The Pub Discussion Board

Okay, while, yes, David is coming to a close on Elemandy, he is nowhere near finished with Divinatory Objects.  He's only been talking about a couple things because he has been working on the mood cube.  There are an endless number of divinatory objects for him to produce.  He could, if he so chose, pursue that subject for a normal person's lifetime before exhausting its possibilities.

As to taking on a new subject:  He cannot take classes.  He has an internship that requires him to be available at a moment's notice.  As such, any scheduled activities must be easily cancelable.  While he could pursue Charms or Enchantments, theoretically, he is unlikely to actually get permission for Directed Study in these areas, as he's not very good at it.

David's school activities, for the moment, are very much circumscribed by the fact that he is a Rimohr Intern.  Nothing he does is allowed to interfere with that.

Eric Storm

Fenixreign wrote:

As long as they aren't circumcised David should be happy.  Those activities would be painful...  ;P

ouch...you made me cringe with that remark lol

one day to go...although because of an error a couple of months ago some of us have read it, I still look forward to this next chapter (because I don't remember a lot of it anymore, my brain is fried) what I do remember with be seen with more background and should be clearer.

Can't wait. Know I'll be suffering from lack of sleep on Monday but it's worth it.

Eric Storm wrote:

As to taking on a new subject:  He cannot take classes.  He has an internship that requires him to be available at a moment's notice.  As such, any scheduled activities must be easily cancelable.  While he could pursue Charms or Enchantments, theoretically, he is unlikely to actually get permission for Directed Study in these areas, as he's not very good at it.



Eric Storm

I thought he did well in his last exam in Charm & enchantments (with Bob) since he's told a fair number of his classmates did worse than he did .  I guess doing better than the other does not automaticly means you're good at it.

So with Elemandy almost over he will just have Divination left. Does that mean, we'll see even less of the academy'side and more of the Rimhor's side ?



Ps: Bob the little guy, not the dragon prince.

Last edited by neolyn (2016-07-31 21:44:08)

Got my energy drink next to me. Got me really excited with with that comment. In for a good night.

No, there are no objects capable of conjuring.  Conjuration requires sentience, as you are literally holding the object entirely within your mind while conjuring it.

The Conjuring Room requires little enough energy to hold together already, and frankly... anchor it to WHAT?  It is already anchored to the wizard.  It's a dimension that exists alone in the emptiness of "this isn't even space".  The only thing it "knows about" is its wizard creator, and the stuff they put into it.

"No matter what the subject, there is always room for improvement" - To that, I say, Improve Arithmetic, and still leave it as arithmetic.  Subjects do have boundaries.  Beyond those boundaries, you're no longer discussing the same subject.

A portal for fast travel:  Only four wizards - EVER - have managed personal teleportation.  Conjuring sentient beings is exceedingly difficult.  Trying to craft a permanent gateway to conjure sentient beings from place to place would be pretty much impossible.  However, this particular issue of portals has been dealt with already, you just haven't read about it yet.

Summoning Jacob out of his prison:  I reiterate: only four wizards have ever conjured a person successfully.  And that person was themselves.  Conjuring a DIFFERENT person is harder, not easier.  You suddenly must contain within yourself the essence of two entire sentient beings.  By comparison, conjuring a squirrel is child's play.  Sentience is a VERY difficult thing to hold together.  Get it wrong, and someone dies... or in the case of Jacob, spends the rest of eternity suffering the mental trauma of a failed attempt.

Crossing dimensional planes:  Theoretically, this is possible, but you would have to be able to treat an entire world as your Conjuring Room.  Not something for the faint-hearted to attempt.  Not something for a Level 4 conjurer to successfully accomplish, or even a Level 5.

