#MQ blathers

[masterqwertster]

You know, I do have to wonder if the reason the gods of Exandria are panicking so much about the release of Predathos isn't solely the threat of being eaten, but also that they can't seal it again.

Like, what you can achieve once can be done again. And you've had thousands of years to look back and consider how to do it better, how you could have maybe prevented Vordo and Ethedok from being eaten by sealing sooner. What happened to their two siblings, the struggle to survive where they landed, has to weigh in the gods' minds at times.

And yet, the gods don't seem to be doing any prep work to stuff Predathos back into Ruidus (or a new prison), and instead are going all in on the fight to stop the seals from releasing in the first place.

Sure, preparation for resealing should the worst happen could be happening in the background where we can't see it. But it doesn't particularly feel that way. Everything we've seen is "All hands on deck so that this thing never gets out, period" with seemingly no back up if that directive is failed.

So I would posit that the gods can't seal Predathos again, because they got rid of the titans.

We know that the titans helped the gods seal Predathos away. We know that Predathos resists the divine power of the gods. We know that an enormous hunk of Exandria was turned into the prison-turned-moon Ruidus.

So it really makes sense to me if the titans were instrumental to the sealing process.

As best I can tell, elemental power is separate from divine power in the cosmos of Exandria. Which means that the titans did not face penalties as the gods did in using their powers against Predathos. So if/when they needed to pin it in place for whatever sealing rituals/ceremonies, the titans would be best suited to it with gods being bait to draw Predathos in.

Next is carving up Exandria. Who could better do that than titans of earth? The earth of Exandria is their element, their birthplace, and their home. If anyone could easily rip up a continent (as the theory of Ruidus's origin on Exandria is), it would be the titans of earth.

I will also point out that glass, like what we've been recently led to believe is what Predathos's form is in its sealed state, is a result of fire and earth, melting sand into a cohesive whole. So the titans might have helped with that part too.

What we know the gods did in the sealing of Predathos seems to be mostly outer bindings. Divine seals on the layers of glass to keep people from cracking it open, the Divine Gate-like cage around Ruidus itself.

So it seems to me that there's a good chance the titans contributed a lot to the sealing of Predathos.

And now they're all gone. The gods killed them

...And maybe sealed a few in other Planes? It's a bit unclear, but Vox Machina did encounter what was called a Dust Titan in Pandmonium in The Search For Bob, and Errevon the Rimelord is thought to be some sort of Ice Titan. Still, the killing and sealing isn't going to do the gods any favors in getting help again. Especially since such surviving titans don't really have a stake in Exandria anymore and probably aren't on Predathos's menu (but may be on it's revenge list).

The closest things the gods have these days to allied titans are Ashton and Fearne, who both only hold tiny fragments of a full titan's power. Even if those fragments are from two of the most powerful titans to walk Exandria.

So yeah, the gods sort of accidentally fucked themselves over in being able to reseal Predathos by wiping out the titans, I think.

[lavenderskye29]

Not really an ask, I just wanted to say I love your Monkey Queen comic! And I’m guessing Monkey Queen is just as yandere as her male counterpart.

Oh thank you! 💙💙💙

Absolutely. In the case of yandere Monkey Queen she would be just as obsessed and in love with her Peaches as her male counterpart. Both Sun Wukongs treat their mate very similarly to one another, but there are some key differences between the two.

-First off, MQ (Monkey Queen) is a bit more empathetic to her mate’s distress and understands that it probably wasn’t ideal getting yoinked out of their own lives and into the lap of the realm’s most powerful demon and ruler. Nonetheless, MQ is almost cold in the way she handles her lover’s cries with her words being absolute and straightforward as they cling to her legs begging to be returned home. In MQ’s eyes, there’s no reason to delude or reason with her broken-hearted mate thinking it better to be honest with them to help them come to terms of their very permanent situation which is in contrast to MK (Monkey King), who hates to deal with the tears and instead likes to distract, threaten, ignore his lover when they start getting emotional.

(Both do, however, in the dark of the night or in the privacy of their room, hold their mate close and tight, hands caressing and voices soft as they coo and chirp consolingly as Peaches sobs. Both MQ and MK are affected a lot more than they would like to admit by their mate’s pain.)

-Another difference between the two, is MQ is not as aggressive as her male counterpart. Now don’t get me wrong, MQ is still incredibly aggressive… but with the lack of testosterone coursing through her body she doesn’t feel the need to compete so intensely with rivals. She takes a little more time to think about the situation at hand before jumping to action.

I mean, why fight for something that’s already yours?

