LCD Mother of Learning

Ofc he knows he's in a time loop.

 

It is a regular phenomenon, but for whatever reason it appears the ghost serpent carries all of its memories of every past cycle without being the main person of it, which is rather distinctive from any other being we've seen. Particularly since most divine-ish beings don't participate in the cycle at all. So until we see some evidence about what exactly makes the ghost serpent able to remember, I hesitate to believe that it is widespread, particularly among humanity.

 

The Ghost serpent also said that it wasn't running for a long while and now someone resumed it running. It is possible that it didnt run for like 10000 years. Well, a bit less - one would need to check the dates when empire was established. it then assumingly run for some time and then it didn't.
it's pretty much 100% guarantee that Lich is not aware of the loop (outside when red robe tells him) and he's too young to know other loopers.

 

started participating in the reddit discussion, posted a speculation on there. in a way crossposting here as well (I've posted a lot more in here and started posting earlier)

Sovereign gate - who,why? RedRobe

One of the elephants in the room which hadn't been addressed yet, but it lingers everywhere - "why the cycle was started, why it was started 1 month earlier and it was initiated by whom, why zach".

I hope I've got a fresh perspective on this.

I see another great ambition for continental unification.

Last chapter QI revealed his exact goals for invasion (and for upcoming splinter wars):
"I want to mess up Eldemar and Sulamnon and make Falkrinea win the war."

There's also an quite odd article which didn't make lot sense (at start) for me:
https://motheroflearninguniverse.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/tetra-abnazia
it starts like this:
Tetra & Abnazia
Posted on November 10, 2017
The current political situation in the Altazian continent is clearly unsustainable.

It is about two other states which have ambitions (but are discounted by other major forces) for Unification of Empire. Tetra is a smoke screen, but the information about Abnazia suggests that Abnazia would be the other winner from Invasion of Cyoria. Its ambitious goals of this state is only delayed because there are other larger forces which wouldn't allow them to happen. (well, the nazi part in abnazia could be an obvious taunt from author).

Another clue, which is so glaringly obvious - RedRobe identity, but for whatever reason no one pointed it out. There's a huge identify flag - soul kill episode. It is pretty clear that imperial artifact was used (frigging dagger which is locked in royal vault of eldemar). There was no fuzz about dagger being stolen from royal vault, that implies someone with access (my guess a very ambitious prince took it from there). And suddenly everything makes a lot more sense.

There's a prince from Eldemar who wants to be another great unificator. After weeping Sovereign gate was passed to Royal family. Capital is usually the place with most restrictive knowledge and chances are that member of royal family has access to restricted archives with more information about Sovereign gate. His hands are tied (he cannot slaughter royal family), but he of course can start unification from another place (Abnazia). And here's the answer to first why - why the cycle was started a month earlier? It was started to make sure invasion is successful (RedRobe makes great effort to inflict huge damage by invasion, it is required as prerequisite for such unification plan. Put the rest of continent in chaos ). Also RedRobe gets some time to grow as a mage so he's a more capable emperor/unificator.

It is possible that RedRobe was unable to initiate the machine with himself as an anchor so he had to use Zach. Since he knew a lot about it, he was initiator and Zach was really helpless at the start, it was pretty easy for him to track Zach, mindrape him, mess with own temporary marker to be part of the loop and make sure invasion is a success to further his own goals (start unification of western continent first and then the rest of the continent as per worldbuilding article).

 

How I imagine Guardian of Threshold with Morgan Freeman voice

 

I don't really think Morgan Freeman is a good fit for the role. At least, I've never not seen him inject personality into whatever role he was playing. Nick Offerman or Bill Lawrence might be better choices. I can totally see either of them being obstructive and unhelpful without noticeable emotions while still being interesting to watch.

 

Mind magic FTW.

 

I have to wonder, since Zorian can create cross continental gates, mostly based on his ability to create clones using a spell that is (if I recall correctly) based on soul magic, why can’t the lich? Why does he even need the gates? Even if the two spells involved were much more secret than they are, he’s been alive and powerful for more than long enough to have acquired them if he wanted to, and there’s no reason for him to not have wanted to.

“Zorian nodded sagely in his heart. Yes, sometimes the world really was extremely unfair.”

