I didn't really come here to have my future told to me

Player: Kerry
Character: Richard Campbell Gansey III
Series: The Raven Cycle
Type of adjustment: Both a canon update and a power adjustment.
Current canon point: The end of the third book, 'Blue Lily, Lily Blue'
Current powerset: Self-Replication and Charmspeak
Specifics:

CANON UPDATE

Update to Character History - The Raven King

The book opens with confirmation that Gansey knows, and has always known, that he is going to die. His first death has always haunted him, making him afraid of it happening again, but his intensive research into ley lines meant that he had always known what it meant when he heard his own voice speaking to Blue on St Mark’s Eve. He had not, however, been willing to face this fact until Persephone died, at which point the need to prevent further hurt to the other people in his life became more important. That had given Gansey the courage he needed to explore Cabeswater’s cave in the last book, and his attitude continues here; he tells Adam that he wants to explore the Dittley cave, something which Adam considers to be risky, and unlike Gansey for that fact. Adam also finally notices something strange going on between Gansey and the headmaster, and Gansey’s unwillingness to talk about it makes Adam correctly guess that it’s something to do with Ronan. Before he can question Gansey further, the boys become aware of something strange; they realises that time keeps shifting and even pausing, and their clocks keep reading 6:21 even when it’s not. This is first noticed on Gansey’s phone, when his parents call to suggest holding a fundraiser for his mother’s election campaign in Aglionby. Gansey’s phone rings constantly throughout the book while the arrangements for this are made, though Gansey’s mind is elsewhere.

Ronan misses school and is attacked in his dreams by a strange black substance; he accidentally brings Orphan Girl – a regular feature in his dreams – out with him. They take her to Cabeswater to be cared for by Ronan’s mother. On the way, they run into Henry Cheng, who notices Orphan Girl in the back of the car, but does not react except to warn Gansey that she’s visible. At the forest, Ronan’s mother shows them that one of the trees isbeing attacked by the same black rot that Ronan saw in his dreams. As they watch, three figures who look like Blue step forward, and appear threatening to the group. They are one of Adam’s nightmares, which Cabeswater has made real. Cabeswater often creates things that the group seems to wish for, but it generally responds to their intent. The three figures are a nightmare, and seem to be a result of the sickness in the trees; neither Adam nor Ronan is able to wish them away. Blue takes Gansey’s hand and Adam tells Gansey to command them away, just as he had commanded the animal bones to wake in Cabeswater’s cave. With Blue amplifying him, Gansey does so, and the command works when nothing else would. Gansey acknowledges that the power to command is an apparent natural ability of his, which he has not completely realized until now.

The next day at school is filled with plans for Raven Day, a pageant-like event which is revealed to have been invented years before by Noah Czerny, when he was alive. Gansey sees Henry Cheng, and tries to think of a way of believably explaining Orphan Girl to him. While Adam is elsewhere, Gansey finds himself distracted by the heat of the day. He thinks he feels an insect close to his face and becomes aware that he is close to having a panic attack in front of the entire school. It is diffused when Henry presses a cup of ice water into his hands, and at the same time reveals that he had seen the panic beginning to surface. This is particularly notable because Henry is the first character who seems to notice and understand Gansey’s anxiety before it manifests. Gansey does not know why, but is aware that he owes something to Henry, and agrees to go to a toga party at his house. Henry also invites Gansey’s friends, but Adam and Ronan both refuse, and he ends up going alone with Blue.

Gansey has grown more and more unhappy about his situation with Blue; he is increasingly irritated by being unable to hold her hand or comfort her around Adam and Ronan, and relieved when he is able to do so around Henry Cheng and his friends. His party marks the first time Gansey and Blue are able to act like a couple in public, and they both feel better for it. They also both grow closer to Henry; he begins to befriend both of them, until a worrying phone call sends them rushing back to Blue’s house. Their night turns on its head when they find Blue’s family being haunted by a creature that has taken possession of a badly decaying Noah. Through him, the creature attacks Blue, trying to gouge out her eye. With Blue amplifying him, Gansey is able to use his power of command again – he tells the creature to be Noah, which drives it out of their friend. After the attack Blue is taken to hospital, where Adam and Ronan meet them. Gansey, already stressed after what happened to Blue, is furious to discover that Adam and Ronan had gone to Cabeswater alone, despite knowing that something was wrong there, and fallen into danger as well. He says that they all need to face what’s happening together. He asks for no more secrets, but recognizes his own hypocrisy in that, and reveals that he has been seeing Blue and wants to keep seeing her. This is in fact not a surprise to Adam, who had both noticed the tension between them and argued with Blue about it. However, the moment passes; Adam accepts their relationship, which from here on in is always expressed in public. The argument also temporarily stops Ronan from skipping school, which relieves Gansey in spite of the reason for it.

