You literally put everything together that I think about Ante and there’s nothing to add to that, so thanks. I wholeheartedly agree with you
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but mc could have dispelled the bomb without killing the saintess if Ante and her goons hadn’t interfered, or that’s just a misunderstanding on my part?
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@Jonard_Conejar No she had to die unless the MC had more time (which they didn’t have) they could maybe had fixed it, maybe. Because our MC found out to late the saintess was the sacrifice. So yeah…
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From what I remember that’s correct. There’s even a choice to ask Ante to watch the mage work on it but Ante refuses and so the mage lost precious time and had to kill the saintess.
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It only needs this recovery period if you use it constantly (like during the war) and because you didn’t get it the right way.
Actually, IIRC, Thalia says EXACTLY the opposite - that Avatar’ing Gwaela lets you speed-cast enchantments but NOT get rid of the things it lets you speed-cast, because going in the opposite direction is not the same. Lemme see if I can find the quote…
…
…
…
Here it is.
I think the collar is more a matter of KNOWING how to do it than having huge amounts of power to do with it. Of course, if you’re wearing a collar you can’t turn it off, because it’d be useless if you could.
I don’t think we have any indication that Thaubal was particularly good at magic’ing - he WAS very good on the theory aspects, i.e., had a high Learning skill.
When you’re the spymaster, “they’re sus” is the only fault you need on people that spend their days in close quarters with the entirety of the royal family.
Yeah, you do, because “sus super-duper mage” is not someone you want in close-quarters with any member of the royal family, let alone all of them.
Of course she knows that. It’s her literal job to know that. After Mireil attacks the palace, the only way for her to not know that is for her to be completely incompetent at her job.
After she let the two princes slip through her fingers when they went to White Fang around the place and it took her three years to find them, she either does or has people do it. Because that’s her job.
No, because these could have been a long term ploy to manipulate the royals, and preventing that sort of stuff is her job. She doesn’t know where you came from, and you are therefore labeled as “potential threat” until that changes. And when it DOES change, it turns out that where you came from is “the country that just attacked the palace and killed the king, and you referred to the leader of that attack as Sister.”
Julius asked you and you immediately deflected. That’s the ACTUAL KING doing the asking and you still don’t answer. And she doesn’t trust you anyway (because her job is to not trust you), so it’s not like she’d trust anything you say anyway. Because “not trusting people” is her job.
I am DEFINITELY pro-Arcadia. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re in Param, she’s the Parami spymaster, and she therefore has the legal right, as empowered by the Crown, to do whatever the fuck she thinks is necessary to ensure the safety of the royal family. Again, if you’re unhappy with her job description, take it up with the people who drew up the job description.
STOP
TRYING
TO
SHIFT
RESPONSIBILITY
OFF
LEOMAR
Leomar is a grown-ass person, he’s responsible for his actions, and since he wasn’t magically compelled he bears full responsibility for them. The things he did are on nobody’s hands but his own.
I mean, I got no counter to your assertion that Leomar is an absolute moron, because he is, it’s just that “being a moron” doesn’t lessen the responsibility for your actions.
You are presumed innocent. If she DIDN’T presume you innocent, she’d just shank you dead and be on her way. The fact that she doesn’t try to just do that is exactly because she can’t prove you’re guilty.
She does. That’s her literal reaction to Ilya’s letter reveal according to the author. Also, the one who cost Param a valuable ally wasn’t Aste, it was Leomar, because only one of those two had the authority to have you burnt at the stake, and it wasn’t her.
No. It’s because you just infiltrated the Saintesse’s tower by either beating up a bunch of guards or magically putting them to sleep, and because her job includes protecting the Saintesse she’s not going to let anyone who just did that in close proximity to the Saintesse, because she’s not an absolute incompetent.
Misunderstanding. You’re out of time. It’s even mentioned that there was a good chance the bomb could have gone off already. Even if you know how dispel the Saintesse-bomb link (which I think you don’t in any case), you can’t risk the extra time it would take over just stabbing the Saintesse.
Certainly possible.
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I take this to mean that the parasites should be able to do this, but no one knows how to get them to perform those tricks any longer. Presumably because the ancient arcadians did not want to pass along that knowledge at some point. More is the pity that they seem like more useful powers than the ones we can actually get them to perform for us. 
