Death. Do you remember Death? From the Obelisk War?
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I’m curious about Death in particular. As you might recall, the Obelisk War ended with each faction fighting some kind of Fear or Deadly Sin or what have you. From left to right, Thieves fought Greed, Neolluminati fought Pride, Pointy Hats fought Envy, Brutes fought Wraith, Nerds fought Sloth (the sleepy guy, not the scientist), and Zombie Monster Party fought Death.
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And then the war ended, and The Oracle showed up.
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I’m not exactly sure how I know this or where I read this, but best I can ASSUME is that those wispy monsters were apparitions created by The Oracle to test each faction. Visions planted in the imaginations of each faction leader, hence a lot of them being all like “Oh no, it’s that Aisha from my nightmares, go get her!”
However, I’m having trouble understanding that as an explanation for Death. Everyone else might just be imaginary frienemies of each faction leader, but Lanie and Lillie’s dialogue when Death shows up acknowledges Death as not just any spook, but their baby brother. To quotes them…
“Dear Meepits, no. It is our little brother…” “This is the worst thing ever. Save us. Save us…” “We must hide before he sees us. Good luck.”
A Wrath or an Envy might be a “character” that the Oracle created and, through her power, haunted people’s thoughts with, but she probably didn’t create Lanie and Lillie’s brother, did she? Sure the vision on the battlefield, that might’ve been a mirage or an illusion or whatever, but in order for them to have recognized the image of a baby Ixi named Death flying around shooting arrows, they must have a baby brother, who they fear, well before any of this Obelisk stuff happened, right?
So who is this baby brother of Lanie and Lillie’s? You never really got a chance to really get at it so I guess there isn’t a canon “answer” right now, but do you know what the intention was? They have a baby brother named Death, is he Neopia’s personification of death? Boy Prince of Reapers?
http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index.phtml?section=556708&week=615
Or do we misunderstand what the intention was here? Because if Lanie and Lillie’s kid brother is Death personified, what does that make them? What does that make their parents? They would have to be a pretty important family amongst monsters and dead things, but then you’d have to be important to lead them like Lanie and Lillie do, right?
Hi! Unfortunately, you’re asking questions that intentionally had no answer and I can’t even tell you if you’re right or wrong in your various assumptions. Most of that storyline was left unexplained for people to chat about and draw their own conclusions, just like you’re doing here. (Partly because it was fun to be mysterious and partly because of the repeating battleground aspect that stayed up afterward.)
So, like… is the Oracle an actual person? A ghost? Some kind of magical AI left behind? If the latter, then by whom? How does the obelisk itself play into all that? Where did it come from and who built it? Does it hold power or does the Oracle? Or both? And yes, what are those “creatures” that appear at the end and why do they protect the Obelisk? These (and more) are all questions we posed and left unanswered on purpose.
So you may be right and there’s more to Death/Lanie & Lillie after all! But you may also be wrong. ? Here are two more fun questions that might counter your version of events:
1) Assuming the Oracle conjured the bosses for the final test (a big if), are you sure it’s also responsible for their actual appearance as well? What if those manifestations of fear were determined by the challengers/faction leaders instead? Not planted, but pulled from their thoughts like Ray choose the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man as the form of the Destructor. Does that make Death more or less likely to be “real”? What does that mean for the other bosses?
2) Are you sure that Lanie & Lillie can be trusted? It’s fairly clear that they’re… off, intentionally or not, so how much can we really trust what they think, say, and do? Are they calling him brother because he’s their actual brother, or they just think he is for some reason? If the Oracle (or whomever) decided he looked like a baby Lupe, was that just to mess with their sanity even more as part of the test? If Death’s form was pulled from their minds, how do we know they didn’t just come up with that appearance as a result of their madness?
We hadn’t decided on anything with any finality since the point was to leave it all open but we had to make sure there were plenty of options, so things like the above are some of the many possibilities we laid out when coming up with the concept for the Oracle/Obelisk and the bosses. Like you said, we might have come back to this in the future and decided on a canon answer, but we had no plans to any time soon!
I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a definitive version of where we were headed but I hope that at least helped explain a bit of why you’re neither right nor wrong in your version.
P.S. One fan theory I can definitely rule out is that Death as a baby Lupe was us making a reference to “la petite mort”. Nope. We were not making some kind of covert sexual reference. ?