Nasuverse FSN + SAO: j-jam it in!

[Kibbles]

Ah, on another note, I'd also like to solicit input for a title.

How about: 'Ephemeral Panopticon'

See, it's a reference to the Association's omni-present control (the panopticon originally being designed to function with a minimum of personnel, which fits the falling magus numbers in the modern era) and just how fragile that control truly is. You said you wanted to focus more of Kayaba's plan, so something more befitting his plan, then. Illusory might work instead of ephemeral, but I like how ephemeral rolls of the tongue.

Well, that's about as much thought as I'm willing to put into the matter. A while minute and a half. Which means that there's going to be better ideas, but I seized the opportunity to drop by and express an interest in the idea. Hadn't had much to add to the discussion until now.

 

[Deathwings]

Okay, no Internet for a week and suddenly ideas, ideas everywhere and I'm playing catch up. *sigh*

First, I'm pretty sure Magic Circuits determine not the depth of your MP pool but the maximum yield of your spells.
It doesn't matter if you have a 100 Circuits of superb quality if you've got only 10 unit of Od to your name, they won't help you cast shit.
Likewise, someone can have od dribbling out of their ears and be completely inept Magi if they can only cast with a single Circuit with a max yield of 10.
They'll be able to rapid fire their piddly 10 Prana worth Magic Missile aaaallllllll day long, sure, but they have anything actually powerful.
A person's MP pool is determined by the amount of Od they have and their skill at "matching" that od with the environment's Mana to make Prana.
The Circuits meanwhile determine how much prana you can channel at once before inflicting irreparable harm to yourself.

If I just repeated what you originally intended to say with your short description, then you may wish to rewrite it because it was very ambiguous.

Second, why not just make SAO a Reality Marble ? Cardinal could be an handcrafted "Demon Familiar" and the RM itself would be "A pocket dimension that exist within electronic data (cyberspace)" which would put juuuust enough outside Gaia's sphere of influence to make the cost of maintaining it negligible.
It has a number of advantages after all, such as the possibility to include into the RM's makeup rules that encourage the players to learn more Magecraft.

It would also allow Kabaya to trap not only the Player's minds but also their Souls. All kind of fun can be had with that. It's the Soul that provide the Magic Circuits and the Od after all, not the Body or the Mind.

You've got a confirmed revolutionary supergenius in Kabaya here, you can justify him figuring out all kind of bullshit without actually breaking the SoD. Abuse it !


And that bring to the idea I allude to in my PM : an idea concerning Ilya.

Kabaya didn't start his mad plan with an infinite amount of resources at his beck and call, especially the mystical kind. Particularly since he and the Clock Tower are on bad term.
No, he had to hunt down every last scrap of resources himself, which was just too damn time consuming and even impossible in the case of some things (RM data).

So he did what any intelligent Magus would do, he found a sponsor.

Enter Matou Zouken, who, to be polite, is in a fucking, bleeding bad mood. The Grail War is toast. The Spiritual component of the Grail shattered just as effectively as the it's Physical one was during the 4th War. His "Material" is useless now and this is all that goddamn Emiya brat's fault.
Not all, however, is lost. There is still one, minuscule chance. An incredible long shot but at this point, the old worm has concluded that ANY SHOT is still better then no shot at all.

The 5th Grail's Spiritual component were destroyed just as well as the 4th's Physical one. In other words, there are fragments of it left. Those remnant unfortunately are very much already rooted somewhere : Ilya's Soul.
Zouken dearly need Ilya's Soul but the damned brat is under constant watch. Shirou has become very overprotective of Ilya as a result of her condition and just nabing her would leave Zouken with too short a window of opportunity before Shirou falls on the Zouken residence, Caliburn blazing (the threat of the Einzberg trying something was hich enough to get Shirou to ask Rin to upgrade/overhaul his house defenses enough to be a fatal hindrance to Zouken).

So Zouken is relegated to gnashing his teeth and watching from afar, cataloging the Emiya's household's habits, vices and weakness in hope that an opportunity will present itself before Ilya's Soul become truly inaccessible by virtue of her being dead.

An opportunity named Kabaya present itself.

Kabaya need extensive data on Familiar Creation, Demons, and Reality Marble. Zouken was a firsthand witness of FIVE Grail Wars, two of which had canonically confirmed RM users (and chances are high that the first 3 also had their share) and the wealth of information he accumulated in his lifetime.

What Kabaya intend to create would be a perfect Soul Trap and all Zouken want (openly) in exchange for all of these resources is one particular Soul who happen to be attached to a little girl with a confirmed MMORPG addiction.

A match made in Hell.

