My theory on Seneschal (spoilers)

[Southernshark]

So I don't buy the Seneschal story.

This guy is no guardian of the world. He's an evil sorcerer in league with the Daimen. What does he do? Show you that being the guardian of the world is pointless, then gives you a weapon which supposedly kills yourself, but in reality just moves you back to the beach to repeat.... This is no guardian of the world, his whole goal is to trap you. And he suceeds by making you think you killed him (the sword doesn't reallty work on you, and wouldn't on him either, if he's there at all....). What he wants to stop is you from just up and leaving with your heart, your girl and your loot. His end game is to get you to the island and trap you forever so that you won't threaten his power. Basically he is full of brown goo.

[SuperBobKing]

My understanding is that when you use godsbane to start NG+, it isn't actually you going back to the beginning, it is your pawn. If you pay attention to BBI's story, Daimon is another arisen that accidentally caused the creation of the island because of the choice he had to make. BBI wasn't in the base game, it was added years later and the complete version with all of the DLC is what was ported to PC.

[dudududu]

so far, except for first game, each time i went into ng+ ending, it always my character from previous game is the seneschal. i always thought i was the bad guy and my pawn became arisen.

[Snowskeeper]

... Bwuh?

[Southernshark]

Your pawn is still your pawn. Please you can look at this and see. You just gave Sen 20 Wakestones. He isn't dead. It's a con.

[Snowskeeper]

Originally posted by Southernshark:

Your pawn is still your pawn. Please you can look at this and see. You just gave Sen 20 Wakestones. He isn't dead. It's a con.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥--no, rewatch the ending cutscene. Your pawn's body vanishes, and their mind is implanted in your body, which is now void of its own consciousness. And if you play through the game again in offline mode, the Seneschal will be your previous Arisen, not the one it was on the first playthrough.

[Emerald Unicorn]

Originally posted by Snowskeeper:

Originally posted by Southernshark:

Your pawn is still your pawn. Please you can look at this and see. You just gave Sen 20 Wakestones. He isn't dead. It's a con.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥--no, rewatch the ending cutscene. Your pawn's body vanishes, and their mind is implanted in your body, which is now void of its own consciousness. And if you play through the game again in offline mode, the Seneschal will be your previous Arisen, not the one it was on the first playthrough.

Which scene? I have the bug where some cinematics freeze and I have to skip them, but the last scene I can watch is where you are your pawn are falling and go into the sea. Two bodies go in, your body comes out on the shore. I may be mostly confused about your choice of words using "vanishes" lol, to me that implies seeing the body fade away or disappear, not just go MIA.

[Snowskeeper]

That's a totally different situation. We explicitly kill ourselves with a god-killing weapon before the transferral happens, voiding our body completely. They're not coming to resemble us; they are literally being moved into our body.

[Snowskeeper]

No, by my logic, the reward for a pawn who served an Arisen that successfully became Seneschal, then killed themself, is an opportunity to live in the body of their master in a situation where they have a will of their own.

You're comparing an apple and an orange, and acting like the apple is just a deformed orange.

[Siloam]

Originally posted by Snowskeeper:

That's a totally different situation. We explicitly kill ourselves with a god-killing weapon before the transferral happens, voiding our body completely. They're not coming to resemble us; they are literally being moved into our body.

I'm agreeing with Snowkeeper here because my arisen is female, but at that scene she shouts out "master!" with my male pawn's voice and then goes all, huh? Why am I a chick now?

[Snowskeeper]

I really wish there was a +1 button or something, here. The only thing I'd add is that you start the game as a fisher. You're contributing directly to the survival of everyone around you, and, importantly, you're doing it peacefully. The useless occupation is the reward for all that struggling and willpower the Seneschal loves, and the only thing you can use it to do is harm people.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by The Commendatore:

The Seneschal is well above Daimon in terms of power. (S)He could end Ashe's curse or end his existence at the any given time.

Originally posted by Snowskeeper:

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥--no, rewatch the ending cutscene. Your pawn's body vanishes, and their mind is implanted in your body, which is now void of its own consciousness. And if you play through the game again in offline mode, the Seneschal will be your previous Arisen, not the one it was on the first playthrough.