Everyone is so concerned that this subject has already been circumscribed.  Sure, things to us seem like there's always more to learn because we're discovering new stuff all the time... in subjects we've been studying for a couple decades, or maybe a century.  But Dugerran wizards have been studying conjuring for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.  We're talking about things that have been studied for perhaps a couple orders of magnitude longer than what we consider "technology".  And because the nature (if not the application) of the subject is extremely simple, there just isn't anything else to learn about it.  Conjuring is the act of making an object move from point A to point B, without traveling through the intervening points.  Once you go beyond that, you're no longer discussing conjuring.  Sure, the Conjuring Room was a new wrinkle.  That wrinkle was discovered well before the birth of King Tutankhamun.  In other words, a really fucking long time ago.

Perhaps there is more that could, theoretically be learned concerning conjuring, but if so, it would be techniques that cannot be performed by anyone.  Given that, what would be the point in learning them?  I can (and have) learned (academically) how to fly a plane and a helicopter.  I will never, ever actually do either of those things, given my eye condition, so really, what was the point in me learning it?  (Answer: I was like eleven, it was summer break, I was bored, and I wished I could be a pilot.)  Now take that and spread it to every conjurer, everywhere.  "Okay, we have this new technique that will allow you to conjure a dozen people across the country all at once.  Only hitch?  You have to be three times as powerful as the most powerful wizard who ever existed to do it." -- why would anyone waste their time trying to find such a thing?  When 99.9999% of all conjurers cannot even perform all of the techniques known to exist, why would you try to discover more?

Even if there is something out there to discover, if you've looked long enough without finding it, rational people stop looking, because you're wasting a lot of effort that could be better expended on pursuits that have a better chance of delivering results.  So, sorry, everyone, but no, there is no Conjuring Research and Advancement Plan... 'cause it's just CRAP. 



Eric Storm

You took me way too literally, again. I was just throwing out ideas while allowing my noggin to free-form ideas.

as for arithmetic (and I'm gunna get my ass handed to me for this one *sighs*) I give you "the common core" principles... ?!?!? improving ?!?!? arithmetic. The idea being a different way to calculate totals which "experts" claim makes all math easier. Regardless of my opinion on the idea, or yours, people still believe it enough that lots of school systems have adopted it.

Potions have been being made for thousands of years as well, yet David managed to make 10 useful potions in just about a year. He seems to have a different way of looking at some things, or his mind works in a different way. Would David make a good solid researcher in other fields? probably not.

But personally, and this may just be my stubborn, idiotic opinion, but I have found very very few fields where the possibility of advancement did not exist. And there is all too often someone standing there telling you that it can not be done.

Now, that being said, it IS your world. And therefore you DO define the rules. So in this situation, There IS nothing else to be learned. You have said it is so, and you "literally" own the world

Q.E.D.



(I made the argument for purely academic reasons, not out of any real concern that the subject does or does not have further material to explore)

My last comment was not meant as snide or mean... its the truth. You set all the boundaries and limits within this world, therefor, your word is the final one, and the only one that counts

Last edited by fathertyme (2016-08-01 06:53:01)

Okay...

1) "Common Core" does not alter arithmetic in any way, shape, or form.  It changes people's method of LEARNING arithmetic.  Before and after Common Core, arithmetic is still composed of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

2) How many "fields" have you looked at that have been studied for 5,000 - 10,000 years in their current form?  This is kind of the central tenet I'm trying to get across.  We see new discoveries all the time, but they are in very young fields, a dozen years, maybe 50 or 100 years old.  Science has been in "its current form" for just over a century, since we added Quantum Physics around 1900.  Yeah, after 100 years, there's still loads to discover.  What will there be to discover regarding quantum theory 4900 years from now?

Believe it or not as you choose, but there is, in fact, a finite amount of information that can be discovered on any particular subject.  The reason it's hard to see this in our society is that we have developed new tools with which to do the looking, so have discovered more of that information in recent years.  Let's consider this:  Let's assume that Quantum Theory actually explains the universe properly.  (We know it doesn't in some specific areas, but let's ignore that for the moment.)  Do you HONESTLY believe that, 5000 years from now, 10,000 years from now, we won't have an absolutely complete understanding of Quantum Theory?  (Assuming we haven't used it to blow ourselves up in the process...)  I find this extremely hard to believe.

