26 KiB
The Two Year Emperor, Ch65: Book Burning for Fun and Profit
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/65/The-Two-Year-Emperor
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Score: 21
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Created: 2014-10-11T19:03:17
Post:
Comments:
u/INeedAUsernameToo [+5] (23 minutes later)
NOOOO not the books!
Also, weren't the books organized by importance? So at the very least he could have saved the front-most tenth. Given the amount of knowledge that room had, I'm sure the first tenth could hold everything important.
u/eaglejarl [+5] (an hour later)
No one has actually experimentally determined that the room is finite yet, so "the front tenth" might not be well defined. :>
As to whether it /is/ infinite...I'm not sayin'
u/INeedAUsernameToo [+6] (6 hours later)
Yeah, I just double checked. Chapter 55. The wish specified that the books be sorted in order of importance. Also, the books on the nature of the gods were in the first row. Obviously knowing the nature of the gods is the #1 most important information.
Some math on those books: The text is small enough that it appears black and requires an electron microscope to read. Lets assume that the writing consists of individual ink molecules laid out in a readable fashion. So the letter H might consist of 11 ink molecules, each of which is 100 nm, giving us an average letter size of roughly 500nm including white space. Average word has 5 letters, so 2500nm per word. That gives us 10k words per line, for a total of 100 million words per page. A thousand double sided pages gives us 200 billion words per book. Nine linear feet of such books, comprising the sum total of everything he could possibly know about the gods, gives us 2 trillion words total.
In comparison, the library of congress has 20 million books giving us 1 trillion words. So... totally readable. Just saying.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (6 hours later)
Some math on those books: ... 11 ink molecules, ... 100 nm, ... 500nm including white space. ... 2500nm per word. ... 10k words per line, ... 100 million words per page. ... 200 billion words per book.
grumble, grumble, rational fans, grumble, doing math, grumble, can't just relax and enjoy, grumble, grumble
Hm. That sounds low to me, let me check.
The dimensions of the book were called out as "one yard wide and high, and at least 6" thick." Let's assume that it's 1m x 1m x 6 inches. (I'm using inches for thickness because that's the measurement I found online for paper thickness.)
If a word is 2500nm, then by my math the page is 400,000 words per line (ignore margins). If a letter with whitespace is 500nm, let's assume that each line (including leading) is 1000nm. That means there's 1,000,000 lines per page (we'll ignore margins again), for a total of 400,0000,000,000 (four hundred billion!) words per page. Now, based on a quick googling, regular printer paper is 500 sheets to the inch. The paper in Loki's books is from a medieval technology and probably thicker; let's keep the math easy and say that it's 100 sheets to the inch. That's 600 pages per book, double sided makes a total of 1200 pages with 4E11 words on each one, meaning a total of 48E13 words per book. Ignoring the thickness of covers, nine linear feet would be 18 books; let's round it down to 10 to account for the covers and some small space between the books (and to keep the math easy). That's a total of 48E14 or, more properly 4.8E15 words. Round it off and call if 5E15.
9 linear feet of such books, comprising the sum total of everything he could possibly know about the gods, gives us 2 trillion words total.
Ermmm...I think you might be shooting a bit low. :>
Also, note that those nine linear feet weren't "everything I know about gods". They were "the opening paragraph of the discussion about the nature of gods." Yes, Loki spent about five quadrillion words on a single paragraph of text -- of course, all of it was carefully proofread and grammatically correct.
The best part? The sum total of the discussion about the nature of gods can be summed up as "humans create them by believing in them. This will create a god from nothing, or cause a mortal to ascend to godhood."
In comparison, the library of congress has 20 million books giving us 1 trillion words. So... totally readable. Just saying.
Well, let's see...there's 3 bookcases, a total of 6 sets of bookshelves (one of each side of the bookcase), and they recede to "the vanishing point." Let's call that a measly 1000 yards. Now, rounding our earlier estimate of thickness even further, let's say that it's one book per linear foot. That means there's
30,0003000 (oops) books per shelf; I didn't specify the number of shelves, just that they are "tall". Let's go with 30', which is the estimating-from-memory height of other major needs-a-ladder libraries that I've seen. Let's assume that's 10 sets of shelves on each of the 6 bookshelves, for a total of 60 shelves of (at minimum!) 3,000 books each, for a total of1,800,000 books180,000. And let's round that again to 200,000 books, each of which contains 5E15 words, for a total of 1E21 words.I think you're going to need a lot of Red Bull to get through that in a timely fashion. ;>
u/INeedAUsernameToo [+3] (7 hours later)
Okay, fine, I guess getting useful information out of them is just about impossible after all. Probably be easier to just ascend to godhood and get the info that way.
u/philip1201 [+2] (18 hours later)
Is reading a free action? If so, it seems very implausible that there wouldn't be a way to have all the text legibly pass in front of someone. We've got industrial assembly lines (so stuff taking a standard action isn't an excuse, when you can drop an object to trigger it), Graham's number of XP, perfectly cutting walls of force, stuff to make things larger (so the illegibility of the text isn't an excuse), and people with intelligence-enhancing gear and POPE boosts which should put them well past humans from the normalverse.
