You guys are brilliant!
I have a question: Do we have any timeline info for Myrddin’s life in relation to the the death of the blood emperor?
If we assume that the alternative form is always the same, then the Argent (the powerful Siverling sorcerer at the end of the empire) can be another “Sebastian”. Perhaps, other historical sorcerers have used the transformation too.
It is totally possible that Myrddin created the form to reflect his own body, but what if the amulet was an older relic?
What if the use of the amulet in combination with other requirements (maybe talent + bloodline + exposure to abherrant event) allows/improves the ability to split one’s will. The amulet might have helped both the Argent and Myrddin (and others?) become so powerful.
The sinister resurrection idea can still work with this. Let’s say the amulet allows people to split their will as one of the effects of weakening the correspondence between the “identity” and the physical body of the person wearing it. In the magic system, we know that definitions and held beliefs are critical. If wearing the amulet makes you think of yourself as you regardless of your body, then your body will gradually becomes less and less defined as yours. We already saw that the thing sealed in Siobhan made a move to control her shadow which she had so often used to mimic a familiar and which is believed to be a separate entity from the Raven Queen by many people. Is there a more horrific thing(s) waiting for her to lose more of her conceptual bounds to a physical form?
My new theory: the amulet was created to open up a whole new level of flexibility in thought and dramatically improve spellcasting. It has changed hands many times. With extended use, it weakens the concept definition that is protecting its owner’s body from being taken over by something horrific.
Bonus theory (1): Myrddin’s regret has a lot to do with the amulet. Perhaps he created it for someone else who ended up being taken over and causing a tragedy. Or perhaps he used it himself to become more powerful, and ended up losing control of his shadow/body or somehow allow something monstrous to materialize with his original form.
Bonus theory (2): Abherrants are created when people with access to “magic” get into a state of refusing reality/wanting to stop being and instinctively reach out to magic to enforce their will. At that time, their will resonates with a proto-magic-entity that takes over the association with their physical body instead. Or alternatively, the application of the will results in a “re-definition” of the person that changes what they can perceive and what assumptions and logical patterns guide/limit their thinking. The latter option would explain why the abherrant are much more powerful yet restricted and weirdly similar to some aspects of the person before the break event.
Bonus theory (3): Someone invented modifying the magical definition of oneself to gain power. The use and popularization of this idea solidified the magical possibility with transmogrification. People who became abherrant unintentionally used this spell in their heightened emotional states. There were no abherrants before the invention.
Bonus theory (4): The blood empire was working on “human optimization” and the amulet was created by the Argent after his own image while working on that research. Myrddin and his collaborators got the amulet and some research notes from the destroyed empire[0]. They continued the project and inadvertently made abherrants possible.
[0] I’m assuming Myrddin lived after the empire ended. Reverse the order otherwise.
