Kai no Kiseki Farewell O Zemuria notes (WIP)

Yeah,i am aware that it's late making this 4 months after release but better late than never:
Sept-terrion of Time:True Name is the Cradle of Time,Laegjarn's Box.A preservation device in the form of colossal box located outside Zemuria's atmosphere by isolating it from the rest of the universe and rewinding its time which in Melchior's words,is said to be both a blessing and curse.Every 1200 years it scans the continent for data and converts it into the SiN value under an undisclosed standard and if,for some reason the SiN value exceeds a certain threshold which always happens it will initiate the Grand Reset which rewinds time all the way back to Septian Calendar 0 i.e which is when the Great Collapse happened and it has happened 19999 times by the ending of Kai 1,because of the 1200 year period and 19999 resets,it means Zemuria has been looping for approximately 24 million years which meant that the currently living humans of the continent are actually a super-ancient civillization from the perspective of the rest of the universe in the present.In the case of humans trying to break out of its confinement,it will deploy its guardians to neutralize the military force of the rebels before commencing the Grand Reset under a 30-minute countdown and adjust its response based on the threat level of the enemy trying to destroy it as seen when it summons a "Zoa-Gillstein" to shoot down Emilia,if it detects an unexpected assault from a weapon that it hasn't analyzed yet,it will speed up the countdown based on the threat level of the weapon which in this case means the Reactor Weapon which had only been realized in the 19999th loop,it can also limit the cognition of humans in the continent and stop them from leaving it using airships and boats unless it's done in specific places,the "sky" that's visible in the continent was a fake sky it fabricated to hide the reality that the continent is being boxed in by it though then again it's probably just projecting the real universe outside.
That being said,there's an obvious limit to the box's powers:
-The time reversal isn't that strong,it's actually a limited "rewind everything within the range of the reset to Septian Calendar 0" and it's limited only to everything currently under the continent's atmosphere and doesn't extend to anything outside it even if it's still inside the sealed dimension of the Sept so as long as you are not in the continent when the reset happens,you won't get reset and be included in the next cycle(in other words,if the makeshift Creil nuke was actually a warp bomb in nature which meant that Dingo and the civillians caught up in it got teleported outside of the reset range,that would mean that in the 20000th cycle they would...)
-For unknown reasons,some orbal technology from previous loops like Merkabah,the Sonorous Shell,etc can't be rewinded and carries over to the next loop as Artifacts,however only a small amount are from previous loops,most of the Artifacts are still stuff from the ancient Zemurian civillization.
-People from outside the continent can still enter the sealed dimension like Nina,Van,and Mcburn.
-Memories of previous loops aren't deleted like the Genesis rewinds from Crimson Sin,it's more like they're surpressed until something stimulates people from remembering,albeit vaguely and only a few people from Ouroboros like the Grandmaster,Campanella,and Simeon can remember everything with clarity.
-A sufficiently advanced observatory telescope which only exists in Basel can see through the facade which is why Hamilton had to use an Alter Core to fake the data and hack the lower-end orbal telescopes all over Zemuria through the septium veins to ensure the forged data is reflected through them and cover up the truth but this doesn't work on people who broke through the atmosphere who can see through the fake sky and saw the truth that the continent is imprisoned,Rean and Crow saw the truth early in the game because they broke through the atmosphere with Millium in Sen IV's Normal Ending before the Grandmaster saved them by rewinding time,Millium isn't in the game but it's clear that she can see it too.
The Grand Reset setting ties back to the Possible World stuff in past games:
Erebonia:flash forwards in Sen 1 and 3 where certain people like Crow,Millium,Aurelia,and Angie are missing in the prologue,the weird prologue vision in Sen IV of Thors I and II being merged where Cedric never got enslaved and instead became NCVII with Fritz and Ada,also Mcburn going "oh,so that's why Ouroboros is named like that" after gaining his half of memories was him realizing that Zemuria is looping and Ouroboros is exploring its possibillities so they can eventually end the cycle.
Hajimari:Elysium's future stuff that it calculated including Rean Alter is just materializing possible versions of Rean and Emperor that could happen plus the tech that didn't got manufactured by the Black Workshop or has yet to be invented in the present,Lloyd brings up the part about how the SSS was supposed to die fighting Joachim before KeA did her thing and thought that one world goes on without them but he's not exactly right because she never rewinded time in the first place and only did some changes so that Estelle,Joshua,and Renne helped out so that the SSS dying was treated as not happening but it's not wrong to think of the timeline as being one giant tree that grows a branch every 1200 years or so.
Not every cycle was the same(duh),nation dynamics were different in past loops and some loops either got reset earlier or later,it's stated in the game that if Ishmelga won the Final Rivalry,the Great Twilight would have lowered the SiN value and slightly delayed the Grand Reset in that Laegjarn will continue to assess the effects of the Great Twilight though it's unknown how much time is won if the Twilight continued and the current assumption is that cycle 19998 was one of those loops though it's strange that this one cycle was the one where the nanomachines are implied to have originated from even though Marduk's black box that heavily accelerated technological development wasn't even a thing until this cycle.If the Twilight was overcome then the reset is guaranteed to happen in 1209 according to Yun though not necessarily always in late August 1209,how the early resets were triggered is still uncertain.
Before the ending the ones who know about the Grand Resets are Ouroboros(obviously),the Septian Church through its Arict apocrypha though the full context is only known to the Pope(apparently grandma Orestis didn't tell Nina and Ein until her adopted granddaughter's big debut),the Khurgas somehow succeeded in bypassing the memory reset and passed down the knowledge through a song about how the reset happens when the great conjunction of the fake sun,moon,and Shedal constellation in the false sky happens,Nord probably knows,Ikaruga knows about the resets but not the full details just like the Khurgas which is why Shizuna ditched Yun at the last chapter was to learn about the full details from Roy.Yang,General Harling,Emilia and a select few of CID's top brass knows when Roy told them a month before operation Jormungandr and Marduk knows through independent research,Roy learned from either Sophie or Lilia revealing it to him which forms his whole motivation,Elysium knew and by extension so does Rean Alter i.e the whole in 3 years thing that Lloyd stopped him spoiling(good going detective,you caused unnecessary anxiety for everyone in Kai),Claude and by extension Lilia and Sophie knows which is why he made the insurance policy and this information was passed on to Dominique(who left Chloe and Judith out of the loop) and Hamilton(for unknown reasons Albert and Schmidt was left out of the loop) who told it to Agnes.
The initial design of the Time Sept as revealed in the Visual Collection Book is that it was supposed to be a planetarium-themed birdcage with the core at the top of the cage before it was redesigned into a box,if things had gone according to plan and this design passed,it would have given away that Zemuria is a flat world inside a bubble,the depiction in the game is less blatant due to angle but the implication is still there.
Risette:her true identity is a survivor of the previous loop(never outright stated in the game and interviews but the fact that her past was shown in a Memento Orb means that she's from a past cycle instead of the future) that lasted until 1259 and is all but stated to be the grandaughter of Shannon,the waitress of the Lansters's cafe,and the deliveryman Luis,meaning that while she's technically a person that was supposed to be born in the future(if Zemuria goes beyond 1209) from the PoV of the "present",she's actually a person from over a milennia ago.The incident that caused her to lose her body actually cost her literally everything except her brain and nervous system,for reasons unknown,what's left of her was stored in a time capsule containing the box created by Valis's 5 families so she can go to the next loop but the time capsule containing her and the box was time-warped into the far future of the 1200s where Marduk found her in the northern frontiers of the continent,the reason why Marduk only had Van contact her through video calls until Kuro 1 wasn't because of any ill will,it was literally because she was still a brain and nervous system and the android body was only completed recently,her abnormal reactions when encountering beasts boosted by the nanomachines was because of PTSD of an Executor causing the incident that cost her body and she was trying to unconsciously surpress her memory so she can't recall her past and the reason why Mirabel and Marduk never said anything about the time capsule was out of consideration for her wellbeing,the trip to Anchorville heavily stimulated her memories through seeing the city,encountering her grandmother and eating her homemade food,and finally seeing the town hall turned into its "future" (actually past version) in 1259 by Melchior and Ixs which causes her to realize part of the truth but she(and everyone else) hasn't realized the 19998th loop part yet,given how the world works it's evident that unless she dies before her intended birth date,a second Risette will not be born if the current one lives to 1259 because it will cause a paradox,in other words,the designation of the most important character of Kai is not for show.
Because Ishmelga winning will slightly delay the Grand Reset,it stands to reason that she can only be born in cycles where the reset was delayed up to at least 39 years(Risette's current age is 20 and she was discovered in 1202,since she was 14 when she lost her body in 1259 so she was born in 1245) which meant there's room for possibillity that the current Risette was from an earlier cycle from before the 19998th one but there's a nuance in the Visual Collection Interview that implied that the Executors were only just created in the 19998th cycle.
Executor:Mechanical monsters used by the Remnants,their physical specs are comparable to Grendel in its normal state and are also capable of stealth and regeneration,there's a hidden mode called Genocide Mode(coincidentally the Reverie Guardian from FC had the same function) that Ixs and Provoker almost activated but got interrupted each time.
