chalk

[alicornucopia]

In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.

In unison, they complete their shared spell.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[aeskhyne]

The fountain is pretty blatantly magical. Jets of water arc up into the sky, split, twirl, merge again, dive towards the ground, then level out and chase each other around in orthogonal formations above a checkerboard of large tiles before finally splashing back into the square fountain in the middle of it all.

"The maze part is trying to get from the edge to the fountain without any water hitting you," Teah explains. "Safe path changes every week. Great, so magic still works."

[alicornucopia]

"The path changes all by itself without you looking in on it and redesigning?"

[aeskhyne]

"Yep!"

[alicornucopia]

"How?"

[aeskhyne]

"I made it so it'd redesign itself once a week. Always picks some path from edge to middle that as long as you're on it, the water won't hit you, and sometimes it makes fake ones that get partway there and then dead-end. And then the water goes everywhere else, mostly randomly."

[alicornucopia]

"So there's an algorithm built into the magic that can do independent decisionmaking of that kind."

[aeskhyne]

"You could put it that way. I don't know if 'algorithm' is the right word. I think it might imply I specified more things than I did."

[alicornucopia]

"...What word would you use?"

[aeskhyne]

"It's more like a semi-autonomous entity with a few basic guidelines than like a spell or program with an algorithm. It's a little bit alive, I guess. Like library creatures."

[alicornucopia]

"Those don't ever grow beyond what you set them up to do, do they?"

[aeskhyne]

"Not that I've seen."

[alicornucopia]

"Could you make them do so?"

[aeskhyne]

"Make them, what, be actually alive? Sure I could."

[alicornucopia]

"Not necessarily alive, just - growing. We were talking about deifying other people earlier; I'm wondering if you could make independent helpful agents from scratch."

[aeskhyne]

"Hmm. Yeah, I don't see why not. But I don't know how much growing I could make them be..."

[alicornucopia]

"What would be the limiting factor?"

[aeskhyne]

"I've never done something like that before, so I don't know what the limits would be like, I'm just guessing there might be some. Well, for one thing, they might not be able to do things I don't set them up to be able to do, and I might not be able to set them up to do all the things I can do. I'm pretty sure I could make something that could do a lot of stuff, but I don't know about - hearing prayers the way I do, or being able to figure out and mess around with magic I've never seen before. I wouldn't know how to make something that could do those."

[alicornucopia]

"But you could make things that took written suggestions, maybe, or staffed a queue of people with queries, and forwarded up things they couldn't handle to you?"

[aeskhyne]

"I could, I guess. Never thought of it."

[alicornucopia]

"It'd free you up to pay more attention to the complicated things instead of giving people puppies."

[aeskhyne]

"Yeah, but giving people puppies is fun, I like giving people puppies. I dunno. I'll think about it."

[alicornucopia]

"Is your ability to think about this or other things constrained by what prayer you're holding onto or is that just a matter of what information you can look for and what actions you can take?"

[aeskhyne]

"I can think about whatever I want and mostly look at whatever I want - reading history gets a little harder without a prayer to go on sometimes."

[alicornucopia]

"So looking at the present is easier? Speaking of which, what senses are you using to get information?"

[aeskhyne]

"Sight's the most convenient metaphor for most of it, but I can obviously hear too, and I 'see' plenty of things that aren't actually visible. And it's more all-one-thing for me than I think it is for most people. I mean, I'm just guessing here, but you have ears and eyes and noses and so on - I just have one me and lots of magic. It doesn't come in parts so much."