Nasuverse FSN + SAO: j-jam it in!

aryana98 said:
Immune system is also capable to memorize the things it encountered, which also can be applied. Like, a mystery which allows Levi to gain resistance to already encountered spells. (Stupidly useful for farming mobs)
Wait: Can we have Ilya help with that? Ilya has at least some experience with God Hand, assuming she was trained, even tangentially, with the magus-psyche, she'd definitly studied it when berserker was with her.





question that hit me in the middle of writing this: When servant's die their souls go into the lesser grail (in this case Ilya). but if ilya is still here, it means she never "went full-grail". which implies that even if this is one of the "Shinji-grail" timelines (im sorry, im getting multiversally confused) that whoever got stuck inside ilya, didnt get into the grail...

so is Berserker still stuck in Ilya's body? or if not then where did that soul go?


Basically: In every timeline to my knowledge, either Ilya, Shinji or Sakura goes "full grail" but at least one of the others has a servant soul stored in their body, that at the end of the story is left unaccounted for. What effects does such a soul-embedding have on someone over time?

Thinking about closest known analogous situations there have to be SOME effects though.

those two analogous situations are: Shirou and Sakura.
Shirou has a Noble Phantasm embedded in his soul (avalon) for a 10 year period, and ends up absorbing a lot of its properties into himself. note that avalon had 3 purposes:
Protecting saber,
Holding weapons within itself.
moving objects from one layer of reality, into another.

all of which are traits that shirou has in extremity.

and sakura, who has the whole "Dark Sakura" thing going on.

so with that in mind: What about Ilya, which servants and NP's are inside her now? and what would their effects be on a greater timeline.
Is God Hand Berserker's only noble phantasm, or merely the only one SHOWN? what happened to the soul of Gilgamesh (did he die in fate? its been a while)
 

TSB

Well-Known Member
No, Ilya does not still contain the Heroic Spirits. Even a homunculus body specially altered to serve as the Lesser Grail can't survive the strain of containing those spirits, and that's with the aid of the Greater Grail system. I don't know all the details, but I assume they were transferred to the Greater Grail when it manifested at the end of the main story line and were released when it was destroyed.

That said, we did have a discussion some time back about a similar possibility - that Ilya could find "echoes" of the Spirits within her own soul and use those as templates to build strong Sorcery Traits for her and her favorite subordinates.

Berserker technically had other Noble Phantasms, but manifesting with that class sealed them off as he lacked the intelligence and/or dexterity to use them. They would likely leave much less of an impression as a result. As for Gilgamesh (who died in all three routes; Saber did the deed in Fate), his soul presumably returned to the Throne.
 

orumon

Well-Known Member
TSB said:
Berserker technically had other Noble Phantasms, but manifesting with that class sealed them off as he lacked the intelligence and/or dexterity to use them. They would likely leave much less of an impression as a result. As for Gilgamesh (who died in all three routes; Saber did the deed in Fate), his soul presumably returned to the Throne.
Trying to think of what noble phantasms Heracles could possess in other classes, one that comes to mind are the hydra arrows (everyone knows how poisonous these are). These complement his Archer class immensely.

I'd have to reread a version of his story, though, since I remember him using the stymphalian bird feathers to augment the effectiveness of his arrows as well (although it's been so long my mind may be distorting things)
 

TSB

Well-Known Member
As Archer, he would possess the Bow of Hydra which would likely have the special poisoned arrows as a supplementary ability.

In any class except Berserker he would also have access to the Nine Lives: Shooting the Hundred Heads technique NP. Originally based on using a bow and arrow to shoot all of the Hydra's heads simultaneously, he was able to expand this technique to any of his weapons. Shirou was able to replicate it during the Heaven's Feel route as Nine Lives Blade Works.

Aside from that, his two most iconic items are the pelt of Nemean Lion he wore as a cloak and an olive-wood club.
 

linkhyrule5

Well-Known Member
Well, we did actually get to see that in /Apocrypha, but if everyone just wants to pretend that never happened I quite understand. >.>
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
Now that I'm almost done with Chapter 16, I want to do planning review for the rest of the arc.


Chapter 16: Kidnapping Event
16.1: LK Adventure
Our favorite Evil Guild is fucking around with powers they shouldn't be, and unleash a "demon."

16.2: Hexi, Ilya, Silica
They're messing around with Mystic Eyes, and Ilya and Hexi are dancing around a conversation, and it gets interupted by a demon emergency: some evil mob just kidnapped a load of kids from inside the Safe Zone.
*Reworked what the convo was about etc.
*Had the emergency just happen instead

16.3 Black Cats
Kirito is hanging out with the Black Cats, and they're in the right place at the right time with the right tools to deal with the demon & save the kids.
*Rewritten as just the Cats

16.4 Fallout
Diabel holds a meeting to discuss; the response was totally uncoordinated because dealing with something like this wasn't anywhere near the Front Line radar. The Cats get invited to that and praised, which is overwhelming for them.
*I'm not really feeling this as such? Or rather I can't get the scene to work right. We’ll see what actually happens when I write it.
*Well it's up now, so that's that.

