Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-39332473-20190808194309/@comment-44625412-20191208215956

So since I've just finished the latest update, I want to speculate some more on the identity of Ivala's Captor(s). I think that there's been a lot of good speculation in this thread, and while my initial theory was that it may be Hester, the timelines don't quite match up. But I think to talk about the captors, we need to talk about exactly how Ivala was captured, and through what mechanism she remains imprisoned—Tanurak refers to her as 'untouchable', and that she was reduced to her current state, looking on her with pity.

So we can assume that Ivala's capture happened during the period Tanurak was exiled, after Ulrissa shattered him. Where does that put us on the timeline? Well, Ulrissa mentions multiple times that she has explicitly chosen mortality, so while I don't think she's following a human lifespan—my current theory is that gaining power in the Tower may extend a lifespan to some degree, as part of 'adapting' to the Tower—she does have a life that follows roughly the same path. We can follow this to the conclusion that Tanurak was exiled from reality a relatively short time ago, presumably before the 'Asshole of Arclent', as he's referred to here, gained power, since we know from other conversations that Ulrissa is Givini, by ethnicity if not nationality, and held her position in the Tower during the fall of Givini to the aforementioned Incubus King, which was long enough ago that veterans of the war like Simon are old. The main point on the timeline here is Hilstara, since she fought with Simon and Wendis during the War, but was either young enough or bashful enough about her affections for Simon that Wendis never invited her into their bed. So I think we can say with a small degree of certainty that the war against the AoA happened roughly 25 years ago in universe.

So we know that Ulrissa, and thus possibly Tanurak, was in power at least 25 years ago, when, as said previously, the Ivalan Church was much smaller and had much less impact on the world. Was Ivala still 'untouchable' then? Was she still active in the world, or was she already trapped?

It seems pretty obvious that the Church of Ivala has been around for a while. Long enough that Gawnfall has been built up into a city after beign the site of the revelation to the four original priestesses, and long enough that three separate sects of the church have emerged, and no one seems to mention them as recent. So the Church has existed for a long time, even before whatever caused the other divine shard holders to emerge from the depths of the Tower and interact with the world proper again—Mithryn's GoM cult is very new, since it exists in a random basement in the Yhilin slums when we first see it, and Orilise mentions the Mother Cult's rise being recent if I recall correctly. What does this tell us? Well, firstly, Ivala herself is most likely much more interested in the shape of the world than her sister shard holders, and is (was?) the goddess most involved in trying to make the world a better place. She also remained attached to the world when Mithryn (and possibly other divine shard holders)—I assume here that Mithryn has been an active shard-holder long enough to have met with Ivala while she wasn't captured, since she appears to be visiting her semi-regularly and possibly working with her in an attempt to escape—didn't; instead, I assume hiding themselves in the more 'abstract' regions of the Tower. Or did she?

The divine shard holders retreated from the world, and the 'why' seems pretty clear to me; the first abomination, predating The Entity. This places us back on the timeline before Esthera's rise to power—and if I recall correctly, since I don't have the game in front of me, she was seated either third or fourth at The Gathering. So divine shard holders haven't been a force in the world for a long time, and I don't think Ivala is an exception here. I think that there's a chance of this: when Ivala and the other goddesses decided it was 'safe' to come back to the world after the purge of the abomination, Ivala returned to find herself trapped. This, however, creates a slight issue in the timeline, since Tanurak needs to have been inactive when Ivala became trapped according to my theory.

Revisitng Tanurak, I think we can assume a couple more things. The way Ivala recognizes him seems to indicate that she was active, or at least not 'blinded', when he was. This could be a point to narrow down on the timeline, but it's not likely, since this would require Tanurak's original form to have been mortal, and I don't think the Tanurak we see would have allowed that. So Ivala and Tanurak were active at the same time. This may explain why Ivala was active when other goddesses, presumably, weren't—The Mother may have been, since her religion seems to have ancient roots as well, but she only ever seems to bother with 'her children', so we'll discount her—Ivala may have been working as a balancing force against Tanurak's subtle chaotic influence, before Ulrissa was. It's a bit of a reach, but it's the most sensible explanation I've been able to come up with for why they would recognize each other, However, I doubt that Ulrissa and Ivala have ever met, or this would have been mentioned at some point in order to show Ulrissa's knowledge of the deeper workings of the world and/or Tower. This is the tipping point, at least for me, that Tanurak is, or was, an immortal. He presumably stopped bothering with divine shard holders when they left the world after the First Abomination, which to be honest seems to me like something he'd be interested in as a major force of chaos. He may also be related to the changing nature of succubi on Arclent—or more accurately, his absence may be related, but that's a subject for another post. Ulrissa appears to have thought Tanurak obliviated for, presumably, most of her 'career' as a major force in the Tower, which puts Tanurak's exile on a pretty long time span, most likely before the rise of both the Fucklord and the AoA, since he probably would have meddled with either of them if he had the chance to, given that they were very good at causing chaos, if a bit boring with it.

