Erin, kid, you need to get in the headspace of not dismissing stuff anymore. You’re walking around with two demigods, the first ever “child” of a God, you have Satan gnawing on your ribcage and your sister is a Tesla Cannon because the sky decided to use her as target practice.
Reminds me of a part of “Ascendance of a Bookworm” when one character is magically analyzing the memories of titular isekaied bookworm while she is acting like a guide through the society she came from. When he says show me the world, he is shown the local town’s library, school library, a bookstore and Tokyo’s biggest library, prompting him to yell at her “Anything else about the world and not just books! Show me the world outside!”.
Fun times.
And thus, DnD party is complete. The adventure can now begin.
I do get the impression that, given enough time with access to a library, Erin has a tendency to just inhale the entire library, whether or not what he’s reading actually relates to what he’s doing in any way, shape, or form
Erin: It’s a lovely library, very welcoming and open to the public (narrows eyes) unlike some.
It makes sense this is Dainix’s plan; from him being a part of the Ignan standing army and self-exiling to keep them safe, he has a strong sense of duty to his people. No wonder Caliban is working behind the scenes to assist/utilise him.
Speaking of Caliban, their plan with Tahraim for Dainix is still going; getting him out of prison was just step 1. Dainix will probably meet up with them again, knowingly or unknowingly, and looking for Mr Cryptic probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.
This brings Dainix into the gang nicely, but I still don’t know about Tess. Sure she’s Erin’s sister and would want to protect him after all this, but we haven’t got the reason behind why she was looking for him in the first place yet.
Prediction for next week: Genuinely don’t know. Stay with Dainix? Falst pops down to give his thoughts and potential accusations for him fighting Kendal? Change of scene to Alinua franticly healing Kendal still? Could be anything.
Tess seeing Walter/Voidy take over Erin would enough for Tess to stick around for awhile. There could be problems waiting in the wind that may make Tess want to stick around longer too.
OngoingConversationCouplet- But you still managed to do it in two lines, with a rhyme as well! 🙂
The amount of narrative weight being placed on the soulshaper monks as a group of people who can supposedly give both Erin and Dainix all of the information they need is honestly making me very nervous. I would honestly not be at all surprised if Red pulled a ‘sorry almost all of our knowledge is now lost thanks to some kind of battle or invasion’ plot with them. or maybe i’m just an insane cynic who isn’t comfortable getting my hopes up with the idea of protagonists having nice things like information that can lead them on the next step of their world spanning hunt for clues :/
Seriously, though, a library can be a fun vacation. Have you ever been on vacation and it’s one of those days where its just raining slightly and everything’s damp and miserable? Best possible day for a library visit
okay I still want to see Tess yelling at Erin
“AND YOU JUST ‘DIDN’T TELL ME’ YOU WERE POSSESSED BY A PRIMORDIAL DRAGON!?”
“That’s not something you just bring up in everyday conversation! Oh hi, I’m currently housing an ancient evil in addition to my own soul, how have you been”
Party at the monastery library! WOOOOOOOOO
I’d guess that if this woman was also a demon, she wasn’t from the part of the dessert Dainix is from. But if she really is a demon, then her works might prove to be the explanation he needs. I wonder if this is what Caliban and Tahraim want to happen.
@SerifStones my guess is that Dainix will get some answers, but the monks will take one look at VD Walter and play the “that’s outside our zone of competence” card
Though the actual worst case with the monks is that they don’t recognize VD Walter is outside their zone of competence, and end up making him harder to contain…
Dainix spending his vacation AT THE LIBRARY? He’s just a couple steps away from forging a black-bladed sword from meteoric iron.
I think this might be the first (and last) time that Erin has invited a party member to stay. All the previous times it was Kendal doing the friend-making, with the exception of Tess, who joined on her own initiative. (The “and last” part could be proven wrong later, if Erin asks her to stay.) My point is: it’s interesting that this group sort of has two people who take the lead within it, each with a vastly different style of charisma. While Erin tries to appeal to people’s senses of logic, Kendal tends to appeal to people’s empathy and emotions. If they could learn to work together, they could be a real power in diplomatic situations.
