ok but here r my actual thoughts as to why i don’t think zerxus is being intentionally manipulated/asmodeus is lying:
vespin’s whole… deal with what happened to his body is the result of taking in more power than he could handle. clerics have different levels of power because the gods are trying to keep them safe from the divine power. but what about a god that does not care about keeping their followers safe?
this is a strong point for the idea that asmodeus (or another betrayer god!) did that to vespin to be able to escape. however. brennan also says that the initial imprisonment of the betrayer gods meant that no spells or influence could get through, so it feels unclear to me how vespin being the first to begin the calamity could be directly because a betrayer god influenced him before the first tear was even made
i think vespin meddled too much and got burned. this entire series is about arrogance and hubris, and if we’re to believe what he says in the interview they find, his motives don’t seem *inherently* nefarious — just a case of flying too close to the sun. dethroning a betrayer god seems about on par with what our own PCs are trying to accomplish with blurring the lines between planes and mortals and gods. i’m pretty sure that parallel is intentional
so! vespin presumably did not get all fucked up because a betrayer god was directly influencing him. i think he definitely did get fucked up from interacting with the betrayer gods at all. asmodeus describes the door opening as not a door but a violent explosion — the marks are vespin getting burned
asmodeus seems genuinely unclear about how he got to where he is. brennan did emphasize that a few times, so i don’t think that this was a “vespin got told specifically to do this by asmodeus to then manipulate zerxus once vespin was all used up” really works. he doesn’t know where he is and he was also *dying* and unable to move before zerxus healed him which. idk i guess he could have assumed zerxus wouldn’t be able to not help him but that seems like it’s certainly A Thing to hang ur manipulation of this guy on
that entire conversation felt very nuanced and forthcoming about the ways in which the betrayer gods fucked up and the ways in which they (or asmodeus specifically) were not arguably completely wrong. the vibes of asmodeus stopping the atonement ritual did not, to me, seem like “this is a god who wants to stay evil”, but “this is a god who *needs* to stay evil, because there has to be a balance here”. on a meta storytelling level i don’t think the convo would’ve been so nuanced and forthcoming with details if the vibe was that brennan was playing that this is some master plan of him, especially when he told zerxus he wasn’t lying to him. we have no real reason to believe that, so why say it if it isn’t true, y’know?
also on a meta level — having watched the seven i think brennan just likes making complex, hurt, god-like characters who are feared. like yeah talura does sort of almost end the world in the seven but it is out of grief and sadness and despair rather than like. i am evil because that is my nature. similarly, asmodeus might fuck shit up and not be right about everything and maybe his goals will not line up with our PCs but i don’t think the vibe here is “this guy is pure evil and this is unchangeable and all he is able to do is manipulate”. idk! i just do not get that vibe! we are being presented with complex shit and i think it’s fun to enjoy the complexities rather than trying to simplify it down again
i also don’t think redeem is the right word, even if the vibe of that was jokey, in my original post. i don’t think redemption is the goal here. they don’t need redeeming they need a balance. will they get that? probably not
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