"It's just a juice" is a joke Mabel's making.
The English localization tones down a lot about the game, but even so, the only outright indication the localized script ever gives that loqua is "
just juice" comes from Mabel, one of Dyne's raiders. This is immediately after Fina is confused about what, exactly, loqua is, guessing it's a good-tasting beverage from how fervently Dyne's crew are drinking it. Mabel offers her some, saying that it's just juice but it tastes great.
Mabel is joking. Fina being Fina, she doesn't get the joke, but the other Rogues would find it funny, in the same kind of way that calling cheese "very old milk" is funny.
Arcadia used to have a Black Moon.
Something or another happened to it, and the fallout created the Dark Rift around what remained of the thing.
- Take a good look at the "Mysterious Rings
" Discovery; one large circle surrounded by seven smaller ones?
The Black Moon Stone can reverse personalities.
Black magic was used for this long and long ago to control people. It's still possible to use Black magic if you nab a shard of Black Moon Stone from the Rift and are persistent enough, though the consequences of
How Do I Shot Web? from something that can screw with your brain can be
pretty dire.
Lord Galcian is a master of Black Moon magic.
Somehow he got a hold of a Black Moon fragment and taught himself. In line with the above WMG, he used it to alter Ramirez's personality to be fanatically loyal to him.
Dyne is a Valuan noble who ran away.
Of the Rogue captains we know, Dyne is probably the most disciplined and vaguely cultured. Vyse comments at several points that he considers himself, as a Rogue, a gentleman - presumably this came from his father's teachings. Also, when Dyne gives Vyse the Yellow Moon Stone, it's treated like the passing on of a family heirloom.
There's a Valuan noble who asks where Vyse is from the one time you're in Upper City. One of the answers you can give is "I come from a poor, but noble family." Maybe that's the truth, at least for some years before Vyse was born - Dyne's folks were hitting some hard times, nobles on the edge of bankruptcy, and so he ran off to seek his fortune and ended up an Air Pirate.
- This actually makes a good deal of sense with regards to Vyse and his moveset. Rain of Swords and Pirate's Wrath both have heavy lightning themes. Who likely taught him to fight? The most logical person would be his father. While Enrique knows the rapier and knows a Valuan style, Dyne might have known a more forceful style. It's even noted by many that Vyse and Enrique have similar combat styles, and one favors finesse while the other favors force.
- This is also supported by Vyse having an affinity to yellow magic, learning it faster than every other party member.
Where Piastol's Silver magic and the Valuans' robots came from.
Silver magic is practically a lost art, since the Silver Civilization left even less of a trace than the other Old World peoples and Silver Moon Stones are so hard to come by. And yet, Piastol will tear the party to pieces with her command of Silver magic if you're not Delta Shielding every turn.
And where the heck did Valua get robots? They're the most advanced civilization right now, but still. Robots? How do they even work at the general technology level Arcadia's at?
The solution is simple: Ramirez. He taught Piastol Silver magic - she's clearly got some combat training from her father, and there's no one better to teach his kid than his pet Silvite. After his Face–Heel Turn, he turned over robot designs to Galcian. Arcadian robots work by Silvering life into them - which is why the Silver Civilization has the most of them.
The random boss monsters are caused by radiation from the Moon Crystals.
Boy,
Skies sure does have a lot of
Giant Space Fleas that show up, get beaten, and are never mentioned again. Mostly around the Moon Crystals when they aren't guarded by robots or the Gigas themselves. Maybe the Moon Crystals themselves, being essentially pure crystallized magic, have weird effects on the wildlife near them. The unplanned Crystal guardians are just random, hyper-territorial animals.
Ramirez has a "loyalty gene".
One of Ramirez's defining traits is that he is fanatically loyal to his leaders. Fina even notes this in her expository flashback explaining where he came from. It probably would have been pretty easy for the Silvite Elders to insert a tendency towards that - there's no way he and Fina were born normally, they were likely grown in a vat or something - which then proceeded to backfire spectacularly on them.
How you make a Moon Crystal and why Fina even exists.
Moon Crystals are super-pure Moon Stones. How do you get them that pure? If it was a matter of pulling out every last bit of impurity through normal methods, even the New World Arcadians should have come up with one by now. The way you get a Crystal is by using magic of the same colour - the Red Crystal was superheated, the Green was bathed in healing and poison magic, and so on.
Silver magic is life and death. The only way to make one would be to tie it to someone's life force. This is why Fina even exists - the Elders would need a Silver Moon Crystal to awaken Zelos, and Ramirez was meant to be the warrior who would control it. They always intended to eventually kill Fina for it. It's not like they don't have a record of being enormous dicks.