So MQ will stand there, smile smug and eyes vicious, as a rival attempts to threaten/flirt with her (what demon lord wouldn’t want The Great and Mighty Monkey Queen as their wife?), not attacking until the fight has been initiated or until she has been horribly disrespected. Even then, the queen likes to play with her prey before going straight for the kill, being known to bully and taunt her competitor for a while before ending the fight, not unlike MK. But be warned, as soon as her human mate is made mentioned of, MQ will fly into a terrifying and bloody rage. Easily decimating the blathering idiot that dared approach her and made jest of her sweet, little Peaches.

After such a… event, MQ will return home, covered in blood and shaking with unburnt energy hungrily searching out Peaches before spending the night exhausting her remaining adrenaline on her confused unwilling mate, chanting incoherent rage-filled whispers against their neck and stomach nearly the entire time. The words are never meant for Peaches, but it frightens them nonetheless because they feel the anger oozing from the deep claw marks on their hips and the bruising bites littering their neck and shoulders the next morning, despite all of MQ’s attempts to tenderly nurture them afterwards.

- One of the last and few differences, is that MQ is a lot more paranoid about letting Peaches be alone than MK. Not that MQ is concerned about Peaches escaping (because if anything that’s just a fun game of Cat and Mouse), she is more concerned about the demons/celestial beings that would come to the mountain in search of leverage, treasure, or even worse… entertainment. She has had a few nightmares while away on conquests that showed her mate being taken or attacked by such beings, which usually leads to her blasting off on her nimbus to check in on Peaches before returning that same night.

Most of these dreams depict her once close friend and sister, Macaque, stealing Peaches away. MQ can’t help the burning anger that overtakes her after these dreams, nor can she chase away the jealousy sadness she feels at knowing that her mate would prefer her sister over her… that her mate would be happy never seeing MQ ever again… It’s in these moments that MQ has the most determination to never lose her Peaches. Not to anyone or anything.

[masterqwertster]

Shaking Bells Hells by the shoulders: Please take the time to process your "therapy" trials. Nana Morri is literally messing with time in your favor so you can, as she's repeatedly said, "Take your time." If it's as good as when she had Fearne as a kid, you haven’t even been missing from Exandria for ONE hour yet.

[masterqwertster]

Adding a little to the "Liliana you had Choices to go home, you just didn't take them" arguments:

Liliana was with the Grim Verity first.

You know, the friendly researchers who Ludinus was having hunted down so they couldn't learn the truths about Ruidus and the Ruidusborn because that knowledge might allow them to ruin his plans. The researchers who did not want to push into dangerous, shaky territory with those powers.

Hondir, the goblin Verity guy working with Ollie and Birdie, said he last saw Liliana 12 years before Bells Hells. And Professor Kadija Sumal said Liliana came to the Grim Verity research project 10-ish years ago. That is at least half of the time Liliana was gone. That is a decade where only Liliana's own travel choices kept her from backtracking to Gelvaan to check on her family. Only her own determination to have answers kept her away.

Because you can't convince me that the Grim Verity, who was being cautious of what they were prodding, wouldn't allow Liliana to walk away to see her family. They let others back out when they became uncomfortable with the research. They let her walk away with Otohan, after all.

[masterqwertster]

Oh shit.

Just looked at the Reincarnate spell, and it's a 5th Level.

Fearne could cast it.

They just need to get the spell components and Fearne can try to bring FCG back. And I'd say the Exandrian Alliance easily owes Bells Hells 1,000 gp worth of rare oils and unguents. Especially for the soul that killed General of the Ruby Vanguard Otothan Thull.

[masterqwertster]

Thinking about Liliana's little speech about how the Temples and governments will "hunt us down."

She means "us" as anyone who is Ruidusborn. And she's probably not wrong that there will be extremist groups/orders/cells that will do exactly that. Government attempts to collect and/or cull Ruidusborn. That the already existing stigma of a cursed birth will now be taken as a truth.

But she's kind of missing that the why of it all is that her group, the Ruby Vanguard, are the reason it would escalate to that level. Thousands of years since Predathos was sealed and started making Ruidusborn, and it's never been an issue on that level because any potential attempts to reach the moon and release the God-Eater weren't organized or empowered enough to actually be a global problem, much less get there and prove a real threat. Ruidusborn were just people with an unlucky birth, possibly strange powers, until the Ruby Vanguard started broadcasting their plans to kill the gods specifically by messing with Ruidus with the help of Ruidusborns.

It won't be fair to all the Ruidusborn who are actually trying to be regular people and not a God-Eater's tool. It won't be fair to Ruidusborn like Imogen who are actually fighting against Predathos. And it wouldn't be a problem if the Ruby Vanguard hadn't made them out as a viable world-class threat.

