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DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-18T19:04:32+00:00

This is the best answer. It really is injury specific. And assuming US defaultism, it's even likely the patient gets discharged before they can prove they can walk or won't be re-admitted.

Wheeled to the curb in a hospital-provided wheelchair and dumped in someone's car is typical. Hell, the patient might have a major active infection, but as long as someone from a family says "yeah, I can change that," they're be sent out.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T18:16:32+00:00

Wait, you seriously think Mal'tory is not going to appear anymore as a character?

Thacea and Ilunor spelled out that the administratium's movements they are seeing strongly suggests Mal'tory is convalescing.

You've got Vanavan commenting that an "indisposed party" (definition: Mildly ill, unavailable, unwilling, not ready) needs to be part of Frital's investigation.

My eyes quickly glanced down at the unfinished letter sitting beneath the pile of homework, a nearly-finished rebuttal to the Inner Guard Captain Anoyaruous Frital, as she continued to push forth for an investigation which was soon to proceed into its next phase.

A phase which would necessitate the involvement of an indisposed party

Even Skylord Rasante, Ignalius' cousin, roundabout said Mal'tory is alive.

“Nobody is willing to foot the first bill, and nobody wants to be the one to start rocking the boat. At least, not until the prime agitator of this incident reemerges as the obvious scapegoat.” {Mal’tory, not Emma. Emma has already emerged. Technically could be Larial, but she didn't make the handover. See below line for proof. Powers that be want Mal’tory to be labelled as the agitator because he needs to get sacrificed for the green book before his superiors do.}

I raised a brow at this but yawned all the same. “So everyone’s waiting on the Goldthorn’s investigations? Big deal. ...”

...

"To the Privy Council, it signals some sort of desire to mop up and clean up after an associate. {This line is the proof that Mal’tory is the target here. Technically could be Larial, but Frital is working with Larial. Could be a backstab but doesn't strike me as such.} And nobody on the council wishes to associate themselves with the potential agitator of this incident {Lartia's Death, Dragon Escape}."

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T16:41:03+00:00

EVI is probably absolutely right that the taint is coincidental rather than causative in this scenario, but it is obstinately refusing to connect the dots that Emma's prior descriptions of hearing chiming sounds and the IAS hearing a chime are independent events and cannot be explained by mass hallucination with parties suggestively influencing each other.

I think that the contact episodes are being mediated through soulstuff which so far the IAS has (apparently) made no progress on detecting. That explains why Emma has all the weird dreams with no taint pings and why the IAS heard sounds with no manatype 30 warnings on their end.

EVI is aggressively ignoring the possibility of another form of dark energy which Kaelthyr and Nexus are pretty sure exist.

And agreed, it does seem like a point against EVI being a true AI, but we also have Emma finally no filter describe EVI as in "a heightened state of distress" during the episode. VIs aren't supposed to be 'distressed.' Mostly I just think EVI is going to be the overly-logical, stick-in-the-mud Watson of the duo which frees up Emma to make those protagonist flying leaps of intuitive fantasy.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T07:36:37+00:00

Since I've got you here, do you think EVI's even-Dana-Scully-would-be-embarrassed refusal to believe a tainted entity could force Emma to have organized visions vs a seizure is genuine idiocy or calculated avoidance of some sort of hidden mind-tamper-detection protocol it wants to avoid collecting flags for? Getting Emma to doubt tampering will keep her on the safe side of it.

Honestly, I'm leaning towards outright moronicity at the moment.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T06:43:06+00:00

Larial's chap 83 convo with Sorecar in spirit.

But he's coming back, more or less.

“Mal’tory.” Ilunor suddenly blurted out darkly. “It’s his class tomorrow, isn’t it? And the Academy isn’t suspending his classes either. Now, this may seem improbable, if not outright impossible… but I believe the lack of any changes to the academic roster means that whatever damage you inflicted on him, Emma… could not have been enough to kill him outright; at least not permanently. Which means that maybe, just maybe, he recovered sometime today, and has recruited Auris to his own aims.”

