Question about prologue [Spoilers]

[calvin_dr]

Question: Is the prologue a dream/hallucination?

I think knowing whether the prologue is a dream/hallucination or not is very important for interpreting what we learn there.

Argument for:

I completed the prologue. And when I spoke to Daisy (in the Asylum), she reminded Leila of climbing up to the waterfall and picking a special flower, out of which Daisy made a small ring, then forgetting/leaving the Withered Flower Ring under a tree, and then a dog finding the ring and following Leila/Daisy home (I have screenshots of the exact text).

This reminded me of the prologue: meeting Isabelle after the Brood Mother fight. Isabella told Leila then she wanted to make her a flower ring (I have screenshot of that as well). Furthermore, in the first fight, you fight a big 'dog' and he drops the Withered Flower Ring.

So this reminded me of dreaming. In dreams you often combine things that happened during the day/waking state and create new events/stories with them.

So the area after the the prologue should have 'reality logic' and the prologue has 'dream logic' XD

Counter argument:

When we wake, we recognize the contents of the dreams as being 'unreal'. But Leila seems to take the content of the prologue as 'real'.

What do you think, is the prologue a dream?

[quintonhoffert]

AFAIK after a fairly extensive thread questioning the lore, the prologue appears to be sort of a vision quest kind of thing. It shares a lot of similarities with dreams, but in practice I'd consider it more like a guided dream meant to teach Leila stuff. There will be spoilers in the rest of my post, so don't read if you don't want them. That said, I will try not to spoil any major story beats.

So, the reason I say that the prologue is like a vision quest is that it appears to be a variation of the memories of Dephil, the First One, the first Vigilant who was said to have ended the Longest Night in the past. The opening cutscene features Leila drinking a potion and approaching a strange brain embedded in the Vigilant Tree, which I interpret to involve Leila entering a trance and reliving Dephil's memories. As you'll see from some of the lore in the main part of the game, some of the lore from the prologue contradicts lore you'll find in the game depicting events that took place during Dephil's time, but the broad strokes remain the same.

The prologue actually refers to Dephil by name once or twice in cutscenes involving the Professor. Those cutscenes are unfortunately missable: to get them you need to meet the Professor at the top of the waterfall in the Valley before defeating the Brood Mother. In order to get up there without the double jump you need to do an attack after jumping in order to get to the tree branch and continue up the waterfall. This also adds to the lore of the rest of the game's quest, as well as providing a missable decoration that you will need to restart for if you want the "all decorations" achievement, since the event that allows you to buy a house is unfortunately bugged in NG+ and only triggers on your first NG cycle. If you're not very far into the main game it might be worth restarting in order to see these scenes if you missed them, since they add a lot to the lore. Once you know where everything in the prologue is, you can speed through it pretty fast in only an hour or two. It's definitely annoying but I'd recommend it if you're interested in piecing together the lore. There's also a ring that boosts your Arcane that is missable in the Cemetery along with two of the best spells in the game, which are both worth restarting for if you didn't collect them. The Ancient Guard boss also has a chance to drop a powerful spell as well that you can miss, though you can go back and refight him later so the drops are not permanently missable.

The overall take for the prologue story-wise, though, is that Leila is experiencing a vision of past events that are not 100% accurate to the game's recorded history, but represent the memories of Dephil, who by the main part of the game is long dead. That's why the Vigilant's Trial ends by passing through the Portal Avernus, the Gate of the Dead: you're leaving the memories of one who is long dead and passing into the world as it is. Nevertheless, the prologue isn't strictly speaking a dream because you retain all gear that you got from it. Rather than simply dreaming of Dephil's memories, you actually experienced them, and because of that some of your choices during the prologue will have drastic influences on the main world. For example, there is a long quest chain that follows the descendant of the Maye guard Duran that will never trigger if you didn't complete Duran's quest, because if you failed to complete it he would never have left the guard and married his pen-pal Isabella, and thus his descendant would never have been born. Likewise, gathering the three ritual objects for Daisy allows you to actually give them to her in the Asylum to get a special item, which would be impossible if the prologue was just a dream sequence. This is why I call it more like a vision quest: it functions a lot like a dream sequence but your choices during it actually have consequences and you physically keep all of the items that you picked up, which you wouldn't in a conventional dream.

