Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)
- Thread starter Shadestyle
- Start date
- Pronouns
- He
Hmmmm...
I have some ideas for Arc Furnace we might be able to pull off.
We have a bunch of types to mutate bioelectricity into things.
We just need a way to have the organic handle or pipe away the heat. We might be able to tweak the one that makes plants try to feed on heat into something useful in this regard? Turning waste heat into MORE electricty, and some kind of pandore component to keep the steadily escalating power under control?
I have some ideas for Arc Furnace we might be able to pull off.
We have a bunch of types to mutate bioelectricity into things.
We just need a way to have the organic handle or pipe away the heat. We might be able to tweak the one that makes plants try to feed on heat into something useful in this regard? Turning waste heat into MORE electricty, and some kind of pandore component to keep the steadily escalating power under control?
- Location
- ?????????
Can we make Golems? Because if so those will be interesting.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
My attunement chain ideas?
Transmute > Stone > Lead.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Lead.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Lead.
Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Hellforge + Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Hellforge + Defined Pandore Transmutation.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Defined Pandore Transmutation.
Hellforge + Defined Selenium Transmutation.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Defined Selenium Transmutation.
Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge.
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Palladium)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Pandore)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Palladium)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Pandore)
Arcane > (Thaum > Palladium) > Eye.
Arcane > (Thaum > Fluorine) > Eye.
Arcane > (Thaum > Pandore) > Eye.
Arcane > Eye > Paper.
Arcane > Paper > Eye.
Arcane > Palladium.
(Arcane > Chromium) + (Thaum > Palladium).
Thaum > Chromium > Palladium.
Thaum > Sugar > Pandore > Sulfur.
Thaum > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Sisyphium > Brain.
Arcane > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Brain > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Eye > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Sisyphium > Eye.
Thaum > Rhodium > Fluorine.
Thaum > Fluorine > Rhodium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Sisyphium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Pandore.
Thaum > Thunderbolt Iron.
Thaum > Mortal Silver.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Lead.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Lead.
Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Cadmium.
Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Pig Iron.
Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Hellforge + Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Heart.
Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Hellforge + Defined Pandore Transmutation.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Defined Pandore Transmutation.
Hellforge + Defined Selenium Transmutation.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Defined Selenium Transmutation.
Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Timeshift Crystal.
Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Aluminum.
Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Copper.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge.
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Palladium)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Pandore)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Palladium)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Pandore)
Arcane > (Thaum > Palladium) > Eye.
Arcane > (Thaum > Fluorine) > Eye.
Arcane > (Thaum > Pandore) > Eye.
Arcane > Eye > Paper.
Arcane > Paper > Eye.
Arcane > Palladium.
(Arcane > Chromium) + (Thaum > Palladium).
Thaum > Chromium > Palladium.
Thaum > Sugar > Pandore > Sulfur.
Thaum > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Sisyphium > Brain.
Arcane > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Brain > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Eye > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Sisyphium > Eye.
Thaum > Rhodium > Fluorine.
Thaum > Fluorine > Rhodium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Sisyphium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Pandore.
Thaum > Thunderbolt Iron.
Thaum > Mortal Silver.
So excess heat that leaves the furnace is consumed and channeled back in?
Yes, we've made Bird Golems. We should try Humanoid Golems at some point.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He
More like heat in the chamber? I guess?
Im just thinking that, if we make the furnace out of plants, which is our best chance right now, the plants need a way to survive the heat kicking around inside the chamber. And the most obvious way to do that seems to be making it so that the plants are somehow helped by the heat and can use it, rather then simply trying to block it out.
In theroy, as long as the metal continues to heat up faster then the plants can eat the heat
And as long as the plants can eat enough heat to stay alive, we could make a stable system.
I THINK arc furnaces are usualy a bit more focused in how they apply heat using electricty, so that might help as well. I think its worth looking into.
Of course, if we want to work the Hellwater Metals in this way, we might want some kind of attached chamber to store the vapors in. No telling what this stuff gives off as waste product.
Im just thinking that, if we make the furnace out of plants, which is our best chance right now, the plants need a way to survive the heat kicking around inside the chamber. And the most obvious way to do that seems to be making it so that the plants are somehow helped by the heat and can use it, rather then simply trying to block it out.
In theroy, as long as the metal continues to heat up faster then the plants can eat the heat
And as long as the plants can eat enough heat to stay alive, we could make a stable system.
I THINK arc furnaces are usualy a bit more focused in how they apply heat using electricty, so that might help as well. I think its worth looking into.
Of course, if we want to work the Hellwater Metals in this way, we might want some kind of attached chamber to store the vapors in. No telling what this stuff gives off as waste product.
Yea. Here are my favorites at a glance:
Transmute > Heart > Stone.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Palladium)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Pandore)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Arcane > (Thaum > Palladium) > Eye.
Arcane > Eye > Paper.
Arcane > Paper > Eye.
Arcane > Palladium.
Thaum > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Sisyphium > Brain.
Arcane > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Rhodium > Fluorine.
Thaum > Fluorine > Rhodium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Sisyphium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Pandore.
Thaum > Thunderbolt Iron.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge + Transmute > Stone > Voidmetal.
Emerald Cultivation + Hellforge
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Palladium)
Emerald Cultivation + (Thaum > Pandore)
Hellforge + (Thaum > Fluorine)
Arcane > (Thaum > Palladium) > Eye.
Arcane > Eye > Paper.
Arcane > Paper > Eye.
Arcane > Palladium.
