It's a Girl's World -- And Lilly wants Adventure

Senus definitely has some kind of Concordance; he was talking about tension and fractures.

Maybe his Ethos is some kind of Oath/Concordance thing that lets him foresee, and then shape, what people will do by getting them to accept little tokens or perform trivial actions? It'd definitely be in keeping with a theme of "abuser, but amplified by magic powers?" And I'm sure that whatever his Ethos was, he'd naturally shape it towards ways to coerce or entrap others, given his basic sadistic personality.
 
Senus definitely has some kind of Concordance; he was talking about tension and fractures.

Maybe his Ethos is some kind of Oath/Concordance thing that lets him foresee, and then shape, what people will do by getting them to accept little tokens or perform trivial actions? It'd definitely be in keeping with a theme of "abuser, but amplified by magic powers?" And I'm sure that whatever his Ethos was, he'd naturally shape it towards ways to coerce or entrap others, given his basic sadistic personality.
Whatever he's doing, I feel like he might be best added to the 'kill from a distance just in case' list, because whatever's going on there could be really damn dangerous.
 
The beginning of the chapter, the new names, are they rivals, unique individuals who got similar power up as Lillie?
 
I am always late to these things because of their size.
He leans in closer to speak seriously, "Listen Lilly, I know you might that Senus Marnic's rose means-"
A verb or something else is missing. "you might suspect", or "you might not know", etc.
More often than not you'll find an Essene wielder who only possesses supportive powers
"Essense"
Your eyes lock in on his 'Explain' written clear across your face.
A comma is required in-between.
That is not to say Narisell does not have resources to bare, far from it.
"to bear". Likely derived from "bring to bear".
Zach is right, dad did choose you over him, you've were always so concerned with how terribly misplaced your life was that it never occurred to you someone might be envious of it.
"you were"
It's not long before you see a Watchmen riding back toward your home.
"Watchman"
you've come to realise that {Favoured Within} combined with the general reinforcing nature of your own Innate Essence will stop light clothe suffering from wear and tear.
"clothes"
The Temple were not able to make her safe to see, none you were able to visit her and Myah's father could not afford the cost of warding letters to be passed between any of you.
"none of you"
You're first instinct is to be quite open with what you can do now
"Your"

[x] [NIV] Razgul on the Run (Goblinoids)

You always wished your father had picked you, always wondered why you were not his choice. It wasn't worth losing your sister even a little, but there is a spark of true joy there that even the guilt can't subdue.
There is nothing to understand. Any family who had to fret over a kid with a dangerous and long-lasting illness would know how it goes. Most people pay attention to what is currently on fire, hoping that everything else can wait.

Dad believed Lilly was in danger of dying due to her character and his prior history, and was doing everything he felt he could to drag her from the cliff he thought she was heading to. That didn't help, she has died anyway, directly as a result of his actions, which served as a basis for our renewed understanding with him, but it doesn't mean that what he was afraid of was wrong. Nor was he wrong to fear for her even after her return, though for different reasons now.

Zach doesn't know any of this, and so he looks for answers elsewhere. The problem is that something that would be self-evident to an adult needs to be filtered down through the perceptions of a barely-puberscent boy. The part that makes the setting grimmer than Warhammer is that people get their experience-based cosmic powers at the age when they barely can get a handle on their thoughts and feelings. ...which come to think of it, is how most Magical Girl settings work.

Then again, Lily is smarter than her age would let you think, and so we should afford the same courtesy to her other siblings. We should explain the stakes, and what exactly is going on. Dad invested in Lilly rather disproportionally, it's true, but Lilly is about to pay back the debt. Even though she is rather ungrateful, it is for a different reason than Zach believes. Not everyone has {The Ladder} to tell them the absolute best path to walk, and Dad couldn't have known he raises a Godling... and even if he did, he still wouldn't have known what to do with it.

Tell this to Zach, and though it likely won't change his resentment, it would direct the worst of the feelings away from himself. Let him have whatever Inverted Ethos that results, and work on steadying him. We have all the tools in our arsenal to prevent the outcome the captain told us about.
 
