I think it’s also worth pointing out that, if my understanding is correct, the Patron basically spells out that if the PB had tried to sacrifice anybody else for the Pact and that person only had the Gift rather than the Kingsgift, it would’ve “hollowed out the gift and [the Pactbinder] with it.” My assumption is that this is strictly due to how the Pact works given the Patron describes it as the “needs of the Pact” and that the Pact has “an appetite only the Kingsgift can sate”, but since this dude’s intentionally obtuse and withholds information as needed, it’s possible that a genetic relation is a factor in the Pact absorbing the Kingsgift as well.
That aside, the description the Patron gives of the Pact is striking since now the Pact isn’t just some esoteric ability, but is actively parasitic and could have killed the PB. In fact, as far as the Pact goes, it’s possible that it might still kill the PB since the Patron never says it won’t; the only indication that the PB is safe from the Patron is that it can tell the PB that they will fulfill their end of the bargain even if it takes years, decades, or centuries.
Taking a look at the data of player choices, and its somewhat surprising to me to see how low their character stats are. I somehow once again find myself gravitating to a “minmax” combat build
Do you have plans on having PB combine the use of his masteries? Since they can potentially study all four, they could freeze the blood of an enemy with Life+Matter, or subjugate and control an army of spirits with Mind+Spirit.
This is true - though I’ve been pleased to see a few of the builds who’ve managed to get very good grades despite not leaning hard into both mental stats - the extra study options and the grade buffs I embedded into Societies, some roam options, and the non-standard ways of getting study notes were all very much intended to strike a balance of making INT and/or CHA builds feel rewarded whilst giving every character a path towards getting good grades…!
Thanks for sharing the stats! Finn has managed to catch up again, which I’m greatly enjoying - he and Eleanor really did benefit massively from C3, I suspect. Though the fact Adelais is still joint top remains funny, given how much harder her romance is to unlock.
I enjoyed reading this.
And this!
Thanks so much! Really glad you’re enjoying things and thank you for sharing your stats.
Sort of. True Mastery combination is a very advanced (in terms of book learning as well as innate ability) skill that is poorly understood given how few mages have the strength in multiple Masteries to pull it off, so the Pactbinder won’t be able to literally combine two Masteries within the year of the story’s timeframe. And even if they did ever learn it, it wouldn’t be ‘freeform’ in that sense - the example I always use is Life + Matter specifically merging to form Alchemy, which has its own uses and limitations, rather than allowing for complete flexible at-will blending of matter and biological manipulation.
But what is more likely is that there may be longer scenes / more complex fights where the PB’s access to multiple Masteries will come in handy in different stages of the fight.
To give an easy example, imagine fighting an enemy mage skilled at both Spirit and Matter. A Spirit/Matter PB could exorcise the enemy’s Spirit familiar, then engage the enemy mage in a direct elemental blast-off; despite their matched Masteries, the innate firepower advantage of the Pact would likely make the fight very easy. By contrast, a pure Matter mage would have to spend time picking off the enemy Spirit (which might be tough enough that beating it in a ‘fair’ fight is harder than exorcising it) whilst also dealing with the enemy mage - probably all still doable, but it won’t be as easy a fight. Or a pure Spirit mage might have an easy time dealing with the Spirit, but then have no chance against the blaster anyway unless they have the speed to get up close and personal… Etc etc.
You get the idea - the combinations matter a lot even when the magics themselves remain separate!
Also something occurs to me: how exactly does the Patron know that the Pact can’t be sustained on the Gift and requires the Kingsgift to not kill the PB? Wouldn’t that imply that it’s happened before and whichever poor bastard tried it ended up getting sucked dry like some kind of magical juice box? Either that or the Patron is omniscient and knows everything related to the Pact. All signs are pointing to the PB not being the first/only one to be offered the deal; at best, they were the only successful one.
Honestly the more I reflect on everything the Patron says, the more I have questions. For instance, when it clarifies that the Kingsgift and Pact are different, it says that the “old covenants no longer serve, save as kindling for the new.” To me this doesn’t just read as the Pact being a parasite, not entirely, but as some kind of replacement for the Kingsgift. The fact it describes the Kingsgift as an “old covenant” seems to lean toward the idea that something, whether it was the Patron or God or a flying bag of coffee beans or Daphne, bestowed power upon certain specific bloodlines, like a Proto-Pact. The word “serve” is also worth pointing out since it implies that they served a purpose…or a Patron. This also reminds me that Finley stated his Kingsgift wasn’t as potent as others in his family, which combined with the Patron’s analogy for kindling, would imply that the Kingsgift is somehow losing its potency and is in need of replacement.
