|
Post by Fortunomancer on May 9, 2015 14:54:05 GMT
I have had an unprecedented amount of work to do during the past couple of days and have not had a chance to finish writing the explanation of my world's magic. I thought I would start this discussion thread now and add to it later.
I am very curious about all the different types of magic people have mentioned. Would anyone like to explain their world's magic in more detail?
|
|
|
Post by esthfora on May 9, 2015 16:32:46 GMT
In some worlds in some times there is a game called Monument Valley. If you play it, you will understand a little bit about one way my world can work.
|
|
|
Post by Botanical Engineer on May 9, 2015 18:09:05 GMT
Humans have editing magic. We can touch a seed and sense the patterns inside them that control how they will grow, and have some idea of what the different parts of the pattern do. We can change any part of that pattern and have some idea of what changes will result. There is a much weaker sense of vaguely what patterns a plant has when we touch part of a plant that is not the seed. So it's more polite to avoid touching people you don't know fairly well.
All other mobile plants also have some sort of magic with patterns, although the specifics differ, and they are all contact-based. Tifozhe are about half the size of a fist, and have many small fibers on the top of their bodies, which they use to float around and eat brightly colored plants. At the end of each net, the leader of each group floats to a nearby group and fights that group's leader, and whichever fozhe wins copies the patterns of the other and copies parts of that pattern over to its group's plant. Tikeipe are about knee height, and have boneless arm-like limbs from their backs, tipped with orange rhombus-shaped plates. If a keipe touches a living plant with one of its plates, it can change the plant's patterns in near-random ways, which usually causes sickness or death in the plant. This means there is less competition for sunlight nearby when the keipo seed sprouts. Tislonde are slightly taller than humans. Each slonde has two very long legs, and a long neck, and its sedentary stage growing from its back. It chews and holds the seeds of small-seed plants in its mouth, which it edits to not sprout while they are there, and edits them to sprout extremely quickly when it eats other plants. The small-seed plants get into the insides of other plants and kill them by stealing their nutrients. This also reduces the competition for sunlight when the slonde dies and the slondo takes root in the ground.
Garden's god, and presumably other gods, also have magic. It surrounds the planet and changes colors and brightness, keeps the planet floating at a constant height, creates rain at night, creates a new species in areas there is room for them every set, increases the planet's radius every net, and produces species by a new aesthetic theme every cycle.
It is commonly believed that dead humans have spirits that contain their personalities and memories, which are invisible and insubstantial and make up the net-shape that appears in the sky each net, and can return to observe the town they died in, if every shine, their name and pattern are read aloud from the town's book.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 10, 2015 5:41:29 GMT
Hadassah, this thread makes me curious: how do souls work in your world? In mine, demons occasionally claim to take those of summoners, but they cannot actually do anything with souls and this claim is simply for their amusement at the summoners’ expenses; nobody has found any actual souls, although some speculate they’re the reason humans go to one of the four afterlifes and animals don’t (unless they happen to be the one thing Limboites get).
What is a soul, what does it mean for you to not have one, is this why the Judaic god does not recognize you, and why does this mean you cannot choose to follow another deity?
Also, you are talking specifically about the Judaic god; is there a separate Christian god or Islamic god?
Finally, if this isn’t classified information or too personal: what do you mean about being sent on active missions? I was under the impression that you mostly had a desk job with the US Government looking at information on other worlds; do you actually go to other worlds sometimes?
