The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Malaquez
[MUFFLED EUROBEAT]
- Location
- Singapore
Interlude: Well of Sorrows
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
"We have to look deeper." There were few non-Potentials who could understand the complexity of that statement, especially in how it related to the problems in front of you, but Mary D'reve was one of them. The knowledge she'd discovered last year had reinvigorated research into Practice, and she'd asked for the help of Potentials in following it.
It was also why you were here; Ethan Young, a Second Awoken of Insight, and leader of the group of similarly Focused that had been scraped together from various other projects. Which meant that talking was your job.
"Minister," you said carefully, "you must know the limitations of Practice where they apply to Secrets. I know that President Hawk and Minister Cant bypassed that in some way, but we aren't them." You shrugged helplessly, even though you knew she could understand much of the reasoning behind it; the benefits of being an Insight Focused. "We can work out what you want, but we don't know how to get there."
"I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I?" She said, chuckling in a way that took any sting out of what could have been a rebuke. "I'm not going to ask you to do what made Project Insight the only working group of its type, that impossibility has already been covered. What I need you to do is observe some recordings, and try to apply your Focuses to what you see."
That was more in keeping with traditional Insight Focused work, but you were curious. Minister D'reve was one of the most capable scientific minds on the planet, and she understood Practice in ways few could claim to match. "Forgive me, Minister, but what are you wanting us do here?"
"I have some theories after last year," she replied to your question, unusually hesitant if you weren't mistaken. "And I need them confirmed. But what I've been working from is deeply entwined with working Practice, and for all that I'm smart," and wasn't that an understatement, "I'm not a Potential. You have a basic advantage of experience using Practice that I don't, and humanity can't afford for me to get this wrong." She shook her head fiercely. "Not if it's as important as I really think it is."
"There's a reason you can't tell us those theories, isn't there?" You half-asked, half-stated, and the dark-haired Minister nodded.
"It could damage the experimental conditions," she explained gently. "I need you to look at this with clear eyes, to see if what I think is the case actually is." Given how important whatever this was clearly was to her, that made a lot of sense. Examination of objects with your Focus was almost always flawless, but theory could still be vulnerable to bias. The number of people who could trigger that could be counted on one hand, but Mary was one of them, and the only non-Potential on the list.
"You'll be an external observer, then." You said, lips quirking in a smile as she pointed out the various sensor feeds scattered around the room that would act as her eyes. As was to be expected, she was being thorough in preventing contamination. Right now, it was easy to just not apply your Focus, but in a Trance that conscious control lapsed.
"Of course," her voice was bright yet sharp, the knife-edge of satisfied genius. "Don't worry about starting right now, we've put aside up to a week for you all to get settled in." Her eyes sparkled above a small smile. "Vega's explained before how important that can be."
That clinched it. They were definitely hoping for a Trance, but the lack of serious time pressure meant that they also wanted this done right. Which aligned with how careful Minister D'reve was being with what she was saying. All of which meant it probably really was as important as she thought it was, and the sooner you gave her something to work with, the better it would be.
"We'll get started on that right away." You looked round at the group of other Insight Focused that was about to get to know each other extremely well. "You got all of that?" You asked, and they nodded. It wasn't all together, and a few of the motions were shakier than others, but it was an affirmative response. The nerves would settle out with time.
You took the full week in the end. You'd never led a working group before, but you'd read the files on it, and the most important thing always came down to harmony. Knowing the place helped a lot, but according to The Proven Miracle, what truly mattered was the people you were working with. Minister Cant was able to cheat in that, if the writing she and her 'apprentices' had produced was anything to go by. Her Focus allowed her to completely bypass the need to get to know the Potentials she was working with where it came to placement. Insight Focused had a similar cheat, but it was considerably less spectacular.
"Ethan, are you with us?" You turned in place to face the speaker, the blue steel of her eyes no longer as intimidating as they'd been barely three days ago. It was still there, completely unchanged, but you knew it better now.
Where Vega's Focus let her skip to the end of the process, Potentials like you could speed-run all the way through the beginning. It wasn't quite telepathy, but it came very close. And no, the Insight Focused weren't even slightly bitter about the fact that the Unisonbound were able to 'steal' their trick and make it better to boot.
"I am, Lauren." You said, and funnily enough it was actually true this time. "Thank you."
Long term intimacy between Potentials wasn't as common as a lot of people thought; the singular thrust of a Focus made anything more than extremely short term relationships hellishly difficult. It wasn't that the Potential population was celibate, quite the contrary in fact, the shared burden and joy of power made for well suited bedfellows, but getting beyond the bedfellows part was complicated. The problem was finding someone that you could enjoy a stable relationship with and not have your Focus devour them. Or in the case of multiple Potentials, not devour each other. Not a new problem, but the monofocus of a Potential made it more complicated.
