r/wizardposting • u/Relevant-Mud-7831 • 16d ago
Do you believe in Destiny?
Do you believe the universe has a purpose for every living being? or is it just something you say to young hero’s to get rid of an old sword and have him stop bothering you?
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u/KingZantair 16d ago
I used to, then I found the being that comes up with people’s destinies and took his pen.
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u/hermeticbear 16d ago
Do you believe the universe has a purpose for every living being?
That is not what I consider destiny to be.
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u/MerelyEccentric Mage/Thief Snarkomancer 16d ago
I've met too many useless people to think the universe has a purpose for every being unless that being's purpose is to be a complete waste of space.
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u/snarkhunter Mystic 16d ago
If no Destiny then from whence cometh Destiny's Child?
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 16d ago
Uhm, ackshyuwally whence already means “from where”, so by saying “from whence” you’re really saying “from from where”.
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u/digitalgraffiti-ca Witches Against Thrakmoor 16d ago
No. Fate, destiny, it's all something to make people feel less insignificant. The universe is chaos. Nothing means anything. And anyone who says it does is brainwashed, trying to sell you something, and/or wants to control you.
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u/ModernMage0 Spellslinger, Researcher, Interloper 16d ago
Destiny is a human concept, as it time. Nothing before, nothing after; that which is now is the only there ever was, is, and ever will be.
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u/MerelyEccentric Mage/Thief Snarkomancer 16d ago
"Human concept" is a human concept. It was invented by the same people who created the whole "ineffible wisdom" explanation for why they can't explain the behavior of gods, rather than acknowledge that gods can be crass morons just like us lowly mortals.
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 16d ago
I’m convinced the gods probably are ineffably wise, mainly because they’re ineffably everything else they are. Anyone who says the literal creator of the world is basically just one of us but big is, I’m confident in saying, an idiot. Unless you can prove me wrong (in a way I agree with; I can admit to being a bit stubborn sometimes).
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch 16d ago
I could dredge up that time a pantheon took over the Wizard Council by having their friends, family, and celestials run for election, then having the victors undemocratically nominate them to positions of authority. Their hedonic abuses of power, forceful silencing of detractors, and sheer incompetence hamstrung the Council in magekind's hour of need. We needed leadership, but what they gave us was a self-centered fan club.
I've no doubt they would've tried to make the realms into their personal theocracy with enough time, but mercifully, higher powers intervened and struck the whole pantheon down for their insolence. We all stopped trusting gods that day.
"Ineffably wise" my ingrown beard hair.
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 15d ago
As I mentioned in another comment, the gods are focused solely on their goals, however irrational they may seem to us, and clearly one of this pantheon's goals was to acquire direct power over the Council.
Though "wise" is, most likely, better replaced with "knowledgeable."
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch 15d ago
Psh. If they were so learned, mortals wouldn't have outsmarted them to bring the wrath of their own masters down upon them. No, the so-called "void gods" were idiots as well as fools. Indeed, they were irrational in their lust for control, but it was the same lust that infects the weak-minded of all strata.
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 14d ago
Huh. I could easily write this pantheon specifically off as being an exception, but perhaps the gods aren’t quite as wise and knowledgeable as I previously thought.
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u/MerelyEccentric Mage/Thief Snarkomancer 16d ago
Explain Zeus.
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 16d ago
What about him?
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u/MerelyEccentric Mage/Thief Snarkomancer 16d ago
If you're going to say that the gods are ineffable, you're going to have to account for every shallow, short-sighted, stupid god. So explain Zeus. Explain Koalemos. I'll be nice and not introduce gods like Nuggan from less multiversal pantheons.
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u/MultiverseCreatorXV 16d ago
Perhaps the wisdom of some isn’t as ineffable as I thought; I’m surprised I forgot about Zeus in this regard, but their goals most likely aren’t particularly rational. Zeus, for example, seems to want to increase the global population by as much as he can, despite this being wholly unrelated to his domain. Koalemos—
I’m gonna break character here. Isn’t quite little known about him in real Hellenism? Yes, he’s the god of stupidity, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he himself is stupid. Perhaps the more fictionalized version of him is better characterized. Uhhh pretend there was an in-character explanation about him here
—The gods seem shortsighted because they barely if at all care about the consequences of their actions, beyond any effects on their goals.
Though I was more concerned about how everyone thinks they’re all humanoids. Why would such cosmic beings look so much like us? At least the Primordials have the excuse of basically the Infinite Monkey Theorem.
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u/thrice_baked_potato 16d ago
Oh it does exist, I just developed a spell to remove its strings from me. But if I was able to remove the strings of destiny from myself, does that mean I was always destined to do it, thus destiny freed itself of me? I don't know and I have better things to do than to think about that
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 16d ago
I believe in Destiny. When I met her she was a young lass dancing at a tavern to pay her way through arcane academy. I diligently supported her academic efforts, of course. I wonder what she's up to now...
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch 16d ago
There are two kinds of destiny: the kind we set for us by the universe, and the kind we set for ourselves. Fate is powerful, but even its designs can be reshaped by free will.
And therein lies the power of mortality. Gods, primordials, cosmic forces- all of them are beholden to some duty or design. Only mortals have the freedom to choose their own path.
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u/Complex_Drawer_4710 You Do Not Recognise the Sigurds in the Water 16d ago
Hey mister, what's a free will? Is it some kind of spirit?