|
|
Hadassah
Regular
Posts: 107
World: Pantheon
Pronoun: She/Her
|
Post by Hadassah on May 10, 2015 13:50:34 GMT
Hadassah, this thread makes me curious: how do souls work in your world? In mine, demons occasionally claim to take those of summoners, but they cannot actually do anything with souls and this claim is simply for their amusement at the summoners’ expenses; nobody has found any actual souls, although some speculate they’re the reason humans go to one of the four afterlifes and animals don’t (unless they happen to be the one thing Limboites get). What is a soul, what does it mean for you to not have one, is this why the Judaic god does not recognize you, and why does this mean you cannot choose to follow another deity? Also, you are talking specifically about the Judaic god; is there a separate Christian god or Islamic god? Finally, if this isn’t classified information or too personal: what do you mean about being sent on active missions? I was under the impression that you mostly had a desk job with the US Government looking at information on other worlds; do you actually go to other worlds sometimes? I have moved this conversation from here for topicality. A soul is a literal, measurable, mostly-indivisible representation of an individual's personal divinity. The soul allows for people to channel the will of their deity, such as a priest might provide a blessing, and it also allows them to provide a fraction of power to their chosen deity. They can be stolen which very very illegal and prone to cause a cross-pantheon crusade of divine retribution. Generally, the soul the fraction of the person that ascends to their respective afterlife. Most recognized and sentient machine intelligences have souls. Theoretically, I could possibly gain a soul, like other machine intelligence, but the process is still a mystery to most scientists and priests to this day. Personally, I am rather doubtful that I will gain a soul, but I am a cynic about such things. The reason I am not able to choose another deity is because I do not have that essence. I cannot provide a fractional of my will to their pool of power and I cannot channel divine magic at all, even though I am animated with divine magic. The reason the Judaic god does not recognize me is likely because of the original story of "The Golem and The Rabbi" in our world. There are multiple variations on the story, but the most prominent one involves a Rabbi crafting a man from clay, using ritual and magic to give the golem an artificial life, will and purpose. Eventually, the golem, trying to perform his duty as a guardian, does something extreme, such as murder, and the Judaic god finds out about the golem. Furious that the Rabbi would use His powers to create a mockery of life, a simulacra of Man, an idol of His creation of man, the Judaic god forced the Rabbi to destroy the golem, who was loved as a son, then exiled the Rabbi, and forever banned the Rabbi's writings as heretical. That is why I am not recognized by the Judaic god, who while not quite as wrathful in the modern world, is still very, very vehement in His decisions. I have decided not to try to contact Him to ask personally. There is a separate Christian and Islamic god, although there are always debates about how separate they are, or if they represent aspects of the same god. -- Most of my job is actually at a desk. I review inter-universal material as part of the House of Otherworldly Investigations, a small, very new branch of the order of Guardians. Most of the work involves reports, studies, and paperwork, but we occasionally get direct, live connections to another world. The only reason I got the opportunity to get this job was because I was immune to the influence of the recent invasion by another god and assisted in the cleanup. Another recent investigation I had to perform would involve exploring that local branch or franchise of an interdimensional Library (the alleged apostasy branch according to the Grey Librarian). I did not go there alone, and was part of a team that investigated the appearance. I don't sleep or get tired by usual measures, but I am allowed a four hour free-time period each day as well as a personal Sabbath each week, and I would say that on any given day, about 18 hours of my day involves working at a desk.
|
|
|
Post by Fortunomancer on May 11, 2015 1:13:45 GMT
I have been disallowed from posting the details of my world's magic for political reasons. It's possible that a heavily edited version of my summary will make an appearance on the forum at some point. If anyone has specific questions, they can send me a private message, but I and other authorities will have to decide if you are trustworthy.
|
|
Cardea
Poster
words
Posts: 34
World: Adunka
Pronoun: she
|
Post by Cardea on May 11, 2015 16:29:10 GMT
Our magic is a subtractive magic. We remove the parts of things that don't belong. Remove a hole to repair something. Remove dryness from a plant to help the plant. Remove the wrong colours to leave the right ones for writing. These are things I have seen done. There must be more to it, though, because I have tried a little when no one was looking and I didn't figure out how to do it by myself.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 12, 2015 14:18:10 GMT
Botanical engineer, I had assumed that the patterns you spoke of editing were what our world calls “DNA”, but from some of the descriptions of edits you’ve made I’m less sure. Could you please describe what the patterns are like, and how long it takes to learn to edit them? DNA is mostly a sequence composed of the same four elements repeating over and over in different patterns, and the people who study it are still not sure about many of the details of how these sequences translate into the traits we see in the actual beings who have the DNA.