"We should probably get going, the first session is in a few hours," she noted, and you could feel the affection in her words. That was the other side of the coin where Potential relationships were concerned; Focuses could sometime click 'together' when Potentials looked into each other, and bring everything else about them along for the ride.
"Unfortunate," you winked at the blonde, pulling a ring of pleasant laughter from her, "but also true." You pulled yourself up, brushing away the sheets, and headed for the shower.
An hour later, you were back in the room where you'd first met what you were now confident in calling your working group. A week of steady focus on each other had teased out almost every possible point of failure, and the latter half of the week had been dedicated to smoothing them away. Last night have been the culmination of that, and whilst no one had expected the results, neither you or Lauren were complaining. Even if you had to drag your attention back to Mary as she finished out your final briefing.
"What I'm giving you isn't something that many others know about, simply because of how contentious it could be. Amanda and Vega aren't Insight Focused, even if Amanda's shown some ability to extend her Focus in that direction with the help of Siddhartha." The Minister shrugged uncomfortably. There was something about that, but you dismissed it. Applying your Focus to people like that was rude, especially when they were deliberately raising barriers against it.
"We understand, Minister D'reve," you smiled faintly. "We're used to working with partial data, but at least if this was from your own records it'll be the highest fidelity possible." There wasn't any flattery, simply fact; it was hard to not know the premium that Mary placed on accurate data gathering. "Is there anything in particular you want us to be looking for?" You knew that it was unlikely after the initial brief a week ago, but things changed sometimes.
"No," she shook her head emphatically. "Just watch, and let yourself follow anything that you find. Even little things could be important."
"Then I think we're ready." You nodded to the other members of the working group, already settling into place across the room to observe. These sessions were flagged to last up to a full day, which made personal comfort important, especially when searching for a Trance. Potentials were still human, after all, and a single break in concentration from any one of you could crack a forming Trance.
"Your panels will give local control over the data feeds." She reminded you, looking over at one of the virtual panels that she liked to surround herself with. "Observation feeds are stable on our end and the data archive is fully uploaded. Good luck." The virtual display flickered out of existence, taking her face with it, and a soft hum filled the air as the primary holoprojectors spun up.
"Keep track of each other as best you can," you said in the few moments you had before the simulation activated. "The only way we're going to get real answers from this is if we do it together." You relaxed into your chair as a soft chorus of affirmatives met that statement, followed quickly by a focused silence as you reached out to each other with your Practice. After Vega's work on Miracles, the basics of this had been taught to every Potential, but translating technical knowledge into reality wasn't easy.
"How are they doing, Mary?" It was the first question past Amanda's lips, and you looked up tiredly from the data packets that you and your Ministry had been pouring over for days since the Trance. It had taken almost a month of exhausting work for the Insight Focused group to form a Trance, but with some variable actively missing from the proofs you needed to complete the most important theories you'd formed on Practice, you'd needed that. No doubt hard work would have eventually unlocked what you were discovering now, but it would have taken so much longer.
Two decades ago it would have been a fool's hope to bank on Practice to supply you those answers, but even if the crown of her work had resisted use for years, Vega had still taught the Potentials a great deal. Enough that relying on it to give you an answer wasn't quite so insane anymore
"Better," you said with a sigh of relief. "A lot better, actually." The Trance that had formed between the Insight Focused had proven several of your theories right, but you hadn't had it right in some very important places. You'd recovered from that revelation faster than most, but you also knew a great deal more than most about the 'higher field' research into Practice that was moving steadily forwards. For the Potentials, it had been an almost violent shockwave of a discovery, and several of them were still recovering. "Vega manage to free up a specialist from the group helping Project Insight recover, and that's helped a lot."
"I'm glad." Amanda shook her head, her expression one of helpless concern that you'd noticed being more present in recent years. "I just wish," you cut her off with a quiet tutting that pulled an unwilling smile to her lips. "Alright," she added softly, "I'll be good."
"A wise choice," you chuckled dryly. "Moving on, you'll be pleased to hear that we're making definite progress on what they were able to put together from watching the recordings. It took a while to put it all together, the data wasn't as coherent towards the end as we would've liked, but it's to be expected given what they found."
"So, it's confirmed, then." Amanda asked, then winced as you nodded. "Damn. The last thing we need is more…complications from the past. I know, I know," she raised a hand, "we were almost certain before, but knowing where the power we use came from is going to be a hard pill to swallow for the Potentials."
"I noticed," you said solemnly. Although all of the Insight Focused were now mostly functional again, in terms of being fully lucid at least, there'd been some touch and go moments. Ethan and Lauren had survived it through simply retreating into each other, but they'd been the exception to the rule, which was why you had a Potential Trauma specialist on hand.
