Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-39332473-20190808194309/@comment-39332473-20190917105846

77.111.246.98 wrote: From interlude:

T:The untouchable Ivala, reduced to this. I can imagine how pleased you are with your little Church, hmm?

This is evidence of church of Ivala being responsible for the current state of the goddess (at this point, I will consider this a power level, not the prisoner status, as latter would implicate the Church directly). This need not imply that they are aware of what they are doing, at least not the majority of them, however they ARE draining her. This will also explain why the rank-and-file priestesses are losing their connection to Ivala - she is simply becoming weaker. We have learned that the power of shards is limited. Most of her power is being drained to allow church crazy things like 3AW wall.

It is possibble (even probable) that Ivala was the one who initiated direct connection to her worshippers originally, however the church, given a finger, bit off the arm. For the greater good - they needed a tool to fight the IK(s).

Now it is technically possible that the leadership of the Church is completely oblivious. They think that they are using these massive spells and the power is coming from nowhere, or that Ivala is infinite and therefore they can keep pulling more and more power. In fact, I suspect that vast majority of priestesses (including most High Priestesses) think that way. After all the Church was established long ago, and likely operated with consentual links. However at a certain point something happened. The power that Church started drawing increaed. When Simon confronted Hester on the Ivalan wall he explicitly asked what price they had to pay for it, which she dodged with 'is it that hard to believe that devotion can produce these effects? Well, not telling you anything'. This leaves me with one out of two options - either Hester is more oblivious than she looks or she knows what she is doing. Even in the latter scenaro she need not be the captor, simply someone who is utilizing the link to the maximum.

So it is possible that whoever the captor is, they are not affiliated with the church. They either were ok with church draining their goddess, or simply wanted to remove Ivala from being able to influence the world, and not care about what church does to her. Out of characters we know, Anak could fall into that category. The pros of this theory would be another reason why Ivala is weak (theosen collection from prelude) and the fact that Anak likely has Zelica as captive and therefore knows something about imprisoning goddesses. Zelica being drained is implied from the fact that Wendis stopped hearing her after a while. The cons is that during the conversation between Mythin and Ivala where they talked about "monster who has Zelica" to be different from her captors. Also in his conversation with Ivala, Tanurak explicitly used Anak by name (technically title), but did not name the captor.

So I keep my speculation. Hester is the the last Arclent Tower walker and "the" captor of Ivala who found a way to exploit consentual links and drain the godess for the greater good - fight with Arclent IK.

On a tangentially related note, the Totally Normal Girl has blonde hair with blue eyes, same as Ivala. If we assume that she has a direct link to Ivala, letting her drink from the shard might help sustain the drained goddess for a while longer.

>This is evidence of church of Ivala being responsible for the current state of the goddess (at this point, I will consider this a power level, not the prisoner status, as latter would implicate the Church directly). This need not imply that they are aware of what they are doing, at least not the majority of them, however they ARE draining her. This will also explain why the rank-and-file priestesses are losing their connection to Ivala - she is simply becoming weaker.

This is a good catch, especially about the rank and file priestesses having crises of faith that SL keeps showing us. That makes a lot of sense.

>So it is possible that whoever the captor is, they are not affiliated with the church.

This is still my position, but you've definitely given us something to chew on.

> Also in his conversation with Ivala, Tanurak explicitly used Anak by name (technically title), but did not name the captor.

Also something that stuck out to me. Unfortunately, I think evidence points to the captor being someone who is as yet unknown to us.

> Hester is the the last Arclent Tower walker and "the" captor of Ivala who found a way to exploit consentual links and drain the godess for the greater good - fight with Arclent IK.

This is where you lose me a bit. Sure, Hester could be a tower walker. Her role as Arclent Pope would probably give her enough power to makes waves in Towerspace. The only way I can see this as possible, though, is if Ivala was dropped off at the Cloudy Pillar Ultramax within Hester's lifetime, by Hester's own personal effort. Anything else would require a giant, multi-generational conspiracy between people who can barely agree on doctrine, let alone agree that keeping god tied up in the basement is really for the best.

Here's a question: Has Ivala ever interfered directly, in the same way that Mithyn, Zelica and the Mother have? Is it possible that she has gone quiet from her capture only recently (i.e., within a human lifetime)? I was under the impression that she's been quiet for a very long time, that she communicated through her scriptures and not through direct contact. None of the followers of Ivala we've spoken with have said or indicated that Ivala speaks to them in the same way that the Mother speaks to Melmyn, for example. Mithyn's followers, however, seem to indicate that the Goddess of Magic speaks to them directly and explicitly, like the Mother. (What I'm getting at - is Ivala being silent something new?)

I don't think Hester or the Church have her captured. I think something else did that a long time ago - in fact, I'm not toally sure she isn't where she is by semi-choice (I'll explain below*). I do think that you're onto something that Hester and the church might be semi-knowingly draining their god of power for short-term goals. Also - remember when Xestris was talking to our friend Xerxes at the start: something about a channel of divine power? Someone in Aram might be doing the same thing that Hester is doing, but putting that power into Chosen instead of doing anything constructive with it. (also, bet you a dollar the Aram church is about to schism)

(* Mithyn mentions that her isolation was for her protection, but says that the time for that is passing, during the Tanurak preparation section. My pet theory is that this is what all the goddesses were doing up until now: keeping themselves distant and separate from the world, as in the tower their isolation was like a shield to protect themselves from whatever it is they are so frightened of.)