>why wouldn't manufactured, imperfect imitations of humans dependent on highly skilled humans to reproduce become dominant over humans?
The Einzbern homunculus are especially fricking dependent on humans just to survive.
>Even the lowest tier Homunculus have better magic circuits than top tier mages like Rin or Sakura >They’re also stronger, faster, and immortal (as long as there’s mana). >There souls are so pure they can house gods and servants.
The only thing humans have over them is shear numbers (which lets them develop new things faster). Objectively Homunculus are superior in every way because they can develop new things too.
They're literally batteries with some self-protective functions. They are neither capable of replication nor do they survive long on their own without degradation (see: Ilya in basically every route she survives).
And yet they still don't know how to replicate, and are fundamentally dependent on humans to do so. Hell, not even the Von Einzbern know how to make perfect homunculi anymore, that's why they're so desperate for the third magic in the first place. Unless Grand Order added some other bullshit to overwrite that.
>Unless Grand Order added some other bullshit to overwrite that.
Always assume this is true until proven otherwise
2 years ago
Anonymous
I really hate the damage that F/GO has done to Fate (and by extension all the other Nasuverse stuff) as a franchise. Zero really was the high point of Fate.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Zero doesn't even outdo Stay Night. Hollow Ataraxia is the real high point.
2 years ago
Anonymous
zero has a pretty obvious advantage in that it's not a high school harem hentai starring a functional moron
maybe stay night addresses more interesting concepts about heroism than the relatively straightforward zero. but zero is precise in its evaluation of kings and hero worship; it's willing to take things to a logical conclusion even if the conclusion is bittersweet.
stay night is so contrived and comically optimistic that it turns into an eye roller wash cycle >would a hero die pointlessly, or live to fight another day?
well i don't know but the question is kind of irrelevant since the protagonist got his third dragon ball z power up in this fight so everything turned out fine
better go jam your mana rod in her magic circuit before the next one
2 years ago
Anonymous
>not a high school harem hentai starring a functional moron
That isn't really any worse than the set-up of Zero. Most of the characters are incredibly dysfunctional to the point of complete idiocy and Kiritsugu himself is manchild, which granted is an important part of his character.
Yes, Stay Night has some typical high school romance stuff mixed in to help sell the concept, but being about high schoolers doesn't diminish the story in the slightest. Stay Night addresses its themes of heroism, survivor's guilt, the lengths one will go to pursue victory, and self-actualization very well for the medium. The anime doesn't do the plot or characters justice at all. >kind of irrelevant since the protagonist got his third dragon ball z power up in this fight so everything turned out fine
Stay Night really isn't nearly that bad about it. You can point out a couple of BS powerups in SN, but for the most part, his capabilities are kept grounded and he's largely saved by his allies' interference or happenstance.
Zero's evaluation of kingship is remarkably shallow in comparison. The anime makes it look like the other kings are dunking on Saber during the banquet of kings when all they're doing is waxing poetic about their own rules. It's the most misunderstood scene in the entire franchise.
The conclusion is only a lead-in to the larger plot of Stay Night where Saber's issues are actually fully addressed. Zero fails her character by turning her into a stuttering, honor-bound idiot at times.
Zero is by no means bad, but it misses a few points and isn't perfect as a prequel when it would have been relatively easy to do without forsaking any of what made Zero good.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Every F/SN character is butchered in Zero just so Urobochi can tell the story he like, which mainly attract edgy boys.
Both Saber and Kiritisugu act like elementary school kids when they are suppose to be efficiency gay.
it was hardly a high point.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The only good thing about zero is waver. Secondaries latch onto zero for some weird ass reason and are proud that they never read the vn while spouting some nonsense about why they think theyre above it.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>for some weird ass reason
It's not that complicated. It was specifically made for them, and it's the only fate anime you can fully enjoy without prior experience to the source material.
Not FGO, but I think prisma Iliya might have changed it.
2 years ago
Anonymous
prisma canon is a separate thing is doesn't changes shit
Ilya only dies because they made her become the grail which limits her lifespan, if they hadn’t done so she’d be virtually immortal.
Ilya only has such a long lifespan because she is freak of actual nature who was born not made other homunculus in the setting have a lifespan measured in month to single digit years with the stronger the homunculus the lower the lifespan
2 years ago
Anonymous
Prisma literally has multiple crossovers with the ‘normal’ nasuverse, it’s canon.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>other homunculus in the setting have a lifespan measured in month to single digit years with the stronger the homunculus the lower the lifespan
her mom was fine for a decade and also only died by turning into a cup
2 years ago
Anonymous
Different time lines though. FGO isn't the same as Zero and Stay night isn't the same as Prisma isn't the same as Apocrypha yada yada. The only actually connected timeline is Zero into Stay and Strange Fake into Hollow Ataraxia.
Not to mention all the rule breaking every Grail war variant has.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This is pretty irrelevant since they can jump between the trees of time seemingly pretty easily
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Zero into Stay and Strange Fake into Hollow Ataraxia
Not quite true as Zero has always been more of a "this is sort of what it looked like, but with some details altered." Zero contradicts a few things in Stay Night and Nasu and Urobutchi are both on record calling it Uro's take on a what-if scenario. Similarly, Hollow Ataraxia, while being the true sequel to Stay Night, doesn't line up perfectly with any one route. Strange Fake is largely written with Stay Night and Zero in mind, but Nasu basically de-canonized it preemptively by saying some dumb shit in an interview about how the worlds work differently and that Strange Fake is a "special case" within worlds in which servants exist which was basically dropped on Narita's head after he had already been working on Strange Fake for a while.
