rextremendum

The Pro-Bending Tournament [Open and looking for members]

Yang

Name: Yang Shen-Li Age: 18 Sex: Male Team [GM's team] Role: Earthbender Appearance: A consummately average looking man, Yang is characterized with a mop of short black hair, a friendly face and an analytical gaze. He is of a normal weight, lacking the muscles usually characterizing other professional earthbenders. He has pale skin, and though not a particularly well-groomed man Yang is no slob - he dresses nicely, and takes care to not make a poor first impression. Personality: Yang values creativity, ingenuity, and accuracy of belief. He is curious to a fault, always looking for new knowledge to improve his understanding of the world. Yang dislikes dogmatic belief, and ardently opposes regressive thinking. He loves the brave new world this new technology provides, and has a very optimistic view on the capabilities of humanity to use it for good. Yang attempts to be affable, his optimism spreading to interpersonal relationships, though he is by no means an enthusiastic socialite. He is easily distracted when engaged in non-critical activities, always looking to learn new things about the world, but shows impressive determination when dealing with matters of import. Yang's moral philosophy is consequentialist, and Yang is prone to manipulation and unsavory work to achieve net gains of happiness in the world. He hates mushrooms, and has always wanted to own a blimp. Background: Yang was raised in Ba Sing Se, born to loving parents as an only child. His father was a cobbler, and his mother a chef at a local restaurant. From a young age, Yang was curious: he learned to read early, and after school would spend time reading about all manner of things, from philosophy [which he rarely understood, at least at first] to history to art and literature. As he grew up, he found two passions in life: Natural Philosophy, and Earthbending. He grew up in a period of extraordinary industrialization, and remembers vividly all the technological marvels coming into his life one at a time. He remembers when their house got electric lights, he remembers the hot-water heater being installed, and he still has fond memories of his family clustered around their large, wood-paneled radio set. He wanted to contribute to this technological golden age, and found his interests buried in prosaic tomes on physics, about the movement of things, about heat and electricity. At around the same time, Yang pressured his parents into signing him up for earthbending training, and found it to be enthralling. It was strategic, fast, exciting, and there were always new things to be learned. He learned to incorporate one interest into another, and now has set out to be a pro-bender, not only for the money, fame, women and prestige, but also to try and refine his earthbending theories, and add something to the understanding of earthbending as a fighting style.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Thomas is impressed by his choice of company: unflappable in tense social situations, an ease of bearing in the presence of hierarchical betters, excellent manners, and most importantly an intriguing puzzle waiting to be solved. That last is a rare quality, especially within the corridors of nobility, with the aristocracy guarding their secrets without remorse, or being too foolish to have anything worth analyzing. Unfortunately, before he could continue making his young new friend's acquaintance, he was forced to cut himself off as royalty approached, bouncing towards them in an unexpectedly age-appropriate gate. Thomas chided himself for expecting royal children to be fundamentally different from more plebeian stock, and made a mental note to remember this lesson for later. Answering the princess' question was not difficult, and he gave his new-found companion slight credit for her answer. Thomas bows formally, before descending to one knee to address the princess on slightly-below-eye level. "Good afternoon, your highness. To answer your question, of course I am afraid. I am going blindly into danger, and the fear is only exacerbated by my ignorance, causing my imagination to create all manner of horrors to insist on being just around the next bend in the road. However, my fear is of little consequence. Rationally I know that the human mind has a tendency to scare itself, and in all my evaluations our safety is rather likely. It has always been my policy to observe my fear only as more data to be collected, and relying instead on what I can verify." Thomas, being vaguely pleased with his long-winded response, stands back up smiling. He always liked children, and regardless of lineage this particular example is just as charming as the rest. Thomas makes a note of remembering this moment when his pupils at the Academy are being difficult - such joys of teaching are often overshadowed by present discontent. Thomas briefly finds it odd that a princess of royal blood is being so carelessly guarded. Ostensibly, Thomas, if he were so inclined, could do serious harm to the princess, quick as silver, and not be stopped. There was not even particularly diligent security upon entering: he simply stated his purpose and status, and was let in. Any second-rate cutthroat with a falsified piece of identification could be in Thomas' very position, and chaos would be inevitable. Perhaps the Empress thought her daughter's arrival at the garden was too unlikely to be able to be planned for, but bribery of a nursemaid or some other casual scheme could produce reliable results. Thomas did not think the Empress, or especially the Emperor, a fool, and concluded that there must be some invisible security - perhaps a means of verification of identity, or some manner of physical prevention around the castle or on the body of the princess. Thomas noted this down for future study: any scenario would be interesting, though Thomas silently hoped it was the latter of his woefully uninformed guesses, both for increased security of governmental figures, but also from a purely academic interest. Thomas wondered who among his contacts could get him access to the rune arrays that would power such devices, if they even exist, and decided to tuck such quandaries away for later; he needed to be on his guard for political machinations or possible breaches in decorum to avoid.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Sorry for pestering you Sana, I didn't mean to be an asshole, and I DEFINITELY did not mean to come off as saying that I think poorly of the setting - it is super cool, but I am just curious. As for your comment Zurnt, this how I always am, but it is exacerbated by my currently re-reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for shits and giggles. It turns my Less Wrong boner up to eleven, especially when it comes to magic systems.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I can stop if you want, and just take the stance of "DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT", but I always like to know what is actually going on in my games, and think that answering these questions makes for a better world with more capabilities for interesting readers with puzzles, as the puzzles can be more well-presented due to the consistency of the laws told to the reader. Also, I now need to redo my character's magical abilities, because this system seems too easily exploitable for massive power for Thomas to resist learning all he can.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

