Yaldabaoth’s “8oon of resurrection” is literally AURYN!
I didn’t quite see it when someone pointed out the parallels in the word ‘boon’ this morning, but I sure see it now. Yaldabaoth is literally offering AURYN to Caliborn, the combined juju the cherubs gave to Jane!
By AURYN, if you haven’t heard the term batted around recently, I mean the wish-granting amulet/talisman from The Neverending Story at the center of the lollipop. You can expect the candy shell to be eventually broken by the crowbar or eaten away somehow, stripping the ‘Trickster’-ness away from it to reveal its raw power.
Aranea said that the limitless supply of power granted by this boon would be enough to destroy whatever he wanted, but she never said it had to be used to destroy!! Therefore, you can intrepret it as raw power, to be channelled however your role permits.
As such, this 8oon can supercharge your hero role with limitless power, and automatically resurrect you if you possess it. Sound familiar?
It should if you follow me, because those are the EXACT FUNCTIONS we deduced it would have, as detailed in my earlier Cheat Mode Enabled post!
Read the link above for a detailed summary of the juju’s theoretical and observed functions. As described there, much of the insanity you witnessed in Trickster Mode was more than likely the result of supercharging Jane’s Maid of Life role; as the Maid is an active Creation class, this turned her into a wellspring of Life that she could grant to others, giving them boundless energy and enthusiasm to do what they wanted to the total absence of Doom, where Doom is hesitation, restraint, and sacrifice. :)
The allusions to this ‘boon’ have in fact been peppered throughout the story! Bequeathed to Jane by Calliope and Caliborn…
UU: now that yoU mention it, well before i died or even realized i woUld not live to play, i made special exception to my rUle of staying linear with conversation. i messaged jane a birthday gift.
UU: yoU see, i had a brief vision from skaia which sUggested to me she coUld Use a boost in morale on this special day, so i offered her something very dear to me. jUst a little token to show appreciation for her friendship.
UU: i hope it will cheer her Up, and moreover that it will prove at least somewhat UsefUl to yoUr party.
UU: bUt really, at this stage if yoU wish to prevail against sUch stacked odds, collecting boons sUch as new weapons and treasUres will only go so far.
It’s a special amulet with arcane power…
NANNASPRITE: You should have returned sooner! I could have given you this boon at a much lower rung.
JOHN: boon?
NANNASPRITE: Here, John. Take this.
Allows the dead to be resurrected…
You have more followers than you know what to do with. Keep it up! If you can manage to get everyone in the afterlife to follow you, the dark gods will grant you the boon of resurrection.
A game-breaking boon that Vriska will eventually obtain, using it to come back to life and destroy the Green Sun, turning it into a Black Hole that traps her and opens the breach in reality!
You drew your own role playing character for fun, as many Flarpers are prone to do. She is the best character, and you wish you were her. Oh wait, you are her! Your wish has been granted. Probably as a special boon for being so great at everything.
Of course you think you were doing them a favor. You’re an alien.
So is your sister. She thought the juju would be a great boon for them as well. But she was wrong.
See, you cherubs are predisposed to love all this trickster crap. All that goofy squeaky candy coated nonsense is a critical part of your people’s mythos.
That sugarized zillyjunk sort of embodies a unified field of absurd Platonic ideals to the cherubim, so when you see expressions of it in reality of course you’re gonna go apeshit.
But that kind of stuff is freakish and disturbing to humans. Those aren’t our ideals.
WHAT.
Furthermore, that could only be seen as a boon from an asocial species.
You never have to deal with other people. So if you lick a magic lollipop that flips a switch in your brain that says “all my problems are solved,” I guess maybe that’s fine for cherubs, but if you’re a human you haven’t actually solved anything.
By the same logic it’s not much of a boon to a human’s physical journey either.
Using an item that lets them start maniacally powering from point A to point B isn’t doing them any favors.
So a boon that leads to disaster. And you’ve already seen my comparison of the above Andrew speech with Vriska’s on taking shortcuts and finding the ultimate weapon for which they’re searching. (Hint: the weapon is AURYN, and X marks the spot in the alpha session!)
And those are all the references to the standalone word ‘boon’, outside of currency like boondollars and boonbucks. No others exist!
(The above quotes are compiled from my work in an earlier ask on the word ‘boon’, given much clearer relevance now with Aranea’s story.)
So, AURYN is what Yaldabaoth is planning to give to Caliborn. What does this mean?
It means he might not have it for very long!
Gamzee still has Aradia’s timeboxes, and started out with a juju-breaking crowbar. So it should be obvious what he’s going to do… at some point, Gamzee might manage to get or steal AURYN from Caliborn, pry it in half, have it encased in candy (somehow), go back in time, and store it amongst the cherubs’ gifts in their respective chests to be unwittingly given away by them in the past! Whoops! :D
(Okay, admittedly there are other possibilities. Yaldabaoth might just grant him the memory of where AURYN was, just like Echidna did so with the final frog for Jade! That’d put a real damper on his fun, wouldn’t it? And kidcrimefighter notes that the conflict with Dave at the very end of Caliborn’s session might be when the juju is taken and pried apart. But, well… the Gamzee option is the most fun!)
Man, I love it when things come together. Don’t you?
