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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crusher" data-source="post: 5976178" data-attributes="member: 6697285">Well, perhaps.  The ritual is certainly specific to the OotS world, limiting its help in identifying the MitD.  But in the OotS world is an extremely obscure and powerful ritual, known only by a very, very small number of people.The ritual was known only by each High Priest of the Dark One and the divine half of the ritual had (according to Red Cloak) never been written down (and the copy of the arcane half the MitD saw may have been the only time the arcane half had been written down), so the MitD having previous experience with the ritual would be a bit of a surprise.  If he did, it would perhaps suggest that he's not just an outsider but in fact a servitor of the Dark One of some sort (In fact, I've argued that the MitD could be a Pseudonatural Greater Barghast servitor of the Dark One which actually works fairly decently except that Dimension Door isn't a good answer for the Escape scene).Alternatively, its possible the MitD has some sort of mind-reading ability, latent or otherwise and read Red Cloak's mind.The simplest explanation, obviously, is that he made skill checks along the lines of what you suggest.  But there are limitations to that argument.  First, the MitD has said repeatedly that he's not a caster (though he's been wrong about plenty of other things.  "Maybe I'm a kobold?"  "You're too tall to be a kobold."  "Maybe I'm two kobolds?").  Even more telling, Xykon, who we *know* is an epic level caster with 24+ ranks in both Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcane) wasn't able to make heads or tails out of the ritual.  Yet the MitD was able to wander up, glance at the arcane half, and instantly know that the problem was that it was only half of the ritual.  To be fair, we also know that Xykon gets bored extremely fast.  He may have taken one look at the ritual and before even making a skill check said to himself "Ah, screw this.  I'll farm it out to Tsukiko to figure out."  Tsukiko had both knowledge (arcane) and knowledge (religion) as a mystic theurge, but we only know that she had 6 or more ranks in both, making her knowledge level a much lower hurdle to get over.</blockquote>

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