Forde is psychic

[On a Tangent]

So, what headcanon do you have the characters of Magvel? Apart from shipping, I mean. Anything out of the ordinary that's just fixed in your head?

For me, I guess I've always considered Forde to have some measure of latent psychic abilities.

The game made it pretty clear that despite Forde’s quirks, he’s a fully competent knight… somehow. More than a few characters express disbelief in his claim of “always being alert”, which is kind of an important trait when you’re involved in guerilla warfare, especially.

So something must be going on.

Forde is like a cat. He can appear to the be the laziest, slothiest lump around, basking in the sun, but he can go from deeply asleep to hissing, widely alert and twenty body-lengths away in the twitch of a whisker. At least, that’s how I imagine him. He can sleep on the battlefield because some part of him somewhere, is always watching. Clearly he doesn’t wake up for just anyone who approaches him (eg. Vanessa – though he does sense her energy…aura? He was also able to read her pretty quickly upon first formal meeting, what with calling her on her crush on Innes), but he’d have to wake up in time to fight off an enemy combatant. And you don’t just keep getting lucky on the battlefield. If you rely on luck, you end up dead.

I heard once that (supposedly) the American military has a history of identifying people to train as psychics (for surveillance and spying purposes, of course) and the way they’d choose people is they’d see who keeps surviving situations that should have killed them. Who keeps getting lucky? Frankly, Forde’s been through enough that his luck should have run out a while ago.

He’s able to be “lazy” and laid-back because he’s well-enough sure that everything is ok at the moment. Where other people are uncertain, and so need to check, Forde can “sense” when things are about to go wrong, or when the enemy is approaching. It’s not that he’s being negligent, so much as he doesn’t need to put forth the same effort because he’s got a little help. He doesn’t really recognize that he has this ability – he probably thinks everyone does, too, and is just uptight.

It’s not like he actually visualizes what’s going on or reads signs and omens. I doubt he has visions, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he has frequent déjà vu’s and possibly lets the dreams he has at night influence his decisions and what he does during the day. As much as he can sleep during a battle, I suspect that he’d have trouble sleeping while, say, Franz was in mortal danger, or a legion of fiends is approaching them unawares, despite being cognitively unaware of either situation.

Maybe “psychic” is a bit too strong of a word – more that he’s got a really honed intuition – though I suspect that in a world as magical as Magvel, if he were to train his abilities, they’d get stronger. I don’t see him as a prophet or an oracle, but his abilities would be strong enough to be a real asset to military escapades – in fact, I wonder if he hasn’t already been. Ephraim's tactical genius or not, I think he and his two companions must have just gotten lucky a few times while they were stuck behind enemy lines. And I don’t think they would have been so lucky without Forde.

By all this, I don’t mean to imply that he’s unskilled or careless as a knight – if he were either, he’d be a dead knight, with or without a strong intuition. But I think that this latent psychic ability gives him the boost he needs to be able to have his quirks in relative safety. He doesn’t give the impression that he’s survived by sheer cleverness. He certainly IS clever, but as multiple people point out, he doesn’t exactly do a lot of planning. He kinda just “goes with the flow”. The laziness and tomfoolery is part act, but acting or not, can you paint and sleep on the battlefield without getting speared? Forde can.

Spoiler

On the other hand, he didn't seem to see Orson's betrayal coming, did he?

 

[Devnad]

So Ephraim is a fighter that destroys everything and wins every fight.
Forde is slightly physic who can sense when enemies are coming and such.
What does Kyle do that's special or unique?

[On a Tangent]

Devnad, Kyle's special gift is being able to constantly scold Forde and still be considered his best friend.

[MadJak91]

My headcanon for Orson is that he is into corpses......
Valter used to be a stripper/pole dancer.
L'Arachel escaped form an asylum. She messed up her slave's, Dozla's, head with some spell. Rennac is a boy-toy.

Uh, yeah.

[EricaofRenais]

I thing that the title of general is inherited in Renais since I can't come up with too many ideas as to why Seth was a general before the war started, since to reach that rank at such a young age is pretty strange.  Either that or he saved the life of the late king/ twins and was given the title as a reward.

[On a Tangent]

1 hour ago, EricaofRenais said:

I thing that the title of general is inherited in Renais since I can't come up with too many ideas as to why Seth was a general before the war started, since to reach that rank at such a young age is pretty strange.  Either that or he saved the life of the late king/ twins and was given the title as a reward.

That makes a lot of sense. In the game's intro, it says that Magvel has been at peace for 800 hundred years, so I'm not sure how anyone has any fighting experience at all. Could be that everyone was just assigned a rank and they went with it.

[LucarioGamer812]

I have a personal head-canon where Franz constantly shouts war crys at the beginning of the game "I AM FRANZ! DESTROYER OF WORLDS!!! BOOM HEADSHOT!" That last one is mostly due to his sprite animation either with swords or lances mostly hit enemies in the head area. Beyond that, the obvious Obsidianwasp reference of Lute being a MLG pro, and Amelia being the girl who slowly works up the ability to slaughter anything with an iron lance. (Mostly due to the fact I made Amelia a General and fully capped her in everything but res and I often just have her hold an entire side of the map)

[On a Tangent]

21 minutes ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

Franz constantly shouts war crys at the beginning of the game "I AM FRANZ! DESTROYER OF WORLDS!!! BOOM HEADSHOT!" That last one is mostly due to his sprite animation either with swords or lances mostly hit enemies in the head area.

Haha! In some moods, I imagine that Eirika always yells "SHISHKABOB!" when she attacks with her rapier - also because of her sprite. By the same measure, we should consider it canon that Joshua replicates into at least four different beings all at once during criticals.

[Devnad]

I have a headcanon that Ross sprained his neck as a kid.

[LucarioGamer812]

19 hours ago, On a Tangent said:

Haha! In some moods, I imagine that Eirika always yells "SHISHKABOB!" when she attacks with her rapier - also because of her sprite. By the same measure, we should consider it canon that Joshua replicates into at least four different beings all at once during criticals.

Nah, Erika has to be like "O rlly m8?" for me. Though that could fit

[Dandy Druid]

On 8/16/2017 at 8:59 AM, On a Tangent said:

That makes a lot of sense. In the game's intro, it says that Magvel has been at peace for 800 hundred years, so I'm not sure how anyone has any fighting experience at all. Could be that everyone was just assigned a rank and they went with it.

 

On 8/16/2017 at 7:42 AM, EricaofRenais said:

I thing that the title of general is inherited in Renais since I can't come up with too many ideas as to why Seth was a general before the war started, since to reach that rank at such a young age is pretty strange.  Either that or he saved the life of the late king/ twins and was given the title as a reward.

Going by these two things- if Renais had been at peace, then that would mean there probably wasn't that much competition for the title of general. And Seth being Seth, he's pretty amazing at what he does. He's a paladin that's useful all game and he's arguably the smartest member of the army. He probably has "an upstart showing great promise and flying through the rankings" background.