Editing Nasuverse (section)

=== Gaia and her Children ===
''(The following contains a bunch of conjecture. Some of this stuff is strongly implied, but never stated. Take it as a somewhat romanticized retelling.)''

Planets are not quite what they seem through a telescope. The Earth is a cosmos in and of itself, consisting of many layers that do not necessarily agree even on their physics or other fundamental laws. It may or may not be moving toward the model embodied by every other planet in the system (and the Moon), where they eventually become barren rocks inhabited by a single ultimate lifeform (presumably getting there by eliminating all others), known as a Type or an Ultimate One. Said lifeform is also considered the will of the planet it represents, because there's nothing else there that has a will. It also follows its own rules, notably not necessarily subscribing to Earth's idea of death. Aliens ''do'' exist but so little is known about them that they don't really show up.

That's all important, because, as it turns out, Earth doesn't have a Type, and its inhabitants are abnormally powerful compared to the others. In the Middle Ages, a wielder of True Magic named Zelretch fought Type-Moon one on one and barely won, mainly because his opponent did not know what True Magic was. In the apocalyptic universe of Notes, humanity survives a complete loss of fertility on Earth by genetically engineering itself and eliminates Type after Type, though at a great cost and while probably dying out before getting through them all. Perhaps humanity ''is'' a Type, Evangelion-style, or perhaps one just hasn't been born yet but will be terrifyingly powerful if it emerges.

In the ancient times, deep within the Age of Gods, Gaia tried to birth many children of all sizes and shapes. Today most of them are hiding on the Other Side of the World, but some are still around, moreso in the Tsuki timeline than Fate. Such beings have an innate link to Gaia, they are made whole, and perfect, fulfilling their duty. But while they are 'perfect' individually, they do not perfectly encompass what exactly Earth is.

The final experiment was a species that was perfectly imperfect – Humanity. As the ages went by, humanity's link with the earth waned, whether by design or not. All that was on the planet until then was governed by Gaia, the will of the planet, but humanity had its own will: Alaya. As Gaia corrected things that happened on Earth to protect itself and its children, it now had to accommodate for Alaya, which adjusted the world also, protecting humans at the expense of all else. In a bid to preserve the link between gods and humans, the former created the demigod Gilgamesh, who would serve as a bridge between the two groups, [[Not As Planned|only for him to tell them to go fuck themselves, become the first hero of humanity, and eliminate any possibility of a reconciliation]].

There were multiple Ages of Gods that we know of, though we don't have many further details about them. They were separated by periods such as the current one, where the more magical side of the planet retreated. However, the Age of Gods most prominently featured in the Nasuverse may have been the last, and it's all downhill from here. It should be noted here that an Age of Gods is an interesting time to live in due to reality's multilayered nature; the mythology formed during the time was mostly based on observable reality, and you could find the Underworld in Mesopotamia by just digging down. Gods were Gaia-made machines that personified their respective phenomena, and most stories of them acting human stem from them going insane as their colleagues die and they are forced to take on their roles, which they were not designed for. As all the gods died or left for the Other Side, the laws of physics filled their roles.

Long ago, the Human Order began to overtake the planet's influence for good. This is the end of the Age of Gods. By the time of King Arthur, its last vestiges were fading, and Gaia's older children have withdrawn from sight. They did so in no small part because ether, which is like air to them and forms the basis of magic, began disappearing from the atmosphere. A modern human would be unable to survive in the Age of Gods due to the heavy concentration of ether. To combat the growing problem of being unable to conjure spells from thin air by just speaking a few words, King Solomon created modern magic, which uses the body's (rather limited) reserves of ether instead. Hence, modern mages are much weaker than their Age of Gods counterparts, though those would be powerless in the modern world without some extensive preparations.

The Earth was concerned about the unusual situation and called upon Crimson Moon, the ultimate lifeform of Earth's satellite, to help return things to "normal". He made immensely powerful copies of himself known as True Ancestors, which were of Earthly origin and, therefore, accepted by the planet. Unfortunately, they inherited his bloodlust, [[Eldar|going completely nuts unless they adhered to a strict ascetic lifestyle]]. The humans who were bit by True Ancestors and were strong enough to handle it became vampires in their own right, being called Dead Apostles and initially forced to serve the True Ancestors. 

To eliminate their maddened brethren, the True Ancestors made a particularly powerful member of their kin, which doubled as a potential vessel for Crimson Moon in case he died. The plan went swimmingly until she, previously kept away from human blood, was made to taste some by a psychotic human and went mad herself, [[Fail|massacring almost every sane True Ancestor]] before coming to her senses and imprisoning herself, only leaving to hunt the asshole responsible (who extended the chase by body-hopping, which she could do nothing about). The Dead Apostles saw an opportunity to revolt, having become remarkably strong in their own right (to the point where one is also a potential Crimson Moon vessel), and finished the job. Meanwhile, as he'd expected, Crimson Moon died in one of his confrontations, though the potential for him to return still remains.

From there, depending on humanity's various actions, there are two options:
*'''A)''' Humanity embraces modernity, resulting in a strong Human Order. History will be able to manifest through such methods as servant summoning, but that same power becomes a danger to itself, and the world. This route leads to the Fate-side of the world.
*'''B)''' Humanity holds itself back, or loses a few fights, resulting in a healthier but much more dangerous world, where vampires and other nonhumans are much more prominent and threaten to overtake the world. This is colloquially known as the Tsuki-side of the setting.

Whichever the case, most of this stuff is not common knowledge. But unlike the various kinds of Masquerade in the World of Darkness, the masquerade in the Nasuverse isn't necessarily strictly maintained. It is more the result of magi being naturally secretive and organizations such as the Church preferring to keep their dealings under wraps, combined with a general waning of their influence and popular dismissal of old tales of magic and monsters as myth. Unethical as most magical dealings are (they get up to some really fucked up shit in Nasuverse works, like [[Grimdark|trapping an entire apartment complex in an endless cycle of degenerating into psychosis, murdering each other, and coming back to life with their memories reset just to gain an insight into death]]), members of that world naturally prefer to police each other to prevent publicity lest their own eugenics programs, homunculus abuse, and various highly lethal mishaps become known. The secrecy also makes it easier to kill each other for goodies and hidden knowledge (which is allowed and, as seen below, sometimes even encouraged), of course. With that said, there are continuities where mages come out into the open, most notably Fate/EXTRA, where [[Shadowrun|magic embraces the internet]] and old mage families use their wealth and power to effectively rule the world.

The underground's main players are the Mage Association, split into three branches, and the Church, which instead seeks to eliminate Magecraft and the supernatural completely, going as far as they are allowed to get away with. Despite their natural enmity, the two have to constantly cooperate to deal with dangerous rogues. Besides them, there are plenty of others: hedge magi who were never taught properly, people who possess a highly specialized Magic Circuit with instinctive abilities, generally called 'psychics', and people descended from a supernatural being crossbred with a human, or 'mixed bloods'.