OH MY GOD! ALINUA JUST RUN AND KEEP RUNNING! SHE WOULD PROBABLY DISECT ALINUA! THIS MURDERER ISN’T WORTH ANY LIFE AT ALL. I mean, seriously, Alinua has a special connection to Life, and she’s not a crazy psychopath.
I don’t think she’s seen Life Mum the same way. It’s like, the difference between occasionally blacking out and being told that tentacles shot out of you (disturbing and personal, but ultimately just a story you have heard) versus actually looking Cthulhu in the face for an extended length of time (fundamentally changes you in ways that cannot be undone).
I think Life is purposely avoiding doing this a second time to someone.
Side Note: I’m loving the ‘healers aren’t all good-guys’ themes of this story.
But the other members of the team have come in contact with Life Mum, because even though Alinua blacks out, the other members of the Floof Squad have seen Life mum up close and personal whenever Alinua does her thing.
Huh. If she is that mage, then the Chimeric Plague popping up, and therefore Alinua’s situation, is HER doing. Plus, it clashes with the theory that she’s the previous elemental magus, though since this possibility is also juicy (and since it explains why Kendal and Alinua thought she was just a life mage), this is an outcome I’d be willing to accept. (Simultaneously following two competing theories, let’s go) (Although, they could also both end up being true in some capacity)
One more thing: on Tumblr, Red stated that Life’s true name was discovered 300 years ago, making The Nameless Collector a lot older than the Magus theory puts her. The sticking point here is that Ilia said she hadn’t visibly aged in 100 years; following Ilia’s estimation, The Collector would be 200 years old, and therefore quite thoroughly dead, before she started spitting in the cosmic face of entropy itself. So either Ilia’s mistaken (which she could be), or this theory has a wee hole in it.
Not necessarily. The first documented case of Chimeric Plague was around 300 years ago, but there could have been even earlier cases.
But that isn’t my theory. My theory is this:
Life Mum has been trying to contact Life Mages for some time now, to prepare for VD’s return (possibly by influencing them to revive the Primordials, as The Collector may be attempting to). I think she tried to fuse with the The Collector the way she has with Alinua, but it went horribly wrong, leaving The Collector with her incredibly potent Life Magic, green eyes (similar to Alinua’s eyes, but damaged by Life Mum instead of empowered, like they’ve been scarred or burned green), immortality, and insane quest to stop VD. After what happened to The Collector, Life Mum created the Chimeric Plague to whittle out an individual strong enough to contain her power; any Life Mages powerful enough to receive the Plague but not strong enough to host Life Mum resulted in the Plague’s catastrophic symptoms.
Ilia stated that “faint rumours” of the Collector appeared a little over 100 years, so the nature gods presumably only became completely aware of the Collecor somewhat after rumours of her appeared. Thus, Ilias statement that the collector “hasn’t visibly aged in close to a hundred years” isn’t an indicator that she was aging BEFORE a 100 years ago, since Ilias is pretty much just stating that the Collector hasn’t aged since Ilias became aware of her appearance and physical age.
RUN ALINU AND JUST KEEP RUNNING! I bet the Collector will try to tempt Alinua to join her, or she will imprison Alinua. You are totally right. She probably created the Chimeric Plague to create a being with a connection to Life, which resulted in hundreds of catastrophic failures. It said, there was “only one person with Chermic Plague at a time” which means that there is one incarnation of Life at a time, and each time they die at a young age, unable to hold their Life magic. However, Alinua survived it and became stronger.
the timeline doesn’t match up, Illia (maybe not i forget) said that she hadn’t visibly aged in 100 years but the chimeric plague began 207 years ago so Theophrastus Bombastus (The Collector) is 100 or so years late to the party
Maybe she has been around that whole time but only started gathering souls in the last century.
I have a new theory that the Chimeric plague was created by Life as a response to the Collector, after the latter touched the formers mind Life considered her a threat and so set in motion a means to select a vessel to combat her.
theres a chance but probably not, Alinua was (at least from what I can tell) chosen by Life Mum and Theophrastus Bombastus (The Collector) was not so I think that Alinua is gonna be a-OK
Collector does have a bad habit of making chimeras, so we can be certain Life Mum’s not too big on them anymore, but it’s true, they might have been Life Mum’s first attempt at a host, and it went wrong. Could have one of those chimeric plague tattoos under the sleeve.
What if the Chimeric plague was life trying to gain a host, or someone she could use as a sort of messenger. If that’s the case then the collector is probably an early case of someone with the Chimeric plague who survived and went….wrong. Or she’s serving and helping life, trying to free the primodials. In which case, is life the good guy? Also, how long will it take for Alinua to end up in the same state as the collector?
Well, her eyes are infused with green, and Alinua’s eyes also transformed from grey to green. It looks like she’s in the very early stages of what happend to the Collector.
Oh dear. “Doing this for the greater good” + “Stalker with a crush” + “With great power comes great insanity” = “Unwanted assistance” and “Abhorrent Admirer”.
Now I am scared for Alinua.
Since this is the internet, you will never know my real name.
Yeah, touching a primordial’s mind and having V.D. as a neighbour would make your own name and regular gods look small.
So she learnt something so grand and forbidden it severely affected her memories. I’m almost reminded of the early Discworld books where Rincewind has an ancient powerful spell lodged in his mind that scared off all the other spells.
Given her disposition she may even consider the Collector to be a fitting name and decide to roll with it, thanking Kendal for thinking of it.
I think it’s a good idea to keep Alinua’s nature a secret from the Collector, she’d be all too eager to cut open her soul to see how and why Life chose her. She’ll still keep up civil conversation with her but that’s besides the point.
Except, apparently, your ego. That definitely seems to have survived the transition.
Incidentally, now that I think of it, has Alinua actually *seen* Life Mom? I think she’s been out of it every time Life Mom really made an appearance. I’ll have to check.
TL;DR: Troglodyte villain is your new biology teacher! Today we’re learning how to dissect souls while monologuing about some incredible, persepective- changing experience.
Oook, let’s update our data with the new informations.
Collector is definitely a life mage.
She is in direct contact or at least taps directly into life itself.
This could have happened in two ways:
Deliberately
Accidentally.
We shall not discuss the possibility that it was achieved deliberately because we have no informations on this regard.
