A Mage Reborn, Book Two (WIP) - UPDATED August 7th | Book One Released!

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Everyone is faced with this choice, even if you support them you are still functionally a prisoner with no real agency or resources. They just torture you less, how nice of them. :unamused:

The careful observation of the mc makes them not a non-factor by definition. They just judged the mc to be less valuable than sister and that is reflected in their treatment of the mc even now.
You can “pretend” not to be a prisoner but that it is all it really is, pretend. Way I see it is that at that point some mc’s could have snapped far enough to play a “boy in the striped pajama’s” kind of headgame with themselves.

No, the mc never gets any leeway in Arcadia period. You just get to make a pretend “choice” about some of the details of your servitude, but no servitude and actual leeway are never on the table to begin with.

The only part we seem to know for certain is that at some point old Arcadia stopped teaching their own youth their “secrets” due to their own paranoia. A likely terminally stupid decision, whatever else they may or may not have been.

Well Thalia claims to have “relearned” a lot of old Arcadia by her own admission and her new Arcadia is certainly somewhat like the Nazi’s with their magical bloodline obsession and genocidal imperial goals as the goal of Thalia’s “resistance” seems to be the establishment of a genocidal Arcadian empire where the only people of some import will be Arcanists and she god-empress.

As @Gloomcat nicely sums up here Thalia and some of the other Arcadians certainly make a lot of points that might as well have come from the mouth of someone like Himmler.

Oh and assuming they have inherited the word from old Arcadia then the fact that the word for non- Arcadians, ercei also doubles as an insult can certainly be an important clue for insight into the mentality of old Arcadia as well.

After the last update there also isn’t any ro my mc is interested in anymore. :disappointed:

The only actual escape attempt currently in the game seems to be more about just getting away from Arcadia, not running to Param specifically. That wouldn’t be my mc’s instinct by now anyway, he’s not anxious to be reunited with Leon either.

It is however doomed to fail, proving just exactly how utterly useless the latest parasite is. And unfortunately also how untrustworthy Eli can be. :broken_heart:

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Okay let’s stop here for a second cuz it makes me curious.

When MC tries to escape, it is essentially through an elevator/portal (?) that ends up in a room with Thalia. Eli mentions she can read minds, which is how she knows everything that happens there. Something that is not clear for me: did Eli know she was there? Did Eli lead you there at her orders or really wasn’t expecting her? Cuz Eli kept asking ‘‘are you sure? sure sure?’’ Their reaction while MC was being tortured makes me think Eli didn’t know, but the doubt is still there.

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1561

Honestly I am not exactly sure what to think of that scene either. But Eli later voluntarily offering and subsequently acting as the mc’s jailer in Arcadia has me leaning to see it in the worst and not the best possible light.

It may also be that Eli just didn’t think she’d actually torture the mc.

Yep, that’s the highly suspicious part that leads me to think that there is the possibility that he was always meant to be our handler by the Arcadians and always voluntarily acted as such and the escape attempt just made it obvious and then later formal too.

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Something that the update made me realize is that we were too caught up in meeting Eli again. And for a short moment, we thought they were the same Eli as when we were kids. What we didn’t consider was that Eli was brought back years ago, probably in the same terms, she had years to make them fall in line, Eli already had an idea of the extent of her power/influence, maybe doesn’t know everything about her but certainly more than us.

Eli is not on our side, just like Yu isn’t either, they are sympathetic to us but at the end of the day they respond to someone else, and they probably, maybe even first hand, know exactly why you don’t have to contradict her.

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1563

They can cram that “sympathy” where the sun don’t shine as far as my mc is concerned. But yeah, the depressing thing is that nobody except Aunt Bess and maybe, just maybe Saine ever truly was on the mc’s side. :crying_cat_face: Oh and likely their own mother, but she’s long dead and her legacy long since gone thanks to sister. Everybody else, including the parasites is just all about using the mc for their own purposes and don’t give a shit beyond that.

Honestly at this point the circumstances of this mc may be more depressing than even the Marshall in the Forgotten one, as they at least have Darin and in the case of mine Obren genuinely rooting for them and being on their side. As well as at least the conditional support of their sister.

Yeah, my mc is, at least towards Saine. Ilya is more doubtful, especially given her whole connection to church thing and my mc didn’t interact that much with her, but she did help Saine in the breakout attempt, so there is that.

In any case, besides Aunt Bess, Saine and possibly Ilya may very well be the last and only friends he has left in the world. And yes we cannot contact them in any way at present since we are either a slave or a prisoner. Yu gets to see their relatives, but not the mc. Not even Aunt Bess, who is no threat to Arcadia, unlike Saine.

My mc does detest Leon by now though. Like I said before, the way things stand he may still be the lesser evil compared to both Thalia and the mysterious backer of the weird twins, but that doesn’t mean he is a friend and he certainly isn’t on our side.

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Yeah I mean, objectively you are surrounded by people that in the best scenario you don’t have to cross and at worst you can’t trust at all, no support, your one friend that causes more harm than good, a compassionate guy that will never go against his people and the rest is plain tolerance.

