Safe within the Restricted Archives to start off this thread, you’re safe to post spoilers here for the next few weeks until it moves to general discussion.
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Welp, a tiny spark was enough to create absolute chaos :x
I wonder how she could escape though, between what Thaddeus did during the shadow familiar demo and the fact that he could just bruteforce a divination since he’s really close and powerful, or well, I’m sure he has a lot of spells at his disposal to restrain her.
And he might catch her changing into Sebastien too if she thinks she’s lost him.
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And seeing his reaction it’s definitely periodic, since he was fine with her knowing the rate of Aberrant appearance was increasing.
And what could cause that ? A very big one ? (Myrddin turned into one maybe ? Or something related to the Work ?)
Does it have anything to do with the black wastes ?
Does the red guard know what it is ? Do they have an effect on it ?
Or maybe it’s related to the nature of magic itself… so many possibilities !
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Maybe its based on the total population? Having too many people creates too many new aberants which in turn create more break events. Solution from the red guard would be population control maybe based on culling which would absolutely be a “kill anyone who knows” kinda situation
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Holy shit.
Holy shit!
I was not expecting that! Not at all!
And I never imagined Siobhan would ever get the better of Thaddeus in a confrontation, especially if he attacked first.
Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I am actually lost for words.
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Assuming Siobhan was reading Thaddeus’ expressions correctly, the interaction changed right after she brought up the increase in the frequency of break events. We know the break that day was a nightmare type and it could possibly be related to a new trainee associated with her order, but I think the bit about memetic spells is the key thing!
Thaddeus seems to think that the Raven Queen should urgently forget about the change in frequency (Myrddin decided it would be too dangerous for her to know, or her lack of knowledge indicates a fundamental conflict between the stability of her magic and related ideas to this).
It reminds me of the troublesome realization about “common sense” beliefs and magic that messed up Siobhan’s and Damien’s magic for a bit. So, I guess that he feared the thread of information she was pulling at would cause her to break.
It’s fun that she now has his blood!
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Damien: “Heh, “contacts?” He means just asking Lacer right? That’s easy and harmless. No big deal.”
Lacer when asked: “Okay, so I have no choice but to murder you for knowing that, but hopefully I can just delete your knowledge to avoid it.”
Anyway, I’m guessing that she has at very least just blew out his eardrum.
Her shadow familiar shouldn’t be able to overcome his innate magical resistance in order to cool down anything that was beyond any physical barrier, but because of that and the extreme cold she was creating it would also create an extreme temperature differential between the inside and outside of his eardrum, which in turn creates a sudden pressure differential. Possibly not only rupturing his eardrum, but also heavily disrupting his vestibular system and sense of balance
I’m also pretty sure he has a compulsion to kill anyone with that knowledge outside of the Red Guard that is actively conflicting with his attempts to destroy the knowledge and thus end the compulsion, so he has to actively fight against it in order to keep being non-lethal, decreasing his effectiveness. Between that, and him completely losing his sense of balance, I feel like she has an actual chance to escape.
And I feel like the best part is that he is probably going to read her actions as doing the same thing as him, reacting with a powerful freecast spell that was disabling while deliberately avoiding doing permanent harm. He’ll think that she’s an incredibly worthy adversary who could’ve killed him but chose not to.
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I supect this is, as with most love stories, all a misunderstanding.
It wasn’t the question about the topic that caused him to rip the lining of his coat to get the braclet; it was the question on how she reached her conclusion. She was evasive about where she came to know the information.
He is obligated to protect Red Guard secrets.
He may think it’s secret when, in fact, the break events are an observable trend, and not actually secret. But, because he thinks she didn’t obtain the information through observation, she did it by spying, he’s may be obligated to do something about it.
Hence the Myrddin question. If she’d said that she’d realized it through that, she might hve been safe.
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Morning after thoughts:
Didn’t she get some immunity from the Red Guard regarding topics of research?
“If I am to find the answer to this question, I will need leeway to research topics that would otherwise be too…delicate. Forbidden,” she clarified.
I feel that should be enough to get around his vows once either of them cool off enough to remember this.
Also, she has his blood. I wonder if he’ll realise she has his blood. I wonder if she’ll risk using his blood. This could lead to an amusing situation where he’s paranoid about what she’ll do with his blood and she just cluelessly cleaned her clothes of it without thinking of cursing him (or, more likely, she realises it’s too risky to curse a mage of his skill and it could backfire on her).
However, she is going to have to see him as Sebastien. I wonder if she’s going to work on her lying - simulating a personality that has no knowledge of his betrayal so that she can meet him calmly in her other form, giving nothing away.
I’m also of the opinion she should steal the other journals, write them out for Kiernan and Lacer and return them with a note about her not breaking her promises. Otherwise it might get a liiiiittle bit awkward in future deciphering sessions.
I doubt she’ll do this, she’s very risk averse. But I know she’s dying to read more and get answers. Also, it would be funny.
I’ve written out my thoughts elsewhere on why I think Lacer might have a very different interpretation of their altercation - her shrugging off the fear spell, her resistance to the sleep/paralysis spell, her ability to attack him effectively. I’d be deeply intrigued to see his point of view. But I also want to see her get clean away and go to ground.
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Yeah. For all sorts of reasons.
The choice is death or memory wipe. Really? If he knew RQ was also Sebastien, would the answer still be the same? If he knew the information came from Damien? Does this break the agreement with the Red Guard?
