There is always the possibility that Rastov showed Conjurer a modified glyph then put on an act of regret to trick the heroes into releasing him. A good lie takes no magic.
He did formally state he yielded, however. While it’s possible that’s meaningless, I suspect these magic users in this magic egg where rules and riddles and games are foremost would know if formally yielding was enforced by the rules of the game or not.
or in different culture slamming them behind you as fast as possible ‘to cut off the tails of demons following you'(they store their power in the tail)
There is a point to add to this – he doesn’t appear to be bound magically to his oath. If he was bound magically, he’d presumably know if he’d fulfilled it or not. He was standing there on his honor and nothing more. Thus, one would presume that if he says he yields, he really does yield.
Still, this doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of a double-cross.
If he isn’t released (whether or not he crumbles to dust as soon as he leaves), then he might be able to join them. He seems to have more good sense than most of the others.
P.S. The only terms that Rastov knows of are that he needs to defeat three adventurers. If there were no further conditions requiring that he remember the ones he defeated, then Veles was already cheating and technically has lost that challenge _unless_ Rastov hadn’t already defeated three. I suppose it is technically possible that Veles hasn’t had the need to use his little trap for a long time.
Well he’s an action sort, everyone standing around talking particularly about things he knows nothing about is something he’s not good at and so it bores him. When it looked like combat was the way to solve things though he was right there in the thick of it.
when all you have is a hammer….sometimes its best to put the hammer down and let somebody with a screw driver give it a try rather than make things worse by beating on it
Not necessarily, the Conjurer said that Korschei’s techniques were “ahead of his time”, but that time was at least hundreds of years ago (when the Conclave of Eastern Winds still existed), maybe magic has advanced since then.
Nah. The whole reason this worked is that the one person who could end the cycle didn’t know he was part of it. With the realization that he was tricked into an eternity of servitude, he can open the cage and walk out — before, he didn’t know he was inside the cage with everyone else.
Good to see that he’s a quite rational and sensible sort, as soon as he learned the truth about his predicament he promptly accepted the reality of it and surrendered. Hopefully he can be freed from the enchantment somehow so he’s not doomed to an eternity locked in that spot with his memories constantly resetting so he never can grow or even realize he’s been deceived to try and free himself.
write a note on the ground or something. Then read message and try to sovle during the problem during each reset. Not a great solution, but an idea none the less.
I get the feeling it’s not that simple, after all odds are many have gone through before but there’s no evidence that anyone’s been through in the past so it looks like it eventually resets the environment as well. Otherwise like with Phlogiston’s being ‘removed’, there’s obvious damage to the ground that he’d notice if it only reset his memories but not the landscape giving him a clue to his having been set up since his memories would say it wasnt’ damaged yet his looking at it he’d see it as obviously not matching his memories.
Not necessarily. She just noticed that she’s passed by the same rock. So she kicked it, walked by, kicked it again, walked by. So it can move and still be a landmark 84 would notice since she wouldn’t see it again at all if they weren’t looping.
If you kick a rock forward, you expect to see the rock as you walk forward, therefore it’s not a clue towards the loop. If 84 kicked the rock in any other direction, then it would only re-appear if she was looping. Therefore, only if the rock resets is there an indication of looping.
Not quite Psyque. Julie noticed the loop because the rock she kicked looked identical to a rock she was sure she’d kicked before (excellent attention to detail especially for a kid, even a super-kid), so the rock was actually evidence of the loop as it proved they were retracing their steps because it wasn’t simply a rock it was rock they shouldn’t have seen again.
“A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It’s a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn’t have to want to. It doesn’t have to think about it. It just does.”
Indeed. More than his physical state, I want to see how he reacts to Phlogiston’s “death”. I want to hear what he has to say for is involvement in that. It’s going to speak volumes of his character as a superhero and as a leader of a heroic team.
Honestly? I’m pretty sure he’s a raging egomaniac who uses his teammates as life-sized puppets, with the advantage that their powers make up for his own deficits.
The rest of his team a psycers as well they might just operat at the speed of thought as a matter of course. He’s enough of a scumbag without making things up
Something must be wrong with him, unlike Firedrake there’s no way Neuronet would have stood back silently while all this was going on he’d have been trying to inject himself into it somehow.