Can’t imagine the emotional toll of that, because if you are sympathetic with the White Fangs post-resurrection, you are alive but can’t see them for the foreseeable future, you can’t reach them, you can’t warn them of this threat Thalia talks of, can’t tell them you are (not) okay. MC must be feeling pretty useless and desperate.

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Yep, the most depressing thing of all is the one author spoiler we have about a possible end-game that suggests Eli may eventually genuinely come around to the mc’s side again, but not before it is far too late to do anybody any good. Least of all the mc. :disappointed:

In one possible end-game, yes, but that one heavily seems to imply that by the time Eli genuinely comes around and starts to help the mc and actually be on their side again, it will be far too little far too late to make any positive difference.

At present Eli appears to be very much not on the mc’s side. As @Gloomcat said at present Eli and Yu appear to be “sympathetic” to the mc, but that is all. Neither of them are really on the side of the mc right now.

Really that seems to be a very depressing ending and I think I can reasonably say that by that time the reverse certainly won’t be true as judging from what happens in that end-game my mc would definitely not be on Eli’s side anymore and it is just Eli deluding themselves there by the time those events may actually happen.

And yet more of Thalia being a gigantic hypocrite over sister or having the same fetish for abusing and torturing the mc:

Spoiler

“These people worked with Sister, Eli. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

The older mage refuses to meet your eyes. “I am, yes. Though I left Arcadia not long after finding out.”

So Eli was allowed to leave over the sister thing even after being resurrected, but mc, who was the main object of all of sister’s petty torture and vendetta’s is supposed to just move on while they get absolutely nothing at all? :unamused:

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Pretty sure it was already said Eli always takes your side and would probably help you kill everyone if that’s what you choose to do, even if they don’t like it. Also I’m pretty sure them being your “jailer” is so Thalia doesn’t have someone else do it who won’t give a shit what they do to you.

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Now i got a headcanon that sister was actually a distraction so arcadia could redirect param attention on her while they do their things

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I’m so glad I decided to read this after seeing it pop up a few times. It’s been a while since I teared up at a WIP but here we are.

I love your writing and the universe, also the characters are great, the main cast is very likeable in their own way. Also Aunt Bess, I love her! Hoping we’ll get to see her again, though I dunno if my poor heart can take it.

Definitely gonna keep an eye on this one, looking forward to future updates. :eyes:

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1569

Just execute both Leon and Thalia together , problem solved

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You don’t get to accuse Arcadia of this, when everyone with any authority in Param only has it because of their bloodline, unless you’re somehow convinced that royalty and nobility are somehow picked by meritocracy, and being of Arcadian descent means people get to murder you indiscriminately and have the prince advocate for mercy in their punishment. And after that punishment, they get to be in charge of Arcadian lives again. Because if you’re an Arcadian, your life means two things in Param: jack and shit, and someone already drank all the jack (and it wasn’t you). Param who, again, invaded Arcadia with no provocation, and either killed or enslaved every Arcadian it could get its hands on.

Oh no, somebody maybe said something mean about Paramites. Clearly, it’s time for genocide and slavery over generations. If I spent my life as slave whose life was worth nothing, I assure you that ONE WORD would not, in fact, be the complete list of epithets I’d direct towards the people doing it.

As it turns out, Hitler and Churchill are not the same person. The Nazis and the people who fought Nazis are not “just as bad as each other” just because both killed people during WW2.

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Cool the dramatic rhetoric, everyone.

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I wonder how long this game would be; 2millionish words??

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Even if you mean all three books put together, that sounds like a gross overestimation. OP gives a word count of 300k words per book as the upper limit, and puts Book 1 plus a chunk of Book 2 at 216k words. I’d guess 750k words for all three books put together, tops.

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I feel like “Param supporters” are just people who are focusing on their character more than on “the bigger picture”. (Which is not a bad thing). In the world of politics each separate individual is a tool as sad as it sounds. The world doesn’t revolve around MC lore-wise and my MC thinks: if you are a gear in some big machine you might as well rotate. Thalia is certainly not a pleasant person as of now. She is a pragmatic, no BS and ambitious woman. She is also arrogant and has questionable morals. I wouldn’t blame her for limiting our freedom, honestly. I wouldn’t blame Sister as well, (I just felt immense sadness), because who we had to deal with is a broken, insane woman. She believed she was doing things “for the bigger picture”. It made revenge sweeter and “excused” the atrocities she committed. She probably thought that she sacrificed herself in a noble way. I won’t be going against that. Moreover, I will help Arcadia for their future generations. Thalia is not the best, but maybe her child will be or something. The beautiful legacy of magic and knowledge was destroyed by crazy believers. I would be xenophobic too. I wouldn’t trust outsiders easily.
It’s all pretty logical in my opinion. Peace is cool but only if all wrongs from Param’s side are righted.

