Trivia #4 (Chapters 29 - 35)
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Spiteful Murkrow
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Author’s Note: This trivia section was written under the assumption that readers had caught up with the full length of the story up to this point and touches frankly on major spoilers. If you’re stumbling across this from before reading Chapter 35, strongly consider revisiting it sometime after catching up.
How did you come up with Fähnlein Stärke?
How did you come up with King Siegmund?
How did you come up with Zeuge?
What was with those relics in the reliquary?
How did you come up with Kim and Elly?
And what about Fähnlein Jugend and Operation Avalanche?
What was with those paintings in Lacan’s apartment?
What’s with the armor that’s everywhere in the story?
And what’s with this ‘Dyad’ thing that keeps coming up in the story?
What is with this ‘Wish’ and ‘Reality’ thing this story keeps doing with the Taos?
How did you come up with Fähnlein Stärke?
From the very beginning of Once a Thief’s planning, Lacan and Sophia were envisioned as operating within a clandestine unit of Varhyde’s army whose purpose would be to fetch the ‘Dyad’ without drawing major attention to themselves and then bring her deep behind enemy lines to use as a weapon of war, which in the earliest drafts had the oh-so-creative working name of ‘Task Force’. Due to a combination of military history within the Germanosphere tends to be more fraught in terms of implications and to lean into the more old-timey vibes the in-setting society had, the decision was made that the unit would vibe after historically older military formations within the Germanosphere, which led to the decision to cast it as a Fähnlein as the predecessor unit to Companies within militaries in that cultural sphere, and led me to look at names in German that would accompany it.
For the longest time, the actual name of the unit was something that I wavered with what I wanted it to be, hence why it went unnamed until Chapter 20. One thing that I settled on quickly was that in light of Lacan and Sophia both being named in homage to the Xeno series, that it would be fitting if their unit followed a similar convention. The first direction that I considered since I had a Xenoblade X playthrough fresh on my mind, was to name it something thematically aligning with ‘Ganglion’ or ‘Growth’, after the primary antagonist faction from the game (‘Growth’ being the name of the faction in the Japanese release). For obvious reasons, it didn’t quite pan out since ‘Nervenknoten’ and ‘Wachstum’ both didn’t quite roll off the tongue. Eventually, I wound up looking back a bit further in the series for inspiration towards Xenogears, which had an antagonist faction connected to both Lacan and Sophia’s namesake characters called ‘Gebler’, a botched translation by Squaresoft’s US branch of ‘Gevurah’, the name of the sefirot of strength in Kabbalah. A quick glance at some German articles about the tree revealed that ‘Stärke’ or ‘strength’ was one of the attributes generally associated with the sefirot in German, and the rest was history.
For obvious reasons, Fähnlein Stärke did not attempt to directly mirror the role and character dynamics of its namesake organization, though it did influence some of the castings of recurring characters in it. If you happened to think that the names ‘Rank’, ‘Breuer’, ‘ Helmholtz’, and ‘Strachey’ kept popping up, that was very much deliberate: they are the names of recurring minibosses from Gebler in Xenogears in the original Japanese / the game’s German fan translation, whose species castings deliberately evoke some combination of their appearances and fighting styles as bosses.
For the longest time, the actual name of the unit was something that I wavered with what I wanted it to be, hence why it went unnamed until Chapter 20. One thing that I settled on quickly was that in light of Lacan and Sophia both being named in homage to the Xeno series, that it would be fitting if their unit followed a similar convention. The first direction that I considered since I had a Xenoblade X playthrough fresh on my mind, was to name it something thematically aligning with ‘Ganglion’ or ‘Growth’, after the primary antagonist faction from the game (‘Growth’ being the name of the faction in the Japanese release). For obvious reasons, it didn’t quite pan out since ‘Nervenknoten’ and ‘Wachstum’ both didn’t quite roll off the tongue. Eventually, I wound up looking back a bit further in the series for inspiration towards Xenogears, which had an antagonist faction connected to both Lacan and Sophia’s namesake characters called ‘Gebler’, a botched translation by Squaresoft’s US branch of ‘Gevurah’, the name of the sefirot of strength in Kabbalah. A quick glance at some German articles about the tree revealed that ‘Stärke’ or ‘strength’ was one of the attributes generally associated with the sefirot in German, and the rest was history.