The next day Gansey again encounters Henry at school. This time Henry offers him some honesty. He takes him to a part of Aglionby where there is an old hidey hole in the ground. They get into it, and Henry admits that he was once kidnapped, and made to stay in a hole like this. The experience left him traumatised, which explains how he recognised Gansey’s anxiety before. He admits to teaching himself to face the things he was afraid of, and advises Gansey do the same. He had been kidnapped by men named Laumonier, who had wanted to get at his mother – who is revealed to be a dealer in unusual artefacts, much like the Greenmantles from the third book. Henry’s kidnapping is therefore part of the same world in which Niall Lynch had dealt, and ultimately ended up murdered by Greenmantle’s agent, Mr Gray. Henry shows Gansey a small robotic bee, so similar to Ronan’s dream things that Gansey realises it must have come from Niall Lynch himself. The bee is what Laumonier had wanted; it responds to Henry’s commands, either through an app on his phone, or through his thoughts. They all think that it is a magical artefact, rather than a creation from Niall’s dreams. Gansey knows otherwise, but will not be drawn on it; he tells Henry that this is not his secret to tell. Henry uses it to help Gansey face his fear of insects. He tells him that if he cannot be unafraid, he should be afraid and happy. With Henry’s help, Gansey masters some of his fear, and the secrets keep coming. Henry’s arrival at Aglionby is no accident; he is there because his mother wanted a reason to be in Henrietta while she dealt with first Niall, and now his son Declan. She had additionally asked Henry to get close to Gansey and his friends, to see if there was real magic involved with his search for Glendower. With his cards on the table, Henry says that he is not interested in playing spy for his mother; he wants friends with whom he can be honest, and wants Gansey to trust him. He leaves Gansey to consider it.

Shortly afterwards, Declan Lynch himself comes to town. He admits that he is involved in the same world as the Greenmantles, Laumonier and Henry’s mother; he sells the dream things once created by his father, continuing the guise that they have only been sourced by his family and not created by them. One of his contacts – who in fact happens to be Henry’s mother – has warned him that someone is about to sell something big, and that it will bring dozens of his father’s old contacts to Henrietta. Declan says that he wants to take both Ronan and Matthew away to keep them safe. Ronan tells him to take Matthew, and under the guise of a farewell party for Matthew, Ronan explains the danger to his friends.

They also end up talking more frankly about what is happening around them. The sickness in Cabeswater has spread to Adam, through his bond with the forest. His hands and eyes – the parts which he had sacrificed to Cabeswater – are moving of their own accord. Both he and the forest are under attack, by the same creature that had possessed Noah and hurt Blue. Ronan reveals that Cabeswater is not just a dream; it is one of his dreams, and the fact that he had brought it out is why it calls him the Greywaren. He did not, however, invent the forest; it appears to have always existed, on some kind of spiritual plane, and Ronan was able to give it physical form and location by pulling it out of his dreams. It has apparently existed in other forms and in other locations along the length of the ley line in the past, and is always destroyed by a creature like the one that is attacking it now. Each time, it returns to the spiritual plane, and waits to be brought back to life. Ronan also admits to Blue and Gansey that he had created Matthew from his dreams, something previously known only to Adam. Gansey tells the others about Henry, believing that they come as a package deal; he wants his friends to let Henry in.

