Next Book Time Frame?
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Ehhh…
Chocolate is pretty lame once you’ve had Denubian Choco-Coffee(TM) that stuff leaves everything else in the dust….
I was just having Tea with Nick. He’s one of my best customers for “herbal remedies” It’s going to be complex, but we’ll probably be able to come to an agreement. It may take a few centuries, so we may have to put you on “ice” or in Limbo for a while.
Here, have a cup of DCC(TM)…
Drink it while it’s hot!
And btw, since I’m a demon already, I can’t fork over my soul, because my immortal soul is me….I’m just a soul with a mana shield with some “dirt” stuck to it.
People gather animus from experience and even when consuming external animus their basic personality as intact as their body allows. So an individual personality likely has some form of core, or soul which all the other animus then clings to. I mostly think this is the case as all the elements have various forms. Fire also has electricity and seems to encompass energy, Air seems to be gases and voids, Water holds sway over liquids, and Earth holds sway over solid.
All other associated magics with these elements are likely powered in part by belief unless used as a medium. This leads one to conclude that element of Man is composed of various different sub-elements. I am not entirely sure what they would be, but the most basic and simple would be animus, sentience/conscience, spirit, and soul. Man draws mana to itself and then uses the mana to draw in the other elements. I don’t know why, but the the elements seem to mostly stick to themselves unless mana is us present. From what I have read mana is needed to allow interaction between the elements and is needed as a glue between them. Not sure exactly what it is.
Higher mana levels just allows for more interaction between the elements. Animus draws mana and it is harder, but possible to do the reverse. Pure elemental planes likely have no mana as it appears between two. Any plane with two or more elements needs some mana. Not sure what determines how much mana is present, but from the discussion between demons in the first novel it seems that most realities have little mana now. I like to think that this means that the mana concentrates around a certain something, or it is being drawn somewhere.
Their is likely a finite amount of whatever the elements and mana are composed of to power the realities. This means that eventually, some realities will collapse. My guess is that low mana realities might be less important realities. I believe it was mentioned that minor differences were simply lost and consolidated to prevent infinite realities in this universe. Then it stands to reason that some of the realities which continued might go on for some time before they to dissolved as it were. Our theories state that our universe will eventually not have enough energy to sustain itself, so higher mana level might allow a reality to persist for a longer period of time. Thus the low mana realities might be doomed realities. We are off topic, but I just gave you a lot to be distracted by, so feel free to elaborate as you choose.
[quote=Finaltheorem47;575]Eating Animus isn’t like eating Mana I believe.[/quote]
I’m pretty shure we have Word of Tizzy that Vampires eat Animus and that there are Necromancy spells wo are able to do that too.
Eating Animus isn’t like eating Mana I believe. Mana is universal like refined gasoline while Animus is unique consciousness (like every consciousness vibrates at a unique frequency). The more Animus you “eat” the more the foreign personality mixes with your own… no? Even if you only eat like a small amount… You’d be fundamentally changing your identity. The being that you were before would cease to exist. Hmmm I suppose that would change your True Name too… Maybe that’s the secret…
And yes I realize how pretty much every one of the topics on this forum have gone off on a tangent like the Amazon thread… must be Tizzy’s fault. This post has nothing to do with the next book time frame lol.
@Maou
Please,
I
can’t
read
your
post.
Please
use
paragraphs.
Not as extremly as I did here, but please at least some.
Was anything in that Wall of Text an response for me?
If yes, I’ll try to read it again…Two things
1. Haven’t demons solved the writing issue? They have drinks and if needed they could use metals or something else.
2. What is the technological level of the Abyss? They mentioned tom was from a mid-tech world, and dragons are from high tech civilization. so how much have they implemented. because I think that the demons would have gone to great lengths to make televisions or radios at the very least.
Hmm. So people has started commenting on Maou’s rather opaque writing style. Well, not that I write any better.
@Tizzy:
Do demons write? I remember that Antefalken has writen some books (erotica?). There might be more demon writers in Astlan. I wonder, what subject are they writing about?
Yes, but my point remains…my text to speech program can’t translate that.
What does it [i]sound[/i] like?
I’m not much of a written word person, that’s why I hired a ghost writer…and at the rate he’s typing up book 2, he really must be a ghost…apparently takes lots of concentration to move each of the keys on the keyboard ectoplasmically or telekinetically or whatever it is ghosts do.
