Rhapsody of Fire: The Emerald Sword & The Dark Secret Saga are two series of symphonic power metal albums. They tell a pretty standard good vs evil storyline in this fantasy world called "The Enchanted Lands".
I've been listening to these albums in my car for pretty much the past year, whenever I go to work or anywhere I'm usually listening to one of them.
The band who made these series (Rhapsody of Fire) is from Italy, and their songs are multi-lingual (Latin, English, and Italian). Some of the songs deal with the story line of the album, and others are more about world building (Some of my favorites are just basically about the characters visiting a new land and expressing appreciation for all the beauty in it.)
I think these albums are the kind of thing you can enjoy and even get some meaning from even if you don't understand all of the lyrics, but I ended up reading along as I listened to it and it made the story lines a lot more clear.
I'm going to be discussing the storyline more than the songs, because honestly I thought all the songs were good. I love the guitar riffs, and the vocals and everything. If you asked me to name my favorite I could probably narrow it down to, like, five but really they were all fantastic.
Both series are really good, as long as you like symphonic metal, but I favor The Dark Secret Saga because I thought it was a little bit easier to follow along with what was happening, and also I really liked the main character.
The second series also has Christopher Lee as the narrator in between tracks, which doesn't hurt the production value at all, it also has some pretty decent voice actors do the speaking lines as well.
WARNING: This post is gonna contain *extensive spoilers* for both of the series.
The Emerald Sword Saga
(I just love how 8-Bit this cover looks!)
The first series has fantastic music, but the narration isn't that great. A lot of the characters in the first series start with the letter "A" and their names sound a lot alike. While I was listening/reading along for the first time I actually got really confused and thought the bad guy was one of the good guys until he started torturing other characters in horrible horrible ways.
The story involves this an evil army and a prophecy about a warrior who will weld this mighty Emerald Sword against the big bad guy. I thought it was weird that the warrior is simply called "The Warrior of Ice" because so many other random characters are given names, but guy who's supposed to be the main character is not.
Anyway, finding the Emerald Sword doesn't actually take very long and the biggest part of his conflict, to me, hardly involves the sword at all. The bad guy, who's name starts with the letter "A" but I can't remember what it is, captures some of the Warrior's friends and demands the sword in exchange. Ultimately they go along with it, which was totally a stupid idea because guess what? NOW THEY'RE ALL CAPTURED!
So as they're about to be tortured again, the Ice Warrior meets the Big Bad's second in command: Dargor The Shadowlord. It turns out, Dargor is actually a pretty decent guy. I mean, he is half-demon and he's liege-lord over a place called "The Black Mountain" (which sounds kinda sinister in itself), but actually he has a lot of the same values as The Warrior of Ice, and a lot of the things the Big Bad is doing he really doesn't agree with.
The Warrior of Ice sees that this guy is trying to be the voice of reason: they're all tied up about to get tortured Dargor's all like "Is this really necessary?", and when he's overruled he actually leaves the room because he thinks it's wrong and he doesn't want to be a part of it.
With the sacrifice of one of his team mates, though, The Warrior of Ice is able to escape to fight another day, but he's lost the Emerald Sword. So the next time they meet in battle, the enemy is waaayy overpowered.
Now Dargor is the one who's actually leading most of The Big Bad's army this time, fortunately. And since he's a reasonable guy he's like "Aright, I think I know a way we can do this so the least amount of people get killed. The Ice Warrior and I are gonna fight a duel."
So that's what they do, and strangely The Warrior of Ice wins! But he realizes that Dargor's actually a pretty decent guy, and not someone he wants to kill (especially now that the war is tentatively over, we'd much rather work with Dargor than the Big Bad) so he reaches out a hand to help him.
Now Dargor kinda been brainwashed and misinformed about the kind of people his enemies are, doesn't recognize it as a show of mercy, he thinks the ice warrior is toying with him so hits him really bad.
The big bad is all, "Whoops! He's down, looks like we won!" And starts torturing the injured Ice Warrior right in front of Dargor and this time Dargor doesn't leave because he's just now starting to recognize that The Warrior of Ice is a man of honor, just like him. And his whole worldview is shattered to bits. We get this really cool song while the Ice Warrior's being tortured, he's not really concerned with himself anymore: he's reaching out to Dargor. Just like the last time he encountered Big Bad, his friend knew he was going to die so he sacrificed himself in such a way as to let the Ice Warrior escape, now the Ice Warrior is spending his final moments pleading with his honorable enemy to see the truth...to kinda "save him" from the evil that he's doing.
