D&D/TTRPG Thoughts

I don't *think* they knew the whole thing with his binding, or even fully him going after Suvi, but I mean it's all so neat.

Suvi gets there. It's been over a decade, so she steps on the road, releasing the King of Night. Grandmother Wren's protections are still up, even with her condition, but here comes Suvi into the cottage, making contact with first Ame then Grandmother Wren and spreading a memory curse that dulls their knowledge and power. Then, after attempting to counteract this curse, which is unsuccessful, Grandmother Wren dies after passing her station to Ame. In that moment the Man in Black is able to approach and attempt to breach the cottage, to do what we do not know. But if Ame, kept from all of the knowledge she had learned, hadn't found a way to get more time....

It hinges on why the Man in Black wants Suvi, and why exactly the Citadel wanted the Witch of the Worlds Heart station to die with Wren. I'm thinking worse case he was able to enter, and likely kill Ame and Suvi, doing who knows what else as a result.

The Citadel arc feels in hinsight so much more portentious. Ame intuitively saw the same truth Lucent Court did in her conversation with Mr Calum in Bring Them To Me - she automatically assumed that Mr Calum was of kinship with the spirit, in a way that sent the poor tamori into an existential crisis. But where what she saw lifted the tamori up in her worldview, elevating them to the ranks of Honoured Friends, the thought process of the Citadel went in the other direction, bringing the spirit low to the level of arcane practice - the sacred and sublime made malleable and mundane.

Put another way, and to paraphrase Clarke's Third Law, if to Ame, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from Spirit, to the Citadel any sufficiently analysed Spirit is indistinguishable from magic.

The hubris of Lucent Court is such that they do not question the underlying assumption that the laws of magic and the realm of the spirit are theirs to shape - they don't even think of asking themselves the question. Would not any farmer want to be free of Weather's whims? Would not any parent want to shield their offspring from the cruelty of Disease? Is it not a sign of humanity's maturity as a species that they do not simply bow to the Spirit as a hapless child to the will of its parents, but take their destiny in their own hands?

The Citadel creating life, and seeing it merely as a tool. Suicide bomber Fireballs. Shield tamori sacrificing themselves as an act of Love. The function of a tamori is to serve, of course it is, why and how could it be anything else? So then to turn to shape the Spirit to birth beasts of burden for the engines of civilisation, Great Spirits under the yoke of the Citadel, the taming of Nature made manifest, is the logical conclusion of a worldview that sees its dominance over magic and the Spirit not just as a necessity, but as a birthright.

Steel, Sword of the Citadel, drawn by yours truly