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Emerald Flutter
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This took a couple hours to write and although I did my best to comb over it to check for inconsistencies and repetitions, there's a lot here. So yeah, spelling mistakes galore, I'm sure. Incoming text flood.
>>335413
>Not wanting the gentlemen to get away only matters if he was going to do something that would cause them to do so, and there is no indication that he knew they were there.
I can only guess at this because we didn't end up talking to him. Perhaps he did mean to convert Sky to his cause? Perhaps he simply wanted privacy? I was banking more on privacy, but I could be wrong. It's unlikely we'll ever know for sure.
>In fact, if LoM could A: see the future (which he can't)
Just because the other wizards don't think he can does mean he can't. We have no way to verify this yet. It is rather curious that Marv sent Majestic out to tell Sky that she was here to betray her and that she would do really bad things. It may have been an assumption on Marv's part that Blacksoul may have some kind of horrifying plan in the works, but it also curiously accurate.
Marv's ability to see the future also seems to be somewhat sketchy. He can apparently see multiple futures, but cannot see which one will actually happen. It may also stand to reason that he is aware of multiple "presents" and is unable to determine which one he is in until observing something that confirms which one it is. But again, this is something we can't evaluate. We need more evidence.
>OR knew that the gentlemen were there (which he didn't)
We don't know this for sure, but upon reviewing the scene again, it does seem they were unprepared for them. On the other hand an overt show of force may have spooked Sky prematurely, completely eliminating the possibility of having a chat.
>He wouldn't have sent an adept to attempt to push Sky into going to see him when she didn't respond to MT's message
I don't recall any pushing going on. One of those Ophians on the outside of the tent merely reiterated "Lord of Marvels wishes to speak with you, Sky. Please return the spear to me." If they were going to force here they might've had a golem waiting behind the tent, ready to grab her if she tried to flee.
One of the Adepts did try to stop her, but Sky was also carrying an antithesis spear, which may be a precious resource; we don't know how many they have. When she started fleeing with it they may not have been trying to capture her, but prevent her from taking a spear.
>One of the two sources of information about the barrier has stated that killing wizards will cause the wall to faulter and the sea of oblivion to encroach.
This is untrue.
>The person who contradicted this
Actually the only person who's told anything at all on how the wall works, so far.
>If killing the wizards doesn't weaken the wall, the oblivion creatures have nothing noticable to gain from killing the wizards, or sending soul-consuming monsters through the wall at all
But they do. killing off wizards one at a time means they can take the Peninsula piecemeal.
>Kalikissa is The only powerful NPC that we have encountered that has no discernable reason to lie to Spikesby, since by the time she sees him she already believes him to be a part of their plan.
Lying is not the only form of deceit. Everything Kalikissa said to Spikesby (as best I can remember) would still be accurate even if the Progenitors had decided to set their own plan into motion. Simply refraining to give out pertinent information is also another form of deceit. If their plans had changed she would also have no reason to inform Spikesby of this.
>>335423
>I'm counting the ancillary evidence, like his utter failure to stop K'Shaara's awakening (if he could see it in the future, he would've known about Ryxix's presence and known that the only way to stop her awakening would be to prevent the attack in the first place)
This is as yet something I cannot account for. The only explanation I have is "I don't know." It doesn't fit the pattern I see, but I can't really get this to fit anywhere else. This may have because of circumstances we have yet to become aware of.
>as he appears to have told MT that Sky wanted her to be a spy for her, which was not the case.
Actually Sky gave Majestic the impression that she would be spying. "Don't tell [Moriga] what's happening and keep your eyes open," sounds very much like instructions to be a spy.
>That [Moriga's] statements about him being a shady motherfucker were later echoed by Kalikissa.
I don't recall Kalikissa saying anything to the tune of "But he's completely untrustworthy and we know it." If you meant "confirmed" instead of "echoed" then yes I agree: he is being rather underhanded. Having contacts in the Sea of Oblivion that can hand out jars of Wizard poison is very sneaky, but being sneaky does equal being evil.
>The reason to keep her asleep instead of dead would clearly be so that she could keep bleeding and he could continue to have blood harvested to empower the adepts for his now-loyal army.
Keeping her asleep instead of actually killing her would also prevent the Sea of Oblivion from advancing (assuming that's how it works), or it could be that his intent actually was to kill her, but his untested weapons did not have the desired effect and simply put her sleep.
