Her Epoque skin, 'Masterpiece', looks really pretty and has adorable animations involving animate teddy bears, but the subtle details surrounding it, like the crying teddy bear in the mirror, the description indicating the dress as a replica of what she used to wear as the student council president back in Chernobog and how she was groomed to be her "father's masterpiece", and even her base animation where she eats an apple, blanks out, then has a panic attack, make it clear that even the beauty of this skin can't hide the fact that the Chernobog Incident has left deep scars in her heart.
  • A deeper glimpse into Rosa's issues shows up in Menu 5 of the Rhodes Kitchen manga, where her self-loathing manifests as unfriendly apparitions of Gummy and Zima in her nightmares and hallucinations, even as the real Gummy and Zima show concern over her.
• Gummy's potential token is a voucher for free food from her. Seems innocent, until you put it into context with her experiences during the Children of Ursus incident, as well as her additional talk lines and personnel file entries that unlock when your bond of Trust with her gets high enough.
• Dur-Nar's profile, once you have enough Trust built up with her, will reveal that she was once military. Her unorthodox methods made her enemies, who tried to have her Kicked Upstairs by saddling her with a squad of rookies. She responded by building them up into a solid group that trusted her unconditionally. After her opponents in command tried to send her group on a suicide mission, which did kill a number of her rookies, she lost her cool and attacked the officer responsible in a fury, leading to a chain of events that saw her discharged from that force. She ended up joining Rhodes Island when one of the survivors from her unit recommended her there. The poignant reminder of her potential token is 'an abandoned electric blade. One must first understand loss to understand what it means to treasure something.'
• Skadi the Corrupted Heart is the alternate timeline version of Skadi when she turned into a Seaborne. Her record files is a series of research excerpts on the study of her physical changes, first noticing that her cells and tissues self-replicate rapidly, then the medical researchers became alarmed enough by the results to call in Kal'tsit, before finally noticing that Skadi the Corrupted Heart is no longer Skadi herself. The final trust record is a journal note written by an anonymous person telling how all of Terra is being invaded by Seabornes and all civilizations are being destroyed by the creatures. It's also noted that "Skadi" is constantly tailing them but never approaches them, and they wish they could kill her for the damage she had done, but eventually gives up as the world is approaching oblivion. If Skadi the Corrupted Heart's voice lines are related to the records, it is implied that the author of that final record is none other than the Doctor, who is slowly driven mad by the grief of losing everyone they cared about, including Kal'tsit and Amiya, and becoming desperate as the death is closing in around them.
  • To make the matter worse, her failed operation voice line actually brings back her sanity for a brief moment, and she uses this opportunity to plead the Doctor to get away from her as far as possible, fearing the last person she cares about who is still alive may become her next victim.
• Gravel's Operator Record reveals that despite having been with Rhodes Island long enough to have been promoted, she still has dreams that remind her of her past. She often dreams of meeting and rescuing other young girls in Kazimierz that have befallen the same fate she did of getting abducted to be sold into slavery, and whenever she offers to bring them back to their villages, the poor girls don't always remember where their village was, and this never fails to remind Gravel that she herself no longer remembers where her own home village is, something that clearly hurts her deeply. At the very least, the Record ends on a hopeful note, with Gravel noting that her life with Rhodes Island has been very good, and that she has been able to request help in her personal quest to find her village and her parents.
• Apparently, Ch'en never found out the truth regarding the Shadow Squad's strike on Lungmen's sewers, as she bitterly calls Lin Yuhsia a murderer and grimly vows to one day make her pay for her "crimes".
• Kroos the Keen Glint is awesome and pretty, but she is a lot more subdued and scared of accidents - several of her voiced lines and her final Archive entry all point to an unspecified accident that haunts her, makes her scared of people sneaking up behind her without warning, and gave her insomnia. The way her voice wavers a little in her Trust lines suggests that she is on the verge of crying. Poor girl.
• Even knowing that it'll all work out in the end, Cardigan's Operator Record can still be a tough read. She pushes herself through the harsh Leithanian mountains in the middle of a snowstorm in a desperate bid to find someone to treat Adnachiel and Steward after the two of them are afflicted with Oripathy, but when she arrives at the nearest city she finds that none of the doctors there are willing to risk their lives for the sake of a pair of Infected foreigners. Worse, she then receives a call from Steward, urging her to give up on them. With how upbeat and chipper Merry usually is, it's heartwrenching to see her spend the whole Record in a blind panic, and break down in tears as things begin to look more and more hopeless. When she finally does find help in the form of Rhodes Island she promptly collapses in exhaustion, and the medic she was speaking to notices she's suffering from frostbite and covered in injuries, yet she couldn't let herself rest until she'd made sure her friends would be okay.