[Urfarah]

quintonhoffert is correct in his assessment of everything. To it I would add that during the game, we learn that, ever since Dephil, every Vigilant undergoes the same trial. That is, everyone relives Dephil's memories during their initiation into the order to try and learn how to bring back the sun (which is its own set of problems. Suffice to say for now that the existence and actions of Dephil mark a definite shift in what it means to be a Vigilant). But, as the Lantern Keeper says, no one quite relives those events like Leila does and he (I'm gonna go with "he" here because I suspect his true identity) remarks multiple times how fascinating the choices she makes and her actions are.

This leads me to think that, to some extent, Leila not only relives Dephil's memories, like everyone else does, but truly relives and affects the past while she is doing so. This, in turn, affects both her mind and her reality, which is why she wakes up alone terribly confused about everything. And these wacky shenanigans are made possible in part because of what she is, one of the 'blonde twins', and in part as a consequence of, as Janis says during The Twins quest, what Dephil has done. Long story short, what is just a dream to everyone else, to Leila is, as quintonhoffert put it, a sort of mythological vision quest that allows her to slightly alter reality and messes up her memories in the process.

[calvin_dr]

Thank you both so much for your elaborate answers! This helps a lot.

I see it's not a dream now. The arguments of items carrying over and causal links between things that happen in the prologue and in the main game are very convincing.

I did see all the 'flashbacks' in the prologue (top of the waterfall, before Brood Mother fight, at gate to catacombs and finally at the Porta Avernus) and have taken screenshots of the dialog in them.

What's a bit strange to me is that Dephil/Leila seems to be unaware of their contents (given the questions she asks Gram eg. after the flashback; it seems like the player knows more than Dephil/Leila) except for the last one. In the last one the Professor is addressing Dephil/Leila directly.

Is this just a bit sloppy or is it deliberate?

[Urfarah]

I'm not sure about it myself and it bothered me all throughout the game. I mean, I think it makes sense for Leila to be confused while reliving Dephil's memories but I would've liked to see her saying more impacting things or at least displaying more knowledge as the game progresses. And unfortunately that doesn't happen.

An NPC might be revealing a cornerstone of the mythos that you've been reading about and piecing together for some time and Leila will still look blank faced at them and ask "what are you talking about?". There is even an item that could've been used to measure the character's in game knowledge and give Leila different reactions to key story events (the 'mysterious manuscripts' she acquires when reading ancient knowledge. There's a total of 30 across a playthrough). But I guess that's just a limitation of the game and their narrative.

[quintonhoffert]

One of my few gripes with the game is that I was expecting something like that, where your exploration could lead to additional options if you'd read enough lore, and it never happened. I still think the game did a good enough job presenting its story, especially after the language patch that ensured that almost all of the dialogue was consistently written, but I think it fell down in a few specific places. That said, additional content is planned for the game, so there's a distinct possibility that things that seem unreasonably vague are actually waiting for major updates / DLC to flesh them out. Overall I felt like the game's story was understandable, though it took me two playthroughs as well as starting a lore thread on this discussion board to feel like I fully grasped ~90%+ of the story/lore.

I do agree with Urfarah that it would be great if the Mysterious Manuscripts could function as the gate for Leila's knowledge in certain conversations. However, at the game's launch there were actually only 14 Manuscripts, and the other 16 were just recently added (presumably they were always intended to be in but were left out by mistake or because there wasn't time to put them in). I would be very happy if some new dialogue would be added in the next few patches in order to take advantage of this opportunity, but to be honest I don't think it will be. I think that Glass Heart will be a lot more likely to flesh out the more vague parts of the lore with DLC expansions ala the Soulsborne games than with just a few additional dialogue prompts. There's certainly room for several things to be fleshed out, and we know that additional gameplay is part of Glass Heart's intended post-launch plan for the game.

There's one last thing that I would really like to be expanded upon, since I've felt it to be very confusing considering how important it is to the late game: this I will once again put in spoilers. When you meet the Professor at the top of the waterfall, he discusses the Pilgrimage of the Helious, and says that the seal at the top of the tallest giant tree glinted in the daylight. However, in the Giantwood dungeon the lore heavily suggests that the Scholar of the Sacred Wood is the Professor, since some prologue characters like the Maye guard Steve are mentioned as being important protectors of the sealing ritual. If the Professor is the Scholar of the Sacred Wood, then this creates a discrepancy: the Pilgrimage of the Helious that the Professor spoke of explicitly said that the Giantwood was already sealed and that he wished that he could see it with his own eyes, but if it was already sealed long before he lived, how could he be the Scholar sealed within? And yet, there are too many intentional callbacks to the prologue section, and to the Professor specifically, for the Scholar of the Sacred Wood to not reasonably be the Professor. All in all it doesn't seem to make sense timeline-wise, and I would really like an explanation. I believe that there were supposed to be multiple Pilgrimages of the Helious, which explains some of it, but unless the Giantwood was unsealed at some point before the Professor's time and then resealed with the Professor and the Maye church/guard in it, there still wouldn't be any way to reconcile the Professor's story with the Professor being the Scholar of the Sacred Wood. Out of all of the mysteries in the game, this one is the one that most feels under-developed, and is unfortunately also potentially the most lore-breaking. I really hope that we get some answers about this at some point, whether it be a lore overhaul adding clarifications to some documents, an additional flashback or two, or even an entire DLC area explaining it in greater depth. Out of all of the mysteries in the game it is the most baffling to me.