16.5 Imouto Dojo 3
Taiga tries to hijack it; bouncing Taiga off Sugu. Kirito's objections get ignored.

Chapter 17: Beach Episode
17.1 Griselda and Hexidecimal
They run into each other in the Mines of Moria expy dungeon. Hexi mentioned a new floor was unlocked, so he's dropped back to harvest materials and experiment while the initial scouting is done.
*Grimlock loses that bet about Mithral (on a technicality?)
*Griselda is gifted Fake!Tyrfing by Hexi
*Griselda says something "incriminating" about Sorcery

17.2 Ninjas on the Beach
Scouting the Floor, examining that it's a water level, also a fun beach party. Showing development of ninja magic; Hanzou in particular is hot stuff.
*Maybe give Diabel some more face-time / perspective-time.

17.3 Kuradeel vs. Silica
Notionally he's learning familiar stuff while Ilya watches over them, but he's super competitive about it.
*Still hanging out on the beach
*Hint that Silica is closer to being a Titled Player than anyone else?
*Kuradeel has a Sorcery Trait

17.4 Beach Party
The Floor Boss (King Crab) dropped meat as his item, so the Front Line goes ahead and has a party with crab meat.
*Explicitly just light-hearted breather, but...
*Still need to figure out character perspectives (that will drive which subplots advance): Lind? Diabel? (He's out if he's in 17.2) Argo?

17.5 Alley Cat Alliance 3
Sachi, Argo, Lind (in bikinis)
*double-down on the "sex sells" criticism of the narrator from before?
*they assess the story with the Bechdel-Wallace test?

Chapter 18: Darkness
18.1 BSM Scouting (Asuna, Ilya, Leviathan, Rosalia, Silica, Kuradeel) Show off the growth in skills of the BSM Front Liners, but also their lack of team coherence.
*24th Floor is just straight-up dark (literally; low-light)
*Demonstrate the atmosphere of the 24th floor - return of the Bugs? Bugs & Shadow Monsters?
*Kuradeel has a different Sorcery Trait
*Levi has his "Third Bowl" Sorcery Trait
*Rosalia has Eyemancy as per her Rare Element

18.2 To Walk With Death
LK whacks Griselda. Rather than show Grimlock hiring them, he meets up afterwards to confirm + pay. (I'm thinking they show up at his shop in disguise, so he at least somewhat has an alibi). Then Grimlock goes and is with his Guild when they find out.
*LK (REXX specifically) receives Fake!Tyrfing as (part of) payment

18.3 Scouting (Black Cats)
In contrast to the BSM, their abilities are mediocre but their teamwork is great. They find the Boss Room on the 24th Floor... but it's empty, and the Boss is Dead. They automatically "win."
*24th Floor = Shadow Monsters would explain why they're uniquely suited to scout this floor?
*Show them as being more intimidated by the 24th Floor than Ilya's Pokemon.
*Comparison to Dark Sakura killing Zouken (for real this time) in HF; not TOO obvious though.

18.5 Land of Evil Men
The 25th Floor is ultra-super-creepy.
Kirito is running a solo quest to deepen his magecraft with Ellis Bell, who has migrated to the 25th Floor. Probably something to do with Souls.
*25th Floor has no Safe Zones? Also it's even darker than 24th.
*What exactly makes it so creepy? Maybe use the pseudo-Rangeomorph Monsters from the dead!OneSnow scene. Bigger, Scarier Shadow Monsters?
*Quest: Agatha is missing? Maybe EB gives him that one at the end.
*Mention Kuradeel has a different Sorcery Trait?
*EB off-handedly mentioned he moved because his Master died

18.5 Midnight (Cats TPK)
Agatha turns into Dark Agatha and wipes the Cats. Kirito is there. I'm not sure how to spin it that Kirito survives that, honestly. Maybe Agatha uses a "swallow with darkness command" while blaming him for handing her over to Zolgen, and he cuts his way free? I dunno. I kind of like him winning but it being worthless, but I feel like that might be a little weak for the 25th Floor Boss.
*Still need to figure out the exact setting of how the Cats are interacting with Agatha... maybe Kirito recruited them to help with the "Find Agatha" Quest?
*In the end, I need a good way to sell the scenario of “Cats wipe, Kirito survives.”

18.6 Altar of Serious Business 2
All the Cats show up -- "The Ritual" is prepared; over-the-type demon-summoning ritual with hooded cloaks and stuff?
 
*Grimlock loses that bet about Mithral (on a technicality?)

technicality as referred as mithral by game lore but actually aluminium alloy or titanium or something?
 
