The Locked Tomb Spoilers

woefuljester

7 months ago

Imagine you wake up one day, and your day gets interrupted by the funeral of your coworker, who went batshit insane over her gf's death, leaving you with your two other coworkers, who you hate. One of them drops the biggest, worst news (we all gonna die), and your boss, whom you try to tolerate, introduces the new interns to you: A weird, one armed blonde, and this weird nun, who wears a pillowcase mask, randomly starts to bleed from every orifice, and throws up. And people are suprised why you are angry all the time

You're Mercymorn, Saint of Joy.

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gideon the ninth the locked tomb harrow the ninth mercymorn my beloved the locked tomb spoilers

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im-just-a-lady

10 months ago

Imagine you’re some little evil woman sitting in Hades’ throne room when Orpheus walks in to make a deal to get Eurydice back, and Hades is like “yeah ok, just don’t look back otherwise she has to stay here” then walks out of the room. Almost immediately after hearing the conditions, Orpheus breaks his own neck so that it is physically impossible for him to turn it, and then demands that you gouge out his eyes for good measure. Eurydice then gets really upset because she’s convinced this is a sign that Orpheus hates her and never wants to see her again, and Orpheus is completely convinced that this was a normal and logical thing to do.

You are literally the only person in the universe who recognizes this as an act of love. They both then insult you to your face for thinking this is anything other than very normal (Orpheus), or petty hatred (Eurydice).

You are Ianthe Tridentarius.

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the locked tomb spoilers tlt spoilers

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residentinsomniacartist

11 months ago

the love triangle in TLT is so funny because it's not even a true love triangle. it's like a shape that hasn't even been invented yet. first you've got Ianthe, who thinks Harrow is totally into her but isn't. and Harrow is into Gideon but also this really sexy corpse. the sexy corpse was maybe probably in a relationship with Gideon's dad who's also the leader of the solar system. he hooks up with his officers sometimes and has hooked up with his best friends over the last 10,000 years because they were bored. Ianthe also has this weirdly borderline incestuous relationship with Coronabeth but Coronabeth is in love with Judith who had a crush on her now-dead cavalier. the only ones who've got a semi-normal relationship are Camilla and Palamedes and even then they had a weird poly thing with Dulcinea even though they never met her in person. and they have another weird poly thing with Pyrrha but by that point they're sharing a body. then they decide to do a mutual suicide/soul binding ritual and become a whole new person in Camilla's body. also they're second cousins. oh Pyrrha also had a weird poly thing with her necro and Gideon's biomom/the leader of the rebellion who's fighting against Gideon's biodad. I don't even have time to unpack all that and that doesn't even cover half of the shit happening here. there's also the whole Cytherea thing

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gideon the ninth the locked tomb they’re amazing nona the ninth tlt harrow the ninth the locked tomb spoilers ‘A shape that hasn’t been invented yet’ put PERFECTLY op god I love the locked tomb and all the fucked up weird relationships in it no one is doing it like them tamsyn muir your mind nona the ninth spoilers harrow the ninth spoilers gideon the ninth spoilers

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malwirevt

5 months ago

Have another TLT WIP.

What if Alecto adored her reflection as the descendent of Anastasia?

“When she had been earlier born, and less self-conscious, sometimes she would rest her face against the mirror's face, and try to reach her reflec-tion. Camilla had caught her kissing it once, and had written about six pages of notes on that, which was humiliating.” —Nona the Ninth

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my art the locked tomb myart tlt nona alecto the ninth the locked tomb spoilers tlt spoilers nona the ninth spoilers alecto alecto the first wires art wireart anastasia the ninth alectopause

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malwirevt

6 months ago

Tiny Nona in between TLT requests!!!

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my art the locked tomb nona the ninth tlt nona the locked tomb spoilers wireart

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yourlocaltinsmith

2 months ago

A Gideon (Kiriona) sketch ive been working on forever and am unsure if I'll finish🫠

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my art gideon the ninth gideon nav the locked tomb tlt the locked tomb spoilers tlt spoilers kiriona gaia gideon the first ntn spoilers htn spoilers gideon my beloved kiriona the first gtn spoilers

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yourlocaltinsmith

2 months ago

TLT Theory: Pyrrha was the Necromancer

No get back here, hear me out. I'm not saying Gideon didn't become one as a Lyctor. But I've been noticing a lot of things adding up weird here...

