Skies of Arcadia/WMG

Loqua really is liquor, even in the English version.

The only outright indication the game ever gives in the English version that loqua is "just juice" comes from Mabel, one of Dyne's raiders. She's joking around - sure, much like wine, it's just a juiced berry (and unlike wine, mixed with the local Green Rocks). Mabel is playfully leaving out the fact that it's fermented juice.

• Not even WMG. In the Japanese original, Loqua was called rum (an appropriately pirate-themed drink), and was never implied to be non-alcoholic or "juice". Gordo's "Loqua Spray" attack is called "Vodka Chug", etc. The change to Loqua was made in localization.

• • Fixed the WMG title so it's clearer. It's not a WMG in Japanese, but the localization kinda tries to hide it. Barely.

Arcadia used to have a Black Moon.

Something or another happened to it, and the fallout created the Dark Rift around what remained of the thing.

• Take a good look at the "Mysterious Rings" Discovery; one large circle surrounded by seven smaller ones?

The Black Moon Stone can reverse personalities.

Black magic was used for this long and long ago to control people. It's still possible to use Black magic if you nab a shard of Black Moon Stone from the Rift and are persistent enough, though the consequences of How Do I Shot Web? from something that can screw with your brain can be pretty dire.

Lord Galcian is a master of Black Moon magic

Somehow he got a hold of a Black Moon fragment and taught himself. In line with the above WMG, he used it to alter Ramirez's personality to be fanatically loyal to him.

Dyne is a Valuan noble who ran away.

Of the Rogue captains we know, Dyne is probably the most disciplined and vaguely cultured. Vyse comments at several points that he considers himself, as a Rogue, a gentleman - presumably this came from his father's teachings. Also, when Dyne gives Vyse the Yellow Moon Stone, it's treated like the passing on of a family heirloom.

There's a Valuan noble who asks where Vyse is from the one time you're in Upper City. One of the answers you can give is "I come from a poor, but noble family." Maybe that's the truth, at least for some years before Vyse was born - Dyne's folks were hitting some hard times, nobles on the edge of bankruptcy, and so he ran off to seek his fortune and ended up an Air Pirate.

Where Piastol's Silver magic and the Valuans' robots came from.

Silver magic is practically a lost art, since the Silver Civilization left even less of a trace than the other Old World peoples and Silver Moon Stones are so hard to come by. And yet, Piastol will tear the party to pieces with her command of Silver magic if you're not Delta Shielding every turn.

And where the heck did Valua get robots? They're the most advanced civilization right now, but still. Robots? How do they even work at the general technology level Arcadia's at?

The solution is simple. Ramirez. He taught Piastol Silver magic - she's clearly got some combat training from her father, and there's no one better to teach his kid than his pet Silvite. Post-crazy, he turned over robot designs to Galcian. Arcadian robots work by Silvering life into them - which is why the Silver Civilization has the most of them.

The random boss monsters are caused by radiation from the Moon Crystals.

Boy, Skies sure does have a lot of Giant Space Fleas that show up, get beaten, and are never mentioned again. Mostly around the Moon Crystals when they aren't guarded by robots or the Gigas themselves. Maybe the Moon Crystals themselves, being essentially pure crystallized magic, have weird effects on the wildlife near them. The unplanned Crystal guardians are just random, hyper-territorial animals.

Ramirez has a "loyalty gene."

One of Ramirez's defining traits is that he fanatically loyal to his leaders. Fina even notes this in her expository flashback explaining where he came from. It probably would have been pretty easy for the Silvite Elders to insert a tendency towards that - there's no way he and Fina were born normally, they were likely grown in a vat or something - which then proceeded to backfire spectacularly on them.

How you make a Moon Crystal and why Fina even exists.

Moon Crystals are super-pure Moon Stones. How do you get them that pure? If it was a matter of pulling out every last bit of impurity through normal methods, even the New World Arcadians should have come up with one by now. The way you get a Crystal is by using magic of the same colour - the Red Crystal was superheated, the Green was bathed in healing and poison magic, and so on.

Silver magic is life and death. The only way to make one would be to tie it to someone's life force. This is why Fina even exists - the Elders would need a Silver Moon Crystal to awaken Zelos, and Ramirez was meant to be the warrior who would control it. They always intended to eventually kill Fina for it. It's not like they don't have a record of being enormous dicks.

Ramirez was stalling on Crescent Isle.