• You know Midnight, that early on three-star operator who is by most accounts the one who tends to take the fall for the rest of his squad in some form? It turns out that not only was he forcefully infected by a rival host who then ganged up on him with others who tried to kill him, he was also nearly murdered by his own father years ago for becoming a host. If you look closely at his sprite and CG, he's never standing on his right leg fully. Yet despite this he is still sending money back to his family. Given everything that's happened to him it's hard to say he hasn't fallen into becoming a Stepford Smiler like so many other cheerful looking operators.
• Margaret Nearl, the Radiant Knight, has been haunted by the disappearance of her parents from her life since that fateful night they left for the Secret Mission. The flavor text for her module shows that they did manage to tell her how much they loved her and Maria on the night that they set out, and it has stuck with her ever since then. Maria never had a chance to say goodbye to them like Margaret did, since she was too young to really comprehend their departure back then, and she was asleep when they left.
• Projekt Red's module indicates that while she's grateful that Kal'tsit made her feel welcome at Rhodes Island and practically gave her a home there, she still feels out of place at times and wonders if she really belongs there.
• Orchid's Operator Record is a particularly heartwrenching Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story. A man, Jerry, approaches her to design a wedding dress. His fiancée Penny is infected and doesn't have long to live so they cannot wait for landship to stop and shop around. She reluctantly agrees, and she spends days working on the design, asking Penny and Jerry to reminisce their love for inspiration and enlisting help from other operators around the landship. When her dress is almost finished, Penny tells her during fitting that this is the first and last time she will wear it. She doesn't want to be selfish and marry Jerry when she knows she will die soon. She tells Orchid she never thought the dress would be completed so soon and only accepted the offer so she didn't have to keep turning Jerry's proposal down everyday. Orchid listens to her and snips the dress that night, despite all the effort she had put into it and how fond she had been of it. Penny then passes away on the day of their planned wedding, leaving Jerry heartbroken, which leaves Orchid wishing that she had completed the dress and persuaded Penny.
  • Orchid's past: She used to design dresses and learned from a famous Columbian designer she respected. He told her she lacked passion and would ruin her client's lives if she continued her path, causing her to switch majors and eventually become an editor. After Penny's death, she goes to drown her sorrows at a bar and opens up to another operator that she is very scared as she sees herself in Penny. She knows her clock is ticking due to Oripathy and she hates that she once again used an external excuse (her mentor in the past, Penny in the present) to run away from a task.
• Rosmontis's EPOQUE skin, Become Anew, is a glimpse into her past from when she was a test subject at Loken's Water Tank labs. All she's wearing is a simple white medical gown, with the only adornments being an array of medical detectors and Arts inhibitors. The idle animation for this skin in particular is designed to stab you in the heart with the shards of her former stasis capsule, as she takes out a photo of her brother, wipes tears from her eyes, then reaches out for a phantom memory of him.
• Eureka's plotline before she becomes the operator U-Official is an unhappy one. Unable to hold a job because of bad circumstances leading to her getting sacked repeatedly, she ends up becoming a livestreamer until she meets a powerful being who advises her to go to Rhodes Island, by means of showing her all the possible futures her staying as a streamer would bring. None of the possible futures thus are good for her, involving nothing but drama, debt, and harassment by haters. Even being in Rhodes Island isn't entirely ideal for her, because Tequila is present and was the one responsible for bringing her the bad news of getting sacked from her MC job at Dossoles. At least she managed to find helpful people like FEater and Click, who want to help her find a suitable career path.

Gameplay

• One of the first loading screen images the game will likely hit you with when you launch Arknights and wait for PRTS to load is that of some poor girl sitting alone in a trash-filled alley with a blank, hopeless expression, clearly waiting for death as her Oripathy eats away at her while the loading screen blurb for the image talks dispassionately about the disease of Oripathy and how many lives are ruined by it.
• When you fail an operation, one of your operators will usually lament the failure of the mission, all while sad music plays in the background. While some operators (e.g. Exusiai, Hellagur, Passenger, Platinum, Midnight, 12F, etc...) give encouragement to the player, some failure quotes can come off as emotionally heartbreaking, especially if the the player is forced to restart a difficult mission due to a crucial mistake on their part.
  Nightingale: Is this how despair feels?
  Archetto: Were battles beyond the walls... always so cruel?
  Goldenglow: We were so, so close...
  • Some lines that are directed towards you can qualify as a Player Punch. Ifrit is one prominent example as she blames you for messing up (which can be true).
    Ifrit: Damn you... you made a FOOL out of me!
    Zima: Man, you guys suck. Get lost!
    Phantom: Fall back. ...You've already lost your way.
    Młynar: Mark my words, there will be battles you cannot win. Have you considered the consequences of those inevitable failures?
    Gladiia: How mediocre.
    Dusk: Slipped on a stroke? Start over.
