All right, let’s bring the Mandate questline to its end. And to start, let’s go talk to Director Mitty and company:
Well, I’m not solely responsible for this, you know. After all, I am being manipulated by an otherworldly identity.
Succintly: the island is awakening; abyss monsters are rampaging; the 3rd Division is trying to free the Prisoner; and the Mandate is on the verge of taking the 3rd Division’s main facility.
(this short exchange is actually important in its own way, so try and keep it in mind)
We board a vehicle, and during the transport Miranda gets weird:
At length we arrive:
The pyramid, of incredible height rivaling that of any skyscraper in the Spire district, is held by strange ghostly chains, and the same chains criss-cross the floor around us. One of my companions tries to touch one link of the chain—yet her fingers grasp nothing, feel nothing, exactly as if passing through air and air alone.
Meanwhile, director Mitty is in awe of the pyramid:
While we let the impressive sight wash over our eyes, a Mandate trooper calls to Mitty:
Then Mitty wants to inspect the pyramid from closer:
And indeed protection is spurred against us, in the form of five ignoble Abyssal Demons!
Of proportions twice those of a grown man, their whole body is black as the nethermost recesses of the Pit, with in places blots of a dark purple hue telling of corruption surfacing from their innards. Their skin is thin, scorched and wizened as if by the ruin of desert sands; and beneath it we descry the nervous, menacing twitchings of tendons and thews like cables of steel. Risking a glance slightly upward, our eyes meet theirs; and lo! how loathsome their visages, such as must haunt the nightmares of lesser devils. Eyes of a maladive yellow bore intently into ours, with emotions possessed of unhuman qualities; meanwhile lips stretch and part odiously to reveals fangs from which drip, glistening, thick, a noisome mixture of saliva and pus. One look upon those fangs and at once we recoil, understanding too well their purchase into us would prove goreful and insufferable.
Well, no. Actually, they don’t look like that at all.
They are… kind of cute, in truth. Like angry, horned, clawed, sentient marshmallows capable of modesty, as indicated by what seems a green loincloth. It clashes with the name ‘Abyssal Demon’, but I like the look nonetheless. It’s fun.
Once the demons dispatched, Miranda displays part of what I know to be a much greater power:
What do you mean, you didn’t expect me to prevail? Did you expect me to die here? Uncool. Or would you have intervened?
Of course, with what is evidently some kind of betrayal on the part of Miranda, Mitty is mighty miffed:
(I wonder if “I do this for your own good” has, in the history of mankind, ever been successfully employed to placate some angered person)
Isutyr’s brother, Maleon. And surprisingly, I get an answer as to why Isutyr’s brother is present in this place of all:
Holy hell, actual information. Unbelievable.
This said, Miranda takes a step towards part of the Chain:
Then, no sooner has Miranda thanked the Chain, releasing it from its service, that the pyramid shatters in a myriad fragment rain down upon everyone present. And in the blink of an eye, Miranda disappears.
“I want answers.” Join the club, Mitty.
But now, for the most breathtaking moment of the game.
As seen, the Prisoner has taken possession of Maleon. The Prisoner, the Queen Of a Thousand Woes, the Queen Of Endless Sorrow, the Primordial, the Ancient, the Dream Empress, the Monarch Of Dementia, the Consort Of Foly, the First And Forbidden, the Everqueen, the Sovereign Of Nightmares, the Misery Made Flesh, She Who Flicks Onion Juice Into Your Eyes, whose prison cell was essentially a whole magical island, and whose imprisonment—arguably one of the most momentous event in history—required the combined efforts of the Goada Naren and the Mandate.
So then, what does this harbinger of doom does? Ready? Hold on to your gamer chairs—really anchor yourself by curling your toes into the carpet, and clutch those cushy faux-leather armrests!—because you’s gon get shook:
Seriously, what is going on in this last act of the game? Am I losing my mind? 
There I was, expecting a big showdown, possibly a fight during which everybody—myself and Miranda included—gets their asses kicked something fierce, and after which the Prisoner would leave, victorious, maniacally laughing her way to vengeful freedom.
Instead, I get Hitler surrendering on the fifteenth of June 1940. I mean… good for Paris MoonFall, I guess?
But still, moving on, as things are not quite over yet. With the 3rd Division dealt with, Miranda disappeared, and the Prisoner having voluntarily surrendered, we incredulous lot find ourselves back at the Mandate’s main facility under the Commercial district.
There follows a short conversation anent Maleon’s ‘highmark’, which makes him a seer amongst the Goada Naren, but which Isabell’s husband insists is a malady; and the supposed visions afforded by the highmark are nothing more than hallucinations.
