#( instead he suffers headaches and bouts of melancholy and uncontrollable emotion )

[daybreakrising]

i'll make a proper post about it when i'm not stood on a freezing train platform but he's been rattling around inside my head this morning so i want to talk about what's rattling around inside his head-

so it's long established that vautrin has all of history and memory floating around inside his head after his 400 year swim in the primordial sea, but i've only really briefly touched on the consequences of that.

whilst he isn't fully human and is no longer mortal (at least in the sense that humans are mortal), going through something like that isn't going to be a smooth ride and no mortal mind should ever be able to withstand that amount of information without issues.

for the most part, vautrin does not have ready access to all of this information. he can actively seek out things he knows should be in there, but he also has a very basic grasp of the abilities that allow him to tap into those memories so this has mixed success depending on various factors (like how familiar he is with the subject, for example). consider it similar to how our brains will actively repress things from us to protect us - usually from trauma. vautrin's brain is no different here, and it's why he initially had huge gaps in his memory when he first came back.

the main consequence he suffers is in trying to tap into the knowledge inside his head, he risks painful headaches if he pushes too hard and too deep, particularly before he learns how to navigate his abilities. pushing beyond the headaches will lead to further consequences (nosebleeds, fainting, etc) but he's usually too sensible to get that far. usually.

he can lessen these consequences by learning to control the way he explores his mental archives, but he can never be fully rid of them. there must always be a cost to having access to things you shouldn't be able to physically withstand.