Their true identity is an aggregate of biological self-replicating nanomachines,a future technology that strengthens and mechanizes anything it infects,the nanomachines were used to take control of Alter Dawn members and can turn them into human-machine hybrids called Demi-Executors though only for some reason this was only done to Jeffrey and one of the Divanci Brothers in Kai 1 so there may be more conditions for the transformation to occur.
According to Renne,Risette,and Mirabel,from the current technological level of Zemuria's modern civillization's perspective,this technology is in the realm of science fiction even in its current technological development speed which is already super fast to begin with,the possibillity of realizing the nanomachines isn't zero per se,but the chances are so low that the probabillity of completing the Reactor Weapon formula is higher in comparison which needs decades to complete even though it's only 99.7% complete,so it'll likely take over a century to realize but for some reason,in Risette's cycle this technology was somehow realized but the Reactor Weapon wasn't,in that loop,there's a giant outbreak of nanomachines infecting most animals and mechanizing them to the point that it's rare to find a beast that's uncontaminated by nanomachines,there's an implication in the Visual Collection Interview that the nanomachines came from this one specific cycle and didn't exist in previous ones so there's clearly an irregularity that happened in this cycle
19998th loop:Where Risette,the Soldier Remnant who is obviously 19998 Feri and possibly Novartis came from,basically a dystopia that somehow slightly delayed the Grand Reset where war ravaged the continent and nanomachines are rampant and infecting animals by turning them into biomechanical beasts and Executors,loop ended in 1259 because of a failed attempt to destroy Laegjarn was made which ended up turning an Excalibur unit into the Creil idol that the church recovered,at some point the 5 great families of Valis used Laegjarn as a reference and created a digital box containing the information of every loop up to the 19998th cycle which was then stored in Risette's time capsule and heavily influenced Marduk's technological progress in the 19999th cycle without them realizing it when they studied her capsule,also for unknown reasons,Reactor Weapons were never realized in this loop and were only recently created in the 19999th loop judging by Laegjarn's reactions to them.
The current assumption is that this is a loop where Ishmelga won the Final Rivalry and enslaved humanity,after which it attempted to forcibly evolve humans into bio-mechanical lifeforms but failed in the end,all that's certain about how far the nanomachine infection got was that wild beast meat was a rarity in Risette's cycle because a majority of them was infected by nanomachines but the mechanical ascension obviously failed because non-infected humans was still a thing at the end of the loop,however if the Zoa-Gillstein summoned by Laegjarn really did came from the 19998th cycle then a problem arises because the sprite is listed as "Pseudo-Zoa" in the game files which meant that the 19998th cycle was actually a loop where something went wrong with the Great Twilight and created a failed Great One instead so Ishmelga didn't win the Final Rivalry either.
All signs point to this loop being the one where Van and the other 4 Kings arrived in but it's evident they had nothing to do with the events of the cycle so the only point where they could have arrived in was when the Grand Reset was about to happen so despite being branded as Demon Kings by the church,all signs are pointing to them being innocent of any wrongdoing.
The 3 Disciples,Albert,Schmidt,and Hamilton were not students of Claude Epstein in the 19998th loop,Claude's only student in this loop was Furio Novartis who broke up with his teacher(though given the affection,respect and yearning Novartis still has towards his teacher and the lack of any special reaction to being expelled,it's very unlikely their relationship turned sour) because of his problematic research attitude,though not to mad scientist levels,incidentally the year they became teacher and student while also breaking up later was the same year Claude "died" in the 19999th loop,implying he actually lived far beyond his 19999th death date in the 19998th loop,the severe repercussions of the 3 Disciples not being a thing is evident because it would mean that the development of Orbal technology will be considerably slowed despite its establishment,also the Lansters's cafe exists in this cycle which is inhabited by Risette's family albeit ruined by 1259 so Grimcats was a thing in this cycle.
What carried over from this loop was the remnants of AF Excalibur which turned into the Creil idol and the capsule containing Risette and Valis's box.
Van:His sweets obsession was because of him clinging to the memories of his days of eating sweets with his childhood friends in Zemuria in order to cling to life when he was tortured by the cult,Director Arkride of the Oracion orphanage found out that his adopters were suspicious and kept searching for him only to find out in a call with Van after he was rescued by Barkhorn that his adopters were D.G cultists,because of his trauma he got scared of the director and misunderstood that he sold him to the cult(in actuality,it was Elaine's dad but he didn't know the adopters were D.G either) so he didn't want to go back to Oracion but Director Arkride kept searching for Van to reconcile with him for years but unfortunately he passed away from illness with him only wishing that Van could find a place to belong,the trauma from being tortured was why Van founded the Solutions Office in order to save more people who are trapped in situations between the surface and the underworld like him,he also finally had the talk with Elaine in her 2nd connect event about the fact that her father was responsible for him being tortured and it went smoothly fortunately,they were going to talk about this to Rene but then the ending happened so he's going to need some slapping.
....At least,that's the surface level reason he told Agnes but things get suspicious when all signs are pointing to him never existing in the past 19998 loops and that the Van who spent 25 years as a Zemurian only started existing in the 19999th loop,meaning Kuro no Kiseki never happened in past cycles because Van doesn't exist and because of that,new possibillities were born in the 19999th loop thanks to the outsider's presence as a variable,both good(the people who were saved and changed for the better because of him) and bad(Gerard),basically the only arc where he doesn't have any indirect influence was Liberl FC and SC since Renne was already contaminated by his influence when 3rd started,because the "Zemurian" Van is just another facet of the true Van,there's no denying that the kindness and purpose to save humans from their plight was genuine but was the true purpose of the Arkride Solutions Office,which never existed until the 19999th loop,is to intervene in the closed continent's possibillities that has gone stagnant and expand it so that it can be saved?
It's also revealed that despite being deprived of most of his powers,his current power is enough to subdue Shizuna after she awakened as the Sword Saint of Destruction and he's not bound by logic of Zemuria and thus can deduce more possibillities that not even Yun-Ka-Fai's clairvoyance could conceive as seen when he quickly deduced the space-time jump abillity of the Alter Core,the fact that the true purpose of the Remnants and Alter Cores lies in distorting the laws of the continent,and the ruined town hall's true nature with only a cursory glance which earned him praises from Yun and Ellroy,Campanella himself states in chapter 2 that he has high expectations for Van and the Grandmaster stated in Grim Garten that she already foresaw that neither Estelle,Lloyd,Kevin,Rean or Rufus who are natives to the continent would be the ones reach her first and that it was inevitable that Van,who is an outsider to the continent would be the one to do so.
Aside from Yume's 4Spg for Agnes's birthday celebration and the unauthorized use of the Oct-Genesis(which aren't actually there in the first place) that he and the Solutions Office worked so hard to collect,the 3rd reason why Van asked Roy for a slight delay of the Laevatein Plan was that he noticed through his sense of smell that something about the Grand Reset is related to why he came to Zemuria in the first place so he wanted to further inquire Hamilton,Ouroboros,and the Church to find out what it is just but he couldn't reveal his true identity as an outsider at that point so his request got rejected,he also sensed the materialization of the Pseudo Zoa-Gillstein for unknown reasons but at the very least it's clear that the other Van didn't ruin Roy's victory at the last minute.
Hamilton:A person who exemplifies that compassion is also another form of sin,in order to restore Tharbad's oasis in 1189 that dried up because of drought,she used the Alter Core she had with her,the one in Basel's observatory,and the Antikhytera Tower's vein controlling power to take all of Tharbad's water resources from 1210 onwards and condense them in a 20-year period that will last until the Grand Reset happens,this might sound like that Tharbad's water from 1210 onwards will be used up and reduced in advance but the exact words when she activated the core was <Alter Core Behind Mode - Retrogression Level 1 set to Septian Calendar 1210> which indicates that the water resources she stole from was cycle 19998's,not the 19999th cycle's water resources which in the first place,hasn't been established to be possible to reach 1210 and beyond at that point because the Great Twilight of the 19999th cycle hasn't even occured yet and AZOTH only calculated events up to 1206 when Hamilton restored the oasis.Grand Prince of Elsaim,Saruman,who unaware of the truth,asked Hamilton if this can be replicated in the eastern parts of the continent but she tells him that it was only possible because because of vein structure and "special conditions"(Alter Core and the Antikhytera Tower) so it can only be done in Tharbad,it's revealed that the thief who stole C.Epstein's Oct-Genesis and spread it all over Calvard was her in order to prepare for her teacher's insurance:as it turns out,just having all 8 units together is meaningless,to activate the insurance in Trion Tower it's necessary for all 8 Oct-Genesis to complete the necessary observations which is why Hamilton had to scatter the units even though she knew that the possibillity that the 8 units could be abused by criminal organizations like Armata existed but contrary to what she thought however,the entire reason why Armata could have done this in the first place was because of Van's influence causing Gerard to survive his destined death thanks to his stolen power and they couldn't have done this the past 19998 times,if Van didn't incarnate as a human and cause the domino effect caused by his existence,Hamilton and Dominique's efforts would have been in vain,she also didn't do anything to stop Dingo (seemingly) go to his death in Creil so that the 8th could copy his data to create a replica AI Dingo in order to complete the 8th Genesis's sin observation on purpose in addition to overlooking Lapis being brainwashed into Altera by Auguste.
