150 KiB
[RT] Mother of Learning Chapter 63
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Author: u/Krossfireo *
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URL: https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2961893/63/Mother-of-Learning
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Score: 191
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Created: 2017-01-01T22:29:03
Post:
Comments:
u/Xtraordinaire [+48] Team Glimglam (53 minutes later)
So yes, they are meeting Daimen, yes they are not forgetting Silverlake. His plan, I think, involves Bakora gates and those spiders that somehow cracked their secret.
And yes, nice evidence that RR must have been a skillful mage when he hijacked the loop, so, not Veyers.
u/thrawnca [+10] Carbon-based biped (8 hours later)
Yeah, I'm betting on a Bakora gate. The relevant Web wanted all the crystallized mana he could spare, and was evasive about their gate. I'm guessing they basically pay for a single activation, a one-way ticket.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (a day later)
Or just wipe out the colony and activate the gate themselves?
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Um... No? Quite apart from the moral issues - this web has only been helpful before - ZZ don't know how to activate a Bakora gate. No one officially does; it just seems likely that the Silent Doorway Adepts unofficially have worked it out.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 days later)
ZZ have already killed plenty of aranea for the sake of training to open the mission critical memory packet. Killing Adepts within the loop so as to use their Bakora Gate sounds like a (traumatic, ethically troubling, and yet) legitimate last resort. Also, Zorian has mind magic, so he might be able to get information on how to work the Gate with or without the consent of the Adepts.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
Even in that extremity, he didn't attack his friends, only neutrals. And I really don't see any benefit in exterminating the Web.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 days later)
The Silent Doorway Adepts were willing to train Zorian for a huge quantity of crystallized mana. However, assuming they have a Bakora Gate, would they be willing to teach Zorian how to use it—the artifact that gives this web their very name? Perhaps, but considering how secretive the Adepts are and how protective aranea are in general about their most prized knowledge, I doubt the Adepts would be willing to give Zorian access to their gate.
As an absolute last resort, storming in, killing everyone except the elders, then extracting the Bakora Gate lore, then spending a restart studying it could catapult Zorian's knowledge of both spell formulas and dimensionalism. What's more could recruit Xvim perhaps even Nora Boole to help him study the artifact. Nora Boole might be brought to tears to have the opportunity.
And it may be that the knowledge gained would also help ZZ disrupt the Bakora Gate used by the Ibasans—which may be critical once the loop ends.
In my opinion, Zorian really ought to get access to that Bakora Gate if at all possible. Maybe it'll be a dead end, but it be well be an incredibly fruitful experience.
Plus, if violence is the only way he could access the Adepts' Bakora Gate, then it is unlikely he will ever get access outside of the loop. He might as well do it considering the Adepts will simply respawn in the next loop. He should certainly give them every chance to share the information though; I cringe to think of him gaining access by force.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
Oh, right, the spiders might keep insisting that they don't know anything. That would pretty much put them in the same position as Xvim's list.
I can't see an easy way for them to bring any non-loop-informed individuals to study ancient artifacts inside a recently-exterminated aranean settlement... or, for that matter, even several who are informed, like Alanic. Xvim, though, might perhaps take an interest. He hasn't wanted to travel previously...
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
"Professor Xvim? What can I do for you?"
"Ms. Boole, I have something you may be interested in."
"Really? What's that?"
"I have a student who is working with me on several advanced projects. For reasons I can't go into, this student has discovered an ancient artifact that may be of immense interest to you. However, again for reasons that I cannot go into, the research will require your utter secrecy."
"Uh, is this illegal?"
"No, Ms. Boole, but it is . . . significant. Tell me, do you know anything about the Bakora Gates?"
"Bakora Gates—oh my gods . . . when can we leave?"
"We can leave now, but don't you want to know more details first?"
"Tell me on the way, Professor. I've got to see this."
As for Xvim traveling, I'm guessing he feels following two fifteen-year-olds on a quest to find a scroll of Simulacrum—especially because Alanic is around—is not something he'd be interested in anymore. But to conduct dimensionalism research on a Bakora Gate in an emptied out spider enclave with Zorian who is he instructing in dimensionalism? I bet he'd be willing to travel for that.
u/Xtraordinaire [+3] Team Glimglam (3 days later)
I HEREBY CHRISTEN THIS SHIP XVOOLE!
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (4 days later)
I swear: Do not tempt me to write that fanfic.
Because I might.
u/Xtraordinaire [+3] Team Glimglam (4 days later)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (4 days later)
Yes, master.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (4 days later)
Bakora gates are not rare, and are already being studied by various people. It's just that since no-one (except maybe the Silent Doorway Adepts) can use them, the interest is mostly for historical purposes.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (5 days later)
That's a good point. But if the Adepts know how to use the gate, then it's not just full access to a Bakora gate—it's full access and the knowledge required to use and experiment with it.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
Thus, my original point that exterminating the spiders is undesirable.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 days later)
You're right, morality is probably an issue here. When it comes to opening the gate I had assumed that the dimensionalism that Zorian has been studying would help. But you're probably right.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (2 days later)
a Bakora gate... all the crystallized mana .. pay for a single activation, a one-way ticket.
There's three plot threads converging towards this. There are
BanoraBakora Gates in both the timeloop, and the real world. Connecting them could make an exit. Silverlake, the Silent Doorway Adepts, and Xvim can manipulate dimensional gateways. Sudomir Kandrei's has a giant mana crystal that can absorb a cataclysmic amount of life force.This seems possible.
u/Tommy2255 [+2] (2 days later)
There are Banora [sic] Gates in both the timeloop, and the real world. Connecting them could make an exit.
That doesn't make any sense at all. There's absolutely no reason to believe that any teleportation method, no matter how exotic, could get them out of the pocket dimension. The only connection between the real world and the time loop is the Sovereign Gate.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (2 days later)
You're right, it doesn't. There's also too little information about them to make this work. So far, dimensional gates have been shown to circumnavigate all the known problems that teleportation suffers- such as distance, needing to know the destination, and wards.
The only connection between the real world and the time loop is the Sovereign Gate.
The Sovereign Gate is barred, but it's not inactive if RR is travelling through it between the Timeloop and the Real world. If that connection didn't exist, then the Timeloop world would be already dissolved. Perhaps the Bakora gate can piggyback on this connection? All speculation. I'm desperately trying to find a way out for Zorian, preferably with his body intact.
It seems very possible that the Primordial is not within the Timeloop, and is being summoned from a pocket universe that is located outside of both the Timeloop, and the Real world. It's bridged by a lifeforce/blood connection. This is something that Zorian will have between himself and his irl self. If this is true, it indicates that another exit can be made, but will trigger the loop. A solution is to wait until the final loop.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
I'm pretty sure that it would be possible to ward against gates, just not with a standard teleport ward. And I get the impression that the invaders' gate consumes rather a lot of mana, though perhaps less than teleporting. Gates don't really bypass all the usual problems, although they may be a better tool in some cases for those who can actually make them.
u/Tommy2255 [+2] (2 days later)
There's no reason to suspect any relationship whatsoever between the Bakora Gates and the Sovereign Gate. The only thing they share is that they have Gate in the name and we learned about them fairly close together. They're different technologies from entirely different civilizations and time periods which work according to completely different principles.
I'm desperately trying to find a way out for Zorian, preferably with his body intact.
They have a way out. Collect the keys, unlock the Sovereign Gate, walk out.
If the Primordial were being summoned from a pocket universe outside of both the loop and the real world, that would imply that a) all pocket universes would display unexpected behavior during the loop, in particular a Bag of Holding or somesuch would let you send information from one loop to the next and eventually out of the loop, which directly contradicts one of the primary design goals of the Sovereign Gate b) it wouldn't work more than once, since summoning the Primordial into a world and then destroying that world would either destroy the Primordial or cause devastating consequences across all nearby universes, neither of which is consistent with what we've observed.
Even if some kind of blood-bridge to summon looped!Zorian bodily back into the real world were possible, that bridge would have to go through the Sovereign Gate for the same reason that the ritual to summon the Primordial has to happen at the hole. You can only access a pocket universe at the point where the pocket universe connects to the rest of the universe. The problem with this is that the Gate is barred. You'd still have to unlock it, which would still require finding the keys, at which point you could just walk through. The only advantage is that the summoning thing might be able to move you through bodily rather than having your spirit supplant your original self, which is extremely useful but not necessarily worth the tremendous difficulty involved in designing such a ritual.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
They're different technologies from entirely different civilizations and time periods which work according to completely different principles.
This may not be true. The Sovereign Gate utilizes time magic and dimensionalism. Bakora Gates use dimensionalism. I'm not saying they're necessarily related, but there may be a connection that can be exploited.
For example, imagine there is a dimensional bridge connecting the loop dimension and the real dimension. What if Bakora Gates can punch into that exit path?
But I agree that the keys are certainly their best bet. I wouldn't be surprised if unexpected problems arise however.
I think the strongest case against these kinds of dimensionalism shenanigans is that, from a storytelling perspective, they would feel very deus ex machina, especially when the Sovereign Gate keys are a valid option.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 days later)
I love this theory of yours. Very original. Dimensionalism is the study of wormholes, so I think it's an avenue worth exploring.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+2] (3 days later)
Silverlake is going to be a large part of the answer. Zorian noted that her home is inside a pocket.
It's the nature of "tests" in Mother of Learning, that Zorian is going to have to develop some kind of skill that's crucial to getting the Grey Hunter eggs, that Silverlake needs him to know. The Haste spell that his simulacrum used during the encounter is also in that area of magic (and a big tip off). Zorian's dimensional gate also had some success against the Grey Hunter.
I'm trying to my best to be a good reader of what the author has constructed in this world. It's a struggle not to turn everything Zorian encounters into a Chekov's Armoury. This is my first encounter with "rational" literature, and it's full of novelty -not just the cheery spider.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 days later)
Honestly, it had totally skipped my mind that the Silverlake's disappearing house shenanigans was dimensionalism. I'm very curious what specific skills Silverlake thinks is necessary to kill the spider, and I wonder if Silverlake somehow knew Zorian was marked in the first place.
Novelty . . . I really miss the Cyoria web . . .
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
best
The Gate spell is essentially a wormhole. A Bakora Gate may indeed have the ability to connect to the original universe given the collaboration of several dimensionalism experts.
u/valeskas [+9] (an hour later)
not Veyers
Unless Veyers somehow struck a bargain with Panaxeth. And got Body Mark II With Bigger Brain or something.
Also, as a minor thought, the Gate itself is suspiciously well suited to avoid interference from other planes of existance.
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (10 hours later)
struck a deal with Panaxeth
Yeah, no. There is nothing anyone could conceivably offer that thing, even assuming it's sufficiently comprehensible to negotiate with. And if he knew a way to force it to do anything, he wouldn't have needed to spend time optimising the invasion; he would have been successful already.
u/valeskas [+5] (13 hours later)
nothing anyone could conceivably offer that thing
Panaxeth probably wants an optimized invasion, so it can get out of prison reliably when time loop is over.
u/GodKiller999 [+2] (22 hours later)
It's quite clear that the invasion is extremely hard to beat, even when the invaders lose the element of surprise they still manage to summon him.
u/valeskas [+2] (a day later)
It's quite clear
There is Zach, so alternative to optimized invasion is optimized city defense.
There is a chance that angels are more efficient than demons.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
I think it's the other way around-Panaxeth doesn't want to get out of bed, so he activated the loop to optimise Zach and city defence.
u/Stop_Sign [+47] (32 minutes later)
Cheeky simulacrums. I love it.
u/None [+34] (9 hours later)
I empathized with the simulacrums. Past me has made some pretty tough New Year's resolutions that present me doesn't like much.
u/thrawnca [+19] Carbon-based biped (10 hours later)
I reckon he should treat his simulacra more like equals. In personality and intelligence, after all, they're almost the same as him. Maybe, rather than assuming he's the master, they should negotiate tasks more. But I guess that wouldn't help Simulacrum 2, since the whole point of going to class was to test the disguise, so the original couldn't take that job. And for life-threatening tasks like baiting the spider, original!Zorian is harder to replace.
He could, at least, before creating a batch of simulacra, roll dice to decide which task each Zorian will have (including, when feasible, the original). Then they wouldn't have to wonder, Why did I get the boring job?
And maybe they could have social events! Team-building! He doesn't like chess, but maybe he'd enjoy a party where everyone is him. Or a football match.
u/None [+10] (21 hours later)
I was actually thinking if he uses the simulcrum to probe the minds of those people whom Xvim had mentioned in the list, since he restraining himself to do so. But then again it comes with a considerable amount of risks if the simulcrum differs too much.
u/RMcD94 [+7] (21 hours later)
But why would his simulacrum be willing to do that
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+14] fear of last pages (22 hours later)
Because one of his current major reasons against mind-probing non-criminals is that the very acts themselves will gradually change his moral principles and thought patterns (e.g. “I don’t like how that guy’s staring at me. → I should put a compulsion on him to go sit elsewhere.” or “I don’t know if my allies are still loyal to me. → I should check the last 72 hours of their personal experiences without warning them just to be sure.”).
With simulacrums that only live <24 hours, gradual changes like this aren’t a concern. But as ani_12 said, if they see something really nasty inside the target’s mind, they could turn on Zorian!prime without him even realising quickly enough what’s happening.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (22 hours later)
But you would you'd just have make a simulacrum to make the compulsion on him
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+7] fear of last pages (23 hours later)
If you mean you’d still be affected by the act of mind-wiping even if you used your clone as a proxy instrument, then I don’t agree. If you use a clone, you are shielding yourself from the the more “visceral” parts of the experience.
