Reasonable Conjecture on the Mechanics of Phantasmoon Games

Reasonable Conjecture on the Mechanics of Phantasmoon Games

As everyone knows, the Phantasmoon Games involve eight Supplicants competing together. They offer up miracles to Aha and Planarcadia, the one who gathers enough Wishpower wins the game and will receive the divine authority for one minute from The Laughter. But dear readers, have you ever pondered a serious question? Just how much is "enough Wishpower" to declare a Supplicant victorious? If we were to convert the Wishpower stored in a Supplicant's mask into Wishbae, would it be 1 billion Wishbae? Or even more? You don't know, right? Well, funny thing is, I don't know either. Next up, I'll break down the two most compelling conjectures and share my own take on them. Extreme Maximalist Theory The victory condition for the Phantasmoon Games is a massive and clearly defined Wishpower quota, one that can only be achieved through sustained, planet-wide attention converging on a single individual. The vast majority of people in arcadia, and even many Wishpower scholars, share this view, which was somewhat validated when the Department of Aberration Defense discovered a way to enter the Phantasmoon Courtyard and gained the ability to partially track game progress by observing the altars corresponding to each mask. However, the observation results from the altars are actually more akin to a percentage of completion rather than quantifiable numbers. And with that, there's been no shortage of those who use this very evidence to challenge the Extreme Maximalist Theory in the academic circles of Wishpower. Aha's Mood Theory Since this is Aha's game, wouldn't setting a fixed quota make things far too boring? This theory posits that the Phantasmoon Games, and even Phantasmoon itself, are one massive, divine-crafted black box. What kind of actions can stir up Wishpower? Countless studies have already proven that the generation of Wishpower is influenced by multiple factors, such as trending developments, social environments, educational systems, and so on. And all of a Supplicant's Wishpower is stored in their mask, making it impossible to observe the exact total amount stored, even by the end of the game. Looking back at the records, we can't help but notice that sometimes it seems like the winner fulfilled the requirements in just a few days. Other times, the Supplicants had to give it their all just to scrape together enough Wishpower. If that's the case, then maybe Wishpower was just a smokescreen from the start. The real winning condition was probably making Aha laugh genuinely. Dynamic Flux Theory The following is just my modest thought offered for your consideration after drawing from the wisdom of those who came before me. Hereby, I shall present it for your amusement. First, we can safely say that the winning condition for the game must involve an absolutely massive amount of Wishpower. Otherwise, there would be no need for Aha to make such a big spectacle of hosting the game and drawing the gaze of everyone in the arcadia. Secondly, even though we can't precisely measure a Supplicant's Wishpower, scholars have tried to extrapolate a rough range based on everyday experience and data... but the results were confounding. The total amount of Wishpower flowing through each recorded Phantasmoon Games follows absolutely no pattern whatsoever. There was even one year where the Wishpower needed to win was double that of the previous cycle. What factor, then, have we overlooked? The answer lies with the people of arcadia themselves. As a game designed to fulfill arcadians' wishes and harvest Wishpower, perhaps the victory condition is a two-way street. As the eras shift, so do the people's perceptions and needs regarding Elation. When arcadia's overall emotion runs low, naturally, more effort is required to satisfy it. Under this hypothesis, arcadia functions as a single, giant entity with fluctuating desires, and the Supplicant who can sate this entity is the one who claims victory in the Phantasmoon Games. Seen in this light, does the fact that the Phantasmoon Games have returned after only fifteen years not suggest that we have become increasingly greedy and ever more difficult to satisfy?