From there the idea skip ahead to the clearing of SAO, when Shirou wakes up and immediately ask about Ilya...and learn from Rin and Taiga that Ilya's body gave out a mere two months after the beginning of the game. Only it apparently didn't slow her down any, unlike the few other players who suffered from that problem, since she fought right next to him for the entire game right up until the final battle.

Ilya's Soul of course in Zouken's hand and that would allow you to set up a next arc, maybe running in parallel with ALO.

Hell, maybe Zouken even set up a Extra style Grail War to accumulate a lot of Heroic Spirits energy in as little a time as possible to fuel the Grail's resurrection or something, that could interesting too.

Well, you get the idea (I hope), though ?

 

[daniel_gudman]

Re: Magic Circuits

...my understanding is much different then yours.

Magic circuits are like pipes. To extend the metaphor, "Quality" refers to the properties of the pipes: "diameter", which governs the volume-of-prana capacity. "Wall thickness", which governs how much pressure or stress they could withstand. Maybe "Length", and "Nickel Content" (resist corrosion) (to push it out just, too far). And so on.

The prana capacity of "magic circuits" is just the sum of volumetric capacities of the pipes.

"Prana" refers to either "Mana" or "Od"; you don't really have to convert one to the other or whatever. Magi generate Od inside their bodies, but you can turn your "pipes" permeable and let Mana soak through them to fill your capacity. Or you can squeeze your body in a spiritual vise and wring out more Od, but there are severe costs to that if you don't have something like Avalon to fix you afterwards.

Re: Demonic Reality Marble to entrap the players

Honestly, this is kinda... overkill. Reality Marble is too big, too visible, too expensive, and above all, not really suitable to his goals....

I mean, I hinted it but I don't know if I said it; Kayaba's magecraft system is Numerology, and his sole element is Ether. A genius computer programmer, who approaches magecraft through the mystical connection of numbers...

The spell he cast on everyone during the tutorial was "spiritual interference", which prevents people from activating their magic circuits, and co-opting that input to instead operate the virtual version. It's impossible to use magic IRL while trapped in the game, simply because the command to "use circuits" is intercepted by the NerveGear and directed to "use virtual circuits" instead.

Those virtual circuits are a replica of your real traits as best as Kayaba could simulate them (with access to hospital-level equipment to perform tests on individuals when necessary), so once the game Clears, all you have to do is flip the "real" switch and your skills are instantly transportable. Ah, I made that sound like Kayaba doesn't intend to forcibly activate everyone's IRL circuits as his last "present" to them...?

Well, I said "impossible", but really I mean, "super-tough." Someone steeped in soul-using magecraft like Ilya could work around it? Especially with a little help from outside....

Also, if Ilya's remaining life span is ~1 year and the game takes at least 2 years to escape....

Ilya gets her mind uploaded and winds up in ALO?

Sounds more like the Alicization/Underworld arcs of SAO.But that sounds more like an excuse later on for Adult!Ilya (Iri2.0 hawtness!).

After seeing that line by EagleCeres, I thought, "...sure! Sounds great. Why not? I was just gonna kill her and set Shirou adrift but if people want her to hang about I can swing that."

What I'm thinking is, after Ilya gets in touch with Sakura and/or Rin, Kayaba finds out, and appears before Ilya.

Stick: If you contact someone outside the game again, I'll fry your brain.

Carrot: If you relax and focus on the game, if you play by my rules, in exchange, I'll provide resources and assistance to grow you a corrected homonculus body with a "normal" life span and then use my brain+soul magic to assist in the transfer to stick you into it.

(...Could Yui be made a Real Girl from that method...?)

Anyway, leaving all that aside, this story is set in the November seven-eight months after the Grail War. Simply put, Kayaba has been planning this since before the Fifth War even started up, so it's impossible that he'd have to obey Zouken's conditions, because Zouken had no reason to demand those conditions.

Re: Kayaba and Zouken

I've been batting around whether I want these two to know each other, and I've realized that in addition to witnessing many interesting forms of magecraft, Makiri Zolgen was the guy who invented Command Seals. That level of ability in Contract Magic would wipe away alot of questions about "how could Kayaba make his Magic Trap work, anyway?" Because we just say "command seals did it".

...I'm kind of tempted to have Kayaba be a "natural talent" who activated his circuits by himself, and was found by the wandering journalist, Matou Kariya; and Kariya explained to Kayaba what was going on, and explained the Statue of Secrecy, and finally Kariya warned Kayaba not to get involved with magic. And then Kayaba turned around and tracked down Matou Zouken based on a hint Kariya didn't even realize he gave, and Zouken loaned him books on a whim, and that's yet another story of how things went exactly the opposite of how Kariya wanted them to.

Hm, if we're gonna have Zouken trying to use Kayaba's thing for his own ends, maybe what happens is, the 300-odd players that were trapped by that loser will get co-opted into "Kotomine's Orphanerium (Mark 2)" and then get sucked dry at full speed to start up Grail War 6. We could even say the fuel tank was left partially full again, just like after War 4.

