SPOILER Lari Doesn't Really Make Sense (Spoilers for ROL and Fruma)

Lari doesn't make sense.

So, there was a debate in a thread on here a few days ago about the relative power of Bak'al and Lari. The debate itself and isn't really important to this, but what is important is that the main argument for her power comes from her being the Scion of the Light and having access to some amount of the power of the Light or of Orphion, however you want to phrase that. Except, this got me wondering, why is she?

Lari is, to put it politely, absolutely useless and terrible at her job. Like, if she was a firefighter, she's the one who arrives to your flaming house, then spends the rest of the time saying that she's against spraying water while everything you own is burnt to ash. I'm going to be frank; the is portrayed as incompetent at what she is supposed to do, after a thousand years of doing it. To call her an idiot would seem generous at this point. This isn't to judge her morality or to say it's stupid that she's a pacifist or anything of the sort; that's beyond the scope of this conversation and a nuanced topic that I have no real issue with or interest in discussing here. But she is entirely incapable of doing anything productive, has been, and in fact the parasite issue seems to be basically entirely because of her ineptitude here. I'm not meaning this as some giant takedown of Lari, but from a practical, amoral standpoint, she is beyond useless; she is a genuine liability who is largely responsible for the biggest arguably problem in the world being as bad as it is (or even really being), and who has utterly failed the entity she serves at every turn.

Remember how I said I have no issue with her morality leading her to be a pacifist? You know who probably would have an issue with it? Orphion. He is very, very explicitly amoral, and quite literally is introduced with him claiming that Dr. Urelix is right for kidnapping, mutilating, and brainwashing people in service for the greater good. He very plainly does not think that having moral reservations about doing bad things for the greater good is a beneficial thing in his service, and makes it plain that he doesn't want to you serving him if you are going to be tethered by these things.

Now, you could argue that being stuck with Lari for a thousand years is why he's so dead set on making sure his next servant is less useless in that regard, but like... why is he still working with Lari? Being far more generous than I think anyone could argue she deserves, she has, from his perspective, absolutely failed him to the highest degree possible, leading to a millennium of being infected by a parasite and having his power wane while his rival grows stronger in his place, quite possibly the worst thing that could happen. She has done nothing in any of that time to make it better, doing, what from his perspective must be effectively the same as twiddling her thumbs for, I remind you, a thousand years. Quick reminder: it is explicitly stated that he doesn't deeply care for human (or villager, elf, etc.) struggles, and even stated that he would even act in much the same way as the Dark in covering everything in a blanket of Light that smothers the world. This is told to us by Two, who is, admittedly, extremely biased and has every reason to lie about this -at this point she thinks that we'd be a valuable ally if we were won over- so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, it definitely fits with everything we do know about him. He would not hesitate to break an egg to make an omelette, and humanity certainly seems like one such egg for the Light omelette it's stated he wants to cook up. At best, the lesser of two evils. He would not care for her doing her best to benefit the lives of these people, while actively leaving the Light to rot.

With all of that in mind, why on earth would he keep Lari as his seemingly primary representative and servant. She displays the one quality he explicitly doesn't want above all others, shows no signs of changing this, and has utterly failed him in every regard, so there isn't even a history of "has pulled through time and time again" to give her some leeway for. This is the equivalent of that firefighter doing that to every house on the block, and being told to do a better job next time instead of being fired.

And I can't think of a reason. Let's look at a few possibilities and I'll explain why I don't think they make sense.

Is she extremely powerful? She isn't displayed as such. She's weaker than we are, and presumably, not significantly stronger than most other elves without his power. I find it incredibly hard to believe that in a thousand years no one as powerful as she is has existed in such a way that
Orphion could make use of them. This also doesn't hold water for me because she refuses to use any of that power to ends that are constructive for him. All the power in the world won't help if she isn't using it, and after a thousand years, I find it really hard to believe he thinks she can be convinced to do so or that it's worth the risk to him to keep rolling those dice. Hell, what about Dullahan? He seems powerful. I bet with Orphion's power (pre-decapitation) he would've been at least comparable to Lari, and he actually seems like he would've got the job done.

