Hello! A corvid question.
A what-if sort of situation. (I've done this to Para too many times, so welcome to the club! Hehe.)
We'll pick on Val.
What if, in some universe, the...ehm... condition :> which kept him safe through a bulk of the danger in 4th Era failed or was removed sooner? Say... before the Great War? What sort of issues would that cause? How would he have ended up in Skyrim, or would he have made it at all?
disgruntled crow noises
I actually think Val would have been safer if the Blades weren't so confident they'd be okay when they saw The Signs. You'll see a bit of why when we post this current chapter I'm working on, but hubris and negligence were a large part of why his unit was backed into a corner to begin with. As a result, they had to rely on outside help to escape, and we know how that went. He ended up having to cast the spell on himself (as he said, self-illusions never last ;).
He's also terrible at them. He doesn't have the focus. Most of the paragraphs in his POV are short for a reason LOL. So if he had gotten the spell cast on him sooner, in the proper way, he would have made it to Skyrim where E was waiting for them, and he would have begun a much different life.
If he had had the proper spell removed too soon, or if even his broken spell had been removed too soon, we would have seen much more reckless behavior from him. The Thalmor had assumed everyone died in that fire; if he laid low I think he would have been ok. But the Thalmor were likely impossible to avoid at that time. It's unlikely he would have been able to resist doing something stupid.
We will at some point see an explanation of how that spell was supposed to work, I promise! Thanks so much for the ask!
