5.0 KiB
Computable Magic | indistinguishable from science.
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Author: u/traverseda With dread but cautious optimism*
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URL: http://traverseda.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/computable-magic/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2014-11-28T05:39:54
Post:
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+2] (12 hours later)
Funny thing is, for the last few weeks I've been working on something that is superficially pretty similar -- mana is a finite resource, it can be imbued into physical objects, etc. I called it "aetheric constructs" instead of "spell weaves" but same thing.
I bounced this off of a couple people including /u/alexanderwales and between us we came up with a few things. So, looking for further points of congruence:
- What generates mana? The gods exhausted it, now it's back. There must be something creating it.
- If you can imbue it into physical things, that means you can love it around. My 'verse will include pipelines where mana has been infused into water so it can be moved from mana factories / areas of high natural generation to areas of lower availability.
- Can spells be made up on the fly?
- Can spells be imbued into magic items?
- Do spells run down?
- If spells do run down, can you install a tap that constantly feeds them mana so they keep running?
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (26 seconds later)
Help me work out the implications in a bit more depth?
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (10 hours later)
It sounds interesting. Some stream of consciousness thoughts:
- The first and most obvious is of course to start testing every possible substance for its effect on manaweaves, and record them.
- Direct proof of divine intervention is interesting. Figure out a way to 'fake' an incredibly complicated manaweave to intimidate opposing mages into thinking you have divine providence.
- In fact, the existence of ascended beings basically makes understanding what the fuck they made a top priority. Figure out a way to make a spell or object capable of seeing the fine details of those.
- On that note, recursion is a thing. Can you make a weave that creates an object or other effect that will modify future weaves in a specific pattern? A 'spell engine' that creates fully formed spells with raw mana input? That could create an army of spellcasters right fast.
- On the note of recursion, can you use that to refine a spell weave? Intelligence explosion style: Make a spell weave that creates a perfect magnifying lens, and then use that lens to make a spell weave that makes a better lens, and so on.
- If you can create a spell 'printer' from existing forms, why not a spell 'computer'?
- Wait. The history of the gods indicates that pure mana can hold sentience. That's budget immortality and a road to ascension if you can figure that one out.
- Back to the printer example, what if you create a weave that stores your current or an idea human body state? can you 'restore to backup' in the event of injury or death?
- Souls? Any evidence for or against? Insubstantial life based on mana is proven by the pre-ascended gods.
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (16 hours later)
The history of the gods indicates that pure mana can hold sentience.
In th same way a computer can hold sentience. It's a more or less physical phenomena.
On the note of recursion, can you use that to refine a spell weave? Intelligence explosion style: Make a spell weave that creates a perfect magnifying lens, and then use that lens to make a spell weave that makes a better lens, and so on.
Sure. Machines making machines are a thing. They're probably just a difficult thing.
Souls? Any evidence for or against?
It's possible that certain facets of biology start using energy, with enough time. I'm also imagining that if you were a cleric you'd start to develop something. But I don't imagine souls would exist before more mundane superpowers.
u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (20 hours later)
Sure. Machines making machines are a thing. They're probably just a difficult thing.
So, it's likely that divine ascension involves a sufficiently effective exponential growth spell of that type. Would also explain how it removed all the mana from the world if it had a subroutine to search out more mana, or if they gathered it all in one spot beforehand.
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (a day later)
I was imagining it as a non-sentient swarm, a sort of mana plankton. Like basically all energy, mana is solar. So a lot of that swarm tried to get as high as it could. Maybe at the same time physical evolution started happening.
Eventually the mana swarm started competing, and finally figured out that dyson sphere's were better for its purposes, returning mana to the earth.