The Schism: A 13th Age RP Campaign

So Master Whosit confirmed something that'd been hinted at but I'd never really dug into so let's do that.  Heroes of time cause their null-fate effect to cascade to - to infect other people to a lesser degree.  But that degree seems to vary.  Grigori was never supposed to be born, so he's a high-degree infection case.  I mean he made Aeva into a HoT.

That also means Miranda shouldn't exist.  But maybe that's not so bad, fate should be able to correct for the hero of time effect to some degree, probably, or everything would eventually cascade to fall apart after the first hero.  But we have one icon with a minor effect.  Actually, that's a lie.  When Miranda became an icon she caused a massive drought that really changed a lot.  OK, so that's one icon with at least some pseudo-null-fate effect.

The Lich King incident removed an icon from power (f***in' whoopsie-doodle), restored a dark god, and brought back the blessed emperor.  Which means now they're all infected.  Probably to various degrees because who knows if Solara and or Talon woulda gotten free eventually.  Also one of them is banging a HoT and made a baby-HoT, whoops again.  Either way Loki woulda got affected.

Then we got the Three.  Through various bumblings, we got them back on speaking terms.  OK.  That's three.  Five?

Then there's the Dwarf King.  Not a lot happened there yet, but we kinda revealed he's being mind-controlled.  And dissolved some of the dwarven power structure by yoinking Warin's parents out of that town.  So more to come there, but that's 4.

Did we affect the Orc Lord with what happened with his lieutenant?  We don't have enough information about that yet.  Still call it 4.

I'm also sticking a big question mark on Farron for later.

Karth been hangin' with the Elf Queen, but it probably didn't do too much?  One of those 'fate can iron this out' level things.

Also we (re)made an icon who is also HoT.  We're up to five.  Unless you still count her with the Three, which is still four.

Theeeen we got Edea.  Future Empress.  So, two question.  Did she get infected from hanging out with the heroes that long?  Follow-up question.  Did Nyl?Specifically in the short time before her trip to the dragon cult?  'Cause she kinda busted Edea's father out from Arlan's dungeons.  That coulda certainly had some effect on Edea's fate, made him pass the iconship early when he got to work again early and burned himself out...  My, but having the Empress have a null-fate effect that she can spread around would put Arlan's plan into overdrive.  So A) we can maybe call that 6 icons and B) another follow-up question: was getting kicked in the dick Arlan's plan all along?

Did Arlan want Izzy busted out like that?  To make that happen?  To make that happen that way, he would've had to have engineered the heroes of fate meeting Nyl in the first place.  And for that to happen, she would need to be a decently powerful mage with the Archmage's trust.  Y'know...  Even I don't know who Nyl's mom is or why she was dropped off with the Archmage.  But he did have a hand with Farina disappearing which, y'know, kinda pushed some of that stuff forward.  So is Arlan thinking that far ahead?  Or was it part of TeAmygdala's plan?  Or was Izzy fated to be rescued like that?  Or did Arlan actually get bamboozled?  Because it did seem a little too easy, huh.  Are we going to need to go ahead and rub that 1 out of Nyl's W column?

Side, since Witches are, like, 80% spells to manipulate Fate, so how does that interact with hanging out with a bunch of people who null fate...?  Does it make her better or worse at witching?  WHY IS SHE ABLE TO READ THEIR FORTUNES?  Answer: she can't, she's been lying about it the whole time.  That's why she casts off CHA.  The HoTs have just been falling for it hook, line, and sucker.  The effects are purely self-hypnosis.

Moving on from that!  Who else was affected with the HoTness?  I don't feel like most people have hung out with us enough to be too affected - Aaron maybe also suddenly Ninian and Ryner we'll see once we see them again - except maybe the super-obvious one.  Y'know.  Raven.  Yeah, she kinda got YEETed off the Tapestry when the HoTs were kinda partially extremely responsible for her getting turned into a vampire.  BUT.  Then Skadi showed up.  And Skadi was like 'lolnope.'  So.  Was Skadi just being nice?  Or did the goddess of fate and stuff herself see Raven falling off the tapestry and personally YOINK her back on track with some divine intervention?

Well I mean give it like 3 sessions and she'll be back off again...

Let's tie that back.  If Arlan maybe mastermind-pushed Nyl into transferring some HoT-juice to the empress in the most roundabout way possible...  Did Arlan also arrange for Raven's parents to go bye-bye so she'd roll with the HoTs for a bit?  Or was it just a coincidence?  And if he did, why?  What's he need Raven to do?  Huh, GX?  What are you plotting?  Because whatever it is, don't do it.  Unless he wants you to not do it, in which case you must definitely not don't do it.

Also I'm leaving that question mark on Farron because she got her Farina back but we don't really know if that's going to be too significant yet so.

Depending on how we count it (and if you count Solara) and with the three question marks...  Somewhere from 4 to 11 icons have been infected with the HoT.

Conclusion: The Tapestry of Time is already sobbing in the corner.