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

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1906

No, these are two different things.

She doesn’t want to make waves because making waves will jeopardise her chances at Saintessing, and she does the bare minimum because… that’s who she is, I guess?

Considering you only need, what, 70%? in Spiritism to make it happen, I presume there’s a reasonable amount of mages who could actually do it. Literally anyone who’s not-quite-as-good at Spiritism as she is at Theurgy can do it. (also, goddamn you Ilya, you’re also great at Enchantment, how about teaming up to invisibility glyph all the kids out of there?)

The “let’s let half these people die” is before this. And after going “let’s let half these people die”, she doesn’t even have the guts to make the call about which half, foisting that decision on the MC.

She getting huffy when you ask why the Church is only sending one healer to deal with a plague because “there aren’t enough healers” (conveniently not mentioning that the reason there’s a scarcity of healers is because the Church she belongs to and supports hoards the knowledge on how to do it and actively hunts down any non-affiliated healer*, to the point that when Eli went around healing people during the first Moonvein plague the Church immediately inquisitoned itself trying to find out who was responsible for the knowledge leak) is just for bonus points.

*after ordaining Param and Salantira to murder everyone else who had the knowledge, of course

2 Likes
1907

I’d like to say that the in-game stats don’t accurately correspond to your in-story “power level”. If that weren’t the case, then the MC’s actual skills would be stagnant 90% of their lifetime, not growing at all (your stats don’t increase once during the whole war segment? And even before all that, do you never read the books that raise your stats?). Also, in terms of in-game stats, I think 61% spiritism is enough, which you can get if you pick the spiritism choice every other time a magic choice comes up aside from the specialty choice (this might detract from my argument in your eyes, but eh.)

Not gonna lie, this might’ve been a good idea. Not sure how good she is at enchantment, though. We only ever see her being a Theurge or alchemist, aside from that one invisibility glyph she casts on you. This plan would also leave Leon and Saine by themselves to do whatever they were going to do(distracting the bandits, I think?).

I forgot about the first “let’s let half these people die” lol. To be fair, it was the “best” decision. Unless you specialize in alchemy or enchantment, trying to save everyone is the worst decision you can make. As in, it has the worst outcome, even if you literally don’t sleep for several days and spare no effort to try to save everyone. Ilya made the correct judgement with her limited information.

Can’t argue with facts. Does she say anything if you go, “screw the kids, let’s save all the old men”?

She probably gets huffy because the church literally can’t send more healers without compromising other missions. You are right that it’s because they’re intentionally limiting who has access to this incredible useful art (which is dumb and vile, of course), and I’ve no clue how she feels about that, but why would she ever go there in response to your question? You’re asking why they can’t send more healers for your specific mission and she responds that it’s because there are other people who need help.

Ooh, I usually skip over the explanation about Moonvein so I forgot that there was someone who dealt with it the first time. Didn’t even notice it was Eli. Also, the church as an organization sucks, I get it. I don’t think it reflects poorly on Ilya that she’s part of it, though. She’s “one of the good ones”. I don’t think she was actively supporting the hoarding of knowledge (unless you want to argue that her not teaching theurgy to the MC, when that topic never came up, is her supporting the hoarding policy) before she became Saintess. She just heals people, she doesn’t hunt people like the inquisitors. And before she became the Saintess, she couldn’t really do anything about the shitty parts of the church. I think she could do a lot of good with her position, possibly reforming the church (which, of course, might take some time considering its history. Reforms usually take time anyway, though I can understand wanting to just abolish the church instead of waiting for it to change.) if she wasn’t grieving anymore and you went for the reconciliation route between Param and Arcadia.

6 Likes
1908

I actually don’t remember the value, but I do know I manage it by picking Enchantment specialty (because Enchantment is the best magic type) and then going Spirit choices all the way to saving the kids. After that you can nab a few more Enchantment choices and you’re on track to save everyone at the village.

You can see how good Book 1 companions are at things by going to the stats menu and picking “Associate Information”. Book 2 folks don’t have that (yet, I presume), though, so we don’t know how good Flyss is at Spirit or Yu at Theurgy nor what other stuff they do. (Ilya has no Spirit stat, so I presume her score on that is “I suck”).

Fun fact: Leomar is SLIGHTLY better at swording than Saine is at daggering.

It’s the same thing than if you pick the other way around - she looks at you in relief of not having to make the call herself.

I HYPOTHESISE it was Eli, because it was someone known only as “Plague Doctor”, and Eli’s callsign is, well, Plague - maybe she lost her license in the intervening time.