It might still be a bad idea because of memetic hazards and other nasty Trickster stuff
The sum total of the discussion about the nature of gods can be summed up as "humans create them by believing in them. This will create a god from nothing, or cause a mortal to ascend to godhood."
Racism against non-human sapient creatures aside, this is not the full nature of the gods: it does not explain the mechanism that transform sapient belief into fact, what a god actually is, how it wields power, how it decides how to exercise that power, etc. All that is part of the true nature of a god, just like neurology is part of the true nature of a human.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (20 hours later)
Is reading a free action?
I spent a lot of time trying to figure that out, and even asked on the GitP forums. As far as I'm aware, there is no RAW classifying how long it takes to read non-magical text. As such, I would say that it is NOT a free action.
stuff to make things larger (so the illegibility of the text isn't an excuse),
The Enlarge Item spell increases the size of something by a factor of 16 in each dimension. If we assume (as above) that each letter is 500nm on a side, that means that after being Enlarged it would be 8micrometers per side. Still far too small to be seen with normal vision or any standard magic item.
and people with intelligence-enhancing gear and POPE boosts which should put them well past humans from the normalverse.
D&D Intelligence seems to map, very roughly, to the IQ scale. A standard human has an Int of 10 / IQ of 100. Maximum human Intelligence is 18, and people with an IQ of 180 are considered top-end geniuses. [A random website[(http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/the-biggest/the-10-highest-iqs-in-histoy/9/) tells me that the real-world person with the highest IQ that may have been accurately measured is Terence Tao, coming in at around 230, with Hawking being around 160 and Einstein estimated at around 180. The people of Grofhamr are survivors of a massive war, so let's assume they are smarter than the average, starting at 12 and going up to the normally maximal 18.
The POPEs give a +5, and a maximized Headband of Intellect gives another +6. The majority of people who are being run through the FLEA would have started with a 12 so, after full enhancement they would be at 23 -- meaning they would be as smart as Tao, a real world human.
They are WAY smarter than the average, but not superhuman.
The sum total of the discussion about the nature of gods can be summed up as "humans create them by believing in them. This will create a god from nothing, or cause a mortal to ascend to godhood."Racism against non-human sapient creatures aside,
sigh
this is not the full nature of the gods: it does not explain the mechanism that transform sapient belief into fact, what a god actually is, how it wields power, how it decides how to exercise that power, etc. All that is part of the true nature of a god, just like neurology is part of the true nature of a human.
You're right that those are critical facts, but I wouldn't call them part of the "nature" of gods. I would put those in a distinct category. But, that's just semantics. I'm sure that the answers to all the questions you list are in that library somewhere.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (42 seconds later)
Could also be entitled: In Which Jake Commits a Mortal Sin
u/ArisKatsaris [+4] Sidebar Contender (an hour later)
Um, what was that about "City of Angels, City of Death" around the middle? Did you just advertise one of your books, by using one of your characters inside the story?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (an hour later)
Nope. That was just Loki being Loki.
Although, it's not a bad name for a send up of the noire detective genre.
u/Rouninscholar [+2] (a day later)
You referenced dresden. I saw it.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
At the end, yes. The 'noire' story itself was intended just as a sendup of the hard-boiled detective genre.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
I got what you tried to do, and I liked it. But the upvote mainly goes to a surprising Dresden Files reference ! Strange to read it, because usually it's Harry who does all the referencing...
u/JackStargazer [+4] Primordial Apologist (3 hours later)
When I turned back, he had been frowning and rubbing his temples...
This cannot possibly be a good sign.
Well, lets see exactly how this is going to go horribly wro....
...Huh.
u/eaglejarl [+4] (3 hours later)
You know, people are allowed to have headaches when something horrible (e.g. a bookburning!) is happening in front of them.
Honestly. All these suspicions.
u/JackStargazer [+3] Primordial Apologist (3 hours later)
Speaking of 'one level higher than you'...
