|
Post by Andrew on May 5, 2015 22:39:06 GMT
I see what Nifl sees. Since I doubt it’s illegal under any relevant governing law for me to see what you can ascend to, it’s probably either a memetic hazard (it still seems odd such things exist) or illegal for you to talk about it where you are. EDIT: Never mind, it looks like the message won’t get through anyway.
I am human. As there seems to be some confusion on this point: we have only negligible magical powers (which most of us don’t even know exist and the rest of us rarely use because they’re practically useless), and we just have the various sorts of physical everyday three-dimensional movement of the type I would expect most people here to have. No pocket dimensions (only physical cloth pockets sewn into clothes), no time travel except for the standard one-second-per-second time travel everything does for “time” to be a meaningful concept.
Depending on your definition of “species”, we may or may not be the only intelligent species, but we are not the only intelligent beings. Since I don’t know if there’s any translation on this forum or how it works, I’ll put a disclaimer before saying what the others are called: the standard terms for the other types of intelligent beings in my language have religious and moral connotations, but the beings don’t really fit the connotations except superficially; don't infer anything meaningful about them from what they're called.
The other intelligent beings are called demons, angels, and fairies (collective term for the three types is “daeva”). Each one lives in one of the four concordant worlds (the fourth has no native inhabitants). These daeva look like humans, except they also have wings (the wings are functional and let them fly). They also have worthwhile magical powers instead of the parlor tricks humans get: demons can create stuff out of nothing, angels can change stuff into other stuff, and fairies can move near-arbitrary amounts of stuff with high speed and control.
EDIT: None of the parlor tricks humans I’m familiar with have, and none of the daeva, have the ability to make prophesies.
|
|
Nifl
Poster
Posts: 35
World: Nexus
|
Post by Nifl on May 5, 2015 22:53:16 GMT
Humans have no magical powers at all in my world (that I'm aware of). How would I check to see if we have the kind you're talking about, Andrew?
|
|
|
Post by Leaf on May 5, 2015 23:22:44 GMT
Humans-only and no magic powers over here. I'm not even going to qualify with "that I know of". I feel very secure in saying that if humans had magic powers, we would've noticed by now.
|
|
Hadassah
Regular
Posts: 107
World: Pantheon
Pronoun: She/Her
|
Post by Hadassah on May 5, 2015 23:29:17 GMT
I am a golem, animated by religious ritual and currently under a probationary period before deemed a full-right citizen. Humans are the primary population of our world, though there are confirmed alien races off of our planet Earth, and quite a few demihumans.
Humans can learn magic in our world as well as the skills involved with scientific inquiry, but the knowledge and intuition involved tend to clash, so very few diversify. Myth and legend were supposed to just that, until around the 1400's, when some people began to develop powers and abilities independent of magic or science (called demihumans). Deities once again became more prevalent as well, but that's kind of a long story.
|
|
|
Post by Fortunomancer on May 5, 2015 23:33:09 GMT
Andrew:
Would you mind describing what "parlor tricks" consist of? Your world's innate magic feels very similar to that of my world (although I must confess that we have nothing like daeva). In my world, human magic varies based on a variety of factors, the most obvious of which is geographical location, so it would not be unusual for you to have the same magic with different levels of strength and variance. (I'm not surprised that you don't have prophetic abilities, as those are limited to people who live in a very specific geographical area).
-The Fortunomancer
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 6, 2015 0:31:51 GMT
Fortunomancer and Nifl:
(I have not yet replied to your etiquette post, but until some standards are developed I will try to address you in the same way you address specific people)
Our parlor tricks don’t vary by geographic location, or (I am told) by world within the cluster. I can, if I concentrate correctly, do minor telekinesis, change the colors of things, produce tiny amounts of light, look at the details of somebody else’s summoning, etc. This requires large amounts of concentration, and is always slow and never precise. It takes some time to focus on things correctly, and in almost all circumstances I can achieve a better result with my fingers and perhaps a colored pencil.