>Even the lowest tier Homunculus have better magic circuits than top tier mages like Rin or Sakura
Not true. They can be created to have good magic circuits, but they've never been shown to be superior to the freaks of the series like Rin, Touko, or Ciel. Illya is an outlier. Sieg only had "good" circuits and his function was still no better than being a battery. >also stronger, faster, and immortal (as long as there’s mana).
Again, Sieg pretty much broke himself immediately upon escaping his tube just by running. Homunculi can be made with different specs and your basic one is no better than your average human if not worse. They're by no means immortal since they have limited lifespans. It's not housing the Grail that does it to Illya. Homunculi are built to die off eventually. Jubstacheit is actually a humanoid golem terminal that lived as long as he did to keep building homunculi for the Einzbern. Apocrypha shows another homunculi specialist in Goredolf and his homunculi also had shortened lifespans. Sieg is another prime example here as Chiron tells Astolfo that, even though he was saved from his initial injuries, his natural lifespan was significantly lower than that of a human. >souls are so pure they can house gods and servants.
Forgot to finish the last bit, but having a "soul so pure it can house gods and servants" doesn't mean much when it means you also come out as little more than a machine without much will of your own. At best, they might develop something akin to a will, but that purity is entirely artificial and is a limitation of the craft. Also, normal humans have been shown to house gods and servants what with the multitude of demi-servants and pseudo-servants mucking about in FGO, so that point doesn't really amount to much anyway.
The only reason they worked as batteries is BECAUSE there circuits are so much better than humans. Plus they’re stronger and faster due to being able to fight the dragon tooth warriors, while Rin couldn’t.
>why wouldn't manufactured, imperfect imitations of humans dependent on highly skilled humans to reproduce become dominant over humans?
What do you mean "Imperfect" and "dependent"?
Touko is specifically not a homunculus in any effective way, she makes exact copies of herself to the degree that they ARE her in every meaningful sense of the word.
She doesent have any of the strengths of limitations of homunculi, shes just Touko Aozaki, human Magus.
They dont depend on Humans at all, they're homunculi made by other homunculi, have usually virtually unlimited lifespans as long as the planet isn't dead and there is still mana in the air for them to absorb.
Yeah, illya was literally the only homunculus that was made via human sperm
All of them are made via sperm(presumebly gathered from male artificial beings), Illya is unique in that she was actually grown in a womb though.
>why wouldn't manufactured, imperfect imitations of humans dependent on highly skilled humans to reproduce become dominant over humans?
What do you mean "Imperfect" and "dependent"?
nta, but as consequence of being grown without a womb there are often some flaws that show up, like stunted growh, a weak constitution or limited intelligence/emotionality, you can compensate for those, but that can potentially cut down their life span and cause other more noticable flaws, like Lysritt who has servant level strength, but has her life and emotions bound to Illya and has problems talking.
And yet they still don't know how to replicate, and are fundamentally dependent on humans to do so. Hell, not even the Von Einzbern know how to make perfect homunculi anymore, that's why they're so desperate for the third magic in the first place. Unless Grand Order added some other bullshit to overwrite that.
they are replicating on their own, the human Einzberns literally abandoned their creations over a millenia ago. And their Homunculi are pretty much perfect by the standard of mages, it's only when they overfocus for specific tasks that flaws become too noticble. They also dont want the third magic to make a perfect homunculi, they want to use it to save humanity, as was the intention of their creators.
They have no true will, ambition, or creative spark of their own and are doomed to stagnate and lose all sense of purpose when given freedom to do as they will.
>make one homunculus >teach it to make more homunculi >Each one makes yet more homunculi >they wipe out the natural born species or subjugate them >keep making homunculi
When you make a homunculous, you are gifting it some of your life force to bring it to life. It is incapable of generating such life force itself, because despite appearances it isn't really a living thing. Creating a homonculous weakens the creator a bit to fuel the creation, and the creation only ever has what it has been given to work with.
A homonculous making another homonculous is STARTING with a borrow life force and then splitting it further, both dramatically shortening its own lifespan and creating a much weaker version of itself that is just as doomed.
This is, for reasons that should be obvious, not sustainable.
Congratulations, you have been killed by your homonculous! The homonculous being powered by the life force of the creator forms the basis of the link that allows the creator to command their creation. By using the life force of a sacrifice you have spared yourself the inconvenience of splintering your own life force, but also created a being over which you exert no control and which has no loyalty to you.
I don't come here to shill, but I swear, you guys want me to shill my game. Or I would if I had something to actually sell you guys. Game's not done yet.
The reasons why artificial races like homunculi are not the dominant species in my setting: >Sterility
Homunculi can't breed or produce heirs. If you try to make a homunculus from the blood of another homunculus, what you get is something either more removed from a human being or more diluted and less powerful (depending on how you do it). >Socio-economics
The alchemical transmutation of lead into gold resulted in hyper-inflation. The economy is ruined. Homunculi got scape-goated for it, so now they aren't legally allowed to handle money, and they aren't allowed to own any property except for what they can personally carry (my game has encumbrance rules but no currency for player characters; you start with whatever you can carry and maintain.) >The Three Cords
Homunculi are connected to their creators by the bronze cord of the body, the silver cord of the mind, and the golden cord of the soul. The bronze cord gives an alchemist bonus HP determined by the highest strength among their homunculi, extends their lifespan, and slows their aging. The silver cord gives an alchemist bonus craft ranks determined by the highest intellect among their homunculi, and also lets them communicate telepathically with their homunculi in dreams. The golden cord gives an alchemist bonus MP determined by the highest will among their homunculi. This ensures that no matter how powerful homunculi may get, the alchemists that made them are always on top (you don't get to play as an alchemist; they are NPC's).
