[Dragaera] They should be protecting Vlad much better (Hawk spoilers)

[Jerry Friedman via Dragaera]

On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 12:56 AM, Alexx Kay via Dragaera <dragaera at lists.dragaera.info> wrote:

>> Sethra is a highly accomplished strategist, and Verra at least is quite
>> capable of making detailed plans for the future. So let's look at the Vlad
>> situation from their point of view.
>
>[...]
>
>> So... you just let this extremely valuable resource wander around, mostly
>> unassisted, repeatedly almost dying?  Really? REALLY?
>
>[...]
>
>> What am I missing?
>
>Celti already raised some good points, but there's at least one big thing
>that both of you are missing.  The Gods (including Verra) do not relate to
>Time in the same way that mortals do.  They know at least some details of
>what is to come, and not in just a mealy-mouthed "vague prophecy" way. 
>Remember how Vlad ran into Baritt in the Halls of Judgment before B
>actually had died (in Vlad's personal timeline).  And Devera clearly moves
>about in time.


I agree with this, and in fact I said so in a post I wrote before Yahoo
got around to delivering yours (sorry for repeating points people had already
made), but it's also true we don't know how many details of what's to come
anybody knows.  Verra, or whoever's responsible for all this Destiny stuff,
may hardly know more than we do.


>Now, broadly speaking, there are two sorts of cosmology allowing time
>travel[*].  We don't know which one applies to Dragaera, but each has an
>explanation for Verra's apparent carelessness towards Vlad.
>
>In Fixed Time, even though you can travel in time, you can't actually
>change things.  Seeing the future doesn't let you *change* the future.  In
>this model, Verra doesn't coddle Vlad because... she just doesn't.  That's
>not what happened.  Fixed Time only has the illusion of free will, but not
>its actuality.  Vlad will survive until he has done his part, by
>definition.


This can make a great story, such as "...All You Zombies", but to me it totally
subjectively feels incompatible with the Vlad books.

>In Changeable Time, the timestream can be changed, at least to some
>degree.  In this model, Verra doesn't coddle Vlad because she doesn't need
>to.  If Vlad *did* die (and her long-term plans required him), she would
>mess with the timeline until she fixed things, and we linear-time mortals
>wouldn't even be aware of the "dead Vlad" timeline.

When she made a mistake in /Phoenix/, she didn't try to change the
timeline--for whatever that's worth.  Also, Devera doesn't seem to have
warned her grandpa about playing with those purple stones.

> Indeed, she may
>(mostly) be letting Vlad deal with these dangerous experiences without her
>help because doing so is the only way to mold him into the person he needs
>to be for her plans.  Perhaps there are now-obsolete timelines in which
>she rescued Vlad a lot, but that left him insufficiently leveled-up for
>the final boss fight.
>
>[* There are lots of subtle variants, of course.  I refer the interested
>student to the GURPS Time Travel sourcebook for more detailed analysis,
>and lots of clever variations.]


There are two not-so-subtly different possibilities.  One is that changing
the past creates a new universe, so now there are two realities.  (That would
explain a lot of things, such as where Morrolan was when Zerika descended the
Falls.)  The other is that the rules for influencing the past are not
systematic--instead, it happens when and only when it's Cool.  You can't do
that in a role-playing game, but you can in fiction.


Jerry Friedman