Good gosh! Erin is so …casual… about the reason for the library visit. Could it be that he -still- is trying to down-play his connection to Voidy in the hopes that either Tess hasn’t figured things out yet – or that she’s not going to smack him around other people?
I mean, casting Falst as the Cowardly Lion is kind of obvious and probably racist. If we go with the original quote-unquote twist that they all had the power they needed within them already, that would make Erin the Scarecrow, since he’s got the brains, and Dainix would be the Tin Woodsman, since he’s all about emotional control. Does that mean Alinua and Kendall are Dorothy and Toto?
Did you know…
While Greenland and Iceland seem like that their names should be switched, with Greenland the origin of its name is from is the Norwegian Erik the Red who led an expedition to explore the island named it Greenland to make it more appealing, and that’s what stuck.
(The descriptions of Helm we got so far make me think of it as a fantasy Greenland, populated by monks instead of traders.)
Random Passerby:
Good thing Tess, Falst, and Alinua crime committing cut his stay short as the Paladin’s library, he would have taken way longer than the sec that Kendal gave Zurrith.
Alleyyy:
YEs, I’ve been enjoying whenever Tess and Erin just behaved as siblings.
Hermit Thrush:
That does actually seem like a possibility as what happened with Danix happened before but Erin is a unique case as no one that we know of have a link to void, and it was actively opened and is being used by the Void Dragon, who would not want that link closed probably.
@Jaq part of me is wondering whether he saved the explanation so that he could tell Tess and Dainix at the same time (probably not something he wants to talk about more than necessary)
Since Erin Lore is finally semi-relevant again, I think I want to detail my theroy about Erins past with the Soulshaper Monks
The long and short of my theroy is that Erin did have the potential to be the elemental magus, but all or most of his elemental links were malformed and non-functional.
Now lets go over the evidence.
1. Erin’s Tatoos
Erin is the only mage we’ve seen who needs to physically touch his tatoos while casting.
Runic tatoos are described as making it easier to cast, and from external sources are confirmed to be intuitive and don’t need to be touched.
Notably, when VD is possesing Erin, he doesn’t do this, and casts without doing this. Interesting.
2. Past interactions with monks
Erin described the monks as ‘effective and discreet’ and that his family had had dealings with him before.
This page also directly confirms that Erin himself had been to the monastary before.
3. Tess
Two lines from Tess are really interesting. ‘Erin used to [faint] all the time’ and she was kind of weird about Erin’s powers when he was younger.
Most mages don’t get powers until they’re about 10-12 ish, so if Tess meant that he didnt have his powers yet, she would have said so. And Red as confirmed on her tumblr that symptoms of malformed links can include fainting.
Also, Erin definetly previously had the links, but he probably is self consious that his connection was unstable when he was young and wants to keep it secret. But it also seems possible that Falst or someone else will ask an incriminating question soon.
I AM LATE BUT OH MYGOD HES BACK MY SKRUNKLY MY BLORBO ITS HE HE HELPIN!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
also is it just me but does it feel like erin takes everychance to drop as many possibly badass sounding lines as possible
@GoodbyeBallad I hadn’t thought of that before, but now it makes me wonder. Could Erin be going to the monks with the idea that, if nothing else, they could close one or more of his Elemental channels? He’s only useful to Voidy if he’s the Elemental Magus after all…
Although with Voidy in his brain, he’d have to quickly and persistently bury any thoughts going that way. Maybe that’s part of why he’s so low-key about mentioning why they’re going. It’s not like Voidy is a secret he can keep from their new arrivals – both Dainix and Tess saw him with the Void Dragon in control.
@ stroylineobessed: And Falst needs to tell us his backstory too. We literally know nothing about his backstory!
@ Eleta the Conspiratorial: Can you please link to the tumblr post about malformed soul links? I can’t find it.
I do wonder how well his Dorothy Impression will hold up. The way the Soulshaper Monks turn out to be the “answer” to everyone’s problems, makes this feel like they’re on the Journey to see the Wizard of Oz. But…well, they’re Erin’s answer to everything. And he’s been wrong before.