Also by using Bazel's Alter Core,she faked the observation data of the observatory's telescope to hide the fact that the sky is fabricated by the Time Sept and because MK's Prometheus-IV uses the faked data,the fake sky's facade was reflected in the satellite but what she didn't count on was that if people broke through the sky and found out the truth in a past loop like Rean,Crow,and Millium,they'll see through the facade and if someone who broke through the atmosphere shows the true sky to the people in the continent,they'll see the truth as well.Alfred Herschel,Towa's grandpa,caught on that she fabricated the observatory's data at some point and while he only had a vague idea that it was related to the secrets of the continent,he clued Towa in on this during her childhood for her to find out later in 1209.
For unknown reasons,the very act of creating replicas of the Oct-Genesis caused Novartis's loathing of her to spike to the point he specifically singles her out of the 3 Disciples as the one student who has no right of being their teacher's disciple,Campanella stated in Van's chapter that Novartis couldn't fully analyze the Alter Core that they found in the northern regions but he never said that he didn't find out anything about it so it's possible he discovered something about its construction which caused Novartis's comments about Hamilton being talentless and lacking.
Roy:Confirmed 100% good guy,he's not comparable to the once in a milennia talent known as Gilliath Osborne in terms of abillity but he's still impressive nonetheless.
He was in the military during the Hundred Days War where he assisted Cassius Bright by using information control and tactics to subdue the Erebonian army using his time in the Calvardian embassy in Liberl as a cover which earned him the private thanks of Queen Alicia for his contribution to the war,after returning to Calvard he used his experience in Liberl to create Calvard's airborne division and then used his connections with Liberl after becoming a politician to organize and participate in the D.G extermination campaign while also doing information control to ensure the privacy and human rights of the victims,he missed out on Agnes's birth as a result but he succeeded with his part in the campaign in order to make his nation safe from the cult.At some point before Sophie's death he found out the truth about the Claudells,Laegjarn,Claude's insurance,and the Grand Reset after which he resolved himself to the mission of destroying the Sept-terrion of Time in order to free Zemuria from the loops,avenge his wife and mother-in-law's deaths,and protect Agnes.To prepare for this,he demanded a huge amount of reparations from Erebonia as part of the post-Great War processing to develop the military technology necessary to go outside the atmosphere and seeked out many experts in science and technology to gather information about Laegjarn,they found out that the Sept-terrion's assessment happens when the great conjunction of the Shedal constellation happens in the sky(at that time,they didn't know about the sky being fabricated by the box and that Hamilton was tampering with the astronomy data to conceal the truth),meaning they only have until August 1209 to prepare for the operation.
To ensure the operation goes uninterrupted by the geopoltics with other nations,Roy made an information embargo to ensure that the operation's true purpose is only known only to a select few people,namely General Harling and his daughter,Yang,Kincaid,Marduk,etc with everyone else including the church,the politicians of other nations,the other political parties of Calvard,his mentor,and his own daughter being left out namely because if they known that the world as they know it so far would be rewinded and undone it would cause unnecessary roadblocks to the operation and delay it further,Ouroboros had no intention of interfering with the Laevateinn Plan in the first place because they want to see whether Roy's plan has the potential to free humanity from the resets so the non-agression pact was really just a formallity in the first place,unfortunately the embargo caused unnecessary anxiety among parties such as Class VII,the Guild,Arkride Solutions,etc because they don't what Roy's plan is thanks to the gag order so while it was only justified in regards to other nations,he really should have at least told other trustworthy people to reduce anxiety.
(granted,Lloyd is also responsible for this because letting Rean Alter spoil what's going to happen in the future would have let them know what Roy is planning which would have at least made them know to prepare in advance for the reset regardless of whether they would succeed or not instead of wasting 3 years doing nothing until the promised time but nooo,the "detective" decided he doesn't want spoilers and everyone suffered for it)
Startaker Plan:Calvard's newest national project meant for opening the new frontier of outer space for humanity and to figure out clues about the desertification of the east,the plan entails the construction of the Zeku Space Base in the Ishgal mountains as a base for rocket launches which entails the launch of Marduk's Prometheus IV satellite,a dummy imitating AF Excalibur and finally a manned spacecraft launch which will be done by Emilia Harling,Calvard's greatest Ace Pilot with the title of the <Queen of the Sky>,the project sounds fine enough on paper but Ryan Connely who visited the base as the opposition party's representative found out that the budget for the construction of the base and current military budget doesn't account for a massive amount of spending funds that is currently missing and the Thors group was suspicious that the AF Excalibur had too many weapons and too high spec to the point that not even Rean and Crow who are ex-Risers could pilot it as they are,and that's because the truth is....
Laevateinn Plan:the true plan Roy and his collaborators are working to complete,which is the destruction of the Time Sept to free humanity from the Grand Reset cycles,the massive amount of funds missing turned out to be used for the development of 24 outer-space use Answerer missiles which are equipped with a explosion lens invented by Kronkite that functions only in the vacuum of space and are 1000x stronger than the one Gerard detonated because they are Calvard's main weapon to destroy the Time Sept with Emilia fighting off the Sept guardians to stop them from destroying the missiles and invade the continent,the whole purpose of the development of advanced military technology was to create the means to destroy the Time Sept and protect Zemuria from it,but even then it's impossible to protect the continent on their own so they warned other nations,city-states,and high-ranking Jaegers that a giant incident will happen in August 7th that will spread outside Calvard so they could prepare their forces in advance and minimize the damage to the continent.According GM Thorndyke, the main AI of Marduk after being enhanced by the Oct-Genesis(in reality 8 Alter Cores being superimposed with the original 8 units in a state where the Oct-Genesis are used to enhance the AI so they're treated as if the original units were connected to the main AI so it doesn't matter if the originals were there or not) determined the humanity's chances of winning are 7:2:1,70% win,20% lose,and 10% unknown which he is embarassed about because even a 10% of uncertainty is unacepptable for a life and death crisis for humankind and he wanted "Mare"'s help to address the source of this anomaly.
The origin of the plan's name was Laevatein,a weapon in Norse Mythology said to be forged by Loki and locked in a chest with nine locks that is watched over by Sinmara,the wife of Surtr and may possibly be the sword Surtr uses in Ragnarok to burn down the world,in Zemuria,it's stated that Laevatein is the only weapon capable of destroying the Time Septerrion but it's current whereabouts are unknown.
The plan (seemingly) succeeded without exhausting all of the Answerers but then Van sensed the summoning of what appears to be a version of Zoa-Gillstein which shot down Emilia's unit after which the Time Sept self-repaired(?) by rewinding time to a state where it could perform the reset but in an obviously damaged state and continued the countdown,Calvard attempted to launch the remaining 18 missiles but without Emilia guarding them,none of them could reach the Sept in time so the Laevatein Plan failed in the end.
Despite this failure however,Ouroboros did not look down on Roy but instead sang the highest praise and respect towards Roy and Calvard's hard work with a genuinely happy Campanella stating that the 19999th cycle has the most exciting ending of the 19999 cycles so far,in other words,this was the furthest humanity got to breaking free of the Cradle of Time and validated its potential(even though it was influenced by Van,the variable from the outside) while Simeon states that Roy delivered what the Grandmaster was so eager to see unfold and did not disappoint or fail her expectations at all.
According to the Visual Collection Interview,the 19999th cycle was actually the first instance of the Laevateinn Plan and previous attempts had different operations,meaning the 19999th cycle where humanity nearly broke free was actually Roy's first attempt and other people tried to destroy Laegjarn in previous cycles but never got as far as him,had the Laevatein plan succeeded it would have counted as the success of the Eternal Recurrence Plan so Roy and the Grandmaster had the same end goal of destroying Laegjarn but the only difference is whether humanity can succeed with or without Ouroboros's guidance,regarding the damage dealt to the Time Sept,it's revealed that while the core functions can function normally in its current state,the damage done is significant enough that it will affect the 20000th cycle in an unknown way so while the plan failed,it was by no means pointless and will have consenquences in the future.
That being said,there are suspecious points about the ending:
-Marduk's Main AI confirmed the termination of the Time Sept's activities just before it "rewinded"
-Van had a reaction just before the Fake Zoa showed up and the rewind happened
-Visual Collection Interview implied that the Time Sept is unable to perform self-repair and the box's lack of a self-repair process mention in addition to the limit of its reset range supports this,it's also stated that Ouroboros doesn't even know why the box rewinded itself either since the non-aggression pact was legitimate and not a scam so they're just as clueless as everyone else.
From these 3 points,it's clear that the Project Laevateinn really did succeed in destroying the box and Roy actually won,the only way to explain this anomaly is if a 3rd party interfered with the ending because they wanted the Grand Resets to go on.
