Discussion welcome. 
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Glad the surgery was a success, and good luck on your continued recovery!
Lot of very interesting stuff this chapter. First, whatever Myrddin did to live so long is something he has to repeat, “refreshing” his body. I wonder if it’s some form of consciousness-transfer, perhaps creating a new body and then inhabiting it, or if it is just something to renew an existing body. If it’s the former, maybe he is still alive somewhere, living an unremarkable life and taking an un-Myrddinlike form. Who says he needs to keep his appearance consistent?
Second, we got a glimpse into the other people in his life. The person he’s addressing, logically someone else who can split their Will, likely either extends their life by means similar to Myrddin himself or is just of a really long lived race. The other, “Night”, sounds like they may be some kind of spirit like Legion, given their insight into the way magic works.
Lastly (well, for this comment anyway), I notice Siobhan managed to open the journal without needing to assume Sebastien’s form. I don’t think she’s ever actually tried that before (not without the Architects’ spoofing anyway), but interesting to see it’s possible. I was a little surprised she’d never attempted it before to be honest
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Siobhan may wish to go back to that book of Myrddin myths. It referenced Night and how she supposedly gave him a piece of herself.
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My Sympathies, due to clotting factors my family has a history of needing surgical removals and post surgery recovery sucks.
It seems or at least I suspect that Myrdinn traced the updates of will into the spirit world. Which gives some interesting potential angles for Siobahn. Both for herself given her unique constiution may make finding herself easier and in potentially teaching others with the aid of Legion.
A school is good, though the Undreaming Order also teaches in a mutual aid style. It may depend on what connections and social services she can tie to her school indepdently. Nominally she wants to avoid her powerbases becoming antagonistic or interfering with each other even as she silos them. So she can likely actually allow the Undreaming Order and the Green Stag to say help her kids get meals or transport to actually help them do well in schools. And perhaps focus on Ana and her connections to help get more of a administrative base from her school as Sebastian.
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He did note transmutation, if he knew thw traceries of the body enough nominallly he could just be transmutting his body at fine detail to a given state. Aging in technicality isnt one thing and is mostly just a lack of repair. If you could properly ideate a full scale shift you could avoid a very large amount of it.
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“Strategies supplies,” → probably “Strategic supplies,”
I’m in a hotel and need to go catch my flight soon so as much as I’d love to reread the chapter right now and potentially catch more typos, I will have to put that off for now.
I’m glad you’re back, even if it’s just for a week. Your body is fighting for you - it’s good to give it the space it needs to recover and replenish itself.
As for the chapter…
I think Siobhan is still a little naĂŻve when it comes to revolutions.
A bad regime which leaves its people in poverty and extracts wealth for the wealthiest without giving back in security, education or decent standard of living - this is a regime that is stealing lives. Lives of people like Betty. There is some stability, but that stability is not bloodless - it’s just that most people keep their heads down and pretend it doesn’t affect them or that there’s nothing they can do. You don’t have to abduct and torture people to ruin lives - although that happens and people still look the other way for the sake of their continued “peaceful” lives.
Revolution is also not bloodless. But if you can persuade, bribe and blackmail people to be on your side, especially people in positions of real power, then it pays dividends in lives. Information, as well, is king.
As someone who is experiencing the news a little too personally these days, and in my teenage years, I have a great deal of sympathy for Oliver’s position.
Morals are good to have, but not at the cost of innocent lives. Bastards get things done, especially when there’s rules for thee but not for me. Some people do not care about laws. About ethics. About humanity. Some people only know force and will only bow before a greater one.
And I’m out of time. I didn’t even get to Myrddin’s journal or Sebastien’s business machinations. Oh well! A future comment!
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Forgive the formatting - typed this up while I was on the plane.
Errata:
or do the same job with less resources. → fewer
He agreed and, without hesitation, she left. When she reached the street outside, she hesitated for a moment, → there’s nothing wrong with this, but the two hesitations in such close proximity feels a little bit odd. Perhaps “paused for a moment” instead?
“Kid,” he greeted. → he greeted sounds weird. Greeted her? Said by way of greeting?
I kept the account books are ready for review any time. → I kept the account books, they’re ready for you to review at any time.
