Questions, questions and more questions (READ THE OP FOR ANSWERS)

[You]

What the hell is Complete Material talking about here? It feels like they threw in three different subjects in a single paragraph but they all use the same terminology for different things.

Noble Colours.

In general, the extent of their abilities was characterized by their long list of titles: Restraint, Compulsion, Contract, Incineration, Illusion, Jinx. These specialties of Mystic Eyes all, in some way or other, intervened in the fates of others.

However, Eyes ranked Gold or higher often held great magics that had long since been lost to the modern era. For Jewel and Rainbow ranks, it could be assumed that they didn't just possess powerful magecraft, but instead could actualize Mysteries that were otherwise entirely impossible to replicate in any era.

They could be said to be an exercise of the Authority of the Divine.

(If Mystic Eyes of Death Perception actually exist, maybe as the authority of Balor...)

Q: What kind of role does the World give to Heroic Spirits that aren't Guardians? Also, what do magi call people with high divinity or are closer to the planet?
A: Heroic Spirits that aren't Guardians are simply treated as traditions that lend power to the later people. Those that became closer to the planet don't mix well with people so they fall into the categories of Divine Spirits and Elementals.

"The ibuki, taking in outside air, is a clear image of connecting the outside world and your inner body. I have heard that to breathe in is to take in God, and to breathe out is to release God.
This 'right way to breathe' is a secret technique in every school, and one can expect only about one student per generation to be able to acquire it."

"To put it another way, a person who casts spells to cast magic is only a magus.
But if one's breathing, walking, and their existence itself can perform divine deeds, that person is a pure Magic Circuit that surpasses magi."

"Oh… I think there was something like that in Shintoism.
Like exterminating evil with mere footsteps or clapping of the hands."


"Yes, one spends all one's life mastering those embodiments.
But there are rare cases where one is born with this correct way of breathing or walking. These are people who themselves are Magic Circuits."

"As they are abnormal, they will be famed as prodigies and end up being claimed by magi. But there are a few who will grow up without catching anyone's attention.
These people have within them divine mysteries surpassing magic, without even knowing magic. But"

It's talking about what elemental alignments are closer to the planet (are more divine).

[pinetree]

So in relation to Magic Circuits, is it saying that an esper has more noble circuits than your average magus? I know the color raking in relation to Mystic Eyes, but Magic Circuits?
I guess it makes some sence since Mystic Eyes are specialized circuits, but have they ever referred to the quality of someone's Magic Circuits in this way?

And I understand the correlation between being closer to the planed and being divine in your quotes, but what confuses me is that CM seems to be drawing the opposite connection, saying that it's normal to be closed to the Earth's crust rather than to the movement of (unindentified?) 'celestial bodies'

[You]

Fire is more aligned to the physical earth.
Wind is more aligned to the movement of celestial bodies of which the Earth is one.

Noble Colours have not yet been used to refer to a magus's circuits beyond Mystic Eyes.

[Random]

Blue Blood Circuits are probably something else then, right?

[You]

Blue Blood Circuits are probably something else then, right?

Any ability that happens to be "special" enough can be called a Noble Colour
https://www.tmdict.com/en/no.noble-color

A name for inborn special talents, used within the Association.
Primarily used in reference to those who possess mystic eyes. For instance, the mystic eyes of Tsukihime’s Shiki are an example of a Noble Color.
Rider’s mystic eyes of petrification fall under the classification of “Jewel,” which exceeds even the “Gold” possessed by the highest class of bloodsucker.
Further, beyond Jewel lies “Rainbow.” These ultimate mystic eyes, which blend and mix all seven colors of the rainbow like a kaleidoscope, are considered to be the mark of the King of the Moon.

So can't rule that out yet.

[Sandman]

Hey people. I was wondering if I could get a deeper explanation of Imaginary Numbers Space and its mechanics.

[Random]

Are you referring to Imaginary Number Space in a basic sense, or are you asking about the Sea of Imaginary Numbers?

People conflate those a lot, and while that's convenient in some contexts, it does mean that those less familiar often don't realise they're conflating anything at all.

[Skull]

The other week we were discussing how much we did disliked Altera as Attila and I completely forgot to ask something, that being the burning question of how Altera works when it comes to the Siegfried/Sigurd split. Fáfnir has been explained and I can swallow some “turning of the wheel” thing where certain archetypes in humanity recur across the centuries. But surely the same can’t be said for Altera right? Unless there’s some explanation I’ve missed, it seems unlikely that she exists in both time periods right?

[Comun]

The other week we were discussing how much we did disliked Altera as Attila and I completely forgot to ask something, that being the burning question of how Altera works when it comes to the Siegfried/Sigurd split. Fáfnir has been explained and I can swallow some “turning of the wheel” thing where certain archetypes in humanity recur across the centuries. But surely the same can’t be said for Altera right? Unless there’s some explanation I’ve missed, it seems unlikely that she exists in both time periods right?

Sigurd happened shortly before Ragnarok (the 1000s BC).
Sigfried happened during Atilla's reign (the 400s AD).
"Kriemhild married Attila" is still true because Kriemhild married Altera.
"Brynhild is Atli's sister" is still true because Odin built the Valkyries out of scrapped Sefar parts.

[Ratman]

(If Mystic Eyes of Death Perception actually exist, maybe as the authority of Balor...) .

