heh, maybe even a hehe if i feel a little daring

fair warning this is pretty rambley and not well organized lol

• THE GLOWSTONE PATH: i'm fascinated by his glowstone path being the thing that makes coco fall in love with magic. that feels too deliberate. that's too interconnected to mean nothing. did iguin lay them himself to lure coco? or did he choose his spot because there were glowstone already there.

and olruggio is super well known, so iguin would probably know who created them and the link to qifrey.

•NOZ: i'm starting to wonder if the brimcaps have more of an interest in him than we realize bc i also think the brimcaps were behind the incident in noz. we know that the blizzard was sudden. almost as if it was created by magic. and the only monsters we've seen so far have been created by the brimcaps. the leach and what they do to euini. they're the most likely candidates to create a monster. monsters don't seem to occur naturally.

and why would the brimcaps come after him? olruggio was already making a name for himself before he was an apprentice. so maybe the brimcaps knew about him and maybe the brim caps wanted him on their side but the kidnapping didn't go to plan.

• TOWER OF TOMES: what did olly's trip to the tower of tomes actually look like? what did he do in there? i think this is going to tell us so much. i saw a theory about him running into the brimcaps in there which is super fun and i could see the brimcaps wanting him to find a solution to the silvertree in qifrey.

my guess about the brimcaps ultimate is they're trying to make the perfect human/silvertree hybrid and it'll be immortal with the healing abilities the silvertree had. and i'm convinced agott's mom is a brimcap so they'd have easy access to olly if they wanted.

i definitely think olly's plan was more steps than just the memory wipe. i think he still remembers the silvertree and is trying to figure out a way to fix it. someone on twitter suggested the fire you can touch is the first step to his fix. a fire that doesn't burn humans, but burns silvertrees. i love that theory.

• WHAT ARE WE FORESHADOWING: i keep feeling like there's a reason we're shown multiple times how well known and famous olruggio is. the story has hyped him up a lot, but we've gotten multiple metaphors about him crashing and burning. it's like the story is setting him up for a spectacular fall.

this panel of utowin - of course at first you think olruggio getting caught by the leach is the fall, but he was ultimately fine after that happened except for passing out. plus i think we're going to get a moment of utowin being a shoulder for olly to cry on like he wanted to do as a kid eventually. it didn't happen during the leach fight so i think it means olly takes a fall again and utowin has another chance to comfort him.

so olruggio slips up during the leach fight, utowin and easthies rescue him and olly is ultimately okay. he passes out for a bit and when he comes back to we're hit with TWO more ominous metaphors for flames burning out. his fall is still to come.

don't burn yourself out. some flames it would be a shame to see fizzle. a little on the nose.

A GOOD WATCHFUL EYE: this is less a question and more just a thought, but i think olly actually being a watchful eye who sees EVERYTHING is fascinating. everyone jokes about him not seeing shit (me included) but the story hypes him up as such a good person and shows him being taken advantage of (well sort of) by qifrey with the cap. i think he is extremely watchful and we're going to see how he doesn't miss anything.

WHY IS HE BEING SPIED ON?: i thought this panel at first was talking about when hiehart jumped down on him, but that was in the great hall, not the castle town. am i missing something or did we never see him actually get spied on in the castle town. only a man with secrets worries about being spied on and who would care what he was up to other than the brimcaps? who is spying on him and why??

• GOOD GUY PERSONA: not to say olruggio isn't a good person, i think at his core he's a very good person, but i feel like the narrative has shined such a deliberate light on his goodness. it shows olly being taken advantage of by qifrey with the cap, it shows how well he's thought of by the witch community, it shows how kind and warm his magic is.

my question is if there's more than it seems with olly. an underbelly of lying and depict that is gnawing a hole in his stomach, but he keeps these lies because he has to to keep the people around him safe. he's portrayed as an angel now because we don't know what he's really up to. and ultimately, he's a fire wielder. what does that say about him? he knows how dangerous fire would be if witches were at war again, it doesn't stop him developing spells with it for battle.

• WAR/HOW POWERFUL IS HE: the way olly's magic is so primed for war makes me nervous. we'll probably get to a war eventually in the story. what's olly's role in it?

and how powerful is he really? what kind of carnage could he inflict if he was forced?