If it happened by accident there are just a couple of ways that might have happened.
The chimeric plague is the way life is trying to find a host.
It tries one child at a time, which usually blows up in a couple of years and brings down with it all of the surrounding area.
It is called a plague not because of the mark itself but because of the disastrous outcome.
It brings when it fails.
It is stated that the subject always dies during the outburst.
Then, after a while, a new child bears the mark.
Hypothesis one.
The outburst is considered a failure by life.
The collector bursted.
She didn’t die for some reason.
Contact with life was established anyway but in a way that life itself cannot manifest, the collector is simply open to tap magic from life at will but leaves the primordial no control in exchange.
So she marked another child.
And some attempts later Alinua happened, she didn’t burst at all, can Channel embarrassing quantities of life magic and if she switches off for any reason life can take the wheel.
Success, no more marks.
This might have happened because Alinua didn’t burst as a kid so when she was exposed to life her body was a bit more resistant and managed to not blow up or go mad.
Hypothesis 2
The collector was a success but the issue is control.
She didn’t burst.
She is doing Life’s bidding.
Life just needed two vessels, one for research and the second for kicking butts.
This might be proven by the fact that the collector seems to be concerned only about her goal and doesn’t have an identity or seem to care about any other thing.
Why is this proof?
Well.
Life seems to think like a scientist herself.
She doesn’t simply mark a bunch of kids and see if one survives, she marks one and attempts to gradually increase their channelling capacity to fit her needs, if it fails the damage is big but containable, if it succeeds, Alinua happens.
The collector herself is trying to revive the primordials, which would be quite a goal for a primordial, but one that cannot be attempted twice.
If you revive Stone and it messes with his mind, you don’t have a spare stone primordial to fall back to.
So she tried with mortals.
Ok, flesh and bones, quite easy.
You tear them apart, you put them back together, they work again, success, when you are done turn everything in a chimera and off you go getting another one. (maybe she caused the ferin?)
This might have been undetected by gods because they don’t notice humans.
Next, nature spirits, more powerful, more similar to primordials, more difficult, various attempts, quite a few successes, then next step, bigger gods, here we come to Vash.
She is scaling up.
Because she needs to be 100% sure to be able to piece everything together and not mess anything up when she will arrive to revive a whole primordial.
So.
Maybe the issue is control and the idea of reviving a primordial on a large scale is the collector’s madness because life wants to have her body back but she can’t because of VD but the collector doesn’t know so she’s taken up this task without permission OR she is a vessel herself and is doing exactly what she is meant to do.
Ok, I don’t think the Collector is a vessel of life. I think that there is one “vessel” of life at a time, and they can’t contain all that powerful life magic so they explode. Alinua is different – the first successful vessel. I think the Collector is the previous elemental magus, and she’s doing some sketchy stuff in her lab that might be related to that big, evil black dragon who I have named “Ultimate Antagonist” even though his real name is the Void Dragon. Yeah, on a second note, I’m almost a hundred percent sure the Collector is the first elemental magus who presumably died 100 and something years ago. She fits the description perfectly – she can use all of the elements, she is female, and her age matches up.
The way she said “I touched her mind” makes me think that she wasn’t chosen by life mum, but life mum was there and she managed to get in her mind without life mum realizing it.
New theory, then. (by theory, I mean insane, wild speculation)
She’s a Chimeric Plague victim, like Alinua. She was one who survived, also like Alinua. But she was power-hungry and willing to make Chimera and stuff, and going against what Life Mum wanted. When she had her awakening, she managed to commune with her.
But she was abandoned. She still got the incredible power, and she used that power to make her life last much longer, instantly heal any injuries. Blood didn’t even matter to her. But her curious mind wanted to know more. So she captured some innocent person, and using her Life powers, she managed to keep them alive as she analyzed their soul.
She could solve so many mysteries, discover so many unknown things about souls. She captured mages, learned about their connection. She even managed to open a connection to Stone and Water with her research. But soon, even that knowledge became obsolete. She needed to know more. Capture and research more powerful souls, to open a connection with all the elements, or at get another complete connection, like the one she has with Life.
Speaking of Life Mum, she finally decided to try again with a new mortal, one that would hopefully not go all “No cost too great,” mad scientist, and that’s how we got Alinua.
TDLR; Eleta tells a mostly made up story that the Collector went power-crazy after Life Mum abandoned her
I re-read the page, and my guess is that Life actually exposited everything to her when she had her awakening, which would be an insane experience. It would also explain why LIFE MUM NEVER FREAKING TALKS TO ALINUA. PLEASE TELL US EVERYTHING, LIFE MUM.
Of course she would feel insignificant, especially if I’m right and Life abandoned her. That might be why she’s trying to awaken the other primordials.
Yeah, Life Primordial through a monster tantrum when Jolon tried to do a little experimenting – guess what Life would do if she found out about the Collector!
Let’s put together all the new informations we now have.
The collector could have obtained her connection with life deliberately or accidentally.
We will discuss the accidental hypothesis since we have no data on how a single individual may have obtained deliberately a connection with a primordial’s mind.
We know that life has been trying to find herself a host for at least three hundred years, we know only one child with the mark exited at once and that it usually ends in catastrophic outbursts that kill the child and mutate everything in the area into crazed chymeras.
If that doesn’t happen for any kind of reason and the child grows mature enough to channel the insane energy well, Alinua is made, a host for life itself. Her eyes are permanently changed to green and sometimes her voice is colored green.
That is surely a way to achieve the connection we see in the collector.
What isn’t clear is if the collector is, in life’s eyes a success or a failure.
Why do I say that?
Well.
Hypothesis 1
She was a child with the mark, she had an outburst but somehow survived, life thought she was dead, or at least not adequate to safely channel her, and gave the mark to another child and a couple centuries passed but since she survived and had come in contact with life she achieved superior understanding of the universe and tries to revive the primordials.
Hypothesis 2
She is a failure because Life connected with her but is unable to control her, so she saw a glimpse of life but life cannot manifest trough her, so she is a failed host but not a randomly dangerous bomb.
This might also be the case if the connection was obtained deliberately without a willing intervention from life, it is an artificial connection, it made a mess in the collector’s mind but now there it is.
