Thanks for your patience with the short delay, everyone! 
Discussion welcome.
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It would be really funny in a tragic way if the book didnāt contain the method to create celerium. That all this chaos and plotting is all for naught.
Apart of me theorizes that the method the make celerium from beast cores requires a āshadow familiarā or something similar. Itās a fun guess because of all the similarities between the Raven Queen and Myrddin. I believe I recall a passage where the shadow familiar was able to draw all the energy from the beast core without breaking it and that being a special thing? Any theories on the celerium process?
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Where did the idea that the method is in there come from, anyway? I might have missed it, but I donāt remember that being explained.
Iām excited for them to read the 5th journal. Maybe weāll find out what it was that Myrddin felt regret over in the preface of the first one.
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I think itās because the book was open next to a pile of beast core on one side and celerium on the other.
Edit: found it in the prologue:
Atop it was a book. It lay open, with the handwriting stopping halfway down the page, abruptly, as if it had been interrupted. It was surrounded by loose sheets of parchment that held the faint remnants of drawings and diagrams, faded to the point of illegibility. Two bowls sat across from the book, one filled with beast cores of all different colors and sizes, enough potential energy for even the most powerful spells, and one with what seemed to be pure celerium Conduits, each half the size of his fist.
He leaned closer to the desk, ignoring the two bowls despite the wealth they contained, and peered at the ink scribbled across the bookās open page.
The writing was profoundly incomprehensibleāencrypted with a spellābut still perfectly preserved. Of course Myrddin would have placed preservative spells on his research grimoire!
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Not the most rigorous piece of evidence to base so much intrigue on
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Thatās all we have to base it on but they have to have more because Oliver had pre-arranged the theft which indicated that he knew before the expedition left so evidence that they found at the hideout doesnāt explain it.
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Your health is important, Azalea, look after it!
Good luck with your surgery, whenever it happens. Your readers will wait. An alive and healthy author can finish a series. An unhealthy author who works herself into a collapse, or worse, is unlikely to do so.
Truly, my wish for you to look after your health is for purely selfish reasons.
Anyway, on to the chapter.
Oliver was not smooth at the start of this one. Poor guy was practically having giggling fits.
Thereās something endearing about him saying that the plotting is the most fun. This must be how he and his sister ended up running away fully prepared to go work as stable hands. They probably enjoyed plotting together as childrenā¦even if she was significantly older than him. Then his plots became grimmer and more serious after she died.
Now he has a chance to plot with the Raven Queen and help her expand her influence.
No wonder heās giddy.
Oliver stared at her as if sheād just announced herself to be a time-traveler from before the Cataclysm.
Iām certain one of my future crackpot theories will involve Siobhan as time travelling Myrddin.
I do appreciate that Oliver does often put himself in harmās way when it comes to Siobhanās safety. Itās often quite subtle, but he does, and I think a lot of people donāt quite realise how much he values her
Losing such a massive advantage in knowledge to a hostile enemy force to spare her being tortured is huge, especially when Iām pretty sure there are compulsions which help you keep your silence under torture. Thereās undoubtedly a limit to them, but it could stop her revealing the secrets to a less prepared adversary and possibly buy time for a rescue. But it would mean the torture would continue.
Errata:
Itās true that the failings of a drowning man may drag down those around him ā flailings
He stared into the distance wistfully, his smile growing large and creepy again. ā I donāt think wistful pairs well with a large smile. If you just remove wistful the sentence makes sense.
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I feel like her comments about wanting Sebastien to have an independent power base say something significant about her plans for the astronomy potion and the future of the Society of the Coaster.
If she doesnāt want Sebastienās influence to by diminished by damage to the In Undreaming Order then she probably canāt really use the Order as her fake higher-ups, especially not after the Crowns kids have spent a decent bit of time with the Order while her brain was being repaired.
What she has had the āorganization,ā doing so far with Damien is mostly reviewing Red Guard actions, so maybe she just borrows a few Nightmare Pack members along with some of her neutered doggos and just calls the secret society The Watchdogs? 
It doesnāt fit particularly well with the star motif, but I guess watching the stars is just another type of watching?
Thereās a reason she was so resistant to naming it. 
The unnamed order and the Undreaming Order. She certainly has enough secret(?) societies to belong to.
I think whoever she borrows to help with this (if she borrows anyone) will have to come in disguise and properly briefed. Either that or she puts up an illusion in advance and gets Legion to do her voice acting for her.
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I was just reading moonsable, the side story, and after the whole reveal of this book I canāt help but think that Thaddeus has Miakodaās aberrant. Iām not really sure if there are spoiler policies or not on this thread regarding patreon content (considering that this does eventually get revealed to non patrons readers) so Iām not really gonna go in depth, but if my hypothesis is correct then WOW, Azalea consistantly surprised me with how thorough her world building/plot is
Weāre in the restricted archives, go wild.
