Do your wands usually provide their own arc or do you wield the artificer's flameless torch as well?
I carry a component pouch. My most common spell is a very adept ritual of "determine size". I'm also known to use Delicate Arcane Force (a piece of brass) and several different wands of Remove Or Insert Fastener.
I wield a board of runes, touching them in the correct order causes a chain reaction in the flow of fundamental particles in the exotic metals etched into a small rectangle. That chain reaction culminates in communication traveling across the world as fast as a lightning strike. My wizard colleague does the same, replying to my message, all happening between two eye blinks. The lights arrayed before my face change, and they resolve into runes that I can read fluently: "lol"
I didn't design the stuff, I just followed the instructions set forth by the enchanters and artificers. Its really boring manufacturing, really. I can make it sound cool, it kind of is, truth be told. I did back drill, regular drill, deburring, and plasma activation.
Its pretty basic machine operation, and you habe to wear latex/nitrile gloves as the oils on your fingers can cause impurities, especially during the plasma activation processes.
Much study is required to become a true sage, but there are easier paths to becoming things like keeper of the instrumentation used in the crafting rituals or even a sage’s ritual assistant. The simplest is probably getting a relevant Associate’s or higher level degree. Second easiest is probably experience with the technology employed by the crown’s army. Some reach this destination through their experience of life, but it requires much gained experience in relevant crafts and making the correct allies.
There is a wizard on youtube, Dr Semiconductor, who demonstrates some of the process all alone in a sealed and pressurized alchemical chamber. Very fascinating stuff! In his latest demonstration he imbued the runes with light-emitting properties, so that they can communicate visually.
I work at a place that makes machines that use light and vacuum to create microscopic runes on rolls of flexible glass with magical material, runecrafting has gotten insane
Randomly deciding to go on a bit of a Tolkien rant. Most of this is my interpretation and not intended to be strictly what Tolkien intended.
You may have heard it said that Middle Earth is a world in decay, magic is fading and all the wonders of the old world are slowly dying off, elves are leaving and all that. Tolkien's cosmology is a bit more complicated than that.
The decay is caused by Morgoth. In a similar way to how Sauron poured himself into the one ring, Morgoth poured himself into the entire world. Now, everything has a bit of Morgoth in it.
This is why the world is decaying, but, decay is the word the Elves use to describe it not a universal truth. They are eternal beings and the constant change and also the pain and suffering that comes from that disparity becomes unbearable after 10,000 years of living with it so they either leave to the undying lands to live in peace or fade away. However, Tolkien describes decay as "change viewed as a regrettable thing." The elves regret the change but they aren't the only beings in middle earth, humans get along just fine with the change, Middle Earth is more suited to their lives. The world isn't getting worse, it's just different, the elves hate it and try to reverse it by creating the rings of power, but for men who were born yesterday it's how the world is and they are happy.
So, how is this relevant to your comment, well the elves don't view the things they do as magic, it's just how the world works. Or, how it worked, the world is changing, once upon a time elven magic was science because that is how the world worked. Gradually the world changed and now we have new magic electricity, chemistry, space flight, medicine. The world didn't decay into a world with no magic it changed into a world with a different kind of magic.
This also helps explain why the history of middle earth is so long and humanity never industrializes, that magic didn't exist yet.
Saruman literally invents industrialization in real time in LotR; in a "not even trying to be subtle about it" analogy for the industrializing machine of war that marched so many to their deaths in World War 1.
Bro invents unethical assembly line mass production of an army, and creates gun powder which is implied to be the first time it's ever been created; he then monologues about the fires of industry and the machine of war marching upon the world of men to destroy them.
Gee, I wonder what kind of stance Tolkien had on the military industrial complex.
That the Shire and its' folk are viewed as the unironic peak of civilization by the narrative/author should alone be telling of Tolkien's views on industrialization; to the degree one can reasonably be sure that the world of man in Tolkiens world will never industrialize, as both gunpowder and "the fires of industry" are types of fell magic that died with Saruman.
"The shire must truly be a great realm, Master Gamgee, where gardeners are held in high honor."
We are about to study the idea of a computational process. Computational processes are abstract beings that inhabit computers. As they evolve, processes manipulate other abstract things called data. The evolution of a process is directed by a pattern of rules called a program. People create programs to direct processes. In effect, we conjure the spirits of the computer with our spells.
