SDnet gets Soul RAR

[Ahriman238]

Blame Crossroads. His magical BOY thread reminded me of this lovely online novella Saga of Soul which appears to be defunct or at least made no progress since I last looked at it.

The idea was to do something like a magical girl story, with an intelligent, rational, and highly scientific girl who immediately begins experimenting. So for this RAR, Q grants every active board member Soul-style magic. The basics follow.

There are two types of magic, called common and noble. Common magic involves the conjuration of matter and energy, apparently ex nihilo and warping space. There are limits, you can only create so much energy, and electricity, lasers or particle beams are almost impossible to control. The general rule with matter is you can only conjure a ton of mass at a time, or 100 tons a minute if you spend a minute mass-producing. This can be food, gold, experiment with creating new transuranics whatever pleases you. Just remember the story about the clever young man who made himself a crate-load of antimatter. You can simulate telekinesis, even fly by imparting kinetic energy.

As for space warping, the easiest is fun with portals. There is some range limitation, as it took two trips to go to the moon. You also can't make them much wider than your outstretched arms. Pressure differentials absolutely work across the portals, and portals always remain stationary in relation to each other. You can only keep one portal open at a time without delving into noble magic. On the plus side, spacelift is amazingly simple for you as an individual. You can create pocket dimensions, Soul made a castle, or something like a hammerspace with some considerable effort and noble magic to anchor it to you.

Noble magic involves either enchanting, storing a particular common spell so a ring will conjure a ham sandwich when twisted or something. Or you can do complex magic by imposing your will and letting magic fill in the blanks, like altering DNA or conjuring a working computer. Noble magic is always time-consuming and energy intensive, especially when trying something for the first time, in which case you should allocate a few days at least. One of the most essential noble magics is called a holistic shield and takes some time to master, basically reinforcing your biology to the point where it takes anti-tank weapons to threaten you.

Now what uses can you come up with for these powers?

But I suppose it would be unfair to take Soul's powers and not her problems.

Magic comes from near-death experiences, those who don't go into the light but hang out and experiment on the light. Thus, NDEs are needed to initiate other mages, experienced mages have a 90% success rate at initiation, where the remainder die. As amateurs, expect more like a 15% success rate.

Oh, and there are many vageuly ominous statements about the use of magic hurting the universe in the long-term, hastening it's end.

There are 4 multi-verse spanning factions who will notice our world after we discover magic. The fairies want to suppress all magic-users who aren't them to conserve the multi-verse, and will seek to kill all mages (us) and suppress all information of magic but then will likely leave the world more-or-less alone. For the time being they are constrained by the anchor of He Who Is, a person whose existence prevents their entering the world so they will likely try to recruit some or all of us as their proxies.

The Council of Wisdom are a human empire that believes only wise-men, or wizards, should rule. They'll try the hearts and minds approach to wow people with the wonders and benefits of magic, particularly noble maigc's uses in healing for popular support before taking over. Then they will brutally suppress all science and technology.

The Elysium is another vast multiversal human(ish) empire. They will send just a couple of agents who will take careful stock of the situation before acting. In the story, they frame the Council of Wisdom for multiple Kaiju attacks to hurt their credibility, kidnap a world leader and replace him with an imposter, publicly ally with the imposters government and initiate a small magical army where only their hand-picked candidates survive their initiation.

Demons swear eternal vengeance on men who rarely know that demons exist. Mostly because we're miserable bastards to each other and due to unfortunate cosmology, they get to share in the "psychic resonance" of all human suffering and misery. Oh well, eternal vengeance! Demons will be sent through one and two at a time, and many months apart and usually take the form of smaller, magic-wielding Kaiju.

And somewhere in all of this is the present human civilization on Earth, most of whom are going to be wondering what the hell is going on. So again, what will you do?

[Eulogy]

First of all, we start practicing our saxophones and cool cat lingo - oh wait, wrong kind of soul. Never mind!

The first thing we should do, since at the moment we as a civilization AND as a forum are woefully, massively outgunned, outnumbered, and outintelligenced, is to hide. Specifically, we try to find ways into (or even better, create our own) different dimensions that are uninhabited and can be the magical and emotional equivalent of soundproofed. Don't want the Anti-Spirals cosmic empires to find us, after all.

