Ilias Cont. South Tartarus

'''Ilias Cont. South Tartarus''' is a location in Monster Girl Quest: Paradox. This is the first Tartarus to be visited by the player.

Overview
Welcome to the Ilias Continent South Tartarus also known as Tartarus I299387. Tartarus is one of the distortions in the world and is shrouded in mysteries. Inside you'll find Sully, Jaide, and Shesta wandering around.

Story
Once Luka arrives at the Tartarus, they see White Rabbit leap down the hole.

 The cataclysm that devastated the world 30 years ago opened seven rifts, to a region called Tartarus. The first one is in the south of the Ilias continent where numerous scholars are investigating the phenomena. If you talk to one of them, he will mention that there are rumours of a "white-robed female researcher " being seen in the Southern Grangold Tartarus.

At the bottom of the ladder, is another world entirely. Surrounded by technology which shouldn't exist yet, and the walls are made entirely out of a metal not yet discovered by the world's inhabitants.

After following the White Rabbit through the Tartarus, the party comes to an abrupt stop at the door which has prevented the research team outside from exploring the Tartarus further. Ilias is familiar with the door and explains that this door is a gateway to another dimension. Very few beings have the power to travel between them. Luka tries opening it himself, and he does just by touching it, much to the surprise of Ilias.

Travelling through the door takes them to the dimension, which seems like a typical town, outside of the purple veins growing out of the ground. Talking to the man standing by the door reveals that this settlement is Remina, which should have been destroyed over 30 years ago when the Hellgondo Tartarus consumed it. Talking to him further causes apoptosis to take over, and he ceases speaking entirely.

Talking to the City Girl wandering around outside one of the homes, causes the same thing to happen. At first, she starts introducing them to Remina, but apoptosis takes over again. Unlike the man, she morphs into one of the apoptosis beings, a Shesta.

Exploring the nearby home introduces ???, a Scylla monster. She attacks the party when they startle her unintentionally. Defeating her causes her to calm down, and she will go back to eating the apples.

Leaving the room and then re-entering it allows Luka to recruit ???. Sonya can understand some of the sounds she makes, and names her Nuruko, taking after Yamatai language. In the room, there is also a note saying "EXPERIMENT FAILED".

At the end of the street, there is a hole which the party can travel through.

Through the gap is Hades, but not the area Luka goes to after death. And Reaper isn't there to greet the group. But there is a teleportation circle at the end of the path to take them back to the real world.

They arrive at the entrance to Tartarus, but the expedition team has vanished, and the surrounding area is dead.

However, White Rabbit pops up to greet them. She didn't expect the party to make it this far and congratulates them for doing so, annoying Ilias who points out she clearly led them here intentionally.

Ilias asks how a mere human like Luka can travel through the dimensions, when even a God cannot. White Rabbit replies that it is a unique ability of this world's Luka, annoying Ilias even more. White Rabbit tells her that her role is to guide them, not to explain. They will have to find the answers themselves, before waving goodbye.

Before they can continue, White Rabbit appears again to warn them to stay on the road; there are "arrogant beings who believe that walking on soil is beneath them". Ilias knows who she's talking about, but White Rabbit knows what she's thinking, so she explains that the angels would not ally with her in that form. Rather, they would be more likely to attack her for impersonating their Goddess. She then leaves.

Walking off the road will cause Archangel Ranael and Principality Nagael to appear and wipe out the entire party as they are far more powerful. In the original trilogy, they were relatively easy to beat. But that Luka had awakened his angelic powers and had the power of the four spirits within him. This Luka has neither of those at present. Come back later.

<p style="white-space:normal;font-weight:normal;">At the end of the road, Sonya and Luka are traumatised to find Iliasville in ruins. They think it's their Iliasville, but they realise it must have been years after the village was attacked to be in the state it's in currently. Skeletons are everywhere. They can recognise some of them. The one with the hunched back was probably the village chief. The one with damaged right arm was Lazarus. The nearby well is filled with the bones of the deceased.

<p style="white-space:normal;font-weight:normal;">The graveyard at the back of the village has increased in size exponentially. One for every villager. Within the cemetery, they see the graves of two people next to each other, Sonya and Luka.

<p style="white-space:normal;font-weight:normal;"> Luka’s diary next to the gravestone confirms that this is Luka. The entries  in  the diary are the same as his normal one, but there is an added entry at the very back.

