Destiny & Fate

[PenitentDemon]

Im curious on Destiny and Fate I've gotten both the liber servitorium and the game masters guide

but i have a question or two.


Does a Destiny or fate (at least what you get with the Divine destiny attunement) need to be something obviously benign or malign... many samples, seemed quite incospicuous.

2ndly, do you think highly politicaly correct or incorrect destinys, are a bad idea.

(In nomine sometimes seems fuzzy on what it considers good or bad at times) it allready said that "one persons fate might be another persons destiny"

a good example might be a young woman with a destiny, of "become a happy, gentle homemaker" a fate of "become a knowing and willing agent of Lilith"


3rd this is just a guess, but do you think its good for some people to have Mirror destinys and fates (ones that are very similar) (e.g. "destiny: become soldier of heaven. Fate: become soldeir of hell) while some likely one has nothing to do with the other.


Hitlers destiny as a interior decorator nuff said.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

Im curious on Destiny and Fate I've gotten both the liber servitorium and the game masters guide

but i have a question or two.


Does a Destiny or fate (at least what you get with the Divine destiny attunement) need to be something obviously benign or malign... many samples, seemed quite incospicuous.

I've always taken into account the "selfless"/"selfish" divide between Heaven and Hell when deciding Destinies and Fates. If the action is something that will ultimately make other people better-off, it's a Destiny; if it will ultimately make other people worse-off, it's a Fate. "Donate one paycheck per year to charity" would be a Destiny if the person doesn't need the money and the charity performs good works with the cash, but if the person (or his family) are struggling to make ends meet and the charity uses the money to buy its president a fancy car, then it's a Fate. It's the results that matter, not the specifics.

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

2ndly, do you think highly politicaly correct or incorrect destinys, are a bad idea.

(In nomine sometimes seems fuzzy on what it considers good or bad at times) it allready said that "one persons fate might be another persons destiny"

a good example might be a young woman with a destiny, of "become a happy, gentle homemaker" a fate of "become a knowing and willing agent of Lilith"

That's up to you and your gaming group. We're playing this game in order to have fun - if people stop having fun because the game went somewhere they weren't ready to go, then that's a bad thing.

Consider the Fate "Take control of the country's government." Somebody could fulfill that by being elected President / Prime Minister / Chancellor of his country, perfectly legally and without an uprising. Is this something that a Servitor of Destiny should thwart? If your players don't want to consider that question, don't ask it.

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

3rd this is just a guess, but do you think its good for some people to have Mirror destinys and fates (ones that are very similar) (e.g. "destiny: become soldier of heaven. Fate: become soldeir of hell) while some likely one has nothing to do with the other.


Hitlers destiny as a interior decorator nuff said.

Oh, definitely. Giving humans asymmetrical Destinies and Fates keeps the Celestials guessing. (Just because someone has the Fate "kill a dozen men" doesn't mean his Destiny has to be "save a dozen men", for example... or vice versa.)

Consider also that the GMG says every angel has the Fate "Fall", and every demon has the Destiny "Redeem". It's impossible for an angel to have the Destiny "Redeem" or a demon to have the Fate "Fall", because they're already in that state of existence. Thus, at the least, celestials don't have symmetrical Destinies and Fates.

[ISNorden]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Oh, definitely. Giving humans asymmetrical Destinies and Fates keeps the Celestials guessing. (Just because someone has the Fate "kill a dozen men" doesn't mean his Destiny has to be "save a dozen men", for example... or vice versa.)

Amen! One example from my Swedish campaign: a troubled teenager with an alcoholic father had the Fate "Spend the rest of his life in a prison hospital" (implying severe injury from a violent crime where this character was implicated). His Destiny was not only unrelated, but much less dramatic: "Help his father recover from alcoholism".

