Fate and Free Will

The subjects of fate and free will are rarely spoken of in concrete terms. The best references available for this subject are all teachings of Istus, the goddess of fate. Istus teaches that fate and free will both exist, and are in fact tightly intertwined with each other. The church uses many metaphors for this, but the most popular one goes as follows:
Imagine time as a string of yarn. We exist at a certain point on a certain thread in this string, which we can call our timeline. When we make meaningful decisions, we jump from our thread to one adjacent to it. This is known as free will. Minor changes in the world result, but the vast majority of these decisions are ultimately meaningless. After all, all threads in the same string of yarn will ultimately lead to the same place. This is known as fate.
However, occasionally our string will intersect with other strings. These strings lead to other places, alternative futures, with their own fate, different to our own. At these intersections, which we will call "knots", some decisions may result in leaping from one string to the other. Such decisions are said to "defy fate", and are actually very common.
However, even after jumping to another string, we may soon discover that this, too, leads to the same destination. This is why we so often meet our fate on the road we take to avoid it; we had not truly escaped fate, only taken another route to the same destination. Some events are easy to escape from, and others are nearly inescapable. You might easily choose to live in the east or in the west, but you will almost certainly grow old and die.
The church dedicates itself to observing these paths, and often tells prophecies of future events that will be difficult to escape. Not all prophecies come true, but most do. The church also works to identify those whose decisions could result in significant divergence from the fated path. Such people are known as Hands of Fate. Istus teaches her followers that the hands of fate are not in her domain. Instead, she says that her domain lies within the hands of fate.

Type

Natural