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

[alicornucopia]

"I'm asking primarily from a magic theory perspective, not an anthropological one."

[cardistry]

"Yeah, well, my perspective here is the exact opposite of theoretical. I don't know of any good way to handle it, but I've been through plenty of bad ones."

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo appears to have a brief internal debate, then says, "So, where do people get linker cores?"

[cardistry]

"They're born with them. As far as I know, there's no other way to get one, but it's not a blatant magical fact like Device intelligence, there could be some way to get them from another source. Other things about linker cores... they're connected to mana colour; the core has a 'colour'" (the word he uses is the equivalent of colour for one of his magical senses, and is clearly linked to the visual version of the concept) "that translates to the visual colour you see when somebody uses visible mana. Devices don't have linker cores but we do have mana colours; mine looks like this," and he holds his hand out over the table and deploys a small magic circle on its surface. The circles and lines of the glowing diagram ripple through all the colours of the rainbow in a semi-random order at varying speeds.

[alicornucopia]

"So you can use magic without a linker core because...? What does the linker core do in a human mage and how are you skipping it?"

[cardistry]

"I... hmm," he says. "Thinking about it."

Thinking about it over another bite of ice cream. How is this stuff so tasty? It is amazing.

Ice cream complete for now, he says thoughtfully, "It might be more accurate to say I am a linker core, instead of that it's something I'm skipping somehow. Humans... on humans it's more like a function module, a pretty central one, but still something that's... a part of them rather than part of them? With me it's seamless, there is no separation between me and the part of me that handles mana because I just am a kind of thing that handles mana. With human mages, there's a human, and then they have an integrated linker core."

[alicornucopia]

"Innnnteresting. Are you staying around the school, if I come up with an analysis spell that'll let me have a look at your kind of magic can I point it at you and see what I can see?"

[cardistry]

"Sure. I mean, I might go away, but I'll come back, they give me food."

[alicornucopia]

"...So I should look for you in the cafeteria as opposed to a particular dormitory room, huh?"

[cardistry]

"Yep. Dormitory rooms are for sleeping in, right? I don't sleep."

[alicornucopia]

"Device thing or you thing?"

[cardistry]

"Device thing. I guess it's possible there's some Device somewhere that sleeps, but I don't think it's common - it's the kind of thing you'd have to build in a function for on purpose, and why would you?"

[alicornucopia]

"But eating is new and you have a function for that even though it's nonessential; why?"

[cardistry]

"It comes with the form in a way that sleeping apparently doesn't, and it's not useless - I'm getting mana from all this."

[alicornucopia]

"Interesting. What's the conversion rate like - what kind of quantities and units does mana come in?"

[cardistry]

"It's not huge, but it's not nothing. And I might just be thinking it's not huge because I'm kind of huge. I'm getting about - this is an estimate, also why does this language have a unit system for mana, I love this language - fifteen to twenty thaums from a bite of ice cream. A little spell like the one I floated my tray with is about ten thaums to cast, with negligible upkeep. A high-damage personal combat spell is maybe five or six thousand thaums. My base power level is about fifteen orders of magnitude bigger than that. It's hard to get the numbers very precise because I'm sensing it all directly, not measuring it, and I can't 'eyeball'" (of course there is a Draconic word for that concept applied specifically to his mana sense, he loves this language) "the big stuff that well."

[alicornucopia]

"That's amazing. How big are most Devices, most mages?"

[cardistry]

"Most mages... between fifty or a hundred thousand thaums and a few million. I've sensed a few that I think might have gone up to a hundred million, but none any bigger than that. A hundred million is pretty powerful for a Device; most of the ones I've sensed were maybe one or two million. I've never sensed one that came remotely close to being as powerful as me. But I could probably hide my mana capacity from casual observation if I felt like it, so maybe all the other Devices this powerful do that automatically."

[alicornucopia]

"Why're you so big? Does that make you smarter, what with the thing where the smaller ones are not even people?"

[cardistry]

"Probably. The scale between power and intelligence doesn't seem to be perfectly consistent, though, and I'm not sure it's as simple as converting thaums to smarts. I haven't known that many other Devices to compare myself to."

Bite of ice cream.

"And I'm so big because I'm built to destroy planets," he adds, post-bite.

[alicornucopia]

"Did Keo check you out before you left your circle?"

[cardistry]

"Yep. And helpfully removed the control program that was trying to make me destroy planets. I do not wanna destroy planets, I like planets, some of them have people and I like people and some of them have ice cream and I think you can tell how I feel about ice cream."

[alicornucopia]

"I can tell you feel pretty positively about ice cream," agrees Kaylo. "Okay good. How hard would it've been to make you?"

[cardistry]

"Extremely. The people who did it were on the cutting edge, granted that it was about four hundred years ago so the cutting edge has probably moved."

[alicornucopia]

"What kind of lifespan have you got there?"