scrape_r_rational/data/cache/2mn44p.md

[BST][HF][MK] Rational Nasuverse characters

Post:

Inspired by the post mentioning MIAL. Not planning on writing a fic anytime soon, but I would like some ideas from /r/rational about Nasuverse and how a rational person would act in it and how to munchkin the rules. Nasuverse is the setting which includes the Fate/Stay Night visual novel/anime. Genre wise, I would call it dark urban fantasy.

** For those of you not familiar with it, some background details I think are particularly relevant and interesting : **

• Magic can be classified as "magecraft" and "true magic". Magecraft is that which is theoretically achievable given unlimited time and resources. Magecraft tend to have equivalent exchange type rules. True magic is that which cannot be achieved by ordinary means regardless of time and resources. The true magics are rare (only 4 living users, only three actually show up in any Type-Moon works), and include time-travel, parallel universe travel, .

• Magecraft is getting weaker over time (according to all the organizations that study it). According to every magically educated character, as a general rule, the more people understand a "mystery" the weaker the mystery is in its use in magecraft. This is suspected to be one of the main causes of the degradation.

• In order to avoid degradation of mysteries, and probably also to avoid public scrutiny on the lack of ethics in their research, magecraft is kept absolutely secret. As in all witnesses are killed or have their memory erased.

• Most "true" magi (as in no True Scotsman fallacy) devote themselves solely to advancing their magecraft. Their goal is to reach "Akasha" the root of all things, either for its own sake, or to gain true magic. Many of them lack conventional ethics or morality and are ruthlessly devoted to their goals, often at risk to their own life and at the expense of normal human relationships.

• Magecraft takes lifetimes to develop. Ordinary humans have few or no "magic circuits" in the first place. Magus families practice eugenics to increase their number of magic circuits from generation to generation. They also record the spells they develop into their circuits and then transplant the circuits to the children. Thus a first generation magus will be much weaker than say an eighth generation magus.

• Mysteries grow stronger over time, thus favoring older magus families even further.

• Mankind is continuously preyed upon by a vampire race refereed to as dead apostles. The top tier dead apostles are completely beyond any mundane weapon and most magecraft. Only the top tier individuals in the various organizations (the Magus Association, Atlas, and the Holy Church) are able to oppose them. Mysteries gain power with age, so some of the really old dead apostle ancestors can't be killed and can only be imprisoned by the church.

• The collective consciousness of the planet has been actively trying to kill humanity since early prehistory and is responsible for the dead apostle ancestors. When the ecosystem eventually collapses and this consciousness dies, it will call eldritch abominations from each of the planets to wipe humanity out.

• One of the organizations, Atlas, that studies magecraft has predicted the end of the world since the early middle ages. Their founder went insane with the inevitability of mankind's destruction and turned himself into a dead apostle ancestor.

Some interesting ideas I've seen in fanfic:

• Intentionally propagate knowledge of an enemies magecraft in order to degrade their mysteries and weaken their power. (This would probably make every other magus hate or at least distrust you)

• Rejecting the common sense of magi in order to achieve things that they would think of as impossible. I think the problem in-universe is that you would more likely kill yourself doing this.

• Degradation of mysteries. The actual underlying mechanics of it vary heavily in fanon. As we don't have the in-universe evidence that the characters have, we can't really evaluate this question.

So /r/rational, what would a rational magus character do. Humanity is probably doomed in the long run, the true laws of the universe are far beyond the laws of physics as commonly known. You can advance your families magecraft, but it might fail anyway as magic continues to degrade. You could pursue immorality, but this is likely to drive you insane or turn you into a dead apostle. Even success would result in you being classified as a heretic or imprisoned for study. Exposing magecraft to the public may cause it to fail entirely, leaving mankind defenseless against dead apostle ancestors.

Comments:

• u/AugSphere:

  > Atlas has predicted the end of the world
  
  Has anyone asked Zelretch to check that out? With his Magic he should be able to find out plenty of valuable info about this "end of the world".
  
  > So /r/rational, what would a rational magus character do?
  
