Welcome to the debate. Usually when we look at
a physical injury, there's this expectation of
precision, you know? Right. Like, you break your
arm, the x -ray shows that jagged white line,
and the doctor just points and says, there it
is, that's the fracture, it's binary, clean.
We like things to be visible. We want cause and
effect to be easily categorized so we know exactly
what went wrong and how to fix it. Exactly. But
then you step into the world of generational
trauma and family betrayal, and suddenly that
x -ray machine is just completely useless. Oh,
totally useless. Yeah. And we're looking at a
moral landscape that is incredibly murky. A perfect
example of this is a moment we discussed recently
regarding the Congo War. Ah, right. The time
travel paradox. Or, well, the supposed paradox.
Yes, the supposed paradox. There was this lingering
assumption. that when Iolite saw Xeonix on that
battlefield, he somehow peered into the future
or like witnessed some mystical prophecy of his
own defeat. Which we need to be very clear about.
That is entirely wrong. It is. Because if we
look closely at the text, that entirely strips
away his agency. Iolite does not travel through
time. Nobody travels through time in this universe
except Xeonix. Ever. Period. Right. So when Iolite
saw Xeonix bending time using the elemental arts,
he didn't see destiny. He looked at a young man
fighting alongside his brother, recognized the
techniques, became suspicious of the strong family
resemblance, and logically deduced that his brother
has or will have a family. Which is a massive
distinction. It was pure, cold deduction. I mean,
it grounds his character in human calculation.
rather than predetermined destiny. He isn't a
passive actor in a cosmic play, you know? He
is an active observer who puts the pieces together
in real time. And that active, calculating nature
is exactly what brings us to today's central
question, drawn right from Neo Gentrics' book
one. It's the ultimate question for him, really.
It is. Looking at this monumental antagonist,
we are forced to ask, is Iolite a sympathetic
villain born of profound, inescapable tragedy?
Or is he a figure of pure, irredeemable evil?
The classic debate. Right. And I look at his
history and I see a profound tragedy. I mean,
Iolite is a brother who lived his entire life
in the crushing, suffocating shadow of a legend.
Everything he becomes grows out of that initial,
fundamental wound. Okay. And understanding that
pain is absolutely essential, even if it doesn't
excuse the horrific things he ultimately does.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that. Sympathy
is a dangerous trap here. I look at the exact
same history, the exact same timeline, and I
see calculated malice. Malice? Over tragedy?
Yes. Let me tell you why. We are talking about
a man who spent 20 years patiently, methodically
engineering the destruction of a child who had
done absolutely nothing to him. Patience on that
scale isn't the byproduct of emotional pain.
It is the definition of pure evil. But you can't
separate his actions from the systemic failure
of his family unit. Iolite's descent isn't just
a story about a bad seed randomly going rogue.
A failure? How so? It is the story of a systemic,
structural failure within the Novus bloodline.
Imagine the sheer psychological weight of growing
up constantly overshadowed by the noble... Universally
revered figure of Xeon Clerics. Sure. His brother
isn't just successful. He is the whistling swordsman.
He is a literal walking legend in Picodesh. A
heavy shadow, undoubtedly. But living in a shadow
doesn't automatically turn you into a tyrant.
It does when the shadow is accompanied by total
parental rejection. Beneath that public shadow
is a deeply private, prevailing feeling of being
entirely unloved by their father. I mean, the
family dynamic was bad, yes. It was fundamentally
shattered long before the first shots of the
Congo War were ever fired. And what makes it
a tragedy, what removes a layer of his culpability,
is the presence of Eon Pax. The imperial mastermind
himself? Exactly. Eon Pax is a master at identifying
structural psychological weaknesses. He looked
at the Novus family, saw this massive fracture,
and actively weaponized him. He didn't just hand
Iolite a sword and recruit him. Right. He groomed
a vulnerable, neglected, desperate son. Eon Pax
figured out exactly what currency Iolite lacked.
