Topic: Castlevania: Umbra of Sorrow (1999 Fan Project)

[theplottwist]

Interesting    Although I can't stress enough about Chaos as Chaos itself is not a demonic being but merely the opposite of Order. I feel that the final boss you face in AoS is not Chaos but a creature born out of Chaos itself. Also if you look at it the creature itself is also very orderly in nature as well, and there is no order in raw Chaos whatsoever. Amatsu-Mikaboshi (as you mentioned) is the primordial god of Chaos and the stars, but he is not Chaos itself.

In fact, in the texts I have researched, it seems that he's one and the same with chaos as the primordial force itself, formless and sometimes called "Amenokagaseo", while his personification as the "god with power over chaos" happens in the Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni-Heitei segment of the Nihon Shoki, and he's called "Amatsumikaboshi" there and is "physically" defeated by Takehazuchi no Mikoto. He's also explicitly referred to as "evil" and "rebel" in this segment, but when going by other names, he's not. I'm going with "Mikaboshi" to simplify things for everyone.

Just as you mentioned, Mikaboshi is the antithesis of order and life, and not exactly evil. When In and Yo came into existence, Mikaboshi's reign came to an end, and his chaos was shattered, but not erased. His influence would come to exist in humans, and would push them to give in to their chaotic desires.

These texts are not very clear, and Mikaboshi tends to be personified or not as convenience demands. He's both the primordial force that drives humanity's passion/instincts, and a stargod who rebels against the Shinto gods born from Izanagi. There is also the issue that, as time passed and interpretations were made, he was bundled together with a bunch of other entities, evil or not, changing names as it went. I'm sorry I failed to be more clear about this aspect. All I just said, btw, is not me inventing things for Castlevania, this is actually how the lore goes.

I'm going with two different interpretations of this that are not still set in stone, so you guys can debate which is more fitting. Either one is fine by me:

1. Chaos is the distorted, identity-less form of Mikaboshi after being subjugated by Dracula.
2. Chaos is the concept which Mikaboshi rules over. Mikaboshi, in turn, is the entity possessing the Demon Castle's walls. Dracula rules over him, and therefore chaos does what Dracula wants through Mikaboshi.

I slightly dislike the 2th option because it generates another entity in the scheme of things when the 1st option only requires one entity. But, as I said, I've no issues with using it if you guys agree.

As for Chaos having a "recognizable" form, I think it has more to do with a videogame's symbolic representation than with the philosophical ramifications and consequences of "chaos having no shape." His first form is orderly, but his second form is far more abstract and chaotic.

Also about the demon castle. Liked the info you did for this one. However I think Dracula would have made Castlevania already before Trevor and Co. stormed the place. The Castle from CV III already contains the elements of an active creature of chaos so I do believe that everything you mentioned happened before Trevor arrives.

This part is slightly complicated.

I'm aware that the castle already contained a great power by CVIII, because Curse of Darkness mentions it all over. Trevor Belmont is able to seal its power using his blood, but the seal is broken by Hector and the castle is resurrected.

What I did here, however, is say that before Dracula's death, the castle was already magical, but was not alive by being possessed and did not have the power to resurrect, therefore allowing a simple blood seal to banish it. Once the seal was broken, however, Dracula's spiritual castle brought the physical castle back into existence (the spiritual castle being the one already possessed by Mikaboshi). Now the castle was impossible to seal with a simple blood seal like Trevor's, because it had been possessed by an entity that would not allow for it.

HOWEVER, the game's name is "Legend of the Demon Castle" after all, so yes, I'm trying to fit the story above on a plot BEFORE Trevor arrives. I'll just have to change the pact's terms slightly for it to make sense. I propose the following fix:

-Dracula makes the pact. Mikaboshi comes to Earth and posseses his castle, morphing it into a chaotic deathtrap and connecting it to the Demon Realm as a way to allow Dracula to summon demons by proxy inside it. The castle therefore becomes the "Demon Castle."
-Dracula is defeated by Trevor Belmont. Mikaboshi imediatelly grabs the soul offered in the pact (Walter's) thinking it belongs to Dracula.
-Mikaboshi notices the ruse and unpossesses the castle causing it to crumble, returning to the Demon Realm seeking retribution against Dracula.
-Dracula subdues Mikaboshi and turns him into his spiritual castle. Now Mikaboshi is forever doomed to be the Demon Castle, resurrecting the physical castle when Dracula returns, and crumbling it when Dracula is gone.