That's just wrong. The Bestowal of Spirit makes the pawn take the Arisen's form over time. "...For you see I myself was once Arisen. And this girl Selene...was my pawn. The soul of an Arisen can but affect their follower. Given time, the pawn will assume the Arisen's very form....But see well Selene. See how she resembles me..." Even the Dragonfored and the Fool are evidence of this.

We don't know that the Seneschal is above Daimon in power, actually. Daimon is multiversal, apparently, given that there are events that explicitly imply that BBI exists outside the normal cycle. We don't even know that the seneschal is above Ur. The seneschal's power is supposed to be of shaping the world, but Ur and Daimon are both unnatural existences. Ur-dragon's arena quite clearly does not take place within the everfall physically, and I can't see the senschal allowing such a creature to exist if he could do something about it, the same is true for Daimon and Arthacos.

The bestowal of spirit, also, implies that it begins when the arisen is still alive, and has not been seen to occur with a seneschal (the seneschal explicitly calls forth his own main pawn who is not identical). Perhaps the use of the godsbane blade, resulted in a rapid transformation, as opposed to the slower one implied by Sofiah and the Dragonforged? I don't think the pawn was outright placed within the arisen's body as a new conciousness, given that there would still be a fatal wound from being stabbed through the heart.

[tomsnc]

Quina, if shes your love interest, literally states after you Godsbane and your body crashes and you shout "Master!" that the person in that body is not your Arisen lmao. Selene even says, "Your like me now arent you?". The pawn has inherited your body at that point and your soul is gone to become Senechal. Almost everyone clearly realizes that you are different but those two off the top of my head are the ones who clearly confirm that youre Arisen is "dead/gone" and the pawn has your body. One whos been around you for basically your entire life cannocially both of you being early twenty year olds, and the other a pawn who received the bestowal of spirit and would clearly be an expert. I guess if you didnt choose them itd be harder to see that though

To the comment above, Im not sure how you got Daimon being multiversal and Im having a hard time seeing anything in game being stronger than a Senechal. He was created due to a curse, by proxy, by the Senechal at the time, so I dont see how someone who could create a being like that/Death ect could be weaker overall than said creature unless...their willpower is gone? Savan is clearly at the end of whatever little will and motivation he has left to be God by the time we meet him, hes been Senechal far longer than intended and the degredation of the world and the hounding of Grigori points to how desperate he is to be replaced. Are their powers 100% derived or atleast mostly derived from willpower? Whats not 100% confirmed is, if there is just One Senechal that runs every dimension/galaxy/universe or if there is seperate ones for each(which is what I believe). Than the issue is if there are seperate ones, how far does the influence and power of each senechal reach? How much are they supposed to govern? We were originally supposed to go to the moon so Id say Galaxy level at the lowest but again there is just too much lore that hasnt been told in this game(it probably was shown more in the MMorpg but thats Japan only atm so idk.)

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by tomsnc:

Quina, if shes your love interest, literally states after you Godsbane and your body crashes and you shout "Master!" that the person in that body is not your Arisen lmao. Selene even says, "Your like me now arent you?". The pawn has inherited your body at that point and your soul is gone to become Senechal. Almost everyone clearly realizes that you are different but those two off the top of my head are the ones who clearly confirm that youre Arisen is "dead/gone" and the pawn has your body. One whos been around you for basically your entire life cannocially both of you being early twenty year olds, and the other a pawn who received the bestowal of spirit and would clearly be an expert. I guess if you didnt choose them itd be harder to see that though

To the comment above, Im not sure how you got Daimon being multiversal and Im having a hard time seeing anything in game being stronger than a Senechal. He was created due to a curse, by proxy, by the Senechal at the time, so I dont see how someone who could create a being like that/Death ect could be weaker overall than said creature unless...their willpower is gone? Savan is clearly at the end of whatever little will and motivation he has left to be God by the time we meet him, hes been Senechal far longer than intended and the degredation of the world and the hounding of Grigori points to how desperate he is to be replaced. Are their powers 100% derived or atleast mostly derived from willpower? Whats not 100% confirmed is, if there is just One Senechal that runs every dimension/galaxy/universe or if there is seperate ones for each(which is what I believe). Than the issue is if there are seperate ones, how far does the influence and power of each senechal reach? How much are they supposed to govern? We were originally supposed to go to the moon so Id say Galaxy level at the lowest but again there is just too much lore that hasnt been told in this game(it probably was shown more in the MMorpg but thats Japan only atm so idk.)