F.Novartis:The dark horse of Kai and without a doubt the main beneficiary,also surprisingly pitiful.
He hacked Marchen Garten in order to get back at Marduk for interrupting his observation of Elysium and cleared the original version of the Garten alongside Simeon and Ulrica by reaching the Abyssal Area located in its depths which is the secret treasure that gave Marduk its rapid advancements without them realizing it,because the management was handed over to the Foundation,he,Ellroy and the other Enforcers had to deal with Van,Rean,Kevin and Rufus's teams trying to reclaim the Garten before they could get to the depths with the Garten's difficulty level being reinforced by Simeon to buy time for Novartis,to show how serious he is about the box he had to stay in the digital world for 2000 hours worth of slowed time which means ignoring the real world,his other research and the strain on his physical body with him getting abnormally manic when interruptions happen to slow down his work.When he was close to breaking the box's data protection,he found out its true identity and realized how much time has passed since he started working but declared this didn't matter for this is the greatest research moment of his life but then he gets nostalgic because no matter how much the box will satisfy his curiosity,it will never compare to the days where he studied under "him",he then gets emotional and declares that he will prove that those days were reality and not dreams,and analyzing the undecipherable data of the box will prove it:that he is more worthy than the 3 Disciples to serve the Grandmaster as one of her Anguis.
(enter delayed gag scene with Renne where he finds out that Simeon stabbed him in the back by making a key to bypass the firewall he placed and gave it to the group)
Risette thinks Novartis is after forbidden knowledge like Reactor Weapon but Novartis tells her that while he's not picky about learning knowledge,he's not interested in material things like mass producing WMDs just to have them and dismisses the Reactor Weapon that Callaghan sought to complete as being "crude",the group notes that despite Novartis's gluttony for knowledge,all he does is just improve on the knowledge he gained after analyzing them and never actually does anything with them.Jolda gets reminded of the 3 Disciples and starts to make comparisons about how he's similar to them in the sense of not being interested in personal achievements but this touches Novartis's reverse scale which gets him mad,he then comments that Hamilton's abillity to act is praiseworthy but even so it's not enough:she's lacking in talent,originality,flair,and sense,concluding that she's not worthy to call herself as a disciple of Claude Epstein.He generates a data copy of Aion Epsilon(it was supposed to be Delta but because its performance had better results than expected he decided to name it Epsilon anyway,physical version hasn't been rolled out yet but it's completed) to defeat the group but it falls because of data lag but he's satisfied with its performance based on the concept of having firepower exceeding Mcburn.
He then tells Van's group that inside the Abyssal Area which is Marduk's secret treasure lies the answers about the Great Collapse,why they're blocked from reaching the edge of the continent,and why they can't analyze artifacts,Van figures out that what Novartis is after isn't knowledge of weapons but his true identity causing Elaine to remember that no matter how hard the Guild and Church investigated,for some reason they literally couldn't find any trace of his past and background before he joined Ouroboros,Novartis confirms Van's deduction and starts to cry out about how long he waited for this,stating that he felt that his existence itself is being rejected by the world and history itself causing an absolute feeling of solitude that still tortures him to this day and asks them if they even know how painful it was for him.
At the same time,Novartis's console Mars-III notifies that the data protection has been breached and extraction corresponding to 0.000000001% of the Abyssal Area's data is complete,an elated Novartis tells Mars-III to display the data to which it complies:
"The Septian Calendar 1154 personal data extracted from the 19998th Grand Archive,Full Name:Furio Novartis,born in the Leman State located in the central north Zemuria,he was the sole disciple of the pioneer of Orbal Technology Claude Epstein but because of his problematic research attitude he was dismissed in the same year after which he parted ways with his teacher and continued his independent research"
"It's there......IT'S THERE!!"
"So i wasn't wrong after all-i was...I WAS THERE AFTER ALL!!!"
As Novartis cries out in genuine relief and happiness that his bond with his teacher was genuine and not fantasy,everyone else is confused:Quatre points out Hamilton and the other disciples's status as Claude's disciples in reaction to the reveal that Novartis was apparently the only one while Risette points out that 1154 was the year Claude died so it was impossible for him to take a disciple in the same year(implying his death was early into the year),Renne thinks Novartis is the professor's hidden disciple but then quickly dismisses it while Barkhorn remembers a passage from the Ladder apocrypha about the "single step" with only Van and Shizuna only realizing the full context of the data revealed just now,an excited Novartis tells the group that none of them will understand what this data means to him after which he then finally realizes what the full picture of the Eternal Recurrence Plan really is and what has to be done to complete its purpose,so he knows that what he has to do is log out and go to Roy so he can interfere with his plan as Claude's student-
"You must not,Novartis"
Everyone is summoned by the Grandmaster into Celestial Globe as she descends to meet them,Grandmaster tells Novartis that while hacking Marchen Garten into Grim Garten is something she can overlook,breaking the pact with Roy is something that is not allowed and reminds him of his role as an Anguis,at this point Novartis then begs the Grandmaster to let him help because his interference is meant to help Roy's plan and hers by extension but the Grandmaster tells him that Roy and his allies has to take matters into their own hands and that whether or not he has a role to play as Claude's student depends on the outcome which causes Novartis to despair from learning that the only way he can help is only if Roy fails and his teacher's insurance is activated so anything he does now won't change a thing,the Grandmaster approaches the crestfallen Novartis and he braces for his punishment but instead she congratulates him for finally reaching the answer he sought(implying she overlooked his hacking for this purpose) but he worked too hard for the past 83 days and tells him to rest:she comforts and reassures him that while he can't make a difference right now,she still needs his help in the future.
Novartis,touched by the Grandmaster's words and gesture,willingly surrenders control of Grim Garten back to the Foundation and MK but tells them that the Abyssal Area will stay open and he will continue to unlock its secrets,as he passes out from his exhaustion catching up to him,he remarks in a resigned and sad tone that all that's left is to wait for today's "results".
After the Grandmaster,Ulrica,and Novartis leaves,the group ponders on the meaning of the data with Renne noting that this single revelation was more meaningful to Novartis than all the research he's done at Ouroboros and that she has never seen him more happy and relieved during the time she has known him.
The earliest point Novartis has appeared in the 19999th loop's history is the summit where intellectuals from all over Zemuria including the 3 disciples,Towa's grandfather Alfred Herschel,and principal Collins of Jenis Academy convene to discuss the future development of the continent where he barges in uninvited and proposes that they go all in on developing technology and that they needn't fear about accidentally creating a Singularity early which will have the risk of creating an AI that could outpace humanity because if they lose to it,then that will be the limit of humanity,he then gets to an offscreened debate with the other intellectuals where he amazes them with his knowledge comparable to the disciples until security drags him out,this ties back to Albert's comment about finding the technology of Ouroboros familliar in SC because they incorporated knowledge Novartis revealed at the debate.
Before mysteriously vanishing(it seems he was already an Anguis by this point),he tells them that unless they release the constraints of their thinking,every technological development from now on will just be as Claude Epstein expected and mocks them,including the 3 Disciples,for being unable to escape the palm of his teacher's hand.
It's also revealed in the Dengeki interview that his behaviour as a mad scientist was a result from going insane thanks to having memories of the 19998th loop which isolated and tortured him mentally,so while he was problematic to an extent,he never went as far as human experimentation in the past loops(in the first place,there's no way Claude would have took Novartis as a disciple if he was always like that),but whether or not Novartis is the same case as Risette is unknown.
As written above,his human side was more emphasized compared to previous games in addition to him being weak to praises from Ulrica and properly cleaning up the mess created by Van,Shizuna and Simeon's rampage in the Garten,while the only time his mad scientist aspect was shown in Kai was his reintroduction when he was fawning over the treasure trove of subjects to analyze and learn from before Agnes unknowingly hit his sore spot,it's also clear that his loyalty and faith towards the Grandmaster is genuine rather than being transactional from being bribed by knowledge so the same applies with his relationship with Claude Epstein where it's evident that what Novartis values and treasures from their time together in the previous cycle was not the knowledge he gained from him(as he stated above,the value of the box's knowledge was higher than the knowledge Claude taught him),but the bond between them to the point where he desperately wanted to prove that their time together was real and not delusion to the point of degenerating into madness.Also the student reveal isn't actually new,this was foreshadowed all the way back in Sen 3 when Alberich was monologuing about his preparations for the Great Twilight with one of them being "joining the 13 Factories and gaining the favour of Epstein's best student" and the only disciple associated with the 13 Factories is Novartis while the other 3 had nothing to do with them,if Schmidt was the disciple in question then it would have been no problem namedropping Schmidt as the one he gained the favour of yet the one Alberich wanted the favour of was evaluated as being the best disciple Claude ever had(comparisons between the 3 Disciples regarding their abillity were never brought up in the games so we don't know which one is the best out of the 3) and wasn't directly named for some reason so he somehow learned about Novartis's relationship with Claude but how he learned this is unknown.