For obvious reasons, Fähnlein Stärke did not attempt to directly mirror the role and character dynamics of its namesake organization, though it did influence some of the castings of recurring characters in it. If you happened to think that the names ‘Rank’, ‘Breuer’, ‘ Helmholtz’, and ‘Strachey’ kept popping up, that was very much deliberate: they are the names of recurring minibosses from Gebler in Xenogears in the original Japanese / the game’s German fan translation, whose species castings deliberately evoke some combination of their appearances and fighting styles as bosses.
How did you come up with King Siegmund?
Siegmund was one of those characters whose identity was settled after the story took a firm decision that it would be shameless and unsubtle about leaning on the Xeno series for influence. It helped quite a bit with narrowing down what I wanted to do with a character that had the working name of ‘King’ and not terribly much to ground him other than that he was intended to get up there in years and be looking at desperate and drastic measures to carry his kingdom to victory as things started fraying around him.
In Siegmund’s case, he is an homage to Kaiser Sigmund from Xenogears (or ‘Siegmund’ in the original Japanese / its German fan translation. In Xenogears, Siegmund reigns over one of two nations in the game’s setting stuck in a Forever War with each other that is being manipulated by outside powers (a premise that should be quite familiar to players of later series games), and is perfectly willing and ready to use amoral means in order to shore up his realm amidst the strains of war. It also carried over to some of Siegmund’s character quirks in his portrayal such as his attire and his thing for organ music (which is a fairly transparent reference to how Kaiser Sigmund is introduced in his origin work).
There were a few other things that made a ‘Siegmund’ a pretty easy decision for a casting, but those are spoilers unto themselves so I will keep them in the block below:
As for why he’s a ‘King’ Siegmund as opposed to a ‘Kaiser’ Siegmund, that was one part not wanting to write a second ‘empire’ faction when my best-known work as a writer has one, and one part deliberate canonical ‘Tao mythos’ nod in which the rulers in the backstory mythology were ‘kings’. As for why he’s a Mienshao, that one’s easy: it’s a Pokémon one can run into as a random encounter in Dragonspiral Tower and it visually shares characteristics after Kaiser Sigmund’s design as a character, so it felt like a pretty natural casting.
In Siegmund’s case, he is an homage to Kaiser Sigmund from Xenogears (or ‘Siegmund’ in the original Japanese / its German fan translation. In Xenogears, Siegmund reigns over one of two nations in the game’s setting stuck in a Forever War with each other that is being manipulated by outside powers (a premise that should be quite familiar to players of later series games), and is perfectly willing and ready to use amoral means in order to shore up his realm amidst the strains of war. It also carried over to some of Siegmund’s character quirks in his portrayal such as his attire and his thing for organ music (which is a fairly transparent reference to how Kaiser Sigmund is introduced in his origin work).
There were a few other things that made a ‘Siegmund’ a pretty easy decision for a casting, but those are spoilers unto themselves so I will keep them in the block below:
In Xenogears, Si(e)gmund and Lacan (or more accurately, Si(e)gmund and Gra(h)f), are also linked to each other, with completely inverted character dynamics to what this story’s Siegmund and Lacan have. In Xenogears, it is Siegmund who is the younger of the two and dependent on the other as a more powerful benefactor.
Like his Xenogears namesake, Siegmund here in Once a Thief has a fairly fraught family life with a deceased wife and an estranged son. I won’t say too much more than that other than that due to the story not dealing with the topic openly other than that those who picked up on Siegmund being a homage character were likely able to very quickly identify who the crown prince of Varhyde mentioned in passing was.
Like his Xenogears namesake, Siegmund here in Once a Thief has a fairly fraught family life with a deceased wife and an estranged son. I won’t say too much more than that other than that due to the story not dealing with the topic openly other than that those who picked up on Siegmund being a homage character were likely able to very quickly identify who the crown prince of Varhyde mentioned in passing was.
As for why he’s a ‘King’ Siegmund as opposed to a ‘Kaiser’ Siegmund, that was one part not wanting to write a second ‘empire’ faction when my best-known work as a writer has one, and one part deliberate canonical ‘Tao mythos’ nod in which the rulers in the backstory mythology were ‘kings’. As for why he’s a Mienshao, that one’s easy: it’s a Pokémon one can run into as a random encounter in Dragonspiral Tower and it visually shares characteristics after Kaiser Sigmund’s design as a character, so it felt like a pretty natural casting.
How did you come up with Zeuge?
Zeuge is another one of those characters that originated as an homage to another one, though he is the rare bird in this story where he isn’t a Xeno series homage. Rather, Zeuge is a composite cameo of Martor Serperior from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Overthrown / Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Dissolution. In those stories, Martor is a weapons researcher (in Overthrown) / scribe (in Dissolution) who makes appearances in the chapter teasers of those stories poking and prodding at things from his world’s past that were often best left forgotten. More than fitting for a scribe in this setting that dealt with relics and old records on a regular basis.