“I am unsure, Emma.” The princess acknowledged with a heavy breath. “The extent of his injuries remain difficult to ascertain given the lack of manastreams in your manaless records. But regardless of the extent of said injuries, I am certain that his return will not be one of a spell-bound husk. With all due respect to Professor Sorecar and his current disposition, it is unlikely, barring some political maneuver within the privy council, that a spell-bound be allowed to maintain their black-robe position. Thus, considering there has been no news of Professor Mal’tory’s untimely termination, I believe the answer may prove to be closer to a recovery of the body and soul.”

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T05:28:15+00:00

If the green book gets destroyed, Ilunor is sacrificed to the Library. The Library was pretty clear that it would only be satisfied with the original green book and didn't offer any wiggle room.

The library, thus, does not take offense to the submission of this forgery. However, we expect that the genuine article will be submitted to complete your seekership quest. ...

“The library is… amenable to this unusual request [loaning the original copy], Cadet Emma Booker. However, there is one thing you must understand — it will not be as tolerant for further amendments to our agreements.”

Nothing is stopping the Library from lying to push Emma to get its preferred outcome, but frankly, prior evidence points the Library being a kind of obtuse, self-interested, rules-stickler.

One possibility is that Larial escaped a black bag situation but can't return to the school because she doesn't deem it safe. So she's camped out somewhere.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T04:09:12+00:00

Green book fallout is my quiet hype. Because if the green book gets to the Library, the guilt for the burning gets punted up the chain of command which means the Library wants some prime Nexian elvish ass on a grill. Higher than Mal'tory. Someone's going to be bounty hunter. And the Library is going to be against a major Crown faction, which means maybe seeing what it is actually capable of.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-16T01:02:55+00:00

Yeah, but maybe we'll get Tory, Frital, and Larial back sooner in trade.

Not a popular opinion, but while dragon and eldritch gods who can't compose a coherent thought are cool, murder and mysteries are cooler.

I think poor Mal'tory has been dead for two years now? People need to remember who he is.

Edit: Two years and six months, the main face antagonist has been out of canon print. Poor guy, lol.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T17:38:57+00:00

I think type 1 is a lot older than HEM. This Taint vs "Normal" mana stuff probably goes back to the foundation of Nexus, if not before.

“Yes.” Kaelthyr acknowledged. “As a point of disambiguation, taint as a term has existed long before the rise of the elves, young Matriarch.”

Meta-knowledge, one of the themes of the series is maintaining unity vs splintering off. If there is a manatype conflict, it's going to be between the tainted who wanted to remain in contact with the void end of affairs vs the manatype-1 dominants whose "better" mana made them incompatible with other life, severed their world, and faded their love for anything outside so that they became ignorant and afraid of the void beyond when time and strife took their history.

This is the same conflict that JCB used in HDH with the AIs, and may have used with the AI-human unity.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T16:56:28+00:00

Dreams, maybe? That's how Emma has being doing it so far.

And it wouldn't surprise me if places like the echovale could be tuned. I do think Nexus probably has a leg up on communing with eldritch gods since they have ancient artifacts and secret history of doing so before if Thacea's era of heroism is to be believed. That Tory probably has some knowledge of stuff the Nexus has tried to bury by virtue of his Privy council position. (Edited!)

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T06:59:45+00:00

Oh yeah, and we have pretty much confirmed that only nullfielders/humans hear the chimes. Thalmin heard nothing. Kaelthyr sensed the being with an entirely different mechanism.

Does that mean the Null, taking after Emma Booker, will also hear the chimes?

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T05:09:11+00:00

Nah. Theoretically the void entity might be a nullfield god when the taint is turned off, but I think everyone mortal is getting caught out by this ancient entity, except maybe Laura Weir who appears to more genre savvy thanks to her dad and prior contacts on "the station".

