Khenal
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Chapter Three-Hundred Fifty-Two
🕑 Added 2025-04-22 01:13:43 +0000 UTCWhile Teemo expands the space in the Lecture Hall, I take the chance to watch Rocky as he carefully experiments with gravity. He’s wary of it, but I’m not worried. He’s not likely to go making black holes any more than he’s likely to punch the planet out of orbit with kinetic affinity.
Still, it’s interesting to watch. Gravity has always felt like one of those forces that cheats. It doesn’t seem like planets and moons are actually spending any energy to attract things, but they still do it. Physicists talk about potential energy to make up for it, but that’s always felt like a bandaid solution to me. Magnets are the same problem, attracting or repelling without necessarily spending anything to achieve it.
They always try to model the attractive force by putting a heavy ball on a bed, and showing how the divot it makes shows the gravitic attraction. Far enough away, any marbles won’t really react. Put them closer, and they’ll roll in to meet the heavy ball. The problem with a model like that is it requires gravity to model in the first place. The reasoning always felt circular to me.
It always made me wonder why they always would talk about it with the force, rather than the acceleration. It’s been shown, time and time again, that if you ignore air resistance, a feather and a bowling ball will fall at the same rate. Which means the force on the ball is a lot higher than on the feather. It seems weird to try to figure gravity as a field of force, rather than a field of acceleration. Not that an acceleration field is easy to picture.
Either way, I’m no theoretical physicist, nor even theoretically a physicist, and despite having it as a domain, I don’t feel any grand understanding of how gravity actually works. It would have been nice to get to thumb my theoretical nose at Newton, Einstein, and Hawking all at once. All I can really do is watch how Rocky tests the affinity and make my own notes, though I do nudge him to compare and contrast it with his kinetic affinity.
He does a few little tests, and though I think to a lot of outsiders, the results would look the same, Rocky and I both can see a lot of differences. Gravity is much happier to exert acceleration rather than force, which has its pros and cons. A punch technically experiences a massive deceleration when it lands, and it’s quickly apparent that gravity will need a lot more mana to achieve something like that.
On the other hand, kinetic affinity exerts the force and is done, not counting Rocky reclaiming the energy as heat and such. Gravity, however, will happily stick around once the energy is spent to make the field. Rocky plays around with a small, weak one for a while, getting a feel for how it works. I get the feeling we could really break thermodynamics if we do things right, but perpetual motion isn’t something I want to play with right now. Or for a while. That might trigger more than a couple system errors if we do that.
I nudge Rocky with a couple ideas, which he quickly picks up on to try, and I think we’re both more than happy with the results. While making a gravity field is expensive, redirecting one is a lot cheaper. It takes Rocky a few tries to make it smooth, but he can easily make a wall be his new down. It costs a trickle of mana to maintain, but unless he keeps it up all day, it’s way cheaper than trying to make a new field with the strength to keep him glued to the wall.
It’s also not too terrible to reduce or increase the magnitude of gravity on certain things. It’s more expensive than changing which way is down, but halving or doubling gravity for a few moments is very affordable. I don’t know if gravity will itself be an offensive powerhouse on its own, but it could easily be a control-effect nightmare. Run around on whatever surfaces to launch attacks, or to dodge ones from your foes, mess with gravity of a foe’s limbs to make them wildly miss, or even make them feel like they’re in a tumble drier and disorient them to get your own attack in.
And that’s just with these basics. I’m sure Rocky and the others will find new and interesting ways to use gravity, and that’s without them expanding into spatial and time shenanigans.
I leave Rocky to his experiments as Teemo calls for my attention. He has the hall decently expanded, making it trivial for me to pay to take it from a small classroom to a lecture hall worth the name. There’s room for well over a hundred people, which is exactly what I wanted. Aranya might think there’s only a few dozen people with the new affinity, but I want to make sure we have room for them. Not only for them, but for my scions, too. It takes a few extra shortcuts, and some help from Tiny to give them all a comfortable place to sit and learn, but soon I have enough room for all of my scions to attend the lecture.