It’s like if you had to kill a person for some reason. It would’ve been much easier if all you had to do was decide that they have to be killed and they just died — you wouldn’t have nightmares about it, your human psyche wouldn’t have to re-align itself around this new important experience, etc.
It would still change you, but not as much on an unconscious level as the first-hand experience would.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (23 hours later)
No I'm saying that if you accept that doing something immoral makes you more likely to do something immoral, then using a proxy to commit that immoral deed just means that you're more likely to use a proxy to do something immoral.
The mental repercussions are a separate thing entirely, but I don't think it's important considering how many people's he has mindraped before who really though no fault of their own are on the side against him. It's not like all criminals are inherently evil.
Regardless if we simplify it to killing people ever, using a gun to kill people instead of your hands, doesn't mean you will kill people less (which is what I think he's worried about).
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+11] fear of last pages (a day later)
I don't think it's important considering how many people's he has mindraped before who really though no fault of their own are on the side against him. It's not like all criminals are inherently evil.
It’s not about his targets being “inherently evil”, it’s about setting at least some kind of boundaries in his mind regarding who can be an acceptable target (e.g. eldritch entity summoners, their goons, their support network, etc) and who can not. Friend-or-foe differentiation is usually very important in matters like this for people, especially during wartime when soldiers have to kill or torture their enemies. For instance, even members of Unit 731 had to be trained to double-think around their victims being humans and think of them as wooden logs.
if you accept that doing something immoral makes you more likely to do something immoral, then using a proxy to commit that immoral deed just means that you're more likely to use a proxy to do something immoral.
I agree with that, but only partially. What I was trying to point out in my original comment was that immoral actions are not all grouped together in a single homogeneous bundle, and that if a person is ready to make immoral choice A then it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re also read to make any immoral choice at all.
Let’s assume there’re two versions of Zorian: one who’s ok with mind-probing non-criminals personally, and another who’s ok with doing that through a proxy clone.
The first one mind-probes people day after day, and gradually starts to realign his morality principles in an even more drastic manner so that all his personal experiences of what he considers mind-probing of innocent people wouldn’t paint him as some kind of a monster in his own eyes. Eventually, this Zorian!A’s moral compass will change so much that he’ll not only be ok with mind-probing them, but also with mind-torturing them, mind-torturing their families for leverage, etc. And each immoral choice that’s one step harder will warp his morality principles even more.
The second one, on the other hand, will know that he’s mind-probing people, but since this knowledge is more of the academic variety because he himself has none of the first-hand “personality-contaminating” experience, through time he’ll stay on the same level of only being ready to mind-probe non-criminals when there’s a very dire need for that. He may decide to make some harder immoral choices, but those decisions won’t be affected by his deteriorating moral principles as much as it would’ve been the case with Zorian!A.
p.s. This all is of course only my current opinion. Also, this is likely my last comment in this comment chain. Thanks for the discussion!
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (a day later)
Hm, I think I'd enjoy Black Mirror.
P.S. Everyone should click the second link in the above post. SPC . . . ♥
u/Veedrac [+2] (22 hours later)
I had the same idea, but all that does is remove the process one step. If he gets used to probing people through an intermediary, the same problem has occurred.
u/None [+7] (20 hours later)
He could also do collaborative activites as a team of simulacra, work with himslef to brainstorm plans, design spell formulae etc.
Given that we see the first one transfer memories to Zorian its unclear why he isn't taking memories from the later ones.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (21 hours later)
Fighting himself seems useful
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
More resistance training maybe?
Fighting himself would have limitations. He can't really learn new techniques that way, so not really helpful for things like martial arts, and he doesn't need a sentient target for things like making force spells transparent. He could encourage the growth of his mana reserves, I guess, but he's already using them plenty, and maxing that out is supposed to be a bad idea.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
The simulacra could execute strong mind magic attacks in a controlled environment for Zorian to defend himself against. I'm sure there are plenty of interesting training regimens he could come up with---simultaneous and detailed pupeteering of highly sentient enemies and compulsions come to mind, especially of the "give yourself greater focus" variety.
Imagine he gets two simulacra and practices puppeteering them simultaneously while maintaining combat effectiveness for himself. It's essentially like turning enemies into mini-simulacra for the price of some mind magic---which is much cheaper.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
Would he consent to be puppeteered himself in that manner?
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
I would in a heartbeat. He's done similar and been subjected to similar things in the past, though more benign and less invasive.
As for himself, he mostly practiced tapping into other people's senses with [Tinami].
Truthfully, there was very little that practicing with Tinami could offer him that he could not also do with Kirielle, Kael or some random stranger.
And then there was the animation spell Ilsa had him use to teach his classmates how to dance.
I think if he was the one doing the control on himself, he'd be willing. It's not like he'd make his simulacra do uncomfortable things during the training—move around, cast spells, do unstructured magic, etc.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (8 days later)
Would his simulacra agree? It's not like they are getting anything out of it.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (8 days later)
Depends on how they look at it. The simulacra are extensive of Zorian in a way and have proven themselves nature enough to put up with less pleasurable tasks for the sake of the mission.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
he isn't taking memories from the later ones
Sure he is. Simulacrum 2 was heading back to report at the end of the day.
However, it appears that the simulacra are choosing which memories to send. Thus, pranking ensues.
What's more interesting is that this one didn't use a telepathic relay. But it does make sense: with multiple simulacra and non-hazardous missions, he really doesn't need to invest in making lots of relays.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
However, it appears that the simulacra are choosing which memories to send. Thus, pranking ensues.
Ah, I thought they were talking about verbal reporting not mental
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
verbal reporting not mental
Quite possibly both. Voice+surface thoughts and emotions for trivial stuff, memory packets for anything more important/complex.
u/ElecNinja [+22] (43 minutes later)
Pretty fun to see a new perspective even if it's a clone of the MC.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+44] Finally, everyone was working together. (an hour later)
I love love love that, despite all the foes Zach and Zorian have conquered, that damn grey hunter is still a total pain in the ass.
u/None [+42] (an hour later)
[deleted]
u/-Fender- [+37] (2 hours later)
Spiders are OP in this story. The author might have a fetish. Too much Kumo. But then again, that probably applies to most of us here.
u/MetagamingAtLast [+13] (7 hours later)
That's because they're based on Exile/Avernum's friendly talking spiders, which are usually a fun highlight of the playthrough. They're pretty great.
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
[removed]
u/-Fender- [+18] (2 hours later)
http://raisingthedead.ninja/current-j-z/kumo-desu-ga-nani-ka/
Literally translates to "So I'm a spider, so what?". Story about a girl reincarnating in another world as a spider. Very fun read, definitely recommend it, like most people here would.
u/UltraRedSpectrum [+20] (2 hours later)
For the record: reincarnating in a fantasy world as a giant monster spider. People keep just saying "spider," and I went into it expecting the main character to be reincarnated into a regular, everyday spider. This is not the case.
u/TimTravel [+12] (2 hours later)
Story about a squirrel reincarnating in another world as a spider.
My girl to squirrel foxreplace script strikes again.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+3] fear of last pages (22 hours later)
Now I can’t decide if a squirrel-to-spider protag would’ve been more confused than a girl-to-spider protag, or less.
Also, did you create that replacement because everyone knows girls don’t really exist?
u/TimTravel [+1] (22 hours later)
My replacements are:
cloud -> butt
girl -> squirrel
man -> robot
beer -> bear
u/nobody103 [+9] (14 hours later)
Fun fact: I had read that story and liked it.
u/-Fender- [+1] (20 hours later)
Oh, it's still ongoing. But good reading tastes, I like that.
u/vallar57 [+7] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (2 hours later)
Indeed! Also, the early chapters are re-translated in a much higher translation quality by blastron.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
Hmm... Kumo vs grey hunter would be an interesting match-up. I wonder at what point she became able to beat it? Zoa Ere maybe?
u/cyberdsaiyan [+2] (8 days later)
Reporting in one week after reading this comment.
I've spent my entire past week reading this.
Thank you very much for introducing me to the almighty Kumo-chan!
u/CaptainMcSmash [+11] (7 hours later)
Yeah, my first thought when reading Silverlake essentially trained the spider was, why not just find a different one then? It might be worth an investment of time to find another, younger and less experienced Grey Hunter that would be easier to subdue, after all there's no reason it has to be that particular one. Though if they're as rare as the author says, might not be possible.
u/Saffrin-chan [+10] (9 hours later)
They're really rare, and you also have to find one with an egg sack, so they probably won't be able to find another one.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+5] fear of last pages (22 hours later)
It would be neat if they eventually decided to raise some of this grey hunter mother’s hatchlings in some natural reserve in the real timeline to preserve her species. The species is dangerous, but also a goldmine of magical research material.
u/thrawnca [+4] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Just breed dragons instead. Even more magical, and less likely to kill you on sight. Seriously, even an enraged mother dragon is likely to be less aggressive than that thing.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
dragons
less likely to kill you
That seems doubtful.
u/GodKiller999 [+1] (a day later)
Dragons might oppose their kind being treated like livestock, they are sapient after all.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Of course they would be angry. But so is the spider...
u/thrawnca [+7] Carbon-based biped (8 hours later)
There must be ways they can do this. Maybe they should attack it in its lair, negating its mobility. If Zorian can cover the entrance with a gate leading to a trap, they could then bombard it through the gate... Potion grenades maybe?
Or drop the trap right over the hole so it can't get past without touching it, and if it holds back, start psychically digging through its magic resistance.
Or make a simulacrum army and overwhelm its magic resistance with psychic brute force.
Or provoke it into jumping and catch it in the air. Once it's already off the ground, it will have a harder time dodging. Can they make a frictionless hemisphere of force for it to land in?
u/SimonSim211 [+6] (18 hours later)
If they could teleport it (it and the whole cave using a metric ton of mana crystals ) they could solve so many issues, just think lich vs spider or treasury vs spider or giant undead dragon vs spider
u/None [+5] (20 hours later)
As amusing as it is to imagine the grey hunter suddenly plummeting down on the lich, they unfortunately still need to get the eggs sacks intact
u/SimonSim211 [+6] (21 hours later)
Only for one restart, also consider placing it into a black room without food to weaken it without harming the eggs
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (21 hours later)
Easier to use one of Zorian's early ideas and seal it inside its lair with terrain alteration.
u/None [+1] (21 hours later)
Maybe they could cover a large area outside the cave entrance with a rune that, when stepped on, teleports the spider? If they just wait for it to come out on its own without alerting it the grey hunter might not sense the trap.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
You can't safely cast a spell using a metric ton of mana crystals. Most of the mana would still be in its raw form, so if you use it, you're subject to poisoning and madness.
u/SimonSim211 [+1] (a day later)
Well I know of a lot of cultists that could be manipulated into casting it...
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Lich vs spider would be funny, but no real contest. He's basically indestructible to physical force, therefore almost certainly bite-proof. He can teleport reflexively. He can fire magical projectiles that pierce all known shielding, like that green javelin. And the spider might well ignore him completely, like the simulacrum.
u/Tanath [+5] LessWrong (than usual) (18 hours later)
Its "trump card" negates catching it in the air pretty well.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
It occurs to me that the spider has managed to break everything physical within reach. Rocks, golems, magical planes of force; it shatters them all.
There must be a limit. If Zorian makes a really big golem, focused on physical resilience - no need for warding against fire etc - maybe it can survive. Then they would have a real shot at the eggs.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (30 days later)
Someone on the blog brought up the question of whether magical flash-bangs exist, and the author confirmed that they do, although mages can easily block them.
Saturation bombing from aerial simulacra could be perfect for wrecking the spider's super senses.
u/TwoxMachina [+6] (13 hours later)
Hmm, with all the dodging, I think they need to cast more Wall spells. Like wall of fire to herd it into a trap. Can't dodge a whole plane of attack. Box it in, then cast a non-lethal spell, so that if it dodges, it'll dodge INTO the lethal wall of fire.
EDIT: IMO, 1st, put a ceiling to things. Horizontal Wall of Fire, just right above human height. Can't jump well without headspace. Heck, just Maze the whole battleground.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Very nice.
Another:
Block the cave entrance, then use magic to leech air from through any cracks until the spider suffocates. Or fill the cave with water somehow.
u/winz3r [+4] (a day later)
And while doing this play the Rains of Castamere.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
Rains of Castamere
Hahaha, perfect. Having never seen GoT, I had no idea what that is until now.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
What makes you think it can't break through walls?
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
I wasn't sure why I thought the spider could break through walls of force, so I reread those paragraphs and found this:
Zach trapped it in a cage of dense, layered force, but the grey hunter mother shattered each one like it was made of paper and burst free before Zach and Zorian could strengthen the prison enough to hold her.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Not to mention the magically strengthened rock that it kicked to pieces in mid-air. Seriously, this spider is a ninja.
u/Fredlage [+39] (2 hours later)
So, I've been thinking about how Zorian could better abuse the simulacrum and this chapter completed an idea. Zorian has been musing about enhancement rituals and the author stated that many of those straight up copy magical abilities from magical creatures. So, Zorian should figure a way to copy the cranium rats' hive mind ability (which is a kind of mind magic, so it should mesh well with his natural ability) then figure how to make the mental connection through his soul (or just use relays if that's not feasible) and voila, hive mind Zorian and his simulacra. That'd be interesting.
u/chaosmosis [+27] and with strange aeons, even death may die (4 hours later)
Redacted.
this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev
u/Fredlage [+2] (12 hours later)
How so?
u/None [+7] (21 hours later)
Psychic feedback loops hard-coded into your soul with a magical ritual, trying to integrate higher-order minds into a gestalt using a schema that has only been shown to be successful when creating an aggregate entity of moderate intelligence out of a bunch of feckin' rats?
u/Fredlage [+3] (23 hours later)
Ok, maybe test it with an enhancement potion first.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+8] (3 hours later)
That'd be pretty awesome.
u/DR_Hero [+5] (3 hours later)
It would be interesting to see how that spell would effect his sense of self.
u/cretan_bull [+4] (a day later)
I have another idea for simulacrum abuse.