I will attempt to teach you, but it would be difficult to communicate the type of focus required even in person. If you were sure these were things you could do, I expect these instructions would be good enough; however, with the confidence difference from not knowing if this works and the reasonable decision to give up if it appears not to be working, I’m not sure that you could reliably rule out the ability to do this type of magic even if you don’t seem to be succeeding.
As an example, I will talk about how to recolor a piece of paper. It starts white, and I would like to put a purple splotch (you can’t get too much more precise than that) on it. I look at the area where I want the color to change, and I concentrate on the color becoming purple. After a few seconds (longer if you have less practice), I start slipping into the correct type of focus, where I am thinking of all of the details of the change I want and simultaneously willing them to happen. Once I have this focus, the color will slowly fade to purple in an area that slowly grows to approximately the part I envisioned. For me, this took about thirty seconds given the size of the area I was concentrating on. If I hadn’t done it before, it would probably have taken five minutes of sustained effort, even after I had the correct kind of focus.
-Andrew
|
|
|
Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 0:40:15 GMT
Just for the hell of it, I put eight-ish minutes into trying very hard to turn a plain white candy wrapper red. I am now pretty sure my world doesn't have that kind of magic.
|
|
|
Post by Mother Starlight on May 6, 2015 0:59:51 GMT
If I censor anything, I'll make it as clear as safely possible that I've done so, the extent of the censorship, and that it was me who did it.
I do provide translation. In most cases it should work pretty transparently.
|
|
|
Post by Fortunomancer on May 6, 2015 2:04:44 GMT
Andrew, Interesting! Aspects of your magic sound similar to electromancy, alchemancy, and necromancy, but it seems that you don't have distinct categories like we do. It also seems like the way magic is practiced is different (we can do simple spells intuitively the way you can, but anything more complicated often involves chanting, symbology, and movement). In any case, your magic doesn't seem technically complicated at all, which is a disappointment, as that would make it more interesting to analyze.
Basic definitions: electromancy is the creation and control of heat and light, alchemancy is the ability to change substances into other substances, and necromancy is the ability to communicate with the dead.
(I'm going to stop signing my name at the end of posts because it is redundant and irritating).
|
|
|
Post by Botanical Engineer on May 6, 2015 2:37:15 GMT
Our world has humans. We also have at least one god, and possibly more, and maybe spirits. Humans are sentient. We can sense and edit the patterns inside the seeds of plants while we are touching them, to change how they grow. It is common to believe in spirits, the memories and personalities of dead humans, which observe the towns they died in and support the sky, but influence nothing else. I am not sure whether they are actually the memories and personalities of dead humans, because we cannot interact with them or observe them up close. Our world has a god, which encapsulates the sky. It causes rain, lights the sky, expands the world, and creates new life. We think there are probably similar gods in other worlds within our system, but we haven't gotten close enough to be sure. We think there might be sentient life in other worlds, but we haven't met any yet.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 6, 2015 5:23:19 GMT
Fortunomancer, humans don’t really have anything like your necromancy, except for summoning (and even then it rarely involves talking to people who used to be living humans), which is distinct from our other magic in several ways. I also wouldn’t call the parlor tricks “intuitive”; most people don’t figure out it’s possible without explicitly being told. Maybe there’s some imprecise translation or a difference between technical and non-technical terminology, and you are saying that we don’t need any non-mental aid in our spellcasting?
Botanical engineer, as it seems different between your world and some others, what do you mean by the word “planet” when you use it, do you mean the same thing by “world” in your last post, and what do you mean by the word “system” in the second-to-last sentence? You also seem to be talking about humans as though they are plants, but that could be just that the word “seed” is often but not exclusively used to refer to plants in English. In my world, humans are not plants.
|
|
|
Post by Botanical Engineer on May 6, 2015 6:05:11 GMT
I just defined planet elsewhere, but basically they are cylindrical collections of packed soil growing about an arm's length every net, slowly moving at a fixed height. Ours is surrounded by a deity and we think other ones are too. The first time I said world,I was referring to what most people here are calling a universe. The second time I meant my planet. A system is a group of planets close enough horizontally and vertically to see each other from the surface.