I’m not allow within that loquacious lot of alliterating citizens I lack the ability to to speak in such a delightful manner, though I find it quite entertaining. Besides to annoy people I would use a simple cipher in small print and contrasting colors.
I was beginning to think Maou was Oorstemothian and trying to overwhelm us by encoding all his messages in giant walls of text.
It seems like something an Oorstemothian would do.
I’m not sure if you got this, in the written translation, but listening to them speak requires a huge amount of concentration on understanding them. Particularly given the accents….sheesh…
Oh! It must be these demons who write those horrible books and make those horrible movies. Demons are just horrible out to give us horrible experiences. Some of the books just makes me wanna projectile vomit sometimes. Uhhh!
Tizzy, Rosver
I think the two of you have some fundamental disconnect on what are inconsistencies vs what is “just the way things are”
The point I would argue is this: there are supposed to be some big inconsistencies and hodge podges in the book.
The Abyss is definitely supposed to be illogical and ramshacke and anachronistic. But Astlan is supposed to be similar.
It’s a very mixed up universe for the simple fact that if you introduce magic to a “real” medieval world, weird shit suddenly starts happening.
Traditional fantasy is extremely unrealistic, unless the magic is extremely scarce, civilization will not follow anything close to the path it did on Earth and you won’t have a “classic fantasy world” after a very short while.
A Song of Ice and Fire is a place where magic makes about the most sense for a medieval world. Because it’s very rare/very hard to do.
When you have a magic rich world in a fantasy book, it will literally turn the economy of the medieval world upside down, and all bets are off, things won’t follow the path that they did on Earth. There will be all sorts of incongruities and discrepancies.
It will flood the economy, turn manufacturing, distribution, everything upside down, it will create chaos.
As Tizzy argues, it’s not that different than suddenly introducing all the “magic” of 21st century technology and capitalism on Africa, the middle East and eastern Europe/Russia.
You are going to find very odd things and odd combinations for a wide variety of reasons.
This is something that I intended to try and demonstrate. Is it a perfect demonstration, and is it always 100% consistent no. But then this book has been written/edited/reedited over a very very long period of time which sort of makes it hard to keep everything completely consistent.
And my apologies to Tizzy as this doesn’t make much sense to you, since, being a character in the book, you just think it’s “how things are” and so try to explain it based on your personal experience, when sometimes the problem is my fault.
The technological inconsistencies can’t be explained by trade. You might notice that the book mostly visits the ‘rich’ areas like Lenamare’s school and Freehold. Actually Lenamare’s school and the castle in Freehold are just the places that is described in most detail. The other might be the Veriga’s secret room and the ship. The poor areas and such is barely even mentioned, we don’t really know much about them. The most thing we could get from the book are from the culture of the rich.
As for paper. Yes for thousand of years people had made paper, but, even by machine, a sheet of paper take days to make. Ink isn’t also made with just a flick of the hand. Bookbinding (essentially sewing the pages together) isn’t really that fast either. Also, it is obvious that there is a very strong limitation in using magic; like it can’t be excecuted at great speed and the need for concentration. It is clear that the kind of magic in Astlan doesn’t lend well for production in masse especially of intricate things like bookmaking. It would have deplete their magical reserves very soon or fatigued their mind from constant concentrating. Imagine how mind numbing it might be for a wizard to ‘xerox’ a thousand page book and then turn it into a book.
Armor and space suit? Huh? An airconditioned armor does not a space suit make. Especially when space suit isn’t comfortable, restrict movement, and is no barrier agains a sword.
As for soldiers, what they wear might be of similar purpose. A candle and an LED light has similar purpose but I won’t say that they are of the same technological level. A chain mail and kevlar? You must be kidding me. Want your soldiers walk to Afghanistan in chain mail?
As for this backwater thing. As I just mentioned the most described in the book are the rich.
The poor people? I don’t really know much about them, except maybe that some soldier whip them when they are not able to pay their taxes. Of course they probably be using oil lamps or cressets instead of candles and those glowing globes. They might be binding their feet with rough cloth instead of wearing boots and high heels. They might be living in mud shacks with earth floor instead of ‘brick’ castles with parquet floors. I just don’t know. There is barely any mention of them.
