Forgot that stuff. Interesting implications...
But what makes you think Al's been in the Warrens only that long?
And another thing occurs to me. Remember how Al was supposed to be a minor character? Maybe this is the first cycle where Al is more than an NPC in town to chat with and enjoy some sideplots with.
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As to who Al trusts...maybe himself? He also referred to himself as "a guy" he knew when he didn't want to admit to being that guy, maybe the same here.
LSS sounds like Life Support Systems, not something you want a potentially-crazy vampiric druid to be messing around with.
Apart from Al mentioning he hasn't been on the surface in "three years," he also mentions that Cherish was "what, 8-9 when I first found you?" in his letter. So yeah, unless somebody has been wiping the memories of both Al and Cherish and reincarnating Cherish as younger version of herself, then it's probably only been 3 years for him. Couple that with the "Ciro is the Silents" theory (or even just the "Ciro must have met Al multiple times if he has past-life memories of him to draw on" part of it) and we have established that one cycle takes place in, at most, three years, and likely much more frequently than that. If we can nail down how often Al sees Silents, and how long the "between-cycle" period is, then we can make a good guess at how long a given cycle lasts. Which could be important to know, considering we probably
die at the end of each one.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Al making the Active Party was a "rare/never happened before" occurrence, considering it took both Ciro attempting to recruit him AND rolling a nat 20 to succeed.
I'm operating on the premises that A) Ciro's exposition is the result of partially remembering many previous cycles at once (and not actually some kind of divination to get new information) and B) Each cycle is substantially different, though following a general guideline. Most notably, I think that in most cycles we either don't befriend Al, or we don't switch perspective to him immediately prior to dying. Cycles which recognize that Al is motivated by a desire to protect Cherish lead to the "gentleman, kind heart, protector" characterizations, while cycles that figure out the vampire angle or see the corpses Al refers to in his letter to Cherish lead to the "hidden side, black heart, killer" characterizations.
Since we're assuming that Ciro has met Al many many times (possibly every cycle,) and Ciro's exposition is an amalgamation of those meetings, it's not beyond reason that Ciro has never (or rarely) figured out all of the above in a single cycle before. Again, assuming that this is the first/only cycle that Al has accompanied Ciro out of the Underside in.
Problem: Didn't Al come in from the outside? That wouldn't explain why he's not doomed like Yaos, but his backstory seemed to indicate that he was in the aboveworld, then jumped into the Warrens proper.
Yes, Al did come from outside the Warrens, which suggests that he was not present for all (or even a majority of) Ciro's cycles. However, my theory rests not on Al being there for every cycle, just enough cycles for Ciro to recognize him when flushed with the memories of past cycles.
I'm assuming that Al hasn't left the Underside in that same period of time. Actually wait no, that Wilford quote like three posts up? That might be when Al arrived in Underside, which leaves us with a year of unaccounted time (possibly spent doing the adventurer thing in the Warrens, looking for Cherish.) In either case, if the Silents = Ciro theory is true then each cycle is probably quite short, if Al has met enough Silents to name them categorically in 2-3 years.
Or that he didn't try to leave for a year, or that the last time he tried to leave was two years ago.
Of course, if Al goes to the Greens to revive people and gets attacked by Illborn on a regular basis, it doesn't make much sense that he's never gotten out that way. Maybe he just slipped past the guard sometimes and gave up trying to talk his way through two years ago?
It's interesting to speculate on how much of the Underside Al had ready access to. He mentioned bringing bodies to Mili's house, so either he was murdering villagers or he was able to sneak past Wilford to the Outer Underside. If that's the case, I wonder why he didn't climb up that ladder back to the Warrens, since he definitely wants to escape the Underside.
I also don't think Ciro dying that early in the cycle is a regular occurrence, and is likely one of a few major aberrations from the regular cycle that occur during Al's Story.
Who the hell is in this place that AL of all people trusts!?! It wasn't us, we died before giving him any instructions. I had thought it was the Chief (since he was onscreen for telling Al to use the somethingorother, presumably the Revival Tube,) but the letter to Cherish makes it sound like Al didn't trust Chief at all, with that "kill him if he's doing what I think he's doing" talk. Cherish was absent, and certainly not giving any instructions that would lead Al to revive Ciro.
I had thought these were the instructions, and that the LSS was the revival machine. But... maybe it isn't? Looking back, it sounds like he just expected Al to do the vampire thing in the privacy of the Greens. Don't know what that makes the LSS. And I certainly don't know what that makes "the person Al trusts."
...whoa. I think he may have been joking/exaggerating about burning Chief at the stake, and he might trust Chief in some ways and not others, but yeah.
Plus, either way, who's giving Al what orders and why?
Complicating the revival machine aspect is the fact that we really don't understand what Al did, could have done, or was supposed to do. I think the LSS was something in the Greens, though, because he mentions "check or use" it, which would only make sense for an item he was carrying around if he needed to be elsewhere to do so. And because we saw his inventory before and after that and he didn't have an LSS on him.
Man, when your "last dying request" in a letter addressed to your foster daughter is that you want a dude straight up
murdered, especially as a priority
before the "escape the Warrens" mission you've been pursuing the last three years, you're probably serious about it.
LSS... the Chief said to "check or use" the LSS in the Greens, so it probably is something fixed there. Using it wasn't a given, so it seems unlikely to be the Revival Tube (if it was the Revival Tube, he'd know we'd have to use it to bring back Ciro, and it didn't really have much to "check on.") The only other thing in the Greens... is that big sphere thingy? Does it actually have a
use?
FAKEDIT: NINJAS AND YAOS DISCUSSION!
As far as I can tell, Yaos died for intruding in the Warrens, or as part of some kind of Faustian deal. I still respect him for taking the shotgun to the face, but damn his maudlin ramblings that did not clear up anything about why he was down here, or how he got here, or what. I'd say the whole thing was a Big Red-Lipped Alligator Moment, but I think we're just not putting the clues together and/or future events will illuminate what the fuck that was all about.
That said, it's a good question. We're one of the Siblings, so we didn't
really come from outside the Warrens, we just thought we did. Al came from outside the Warrens, and hasn't died (though he does have that whole vampire thing that may or may not predate the Warrens.) Yaos came from outside the Warrens, and seems to have paid for his transgression with his life. Why Yaos, and not Al?
I'm REALLY PRETTY SURE KINDA that Yaos is a dude. At least, I don't recall FFS referring to Yaos with feminine pronouns at any point, and I
think he did use masculine ones. Too lazy to check, gender is irrelevant.
Remind me, what happened a fraction of a turn before we died?
We switched the perspective to Al.
I'm not sure what this did, in-character; maybe it let some of Ciro's vital essence seep inside Al to keep his spirit tethered to the world and stop it from reincarnating?
I'm really thinking that this is the thing we did different from every previous cycle. The branching point from which all other discrepancies arise.
Here's a question- when Riltia fell in the acid, Oric/Betweenford went all Deus Ex Machina to keep her alive in order to perpetuate the cycle. So why didn't they act when Ciro died before that? Were they unable (as he possessed his own Soul Star) or unwilling (they really do want him dead-dead) or were they trying but just offscreen? That whole bomb in the mailbox really could have been intended solely to get Al and Ciro's body out of Underside and into the Greens, where he could be revived. Implying they don't know about Al and his vampire revival that was already going to happen.
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Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ??? (Read 3968834 times)