#Predathos

[jadiesoutpost]

Imagine if they get him back, this amazing moment of celebration. Vax is overjoyed to see Keyleth, saddened by how Vex has aged while he remains forever young. Joyous at seeing Percy, his brother in law. His found family. Eager to learn about his nephews and nieces, all the missed celebrations they get to recite.

And then Bells Hells release predathos. The Matron of Ravens is dying. Vax is fading away. So close, yet so far. All that hope, a mirage. One last goodbye. One last kiss. One final feather.

Hot take? But, I am okay with Vax coming back. It's been 10 years i. Real life and 31 in game. Maybe not without consequences and he is back willy nilly. But, give my keyleth her man for at least a little while. I have had to live with all of C1 for a longing time now I hope that there is hope for the Champion.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

I fuck deeply with Laudna's "what makes you think apathy is better than disdain?" It's a beautiful line to back up Orym's arguments

We don't think too hard about the ants we're stepping on when we have our own problems to worry about. What makes Liliana think that Predathos won't step on Exandria to get to its prey?

[ariadne-mouse]

Ludinus: don't worry Predathos told me it only eats gods

Predathos: yes predathos Mouth perfec t size for put exandria to keep safe! inside very Soft and Comfort for exandria put safely in Predathos Mouth. Put Exandria In Predathos Mouth. no problems ever in Predathos mouth because good Shape and Support for exandria weak of big gods pantheon. pPredathos Mouth yes a good place for put exandria put exandria in predthaos mouth can Trust predathos for keep exandria nice good safe get rid of nasty gods. friend Predathos

[soaring-trash]

What happens if you leave?

[sky-scribbles]

I've been thinking about Ludinus's conviction that Predathos doesn't want to eat mortals, and bears them no ill will, and doesn't want to harm them. And I think... there's a strong possibility that this is true, but that what Predathos might consider 'not harming mortals' might not necessarily be what we'd consider 'not harming mortals.'

Would Predathos consider it 'harm' if all mortals somehow were absorbed into the interconnected consciousness of the Ruidusborn, for instance? If all individuality became lost, absorbed into some kind of hive mind? To Predathos, that might seem like a better state of being, a gift. Or it might not consider it anything, just the natural impact of its presence.

Does Predathos consider what happened in Molaesmyr - the warping of all the creatures there, the enduring blight upon the land, the horrifying transformations - to be harm? Or is that what seems normal and natural to it?

Ludinus is telling on himself by comparing Predathos to a shark, a creature of Exandria that works by rules he knows. But Predathos does not work by those rules. Predathos's nature is still unknown, perhaps unknowable, and the fact that just a failed attempt at connection in Molaesmyr did all of that does not fill me with confidence.

[smilelikeawolf]

The Doom of Aeor was not just one thing.

The Betrayer Gods, so full of hate for mortals, so full of hurt at their siblings choosing their creations over them, stepped into the world to destroy everything themselves.

The archmages built a weapon to kill the gods, because the Calamity was destroying the world.

The archmages built the God Hammer at the heart of Aeor, so that anything that went wrong with risked destroying the city.

The Prime Deities didn’t explain the threat of Predathos, and how they needed all the gods to live in order to fight it should it ever break free.

The Wildmother, scared to reveal how much the Primes and Betrayers still loved each other in spite of everything, because she wasn’t ready to be judged by her children.

The Primes not holding themselves to the same rules they placed onto Solars and mortals.

Cognouza fucking off into the Astral Sea destroyed the teleportation leylines and therefore killed any chance the Aeorians had to escape.

The Arch Heart refused to embrace Primarch Selena when she asked for forgiveness. The rejection that caused her throw the trapped sibling into the God Hammer and cast Wish.

The Arch Heart chose to save their sibling, that trapped god, instead of Counterspelling the Wish.

Primarch Selena using Wish to send knowledge of the God Hammer to every wizard still in Aeor. Wizards who might have been smaller in number had it not been for Cognouza, had they been able to leave before the knowledge was dispersed.

Asmodeus and the Betrayers, choosing to use the God Hammer to kill their siblings when their siblings refused to kill them. Asmodeus tricking them all and acquiring the scroll to the God Hammer and setting it off.

The Arch Heart, redirecting the energy of the God Hammer into the city he’d wanted to save, trading mortal lives for his and their siblings.

The gods’ inability to make peace with their own mortality. They, who in their youth, fled the only home they’d ever known, watching as Predathos consumed it, consumed their family, watching loved ones gone in a flash. Their desperate flight into Reality that forced them into their bodies forever constructed by what they felt in that moment.

Trauma born from fear born from loss born from pain born from love.