"But knowing the source is only the start of the problems, even if it might be the worst emotional one." You didn't mean to file off that problem so brazenly, but Amanda knew that. "For us, it's more the active rejection of entropy, and whatever the hell is building up inside that impossibility."
"Amen to that," Amanda added softly. "A self-sustaining power source wired into the souls of every human on the planet is quite enough. But that there's an internal surge building up to release," she trailed off, and for once you couldn't finish the sentence for her. Reversal of entropy was something that the Miracle of Skylark had forced back onto the table of possibility, despite the tortured screaming of the older generation of mathematicians and physicists.
But this was, as Amanda had said, a functionally self-sustaining well of energy, in the process of building up to do…something; you didn't know what. And that scared the hell out of you.
"I've managed to get a bit further on my pet theory." You said, trying to distract Amanda and yourself from a worry you couldn't do anything about. "It's still very theoretical, but you said to me that you felt something more than yourself in the energy you were able to access at the end of the Second Battle of Sol. We can see now that the energy of the well isn't split equally, most humans only get a little, and those that get more are like you. But then you have Harmonials, and the connections that can form between Potentials when Trances and Miracles happen." Amanda looked away to the side, but you pushed forward regardless, this might embarrass her but it interested her too. "There's no practical reason that non-Potentials can't manipulate the power linked to their souls, but it would require very special circumstances to meaningfully focus it."
"Circumstances like a single person focus in a battle for species survival, you mean." Amanda didn't like this idea, it was too close to prayer in her mind, but it was your job to push the boundaries of what might be. "What about the synergy with Vega's work?"
It was a cheap subject change, but you didn't fight her on it. If you were right, she'd accept it, but you weren't sure if you were yet. "It's going to let us start on catching up with everything she and you have been experimenting with over the last few years. Although I'm actually more interested in working out the theory behind what Marcus does in some ways. What he does is incredible in a totally different way to your use of Words."
She nodded once, and for a moment the competent mask that your dearest friend had grown so used to wearing slipped, revealing the exhaustion behind it. "What's wrong?" You knew the answer, but it was better for her to tell you, or so she'd said.
"I'm just," she sighed heavily, "tired. This work is magnificent, and I know between us all we've done so much, but at the same time." Your hand moved without thinking, coming up to the edge of the virtual panel that held her face. "What we've discovered here, it's not going to be easy for any Potential to accept. There's a symmetry to it, I accept; the final gift of our greatest guardians, and we were pretty sure of that before, but knowing the way in which it happened as well," you shook your head as her words descended into silence.
"Look for the courage in the sacrifice, Amanda." You said softly. "It's what they would have wanted, I think."
"I'll try." Her face brightened a little. "Dinner?" To anyone listening in, that would have been a question, but not to you. She needed time to stop and if you were being honest with yourself, she wasn't the only one.
"Alright."
(Actions unlocked and modified. Further theoretical knowledge of Practice unlocked.)
It was also why you were here; Ethan Young, a Second Awoken of Insight, and leader of the group of similarly Focused that had been scraped together from various other projects. Which meant that talking was your job.
"Minister," you said carefully, "you must know the limitations of Practice where they apply to Secrets. I know that President Hawk and Minister Cant bypassed that in some way, but we aren't them." You shrugged helplessly, even though you knew she could understand much of the reasoning behind it; the benefits of being an Insight Focused. "We can work out what you want, but we don't know how to get there."
"I'm getting ahead of myself again, aren't I?" She said, chuckling in a way that took any sting out of what could have been a rebuke. "I'm not going to ask you to do what made Project Insight the only working group of its type, that impossibility has already been covered. What I need you to do is observe some recordings, and try to apply your Focuses to what you see."
That was more in keeping with traditional Insight Focused work, but you were curious. Minister D'reve was one of the most capable scientific minds on the planet, and she understood Practice in ways few could claim to match. "Forgive me, Minister, but what are you wanting us do here?"
"I have some theories after last year," she replied to your question, unusually hesitant if you weren't mistaken. "And I need them confirmed. But what I've been working from is deeply entwined with working Practice, and for all that I'm smart," and wasn't that an understatement, "I'm not a Potential. You have a basic advantage of experience using Practice that I don't, and humanity can't afford for me to get this wrong." She shook her head fiercely. "Not if it's as important as I really think it is."
"There's a reason you can't tell us those theories, isn't there?" You half-asked, half-stated, and the dark-haired Minister nodded.
"It could damage the experimental conditions," she explained gently. "I need you to look at this with clear eyes, to see if what I think is the case actually is." Given how important whatever this was clearly was to her, that made a lot of sense. Examination of objects with your Focus was almost always flawless, but theory could still be vulnerable to bias. The number of people who could trigger that could be counted on one hand, but Mary was one of them, and the only non-Potential on the list.