So, Ramirez almost kills Fina for her Crystal when he swipes the other ones. When Gilder shows up, he notes, "Good thing that guy's long-winded." As a general rule, Ramirez isn't. He's pretty quiet, and when he does speak, it's usually short and to the point when he's not in Omnicidal Maniac mode. And as he later proved with Elder Prime, it wasn't particularly necessary to attempt to drag the Crystal out magically.

Fina's still his little sister. He was waiting to get interrupted so he could take the rest of the Crystals and convince Galcian to go to the Shrine for a Silver Moon Crystal.

The Rains of Destruction from the Black Moon are what caused the Floating Continents.

Since Soltis was the cause of all the massive storms and air rifts, and the Black Moon Stone was found at the Dark Rift, one can safely say that all powerful/gigantic objects falling into Deep Sky have an effect on Arcadia's atmosphere. There is no sign of a Black Moon, but we have this Black Moon Stone. And we have this Gigas that brings down the Rains of Destruction. You have to wonder... why oh why does land float and fish swim in the air? How do ships just hover like air is buoyant? Why is there incredible deadly pressure on the surface of the world, exactly? How about... it was caused by the released energies of destroying an entire Moon to bring ruin to the world. That would account for it, since the rest look pretty intact.

• Maybe the Black Moon was smaller, too, so it got used up when the rest didn't.

Moon Stones in general float and are what cause the Floating Continents.

If you use Moon Stones as fuel, however they're actually used up, they make ships float. Blue Moon Stones, being associated with wind (and water), work the best, but any kind will do. Small hunks of Moon Stone, and even Moon Crystal, don't seem to float on their own... but they have to get off the Moons somehow. What if you got a whole bunch of them together and buried them in the ground? Eventually, they'd raise islands and continents from Deep Sky. Bigger landmasses would be hit by more Moon Stones from space, so they'd be more stable than islands whose "fuel" may eventually run out.

The magic of the sheer number of lunar chunks down in Deep Sky is what causes the pressures, too.

• Why is this a WMG comment? I think that this is established by the game.

• • It's hinted at, but we never get outright confirmation that I'm aware of.

Vyse is a master artist.

Those Discovery logbook pictures had to come from somewhere...

Skies of Arcadia and Valkyria Chronicles take place on the same planet

The Vyse, Aika, and Fina in Valkyria Chronicles are all implied to be the same ones from here, and it's very possible that all the moons but the silver one and all the continents are somehow not visible from Europa. Due to being separate from each other for so long, both worlds are at different technological levels. Mina and Hina were sent away because they didn't have the aptitude towards magic that Fina had. Also Vyse and Aika made up last names for themselves, just because.

Skies of Arcadia is a bad future of the world of One Piece

The Gigas are the Ancient Weapons. They ran amuck, evaporated the ocean and messed up the gravity.

Piasol's design was based on a velociraptor.

Look at her! "Feathery" hair, boots shaped like toe-claws, lanky, scythe motif...

Vyse's eyepatch is corrective.

He does have a bad eye, but only one. The eyepatch, when set right, normalizes it, and obviously has added bonuses. Also it's a relic from the Old World - that kind of technology seems a bit out of the grasp of Arcadians of Vyse's day.

Galcian has no feelings for Ramirez except as a tool, the same as Mendosa.

He just has more sense than Mendosa and knows he wouldn't win a fight with the kid. Plus, Ramirez is a very, very useful tool from his perspective.

Galcian killed or arranged for the death of Enrique's father.

Doc's story in the moonfish sidequest implies that Galcian has been planning his conquest for some time before the events of the game. Teodora is said to have once been a beautiful and kind woman, and it's implied that the death of Enrique's father (which we know nothing about) prompted her Start of Darkness. If Galcian had been planning long-term, it could be possible that he murdered or arranged for the Emperor to be out of the picture in order to manipulate Teodora into becoming the power-hungry dictator she is during the game. That would allow him to gain power and the ear of the Empress (whose goal he pretends to share), thus allowing him free reign to set the rest of his plans into motion.

Ramirez's sword is the same kind of thing Cupil is.

Only his has a lot less personality and only takes that sword shape. The sword and Cupil are the exact same shade of silver, and it makes sense that Ramirez would have brought along something to defend himself with.

Galcian and Ramirez were lovers.

Why would Ramirez betray the Sivites? Why would he be so loyal to Galcian? Why would he cry when Galcian was killed? because they were lovers. It makes so much sense.