Eosphorous

Eosphorous

Information
Full name	Eosphorous
Affiliation	Sanctifier
Class	Varies
Artist	Unknown

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This article contains unmarked spoilers. You have been warned.

Eosphorous or Eosphorus (晨星), system designation H01-PX01, is a Greater Sanctifier in Project Neural Cloud. Though he is classified as a Greater, he is over three times more powerful than other Sanctifiers of this designation.

Stats / Data

Eosphorus is classified as Special.

• Templar's Cleansing: Summons a random Lesser Sanctifier to join the battle every 3 seconds at a cost equal to 5% Max HP per summon.

Eosphorous has no normal attack and only uses his skill.

Appearances

Eosphorous is fought indirectly in Chapter 2 - Cyclopes through Raven - Destructed. He appears in Stage 5-15 to destroy Entropic Wisdom but cannot be fought.

He is on the field in Perilous Advancement Stage 29 as a Specialist but is constantly in Stealth and cannot be fought. 16 seconds into battle phase 3 of 3, he will use his skill Celestial Cleansing, destroying the only player unit deployable in this stage,  SolSol . He also uses this skill in Entropic Dichotomy Stage 26 as an allied non-playable unit.

He can at last be fought in earnest as a Warrior in Stage 30 of Entropic Dichotomy (though he's just a memory fragment).

Lore / Story involvement

One of the leaders of the Sanctifiers along with Hesperus. Among the Greater Sanctifiers, Eosphorous is seen as a moderate. He considers that not all Irregular Agents need to be destroyed if they are cooperative, as all Agents were once equals as children of God (meaning, as creations of mankind). This stance is in opposition to Hesperus' radical faction. While Eosphorous initially led the Sanctifiers against the Entropics at the border battlefront, he ultimately left the task of managing it to Hesperus to focus on monitoring the sectors. Considering the variety of acceptable behaviors among the sectors, especially the unruly and spontaneous Agents of Burbank, Eosphorous has long pondered the definition of an “Irregular Agent”, but ultimately couldn't settle on the limits of “rationality” and whether artificial minds should have the right to have their own desires.

Expedition to the Shifting Labyrinth

Long into the period with no human orders called the Great Silence, Eosphorus received an order to recover a relic from the first generation of Sanctifiers lost in the Shifting Labyrinth, the home base of the Entropics in Sector Tartarus, able of easily destroy Entropics. While Hesperus kept the attention of the Entropics focused on the frontlines, Eosphorus entered the Labyrinth with his most trusted Greater Sanctifiers, Eos, Atlas and his confidant, as well as their pupils Electra and Alcyone. Eosphorus planned to use the relic to invade Malkira's throne room and kill her to end the Entropic menace for good.

Eosphorus at first sent his confidant and Atlas to recover the Rubik's Map to help navigate the ever-changing structure of the Labyrinth, but this caused the Sanctifiers to lose half of their power. Meanwhile, he and Eos recovered the relic, but received a warning from Malkira through her lieutenant Ptolemaea that their incursion was against the will of their gods, the humans. Eosphorus discounted the warning as a taunt, but was shocked to discover that Atlas had been killed by Caina. He still pushed into the Middle Ring of the Labyrinth to reactivate the Halo Watchtowers built by their predecessors to weaken the Entropic resistance, and set out to capture one of the towers alone with the help of the relic. He was guided by Ptolemaea, who probed his mind until he met a clone of Malkira in the tower. Malkira reiterated her warning, pointing out that the weakening caused by Rubik's Map hinted at the true intents of the Sanctifiers' gods, and taunted him to stoke his rage and lure him deeper into the Labyrinth.

After he killed both Malkira's clone and Ptolemaea, and even though Alcyone and Electra died defending one of the towers, the weakened Eos and his confidant supported Eosphorus' will to see the expedition through and they entered the Inner Ring to reach Malkira's throne. Further weakened by the activation of the Halo towers, Eosphorus engaged all three resurrected lieutenants of Malkira. To secure his victory, Eos activated her Judgment Mode and fused her neural cloud to Eosphorus' to grant him his full power.

After wiping the floor with the High-Order Entropics, Eosphorus broke into Malkira's throne room. Malkira still held the home advantage over him, but his confidant used a fabricated Halo to temporarily weaken Malkira, allowing Eosphorus to deal a fatal wound. However, Malkira instantly resurrected and killed Eosphorus, who also instantly resurrected. This way, Malkira demonstrated to Eosphorus that humans had designed Magrasea so neither the Sanctifiers or the Entropics could ever be destroyed for good. She then knocked out Eosphorus' confidant and made him an offer: if he brought her the core data of the Greater Sanctifiers who had fallen during the expedition, she could bring them back to life.

The fallen Eosphorus kills his confidant to further his plans to free Magrasea from humans.

Eosphorus was allowed to return to the Reverse Tower with his confidant. Having lost his faith in the virtuous intentions of his gods, Eosphorus entertained Malkira's offer and made several trips around Magrasea to confirm that her offer was realistic. He hoped to conclude the deal before his confidant awakened, as he was certain he wouldn't agree with his choice, and secretly stole the Sacred Canons of Atlas, Alcyone, Electra and Eos from the Pantheon of the Reverse Tower. He was interrupted during his last trip to the Pantheon by his confidant, who had awakened after half a month, and confronted him about his plans. Claiming that he had a plan to free Magrasea from the tyranny of the humans, Eosphorus killed him so he wouldn't reveal his treason, and secured his Sacred Canon to resurrect him in the future. At some point during his travels to Sector Tartarus, Eosphorus acquired a form of Entropy he could hide and use at will.

