GlytchMeister wrote:Well, then, I guess we'd better get the questions rolling before this topic dies.
...
Something that's been nagging at me for quite a while are these half-mentioned prophecies. "Five winged beings destined to..." And "Bia will have a descendant who will set the powers right" and the Nui Gui's interpretation of the Bia prophecy that Bia should focus less on immortal heirs and more on a mortal descendant.
Are these two connected somehow? Does anyone have any idea what the complete version of the 5wing prophecy might be? If the Bia and the 5wing prophecies
are connected, are they complimentary (prophesize the same thing occurring the same way, just with different words), supportive (prophesize separate events that, when combined, cause something more important to happen), divergent (prophesize separate possible futures that cannot coexist), or competitive (prophesize the same overall future coming about via different events)? ...or some other type of connection?
...
Given the recent encounter of Tina (possibly one of the 5 winged ones) and Bia, I'm thinking they are connected somehow.
Okay, my thoughts on the prophecies:
As far as I'm aware, we have had four strips that dealt with prophecies, two apparently dealing with one prophecy and the other two perhaps about a different couple of prophecies.
The first (I'll call it the Sibyl prophecy) is found
here and
here.
The prophecy: “She told me that the land of the crescent will turn to glass, but you [Bia] would have a descendent who will set the powers right.”
The source: Sibyl, by way of Charon.
The context: The chimera had just wiped out most of human civilisation.
The second (I'll call it the Atsali prophecy) is found
here.
The prophecy: “It was told that six special women will defeat an evil, born from the death of an innocent.”
The source: Unknown, by way of Atsali.
The context: Katherine, Atsali, Bud, Brandi, Lily and Suzie had just defeated the Nu Gui.
The third (I'll call it the Tina prophecy) is found
here.
The prophecy: “Five winged beings prophesied to be-”
The source: Unknown, by way of Tina.
The context: Tina feels that she let Monica down and hurt her.
Prophecies can be broken down into two different types. There's the Oedipus style ones, where the foretold events will happen regardless of whether you try to prevent them or not. Then there's the Ghost of Christmas Future style of prophecy, where you're presented with what will happen if things continue as they are, but you can take action to prevent them.
With the latter kind, you could have two conflicting prophecies. But with the former type, all prophecies have to fit together into the same framework, and thus will be connected in
some way. It may be in the most tenuous imaginable way, but there will be a connection. Since we're dealing here with a limited number of characters in a limited area, then the connections would have to be rather strong.
So far, we have yet to see anybody successfully defy any of the prophecies. Of course, it's a bit tricky to say which prophecies have come to a conclusion already. The Atsali prophecy looks as though it
probably came to pass: six women had just defeated an ancient evil being who had arisen due to the murder of an innocent baby. If that was the event that the prophecy was referring to, then that prophecy did indeed come true. That doesn't tell us whether or not a prophecy
could have been derailed, just that it wasn't in this one particular case.
On the other hand, there's no guarantee that the prophecy was actually referring to all that had just come to pass. There are plenty of special women in this story, and there's always plenty of both evil and innocence in the world. You could plausibly argue that the prophecy actually refers to, say, six of the female characters eventually having to defeat the chimera, a product of the evil manipulations of some priests who murdered several innocents to make it happen.
And if that is the case, then the Atsali prophecy could actually tie in with and be part of the Sibyl prophecy. The Sibyl prophecy happened just after the chimera went amok and, according to the golem girls, covered that part of the planet in a post-apocalyptic shell of glass. That could easily be considered as the powers being set off-balance. So the prophecy is likely referring to a descendent of Bia somehow setting right what the priests did in making the chimera.
So far, then, we either have one prophecy that came to pass and had only a most passing connection to another prophecy, or perhaps two prophecies that are still waiting to be fulfilled and may be pretty much the same thing.
Again, though, the whole vagueness part comes into play. We're only assuming that the “set the powers right” bit was about the chimera, because of the context in which the prophecy is brought up. However, the Sibyl prophecy could possibly be referring to the calendar machine storyline. That could be considered as setting the powers right, and Bia's descendent Shelly did play a critical part in the events. Or it could be talking about something totally different, perhaps Shelly's third-oldest brother's grandson will fix some problem that we don't even know about yet (just as long as he doesn't bring balance to the Force).
If we take those two prophecies at face value and assume that they refer to the obvious things (which is by no means a certainty), then
those two prophecies are probably not all that connected to each other. They just happened to both occur in the same universe. We don't know from either of them whether or not prophecies can be avoided, so we can't even say whether they were mutually exclusive or not.
With Tina's prophecy, we've basically got a whole lot of nothing. We know that five beings with a certain characteristic will. . .do something. That's it. It's hard to tell even the context. Was it her failing Monica that reminded Tina of the prophecy? Was it the rape? Was it her realising that Monica hadn't been fully prepared ahead of time for what her Jaguar Girl status involves? Whatever it is, Tina seems to be less than happy about whatever the five winged beings are going to do.
Could Tina's prophecy be a part of Sibyl's, or vice versa? Perhaps. Shelly, a descendent of Bia, is a winged being. Shelly, Tina and three others could end up doing something that seems really horrible in the short term, but that in the long run sets things right with the chimera. Or the situation could end up as something totally different.
With the Nu Gui's comments regarding Sibyl's prophecy, she was trying her own way to fulfill the prophecy. This adds further weight to the idea that Sibyl's prophecy is about undoing what the Lanthian priests had done, since why else would an evil being care about setting things right other than that it would be revenge against those who had set things wrong (and in the process had killed her as an infant)? Exactly how the Nu Gui's plan would have resulted in a descendent of Bia being mortal and doing things, I'm not sure. This was all long before Shelly was born, so it's not as though the Nu Gui was trying to actively plan about Shelly specifically. Perhaps Bia already had some children by that time, and the Nu Gui was planning something about them. . .in which case, there could be more relatives of Shelly's who we either have yet to meet or else haven't realised are relatives.