Then there’s one other elephant in the room: I don’t think the Patron likes the OT for some reason, or something. It goes out of its way to call the OT “unfit for the privilege it inherited”, which reads to me like the Patron being disappointed that the OT couldn’t live up to their potential with the Kingsgift and all the power they could have had at their disposal…which raises more questions as to why it would try to replace the OT with the PB. There’s no indication that the PB is special in any way aside from looking like the OT. Maybe they assume anyone crazy enough to perform the ritual and seal the Pact would be ambitious enough to utilize that power properly? Meanwhile, the Patron also states that the OT has another purpose, hence why they’re still around even if you killed them; the fact that I stabbed that guy in the neck and he’s still pissed at me mouthing off in the Shadow Realm is both hilarious and darkly paints a picture of the Patron having the ability to transcend death in some way. Does this tie into Necromancy somehow? What is the Patron planning with the OT? They state that the OT won’t be a threat to the PB, which implies that they’ll either never escape, or they’ll be enslaved to aid the Patron and PB, or that by the time the OT is freed, the PB will be too powerful to be challenged.
Unrelated to my tangent, my crack theory going forward shall be that everybody knows what a Pact is and that they’d normally warn people against deals with the Patron; the only reason this information hasn’t come out is because the PB has been too paranoid to ask. This is in no way based upon any fact or evidence other than it would be extremely funny for everyone to have a “why didn’t you say anything!?” moment.
Iirc, normal Gifts are also becoming less powerful over time, and the Kingsgift is… well, it’s a really fancy Gift, but it’s still a Gift. I have to assume it’s something similar causing the dwindling magic in both cases? The Pact isn’t a gift given freely to one party by another, it’s a contracted deal where both beings involved are meant to win.
Maybe whatever or whoever gave people the Gift just couldn’t make it (or didn’t want it) to last forever, since it wasn’t mutually beneficial in the same way the Patron’s deal with PB will be? At least to me, the wording in regards to OT and the magical society definitely implies that the Patron views the way people have handled the Gift to be… well, entitled to and ungrateful for the Gift of magic, because it runs in the blood, and they’ve made up rules and hierarchies that don’t allow as much free reign as the Pact gives.
PB can’t really be entitled (wasn’t intended to have the Gift) or ungrateful (they owe a debt to the Patron) in the same way as someone born into magic without consequence, because they have a Pact instead. Much more likable and useful than the OT, whose family got given something long ago and who wasn’t expected to give anything back, in that sense.
…This is really just a long rant saying that I think the ‘Gift’ and ‘Pact’ words have a whole lot of implications when it comes to expectation of returns for the sender. Of course the Gift can also just be a poetic term for, like, a genetic thing though lmao!
I enjoyed this update. It did exactly what I expected of it, in a good way. Alice is shaping up to be a great RO, seems to me a lot of meat was added there. I’m interested in how the study and practice of higher forms of magic will proceed and what the opportunities for showcasing it will be like, it would also be cool to have secret spells of some sort that you unlock by picking specific choices that aren’t immediately obvious, or that make you more specialized, just brainstorming though! Great work.
My crack theory based on very little is that the Patron was previously responsible for the Kingsgift, and has created the Pact as a sort of ‘Kingsgift 2.0’ in an attempt to halt/reverse the gradual winnowing of magic.
We don’t know exactly when the Gift started fading but it’s very likely after the overturn of the Kingsgift in favor of the Lordsgift. Perhaps the ‘divine right’ of the Kingsgift required some kind of active renewal of it on the Patron’s part and, without that, it fades over time. Not wanting magic to dry-up entirely, the Patron creates the Pact and gets us to fuel it with a weakened Kingsgift as part of some long-term scheme to restore the prevalence of magic in the world.
This is admittedly the result of me trying to come-up with some sort of scenario in which the Patron is benevolent, because I think everything about its aesthetics and general evasiveness is a red herring to make us as readers not trust it. But I do think it makes sense. We know the Kingsgift can ‘appoint Peers’, so us having some similar ability to strengthen the magic of those around us would let the rest of the Antioch gang continue to be relevant power-wise throughout the whole story even if they’re not magical prodigies.
I’ve also questioned the manner through which the Kingsgift could have lost its potency in a theory of mine.
