Rowan: The what.
Violet: Well, I think we’d all like to hear a little more about this.
Atarangi: If you don’t already know, I shouldn’t say any more. It might derail the optimal results.
Rowan: Unless “revealing it by accident right now” is part of the optimal result, and you’ll be derailing it by not saying more.
Atarangi: Sir Rowan, please consider that I can make this call with more prophecy-related intel than you can . . .
Thorn: We’re here! Everybody out! . . . What was that about a prophecy?
Comment Header
12 Comments
See, shit like this is what makes me question any fictional system that relies on prophecy.
Based on theory of relativity, time travel is possible in our own universe. Now, granted, theory of relativity may be wrong, but if not, quantum physics offers a way how to make it work not weirder than rest of it (or Bell’s inequalities, which were already experimentally proven).
Assuming “probability” was a typo for “prophecy”… I guess HKMaly is looking at prophecy as time travel of information.
Please don’t swear at people just for being irrelevant. I like being able to enjoy reading the comments.
(Also, I believe the intent of the comment was “it’s not just fictional universes, it could theoretically be the way our real universe works as well”. So it wasn’t actually irrelevant, even.)
…yeah, I’m just gonna delete this, it’s way too much hostility for what’s likely either “your phrasing is unclear” or “you meant to post this as a reply to a different comment.”
Hahahahahahahahaha “derail” hahahahahahahahaha
Now I’m wondering if Atarangi is there *specifically* to spill the beans. Honestly, if they didn’t want this to get out it would have been easier to just not include any fire mages at all, particularly with Thorn’s PTSD.
Ok, definitely can’t find the can. Hope not too many of them get out if someone opens it all the way.
Well, this raises questions about the set-up for the plot.
If people have such little idea on how best to respond to prophecies, why even listen to them? Like, a Christian can say “Yes, this part of the Old Testament undoubtedly covers some point of real value, but I don’t know what it is, so I’m going to ignore it for now”. Why don’t people do something similar with prophecies?
Like, sure, maybe Thorn is supposed to play an important role stopping a war or whatever it is. But if people can’t tell whether they need to either:
a) Stop the information from spreading to untrusted people so that you don’t have stuff like evil vampires figuring out what’s going on and negating it entirely or turning it to their advantage
or b) Tell the entire team, including the people who might not be trusted so that they realise “oh, we’re supposed to do the thing that only we could do in order to save the nation”, in order for them to actually do the thing they’re supposed to.
Why do people instead not go with option C) Avoid risking an international incident and the breakdown of proper safety protocols by choosing not to put somebody into a situation they wouldn’t normally be trusted with.
I suppose the easy answer is that prophecies are at least a little resilient to mixups like that. But if they’re not resilient like that, I think that placing people’s continued safety and well-being upon the foundation of some pretty unreliable knowledge is a bad call.
Part of the problem is that we don’t know WHAT the disaster to avert is. It could be the ambassador dying, it could be an attack on the embassy by someone in Ceannis, hell it could even be another dragon attack. If the fire spirits aren’t going to tell you WHAT the disaster to avert is, they’re just setting you up to chase tail after tail until they’re either proven right one way or the other.
Prophecies are more convenient for the author than for the characters, for sure. I’m hoping that Atarangi has *different* info from the fire spirits than the Ceannis government both got, and revealed to the readers. She is definitely acting like it refers to something still in the future, which would rule out hellhounds.
We don’t even know if the prophecy is to AVERT a disaster. We just know that “IT MUST BE THORN AND HIS TEAM!“. It’s entirely possible that it’s going to be some ‘want of a nail’ scenario in which Thorn macking on Leif at EXACTLY the right moment saves the Ambassador as well as emboldening a putsch that starts with the execution of Lady Stanczia and Lord Imri, and ends with the dismantling of the Debt Servitude system.
Comment Footer