also just as an addendum to my big explanation on araman cosmology, the thing that interested me in this right off the bat was one line occtis had in episode three. and because it was an occtis line not a brennan line, i don't know if it will get picked up again, but to assume it's canon bc things are more fun that way
aranessa wanted to talk to occtis, as the only member of house tachonis willing to talk to her, about what was happening with the planes. because faerie had been closed off for 8 years at this point due to the underworld's chaotic expansion almost choking it to death, but that's not the only thing that's at risk from what's going on in the underworld right now. (and with future context, we now know just how big a deal stability is, everything down there is unstable, chaotic, unpredictable, that's why it's such a problem)
faerie may be safe in its bubble. but aranessa brought it up because even before house tachonis destroyed the golden orchard, the orchard was dying. the more souls enter the underworld, and push it past its limits, the more the entire universe shakes, and everything extraplanar (even a local demiplane like the orchard) is at risk
so to that line i talked about. aranessa knew about the tachonis stronghold in the underworld, and asked if all of this was also killing it, or just making it stronger? and occtis' complete honest answer was "it's doing both"
the bigger the underworld gets, the more powerful house tachonis get, and if their castle down there is an extension of their magic, then it's getting stronger too. but it has to just to keep up, because all that metaphysical shaking and buffering that threatened to destroy the bridge at the theatre without a solid trinity of anchors? it's hitting them just as much, and i don't even know if it's possible to make anchors to prevent that one
and i kinda love it as a metaphor or parallel too, bc the house is breaking in more ways than one. in desperate times the family is grabbing at anything that'll make them stronger, and they're failing and disagreeing just as much as they're succeeding. julien's managed to sneak in there and kill two of primus' kids already, and the rest don't really seem to be all that unified a front. i think nullus had this shit down, but he's not alive anymore, so he's gotta trust the others to handle things in the material plane while he plays a frantic game of whack a mole with a million underworld problems
and im interested to see at what point it all shatters