Also, what a fight! She dodged. She punched him. She stabbed him with her shadow magic. She has his blood. She escaped him.
But most importantly: No more Myrddin books? No more cozy coffee in Lacer’s cottage? No more passed notes? No more little talks with Lacer about the Raven Queen’s mysterious powers?
Holy shit indeed.
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To me the Myrddin question is because one of their lead hypothesis on the raven queen is that she was “created” by Myrddin and Siobhan is simply being possessed.
She made it as cold as her Will could achieve, as cold as the dark side of the moon, as cold as the disappointment of Thaddeus’s betrayal.
Siobahn really getting a hang of those transmogrification metaphors I see.
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This was another thought I had. Siobhan can sense the intent behind spells sometimes, like with the dazzler (another esoteric spell like her shadow) - I wonder if Lacer felt her anger and feeling of betrayal when she shoved her shadow into his head?
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I can’t help but think the cold ice pick to the ear has momentarily incapacitated the professor. Several years ago I was scuba diving in Hayden Lake, Idaho in January , when the ice cold water hit my ear drum, I instantly had the most extreme case of vertigo ever. It was terrifying! I could not even sit on the lake bottom, I just kept falling over. All I could do was hold my regulator in my mouth and hope it eventually passed.
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That’s an interesting idea. If they need to reduce the population to lower Aberrancy rates could they be supportive of the major war about to break out? I did think it was weird that they were so nonchalant about a major resource shortage that it would cause a war that would result in a surge of new Aberrants. Political neutrality is great and all but surely they’d be enthusiastic about much less work in the middle of a battlefield if they could help it, right?
On another note, anyone else think if Lacer had actually managed to wipe her memory it could have ended significantly worse than if he just tried to kill her? I mean Lacer is skilled I’m sure and he’d be tampering with much more recent memories but there’s still a hidden prison made of memories in there. What are the odds that accidentally pierces it while trying to excise specific knowledge of Aberrants from her head? He could have successfully subdued her and broken her mental resistance only to suddenly find himself face to face with a very angry Aberrant that was powerful enough to kill Grandfather dearest.
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Of course that’s why it was Myrddin question and not some other series of questions. For example: You read the coppers files? You analyzed newspapers?
What I meant was, if Lacer had some other reason to think the Raven Queen obtained the information without spying he might not have decided that memory modification was the only answer.
But maybe that’s just wishful thinking that they can fix this relationship.
I notice none of us believe her attack was lethal. It would be horrible if she has done something like accidentally kill him with her brain aberrant. It’s possible that we will never get another Lacer chapter … 
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I doubt that it was fatal - he did curse after the fact and if he has the presence of mind for that he can probably get himself a healing potion or cast a healing spell.
As for the relationship…well. Yes, Siobhan is taking it a little bit personally right now, but she knows he didn’t want to kill her - she acknowledges that when she says she doesn’t want to kill him either - and she knows why he’s attacked her. “If you don’t know then I don’t have to kill your” she’s bright enough to work out the red guard vows still have a hold on him. She might not feel safe with him, but I think she’ll appreciate that he preferred to wipe her memory than kill her.
I wonder if she can work out how to speak through her shadow. Then she could go talk to him with less risk and, presumably, without triggering his vows. You can’t exactly kill a shadow.
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I feel like the fact that she was asking him about it to begin with, rather than already knowing, and her uncertainty to whether it was a cyclical or one-way process indicate pretty strongly that she didn’t have definitive Red Guard information, and Lacer would know that, so I doubt he thinks it was from spying.
Honestly, I think it might be a little bit of the exact opposite of this. Siobhan has mentioned that her little friend can leak out precisely because her grandfather failed to erase all of the relevant memories, one in particular that he did not know she had. I think that memory erasing spells have the potential to truly seal it, and so are an absolute existential threat to it, and I feel like some of its instincts on the matter have bled over to Siobhan’s subconscious, making the prospect of memory modification extra terrifying.
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I think it depends on how Lacer’s spell works. If it works by just adding a strong compulsion preventing her from remembering or rediscovering the banned information, then yes there’s probably no risk of an escape. I’m skeptical that it would fully seal the Aberrant though, if he just banned her from thinking about Aberrants then sure our little nightmare is fucked but that seems like too much of a blunt instrument to be Lacer’s work. He’d want to eliminate only the one conclusion that’s too far for his oaths to allow. Anything more and he leaves a big glaring sign in her mind that someone been in her head; it’d offend his professional sensibilities if nothing else. So the memory of meeting the Aberrant is probably safe from his touch.
If the spell actively interacts with the memories, either to pick which ones to suppress, or to actively scrub the offending information, however. Lacer’s just created an active connection between his magic and her mind, if his spell pierces the memory prison’s containment he’s opened a window of opportunity the Aberrant will be desperate to exploit. Hell, it’s probably specialized in attacking that sort of connection considering how it must of gotten into her head in the first place. Worse, if he gets feedback from his magic about what it’s resisting it, it’s not a magic to mind bond it’s a mind to mind bond; one he’s willing entered into with all the additional vulnerability that entails. I can’t think of a worse ambush for Lacer accidentally spring.
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I just realized something. When Siobhan thinks its one more aberrant than they had alarms for, it’s not. It is two more aberrants, because one of the three alarms was faked.
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