Validation, power, a sense of belonging. And
he provided it solely to forge him into a weapon
for his empire. You have a broken boy being manipulated.
You are using familial neglect as a shield for
atrocity. And in a universe as brutal as Picodesh,
that argument completely falls apart. I'm not
shielding him. I'm explaining him. Look, we all
acknowledge that crimes of passion happen. Lashing
out in a moment of burning jealousy. Making a
terrible mistake because you feel unloved. Those
are human failings. We can sympathize with a
fleeting moment of weakness. Right. But Iolite's
methodology is terrifyingly patient. When he
targets the Novus bloodline, he doesn't act
in a fit of rage. He doesn't just throw a tantrum.
His capacity to defer his gratification, to sit
in the dark for decades just to maximize the
suffering of an innocent person is a completely
different pathology. It completely overrides
whatever childhood insecurity he felt because
it requires a sustained conscious choice to be
cruel every single day. But that cruelty didn't
manifest out of thin air. We have to look at
the specific catalyst that finalized the brothers
falling out. The incident in the Xaolyn Timber
Forest. Oh, here we go. No, hear me out. Iolite
attempts to steal the Infinity Crest. Now, Neo Gentricss
actually doesn't provide a deeper backstory in
the text for why the father hated Iolite so vehemently
from the beginning. We just see the result. Right,
the book leaves that pretty ambiguous. Since
the book doesn't state why he turned on his brother
initially, I have to speculate. Perhaps Iolite
never had an inherent affinity for the peaceful,
sustaining elemental arts that his family valued
so highly. You think his father rejected him
early on as defective? Yes. If he couldn't manipulate
the environment to foster life the way Xeon Clerics
could, his father might have rejected him. And
if a father rejects a son for his inherent nature,
for something he cannot control, and that son
subsequently tries to steal a source of immense
power just to prove his worth. You call that
desperation? You have to view that theft to the
lens of desperation. It's a desperate, catastrophic
cry for acknowledgement. A cry for acknowledgement?
Are you kidding me? You are severely downplaying
the mechanics of what he actually tried to do.
It was a desperate act. You're talking about
stealing the Infinity Crest, like he tried to
steal a family heirloom off the mantle to pawn
it. He tried to rip the living heart out of the
shell and timber forest. I know the stakes were
high. The Infinity Crest doesn't just sit there
looking pretty. It regulates the entire biosphere.
It feeds the root systems. To take it is to trigger
an unstoppable ecological meltdown. Well, yes,
but... What he did was the equivalent of setting
your own house on fire with your family inside
just because you didn't get the biggest bedroom.
That's a huge exaggeration. It really isn't.
It wasn't a cry for help. It was an act of profound
sociopathic disregard for the catastrophic environmental
consequences that would ravage the entire Pico
-Desh continent. But... If he pulls that crest,
the soil turns to ash. The elemental balance
collapses. He was entirely willing to let the
world rot just so he could feel powerful for
five minutes. You are focusing purely on the
external consequences and completely ignoring
the internal emotional engine driving the act.
You have to look at the physical manifestation
of his malice. The elemental arts are just tools.
No, let's talk about the elemental arts themselves.
In Neo Gentrics' universe, the elemental arts
are not just physical tools. They aren't just
weapons you pick up and swing. Sure, they have
a spiritual component. The text makes it incredibly
clear that the elemental arts are a direct physical
interface with the user's soul. How you feel,
what you value, your psychological state, it
all dictates how the energy manifests in the
physical world. Right. On the Congo War battlefield,
we see this contrast beautifully illustrated.
Xeon Clerics wields this revitalizing, gentle
green wind. It breathed life into the environment
around him. And pushing against it, Iolite
wields this corrupted, suffocating red wind.