Unless he was counting on Kshaara to wake up again at some point, causing everyone to flee for cover and possibly head over to him, it doesn't make much sense that his goal in attacking Kshaara would be to acquire her people as an army (especially if he can't see the future). Moving in on Kshaara's territory would give him away. If the the Ophians suddenly migrated to him after their uprising that would also be suspicious. Only now that Suri is in ruins does he have an army to command. This seems to be more of a fortuitous opportunity, rather than something planned.
>So I don't think it was just to test the spears, but definitely think that she was chosen because she was the easiest opportunity.
Actually, the easiest opportunity looks to be Moriga, who is the closest and doesn't have another wizard's territory in the way either. Moriga and Kshaara have relatively content and intelligent populations. Moriga's population may be smaller, but being quite varied, probably has more combat capable creatures in it. Even though she isn't as powerful as Kshaara, she could still probably bleed some potent magic blood.
Moriga is also a coward. Even if the attempt on her life was unsuccessful she would've just left to the oceans again, but this would achieve the same result (assuming the objective was not to test the weapons, but actually use them). If the objective was not a simple weapons test against a convenient target, then Moriga might not be a good target. Signs point to Kshaara being chosen for a reason, though what that might be is still uncertain.
Kshaara is also not weak, not a coward, and apparently enjoys eating people who have crossed her. The prospect of being eaten alive if found it is, I would think, a rather significant disincentive to mess with her. In fact Kshaara is perhaps the most dangerous wizard he could have attacked. She may be the only (at the time, anyway. Xix is definitely big enough now) who can absorb his power and kill him at the same time. Assuming the Oblivion advances if a wizard dies it would make more sense to go after any wizard that couldn't eat him in retaliation. If he had attacked Soulfire, Moriga, possibly even Blacksoul (just as an example) he'd still probably be fine because they couldn't kill him. No one would trust him ever again, but he would still be safe. Again, only assuming that live wizards is what keeps the wall from receding. If killing them doesn't affect the wall then Moriga would still be the best choice because, as I said, she's a coward and admits she's also the weakest of the wizards.
>And nobody did because it was an isolated incident. Nobody investigated in seriousness because it didn't keep happening. If he HAD kept going, he would have drawn more attention, and he wouldn't have enough of an army to deflect the retaliation.
2 is a coincidence, 3 is a pattern. It would be easy for the other wizards to dismiss a second uprising as mere coincidence or as other mortals getting similar ideas. Once one had happened it would prove to people everywhere that it could be done. It wouldn't be surprising if one of the other wizards experienced a rebellion inspired by the Ophians' success, though it would be doomed to fail without antithesis spears.
The other wizards also seemed totally unaware or uninterested by the strange weapons that made Kshaara's downfall possible. A third rebellion might have been suspicious, but a second would not have been outside the realm of possibility. The wizards know that some of them treat their mortals like shit. It would be unsurprising if one of the more oppressive of them also suffered a sudden dethronement.
>The Lord of Marvels is a scheming false prophet, who moved (along with blacksoul) to set up a truce between all of the wizards
This is counterintuitive. If Marv's objective were to aid Oblivion then it would not serve his purposes to help Blacksoul establish a truce and create congeal the wall. At the very least he should have been a passive participant or slightly uncooperative.
>He made a shadowy deal with beings that secrete chaos and despair as a side-effect of their existence.
I do not contend this point, but I do wonder why you believe he is on their side. Unless he has a way of surviving the Oblivion, which so far seems impossible for a wizard, then this would be ensuring his own death. Not a typical objective for a sneaky, power hungry, egomaniac. Whether his intentions are good or evil, it is far more likely that Marv is deceiving the Progenitors to acquire their assistance. Thus far
>He sends people into an area that will kill them under false pretenses so that they can be converted into assassins.
While his objective may be this, it is ultimately up to the individual. They can refuse to either go or they can go and then refuse the task. While by itself this method is more than a little devious, the end it is meant to achieve ultimately determines whether or not it is good or evil.
>If he is not already a big bad, he is certainly no farther from being one than Blacksoul is.
I believe his actions thus far have been somewhere between ambiguous and friendly. Nonetheless, the probability of him turning out to be evil is not zero. If he is a bad guy then yeah, he could certainly be big bad material. I just don't think he is yet.
>Which is why the best option is to reveal other options to blacksoul
This I also agree with. Blacksoul is ruthless and willing to go to unacceptable extremes to achieve his aims, but he is also very powerful. Any alternate solutions we discover will probably have the highest chance of success if we inform Blacksoul of them and acquire his backing. Still, Blacksoul is willing to go too far, so it would be wise to handle him with kid gloves.
