28 KiB
[RT][MK][BST] Please break my setting.
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3o4gsm/rtmkbst_please_break_my_setting/
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Score: 4
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Created: 2015-10-09T17:28:57
Post:
Hi everyone! I'm a long-time lurker on this sub, huge fan of the work here. I just made an account specifically to post this, but I hope to post/comment some more in the future!
I'm going to be writing a serial story in a magical sci-fi setting, and hope to make it as Rational as possible. The magic system follows the below rules, and I was hoping to get some feedback. Some specific world-building is included in the description; the main actors are Humanity, and a Confederacy of various magical alien species. The plot is actually sort of Firefly-esque, if the Border Worlds were in an anarchic DMZ, set aside due to a cold war between the two factions, and were filled with organized crime rings instead of quaint villages. And the crew of the Serenity were spies, not smugglers.
I would rather the system not be obviously broken. from the get-go; hence the post. Please do your absolute best to break it as hard as possible. Assume that there are a reasonable number of defectors from magical races to use as test subjects, but human experimentation ethics would apply to them as well. Also assume that human technology, due to magical influence + research, already has things like FTL travel. I can answer any specific existing tech questions as they arise.
TL;DR Warp drives are okay, living gods are not; help me find living gods.
Thanks, and happy Munchkinry!
1). Magic is biological- either your species has it, or it doesn't.
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1a). An individual of a non-magical, sapient species (humans are the only one confirmed), can gain some magical ability through a genetic virus, and therefore pass it on to their offspring. However, the virus has approximately a 50% chance of killing the host, and those so infected generally have a shorter lifespan. The survival rate of said offspring is much higher.
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1b). An individual of a non-magical, near-sapient species becomes sapient through prolonged, multi-generational exposure, and becomes a magical species.
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1c). The virus is ubiquitous among all magical species, but does nothing to them. Earth is now completely infected, but the vast majority of people are immune, and of those not immune, most just die. The rate of people who end up with magical powers (and a lower life expectancy) is about 1 in 100000.
2). Magic is cast through a combination of somatic and verbal components, and runically-keyed implements.
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2a). Each species has its own set of gestures + sounds for basic effects, such as "apply x kinetic energy in y direction," or "attempt to set x on fire," or "transport object at x location to y location." Magical effects can also be persistent on specific objects; these effects are usually anchored to a rune.
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2b). More complex spells are simply combinations of (2a) effects.
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2c). Complex spells can be keyed to runes, which work as a "shortcut" of sorts, and are activated through individually-created gestures. Runes can be combined with implements for convenience. A "standard library" for runes exists, and most spells are now created with that, unless obfuscation is necessary.
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2d). Magic IS linked to sapience, and takes into account concentration + intent for (2a) effects. Spells created with (2b) and (2c) only do so as far as their individual components.
3). Magical individuals of a non-magical species (1a), can only use the basic effects such as those stated in (2a), and said effects tend to backfire and cause physical damage + strain. Training can alleviate some of this, and make misfires mostly trivial, but long-term damage will accumulate.
4). Whatever created the magic in the first place was very likely a "precursor" race of some sort, since it seems to actually "cause" sapience in and of itself. Humanity, for the purposes of magical effects (translation spells, etc), actually already counts as sapient, despite not having magic. The reason for this is unknown.
- 4a). Because the species that have magic have reality-altering powers from the outset, almost all innovation is of a magical nature. No magical species have even come close to the scientific method, or even questioned their abilities. They do have invention, etc, and even interstellar travel (teleportation, etc), but societies are fairly medieval.
The following information is determined by humans AFTER first contact, through research.
5). All mages have an organ, similar to a second stomach, that siphons off part of ingested food + similar, stores it as a hyper-dense material of alien chemical makeup. Most magical species have EXTREMELY high caloric requirements, and many have a supplemental source as well, such as solar-cell feathers, etc. Part of the reason that sapient species have such an issue with the virus is it essentially grows this system from scratch, and causes complications with more advanced biology.
- 5a). When using magic, any energy used is taken by converting this substance to energy
with near 100% efficiency, and applying it to the world at large. Persistent effects will stop if not powered by something, either the caster, the holder of an object, or another source of energy (some alien plants, crystals, etc can be used as an energy source in this regard).
Again, thanks!
Edit: Formatting
Edit 2: not 100% efficiency, I'd rather magical babies not drop nukes everywhere.