So with that explained, can we finally get to trying to figure out who Ivala's captor is? Well, we can try. I think that given the Crystal of Ivala, Ivala's Wall, and the Chosen (Who currently only seem to appear on Arclent, according to Xestris's report to the Anak in the prologue, with one notable exception), we have enough evidence to say that it must be someone within her church, using her power, if not her shard directly, for their own ends. We then have a pretty simple time narrowing down candidates—they would have to be very high in the church to have the political capital to work these great acts like Ivala's Wall and the Crystal, they would have to be Tower walkers with great experience, in order to be able to hide the evidence of the Chosen, and they would have to have been active starting at some point after Tanurak's exile. The first point winnows the field massively—pretty much everybody but our seven High Priestesses and one former high priestess are gone, along with rulers who are significantly affiliated with the Church—I don't think Alonon counts, Janine and, earlier, her husband definitely don't, and none of the non-human nations have a strong enough church following to count. This leaves only Aram's king as a possible candidate from the political side of things.

On the religious side, we can eliminate Andra easily, since she definitely doesn't have the will to hide such a secret. Annah was proven in the latest section not responsible, or the greatest actor of all time. Sarai being responsible would be the biggest curveball of all time, but we can discount her fairly easily—she was shocked by Simon's revelation that the Mother was real, and though she's shown an ability to fake a personality with the rest of the church, I don't think that was a lie. Nabith is appointed to replace Andra, and as such can also be discounted—the timeline just doesn't fit, unless she worked significantly behind the scenes with Ivala's Wall. Bertricia likely would've been much more confident about converting elves if she had concrete proof of Ivala's existence, in my opinion, and her confession to Carina that she's never felt Ivala's 'presence' seemed truthful. When it comes to the Aramites, Kerannii has only appeared during the council so far, so evidence for or against her is somewhat scarce, and Esmera losing her faith may be a point in her favor; it would fit with discovering that the transcendant good you worshipped is in fact just a significantly powerful person. Lastly, of course, we have Hester, who is probably the best candidate for reasons I'll explain below.

So we've narrowed it down to three characters we know of—I'm not going to discuss the king of Aram because we've not met them in story yet, and so it'd be pure speculation. Esmera's age is unknown, but assuming her portrait is accurate, she does appear old enough to have been in the church around the time that it expanded across the continent during/following the AoA's invasion. Kerannii, again, we're going by portraits here, doesn't, but of course age is less of a factor for Tower walkers; after all, if they can capture Ivala, they may have found a way to sip from her shard the way succubi do. Hester, on the other hand, initially seems like the strongest candidate. She's old enough to have been in power a long time, she's known to be secretive (see Ivala's Wall in the third arclent war), and her ambivalence during the Council shows the same type of distance that Alonon shows from Ardan politics, if not to the same degree.

Others have disputed Hester as Ivala's captor for a simple reason—Ivala's capture appears to have been going on for a long time, even from the perspective of the goddesses themselves. I think I've managed to introduce some doubt as to the length of Ivala's capture via the Tanurak timeline, at least enough for me, but again, we don't know how long Tanurak's been exiled or even how old Ulrissa is. But even if that part of the theory falls through, someone else has mentioned an excellent explanation for it. While Mithryn first mentions Ivala's captors, in chapter 4 she refers to Ivala's captor, singular. Whether this was a mistake or intentional, I think there's an explanation. Ivala's captor, in truth, may not be one person at all, but the institution of the church that's been built.

We're told recently that divine shards draw power from the environment, and the prevailing theory here seems to be that, perhaps via the Tower and how power is drawn from it, divine shards may gain power through faith, similar to how IK shards draw power through sexual bonds. But IK shards also release energy through sexual magic, and there's no reason for divine shards to be any different. So then, is Ivala's prison not built via actual bonds, but by the reciprocal nature of the 'faith bonds' she built with her followers that massively expanded over time? I think it's a nice theory, at least, but there's holes in it. Mainly that Ivala seems to be relying on Simon to somehow release her, given her conversation with Mithryn, and in this theory Ivala's release would necessitate destroying her church, and I don't think Simon's likely to do that.

Instead, I think the more likely theory is that whoever Ivala's captor is; the Church as a whole, Hester, the King of Aram, or someone else entirely, is keeping her captured by draining her shard's energy into massive expenditures like Ivala's Wall or the Crystal of Ivala. Or maybe a different way of fracturing divine power into many shards that somehow spread themselves across a wide space, unlikely to be gathered by one person and restored.

In case that wasn't clear, I'm talking about the Chosen. The main drive for this theory is the 'broken' Chosen we see in Stineford in the latest update, and his statement that "They needed a flawed vessel." This, to me, explains a lot about why the Chosen have so many… personality quirks. The Chosen are created via an autonomous process, seeking out flawed youths in search of power and giving it to them—recall Mestan's statement in Eustrin: "Giving a grunt power doesn't make him better, it just makes a grunt with too much power." The Chosen were never meant to change anything. Simon's cycle of trying to get a Chosen enough power to make him unstoppable was doomed from the start—they're chosen (get it?) specifically to get themselves killed and possibly annoy greater powers in the process. Their swords—the Shining Blades—aren't actually normal swords, if I'm guessing right. They're distilled power chipped off of a divine shard, and they also serve as a channel to allow the Chosen to draw divine magic and heal their wounds(I don't think we've ever seen a Chosen use any other form of magic, but that might not be interestind to see). The only way for a Chosen to escape this 'destiny', as far as we know, is giving up their power voluntarily; this also seems to stop the personality changes that Chosen undergo that make them more reckless, given Kalant.

So if the Chosen draw power from Ivala, forcefully draining her shard, then what about the one in Rodak we see during the Gathering? Every other Chosen we've seen is from Arclent, and according to Hester and Sarai, manifest near Incubus Kings. And there's also the Tower orc with the Shining Sword we see during the war that Aka mentions feels like a Chosen. What do you guys think is up with those?