Oh, she can’t do that now, either. The Saintesse isn’t the Jovian pope (that’s the hierophant), she’s the propaganda girl. Do you know how Captain America’s job started as going on tour to help sell war bonds and boost morale? That’s it. That’s the Saintesse’s job. You give her a fur suit and you might as well call her the mascot.

I want to say that, despite my critiques of her, I think Ilya is pretty great. She was getting fucked over because Param is, apparently, a shithole with no redeeming qualities, and she managed to find a way to unfuck herself without hurting any innocents in the process. You GO, girl!

Yes. Abolish. That was, uh, exactly how far I was planning to go. Yes. I was definitely not, at any point, considering getting the entirety of its library out of the place and burning* everything else to the ground. No sirree. Not me.

I forgot to comment on this way back when. I think the snake being so sucky as a phantasma is what allows Flyss to keep it up pretty much all the time with no side effects. It would make sense that the more powerful the phantasma, the bigger the strain it causes. I should make a playthrough where I blow the fortress up at some point just to see what Zephyros’ing does to Yu.

*speaking of burning, after getting Flyss to bring me out of the PTSD catatonia from watching fireworks, I wonder who I’m scheduling for THAT job the absolute moment we run up against a fire mage

4 Likes
1909

Eh, I think if she got public opinion on her side she could put pressure on the higherups. She could also get the lower-ranking guys on her side (or at least some percentage of them. I doubt every member of the church agrees with every one of its policies. They’re just cogs in a gear.). It wouldn’t be smooth sailing, but it is possible. Mascot or not, the position has prestige and the church can’t just excommunicate her without looking shitty.

She’s driven for sure. Also, she didn’t actually need to become Saintess post-war, since her brother and became eligible to inherit the estate. So she did it because she wants to do good (considering her character, I doubt it was for any other reason). Meaning if she wanted to push change, she could do so with no reservations as she has nothing to really lose. Her family is safe.

I mean… if the church is gone they’re not gonna need the library, so why not? You could repurpose the building for something else though. I think mellowing out the church is a better option personally, though, since the people in Param aren’t gonna be happy with their religious buildings getting nuked.

3 Likes
1910

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on Ante. If a spymaster is suspicious of somebody, they should be monitored without being made aware. If the subject is aware that he/she is being observed, it’s pointless. Either up your stealth game or be their best friend.

At the beginning I thought Ante showed great promise at the head of strike force that found/captured white fangs. Then she shattered any illusion of competence.

13 Likes
1911

Ya know, there was a moment that I can’t for the life of me remember, where I was absolutely sure MC was going to suffer a PSTD crisis. I wonder if it going to be addressed at some point, cuz MC can joke about it with Yu and all, but if there is anything like a building/forest on fire MC will NOT deal it with it well. Hell, I would get fidgety in front of a damn campfire after that.

3 Likes
1912

Considering that AMR features the biggest trauma conga line I’ve seen outside of Mind Blind, I don’t think there’s any chance of it NOT being addressed. The other things were bad enough, but this is how you actually DIED. Like, dead died. Barbecue’d extra crispy, smoke flavoured, hold the ketchup. There’s no way it’s not a trigger.

I mean, the MC DEFINITELY has PTSD, because there’s no other way to qualify, e.g., breaking down into catatonia because you saw fireworks that were designed by someone who later attacked you.

4 Likes
1913

You’d think, but I’m not sure. I remember someone asking if MC could have PTSD and Parivir wasn’t sure if it would be a feature because it might be too much to keep track of flavor-text-wise.

2 Likes
1914

Well there were probably a handful back in Salantira…most of Yu’s family, including Yu also seem likely to qualify and that is all without parasites, just regular magic.

But I get you point the mc doesn’t start to meet the regular mages who are more powerful than they are (again) until book 2.

Still the most baffling oversight, since the mc is such a glass cannon and also just about the only non church healer mage, as you said before, who does not carry or know how to use a weapon, is why we couldn’t learn something from either Saine or Leo during the mc’s adventuring days to make them (slightly) less of a glass cannon.

Not to my mc it wasn’t. It was decent to him, because all of the other places were far worse as in all of the other places he has never been anything more than a slave for sadists to torture and experiment on at their leisure. :rage:

That would make the mc as bad as the old Arcadian shitheads. That said it would be an agonising choice since it is one of the few shots my mc has at learning how to evict or, if necessary kill, parasites but it falling into Thalia’s hands would be even worse.

I guess if it came down to that my mc would burn it down, but he’d probably burn himself down with it.

Realistically they probably would have it. But what really pushed my mc over the edge mentally in the trauma conga line was Eli’s betrayal…which also means that in this game I do now have an mc who has no RO.