Thaum > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Sisyphium > Brain.
Arcane > Sisyphium.
Arcane > Brain > Sisyphium.
Thaum > Rhodium > Fluorine.
Thaum > Fluorine > Rhodium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Sisyphium.
(Construct + Barrier + Shell) > Pandore.
Thaum > Thunderbolt Iron.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Idea:
Another one of interest:
- Get Egg
- Use Arcane > Cadmium on Egg
- Create incubation zone(Heat and Time Acceleration Magics) and wait for the Dragon to hatch.
| Thaum > Tungsten > Plant | Heatseeker Plant | Liquid | This mana makes plants grow towards hot objects until they are close enough to absorb the waste energy emitted from them. | Plants lose the ability to absorb waste energy without a supply of mana. |
| Thaum > Sugar | Rapid Energy | Liquid | This mana increases the energy and instability of what it is applied to. | |
| Thaum > Sweat | Power Spark | Liquid | This mana amplifies nearby energy present in living material. Sweat begins to spark and glow in the presence of this mana. |
| Thaum > Manganese > Blood | Purge Impure Vitae | Liquid | This mana purges a target of impure vitality | The target is weakened, but made more stable, due to lack of vital impurities reacting to create greater magical power. |
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Hmm, considering the current situation, it might be worth trying to see if we actually can...
[x][Simple] Thaum>DNA
[x][Simple] Thaum>Mitochondria
[x][Simple] Arcane>DNA
[x][Simple] Arcane>Mitochondria
Just see if we actually can attune to cellular organelles, or if they're not considered separate.
Maybe try pulsing mana through her body again to see if we get more information, too; Taylor's power seems to be being more forthcoming/talkative lately...
[x][Simple] Thaum>DNA
[x][Simple] Thaum>Mitochondria
[x][Simple] Arcane>DNA
[x][Simple] Arcane>Mitochondria
Just see if we actually can attune to cellular organelles, or if they're not considered separate.
Maybe try pulsing mana through her body again to see if we get more information, too; Taylor's power seems to be being more forthcoming/talkative lately...
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Rethinking the hellish materials and here is my guess to how it works:
Iron = The Blade by Which the Wrathful Strike
Gold = The Treasure the Greedy Seek
Silver = The Pure Metal the Prideful wear.
Cloth/Fabric = The Bedding in Which The Slothful Rest
- = Envy
Apple = The Food The Gluttonous Feast Upon
- = Lust
Iron = The Blade by Which the Wrathful Strike
Gold = The Treasure the Greedy Seek
Silver = The Pure Metal the Prideful wear.
Cloth/Fabric = The Bedding in Which The Slothful Rest
- = Envy
Apple = The Food The Gluttonous Feast Upon
- = Lust
I were trying to make a spell for setting up our chop each morning,and I think I, um, kinda overdid something:
With a skip and a hopp, I set up my shop
With a spell and a smile, I stock now each isle
With the sun in my hair, I decorate my lair
So come sun and come moon
Come arcane waters
Come true and come soon
Come to your daughters
It's a magical place, so the new day embrace
Where each shelf stocks itself, as swift as an elf
So I tell each shopper, that time's made of copper
So you tell each buyer, they me should admire
So with dance and with laugher, c'mon just look at her
With Sage and with Rhyme , there will be no rrime
For see Sage pays your wage, it's no cage, quell your rage
For I gauge that my phage can engage at this stage
For I am a mage, now onstage, flip the page
It will only assuage, cure old age, it's no plague
No-one can me upstage, so come join my menague
Yes come Gentleman, Lady
Come great and come small
Come browse at in my hall, 'cause it has it all
Phantom keratin wind, to my will be consigned
Strong iron of force, Put each good on it's course
Oh splendor of chrome, scour the filth from my home
Sun's rays shining as gold, feed the plants but kill mold
Manganese expressing, fill my shop with your blessing
Arcane diamond sprite, price and purpose recite
Graphite realm of the living, your gift keep on giving
Yes with a skip and a hopp, I set up my shop
With each trinket and pet, market demand be met
Let me open your door, to these wonders and more.
Welcome all, to the boutique of Sage.
I'm thinking this needs to be cut apart into several spells somehow, and some of the bloat trimmed away, but I'm not really good at that part. With a spell and a smile, I stock now each isle
With the sun in my hair, I decorate my lair
So come sun and come moon
Come arcane waters
Come true and come soon
Come to your daughters
It's a magical place, so the new day embrace
Where each shelf stocks itself, as swift as an elf
So I tell each shopper, that time's made of copper
So you tell each buyer, they me should admire
So with dance and with laugher, c'mon just look at her
With Sage and with Rhyme , there will be no rrime
For see Sage pays your wage, it's no cage, quell your rage
For I gauge that my phage can engage at this stage
For I am a mage, now onstage, flip the page
It will only assuage, cure old age, it's no plague
No-one can me upstage, so come join my menague
Yes come Gentleman, Lady
Come great and come small
Come browse at in my hall, 'cause it has it all
Phantom keratin wind, to my will be consigned
Strong iron of force, Put each good on it's course
Oh splendor of chrome, scour the filth from my home
Sun's rays shining as gold, feed the plants but kill mold
Manganese expressing, fill my shop with your blessing
Arcane diamond sprite, price and purpose recite
Graphite realm of the living, your gift keep on giving
Yes with a skip and a hopp, I set up my shop
With each trinket and pet, market demand be met
Let me open your door, to these wonders and more.
Welcome all, to the boutique of Sage.
