Story Friday February 23, 2018

[The Old Hack 2,448]

23 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And related to the tectonic map note, there might not be anything to raise anymore.

(On the other hand, maybe you - and Plato - overestimate size of Atlantis. If it was small, it would fit on lot of places.)

Also possible. But that wouldn't have been so funny as a potential panic-inducing scenario for our seers.

24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I'll rather do something more useful, like making sure I'm out of range.

That is probably a really smart move.

24 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Also, you missed the option that making sure there is no tomorrow may be what they WANT to do. There are people like that.

Fortunately they face stiff competition from Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow.

[Scotty 1,061]

49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Of course, the REASON why magic changed in first place was too much exposure, so that damage control is unlikely to restore status quo, BUT they have at least chance to delay and form it somewhat. With thousand seers knowing new rules and them suddenly forced to re-teach all magic users they have, they wouldn't have a chance.

Yeah, That's why I referred to it as damage control, rather than them trying to cover it up completely.

 

49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... if those chaos magic storms are massive enough, there might NOT be tomorrow.

Certainly. Try to explain that to the eager would-be wizards, mind you. Every single one. There is always another optimist.

I'll rather do something more useful, like making sure I'm out of range.

Also, you missed the option that making sure there is no tomorrow may be what they WANT to do. There are people like that.

That whole chaos magic storms bit what if magic tried to have ideal rules, trying to make one spell work a certain way might conflict with how another spell that similar but not quite works. Maybe an example might be when Tedd tried to adjust the minimum size of clothing for the dynamic morph watches to be a little bit looser than when Nanase tried to make them as small as possible, Tedd said it ended up having a 100% chance of growing to maximum size.    It would certainly be more extreme than that exampled but trying to get spells to do specific things just might not be possible so the spells have a certain amount of wiggle room. That could be where the idea of "flair for the dramatic" came from it's not really the WoM picking what it considers dramatic, but that "wiggle room" in how spells work. If magic unchecked is chaotic, but trying bring order to it completely is impossible without it all imploding on itself, then having a little bit of chaos in spells is probably the best it can do.

24 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And related to the tectonic map note, there might not be anything to raise anymore.

(On the other hand, maybe you - and Plato - overestimate size of Atlantis. If it was small, it would fit on lot of places.)

Also possible. But that wouldn't have been so funny as a potential panic-inducing scenario for our seers.

There's also the other theory that Atlantis didn't sink, but instead blew up in a volcanic eruption, that the story of Atlantis was about the destruction of the Minoan civilization when the Island of Thera (now Santorini) erupted and sent tidal waves and rock everywhere.

[hkmaly 490]

33 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

59 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And related to the tectonic map note, there might not be anything to raise anymore.

(On the other hand, maybe you - and Plato - overestimate size of Atlantis. If it was small, it would fit on lot of places.)

Also possible. But that wouldn't have been so funny as a potential panic-inducing scenario for our seers.

True.

19 minutes ago, Scotty said:

Maybe an example might be when Tedd tried to adjust the minimum size of clothing for the dynamic morph watches to be a little bit looser than when Nanase tried to make them as small as possible, Tedd said it ended up having a 100% chance of growing to maximum size.    It would certainly be more extreme than that exampled but trying to get spells to do specific things just might not be possible so the spells have a certain amount of wiggle room.

That's not wingle room. If the spells are written in something resembling programming language - OR math - error like this are EASY to make.

Simplified example: Tedd was setting the clothes to grow until the force they apply to wielder is below certain value. The value she chosen for the resulting watches was smallest value which didn't result in the spell mistaking atmospheric pressure for force it applies and trying to grow more to stop doing that (which obviously didn't helped).

[ChronosCat 155]

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I'll rather do something more useful, like making sure I'm out of range.

Out of range of the Chaos storms caused by humans who ignored the danger of using magic? ...I hear the Uryuom Homeworld is nice this time of year...

[hkmaly 490]

1 hour ago, ChronosCat said:

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

I'll rather do something more useful, like making sure I'm out of range.

Out of range of the Chaos storms caused by humans who ignored the danger of using magic? ...I hear the Uryuom Homeworld is nice this time of year...

