@landscapingfan said: was there a mistake in CoM? i wasn't aware of that (but im also not hugely informed about it, i only played it once)
so CoM had a lot of goofiness in it, largely people acting very out of character and also the fact that the player character didnāt really need to be involved at all but much of the OOC-ness can be put down to a combination of the writers having to try and distribute dialogue evenly amongst every character, thus no single character really got to have a properly big, fleshed out speaking role (aside from azzy, zaros, and arguably kharshai),
and also the fact that two of those aforementioned major characters were probably not in the best place mentally for the duration. zaros having to recall the betrayal and azzy having to not only relive that through their bond, but also literally relive it through divination memory shit wouldnāt have been the greatest time for them, ya dig!
but anyway iām blathering. i could talk a lot about CoM.
the big āmistakeā in CoM was, like i sort of mentioned, something that you could actually work with. you could either ignore it outright or find other things in-canon to explain it with to make it Less Stupid.
the mistake was two-fold: the reveal that zamorak had been there personally when seren came to the mahjarrat posing as mah and taught them the rituals. right from the off, this reveal COMPLETELY fucks the timeline of mahjarrat history. it makes zamorak - and by extension, almost every other mahjarrat, because zamorak is one of the oldest - either WAY older or WAY younger (weāll get to that) than you would otherwise suspect. this also naturally necessitates that azzy was there for this moment as well, since heās The oldest.
first of all, the idea that any currently living mahjarrat was alive for this thing that supposedly happened so far in their cultureās past that none of them even believe mah is real anymore is just capital-f Fucking Stupid. this cultural turning point that shaped their entire history and put them down the path of becoming the bloodthirsty, violent, warlike species that they are today? the thing that happened so far into their species history that itās literally part of their own creation myth by the present day?
nah lmao not only did that happen within living memory, it didnāt even happen within living memory of the oldest member of their species, because:
this is the second part of this mistake, and instead of being the result of just not thinking the implications of things through like the first bit, this part is directly because of NOT KNOWING THEIR OWN FUCKING LORE.
everything wrong with āzamorak was there when seren taught them the ritualsā so far can either be ignored or teeth-grittingly headcanoned into making sense. but the mere addition of bilrach popping in to say āhey i remember that shit too! i was there!ā fucks it ALL THE WAY INTO THE STRATOSPHERE
because bilrach is one of the youngest mahjarrat! in mahjarrat memories, bilrach is described as being young by the time of the move to gielinor. combine this with khazard probably being the only mahjarrat born on gielinor, and that makes bilrach like, the second or third-youngest mahjarrat!
so if he was there too then this shit happened like barely ten thousand years ago! so not only is zamorak way younger than youād think, but so is azzy, the guy whoās so brain-breakingly old that even the other mahjarrat find his age incredible!
there is seriously so much that this one singular decision fucks up that i could keep at this for several paragraphs more but iāll spare you because god damn. unfortunately they hardcore doubled down on this in future updates in way that made it CATASTROPHICALLY MORE STUPID because this one flub makes anything else based on it go to shit