藤丸立香 (Fujimaru Ritsuka) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightofchaldea) wrote2018-09-08 11:17 pm
lightofchaldea) wrote2018-09-08 11:17 pm
Notes on technical canon things
Since as far as I can tell none of the wikis actually cover some of this stuff I may as well ramble here! not that most of it's relevant to RP but
CONTAINS UNMARKED SPOILERS
即時召喚
Literally "Instant Summon", probably better rendered as "Temporary Summon".
Basically there's always been an apparent gameplay/story segregation in effect where you can have all kinds of servants in your party without them being present in or even mentioned in the actual story.
This changes in the Shimosa chapter of Epic of Remnant, however. At the beginning of the chapter your party is locked and you're only able to use the story support Musashi. And she comments on this and remarks that the Chaldea servants you usually have fight for you didn't show up. Then in a subsequent battle, the story scene leading up to it shows the protag doing something with the command spells and you're able to use your party as normal again, hooray! And Musashi comments on that, too.
This gets referred to over the course of these scenes as "即時召喚" which makes it sound like it's a very temporary/brief kind of summoning that can only be sustained for the duration of the battle. Considering that realistically speaking, most battles are probably over in seconds and only major, significant bossfights would stretch that into minutes, this seems to carry with it the implication that it's difficult/strenuous to keep the servants manifested.
And considering that later in the same chapter Shuten manages to kidnap the protagonist without having servants summoned on her immediately it's probably safe to say it also requires concentration. Which means that the protagonist typically needs at least one servant physically present to buy enough time to do the temporary summon in the first place.
Where this gets interesting is when Kotarou shows up in section five of the chapter and the protag and Musashi fill him in on what's happened so far while he's recuperating in Tama's inn. His response to the bit about the Temporary Summon is this:
"せ・・・・・・戦闘時、に・・・・・・召喚、を・・・・・・？それは、きっと・・・・・・霊基の影を・・・・・・一時的、に・・・・・・。 借り、て・・・・・・いるのかも・・・・・・しれ・・・・・・ませ・・・・・・。"
Without all the extra pauses, this reads "Summoned at the time of battle? That's most likely borrowing a shadow of the saint graph for an instant."
What's interesting about this is that Kotarou's wording specifically calls it a shadow of the saint graph. Combined with Musashi's observations and the fact that the servants in your party only fight and otherwise don't interact with anything before being immediately (automatically?) dismissed again, this makes it sound as though your party is effectively a form of shadow servants based on the saint graphs registered with Chaldea.
Which if this is an accurate interpretation of these scenes, would really explain a lot.
It's also worth noting that even later in Anastasia, when the protagonist and Mash go to summon a servant as an ally on Holmes's instructions, Holmes remarks that when a servant is summoned and given physical form by mere human magecraft, they will naturally disappear again almost immediately if they don't have something to be bound to such as a master. At the same time, he also instructs the protagonist to talk to and form a contract with the servant as soon as the servant is summoned, which means that the "immediately" disappearing bit is still not so immediate as to preclude at least a brief conversation. ("だが、それだけではすぐに消えてしまう。人の魔術によって召喚されたサーヴァントを世界に留めるには依り代・・・・・・要石となるマスターが必要不可欠だからだ。 キミの仕事は、現れたサーヴァントと対話し、すぐに契約する事にある．") So if the same principle applies to the temporary summon, the servants would be physically manifested long enough for a single battle at a time, but no more.
Altogether this seems to effectively explain away where your party of servants is coming from, how they get there, and why their presence is so insignificant to the plot of a chapter that it's virtually never mentioned. As far as the servants (or other non-servant NPCs) are concerned, you're just a mage summoning temporary familiars that disappear the moment the battle's over, not people they can talk to or who stick around to help with other things.
(Of course, this explanation is all the more hilarious when you consider the protagonist technically isn't a magus at all and can only do any of this thanks to borrowing magic power from/being supported by Chaldea...)
Timeline math
Figuring out the protagonist's exact age is a lost cause thanks to some of the events, but that's not the part of the timeline I'm talking about anyway. Basically, the story chapters and events give a rough but imperfect guideline as to how long in-universe each part takes. There's still no clear-cut official answer that I know of for most of it, but contextually we have a few clues:
Most actual singularities take at least a few days to resolve because there's references to eating, sleeping, etc. A rough guideline might be that they average is something around the amount of time that the chapter-related gachas run (typically a couple weeks). Some singularities take less, others (America, Babylon) would take more. A few events (Demon Tower, Chaldea Summer Memory/Heat Odyssey) are explicitly referenced to take place within a short time (days or less).