    W: Retreat? Keep casualties to a minimum? Heh, hard to imagine I'm hearing those words from your mouth.^note Referencing how the Doctor back in the day, was a ruthless commander who didn't hesitate to sacrifice their operators to win.
    Ines: An arm, an eye, or maybe something else. More than enough to trade for a few enemy heads. Or, would you rather bear the price of failure? Ugh, suit yourself.
  • Losing a level can be particularly heartrending if said operator blames themselves for the loss. Jessica's operation failure quote is particularly bad, knowing her already crippling lack of self esteem.
    Jessica: Requesting medevac! I dragged everybody down... it's all my fault! Sorry! I'm sorry!

Other

• The Crapsack World the game takes place in can be depressing to think about at times. Imagine living in a world where cataclysmic disasters are a common occurrence, forcing people to become nomadic in order to survive. Said disasters spread a wonder material that is now the backbone of just about all things on Terra, but can also cause an incurable disease with a 100% mortality rate, on top of making you a pariah ostracized and punished by all of society. And on top of that, society itself isn't the best either, with poverty and government corruption being rife alongside the constant discrimination and oppression of the Infected (and sometimes against the non-infected like the Sarkaz as well). The worst part is that avoiding Originium simply isn't an option - Originium basically runs the world, and the only choice people have is to keep relying on the mineral despite the risks.
  • One of Eyjafjalla's archive files highlights this. An unknown individual peruses her thesis drafts, which claim that Originium itself is a natural catastrophe, and expresses that she is asking dangerous questions. The speaker likens the world's use of Originium to ants eating carrion - they know it's "rotten" and may spell disaster in the future, but they have no choice.
    You do know ants, right? Then you should know ants love carrion.
    Even though the carrion is still rotting, the ants will still rip it to tiny chunks and carry them back to their nest to feed the whole community.
    Ants must grow stronger to survive in the world.
    Do you get it? If the carrion is Originium, we are feeding our community with it for everyone to grow stronger. And the purpose of that is to defend ourselves... and maybe oppose potential changes in the future.
    Yes, according Eyjafjalla's thesis, Originium is a natural Catastrophe.
    But we cannot stop, and will not stop.
• Some furniture from the Rhodes Island Workstation set will have captions on Blaze's deceased friends, which can be very heart-wrenching:
  Robotic Arm: A robotic arm installed inside the workshop. Whitesmith used to dance with it, her steps so fast even death could not catch her. In the end, she did finally slow down.
  Workbench: A simple workbench, with some experiment supplies strewn across it messily. Mechanist's workbench also doubles as his bed. He once said that sleep and death are one and the same.
  Weapon Storage Cabinet: A closet filled with weapons. The weapons are waiting for calibration, Logos is waiting for spare parts, and Whitesmith is waiting for raw materials. All the waiting is meaningless now.
  Workstation Wallpaper: The workstations wallpaper has a logo imprinted upon it. Everyone secretly vowed to dedicated their lives to their work, and some of them made good on that vow.
• The Freeze-Frame Bonus at the end of this trailer.
  Idealism is that you will probably never receive something back but nonetheless still decide to give.

Multiple Media

• Rhodes Kitchen, despite being a warm-hearted and fluffy set of sidestories that show off the cuisine of Terra, also shows that many of the featured characters have bad memories haunting them:
  • Menu 1 opens with a woman named Nalaura who was recently hired by Rhodes Island as part of the cooking staff trying to cut off her hand due to the oripathy lesion on it. It's later revealed that she used to run a food truck back in RIM Billiton to provide food for the miners but later ostracized and lost business when the miners saw her Oripathy lesion. She all but lashed out at Amiya thinking that Rhodes Island is providing empty promises for the Infected and that Amiya is just a naive little girl who didn't know how cruel the people of Terra can be towards the Infected until Amiya shows off her own Oripathy lesions.
  • Menu 5, being a chapter that focuses on Rosa and the other Chernobog students, shows that the nightmares that happened still haunt Rosa, as she ended up working so late that she missed the cafeteria hours and ended up sitting alone in the darkened mess hall, and then began hallucinating in her tired and hungry state, with her inner fears manifesting as hallucinations of Gummy and Zima berating her. It's also shown that the real Gummy and Zima were concerned for her and secretly followed her to the cafeteria to help fix her some dinner since she missed the official dining hours.
  • Menu 6, taking place canonically after Episode 10, shows Horn still dealing with the minor PTSD she suffered from as a result of the horrors the Kazdel Commission and Dublinn had visited on Victoria, and showed that she was all too familiar with the loss of appetite that PTSD victims sometimes suffer from.
  • Menu 7 shows that Mizuki sometimes feels alienated from others due to his unique Seaborn-hybrid nature and tastes resulting in his brand of Higashi-style sashimi being made so fresh it looked and tasted like it was still alive, briefly spooking the other Higashi operators he was playing Tetris with.
