Well I know I said I wanted to wait to make an article until more people were here in hopes of letting more people read it but it turns out I don’t have that kind of patience . For the time being I’m not so sure how to get more people to come to this site so waiting for more viewers would obviously take a very long time.heck! if I wait that long I might actually lose members…and I only have two !!! so instead of that I’m just going to go ahead and make an article.

One of the things that always drove me nuts about path of radiance was the final battle,here you have this giant armoured king,on a giant armoured dragon,with a deadly looking sword……………and we end up fighting him  in Cremias beautiful gardens -_-’ . is he going to attack us with butterfly’s,too? I have to admit…it was much different from what I had pictured.

And why wouldn’t it be? lets start from the beginning.we first hear about King Ashnard very early on,naturally hes just an opposing king with-what its made out to be-intentions of conquering the continent.yeah,a big goal,but its not like we haven’t seen it before…I seem to remember a certain FE villain who wanted to conquer the world *coughnergalcoughcough* .

A good amount of time later we meet the enigmatic black knight.we also see him interrogate and-with little opposition-kill ikes father greil (that’s what he gets for being a prepromote ).it turns out the black knight is after “it” .ahhhh “it” ,whatever could it be (it couldn’t be that hunk of metal mist is so interested in….the same hunk of metal that gets its own cut-scene? nah ).well whatever “it” is he cant get it so he warps away.shortly after that its revealed the King Ashnard wants the medallion…and Ashnard becomes alot more mysterious.

Some how or another we end up bumping into everybodys favorite magical heron (except mine…I like Leanne ) ,reyson.except he hates humans! why? well,its some little squabble he has with the humans…some of them came and burnt down his forest and clan or something equally as small . 

in time we learn that it wasn’t just for fun that the humans burned down the forest.it turns out that “the apostle” of that time was said to have been assassinated by ALIENS!!! herons,and the people-seeking revenge-did away with them.ofcoarse it couldn’t be the herons who did it cause they break easier than glass,naturally they couldn’t fight.it must have been someone else.

eventually we end up going to daien and are told that Ashnard was never close to becoming king.he was of a distant bloodline and one of the last people to be chosen as king from his family.Ashnard,however,destroyed all the would be kings until he was the last choice.interesting,you have to give him credit for planing 

then volke tells us that the medallion,called “lehrans medallion” can cause people to go berserk.he tells us that there are two forces inside of people: balance and chaos ,and that the medallion “takes the worst aspects of a person and magnifies them a thousandfold”.oh,he also tells us that there’s a dark god trapped inside the medallion that destroyed every continent on the planet except for Tellius,but no pressure.

soon it becomes ashnards turn to explain how the medallion works;it reacts to the chaos within everything.then he says that its greatly responding to the war he created.so that would explain all the useless war he created,eh?

now back to this whole heron thing,it turns out that Daien was behind that,too.during all the fighting a “large human” captured reysons older sister,Lillia.he later forced her to release the “thing” inside the medallion,but she didn’t have the power to do so and ended up dying.by now its well known that the “thing” was the dark god.its also pretty clear that the”large human” was Ashnard.

so now its almost the end of the game,and Ashnard ends up getting the medallion and Leanne in his possession.in addition,he also wants to revive the dark god.so what exactly would he do with it? well this is just my guess,but he would probably try to control it and take over the world.now hes thinking like a FE bad guy .he says that “the conditions for the ritual are right,but how long willthey last?”, and tucks it away .Im not sure what the conditions were,but I would assume it had something to do with the conflict on the continent.Leanne soon escapes and all Ashnard has left is the medallion.

at this point you must be expecting a typical FE last board where you kill the boss and a new,more powerful boss takes its place.and the dark god would work perfectly in this case,right? no such luck…

eventually the last battle happens and Ike beats Ashnard (unless you cheat and use one of the three laguz leaders…in which case they beat him ) .now if your on hard mode Ashnard touches the medallion and gets much stronger (and…kills naiser if your not careful ) .don’t get me wrong,that was shocking since I wasn’t expecting anything different to happen,but it still wasn’t the ending you would expect.all these plans of his…the heron plot,the war,recovering the medallion,even his becoming king plan, all he does is touche the medallion? i thought for sure he would have ended up going into the castle (out of the garden -_- )  and releasing the dark god somehow or another.

so to break down Ashnards plot for world domination;he killed all the people in his bloodline until he was closest to the throne,framed the herons and captured Lillia,caused a war to cause chaos,recovered the medallion,and his last step would have been reviving the dark god.

and there you go,my first real article! make sure to include some feedback in your posts to tell me if I did good on it or not .

by Saint Of Swords