Grrl Power #457 – Arcanum++ has better mobile support
This is kind of a weird page, in that Sydney asks a question and it doesn’t quite get answered on this page, but some of you can probably see what Ingsol is winding up to. I found the aside with the spells as programs too enticing to edit out.
In a post computer world, it’s difficult to not think of spells as nothing more than code. Really I guess that’s what they are, but you don’t often hear people talking about “My fire dart spell is almost ready, but it kept crashing at this function loop. I found a Yoda condition and fixed it, but now it hangs and just bleeds heat until I cancel the spell or run out of mana.”
Magic would probably have different enchanting languages depending on your school of magic at least. Actually it would be a mess because every branch of magic would probably have variants on common enchanting languages, and proper enchanting , that is, imbuing an artifact with magical properties would probably take a different language than casting a quick spell, vs. an extended ceremony designed to conjure something. Or maybe there’s one language which does it all, but not as efficiently as single purpose languages, and there would probably be forums where people are shitty and defensive about their favorite language, or where they share moronically written enchantments their co-workers wrote, just like in real life.
I like “Arcanum++” because it’s so on the nose and answers Sydney’s question without ever saying it directly. Even if you’ve never done any programming on your life you’ve probably heard of C++.
There was some debate in the comments from the previous page as to whether all these creatures hiding in plain sight meant something untoward was going on. (Sorry I didn’t getting around to throwing my two cents in with the comments, but I was weirdly busy with stuff last week so I’ll put something here.) Obviously, there’s a case to be made since 1) someone could be making out with a lizardman at a club (for example) and not know it, which is… I guess bad, if you’re racist against lizardmen, but if there’s no detrimental consequence to making out with one, like some kind of flu you can only get from sticking your tongue in their mouth, it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me. Obviously your mileage will vary with that one. I think as long as someone is honest about who they are, it doesn’t really matter what they are? I end that sentence with a question mark because I imagine I could think of examples where that’s not true if I gave it some more thought.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been lying this whole time, I’m not brunette, I’m really a… blonde!”
“You monster why would you lie to me!?”
2) And this is the big one really, some of these creatures do prey on humans. That said, the ones that do generally try not to kill or otherwise traumatize them. Most Vampires are just fine with willing victims, and there are small pockets of people who do know about them, (much fewer than know everything). Obviously as with any population like this, there are going to be some who are going to delight in tormenting or killing their prey, but as Ingsol said, they police their own. Keeping their more rampant members in check allows them to work in good faith with the government
Since I don’t plan on dissecting every aspect of The Veil in the comic, I’ll expand a little on it here. It doesn’t alter memories. If someone sees something in the raw, they either have to rationalize it, go running through the streets trying to tell everyone, (usually winding up in therapy,) or become one of those quiet wierdos who insists they saw a centaur at the corner of 5th and main and finds some private message board where he can commiserate with the other people like him. Often times those boards and UFO Cons or whatever are infiltrated by Council people who try and subtly steer people back to “rationality.” (Oh you’re a new vampire are you? How many words per minute can you type?) It’s not an easy job, but the Council has a number of playbooks on that kind of disinformation campaign.
The Veil allows the supernatural to exist along side humans without them noticing. Mostly it does this by making non-humans look human. It also does stuff like alter how humans see certain footprints and other telltale signs. It’s not foolproof, and stuff like a supernatural leaving their blood all over a crime scene can be quite a complication. The most recent and complicated additions to The Veil are things like altering how photographs and video recordings appear. Sydney will be disappointed when she checks the pictures she took earlier.
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What happens when your Arcanum++ runs into an inheritance problem? You should switch over to Magus, it’s a functional programming language. It’s based on Scala, and solves the OOP problems.
This would be a great application for trying out the transparadigm model of perl6!
Sadly that still wouldn’t solve the expression problem. FP just moves it somewhere else. But seeing that it seems hard to add new “objects” I’d wager their language is indeed functional. Personally I would expect it to be strongly typed, too, so you don’t get as many nasty bugs – but we don’t have any evidence of spells fizzling out with a “no instance for (Monad Werewolf)”.
So, dynamically typed, functional, arcane…
Wait… I’ve heard Lisp programmers being called wizards in our world… Waaaaaiiitt a minute…. o.O
dammit, our secret is out…
Quickspell 2 was supposed to fix this problem, but it always shorted out in bad weather. *Sigh*
that’s OK… The Laundry has them under control…
So… in this world there are spell programming languages. You know, I should be surprised, but I am not.
What you do not realise is that this world’s programming languages evolved from rogue wizards teaching muggles about spell programming languages! Despite very strict, public rules, that a magician should never reveal his secrets.
Obviously this rule is only observed by enterprise (guild?) employed wizards. There are, however, at least two wizard movements that do not believe in secrets. They are called Free Spellware and Open Force, respectively.
Didn’t I see you at the corner of 5th and main the other day?
“You know, this Godzilla guy is a hell of a programmer, but his custom of doodling diagrams on corn fields is getting out of hand!”
No giant sea monsters.
No capes.
*looks at paws*
No hands.
“Godzilla” is his nickname :P
That’s what they all say.
even if the local magic wasn’t inherently code based, and more concept-to-form, i see no reason why it couldn’t be made into a code based magic.
i mean, runes are a thing, so no reason why someone couldn’t try making something complex out of them.
and once computers are invented, then it seams like a perfectly natural progression for the magic, to become more organized. it pretty much has to happen at that point, if it hadn’t already.
It’s pretty obvious, with hindsight, really. It’s all algorithms.
Algorithms are just a series of steps to be performed in a particular order to achieve some objective.
Programming code are algorithms for processing information.
Recipes are algorithms for preparing food.
So, therefore, spells are algorithms for casting magic.
I’m pretty sure every activity can be described by an algorithm.
In, out, in, out, shake it all about.
You do the hokey pokey somewhere in there, right?
That is what it’s all about!
Start program ‘World’
perform varying Day from 1 to 6
If Day = 1, perform ‘Light’
If Day = 2, perform ‘Sky’
If Day = 3, perform ‘Land’ (Land: subroutine ‘plants’)
If Day = 4, perform ‘Sun-Moon’
If Day = 5, perform ‘Animals’
If Day = 6, perform ‘Man’ (Man: subroutine ‘woman’)
End Perform
Rest.
Compiler errors:
Out of sequence error: ‘Sun’ needed before ‘Plant’
Infinite loop error. Routine ‘Man’: ‘Be Fruitful. Multiply. Repeat.’
Why would sun be needed before plant? One would think that a being powerful enough to create everything out of nothing would also be powerful enough to sustain a plant without sunlight until it decided to get around to creating a sun.
it happened the very next damn day.
if they popped into existence at full health, they are NOT going to die THAT fast.
plants can wait a day or two.
yes they will die that that fast but not because of lacking light but for lacking heat, they’d be plant shaped popsicles.
Which would be an issue, were it not for the fact that day and night were established on day 1 (logically enough). There is no separate mention of heat, so it is fair to assume that the days were hot and the nights were cold.
Following through Deof Movestofca‘s logic, that would have been sustaining the plants, until the familiar light sources, which we know, replaced the generic ones around initially.
Sun is not needed before plant. Light is needed, at latest, within a couple days after plant – and it was provided before plant.
However, there’s another version of that routine in Genesis 2, and it gives a different order – and we aren’t sure which one (if either) got executed. In Genesis 2 everything got done in one day, which was either immediately before or immediately after the seventh day, and the order is:
1) plants
2) watery mist
3) man (not woman)
4) garden
5) river
6) animals
7) woman
(Later the watering routine was rewritten, replacing “mist” with “rain”.)
Blah blah blah….
Some time later plants get made.
Day 5 – Creatures of the sky and sea
Day 6 – Creatures of the land
Day 6 – Mankind
Has the colouring of the comic changed? Sydney looks… a bit different. I think I liked the colouring when it was more flat. Like here or most of the rotating header images.
Yeah I’ve been trying some stuff to speed up the process, with sort of indeterminate results. This arc especially I’ve been trying to pay a little more attention to light direction, which results in more obvious shadows on one side of a face for example, plus this room is supposed to be a little darker than the omni directional lighting at Archon HQ. I’m still experimenting and hopefully I’ll arrive at a good solution eventually. I agree some of the shading in the last few pages is a bit harsh though.
Ah okays. :) Thanks for sharing about the art process. I’m not an artist, but I can understand how important experimentation is (I do this with food). A lot of stuff is learned along the way too. And I learned something new today – before this, it never really occurred to me that light comes from many directions and just thought ‘a room has light’. :P And I just so happened to look at a magazine photo and could now understand the effect you’re trying to achieve. So yays for experimentation! *waves cheerleader pom poms*
*grabs pom-poms, and provides backup*
Don’t do this at home kids. Or, at least, always be sure to get your dog’s permission first.
This makes complete sense to me. I’ve never met a group of people more superstitious than those who work in IT or do computer programming for a living. When they do troubleshooting, I always feel like they’re two steps away from suggesting I burn incense and offer praise to the Omnissaiah.
I do both IT and computer programming for a living. I don’t know where these superstitious ones are coming from. I have a specific methodology for tackling a computer problem (we all do), but I wouldn’t call it superstitious.
Sounds like the IT guys you have are from the Warhammer universe. Praise the Machine Gods!
no we’re just members of the word of blake. purging the heretics one planet at a time.
After studying to become telecom engineer I swear that some Cisco routers and/or switches are possessed by spirits that have to be appeased, or the hardware will not work properly.
Then, IIRC, there’s the computer that will only work for males. But it was awhile since I read about it, so I don’t quite recall any of the details.
