Chương 127: 4.17 The Detectives (Long Version) - Alan Tew (2:30)

THREAD: [SPOILERS] Krill Kraken Encounter - Evidence Roundup / What Actually Happened to Pucco? USER: Hyo-the-Flower Hyo-the-Flower (Original Poster) Hello hello, and welcome one and all to the Krill Kraken theory thread. If you're here, that means you're someone who is currently trying to come up with a plausible explanation for how Simon Pucco managed to kill the Krill Kraken.

The goal of this thread is pretty simple: collect the evidence, argue about the theories, and hopefully piece together what actually happened in the Krill Kraken fight. More importantly, I think there's a good chance that figuring out this fight will tell us what piece of lore Zeke is trying to point us towards. My current theory is that Zeke has figured out something about killing Living Stories that the rest of us haven't.

He keeps dropping little bits of information throughout his whole story that eventually leads to someone discovering a massive piece of canon we've all overlooked - Corva, the House of Seasons, and Rank 11 - and I think this particular fight fits the bill. WHAT WE ACTUALLY KNOW The Krill Kraken is a Living Story, which puts this encounter in a completely different category from basically every other boss fight Zeke has had.

For anyone who somehow hasn't played Emberveil and don't know how Living Stories work, first of all: why? Go play the game. Second, here's the short version. When magic returned to the world of Emberveil, it latched onto a number of urban legends. Those stories were told in towns and cities and communities scattered throughout Emberveil. When the magic found those stories, it gave them life. That's how we ended up with Living Stories, and it's also why they're so much harder to kill than ordinary creatures.

Now, the sequence of events Zeke gave us for the Krill Kraken fight are pretty straightforward. Simon Pucco's armada fought the Krill Kraken. That's one way to kill a Living Story, but it's also pretty much the hardest way to do it. The Krill Kraken was subjected to sustained attacks and it was pushed towards the edge of death. Then Simon Pucco jumped on it. He physically and deliberately entered the Krill Kraken. Unfortunately for everyone trying to solve this, Zeke didn't actually see what happened after that.

He told us that Pucco disappeared, that the Kraken eventually died, and then there was a bunch of chaos in the aftermath. So the giant question mark in the middle of this fight is what happened between Pucco entering the Kraken and the Kraken dying. Next, after the battle Zeke went looking for Simon Pucco's body, but he couldn't find it. This is probably the single most important detail in his entire update, because it means we do NOT have confirmation that Simon Pucco is dead.

We've got three confirmed facts: Pucco entered the Kraken, the Kraken died, and Pucco's body was never found. That's it. Everything else is left up for interpretation. Now, with those three facts established, here are the theories that actually have some mechanical basis in the games. THEORY #1 - Simon Pucco used 'Give It An Ending.' I'll admit upfront that this is my current favorite theory, but I want to be clear about what I mean by 'favorite.' I mean that the mechanics line up really well.

I do NOT mean that I think we've proven that this is what happened. For those of you who don't know the relevant details - again, play the damn game - Give It An Ending is a rite that was introduced in Emberveil. It requires the player character have at least Rank 9 in Performance, and its whole gimmick is that it uses the weight of a creature against itself. That last bit is, in my view, the biggest proponent for this theory.

Zeke has already spent a bunch of time talking about weight because of everything that happened with Corva. We've seen that weight isn't just an abstract lore concept that exists in the background; it can be manipulated, transferred, weaponized, and used to do things that would otherwise be completely impossible. And if there is one creature in Emberveil that seems like it would be hilariously vulnerable to a rite that turns a creature's own weight against it, I think it's the Krill Kraken.

The Kraken was a Living Story, meaning that it accumulated generations of people telling stories about it, fearing it, hunting it, worshipping it, exaggerating it, and building an entire mythology around the thing. Whatever the exact mechanics of weight are, it's obvious that the Kraken would have an enormous amount of it. So if Give It An Ending lets you turn all that weight into a weapon, the Kraken basically walked into the fight carrying all the ammunition that Pucco needed.