TL;DR The Kings were abandoned by the Patron, while the remaining Kingsgift power was diluted over time by use and political necessity, but could theoretically be reawakened in a dormant case (like Finlay’s) through Kingspells.
If we assume the Patron to be the one at the origin of the whole Kingsgift phenomenon, then we can propose that It no longer found the Crown useful and has sought to replace it with the Pact. We are told that there are precious few Sorcerer-Kings left, and the Gift is in decline. How come, after millennia of Gifted prosperity, it has started to decline? Perhaps the source of this power no longer deemed those to whom It granted it worthy. Then, it is not that the Transplant was disappointing, it is the entire Crown system that It found unsatisfactory. Consequently, the Transplant was always meant to be a sacrifice for the Pact, the latter of which is the Patron’s current pathway toward whatever objective it desires to be accomplished.
If the Patron seeks to halt or reverse the decline of magic in the Pactbinder’s world, then it would only attempt to do so for the physical realm. From what we’ve seen, the Elsewhere is fine and dandy, full of magic and dangerous Spirits (even if full of war). And Its own realm of darkness is as depressingly eldritch as always. We can assume that the Patron’s realm and Elsewhere are inherently “magic rich” through their very nature, while the physical world, a “fraction of Creation” as the Patron describes it, is perhaps a naturally low-magic realm.
Still, we are informed there were once Elselings roaming the Earth. Dragons, as shown by the church and vault frescos, could’ve been one such example of Elselings, capable of being slain only through powerful artifacts such as the Knife of Temoth. So, the physical realm might’ve once been full of magic. If anything, it seems the interference of mankind has rendered the physical realm less magic through the extinction of Elselings that appears to have been pursued by Kings and Gifted alike. As such, not only are the native magical inhabitants of the realm dead, but the artificial ones (Gifted/Kingsgift) are in decline as well. Hightower is one of the last remnants of the old world, as Chancellor Harrow nicely tells us.
I don’t think the Patron is benevolent at all. I also don’t think it’s cruel. I believe it runs on it’s own moral system, one that sees our emotions and concerns as insignificant at best, a nuisance at worst.
With the risk of sounding like a broken record, I suggest we let the Patron tell us what It thinks of Itself: “Your kind exist within only the narrowest aspect of Creation; a shadow dancing upon a cavern wall. We are an expression of all that lies beyond that aspect. The Form that casts the Shadow. The stone cast upon the surface of the lake. The beholder gazing upon the mirror. The slumbering godhead that dreams a dream of you.”
If one were to deal with the Creator of existence itself, to attempt to reduce such a being to the binary of good and evil would certainly be an exercise in futility.
My first pick was also intelligence and charisma mostly because I just felt someone kinda evil or sociopathic to some extent would have very high levels of both. To maintain a lie like that for long you gotta be good at deception.
The other graphs are really interesting though with the added mastery much more variation!
Yeah, and intelligence and charisma sound like things a mage would have/need anyways, as opposed to strength and such, this seemed like a no brainer to me
I am kinda torn between mind/spirit and spirit/matter
On the one hand I really like Carcer, but on the other matter seems like its probably better in most combat situations than mind. Spirit is hardlocked (Anzu is best bird) but usually as second mastery imo, Eincroft kinda sucks imo
Been catching up on this over the week, and I loved the new chapter. The two things that inpress me the most about this project is the characterization of the MC and the amout of differnt subplots/mysteries MC availible to engage with. I love how the PB feels like just as compelling a character as the major NPCs and noy just a vessel to deliver the plot. And I love the free time hubs, and how it gives us the option to prioritize according to what our PBs find interesting/concerning leading to what feels like very different playthroughs.
Some Theories
I haven’t put nearly as much thought into theory crafting as some of the people in this thread, but I did have a few thoughts I wanted to express.
About the original transplant and Silas so after our patron reveals that the original transplant had the kingsgift, PB wonders how many of their professors knew. But I’m wondering if Silas knows? And that’s the source of his beef with MC. Not much substance to this other than George said something about Silas’s dad having ambitions if being Prime Minister, and I think Antonia calls him one of those political types. So his grudge being political on nature makes sense and if i remember correctly during the introduction with Devereux students after Silas responds to MC, the only other person he looks at is Finlay. So im thinking it could be kingsgift related more broadly but PB is easier to bully than Finn?