Simulacra share Zorian's mana supply. If simulacra were to do the mana-regeneration meditation procedure near the Cyoria well they should be able to regenerate Zorian's mana in parallel.
We have not yet seen any range limitation on maintaining the simulacra, or a numerical limit on the number he could maintain at once.
The apparent lack of a range limitation should allow Zorian to effectively bypass the constraints on mana use when far away from a mana well.
As Zorian can maintain a number of simulacra simultaneously while being principally concerned with their use of mana-intensive spells rather than any sort of constant mana draw, and on the other hand Zorian can regenerate his entire mana reserves in a matter of minutes when near the Cyoria well, maintaining such simulacra should provide Zorian with far more mana than they consume.
This idea may not work as well if mana regeneration is principally limited by the ability of the soul to assimilate mana. In which case Zorian should still see substantial benefits from having a single simulacrum dedicated to mana regeneration, however he would not see additional benefits from having more.
u/thrawnca [+5] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Already discussed in a previous chapter thread, and resolved by the author. Yes, it sort of works: you could assign a simulacrum to sit cross-legged and assimilate mana, which would max out your assimilation rate, provided it didn't get too bored and wander off. However, your soul is the bottleneck; adding extras doesn't give any further benefit.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
I think you seem to be missing a large problem: you can't really force a simulacrum to do anything.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Actually, the politics of the mana assimilation plan don't seem so bad. If a simulacrum doesn't want the boring job, then Original!Zorian can do it, and send the simulacrum on the mana-consuming job instead. And besides, whenever their mana reserves are full, they can tap each other's senses. Not such a terrible assignment really.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (2 days later)
I think it would have to wait until Zorian figures out a way to seemlessly integrate the memories from his simulacra.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
What would have to wait? Sensory tap? They're doing that already.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 days later)
If the simulacrum is in Cyoria, it would have access to books, building materials, research notes, Kael, Kirielle, Xvim, etc. I'm sure it'd have no issue with spending a restart hanging out, giving Zorian a guaranteed max regeneration rate. The main issue is that Zorian hasn't been keeping any simulacra alive for more than a day, but it may be worthwhile to break the rule for this purpose.
u/gridpoint [+1] (12 hours later)
The cranium rats don't have much ability as individuals. A single rat doesn't do anything that he can't easily overpower. It's the group that's formidable. I doubt enhancement rituals can take the cumulative abilities of a whole bunch of magical creatures. He'd be better off taking a bunch of any other creature instead.
u/Fredlage [+7] (12 hours later)
Each individual rat has the ability to join in a hive mind with others of the same ability. Said hive mind is more intelligent and powerful than its components. If Zorian and each of his simulacra had the same ability, the result might be very impressive for Zorian.
u/gridpoint [+1] (13 hours later)
But didn't the simulacra communicate telepathically with Zorian. Isn't a hive mind just like a bunch of simulacra doing the same thing simultaneously? Just as Zorian did joining with the Hive mind before they shut him out.
u/GodKiller999 [+1] (22 hours later)
No, they're just individuals that can communicate right now, nothing like an hive mind.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
It's possible that that is simply a matter of choice and practice. Zorian likely hasn't tried to mind-meld with a simulacrum and wouldn't really want to. If they set their mind (s) to it, he might already be capable of forming a hive mind.
u/megazver [+38] (an hour later)
The simulacrum shenanigans and how quickly they've been shown to begin to diverge from the creator's best interests struck me as more material for the "Red Robe is a rogue simulacrum of Zach's" theory.
Other than that, I don't see extensive use of simulacra any less ethically challenging than marking people to retain memories in-between reboots. I'd like to see them explore the latter (and the other marker abilities) in future chapters.
u/Krossfireo [+16] (an hour later)
Do simulacra maintain themselves over resets? I guess Zach could be brainwashed by his simulacra to maintain the memory of it (memory packets) and then create the simulacra as soon as the loop begins.
u/thrawnca [+12] Carbon-based biped (8 hours later)
I'm pretty sure a simulacrum would not survive the restart.
The Gate recreates the entire physical world according to the template, then anchors the Controller's soul into the appropriate body. And the template does not include an ectoplasmic shell.
u/DerSaidin [+3] (a day later)
Yeah, this. Both Zach and RR survive loop, which requires a soul. Simulacra do not have a soul.
Could it be possible to give a simulacrum a soul? Maybe. But Occam's Razor says RR is not a Zach simulacrum with its own soul.
u/megazver [+8] (2 hours later)
Well... We don't know the rules yet. Maybe Zach's simulacra actually share his marker, somehow. Maybe Zach actually knew a lot more about the markers and soul magic before his memory wipe, since he had one in the first place. Maybe it's the (very inventive) mechanism you've described.
Or maybe simulacra do just maintain themselves over resets. They're weird-ass soul magic, who knows how weird-ass soul magic interacts with the weird-ass soul magic of resets? I suspect we'll see what happens when a simulacrum is active during the reset soon enough. Then, if they do, it probably took over Veyers' body, like people speculated in the previous chapter's discussion and off it went.
Let's face it, the magic system in this story has new shit added to it every chapter and we could get new information that disproves this, then makes it possible again, then disproves it again several times over. But Zach's simulacrum just feels right to me from a storytelling perspective. It's very elegant.
u/GodKiller999 [+29] (2 hours later)
Let's face it, the magic system in this story has new shit added to it every chapter and we could get new information that disproves this, then makes it possible again, then disproves it again several times over. But Zach's simulacrum just feels right to me from a storytelling perspective. It's very elegant.
No? If anything the magic system has been extremely consistent, it's how we can figure out later plot points from explanations that were given in early chapters.
u/megazver [+5] (2 hours later)
Consistent with what has previously been added, yes. But he does add exciting new areas of magical expertise quite often.
u/GodKiller999 [+25] (4 hours later)
But those aren't haphazardly added for plot reasons, it's quite obvious that they existed before we ever heard about them by the way they neatly fit with the rest of the magic system.
u/-Fender- [+19] (2 hours later)
Except that Zach had no awareness whatsoever of his soul. No defenses whatsoever. It just seems to me like there would be some signs visible to someone with soul sight (like Alanic) if he ever had the kind of soul magic expertise necessary to create a simulacra.
But then again, who knows. The author could choose to go that route regardless of what we currently know of how soul magic or the simulacrum spell works, or regardless of however I interpreted his writing.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+7] (7 hours later)
I completely agree. After the previous chapter, I argued that it's implausible for even a skilled soul/mind mage to completely erase a trained "skill" of Zach's: soul-sense. We know the soul grows with training, like muscles, and, especially after what we learned in this chapter about how trigger-happy the marker is, I find it highly doubtful that anyone could have altered his mind and soul enough to have completely removed his knowledge of and ability to control his marker AND set him back to square one when he tries to re-train it.
I still think the most logical conclusion here is that Zach never knew what was going on to begin with when the loops started.
u/melmonella [+3] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (11 hours later)
Is it possible that someone else could have cast Simulacrum for Zach?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (12 hours later)
Technically? Yes, you can make a simulacrum of someone else. But I'm not sure it solves any of the issues surrounding Red Robe.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (13 hours later)
It solves the issue of Zach obviously being unable to cast the spell. If he hired someone to make a simulacrum for him (for...whatever reason) that would explain where RR came from.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Yes, you can make a simulacrum of someone else.
How do you know this? Sudomir?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (2 days later)
You always ask good questions. For everyone else, here's the relevant discussion:
thrawnca
If you had soul sight (and maybe a willing target), I would think you could attach a generic simulacrum body/mind to someone else’s soul. I would expect it to work pretty much the same way as if the recipient had cast the simulacrum spell themselves.
(In which case, Zorian would be able to cast it on Zach before the latter has sufficient mastery of soul perception, once Zorian uses blood magic to copy Kael’s soul sight.)
.
Domagoj (author)
Yes, you could make a simulacrum of another person and it would work largely the same as if the target cast the simulacrum spell themselves. As you noted, you need soul sight first before you can do that. Necromancers a similar method to this to interrogate dead people.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Domagoj?
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Yes, the author. Domagoj Kurmaic.
I'm guessing you've never visited his Patreon page? Worth doing; he tends to answer questions there.
u/megazver [+2] (2 hours later)
I don't think that's the case either. I just listed it as remotely plausible, based on what we've been given so far.
I suspect it'll be something we haven't even been told about yet.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (2 hours later)
Zorian's been using simulacra for eight restarts so far; they don't seem to maintain themselves.
The memory packets theory is definitely possible. It's possible that Zach had been trained in a lot of things pre-timeloop. There is one major flaw:
Even Zorian would have a difficult time overwriting a person's life story that much. If Zach had been skilled enough to cast simulacrum, to have (novice or intermediate-level) unstructured mind shaping abilities like RR exhibited, etc., I don't think RR could have successfully purged that much information.
Plus, it is unlike Zach to have the patience or temperament to undergo that level of training, then hide it from his peers to pretend to be untalented in school. All that mastery would have required a few years of training.
It's still possible I suppose, but I find it really unlikely. Veyers also feels unlikely considering his volatile temperament, but we shall see. :D
u/megazver [+4] (2 hours later)
Zorian's been using simulacra for eight restarts so far; they don't seem to maintain themselves.
So far he has been reabsorbing them at the end of each day. I doubt he ever tried to keep one up during a reset.
And I doubt Zach forgot that much, yes. I don't think that's the solution, I just listed it as remotely plausible.
I suspect if the theory is true, the "how" might not have even been introduced to us yet.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (3 hours later)
So far he has been reabsorbing them at the end of each day.
Good point. He should maintain a simulacrum specifically at the time where restart occurs.
"How" might not have even been introduced to us yet.
I hope we'll find out soon! But I don't think that's likely . . .
u/pleasedothenerdful [+1] (3 days later)
But Zach didn't know the Simulacrum spell at the beginning of the restarts.
u/SpeculativeFiction [+1] (4 days later)
It does seem to hint to that, but we've seen Red Robe make a simulacrum of their own, which they used to set off all the Aranean traps. It's possible Simulacrum can make copies of themselves, but seems a bit unlikely, I guess?
While I was a strong proponent of the Veyer's theory, his identity was revealed a bit too early.
u/TimTravel [+34] (2 hours later)
I forget if I already mentioned this in previous threads, but Kael's coin has (temporarily) defeated Quatach-Ichl before, and Zorian was able to fool him into touching it. It probably works by making his lich defenses think he's undergoing a serious soul attack and severing the simulacrum automatically, but regardless, it's worth a try next time they fight him.
That devious Silverlake. She'd better have some amazing knowledge.
u/Krossfireo [+14] (2 hours later)
I don't know why they haven't used this attack on the lich more than once. Maybe Zorian forgot about it partially since the traumatic events of red robe's purple light spree happened right after
u/thrawnca [+14] Carbon-based biped (4 hours later)
He hasn't used it because it has to touch the lich, and Zorian normally meets him with shields up.
u/Krossfireo [+7] (5 hours later)
He didn't touch him the first time, he tossed him the coin
u/thrawnca [+26] Carbon-based biped (7 hours later)
In a normal combat situation, the lich isn't going to let any thrown object touch him. He was tricked in a specific situation that would be very difficult to replicate.
u/melmonella [+5] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (12 hours later)
Yeah, they probably need to design an anti-lich rifle. Something with a big caliber so that all spell formula needed to sewer his soul from his body can be put on a bullet, and then something else to insure it would pierce all his shields. No matter how strong those are, there has to be a limit-and if Z&Z were to convert all the mana crystals they can gather in a month into one incredibly powerful attack...
u/TimTravel [+2] (22 hours later)
...and then he teleports away. It would have to be supersonic to avoid the sound warning him.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (22 hours later)
Well, obviously.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Supersonic? Great point. Alternatively, the area around the gun could be magically silenced.
u/Xtraordinaire [+5] Team Glimglam (12 hours later)
At the time it was a desperation move from Zorian. He was about to get some firsthand experience in lich soul magic, so he went for it and it worked because he was not percieved as a threat by the lich. He has no way of repeating that.
u/nobody103 [+6] (13 hours later)
As the people below said, it only worked because of very specific circumstances. He wasn't hit by the coin - he deliberately caught it in his hand. In a normal encounter, Quatach-Ichl would treat any object thrown at him, no matter how innocuous, as an attack.
u/nobody103 [+11] (13 hours later)
It probably works by making his lich defenses think he's undergoing a serious soul attack and severing the simulacrum automatically.
Less 'severing the simulacrum' and more 'pulling the soul back to the phylactery', but yes, that is how it works.
