Fate

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Revision as of 08:00, 14 January 2007

Fate was an incredibly powerful entity created by the gods as a failsafe measure for the universe. Fate was imbued with the ability to sense a permanent, irrevocable unbalance in the quintessence in the universe. If and only if such an imbalance was detected, Fate would “awaken,” break down all quintessential matter into its simplest form, and restart the universe again from nothing. However Fate awakened at a time the gods were not prepared for and began its mission with a zeal, devouring planet after planet without significant resistance.

This article is essentially “Control of Destiny and Micras in a nutshell” – how all the plots connect together is on here.

Fate’s History

Origins

It’s difficult to tell exactly when Fate was created. Some Micras theorists place Fate’s creation shortly after the Great War of Destruction, an epic battle between the gods that shook Micras’s foundations. The theorists believe that a conflict similar to the Great War happened on many planets and only ended because the gods themselves realized that they were destroying their very creations. This could have prompted the gods to realize that their wars may permanently upset the balance of the universe, so a being like Fate may be necessary to revitalize it.

This is only a theory however. The only thing that is certain is that Fate was not present at the universe’s creation. Its role as a safeguard was added later after some terrible realization that all six major gods supported. This would make Fate the single known decision the six agreed upon; ironically, it was also their biggest mistake (at least as seen from a mortal point of view). Regardless of how it happened, Fate’s creation must not have been an easy thing to support. The entire destruction of everything in creation is as high as the stakes go. The gods must have labored long to believe that Fate was completely necessary.

The Awakening

Because of the nature of Fate’s powers not only destroy planets but largely remove them from the entire flow of history, it is very difficult to tell when it awoke or where it struck first. Among the Time Distortionists is a story of a planet named Drewidia; a peaceful planet not far into its development. The gods were quarrelling over the history of this planet when Fate wiped it from the slate of the universe right under them. No survivors. No neighboring planets had spaceflight but the ones that had astronomy had Drewidia’s existence removed from their histories and memories. The planet not only ceased to exist; it never existed to begin with as far as mortals knew.

The gods of course knew immediately that Fate had awakened. They attempted to use their divine abilities against it but, in their wisdom, had warded it against divine powers lest a rogue god attempt to kill it during the universe’s rebirth. They sent their mortal champions against it, but mortals were hopelessly outpowered and even the strongest fell easily.

A second planet fell to Fate, though with considerable effort and a huge amount of time, for Fate was immortal yet could be attacked and harmed by normal weapons. Fate quickly realized that in order to complete its mission in a timely fashion it would need its own army to decimate key resistance centers on targeted planets. Fate’s powers broke down the quintessence (“corrupted” as mortals would say) within matter, but Fate found that if it only broke down a certain level of living organisms (mainly the quintessence of Life) the creatures would remain functional and yet not need food, air, sleep, or other biological needs. These creatures became known as Fiends. Largely immaterial, they were near invulnerable to physical attack, and since their souls did not exist within the Empathi Field, very magic resistant.

With a growing army of Fiends at its disposal, a third planet fell. Fate used some of the harvested energy to create his own dimension, the Plane of Corruption, as a fortress and a sanctuary. Again the gods attacked Fate with mortals by sending their champions to this plane, and again the heroes were slaughtered.

First Conflict

The Time Distortionists believed that they were the first group to assault Fate in an organized fashion. In reality, there were probably the eighth or so mortal resistance. Fate’s effect on time and space when it destroyed a planet was imperfect; occasionally there were insignificant off-planet survivors. Slowly time and time again mortals in the universe put two and two together and discovered Fate.

One of the early groups established the Existence Core with the help of the gods servant Avatar. A base upon the Plane of Time, the resistance would monitor Fate until they believed they found a weak point.

Every one of these armies eventually assaulted Fate directly and they were all eventually wiped out. However, in the process, they managed to prolong a good number of invasions and destroy incredible numbers of Fiends to the point where Fate began to run at an energy loss; harvested energy from planets didn’t even outweigh the losses in his armies being destroyed by the mortals.