On one hand, a Grail War starring Masters picked from the SAO crowd (well, less the Three Designated House Contenders)... four Masters who don't give a damn about the Masquerade, would be a big enough spectacle to blow the doors off the Statute of Secrecy like Kayaba wants, but on the other hand, I dunno "humongous death tournament" is gonna have the best outcome...? But wait, Kayaba already used a humongous death tournament in the first place!?

Yeah, I'm already prototyping a speech from Kayaba about how, only a vast and terrible incident is enough to disturb the status quo....?

Well in either case Kayaba would betray and murder Captain Worms when he became more trouble than he was worth.

...

Anything after "Game Clear" is too far for me to say anything concrete. I'm not sure what happens then, so....

Plus I'm not sure if I wanna do a Grail War. I'm extremely ambivalent about going that direction.

I dunno if I even want to do a "the secret of magic gets out" plot.

I'm kinda tempted to let somebody from the Clock Tower talk the SAO group into maintaining the secret of magecraft. It gets buried and everybody lives happily ever after, mostly. The people who didn't buy into the idea of the Masquerade aren't willing to go to the hassle of dealing with Enforcers just to make Kayaba happy, to put it one way.

...Would Waver play a Cait Sith...? Ah, but I wrote

Alfheim: <s>flying magic elves</s>STEAMPUNK! With airships and jetpacks?

Maybe that high-school that got founded to handle all the SAO kids would evolve into the 4th body in the Magecraft Association...?

 

[Avider]

Magic circuits are like pipes. To extend the metaphor, "Quality" refers to the properties of the pipes: "diameter", which governs the volume-of-prana capacity. "Wall thickness", which governs how much pressure or stress they could withstand. Maybe "Length", and "Nickel Content" (resist corrosion) (to push it out just, too far). And so on.

The prana capacity of "magic circuits" is just the sum of volumetric capacities of the pipes.

"Prana" refers to either "Mana" or "Od"; you don't really have to convert one to the other or whatever. Magi generate Od inside their bodies, but you can turn your "pipes" permeable and let Mana soak through them to fill your capacity. Or you can squeeze your body in a spiritual vise and wring out more Od, but there are severe costs to that if you don't have something like Avalon to fix you afterwards.

None of what you just wrote contradicts the basic point of his post.

I'm pretty sure Magic Circuits determine not the depth of your MP pool but the maximum yield of your spells.

Basically, circuits aren't supposed to be used as storage tanks. They're pipes/channels for magic energy (prana) yes, and the amount of prana they can handle at any period of time is dependent on the, what you call their sum volumetric capacities, but the storage of prana long term isn't their function.

They're like those turbines that generate electricity, generators and conduits. In fact, running prana through circuits damages the body, so yeah, they're not meant to hold prana for long periods of time. (Semen and blood are some of the things that actually store magic energy.)

What they do is convert life force (either the Lesser Source, the life force of living beings, or the Greater Source, the life force of nature) into magic energy, then channels that magic energy into the magic foundation to run the magic formula within it, which is what actually creates the phenomenon known as magic.

Rather than a traditional MP bar that starts full, it's more like, the MP bar starts at 0, with the Max MP dependent on the quality of your circuits, and MP is then generated until it reaches the amount necessary to power whatever spell you're casting.

Really, the only real distinction to note here is that circuits aren't batteries, or at least if you use them as batteries you're gonna be sorry...

 

[daniel_gudman]

Wait, I thought they could be battery-like in that, you could fill them up and let them sit full of prana; and that was fine because it was circulating the prana that was the dangerous/painful part. The water is there, but because it's just sitting in the pipes without moving, the turbines don't move. And those closed, inactive, but still full circuits leak, and that's what Rin was looking for as the "prana signature" in the school: it was the built-up stain from those leaky pipes. That's why she didn't think Shirou was a magus; because he never correctly turned on his circuits even once, they couldn't fill up, so they remained empty, and couldn't "leak".

So you start with Max MP, but you have to turn it on to use it. And you can refill the pipes from the atmosphere, or you just use your own gutsiness. (Well, Shirou always starts with less than 20% MP though because he's got crappy, super-leaky circuits.)

 

[Deathwings]

I see, my own understanding of Magic Circuit is that you have your pool of Od, your Circuits and the virtually infinite quantity of Mana floating around. You then use a bit of your Od to draw Mana into the Circuits until they fill up with the mix of Od and Mana, from there on referred to as Prana, and then discharge the accumulated energy in the form of a spell.

"Quality" then refer to the maximum amount of Prana the Circuit can hold and "efficiency" to amount of Od the Magus need to use to draw a specific amount of Mana.

