Recap / Arknights Stultifera Navis

Remember when the days were young,
Iberia's future's bright as the sun.
She whispers when the sails ascend:
"The Golden Age will return again!"

—Stultifer Cantus (Song of Fools)

Various factions converge in the seaside town of Gran Faro, Iberia, with the hopes of discovering the long-lost treasures of the Iberian Golden Age for their own use.

Tropes in this episode:

• Central Theme: Dealing with tragedy and its ensuing grief. It's pointed out that Iberia has never truly been able to recover from the Profound Silence and the loss of its Golden Age to this day, Gran Faro and its subsequent decline has Thiago stewing in decades-long resentment, and the crew of the Stultifera Navis has long fallen into madness since they were left adrift and forced to cope with what has happened.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Amaia states that the Profound Silence happened in 1038 and it's been exactly fifty-six years ago in the English script. The problem with this exact number is that it implies this story takes place in 1094, an impossibility because it has to take place after "Near Light" for Blemishine to be on Rhodes Island and the fall of Reunion because Grani's event where Skadi hunts for the Last Knight's key hinges on Big Bob leading a remnant group in hopes of fleeing to Columbia. The Chinese script is much vaguer and allows for a margin of error in Amaia's estimation by stating it's somewhere between fifty to sixty years since the Profound Silence.
• Shout-Out: The event's theme takes its inspiration from a satirical allegory with the same name in Latin (Stultifera Navis), which discussed the "ship of fools" trope (a ship of dysfunctional people that illustrate the lack of expert knowledge-based governance in a political system). Although here, the title "Ship of Fools" is taken more literally, as the event illustrates what happened to the dysfunctional (read: the adrift and horrifically mutated) crew of the eponymous golden ship.
• Thematic Theme Tune: At first glance, the "Song of Fools" is a sea shanty urging people to reclaim what remains of the Golden Age for Iberia before its glory is lost forever. However, with the context of the event story, it can also be read as the dreadnaught's crew hanging onto what remains of their sanity as they attempt to weather being stranded out at sea.
• Wham Line: The context of the Abyssal Hunters' quest to return home is massively upended when Kal'tsit and Carmen read through the Eye of Iberia's logs, discovering that it's been receiving distress signals from an Aegirian city right below the Stultifera Navis about a Seaborn invasion. The Hunters' greatest hope and fear are happening right below their foot at that point in the story.
  Kal'tsit: It means Aegir's demise is accelerating. It means that... if even cities at this distance are sending out distress signals, then the Stultifera Navis has been circling above their nest since the very beginning.