Liliana says they'll be hunted because the world knows. She doesn't mention that the world knows because of the Ruby Vanguard which she works for.

Which comes to the real truth of "us." "Us" is the Ruby Vanguard, and they have created a reason to be hunted by the world in all the people they've killed and the chaos and destruction they've caused in the name of their goal. It's not good, but when you're willing to kill, you shouldn't be surprised when that mentality is turned towards you.

If the Ruby Vanguard fails, the world remains strong enough to tear them down in the aftermath. Not only that, but the world is motivated to do so by the damage done to it and the fear of what would have happened if the Vanguard won.

And if the Vanguard does win, all of the clerics and paladins are depowered. Some of the greatest healers and devout warriors in the world, unable to draw out their full might. How much of the world is crippled and left defenseless without divine magics? And the Vanguard has a Ruidian army they're allied with and bringing down to Exandria. Who can resist them? They will be the hunters then.

[masterqwertster]

I just realized, in Ashton’s new official art, he could be leaning on the hammer.

That thing has Immovable Rod properties. They could have clicked the button and made a personal rail to lean against.

Look at this art! Ashton is braced! That is not an arm position for holding! Particularly on the left!

[masterqwertster]

A difference between Ashton absorbing the Spark and Fearne absorbing the Spark that I haven't seen discussed is that Fearne had the ability to ripcord out until the end of the 6th round/start of the 7th round while Ashton only had to the end of the 1st round.

Now by "ripcord out," I mean they could have halted the absorption process by either removing the Quintessence Array or potentially pulling the Spark out of the Array's funnel. Essentially, the Spark's crystal vessel had to still exist and be a separate receptacle, much like how the Quintessence Array cannot fully transfer a creature's magical essence without proper absorption time.

For Ashton, the Spark's crystal crumpled to nothing by the end of the first round via CON Saves (Ashton's early rounds were weird in that Matt rolled multiple damages against him instead of just one, especially the second CON Save round). All they had were those initial moments where it didn't seem impossible, didn't seem like anything they couldn't handle, to back out. 36 Damage and unaware they had to go for 9 more rounds where one pulse of Damage could do up to 60 Damage.

Fearne, on the other hand, besides having a much gentler time of it with zero CON Saves and able to use her own magic to help keep herself up from lower Damage rolls, had until the end of the sixth round or the start of the seventh round before the second Spark crystal finished crumpling into nothing. She had time to assess if it would be too much for her to finish, time to say "No, this was a bad idea. I don't want it."

I'm sure part of that difference is Ashton jumped in on a bad idea and was being forced to deal with the Consequences while Fearne's was a much more measured decision and the "safe" route. You know, game mechanics and penalties.

But consider it narratively.

The way I read it, one of two things happened: Ashton's body is so attuned/ready to be a vessel of great powers that it just slorped the Spark right up, no hesitation. Or, Rau'shan was so eager to move in with his old partner, that he jumped right in (and later backed out because it was too crowded to be tenable). And honestly? Both have interesting implications.

If Ashton is just a higher power absorbing machine, that can mean some interesting things for how he ended up with the Shard of Ka'Mort. Like that the Hishari ritual wasn't meant to bestow the Shard to anyone, but through whatever fuck up happened, Ashton chomped it up. Or that it was about bestowing, but Ashton was such a better vessel that it fucked up the ritual. And the Potion of Possibility giving them a half-beacon brain just happened. There's no explanation as to why it didn't just give him a Mote of Possibility to essentially reroll a Death Save into stabilizing himself rather than die, which makes sense with what the Potion does. Instead it made Ashton a permanent well of dunamis. Maybe that happened because Ashton is titan-blooded. Maybe it's because they are uniquely suited to being a vessel of great powers, that they possess a body hungry to hold more power.

On the other hand, if Rau'shan wanted in to reunite with Ka'Mort with all haste, that makes Ashton his first choice of vessel. Then Rau'shan backed out because three's a crowd and a quality vessel does no one any good if it breaks trying to use that power (because Ashton did manage to contain it all). And maybe he goes a little slower when a second vessel attempts to hold his Spark, just to make sure she's not going to blow up on him.

Or even Fearne just doesn't have the same draw for the Spark as Ashton, so it crumbled at the rate the Quintessence Array drained it at instead of being sucked straight through to it's new home.

I'm just saying, it's a very interesting difference that didn't need to exist to show how much easier absorbing the Spark is for not-Ashton.