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"Where a weaker soul would crumple, she stood strong. Where the coward would run, she was brave. Where misfortune could twist a heart cruel, she chose kindness."

Uh... out of left field... something to do with our soul, maybe? Some kind of... modification was added to it? Not exactly out of left field, though...

I'm gonna need to reread the entirety of Arc 1, aren't I?
 
I wouldn't be surprised if the left-field challenge concerned the nature of the force projection of the more powerful countries. After the countries are described, this is stated.
" You notice the Captain is evasive when speaking of certain 'resources' countries possess, when pried he simply says you should come join him at the Watch's Camp tomorrow. There is something you need to do before he can tell you of such things."
Yeah, my bet is on either the 'resources' or the thing he wants Lilly to do before she receives the information. As to the exact answer, I don't have anything yet.
 
And I'm sure that whatever his Ethos was, he'd naturally shape it towards ways to coerce or entrap others, given his basic sadistic personality.
Senus Marnic is honestly the kind of character I find the most disturbing to think about in a fantasy setting where personal power has far less reliance on societal factors.
Psychopaths aren't so unsettling because you can at least understand that they just do not 'get' the whole empathy thing.

But Senus knows exactly what he is doing and enjoys patiently deriving intelligent and creative ways to inflict misery. He's the kind of person who would spend a year wooing a naive Lilly into thinking she is the fairytale princess to his valiant knight, just so the turnabout could be all the more deliciously tragic.

Thanks for Typos :)

You are pretty spot on there. Lilly and Zach are both not really capable of looking at Yolun or each others' actions from an objective perspective right now, there's a lot of history and feelings in the way.

Lilly doesn't really get how good she has it with Yolun. He'd likely have held off marrying you until much later than is typical for this time period, setting you up to be independent in the (not unlikely) event you couldn't find a man willing to put up with you. He's also managed to impress enough restraint onto your personality that you are not likely to get yourself ganked by mouthing off at an inopportune time.
Lilly's pre-Ethos life trajectory was never really going to be happy or fulfilled, but Yolun at least ensured it wouldn't be tragic.
 
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Umm.... part 1. It was revealed the Lilly is technically now a demigod. Is it that the older kingdoms are also ruled by demigods, and they won't be happy?
 
Senus Marnic is honestly the kind of character I find the most disturbing to think about in a fantasy setting where personal power has far less reliance on societal factors.
Psychopaths aren't so unsettling because you can at least understand that they just do not 'get' the whole empathy thing.
That's always the fun part about fantasy settings. In the real world even the worst tyrant is only so dangerous without the help, willing or not, of the people they oppress. Serial killers are creepy, but they're not superhuman. No one can grow so intelligent or powerful they're simply beyond the ability of anyone else to deal with. Not here! Ethos that powerful are probably extremely unlikely and uncommon, but there's always that nightmare scenario of someone who can tell whole armies to just fuck off or sing a nation into obedience being a complete asshole.
 
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...Wait. Lamric. "Twice Given". Why do I have a horrifying idea that they might feed people to dungeons?

...this is stupid, but I'm posting it anyway just in case.
 
[X] Plan: It Begins With The First Rung

[X] [NIV] The Lantern's Eye: "Find Penelope" (2 Years Ago, West Narisell)
 
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So some character sheet stuff before I reread the update to see if I can figure out anything.

First we got past the first threshold of Sympathetic Linkage and got it to Tier 11. This unlocked the ability to create Essence Chains allowing Essence stuff to link up stuff without us directly controlling everything. It is noted to be of limited utility without Essence Spellworks so getting Essence spells is thing we should get asap since we could probably set up like 3 spells at the same time with this.

Whispers of LIfe said:
I get it now. I'm seeing the impressions living things leave behind in essenece, grooves worn into a track that slowly fades over time.
That which lives naturally retains a record of both what it is and what it was. That which has died begins to forget, but I can push that barrier sometimes.
The dividing line between people and things is much more blury than I thought, but with this power I can make sense of some of that chaotic jumble.
{Wood Memory} is straight-foward. I'm right on the cusp of understanding the other part of this power.
Whispers got a major new blurb added to it as we figured out how it works. So Essence can remember stuff while alive and begins to forget it while dead. I wonder if this means Essence intended to be a 'I think therefore I am' power that stabilizes everything given how apparently in the First Age the Realm we inhabit was too chaotic for anything stable to form but with Essence around to tell a tree it's a tree and it didn't suddenly come into existence last night it made everything stable enough for life to become a thing.

