Chapter 7 Q&A (Patreon)

Below are the questions I received for the Q&A. These were pulled from Tumblr and some DMs I received. If I missed your question, please let me know so I can remedy that. I've been juggling an unusual amount of messages lately and some may have slipped through.

I went into as much detail as I could without ruining any surprises for later. If you have additional questions you'd like me to do deeper answers to, let me know! If you have follow up questions about these that I might be able to cover without spoiling things, please comment and I'll expound as much as I can!

Needless to say: There be spoilers afoot! If you haven't read ALL of Chapter 7, these may ruin some of the magic for you.

Is there a limit to the amount of things/people Shadow can teleport bc Shadow IS teleporting the caravan + dainn around so I was wondering how large we can go

There is a limit for both distance, amount of people/things, and how many times he's used the ability.

He can take himself, Nathanael, the caravan, and Dainn really far if he's only using the power once and then he needs a day or two before using it again. He can go about from Stonebrook to Lale in one go, so you're looking at around 3 days worth of travel in distance.

Adding people/living things adds more strain than adding objects, so just a couple more people would make things more difficult.

I am still so tickled pink that Nathan/Typhon are getting all these romantic moments UGHHHH THEYRE SO DOOMED BY THE NARRATIVE ITS SO FUN!! I also think he’s an excellent addition to the RO companions due to his connection with Duri and Aster :3c like he compliments their stories and themes so well without it feeling like he’s stepping on anyone’s toes! It does make me wonder if you were always planning this little romance with him or if he was just going to stay as part of the larger supporting cast…

Nathan/Typhon were planned from the very start. He was actually set out before Rune and Zahn specifically. Before I even made Oswin, I knew that I wanted to pull a little sneaky. I had seen other IFs with "secret/mystery" ROs and I always found it amusing that this factor was revealed so readily. So, I thought, maybe I'll make an actual mystery with it.

So, Aster was a red herring. Nathan/Typhon was always meant to be the real mystery suitor. In the original plan, Aster was not actually going to be an RO at all, he was going to break a few hearts instead. The more I put planning into him and fleshed him out, the more my heart changed for him and I thought people might actually dig a romance with him. So after his reveal when I was seeing some real love for him and his potential, I officially changed my mind and decided that there was a way for him to find love with the MC as well.

In addition, if you're wondering, basically all the Tumblr asks prior to Chapter 5's release where ??? is mentioned - they're actually about Typhon. After Ch 5, things got dicey as I tried to keep my secrets. If you take a look back, you'll probably note some pretty big clues that there was something odd going on. (And no worries, Aster has his own NSFW Alphabet and it will be posted soon).

What about the other cats with the other carts... does shadow also have flesh puppets or does typhon just own several cats but only really cares for shadow the most…

In the next chapter, Typhon will explain more specifics, but basically Shadow is an extension of himself and a small piece of his godhood – the cat is an anomaly even to him. This is why he can warp and also why Typhon's cloak can do the same on a smaller scale – they contain pieces of him/his power. All the cats you meet are also Shadow. Same with Typhon, he becomes the other cat and is wholly unique in body, smell, and personality.

Dainn, however, is simply enchanted to look different. It's like an illusion spell, I suppose.

so my main question is: can typhon control multiple puppets at once... 

He can!

So there's a few things here.

Typhon is "housed" in his merchant puppets and he can even sort of tune himself out. Think of him as an actor who is playing a role. Especially during the events of the story where he's beginning to struggle to keep his mind in check, his mind (as Typhon) is nestled in the puppet on "standby" so he's not completely there. Normally, he'd still maintain the memories from the puppet, but lately that's even been difficult. He's had trouble understanding who he is or what happened. Think of these as…fleshy cocoons he pilots around, lol.

He can also "make" puppets that he controls but he isn't embodied in. This could be inanimate objects or he can make some realistically fleshy people which are mostly just clever magical illusions that can be touched, speak, and act human. And…less fun, he can do the same with dead things…so people or animals.

And like we've seen, he can literally make people or animals into puppets and control them with his magic strings. He doesn't like doing this if it's against a person's will.

The number of puppets he can have correlates with how much power he's willing to put into it. The more power he lets go of, the less stable his mind tends to be. 

It's implied Typhon can give items and animals teleportive powers. Does he himself not have them? Can they be given to humans?? Could he trade the cloak for teleportation??

This is a fun one. Typhon himself can no longer teleport/warp himself any longer. He made his cloak long before Shadow and it has a couple of his abilities that are fairly minimal compared to his real power. He made a lot of things over the years and this was a sort of prototype.

