sid_guardian | The Hallows: What the Heck Do They Do?

*bookmarks* If someone can explain the merit brush to me...

The Longevity Dial is IMO the one where it's clearest what it does - transferring life energy around - but the more often I watch the eps the more noticeable I find it that the show seems almost reluctant? to really specify the cost and gain of using it. Especially in contrast to the novel, which is very clear and pretty mathy about the life years.

I have been the MOST baffled about the merit brush...

Also: is it a calligraphy brush or a paintbrush?

It does seem like the costs are high for using the longevity dial... you don't want to mess around with it just for fun. BUT exactly its implications for Shen Wei are hazy to me.

The costs of using the longevity dial are high, but I find it very noticeable that when a member of the team uses it, it's not commented on just what the price is - which I think would be a pretty normal narrative thing to do. (And Li Qian doesn't say exactly what it cost her, either.)

And Zhao Yunlan's slightly crazy readiness to use it on people he met ten minutes ago also doesn't exactly say "it'll cost you half your life" - the man is crazy but that would be a little crazy even for him? I think?

My favourite theory re: Shen Wei ATM is that they thought it would slightly hurt a human to fix Zhao Yunlan's eyes, and Shen Wei could probably totally bounce over that because he's the Black Cloaked Envoy, and then it ended up fucking up Shen Wei more than it would have a human. Because I think that works with Shen Wei's visible surprise after the exchange and everyone's characterisations, and I like the OOPS factor of it. But canon is definitely hazy on this!

I love that interpretation of Shen Wei using the dial because that scene/segment didn't really work for me on my first watch because I was like ...but everyone knows using the dial does BAD THINGS? But everyone expecting that it wouldn't hurt him like it would a human makes total sense.

I was like ...but everyone knows using the dial does BAD THINGS?

Right? And Zhao Yunlan is both pissed off and shocked when he realises in the kitchen / knife cutting scene that Shen Wei got hurt here.

I like that theory because it both means Shen Wei didn't lie about the price (he got it wrong too) and Zhao Yunlan's characterisation and smarts aren't wildly inconsistent.

It looks like a calligraphy brush to me but I'm sure people more knowledgeable can confirm that.

Guo Changcheng used it for calligraphy in one of the early episodes, so I've always assumed it was a calligraphy brush.

I was rewatching episode 14, where Guo Changcheng writes with it at Wang Xiangyang's request and Wang Xiangyang says that it's an heirloom of his and he only uses it to bring good luck to his shop. Since the brush can also apparently give people power who didn't have any before and create energy storage cells, I'm wondering if maybe the brush's power is that whatever it's used to write becomes reality?

That could definitely be part of it because Zhu Jiu presumably used it on that writer whose stories turned true.

When does Zhu Jiu have access to the Merit Brush?

I checked, and the answer is never. I got confused. :)

Longevity Dial, as

jo_lasalle says.

AFAIK the Mountain-River Awl strips out human/Dixingian essences and binds them to things like... pillars.

The Merit Brush seems to either awaken (e.g. Zu Ma) or enhance (e.g. Sha Ya) Dixingren powers. And clearly it can also build... um. Power storage facilities?

The Guardian Lantern I'm least clear about. I don't know what it does by itself but it's necessary for the Holy Tools to be able to act in concert. (Or for fusing them, if that' what you're after.)

ETA re consequences, well, we know of the LD.

I can't offhand remember if the MRA was invoked by Sang Zan when it stuck him in the pillar or was floating around randomly and did it. I'm not very strong the flashbacks in the Hanga Arc.

The Merit Brush definitely comes with a cost when non-Dixingren use is - its corrupting power basically kills off Wang Xiangyang in the end.

Guardian Lantern - if ur the wick, it kills u ded. What happens after that is perhaps a matter for speculation.

Edited 2019-03-22 17:14 (UTC)

Re Mount River Awl, I believe it was an heirloom in his tribe and he held it in his hand when he buried Wang Zheng. I don‘t think he consciously activated it? Which makes it all the stranger.

So strike that. I rewatched. At the end of episode 10 Sang San uses the Awl thinking it will save Wang Zheng‘s life (he only knows it‘s a hallow). He strips her spirit from her corpse/almost dead body. But then nothing happens so he buries her with it. Black Cloak Envoy says that in contrast to the Longevity Dial the Awl cannot save lives but its 'most special effect [is] stripping the energy body forcibly from the flesh forming a permanent body. But The one stripped may not even be able to achieve the most basic form of solidification.' That happens to Wang Zheng who initally is a light without form.

