#obey me nb lesson 53

[inhuman-obey-me]

Soupymeltymuddy timeywimey nonsense

So there were some interesting tidbits in Lessons 53+54, but one thing we want to discuss is the whole dilemma around MC's power.

Last time the story focused on MC and their power, it was all the way back in OG Season 2, when their power was literally destabilizing the Three Realms. But that whole matter was solved once MC got the Ring of Light, and for four seasons across two games and innumerable centuries, everything was all dandy again.

But not anymore~! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ ୭ ˚.⁺⊹ .ᐟ

(spoilers up to NB Lesson 54 below the cut!)

Suddenly, MC is casting spells without incantations, and seemingly without even intending to use magic. Apparently, MC's power is growing, and once again, it's now getting too powerful for us to control. Fortunately, this time, it's not causing massive inexplicable damage to major historical sites of the different realms, but it's still a problem for someone with so much magical power to not have full control over what that magic does.

So, what changed?

Well, we got sent to the past and ended up having to make pacts with the demon brothers all over again in order to get back to our own timeline.

Essentially, MC now has double-pacts with all the brothers.

We've already been told that time does not act in a linear fashion -- it's soup or mud. Even in the past, the power from the original pacts still existed to a certain extent; MC still had some limited magic and could still use "stay" on the brothers, but it was just more limited because MC didn't have those pacts "yet" in the past. Now that we're back in the present, the power of our second set of pacts with them has presumably traveled forward with us, and it seems we might perhaps be finally seeing the more serious consequences of our little trip to the past.

The question is -- where is the story going with this?

We have the whole situation of Simeon turning into a demon. We spoke before of all the ramifications this would have on the Three Realms. We even got a bit more in these lessons showing Raphael on the verge of a meltdown over it. Simeon's situation alone is a big conflict in the story.

But so far, that's all an entirely separate matter from MC's growing power. Plus, the teaser trailer for the season seems to have Lucifer saying, "Take my hand, master" and then shows a darkened partial image of Simeon, but Lucifer can't make a pact with Simeon if he becomes a demon, we already have a pact with Lucifer, and if overly powerful pacts are the problem for MC's magic, it wouldn't make sense to make another pact with Simeon next. And then, of course, there's the mysterious titular Nightbringer, whom we haven't seen or heard from in quite a long time now. So...what's going on?

We're unsure of where they're going with this, but Nightbringer did say back in the past that he wanted us to make pacts with all the brothers. So if this sudden increase in MC's power is a result of that, perhaps we'll finally find out what it is that he wanted?

[nocreativityfornames]

takeways from the new lesson (53)

MC had a strange dream where Raphael was in distress while Simeon tried to comfort him and Lucifer stayed back. Lucifer was the only one to acknowledge MC's presence, but before he could explain anything Raphael started yelling and lost control, and Asmo woke us up. It probably wasn't a shared dream, since Raphael didn't bring it up while talking to us during the scene at the field of flowers (unless Lucifer and/or Simeon remember the dream and that's revealed later).

Something or someone tried to attack Simeon and MC was able to protect him with magic without using an invocation or meaning to use magic at all, which means that their powers are getting out of control again, even while using the Ring of Light that's supposed to supress and stabilize their magic to keep them and everything around them safe from it (throwbacks to SWD season 2).

Raphael is reminiscing about the past, and tells MC that he recognizes the flowers around them as ones he saw in one of Michael's favorite books (about Devildom plants) right after the war ended when he found Simeon reading it. He explains that at the time they thought they'd never see the brothers again and missed their presence in the Celestial Realm, and Simeon was struggling with that but didn't want to let it show.

MC and Raphael are attacked (?) while they're still talking and Simeon is the one to show up in the moment and warn them right before the lesson ends.

[nocreativityfornames]

Barbatos and Solomon's first meeting and a theory of mine, aka: what if Solomon summoned Barbatos to save his friend?

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SWD S3 AND NB S1 AHEAD

Okay, so we've had pieces of info about their first meeting for a while now, but after collecting everything I could on these two to make my recent posts I was able to put them together and here it is.

First, there are the two times the story was briefly told in Obey Me! SWD, this one being from lesson 53-16 when Asmo discusses his first meeting with Solomon and then asks Barbatos about his:

And this next one being from lesson 49-A when Asmo asks about it for the first time and Solomon doesn't want to tell him:

And we learn what happened in the aftermath from Thirteen when she tells us about it in Obey Me! NB lesson 11-10:

So Solomon risked his life to summon Barbatos using an incantation and was left on the brink of death because of it, all because he "desperately needed his powers to control time", and after their interaction and whatever happened there, Barbatos took him to the Fountain of Knowledge and declared him the new protector of it.

By the way, they didn't make a pact during their first meeting but later on instead, or at least that's what I got from Barbatos saying:

I'm saying this because "eventually" is vague enough to be open to interpretation and could mean that they did make a pact during their first meeting and that it only took some bargaining for Barbatos to agree. But the way I saw it was that the pact was made later on.

So, the questions left unanswered from this are:

1 ) What made Solomon want to control time badly enough for him to seriously risk his life for it?

2 ) Did Barbatos help Solomon by using his powers to control time like he wanted him to?

Because it never says that Barbatos agreed to Solomon's "desperate need", and it doesn't say why Solomon was so desperate for it in the first place, only telling us that there was something he wanted enough to risk death for it.

But it does answer WHY later.

At first I thought we didn't have more info on their first meeting, but then I remembered this little moment from Obey Me! NB ( that I added to my post afterward and here's the screenshot from the post because I was too lazy to open the game and go to the lesson again ):

So Solomon almost died summoning Barbatos because he desperately needed his powers to control time after causing serious destruction to the Human World with his...?

Well, maybe, the passage does say that Barbatos appeared before him and not that he was purposely summoned by him, but it could be that the book is just depicting what people at the time thought happened, since it makes it sound like that was their first meeting when Barbatos himself said that Solomon summoning him was how they first met.

Anyway, let's assume I'm right and that's what happened and the reason why Solomon needed Barbatos was to fix the damage he did to the Human World unintentionally.

THE MAIN THEORY: Solomon summoned Barbatos to save his childhood friend's life, who was affected by Solomon's powers going out of control.

This is something that Solomon tells us in Obey Me! NB lesson 14-16, that he had a friend while he was locked up in the basement as a kid. He tells us the story of how they met and says that from then on the friend started visiting him regularly and that they would chat through the bars of the window basement and that's how their interactions went for however long. But then while telling us about them he suddenly stops:

And thus this became my current theory.

Solomon's powers, which have always vastly surpassed your usual human's, start getting out of control and becomes a threat to the world, endangering one of his loved ones ( much like MC's in S2 with Lucifer ). And desperate to save their life and out of what to do, he summons a demon he knows can control time to help him.

Judging by how Solomon struggles to tell the story to MC though, we can assume that it didn't end well.

Maybe Barbatos refused to save his friend/had no way to do it ( he can only travel through timelines and not actually go back and change the one where he is ) and Solomon had to accept the fact that they were dying and say goodbye and this was the moment when he made this promise to them to become a good sorcerer, learn how to control his powers and protect humanity.

Or maybe Barbatos did try to save them/told Solomon how to do it but it ended badly somehow and that's what brings Solomon pain when he tries to talk about it.