Various clarifications, crossposted from SB:
Writer of 2814 said:
Given the timeline and the lack of mentions of a Holy Grail, I'm going assume this is a variant of the Prisma-verse, rather than the Miyu-verse. Somewhere on this planet is an innocent little girl... with BEST GIRL trapped in her head.
Alza said:
Is that the only possibility. Couldn't the timeline just have avoided mentioning the HGW since the grail won't be that important in this story? It's like thinking the Clock Tower doesn't exist since the timeline didn't mention when it was founded.
This is a timeline in which, at the very least, the 4th and 5th Grail Wars did not occur.
The Void Ever Watching said:
That's assuming the Mages are firstly aware of her, which I'd grant they'd probably do logically barring extreme isolationists.
The magi are indeed aware of the Endbringers in general.
Shard_486 said:
I don't know who or what Manchurian is, but I think it's likely we don't have to worry about any mage being a Ziz Bomb. Both because they're unlikely to spread or move much, so there'd be little point for the angel thing to bother to make a mage one, and because being a Ziz bomb seems like a Nasu curse, so they'd have the capacity to notice, and therefore potentially do something about it before it becomes an issue.
Aitch Kay said:
It not like a curse, it is a manipulation of events so one day you'll snap at the worst time and spree kill a tour group of elementary school kids or assassinate an up and coming politician.
The Void Ever Watching said:
It means political puppet, and if anything their insular cutthroat nature seems liable to screw them over here. Not to mention they do still have social gatherings, at least by the Clock Tower and such. While we can't really say much about the bomb planting process, given it can make use of both mundane, parahuman, and perhaps even supernatural means to affect them mentally. As it's less of a curse in of itself and more a result of the psyche reacting in the long-term, barring alterations to Ziz's scream by being in Nasu whether that be on Ziz's end or caused by the Human Order, and if anything the Western side of Magi tend to be ignorant of curses, given they aren't taught unless your family has it's own.
Aitch Kay said:
Unless the Entities are changed in this fic, they and the Endbringers and all shards accomplish what they do through extreme manipulation of physics and dimensions.
In Nasu, every outcome rendered by magecraft is entirely possible within the bounds of the laws of physics, and hypothetically attainable by technological means.
This means that any outcome not explicitly a product of True Magic can in observation of Parahumans canon be produced by a Shard-implemented power.
However, differing from Parahumans canon, the circumstance whereby Shards are obligated to operate in accordance to the laws of physics is a consequence either of the 'Order' by which Shards natively abide; or of a compliance to the strictures of the Human Order. Said compliance is not necessarily absolute across all Shards.
Furthermore, in Nasu, "the laws of physics" and "the bounds of possibility" currently asserted by the Human Order extend further than what is covered by the body of knowledge currently known to human science.
This fic would presume that Shard-implemented capabilities can act in the context of concrete mechanics not known to human science. This seems more or less in line with Parahumans canon, though the nuance probably differs a bit.
Ze Bri-0n said:
At one point the wiki said that there were (Middle?) Eastern schools of magecraft whose knowledge of curses were superior to that of the Clocktower. I do not think it is there anymore, don't think it was cited, and it never said they were ignorant of them, just not as knowledgeable as what was implied to be the world's specialists, but he might be drawing upon that.
There's a Middle Eastern Association that specializes in Curses. This isn't to say that the Clock Tower is unaware of Curses, or that it doesn't make use of them.
LordCassius said:
Simurgh, has the ability to scan individuals and see their possible futures, she then uses that information to psychologically manipulate them, sometimes through subtle brainwashing and other times by doing stuff like killing their loved ones so they go off the deep end in despair or by mind controlling someone else who then interacts with them at a later date which prods them into a certain course of action.
Notspecialdude said:
Simurgh is on Zeldretch's radar for sure if Simurgh uses a kaleidoscope-esc ability like that.
Erddad890765 said:
What Ziz does is very simply planning, to an insane degree. Her "precog" powers are her massive number-crunching brain running all the variables and finding likely trends, figuring out what's likely to happen and creating a big splash in the form of her Endbringer attack to distract from her smaller plots. She aggravates mental conditions and sets up new ones being created that have predictable triggers, and in doing so creates a sort of modular set of "build your own Ziz-bomb" plots that she can then manipulate later on to interact poorly with each other. Mind, having "Magecraft-adjacent abilities" might change that slightly in this fic, but the base canon premise is that it's just taking a near-perfect understanding of the universe and cranking it through a gigantic xenotech supercomputer.
In this fic, the Simurgh's predictions are not rendered via observation of actual alternate timelines or potential futures. Shard-run calculations are a massive part of the implementation, but things are a little more complicated than I'm willing to cover here.
Further, the Earth Bet of this fic doesn't have anything resembling closely-adjacent alternate timelines that are accessible to the Simurgh.
Notspecialdude said:
Fair, but I'd still have to say that it would have to be at least a little tepid around them. Also, if that is the end goal of the Endbringers; (kinda obvious all things considered) how the hell has a Counter Guardian not gotten involved yet?
Ze Bri-0n said:
The Counter Guardians do not have the best track record, particularly with alien threats. As in, there was this one time where an alien moseyed on into Earth-space and murdered 90-98% of everyone everywhere without the Counter Force even slowing it down. The result is called the Age of Man. The counter force's fallibility in the face of aliens is literally the whole reason humans rule the planet. They also do not have the best track record against other threats, but that's another topic.
The Void Ever Watching said:
In Worm canon, that would be Khepri, and in Fate canon, the closest counterpart would be whoever used not-Excalibur on the White Titan during the Age of Gods. The Counterforces does not like to use tons of energy if doable and will aim to be cost-effective as possible regardless of human suffering, and so even the damages to a few possible Earths largely doesn't matter to the whole truthfully.
The Counter Forces actually assert multiple protections against the physical destruction of the planet, but these are suspended in timelines that have been slated for culling. That being the case, there are circumstances in which the Counter Force either cannot or will not act; and generally, it commits the lowest . A Grail powerful enough to bind all the timelines in a given era into a Singularity is an example of an obstacle that the Counter Force cannot overcome on its own.
Incidentally, the wielder of the Holy Sword that fought off Altera 14,000 years ago was probably something brought forth by a Counter Force — so, claiming that circumstance as a complete failure of the Counter Force isn't totally accurate.