Eldarion twins:Jolda fits in like a glove in Ouroboros which encourages free will and individuality so she can complete her missions in any way she sees fit,this stimulates her abillities and imagination in ways that Garden would have never allowed and the best part is that she doesn't have to make any unnecessary murders which she doesn't even like doing in the first place and consciously stops herself from feeling any pleasure from it so she won't fall to the same level as Melchior who she hates for forcing her to kill her fellow child assassins who were kidnapped and forced to be assassins in the deathmatch,it's also revealed that Jolda was the one responsible for Elaine's promotion thanks to injuring Anju's brother who used to be A-rank and forcing him to retire from the front lines during a mission.
Ixs on the other hand,didn't manage as well and gets weirded out when Jolda tells him that it's good that they didn't need to kill needlessly anymore,he keeps getting unrelated people involved in his missions and it comes to a head when Jolda tells him stop and Ixs goes on a tantrum about how Jolda isn't as broken as him and that they're different despite being twins contrary to what he thought,they got distant after this and at some point during a mission in the northern frontiers he met Melchior who was turned into a Remnant and offered him a part-time job working for Hamilton which he accepted getting an Alter Core and an Executor for himself,he was also ordered to steal Ishtanti and Rago's Fang from the Glorious so Remnant Arioch and Olympia could use them.
Jolda then tagged along with Van to find Ixs which eventually led them to him when Jeffrey snapped out of his brainwashing thanks to Van's words which led Ixs to nearly get rid of him if not for Rixia and Renne,he tells them that this has nothing to do with Ellroy(currently away on a business trip with V and XII so he has no time for trolling unlike Crimson Sin) and Novartis(see above),he then ports away telling Jolda to stop chasing him which she proceeded to not do and continue her chase.
He pops up again brainwashing and leading the Blacklight Town citizens go on a rampage in the district before taking a significant portion away to the Sheena Dirk nature park to use as a living barricades until the wedge has been completed,but Van's group gets to him anyway thanks to help from Rixia,the police,and the Bracers.Ixs puts up a bravado act about cutting off Jolda but he gets exposed by Van for having a tantrum and being scared of reconciling with Jolda after hurting her which basically something most adolescents go and that the whole part-time job was an excuse to run away from her which hits the mark given his reaction,the Apostle,Martial Artist,and Soldier Remnants pops up after the fight and introduces themselves before retreating with Ixs but Jolda's shadow hand grabs him and kept holding on to him until his next coordinates could be tracked,when the Apostle uses their Alter Core to produce an imitation Pandaemonium using the data from the one in the capital to create the final wedge for the insurance,he meets Ellroy again and taunts him that he can't order him around because Enforcers can do anything they want(in reality the only reason Ixs's tantrum was ignored in the first place was because helping setting up Claude's insurance doesn't conflict with the Grandmaster's will and he would have been surpressed if it did) but Ellroy tells him that he's here because of a personal business(with Melchior) and not for him while also teasing Ixs that he can delay making up with Jolda for as long as he wants because that's allowed as well to his irritation,he runs away with Melchior and the others after the final wedge is completed and comments that they can see each other again depending on tomorrow's outcome,at some point he gets summoned by the Grandmaster offscreen to have a conversation that she's not going to disclose to Jolda.
On another note,a meeting with their father as a Remnant will never happen,because he has no "unfinished business" and thus isn't qualified to be turned into one.
Remnant:basically people from past loops or the current one being "brought back" from the past by the Alter Cores,for some reason the criterias for being one is related to whether they have unfinished business in the present or not so people like Loewe,Osborne and Gerard can't be brought back because they have nothing left to do in the present,the ones brought back by the Alter Cores have to be people involved with Calvard's history for some reason even though that would limit the pool of candidates,so far there are 11 members who appeared including the 3 members who are still alive in the present but it's stated that there's more of them that hasn't showed up.So far the masked ones who showed up are:
Apostle:Melchior,hair is lighter for some reason(probably because of the lighting in the area) but the way he talks makes it clear that he's from loop 19999.
Martial Artist:Ragan Khan,Aaron's previous life,his knowledge of the kings makes it clear that he's from loop 19999 but his existence itself is a paradox because Ragan himself is still alive as Aaron.
Soldier:datamine lists her name as "Aida(Remnant)" and uses her model(it appears to be a placeholder though) but the portrayal in Kai makes it clear that it's not Aida but someone pretending to be her,the graying hair,middle eastern skin tone,the comparison to Kasim,and the fact she's unfamilliar with Shard tech points to her being loop 19998 Feri.
Provoker:Giacomo,he's among the lower ranking Remnants and is treated as a sidekick by Ragan(seriously though,why did Hamilton brought this guy back of all people?)
Giant:Arioch,not confirmed if he's 19999 Arioch or not given the way he leaved on Genesis Tower.
Puppeteer:Olympia,taking Hajimari into account,this is most likely 19998 Olympia taking over the current Olympia through the assimilation phenomenon since the canon version of events is the Bracer route where the Law choices always triggers and she gets saved which meant that 19999 Olympia has no reason to help Hamilton.
Swordsman:Ulger Atkinson(confirmed through datamine)
Mage:Aramis Gainsborough(confirmed through datamine)
Knight:Sheena Dirk(confirmed through datamine)
Interviews implies that there's more Remnants summoned by Hamilton than the ones that appeared in Kai including ones that the protagonists never met directly and that Emperor(real,not robot) can qualify as one,so he's probably one too.
Swordsman stated that he,Mage,and Knight are unstable in terms of presence unlike the other 6 and can fade away at any time but the difference between them and the others are unknown,the whole purpose of summoning the Remnants is to cause uncertanties in space-time and create wedges into the continent to create a singularity through the A.D rituals so that Claude's insurance can partially control Laegjarn.
Aside from the Remnants in Kai,Rean Alter from Hajimari was one too,being a version of Rean who escaped the atmosphere in a past loop before being shot down into the continent at some point and getting reset with the continent,meaning the future where he's trapped in an unending tug-of-war with Ishmelga actually did happen to Rean at some point and it wasn't fabricated by Elysium,also Kai confirms that Rean Alter's words of drifting in an dark void was him seeing the continent being imprisoned and being stuck outside the atmosphere so he never escaped to the universe in the first place.
Nina describes the existence of the Remnants summoned by the Alter Cores as "hollow" and judging from the description about how Dingo got his data copied by the 8th Genesis because of his regrets and guilt along with how Remnants can't be made from people who have no regrets,it seems that they share the same criterion and that they're basically the same thing(meaning AI Dingo is technically Remnant Dingo) which explains Nina's statement and solves the paradox with Aaron and Feri because Martial Artist and Soldiers are just recreations created using consciousness data and that Ragan and 19998 Feri weren't actually plucked out of their time periods.
According to the Visual Collection Interview,the Remnants are part of Laegjarn's system just like the Sept guardians and the Grand Reset,Hamilton gained access to the library by hacking the Sept using the Alter Cores and summoned them to prepare Claude's insurance.
Alter Dawn:Essentially brainwashed leftover members of previous groups like Revache,Richard's coup,anti-immigrant terrorists,corrupt reformist and Noble Alliance members,Jurai pro-independence supporters,Armata,Bugbear,etc controlled using the recreated 19998 nanomachines through something called the E(xecutor)-factor to do the Remnants's bidding,the mass disappearance cases happening all over the continent was the Remnants abducting and putting them to work to place wedges all over the continent in preparation for the insurance,Ellroy and the Apostle Remnant stated that everyone brainwashed are all people forgotten or forsaken by the world and people who lost sight of their place in the continent,calling them the final lambs.
The meaning of Alter Dawn is basically <An Alternate Dawn>,meant to appeal to the leftovers into subconsciously supporting the cause.
Moonlight Horse:Surprisingly enough Ellroy wasn't a high ranking member of the group,he was just a middleman between the leaders and the other members and his scar wasn't caused by Mcburn either.The triumvate chiefs of Moonlight Horse attempted to escape while ordering Ellroy to tell the other members to fight to the death but in retaliation he slipped a neurotoxin into their favorite objects that caused their deaths,also new members of Moonlight Horse were namedropped,Golden Lion Ruago,Bernard Brothers and the Shadow Hunter who all survived into Garden but died by the time the self-destruct deathmatch happened in the 19999th loop but thanks to the Grand Reset their deaths were undone and they're alive again in the 20000th loop.
Septian Church:The name of the current Pope is Orestis II,she's a veteran older than Barkhorn and was the one who recruited him as a Dominion during her active days by inspiring him to go outside his hometown which led to him awakening his Stigma,she's also the one who raised Nina until she reached 14 years old and treated her like her own granddaughter,as far as her personal feelings go,she(and Rufina) never liked how Nina was forced into the saint role and would rather raise her normally instead of hiding her in Arteria's Papal Garden but she knows that it's necessary for the world so she put up with it.The big incident that shook up the church was Nina's reveal as the Saint of the End to the leaders of the divisions of the church and her being given total authority over them,which caused the conflict between the Gralsritter and Papal Guard to vanish until Hamilton's guilt was confirmed which caused Celis and Rion to dissent from disagreeing with the church on the death penalty.Orestis then disclosed the secrets of the church regarding Laegjarn and the Grand Reset from the Arict apocrypha which meant that current cycle is about to end and that they need to act.
