18 KiB
[RT] Glimwarden, Chapter 4
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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Score: 42
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Created: 2016-06-03T13:28:01
Post:
Comments:
u/SometimesATroll [+12] (59 minutes later)
So domesticated animals are a thing in this setting. That leaves the obvious question. What happens when you feed a thousand hearts to a pig?
I get the feeling nobody really wants to invest the hearts in finding out.
u/alexanderwales [+14] Time flies like an arrow (an hour later)
More on that later. :)
u/SometimesATroll [+12] (an hour later)
Oh dear.
u/Nevereatcars [+1] The Greatest Is Behind (4 days later)
You're the best.
u/Charlie___ [+2] (16 hours later)
I'm sure nothing could go wrong if you made yourself a superpowered steed.
u/mohammadashworth [+9] (8 hours later)
"Let’s say I collect thirty hearts a day, every day, for the past eighteen years. I assume you’re still fantastic at math?”
“98,550 hearts,” replied Sander, nearly automatically.
For the reader's sake, translations have been made whenever the subject of weeks and years are brought up. At the time The Glimwarden Chronicles takes place, the calendar system in use was a remnant of Tor Ellsum. The clergy there used a base nine numbering system, which was largely vestigial in Light's Hollow. This calendar had nine-day week-equivalents, nine-week month-equivalents, and a nine-month cycle. This resulted in a calendar with 729 days, with a single extra day tacked on at the end to make up the difference (Tripartite Day). As the Jorón lived on a planet with years equal in length to our own, each calendar cycle covered two orbital periods. While the clergy might have found the symmetry of nines pleasant, there were some obvious problems with regards to this calendar, namely that some conversion was necessary if (for example) you wanted to plant your crops at the same time each orbital period. Nevertheless, no later attempts at reform met with success, even after society had largely switched away from the nonary system.
Whenever a year is expressed, it refers to an Earth calendar year rather than the Jorón calendar year, which is twice as long. This is primarily to avoid confusion with regards to ages, all of which the reader would have to mentally double if translation was more literal, e.g. the text would describe Sander as being eight years old. Depending on context, I have sometimes translated the Jorónese word for a nine-day calendar period into a literal "nine days", but in many places I have simply left it as "a week" since it seldom matters to the narrative whether a week consists of nine days or seven (and a declaration of nine days might feel oddly specific if the reader does not know or remember the cultural context).
Sander's math is therefore somewhat more simple than the translation would suggest, because he is only multiplying basic numbers together and doing a standard conversion from nonary afterward.
Your Humble Translator,
Mohammad Ashworth
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (20 hours later)
At the time The Glimwarden Chronicles takes place, the calendar system in use was a remnant of Tor Ellsum.
Oh, you haven't been told? The editor felt "The Glimwarden Chronicles" was too long and complicated to understand for readers of this world. We just call it "Glimwarden" here.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+9] Mouse Army (an hour later)
So I wonder about limits and hacks to the system. Lanterns 2-7 are usually built in the natural hexagonal circle packaging. What happens if you then turn of the middle one, taking care to have a high flux in the interlapping zones?
Do darklings just SPAWN inside the light hollow? If not you can get away with much fewer lanterns overall. Either no one ever tried - or they did with catastrophic results.
u/SometimesATroll [+10] (2 hours later)
Another possibility: some darklings can fly or burrow.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (2 hours later)
Thats a terrifying thought. I think that not happening, the world would look different if it were - airdiving darklings and (possibly) earth-protected burrowing darkling attacks would make the cities less secure than they seem.
u/CCC_037 [+3] (5 hours later)
Maybe lanterns protect in a sphere, and that sphere is not blocked by mere dirt and soil? So burrowing darklings can't even get close to the surface, and air-dropping ones would evaporate in mid-air?
u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
This will be at least partially answered in the next chapter, and fully explored in chapter 7 (according to current plans anyway; I only write about two chapters ahead).
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (3 hours later)
I was very confident that this was something you were going to explore. It is the closest hack to think of.
u/munkeegutz [+1] (12 hours later)
Really, you can extend the idea: say a lantern "protects" any volume which receives sufficient flux. So, if you can turn off the middle Lantern, it makes sense to instead have lots of smaller Lanterns in a fence, so that you're not wasting as much Light.
While you're at it, since you just need to achieve some minimum flux, why not make the Lights smaller and denser? Maybe more efficient. If the tech is there, you could instead use fiber optics (or mirror system, or similar), to direct light from a central lantern (or perhaps 2-3 for redundancy) out to the exterior.