There's another reason that I like this theory, and this one is a little more meta. If Zeke really is trying to guide us towards overlooked pieces of lore, then having the forum figure out that Give It An Ending might work on a Living Story would be a pretty convenient way for him to discover it 'in-universe.' By that I mean he is already focused on Performance as a skill. Now here comes a giant weapon he could use that uses Performance? He wouldn't need to "randomly stumble" across it.

He could have the forum actually point him towards it. I don't think that's impossible, especially considering how much Zeke has already subtly guided us towards other parts of canon that we've all been missing. The problem with this theory is twofold, and the first should be fairly obvious: we don't know whether Simon Pucco even had Performance. I think it's extremely plausible that he did, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was sitting at Rank 9 or Rank 10. Simon Pucco was flamboyant as hell.

He had style and panache and a ridiculous amount of presence. Everything that we've seen of his character - both from Syndicate's Wake and in Zeke's story - suggests that the dood understood presentation, spectacle, and flair on a level that went way beyond ordinary charisma. That's an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence for Simon Pucco having invested in Performance. Just look at what the dood accomplished. He managed to cobble together an entire armada of pirates and point it at a Living Story.

It wasn't a handful of mercenaries who followed him either. It was an ARMADA. Zeke's most recent update also made it pretty clear that Pucco wasn't merely one leader among many. He was the only thing holding that armada together, and once he "disappeared" they started fracturing and splitting apart almost immediately. The second problem with the theory is a little more series. Even if Simon Pucco had the required Performance rank, we don't know if he ever unlocked Give It An Ending.

Having a high rank in a skill doesn't automatically mean you've got all the abilities associated with that skill, and we never actually saw Pucco demonstrate Performance. There isn't a scene where he used the Give It An Ending rite, and there isn't anything from Zeke suggesting that he saw someone else in the armada with a high performance skill. And even if he did have the rite, there's another problem that makes the whole theory a little weak. Give It An Ending is a rite that wipes out the user for three days.

That's a pretty serious drawback, and it doesn't explain what happened to Simon Pucco's body. If he used the rite, he would have presumably been left exhausted and weakened. Maybe he would have collapsed or gone unconscious. But Zeke went looking for him and found nothing. If Pucco had simply collapsed somewhere inside the Kraken after using the rite, eventually somebody would have found him.

Zeke was looking for the man, and a completely helpless Pucco lying around in the aftermath should have been pretty easy to find. There's also the question of what this theory would actually reveal. If Pucco killed the Kraken with Give It An Ending, that's certainly interesting. It would establish that the rite can be used against a Living Story, and it would give us a better idea of what "weaponizing weight" actually means in practice. But what would be the piece of lore that Zeke is steering us towards?

That last part has me convinced this is not the theory. Zeke has already blown our minds with hidden lore and canon that we've all missed, everything from Corva to Rank 11 to the House of Seasons. Give It An Ending being effective against a Living Story would be cool, but it doesn't feel like it's on that level. Right now, I'm willing to believe that Pucco had the Performance rank for it. I'm NOT willing to believe he had the rite itself.

And I'm also not willing to believe that it's the answer, because it leaves the biggest mystery completely untouched: why didn't Zeke find Pucco's body. THEORY #2 - Pucco didn't kill the Krill Kraken Okay, this is a weird one but I think this theory deserves more attention than it's getting. The basic idea is that Pucco didn't actually kill the Krill Kraken, but instead took its place. More specifically, he used the Understudy's Rite. Think about what Pucco actually did.

He deliberately charged straight into the Kraken when the fight was reaching its end. If he was trying to do damage to the creature, there were literally thousands of safer ways to do that than throwing himself at the Living Story. We've already established that the armada was pushing the Kraken close to death through conventional attacks, so Pucco didn't need to personally jump into it just to keep hitting it. But if he needed to get inside the thing to use a rite, suddenly that decision makes a lot more sense.

The Understudy's Rite is from Emberveil and it can be used on a Living Story once that story has been brought to the edge of death. We actually have a pretty good demonstration of what it can do thanks to Danika-Danke's videos that you can find <HERE. > If you haven't watched her three-hour "documentary" series called Living Story Apocalypse… well, I don't blame you. Here's the important part.