  • Menu 9 demonstrates how much Ace managed to teach Blaze when she was still a newbie operator, and shows off the bond of friendship she forms with three other operators who brought her under their wing. The entire thing, despite its comfy mood, has a melancholy feel to it, especially when it became known that the three other operators, like Ace, did not survive to see the end of the Chernobog Incident.
• The Record of Originium: Rhine Labs focused spin-off details and elaborates how the Diαbolic Crisis, or known as the Flame demon incident, truly occurred and also the fallout of it, pulling no punches in showing how much Ifrit's circumstances have led to both Saria and Silence leaving Rhine Lab in disgust and disappointment:
  • The start of Silence and Saria's relationship as they grew to have a closer relationship; Silence starts out admiring Saria ever since she was hired for Rhine Labs but during the incident, she arrived to the sight of Saria nearly about to murder Ifrit and experienced a case of Broken Pedestal where the sight, along with the fact that one of the Rhine Labs executives, Parvis, tells Silence that Saria agreed to Ifrit's project, morphed and destroyed what admiration she had left for Saria. Silence's grudge over Saria's situation over Ifrit was so strong, that it coloured their interactions even at Rhodes Island, and they take a long time to even get together and try to hash out what happened face-to-face. The only silver lining here is that they finally agreed to try and cooperate more for Ifrit's sake after that discussion.
  • While Ifrit is majorly left out from the full details of the incident, she was left with an impression that Silence and Saria, who used to get along so well together, split up and got into a fight because of Ifrit herself and believed that Saria now hates her and that's why Saria never got to speak to her even in Rhodes Island.
  • The Rhine Labs manhua spin-off introduces a little girl named Darya, who is stowed away on a shipment of goods to the Rhodes Island landship. She inherited her mother's Oripathy and was born Infected, so all she knew was a dysfunctional household where her abusive alcoholic father always fought with her mother over Darya being a mistake from birth. This went on for years until her father eventually killed her mother in a drunken rage, and Darya awakened to her Arts to kill him in self-defense. Her Dark and Troubled Past is the reason why the family's neighbors decided to stow her away on Rhodes Island, and her plight reminds Silence and Saria so much of Ifrit's situation that Silence immediately wants to help treat Darya after Ifrit practically adopts the little stowaway as her underling and little sister.
  • Chapter 4's flashbacks reveal that Ifrit's bad memories of being used in experimentation haunted her so badly that she refused restraints even before a painful procedure, flinching away from an assistant carrying an armful of leather straps, and breaking down in sobs and wails about not wanting to be a test subject any more. It's clear that this not only was part of what soured Silence towards certain forms of experimentation in the name of research but also drove Saria to immediately investigate the Hyde Labs ruins from which Ifrit was rescued.
  • The revelation that Control had basically taken advantage of Saria's trust in her to indulge in questionable research without explaining it to her, and Saria's mixed angry and disappointed reaction, adds another dimension of trauma to Saria's backstory. While it's difficult for Saria to express herself due to the way her upbringing forced her to tamp down her emotions, the way her anger goes cold and brittle as she confronts Control over Ifrit's treatment and situation really shows how badly her composure has cracked.
  • In the manhua's climax, Saria's trauma over Ifrit's situation is finally revealed: she was forced to resort to violence when she was unable to get Ifrit to come to her senses when her Arts ran wild in Rhine Labs, and yet Ifrit did not hold any of it against her - her expression of realization of trauma when a badly injured Ifrit smiles at her, uncomprehending of the violence beforehand, is a rare moment where her normally-stoic expression just cracks, and it is a powerful scene that reveals that the Darya situation is just hammering hard on her personal issues. In addition, Darya finally succumbs to her Oripathy, her condition having deteriorated too much to be treated or stabilized despite Silence's best efforts. Nevertheless, Darya dies smiling, thanking Ifrit for granting her small wish to see an oasis. Silence reacts to Darya's death poorly, as the situation reminded her of when she met Ifrit and ended up taking care of her.
• As part of the 4th Anniversary Livestream, The Story of Rhine Lab shows the backstory of Rhine Labs from Muelsyse's perspective, where she originally helped Kirsten and Saria bring Rhine Labs to life as a sponsor, but ended up watching them drift apart. The use of sepia tones and Fallout-esque old-timey Fifties-styled music gives it an 'old regrets' theme. What makes this video even more tragic is that it is based on the real history of Hypergryph and Arknights development itself, and is part of the reason why MICA and Hypergryph can never see eye to eye.
• The sidestory manga Prelude Suite: Cadenza Virtuosa shows that Arturia had trouble processing emotions herself, and that she regretted accidentally enabling her mother's desire to be a war reporter that led to her death, one of the few times she has felt a genuine emotion of her own.