An enterprising individual with good control of lantern output and direction could aim a beam of Light from the lantern, creating some targeting system. That could be the ultimate form of a Lantern.
A Lantern is the most wasteful use of Light, because the other forms (human consumption, runes) are permanent gains, whereas the Lanterns only temporarily illuminate the city.
u/tbroch [+1] (a day later)
Glimlight clearly works on some sort of principal beyond our physics. The most clear example is that intensity falls off by 1/r^3, which seems to suggest either that it's some sort of dipole effect, or that it's propagating in a 4-dimension space. In either case, it's unlikely that mirrors or fiber optics will work the way you would want them to.
u/BoilingLeadBath [+2] (a day later)
Interestingly, if the lanterns work by some sort of dipole or 4D effect, but the evaporation of their central hava sphere is dependent on it's 3-space area, it would be entirely reasonable for their field strength to be dependent on the diameter^3, while the rate of hava consumption went as diameter^2.
That would mean that, fences aside, protected land area would be a constant function of the rate at which hava was used up. This would help account for the uniform design of the lanterns: there's little cause to want to make different sizes.
Risk aversion (in a simple single-wide fence, one lantern failure lets darklings into the core, which is large compared to the ring in which the residents could seek refuge), the loss of useful barely-lit hinterlands, and the sheer manpower required to maintain so many more lanterns would be sufficient to explain why fences aren't a thing - at least for mid-sized places like Light's Hollow.
Big places could have a double-thick fence, which would require TWO lanterns to fail before the core was compromised; and if the second, inner, fence was composed of lanterns mounted on rails...
u/munkeegutz [+1] (a day later)
In either case, it's unlikely that mirrors or fiber optics will work the way you would want them to.
I initially assumed that was a mistake, guess not. My current assumption is that grimlight is some kind of volume effect: you're consuming a constant amount of something over time, to produce an effect that spans the entire volume (so there are no shadowing effects). But it's too early to know...
u/RMcD94 [+2] (17 days later)
If darklings spawn then you can farm them and people wouldn't have the setup they have now. That's my guess.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (17 days later)
So far we have info that
A) Lanterns are extremely expensive
B) Lantern engineers are very conservative.
C) Society of Lights Hollow doesn't care much about efficiency.
All of that leads me to believe that farming set-ups are not a thing.
u/RMcD94 [+2] (17 days later)
Well I think we know set ups aren't a thing but I have a hard time believing that the Glimwardens wouldn't just dig a pit and shoot darklings in a barrel in order to farm if it was possible. Or build a tower.
Though to be fair they could build a trench then bring a travelling lantern over and all the darklings in there get evaporated.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (17 days later)
But spawn rate is presumably proportional to area. We really dont know about a basic spawn rate; but enough that you find Wildlings in the Wild every few hundred meters... If all you have is a pit 10m x10m you won't get many darklings there.
Still does not explain zero fortifications.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (17 days later)
I meant put a pit outside the circle in the darkness, presuming they move about, then they're trapped and you can bring a lantern along and gib them all without trouble since they can't run away
u/yuridez [+9] (an hour later)
Sander sure didn't have much of worth to say to his dad. No wonder he wasn't looking forward to it.
. “Of course, it leaves you weak and helpless after the fact, not to mention drained of bind, but it’s better than dying, and if you don’t have anything to lose, why not?”
Maybe this would have been better to test after taking Sander into the woods rather than before? You know, so if a Darkling got past Merry he would be fit and fully charged to have a better chance of not being harmed? It's nice to have the information about his signature beforehand, perhaps, but it's not useful if he has no way to use it. Oh well, Merry seems competent enough.
She paused for a moment and then grinned at Sander. “The bad kind of friction, mind you.”
Sander blushed. “It wasn’t just the runeworkers,” said Sander, eager to move on from Merry’s lewdness.
So pure! Someone could take advantage of him through this in the future.
u/DaystarEld [+8] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Something I was confused about before that hasn't clarified on reread: the first chapter says
Killing a darkling wasn’t supposed to be about making a killing blow, or even removing its body parts one by one, it was about inflicting enough cumulative damage that it was left with no reserves.
This gave the impression that taking down Darklings is a battle of endurance in most circumstances, a diminishing of HP bars that theoretically can make a group of them dangerous even for experienced Glimwardens (since they can't just one-shot them with superior power).
But that seems to be exactly what Merry is saying her guns are capable of. Except when she shot it:
The darkling didn’t seem to be effected by the hit; it began sprinting toward them, occasionally pushing off the trees with its claws as it went by for more speed. Sander had thought that it would die from the pistol shot; he stepped back with his borrowed pistol drawn. For her part, Merry had drawn a dagger and seemed unconcerned by what was happening.