"You'll be an external observer, then." You said, lips quirking in a smile as she pointed out the various sensor feeds scattered around the room that would act as her eyes. As was to be expected, she was being thorough in preventing contamination. Right now, it was easy to just not apply your Focus, but in a Trance that conscious control lapsed.
"Of course," her voice was bright yet sharp, the knife-edge of satisfied genius. "Don't worry about starting right now, we've put aside up to a week for you all to get settled in." Her eyes sparkled above a small smile. "Vega's explained before how important that can be."
That clinched it. They were definitely hoping for a Trance, but the lack of serious time pressure meant that they also wanted this done right. Which aligned with how careful Minister D'reve was being with what she was saying. All of which meant it probably really was as important as she thought it was, and the sooner you gave her something to work with, the better it would be.
"We'll get started on that right away." You looked round at the group of other Insight Focused that was about to get to know each other extremely well. "You got all of that?" You asked, and they nodded. It wasn't all together, and a few of the motions were shakier than others, but it was an affirmative response. The nerves would settle out with time.
***
You took the full week in the end. You'd never led a working group before, but you'd read the files on it, and the most important thing always came down to harmony. Knowing the place helped a lot, but according to The Proven Miracle, what truly mattered was the people you were working with. Minister Cant was able to cheat in that, if the writing she and her 'apprentices' had produced was anything to go by. Her Focus allowed her to completely bypass the need to get to know the Potentials she was working with where it came to placement. Insight Focused had a similar cheat, but it was considerably less spectacular.
"Ethan, are you with us?" You turned in place to face the speaker, the blue steel of her eyes no longer as intimidating as they'd been barely three days ago. It was still there, completely unchanged, but you knew it better now.
Where Vega's Focus let her skip to the end of the process, Potentials like you could speed-run all the way through the beginning. It wasn't quite telepathy, but it came very close. And no, the Insight Focused weren't even slightly bitter about the fact that the Unisonbound were able to 'steal' their trick and make it better to boot.
"I am, Lauren." You said, and funnily enough it was actually true this time. "Thank you."
Long term intimacy between Potentials wasn't as common as a lot of people thought; the singular thrust of a Focus made anything more than extremely short term relationships hellishly difficult. It wasn't that the Potential population was celibate, quite the contrary in fact, the shared burden and joy of power made for well suited bedfellows, but getting beyond the bedfellows part was complicated. The problem was finding someone that you could enjoy a stable relationship with and not have your Focus devour them. Or in the case of multiple Potentials, not devour each other. Not a new problem, but the monofocus of a Potential made it more complicated.
"We should probably get going, the first session is in a few hours," she noted, and you could feel the affection in her words. That was the other side of the coin where Potential relationships were concerned; Focuses could sometime click 'together' when Potentials looked into each other, and bring everything else about them along for the ride.
"Unfortunate," you winked at the blonde, pulling a ring of pleasant laughter from her, "but also true." You pulled yourself up, brushing away the sheets, and headed for the shower.
An hour later, you were back in the room where you'd first met what you were now confident in calling your working group. A week of steady focus on each other had teased out almost every possible point of failure, and the latter half of the week had been dedicated to smoothing them away. Last night have been the culmination of that, and whilst no one had expected the results, neither you or Lauren were complaining. Even if you had to drag your attention back to Mary as she finished out your final briefing.
"What I'm giving you isn't something that many others know about, simply because of how contentious it could be. Amanda and Vega aren't Insight Focused, even if Amanda's shown some ability to extend her Focus in that direction with the help of Siddhartha." The Minister shrugged uncomfortably. There was something about that, but you dismissed it. Applying your Focus to people like that was rude, especially when they were deliberately raising barriers against it.
"We understand, Minister D'reve," you smiled faintly. "We're used to working with partial data, but at least if this was from your own records it'll be the highest fidelity possible." There wasn't any flattery, simply fact; it was hard to not know the premium that Mary placed on accurate data gathering. "Is there anything in particular you want us to be looking for?" You knew that it was unlikely after the initial brief a week ago, but things changed sometimes.
"No," she shook her head emphatically. "Just watch, and let yourself follow anything that you find. Even little things could be important."
"Then I think we're ready." You nodded to the other members of the working group, already settling into place across the room to observe. These sessions were flagged to last up to a full day, which made personal comfort important, especially when searching for a Trance. Potentials were still human, after all, and a single break in concentration from any one of you could crack a forming Trance.
"Your panels will give local control over the data feeds." She reminded you, looking over at one of the virtual panels that she liked to surround herself with. "Observation feeds are stable on our end and the data archive is fully uploaded. Good luck." The virtual display flickered out of existence, taking her face with it, and a soft hum filled the air as the primary holoprojectors spun up.