Fate was nothing if not far-seeing, however, and saw the issue before it became a major problem. Fate discovered that other planes in the multiverse were relatively unprotected. Though containing far less raw quintessence for harvesting than populated planets, they served as useful “mining colonies” to continually supply its force for the main push through the universe galaxy. The Plane of Life was Fate’s most productive colony by far. However operating across planes to control his armies there put a major strain on Fate’s ability to function quickly. To counter this, it separated small parts of its own body to control the Fiends on the other planes. These beings became known as Archfiends and were connected with Fate through a powerful interplanar link.

The mortals, though a nuisance, failed to either halt Fate’s progress through the universe nor harm the being directly.

The Time Distortionists

The planet Micras entered the scene when a group of scientists traveled through a dimensional portal to the Existence Core, met Avatar, and discovered Fate. Once again, a mortal resistance formed to combat the threat. They named themselves the Time Distortionists (henceforth referred to as the TDs). Most of their early history can be seen in Sealed Gate.

As with their predecessors, the TDs mainly attempted to fight Fate with force by rallying to defense planets Fate was trying to destroy. And as with their predecessors, these attempts all failed spectacularly. The last such attempt took place on the planet Remora where the TDs successfully attacked Fate with a high-powered laser weapon system from a hidden ocean base, damaging the beast but still not causing enough damage before their base was destroyed by fiends.

Realizing force wasn’t going to work after a time, they launched a brazen attack against the Archfiend on the Plane of Life. Hopelessly outmatched, they tried to retreat back to the Plane of Time, but the portal to the Plane of Time caused the Archfiend distress enough for the TDs to kill it, albeit not before losing one of their top members.

The death of the Archfiend sent a powerful shock across the interplanar link to Fate. Essentially, some of Fate’s own mind had been killed. All Fate’s Fiends spread across the universe lost contact with Fate for a time. In some cases, planets under siege actually managed to beat back the invading Fiends and save their planets, a first in the galactic history. Fate’s march of destruction was halted, if only for a few months. The losses were incalculable.

For the first time, Fate was directly threatened. Security around all Archfiends was tightened but Fate realized the need to root out the opposition. He located their home planet, Micras, far inside a populated galaxy. Attacking a planet not on the edge of Fate’s corrupted area was dangerous and costly, but Fate didn’t care. It wanted these people dead, now. However Fate found the planet surrounded by a special type of energy; Chrono energy. The energies of time, the ultimate judgment and the one thing Fate had no real mastery over.

The TDs were not idle in the time Fate was out of commission; they had discovered why the Archfiend was harmed by the powers of the Plane of Time and had erected a crude Chrono Shield around the planet. They had also discovered that certain people are periodically born with concentrations of Chrono powers. There would be three such people on Micras, but history would not let them reach their full powers.

Fate continued to try to corrupt the universe and find a way to influence Micras from beyond the Chrono shield. The TDs continued to recruit members, hamper Fate in any way possible, and tweak Micras so that the power of the Chrono would become powerful enough to open the Sealed Gate of the Gods within the Existence Core that would give them access to the full power of the Chrono. And so a great stalemate began with Micras as the most important planet in the universe. And this is where Control of Destiny begins.

Control of Destiny

The TDs, collaborating with the Micras country of Solaria identified one of the Chrono-sensative humans early; a woman named Empress Leos that lived as a revolutionary and died young. The TDs began a number of subtle small alterations into Micras’s history to prolong her life, but they could only push it so far without contacting the girl nor significantly altering history. They prolonged her life from 16 to 25 but after that any choice they offered her resulted in her death. Reluctantly, the TDs decided to worry about out to save her later.

The second Chrono being was a young micron, an illegitimate daughter of a princess. Technically royalty but with the prince not of her father, she was put to death at two months age by royal law. Again the TDs altered history in small ways, but no matter how they tried, they couldn’t save the girl. They were forced to send a top TD agent down to Micras directly to protect and educate the girl. Princess Sai'Kar Lum'Eth survived the Eve of Destruction by hiding in the City of the Sun with other micron survivors.

The third human, however, would never be born in the world due to an Imperial invasion and occupation of Micras. The invasion was massive for the TDs to stop in any way. Realizing that this sort of manipulation wasn’t really getting them anywhere, they encouraged a number of humans from the Flying Islands of Jasonia to do the job for the by manipulating one of them into discovering time travel. Yet the travelers needed a guide, and so, in one of their largest efforts ever, the TDs created an artificial copy of the third Chrono-sensative and named her Amy Leonarkos. She wasn’t a perfect creation; her personality had several holes that made her act in odd ways, but most of the quirks such as single-mindedness actually turned out to be a bonus. Amy met the travelers and helped them on their quest to alter the future and allow the real Amy to be born. As a bonus, they had the travelers save Empress from death. This became known as Control of Destiny 1, the first Control of Destiny Campaign.