Thanks! Will do.
My player's book is just about done. All I need is weapon upgrades,mutations, and organizational stuff like an index and a glossary. And more illustrations, of course.
To create a humunculus you have to jack off into a jar with cow shit. I don't think homunculi are able to ejaculate, but I have never observed one in private
Because fantasy is fantasy, and injects unrealistic equivalencies for its own narrative sake? It is itself heavily artificial. Kind of like how in Star Trek every race is similarly advanced technologically. And humanoid. Also humans in D&D (and its imitators) somehow equal elves who are 10x older. Just because.
This. Eventually society/infrastructure becomes the caster, not the people making it work. A wizard's staff eventually becomes a tower, then a goddamn orbital satellite, then some meta-physical AI or something.
They should be close enough to humans that any children they have are indistinguishable from normal humans. After all, why would a wizard even make one besides using it as a wife, assistant, and mother to their children/future apprentices?
Because the six frickers in the world that know the secrets of creating true takwin are smart enough not to teach them how to make more of themselves, and tend to include mental limitations to prevent this from happening by accident. Also, because most are made without reproductive organs, they lack big dick energy.
All other homonculi are weak, small, lumpy little things that directly depend on their masters for life and lack free will.
Homunculi in my setting are soulless. Once a body is created, or corpses are looted and prepared, their brains are washed in a 'life-giving substance' (it isn't until modern times that scientists discover said substance is a wienertail of space liquid and parasites that can take control of the brain) and they are trained over the course of a few months to a couple years to assimilate the role and memories of another.
During the modern age (somewhere around 1970), demand for PMCs created a market that made creating homunculi more profitable and factory built bodies became the norm. The 2000s saw companies scour defunct internet accounts to parse personalities as basis for the personalities of the homunculi which, alongside the usage of AI, greatly increased the speed at which they could be trained before being released.
>it isn't until modern times that scientists discover said substance is a wienertail of space liquid and parasites that can take control of the brain)
How can they do shit like that without even knowing what it is?
Presumably it came from space, or maybe a demon or some other magical creature made it. Through blind experimenting they could figure out it makes bodies start moving again and how to make more of it. People cultivated yogurt and beer before they knew what microbes were making it.
Presumably it came from space, or maybe a demon or some other magical creature made it. Through blind experimenting they could figure out it makes bodies start moving again and how to make more of it. People cultivated yogurt and beer before they knew what microbes were making it.
yeah that was the exact reasoning behind it; it came from space long before homosexual sapiens were even a thing. Some experimentation happens by a couple of guys doing research due to happenstance (chicken they slaughtered for lunch fell inside and came back revitalized for a bit) and soon, they've got a catalog of places that have similar properties.
While most people are horrified at the idea of bringing back the dead, which acts as a natural filter and keeps others at bay from the areas, some were willing to pay for the service of 'reviving' the dead; there was one instance of a Greek senator who had an entire slave staff full of the undead, who worked without trouble until his entire property burnt down with him inside it.
Somewhere along the line, someone figured that you can build cyborg soldiers by fitting the dead with metal prosthetics, so long as their brain was intact, and throwing them in. The demand for these soldiers as assassins and bodyguards was high compared to the supply up until factories made making prosthetics cheaper and quicker. Of course, the most important part about this is the idea of loss of autonomy and identity: how it would feel constantly being resurrected to go and do tasks for others with no say in the matter and how it would feel to know you're not even the first iteration of you (in case the parasite ends up figuring out it's not the person it is controlling)
I don't fricking know, use some imagination. Maybe they're incapable of wielding sufficient magical power to create more of themselves, maybe they don't have souls of their own to divide to make more of themselves, or maybe they literally don't know the process used to create them.
NTA, but my preferred method would be the iPhone solution, planned obsolescence. Give the Homonculi a lifespan between five to ten years and you don't gotta think about it on top of being able to generate more money by constantly selling replacements.
The same reason dogs aren't the dominant race IRL, they're bred for subservience and/or low intellect depending on task. Plus they're largely incapable of thriving without the help of the race that created them.
>dog can reach the table but knows that he shouldn't >cat just doesn't give a frick
Also the fact that dogs managed to go feral in the hell on earth that is Australia should be proof enough that they still can survive on their own when they have to.
Usually they've got expensive reproduction requirements, particular weaknesses due to being identical, or inbuilt weaknesses from their original designers.
Alchemy is always a crapshoot, anon. The more complex it is, the more 'elegantly' it is designed, the less you can afford to change things up because the everything depends on everything else and a small tweak ripples out and ruins half of the rest of the formula.
One good example comes from a show where the villains are alchemists who have achieved immortality, all women. Which is to say that the FIRST person to create immortality, the one who cracked the secret to making an immortal perfect body with superhuman strength, healing, and immunity to disease, was a woman. It was her life's work and she nailed it, creating exactly the body she always wanted and could use to live forever.
But the formula assumes that the body it generates is female. When she eventually took on disciples, only the very best of them were offered immortality as well. At which point they were given a choice: take the formula as-is, or try and make their own version of it that works for men.