"Keep track of each other as best you can," you said in the few moments you had before the simulation activated. "The only way we're going to get real answers from this is if we do it together." You relaxed into your chair as a soft chorus of affirmatives met that statement, followed quickly by a focused silence as you reached out to each other with your Practice. After Vega's work on Miracles, the basics of this had been taught to every Potential, but translating technical knowledge into reality wasn't easy.
***
"How are they doing, Mary?" It was the first question past Amanda's lips, and you looked up tiredly from the data packets that you and your Ministry had been pouring over for days since the Trance. It had taken almost a month of exhausting work for the Insight Focused group to form a Trance, but with some variable actively missing from the proofs you needed to complete the most important theories you'd formed on Practice, you'd needed that. No doubt hard work would have eventually unlocked what you were discovering now, but it would have taken so much longer.
Two decades ago it would have been a fool's hope to bank on Practice to supply you those answers, but even if the crown of her work had resisted use for years, Vega had still taught the Potentials a great deal. Enough that relying on it to give you an answer wasn't quite so insane anymore
"Better," you said with a sigh of relief. "A lot better, actually." The Trance that had formed between the Insight Focused had proven several of your theories right, but you hadn't had it right in some very important places. You'd recovered from that revelation faster than most, but you also knew a great deal more than most about the 'higher field' research into Practice that was moving steadily forwards. For the Potentials, it had been an almost violent shockwave of a discovery, and several of them were still recovering. "Vega manage to free up a specialist from the group helping Project Insight recover, and that's helped a lot."
"I'm glad." Amanda shook her head, her expression one of helpless concern that you'd noticed being more present in recent years. "I just wish," you cut her off with a quiet tutting that pulled an unwilling smile to her lips. "Alright," she added softly, "I'll be good."
"A wise choice," you chuckled dryly. "Moving on, you'll be pleased to hear that we're making definite progress on what they were able to put together from watching the recordings. It took a while to put it all together, the data wasn't as coherent towards the end as we would've liked, but it's to be expected given what they found."
"So, it's confirmed, then." Amanda asked, then winced as you nodded. "Damn. The last thing we need is more…complications from the past. I know, I know," she raised a hand, "we were almost certain before, but knowing where the power we use came from is going to be a hard pill to swallow for the Potentials."
"I noticed," you said solemnly. Although all of the Insight Focused were now mostly functional again, in terms of being fully lucid at least, there'd been some touch and go moments. Ethan and Lauren had survived it through simply retreating into each other, but they'd been the exception to the rule, which was why you had a Potential Trauma specialist on hand.
"But knowing the source is only the start of the problems, even if it might be the worst emotional one." You didn't mean to file off that problem so brazenly, but Amanda knew that. "For us, it's more the active rejection of entropy, and whatever the hell is building up inside that impossibility."
"Amen to that," Amanda added softly. "A self-sustaining power source wired into the souls of every human on the planet is quite enough. But that there's an internal surge building up to release," she trailed off, and for once you couldn't finish the sentence for her. Reversal of entropy was something that the Miracle of Skylark had forced back onto the table of possibility, despite the tortured screaming of the older generation of mathematicians and physicists.
But this was, as Amanda had said, a functionally self-sustaining well of energy, in the process of building up to do…something; you didn't know what. And that scared the hell out of you.
"I've managed to get a bit further on my pet theory." You said, trying to distract Amanda and yourself from a worry you couldn't do anything about. "It's still very theoretical, but you said to me that you felt something more than yourself in the energy you were able to access at the end of the Second Battle of Sol. We can see now that the energy of the well isn't split equally, most humans only get a little, and those that get more are like you. But then you have Harmonials, and the connections that can form between Potentials when Trances and Miracles happen." Amanda looked away to the side, but you pushed forward regardless, this might embarrass her but it interested her too. "There's no practical reason that non-Potentials can't manipulate the power linked to their souls, but it would require very special circumstances to meaningfully focus it."
"Circumstances like a single person focus in a battle for species survival, you mean." Amanda didn't like this idea, it was too close to prayer in her mind, but it was your job to push the boundaries of what might be. "What about the synergy with Vega's work?"
It was a cheap subject change, but you didn't fight her on it. If you were right, she'd accept it, but you weren't sure if you were yet. "It's going to let us start on catching up with everything she and you have been experimenting with over the last few years. Although I'm actually more interested in working out the theory behind what Marcus does in some ways. What he does is incredible in a totally different way to your use of Words."
She nodded once, and for a moment the competent mask that your dearest friend had grown so used to wearing slipped, revealing the exhaustion behind it. "What's wrong?" You knew the answer, but it was better for her to tell you, or so she'd said.