Then, we start setting up, preferably by making more mages and researching resurrection. Can't let a pesky thing like death and risky Awakenings off most of our members, after all.

[Ahriman238]

Mostly it's the opposition that's outnumbered. Outside a particular artifact, dimension-hopping is not easy or cheap in energy terms. Ultimately, the cosmic empires will have more manpower but unless they're willing to drop everything to focus on this Earth (unlikely in the extreme) they're reduced to sending 1-3 agents every few months. Granted, these agents are each capable of mass destruction, but only the demons are after death and destruction for it's own sake, everyone else wants to rule the world, and the demons want a more satisfying and personal vengeance than just nuking everything.

Which should probably nix the evacuation plan, our pocket dimensions will all be anchored to this one, actually creating or traveling to a totally different will take a lot of work and a lot of research into how our magic works. The likelihood of evacuating any significant number of people is negligible.

[Eulogy]

How much energy needed are we talking here? Could we, say, make some nuclear power plants just for the purpose of traveling through dimensions? Because if we could, then my plan could still work. Hell, we might not even need to create an apple pie our own universe from scratch, if we can find a manageable one to move to.

[Murazor]

Blame Crossroads. His magical BOY thread reminded me of this lovely online novella Saga of Soul which appears to be defunct or at least made no progress since I last looked at it.

This one?

Nah. Still alive and kicking. Author has posted a few status reports elsehwere in the net.

[Ahriman238]

How much energy needed are we talking here? Could we, say, make some nuclear power plants just for the purpose of traveling through dimensions? Because if we could, then my plan could still work. Hell, we might not even need to create an apple pie our own universe from scratch, if we can find a manageable one to move to.

On the one hand, it's a considerable energy burden for these mage-empires. Then again, it's implied a bunch of times that none of them really have the scientific literacy to make the most of their powers. The story already provides an easy cheat for fusion, have all the fusion take place in a hammerspace, than make a portal whenever you want to boil water for steam power. Or how with a little effort enchanting things we could make a perpetual motion waterfall.

[Eulogy]

So with some Fun With Portals (TM), we could have PM waterfalls supply UNLIMITED POWER to anything we desire, and they would be maintained by automatons, if we didn't magic that away as well.

So with matter and energy requirements a non-issue, what's to stop us from going all Minecraft on wherever we please? Besides all of those nasty factions that want us dead or under their thumb, of course.

[Forgothrax]

Ahriman, 2 questions:

1) Should we expect to see "wild" magi (people who have near-death experiences not linked to Q) popping up immediately? Is there any way to quantify how fast they would begin to appear? The rate at which new magi show up will affect us directly.

2) For the purposes of initiating new magi, do we count as experienced or inexperienced magi?

[Ahriman238]

So with some Fun With Portals (TM), we could have PM waterfalls supply UNLIMITED POWER to anything we desire, and they would be maintained by automatons, if we didn't magic that away as well.

So with matter and energy requirements a non-issue, what's to stop us from going all Minecraft on wherever we please? Besides all of those nasty factions that want us dead or under their thumb, of course.

Just the other factions. Maybe the rest of us if you go too far or start treating people like dirt. Otherwise, go nuts the whole thread is about what you'd do with this power.

Ahriman, 2 questions:

1) Should we expect to see "wild" magi (people who have near-death experiences not linked to Q) popping up immediately? Is there any way to quantify how fast they would begin to appear? The rate at which new magi show up will affect us directly.

2) For the purposes of initiating new magi, do we count as experienced or inexperienced magi?

Wild mages as you described are possible, but rather unlikely. It is probable that the other factions will try recruiting and awakening their own mages, and given that it probably won't take a year for governments and similar powerful groups to make the connection between NDEs and magic.

We should count as highly inexperienced, for purposes of creating new mages. This is probably a good thing.

[InsaneTD]

I'm finding it a hard choice. Both styles have aspects that appeal to me. As to what I would do? World domination sounds good to me.

Wild mages seem more likely then non-wild. Thousands of people have near death experiences everyday. So there either has to be another even more limiting factor, a Q blessing, belief in magic or maybe it has to be caused by violence, or there is lots more wild mages. Possible they don't know they have the power and won't find out as they never end up in a situation that brings it to the fore.