• WHAT'S UP NEXT?: jumping forward to the most recent chapters, the fact that olruggio has the girls with him in the snow feels like a setup for noz 2.0. the brimcaps go after coco when qifrey's not around so what better opportunity. i feel like it'll be noz 2.0 and he freezes again and that's ultimately what leads to the flame fizzling out. at least for a while.

if you have a link to the post, that would be appreciated!

It’s not a theory per se, that’s why it’s presented as a conspiracy board and not a post!

The explanation is basically that Olruggio's makeover mask has huge potential for misuse and there are a lot of things that make me think it could be a Chekhov's gun.

I’m not trying to presume how any of that could come together, I’m just saying that any of the things I put there could be a trigger for it to be fired.

I had talked a little bit about it on Twitter before so I do have some expanded thoughts, though:

WHA usually has a very linear narrative style where something introduced in one chapter or arc becomes relevant in the one that immediately follows

Iguin's introduction of pegasus carriages, purifying springs, glowstones -> ch 1 contraptions

Raincleaver -> seal of seals

Cloak of flight, pigment stone -> used to clear Dadah Range; eventually become Custas' wingcloak

Flying puppet of diversion -> Sasaran's cloak

Link rings -> given to Agott in Staircase River

Garmentglimpse glasses -> then requested by the king

etc

Which makes me wonder about Olruggio's makeover mask getting a Pretty Long scene and then just not having have come back again since

Technically it could be a one and done deal since it served to introduce the rules of Castle Ezrest but the KM's entrance did that as well...

How do I make this about Tetia's and Eoleo's deal with clothes transforming you and all that is needed to infiltrate witch society really being the costume uhhh

It’s likely not released publicly (even the snugstones weren’t yet, by Silver Eve) but its use is kind of loud in that those who know him would ask questions, and if he answers, it’s magic someone could try to replicate. He had also been spied on without him noticing…

both of them have this sort of "division" symbol in association with an "eye" (sasaran's actual eye, and iguin's mask). i dont know if this particular sign/sigil has been revealed elsewhere, but i thought it was interesting. perhaps iguin's eye mask is more than just decoration. (also im just now realizing the eye mask uses a bunch of circles in the design. perhaps that is also a seal of some kind? i think its possible there could also be a circle that functions as a sigil rather than an actual circle. meaning their mask could be a contraption of sorts)

anyway no clue what this means, but i thought it was an interesting detail wait hold on i just thought of smth as i typed this out.

one of sasaran's eyes is most likely the one on his hat. perhaps that seal on his face moves the location of the object it touches, thereby allowing sasaran to see from his cloak puppet.

on top of that, iguin refers to themself as the "eye of the world" and "the lidless one". perhaps their own eye (and im thinking it might be just be One for clone theory reasons) isn't actually contained within their body? not only would that allow them to view "the world" far beyond their body, an eye plucked from a face is, by its very nature, lidless.

EDIT: HOLY SHIT I FOUND SOMETHING ELSE LITERALLY RIGHT AFTER. LOOK AT EUINI'S ANTI-SCALEWOLF MEDALLION

COMPUTER. ENHANCE THAT BITCH

ITS ALMOST THE SAME FUCKING DESIGN, WITH A RING MISSING. WHAT THE FUCK DOES ANY OF THIS MEAN

the manga is a little unclear but the anime makes a point to have qifrey using the normal pyreball spell right before showing the "forbidden" one

I think this is my favourite qifrey frame in the whole manga

I admire shirahama as a writer so much, she's always working in narrative mirrors and parallels and foils and sets them out there so skillfully. the scene immediately before this is tartah forcing coco to speak even as she's weeping and breaking down and trying to pull away, and here we have coco entering the scene so angry and determined but the moment qifrey expresses to her (a bit manipulatively as is his wont lol but also truthfully) that talking about this is actively hurting him, she all but makes him stop/forces him to pace himself. because she cares about him. she catches him at the kind of shitty defensive thing he's doing to push her away and she calls him out on it and he actually manages to get his adult brain back on for her to comfort her. (which includes 'yes, you're right. I'm sorry', and for all his faults I think his consistent capacity for that is one of his most redeeming and sympathetic qualities and also part of what makes him such a good teacher at the end of the day.)

it's a foolproof plan!