“Wait, you’re still using store-bought ashes? Haven’t you ever made your own? It’s super easy, and you don’t have to worry if your bone ash is ever cut with Birch anymore.”
“I use ash btw”
How was it going? “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science (and tech)”.
Which is probably why I have a soft spot both for the “lost technologies” scifi trope, and fantasy universes where magic is studied just like any other science
Arthur C. Clark.
My own: science is the scrutiny of magic.
“Magic missile is just a teleportation spell to a gun range. Create food and water? Teleportation. Teleport? Believe it or not, a hack of disintegration”
That was thr lore behind infinity blade. All magic rings can be distilled down to short range teleportation, just paired with different locations.
Ah yes, the “every OS but windows -> Linux -> Unix” dynamic
We found a race condition in the teleport code. Turns out the efficiency curve for the restoration magic that undoes the disintegration in real time has a parabolic mana requirement related to mass, but disintegrate has a caterneric curve. For human sized stuff they match up, but if you try to teleport something of sufficient mass the restoration starts to draw a disproportionate amount of mana and the whole thing falls apart.
Also, we need to hire some more QA contractors.
How we found out? We knew from the start there would be a discrepancy. Early testing pointed to this problem. And we warned every superior up the chain. But in the end we were ordered to just put a warning on the scroll.
We were only taken serious after a junior magician thought it was funny to teleport an elephant into their observatorium before exams and neglected the warnings. That is how the Mana Void of Barkley Academy was formed.
The superiors were out for blood when the first court summon scrolls appeared, using competitors teleportation technology. That was until we gave them a copy of our manilla scroll holder full with communication of them neglecting to heed our warnings.
3E sorcerers in a nutshell
I don’t know what’s going wrong. That spell works perfectly fine on my summoning circle.
As a QA myself, this is what dealing with developers (and I this case, wizards) is like. Way too much trust in their code.
I’m a dev, and once when I pulled something like that, QA told me, “oh cool, so we’re shipping your machine to the customer then?”
and that’s why they invented Docker 👈😬👈
And that’s why they invented wands.
Senior QA in the wizard world would actually be a respected title. Can’t make senior if you’re dead, and you can be alive if you’re bad at it.
Have you tried closing and re-opening your spell book?
What’s the uptime on your portal?
Apple-wood makes really good wands for illusions.
Oh, the staff? Built it myself. Hexacore silicon based crystal lattice CPU (Casting Power Unit), 4 billion RAM (Refined Arcane Modules) with an upgraded SSD (Swift Spell Deck) that can hold 2 trillion sigils. Yeah, of course it has RGB aura effects.
Some smartass drew a penis into the runes for the ritual circle during development by mistake. We tried removing it once we noticed it, but then the whole spell broke so we had to leave it in.
Or “if every engineering field was like IT”.
Boeing leaves the chat
As a wizard, I agree to this.
Never trust any spell except the most simple and basic ones.
So, you’re a warlock without the background story?
Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld’s wizards are sort of like this, at least once Mustrum Ridcully becomes archchancellor, and especially once they built their magic Rube Goldberg style supercomputer Hex.
+++ Out Of Cheese Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot. +++
As always, if someone has a good worldbuilding idea, somebody has already thought of it.
As usual, it was Terry Pratchett.GNU STP
GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
Jack Vance, Dying Earth series has similar ideas.
Archwizard btw
By the time the archwizard has finished the incantation, the rest of the party has finished the dungeon
Always wanted to add the pitfalls of modern capitalism to my fantasy worlds.
maybe read the dark profit saga then!
kinda terry prathett vibe with a more modern style, first one is called “Orconomics”
amazing trilogy, highly recommended!
Steal lore from Shadowrun, they’ve already fleshed out the details for you!
This is why I love Dimension20’s DnD shows. Capitalism is always the bad guy.
“What the fuck? why is this spell trying to access your Patron directly? Theres no reason it cant run off your local mana reserves”
“Wow I made the pact with the creature from the abyss to get my powers, and now it wants a monthly sacrifice in order to keep use them?”
“How does a simple “create water” spell have a 15 second cast time? Is it doing something else in the background or were the glyphs written by a first year apprentice?”
“Ah fuck how do I change the incantation for my spell again? Let me search the the orb real quick…”
“Why would you use Elvish for an earth-spell?? Dwarven is clearly the more appropriate language, especially if it’s an incantation”
“It’s fine like it is! It works, ok?”
“How does a simple “create water” spell have a 15 second cast time? Is it doing something else in the background or were the glyphs written by a first year apprentice?”
And that’s how the backdoor (literal) in the xzutils material component was discovered.
groan… it’s meant to be fantasy! Why do i have to subscribe to 15 patrons to get access to the spells i want?
I like this idea.
So in this case could a segment fault create a black hole?