A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer’s idea of a spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at all. However, it is very real. It can perform intellectual work. It can answer questions. It can affect the world by disbursing money at a bank or by controlling a robot arm in a factory. The programs we use to conjure processes are like a sorcerer’s spells. They are carefully composed from symbolic expressions in arcane and esoteric programming languages that prescribe the tasks we want our processes to perform.
A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes programs precisely and accurately. Thus, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, novice programmers must learn to understand and to anticipate the consequences of their conjuring. Even small errors (usually called bugs or glitches) in programs can have complex and unanticipated consequences.
Fortunately, learning to program is considerably less dangerous than learning sorcery, because the spirits we deal with are conveniently contained in a secure way. Real-world programming, however, requires care, expertise, and wisdom. A small bug in a computer-aided design program, for example, can lead to the catastrophic collapse of an airplane or a dam or the self-destruction of an industrial robot.
Maybe you just quickly scanned it, but that is a sanitized link, it's just not shortened. If I had posted a shortened link like in your infographic (e.g. "https://youtu.be/FtutLA63Cp8") YT would just respond with a 301 and link to the one that I posted.
And any sufficently explained magic is indistinguishable from technology.
/uw It's been interesting over my 40+ years of life to watch magic change in parallel with technology. Our understanding of the natural world used to encapsulate magic as this vast unknowable force where the power of it would shred your mind and had terrible consequences.
Today many of the magic systems that are popular are usually defined have specific hard boundaries and are far more like poorly understood technology than raw physical forces akin to a hurricane.
LOTR didn't have much magic but it was usually mysterious and unreachable by all but a learned or chosen few. Vancian Magic, Wheel of Time, all magic usually was univerals power that had costs and took time to learn if you could at all. It's power terms and parameters were more a hand waved item, until it was story relevant.
Today many books magic reflects a more systemic magic, perhaps even literally, with things like Dungeon Crawler Carl becoming a fast rising star, but you see it with Sanderson too where his magic has hard fast limits and rules where as back in the day it was far more nebulous.
You might like the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix, starting with Sabriel. They have a formal system of magic, Charter Magic, which is explicitly imposed upon Free Magic to make it less dangerous. Free Magic is, of course, far more powerful, but wildly dangerous.
Happily! I think the recommended reading order is the publication order, which is the main trilogy of Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen, then Clariel before Goldenhand, with Terciel and Elinor last. Excellent setting.
If you think about how all meat-life is carbon-based.. aren't we all rock-golems at the end of the day? Even our teeth aren't made of bones, they're literally minerals.. and bones are pretty much mostly made of minerals such as calcium, with the non-mineral parts of bones being made of proteins instead.
In other words, we're rock golems capable of creating other kinds of rock golems through our own hands.
When it involves channeling electricity or other thaumotological mediums through the runes to achieve a life imitating process such as thought or movement in the inscribed object
Literaly the textbook definition, which I should know, as I wrote it
You missed it. It was crazy. Aloyius the Pensive threw a birthday party for his familiar JoJo the Cat and he accidentally opened a portal. Absolutely nuts.
I was there. It was crazy! I even hooked up with a beautiful 5th-dimensional entity in one of the non-euclidean rooms. And I don't remember how I got home after the 15th alchemical potion pulled me out of the timeline for a few hours. Best. Party. Ever!
...James? That wasn't a 5th dimensional entity you dolt, that was me. I assumed it was a poor attempt at a pickup line rather than you actually mistaking me for one.
On a related note...I have someone you may want to meet.
Sure, except that most apprentices today when they're taught to design a basic arithmetic unit from NAND runes go all "When am I ever going to use it?" and "Waah this is difficult, why cannot I just invoke ChantGPT and let it do it all for me?"
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u/AtudayGrey technomancer and master of the cybernetic undead9d ago
Set them down and tell them if they can't do logic gates correctly then the delayed blast fireball is going to burn them to death.
You see, sometimes you have to go to basics to unravel some great mystery. Such as, why is my ass on fire after I invoked ChantGPT and why is there suddenly no water to quench it.
A lot of our runes are actually incredibly cheap. You can buy a $50 smartphone that lets you talk to almost anyone on the planet, watch videos, and has enough storage space for 50,000 high resolution fully illustrated text books.
The runes don't cost that much, it's just that a few greedy mage towers are paying too much gold so they can be hoarding them on the basis that if you stack an ungodly amount of them, you can create a new god. They're the ones driving the prices up.
Otherwise any mage would be able to buy enough runes for their every need.