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For the record, I would be perfectly fine with her doing her job if she was doing it properly. Be mindful of MC’s actions? Sure. Occasionally check out their dealings? Seems reasonable. But sabotaging their relationship with the only friends they have is an intolerable blow.
This is something I completely disagree with. Make the King know, listen to his response and order and do exactly that with the most efficiency which includes being swift and morally acceptable at least when you’re surrounded by people. But her entire persona seems way to arrogant to me, the methods she uses to do her job are horrendous. Don’t tell me you are going to excuse her decisions during their first meeting? Chasing after Ilya and MC without a word? Cornering them like street rats? Putting a spell on them and angering the royals? Worst tactic I’ve ever seen. Send a freaking letter, meet them at the tavern, pretend to be possible clients. Anything but what she did. They are not criminals on the loose and as far as I remember they do not desperately run away from the spymaster, they’re just travelling.
Regarding this. It’s actually funny that it took her so long. Despite the fact that White Fangs move a lot, they accept commissions to earn money and are pretty famous. I’m sure some of the wealthiest clients would specifically search for them and find them to make a request.
Than she should know about MC’s good deeds as well. And accept them. Not disregard in favour of MC being suspicious. She should investigate, not condemn, just as I said before. She needs to be objective. You can be mindful of a person while not annoying them to death. You write as the good deeds are all part of the plot to get close to the royals but it just doesn’t hold up. MC is already close to them, they could’ve waited until Ilya falls asleep, sent Saine to pick some berries, then slit Leon’s throat when his back is turned. By the way, you also write as if the entirety of the White Fangs are fucking dumb. You don’t need to be a genius to understand that MC is suspicious. They refuse to talk about their past, they have weird stuff on their body (which they either will show at some point or will do the best effort to hide), they are really good at magic. I’m adamant that at least Ilya understands this and she chose to accept the risk. She will still try to stop the MC if they will loudly proclaim about their hatred for the world and will start murdering everyone.
About this again. The royals won’t run away during the war, so I do not think this argument is valid. But Ante could think like that, I guess, because she doesn’t trust anyone, only herself and her judgment which makes her perception twisted, as I said before. She has nothing to rely on in her search, so she just makes up the theory that is most convenient for her. The job to protect the princes is their guards’ job. She has to have some other tasks apart from stalking MC and the royals…right? -.-
Except she didn’t to anything useful during the story. The only remotely useful thing she has done - she located the royals under the orders of the previous king and she took her sweet time doing that. You sure she didn’t take a vacation in the meantime?)
So what? If she is such a professional she could always use some of her techniques to make MC spill everything. Oh, wait. She doesn’t have any. She can only bully people and stalk them like a creep. My bad.
This is why my MC is perfectly content helping Arcadia and living there. It’s not his job to change the way royal spymasters operate. And I still think that a normal spymaster wouldn’t operate in a way Ante does. It’s easier to kill her by this point and hope that the next spymaster is going to will their brainsells to not follow a false fucking trail for several years. Do not even try telling me she’s competent.
Yes. Leon still made the decision. But he was influenced by the outside forse. He wouldn’t even imagine burning his comrade at the stake when he was travelling with the White Fangs. Ante was the one with the biggest bucket of shit to put in his ears using her spymaster influence.
I’m not shifting the blame, I acknowledge that Leon decided this. I’m just stating that Ante played a big role in convincing him.
Except she can’t. She is not strong enough. And she still tried to stop the MC when there was a bomb. Is she dumb? She should’ve sent someone to warn Leon and stall for time like asking what their motivation is or something. Not making ultimatums that are known for provoking people.
Sure, can’t wait her to become a professional (not gonna happen and even if it is I’m not going to like her anyway, too late)
Beating, putting to sleep. Not killing. It should ring a bell, it should provoke a thought. But she was successfully ignoring everything good that MC ever did (even if they almost died repeteadly which wouldn’t be a good thing for a villain) so why start now, am I right?
What you’re basically trying to tell me is that being a spymaster equals being an incompetent close-minded individual who has no idea about being discreet and doesn’t know what “manners” mean.
Let’s recreate Ante’s way of thinking by using some random butcher:
I’m a butcher, my job is not pretty, but it needs to be done or someone will starve. So when my higher ups will ask for meat I will take any meat even the meat on human’s bones. I’m legally able to harm to take meat, it will taste good in the arms of a talented cook. I shouldn’t care about humans at all, I’m competent and the meat will be handled with professional hands… Okay, I’m going kinda far with lol. But the point still stands.
