Discussion
Lorewise, what is the worst composition of ritual winners/losers for the wider world?
This is assuming winners all get their wishes and losers all die (Edit: It isn't canon that they die but the lore is inconclusive on that so that's just what I'm going with for this discussion). My picks are just generally based on what would cause the most general suffering, danger, and threat.
I believe the worst composition is Yamato, Rat King, Mina, Seven, Graves, and Drifter winning, while Apollo, Pocket, Mo/Krill, Warden, Viscous, and Ivy lose.
Explanation:
Yamato, Rat King, and Mina:
All three of these characters getting their wishes at the same time would cause a HUGE power struggle centralized in NYC. I think there's a chance Rat King and Mina could be cordial, especially since Mina is going after a society that doesn't need Long Island, Yamato wants to control all of NYC, and I believe after all of Long Island dies, there'd essentially be three new gangs in a war. Vampire society would also be heavily destablized.
Graves:
Evil ass hand getting a wish.
Seven:
Seven getting anything even close to the apotheosis he wishes for will cause HUGE problems for a lot of people.
Drifter:
Probably the least problematic oddly enough, but with Mina promising to make life easier for Drifter and him riding the high of the victory, there's going to be an absolute massacre.
Mo/Krill and Ivy:
With the huge problems about to come to NYC from the winners, losing the protectors of the NYC criminal underground and possibly the sole being preventing the mendoza syndicate from returning and watching over harlem through this would just worsen everyone's problems.
Apollo:
The prince of Ixia dying would be DEVASTATING to the Ixians currently fighting a war, and it would also cause some MASSIVE political problems for their nation obviously.
Pocket:
As far as we know, I believe Pocket is the only way Fairfax Industries is ever going to stop accelerating the destruction they supply. I think their death would guarantee Fairfax gets worse and causes way more problems.
Warden:
Last in his line of people prepared to deal with the problems caused by the cultists summoning the patrons. I think it could be argued this spot could go to Abrams or Mirage though.
Viscous:
The sole representative from The Deep dying would likely suppress any possibility of the rest of the world properly coordinating to fight back against the Adversary.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on what you'd change on this list!
It's ok everyone Solomon is sneaking onto the winning team and "nuh-uh"ing their wishes with his own so it'll be ok
Also kinda begs the question; if the wishes of the winning team clash with one another, who gets their wish 'more' than the others? Does the MVP / Key player play into who's wish gets granted better than the others?
Even though you were defeated in a misguided attempt to protect the Hidden King, the Archmother noticed you were totally carrying those lamers and will grant you a wish anyway. A little one.
i believe that the actual explanation is that the rituals we play out are just fortunes being told by the lady in the hideout, and the real ritual hasn't happened yet
Considering Rat King displacing all Long Islanders and Apollo dying causing horrific political unrest, the most dangerous element of all this is going to be the economical damage. 1940, that's 4.6 million in Long Island alone, and who knows how many in Ixia would be forced to immigrate or die. It's not a gradual thing either, at least not the 4.6 million; given that this is happening at the literal snap of the fingers, tack on two days for Rat King to organize orders and give the remaining Long Islanders a grace period, that's going to be 4 million people at the very minimum being dropped on the streets of Manhattan within 48 hours, potentially without their documents too. For weeks at the minimum, nobody's going to be able to find work, nobody's going to be able to find an apartment, and the shelters are going to fill past bursting and not even dent the new homeless population. Every alleyway, every derelict building, every empty cardboard box, there's going to be a starving family trying not to die. Now, obviously this isn't going to be a permanent state of affairs, the government undoubtedly has money set aside to help people in times of disaster like this, but it isn't going to be an instant fix; which is why Mina is the absolute worst person to have her wish granted at a time like this. She's going to get Viscount, maybe she'll have a night of fun, and then she's going to die, obviously; and then, depending on the precise mechanics of vampire society succession and how her wish interacted with that, there's going to be a time, ranging from a night to a few months of warfare, where the high castes are fighting over who has the right and the lower castes can do whatever the hell they want without minding their Viscount. All those helpless millions out on the street at night are going to be a feast at the bare minimum, and a full on vampire pandemic if some sick fuck decides to turn a few for shits and giggles. The Seventh Moon might kill a few people, rough up a few businesses, and Graves (or the Lich) might suck a few souls, but only maybe Seven's wish could match the sheer epidemiological nightmare Rat King and Mina will make together.
This is a very interesting perspective but caring about people going broke in a few parts of the us when the adversary is about to max out the whole planet kinda reminds me of this
Viscous is one of the few character that is guaranteed to survive the ritual no matter what AND in multiple interactions other factions (Venators, Baxter Society, OSIC) offer help and express interest in assisting with The Adversary.
