A Thought About Clanner Rebirth and Ceraph Claw's Fate

[Puyon]

So to recap what we know about Clanners... they're immortal in that they can be killed and will always revive and after some circumstances, a clanner's respective god will have them 'properly reborn'. In the first situation, Clanners regenerate where their body was left (or some large part of the body) and will have all their memories, have scars where they were wounded, and will retain darkwings... in the other situation, their memories are wiped, presumably their scars go away, wings are cleansed...

So one thing I gotta wonder is... why use the second feature at all? Why would the gods need to uh... start a new file, so to speak, with their Clanners? Like... I guess I can see clearing away scars and dark wings as useful, but clearing away their memories is a bit more curious... they could probably clear the wings and scars but still preserve the Clanners memories, though it's hard to say what the Elemental gods can and can't do as far as their servants go... another reason this seems disadvantageous is that it's implied that when Clanners are "New", their magic seems to be weaker, or at least that's what I infer since C. Tal only just picked up on the fact P. Claw was new when she showed that using magic is hard for her...

The thought I had... was that it's mainly used for the memory wipe. Because really... if the Clanners lived for centuries and retained that memory, and hell, if they remembered tricksters before they were ordered to kill them, they'd probably be a lot less willing to do so. Obviously, wiping their memories if they started being defiant with their gods would solve the problem of them not killing tricksters/not spreading the word of killing tricksters.

So... it's hard to say what exact situation a god would want to reset his immortal, but it'd probably be when they stop following his orders. Phoenix Clan may be an exception to this since Phoenix doesn't give any orders... at least in P. Claw's current iteration, he doesn't.

So an immortal will live for a long time, die a few times nbd, travel around a bunch meet new people... and at some point, I bet they're going to meet a trickster who they don't really want to kill. Of  course, when I'm saying this, I'm thinking about Ceraph Claw in New Game+.

C. Claw's character was pretty interesting in the time we got to know her. She was friendly with Zack, offering friendly (if not violent) gestures to him up until she learned he was a trickster. She's set in her ways about being a god's servant, so naturally she finds it bizarre that a light power and dark power are friends, asserting that one can't change their minds about that sort of thing... but more interestingly, she immediately wonders if it's actually possible. While Dark explains that he doesn't want to hurt anybody and has his free will, it's a message that C. Claw takes to heart, remembering it later when she chooses to spare Zack. (As a side note, this scene is a very cool parallel to when Darkling spares Arthur.)

Another thing to note though about this scene in particular, is that it follows a scene earlier in the volume in which Art describes his hesitation on harming Darkling, saying that if it were really the right thing to do, there'd probably be a sign. In this scene, C. Claw actually seems to be seriously thinking about the consequences of Arthur disobeying Sola, though I think she asks this question more for herself than for a concern for Arthur. In the confrontation with C. Talon, C. Claw is visibly upset about the fact that everyone in town wants Zack dead despite the fact that he's done nothing wrong other than be a trickster. Up until C. Talon is struck down, as a matter of fact, Claw looks scared and worried for Zack. Ceraph is even pretty shocked with this and stops communicating with Claw for a second, but then he tries again to tell Claw to kill Zack.

He finally backs off when Claw mentions her free will. He stops as soon as she says that, even when she goes on to say she's going to stop her brother from coming back after them, which is ever more obstruction of Ceraph's will, so it's really interesting to me that Ceraph just chooses to say... nothing to her. Almost as if he's decided that she's no longer a problem, or at least very soon, she won't be.

So I suspect that C. Claw is going to be reborn proper very soon... forgetting about what she's learned about the relationship between servants and their god and that tricksters don't deserve to die just for being who they are. It makes Claw's dialogue about free will pretty depressing, all in all. She's followed Ceraph's orders for as long as she can remember, but once she gets the idea that perhaps she doesn't have to and that there's no real reason to, then that concept of freedom is being instantly taken away when she's reborn. While Darkling and Art have their free will and won't be given a warning or sign by their respective Goddess about not killing each other, Claw will have it shouted and screamed in her ear until she basically gets the Clanner equivalent of death.

...this was a long, distracting thought. I should probably get back to working on Hero Stories before it's too late at night.

[Tapewolf]

I got the impression that it was an age-related thing, e.g. when they reach 100 they reset.  But I could be wrong.