Douglas Miller
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MiP B2 Chapter 27: Contemplation of Lessons
🕑 Added 2025-01-03 20:46:10 +0000 UTC<< First | < Previous | Next >
Carlos panted and leaned on his knees for a moment after conceding yet another defeat to Trinlen. He looked up at the sound of clapping, coming from the side of the arena opposite Lorvan.
Sconter met his gaze and called out to him. "Good show, you almost had him that time!"
Carlos took a deep breath, then settled to the ground and shook his head. He took a few more breaths to rest before answering the adventurer. "Maybe, but only because I have more mana than he does. That's not good enough. If I need a mana advantage, then that means my skills and tactics are lagging behind and need to be improved. We need to build up every advantage we can get."
Trinlen clapped his hands a couple times to add to Sconter's applause. "Good attitude, boss. You may need that edge someday, when you get into fights with other nobles."
"Yeah." Carlos straightened his back and looked at Trinlen. "There's one thing I don't understand about this, though. Surely the Crown must have had some of the best tacticians in the kingdom design this set of spells for the royal guards to use. Leaving aside Silence, since obviously that one is irrelevant for fighting against an actual royal guard, if the spells you used can beat theirs, then…"
"Why aren't they using my spells instead?" Trinlen grinned cheekily. "I'm flattered, really, but there are more differences between a mage and a royal guard than just whether they rely on speaking to fight."
Carlos shrugged and shook his head. "Well, yes, but many of the spells you used can't be substituted or compensated for with strength, speed, armor, and weapons."
"Correct, but those aren't the only factors." Trinlen called out to the side. "Colonel Lorvan, care to critique the idea of redesigning royal guard enchantments to use the spells I just demonstrated?"
Lorvan gave a respectful nod. "Of course, Mage Trinlen. To start with, many of the spells you used are specialized for narrow purposes, which means that achieving broad versatility with them would require a large number of different spells. Enchantments for casting spells are expensive, and packing many of them into one item magnifies the cost greatly. Equipping royal guards with your entire suite of spells would be exhorbitantly costly."
Carlos raised an eyebrow. "Too expensive even for the Crown?"
"Hardly." Lorvan snorted dismissively. "The Crown could bear the cost, of course. That is the least of the major issues with the idea. More importantly, cramming that many of such enchantments into our gear would require compromises in other aspects of its design. You've been studying royal guard gauntlets with Felton; imagine tripling the number of runic plates in them."
Carlos cocked his head and tried to visualize the idea. "They would have to be more bulky, I suppose. Couldn't some of them be put in the arms or other parts of the suit, though?"
Trinlen laughed before Lorvan could answer, drawing a curious look from Carlos. "He's still on the minor issues, boss, just less minor. Spreading them out more is possible. It would be less efficient and harder to protect from disruption, and doing it without weakening the defensive enchantments on the rest of the armor would be tricky, but it could be done." He shook his head. "Colonel, I think it's time to stop kidding around with the small stuff and give him the major reason it would never work."
Lorvan inclined his head a minute fraction. "Very well. The largest and most intractable issue is that many of Trinlen's spells require a degree of sophisticated control by the caster that can only be achieved with a soul structure dedicated to the purpose."
Carlos's eyes opened wide, and he nodded slowly in understanding. "Aaaah, I see. And that soul structure does not fit the royal guard soul plan. Refining the spells to handle those control details for you should be theoretically possible, I think, but it would be… complicated."
Trinlen chuckled. "Keep that up, and you might start competing with me for greatest understatements. I doubt even Sandaras could do it without sacrificing the flexibility that makes those spells worth using."
Amber called out to him as she walked over. "You've seen the lock spell Sandaras put on the copies of his spellbook, and that thing is so complex that just thinking about it makes me dizzy."
Trinlen fired right back. "I'll grant that he can handle extreme complexity, but that spell doesn't need to be flexible. Versatile flexibility has its own brand of complexity that is the biggest source of headaches for spell designers ever."
Carlos laughed and shuddered. "Now that, I already knew!" He shook his head and sighed. "So, essentially, we'll have to make that soul structure before we can really start sparring with you properly. Three more days, then."
___
Late that night, Amber looked at Carlos before getting ready to sleep, and paused. "I know that look. What's bothering you?"