And Quantum Theory is a hell of a lot more complex than Conjuring.

3) Potion-making is a discipline bounded by only one constraint:  You're using a potion to do magic.  WHAT the potion does is completely unbounded.  This is the pivotal difference between conjuring and almost every other discipline.  Potions can be used to do an almost infinite number of things.  Divinatory objects can be created to do a vast number of tasks.  Spells can be crafted to do a limitless number of things.

Conjuring does ONE THING.  It only does JUST one thing.  It moves objects from place to place.  Even if you consider the Conjuring Room as a separate concept from that, then conjuring manages to do TWO things.  It is a highly bounded subject.

There is literally no comparison between conjuring and ANY other magical endeavor, because conjuring is so strictly limited in its purpose.  Conjuring only has its own class structure because it is so very hard to actually do.  But there isn't any other subject taught at the school that teaches you to do so very little.

Eric Storm

Once again another great chapter. I Liked how it was a bit bigger than the previous few chapters. Keep up the good work and I look forward to next month.

(posted from Chapter 8: January)

fathertyme wrote:

I'm enjoying some of the dichotomy in the story that I'm seeing pop up..

for example, his view of vigilantes when combined with how he acts around people who he feels are getting away with hurting other people.

David's issue is not with the "concept" of vigilantism.  He is concerned for the safety of the students involved.  As Chief of Security, he has to come down on them hard to protect his position of authority.  As David, he has to come down on them hard to keep them in one piece.

His disrespect for authority and his insistence that people respect his.

David has no disrespect for authority.  He has a disrespect for ineptitude and indifference.  You'll note that he has not once disrespected Dean Lengel's authority.  When he has broken the rules, he has expected punishment.  David is of the belief that, if you are put into a position of authority, you had damned well better take that seriously.  When you don't, he no longer believes that you have any moral authority with which to "govern".

Its easy to see the conflict between how he logically thinks about things, and how his growing frustration, and dissatisfaction with things around him feed his dark side and his contempt for "bureaucrats"

And it is bureaucrats that he actually has disrespect for.  If your job is the safety of others, and you're more concerned about dotting i's and crossing t's, then yes, he will disrespect that, because he feels you're no longer actually doing your job, and as such, you have no right to the authority you were mistakenly given.  Basically, David is of the belief that, just because some fool granted you authority, it doesn't mean you deserve it.  If David sees that you are actually taking your position seriously, he will respect that, even when he disagrees with you.  As examples, I present Dean Lengel, Seth Tupper, Joe Garibaldi, and the King, all of which are people that David has never questioned the authority of.

Eric Storm

The other thing that you have to consider, Neolyn, is that David could also, along with what Eric brought up, be starting to feel his true immortality.  You can't cause permanent physical damage.  You can't kill him.  It makes him indestructible on a physical level.  That is true power.  The only way we have seen a demighost even countered for the long term is Jacob and a sufficiently powerful wizard with a talent for Enchantments could break that spell given enough time and/or information releasing Jacob and loosing him on the world once more.

I imagine it's part of the reason demighosts are so feared.  You can't do anything to them (not really) and they can just wait you out and you're you later.  Having all of time left to get your revenge without fear of any real retribution so long as you keep disconnected from others emotionally makes a person INCREDIBLY dangerous and that's without all their inherent abilities.  Plus can you imagine having been around for 4000+ years already?  Boredom alone might make you insane.  Hell, you'll live long enough that you can pull a "Professor Paradox" and go so nuts you go sane again.

Another awe inspiring chapter Eric.

(posted from the Item Information Page)

Glad you enjoyed it, but I wouldn't be expecting any more 38,000-word chapters.

Eric Storm