Ah, I made that sound like Kayaba doesn't intend to forcibly activate everyone's IRL circuits as his last "present" to them...?

Yeah, it was pretty ambiguous. If he hope to succeed, I at least expect Kabaya at some point to give the player a thorough briefing about how the Clock Tower is going to come after their asses the moment they get out of SAO so it's REALLY in their best interest to activate their Circuits and prepare themselves for whole new sort of "Death Game" once back in the real world.

I dunno if I even want to do a "the secret of magic gets out" plot.

I'm kinda tempted to let somebody from the Clock Tower talk the SAO group into maintaining the secret of magecraft. It gets buried and everybody lives happily ever after, mostly. The people who didn't buy into the idea of the Masquerade aren't willing to go to the hassle of dealing with Enforcers just to make Kayaba happy, to put it one way.

I'm gonna be honest here, a lot of my interest was first grabbed by the concept of "Clock Tower get fucked over BIG TIME", so I would be very disapointed if it didn't actually happened.

As for the rest, well I'm just throwing ideas around to see what stick. As long as they're at least being looked over, I'm happy.

 

[Avider]

Wait, I thought they could be battery-like in that, you could fill them up and let them sit full of prana; and that was fine because it was circulating the prana that was the dangerous/painful part. The water is there, but because it's just sitting in the pipes without moving, the turbines don't move. And those closed, inactive, but still full circuits leak, and that's what Rin was looking for as the "prana signature" in the school: it was the built-up stain from those leaky pipes. That's why she didn't think Shirou was a magus; because he never correctly turned on his circuits even once, they couldn't fill up, so they remained empty, and couldn't "leak".

So you start with Max MP, but you have to turn it on to use it. And you can refill the pipes from the atmosphere, or you just use your own gutsiness. (Well, Shirou always starts with less than 20% MP though because he's got crappy, super-leaky circuits.)

I dunno. I'd check the game if indeed that's the mechanism that Rin's looking at (a full circuit leaking prana, but I have it installed on another HDD and I don't feel like connecting the USB...), but I doubt it, since:

Shirou has channeled prana before opening his real circuits.

There's no indication of even a single instance of when Shirou/Rin opened their circuit, filled it to full, then shut it down to hold until the next time they need it.

If indeed that's a use for them, then it should have been mentioned.

And, the circulation of prana being what's actually dangerous, well I don't really recall that at all.


Bah, let me connect the USB and fire up the game, but in general I don't recall circuits being used in the manner that you're describing.


Anyways, now:

Actually, let's explore the basic premise of your fic more. I don't really understand what Kayaba is trying to achieve.

Ok, let's suppose what you wrote for his motive. Gaia and Alaya are in opposition because the contradictory paradigm, or so he reasons. This opposition is slowly eroding away humanity. To solve this opposition, Kayaba wants to train 5,000 people as magus and...then that somehow exposes everybody else to the paradigm of the world?

Ok, so my question then is, why does he need to train them to be magus? If his goal is simply the exposure of magic to the world, then there's really no need to train 5,000 magus to do it.

Ok, so I see a possible reason. 5,000 magus are needed to ensure that the Enforcer of the Magus Association will not be able to silence everyone. Ok, I guess that makes sense.

Ok, so 5,000 instant magus will be a large disruption to the current status quo, and they in turn will act as a vector to transmit the paradigm of the world.

But, so would a single horrific tragedy that is so large in scale that the Magus Association would not be able to cover up, something that science would not be able to explain, etc...That would be much easier to achieve his goal, which isn't to train magus but to expose magic, and it'd be more guaranteed too.

Since if millions of people are affected, rather than a measly 5,000, then the Magus Association will truly be overwhelmed.

Say, like, transporting ORT to the middle of Tokyo (or any large city center). Or, antagonizing one of the many dangerous supernatural faction into an all out war with each other. I just really don't get why he's running this simulation other than it's necessary for this to be a Fate/SAO crossover.

 

[daniel_gudman]

I would like to write the story being about "The Secret gets blown", but the sheer scope of such a story intimidates me. I can imagine a spectrum of how people would react individually, but translating that into the action of nation-states feels too ambitious?

Or rather, I don't want to write a story about "The war of Wizards vs. Muggles", because then we end up just measuring power scales, and they are perpendicular to each other.

Instead, the best solution I could come up with was, an ultra-charismatic figure who rose up to preach reconciliation and peace, to usher in the start up of, call it the "Age of Wonders." The counter force could make that happen.



EDIT:
Avider, those are good points, but Kayaba is walking a fine line between "big enough incident" and "getting squished by the Counter Force."

He wants to force the entire human species to reset their paradigm, without turning himself into enough threat that EMIYA (and friends) deal with him instead of the Enforcers. So that's pushing him towards a situation that won't inevitably escalate into nuclear Armageddon.