In Ch6 of HtN, when preparing for the first trip through the River, they call it Pyrrha's trial.

An ebook screenshot: “You should start with Pyrrha’s trial,” called out the other Lyctor immediately.

“Right,” said the Emperor. Then: “I mean, I was being more or less facetious, Mercy, but yes, I’ll probably begin there— Do you both recall the projection trial, back at Canaan House? It would have been in Lab Three.”

You recalled the enormous construction of regrowing bone, your hands encased in it so that you could not wrench yourself free, your mind voyaging nauseously into the chamber of another person’s brain. God said, “You’ll need that skillset now.”

Much later, when Pyrrha is mad at Palamedes for the soul fuckery he and Camilla are doing, she refers to it as one they designed together, but that doesn't negate Mercy calling it Pyrrha's first and foremost. And...

Screenshot: “Who gives a shit about clues? It’s a thalergetic fuckfest you’re subjecting that cerebral cortex to, is what it is. Every time you overlap, son, you’re subjecting her thalamus to appalling stress—”

“I greenlight it every time, I thoroughly scan her for—”

“You should be draining and replacing her fucking brain fluid,” said Pyrrha. “When Gideon and I designed that trial, I used to crack his skull and sieve it myself, just as a control variable. It’s aggregative. I doubt you’re testing her white blood cell count either. The only other people I put through that damn trial were Mercy and Cris, because only Cris didn’t mind being trepanned on the regular. Fucking around with souls is the problem, Sextus … you can’t ever get the full data on souls.”

She's worried about Camilla's brain, and okay, sure, they only have Camilla's body. But with Cris and Mercy, it was Cris getting cracked open. With Harrow and Gideon 2, it was always Gideon in danger, not Harrow. And with Gideon 1 and Pyrrha, it was Gideon's skull, Gideon's brain, getting the testing done. No mention of the same kind of testing or Mercy or Pyrrha. The principle of it is the necromancer's consciousness being overlaid onto the cavalier's brain, right?

But okay, maybe Pyrrha just doesn't mention herself, and Gideon's "a control variable" to compare herself to? But there's more.

Pyrrha fights with guns, prefers them. Gideon fought with not just a sword but a whole ass massive spear for an offhand, and has easily more physical prowess than any other necromancer we've ever seen. His stomach is still desiccated in typical necromancer fashion, he's dehydrated and not a scrap of fair fat on him, but he's a wall of muscle and sinew. Yes he looks "like an idiot's construct", probably because John regrew him from an arm when he was still getting the hang of using that level of power, but he's distinctly not built like other necromancers. If he wasn't a necromancer prior to being a Lyctor, his build might make more sense. Moreover, we've seen other cavaliers turned into sort-of-constructs, with both Protesilaus and Kiriona.

I also want you to look at the Saint of Duty and tell me that man isn't the walking essence of what it means to be a Cavalier.

And he rarely uses necromancy. He can travel in the River, and he drains thanergy, but he never really uses theorems or sets up wards. His necromancy is used pretty exclusively in passive ways or to remove obstacles between himself and his weapons. But Pyrrha is extremely knowledgeable about all kinds of necromancy. She tells Harrow fresh thalergy is harder to drain. She sees Ianthe's brilliantly inventive combination of wards creatively mimicking the effect of Mercy's trial and can accurately tell what they're going to do, as well as how to break them. Among other things. She also says she walked the Eightfold. Maybe that means being led willingly as a cav, but what if she was in control of the process?