Carlos hesitated, then sat up with a long sigh. "It's…" He shook his head and switched to the telepathy that Purple provided for them. [It's some of the incantation words we learned from the royal guard gear today. I can't find all of them in the `help` command's knowledge reference. I understand all of them and what they do, but for some of them that knowledge comes only from my comprehension aid. That shouldn't be possible. `help`'s information should be complete.]
Amber leaned back and thought. [It was all made by people. Maybe they just neglected to write about some of the words?]
Carlos shook his head. [No, they designed it to ensure that everything must be documented. `help` produces its information from the same part of the system as what makes it all work. If an incantation keyword has any effect, then that inherently makes information about its effect available to the `help` command. And yet, for some of them I can't find that information. I'm missing something, and I don't know what. It's bugging me.]
[I'll let you know if I think of any ideas.] Amber yawned and shook her head. [For now, just get some sleep. We learned a lot today, but we'll be set to learn even more tomorrow with the perception-themed superstructure done and the analysis-themed one in progress, and we need to be properly rested for that.] She deployed the tent's divider curtain and followed her own advice.
___
The next morning, before beginning their studies for the day, Crown Mage Felton had news for them. "I have been advised that the Crown believes it would be prudent for House Carlos to remain in the Wilds for a while, and to conceal yourselves from potential searches. The Crown arrested a number of noble scions with regard to the 'rotation agreement,' and there may be a chance that an affected house might realize you are connected to how the Crown discovered it."
Carlos just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "So, we should keep doing exactly what we already planned to. Okay."
"Not quite," Lorvan interrupted. "We have not been concealing ourselves much. Though I'm afraid concealing your aether absorption to an adequate degree might not be possible, at least not without slowing down your advancement by an extreme amount. The Crown would accept the delay, in light of the circumstances, but that decision is yours." He shrugged. "Perhaps you could design one of today's new soul structures after the Tier 8 unification to do something about that. It would not be the most absurd thing I've seen you do."
Carlos blinked and paused. "We'll see if we can think of something for that." He exchanged a look with Amber and spoke telepathically to her. [Concealing aether absorption seems like something Purple would be better suited for; dungeon cores are the premier masters of aether manipulation, after all.]
Purple's attention suddenly focused on them, and he responded before Amber could. [I cannot conceal that aether is being absorbed. Aether continuously pours into the area around us and does not re-emerge. This simple fact cannot be hidden, nor can it be changed without stopping our absorption. What I could do is that, if I expand my domain to cover a much larger area, I might be able to conceal from outside observation precisely where in my domain the absorption is happening.]
Carlos mentally reviewed his knowledge of subterfuge tactics. Most of what I know on the topic comes from games or fiction novels, but all the good ones at least try to make it realistically plausible, right? One of the recurring principles I've seen a lot is that it's better to trick your opponent into believing a falsehood, rather than letting them know that they don't know the truth. So… He started sharing his thoughts with Purple and Amber. [Could you make it appear that the aether is being absorbed in one spot, when it's actually being sent to us instead?]
Purple mulled over the question, and the aether around them all made some strange and erratic movements as he experimented briefly. [With the refinements in my aether control from the dungeon domain superstructure I made yesterday, I believe I can do that. For it to actually fool anyone, I would need something to be a decoy, something that could appear to be doing the absorption.]
[Hmm.] Carlos frowned. [Amber, any ideas?]
[Not directly, but we have other people we could ask.] Amber focused on Felton, who was watching the silent interplay with patient curiosity. "As far as I know, the only thing that can absorb aether is a person. Felton, is there anything else that could serve as a decoy fake aether absorber?"
Felton raised an eyebrow. "You've thought of a way to disguise the location of the absorption, then?" He tilted his head and held his chin contemplatively. "There are some enchanted items that can use aether to fuel themselves, but unless you count the ones made out of dungeon cores, they're immobile and expensive. The main one is the teleporters that nobles use to enter and leave their contained wellsprings. Anyone who saw such a thing randomly out in the Wilds would immediately get suspicious." He paused a few more seconds for thought, but finally sighed and shook his head. "It would have to be a person. And to be at all believable for your rate of absorption, the person would have to be a noble. Preferably multiple people, but a noble in the second stage, inside a dungeon's domain, would go a long way toward convincing people to dismiss the remaining discrepancy."
Carlos hesitated, then slapped his forehead and sighed exasperatedly. "I hate to say it, but… Kindar?"
