The theory is that Reynir either is immune, or becomes immune, but it needs a few words to make sense:
The thing is, there is plenty of Minna's art around the site (character section!) and especially on her blog that shows Reynir without his breathing mask - at first I thought she just might just not have bothered with it or left it off to better show his expression, similar to how Tuuri's mask lost its kitty mouth emoticon, but in most (not all) cases of him not wearing it, Tuuri wears hers anyway, so it feels more like a hint than a lapse. In some of those images he also has carving tools on his belt, presumably for runes.
Theories:
We know that Reynir's parents lied to him before about illness-related things like lifting the ban on non-immune international travel even when he asked, and exaggerated the infection threat a la "they led me to believe my face would fall off" to keep him home safe, so this wouldn't feel entirely out of line to me. Might be they had second thoughts after their Dagrenning kids left home and went head-first into danger by the time Reynir was tiny, so they resolved to keep their only biological kid home no matter what, and immune status be damned - they'd just need to tell him he wasn't immune to put weight behind their reasoning. Reynir's misconceptions and ignorance peeling away has been a pretty consistent thing in his character arc, so this'd feel like a possible extension of it. It'd also make a neat contrast to Tuuri - also non-immune and kept home against her will by an overprotective caretaker whose authority she had to defy to leave.
The weak point in that - his parents' immunity status is never really confirmed, is it? But in my understanding only one of them has to be non-immune to run the risk of non-immune kids that they would have wanted to avoid, but that would still allow for the chance an immune child as well, I think.
Or all of this is bogus, Reynir is not immune, gets bitten or otherwise infected (as foreshadowed by the Leaftroll encounter) and it ties in with the vaccine plot - Reynir has to play lab rat and pray really hard it has an effect, or accept his life is over. On the other hand, having a working vaccine would change literally everything, so if this is what happens, it might not be until closer to the end of the comic?
Third option, Icelandic mages' magery is tied to immunity, but that is even less substantiated than the rest of the wid guessing here. :D
Re: 501
The theory is that Reynir either is immune, or becomes immune, but it needs a few words to make sense:
The thing is, there is plenty of Minna's art around the site (character section!) and especially on her blog that shows Reynir without his breathing mask - at first I thought she just might just not have bothered with it or left it off to better show his expression, similar to how Tuuri's mask lost its kitty mouth emoticon, but in most (not all) cases of him not wearing it, Tuuri wears hers anyway, so it feels more like a hint than a lapse. In some of those images he also has carving tools on his belt, presumably for runes.
Theories:
We know that Reynir's parents lied to him before about illness-related things like lifting the ban on non-immune international travel even when he asked, and exaggerated the infection threat a la "they led me to believe my face would fall off" to keep him home safe, so this wouldn't feel entirely out of line to me. Might be they had second thoughts after their Dagrenning kids left home and went head-first into danger by the time Reynir was tiny, so they resolved to keep their only biological kid home no matter what, and immune status be damned - they'd just need to tell him he wasn't immune to put weight behind their reasoning. Reynir's misconceptions and ignorance peeling away has been a pretty consistent thing in his character arc, so this'd feel like a possible extension of it. It'd also make a neat contrast to Tuuri - also non-immune and kept home against her will by an overprotective caretaker whose authority she had to defy to leave.
The weak point in that - his parents' immunity status is never really confirmed, is it? But in my understanding only one of them has to be non-immune to run the risk of non-immune kids that they would have wanted to avoid, but that would still allow for the chance an immune child as well, I think.
Or all of this is bogus, Reynir is not immune, gets bitten or otherwise infected (as foreshadowed by the Leaftroll encounter) and it ties in with the vaccine plot - Reynir has to play lab rat and pray really hard it has an effect, or accept his life is over. On the other hand, having a working vaccine would change literally everything, so if this is what happens, it might not be until closer to the end of the comic?
Third option, Icelandic mages' magery is tied to immunity, but that is even less substantiated than the rest of the wid guessing here. :D