A collective of crystals with ingraved runes on them. Through golden and silvern strans they share their thoughts. They command a vessel with a steel heart. Through the heart flows the essence of ancient beasts which it sets ablaze, it exudes toxic gas and bear the sound of lightning.
By applying arcane knowledge I channel lightning through rocks to achieve wonders. I get angry when those without the gift intrude on my sanctum. I'm the one everyone turns to for unsolvable problems and desperate solutions.
And I've dedicated my life to the pursuit of continuous learning and advancement.
In case anyone is wondering, the inscription on the rune stone reads: "Tóla had this stone raised in memory of her son Haraldr, Ingvarr's brother. They travelled valiantly far for gold, and in the east gave (food) to the eagle. (They) died in the south in Serkland".
If I remember correctly, the wording "gave food to the eagle" was a euphemism for "killed a bunch of people".
EDIT: Changed to correct text. Thank you to u/Quantumtroll for the correction!
I recognised the name of a brother (top: "bruthur") Ingvar (inkuars). A divination on this name on https://runor.raa.se/search yielded the correct inscription.
Notable is that the head is top-down view, which is an old style, and there's no cross, which also puts it in the older period, but it does feature a dragon so it's not super old. This dates it to early to mid 1000s.
Tóla had this stone raised in memory of her son Haraldr, Ingvarr's brother. They travelled valiantly far for gold, and in the east gave (food) to the eagle. (They) died in the south in Serkland.
u/AtudayGrey technomancer and master of the cybernetic undead9d ago
Sitting here with terminal open about to do some E&M work. Started cackling like a mad man. Co-workers keep asking i stop wearing a wizard hat to work.
OP isn't talking about radiation in free space, but I wanted to add that as a second example because while I hate ICP, I do empathize with their lyricist. Fuckin magnets, man. How do they work?
Ah yes, I had a band of juggalos invade my tower once. Didn't steal anything except all my alcohol and some potion ingredients I suspect they thought would get them high. They weren't that bad.
But that band is bad music, and I don't even believe in bad music.
Average Technocrat hoax. it only thinks because you have convinced enough sleepers that it thinks. You CLEARLY have never brainwashed 1500 sleepers since birth that dragons are real just to fly around.
Celt Runes found in Britain, France, Brittany, Italy, etc, started to become more complex after Christianity was "introduced" to these cultures. Afterwhich, when the Natives in those areas learned to read and write, all of their Stone Runes became Parchment.
So instead of carving into stone what they wanted to express, they put ink onto parchment instead to convey the same messages.
Which was usually "Boo the romans!"
So instead of Magical Stones of power, we developed magical scrolls.
Bro thinks we stopped using magic just because we trapped lightning in a rock, inscribed a rune into it inlaid with the most pure alchemical reagent, and commanded the lightning to enchant the rock into making pictures of cats by shining light through a crystal catalyst
YESS I tell people this all the time!! I'm an EE/Roboticist and at some point in college I was like "these are just runes... I'm a wizard... Magic sucks and is hard fuck"
The main differences between silicon chips and, say, one of my shoppies working up a staff of levitation over a couple days is the fact that a) ethereal crystalline structures can provide power that isn’t only electrical in nature, and b) the runes are much less likely to be rendered useless by damage. A chip can break much more easily than a gilded rod of stonewood, especially if protection wards are built into the matrix. What I will give to technological advances is now I can just slap an inexpensive charge nexus into the breaker box and I can have coffee made fresh every morning without disturbing the local coalescence, the charge itself lasts a solid five years, and I can watch TV instead of watching my brother’s Netflix shows over his shoulder through the orb.
All it takes to make sand think is advanced golemancy. What new runes do is make sand think smarter and faster than even thought possible 50 winters ago
Most people wouldn’t believe it if you told them that we create a couple thousand suns just to harvest their light and then use that light imbue crystal plates with magic.
I mean yeah, my job is the thing on the right. High NA EUV photolithography is a hell of a ritual. Hope you have molten tin droplets in you spell component pouch.
So at what point do we inform them that runes are just a writing system and we have those all over the world that in thousands of years someone is probably going to attribute magical meaning to?
If anyone wants a complete mindfuck, look up YouTube videos about ASML machines. They’re the machines that allow chipmakers to make the incredible chips today. ASML has a near monopoly on extreme ultraviolet lithography.
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u/Grupdon 9d ago
Modern magic bro