Last edited:
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
The DNA thing is the result of our Magic Body stat, it's nothing to be cured, really.
As a Fellow Poet, let me try, comrade.
With a skip and a hop,
I set up my shop.
Strong iron of force,
Put each good on it's course.
Oh splendor of chrome,
scour the filth from my home.
Sun's rays shining as gold,
feed the plants but kill mold.
Manganese expressing,
fill my shop with your blessing.
Arcane diamond sprite,
price and purpose recite.
Graphite realm of the living,
your gift keep on giving.
Yes with a skip and a hop,
I set up my shop!
Yes! Come great! Come small!
Come browse within my walls!
Explore the wares!
Let them capture your stares!
Charms to ward away any foe,
And many more did the world not know!
Works once unseen to this age,
Now lie within the halls of Sage!
Hope that works?I set up my shop.
Strong iron of force,
Put each good on it's course.
Oh splendor of chrome,
scour the filth from my home.
Sun's rays shining as gold,
feed the plants but kill mold.
Manganese expressing,
fill my shop with your blessing.
Arcane diamond sprite,
price and purpose recite.
Graphite realm of the living,
your gift keep on giving.
Yes with a skip and a hop,
I set up my shop!
Yes! Come great! Come small!
Come browse within my walls!
Explore the wares!
Let them capture your stares!
Charms to ward away any foe,
And many more did the world not know!
Works once unseen to this age,
Now lie within the halls of Sage!
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Oh, I wouldn't expect it to 'cure' the condition. Just wondering if mana channeling is precise enough to target at that level. And what kinds of things we'd get from attuning to cellular organelles.
Actually, I would expect for attuning at the microscopic level to actually accelerate the transition to a magic-based biology, if anything.
Actually, I would expect for attuning at the microscopic level to actually accelerate the transition to a magic-based biology, if anything.
In terms of magical theory, there is one thing that I'd like to try out the next time we get to vote.
As I remember, we know that Thaum and Arcane mana are what you get when Taylor's Mana aligns with Air and Water, respectively, before attuning to something else. What do these 2 things have in common? They're 2 of the 4 "classical" elements - Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. Given that, I feel that it would likely be useful for us to try and attune mana to Earth and Fire in the same way we did Water to discover Arcane Mana - it might also serve us well to try to use Wood like that as well, given that our runic experiment with the Pentagon listed Wood as one of the elements along the classical 4.
In terms of our long-term projects, though, I feel that it might serve us well to actually try and create a workspace where it's actually safe for us to work with some of the more funky Alchemical magic - Given how much our power seems to warn us about it, I think trying to keep safe about it so that we can see how the more weird, hostile to human life stuff, like Perform Alchemy, or Dual of Ideals, actually works in practice - I feel like a lot of Alchemical Magic could be really cool, if we just figured out how it works, and how to use it safely.
As I remember, we know that Thaum and Arcane mana are what you get when Taylor's Mana aligns with Air and Water, respectively, before attuning to something else. What do these 2 things have in common? They're 2 of the 4 "classical" elements - Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. Given that, I feel that it would likely be useful for us to try and attune mana to Earth and Fire in the same way we did Water to discover Arcane Mana - it might also serve us well to try to use Wood like that as well, given that our runic experiment with the Pentagon listed Wood as one of the elements along the classical 4.
In terms of our long-term projects, though, I feel that it might serve us well to actually try and create a workspace where it's actually safe for us to work with some of the more funky Alchemical magic - Given how much our power seems to warn us about it, I think trying to keep safe about it so that we can see how the more weird, hostile to human life stuff, like Perform Alchemy, or Dual of Ideals, actually works in practice - I feel like a lot of Alchemical Magic could be really cool, if we just figured out how it works, and how to use it safely.
Wood, fire, earth, metal and water are the chinese classical elements.
The thing about setting up a workspace is that in the longer term we might need a large amount of space for farming, and to be far away from prying eyes. Hence the forest visit.
But we should definitely set up a fume hood with a bunch of enchantments for protection, just make sure we can move it later.
But we should definitely set up a fume hood with a bunch of enchantments for protection, just make sure we can move it later.
- Location
- Dragyxx
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Really, given our now-proven ability to set up self-sustaining fully-automated ecosystem/farm/factories, available workspace is really the only limit to our output, at least for plant-based products. Probably want something nice, secret and secure for our actual experimentation space.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
It has the same effect really, so they would be 2 poems for one effect, just trash it.
Honestly, next business vote we should buy a bunch of chemical supplies for our new workshop.
Yeah, personally if we can manage to put a lab in the void between worlds, that will be really useful. We can make artificial daylight easily, so photosynthesis won't be an issue.
I am disappointed I can't just copy-paste an image into SV... And the insert image button just gives "something went wrong, try again" so not sure how well this will work...
Anyways, I was curious if any patterns arose out of mana types from the periodic table, thus this:
imgur.com/a/lCt51YP
It also shows what elements we still need to acquire and test!
Edit: small mistake as we have tested Scandium
Anyways, I was curious if any patterns arose out of mana types from the periodic table, thus this:
imgur.com/a/lCt51YP
Edit: small mistake as we have tested Scandium
Last edited:
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
The issue was that you didn't try the image link, but rather the album link.I am disappointed I can't just copy-paste an image into SV... And the insert image button just gives "something went wrong, try again" so not sure how well this will work...
Anyways, I was curious if any patterns arose out of mana types from the periodic table, thus this:
It also shows what elements we still need to acquire and test!