Going from this, and assuming that the first year in Chaldea's timeline ran roughly from Fuyuki to just after Camelot, we can try to see how well all of this fits in. I'm using some very loose estimates, mind, based on a combination of whether there's any indication of time passing within the event (for example, Accel Order takes place over much of the timeline of the 4th Grail War, while much of the Valentines mayhem obviously takes place on the day of) as well as what's reasonably possible (assuming servants sprinting and some spacial distortion thanks to the singularity, there would still be days of travel time in America).
Singularities
Fuyuki: 1-2 days
Orleans, Septem, Okeanos, London, Camelot: average 1 week each
America: 3-4 weeks
Total: 65 days (approximately)
Events
Moon Dango, Gudaguda, Singing Pumpkin, Saber Wars, Valentines, Garden of Sinners, Prison Tower, Counterfeit Spirits, Rashomon, Onigashima: short events, average a maybe 1-3 days each
Nero Fest, Santa Alter, Accel Order, Sanzang: longer events, average perhaps 1 week (max) each
Total: 58 days (approximately)
Not counting Mash, as of the 1 year mark there are 126 possible servants available in Chaldea, all with their own interludes. Some interludes take place over the course of actual excursions; others merely in the span of a few dreams. So to play it safe let's assume that it takes at least one day per servant, and we get 126 days approximately spent on interludes.
Strengthening quests can be ruled out since that's a game mechanics thing, though it's safe to assume there's simulator time used (which may probably overlap with interlude scenes as well).
Altogether, using some of the higher ends of the estimates, this comes to 249 days out of 365. Which leaves over 100 days left over. Even bumping up the timelines of the singularities and events, we can safely add a couple months (so, say, 60 days) and end up with time left over.
Of course, this is only accounting for the first (approximate) year, there's still more singularities and events that come after. However, the summer event is actually explicitly only 1 hour long in Chaldea time (Romani comments on that at the end of the event, only one hour had passed in Chaldea between contact being lost and being reestablished) and there's definitely days of "downtime" between the schedules of events and story chapter releases where interludes for new servants can fit in.
So in conclusion, it's entirely possible timeline-wise for all the events and all the interludes to actually occur in canon. Chaldea is just a busy place, apparently.
... I'll probably add more as I think of it but that's all for the moment.
CONTAINS UNMARKED SPOILERS
即時召喚
Literally "Instant Summon", probably better rendered as "Temporary Summon".
Basically there's always been an apparent gameplay/story segregation in effect where you can have all kinds of servants in your party without them being present in or even mentioned in the actual story.
This changes in the Shimosa chapter of Epic of Remnant, however. At the beginning of the chapter your party is locked and you're only able to use the story support Musashi. And she comments on this and remarks that the Chaldea servants you usually have fight for you didn't show up. Then in a subsequent battle, the story scene leading up to it shows the protag doing something with the command spells and you're able to use your party as normal again, hooray! And Musashi comments on that, too.
This gets referred to over the course of these scenes as "即時召喚" which makes it sound like it's a very temporary/brief kind of summoning that can only be sustained for the duration of the battle. Considering that realistically speaking, most battles are probably over in seconds and only major, significant bossfights would stretch that into minutes, this seems to carry with it the implication that it's difficult/strenuous to keep the servants manifested.
And considering that later in the same chapter Shuten manages to kidnap the protagonist without having servants summoned on her immediately it's probably safe to say it also requires concentration. Which means that the protagonist typically needs at least one servant physically present to buy enough time to do the temporary summon in the first place.
Where this gets interesting is when Kotarou shows up in section five of the chapter and the protag and Musashi fill him in on what's happened so far while he's recuperating in Tama's inn. His response to the bit about the Temporary Summon is this:
"せ・・・・・・戦闘時、に・・・・・・召喚、を・・・・・・？それは、きっと・・・・・・霊基の影を・・・・・・一時的、に・・・・・・。 借り、て・・・・・・いるのかも・・・・・・しれ・・・・・・ませ・・・・・・。"
Without all the extra pauses, this reads "Summoned at the time of battle? That's most likely borrowing a shadow of the saint graph for an instant."
What's interesting about this is that Kotarou's wording specifically calls it a shadow of the saint graph. Combined with Musashi's observations and the fact that the servants in your party only fight and otherwise don't interact with anything before being immediately (automatically?) dismissed again, this makes it sound as though your party is effectively a form of shadow servants based on the saint graphs registered with Chaldea.