Note that I’m not complaining here mind you. I just find it interesting.
@Eleta the Conspiratorial
to add onto your theory, he specifically mentioned that “they can also help people with congenital soul conditions, like malformed or incomplete magical links.They’re mostly known for OPENING those links…” (1.8.3), which seems like a weirdly specific detail to know if he hasn’t had first-hand experience with that (since he says on the same page that they specialize in helping people with prosthetics regain feeling in them, so they can’t have THAT many people coming to them for magical links to the point that their specific method is “what they’re known for”.)
Plus, there’s the distinct fact that Kendal/Vash’s only knowledge of the elemental magus is the one from a hundred years ago, which is weird, since the elemental magus feels like the kind of major thing that a city god would want to keep track of. So it might be that they’ve been keeping things on the down-low, especially since, as you mentioned, he specifically mentions the monks being discrete
Ok but Red’s comment at the end there is basically implying that Erin is Sokka and yet Erin controls all the elements so would therefore be Aang…
But The Floof Squad as The gaang got me thinking. Either Kendal or Erin would be Aang (Kendal’s the protagonist, is alive for weird reasons, has basically superpowers, and glows blue sometimes. Erin can control all the elements, thinks he’s the protagonist and has sic tats). Aluinua would be Katara (Healing magic but can kill a man with said healing magic, mom friend, is supposed to be dead but isn’t.). And Dainix would be Zuko (Fire powers, missing/damaged eye, exiled?, trauma). As for the rest idk. Tess as Toph maybe (Strong, rich ‘family’, idk).
I never seen ATLA but between the memes and cultural osmosis I think I “get” Uncle Iroh
If it is conceded that “Wheel of Time” author Robert Jordan’s hangups with gender show up; he is still a great “story weaver” more akin to Homer than a fellow Citadel graduate who was also a master writer, Pat Conroy.
“Lords of Discipline” was for Maritime what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God
is for nursing.
@storylineobsessed Thank you for your shared prayers. His end was peaceful and he had lived to his eighties and missed his mate, my mother, who died years earlier. I miss him but I have already made peace with his passing. I pray for his reunion with my mother in heaven. They raised 4 children without mishap to be responsible adults. Not a bad legacy and I am grateful for their guidance.
Yes! Dainix officially joins the floof squad!
Woooo!
For mobile readers.
Alt-text: see? reading IS fun!
Image source: lead
YAY! LIBRARY!
And that’s how Dainix got dragged along on this crazy adventure
He has lost all hope, without Tahraim’s calls
But there might be help in the library halls
Gods, this page was hard to summarize in two lines
Life isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card
Erin, kid, you need to get in the headspace of not dismissing stuff anymore. You’re walking around with two demigods, the first ever “child” of a God, you have Satan gnawing on your ribcage and your sister is a Tesla Cannon because the sky decided to use her as target practice.
Open your Third Eye, bruv!
Well isn’t that awfully convenient
“for my vacation we’re going……… TO THE LIBRARY”
Reminds me of a part of “Ascendance of a Bookworm” when one character is magically analyzing the memories of titular isekaied bookworm while she is acting like a guide through the society she came from. When he says show me the world, he is shown the local town’s library, school library, a bookstore and Tokyo’s biggest library, prompting him to yell at her “Anything else about the world and not just books! Show me the world outside!”.
Fun times.
And thus, DnD party is complete. The adventure can now begin.
My conspiracy theory that he may have been shaped into an Elemental Magus there returns…
Also, library trip!
@youngstormlord There’s a sword lady we’re still waiting on. Check #aurora-in-trope talk and #comic-discussion on the Aurora Fan Server.
@GoodbyeBallad same tinfoil hat!
I do get the impression that, given enough time with access to a library, Erin has a tendency to just inhale the entire library, whether or not what he’s reading actually relates to what he’s doing in any way, shape, or form
Erin: It’s a lovely library, very welcoming and open to the public (narrows eyes) unlike some.
