Banishing divine card when temporarily closing with none in hand

[Kimchi]

Hey all, had a situation last night where a friend encountered the villian. In another location, I was going to temporarily close it but I had to banish one of my good divine cards to do so, or else keep the game going. I ended up not doing it, but it brought up a question. What if I was to temporarily close with a requirement as banishing a divine card in my hand, but don't have a divine card in my hand?

I'd assume if I'm following the golden rules, and since it would be impossible to fulfill this criteria, I would ignore the text and temporarily close it. But I'm hoping to get clarification. Thanks in advance!

[Scripted]

When it is impossible to fulfil a *requirement* you can't do the action. So, no, you couldn't temp close the location.

[Sandslice]

When it comes to closing locations: it's impossible to fulfill the criterion (banishing a divine card,) therefore you do not close the location.

The way to look at it is this.

1. If a power allows you to attempt to close this location, do X. If you do X, the location is permanently closed; otherwise it is not closed.

2. If a villain is encountered at another location, do X. If you do X, the location is closed until the end of the encounter; otherwise it is not closed.

[skizzerz]

This is indeed a case of the golden rule telling you to ignore impossible instructions, however not in the way you want it to. From the rulebook (emphasis mine):

S&S Rulebook, page 15 wrote:

When you have the opportunity and want to close a location, do whatever the location’s When Closing section says. Locations often require specific checks to close them; otherwise, they list specific tasks you must perform. (If a location says you may close it automatically, you don’t need to do anything else.) If the When Closing text offers multiple options separated by “or,” you must make your choice of options before you make any rolls or play any cards. If you succeed at meeting the When Closing requirement, search the location deck for villains. If you find any, banish all non-villain cards from the location deck. The location is not closed—but at least you know where the villains are!

If you didn’t find any villains, perform the When Permanently Closed effect: First, apply any effects that say “before closing.” Then banish all of the cards from the location deck; it is now closed.

Now let's look at the card. The When Closing lists one thing: banish a divine card. We don't have any so we can't do that per the golden rule. There are no other options (due to not having any "or"s), so we cannot do anything else. Since we didn't banish a divine card and there are no other options available to close the location, we quite obviously did not succeed at any of the When Closing requirements because we didn't even do any of them. As a result, we don't do any of the things listed in the rulebook (searching the deck for villains, doing the When Permanently Closed effect, or banishing cards from the location deck as all of these hinge on succeeding at the When Closing requirements) and the location is not closed.

[Kimchi]

Ah I see. Awesome, thanks for such a quick and detailed response guys!