Edit 3: I've made a list of the basic "effects" that will be available to mages; again, anything else is just a combination of these effects. I will add more if you guys, or I, think of them.
- Temperature manipulation
- Apply a physical force, aka "push x in y direction z hard"
- Teleportaion; this is done via localized wormholes, and requires an ENORMOUS amount of energy. You couldn't realistically pull a Nightcrawler with just personal reserves, but you could move a baseball. It's possible to teleport on a large scale with supplemental energy sources, in fact, that's how their interstellar travel works. The larger the object, the more energy required, but distance does NOT factor in.
- Transmutation of pure substances into other pure substances; the mass remains constant.
Edit 4: More information, by way of discussion
- Human mages that survive can and do donate their magical "kidney stones," which is where the energy is stored. They get paid fairly large sums of money, since magical energy sources are very scarce on earth.
Comments:
u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (17 minutes later)
So, this is "humans don't have X so they've developed higher technology instead", like in Harry Turtledove's "The Road not Taken".
I would recommend not explaining the physiological details of magic so much to avoid the "midiclorian" problem.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+5] Mouse Army (36 minutes later)
When using magic, any energy used is taken by converting this substance to energy with near 100% efficiency, and applying it to the world at large.
Breaks your setting right there. One gram yields the equivalent of 21.5 kilotons of tnt - the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. So either all the magical species are gods who with a snap of their finger do interstellar travel or -more likely- are an extinction event. You get multi-megaton bomb organs, and you, and you! Everyone! Even the psychopaths and angry teenagers! And babies!
So via selection effects only docile, extremely pacifistic species remain.
u/None [+1] (44 minutes later)
Hot damn. Well, it's a good thing I posted this here then, I should have thought of that. I'll edit it on the OP, it'll be far lower then.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+6] Mouse Army (an hour later)
I mean you do have the high caloric intake in there. If one needs to eat all that energy first and convert it into that magical matter-
That'd would allow you to write in a scenario thats surprisingly similar to modern US in some aspects. Everyone is obsessed with eating high caloric food all the time. There are metabollically privileged magic users - who have a high conversion ratio and stay slim- and bad disprivileged ones, who get fat trying to power up reserves.
A great magical work, like starting/manning an interstellar ship, requires the spending of an entire lifetime of carefully hoarded food. Any mildly big miracle is to be pondered most carefully, undoing month of eating.
A lesser known fact about tour the france: racers already need more calories than their bodies can reasonably digest. They all get intravenous feeding...
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
That's a really interesting direction, I didn't even think of that. It's not really stored as fat per se, think more "organ specifically designed to hold kidney stones." Except the kidney stones are marble-sized, but maybe a kilogram or so each. The body naturally uses up excess energy in naturally-magical species, but that would be an interesting take for human mages- if you eat too much, you risk setting random objects on fire.
Also, I should have specified in the OP, tech like interstellar ships are powered by actual fuel- persistent effects can be powered by outside fuel sources, like some native plants and minerals.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (an hour later)
If it were stored as fat it wouldnt work really, I got your gist. It still means eating years of obsessive binging for food for a single gram of magicmatter. A kg of fat has 3.7e7 joules, if we assume 25% conversion effiency (which is what humans usually get out of food), this gives you... 1e-10grams. So you need to eat ten thousand tons of fat to get one gram magic matter, which is very far out of any reasonable rate even binge eating whales could conceivably consume.
Or you beings have evolved for much higher caloric intake, like whales!
u/None [+2] (an hour later)
That was sort of my rationale behind making it an "annihilation" type conversion; it gets stored in very small amounts, but pays huge dividends in terms of energy output.
Also, the matter/energy conversion method is not known; the "organ" loses a certain amount of mass, at a proportional rate of energy output, both of which can be measured. However, no one really knows how it gets from "magic kidney stones" to "boom whiz poof."
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
Except the kidney stones are marble-sized, but maybe a kilogram or so each.