 

The thing is Zorian and Zach have been able to get access to magical experts that the lich never could, due to the cycle. And maybe he just never learned the exact things he needed to, to learn how to make these gates. Also, remember that they need a simulacra in order to do these huge gates. It might be that due to how lichs' souls are, they can't form simulacrum and thus no cross continental gates.

 

You are missing something. The mind magic was used as intermediary for coordinating simulacrums with original to open gates at first (telepathic relays were created to mitigate limit (so he was able to communicate gate opening over such large distance). Afterwards he learned to piggyback on soul connection so relays became redundant. While Zorian was able to communicate with Damien, but it was assisted by existing tele relays and his gate version is very pimped (very stable).
The issues for QI:
well, simulacrum might attempt to kill original (either very high or very low chance of this happening). We didn't witness simulacrum on the battlefield (there it makes most sense) so it is very likely that QI has some bad rap with his simulacrums.
he is no mind mage, so the telepathy via soul with the simulacrums might not be apparent to him. Without perfect coordination method and less stable gate version there might be some issues with gate opening.

But generally speaking, yes - it is quite possible. I'm not sure if I posted here, but an idea to prevent destruction of Cyoria by offering gate to blantyrre for QI/Ibasa would work.

 

Why do anything when you have an army of underlings that want to do it.

 

The magical experts that they got the simulacrum spell from were people that they killed as I recall. Also, it didn't sound like the existence of either magic was particularly secret. Given a thousand years and as many resources as he has access to, he could just create the spells himself, even if he wasn't (for whatever idiotic and uncharacteristic reason) unwilling to simply take the spells from the cold, dead hands of others.

Also, simulacra are the soul magic based clones I was referring to, and the lich's phylactery spell is likely heavily related to the simulacra spell as it's basic function is extremely similar. So there's no reason at all to think that he would have any trouble with the spell whatsoever. But, even if he couldn't form it with his own soul for some reason, I don't believe that he couldn't forcibly split someone else's soul, enslave both, and then use them as the coordination tool for his gate creation operation. It might take a bit more practice, but it would still be much easier to use in secret to transport armies into enemy territory on very short notice and with minimal preparations. It would be, in almost every way, superior to the gate technology that he actually did use.

 

I think the issue here is that QI probably has his own stuff to do, meaning he couldn't focus his efforts on the spell all the time during the invasion, as well as the fact he doesn't actually trust the Dragon Cult very much, so he wouldn't want to use any expense on them when he could be doing other stuff.

 

I'd like to try some of the stuff you are using
Very little of the stuff you've mentioned is relevant (at least for me). My understanding is we are discussing why QI didn't create a gate to Blantyrre continent during last century or so. You are talking about current invasion - which is somewhat related topic, but not much related to the subject which was discussed before.
QI is very knowledgeable person. I'm pretty sure he knows the gate spell and myriad of other combat/non combat spells.

 

I keep mentioning that he's had a millenia to do this for a reason, and it's not because he suddenly had his own time loop to study in the short time since someone proposed this assault. The gate spell has long been recognized as being of strategic importance and the pros and cons of simulacra have been known for ages as well. There's no reason for a person with his skills, personality and resources to not have learned both. Once he started thinking about how to get people to another continent, combining these two spells seems a heck of a lot easier and more intuitively correct than researching and repairing ancient gate technology using divinely inspired spell patterns.

I could almost buy this as an attempt on his part to make the process seem much harder than it actually is so that he'll be less likely to be targeted by scared nations, while getting someone else to foot his research bills, but honestly, that feels like a bit of stretch.

 

Maybe he simply never went to Blantyree/Cyoria and thus can't gate there?

 

He just had a meeting with the MCs. He clearly doesn't have that problem.

 

*Shrugs* Maybe they have teleportation protection for the city center. I remember Zorian and co tping to the country side. Or maybe it's a plot hole

 

Does TP protection block gates? I can't remember it ever coming up. Though, even if it does, I doubt it extends all the way into the dungeon.

There's also the degree to which the cult had infiltrated the city, which would likely have allowed them to bring down the wards in at least one place, thus allowing the army to flood in from there. Heck, they could have just gated people into the surrounding territory and had them infiltrate as normal tourists, merchants, etc. if they felt like it. There's been no indication so far that anyone notices the gates being formed after all.

 

It would probably still be hard to sneak in an army with full gear. But yeah I'm sure there are some options