Hypothesis 3
She is NOT a failed attempt but a successful one.
She is not doing something against life.
This is partially disproven by her using chimeras, but she might have made them in a way that doesn’t upset life.
But it may be proven by other factors:
She has a scientific approach, she kidnaps one soul at a time and runs tests, when she’s done, if successful, she scales up.
The objective might be reviving the primordials, but since she has one primordial of a kind she can’t afford to mess it up, so she is tearing souls apart, like the scattered primordials, and trying to put them back together in order to practice with increasingly larger targets before getting to the real thing, which she cannot afford to fail.
This might be an objective of her own, but might also be life’s objective.
Alinua is there to obtain some other goal, maybe stopping Erin from releasing VD, maybe something else.
Because what we know of the chimeric plague comes from reports in the academic world, which usually come to know of the cases after they gave an outburst, so they know only about the failed attempts, not the successful ones.
Nobody said that life cannot have more than one host.
Nobody knew the purpose of the plague.
Alinua is either a counter to the collector, being the first successful host, or a backup or there for some other purpose.
I myself think that she is probably a failed attempt or obtained the connection artificially, but the third hypothesis is not to be discarded.
We don’t know the actual will of the primordials and we cannot assume they actually care about the world at large.
…this is a very good point to consider in all the theorizing. Alinua of all people should know what life magic looks like. “Healing” the crater may be just a very galaxy-brained application of life magic but it’s harder to explain closing the tunnel that way.
(Unless the tunnel opening is like a papercut???)
Ilia stated that “faint rumours” of the Collector appeared a little over 100 years, so the nature gods presumably only became completely aware of the Collecor somewhat after rumours of her appeared. Thus, Ilias statement that the collector “hasn’t visibly aged in close to a hundred years” isn’t an indicator that she was aging BEFORE a 100 years ago, since Ilias is pretty much just stating that the Collector hasn’t aged since Ilias became aware of her appearance and physical age.
now, let’s put on our scientific coat and input all the new data.
The collector has a connection to Life.
ok.
How did it happen?
There are two main ways which branch out in three hypothesis on how did this happen and what that means.
First we must repeat some of the facts we already know in order to provide context:
Life was for some reason trying to obtain a vessel, and has been trying for at least 300 years.
This attempt is called the chymeric plague, since when a child who bears the mark channels too much of life’s essence he loses control, bursts out, is killed in the process and mutates everything in a large radius.
As far as we know only one child bears the mark at a time.
How do we know all of this?
Apparently it is common knowledge in the academic world, which often know about the cases after they blow up.
If that outburst doesn’t happen and the host survives, apparently we obtain the state Alinua is in now. A deep connection with life, the ability to channel massive quantities of energy and the chance to be possessed by life if something happens to the conscious mind.
The collector speaks in green, just like Alinua did when possessed by life, but a different tone, and has permanently green eyes, just like Alinua, so we can assume that their condition is of similar if not equal nature. She has been around for AT LEAST 100 years, but since this number is the time period in which minor gods have noticed her, and since we now know that gods have an issue telling humans apart we can assume she might have been roaming around for longer.
Hypothesis 1:
The collector is a partly failed attempt, in the way that she had an outburst but somehow didn’t die. She gained the connection with life anyway but was maddened by it, so Life is unable to speak to her directly as she is shown to be able to do with Alinua, and she pursues her goals.
Hypothesis 2:
The collector obtained the connection artificially or is a successfull attempt which cannot be controlled.
She came in contact with life’s mind while conducting research and now she just had a change in perspective or simply life cannot speak to her and doesn’t have any way to gain control over her, she is too autonomous and goes against Life’s will, so she is unsuitable to being a host and she went on searching for another one.
Hypothesis 3:
She is a successful host and is doing as she is told.
There is the fact that she uses chymeras, which would go against this hypothesis, but Life seemed to have an issue in the chymeras that Jolon created because he was twisting her powers, maybe there are kinds of chymeras that Life isn’t concerned about, they are a byproduct of her failed attempts to find a host, after all.
Reviving the primordials would be a goal that suits a primordial, and Life has already shown to have a scientific analytical way of doing things.
She gave her mark one person at a time in order to minimize damage and carefully trying to increase their magic prowess in order to channell her and proceeded to gift someone else only after she failed and, probably, took notes on the results, until Alinua came out.
If she is trying to revive the primordials she knows she can’t just try to do it and see what happens, she doesn’t have a spare stone primordial if the first one she revives is messed in the brain because she didn’t know how to do it.
The collector started with mortals, then went on with minor gods and now has Vash which is rather big.
She started small by taking the subjects apart and putting them back together and is scaling up because the primordials are scattered in the atmosphere and she has one attempt with them that cannot fail so she is trying to experiment on increasingly big souls in order to not mess up the big shot.
This could very well be Life’s own objective and she is pursuing it using the collector, and Alinua is another host that she uses in order to keep VD imprisoned or some other reason we are yet to discover.
having said all of this the question is:
what is Alinua?
Is she a counter that life was trying to create in order to stop the collector, which has obtained superior knowledge by artificial means or is just out of control?
is she there to stop VD from coming back?
is she both?
Or does she serve another, totally unrelated, purpose since the collector is doing exactly what she’s needed to do?
We don’t actually know what the primordials care about and what are their objectives.
If VD wasn’t lying the only objective we know of is keeping him imprisoned, but this tells us ZERO about wether or not they care about the fate of the land or if they had the chance to be alive and free again they would take it, despite everything that lives on Stone right now.
Yeah, all of those check out. But my favorite is the first one, because it makes the most sense. She has the power and made contact with Life, but Life hadn’t foreseen the fragility of the human mind. The only question is, why didn’t Life make more like her. I think yours makes a lot more sense than mine, how she did have an outburst but survive.
There could be a simple explanation of why aren’t there more collectors around.
It could be hypothesis 3.
Life needs one collector, she has it, the next host must be different.
Or it’s just that surviving contact with life is extremely rare.
99% just die with a blast, the collector did not, nor did Alinua, the rest are toast.
Or it’s hypothesis 2, the collector gained the link artificially and life didn’t have a say in that, and Alinua is the first successful attempt, or again, the collector is successful but uncontrollable and the reason became immediately clear to Life, so when Alinua survived she didn’t come in contact directly and just speaks to her occasionally or takes control when she is ko.