Also, since when is Loki a people?
u/eaglejarl [+4] (4 hours later)
If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, I generally call it a somewhat mangled aphorism.
u/alexeyr [+2] Steersman (11 hours later)
Sounds reasonable to me, except.
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (18 hours later)
He made the library. [So] (#s "He populated it only with secrets he was willing to lose.")
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (19 hours later)
But he had to fill it with and then said I would expect these sets to intersect with .
u/eaglejarl [+2] (20 hours later)
Mwahaha.
Actually, I'm feeling disclose-y. Go back and reread the section where they set up the railguns and the bit just after it. Pay particular attention to Loki's actions.
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (21 hours later)
Ohhh.
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (22 hours later)
Yeah, Loki, Trickster God
u/gumballhassassin [+1] (a day later)
What is it?! Please tell me (in a message if you want)!
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (a day later)
When Loki Though I am still not clear what the second sweeping gesture and the door being stuck to Jake mean.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)
Though I am still not clear what the second sweeping gesture and the door being stuck to Jake mean.
When Loki originally created the room, the door was always a couple feet behind Jake -- it would follow him around as he moved. (It would hold still if he wanted to step into it, of course.)
This is great for making sure that it's available, but not so much when you want to leave it next to the altar while you go off and do other things. At Jake's request, Loki temporarily untethered the room from Jake; it'll stay right where it is until Jake comes back and picks it up, at which point it will start following him around again.
u/gumballhassassin [+1] (a day later)
Ah right, I thought it was the bit about him frowning and rubbing his temples.
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (a day later)
Well, that was already covered in the original comment.
u/drageuth2 [+3] (3 hours later)
It's a pity Jake didn't wish up a magically precise photocopier and railgun them through that first. But I guess that would make it less of a sacrifice. Loki's being surprisingly... rational about all of it, though. Surprising, maybe a little worrying.
Also, I may not have much money to my name, but I have some. You have my axe!
u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 hours later)
It's a pity Jake didn't wish up a magically precise photocopier and railgun them through that first. But I guess that would make it less of a sacrifice.
Yep. Would have rendered it not really that much of a sacrifice...it would have amounted to sacrificing knowledge, not secrets, and that has a lot less oomph to it. Right now, they need all the punch they can get; I did the math out and the Icefies' sacrifices outnumber the Grofhamrites by multiple orders of magnitude.
Loki's being surprisingly... rational about all of it, though.
He is, isn't he? Huh.
Also, I may not have much money to my name, but I have some. You have my axe!
You are the bomb, amigo. Thank you.
u/lsparrish [+2] (an hour later)
No spells, no killing. I'm betting on yet another Helm of Opposite Alignment. But how to apply it enough times to break through the Will Save of a god?
One way would be to stack millions of helms together. Nothing is stopping them from being a nanometer thick. But what if they have to be touching the head of the person in order to work? (Does Jake know the rule on this?)
I have an amusing mental picture of a stack of graphene nanolayer "helms" that disappear as soon as they touch an Evil person's head. (Every other layer in the stack could be a spell engine that causes itself and the layer immediately below itself to disappear.)
I wonder if such a stack could be wished into existence in one go, or if a bunch of sequential wishes would be needed.
Also, could the hats be delivered magically, say teleported or wished into being directly onto the target's head?
If so, instead of a stack of thin hats, it might be more efficient to use a bunch of small spell engines (a bag of sand with each grain being a spell engine, say) to rapidly apply and remove a single helm.
("Spell sand" could be useful for a lot of things, come to think of it. You could go into battle with every person armed with millions of spells ready to go off instantly. And the particles could be arbitrarily small, perhaps individual molecules...)
u/eaglejarl [+3] (2 hours later)
I'm betting on yet another Helm of Opposite Alignment. But how to apply it enough times to break through the Will Save of a god?
You can't. :> Greater Gods (like Neklos) have the ability:
Always Maximize Roll
Greater deities (rank 16-20) automatically get the best result possible on any check, saving throw, attack roll, or damage roll. Calculate success, failure, or other effects accordingly. When a greater deity makes a check, attack, or save assume a 20 was rolled and calculate success or failure from there.
So, nope. Nothing that allows a save is ever going to work on him.
The idea of spellsand is slick. I'm pretty sure there will be some reason in RAW why it's not doable, but I don't know what it would be..maybe "because spell traps have to be a certain size" ?
I don't know if there is a rule about transporting things onto a creature; I have a question over on GITP about it.
u/ulyssessword [+2] (7 hours later)
Do objects have to be carefully dropped in the sacrificial fires, or can they be thrown?
I'd say that the books are Large Improvised Throwing Weapons, giving them a range increment of 15 feet, a -4 penalty to attack, and 1d6 damage.