As for the creature itself, more is discovered about it from an unexpected source; Blue’s aunt Neeve, who had been an enemy in the first book, briefly redeems herself by revealing to Blue’s family that it is a demon, and that it means to ‘unmake’ the forest and ‘everything attached to it’. The demon is also the ‘something big’ referred to by Declan; Piper Greenmantle intends to sell it to the highest bidder. The group agree that they all feel they have a responsibility to try and protect Cabeswater, and ultimately decide to talk to Blue’s family before they act. With that discussion over, the group disperses, leaving Adam alone with Gansey. He surprises Gansey by admitting that Ronan has kissed him, and asking whether Gansey loves Blue. When Gansey says that he does, Adam asks how he knows. Gansey can only say that he knows because he can sleep after talking to Blue. He advises Adam to be honest with himself about his feelings, and warns him that Ronan is not as tough as he seems.

During his own investigations of what’s going on, Mr Gray briefly kidnaps Henry, intent on finding what he knows about the demon. While they are together, he takes a call from Gansey, who also wants to talk to Henry and has not been able to find him. While he and Blue meet with Henry and Mr Gray, they are intercepted by the Laumonier brothers, who have seen Mr Gray’s car. Knowing that they would have a continued interest in their former victim Henry and his Robobee, Mr Gray distracts the brothers while Blue, Gansey and Henry narrowly escape. The encounter confirms Henry as a firm friend of Gansey and Blue, and by extension, the rest of their group too.

Confirming this, Gansey then takes both Blue and Henry to meet his family, who have arrived at the schoolhouse in preparation for their fundraiser. They like and approve of Blue, whose eccentricities match theirs in the same way they match Gansey’s. They also approve of Henry, who appears to be considered an appropriate peer and friend in a way that neither Adam nor Ronan had ever managed. However, Gansey’s sister Helen is angry with him; she has discovered that Gansey had bribed Aglionby’s headmaster to keep Ronan in school, something that Gansey did in the first book. She reveals the previously unknown fact that Gansey is only able to do this by agreeing to sign Monmouth Manufacturing – his warehouse home in Henrietta – over to the school. Helen warns Gansey that this abuse of privilege could look bad for their mother’s election, and is furious both that he had done it and not warned her (so that she could prepare to manage any fallout), and that he had done it for Ronan, who she thinks is not worth the risk. The conversation reveals both that Gansey had made the decision quickly, because he is not sure how much time he has left to live, and that he was thinking of Ronan’s future – he thinks that though Ronan doesn’t want his diploma now, he’ll want it when he’s older. The pensiveness of this makes Helen realise something is really wrong, though Gansey is not able to tell her what. He does admit that he’s worried about what it would mean if he did not find Glendower, because for him, ‘that’s all there is’. It’s clear that the future – or his lack of one – is weighing heavily on Gansey.

This weight only increases, when news comes that Ronan’s mother has become a casualty of Cabeswater’s demon. Having found her body in one of his dreams, Ronan is distraught; he has now found the bodies of both parents, and his response is to retreat to near silence. He talks to no one until Gansey arrives, and then talks only to say that he is waiting for Gansey to tell him what to do. He tells Gansey that he knows how to find Glendower, and when he is ready to go, Ronan will be waiting to go where Gansey tells him. In the absence of other ideas, Blue attempts to talk to Artemus, who has said almost nothing since his rescue from the cave in the previous book. While Adam and Gansey watch, Blue asks Artemus what he knows. His revelations do not help to find Glendower, but he is able to explain more about Cabeswater; he says that the forest is made of living spirits, who are able to take human form when they wish, but are also able to live within trees. Artemus reveals that both he, and Gwenllian’s mother, are tree spirits – called tir e e’lintes, in their own language. Both of them had taken human form and had children with humans; Artemus with Blue’s mother, and Gwenllian’s mother with Glendower. This strange parentage – half human, half spirit – is the reason behind the ability of both Gwenllian and Blue to amplify the magic of those around them. The ability to amplify comes from the spirits, and this is also why Cabeswater is a focal point for the energy of the ley line. Artemus recounts his time with Glendower, and admits that he wants to return to Cabeswater – but cannot, because the demon is unmaking it. He reveals that the only way to get rid of the demon was for someone to willingly die on the corpse road. This would pay for the unwilling death which had created the demon in the first place – the murder of Noah by Barrington Whelk, seven years ago. Gansey asks if it’s possible to wake Glendower and use his favour instead. Artemus has no answer to that.