All three hypothesis have a case in which this occurrence is unique or very rare.
Oh, and if it hypothesis 3 nobody can say if a third host isn’t somehow planned.
Maybe now that Alinua is stabilized a new child with a mark might be born and the cycle of trial and error to find a new host will start over.
Personally I think the most likely is hypothesis 2
The collector seems like somebody that always did what she did, so maybe during research she stumbled into life’s mind and managed to establish a link but she was overwhelmed by the experience and has been scaling up ever since.
The least likely IMHO is that she was a totally failed attempt that survived the contact with life but was maddened, I think that would be too random. But it’s not impossible.
Hypothesis 3 turns the theory upside down and shifts the blame on Life, which for now is an ally since she helps Alinua and the team.
Is Falst’s common sense that mages rely on a power that isn’t theirs foreshadowing of what will happen to mages when primordials start reappropriating of their energy for themselves?
Who knows?
A thing I noticed…
It is stated in the extra lore that humans or humanoids created by mages using all of the elements are unable to eat in order to gain new material for sustaining themselves, that they heal only by moving matter that is already there and that they cannot reproduce.
Now.
Kendal is artifical, we literally say him being made and was not born, and while we cannot yet tell about the reproduction bit, and I guess there would be some moral implications for now since he’s a week old, he seems able to eat, heal and sustain himself.
Do all gods unknowingly weild the void element?
Because Erin believes (the extra lore is basically his textbook) that this ability is due to the seventh element, and Kendal does indeed have a fully working eating healing body.
Maybe it’s te soul that homunculi are missing?
Maybe the twins decided on a whim that Kendal had to receive special treatment and gave him their blessings while his soul was forming?
So sudden thought, since she is a very old and powerful life mage did she make the Ferin. She can clearly work with souls and that seems to be unheard of with regular mages so maybe she is the mage who made a new race.
That last line giving me huge vibes of john from The adventure zone: balance. The way she seems to be implying that she used to just be a normal person who had a huge revelation that made her ultra-powerful. Just like john. I feel like when we know more about her an animatic of that iconic scene where john and merle talk about their motivations could work really well.
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I think life wanted her to be her vessel then instead of it working like alinua she went kinda crazy and is now trying to revive Life against its will which is why Life is being a lot more cryptic
Vash: what is your name?
The Collector: The names Nobody, wanna get buried?
Vash:Argghhh! Nobody destroyed my city!
Zurrith: That’s funny Vash, is Nobody stealing your city?
I mean, even the first time we saw the Collector, she reminded me of my charmingly cute, affably evil archvillain OC, who is something beyond what my worldbuilding calls a Druid, the closest thing to a Life-magic adept… but with this page, I am starting to actually hear the Collector talk like Icklenellie Rose… which is what I based my OC’s voice on. And she’s unnaturally old, too? At this point, I am desperately trying to work out if I invented my OC before 2019, or if somehow I unwittingly picked up a telepathic signal from Red…
Although my OC doesn’t have this kind of power until 5 arcs in, when the heroines unwittingly allow her to take it, by fleeing to save their own skins. In fact, she arguably never approaches the kind of power the Collector started the story with.
Ok so my main theory is that she was a scientist. Maybe she was trying to study where magic comes from, maybe trying to tap into the source instead if using “ambient magic” but whatever she did, it worked slightly too well and well, y’know she did the classic “oops, did something I shouldn’t and now I’m getting weird flashes of memories and knowledge that are not my own”. The problem with that was that they were from something so incredibly big, it let her see every part of the world, KNOW it in a similar way that Vash did for his people, but all of herself was swept away in that knowledge. And I think her personhod being swept away in a rush of knowing is really cool cause it explains just about everything about her character, of course she can kill a city and feel no remorse, of course she’s affably evil, the world has been “put into perspective” and everything’s SO SMALL, why should she care at all
My theory was right! She is a life mage! Or at least she’s been in contact with Life Mum.
OH MY GOD! ALINUA JUST RUN AND KEEP RUNNING! SHE WOULD PROBABLY DISECT ALINUA! THIS MURDERER ISN’T WORTH ANY LIFE AT ALL. I mean, seriously, Alinua has a special connection to Life, and she’s not a crazy psychopath.
she doesn’t have a name? Well then! I’m dubbing her Theophrastus Bombastus because why not
“I don’t think anyone else has seen it”
*cough cough* *looks at Alinua*
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell…
I don’t think she’s seen Life Mum the same way. It’s like, the difference between occasionally blacking out and being told that tentacles shot out of you (disturbing and personal, but ultimately just a story you have heard) versus actually looking Cthulhu in the face for an extended length of time (fundamentally changes you in ways that cannot be undone).
I think Life is purposely avoiding doing this a second time to someone.
Side Note: I’m loving the ‘healers aren’t all good-guys’ themes of this story.
But the other members of the team have come in contact with Life Mum, because even though Alinua blacks out, the other members of the Floof Squad have seen Life mum up close and personal whenever Alinua does her thing.
im pretty sure she remembers chapter 9 pages 15 and 16,
Come on, have respect for traditions! We already knew her as Chimera Mom ?
Or, if she can’t remember that one, offer to dub her Van Hohenheim.
Noooooo don’t start cutting up Cash yet. Kendall probably needs more sleep
Who is this ‘Cash’ character? 🙂
M’thinks the mean Vash.
the fuck
So she’s the one who found life’s truename… And forgot her own humanity.
nothing like losing your own humanity to discover the true name of a primordial!
Someone I’m writing in a completely unrelated thing would definitely sign up for that
Huh. If she is that mage, then the Chimeric Plague popping up, and therefore Alinua’s situation, is HER doing. Plus, it clashes with the theory that she’s the previous elemental magus, though since this possibility is also juicy (and since it explains why Kendal and Alinua thought she was just a life mage), this is an outcome I’d be willing to accept. (Simultaneously following two competing theories, let’s go) (Although, they could also both end up being true in some capacity)
One more thing: on Tumblr, Red stated that Life’s true name was discovered 300 years ago, making The Nameless Collector a lot older than the Magus theory puts her. The sticking point here is that Ilia said she hadn’t visibly aged in 100 years; following Ilia’s estimation, The Collector would be 200 years old, and therefore quite thoroughly dead, before she started spitting in the cosmic face of entropy itself. So either Ilia’s mistaken (which she could be), or this theory has a wee hole in it.