A 5 foot square has AC 5, so let's say that the fires are AC 15 (because they're small). Being 5 range increments (75') away (the maximum, ) gives a -10 penalty to hit, so a roll of 30 is needed to hit it, which an Ice Assassin could do 19 times out of 20.
If some Monks came out of the FLEA, they could also use the Snatch Arrows feat to speed up the bottleneck at the door, by having people on one end throw them through the doorway, while the monks catch them on the other end. there could be about 300 people on each end of this, practically negating the bottleneck. The main problem is that natural 1's would still miss and disrupt it.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (9 hours later)
Do objects have to be carefully dropped in the sacrificial fires, or can they be thrown?
They can be thrown. The "throwing it in the fire" part is mostly set dressing -- the actual important element is the choice of sacrifice. The fire is really just the equivalent of an "are you sure?" dialog...you can make the decision to sacrifice something, but you get to change your mind right up until the moment you actually put it in the fire.
u/Nepene [+1] (7 hours later)
No feats in this world.
u/ulyssessword [+1] (8 hours later)
Huh, I hadn't heard that.
That still only halves the speed, though.
Round 1: Person A throws a book, hitting person B. Person B picks up the book from his square.
Round 2: Person B hands off the book to the start of a railgun.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (21 hours later)
Actually, it can still be done in one round. "Pick up object" is a move action, "drop object" is free. So, Person A
throws two booksthrows a book (*) at the start of the round, Person B picks them up an instant later and rails them on.(*) Throwing the books is probably an attack with Improvised Weapon against the square that Person B is standing in. Therefore, it's a standard action and you only get one of those. You can still do the entire throw+pick up sequence in one round, though.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
You should get multiple attacks per round if you're 60th level, which means that the only thing that needs to be streamlined is picking up the object. Perhaps you could pick up multiple books per move action? I mean, does the universe consider "a pile of three books" to be a single object? I guess I think that picking up two daggers should take about as long as picking up a single dagger, since most of the action is spent bending down and moving your hand into position, but I don't know where RAW falls on that.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
RAW is pretty stupid about all of these things. (Well, it's pretty stupid in general, but leave that.)
Actions come in several types, but the ones we care about here are: free, move, standard, and full-round. In a given round you can perform:
- standard+move,
- move+move,
- full-round
No matter which format you choose, you can perform an arbitrary number of free actions in a round -- basically, as many as the DM will let you get away with.
Picking something up is a move action, and it's a singular thing. The exact text is:
[A move action] includes retrieving or putting away a stored item, picking up an item, moving a heavy object, and opening a door.
So, picking up a bag of daggers is one move action, but picking up two daggers is two move actions.
As to multiple attacks: yes, if you're high level, you are allowed to make multiple attacks in a round. In order to do that, though, you need to use a full-round action, which means you can't do anything else except free actions.
There's some nits about 5-foot steps and how they interact with all of the above, but that's not important.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Derp, I completely forgot about the full attack and move action thing (I've been playing 5th edition, where that's not a thing).
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
How is 5th?
I haven't played 4th but what I've heard about me makes me not want to play. Everything I've heard says that it's taking a full-round Run action towards being a video game instead of the RPG that I grew up on.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
I played a lot of 4th, and generally agree that it showed too much influence from videogames - mostly the fact that it seemed like something that you could have programmed pretty easily, and how it stripped out a lot of the weirdness (and coolness) of 3rd.
5th is basically a return to being more like 3rd in a lot of ways. So far, there hasn't been a change between 3rd and 5th that I find myself disliking. Everything is streamlined, but unlike 4th, you don't feel like you're missing out on anything. They added a lot of the weirdness back into the game - cool spells and unique classes that do things that can't be easily put into one category or another. And the production values on the books are quite high. It's still a little too soon to say, since the DMG isn't out yet, but mostly I think it's an improvement on 3rd (though it's difficult to say that when I'm comparing an edition with hundreds of broken splatbooks and contradictory rules to something that has virtually nothing in the way of supplemental material as yet).
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Heh.
That sounds very cool. If I ever manage to find a RPG group again, I'll check out 5th.
u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (19 hours later)
So "the kid" is Shailos?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (20 hours later)
What makes you say that? :>
u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (20 hours later)
Loki's story fits pretty well with how I had imagined the aftershocks of Shailos' apotheosis in the divine community.
And I assume the edict was one of "the laws they could all agree to"?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (21 hours later)
I was thinking about being all coy on this but nah.
You are dead on. This is a big part of why the gods don't like people ascending...the last time it happened, pretty much everything on the planet died.