<p style="white-space:normal;font-weight:normal;"> Reading through the added entry reveals that in this dimension,  Luka never challenged Granberia in Iliasburg. Instead,  he decided that adventuring life was not for him and returned home. Consequentially, that meant Luka never went off on his adventures trying to bring co-existence. Because Luka didn't solve the various problems going on in the world and he never realised his true angelic power, no one was able to stand up to Ilias when she decided to remake the world. This dimension is the consequence of those actions.

<p style="white-space:normal;font-weight:normal;"> There is also a final note written by someone else that Luka had fought and died a true hero while trying to fend off the second wave of attacking angels. The very beings the town had worshipped for millennia.

Ilias reasons that this has to be a parallel world. They try to leave the dimension using a harpy feather, but it doesn't work for her. She asks Luka to try it instead, and when he uses a Harpy Feather, it teleports them back to the Paradox Iliasville.

Ilias then calls for a strategy meeting in the Pocket Castle, where they discuss their next plan of action:
 * White Rabbit: Ilias believes that there's a connection between a White Rabbit guiding Alice, but isn't sure of the actual purpose of it. She is also aware that White Rabbit intentionally lead them to that exact parallel world for a reason and that she has a connection with the Great Disaster.
 * Tartarus: Ilias knows that Tartarus is connected to the Great Disaster and that each one contains a door to a parallel world, but she doesn't know why apoptosis would be taking place within the Tartarus. "The underlying cause of the effect is holy and dark energies from a distortion in spacetime corrupting organisms. They exist to repel foreign invaders, namely us. You can think of them as beings controlled by the will of space itself." Nuruko crops up, and Sonya asks if Nuruko could be one. Ilias says that she is something else entirely. As for why Remina is in the Tartarus, she doesn't know.
 * The other world: It is at least ten years ahead of the Paradox one. Sonya thinks that is her future, but Ilias thinks otherwise. She thinks it was a potential future that was averted when White Rabbit appeared in the place of Granberia in Iliasburg. She also mentions there are at least seven other worlds to explore, each of them in a different Tartarus.
 * Reasons for other world destroyed: Ilias says that in that dimension, she had intended to remake the world, but is surprised that Luka had also died. She immediately regrets mentioning that and pretends she was just talking to herself. The destruction of that world and the Great Disaster are two separate things entirely, and that world's inhabitants probably thought they were the only world that existed, just like the group once did. It was only after seeing that world they knew they were not alone. She theorises that travelling between worlds may spread the Chaos.
 * Luka's powers: Ilias brings up White Rabbit: "From what we observed, I think she may be an entity that exists to travel through spacetime. It is also possible she doesn't exist like we do at all. Rather, she may manifest simultaneously across a multiverse, like a universal phenomenon, cosmic constant, or something similar." But she isn't concerned about her; she is concerned about how a mere human can travel across dimensions, despite his bloodline. Luka inheriting his mother's bloodline would mean he could potentially move within spacetime, but certainly not across parallel worlds. Marcellus is also out of the question, as he is entirely human, even if he is an extraordinary hero.
 * Ilias's subordinates: Ilias believes that they need to get to a point to closer to Heaven to talk to the angels, like The Navel of the World. But Sonya mentions that it's gone. The centre of Sentora is now an enormous Tartarus rift, where The Navel of the World used to be. Ilias says that since Heaven is made of pure, holy energy, the physical destruction of the area would be impossible. But then she realises that the Tartarus dug through reality itself, all the way into another parallel world. Meaning Heaven was destroyed in the process, upsetting Ilias significantly.

Map Of The Area
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Small Medal Locations
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Surface (Normal World)

 * Small Medal, Red Chest
 * Phoenix Tail, Red Chest

1L

 * Blast Voice, Blue Chest
 * Musket, Red Chest
 * Auto Crossbow, Red Chest

2L

 * Chain Cross, Red Chest
 * Seed of Magic, Red Chest
 * Bio Blaster, Blue Chest
 * Iron Breastplate, Red Chest

3L

 * Small Medal, Red Chest in the left corridor
 * Lightweight Shield, Red Chest

3L (Indoors)

 * Stone of Chaos, Red Chest

Corridor of Chaos

 * Elixir, Red Chest

1L

 * 2 Sullies
 * 2 Jaides
 * Sully, 2 Jaides
 * Shesta

2L

 * 3 Sullies
 * 3 Jaides
 * Shesta
 * Shesta, Sully
 * Shesta, Jaide

3L

 * 2 Shestas
 * Shesta, Sully
 * Shesta, Jaide
 * Shesta, Scripted battle after talking to girl

Boss

 * Nuruko, 3L Indoors

Related Quests

 * Main Quest