And you think that red wind is just a symptom
of his sadness? I think it is the physical manifestation
of his rotting jealousy and internal pain. He
isn't just casting a spell. The red wind literally
taxes his own life force. It is a heavy technique,
sure. It is heavy. It is oppressive. And it suffocates
everything it touches because that is exactly
what he is experiencing internally. He is bleeding
his trauma out into the atmosphere. The very
mechanics of the elemental arts in that scene
prove that he is a man in absolute unrelenting
agony. I understand the mechanism. But you are
entirely stripping him of his agency. The elemental
arts interface with the soul, yes. But the red
wind is a choice to embrace corruption. He cultivated
that suffocating energy. He fed it. It's trauma
made physical. If his actions are just the flailings
of a pained, overshadowed brother, if he is so
blinded by his own psychological trauma, how
do you explain his cold -blooded deduction on
that very same battlefield? Because the trauma
hones his survival instincts. Let's walk through
exactly what happens in the Congo War. Xeonix
bends time, right? He ends up on that battlefield.
Iolite clashes with him. Right. Iolite is currently
in the middle of a war, supposedly consumed by
this agonizing red wind of jealousy. But what
does he do when he locks eyes with Xeonix? He
studies his techniques. He recognizes the footwork.
He realizes who he's fighting. He sees the family
resemblance. He realizes in real time that this
mysterious fighter is using the Novus bloodline
techniques. Right. If Iolite is just a wounded,
emotionally volatile victim, he should react
with blind rage. He should lash out. He should
have a breakdown realizing that his efforts to
wipe out his brother's legacy have somehow failed.
He does react. He fights him. But he doesn't
fight him with blind emotion. He reacts with
terrifying calculation. He stands there on the
mud of the Congo War battlefield, puts the pieces
together, deduces exactly who Xeonix is, and
instantly formulates a multi -generational strategy.
Eon Pax taught him to do that. He doesn't scream
at the heavens. He thinks, my purges failed.
My brother's line survives into the future. I
need a new plan. That level of emotional detachment
in the middle of a visceral combat scenario isn't
pain. That is psychopathy. I completely disagree
that it's psychopathy. That calculation is a
learned survival mechanism. You have to remember
who his mentor is. Eon Pax. Yes. When you are
taken in and groomed by Eon Pax, a tyrant whose
entire empire is built on suppressing panic and
immediately strategizing, you learn to mimic
that behavior. Iolite suppressing his immediate
emotional reaction to plan his next move is exactly
what Eon Pax trained him to do. It's a tragedy
of conditioning. Then let's talk about the ultimate
result of that conditioning, because this is
the specific point where any argument for his
sympathy completely collapses. The 20 -year grooming
plan. Well, it is an incredibly dark pivot in
his strategy. I won't deny that. It is the ultimate,
unforgivable betrayal of Xeonix. Because once
Iolite deduces the truth on that battlefield,
what does he do? He orders his most ruthless,
highly trained warrior, Malamar Kenshin, to infiltrate
Xeonix's life. To act as a mentor, yes? He commands
Malamar to step into that role, to gain this
young, innocent boy's absolute trust, and then
to slowly, methodically fill his path with despair.
It's brutal. It is the darkest pivot imaginable.
And the mechanics of how it was executed are
vital. We need to be crystal clear on the canon
facts of Neo Gentrics' timeline here. Right, regarding
how he got there. Malamar was planted years in
advance. He was never sent into the future via
some elemental arts manipulation. Malamar lived
normal, consecutive days. He aged forward through
normal time. The endurance required for that
kind of deception is staggering. It strips away
any claim to humanity Iolite might have had left.
Think about the mundane horror of it. Iolite
commanded a man to spend two decades waking up
every single morning, looking a growing child
in the eyes, pretending to care for him. Acting
as a father figure? Training him? Acting as a
father figure all while secretly plotting to
break his soul from the inside out. Malamar
had to eat breakfast with this kid. He had to
patch up his scraped knees. And every step of
the way, he was reporting back to Iolite. Yeah.