Humans are a type of plant. We are the second stage of a two stage plant. When two people want to have a child, they pollinate the flower of the sedentary plant one person came from with pollen from the sedentary plant the other person came from. The flower produces seeds. The parents sense the patterns of the different seeds and pick one or two to plant. They do not edit the seed, ever. The patterns of the chosen seeds are written down and given to a scribe to prepare. The seed grows into a sedentary plant with a large pod. A child develops inside the pod until it splits open and the ambulatory human stage begins. The empty pod is discarded and the sedentary plant eventually grows into a flowering stage. Children start out not being able to do many things, but they eventually learn how to do things.
If humans in your world aren't plants, what are you instead? I've read a lot of people here talking about rocks on your planets. Are you lot made out of rocks? (Also, from the translation I'm pretty sure rocks are basically really hard soil, from the characters it's using. Please correct me if that's wrong or impolite or something). How would people being made out of rocks even work? I don't think air or water would hold complicated enough patterns to make people either? And how would more people even happen?
|
|
Thorn
Poster
Posts: 44
World: Eclipse
Pronoun: she/her/hers
|
Post by Thorn on May 6, 2015 13:53:06 GMT
I am (to, admittedly, use the term very loosely) human. We have a lot of different variants and groupings of -- in the local parlance, transhumans -- personally I would only define those with large degrees of variance in the structure of the ego as separate species: so, exhumans, and [REDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS]. A reasonable argument could be made about ultimates and asyncs. Other than, we also have AGIs and several kinds of uplifts. In terms of aliens... well, we've encountered one species, and we've found a lot of ruins from presumably-extinct sentient species. I've also heard it argued (mostly by other asyncs) that the [REDACTED FOR SECURITY REASONS] itself is sentient, and therefore qualifies. I don't agree (I don't think it really matters, given its apparent goals if it is), but I can see where they're coming from. Dispersive Prism, most of your post on ascension appears to have been flagged as a potential -- memetic hazard appears to be the term in common use here, so I'll go with that -- on my end, and I'm slightly curious why. If you're reading this, could you tell me: does it, or any of the the things it was discussing, involve: - Something bearing any resemblance (if you would forgive the analogy) to a biological virus (if you don't have have those, mmm... microscopic not-exactly-creatures that attempt to attack or hijack the systems of larger creatures)
- Microscopic robots (um, extremely complicated clockwork creatures) that interact with systems in a somewhat similar way, with extremely variable effects depending on which you're working with.
- Virus-analogues that might be transmitted across your local network
- Extremely specific sets or patterns of stimuli
(The first two are unlikely to have gotten it flagged unless you included blueprints, but I thought it was best to include them for completeness.) Botanical Engineer, organic sentients, including humans, in my world, are general composed of lots of very tiny bits of air, water, and a lot of other substances, including some of those generally included in rocks and soil, arranged in extremely specific patterns. It sounds as though I would have to give an in-depth explanation of local physics to be more specific, as, based on your description of planets, it seems to be dramatically different from yours.
|
|
|
Post by Leaf on May 6, 2015 13:55:53 GMT
Thorn, are you aware of the security redactions in your post?
|
|
Thorn
Poster
Posts: 44
World: Eclipse
Pronoun: she/her/hers
|
Post by Thorn on May 6, 2015 14:18:24 GMT
Security... oh.
Excuse me while I go talk to my router. I can guess why those are there, but I was under the impression it had been concluded that this wasn't an X-risk.
Either someone is being paranoid (fairly normal, and even reasonable), or the security AI was left on. Until I know which, I can't really say much more.
|
|