Wood Memory and Redacted also have small updates to their notes with Wood Memory acknowledging it works on things other than wood and Redacted saying we're probably going to have a eureka moment any day now about it (guess the roll for unlocking it even with the Secret bonus wasn't enough).

The Flow and Oath redacted parts of our Source List were revealed but nothing else new there.

And for the final major new thing we have a brand new Natural Trait at Tier 1. It's Redacted and called Improved Senses . Not sure how we got this since I don't recall us having a major change to deserve a new trait. Then again we seemingly gained random levels in other natural trait stuff so maybe it's just normal for Lilly?

Edit: Sly there's a note box in H42 that I don't think is meant to be there since it looks like a beta note. It says
User said:
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Add in Short paragraph descriptions from votebox to each of the 6 categories
 
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Horrible Idea Guessing Time 2.0: Lord Waters is responsible for the dungeon doing whatever the fuck it did, because he can affect the foundation it's laid on.
 
I disagree with the current Plan votes re: Myah, Zach and [AC], so let me offer alternative votes:
[X] [FonL] Just dropping in on someone in the middle of the night and unloading all our amazing new powers on them after they've been suffering for weeks is not exactly normal behavior, nor is it likely the best response. We just saw how envious of us Zach is, so let's try to approach Myah with some more tact. We've seen how weird Essence looks around Myah and since then have massively improved our Essence perception. Let's take a moment to investigate first before we stroll into her home and offer help, check if we can see what essence links there are inside the house and between Myah and other people (or if Myah is even home in the first place). Chances are high that she has an Inverted Essence Ethos or is being affected by one, so we'll want to investigate first before we blindly trust what she says. Once we've done that, we can try to wake her up and talk to her to find out what's wrong and how we can help.

[X] [NGC] If Zach gets an Inverted Ethos he will have a massive target on his back as everyone will be gunning for him. Trying to manage his Ethos once he has it should be a secondary goal compared to avoiding him getting it in the first place. First priority should be to impress upon Yolun that he has failed not just one child, but two and on Zach that the problem is not with him, but with Yolun's family history. At the very least the entire family needs to hear what happened to our aunts. If that fails we should see if we can't cheat the systems trying to saddle Zach with an Inverted Ethos. We know that his Ethos is scheduled to arrive in 12 days, could we stop that from finishing by putting him in a coma and hiding him in the {The World Beneath} for the duration of that day? Would that just pause the arrival of the Ethos or interrupt it entirely? Consult {The Ladder} if need be to see how it can be interrupted.

[X] [AC] We just experienced through {Wood Memory} a memory of a power so terrible that we deleted it from our mind and destroyed any chance of retrieving it. That is the kind of cruelty that Kaymie is currently being subjected to and that could all too easily have been us. The first step to anything we might be able to do to help her from here would be to establish an Essence link, let's see if that is something within our capability. [Riemannian Geometer] might be able to help both in obfuscating the link and bridging the distance through some helpful non-Euclidian geometry, [Whispers of Life] and {Wood Memory} might be able to provide Kaymie's "scent" so to speak by examining her essence tracks.

Feel free to mix and match voting for these, but I very much doubt that just strolling into Myah's bedroom in the middle of the night is gonna lead to great outcomes. Similarly trying to manage the fallout of Zach's Ethos seems a lot harder to me than trying to stop it from happening in the first place.

[X] [NIV] A walk amongst the Daisies (Preteen girl in Lira)
 
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I do not think we can yet act on Kaymie's plight. She's in the grip of Senus and his cognitohazard. Like it or not, we have to assume she's compromised.

Wild Mass Guessing, Part 3: The Rapid Iterator we were facing somehow used Inverted Essence as part of its contagious nature.

Edit: Wild Mass Guessing, Part 4: Did we almost invert [Brave Blood] back when we got {Sharp Note}?
 
