Quote Originally Posted by Riastrad View Post
He's a fragment of the soul once called Lahabrea. That would be my guess.
Not so sure. Death erases conscious memory, and as we know from both ourselves (Azem) and Gaia (Mitron) Ascians do not retain their memory between deaths. Assuming he's still the Lahabrea we know and loathe, my best guess would be that his time stuck in Nidhogg's Eye burned away some of his soul but not all of it, leaving him even crazier than before.

Assuming there's any significance to his mask only being half-there, anyway.

Quote Originally Posted by Kesey View Post
What are the odds that Lahbrea is just dead and this is part of the legacy of plans he left behind?
Not so sure on that one given the Mateus references. Mateus is famous for dying like a chump, only to come back from Hell after taking it over and dragging up Pandemonium as his new base in so doing.

While Lahabrea is implied to have fallen far from his days as one of Amaurot's foremost scholars, with the II reference in play I'm doubtful it's just a posthumous plan of his. Plus the Hydaelyn / Zodiark arc is ending with 6.0's MSQ, and Pandemonium's story will chronologically take place after that, so having one of Zodiark's chief agents continuing to meddle after that point would be, ahh... counterproductive to setting up the new meta arc.