Who killed the shaman? And what’s going on with incense-Paimon?
Thoughts, theories, and general discussion welcome.
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Organising thoughts. We start with errata:
I think the link in the email is wrong - it took me to chapter 261 discussion rather than this discussion page
over their mouth and nose
Not certain that’s wrong, but it feels awkward. I’m not sure mouthes and noses is better. Others may opine on whether I’m being too picky here.
clear the corpse.
Again, not an error, but it sounds odd in the context, though on first read I didn’t notice it at all. Uncover the corpse might be better. Or cleared the debris from the corpse
As Siobhan had suspected, it was the shaman. His eyes were still open, though they had clouded, sunk, and begun to leak.
This was the only thing that jumped out at me when I was reading it the first time - I think just “had begun” fixes it. It doesn’t read right without the had.
There were no other points that caught my attention (for editing) I was too captivated by what was going on.
So, her mother might REALLY be a semi lucid aberrant, trying to reach out to her daughter. How wretched! How utterly, utterly tragic. Poor Siobhan, who’s just a baby trying to be brave and grown up but who’s desperately missing her mother. Poor Miakoda, who can’t have been much more than 30 or 40 herself - a young thaumaturge with her whole life ahead of her.
Who killed the shaman? Claudio? Or grandfather? Or someone else entirely?
I’m inclined to exclude the third party. And grandfather, for that matter. The whole thing seems too crude and sloppy for him. I suspect he would have made him look like he’d died of an accident, or natural causes. Strangled, and in a shallow grave? It almost feels like someone wanted him to be found. Perhaps coincidentally just when Raaz was out of town.
Or maybe they were just that sloppy and careless.
I’m yawning my head off so I’ll finish on the same point you did - I cannot wait to see the nightmare manifested in the real world. I just wish I knew what Siobhan knows about the victims of the curse.
Definitely doubt it’s Grandfather. I’m sure he would have gone for magic over bare hands (unless that’s what he wants us to think??)
It’s all strange though. We have a sloppily, shallowly buried corpse with obvious marks of strangling. And yet, there don’t seem to be any signs of confrontation or break in above. Even his alarms were set. I don’t think a killer who cleaned up the murder scene that well would have done such a poor job hiding the body.
So was the killer someone the shaman trusted enough to let inside willingly, and then they got him by surprise? I wonder if Siobhan would have found other injuries, perhaps on the head, if she looked. Or maybe it was some incapacitating magic.
I feel like it goes like this: Maidoka becomes a doorway Aberrant. Grandfather calls Claudio to help study it. Claudio has an Aberrant in his body, but doesn’t tell anyone.
Claudio is convinced by aberrant to kill local shaman who could discover him. Claudio meets Siobhan at the house and the broken window damages Grandfather’s wards. Grandfather forces Claudio to take a blood oath of secrecy and that he won’t use his magic on Siobhan. Claudio and grandfather do dream walking to explore the doorway, but Grandfather doesn’t realize that Claudio is infecting everyone with an aberrant at the same time.
Claudio is doing a poor job keeping his aberrant under wraps, and grandfather incorrectly believes that it’s Maidoka. he’s gone through the doorway to try to stop the spread, without realizing that it’s all Claudio’s fault.
Claudio might not have an aberrant. I’m sticking stubbornly to my spirit theory - I think he’s either in cahoots with a spirit for power or he allowed one to possess him and lost control.
Apart from that, I think it’s plausible.
Honestly, my take is that the shaman doesn’t seem particularly fresh, so I’m guessing an entirely un-posessed Claudio killed him on the way in, simply because a shaman might have the means to detect their experiments and alert the Red Guard.
My current guess is this all sort of has to do with the legacy of the Brillig. Maybe the only surviving Brillig ended up stuck in the spirit realm, and, driven mad by existing there managed to destroy some of the underpinnings of reality there, creating the black wastes? And then with their remaining connections severed they weren’t able to destroy anything else, until the Mirrorakoda was created and a reckless asshole did some experiments that drew their attention and let them eat away at reality in a different location?
I dreamed of purple zombies and red sticky-webbed villages last night, so the imagery was really vivid! Dreaming on the subject of the nightmares that the story had all the villagers dreaming about … kinda spooky. But I wasn’t upset at all! (Is that a bad sign? It’s a bad sign, isn’t it?)
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Backing away slowly…
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His eyes were still open, though they had clouded, sunk, and begun to leak. She didn’t want to touch his face to try to close the lids.
The man showed no signs of emaciation, a distended belly,
So, I think you’re right about that. The corpse seems to be in active or advanced decay (eyes leaking and clouded, belly not bloated so past that stage) so more than a week. Maybe more than two, even. It depends when Claudio moved in. The first chapter is Month 4 Day 3, it’s now month 5 Day 14. So call it six weeks. (This is the point where I went off and googled what a corpse would look like after six weeks - RIP my search history, and I assume Azalea’s, too 
) Yeah, that could track. I wonder why no one’s noticed him missing if it’s been so long.
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We thank you for your sacrifice!
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I really applaud your description of the body decaying and the indications of morbidity. Often people leave out certain details relevant to death and you did it very smoothly.
Felt a bit bad for the chickens, left to starve by murderer and young investigators.
I am still trying to figure out who might have killed the shaman. It seems like there may be a couple of proccesses happening that Raaz wanted to learn about and that Claudio was directly seeking something from. The alignment with the spirit world seems like in some ways a direct way for him to find what he seeks of that is indeed his goal.
I do mildly wonder if Raaz sought out claudio as a way to help observe how a aberrant forms and perhaps “decays”.
Personally I wonder how similar the Fae and Brillig may bw to Aberrants. Like they may be elements of the same paradigm.
Titans too for that matter. Besides their size, they sound very much like abberants, with strange magical powers unique to each titan and varying levels of sanity.
Especially interesting to think on why they died out too considering the current rising levels of aberrants over decades
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So, I’ll start off by saying that I am incredibly feral for new PGTS and the notification has caused immense impact to my planned sleeping time. Evil (affectionate).
For theories, I think it’s pretty undeniable that Siobhan’s mother is an Aberrant involved here, and at least lucid enough to both recall Paimon and other details, and still possessed enough theory of mine to know how Siobhan might react and use that.
This is considerably more intellect than I think we’ve seen from Aberants before, and I am deeply concerned about what that means. Still riding my theory that she’s what ends up locked in Siobhan’s head, but I look forward to possibly being proven wrong!
Many appreciations for the chapter, and I look forward to more! Maybe I should read them in the morning though… we’ll see how far that wisdom gets.