In episode 11 the enraged tribe dig up Wang Zheng, Sang Zan comes to her 'rescue', has the Awl in hand and curses the tribe. At that point the Awl activates and strips Sang Zan (he also mentioned something about wanting to escape slavery all his life beforehand, maybe that was the spark?) he wants them all to die and apparently thinks he can use the Awl for that. It isn‚t entirely clear why the Awl bans him into a pillar with chains, maybe for his evil intentions? Wang Zheng tries to stop him and now that he is almost a ghost too he can see her formless light. But he still gets buried in the pillar with his tattoo on it. Hum.

Cut to a fully formed Wang Zheng with amnesia being found by Yunlan and the cat in the future.

Thanks for these thoughts!

"Power storage facilities" > Is that something you are filling in the blanks with, or is that stated more directly in the show?

There's something when the MOTMB is waving the brush around over Dragon City and Ya Qing says something about power reactors (to fuel Ye Zun's return)? I was too busy to look it up earlier but will see if I can find it now.

Ep 29, 0:34:56.10:

The role of the Merit Brush is to build lots of energy reactors to destroy the imprisonment of the Pillar in Dixing.

I admit this is an episode where I went over the subs early, before I got a bit more, uh, obsessive about what exactly might be meant. But afaik this, perhaps in less coherent English, is what was in the original subs.

There's the bit where drawing sigils with it into the air generates energy somethings that break Ye Zun's bounds and let him escape. Of course, it could be that that was the Dixing power it granted for Wang Xiangyang (and he used the Merit Brush to do it just for show) and the escape thing was unrelated to the Brush's core power.

The Sundial seems to form connections and transfer life energy.

The Awl seems to do all sorts of things involving disembodied energy - it can disembody people, and bind disembodied people to pillars, and also reconstitute a person's disembodied energy after it has dissipated. (The Envoy uses it to do that for Sang Zan.)

The Merit Brush activates latent ability - awakening or enhancing it.

The Guardian Lantern? Honestly, I have no clue, outside of enabling the Hallows to work together.

Hmm interesting. I hadn't quite framed it in my head as "disembodied energy" but that makes sense. I was thinking that Ye Zun had the power himself to become disembodied and travel to Haixing, but maybe that was just me filling in dots where I shouldn't have been. Is he actually using the power of the Awl for that purpose?

The way I understood it, Ye Zun was disembodied when he was first trapped inside the pillar. So then travelling to Haixing in energy form was just a matter of a) getting loose of the pillar (and he's working on weakening it's hold via Zhu Jiu's energy collection), and then b) using a portal, same as all the other Dixingren he's been sending to Haixing?

The thing I'm stuck on right now is the scene in Ep 5 where ZYL is looking at the Dial and it activates and shows him a picture of the Awl. Is this ever explained? I am considering the possibility that the Hallows are at least semi-sentient, either 4 minds or 1 mind distributed across four objects.

Don't forget

china_shop's Very Srs Poll about where the 3-D model of the Dial came from.

I wondered early on if ZYL had some kind of relationship to the hallows or if they affected him in unique ways when he touched them. My headcanon is they are semi-sentient but I kind of say that tongue-in-cheek -- although I'd be amenable to someone proving it!

Thank you for asking this! I've been wondering, myself and there's so much good info, here.

I hope you will post the link to the wiki when it's up?

Yes! Definitely. It's being staged on Hubzilla https://fandom.stopthatimp.net/wiki/guardian-fanworks/Guardian/Home but we're thinking of moving to wikia for additional functionality. But this hubzilla is being run by fandom people and there are no ads, which makes it attractive.

I am thrilled you asked this question; I've been thinking about it a lot as I've been rewatching. The Hallows do seem to work in mysterious ways!

I think the Longevity Dial can also store life energy in addition to exchanging it. Li Qian's grandma is able to preserve her spirit in the Dial (at least for a short while anyway). SW says he had never heard of anyone accomplishing that before; however, Li Qian said her grandma told her when she gave her the Dial that it could "manifest spirits." That kind of comment doesn't come from nowhere and suggests to me that an ancestor of Li Qian (or whichever family had it throughout those long ten thousand years) either successfully stored their own spirit or interacted with someone else's spirit in the Dial, and the story about it was passed down through the generations.

In addition to everything else it does, the Awl also gives ZYL visions. SW said his research showed that normal humans infected with dark energy can suffer from "temporal dysfunction." I wondered a bit if that meant a human infected with dark energy from any source might experience visions, but we don't see any evidence of that; it seems to be pretty specifically tied to the Awl/Hallows. Perhaps the visions are another expression of the Awl doing things with disembodied energy, as

trobadora suggests upthread? Only instead of fully disembodying a person, it's partially displacing some of the person's energy through time?