And none too soon. Tiny looks comfortable taking up a large corner in the back, but Nova is still carefully testing her own fireproof area when priests start filing in. Ratkin are well represented, as are the different spiderkin varieties. My antkin are here as well, with their own priests seeming to favor either worker or enchanter castes. What really surprises me is the number of elves and other beastkin, not to mention the dwarf and troll that take their seats. Aranya arrives last with a few kobolds, and they all eagerly take their seats, waiting for Teemo to start the lecture.
He grumbles at me from a shortcut, still not happy about having to give the lesson, but there’s not many others who could. You’re the one who first got the affinity, bud. Welcome to the consequences of your actions.
“More like your actions. But fine. Let’s get them introduced to the concept.” He pops out onto the small podium, not bothering with any notes. He does, however, motion for Thing to help him with the chalkboards, which Thing is happy to do.
“Alright. Welcome, everyone, to the basics of gravity. It might sound utterly alien, but it’s actually something we’ve all dealt with every single day of our lives. It’s so ubiquitous that we just don’t notice it. Before I go into it, I need to introduce those who haven’t heard it to something Rocky likes to say.” He motions for Thing, who already knows what to write on the large chalkboard.
“Stuff is made of stuff. It sounds so simple that it doesn’t even need to be said, but there’s a lot of mysteries that happen because people forget that. There’s a follow up, though, that Rocky hasn’t coined, so I’m gonna beat him to the punch for probably the only time: things don’t just happen.” He gives Thing a moment to write it before he continues.
“It also sounds pretty obvious, but keep it in mind while I explain. Imagine an apple. Why an apple? Boss says it’s traditional.” That earns smiles as everyone gathered just thinks I’m being weird. “Now, hold out that apple and let go of it. It falls, of course. Now, instead of dropping the apple, set it on a table. Now the apple will sit there until you get hungry enough to eat it.” Thing draws an apple on a table on the chalkboard while the gathered students murmur, wondering where Teemo’s going with this.
“Now, remove the table. The apple falls, right? But why? I just said things don’t just happen, but the apple falls without you doing anything. It wouldn’t go shooting across the table on its own. It wouldn’t float up to the ceiling on its own. So why would it fall on its own?”
The faces in the audience show a spectrum from quiet eureka, to confusion, to dawning understanding. Teemo scans their faces before nodding. “Gravity is why it falls. Gravity is what makes down exist. As for the why and how of gravity… that’s the complicated part. Even the Boss is fuzzy on the details, but the relevant part comes back to stuff being made of stuff.”
Teemo points to the floor, with the students following his direction, though they’re not sure what he’s pointing at. “Stuff makes gravity. More stuff, more gravity. Remember that stuff is made of stuff. How much ground is there? A lot. Even if you go as deep as the deepest tunnels, there’s a lot more below you than you can even imagine. So much that all the stuff above and around you doesn’t make enough gravity for you to even notice.” He smiles as everyone tries to take that in. My scions are taking it in stride, used to me casually upending their understanding of how things work. My priests are taking it better than I thought they would, but I probably shouldn’t be too surprised. They deal with a lot of my nonsense, too.
“There’s a few more bits of theory to play with and some mundane practical demonstrations, but let's see about getting all of you your first gravity technique.” Everyone looks eager at that, and Teemo motions for Rocky to come up and join him.
“Rocky and the Boss have been playing with the affinity and I think their wall walking maneuver is a simple way of utilizing gravity, while also helping to give you a good idea of what it can do. Rocky, if you’d demonstrate?”
My boxer nods and walks up to the chalkboards, then walks up the chalkboards with ease. He’s not a savant for nothing. The technique is already looking smooth in his gloved hands. He even shows off by walking along the wall in a circuit of the room, every eye glued to him as the students take in the details of what he’s doing.
