Truth From the Shadow: A Guide to the Khrysalis Orbs

Wizard101's Khrysalis Part 2 has a new history quest - and this is a good one. Grandfather Bartleby and Grandmother Raven neglected to tell you something. Morganthe is not the shadow, she is but a pawn in a much larger chess game... all this is learned from a side quest you might have missed.

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Shadows of History

To begin this quest, you'll want to talk to Zaltanna the Mirrormask in Bastion. She'll ask you to search the second part of Khrysalis for six orbs.

The first orb is in Crescent Beach.

The second orb is in the Ruined Alcazar.

The third orb is in Radiance Reborn.

The fourth orb is in Troika Palace (Sardonyx).

The fifth orb is in the Chamber of Solar Justice (Solar Arc, Khonda Desert).
The sixth orb is in the Shadow Palace.

Locating the Orbs

If done correctly, none of these orbs require fighting. The one that you might need to battle for is the first in Crescent Beach, as it is a battle that will pull you in before you reach the orb. However, if you have a friend activate the pull, you can safety go around to collect it. The others are in dungeons and areas that you may have to have someone teleport you to or wait until you can access yourself. You cannot teleport into the Shadow Palace dungeon required to obtain the last orb, but the mount trick may be used.

MOUSE OVER ANY IMAGE FOR A MAP

Crescent Beach Orb Inside Steig's cave in a pool of water in the back	Ruined Alcazar Orb Near one of the phantoms between two tower entrances	Radiance Reborn Orb In the hallway between the crab and hart towers
Troika Palace Orb Go in through the very right entrance - the orb is behind the counter by some chairs	Solar Justice Orb Inside the Balance room in the Solar Arc in Khonda Desert	Shadow Palace Orb Inside the dungeon with the root bosses - check the back

The Shadow Tells All - [Spoiler Alert]

After you complete the quest, you get to go to Sardonyx and place the orbs in an obelisk. Here, you learn a very different story of the Spiral... a few things that Grandmother Raven and Grandfather Bartleby forgot to tell you. The story is told by Old Cob, a character from the late stages of Khrysalis part 2. I can't give you much information on his role there, as I've not yet progressed that far. But he does have a few interesting words in his retelling of the Spiral's history!

Sky and land once danced as one, round the tree of  magic's shade. A thousand  years, a thousand more,  memories of love and fury fade.	Raven and Spider played  across Sky, and battled throughout the Land. Spider fell into the deepest hole, locked away by Raven's hand.	Spider roared and thrashed against the heavens, and finally fell into a sleep. His dreams made twisting Shadow things, sowing chaos to one day reap.
The Candle flickers across the Night, A Child sailing the Shadow Sea. The Spiral bends, and twists, and whirls, bringing the Chosen back to me.	The Mirror will break... the Horn will call. From the Shadows I strike and the skies... will fall!	The Shadow Web hums and  stretches beyond the stars, Touching all the Spiral with Spider's welcoming arms.

Everything Changes

Grandmother Raven and Grandfather Bartleby were not the only magical beings in existence in the First World. There was also Grandfather Spider - Old Cob, who tells these stories. Grandmother Raven locked him away, and in doing so set him into a deep sleep that led to dreams creating shadow creatures to one day bring chaos to the Spiral.

One major question is this - did this prophecy actually occur in Khrysalis with Morganthe, or is Morganthe a very small part of a much larger force controlled by Old Cob? In any case, it sounds here as if the prophecy we thought to be Morganthe's was actually Old Cob's! And it also sounds like the Spiral is at a much greater risk than Morganthe. But how do you kill an ancient being like Bartleby?

This also mentions that the Spiral "bends, and twists, and whirls" and brings the Chosen (that's us!) back to Old Cob. With all of Ambrose's mention of balancing light and dark within us and earning badges like Child of Shadow and Light, I have a very curious suspicion that WE ourselves might be Old Cob's ultimate tool of destruction. 

If you've played Pirate101, you know that evil has manipulated us to use our powers to take out entire shrines and islands of enemies for their will. If Old Cob is as powerful as he seems to be, we'd be more than capable or enacting his vengeance against Grandfather Bartleby, Grandmother Raven, and the entire Spiral.

What's even more worrisome to me is that no previous version of the Spiral's history, be it history books, the website intro, NPC's stories, or other history quests, have mentioned Grandfather Spider. This creates an interesting dynamic that I'll be touching on in a number of other posts about the possibility that, like Morganthe's memories, the history we read is distorted based on who's telling it. We could really be ill-informed as to what truly happened in the First World, when we think we know it all.

Morganthe is Only the Beginning

I can't wait to see what Old Cob will be up to as I conclude the Morgantha saga. I'll be back for more theorycrafting when the time comes! For now, thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral! Credits: Thanks to Lucas Walker and Alex Lionheart for teleporting me to a few of these locations.