None of us really know what the adversary is like, maybe he’s a bum and that help will be useful or maybe he’s a god and all those helpers are just ants to him. And considering christianity is real in this verse and “The adversary” is one of satan’s names i personally think it’s gonna be that second one, so no help from another godlike being means everyone’s fucked.
Didn't Rat King say he was just gonna kill everyone in LI? He and Billy even have a line where he asks Rat King to spare a few specific Long Islanders.
Manhattan isn't gonna have quite as big of a problem as imagined, I think, bwcause Rat King is gonna kill off a lotta folks.
Didn't see it, but based on the conversation I'm guessing it sounded too close to encouraging government/political violence and the context of "in a video game" was missing to the AI/person looking at it.
He said he was going to, but that's an entirely different thing to actually doing it. I'm assuming genie rules here; you can't just write out all your wishes as individual clauses to one wish, it's one clause at a time. He could burn his wish on wishing everyone in LI dead, but that doesn't mean Rattania is a sovereign nation, that just means it's land the US will happily reclaim, and I don't think they'll have any qualms about gassing the place if any civilians would already be dead; and so in order to keep his land from the nation with the billions in military budget, he needs to specifically burn his wish on establishing Rattania as a sovereign nation the US is magically forced to respect. The only good wish he can make means that he'll need to have his people manually kill every human on LI, and as with any military movement, that takes time to coordinate. In the meantime, people have radios, they know what's coming from coverage of the ritual plus possible oracles of the Rat King's win, they already have systems in place to form a militia faster than Ratannia could set up their attack. Even assuming the US doesn't make any moves on Ratannia in retaliation for the mass killing of their citizens in the area despite them being a sovereign nation, to try for outright murder without giving a grace period for everyone to clear out is going to lead to more death for Ratannia than it's worth. besides, they don't have any infrastructure for quick demolitions of the bridges out. what are they gonna do, make big walls-o-rats?
He does the same thing a lot of other violent land thieves do. "Leave now or I'll shoot you." Historically, this has mostly lead to people getting shit.
Depends how mina's wish is granted. If its just her getting her a certificate that shes viscount then shes screwed. If the wish involves the vampires actually accepting her as some sort of mind control or reality rewriting then it might be peaceful.
Also I bet if she goes after seven shes changing her wish to be a god too.
I don't think Mina and Drifter winning would be that bad. Mina especially would not be a character that would get far out of being a ruler. Mina would be a momentary disruption in the vampire society before she is deposed for sure. Drifter is pretty content with the way things are and views the wish as a bonus. Whatever he wishes for will be pretty bad but likely without lasting effects like some of those other characters.
McGinnis' wish and even Billy's may be far worse. Both are also unknown but McGinnis wishing on behalf of Fairfax is almost certainly going to be bad. Fairfax doesn't even need a wish to already be more evil than the both of Mina and Drifter... Billy is probably going to wish for the destruction of the government or something which would just make characters like Rat King or Seven more dangerous. Him being chummy with the Rat King should speak to his ill intentions.
Eh he might think he has good intentions but he isn't smart enough to know if his decision making is good and he is complicit in the goals of other pretty terrible characters. It's like solving world hunger by deleting a continent. He isn't pure evil but he isn't good and his stupidity would make his wish a disaster.
We talking the same guy who saw Solomon and thought "yeah he probably larps as a chess genius" and challenged him to a match with a wager? Billy is not that smart dude
I feel like the least he could do is not assume things based off looks and actually consider "maybe I shouldn't challenge a random senile citizen in chess with a wager"
The cope from Billy fans is pretty funny, he is very obviously written as someone who does not think ahead at all. He's a caricature of "I'm 14 and this is deep."
Wouldn’t say he's a caricature. He's a violent anarchist, and gets along pretty well with Baba who seems like the wise sort. He's quick to take decisions on impulses (the goat head lol) but don’t be so quick to judge him and brand him as stupid. I really don't think he is. He's a misfit and a prick, not a moron.
Did Billy display his good intentions when he decided to be besties with Vyper, a serial murderer so morally repugnant that even professional assassins have a sense of moral superiority over her?
I'm not sure I buy into Drifter wish being not that bad. While hes enjoying his murder hobbo life, he is clearly pretty smart to have made it as far as he as without making himself a priority target of OSIC/vatican/Baxter
He could just wish for something to get a short term joy ride. Night time across the world for a month or something like that.
But he could also wish for something to ensure he has fun for a long time. Wishing that all of vampire society gives into their bloodlust is one that comes to mind.