"I'm just," she sighed heavily, "tired. This work is magnificent, and I know between us all we've done so much, but at the same time." Your hand moved without thinking, coming up to the edge of the virtual panel that held her face. "What we've discovered here, it's not going to be easy for any Potential to accept. There's a symmetry to it, I accept; the final gift of our greatest guardians, and we were pretty sure of that before, but knowing the way in which it happened as well," you shook your head as her words descended into silence.
"Look for the courage in the sacrifice, Amanda." You said softly. "It's what they would have wanted, I think."
"I'll try." Her face brightened a little. "Dinner?" To anyone listening in, that would have been a question, but not to you. She needed time to stop and if you were being honest with yourself, she wasn't the only one.
"Alright."
(Actions unlocked and modified. Further theoretical knowledge of Practice unlocked.)
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So I'm pretty sure this is free of horrific errors, and as I'm about halfway through the other stuff I want done for this (not counting the not sufficiently damned compendium update) I feel like I can put this up here tonight confident that I can have everything else I want done finished over the weekend.
My being confident about timing, you just know this is going to go wrong
I'm sure people will have a bunch of questions on what was worked out here, but the reason it's such a hard thing to swallow is that there was never actual proof that Practice and everything that came with it was the result of hundreds of thousands of sentients dying in a futile defence. That minor nightmare aside, I'll summarise the high points:
Also there is fluff, because my brain demanded cute fluff at the end.
Hope you like it, and please ask me questions. I've no doubt I won't be able to answer some, but this result opens up a lot of answers, even if most of them are going to lead to more questions.
My being confident about timing, you just know this is going to go wrong
I'm sure people will have a bunch of questions on what was worked out here, but the reason it's such a hard thing to swallow is that there was never actual proof that Practice and everything that came with it was the result of hundreds of thousands of sentients dying in a futile defence. That minor nightmare aside, I'll summarise the high points:
- The energy well that fuels all Practice, proven now to be the result of the sacrifice of the Dragons and their human comrades, appears to be fully self-sustaining. No external sources of charge can be detected.
- You now have firm confirmation that every human has access to some portion of this energy, but that it's not split equally. Potentials have a lot more on a per-person level, which is what allows them to use Practice.
- There is an internal surge building up inside the well.
Also there is fluff, because my brain demanded cute fluff at the end.
Hope you like it, and please ask me questions. I've no doubt I won't be able to answer some, but this result opens up a lot of answers, even if most of them are going to lead to more questions.
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Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
They are very much like JD & Turk, a little married and if they ever do start seeing anyone else they'll still probably be closer to each other.
I'm not sure I find that believable. Since when was relationship planning a primary determinant of when and how relationships kick off? While there are certainly cases when it is relevant, this strikes me as silly in the same way that saying "population growth is down because nobody wanted to bring children into a world full of strife" or "people stopped getting angry at each other; all their energy and focus was needed to prepare for the trials ahead."
Potentials are going to fall in love with people around them, just like everyone else. I expect a lot of said people to also be potentials, since work is usually clustered by occupation. So Potentials are going to fall in love with Potentials, and at a reasonable rate too. I don't see uncertainties about the distant future getting in the way of that.
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These three points are contradictory. Any two are fine, but conflict with the third.
Well, unless you take the stance that "can be detected" means "we know its there but can't find it"
If it's entropy neutral and a surge is building up, something has to be adding energy.
It it's entropy neutral and no external source exists then it should be static.
If no external source exists and an internal surge is building, then it's not entropy neutral.
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Delete this word?
That was my first thought too.
Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
You all took the words right out of my mouth. +1
So far we've seen a few ways to Focus your share of Humanity's Potential:
1. Through repetition and Practice, and a Concept Imprinted on your Soul. That's the normal way.
1b. As 1, except you apply your Practice to yourself. IE: Marcus.
1c. As 1, except highly conceptual. Almost no one can sense this. IE: Amanda (and Vega).
2. Through a Word. IE: Amanda (and Vega).
3. Through the hopes and dreams of all Humanity. Or something like that. IE: Amanda in the Second Battle of Sol.
Interestingly enough, 1, 2, and 3 can be combined - Words are easier to speak if they match your Imprint, and 3 was only ever really channeled through a Word.
Has anyone noticed any I've missed? This could be important...
I'd have to agree with this.
History has shown, time and time again, that when humanity is in the worst situations... that people have sex to deal with it. Far more often and usually with less social bindings than in normal situations.
The only reason the Baby Boom didn't start years earlier was that most males weren't in the US to produce them. Over in England and the occupied countries there was a noted boom in pregnancies, even during the blitz. And that fully included the people in the war effort.
And romances tend to form around the familiar. So yea, I would think Potentials would likely find others among their peers.
