The Truth about PS...

[Kyazu]

well i dont care if anyone has posted this yet but....

think about it yes we know its Rhue...

but tehres always parts that we see Rhue and the PS togeather so this is what i was thinking

the PS appears next to Rhue while he is sleeping in the tent and wakes him up
he walks off shortly...
there are some others but i cant rember what Episodes..

also there have been parts where Rhue was wide awake and the "PS" was at the edge of town but htat was probably Cetsa or Kyger

also there was that part in Ep 5 (i think it was that one) where the PS appears and gives Rhue his sword back.

so in conclusion yes rhue can be the PS but really... the PS is his word... the Shadow sword when you thik about it...

more to come i know i missed some other encounters with Rhue and the PS but im too lazy to replay the series :p

DIPPY IS THE PS!.... ok no(wait that could make sence lol)

[Squish]

...Right.........

[Shindy]

huh...

what the...

dont come to conclusion based on what you see.

[Kyazu]

true...

im not basing it on char sprites or anything but maby it can be true...

the person that told me about the way was sayingthat maby the Sword is called to Rhue because it basicly has its own mind

you can see something of that sord demonstrated when the sword that killed Bela Sera (to lazy to look for his name) flew off after he was killed by it(to lazy to rember how to spell Triaziun or w/e)

trutfully it is not a conclusion its more of a OMG its plausable

so who knows maby PS could be or couldent be its basicly what you trust in Lun to do in EP 6 maby we are all wrong

[Jabbo]

I think that by now everyone agrees that Rhue's body isn't the Phantom Slasher because, well, we've seen Rhue and the PS together in scenes. I dunno about you, but I find it difficult to be in two places at the same moment and to look at myself without a mirror. The options are basically, the PS is a manifestation of Rhue's aura, Rhue's sword, someone else (Gaius), or a being of its own.

Anyway, while I'm here, I'm going to use this topic to post a few of my thoughts on the PS.

The main connection between PS slayings that I've seen is that everyone it kills has committed some sort of crime OR they're in the group with someone who has committed a crime. The first guy said the Purpose didn't exist, the second group we didn't know, there was a bandit guy who seemed to know a lot of PS victims, the Shadow Lords were attacking Cherla, the Arastotzi were planning to attack Rhue, and the Guided rebels were either going to rebel against the Guided, and that was crime enough, or the PS was attacking Sacrifa for destroying Estrana. I think it's also notable that the PS paused before killing Cherla as if it was thinking "I just saved her life... now I have to kill her. Why am I even doing this?"

There's also the thing where the PS never attacks children. What if the reason behind that is that the act of attacking a child is suicide for the PS? What if at one point Rhue was a PS-like being, then the Landorin Massacre happened, and he killed Jeruh, thus committing suicide and forcing Jeruh's soul into his own body? Just a thought I had.

[Kyazu]

ER....

yea i rember them saying that children were spared
thats probably because of the Landori Massacure like you said(?)

of corse its mind is like Rhue's but its more like OMG PROTECT RHUE!
but there was no reason for the PS to kill the first group they killed(well i dont really think they were killed all you hear is PACHINK and no screams(of corse becasue that would mean they died)

i was thinking maby he killed them because they said he would make a great forerunner in the future. thats all i can think of for that part

of corse he kill Sacrifa for spawning the monsters in the city and such

then there are the other murders that were the PS and so forth so who knows :p

[Escreon]

Or there could always be more than one Phantom Slasher.

[Impossible]

I like your avatar very much, but your theory is a little hollow.

Looking at each of the PS attacks, you can make a very strong point for the theory of the PS being a tool of Tetzel. It killed Sacrifa who was rebelling, and the guy who didn't believe in the Purpose. It seems to hate everyone Tetzel would want to get rid of. But why is he doing it, and how?

[Fredric]

Looking at each of the PS attacks, you can make a very strong point for the theory of the PS being a tool of Tetzel. It killed Sacrifa who was rebelling, and the guy who didn't believe in the Purpose. It seems to hate everyone Tetzel would want to get rid of. But why is he doing it, and how?

Obviously Tetzel is the PS.

[Sephiroth555]

Now there's a thought...

[Drake]

Now there's a thought...

Still, one without evidence.

Yet there are a few things that lead me to believe Gaius was saying the truth after all... For once, do you remember the scene in which the PS killed Cherla and two Shadow Lords?
Someone already tried to justify the PS' cause in waiting before killing the woman. However, I almost believe that there's a much more practical reason for that.
First off, what was it she said? Something like "Thanks for saving my
life...", wasn't it.

It seemed strange to me at first, a man jumps down in front of you and effortlessly kills two seemingly tough criminals. Even if it was to save her life, she was surprisingly fast to recover from such a shock, and much faster to offer her thanks.
Yet after what Gaius said it makes sense: She knew the mysterious figure that appeared in front of her, and wonder of wonders, she was one of the people who did know Rhue.
Perhaps I'm over interpreting things too much here, but there's more.

The PS shadowed Rhue wherever he went (...by the way, not only does the thing look like a shadow, it also behaves in that very way. Guess there's a reason for the name "Shadow Sword" after all.), and only killed people Rhue knew, afair.