Here's the thing, regarding Daimon. There are multiple instances where BBI is pretty clearly stated to exist outside of natural reality, even the very first introduction with Olra has her surprised you are even aware of her existance. There are also statements regarding BBI only being accessible to those with 'some tie to the wyrm'.
Furthermore, Ashe's 'wish' as recieved by the dragon was 'damn the lot of them, the gods, the dragons, all of it, I'll tear it all asunder', or something along those lines. The wish that was granted explicitly requested the power to kill the 'gods' which could only really be interpreted as the seneschal. That's not even touching form 2 Daimon, which verbally acknowledges it is from outside of normal reality.
There are a few dialogues in the fallen city, including one directed to your arisen, that state that his goal is to 'shatter all the bonds and break the empty cycle'. Considering his goal is pretty much to destroy space and time, and that simply spending an extended period of time in Bitterblack isle and under the influence of Daimon's malice was enough to turn Arthacos into the grim reaper, as well as the existence of extremely powerful creatures that don't exist on the mainland, some of which don't have a mainland equivalent, Daimon in his first form at least rivals the senechal's power.

The seneschal did not authorize Ashe's wish, necessarily. The dragon that Ashe confronted (which was actually Grette) interpreted Ashe's spoken desire to destroy the cycle and the gods as his 'wish'. We don't know that the wish's power/capability is even modulated. For all we know, it pulls the energy required to fulfill it from the power of the universe itself, no matter how much power that requires.

The situation is really not super clear. I'm of the opinion that given what we see of bitterblack, and comparing it to the danger level of the Everfall, Daimon is certainly in the ballpark of the seneschal's power, he just doesn't have the active abilities that the seneschal gains simply by being seneschal. You can have similar levels of power, and just use them differently, have different limitations on how that power can be used.
The everfall is supposed to be the final test of the arisen's will, yet it pales in comparison to even the first strata of BBI when it comes to overall level of threat.

[Snowskeeper]

Two things:

1: "daimon" is not a name. It is an identifier. It is almost never used outside the boss fight, but when it is, it is used as "the daimon," not "Daimon." The daimon is therefore probably a type of creature; I'd suggest it's probably the opposite of the dragon, at least in terms of the Pawns' belief system.

2: The Seneschals don't seem to have that much power, really? They seem more like batteries for whatever fundemental forces was responsible for this cycle to begin with. Those forces were probably what empowered Ashe's wish, not the local Seneschal.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Snowskeeper:

Two things:

1: "daimon" is not a name. It is an identifier. It is almost never used outside the boss fight, but when it is, it is used as "the daimon," not "Daimon." The daimon is therefore probably a type of creature; I'd suggest it's probably the opposite of the dragon, at least in terms of the Pawns' belief system.

2: The Seneschals don't seem to have that much power, really? They seem more like batteries for whatever fundemental forces was responsible for this cycle to begin with. Those forces were probably what empowered Ashe's wish, not the local Seneschal.

Daimon is a word derived from demon, and since Ashe is a unique existance, it is as good as a name, or maybe even used as a title. As for it being the name of a 'type' of creature, no. When you only see one, ever, and the circumstances resulting in it's creation are so unique, it's unlikely that there are others. As for them calling it 'the daimon' that could also be simply because they have no name for it. IRL history has a ton of places, items, and creatures, that wound up with descriptionary names.

As for Seneschal, people seem to think 'the almighty' when they should really be thinking archangel, tbh.
Even the name itself is a hint at this. A seneschal is a steward or major-domo. Basically, a high-end administrator in service to a higher power.