Edit: Although a lich's body could be thought of as a kind of simulacrum, so maybe you're right. Hmm...
u/Tommy2255 [+1] (2 days later)
It has been established that the Simulcrum spell is a major part of the basis of how liches are made.
u/serge_cell [+3] (22 hours later)
She could be a dud. Just bitch with delusion of unrivaled cunning thinking she can scam her way to real power. Would be ironic if the real prize after success would be not Silverlake's nonexistent wisdom, but eggs themselves and method for getting them.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Zorian is studying dimensional magic, which is probably what she used to conceal her cottage, since Zorian physically walked through the spot where it should have been.
He's learning to make transformation potions. She's a potions master, probably the best he'll ever meet.
He's interested in enhancement rituals and bloodline powers. She's a witch; they love those, and probably know many useful things about them.
He's already benefiting from converting the grey hunter to enhancement potions, using a recipe devised by someone who never worked with one before. Silverlake's been after the thing for years; she probably knows lots more things they can do with it, especially with the corpse presumably in good condition.
She'll be useful, I have no doubt.
And some of Xvim's best stuff only came out after Zorian gained his respect. The same is probably true of Silverlake. She shows that much promise and he only met her in one restart.
u/serge_cell [+1] (a day later)
She'll be useful, I have no doubt.
What I mean - by the time Zorian&Zach get Grey Hunter eggs they will be the same or better in all or most important of those areas. Difference between Xvim and Silverlake is that Xvim didn't send student on suicidal mission. Silverlake actually made this mission much worse by "teaching" Grey Hunter with her own failed attempts. And it was not just single test of resolve - she want Zorain to make repeated attempts, which can only end with his death, if he would be a normal wizard.
It's difficult to understand her reasoning beyond simple witch's malice. May be she hope to lower Grey Hunter level of readiness by sending weak opponent. Or may be she has no other use for a student. I expect her to attack Zorian after he handed her eggs if she can't pay him with knowledge - she looks greedy enough for it.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
To assume that she would immediately attack someone who could overpower a grey hunter is, I think, to assume that she is an idiot. Which, based on the evidence, she pretty clearly is not.
Setting them a further impossible task, though, that I wouldn't entirely put past her.
u/cathemeralman [+25] (3 hours later)
I have a theory for how Zorian might pull off transcontinental travel (besides Bakora gates).
If Zorian's simulacrum goes to another continent and then gives him the memories of the place, does Zorian gain the ability to teleport there? That way he wouldn't have to waste a restart traveling. The only problem is the simulacrum would have to remain active for longer than a day to do this (unless Zorian has the simulacra teleport back, dispel, and then teleport back out on a day-to-day basis).
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+7] (7 hours later)
unless Zorian has the simulacra teleport back, dispel, and then teleport back out on a day-to-day basis
Which is impossible if taking a boat or train. I may have to consult the world map again to see if that's necessary, since I had the same thought originally.
u/kuilin [+3] (11 hours later)
Have the simulacra travel as far as possible in the direction for one cycle, then next cycle have the next simulacra teleport to where the previous one stopped and continue?
u/melmonella [+3] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (13 hours later)
Why would it be impossible? S. gives Z memories of the ship, Z teleports there, dispels S and makes a new S. Repeat next day.
u/Bighomer [+2] (14 hours later)
I reckon it is because the ship moves.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (14 hours later)
They could stop the ship for the time they need to teleport there and back.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (a day later)
/u/Bighomer had it right. I was assuming a commercial ship I guess, where they wouldn't have the authority to request the ship to stop once a day. I guess a private charter might be possible with the money they have, so it's not totally infeasible.
But there's still the distance limitation of teleportation to consider. The Bakora gates exist for a reason, after all. As far as I understand the magic system, teleporting 1 mile takes more mana than teleporting half a mile twice to reach the same destination.
u/Cheese_Ninja [+2] (a day later)
Any series with teleports I start wondering about how it is affected by teleporting to/from a moving object, especially since the planet itself and everything on it is moving at different rates depending on latitude.
I feel like until the author makes a statement about it directly, teleporting to/from a moving vehicle is always an option. I can't remember if this has ever been addressed in the story.
I also wonder about what happens to pre-existing matter in the location being teleported to, but that's not the question at the moment.
The main issue here is that the basic teleport spell has a range limitation. It's not a big deal since we've almost always seen the characters stay in Eldemar: http://dodo-ptica.deviantart.com/art/Altazia-s-Central-Valley-525095257
Last chapter was the farthest we've actually seen them go away from here, but we don't know if they were able to teleport directly or if they had to make multiple jumps:
In the Ishekatara Sea – the southern sea enclosed by the two 'prongs' of the Altazian continent – there was a pirate ship.
Koth (Daimen) and Bianyrre are other continents entirely.
The aranea colony with the Bakora Gate seems like the most likely route for Zach and Zorian.
Other possibilities involve teleportation and Gate spell variants, or even an established teleportation route across the ocean using islands/boats?. I think there's sufficient reason to have a much faster transoceanic route available for information/small goods/small groups of people, that would be prohibitively expensive for individuals to utilize for themselves. This chapter seems to argue against that because if it did exist Zach should have brought it up as an option, unless it's illicit knowledge that Zorian gained on his own.
u/elevul [+3] Cyoria Observer (10 hours later)
Why not just morph into an Eagle and fly there?
u/nobody103 [+13] (a day later)
Out of pure curiosity, I did some quick research on this.
Peregrine falcons are one of the fastest flyers in the world. Their speed in level fight is about 65 to 100 km/h. Assuming the maximum is probably unreasonable so let's say they can fly at about 80 km/h normally. Assuming 10 hours a day spent in flight, that's a travel distance of 800 km per day.
But wait! Peregrine falcons are migratory birds ('peregrine' means 'wanderer') and while finding information about their migration speeds is surprisingly difficult, the internet is telling me that some individuals travel as much as 480 km per day. This is considered very impressive. Although it's possible that peregrine falcons are just being conservative with their energy, I'm going to assume they have good reasons for traveling at that speed. Let's round this to 500 km per day for easier calculation.
I have not thought too deeply about actual numerical distances in my world, but I consider the planet on which the story is happening to be the same size at earth. Since Altazia is temperate, and Koth is equatorial, that's roughly the distance between Northern Europe and Central Africa. Web calculators tell me that the distance between Copenhagen and Kinshasa is 6678 km. Since I assume actual peregrine falcons are way better navigators than shapeshifted humans, let's round that up to 7000 km.
7000 divided by 500 is 14, so the best case scenario says Zach and Zorian would need 14 days to fly to Koth as birds. Not unworkable. However, spending half of the restart traveling is clearly quite suboptimal. Not to mention that reality is unlikely to be ideal, and that they would likely encounter unfamiliar complication the first few times they tried that.
u/Tommy2255 [+3] (a day later)
But how fast would they be if they had to carry spell formula roughly the size and shape of a coconut? And would they encounter enough swallows on the way to satisfy the dietary requirements of a falcon?
u/nobody103 [+9] (a day later)
When I started researching the topic I tried searching for the 'average speed of a swallow', since they are also famously fast birds that migrate vast distances every year. What a mistake that was...
u/elevul [+1] Cyoria Observer (a day later)
They only need to do it once though. After that they just teleport there, either directly or through way points.
u/nobody103 [+5] (a day later)
Teleporting directly is impossible, since teleportation has range limitations. I assume that by way points you mean they can just chain teleports to cross the distance, in which case yes, that is possible. But if the goal is just to get teleport destinations, it's easier and faster to use the already existing teleportation network and have other people teleport them to desired destinations.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
I'm glad to hear this. It's been a consistent question in my mind—can't they just hire people who can teleport them through established network nodes until they reach Koth? I'd guess wealthy people who could afford those kinds of services could arrive in Koth within a day or two using this method.
u/nobody103 [+4] (a day later)
Not that fast. It would take some time to arrange for all those jumps, even after Z&Z had spent some time turning the process into routine. I don't mention it often, but teleportation isn't that common among mages - especially not at high enough level to do such long jumps while carrying passengers.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
I don't mention it often, but teleportation isn't that common among mages
Interesting. Seeing everything from the perspective of Zorian seems to have tinted our view of things. Apparently, his even his initial expectations of what a mage should do were very ambitious—teleportation, invisibility, fireballs, and so on.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Well, based on this comment, I think their way of travel is confirmed.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
That's funny. I did similar calculations in a comment below before seeing this—but it was related to the flight speed of Zach's kinetic sphere spell compared with the giant crowned eagles following them.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Homing pigeons have faster horisontal flight speed than peregrine falcons, I believe. 170km/h IIRC.
u/nobody103 [+3] (a day later)
Finding information on bird speeds is surprisingly hard. Most overviews don't seem to view it as relevant to note, or maybe its just hard to measure. In addition, when I do find data, it's unclear whether it lists the fastest observed speeds or something that can be sustained indefinitely.
I picked peregrine falcons because they are famously fast (even disregarding their absolutely crazy diving speeds) and also migratory, meaning they have endurance to sustain those speeds over large periods of time. Rock doves (common pigeons) do not migrate, so I was less sure about relying on their information.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Huh, I only now noticed you are the author. Neat.
I used this page for my sources on bird speeds. Here is another source, with one bird flying for about 1200 kilometers per day for 9 days.
In general peregrine falcons don't strike me as the kind of bird you would pick to fly across the ocean. They are small, which means they are unlikely to be able to fly 24/7, and would probably run out of energy reserves (i.e. fat) pretty quickly.
If we are talking about ways to get to Koth quickly in general, I think there are several good options:
The easiest and the most likely to work into any other activities: use the same method Zorian's parents use at the start of the month, which likely involves a hired teleporter who knows the road. In later restarts Z&Z would know all teleportation locaitons and would be able to travel there independantly.
Some sort of polymorph potion to turn into an extremely fast bird, along with some other potion to increase it's speed, letting Z&Z complete the journey in just a handful of days. Requires them to develop/buy the necessary potions, and I don't see what are the advantages over the first plan.
A plane golem. Make some sort of semi-aerodynamic platform, inscribe enough spell formula into it to make it float and cut through air without any resistance, strap a big magical engine on the back, load it up with mana crystals, strap in and go. Advantage being that this platform can be used multiple times, and all it requires is a supply of mana crystals (and thus could be used by non-mages. Z&Z could get rich after the time loop by inventing aerospace industry and selling tickets to other continents)
My favourite method: ICBM transportation. Use magic (Like that sphere Zach used) to gain enough speed to reach space and travel to Koth using a ballistic trajectory. Main advantage is that this method should be fast when compared to something like a chain of teleports (since they would likely have to rest somewhere in the middle).
u/nobody103 [+6] (a day later)
That second article is pretty amazing, thank you for linking that. However, I note that shorebirds aren't very big either.
In any case, I never intended for Z&Z to cross the ocean as birds - I just got my curiosity awoken by the original comment and tried to see just how feasible it was in general. As you noted, hiring teleporters is both faster and and has fewer complications.
Making a plane golem or (especially) ICBM would be a major undertaking that is beyond Zorian at the moment. In fact, it would probably be beyond one person in general. Zorian would have to organize and entire team of researchers, both mundane engineers and spell formula crafters, and direct their efforts for god knows how many restarts. Z&Z don't have time to devote themselves on a project like this.
u/melmonella [+3] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
...but it would be so awesome.
u/Karranor [+2] (2 days later)
Googling for "fastest migrating bird" gave me this
In short, 3.5 days for 6800km (non-stop flight). Adding a day of rest and 3 flights like that would add up to 20400km in 12.5 days, which is the other side of earth. Which makes the bird idea far more reasonable than I would ever have thought.
u/nobody103 [+10] (2 days later)
Yeah, this is pretty damn impressive. It is clear that I have greatly underestimated the ability to birds to cross vast distances quickly.
Since the story plan does not account for the 'fly there as a bird' plan, I'm just going to rule that Zorian isn't an ornithologist and never thought to consult one, and thus just dismissed the idea out of hand as implausible. Being a mage, he was more focused on finding a magical solution to the problem.
u/GodKiller999 [+1] (a day later)
He could probably have a simulacrum on the task, after all it's not he has to do it himself.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Note that the sphere probably cannot be the basis of an ICBM, since it appears to be doing funky things with inertia.
u/Shhninja [+1] (a month later)
Not sure what the range on teleport is, but if I were Zorian I would just use a simulacrum to travel to the maximum range of his teleport using a bird transformation (and to each telepathic relay point) and then contact Zorian and Zach for a gate so they could memorize the locations for future restarts. Rinse repeat until the entire way could be done in a series of teleports. Then they could just chain teleports at the start of the next restart to get there insanely fast. I believe this would be easier then dealing with different people for different amounts of money and their own schedules. With Zach's huge mana pool it would be a triviality to make the trip. This would also be much faster then having to deal with other people and/or border checks or the illegality of bypassing them.
u/nobody103 [+1] (a month later)
If Zach and real Zorian are traveling, they can't make use of the Black Room during the restart. The point of sending a simulacrum is so they can do their own thing while someone else does the traveling. Unfortunately, Zorian's simulacrum has a very limited amount of mana - hence him hiring other people to teleport him most of the way.
u/Shhninja [+2] (a month later)
I think you misunderstood what I was saying =/ I was suggesting that the simulacrum would travel by themself to the maximum range of Z&Zs teleport, then open a gate with the original to bring both Z&Z through. They would then memorize the location for future restarts and let a new simulacrum start towards the next teleport relay.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a month later)
Knowing the locations is only half the problem. The other half is that after doing such long jumps, even Zach would have to do a lot of waiting for his mana reserves to recover.