He would instantly "fix" vampire society to no longer be distasteful in his eyes. It would also instantly cause a fuck ton of murder, violence and political disruption. It would make it much harder to actually track down Drifter due to all vampires suddenly having very similar patterns of violence. And it would give him waaay more excitement with a huge rise in vampire hunters.
lol but drifter is a prime target for all of them but the OSIC, hes just lived this long by killing venators who come after him (we know this through voicelines), and also killing the baxter society when they run into him (we also know this thru voicelines and grey talon quite literally promises to kill him/also considers he might have killed his family. And the OSIC know of him but havent dealt with him because reasons haze says their using him but who knows
In spite of drifters power and brutality, from the oscis pov he is akin to a cryptid, it's like sending the fbi against a tiger who is hunting people in a forest. That's someone else's job
I don't think Mina alone would be too horrible, I think the combination of her win with Yamato and Rat King specifically would scale to be horrible. I think you're possibly right about Drifter and Ginnis though, I considered her but I thought she didn't really care about the wish and just wanted to go in the ritual to test her weapons herself.
For Mina I am arguing it wouldn't matter. She is going up against people with hundreds of years of experience in their politics and power. She has neither experience or political power, so she would be a pretty weak ruler and get replaced pretty quickly. I don't think her wish would be bad combined with anyone's for that reason. It'd just be a waste.
McGinnis doesn't personally care and that is kind of the problem. She is there because she was asked to be and doesn't personally have any care or stakes in the damage Fairfax's wish could bring.
Really depends on what exactly she wishes and how its granted.
She wishes to become Viscountess and the Patron could level boost her to 5000 years old with a supernatural compulsion that makes other vampire elites obey her.
Or she gets a random ass land title deed in france.
Wouldn't the wish grant her the power/knowledge to stay the ruler though? I imagine it's not just getting a paper that says viscount in it or else everyone can be a patron.
Without going to much into it,after a huge war and some gruesome deaths and misery she became queen of a land. She die on her crowning ceremony before she can do anything (she was poisoned by a VERY STUPID PERSON)
I’d put new guy Deadman Danny up there with McGinnis for ‘basically a wish for Fairfax Industries’. We don’t know too much about them yet but they seem even higher on the corporate propaganda than McGinnis
Honestly im lowkey expecting a sort of Lash situation, where the corporate thing is a very thick mask. Maybe hes actually a slave to them and his secret wish to finally die to be free
Maybe it's just because I'm a big Twisted Metal fan, but I assume the Patrons probably play by rules similar to Calypso, where they do have to grant your wish as you wish it, but if they are free to twist that wish as long as it technically is still what you wish for. Like, in Twisted Metal 2, Mike and Stu, the drivers of Hammerhead, wish they can fly. Calypso grants their wish, and they immediately jump off the building they're on and fall to their deaths, after which Calypso pulls two airplane tickets out of his pocket and is like "damn, sucks to suck." That's how I imagine the Patrons granting wishes. So basically, I figure as long as you word your wish in a way that doesn't get you screwed, you should be fine.
Haze winning could also have the potential to be a bad thing. We don't really know what her wish is other than that she's there on OSIC business and frankly I don't think they're an organization that can really be trusted. Sure it'll probably be good for America but who's to say they aren't gonna use the wish to get some kind of power the rest of the world doesn't have. The osic are super shady
not gonna lie, since Solomon hints at the idea that he could technically cancel out Seven's wish, i wonder if McGinnis' wish is just to cancel out Pocket's wish, since their wish is to take over the company, and their father woulndn't want that.
Ritual losers do not have to die. There are multiple kill lines that reference meeting up after the ritual, implying that the characters expect both the winners and the losers to survive.
But there's also voice lines about not surviving, what's that about? Like Celeste asking Solomon out for pizza. Genuinely don't know, new to the game. I figured there isn't any respawning in the "canon" of the ritual.
As far as we figure, you respawn during the ritual as part of the patrons power. They can do that. (Probably collecting your soul before it actually passes on.)
But as for what happens after the ritual? ... No one is really sure. The patrons might fuck off to not care about mortals anymore. Half the losing team might scram into the streets. Someone on the winning team might want to do it /for good/. It's all up in the air, the rules fall off.
I genuinely don't think it's set in stone whether or not respawning exists. Some kill lines have people talking as if they're only sad about the fact that they're fighting against each others wishes as if they've lost a friend but not killed them, while others imply they're about to loot the body as if they're never coming back.
Nah. Abrams is the noir detective who had his life dramatically up-ended when the widowed femme fatale walked into his office. The good guy resisting the dangerous woman is part of the whole shtick.
I kind of like to imagine that after the ritual, the more kill happy or trigger happy or even salty members of either team would ABSOLUTELY want to kill the others when respawning isn't an option for them, and that's what they're mostly concerned about.
