The resolution of Free Will and Destiny is a matter of significant importance as it dictates whether one is truly capable of controlling one's own actions or whether control is a mere illusion brought on egotistical delusions of agency. Though causality may be utilized as an argument for the latter with Destiny being the summation of all the variables within a system that is a matter that begins to lose influence as scales decrease into the unpredictable world quantum mechanics where it is probability that reigns, where events may occur with seemingly no cause. This resolution takes the form of a compromise, not one that falls prey to Golden Mean Fallacy, but rather one that is based around the concept of futility.
Destiny is a fragile concept, being able to violate it immediately reduces it to a guideline rather than an absolute. Therefore, it is paramount to ensure that whilst it exists, it does not compromise free-will yet remains inescapable. In this case, this compromise exists as follows: to preserve destiny without violating free-will, a destined event must occur without fail regardless of the actions of any entity whilst still allowing them to exercise free-will. As any such event could theoretically evaded through a certain set of actions at an earlier enough point in time, the only scenario in which this may occur is if free-will, even of near-omnipotent entities is irrelevant. Futility is the key.
If in the end, there is nothing, then anything that comes before is meaningless. Futile. Irrelevant. This is Fate. The inescapable. What exists at the end of time, after everything has ceased to exist, every being, every realm, every concept. Of course, this poses numerous issues for any setting if there is an inevitable end, what resolves this matter is perspective.
Consider this: an external observer watches the universe. The universe will cease to exist in one year from both the external observer's point of view and the view of it's denizens. However, what if the entire universe were to speed up by a factor of ten? The observer still sees it end in one year, but it's denizens will see that it ends in ten. How about a factor of one hundred? One year versus One century. One thousand? One year versus One millennium. Now, what about infinity? The observer still sees it end in one year yet to the denizens, the universe lasts for all eternity.
Fate is this external observer, to Fate, infinity is a colossal yet undeniably finite number. To Fate, nothing, not even what is immortal can withstand time.
Fate may be considered as a realm or as a nebulous eldritch influence, however a more accurate description is that it IS the entire cosmos. It is cosmos, given infinity entities shall become. It is virtually impossible to enter and rather ill-advised. It is empty. There is nothing in it including nothing itself. No concepts exist within it including Fate. Nothing can survive. Nothing can escape. No god. No immortal. No omnipotent. Entry results in complete erasure of existence regardless of any action taken.
Though it is not sentient, there exist a spare few entities known as Fate Aspects, soulless beings that while having a very real influence, technically do not exist and never will. They do not exist in Fate as not even they can survive it, instead, they exist in the final chronon before Fate occurs. What faint illusion of will that Fate possesses is really the actions of these Aspects. Virtually all of which are effectively mindless themselves, driven only by whatever faint approximation of instinct they developed. This is not due to an inherent bias against sentient life, but rather because the quantity of possible lifeforms that may occur far exceed the quantity of possible sentient lifeforms. Each of them may be summoned into an object through a corresponding summoning ritual, these tend to be rather simplistic and adaptable.
Contractors are effectively an extension of Fate's collective "will", compatible entities that are granted similar capabilities to Aspects, the ability to manifest Fate unto reality itself. This is better known as a false vacuum metastability event, or vacuum decay.
Of course, gravitation affects the quantitative features of vacuum decay. In any conceivable application, these effects are totally negligible, but we have computed them anyway. In general, gravitation makes the probability of vacuum decay smaller; in the extreme case of very small energy-density difference, it can even stabilize the false vacuum, preventing vacuum decay altogether. We believe we understand this. For the vacuum to decay, it must be possible to build a bubble of total energy zero. In the absence of gravitation, this is no problem, no matter how small the energy-density difference; all one has to do is make the bubble big enough, and the volume/surface ratio will do the job. In the presence of gravitation, though, the negative energy density of the true vacuum distorts geometry within the bubble with the result that, for a small enough energy density, there is no bubble with a big enough volume/surface ratio. Within the bubble, the effects of gravitation are more dramatic. The geometry of space-time with- in the bubble is that of anti-de Sitter space, a space much like conventional de Sitter space except that its group of symmetries is O(3, 2) rather than O(4, 1). Although this space-time is free of singularities, it is unstable under small perturbations, and inevitably suffers gravitational collapse of the same sort as the end state of a contracting Friedmann universe. The time required for the collapse of the interior universe is on the order of the time A discussed in Sec. I, microseconds or less. This is disheartening. The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe, ' in a new vacuum there are new constants of nature, ' after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated.
Contrary to the beliefs of human scientists, such an event is automatically limited. Realms automatically contain and seal off these bubble nucleation results, distortions.
Contractors instinctively kill when required, yet their incredibly rare occurrence and tendency to do so in stealth has resulted in this realm being incredibly obscure and virtually undocumented. This is suspected to be part of Fate's instinct. By remaining obscure, countermeasures cannot be developed (not that defending against what amounts to a localized collapse of reality itself is easy to do so to begin with) and it remains free to eliminate life, bringing Fate closer to manifestation by an immeasurably small amount. The tendency for Fate to forsake any drastic, noticeable action is in part due to possessing no real intelligence but also because it's perception and willingness to wait for all of eternity effectively ensures that it's victory is inevitable (not that anything would ever notice it care much due to it's victory being dependent entirely on its odd sense of time).
ANDROMALIUS—The Seventy-second Spirit in Order seems to be better classified as an infernal aberration than a true demon, all documented summonings do not indicate any sentience, or even life. Review of combat data and magic signature tracing indicate that its actions are driven solely by the bindings that accompany the ritual, nothing more than a marionette puppeteered by the magic of others. Disturbingly however, though the wounds that it inflict indicate some kind of potent magic, it seems to only does so when it is simply not feasible to gather sufficient data on it, furthermore, this magic seems to ignore both antimagic and antivoid fields. It is due to this that we believe it is some sort of entity of the twilight, seemingly inanimate yet displaying mastery over a hitherto unknown supernatural force. This possibility is no longer explorable, all recent summoning attempts have failed and we know not as to its cause.
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Topic: Rise of the Magic Girls v3 OOC: Stealing combat systems from an eroge (Read 518951 times)