Which if this is an accurate interpretation of these scenes, would really explain a lot.
It's also worth noting that even later in Anastasia, when the protagonist and Mash go to summon a servant as an ally on Holmes's instructions, Holmes remarks that when a servant is summoned and given physical form by mere human magecraft, they will naturally disappear again almost immediately if they don't have something to be bound to such as a master. At the same time, he also instructs the protagonist to talk to and form a contract with the servant as soon as the servant is summoned, which means that the "immediately" disappearing bit is still not so immediate as to preclude at least a brief conversation. ("だが、それだけではすぐに消えてしまう。人の魔術によって召喚されたサーヴァントを世界に留めるには依り代・・・・・・要石となるマスターが必要不可欠だからだ。 キミの仕事は、現れたサーヴァントと対話し、すぐに契約する事にある．") So if the same principle applies to the temporary summon, the servants would be physically manifested long enough for a single battle at a time, but no more.
Altogether this seems to effectively explain away where your party of servants is coming from, how they get there, and why their presence is so insignificant to the plot of a chapter that it's virtually never mentioned. As far as the servants (or other non-servant NPCs) are concerned, you're just a mage summoning temporary familiars that disappear the moment the battle's over, not people they can talk to or who stick around to help with other things.
(Of course, this explanation is all the more hilarious when you consider the protagonist technically isn't a magus at all and can only do any of this thanks to borrowing magic power from/being supported by Chaldea...)
Timeline math
Figuring out the protagonist's exact age is a lost cause thanks to some of the events, but that's not the part of the timeline I'm talking about anyway. Basically, the story chapters and events give a rough but imperfect guideline as to how long in-universe each part takes. There's still no clear-cut official answer that I know of for most of it, but contextually we have a few clues:
Most actual singularities take at least a few days to resolve because there's references to eating, sleeping, etc. A rough guideline might be that they average is something around the amount of time that the chapter-related gachas run (typically a couple weeks). Some singularities take less, others (America, Babylon) would take more. A few events (Demon Tower, Chaldea Summer Memory/Heat Odyssey) are explicitly referenced to take place within a short time (days or less).
Going from this, and assuming that the first year in Chaldea's timeline ran roughly from Fuyuki to just after Camelot, we can try to see how well all of this fits in. I'm using some very loose estimates, mind, based on a combination of whether there's any indication of time passing within the event (for example, Accel Order takes place over much of the timeline of the 4th Grail War, while much of the Valentines mayhem obviously takes place on the day of) as well as what's reasonably possible (assuming servants sprinting and some spacial distortion thanks to the singularity, there would still be days of travel time in America).
Singularities
Fuyuki: 1-2 days
Orleans, Septem, Okeanos, London, Camelot: average 1 week each
America: 3-4 weeks
Total: 65 days (approximately)
Events
Moon Dango, Gudaguda, Singing Pumpkin, Saber Wars, Valentines, Garden of Sinners, Prison Tower, Counterfeit Spirits, Rashomon, Onigashima: short events, average a maybe 1-3 days each
Nero Fest, Santa Alter, Accel Order, Sanzang: longer events, average perhaps 1 week (max) each
Total: 58 days (approximately)
Not counting Mash, as of the 1 year mark there are 126 possible servants available in Chaldea, all with their own interludes. Some interludes take place over the course of actual excursions; others merely in the span of a few dreams. So to play it safe let's assume that it takes at least one day per servant, and we get 126 days approximately spent on interludes.
Strengthening quests can be ruled out since that's a game mechanics thing, though it's safe to assume there's simulator time used (which may probably overlap with interlude scenes as well).
Altogether, using some of the higher ends of the estimates, this comes to 249 days out of 365. Which leaves over 100 days left over. Even bumping up the timelines of the singularities and events, we can safely add a couple months (so, say, 60 days) and end up with time left over.
Of course, this is only accounting for the first (approximate) year, there's still more singularities and events that come after. However, the summer event is actually explicitly only 1 hour long in Chaldea time (Romani comments on that at the end of the event, only one hour had passed in Chaldea between contact being lost and being reestablished) and there's definitely days of "downtime" between the schedules of events and story chapter releases where interludes for new servants can fit in.
So in conclusion, it's entirely possible timeline-wise for all the events and all the interludes to actually occur in canon. Chaldea is just a busy place, apparently.
... I'll probably add more as I think of it but that's all for the moment.