That night, Gansey stays at Blue’s house. He is unable to sleep, but encounters Noah, who is more decayed and ghostly than he has ever been. Noah leads Gansey upstairs, to Gwenllian, and he tells her that he has come to her for courage. She tells him that a king acts so that others will act. She advises him to stop asking how, and to do what he needs to do. Gansey, acting on instinct, asks Gwenllian to take his hand so that she is amplifying his power, and he commands the night to tell him where Glendower is. Magic responds, and a flock of ravens appears, circling Gansey’s car. He runs to it and as the birds fly away, he follows them, without telling anyone where he is going. He intends to finish the quest alone, so that no one else need be endangered by it. On the way, however, his car – never reliable – breaks down, right at a point on the road where Henry Cheng is waiting. Henry reveals that he has asked his Robobee to watch over Gansey and let him know if he was needed, and because he was needed, he was here to help. Gansey leaves his own car behind and goes with Henry.

The birds lead them to an old mansion – the mansion in whose grounds Gansey had died seven years ago. Gansey feels he has come full circle, but also feels that the magic he has commanded has led him to this moment, and if he stops now, the moment will be lost. When Henry finds a cave beneath the house, Gansey goes in. Henry, who is wearing his Aglionby uniform, gives Gansey his sweater before he goes; unknown to Gansey, this means that he is wearing the same clothes as he was when Blue saw his spirit on St Mark’s Eve. He makes it almost all the way along the tunnel before his friends – Adam, Ronan, Blue and Henry – all appear around him. He realises his friends are all afraid for him, and Gansey tells them that he hadn’t wanted them to be hurt anymore. They forgive him, and proceed together; when Henry offers, Gansey asks if he will use Robobee to help them navigate the cave, and they eventually find Glendower’s tomb. To Gansey, the tomb feels entirely right, in a way that it had not when the group previously found Glendower. When they enter, however, they do not find a living king that can be woken; they find only bones, which have been dead for a long time. On seeing this, Gansey’s hope drains away. His friends want him to try commanding the bones to life, and he tries, but it does not work. Previously, magic had seemed to respond to Gansey’s intention, but both magic and intention seem missing here – Gansey feels that he is already grieving, because he knows there is nothing more to do. Glendower cannot be woken, and so there will be no favour.

They leave the tomb and drive away. Gansey’s phone, which had run out of both power and signal in the cave, is turned back on and he receives a flood of increasingly angry messages from his family. It’s revealed that the group had been underground for much longer than they’d thought; their evening had been more than a day in the real world, and Gansey has missed his family’s fundraiser. They stop the cars, and Gansey gives in to his grief; he thinks he will never now have any answer for why he had been saved from death, and the quest he’d devoted seven years to has ended with a whimper. On top of that, there is no Glendower to save Cabeswater. Gansey is ready to face what that means; he tells his friends that a willing sacrifice is the only way, that he knows Blue had seen his spirit, and that the sacrifice has to be him. His friends argue, but Gansey is determined; he does not want to die, but he is willing to, if it saves Cabeswater. Adam comes up with the idea to use the shifting time around the ley line to their advantage; if Cabeswater could kill Gansey without destroying his body, and then kept time from moving, they may have a chance to bring Gansey back to life.

Gansey agrees to try, and the group makes for Cabeswater. At the moment they agree, Adam suddenly attacks Ronan, trying to strangle him, and it is quickly clear that the demon has taken control of him. The group work to restrain Adam without hurting him, and are forced to both tie his hands and blindfold him to prevent the demon from using him. They drive towards Cabeswater, only for the demon to attack again, through Ronan’s dreams; a mountain of artefacts is pulled out of Ronan, and a sudden flurry of phone calls from Declan indicates that Matthew is in trouble too. Gansey realises that they don’t have time to get to Cabeswater, because the demon will kill Ronan before they get there. Gansey asks if they are on the ley line, and they are; to Gansey that is enough, because all that is needed for the sacrifice to work is a willing death on the ley line. Knowing that it’s a choice between his own life and Ronan’s, Gansey tells Blue that he’s ready, and asks her to kiss him.