Does Orphion have the future sight to know that Lari would eventually be provoked by us into being not-useless? It doesn't sound like he does. It's certainly never mentioned or really hinted at. And there's one massive gaping flaw with this; the only reason he is so desperate for help and in need of her to not be useless would never have been an issue if she wasn't the Scion. Anyone else would have killed the parasite. It's made pretty clear she had the power to do so, and any other similarly powerful individual would have. It is purely on her moral inhibitions against killing that it lived. "She'll be powerful enough to solve the problem she causes" is really dumb reasoning, which I assume Orphion is smarter than. Also, she doesn't even solve it; as soon as we make her not useless, she goes and gets herself killed. Immediately. We solve the issue. She doesn't. If Orphion has plot-convenient foresight to know she would be both powerful enough and would lose her inhibitions about killing, but specifically didn't know that she 1) wouldn't kill it at the start and would lead to a thousand years of infection during which she is effectively useless to him, and 2) wouldn't actually be the one to fix the problem in the end. I guess if Orphion has plot-convenient foresight that shows him the exact (and only the exact) things needed to shepherd the plot forwards in this direction, it kinda makes sense. Otherwise, not so much.

Is she making progress in other areas? Uh, no. This one we can pretty much just reject outright. 1) I doubt Orphion would even be interested; he seems pretty much to just care about the Light and the fact that the world is being overtaken by Darkness because he's being drained of his power by a parasite. Which, honestly, is pretty fair. Even from a "cares about mortals" standpoint, the Darkness overtaking the world is a pretty big issue. But I don't think he does, for the reasons outlined earlier. But, let's say I'm wrong, Two lied to us, and Orphion does care about the mortals. Lari is very clearly demonstrated to have made little if any progress. The Decay is getting worse, she is not actually making an impact. It's possible -possible- that she is doing more than anyone else could during this time. But it's been clearly demonstrated she is incapable of fixing the actual root of the problem; she cannot or will not kill the parasite. This is a downhill battle. The most she will do is slow the rate at which it gets worse, she cannot make it better. There is no win condition for Orphion here, only losing sooner or later. He has no hope of getting better. So no, this one doesn't seem correct either.

So where does that leave us? There is no reason that I can think of that makes sense for Lari to not have been replaced literally centuries ago. I'm sure someone will come here and try to argue that it's because of <x> or <y> or <z> and I look forward to it, but I'm gonna be really hard to convince that it's not totally out of character for Orphion to be so tolerant of what is effectively the massive incompetence of his most valuable chess piece.

 

I have always found this puzzling and the best that I could come up with to justify this is that Orphion has warped perception of time. Perhaps since he is so old, a thousand years is just enough time to see the error that he made and start to look for a new person who could cleanse the decay. A theory I've always had always had on Lari's extreme pacifism is that the cutting down of the Guardian of the Forest scared her. She saw the disastrous effects across the provinces when the elves interpreted Orphion's prophecies with violence and therefore did not want to repeat that mistake.

 

In my opinion... I think it's probably going to get updated at some point? A lot of Gavel was revamped, including the whole RoL questline, but when you look at it through angles like these, it starts to look like it still needs work.

Which is to say, it's a plot hole that will eventually be resolved via replacing what it's a hole in.

 

Thank you for putting this into coherent words.

I'm gonna say that a big part of this Wynn's stretched timeline. Lari SHOULD NOT be over a thousand (and the equinox should be much more recent: a few blocks every decade, oh the decay is so scary.).

Even if you excuse that her relationship with Orphion makes zero sense. She views him not as a patron but a God, only she doesn't even know what he's even the god of! She might even love him, in the same way a follower loves a leader, but isn't that weird when she actually has no idea who Orphion really is and what he's all about?

 

Something to consider: Orphion kind of sods off and stops talking to Lari Her Majesty doesn't remove Scion status from Zhiraok after she says he's no longer a Sovereign, so it's very likely that it cannot be revoked.
I think you overlook the fact that Orphion effectively leaves Lari with absolutely no help after her blunder, and it's from then onward that her spiral of failure commences.

A proposal - this isn't necessarily canon, I know a lore writer is making this proposal, but it's up to you to determine what parts, if any, are actually canon, or what's just me making up reasonable explanations - Orphion does outright abandon Lari and Aldorei. He stops communicating with them outright, the Guardian falls asleep, and he focuses on fixing the problem himself, as mortals have proven themselves utterly incompetent. This gambit is not a successful one, and when somebody who could be competent (the player shows a ... certain proclivity for executing orders without much question and is already rather strong), he reaches out for assistance, does his whole Divinity schtick, and ropes you into aiding him.
... But he doesn't make you a Scion, because doing that means giving away some of his power, and when he did that with Lari, she failed - granted, she only failed once, every other time she was successful, but it was the moment he needed her to succeed - and isn't in the position to take another risk.