So there is a syntactical language of glyphs that change the effect of the "magic" that flows through it. So what happens is I essentially cause M/AM annihilation on some air particles and turn that resulting energy into Magic by some unknown mechanism, and then I use my mental fortitude to shape it along certain lines that change its function. This explains all of my questions essentially, but I think it might fuck your world's logic in the eye, or at least soon it will when characters start being smart about things. One thing that worries me right off the bat is that repeating the same step [presumably requiring 2 times the mental fortitude, and the same amount of magic] causes something x^2 result. This not only makes little sense when balancing the requirements of mental fortitude, essentially inserting an extra up arrow into any considerations, but it also confuses me as to what is powering the magic. Imagine for a second I want to use magic to create 10 ounces of gold. I pull enough magic out to use one X loop to cause this result [presumably ~10 ounces of gold in energy]. But my friend, who wants the same thing, throws his magic through the X loop twice, using twice as much mental fortitude and creating 100 ounces of gold with the same amount of magic expended. This also fucks conservation of energy right in the eye, unless there is a theoretical limit of energy efficiency of 100% as x=number of loops -> infinity, and any amount of loops less than whatever the maximum efficiency number is causes a lack of efficiency in the magic. For example, pulling numbers out of my ass, I rip 1 mole of hydrogen apart for energy, and because I only use 2 loops, I output .2 moles of hydrogen with my "create hydrogen" spell. Not sure what you want to do about this, but if you could clarify that would be grand.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

The question is: what is actually causing it? Is life inherently made of magic? If so, then what is it, and how do we see it, and how does it effect our lives? Like, are there soul analogies? If so, by logic I should be able to receive massive head trauma and still maintain cognitive function, because the soul would still be fine. I understand if magic can somehow teleport ATP from animals into our bodies, or just dismantle atoms to harness that energy, but if the former is the case it would be very easy to see, and probably highly ineffective at fueling powerful spells [assuming conservation of energy], and the latter would make people nigh-omnipotent. Also, if we start privileging some life over others, humans would rank higher than other life by the basic laws of fiction, and that presents the interesting dynamic of magical energy growing every generation, because every single person who is about to die would obviously be harvested for every smudge of magic, which could then be used in all sorts of ways. With thousands dying of natural causes every day, this would be a massive thing to consider. EDIT: didnt see your post, Twisted, give me a sec and I'll respond.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

I mean, who knows - I still don't know if there is conservation of energy, so they could cast a spell to give themselves more power for less than the power given, and subsist forever like that

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Right, I'll wait for the explanation before i ask more questions

Something Wicked This Way Comes

If you want me to help pick holes in your book, it is one of my very few talents, and we can do it better in places that are not this forum. However, I need to answer a few questions. Provided that at least some spells are cast via saying an incantation and sundry other requirements: What happens if someone misspeaks the incantation? What happens if someone does not know what a spell does, but casts it correctly otherwise? What if some of the accouterments fail but the incantation and intention are correct? How are new spells created? Is there a clear translation from intended action to incantation/actions? Is the language of magical incantations syntactical, and is it well understood? Can people speak in the language, and does it have any sort of power in and of itself? Is there a way to do everything needed to cast a spell physically and still not cast it? Does it require some control over magic, or is it able to be performed by any old luddite? Where does the energy that powers spells come from? Is it biological energy made from ATP and pushed into some hitherto-unknown magic-organ? Or is it something like direct matter-energy conversion, and a person loses weight when casting, or is it drawn from ambient matter/energy, or pulled from other theoretical universes parallel to our own? [my understanding of quantum theory is not excellent, I apologize] Can someone do more work than the energy present in their body is theoretically capable of doing, according to modern understanding of biology/quantum physics? we'll start with that, I suppose This is also assuming that spells can be manipulated by magical aptitude, or magic can also be done without incantation

Something Wicked This Way Comes

That hypothesis privileges spells with either intelligence, or at least analytical capabilities, as if some sentience drives them. We create a spell meant to "heal", but heal is a vague term. There are no specifics there, and therefore either it acts mechanistically or there is some overarching analytical power that either comprehends for us, or predicts possibilities and comprehends them enough to choose the best manifestation of power. The question then is, if spells are driven entirely by intention, then we can use them to fucking ruin the world. For example: I cast a spell with the intent to write out every single law of the universe in easy-to-understand mathematics. If spells are run by our own comprehension, this is impossible, but if it is run by intent as arbitrated by a higher power, it will produce exactly what I want, and that will rape this setting hard. Please don't give me that power.