[Ahriman238]

I'm finding it a hard choice. Both styles have aspects that appeal to me. As to what I would do? World domination sounds good to me.

Hmm? Oh! You don't have to choose between noble and common magic. Common magic just refers to stuff you can do on a moment's notice (say in a fight) and get into right away like portals, telekinesis, and conjuring. Noble magic like conjuring complex machines or enchanting items is going to take a lot of time and effort to figure out.

Wild mages seem more likely then non-wild. Thousands of people have near death experiences everyday. So there either has to be another even more limiting factor, a Q blessing, belief in magic or maybe it has to be caused by violence, or there is lots more wild mages. Possible they don't know they have the power and won't find out as they never end up in a situation that brings it to the fore.

It;s not just having a near death experience, it's having a very specific reaction to a near death experience. One that arises naturally just once in all human civilization, when the series begins. Namely, being rendered comatose, seeing a light and choosing to experiment with channeling/controlling the light instead of moving towards or fleeing it. It's possible that someone else might stumble on that, but as you say there are many NDEs daily and one accidental awakening.

[InsaneTD]

That's actually an interesting requirement. Though to get the white light, doesn't your heart need to basically stop? That does make it very dangerous and having someone who's an expert healer and a mage would be very handy to have nearby.

And since a mage can do both then I would definitely be going world domination. >:D

[Eulogy]

So, revised plan:

1) Get the hell away from Earth and therefore the enemy factions and other meddlers. With enough experimentation we should find a dimension that's more or less perfect for us and our purposes.

2) Move into said dimension and being setting up needed infrastructure, automation workers and servants, and stockpiles of resources, weapons, food, etc. If we need more energy we can always set up PM waterfalls to start and tinker with other forms of power generation later.

3) Once established, begin building up our defenses and research capabilities. With the ability to mass produce materiel, ammunition, killbots, etc. we can begin the transition from Minecraft to Supreme Commander. There will be places to test things out, of course, but progress is helped if we had the ability to make more mages as we see fit.

4) To that end, work on ways to bring people back from the dead, because there WILL be accidents when trying to Awaken potential recruits. Also, we should perfect our means of dimensional travel to the point of such a thing being no more difficult than driving a car, because that will allow us to...

5) Raid other factions for people. More specifically, we "liberate" prisoners that have been tossed into the magical clink because they dared to try science (Council of 'Wisdom"), exposed (or tried to, at least) the misdeeds of Elysium, or are freedom fighters/revolutionaries/being tortured by demons. People unjustly imprisoned due to framing/corruption/etc. and slaves are fair game too. Since it is their undesirables that are mysteriously disappearing, I doubt the affected factions will look very hard into what's happening, especially since there is a lot on their plates as is.

This will give us intelligence and insight into the nature and activity of our enemies, as well as give us more potential mages to Awaken. With enough medical knowhow (and resurrection powers) our chances of getting people to start playing with the light should approach 100%. While we're doing that...

6) We go about either trying to pacify our enemies, or setting them up for conquest. If we can find out how magic is harming the muiltverse, we could identify the means of stopping it or repairing the damage magic does. Hence, we could prove that we will not destroy the universe and therefore get the Fae to leave us alone. Demons could be made our friends if we emotionproof their dimension or something to that effect; after all, we'd be the reason they are not suffering anymore. The two human empires should be set on each other, and there are quite a few ways to do it.

7) By the time the two empires are done with each other, our transition to Supreme Commander is finished and we, now with a large loyal mage population, swoop in and claims their carcasses. Magic AND Science for all! Eriko can be made the head of the Magitechnology Department.

[PKRudeBoy]

...and the demons want a more satisfying and personal vengeance than just nuking everything.

If the demons share in the psychic resonance of human suffering, wouldn't they either try to reduce it, or more likely eliminate humanity painlessly?

[Ahriman238]

...and the demons want a more satisfying and personal vengeance than just nuking everything.

If the demons share in the psychic resonance of human suffering, wouldn't they either try to reduce it, or more likely eliminate humanity painlessly?

One would think so, but I don't think they're exactly rational actors after millennia of torment at the hands of a vast multiverse of humanity that generally has no reason to know or care that they exist and suffer.