Not seeing any pattern, and I don't think that's productive. We're talking Platonic Forms and Ideals, elements will be random.
The Shallow
Shallow, Yet Deep
- Location
- Your Universe
- Pronouns
- She/They
Considering the nature of magic, how long till we can heal by balancing the 4 humors? I think that would be something we should try to achieve...
What brand of mana though...?
What brand of mana though...?
Chapter 19.4
- Location
- OK
Amy didn't seem concerned, but I absolutely was. My body was melting from the inside? My DNA was decaying?
It was horrific, and what it meant for me...
"Amy, what would happen if I lost my power? If it were suppressed, or something?" I asked. I knew enough to consider the threat that a trump might pose to me, if they distorted or canceled out my ability.
She shrugs. "Right now, you would probably get really sick as some of your cells died off. Nothing too serious. By the way, what exactly did you do to your fingers? I don't mean to pry, but what I'm picking up off of those isn't some casual modification. Whatever happened, you've also got DNA expressing those petrified and wooden parts. It's like you were born with them, rather than something that was added on after," she says, returning my hands to normal with absolute ease.
Letting go with clear hesitation, she continues. "I fixed the actual fingertips, but I'll be honest, there's not much I can do for your DNA. I could give you a copy of someone else's if you wanted, but it's not like I have a perfect memory of what yours looked like," she says.
"No, I think I'll be alright," I say, not really feeling like I'm telling the whole truth.
"If it makes you feel any better, your body was already rejecting the alterations. Whatever part of your power has your bodyplan mapped on it, it isn't accepting changes right now. Visit me a week from now and I could probably tell you how you're doing. No charge," she jokes, making me smile a bit.
I wave as I head back home. My DNA was decaying, but it was also rejecting the changes that came with it. My soul was rejecting things that weren't me.
What did that mean? Would my body reject other changes? If there wasn't anything other than my magic regulating my body's form, would my hair stop growing? Would it grow back when cut?
Suddenly, all the side effects of my healing magic made some more sense, from a certain twisted perspective. It wasn't that I cheated the process of healing through magic. It was merely that I traded one kind of recovery for another. If she was right, something like the softness of diamond magic might eventually fade if I used it to heal myself. Even if it didn't, the way she spoke implied that my cells were 'Migrating', for lack of a better word, being turned into raw material by my bones in an endless cycle.
It made some of the magic I had discovered seem terribly mundane. An attunement that makes a person grow biological fibers over their wounds that take over nearby cells and control them?
A party favor compared to someone's cells casually carrying along in spite of deep, fundamental damage, or their bones emulsifying things, only for those things to themselves be consumed for cellular processes.
A chill ran down my spine. I didn't need Panacea to tell me what would happen to a body like mine that lacked a soul.
After all, I had already created creatures like that. Monsters reliant on mana to sustain their decaying forms, to stave off inertion.
As I slipped off my costume with plant manipulation, the mass of fibers slipping into my messenger bag quietly in moments, I couldn't help but think it was a bit comforting, from that same twisted perspective.
I didn't want to disfigure myself with magic, and it seems my magic more than agreed.
What Panacea mentioned near the end didn't escape my thoughts either, and as I walked through the door of my home, I considered the Thaumic Collapse. Magic's answer to complexity.
There was too much mana, too much energy, too much information in one place, and it spilled out into its surroundings. One thing I realize now is that this isn't the first time I've seen this effect. I just didn't know what I was looking at at the time. Like looking at a candle from far away, I couldn't tell quite what it was doing.
Dust magic.
It made sense, too, something in my mind seemed to correlate the two. Too much complexity, too many distinct interactions. My magic didn't turn water into mana, and it didn't turn aggregates into mana. It didn't turn pebbles or gravel or well-packed dirt into mana either. Ball bearings, BB's, none of those would do the trick. Dust magic could only let me turn a substance into mana if it were in a powdery form.
I was reminded of one of the ancient questions that didn't really have a proper answer. How many grains of sand are there in a pile?
I grabbed a handful of soil, and applied mana to it, turning the entire mass of dirt into Dirt Mana.
There was a butter-zone, a sweet spot between something so small as to no longer be a distinct object, and too large to effectively turn into pure mana.
The reason dust turns into mana when mana is applied is simple, I could tell now as my power helpfully logged the twelve billion mana interactions that took place, in the moments before it ceased to be.
It was just a tiny version of a Thaumic Collapse. Mana interacting with dust interacted with the dust and the air billions of times, billions of distinct, minuscule interactions that took up too great a volume of information to fit in the tiny space it was alotted. Reality blurred on a microscopic scale, a scale upon which there was only two things that could be blurred together. Only two bits of reality that could meddle with one another like peanut butter splattering onto a piece of chocolate.
Substance and Mana. Dirt + Mana = Dirt Mana.
It was incredible, and demonstrated to me the gravity of magic. In order to create magic without a Soul, you either needed my parahuman ability, or you had to tear reality apart, tear it apart on such a grand scale that matter couldn't remember what it was supposed to be anymore.
Tear it apart on such a fine scale that you confused mere motes of dust into mistaking themselves for the magic around them.
And all any old buffoon had to do was toss some dirt at a blob of magic to do it.
I decided to shell out a thousand dollars and change to buy some important materials for my work as Sage. I bought several phones, electric motors, and other assorted parts to help with designing and creating a few things.
