- Location
- Canada
Daimen being RR would be way too cliche IMO.
Mother of Learning
- Thread starter Dr. Bob Doom
- Start date
- Discussion
Daimen hasn't just been a subtle mention in the original first loop, he's been repeatedly referenced by Zorian and called back to many times. So there's good reason to believe he'll be significant in a way that Fortov hasn't been. You're right that there's no evidence in favour of him being Red Robe.
As of the latest chapter, Zach and Zorian are outright doing the "adventurer archaeologist" delving into far forgotten places and finding hidden treasures thing. So I think that like many of the people that Zorian knew (or thought he knew) Daimen will be used as a benchmark for competence in a field that he's just getting into. He'll meet Daimen and be roughly his equal in magic (Daimen was a prodigy, Zorian is not but he's clever and a couple of years advantage) while still retaining his bullshit psychic abilities and the support of Zach. Daimen will still have some advantages in terms of contacts and knowledge of how to go about excavation, but Zach will be able to provide some of that and the rest will suddenly seem less important that it had been. So suddenly Daimen is the one asking Zorian where'd you learn that? And from there family drama occurs.
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Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
New chapter out
Past this is spoilers of the chapter.
So how best to use the simulacrum spell? For combat, I think having minions controlled remotely by the real Zorian follow the fake Zorian who casts actual combat magic. Reduces risk to real Zorian, and gives him the attention to micromanage his golems/whatever minions he chooses.
(The simulacrum also allows him to make more golems. Making the animation core was said to be the most demanding part, and now he has two people who can do it to his specifications)
When Zach gets good enough at soul awareness to learn the simulacrum, for combat I think he'll get less comparative use out of it. Maybe have one focus solely on defense while the other rains down the fire? Even with his mana shared between two people, he still has a huge mana reserve, so he won't need to have one copy be the only one using mana intensive spells. Taking some lessons from Xvim could be a good idea, as Zach doesn't seem to have focused all that much on specialized defensive spells.
For non-combat, Zorian will be getting vastly more use out of the simulacrum spell than Zach. The author said on his patreon page that simulacrum don't integrate their memories to the original when they end or anything that convenient. Zorian can get around this most of the time with memory packets and telepathic memory sharing. Anything the simulacrum learns could be shared extremely easily, especially as Zorian made those discs that relay telepathic messaging a while back. Now he can take paths that he previously wouldn't because they were too dangerous, like exploring deep in caves or going after necromancers/other people with soul magic.
For a story titled Mother of LEARNING, this is a pretty big boost to Dorian's power set.
Past this is spoilers of the chapter.
So how best to use the simulacrum spell? For combat, I think having minions controlled remotely by the real Zorian follow the fake Zorian who casts actual combat magic. Reduces risk to real Zorian, and gives him the attention to micromanage his golems/whatever minions he chooses.
(The simulacrum also allows him to make more golems. Making the animation core was said to be the most demanding part, and now he has two people who can do it to his specifications)
When Zach gets good enough at soul awareness to learn the simulacrum, for combat I think he'll get less comparative use out of it. Maybe have one focus solely on defense while the other rains down the fire? Even with his mana shared between two people, he still has a huge mana reserve, so he won't need to have one copy be the only one using mana intensive spells. Taking some lessons from Xvim could be a good idea, as Zach doesn't seem to have focused all that much on specialized defensive spells.
For non-combat, Zorian will be getting vastly more use out of the simulacrum spell than Zach. The author said on his patreon page that simulacrum don't integrate their memories to the original when they end or anything that convenient. Zorian can get around this most of the time with memory packets and telepathic memory sharing. Anything the simulacrum learns could be shared extremely easily, especially as Zorian made those discs that relay telepathic messaging a while back. Now he can take paths that he previously wouldn't because they were too dangerous, like exploring deep in caves or going after necromancers/other people with soul magic.