  The first way to ensure survival of humankind in Nasuverse that popped into my head is some kind of scenario along the lines of instrumentality from NGE. A unified will of all humankind would probably make Alaya powerful enough to defend it. You'd probably need access to Akasha to pull something like that off, though.
  
  Alternatively you could do something sensible and boring like creating seed FAI and explaining the situation to it.
  

  • u/EliezerYudkowsky:

    > Alternatively you could do something sensible and boring like creating seed FAI and explaining the situation to it.
    
    Congratulations.  I now have to wipe spittle off my computer screen.
    

  • u/scruiser:

    > Has anyone asked Zelretch to check that out? With his Magic he should be able to find out plenty of valuable info about this "end of the world".
    
    Not as far as any of the characters know in any of the existing Type-Moon works.  Given the way magi normally treat knowledge, I would guess that if anyone has, they probably kept his answer secret.  It does seem like the sensible sort of thing that someone who meet him would ask.
    
    > Alternatively you could do something sensible and boring like creating seed FAI and explaining the situation to it. 
    
    That probably is the most straightforward and reasonable thing to do.  How would a rational magus character leverage their magical training to aid in this?  Atlas is described as having several advanced mental techniques, such as prediction and partitioning their minds, this would help with any type of research.  Magi have probably probed the human mind much more thoroughly than psychology, this seems like another area to leverage.
    
    > The first way to ensure survival of humankind in Nasuverse that popped into my head is some kind of scenario along the lines of instrumentality from NGE. A unified will of all humankind would probably make Alaya powerful enough to defend it. 
    
    Lol, given the way Nasu characters typically act this is probably what someone would try.  It would probably involve some horrible ritual that endangers the world even as they try to save it.
    

• u/EliezerYudkowsky:

  Will the World give me the power to create FAI if I offer to become a Counter Guardian?
  

  • u/scruiser:

    Isn't Alaya limited to the collective power of the subconscious of mankind?  Although, the existence of Counter Guardian Emiya implies that Alaya exists in many possible worlds at once.  So it seems to me that if one timeline successfully creates FAI, then it should propagate throughout Alaya in multiple other timelines.  So maybe Alaya would have the knowledge, maybe not.
    
    Alaya should be able to at least great some form of precognition, as indicated by Joan of Arc's revelation skill.  It should also be able to grant peak human knowledge, skill, and intelligence.
    
    So short answer is that it can empower you in extremely helpful ways, although probably not with specific knowledge.  Maybe you could also make your end of the deal conditional on you succeeding in creating the FAI.
    
    On the plus side, if you succeed, once you are a Counter Guardian, you could theoretically be summoned into other timelines where you could share your research and help them save their timelines additionally.
    

• u/scruiser:

  Thinking about Harry Potter, another munchkin idea occurred to me: 
  
  Develop a system of magecraft/thaumaturgical foundation with completely opaque and incomprehensible rules.  Thus no matter how many people used it, its mystery would not degrade because no one would understand it.  A spell creation/ritual creation method would have to be built into it, because no one would understand the underlying principles well enough to design spells from first principles... sounds like an explanation for canon Harry Potter existing in Nasuverse.
  
  Of course, creating a new system of magecraft would be difficult to nearly impossible in modern times given the degradation of magic as a whole, but it might still be worth the effort.
  

• u/TimTravel:

  > Magus families practice eugenics to increase their number of magic circuits from generation to generation. 
  
  Normally this would take countless generations to be effective. In real life we'll get genetic engineering way before any eugenics program would be effective even if we implemented it globally. I seem to remember them saying it's more the product of hard work and generations of research and putting mana into the family crest that accounts for older families being more powerful.
  

  • u/scruiser:

    It is possible that even though magical power is inherited, it is not based in genetics.  I would guess some branch of the magus association probably knows.  Even if their is a genetic component, if they couldn't find a way to boost their ability to sequence DNA and process that information with magecraft, they would only be recently figuring out what genetic traits correlate with magical power.  And of course degradation of mysteries mean that any attempts to genetically engineer more mages simply weakens magic further.
    