Rhue and the PS being together in Scene xy can be explained in various ways... at least I guess so...
Ah hell, it might have just been someone else for all I know, so no amusing interpreting to be done here... ;_;°

[Jabbo]

The one thing I'm willing to base off sprites is that there's either only one PS or someone, like Tetzel, unleashed a horde of identical PSes upon the Way. I don't think the same sprite would be used for two different people, even if it is just a black shadow.

That said, I've never really thought about Cherla's reaction before. It really is abnormal. You'd think that she'd just run the hell away like Cetsa did after Rhue flew out of the sky and killed her captors in Ep2 (The scenes are actually pretty similar, except Rhue waits for a moment before killing). Chances are that it means she did actually know who the PS was, but that doesn't mean that it had to be Rhue.

As far as we know, the PS COULD be Tetzel himself. We know about Gaius's power to see other peoples' pasts, and the PS would probably have to have some similar power if it was going around killing people for what they did in the past. And since Gaius seems allied with the Guided (and playing both sides of the rebellion), he might have inherited Tetzel's power (via Illuminati?). And if Tetzel has the power the PS has, well, he's a possibility.

Moving off topic for a moment, if Gaius has an Illuminati, and it gives him the ability to see the past and then judge, and Shadow Swords have the ability to judge and then afterward see the past, perhaps that's one of the ways the swords differ. Who knows.

And on the subject of the Guided, the guys on the Guided Council in Estrana were Sacrifa, Wyst, and Hadar. Hadar was the guy that Rhue was supposed to Plunge in the tournament, but wasn't his name mentioned somewhere else? I remember Slade's line "Your match against Hadar, the Guided rep..." but I also remember something along the lines of "...Hadar of the Guided..." Maybe I'm just imagining things, but if anyone remembers that line, tell me. Anyway, trying not to get too sidetracked...

[Kyazu]

Each of the PS attacks were related as we can all see that atleast 1 person has seen Rhue or talked to him

but that dosent mean it couldent be Rhue because who really knows it could be some person that hasent even been introduced into the game and they were tailing Rhue sence the Massacure and wanted to ask him questions(riiiiight) or it could be his girl OR anyone else for that matter...

so yea i stopped careing because i found something funnier when i was lookign at char sprites in RM2k SCATHA.... look for yourself im not guna say anything lol either thats an Easter Egg or a joke... or he just put it in too fast for Episode1 she wasent even in Episode 1... look around on Scatha's char thing you will see what i mean :p

anyway back on topic... The sword could controll the PS because maby Tetzel was the dark lord or what ever made the shadow swords (crap idea?) we have many theroies but who knows...

[Telephalsion]

man- "You know there might be a pattern, all my friends who were killed they were..."
Rhue- "They were what?"
Man- "Hehe, they were all good people... bye now!"

something similar happened in... marna i think.
anyways, that means that the ps isn't just killing at random, there is some, bizzare or obvious goal he's aiming for.

That whole judging theory might be pretty good. The illuminati were called the swords of judgement unless i'm mistaken. If illuminati can shine a light and see things in a diferent way and thus be able to pass appropriate judgement. then Shadow swords might darken things to make passing a jugement easier, not more accurate. Maybe I'm just rambling.

[Cocoa]

I guess someone hasn't researched the board very well. If you had you would have already seen the definitive answer to this question many, many, posts ago. In fact I would encourage all of you to read the posts that I've made on the Estrana board before you go posting any theories that might make you look foolish.

So one more time, for the folks who weren't here for the first time around. The PS must be Rhue because he is an intimate representation of Rhue's Id and deviant sexual awareness. As you may remember Rhue became aware of his own sexuality while he was pre-pubescent. He had the misfortune of observing a deviant sexual act between two men who were also "shadowy figures" after which one of the men "gave Rhue his sword". I'll leave you to figure that one out on your own. Just think about what your uncle did to you last family reunion.

If you're one of those Jungian douches you might interpret the PS as Rhue's "Shadow". You might say the PS is the part of Rhue that by virtue of it's Darwinian and bestial nature prevents Rhue from gaining further insights about himself. This is bullpoo, as Rhue learns plenty about himself through the course of the game.

But anyway back to stuff that isn't retarded. Rhue is unaware of his deviant sexual nature throughout the game. But wherever it goes it leaves behind a trail of victims. Simply put: deviant sexuality creates victims.

At times it is instrumental in restoring Rhue's sexual power represented by his sword. To put it in simple words: Rhue's sexual ability and his sexual deviance are intimately related and cannot exist without the other.

I won't go into detail on this point as I've already explained it perfectly in previous points, but one of the main themes of the games is Rhue's unconscious deviant nature swallowing up his more normal conscious sexuality. Just look at all the bastard things Rhue did in eps 4 and 5.

So why does Gaius tell Rhue that he is the PS? Gaius is trying to help Rhue. He knows that if Rhue is aware of the insidious nature of the PS he will be able to fight it, and perhaps win. this will benefit Rhue and society as a whole.

Frankly I'm suprised that nobody ever figured out the whole entire "purpose", if you will, of "The Way" before now. When I created the story I wanted to Parrallel Oprah Winfrey's rise to stardom after her own sexual troubles in childhood and as a young adult. How her molestation lead her to general whorishness until she overcame it and became a billonaire by acknowledging her problem and sharing it with the world. I had hoped that my allegory would be, to use the words of a certain snobish Jungian jackass, "transparent" enough for the mass market to understand. Guess not. I guess next time I'll just make some crap like "Cinderella Man".