When she does, Gansey feels suddenly connected. He realises that Blue is a creature made from Cabeswater’s magic, and that he has only been repaired by it:
“Gansey’s ley line heart had been gifted, not grown.” This is why Gansey cannot survive her kiss; his heart stops, and his sacrifice stops both the attacks on Ronan and the possession of Adam. The demon appears to be gone, but Gansey is dead, and most of Cabeswater is gone as well. At the same moment, the last decaying strand of the ghost that had been Noah Czerny, revisits the moment of Gansey’s first death – and it is revealed that it is Noah who had whispered into Gansey’s ear that he would live because of Glendower. Noah tells Gansey not to throw it away, and then his ghost fades away completely.

Back in the present, with Blue, Adam and Ronan all grieving, Henry reacts with disbelief, telling them that if they are Gansey’s magicians, there must be something they can do to save him. Adam suggests reaching out to Cabeswater; there is not much left, but he suggests that if Ronan, the Greywaren, asks, it may be willing to sacrifice itself for Gansey. They make this request, but Cabeswater finds it difficult; it was always either alive, or wanting to be alive – it had never purposefully died, and so it does not know how to sacrifice itself. Additionally, it is not a simple sacrifice; a life can be given for a life, but Gansey was mortal, and Cabeswater is not. It offers a compromise; it cannot unmake itself, because it is a creator, and it cannot repair Gansey’s body because its death cannot be reversed. What it can do is remake Gansey into something new, using the last power from its current life. The friends agree, and Cabeswater uses feelings and memories from Adam, Ronan and Blue, to remake their friend.

It creates a new life, not simply repaired, but this time directly built by Cabeswater. For Gansey, new life brings new answers; he understands that Cabeswater is now a part of him, and because Cabeswater is eternal, it has in some way always been with him. This is why, throughout both his old life and his new one, he has had the feeling of time ‘slipping’, as though the past and the future are one. This is essentially a hangover from Cabeswater. Gansey’s new life means that for the first time in seven years, he is able to live without the fear of death hanging over him. He is able to be with Blue, and he is able to think about his own future, in a way that had never been possible before. The Epilogue reveals that at the end of the school year, in June, Gansey and Henry graduate together – notably without Ronan, who no longer seems to be fighting with Gansey about attendance. They plan to spend a year travelling with Blue before they consider college. For their travels, Ronan gives them the Camaro he had dreamed up in book two – a car identical to Gansey’s, but capable of running without an engine. Adam plans to go to college right away, though he is now in a relationship with Ronan, and like Blue, Gansey and Henry, he intends to come back. Ronan has reclaimed the Barns, and intends to stay there, farming and creating from his dreams. The book ends with Ronan wondering if he could recreate Cabeswater in his dreams, and bring it back again; he goes to sleep to try.

New Canon Point

I would like to update Gansey to the end of the main story of book four, but before the Epilogue - the point right after which Gansey is remade by Cabeswater.

Update to Personality

The most notable change to Gansey's personality in this book is his gradual acceptance of the fact that his death is inevitable. Once it is known that Gansey has always been aware that the presence of his spirit on St Mark's Eve meant that he would die within a year, a great deal of his earlier caution makes more sense. His fear of someone getting hurt during the sacrifice to the ley line in book one, coupled with his ongoing fears for the safety of his friends, is the mark of a man who is deeply afraid that something will go wrong. Gansey describes himself has having spent so long 'chaining' his fear of death after he died for the first time, that he was not yet ready to open those locks. For him, Persephone's death is a watershed. When she dies, he is forced to face the reality of death once again, and see it as something that cannot be run from or hidden from. If he cannot run, then he must ready himself to face it. For that reason, he becomes notably less risk averse, and more willing to put himself in dangerous situations. This is enough of a difference for Adam to take note of it, though Adam is only confused by the change; he does not realize why it has happened.

From Gansey's point of view, The Raven King is very much a story in which he prepares for his death. The urgency for him to complete his quest and devote time to it has intensified, and he is shown to be very concerned with his own legacy. Gansey knows that he is supposed to leave the world. That means that he wants to make his mark on it; he wants to achieve his 'something more' before he dies, and that means both finding Glendower, and waking him, so that he can find out why he was saved from death before. His need for understanding is his strongest motivation in his search. Where in the last book, he told Noah that he wasn't sure what he would do when his quest had ended, he now feels that he is ready for it to be over. Gansey is obsessed with Glendower, but from a certain point of view, he is also tired of the obsession. He is seeking an end to seeking.

