Even in Arcadia | Sleep Token | Lore Explained

Even in Arcadia: Sleep Token Lore Explained

Vessel and Sleep’s love story has gone through many trials and tribulations. 

Last left off in TMBTE with Vessel accepting that Sleep will never really love him the way he wants. He continues on serving her with a broken heart. 

**What follows is my personal interpretation of the album Even in Arcadia. 

Even in Arcadia begins a new chapter where Sleep takes Vessel on a journey to another realm. Sleep has the power to view other worlds—in the reality where there are infinite alternate universes, Sleep discovers one that intrigues her. She has been keeping her eye on it and becomes somewhat infatuated with this world called Arcadia. 

She has been slowly growing bitter about the world we live in as she and Vessel have been working hard to gather followers to bring Sleep into the Earthly world and a fully living and breathing deity. 

However progress has been slow, and it’s only made worse by the strain in the relationship between her and Vessel. The urge to travel to this exotic land of Arcadia is growing more and more appealing. 

Meanwhile Vessel is feeling beaten down, growing resentment toward Sleep and her poor treatment of him. He’s been going through some dark days. 

Sleep approaches him with the proposing: Go with her to experience Arcadia. Vessel jumps at the idea to disappear from his reality for a while and go on an adventure. 

However, Sleep warns that when they enter Arcadia, she won’t have control of where exactly they end up when they get there. They will be separated AND neither of them will have any memory of who they were before. They will arrive as blank slates and will have to see if they can find each other in this other world without the aid of their memories. 

Vessel agrees to go on the journey as it’s the ultimate test to their love: either they will find each other and fall in love all over again, or he will finally be free of her once and for all. 

Arcadia is this gorgeous world filled with beautiful palaces and the jagged gray rocks broken up by delicate Arcadia flowers bursting up through the stones. 

The world has been at war since the beginning of their history. Two houses war for control of the land: House Veridian and The Feathered Host. 

Two races of Arcadians exist: Veridians and Feathered. At one time both races wielded magic but the magic has long since died out. 

There is a prophecy, however, that promises the return of their magic belongs to the Hero who will end the war between the factions once and for all. Of course, both races believe the prophesy speaks to their own race obtaining Hero and conquering the other. 

House Veridian is a warrior society (imagine the Spartans). Veridians are the bigger and physically stronger race. They live for war. After their ancestors where once enslaved by the Feathered, newer generations have sworn to wipe the Feathered from the face of Arcadia. 

Feathered Host (imagine Atlanteans) what they lack in brawn they make up for in brains. They are incredibly smart and have created technology to take the place of their dying magic. Oh, and they’re originally born with wings. However, over centuries of war, many of their wings were cut off by the Veridians to the point where children began being born without wings. Now, only the nobles and royals have wings. 

Track 1) “Look to Windward”

Vessel arrives in Arcadia and washes up on the shore. He is alone and totally lost, doesn’t know who he is, where he is, or how he got there. He is nearly dead, having almost drowned when he arrived. 

He is soon found by a Veridian woman who saw him fall from the sky and crash into the ocean. She drags him from the shore and nurses him back to health. Word soon spreads of a stranger who fell from the sky who doesn’t look like a Veridian or a Feathered.

Track 2) “Emergence”

By the time Vessel wakes up from his near-death experience, he is at the castle of House Veridian, and he is told he is the prophesized Hero come to rid Arcadia of the evil Feathered Host. 

Vessel is overwhelmed by this idea that he is some savior to these people. He doesn’t even know who they are or who he even is. He rejects the chosen one status while he gains his bearings. 

He finds out the woman who saved him from the shore and nursed him back to health is actually the Veridian princess. She begins showing him around the kingdom and introducing him to her people and their way of life. 

Vessel begins to settle into life with the Veridians and begins falling for the princess. 

The princess encourages him to seize his destiny as the prophesized hero. However, he feels he can’t accept this role until he knows who he was before he fell into the ocean. 

Track 3) “Past Self” 

To help Vessel learn who he was, the Veridian Princess takes him to the seer. The seer offers him a glimpse of who he was before he came to Arcadia. Though he only gains a glimpse, he doesn’t like what he sees. He sees darkness, pain, blood… and at the end of the vision he gains a whisper of a memory about the promise of love and someone he was supposed to find. 

The cryptic knowledge of his dark past life scares him. But Inspired by this new idea of love needed to be found, he decides to take the plunge with the princess and confess his feelings for her. 

She returns his love and at her urging, he eventually decides to embrace his role as the prophesied Hero. 

Vessel and the Princess, along with the help of the rest of the Veridian nobles, begin conducting their plans to decimate Feathered Host. 

Their plan is to send Vessel in to the Feathered capital as a spy. They’ll make him look like a Feathered Noble and pass him off as the Feathered prophesied hero. Once he has established himself there, he will take down the city’s defenses and let the army of Veridians in to conquer. 

Track 4) “Dangerous”

Vessel gets swept up in working toward the plan to defeat the feathered. He and the princess have hit it off and he feels he loves her; however, he keeps seeing this woman in his dreams. She’s this beautiful dangerous thing. And he’s completely captivated by her. 