400 years later, everyone who chose masculinity over immortality has died trying. At best it did nothing, at worst they fricking melted. The only apprentices that survived are the ones that either started off female or were willing to become female to live forever. Its not that a male version cannot exist, its that trying to turn the female version into that just doesn't work, and building a new version from scratch to work for men is a project longer than a human lifespan unless you are the same level of genius as the people who invented alchemy in the first place.
So 1: Sauce, though I doubt it's actually very good and 2: Why has no one used their newfound immortality to puzzle out how to do it for a male body now that they have the time. I have a feeling it'll be because the show it's from isn't very good but I can hope.
Symphogear, though the alchemists in question don't show up until season 4 out of 5.
Alchemy as a concept is introduced earlier, but the Bavarian Illuminati in specific don't show up until then.
Symphogear is dumb, but its the kind of dumb that goes all-in on its insane lore and as such is a lot of fun to watch and better to steal bits and peices from.
> Why has no one used their newfound immortality to puzzle out how to do it for a male body now that they have the time.
Mostly because they have better things to do. Their boss is very focused on saving the world, after all. You may be living forever, but you wouldn't have been given that choice if the boss in question didn't already trust you completely and believe in your dedication to the cause above all else.
>Symphogear is dumb,
Isn’t the plot of it basically using music to power battle armor of some weird anime shit like that?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Very much so. The Symphogears themselves are broken pieces of powerful magical weapons (made before the Tower of Babel incident, or a version of it anyway) that have been patched together with modern superscience to get them working again. Because they were made pre-Babel, they are designed to respond to the True Language, the one destroyed by god. It turns out that singing is the closest thing we have left to that original language, because music trascends language bla bla bla, so the gear users have to keep singing at their magic powered armor to keep them working.
This is all an excuse to turn every single fight into its own unique choreographed music video.
https://streamable.com/u622v
A fun thing that Symphogear gets right in a way that makes it amusing as hell to watch is that the Symphogears are powered by magic, so that makes them *magical*. They may look like technology, but the rules they operate under do not make sense. They don't just have x-men powers that follow consistent rules, Symphogear armor will just *do shit* sometimes and after a while nobody bothers to even pretend they have a logical explanation for it, this is what happens when you dabble in forces you don't understand. Half of the cool shit the Gears do they use exactly once, and then never again, because the gear users are just kind of winging it and they don't know what they are doing any more than anyone else does. Its a power system that explicitly works *better for very stupid people* because a smart person has reasonable expectations that actually limit their gear from working to its full, unreasonable potential.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Alright, is that connected to why all the users seem to be female? And what the Hell are the fighting anyway?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Its a power system that explicitly works *better for very stupid people* because a smart person has reasonable expectations that actually limit their gear from working to its full, unreasonable potential.
That hits the nail right on the head. I've been writing a Symphogear/Muv Luv crossover and part of the fun is that the MC is a former Eishi who constantly struggles with wringing the potential out of their Symphogear as the skills of piloting a mecha and operating a Symphogear can often be at odds.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Muv Luv
I have never even heard of that series, what’s it about besides apparently mecha?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Grimdark sci-fi war series disguised as a generic harem rom-com, with a level of worldbuilding that rivals much older and more established franchises. The first entry, Extra is as generic a high school dating sim as you can get, but it exists to introduce the characters. Unlimited is the part where the story shifts to the sci-fi war drama, and it seeks to set up the setting and the universe. Alternative is the final entry, and has been rated the number 1 Visual Novel on VNDB for over a decade now over such famous entries as Steins;Gate, Umineko and Fate Stay/Night.
Good question, logically they’d be made for sex purposes (do they be extreme attractive), defensive purposes (so they’re strong enough to fight off people looking to kill rich people), and should have extreme mana capabilities (to protect rich people)
Logically they’d be near perfect.
since homunculi are artificially made and didn't evolve, they don't have any instinct of preservation of their species. while they imitate the intellectual characteristic of humans and can learn to apreciate most things that humans like, and to abhor things that humans hate (like death), and maybe to feel kinship with other homunculi, there are still all learned things, absorbed by cultural osmosis from humans. the concept of propagating one's own species is more deep and complex, it doesn't passes to a creature that has no instincts.
>why wouldn't manufactured, imperfect imitations of humans dependent on highly skilled humans to reproduce become dominant over humans?
The Einzbern homunculus are especially fricking dependent on humans just to survive.
>Even the lowest tier Homunculus have better magic circuits than top tier mages like Rin or Sakura
>They’re also stronger, faster, and immortal (as long as there’s mana).
>There souls are so pure they can house gods and servants.
The only thing humans have over them is shear numbers (which lets them develop new things faster). Objectively Homunculus are superior in every way because they can develop new things too.
They're literally batteries with some self-protective functions. They are neither capable of replication nor do they survive long on their own without degradation (see: Ilya in basically every route she survives).
Ilya only dies because they made her become the grail which limits her lifespan, if they hadn’t done so she’d be virtually immortal.
And yet they still don't know how to replicate, and are fundamentally dependent on humans to do so. Hell, not even the Von Einzbern know how to make perfect homunculi anymore, that's why they're so desperate for the third magic in the first place. Unless Grand Order added some other bullshit to overwrite that.
>Unless Grand Order added some other bullshit to overwrite that.
Always assume this is true until proven otherwise
I really hate the damage that F/GO has done to Fate (and by extension all the other Nasuverse stuff) as a franchise. Zero really was the high point of Fate.