With Harrow, Gideon was constantly in and out of awareness, watching from Harrow's subconscious, things that Harrow was fully conscious for. Palamedes doesn't have that with Camilla, and both of them being conscious is rare and dangerous, as detailed above. Pal and Pyrrha are frequently compared with their situations. How did Cam and Pal work out how to do the switcheroo, especially while Pal had extremely limited ability to move or perceive? How did they work out a safe time limit before too much irreparable damage was done? Could they have had guidance from someone who's done it? Done it with a necromancer's knowledge, letting him know where he can safely go under in the brain, how to come out at will, what to watch out for?

On a separate note:

Lyctor names are sacred, but the Houses were founded before Lyctorhood was achieved. Anastasia did not become a Lyctor, so her name was not removed from history, and became common in her House. Judith and Marta are part of the Dve Territorials, and while that doesn't prove anything or could even be evidence against, I feel like it would make sense to have named prestigious military groups after the House's "main" Founder, before there were Saints and the decision to erase the Saints' names.

On a more meta level, I think it would be weird to have "their names were meant to be forgotten", history knowing jack shit about the cavaliers of old, and even emphasis on the Lyctors forgetting each others' House names, only to have a cavalier's House name in active use somewhere, if that information wasn't supposed to be serving a narrative purpose. If we weren't meant to question why.

"But they call her his cavalier. She calls him her necromancer."

Sure. And maybe that's straightforward; this is a theory, I could be wrong. But switching titles after Lyctorhood doesn't sound too out of the question to me. What's a bit of revisionist history in TLT? John knows where memory lives in the brain, and on Pyrrha's end, at least after Lyctorhood Gideon was the necromancer, after all.

"So why can't she do necromancy when she's in control?"

"He took more from me than got taken from you" feels like explanation enough to me. He got her aptitude and more. She's a partial soul. If anything, she could even still has an ounce of it, to retain the body's healing capabilities. If Gideon was fully giddy-gone and the soul that was left had zero aptitude, what would the furnace be burning? But if Gideon's consciousness is dead and what's left of his soul is in the furnace with a (partial) necromancer at the helm, well, that's not far off from Lyctorhood working as intended.

"Why though?"

And there's the part that gets really tricky but interesting. My best guess short answer is, one of them was dying, and it was an act of desperation.

Maybe Pyrrha was dying and so brutalized her body wouldn't have healed right even becoming a Lyctor, but given what they're like and the Cam/Pal parallels, I feel like an even more likely answer was that Gideon was dying. Cris and Alfred had already put Mercy and Augustine in that position, and they took their souls to preserve something, but Pyrrha would have seen how well that worked, assuming the third ascension wasn't immediately after the first two. So perhaps in her own desperation, with endless adoration for the man so willing to burn for what he believed, she said no. You don't get to throw your life away. If you're going to keep throwing yourself on things, I will make sure you can survive it and keep surviving it, even if it kills me instead. And then walked the path in reverse, pinning her own soul to his instead of pulling his into her.

I've seen a post around here pointing out how when Pyrrha tells Nona about her first tantrum, she's laughing with her mouth but not her eyes, and it looks like it reminds her of something her brain doesn't want to bring back, and proposing that Alecto killed Pyrrha. And I do think there's a solid possibility it was Alecto's tantrum that mortally wounded whichever (or maybe even both!) of them and prompted them to ascend. If Pyrrha didn't blame Varun for Gideon recently, I doubt she'd hold it against Alecto either.

Either way, wouldn't something like that more than earn the title of Duty? Wouldn't it be beautiful that they both fit the title if both had in ways been the cavalier? Wouldn't it be fitting to allow the name Dve to stand in the military as a monument to such a woman?

I know this might still be a long shot, but I definitely think there's enough little things sprinkled around to at least to warrant some solid suspicion. And it honestly would explain a lot.

Tags

the locked tomb let them cook the locked tomb spoilers pyrrha dve gideon the first ntn spoilers htn spoilers tlt theory

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yourlocaltinsmith

2 months ago

Very very helpful and I will revisit when I need to because the timeline is very confusing lol

I get so sad every time someone says they couldn't get into TLT because they got lost so I MADE THIS. enjoy. Please let me know if Im missing anything or anything is wrong!

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TLT Theory: Pyrrha was the Necromancer