Anyone got some "what-if" ideas for the Arcane Universe

I think I asked something like this before but I figured I’d try it again cause I really like this sort of thing. Just picking something, or possibly even multiple things, that could be changed at any point in the AU’s timeline that could have some interesting consequences.

what if powerscaling wasn’t entirely based off of luck

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What if you came up with something less boring

what if only people who can’t cast magic circles were the only ones able to get curses
what if chaos and order were fully sentient

What if Magic Circles weren’t invented?

I wouldn’t even know where to start with this one, it changes a lot

Either a lot more or a lot less people die

what if the USA military was in ao

Well no magic for humans than cause circle-less magic isn’t a thing anymore as far as I can tell. No clue what Prometheus is doing in this scenario.

then it would just be our world but Hellenism isn’t dead :skull:

No, bruh

If magic circles were never created, then circle-less magic was never unlearned.

Well ignoring where they would be and logistics if they can learn aura tracing and keep that on ammunition long after they’re no longer near it than they probably become the greatest power in the world next to Chaos, Creation, and whatever unknown exceptions. Otherwise they probably get stomped by curse users.

Circle-less magic isn’t a thing in current canon

Though if we want to go with old canon I guess its mostly the same just without circles? That or magic is just lost once circle-less magic is lost.

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Man, we can’t have one good thing, huh?

What if Acheron frickin’ died?
Like, instead of blasting the earth, Theos kinda just won.

then now we just have our world but with magic

The colonization of America is way unfair now.

so nothing changed?

  1. What if Zeus wasn’t an idiot and ganked Prometheus before Y112
    (Arcane Odyssey is renamed to Oracle Odyssey)

  2. What if Prometheus decided to lock in and solo Poseidon, Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, and all of their allies instead of just killing himself (don’t ask me how he does this, just assume he does)

  3. What if Morden wasn’t a bitch

the jaw pirates come down from sky island which is their base

If Zeus doesn’t take away all the spirit weapons once the war is over, then I think spirit weapons end up kinda becoming this world’s curses. They’d be similarly sought after as the most powerful tools in the world. Their users becoming the upper echelon of humanity. It’s kinda hard to guess what they would do cause we know nothing about these hypothetical characters that would possess these weapons but I think the simplest answer is that a lot of them rise to the top of the power structures they inhabit and human societies probably a lot more in line with what the gods on Zeus’ side want.

I’d say his best chance for this is if he catches on before Arthur starts to go after him. Probably sometime when he starts to become the strongest mage of the time is when Prometheus would most likely be able to catch on.

For it to have the most impact however it’d probably have to play out the same as it did originally just with Mr. P winning out at Olympus. Pretty unlikely but it has the most interesting possibilities for consequences. Right off the bat curses are never made, Cursebeard and his entire army are out of the picture, and Prometheus is now the uncontested winner of the War of the Gods. Acheron probably never gets enough power to be able to fight on somewhat even footing with Theos, at least not by the time it happens in the actual story. So the fracture either doesn’t happen or is at least delayed by probably a couple centuries at the least.

Alongside those differences I can see a couple different scenarios playing out:

  • Prometheus leaves things as they are after he wins the war, aside from maybe returning magic to the descendants of people Zeus stole it from. Magic then develops for all magic using society the same way it did for the war seas in the main timeline. So the lesser losts become base magics for everyone like they did for people in the war seas, as well as the other lost magics slowly beginning to become something people can be born with as well. Basically the standard for magic on average world wide becomes the same as it is in the war seas.

  • Prometheus realizes Arthur did what he did because of humanity getting access to losts and ancients from hecate shards, and Prometheus does everything in his power to remove those things from humanity. Here humanity is just kinda stuck with the seven og base magics and can’t really move beyond them. They could still reach some pretty powerful heights here, but I don’t think anything like what Cursebeard did would be possible for them anymore. Not unless every single experimental curse user decides make a go at it.

  • Prometheus, after nearly meeting his end at the hands of a human who managed to make gods into his followers, comes to the conclusion that Zeus was right and humanity can’t be trusted with magic. He finishes what Zeus started and takes away any ability to use magic circles away from the rest of humanity. Things kinda go back to the way they were though the nations we know of are probably long gone by this point.

Honestly this scenario is really interesting and could go a lot of ways. Go ahead and tell me if you think it’d go differently or if anything else could happen cause I really like this idea.

The fight with Julian maybe goes differently? Kinda hard to tell cause Julian still beats him in the skill category, but if you think Morden wins completely and kills Julian I wouldn’t say you’re wrong. In this case there’s less rush to flee, I still think they’d have to cause Morden is probably still somewhat injured and eventually enough of the Bronze Legion would show up to overwhelm the group, but things aren’t even remotely as dire as they were in the main timeline.

Pirates get wiped off the board completely, so much so Morden might just accidently fuck up their hideout and cost the group the info that the AS was behind the pirate blockade. That kinda more depends on how much self control and foresight Morden has in this scenario though.

Besides that I can’t think of much changing afterwards, he still most likely can’t take on a son of Wotan so he’s not rushing the Fenrir and there’s not much he can do to really change what happens at Port Mistral when he gets there, not much for him to do there in the first place.

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