>which Marv has had the capacity to do (antithesis and spears for study would have been a big help) but won't because it will hamper his own plans.
Or because he doesn't trust Blacksoul and it would reveal him as the one who instigated the rebellion again Kshaara, which is kind of against the rules. This would only make Blacksoul distrust him further and increase the probability of him actively working again Marv.
>And giving Blacksoul an alternative beyond reaping is a far, far better solution than letting Marv plunge the world into the sea of oblivion.
Of course it is. However this assumes that Marv's goal is to even do that. Unless I missed something you have yet to address the possibility that Marv also lied the to Progenitors and is just using them for his own purposes.
>I DID trust him in the first place. I was one of the people saying 'we should probably trust this guy, he seems legit' up until...
Until now you had only stated that you didn't trust him because he's sneaky and you don't like what he's doing. You had not yet revealed the reason behind these things. Now I can at least understand your perspective and reasoning process.
>That is not the sea of oblivion, that is something that came out of the sea of oblivion.
Which is also unimportant to the point I was trying to make. Staying behind the Sea of Oblivion is normal. We don't care about normal, because that means nothing has changed. Suddenly they've decided to come out now. What we should be wonder is "why?"
>There is no indication that such things haven't been kept in the sea, biding their time, until the point that the plan was to be set in motion.
And there's nothing to indicate that these aren't a new weapon being fielded by the Progenitors either. It's a total unknown. Even if they've been around for decades that is irrelevant because it wasn't the point I was trying to address. My point was that the behavior of the Progenitors has suddenly changed. So far as we know it is impossible for Marv to reliably communicate with them, if at all. This may be indicative of a change in plans on their part.
Kalikissa also only told Spikesby of the antithesis spears, the Red Wizard, his plans, and using the pure antithesis. She made no mention of what the Progenitors were up to. This may be because Spikesby didn't ask about it, because she didn't know, or because she was hiding it. We don't know.
>There is no way to read Majestic Thunderstrike's statement and come away with any idea other than...
This statement is demonstrably false. I read her statement; I came to a different conclusion. That is a matter of fact. Saying that I read her statement and didn't come to a different conclusion does not make it true just because you don't agree with or understand how I did it.
>you are extremely insistent that Marv and the Progenitor's deal has changed.What is your evidence of this? We know that it came into being, and know nothing of it changing after the fact. By all appearances, it is doing nothing BUT moving forward as planned. There is no evidence that anything about it has changed.
I don't believe I ever stated that the "deal" had changed, though if I did then that was an error in communication on my part. I instead posit that the Progenitors have launched a plan of their own, one that is independent of their arrangement with the Red Wizard.
The Red Wizard's deal with the Progenitors is "Make creatures I send your way combat ready against wizards and give them a jar of your blood to use as poison. In exchange I will use them to kill all the wizards and life will be just spiffy for you guys." Well that's the part we know about anyway. That's a far more enticing offer than "Do all that stuff so I can kill just one of them and then you guys are on your own again." Regardless, none of that has changed. Marv having plans of his own, possibly to betray them, or the Progenitors hatching their own diabolical scheme is not mutually exclusive to this agreement.
I was skeptical that Marv ever intended to stick with his deal at all. It seems more likely to me, simply because he is a wizard, that he deceived them from the start.
While you have explained why you believe Marv is being dishonest to everyone else, you have yet to explain why you believe he is being honest with them. So far as we know it is impossible for a wizard to exist inside the Sea of Oblivion and we have no reason to believe that Marv is any exception to this rule yet. Unless he's just an omnicidal maniac we can also reasonably conclude that he isn't suicidal either. It stands to reason that his plan is not in fact to have Oblivion overtake everything, but either destroy it or keep it in a state of balance. Both options would involve betraying the Progenitors in varying degrees.
>The fact that Marv's plan to kill the wizards also furthers the progenitors' apparent goals certainly doesn't help your case.
Although killing off wizards does weaken the Peninsula's hand, we have yet to determine if the congealed wall will weaken when wizards die. I'm sure you can acknowledge that a lot of the wizard aren't very nice folks and, whatever Marv is planning, they would probably stand in his way. In order to succeed, regardless whether or not he's good or evil, he will inevitably have to kill or incapacitate other wizards to ensure they do not interfere.
>Because he DID have to. See above. He needed an army, and he needed the blood to empower them.
