elysian-kotlc

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shannon introduced elysian stepping out of thin air claiming to be a power source, called it the biggest secret of the lost cities she's been keeping for over a decade, then said peace see you in at least 3 years. and honestly. power move

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Currently trying to come to terms with the fact that Elysian will probably not be as cool as the version of her I've constructed in my head.

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Idk if I posted this

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something something elysian is the keeper of the lost cities and is going to pass the role onto sophie something something

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there's no way the movies will get this far but the edits of Elysian saying "My name is Elysian and I am the power source you've all been looking for" would go so hard

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How did Sophie know Elysian was a woman like… usually the narration is limited to Sophie’s knowledge and supposedly Elysian face isn’t visible. does Elysian just have like really big tiddies and Sophie was like “oh yes must be a gorl”

Elysian's tits entered before she did. she's got some serious honkers. a real set of badonkers. packin some dobonhonkeros. massive dohoonkabhankaloos. big old tonhongerekoogers.

Serious answer: I'm assuming this was done on Shannon's part, imparting that snippet of knowledge because it wasn't something she needed or wanted left to interpretation. Shannon knows Elysian's female, so she's telling us even if the characters wouldn't know for certain. It's possible the voice gave it away, as in keeper there's a pretty clear female/male society and it's rather limited, so in their system a certain tenor of voice=female.

I would say it's because Shannon needed a pronoun to use, but she has used they/them singular pronouns in one scene in the past, so if that was the case she could've used them again.

My assumption is this is another instance of limited gender expression and variation in the series that categorized Elysian into it quickly despite knowing very little about her. But big bonkhonagahoogs, humongous hungolomghnonoloughongous Elysian is a funnier explanation :)

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Councillor Elysian

really random but I was thinking about how she shows up in a gray cloak, and then about how the current Council wears silver cloaks whenever they go to space to earth gaze instead of star gaze, and I realized that her ability is clearly powerful and she has to be an ancient. so, what if she was a councilor, perhaps one of the original ones? the elves could have started off with dull colors, but then switched to their obsession with sparkles and bright, reflective fabrics. based off that, she could be a councilor who was betrayed and just decided that she would still wear the cloak because Elysian deserved the title of councilor, even if the others denied it.

also which version of councilor is the correct version? i think she uses councillor, but what if the difference? is it the British? why are there so many versions of one word, English, why?

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Unprompted options on what I think Elysian looks like.

Long hair, like down to their knees long

Crazy colorful hair

It changes color depending on how the light catches it

Medium brown skin

Hazel or Green eyes

Most of their clothes are slightly mismatched since they were made from old clothes when either they or their ancestor got banished there

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Kotlc theory: Could Elysian be a shade?

We know that shadowflux can turn off abilities in some way because of what happened with Ruy. You know who else can turn off abilities? Elysian.

Building off of this, there has to be an Ancient shade that we don't know of yet, because in order to make illusions you need a flasher and a shade. We know that Luzia and Vespera worked together to make illusions back in the Ancient days, and we know that Luzia is a flasher, but Vespera is not a shade, so there's someone missing from the equation. The only shades mentioned in the entire series (and if I’m forgetting someone please let me know) are Umber, Tam, and Lady Zillah. None of them are ancients, but Elysian definitely is. So if Elysian is a shade, she could be that missing person.

It would also be very interesting if Elysian, the power source, was a shade, since the entire elven world is built around light. Something something light cannot exist without darkness

Credit to @molikesbooks for helping me come up with this theory :)

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Elysian Theories

Elysian's Powers:

The current known trait of her ability is being able to stop a person from using their ability. Additionally, that includes being able to stop multiple people from doing so as Sophie, Maruca, Marella, Fitz, Keefe, and Gisela were immediately cut off from using their abilities. We do not know the duration of their power loss, but the closest thing to this instance is when Grady Ruewen mesmered the Council into slapping themselves. That was short lived, but involved twelve people being controlled, in comparison to the six people here, adding to the plausibility of that many people being controlled, even if the nature of the ability itself is very powerful.

The specifics of Elysian's powers include flicking off a switch inside of the person, shutting down their unruly emotions, and clearing their vision, which can be generalized to clearing their emotions like a reset button. In contrast to Sophie's reaction, Fitz appears to get a headache from the loss of his telepathy, which could be due to the fact that Sophie is the moonlark and has an unnatural defense built in that might make her reaction easier to manage. Still, she has reacted similarly to Fitz when around humans, so that is not as likely.

As for Elysian's nature, she is described as a "figure in a gray cloak" who "[steps] out of thin air," likely blinking as Sophie does when playing base quest in the beginning of the series with Biana, Keefe, and Fitz (Messenger 728). Additionally, she says, "I am the power source you're all here looking for," which can be seen as cocky or just plain factual (Messenger 728). Either could add to her character, making her arrogant or almost numb, like an empath, although that does not necessarily matter right now.

For the actual theory element of this, Elysian's power appears to relate to illusions in the mind as she seems to put up a wall between the person and their ability. The most notable illusionist, Vespera Follend, expressed the need to keep Elysian locked up, which could be due to prior knowledge, perhaps forgotten secrets that were not necessarily removed from Vespera, who might have already been put in jail at the time and essentially forgotten herself. The only other ability close enough to creating illusions is a flasher, but considering that the ability was one used to find Elysian and release her, I doubt that she has that ability, since the people who locked her up would not want her to be able to break out of any section of her prison. Therefore, Elysian has elements of an Empath's ability, which is further proven by how Keefe's combined polyglot and empath abilities allow him to control people through verbal tone and emotions. Elysian did not speak until afterwards, so the tone is likely not part of how she works, but the emotional side of the empath very well could be.