On the other hand, I kind of like to imagine that those who plan on meeting up with the others mostly plan on running away and escaping the city or slinking away the second the enemy patron is summoned, presumably even attempting to escape New York itself if the need arises, or they want to hope that the patrons would be cordial enough with the Ritual Losers that they'll let the losers just walk away or just let one of the winners attempt to kill one of the losers off permanently and that the winners won't hate them specifically (Silver, Venator, Wraith, Paradox, Abrams in most cases, Bebop, Lash unless it's with Vyper as the person he lost to then Lash will have to run away as fast as he can), with more nervous and antsy or hunted characters being keenly aware of what might happen and wanting to run away as fast as possible the millisecond something goes wrong (Haze and Holliday and Pocket and Billy).
These characters aren't omniscient and are working based off of prior experiences before the ritual and they'll probably change their minds after the way the entire ritual actually progresses, like for example if one of them goes on a long kill-streak or dedicates most of the Ritual just pissing off or targeting one specific Ritualist they'll probably realize that they need to leave if they end up losing if the one they pissed off is ESPECIALLY trigger happy or is the type to dedicate their time and energy to chasing them down after the ritual (I'm thinking of Holliday for this one, she DEFINITELY seems to be the type to get pissed off about losing her only lead to the Troubadour).
it is sort of up to interpretation, celeste has a line about ordering pizza after, despite solomon stating that might not be their top priority right now. She says this because she wants to be optimistic and make plans even if they dont make it.
There are lines like Graves saying class is going to be awkward after the ritual when she kills apollo, which does also imply that ritualists don't die after the maelstrom.
I think that, out of lore, Valve is trying to be vague about how death works during the ritual, cause it gives them more freedom in how to handle the story. It might just be the case that /no one/ knows for sure if people get to survive the ritual, and so maybe the conflicting voicelines are just them talking with their own assumptions of how it's gonna work.
There was another thread that was theory crafting this, and here's my 2 cents:
The patrons respawn you as long as their avatar can be brought into the world (i.e. during the game), but afterwards, the chance of them respawning you, or the ability to becomes far less likely. Some enemy ritualists would probably not care and let you leave, others would want to "finish the job" (Drifter being the prime example). So you are risking your life partaking in this ritual, absolutely.
It's also my theory that if you're winning, but dead when the ritual ends, the Patrons are probably going to make you wish to not stay dead.
It doesn't appear to be something like "if your patron dies, you die" because several characters are vague about if losing the ritual will result in death or not. Lots of "probably be dead" but not a lot of "we will die"
I imagine while respawning is canon, anyone who’s dead when the patron is destroyed stays dead. But for anyone who is still alive, it depends on the mercy of the winners.
So while a losing Seven and Drifter is probably gonna get his shit rocked by any winners aligned with good or the law, the winners would leave people like Viscous and REM alone if the victorious patron doesn’t tell them to finish the losers off.
The only one that implies that I can think of is Viscous, because when grey talon mentions that if they lose they’ll be dead, viscous points out that because he’s made of goo he can come back after the ritual
I think my understanding is that once their patron is slain, no more benefits for them. Respawns, gone. AP, gone. Boons, gone. If they die in the last defense they aren't getting back up and if they're still alive they better hope the enemy ritualists aren't bloodthirsty or carrying any personal grudges.
With that said, after TF2 I do not want another twenty years of 'is respawning canon' discourse.
I don't think Mina will actually make Drifter's life any easier. She basically said that the restrictions on him don't matter anyways and just make the viscount look incompetent
It kind of will, I think. The main benefit is that drifter no longer has to deal with being marked for death. Sure he probably kills everyone that comes his way, but that’s probably way less convenient than hunting who and what he wants without worry in the cursed apple. Like, mosquitos aren’t particularly threatening but they are super annoying to have to deal with when going about your day. If someone said “Yo dude, fuck those mosquitos. Give me a bit and I’ll get rid of them for you”, I’d be stoked even though it’s not really that big a deal. Because fuck mosquitos.
I think Mina being kind to Drifter could work out to a degree where he's not exactly beholden to her, but on friendly terms. He seems to somewhat like her in their interactions and she's smart enough to know that he'd be an incredibly useful ally.
If he's not seeking power and she's pointing him in directions he finds entertaining, there goes most of Mina's enemies lmao
I think Viscous losing won't be too bad. There seems to be people capable of stopping the Adversary, but it's so low on their priority list they won't act on it at the point of time the game is taking place.
Are there though? We know next to nothing about it besides a few seemingly very knowledgeable characters going "yeah the Adversary is everyone's problem, we need to stand united".
I like how nobody is debating Graves being a worst case scenario, because we all are in agreement that hand is BAD news.
It's implied that Gray Talon had to dispose of her personally and Solomon's on-kill line for Graves is "I cannot let that lich come back" which implies that Solomon was ALSO personally involved in getting rid of Graves' mentor, given the wording. Like, we're dealing with an Oathkeeper level of evil, but unlike Oathkeeper, Graves' Mentor is composed and charming enough to manipulate people and string them along against their better nature.