Also yeah okay causality was reversed "The story is SAO+FSN therefore the rationale must have been thought up", you've pierced the heart of it.

 

[Deathwings]

SAO could also be a proof of concept.

Let's say that during the first year a lot of players develop magecraft, therefore proving that yes, the SAO model actually is capable of training people in magecraft, all that Kabaya would have to do from that point on is release The Seed and watch as ALO and other virtual games start popping up, all bearing his hidden subroutine intended to encourage players to awaken their Circuits.

Suddenly, the Clock Tower isn't dealing with a measly 10000 poor slob that just awoke from a 2 years coma, they're dealing with the world entire Virtual MMO player base.

Keeping the SAO players prisoner at this point would then become more about keeping the World eyes on it and away from the rest of the VMMO scene and complete his in-depth study of his experiment.

 

[daniel_gudman]

...you're suggesting that Kayaba let his Magecraft Tutorial go viral after beta?

Deathwings

I like it.

 

[Deathwings]

Happy to help. :lol:

 

[Avider]

Ok, I've did a quick check over the obvious place where they explain about circuits.

No indication of storing magic energy in the inactive form.

In the prologue it's explained that when Magic Circuit is closed, no magic energy will flow to the Command Spell, and therefore a magus will be able to escape detection.

While I can't definitively rule out such a possibility, I can say that it's unlikely given we know of things that actually are supposed to store magic energy energy, and general comments on that matter with there's a limit on how much the body can store, and assuming that something like that would be mentioned if it's generally the case.

That and when circuits are mentioned, it's generally in terms of things like filters, channels, and generators, rather than batteries. Their main use is most definitely the conversion of mana/od into prana.

Avider, those are good points, but Kayaba is walking a fine line between "big enough incident" and "getting squished by the Counter Force."

True, but I'm just naming some examples. It needn't be something especially destructive...but I guess at this point it's really meta-necessity.


I guess the only real problem I have with the explanation is the rationalization. I could understand if the simulation itself is a preliminary experiment to see if you can forcibly create viable magus from the general public, with the eventual goal being to basically turning everybody on Earth into a magus, rather than being specifically,

1. Start simulation.
2. Make 5000 magus.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Since what I see in here is also an assumption that you can easily (for a loose definition of the word easy) turn random people into magus, when the general population has either 0 circuits or an extremely low amount and poor quality ones. I mean, that's why Zouken got Sakura in the first place, his family lost their circuits, they're unable to become 'proper' magus.

Actually, another problem I have is just how many people have circuits.

Grimlock, for example, has an insane amount of circuits, plus his crest. That's usually something that's only present in a House of Magus that spans many, many generations, but I guess you are supposing that. Ok, that's fine. But then, Kirito and Asuna too?

I dunno, it just kinda offends my sensibility to think of all these people being unknowing descendants of lineage of magus, or that it's this 'easy' to train magus.

Have you ever thought on perhaps changing the nature of the experiment from,

1. Assume everybody can become magus easy. (Everybody has circuits! You just have to know how to awaken them! [Easy, have Rin feed everyone a Ruby.])

To,

2. On a means of creating circuits within the soul.

That is, the whole simulation is an experiment to successfully develop/imprint circuits on the souls of the players, such that once removed from the simulation, these artificial circuits become integrated with the players? The soul dictates the form of the body after all. (Actually, this would explain why Zouken might be interested in helping Kayaba out, since it would directly help his family recover from their fall...)


Of course...it might not be what you want to do. I'm just thinking in terms of things like, capture 10,000 souls, force the souls through various conditions that may contribute to the development/imprinting of the circuits (which might actually consist of multiple rounds of simulations and deaths), until the optimal setting is found?

Well, those are all details, but that's where the devil is.

@deathwings

See, that one additional detail makes the idea much more palatable...

 

[daniel_gudman]

Avider:

Hm, you've convinced me on the circuits content thing.



As for those character numbers, I was operating under assumptions:

1) I heard somewhere that Emiya Shirou, with 27, has "slightly above average" circuit count, so I was basing those circuit counts around an average of 25; I was trying to make people mostly unremarkable. I, um, was also assuming a normal distribution, which is ridiculous in its own way.

2) I'm assuming most people have circuits, not the other way around; that about 85%+ of humans have circuits. Well, I realize that contradicts stuff that came from interviews, but on the other hand, I'm willing to change that. A high percentage makes sense to me logically, because if the mandatory prerequisite for magecraft is vanishingly rare, then it undermines that reasoning that magecraft is kept secret to protect a finite resource; why keep it secret if only a tiny fraction of people can exploit it in the first place?

3) Whatever degeneration is going on with the Matou bloodline is too woven together with Zouken's screwy actions for me to be comfortable treating it as a reliable data point.