“Now, if everyone would head to the wall, we can spend some time practicing and you can all get your first taste of what the Boss calls a fundamental force.”
Comments
D.Kaiser
I'm looking to see what kind of Chutes and Ladders revision to the labyrinth might happen. Not to mention sections of the tree where falling off a branch is no longer a possibility... TFTC! :D
mly85lc
Fate chained, all consuming [thunder pig's]! flying/charging trought air compination of repulsive trusts and gravity levitation.
BrokenLord321
Wait if we mess with gravity can we turn physics into a game mechanic and make a perpetual motion machine Beseige style!?
Ethan Barrow
TFTC!! Love this series, so when can we get a Boar spawner and have a pig walk on a ceiling?
Wolf_Senpai
Yes. Collect ALL the elements like pokemon. Become eldritch! >:D
The-Guy-Who-Asks
What’s Updog?
PickledTink
Khenal: I swear to the gods that if you put in a gravity affinity canine and call it Updog I will hit you :p
Aerowarrier
God forbid when another dungeon is created with it and doesn’t have TheDiem to guide it. Imagine a murderous dungeon with gravity affinity
Aerowarrier
God this opens up so many problems. Can’t wait to see normal people start being born with gravity affinity, since apparently everyone has some random affinity naturally, and just accidentally break reality since nobody has any clue what the affinity means
Altaan
Wonder what the blue or green type will have fun with! (yes I know you meant Rogue type, but might as well have fun with the Mistype)
Stav Tri
Well, depending on the amount of gravity is In a localized area and the direction, especially if it's two opposite directions, it could introduced a sheering force. The same danger can be applied if thediem was more ruthless and formed garott wire type gravity wells, super thin but intense gravity wells that would be impossible to tell anything was there, but should something cross it, that portion is basically shaved off into the trap. Good thing we have a well rounded good thediem, rather than the normal.
mly85lc
Thous are some nice ideas especially minerals ones. Though I'm pretty sure one can not just form/manifest mana to world while inside Ohter creatures. Ohter wise one would just form [fireball] inside oppents mouth and explosive they head off..
BrokenLord321
I hope so I wanna hear the goddesses' reaction to the explanation. 🤣
Thomas V.
This is an incredible visualisation, thanks so much!
Samuel
thanks for the chapter!
Markell
Wait till they learn that Gravity isn’t merely just a force, but reality bending along 4 axis. Scienceclic english does a really good job of presenting general relativity in a digestible way: https://youtu.be/wrwgIjBUYVc?si=gwoXJ0QbmZEPHB3e
Samuel
ohhh or can he make gravity fae? or gravity spirits?
JHD
I would say yes, but only as strong as the weight of the lever in the field, so not very useful, depending on the field and lever it might just fall out on its own 😅 Edit: After thinking about it more: My head start hurting 😫 I don't know what happens.
Daniel Popov
To make noticeable time dilation to play with (no atomic clocks) you need relativistic gravity or speed. Think standing on a neutron star or a punch flying at 25% c. I don't think time dilation is linear either so 5% c (which would probably still destroy more than a nuke) won't slow your clock anywhere near 5% but I could be wrong. Unless The DM sends scions in space I don't think they can link time by way of practical experiments, only theoretical knowledge, if it can be unlocked that way at all.
Jake
So with gravity being a new affinity, does that mean Thediem could start making gravity elementals? What might those look like?
LinaBoeckwurm
*Has nothing useful to say and is just grinning with excitement reading this chapter*
Demonlord
Thanks for the amazing chapter 😊 explaining gravity isn't easy but teemo did a great job imo
Thomas V.
Also: > The problem with a model like that is it requires gravity to model in the first place. The reasoning always felt circular to me. That’s because we cannot make 4D models the way it actually works in real life. Space time fabric is *hard* to wrap your head around.