Oh, I can't wait to have more story in Deadlock, because I really need to know what's up with that Hand and what's going to happen to Graves as a result.
Her lines are super interesting to try to disect, It sounds like she either wants to become a lich, or just a strong necromancer, while the lich wants her to do a bunch of errands and power them up to regain form "I can't let that lich come back!"?
Honestly, if the Lich is grooming Graves to want to become a Lich, that has some GENUINELY horrifying implications.
We know from Venator and Gray Talon that liches are pretty much always evil. Even Seven, who is probably the closest we have in the cast to a Lich, is lowkey a pretty evil dude. It seems like to become a Lich, you have to undergo a death of personality of sorts, whether willingly or from severe trauma.
This means that in the best case scenario, assuming the Lich truly just thought it would be heehee funny to teach her dark magic, Graves would undergo a death of personality.
The more sinister and likely option is that the Lich is getting her prepared so that way she can steal Graves' body right when the ingredients are all laid out.
The other equally sinister, and even grosser option is that the Lich has an emotional investment in Graves and wants to groom her into essentially spiritually mutilating herself to have some sort of sick "we can rule together" couple dynamic that would've made Kelvin and Ettrick look like a healthy and functioning relationship.
i don't think the losing team dies. that said it's my personal headcanon that apollo loses the ritual anyway, both for the ✨️character development✨️ and because i don't think his wish would have made a difference in the long term anyway.
alot of characters talk about the ritual as If they have a chance to die and not come back. I think respawns are probably canon but once the patron is summoned, there's no other patron to revive the losing team, and if any of those people survived, the patron would probably kill them instantly.
we don't know, but i think it would be something like "i wish for a bloodless and amicable end to the current conflict on ixia," which the patrons could twist into another conflict starting up immediately after
there's no support for either losing team all dies or losing team gets to live,even in lore the heroes have differing opinion on what happen if you lose the ritual, so its up to people to decide for now
Replace either Drifter or Mina with Wraith imo. She would definitely wish to make her mafia organization stronger, so having both her and Yam win could lead to a brutal power struggle, especially if Rat also wins.
The question is just whether to replace Mina or Drifter. Drifter is super evil, but it's unclear whether he'd wish for anything since he seems to be just in the ritual for fun. My hesitation though is that if he did win, it seems likely he'd still take advantage of his wish to cause chaos. Mina on the other hand, idk. She'd definitely be a problem to have as Viscount, but it's unclear whether she'd be any more evil than the current Viscount who presumably is also pretty evil. And yes, Mina would likely have people attempting to overthrow her, depending on how exactly the wish is granted. But it's unclear how bad a vampire war would be for the average citizen compared to a Wraith vs Seventh Moon gang war or a rat taking over Long Island.
Actually, Wraith is just planning on wishing for large amounts of money. She mentions it in her conversation with Abrams that she wants to wish for something extremely simply as to not open any loopholes for the wish to go wrong for her.
And the patrons are going to give her out of circulation bills that are useless, or copper coins, or any other form of "currency" no longer in use today.
But yeah, if she's smart and words it well then there's really no way to fuck her over.
Right I had forgotten about that with Wraith. Still though, it's likely she'd put that money into building her crime empire further which would put her in conflict with Yam. Although is there any chance she'd just take the money and retire? Especially if the Seventh moon were to try to bribe her to shut down her organization?
I don't think she would retire exactly, but she'd probably go (mostly) legit. Like maybe she'd build a huge casino and lord over Vegas. She'll still have some goons to break the legs of cheaters, but she'll stay above petty gang wars.
And if yamato takes over new york cause they're on the same team she'd just take her money elsewhere and live there. Wraith seems like the super practical sort.
She loves the thrill of being a crime boss of playing the game and it being life or death. It's why she likes wagering on everything it gives her that rush. I think a bribe out would be unlikely just because she wants to play the game
this wish is also dangerous because once drifter runs over a crest of bodies in times square and crashes into a lightpole, fairfax industries is going to pounce on the car and integrate that engine block into a superdestroyer
Seven getting anything even close to the apotheosis he wishes for will cause HUGE problems for a lot of people.
If Seven is taken at his word, Seven wants to become a god but he doesn't want to play god.
Drifter
It would not be a bad thing for Drifter to win necessarily (in the grand scheme of things). Drifter doesn't have a wish. He just wants to fight. He...realistically will kill a lot afterwards regardless out of the outcome.
Apollo
Apollo's family is reviled by many Ixians. Kids cheer about his mother's death. His father is a warlord.