Because of the setting of the Grand Reset,the true nature of the church's Arict,Ezer,and Ladder apocryphas are essentially records of previous loops preserved from the Grand Reset thanks to Arteria's Primal Ground in the form of prophecies,it's also revealed Calvard's Primal Ground is located in the Ishgal Mountains and it is the only place where space launch can be done because Laegjarn's influence doesn't extend there,unfortunately the resistance to the resets can't stop the Artifacts from respawning so the Gralsritter has go through the trouble recovering them again and again every cycle.
Gralsritter:Thomas wasn't the vice-commander when Kevin had just been appointed as the 5th Dominion despite being the 2nd Dominion at the time,he got the position sometime after the Creil idol(AF Excalibur from the 19998th cycle,unbeknownst to the church) was secured.Barkhorn was from a town in the Solaris mountains,Celis was from the fringes of the continent,being the leader of a group of orphans who were looked after by Sister Ortesia and Rion was an ex-noble from Erebonia disowned by his family,Orestis recruited Barkhorn when his hometown was attacked by bandits which caused his currently cursed Stigma that is now in Gaius's possession to awaken while Barkhorn recruited the duo when they awakened and lost control of theirs during their respective incidents(an attempted kidnapping for Celis and a cousin belonging to the D.G Cult remnants trying to exploit Rion's supernatural powers).In addition it's revealed in the duo's Memento Orb that Ortesia was not the name of Celis's family,but the name of Sister Ortesia who lost her life taking the bullet from a human trafficker to protect Celis and her orphan group with Barkhorn arriving too late to save her.
Nina:her true identity is a human from another planet that somehow drifted into the continent at some point in the cycles,she lost all memories of her true name,birth family,and homeworld with only the abillity to speak the language of her homeworld remaining(by the way,the censored line in her orb is just her asking for Rufina's name according to the datamine(literally "oneechan,dare?"),they didn't made up an alien language on the spot),the first person she met was Rufina Argent who took her to Arteria and presented her to Orestis,the Pope realized that this girl was "The Saint of the End" recorded in the Arict Apocrypha who was prophesized to always arrive before the end times of the continent from the outside and took her under her protection with only a select people knowing of her existence,because of this she's currently the earliest known outsider who arrived in Zemuria even before Van,Mcburn,and the other Kings arrived but because her memories were reset every time we don't know the cycle she arrived in.She quickly learned Zemurian at the cost of losing all memories of her original language,many people was convinced that she was the prophesized Saint of the End thanks to how quickly she learned their language and how she acted exactly how people wanted her to as if reading their emotions but a few people including Orestis and Rufina was not pleased at how such a heavy burden was given to a little girl that's only 4 years old.
4 years after she was taken in by the Pope,she awakened the power of the Akashic Eye(which was apprently given to her by an unknown being) and the first vision she saw was Rufina's accidental death at the hands of Kevin(who she has yet to meet in person) which causes her to pass out screaming from the shock,at the age of 10,in order to repay Rufina,she requested to help in the church's affairs and was given command of the Iscariot squad where her Akashic eye was put to use to punish heretics,when she reached 14 years old she left Arteria in order investigate a distortion she detected in Calvard under the cover of being a daughter of an eastern merchant and watched Judith's debut movie which sparked her interest in movies,by sheer coincidence,a friend she had just made gave her resume to the same talent agency Judith is part of and so she became Judith's junior who she eventually admires and felt inferior to because Judith was more worthy of the stage than she ever will be,this distortion is Hamilton's Alter Core warping space-time to steal water resources for Tharbad so unless she had other reasons to go to Calvard in past cycles,it's unlikely she would have met Judith in past resets before the 19999th one.
Campanella states that her powers are on the same level as the Grandmaster but it's stated in the Dengeki Interview that essence of their powers are completely different.
After gaining complete authority over the Gralsritter and Papal Guard,she employs Kevin on a mission to ascertain as to whether Hamilton is conducting something that violates the laws of the goddess to which he complies under the condition that Ries is exempt and left out of the loop for this mission (except Ries found out anyway and told the Picnic team to take care of him in her place so keeping her out of the loop was for nothing),she gave him 1 half of her eye that gives limited past vision for his investigation with Picnic Squad and her guilt was confirmed in the Antikythera tower prompting Nina to declare her a heretic and sends Kevin and the others on their way to Creil where she is located while also sending the Iscariot as reinforcements.In the end Kevin hesitated for too long and the execution fails thanks to the Knight,Swordsman,and Mage Remnants interfering and the 19999th Grand Reset occurs with Agnes sacrificing herself with Nina as one of the witnesses,out of respect for Agnes's decision(which was something the church can barely tolerate for some reason) she let her sacrifice happen but warns Hamilton that her judgment as a heretic stays as is.
Marduk:They were already established as a PMC by the time Sora FC happened in 1202 with them already having a risk assessment AI and Gilliam,Kasim,and Mirabel already being members though their tech wasn't that advanced aside from the AI,one day the AI suddenly detected a dangerous presence in the northern frontiers appearing out of nowhere which caused them to mobilize only to find out that the high-risk "danger" was a pod containing a girl who lost 90% of her body with only her brain and nervous systems being functional,they took the pod back with them so they can analyze and awaken the girl,they succeeded in awakening the girl early but the only piece of information they got was her own name so they continued to analyze the pod while also putting Mirabel in charge of rehab,what they didn't tell Risette was the mark on the pod that revealed its origins:Septian Calendar 1259 Anchorville.
Thanks to the analysis of the pod,advances in technology was greatly accelerated to the point where they can hack even Ouroboros's Astral Code to access the Celestial Globe in 1207,but what they don't know even to this day was that the technological advances and hacking was only possible thanks to a secret treasure hidden in the pod containing Risette,according to Novartis,this treasure was created by the 5 Great Families of Valis of the previous loop which uses the Sept-terrion of Time as a reference point and it contained data of the last 19998 loops,the data protection is powerful enough that not even the 3 Disciples working together can break through it,you have to be a scientist of Novartis's caliber to succeed solo and even then,you have to work 24/7 with full concentration for 2000 hours in the cyber world's slowed time just to extract 0.000000001% of its data.They used the VR tech developed from the analysis for Risette's rehabillitation using a virtual space to simulate things from the outside world but unfortunately the technology to create a mechanical body hasn't been developed yet so the best they could do to extend her social contact beyond Marduk was to employ her as an SC and use a virtual model of her body to disguise the fact that she's just a brain at that point but Van's senses weren't fooled and figured out that what he's seeing through their video calls isn't the real Risette.
West Zemuria Tech Union:ZCF and Reinford's technology were used in the development of AF Excalibur so they contributed to the Laevatein Plan unknowingly,despite not being able to bring Verne and Hamilton into the fold,more companies have joined the union as of 1209 so the initiative is a success when it comes to bringing together organizations,but not so much when it comes to Marduk and Ouroboros because Marduk's technological advances are progressing too fast for them to catch up and losing the Black Workshop and the Rozenberg Workshop didn't narrow the gap between the union and 13 Factories thanks to the factories stealing knowledge from each other and also because of Novartis's abillities which ensures that he consistently stays ahead of modern tech without using Artifacts as a basis.
On the other hand,the Epstein Foundation was given control of the Marchen Garten by Marduk because they're too busy with Roy's plan to manage it but at that point,Ouroboros had already taken control of it so they're basically treating the foundation as a subcontractor to deal with their problems,the Foundation was "convinced" into accepting the transfer by dangling the disclosure of some of the Xipha standard's core technologies as payment for the request's completion so the foundation will accept it in the empty hope that they could catch up to Marduk using the tech but it's pointless because without Marduk's treasure the chances of the foundation catching up is nil and they're basically doing Marduk's work for what's essentially dog scraps,the worst part is that because the Grand Reset occured in the ending,the deal was effectively undone so they're never going to get the tech.
Sunshine Agnes:Heavily implied to be a record of a past cycle of Anchorville in a different location,Edwin is a real person who experienced the 1199 bus accident that also happened in the 19999th cycle but the encounter with "Sunshine Agnes" never happened in this cycle but he starts to remember things when the Apostle's artificial Pandaemonium happens,the author of the book is all but stated to be Sophie who is implied to be the titular Sunshine Agnes,she sent the manuscript through a package to Edwin's news agency in 1203(one year before Sophie died) who then published them and a letter was also sent to him that contains a pendant called Witch's Medallion which can only be equipped by Agnes which requests that the pendant is given to the "other Agnes" and the Dengeki inteview hints that this pendant will be the key to turn her back from her current state as the Tuner.