I do agree, though, that they should have made more use of intermediate gates - for transferring funds to help the simulacrum move faster.
u/Xtraordinaire [+1] Team Glimglam (12 hours later)
And when the transformation potion runs out mid-flight... oooopsie!
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (22 hours later)
- Create a potion harness for the eagle body.
- Use unstructured magic to levitate the harness slightly while flying. This would reduce the apparent weight of the potion harness.
It may also be possible to stop and remake the potions as necessary, especially if many of the ingredients can be brought along dry, which reduces their weight.
u/Xtraordinaire [+2] Team Glimglam (22 hours later)
Why not use Zach's kinetic sphere though? (from ch 60). I'm fairly certain it can go hypersonic. Transformation potions and all the contraptions are such a mess.
(but of course the real answer is dimensionalism anyway)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Zach's sphere can go hypersonic? I'm not sure, The need for inertial dampening made me wonder, but here are some numbers on the matter.
Hypersonic means five times the speed of sound (Mach 5). The speed of sound is 1200 kph (750 mph).
In Ch 62, Zach uses the sphere to escape giant eagles.
The fastest bird, the homing pigeon, has horizontal flight speed of about 80 kph (sustained) to 140 kph (short distance) (50 to 90 mph). If the giant birds were going that fast (they were probably slower than this, seeing as they're giant birds and were each carrying a human), then we know Zach was also going at least 100 kph (for ease of calculation—well under the speed of sound.
Zorian's reaction to escaping the giant birds wasn't that Zach was going slowly to let the birds catch up—rather, he was surprised the eagles could keep up. This suggests Zach's speed when escaping the birds was comparable to the first time Zorian saw the sphere used. I take this to mean that Zach wasn't killing his speed too much to escape the eagles, so his max speed is probably somewhere between 100 kph and 500 kph, depending on how much more he can push himself, and probably closer to 100 kph.
How long can Zach sustain that speed? If the above is accurate to how the sphere works, then Zach can easily travel 100 kph, but not for extended periods of time. The first time we saw the spell, Zach used the sphere to travel from the invasion army to the Hole. At 100 kph, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes to travel across the city (it takes 15 minutes to travel the length of Manhattan at that speed)—after which Zach was exhausted.
I think they might do better traveling as birds or, as you said, dimensionalism—or whatever else Zorian has up his sleeve.
u/Xtraordinaire [+1] Team Glimglam (a day later)
Oh, right, I forgot about that bit in ch62.
So my reasoning was that the sphere was clearly pulling high-g maneuvers, while passengers were unaffected; it didn't give a damn about physical obstacles it encountered (which means it doesn't give a damn about drag) and it would not care about heating as it's not material anyway. If it was operating under proper Newtonian mechanics, it should have been possible to launch it like a ICBM.
But apparently that's not the case. Oh well.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Peregrine falcons do not have the fastest horisontal flight speed of all birds. Try Homing pigeons (170 km/h).
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
I'm really surprised. I corrected the post, however 170 kph seems a bit high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon#Navigation
Their average flying speed over moderate[clarification needed] distances is around 80 km/h (50 miles per hour) but speeds of up to 140 km/h (90 miles per hour) have been observed in top racers for short[clarification needed] distances.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (2 days later)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed
hashtag wikipedia is a great source
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
Nice. Yeah, wikipedia is amazing. I think it was the journal Nature analyzed the quality of Wikipedia compared with Britannica. Wikipedia did pretty well.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+20] (58 minutes later)
Was anyone else momentarily confused when, after transforming into eagles, they weren't able to communicate via thought-speech?
(For those who don't know: In the series Animorphs, the protagonists use alien tech to morph into animals, but while in morph, they can communicate telepathically.)
u/Krossfireo [+15] (59 minutes later)
Have you been reading rational!Animorphs as well?
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+10] (2 hours later)
YES! I grew up on Animorphs and I'm waiting with bated breath for the next installment of that story from Dabien.
u/Krossfireo [+8] (2 hours later)
It's one of my favorite fanfics, partially because it's not a super explored space
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+8] (2 hours later)
I find it odd that almost nobody I know has read Animorphs, otherwise I'd tell more people about the fanfic.
u/netokoff [+7] (7 hours later)
Woah hold on. There is an Animorph fanfiction?
u/None [+5] (9 hours later)
TK17 does an incredible job writing human characters that make mistakes, but are really really smart. Also, the aliens are alien.
9.5/10, Highly recommended reading.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (10 hours later)
I'm actually holding off until it's done, for fear of having one more story that I need to constantly check for updates. Didn't come close to reading all of canon, but I read a bunch of them.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+2] fear of last pages (22 hours later)
Which ones would you recommend reading? I once had a mind of starting on that series, but it had so many titles that seemed to be ghost-written fillers that I gave up.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (a day later)
I'd say read books 1--20ish. The author got pregnant during the series run and so eventually hired ghost-writers, but the beginning is really strong. Meanwhile, go on the Animorphs reddit for more information about which ones to skip.
Here's a start:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Animorphs/comments/3dj2ts/which_books_would_you_recommend_a_friend_to_skip/
u/TheTrikki [+2] (20 hours later)
Do you need to know the original series in order to enjoy this?
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (a day later)
I feel you'd love the story even without reading the source material first. I'm biased, having grown up on the series, but a discussion in this subreddit described it as among the best introductions to rational fiction.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (21 hours later)
Yes, and it's rationalist and really good. I hope you're
bingingreading it at this very moment. ;)
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+3] (7 hours later)
I knew it existed when growing up and would see it at Barnes & Noble whenever I went, but I just never picked it up. Kinda disappointed about that now since I've heard such good things about this fic.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (8 hours later)
The first two or three dozen Animorphs were great and have aged pretty well. They're a fast read too. I highly recommend the series if you're inclined.
u/TimTravel [+3] (2 hours later)
I have! I'm actually behind a few chapters but I love it.
u/Bludflag [+15] (an hour later)
publically
Ellipses generally have a space on both sides, although when a sentence ends with an ellipsis, you don’t have one after it. E.g.:
“I see,” I said. “Um. What are you doing here?”
“I am your batman.”
“My . . .”
“Not the notional hero,” Sith said, a bit of a growl in his voice. “Your batman. Your orderly.”
“Orderly . . .” I frowned. “Wait. You work for me?”
http://practicaltypography.com/ellipses.html
Notably, CMOS dictates an ellipsis that has a space between the periods themselves rather than supporting the preformatted glyph which you use (Word AutoCorrect).
Oh, and em dashes are the preferred option in AmE publishing—no space on either side. AmE also uses it to show interrupted text, whether internal thoughts or dialogue.
“I know exactly what role she has in mind for me, Sir Knight. I am to”—her mouth twisted—“be at your convenience.”
Did you ever read any Spider-Man comics when you were—”
Found out you were going to edit the entire story and sell it as a book—here’s some useful advice for starting out.
On a side note, forwards is generally not used in AmE.
I trust the regulars are already penning down the typos, so I’ll leave that to them.
u/TimTravel [+10] (2 hours later)
I've never seen ellipses separated in any book or newspaper.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+10] (3 hours later)
CMOS asks for the ellipsis to be separated by spaces because the pre-formatted ellipsis glyph may show up as another character depending on platform. They prefer writers to use . . ., then an editor can do a search-replace on the document, replacing all . . . with three periods surrounded by two non-breaking spaces.
In reality, this is not considered the best way to make an ellipse by many typographers, who believe that an ellipse should be three dots separated by thinspaces. To not have spaces makes it feel to scrunched together, but it doesn't look as crazily wide as . . . either.
For manuscripts, inserting an ellipsis character is a workable method, but it is not our preferred method. It is easy enough for a publisher to search for this unique character and replace it with the recommended three periods plus two nonbreaking spaces (. . .). But in addition to this extra step, there is also the potential for character-mapping problems (the ellipsis could appear as some other character) across software platforms—an added inconvenience. So type three spaced dots, like this . . . or, at the end of a grammatical sentence, like this. . . . If you know how, use two nonbreaking spaces to keep the three dots—or the last three of four—from breaking across a line.
u/TimTravel [+1] (14 hours later)
Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying.
u/renegadeduck [+1] picky but enthusiastic (20 hours later)
Ew. This is like making an em dash out of two hyphens. Use the character that's designed for that purpose and let the typographers do their job.
The argument about not recognizing the character correctly is nonsense; they're already recommending the use of a non-ASCII character. Anything non-ASCII could be recognized incorrectly if the document is opened with the wrong character set. (Which is why you should always use UTF-8.)
The problem of “…” being rendered incorrectly is a matter of font choice. It's rendered poorly in Verdana, but it looks good in Helvetica and Times.
(I realize I'm effectively arguing with CMOS here.)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (20 hours later)
. . . and let the typographers do their job. (I realize I'm effectively arguing with CMOS here.)
I agree with you on this. I'd rather use the character, ensure UTF-8 encoding, and be done with it.
Also, if one is not using a word processor, many are not even aware of being able to input these special characters. FYI everybody:
Character Alt-Code – 0150 — 0151 … 0133 On that note, I'd love for every keyboard to include the endash, endash, and ellipsis. /rant
u/renegadeduck [+3] picky but enthusiastic (22 hours later)
On that note, I'd love for every keyboard to include the endash, endash, and ellipsis. /rant
It's not useful to you, but it might be to others. On a Mac:
Character Key combination – option + hyphen — option + shift + hyphen … option + semicolon Linux GUIs have similar combinations, or such combinations can be set up.
u/Bludflag [+1] (a day later)
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/typography-keyboard-layout-download-now/
Eat dust, old man. :v
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
very nice
u/Agnoman [+3] (8 hours later)
I love me some Dresen Files.
u/Bludflag [+1] (17 hours later)
I had it on hand and it has approximately 400 gazillion beta readers and New American Library (a division of Penguin Group) behind it. The only mistake in it, IIRC, is how a scene got deleted by accident so stuff got confusing:
The first one has to do with Harry’s amulet.
Okay, yes, Harry’s amulet, right.
We saw it at the birthday party and never again … did it survive the circle on Demonreach?
Oh yes.
*Unintelligible, something about why it wasn’t mentioned at all later
I believe it was, he was with his gear, right, he took his gear off and he handed it to Michael [ed: Yes, he says Michael here]. Did I not specifically mention…?
Audience confirms he didn’t mention it
Unintelligible although if that wasn’t written, that was an oversight during the editing process, which was a little crunched. I think the post-production on that was, from start to finish, I think it was 15 days, so there was a lot of back and forth and a lot of me not sleeping during the process.
Audience laughter
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (2 hours later)
Yes, thanks for this.
Where did you hear the author is going to edit and sell the book?
/u/nobody103, I'd be willing to help, and I'm familiar with the above-discussed topics and some basic typography.
u/nobody103 [+7] (13 hours later)
I've said in the past that I'll only start looking into publishing the story once it is done, and I remain committed to that. I want to finish the story first. In addition, I have heard that publishers make problems for authors that want to publish stories that already exist on the internet. Since I have no intention of taking down the free version of the story from the the net, that might be a problem.
Anyway, I suspect publishing MoL is going to be a long and somewhat frustrating process, so I don't want to deal with it at the moment. I'll gladly contact you for advice once I'm ready to move forwards with it, though.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (20 hours later)
I have heard that publishers make problems for authors that want to publish stories that already exist on the internet.
Sounds good. Once the time comes to publish, I'm sure the community would love to help, myself included.
Just as some food for thought, the author Mooderino who writes the online serial How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis has been publishing this series as he finishes each arc. He's finished four story arcs so far, so he may have some ideas of how the process works. The books are available on Amazon kindle as well as two sites I haven't heard of: Kobo and Smashwords.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (a day later)
Since I have no intention of taking down the free version of the story from the the net, that might be a problem.
Eh, you could probably put it on the Amazon Kindle store. If your story had a larger outreach you could end up like the Worm author and get into talks of tv shows, lol.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
I don't have much advice, but from what I understand, most publishers won't touch a debut novel over about 100k words, tops. Each arc is around 200k, I believe. And it wouldn't be right to chop huge segments out of a story like this, with so much rich world-building. So that could be problematic. :(
At least, dead tree publishers. Publishing as an e-book might have more flexibility. Except it's already possible to make an e-book for free. But it wouldn't hurt to try, and I'd be tempted to buy it despite having the free version.
Actually, my only real hesitation would be, not the money, but the fact that I'd like to make a version with all strong language trimmed or substituted. It's not worse than a lot of other stories, but I'd really like an "airline version". Would definitely pay for that.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a month later)
Incidentally, I'm currently creating and revising the aforementioned airline version, mostly for my own use and a couple of family members at this point.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (7 hours later)
familiar the above topics
You mean "familiar with"?
:D I'd be quite interested in buying it.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (8 hours later)
Thanks. I accidentally a word. ;)
u/Bludflag [+1] (16 hours later)
It’s been answered, but he said that on chapter 40 on his Patreon.
EDIT: Wanted to clarify, but I can help somewhat. Literature I have: Garner’s Modern English Usage, Chicago Manual of Style PDF, and New Hart’s Rules.
I also have A Few Notes on Book Design, but that’s more of a thing for people who don’t have the aforementioned books.
Aside from that, I’m also familiar with typography to an extent. Not really a professional, but oh well. Probably the best I can offer on that is the idea of rearranging your keyboard so you can edit it on your convenience. There’s an existing layout, but it uses a QWERTY keyboard—I somehow doubt that’ll work for you when you have a QWERTZ keyboard.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (20 hours later)
I usually use LaTeX if I need to make something nicely formatted, which takes care of the characters for me. I don't know if publishing companies would accept that kind of file though or the compiled PDF. I've never looked into it, mostly because I've never finished anything publishable.
u/Bludflag [+1] (a day later)
Literally how do you even manage?