[masterqwertster]

Pulling this size comparison to stand on it's own. But the composition was inspired by this post

Demi-titan Mode Ashton with the Short Kings size comparison

Sorry I had to use old art Chet. The new art's crouching position is too much to deal with to get a decently accurate size adjustment

[masterqwertster]

So I know there was some speculation (complaint?) that Fearne should have been perma-banished back to the Fey Realm when FCG did the self-banishing to get away from Otohan.

Which, fair enough. She's a fey being and has lived over one hundred years in the Fey Realm.

But, technically, the Fey Realm is not her Plane of origin.

Fearne was very specifically and purposefully born on Exandria for the plan to make her be Ruidusborn.

So, assuming the spell interprets "Plane of origin" as "the Plane you were born on" and not "the Plane you currently have residence on/have lived longest on," it's actually following the rules for Fearne to be dumped in a demi-plane with FCG.

Also, while Ruidus is magically locked away for most things by a mini Divine Gate, it is still on the Prime Material Plane. So that's why FCG (and Fearne) didn't/couldn't perma-banish out of that fight.

[masterqwertster]

Been meaning to say:

Thank you, Matt, for making it canon plausibility that "emotionally distressed baby titan quakes their surroundings."

Poor Ashton had their panic attack, but I am living for the "might have been shaking those stones with my emotions" bit that he experienced. I want it to be a real effect. It matches my baby titan headcanons. Give me more little things that Ashton might not have noticed about themself but clearly point to being more than a normal genasi.

Then let him experiment with what he notices and find uses for what he learns. Like quake their immediate vicinity for extra intimidation. Then quake a spot in line-of-sight for distractions. Give Ashton titan blooded skills!

[masterqwertster]

Also love that both Allura and Keyleth's reactions to poking Ashton's magic/essence/energies is shaky breath and perturbed stare followed by "What the fuck are you? And by what miracle are you even functioning? Also the vast powers sleeping within you freak me the fuck out."

[masterqwertster]

And with the new Titan-mode minis art:

(Updated) Demi-Titan Ashton and the Short Kings

[masterqwertster]

Can we talk about how Ashton's response to FCG saying "We're going to take a day off, we're going to figure out some fun activities to do together that will bond us and remind us of our childhood." is fucking "I have been a piñata. That will work."

My dude. What?

The Greymoore Home was shit if a childhood memory that Ashton apparently associates with fun and bonding (probably not for themself but for everyone else involved) is getting beat with a stick like he'll spew out candy. Possibly/probably while tied up and dangling.

No responsible adult should allow, facilitate, or encourage this sort of thing. And sure, maybe the kids scampered off, found an unmonitored corner to do this in. But it's not like they can hide the results of one kid being beat to shit under unknown circumstances. And Ashton's stone hide probably didn't protect them much when you're more likely to find a steel bar than a wooden stick in a mech-junk town in the middle of a desert. Assuming this didn't happen before he shifted to genasi.

Just, Baby Ashton (or anyone really) being used as a piñata is horrible.

And I'm sure part of Ashton offering the piñata idea is a fucked up penance for putting everyone through it. You know, let them beat him up with their anger. It's fine, taking hits is one of the things he's good for.

It's sad, and I'm glad no one jumped on it. But maybe a teeny tiny bit worried they just talked over it, as if Ashton hadn't revealed another piece of horrible trauma and lack of self-value, when it's ignoring that shit that led them to their current position.

So yeah, probably a good thing FCG is in charge of activity planning and they never want anyone to be hurting.

[masterqwertster]

It's wild to see the dynamic between Prime and Betrayer gods when they're nominally on the same side.

The whole part where the Wildmother is like "Why should I stop the Spider Queen from collecting her champion and putting her on the field?" was amazing. The Prime Deities care about mortals, but in this case, it's all hands on deck, please save our asses. Even if the Primes don't approve of the Betrayers' methods (which, debatable given k'nauth and judicators seem to be the same thing with the difference being who they devoted themself into oblivion for), right now, they're going to allow it because the Betrayers are trying to stop the release of Predathos too and whatever works, works.

And Champions are a god's most potent tool in working on the Prime Material Plane, so why would the Wildmother stop the Spider Queen from setting one of her best bets at affecting things into motion when it's for a mutual goal? This is the gods' favoritism at play. Who they will try to protect, who they will ask to make sacrifices, who they will let fall to the fate that individual has chosen.

Opal may not have known what she agreed to in accepting being the Spider Queen's Champion, but she did agree to it. What happens now is the path she chose, even if she didn't know the consequences waiting in that decision. And the other gods aren't going to try to change that path unless Opal is used to interfere with their own goals. It's not their place. And in this case, it's in their interest to let this play out.

[masterqwertster]

Y’know, despite all the concern that Ashton would be one of the hardest to create in the Baldur's Gate 3 character creator, I think they turned out the best.