Keeper of the Lost Cities Thoughts

Thoughts About Abilities: Part 4

Yes, I'm going to put that chart at the top of all of these chapters.  And yes, its not nearly as useful (or accurate) as I've been pretending. But at least it shows how big of a chunk the Telepaths form.

Polyglot:

A very practical ability. A lot more practical than most other abilities. (Mesmer, Beguiler, Vociferator, etc.) Though I guess the elves don't place as much importance on it, because they all speak the Enlightened Language. (What exactly makes it so "enlightened"?)

Since most Polyglots also manifest an additional ability, I wonder if Polyglots that don't manifest another ability are looked down upon, like the Talentless are, because they could have manifested another, more "powerful" ability, but didn't. Just a thought.

Councilor Clarette can apparently speak the language of animals, and I suspect Sophie can too, because she's always communicating with alicorns. It could be, in part, her Polyglot skills that make it easier for her to telepathically communicate with animals. Yes, she could do it before she manifested as a Polyglot, but it had to have helped.

Honestly, it makes sense that Polyglots can mimic. Being able to speak a language isn't just knowing the words. You also have to figure out the intonation, like you would have to if you wanted to imitate someone else's accent. Interesting that Keefe could mimic before he manifested as a Polyglot.

And, I totally get why Mr. Forkle had Sophie manifest as a Polyglot. It's made it a lot easier for her to communicate with the other species. In fact, a lot of the other intelligent species seemed very impressed that Sophie knew their language. Do hardly any elves learn other languages or something?

Psionipath:

I have not been able to find a reason why Psionipaths are called Psionipath. As far as I can tell, "psion" has something to do with the mind (like psychic), not force fields. It could be because Psionipath control their power with their minds, but so does every other ability.

That aside, I feel like there's facets of psionipathy that haven't been explored yet. So far, all we've seen Psionipaths do is make specifically dome-shaped force fields. I see no particular reason why a force field would have to be dome-shaped. It's probably the most stable shape, like how bubbles are round, but a Psionipath could probably shape force fields in other ways, too.

Also, you can do things with energy other than make force fields. Psionipath force fields seem like something somewhere between lightning and normal light. I don't know, but it seems like that energy could be used to do other things, too.

Also, apparently, there were seven guys with psionipathy at Exillium at one point. That makes no sense in my brain. It's implied that psionipathy is rare, maybe as rare as an elemental ability, so why would seven guys with it be banished? It doesn't fit with the rarity. Maybe it was a fluke. Though, I propose an alternate theory: The Neverseen has a freakishly powerful Technopath. What if Ruy had them mess with the Exillium records to make it harder for someone to find him by making it appear like there were a lot more Psionipaths there than there really were?

Pyrokinetic:

Like all the elemental abilities, this one seems to be limited in its usefulness. Sure, balefire, but I don't see why the elves couldn't use weird Flasher skills or technology to light their cities, instead.

Though, while we're at it, I'll explain why banning pyrokinesis was the stupidest choice the Council had made in that situation. Firstly, it was, quite literally, ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away.

Secondly, I'm making the assumption that pyrokinesis is equally as likely to be triggered as other elemental abilities, given that they are similarly powerful and similarly volatile. Look at Linh. She manifested hydrokinesis ridiculously young, before she even attended Foxfire. While a sample size of one is definitely not enough to draw any definitive conclusions, Mr. Forkle also said that it was unlikely that Marella's pyrokinesis would have stayed dormant. Sample size two: still too small, but I suspect that elemental abilities as a rule are unlikely to stay dormant, meaning that the Council couldn't have prevented Pyrokinetics from manifesting.

Thirdly, the ban made it illegal to train in pyrokinesis. Do you see what a terrible decision that was? The Council was unable to actually prevent people from manifesting this dangerous, difficult to control ability, so instead they just made it illegal for someone to train in it when they manifested.

Honestly, its a surprise that the Lost Cities haven't been accidentally burned down by unregistered Pyrokinetics (There have to be a few. The two Pyrokinetics who manifested after the ban both manifested relatively recently, compared to the amount of time that pyrokinesis was banned. We don't have any numbers on that, but I suspect it was a long time ago.) who have no idea how to control their ability.

Shade:

Why does everyone who writes a book seem compelled to give people who control shadows all sorts of weird powers like shadow-whispering? All this stuff about "my shadow is carrying my consciousness" doesn't make any sense.

Yes, I'm complaining about shadow-whispering, not reading people's shadowvapor, which actually kind of makes sense. Someone's subconscious hiding their secrets using veils of shadowvapor makes some sort of sense. People hide things in the shadows all the time. And then of course Shades can sense those shadows to find out how many secrets you have. And people with more secrets are generally more suspicious. I get it. Tam's not sensing your potential like Terik supposedly does, he's sensing how much you're trying to keep hidden.

But I see no particular reason for shadow-whispering to work. It's my main complaint about Shades' powers.

The whole thing about shadowflux echoes affecting emotions kind of makes sense. Sophie was afraid when Umber attacked her, so the shadowflux could feel that fear and the pain Umber caused with it. I'm not completely sure I can explain the pain part (something about the echoes connecting pain and fear), but the fear part could connect with reading people's shadowvapor. Generally, people try to hide their fears, so the echo could pull on the fears using the shadowvapor veiling them and bring them to the forefront of someone's mind.

Talentless:

I suspect this is more common than the elves like to pretend. Having an ability is definitely more common than being Talentless, but there are so many abilities I'd venture to guess that Talentlessness is more common than any one particular ability. Now you look at the graph at the top of this chapter, find the pale blue slice Talentless slice, and say, "But it's small! The Conjurer, Empath, Flasher, Phaser, Polyglot, Technopath, Telepath, and Vanisher slices are all bigger than it!"

Keep in mind that Sophie seems to interact with the Nobility (all of which have an ability) a lot more than the working class. And that most of her friends are crazy-powerful. It makes sense that she'd know a disproportionately large number of people that have powerful abilities.

Speaking of this, I don't believe that Lady Galvin is Talentless. Yes, there's that one line about how "being good at alchemy isn't the same as having a special ability," but "there aren't any Talentless elves in the Nobility" is mentioned a lot more. Therefore, I'm going to ignore that one line until there's a development in the books that drives me to ignore all the lines that talk about Talentless elves not being allowed in the nobility.

I'm not sure if I've talked about this before, but, remember when Sophie had the ability restrictor in Everblaze? She was going on and on about how she was useless without her abilities and how she couldn't work with the Black Swan anymore because she didn't have any special powers and how she couldn't help anyone. Remember that? All I'm going to say about that is, "That doesn't bode well for Sophie allowing Talentless elves into her Neverseen-fighting group." She seems to think they're just as useless as the rest of the Lost Cities thinks.

And let's talk about something random my brother said. He said that the ability restrictor could actually be a beneficial thing.

"How?" you demand. Well, if someone could alter it to get rid of the side effects, which, as far as I can tell, are headaches and fuzzy thinking, the only effect it would have would be getting rid of someone's special ability, forcing them to focus on their normal abilities and showing that abilities aren't the only thing that make elves powerful.

If elves with special abilities could understand Talentless elves better and see that their abilities aren't nearly as useful as they think (most of the abilities seem pretty specific), the Lost Cities could be a lot better.

Also, what sort of society thinks that the ability to summon lighting (Charger) or mind-control people (Mesmer) is a prerequisite for being a leader?

The last part of Thoughts About Abilities will discuss Technopath, Telepath, Teleporter, Vanisher, and Vociferator.