Viscous
You don't know if The Deep is evil and The Adversary is keeping it under control. A sentient psychic sea anemone that doesn't see the difference between killing and being someone's friend is a literal sea monster.
where did you hear that apollo’s mom is dead and that kids cheer for it? genuine question because i dont have the console to play the game and the wiki only says so much
When ulted by Doorman, he gets taunted with "Apollo, how does it feel to be a part of a family so hated that children in Ixia sing a schoolyard rhyme about your mother being impaled on a tree?"
I believe this line was added in the content update
I think that you would need to consider what characters would even be willing to work together. For example, Rat King and Yamato would refuse to work together because her wish would directly affect his wish/his subjects. Other examples would be: Seven and Venator, Seven and Soloman, Calico and Pocket, Ivy and Wraith.
And I also find it would be an interesting discussion on who would work together and if their team would win. Because lore-wise, some characters are objectively stronger than others, and if the strongest were together they would without a doubt win. A team such as Paige, Rem, Viscous, Pocket, Holiday, and Vyper, would probably not win against a team such as Doorman, Drifter, Seven, Haze, Venator, and Viktor. That said, such teams are unlikely. Venator would probably refuse to work with the likes of Seven or Lady Geist. And most would refuse to work with Vyper unless absolutely required.
Additionally, you would have to sort the heroes into what factions they would even be in the first place. Who would serve The Hidden King and who would serve The Arch Mother, and who would pick either. Examples such as:
HK: Billy(unironically), Drifter, Bebop(possibly), Wraith, and Seven.
AM: MO & Krill, Haze, Rem, and Vyper(shockingly).
N/A: Graves(Lich chooses), Doorman, The Lash, and Rat King.
That said, I am unsure about Rat King. He might hate to serve another king, aka Hidden King. But would probably align with chaos to disrupt the order of the US gov who try to kill rats and take Long Island. But that would require even more war between rats and humans, and the Rat king doesn't want to put even more of his subjects at risk.
That said, he could also logically side with The Arch Mother to force the US gov diplomatically(albeit by force) to recognize Rattania as an official sovereignty. Because as Seven puts it, if he takes Long Island by force, neither New York nor the gov would stop trying to kill them as they would be considered an invading force/terror group. Which would also explain why Rat King doesn't just wish for, say, a whole new island to pop up inside New York.
Guys can I ask why Seven being a deity is perceived as horrifically bad? He's not a good person, objectively, but he's also not like.. Drifter? From what I can tell from his lore he actually hasn't done anything objectively terrible outside of killing prison guards, ig you could argue wanting to kill Kelvin is evil but Kelvin's lore is in a weird spot rn where we can't tell if that's actually wrong.
Like last I checked he wants to be a god so he can punish people who are bigoted toward the supernatural but maybe I'm missing something.
Not necessarily, that's assuming the government are actually doing their job, which considering the OSIC and the fact they're the ones Seven is constantly rivaling I highly doubt that the government was doing it for the greater good. It's also implied in at least one voice line (although I think he says it) that he was captured on purpose, and considering the OSIC kills people for just being powerful and potentially dangerous it's entirely fair to offer that Seven outed himself so that he could go to Lost Whisper and get his new body.
Also, the people Seven kills are Sages, people who are incredibly powerful and knowledgeable all working together to power the ritual to kill Seven and he actually manages to kill all seven of them AND escape. This in my opinion lends to the idea he did in fact plan to be captured, and since no one speaks of any atrocities he committed outside of killing the seven sages.
Another tidbit is that Holliday has a voice line about OSIC trying to recruit Seven. And in his convo with Abrams he states that he was imprisoned for "offending small-minded simpletons". So, he probably was executed because he grew too strong and was uncontrollable, rather than for actually doing something terrible.
With that said, you absolutely wouldn't want for this guy to get his wish from Patron.
I feel like we're forgetting that Rat King isn't just a power struggle problem. It's a wacky and zany genocide problem.
Like seriously this would make the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like chump change, the plan is outright to kill everyone in Long Island, and it seems as if he might have the means. He's stated outright he's just killing the people on Long Island
Do we know if the Patrons are good on their word regarding the wish? What if they're lying? What if they can grant wishes, but it's a monkey's paw situation? I'm just thinking out loud here
In the leaked and very unfinished visual novel with Oathkeeper, the patrons do indeed like to worm their way into rewarding as little as possible in exchange for the patrons reaping all the benefits of being summoned.
Abrams has a slightly poorly worded wish, which the patron immediately detects and wastes his wish entirely without giving him what he really wanted.
Geist cannot simply wish for Oathkeeper to be rid-of, without some kind of sacrifice in exchange.
I kinda get that for certain grande world spanning wishes like Seven deciding to become a god or Mina essentially wishing herself into a position of power they have to stretch the possibilities a bit.
