Fate
I had everything under control, until I pushed that monkey a little too far. Suddenly, it stood up and had a thought, and nothing has been simple since.
Long, long ago, the world we know as Earth was nothing but a turbulent ball of magma. Solar radiation bombarded its surface, for it hadn't yet developed an atmosphere. In this world of brimstone and chaos, a consciousness took form.
The being known as Fate is as old as the Earth, and will persist until the end of the Earth as well. It is the guiding hand that has sculpted the destiny of the world from the very beginning. At first, the consciousness was hardly sapient. It mindlessly sculpted the continents and then allowed the magma to consume them once more. Oceans spread, the surface of the world took form, and then, everything changed.
Life happened. As cells began to grow and spread, life, in a way, happened to the consciousness as well. The world became more complex. Soon (relative to an ageless being) it was guiding the futures of not just rocks, but complex organisms. Decisions had to be made, and interest was to be had. The mindless being that had sculpted the land developed a mind, and created a language with which to think.
She called herself Fate, along with deciding she was a she and not an it.
The Role of Fate
Fate is the guiding hand of the world's destiny. She is not a god, and has no power over creation. She did not create the world and cannot now create life, but she can influence the course of events.
In the beginning, this was easy. Though she cannot manipulate living things like puppets, she can insert ideas and instincts into animals to push them where she wills. In this manner, she gleefully oversaw the evolution of dinosaurs, until she grew bored with giant scaly things and ensured the environmental effects of the meteor put an end to them.
Her existence became difficult when she began to experiment with monkeys on the savanna. Her aim was to create an intelligent ape, but then that ape surprised her by developing a sapient mind of its own. These minds got more and more complex, until she couldn't control them anymore. The best she can do is inspire ideas, but it is up to the individual human to decide if they will act on them.
Fate has taken this development in good spirits. Her job is much more difficult now that there are millions or sapient creatures making choices and modifying the world, but she must admit that it makes things more interesting. Her plans for the world are more complex now, and she gleefully writes out potential biographies for characters she hopes to push the world into creating.
Powers and Limitations
She is far from omnipotent. For example, she could influence the wind and weather to push storm clouds over a mountain and encourage the build up of snow, and then decide when a single rock's tension with snap to trigger an avalanche. She could not conjure snow out of nowhere in the middle of summer and drop it on a town.
For this reason, all of Fate's plans are plotted out years - centuries - in advance. As an author plots a story, Fate has written out the broad strokes of the world's future and continually adds to it. When a human makes a decision that goes against her script, she changes her plans and rewrites the world to get things back on track as much as she can.
She is closer to being omniscient, though not entirely. She can't read a person's mind, and she doesn't know exactly what they will decide to do. However, she has an innate understanding of every person's history and personality and an uncanny ability at knowing how someone is most likely to act. Surprises do happen, but she generally knows who to give ideas to in order to get someone to act on them. Her biggest problem is not people failing to act on suggestions she prompts them with, but people coming up with their own plans entirely separate from her.
Residence
Fate resides in a domain she created for herself which exists apart from time and reality. Getting to it is a bit of a challenge:Only one human is known to have travelled to her domain and come back again in the past thousand years: Leonardo da Vinci, which led to the deciphering of Babelian. He was vague on the details, but described entering a study lined in books, in a house designed in an eclectic mix of the history's best architecture and art.
The majority of Christian Europe believe da Vinci to have stepped into an atrium of heaven and that this was perhaps the residence of a saint or an archangel.
Mental characteristics
Sexuality
Fate is entirely asexual. Although she presently prefers a human form, she considers humans to be little more than very smart monkeys and has no interest in them.
Belief
Although Fate exists and is one of the most significant factors in the course of history, very few humans in the world actually acknowledge her. The belief in Fate as a conscious being is known as Sortism. Most people perceive fate to be simple an extension of their god or gods' will.
Children
Gender
Strictly speaking, the concept of gender or sex does not really apply to Fate. However, she thinks of herself as feminine.
Her current form was chosen at the dawn of humanity, when she first realized how intriguing this group of apes truly was. Very few humans throughout all the thousands of years of humanity have ever witnessed her, but a modern human would describe her as resembling an African woman of immaculate beauty.
Assigning an age to her is difficult, though a best guess would be somewhere in the late twenties to thirties range. Her face bears no signs of aging, but her eyes hold an ancient wisdom that stands out from her youthful appearance.