For a period of time during drafting, Zeuge was just flatly named ‘Martor’, but it was ultimately decided to roll a different but semantically related name in case the original character happened to ever make a proper appearance through his author’s pen someday. In this case, Zeuge is an occasionally encountered German surname that semantically means ‘witness’, while Martor is a roughly equivalent term in Romanian for the same concept.
How close Zeuge turned out to his source of inspiration is likely something only Knightfall will ever know, though it was also an opportunity to work in some deep cut referential fun here and there to Knightfall’s stories with things like him pining over a Floatzel historian from a ‘Silver City’ that had an untimely demise.
For a period of time during drafting, Zeuge was just flatly named ‘Martor’, but it was ultimately decided to roll a different but semantically related name in case the original character happened to ever make a proper appearance through his author’s pen someday. In this case, Zeuge is an occasionally encountered German surname that semantically means ‘witness’, while Martor is a roughly equivalent term in Romanian for the same concept.
How close Zeuge turned out to his source of inspiration is likely something only Knightfall will ever know, though it was also an opportunity to work in some deep cut referential fun here and there to Knightfall’s stories with things like him pining over a Floatzel historian from a ‘Silver City’ that had an untimely demise.
What was with those relics in the reliquary?
They are a grab bag of odds and ends from the Pokémon franchise (e.x. the case with Pokéballs) and excuses to do different references primarily to different Xeno media:
- The ‘box with knobs and cups’ with the “Vector Ah-Ghee” sigil ought to be familiar to anyone who played through Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed, if a bit worse for wear.
- The ‘Steel Raven’ is a gutted background vehicle that can be seen around NLA in Xenoblade X with an added bonus of being a cross-fic reference to Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rebirth for anyone who’s read past a particular watershed chapter of that story.
- The ‘Skell’/‘Doll’ lying around is a reference to the mechs from Xenoblade X, which were called ‘Skells’/’Dolls’ depending on if one played one of the localized releases or the original Japanese. I won’t say too much about the power source that was shown off since that’s a story for another day in this tale, other than that Zeuge’s explanation of how it used to work is something readers familiar with Xenogears or Xenoblade 2’s supplemental lore likely thought sounded quite familiar.
- The ‘box with knobs and cups’ with the “Vector Ah-Ghee” sigil ought to be familiar to anyone who played through Xenoblade 3: Future Redeemed, if a bit worse for wear.
- The ‘Steel Raven’ is a gutted background vehicle that can be seen around NLA in Xenoblade X with an added bonus of being a cross-fic reference to Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rebirth for anyone who’s read past a particular watershed chapter of that story.
- The ‘Skell’/‘Doll’ lying around is a reference to the mechs from Xenoblade X, which were called ‘Skells’/’Dolls’ depending on if one played one of the localized releases or the original Japanese. I won’t say too much about the power source that was shown off since that’s a story for another day in this tale, other than that Zeuge’s explanation of how it used to work is something readers familiar with Xenogears or Xenoblade 2’s supplemental lore likely thought sounded quite familiar.
How did you come up with Kim and Elly?
Simple, I came up ‘eternal recurrence’ subplot, of course, which was put together as a means for laying the foundations for some character dynamics for Fähnlein Stärke and its members that will become relevant in the second half of the story. As such, it was only natural that I’d look at Lacan and Sophia’s source of inspiration for ideas, which happened to provide an off-the-shelf option to work with through Kim Kasim and his lover, Elly from that game, who were similarly connected to that game’s Lacan and Sophia. A fuller explanation is below for the less spoiler-averse:
As such, there is more than a little bit of deliberate paralleling between this story’s ‘Lacan and Sophia’ and ‘Kim and Elly’, through things such as the two having eerily similar handwriting and thought processes. It is also the source of some blink-and-miss-it character details such as Kim having a background as a healer, which are an intentional parallel to their namesakes.
In Xenogears, Kim Kasim and Elly are preincarnations to the Lacan and Sophia of that game, who lived in a distant past while still having life arcs that followed similar trajectories and ended in a similarly star-crossed fashion.
As such, there is more than a little bit of deliberate paralleling between this story’s ‘Lacan and Sophia’ and ‘Kim and Elly’, through things such as the two having eerily similar handwriting and thought processes. It is also the source of some blink-and-miss-it character details such as Kim having a background as a healer, which are an intentional parallel to their namesakes.