Zero doesn't even outdo Stay Night. Hollow Ataraxia is the real high point.
zero has a pretty obvious advantage in that it's not a high school harem hentai starring a functional moron
maybe stay night addresses more interesting concepts about heroism than the relatively straightforward zero. but zero is precise in its evaluation of kings and hero worship; it's willing to take things to a logical conclusion even if the conclusion is bittersweet.
stay night is so contrived and comically optimistic that it turns into an eye roller wash cycle
>would a hero die pointlessly, or live to fight another day?
well i don't know but the question is kind of irrelevant since the protagonist got his third dragon ball z power up in this fight so everything turned out fine
better go jam your mana rod in her magic circuit before the next one
>not a high school harem hentai starring a functional moron
That isn't really any worse than the set-up of Zero. Most of the characters are incredibly dysfunctional to the point of complete idiocy and Kiritsugu himself is manchild, which granted is an important part of his character.
Yes, Stay Night has some typical high school romance stuff mixed in to help sell the concept, but being about high schoolers doesn't diminish the story in the slightest. Stay Night addresses its themes of heroism, survivor's guilt, the lengths one will go to pursue victory, and self-actualization very well for the medium. The anime doesn't do the plot or characters justice at all.
>kind of irrelevant since the protagonist got his third dragon ball z power up in this fight so everything turned out fine
Stay Night really isn't nearly that bad about it. You can point out a couple of BS powerups in SN, but for the most part, his capabilities are kept grounded and he's largely saved by his allies' interference or happenstance.
Zero's evaluation of kingship is remarkably shallow in comparison. The anime makes it look like the other kings are dunking on Saber during the banquet of kings when all they're doing is waxing poetic about their own rules. It's the most misunderstood scene in the entire franchise.
The conclusion is only a lead-in to the larger plot of Stay Night where Saber's issues are actually fully addressed. Zero fails her character by turning her into a stuttering, honor-bound idiot at times.
Zero is by no means bad, but it misses a few points and isn't perfect as a prequel when it would have been relatively easy to do without forsaking any of what made Zero good.
Every F/SN character is butchered in Zero just so Urobochi can tell the story he like, which mainly attract edgy boys.
Both Saber and Kiritisugu act like elementary school kids when they are suppose to be efficiency gay.
it was hardly a high point.
The only good thing about zero is waver. Secondaries latch onto zero for some weird ass reason and are proud that they never read the vn while spouting some nonsense about why they think theyre above it.
>for some weird ass reason
It's not that complicated. It was specifically made for them, and it's the only fate anime you can fully enjoy without prior experience to the source material.
Not FGO, but I think prisma Iliya might have changed it.
prisma canon is a separate thing is doesn't changes shit
Ilya only has such a long lifespan because she is freak of actual nature who was born not made other homunculus in the setting have a lifespan measured in month to single digit years with the stronger the homunculus the lower the lifespan
Prisma literally has multiple crossovers with the ‘normal’ nasuverse, it’s canon.
>other homunculus in the setting have a lifespan measured in month to single digit years with the stronger the homunculus the lower the lifespan
her mom was fine for a decade and also only died by turning into a cup
Different time lines though. FGO isn't the same as Zero and Stay night isn't the same as Prisma isn't the same as Apocrypha yada yada. The only actually connected timeline is Zero into Stay and Strange Fake into Hollow Ataraxia.
Not to mention all the rule breaking every Grail war variant has.
This is pretty irrelevant since they can jump between the trees of time seemingly pretty easily
>Zero into Stay and Strange Fake into Hollow Ataraxia
Not quite true as Zero has always been more of a "this is sort of what it looked like, but with some details altered." Zero contradicts a few things in Stay Night and Nasu and Urobutchi are both on record calling it Uro's take on a what-if scenario. Similarly, Hollow Ataraxia, while being the true sequel to Stay Night, doesn't line up perfectly with any one route. Strange Fake is largely written with Stay Night and Zero in mind, but Nasu basically de-canonized it preemptively by saying some dumb shit in an interview about how the worlds work differently and that Strange Fake is a "special case" within worlds in which servants exist which was basically dropped on Narita's head after he had already been working on Strange Fake for a while.
>Even the lowest tier Homunculus have better magic circuits than top tier mages like Rin or Sakura
Not true. They can be created to have good magic circuits, but they've never been shown to be superior to the freaks of the series like Rin, Touko, or Ciel. Illya is an outlier. Sieg only had "good" circuits and his function was still no better than being a battery.
>also stronger, faster, and immortal (as long as there’s mana).
Again, Sieg pretty much broke himself immediately upon escaping his tube just by running. Homunculi can be made with different specs and your basic one is no better than your average human if not worse. They're by no means immortal since they have limited lifespans. It's not housing the Grail that does it to Illya. Homunculi are built to die off eventually. Jubstacheit is actually a humanoid golem terminal that lived as long as he did to keep building homunculi for the Einzbern. Apocrypha shows another homunculi specialist in Goredolf and his homunculi also had shortened lifespans. Sieg is another prime example here as Chiron tells Astolfo that, even though he was saved from his initial injuries, his natural lifespan was significantly lower than that of a human.
>souls are so pure they can house gods and servants.
Forgot to finish the last bit, but having a "soul so pure it can house gods and servants" doesn't mean much when it means you also come out as little more than a machine without much will of your own. At best, they might develop something akin to a will, but that purity is entirely artificial and is a limitation of the craft. Also, normal humans have been shown to house gods and servants what with the multitude of demi-servants and pseudo-servants mucking about in FGO, so that point doesn't really amount to much anyway.
The only reason they worked as batteries is BECAUSE there circuits are so much better than humans. Plus they’re stronger and faster due to being able to fight the dragon tooth warriors, while Rin couldn’t.