It makes sense this is Dainix’s plan; from him being a part of the Ignan standing army and self-exiling to keep them safe, he has a strong sense of duty to his people. No wonder Caliban is working behind the scenes to assist/utilise him.
Speaking of Caliban, their plan with Tahraim for Dainix is still going; getting him out of prison was just step 1. Dainix will probably meet up with them again, knowingly or unknowingly, and looking for Mr Cryptic probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.
This brings Dainix into the gang nicely, but I still don’t know about Tess. Sure she’s Erin’s sister and would want to protect him after all this, but we haven’t got the reason behind why she was looking for him in the first place yet.
Prediction for next week: Genuinely don’t know. Stay with Dainix? Falst pops down to give his thoughts and potential accusations for him fighting Kendal? Change of scene to Alinua franticly healing Kendal still? Could be anything.
Aw, Dainix looking so hopeful in the last panel. <3
Tess seeing Walter/Voidy take over Erin would enough for Tess to stick around for awhile. There could be problems waiting in the wind that may make Tess want to stick around longer too.
OngoingConversationCouplet- But you still managed to do it in two lines, with a rhyme as well! 🙂
Man, this island’s got everything!
Quite appropriate, considering that this is Library Week.
The amount of narrative weight being placed on the soulshaper monks as a group of people who can supposedly give both Erin and Dainix all of the information they need is honestly making me very nervous. I would honestly not be at all surprised if Red pulled a ‘sorry almost all of our knowledge is now lost thanks to some kind of battle or invasion’ plot with them. or maybe i’m just an insane cynic who isn’t comfortable getting my hopes up with the idea of protagonists having nice things like information that can lead them on the next step of their world spanning hunt for clues :/
WOO, TO THE LIBRARY! Where reading is MAAAAAAAAAAGIC! Expecially reading ABOUT magic! 😀
my prediction for next week is we finally get to see what’s going on in kendals brain ? ?
Seriously, though, a library can be a fun vacation. Have you ever been on vacation and it’s one of those days where its just raining slightly and everything’s damp and miserable? Best possible day for a library visit
okay I still want to see Tess yelling at Erin
“AND YOU JUST ‘DIDN’T TELL ME’ YOU WERE POSSESSED BY A PRIMORDIAL DRAGON!?”
“That’s not something you just bring up in everyday conversation! Oh hi, I’m currently housing an ancient evil in addition to my own soul, how have you been”
“Hey, we’re going to the Emerald City to see the wizard. You wanna come along?”
Classic Erin. “Ask a god? Pssss, that is weak shit. How about I show you a book”
TL;DR: +1 party member.
Party at the monastery library! WOOOOOOOOO
I’d guess that if this woman was also a demon, she wasn’t from the part of the dessert Dainix is from. But if she really is a demon, then her works might prove to be the explanation he needs. I wonder if this is what Caliban and Tahraim want to happen.
Another A: TLA reference by Red!
But seriously, libraries are great. Except for the evil librarians who like to misinform us Hushlanders.
@SerifStones my guess is that Dainix will get some answers, but the monks will take one look at VD Walter and play the “that’s outside our zone of competence” card
Though the actual worst case with the monks is that they don’t recognize VD Walter is outside their zone of competence, and end up making him harder to contain…
I’m thinking that in order for them to close off the void dragon completely, they’d have to close his soul off to every magic link entirely.
Dainix spending his vacation AT THE LIBRARY? He’s just a couple steps away from forging a black-bladed sword from meteoric iron.
I think this might be the first (and last) time that Erin has invited a party member to stay. All the previous times it was Kendal doing the friend-making, with the exception of Tess, who joined on her own initiative. (The “and last” part could be proven wrong later, if Erin asks her to stay.) My point is: it’s interesting that this group sort of has two people who take the lead within it, each with a vastly different style of charisma. While Erin tries to appeal to people’s senses of logic, Kendal tends to appeal to people’s empathy and emotions. If they could learn to work together, they could be a real power in diplomatic situations.
Good gosh! Erin is so …casual… about the reason for the library visit. Could it be that he -still- is trying to down-play his connection to Voidy in the hopes that either Tess hasn’t figured things out yet – or that she’s not going to smack him around other people?