This solves the issue and makes the castle into the "demon castle" before Trevor arrives, while still maintaining the overall story.

[X]

I'm sorry I failed to be more clear about this aspect. All I just said, btw, is not me inventing things for Castlevania, this is actually how the lore goes.

Ah, no need to apologize dude    You're doing your best to fill in the plotholes and pitfalls that IGA didn't deal with when he wrote the stories. Believe me what you're doing is a lot of work. I can clearly see that and I applaud you for your efforts. And yes there is a lot of lore you're digging up just to get things to make some form of semblance. As for options 1 or 2? 2 sounds more applicable to me at least as option 1 continues to follow IGA's inconsistency or lack of explanation (in-game) about whether or not you face Chaos or a Chaotic being in AoS. To have Chaos itself to be a being of some sort is limiting to Chaos itself, making it (in many ways) less then what it actually is. The only part of explanation 2 that doesn't fit with me is this; Mikaboshi, in turn, is the entity possessing the Demon Castle's walls. It seems a bit excessive. Not really necessary when you think about it. Castlevania being a creature of chaos makes good sense as it's always changing it's form after each defeat. Dracula can simply tap into the power of Mikaboshi and use that to bring about Castlevania without having Mikaboshi actually inhibit the castle itself.

[theplottwist]

I just dug up another pearl.

[Mikaboshi] is a force of absolute domination that feeds off of human emotions that, if left unchecked, result in social, emotional, or physical destruction. For instance, a desire for success can lead to greed and lust for power, which is the result of the influence of the Mikaboshi's residue. Love for another can lead to obsession or jealousy, also result of these dark influences.

In later centuries, certain creatures that are by nature dark or demonic were said to be connected to the Mikaboshi in a sort of slave relationship to its power.

Souls that died with strong attachments and came back to hurt the living were said to have become physical agents to the Mikaboshi's force in a more direct way than simple greed or lust when living, and such creatures as oni (goblins), Ama-no-Jaku, and Demons were also results of certain natural elements falling prey to passions fed by the Mikaboshi's temptations. The ultimate goal, it is said, was to absoultely destroy everything by dissolving it back into chaos, whereby the static, controlling power of the Mikaboshi could return.

It's an excerpt from the book "Stellar Deities" by LLC Books, so the reliability is slightly dubious.

This part seems to be another interpretation of the Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni-Heitei, since in that story it appears that Mikaboshi is leading lower beings against the other gods, refusing to give up battle.

This "demonic slavery" interpretation sounds an awful lot like the Dominance.

The only part of explanation 2 that doesn't fit with me is this; Mikaboshi, in turn, is the entity possessing the Demon Castle's walls. It seems a bit excessive. Not really necessary when you think about it.

I'm starting to like the 2th option better now that you put it. Making Mikaboshi lose his identity just to explain what Chaos is might be trying too hard, after all. However, Mikaboshi needs to exist a main part of the castle structure itself somehow, since he's the plot mechanic allowing for the Hakubas to be introduced. In the 1999 plot, they'll have understood that the castle is possessed by a Shinto entity, therefore requiring a Shinto ceremony to deal with him.

What if Dracula subdued Mikaboshi, and used his "body parts" to build Castlevania, gaining control over chaos, instead of having Mikaboshi simply possess the structure? This would be akin to some myths about divine body parts giving shape or origin to objects like weapons, or landmarks like rivers and mountains (in Shinto itself, Izanagi's clothes become the two gods Amaterasu and Susanoo).

