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

[ertia]

"I think we can cut them off later more defensibly than we can cut them off now. I'll explain for you. ...And tell off Kiaver for being the second person not to mention that their cheaty power boost comes with a love thing."

Kithabel goes and does that: there are only so many dragons here who will have had only so many Bonded, but it does need to be self-contained and since she and Milan are outsiders to the whole Dark situation they're going to let anybody veto anybody else's resurrection requests, e.g. Saravasse's "no Dark" policy seems sound.

Kiaver does not seem to understand why she is being chastened. Was Kithabel under the impression that this sort of partnership would be sustainable without a good solid mutual affection underlying it? It sometimes doesn't work out that well even with.

Kithabel is annoyed. But she collects the list for Milan to fulfill far enough away from the door that its timeflow doesn't affect his momentum.

[first_and_final]

The list grows. Some people who've been around for a while under the new order of multiple Bonded want all their dead Bondmates back, whereas some only want one or two because they're worried about collisions.

"We're testing this," says Saravasse firmly. "Atuona, go ask the nice man for your first five Bondmates."

Atuona goes to Milan and names five individuals.

"Sure," says Milan. He turns up and concentrates. Two elves and three humans appear, confused.

"Well, none of you are dropping dead again immediately, that's a good sign," says Saravasse.

"Saravasse," grumbles Atuona. She retrieves her resurrected Bondmates to explain what's going on and check that they're all definitely okay. It comes out that not all of them are currently her Bondmates. Apparently only one example of each type of magic may be Bonded to a particular dragon at a time, and priority goes to whoever happens to be resurrected first.

Some dragons start frantically prioritizing. Others decide they don't need their entire list of dead Bondmates; some decide that actually maybe they could use a few more if this is how it's going to work out. The overworked secretary has to scrap his whole list and start over.

[ertia]

Well, they can present whatever list they like within the constraints. Kithabel and Milan were hanging out in Milliways anyway and they can do that while interrupted by occasional resurrection jobs. (Kithabel tries one. It doesn't work.)

[first_and_final]

"So I don't know about you, but none of those dragons seemed especially mesmerizingly beautiful to me," comments Milan while they await the list. "Although maybe that's because my magic-love-thing quota has already been filled. For that matter, I wouldn't necessarily expect Addy to know even if we'd thought to ask her, but given what she implied about how mating works I wonder if your magic love thing quota has also been filled by some sort of vampire magic convenience factor that exists to prevent multiple vampires getting stuck on the same human and having to pursue some sort of awkward compromise and/or violent confrontation."

[ertia]

"I suppose that doesn't sound impossible, but I don't have the impression that everybody has a dragon that is right for them necessarily at all, and it could also just be sorcery not working right for it."

[first_and_final]

"Yeah, we really don't have enough information. I suppose we could go fetch some other sorcerers whom we might want to make omnipotent. Are there any sorcerers we want to make omnipotent besides you? Is there anyone we want to make omnipotent - even if they've never been to your world we can bring one of the dragons or their Bonded into Milliways for a bit so we don't lose the connection, send someone into your world long enough to pick up nonzero momentum, then pull them back into Milliways and introduce them to the crowd. Now is the time to mention if you know the Milliways room number of someone whom you would just love to make omnipotent."

[ertia]

"6779," says Kithabel. It is her own room number. "I don't know, a lot of the mechanisms that make sorcery such a friendly sort of magic disappear with actual omnipotence, and I'd trust me but I'd have to think long and hard about anybody else, you know?"

[first_and_final]

"I think I'm more willing to trust my own reading of arbitrary Milliways patrons from gods know where than you are, but yeah, I take your point. I mean, since it has been established that I can successfully create dragons..."

He stops. He pauses noticeably.

Then he says, "I was going to say that we can wait around and see if there's anyone we want to try out for a long apprenticeship as our junior sorcerer and then once we know them well enough we vampire them, wait until they find a mate, and dragon the mate and see if that works since at least one magical love thing will already have cleared the connection, but actually there's a much shorter route to a similar setup."

[ertia]

"Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

[first_and_final]

"I'm pretty sure I am," he says. "But to avoid hilarious communicative mishaps, the thing I'm thinking is that I could turn into a dragon."

[ertia]

"Presumably you wouldn't be a vampire anymore..."