Firstly, I started on Lisa's phone. Three phones ended up scrapped when I found out that silicon chips react incredibly poorly to undirected magic, growing and breaking apart the fragile electronics. I was eventually able to fix the problem, manipulating a phone with alchemy to steal away the concepts from its internal electronics, applying those to structures I crafted from Crystaline Flesh instead. The resultant parts seemed to hum with a low, mournful sound as I slowly clipped them into the phone's internal places.
As I constructed the phone, I began to weave together magic.
"A villain's brought my blood to boil," I spoke, attaching a small platinum chamber where the battery went, and filling it with swirling mana.
"Device, guard against the menace Coil" I said, soldering together the parts I took out, using gallium magic to force everything into place by warping its form.
"Anoint you with a sacred oil" I intoned, wiping everything down with mineral oil to protect it.
"A mana test, that is his foil" I explained, grabbing three beads of copper, silver and gold, metals I hadn't tested all the interactions of, and soldering them into a spot near the mana chamber.
"Therefore I in transmutation toil" I expressed, transmuting parts of the phone into my bird Golem Core material, to give me some control over its processing and thinking.
"Eldritch power, earthly soil" The core, nestled into a bit of dirt that several of the more plant-like crystals snuggled into, began to pulse softly.
"Us from trouble un-embroil" I finished, clipping the smartphone back together, and turning it on with crossed fingers.
The phone turned on, platinum mana engine softly converting a packet of quadruple-compressed air dust into lightning mana to power the various components, while the Eldritch Relay fed in a steady stream of my own magic into the mix, powering the enchanted clay transmutation device that would draw in air for consumption.
Walking through the phone's startup, I swiped over to the app that my magic had left embedded in its makeup.
"SageAdvise" was the app's name. The pun made me a bit ill, considering that the core was acting off of my intentions, and I'm pretty sure I still hated puns.
Opening the app, the phone began to rattle a bit, and I could see thin fillaments of crystal creep out of the seams of the plastic case, rainbow colored material spreading like mycelium over it.
The app had a few different options, including a dead-man's switch, an instant alert, and one that would alert me if the phone was destroyed, or if Lisa didn't put in a password after so long.
When I closed out of the app, the crystalline flesh retracted back into the phone, parts of it dissolving into motes of light as if they never existed.
It was time to present the phone to Lisa, and with it...
I grabbed the briefcase of papers that I had filled with The Language, eager to see if her Thinker Ability could make some sense of it.
Lisa was often a bit too smug and snide for my liking, but I have to admit, seeing her look at the phone like it was ready to bite her didn't quite evoke the schadenfreude that I expected when we met at my office near the boardwalk. She came in a simple balaclava and suit, looking to the world like a literal corporate goon.
Naturally, she ditched the getup the minute we were inside and I took a few moments to weld the doors shut with some wheatgrass for privacy.
"Your powers really are bullshit, aren't they? You just made shit up and somehow added an app to a phone on the hardware level. No tinkering, nothing. Just casually threw some random parts in and leaned on the case until it all fit, huh?" she says, picking up the crystal-infested device and swiping through it.
"You really went all out, huh? This phone isn't cheap, even before you got your mitts on it," she asks rhetorically.
I shrug. "It seemed like the right thing to do. In return, I've got a job for you to do. One of my powers produced some weird text that I need translated, and you seemed like the right person to try and figure it out," I explain, opening the briefcase and showing her the papers.
She glances over them a bit, frowning. "You know I need information before I can do my thing, right? There's only so much I can intuit from gibberish."
"What's your best guess, then, just from this so far? I can do some more tests to get the info you need, just name it," I explain, prepared with another stack of blank paper.
"Well, it's a wavy, curving, flowing script. It's definitely a language, a descriptive one that reuses a lot of the same strings and 'letters', and a lot of this is just the same text either looping or rephrased, like a college student trying to squeak out a thousand words when a hundred is plenty," she says, shrugging.
"Can you show me you making it? It might help," she insists, and I do so, writing down The Language with a surge of arcane magic.
Her eyes widen, and she moves the paper closer to me. "Do it again," she insists.
Again, I write down the flowing, smooth script.
She scoots it closer to herself, and I pick up on the unspoken command.
"Lisa? Lisa!" I shout, grabbing her as her nose trickles red.
"It's all water, all of it. It's all water," she repeats, rubbing her eyes and breathing frantically.
"What are you talking about? What's all water, Lisa?" I ask, summoning up magic to try and heal her.
She shoves me away. "It's all water, don't you get it, you dolt? Oh, fuck my head hurts so bad," she says, leaning back in her chair.
"It's water, this script of yours, it's describing the world as if it were water alone," she says.
She opens her mouth, and the words that come out grate at me with their familiarity, words tumbling out of her mouth in no known language.
"Shha shh splash slush tsss t' Fff chsh, squelch" she says, trailing off into more and more incoherent phrases and sounds.
She bites her tongue, and I quickly channel magic into her, trying to keep her from having a stroke.
As I heal her, she reverts back to English, not seeming to notice the transition.
"The winding rivers of the well-rained lakespan flows through the slush of the branched rivers and its streams ending without lakes rising-without-risewater through rivers upstream and the stream curls upstream like waterfalls that drizzle," she cuts herself off, hand pressed firmly over her eyes.
Her breathing calms, but I keep the magic woven around her just in case as I drag over over to a bed that I form out of hastily thrown together mosses.