 

That does seem pretty sound. I guess I was assuming that the status could be revoked at will. If he can't take that power back from her, that makes far more sense; I was interpreting this as him keeping her around in the hopes that she'd finally be useful, which seemed out of character. Her being a sunk cost from his perspective makes it far more reasonable.

This also does kind of answer my question as to whether or not the Sovereigns would keep their power after you kill the Queen (she needs a better name than Anathema).

 

Her Majesty is her official title, but WHAT DO YOU MEAN A BETTER NAME..
ANATHEMA IS GOATED .......

 

The first point is valid, but I object to the second on the grounds of:

• It's post-raid Anathema dialogue that talks about how Bak'al and Two were her Scions.
• Sovereigns being Scions wasn't something that ever occurred to me. It seems like a pretty singular, transferable status - aside from Orphion not revoking it, there's no real indication that Bak'al stayed a Scion when Anathema took on Two. It's previously explained as Painful and involving a Soul Brand, so it seems like just some sort of soul mod and you're not really confronted to reevaluate that once you learn about Anathema being the Beast of War.

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I think you do have to chalk this one up to incomplete and unupdated writing. The exact mechanics of Scionhood are never really relevant, and there's never any time where they're really talked about at all, other than a sprawling dialogue tree that effectively requires wiki usage to understand (and even then is very complicated due to merging branches). We never have Orphion's relationship to Lari as the provider of her power detailed, nor do we get to have a second look at the nature of the Sovereigns and their mysterious* blessings once the true nature of the Queen is revealed.

*How, exactly, does the influence of War create all of these versatile effects? Most of the Sovereigns have extraordinary and at times almost semantic personality-derived abilities which resemble very little, if anything, seen elsewhere. Ex: the Olmic time-manipulation was runic while Zhiraok just Does That. It's not even entirely a function of his blessing because the Nasin amulet also Does That. Soosu's total control of matter is just A Thing She Does, it doesn't resemble any other abilities. I don't think there's much of any prophecy present aside from Two's fractured foresight. And the Sovereign blessings are presumably just regular blessings but amped up and involving some sort of agonising soul surgery - unless, of course, you have access to out-of-game lore from Deusphage on the forums.

 

Two calls Tasim a Scion at the end of Apotheosis, because all the Sovereigns are Scions.
Bak'al literally still has Corruption powers. He is actively referred to as "War's Lost Scion" in Overture to Despair.

 

Oh, yeah, she does. I forgot that. I was in a rush when I was finishing Apotheosis, and I also have a dangerously bad memory.

Bak'al having Corruption powers isn't that big of a deal though. He's had those since several revisions ago, he could have just not been updated in earlier appearances. Strong Corrupted usually have Corruption powers anyways, Bak'al's only special for being the strongest.

I suppose it can be plausibly put together, but unlikely that it would come to mind while playing the quests given how spaced-out the information you need to assemble is.

 

It's a bit too on-the-nose. Also, I'd argue that while it's accurate, it's kinda just sad, and feels like the sort of thing she was actively trying to put behind her. I feel like her character deserves better. Though, I suppose, it isn't wrong.

 

Bak'al is able to control the undead, essentially being able to control the War's influence in a way. (I don't know if it's confirmed but the reason the corruption creatures have been mindless is due to Anathema leaving the realm, but him being able to control it to me shows that he has Anathema's power). That's why he's special out of all the corrupted imo.


Anyways Lari doesn't make much sense in-game as she is. Too much of the reasoning behind the RoL storyline has to be imagined by the player, but the explanation that Orphion was manipulating the Elves and Lari to worshipping him but after Lari's failure and the Elves failure to spread the light he abandoned them.

And he doesn't make the player a scion, I think after seeing Bak'al and Lari as scions, it's kinda just a waste for the Realm Beast to give up some of their power.

 

How did she even leave...

 

its highly likely you can't remove your blessing from someone. Anathema couldn't get rid of bak'al or zhiroak whenever she wanted either, she had to send Majin after the goat.

 

Hence why she exclusively uses her title. The only time Two uses the name Anathema is when she has returned to the Realm of War. For the entirety of Fruma, every character refers to her as the Queen or Her Majesty. Even her textbox is 'Her Majesty'.

 

Exactly. Surely she must have given herself a name after breaking free.

 

Her name is Her Majesty, the Queen of Fruma.