EDIT: I also hope that we receive more information on the ancient past of the world, such as the Battle of Diqbushire and the Ocarina Realm bosses, Dephil of course excluded. Gram's brother Chris mentions after you kill the Brood Mother that the rage of the ancient gods has been stewing for centuries, presumably at the Goddess since he mentions her right before saying that. We know from his arcane tool that Uptancos, the Pulse Surrounder of the Shadow Disaster, was one such god, and I think we can generally assume from the words of Silvia (who herself is Satis, as Janis is Lauraby) that Princess Downaly of the Betrayers is another such god. They seem to be sealed away in their respective Ocarina Realms, probably by the strange artifacts they drop upon death: I would base this assumption on the fact that the glowing portal that activates their boss fights (along with the Ancient Guard's portal) are all chained up. I hope that one of the additions to the game explains what their deal is, why specifically they were sealed away from the world, and what (if anything) they have to do with the Light Devourer and/or the eldritch sun god from the Nightmare ending.

[Urfarah]

Originally posted by quintonhoffert:

at the game's launch there were actually only 14 Manuscripts, and the other 16 were just recently added (presumably they were always intended to be in but were left out by mistake or because there wasn't time to put them in).

Yeah, started a new game because of that, since even though the manuscripts were retroactively added, some could have been missed forever if you had already done certain actions.

Now I'm waiting for the next patch before I go into NG. I'm curious to see what they will add. Here's hoping for a better translation and, eventually (maybe on a future DLC? who knows), expanded lore and more bosses. It would be nice if Leila demonstrated more knowledge, something akin to what we know by the end, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

Originally posted by quintonhoffert:

When you meet the Professor at the top of the waterfall, he discusses the Pilgrimage of the Helious...

This is a bit tricky, as most of the details in this game are (and, to be honest, everything just gives me a strong Bloodborne feeling, to the point where I wonder if Leila's present isn't somehow also a "nightmare" of sorts. But I digress). With the available information, my take on it is that the Professor, as he tells Gram at the entrance to the Catacombs, is not a "chosen one", that is, his existence doesn't have a mythical/spiritual spark to it like Leila's and Daisy's (because of them being an incarnation of the "blonde twins" AND their strong faith) or even like Bruna's (because of her strong faith), so, he cannot "ascend" to another layer of existence through the usage of the pale red and the crimson (which are, as I gather, extracted from the Sacredwood). Even so, through his research and horrific experimentations (with the active help of Dephil), he uncovers that the Pilgrimage of the Helious was the cutlural manifestation of an ancient ritual used to maintain the seal that imprisioned a "being" (related to the old Shimmer faith) inside the Giantwood and where exactly that seal is located. So, when Dephil loses heart and kills Daisy (a guess, but a good one, based on what Janis says about the destiny of the "blonde twins") after she understands that the entity they both bound into Daisy is not the Shimmer Goddess (but an "outer god", a "light devourer". Which, considering the persistent black hole motif present in all of the Ocarina Realms, I'm just gonna go and say it's the spiritual equivalent of a black hole), the Professor, trying to salvage the plan and take matters into his own hands, breaks the seal of the Giantwood and offers his body as a vessel for whatever was imprisioned there, thus becoming the Scholar of the Sacred Wood. When the Vigilants, the Church and the Guard see that horror firsthand they sacrifice themselves to create a new seal by emulating a ritual used by the Shimmer Goddess (supposedly to purify and imprison other gods) but they miscalculate and also become trapped inside (this part is all explained by the texts found inside the Giantwood). Then, those that stayed outside the Giantwood (because everyone inside inevitably dies) sever that seal into three parts, which creates the three Cubic Crystals. This is why the centuries pass by without any major catastrophic incidents UNTIL the "blonde twins" are born again and the cycle started by Dephil and the Professor becomes possible to be finished (by the Doctor, who, apparently, has been alive for a long time, easily for more than a human's lifespan. If I remember correctly he hints at centuries when confronted below Maye Hall but doesn't specify the age).