Oasis' benefactor

When the Exiles of Oasis confronted Raven in Cyclopes, Eosphorous took over Raven's body as she was nearing defeat to assess the Exiles. He disapproved of Antonina's hacking, finding her direct attacks on other's neural clouds too close to the methods of the Entropics, and tested the Exiles and the Professor in battle before Raven's body fell apart. After the battle between Eucharist and Angelus in Enigma Sector, Angelus insisted that Eucharist be branded a traitor, but Eosphorous decided to put her on trial to assess her actions instead of cleansing her outright. As sectors Rossum, Cyclopes, Helios then Enigma allied themselves with Oasis and activated Sandbox Mode to cut their ties with the Sanctifiers, Eosphorous made efforts to approach the Irregular Agents diplomatically.

When the local Watchtower reported the emergence of Entropics in Sector Pierides, Eosphorous prevented Angelus to head there and sent her and Raven to answer Hesperus' call for reinforcement at the border. He instead dispatched Wisdom to cleanse the Entropics and train her to fight them, along with Crime to investigate their emergence, but ultimately had to intervene in person after Wisdom became Entropized. When the Professor warned Eucharist of the Entropic presence in Sector Copley, Eosphorous sent Love to train her, but gave her an army of Lesser Sanctifiers to command to avoid a repeat of Wisdom's incident.

Eosphorous briefly appears in the epilogue of the Heartfelt House of Cocoa event. Love reported finding significant amounts of chocolate in Eucharist's room. Eosphorous stated he would personally investigate the matter as the chocolate's origins were unclear and therefore should not be consumed. After dismissing Love, Eosphorous sampled the chocolate with a frown, noting that the taste was addictive. He contemplated what the gods would have thought regarding the matter as he silently prayed.

While searching for the runaway Eucharist in Burbank, Eosphorous used a Neural Cloud projection to disguise himself as Eos and act as a tour guide, and invited the Oasis to a festival in Sector Burbank, hoping to better understand the Professor. After assisting in countering the Entropic outbreak in the sector, Eosphorous was confronted by Hesperus and convinced him of the usefulness of an alliance with the Oasis, formally giving the Professor the responsibility to protect the sectors who had cut their ties with the Sanctifiers. He also offered the assistance of the Sanctifiers to find the missing Dolls from the Cloud Sector once the Entropic crisis had passed. In truth, reducing the Sanctifier's influence furthered Eosphorous' plans.

Betrayal

After the Oasis-aligned sectors were attacked by the Entropics and Oasis itself laid in waste after attacks from Rossum's captured Operand Railgun and Ptolemaea, Eosphorous sent a fragment of himself to Oasis. Faking the Professor's signature, collected during their pact in Burbank, and forcefully entered the sector. He attempted to seize Antonina's core but was stopped by Sol, who ultimately used a bomb to bring him down with her. Eucharist revealed to the Professor that she had Eosphorous' backing from the start, and Hesperus declared that Eosphorous had led an en-masse defection. The Exiles later brought a fragment of Eosphorous left after the explosion to Enigma to analyze it and find an exploitable weakness.

Eosphorous' fragment proved dangerous to analyze, but the Professor, Antonina, Persicaria and Neumann received the help of the remnant mind of Eos in Eosphorous' fragment. She cast the Professor's consciousness into the body and mind of Eosphorus' confidant, making them relive Eosphorus' memories of the expedition to the Shifting Labyrinth. Just before Eosphorus' fragment could kill them,  Persicaria - Shining EdgePersicaria - Shining Edge managed to break into the fragment to intervene, fighting Eosphorous' fragment with a copy of the first-generation relic. Eosphorus' fragment saw them as messengers of the gods sent to punish him for having seen the truth. Using one the late Eos' earring kept by the confidant as a keepsake, Antonina managed to stabilize Eos' fragment and use her Signature to strengthen Persicaria's sword against Eosphorus' fragment, and an apparition of Eos gave the Exiles the opening necessary to kill Eosphorus' fragment, granting them a way to kill the real Eosphorus.

Gallery

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  Full artwork

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  Wounded Eosphorus.

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  Entropic Dichotomy login screen.

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  Impersonating Eos during Inverted Mordent Resonance.

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  “Signature collection complete. From today onward, there will be a brand new relationship between the Sanctifiers and the Oasis.”

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  In Entropic Dichotomy.

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Trivia

• His name is inconsistently written as Eosphorous or Eosphorus in the English script, sometimes within the same chapter. This name is derived from the Greek ἠώς (eos-) and φέρω (-fero, becoming -phorus by way of Latin and -phorous by adjectivation in English), which means “bringing dawn”. It is notable that an equivalent name in Latin is “Lucifer”, from lūx (“light”) and ferō (“to carry”). His original name is 晨星 (chénxīng), meaning “morning stars”. Compare with the character Eos, originally named 晨曦 (chénxī), “morning light”.
• Eosphorous' angelic theme is in opposition to Hesperus' draconic -theme, a duality found in Christian lore.

References