terabient

Been thinking about Casra I and Casra II's history a lot lately. The absence of canonical appearances Casra I and sparse statements regarding both characters in-game and in supplemental material means there's a LOT of room to ~go wild~ with speculation and headcanons, and making up stuff based on a few lines of text is my #1 favorite thing to do in fandom! So here’s is my personal timeline for pre-PSO2 Lucasra. please clap

Warnings: underage relationship, psychological manipulation, Luther at his absolute worst

( Timeline from Casra II’s conception to AP 220 )

Many thanks if you made it this far! But also: SORRY, I can’t stop yelling about these two (individually AND together) so here’s some Additional Thoughts on pre-PSO2 Lucasra that don’t fit neatly into the timeline format:

• Since the successors of the Three Heroes take on their predecessor’s name...it’s possible that Casra II has a different birth name. At the same time, I can absolutely see Casra I and Luther having zero originality and just name him Casra II anyway, especially since his “purpose” is set and I doubt Casra II was known to anyone outside Void Apparatus before his placement on the Council (meaning there’s no need to hide the fact that he’s intended to be Casra I’s successor). Also I just find it hard to refer to Casra II as anything besides Casra, lol.


• Thematically, I think of Lucasra as a bleak inversion/corruption of Luther’s relationship with Hariette. In EP5 Luther understands he has a duty to raise and care for Hariette, and is actually capable of choosing her safety at the cost of his own. Oracle Luther has completely lost these qualities and can only see people as tools to be used. At most he views his creations as extensions of himself or symbols of his brilliance—not individuals with their own wills. So whenever there’s a question on how Luther would treat Casra in a given situation I think “well the exact opposite of how he would treat Hariette.” Gotta live up to the “Fallen” and “Loser” titles, after all.


• I had some thoughts about Luther taking an interest in Casra’s Draconian research because it potentially offers an alternate path to omniscience through “completing” Terr’yiotr or Kasheena, but it’s not something I’ve fully fleshed out yet. 🫠

playing around with the idea that Luther's body-snatching works in the same way as his attempted absorption of Xion in Ep. 2, but on a smaller scale, where he gains whatever knowledge that person had. also perhaps his body hopping not only serves as a means of survival, but is necessary research into eventually absorbing something on the scale of an omniscient being.

The Amduskia Draconians are a race created by Photoners and presumably at the time of PSO2 Ep 1, no one would have known more about them than Luther himself. Yet the Artificial Draconian Project (led? by Casra and Aki) being hiijacked for Luther's purposes suggests they discovered something that Luther was unaware of--not impossible, of course, given that evolution is a thing, and perhaps the creation of Amduskia wasn't really in Luther's area of study as Photoner, so while he may have known more than anyone else on Oracle, it wasn't all encompassing.

this is a very long winded way to say that Casra's approach to research leads him to insights that have eluded Luther for centuries, which would make him an even more appealing candidate as Luther's vessel. It could also explain why Luther seems so keen on using Casra I's body, specifically--not only does he take over the first, Luther planned to mass produce copies of him, essentially making Casra I his "permanent" body--something he doesn't appear to have done before.

anyway i assume Luther always portrayed his eventual body-snatching of Casra II as something good and desirable for both of them, i.e. "Of course Casra would want his existence absorbed into mine, what greater fate could there be???" which would make Casra's suffering even more exquisite. you're welcome 😌