There are physiological differences between males and females. Similarly to ones between right and left hands. Should a computer already be hypersensitive* to Biomagnetism then the differences between magnetic fields (or electrical conductivity, if the sensitivity is via touch**) from an average male to an average female might affect its operation.
Seems too stretched? Fine, you are right, a wizard did it.
* Be it due to manufacturing flaws or subsequent damage or deterioration.
** Phat fingered males complete the circuit, for the on switch, where slender female fingers fail to.
Physiological differences make no difference. It’s just that the gremlins that live in those machines like certain people more than other people.
Like dogs.
Like my late father, for example. He was a maintenance engineer at Rockwell International for more than 30 years. If something in the house malfunctioned, all we had to do was get him to walk into the room.
Me: “Daaaad! The VCR’s not working!”
Dad: *walks into the living room* “Yes it is! See?”
*hits play, the VCR works perfectly*
Every single time. The gremlins were terrified of him.
I know what you mean. My mother performs magic as well, for real. This is a true history, I’m the co-star but similar things have happened since she was a child, at her work, at family reunions, you name it.
I’m taking apart say a radio and drop a little screw. I look at the floor around my feet. Nothing. I get on my knees and look all around. Nothing. I literally crawl over the whole floor, move chairs and look under the rest of the forniture. Nothing. I look into my shoes. Nothing. I give up.
Me: Mom! Can you came here?
Mom [enters the room and stop at what seems a random place]: What is it, dear?
Me: I dropped a little screw and can’t find it.
Mom [looks at the floor, bends down and takes something up from a spot a step away from her]: This one?
Me: … yes. Thank you.
Mom [walking away as nothing]: Your welcome, dear. Dinner in half an hour.
We call her “The Eye”.
Some people can look at the world a different way.
Try male and female human skin, on average, have slightly different pH levels, due to differing levels of chemical compounds present, and as a result, can have slightly different electrical conductivities.
Female fingers can be just as ‘phat’ as males’, and males’ as slender as females’.
That’s why you have to unplug and replug the router to get it to work again. It drives out the evil spirits.
as a IT tech i cannot count the number of times a computer has decided to stop misbehaving the moment i walk into the room. Flee before me spirits!
The evil spirits seem to enjoy trying to make a fool of me.
No matter how screwed up my computer, car, or whatever may be acting up at home, they always seem to straighten up and purr like the proverbial kitten when I take them to the repairman . . .
Always a little embarrassing when you take something to the repairman and he can’t reproduce the problem, isn’t it? That happens with my car. It has a “lean in bank 1” issue that even the dealership hasn’t been able to find, because once they clear the code, the computer doesn’t give another code until I get it home again.
On the other hand, some people who bring their computers to me have that problem too. I can never reproduce their problem because it works just fine for me. (Usually, this happens when it’s an intermittent problem that gets worse over time. They bring it to me as soon as it glitches for the first time, and I can’t diagnose it until the glitch starts happening often enough to reproduce the issue. More often than not, it’s the first sign of the memory bus starting to fail, or “tin whiskering” inside the CPU.)
I’d say it has less to do with superstition (defined as an association between one action and another that is neither logically nor functionally linked) and more to do with obsessive-compusive tendencies fostered by systems that require high degrees of precision in order to function.
To whit, programmers do things a certain way because it works each and every time. The problem comes in when the inevitable change happens and they have difficulties adjusting to the new paradigm.
Also see: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
However, “Ain’t nothing can’t be improved with some tinkering.”
A donkey who likes playing tinker gnomes!
If it ain’t broke , use a bigger hammer.
Lol.
If it ain’t broke, upgrade till it is.
/\ Bill Gates of Microsoft .
|
So, basically….it’s kinda hinky, but the bonuses are much better then the problems. Either a lot of “I’m secretly an alien”, or “Complete paradigm shift of all that humanity takes for granted.”
It’s kinda like ATMs still running on a modified windows 95. It’s stable enough, and much cheaper to just hire Windows to support it specifically for you, than it is to update every few years.
Be careful. Those might be getting dangerously close to hereteks, if they think attempted prayers by the uninitiated would appease the machine spirits.
Jokoes about spell programming languages aside, just to make sure I understand this, ingsol was getting at “Basically, we need to be able to input “genetic” markers into the sigils to block entire groups out and supers are still random and highly varied so unless their power set closely matches a supernatural power set already covered, the veil doesnt work on them.” If thats the case, wow, it could be interesting. Makes you wonder how many supers are operating under the veil and just think they are really good at batmanning around because they havent been caught yet.
Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty much on the mark. That’s the impression I got, too.
Super or not, those who have been batmanning around might want to reconsider.
Thats the point though. If they are partially or completely covered by the veil, thats why they have escaped notice and capture. And they dont even realize it. They probably think they are just that awesome at avoiding notice or identification or whatever.
Agreed.
Notice and capture by whom? If I’m not mistaken, Maxima’s warning was only a few days ago in Haloverse time and marks the start of the government’s official lookout for vigilante supers. Even if one of them believed that the government was looking for him or her before that, Maxima’s press conference made it clear that many of the official supers were off making the world safe for democracy. Thus, their returning home increases the resources the government would have to track them down and capture them.
“Notice and capture by whom?”
The police.
“and marks the start of the government’s official lookout for vigilante supers”
Nope. Illegal acts performed by people super or not, vigilante or not, were police matter since ever. Nowadays Archon took over supers.
Notice by the general public, CCTV and security systems. Capture by citizens arrest, the police, FBI and/or other law enforcement agencies.
All of the remainder, about Archon and Maxima, does not change the Veil-concealed Vigilante’s hubris about being really awesome at hiding. The more cautious might do a re-think, mind, at Maxima’s A-Bomb enhanced speech. The remainder though may just brush it off with “first they would have to find me, but they can’t, because I am really awesome at hiding!”
That’s actually a pretty interesting insight. Thanks!
Check me on this but wouldn’t it be way easier to give the sigil program a couple of human templates and say; “Cloak anything not falling within the range of human as defined by these characterizing traits referenced from the templates”?
That was tried, just before ‘the Great Vanishing’, when many humans starved, died of exposure and drowned because they could not find their livestock or crops or houses or rivers.
You are right, that would be the result of my previous wording but “Cloak not falling within the range of human as defined by traits referenced from the templates.” should work much better.
Sorry that should have been,
“Cloak intelligent entities not falling within the range of human as defined by traits referenced from the templates.”
Error: Line 118319
Variable “Intelligent” is undefined in %root%\arcproxy\gmask\geneticmask.arc++emulated
Stack trace:
In general.masklocking.parsefilter at line 3921
In general.masklocking.parsefilteremulation at line 10029
In security.livehotfix.corruptisolate at line 884195
In ??? at line ???
319 more…
Custom: Stack trace is halted for instances contained by isolation module. Contact the magisterial office if further debug is deemed necessary.
And after that dolphins, octopuses, Alex, Yorp, and unsurprisingly Summer Glau vanished.
You would have better luck with “sentient”, but even that can give us a couple surprises.
I think you are right. I don’t think they are trying to veil superhumans, though.
BTW. That’s why Dave drew the Sigil the way he did. A lot of patches and modules added as new races, hybrids and special cases were included.
I guess that the part at the top of the Sigil is the newest subsytem aimed to recording technology.
Back in my misspent youth, I was offered the “opportunity” to update some FORTRAN code for the Business School at ??? University. It had every version of FORTRAN in it. The professors added useless modules to try out some idea. Some unknown amount of grad students, each of whom had taken maybe one programming class, had modified this program over the years. Spaghetti code is a kind description (and an insult to spaghetti) of some of the code. I ran away screaming, “No. No! NO!”
I imagine The Veil is similar. It runs under Lexica Arcanex, but has older style legacy code.
You basically described what computer programming was in meteorology until 2000. It’s worse because they were using FORTRAN for everything until they were convinced that using SQL instead of FORTRAN to actually move the big data sets (we’re talking global weather models and models forecasting the contiguous USA) is a good idea. I shudder when I see FORTRAN code to this day.
Should panel 6 be “have to be completely” instead of “have be completely”
Yup! Whoops I’l get that fixed.
You mean it won’t be able to have any baby errors?
Wow. Blade really let himself go. :D Also I wonder if it is possible for a regular human that is unaware of supernatural stuff to actually pierce the Veil. If it is written like a software program and there was a glitch, I would not be surprised by someone being introduced into the magical world by accident and they just roll with it.
It’s rare but the Veil isn’t perfect and unusual combinations of circumstances can occur where humans can see through it. There are also places it is excluded from operating, like this chamber (although it can be flipped back on here if it’s needed to), but locations like that are usually quite secure. Again though, over the centuries, incidents have happened.
There was that temporary Sigil outage at Roswell back in 1947 that caused a stir.
You mean, comic cons, cosplays and hallowen?
It is why it is against the rules for monsters to go outside at Halloween. Too many humans are being hidden by the Veil!
You know Victoria Secret Angels? That’s their true form!!
I don’t know any, but I would like to.
They are still talking about the misuse of a ‘vanish’ rune in the Atlantis’ node
That’s where all those rumours of aliens and bigfoot come from.
Hah! ☺
I’ve noticed that Guesticus has been calling that guy Not-Blade, too.
Under the circumstances, until DaveB reveals his real name, I’m gonna call him Blunt.
That was in response to Cobra Commander
Hmm, ‘not-Blade’ or ‘Blunt’? Gonna have to think on which name will ‘stick’ for me
In fairness, Blunt is probably going to turn out to be a bad name for him, now that I think of it. How much do you want to bet that he’s going to prove to be some kind of extremely powerful mage?
