#moreso than the iberian sword technique or referencing an old student just

[astranauticus]

my personal pet theory about Aulus (working on the. quite warranted assumption that he is, in fact, Thorns' mentor, something that feels so true in my head i kind of forgot it was never actually confirmed in game lol) is that he skews more on the Cicero end of church of the deep bishop motivations but rather than trying to create a 'better' version of humanity, Aulus is trying to create a sort of best of both worlds intermediate between humans and seaborn that have access to the seaborne hivemind but can still retain individual human agency. let me explain

the idea of choice is present in almost everything Aulus says, both in Thorns' IS3 monthly squad and in hortus de escapisimo. as mentor to Thorns, the main thing Aulus taught him was the importance of making his own decisions, which honestly seems pretty contradictory to the nature of We Many as a hivemind where the self can be sacrificed for the good of the collective

in hortus de escapisimo, both Stephano and Arturia also comment on this as being Aulus' main motivation, with Arturia not fully buying his whole individual agency thing since she sees people's choices as being strung along by their emotions and desires

when Aulus asks Stephano if he's sure he wants to go forward with the plan to midnight mass feed seaborn to the abbey residents (and implies he thinks he's under the influence of Arturia's arts), Stephano thinks it's out of character for Aulus to question others' choices and resolve

similarly, he also planned on persuading Hyman against becoming a seaborn because he thought her judgement was clouded, which, again, doesn't seem very church of the deep bishop of him

but if independent choice and agency is so important to Aulus, why side with the seaborne? honestly i'm not 100% on this part, but my guess is that he's after the seaborn hivemind

considering the fact that Aulus also studied at the sanctilaminium ambrosi, a lateran monastery, it doesn't feel particularly far-fetched to me that an Iberian Aegir who has personally witnessed the Sankta's empathy would be interested in trying to achieve something similar on a wider scale in an attempt to bring about greater mutual understanding between individuals. in that sense, his focus on individual agency can be seen as more of a defense mechanism against being assimilated by the seaborn while he tries to take advantage of their most useful feature.

also, we have already seen him succeed in this goal. In hortus de escapisimo, Hyman spares her children despite her hunger, in spite of the collective's drive to survive, because she recognises them as her children. in the IS3 timeline, Aulus himself is implied to be something like this as well, having fully transformed into a seaborn but still being able to hold a conversation with Thorns as an individual where he once again encourages him to make his own choices.

and, similarly to Hyman, Aulus' teachings do manage to reach Thorns in the IS3 storyline (although, ironically, his individual resolve is more focused on hurting the collective after joining them)

again, this is all just speculation (lord knows when we're getting the next installment in the seaborn storyline) but since all the church of the deep bishops have gotten their own little moments of explaining what they think they're getting out of the job, this is just my personal guess at what Aulus' end goal is as our newly introduced bishop