Fans of the Tellius saga may know that the Tellius Recollection (Volume 1) book was released in Japan during the end of last month.
An official English release for this Path of Radiance-themed book is currently unknown (unlike the upcoming English Awakening artbook), but you don’t have to wait long to enjoy its contents.
That’s because Kirokan and MicrowaveIt, two very hard-working translators from the amazing Fire Emblem fan community, are combining their efforts to translate the book bit by bit. Who knows, maybe I’ll chip in as well!
You can find the current translations and translation requests in this topic. In addition, Kirokan will be posting updates on their website. Meanwhile, MicrowaveIt will be posting in the Fire Emblem subreddit.
Warning: This article and the links provided contain spoilers!
So far, the following has been translated: ages for the Path of Radiance cast, concept art for Mia and Nephenee and a Beorc/Laguz lifespan comparison chart.
You might notice the list of ages doesn’t actually provide many concrete ages for the cast, preferring to disclose the characters’ “apparent age” (as in the age they “look like”) instead.
For some reason or another, it seems Intelligent Systems is very conservative about revealing character ages, especially in recent times.
Even as far back as Radiant Dawn, the developers mentioned (multiple times) about not wishing to reveal specific ages in the Q and As section on the official background site.
A) We cannot answer age questions exactly. However Edward, Leonardo, Rolf and Meg are all around the same age…
–Nintendo/IS in a response to a question about Edward and Leonardo’s ages.
A) We have ages and heights for all characters, but we apologise that we cannot disclose such information.
–Nintendo/IS in a response to a question about Sothe and Tormod’s ages.
That said, it seems they were fine with revealing age ranges, except for a certain special someone…
A) Haar and Titania are in their 30’s. Sigrun is in her 20’s. As for Micaiah, it is a secret…
–Nintendo/IS in a response to a question about the aforementioned characters’ ages.
By the way, this behaviour even extends to the characters from FE: Fates with profiles in the Making of Fire Emblem book (Jakob, Takumi, Leo, Charlotte and Oboro), where their name origin, age, height and weight are all conveniently censored with black bars.
Perhaps the developers simply prefer to leave these sensitive details up to the players’ imaginations?
Furthermore, the developers already briefly touched on the Beorc and Laguz lifespans in the same Q and As section.
A) The Beast tribes have 5~6x the (average?) Beorc lifespan, while for the Hawk and Raven tribes it is 10x. Herons live up to 1000 years and Dragons up to 2000 years.
–Nintendo/IS in a response to a question about Laguz lifespans.
However the information provided back then is slightly at odds with the information in this new book, where beast tribe members apparently have 3x the life expectancy of Beorc, rather than 5~6x.
It may be possible that there’s a difference between “full” lifespan and “average” lifespan, which could explain how Herons can live up to 1000 years despite their average lifespan being 300 years, for example.
Still, it’s strange for the gaps to be so big.
Another cool thing is that the book reveals the average lifespan of Black Dragon, Lion and Tiger Branded. Not just that, but the three types of Branded are oddly specific…
If you think about it, it’s probably a reference to the three known Branded in Path of Radiance: Soren (confirmed to be a Black Dragon Branded), Stefan (implied to be descended from a Lion) and, finally, Petrine.
Previously, some fans debated what type of Branded Petrine was, with the author speculating she might be a Raven due to her uncanny involvement with the Raven King, Naesala. However her profile in the book confirms she’s a Tiger Branded.
To finish off, if you have any comments or requests, feel free to post in Kirokan’s topic or leave a message here!