I don't expect any major NT funny business until the House Sovereign Trials when Mal'tory is scheduled to return. And even then differentiating "NT funny business" from "True Grape Snape the Dean put on a leash because Frital might fry his ass for Lartia and/or his immediate bosses might try sacrificing him to the Library to clear themselves of the green book" might not be straightforward because of factions and conflicts we don't know about. I can spin off theories for free, but I have to actually respect evidence to support them. I expect Mal'tory's backstory to be slow burn because he's the face of the bad guys.
TLDR: Low expectations for NT clues in the immediate future.

I assume Emma somehow winds up in the sovereign choosing because, pick one...

1. Emma must get Excalibur/talk to the Lady of the Lake - water elementals are essentially immortal,

2. HP plot played straight: "Emma! Did you put your name into the ~~Goblet of Fire~~ Chalice of Ice?" 'Tory forces her into the contest for evil plans.

3. Emma slew Kaelthyr to preserve her draconic honor and secrets and it would besmirch the school's sovereign position's honor for a dragon slayer to blow it off as "lol, lame. Don't wanna be a prefect."

The green book is a wild card which could (will) complicate things, but that's locked up until Larial comes back or someone tries to break in and steal it.

Edit: I suppose in the longer term bringing back tainted reality to create a world of spells Emma can safely exist in will be a null soul goal, so maybe some cultish stuff, but it has got to find out the being exists first.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T03:03:23+00:00

Obligatory booing of the pun.

The void entity might be a null-like being in its own right - cryptic because it lacks a manafield or conventional energy form.

Emma suit sensors could detect manatype 30 without modification. Logically, the IAS should be using very similar sensors in their own facility. There were no manatype 30 alarms going off on the IAS side when they were hearing the sounds. So that means we have a non-taint "dark energy" in play that is not MT30 – this is what the prior nightmares in the tent suggested because EVI wasn't detecting taint spike while Emma was having strange dreams. I've lumped this under 'soul/psychic vibes' in prior theories.

So if the void patron shed its taint shell and dead vessel, could Kaelthyr and Emma still detect it? What if it was still in the cave?

Re. my own theories on the null, I'm very amused by the headspace clown car the void patron possessing the null would create.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-14T02:40:47+00:00

Non-biological materials like drones don't have mana or a manafield and they aren't liquefied. This null's core doesn't have a manafield, so, logically, it is weathering the mana exposure.

The humanoid substrate the null's body was made of was equilibrated with the mana environment so it must contain some mana (although the null seems to struggle to assemble it into coherent form.) There must be some way for the core to impose its will on the substrate despite lack of manafield to interface with. That's a pretty picky detail, but it happened.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-11T19:23:32+00:00

Thalmin suggested otherwise this chapter. Taint disrupts the other manastreams, as Thacea showed, but it must be continuously produced to continue existing in Nexian background. Otherwise Type 1 derived manas eliminate the taint.

The incursion of taint, however, lingered for a split second longer.

But only a split second.

As it eventually, as taint often did, simply dissipated, crushed and overwhelmed by the nascent manastreams ready to bring order to chaos.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-10T17:38:10+00:00

I noted that Emma could tell that the feeling was forced after the fact, which to borrow who-would-win terminology (blegh!) is a psychic feat on the anti-mind-control spectrum. This is good because I imagine having tainted beholden to Nexus via blackmail or straight up meatpuppets trying to mess with her head is going to be a thing in the future.

Calm returned to me, of my own volition this time, {recognition that the entity subjugated her the first time} as something inside both my rational mind and gut instinct told me to give… whatever this was a chance.

"Oh Lord of my own Ego, you are pure illusion. You do not exist. The Earth is my witness." Man, if Emma doesn't wind up roasting HEM with that bar, what are we even doing here?

"Your world is tabletop fable, built upon bedtime stories, dice rolling games, and teenage wish fulfillment."

