So, every time aberrants are mentioned it seems to be assumed that every single one is going to be a threat to life, or even to humanity itself. Everyone seems to take for granted that every aberrant is going to be a threatening horror.
My question is, is there any reason that this must be true? Like, if aberrants were just people turned into engines that endlessly fuel a runaway spell effect, then you would expect there to be some aberrants that through pure happenstance had neutral or even beneficial effects from the perspectives of those around them.
But it doesn’t seem like people who have break events while casting divinations ever just turn into a window that looks upon a random landscape on the other side of the continent, or like there are any roving effects that transform one specific composition of mud into diamonds, or even any effects that are simply inconvenient, like not being able to close doors within a given vicinity.
It seems like every single one is actively harmful to people around it, and if they are just runaway magic with extra bits pulled in from the collective unconscious, then shouldn’t some of them be fine, just by pure chance?
What if there is something actively influencing them toward malevolence?..
Ought to be, right? Moonsable isn’t very dangerous on the surface of it; she just promulgates the effect of admiration of her. We have very few aberrants as examples so far, and most of them are the cautionary tales.
There are Aberrants that aren’t directly harmful, such as the one that gives out prophecies. It doesn’t seem to be harmful to people who leave it alone. There probably are other Aberrants which are similarly not dangerous if left alone.
However, consider that the cause of an Aberrant is 1) a thaumaterge having their Will break 2) while actively casting magic. Magic requires a strong Will, as you are effectively forcing a change that does not follow the laws of physics. So far, the Aberrants we know of all had their Wills break during intense traumatic events, or by casting magic through their flesh.
So that Divination Aberrant? The Red Guard set up an exclusion zone because it happily divines only negative futures for those who ask. I imagine a Healing Aberration would turn out like the lady who cast spells to remove her excess fat.
I think you might be misremembering what the Red Sage does. Its prophecies are sometimes positive for the people who go see it, if it likes them, that is why people continue to go see it.
They merely are always horrible for the world at large and everyone around that person.
In fact I view that description of the Red Sage as a Chekhov’s gun. I expect that some day we’ll learn that some prophecy was in some way involved in various of the things that happened to Siobhan.
Maybe S wakes up one day and finds out her entire life and story thus far was in fact just living inside a dream made by the abberrant of the accident/mother. NOTHING IS REAL
Yes, I think any loss of control channeling magic could cause it.
I always thought of aberrants like a virus. They exist solely to propagate their effects, which few (if any) people have immunity to, and, if left unchecked… Spread. Exponentially, maybe?
In the case of the one I meant it created access to a whole different world with its own magic system that seems more advanced than Lenore’s and means of powering magic off of the rifts the aberrant made, not to mention presumably an alternative to using celerium for everything. That creates room for an enormous amount of benefits in culture, technology, etc well beyond any harm that we saw from some rifts being vaguely, “dangerous,” and possibly physics-bending.
Though I suppose the Red Guard would look at those potential benefits and just see risks posed to the less advanced people of Siobhan’s world.
So, I suppose new and interesting magics, a probably a few plays and stories, and a whole new magitechnological paradigm would be what comes from at least one of the rifts.
I’m reserving judgment on that. I’m not fully convinced it’s an Aberrant, and if it is, I’m definitely not convinced that it’s neutral. It wants to eat the world, and even that wouldn’t satisfy it - part of me wonders if some part of Siobhan’s desperate and unquenchable thirst for knowledge is a byproduct of that.
Siobhan’s memory is perfect. She can recite things that people said months ago, word for word, same with nearly anything she’s read. That’s a positive potential effect, but the creature certainly seems to have strange effects on memories beyond her own.
Not only is it desperate for her to remember it, because that is what will give it power over her, but other people seem to take notice and remember her in either from…to the point of becoming obsessed with her. This anomalous effect appears to have spread from the pages and into the real world.
The rumors about her seem to be the fuel the city runs on. They were absurd from the very first day and have consumed the populace. The things people claim about her from the beginning seem strangely similar to either her (secret) abilities or the abilities she develops later - dream walking, traveling through shadows, destroying people’s minds, shadows separating from their owner, consorting with dark beings from other planes, etc etc.
In this world, what people believe in have an effect on how magic behaves,
So when enough people believe, of course she is gonna get powers somehow, and I wonder how much the magic guides her to make her think it’s her own doing
This is something I have been wondering since somebody asked if the RQ was trying to alter the public’s beliefs to her favor
And then when they started a cult…
Welp, this is how some cultures end up with a new god
Just to clarify a tiny bit more, the neutral or positive aberrant I was talking about was the one she read about in the hidden Crown of Madness journal that the people developing the spell apparently experimented with for a considerable amount of time and eventually fled into to avoid the Red Guard.
I didn’t mean the thing inside Siobhan. I guess I keep forgetting how ambiguous talking about an aberrant that makes rifts/portals is.
Ohh. I clearly misunderstood. I was under the impression they might actually be the same thing? It’s certainly possible that there are two entities with some of the same talents.