And what about Fähnlein Jugend and Operation Avalanche?
Once again, the Xeno series references were out in force, with Fähnlein Jugend being named after the rather bluntly-named ‘Jugend Military Academy’ that feeds recruits into Gebler in Xenogears, which felt like a decent fit for the name of a unit that would effectively be Fähnlein Stärke's precursor. The story behind ‘Operation Avalanche’ is a bit more esoteric, but its name in German, ‘Operation Lawine’, is based on the name in the German fan translation of Xenogears for ‘Ravine’, a backstory rebel group that wound up intersecting with the lives of that ‘Kim and Elly’ as elaborated on below:
In the case of the fan translation, the translators were having a giggle and made it a nod to Avalanche from Final Fantasy VII as a meta mythology gag to how Xenogears was a rejected candidate to be that game, thus why it did not opt for the more semantically faithful ‘Klamm’ or ‘Schlucht’, which is just as well since ‘Lawine’ rolled off the tongue a bit better.
‘Kim and Elly’ join said rebel group in order to protect their daughter from one of the game’s central antagonists, which ultimately leads to their deaths.
In the case of the fan translation, the translators were having a giggle and made it a nod to Avalanche from Final Fantasy VII as a meta mythology gag to how Xenogears was a rejected candidate to be that game, thus why it did not opt for the more semantically faithful ‘Klamm’ or ‘Schlucht’, which is just as well since ‘Lawine’ rolled off the tongue a bit better.
What was with those paintings in Lacan’s apartment?
As mentioned in passing to a review response some time ago, they are paintings that a player can encounter very early on while playing through Xenogears:
In Xenogears proper, they happen to be linked to Lacan’s namesake in the game, so I figured they would be appropriate for a cute cameo here. The fuller story is a bit of bigger spoiler, so once again, I shall include it in another nested spoiler:
In Xenogears proper, they happen to be linked to Lacan’s namesake in the game, so I figured they would be appropriate for a cute cameo here. The fuller story is a bit of bigger spoiler, so once again, I shall include it in another nested spoiler:
In Xenogears, it is a reincarnation of its Lacan who makes the paintings that this story’s Lacan painted.
What’s with the armor that’s everywhere in the story?
It was one part because I thought it looked cool from the opening to M08 and one part conscious differentiation from the other big PMD work that I chip away at (even if it has since had armor worked into it in a more limited fashion). As a setting that is inherently more militarized, incorporating armor felt like an easy way to lean into those vibes and also add a degree of strategy for hostile encounters with the military.
The actual design of the standard-issue armor in this story was developed in mind for being cheap to build and discardable when degraded, which is essentially one and the same as linothorax, just with treatment to make it less flammable and prone to degrading from moisture. The dominant colors for armor used in setting being green and red is once again partly a M08 reference, as well as a less-than-subtle symbolism about how both are threats through the eyes of the cast when Lyle and Kate literally cannot distinguish between the two without added markings or cues from their wearers.
The actual design of the standard-issue armor in this story was developed in mind for being cheap to build and discardable when degraded, which is essentially one and the same as linothorax, just with treatment to make it less flammable and prone to degrading from moisture. The dominant colors for armor used in setting being green and red is once again partly a M08 reference, as well as a less-than-subtle symbolism about how both are threats through the eyes of the cast when Lyle and Kate literally cannot distinguish between the two without added markings or cues from their wearers.
And what’s with this ‘Dyad’ thing that keeps coming up in the story?
Well, it wouldn’t be a story carrying heavy Xeno series influence without a dash of Gnostic mythos, now would it? The relationship between ‘Monad’, ‘Dyad’, and ‘Triad’ as mentioned in the teaser to Chapter 26 is almost a straight lift of the relationship that they have in Pythagoreanism and some schools of Gnosticism. Which felt more than a little fitting for a being that had been created by a great power to ultimately become three in the end.
What is with this ‘Wish’ and ‘Reality’ thing this story keeps doing with the Taos?
They are the Tao attributes that are utilized in the German localization of the Pokémon franchise: “Wunsch und Wirklichkeit”. They are utilized in this story as epithets roughly equivalent to calling Reshiram and Zekrom “Truth” and “Ideals” respectively, with Kyurem being mapped to its Pokédex category in that same localization. As for why “Truth” and “Ideals” themselves weren’t used for the Taos in this story, those were already spoken for as names for something else in this setting that will be a story for another batch of trivia in the future, as readers good at spotting details in the translation notes likely picked up on.
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