I think its someone invented some good alloy and decided to call it Mithral, because apparently Mithral as a legendary name for light, hard, strong metal hold some mystical weight or something.
 

TSB

Well-Known Member
17.1: I like the idea of Shirou developing some special alloy of steel using Alchemy and metallurgy with an industry-standard alloy identifier number... and everyone else just calls it mithril.

18.2: Given Grimlock's focus on mental manipulation, maybe he uses an NPC as an intermediary? Rather than his shop employee I'm thinking one he interacts with regularly but is not directly connected with him, such as an ore trader.

18.5: I agree with the idea of Kirito bringing them along for a "Find Agatha" quest - as for his survival, it doesn't need to be Kirito's work. Sacchi awakens her Origin as she hits 0 HP and instinctively unleashes a death curse on Agatha. Agatha begins constantly losing health and all of her spells "die", releasing Kirito.
 
Ok why are we talking about the "mithril=fiction" thing again?

Read up on Lancer-Brynhild's spear on the wiki. ITS CANNONICALLY MADE OF MITHRIL.
meaning that mithril, within the bounds of the nasuverse isn't fictional.

basically my question here is: Is kayaba going to make "Cannon-Mithril" or some kind "Lets just make something and call it mithril" type deal?


also: I was re-reading the fic recently, and i have to say that i love how at the beginning shirou was complaining that people were only trying to recreate real-world recipes, while ignoring the ability to create something new. because as his character-arc seems to be going with kirito (learning to make his own weapons instead of relieing on pre-existing NP's) that seems like a bit of well crafted foreshadowing. (intentional or not)
 
Thing is, there is no reason the mithril in fictional stories cannot be based on a specific alloy made and used by mages in the Nasuverse. Maybe once Shirou figures out how to make the alloy that was used in Lorelei's gauntlet, then it is automatically renamed to mithril by the Cardinal System?

Edit: It will assure Grimlock lose the bet he made, since Cardinal itself named it, so he can't declare the bet invalid unlike if the playerbase just renamed the new alloy Mithril.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
The thing about Mithril is, IRL, it was made up whole-cloth by Tolkien. So it didn't even exist before like 100 years ago. That's why, uh, I kind of assumed it didn't exist in the Nasuverse, and used Grimlock as a mouthpiece for that.

Anyway it does mean that I've got to walk it back in a way that doesn't undermine "Grimlock knows all the lore for some reason."
 
Actually, the original source doesn't say mythril anywhere - it just says "mystic silver". I'd quote the japanese but TFF doesn't support Unicode, lol. Mythril is something some wiki translator made up, I'm pretty sure.
 

TSB

Well-Known Member
So we can have Grimlock both right and wrong. The metal created is "mystic silver", but due to how the system is set up Cardinal translates this to "mithril". Grimlock's annoyed both at the inaccuracy and at losing the bet.
 
What if Diabel sets up a system where some Rear Liners can tutor players on useful IRL subjects. I'm assuming that Numerology and Alchemy is gonna be widespread soon, and it's unlikely that most players know enough about mathematics/chemistry to really take advantage of those magecraft systems.
 
daniel_gudman said:
The thing about Mithril is, IRL, it was made up whole-cloth by Tolkien. So it didn't even exist before like 100 years ago. That's why, uh, I kind of assumed it didn't exist in the Nasuverse, and used Grimlock as a mouthpiece for that.

Anyway it does mean that I've got to walk it back in a way that doesn't undermine "Grimlock knows all the lore for some reason."
easy: It's only known existence is in a noble phantasm belonging to a purely supernatural being.
just say: It's so rare that even the MAGI believe its fictional and was believed so nonexistent that knowledge of its legends vanished over time. Tolkien was secretly a magus who got his hands on some and revived the legends through LOTR,
 

Leidolf

Well-Known Member
Yeah, that. Grimlock is an expert on messing with heads. Not history. Not involving Heroic Spirits. He couldn't have known, but since Kayaba has some knowledge, it can be explained away why he knew.
 
I don't know why we'd bother, given that again, the canon doesn't actually say mithril anywhere. He can just be right all along.
 
DiamondTiaraIsBest said:
I'm assuming that Numerology and Alchemy is gonna be widespread soon.
Except that Numerology is limited to 'Ellis Bell,' Kirito, and to a lesser extent the Black Cats. No NPC teachers.

Alchemy is... Ilya via RL knowledge, Shirou via Ilya, and Argo via Shirou. If there's an NPC tutor for it, it's not going to be anywhere near as advanced.

--

As for Mithril? RL alloys that don't exist in a natural (i.e raw) material state, by another name.

The sort of metal that has a real world formula, generally only found in advanced metallurgy work, but medieval society could mistake for a 'Mystical Silver.'
 
