Low mana levels mean we can't defend ourselves, explosions everywhere, we cause a scene upon entry and get at least arrested. Honestly, the pool seems like the safest option to me.
Do areas not vary significantly in magic levels? "Low magic" at the point of exit isn't the same as low magic everywhere. Plus, I'd rather try to deal with the local police of the fireworks dimension, with no more magic than is found in that dimension, than deal with the being responsible for that pool of blood, with
all the magic of that pool.
Local police
probably won't have a teenage girl summarily executed for appearing out of the middle of nowhere. Realistic societies generally are not that batshit.
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EDIT: And before we get too involved in "but what about witch hunts?" Consider:
Witch hunts in real life generally went after the following classes of people:
1) Unpopular members of a community.
2) People accused of witchcraft by other people who had been accused, who were trying to avoid death by deflecting blame.
3) People who had assets that another person could take for themselves by getting the victim executed for witchcraft.
The thing these groups have in common is that the people accusing them and getting them killed have a
motive to kill them. With Melia falling out of the middle of nowhere, the motive isn't there, and even if there are laws on the books saying "magicians must be put to death*... The most likely result is going to be an extended period in captivity, at least hours, in which time Melia can sever her tether. Even if there's danger it is
not going to be immediate danger, unless these people are not merely nonmagical but also completely bughouse insane.
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*By the way, I think that "what if the fireworks dimension has a 'burn all magic-users' law" speculation is WAAAY more contrived than "what if the lake of blood with the familiar scent and the unseen voice singing about forgetting the fear was created by the sort of entity that might attack or otherwise harm people" speculation.
Not sure I agree with that first bit. I'd actually call that the best-case scenario. I would be very surprised if we managed to acquire anything of value there.
Well the point of origin is pretty boring- but then, look at the dimension we just visited! NONE of what we gained came from the site we first appeared at. Everything we got (including a variety of valuable supplies and knowledge) came from interacting with the local inhabitants. We didn't know what the inhabitants would be like when we went to the 'tower in the woods' site, we just happened across them later.
If the tower had been a stretch of road in the middle of nowhere, and we'd encountered the same two people and so on, everything would have played out the same way. It is simply not justified to say "our point of entry looks boring, therefore the whole dimension is boring."
By contrast, "our point of entry looks dangerous, therefore
the point of entry itself is dangerous" is basically a tautology. Note that I'm not even saying the whole dimension is dangerous, just that the specific part of it with a lake of blood looks dangerous.
I'm going to have to disagree with your 'worst probable case scenario', though. I don't think it's probable that we'll die, given what we've been told by the QM.
Because, um... he's told us that
just deciding to go there will not in and of itself be lethal?Do you have more reason than that?
I mean, Alivaril has never, ever said that the places we're going are
safe. I don't think he's ever said anything that can reasonably be interpreted as, say "I won't create any dimensions where Melia would have, say, a 30% chance of dying or being imprisoned and horribly tortured forever."
Your words imply that you believe that no such dimensions exist. I cannot understand why you believe this.
All Alivaril promised is that just picking 'the wrong dimension' to go to won't kill us all by itself. It doesn't mean the places we go are safe, it doesn't mean there isn't great danger. It doesn't mean we can just
skip the step of trying to rationally evaluate the hazards associated with the places we proposed to go.
I would just like to point out that I have ADHD. That doesn't excuse my occasionally impulsive behavior, but at least in my case it's somewhat pathological. I'm treated, sure, but it never really goes away completely. Also, mania from bipolar can come with similar issues. So I'm kinda doubled down on the impulse issues, since I have both, and lean towards mania. So yeah, I'm kinda impulsive.
Well, I sympathize, but we've been discussing this issue all day, so this isn't exactly an impulse decision on your part. It's like, an impulse can lead
two thirds of all men to do something stupid (touch the electrified bar). I can at least sympathize with that, because I can hardly pretend that two thirds of all men are just deeply defective.
At the same time, we've been arguing over whether to touch the electrified bar
all day from my point of view. It's gotten a bit confusingly exasperating. And yes, as someone else pointed out, here there are potential rewards whereas with the electrified bar there are zero rewards other than "relieve boredom." On the other hand, the risks are a lot higher than "receive mild electric shock."
I gotta say, that would be pretty BS and railroad-y. And it kinda sounds like something our powers were supposed to be avoiding. I mean, supposedly our powers are actively avoiding areas with a lot of danger. That example would be more than enough for me to call 'BS'.
Really?
So, us appearing in a place where we're attacked is bullshit?
Because I don't recall Alivaril telling us all the places we'd go would be
safe. I recall him saying none of them would be unavoidable death. Making us answer a riddle to avoid being attacked (by a monster we could conceivably just plain defeat, or talk out of eating us) would be positively tame, by those standards. "Unavoidable death" would be something like dimension-jumping into a volcano, or a dragon's mouth.
It does NOT mean that, say, we won't encounter bandits, or a monster that likes to eat people, or a trap that's hard to escape from, or a magic system where losing control of our spells would attract the attention of demons, or something like that.
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