On the escape route Eli shows their true colours and likely ratted the mc out long beforehand and they turn from friend to jailor.

2 Likes
1915

What betrayal?

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1916

Don’t really think Eli ratted out. Thalia reads minds after all (I mean, I’m not completely sure they didn’t, but she reads minds!)

10 Likes
1917

I doubt that’s what happened tbh.

8 Likes
1918

Regardless they still willingly serve as Thalia’s prime enforcer to “make the mc fall in line” afterwards in addition to being becoming another torturer, even if it is done under the guise of “healing” and Thalia’s orders just because Thalia wants the mc to use Arcana as often as possible no matter how excruciating that may be for the mc and those “healing” sessions are torture all by themselves because Eli’s phantasma has either never hear of pain-killing or the potential pain-killing power of their Phantasma is a trick Eli doesn’t know how to tap into. :unamused:

While there can be reasonable differences in opinion as to whether or not Eli did or did not rat the mc out to Thalia the fact that he quite willingly serves as the mc’s primary jailor and Thalia’s enforcer where it concerns the mc is literally in the text, as is the excruciating pain Eli’s healing arcana inflicts on the mc all to shave some time off the regeneration of their stupid mana ducts under Thalia’s orders. Thus to my mc Eli is rapidly following in the footsteps of Thaubal now in becoming a jailor and torturer.

What’s worse is Eli’s treatments only treat symptoms, they do bollocks all for the underlying cause.

They’re doing a shit job at it then because their own healing sessions are torture especially since their only purpose is making sure the mc can then inflict torture on themselves again by using the parasites, after which Eli will very painfully “heal” the mc again, it’s quite a nice little vicious cycle of torture for the mc.

Still Eli acts extremely suspicious on the escape branch.

2 Likes
1919

Pretty sure they’re not doing it to make the MC fall in line, they’re saving the MC from possibly being tortured or killed again. How ever painful their healing is, it’ll be nothing to whatever Thalia would have someone do to tht MC once they start getting tired of you. Also once your healed you’ll have a better fighting chance. Everything we know about Eli’s character and what’s already been said, it’s pretty obvious they’re not doing it to serve Thalia.

9 Likes
1920

I can agree with you on that it’s like he is stalling for time with their nonsense questions like dude I already made up my mind it’s either you follow me or not

2 Likes
1921

I genuinely think that was Eli simply saying whatever Tahlia wanted to hear in panic, regardless of whether Tahlia could read their mind or not, since Tahlia was about to kill MC.

Man, I get where you’re coming from but there’s a very big difference between torturing someone to cause pain and treating someone with a side-effect of the treatment being pain. We don’t call surgery torture because it causes pain.

Unless stated or shown to be otherwise I’m also willing to assume the reason Tahlia and co does not remove the entirely useless phantasma we have has to be because either they cannot due to the nature of how the phantasma were binded to us or because of the consequences of doing so, because while I hate Tahlia and she’s been shown to be very ruthless, there’s no reason for her to not do it.

11 Likes
1922

If it is non-consensual surgery then it is torture, doubly so if, like Eli, you don’t use sedation or pain relieving measures. All adult, mentally competent persons ought to have the right to refuse any medical treatments, no matter how beneficial they may be.

Sure Eli is acting under orders of Thalia, but that does not completely absolve them, they still do it and do so very much against my mc’s wishes.

Which is not really the case in the mc’s case, all Eli is doing is speeding up a healing process that would have taken place on its own with much less pain only for the mc to have to torture themselves with parasite magic, after which Eli will torture them further with more “healing”.

2 Likes
1923

I don’t think MC fancies being crippled when it comes to the use of normal magic along with arcana, as the stress the arcana we used with during the war caused crippled our normal magic aswell. I mean, your MC might be just fine with that, but Parivir not giving a choice when it’s not even suggested that Tahlia forced you to undergo healing shows that it’s pretty much canon you go along with it.

…Over the course of 30 years, yes. You could say that you don’t trust Tahlia on that, but unless stated by the story otherwise, I’ll go with that. 30 years of waiting would not only grind the story to a halt, it would compeletely end it for all intents and purposes. I can see why, again, Parivir made it canon that you just go along with the healing.

11 Likes
1924

notices Reaper codename

Guess this WIP was meant for me after all.

9 Likes
1925

Eh, the mc can use normal magic on the Eli rescue mission. The healing seems to be solely for the benefit of being able to use arcana…and in the present being able to handle the sheer stress of the Earthworm thing.

But, at least before Raeguse being forced on the mc, the mc could use normal magic, but not Arcana without Eli’s “healing”.

It is true though that the latest parasite seems to have changed things for the worse for the mc.