The kinds of things that don’t directly involve magic or acquire accreditation. → require accreditation
As per earlier comment “Strategies supplies,” → Strategic
Damien is going to eat his heart out when he sees Sebastien’s new hair 
- he’s excessively vain about his own.
I’m going to have to go back and reread the sections from Enough Yarn to Fill the Night. I have initial thoughts, but none are particularly coherent.
The foreword is haunting me. “Please forgive me.” Night who is spoken of but not to. The parallels with Siobhan’s life and the talisman she found. The theories people have about Night to Naught. Spirits. Aberrants. Why the Titans went insane. The cataclysm. The disappearance of the Fey.
Thoughts. Disparate, percolating and yet to cohere.
Possibly I need to sleep on it.
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I kind of think the Titans may have been trying to form stable identies in the outer reaches using the information of, I suppose the "haeccity” as it were of other beings. Which has all kinds of interesting implications for Siobahn and Legion as a interesting step towards such a goal. I wonder how old the Naught project is exactly. Also makes me curious if the Blood Emperor was really from across the sea and not somewhere stranger
The Titans ended up ravenous and mad, which…I can see that tracking.
Imagine you created a magic in order to impose haecceity (good word for the situation!) - for what purpose do you do this?
Myrddin wrote that he was able to track the Will through the fabric of magic…
I can’t even begin grasping at all the implications.
But if this was all the doing of the titans, was this what led to their downfall? Was this what led to the cataclysm? Are there still titans out there powering this magic (possibly even in death!) or has it become so ingrained in the fabric of magic that this magical haecceity is now imposed upon people at birth?
That kind of magic is astonishing in its scale, in its perpetuity, in the sheer breathtaking arrogance of its undertaking and the power that would be required for it.
Why? What is the benefit?
Unless it was a means to escape death, or to extend life past death.
Or maybe I’m failing to grasp something. An idea is scratching at my brain regarding magic, Will and a new world order.
Everyone can be a thaumaturge with practice. Was that always the case?
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I can now identify use of the Will and isolate it by tracking someone’s identity through the fabric of magic rather than inside their body. I’ll call this link a quantum tether, which works on a similar principle to the sympathetic magic people dabble in. This identity is external, but constantly updating and interdependent with the Will-source—the mortal flesh. If I were more romantic or less educated, I might call it a soul.
But for those who believe in the myth of the soul, this would be the most disappointing possible revelation, seeing as it is artificial. I knew of this from talking to Night, and of course had seen the evidence in myself, but grasping the specifics for myself, understanding it in clear calculations, is entirely different.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around that part.
What’s different between someone’s identity and their Will ? Because to me the Will represents who someone is but maybe it’s the natural part and the identity is the artificial part, however that was done.
But then it doesn’t seem that the Will is directly tied to the body since the amulet allows someone to swap bodies without affecting the Will. Unless it’s not exactly swapping or maybe it’s keeping enough of the original body to keep the Will intact. The eyes are one thing, but then probably the brain too ? But there’s also no issue for Siobhan while her 2 bodies are from the opposite sexes and just general differences in morphology.
I wonder if there’s something that actively handles updates to this artifical identity in a centralised manner and it’s becoming more unstable over time, since local spikes in break events increase the chance of becoming an aberrant globally. Maybe it’s in the middle of the Black Wastes.
The Will is the muscle, I guess. The force one can bring to bear in order to impose their desires upon the world. The…quantum tether, the soul, is the brain. The personality. The thoughts of the person. Their identity, to an extent.
It’s not quite perfect as an analogy, but if the Will is contained within the body and the quantum tether exists externally then I suppose you can be in any body so long as the original still exists and the quantum tether connects you to both. Perhaps this is why injuries translate over - because the two bodies are conceptually one in some form. Hair is “dead” once it emerges from the scalp so a haircut wouldn’t need to translate from one body to the other, but bruises and cuts would.
Perhaps experiments on body transference failed dramatically because they didn’t know about the soul and so failed to accommodate for it, leaving the connection between identity and Will damaged.
I’m honestly still having trouble really understanding that extract. It’s fairly mind boggling.