*over 200 years old
Not necessarily. The first documented case of Chimeric Plague was around 300 years ago, but there could have been even earlier cases.
But that isn’t my theory. My theory is this:
Life Mum has been trying to contact Life Mages for some time now, to prepare for VD’s return (possibly by influencing them to revive the Primordials, as The Collector may be attempting to). I think she tried to fuse with the The Collector the way she has with Alinua, but it went horribly wrong, leaving The Collector with her incredibly potent Life Magic, green eyes (similar to Alinua’s eyes, but damaged by Life Mum instead of empowered, like they’ve been scarred or burned green), immortality, and insane quest to stop VD. After what happened to The Collector, Life Mum created the Chimeric Plague to whittle out an individual strong enough to contain her power; any Life Mages powerful enough to receive the Plague but not strong enough to host Life Mum resulted in the Plague’s catastrophic symptoms.
Ilia stated that “faint rumours” of the Collector appeared a little over 100 years, so the nature gods presumably only became completely aware of the Collecor somewhat after rumours of her appeared. Thus, Ilias statement that the collector “hasn’t visibly aged in close to a hundred years” isn’t an indicator that she was aging BEFORE a 100 years ago, since Ilias is pretty much just stating that the Collector hasn’t aged since Ilias became aware of her appearance and physical age.
Oh, ok. Thank you for clarifying, that makes more sense.
RUN ALINU AND JUST KEEP RUNNING! I bet the Collector will try to tempt Alinua to join her, or she will imprison Alinua. You are totally right. She probably created the Chimeric Plague to create a being with a connection to Life, which resulted in hundreds of catastrophic failures. It said, there was “only one person with Chermic Plague at a time” which means that there is one incarnation of Life at a time, and each time they die at a young age, unable to hold their Life magic. However, Alinua survived it and became stronger.
NOOOO NOT VASH
anyways, does this mean she might be the life mage who discovered life’s truename, and when she disappeared the chimeric plague began
the timeline doesn’t match up, Illia (maybe not i forget) said that she hadn’t visibly aged in 100 years but the chimeric plague began 207 years ago so Theophrastus Bombastus (The Collector) is 100 or so years late to the party
Maybe she has been around that whole time but only started gathering souls in the last century.
I have a new theory that the Chimeric plague was created by Life as a response to the Collector, after the latter touched the formers mind Life considered her a threat and so set in motion a means to select a vessel to combat her.
The Chimeric Plague was first documented 300 years ago, according to extra lore pages.
oh snap..
Hey wait we know someone else who’s seen that
Does this mean that whatever messed up the Collector so much might also happen to Alinua?
theres a chance but probably not, Alinua was (at least from what I can tell) chosen by Life Mum and Theophrastus Bombastus (The Collector) was not so I think that Alinua is gonna be a-OK
Wait, how do we know the Collector wasn’t chosen by Life Mum?
*slow realisation*
Collector does have a bad habit of making chimeras, so we can be certain Life Mum’s not too big on them anymore, but it’s true, they might have been Life Mum’s first attempt at a host, and it went wrong. Could have one of those chimeric plague tattoos under the sleeve.
What if the Chimeric plague was life trying to gain a host, or someone she could use as a sort of messenger. If that’s the case then the collector is probably an early case of someone with the Chimeric plague who survived and went….wrong. Or she’s serving and helping life, trying to free the primodials. In which case, is life the good guy? Also, how long will it take for Alinua to end up in the same state as the collector?
Well, her eyes are infused with green, and Alinua’s eyes also transformed from grey to green. It looks like she’s in the very early stages of what happend to the Collector.
Also her speech bubbels are green.
Oh dear. “Doing this for the greater good” + “Stalker with a crush” + “With great power comes great insanity” = “Unwanted assistance” and “Abhorrent Admirer”.
Now I am scared for Alinua.
OMG I was JUST THINNKING of “with great power comes great insanity”!!!!
That is legitimately disturbing.
“and it REALLY did a number on me!” wow really couldn’t tell
what a twist!
OH. It seems Alinua isn’t the first pancake as far as Life is concerned. And you know what they say about the first pancake..
You always burn it, no matter what you try?
oof, Collector, big oof
You mistake sugar for flour and end up with a pool of bitter caramel?
Yeah, touching a primordial’s mind and having V.D. as a neighbour would make your own name and regular gods look small.
So she learnt something so grand and forbidden it severely affected her memories. I’m almost reminded of the early Discworld books where Rincewind has an ancient powerful spell lodged in his mind that scared off all the other spells.
Given her disposition she may even consider the Collector to be a fitting name and decide to roll with it, thanking Kendal for thinking of it.
I think it’s a good idea to keep Alinua’s nature a secret from the Collector, she’d be all too eager to cut open her soul to see how and why Life chose her. She’ll still keep up civil conversation with her but that’s besides the point.
I can only wonder how she’d react to Erin. If she’s touched Life Mum’s mind then she may know of their cosmic quest to stop VD.
I was thinking the same thing! She’d probably try to disect Alinua or something. ?
The picture in the bottom panel is *amazing*!
oh sHIT
STOP HURTING VASH! YOU’D BE SO COOL IF YOU WEREN’T SO DANG AMBIGUOUS!
She’s gunna just be called Evil Alinua in my head now XD
Elinua?
I’d like to wish veryone a great day, and ask: How is your name?
I HAVE NO NAME. I AM JUST… SOMEBODY.
Pretty gay.
Very dead.
[Error: information redacted. Try again?]
-Yes
-No
Y
Except, apparently, your ego. That definitely seems to have survived the transition.
Incidentally, now that I think of it, has Alinua actually *seen* Life Mom? I think she’s been out of it every time Life Mom really made an appearance. I’ll have to check.
TL;DR: Troglodyte villain is your new biology teacher! Today we’re learning how to dissect souls while monologuing about some incredible, persepective- changing experience.
HAHAHAHAHA
Your new biology teacher… and the cheery vibe with which you said this one, too!
We all need villainous positivity on these trying times. Enjoy your class, and don’t forget your homework!
