Hello, and welcome to a hypothetical thread. In this thread, I (and anyone else who wants to) will explore the answers to hypothetical questions regarding the M:EM canon characters and storylines. Questions can be anything from "How likely is it that CHARACTER X will meet CHARACTER Y?" or "What are the chances of EVENT X occurring on PLANE Y?" Things like that.

Others can address these sorts of questions however they want, of course, but my process will, for the most part, be this: First I will pose the question, then I will give a brief background, and then I will answer the question on two different metrics. The first metric will be how likely something is to happen in-world, and the second will be how likely it is to happen in Meta, meaning how likely is it that it will actually get written.

As an example, a question might be "how likely is it that Vasilias will ever meet Molcru?" I would give a brief background of both characters first. Then I might say that, in-world, there's a decent chance of it happening (as, in fact, it was intended to for a time!), so maybe we're looking at a 50-60% chance or so. Then, I would say that in terms of Meta, the chance is basically 0%, because neither creator is currently around, and Molcru is still technically set to Private, so it's really just not going to happen.

Feel free to drop in a hypothetical question whenever you want to, although I suspect most of the "questions" will simply be musings from the writers around here... (alright, if I'm being REALLY honest, pretty much just me...) but I'm sure we'd all love the prompts.

Owing to the nature of this thread, there are bound to be spoilers for other stories, likely significant ones, so I will be putting my responses in spoiler blocks, and I'm guessing that much of the time, they will contain actual spoilers. But if there's anything anybody wants to know, just feel free to post!

Have fun.

What are the odds of… Daneera and Gale meeting in canon?

Oh, I always do enjoy these sorts of things. If any of my characters come up, I'd gladly weigh in on the scenario, but in the meantime, I'm going to brainstorm some hypotheticals I'd be intrigued to see play out. Admittedly, there is a line from Pitch Meetings that keeps running through my head


Ye gods, I completely spaced on Gale.
... and now I feel profoundly bad about that since I penned a story with her and Aamir that needed more work to get accepted.
mrrph...

To Barinellos's hypothetical, What are the odds... the Chessmasters would come into conflict with our other archvillains?

Okay, so for my breakdown:

There are three primary things to consider with this question.
1) If the conflict comes up that threatens either side. If an outsider comes in and for whatever reason, begins to impact one side of the conflict. The opposite side would then try to either accelerate the damage or exploit the outsider's intervention. Given the nature of the chessmasters, this would be fairly likely, so long as the intervention does not impact the larger plans. We'll call this 65/100 if the encounter were to occur. The chances of the encounter itself actually happening are only probably about 25%. The Chessmasters aren't exactly public about their overtures, usually being very secretive about their manipulations and working through agents, but said agents would bear the fingerprint of their conspiracy and that would probably cause most of the archvillains to question it once they noticed. Except Rishima, probably. She has more ego than subtlety.

2) If for some reason a chessmaster has to move into established territory. This is a lot thornier. While I rate the encounter as lower probability, at only around 15%, I rate the chance of conflict MUCH higher, at 80/100, because the chessmasters aren't given to conflict like that on a whim. They might try diplomacy, but if they initiate the contact, there's no "lose" in their dictionary. They WILL accomplish what they set out for or die trying. And if they were to fail, that's where the peculiarity of scenario 3 also factors in.

3) Someone threatens The Game. The Chessmasters hate each other. They would do very nearly anything in their power to hurt the other, including sacrificing virtually anything they possess. They truly want the other to die... but only at their hands. If an interloper had managed to actually defeat one of the Chessmasters, then the common interest of The Game would see an armistice as they BOTH turn to crushing the outsider. If one of them fell, then the vengeance heaped upon the victor would be unmeasured because there is no point without The Game. They would spend every resource at their disposal to DESTROY the person and their world. The chances of the encounter are probably something like 3% of anybody pushing them that far, but if they did, there's a 100/100 chance they'd react like that.

Now, I will say that in terms of raw magical might, the Chessmasters are high tier, but they aren't that much stronger than most of the archvillains, but the bulk of their strength is in the control they can exert on other agents and the chilling extent to which they plan or can react. They are inhumanly cunning and neither have much humanity left, so they have very few limits. But if the pair worked in tandem, whoever got on their bad side probably wouldn't be able to bring to bear enough arcane power to do much more than survive.

So, to further this line of thought, and to tie in with something I mentioned, what do you think the odds are of Zhiran taking notice of, or actually doing something about, the Chessmasters' Game? We know that Zhiran lost to Rishima (with extenuating circumstances) but we also know that he's basically our "best of the best" with regards to pure power. And, while what we saw on Aliavelli isn't the same level of destruction we saw from the Cabal where entire planes were Obliterated, we did see a possible move toward high-levels of destruction, which might draw his attention.

I would hazard that the chances of Zhiran taking note of The Game are relatively low, probably only around a 5% chance. I'll explain.

It's important to dig into the two motivating factors when it comes to Zhiran.
The first is the more recent, as he's waking back up to being, essentially, a person. He has a lot of things that weigh on him that transpired while he was essentially omnipotent, but now that he's more grounded and feeling the effects of at least a fraction of his age, he's much more sedentary, more concerned with the protection and comfort of those around him* and making sure his legacy can carry on in his students and his studies. Despite his, almost literally, world shaking power, he'd rather do nothing so much as listen to the harp and drink a nice hot cup of lemon tea. (just one sugar, but loooads of lemon juice)

That is, after a fashion, still a testament to his ego. While he's now a grandfatherly figure, his entire worldview is still dominated by himself. He very much sees his world as revolving around himself and his interests, and things outside that purview rarely intrude into his domain, certainly rarely enough that he is moved to act. You see it both in his interaction with the Cabal (and the WORLD he was on at the time for that matter) and even relatively more recently with Rishima. He did not seek them out, but was rather thrust into their conflict where he began by dictating his terms.

So unless the Chessmasters brought their war to his doorstep, he wouldn't act. He likely wouldn't even act if they just came to the world since The Academy is in a bubble plane attached to said world. The only reason he's gone after Rishima is because, as he sees it, it's unfinished business, not so much a desire to protect anybody except in the most abstract way.

Really, it'd take someone fairly bombastic, like Rishima or Ellia... Maaaaybe the Dual Walkers, for him to stir, and even then, depending on circumstances, it'd likely only be a warning. In this, someone like Raiker or the Chessmaster's subtlety works in their favor because he likely wouldn't even notice their influence because he thinks himself so far above the world. But he's TRYING to live amongst its people, at least, but unless he really knows you... you're just one in tens of millions of people he's met in passing.

*You could really see this in the War of the Spark when he chose not to congregate with the Gatewatch, but instead set up his own haven apart from the majority of the conflict. He could have easily dispatched the God Eternals, but they never got to him and he didn't go out to join the battle.

Here's a query to ponder on, inspired by another encounter of a card reader and poet:

Suppose, if you will, an encounter between Alessa and Raiker.

What are the odds of...Alessa and Raiker encountering each other?

What do you think the odds are that we'll ever see a Blobar planeswalker?

@Brentain: I would have to agree with pretty much all of your points here. I was hoping the Blobars would be a bit more memorable, but then, I did create them, and tend to have a very strange memory for things like this anyway.

Thanks for writing this up! It was definitely interesting hearing someone else's take on this one, considering I was the closest to the question!