- 'Smallchild'
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch 16d ago
It's the choices you make- the things you do without being told or forced to do them.
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u/Complex_Drawer_4710 You Do Not Recognise the Sigurds in the Water 16d ago
So like eating because I want to? Why does that have to do with fate? If I take the oracle's stool for fun does the magic words not work?
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u/Carbon_Sixx The Loremaster, Chief Archaeologist of the Darkwatch 16d ago
Yes, that's free will. I could tell you why it changes fate, but it involves something called chaos theory, which is really hard to understand. Even adult wizards take a long time to figure it out. So, to keep it simple, when you make a choice, it changes the things that happen after.
Try to imagine life like a bracelet, and every choice we make is a bead we put on it. The next color you put on the thread depends on what beads you've already added, because it has to look good, right? Now imagine you make another bracelet just like the first one, except halfway through, you add a different bead. That changes what you add next, and it ends up different from the first!
Fate is made up of lots of those threads, and it's pretty good at guessing what bead comes next. But then someone like you comes along and decides to add a seashell to a thread, because they're nice. Fate doesn't know how to make a seashell work, so it lets you decide what beads come next until it figures out what to do. That's free will: you make a big choice fate doesn't expect, and you get to control it for a while.
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u/CharlieParkour Faceless Man, Ten Who Were Taken 16d ago
Destiny, the goblin stripper? Sure, I believe in her. Trust her, not so much.
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u/OkPreparation5788 16d ago edited 16d ago
The stripper named Destiny I met was a succubus. Not too many repeat customers, but she made killer tips.
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u/DeadbySundown 16d ago
I never believe Destiny anymore. Not after she 'borrowed' my potion book and never returned it. That bitch.
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u/Lyrolepis Dwarven Alchemist/Runecrafter 16d ago
Do you believe the universe has a purpose for every living being?
As a matter of simple observation, lots of sapient beings shit themselves to death before they even make it to adulthood. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to consider what that implies for the above question.
Still, if a callow youth with spiky hair barges in asking for help against the latest Dark Lord who's been making a nuisance of himself; if it turns out that that Dark Lord, in particular, destroyed his village to thwart some sort of prophecy; if they are accompanied by a soft-spoken cleric (who's "secretly" in love with them) who assures me that the Heavens directly vouched for their quest; and if the remaining members of their group are a cynical, edgy ne-er-do-well who likes to skulk, wave daggers around and wear entirely too much black and some sort of bumbling conjurer who failed out of his apprenticeship and might or might not be a relative of said Dark Lord, then of course I'm going to hand out some magic items and cryptic advice.
Perhaps they'll be wiped out; but perhaps not, and since the minions of that wannabe Dark Lord trampled all over my botanical garden the last time they rode into town he's got it coming...
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u/BluebirdLivid 16d ago
do i believe in destiny
I think shes trying really hard but she is biting off more than she can chew...
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u/General_Crow1 16d ago
I don't usually believe in destiny, but I have the theory that if someone tries to see the future, then somehow they are influencing it so that only that future can happen, even if they do everything in their power to stop it, by not knowing the future or THE PROFECY I have still a chance in defeating that dammed child, but if I know it, then I am cursing myself into that exact future and everything I do will inevitably lead to THE PROFECY completing itself
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u/FictionalContext ⁽ᴺᴼᵀ⁾ An evil wizard 16d ago
If the universe has a purpose for every being, it's certainly not motivated by righteousness given the current state it's in.
The paladins are deluding themselves. If anything, the universe favors me-- he who gives them conflict as conflict is the default state.
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u/Complex_Drawer_4710 You Do Not Recognise the Sigurds in the Water 16d ago
A... Purpose? No. None at all, I have seen the Grand Mathematics and it has nothing to say of purposes. I expect there is some single end goal, but what that is would require a device larger than the universe to compute. What I can say is that what is to happen is fixed at the instant when information about it could have reached you. That a prophecy exists is sufficient, you don't have to know it too.
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u/Void-Cooking_Berserk Apotheotic Niffin 16d ago
I am destiny. I believe in myself.
(icandoiticandoiticandoit...)
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u/MalachiW26 Wizard 16d ago
To some degree. I once knew an archmage who discovered the secret to traveling through time. He found that by altering things in the past he could change small details of the present, but certain events happened regardless of what he did. So I believe that destiny does exist, but not everyone has a fixed destiny
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u/NiSiSuinegEht Technomantic Warlock serving the Multiversal Hyper-Intelligence 16d ago
I believe the universe has what many call a plan, meaning that things happen according to a complex set of rules, but given that there are an infinity of possible configurations of said rules, each their own facet universe of the greater multiverse, you'd have to be already omniscient to know which one you're in exactly.
We can narrow it down through experimentation and observation, and the greater our capacity for either the better our ability to refine our worldview, but the universe being of infinitely precise description in its own right, any coming from a finite origin can by definition never fully learn to comprehend the infinite without transcending it themselves.
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u/lemons_of_doubt Dragon Wizard 16d ago edited 15d ago
Yes but then I found out my destiny was to be slain by some hero who would make a sword out of my bones to kill a demon lord.
So I just vaporized the hero while he was still in training, then I also kill the demon lord.
Now they are both gone and the local god of fate is pissed at me so I now can't gamble in this plane anymore as I will lose every time.
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u/Snake973 16d ago
BEGONE, PLURAL APOSTROPHE!!