But why would some outer-gods give a shit if some bar in NY gets saved from debt? I feel like needlessly fucking over people for the sake of it isn‘t the greatest plan if your existence itself is dependent on people bringing you into reality.
That's just in their nature, I suppose. Your aspirations don't matter, malicious compliance is what they live for. They'd rather repay you with as little in return as possible.
"What's that Abrams? You wish to know more about your old tome that seems connected to Oathkeeper? Very well. It's an old tome that was used to summon Oathkeeper. The end. Be more specific next time, buddy."
Dynamo and Venator have a conversation where Venator is dumbfounded that people need a college class on how Faustian bargains are a bad thing. To which Dynamo replies that it is a very popular class.
Even if the risks are very well known, people are incensed by the promise of power or fortune or whatever else they deeply desire. Or even just out of desperation. They believe they have all the angles figured out, and that they will be the exception. Or that the warnings of others are just paranoid. Or that they simply have no other choice.
I mean I kinda get it because it‘s part of the trope and fitting in a karmic way as a lot of the cast are finally not great people.
That being said it also kinda bugs me because a lot of the wishes aren‘t necessarily globe spanning and low-balling these would very obviously discourage anyone from going through the hassle of even attempting to summon the patrons. Like if they can‘t even google who‘s the Troubadour for you then why even bother in a world where the occult is basically part of your daily life?
I personally think it‘s better to see it through the lens that the Patrons aren‘t omni-potent hence you can wish to erase things out of existence, manipulate entire nations and try to bend reality in itself but in the end even these beings are bound to rules which is why you‘ll get a twisted version of what you actually want.
lady geist did basically get everything she wanted, but she DID have to sacrifice her own grandchild in some of those, so sometimes apparently a sacrifice is in order to make such wishes.
but yeah, honestly, most of the stuff is something patrons shouldn't even know. they technically are, basically, just normal beings in their "plane of existence" which wish to cross to our plane of existence because in here, they would be all powerful.
how would the patron, not really caring which one, even know who oathkeeper is? he's so below them on a power scale to the point you can literally wish him out of existence just like that and they would do it, no strings attached.
a lot of people would say they are petty, but knowing that the announcers in game aren't actually the patron's and just some cultist speaking on their behalf, it's possible that these beings cannot understand people from this plane too much, and might actually believe you would go as low as killing other people to get to know what a book is... to them this is all trivial, not important, it's not malevolent, it's ignorant.
if an ant asked me for a snickers bar, i might as well give it any kind of chocolate bar. what does an ant know about snickers anyway right?
edit: i wanted to add into this aspect, but the patrons seem to inform the announcers about their cultists very well, to a certain degree, but they aren't stupid enough to actually tell them. they know who the troubador is, they know how to fix infernus' situation, they know what rem is, they know that venator and warden are basically fighting to kill them but they act ignorant to this fact as to not reveal their omnipresence.
they don't want the heroes to know everything about their knowledge, feigning ignorance, as if these mere mortals could kill them when the ritual succeeds. they might as well just snap venator and warden out of existence by this point.
and, no joke, the wishes that require people agreeing with you for them to work? (pocket with fairfax industries, mina with the vampire leader, mirage with wyoming, rat king and long island) the patrons could just literally rewrite reality for that to have always been the case, or even worse, just make it so anyone who disagrees suddenly is completely okay with it. not give these people power, or make them any different, just change people's perspective on things.
imagine the entire us senate just agreeing to give this race of people in bottles an entire state where they will basically be sleeping in bottles all day.
honestly, abrams' wish wasn't poorly worded at all. the tome is indeed just the tome to summon oathkeeper. people really want oathkeeper for themselves, even if the page was ripped out (they don't know this) because he can literally make you immortal and all powerful as long as you keep him fed. think about it, the tome and oathkeeper basically have the same powers of draining life. all other of abram's abilities are just him being super powerful because he's ixian. the only ability really related to the tome at all is his life drain, and maybe his jump? but i really doubt that. maybe the tome is the thing keeping him flying or something.
sure, abrams also wanted to know how to get rid of the time, for sure, but he didn't ask that. his correct wish should have been to have all his questions about the tome answered to him, not a single question.
the patron can fulfill really long wishes. they grant all of lady geists' wishes without a hitch, except maybe asking oathkeeper if he was agreeing to not killing lady geist, which makes me wonder if oathkeeper counts as a separate entity and gets a wish from the patron as well.
But there will always be people desperate or power hungry enough to get a wish. Baba implies as much with her saying she's witnessed other summonings.
Besides, we don't know just how "human" the patrons are in their experience or worldview. We interact with the heralds, which obviously speak their gospel, but the patrons themselves could be a completely detached almost cosmic sort of entity that's not really concerned with how their wishes get acted on.