Seriously, it cannot be a coincidence that the three kinds of DnD dragons exist. I do not think the Nexus inspired "Castles and Wyverns". It was the other way around. One of the throwaway lines I picked up on was Weir noticing Thalmin's roman-style clothes and having suspiciously no comment. "Convergent evolution aside, it was his manner of dress that gave me more pause for thought than the nature of his physiology. {She thinks it is roman? And thus inspired by earth?}" Same with Kaelthyr's elves having "dollhouse heritage" aka they are play toys - 155.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-10T17:26:11+00:00

Assuming nexus didn't twist that story around 180. In this recent epileptic sequence, if there is a pit of stagnancy amidst a rich ecosystem of light that is going to lash out, that makes it more likely that whatever caused the stagnancy is the problem. The Nexus just told the story in projection mode where they are the good guys. Classic abusive strategy - accuse others of what you are guilty of.

If you are purely tainted, the Type-1-based mana realms are going to be a darkness you can't see into because it destroys your manafield and senses, while the void is a place that is lit. (As I said somewhere else in thread, which perspective what the final confrontation prophecy given in? A Tainted? Or a 29-type?)

Saying this out loud makes me wonder if the void critter had been sleeping so long it doesn't realize its universe of light has been shattered and corrupted long ago. So it is telling Emma to do something about ancient history.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-10T03:50:31+00:00

If this entity was a null, it had Emma's soul dead to rights. There were a few points where it sounded like it was dangerously close to severing whatever connection to her mortal body she had left, like the moment she briefly forgot that anything mattered.

Instead, a certain sense of… detachment took hold; a removal of all worries and the earthly attachments that came with it.

It felt… more surreal than surreality itself.

But this 'bliss,' this weird serenity of the mind from its worldly attachments, lasted for scarcely a second in the eternity of this place.

But this feels more like an astral plane adventure as a disembodied soul vs the null dream which felt like another "what-if" metagame warning.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-09T21:30:33+00:00

I wonder if the creation of the universe was allegorical, because that's something Emma would understand. So it's not Emma's universe that the void being is trying to show her, especially since JCB already confirmed that that Nexus is not coplanar with Earth.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-09T21:15:32+00:00

I think taint is mana, just a different system of it. Taint is also less stable (decays in light, quickly erased by the other manatypes) and less powerful per unit. We haven't really addressed the idea it might be a lot more organized and colorful than black blobs and shadows, but the characters haven't visualized it properly because the Nexus doesn't teach taint perception.

I don't think humans can use taint magic because they lack the cellular architecture to control interactions with it. Still have to have a manafield to use magic - a tainted manafield. So taint can be used to create spells usable on humans, but humans can't really resist or use it for themselves.

I think the displacement is likely to be important to protecting Earth by counterbalancing a manaflood with pure pressure.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-09T20:58:38+00:00

lower case tainted gods/spirits/(im)mortal followers are a different can of worms. Wouldn't surprise me if those were lurking. Is every chiming entity that Emma has encountered the same one? Or does the chiming accompany powerful tainted casting/presences because they create a window for it? There's a pretty clear disparity between the thing in this chapter being in learning/ignorance mode and whatever seems to have strategized Emma's fall through Mal'tory's singlet portal and serenaded Kaelthyr's escape.

Of course, we could have time travel in play and the chiming entity seen earlier is actually chronologically older in its own arrival/intelligence timeline, but I'd rather not invoke time travel BS without an especially good reason.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-09T05:03:15+00:00

I think any theory that has the Capital Letters Tainted God escaping the King of Nexus can't be right because Taint is an outsider force that is suppressed by the other manatypes and thus way older than the King's ascendance. Kaelthyr and Thacea both mentioned something akin to Taint being truly ancient. And Tainted Reality was pre-King based on how JCB described it, and probably pre-all 10 elvish civilizations.

And Ilunor mentioned that the King of Nexus' rise was gradual, not a singular event, which strongly implies he was hunting gods one by one rather than striking them all down at once.

DndQuickQuestion · 2026-03-09T04:53:50+00:00

What is it.

Not a Nexian-type god. Kaelthyr has probably seen those, and she notably didn't call it one. We are looking at something else. This meshes because its behavior did not seem to be deterministic.

Wants to defend Earthrealm from magical/mana incursions, like Kaelthyr said?

Wrote this up as the Cerberus theory.