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Damn, it’s long. I understand if you won’t read it .-.
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as I see it, her suspicions are 100% warranted but her methods are horrible and she comes off as arrogant which doesn’t help at all. If anything, keeping her alive would be a good thing because the last thing Arcadia needs is an actual competent spymaster, somebody who shares her suspicious attitude but has better skills and doesn’t act so much like an arrogant snob
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I did. I still don’t agree, but I read it. Although let it be known I’m biased, I tend to be pretty understanding with characters’ motivations and only hold grudges in specific situations.
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I, of ALL PEOPLE, am hardly in a position to say “that’s too long for me to be arsed to read”. 
EDIT: I mean, look at the size of THIS ONE.
As far as we know, she did exactly this. Because it relates to this other thing:
and it’s this: Welcome to the (not really) wonderful world of an absolutist monarchy, where the agents of the Crown have the legal right to do whatever they want unless countermanded by someone higher up the food chain. In Aste’s case, “someone higher up the food chain” is Leomar and MAYBE Saine.
So the options are either:
a) Leomar never heard of Aste spying on you, whether from her, you, or literally anyone else, in which case she couldn’t have influenced his opinion of you; or
b) he did, and thought her spying on you was just fine and dandy.
The White Fangs didn’t take wealthy clients, though. Wealthy clients could solve their problems by being wealthy; the Fangs specifically took low- to no-paying jobs. IIRC, at one point you actually wonder HOW the White Fangs can keep functioning by taking the jobs they do.
No, Leomar is fucking dumb. It’s just that Saine actively doesn’t care and Ilya… well, Ilya actively doesn’t want to raise any waves.
All the White Fangs do this, though. You don’t know Leomar and Siane are royals until Aste shows up, and you don’t know why Ilya got tangled up with the whole White Fang thing until the ball (and only if you dance with her).
Come on, man, Ilya is the poster girl for doing the absolute minimum. More slavers than we expected? Let’s go back home. It’s gonna be hard saving all these people? Let’s just let half of them die from the get-go.
Even if this is true (and have you met Saine?), during the war is the absolute best time to not let the royals out her sight when they’re always at the spearhead of the battlelines.
I think we can all agree that the guards are bad at their jobs. It’s how we ended up with a dead king in the first place, and how they completely failed to stop the royals from leaving when that was exactly the moment they should’ve watched them more closely, because up until this generation Parami succession was apparently determined by “last living heir, having killed all the others”.
Presumably she also collates intel reports? I guess?
I have a feeling that Aste is the sort of person that defines “vacation” and “off-duty” as “things that other people do, because they’re lazy slackers”.
I’m pretty sure this means “torture” as far as she’s concerned. This would be, I think we can all agree, a bad move on her part.
tries anyway, out of spite 
You can’t tell me what to do, YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!
I’m not sure she realises this, considering that her unit managed to shut you down instantly when they cornered you and Ilya in the alley. And she’s not the only one because there was someone in this thread (forget who) saying that Aste was a big danger (no, my dude, Aste’s not a big danger. She’s an annoyance, or, at most, a speedbump. There’s literally two non-mages who are a “danger”, and that’s Leomar because he has a magic-cutting sword, and Saine, because he blinks around the place. Everyone else is cannon fodder).
See, you’d THINK that Leomar would heed the person he spent three years fighting alongside more than… well, pretty much anyone else. If that’s not the case, that’s on Leomar, not on Aste.
See, you’re being ironic here, but I think that’s literally Aste’s stance. Her job is to keep Param and the royals safe, and if she has to burn down the rest of everything to get it done, that’s exactly what she’s going to try for.
Now you got me thinking, and I’m realising that her and Thalia are basically the same person, except Aste is about the royal family and Param, and Thalia is about the Arcadians. Well, that and Thalia can actually pack a huge punch if she wants to.
They are. “Mage who deliberately obscures their provenance that has made their way into the inner circle of the royals and the best candidate for next Saintesse” is definitely someone to be suspicious of.
I mean, you can’t be the spymaster without horrible methods. It’s like being a vizier, a job whose starter package includes a thin moustache, deviousness, an ACME scorpion pit to throw people into, and a desire to be the caliph in place of the caliph.