John Pratt
I don't know, maybe. I know G-force happens because of inertia. Is inertia a function of gravity? It seems like it could be, but I don't know how inertia works outside of Earth's gravity. It seems intuitive that a bigger thing would need more force to effect its acceleration even in the absence of a larger gravity well, but I don't actually know if that's true and that could still be a function of gravity, but just the objects own gravity.
mly85lc
So a question.. if a small gravity field is suspended made on air, that is 1:1 with exsicting gravity. Could that field act as "fulcrum" point, for lever?
Shino
I wonder if Tula is there...
Devin Durham
TYFTC! I can’t wait to see the delvers reactions to the non spider denizens suddenly able to run on walls and ceilings 🤣
CF Sapper
Oh the thing Rocky could do with gravity. It's absolutely a buff/debuff. When suddenly your opponent/their armour weighs multiples of it originally weigh it's hard to fight back. Or you tank in 2 tonnes of armour now feels like they are wearing a nightgown. Localisation of it to make all the blood rush to/from their head. Localize it to the soles of their shoes/boots so they can't move. Or just localize it to the center of their being and they crush in on themselves like a tin can getting stepped on. The utility of forging metals into ultra dense versions, crash the local economy with dimonds, purification of metals, fusion at atomic/micro/macro level.
Cordell Patrick
Oh this is gonna be fun for the rouge types
Shiloh Gallaher
Correction the strong nuclear force would make disintegration magic
Shiloh Gallaher
So there are 3 fundamental forces. Will each of them get an affinity? Cause I think the strong and weak nuclear forces will make exelent disintegration magic
Herakilla
Thanks for the chapter!
Justin Raine
I think they would function like Teemo's shortcuts were if they are not maintained they go away on their own.
Justin Raine
We're gonna see Rocky make orbiting elemental punches ain't we.
Austin Miller
Gravity wizards spending all day every day creating a gravity construct seems like a terrifying version of the "stop the cabal of wizards from casting their super spell before the world is destroyed" type shit. If creating gravity fields are actually permanent, this is a terrifying prospect.
Brandon C
kinetic affinity exerts the force and it’s* done,
Rick Delallata
Gravity mages are terrifying. Nearly everything relies on consistency so when someone starts messing with what is one of the most consistent things in the universe, it's hard to push through that to fight or run
Ben Bass
TYFTC! Of course it is an apple, it is traditional of course. I love the explanation that gravity is what makes down. I think Thediem is right that gravity won’t necessarily be an offensive force, it will definitely be one for controlling the field. I think Thediem needs to have some standing gravity fields to help catch those that fall from the tree and guide them to a lower gravity landing area so they don’t get hurt, just corralled and sent to an exit.
fanfan8000
Typo? On the other hand, kinetic affinity exerts the force and it(is) done, not counting Rocky reclaiming the energy as heat and such.
William Anderson
TYFTC!!!!! This is awesome and I'm so excited for the next chapter!!! :)
Jesus Figueroa
I wonder if G Force would apply to this after all gravity is all about speed.
Patrick
It feels like these chapters are getting shorter
brennon Petersen
Tftc!
Brandon C
Rocky walks up to the chalkboard then walks UP the chalkboard 🤣🤣
Speedsaber
I wonder if rocky could use a gravity feild to make his punch accelerate at an opponent
Jacob
That is a fantastic definition. I love it
Jacob
Cue many many faceplants.
Stickboy172
Cackles in fundamental rules of the universe. Proceeds to break them and Order's mind.
PickledTink
So, six fundamental forces for the setting. Strong and Weak forces are: Why Stuff Exists As Stuff Electromagnetism and Gravity are: How Stuff Interacts With Stuff Mana and Divinity are: How Soul Interacts With Stuff.
Vorquel
Sorry Thedeim, but potential energy only feels like a band-aid solution because you can cheat. For us mortals, conservation of energy cannot be violated.
CurufinIII
Tyftc!! Can't wait to see what broken gravity shennanigans happen when Rocky has more time to play with it. My money says he notices the dilation effect before too long, and he accidentally time affinity.