Think I adequately addressed this a few paragraphs up.
>Ingratiating the ophians to him and keeping her asleep (remember, his stated goal is to KILL the wizards, not subdue them) allowed him to accomplish both of these goals.
The Ophians have only become ingratiated to him rather recently. If he were intent on killing other wizards it might've been prudent to use the Ophians as couriers between him and the Progenitors. Ophians are fully functional organisms that don't need magic to sustain them. They would be perfectly suited to this task, but as far as we know they never did anything of the sort. If they did we should've expected to see some antithesis spears flying around at the battle of Suri.
>Queenie lives in a fortress castle and Meg doesn't give him an army. Furthermore, the whole 'blood empowerment' probably wouldn't work with meg since her wizard power seems to be making everything around her poisoned and dead. Neither was a more convenient target than K'shaara.
Sorrows is, now that I think about it, probably a poor choice. Based Majestic's first interactions with Sky it would seem her minions have a tough time even conceptualizing rebellion... although they do understand fear. So okay, Sorrows wouldn't be a good test subject.
Meg, though. Meg doesn't seem to have anything protecting her other than the swamp. She also doesn't appear to have any "super wizard senses" like Kshaara demonstrated. She wasn't aware Sky was at her door until she knocked and opened. At this point we don't know how powerful she is, so if she's really strong that would obviously make her a bad test subject, but otherwise she is perfect: lives alone, is very introverted, lives far away so he could avoid suspicion if only because of the distance, and close to Oblivion for a timely way to dispose of evidence. It would be nearly impossible to pin the attack on Marv if it were successful, even if he had to use his own golems. Meg would make the perfect test subject to see if they worked, Moriga would be the perfect choice for when he means business.
>It isn't that consolidating a power base is inherently bad, it is that The Lord of Marvels consolidating a power base for the express purpose of murdering the other wizards so that the Progenitors can win looks bad.
We still don't know if this is his goal. Supposing his intent is too kill all the other wizards assumes he was being honest the Progenitors, which as I said before, he may not have been.
>The Lord of Marvels has explicitly lied about his goals to the PCs and his underlings in the past.
Certainly he has not told us everything, but since it's his secret plan I wouldn't expect him to be forthcoming with the details to just anyone. We can't yet make this call for sure because we still don't know what his goals are in the first place.
>Blacksoul has had complete transparency with his plan as far as his underlings are concerned.
Blacksoul has been honest so far as we know and I won't call that into question. However until I posted Blacksoul's dialogue up there I think maybe a lot of us had the wrong idea about him as well. He has been perfectly honest so far, making no bones about his intent to destroy the Sea of Oblivion. What he failed to mention is that he is willing to sacrifice all life on the face of the planet to do so, which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than satisfying his insane hatred of Oblivion.
>Blacksoul's might have more immediate and obvious consequences, but Blacksoul is far more trustworthy.
This is something I actually agree with. Blacksoul is more trustworthy in that he probably won't lie to us. Outright deception just seems beneath him for some reason. However his methods are something I don't agree with. While it would be wise to keep his plan in motion as a backup, I would rather take a chance on someone we don't quite know yet, who seems friendly enough (though perhaps a bit machiavellian), appears to be helping people, and probably won't resort to exterminating all life to achieve his goals.
>employing every sort of doublethink...
I have employed no doublethink anywhere. Doublethink is asserting to two thing that are mutually exclusive to be true. There is as yet insufficent information to make a 100% accurate judgment call on a lot of things. Most of this stuff I am only 70 to 90 percent sure of. It would be foolish of me not to consider the possibility that I may be wrong. To make my decisions I assume that multiple scenarios could be true, then attempt to come up with a course of action that will achieve the best results in the most scenarios that I believe are most likely.
>Only an absolute moron could interpret majestic thunderstrike's statement as anything but a warning. If you choose to interpret it any other way it is because you are choosing to be a moron.
>Deal with it.
>that she tried to warn sky unless you literally failed to comprehend the words on the screen in front of you.
>you are outright lying to yourself if you continue to claim that A: you are not a goddamn illiterate
I have yet to resort to name calling or insulting your intelligence. It would be great if you could avoid that too.
>Flowering up your insults doesn't change what you're saying, you jackass.
I was not trying to be insulting. I was stating my perspective. Rude and insulting are two different things. I couldn't think of any other way to say it, but perhaps you can? How could I have phrased that differently so it wouldn't have been rude?
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