Not even a visible loss of substance, until
She had stabbed it through straight to the very core and killed it in the instant that it jumped at her.
So apparently a one-shot is possible if you can pierce the heart, but that's difficult normally because of all the substance being in the way. My hypothesis is that the bullet bored a line through its substance near enough to the core that she could just pierce it with a dagger and go for an insta-kill. If that's the case, why didn't it close its wound the way it did against Sander? Not enough time? I get that Merry's not the best verbal instructor, by her own admission, but I think it can still stand to be better explained.
Looking forward to seeing the new type of monster in action next chapter!
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (a day later)
If I had to guess, I'd say that a darkling is basically a construct like the Lanterns that utilises the energy of the hearts in a different way. Damaging it saps energy from the system (potentially causing it to lose coherence), but destroying the heart shuts it down outright.
I'm not terribly confident in that model, but it makes a nice literary parallel with the Lanterns. "HP and heart=crit" makes about as much sense, but doesn't quite fit with the technical portrayal of the Lantern technology.
In this case, Merry was either trying to illustrate the issue of effective range with her pistols or trying to goad the darkling into attacking.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
The idea that destroying the heart shuts it down makes sense to me too, but that would presumably make you harvest less of it, if it's harvestable at all. Apparently it just splits when you try to crush or bite down on it, so I'm not sure yet why stabbing it would "destroy" it unless the act of splitting it is what makes the darkling lose coherence.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (7 hours later)
Mhhh... As other people said, the fact that the town in completely glimlit instead of bordered by a glimlight fence probably means that the centre of the ring wouldn't be safe from darklings, either because they can spawn in or because they can bypass the fence.
Could you make a hunting reserve that way? If the darkling spawn inside, it would probably be a much safer hunting ground than the forest, with bunkers, easier scouting, etc. The amount of darkings there might not be enough to sustain the lanterns, but it would still be a nice bonus.
Otherwise, I like Sander's arrogance here. He says: "Half die in the first year, but it’s not so grim after that. If you could figure out why that first year was so bad then you’d be able to mitigate whatever factors are at play."
Okay, so let's say those factors are, 1: they suck at fighting, and 2: their bones are too easy to break because they haven't eaten enough hava yet. What do you do about that? Make double sure the darklings don't eat you?
u/None [+6] (16 hours later)
It's pretty easy. If you ever find yourself about to be devoured by a darkling, don't do that. If it happens again, don't do that a second time. Really, it's as easy as not doing that, and doing it again! And again. And again. For the rest of your life.
u/None [+4] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (22 hours later)
I don't quite follow what point you're making about self awareness being rare. Main characterdom is hardly a randomly assigned process, so the characters both being self aware is entirely plausible
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (2 minutes later)
Last time, Sander made a journey into the woods in order to become a glimwarden against his father's wishes.
This time: Training, visiting a lantern, a power is revealed, and an omen for the future.
(I'll get to any comments or corrections later in the day today. Thanks for reading!)
u/munkeegutz [+2] (15 hours later)
I really hope that this fiction ends with something in orbit. Or at the very least, you could use long range teleportation for trade with adjacent cities... That must be expensive and dangerous right now!
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (22 hours later)
Orbiting sounds highly difficult with what we know at the moment. Assuming that darklings could spawn in the absence of a lantern, they'd need regular deliveries of hearts there. Even with teleporters making that possible, it's still fairly impractical compared to grounded civilisations
u/munkeegutz [+1] (a day later)
Orbital with humans assumes that the darklings breed but don't spontaneously appear. If they do, it might still be fine because course correction is hard in space.
Barring all that, could just be content with satellites. I have a feeling that inorganics will fare better...
u/None [+1] (a day later)
How did Sander get 98,550? 3018365.24=197,229.6. Am I just missing something?
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Sander is calculating the number of hearts that Merry has consumed, which is (by her reckoning) half of the hearts that she collects. 365 * 18 * 15 = 98550.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Ah, its a rounding error, plus my forgetting to divide. I was wondering why they didn't even seem close.
u/TotesMessenger [+1] (15 days later)
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/glimwarden] Glimwarden Discussion Link: Chapter 4
^(If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads.) ^(Info ^/ ^Contact)
u/RMcD94 [+1] (17 days later)
three seconds to cross twenty feet, so I transitioned from being stationary to moving five miles per hour
I'm more amazed that he can use the imperial system with such ease than he can teleport. Seconds to hours requires a 3600 multiplication and I have no idea how many feet are in a mile but I know it's weird