It seems that they’re getting very close to finishing the trials, and it seems to work great for everyone else, but am I the only one who thinks that Siobhan is going to be the one exception where it has disastrous results?
Siobhan has a seal in her mind to prevent her nightmares from escaping. Whatever creature is dreaming on her behalf will not… They won’t have her memories, but Siobhan’s dreams don’t seem to be just memories.
I feel like if they try it then she is going to spread aberrant effects to a raven, which will then escape somehow. A flock of aberrant-ravens (an unkindness I guess?) flying around Gilbratha is going to be terrifying, nearly impossible to stop, and going to end up with the red guard hunting her with all of their resources.
I mean, yes, the spell has restorative effects, but it also seems to transfer more than that. There presumably is a reason you can’t put off sleep indefinitely just with normal healing/regeneration magic and wakefulness brew, because sleep also involves more aspects than just physical recovery, and more than just that is being transferred.
The existence of shamans, lucid dreaming being a major part of their craft, dream-walking, etc. also indicates that there is a magical component to sleep, and esoteric bits seem like they could possibly transfer to me.
Yeah - there are many things with sleep that are unknown by S’s admission, however the reason why I’m pretty confident in my thinking that it should be safe is that S is a target of the spell rather than providing bits of herself. If she was sending her dreams and tiredness to be experienced by someone else than I think that your concern would have been very valid.
If you think about a spell like a pipe let say and whatever it transfers(healing restoration etc.) as fluid. As I understand Raven provides all the “fluid” that goes through the pipe to S.
I think this is the reason the spell works well in the first place. Rather than trying to figure out what sleep does for you and try to imitate it you simply outsource the process and transfer benefits(“fluid”) without really fully understanding what they are.
Since S doesn’t share anything back there is no outlet for whatever is sealed in her dreams to escape. I’m assuming here that whatever is trapped in there can’t use magic independently to do a spell on the same principles as reverse scry to escape which I think is reasonable at this point but may change in the future as seal weakens.
I mean I don’t think anything is going to be transferred to the raven. I don’t think that’s really the issue.
But yes, when the spell is cast on S the one thing we can be sure of is it will not interact with her the way it does for everyone else, because narratively, it’s a giant Checkov’s gun pointed right at her.
if we look at it like shes both asleep and awake would that not maybe you know be even worse as there would be a path open for the nightmare to affect S anytime.
I do think when the spell stops the link is entirely broken, but I guess we’ll see… but a flock of Aberrant-Ravens sounds like exactly what Gilbratha needs. 100%.
Would a flock of Aberrant ravens be a Nightmare of Ravens? Or an Irreverence of Ravens? Or a Torment of Ravens?