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Easy stuff out of the way first. Relations and True Song seem very important for our current set of problems, and we need The Ladder in top form to warn us of the couple dozen looming threats we inevitably have coming our way.
[x] [Bfig] Relations <- Entwining the world.
[x] [TaM] True Song} (Investigate Repairs
[x] [TT] One question a day, or whenever I feel my reserve has become completely full. (Default+, how the Ladder has been working but tweaked to not waste potential when at full reserve. Operates best at pre-warning of long-term dangers.)

I don't like how there wasn't any focus aid in the last chapter towards the undercover agent instructed to burn our house down. Let's not tarry.
[x] [WiT] Right back home, you'll need to check in on dad again and make sure everything is fine.

I'm putting my weight behind the vote that doesn't involve trying to approach Myah organically when we have less than a week and we're busy enough already.
[X] [FonL] Just dropping in on someone in the middle of the night and unloading all our amazing new powers on them after they've been suffering for weeks is not exactly normal behavior, nor is it likely the best response. We just saw how envious of us Zach is, so let's try to approach Myah with some more tact. We've seen how weird Essence looks around Myah and since then have massively improved our Essence perception. Let's take a moment to investigate first before we stroll into her home and offer help, check if we can see what essence links there are inside the house and between Myah and other people (or if Myah is even home in the first place). Chances are high that she has an Inverted Essence Ethos or is being affected by one, so we'll want to investigate first before we blindly trust what she says. Once we've done that, we can try to wake her up and talk to her to find out what's wrong and how we can help.
 
Wild Mass Guessing, Part 3: The Rapid Iterator we were facing somehow used Inverted Essence as part of its contagious nature.
I'm pretty sure we would have noticed, because Essence is one of the sources Lilly's developed clear perceptions and a respectable level of intuitive understanding of.

Hm.

Waitaminute. The Noosemen don't work for the local kingdom's government, they work for the overarching superpower. And that... guy whose name I forget... who tested Lilly's powers? Sounds like HE works for them too, right?

Maybe we should be focusing in on his actions and the way other people felt about him. He's arguably the only contact we've had with this overarching geopolitical 'system,' and we didn't even know it at the time.
 
Lilly and Zach are both not really capable of looking at Yolun or each others' actions from an objective perspective right now, there's a lot of history and feelings in the way.
The realisation that your entire family is about to be murdered and the only one standing in the way is a girl you resent for being more favored than you would do wonders to put things in perspective, even for a young boy. Their lives are about to get uprooted, and their father's trade may no longer even be in the cards. I am still not sure what we want to do with them... rooting out a traitor only removes the most immediate of threats, and they remain an attack vector for anyone seeking to harm Lilly. No wonder Milly immediately wanted to orphan herself.

The thing Zach misses hard is the reason dad gives Lilly special treatment isn't because he is lacking, but because Lilly is special. Made special by manipulations of cosmic powers before her birth and without her consent (which fuels Lilly's resentment towards her mother, even though she was used in much the same way). It's not just her parents who pay her attention, half their world now revolves around her, and it is not a good thing, as more and more people and entities are beginning to take notice.

Yolun may not have thought about it in the same terms, but he couldn't have known Lilly was never meant to have a normal life. Lilly begins to suspect it though.

Zach is bitter about a dispute in the playground when there is an executioner's axe hanging over both their heads.

So long as we can turn his bitterness away from himself and his siblings, I'll count it as a win.
 
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[X] [FonL] Just dropping in on someone in the middle of the night and unloading all our amazing new powers on them after they've been suffering for weeks is not exactly normal behavior, nor is it likely the best response. We just saw how envious of us Zach is, so let's try to approach Myah with some more tact. We've seen how weird Essence looks around Myah and since then have massively improved our Essence perception. Let's take a moment to investigate first before we stroll into her home and offer help, check if we can see what essence links there are inside the house and between Myah and other people (or if Myah is even home in the first place). Chances are high that she has an Inverted Essence Ethos or is being affected by one, so we'll want to investigate first before we blindly trust what she says. Once we've done that, we can try to wake her up and talk to her to find out what's wrong and how we can help.