I heard that Risa is nice all the time. Also, being in completely different universe, safely out of range.

[Scotty 1,061]

34 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

That's not wingle room. If the spells are written in something resembling programming language - OR math - error like this are EASY to make.

Simplified example: Tedd was setting the clothes to grow until the force they apply to wielder is below certain value. The value she chosen for the resulting watches was smallest value which didn't result in the spell mistaking atmospheric pressure for force it applies and trying to grow more to stop doing that (which obviously didn't helped).

Maybe Tedd's example wasn't the best, but I still think the "wiggle room" bit still works overall. Maybe if spells had specific rules for each that were ideal, stacking enchantments would be impossible because their mechanics would conflict too much? Like maybe Rhoda and Catalina's enchantments during Escape from the Mall might have caused the catpocalypse that Catalina was worried about, or worse.

[hkmaly 490]

13 hours ago, Scotty said:

Maybe Tedd's example wasn't the best, but I still think the "wiggle room" bit still works overall. Maybe if spells had specific rules for each that were ideal, stacking enchantments would be impossible because their mechanics would conflict too much? Like maybe Rhoda and Catalina's enchantments during Escape from the Mall might have caused the catpocalypse that Catalina was worried about, or worse.

Actually catpocalypse sound more like another "wiggle room".

Most likely results of two transformations being too strict to be compatible would be that target would be transformed in way which kills him or constantly hurts him.

Something like here on Dragon Doctors ...

 

[Tuscahoma 53]

On 2/23/2018 at 10:54 PM, The Old Hack said:

On 2/23/2018 at 10:29 PM, hkmaly said:

And related to the tectonic map note, there might not be anything to raise anymore.

(On the other hand, maybe you - and Plato - overestimate size of Atlantis. If it was small, it would fit on lot of places.)

Also possible. But that wouldn't have been so funny as a potential panic-inducing scenario for our seers.

Actually, Atlantis sinking was merely metaphor for the magic-users on Atlantis accidentally causing it to phase out of shift with our dimension.  The Pillars of Atlantis held this off for a while but then failed during one of the magic changeover event.  The actual phase shift still occurred because the material of Atlantis has been changed.

So yeah, I think it's going to reappear somewhere over the Atlantic.  Oh, did I mention it was a floating Island? 

On 2/23/2018 at 11:10 PM, Scotty said:

That whole chaos magic storms bit what if magic tried to have ideal rules, trying to make one spell work a certain way might conflict with how another spell that similar but not quite works. Maybe an example might be when Tedd tried to adjust the minimum size of clothing for the dynamic morph watches to be a little bit looser than when Nanase tried to make them as small as possible, Tedd said it ended up having a 100% chance of growing to maximum size.    It would certainly be more extreme than that exampled but trying to get spells to do specific things just might not be possible so the spells have a certain amount of wiggle room. That could be where the idea of "flair for the dramatic" came from it's not really the WoM picking what it considers dramatic, but that "wiggle room" in how spells work. If magic unchecked is chaotic, but trying bring order to it completely is impossible without it all imploding on itself, then having a little bit of chaos in spells is probably the best it can do.

Dan has outlined many situations where using Magic is safe.  For example, eating lots of food while huge and then shrinking back to normal will not kill you.  These kinds of safety measures are encoded into Magic, but as has been pointed out, if Magic is programmed like an application, Magic might not be able to handle all possible situations that humans can come up with, so there are situations where it might have error handling functions that simply go to some default, safe state, like growing clothes to maximum size.

 

On 2/24/2018 at 0:19 AM, ChronosCat said:

Out of range of the Chaos storms caused by humans who ignored the danger of using magic? ...I hear the Uryuom Homeworld is nice this time of year...

Chaos storms.  Why are people so afraid of Chaos storms?  Why is no one concerned about uncontrolled magic crystallizing into Pylons of Order?  I mean those things hurt when they hit you on your county or region. 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

6 minutes ago, Tuscahoma said:

Chaos storms.  Why are people so afraid of Chaos storms?  Why is no one concerned about uncontrolled magic crystallizing into Pylons of Order?  I mean those things hurt when they hit you on your county or region. 

Eh. You resolve that just by building additional pylons.