[first_and_final]

"Sure, but I'd still have the primary advantage of having ever turned into a vampire, I can't see anything about turning into a dragon that would eliminate my fairy curse," he says. "It might do away with my witchcraft power but I've never actually used my witchcraft power except to mitigate one of the flaws of vampirism, and anyway once I am a dragon I can experiment with turning back into a mostly-human and then back into a vampire from there, I don't especially want to spend the rest of my life enormous and quadrupedal. I have no idea what ceasing to be a vampire will do to my magical vampire crush on you, but if it gets immediately replaced by a Dragonbond, well, that presumably won't be so different. We could test ahead on a few of these things by seeing if any of those dragons want to be temporarily turned into humans and find out what that does to their Bonds..."

[ertia]

"Testing sounds like a plan." Kithabel goes and asks some dragons if any of them want to volunteer for an experiment that involves turning into a human temporarily.

[pythbox]

"What in the world for?" asks Sirofael.

[ertia]

"We're considering turning Milan into a dragon to see if I can Bond to him and want to know what happens if he does not prefer to stay a dragon after that."

[first_and_final]

"Well, I'll do it, sure," says Sirofael.

"I haven't resurrected any Bondmates for you in particular, have I?" says Milan.

"No, does that matter?"

"It might," says Milan.

"Okay then, um, um, her name was Elora Carter and she was a Wildmage from Ysterialpoerin—"

There appears a Wildmage. She, like so many others today, is confused.

"Hello just a minute I can explain everything but first the resurrection man wants to try something," says Sirofael.

"Any cosmetic preferences for your human form?" says Milan.

"Oh, well, I guess I want hair the colour of my scales and I want to keep my eye colour, since you're asking..."

Sirofael turns into a human. She is tall and has long pale lavender hair and black eyes. She looks very pretty, particularly to Elora.

"Oh, how do you balance," she complains, wobbling on her insufficient quantity of feet. (Elora catches her.) "Have I been human for long enough, can I turn back now?"

"Are you still Bonded?"

"Yes, definitely," says Sirofael.

"I have no idea what's going on," says Elora.

"Please make me a dragon again," says Sirofael. "This feels very weird. Elora, do some magic to show you're still my Bonded."

Elora sighs and looks around and pours out a bit of salt from a saltshaker on a nearby table and grows a grain of it into a block of salt the size of her head.

"I'll trust you that that's appropriate evidence," says Milan, and then Sirofael is once again a dragon. Sirofael and Elora go back out the door where the least bewildered of Atuona's resurrected Bondmates is holding it.

[ertia]

"So, that'll work, I guess."

[first_and_final]

"It sure does look like that'll work," Milan agrees.

[ertia]

Kithabel asks the nearest dragon if there are any other side effects of the Bond besides the love thing, creepy thought sharing business for a few minutes, linked-up proneness to death, and omnipotence.

[first_and_final]

"Co-Bonded always find that they are able to understand each other unusually well, especially when it comes to using magic, even after the creepy thought sharing business has been and gone," says Saravasse. "Not that miscommunications become impossible, but cooperating does become very easy. The dragon is included but for our purposes it matters less since dragons can't do magic. Oh, and of course there is the part where the Bonded can force the dragon to obey their will by wishing it so."

"Excuse me?!" says Milan.

[ertia]

"Why! Do people! Not! Mention! All of that sort of thing up front!"

[first_and_final]

"I imagine most of us don't like to think about it," snorts Saravasse.

"I wouldn't either, but that's no excuse," says Milan.

"On the other hand, I think you'll be pleased to hear that losing one's last Bonded is not literally immediately fatal," says Saravasse. "It takes a few seconds, and if there's another Dragonbond Mage or two around and they're quick about it, the dying dragon can be saved before they're all the way gone and hang on until they find another Bondmate. But you have to be very quick, and this method was discovered at the same time as co-Bonding, which is a much more reliable way to keep dragons alive when our Bonded die."

[ertia]

"Oh, well, convenient that we can resurrect the dead, then."

[first_and_final]

"I thought so!" says Saravasse.

"What else?" says Milan.

"...If I were you, as the only dragon in your universe, I would be very worried about accumulating more Bondmates," says Saravasse. "Are you very, very sure that you have only the one type of magic?"

"In Kithabel's world, yes," says Milan. "Mine has... more than that."

"Then if you return to your world - or hang around Milliways - and acquire any new Bondmates, I advise you to kill them immediately at the first sign of trouble," says Saravasse. "Considering that you can resurrect the dead, this should only be a minor inconvenience for them if it turns out that they weren't so bad after all and you feel safe bringing them back, but if they happen to be colossal idiots like my Bisochim they could do an enormous amount of damage before you found a less drastic solution."

"...I'll take that under advisement," says Milan.

"You do that."

[ertia]

"Does the control mechanism do anything useful like, say, let me forbid adding extraneous Bondmates he doesn't even want, or is it just creepy and horrible."