Consider also that the GMG says every angel has the Fate "Fall", and every demon has the Destiny "Redeem". It's impossible for an angel to have the Destiny "Redeem" or a demon to have the Fate "Fall", because they're already in that state of existence. Thus, at the least, celestials don't have symmetrical Destinies and Fates.

Again, well said...an angel can't Redeem without Falling first (and the opposite is true of demons). It's hard to imagine God/Lucifer wanting a "yo-yo case"; even in a low-contrast game, an angel Destined to Redeem (or a demon Fated to Fall) would be rare exceptions to the rule.

So, what other kinds of prediction might apply to celestials only? Here are a few obvious ones:

• Become a Superior (hey, it happened to Furfur and Lilith!)
• Become Wordbound (whether this is a Fate or a Destiny depends on lots of situations...)
• Become Seneschal of a Tether (as above)
• Destroy/be destroyed by a major celestial on "the other side"
• Earn one or more Distinctions

Do any other Fates and Destinies come to mind which celestials could get "out of Role", but mortals couldn't? Please let me know!

[Orlin]

"Donate one paycheck per year to charity" would be a Destiny if the person doesn't need the money and the charity performs good works with the cash, but if the person (or his family) are struggling to make ends meet and the charity uses the money to buy its president a fancy car, then it's a Fate. It's the results that matter, not the specifics.

This doesn't seem to stress the selfless/selfish divide very much. In fact, I really whole-heartedly believe that some of these Fates are just screwed up.

Let's say we have Mister Farnsworth, a God-fearing Christian man. After Mrs. Farnsworth died, Mr. Farnsworth sought refuge in the One True Church of Christ -- where Father Matthew spends some of his sermons in song and many others preaching out against people who retain wealth, live liberal lifestyles or place their beliefs in any church that is not the One True Church of Christ. Is it wrong to expose his children to this belief? Maybe. Is it wrong that he's skimping on meals and forcing himself and his family to go hungrier than they have to because he HAS to give that 10% of his income to his church? Maybe. Would he feel terrible if he learned that Father Matthew uses that money to live like a rockstar? Certainly!

Because in his heart, Farnsworth still believes that he is making sacrifices that will assure his family is admitted to Heaven. He honestly believes that by exposing his children to this church, he's saving their souls. How can that be a result of his Fate?

Do any other Fates and Destinies come to mind which celestials could get "out of Role", but mortals couldn't? Please let me know!

Be destroyed by your own Superior.

[PenitentDemon]

Sorry to Ressurect this long dead thread.

but have another similar question

looked at liber urbariam (book of ghosts)

I find the aspect that a persons final destinatino is not QUITE set in stone very interesting.

Think a Symbolic achievement of ones destiny/Fate could suffice?

e.g. protecting and guiding away from harm a child, rather then actualy raising one.

Just a question.

[Archangel Beth]

If the GM wants, sure! I'd say it's in the spirit (...pun not intended...) of destinies and fates for a given destiny/fate to be "symbolic" and not necessarily concrete. It's kinda like a prophecy, after all.

Just remember that a celestial who pushes too hard on destiny/fate... tends to have the Symphony kick back, and harder.

[Phoenix42]

An interpretation question, since the thread is revived:

Barring celestial intervention, the Symphony "knows" when a person will die, and which is why celestials killing people prematurely (and making them live longer via songs) creates Disturbance, right?

A person who has much of their life ahead of them would typically have a Fate and Destiny that were quite far apart and distinguishable from each other (though evil gms can make them one and the same thing, just with different perspectives).

So my first question is, do Fate and Destiny shift according to where people are in their life, or do readings simply portray a fixed point for that individual, set at birth? I've so far gone for the first one, because it otherwise tends to be rather frustrating because half the time, you end up reading what the person could have done better. But if that's the case, then reading Destiny and Fate gives you a prognosis of the best and the worst things the person can achieve from now on out.