Maybe it doesn’t refer to his abilities, but what he uses recreationally?
And that’s how he became the uber-mage I was talking about. He got lots of practice by magically creating snacks to cure his munchies! ☺
How I think it works:
The Veil constantly scans for the use of those supernatural powers that have been programmed into it. Say, for instance, a werewolf transformation. When such an activity is discovered, it then casts a glamour, like a hologram, over the werewolf, thus causing it to appear as a normal human. So then you have what appears to be a normal human ripping people’s throats out with their teeth.
Recent updates to the spell cause the rampaging ‘human’ to look human on things like cell phones as well: it is an update to the ‘hologram’. So when you take a picture, your perception of the picture isn’t altered. What you have instead is a picture of a glamour. The light waves were altered before they got into the camera, so using the True Sight orb on the picture would have no effect.
Now let’s say you shoot the werewolf and he bleeds all over the place. The Veil might be able to cast a glamour over the blood that would fool normal eyes or even a fairly powerful microscope, but probably not a genetic scan or similar (because the Veil hasn’t been updated to cover that technology). Thus resulting in a medical examiner who thinks he has been hacked.
Now let’s say you have a human who gets a dose of wolf DNA nanites and is now able to morph into a humanoid wolf. The Veil may detect his transformation as ‘normal human doing science thing’ (if at all) and not mask that. The human may call themselves a werewolf, think they are a werewolf, and even go on a rampage that threatens the Council, but the Veil would not care: they are just a normal, if screwed up, human.
So, it seems there are three ways The Veil could be working so far. Take “information” as “whatever coming from a supernatural source”.
A – It modifies the infromation before it reaches the observer. For instance it casts an “hologram” around the source so the light that reaches our eyes is not the same emitted. It also alter pressure waves (sound), chemical particles (odor), and so. Tactile perception, as in Dabbler not feeling furry, seems tricky. This way the very reality becomes altered so it will fool technology and other supernaturals all the same. Something supporting this is that Dabbler was fooled at the club the same as human were.
B – It modifies the way our senses capture the information. Like a generalized color blindness, our senses give our brain the same information coming from a Centaur that from an Irish, for instance. It should not fool cameras unless they are included in the spells as “senses to be fooled”. It should not affect how we see photos unless “photo image” are included as “sources to be altered”. Something supporting this is that spells for recoding devices needed to be added.
C – It modifies how our brain process the information. Like a generalized Dislexia of sorts, we become unable to tell apart a Centaur from an Irish despite having the right information. Recoding devices could or could not need special spells depending on how the alteration works. As Yorp pointed out, some of the phrasing supports this and some counter it, both weakly though.
Did I forget something?
Wait, so does that mean that any Irish we see, may in fact be a Centaur? o_O
Yessss.
Don’t ask about chickens, you don’t want to know. Seriously. Don’t.
oh i read a series were magic was treated similar to tech and spells were just a way of channeling the energy. the spells almost looked like circuit boards. i explained that badly. wen Spencer explains better.
i like your idea though way more fun. fits your universe perfectly too.
You’re talking about either light novel or manga I Couldn’t Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job. I’ve seen anime. Good fun, and female lead (daughter of defeated demon lord) is adorable. Here you go:
https://www.crunchyroll.com/i-couldnt-become-a-hero-so-i-reluctantly-decided-to-get-a-job
I liked that one, but I thought the ending seemed rushed. I got the impression it was planned for a few more seasons, then they had to wrap it up sooner.
Sounds like a sequel to “The Devil is a Part Timer!”
Any sufficiently understood magic is indistinguishable fron technology.
There is only technomagic.
the series “Modern Magic” looks very similar.
funny thing on this thought process, the existence of computers and programming makes explaining things like magical systems, sigils, and avatars a lot easier.
As a programming student, I love the idea of magic as programming. It absolutely makes sense to me. In programming if you makes mistakes, the program crashes, or does some really WEIRD things, sometimes things you never intended. In magic, if you screw up the spell fizzles out, or you accidentally turn your opponent into a purple poodle with yellow polkadots and green tentacles or something.
You know. Parallels.
If you can find a copy of The Wiz Biz by Rick Cook you may find it enjoyable. The main thrust of the story is a computer programmer who gets summoned into a world with magic. He does at one point almost get himself trapped in an infinite loop.
https://g.co/kgs/igRjuN
“The Laundry Files” series by Charles Stross does even more along those lines… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
“School of Hard Knocks series by Christopher Nuttall does an excellent job of spells as programs.
As does his “Bookworm” series show how understanding and finesse can beat brute power.
I love that not only do you people agree with me, but you’re recommending books to me. You are my kind of people.
Yar!
*gnaws on edge of shield, howls, froths at the mouth, and stands ready to pirouette, at any enemies*
If you can find it the anthology “Chicks in Chainmail” and it’s sequels had several stories in the vein we have been discussing.
All this magic as programming code makes me feel like Erzen form Pathfinder. How? Well, I’m studying IT at the age of 36 after my career as a English teacher went nowhere.
See now you know why all those ancient Latin spells you cast did not work. Wrong career path to become a mage.
Ahhhahah that legit made me laugh!
Personally, I blame Jim Butcher.
I was going to make this observation as well, and was checking to see if anyone else had first. But yes, highly entertaining series.
Speaking as a programmer, the idea of magic being a programming language with read/write access to the real world is… really, really scary. It’s far too hard to avoid writing a bug, and bugs can do anything that the program can do, only do it wrong. Make an object appear? OK, one bug later the universe suddenly becomes full of that object. Worse if you can make objects disappear.
It’s hard for me to imagine a magic language that had enough limitations or permissions checks to permit the universe to continue to exist, without being completely powerless. Maybe if it only affected minds… Wait, we have that, and it’s called memes. And we can see how dangerous memes are. In just a few years, we’ve reached a point where most of America is convinced that if politician-they-don’t-like is elected this fall, it will literally destroy the country.
Sure, magical bugs absolutely can happen, but the primary difference between magic and computer programming is magic is fueled by the caster (or at least a ritual) so there is usually going to be a finite amount of power a badly written spell has access to. In your example, the bug wouldn’t become the universe, but it could become all objects of the same type within 50 feet, and would wipe out the caster, motivating him to prioritize correcting the issue.
There are exceptions of course, but they usually involve spells powered by rare artifacts or portals that try and sustain themselves by feeding on energy from the other side.
Reminds me of a story I heard about Fotamecus.
https://www.kikiwanderer.com/fotamecus-a-time-experiment/
Where he was originally created to force a time compression to allow a person to get to work quicker. Then was altered to get rid of the draw back of the compression (ie. Time slowed down to an equal amount that it was sped up), and it ended up getting a mind of it’s own.
Quite an amusing little tale ^_^.
I would assume that the abilities of the Mage help govern universe ending type stuff. E.g if you have a bug that causes infinite staplers to appear instead of just 1, the Mage will pass out from exhaustion after only 100 appear and the spell would end.
But I agree that buggy spells could be terrifying. Perhaps they have testing realities where the permissions are intentionally very strict so they can work out the bugs before bringing it into the real world. But the edge cases… “Huh, that spell was just supposed to make your family forget you are a Mage, not erase their memories entirely… Oh! I forgot to account for someone remarriaging the same person! Crap!”
Well it also depends on the power level and area/range of effect of the base runes in general. I wold also suspect the Murphy’s Law might also be a culprit.
Things like are the sigils/runse properly describing the things with correct syntax? Or is there a definition issue that is is unknown or misinterpreted?
I guess that’s where all the supernatural hogwash off the renaissance came from. Bugs in the code. But when you’ve had centuries to write and debug a code, all the big bugs are probably out by now.
No no, they are meant to be hiding those!
Actually with metaphysics and the actual magic user community on earth (not counting Wicca). It’s more or less like the later version of what you said magic is. A single all purpose language that does everything. At least when you get down to brass tacks.
But then you have different ways of using that. So in a way resembles different programming languages, and some are more structured and effecient, but very rule oriented (rituals, ceremonies, runes, sigils), while others are more fluid and free forming, but have a greater chance for error (personal sigils, psionics, chaos magic, etc.).
So kind of, one program does all the work of all the spells (transforming will and visualization, into form).
Although I really do like how you put it. And how there’d be (in your AU) forums of people fighting over the better language / their friends coding. And how it’s more of a programming language than IRL. That and Arcanum ++ sounds like it’d be kind of interesting.
You guys are a bunch of chumps. Why do you think wicca doesn’t fit into the paradigm? It’s cuz every one of your groups got it all wrong. Well, okay, the wicca are closer, but eh.
Just you wait until I finish debugging! (There’s still some problems with the access arrays…) I will give everyone candy and sugarplums. AND THEN OPEN A 24HR DENTISTRY! Muahahahaha!
No Wiccans are a bunch of morons because:
A) They believe a school of magical thought made in 1920’s is a thousand years old.
B) They are militant (much like PITA) on things they know nothing about. Talking about Karma without truly understanding the mechanisms about it. And can be quite anal on things that don’t meet their perceptions of what is morally appropriate.
C) Their form of magic. Was made by cannibalizing various traditions, nations religious philosphies, and magical thought. That was restructured in a way to revitalize a declining popularity in magic / metaphysics. And done so with little thought on how to do it properly.
and
D) Wiccans are idiots. All the one’s I’ve met are quite quick to call me a monster the second they get within a few feet of me without any justification, other than one. Not to mention their own ignorance on their religious practices. Not knowing the difference between a Godform and an actual deity.
