I would take that over him being seen a far-seeing benevolent “Dumbledore”-type. I still chafe at the idea of him gaining our trust only to use us as a means to an end.
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I think it’s fair to want to distance him from the image of the “benevolent” Dumbledore, but he had his own problems like this, too. In the 5th book, for instance, Dumbledore isolates Harry for the whole year because he thinks Voldemort is in Harry’s head. It’s something he did out of spite, rather, he thought he was keeping Harry safe in this way.
The common link between the two is that they’re both being incredibly paternalistic in that they both believe what they’re doing is right and also the best for those they are “parents” to. And Ascender has had this kind of behavior for a long time. In the 90s, Ascender had to be the one to go to Missouri to check on the mountie affected by the storm. He was the one who had to bring back the mounties in 2016, but then he left in search of the Monarchs. In short, he does things because he thinks it’s the right thing to do and doesn’t always think of the consequences of his own actions. And that behavior had likely gotten worse since he’s effectively been a lone wolf for most of the past two decades at least. I think Eaves has extremely valid reasons for hating Ascender and it’s really important to have this view on someone who has been viewed so positively in the past.
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Imagines the element symbols on stickers everywhere
But seriously, the thing about seeing people wearing the symbols reminded me of the Aorthora and Ganifanx initiatives during the Day of Change, where those involved put their defensive/offensive sigils on their user pics for protection (and in some cases on the backs of hands); the purple teardrop on Sel’s is from that, and I think Rimor still has his as part of it too (well, his was until Bean drew that sweet giant).
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Also, this reminds me of chakras, not that I’m super well-versed in them.
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I’m not sure it’s up to us to decide if Eaves’ feelings are right or wrong. We can’t change someone else’s feelings, but we can manage our image based on them.
Ascender brought back the Mountaineers into our Book, but may have been doing it for his own benefit. It doesn’t change the fact that we are here now because of it, or that he may have his more selfish reasons for doing it (regardless of how we feel about the man that brought back the Mounties, I wouldn’t trade knowing you for the world). Maybe Ascender really is the perfect name for him. He has ambition, and will not stop climbing that mountain for anything. There are both good and bad sides to this trait.
Eaves isn’t only a being spiteful towards Ascender. He also found people he valued while in the Mountaineers run by him. I see him as someone who felt they were perhaps smothered too much by their parental figure. wouldn’t it be natural to have some resentment? Perhaps in some people, the feelings would have faded by now, or been forgiven. But that’s not who Eaves is.
Ascender wants to complete his quest, no matter the cost. We’ve expressed the same feelings time and time again as we opened the BoB and find our way in this new age.
Eaves wants to be free of Ascender’s expectations and control, and it keeps coming back to haunt him anyway. But aren’t we doing the same thing, clawing our way out of these “walls”, regardless of whether the one who placed them intends to help or harm?
What I’m saying is, I’m not sure we can pick one side or the other. They are only human, and so are we. Their vices are much the same as ours, and we can’t blame them for acting the same way we do.
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Yeah, it worries me that there’s so much ‘blame’ getting thrown around here. We don’t need to be pointing fingers and picking sides. Not right now at least. Right now, we need to figure out what is happening, how it’s happening (if we can) and what we can do about it . The latter is the most important. We’ll have to be patient, i reckon, but we’ve gained so much information already, and I’m sure more will come with the rest of the tomes! Here’s hoping that, once together, the six runes will become useful to us, and we’ll know what to do with them.
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Got one!
It’s a good thing my neighbors want nothing to do with me, because they would definitely have come knocking otherwise. I came home from work to find that my living room was absolutely awash in light. I knocked over my coffee table, which is a mess, and I’ve got some killer bruises on my shins because of it. The journal was glowing, so much so that I had to grab a pair of sunglasses to make out details.
The journal was too hot to touch for long, but I got a copy of what was written and a shaky copy of the rune. I’ve put the journal in a drawer until it hopefully stops glowing so much, and with any luck I won’t completely burn this building down.