Oook, let’s update our data with the new informations.
Collector is definitely a life mage.
She is in direct contact or at least taps directly into life itself.
This could have happened in two ways:
Deliberately
Accidentally.
We shall not discuss the possibility that it was achieved deliberately because we have no informations on this regard.
If it happened by accident there are just a couple of ways that might have happened.
The chimeric plague is the way life is trying to find a host.
It tries one child at a time, which usually blows up in a couple of years and brings down with it all of the surrounding area.
It is called a plague not because of the mark itself but because of the disastrous outcome.
It brings when it fails.
It is stated that the subject always dies during the outburst.
Then, after a while, a new child bears the mark.
Hypothesis one.
The outburst is considered a failure by life.
The collector bursted.
She didn’t die for some reason.
Contact with life was established anyway but in a way that life itself cannot manifest, the collector is simply open to tap magic from life at will but leaves the primordial no control in exchange.
So she marked another child.
And some attempts later Alinua happened, she didn’t burst at all, can Channel embarrassing quantities of life magic and if she switches off for any reason life can take the wheel.
Success, no more marks.
This might have happened because Alinua didn’t burst as a kid so when she was exposed to life her body was a bit more resistant and managed to not blow up or go mad.
Hypothesis 2
The collector was a success but the issue is control.
She didn’t burst.
She is doing Life’s bidding.
Life just needed two vessels, one for research and the second for kicking butts.
This might be proven by the fact that the collector seems to be concerned only about her goal and doesn’t have an identity or seem to care about any other thing.
Why is this proof?
Well.
Life seems to think like a scientist herself.
She doesn’t simply mark a bunch of kids and see if one survives, she marks one and attempts to gradually increase their channelling capacity to fit her needs, if it fails the damage is big but containable, if it succeeds, Alinua happens.
The collector herself is trying to revive the primordials, which would be quite a goal for a primordial, but one that cannot be attempted twice.
If you revive Stone and it messes with his mind, you don’t have a spare stone primordial to fall back to.
So she tried with mortals.
Ok, flesh and bones, quite easy.
You tear them apart, you put them back together, they work again, success, when you are done turn everything in a chimera and off you go getting another one. (maybe she caused the ferin?)
This might have been undetected by gods because they don’t notice humans.
Next, nature spirits, more powerful, more similar to primordials, more difficult, various attempts, quite a few successes, then next step, bigger gods, here we come to Vash.
She is scaling up.
Because she needs to be 100% sure to be able to piece everything together and not mess anything up when she will arrive to revive a whole primordial.
So.
Maybe the issue is control and the idea of reviving a primordial on a large scale is the collector’s madness because life wants to have her body back but she can’t because of VD but the collector doesn’t know so she’s taken up this task without permission OR she is a vessel herself and is doing exactly what she is meant to do.
EEEEK! If you’re right then that means – LIFE is the villain!? What would the Floofy Poofs do if that were the case?
Ok, I don’t think the Collector is a vessel of life. I think that there is one “vessel” of life at a time, and they can’t contain all that powerful life magic so they explode. Alinua is different – the first successful vessel. I think the Collector is the previous elemental magus, and she’s doing some sketchy stuff in her lab that might be related to that big, evil black dragon who I have named “Ultimate Antagonist” even though his real name is the Void Dragon. Yeah, on a second note, I’m almost a hundred percent sure the Collector is the first elemental magus who presumably died 100 and something years ago. She fits the description perfectly – she can use all of the elements, she is female, and her age matches up.
“I think I had a name, once.”
Always breaks my heart when a character says that. BTW, have any of you watched “immortal machine” by dead sound?
I have! Also, this is my first comment, Hello everyone!
Hello and welcome fictionary!
Haloo!
Yes. The Autodale series as a whole is dark as all hell, but it’s such a compelling world.
yes, tis a good
…
…And just like that. Rest In Pieces, Vash.
*starts sobbing in a corner*
Wait… Oh, that’s an extremely pain-distorted speech bubble, not the soul being torn fully open…
He’s still alive… somewhat…
The way she said “I touched her mind” makes me think that she wasn’t chosen by life mum, but life mum was there and she managed to get in her mind without life mum realizing it.
But Life Mum has her hand outstretched in invitation. Could go either way.
Well I guess I was wrong.
New theory, then. (by theory, I mean insane, wild speculation)
She’s a Chimeric Plague victim, like Alinua. She was one who survived, also like Alinua. But she was power-hungry and willing to make Chimera and stuff, and going against what Life Mum wanted. When she had her awakening, she managed to commune with her.
But she was abandoned. She still got the incredible power, and she used that power to make her life last much longer, instantly heal any injuries. Blood didn’t even matter to her. But her curious mind wanted to know more. So she captured some innocent person, and using her Life powers, she managed to keep them alive as she analyzed their soul.
She could solve so many mysteries, discover so many unknown things about souls. She captured mages, learned about their connection. She even managed to open a connection to Stone and Water with her research. But soon, even that knowledge became obsolete. She needed to know more. Capture and research more powerful souls, to open a connection with all the elements, or at get another complete connection, like the one she has with Life.
Speaking of Life Mum, she finally decided to try again with a new mortal, one that would hopefully not go all “No cost too great,” mad scientist, and that’s how we got Alinua.
TDLR; Eleta tells a mostly made up story that the Collector went power-crazy after Life Mum abandoned her
Also, RIP Vash, that sounded like it hurt.
ALSO
I re-read the page, and my guess is that Life actually exposited everything to her when she had her awakening, which would be an insane experience. It would also explain why LIFE MUM NEVER FREAKING TALKS TO ALINUA. PLEASE TELL US EVERYTHING, LIFE MUM.
Of course she would feel insignificant, especially if I’m right and Life abandoned her. That might be why she’s trying to awaken the other primordials.
That’s a really strong theory, actually. Well the second part at least. The first is just wild speculation, as you say.
“I saw the primordial Life…”
“Oh, that’s rad.”
“And now I’m doing stuff that would royally piss them off…”
Yeah, Life Primordial through a monster tantrum when Jolon tried to do a little experimenting – guess what Life would do if she found out about the Collector!
Let’s put together all the new informations we now have.
The collector could have obtained her connection with life deliberately or accidentally.
