What do we think becomes of the Fae after Maricica’s plot?

(MASSIVE, GIGANTIC SPOILERS, do not read if you have not finished literally the entirety of Pale)

If you don’t need a recap or anything, skip to the TL;DR Speculation Section

For the purpose of aiding people like me who haven’t read the ending/ its build up in a hot minute, I will be HEAVILY paraphrasing and quoting the relevant info.

The thesis of the court change blood goddess Maricica and Brsne orchestrated was that the court system itself had become a boring, constrained, and disappointing dynamic. After all “What is the difference between a court of red flowers and a court of early fall, besides the ways we dress ourselves up?” So rather than change the courts into yet another disappointingly familiar set, they said why not just do away with the constraints of the courts altogether?

We know that the plan is for the new Fae to center around Fae at the edges of great and terrible things happening in the human world and places at the cusp of turmoil alongside “Fae exiles and those who’ve seemed to abandon the Courts to mingle with humanity become[ing] the real Lords and Ladies” of the Fae.

Miss pretty much sums up the only other thing we get confirmed the Fae are gearing up for in the final chapter of the series:

> “blood, fire, and darkness (…) As shapes a war of practice could take. (…) A war fought in the margins of innocence.  Not at the periphery (…) Cities.  Institutions.  Applying pressure, finding the weak points.  This would be a war of subtleties and definitions”

with Lucy providing perhaps the scariest implication of this new regime:

> “Some went one step further than messing with the Seal,” Lucy said.  “Think hellfire.  Crossing those lines.  That even Charles didn’t seriously conside.”

So we have an Oni Accord style war with Fae not only willing to relabel/ redefine themselves and toy with the Seal, but perhaps even dip their toes into what is pretty heavily implied to be Diabolist aspirations with the mention of hellfire and focus on great and terrible things. Horrifying.

TL;DR Speculation Section:

Winter has been seen to remain thoroughly unchanging regardless of courtly machinations, and it’s honestly not a leap to say Winter is perhaps the pinnacle of what it is to be an exile from the Fae, so I don’t see them changing as the ruling “court” all that much (or I guess winter court is the wrong word for winter now? No courts boggles my mind!), but what about Fae mages?

What does practice involving the Fae look like now? Families that worked with powerful Lords and Ladies of the courts outside Winter are pretty thoroughly fucked now is my best guess, having to rework essentially all their connections if they still want or are able to maintain relations with these new oni/ demonic toe dipping Fae.

I imagine realms/ knotting practices are going to be majorly important for hiding the Fae in society and the main economic dynamic is suddenly shifted way more towards the exchange of information over the human world we got a little glimpse at in the past.

If the Fae are a sort of Alice in Wonderland metaphor for the establishment and systematic oppression and the way it harms the disadvantaged and deprived that lack the knowledge to combat them, doesn’t the new exile system kinda turn that on its head a little? Or will that be a continuity across the change somehow?

Does anyone have any speculation or theories or ideas they want to share? It’s hard to convince people to read all of a web-serial that is three times the size of the Bible (or something like that) just so they can speculate with me.

Edit: Formatting

Art by InformationSyrup

Basically assume we have a practitioner who just awakened; they don't have a family or some patron - Other or human -whom they can fall back on. Maybe they stumbled on some artifact or were interested in the occult and got their hands on a stray copy of Essentials.

They have few resources and little knowledge, at most a few books that explain the elementary stuff (runes, spirits, basic others, etc.); in short, think something like Maggie.

What is the stuff that this person can do literally within the first days and weeks of their awakening, stuff that any practitioner can do with relative ease, given that they don't have any cred with the spirit or power source.

What can they do to accumulate power, bootstrap themselves, or get in contact with their practitioner community, and what do the timelines look like?

Can they communicate with minor spirits (who suffuse everything) to accomplish minor effects they can exploit (what are they)?

Can they start setting up routines and rituals (what are they, to what end, and how long before they start seeing some minor effects)? What are the weakest, safest others they can bind to get more information/power, etc. (like Maggie binding goblins to get info out of them)? Can they summon others or find them ( goblins, fairys, not faeries, etc.)?

As to the sight, how can they exploit it? What would it allow them to see? Blake uses the Sight to do some very cool investigative work. Can a beginner practitioner use their sight to find other practitioners (do practitioners have some tell that only sight reveals)? Can they see the breath depth and nature of connection, and how can that be leveraged? Can they look for places with significance, places where the spirits congregate, to find where other practitioners might be or find where others might be found and bound (ghosts and vestiges in cemeteries, etc.)?

