Once upon a time, there was a city ruled by three sister princesses. They were much-loved in their kingdom- the eldest with eyes of brightest blue, the middle with lips of sweetest pink, and the youngest with hair of deepest red. They were incredibly close, acting as each other’s friends and confidantes. They were just, and kind, able to balance the people and keep the peace in their land.
For a time, all was well.
And then it wasn’t.
Mother?
Shh.
A neighboring kingdom, jealous of this city’s prosperity and peace, sought to disrupt it. They dragged to its gates hideous war machines, made of magic and steel and human skin. The king, a man of great magical learning and power, demanded the princesses surrender their city to him, and if they did not, he said, he would raze it to the ground.
Mother, I’ve never heard of this story.
Then listen when I tell it to you.
The youngest daughter, when she heard, did up her deep red hair, put on a delicate crown, and clothed herself in a beautiful dress. “I will offer him an alliance,” she told her sisters. “I will give him my hand in marriage for our kingdom’s safety.”
The other sisters wept, understanding the sacrifice that their youngest was making, and held her close until dawn. They saw her off at the castle gates, and watched until she disappeared into the still city.
When the youngest daughter reached the enemy’s camp, she stood tall, and did not show her fear. She spoke kindly to the weary soldiers, curtsied before the cruel sorcerer-king as custom demanded. She was brave, oh, my darling, she was so brave.
And the king spat at her fine words, and spoke the words that drew all the light from out of her, until she went mad with despair. As the sun set on the day, and on the youngest sister, who lay despondent in the middle of the camp, a soldier came upon her, and killed her in a fit of mercy.
But you said that she was brave.
Yes. She was.
When the other sisters heard, the middle sister donned silver armor, borrowed from the guards in the castle, and took up a crossbow. “I go to kill the king,” she said. “I go to avenge our youngest.”
And the eldest held her close, and wept, until she let her go and watched her disappear from sight into the streets.
When the middle sister arrived at the camp, she moved quietly, looking through the tents with eyes and a heart made cold with fury and grief. She reached the king’s tent- asleep, inside was the enemy, and she raised her crossbow to finish the job. And she would have, darling, she would have, had she not seen, hanging from the post of the kings fine bed, her sister’s delicate crown.
The king awoke when she sobbed at the sight of it, and spoke words that caused her to wither and decay where she stood, crumbling to rotted remains inside a suit of armor.
Mother, I don’t like this story.
You must hear it.
The eldest sister heard the news and she did not weep. She drew her courage about her, and set off into the forest to find her and her sister’s mother, who was a powerful witch.
Her mother answered the door and bade her come inside, offering her condolences about her sister’s fates. Once the door had closed, her mother hesitated, then spoke.
“I left you in that castle long ago, and I will give you your answers, and then I will give you your vengeance against the king.”
And so the daughter listened.
Mother, I don’t want to hear this.
Listen, daughter.
Long ago, there had been a queen with great magickal abilities, but she was never able to find a love, so she used those powers to create three daughters.
One, she formed from a bottle of light captured at the sun’s violent surrender to night. It woke last, a child with beautiful red hair, and so it was the youngest.
One, she shaped from a gentle pink anemone, the last in her castle’s courtyard to survive winter’s onslaught. It woke second, a child with curved pink lips, and so it was the middle.
One, she carved from a piece of sapphire the size of her fist, and as she did, she cut her finger with the blade, so it was made with blood, as well. It woke immediately, with bright blue eyes, so it was the eldest.
The sun took her first child home, she told the sapphire-girl. Her body turned to light, and then to nothing, what it always was. The body of her second daughter rotted in the encampment like a flower decayed beyond its lifespan. “All the king can do is turn you back to what you were before,” she told her daughter. “He will turn you back to stone if you are unprotected.”
She gave her daughter a vial full of black liquid. “This will turn your heart forever to sapphire. The king will be unable to change you- but you will never feel again. No blade shall pierce your skin, but no joy or grief will stir within you. You will never be warm, or cold. I offer you not immortality, but a half-life of invincibility.”
The daughter regarded the vial, and uncorked it. She brought it to her lips, but before she drank, she asked her mother, “Why did you leave us?”
And then she swallowed, so she would not care about the response, and she left her mother in her home before she found the answer.
But why did their mother leave them?
Because she knew, daughter, even then, that her eldest child was capable of committing this act, and she was afraid.
The eldest daughter marched to the encampment, and to the kings tent. She was attacked, but nothing drew blood, and so she went forward. The king, upon seeing her, spoke the words that would have crumbled her to so many sapphire shards, but nothing happened.
She pulled out the king’s heart through his armor, and she felt no relief at having killed him.
She felt nothing.
The end.
Mother?
Mother, that can’t be how the story ends.
Mother, that is not how the story ends.
Do you want another ending?
Yes.
Very well, then.
The people saw what their queen had done, and began to fear her. The queen, unable to feel love or even affection, went back to her mother to find a way to make a child that her people would adore, because, without emotion, she saw that that was what they needed.