Danika-Danke discovered that the Understudy's Rite could effectively wipe out a Living Story by allowing the caster to become the new anchor for whatever belief the creature was operating on. The caster basically 'recasts' the role of Living Story. It's actually pretty interesting how Danika used the rite because she was able to go through Emberveil and kill all those stories and raise her own skills by multiple ranks.

After defeating all 38 Living Stories in Emberveil, she pretty much became a one-woman apocalypse. So we know this ritual works. The Understudy's Rite is a real, established way to deal with a Living Story, and it fits the conditions of the Kraken encounter almost perfectly. The Kraken was close to death and Pucco deliberately got close to the creature. And do any of us think that Pucco wouldn't be interested in gaining power from the Krill Kraken?

It also does somewhat answer the biggest question we've got which is where the hell did his body go. The most generous interpretation of the Understudy Rite would have Pucco surviving in an altered form. He could have taken on the role that previously belonged to the Kraken, effectively replacing the thing itself. In that case, there wouldn't necessarily be a Simon Pucco corpse lying around for Zeke to find. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

But I'm not entirely convinced by that interpretation and the biggest reason for that is Danika-Danke herself. Her videos have already shown what the rite is capable of. It's not some obscure mechanic that Zeke is uniquely discovering. Danika-Danke has already proven to everyone how absurdly powerful the Understudy's Rite could be if used repeatedly, and I don't think Zeke would be rehashing that.

It would mean that the big mystery of Simon Pucco's death is something the community already figured out years ago, and I don't think that Zeke is that lazy. There is, however, one thing I really like about this theory, and that's how perfectly it fits Simon Pucco as a character. Think about what he was doing during the whole battle. The man organized an entire armada around a single impossible objective: kill the Krill Kraken. It shows that Pucco's strength was his ability to make people believe in a cause.

He was able to convince hundreds of people to get on ships and sail directly at a massive ocean kaiju. So if the Understudy's Rite works by having the caster become the new anchor for a belief, then Pucco becoming the anchor of another story is almost absurdly appropriate. There is one major counterargument to this theory and unfortunately it's a big one: Corva. Zeke has already shown us someone who was able to manipulate weight in a way that allowed identity to persist beyond a person's body.

Corva was trying to preserve his family's original weight by smuggling it into new, unwilling bodies. He was obsessed with resurrecting his family. That was the whole horror of Corva's storyline, that he wasn't willing to accept that his family was gone and he kept trying to force them to continue in strange bodies. The Understudy's Rite looks awfully similar to that if Pucco was using it. He would interact with weight, he enters another body, the person's original body is no longer relevant.

We've already done that in Zeke's fanfic. And I don't think Zeke would have spent all that time setting up the Kraken encounter just to give us Corva 2: Ocean Boogaloo. If the answer really is the Understudy's Rite, I think the important distinction is going to be why Pucco used it and what he actually became afterwards. Corva was desperately trying to preserve his family as specific people. Maybe Pucco was willingly throwing all he was away to become something else entirely. But I don't know.

I'm not ruling this theory out. In fact, mechanically, I think it's one of the strongest explanations we have. I'm just not totally convinced. THEORY # 3 - The Widow's Light Now we get to the theory that I initially dismissed as complete nonsense until someone actually went back and quoted the item's flavor text. The Widow's Light is a relic candle from Emberveil, and its description says that it "removes the bearer from the encounter permanently." That's just a fancy way of saying "you die," right?

For anyone who doesn't know - and I feel like I've used that phrase way too many times in this post already - the Widow's Light candle is generally considered to be one of the most useless pieces of equipment in the game. You can actually find threads where people are talking about useless equipment and they're trying to decipher why the devs bothered putting them in the game in the first place. The Widow's Light is a candle that does exactly one thing: you light it, and you die.

So the question is, why the hell would anyone ever use it. The answer to that is challenge runners. Specifically, StealthieGurl101. She is known as the stealth player in the Fracture-verse challenge-run community. She's done some ridiculous runs through both Null Protocol and Tech Reign and you can find them <HERE> and <HERE>.

