It is fantastic in a variety of ways.
It might not even have been a lie. Maybe he was just wrong and didn't know.
To be fair, we NEED Edge 4 to have a chance at his sacrament, so if we don't do it now we WILL do it later.
Probably to better our chances against Biedde in a duel, since our Edge is capped and can't improve our stabbery any further at this time.
It could, but since the Master was The Will of the Woods and a Moth 7 Name it is more likely that he just lied.
They are trying to get a bonus to personal combat independent of Edge because the ponies that are Edge main like Biedde or Comet usually have higher martial than is, which gives them advantage given similar levels of Edge. For example, Shining Armor had a plus 25 to combat iirc (either that or +20), which means that an hipothetical Edge 1 Shining Armor has bigger personal combat bonus than an Edge 4 Velvet (sans rerolls).
+25. It was marked as "Heroic".
You found it suspicious that the Moth Name, the entity that basically was made of the Lore based entirely around being sneaky, obfuscation, ignorance, and hiding, thought that hiding Harmony would be the best option?
Well, while we don't know exactly what his baseline martial stat was, it's actually not hard to figure out what traits and past Comet has if we assume it's equal to Velvet.
Anyways, equal base to Velvet is 8 martial.
We know he has this given he is always described as being very large in the narrative. Ten martial, plus five to combat.
Eleven martial.
Twelve martial.
Fair, though that's another Lore thing and… not quite the same kind of trait.
Considering the other options it gave, yes. The only thing that it thought of hiding was Harmony, not the world, if it said "We need to hide the world" I would have been "Yeah, that fits a Moth thing" but it focused on Harmony so that was suspicious.
Yep. Bird confirmed that 5+ give extra goodies.
…Uh, no. There's definitely something keeping the Worms out of the world, or it would have been overrun long ago. The only Worm that got in at all recently—relatively speaking—was the one that made Nightmare Moon. The problem is that if enough get attracted whatever those protections are they will probably be overwhelmed.
Literally, why though? This would introduce so many complications and problems. And "give" them to Steppes who doesn't even know the Lores exist?
Weird shiny thing is attracting Worms due to being so shiny -> teach shiny thing to stop pointing its personal mega-flashlight into Nowhere. Seems like a reasonable conclusion for a Moth Name to come to?
The Dreamlands being on the "wrong" side of the dream-world seems to be at least part of the problem, tbh. Which is to say, Nowhere-facing instead of Glory-facing.
To be entirely fair, some of those rank and file might try to figure out who the fuck just murked their upper ranks. Velvet's got good Moth, but she's not immune to RotT, and if someone gets a critical balance between information and misinformation they might do something really stupid. Not even for revenge, just proactive self defense.
The old wards are gone, I don't think we got an official answer on how the world is still standing but the only thing we found that could keep the Worms out is Harmony so it is either that or something of the old Era that remained.
If we task Biedde with destroying Copper's cult I fully expect him to kill everyone involved. And it is not like we can give them to authorities. And most of them are criminals and Steppes supposedly knows what to do with criminals. Low level cultist are not much more than talented ponies. After Biddie tells them to behave I expect them to be on their best behavior. For any high ranks I expect them to either die in the fighting, escape on their own or come to our attention where we will be able to decide on individual basis. Plus sending them on their own increases risk of them doing something unadvisable, or getting catch by police and spilling beans on Lores
All of this is predicated on the assumption that we're going to be ordering Biedde to destroy the cult. Which, as far as I can tell, literally no one cares about. The only actual target we're planning on killing is Copper.
The ritual cadre, who we had literally done rituals in front of completely devoid of any disguise, thought we were a dude. And in the cult as a whole, we got mention of our "being part of the cult" down to regular rumor level. Which like. We were the only noble in town until Hills showed up. Making up wild rumors about the local noble seems pretty normal.
Mm, fair. On the other hand, we're not the only potential target. If all the upper echelons disappear and—preferably—Neighnia isn't there to pick up the slack…
The stab Neighnia on the way out? I'd be surprised if Biedde + Mareinette + (maybe) DoA wouldn't be able to knock her back into an "unsummoned" state one way or another.
…See, now I have this weird image of a situation where, like, the Names are all standing over Copper's corpse or something, and Neighnia bursts into the room. Everybody panics, DoA throws a key ring at Neighnia, and then they all scamper away from the crime scene without even waiting to see if it worked.