I also wonder a bit about the way the Hallows seem to resonate with each other: we see over and over how the Dial, the Awl, and the Merit Brush all react to one another based on proximity or usage... but the Guardian Lantern is literally sitting in a box one floor up from the lab for most of the show and never seems to glow or vibrate or anything! Given how close it was, why wasn't it setting all of the other ones off all the time? Why did the Dial send ZYL first on a hunt to the northwest mountains when it could have just sent him up the stairs?

but the Guardian Lantern is literally sitting in a box one floor up from the lab for most of the show and never seems to glow or vibrate or anything!

Or maybe it did and no one noticed?

Why did the Dial send ZYL first on a hunt to the northwest mountains when it could have just sent him up the stairs?

Maybe they were close enough already. The Dial gained in size once they brought it back to the SID. Before that, when it was a pendant, it was smaller. Maybe proximity to the Lantern made it grow?

And maybe the Awl became more active/visiony in proximity to the Lantern and the Dial.

/pure speculation

Or maybe it did and no one noticed?

That's true, I didn't think of that. The Lantern *was* wrapped up in a box and tucked away, so any glow or vibration would have been muted. Although even if it weren't, there's no guarantee that someone would be looking in the right direction at the right time... or even necessarily realize what they were looking at if they did notice it, I suppose.

(Now I'm envisioning Sang Zan coming across a slightly glowy box while trying to organize the library; he assumes it's a bit of newfangled technology he hasn't learned how to deal with yet, sets it aside to ask Wang Zheng about later, and then distracting events are distracting and he never gets back to it.)

The Dial gained in size once they brought it back to the SID.

Oh, I thought that was something Lin Jing did? But I admit I was confused as to how he did it.

And maybe the Awl became more active/visiony in proximity to the Lantern and the Dial.

Oooh I like that thought.

(Now I'm envisioning Sang Zan coming across a slightly glowy box while trying to organize the library; he assumes it's a bit of newfangled technology he hasn't learned how to deal with yet, sets it aside to ask Wang Zheng about later, and then distracting events are distracting and he never gets back to it.)

Haha, that's great. I would read that fic! (And honestly, leaving the Lantern there was actually safer than them keeping it on a pedestal in the lab. Zhu Jiu went after the Hallows he knew about, repeatedly.)

Oh, I thought that was something Lin Jing did? But I admit I was confused as to how he did it.

So was he, iirc. :-)

My first idea was like

china_shop's, that it maybe glowed or vibrated but nobody was there to see.

But it's also 'extinguished', so maybe it's simply that without the 'wick', it can't function and won't do a thing (and won't be noticed by the other Holy Tools.)

Extinguished = not functioning would make a lot of sense! But it must be somewhat functional? Because it works with the other Hallows to open the wormhole and the communications window, right? Maybe in combination it's strong enough to do some tasks, but individually it's too weak to do much until it's complete?

(My memory might be wrong here; I kinda blitzed through my first time watching and I haven't gotten to this far yet in my rewatch.)

Do you think ZYL's visions via the awl are something he uniquely can experience, or would anyone who touches it get them?

I think it's probably possible for other people to experience visions -- someone in the past must have, if SW was able to find research to explain what was happening -- but I also feel that the Hallows in general seem more responsive to ZYL? So he ends up having multiple visions while others have none when they touch the Awl.

Ofc, it might just be that ZYL *keeps touching* the Hallows? (Much to SW's dismay.) More contact with the Hallows = more opportunities to have things happen?

Was the trans-temporal teleconferencing Hallows-related too? I had a feeling it was, but I can't remember enough about those scenes to track them down and check.

Yes, I think so. Zhu Hong breaks it down in the cave here:
https://youtu.be/V2dUtbSz4hQ?t=260

When they're all together, they can project a screen that spans across space and time. They set up the Yashou cave as the place to use them.

I wonder if the Hallows have to be at both ends, and that's why they keep dialling Ma Gui's number, as it were. Otherwise, hey, ZYL and bb!Shen Wei could totally Skype (or they could have, if Shen Wei hadn't been buried)...

ETA: Wait, were the Hallows all together when ZYL made his last teleconferencing call? I thought he just had the Lantern at that stage.

Edited 2019-03-24 19:46 (UTC)

oooh... that's a very intriguing idea.

And also, I am absolutely here for the ZYL/bb!SW Skype fic.

But that would undermine the romantic poignancy of their separation! *g*

Your ETA: he had all the Hallows in a bag. If you click on the linked vid, you can see him take them out and position them. BUT. They don't have the wick yet, so apparently the Lantern still works in some capacity, as it also did when ZYL gets sucked through the wormhole.

I meant his last teleconferencing conversation, when it was just him (ep 40, 17:34). (Being cryptic to avoid being spoilery.)

The Hallows: What the Heck Do They Do?

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Spoilers for episode 10+11

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