Your suggestion to replace "Teaching magecraft" with "Creating Circuits First" has merit. I will give it serious consideration.

 

[Avider]

Meh, the mechanism of circuits is minor, since you also have the basic gist of it right, it's just the difference between starting a battle being able to instantly spam level 100 spells vs. not.


As for Zouken, the degradation is tied to him moving his family from the land where his magic foundation was engraved. The whole most people don't have circuits/have poor quality/have low amount isn't based on just Zouken. It's a reason for why a magus family with a long history has such high prestige, years of selective breeding to increase the number/quality of their circuits. Well that and the whole crest accumulation thing.


Either way, I just wanted to make sure you realize that it's likely that most people do not have circuits, rather than most do. What you actually choose to do is up to how you want the story to evolve.



Actually, let me go re-read what you have so far to see Kayaba's speech.

"Expansion. Thaumaturgy. Spells."

Er...guess I'm still a bit confused as to how this will teach people to become magus. Maybe it's something like,

"This is a game. Kayaba said magic is a feature. This means it exists. We must find out how to use this magic. Oh like this."

With the 'like this' piggy-backing off the real world system?

Perhaps expedited with tomes in game that teaches how to open circuits/the basics of the actual magic system? You mentioned a virtual circuit in your notes, I'm unsure as to what that actually means...so are they actually casting magic or are they just going through the motion of casting magic, with the game judging to see if their motions are close enough to enact the magic effects?

From what I got in the notes, it seems like what the simulation is going to do is give them magic knowledge and experience in what magic ability will look like, which after they wake up they'll incidentally find that they can duplicate what they did in game to awaken their actual magical ability. Well, the connection between magic in game vs. magic IRL is probably going to be tenuous...but I suppose you can explain it away or handwave it away.

That might actually be a viable way to keep the Enforcers off the case. I guess if you tone down on the blatant "I'm trying to train you all to be magus." angle of Kayaba, at least in the beginning, you can probably stretch the mystery of why he's doing this to after it's too late for the Magus Association to stop it, after The Seed has been distributed and too many people have been exposed.

Well, Shirou and Ilya will likely suspect, and Kayaba might even tell them when the game clears of his actual plan.

It's interesting, at the very least.



By the way, joke title:

Electronic Circuit Board

D:

(Seriously though, a Fate/xxx yyy is probably the best format for this. Titles in the Fate series is named like that, so it's both traditional and typical. A regular title wouldn't really fit.)

 

[Deathwings]

Your suggestion to replace "Teaching magecraft" with "Creating Circuits First" has merit. I will give it serious consideration.

I like that one, because it provide a way for Shirou to overcome his greatest limitation : the poor quality of his Circuits. It would certainly make him using Caliburn as his weapon of choice a much more viable option. It would be nice change from Kanshou and Bakuya (is it how it's spelled ?).

In any case, I was struck by an idea at work this morning.

Shirou and Ilya blatantly reveal that they are Magi during the First Floor Boss Fight, probably through Shirou tracing and firing a weak Caliblast to save Diabel's ass or something, which net some big changes to the canon plot.

For one, Kibaou all but forget about the Beaters since he's just found a new, much juicer target for his hate, resulting in Kirito and Argo getting much less flak about their position as Beta Testers.

For two, Kirito take a sudden interest in Shirou and Ilya. Kirito's goal at this point is to survive at all cost and beat the game (so that he can punch Kabaya's face in). Kabaya said that you need Magecraft to beat the game, Shirou and Ilya already know how to use Magecraft. 2+2=4.
So Kirito pretty much swallow his pride and decide that, just this once, he isn't going to do the whole Lone Wolf thing because, fuck, he miss all of his awesome tracking skills and he hasn't had any luck figuring out how to use them through that "magecraft" thing yet.

Ilya's answer to Kirito's request for teaching ?

"If you want to learn Magecraft from us, then once we reach the third floor become part of our guild."

And so is the guild Heroic Spirits, which will in the end feature 7 members all roughly fitting the template of of the Servant, is born.

Kirito become the Saber.

Asuna, who at this point is still pretty much trailing after Kirito like a lost puppy, tough she doesn't use the matching weapon fit the stat criteria of Lancer.

Shirou is the generalist Archer, to his eternal annoyance because Ilya just won't let him forget that fact.

Ilya is Berserker because, fuck it, it's her name and she won't let her frail appearance dictate what her skill set is going to be. So in the end you end up with an angelic looking little wielding a GIANT FUCK OFF AXE that's bigger then she is and a STR stat that is nothing short of ridiculous. She's the party Tank on top of that.

Rider is Sillica, obviously. That's a given with the talent you intend for her.