For a story titled Mother of LEARNING, this is a pretty big boost to Dorian's power set.
Silverias
Seeing is Believing
- Location
- Squiddy Places
I thought the exact same thing.
Simulacrum might not integrate memories, but two extremely powerful telepaths likely CAN.
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
And because their memories will integrate, there is much less of a chance for the simulacrum to mutiny. Being created whole sale from another person, then being guaranteed to die within about a day? Not a great mindset to be born into. Knowing that your memories will persist into the future makes it relatively fine.
- Location
- Canada
*Zorian
And yeah for Zorian I don't expect his personality to go poorly with a simulacrum anyway. He's a very pragmatic guy after all.
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
I typed it correctly, my phone just decided against me. I'm leaving it as a testament to the arrogance of technology.
True, but a simulacrum of Zorian is one of the few things that's can permanently hurt him. Every reason for it not to do so is great, as you can't ever be totally sure.
In contrast, I don't think any simulacrum of Zach has any method off affecting the original outside of the current loop. Worst case, they restart the loop when Zach dies. For Zorian, if the simulacrum won his kind could be shattered.
Silverias
Seeing is Believing
- Location
- Squiddy Places
This also shows that Zach has come into contact with the Simulacrum spell before. Early on, I had a pet theory that Red Robe was somehow a rogue simulacrum that fought back against Zach and was sustained by the marker.
That theory has mostly died, but it was something fun to consider.
That theory has mostly died, but it was something fun to consider.
- Location
- Telmar
Technology or mankind? I think we both know that you're trying to subliminaly spread your headcanon that much like in 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' Zorian, an artificial construct, is being callously aged in order for his owner, himself, to live a petty life of pleasure outside of the medium.
I thought the mention by Alanic that the simulacrum spell is actually a precursor to becoming a lich quite interesting, especially given that we know that Red Robe can cast it. He doesn't seem to be a lich currently, but once the timeloop isn't providing him effective immortality he might decide to change that. It's just another reminder that we don't really know what he's capable of, he might not match Quatach-Ichl in general or Zorian and Zach in their specialities, but he surely developed some has a comparable skills over the years he was in the loop.
- Location
- Canada
Thing is we don't know enough about his situation to say that for all we know the thing that allows him to stay in the loop might just transfer his mind rather than his soul.
So your suggesting that the reason for his relative weakness is that he couldn't improve his shaping skills as his soul wasn't carried between loops? That's possible, but I don't think it's likely. Primarily because we know his mastery of mind magic doesn't measure up to Zorian's, I don't think there's reason to believe he'd be able to totally rewrite his past self's mind like that even if he found some way to access it. If I had to make a guess I'd suggest that he was using a lesser marker that had been deliberately damaged in such a way that it stopped counting how many loops he'd been through, but you're correct that we don't have enough info to make firm predictions at this point.
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
Personally, I think Zorian is the one on the path to Lichdom. Heavily interested in mind magic, has exemplary soul awareness and it seems he would likely pursue soul magic if he could cast it at all (or find someone to teach him), is great at creating golems (similar to creating undead minions), is looking into blood magic to possibly make him into a more magical being, and is now learning the simulacrum spell.
Also, blood magic may allow Zorian to copy someone's soul sight, which would allow necromancy.
No good ones, but I'll speculate regardless.
Noveda bloodline magic, which is ordinarily spread throughout the whole house but only Zach remains so he gets all of it.
Someone somehow grafted multiple mindless souls into Zach's, increasing his mana reserves.
He's drawing from some well of souls similar to the one in Iasku Manor.
I expect we will get at least some hints when Zach gets better at soul awareness.
I'll admit I didn't consider it from that angle. This chapter outright pointed out Zorian doesn't care about what the Mage's Guild does or doesn't think is forbidden magic, but between him continually rejecting the option of just doing the human sacrifices once to get soul sight and him already having the time loop as a equivalent source of immortality, it didn't occur to me that Zorian would outright go the Lich route. Thinking about it, for all that it MoL takes inspiration from D&D we don't actually know what's required to become a Lich in this setting. I suppose there could be a path to Lichdom that doesn't require a horrifically evil ritual and that Zorian might accept.