Sounds like a certain few religions…
Agreed. I have met “militant” Wiccans. I’ve met militant Christians. And it’s obvious there are militant Muslims. You can’t take away people’s right to be assholes, though. The moment the government starts telling people what to believe, this is no longer a free country.
I mean “what to believe” in terms of “establishing a state religion”. Just wanted to make that clear.
I have a personal philosophy which requires me to accept all belief structures as being equally valid. Of course, even with such a liberal attitude I too find that ones which are not internally consistent, or which are drawn from a clearly bogus source, fail to earn my respect.
So I find homeopathic medicine to be complete tosh, as it purports to use science but fails under any critical scrutiny.* And newspaper horoscopes were purely created in order to increase their circulation, and make money out of the gullible. These are modern creations which lack merit.
However I disagree with your similar assessment of Wicca.
No Wicca I have spoken to ever made that claim. You actually answer this one yourself, in C), they have drawn their system from a variety of historical practices. This gives them a valid claim to having historical roots, through those sources.
No Wicca I knew behaved like that. Whilst their religion had strong Karma influences, in various aspects, they clearly had their own take on this. That is a perfectly acceptable thing to do with a belief system. Draw in influences which inspire you, whilst ignoring the ones which do not have relevance to you. This will create discrepancies, with the sources, of the inspirations, but that is their choice to make.
The practitioners have no obligation to have expertise in things which fall outside of their faith. So condemning them for this is not seemly. I must say that (again restricted just to those I met personally), the karma-like aspects made them very nice people to be around. Various positive things that they routinely did were a direct result of the attitudes and beliefs that it instilled in them.
They are satisfied with how it works, so again that is their choice to make, not yours. You are free to choose your own path, of course. But others walk their own.
Well given that you have accused a very dear friend of mine of being ‘a moron’, ‘a militant’, ‘anal’, ignorant of the history of her own religion and ‘an idiot’, without having ever met her, I can see why they might not warm to you. Perhaps you should try a different approach, on meeting them?
* If anyone swears by it, feel free to carry on using it. The placebo effect will give you benefit (as far as it is able). The really good news is even me telling you that it is a placebo will not stop it working.
Handy tip, if you fall on hard times, and can no longer afford to keep giving money to quack companies, just hang on to the holistic bottles. Top them up with tap water. The memory of the medicine will still be in the bottle, so it will impart the healing properties to the water. So that will cure you, like normal, even though it is only a placebo effect. Just have faith, if homeopathic medicine works for you, so will this version.
Clap, clap, clap.
Also, not to nitpick … but I think he means PETA.
PETA is an animal rights organization. (For the sake of brevity, I won’t discuss how I feel about them, other than to say some are hypocrites and some are struggling to stay relevant by making idiotic “protest games”.) PITA is a type of bread.
Hmm, that must be a sign of how tired I am. I just had a mental image of a loaf of sapient bread wearing military fatigues and picketing for “voting rights for bread”.
Yes them. XD. PETA.
Technically, PETA is a PITA (Pain In The Arse) :P
Rise Up! Rise Up!
::scampers for the door before he gets grievously muffined::
I’m going to be talking to two peeps: Yorp and MCSears respectively:
Yorp:(sorry don’t know how to bold or quote mark things in this type of set up so sorry a head of time if this isn’t as clean as I’d like it)
__________________
No Wicca I have spoken to ever made that claim. You actually answer this one yourself, in C), they have drawn their system from a variety of historical practices. This gives them a valid claim to having historical roots, through those sources.
————-
The one’s I have did.
And no it doesn’t give them a valid claim. While yes the things they picked apart from other religions did have historical roots going back ages. It wasn’t thousands or even a thousand years for all of them.
And the parts that they took apart where not done with the entirety of the teachings and philosophies of said things. Rather as you later state. The parts that worked for that specific type of Wicca. And even then there are numerous conflicts between philosophies and practices of said things.
Which undermines their claim on the ancestry of their practice.
_________
No Wicca I knew behaved like that. Whilst their religion had strong Karma influences, in various aspects, they clearly had their own take on this. That is a perfectly acceptable thing to do with a belief system. Draw in influences which inspire you, whilst ignoring the ones which do not have relevance to you. This will create discrepancies, with the sources, of the inspirations, but that is their choice to make.
The practitioners have no obligation to have expertise in things which fall outside of their faith. So condemning them for this is not seemly. I must say that (again restricted just to those I met personally), the karma-like aspects made them very nice people to be around. Various positive things that they routinely did were a direct result of the attitudes and beliefs that it instilled in them.
____________
All of the one’s I’ve met behaved that way. Of course that was towards me personally, and when asked about it their answer was, and I’m not kidding “You know why.”
Which apparently the only questions that exist are rhetorical ones XD.
And that’s not even counting the ones I met in the US ARMY which were so far removed from reality it wasn’t even funny. Other than one, can’t remember his name. But he was convinced that Charmed was real. That he was part Vampire part Werewolf, but his soul and true form was locked within a ring. As well as that he could shoot fireballs from his eyes.
But yeah, I’ve never had a good experience with any of them. And even talking to them about Karma, shows that they have barely a rudimentary understanding of the concept. As well as are inclined to act against others if they can justify it as “karmatically right”.
But then again, other than one David Katt. All the Wiccan’s I’ve ever met IRL hate me with a passion the second they meet me, even before I speak with them. And it took ages to find out that they label me as a Monster, and get pissed off even more when they fail to bind me. Which admittedly, when they try I do goad them afterwards and intentionally mock their inability to do anything to me.
David though. He was a cool person. We had tons of philosophical discusions, and as a Christian Wiccan was an interesting entity. We taught each other much when we were in Ft. Gordon.
________________
They are satisfied with how it works, so again that is their choice to make, not yours. You are free to choose your own path, of course. But others walk their own.
——-
Oh! I’d normally have no problem with beliefs after all. I personally know that all deities exist, and have talked with more than a few pantheons. Heck I’ve even talked quite amicably with Adonai.
My problem is that the one’s I know force their opinions on others, and is colored by both their ignorance. And the fact that 99.99% of them are quite happy to label me without getting to know me personally, and try the magical version of attacking me. Sure they fail, and I let them know they did so spectacularly. In quite an assholish fashion (although those that don’t. I’m more than happy to let bygones be bygones.).
And yes. Their choice to follow something they believe. It’s not OK though to be aggressive to those who don’t harm you, or who’s only crime was existing. That’s when it stops being alright.
____________________________
Well given that you have accused a very dear friend of mine of being ‘a moron’, ‘a militant’, ‘anal’, ignorant of the history of her own religion and ‘an idiot’, without having ever met her, I can see why they might not warm to you. Perhaps you should try a different approach, on meeting them?
——-
HA! I call them that because they are.
Well it also goes to the point. I was called a monster by them simply looking at me. Without me uttering a word.
And after months of this that treatment. I do what I normally do when confronted with something I am ignorant of. I obsessively read up on everything about it. And seeing the inconsistencies of their internal belief structure and what they talk about. As well as being attacked first, and spoken to as an sapient entity last. That’s when I get hostile.
And 13 years of that treatment. Hasn’t left me with a good taste when it comes to them.
Sure there’s David. But when talking to him about those inconsistencies of that faith. Mentioned that they were true. But he still followed it because it spoke to him, and allowed him to follow his Christian faith in a way that felt more complete to him.
And was the first and only wiccan not to be aggressive towards me for no reason. Heck my calling them ignorant morons is only 3 yrs old. After dealing with their aggression for 10 years and finally having enough. Well on the whole. If I meet one IRL, and they are civil towards me. I an be civil towards them.
It does not need to be for all, provided some do though, then they can make such a claim.
I add emphasis to the most important part, given that is how society makes advances. As it works, for them, they have chosen wisely.
As regards the latter point, there are always some conflicts between philosophies and practice. I mentioned one, in my own, at the beginning of my previous reply. People just find a compromise, that feels comfortable, within their personal world view. Like I indicated for my own.
This is a perfectly normal approach that moral people take. As epitomised by “the right to self-defence”, which does intrinsically require acting against others, under the appropriate circumstances. It is the immoral, who act against others, without weighing whether it is morally justifiable.
Not that this should be taken to read as “all Wicca are good”, as there are good and bad people in all parts of society. However the basic faith, if adhered to, does have strong mechanisms to encourage practitioners to do good.
The implications, of that, are worrying.
Clearly, from the remainder of your post, you have considerable personal issues with them. Although I am glad that you are finding some exceptions. And your last point is the most encouraging of all!
I would suggest capitalising on that sentiment and being proactively civil. As a general rule, the nicer you are to others, the nicer they are in return. Obviously if you have to overcome an initial antipathy, this does require even more effort than normal. But, if it results in either making peace or an enjoyable conversation, then both parties are enriched.
One thing that is true though, for anybody, is that mocking or criticising a person’s strongly held beliefs will always antagonise them. So this is a topic to steer clear of, if attempting to be polite and civil. Especially if their beliefs do not sit comfortably with your own.
I feel I have said my piece on this, and doubt if I will be able to contribute much more. Do, of course, feel free to reply to any points you wish. But I shall let allow such to stand, on their own merits, without further response.
Just three things you wrote real quick.
1) The implications, of that, are worrying.
and
2) I would suggest capitalising on that sentiment and being proactively civil. As a general rule, the nicer you are to others, the nicer they are in return
—–
Yeah. Tell me about it. So my crititcisms and dislike of them are completely justifiable. After all 1 person out of a few hundred that I’ve met has seen me as a literal monster the second they looked at me.
But when someone doesn’t view you as human. You’d be surprised at what they justify as morally right to do to you. Especially when meeting in the flesh, scryed, or sensed. Their initial reaction upon meeting you is that you’re either not human or something evil.