The intended consequence of meddling with Daisy's, the younger sister of the twins (the sacrifice), essence is that when she is reborn, the entity bound to her is too, which allows the Doctor to follow the Professor's folly (because he would not be bringing back the Shimmer Goddess but instead creating a beign that would devour everything in that solar system as seen in the bad ending). BUT, the unintended consequence is that, as Janis says, this frees Leila from what would be her inescapable destiny. That is, she is no longer bound to kill Daisy, thus allowing her to chose a different fate than that of Dephil's and all of the previous "older sister of the twins" before her.

As a loose bit of information, Maye Hall is located exactly on top of where the Sacredwood was and that by itself explains so much.

[quintonhoffert]

Originally posted by Urfarah:

Originally posted by quintonhoffert:

at the game's launch there were actually only 14 Manuscripts, and the other 16 were just recently added (presumably they were always intended to be in but were left out by mistake or because there wasn't time to put them in).

Yeah, started a new game because of that, since even though the manuscripts were retroactively added, some could have been missed forever if you had already done certain actions.

Now I'm waiting for the next patch before I go into NG. I'm curious to see what they will add. Here's hoping for a better translation and, eventually (maybe on a future DLC? who knows), expanded lore and more bosses. It would be nice if Leila demonstrated more knowledge, something akin to what we know by the end, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

Originally posted by quintonhoffert:

When you meet the Professor at the top of the waterfall, he discusses the Pilgrimage of the Helious...

This is a bit tricky, as most of the details in this game are (and, to be honest, everything just gives me a strong Bloodborne feeling, to the point where I wonder if Leila's present isn't somehow also a "nightmare" of sorts. But I digress). With the available information, my take on it is that the Professor, as he tells Gram at the entrance to the Catacombs, is not a "chosen one", that is, his existence doesn't have a mythical/spiritual spark to it like Leila's and Daisy's (because of them being an incarnation of the "blonde twins" AND their strong faith) or even like Bruna's (because of her strong faith), so, he cannot "ascend" to another layer of existence through the usage of the pale red and the crimson (which are, as I gather, extracted from the Sacredwood). Even so, through his research and horrific experimentations (with the active help of Dephil), he uncovers that the Pilgrimage of the Helious was the cutlural manifestation of an ancient ritual used to maintain the seal that imprisioned a "being" (related to the old Shimmer faith) inside the Giantwood and where exactly that seal is located. So, when Dephil loses heart and kills Daisy (a guess, but a good one, based on what Janis says about the destiny of the "blonde twins") after she understands that the entity they both bound into Daisy is not the Shimmer Goddess (but an "outer god", a "light devourer". Which, considering the persistent black hole motif present in all of the Ocarina Realms, I'm just gonna go and say it's the spiritual equivalent of a black hole), the Professor, trying to salvage the plan and take matters into his own hands, breaks the seal of the Giantwood and offers his body as a vessel for whatever was imprisioned there, thus becoming the Scholar of the Sacred Wood. When the Vigilants, the Church and the Guard see that horror firsthand they sacrifice themselves to create a new seal by emulating a ritual used by the Shimmer Goddess (supposedly to purify and imprison other gods) but they miscalculate and also become trapped inside (this part is all explained by the texts found inside the Giantwood). Then, those that stayed outside the Giantwood (because everyone inside inevitably dies) sever that seal into three parts, which creates the three Cubic Crystals. This is why the centuries pass by without any major catastrophic incidents UNTIL the "blonde twins" are born again and the cycle started by Dephil and the Professor becomes possible to be finished (by the Doctor, who, apparently, has been alive for a long time, easily for more than a human's lifespan. If I remember correctly he hints at centuries when confronted below Maye Hall but doesn't specify the age).

The intended consequence of meddling with Daisy's, the younger sister of the twins (the sacrifice), essence is that when she is reborn, the entity bound to her is too, which allows the Doctor to follow the Professor's folly (because he would not be bringing back the Shimmer Goddess but instead creating a beign that would devour everything in that solar system as seen in the bad ending). BUT, the unintended consequence is that, as Janis says, this frees Leila from what would be her inescapable destiny. That is, she is no longer bound to kill Daisy, thus allowing her to chose a different fate than that of Dephil's and all of the previous "older sister of the twins" before her.