>why wouldn't manufactured, imperfect imitations of humans dependent on highly skilled humans to reproduce become dominant over humans?
What do you mean "Imperfect" and "dependent"?
Touko best girl.
Touko is specifically not a homunculus in any effective way, she makes exact copies of herself to the degree that they ARE her in every meaningful sense of the word.
She doesent have any of the strengths of limitations of homunculi, shes just Touko Aozaki, human Magus.
I thought the Einzbern's were homunculus making homunculus serving the will of long dead human masters.
Yeah, illya was literally the only homunculus that was made via human sperm
They dont depend on Humans at all, they're homunculi made by other homunculi, have usually virtually unlimited lifespans as long as the planet isn't dead and there is still mana in the air for them to absorb.
All of them are made via sperm(presumebly gathered from male artificial beings), Illya is unique in that she was actually grown in a womb though.
nta, but as consequence of being grown without a womb there are often some flaws that show up, like stunted growh, a weak constitution or limited intelligence/emotionality, you can compensate for those, but that can potentially cut down their life span and cause other more noticable flaws, like Lysritt who has servant level strength, but has her life and emotions bound to Illya and has problems talking.
they are replicating on their own, the human Einzberns literally abandoned their creations over a millenia ago. And their Homunculi are pretty much perfect by the standard of mages, it's only when they overfocus for specific tasks that flaws become too noticble. They also dont want the third magic to make a perfect homunculi, they want to use it to save humanity, as was the intention of their creators.
>races like homunculus
homunculi
based.
>races like homunculus
Homunculusses
homunclussy?
im so sorry
>homunclussy?
>homupussy?
>homopussy?
Call it what you want you're still not getting any, creep.
>made from cinnamon, spice, and meth
>lots of meth
>Used up, loose Bubbles with no self esteem
Please give
homundicky
Can we get the flying version. I remember the flying version.
They have no true will, ambition, or creative spark of their own and are doomed to stagnate and lose all sense of purpose when given freedom to do as they will.
Just like me!
Enslaved to the BBM dicc
It's too subjective.
It can literally go in any direction, it all depends on the person with creative control.
>Why wouldn’t artificial races like homunculus be the dominant species?
because we recognize the threat and kill the ones that step out of line
>artificial races like homunculus be the dominant species
Who is gonna make them?
>make one homunculus
>teach it to make more homunculi
>Each one makes yet more homunculi
>they wipe out the natural born species or subjugate them
>keep making homunculi
Doesn't work, you would get diminishing returns.
When you make a homunculous, you are gifting it some of your life force to bring it to life. It is incapable of generating such life force itself, because despite appearances it isn't really a living thing. Creating a homonculous weakens the creator a bit to fuel the creation, and the creation only ever has what it has been given to work with.
A homonculous making another homonculous is STARTING with a borrow life force and then splitting it further, both dramatically shortening its own lifespan and creating a much weaker version of itself that is just as doomed.
This is, for reasons that should be obvious, not sustainable.
Until the homunculi figure out how to steal the life force of humans to create more of themselves.
>you gift it some of your lifeforce
says who? the spark could easily come from sacrifices and the like.
Exactly. You could combine it with a slaughterhouse, use the life force you get from the animals that you kill.
Congratulations, you have been killed by your homonculous! The homonculous being powered by the life force of the creator forms the basis of the link that allows the creator to command their creation. By using the life force of a sacrifice you have spared yourself the inconvenience of splintering your own life force, but also created a being over which you exert no control and which has no loyalty to you.
Short life spans by design or without dependency on their creator
I don't come here to shill, but I swear, you guys want me to shill my game. Or I would if I had something to actually sell you guys. Game's not done yet.
The reasons why artificial races like homunculi are not the dominant species in my setting:
>Sterility
Homunculi can't breed or produce heirs. If you try to make a homunculus from the blood of another homunculus, what you get is something either more removed from a human being or more diluted and less powerful (depending on how you do it).
>Socio-economics
The alchemical transmutation of lead into gold resulted in hyper-inflation. The economy is ruined. Homunculi got scape-goated for it, so now they aren't legally allowed to handle money, and they aren't allowed to own any property except for what they can personally carry (my game has encumbrance rules but no currency for player characters; you start with whatever you can carry and maintain.)
>The Three Cords
Homunculi are connected to their creators by the bronze cord of the body, the silver cord of the mind, and the golden cord of the soul. The bronze cord gives an alchemist bonus HP determined by the highest strength among their homunculi, extends their lifespan, and slows their aging. The silver cord gives an alchemist bonus craft ranks determined by the highest intellect among their homunculi, and also lets them communicate telepathically with their homunculi in dreams. The golden cord gives an alchemist bonus MP determined by the highest will among their homunculi. This ensures that no matter how powerful homunculi may get, the alchemists that made them are always on top (you don't get to play as an alchemist; they are NPC's).
Neat. Make sure you post about your game more once you make some headway. Good luck, Anon.
Thanks! Will do.
My player's book is just about done. All I need is weapon upgrades,mutations, and organizational stuff like an index and a glossary. And more illustrations, of course.
That sheet is cool as frick I hope you plan on distributing this game
Same. Seconding any plans that you have for it please.
Absolutely! It's getting pretty close to done.
In actual alchemy, homonculi are grown in jars from cum meaning they need humans to reproduce
They are and that's why there aren't elves anymore.
I remember GOAT.
To create a humunculus you have to jack off into a jar with cow shit. I don't think homunculi are able to ejaculate, but I have never observed one in private
What kind of moron would make artificial beings that are capable of reproduction?