Anyway, I hate the font choices, so I simply use Adobe InDesign for making PDF documents (and Adobe Acrobat for headers and footers because I’m a n00b at master pages).
Like, LaTeX is all about doing the formatting on its own while the user has less input (adding a font is OMGWTF in LaTeX, IIRC).
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (2 days later)
Literally how do you even manage?
Templates. If you have a style files that you just add to over time, you eventually have a lot less to figure out. My template had a font section, so once I figured it out once, I'd just change the font for that section and it'd be okay. Sometimes, certain fonts require certain packages, so you just keep font and package pairs commented out for when you need them.
LaTeX is all about doing the formatting on its own while the user has less input
I think LaTeX takes that route because most people don't know typography well enough to make those decisions, and it tends to do a really good job of it—certainly better than MS Word. At the same time, it gives you the control to make the decisions where needed, albeit using a forty-year-old markup language.
Anyhow, changing fonts can be annoying—it depends on your pain tolerance certainly—but I didn't find it too bad. I remember making a few resumes in LaTeX and then spent an hour recompiling with different fonts.
I've never used InDesign, but I'd like to play with it sometime.
u/Bludflag [+1] (2 days later)
I've never used InDesign, but I'd like to play with it sometime.
That is all.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
All them space widths . . . \drool
u/Bludflag [+1] (2 days later)
As an example of what a complete n00b can do with it: https://www.docdroid.net/036pZyi/swords-and-sorcery-prologue.pdf.html
And yeah, it’s cool beans for special characters. You can even see invisible characters (space, paragraph marks, indents, non-breaking space, etc.) in it, which is a major boon when cleaning up the file.
That would be why I prefer it, at least.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (4 days later)
Very nice. And it's a hell of a lot easier than LaTeX.
P.S. The sample isn't yours is it? Hope i'm not being a jerk, but the margins look tiny and centering is a bit off. Other than that, it looks real nice.
u/Bludflag [+1] (4 days later)
Yeah, I did the thing, but I’m not really an expert on InDesign. It’s got a lot of options, so looking for a specific one is a pain.
It’s just an experiment for now—I’ll look up tutorials to make it better when I have less school stuff to look forward to. ^_^
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (4 days later)
:D Yeah, programs like that have so much stuff going on
u/Mountebank [+13] (4 hours later)
What exactly is the limitation on teleportation in this setting? Zorian is able to go anywhere in the country it seems, so long distances isn't it. If he's limited by only being able to teleport to places that he's already been before, then he could make the trip to the other continent in stages across restarts. Better yet, pay someone to teleport the two of them.
u/Tur4 [+12] (4 hours later)
I was thinking about this. It should be easy to find someone to take them there thats been there before if the only issue is that neither of them have been to koth. But because they haven't done that there must be something else at issue. Otherwise Daimon, a avery skilled wizard who clearly knows how to teleport would be coming back frequently from koth to visit or whatever but it sounds like he hasn't been back in some time in the story.
My only thought is there might be a distance limit to teleporting and since its across an ocean there are not relay locations to teleport in between. This is backed up by the discussion regarding how it would be hard to teleport an entire army under the town from a great distance, then they found those gates that solved the problem.
My own theory to how he gets to koth is that he gave his mom an anchor stone to take to Koth that way he could teleport to that. That said, a Bakora gate would also solve the problem though we haven't seen any evidence he has figured those out. But we do know he knows how to make teleport anchor stones.
u/thrawnca [+12] Carbon-based biped (7 hours later)
The anchor stone is a clever idea, except, will his parents actually reach Koth promptly?
u/Tur4 [+12] (8 hours later)
We know they are leaving the day Zorian wakes up to go to koth. Seems they were waiting for him to go to school before departing on their trip. Zach mentions in this chapter it will take the entire month to travel to Koth. That was another reason I thought of this. The time line fits.
u/Xtraordinaire [+11] Team Glimglam (12 hours later)
I think this is just a set up for some shenanigans at the end of the month, where Zorian travels to Koth and forgets that his parents are arriving too.
"Hey son, how come you're not in school?!"
u/cretan_bull [+9] (5 hours later)
Distances are a limitation:
###Chapter 45: Fine Structures
[Some of this doesn't make any sense,] Zorian complained. [According to you, the Ibasans are transporting their forces straight from Ulquaan Ibasa to Fort Oroklo, then from Fort Oroklo to some unknown point in the Sarokian Highlands, and then from there to beneath Cyoria.]
[Yes, what of it?]
[That's not enough stops for an effective teleportation chain,] Zorian said. [Only two stop points for a journey of such distance, with the final destination point being deep underground to boot? There is no way that's really what's happening. If they were sending letters or small packages maybe, but no way could you transport an army like that. Even if Quatach-Ichl is the best mass teleporter in the whole damn world, the mana costs for such long jumps would be completely impractical on that scale.]
Admittedly, such a small number of stops would do much to explain how they could transport such an army through Eldemar territory without being discovered by Eldemar, but…
[They're not teleporting in the manner we've seen you do it,] Memory of Sublime Glories noted. [They are using some kind of stone construct to open a dimensional passage between two points. Like a door to another land.]
As for destination, I believe one merely needs some way of divining the target location sufficiently accurately. Having been somewhere before should make that easier, but I do not think it should be a strict requirement for someone of Zorian's skill.
u/AKAAkira [+1] (3 days later)
Along with the distance thing others brought up, maybe it's also possible that there're some kind of wards being maintained along borders to discourage sneaking across?
Though maybe implementation of something like that is a bit tricky. Zorian said before that there are three steps to teleporting - the divination, the dimensional barrier, and I presume the actual transportation. None of of these are the kind of things that can be prevented outright if you limit the wards' area of effect, so if an anti-border-crossing ward exists it'll have to be country-wide. Otherwise, countries could just place detection/prevention wards where they can along the border and physically maintain a presence in border villages to catch anyone who sneaked through.
u/vallar57 [+7] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (an hour later)
Zorian's simulacrum used Mischief! It's super-effective!
u/-Fender- [+8] (2 hours later)
#Typo thread!
And while Zorian had never been, now was likely to ever be [...]
"had never been, nor was likely to ever [...]"
The regain his wits quickly though, [...]
"He regained his wits [...]"
All he could do was given them a list of better alchemists [...]
"All he could do was give them [...]"
OR
"he could do was hand them [...]"
[...] it did inspire him to take his mental abilities in new direction.
"[...] his mental abilities in a new direction.
OR
"[...] his mental abilities in new directions.
how to hire unscrupulous mercenaries without getting ripped off or in jail.
"[...] getting ripped off or sent to jail."
Then he took the finished designs and gave to same people in the next restart
"[...] the finished designs and gave them to the same people [...]"
They probably though he had studied ahead [...]
"They probably thought he had [...]
[...] dimensional gates and haste himself, so he at least he accomplished something.
One of the "he" needs to be removed. Either work, so it's only a matter of preference whichever one you choose.
u/thrawnca [+5] Carbon-based biped (4 hours later)
making sure it was blundering/making sure it wasn't blundering
haven't managed to accomplish/hadn't managed to accomplish
use it entangle/use it to entangle
and reel him/and reel it
there was no publically available/there were no publicly available
pseudo-attack and/pseudo-attack, and
few more clarification/few more clarifications
other people's mind/other people's minds
four session/four sessions
couldn't help notice/couldn't help but notice
You've established link with the Cyoria's/You've established links with Cyoria's
knowledge how to hire/knowledge of how to hire
can only last/could only last
those Black Room/those Black Rooms
responded with by/responded by
commonly possess/commonly possessed
Sovereign gate/Sovereign Gate
done their own attempts/made their own attempts
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (12 hours later)
heart of sphere/heart of the sphere
did managed to/did manage to
being spent back/being sent back
the Eldemar's/Eldemar's
As for Zorian he did/As for Zorian, he did
I had enough of this/I've had enough of this
in jungles of Koth/in the jungles of Koth
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
using them golem's/using the golem's
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
- which attack it can tank
which attack it could tank
u/crivtox [+8] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (2 hours later)
Maybe the simulacrum can steal the eggs?the spider seems to be ignoring him so maybe he can steal the eggs before it notices him
u/bludvein [+15] (2 hours later)
The spider is ignoring it because it knows on some level that the simulacrum is a trap and not the main threat. Trying to remove the eggs would still have the simulacrum meeting the business end of a pissed off ninja tank spider.
u/DR_Hero [+8] (6 hours later)
It really makes you think. Did Silverlake know the simulacrum spell and bait Greyhunter before?
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+3] fear of last pages (23 hours later)
It would be neat if the grey spider was a golden man expy.
u/Saffrin-chan [+5] (2 hours later)
The eggs are on the spiders underside. Considering that the Grey Hunter destroyed the Golems that tried to grapple with it, I think it would stop ignoring the simulacrum if it tried to directly take the eggs from its body.
u/Krossfireo [+3] (2 hours later)
It seemed to not attack the simulacrum since Zorian was in range of it, maybe it would attack the simulacrum if (the real) Zorian wasn't in range
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Did you just say "before it notices him"?
Seriously, is there anything that monster doesn't notice?
u/crivtox [+0] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (2 days later)
well it(probably) doesn't notice neutrinos so yes there is
u/Marthinwurer [+8] (2 hours later)
I'm surprised that no one has been talking about the simulacrum's conversation with Neolu. If I'm remembering correctly, she's acting differently than she has before in previous restarts.
u/Menolith [+27] Unworthy Opponent (2 hours later)
I think that's because Simulacrum #1 was the first one created that day since Zorian wants to wipe them daily. The ones which came before him probably caused Neolu to diverge.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+19] (3 hours later)
It seems Zorian has been using a simulacrum to attend class for at least a few days if not longer. It's likely a previous simulacrum noticed Neolu's interest and decided to mix things up on the off-chance that Zorian has to deal with the aftermath. It's harmless enough and will annoy Zorian enough that the troll that lives in Zorian and all his copies can't resist. ;)
u/ZeroNihilist [+11] (12 hours later)
It isn't 100% harmless, and I suspect it may have minor ramifications.
If you have N divergent copies of yourself each revealing slightly different information to somebody as a joke, there's no guarantee those N bits of (mis)information won't allow the target to figure out something true.
This simulacrum made a joke about having a time machine. If the next makes a joke about actually being 100 years old, it provides a clearer picture for Neolu. And since none of them are telling Zorian-prime, none of the simulacra know whether they've collectively crossed a line.
To put it another way, if 100 witnesses each tell a fraction of the truth with no coordination, it will be possible to extract a much more accurate answer than any one witness revealed. Even if they've all got a motive to be deceitful, they'll all tell their fragment of truth in a slightly different way.
u/thrawnca [+4] Carbon-based biped (21 hours later)
Well, there's no chance of accumulating 100 witnesses in this case, of course.
And really, even if she figures it out - meh. They can ignore her, or recruit her. Still harmless.
u/possiblylefthanded [+1] (4 days later)
And what if she's red robe?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (4 days later)
Then she would have identified Zorian as a time traveler and dispatched him long ago, when he first started showing signs of improvement and growth.
u/possiblylefthanded [+1] (5 days later)
That assumes you know her goal, and that the goal is inimical to Zorian's development.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
I assume that RR would have done something about discovering another time traveler, as happened with the aranea. S/he was not content to just ignore such a development.
u/possiblylefthanded [+1] (5 days later)
Well, from what we know, they had a change of plans and left the room.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (5 days later)
Yes, but my point is, well before that occurred, Neolu had ample opportunities to notice that Zorian was now topping every class. Yet she did nothing. She didn't even behave differently; Zorian was watching for that at one point.
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+3] fear of last pages (23 hours later)
Well… he wasn't the first simulacrum that was sent on this mission. And apparently one of the previous simulacrums was similarly bored out of his skull here and decided to go off the script and befriend her. And then never bothered to inform the original about it. Simulacrum number two didn't intend to inform the original either. The whole thing was harmless and imagining the original's reaction when he finally found out was kind of amusing.
I think Zorian is demonstrating some minor IdiotBall \ blunder-level behaviour regarding his management of the clones. Even after that grey spider clone sent him feedback on how quickly and dramatically clones’ thought patterns can diverge from the original, Zorian still didn’t establish some system of check-up and “quality control” on the clones’ experiences and thoughts before dismissing them.
He just arbitrarily decided that <24h lifespan should be safe enough and went with it.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
I think doing a factory reset every 24 hours is probably sufficient quality control, but I do wish he treated his simulacra more like his equals instead of his servants. It's all very well for the original to be excited about sending someone else to be torn apart by the murder-spider, but he needs to remember that simulacra won't like doing anything that he would dislike doing himself.
Which is not to say that he should stop sending them on potentially lethal or boring missions. The ability to copy himself is just too valuable to pass up. But a little more consideration and sympathy might go a long way.
Consider: it was entirely foreseeable that when actually faced with the expectation of being torn apart by a super-spider, he would be scared. So he could have planned ways to mitigate that. Real-time memory uploads and a promise to promptly re-cast the spell afterward. Or letting it do something fun first, so it resented its existence less. Or planning a big victory party, so it feels like there's something worth being dispelled for, something to achieve. After all, these are copies of himself; it makes sense to care about their happiness.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (21 hours later)
I agree with you on this, but I think the effect is mitigated. Each "witness" is a copy of Zorian Prime from that morning. Zorian is pretty discrete and private, so his simulacra shouldn't get too crazy with things. Things might spiral out of control a little, but it's only a month until the slate's wiped clean.
