SOULS UPDATE:
This won't come up in the story for a long while, as the occult science ain't there to investigate it. This is for Exaled Mechanics nerds.
For all intents and purposes, a 'pinhole' was poked into Earth Bet somewhere. Through that pinhole, with the very first breath each human took after it was poked, came SOULS. Creation-class souls, that is.
A Creation-Class Human Soul, unlike any other sentient soul made for other species before it, is designed not to draw in and respire the Essence of Creation and shape the world. It is, instead, a prayer engine with the singular and sole (har har) purpose of redirecting what essence a human may have otherwise commanded towards their target of choice, via faith and dogma. Humans came up with all sorts of creative ways to worship and celebrate all sorts of beings back then; motes and quintessence were showered on those they bothered to pray to.
Then a bunch of drama happened and exaltations were forged and glued themselves to appropriately powerful human souls and WAR happened and then they won and went crazy and oh god the blood.
But that's all irrelevant.
What's important is that at some arbitrary point in time, Earth Bet was connected and every human got a free soul. No HFY here, folks, no sir. As an added bonus, certain souls are Heroic and able to better resist the pull and tangles of Fate. This simply means that some people are Better Than You at getting their way. Ha.
From the very MOMENT that this 'Great Inhalation' happened, we'll just say Cauldron had a bit of a panic as their predictions and projections went totally to shit. Certain wussy people that would never have made a move suddenly grew a pair and acted uncharacteristically. This actually LOWERED the number of trigger events globally for a bit, because a sub-section of these newly Heroic mortals (not that Cauldron called them that) acted against the tide of events that was lining them up for a shitty day and a trigger event. This phenomenon is modeled in game terms by Willpower, a finite-yet-regenerating stock of energy you get that allows you to sparingly force your will on your actions and succeed where you otherwise had very little chance to. At the very least, it prevents you from utterly making a disaster of yourself no matter how far beyond your abilities the action in question was.
Of course, humans are still humans, and after looking far enough in the future Cauldron more or less sighed with relief as their long term projections were mostly unchanged. People were still people, but a big handful of them got a sudden dose of dramatic adrenaline.
Heroic Mortal Taylor blew willpower during her investigation, preventing the worst case scenario of Sophia realizing she was collecting dirt from happening. Blowing willpower also let her figure out Sophia was the figurehead in the first place. If we reach back even further, she probably did so when deciding what course of action to take between investigating and passively surviving.
EDIT: To be clear, Heroic Souls have a Willpower track. They may harness it as a resource. Your total Willpower is, to some degree, a function of your strongest virtues; the aforementioned Conviction, Compassion, Temperance, and Valor. Four different facets via which one would commonly force their will on the world. You may also do a fun trick of focusing your willpower through your virtues and upping your dice for a roll but that gets all woogie when trying to bullshit it into metaphor.
Finally, Heroic Mortals gain a Heroic Motivation. It's some sort of Awesome Goal that they realistically hope to achieve and are willing to work and sacrifice towards. They gain bonuses to their Willpower while working towards their motivation, which more or less turns a Heroic Mortal into a tiny self sustaining engine of awesome when they are aiming at their goals. This tends to go well until an Bigger Fish stomps on them, eats them, or enslaves them, etc. I refer you to one N. Bolas for reference on the philosophy there.