The child was made of ice over a pond, and her hair was the orange-white color of the fish, still alive in the cold.
And the queen raised her daughter to love the kingdom, to rule well, and to one day overthrow her mother.
If Lup hadn’t been in the umbra staff when Lucretia did what she did then that would mean Taako possibly running into a totally unknown woman who looks exactly the fuck like him with a similar speech pattern and the same childhood and the same last name imagine what a Trip that would be
He’s so deeply unsettled that he tries to fantasy sue her for brand infringement
If Lup hadn’t been in the umbra staff when Lucretia did what she did then that would mean Taako possibly running into a totally unknown woman who looks exactly the fuck like him with a similar speech pattern and the same childhood and the same last name imagine what a Trip that would be
He’s so deeply unsettled that he tries to fantasy sue her for brand infringement
So like, the voidfish maybe (?) don’t need to eat all that often, but I doubt Lucretia was just gonna let junior go hungry. But she can’t tell anyone else that there’s a baby voidfish so she’d have to make things for him herself, but what?? Did she write him stories? Some angsty poems?? Songs??? Please imagine a very tired Madame Director trying to improvise a snack after a long day of directing, slumped over juniors tank whispering do you want ice cream, it’s a creamy creamy treat-
IF YOU NEED A PERSONALITY DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES AND JUST STEAL THE GOOD BITS FROM PEOPLE YOU LIKE UNTIL YOUVE CONVINCED EVERYONE YOURE AN ORIGINAL PERSON
as you may or may not know there are a bunch of cryptic, unused lines in deltarune’s code, most of them being error handlers, and a significant amount possibly relating to gaster. if you didn’t know that, here’s a little post compiling them. i’m also going to be going over most of them in this post anyways!
now, what’s significant is that some (but not all) of these mysterious, supposedly inaccessible lines are actually translated into japanese, while most, if not all, of the more “normal” unused lines are left untranslated. this implies that these “hidden” messages are meant to be found by people looking into the game’s code.
anyway, here’s a compilation of all the “mysterious” lines and their japanese equivalents.
* The gash weaves down as if you cry.
パックリ割れた 切り傷が まるで 涙のあとみたい。
* Suddenly, your body seizes up. * What are you looking at?
＊ とつぜん からだが けいれんした。＊ いったい なにを みている？
* Is that a cut on your face, or part of your eye?
＊ キミの顔… それは傷かい？ それとも 目なのかい？(1)
* You can’t read these symbols… * Or maybe it’s the handwriting.
＊ 記号を 解読できない…＊ 手で書いてあるせいかもしれない。
* The pain itself is reason why.
＊ 理由は その 痛み自体。
* Can you see me…?
＊ ボクが 見える…？ (2)
* (It won’t open.)
＊ (開かない)
* Your eyesight became blurry.
＊ しかいが ぼやけた。
* Your heartbeat quickened.
＊ しんぞうが たかなった。
* It could not be. (not translated)
* An emptiness filled your hands. (not translated)
* Your voice echoes aimlessly. (not translated)
notes:
(1) this line uses the second-person pronoun “kimi”, which is unusual, because the narration always uses “jibun”. “kimi” is an informal, casual pronoun. it can be considered rude in a lot of contexts, but it can also imply intimacy/closeness.
(2) this line uses the first-person pronoun “boku”, which is notably masculine. the only major character in deltarune, iirc, that uses “boku” is ralsei. lancer also says “boku-sama”, but i don’t think he uses just “boku”. so this could be ralsei, but it’s certainly not a confirmation, as there’s a lot of minor characters that use boku as well.
in addition, there’s also this series of lines, clearly labeled as “UNUSED” in the code. they’re almost certainly made for dataminers to find… and they’re translated into japanese, as well.
Where… Where am I? Hello…? Anyone…? Is… is anybody out there…? Someone!? Anyone!? Can anyone hear me!? … It’s dark. It’s so dark here. Someone, anyone, if you can hear me… Say something… please…
unfortunately, the japanese translation doesn’t use any first-person pronouns, so we don’t get any hints towards who the speaker might be. but.. it’s definitely interesting that these lines were translated at all. they aren’t used in the game at all, and yet toby had them translated for some reason – presumably, specifically for dataminers to find. from which lines specifically are translated, we can sort of gather which lines are more “important”, and which ones he didn’t think were important enough to bother translating into japanese.
for reference, there’s a lot of untranslated text in the japanese strings. here’s some examples.
an unused weapon, along with its description and some dialogue you would get upon equipping it to ralsei or susie.
some unused dialogue with ralsei.
a couple of lines i mentioned earlier, as well as some unused items (one of which, the “dark candy”, is simply an old version of an existing item.)
there’s so much untranslated text in the japanese strings this post would be a million miles long if i put all of it here. like, there’s walls of untranslated text, just sitting there in english, presumably never called by the code.
and yet for some reason, toby still wanted some of the unused lines to be translated.
PTA archive 