Lilies on the grave... (HW-spoiler ahead!)

[MilesSaintboroguh]

I don't see a point for an ascian to possess a dead body unless they seriously ran out of ideas. Death of a character should be a serious thing and stay dead, not a cheap drama card to pull out of your butt for drama's sake.

[Ayuhra]

I don't see a point for an ascian to possess a dead body unless they seriously ran out of ideas.

As of the Summoner quests Ascians possessing corpses IS a thing, to be fair. Weaker Ascians (ie Ascian of the Twelfth Chalice etc) don't have the strength to take on still living hosts.

Thus do I pose the question: could it be that the Twelfth Chalice and his black-masked brethren are not as practiced in the art of possession as their red-veiled masters? At the time of the battle, our bodies were the only available hosts nearby. Assuming that he also lacks his superiors' facility to flee to the space betwixt worlds, I suspect that our foe's sudden cowardice stemmed from an inability to force his soul into our living vessels.

Twelfth Chalice had been using a certain dead NPC as a puppet.

Not saying an Ascian will possess Haurchefant but if they wanted to play that card, they have a set up for it.

[Fenral]

His death is more powerful because it's someone you will never get back.

Death of a character should be a serious thing and stay dead, not a cheap drama card to pull out of your butt for drama's sake.

Yeah, but as it stands now, most "costs" we've paid have been human lives, but nonetheless handled like one-time charges to our bank account to be made and then forgotten. If death is supposed to be meaningful, then death should matter. Death by itself is not meaningful. When a meaningful death occurs, the story is forced to change in order to account for the loss of one of its players, and that change in course is then felt by the characters that remain, even, rather, especially when the lasting implications aren't immediately apparent.

Lots of people made George R. R. Martin comparisons to FFXIV's handling of characters since 2.5, but the fact of the matter is, the (surviving) characters in A Song of Ice and Fire are still feeling the effects of certain deaths from as early as book one, and the places where even a minor character's death becomes important after the fact are almost as dramatic as the deaths themselves.

Getting possessed by an Ascian or getting turned into a primal would both be story-altering consequences to a death that has so far served no purpose besides being a "meaningful cost" with no consequence beyond "waah, Haurchefant's dead." (That sounds sarcastic, but I'm crying, too.)