I mean, casting Falst as the Cowardly Lion is kind of obvious and probably racist. If we go with the original quote-unquote twist that they all had the power they needed within them already, that would make Erin the Scarecrow, since he’s got the brains, and Dainix would be the Tin Woodsman, since he’s all about emotional control. Does that mean Alinua and Kendall are Dorothy and Toto?
Did you know…
While Greenland and Iceland seem like that their names should be switched, with Greenland the origin of its name is from is the Norwegian Erik the Red who led an expedition to explore the island named it Greenland to make it more appealing, and that’s what stuck.
(The descriptions of Helm we got so far make me think of it as a fantasy Greenland, populated by monks instead of traders.)
Random Passerby:
Good thing Tess, Falst, and Alinua crime committing cut his stay short as the Paladin’s library, he would have taken way longer than the sec that Kendal gave Zurrith.
Alleyyy:
YEs, I’ve been enjoying whenever Tess and Erin just behaved as siblings.
Hermit Thrush:
That does actually seem like a possibility as what happened with Danix happened before but Erin is a unique case as no one that we know of have a link to void, and it was actively opened and is being used by the Void Dragon, who would not want that link closed probably.
@Jaq part of me is wondering whether he saved the explanation so that he could tell Tess and Dainix at the same time (probably not something he wants to talk about more than necessary)
holy crp erin you really have every solution in your books huh – cite me people, Erin will have a book on how to defeat a giant god-snatching woman
And Dainix never even used the term Soulfire. How brilliant is Erin?
Since Erin Lore is finally semi-relevant again, I think I want to detail my theroy about Erins past with the Soulshaper Monks
The long and short of my theroy is that Erin did have the potential to be the elemental magus, but all or most of his elemental links were malformed and non-functional.
Now lets go over the evidence.
1. Erin’s Tatoos
Erin is the only mage we’ve seen who needs to physically touch his tatoos while casting.
Runic tatoos are described as making it easier to cast, and from external sources are confirmed to be intuitive and don’t need to be touched.
Notably, when VD is possesing Erin, he doesn’t do this, and casts without doing this. Interesting.
2. Past interactions with monks
Erin described the monks as ‘effective and discreet’ and that his family had had dealings with him before.
This page also directly confirms that Erin himself had been to the monastary before.
3. Tess
Two lines from Tess are really interesting. ‘Erin used to [faint] all the time’ and she was kind of weird about Erin’s powers when he was younger.
Most mages don’t get powers until they’re about 10-12 ish, so if Tess meant that he didnt have his powers yet, she would have said so. And Red as confirmed on her tumblr that symptoms of malformed links can include fainting.
Also, Erin definetly previously had the links, but he probably is self consious that his connection was unstable when he was young and wants to keep it secret. But it also seems possible that Falst or someone else will ask an incriminating question soon.
I’m flagging the source text for copyright infringement.
Sorry, but after reading the comments, the only thing I can think of is: “We’re off to see the Soulshapers,/the wonderful Soulshaper Monks!”
I AM LATE BUT OH MYGOD HES BACK MY SKRUNKLY MY BLORBO ITS HE HE HELPIN!!!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
also is it just me but does it feel like erin takes everychance to drop as many possibly badass sounding lines as possible
Dainix: “He’s the only lead I have.”
Erin: “You underestimate my nerdery!”
@GoodbyeBallad I hadn’t thought of that before, but now it makes me wonder. Could Erin be going to the monks with the idea that, if nothing else, they could close one or more of his Elemental channels? He’s only useful to Voidy if he’s the Elemental Magus after all…
Although with Voidy in his brain, he’d have to quickly and persistently bury any thoughts going that way. Maybe that’s part of why he’s so low-key about mentioning why they’re going. It’s not like Voidy is a secret he can keep from their new arrivals – both Dainix and Tess saw him with the Void Dragon in control.
if danix = new party member, new party member = yes
Now that Dainix has told us HIS backstory, does anyone else wanna tell us theirs? What about you Erin? What’s your backstory? WHAT IS IT?
