Oh hey, is this the first time we learned one of the Elder First's names?
It is, yes. They've never come up in the direct narrative before.
So would they have had us continue to mold and create the Circles? Even if that's the case, I feel like it'd be different, like a step removed or something (which would have it's own implications and consequences) to make that vote actually mean something. I do prefer the way things panned out because it felt so much more personal for Amanda to be so deeply involved. Like the difference between the First Seat musician of an orchestra versus the conductor I guess. Hopefully my poor memory of orchestra doesn't ruin the analogy.
I
suspect (but obviously can't prove) that an Elder First trained Amanda would be much more Practice-focused and less Diplomacy-focused than ours turned out to be. We obviously wouldn't have quite as tight a relationship with Mary, but more than that I suspect that the Circles would be less widespread and much more intensely focused on their Web capabilities than the togetherness and unification that we're seeing in the quest now.
Bottom line would be that morale would still be broken up among the Earthborn, the Marsborn, and the Spaceborn; we'd probably still be working on the Fifth Secret because Mary would either not be as close as she is; and we probably would be dealing with a lot more factionalism in Congress. On the flip side, we probably would have been able to Purify half the Tribute Fleet by ourselves. So, tradeoffs, but overall I'm very happy where we are.
Essentially, these are pretty close to the truth. If you go back to the scene where Amanda made up her mind, you'll see that Mary had done a considerable amount of work on trying to work out what would happen, and how to avoid the collapse of the Circle as what it was becoming into something else if Amanda
did actually choose to go. She had yet to find a solution, and in the end, there wasn't really one. Amanda was a unique confluence of the right person, in the right place, in the right time, with the right outlook. That she then Awoke to a Focus of Mending only made it more so.
The Elder First saw her as a possible unifier, but there were a couple of ways that could play out. In one of them, she studied with them, and learnt a great deal of how they had done what they'd done to the world after the Week of Sorrows. This would have lead to a very different form of Circle, and as Eyes predicts, not nearly as...all encompassing. You
would have been able to get a lot more directly out of those, but...double edged sword. Humanity would still unify in the face of the Shiplord's return, but you'd have found it a lot harder to actually get some of the wide-area unity results that you did.
For one thing, Kazuki - who gave you those options in the first place - might not have existed. There's a lot more to this that I could delve into, but at the end of the day, it's a decision long past. That said, this is definitely the case:
I think it should be; it was definitely Amanda's single most life-altering decision, with the possible exception of her decision to run for president.
It was. Above even her decision to run for President, in fact. The choice to remain with the Circles, to help them grow and become something more, has shaped the world of the Practice War more than anything any President has ever done. It's what gives Amanda such power, even now, though not in the same way it might have. You're learning how to change that, but it takes time.
@Snowfire do we have any hints or clues about how the Elder Firsts were able to use Practice to make the spatial weirdness of the Vault itself? I get the feeling that the forest has been missed for the trees, because that's hella useful for all sorts of things. Not least of which is nearly unassailable bunkers. Or is that a psuedo-secret manifestation of gravity manipulation?
The Vault actually doesn't have any spatial weirdness to it - I think I made that clear a while back. It's just rather complicated, and finding your way around without Vigil can be challenging. The spatial weirdness was the Door which Amanda stepped into to open the Vault, which is now just a door. Whatever the Elder First invested in it is gone. Sorry if I've not been clear on that.
Also I suspect that the reason Amanda was given an indestructible ship is they thought she was going to use the LIFE approach to make herself into a super weapon
I can confirm that this is actually not the case. The
Adamant was built for other reasons.
Really glad people seem to have enjoyed this update