Similar to the shows Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, Elysian appears to be able to disrupt a person's connection to their ability, much like chi blocking. Considering that ancient minds are practically impenetrable, she would be able to put up mental shields in her own mind (with the assumption that she would be an Ancient). Additionally, Elysian's ability extends beyond her own mental shields, like the shields against telepaths and empaths, as seen by Fintan and Gisela (although not an Ancient, she hid her true emotions and thus her lies from her family who consisted of empaths). Elysian can put up a mental shield between a person and their ability. Her genetics were likely a hybrid of an inflictor, telepath, empath, and/or mesmer. While Bronte is the only known inflictor, the genes likely appeared earlier, at least the elements of what developed into his, and they possibly remained dormant in other people, but not necessarily in Elysian.

Why Elysian was Locked Away:

Her ability is clearly dangerous, which would cause the other elves to be hesitant of her. Elysian likely came before the pyrokinetic ban as that would be the first moment that an ability like hers would have been necessary and possibly why Kenric would have sought out Elysian, becoming weary of the ability and wanting a failsafe that could temporarily, if not permanently remove the ability and therefore remove the problem. There is not something that necessarily suggests that Kenric would want to remove the pyrokinesis ability, still, he did search for the woman. People do not look for a power source without a plan of how they could use it, and for a Councillor in charge of protecting a world that did not even know it needed to be changed, Kenric Fathdom had a lot of reasons to go searching for Elysian.

Because stellarlune has become such a big part of the series, Elysian likely experimented with this as a younger woman, and she likely found a way to use that as her own way of getting permanently enhanced, removing the need of that ability in order to make her extremely powerful. That would have made her a target to the Council, who would want to know that they have absolute power, but would never be assured of that if she was able to roam free. The prison was a way to safeguard themselves, and the Council knew that none of them had a power that strong.

How Elysian Pulls Stellarlune and Legacies Together:

Shannon Messenger did not originally plan for Keefe Sencen to be a character in her book series, but since then has clearly embraced his role in the series. His mother, Gisela, has no clear connection that would allow her access to the knowledge about Elysian, so I am going to get a little far from reality in this section of the theory and say that Elysian was part of Gisela's family tree, specifically her mother's side. Those who were related to Elysian likely had two primary choices; they could try and forget that she ever existed because of how jealous they felt when they remembered that she had such a powerful ability and they did not, or they could continue her work, keeping everything related to her and stellarlune as they passed it down for generations to the bright children in their family line who they expected to continue the work without telling others. Through this, the family would have learned the time that the stars would align, allowing for the location of Elysian to be accessible. The family would have passed this down slowly, likely waiting until they were a couple hundred years old and wanted to essentially retire from the work. At this point, they would likely pass down the knowledge of Elysian to their child, who would be in the mid hundreds at this point.

The only exclusion to this tradition would be Gisela Minette, a girl who was so promising that she manifested with two abilities. There are two version of this that could have occurred. The first would be when Gisela was a kid. She manifested as a polyglot first, so her mother told her to hide her other ability, which she manifested at home, from the Council, and even her father. Young Gisela would have been trained extra hard in her polyglot ability by her mother, but only watched her father whenever he conjured something, trying to copy the ability in her room when the door was locked. The other version would be that Gisela had aftereffects of the contents that she drank while pregnant with Keefe, and that caused the potential in her to be brought out in the form of a conjurer. She could have privately trained in the ability, but still not gotten anywhere near mastering it as she still struggled a decade and a half later.

As for the "family legacy," Gisela learned about the details when she was a couple hundred years old, sooner than her previously family members, as her mother trusted that she would be the one to complete the tasks, knowing how special and driven Gisela was. (This would have occurred before Gisela had married Cassius and had Keefe.) Based off that, she would have developed her idea for stellarlune and Keefe's legacy before marrying, choosing Cassius because he was a strong empath, and Elysian had genetic connections to the ability. Through that, Keefe's legacy is to become the next Elysian, extending beyond the ability to shut off elves' special abilities, but to also prompt people to manifest and control their physical actions.

In summary, Elysian's ability allows her to put up mental blocks between a person and their connection to their special ability. Gisela is Elysian's descendant, and Keefe is the product of his heritage and experimentation. Elysian is not an overpowered character; she can only shut off elves' special abilities, but the Talentless have been living without them and therefore can survive without that power. The one who is overpowered is Keefe, because now, he has Elysian's ability and Grady's ability combined into one, allowing him to control both the mind and the body, making him the most powerful character in the entire Keeper of the Lost Cities Series.

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Elysian is mentioned in Unlocked and Stellarlune. In Unlocked, Councillor Kenric mentions this term in the memory that Oralie's cache holds, but does not elaborate. It is something that Kenric was investigating along with Stellarlune, but he refused to tell Oralie. The last paragraph of Stellarlune reveals that the forgotten secret of Elysian is actually a person. All that is known about her physical appearance so far is that she wears a grey cloak. When she appears, everyone's abilities seem to stop working. The last few sentences of the book and the first bit of dialogue she has states, "You're not supposed to." and then "My name is Elysian. And I am the power source you're all here looking for." Shannon Messenger said that the end of this book was what the entire series had been leading up to, meaning that Elysian will play an important role as the series comes to a close.

Elysian appears to be the name of an island as well as a person. She may to have the power to switch off abilities.