 Welcome back folks, today we are going to be looking into one of the mysteries of Erdreia. In Dragon Quest XI you frequently hear about the legends of the original luminary Erdwin and the sage Serenika who fought against the dark one many years ago. Erdwin comes from the now ruined kingdom of Dundercil and Serenika is from Arboria where Veronica and Serena come from. When you first enter Arboria you are immediately greeted by a giant towering statue of Serenika in the background. A big question of course is where does this statue come from? Well, a book in one of the houses in Arboria titled The Architect of the Ancients answers this. In the book it explains that the statue of Serenika was created by an itinerant architect who spent most of his life working on the statue. While the statue is rather far away we can use the debug camera and the PC version of the game to get a closer look. You'll notice just how massive the statue is, it's almost like Mount Rushmore. It can be seen that the statue actually closely resembles Serenika in the game. The strands of hair on the front look just like her in-game model. Her coronet is here as well and it is across her forehead rather than on her crown. The statue appears to have the same round earrings Serenika wears and her clasp for her cape appears to be exactly the same. While this is very hard to miss, a lot of people playing DQ11 will beat the entire game without even realizing that Erdogan, the Luminary of Legend, has a statue as well. The same book goes on. What is less well known is that this statue is created as a counterpart to another, that of the Luminary which stands in ancient Dundercil. Indeed, it would seem that the fates of these two great statues were as wedded to one another as those of their subjects. So dear reader, should your travels ever take you to Dundercil, be sure to pay your respects to the mighty Erdogan. Who knows what benefits the blessing of both of these great monuments might bring. And indeed it is less well known as upon reading this I had already explored Dundercil in the game and I had never even noticed this detail. So I ventured back to Dundercil to see if I could find this statue and just walking around the city at first you will not be able to see it no matter where you go. It is upon entering the next part of the city where the Luminary originally meets Rab that the statue is first visible on the side of a mountain in the distance. It is so far away and blends into the environment so easily that I am not surprised so many people missed it entirely. Of course I want to take a closer look but the closest you will possibly get to the statue in the game is after Luminary and Rab complete their ritual at the altar of souls. And after this sequence is over you will not be able to return to this area without hacking the game. This is the closest you can get to the statue in the game. Luckily we have the debug camera allowing us to take a closer look at the statue. Additionally the statue appears in the Dragon Quest XI arc book so we can compare. Upon looking at it it does not resemble Erdwin in the game very closely at all. The statue is of a man with a large helmet, a long cape descending towards the ground and he is holding a sword. Erdwin as we see him in the flashbacks has a coronet not a helmet and he does not wear a cape of any kind. The sword that the statue is holding clearly looks like a sword of light used by the Luminary and it is quite close. It has the same general shape and the blade is wider at the middle just like the original sword. It's interesting foreshadowing since we haven't seen the sword in the game up until that point. Now the helmet and cape combination looks a lot less like Erdwin and more like the armor of Erdrick from the original Dragon Quest trilogy. You can see the gem in the middle of the helmet, the plume on the back of the helmet and the original armor has a long cape as well. This to me is clearly meant to be a throwback to the Erdrick trilogy more than anything. The same way Erdwin's design is supposed to be a throwback to the design of the Dragon Quest 3 protagonist. Who knows though, maybe Erdwin had an armor set like this he wore at some point? It would certainly add to a number of fan theories. Another interesting thing to note is that when the party arrives to Haven's above they find much more accurate statues of the heroes of old that closely resemble each of their in-game models. Which makes me think that they may have been made when they were all still alive while the statues in Dundrasil and Arboria may be from many years later. Just my theory. So that's about as much as we could get out of it. I like exploring this game a lot, it seems like almost every day I discover something new about it and I have a whole lot more to discuss soon. Until then, see you next time.