tony1695 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 5:20 am
So, Maren was always intended to act as a replacement body for Saria. That's not what has me thinking. What has me thinking is just what state the new 'Saria' is in.
Did Evil!Trace find a way to take a soul from the afterlife, which would make Maren into a sort-of phylactery? Given how
Saria seems to be happy that Trace has a new girl in his life, I can't imagine that she'd be happy with the situation and would want a way to reverse the process.
Or it could be something akin to Ghost Laura. An echo formed from memories. Given this is Evil!Trace, odds are this echo would also share his animosity towards non-humans, which makes the fact that Maren is currently in the same room as a naked wolf a bad start to this all. This would also be the one that would be harder to reverse, given that this 'Saria' would likely fight against it. And there's also the huge energy drain this process incurs. Either 'Saria' would be confined to the estate and be stuck leeching energy from... prisoners or slaves, really, Evil!Trace after all, or Maren's body would deteriorate and break down in a matter of weeks at best.
We're also not taking Rose into account. Trace removed her restrictions. Odds are she's now aware of this plan, and may be able to intervene. Even if that intervention is little more than teleporting into the room and pulling Maren's hand off the table before the spell can override her soul/brain.
I do not think Trace plan was to simply gonna put Saria soul into Maren body. I mean if he could simply summon Saria soul from the afterlife i think he would have resurrected her long ago. And as you point out Saria would probably would not like the idea either. Of cour we would miss a potentially good scene where Saria, in Maren's body confronts Traces for all he has done and what he has become, not just a shadow of the man she had loved but turned into a monster alright.
At the end i do think he is just trying to make a copy of his deceased wife, not the ideal but the best he can.
steelabjur wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 12:40 pm
Bellhead wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 10:06 am
tony1695 wrote:snip
That gave me a worrying thought. Trace openly said "I remove your restrictions". does that ONLY apply to Rose? Or anything in earshot? Could it have affected this tentacle darkness thing as well?
The painting of Saria shown in that panel looks a lot like the one from when they first arrived, so now I'm thinking that whatever this thing is, it's loose in the Estate and no longer confined. And knowing who Trace used to be, I don't know if Rose would be able to stop it, or if it's stronger than her.
I feel the Rose we've seen is part of The Thing In The Room and doesn't know it, sort of like a program running on a computer system, and Trace just gave her Admin access. I think the reason this could be something important later is, like a virus with Admin access on your computer, she can now really wreck stuff on the system if she needs to, maybe even take over completely.
multilis wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2020 6:06 am
Not sure we really know what is going on... eg old Evil Trace might not have been entirely Trace anymore, but may been pawn who was getting increasingly controlled by some older more evil entity... chapter 6 flora became possessed, evil Trace may have been possessed and told lies about bringing back his dead wife to keep him from resisting being possessed, and the final goal may be something much different and more evil than dead wife Saria and the look like Saria part was just to string Trace along to use his power to make it happen.
I don't think he was possessed like Flora per se, but I think his grief at Saria's death and the corruption caused from tinkering with black magic trying to bring her back left him in a diminished mental capacity that was then taken advantage of by
the Mask that spoke to Neutral after it was defeated by Trace who used him as a pawn. I also suspect the Mask in question also manipulated him while being close at hand, possessing another for convenience (the Master Mage of the Master Templars specifically, who's even depicted wearing a Mask-like mask on the Characters page and has a rather redundant title and position in a mage-focused group like the Templars with the Grand Templar in place if you think about it). I highly suspect that EBSH might actually be that Mask trying to influence the new Trace because his removal has slowed his plans and Trace has destroyed a couple of Towers by that point, and they are critical to the Mask's plans.
Why would a Mask do this indirectly rather than possess it's target directly? Safety. Think about what happened to Neutral when it possessed Flora. It got broke and wouldn't be able to pull itself together until it would be far too late to do anything to save it's chosen people (which is why Neutral made crossbreeding possible, to save what it could of the Keidran bloodline), so we're talking a considerable amount of time before it is strong enough to meddle directly again. They're not invincible gods and can be sent packing back to their own plane, for awhile at least (and this is probably why they give dragons a wide berth too, a Dragon like Nora might not be able to kill a Mask, but could certainly ship it back home to lick it's wounds for a very long time).
As for what The Thing In The Room plans to do with Maren, my guess is treat her like an old hard drive, reformat then replace with Saria.exe (programmed by Evil!Trace using the finest madness-tinged and corrupted memories of her he had at the time). The physical differences between Maren and Saria are minor enough that they wouldn't be a problem to change for a person who is able to give a human a permanent extra set of keidran ears because they were annoying him (:karen:).
Honestly i do not really like the idea of Trace being controlled by external forces. It removes agency from him. Right now he is/was? a grief stricken and broken man unable to bear his wife death but strong and delusional enough to believe he can bring her back or at least wipe out all who, in his mind, killed his wife. He has a sympathetic streak. Like the most recent joker, he is a crazy psycho but you can't help to feel just a bit sorry for him.
If he is simply controlled by something else he turns him into the standard fire emblem mad antagonist. Evil to the bone but only because he is possessed by some otherworldly evil, who by the way lacks any reason to be evil. He is not evil himself he was made evil by something else.
Also if he is not controlled he can actually atone for his many sins, or at least try. If he is just a pawn, we he really has nothing to atone for.
Yet i like the Mask as vilains (?) They do not care for the people on their world, for the same reason we do not care about our pieces in a chess match or our cards in poker. For them they are not real people, they are toys, at best. That makes him very dangeours, what is to say they do not decide to kill all and start the game anew? And gives them a slight lovecraftian vibe without being too much to scare people who are not into that sort of thing.
Which I think makes an interesting comparison with, well us readers, we know the characters does not exits but Tom has, somehow, made us care. We are on the opposite perspective of the mask.