I have been thinking a bit about what the other powers are in the Land. Theres probably human empires, elven empires, various kingdoms and the demigods and monsters. Blood Coven and Banks. Ritcher will face all of these. But the largest challenge may be uniting or eliminating the other chaos seeds with powerful abilities. Most chaos seeds will be unique but but not super powerful abilities. Some will be on par with Heman. And a very few will be Mythic or Legendary like Richers. I'm wondering what these could be. This is especially true since Richer does not really have an advantage in chaos magic. Being able to access strata is something you can purchase with chaos points. Being able to ascend, while rare because you have to reach 45 and because you have to come to terms with yourself, is still not unique, and reaching tier two is also not an advantage over the other chaos seeds. The only things that set Richer apart in term of chaos is the two bonuses from the two choices he made, being about to sense sources of chaos and double the points from chaotic vessels. These are cool but not huge advantages, and presumably other chaos seeds will also get choices from their adventures. So really, the difference is the abilities, and the Grand Aura. Starting with other powerful abilities: Some Ideas: Regenerative health could be on par with Heman's ability I think. What about an ability where you don't loose health at all– impervious to damage, the only way you can die is from old age? Be able to teleport would be very powerful. Being able to open portals to other planes of existence would be pretty legendary. Some crazy rare magic gift, like star magic or gravity magic would be powerful. Something that Richer could learn if someone could ever write a spell book and teach him. Good luck with that. Absorbing other people's abilities and skills when you kill then would be useful. Having a fast leveling ability so that a tenth or a hundredth of the experience would be necessary to level each time would be a quick way to become a boss. Being able to shape shift into other powerful creatures. Also being born into a position of power, like for filling a prophecy of a people and becoming their leader would be powerful. There grand aura may not be countered. The Originals pointed out that much is being drawn to the Riverlands, and they didn't specify other confluences of power, which makes me think Richer is the only one with an Aura this powerful. This means that he has an advantage in the resources he can draw upon, like allies (Heart mother, eventually drawvres, piksies, Randy) dungeon, magic cores, celestial tree, bloodstone, among other things. This could be decisive in the end. What do you guys think?
Just a quick note, he gets double benefits from vassals, not necessarily just points. We know they would give him points but he may also get other things (quest exp, bonus to chaos magic etc) which would also be doubled. A "Blink" teleport type ability could be very powerful with certain conditions. Can you change your physical orientation mid blink? There's likely a cool down or possibly unlimited but only for one hour per day, but it'd be huge for combat or exploration. Absorbing abilities would be beyond legendary. Just starting off with killing for racial abilities this person could become monstrous. Unless they gain weakened versions, with a chance to power them up to full strength somehow, maybe more kills, I don't see this one as being allowed. Now skills on the other hand, that I could see, but without a limitless /jack of all trades type ability, could prove to only be useful for a time. Likely wouldn't get too much per kill either, but still quite powerful. The fast leveling (I assume you mean personal level) would be a pretty big double edged sword. Getting to 45 (or higher if they had a race change) in 1/100 or 1/10 of the time means there's is less time to gain the extra paths to ascend to. Powerful, but would almost certainly need to be complimented by a strong/greater /grand chaotic aura. I like the ideas though. How about a Mage killer, where they have zero magic potential themselves, but mage cast spells are 99.99% ineffective on them and they have a 90% resistance to inherent magic abilities (such as Alma's psi blast, or the koolari fear laughing, Barrow doubt debuff etc)
I think the vast majority of chaos seeds will be unimportant scrubs no matter their abilities, struggling to get past level 20. If they even try to do that, many will seek out the nearest safe spot and take whatever work they can get in order to survive. The ones that matter will be the ones with overwhelming abilities (Heman) or the ones with a powerful drive. Of those two, drive is going to carry you much farther than almost any ability, because abilities are ultimately finite tools designed for a few things, but with drive you can develop every aspect of yourself or build a true partnership with others (party ). I wouldn't be surprised if some of the strongest seeds end up being people that started out with garbage abilities and getting pushed around by other seeds, but invested time and effort until the balance shifted in their favor. Richter's greatest advantage is that he has the mist village, the pop and the alliance with the HT. He basically came to the land going full speed ahead and never let down. At the same time his patron(s) have clearly made an effort to prepare the road ahead. The fealty of the kindir is an invaluable advantage as well, they are a race of travellers and kindir talk freely amongst everyone, but especially around other kindir exchanging stories and information. At the same time they have an ability to get in anywhere and everywhere, whether they are wanted there or not. They are an endless source of information he can tap into. I also think powerful chaos seeds will be especially prone to underestimating kindir because they seem silly and moronic. In addition to that he has both powerful starting abilities and the drive required to succeed. Richter's ability to tap the higher strata likely isn't unique, but it should be fairly rare. Opening the first layer was 100 points, the second 500 and so on. Except Richter gets a boost of 3 levels on top of the basic ones he has unlocked, giving him access to the fifth. The only chaos seeds with a shot of having sufficient points to unlock the fifth strata at this stage are prolific chaos seed hunters - should be very rare at this stage to have gathered that many points from kills - or they have an extremely high chaotic alignment.
