delta v over delta t when there is no t

[ertia]

In a bar, there is a girl.

She looks like she has saved up all of her decadent and slothful impulses for a solid decade and is indulging them all at once. She is sprawled on a couch with a book she's only half-reading, and an ice cream sundae, and smiiiiiiling.

Comments

[first_and_final]

"My end goal is still overthrowing the gods; if I have to spend a while playing with pointless things in a corner somewhere first, so be it. But I'd really rather cooperate, and if cooperating is as intractable as all that, I'll take a neighbouring territory if one is on offer."

[ertia]

"It's not completely intractable. Cooperating sorceren can do bigger projects as long as they can agree on what they're aiming at in sufficient detail. It'd just mean we'd have to find bigger projects to do."

[first_and_final]

"I'm sure we can come up with those."

[ertia]

"Quite likely. And I just recently gave the local rulers of things beads to talk to me from a distance so they can call me up for anything me-sized; if you get significant momentum I can notify them that me-sized has taken a jump."

[first_and_final]

"Well. We'll see how well my fairy blessing helps me along."

[ertia]

"Yep."

[first_and_final]

"I wonder if the bar, being from neither your world nor mine, might have a valuable perspective on translating between the two."

[ertia]

"What do you mean?"

[first_and_final]

"Well, it seems like you're having a little trouble explaining your world to me in enough detail, perhaps because you don't know which information I'm missing, and I know I'm having trouble asking the right questions because I don't know what they are. That's the sort of problem I imagine someone who hangs around this sort of place a lot would have a lot of experience dealing with."

[ertia]

"We can talk to her, I guess, but she won't know what you want to know in particular."

[first_and_final]

"I want to know whatever I'll be better off knowing as someone who's going to move from my world to yours and then live there. You might know all that information but it would be hard for us to compare notes thoroughly enough to figure out that you do have toast and healers and you don't have skirmish or fae and so on for all potentially relevant phenomena - I can stand here going 'dwarves? a-mail? universities? paladins? lawyers? cats? trees?' all day, and you can do the same to cover the things you have that I might never have heard of, but it would be kind of a haphazard way to go about it. If the bar knows the relevant things already, she'll have a much easier time getting me up to speed."

[ertia]

"Oh, fair enough. Well, she's over there." Gesture.

[first_and_final]

Milan looks at the piece of demonstration toast in his hand, eats it, and wanders over to the bar.

"Hello," he says.

[alicornucopia]

Hello. Can I interest you in a beverage? says a napkin.

Says a second napkin, Also, you might want to know that my hearing is fairly good.

[first_and_final]

"Well, that would've been good to know much earlier," he says of the second napkin. "But then I suppose you must already know what I've come to ask. Can you help me?"

[alicornucopia]

I would have mentioned it but as you can see I communicate by napkin and you were all the way over there.

Kithabel's world has only humans for sapient species, although magic allows significant cosmetic variation in those inclined. It lacks aethernet, any non-momentum-based sources of magic, does have most of the plants and animals you're accustomed to and then some, contains recognizable if differing universities - the world permits science, if not quite unvarnished by human expectation, and magic is not considered an academic field at all.

[first_and_final]

"Curious. No equivalent of thaumatology? I guess with only one source of magic, and a fairly simple and predictable one at that, there wouldn't be much call for intensive study..."

[alicornucopia]

And those who practice it are disinclined to hold still for rigorous repeated experimentation.

[first_and_final]

[alicornucopia]

The planet has four moons and a set of lovely rings, Bar continues. The population density is rather high but not, mostly, urbanized, as most of the reasons to centralize don't apply. Kithabel's home is the Sunlit Satrapy, but except for governing parties forwarding information about tasks to do to sorcerers they are unlikely to intrude upon your life very much.

[first_and_final]

"Thank you," he says. "As for the drink, do you offer recommendations? It seems to me that you're also in a very good position to give people things they'd never think to ask for on their own."

[alicornucopia]

I do and am.

[first_and_final]

"Then I'd like whatever you recommend, please."

[alicornucopia]

Here is a mug of something hot and almost buttery. It steams.

It goes very well with his toast.

[first_and_final]

"Thank you. My faith in your recommendations is entirely vindicated."