Shadow is a very literal part of him now and as a bit of an accidental side effect, the cat kinda took his warp ability from him. Whoops. That said, he could probably still zip himself around minimally, but the core of that ability isn't in him anymore. So, he can no longer channel it into an artifact or anything like that.

Perhaps he could reabsorb the power in the cloak or…even the cat, but he's not keen to find out.

Would the characters have survived without Duri'naan's help against the demon?

I've really had to think on this one. I do think that everyone may have managed to get away and technically survive, but they wouldn't have been successful in retrieving the stone. I would bet that there would have been some grievous injuries as well, and someone may have actually bit the dust. Duri pulled a LOT of that fight and kept the demon busy while the others chipped away at it. Rune could have unleashed some significant blows to it and Aster could have done more, but…well, let's say that his priority would have been his own safety.

Would it be possible to share a few fun facts about Willow?

I would love to!

Similar to the Twinflowers, she has a larger family and all her siblings were named after trees. She's currently the second oldest out of 5, but they once numbered 7. Her two oldest brothers were in a logging accident when she was still pretty young and neither made it. They survived initially, but with significant injuries. She helped care for them until they passed and it left a very big mark on her.

She was painfully shy and nervous as a child. She knew MC and the Twinflowers for years before she tried to make friends.

Caring for others gives her life. She loves what she does even though it's hard, she loves being a parent and a wife.

I feel like she's the type who would make a great leader, but would have no desire to.

Willow has a rich inner life as well, she's a daydreamer and sometimes gets a little lost in her own little worlds.

Why would us awakening and breaking the curse cause Typhon to go into madness? Are his powers connected to it? 

You'll learn more as the story continues, but the basic thing is that there is a curse currently on all the gods that keeps them from popping out more gods. Hayat, the god of life, carried this out. But magic is fickle and a curse must always have a way to break it (called a contingency by mages), like a backdoor or a cheatcode because not even magic can be absolute. Hayat's curse was to prevent new gods and protect humans by essentially neutering the power gods had over them. The way to break Hayat's curse is to create a new god. He was pretty sure it was ironclad as the way to break it is prevented in the curse itself. MC's godhood was sort of frozen until it could no longer be contained. It's a bit like they've been in a cocoon all these years and are slowly emerging. Once they have fully emerged, the curse will break and the gods are free to do as they please once more.

Typhon's madness is caused by magic – copious amounts of power. Where gods generally have limits that would prevent this, he has no known limit. His magic is also just different, which will be explained more in the story so I won't spoil it here. Hayat's curse, as a happy side effect, shielded Typhon from the influence of magic. This goes along with other things that were happening that Typhon himself was doing, which he'll tell the MC in detail in the next chapter. Without the gods being an everyday force among humans, magic dwindles and becomes more placid, more simple.

Each god has a "catalyst" which they gain power from, and as we're seeing, some gods do have specific powers tied to their catalyst as well. This is why your MC's mark creates a different outburst of power when they have a little breakdown at the end of Chapter 7.

Typhon's catalyst was madness which was a catchall word for negative emotions. During the times where he was lucid, he was working on a way to change this or prevent it – anything to get relief, which is why he made lots of little magical artifacts. And he did this for a very long time and managed to change his catalyst. But now, things are starting to reverse.

The more MC awakens into full godhood, the more the curse fractures, the more magic runs free, and the less protection Typhon has. Think of it like glass for the shark tank at an aquarium. It's made to withstand a lot of force even if it's cracked, but it can only take so much.

Are the people in the beginning of the story our parents? they are, presumably, a couple and have a vested interest in if whatever process occurred worked… however i could be reading into it too much and they’re simply just a part of whatever church our birth mother belonged to

It won't be too much longer until you find out who those people were, but I won't be spoiling any identities just yet. :3

okay this isn’t a question per se but a really far out theory– Aster is the same age as us, right? and he has very powerful magic that obviously hurts him to use, like it’s not made for his body. The lady in the beginning of the story mention having another lead, presumably about a way to achieve the goals of the church. Aster’s family is noble, has connections to the gods (or more specifically Aigar), one could assume his family also has connections to many churches, and Aster is thought to be a bastard child. I think….. that he is another experiment baby like us. Perhaps something to do with harnessing the power of the gods? I haven’t thought quite that far yet lol like i said this is an incredibly far out theory

Aster is very close in age to the MC (more on that later, because he actually may have had a birthday recently…), but you won't know more for a little bit still. Perhaps he feels the MC's pain on a deeper level? Hmmm