Better make the organ that holds them in place strong, because that is a lot of mass in a small area. Acceleration and deceleration of such a dense mass could cause damage to the surrounding tissues.
u/Jakkubus [+1] (21 hours later)
Well, it would depend on amount of said substance in magicians body and their output. For example average mage has 0,0001 gram of it in said organ and in one spell without preparation he/she can utilize only 0.5% of it. If that was the case there wouldn't be problem of infant nukes.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (22 hours later)
Check your math. thats 7 magnitudes, you still get 1kg of TNT that way.
u/Jakkubus [+2] (22 hours later)
That was only an example and I made an assumption, that magic is not a superpower, that you just get at full power after being bitten by radioactive spider. If it's dependant on organ, it has to be exercised to raise it's output just like brain or muscles. Said value would be capability of average magician, so the one after some training. Infant on the other hand would have much lower output, since it's body is not accustomed to casting magic and as OP said it requires concentration.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (22 hours later)
Sure. All up to OP and the universe they want.
u/pedanterrific [+3] (2 hours later)
1a). An individual of a non-magical, sapient species (humans are the only one confirmed), can gain some magical ability through a genetic virus, and therefore pass it on to their offspring. However, the virus has approximately a 50% chance of killing the host, and those so infected generally have a shorter lifespan. The survival rate of said offspring is much higher.
1c). The virus is ubiquitous among all magical species, but does nothing to them. Earth is now completely infected, but the vast majority of people are immune, and of those not immune, most just die. The rate of people who end up with magical powers (and a lower life expectancy) is about 1 in 100000.
I assume 1c overrides 1a, but as it stands it looks contradictory. Edit: or do you mean half of humanity died after First Contact, but most of the survivors didn't get magical powers?
1b). An individual of a non-magical, near-sapient species becomes sapient through prolonged, multi-generational exposure (to what, magic, the virus?), and becomes a magical species.
Wizard german shepherds when? But seriously, that's probably the killer app: not trying to make human mages, but taking this tailor-made EZ-Uplift process to create loyal vassal species.
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
I assume 1c overrides 1a, but as it stands it looks contradictory. Edit: or do you mean half of humanity died after First contact, but > most of the survivors didn't get magical powers?
The virus passes over the vast majority of people, doing absolutely nothing. If it does affect you, it will try to give you magic; about 50% of the time, you will die. If you survive, you will get magic, but there's still a good chance that's what kills you in the end. If you then have kids, those kids may still have issues, but the prognosis is much higher, and they'll be closer to "normal" health, in addition to magic.
Wizard german shepherds when? But seriously, that's probably the killer app: not trying to make human mages, but taking this > tailor-made EZ-Uplift process to create loyal vassal species.
It's exposure to the virus, though the virus is spread through magical species, so it really is the same either way. It takes hundreds of years for the uplift to take place though; by the time the story takes place, those species are starting to get smarter, but are still non-sapient. The issue with humans is that we were already sapient when we got exposed, so it tried to give us magic immediately. Again, the reason for this is a mystery.
u/pedanterrific [+2] (3 hours later)
It's exposure to the virus, though the virus is spread through magical species, so it really is the same either way. It takes hundreds of years for the uplift to take place though; by the time the story takes place, those species are starting to get smarter, but are still non-sapient.
Is it hundreds of years minimum, or is it a function of starting distance from sapience? Because the first probably means humanity would bank on cracking the problem and having its own wizards before it becomes an issue, and the second probably means that a war of extinction was waged on chimpanzees and dolphins and embassies were constructed for bonobos and African Grey parrots.
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
I'm going to say both; so it's at least hundreds of years, but it's also a function of distance from sapience. So a...random goldfish? Or something would take a while, far longer than the timescale of the story.
Honestly, I really like the idea of random species getting uplifted alongside; I might just include that in. One day, a dolphin caught in a fishing net sets the ship on fire with it's mind.
u/Norseman2 [+2] (2 hours later)
Teleportation is nice. You've made it possible to create something similar to a tachyonic antitelephone, except messages are passed instantly. That makes it pretty easy to send information into the past.
Time dilation is mutual. If I'm on a ship moving at a relativistic speed relative to you, then you perceive my clock ticking slower than yours, just as I simultaneously perceive your clock ticking slower than mine. If you teleport to my ship, you've just gone backwards in time. You'll go backwards again when you teleport home.
Let's exploit that. Build a ship with a large nuclear reactor to power grow lamps for crops. Include water recycling systems, air recycling systems, and everything else we'll need for mostly self-sufficient living. Have many spellcasters aboard the ship, and use magic to propel the ship as fast as we can make it go.