It’s possible that Neuronet is already in the next cycle since he was closer to the pathway.
This would result in the unfortunate situation in which he won’t feel responsible about what happened to Phlogiston because he can’t remember what he did and given the similar circumstances he would act the same way because he learned nothing.
Why would he WANT to? His order was just explicitly stated to be gone. He’d either be going to join them in their fate (if he was dropped off before) or he’d be going to nothing (if dropped off right after).
Are they his order? I mean they may have just been the biggest conclave of mages when he was around, so anyone who knew anything about magic would have know about their meetings.
Part of the power of the spells are that they are surmountable challenges susceptible to wit. At their heart is the nature of a riddle game. This third level of challenges is possibly only a third of the way through a ninefold maze, or it is plausible each of the riddles is keyed to some aspect, for example, of the ideal champion.
What aspects has the team demonstrated that proved valuable to their progress on each? This may be a clue to the ones that remain.
And has Neuronut used his power to make himself.. seem unimportant? 😉
Julie listened patiently, actively participating while the big brains on both sides talked, doing her best to understand the explanations, while Fireduck.. ducked, and Neuronut so far as we can tell tuned out.
She’s got pretty good leadership qualities all in all.
Hopefully Julie listened to the part about 6 heroes.
Maybe there simply is a sixth hero, of a shrunken or invisible kind, with the hero pack.
Maybe they’re whacking the living daylights out of Neuronut off panel.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Don’t see how it helps with Julie’s leadership, though.
“… I have been deceived and a child who has yet to see her tenth year if I’m any judge saw it more clearly than I did. I suddenly wish it /were/ possible to die in here…”
Hitting your teens isn’t the same as dying. We wouldn’t really know Julie hasn’t aged if not for the seven-hour timer outside not expiring yet.. Unless it has. They could have been in that loop for months, and Veles just left them in the Egg and moved on without telling them.
Of course, time may flow differently int he Eggverse, too. I believe the general trend is for magic to get more durable the faster time flows, based on Alice in Wonderland and the Chronicles of Narnia.
No matter how long they were in there, their experiential time is only hours, at most. So even if by external calendars they were in there for decades and Julie’s theoretically in her forties, she still has only the experience and mind of a child. And she saw the flaw in the spell, where it passed by Rostov completely.
Maybe it takes longer to reset a memory than to walk a cycle; that’s sort of fair, since it gives you a chance to notice the repetition on the next go-round. The others just weren’t bothering to notice the scenery. Rastov was there longer, but his memory hasn’t been reset since their original encounter, and it’s been a while.
Looks like the bell just rang for some realization…
There is always the possibility that Rastov showed Conjurer a modified glyph then put on an act of regret to trick the heroes into releasing him. A good lie takes no magic.
He did formally state he yielded, however. While it’s possible that’s meaningless, I suspect these magic users in this magic egg where rules and riddles and games are foremost would know if formally yielding was enforced by the rules of the game or not.
And it seems the kind of thing that is.
There has always been a power associated with forms and ritual. You can see that in the way Rostov and Veles act.
some call it “old school” I’d call it “the way your mother taught you, and she’d give you one hell of a hiding if you didn’t do it that way”
Sorta like opening doors for folks, regardless of age, race, or gender.
or in different culture slamming them behind you as fast as possible ‘to cut off the tails of demons following you'(they store their power in the tail)
There is a point to add to this – he doesn’t appear to be bound magically to his oath. If he was bound magically, he’d presumably know if he’d fulfilled it or not. He was standing there on his honor and nothing more. Thus, one would presume that if he says he yields, he really does yield.
Still, this doesn’t completely rule out the possibility of a double-cross.
If he isn’t released (whether or not he crumbles to dust as soon as he leaves), then he might be able to join them. He seems to have more good sense than most of the others.
P.S. The only terms that Rastov knows of are that he needs to defeat three adventurers. If there were no further conditions requiring that he remember the ones he defeated, then Veles was already cheating and technically has lost that challenge _unless_ Rastov hadn’t already defeated three. I suppose it is technically possible that Veles hasn’t had the need to use his little trap for a long time.
Oops. Korschei is the cheater. Veles may or may not be cheating but yeah, it was Korschei who trapped Rastov and cheated on the challenge.
