Both seem likely to me, though this ties back to an important point about our legacy with the rebellion we left behind:
We were the sleeping king in the mountain: the Marble Emperor, Arthur in Avalon. We departed for the land from which only one man has returned (poetic license), the nightmare world of fairy tales. And when we return, they likely won’t see our face, or hear our voice, or touch us, or smell us (undoubtedly our protagonists stink): a distant figure speaking through intermediaries, and soon after that departing for a world beyond contact (Grand Shayard).
Already, we’ve been away from the Whendward Band longer than we’ve been with it. There will be new recruits who know us only as a story — potentially a story wielded by rebel leaders to claim authority.
So when we return from the dead, so to speak: if we have changed, or are merely perceived as having changed, I’d expect a kind of metaphorical homelessness. That the people of our past might prefer the old myth to the new reality.
Working with the aristos could be one potential such fault line. The Leaguers, for example, are led by a Leilatou, and not one our rebellion can just hold for ransom. If it seems like the wellbeing of these obscenely rich aristocrats from the metropole has become our priority—well, disillusionment is to be expected.
Kala’s counteroffer: Kalt will acknowledge this lineage, that the esteemed rebel leader was always noble. Therefore, they shall be treated like Kala treats all nobles…
Ah yeah, fair, you’re right. I was thinking of rest mass (rest energy), which would not vary, but it was wrong of me to just describe that as mass. But that ultimately leads back to the core point of reducing to absolutes where we agree.
The classical physics examples are more illustrative of a philosophical question about the bag of sugar regarding how we perceive the continued existence of objects. To change cold coal into hot coal or a contracted spring to a relaxed spring, energy moves in or out of that system. Applied to your bag of sugar example, I think it less challenges the notion of physicality and more how we perceive the bag. If I add more sugar to the bag, it remains a “bag of sugar” but isn’t a “1kg bag of sugar” anymore.
Also, looping back to this:
Is there any reading material you’d recommend on this topic? I have a very shallow grasp of Aristotelian metaphysics, but it’d be interesting to see if any of the current deeper mysteries of XOR’s magic system (like Wardwork and meta-telos) could be read differently in this context.