This is just a pipeline leading down to 'Mixed bloods and psychics are the same thing', isn't it.

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I mean, just look at where the Ryougi powers come from.

[MoonCell]

Is there some mythological precedent for Artoria's Invisible Air and for the Hashashin having 19 leaders/an immortal leader? These are two things that always felt familiar to me, like I read about them when I was younger, but I can't find any actual sources that could have inspired these abilities. Maybe it's just Mandela Effect and I'm imagining things, but I thought I'd see if someone else knows.

[Skull]

Is there some mythological precedent for Artoria's Invisible Air

No.

[pinetree]

I think there must be something, at least in the Japanese sphere, connecting Excalibur and the wind. I'm guessing only based off the two being associated often (?) in games though.

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Actually, now that I said it out loud, it might be just most famous sword = kusanagi = wind powers

[Skull]

FWIW...

Q: Though many Servants possess Noble Phantasms that appear in their actual myths and legends, there were some that felt like original creations for the game. What did you have in mind when you created these original Noble Phantasms (“Bounded Field of the Wind King: Invisible Air”, “All-Violating Talisman: Rule Breaker”)?

A: Invisible Air was simply a form of sorcery meant to conceal a Noble Phantasm. I thought that surely Merlin could have managed that somehow! Heroic Spirits that possess overly famous Noble Phantasms have a trick or two to hide their true identities.
[As for Rule Breaker,] I created it from her image as a treacherous archmage. I figured she would be too weak with only her Dragon’s Teeth soldiers.

[TamamoRoute]

I see, I also always wondered about this

[Random]

I think there must be something, at least in the Japanese sphere, connecting Excalibur and the wind. I'm guessing only based off the two being associated often (?) in games though.

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Actually, now that I said it out loud, it might be just most famous sword = kusanagi = wind powers

As the Yamato Takeru guy, the "wind powers" for Kusanagi are a bit less straightforward than just a quirk in a JRPG drop.

There is a recurring minor motif in Japanese folklore as a whole concerning a divine wind - literally "kamikaze" - that comes at fortunate moments as a deus ex machina for this episode's auspicious hero. Perhaps the most famous example is actually a historical one** (no not that one but yes this is where they got their name from): on two occasions in the late 13th century about ten years apart, two assembled Mongol fleets attempted to conquer Japan. Both were destroyed by typhoons. This was enshrined as the workings of kamikaze. There are a lot of wind and storm gods in especially Shinto, and it's not hard to see why when considering the geography of the country results in moments like this, so generally speaking the wind will save you if divine providence decrees that you should be saved.

The episode in which Kusanagi "controls" the wind to extinguish a fire and then massacre an army isn't strictly an ability that you should tie to the sword in such a mechanical way as "it has wind powers". In context, this is something more along the lines of the moment that Yamato Takeru embraces his status as the Specialest Boy In The World and picks up the divine sword that he was always meant to have. It's sort of the inverse of the true king of England drawing the sword from the stone - in that example, the idea is that Arthur is demonstrated to be the true king. In the case of Yamato Takeru and Kusanagi, the former is already in a position of power as the prince of Japan, and he is regularly affirmed as a kind of de facto emperor in that his inherent nature is conceived as that of an emperor, and it was just happenstance that his father was reigning during his entire lifetime so technically he was never on the throne. What is being demonstrated is nothing to do with Yamato Takeru himself per se, but that Kusanagi is innately one of the Imperial Regalia. Because the sword is divinely ordained to be in the hands of the also-ordained imperial lineage, the moment that Takeru - or in this case, the moment Yamato - picks it up is so very auspicious that the kamikaze comes to save him from certain death, because the wind is part of the land and the land was declared by Amaterasu to belong to this specific imperial court.

Basically, it's some divine right of kings bullshit, and it's worth remembering that Yamato Takeru is a mythological personification of the various military forces and commanders who invaded and conquered the surrounding nations. This is why Yamato Takeru handily levels up from killing up from killing dudes to killing gods over the course of the story.

if you wanted to link Invisible Air to the kamikaze motif, I'm sure you can. It's explicitly not divine, but in a Watsonian sense, the Noble Phantasm is the crystallisation of Merlin's support for Artoria. Likewise, there is a test of worthiness for the sword in the stone, although that sort of falls apart because Caliburn and Invisible Air are never in the same room together. And then, more recently, we have Morgan actually being the chosen ruler by the land itself and Artoria was the opposing human faction's pick...

The parallels exist, but they don't really hold up when you squint. That said, Invisible Air seems to have existed since the first drafts of Old Fate, so it's possible that Nasu was just sort of going with the flow at the time without really critically analysing why he decided that there's a wind sword, and it just sort of stuck because it was a convenient plot device. We've had a lot of chances to expand on Invisible Air since FGO started that just never really came to fruition, so I think that's at least a point in favour of "he didn't really think about it".

[OnesFleetingGlory]

Thanks for Yamato Takeru infodump. I'm kinda excited if the official Servant version will appear soon if recent theories are true.

[Random]

man i would be fucked lmfao

[Kirishima]

Yamato Takeru servant is walking on thin ice because he can either be Sakurai for the Ibuki connections or Nasu because Artoria but Japanese

[You]

100% going to be a Sakurai