I kinda want Shirou to, at some point, make some rando a Damascus steel blade and see the look on Lisbeths and Argos faces when they realize later that this means Shirou has to have someone discovered the IRL procedure for making a type of steel that has not only been lost for centuries but also cannot be reproduced even with of modern science.
 
what I would like to see on the Mithral front is Shiro picking it up and recognizing it as an experiment he tried a while ago, but gave up on since him making it made it too hard to make a custom weapon out of it for someone else. There was an earlier scene where this (him experimenting with the other sliders of magical materials) was hinted at. It would seem odd for any materiel that they could not get outside to be included, but any weird experiments that were abandoned because the one making it did not have a use for it seems like the type of thing it would find and reintroduce to spur development of new magecraft. I would love for the mines of moria to be filled with other expermiments that looked useless, but someone saw some merit in so it is full of lost wonders.

Mithral vs mystic silver: really this is one of those things where a word was made and it stuck. As far as I am concerned, mystic silver is a clumsy old fashioned way of saying Mithral. Translators that translate the concept of a magical version of silver into English as mystic silver are wrong. Tolkien may have invented it, but it has expanded in its use since then and is slowly becoming a generic fantasy term for magical silvery metals. Considering the language everyone is speaking in this, it really does not matter what it is called in English unless it is getting one of those treatments where it is still in English when speaking Japanese because Japanese people think it is cool of more mystical to use the foreign word.
 
It's very important. This is the Nasuverse. Names have power, associations have power, legends have power. If you invent a magical alloy, name it mithril, and everyone agrees with you, you have just tied your new metal not just to whatever concepts were involved in its forging, but also into the concepts of [Inevitable Decay], [Fantasy], and perhaps also [Protection Against Fire] due to the nature of the "legend." This may or may not be a good thing - but it's definitely a real difference in the actual properties of your new material, that wouldn't exist if you hadn't named it mithril.
 
I've only recently come across this thread, but I can't help but imagine a scene in the hospital post SAO where Kirito and the Black Cats run into Sakura, and promptly freak out.
 
Sandeon said:
I've only recently come across this thread, but I can't help but imagine a scene in the hospital post SAO where Kirito and the Black Cats run into Sakura, and promptly freak out.
Amusingly, that might be a step towards a Good End for Sakura...
 
I find it a little surprising that Hexadecimal is giving up Not!Tyrfang so quickly given that the Worm Magus boss that killed his friends recently respawned. I mean yeah, "Worm Magus Zolgen", former Floor Boss of Level 5, isn't actually a real person, or even a particularly advanced AI, and Shirou did pretty much say "vengeance will consume you", but I guess I'm just a little surprised that Hexadecimal was doing emotionally well enough to internalize those things as fast as he seems to have.

Also, on the subject of Zolgen's whole quest line, on Sufficient Velocity, you said that the whole Zolgen/Agatha plotline was originally intended for Shirou and Ilya, and Kirito just kind of stumbled into it, and... I'm not sure I really buy that? Like firstly, Kayaba should be more than well aware that Ilya has never fairly completed a quest since she started playing, and Shirou has barely completed any quests period (just circuit activation, maybe the element thing, and martial arts), so if he wants to convey some kind of information/lesson to them, he should know he'd have to try a lot harder than that.
Secondly even if he thought they'd stumble upon it for some reason, it seems like a bad idea on the same level that making a boss derived from Kiritsugu was a bad idea, in that it'd just be pointlessly antagonizing Shirou and Ilya for no real benefit. Actually it'd be much worse, because what Kayaba would be saying is "You've been failing to save your friend from horrific abuse for years now, and a good amount of that abuse is still ongoing even now. While before she could derive some comfort from your company, she can no longer even have that because I trapped you here. Considering I want you guys here for several years, it is pretty likely your friend is going to kill herself if it's even within her abilities to do so, and it's your (and my) fault." Like... that's not a constructive thing for Kayaba to do, in my opinion. To be honest, I was figuring that his goal with that stuff was to try to try and figure out a way to deal with Sakura and Zouken in real life.

Because... Zouken is still out there, and he's the only person who knows exactly what Kayaba is capable of, and may even be able to guess at what Kayaba is planning. But that's not all, because Zouken has no reason to believe that there won't be another Grail War in the future, and he wants either Sakura to serve his will, or whatever kid he forces her to have will be sufficiently mature, and in the meantime he's not above scrounging for any advantage he can get his hands on. And wouldn't you know it? His apprentice has kindly rendered the Einzbern child, a vessel for the Lesser Grail that, unlike her mother, had seven Heroic Spirits flowing through her instead of five, comatose and completely helpless and placed in a mundane hospital with the rest of the players. There's almost certainly a gross and evil way he can prey upon Ilya to grant an advantage in the future Grail Wars he thinks are coming, or his name isn't Makiri Zolgen.
 
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