Her whole schtick is taking stealth and pickpocking up to Rank 10 (along with other neglected stealth mechanics) and turning them into weapons against enemies that were never designed to account for them. She has a particularly stupid trick that involves the Widow's Light candle. She builds up her stealth and pickpocketing skills, sneaks up to a boss that is almost impossible to kill, and then reverse-pickpockets the Widow's Light onto them and lights it. Boom, the boss is gone and she gets a ton of video views.

Which brings us to Pucco. If he had a Widow's Light candle, and it's at least conceivable that he somehow got his hands on the thing, he could have easily reverse-pickpocketed it into the Krill Kraken and killed it that way. Yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. Where the hell are the Krill Kraken's pockets? But I don't think we can completely dismiss it. Pucco was a pirate, and Zeke has already talked about how the man had spent years grabbing a bunch of unusual relics that he had no interest in.

He talked about how he packed the first fire ketch full with those relics and was using it as bait. So is it really impossible that he'd have a Widow's Light candle? If we're looking for someone who might have an insane relic tucked away somewhere, Simon Pucco is pretty high on that list. More importantly, the actual mechanics of it fits the outcome better than it has any right to. The Kraken is permanently removed from the encounter.

It breaks the game which would mean that the bioluminescence glow that we are all stuck on could have remained there. The biggest problem with the theory is that we don't know whether the Widow's Light works on Living Stories. StealthieGurl used it on conventional bosses and enemies, and we've never seen anyone demonstrate what happens when you try to reverse pickpocket a Living Story. I've already reached out to her and she promised to try the Widow's Light trick on her game.

Until she comes back, we're not going to know whether this theory is plausible or not. Also, we don't have any evidence that Pucco actually owned one, although, again, if there was anyone in the setting who might have somehow acquired a deeply cursed relic through piracy, theft, or sheer force of personality, it's probably Simon Pucco.

THEORY #4 - The Martyr Capstone This is probably the least likely theory on the list, but I'm throwing it in any way because, at the very least, it gives us a plausible way for Pucco to have done enough damage to kill the Krill Kraken. It doesn't explain what happened to his body, but the actual mechanics of the attack does line up with what Zeke talked about. Martyr is a class that was introduced in Syndicate's Wake and it's something kind of like a blood-magic class in the broadest possible sense.

By that I mean it's extremely high-risk, high-reward with the whole design built around sacrificing your own resources to produce powerful effects. But instead of blood, the player character is trading away something much more important. The Martyr class lets the player trade away ranks in their class skills in exchange for a single massive burst of damage. In other words, you're taking your entire character sheet, balling it up, and throwing it at your enemy. Now, we don't actually know if Simon Pucco was a Marty.

I personally doubt that he was. The class doesn't exactly scream "Simon Pucco," and everything we know about the man makes me think he'd prefer having a ton of different options available to him rather than deliberately building towards a personal sacrifice. But if he had the class - and that's a HUGE if - then the Krill Kraken encounter would be the perfect situation for someone to decide that all the ranks they've gained is worth sacrificing if it meant getting the job done.

In Zeke's update, he talked a little bit about how the armada was getting wiped out. He said there were a ton of ships that were listing badly, or they were almost sunk. The third fire ketch had exploded and the armada was still fighting but it's entirely plausible that Simon Pucco could have looked around and thought to himself "oh, we're gonna die." Look at the timing again. The armada spent the entire fight trying to fend off the Krill Kraken, but they were clearly on their last legs.

Then Pucco made his move and jumped at the Kraken. If he had the Martyr class, he could have converted all his ranks into an enormous burst of damage at exactly the moment the Kraken was vulnerable enough for it to matter. Special thanks go out to DarthVaders-Vader when he pointed out that the Martyr class could pair well with Give It An Ending. That's honestly the only reason that I'm including this theory at all.

The Martyr class capstone could have provided the overwhelming burst of damage needed to push the Krill Kraken into whatever defeat threshold the rite required, after which Pucco could have used Give It An Ending. That would give us a pretty clean explanation for how the Kraken died, even if it still leaves the much bigger question of what happened to Pucco afterwards. I will mention one other small detail, but I don't want everyone thinking that it provides stronger evidence than it does.