He'll still need some motivation to actually seek it out though. Simulacrum might be "half way there", but Zorian could have spent years searching for it if he didn't have Zach's admittedly vague recollections giving their search some direction. And while Simulacrum is carefully restricted, the lich transformation is outright illegal. Escaping the loop and suddenly being back to mortality might do it, but would he actually manage to pull it off before the finale at the end of the month? Otherwise what could give him the push?
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
I don't remember him talking about not wanting to do a ritual sacrifice for soul sight. Mind providing a quote? Not doubting you, just don't remember.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much he would be bothered by it if he only did the deed on cultists. He spent quite a while practicing memory reading, and in the first attempts he rendered lots of people into mindless husks. Even did the same to some Aranea. It would seem a bit silly to draw the line at sacrificing people who don't do anybody any good when he's perfectly fine with destroying their minds.
Part of the problem he might have is that while having the skill of memory reading doesn't immediately show you to have effectively killed lots of people, Zach would certainly know what he would have had to do to get soul sight, and being a lich is pretty obvious.
Being able to make custom designed bodies, much safer from harm in general, and having as much time as you would ever want to study magic is a pretty compelling reason. If he can do that before leaving the loop, he wouldn't even have had to sacrifice anyone.
Assuming he finds the correct spells in time, and that the lich process survives an iteration of the loop, there's no reason to wait for the final loop. Plus, it would make it much easier to beat a lich as a lich, and to break into Eldemar's vault.
The example the most obviously springs to mind is his reaction to Kael mentioning the possibility the first time back in chapter 16. Zorian doesn't even seem to consider something involving human sacrifice to be an option. Still that was before he decided that he was perfectly fine with melting the brains of opponents he was likely going to kill anyway, so it's possible he'd change his mind if something prompted him to re-examine the issue.
Also at this point I think the only reason that Zach is putting up with Zorian's shadier practices is that he's desperately lonely. He's clearly uncomfortable already and I wouldn't be surprised if trying to go from soul magic to necromancy and lichdom was enough push him over the edge.
Which wouldn't matter as much if this was something he could do privately or quickly enough that he could do it in his spare time, but the process for becoming a lich is apparently obscure enough that even a master necromancer with serious political resources like Sudomir needs to ask for help to get access to it. As a looper Zorian has advantages that Sudomir doesn't, but even at the bare minimum it's going to be a significant investment of time that Zach is likely to question.
Frankly the lich process being reversed is one of the more benign possibilities for a looping lich. There's a serious possibility that you end up with you soul still altered, but your phylactery destroyed by the reset. I certainly wouldn't want to risk it without some serious guarantees.
The benefits are good enough that I can imagine Zorian going for it under the right circumstances, but for now the risks and costs are too significant. It'll take at least one more shock to the system before he even considers it.(Not that he hasn't had several of those already over the course of the story)
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
While Zach is wary of the shady stuff Zorian has learned, I don't think he's actually hostile to him in any way. If Zorian really started gunning for Lichdom, that would change, but right now they're fine.
Sudomir lacked the ability to literally rip information from people's minds. If Zorian manages to incapacitate a lich of any form, he could learn the process extremely easily. Or just do something similar to enough necromancers to reproduce it.
No he's not actively hostile to him as things stand. But I suspect that if there were say 5 or 6 people in the timeloop he might well be at least passively hostile towards him. The fact that Zorian is literally the only person he can make any substantial connection with any more is probably the only reason he was able to push past his fear and distrust of mind magic. When Zach is told about the existence of the lesser markers he sees it as being self inflicted torture, because he'd be giving himself a semblance of what he's desperately wanted only for it to be ripped away. So long as Zorian remains mindful that Zach is uncomfortable with 'dark' magic Zach will probably stick to teasing him about how scary he is. So the question is: Is Lichdom worth fighting Zach over?