Plus, Zorian knows that Zach has convinced Neolu that he's a time-traveler in the past and she was chill about it. That's probably why Simulacrum!Zorian is comfortable trolling Prime!Zorian with Neolu.
u/Tommy2255 [+1] (2 days later)
If there's ever any indication of it becoming an issue, then that simulcrum is going to think "dammit, past me, what were you thinking?" and tell Zorian Prime so that the situation can actually be dealt with. These are very slight variations of the original independently deciding that it's a harmless joke. It's a situation that would be very difficult to snowball into a major issue without noticing.
u/Cedrices_Diggory [+4] (a day later)
That's because Neolu is Red Robe.
u/Bighomer [+5] (a day later)
Now that's ridiculous! Clearly Red Robe is actually Kirielle.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Mystery solved.
u/DerSaidin [+1] (a day later)
Zorian simulacrum is in thinking: YOLO, lets spend some time with the ladies ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
u/melmonella [+8] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (15 hours later)
So, we know that one part of the Key is held by our undead supermage friend, one part is somewhere within a ridiculously well-defended encampment filled with traps and with a small army of battlemages on short dial (aka treasury), one is somewhere deep within the Xlotic desert, one is located within Koth jungles and finally one is on Blantyrre. Here is what I think:
Crown will probably be either the last or the first part of the Key they will collect in the final restart. Collecting it first would involve first spying on QI, finding out where he is certainly located at a set time, and then catching him off-quard while he doesn't have his stack of buffs (haste, all his shields, likely perception magic, contingency teleportation, etc) up. This is best done as early in the restart as possible, to maximise the element of surprise (as invasion draws near QI will likely grow more and more paranoid). On the other hand, collecting it last would probably probably involve defeating QI during the invasion, if finding him before that point proves troublesome. Now, I can't guess how that would work, but I imagine it would involve a really big magical cannon that would be able to launch a projectile with similar properties to that coin Kael developed. It would have to be big because that projectile would have to be moving fast enough that QI wouldn't be able to dodge, and magical enough that it would break straight through all his shields.
Taking dagger might be attempted in two different ways. One way to do that is to go at it all stealthy-like, sneak into the treasury and nib it without triggering the alarms. Personally, I don't think that is very likely, as the treasury seems incredibly well-defended. Alternatively, they could break through with brutal force, and then it should probably be the last part of the Key to get-as we have seen, otherwise local military won't let them do anything for the rest of the restart.
We obviously don't know anything about the other parts of the key, but I think that the one on Koth will involve Damien, one in Xlotic will involve those wasp-creatures nobody103 wrote about on his worldbuilding blog, and finally one on Blantyrre will be in the hands of the lizardpeople. Personally, I don't see "you need to search a whole desert to find it" as much of an obstacle to them, since they could probably use a combination of simulacra and polymorph potions to swiftly search for it. Turn into an eagle->fly around triggering the key-searching part of the marker once every couple seconds->do that with 10 simulacra simultaneously and you can cover a whole lot of ground in a day. For example, Homing Racing Pigeons have horisontal flight speed of 177 km/h, or about 50m/s. Assuming marker can ping the key from 200 meters away, that's 20 000 square meters covered per second. I think that with the use of magical drugs and potions you should be able to make them fly for 16 hours a day, for a total of about a billion square meters covered in a day. You could cover something the size of sahara desert pretty quickly like that.
u/Xtraordinaire [+2] Team Glimglam (22 hours later)
Good idea with the pigeons, one problem: simulacrum has no soul and therefore no key detector.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (22 hours later)
Then you need one really fast pigeon. A dragon-based potion, perhaps?
u/Xtraordinaire [+5] Team Glimglam (23 hours later)
Pigeons carrying miniature gates that are constantly open to a room with real Zorian on detection duty.
But I think regular paid intel services would suffice instead of such brute force.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (a day later)
Pigeons carrying miniature gates that are constantly open to a room with real Zorian on detection duty.
That's brilliant!
Zorian could hire a team of trained pigeons—no need to make simulaca. Then he gets a team of mages who can all cast and maintain a gate spell. If they can anchor the gates to the birds somehow so each gate follows a pigeon, they could essentially cover large swaths of land at decent speeds.
And maybe some aranea could help too, allowing them to control a ton of pigeons via relays.
It would be one hell of a circus to pull it off.
u/waylandertheslayer [+2] (a day later)
Pigeons carrying miniature gates that are constantly open to a room with real Zorian on detection duty.
If he can set up that, then why not go for the full Khepri defence and have a moving screen of miniature gates around him all the time? Hell, with his mind magic and access to an efficient way to generate moving gates that he can cast through, Zorian would basically be Khepri-lite in addition to all his other talents.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Because you never go full Khepri. That way lies madness and benny hill themes.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
Intel services have no way of finding the key in the middle of a desert that I am aware of.
u/Xtraordinaire [+1] Team Glimglam (a day later)
I mean the keys are not going to be just lying in the sand. They are Most likely to wind up in a treasury of some local power or at least at a site where such local power once resided. This is far from impossible to locate with non-magical means. Zorian will have to check it out, of course, but that would narrow the search down to several thousands points of interest as opposed to the entire continent divided by sub 1km^2 patches.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (a day later)
Great. We'll have our mind-controlled army of telepathic relay-carrying, dimensional gate-dragging pigeons investigate those points of interest. Let's teach the pigeons calculus while we're at it. We'll find the keys by dinner.
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
And that's how Gray Goo scenarios start.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
I think the pigeons would work. The simulacra are connected to the soul for the purpose of drawing mana. It's possible the simulacra also have access to the soul marker and its key detector.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
I don't think the pigeons would work. Simulacra are connected to Zorian's soul, yes, but the soul stays in the original body. I suspect it will only detect Key pieces close to the original.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
That's possible, but not necessarily true.
First of all, can simulacra use the key detector at all?
Second, where does the soul reside?
If the soul resides inside a person's body, one might expect simulacra to experience a distance-related time-delay when using mana.
If the soul resides in a parallel dimension meant to store soul information, then that dimension does not have to map the distances of the spatial dimension—like how a holographic card does not preserve the distance of the hologram it creates.
This would mean that even simulacra could use the key detector if they indeed have access to it in the first place.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
The author confirmed my speculation elsewhere in this thread...
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
Good to know. ♥
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (21 hours later)
Actually I think the lich-banishing bullet probably wouldn't need to pass through shields. The lich probably doesn't keep up shields when not under attack, because he's almost indestructible anyway. So if your projectile is fast enough that he can't react, I think that's all you need to snipe him.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (21 hours later)
Are you really going to risk it?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
Assuming you try it near the end of the restart, what's the worst that could happen?
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (a day later)
You waste your cannon plan (and thus a whole restart) when bullet glances off his shields?
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
In chapter 60, the lich shielded himself or dodged whenever he was attacked. So presumably he doesn't keep shields up continuously when not in combat.
I doubt that a cannon of any caliber could penetrate them anyway. At least, not in a single shot - and even if it could, the discharge of energy on impact would surely destroy the projectile. And you're unlikely to get a second shot.
Catching him with his shields down seems to me like the only way. Except for beating him in pitched battle. Which they still haven't done. It's all very well to make him flee and shore up other parts of the invasion, but that's a very different order to actually destroying his body - and preserving the crown in the process. He's like the murder-spider, except a hundred times worse; even an army couldn't really hurt him. The worst thing that happened to him was having his arms cut off, and he just stuck them back on. And continued to kill off dozens of soldiers.
No doubt the Lord British postulate applies, but for ZZ's purposes, the only practical solution is to catch him unaware and unshielded.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Ch 29: Enchanting firearms
Firearms were notoriously tricky to enhance with magic. Like all ranged weapons, they had the problem that you could only enchant the device to be more accurate and durable, and if you wanted the projectile to have any sort of magical effect upon striking the target you had to enchant the projectile itself. Bullets were unfortunately very hard to enchant, being much smaller than arrows and crossbow bolts and usually made from some very magically unsuitable materials. You also couldn't touch the bullet to channel mana into it once it was already in the gun… though maybe if he installed some crystal mana channels into the gun via alteration…
For a complicated enchantment like what Kael put on that coin, it may be difficult to make the "coin cannon" work. But Zorian is good at spell formula and can recruit a small team of researchers. They definitely should explore the tactic. If they can fire the gun before QI can cast a haste spell, they should be fine.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (21 hours later)
That's a good assumption: Zorian's simulacra should be able to check for the location of keys.
One issue, however, is how do simulacra respond to polyjuice? They aren't made of human material; we can't assume the potion will work on them in it's normal form—in fact, I'd guess the potion wouldn't work. That's not to say a modified polyjuice potion couldn't do the job, but Zorian might have to recruit a few alchemists to work on that problem.
u/nobody103 [+5] (23 hours later)
As you guessed, a simulacrum cannot drink potions. Well, they technically can, but it would be useless. You need a real body to benefit from that.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
I'm guessing also that the Key detection is tied to the physical location of his soul, which remains with the original body?
u/nobody103 [+3] (a day later)
Yes.
u/melmonella [+1] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (22 hours later)
He is already learning alchemy. It's just a matter of time.
u/InsaneBranch [+16] (36 minutes later)
Zorian used shadow clone jutsu! Now to learn mass shadow clone jutsu ...
u/Tommy2255 [+7] (a day later)
No wonder simulcra are forbidden magic. Necromancy and blood magic and mind magic can be used for unspeakable evil, but that's nothing compared to the ultimate humiliation: trolling yourself.
u/narfanator [+5] (3 hours later)
So, what's the timing involved in the pipeline for a simalcrum memory packet? Ex: If a simalcrum sends over a full day's memories, how long does it take to a) make the memory packet b) send the packet c) for ZorianPrime to absorb the packet?
It does seem like Zorian is using them to good effect (clone per job!), but I'm still curious as to what the improvement ratio ends up being.
(Does the author hang out here at all?)
u/cathemeralman [+11] (3 hours later)
Nobody103 pops in occasionally, but rarely responds to questions posted on reddit. He responds to almost all comments on his patreon page and worldbuilding blog though.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (3 hours later)
(Does the author hang out here at all?)
Yep, he comes around. He's Croatian and it's currently 3 AM for him, so he may be around in the next day or so.
u/None [+2] (20 hours later)
Yeah I was thinking that, it seems silly to not absorb their memories a the end of the day if its possible, and it softens the dying part as well
u/crivtox [+4] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (2 hours later)
This is the shadow cl..... I mean simulacrum spell
u/Fomalhaut-b [+4] (a day later)
Hi, there. I'm new to this series. I've just had a huge binge read of Mother of Learning. It's great. I'm going to have to read it all again from the start. There's so much.
The simulacrum perspective is really good stuff as it picks up on Zorian's questionable status as a copy. Nice that this is being explored, and I like that it's adding a new PoV. Potential for extra runtime and replace his need for Black Rooms.
Nice that there are so many body/soul options that could all be possible escape exits from the Sovereign Gate. I have a hunch that Lich and Mayor Necromancer could become allies, or at least tools, for the duo's exit. This is tipped off by Red Robe's quick escape, and I think they may have to reconstruct RR pathway to get out.
Still wondering if/when the story will circle back on the soul alteration that started this story. This is so mysterious to me as the story has established that Shifters get benefits from having animal souls within them and inherit special abilities from that infusion. Did Zach get something from Zorian? Such as an improved his Shaping ability? Did Zorian get more that the Marker?
Speculation: If Zack carried Zorian's soul outside of the Gate with him, he has enough mana to manifest Zorian in a simulacrum. Don't know if the magic system supports this sort of thing. I'd like to see more Zorian's internal conflict over having to "kill" his true self played out in his simulacrums.
I miss those damn cute spiders.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
There's no indication of Zach or Zorian picking up anything except the marker, but it would be hard to tell. Zorian's mana reserves might well grow a little bit more than he'd expect, but he doesn't have any precise way to measure that, since his magic missiles are way more efficient than when he started measuring.
The author has confirmed on his blog that you could make a simulacrum of someone else, but you would need soul sight, not just personal soul awareness.
Of course the lich will become a tool of escape - or, at least, they'll take such a tool off his head. To actually recruit him, though, would unbalance the story. If he said to pack up and go home, or to massacre the cultists before they complete the ritual, the Ibasans would do it.
Sudomir also isn't likely to become an ally, but they will probably take the opportunity to disrupt the invaders' preparation by toppling him.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (2 days later)
Hey, thanks! There's clues sprinkled around this story, and it's a lot of fun trying to piece them all together.
I think Red Robe is an ally! I don't think he came from inside the loop- I think he is Zach's mage trainer and the one that put him into the Gate before the story started. He either entered the gate with Zach and a copy of his marker, or he knew he was copied into the Sovereign Gate, and was given a marker by Zach once inside. It's plausible.
I'm concerned for Zorian. It doesn't currently seem possible that he can exit the simulation without doing something drastic. I really enjoy how the author has so much restraint in defining Zorian's character growth. It's refreshing to read a coming-of-age story that isn't littered with false drama, and I have my fingers crossed that Zorian will remain both credible and consistent.