Here’s the text:
It’s been over a month since the lighthouse. Most have chalked it up to a one-off attempt to topple our confidence, a blind swipe to get at us and what’s left of Monarch’s Mountain, and that the informant was left behind at the lighthouse. They’ve all gone back to research, excavation, and unraveling the mysteries of the Mountain and what they knew.
But I’m not sleeping. I can’t.
Yesterday, Endri, Bash and their team cracked it. They managed to salvage the safeguard from one of the dead drives. It’s a complicated piece of magic the Mountain called “Determiner 12.”
It’s a proxy. A magimystic doorman of sorts that’s imbued with all manner of telemantic spells as well as leaving room for the practitioner’s intention and discretion. If performed correctly, it’s believed to provide three-tier protection against both physical and virtual places and groups. It will protect those allowed within the walls of the spell. It will continuously determine who at any given time should be kept out (or doesn’t absolutely require access), and will also in rare occasions allow “messengers” that exist outside the wall to communicate through the wall without having direct access.
They’ve been building this for the better part of a decade. At first, like all things, I thought the Mountain was overthinking it instead of performing it, but the few who stayed behind with us told us stories about a handful of attempts to cast the spell in preparation for Silver raids or the Joradians failing. In each preparation, the practitioner was killed. The spell is made of pieces of twelve spells, and because of that, there are unseen flaws and narrative conflicts that cause echoes and reverberations which end up catching the practitioner in wave after wave of magimystic energy. It is costly, messy, incomplete, and extremely dangerous. Endri, Bash, their team, and their unnamed accomplice (I’ve told them not to tell me their name) have spent weeks trying to find the flaws and patch them. In partial tests, new defects always appear, new conflicts arise between the different spell types. With what little we know, and what little power is left, this may be the best we can do.
It was always considered a worst-case scenario. Not only because of its level of authority and that it’s nigh-unbreakable, but also because you’re putting your life in the hands of some external object that makes the determination for you. They first considered making a person the determiner, to better control and humanize the spell, but they feared that a human would be mentally torn apart by the countless variables and choices flooding through them.
We had a long meeting about it in the front sitting room. I was the last to arrive.
Questions were bandied. Could we fix the flaws? Should we even try? Is there some alternative? Could we protect the caster? Who should we protect behind the wall? There was unanimous agreement that the physical manor and the virtual collection of mountaineers should be behind the wall. I didn’t say anything. I just watched the room, full of those who followed me here. How long this road has been, and no one knowing what would happen next now that we “saved the world.”
Finally, I spoke up. I admitted that I knew of something that could protect the practitioner. An object the '94s found when they tried to open The Book of Briars. It’s called a bearer’s band. Similar to the charmed tokens we found, it’s a ring that can withstand magic for a brief period before needing to recharge for years. Only a few of us knew about it, and it was never used because the mountaineer who kept it safe was caught by the Storm. I told them I thought I knew where to find it. I told them I would wear it and perform Determiner 12. They debated and discussed, but I’d already made up my mind. I left that night without anyone knowing.
————
Two weeks. That’s how long it took to do what I needed to do. When I came back, I told them about my search. How it was hidden, where I feared it would be, how difficult it was to obtain, but how I managed, in the end, to find it and bring it back. I told them I was ready to perform the spell.Every word a lie.
And a cleaner copy of the rune than I first made (drawing freehand circles is not my forte):
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Hope your journal cools down fast!
Welp, now we’ve got the description of the spell from the man himself!
Oh, Ascender…
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If the spell is that unstable then surely there should be cracks in the wall? They can’t have perfected the spell in the time they had, and it also still doesn’t answer why we were trapped in here
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Sigh
So, we’re not the only ones behind this wall it seems. All our reaching out, and there are others in here that we could have asked. Well, unless something went wrong (gods, I hope not). I’m now very curious why the Book is keeping our friends out. If this spell was meant to have the Book determine who can see/speak to us, why would it lock out Marty? I’m wondering if the flaws in the spell are causing it to expand in such a way that evenutally everything will be blocked out. I’m hoping that’s it, cause my other theory is much worse.
If the Ascender and everyone at the Mountain are behind the wall with us, what if the reason the spell keeps blocking more out is because it’s trying to block something bad on this side that got trapped with us from the Mountain? Urg… I don’t like that train of thought.