We will discuss the accidental hypothesis since we have no data on how a single individual may have obtained deliberately a connection with a primordial’s mind.
We know that life has been trying to find herself a host for at least three hundred years, we know only one child with the mark exited at once and that it usually ends in catastrophic outbursts that kill the child and mutate everything in the area into crazed chymeras.
If that doesn’t happen for any kind of reason and the child grows mature enough to channel the insane energy well, Alinua is made, a host for life itself. Her eyes are permanently changed to green and sometimes her voice is colored green.
That is surely a way to achieve the connection we see in the collector.
What isn’t clear is if the collector is, in life’s eyes a success or a failure.
Why do I say that?
Well.
Hypothesis 1
She was a child with the mark, she had an outburst but somehow survived, life thought she was dead, or at least not adequate to safely channel her, and gave the mark to another child and a couple centuries passed but since she survived and had come in contact with life she achieved superior understanding of the universe and tries to revive the primordials.
Hypothesis 2
She is a failure because Life connected with her but is unable to control her, so she saw a glimpse of life but life cannot manifest trough her, so she is a failed host but not a randomly dangerous bomb.
This might also be the case if the connection was obtained deliberately without a willing intervention from life, it is an artificial connection, it made a mess in the collector’s mind but now there it is.
Hypothesis 3
She is NOT a failed attempt but a successful one.
She is not doing something against life.
This is partially disproven by her using chimeras, but she might have made them in a way that doesn’t upset life.
But it may be proven by other factors:
She has a scientific approach, she kidnaps one soul at a time and runs tests, when she’s done, if successful, she scales up.
The objective might be reviving the primordials, but since she has one primordial of a kind she can’t afford to mess it up, so she is tearing souls apart, like the scattered primordials, and trying to put them back together in order to practice with increasingly larger targets before getting to the real thing, which she cannot afford to fail.
This might be an objective of her own, but might also be life’s objective.
Alinua is there to obtain some other goal, maybe stopping Erin from releasing VD, maybe something else.
Because what we know of the chimeric plague comes from reports in the academic world, which usually come to know of the cases after they gave an outburst, so they know only about the failed attempts, not the successful ones.
Nobody said that life cannot have more than one host.
Nobody knew the purpose of the plague.
Alinua is either a counter to the collector, being the first successful host, or a backup or there for some other purpose.
I myself think that she is probably a failed attempt or obtained the connection artificially, but the third hypothesis is not to be discarded.
We don’t know the actual will of the primordials and we cannot assume they actually care about the world at large.
“Well she didn’t do THIS with life magic!”
-Alinua 1.2.23
…this is a very good point to consider in all the theorizing. Alinua of all people should know what life magic looks like. “Healing” the crater may be just a very galaxy-brained application of life magic but it’s harder to explain closing the tunnel that way.
(Unless the tunnel opening is like a papercut???)
Considering that The Singing Caves were once Stone’s veins and arteries, that is a very apt comparison.
I guess my theory comments have become too long for WordPress to process them.
Pity.
Or maybe it’s the name.
Ilia stated that “faint rumours” of the Collector appeared a little over 100 years, so the nature gods presumably only became completely aware of the Collecor somewhat after rumours of her appeared. Thus, Ilias statement that the collector “hasn’t visibly aged in close to a hundred years” isn’t an indicator that she was aging BEFORE a 100 years ago, since Ilias is pretty much just stating that the Collector hasn’t aged since Ilias became aware of her appearance and physical age.
not sure what it means but Life Mum in this panel DOESN’T HAVE ALL THE EYES
nope, I guess it was just the name.
now, let’s put on our scientific coat and input all the new data.
The collector has a connection to Life.
ok.
How did it happen?
There are two main ways which branch out in three hypothesis on how did this happen and what that means.
First we must repeat some of the facts we already know in order to provide context:
Life was for some reason trying to obtain a vessel, and has been trying for at least 300 years.
This attempt is called the chymeric plague, since when a child who bears the mark channels too much of life’s essence he loses control, bursts out, is killed in the process and mutates everything in a large radius.
As far as we know only one child bears the mark at a time.
How do we know all of this?
Apparently it is common knowledge in the academic world, which often know about the cases after they blow up.
If that outburst doesn’t happen and the host survives, apparently we obtain the state Alinua is in now. A deep connection with life, the ability to channel massive quantities of energy and the chance to be possessed by life if something happens to the conscious mind.
The collector speaks in green, just like Alinua did when possessed by life, but a different tone, and has permanently green eyes, just like Alinua, so we can assume that their condition is of similar if not equal nature. She has been around for AT LEAST 100 years, but since this number is the time period in which minor gods have noticed her, and since we now know that gods have an issue telling humans apart we can assume she might have been roaming around for longer.
Hypothesis 1:
The collector is a partly failed attempt, in the way that she had an outburst but somehow didn’t die. She gained the connection with life anyway but was maddened by it, so Life is unable to speak to her directly as she is shown to be able to do with Alinua, and she pursues her goals.
Hypothesis 2:
The collector obtained the connection artificially or is a successfull attempt which cannot be controlled.
She came in contact with life’s mind while conducting research and now she just had a change in perspective or simply life cannot speak to her and doesn’t have any way to gain control over her, she is too autonomous and goes against Life’s will, so she is unsuitable to being a host and she went on searching for another one.
Hypothesis 3:
She is a successful host and is doing as she is told.
There is the fact that she uses chymeras, which would go against this hypothesis, but Life seemed to have an issue in the chymeras that Jolon created because he was twisting her powers, maybe there are kinds of chymeras that Life isn’t concerned about, they are a byproduct of her failed attempts to find a host, after all.
Reviving the primordials would be a goal that suits a primordial, and Life has already shown to have a scientific analytical way of doing things.
She gave her mark one person at a time in order to minimize damage and carefully trying to increase their magic prowess in order to channell her and proceeded to gift someone else only after she failed and, probably, took notes on the results, until Alinua came out.
If she is trying to revive the primordials she knows she can’t just try to do it and see what happens, she doesn’t have a spare stone primordial if the first one she revives is messed in the brain because she didn’t know how to do it.
The collector started with mortals, then went on with minor gods and now has Vash which is rather big.