Caster is actually Lizbeth, who took full advantage of the fact that offensive Magecraft doesn't take a Skill Slot to get rid of her Combat Skills in order to master even more Utility Skills then she did in canon.

And finally Assassin is everyone favorite little sneak, Argo The Rat.

How does that sound ?

 

[Azure]

Not really sure on the whole Guild thing, but Asuna already had the 2-H Spear skill and Heavy Armor skills leveled up in canon, so it would not be too hard to remake her as a heavy armor Dragoon.

Anyhow, I do like the Idea to make Shirou and Illya the center of attention for the floor one boss battle, but do not fall into the trap of Caliblasting it, Caliburn only works with Saber, the only time Shirou managed to activate it alone was automatically against gram with Gil in the Fate Route.

I like the idea of having magic circuits be more common, remember random people have had magic circuits and not used them, hell Ciel and Satsuki where just random girls and turned out to have more magical potential than most mages. Hell even Shiki has magic circuits according to KT.

In the teaching magecraft part, how about having several quest pop in the starting city right after the tutorial to the game, things like helping an NPC and it teaches to open a circuit, or a rare book drops from random monsters that details the starting steps. In essence the game would spam the concept of magic in the starting city to force players to learn it, Then Kirito in his whole getting away fast to farm, misses the forced tutorials and ends up not picking magic at first.

 

[Deathwings]

UBW works in such as way that any Traced item with it fall under Shirou's ownership for as long as they exist. That's why Shirou could use the full power of his Traced Avalon but could only passive regeneration from the original even with his connection to Saber.

So in effect the only reason Shirou couldn't use Caliburn by himself is a lack of Od to fully power it. Doesn't mean he couldn't partly power it and end up using a much smaller version of the Caliblast tough.

Caliblast is an Anti-Unit attack anyway, unlike Excaliblast which is Anti-Army/Fortress, so the charging cost to use it should be much lower then Excalibur.

As for the guild thing, I though it would be an interesting/amusing way to throw canon to the wayside while keeping the favorite characters of both fandoms in the spotlight.

 

[zeebee1]

I don't think you can just weaken the attack.

 

[Ryune]

Hmmm, just a though that crossed my mind. I rather liked the idea of SAO being just a precursor for the seed being deployed and the magic circuit idea has some merit. What if the entire thing is an effort to create a method of grafting artificial circuits? The reason SAO was set to take so long was so that Cardinal could run simulations, collect data and design circuits for players into a streamlined process that would only need a few hours logged with a NervGear or the already in development AMUsphere to design and graft fully compatible custom magical circuits.

The general idea that runs with this is that players don't actually start with a number of magic circuits. They, much like the player's physical condition, can be increased with leveling. Then, when the game is cleared, the players find that what they return to aren't emaciated bodies but marginally stiff versions of their player bodies. Stats roughly included. It could, at least for the lower level players, be explained away by the NervGear using it's intercepting capability to flex and relax muscles at the ideal frequency to build and maintain exceptional muscle tone.

Also, something that just occurred to me while I was typing this up. Shirou used and account that Illiya set up. I would have found it quite amusing if we got an Archerko or Shiroko out of it given that it was calibrated by Illiya.

EDIT: After reading the new interlude I have to wonder, did Kayaba have at least a partially awakened origin of "fortress" or "castle"? It would certainly tie in well with both his desire to build SAO and his absolutely beastly defense.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Nah, Ilya set up a shota!Shirou. Still a boy, just way underage.

I'm gonna vomit more of my thinking up now.

When I was just batting ideas around associatively, I was like, let's replace Heathcliff with Garfield, but then I was like, "no, that's super-dumb." Then I wondered who could replace Heathcliff and I ultimately decided that I'm just gonna drop that.

Anyway, if it's the most famous sword guild from Germany, than the answer is already obvious: The Brotherhood of Saint Mark.

So we'll cross out Knights of Blood like this, KoB, and now the biggest / coolest guild is BSM. ('m not really feeling the Grail thing and anyway it's one thing to be trapped in the game and it's another to trumpet the fact you were a magus IRL.) Well, since Ilya's goal is "100% completion" rather than "clearing the game", there's some friction at the top....? I'll probably put Asuna in the BSM just to keep characters conserved and make her one of the strongest voices to push harder on bosses. I'm a little tempted to give her the title of "Raid Commander" but she doesn't equip a massive two-handed sword with light armor.

Wait, if Ilya's goal is 100% completion, doesn't that mean she'd be aggressively recruiting Argo?

Now I'm gonna talk about Kaibou a little bit. I kinda felt sorry for him.

I mean, here's this guy, and yeah he's kinda, his stereotype is the "jerk from Osaka", that's true. But he's trapped in the [deathgame], and he makes friends with this upstanding bloke, Diabel. Okay in the light novels there was apparently some less-hidden darkness in Diabel but whatever. My point is, Kaibou was a dumbass who made a new friend when he was alone, surrounded by death.