As a loose bit of information, Maye Hall is located exactly on top of where the Sacredwood was and that by itself explains so much.

That's a really interesting take on the lore. To be honest, I don't agree with a lot of it, and I'm going to explain what I believe to debate your arguments, but it's a pretty fleshed out take on the lore and I think it's a really good explanation, even if it's not the one I personally believe. I do absolutely agree with you that the game's plot reminds me of Bloodborne in that the story of the game feels fairly easy to nail down, but the full lore implications are currently too murky to say with close to 100% certainty that we totally understand. So here's my feelings on the story/lore and how they differ from yours.

My main point of contention is that I believe that the Light Devourer that Daisy transforms into actually is her true form as a god, rather than being a foreign creature bound into her body. Both Janis and Silvia make mention of feeling limited by the human forms forced upon them, and two of the three Ocarina Bosses (Uptancos and the Ancient Guard) have very eldritch bodies. The Doctor believes that Daisy is the reincarnation of the Shimmer Goddess, and I believe that he's correct about that, but not about her intentions.

The Shimmer Goddess, and the religion of the Shimmer Church, is interesting in that its tenets change profoundly from Dephil's time to the present day game's time. In the prologue, while we don't learn too much about the Shimmer Church's tenets, there isn't really a focus on the Goddess as a figure of light. The main thing we learn about the Shimmer Church is the ritual of the Shimmerless Day, which is a ritual commemorating the end of daylight and the beginning of the endless night: the ritual begins with Sunlight, transitions into a Holy War, and ends with Night as (according to the ceremonial blouse) the Goddess sacrificed her body to protect the world and become the Shimmer. The Goddess is never associated with light in the prologue. In the present, though, the Shimmer tenets all refer to the Goddess as being a goddess of light who will return with the coming of dawn. This seems to be a new addition, as the locked door in the Church's Forbidden Library cherishes darkness as a gentle protection and castigates the return of the light.

There is, however, a god associated with light and the return of the day in Dephil's memories: the Great Deity of the Sacredwood, from the Advent Prophecy. The Advent Prophecy states, "If we can get assistance from the GREAT DEITY, the Darkness can be eliminated. The Sacred Legacy hides within the Sacredwood, waiting..." I believe that the great eldritch creature from the Nightmare ending is the Great Deity, since it seems to be associated with the sun. It is a bright white color, the same color as the sun in the Dawn ending, its head sits at the center of a solar system, it has many tentacles and tentacles emerge from the sun in the Dawn ending, and the Day Light spell looks visually quite similar to the creature in the Dawn ending and its flavor text references an ominous "it" that left it behind. I believe that the Great Deity is being locked away from the world of Vigil by the Shimmer Goddess's eternal night.

In Dephil's memories, we learn from Sungi W. Thurber, the imperial spy, that heretics are manipulating church doctrine in order to defile the Goddess, and that the letter from the School that Bruna stole implicated the Professor as a major ringleader of these heretics. I think that what happened is that the Professor's allies in the School were eventually successful in subverting the Shimmer Church's doctrine, fusing the Advent Prophecy with the Shimmer religion in order to subvert it's end goal of maintaining the eternal night. Maye Hall acts as both foreshadowing and a metaphor relating to this: the pristine Shimmer religion above conceals a twisted, eldritch infection beneath the surface.

Taken this way, Daisy's true form as a "Light Devourer" makes a lot more sense. The Shimmer Goddess IS the Light Devourer: a being that maintains the eternal night by devouring the light. The Great Deity and its followers would like for her to die, because upon her death the eternal night will vanish and the Great Deity will be able to return to Vigil once more. The Dawn and Nightmare endings are essentially the same, in that the same thing happens to the world: the only difference is perception. The Dawn ending looks beautiful and only alludes to danger with tentacles slowly emerging from the sun, while the Nightmare ending shows us what really comes of slaying the Light Devourer and ending the Longest Night. Notably, the ending in which Daisy survives is the only ending in which the eternal night is not broken. Name-wise it also makes some sense: the sun shines, while the moon Shimmers.

Thus, the entire premise of the game is intentionally flawed. The game makes you believe that the goal of the Vigilants is to end the Longest Night, but in fact the goal is the opposite: to save Daisy and preserve the Longest Night, and so forth protect the world from the Great Deity of the Sacredwood.