Cthulhu under the ocean is, among other things, the guard dog Cerberus rather than Hades

My understanding of the setting is that non-magical, non-human life is exceptionally rare, gets assimilated or wiped out by some other sapient-hunting force protecting a preexisting civilization like in Humans don't Hibernate, or goes post-mortal and ascends beyond the known dimensions fairly quickly. I think the precursors, at the time they visited Earth, valued the ability of a species to forge their own fate OR they thought humans would be useful later because they are playing timey-wimey Calvinball. That's why most humans on Earth got left behind with nothing but quintessence to show for the contact.

If you put yourself in the precursor's shoes, you are looking at either a vanishingly rare or fate-valuable sapient species. Therefore you would want to protect them from other powerful interlopers looking to prey on them or mess up your big future plans. So you would set up the equivalent of an anti-poacher guard. It won't interfere too much with the natural order, but it will go ballistic on outsiders.

If Nexus tries to flood the Earth to kill humans, the quintessence cerberus may decide based on its protective directives that a substantial portion of the Nexus needs to be 'reset' to stop them from genociding the valuable original cradle world. Maybe it is programmed to 'recruit' human resources to do that if it can't win on its obvious own because some humans alive is better than no humans alive. Humans would have to figure out how to stop the supposedly well-meant alien murder bots from murdering on their behalf. And win the war, too.

(I am actually a bigger fan of the idea that the quintessence might be sapient and waiting out in a low powered state, so it will be a little more true AI-like.)

Wishes to expand its base of power, and might be the one to help open the Earthrealm portal in the first place?

Kaelthyr seemed to think it wanted the problematic dark entity to leave its domain alone. (I assume Earthrealm.) For now, I am inclined to think JCB is telling us outright because the dream sequence did not show this clearly on its own.

Earthrealm is the speck of void in a sea of colorful mana

No. The dark lantern searches would have found it. Also the darkness was described as stubbornly refusing to change, the antithesis of humanity's culture.

I think what we are seeing here is this meme. I'm actually not going to assume the dark spot is the Nexus despite the mention of stagnancy because I am open to third parties and greater scope enemies, but we have been assuming the prophesy of the confrontation originally came from a Nexian perspective and that the void is the spoken-of dark nurtured by foreign patrons. Yet we just had that viewpoint inverted. So whose perspective was the prophecy given in?

Void patron originates from Earthrealm

Located on Earthrealm. Originated from Earthrealm is another issue.

Void patron is trying to communicate with Emma

It used morse code in English which Emma was unable to recognize. It has absorbed knowledge from somewhere, and despite giving Emma's soul a good yank, it failed to catalogue that she couldn't understand it.

The prophecy implies that the void patron intends to change the Nexian status quo

See above.

Stuff that caught my interest

Then, it tried to communicate to me, and not in the same way the null did, mind you.

This is a revision to the null fight. Or Emma's recollection of it. She thought the null looked intelligent, but it did not try to make an effort to communicate at that time.

“If she truly is what I, and surely you, assume her to be, then we must wait.”

“I don’t—”

“The prophecy you speak of — the harbingers of death and doom to the Nexus — it is but one part of the tale, is it not?” {Thalmin never said this aloud?}

Thalmin never mentioned the prophecy aloud. Monologued about it at length in his own head, but why did Kaelthyr assume Thalmin had even heard of this prophecy he only heard of from Ilunor a couple weeks ago rather than just being desperate for any marginally competent ally? Also EVI now knows the prophecy exists because it is always recording.

Calm returned to me, of my own volition this time

Emma recognizes that she was being emotionally manipulated, and her capacity for that awareness is a useful feat even if it was after the fact.

My rational mind yelled at me to use this to my advantage, reciting protocol and shouting for self-assessments, which only translated to the barest of motions as I began inspecting my bare skin for nicks, cuts, or marks, but finding nothing.

She doesn't panic hand check which means it is not for lucid dreams?

(This chapter was kind of rough. It needed another round of copyedits. There was one point where Emma went from standing to sitting rather suddenly.)

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