#thinking about the caterpillar quest....hmmm

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arlecchino? pantalone??? MONA????

[beautifulterriblequeen]

I just finished your Aaravos plague post and loved it! Do you think Kasef could be influenced/possessed too? Saleer takes him down in the dungeon to talk with Viren, and we never see what transpires. We just get the fallout. It seems just like Aaravos to have a plant in the crowd though, doesn’t it? And this whole transformation thing only works if the troops aren’t running away from it, so there has to be a sacrifice. Poor Kasef, tricked into joining them by Aaravos and Viren.

Aw thanks! @kotikala and I sure had fun bouncing that theory around, and it really did just keep getting bigger. 

Hmmm, Kasef... I’ve been thinking this over for a couple days, and I would love to know what actually was said between Kasef, Saleer, and Viren. The way that Viren reacts with surprise to Kasef’s presence makes me think that Aaravos is keeping all his puppets isolated and only telling them what they need to know in order to do what he wants them to. He’s getting information from them and passing it off as his own.

Now I’m wondering how much Aaravos can really see the imminent future, and how much is just him getting information from his caterpillar network, which includes Saleer. Saleer is the crowd plant that we get to see (because there could be more). He does all of the groundwork inside the castle for Viren’s rule to begin.

Both of these informational incidents below could’ve happened because Aaravos is simply talking to someone else in the castle. It would be just like Unreliable Narrator Aaravos to keep us just as much in the dark about what his powers truly are as he kept all his other puppets.

And yeah, Kasef is absolutely being tricked and lured in. Aaravos needs him and Saleer to get Viren out of jail, on the throne, and onto the warpath. After that, he may or may not have plans for them anymore, and they can be discarded the way he dumped that poor Sun mage. Encouraging Kasef’s angrier tendencies on the march to Xadia could have made his heart harder so he’d be more likely to succumbing to the Hearts of Cinder spell the way he did.

Okay, back to Kasef, though: I don’t think he’s been bitten or possessed like Saleer has. I think, in a way, he’s more a mirror for Viren than Saleer: so emotionally unbalanced that he volunteered before fully understanding what it was going to cost him.

Kasef had a permissive household that apparently didn’t teach princely priorities as well as it could’ve (what did Kasef like to do, I wonder??) so when his father was attacked and Kasef suddenly found himself in charge, he was an angry son who wanted vengeance more than anything else in the world. He didn’t even ask what Viren’s spell would do to him before he said he wanted it.

His feels unbalanced him and made him want to listen to Saleer Aaravos’s scheme to get Viren on the throne, because Viren on the throne meant vengeance for Kasef’s dad. Kasef wanted war, and Viren promised it to him. As long as it gave Kasef what he wanted, he’d support anything.

Viren similarly agreed to the blood ritual with Aaravos without fully understanding what it meant, because he felt he was out of options in his quest for power and stability in Katolis. He’d forged Harrow’s seal and failed to get backup from the Pentarchy. Opeli knew what he’d done, and he was about to go down for it. He could’ve found another way. He’s genuinely intelligent, and he plans very thoroughly. But he wanted this way, so he took it. Again, without asking what it would cost him.

And then, he got in way over his head, but since that way kept leading him where he generally wanted to go, he kept walking in deeper.

(Narrator: Neither of them were ready.)

The way that Kasef changed into a different size of lava zombie than the other soldiers is the detail that sways me against Aaravos’s direct influence over him. Viren’s spell is called Hearts of Cinder, and Kasef’s heart was bright orange and glowing, like it was more packed with rage than the rest of him. He had a full-on werewolf transformation moment too, where his shirt ripped because he got so much bigger due to the spell effect on him. No one else had that happen. 

In battle, Kasef was less reasonable than ever, rushing ahead of everyone and growling. He’d truly become monstrous, led entirely by his rage, by a single negative emotion. But that rage had been a part of his character from the time we met him. 

He was flawed before he even met Saleer, Viren, or Aaravos, so the archmage didn’t need to take him over to get what he needed. He just needed to gently lead Kasef where Kasef thought he wanted to go.

And in the end, both Kasef and Viren paid with their lives for not reading the fine print on their deals with the devil. 

Haha, it’s interesting that they were both taken down by stabby girls, too. So there’s a parallel for Aanya and Rayla now, too.