[annemarieyeretzian]

the arch heart asserting “[predathos] will not turn on humanity.” and fearne demanding “how do you know?” and the arch heart answering “because you are nothing to predathos.” and orym saying “well, I step on ants every day because I don’t know they’re there. I’m a little worried about the same thing, lord.” 🙌

[undead-knick-knack]

Trying to decide which friend to sacrifice to Predathos isn't going to be easy I imagine 😔

[lonely-business]

Just. . . Imagine Predathos to be a starving caged coyote, gaunt and angry, ribs exposed, just unbelievably hungry and wishing to be free. Oh, he says, let me in the hen-house; I'll just eat the hens. I'll leave the eggs be, they don't interest me. You hate the hens and I crave them so dearly. I'll leave you the eggs. The eggs are safe with me. Trust me. I'm so hungry.

[masterqwertster]

I do wish that Orym had brought up the maddening feeling of Oblivion Hunger that he got from Predathos in his Wildmother vision.

Because honestly? As opposed to the Survival-Predator Hunger that Ludinus and the Vanguard are trying to sell as what Predathos feels/is going to act upon, that seems pretty fucking significant.

Like here is a pretty good indicator that the god-eater that you are unsure of what the final results of unleashing it will be is going to be complete destruction. It's not Hungry in a Fill My Belly way, it's Hungry in a Destroy Everything way.

I feel like if Orym had shared that, it would have added some good shit to the conversation.

[ludinusdaleth]

absolutely out of my mind obsessed. OBSESSED. with liliana always saying "he" and, even if we know it's ludinus, never saying his name and obfuscating him with predathos, these two pillars of limitless power & incredible cruelty that chain her, stronger than her, in her own words. how he needs her. how he admires & values & even in some way adores her, and maybe more. how she's pulled ludinus back from the very edge. her trying to change him, and zerxus 1000 years ago trying to change asmodeus and jester trying to change artagan and caleb trying to change essek and the m9 trying to change lucien and opal trying to change lolth, and imogen, trying to change her own mother. this cycle of desperate belief in redemption that can succeed or fail, the coin that hasnt landed on a side yet. how that's freedom for some. how that's a whip, a martinet on the back of the reformer for others. the belief in set fate vs the vanguard belief in changing destiny. generation upon generation of hope & abuse that can so easily become one or the other or both at once for eon upon eon. how the gods who created these mortals who seek any glint of kindness desperately wish, in this moment, for redemption themselves. "to reach a hand down to somebody, they need to be beneath you". but the gods are in the sky. and their saviors are on a lonely planet & lonelier moon, locked together by a cycle of violence & desperation started by them so long ago.

[ariadne-mouse]

I wonder if a Predathos mini already exists. What does it look like. Is it even a mini. Is it a macro. Is it a red fog machine

[eldritchpalette]

What if Imogen lets go.

[soath]

trying to figure out their thematic differences (because they do seem to be separate)

[sky-scribbles]

Bell's Hells made a pretty salient point about how Predathos has been imprisoned for thousands of years, and releasing an entity that's been trapped for so long, left to go slowly mad, might not be a good idea. And that got me thinking about Call of the Netherdeep again. (Spoilers for all of that adventure, especially the ending.)

That is exactly what can happen with Alyxian, the anatagonist/deutragonist of Call of the Netherdeep. He is a powerful Ruidusborn who ends up stranded in a pocket dimenion, the Netherdeep, because of a magical cataclysm that happened when his 'connection to Ruidus flared to life'.

The Netherdeep is very Ruidus-flavoured. It's a psychic mirror for Alyxian's trauma, giving it physical forms. It's full of psionic aberrations, like sharks that cause a 'psychic maelstrom' around them and fish swarms that stun people who get caught in their space. Alyxian's own demigod nature and deep trauma are obviously an influence, but there's something of Ruidus - something of Predathos - woven in with his nature, and with the Netherdeep.

You know what happens if you release Alyxian - who has spent a thousand years slowly becoming absorbed into the Netherdeep, and being tortured by its influence - without helping him heal from his pain? He turns into a storm of shadow that 'can reduce cities to rubble in a matter of days' and begins razing Exandria.

Just an observation.

[song-of-baldy-ron]

Today I’m thinking of how different a mortal’s fear of death must feel in a world with an established and known afterlife like Exandria. Clearly there is still a natural fear of death/ survival instincts that keep life on Exandria intact, but what of the fear of the unknown/oblivion/simply not existing anymore that is so intrinsically linked to the fear of death in our world?

Are most of Exandria’s mortals even capable of understanding the fear the gods have of beings like Predathos? Is this what the Dawnfather may have meant when he told Cassida there are things she doesn’t understand?

And if the gods are in charge of mortals’ afterlives in Exandria- what happens to those souls when Predathos is released? When Predathos consumes a god, does the god’s followers get eaten/removed from reality alongside them?