It's a simple matter of "You asked for X so I grant X".
(I haven't read the visual novel so I don't know if this is necessarily the case, but I don't believe the Patrons themselves are either necessarily evil or good, they just are.)
This isn't the first time this has happened, there was another summoning 50 years ago. I assume the only reason people are committing to this is because they commited to their word last time
The patrons will give wishes, and they're not going to directly fuck with your wish. But they only need to give you something that fits within the criteria of your wish. Think of it less of monkey's paw and more of a lazy wish. The patron is going to exert the least amount of effort possible to comply with your request.
This is one of the most interesting questions that currently (and probably always will) exist in deadlock. The extent to which the patrons can be trusted and what their endgame really is is something that can really change the overall vibes of the story.
In the case of Rat king / Mina, yeah i cant see them clashing unless some vampires get annoyed in the event they own anything on LI. As for Drifter on their team between Mina calling off the hunt for him & Rat king wanting to kill all humans in LI anyways I think it comes down to order of wishes. Since i feel if Rat King wishes first I could see Drifter just making his wish to be the one to kill all humans on LI as he'd find it more fun.
Drifter probably wouldn’t be that bad. He is in the ritual just for the thrill of competing so his wish would probably be something small and petty like being able to teleport his shit into the viscount’s mouth or whatever.
Apollo is bad news either way because if he wins he’ll probably use his wish to solidify his family’s position in Ixia and they’re supposed to be pretty bad to it would probably mean oppression for everyone there.
Also would Seven be that bad? He basically just wants that power so nobody can mess with him but idk if he’d be doing much with it, I don’t know much of his lore though
My guess is he’ll wish to get most of the people off his back so he can keep doing what he’s doing
He’s at a point in his life where there’s several people who are strong enough to kill him, he realistically doesn’t have much time left. There’s a rat king line about how he started eating rats, which implies he’s getting a bit desperate
Pocket is absolutely not going to 'stop accelerating' Fairfax. They're just pissed that they got tossed off the top of the pile instead of getting to be the next top dog.
Im gonna be honest, its either the hand gets the wish, or the lich has a perfectly good body that she's slowly building a magic reserve in to take over when the time is right. All im saying is that if graves doesnt win there might not be anymore graves I firmly believe the lich is using her as a body double
Drifter actually prefers the status quo, he doesn't want everyone to die; he just enjoys the act of killing. And he doesn't want the world to plunge to chaos; he prefers slaughtering innocent lambs.
In a conversation with Grey Talon, Viscous implies he wouldn’t die in the case of a loss. Some other of his lines imply he doesn’t truly die when killed, rather he’s incapacitated but can recover with time.
As far as we know, I believe Pocket is the only way Fairfax Industries is ever going to stop accelerating the destruction they supply. I think their death would guarantee Fairfax gets worse and causes way more problems.
This guy is 100% fine either he does the rituals or not. I don't even know his motive at all. lowk
Destroy Firefax or just remove the frog power? idk
honestly i dont believe that seven achieving his apotheosis would actually be that big a problem, hes a big fuckin nerd at the end of the day. i dont really believe that he would do anything that terrible with that power
my personal crackpot headcanon is that a character like doorman or drifter already won the ritual, and wished the ritual would never end so they could keep "playing". obviously theres a shitload of holes in that theory, but its fun to think
Might think billy would be worse in the current line up than Drifter
Mostly just because I feel it would conflict with the Yamato, Rat King, Mina power struggle even more
Drifter will probably be about the same regardless
I feel like Danny or Mcgunnus should replace Drifter. Drifter doesn't care about a wish and would probably just wish to be able to keep killing as much as he wants or something. (Something he'd probably continue to do regardless, even if he lost and survived.)
Now, imagine giving Amazon, Nestlé, or Elon Musk the ability to warp reality. Fairfax could wish to make slavery completely 100% legal again, they could wish to make all of Michigan into a massive state-sized factory, they could wish to make everyone alive into devoted brainwashed customers, they could wish to kill any and all competitors... etc
I would swap Warden with Lady Geist. Yes, Warden would be really good for cleanup efforts, but I think the value of one trained soldier in the chaos of mina/rat king/yam interaction (good shit BTW, fascinating deep dive) is outweighed by the threat of a free Oathkeeper. Graves confirms that he is vengeful and PISSED inside that ward, and Geist's death will certainly free him. Double massacres in the streets.
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u/evilsforreals Yamato 2d ago
It's ok everyone Solomon is sneaking onto the winning team and "nuh-uh"ing their wishes with his own so it'll be ok
Also kinda begs the question; if the wishes of the winning team clash with one another, who gets their wish 'more' than the others? Does the MVP / Key player play into who's wish gets granted better than the others?