When the subject naturally circles back to the Prisoner:
Is then mentionned a certain Ritual Of Wugwai, which could contain the Prisoner.
It follows reason I will now be tasked with convincing Xai to fix what Miranda has broken.
No? Wait. Why is the conversation moving away from that subject of the ritual and Xai? Uhm… Hello? I… uh… I know Xai, I could talk to him. Hello, can anybody see me? Hear me? I’m here, right here, in front of you all, waving frantically. I could help. Be useful. For once. Please… let me do something, anything. I want to play.
Nope. Nothing comes of it. The conversation moves on, without any involvement on my part. I might as well not exist.
Hold one; if those Cohn-Bin devices will allow you to talk to her safely, then by definition she is not “dangerous in the extreme.”
So what does that oath entails exactly?
Now those are interesting notions. There’s something there, a nice grey area full of possibilities. Unfortunately the game doesn’t provide me any option to press Mitty on the matter, and he doesn’t elaborate on his own, but…
Imagine that this Oathstone comes into play much earlier. Imagine that swearing this oath is a mandatory pre-requisite to work with the Mandate, to enter the Abyss.
Now, in this hypothetical situation, you swear the oath then enter the Abyss and there discover and learn much. And, intimating what will ultimately happen—the Prisoner being released, and writhing monstrosities surging forth to ‘defend’ the island against invaders from the mainland—you want to alert your best gal, Dejah. But you can’t, as that would be breaking the unbreakable oath.
For indeed Mitty claims the oath is unbreakable; that the exact words do not matter, the Oathstone will know their meaning. But I know from Xai and Pike that the latter, despite I think having sworn on a Oathstone to never lie to Xai, still managed to do so via lying by omittance. So there is some wiggle room.
Moreover, I wonder if allegiance to myself would be considered a ‘higher allegiance’, thus a betrayal of the oath? And if I burn the memory of having taken the oath, does the oath still stand? And if burn other specific memories so as to irremediably alter my very own perception of events, could I not convince my manipulated self that sharing Mandate secrets with Dejah would in fact serve the best interests of the Mandate?
But perhaps my shaping abilities are not sufficiently masterful so as to permit me burn specific memories, only random ones. Enters Xai Revel, shaping prodigy, whose goal is opposite that of Miranda (and by extent opposite the Mandate’s goals). Could I ask him to teach me, to our mutual benefit?
That, right there, is half a game’s worth of machinations. And worthwhile machinations, too. Because in Memoirs I’m constantly subjected to the connivings of others, but rarely—if ever—do I get to be involved and consciously take matters into my own hands.
Alas, such as it is now, at the end of the questline, it is an almost meaningless oath to swear (only almost, as it is, or should have been, pseudo-important for one later thing).
It’s meaningless enough it doesn’t even influence the ending. Whether I swear the oath and join the Mandate’s folds, or not, they will support me in ending the Guild’s civil war. Which is weird. If I don’t swear the oath, then my memories of everything Mandate-related will be erased. So won’t I later wonder, “Hey, who are those Mandate guys who throw their political weight at my back?” Though I guess they could, unseen and unheard by me, pull some strings from behind the scenes as is their wont.
But no matter. As to what my companions think:
So I agree to take the oath. Refusing would mean having my memories erased; and come nyghtertale I’ll want to do some lone reminiscing about Isabell Nona.
Having sworn, the Oathstone talks to me:
Oh and there’s that too! The ‘visitor’, i.e. the thing in me, is not subjected to the oath. In the theoretical game world wherein I had to swear the oath near the beginning of the story, that fact alone would beget an entire questline, to break the oath while not technically breaking the oath, by letting the Visitor take full control of my actions for a while.
I have to say, thinking about it some more, that Memoirs could have been a new Baten Kaitos, going full meta with its main character. And it would have been glorious. All the required materials are already there; they just need assembled differently.
But now, the Mandate questline is ended. Bye bye, Mitty. Ciao, bella Nona.
Now for some quick circling back. I recommended you guys keep that in mind:
As you now understand, this was a bullshit excuse on Tyranicon’s part (I say that amicably, of course) to drag me where events unfolded.
Because in this episode I, the main character, was yet again of absolutely no utility. Yes, technically I did fight five Abyssal Demons; but there were Mandate troopers with us and they could have taken care of the threat. Plus Miranda could have swatted those demons away as if some pesky flies; when first I met her the game made a point of telling me she’s vastly more powerful than I am, and she proved that abundantly.
Really, had I and Isutyr not accompanied Mitty and Miranda to the chained pyramid, what would have changed? Nothing whatsoever. This part of the questline perfectly exemplifies why playing this game often feels less like playing a game than it does flipping through the virtual pages of a Visual Novel.
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