no matter how many times i listen to the s1, i keep feeling like the ring count is off, especially when i listen to episode 12
but... that's nine rings, no? why do they keep talking about eight rings? what am i getting wrong?
I've been asked about this a few times now, enough to make me realize that perhaps something wasn't as clear as I thought it was when I wrote it. It's not the greatest form in the world to just answer it here, but just to clarify what's happening with that count...
Okay, so let's break it down from the point of view of Episode 12.
The first four (movement, mind, divination, sympathy) are all accounted for. There's people out in the world that have them and are using them.
Then, before the commercial break, Adam, Amy, and McCandless translate two more tablets, which seem to point towards the Ring of Skies and the Ring of the Body. That's six so far.
And then, while Adam is out in the garden talking to President Shepherd, McCandless and Amy crack the basics on two more tablets, which allude to the Ring of Demons and to a ring that lets you talk to the dead. That's eight, which is the full set.
The confusion arises from an exchange that McCandless and Amy have shortly after the commercial break, in which they go:
AMY STIRLING: All right, so... “in this covenant is granted... the... dominion over... issues -”
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: “- or matters -”
AMY STIRLING: Right. “... of the...” I don’t know “daionica.”
JULIAN MCCANDLESS: It’s a slippery term. Lots of double meanings. But generally... “distant place?” “Far off place?”
AMY STIRLING: So another ring related to moving matter? To… speed? Adam what do you think?
Which is where a lot of people have been left with the impression of a phantom ninth ring that doesn't quite fit with any of the other ones.
The thing that to my mind was dazzlingly obvious (but which absolutely isn't, given how many people have asked about it) is that while Adam is off in the garden, Amy and McCandless realize that the "distant, far-off place" that daionica is referring to is... well, death. Or the place where things go after life. The ultimate distant place that we can't really reach, if you will.
So yeah - that's what's going on there, with that seeming discrepancy.
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