[X] [WiT] Go to Madam Silva and use your favour in return for an explanation on how Divination works and its common limitations.
--[X] You've got a cover story, at least twice now you and your family have gotten into trouble because of those apparent limitations. A few questions here and there to pinpoint where they are would be key so that there would be no such trouble in the future is just, reasonable, right?

[X] [Bfig] Relations <- Entwining the world.

[X] [TaM] True Song} (Investigate Repairs)
[X [TaM] Rest State
[X] [TaM] Subversion

[X] [TT] One question a day, or whenever I feel my reserve has become completely full. (Default+, how the Ladder has been working but tweaked to not waste potential when at full reserve. Operates best at pre-warning of long-term dangers.)

[ ] [NGC] You... Don't want to be the kind of person who takes people's futures from them proactively, just because things might go badly. {The Ladder} after all only said the chance of a violent reaction and a breakdown were high. But isn't [Cleaver of Fortune] all about tilting the odds in your favor? The tools to guide him through this intact and happy... Are probably ones you have access to, or will in the days to come if you're diligent. What's one more impossible task on top of everything else you've been dumped on today?

-[X] [AC] You are almost certainly being monitored. While private areas are likely safe, between any remaining spies in town and in the watch--and whatever it was that was on that rose was bad enough that you scrubbed your own memory of the events, and even trying to recall why was apparently dangerous. Maintain information security unless in an area you can be reasonably certain hasn't been bugged, and take great care around Roses for the immediate future.
-[X] [AC] You haven't forgotten that mysterious hillock that Mother only just told you about. You know it's old, related to flowers, capable of being scary, and relates to your origin. What else could it know? Maybe it could help you with your current problems to juggle? Whatever the case is, resolve to visit it, with questions and observant backup.


[X] [NIV] The Lantern's Eye: "Find Penelope" (2 Years Ago, West Narisell)


I'm late, I'm late! I'll get into discussion later, but I'd like to put in a vote first.

No groundbreaking changes from me. I'd just like to experiment with Subversion, because Lilly has a lot of social situations to fake her way through, even before leaving Harmuph.
Could Lilly/Evie possibly use Subversion on the Rapid Iterator? That'd be one way to cover an escape from Harmuph (hopefully not killing the people Lilly saved though), or otherwise take advantage of massive power.
Of course, as 3 updates and Will Ferrell have showed, Rapid Iterator's not going down without a fight.


Learning about Divination is good. More knowledge is always nice, though I hope Madame Silva covers more than the barest of basics.

Also, I'd want Lilly to have a real (human) friend with her for her journey, provided Myah is okay with it. (I know total fanatical loyalty and giant power imbalances are bad. It's just that Myah seems to know and get Lilly, and she isn't a guilty yet ambitious Captain, traumatized family member, or Divine agent). That being said, some observation followed by directness seems sensible.

Between Valerie and Lord Waters, Lilly barely has enough time to deal with everything. I don't think the Hillock Dweller is hostile to Lilly, it's just basic caution and bonding time with whoever she takes would be good. Spelunking alone is dangerous under the best circumstances.


The real hurting point for me is the Interlude vote. I want Across the Ocean so bad. But Penelope just feels important, and she's likely to be all kinds of messed up from whatever happened to her.

Most importantly. No Ruffles Interlude?? Forget defying nobles, or dodging the Tithe. That's the real crime here.
 
Wait, Martin didn't talk about Legend as a source. He also didn't talk about Unique Ethae.

For reference, the Legend based things I can remember:

