User blog comment:GAK16/Theory Time...../@comment-31817574-20181003210716

DAUGHTER! MIRA? I thought so...but I also had a whole odd theory that when the Puppet Master was human, he was an Academy student when the Astral Warden was the headmaster. He would tinker with his magic far beyond his friends and was a whole lot more powerful than his other students, able to become a young prodigy himself. When he had to do standardized magic testing, he would fail of nervousness and he would have had a bad case of vertigo that day, so now it his his plan of VENGEANCE to prevent others from being prodigies too, as it was probably him having a mental illness that made him believe that his classmates were so jealous that they cast the spell to make him ill. Therefore, a now angered undergraduate, he leaves the school and decides to work on mind illusion spells as well, eventually growing up, testing them way too hard, causing himself to change into a form of a puppet specter because he was so heavily damaged by his own spell testing, and then decides to conquer the world. But before a major test that changes him forever, the Puppet Master would go through a calm, young-adult phase of his life where he'd look for a wife - a Vinequeen or some other human. Having kids (depeding on which wife he has) would be semidryads or pure wizards. Then he's to the major test on his magic, ruin his life and everyone's forever, and cause this trouble. Beyond the lock would probably be more tests of what students do in their everyday lives, like opening lockers, getting to areas of the academy on time after battling goons, etc. The final battle against him himself would be a battle of the mind - one in which you must get 100 spells right the first time each in a row or else you'd be buffeted by his shadow magic forever. If you prevail, you win the game and the academy is saved - woo-hooh, solving mysteries and rewriting history (yeeeeee). If you fail, you get conked out and must retake the entire trial all over again.