This would also explain how "chaos fuels the castle's existence" or how "the castle is a creature of chaos."  The castle is literally a creature fulled by chaos because it is Mikaboshi. Therefore, the explanation would go like this:

-Dracula defeats Mikaboshi and turns his body parts into his spiritual castle. As the master of this castle, Dracula becomes the new ruler over Chaos, which fuels the castle's (Mikaboshi himself) existence.

[X]

I just dug up another pearl.

That's quite the pearl! It definitely helps to clarify things more.

What if Dracula subdued Mikaboshi, and used his "body parts" to build Castlevania, gaining control over chaos, instead of having Mikaboshi simply possess the structure? This would be akin to some myths about divine body parts giving shape or origin to objects like weapons, or landmarks like rivers and mountains (in Shinto itself, Izanagi's clothes become the two gods Amaterasu and Susanoo).

This would also explain how "chaos fuels the castle's existence" or how "the castle is a creature of chaos."  The castle is literally a creature fulled by chaos because it is Mikaboshi. Therefore, the explanation would go like this:

-Dracula defeats Mikaboshi and turns his body parts into his spiritual castle. As the master of this castle, Dracula becomes the new ruler over Chaos, which fuels the castle's (Mikaboshi himself) existence.

I'll admit with great interest that this idea is very intriguing    Though for Dracula to be successful in this regard he would have to erase any form of conscious sentience from Mikaboshi so that only the body remains. Or else Mikaboshi would find some way of fighting back and reclaiming both his body and power.

[theplottwist]

Okay, this is what it looks like now. Yellow enphasis on the changes:

(click to show/hide)

Before his confrontation with Trevor Belmont, Dracula was not the Dark Lord, but rather a powerful vampire sorcerer living in relative harmony with humans, even managing to have a son with a human woman named Lisa.

However, after being accused and persecuted for witchcraft, Lisa was unfairly executed by the people, sending Dracula in a path of bloodlust and vengeance. He then declared war against mankind.

Dracula was aware that, even with his vast powers, he was unable to face and destroy all humans. Therefore he sought to increase his own dark power and build an unstoppable army of darkness, and to achieve this goal he held a ritual to summon the greatest darkness of all - The stargod of primordial chaos and current Dark Lord, Amatsu-Mikaboshi.

As the Dark Lord, Mikaboshi possessed the Dominance, a power that crowned the entity who owned it as the King of Demons and forced all other demonic entities to bend to the Dark Lord's every will.

Dracula urged Mikaboshi in conceding him control over the demonic legions in the Demon Realm, and the Dark Lord agreed, but not for free. Coveting Dracula's blackened, powerful soul, Mikaboshi offered him a deal:

The Dark Lord would bind Dominance by proxy to Dracula's soul, enabling him to summon and command the demonic legions of the Demon Realm to wage his war. But once the war was over by either him winning or losing, Mikaboshi would rise to claim ownership over the soul belonging to Dracula, stripping it from the power over the demons it had been granted by the pact, and taking it to serve under the Dark Lord for all eternity.

Dracula agreed to the contract's terms. Yet, with no plans to have his soul become anyone's eternal servant, he devised his own scheme.

Upon his agreement, Mikaboshi possessed Dracula's castle, connecting it with the Demon Realm allowing Dracula, with his newfound power, to summon and command legions of demons at once from there to Earth. In the ensuing chaos, Dracula covered Europe in darkness, gradually increasing his strength. His war would come to a halt, however, as Trevor and his conrades would storm the demon-possessed castle and defeat him in combat. Before disappearing, Dracula uttered a vile curse that would eat away at men's hearts in the years to come, seeking to speed up his own revival in the process.

As per the pact's terms, Mikaboshi rose to claim his prize - Dracula's soul - upon Dracula's downfall, yet something else was given to him: The weak soul of Walter Bernhard, with the power he had bestowed upon Dracula nowhere to be found to be stripped from him. Having indeed sold a soul that belonged to him, Dracula had abided to the contract, but in Mikaboshi's eyes, he had been cheated. Growing wrathful at Dracula's deceit, Mikaboshi ignored the useless, powerless soul before him, abandoned the castle to crumble under its own weight,  and returned to the Demon Realm seeking retribution against the King of Vampires, unaware that Dracula had already antecipated his every move.

