Destiny & Fate

[JCD]

I would have a HUGE problem with sending someone to Hell over mail, and I'd think God would see the same way.

Fate and Destiny is more then mail and as hinted at on the 'kill national leader' post, involves a choice. (All of this is my opinion)

So, one could argue that a guy who picks up someone else's mail and throws it away may get the acceptance letter for Jimmy Phelps to college and now he doesn't go and misses out curing cancer.

Is that a Fate? It certainly contributed to Jimmy missing his Destiny but did Mean Mr. Madigan DECIDE that he was going to screw Jimmy over? In some ways by engaging in that behavior, yes, he did in an indirect way. But I would think (hope) that it takes more of a conscious effort then that.

[Matthias Wasser]

The interpretation I run with is:

• You're assigned your Destiny at conception; it's a fairly vague description of the consequentially best thing you could do. You fulfill it by performing that action because you think it's the best thing you could do for the universe as a whole (compared to alternative actions, not all other things you have or will do,) where "because" means causally crucial per your soul's necessaries of freedom. It needn't actually be the best thing you do or even on balance a consequentially good one for its fulfillment to count; by their nature, Destinies tend towards being fulfillable by acts that are big rather than trivial and beneficial rather than harmful, but given the messiness of reality these are just statistical tendencies.
• You choose your Fate whenever you choose it, usually around adolescence. Fates are fulfilled if you accomplished them because of goals you have for yourself alone. Winning at life in some morally neutral endeavor is a much more common Fate than Destiny.
• Acting to fulfill the expectations others have for you or to help people you care about more than random strangers (because you care more about them than random strangers) are neither selfless enough for a Destiny nor selfish enough for a Fate, although they can cut against motivations that are to make them causally crucial.
• Only humans (and maybe some other great apes, ceteceans, &c.) have Fates and interesting Destinies. The Destiny of Celestials is to fulfill the mission of their Choir, of beasts to fulfill their natures, of elementary particles to obey the laws of physics. Balseraphs have the Fate of doing whatever they've last Lied that their ultimate goal or purpose is. These don't mean anything sotierologically but it's what you get when you ping them.
• Inasmuch as those who make a lot of self-centered choices are statistically more likely to both end up in and be happier in Hell, relative to Heaven, and visa-versa for those who make a lot of selfless choices, damnation and salvation are already fairer than any other natural mechanism in the universe. Inasmuch as it's not really fair at all, well, don't expect it to change any time soon.
• Reincarnation is just a polite term for annihilation. Or maybe all those people are floating bored out of their minds in Limbo, who would know?

[PenitentDemon]

Hey just quoting what I saw in liber servitorium.

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by PenitentDemon

Hey just quoting what I saw in liber servitorium.

The LiberS has a bunch of ideas for fates and destinies, but the GM has to assign meaning to them, based on the GM's choices about how to handle fate/destiny, what the Brightness/Contrast of the setting is, etc. The ideas exist in a moral vacuum, but the implementation of them cannot exist without the GM deciding why a given action is a fate or destiny -- though the option does exist for "because the Symphony is random and arbitrary," though that's starting to get into In Nomine Backwards territory at best, and mega-Dark at worst...

Or, in other words... How to justify "tear up unopened mail" as a fate? That's the GM's responsibility, if the GM chooses to use that answer. And therein should hang a tale.

(And the GM should also read the Yves writeup in S3; push the Symphony too directly, and it will push back, and you will not like what happens if you are a Servitor of Fate or Destiny. There's a reason why those Servitors are supposed to be subtle...)