This, exactly. I think, @Snowfire, that what you're looking for is "entropy-negative" rather than entropy-neutral: there is literally energy building up with no discernible source (although one would assume that it exists but is just undetectable), work being done without net enthalpy being expended, cats and dogs living together -- mass hysteria.
I'm going to steal a line from a favorite fanfic of mine and call it SHADETREE. Symbology- and Heuristics-Affected Directed Energies Through Recondite Esoteric Egresses. Which, if you unpack the six-dollar words, is really just a fancy way of saying "magic", since Practice is totally magic.
So, what we really need here is a mnemonic shortcut, a mantra if you will, something to focus the minds of the masses on a singular goal, to focus the lens of the human soul and channel this SHADETREE energy towards a particular goal. In other words, prayer.
And now I'm going to ruin the buildup by making a crass reference to Amanda as the new God-Empress of Mankind.
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I still hope that happens on accident due to rolls.... So please, by all means do so Eyes. 
- Location
- Earth Aleph
Well... looks like we will need to work fast on getting formal ritual techniques sorted before things go religious.
At least, I suppose that is what happened during the second battle; billions of people hoping for survival and Amanda focusing that energy. If we can teach a common set of movements and words that focus all those similar but diffuse hopes onto a particular goal we could start off all battles with one hell of an advantage.
For example, a city and ship are paired by having a model of the ship set central with concentric circles of all the cities people reciting words of protection in unison. Or a model / hologram of an enemy ship gets a recital of entropy (draining the energy supply of the first secret drive and stopping it from jumping).
At least, I suppose that is what happened during the second battle; billions of people hoping for survival and Amanda focusing that energy. If we can teach a common set of movements and words that focus all those similar but diffuse hopes onto a particular goal we could start off all battles with one hell of an advantage.
For example, a city and ship are paired by having a model of the ship set central with concentric circles of all the cities people reciting words of protection in unison. Or a model / hologram of an enemy ship gets a recital of entropy (draining the energy supply of the first secret drive and stopping it from jumping).
- Location
- madison
That would be the optimistic prediction.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First step: educate the people on what's going on.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yes, did you mean entropy-negative?If there are any quick(er) questions people have, now would be a good time to ask them
A lot of this interlude has focused on how we seem to have figured out some of the secrets to bringing forth a Trance deliberately. Is this going to have a mechanical benefit, or is this just because our dice have been unreasonably hot lately?I'll be inputting some fixes and giving out some answers in a few hours (when I have a break) Hopefully they'll be satisfactory!
If there are any quick(er) questions people have, now would be a good time to ask them
How exactly was Mary measuring an energy buildup in the... what would we even call it? Akashic energy reserve? The thing that's fueling Practice, whatever it is. Is this a method that allows us to get historical data on the energy reserve, or is it something that can only measure current levels? Basically, we know what we think we know, now we need to know how we think we know it.
Did the First, Second, and Third Awakenings happen on a specific schedule? Did they happen all at once, or over a period of time? Given the strategic importance of the Awakened to the future of Humanity, the amount of time they've been around, and the amount of spare computer cycles that exist in a society where CPUs have an extra century of maturity and data science as a field has been around for over a century and a half, I presume all of the studies have already been done attempting to collate data on the Awakened versus the regular population. Numbers of Awakened, time of Awakening, DNA markers and family history, geo-locations and history of movements, that sort of thing have likely all been studied extensively and exhaustively; have there been any correlations worth noting in that regard?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So, some changes have been made to the interlude.
The paragraph in question was meant to have been edited out in a previous revision, but I must have forgotten to paste in the new one and my eyes just skipped across the content itself when I was looking through; I was focusing on grammar and the like. This has now been replaced with something I hope will make a bit more sense. The problem I had with that paragraph was the primacy of the issue involved; it's not a lack of opportunity or interest, it's finding someone that...well, read the new paragraph. Should make a bit more sense.
I've modded this to self-sustaining, which I'm pretty sure neatly ties up this issue. To extend, the gross energy available to humanity is a constant figure of x bigajoules (no, I'm not giving you a figure, I'm not that stupid). If this figure has grown with further Awakenings? Well that's another matter that you totally aren't going to be finding out at some point in the near future.
No really.
Honest.
I'm not convincing anyone here, am I.
I will have you know that my cats don't mind dogs at all, and no mass hysteria is involved (as far as I know). As noted above, I've switched to self-sustaining, although I'll probably push in a mention of entropy-negative somewhere. It's far more correct - thank you for keeping the moderately clueless QM right once again <3
Most of this was talking about things that Vega's done; the narrative justification of her mechanical benefit towards the creation of Trances/Miracles and how some of the bullshit rolls you've enjoyed recently. One of the options coming out of this will involve a more theoretical study of that matter, synergy between this interlude and Shadow Dancing are responsible for that.
