exploratory kidnapping

[alicornucopia]

In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.

In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"So it spreads out pretty fast," says Kaylo. "I can't think of any reason anyone would be doing ialdae in the Taavlas Isles, say, or on the other side of the world in the ocean. How long ago were you or some other ialder in these spotted places?"

[missnicegirl]

"Well, let's see - that's where we are right now, isn't it?" She points to the brightest dot. "And I think that must be Terali's building," a blob in Linnip that has a particularly even gradient as it fades into its surroundings. "I'm there pretty regularly. I don't think this map shows Annei or Sarsia at all, I think you have to spill at least as much as a dragon to show up... I'm pretty sure that spot on the bottom is where I cured Jensal. I spilled a lot of ialdae there a few weeks ago, and then there was some more ialdae spilled there a few more times and then it stopped - see how there's that wide circle that's almost faded into the background, and then a smaller circle inside it?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yep. Okay, so there's plenty of it lying around. I'll make a recycler-ward as proof of concept and see if it sucks up enough to make a difference - if a country full of wards would eat up all the stray ialdae between them and then have nothing left it probably makes more sense to actively feed them even though that's more labor intensive." He paces out a square again, hmmming.

[missnicegirl]

The recycler-ward sucks up enough stray ialdae to make their dot on the map noticeably dimmer after a tick or so. After two ticks, when its brightness in magic-sight is comparable to Kaylo's, it begins to actually visibly glow.

"Oh, hmm. Do we want our wards to glow? Sometimes ialdae does that and I'm not quite sure how to make it stop."

[alicornucopia]

"Better if they don't glow. In a state of war they'd have to be on all the time and they'd keep people up at night and confuse wildlife and such. It's better than getting invaded but not ideal." Kaylo peers at the ward.

[missnicegirl]

"I'll try to cast one that doesn't," says Matilda. She makes a recycler-ward next to Kaylo's and then spills a bunch of ialdae on them both. Hers declines to glow even with every bit as much power as Kaylo's. "Well, that seems to have worked, but I don't know if it just has a higher glowiness threshold..."

[alicornucopia]

"We can leave them for a while. Mine has a way to unravel it - obviously the non-test model wouldn't have that - so it won't go permanently to waste even if it sucks up all the ialdae on the continent of Espaal. I wonder if it goes through the ground." He goes and peers at the map to see if the fog is dimming opposite Paraasilan on the bottom of the world.

[missnicegirl]

"I wonder if I can still break yours. I think I'll leave it for another while before I try."

The background level of ialdae isn't changing visibly, but the leftovers from the shren cure - which are indeed located opposite Paraasilan - are slowly being pulled into the two recycler wards.

[alicornucopia]

"It doesn't look like it's traveling. I don't see flow towards the wards, either around the corner or across the top, and it's not dimming the spot opposite us substantially faster than it is the other spots."

[missnicegirl]

"And it's not dimming the background ialdae," Matilda observes. "If it can reach as far as the other side of the world, and it's making the really bright spots here and on the bottom opposite us noticeably dimmer, I would've expected the fainter stuff in its range to be gone already. Is it just pulling from the higher concentrations first? Or is there something about the background that's different from the bright spots? What is its range? I don't think the spots outside Esmaar are being affected..."

[alicornucopia]

"This is weird because in order to produce the fading-spots effect ialdae has to travel when spilled, but it apparently doesn't travel to destinations, just from origin points."

[missnicegirl]

"Apparently. Well, ialdae can do teleportation, so it shouldn't be that big of a surprise that it doesn't have to cross distances conventionally if it doesn't want to, but maybe it only bothers to move around instantaneously when it has a job to do."

[alicornucopia]

"I wonder if the process is lossy? Is some ialdae spending itself to move other ialdae to the wards to be sucked up?"

[missnicegirl]

"I'm not sure. And it might be hard to tell without clear measurements."

[alicornucopia]

"Quite." Kaylo taps his chin, then adds to the illusion: older ialdae should now look bluer. "I like the freeform-ness of this stuff, by the by, very nice."

[missnicegirl]

"It's convenient!"

The dots representing active ialdae output are yellow, and the oldest spots are blue, and the background fog is a uniform medium green.

"Hmm, it does look like there's something going on with the background."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah. Is that 'the fog sprang into existence halfway through the current lifespan of Elcenian ialdae' or 'it's a mix'..."

[missnicegirl]

"Or some combination of the two? Well, can we make the map show the past?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sure, why not. Past-scry the whole thing." Kaylo rewinds the illusion.

[missnicegirl]

The background fog, it turns out, sprang into existence - well, achieved its current density over the course of a few degrees - when someone, presumably Matilda, had just begun spewing enormous amounts of ialdae all over the bottom of the world opposite Paraasilan. But its current age-colour would suggest it's younger than that, so apparently it is also a mix.

[alicornucopia]

"Huh. So ialdae sometimes also teleports to destinations. It didn't travel from opposite Paraasilan to become a fog in Gibryel at its normal rate, that much is clear..."

[missnicegirl]

"I wonder why the background stuff behaves so differently?"

[alicornucopia]

"Good question. And we still don't know whether ialdae teleporting itself around is lossy or not - does the background fog mean there was more than this potentiated but then it got expended spreading itself around?"

[missnicegirl]

"I'm not sure. I'm also not sure how... big the background fog is. It's the same everywhere on the map, but the map is only as big as this planet."

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah." Kaylo makes a separate illusion, this one of the moon.