Firedrake’s response says so much about him.
That He’s a jock with ADHD?
Yep, at least he tries. Even if he’s really, REALLY slow.
Unless everyone’s memory just reset.
As far as Firedrake is concerned, taking a nap is probably better than setting fire to random objects to relieve his boredom.
Well he’s an action sort, everyone standing around talking particularly about things he knows nothing about is something he’s not good at and so it bores him. When it looked like combat was the way to solve things though he was right there in the thick of it.
“If a problem can’t be solved by being set on fire, it’s not my problem.”
Perhaps a lot of fire-based metahumans think like the guy Ron was talking about.
This is a reasonable alternative to the ‘Hey, maybe this problem would be more manageable if it were ON FIRE’ attitude.
The latter being especially problematic if used on homework or final exam problems, at least in most cases.
when all you have is a hammer….sometimes its best to put the hammer down and let somebody with a screw driver give it a try rather than make things worse by beating on it
Firedrake’s got nasty pits
Now, unfortunately, he’ll also forget this revelation shortly. sorry wizard, you are kind of hosed.
Not necessarily, the Conjurer said that Korschei’s techniques were “ahead of his time”, but that time was at least hundreds of years ago (when the Conclave of Eastern Winds still existed), maybe magic has advanced since then.
The Conjurer is actually being quite nice, freely giving Rastov information that he was using as bargaining chips before.
Too bad he’s going to get devoured by a dragon before the end of the story arc: something doesn’t get foreshadowed so many times without a payoff.
I think Julie might have something against that. She might think of a way to circumvent the memory wipe for Rastov, with very simple tools.
Nah. The whole reason this worked is that the one person who could end the cycle didn’t know he was part of it. With the realization that he was tricked into an eternity of servitude, he can open the cage and walk out — before, he didn’t know he was inside the cage with everyone else.
Good to see that he’s a quite rational and sensible sort, as soon as he learned the truth about his predicament he promptly accepted the reality of it and surrendered. Hopefully he can be freed from the enchantment somehow so he’s not doomed to an eternity locked in that spot with his memories constantly resetting so he never can grow or even realize he’s been deceived to try and free himself.
write a note on the ground or something. Then read message and try to sovle during the problem during each reset. Not a great solution, but an idea none the less.
I get the feeling it’s not that simple, after all odds are many have gone through before but there’s no evidence that anyone’s been through in the past so it looks like it eventually resets the environment as well. Otherwise like with Phlogiston’s being ‘removed’, there’s obvious damage to the ground that he’d notice if it only reset his memories but not the landscape giving him a clue to his having been set up since his memories would say it wasnt’ damaged yet his looking at it he’d see it as obviously not matching his memories.
Well maby this group of heros will try to do something about that. Hopefully.
The ground resets as well, otherwise 84 wouldn’t have noticed the same stone she kept kicking.
Not necessarily. She just noticed that she’s passed by the same rock. So she kicked it, walked by, kicked it again, walked by. So it can move and still be a landmark 84 would notice since she wouldn’t see it again at all if they weren’t looping.
If you kick a rock forward, you expect to see the rock as you walk forward, therefore it’s not a clue towards the loop. If 84 kicked the rock in any other direction, then it would only re-appear if she was looping. Therefore, only if the rock resets is there an indication of looping.
Not quite Psyque. Julie noticed the loop because the rock she kicked looked identical to a rock she was sure she’d kicked before (excellent attention to detail especially for a kid, even a super-kid), so the rock was actually evidence of the loop as it proved they were retracing their steps because it wasn’t simply a rock it was rock they shouldn’t have seen again.
84 is a catalyst. She does not have to take many actions, her presence makes thing happen around her.
“A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It’s a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn’t have to want to. It doesn’t have to think about it. It just does.”
– recording in “Mass Effect 2”
Still no appearance of Neuronet…
I can’t honestly say I miss him – or even care about his wellbeing that much – but we do need some closure on that little bit of bother…
Indeed. More than his physical state, I want to see how he reacts to Phlogiston’s “death”. I want to hear what he has to say for is involvement in that. It’s going to speak volumes of his character as a superhero and as a leader of a heroic team.