Claude:All that we know about his death was that it wasn't because of natural causes,still no reveal as to the date and location of death but it doesn't seem to be in Leman and considering Risette's reaction to Novartis's true identity,it was pretty early into 1154.As thanks for scouting the location for the construction of Trion Tower,he created the Nocturnal Compact for Dominique that constructs a suit made out of Shard using byproduct technology created by Genesis which kickstarted the legend of Phantom Thief Grimcats,his insurance uses the Trion Tower,Oct-Genesis,and the bloodline factor the Claudells inherited to limit the Grand Reset up to a certain point and preserve the events the cycle the hack happens in to the next cycle but it can't take full control of it because otherwise the Sept-Terrion would have been shut down by this point.
He took Novartis as his disciple in the 19998th loop but didn't do so the same thing in the 19999th loop and instead took Russell,Hamilton,and Schmidt as students instead,as a human who broke the shackles of the continent on his own,he would have retained memories of previous cycles so he would have remembered what happened to cause the break up with Novartis but his ex-disciple's reaction to the reveal that the dreams of studying under his teacher were reality is not how a student with a bad breakup with his teacher would act and there's the mystery as to why Novartis is treated as someone who is not supposed to exist in the 19999th loop so it's possible that he initially planned to create a quartet of disciples consisting of Novartis,Russell,Schmidt,and Hamilton so they can balance each other out but because Novartis was nowhere to be found in the 19999th loop,he took his chances with the other 3 rather than abandoning and replacing Novartis for having personality problems.
Dominique stated that Claude's origins has something to do with Marduk and that Thorndyke asked Hamilton to allow him to be present to witness the Grand Reset hack if the Laevatein Plan fails.His past encounter with Van gets murky because it's evident that the Oct-Genesis and Grand Reset hacks has been happening for several loops while the 5 Outsiders had nothing to do with Zemuria's past loops and only started to intervene in the 19999th cycle so it's unknown what his relationship with the outside really is.
In addition,the Remnants,Alter Cores,and the Alter Dawn movement was not how the original plan to hack the box was supposed to be executed,this was completely Hamilton's doing so it's unknown how the preparations of the past hackings were even done.
Outsiders:As far as we learned,the order was Nina(before the 19998th loop)>Van and 4 other people(barged in at the end of the 19998th loop)>McBurn(arrived in the 125Xs on the 19999th cycle) so outsider influence was actually pretty recent until it's revealed that someone before Nina arrived,Novartis stated that anyone on the level of kings are unbound by the laws of the continent and thus isn't chained by its logic but he admits that he barely knows anything about Mcburn,Van and the other 4.
Nina,unlike the other 6,was assimillated and bound by the continent's laws to the point where she forgot and lost the abillity to speak her native language so she's nowhere as powerful and influental as them for that matter,even after she arrived in Zemuria,there's been no significant impact on the events leading up to the Grand Reset deadline and no progress on breaking free despite having the Akashic Eye so her influence was pretty much negligible.On the other hand,after incarnating as a Zemurian and being stripped of most of his powers in the 19999th loop,Van's "corruption" of the continent's possibilities was strong enough to the point that humanity almost broke free of Laegjarn despite falling short.
No new information about the Salt Pale is revealed but considering the fact that the church never expected it to just materialize in North Ambria,it seems that it first appeared in the 19999th loop though that would mean North Ambria's salinification,the Northern Jaegers,and Weissman becoming the 3rd Anguis only happened in this cycle.
Also relevant:Tausend stated in Bazel during the AF test chapter that you need to collaborate with people from outside your circle to bring new innovations or else you're going to rot with regards to Verne working together with Reinford in earnest which basically sums up Zemuria's current situation:it's basically impossible at this point for humans born in the continent to break free of the Cradle of Time after 24 million years of looping and that its possibilities will get exhausted from the isolation,so it's inevitable that to save humanity,help from people outside the continent is necessary to expand the continent's potential which is shown by the chain of events caused by Van's existence in the 19999th cycle leading to a major milestone in breaking free of the cage which pleases Ouroboros,this is likely why the Grandmaster told Van that him reaching her first was inevitable because he's going to be the one who will bring the true dawn of tomorrow for the continent as an outsider and not Hamilton's group which will amount to nothing but give a false dawn through preserving the events of the current loop by hacking the Sept.
Armata:Pretty much all of the higher-ups except for Gerard appears in Kai,canonically Viola(she makes an early cameo in the 4Spg with the mafia from her nation in Kevin's route) and Alexandre gets a parole deal out of jail thanks to a deal with Marduk and the presidential office in exchange for assisting with Project Laevatein(they got explosives strapped in their necks in case of rebellion but they have no intention of doing that in the first place),if the Chaos choice to kill them was chosen in Oracion,then it will be revealed that Van botched the kill and only put them in a near-death state,Kasim's team in Oracion found them barely clinging to life and secretly took them away to be given the same prosthetic bodies as Risette,in this case what was summoned in Genesis Tower are their souls temporarily taken from their bodies because they were still in the middle of recuperation when Pandaemonium in the capital happened and their were sent back to their bodies when it ended.
In other words,Kai slaps you in the face if you chose to let Olympia die in Oracion because she's the only one who actually dies from the Oracion LGC choices.
In a call back to the first game,it turns out that the Agave plant used to make the drug for the Tharbad Incident came from the Antikythera Tower's area and Armata got samples when the sandstorm receded,Hamilton cured Shaheena thanks to knowing the composition of the plant and secretly installed another Aurora terminal in Vegasfilm's basement linked to the tower's Alter Core to further seal the tower by perpetually maintaining the sandstorm while also cutting the investigation of the plant short using the excuse that analyzing the plant's properties was more important,the remaining samples of the plant were found in the underground lab of Anchorville's General Hospital that was built because Armata blackmailed the hospital's director thanks to secretly funding its construction where an Alter Core was used to enhance its effects after which it is used to create more drugs to draw more people into A.D.
Hamilton knew about Armata collecting and using the Oct-Genesis for Gerard's plot from the beginning and kept track of their activities in secret but didn't do anything about them because all 8 had to complete their observations for the insurance so they were basically exploited by her without knowing about it.
Because of the ending,everything Armata did in Kuro 1 was effectively undone so everyone who died because of them are alive again in 20000th loop,while the "saving of Zemurian space-time" in the ending implies that everything is going to repeat again,the limits of the Time Sept meant that Van's Diabolic Core can't be brought back into the continent because it's currently outside of the Grand Reset's range of effect which means that Gerard will not survive the D.G extermination campaign because the core's reinforcement was the only reason he lived to 1208 to begin with so Kuro 1 will never happen in the 20000th loop.
Creil:Rashkal and Aina are doing well with the former getting a part-time job in Edith's guild branch while the currently ruined Creil is the main area of part 3 of Kevin's section,the scientists of other nations are still wary about Creil possibly having radioactive pollution with Erika and George making an app for Lila and Mint to detect radiation when they're there but Merkabah II's computer and the apps stated that there's no radioactive pollution despite the area was wrecked by the explosion,in addition,the special effect for the Answerer missiles is different compared to the one detonated by Apeiron and Laegjarn identifies the explosion as an "unexpected thermonuclear attack" which meant that no nuclear explosion occured in the continent during the data gathering for the 19999th reset so what exploded in Creil is not a nuclear bomb but something else.
Thors:Both the main and Leeves campuses are getting higher enrollments every year,Rean teaches at both the Trista and Leeves campuses while Towa is the Head Instructor for both campuses,Makarov is now Roer institute's chief researcher and had just gotten married with instructor Mary.The other Class VII and other Thors graduates are pitching in for Rean as substitute teachers when he needs to go out of Erebonia,where the NCVII members went to after graduating is revealed:
Juna:became an SSS member in Crossbell.
Kurt:became a Vander style instructor in another nation while also searching for Cedric,but he also comes back to Thors II from time to time.
Ash:currently touring Zemuria using his Orbal Bike but he comes back to Thors II from time to time,currently filling in for Rean as the substitute instructor for Class VII with Kurt.
Musse:Became the official Duke Cayenne of Ordis.
Altina:Became a faculty member of the newly established Thors Strategic Laboratory and the foundation's Imperial Branch after studying in Leman for a year in 1208.
Also Alisa is working with Georg and Angelica to create Orbal hoverbikes,they're currently in the testing phase with the prototype.
Crossbell:See Thors for Juna,Tio is now Altina and Jona's boss with the latter now working in the Foundation's Crossbell branch and being the one cracking Novartis's firewall in the last floor of Grim Garten.Elie gets another phonecall with her dad in the final chapter stating that the SSS is on standby after Calvard's secret warning about something spreading outside Calvard but at that point,they're in no position to learn the truth,almost as if this is karma for Lloyd's "no spoiler pls" in Hajimari,the only saving grace is that Rixia is in Calvard to help deal with the missing easterner cases caused by Alter Dawn and ends up being the representative of the Crossbell group who gets to learn the big reveal at end of the game since KeA can't reveal what's beyond the false sky,being shackled by the Time Sept.