"Imagine a person made out of nothing but water, suspended in place, and imagine trying to describe what they're shaped like using only terms you apply to pure unadulterated water. This language doesn't even have a word for salt, salt is what this language describes as the 'stillwater-like un-risewatered from the ocean'. It's describing salt like some kind of oceanic ice that evaporates in reverse!" she says, jabbing a finger at the salt shaker on the counter, where I had the microwave and coffeemaker set up.
"It even has phrases describing how it 'branches the slushrivers of the ocean from the slushrivers of the river'. It's talking about fucking freshwater fish, it can't even explain what meat is, the closest equivalent is apparently slush, which is somehow close enough to water to count even though it also doesn't have a word for ice! It doesn't distinguish between stagnant water and ice either, it's all just stillwater, it doesn't actually describe the existence of something that isn't water, that could theoretically hold it. It's all just moving or still water, whether it's ice aboveground or water in a pool," she insists.
"It's not just describing that shit with language, either, the math is all there too, those curves have some kind of fucked up pattern to them, you could plug some of that shit into a graphing calculator and you'd get out tidal currents from last year, and it's really making my head hurt," she says, forcing herself to look away from it.
"I am so sorry, I had no clue that would happen," I say, my face hot with embarrassment and shame.
She touches a hand to her mouth, feeling the blood from earlier. "Fuck, this is rough. Look, it's not your fault, blah blah blah platitudes. My power got away from me somehow. Don't worry about it," she says, much more coherently now that I've finished healing her.
She sits up and grabs her phone.
"I'm not translating all of that shit, but I'll try to get some of the words down if you'll give me a month or so, and keep that healing coming," she explains, glancing at the papers with a grimace.
My own power helpfully and happily took that moment to respond. "The Language" was now renamed to something more accurate. "Scribe Elemental Language of Water"
"You really don't have to..." I said, worried about her.
She waves me off. "It's fine. It took you like a minute to heal the Thinker headache. We'll get into how people would kill a lot of other people to get their hands on that next time I come around. See you. I'm taking a half day," she says, jabbing a thumb at the door and glancing at me.
I didn't move, but the plant matter sealing the door from any interlopers shifted away and allowed her to exit the building.
It seems every answer I wrench out of my magic has to come with all the revelatory panic of a Lovecraft novel's finale, and I dreaded the thought I had reminded myself of. My magic was proving further and further that whatever my power was, it had a mind of its own, and I was filled with the curiosity to explore that.
I bought more than enough raw materials to work on that particular project, once my pounding heart settled and I managed to take my mind off of Lisa speaking in tongues in what seemed to be a Thinker-induced psychotic break.
A pound of gold powder, converted into silicon powder through some trickery and transmutation, hundreds of pounds of quartz and cast iron, and of course, a ton of clay sediment for transmutation of air into air powder for multiplication of a Thaumic-like mana.
Enough raw material to gather mana sufficient to summon something so mysterious and unknowable as the source of my parahuman abilities.
Oh, and a pack of chalk, for drawing the spooky ritual circle and the pentagrams and pentacles I planned on absolutely shrouding my testing area in before I dared attempt it.
I learned my lesson, when it comes to tampering with forces beyond my comprehension.
It was horrific, and what it meant for me...
"Amy, what would happen if I lost my power? If it were suppressed, or something?" I asked. I knew enough to consider the threat that a trump might pose to me, if they distorted or canceled out my ability.
She shrugs. "Right now, you would probably get really sick as some of your cells died off. Nothing too serious. By the way, what exactly did you do to your fingers? I don't mean to pry, but what I'm picking up off of those isn't some casual modification. Whatever happened, you've also got DNA expressing those petrified and wooden parts. It's like you were born with them, rather than something that was added on after," she says, returning my hands to normal with absolute ease.
Letting go with clear hesitation, she continues. "I fixed the actual fingertips, but I'll be honest, there's not much I can do for your DNA. I could give you a copy of someone else's if you wanted, but it's not like I have a perfect memory of what yours looked like," she says.
"No, I think I'll be alright," I say, not really feeling like I'm telling the whole truth.
"If it makes you feel any better, your body was already rejecting the alterations. Whatever part of your power has your bodyplan mapped on it, it isn't accepting changes right now. Visit me a week from now and I could probably tell you how you're doing. No charge," she jokes, making me smile a bit.
I wave as I head back home. My DNA was decaying, but it was also rejecting the changes that came with it. My soul was rejecting things that weren't me.
What did that mean? Would my body reject other changes? If there wasn't anything other than my magic regulating my body's form, would my hair stop growing? Would it grow back when cut?
Suddenly, all the side effects of my healing magic made some more sense, from a certain twisted perspective. It wasn't that I cheated the process of healing through magic. It was merely that I traded one kind of recovery for another. If she was right, something like the softness of diamond magic might eventually fade if I used it to heal myself. Even if it didn't, the way she spoke implied that my cells were 'Migrating', for lack of a better word, being turned into raw material by my bones in an endless cycle.
It made some of the magic I had discovered seem terribly mundane. An attunement that makes a person grow biological fibers over their wounds that take over nearby cells and control them?
A party favor compared to someone's cells casually carrying along in spite of deep, fundamental damage, or their bones emulsifying things, only for those things to themselves be consumed for cellular processes.
A chill ran down my spine. I didn't need Panacea to tell me what would happen to a body like mine that lacked a soul.
After all, I had already created creatures like that. Monsters reliant on mana to sustain their decaying forms, to stave off inertion.
As I slipped off my costume with plant manipulation, the mass of fibers slipping into my messenger bag quietly in moments, I couldn't help but think it was a bit comforting, from that same twisted perspective.