Meanwhile, Fate and gave an update on what it was up to. Fate was utterly unable to breach the Chrono Shield after a number of attempts but came up with a different plan. While this was going on Fate made a deal with Atropos, an evil goddess of shadows. Fate made no lies or deceptions about its mission to destroy and recreate the universe, but offered Atropos a position as a major goddess in the new universe. If Fate could have kept that sort of bargain is a matter of some speculation, but either way Atropos agreed.

Atropos was not limited by the Chrono Shield in the way Fate was. Atropos chose to target the Elemental Seal that separated dimensional walls, believing that weaknesses in the walls would trigger a massive war that would kill the important Control of Destiny Team members and halt the TDs plans. Long story short, this didn’t work very well, and Control of Destiny 2 ended with Atropos’s demotion from godhood and actual mortal death.

Restoration of the Chrono

(i.e. Control of Destiny 3)

With the three Chrono-sensatives, affectionately known as the Chrono Girls, located and under TD protection, the next task was training their abilities to the point where they could open the Sealed Gate. Fate, however, had finally worked a way through the Chrono Shield and attempted to assassinate the Chrono Girls directly using his avatar Diga. Wielding powers across space and time and a small force of Fiends, Diga launched attacks at all three of the girls. All three girls were prevented but with tragic losses; the Micron Empire was decimated, the Flying Islands utterly destroyed, and most of the nonhumans of the future wiped out.

Fighting losing battles, the TDs managed to keep away from Digas minions long enough to return to the Existence Core. Just after explaining the real truth to the confused mortals of Micras Diga’s force attacked the Existence Core, center of the galaxy, directly. The girls were taken to the Sealed Gate of the Gods and gained within themselves the Chrono in the purest form, but they were too late. Diga had almost succeeded in shattering the Existence Core when CoD Team leader Jason Steffke tricked him through a portal back to Micras. Jason saved the universe but paid a high price himself; Diga annihilated him on Micras with corrupted Fate energies making him impossible to revive.

Grieving for their lost leader, the group had no choice but to push on before Diga’s efforts made their homeworld a wasteland. The group located the three Realtime Artifacts, objects of power from the old universe that could open a portal directly to Fate’s inner sanctum upon the Plain of Corruption and bypass his armies. They took the relics to the place where the dimensional walls were weakest; the now-destroyed city of Airosamente. Diga was there waiting for them, but using their newfound Chrono powers he was finally killed.

Empress, Sai’Kar, and Amy found themselves before Fate, destroyer and recreator of the universe. Fate tried to appeal first to their humanity, on how they were cheated out of normal lives by the TDs to fill this role, and then to their ethics, explaining that it was performing a necessary service to an irredeemably corrupted universe, promising a better life for all if it was allowed to proceed as planned. Many believe that Fate was sincere about its views on things. The Chrono Girls too almost bought into it, but in the end decided that there must be a better way then just destroying everything and starting over.

Combat began. Fate held nothing back and used every trick it had acquired in its destruction of worlds, but against it was the power of the Chrono, the all-judging force of time, the seventh quintessence. Empress harnessed the powers to create new quintessence from Fate’s body, causing Fate great harm. Sai’Kar used her abilities to undo the powerful paradoxes Fate attacked the group with, purifying the damage done by Fate and healing the beast’s damage. Amy’s powers diminished Fate’s powers, enhanced Empress and Sai’Kar’s efforts, and enacted powerful Chrono Shields to protect the girls.

After uncountable years and with a death toll of trillions of sentient beings and over a thousand planets, the power of the Chrono, the one thing Fate was not designed to corrupt and recreate, destroyed the entity forever. The Chrono Girls returned to Micras and Plane of Corruption collapsed without its ruler’s energies. The reconstruction of a universe upon which only one in a million even knew of the war begun. And once again, fate was put back into mortal hands.

Information About Fate

(I’ll do this part later)

Fate’s Powers

Fiends

The Ethics of Fate