Ramirez was stalling on Crescent Isle.
So, Ramirez almost kills Fina for her Crystal when he swipes the other ones. When
Gilder shows up, he notes, "Good thing that guy's long-winded." As a general rule, Ramirez
isn't. He's pretty quiet, and when he does speak, it's usually short and to the point when he's not in
Omnicidal Maniac mode. And as he later proved with Elder Prime, it wasn't particularly necessary to attempt to drag the Crystal out magically.
Fina's still his little sister. He was waiting to get interrupted so he could take the rest of the Crystals and convince Galcian to go to the Shrine for a Silver Moon Crystal.
Since Soltis was the cause of all the massive storms and air rifts, and the Black Moon Stone was found at the Dark Rift, one can safely say that all powerful/gigantic objects falling into Deep Sky have an effect on Arcadia's atmosphere. There is no sign of a Black Moon, but we have this Black Moon Stone. And we have this Gigas that brings down the Rains of Destruction. You have to wonder... why oh why does land float and fish swim in the air? How do ships just hover like air is buoyant? Why is there incredible deadly pressure on the surface of the world, exactly? How about... it was caused by the released energies of destroying an entire Moon to bring ruin to the world. That would account for it, since the rest look pretty intact.
- Maybe the Black Moon was smaller, too, so it got used up when the rest didn't.
If you use Moon Stones as fuel,
however they're actually used up, they make ships float. Blue Moon Stones, being associated with wind (and water), work the best, but any kind will do. Small hunks of Moon Stone, and even Moon Crystal, don't seem to float on their own... but they have to get off the Moons
somehow. What if you got a whole
bunch of them together and buried them in the ground? Eventually, they'd raise islands and continents from Deep Sky. Bigger landmasses would be hit by more Moon Stones from space, so they'd be more stable than islands whose "fuel" may eventually run out.
The magic of the sheer number of lunar chunks down in Deep Sky is what causes the pressures, too.
- Why is this a WMG comment? I think that this is established by the game.
- It's hinted at, but we never get outright confirmation that I'm aware of.
Vyse is a master artist.
Those Discovery logbook pictures had to come from
somewhere...
The Vyse, Aika, and Fina in
Valkyria Chronicles are all implied to be the same ones from here, and it's very possible that all the moons but the silver one and all the continents are somehow not visible from Europa. Due to being separate from each other for so long, both worlds are at different technological levels. Mina and Hina were sent away because they didn't have the aptitude towards magic that Fina had. Also Vyse and Aika made up last names for themselves, just because.
This game is a bad future of the world of
One Piece.
The Gigas are the Ancient Weapons. They ran amuck, evaporated the ocean, and messed up the gravity.
Piasol's design was based on a velociraptor.
Look at her! "Feathery" hair, boots shaped like toe-claws, lanky, scythe motif...
Vyse's eyepatch is corrective.
He does have a bad eye, but only one. The eyepatch, when set right, normalizes it, and obviously has added bonuses. Also it's a relic from the Old World - that kind of technology seems a bit out of the grasp of Arcadians of Vyse's day.
Galcian has no feelings for Ramirez except as a tool, the same as Mendosa.
He just has more sense than Mendosa and knows he wouldn't win a fight with the kid. Plus, Ramirez is a very, very useful tool from his perspective.
Galcian killed or arranged for the death of Enrique's father.
Doc's story in the moonfish sidequest implies that Galcian has been planning his conquest for some time before the events of the game. Teodora is said to have once been a beautiful and kind woman, and it's implied that the death of Enrique's father (which we know nothing about) prompted her
Start of Darkness. If Galcian had been planning long-term, it could be possible that he murdered or arranged for the Emperor to be out of the picture in order to manipulate Teodora into becoming the power-hungry dictator she is during the game. That would allow him to gain power and the ear of the Empress (whose goal he pretends to share), thus allowing him free reign to set the rest of his plans into motion.
Ramirez's sword is the same kind of being as Cupil.
Only his has a lot less personality and only takes that sword shape. The sword and Cupil are the exact same shade of silver, and it makes sense that Ramirez would have brought along something to defend himself with.
Galcian and Ramirez were lovers.
Why would Ramirez betray the Sivites? Why would he be so loyal to Galcian? Why would he cry when Galcian was killed?because they were lovers. It makes so much sense.
- He was so loyal to Galcian because he had his entire worldview shattered and was forced to adopt a new one, in which he viewed Galcian as the only person worthy of ruling over the world.