As the pact was being agreed on, Dracula surmised that if the proxy power of command over demons he was granted were to clash in the Demon Realm against the Dark Lord Mikaboshi's Dominance, his power would surely be overridden or stripped from him by the Dark Lord himself. Therefore, by offering a soul belonging to him in place of his own, Dracula forced Mikaboshi to stay on Earth to take it while his own soul left to the Demon Realm. Mikaboshi would be forced to refuse the soul offered to him, since it did not have the power that the he had granted to Dracula, therefore leaving the pact unfinished.

With Mikaboshi's refusal to take this soul, causing the pact to be unfinished, Dracula's soul was allowed to descend into the Demon Realm with the power the pact had granted him. Once there and with Mikaboshi out of his domain, Dracula exercised his power over the demonic population uncontested. When Mikaboshi realized Dracula's deceit and returned to the Demon Realm, it was already too late to reverse the vampire's control over the legions of darkness, and the Dark Lord Mikaboshi was overwhelmed by the countless waves of demons under the Dracula's command before being able to react to the onslaught.

Having defeated Mikaboshi, the god of chaos and Dark Lord, Dracula stripped him from his will and powers by shattering his body in many parts with powerful black magic, and using them to built himself an ethereal fortress connected to the Demon Realm. From Mikaboshi's head, Dracula built the throne room, where he would sit to command the entire castle. And from Mikaboshi's heart, Dracula built a chaotic maze to house the endless flow of chaos from humankind's darkest desires, that now would feed the castle's existence. The Demon Castle was born, and became the symbol of Dracula's magic and cruelty.

With Mikaboshi permanently unable to give closure to the contract, the power of the pact bound the Dominance to Dracula's soul, making him the Dark Lord for as long as his soul existed, and effectively nullifying any chance for any other demon to achieve the position of Dark Lord.

Dracula now would be resurrected as the King of Demons, and his castle would become the inexhaustible source of the chaotic power that would bring him from the dead through the hearts of humans once their chaotic desires became greater than their faith in good.

The last part, about making the throne room from Mikaboshi's head, was meant to reflect the nature of the throne room as the "command center" of the castle, and its recurring nature. Furthermore, the throne room seems to be extremelly important, as in Portrait, Brauner separates it from the rest of the castle, leaving "the body" without a "head" to control it. In Aria it also happens that the one to inherit the castle must reach the throne room. Graham does become the castle's temporary master, but Soma is recognized as the true Dark Lord when he gets there.

The part about the right arm becoming Clock Tower is supposed to reflect how the right arm is considered the most important one. It seemed fitting to turn it into the Clock Tower, as Death (Dracula's right-arm) is commonly associated with it.

The part about creating the Chaotic Realm from Mikaboshi's heart is also obvious, I suppose. The heart is (more symbolically than physiologically) the "source" of one's strength, pumping blood through the entire body. The body, in this case, being the castle itself.

I was going to add more things, but I think it's already too much as it is 

In retrospect, this idea makes much more harmonic sense than Mikaboshi being Chaos. I'll even be able to use the "demons are antibodies protecting Dracula's castle" comparison with more clarity now.

[X]

I was going to add more things, but I think it's already too much as it is 

Haha, yeah take a bit of a break bro. Good job though.

The part about the right arm becoming Clock Tower is supposed to reflect how the right arm is considered the most important one. It seemed fitting to turn it into the Clock Tower, as Death (Dracula's right-arm) is commonly associated with it.

While death is Dracula's right hand man- er...corps..? The clock tower itself is more of a logical implementation. Logic is associated with the left side of the individual as that is where logic is represented, whereas emotion is associated with the right side. Just to clarify what I mean;

Male-left-logic

Female-right-emotion

You don't need to follow this if you don't want to, it's just food for thought   

[Inccubus]

But isn't also true that the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain then the left?