I didn't want to disfigure myself with magic, and it seems my magic more than agreed.
What Panacea mentioned near the end didn't escape my thoughts either, and as I walked through the door of my home, I considered the Thaumic Collapse. Magic's answer to complexity.
There was too much mana, too much energy, too much information in one place, and it spilled out into its surroundings. One thing I realize now is that this isn't the first time I've seen this effect. I just didn't know what I was looking at at the time. Like looking at a candle from far away, I couldn't tell quite what it was doing.
Dust magic.
It made sense, too, something in my mind seemed to correlate the two. Too much complexity, too many distinct interactions. My magic didn't turn water into mana, and it didn't turn aggregates into mana. It didn't turn pebbles or gravel or well-packed dirt into mana either. Ball bearings, BB's, none of those would do the trick. Dust magic could only let me turn a substance into mana if it were in a powdery form.
I was reminded of one of the ancient questions that didn't really have a proper answer. How many grains of sand are there in a pile?
I grabbed a handful of soil, and applied mana to it, turning the entire mass of dirt into Dirt Mana.
There was a butter-zone, a sweet spot between something so small as to no longer be a distinct object, and too large to effectively turn into pure mana.
The reason dust turns into mana when mana is applied is simple, I could tell now as my power helpfully logged the twelve billion mana interactions that took place, in the moments before it ceased to be.
It was just a tiny version of a Thaumic Collapse. Mana interacting with dust interacted with the dust and the air billions of times, billions of distinct, minuscule interactions that took up too great a volume of information to fit in the tiny space it was alotted. Reality blurred on a microscopic scale, a scale upon which there was only two things that could be blurred together. Only two bits of reality that could meddle with one another like peanut butter splattering onto a piece of chocolate.
Substance and Mana. Dirt + Mana = Dirt Mana.
It was incredible, and demonstrated to me the gravity of magic. In order to create magic without a Soul, you either needed my parahuman ability, or you had to tear reality apart, tear it apart on such a grand scale that matter couldn't remember what it was supposed to be anymore.
Tear it apart on such a fine scale that you confused mere motes of dust into mistaking themselves for the magic around them.
And all any old buffoon had to do was toss some dirt at a blob of magic to do it.
I decided to shell out a thousand dollars and change to buy some important materials for my work as Sage. I bought several phones, electric motors, and other assorted parts to help with designing and creating a few things.
Firstly, I started on Lisa's phone. Three phones ended up scrapped when I found out that silicon chips react incredibly poorly to undirected magic, growing and breaking apart the fragile electronics. I was eventually able to fix the problem, manipulating a phone with alchemy to steal away the concepts from its internal electronics, applying those to structures I crafted from Crystaline Flesh instead. The resultant parts seemed to hum with a low, mournful sound as I slowly clipped them into the phone's internal places.
As I constructed the phone, I began to weave together magic.
"A villain's brought my blood to boil," I spoke, attaching a small platinum chamber where the battery went, and filling it with swirling mana.
"Device, guard against the menace Coil" I said, soldering together the parts I took out, using gallium magic to force everything into place by warping its form.
"Anoint you with a sacred oil" I intoned, wiping everything down with mineral oil to protect it.
"A mana test, that is his foil" I explained, grabbing three beads of copper, silver and gold, metals I hadn't tested all the interactions of, and soldering them into a spot near the mana chamber.
"Therefore I in transmutation toil" I expressed, transmuting parts of the phone into my bird Golem Core material, to give me some control over its processing and thinking.
"Eldritch power, earthly soil" The core, nestled into a bit of dirt that several of the more plant-like crystals snuggled into, began to pulse softly.
"Us from trouble un-embroil" I finished, clipping the smartphone back together, and turning it on with crossed fingers.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 9, 7
The phone turned on, platinum mana engine softly converting a packet of quadruple-compressed air dust into lightning mana to power the various components, while the Eldritch Relay fed in a steady stream of my own magic into the mix, powering the enchanted clay transmutation device that would draw in air for consumption.
Walking through the phone's startup, I swiped over to the app that my magic had left embedded in its makeup.
"SageAdvise" was the app's name. The pun made me a bit ill, considering that the core was acting off of my intentions, and I'm pretty sure I still hated puns.
Opening the app, the phone began to rattle a bit, and I could see thin fillaments of crystal creep out of the seams of the plastic case, rainbow colored material spreading like mycelium over it.
The app had a few different options, including a dead-man's switch, an instant alert, and one that would alert me if the phone was destroyed, or if Lisa didn't put in a password after so long.
When I closed out of the app, the crystalline flesh retracted back into the phone, parts of it dissolving into motes of light as if they never existed.
It was time to present the phone to Lisa, and with it...
I grabbed the briefcase of papers that I had filled with The Language, eager to see if her Thinker Ability could make some sense of it.
Lisa was often a bit too smug and snide for my liking, but I have to admit, seeing her look at the phone like it was ready to bite her didn't quite evoke the schadenfreude that I expected when we met at my office near the boardwalk. She came in a simple balaclava and suit, looking to the world like a literal corporate goon.
Naturally, she ditched the getup the minute we were inside and I took a few moments to weld the doors shut with some wheatgrass for privacy.
"Your powers really are bullshit, aren't they? You just made shit up and somehow added an app to a phone on the hardware level. No tinkering, nothing. Just casually threw some random parts in and leaned on the case until it all fit, huh?" she says, picking up the crystal-infested device and swiping through it.