Revenant: I’m seeing lots of people throw around Daphne though Im not sure how serious that is. I honestly suspect George may have some connection with it. Especially after seeing him in the park around the little girl’s dead cat when he’s supposedly fallow. I don’t think he is the revenant, but i wonder if hes and agent of it the way PB is of the patron (minus pact magic of course)
Romance Commentary (spoilers for update)
I played through everyone’s romancr scenes, and I really enjoyed them. I liked how they were less about picking “flirt” choices and more just felt like the characters being naturally drawn to each other.
I also loved how all the routes moved at their own pace and were all very distinct from each other.
More specific to each character:
Finlay was the first route I did, and my pactbinder on this playthrough is very concious of everything she’s lying about, and was wary of pursuing anything, and I felt like that fit the scene I got very well, especially in combination with him thinking about how complicated his own situation is. (Also dressing up like an ax murderer to not have to bother anyone was adorable)
Adelais was next, and I really like the emotional vulnerability we get in her scenes that feels uniquely her.
The Marcus scene was probably my favorite. It felt like a nice contrast to the other two routes I did, but also I absolutely loved when he pointed out that there seems to be a lot about PB they can’t talk about just as an observation, rather than as pressure to be more open? It was really nice, and I also really enjoyed how the dinner discussion felt like a expansion of his free time conversation from the previous chapter.
Layla probably surprised me the most (in a good way). At first she seemed to be the most “what you see is what you get” character (which I wonder of that contributed to her being less popular) and even back after picking a society it’s obvious that’s there’s more to her than she’s letting on, but I really thought her scene let me see her in a new light and get a deeper insight into her motivations.
Lastly, Ellie is adorable, and I feel bad that I keep accidently giving her crushes on my other MCs, but its okay because I made a pactbinder just for her. The whole “I know the magic world isn’t very good to you, so I wanted to show you the beautiful side too” was so endearing. Pulling at my heartstrings with that one.
Just confirming, going on the dates with Adeline/Eleanor doesn’t lock you into their romances does it? Just asking because the other dates have the option to explicitly say you aren’t interested in a romance but these ones don’t
Please have some compassion for poor Professor Eincroft. Years of his life have already been cut due to the stress caused by the ongoing events. In spite of his moderare lack of social skills and somewhat initially careless behaviour, he has done his best trying to help the University and its students.
I believe that George is searching for a way to acquire a Gift, or enhance his magic potential until it blooms into a Gift. His presence in the park could’ve been him looking into the means and effects of Necromancy. Since we see how the life force of creatures is removed from them (in order to presumably feed oneself, the Revenant way), perhaps it is possible to extract the magic or Gift of fellow mages. I don’t know if what George seeks is feasible, but his desperation to not be a Fallow is clear (reading a history book while at a party is curious), and I think he is ready to commit the kind of immoral acts Necromancy requires.
About that, I wonder if being in presence of the Pactbinder is potentially helpful for the magical potential of more people than just Finlay, or if it only works for others with the Kingsgift, like Finn?
I suspect this is not entirely accurate, despite what it says.
This is the Sovereign’s speech from Mass Effect, an entity claiming it is entirely above you and beyond your comprehension when it’s… really not. Even the PB comments on that:
"You're not necessarily convinced that it would *truly* be impossible for your Patron to explain more, not if it really wanted to, but at least it's a start."
Greatly enjoying all the discussion so I’m going to stay mostly quiet, don’t want to stifle anything, just quickly sidling in to answer a couple of Qs / comments for me, and to thank everybody who has shared feedback on the latest chapter since my last post - I’m reading everything gratefully.
Thanks! There’s already one semi-secret/advanced magical technique buried in the current chapters - more to come for those who seek them, and more ways to find the one that’s already there.,
Thanks so much for sharing these! And really glad you’re enjoying the romance tracks (especially the scenes for the ROs who’ve gotten less attention like Marcus and Layla!), my priority for each of them was making them feel true to the Pactbinder and the character in question, even if that meant the scenes looked very different and were paced very differently.
The bug you mentioned isn’t a bug - it probably means your PB was on full HP so didn’t need healing. I’m probably going to make that option invisible unless the PB is injured, though, to avoid confusion!
Good question!
None of the Christmas date scenes are hard locks (though the Adelais and Finlay ones might be prerequisites to progress their particular romances when the hard lock does arrive, given the former’s reticence and the latter’s state of mind) - so I only included ‘rejection’ moments where I felt the scene was overtly romantic - if a scene felt like it could be read platonically, I figured it would be fine to let it breathe that way without forcing it as a romance-only scene. Harder for poor Finn, Marcus and Layla than the others…
Awesome work and fascinating how the plot thickens.