Ooooh, actionable info, thank you. So Leomar totally knew Aste was spying on you, and never told her to shut it down.
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I see. I think pretty much everyone here is biased. In my case it’s enough that she contributed in MC’s burning while being a jerk about it, so I hold a grudge)
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Quick word here, but people who romance Leon say he talks about it in the dungeon, saying something like ‘‘I never believed Ante all those times she said not to trust you’’ (you get the idea).
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When I mean horrible, I don’t mean horrible morally, I don’t give a crap about that, I mean horrible as in incompetent; she’s a spy master yet seems to have never heard of subtlety
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Nah, she was being a jerk about it. Both Ilya and MC are capable of meaningful and calm conversation.
A is not true as was stated earlier, B is rather logical, but I can easily imagine Leon saying “just don’t go overboard with this” Ante: immediately goes overboard
It wouldn’t stop ambitious wealthy dudes from trying I think.
Come on, don’t do lady Ilya dirty like that. She just prioritizes personal safety above others. And if MC was really evil she would act I’m sure. She would tell Leon about it at the very least. And we shouldn’t forget about her trying to save MC from the dungeons. It was a really risky move.
Yeah, but MC is not a royal and they don’t know them. So suspicions can totally exist.
Ante wouldn’t stand a chance against Sister as well.
Earlier I wrote that it would be better to torture the MC since it could help Leon and co realize that they can’t physically speak anything related to the incident. Better bruised but alive than opposite.
Damn, my only weakness.
Yeah, I can buy that.
That’s what I also don’t understand. Can’t wait to read how it will be explained.
And I like Thalia for some reason, but hate Ante’s guts. Wonders of the world ig.
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Lmao I’m the opposite.
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No, no, see Ilya ACTIVELY doesn’t want to raise any waves, because she wants to make Saintesse (so she doesn’t have to marry that otherwise completely irrelevant dude to keep her estate, which I still can’t figure out is because Param is ALSO incredibly sexist or Ilya’s parents are incredibly sexist), and only Good Girls 
make it to Saintesse, and Good Girls don’t make waves. And now excuse me, because after writing that last part I need to go wash my soul.
I think they’re both good CHARACTERS, but as far as being “people” I have a distinct feeling that I’ll have to rein Thalia back when things go all-out. Because Thalia has absolutely no interest in, say, burning the entirety of Param to the ground to get rid of the Parami royal bloodline so she can get rid of the magic-cutting sword, but she also has absolutely no interest in NOT doing it.
It’s not a wonder. It’s that Ante is on the side of the genocidal slavers (that had you executed) and Thalia is on the side of people who were constantly genocided and enslaved and she spent a great amount of resources and an actual year of her time bringing you back to life.
It comes up if you dance with her at the ball, IIRC.
Fun fact: in the alchemy session both of you almost get blown up because neither of you… does something important during the process, and this is all so she can dye a dress a pretty colour.
I sacrificed Intrigue (aka, the stat I was going to dump anyway) and never bothered building it back up.
Annoying authority figures will never not be hilarious.
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Wow, I didn’t know that. I didn’t interact enough with Ilya even though I like her a lot (I even had to miss the alchemy session with her in favour of restoring my ruined charisma from “saving the kids” action)
Yep, I just keep hoping that MC will have an opportunity to become somewhat respectable in Thalia’s eyes to suggest diplomatic approach while dealing with Param.
Overall Thalia seems way more dangerous to me than Ante for obvious reasons and I like Thalia’s no bs attitude. It’s really funny how fed up she is with MC sometimes.
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Param is sexist. She even mentioned that by marrying that dude, she’d be considered a “guided woman” or something with that phrasing (by law is implied). I still don’t get what you mean about her not wanting to make waves being the reason she does the “bare minimum”. She disagrees with your plan for saving the kids because it’s horribly impractical. Like, no other mage would be able to pull it off. What other mage would be able to just walk in through the front door and blast all the bandits in-between them or the kids? Or sustain 8 invisibility glyphs? Or teleport 8 people without pause? She also wanted to leave the village because they were running out of resources. The only outcome would be that MC and Ilya lose their immunity and contract the disease themselves. The pragmatic decision is to leave and she’s probably the most pragmatic member of the White Fangs (bar maybe MC depending on how you play them).
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