After a five years have passed, we can collect all scientific papers and research data published in that period of time and load it onto a microchip smaller than a speck of dust. We can then teleport the chip back and forth between the ship and Earth, sending it further back in time until hardly a year has passed. What happens from here is anyone's guess. Are there many worlds? Does the timeline start over each time someone/something goes into the past?
Most likely, we will now be able to complete decades of research on a global scale in the blink of an eye. Projects like cloning the magic organs and linking them to computerized neural interfaces might take centuries normally, but now it could all be done in a few years. We'll call these magic interfaces.
Spell research with the magic interfaces can proceed similarly quickly, allowing humans to rapidly master magic. The most munchkiny use I can think of would be atomic-scale manipulation for on-the-fly genetic engineering and nanotechnology. You're not moving much material, so energy requirements are practically nil, yet gains are massive. Now you can transport nanites to asteroids, moons, and planets, terrforming and industrializing across the galaxy to make worlds suitable for humans and their new-fangled magic interfaces, all in the span of a few decades.
u/None [+1] (2 hours later)
If you teleport to my ship
I like the concept, but teleportation spells do require either a reference beacon or an exactly specified location. If the beacon is moving at relative speeds, then it won't be able to find it, and just fizzle. The way the aliens actually do "exploration" travel, incidentally, is by using teleportation spells to send a beacon "arbitrarily far THAT WAY, scry it to make sure it's safe, and then saying to a ship, "okay, teleport to THAT object that we just sent." Most travel is done between consistent base stations.
u/Norseman2 [+1] (3 hours later)
"okay, teleport to THAT object that we just sent."
That will suffice perfectly. In this case, the 'beacon' you refer to is the ship that I'm on, and the 'ship' to be teleported is a microscopic data chip.
u/None [+2] (3 hours later)
I guess I'm not explaining it properly; you can only define locations to the spell in terms of a specific point in space. When you're using a "beacon" as a reference point, you're not saying "go to the beacon," you're saying, "go to x y z location relative to that beacon's position in space at the instant of casting." So if the beacon is moving at all, it's just going to take a snapshot of the moving ship, and you'll end up in the middle of space.Edit: Even when I'm saying there I realize I'm spouting nonsense. As given, what you say makes sense; I just really don't want time travel to be a thing in this universe. I'll have to figure out another patch.
u/Norseman2 [+1] (3 hours later)
In other words, teleportation changes your position, but conserves your velocity relative to your starting position and velocity. I got that, and I'm saying that's fine. We only need to accelerate a speck to match speeds with the ship, energy requirements to do that are significant but quite manageable.
Even if that is not feasible for some reason, the easy alternative solution would be to teleport a small radio beacon a few seconds ahead of the ship's position and have it transmit the data to the ship.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+1] Roll the Dice on Fate (6 hours later)
Just make it slower than light by some infinitesimal amount and you should be golden. Unless you want alien worlds as neighbours that you can just pop to by teleport beacon over lunch.
I suppose you could hypothesise magical worlds a few light-weeks away hidden from telescopes by anti-scry wards, but it might feel contrived.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (4 hours later)
It's interesting that magic appears to be almost purely offensive.
Transmutation probably has all kinds of neat uses, but I'm really not a chemist. I mean, I could blow things up, that's about it. Oh, can you transmute a specific element inside an existing compound, something like that? You could also make a nuke with this, so they'll have had nukes for longer than we did. (Incidentally, if it needs to be a reasonably pure element, that's not all that hard.)
FTL travel is time travel, so there's an obvious loophole (?) right there. It's so common that people will probably suspend their disbelief, though, if they even notice.
If you can do a sustained acceleration that's faster than gravity, you can go to space with magic alone, I think. Might want to run the numbers, but a majority of the effort of space travel is the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation rather than "real" energy requirements.
Magical temperature manipulation ... that's neat. Cooling things down is, well, cooler than heating them up. You can do some neat things with that.
Why are humanity immune/carriers, when most other species have evolved some level of symbiosis with this virus? Why are we different?
It's a shame that there's no way for me to get these powers, since I'm not all that lucky. You could strip away most of a person's body, stick some wires in their brain for motivation, and use them as part of a mechanical magic-based device; but ethics. I bet there are villains doing it, though. Don't even have to be psychopaths, could be an ethnic "they're not people" thing, species-based morality (you see people going on about it sometimes), could be doing it with someone they decided "deserved" it for doing something bad.