At the same time, he also feels himself drawn to a life which, at this point in time, he believes he cannot have. His friends continue to be concerned with what they will do once school is over, and when Henry and Blue in particular start to talk about traveling, and seeing other countries together, Gansey feels a new kind of yearning. There is a strong part of him that wants to go with them, that wants to have a life outside of his obsessive quest. This desire brings with it a sense of melancholy, because at the same time, Gansey believes that he won't be around to experience anything of the sort. Henry Cheng in particular is associated with this new desire of Gansey's. Henry is excited by the prospect of experiencing the world, and he seeks friendship and belonging with Gansey. Gansey thinks, at first, that he is not in a position to make new friends - his life already feels full, his ties already bound, and his vitality is finite. Henry represents something new; he makes Gansey want new experiences, and makes him imagine a future that he had not been allowing himself to think about. This is further reinforced by his developing relationship with Blue; Gansey is more drawn to her than ever, to the extent that he becomes certain that he loves her, and he is no longer content with keeping their feelings secret. He wants a public relationship, and once he has one, he is not shy about being affectionate with Blue in public. All of this is very different from the earlier Gansey who was determined to keep his secrets, and consistently told himself that 'this was not allowed' with regards to Blue. That is no longer the case; Gansey wants his feelings for Blue to be allowed, and he feels much more happy and settled once it is.

There is also a change with regards to Gansey's anxiety. In certain respects, Gansey is shown to be much less stable in this book; he twice comes close to a panic attack, once in the school grounds, and once in the hidey hole with Cheng. In the previous book, the knowledge that he was having an attack startled and upset Gansey, because he had not had one for a long time. Now, his emotions - and his fears - seem closer to the surface, and some element of his control appears to have been lost. This is most likely due to both the increasingly dangerous activities he and his friends have involved themselves in, and due to the knowledge that his major fear - that of dying again - could be about to come true. However, Henry's influence proves positive for Gansey's anxiety; he finds in Henry a friend who intimately understands what he is feeling, and offers support, and ways of coping with that fear. This means that although Gansey's anxiety seems closer to the surface, he becomes somewhat better at dealing with it; with Henry's help, he begins to address it, rather than keeping it buried under a facade of control.

The moment when Gansey actually finds Glendower ends up being the most crushing moment of his life. He has sought this moment for seven years, and while seeking, has convinced himself that Glendower really can be woken, that there really will be a favour to claim. Gansey is an inherently hopeful and optimistic person, despite his fears and anxieties. The thought of Glendower has always given him hope. To discover that there is nothing but old bones to find leaves him desolate; he will never have the answers he seeks, and the legacy he imagined leaving behind has been taken away. This marks the first time in the series when Gansey's most vulnerable emotions are on display to his friends, and he has no idea how to deal with it. He notes that it makes him understand Adam for the first time; he does not want his friends' pity, and does not know how to move on. In the end, Gansey decides that the only thing left for him to do is fulfil his prophecy. Defeating the demon will be his legacy, and he will finally stop running for the fate that he feels has been following him for seven years. This is his lowest moment - but in this moment, he also finds acceptance of his fate. He will face his fears rather than running from them, and that is important; the Gansey of book one, who begged Adam not to make himself a sacrifice, would never have made this choice. Now Gansey makes a sacrifice of himself, and while this moment shows him at his most low, it shows him also at his most brave.

At Gansey's core, he is still the same person that he has been throughout the series. He still hides genuine feelings and vulnerabilities behind a hospitable mask; he is still obsessed with Glendower, and still likes to be the man in charge of any given situation. He is still very codependent with, and deeply caring for his friends, which often manifests in him trying to shoulder their responsibilities, and guide their choices to the point where he is too controlling. This is shown most often with Ronan, with whom he has an ongoing fight over attending school (partly, in Gansey's case, because he has literally paid the school from his own pocket to keep Ronan enrolled). However, by the end of the book, he appears to have accepted Ronan's choice not to graduate from Aglionby; there appears no leftover animosity between them at the end. Though he still does not always know the best way to show it, Gansey's friends remain critically important to him, and because of that, it is fitting that their memories and feelings help to fuel his remaking by Cabeswater.