It's less something that was measured and more something that the Insight group found, which places it firmly in the can only measure current levels category. The reserve itself appears to be a static amount of bigajoules, transferable through the human soul into the various effects that are covered by the term Practice.
All of the studies have been attempted, yes. As you might suspect, no correlations of note have been found except maybe one, and it's contentious as hell. Potentials are driven in a way that is exceptional even among a communalist society like the one Practice-verse humanity enjoys, and there've been some attempts to correlate that drive with Awakenings. There's even some potential evidence of this, but it breaks down at the edges due to how difficult it is to identify 'drive' involved in previous Awakenings and then pinpoint it as something that existed before the Potential in question Awoke.
As to scheduling, the timing has varied. The First Awoken came into existence with shocking swiftness, less than six months in fact. Since then, the amount of time has increased. There've been some arguments about relation to a growing population, and whilst that's not been disproved it's not vastly trusted either given how difficult that is to disprove. The Second Awakening happened across a space of several years, the Third took almost a decade.
Goddamnit Eyes!
The paragraph in question was meant to have been edited out in a previous revision, but I must have forgotten to paste in the new one and my eyes just skipped across the content itself when I was looking through; I was focusing on grammar and the like. This has now been replaced with something I hope will make a bit more sense. The problem I had with that paragraph was the primacy of the issue involved; it's not a lack of opportunity or interest, it's finding someone that...well, read the new paragraph. Should make a bit more sense.
I've modded this to self-sustaining, which I'm pretty sure neatly ties up this issue. To extend, the gross energy available to humanity is a constant figure of x bigajoules (no, I'm not giving you a figure, I'm not that stupid). If this figure has grown with further Awakenings? Well that's another matter that you totally aren't going to be finding out at some point in the near future.
No really.
Honest.
I'm not convincing anyone here, am I.
This, exactly. I think, @Snowfire, that what you're looking for is "entropy-negative" rather than entropy-neutral: there is literally energy building up with no discernible source (although one would assume that it exists but is just undetectable), work being done without net enthalpy being expended, cats and dogs living together -- mass hysteria.
I'm going to steal a line from a favorite fanfic of mine and call it SHADETREE. Symbology- and Heuristics-Affected Directed Energies Through Recondite Esoteric Egresses. Which, if you unpack the six-dollar words, is really just a fancy way of saying "magic", since Practice is totally magic.
Yes, did you mean entropy-negative?
I will have you know that my cats don't mind dogs at all, and no mass hysteria is involved (as far as I know). As noted above, I've switched to self-sustaining, although I'll probably push in a mention of entropy-negative somewhere. It's far more correct - thank you for keeping the moderately clueless QM right once again <3
Most of this was talking about things that Vega's done; the narrative justification of her mechanical benefit towards the creation of Trances/Miracles and how some of the bullshit rolls you've enjoyed recently. One of the options coming out of this will involve a more theoretical study of that matter, synergy between this interlude and Shadow Dancing are responsible for that.
How exactly was Mary measuring an energy buildup in the... what would we even call it? Akashic energy reserve? The thing that's fueling Practice, whatever it is. Is this a method that allows us to get historical data on the energy reserve, or is it something that can only measure current levels? Basically, we know what we think we know, now we need to know how we think we know it.
It's less something that was measured and more something that the Insight group found, which places it firmly in the can only measure current levels category. The reserve itself appears to be a static amount of bigajoules, transferable through the human soul into the various effects that are covered by the term Practice.
All of the studies have been attempted, yes. As you might suspect, no correlations of note have been found except maybe one, and it's contentious as hell. Potentials are driven in a way that is exceptional even among a communalist society like the one Practice-verse humanity enjoys, and there've been some attempts to correlate that drive with Awakenings. There's even some potential evidence of this, but it breaks down at the edges due to how difficult it is to identify 'drive' involved in previous Awakenings and then pinpoint it as something that existed before the Potential in question Awoke.
As to scheduling, the timing has varied. The First Awoken came into existence with shocking swiftness, less than six months in fact. Since then, the amount of time has increased. There've been some arguments about relation to a growing population, and whilst that's not been disproved it's not vastly trusted either given how difficult that is to disprove. The Second Awakening happened across a space of several years, the Third took almost a decade.
And now I'm going to ruin the buildup by making a crass reference to Amanda as the new God-Empress of Mankind.
Goddamnit Eyes!
Malaquez
[MUFFLED EUROBEAT]
- Location
- Singapore
If you can't tell, that's exactly what I want.
Khaos
Baguette, wine and cheese
That's weird, personally, I figure that the most human reactions should be variations of "Cool stuff, we owe you, dragons and forefathers".
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Some of this combines with the Metaconcert interlude from last year, particularly in what Mary saw. That said, subjective viewpoints.