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Yes, I am guilty of that with my character, at least post-resurrection, he is done with wars and politics and all that shit and only really has personal goals now. A bucket-list if you will. Caring about “big pictures” has never done my mc any favours, therefore he’s resolved not to do so any longer as he’s sick and tired of being a cosmic plaything for the “big picture” as even undead spirits like Augur now violate him and disrespect his free will.
The only good times in his life were as busboy at Aunt Bess little inn, with the White Fangs and maybe before Thaubal kidnapped him, everything else has been one constant hell of pain, torture and servitude/slavery.

Thalia and Arcadia have proven themselves no better than Thaubal enslaving, torturing and being fully willing to experiment on him some more.

They also offer no real reward or incentive to side with them and are threatening to kill the only people left in the world who might actually genuinely care about him as a person, Aunt Bess (really don’t think she and Leaf’s end are going to survive a big continental war and the coming genocide should Thalia prevail, since they are all “evil” Parami) and Saine (& maybe Ilya).

As far as his personal goals of that bucket list go there are:

  • Escape slavery in Arcadia,
  • Get rid of the parasites, all of them.
  • See if sister left anything of his real mother intact, as he wants to get to know her. Though given sister’s consistent cruelty and pettiness towards the mc I’m not holding out much hope that there is anything left to reclaim there.
  • Maybe take some personal vengeance on any surviving member’s of Mireil’s clique in Salantira.
  • Get rid of ugly tattoos, if possible as we shouldn’t need them anymore if we can get rid of the parasites.
  • Destroy a statue.
  • Reach out to Saine and Ilya.
  • Go back to Leaf’s end, take on Aunt Bess’ last name, take over the family business and hopefully never need to use or practice any magic ever again.

Mostly in that order.

That’s it. Siding with Arcadia doesn’t get him remotely close to any of those goals as all he has to look forward to there is a lifetime of further slavery under the arcane collar of god-empress Thalia. In fact code-diving the upcoming archangel sections shows that they’ll require the mc to help a Salantiran Duchess who was in Mireil’s clique and has participated in destroying his mother’s legacy. :rage:

In fact if Thalia succeeds, his few remaining friends will be dead, Leaf’s End and anything left of his real mother’s legacy razed and burned to ashes and he himself still a slave with an arcane collar who has nothing more than a set of shitty robes to his name and is still infested with a bunch of useless parasites that make using magic akin to self-inflicted torture.

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This isn’t STRICTLY true. Getting rid of the phantasmas and the scars (getting rid of the scars might get rid of the phantasmas, who knows? It’s not like Thaubal’s shit wasn’t all over the place, nothing he did was standard practice) should be much easier (or perhaps even only possible) via the use of thaumic healing. And that means you’re going to have to burninate the Jovian Church and break into whatever the equivalent of the Vatican is to get access to the Arcadian knowledge on it they keep sequestered inside. “Burninate the Jovian Church” and “liberalise thaumic healing” are two goals that should be right up New Arcadia’s alley.

Isn’t she dead? I thought Thaubal had killed her, which is why you get the other dude swearing his allegiance to you after Sister bashes Thaubal’s skull in with a rock.

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It is, god-empress Thalia is never gonna let anybody use that knowledge for the purpose of discarding the very things that make somebody an “Arcadian” in her twisted vision. Nor does she share any knowledge with the mc or provide any resources.

And in Arcadia the mc is nothing more than a slave with no free will, resources or agency of his own.

But they will never be used for the what the mc actually wants for himself nor would such knowledge be shared with a slave like him, just like most of the rest of their knowledge.
Thalia will never let mc get rid of the useless parasites, because that would make them too powerful and a potential threat and she certainly wouldn’t let us get rid of the earthworm too.

As for the scars and tattoos, why waste cosmetic vanity treatments on a slave.

Also by the time “new” Arcadia might achieve those goals Leaf’s end, Aunt Bess and his remaining friends Saine and Ilya will be dead and gone, so he’d have nowhere to go and nothing to live for anyway.

Nope, not if Ilya will help. And even if she doesn’t and he does have to get it himself, that is better than Thalia getting her hands on it as she would neither share it nor let the mc use it for the purpose mine wants.

Lot of good that did us, and that allegiance turned out to only ever have been to “sister” if you mean that Duke guy. They didn’t care much about Eli or mc, even back then.

See my previous post. My mc only really wants what he can get of her personal effects, diaries, love letters, a portrait. And not holding out much hope there since sister probably has destroyed everything already as she was certainly petty enough to do such things, but he still wants to try. He doesn’t care about the title or the estate he just wants some personal connection, anything to remember her by really.

Instead If you code dive to the section where you take the archangel job you do get to visit Salantira again, but to help a surviving member of Mireil’s vile ruling clique, and no, unlike Yu the mc doesn’t get to settle any personal business nor kill or torture one of Mireil’s remaining accomplices. Instead Thalia seems keen to reward vile scum like that. :unamused:

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Just to know, will there be an option to not wanting to collaborate with Thalia &co. without running back to Leon like a lapdog? Because while my MC doesn’t exactly care about the “great Arcadian cause”, he’s not exactly thrilled to just go back and hug the guy that literally burned him alive.

…well, i was thinking about something a lil bit less drastic like “fuck yall I am just trying to survive here” bit that ok too i guess? (maybe just kill some of them?)

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