D.G Cult:They're basically gone at this point but the climax ties in with Crossbell games and Kuro 1,the true form of the world that Joachim found out after overdosing on Red Gnosis in Zero was that the continent was isolated from the universe by the Time Sept-terrion and that they have been repeating their lives again and again,Ernest saw beyond the fake sky but couldn't understand why there's an empty void outside Zemuria and didn't realize that they were caged in so he freaked out from not understanding,Gerard also knows about the stuff Joachim learned and wanted to expose the facade so he can drown the continent in fear by exposing the truth of the world but what he meant about the true form of the Republic however is still unclear.
So just as Mcburn said in Sen IV,they were all essentially puppets to the end,being exploited by the Crois family,Alberich,and Hamilton for their purposes but the cult had their own results.
On another note,some of the remnants tried to take the Creil idol in the past before Thomas and Kevin foiled them,mistakenly thinking that the Creil idol had some sort of power that could defy Aidios but in reality it's just the remains of the previous cycle's AF Excalibur.
Crimson Sin:Contrary to what the antis are saying,it's not filler(duh),the whole game was essentially a small scale simulation of Laegjarn's Grand Resets using the 8th Genesis's sin observation and AI Dingo is basically a Remnant,what Auguste was doing was using uncertainties in Zemuria's space-time generated using the Oct-Genesis's resets to take partial control of the Time Sept to perform a limited rewind to the Calvard Revolution,basically the same thing as the Remnants are doing but through a different process using the limited resets of the units to cause impossibile events in the present,the 8th's human sin observation is possibly meant to figure out what Laegjarn's SiN value is measuring but it's unknown if Claude successfully figured it out before his death.
Also since Crimson Sin was undone thanks to the Grand Reset,it meant that Auguste can come back in Kai 2 but it's unknown if he'll use Ace's simulacrum when he reappears because that depends on whether Melchior will make the simulacrum or not in the next cycle.
Elysium:According to Lapis,Elysium can't see anything outside the continent which is why she gets confused about Startaker Project's goal of going outside the atmosphere and she got the answer to that question at the climax when its revealed that the continent is being boxed in so even the technological singullarity is being shackled by the continent,Hamilton also said that its birth was the turning point that will lead to the reset happening in 1209 so the AI will not be born in cycles where Ishmelga wins in the Great Twilight,the ending also ties in with Rean Alter's goal and what was about to reveal to Lloyd and Jusis in Hajimari,what he wanted to do by unifying the continent through using Keraunos as a deterrent is to delay the scheduled reset in 1209 by lowering the SiN value through surpressing technological development and human malice by using the the bombardment cannon as a threat,basically stalling for time but not fix the root problem because hatred is a fundamental part of human nature so the reset will inevitably happen anyway though whether or not Rean Alter tried to do this in past cycles or if this was actually the first time Elysium went crazy is unknown.
Lansters:Dominique was an orphan taught by a master pickpocket in the ways of stealing before his death prior to 1152,one day she attempted to break into a certain mansion in the Rexcel district to rob the owner of their belongings but she was instead moved by the piano performance of the owner and became friends with the house's resident,said resident was an elderly 70-year old Sheena Dirk who showed her the path of a chanson singer which she eventually became famous for,she then later helped providing the ideal location for Trion Tower's construction in 1155 and obtained the Nocturnal Compact from Claude which started the legend of Phantom Thief Grimcats.After Claude's supposed "death" in 1157,she secretly took Lilia away from Leman,which was reeling from chaos thanks to his death,to Calvard where she lived with Sheena until her death in 1162 after which she lived alone with Dominique's support before Sophie's birth.During her exploits as Grimcats,Dominique became acquaintances with Aaron's previous life,Ragan Khan,Giacomo,and Yun before passing the mantle to Chloe prior to the D.G extermination op.In preparation for the Grand Reset,Dominique used her business trips as a cover to spread Hamilton's Alter Cores all over the continent to insert wedges for the Grand Reset hack.
On a side note,neither Dominique and Chloe formally married their partners,the Lansters has a rule of conceiving children from their partners after which they part ways with them to keep them out of their phantom thief business and while at least Judith's birth father is still alive and is on good terms with her mom,her grandfather's current status is unknown.
Claudells:Lilia died at the age of 46 in 1190 while Sophie died at the age of 34(8-year age gap with Roy and since he's 46 in 1208 then the age math becomes 48-4-8=34) in 1204,the reason for them dying young was a side effect of the Grand Reset hacks which reduces their life expectancy for unknown reasons,reasons of which at least Sophie doesn't know the truth of nor understand why judging by her Memento Orb,and because Agnes has the same factor that allows the hack,she can do the same thing her grandmother and mother did and hack the Time Sept to limit its reset,but the price she paid is that she is removed from the next cycle and quit being human but it's clear that this isn't a permanent thing since Sophie who used to be in her current state eventually reverted to normal and was reintergrated into the cycles.In-game llustrations revealed that all 3 members of the Claudell family literally share the same face and datamined sprites revealed that the person who had the same face as Sheena back in Kuro 1 was Agnes so it's clear that Sheena and Claudells are relatives.
Yun,Ikaruga,Eight Leaves and Black God:The next-in-line for the leader position is Kurogane,real name Kuuga Ka-Fai,who is the son of Jiou Ka-Fai.
(Yes it's a Kamen Rider reference about the first and last Heisei era riders except the predecessor-successor positions are reversed)
The blood relationship between these two and Yun is that Jiou was the son of whoever Yun's sibling is so Kuuga is Anelace's cousin from her grandfather's side of the family.Jiou succeeded Yun as the leader when he stepped down in 1179 and left for the west,he was personally guarding the Space Base in Kai so he didn't show up when Rean met Yun and Kuuga in Kunlun,Shizuna has an attendant named Kaede who she grew up together with during their childhood.
The true reason behind the creation of the Eight Leaves sword style is to act as an insurance policy in case Black God fails to produce the Sword that overcomes the heavenly laws(same kanji as Heavenly Principles/Tianli/Tenri) i.e an event beyond the comprehension of Zemurians and overcoming this through swordmanship is related to the "state of mind reached through swordmanship",Eight Leaves was spread by Yun in the western part of the continent until he found Rean who he found a possibillity of awakening the sword,thus his position of being Yun's last direct Eight Leaves disciple.He foresaw that Rean would have to go through the suffering in the Sen arc to get to that point but didn't approach him on purpose because he had faith that he and his friends would overcome it so he settled into the audience position to Altina and Fie's frustration when they found out because he could have helped Rean but chose not to on purpose.
Shizuna was chosen as Black God's representative to awaken the sword and was entrusted Akegarasu(other names include Chitose and Nayuta) so she can master it but at one point in the past,the sword's curse possessed her and killed several of Ikaruga's members including one of her family members and gave Kuuga his scar in the process,it went crazy again after the clash with Rean in Bazel's observatory but Van subdued her in Grim Garten.
The specifics of Yun's clairvoyance is revealed to be him melding with the continent to gain deeper insight into the true nature of things than the Unclouded Eye but there's a limit to this:he can't surpass the shackles of the continent and is still constrained by its logic like almost everyone else so stuff and concepts from other planets is incomprehensible even to him which is why he needed Van to figure out what's going on with the Remnants.
Ouroboros:Ellroy was off for a business trip with the Hierophant(lazy old man) and Hanged Man(female martial artist) Enforcers at the start of Kai so he had no time for colluding with Hamilton for the giggles and only found out what was happening by the time Anchorville started,said business trip is a fact-checking mission related to the Eternal Recurrence Plan.Anguis V was the one who recruited Walter into Ouroboros and normally operates in the east with V and XII but the Guild doesn't know who he is while Lianne's successor still hasn't made a decision to take her seat or not.Eternal Recurrence isn't the final phase of Orpheus,it's just the last one the Anguis needs to know in the current situation and there's more phases after the 3rd that will only be revealed after Eternal Recurrence is completed,Ellroy stated that the reason GM doesn't reveal what's beyond the 3rd phase because it won't make a difference if anyone learns about them.According to Campanella who declared the beginning of the 3rd phase's observation in Van's route,they apparently never attempted Eternal Recurrence during the past 19998 times and that the 19999th Grand Reset is where the plan actually begins unless the Grandmaster changed the order of phases for some reason.Simeon is actually a veteran of Ouroboros along with Campanella,Lianne,Loewe(who he was buddies with),and Mcburn who joined before Ellroy,Lucrezia,and Sharon but didn't get his number until after Luciola got hers for some reason and he had another title before it was changed to <Imaginator>,his full power is rumoured to be equal to Mcburn but Simeon got annoyed by the comparison so probably he isn't actually that strong,he also calls the Grim Garten group a "bunch of humans" so it's clear he's not actually one or at least not a pure human,along with Campanella and the Grandmaster,he retained his memories of the past cycles so he's not shackled by the continent.
On a side note,Bleublanc shows up in Renne's connect event after being absent for 2 games(but not unmentioned),he gave a congratulations gift to Renne for completing her studies in Calvard using the riddle game from Kuro 1(as it turns out,the quiz game guy from Bazel wasn't him after all) and left before she and Van found the gift,he's apparently just passing by Calvard according to Renne but it's unknown if he's participating in the Eternal Recurrence plan in another location.