Edit: I realised I should clarify. In order to post in the restricted archives (this particular folder) you need to be a patron who can see the content. Thatās why thereās no rules on spoilers here - there are in different places on this site.
Iāve just been mulling over the fact that Siobhan considered assassinating Hite and then decided against it because she might get caught.
But what if she finds out about the betting pool?
She wanted to solidify her status and gain power. She could always torment him with nightmares (Claudioās remnant would be useful with that). Or she could have Legion possess him if he threatens her again. On the one hand, surely the Red Guard have some defences against possession? On the otherā¦. It feels like something they wouldnāt bother with because they have wards against memetic effects and do those even work against Legion? Thaddeus fought them off, but that was before their pact with Siobhan and that was when it was trying to attack him rather than possess him. They were still constrained by the seal.
I feel there would be a significant amount of dramatic irony if Hite threatens to bring her in to make progress on consciousness transferral and she, er, demonstrates it. On him.
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Its interesting to think on. I suspectā¦she could essentially get a connection through continual visits through the spirit world using her moms part of legion to imprint Hite as a concept into one of legions spirit constructs. Asd other cultivated concepts from those concepts and she may be able to affect Hite from a unseen avenue to any words using sympathy and further be able to use that to steal concepts or patterns from Hite in a kind of reverse dynamic to the usage of aberrant parts?
I at least think such might work for accessing and affecting him without nearly as much risk of reprisal and be a good preperatory measure. I mostly see potential downsides from hubris or miscalibration of her applying such to others or not using similar strategems to help build up her followers capacity of will or modify her raven network to be more resilient in various ways.
Sweet! Thanks for through heads up. So to get right into it, we all know that Thaddeus has a forbidden secret that he keeps, some sort of research project that he has considered bringing the Raven queen in on. Considering all the secrecy, it would be believable for the research to be related to aberrants. This would further tie into how the red guard (and Thaddeus himself by extension) have theorized the raven queen to be an aberrant herself or at leas heavily related to them.
Furthermore, codename moonsable reveals that Thaddeus feels great excitement over unusual abberants that can be studied to further his knowledge (He states āIf we had an Aberrant that wanted to trade for our souls, perhaps it would help us understand if the soul actually exists, and allow us to quantify that existence. I, for one, would welcome such a being.ā).
He also comments specifically on moonsablesās lucidity and memories of her human times, describing her as ā[potentially] a benign lucid Aberrant [that retains] some remnant of [Millieās] remainsā. And given the contents of the most recent book, we know that Miakoda as an aberrant shows similar features, yet she shows those features in a āsuperiorā fashion to moonsable in that she doesnāt have a seperate normal form and a lucid form, but that her lucid form is her normal form.
This could the tie into Thaddeus belief that āThis Aberrant was unlikely to create the breakthroughā¦ that he neededā (with āthisā suggesting tyat he has a better alternative abberant to use) and that even if he loses access to moonsable, āthat was alright [as] His current research was more promisingā¦ā which further adds to my speculation.
But all in all, Iām just guessing here
I feel like Thaddeus would have made the connection to Miakodaās Aberrant when Siobhan escaped into the spirit realm if he had known about it though, unless they had some reason to believe the Aberrantās anomalous effect was something else. Maybe if it can view other Planes as well? That might have given Thaddeus inspiration for the spell he cast at the exhibition
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I donāt think I agree with that theory but to be fair it specifically took Claudioās help for Miakodaās mirror to see into the spirit realm.
Though even Miakoda seems to have trouble gazing upon the form of Hyperiodax directly, and cannot view the spirit realm at all without my direction.
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I think the earlier point was that, in theory, this thread will get moved to A Practical Discussion when this chapter sees public release, complete with all comments, but at the time Moonsable will keep being patreon-only. It does seem like a worthwhile question .
Claudio believed this to be true, but it also seems to be directly contradicted by the events of the book. Miakoda was able to rescue Siobhan from the spirit realm twice without Claudioās help or approval and then the two of them were able to rescue Raaz. Each time this happened Claudio came up with another explanation, because he didnāt regard what really happened as being possible.
I think Claudioās help might have been initially needed for her to establish a connection, and after that she was able, but did her best to refuse.
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Itās valid, but Iāve seen Moonsable discussed even outside of the restricted archives so I think itās one of those things thatās an open secret.
I agree with your conclusions about Miakodaās Aberrant. Itās hard to unlearn something once youāve learned how to do it and she definitely did let Siobhan out of the spirit realm multiple times. And Raaz. If an Aberrant can retain vestiges of its personality and memory Iām certain it can also retain its arrogance.
So its not about this chapter but I recently got my sister to start reading PGTS sheās half way through book two and I asked her who her favorite character was so far and she answered Newton.
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Oof. Oh no. Thatās gonna hurt.
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Oh, I am sad for her. Hope she keeps reading after ā¦