She started small by taking the subjects apart and putting them back together and is scaling up because the primordials are scattered in the atmosphere and she has one attempt with them that cannot fail so she is trying to experiment on increasingly big souls in order to not mess up the big shot.
This could very well be Life’s own objective and she is pursuing it using the collector, and Alinua is another host that she uses in order to keep VD imprisoned or some other reason we are yet to discover.
having said all of this the question is:
what is Alinua?
Is she a counter that life was trying to create in order to stop the collector, which has obtained superior knowledge by artificial means or is just out of control?
is she there to stop VD from coming back?
is she both?
Or does she serve another, totally unrelated, purpose since the collector is doing exactly what she’s needed to do?
We don’t actually know what the primordials care about and what are their objectives.
If VD wasn’t lying the only objective we know of is keeping him imprisoned, but this tells us ZERO about wether or not they care about the fate of the land or if they had the chance to be alive and free again they would take it, despite everything that lives on Stone right now.
wow
Yeah, all of those check out. But my favorite is the first one, because it makes the most sense. She has the power and made contact with Life, but Life hadn’t foreseen the fragility of the human mind. The only question is, why didn’t Life make more like her. I think yours makes a lot more sense than mine, how she did have an outburst but survive.
There could be a simple explanation of why aren’t there more collectors around.
It could be hypothesis 3.
Life needs one collector, she has it, the next host must be different.
Or it’s just that surviving contact with life is extremely rare.
99% just die with a blast, the collector did not, nor did Alinua, the rest are toast.
Or it’s hypothesis 2, the collector gained the link artificially and life didn’t have a say in that, and Alinua is the first successful attempt, or again, the collector is successful but uncontrollable and the reason became immediately clear to Life, so when Alinua survived she didn’t come in contact directly and just speaks to her occasionally or takes control when she is ko.
All three hypothesis have a case in which this occurrence is unique or very rare.
Oh, and if it hypothesis 3 nobody can say if a third host isn’t somehow planned.
Maybe now that Alinua is stabilized a new child with a mark might be born and the cycle of trial and error to find a new host will start over.
Personally I think the most likely is hypothesis 2
The collector seems like somebody that always did what she did, so maybe during research she stumbled into life’s mind and managed to establish a link but she was overwhelmed by the experience and has been scaling up ever since.
The least likely IMHO is that she was a totally failed attempt that survived the contact with life but was maddened, I think that would be too random. But it’s not impossible.
Hypothesis 3 turns the theory upside down and shifts the blame on Life, which for now is an ally since she helps Alinua and the team.
Is Falst’s common sense that mages rely on a power that isn’t theirs foreshadowing of what will happen to mages when primordials start reappropriating of their energy for themselves?
Who knows?
A thing I noticed…
It is stated in the extra lore that humans or humanoids created by mages using all of the elements are unable to eat in order to gain new material for sustaining themselves, that they heal only by moving matter that is already there and that they cannot reproduce.
Now.
Kendal is artifical, we literally say him being made and was not born, and while we cannot yet tell about the reproduction bit, and I guess there would be some moral implications for now since he’s a week old, he seems able to eat, heal and sustain himself.
Do all gods unknowingly weild the void element?
Because Erin believes (the extra lore is basically his textbook) that this ability is due to the seventh element, and Kendal does indeed have a fully working eating healing body.
Maybe it’s te soul that homunculi are missing?
Maybe the twins decided on a whim that Kendal had to receive special treatment and gave him their blessings while his soul was forming?
So sudden thought, since she is a very old and powerful life mage did she make the Ferin. She can clearly work with souls and that seems to be unheard of with regular mages so maybe she is the mage who made a new race.
That last line giving me huge vibes of john from The adventure zone: balance. The way she seems to be implying that she used to just be a normal person who had a huge revelation that made her ultra-powerful. Just like john. I feel like when we know more about her an animatic of that iconic scene where john and merle talk about their motivations could work really well.
hory carp! that last panel is gorgeous!
On a re read of the whole comic.
Honestly, points for self awareness
Suddenly, I am very concerned for Alinua.
… So Alinua will turn evil soon enough? Unless the power of friendship can save her? Kendal… get your butt back to the world of the awake.
Collector: I don’t think ANYONE ELSE has seen it.
Alinua: I have, and I still remember my name and my moral compass.
Collector: …
Wait? life is evil? that doesn’t quite wok with what we’ve seen up to this point… maybe it’s a splinter of Life that wants everything dead?
No name? Then I’m gonna call her. . . . Theophania
alt text:
wonder who that is
“For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind”
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I think life wanted her to be her vessel then instead of it working like alinua she went kinda crazy and is now trying to revive Life against its will which is why Life is being a lot more cryptic
Vash: what is your name?
The Collector: The names Nobody, wanna get buried?
Vash:Argghhh! Nobody destroyed my city!
Zurrith: That’s funny Vash, is Nobody stealing your city?
Soul not city*
I mean, even the first time we saw the Collector, she reminded me of my charmingly cute, affably evil archvillain OC, who is something beyond what my worldbuilding calls a Druid, the closest thing to a Life-magic adept… but with this page, I am starting to actually hear the Collector talk like Icklenellie Rose… which is what I based my OC’s voice on. And she’s unnaturally old, too? At this point, I am desperately trying to work out if I invented my OC before 2019, or if somehow I unwittingly picked up a telepathic signal from Red…
Although my OC doesn’t have this kind of power until 5 arcs in, when the heroines unwittingly allow her to take it, by fleeing to save their own skins. In fact, she arguably never approaches the kind of power the Collector started the story with.
Ok so my main theory is that she was a scientist. Maybe she was trying to study where magic comes from, maybe trying to tap into the source instead if using “ambient magic” but whatever she did, it worked slightly too well and well, y’know she did the classic “oops, did something I shouldn’t and now I’m getting weird flashes of memories and knowledge that are not my own”. The problem with that was that they were from something so incredibly big, it let her see every part of the world, KNOW it in a similar way that Vash did for his people, but all of herself was swept away in that knowledge. And I think her personhod being swept away in a rush of knowing is really cool cause it explains just about everything about her character, of course she can kill a city and feel no remorse, of course she’s affably evil, the world has been “put into perspective” and everything’s SO SMALL, why should she care at all