That and I shouldn’t have had to over come their antipathy. They should have taken a moment to open much like I tried to before being done with them and their ignorance. And start things off trying to learn and gain knowledge. As well as being civil. If no other reason to see if I was what they thought.
———————
and 3) This is a perfectly normal approach that moral people take. As epitomised by “the right to self-defence”, which does intrinsically require acting against others, under the appropriate circumstances. It is the immoral, who act against others, without weighing whether it is morally justifiable.
Not that this should be taken to read as “all Wicca are good”, as there are good and bad people in all parts of society. However the basic faith, if adhered to, does have strong mechanisms to encourage practitioners to do good.
—————
Ah! That’s the rub though. If you are acting against a person whom you see, and ‘just know’ that they aren’t a fellow human being. And ‘just know’ deep in the pit of your gut that they are a monster. And act against them.
Is that morally acceptable? Other than 1. The wiccan’s I’ve met think so. Now are they good, moral people to others? Probably. But that antipathy towards me makes them think that they are being morally appropriate in their words and actions towards me.
It’s just sad that the only reason that David gave me a chance was because he was a huge fan of the Drizzt Do’urden saga where he learned that the best thing for a person was to sit down and talk about different philosophies. And to learn about others than just acting out. But still something I’m thankful of.
But it’s hard to capitalize on being civil, and that sentiment. When out of hundreds only one didn’t think that anything they did against what they sense as non-human is entirely justifiable. Rather than taking time to learn.
Real quick on my comment below sorry about the length.
But a bit of clarification. I don’t mean monster like a mean person. Or like Dahmer, Bundy, or Osama Bin Laden.
They meant and talked to me (before I even talked to them, the second they saw me). As a monster in this comic’s Twilight Council. Type monster. Aka, a quite literal sense, not a figurative one.
hate not being able to edit XD. Thought that comment would be at the top of the replies not at the bottom. Still, clarified it.
Hey, Yorp. Internal consistency? Don’t you know that logic is a methodology established upon this universe’s rationality? Thus, a universe with different molecular mechanisms might prescribe to different logical norms, thus automatically violating your sense of internal consistency.
Sir Lord Evil, at your service.
(Lord is my first name, dammit.)
Not at all. Each universe has its own mechanisms. Whatever they may be they are self-contained.
Further many may not have logic at all, given that such is an abstract concept, which would require something thinking, in order to create it. Such as those with conditions which are inimical, to either life or any other means of abstract thought occurring.
However, even if we are not present in any of those hypothetical universes, we can still talk about them, as we are. But, of course, the logic, which we use, is bound by our experiences, in this universe. So, whilst you are correct, it may not be able to adapt, to the terms of another universe, it still retains internal consistency within our one.
The fun part though occurs when universes interact with each other. But then you need to look at the internal consistency of the metaverse, rather than just the individual universes, within it.
Just like how we had to scale things up, once we realised that our world was not the only one, but also had to consider the other planets, within our solar system. And then again when we figured out that there was even more, to our visible universe, beyond that.
Of course, this assumes our current sense of logic can conceive of the interactions between universes. In this case you make the assumption that interactions would occur in a stratified manner. If the logic of our universe does not follow with that of an interacting universe, then whatever preconceptions we may have regarding said interactions may ultimately be nonsensical. Especially the likely situation where internal consistency is not preserved, but converged from the two interacting locales, resulting in a state which is directly derivable from neither.
Actually I did come across one piece of research which had predicted how an adjacent universe, expanding into, and interacting with our universe* would appear. Which then was able to point at observational data which supported that as actually happening!
It withstood critical review, and sounded credible. So I eagerly awaited the next follow-up report on it. And have heard nothing for years!
Maybe it has been overturned by subsequent peer-reviewed work, either quietly, without publicity, or just at a time when I had no internet access. Or, more frustratingly, the researcher may just not have been making headway in publicising her work, or getting the wider astronomer community to try and replicate her results.
Assuming it is the latter though, and her work eventually turns out to be corroborated, then the interaction was predicted by scientific logic and remained consistent with it.
What conditions would be like in the merged areas, now that is not something she would be drawn on. The complexities of each universe having created its own time/space bubble around it, put that beyond her capacity to predict, at that time. Although others may be able to, in due course.
* I.e. another big bang, with its own time and space around it.
One hypothesis doesn’t counteract another, especially since neither are proven, both are based on observational data, yet both are provable. But I appreciate the unique manner of argument, even if it doesn’t actually debate my point; that our own sense of internal consistency is violable by things outside our realm of experience.
Lord Evil sends you quantum peonies! They may or may not have arrived.
Ahh, if that is the core of your argument, then I will just trot out “I think therefore I am”. Nothing beyond that is provable.
Therefore my internal consistency is not violable, by things outside of my realm of experience. Yours? That is for you to decide.
*plants the quantum peonies, in a Schrodinger’s flower box, with a life support system*
How pretty. Thanks. I shall treasure those forever!
Yeah, but even that is not provable. The idea that thinking creates a self-referential loop, thus identifying the thinker, is systematically flawed. In order to generate the process of thought, many sub-levels of circuity are needed (as far as we know). This would imply the act of thinking and acknowledging could be completely separated and then recombined, such that the thinker would never know “they” had changed and become someone else. Thus, internal consistency does not necessarily translate to self-reference. No state of synchronous operation is known to be inviolable.
Cmon, I thought about this for years, give me a bit more credit than that. :P
A day without light, a night without hour, a land which we become. Live ones’ lives; who we’ll be, will we find the end of the fray? But if “pasttime” we seek and hide ourselves, to the world we must still deign.
It is provable, as the statement does not claim to say why or how I think. Simply that I do.
Circular logic doesn’t apply to the real world.
It is not circular. It takes an observation “I think” and draws a conclusion “I exist”.
Just to check what I have said, here is the definition:
Yup, I started with one thing, and ended with another. Neither of which are synonymous with each other. Well, a greater mind than mine did, namely Descartes.
Incidentally, how do you decide what is the “real world”? The only thing I know about it is that I exist? What makes you think that there is a “real world”, beyond that?
You sure you are not getting the Wiccans confused with the Scientologists? o_O
Lol no. Scientologists are about as Spiritually Aware as a bag of bricks. Led by a con man’s and a filthy liar’s teachings. Who was noted for saying that the only thing that matters is making money, making more money, and having people make more money for you.
As Gandhi said “There is no greater god than TRUTH.”
Everything and everyone has truth within them.
Do your best to learn that truth and share yours.
LOL so basically they still run on Fortrun?
I love the concept of magic as a programming language.
It’s similar to ATMs still running on a modified Windows 95 (or 90. Can’t remember exactly).
It’s stable, and far cheaper to just pay Windows for support, than it is to update every few years.
actually the question about hiding your identity from someone with whom you’re having sex, or otherwise intimate, is legally rape… but only in certain countries. we don’t have a universal definition of rape, but Knowingly Withholding information about yourself, which you know would affect that person’s consent, is still considered non-consensual. the legal case i can remember best is that a Palestinian man lied about being Israeli to an Israeli woman, and they had sex. he knew she would have turned him down if he had been truthful about it. that is non-consensual sex.
another, less racist, example: you have a cousin you haven’t seen in forever, because her parents moved to another country when you were like two. you meet as adults and she is pretty and you flirt. she knows you are related, but doesn’t tell you. that is non-consensual sex (and incest in every USA state).
or take another more likely example: you have very strong moral clause, and do not believe in cheating. you meet a nice man. you tell him you very strongly believe in monogamy. he tells you that he is single, and you two hit it off. three months later you find out that he’s already engaged to another woman, and you’ve been the “woman on the side” the entire time. that is non-consensual sex. that is a non-consensual relationship.
and yes, this means that secret-identity shenanigans are potential minefield of informed consent vs keeping your identity safe. while you don’t legally or morally have to write an autobiography every time you want casual sex with a stranger at a dance club or music festival, you are legally and morally obligated (in most countries/states) to disclose information that you know would affect your partner(s) choice to consent. whether or not an alien with a glamour would be legally tried for sexual assault in an alien court of law probably depends on whether the prosecution could prove that had the other party been informed, they would not have consented, and whether the defendant knew that.
Actually it is perfectly legal to marry a first cousin, in a number of US States. And most of the rest of the Western world too.
well i stand corrected, then.
I should have added that the rest of your post is well-thought through, morally speaking. Legality is always much harder to be definitive about mind, when talking about world-wide issues, given the number of conflicting laws, in different legal systems.
There’s other aspects to this. For instance, the consequences of having intimate relations with various non-human sophants seems to vary greatly by ‘species’. Beast-changers are infectious with bodily fluids; vampires aren’t without deliberate efforts. In the case of more esoteric beings (such as aliens), there’s also issues of cross-breeding, which depending on the set-up may be totally viable and happen all the time, totally impossible barring the introduction of super-science/magic into the mix, or somewhere in-between, where Alpha Centaurans and Terrans are capable of viable off-spring, but Terrans and Venusians are not.
(Which brings to mind another issue along the lines Altalemur raised–fertility of one’s partner is often an issue on people’s minds when they consent to sex. If this is a no-crossbreeds setting, then humans seeking to actually have a family are being denied consent unless told explicitly that their partner is ‘infertile’, at least.)
