Revelations from Patch 4.3

[ObsidianFire]

On killing Ascians

In the Lvl. 60 Summoner quest, we find out it's possible to really kill the black-masked Ascians by killing their bodies. There just can't be any dead bodies in the area. The black-masked Ascians aren't skilled enough at leaving their bodies to get back to the space between worlds or take over living bodies. As far as killing them in the first place goes, Deathflare works just fine, no crazy empowered-by-Hydalen blades of light needed. Whether that just means killing them normally works, or a spell that slams them with a bunch of aether works, or dragon death magic works, is up for debate.

In order to kill an Ascian though, you need to know it's an Ascian in the first place. None of the Ascians in 2.0 and onwards have been "found" by the Scions while they were possessing someone. They have all revealed themselves to the Scions. Which kinda begs the question of how Giaus has found so many. 'Cause if it's by tracking down people with agendas that align with the Ascians' goals, that's a very different way of finding Ascians then the Scions. If it's because the Ascians have been purposely revealing themselves to him, then how much of a threat is he to them compared to the WoL?

The irony is that one of the big GiausLives theories was that he survived due to being possessed by an Ascian. Instead he's been doing one of the things the Scions have let fall by the wayside ever since SB started.

[Remedi]

What if our dear mother has a hand in this?

[Belhi]

On killing Ascians

In the Lvl. 60 Summoner quest, we find out it's possible to really kill the black-masked Ascians by killing their bodies. There just can't be any dead bodies in the area. The black-masked Ascians aren't skilled enough at leaving their bodies to get back to the space between worlds or take over living bodies. As far as killing them in the first place goes, Deathflare works just fine, no crazy empowered-by-Hydalen blades of light needed. Whether that just means killing them normally works, or a spell that slams them with a bunch of aether works, or dragon death magic works, is up for debate.

In order to kill an Ascian though, you need to know it's an Ascian in the first place. None of the Ascians in 2.0 and onwards have been "found" by the Scions while they were possessing someone. They have all revealed themselves to the Scions. Which kinda begs the question of how Giaus has found so many. 'Cause if it's by tracking down people with agendas that align with the Ascians' goals, that's a very different way of finding Ascians then the Scions. If it's because the Ascians have been purposely revealing themselves to him, then how much of a threat is he to them compared to the WoL?

The irony is that one of the big GiausLives theories was that he survived due to being possessed by an Ascian. Instead he's been doing one of the things the Scions have let fall by the wayside ever since SB started.

There is an detail about this:

In the summoner quest you are referring too, you are dealing with lesser Ascians who are substancially weaker than the Overlords and cant as easily transition to the 'space between planes' that the Ascian overlords got to when they lose a body. They can also only use corpses as hosts. Simply put, while he could permanently kill a lesser Ascian, the Overlords don't have the same weakness to exploit. Hell, even holding an Ascian overlord's soul still long enough to destroy is difficult. From ingame dialog it sounds like the WoL was the first to pull it off. That would suggest to me that it is unlikely that Giaus found a way, particularly since he doesn't seem to have the full resources of the Empire to use.