As for the temperature in the Abyss. When Tom was in the “The Ripe Young Maiden’s Surprise” he made the comment about the temperature in the Abyss. It is about the temperature of boiling water. Even half the temperature of boiling point of water is still very hot. Storing chemicals in that temperature isn’t really advised, alcohol is one of them.
But please. These kind of things doesn’t really bother much my reading experience. Put them behind my mind
I would have to completely disagree with rationalized away.
It is all a very intentional and when factoring in economics, quite logical and realistic.
First though: I want to point out that you are also failing to integrate the other races, some of which are very old, and who do trade with the humans.
Gnomes, Elves and Dwarves in particular. Very highly skilled craftsmen, with fairly stable cultures for long periods of time. Different races develop different things, some they sell, some secrets they reveal, others they keep for themselves. It’s a question of production capacity, time and money.
In particular fine metal work, glass work, jewelry etc. These guys produce lots of really great stuff, but they live in relative isolation from most humans, or at least their production facilities are. They produce this stuff for themselves, and their excess they trade/sell. The rich in the rest of the world get access to these high quality products, the poor do not. Acquisition and distribution of said merchandise is a huge issue on top of production capacity and excess stock.Inconsistencies with who has what/old and new are easily understood in terms of trade. Astlan is not a utopia, there is a very real level of income/power inequality, and because travel and transportation is not democratized, the geographical scale on which this inequality persists is much shorter.
Those who have magic, have a lot of luxuries and “high magic tech” those without, can lead relatively primitive lives, very similar to medieval Europe.
Thus you see some huge differences like the ones you describe. There are very high tech things, but production and distribution are not democratized.Most of Astlan is still feudal. In many ways it is an Ayn Rand paradise.
If you must compare to Earth, a better example might be the third world today. People in many countries don’t have indoor plumbing, but they can tweet and use twitter/facebook via cell phone, while squatting over a hole in the ground, and they don’t have TV in their homes but can go to a bar in town to watch the world cup on satellite TV.
Book making, book binding ehh…all comes down to making and reproducing books. Very easy to do with Sorcery and Alchemy. The actual hardest part is paper production, but that as you recall has been done on Earth for a couple thousand years. Some people do have movable type printing presses but it’s not that critical when you have mimeograph/xerox like capabilities.
Plate armor, chainmail etc are pretty good when you have magic to back them up and your primary weapons are swords etc. And I point out that Talarius’s plate armor is basically a space suit. It works very well against flame weapons and lots of other attacks (and is currently keeping him alive in the Abyss)
I don’t quite get your argument there, though, I have to admit. Have you looked at how modern soldiers dress? They wear a ton of armor, plate armor with Kevlar (similar purpose to chainmail) they just put clothes on the outside of the plates and the plates aren’t usually metal. Look at modern SWAT teams in large cities.
And yes, I can compare magical healing to surgical stitches. I did in my last post. Here’s the thing, if you have something that works very well (magical healing) traditional surgical techniques will be very primitive because there is no need to improve them. Stitching and normal medicine are only used when there is no priestly or magical healing around. Only poor people in backwaters need it etc. So therefore there won’t be a lot of advances in the science/techniques.
This is actually true for a lot of things in Astlan. Many things still seem backwater to you, because due to the existence of magic, those with access to it can use magic to do what they need done, there is no real incentive to advance more mundane things that the poor/magic poor people could use since the rich have a better solution at hand.
And when stuff trickles down to the poorer people? Why build land line phone infrastructure, just give people cheap cell phones to keep them happy. Sure 2G/3G Internet on a cell phone isn’t good, particularly for a computer, but without the land line structure for towers, it takes time to ramp 4G up. And even then those people aren’t going to get fiber optic speed ever. However, for now, they can marginally interact with the rest of the world.
The economic logic above is what leads to what you term as inconsistencies. Poor/selfish trade policies, no democratized transportation, isolated mass production centers/culture centers and a way for the oligarchs to get what they want with magic that they control and only “trickling down” some magic to others
I also think I did say that the cars really only function in the courts where the temperatures about half that of the rest of the Abyss? So alcohol is not a problem
You are hitting it on the head with the demons though. Think Mad Max, they don’t have the structure to make things, they steal, fix, jerry-rig etc. So it’s all a hodge podge. And they don’t share without getting something in return.
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