For that matter, let’s consider the alien flu Dave mentions in his sub-post. That’s a concern even without tongues down throats. It’s probably the single biggest threat, actually, to both the Veil and those left in ignorance about it. The only way to ethically let aliens come to Earth without warning people who might have concerns about health is that they are completely decontaminated of all pathogens before arriving planetside. And if THAT is the truth, then Archon is guilty of something far, far worse than letting a few Vamps get away with a murder or three every year: the current death-toll for AIDS alone is around 35 million people. That’s before factoring in Ebola, Zika, etc. Which means that Archon stood by while technology capable of wiping out numerous plagues that have devastated entire nations sat idly being used by a bunch of interstellar diletantes. (Damn near close to the plot of Elysium, now that I think about it….)
Note: Sure, the aliens could ‘refuse’ to open up the tech to a pre-jump society. But that doesn’t excuse Archon from not demanding that rule be bent if the aliens want them to go along with this whole ‘Veil’ thing. You don’t have to go full-public. Instead, you brief half-a-dozen researchers in the CDC on the truth. Then, within a few years of any disease showing signs of being a serious threat, you announce the ‘discovery’ of a cure, with the cure being administered in special facilities set up world-wide.
And this is the problem with fictional government secrecy ‘for the good of the people’. Either the government becomes complicit in atrocity, or you can’t have it set in ‘our world, but with a secret’.
and who says that Ebola, Zika, Aids, etc AREN’T an “Alien Flu” in origin, and that the common knowledge of the UN-initiated, saying that those diseases are/were started by “mosquitoes” and “monkeys infecting humans” aren’t the COVER STORY??? and that the CDC and other equivalents around the world ARE trying to find a cure, and once that happens we are one step closer to full disclosure??
That’s just it–if the world is being infected by alien diseases, then the government actively covering that fact up means that they are hiding the true source of the pathogens. Unless every researcher on the planet has been brought in on the secret (unlikely at best), they’re hampering themselves. And by allowing aliens to move about the planet unhindered, they’re risking further outbreaks, without warning the populace of the danger.
But surely any species of alien advanced enough to get here, would also be advanced enough to inoculate the ones who do come. Unless their secretly out to disseminate some kind of pathogen as part of some evil plan of course, I would think they would be extra careful not to let their citizens catch any earth germs, or transmit any alien ones.
We humans have to get a medical check up and often a bunch of shots just to travel from one country to another, remember.
There’s no reason to travel technology and medical one to advance simultaneously. I guess that they would not risk to came here unless they can protect themselves, by inoculation or otherwise. About to protect the local fauna I would not be so sure, not evil plot, just “who cares?”
Due its goals, I bet The Council enforces it, though.
“Inoculation” isn’t strong enough, though. That would protect visitors from local bugs, but not vice-versa; you would need “decontamination”, which is a much bigger deal. (The idea is that what for them is little more irritating for them than the common cold could very well be fatal to humans, who haven’t evolved a resistance to that particular pathogen.)
If the aliens are capable of wiping out pathogens on that scale, to the point where it’s considered safe for them to go nightclubbing on a regular basis, then Archon is being absolutely negligent in their duties to not demand access to that particular technology in exchange for both allowing aliens to visit and seeing to it that they are cloaked by the Veil. This isn’t a case of Dabbler’s handheld railpistol, which one can argue is a weapon too far advanced to let humans have access to. But this is a developed setting, into which Sydney is just now being thrust; this sort of issue must have come up by now.
Diseases very seldom cross species lines. (Note that I didn’t say “never”. Just seldom.) If the alien happens to have dextro-DNA, then any diseases we have, truly will never infect them, and vice-versa.
(Of course, if they have dextro-DNA, they’re going to have all sorts of other problems, like the inability to digest most of our world’s proteins, likely resulting in malnutrition unless they bought their own food supplies…)
Lots of diseases cross species lines. Lots of human diseases originated in other species.
“The major sources of new human viral diseases are enzootic and epizootic viruses of animals. We likely know only a small fraction of the viruses infecting wild or even domesticated animals. The risks of such unrecognized viruses are highlighted by the emergence of SARS coronavirus (CoV), hantaviruses, Ebola and Marburg viruses, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and HIV-2, all cross-species host switches of established enzootic viruses that were unknown before their emergences into humans.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2546865/
While the risk of one particual virus becoming able to cross species is low, there are A LOT of viruses, and the more exposure to them the more the risk that a cross success.
If aliens and humans start to interact, a cross will happen sooner or later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMjQ3hA9mEA
Do appreciate the differences in degree between the first part of your argument, and the last.
To point out the difference in scale, please consider the following.
Provided species shared a (relatively) recent common ancestor, they have a chance of interbreeding with another. For instance Homo Sapiens with Neanderthal. Even possible if they have different numbers of chromosomes. Such as with horses and donkeys.
The further back you have to go, to find a common ancestor, and the less shared DNA there is, the less likely this becomes.
For instance we have no known examples of a human/oak tree hybrid. Yet they did both come from a common phylum, once.
What you are proposing is even more unlikely.*
Of course there is a reasonable chance that life spreads from one planet to another naturally. Such as that proposed by micro-organisms being carried through space. For instance we have some meteorites which originated from impacts on Mars, which could have served as such a hypothetical vehicle. In which case there would be a greater chance for commonality, between the basic building blocks, of life, such as using DNA.
But, even with that, the chances of any given alien life being able to breed with a vaguely similar looking Terrestrial counterpart are similar to the Human/ Oak tree hybrid odds.
However if, retaining that common origin assumption, and comparing all the alien life (on a particular planet’s ecosystems) versus all Terrestrial life, then you actually do start to have a chance that ‘life will find a way’.
* Excluding deliberate use of extremely advanced technomagic. Or the long long timescales of evolution. Or parallel evolution. Of which close alternate-Earths being the most likely prospects, mathematically speaking.
Sorry, I snipped a bit about “by analogy”, when switching to talking about breeding, rather than infection by disease. They are not the same thing, but they are connected. For a disease to make the jump from one host species, to another, they need to be closely enough related, for the mechanisms the disease uses, to survive and propagate itself, to continue to work.
I was wrong though not to point out that such needs are nowhere near as restrictive as those needed for breeding. Something which infects a tree could also cause problems for humans. An example of which would be via allergies, through their spores. So your argument does have merit from that point of view.
That though is a side-effect, rather than a disease being able to find a new host. Diseases and hosts need to evolve in parallel, unless the disease is able to find a host with very similar biology to the one(s) it evolved with.
Even amongst terrestrial diseases, species hopping is very rare, as it requires a lot of prerequisites, to do so successfully. The less the hosts are related, the harder it is to meet those requirements, in order to survive and breed. Bringing me back to the angle I switched to.
Fair enough.
Granted that all this is speculative, and we don’t even have a lot of ground to speculate with. However some exists. Humans and birds diverged over 300 millions years ago and flu virus still made the jump. Priones as well.
The alien biology don’t need to have the same DNA, not even DNA at all for some diseases to affect them. Bacteries need just an environment to reproduce, the toxines they produce is what does the harm.
Anyway the central factor is, how different an alien biology can be. And that we don’t really know.
“Even amongst terrestrial diseases, species hopping is very rare”
I was unable to find a confiable source backing that. There’s lot of “noise” from diseases transmited by animals, but it seems rather the opposite, as in the more common source of new diseases being jumps. I will look at it again later.
I see a few possibilities:
1: There is no possibility whatsoever of non-Terran pathogens infecting Terrans. Given certain details of the existing setting, I’m… dubious about this one. In particular, it would appear that multiple alien species are sexually dimorphic AND have evolved pleasure-based sex. That latter one, in particular, suggests that there’s some sort of background meddling (say, an uber-powerful alien species that ‘seeds’ other planets deliberately, using a common base-formula) that at least creates the potential for cross-contamination. And if we ever do hear of an alien-human hybrid, this option goes right out the window. We can’t crossbreed with chimps, for crying out loud, so viable alien-human offspring would absolutely present the danger of other forms of cross-infection.
2: There is a risk of cross-contamination, but this is dealt with via an extreme decontamination procedure, likely instituted in both directions. As I noted above, this would suggest that there’s technology in existence, in Archon’s awareness, that can wipe out AIDS and Ebola (among others), but the use of which is not a requirement for allowing aliens to access Earth frequently enough that Sydney ran into one in the local discotheque. This is unconscionable.
3: There is a SMALL risk of cross-contamination, but it has been deemed sufficiently narrow that the government has decided that keeping the Veil up trumps any concerns about it, and so the government continues to keep the secret. This? This is why people hate government conspiracies. If/when the truth does eventually come out, Archon will be lucky if there’s not actual street-violence over this policy. And if the secret comes out after an actual cross-contamination crisis? Yeah, Arianna and the others in the Big Board Room are gonna be the first ones against the wall.
Now, of course, none of the above prevents a totally incompatible alien organism from taking a chomp out of a terrestrial being. Or otherwise poisoning it, corrupting its DNA (such as with radioactivity or chemical degradation) or altering its evolutionary development, in some way (e.g. resulting in extinction).
Likewise if an alien organism starts to reproduce, on a planet (ignoring the specifics of how it is able to obtain sustenance) then it would be far worse than any ‘invasive species’ from another continent. Given that all the usual problems, from the latter, would be vastly magnified, by the disparate metabolisms.
Hence why scientists, making preparations to explore other ecosystems (known or potential), take precautions to prevent us contaminating their environment.
Yet when they see some weird alien-looking thing they still insist on going “quick, snag it, and bring it home with us!”
Wait, I just realized. What’s dextro-DNA?
I’m going to try to explain this in layman’s terms, but I may not be totally successful. So if you still need me to clarify further, feel free to ask.
The DNA structure of every living creature on Earth twists to the left (“levo”), but it is possible that some alien lifeforms may have DNA structures that twist to the right (“dextro”). As it turns out, DNA imparts its ‘handedness’ to every protein it codes for. So, biochemically, all life on earth has only left hands and left feet, and can only combine properly with left gloves and left shoes.