[ChronosCat 155]

2 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:

Chaos storms.  Why are people so afraid of Chaos storms?  Why is no one concerned about uncontrolled magic crystallizing into Pylons of Order?  I mean those things hurt when they hit you on your county or region. 

Well, Will didn't say anything about that. Hmm, if Chaos Storms are what happens if all of the parameters of the magic system are set to their individual "ideal" states, then perhaps Pylons or Order (or some other Order based effect) are what happens when they're all set to their least ideal setting...

Either that or by "ideal" Will means "sensitive to human input" (which would mean with them all set to that, the smallest amount of magic use would cause huge ripples in the ambient magic, explaining the storms), in which case the least ideal settings would probably result in a world where humans couldn't use magic at all.

[hkmaly 490]

7 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:

These kinds of safety measures are encoded into Magic, but as has been pointed out, if Magic is programmed like an application, Magic might not be able to handle all possible situations that humans can come up with, so there are situations where it might have error handling functions that simply go to some default, safe state, like growing clothes to maximum size.

I already pointed out that the clothes growing to maximum size is something different. However, I agree in general: You CAN'T be ready to handle every possible situations. Batman must be doing it by cheating and reading movie script in advance.

7 hours ago, Tuscahoma said:

Chaos storms.  Why are people so afraid of Chaos storms?  Why is no one concerned about uncontrolled magic crystallizing into Pylons of Order?  I mean those things hurt when they hit you on your county or region. 

It's because order has better PR. People are generally more afraid of chaos and not enough afraid of order, despite the amount of destruction various Orders did in past.

Also, magic in general is force of chaos.

5 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

in which case the least ideal settings would probably result in a world where humans couldn't use magic at all.

No magic at all IS the most orderly behaviour of magic. Also, the best think human can do to become less chaotic is to die and get mummified. Life is sooo chaotic.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

What I don't understand is the concept of "Chaos Storms".

Storms are incredibly organized atmospheric systems.  The better organized the system, the more powerful the storm.

Chaotic atmospheric systems don't last long and do little damage.

[hkmaly 490]

6 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

What I don't understand is the concept of "Chaos Storms".

Storms are incredibly organized atmospheric systems.  The better organized the system, the more powerful the storm.

Did you ever faced one of Lords of Chaos?

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

I once had an appointment to meet a Lord of Chaos to discuss my post-Pharonic career choices.

But he wouldn't stick to the structured schedule and I got tired of waiting.

Of course, then I met the Lords of Order and they were real jerks.

So when I retire, I will instead align myself with the Earls of Entropy.

[ChronosCat 155]

2 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

What I don't understand is the concept of "Chaos Storms".

Storms are incredibly organized atmospheric systems.  The better organized the system, the more powerful the storm.

Chaotic atmospheric systems don't last long and do little damage.

Will of Magic technically called them "Storms of Chaos Magic". I suspect the "Chaos" refers to the effect, not how the magic itself works behind the scene. The Chaos Storms themselves are probably organized magical systems, they just unleash spells with random (and likely dangerous) effects on the landscape (and inhabitants thereof) they cross. It's also possible "Chaos Magic" is just a impressive sounding name humans came up with for a specific sort of magic which actually isn't all that chaotic in the mathematical sense.

[hkmaly 490]

46 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

they just unleash spells with random (and likely dangerous) effects on the landscape (and inhabitants thereof) they cross

Yes, statistically speaking, random effects ARE dangerous, especially if you get several of them on single places.

48 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

It's also possible "Chaos Magic" is just a impressive sounding name humans came up with for a specific sort of magic which actually isn't all that chaotic in the mathematical sense.

"Chaos Magic" might be accurate description (in mathematical sense) of what the storm is throwing around, not the storm itself.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

3 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

I once had an appointment to meet a Lord of Chaos to discuss my post-Pharonic career choices.

But he wouldn't stick to the structured schedule and I got tired of waiting.

Look, I'm sorry, but you should see my secretarial staff. Notice what it is that I am Lord of, then imagine what sort of recruitment pool I have to pick employees from. Getting them to keep a proper schedule is like pulling teeth, only from a reluctant crocodile.