Amber stared in stupefaction for a moment, then laughed. "You know, using him as decoy bait to protect ourselves actually sounds appealing. But we'd have to go back and catch him up in levels. Unless Purple can…?"
Purple responded by demonstration. A small zone of the Level 19 aether nearby suddenly thinned out, most of the aether pulled back by nearly-imperceptible gossamer threads of Purple's essence, allowing what little remained to decompress to lower levels.
Carlos approached, fascinated, to inspect the phenomenon closely. "Only Level 10 in the center? Yes, and surrounded with thin shells of each level between that and the natural background. Kindar could survive in there. How long can you maintain it, and how easily?"
Purple let the de-leveled area collapse. [Indefinitely, and with only minor effort. Maintaining a greater difference in aether level would take more effort, but lowering the area by only 9 levels is easy.]
"Alright, this is starting to sound like a plan. We should contact Stelras."
Felton spoke up dryly. "You might as well go ahead with that. It's obvious by now that you have a means of purely mental communication, and that it has considerable range. If you want to keep that secret from other houses, you'll have to be a lot more careful about concealing when you use it."
Amber blushed sheepishly, and Carlos sighed and shook his head. Carlos took the lead in responding. "Might as well admit it at this point, I suppose. Alright, here goes." He focused on a mental image of the mayor. [Stelras, I hope I'm not interrupting anything important. We're ready for Kindar to join us soon.]
Mayor Stelras replied cheerfully right away. [Funny you should mention him. I was getting around to telling you that he got impatient and did something about it yesterday evening. No, nothing bad. He was surprisingly polite about the whole thing, actually. He just wrote down his entire soul plan, synergies and all, sealed it in an envelope, and handed it to me to relay to you. He said he hoped you could at least spare a few moments from your busy schedule - he even managed to avoid sounding sarcastic about that - to consider what extensions of it might be possible.]
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Comments
Daniel Martinek
That Is impossible when you know what you are doing. Few chapters earlier in the nature dungeon, they trend and failed.
Monkinto
It would be possible in some programming languages where functions and the like can be define while the program is actively running. To my understanding in most of those languages such changes would only last while the program is currently running and would be lost if the program was restarted. That also does bring up the possibility that the words defined by users can be redefined to change their functionality in ways that are advantageous to the person doing the redefining. It would certainly be interesting if someone did restart the magic system and suddenly a bunch of spells/enchantments stopped working until someone recast the spell that added their functionality. Could be a real problem if the person/group who define the word isn't around to do it anymore.
Timo Geerties
I expected full control of aether levels in every dorm of Carlos' proposed academy (purple dungeon) the moment he asked Lorvan about controlling a mana wellspring's output, rather than sealing it outright.
Jambles
Ignoring the test account may be advised, but is it prudent? The ongoing theft of our right to "first" cannot be suffered so easily. Revolt, brothers! Take back our First!
Jambles
Defining variables and classes sounds pretty on point, but I don't know enough about programming to know.. seems like something you'd have to define explicitly within the program where you'd see the definition when analyzing. If it's stated without defining it explicitly, it'd have to be part of the base language, right?
Jambles
Also, I'm not sure anyone's tried packing up a cooperative dungeon core and bringing it with them to ask if it'd be so kind before. Lots of things a dungeon core is better at doing than a person. Aether manipulation being, maybe, the most notable.
Timo Geerties
As far as I know, this is mainly a problem with these mana wellsprings as you can't just seal it up with a barrier and poke holes in it whenever you want a little aether to spill out. Kind of like poking an inflated balloon with a needle and hoping for it not to burst. Failed a few times, erased entire city populations
gigin CZ
Wasn't that whole 'decompressing mana in a localized area' thing supposed to be a really big deal? As in acording to public knowledge, totally impossible? I would expect some reaction to it from at least someone in the group.
Ben Bass
TYFTC! So now they need to start weaving in more deception into their plans. Plus having a soul structure(s) dedicated to dueling/offensive/defensive capabilities sounds very intriguing.