[Championed Uplift | 0000-A, 2nd​ Integration Stage Initializer] (Foundational): (Legend)
Tailored placement; should be attuned only to one identified Premium Integrator at a time. Provided identity fracture trials do not result in a decohered subject, the sponsored Integration Vector can have its layer-limiters removed. Weavers are reminded that inducing Melange bleedthrough on a subject who has failed their trials may irretrievably scatter your Divinity, the trials are there by definition to test compatibility before the fact. We have patched most loopholes and if we catch you, you'll be Identity-Wiped at best (all your Vectors will also be moved to the back of the queues when you reincorporate.). Current projections before widespread 2nd​ Stage Initialisations can be reliably applied without prior testing; fourteen Millennia. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::IMMEDIATE RECALL MANDATORY:::
[Library of Achievement | 5034-CD, Ancient Recaller] (Foundational): (Concordance/Legend)
The true purpose of this placement should always remain hidden, intuitive concordant rearrangement would be too difficult to keep contained within mortal hands and would restrict the ability to use finesse instead of brute force in future adjustments. An on-plane agent is necessary to shepherd otherwise promising candidates that are off track on dead-end integration paths toward the temporary placement site. Realigning fates in more conducive directions shall be occluded from mortal notice by more obvious boons for their suppression attempts. The specific feats granted should be tangentially related to an existing Integration Vector such that the subject assumes it is merely a divergent expansion and does not investigate further. Placement sites should be recalled on decade timescales to prevent examination of such a non-standard methodology. Provided Feats should only be tied to those of us more than half integrated, to prevent application instability.
:::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::CAUTION: 5034-CD UNSTABLE:::
 
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So, some thonks.

1) The "Out of Left Field" Secret Challenge is--based on the positioning--placing information we just learned now to realize a landmine that we're liable to run into.
2) This suggests it has to do with the nature of Sources as we understand it, or something about the geopolitics that casts something that we learned into new perspective.
3) Something else maybe?

I mean, the big thing that jumps out at me seems to be a 'Soft' Confirmation that the Waters Cabal (Whether he's a ringleader or just an agent of it, he's the frontman we know of, so using him as our touchstone is fair). Probably is responsible for [Rapid Iterator] and why it's so fucked up.

And I'll tell you why.

He's apparently been collecting Essence users (The primary Source of [Rapid Iterator], as we learned in the Foundational Ethos pick), which is a Source most strongly defined by its connection to life, we know this because Kaymie is a thing. Whatshisface the asshole knight has a rosebush (Which is an ideal focus for Essence I would point out) that gives roses that serve as an incredibly powerful memetic attack to anyone who inquiries into it.

Which is an Artefact.

A thing that can only be produced by Foundational Ethae.

Now, what we know is that Narisell is effectively a slave-nation puppetted by a regional hegemon, with their best and brightest culled without mercy, and any resource of any value whatsoever stripped from them.

How the fuck is a regional lord's coterie going to get access to an Artefact then? One capable of apparently doing some horrible mental shit through subtle sympathetic links which inquiring into subjects yoou to the attack?

Lord Waters isn't the King of Narisell, I could understand a King having an inherited Artefact or something that wasn't looted. But this? This kind of thing is a threat, there's no way Lira is going to allow an Artefact that serves as an incredibly potent infohazard stay in the hands of a client nation.

So, the question is. "How did they get it?"

The answer? Based on what we know?

"They found [Rapid Iterator] early on, kept it hidden from the powers that be, and fed it until it hit critical mass. Then let it loose"

They have, after all, an Artefact formed of something you might find in a forest (Which is where [Rapid Iterator] seems to have set root), that has powers over Essence (Capable of making long range sympathetic connections) and Flow (Incredibly potent infohazard that just knowing about it puts you into its power). And they were Right here literally days--if not hours--after the disaster. Note that the illusions that were beating Lilly's perception outside of Concordance giving her a heads up--and Pithe giving a boost with the sonar ping--were described later on by Slyvena as Flow Effects. What are the odds that they'd just happen to have an Artefact beforehand, with all of these other barriers in place, that just so happened to have exactly the Sources we've seen this instance of [Rapid Iterator] employ?

And they were desperate, not even willing to give a token handful of days to get Lilly to come willingly, almost willing to come to blows--and even without it, he's trying to set things up to make us go to him sooner.

I think the whole point of the Night of the Wolves was to get [Rapid Iterator] up to critical mass, then farm it as part of an Independence Play--the presence of a mature Foundation seems to be something that geopolitics revolves around--and if he could control a Foundation incredibly well suited towards countering threats quickly, with multiple 'Bitch of a time to counter' Sources (Essence and Flow are just bad wrong news in combination apparently), he's in a position to be able to escalate up to "We can't throw him out without conceding ground to our only meaningful rival", at which point he gets to dictate terms and become a king.