[Urfarah]

I generally agree with you and I see your point. Hopefully the translation that's on the way will clarify at least a few of these more obscure bits. I'm gonna make a few stray observations that come to mind now (since this is one of those games that the more I think about it, the more I remember about things I forgot to mention):

1) About Daisy being a goddess... I agree with the possibility but I disagree that the Light Devourer is her "natural" form or that it is the Shimmer Goddess for that matter (more on that later). I think both Leila AND Daisy are reincarnations of a divine principle, the blonde twins, and both have a, let's call it "divine spark". They are goddesses in potential (on that topic, I think the Shimmer Goddess is not one goddess but one of twins). Now, if we are to believe Silvia/Satis and Janis/Lauraby the destiny of the blonde twins was, until Dephil, always set in stone, so, whenever they reincarnate they will always fulfill a divine role that ends with the elder sister killing the younger. To reinforce the idea that Leila is also potentially a goddess, we can look at the interactions between her and Arabela, after the quest "Serve the Church". When she looks at Leila she is blinded by a fierce light and can only talk properly after Leila hands her the Eye Cloth, after which she says, among other important bits, "Goddess before me". I think she says that in a very literal way, she sees the divine light inside Leila and is blinded by it because human eyes are not prepared to gaze directly upon divinity (and Arabela clearly is special. She sounds unhinged by the knowledge she carries but, maybe because of this, she also seems capable of seeing the "truth of the world"). So, I agree that Daisy is a reincarnation of, let's say, a divine principle that is the basis for the Shimmer Goddess... but so is Leila. With that said, I think that the being inside Daisy is alien to her because of one of the last things Silvia/Satis says, that "there was once a Vigilant and a Researcher. They tried to awaken something terrible in the outer realms" and then, when you face the Doctor below Maye Hall during the true ending path, he says something about the beings beyond the stars being hungry and says they are coming. I think this "something terrible" was put inside Daisy and that that was possible only because she was one of the twins. So, when she awakens as a goddess, this terrible being will "hatch", taking control of her "divine spark", devouring the light and, potentially, opening the way for others. In other words, with her "divine spark" hijacked by "something terrible", instead of living as a human or awakening as a protective goddess, she would become a Light Devourer and herald the end of her "reality" (which Leila can only avoid by helping Daisy control her awakening by reminding her of her humanity, thus circumventing the need for a sacrifice);

2) Yeah, the "GREAT DEITY" definitely differs from the Shimmer Goddess, is associated with the Sacredwood (and the Giantwood too if I'm not mistaken) and is trying to eliminate the protective cloak of night that is enveloping the world (to potentially bring back the old deities, which would herald an apocalyptical event). Also, important to notice, when you face Bruna's "evolution" as the Broodmother, the cultists above her say they can hear the voice of the "GREAT DEITY" in her roars and after you defeat her, they say the "GREAT DEITY" went silent again. I think this "GREAT DEITY" is not one being either but also a principle. It "speaks" through whoever it controls/influences and it does so through the pale red and the crimson;

3) Also yes, I agree that both the Shimmer Church AND the Vigilant Order were, originally, the exact opposite of what they became after Dephil. I'm gonna use Dephil as the marker here because she becomes known as The First One (to try and bring back the sunlight) among the Vigilants and her actions, alongside those of the Professor, are the cornerstone for a lot of major changes that corrupt the original purpose of the Shimmer Faith and the Vigilant Order (while the Maye Guard pretty much disappeared). Beyond what you've said, one of the books within the Forbidden Library about the Old Shimmer Code plainly states that the night is protective and beneficial and, if I'm not mistaken, one of the texts within the Giantwood mentions that before Dephil, the Vigilants worshipped the long night and saw it as a blessing. The construction of the Maye Hall over what was in the past the Sacredwood pretty much solidifies all of this.

4) Now, I do not think the Light Devourer is the Shimmer Goddess simply because the night is not the absence of light. The Moon reflects the light of the sun, it does not devour it. The night world is not one of total darkness but of faint light, of embers. And when we read Donathio, who is considered heretical by the current Shimmer Faith, he says:

"Shimmer Code - 4 - 2

Donathio writes: the true meaning of the Shimmer Goddess is in her embers, the ashes glowing with flickering light and heat, rather than bright, intense light.This is because it can still exist in the void, even if it's weak and fleeting. This is Her voice, Her whisper."

This is clearly not about the absence or the devouring of light. What "devours" light to me is a black hole (not the moon nor the night), a motif that is predominant in the background of every single Ocarina Realm.

[Sonic]

such a golden thread, kinda understand the lore now