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

[alicornucopia]

Does he want to be a chair, upholstered in human skin, which screams when sat on? Does he want to speak in dactylic hexameter? Does he want to have a brain made of noodles which will otherwise function entirely as normal? Does he want to sprout a grape vine whenever he sits down for more than five minutes, from his right hip?

[first_and_final]

Nooooooo. He wants none of those things.

Okay, I'm all done playing with the magics. Should we leave a bead with Berete in case she needs more help later?

[ertia]

Seems like that should be standard operating procedure. Kithabel bestows and explains a bead.

[first_and_final]

And back to Milliways they traipse, now with real silver.

[ertia]

Kithabel finds him mesmerizingly beautiful anyway, of course.

[first_and_final]

Who could have foreseen this astonishing development?

[ertia]

The omnipotent sorceress is blindsided. Blindsided, I tell you.

And then: who else wants some omnipotence? Anybody hanging around the bar looking like they come from a world beset by fiends or peppered by magics or something?

[sicaria]

Here is a girl wearing a very nice grey dress with a loose knee-length skirt, standing very still by the door and looking around with exceptional alertness.

[ertia]

"Hi! Do you need an omnipotent sorceress for anything?"

[sicaria]

"That depends," she says. "What are the functions of an omnipotent sorceress?"

[ertia]

"Pretty all-purpose, really. What've you got?"

[sicaria]

"A government that needs overthrowing."

[ertia]

"Well, that might require more than the application of brute omnipotence, but I can still probably help." Hey Milan, got a government reportedly needs overthrowing.

[first_and_final]

Details? says Milan.

[ertia]

Soliciting now, come be in the conversation. "What's wrong with it?"

[first_and_final]

Milan appears in the main bar area.

[sicaria]

The girl in need of an overthrown government looks at him.

After half a second she returns her attention to Kithabel and says, "Once a year, two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts are selected by lottery and transported to an arena where they contend against each other and environmental obstacles until there is only one left alive. That is not by any means the only problem, but it may be the most obvious example."

[ertia]

"It is certainly that."

[first_and_final]

"Um, what," says Milan, approaching them.

[sicaria]

"Other problems are of a similar character. The inhabitants of the Districts are a source of resources and entertainment for the inhabitants of the Capitol, and are not otherwise valuable."

[ertia]

"Okay. Well, not okay, but you know what I mean. So... I can do all kinds of complicated conditional magic but I need to know who to aim it at ideally without mindreading of any kind."

[sicaria]

"What do you mean?"

[ertia]

"The Capitol sounds like an entire population and not just, exclusively, a governing body. Am I wrong, is everybody in the Capitol universally guilty?"

[sicaria]

"No. Plenty of them are varying degrees of innocent, by most measures."

[ertia]

"So I need to identify who needs to be kept away from what forms of ability-to-do-things and I'd rather learn this information in a way that doesn't involve inspecting their minds."