Absorption abilities are always grotesquely OP and uninteresting. Levelling on its own would quickly become worthless (every extra statpoint is worth relatively less) and you would lose out on the possibility of an early profession. It could be useful as long as you kept your level low early on, but not that useful. To have a shot against others at your level you would still need time to develop the 90% of your powerbase that doesn't rely on your personal level. Fullfilling a prophecy could work, but it does not seem like it fits the world. Shapeshifting is always a goody. The exiles pointed out that somewhere in the southeastern river peninsula something was attracting chaos. It was already one of the major spots as of that time. With Richter upgrading his aura another tier, its likely he is the defacto biggest chaos magnet on the planet. Drawing chaos seeds from the eastern river peninsula towards the village and exerting a growing draw on seeds further away. Likely linked to luck. It draws opportunity and danger after all, which is what luck is all about.
You'd be invincible against direct magical damage, but would still be vulnerable to the grease spell, summons, undead, and indirect spell attacks just to mention a few. You'd also be vulnerable to mages that use their power to buff themselves or their allies.
True, but someone with an Anti-Magic Field around them may disrupt, &/or gradually weaken &/or shorten the duration of many of those types Spells within that field? If course it would also course him and any allies issued as well.
That's certainly true. That would probably be a legendary ability though, if it works against all types of magic, magical items and magic-based abilities.
I think one of the chaos seed has the ability to control time. Highest form of energy right? I think richter will eventually learn to control it to. I think that in certain moments he comes back and speaks to himself i.e when Elora pledged herself to him and something in the back of his minds asked him was there not a 3rd choice. I think that was future him lol.
Time and Gravity are closely connected, gravity can alter time flow, places with high density like Granite Mounts can actually slow time by a minute amount, proven by Atomic Clocks.
We see similar effects on tests done in space. Pretty sure they were done on the international space station, but not positive.
Or increased gravity beyond or below certain thresholds has an effect on the frequency with which cesium 133 oscillates, creating the illusion that time has been altered, when in reality the clock is the affected one. Or is that nonsense? How would you know?
On a site note it would be funny seeing more books where the character understand science (mainly physics) better and have near breakdowns trying to grapple with the ramifications of magic. The night lord series comes to mind.
If you have near breakdowns at physics being proven wrong you need to read up on what it means for something to be an unsubstantiated theory as well as a pile of guesswork . We have barely acquired the first smidgem of proof that gravity waves are real here many decades after they were first theorized, and are essentially grasping at straws when it comes to explaining why the heck our galaxy does not conform to the models (it does not, its hilarious watching them scramble around on the various fora trying to explain it away). Its all wrong when you get far enough away from the galactic core. And that is just an issue with one set of theories to describe one of the fundamental powers. No one has any serious idea how the fundamental powers interact, there isn't even the beginning of understanding on which we could build a theory of everything. Also the physical laws as we know them and the properties of things are very unlikely to be the same in other universes. In fact its mindboglingly unlikely if I understand the science right, barring (harks "dimwit" harks) interpretations of quantum physics such as manyworlds where the "settings" are essentially copied over.
how is Richter going to let any earthling into his party? twice he has been burned by letting unknowns get close to him. Only a fool would let it happen a third time. It would have to be a person that had battled with him to survive in the depths for a long time. I could only see that happening if each person had to rely on the other to survive, and not just by sacrificing the other so they wont get eaten first. Richter would need to get hurt and the other person would need carry and care for Righter too, so trust is formed.
Actually, that would be the weakling's solution as the only way to ensure you are never betrayed is to never give trust. It is comparable to wearing armor all the time, impractical and damaging, which is why people with serious trust issues have such a hard time making even a single lasting relationship. They demand impossible proof and hold others to a standard that can never be achieved, a standard they more often than not do not themself aspire to. Meanwhile the rest of us get hurt and occasionally betrayed, but we also build a dozen relationships for every betrayal. So Richter should do the hard thing and trust until people prove themselves liars - though he should also attempt to verify. A very tiny percentage of chaos seeds have killed so far, 200.000+ out of several hundred million, its less than 0.1%. Out of those the majority likely killed in some form of self defense or battle, rather than murde. Irl very few people are like Heman, capable of not only killing others but seeking out innocent victims in a methodical fashion to murder in cold blood. Its the act of a maniac, which we know from his confession that Heman is. He is also an addict, which is a terrifying combination.
I believe that once any earthling kills another and gets a hit of that good good chaos, most will become addicts. 0.1% is quite high, because there is much less of a chance that one would even meet another at all in a 100 days. We will see what Richter does with the possble group of chaos seeds at the end of book eight.
It would go against the nature of chaos to enslave/ turn everyone into murder addicts and besides the lords have no reason to make things worse, not when they are deliberately using Richter and others to prevent the inevitable fighting from spinning out of control. The pleasure they get from taking in chaos energy is a temptation that some will fall to, but most of us do not turn into addicts because we get one hit of heroin no matter how good it feels, especially not when there are no withdrawals or other negatives. Richter barely ever thinks about the pleasure, I don't remember it coming up once in book 8. A .1 % murder rate is low no matter how you look at it. Most chaos seeds will congregate towards population centers, as both Heman and Richter did, or areas with strong chaotic auras. So while their initial starting points are essentially random, where they end up is less so. After a month most have probably met one or two other chaos seeds, unless they have been extremely unlucky, and a few of those encounters have proven deadly. The majority are likely just happy to have met someone they can talk to, instead of having to listen to tribesmen/ villagers talk nonsense.