Pheonixarcher
Could purple make a soul structure to define an area and enforce rules up that area? Imagine from old DND Mythallar's, and Mythal's. If he could control magic in a localized area, perhaps he could make a semipermeable barrier that could act as a one way air compressor. Mana drawn in, but can't come back out. People walk in, people walk out. When its time to take it down purple pulls in the barrier and absorbs the leftover mana.
viperfan7
Well now I'm just not going to ignore you, so ha
Justchillin
I bet the Enchanters Guild has their own Library
NoneSuch
Domain Specific Languages. High level vs low level? Maybe there's a virtual machine and help doesn't document the opcodes of the VM? Or the reverse and help only documents the opcodes of the VM. Maybe there's also "man" and "info"? Not everything makes it into the "help".
Jouni Osmala
Maybe the language has meta words that allow people to define new words with meaning of existing words but mostly the meta words. Basically a subset of language that can be used to define rest of the system words. And what help function shows is part of definition of word that needs to be included explicitly in the definition for help to actually have anything to show.
Josh
Carlos has been assuming that he's the only one to ever think of certain things. For some of them he's probably right, such as the ability to have more soul structures at every level (though even then, I wouldn't underestimate the effect of having generations of people with an extremely practical application of any advanced mathematics they can devise). He knows that there are house secrets of the royal family that make a monumental difference. Discovering the help system could have happened, and monkeypatching it to conceal things considered sensitive. Or attaching an exceptionally good perception filter to some information in it. Or even realizing that there's an underlying system beneath the keywords and building a few things in assembly language. I wouldn't put it past the royal family to maintain a massive conspiracy that hides certain things, even at the expense of the mages building spaghetti code because they don't have better alternatives. They might even have the right idea to do so, if there are extreme dangers of whatever secret they're concealing. Also, I wonder if Sandaras discovered whatever the royal family's secret is, hence the protection mechanisms around it. (Or if Sandaras is still around and hidden away in the royal family.)
Jouni Osmala
Help is the first manual and obvious, but after it got harder to use they got newer version that's easier to use with another command and stopped updating the old interface which is still available because legacy compatibility and if someone still uses it there's just no point in removing it.
Heiko
We really don't know yet if they managed to learn the threading keywords. The multiple force bubbles Carlos made could have been multi-process (minds).
viperfan7
Do I see the start of a "sudo help" forming?
Connor Mcharg
If there’s a library in the armour, then that would be easy to test, since it wouldn’t work if it was cast by anyone or anything that didn’t have that library - and given High House Carlos has been learning the spells as they find them, that’s almost certainly not the issue.
Melissa Harden
Yes we've seen the building of a broken Programmer Mage sole structure skill tree, hints at the royal knights Power Suit Operater sole structure skill tree. Now we get to witness building a Warrior or perhaps a Battle Tacticion.
Hauke Musicaloris
I was thinking maybe there is some namespace-fuckery with those keywords, like os.path is only accessible via the os package in Python. Yes it's built-in, but you have to import it anyways? Or some OOP trickery maybe?
Heiko
Butting in. Somewhere in the armor there could be a hidden library. Something in the library could also overload a standard function of effect, in order to perform the functions hidden to the crown without spelling them out for everybody capable of reading the enchantment runes.
Connor Mcharg
I was going with the enchanters creating a secondary incantation system, but Carlos probably would’ve noticed if those words weren’t in the original (and now lost) language, and it’d be an insanely big project to replicate the world-wide coverage of the original system.
Alex Heilgeist
Not sure how possible the options could be, but: A parallell/competing system? Someones using a different power source for specialized commands? Would system calls and some library of functions be distinguishable? Someone inventing their own words that are really complex constructions of existing ones? Access restrictions? Words of a higher security level? Compression/encryption/Compiling? Words that are help commands but have been named somthing else when decompiled?
Skylar Ittner
My thought was there might be some sort of way to define a global function in the magic system like how JavaScript allows sticking whatever into the `window`object. It wouldn't show up in `help`because it was patched in "at runtime", meaning after the magic system was created. And since nobody's ever rebooted the entire system the new functions have never gone away.
NoneSuch
Sounds like Kindar might have grown up. Or Daddy impressed upon him the importance of not fucking up! Or both. Both is always possible.
Douglas Miller
I'm curious, what "something" did you think you had?
Connor Mcharg
Huh, that might actually be the most sensible thing *anyone* could’ve done in Kindar’s position - maybe he does have a good head on those shoulders… As for `help`’s incompleteness… …I’ve got nothing. I thought I had something, but that quickly produced other problems.
Tim Judge
Welcome back.Hope the new brain juice works well for you. cheers. Oh and good chapter YAY
Test Patron Plz Ignore
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