"You really went all out, huh? This phone isn't cheap, even before you got your mitts on it," she asks rhetorically.
I shrug. "It seemed like the right thing to do. In return, I've got a job for you to do. One of my powers produced some weird text that I need translated, and you seemed like the right person to try and figure it out," I explain, opening the briefcase and showing her the papers.
She glances over them a bit, frowning. "You know I need information before I can do my thing, right? There's only so much I can intuit from gibberish."
"What's your best guess, then, just from this so far? I can do some more tests to get the info you need, just name it," I explain, prepared with another stack of blank paper.
"Well, it's a wavy, curving, flowing script. It's definitely a language, a descriptive one that reuses a lot of the same strings and 'letters', and a lot of this is just the same text either looping or rephrased, like a college student trying to squeak out a thousand words when a hundred is plenty," she says, shrugging.
"Can you show me you making it? It might help," she insists, and I do so, writing down The Language with a surge of arcane magic.
Her eyes widen, and she moves the paper closer to me. "Do it again," she insists.
Again, I write down the flowing, smooth script.
She scoots it closer to herself, and I pick up on the unspoken command.
"Lisa? Lisa!" I shout, grabbing her as her nose trickles red.
"It's all water, all of it. It's all water," she repeats, rubbing her eyes and breathing frantically.
"What are you talking about? What's all water, Lisa?" I ask, summoning up magic to try and heal her.
She shoves me away. "It's all water, don't you get it, you dolt? Oh, fuck my head hurts so bad," she says, leaning back in her chair.
"It's water, this script of yours, it's describing the world as if it were water alone," she says.
She opens her mouth, and the words that come out grate at me with their familiarity, words tumbling out of her mouth in no known language.
"Shha shh splash slush tsss t' Fff chsh, squelch" she says, trailing off into more and more incoherent phrases and sounds.
She bites her tongue, and I quickly channel magic into her, trying to keep her from having a stroke.
As I heal her, she reverts back to English, not seeming to notice the transition.
"The winding rivers of the well-rained lakespan flows through the slush of the branched rivers and its streams ending without lakes rising-without-risewater through rivers upstream and the stream curls upstream like waterfalls that drizzle," she cuts herself off, hand pressed firmly over her eyes.
Her breathing calms, but I keep the magic woven around her just in case as I drag over over to a bed that I form out of hastily thrown together mosses.
"Imagine a person made out of nothing but water, suspended in place, and imagine trying to describe what they're shaped like using only terms you apply to pure unadulterated water. This language doesn't even have a word for salt, salt is what this language describes as the 'stillwater-like un-risewatered from the ocean'. It's describing salt like some kind of oceanic ice that evaporates in reverse!" she says, jabbing a finger at the salt shaker on the counter, where I had the microwave and coffeemaker set up.
"It even has phrases describing how it 'branches the slushrivers of the ocean from the slushrivers of the river'. It's talking about fucking freshwater fish, it can't even explain what meat is, the closest equivalent is apparently slush, which is somehow close enough to water to count even though it also doesn't have a word for ice! It doesn't distinguish between stagnant water and ice either, it's all just stillwater, it doesn't actually describe the existence of something that isn't water, that could theoretically hold it. It's all just moving or still water, whether it's ice aboveground or water in a pool," she insists.
"It's not just describing that shit with language, either, the math is all there too, those curves have some kind of fucked up pattern to them, you could plug some of that shit into a graphing calculator and you'd get out tidal currents from last year, and it's really making my head hurt," she says, forcing herself to look away from it.
"I am so sorry, I had no clue that would happen," I say, my face hot with embarrassment and shame.
She touches a hand to her mouth, feeling the blood from earlier. "Fuck, this is rough. Look, it's not your fault, blah blah blah platitudes. My power got away from me somehow. Don't worry about it," she says, much more coherently now that I've finished healing her.
She sits up and grabs her phone.
"I'm not translating all of that shit, but I'll try to get some of the words down if you'll give me a month or so, and keep that healing coming," she explains, glancing at the papers with a grimace.
My own power helpfully and happily took that moment to respond. "The Language" was now renamed to something more accurate. "Scribe Elemental Language of Water"
"You really don't have to..." I said, worried about her.
She waves me off. "It's fine. It took you like a minute to heal the Thinker headache. We'll get into how people would kill a lot of other people to get their hands on that next time I come around. See you. I'm taking a half day," she says, jabbing a thumb at the door and glancing at me.
I didn't move, but the plant matter sealing the door from any interlopers shifted away and allowed her to exit the building.
It seems every answer I wrench out of my magic has to come with all the revelatory panic of a Lovecraft novel's finale, and I dreaded the thought I had reminded myself of. My magic was proving further and further that whatever my power was, it had a mind of its own, and I was filled with the curiosity to explore that.
I bought more than enough raw materials to work on that particular project, once my pounding heart settled and I managed to take my mind off of Lisa speaking in tongues in what seemed to be a Thinker-induced psychotic break.
A pound of gold powder, converted into silicon powder through some trickery and transmutation, hundreds of pounds of quartz and cast iron, and of course, a ton of clay sediment for transmutation of air into air powder for multiplication of a Thaumic-like mana.
Enough raw material to gather mana sufficient to summon something so mysterious and unknowable as the source of my parahuman abilities.
Oh, and a pack of chalk, for drawing the spooky ritual circle and the pentagrams and pentacles I planned on absolutely shrouding my testing area in before I dared attempt it.
I learned my lesson, when it comes to tampering with forces beyond my comprehension.