If Iolite just wanted to end his brother's bloodline,
an assassination would have taken one night,
it would have been violent, but it would have
been merciful compared to this. True. He didn't
want Xeonix dead. He wanted to conquer his soul.
He wanted to forge him into a broken, malleable
weapon, just like Eon Pax did to him. It's a
horrific cycle. Waiting 20 years, knowing you
are slowly poisoning a young man's mind, making
him believe his master loves him when his entire
life is a trap. That is pure, irredeemable malice.
It takes a monster to sign off on a 20 -year
psychological torture campaign against a child.
You know. I have to admit, this is where my defense
of his humanity hits a hard wall. I would hope
so. No, truly, I will concede this point to you.
This specific, methodical psychological torture
of Xeonix crosses a moral event horizon. It really
does. The sheer endurance required to orchestrate
and sustain a lie of that magnitude for 20 normal
consecutive years requires a level of premeditated
cruelty that I cannot justify. The tragedy of
his youth, the crushing shadow of Xeon Clerics,
even the grooming by Eon Pax, none of it balances
the scales against what he knowingly did to a
child through Malamar. The malice outgrew the
trauma. I appreciate that concession. It really
is a staggering violation of trust. And the text
forces us to sit with the weight of that 20 -year
lie. It does. But, you know, in the spirit of
intellectual charity, I will concede a major
point to you as well. Oh, go ahead. Eon Pax was
the necessary catalyst. He truly was a master
manipulator who found the perfect microscopic
crack in the Novus and Cleric's bloodline and
wedged it wide open. He exploited them perfectly.
If Iolite had been born into literally any other
family, perhaps a family in Sacar or Orion, where
he wasn't constantly measured against a living
saint, he likely wouldn't have become a monster.
Right, he might have just lived a quiet, somewhat
bitter life. Exactly. He might have been harmless.
It took the specific, intense pressure of Xeon
Cleric's legend, combined with Eon Pax's predatory
grooming, to forge him into a warlord. So despite
his ultimate descent, The environment was the
forge. To summarize where we stand, I maintain
that the deepest roots of Iolite's villainies
lie as a tragic, systemic, familial wound. Right.
Understanding how his feelings of inadequacy
were weaponized by an empire is essential to
understanding the text. even if he eventually
crosses the line into unforgivable territory.
And I maintain that regardless of how he started
or the environment he was raised in, his decades
of calculated sadism override his origins. His
infinite patience in destroying Xeonix proves
that the trauma is no longer an excuse, the malice
became his defining characteristic. Which is
precisely what makes Neo Gentrics' world so brilliant.
The material intentionally blurs the line between
victimhood and villainy. It really does. The
tension between the tragedy of how someone is
made and the horror of what they choose to do,
it leaves us to grapple with how much weight
we should truly give to a villain's origin story
when their current actions are so horrific. There
is no easy, clean x -ray here. We have to leave
the listener genuinely torn on where to draw
that line. Absolutely. The deeper you dig into
these character motivations, the more complex
the bedrock gets. There's so much more to explore
in this material, and the family dynamics honestly
only get more complicated from here. Oh, definitely.
In fact, that perfectly sets up our next discussion.
Next time, we are going to pivot slightly and
analyze the tactical nightmare of Fuse Master's
weapon and how its mechanics completely upend
the traditional rules of elemental combat in
this universe. Oh, I'm excited for that one.
And what makes that upcoming discussion even
more compelling is the revelation regarding his
background. Fuse Master and Crater Steve are
also brothers. It just never ends. It doesn't.
It just reinforces this profound theme that the
history of Picodesh really is a story about
brothers, all the way down. Which brings us right
back to that medical analogy. Right. You look
at this world trying to find a simple good versus
evil. a clean fracture you can point to on an
x -ray. But the deeper you look into these families,
the more you realize you're just staring at the
infinitely complex, muddy waters of human nature.