I suspect incapacitating a lich in such a manner that they can't escape is not at all a trivial endeavour. If an amateur necromancer like Kael can cast a spell that would sever them from their body then I doubt that there's any of them who couldn't abandon their body to escape. Beyond that even tracking down a vulnerable(ish) lich without the benefit of Zachs years of random adventuring is likely to be a time consuming task. Zorian could do it, but it's not a easy option by any measure.
Blazinghand
O cursèd spite
- Location
- California
I think part of the point of Zach's cageyness RE: Zorian's stuff is to provide another perspective on what Zorian does. We can see to a certain extent that what Zorian perceives isn't always completely well-explained or accurate. For example, if you go back and reread the chapters before he learned he was an empath, it's quite clear in hindsight that he was. In the same sense, Zach is our like, hero protagonist who despite his lack of "optimization" or whatever is in fact a lot more grounded in societal morality than Zorian is. Zach never bothers to question whether something is right or wrong, he just does what he thinks is the right thing, or tries to. He's a great foil in this respect.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
If anyone wants to continue discussing this story, there are various quite active forums for doing so. And if anyone wants to wait until it's complete, best estimates are that that should happen in the first half of this year.
- Location
- Canada
No way, to end that soon it'd need to be over in 4-5 chapters.
PhDEevee
Mathematician and Questgiver
- Location
- Sydney
So the most recent update introduces some things I've felt Mother of Learning has sorely needed for a while - more direct stakes, and a meaningful clock. I'm also interested to see more from Ilsa, as essentially Zorian's earliest mentor. It's an exciting development to a story I enjoy but which has really needed some tension injected into it for a while.
I think it's interesting that the situation with the additional time loopers mirrors that of Zorian's situation - a comparison he directly makes by saying that he and Zach will exit the time loop with the others if possible. Moreover, aside from the Koth time loopers (not sure how I feel about them), these are all people whom Zach and Zorian (though mainly Zorian) trust and have some emotional attachment to. Zorian, while he felt betrayed by the aranea, didn't really have the same connection to them that he has to these people, and I think that's something the story has lacked (for various reasons, not all of them bad). It also reintroduces the risk of very real death in a way we haven't had since Red Robe left - because even if there's a copy of a person outside the loop, Zorian's relationship with that person is gone.
The confrontation with Quatach-Itchl (or whatever his name is) should have felt threatening in the same sense, but something felt lacking from how it ultimately played out. I think it's possibly because they didn't lose anything from the encounter - it was risky, but they only paid the price in a few restarts, which is very abstract. While Quatach pulled out some things that were surprising, it was in a way that didn't have lasting consequences. I also think it took way too long for them to actually confront the lich, given how threatening he was at the very beginning of the story, though that can be put heavily down to Zorian's paranoia.
The confrontation with Quatach-Itchl (or whatever his name is) should have felt threatening in the same sense, but something felt lacking from how it ultimately played out. I think it's possibly because they didn't lose anything from the encounter - it was risky, but they only paid the price in a few restarts, which is very abstract. While Quatach pulled out some things that were surprising, it was in a way that didn't have lasting consequences. I also think it took way too long for them to actually confront the lich, given how threatening he was at the very beginning of the story, though that can be put heavily down to Zorian's paranoia.
- Location
- Canada
IMO considering the relatively small amount of time they already had left it doesn't change much in term of having a clock, but I'm very interested in them failing to save all these people and needing to get very desperate when they're gone.
Also you'd get discussion on the thread on Spacebattles or r/rational, this one is fairly dead.
ThrawnCA
Carbon-based biped
- Location
- Australia
There are some other live threads too, like DarkLordPotter. The index is the second-oldest post at r/motheroflearning.