The thing that disturbs him about the dream is the woman is a Feathered. He decides to ignore the dreams and chalks it up to nerves about the upcoming plan. 

Track 5) “Caramel”

Vessel’s disguise is ready: it’s an elaborate farce complete with fake wings that he is able to move enough to look convincing. 

With preparations complete, he says a heavy-hearted goodbye for now to the princess and travels to the Feathered Host kingdom. 

Vessel is extremely nervous. If his disguise fails or if he is found out as the Veridian Hero, he will be executed in an instant. 

On his way to Feathered Host, he begins gathering followers. As planned, the Veridians spread rumors of the arrival of the Feathered Hero and word has spread to the Feathered lands. 

Along the way, every Feathered person he passes wants to see him, touch him, talk to him. People fall on their knees before him, and he can’t help but feel like a traitor when he sees the zealous love and adoration in the eyes of the Feathered people who look to him as their savoir. The people treat him like a god, which is far different than the way the Verdians treated him more like a great weapon.  

At the same time, he is terrified of being found out. Day after day passes and he grows more and more worried that he will be caught and killed. 

The only thing keeping him sane are his dreams where he sees the dangerous feathered woman. She doesn’t speak on the dreams, but she somehow offered his strength. He latches onto the image of her as he nears the Feathered capital. 

Track 6) “Even in Arcadia”

Vessel reaches the Feathered Host kingdom and has amassed a huge following that have come along with him. The gates to the kingdom swing wide at his arrival and welcome him and his entourage of dedicated followers. 

Vessel is taken to the palace where he stands before the Feathered king and queen—he locks eyes with the queen for the first time and discovers she is the one from his dreams.  

She meets his eye and there is a moment of unspoken understanding that passes between them, like she’s seen him in her dreams as well and she’s been waiting him to arrive. 

Track 7) “Provider”

After all the parades and politics of the Feathered hero’s arrival has finished, Vessel is showed to his rooms in the palace. 

And it’s no surprise when the queen comes knocking on his door that night. Vessel keeps his disguise on and the two talk. He learns she is a new queen only having married the king a few months ago. She has a similar story to his, she woke up in a field of flowers one day and has no memory of who she was or where she came from before. 

Vessel knows it’s dangerous for him to risk discovery by continuing to see her, but he can’t help it. He can’t seem to keep away from her and it doesn’t take long before they become lovers, and Vessel realizes he is in love with her–he fell in love with her at the first sight of her the first time he dreamed of her. 

Track 8) “Damocles”

And now he’s really in a pickle. He’s fallen for the enemy and the queen at that.

He’s accomplished infiltrating the royal Feathered court, they embrace him as their savior—but what would happen if the queen found out who he really is and what his plans are? 

He’s afraid that at any second he’s going to be caught either in his affair with the queen or with his subterfuge. 

As the days drag on he begins doubting if he should even go through with his plan to destroy the Feathered. He fell in love with the Veridians because he spent months with them learning their culture and being accepted by them. But the Feathered are nothing like the villains the Veridians made them out to be. 

Time is running short. The Veridian army will be there soon, and he is supposed to put down the city’s defenses for the attack.  

In a moment of vulnerability with the queen he decides to bare himself to her and let his disguise drop. She stares at him in shock, and he waits for the proverbial sword to drop. 

Track 9) “Gethsemane”

Vessel explains who he is and what his plans were with the Veridians. He goes on to explain it doesn’t have to be this way, it doesn’t have to be Feathered or Veridians, he proposes they turn their backs on both and just run away together. 

The queen reluctantly agrees, and they make plans to meet in the gardens outside the palace and make their escape the following night. 

Vessel shows up at the gardens but instead of the queen he finds the king’s guards waiting for him. They rip away his disguise and put him in chains. As he is dragged away, he catches a glimpse of the queen, and her face is all he needs to see to know she betrayed him. 

Track 10) “Infinite Baths” 

In the Feathered kingdom, traitors are crucified. Vessel knows he’ll soon meet his execution. He knows The Veridian army is waiting just outside the city, but without his signal and ability to fall the city’s defenses, there’s no chance of them saving him in time. 

Awaiting his fate in the dungeons, a mysterious gift arrives, a small vial with a note asking him for one last dream. No secret, it’s from the queen. He hopes maybe it’s something that will help him escapes—maybe she hasn’t betrayed him after all. He drinks the vial and realizes it was a drug. His heart shatters as he realizes it’s not an instrument to aid in escape; it’s a way to make his torture and execution bearable. 

He falls into a calm, drugged state as he is taken and cleansed for his execution. They bathe him and he spirals out dreaming of the queen, he sees Arcadia with a new appreciation for the beauty as he goes willingly to his execution…

However, a side effect of the potion he took combined with the pain of the torture caused him to unlock a hidden magical power within him—the kind of magic that used to flow through arcadians in ancient times. Just as the executioner’s blade is about to fall, Vessel stands up, dark magic breaks out of him as he seizes hold of the power becoming the prophesied hero. 

And here we are left on that cliff hanger—not knowing if Vessel will live or die, not knowing if he will fight for house Veridian or Feathered Host and not knowing if the queen knew the drug would reveal the magic within him or if that was a coincidence.