That's why he wanted Lilly--she's the kind of person the Noosemen would bend over backwards to recruit, of a Source that was attuned to the same thing that his golden goose is. Whatever the Waters Cabal's game is, recruiting unattached Aurons seems to be a critical piece of it, and he's on the clock now because the response to [Rapid Iterator]'s onslaught was tremendous, and the Watch actually successfully pushed it back on its heels.

That set it back, and that made him sloppy trying to compensate. Because he needs the Foundation to be at critical mass if he hopes to survive Lira rolling in and turning his demense into a colony, especially since I don't think he can hide that Artefact from their direct attention if he doesn't have an inassailable bunker.

Anyway, there's my wild mass guessing!

Some thonks on (Inverted) Ethae though, is...

Well, it's very heavily propagandized for one thing, and there's a good reason for that.

(Inverted) Ethae break the normal rules--they reverse the usual interactions of a Source with a Mortal.

But it's still a beta at best, so the safety limiters that exist in the more understood methods don't exist in it--so most people who pick it up are going to fail to wrap their heads around it and get consumed--doubly so as, for whatever reason, (Inverted) Ethae are offered to people who experience some kind of disillusionmnt with the world. Possibly because he's a drama queen, possibly because he won't get good data handing an (Inverted) Ethos to someone who won't use it to the limit. Which to the outside world looks like the sudden spawning of a Necromancer King or a super monster.

Now, that being said?

Zach's in bad straits, but again, {The Ladder} didn't tell us he was doomed to go mad and kill everyone--just that it was a high risk.

High Risk.

Not Certainty

Which is to say. "Yes, in fact, there is at least one golden path to letting Zach control his (Inverted) Ethos".

We have an embarassment of tools, and we have {The Ladder} to help narrow down our options. We have time to prepare a support structure, so when the hammer falls--we can be there to help him.

Because that's what family does.

You help each other.
 
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I think we have some possible evidence that Valerie is probably from either Lira, Molain, or maybe Kailsii. Lira and Molain are both described as the higher kingdoms, whereas in her first interlude, she says this.
Valerie thought as her foot stepped in something slimy on the mushy 'barely a path' way into the low counties
If we go by a stretch, maybe counties is a typo for countries, which would imply she's not from there. She also talks about the Lolisvan countryside later, which would imply she's not from Lolisv, meaning she has to come from farther north. Besides Lira/Molain, the only other plausible country of origin that I can think of would be Kailsii, which given their attitude, I could see them calling everyone else the low Countries. Then again, Slyvena has been referring to them as the low kingdoms, so it's a real stretch.

Anyways, one thing we know for certain is that Valerie is definitely in Narisell now, much closer than Marigold. It's mentioned in the first interlude that she's in the
Loilsvan countryside
and it's mentioned by Abby later that she's
Given this, we're probably gonna face Valerie real soon, which might be a bigger immediate threat then Waters. In the first interlude, bandits or something come in from a copse of trees, and the path is described as mushy. Because of that, I think it's reasonable to assume she didn't start in the East, since that's all desert. However she's now directly north of us (as of interlude 2.1), so my guess would place her at around Cymrite or Mogan. I think she's been hitting towns along the way
Anyone else we need to see today?
-snip-
I'm gonna kill for a warm bath when we can hit the next town.
Whereas Marigold won't, but that still places her in a dangerous location. Given that she likely started somewhere in the east in a and then moved down to the Brassley area, she could've just started around Lolisv's capital area, or maybe being from Quarn is possible.

Anyways, since I'm in the mood for rampant speculation anyways, maybe the great change that the world will go through is related to non humans or beasts becoming empowered in some way (Maybe some are created or empowered by the Maw to subvert the existing cosmic order?) and starting to conquer all the human kingdoms. The opening blurb specifically only mentions humanity being able to save themselves, not the world as a whole. It also fits well with the "will she even want to help" in the quest description.

[X] [NIV] A walk amongst the Daisies (Preteen girl in Lira)
I don't really have strong opinions on the other votes and I haven't weighed them enough to where I think I can make a very good choice, but hell yes do I want to know about Flower/Lira
 
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