Which leads to my actual question, which is, would it then be correct that in most cases, Fate and Destiny grow closer and closer toward the end of one's life, as the options tend to grow fewer?
Example from our group: A Soldier of Destiny serving a Servitor of Creation in Service to Destiny (yeah, tricky) rolled a 666 at a bad moment in 1947 and met a kind elderly man who told him the "truth" about everything that was going on, and his employers. When Malphas left, the Soldier was turned, and spent the next 14 years or so happily feeding the local Malphas tether everything the players were doing that he knew about. When he then tried to lure the players into a trap (hint for dms who want to try that one, don't make the mistake I made - any trap for the pcs needs to always start with 1: shoot the Ofanite), the players cottoned on to him and cornered him in the local Laurence Tether/cathedral. With the soldier surrounded by somewhat annoyed Malakites of Laurence and the even more annoyed players, the aforementioned servitor of Eli/Yves read his Destiny. Now this is a daft case because the Destiny of a soldier who has been working for angels and demons for over a decade must be completely smudged, but quite generally, seeing as they are about to kill him (and they did), what would his Destiny and Fate be? I ruled that both hinged on his death, but that Destiny put a positive spin on it (he would become a negative example to others) whereas his Fate would lead to those around him trusting others (i.e. other soldiers). I thought it was rather a strange situation, so I would really like to hear what others would have ruled in a moment like that (if you like, you can leave out the celestial aspect, and have a guy about to be shot for treason by his government, or the like), or have ruled in similar situations. Do Destiny and Fate converge toward the end of a person's life?

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Phoenix42

So my first question is, do [f]ate and [d]estiny shift according to where people are in their life, or do readings simply portray a fixed point for that individual, set at birth?

The GM has a huge amount of flexibility on this one. In general, the assumption appears to be more towards the latter, though. That there will be some particular thing -- that will take either a moment or a lifetime -- that this person can do which will best improve the Symphony, or worst-harm it. And anything else will not have the same snowball effect meaning.

Fates and destinies are not necessarily equal. See also Hitler, whose canonical destiny was to be a painter, and who presumably met his fate. More fictionally, you could have someone whose fate is to do some small, selfish, petty thing that makes someone else's life fractionally more awful, such that they do something selfish themselves, etc. But the destiny might be huge.

Fates and destines may be one thing -- shoot this person, save that one. Fates and destinies may be a lifetime of thing -- live as a painter, work for a church, raise a family. You could mix-and-match; someone might have the fate to be a drug-addicted homeless bum and thief, and the destiny to save a child from drowning.

Fates and destines are not necessarily mutually exclusive. That homeless druggie thief might also save a kid from drowning.

Life-destinies/fates are probably more reversible; maybe saving that kid will be what turns that druggie's life around, and fate will be avoided after all! Or one drunk-driving accident will turn the family-raiser to drink and despair, destroying a destiny.

It is canonical that people can meet the requirements for both fate and destiny (rare), or neither (very, very common). So whatever the GM picks, if you're going for canon, it needs to allow for the both/neither option, and fit the theme of "the best/worst you can do to/be within the Symphony."

[Rocket Man]

It should be noted that the presence of children in both Heaven (Christopher's House) and Hell (Kronos's special little reading room) implies that some fates and destinies are achievable by the very young! The hysteria that kicked off the Salem Witch Trials comes to mind ...

[JCD]

IIRC, there was something mentioned that Hemmingway both met his Destiny and Fate in that he was a world class author who also died a disillusioned and cynical drunk.

Now, I'm not sure who gets his soul, but it's something to discuss.

I would even avoid the selfless/selfish paradigm. Does the actions of the person move the Symphony closer to God or Satan?

Case in point: Stalin. He ruined the lives of millions. He was a perfectly awful human being. But he stands as an example for humanity of what to avoid, an educational lesson. I leave it to you if that is fulfilling a sort of Destiny or simply Heaven making lemonade out of lemons, but they are really good at that spiritual ju jitsu, which is good considering their other limitations.