The sight seems like the most versatile tool in a young practitioner's arsenal, with some very cool potential for investigation work. Beyond that, what are the practices that lend themselves well to beginners (dealing with spirits, summoning, etc.)?

First of all, I'd like to apologize—English isn't my native language

So, I'm just starting to read *Worm*, and I'm already at the bank scene where Taylor runs into Glory Girl and Panacea, but the more I read, the more curious I get... What is Scion?

I mean, from the spoilers I’ve read, I understand it’s some kind of alien entity that’s the source of the powers in *Worm*, but I also understand it’s some kind of machine?

The thing is, I want to write a crossover fanfic with the *Children of...* book series. Specifically, I want *The Thing of Nod* (a kind of benevolent hive mind but with a lot of existential dilemmas) to infect Taylor after he gains his power... Basically that—The Thing of Nod acting as “Taylor” and unconsciously possessing all the information, knowledge, and consciousness of every being and event that has ever happened to humanity and the successor races in the future...

And here’s my problem: I want to respect the essence of both works, but the thing is, the *Children of...* series is characterized by empathy and understanding between radically different life forms (like The Thing of Nod itself—basically a hive mind that wanted to assimilate everything in the universe, until it realized that would leave it alone and hurt everyone), and I don’t know how to apply that to Scion...

Coil makes a demonstration of flipping a coin and getting heads every time. Why is that supposed to be in impressive demonstration? There must be dozens of powers that allow that to be faked ranging from illusions, over telekinesis, to luck manipulation or even someone else being the cause of the coin landing on head every time and probably several other options I can’t think of right now. If tattletale weren’t there i’d add normal slight of hand tricks too. I don’t understand why its supposed to be an impressive demonstration of controlling destiny

Pardon if this is an unconventional opinion (I genuinely wouldn't know) but every time I read worm I read Taylor's explanation of her being a spy to gain info on the undersiders as a thinly veiled excuse for actually enjoying her actions and time with the undersiders.

So, assuming you agree with my opinion, what do you think it would take for her to own up to it in the quickest way possible?

The way the Pactverse interprets Ghouls and undead things in general stuck out to me as, maybe not an extremely original twist but nonetheless a notably interesting interpretation.

The setting as a whole seems to be defined by creepypasta just with some infusions of older and more generic urban fantasy.

Many Others are basically creepypastas, the kind of short story that's passed around the internet that blurs the lines between the fascinating, the disgusting, and the plausible.

I'm sure someone else could define the tone and content of creepypastas much more precisely but that's the correlation my mind has been making as I read Pale and Pact.

Which brings me to the title. For those who don't known Russian Sleeping Experiment is a 15+ year old creepypasta about a supposed well you know russian sleep experiment where Soviet scientists used a special gas mixed with the air to keep humans awake indefinitely, observing the increasingly horrifying effects as their insanity grows.

Complete fiction obviously and based on rather insulting ideas of Soviet science.

But in the Pactverse I could see it becoming an origin for a subtype of Ghoul.

I liked the idea of the Couch Potato Ghoul, someone who doesn't actually endanger their life necessarily but stops doing the mundane things which are associated with being a living creature and therefore being stranded between the boundaries of a corpse and a person.

Sleep is something fundamental to animals so I could see someone in the extremes of insomnia finding Life abandoning them but Death not recognizing them and therefore they become a Ghoul.

Gone?

I think I remember from the epilogue that it’s still physically there, and Innocents can pass through an abandoned town with a strong sense of foreboding.

But if the truly desperate decide to stick around are they setting up shop on thin ice, destined to sink into the abyss? Can practitioners or Others even set foot in there?

Hope i got these tags right.

I'm curious, what would you want a third Parahumans story to be? Main Character? Basic plot? Storyline ideas? Name? Anything really.

Adding onto that would anything have to change make them work, beyond Parahumans' physics.

Mine as an example would Be MCSM's Wither Storm, perhaps starting in a slightly advanced state and slowly getting bigger (within reason) by absorbing surrounding buildings. Be kinda like a slower but flying Behemoth with tractor beams, and hey it already has the unbreakable core.

What if tattletale created a religion around Khepri and used her connection to Taylor in life to lend legitimacy to her role as a high priestess.

Let's say tattle realizes the collapse of society creates a vacuum of meaning in the world of parahumans and decides to create her own religion to counter the influence of the fallen.

Maybe the idea of her distorting the memory of her friend/comrade/leader would also evoke tragic memories of her bother and thus her shard would reward any sense of guilt or conflict this might cause within her.

Joined the undersiders? I hear and think a lot of 'what if Amy joined the undersiders' and while I do find the idea interesting this one is asked hardly as often (for understandable reasons).

So, what do you think would happen?