#nicte batan

[svnsetromance]

SCYLLA RAMSHORN 1.04 "Hail Beltane" 2.05 "Brianna's Favorite Pencil" 3.03 "Oh Elayne..."

[jomarchofficial]

sarah alder / nicte batan || god's gonna cut you down

[arbitrarygreay]

Do you have a concrete feel on the hierarchy of power in MFS? Cause it's a little hard to grasp for me since the budget forces the witches to fight hand to hand a lot. The Scylla/Nicte fight scene is the biggest example of this.

Personally, I think Spree work is a little overpowered since the Army's training can't counteract it and it easily overwhelms anyone who's caught in it. Nicte literally set someone on fire with her mind.

Raelle and Khalida are said to be the most powerful witches ever and I buy that statement for Khalida but Raelle never gets to unleash the witchbomb at full power against her enemies and it can't cure the witchplague.

Alder seems pretty powerful but she uses her biddies to help her a lot. The Marshall put everyone on their ass so I'd put him up there too.

I wrote a post on this already! But I also came up with even more thoughts about it.

I was playing around with the idea that maybe Alder isn't actually even that powerful as a witch, but reviewing the evidence in the show doe

Combat magic on screen was always going to be determined by budget, which is why we mostly didn't see large scale stuff, and power levels for everyone were pretty inconsistent for plot convenience reasons.

The Rings of Saturn single tornado we saw used 4 people, but perhaps that was more about its speed and ease of control. In 1x1 Raelle and Scylla witness 6 tornadoes going at once. Only one soldier is shown directing that work, but it's easy to pretend that there were others spread out in that field.

In 2x3, Abigail attempts to match or outdo Jem by controlling two tornadoes at once (but fails). Maybe the difficulty was also her trying to add snow and lightning/thunder to the mix? Abigail's 2x8 delusion is about summoning 3 tornadoes simultaneously and then braiding them together. She actually does it outside of the delusion as well, before the delusion causes her to lose control.

Also in 2x8, Scylla notes that the forest-wide delusion Work "takes a lot of energy to maintain", which Tally also notices in her attempt to fight Nicte in hand-to-hand. If so, then most of the large scale Spree attacks we saw were probably collaborative efforts. (But that also introduces more ambiguity as to why the Spree risked Scylla's cover to do the mall attack? Probably as a loyalty test/moral horizon to bind her to them.)

Meanwhile, though, you mentioned "the Army's training can't counteract it", but Scylla was the one to pull Raelle out of her 2x8 delusion, and then Raelle was able to help Tally out of hers, and then the two of them helped Abigail. So, Scylla was evidently trained to avoid getting ensnared in that kind of Work somehow (but not a counter, since she could not simply counter its effects on others).

Coming back to Jem, here is what was said about her in 3x10:

I have seen no witch sing two elements at once, but Jem does so as easily as breathing. Earth and Sky arrange themselves according to her songs. And in that, we have barely scratched the surface. There is one song she barely remembers. One she is afraid to sing in full voice. A song from long ago, grandmother passed through the women in her line. A song held unsung by generations, waiting for some precise predetermined moment. A song that Jem says has the power to break the world or remake it, depending entirely on how it's sung.

Now, we know that Alder singing her piece of the First Song rendered her infertile, so many of Jem's accomplishments cannot be chalked up to that, as she was able to pro-create. But, this doesn't apply to the thing she is most famous for, which was her very final day, single-handedly holding back the enemy at the Battle of Juarez, until the storm summoned by the Swythes clinched it (and killing Jem in the process). As that was her final day, Jem could have unleashed the power of the First song.

3x9 has this exchange:

Abigail: Ever since I first tried Jem's Working, there has been something growing inside of me. I felt it at that airfield in the Cession, and again out on that road. Petra: I heard about the Razor Hail. No one from our line has done that Work before.

So, we are told that Abigail is uniquely powerful in the Bellweather line from her being able to do Razor Hail solo, but this also implies my theory, that "Jem's Working" (from the Battle of Juarez) was the First Song. (And, Alder says in 3x7 that the First Song is the only thing more powerful that the Witchbomb.)

Raelle's power, independent of the Mycelium, was mostly demonstrated by the fact that she could Sleep an entire room of Basic recruits by accident. However, Izadora was apparently not affected, so maybe it was only because they were Basic recruits who didn't know the counter (also relevant to evaluating The Marshal, as Nicte puts up a fair resistance against him compared to the younguns). And the Sleeping incident was also after Raelle was already colonized by the Mycelium, so.

The main pre-Mycelium hints of Raelle's power are in the unit's tuning fork exercise in the pilot (which Anacostia and the other senior soldiers were nonetheless able to control), her fight with Abigail in the pilot (summoning bad weather together), her almost being able to save Porter from death, and Willa's letter from 1x10 saying she has powerful Work in her (but obviously that last one can't be trusted for multiple reasons).

Meanwhile, though, we still can't ignore Tally, as Nicte claims it not possible to See days into the future, Verger saying that no one had ever beaten the Dollhouse on their first try before, and the implication that Tally's ability to See sound is unique to her power level (from Verger's intrigue at Tally saying so in 2x2 to Tally being the only one to identify the Camarilla frequency). Alder names her as a "prophetess" in 3x7, coming to her specifically vs. anyone else in order to See centuries into the past. If anyone else in the military had that sort of psychometry power, they would have solved many plot happenings much faster.

[wpsldo]

Motherland: Fort Salem + text posts [13/13]

Ones I created a while back ago but never posted.

[sunshineraccoon]

In a continuation of posting old art that I finished years ago, but never posted - please enjoy Motherland: Fort Salem as Lilo & Stitch.

I drew everything in the foreground, but the background is not mine. It came from this tweet.

I'm pretty sure the original idea for this piece was inspired by this post.

[nomi--sunrider]

“Water.” Nicte brings her forefinger, middle finger, and ring finger to her chin and taps a few times. “It’s basically the sign for ‘W’, with a little emphasis.”

-Then, Now, and Always Chapter 5: Idaho

Art by the immensely talented @prose-n-scripts

[prismcon]

We can't wait to welcome Spree Leader, Arlen Aguayo Stewart and Sekhmet Coven Leader, Ess Hodlmoser, to PRISM 2025! Who else is excited to meet these incredible Motherland Fort Salem actors?

Tickets on sale now: https://t.co/43VkbP1ipL

[badwolfkaily]

2 years ago today, "Delusional" (2x08) premiered.