If an alien were to use right-handed (“dextro”) organic molecules, they would have to use them entirely, because all biochemical reactions would be related to each other there in the same way that they are here. They wouldn’t be able to get any nutrition from our food, and we wouldn’t be able to get any nutrition from theirs. At best, you’d get a belly ache and diarrhea.
Why? Well, going back to the “hands and feet” analogy… you’d be trying to put a right glove on your left hand, and a right shoe on your left foot. Your enzymes just don’t know how to break down those right-handed molecules. Same for them, but in reverse. (Note: This applies primarily to proteins. We can process some right-handed molecules, as long as they’re not proteins. Sugar, for example.)
On the negative side, this means that any aliens with dextro-DNA would need to bring their own food supplies, or some sort of alien technology that converts our food into something they can actually eat. They might also (depending on whether their ENTIRE biosphere uses dextro-DNA or not) need breathing apparatus; pollen in our atmosphere would clog their pores and respiratory system with unprocessable organic matter, eventually killing them.
On the positive side, this means that our bacteria and viruses would be unable to affect them, and theirs would be unable to affect us.
Of course the most contagious galactic diseases use ambidextro-DNA.
I was afraid of that.
Our biology is based on amino acids. Proteins are chains of amino acids.
Many molecules, included amino acids, has two version, mirrored each other. Not twisted the other way, mirrored. We call them L and D, which is a nomenclature based on structure. All our amino acids are L (we don’t know why).
Not all biochemestry is L, sugars are all D.
“Dextro” is short for “dextrorotatory” and means the direction in which a molecule twists light. Some of our L-amino acids are dextrorotatory (right) some are laevorotatory (left).
Our DNA double-helix normally spin right (yes, right) and its called right-hand DNA (not “dextro”). Left-hand DNA also occurs on Earth.
DNA do not generate amino acids, it use them to build proteines, so neither right-hand nor left-hand DNA can generate “dextro life”, it do not have with to since there’s only L-amino acids.
D-amino acids provided, “dextro life” could be made. It’s DNA likely would spin right as well, since DNA itself is not build out of amino acids.
D-ACs are not necessarily poison. We can digest D-ACs, we can even turn D-ACs into L-ACs. We have D-Enzymes. We can deal with L-sugars.
Interaction between D and L life, diseases included, is not so straight forward.
Where it say:
“D-amino acids provided, “dextro life” could be made. It’s DNA likely would spin right as well, since DNA itself is not build out of amino acids.”
should say:
“D-amino acids provided, “dextro life” could be made. Its DNA likely would spin right as ours, since DNA itself is not build out of amino acids.”
I have left-pawed DNA.
My explanation still stands, however. A life form that evolved to live on D-Amino acids would not be able to digest our food (or vice-versa), and may have problems with the atmosphere as well (airborne pollen), if their biome also evolved D-amino plant life.
And it IS possible for life to evolve that uses D-amino proteins. It just didn’t happen here, except for maybe one or two bacteria (IIRC),
A good example, by the way, of the incompatibility of different chiralities… and I know you’ve all heard of it… Thalidomide. The early testing of Thalidomide was done only on the desired enantiomer, but synthesis for mass production produced a racemic drug. That is to say, it contained both chiralities (enantiomers)… one enantiomer helps prevent morning sickness in women; the other one produces birth defects.
Another example is the cancer-fighting drug Platinol. In this case, scientists haven’t been able to separate the beneficial enantiomer from the toxic one that makes you sick. So while the racemic drug does help fight cancer, there will be side-effects.
By the way, the drug companies are Genre Savvy about this. Whenever they develop a new drug, they’ll initially release a racemic mixture, and sell that until its exclusivity expires, then release a “new” medication consisting of only the biologically active enantiomer of the original compound, so as to gain a whole new patent life for essentially the same compound. Examples include Prilosec (omeprazole) vs. Nexium (esomeprazole), Celexa (citalopram) vs. Lexapro (escitalopram), Claritin (loratadine) vs. Clarinex (desloratadine), and so on.
“…gourmands across the galaxy are lining up to try Reversal, a new gastrointestinal immunosuppressant treatment that allows dextro/levo species to safely sample each other’s cuisine. […] Doctors are warning these bold new epicures to watch out for leftovers — meals should be eaten as soon as possible, and users must purge before the treatment wears off.”
It ocurred to me to google “dextro-DNA” because, who knows? and… voilá: it comes from the game Mass Effect. I read some of the wiki and threads about it.
I’m still shivering.
Me too. Just think sugar is the one example of something like that, which we know. Now imagine how awesome the rest of the southpaw DNA food will taste!
Their sugared bunny must be heavenly!
Yorp
D-amino acids are sweeter than ours normal L ones, of course people included.
Their “bunnies” do must taste heavenly ;)
It depends on how much those species mingle in the general population. Especially if they have their own little enclaves of their own species.
They mingle enough to get tongues down throats, per Sydney’s Truesight.
I can´t believe no one mentioned this game: Codespells
It’s exactly what you would think it is:
“Craft any magical spell you can imagine using the most powerful tool there is: code.”
When you say “Arcanum” I think “Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura”…
Dabbler has a question mark showing in the last panel. This is her reply to the suggestion made by the Veil tech guy. “If we do redesign the sigil towers, I think the new model should drop the headphone jack.”
No, that ? is part of what ever hologrammy thingie she is demonstrating to not-Blade
Possibly.
I think it more likely though that this is a pictogramonomatopoeia.*
Dabbler’s conversation is carrying on, mostly as white noise to Sydney, so no words are to be heard (/read). But she is picking up enough of the gist to contextualise it, as a highly technical conversation. The graphics being there to convey that visually.
* “HWARF!” is a word that recreates a sound, in a written form, so is an onomatopoeia. Whereas a pictogram is a visual representation of a word. Therefore a pictorial representation, of the sounds of a conversation, would be a pictogramonomatopoeia.
Or possibly an ideogram. But that is not as funny.
One of my favorite books/series is “Wizard’s Bane”, by Rick Cook.
It describes the adventures of a systems programmer teleported to a world of magic. While he seems useless at first…
[spoiler]
….eventually he discovers that while major, powerful spells are impossible or incredibly dangerous for non Wizards to cast, simple small spells are safe for anybody to cast. And that small spells can be used to cast other small spells. By determining the magical equivalents for branching instructions and storage (ie. variables) along with other elements, he is able to create a magical compiler that can be used by anyone and makes him the most powerful wizard in the world.
The Wiz Zumwalt novels by Rick Cook feature a magical world where human wizards have only a stumbling, error-filled understanding of magic… until they import a programmer from Earth who realizes that magic is the source code of the universe, and works out a proper programming language that is almost incomprehensibly more powerful than what the wizards have.
Ninja’d by MechaBill!
Not to mention Ie Yamof Ool, Scottie and estocasticom mentioning Rick Cook on the first page of comments. But it is still interesting, to see what each commentator brings from his works.
Literally LOL! This is GREAT, love it! :)
They need to introduce the Arc Tailor Ashley to the Council. The market for badass black trench coats for this organization could be enough for him to retire on.
With how high a demand there is for Ashley and his powers, I don’t think he needs any help to retire.
That’s what I’ve been thinking about spells too. Spellbooks are just code libraries.
The issue of “magic as code” has come up a lot in my D&D game, and since I don’t want a world where magic is common, I’ve implemented a few “laws of magic”
1) Each person using magic must first interact with the magic, and magic is thereby “adjusted”. Essentially, each person is their own complier / unique language.
2) Trying to exactly run someone else’s “code” is either going to result in failed output (nothing happens), incorrect output (“That was supposed to produce a gout of flame, not a frog.”), or catastrophic failure (“Sunnuvabeech, he burned himself up!”).
3) There are universal principles, but each person’s experience affects how they internalize the symbology (“Wait, why are you using a sigil for cat here?” “Because cats are independent.” “No, cats represent hedonism!”). In essence, everyone casts any spell in a way that makes sense to them.
4) Magical training consists of identification of the core principles and determining what associations best represent that core principle for the caster. “Learning a spell” isn’t a rote process, but is rather a process of re-interpretting the core principles presented ( step a is figuring out what Bob meant by the symbology he used, and step b is figuring out which symbols in one’s own repertoire best matches that *interpreted* symbology (and that explains the “learn spells” roll for wizards).
This approach tends to shut down modern (read – anachronistic) thinking in a medieval setting.
And yes, I find Jungian-based psychology fascinating. :D
Clever stuff.
What about carrots?
*attaches a stick, behind Weatherheight‘s neck, with a rope dangling a carrot, in front, but just out of biting range*
Not as clever as you might think. Took literally years of debate with friends from several disciplines (computer programmer/engineer, physicist, medicine, anthropology, and political science) to figure out something that made sense, was relatively easy to explain, and was palatable enough to the players who wanted to power-game to accept.
Oh, and I solved the carrot-on-a-rope-tied-to-a-stick thing years ago.
::sits down, tilts his head back, and enjoys a well-earned carrot::
Your end result though was good.
Most traditional* stories, with mages, do not have industrialised magic, or whole populations of magic users. Master-apprentice relationships being by far the most common. But when there are colleges, they are usually restricted to a very limited number. Rather than every community having one or more.
Which your mechanisms would make highly believable. Whereas (for instance) normal D&D rules should really easily lead to mass-production techniques. Especially with spells which can cut out laborious hand-copying techniques (and all the risk of errors associated with such). Plus I could see no flaw with the system, which would put me off playing it.