Then Diabel died.

So Kaibou was on his knees crying, and he was pretty much in the Anger stage of the grieving process.

Then Kirito literally starts laughing, and says "Those words right there, from when you lashed out in sorrow? They are actually double true!"

So Kaibou pulls himself together, and picks up the dream Diabel described, and becomes the leader of the Clearing Guild, one of the best, [The Aincrad Liberation Force], the [Army]. He's doing it. He's successfully shouldered Diabel-han's will.

Then they got mostly wiped by the unexpectedly hard boss on the 25th floor.

I just imagine the guilt that must have been eating him from the inside after that, you know?

So I guess I'm interested in the dynamic between these two, where Diabel survives, and continues to play the role of "good guy", especially in front of Kaibou, and Kaibou gets reigned in because he's standing next to a "knight."

Well no matter what Ilya's gonna troll them as hard as she can though.


EDIT:
Regarding Kayaba,

Maybe Kayaba will have spent his gap year between HS and uni in Egypt? I dunno.

No, more than that, since this is a FSN cross, and Shirou's around, I thought it would be thematically nice if Kayaba's ideal betrayed him somehow. Especially if it's something that made him unsatisfied with the world and determined to change it, to alter the very course of history, so it viscerally ties into why he wants to overthrow the way magecraft operates in society. Man, if only the Nasuverse had some image I could swing with "an iron castle, floating in the sky" that was associated with an apocalypse. If it was caused by humans that would be even better!

wait

 

[Ryune]

Nah, Ilya set up a shota!Shirou. Still a boy, just way underage.

I'm gonna vomit more of my thinking up now.

Eh, I didn't explain myself well I guess.

I meant that because it was Illiya who set up the characters, then their "this is what they really look like" avatars would resemble her.

It would be an amusing Omake anyways.

Now I'm gonna talk about Kaibou a little bit. I kinda felt sorry for him.

I mean, here's this guy, and yeah he's kinda, his stereotype is the "jerk from Osaka", that's true. But he's trapped in the [deathgame], and he makes friends with this upstanding bloke, Diabel. Okay in the light novels there was apparently some less-hidden darkness in Diabel but whatever. My point is, Kaibou was a dumbass who made a new friend when he was alone, surrounded by death.

Then Diabel died.

So Kaibou was on his knees crying, and he was pretty much in the Anger stage of the grieving process.

Then Kirito literally starts laughing, and says "Those words right there, from when you lashed out in sorrow? They are actually double true!"

So Kaibou pulls himself together, and picks up the dream Diabel described, and becomes the leader of the Clearing Guild, one of the best, [The Aincrad Liberation Force], the [Army]. He's doing it. He's successfully shouldered Diabel-han's will.

Then they got mostly wiped by the unexpectedly hard boss on the 25th floor.

I just imagine the guilt that must have been eating him from the inside after that, you know?

So I guess I'm interested in the dynamic between these two, where Diabel survives, and continues to play the role of "good guy", especially in front of Kaibou, and Kaibou gets reigned in because he's standing next to a "knight."

Well no matter what Ilya's gonna troll them as hard as she can though.

Kaibou was kind of a dick from the start though. I mean, I could understand it from the perspective you gave, but he was kind of a dick when he was first introduced demanding that the Betas gave up their loot and money because they didn't help out in blatant methods.

He was also trying running a protection racket using army members as muscle and it's shear size for intimidation.

 

[seitora]

My question is, will Ilya's lifespan be handwaved or will it be a factor? IIRC the time spent in SAO was 2 years, and Ilya is only supposed to have about a year following the end of the Fate scenario to live.

 

[daniel_gudman]

I was just gonna let her drop dead, but I got talked into keeping her alive. (It wasn't hard).

Kayaba's gonna grow her a fresh body without any defects in a jar, or help Ilya accomplish that bit of Einzbern homunculus-crafting herself, and then they'll take Ilya's soul and jam it in.

From Kayaba's perspective, it's a bribe to keep some trouble in line, and as a bonus, he'll get first-hand exposure to some really high-quality homonculi creation.

From Ilya's perspective, she'll complete a "heroine's qualification" that she lacked: puberty.

 

[Ryune]

Well, he would also get prime exposure to not only Homunculus crafting but he would also get an exceptional access to wishcraft and the magecraft involved heaven's feel. A godsend if he ever plans to make it so that his players are combat viable right out of the game instead of needing a bunch of rehabilitation and then physical training to be able to survive enforcers.

 

[seitora]

From Ilya's perspective, she'll complete a "heroine's qualification" that she lacked: puberty.

......Ilya route,Ilya route,Ilya route,Ilya route,Ilya route!