[X]

Yes that's absolutely true. As well as the left eye connecting to the right side of the brain, and the right eye connecting to the left side of the brain. However this,..

Male-left-logic

Female-right-emotion


was more of a spiritual representation rather then a biological one. But it works for both too.

[theplottwist]

Haha, yeah take a bit of a break bro. Good job though.

While death is Dracula's right hand man- er...corps..? The clock tower itself is more of a logical implementation. Logic is associated with the left side of the individual as that is where logic is represented, whereas emotion is associated with the right side. Just to clarify what I mean;

Male-left-logic

Female-right-emotion

You don't need to follow this if you don't want to, it's just food for thought   

LOL sorry. What I meant is that, since Death is Dracula's right-hand man/general/guardian, making the Clock Tower from Mikaboshi's right-arm was symbolically fitting, since Death is generally associated with the Clock Tower. But this is largely irrelevant, really.

[X]

No worries bro.    Death is not always featured at the clock tower either as seen in some of the games. It must be a preference of his sometimes.

[theplottwist]

Hey, it's me again. Julius has to wait a little more, since real life got in the way again. While he waits, I bring you the overlay of the map I posted here before. It had no overlay, but now it does as I built it while thinking of how the story should unfold in case it turned into a game.

The internals of the castle have been worked with both a story and a game in mind, so almost all rooms here have been thought carefully envisioning how the "game" should play out from it. This map has about 1600 rooms. It's big because it should fit the hypothetical campaign for four characters. There are also a lot of rules I followed to build it, like keeping in mind the distance between each Save Room and Teleport Room, or keeping the routes needed to find certain items as fresh as possible to avoid boring backtracking... If your eyes are sharp you can even spot some rooms of interest. Hell, if they're REALLY sharp you can even spot where "Don't Wait Until Night" would play



■ = Save Room
■ = Teleport Room
■ = Transition Room

And yeah, you may think "Holy shit, the Save Rooms are sparce here!" but there is a good reason for that: If this was a game, "Save Tickets" would be a thing that would allow the player to generate a Save Totem (provisional name) wherever he's at. Yet this Save Totem would not have all the capabilities of a Save Room.

One more thing that might be brought up: Why is the Clock Tower not connected to anywhere else? The answer is because the story demands so. The Clock Tower plays a fundamental role in the story and it's necessary that it remains disconnected from the rest of the castle. Futhermore, upon the player gains entry into the Clock Tower, the plot is pretty much straightfoward from there. The player is "pushed" into following through with the final stretch of the story, that will demand urgency from the hero, giving him no time to fool around with exploration shenanigans.

The following zones are in this map:

(click to show/hide)

Entrance Halls
Forbidden Library
Forlorn Villa
Corrupt Cathedral
Observatory
Underground Waterway
Treasury
Necropolis
Castle Sewer
Clock Tower
Castle Keep
Hidden Gardens

[Shiroi Koumori]

Oooohhhh... nice layout!  The clock tower portion looks scary.

Just a random question, will you include Alucard's room? I can see possible areas where it can be placed.

[VladCT]

Hoo boy, that looks like a doozy. Secret rooms not included, I assume?

[theplottwist]

Oooohhhh... nice layout!  The clock tower portion looks scary.

Just a random question, will you include Alucard's room? I can see possible areas where it can be placed.

Yes. Not only it will be included, but it does have a place in the story too! Speaking in game lingo, Alucard can get an item in this room that increases all of his stats, but it requires him to accomplish a side quest first. Also, among the 4 characters, only he would have access to it.

But I have not decided what room it will be in, even though I added some rooms to fit this specific purpose.

Hoo boy, that looks like a doozy. Secret rooms not included, I assume?

In fact they are included. Of course I could add 3~4 more according to necessity, but this is pretty much it. This castle also has 4 super secret bosses, and their rooms are included.

[X]

That's big 

It looks like some of the segments are segregate by elevator shafts, kind like Metroid. That's something that IGA never did in his Metroidvanias. Looks interesting. Well given that it's 1999 I don't see why Castlevania would not have elevators in it.