Because fantasy is fantasy, and injects unrealistic equivalencies for its own narrative sake? It is itself heavily artificial. Kind of like how in Star Trek every race is similarly advanced technologically. And humanoid. Also humans in D&D (and its imitators) somehow equal elves who are 10x older. Just because.
Stop being moronic.
This. Eventually society/infrastructure becomes the caster, not the people making it work. A wizard's staff eventually becomes a tower, then a goddamn orbital satellite, then some meta-physical AI or something.
Because Scarecrows are better
Not only do you not play games.
But you're also a deranged moron.
They should be close enough to humans that any children they have are indistinguishable from normal humans. After all, why would a wizard even make one besides using it as a wife, assistant, and mother to their children/future apprentices?
It
Depends
On
The
Setting
Because the six frickers in the world that know the secrets of creating true takwin are smart enough not to teach them how to make more of themselves, and tend to include mental limitations to prevent this from happening by accident. Also, because most are made without reproductive organs, they lack big dick energy.
All other homonculi are weak, small, lumpy little things that directly depend on their masters for life and lack free will.
Alchemy cannot create a soul, so Homunculi are either soulless sociopaths or get their souls from somewhere far beyond human reckoning.
Homunculi in my setting are soulless. Once a body is created, or corpses are looted and prepared, their brains are washed in a 'life-giving substance' (it isn't until modern times that scientists discover said substance is a wienertail of space liquid and parasites that can take control of the brain) and they are trained over the course of a few months to a couple years to assimilate the role and memories of another.
During the modern age (somewhere around 1970), demand for PMCs created a market that made creating homunculi more profitable and factory built bodies became the norm. The 2000s saw companies scour defunct internet accounts to parse personalities as basis for the personalities of the homunculi which, alongside the usage of AI, greatly increased the speed at which they could be trained before being released.
>it isn't until modern times that scientists discover said substance is a wienertail of space liquid and parasites that can take control of the brain)
How can they do shit like that without even knowing what it is?
Presumably it came from space, or maybe a demon or some other magical creature made it. Through blind experimenting they could figure out it makes bodies start moving again and how to make more of it. People cultivated yogurt and beer before they knew what microbes were making it.
yeah that was the exact reasoning behind it; it came from space long before homosexual sapiens were even a thing. Some experimentation happens by a couple of guys doing research due to happenstance (chicken they slaughtered for lunch fell inside and came back revitalized for a bit) and soon, they've got a catalog of places that have similar properties.
While most people are horrified at the idea of bringing back the dead, which acts as a natural filter and keeps others at bay from the areas, some were willing to pay for the service of 'reviving' the dead; there was one instance of a Greek senator who had an entire slave staff full of the undead, who worked without trouble until his entire property burnt down with him inside it.
Somewhere along the line, someone figured that you can build cyborg soldiers by fitting the dead with metal prosthetics, so long as their brain was intact, and throwing them in. The demand for these soldiers as assassins and bodyguards was high compared to the supply up until factories made making prosthetics cheaper and quicker.
Of course, the most important part about this is the idea of loss of autonomy and identity: how it would feel constantly being resurrected to go and do tasks for others with no say in the matter and how it would feel to know you're not even the first iteration of you (in case the parasite ends up figuring out it's not the person it is controlling)
Someone has to make them.
He’s saying that they could make more of themselves on their own. What would stop them then?
Simple, make them incapable of reproducing on their own, probably also hard code in an expiration date.
>make them incapable of reproducing on their own,
What’s stopping them from manually making more of themselves then?
I don't fricking know, use some imagination. Maybe they're incapable of wielding sufficient magical power to create more of themselves, maybe they don't have souls of their own to divide to make more of themselves, or maybe they literally don't know the process used to create them.
They are, but they have since 'gone native' and forgotten their origins. This has happened several times now.
Alright then, what are some of these races? Are humans one of them? Elves?
Why do they keep forgetting? And who keeps making them?
Anyone smart enough to make a race of homunculi is smart enough to make a mass off-switch for them.
And how would that even work, what would trigger it? You’d want it to not be too complicated, but not something that would happen accidentally.
NTA, but my preferred method would be the iPhone solution, planned obsolescence. Give the Homonculi a lifespan between five to ten years and you don't gotta think about it on top of being able to generate more money by constantly selling replacements.
>This amount of seething, cope and projection
Hey, Crimson 1, what's it like being shot down by a guy whose callsign is a butterfly?
Because they wouldn’t reproduce.
I don't think you know what a homunculi is.
An artificial human.
Not sure about every setting, but I know a bunch have fail-safes so they cannot reproduce
Depends on the setting.
> artificial races
we're already the dominant species dude
Wait, what? Who made us and why then?
Jesus created us to kill the dinosaurs.
The same reason dogs aren't the dominant race IRL, they're bred for subservience and/or low intellect depending on task. Plus they're largely incapable of thriving without the help of the race that created them.
Catgay here, dogs are intelligent enough to where they'd generally survive if we went extinct. Barring breeds with horrible defects bred into them.
>dog can reach the table but knows that he shouldn't
>cat just doesn't give a frick
Also the fact that dogs managed to go feral in the hell on earth that is Australia should be proof enough that they still can survive on their own when they have to.
I'm pretty sure the video implies that the owner is fine with the cat being on the counter.
Probably, the point is cat would go there even if he wasn't.
You can train cats to not go on certain counters, namely the ones where I food prep.