To the contrary, I like systems which reward those putting in the hard work. With normal D&D one player could work hard designing new custom spells, then (because of being a nice guy) give them to everyone else in the party. But thereby devaluing the various rewards to having unique spells (not least being standing out from the crowd).
So I would love using such a system. As a DM, I like to see players getting the kicks out of having worked hard to create a distinctive character, with signature spells (and their own custom magical items). Plus enjoy that myself, as a player.
The heaviest I ever went down that route was a character played all the way up to arch-mage status (and a very high level one, to boot), with shadow-themed custom spells. Creating at least two, at every level, before designing any non-themed ones.
* I.e. pure fantasy, rather than blurring science fiction with magic. And ignoring anything too recent (let us say since the “Harry Potter Era” started), as I have not been able to read those.
Here, you deserve reward, for all that hard work.
*passes over a box of carrots, half of which have customised shapes, flavours and colours*
I recommend you try the shadow carrot last. You may find any normal carrot to be a bit dull, after that.
That probably leads to schools of magic, where different masters teach their own unique ways (assuming the students would adopt a similar language from the master).
No doubt each master’s specializations would, in the end, effect what kind of magic the school focusses on (or is best at)
Exactly – we tend to think along the pathways we are taught (albeit not exactly perfectly in synch with the teacher). This also tends to preclude other modes of thought.
On the other hand, some people are better at some things naturally (I, for example, am really bad at rock-paper-scissors), which helps explain how the various schools get started in the first place.
I wish I could claim full credit, but it really was a committee effort.
It’s the “Somebody Else’s Problem” field from Hitchikers Guide, isn’t it?
All this talk about magic code, and no one has asked the obvious question about panel three: is that Mr Barkley with his wife and cub? (great detail on the polo shirt, can even make out the centaur ☺)
The second image, of the vampire lady biting the male is cute as well ☺
Wow, well deduced, and his patterning, taking into account ageing, seems to be a good match.
In which case that must be Clover, that Mrs Barkley is holding, in her pre-Goth phase.
Who is a cute little cub? You are, yes you are. Wag your tail!
Oooh, you are probably right.
Is it a centaur? Thanks, I can tell and it’s a great detail.
“the vampire lady biting the male”
It’s the other way around, that’s why she is still mad “for the other thing”.
There are three groups though: those who have families, those who propagate through transmission, and those who do both, the other couple with the sheepish wolf is the ‘both’
Or at least he is trying his best (his beast?) to :P
So, he is giving the appearance of being a ‘wolf in sheepish clothing’?
Zack Tilly ☺
“Think of the Chocobo as a spaceship.”
“Ah! Now that makes sense!”
In The Dragon Knight and further novels in the eponymous series, one character’s magic very much works in a ‘if then’ boolean/programming language sort of way. It’s a neat way to handle it, I think. Magic, after all, is the ultimate black box, but if you can make it work, does it really matter so much HOW?
If the HOW involves puppies dying, it does matter!
I you want a good free read that delves into the mechanics behind magic, I suggest “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”. It is now compiled into one link to the whole work. https://hpmor.com/
This is an alternate universe fiction that changes the starting condition of the story. Harry still loses his parents, but is raised by muggle parents who are university professors. Harry learns logic before heading off to Hogwarts. He tries to work out the mechanics behind spellcraft. One of his tests is the mindset of the caster. ‘If there is a spell that creates a pink flower, but you tell the person you are teaching it to that it creates a blue flower, what will be the result of that person casting the spell?” The author makes occasional digs at the logic behind the original, such as why would a bookworm like Hermione be assigned to Gryffindoor instead of Ravenclaw? Sections of the book dealing with the lessons taught to the students show that the author is a fan of Ender’s Game.
At least it’s not written in DRUID or CABAL.
The smell would be a bit of a problem.
As a coder myself, I appreciate the magic=code equation. When I GM’d, I tended to think of it that way internally. There probably should be a reference to the Arthur Clarke comment (“Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from magic.”)
You’re undoubtedly right about there being various magical languages. Every high-level computer language has particular advantages and disadvantages; there are some things you can do much easier in one than another. They all compile, of course, down to processors-based machine code, which brings up an interesting question: Does a magical language compile into the “machine code” of the universe? I guess that means to be a “Master of the Mystic Arts,” you’d need to know universal assembler as well as a suite of higher-level languages. The magic=code also helps to explain Dabbler’s GUIs for her powers.
Recommended reading on this idea: “Off to Be the Wizzard” by Scott Meyer
Or Rick Cook’s “Wizardry” series :)
Once played in a D&D campaign that took place on a Dyson sphere and “magic” was based on the environmental and and structural integrity controls of the sphere. People who were spellcasters had a genetic background that linked them to the genetics of the original engineers and technicians of the sphere, which genetics could be sensed by the control systems.
Over time, the systems had evolved to accept certain commands when given in a certain way from people with these genetics (essentially, people made up stuff and the computers figured out what they were trying to do). This made spell research both fun and incredibly risky (sometimes the computers kicked in the auto-limiters to prevent “people” casualties, sometimes they were told in the spell to turn them off).
Somewhere in that world, my character is perpetually burning and wandering around, in constant pain and not allowed to die. Good times.
:’-(
You should go read The Reluctant Sorcerer. Seriously.
…Oh, maybe that’s why the cameras (and Dabbler’s one cybernetic eye) didn’t pick up Sydney’s skill-tree. But that raises even more questions. Are the orbs ancient artifacts that the Council knew about? Are they relatively new things, maybe poorly implemented into the Veil through some API-type thing? I’ll stop before I go off on a tangent.
Well, one of the other reasons for dragging Sydney along to this Meeting is to see if anyone there knows anything about her balls
Well her balls are hanging out for everyone to take a peek at.
Yes, but just because they are on display, doesn’t mean everyone would know where they came from
That is why they are on display.
It’s possible that the level up grid itself was a simple illusion. I’m sure the Veil is set up to blanket detect all illusions and “normalize” them.
Wow a chance to pull on some occultism. So Dave you might find this intriguing/ useful regarding magic. Magic does originate from the caster in most traditional schools of occult thought. However there are two fundamental approaches to actual act of casting. Funnily enough both were practiced by Norse magicians.
The “female ” form is usually to use meditative and altered entranced to states to generate the correct mind state for a spell and then magic is free form exercise kind of like lucid dreaming but while awake. The male approach is fundamentally what you’ve recreated here coding by using runes to bring the power of the unconscious under concious control . rune actually means mystery and while it’s totally possible to “code” in runes but there are some difficulties.
Mostly runes are complex and layered things so it’s kind of like coding in kanji it’s a bit tricky to get an exact meaning across to anyone but the person who actually cast it. Overall it’s more consistent and better for long term work like an enchantment though.
Finally so yes sigils are the circle things kind of but also no, a magic circle is fundamentally a shark cage designed to protect the magician from all the things he or she is about to deal with. A sigil on the other hand is actually sort of a spell turned into a puzzle. It’s a complete spell turned into a singular defining icon and charged with energy. It’s activated traditionally by “unfolding” the icon like a piece of origami in the mind of the viewer. Traditionally only the caster would know how to activate it. They’re commonly used to denote identity of caster as a makers mark or as a personal talisman or to have a spell ready to go without having to cast.
It’s worth noting some sigil mages burn their sigils after they’ve been placed on scrolls or paper as a means of activation.
Still your interpretation holds up pretty well to basic occult theory 4 out of 5 stars.
Feel free to hit me up for help with occult lore ,firearms knowledge and martial arts knowledge .
Sorry about typos and lack of clarity I can’t figure out editing and I was too excited to double check
That was very well typed, didn’t notice any typoes and any lack of clarity is entirely on this side of the screen ☺
Very interesting, thank you. I always found it fascinating how there are male and female ways of magic.
I’m not fluent in English: what “altered entranced to states” means?
What about energy? Is it created by the caster or is it channeled from elsewhere?
I have read stories where basically the “magic energy” of the surroundings was consumed in its whole, making it impossible to cast any more spells.
That would be one of those typos. I meant an altered state properly described as a trance.
Kind of a theological / philosophical debate on that origin of energy. Personally I think Dirac’s sea neatly solves that problem. The universe is actually flooded with infinite energy at any given point. Magic just requires you to Utilize that. Problems with a power source in a spell usually mean one person can’t collect and harvest energy efficiently enough.
That’s why mages seek out lay lines which function as a naturally occurring current of energy that flows through the world where they intersect in particular tends to function as a sort of “vent ” or well. Much easier to harnass than collecting it from the air.
On the using up all the energy problem if we think of the universe as a closed system then the conservation of mass garuntees we’ll never run out of energy assuming that E=mc squared. You could drain an area but it would just refill as energy would move from nearby areas to fill in. Also some theories make magic a bit of a “butterfly effect “. You mind starts a ripple in the one area and that ripple builds to have a more drastic effect where desired. How is a matter of debate but over use of energy has never been a problem I’ve ever heard of unless the person refused to cast from the environment at all and was pulling from their own life force to supplement . Then that could lead to death or unconciousness but usually the body will protect itself and shut down the spell it can’t sustain.
Glad that made more sense than I thought.
Thank you! :)
Heh,
the Midgardian Council of Darkness, and the Dimension Police would be so jealous they didn’t think to have the “Nine Obelisks” actual work as a glamor; but considering how much of their mystic code and power went to maintaining seals and decreasing the powers of the supernatural elements *to the extent that 99% of all superhumans wouldn’t even be able to use their powers and thus come across as human even to themselves.
that and jealous of the idea of putting them in hidden earthly locations instead of thinking them safer floating in orbital formation not realizing Overlord class demons could hit them on the way in…