JLAF wrote:However, I would like to point out that it's not as inconceivable as it may seem for Rhue to lose the sword to Jeruh and then get it back. Let me explain:
Rhue killed someone near the Landorin Massacre. At this point he starts to change auras. Jeruh comes up. This explains why one guy is dead and the other is silent. Jeruh then does the massacre thing. Rhue wakes up, and wants his sword (since he's like that). Rhue then hunts down Jeruh and gets the sword back fairly easily (since he's a lot bigger).
There's a problem with this, however. First, let's consider Midian. In the cell at the top of the Phantom's Blade, Midian says he was there at the Landorin Massacre when Jeruh killed Serena. He also says that after that, he spent several years training with the sword and hunting Jeruh, but eventually lost motivation. We also know, by virtue of the fact that he's in Dream Estrana, Midian was killed by the sword Phantom Slasher.
Now, we also know from the headhunter on the Marna Stretch in Episode 2 that at some point, the person we now know as Rhue was introducing himself as Midian. Names are very carefully picked in The Way, and to the best of my knowledge, there is no name that is used for more than one character. In the normal ending, Gaius reveals that he and proto-Rhue pursued and killed Jeruh.
Finally, we also see in the normal ending that proto-Rhue will sometimes change personalities upon absorbing a new aura into his sword. Whether this is instantaneous or not is immaterial to this argument.
With all these facts in mind, here's the point I'm driving at:
Jeruh could not possibly have committed the Landorin Massacre with proto-Rhue's shadow sword. Why? Because proto-Rhue never lost his sword to Jeruh. The facts that support this:
1) Proto-Rhue introduced himself as Midian at some point. As we know he can change personalities upon absorbing a new aura, it's logical to conclude that he killed Midian and changed personalities to Midian.
2) In order to do this, proto-Rhue must have had his shadow sword when he killed Midian (or Midian died). Otherwise, he would have had no way to obtain Midian's aura and certainly wouldn't have changed personalities to Midian.
3) This is more circumstantial, and I'm a bit trepiditious about posting it, but in the same scene at the top of the Phantom's Blade, the unresponsive man that Jeruh takes his sword from does not look like proto-Rhue at all. Even accounting for the angle and possible body shape changes, it just does not look like proto-Rhue.
In fact, it does not logically follow that the sword Jeruh did the Landorin Massacre with was necessarily a Shadow Sword at all. First off, in the Phantom's Blade flashback(I'm using that scene a lot, aren't I?) Jeruh is clearly shown as a small child when he does the massacre. In the normal ending, when proto-Rhue kills him, Jeruh is older, roughly a teenager or maybe into his twenties. According to the Red Woman, those with Shadow Swords do not age physically. If we assume Jeruh did all the killings with a Shadow Sword, he probably would have kept it with him, judging from Rhue's behavior. If he did, Jeruh would have remained a little boy until the day Midian-Rhue killed him. As he clearly grew in the years since the massacre, we can conclude that Jeruh did not have a Shadow Sword at all.
As for Jeruh's assertions that "the sword was crying out for blood" (or something to that effect), Jeruh is clearly a lonely child at this time. He has found what he believes to be a symbol of power and respect that will give the other children no option but to worship him as the ringleader. At the moment he leaps from the bushes to begin killing, he has Columbine Syndrome - he is a lonely child with nothing to live for, seeking revenge agains those he percieves as having wronged him. Also, when recounting the massacre, Jeruh is horrified by the truth that he repressed, so all of his words in the Phantom's Blade scene have to be taken with a grain of salt. Seen in this light, it's totally possible that Jeruh could have been romanticizing the sword and confusing his own feelings with those of his sword's.
And just for kicks, here's my personal theory on the Phantom Slasher. I believe the sword is sentient and constantly desires more power, which it acquires through auras. To that end, the Phantom Slasher we see in the game (the dark, shadowy figure that seemingly kills at random) is an astral projection, if you will, of the sword's will. The sword has been absorbing auras for hundreds if not thousands of years, so its projection is powerful enough to kill most wanderers in a single sword blow. However, to acquire enough auras to be able to do this, the sword needs its wielder to kill ever more wanderers. So the sword's carrier (proto-Rhue) is subtly influenced to kill more and more people any way he can. To aid this pursuit, the sword examines the auras it absorbs and looks for those with murderous intentions. It selects the one with the most motivation to go out and kill people and impresses that personality on its carrier. This is how proto-Rhue can go from being Midian one minute to Rhue the next, as well as why he does - though the real Midian had given up hunting Jeruh, the sword did not see fit to impress that part of the personality into proto-Rhue, instead only giving him the "must hunt Jeruh" programming. When Jeruh was killed, Midian-Rhue had no more motivation to kill wanderers, and so was an unacceptable personality for the sword's carrier. Jeruh's fundamental instability and aggression worked far better for the PS's purposes, and so proto-Rhue's personality changed, becoming the Rhue we all know and love.