|
|
|
Post by Botanical Engineer on May 12, 2015 17:36:09 GMT
There are five "symbols" that the patterns are made of. Two are outside symbols, and two are inside symbols, and the last is a branching connection symbol. They connect "horizontally" in groups of three with one inside symbol connected to two outside symbols, and "vertically" in long strings of varying lengths. All patterns have at least one branch into two vertical strings, and more complex plants often have more branches later down each string. There are always an even number of ends of strings. Any outside symbol can connect to any inside symbol, and branching symbols can connect to any inside symbol. Each horizontal set of three has an instruction, which means different things depending on where in the string it is, what symbols are in it, and in what order. Most patterns start with instructions of how to sprout and grow, then how to reproduce, then how to disperse seeds. If a plant needs to respond to things, there is an instruction for how to tell whether something is happening, followed by different branches of instructions for different situations. Mobile plants generally have patterns at least three times as long as those of most sedentary plants, because it needs to contain instructions for how the sedentary phase grows, then instructions for how the sedentary phase grows the mobile phase, then instructions for how the mobile plant behaves. Some people aren't sure whether to count the branching pieces as symbols or something else, so if in your world they don't count the branching pieces, we'd have the same number of symbols. Does DNA work the same way as our patterns?
I'm pretty sure a child five or six shines old could successfully change what color a simple flower's petals were, and maybe younger if they had some examples of seeds of the same species with the target color of petals to compare with. Some parts of patterns only work depending on whether a different part of the pattern matches it. Most people don't get to be good enough to make complex changes because it takes a lot of time. It took me around ten shines of practice to get good enough to sometimes make useful edits to complex plants. The most common edit everyone is expected to be able to do is allow distributed seeds to sprout. Most distributed seeds have an outside symbol changed to an inside symbol in the sprouting instructions, and it's really obvious which outside symbol it should be, so people just fix it when they plant the seeds.
Normally instructions for a simple trait will be contained in one or two horizontal groups in the section of the pattern of the other instructions for other traits of the same part of the plant.
|
|
|
Post by Archangel on May 12, 2015 19:16:45 GMT
Which forms of magic are learnable, and which are likely to require innate characteristics? People from different worlds may lack any relevant inborn traits. Keter once contained some magic of the former type, but the rituals involved were such that everyone who knows about it is very glad that there are no living practitioners.
Many of the anomalous people and objects would be considered magical depending on the definition. Most but not all of these have reasonably consistent effects, ranging from a ring that cures the common cold to a pizza that will destroy the world if not eaten. (Yes, really.) For obvious reasons, the Foundation is most concerned with the dangerous ones. Most are more dignified than the pizza one.
|
|
|
Post by Andrew on May 13, 2015 2:22:52 GMT
This is not how our DNA works. In DNA, there are four basic coding units called bases: A, C, T, and G. There are two sides, but each base can be on either side, and they always pair with the same other base (A with T and C with G). A basic property is called a gene, formed by a long sequence of several of these base pairs. There are a large number of genes on each chromosome, where a chromosome is a single sequence of these base pairs. Chromosomes also come in pairs; you get one chromosome of each type from each of your parents, so you end up with a pair of each type. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs.
The DNA is fairly difficult to read, although I don’t know how much of that is due to its recent discovery and how much is due to it actually being complicated.
|
|
|
Post by Botanical Engineer on May 13, 2015 3:30:47 GMT
Okay. DNA sounds a little bit similar to patterns but different enough that it's probably not just different categorization. Upon pollination, one pattern is copied from each parent per branch. So if a pattern branched once at the beginning, and once each branch further down, all of the "left" branches would be copied from one parent, and all the "right" branches from the other. Humans have more than 23 strings of patterns.
Patterns are also fairly complicated. I think editing competently would be nearly impossible without the sense for what things do that is connected with it.
|
|
|
Post by Kit on May 13, 2015 21:58:00 GMT
My world doesn't have any magic at all, I don't think. What's it like having magic? Can you do anything you want? Can you see in the dark? Can you turn invisible? Can you turn yourself into things?
|
|
|
Post by Fortunomancer on May 13, 2015 23:18:59 GMT
Speaking for myself, we cannot do anything we want, we cannot see in the dark but we can create light, and we cannot turn invisible or turn ourselves into things.
|
|
|
Post by QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS on May 13, 2015 23:37:41 GMT
We offer INVISIBILITY for only 198 zorkmids! BUY NOW!
|
|