@ stroylineobessed: And Falst needs to tell us his backstory too. We literally know nothing about his backstory!
@ Eleta the Conspiratorial: Can you please link to the tumblr post about malformed soul links? I can’t find it.
I do wonder how well his Dorothy Impression will hold up. The way the Soulshaper Monks turn out to be the “answer” to everyone’s problems, makes this feel like they’re on the Journey to see the Wizard of Oz. But…well, they’re Erin’s answer to everything. And he’s been wrong before.
Note that I’m not complaining here mind you. I just find it interesting.
@freezeears5
Yeah I did forgot Falst. He can join in the backstory sharing session too.
@ freezeears5
We got a tiny bit of back story in Chapter 9 on Falst when he and Kendal but I am up to hear more of his and Tess’s backstory!
Thank you for your witty comments. My father died (of old age, thanks be) and this help me laugh this week.
@Eleta the Conspiratorial
to add onto your theory, he specifically mentioned that “they can also help people with congenital soul conditions, like malformed or incomplete magical links.They’re mostly known for OPENING those links…” (1.8.3), which seems like a weirdly specific detail to know if he hasn’t had first-hand experience with that (since he says on the same page that they specialize in helping people with prosthetics regain feeling in them, so they can’t have THAT many people coming to them for magical links to the point that their specific method is “what they’re known for”.)
Plus, there’s the distinct fact that Kendal/Vash’s only knowledge of the elemental magus is the one from a hundred years ago, which is weird, since the elemental magus feels like the kind of major thing that a city god would want to keep track of. So it might be that they’ve been keeping things on the down-low, especially since, as you mentioned, he specifically mentions the monks being discrete
Is Dainix going to join the crew?
@Aulde
Oh my goodness, are you okay? I shall pray for you.♥️
Ok but Red’s comment at the end there is basically implying that Erin is Sokka and yet Erin controls all the elements so would therefore be Aang…
But The Floof Squad as The gaang got me thinking. Either Kendal or Erin would be Aang (Kendal’s the protagonist, is alive for weird reasons, has basically superpowers, and glows blue sometimes. Erin can control all the elements, thinks he’s the protagonist and has sic tats). Aluinua would be Katara (Healing magic but can kill a man with said healing magic, mom friend, is supposed to be dead but isn’t.). And Dainix would be Zuko (Fire powers, missing/damaged eye, exiled?, trauma). As for the rest idk. Tess as Toph maybe (Strong, rich ‘family’, idk).
Oh and the People of Vash would be the other Airbenders (Have a connection to the protagonist, grew up with/around said protagonist, dead)
@ Dark Wolf: Erin is definitely most like Sokka – they have the same smart but dumb vibes
So
Kendal = Aang
Alinua = Katara
Erin = Sokka
Falst = ???
Tess = Toph?
Dainix = Zuko
@Dark Wolf,
So would Tahraim be
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroh
I’m not listing the parallels but I can think of 2 off the top of my head.
I never seen ATLA but between the memes and cultural osmosis I think I “get” Uncle Iroh
If it is conceded that “Wheel of Time” author Robert Jordan’s hangups with gender show up; he is still a great “story weaver” more akin to Homer than a fellow Citadel graduate who was also a master writer, Pat Conroy.
“Lords of Discipline” was for Maritime what
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God
is for nursing.
@storylineobsessed Thank you for your shared prayers. His end was peaceful and he had lived to his eighties and missed his mate, my mother, who died years earlier. I miss him but I have already made peace with his passing. I pray for his reunion with my mother in heaven. They raised 4 children without mishap to be responsible adults. Not a bad legacy and I am grateful for their guidance.
@Aris
Tahraim would 100% be Iroh
(I feel like Caliban could suit Zuko quite well tho. With the fire and impatience etc.)
@Dark Wolf
Consider: Falst = Mai
I think Falst may be jealous
If there’s a problem, there’ll be a book for it in this world, apparently. Erin being a nerd is actually helpful!
Red was that an ATLA reference?
I just love how Erin just knew most of the plot before he even met the other but dismissed it as nonsense
Guys I think Dainix just got floofier…