Twilight Princess What Exactly Happened in Kakariko Village?

[Dragoncat]

We know it was attacked, but there's something I find hard to understand. There was a small handful of people who huddled up in the building called the sanctuary, and survived. But that sanctuary looked far from cramped, they could've fit a lot more in there, so what's up with that? Why was there not more survivors? If Zant's forces got into the sanctuary they wouldn't just kill a few and leave. On that note, it wasn't exactly an invincible building with barbed wire, shatterproof windows, a moat with crocodiles etc. It WAS the best they could manage, but I think a shadow beast or bulbin could have gotten in if it really wanted to.

Do you think the others went to Castle Town, or were the ones there really the only survivors? What kept that building safe? Why didn't they just stick the whole town in the sanctuary if they could? Were the innkeepers too stubborn, thinking they could fight the monsters and win? (Barnes mentioned that the shadow beasts got the innkeepers.)

 

[basement24]

I got the impression that pretty much the whole town was wiped out. Maybe I'm forgetting dialogue that says otherwise, but I don't think it was a case of having a lot of time to prepare or get to safety before an attack would have happened. It was a spur of the moment event where people looked out their windows to see Zant's forces cleaning out the town.

The sanctuary may not have been a fortress, but I assumed there was a bit of a religious explanation for that, as if evil was repelled by the 'good' of the building. Nintendo doesn't use religious iconography anymore (or severely limits it) so they stopped short of saying it was a church and the evil couldn't enter because of that fact.

Regardless, I just don't think there was time to huddle everyone together. Perhaps some escaped to Castle Town, but you'd think there'd be more people there who'd say "I used to live in Kakariko until..." that you'd meet.

 

[Beauts]

I assumed the attack happened too quickly for most of the people to escape to the sanctuary... maybe the one's who survived had some forewarning or perhaps they were just closer to the sanctuary in the first place, and so had more time to hide and keep themselves safe. Some may have escaped to Castle Town and other places, but I get the impression the village's population wasn't that big to begin with- I mean, assuming after OoT Castle Town grew immensely in this part of the timeline, a lot of people may have moved there beforehand towards the prosperity or opportunities a big town would offer. So, the population of smaller places like Karkariko would have shrunk.

 

[Hoff123]

Wow, I never even thought about that. I always thought something like this: "OK, so these abandoned houses must have had people in them a long time ago..." Like the Hidden Village, I assumed Kakariko Village was just getting less and less popular...lol. But the rest of the population... actually died?

EDIT From the Zelda Wiki: "By the time the events of Twilight Princess take place, most of the townsfolk have been already transformed into Shadow Beasts due to the Shadow Invasion". I feel stupid...

 

[DarkestLink]

The village was wiped out/transformed by the Shadow Beasts. The people in the Sanctuary were the ones ones who could escape.

 

[Dragoncat]

Yeah I suppose they didnt have much time and most of them didnt make it because they were caught off guard.

As for the "evil can't enter a church" thing, that's not true, look at all the events in real life to prove otherwise. People going to churches and going on shooting rampages, and the more well known issue, priests raping kids at the Vatican. But who knows, maybe Hyrule's gods are more involved than ours, actually protecting the churches and preventing bad things from happening to people in them instead of waiting for the criminals to die and punishing them then. Of course I have no proof that people who attack/do bad things in churches are getting punished in the afterlife, but I like to think they are and that's a whole other topic.

 

[basement24]

Yeah I suppose they didnt have much time and most of them didnt make it because they were caught off guard.

As for the "evil can't enter a church" thing, that's not true, look at all the events in real life to prove otherwise. People going to churches and going on shooting rampages, and the more well known issue, priests raping kids at the Vatican. But who knows, maybe Hyrule's gods are more involved than ours, actually protecting the churches and preventing bad things from happening to people in them instead of waiting for the criminals to die and punishing them then. Of course I have no proof that people who attack/do bad things in churches are getting punished in the afterlife, but I like to think they are and that's a whole other topic.

I don't mean it in the literal sense, but in fiction it's a common theme. This really isn't the place for real-life discussion on that though...

 

[Dragoncat]

I don't mean it in the literal sense, but in fiction it's a common theme. This really isn't the place for real-life discussion on that though...

Yeah. Which is why I quit while I was ahead...

 

[r2d93]

It would seem that the most logical explanation is that the timing of the attack resulted in where the citizens were and I guess only certain citizens could make it in safety in time. The others were killed and/or turned into shadow beasts.

I've always thought that the houses that were locked were simply that- locked houses, not abandoned houses. After all, if a person was killed or turned into a shadow beast how exactly would they find the time to grab their keys and lock their front door? I always thought there were people inside. The reason they were boarded up were probably to protect themselves from future attacks. OR even more likely, the owners of those houses are amongst the 50+ people in Castle Town

After all, there never were THAT many people in Kakariko before. Off the top of my head I can only think of MAYBE 15ish people who were present (let alone living) in Kakariko in OoT, so it makes sense that TP Kakariko doesn't have many people