And suddenly it clicks for Dargor that the Big Bad is a lying low-life POS and he turns on him. Together, The Warrior of Ice and Dargor have this really epic fight scene together and the Ice Warrior kills the Big Bad. Dargor and his people fight the other evil creatures of the night.
Victory is won, peace is established, and the lands that have undergone such destruction begin to be rebuilt.
The Dark Secret Saga
This time they're not waiting for the forces of evil to amass a lot of power until they become a big threat, they're proactively looking for ways to undermine the forces of evil.
It involves finding two books: First they have to find "The Black Book" Vol. 7, all the others in the series have been apprehended but this one has an incantation that can bring this really powerful demon king back into their realm, so it's pretty important they find it. The put together this crack team of adventurers to track it own. The adventure is fairly involved, and once it's done, you realize it's only half the story.
They've negated this evil influence, but now they have to find a way to fight evil on it's home turf.
So some time later the gang gets back together and decides to look for 'The White Book of the Holy Angels'. This book was supposedly written by an Angel named Erain during this great big primordial war between heaven and hell. I can't quite remember, but I think the angel Erain used his life blood to write the book and he, like, infused his soul into it. Very cool!
This time there's a bit of a twist though, because they have a turncoat in their midst. (I won't tell you who it is.) They go into the chamber where the book is and there is a statue of a dragon standing over it in a protective stance. And they're all "Huh, that's weird!" And they look closer and the statue's eyes have been plucked out.
Pretty freaky!
Then just as they're bout to grab it, the turncoat tries to snatch the book, and there's a fight scene which was actually pretty confusing because I wasn't sure who the turncoat was a the time. (I thought it might be Dargor...almost broke my heart!)
The turncoat isn't able to steal the whole thing, but he does pull a chunk of pages out from it.
Later on when they get the chance to examine the book, we learn more about the Dragon statue they saw protecting it. It sounds like Erain the Angel and the Dragon (who's name is Thanor) were actually kind of a dynamic duo. Thanor actually used to work with the demon king, but he betrayed him by telling the Angels where the demon king was hiding.
The demon king (who's name is Nekron btw) got so mad he killed the dragon, and then Erain turned him to stone. The dragon's eyes (which are precious gems) were spread out in the world as a kind of blessing. If they find the dragons eyes and put them back in his statue, he'll come back to life and be able to fight Nekron before this big cosmic convergence that will allow him to come into the world of the living.
They do that just in time, but it turns out those missing pages become very relevant here: Because the Dragon needs Erain to bring the fight to Nekron. Erain is kind of...dead...er he lives in the book or something. It becomes clear that one of the members of the company is going to have to use the book to take his place, and in doing so they will have to physically die.
(Guess who the lucky demon prince is going to be?!)
Dargor's like "Ummm...That doesn't really make any sense because I unless you forgot I BASICALLY AM A DEMON."
Really though, kind of the same thing as it is with the dragon: they were both created to serve the will of evil and they have an understanding of it that the other characters don't, they have freewill and not only did they CHOOSE TO REJECT EVIL, but they also lived their lives in such a way that they were actively CHOOSING TO DO GOOD.
So yeah they are basically the best guys for the job.
So Dargor dies, physically, but really he just kinda becomes exhalted: his personality is still there, and he binds with what's left of the angel and gets a new sick bod and awesome powers!
The End!
I just really love Dargor as a character, and the whole journey he goes though. I love that his Flashback-POV song is so emotive, and his speaking voice sounds like velvety and kinda like he's bored most of the time.
It kinda makes me think of someone who, like, used to be real emotional as a teenager and now they're an adult and they try to be cool and act like they don't care about things (But they actually really do care about things...)
I imagine him too look like a combination of this guy:
My five favorite songs that I can think of right now are (in no particular order):
- "Old-Age of Wonders"
- "Dawn of Victory"
- "II Canto del Vento"
- "The Magic of the Wizard's Dream"
- "Forest of Unicorns"
- "The Ancient fires of Har-Kuun"
- The Myth of the Holy Sword
Yes I know that is more than five songs, no I do not care.
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