Honestly? I’m pretty sure he’s a raging egomaniac who uses his teammates as life-sized puppets, with the advantage that their powers make up for his own deficits.
The rest of his team a psycers as well they might just operat at the speed of thought as a matter of course. He’s enough of a scumbag without making things up
Where is Nerunet during all this? We haven’t seen him since Phlog blew up.
Something must be wrong with him, unlike Firedrake there’s no way Neuronet would have stood back silently while all this was going on he’d have been trying to inject himself into it somehow.
It’s possible that Neuronet is already in the next cycle since he was closer to the pathway.
This would result in the unfortunate situation in which he won’t feel responsible about what happened to Phlogiston because he can’t remember what he did and given the similar circumstances he would act the same way because he learned nothing.
I’m betting he’s just smart enough to know ‘killing’ Phlo was his fault and that drawing attention to himself would cause 84 to give him a drubbing.
Also I’m betting 84 decides to set Rastov free, she just needs to send one or two more teammates back out…
When they get out they will need the help of a timetraveller to get back home
Fortunately, we know where to find one.
Why would he WANT to? His order was just explicitly stated to be gone. He’d either be going to join them in their fate (if he was dropped off before) or he’d be going to nothing (if dropped off right after).
I forget how the staffing at the school looks, but maybe ps238 could use a history teacher?
Are they his order? I mean they may have just been the biggest conclave of mages when he was around, so anyone who knew anything about magic would have know about their meetings.
That presumes they’ve been walking around for an inordinately long time. They may still have time left on the clock to complete their task.
They only have 7 hours before Veles does some magic on a big city.
For all we know the magic was aimed towards keeping Rastov’s memory from progressing more then the one of people trapped in there with him.
Called it.
That you did, and pretty much to a ‘T’. Take a well-deserved bow.
But is Rastov live, or is he unmemorex?
Part of the power of the spells are that they are surmountable challenges susceptible to wit. At their heart is the nature of a riddle game. This third level of challenges is possibly only a third of the way through a ninefold maze, or it is plausible each of the riddles is keyed to some aspect, for example, of the ideal champion.
What aspects has the team demonstrated that proved valuable to their progress on each? This may be a clue to the ones that remain.
And has Neuronut used his power to make himself.. seem unimportant? 😉
84 was Courteous to the gatekeeper (the dwarf in the swamped boat); Honest to the door-wardens; Perceptive in the Loop.
That’s a good list of three to be starting with … 🙂
There is still the aspect that Rastov said there were 6 heroes left in the party and we only saw the three…
Julie listened patiently, actively participating while the big brains on both sides talked, doing her best to understand the explanations, while Fireduck.. ducked, and Neuronut so far as we can tell tuned out.
She’s got pretty good leadership qualities all in all.
Hopefully Julie listened to the part about 6 heroes.
Maybe there simply is a sixth hero, of a shrunken or invisible kind, with the hero pack.
Maybe they’re whacking the living daylights out of Neuronut off panel.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Don’t see how it helps with Julie’s leadership, though.
“… I have been deceived and a child who has yet to see her tenth year if I’m any judge saw it more clearly than I did. I suddenly wish it /were/ possible to die in here…”
Hitting your teens isn’t the same as dying. We wouldn’t really know Julie hasn’t aged if not for the seven-hour timer outside not expiring yet.. Unless it has. They could have been in that loop for months, and Veles just left them in the Egg and moved on without telling them.
Of course, time may flow differently int he Eggverse, too. I believe the general trend is for magic to get more durable the faster time flows, based on Alice in Wonderland and the Chronicles of Narnia.
No matter how long they were in there, their experiential time is only hours, at most. So even if by external calendars they were in there for decades and Julie’s theoretically in her forties, she still has only the experience and mind of a child. And she saw the flaw in the spell, where it passed by Rostov completely.
I’m guessing that’s pretty embarrassing…
If memories reset, then how does Julie remember the kicked rock?
Maybe it takes longer to reset a memory than to walk a cycle; that’s sort of fair, since it gives you a chance to notice the repetition on the next go-round. The others just weren’t bothering to notice the scenery. Rastov was there longer, but his memory hasn’t been reset since their original encounter, and it’s been a while.