The Martyr capstone ability does produce a flash of light when it's activated. It's not proof of anything, but Zeke did describe a flash of red light during the encounter. It happened right before the Krill Kraken keeled over completely. Considering how little visual information Zeke gave us for what happened inside the Krill Kraken, I'm not willing to completely toss aside that detail. Still, this is speculation stacked on top of speculation. We don't know that Pucco had the Martyr class.

If he had the class, we don't know that he unlocked the capstone. If he unlocked the capstone, we're not sure how it would actually work with regards to the Krill Kraken. And even if all those things were true, I for one don't think Simon Pucco is the type to willingly burn away all his improvements for one attack. In fact, given everything that we know about it, it seems fairly unlikely he'd choose the class in the first place. He's not exactly the sacrificial-goat type of guy. SO WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I think we're making a mistake in trying to find one ability that explains everything about the encounter. The confirmed sequence is already bizarre enough that I think it's more likely that it is a combination or two or more mechanics interacting in a way that we haven't seen before. Zeke has given us just enough information to maybe recognize some of the abilities and relics, but not enough to see the entire mechanism he's pointing us towards.

To do that, we would all need to fiddle around with all these skills, and I think that's what he is doing. He wants us looking through all these small pieces of canon that we've ignored. He wants us fiddling with unique items and rarely used spells. That's what allowed us to find Corva in the first place. Foppery played through THE WORST of the Fracture-verse games, and came up with the proof that Corva was a body-hopping monster.

FarField poked around the House of Seasons when we all thought we'd discovered everything of use in that place. So using all these unique and rare class skills would fit with what Zeke has been doing with his fanfic since the very beginning. Of the theories we've got so far, Give It An Ending is probably the most thematically plausible. Pucco potentially having a high Performance rank fits his character. The Kraken having an enormous amount of weight makes it an obvious target.

And the fact that the rite specifically turns a creature's weight against itself is almost too perfect. The big problem is the three-day exhaustion afterwards. The Understudy's Rite is more interesting to me because it explains why Pucco would charge directly into the Kraken. Pucco would have needed to physically enter the Living Story if he intended to become its new anchor. If that's what happened, then his missing body suddenly makes a lot more sense.

He might have been "reborn" somewhere else, or taken on a new role entirely, and simply hasn't figured out where he is yet. Then there's the Widow's Light, which I'm still treating as the wild card. It would explain the bioluminescence stuff, but it would require Pucco to get his hand on an extraordinarily rare, one-use relic. We've got no evidence of that, and we don't know if it would even work on the Living Story. So that's where I'm leaving this for now.

I will leave you with this last little bit before I shut up and let you all fight in the comments. We've been looking almost exclusively at Emberveil and Syndicate's Wake mechanics because that's where the Living Story stuff is most obvious. But Zeke has already proven that he doesn't care about keeping his toolkit inside one game's boundaries.

He's pulled items and spells and class mechanics from other games before, and there is no reason to assume that whatever was used on the Krill Kraken has to come from Emberveil. Honestly, I think that might be the clearest answer so far. I don't think Zeke has given us nearly enough information to solve the Krill Kraken encounter yet. I think he's leaving us a small breadcrumb and building towards a much larger canon discovery.

If that's what he's doing, then the Kraken isn't really the mystery we're all supposed to solve. It's just the first example. MushroomCleric JEEZUS. Hyo, you need to get out more. Maybe touch some grass or something. That is… that is something. StoryLeech You basically said: it could be this, but also it could be that, but more likely it's none of the above. Dood. What. The. Hell?

Recoil44 I have read this entire post, and I am struck by the sheer elegance with which Hyo-the-Flower has managed to construct an elaborate monument to the proposition that we do not know what happened to Pucco. A remarkable amount of prose has been expended in establishing this. 10/10. Excellent thread. We have learned absolutely nothing. Hyo-the-Flower (Original Poster) You know what, fuck you guys. I'm telling you that it's going to be one of those theories.

You're all going to look back on this thread and apologize to me in something like… three months or so.