Usually they've got expensive reproduction requirements, particular weaknesses due to being identical, or inbuilt weaknesses from their original designers.
Couldn’t they just easily alter the formula? Is it that hard?
I don't know, you think it's hard to rewrite a human's genetic code?
Think before you post, please.
Alchemy is always a crapshoot, anon. The more complex it is, the more 'elegantly' it is designed, the less you can afford to change things up because the everything depends on everything else and a small tweak ripples out and ruins half of the rest of the formula.
One good example comes from a show where the villains are alchemists who have achieved immortality, all women. Which is to say that the FIRST person to create immortality, the one who cracked the secret to making an immortal perfect body with superhuman strength, healing, and immunity to disease, was a woman. It was her life's work and she nailed it, creating exactly the body she always wanted and could use to live forever.
But the formula assumes that the body it generates is female. When she eventually took on disciples, only the very best of them were offered immortality as well. At which point they were given a choice: take the formula as-is, or try and make their own version of it that works for men.
400 years later, everyone who chose masculinity over immortality has died trying. At best it did nothing, at worst they fricking melted. The only apprentices that survived are the ones that either started off female or were willing to become female to live forever. Its not that a male version cannot exist, its that trying to turn the female version into that just doesn't work, and building a new version from scratch to work for men is a project longer than a human lifespan unless you are the same level of genius as the people who invented alchemy in the first place.
I'm going to put this in my setting, but instead of only working on women, it will only work on middle aged balding men who've given up on life.
So 1: Sauce, though I doubt it's actually very good and 2: Why has no one used their newfound immortality to puzzle out how to do it for a male body now that they have the time. I have a feeling it'll be because the show it's from isn't very good but I can hope.
Symphogear, though the alchemists in question don't show up until season 4 out of 5.
Alchemy as a concept is introduced earlier, but the Bavarian Illuminati in specific don't show up until then.
Symphogear is dumb, but its the kind of dumb that goes all-in on its insane lore and as such is a lot of fun to watch and better to steal bits and peices from.
> Why has no one used their newfound immortality to puzzle out how to do it for a male body now that they have the time.
Mostly because they have better things to do. Their boss is very focused on saving the world, after all. You may be living forever, but you wouldn't have been given that choice if the boss in question didn't already trust you completely and believe in your dedication to the cause above all else.
>Symphogear is dumb,
Isn’t the plot of it basically using music to power battle armor of some weird anime shit like that?
Very much so. The Symphogears themselves are broken pieces of powerful magical weapons (made before the Tower of Babel incident, or a version of it anyway) that have been patched together with modern superscience to get them working again. Because they were made pre-Babel, they are designed to respond to the True Language, the one destroyed by god. It turns out that singing is the closest thing we have left to that original language, because music trascends language bla bla bla, so the gear users have to keep singing at their magic powered armor to keep them working.
This is all an excuse to turn every single fight into its own unique choreographed music video.
https://streamable.com/u622v
A fun thing that Symphogear gets right in a way that makes it amusing as hell to watch is that the Symphogears are powered by magic, so that makes them *magical*. They may look like technology, but the rules they operate under do not make sense. They don't just have x-men powers that follow consistent rules, Symphogear armor will just *do shit* sometimes and after a while nobody bothers to even pretend they have a logical explanation for it, this is what happens when you dabble in forces you don't understand. Half of the cool shit the Gears do they use exactly once, and then never again, because the gear users are just kind of winging it and they don't know what they are doing any more than anyone else does. Its a power system that explicitly works *better for very stupid people* because a smart person has reasonable expectations that actually limit their gear from working to its full, unreasonable potential.
Alright, is that connected to why all the users seem to be female? And what the Hell are the fighting anyway?
>Its a power system that explicitly works *better for very stupid people* because a smart person has reasonable expectations that actually limit their gear from working to its full, unreasonable potential.
That hits the nail right on the head. I've been writing a Symphogear/Muv Luv crossover and part of the fun is that the MC is a former Eishi who constantly struggles with wringing the potential out of their Symphogear as the skills of piloting a mecha and operating a Symphogear can often be at odds.
>Muv Luv
I have never even heard of that series, what’s it about besides apparently mecha?
Grimdark sci-fi war series disguised as a generic harem rom-com, with a level of worldbuilding that rivals much older and more established franchises. The first entry, Extra is as generic a high school dating sim as you can get, but it exists to introduce the characters. Unlimited is the part where the story shifts to the sci-fi war drama, and it seeks to set up the setting and the universe. Alternative is the final entry, and has been rated the number 1 Visual Novel on VNDB for over a decade now over such famous entries as Steins;Gate, Umineko and Fate Stay/Night.
Why do you nogames always make incredibly assumptive leading question OPs that never specify an actual game or system?
Good question, logically they’d be made for sex purposes (do they be extreme attractive), defensive purposes (so they’re strong enough to fight off people looking to kill rich people), and should have extreme mana capabilities (to protect rich people)
Logically they’d be near perfect.
Maybe they’re hard-coded for obedience? Maybe a pheromone thing.
since homunculi are artificially made and didn't evolve, they don't have any instinct of preservation of their species. while they imitate the intellectual characteristic of humans and can learn to apreciate most things that humans like, and to abhor things that humans hate (like death), and maybe to feel kinship with other homunculi, there are still all learned things, absorbed by cultural osmosis from humans. the concept of propagating one's own species is more deep and complex, it doesn't passes to a creature that has no instincts.
Why would they be?
because making artificial life is generally more expensive and difficult than sticking a penis in a vegana and letting nature do rest.