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This idea has been percolating in my head since reading the chapter. I’m wondering if a break event is essentially where the quantum tether is broken or hijacked by a spirit.
When someone breaks generally we’ve seen a rapid transformation in their body which could be the effect of suddenly having a new identity tethered to them. If that identity is of a spirit, I think I am correct in saying they typically have one drive/theme which could tie into having one effect the aberrant propagates.
Additionally, the breaking of the original individuals tether could be only a partial break, leaving some element of them present like we see with Miakoda.
There is a decent chance the Archaeologist has had his quantum tether eroded or possibly hijacked from his Black Wastes excursion too as his identity/awareness of self clearly is not as strong as it once was. Makes me wonder if places or objects in the world could technically have an identify tethered to them and potentially the Black Wastes is growing because it is corrupting or changing the identity of the land around it to be more like itself/the spirit realm.
We know that the Black Wastes have a somewhat corrosive effect on the self, eating away at the mind.
If the quantum tether - the thing connecting a person to their self - is the thing that is being eaten away that would make sense.
We’ve seen the advantages that Legion brings, the extra senses Siobhan has access to, even though she keeps them very separate from herself. If we apply that to your theory, it does fit. The Archaeologist has lost that connection to their past self and looks upon his past self with a certain degree of…contempt? Pity? He thinks he was very small minded, even though he, himself, is not entirely in his right mind.
His memory is shot but he can sense things like Legion can. His psyche is…somewhat fractured. That’s like a break in the skin barrier, allowing microbes to enter. But he still got out before he was fully broken. He’s still there. He still remembers.
We know that it’s not just people who remember. The fabric of magic holds some kind of memory and we know that magic pays more attention to certain individuals. So perhaps that’s why Miakoda, Siobhan and even Claudio were more resistant against break events - because someone, something external to them remembers as well. Just that tiny bit of a buffer.
As for the Black Wastes themselves…what one man can achieve, can’t another tear asunder?
If the titans created the soul, could not the Brillig have sought to destroy it? We still don’t know why the titans did it. We don’t know the effect it has upon people, upon magic, upon the world itself.
But here are two races who have been brought to destruction and two great magics that persist to this day.
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I have had similar thoughts but I dont quite think it has to be hijacking. Rather, I think, its simply a “rearrangement” as it were of the differentiated pattern of a being and the spirit world. Because in technicality spirits are just kind of aggregates of information, implictly information from the physical world but could be from lots of places. In essence, the spirit world is an aggregate pool of information of reality with different inflection points of differentiation allowing spirit aggregates to be more or less stable. So, a break event to my mind would just be the illusion of separation being broken as a being reached out from their limited frame of reference to more of the totality.
I suspect that ones own patterns are always being reflected into the Spirit world, the Will simply helps differentiate ones own pattern from others. A further related supposition is Will is basically what allowed life to differentiate itself from the rest of things. Natural selection and later social ideation shaped what particular patterns of magic were normal through reinforcement. But a new, altered spell can be made at any time; it just has less time being defined by others, which means its a less stable pattern. So Will is tied to the physical forms of beings existing at all, and stuff like skin providing resistance, but not eyes. Its like an aggregate pattern itself of the feedback loop of things existing, thus Wills own categorized multifaceted nature.
The Identity is the wider network of connected symmetries beyond the limits of the world. Theres a whole pluritude of traceries a being may be leaving in the wider planes as it exist. But the statuses of normal "living” are enforced things, going against greater gradients. As a analogy, there are wider patterns of water that water cycles through you and me, and actively over a century many configurations of human, plant, soil and rock. But a body carefully maintains its levels of salts and such in the blood to maintain a specific amount of water so the heart can pump blood through displacement. So though there may be sympathetic symmetry between water in general for the identity of life, a persons will regulates the prescence of it to maitnain equilibrium. And the Will is sieving and maintaining certain levels of differentiation from those wider connections as one stays alive. The “soul” here is artificially facilitating tracing those wider connections while the person is alive. Which would then nominally let you actively design or facilitate new Wills.
So summary. Identity is wider causal connection to the greafer pattern of reality, Will differentiates a thing to maintain itself as seperate from that totality, a Soul can externally trace identity and thus how to differentiate new bits of Will.
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