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TFS -> Why doesn't Roirr have mana? (Lore thread I guess) (3/25/2024 14:21:17)
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So, all of the new lore about mana and souls that's been revealed recently has gotten me thinking about some older content. One question I've had in the back of my mind for... nine years now, whew... is about Roirr, during the First Weaver saga. The game makes a point of setting Roirr's MP to 0 while we play as him, which is a mostly unique circumstance (more on that below), but there's never any overt explanation as to why this is. This is not the case for Danyel, who we can also play as in the same questline, so the game clearly wants us to understand that not having mana is a property unique to Roirr.
So... why doesn't Roirr have mana? We're given some insight into the nature of mana and souls in Project Casca, wherein Ostromir claims that all life on Lore (or at least for humans and togs, the important ones) is tied to the Mana Core through their Soulthreads (allowing for the flow of mana and use of magic, as we know from many other locations in the game example). Without being tied to the Mana Core, their souls will unravel and they'll cease to exist (despite evidence to the contrary)... or they are Akanthus.
The first of these statements clearly doesn't apply to Roirr, who wields many souls and is even capable of weaving without the use of an Elemental Spirit (though, if Jaania's use of Hesperrhodos and Aegis's final skill are any indication, the function of an Elemental Spirit seems to be channeling/manipulating mana anyway). So, maybe he's just disconnected from the mana core like Akanthus?
Well, no, because that'd make even less sense. While Roirr is clearly very powerful (defeating the entire Magestrium and their mana core piece) he isn't impervious to harm like Akanthus is - not only can he take damage from enemy mobs while you play as him, he even comments on his host body being injured by the Magestrium. We also know that being disconnected from the Mana Core prevents Akanthus from casting spells, which very clearly is not the case for Roirr. ...And apparently Akanthus has MP anyway, so this whole thing was a dead end regardless. Roirr clearly is connected to the Mana Core - or at the very least, not disconnected in the way Akanthus is.
...So, if Ostromir isn't going to be of any help, what other instances of 0 MP are there in the game? To the best of my knowledge, the only other characters in a similar situation to Roirr are less-old incarnations of Warlic (though some appearances lack this trait), less-new incarnations of Wargoth (though not all appearances have this, and one appearance lost it due to a bug many years after release), and Nythera while she's specifically channeling Warlic's power. Unlike with Roirr, however, there's a very clear explanation for this mechanic that slots in with Ostromir's explanation; if the Mana Core is implied to be made out of Infernals and Celestials, Infernals therefore must generate their own mana and have no need to be connected to the Mana Core like humans and togs are (which could imply Warlic is soulless... oof). But what does this tell us about Roirr? Absolutely nothing, unless you've got a REALLY insane crackpot theory. The takeaway here is that, despite the use of 0 MP as a storytelling device throughout the game and its deliberate allocation to Roirr, this still doesn't provide us with any explanation.
So, as far as I can tell, it doesn't look like any of the recent soul/mana developments give us insight into why Roirr doesn't have mana, as they do for other instances of characters not having mana. This one's got me really puzzled and I don't know if I missed/forgot a quest somewhere in there, or if it's just not revealed yet. I think this topic has room for a fair amount of discussion - if I'm missing something, or if there are any plausible and not-baseless (based, even) theories, I'd love to hear them below!
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