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I think my main question, right now, is what is that band? Real or false? If it’s fake, what consequences does that have on the spell? That might be a source of some cracks, or at least a place to leverage a rock or two. (I might be forgetting something, I’m a bit sleep deprived right now, and my records are less helpful than I had hoped.)
It also sounds to me like the spell can rescind access as well as give it. A constantly updating whitelist, as it were.
Well. I’m going to check on the journal, and then catch up on sleep. Good luck team.
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Or the reverse, that there’s still a bit of Silver in the Mountain, or Ascender didn’t want to risk that possibility and only stuck us in there.
And with him being the caster and all that entails, that goes a long way in explaining why it’s his account of what happened that we’re unlocking… (I really want to use the Eavessweat emoji, but out of respect of his feelings toward the other party I’ll refrain)
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Two options come to mind from his “everything was a lie.”
- It never existed and he was blowing smoke to give the rest a false sense of security
- It does exist, but he wasn’t going to use it/didn’t locate it. Probably used any old mundane ring to throw them off.
…though now that I think of it, ring proxy was used either way, since he said there was one.
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Wow. This is mind boggling. I’m concerned about Ascender though. If the ring is a lie and he didn’t use it then what happened to him. If they couldn’t fully perfect the spell does that mean he ended up like everyone else who tried to cast it before him?
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Yeah, ring’s totally a lie. Tell a lie with compete confidence, make up wild details and give it time to set in, and people will believe if they want to. It’s all window dressing.
You know, Ascender, if you wanted to lead people just so you could ignore their opinions, lie to, and manipulate them then you could have just joined the Silver and worked your way up the ranks the honest way. I guess that puts me on <Team @Augustus_Octavian > now.
On the other hand, there was ‘unanimous agreement’ to stick us in this bubble before Ascender even spoke. So thanks Endri and Bash and their unnamed friend for that.
I have 3 thoughts now.
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So the team who made this was Endri, Bash, “their team” (presumably other Monarch’s) and an “unnamed accomplice”. That could have been anyone. A Silver turncoat trying to help? a Silver spy trying to sabotage it? the Collector? another Benefactor? Sullivan? Laureen? We may never find out who it is, but place your bets now.
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If the found copy was Determiner 12…then what was the version number of the one cast? C’mon you know Bash, the tech guy, and Endri, the historian and librarian, used version control. I’d love to know. Was it 12.1? 13? 55.5? How many tries and variations did they make?
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What DID Ascender do for those two weeks? Did he just sit around in a motel room watching all the Netflix? Or did he have another plan?
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I’d like to hope he had another plan! Whether or not the ring existed in the first place surely he tried to find some type of protective measures for when the spell was cast??
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My theory at the moment is he may have tried to reach out to the cagliostro for help in some way. She’s about the only person I can think of with enough power and access to magiqal knowledge to protect Ascender from something like this.
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I just figured the 12 referenced the number of spells in the magiq soup. 
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That’s what I thought as well
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Okay, so… A “True Neutral” arbitrator/guard sounds like a positive thing. I understand, to some extent, wanting to humanize this protections spell. So far all the “humanized” or “domesticated” aspects of magiq have backfired in, predictably, unforeseeable ways. The Little Red House accidentally became a touch stone for forgetting about magiq (Deidre, Martin, Martin’s kid, presumably everyone who ever read it), opening the BoB has/is/will cause uncharitable ripples in reality and time space… When the Mountaineers reformed and decided to “open the floodgates” of magiq, as it were, things seemed to get better… Right? More people means more experience and broader access to knowledge and information…
I don’t know what exactly I’m getting at… Yes I do; Why were they trying to control it? Whose idea was it the a single person should be allowed to determine who is and is not allowed access to magiq?
Yeah, we’re trying to protect magiq from being hoarded and depleted by Silver, but what gives anyone the right to say “you’re allowed” and “you’re not”?
It seems really dangerous to put that much authority in once person’s hands. A “True Neutral” arbitrator/guard sounds really good in comparison, but maybe that my instinct for Chaos speaking.
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