I'm looking forward to meeting Damien as it has so much potential for Zorian to get over his old hang ups. Damien, being older and having excelled, seems to be a parallel to Timelooped Zorian and his irl self. If Timelooped Zorian somehow exits the gate, I think Zorian Prime would be feel incredibly inferior to him for the same reasons that he feel inferior to Damien. Not sure how that going to play out so I'll be here for the next chapter.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Red Robe as Zach's trainer doesn't work for me.
He criticised Zach's failure to shield himself from divination. A trainer would have told Zach to remedy the failure, years ago, or decades.
He approached Zach as an enemy, assaulting him to get access to his mind. If he were any kind of ally of Zach, he would have just asked. We know Zach was lonely and jumped at the chance of companions.
He's apparently a cultist, based on his easy access to the robe, and they're bad news.
He didn't try to help Zach recover his memories. Either he did the wipe himself - probably, with his unstructured mind magic - or he didn't mind that someone else did it.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (2 days later)
All very good points.
What baffles me is how Zach got into the Sovereign Gate, and for what purpose? What are your thoughts on this?
It seem that the Gate activates once every 400 years, and may be tied directly to the Noveda bloodline. Otherwise, why put him in there. The same astrological conjunction that occurs is also the best time for summoning the Primordial, so maybe the SGate is a divine safety net against such an event. Possibly there's a reason that's yet to be revealed that Zach need to be at peak mana. Zach's fantastic stats aren't as relevant in the final battle as strategy, though this could be story bias towards Zorian.
I agree that RR is the one that mind wiped Zach. On top of that, Zach has a compulsion to prevent anyone from undoing this. To me this indicates that there is a plot twist hidden inside- as the amnesia trope is often used to conceal information such as this. What does Zach's amnesia achieve?
RR is a covert agent that infiltrated the invasion force, and used it to hammer Zach until Zach matured and found way to defeat it. After that, RR collected the five keys- four that he has access to because he is an agent of the Crown, and the fifth he can get from Quatach-Ichl due to this previous reconnaissance. Why did RR leave at that point?
Zorian speculates that RR feared multiple time traveler. I think it's because the purpose of the Timeloop was completed. A solution to the invasion had been found- an alliance with the Arenae can foil the invasion without any input from Zach. Furthermore, the control conditions had become polluted with (seemingly) additional time travellers that were corrupting Zach.
Maybe RR departure should have ejected Zach, but Zach's tie to Zorian has anchored him from leaving. Zorian is the spanner in the works.
I think it's highly likely that the Zach has a lot of safeguards around him that will allow him to exit, and these are going to be the obstacle to Zorian's survival.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Zach has a lot of safeguards around him that will allow him to exit
The Guardian wouldn't allow Zach to exit. The Gate is barred.
On the other hand, since it previously was not barred, RR would not have needed to collect the Key.
Zorian is the spanner in the works
The loop remains, not just because of Zorian, but also because of Zach. It can't end while there is a Controller inside.
an alliance with the aranea can foil the invasion
If RR planned to ally with the aranea, he wouldn't have bothered to hunt them down and evict them from the loop. He would have simply exited, or else spent some time actually working with them.
And he ambushed and attacked Zach twice before leaving. He's no ally.
may be tied to the Noveda bloodline
I don't see any evidence for that. Whoever marked him and started the Gate may have seen his undeveloped potential - speculation only - but there's no indication that Noveda in general have any affinity with the Gate.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (3 days later)
may be tied to the Noveda bloodline
I don't see any evidence for that.
That the Gate was among the Noveda treasures is weak evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
OK, there is that correlation.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (3 days later)
Gate was among the Noveda treasures
That was what stuck in my mind.
The gate was no longer in Zach's possession- having been sold/donated. I find it curious that Zach is the controller of the Gate if he had no access to it.
This is what leads me to think that RR secured vicarious access to the Sovereign Gate through Zach by being the one to initiate it.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
You don't need to come in contact with the Gate to be the Controller. You just need to be marked.
And activating the Gate doesn't give you a mark, either. Remember how the Guardian said that the purpose of the Gate was between the Controller and whoever marked them, then corrected itself to say it's really up to the Controller, since nothing stops them from doing as they please?
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (3 days later)
the Gate was among the Noveda treasures
Thanks. That's what chiefly stuck out to me.
In addition, the Noveda bloodline ability is only loosely described as a capacity for high mana. Hardly unique, as others have been mentioned to have this (e.g. Damien, Fortov) though not as absurdly high as Zach.
It was also pointed out (somewhere!) that Zach's high mana, and slow shaping maturation, was something that would keenly benefit from Black Room time dilation. The Sovereign Gate is a perfect aid for him to capitalise on these qualities, if indeed his bloodline are the "chosen ones".
Doesn't explain why the keys are scattered everywhere.
Qualith Ichl may have answers- if he's 1000 years old he's lived through two activations of the Sovereign Gate, and if the Planar alignments are evenly spaced at 400 years apart. We know from the Ghost Serpent that some entities undoubtably know of the Sovereign Gate's function. This is a massive can of worms- there are people copied inside the gate could keenly know the scenario, and may want a way out. May not be a plot point- The Gate may be too esoteric for anyone to operate, and a true Noveda family secret expunged from or buried in Zach's compromised mind.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (3 days later)
Meeting someone else who already knows about the Gate (besides the Ghost Serpent, that is) could be quite interesting.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
In addition, the Noveda bloodline ability is only loosely described as a capacity for high mana.
I still have my doubts about it being a bloodline. Zach said:
"No one I consulted about [having a large mana pool yet good shaping skills] has any idea how that is possible. Most people think it's some kind of undocumented bloodline of the Noveda."
My pet hypothesis is that Zach's strange abilities are part of the whatever ritual gave Zach the loop marker. Like you said, the loop is the perfect environment for a huge mana pool in exchange for slow shaping maturation.
If Zach's abilities are the result of a bloodline that only pops up every once in a while, it's a huge coincidence that the bloodline happened to manifest in the same generation that gets to use the Sovereign Gate. So, my guess is that Zach's abilities and the Sovereign Gate are intimately linked. Either the bloodline is somehow a once in 400-years thing or it's a part of the loop marking ritual. Or maybe it's a second ritual done in addition to the ritual that gave Zach the marker—and that's why Zorian didn't get the mana reserves boost when he got the soul marker.
As for Quatach-Ichl, I would freaking love for ZZ to spend a couple restarts chatting his ear (skull?) off; he must be a fascinating person to talk to. Sadly, I doubt QI would give ZZ the time of day unless QI knew they were loopers, and if QI knew they were loopers, I'm pretty sure he'd find some way to make them into lab rats.
I'm really disappointed that ZZ aren't fighting QI at the end of every restart, trying to find ways to beat him. And if they could eventually disable him to the point where Simulacrum!Zorian could access QI's mind . . . hoh boi, would that be interesting.
(I say Simulacrum!Zorian because personally invading the mind of a 1000-year-old lich has NOPE written all over it.)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
I'm happy to see newcomers to the discussion! I love that we can discuss the book with dozens of others after every chapter release.
u/Fomalhaut-b [+1] (3 days later)
I'm re-reading it now. A good time travel story has a lot more to give the second time around. So many details grow in relevance.
This story has such a sweet cast. Zorian's sardonic wit is very entertaining.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (3 days later)
Yes, absolutely. I've reread it once so far and enjoyed it all the more the second time around. There are so many details and hints about the mechanics of the world that are later revealed.
u/Green0Photon [+3] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (9 hours later)
Unlikely but possible note on rogue simulacrums: Can you steal a soul? Considering simulacrums don't have souls, that means it's only how your magic works that's the difference. Imagine the Matriarch's packet and instead just copy your whole mind over and delete the other one. I think of it as an unstructured mind magic thing, but that would be too hard. So imagine that the simulacrum spell creates a blank mental construct, and part of that is copying your mind over. It would be "simple" to change it to overwrite someone else's mind then, right?
u/crivtox [+3] Closed Time Loop Enthusiast (12 hours later)
stealing souls to power simulacrums seems easier than modifying the spell to take over people.I can imagine a necromancer premiering an army of simulacrums this way, it probably doesn't happen because you can't really trust the simulacrum in all situations , maybe whith mind magic like zorian's you can become a coordinated hive mind
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (21 hours later)
I'm curious to what extent a mind packet could transfer personality itself. In the story, mind packets have been used to store a bit of data, but to rewrite a person's entire being with your personality? That's got to take a true mind magic master.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (21 hours later)
You can't power a simulacrum with someone else's soul; the author has confirmed.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (a day later)
Can you quote that?
A simulacrum is a sort of construct. I'm sure using a soul as a battery for a simulacrum wouldn't work—the soul still has to integrate the raw mana into the prime!caster's soul. However, changing the simulacrum's soul anchor to another person's soul may be doable.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
It's on the world-building blog
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+1] (2 days later)
Okay, it seems that changing a simulacrum's soul anchor is just not doable; maybe the ectoplasmic container disintegrates if the connection to the soul is broken. This reminds me of an interesting question:
/u/nobody103: If a person makes a simulacrum and then dies, what happens to the simulacrum?
u/nobody103 [+2] (2 days later)
They lose the soul that powers them (it moves on to the afterlife) and are thereafter living on borrowed time.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Really? I'm surprised they get any time at all. The ectoplasmic shell imposes a continual mana cost, doesn't it? Without a source of mana, I would have expected them to dissipate as quickly as the skeleton pirate wards.
u/nobody103 [+2] (2 days later)
Their maintenance costs aren't as severe as those of the pirate ship wards (ectoplasm isn't that unstable), or else how would Zorian maintain them for any length of time? The simulacrums could linger on for a couple of hours, unable to cast anything and steadily losing cohesion.
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Could they cast spells from raw ambient mana during that period?
Also, the soul lingers with the body for a short time, yes? Could the simulacrum use that time to anchor the soul to something, effectively becoming a lich?
u/nobody103 [+3] (2 days later)
Once the soul is gone, they cannot cast anything at all.
Yes, provided the body was not totally destroyed, the soul would linger on the material plane for a while, and the simulacrum would have the chance to claim the soul if they knew how (if the original was a necromancer, in other words).
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
We know that the soul remains for a short time and then passes on. I'm betting that the simulacrum disperses when that happens.
Unless you take it a step further, binding your soul to something so it doesn't pass on, and congratulations, you're a lich!
u/Kylinger [+5] (17 hours later)
As for getting the dagger, wouldn't it be easier to bring someone with the authority to access the dagger into the loop temporarily to convince them to help/mind magic them into helping him? I assume someone is allowed to access the vault, even if the only person who can is the king.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (22 hours later)
Telling the king or other high-up mages is risky: they might try to hunt you down and change your memories/soul to get in on the loop in the hopes of getting out of the restarts, and they have significant resources to try such things.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+2] (a day later)
Yeah, if a Royal hit squad was giving Z&Z trouble, imagine the fallout if the king thought he could enter a time loop. He'd throw everything at them with all the speed and subtlety possible—which may result in capture before Zorian can flip the soul marker switch and restart everything.
u/ansible [+4] The Culture (17 hours later)
So, assuming they do successfully get out of the time loop...
What's the plan for living the actual month in question? Obviously they're making notes to quickly generate a lot of cash. So they'll go after the mana crystals again.
They've got to assume that the minute they exit the loop, Red Robe is coming after both of them.
Right before the end, maybe they should have a practice month to play out exactly how they want to handle the real world.
u/bludvein [+8] (20 hours later)
On the contrary, Red Robe will be totally ignorant of their existence. From his perspective they should already be a done deal when he left the loop. They could make a fake corpse for Zach just in case RR tries to confirm and then totally take him by surprise.
Practice would be unreliable in this situation. The best chance for practice already left when RR quit, and the invasion and the city plays completely differently due to no inside knowledge and monster incursions already putting the city on high alert.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+5] (21 hours later)
What's worse, outside the loop, the invasion should have access to the divine plane, so demon summoning may be a thing.
But I bet Zorian on his own could defeat RR at this point, and with Zach's help, I think it'd be a done deal.
The intel they really need is: Who is RR, where is he going to be, and can they ambush him? If they can bring along Alanic and Xvim, RR is toast. I'm sure something will throw a wretch in all that though.
u/melmonella [+4] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (20 hours later)
And the total lack of demons.
u/thrawnca [+3] Carbon-based biped (a day later)
I think their most important goal should be to protect the shifter children.
If the primordial gets out, then the nation, maybe the continent, is toast. If they interrupt the summoning halfway through, they are toast, and potentially the whole city, depending on exactly how widespread the effects are. So they should guard shifter children and stop the ritual from becoming feasible. Unless they were kidnapped before the loop started.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
[deleted]
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (a month later)
Well, if you're OK with "unethical", then they could get hold of a necromancer and make simulacra of the children to leave in their place.
u/Tommy2255 [+3] (2 days later)
Tell Alanic about Iasku Mansion. That pulls the entire invasion completely off-schedule and off-plan, the trial run happened while Red Robe was already out of the loop so most of his foresight is useless, and the reintroduction of access to extraplanar help is much less of a factor when dealing with a necromancer than it is when dealing with cultists.
u/OchreOgre_AugerAugur [+4] (21 hours later)
Now that Zorian has simulacrum reasonably mastered, time to learn Summon Grey Hunter/s.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (13 days later)
Behind on my reading and late to the discussion, but I have to point out...
Well, unless Xvim was secretly hiding something of crucial importance from him, but Zorian kind of doubted that.
Sure doesn't sound like any kind of suspicious foreshadowing going on here... if Zorian "kind of doubts" that Xvim is hiding anything important then that's that settled.