Teleportation ... probably the best use of this is data transfer, but humans probably already have FTL data transfer. Oh, magic satellites is nice.
You could make a forcefield with the "apply physical force" thing. Push everything out of an area, once you've got a vacuum it'll feel like a solid object. But sadly, I think it would take too much power to be genuinely useful. The greatest of party tricks, though. And it's a perfect insulator! (Sort of, it's transparent to infrared.) That's handy.
Oh! Clones. If they have FTL, they've gotta have clones. That's another way for a villain to break the rules; mass-clone people, check them for magic as soon as the fetus'll react to stimulus, kill the ones that don't. You can brute-force magic potential. Heck, you might be able to physically duplicate a magic-user and see if they keep their powers, which they probably will.
Mass-produced, automated magic is a villains-only tech, and it's really freaking cool. Forcefields! Actual forcefields! Also proper teleportation and some engineering stuff I guess; and better weapons but honestly if you can't kill someone with this magic system you're not even trying.
It's possible to teleport on a large scale with supplemental energy sources, in fact, that's how their interstellar travel works.
Supplemental what?!
u/None [+1] (7 hours later)
Lots of awesome ideas here; the whole "going to space with magic alone" thing was sort of the initial spark behind the whole setting.
Why are humanity immune/carriers, when most other species have evolved symbiosis?
Part of that is explained, part of it is a huge mystery behind the setting. Basically, humanity became sapient WITHOUT magic for whatever reason, so when it encounters a human, the virus says "hey, it's cool, we don't need to do anything else." It's basically an uplifting mechanism from some unknown progenitor race. However, if a human is exposed long enough (the first to be actually affected were scientists studying magic, or people with regular alien contact), it tries to forcibly create the alien "magic" organs in their biology, and often this just straight-up kills the host; they aren't really compatible with our biology. Sometimes, though, you get lucky, and it doesn't kill you. Doesn't mean there aren't complications down the line.
Supplemental what?!
Any kind of persistent magical effects (propulsion, force fields, warp gates, etc) can be powered through certain crystals + plant matter from the alien planets, sort of like fossil fuels, or you know, burning logs. It's a consistent power source, but not very flexible; you have to re-cast the whole spell to switch sources if it runs out, which can get really complicated. This is sort of how humans end up "cheating" and using alien technology; the resources are pretty scarce for us though, since we don't have them on earth.
u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (5 hours later)
The main problem with checking for stable elements much heavier than Uranium is that the way we create them is to mash two atoms together and hope they stick. Because the neutron to proton ratio for stable isotopes goes up the higher we go, this results in heavy atoms of provably less stable isotopes than what we would get with more neutrons.
So. Your transmutation. Does it allow mages to create superheavy elements? Because there very likely are elements up there that are, if not stable, at least stable enough to have a half life of months or centuries rather than nano seconds. I know in my own world I use this as an excuse to shove in Orichalcum and a few other imaginary materials.
u/None [+2] (7 hours later)
Does it allow mages to create superheavy elements?
I would say yes, although it's really difficult, and requires substantial energy + initial materials. The amount of particles stay the same, so if you have 4 mol of carbon for example, you'll end up with a fractional amount of Orichalcum.
u/Nepene [+1] (2 hours later)
The only really useful power they seem to have is teleport?
u/clawclawbite [+1] (4 hours later)
The top priority is to create magic to improve the survival chance and lifespan of human mages. Healthcare, entertainment, and basic research are the big draws that people throw rare magic at.
u/Sagebrysh [+1] Rank 7 Pragmatist (6 hours later)
could you, say, extract this superelement that powers magic via surgery, and use it as a fuel source? Ethics aside, if you can't cast magic yourself, you could always steal the magic element from someone who has it and experiment on it to figure out why it works, how it works, how to make it in a lab, etc. You could also do some genetic engineering to create an algae-like microorganism that eats stuff and excretes the magic element.
u/None [+1] (7 hours later)
You could, actually, and it's not even that hard. Some human mages who don't really use their powers straight-up get paid to donate them when they "fill up," sort of like a more invasive blood donation. The military and corporations will pay good money for voluntary donations of it.
u/Jakkubus [+1] (21 hours later)
- Why are somatic and verbal components required and how are they connected to effect of spells?
- And have you though about how this superdense, magical organ would influence the rest of human body? IMO better option to fuel magic would be linking said organ to some external source of energy.