picknicking

[dark_light]

There's something unutterably pleasant about landing in a bit of woods in the middle of Nowhere, Manitoba, removing a sandwich and an apple from her backpack and having a picnic before she's ready to move on. She could eat in midair, but it makes it too likely that she'll drop something and find it unrecoverable.

Path's on her knee, and her cloudpine is propped up against the tree next to her.

Comments

[dark_light]

"The impression I have of your world is a bunch of loosely organized people trying to retain status they can no longer realistically maintain and otherwise running around haphazardly, but is there some formal political structure? Like, I'm formally subject to the queen of my clan, and also the democractic republic and its appointees of the United States and whichever of those states have a particular claim on me - this one is Maine and my legal residence is in Washington - plus wherever I am at any given time, like when you found me I was in Canada, a neighboring country."

[prodigal_miser]

"Your impression is reasonably accurate. There was a more formal system set up, but most of us don't recognize it anymore considering many of the people who ran it died with my mother. We don't have any countries set up, but my sister's - you recall how she quit the political field? She'd won over a large number of people by saving their lives so when she left they went with her. I can try to explain the political structure that used to be, if that would help?"

[dark_light]

"It could. I'm curious, anyway."

[prodigal_miser]

"Well. They'd set up a sort of... Puppet monarchy when I was a child, but I later learned it was actually run by an oligarchy made up of older and more powerful mages. They did not all get along, but they'd agreed to not kill each other, and try to make some decisions for mutual benefit of mages present."

[dark_light]

"Very mage-centric, this setup."

[prodigal_miser]

"Annoyingly so. There's a bit of history with mages going on long crusades to conquer non-magic setups. Since they had no defense..." he winces. "It was rather one-sided."

[dark_light]

"I suppose witches could have done that, but my various relatives have never been interested in governing humans, just in collecting appealing ones when they felt like it, which I suppose is a mild improvement for the majority of the nonmagical population."

[prodigal_miser]

"A mild one, yes. I suspect that since our power is renewable but finite, many mages wanted an army to hide behind while another mage attacked them, so they could recuperate. So, conquest and conscription."

[dark_light]

"Yeesh. You're probably going to want to lay down the groundwork to enfranchise non-mages sufficiently to make that at least inconvenient to retry."

[prodigal_miser]

"I'm trying, but the trouble is, usually power favors anyone with magic because they have more to threaten with. A general could raise an army, but a mage could just incinerate the army and then say they're in charge of whatever the army was protecting."

He sounds rather sad. "And... Well. I'm one man. They outnumber me. Maybe if I were the murderous type I could just try and conquer the mages and say, 'I'm in charge, do what I say' but that hardly solves the problem. Not to mention, I'm not murderous."

[dark_light]

"So - radios, let's learn how radios work and get everybody radios. Somebody starts throwing power around over here, and all six other locations he was planning to hit hear about it and have time to melt away. Maybe not the first place he tries, since he can teleport presumably - but the other five. And he can do property damage and scoop up stragglers, but it'll be harder and slower and everyone will do whatever they can with warning. Radio you, maybe, or any other sympathetic mages."

[prodigal_miser]

"Oooo. Oh, I like you - that's a good idea. We have mirrors, if I spend months making a ton of spelled ones I could get a sort of network set up. No radio required."

Adarin thinks, a little. "I think the problem might be in giving the mages the idea that I was trying to take over the world. They're notoriously bad at working together, but someone having a good chance at ruling everyone else usually gets them to try."

[dark_light]

"The radios have the advantage that non-mages can make them, though I don't know how easily or what kinds of materials are required. I think really basic ones might require vacuum tubes."

[prodigal_miser]

"Ahh. I'll have to ask my facetious fiance, then. I would like to use radios, I have no moral issues with stealing ideas to let people not be oppressed anymore."

[dark_light]

"The concept of the radio is long out of patent, I'm sure."

[prodigal_miser]

"Oh good, so no one will make faces at me for borrowing it."

[dark_light]

"Not a bit. And even if you take things that are patented, your world is well out of jurisdiction of anyone interested in enforcing Earthly patent law."

[prodigal_miser]

"True, but I'd like to avoid antagonizing anyone in charge in your plane. If I need to in order to prevent large-scale death or something, I will, but if it's something simple - I can just throw money at the problem until it goes away. That's what I make it for."

[dark_light]

"The ostensible point of intellectual property law is to allow people the profit motive for making their ideas available without fear of those ideas getting stolen. So if you feel bad about it and you have the money to throw - after whatever conversion process into local currency - you could also buy radios and whatnot. The problem is that modern ones will require more sophisticated infrastructure to maintain and repair. You'll run into this problem with most things - we're using improved versions of everything that requires materials science and software engineering and robotic assembly lines just to get the parts spat out of a factory."

[prodigal_miser]

"Aha. So I'd have the basic, no longer in use versions and need to upgrade if I want New Kystle to match your plane. That sounds like I should just do what I can with simple versions until things are stable enough to start getting an infrastructure set up. That works for me."

[dark_light]

Isabella nods. They are still snuggled up, so it comes out as vaguely nuzzly, but presumably meaning is preserved.

[prodigal_miser]

Meaning is preserved! Also, snuggling continues to be nice. He keeps getting distracted by her being helpful for solving problems, and absently forgetting that they're cuddling at all. A part of him's saying they should probably stop, but it's getting shoved into a corner and told to shut up.

"Hmmm. At some time in the future, would you like a spelled mirror? They work across planes."

[dark_light]

"Hell yes."

[prodigal_miser]

He laughs. "Alright. I'll have to actually get mirrors, but I can get a pair when I get chamomile."

[dark_light]

"Yeah, no shortage, mirrors are cheap."