The remaking in itself is also critical for Gansey, even though it comes at the end of the book. Facing his second death means that he has very literally done what Henry advised, and faced his fear head on. His decision to die despite wanting to live ultimately defeats the demon, and saves Ronan's life; this is the legacy that Gansey thinks he will leave, and in his final moments, he is willing for that. His remaking means, essentially, that he is able to have the life that he thought would be impossible; now that he has been made, and not simply repaired, by Cabeswater, he is able to be with Blue without further complications, and he is able to seek out a new future which is governed neither by his quest, nor by the threat of imminent death. The Epilogue reveals that, for now, Gansey's future is a happy one; and reveals, also, that he and his friends will eventually continue their explorations of the ley line. In game, this will mean that Gansey's motivations have changed; he will no longer be obsessed with returning home to find Glendower, but will be more interested in exploring pastures new. He will see his new life as his second chance; and as Noah instructed him with his final words, he does not intend to throw it away.

POWER UPDATE

Gansey currently has two active powers. The first is Self-Replication, which I would like him to retain with no changes. It will be as it was in his app.

His second power is Charmspeak. My reason for giving him this power was that in canon, he is known to be particularly persuasive and good at talking people into things. There is also an instance at the end of Blue Lily, Lily Blue where Gansey is able to command a room of skeletons to come to life. How he is able to do this is not fully explained in the third book, and it is not clear whether it is a power inherent to Gansey, or whether it was a product of the situation they were in. The Raven King explores this further, and reveals that Gansey does seem to have a power of command. It appears that this is related to his intent, which explains both why he is known to be persuasive, and why he is said to be good at finding things - it is his intent to find them that allows him to do so. This apparently natural ability becomes something more clear and obvious when he is being amplified by either Blue or Gwenllian, the two characters who have the ability to amplify all magic in The Raven Cycle.

This power is very heavily linked to Gansey's intent - he has to believe in it, and command it. This is similar to the magic exhibited by Cabeswater, which is shown on many occasions to react to the intent of people inside it. When Cabeswater remakes Gansey, it is revealed that it has always had a certain influence over him. Gansey's feeling of time 'slipping' around him is because, at some point in his life, Cabeswater will remake him - meaning that he feels its influence all along his timeline. My theory is that his ability to command also comes from Cabeswater, and it has always been a part of him because, eventually, Cabeswater would remake him from its own power.

Due to this power existing in canon, I would like to exchange Gansey's Charmspeak for his canon power. Due to its wide-ranging nature, this power will be split into two, as follows:

Power of Intent

• Gansey's intentions are made powerful, due to Cabeswater's influence on him. This manifests in two ways:


• Gansey is notably persuasive. When he puts intention behind his words, he is very convincing and difficult to say no to. However, it is far from impossible - he has no control over other people's minds, and if they stubbornly disagree with him, they are not forced to comply.


• He is notably good at finding things; his belief that an object can be found, or his strong intention to find it, will make it more likely that he is on the right path. For this to be successful, it must be possible to find the object; Gansey's power does not create an item that is not real, but it can set his instincts on the right path - even when that path is difficult for anyone else to see.

Vocal Command

• He is able to command magical power to activate; for example, when he commands the animal bones to 'wake up' in Blue Lily, Lily Blue, and when he issues a general command for the magic in Henrietta to lead him to Glendower. This only works when the conditions are right, as shown when he is unable to 'wake' Glendower's bones - he cannot create magic for himself. Some manner of magic (either a spell, or latent magical power within a place) must be present in order for him to tell it to work.


• He can command magical power to stop; for example, when he commands Noah to 'be Noah', thus expelling the demon from him, and when he commands Cabeswater to 'make it safe', thus dispelling Adam's living nightmare. This power would enable Gansey to nullify magical abilities in game.


• If the mods are content, I would like to extend this ability to superpowers in general. The power shown in Gansey's world tends to be magical in nature, and there are no general superpowers against which his commands could be tested in canon. If approved, he will be able to command any superpower to either 'stop' or 'go'.


• In general terms, Gansey's commands to 'stop' or 'go' must be spoken, and must be heard.

If you would be content with this, Gansey's three power slots would be:
1. Self-Replication
2. Power of Intent
3. Vocal Command

Powers 2 and 3 would both be governed by a permissions post.