Huskras are ratting dogs.
While we don't see any other dogs in Arcadia, this might be because we mostly hang around sailors and in ports. Huskras, with their low stature, are great dogs for keeping rats or the Arcadian equivalent under control on a ship.
The Valua-Nasr War gave rise to what later became the Valuan Empire.
The Valua-Nasr War doesn't receive a lot of emphasis in-game, but dialogue from
NPCs and the "Valuan Wreckage" discovery implies that it was a long, costly conflict. (At one point, there was even an attempted invasion of the Valuan mainland by the Nasreans, according to the village elder in Maramba.)
It can be assumed that Valua were the instigators of the conflict, but it wouldn't make sense for them to enter a war when they're headed towards an unavoidable energy crisis and the only way to access Nasrad during that period was through the South Dannel Strait.
Maybe at that point in time, the Valuans were the underdogs: a small, inhospitable country with a sore lack of resources and manpower, a dead king, but a tenacious Admiralty. Galcian (who canonically fought in the war, according to the village elder) came out the hero of the Valua-Nasr campaign. Lord Admiral Mendosa and Second Admiral Gregorio had worked together to spearhead the war effort. Vigoro, Belleza, and De Loco were just beginning their naval careers at the time, but each made a name for themselves during the conflict.
Neither side had truly won, but the defense of the capital became a great source of pride for the Valuan people. However, the king of Valua had been killed in an early skirmish, leaving his wife and their son to brave the rest of the war alone. This experience hardened the young Empress Teodora and inadvertently set Valua on the path to worldwide conquest.
- The Valuan Entrance massiveness and the Upper City's opulence doesn't speak to Valua being the underdogs in the conflict. There was probably parity between the two sides.
"Mixed race" people exist in Arcadia.
Because De Loco is one of few characters (other than those introduced in
Legends) who possesses an unnatural hair color, it might be that he dyed his hair in Ixa'taka. However, his hair was shown to be purple in his introductory cutscene, which was before he even stepped foot on the continent. Also, it seems unlikely he would allow dye that close to his face, given that his official bio reads that he dislikes "polluted air".
So why not take it a step further? The only people in Arcadia who are shown to have vivid purple hair are the Ixa'takans. There's no mention in-game of mixed race people, but it is possible for a person to pass for a race other than their own (ex. Ramirez). Perhaps a part of De Loco's hostility towards the Ixa'takan people (other than his inherent disregard for life) is rooted in insecurities about being associated with a people whom he considers primitive and ignorant.
- More: According to Doc's flashbacks, Galcian is the person who masterminded the conquest of Ixa'taka several years before the story. Perhaps he assigned De Loco to Ixa'taka not only because of his work with Moon Stones but also because he [Galcian] is the only person in the Armada privy to De Loco's secret.
- It's also a popular fan theory/headcanon that Aika's parents died during the Valua-Nasr War. It's possible that she is part-Nasrean, given that all of her damage-dealing S-moves relate to fire, the element associated with Nasr. Furthermore, many Nasreans possess red hair (though not the same shade as Aika's).
There is no big mystery as to why Glacia is uninhabited.
Glacia is the ice civilization. It was probable that they needed to import a lot of their food. Once the Rains of Destruction hit, whatever trading network they set up with other nations was shattered. Even though their City remained physically intact, there just wasn't enough food to feed the population. You either left, or you starved. The Glacians then mixed in with the populations of other races.
There were going to be more towns
Originally you would have visited a town inhabited by Glacians during the Purple Crystal section, and would have visited Upper Valua during the Yellow Crystal section, but they were canned due to time constraints. So they tweaked the story a bit, made the Glacia dungeon into the town itself, and implemented the small section of Upper Valua that you visit before rescuing Fina so that the assets they had created wouldn't go to waste. The part with Enrique trying to talk sense into her mother and trying to take her life when that failed might originally have been intended to happen during the Yellow Crystal section, or possibly at the end of it. There might even have been a Silvite town planned and possibly a Silvite dungeon, before they replaced them with the Silver Shrine.
This is supported by the fact we know that there was content they wanted to implement but couldn't due to time constraints, as they stated that that was the reason they left Ramirez's backstory out of the Dreamcast version, and consider the Gamecube version more "complete". It also explains a few oddities, like the last sections feeling rushed, having no proper visitable towns and lacking either a Gigas ship battle or a standard boss fight, or the player getting his own base only for the game to end shortly after (more towns and dungeons would have made the last part of the game longer), or Upper Valua never being fully visited unlike Lower Valua (many players were expecting it to be visitable later in the game).