• u/scruiser:

  For as long as he could remember, [Caules Forvedge ](http://typemoon.wikia.com/wiki/Caules_Forvedge_Yggdmillennia) [Yggdmillennia](http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/1451-Fate-Apocrypha-Translation-%28no-spoilers%29/page130) had always appreciated magecraft, just as he knew that he would never manage anything truly great with it.  His circuit count was low, he had no special sorcery attributes, and his much more talented sister had been selected to inherit the family crest.  He had heard the occasional story of magi that turned out to be savants in particular areas although they were completely mediocre otherwise.  So when his father finally lost interest in teaching him in favor of his sister, he systematically tried as many other systems of magecraft as he could.  His family did have an extensive library, even if they themselves favored spiritual evocation.  So he went through it,  Astrology, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Shinsendou... he had found no hidden talent or special power within him for any of the major modern foundations.  He went through the basics he had already learned, bounded fields, structural grasping, gradation air, if it wasn't clear already he simply lacked any particular ability to distinguish himself.  Other magi might distinguish themselves by their ruthlessness, experimenting on humans subjects but Caules did not desire to achieve greatness this way.
  
  As he entered adulthood, it occurred to Caules that perhaps he should simply look outside the moonlit world for opportunity.  Had his family had a particular need for him, say with the Yggdmillenia's political conflicts with the rest of the association, he might have stayed even then.  But as it was, their was simply more for him to accomplish in the mundane than in the magical.
  
  The Clock Tower had fronts with which to grant its students with ordinary educational certifications.  The study skills he had developed studying magic made passing the exams he needed easy.  It was just a matter of choosing an appropriate area of research and educational institute.  And apparently, independent research at the undergraduate level was uncommon in ordinary education, if anything, Caules thought he might be bored in his first several years of college.
  

  • u/scruiser:

    Started this snippet without any plot in mind yet.  Caules goes to college, decided to study AI, because of his magus training recognizes the need to solve for FAI, and then starts his own AI research organization sounds a little boring to me.  Maybe his AI research attracts the interest of Atlas or some other organization... I need to think of how to bring it back into urban fantasy action.
    

    • u/AugSphere:

      Not bad. 
      
      Personally, I always thought that Shirou would be an ideal character for rationalist fiction. The only thing required is for Kiritsugu to pass on his mastery of "shut up and multiply" to him before dying. After that Shirou could probably figure out that the best way to go about saving people is along the lines of curing death rather than shooting people with a bow. At the same time he is broken enough to dedicate himself to this utterly. Plus he is a crappy magus severely limited in what he can do, which is always nice.
      

      • u/None:

        Shirou would also be interesting if his magical focus became more about reinforcement and less about BE SWORDS. Reinforcement means making something more effective, not just tougher. Reinforcement applied to powerful computers, therefore, has some interesting implications.
        

        • u/AugSphere:

          Yep. You could also apply it to a powerful biological computer in your own head. Combined with Thought Acceleration and Memory Partition (which are alchemical techniques that Shirou should be able to use) you could have one hell of a thinker. A protagonist severely limited magically, but smart enough to win anyway.  
          
          The question is, as always, what would a rational fast-thinking Shirou actually do with himself. That's what the story would be about, after all. There is also a distressingly small amount of canon material dealing with Atlas. Which is a pity, because it looks like the best fit for a rationalist Nasuverse story.
          

      • u/scruiser:

        I kinda think that Shirou is overused for Type-moon fanfiction.  I mean that there is some many characters in the various side materials and side works, that it would be interesting to explore somone else though.
        
        > The only thing required is for Kiritsugu to pass on his mastery of "shut up and multiply" to him before dying. 
        
        Shirou does have a clear backstory for how he got rationalist though, and it would be interesting to see an otherwise canon Shirou applying the rules of rational thinking.  He is so perfectionist and mechanical in his thinking... I could imagine him being perfectly rational when he has time to think and plan out, but then acting like his canon idiot self and running in when push comes to shove.
        

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