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Dantalian

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Orcris, your signature has grown quite long. And it seems to contradict itself, "Honor is a fool's prize" doesn't go along with "Est Solaris Oth Mithas", does it?

Ah, and one last thing, I'm pretty sure the way Virgil said it was Amor omnia vincit, (I am sure partially due to the face that it was one of the first Latin mottos my mother drilled into my head when she made me learn Latin.) not Amor vincit omnia. The former is the proper ordering for a Latin sentence, the latter is the proper order for an English sentence. "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

19-Apr-2010 06:09:07

Orcris

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I'm aware of the state of contradiction. The application of the honor is a fool's prize quote is during war or similar situations, otherwise I stick to my previous motto. And thanks for the correction, I stole it off some website so I blame them. I have not begun to question the value of honor, but rather I am learning when it is better set aside. In true war honor becomes near worthless, as the quote says.

~Orcris~
~Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.~ Darth Revan
~Est Sularis Oth Mithas~ Sturm Brightblade
~Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality~ Richter Abend
~What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger* Friedrich Nietzsche
~Who I am is not important, my message is~ Darth Revan
~Amor omnia vincit~ Virgil

21-Apr-2010 13:44:40

Dantalian

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Oh great, you'll be quite a terror if you learn when to not be honorable.

Incidentally, The Weapons of Destiny is up. (Quick find code: 49-50-206-60859371 ) "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

23-Apr-2010 03:03:47

Orcris

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~Orcris~
~Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.~ Darth Revan
~Est Sularis Oth Mithas~ Sturm Brightblade
~Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality~ Richter Abend
~What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger* Friedrich Nietzsche
~Who I am is not important, my message is~ Darth Revan
~Amor omnia vincit~ Virgil

07-May-2010 17:20:47

Dantalian

Posts: 3,434 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

APPENDIX TO BLACK PENTAGRAM

An Overview of Magic by Taika Guillory

(This was an essay written and published by Taika Guillory and presented the Mage‘s Guild. It so worried and infuriated the old guard of the guild that they promptly tried to execute Taika and her research partners. They failed, and the power of base magic caught the eyes of a Zarosian sect which proceeded to provide Taika with funding and protection.)

Consider a line which lies on a Cartesian plane. It need not be straight, nor need it follow a formula. Therefore what we have is a series of seemingly arbitrary points in an infinite plane. Now imagine another arbitrary line, this one going through three-dimensional space; with this, the line may be more complex. Now consider, but do not try to visualize, a line going through a space of nigh-infinite dimensions. This line is our world, and the space is the realm of possibilities.

When shown a graph, we tend to pay attention to the figure, not the infinite empty space around it; likewise, when it comes to existence, we tend to pay attention to reality, not the infinite possibilities surrounding it. However, a mage must pay attention to, and to her best ability, study the surrounding space, the realm of possibilities. For the craft of a mage is to find a desirable possibility and bring it into reality by use of her will.

Consider this example; a lone mage stands against a skilled knight in full armor. The mage, protected only by her robes and agility is likely to be slaughtered. However, the mage is aware that there exists some possible reality where there is a large ball of fire coming from her and going toward the knight. Using her skills, she looks into the realm of possibilities and finds a possible reality with the ball of fire, then using her will, she turns her current reality into the desired reality. The result; our skilled knight finds a fire wave slamming into his helmet. "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

08-May-2010 17:39:43

Dantalian

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While we have seen such things many times before, few people understand how this happens. Even many skilled mages do this intuitively, and thus do not think through their actions. As a result of this ignorance, many mages and common folk alike believe that runes are necessary for magic, whereas they are only tools to make spells easier (a concept I will elaborate on shortly.)

Before I turn to the subject of runes allow me to define magic, but before I do so, let me define a coherent reality as one which can be explained via logical progressions (our reality is one such reality.) Returning to my earlier example about the mage fighting a knight, she could load a catapult with a ball of tar and set it ablaze before firing it at the knight, the end result would be the same, the knight would be hit by a ball of fire (assuming he did*‘t kill the mage before then.) This is logical progression, one goes through a series of steps which follow the laws of science to achieve a result. Magic therefore may be defined as jumping between coherent realities; rather than go through the steps to create and launch a fireball at my opponent, I simply make into reality, the possibility that the fireball has already been created and launched. "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

08-May-2010 17:42:04

Dantalian

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Now having defined magic, allow me to state that the further two possible coherent realities are from one another, the more power it takes to jump between the two. A powerful mage can easily manipulate a tossed coin to land on either heads or tails since the possibilities are so close to one another, but the possibility of a city being on a different continent from where it is now is such a remote possibility that it would be nigh impossible to magically move it without a large group of mages working in unison. This is where runes come into the equation. Many of you may be familiar to bank notes; slips of paper on which an item and amount are written. If you take one of these to any bank, you can request that the item be turned over to you, and the bank is legally obliged to do so. Well, runes are like bank notes issued by the universe. Essentially if you are carrying around a number of fire runes, the universe “understands” it as if you were carrying around a large fire (enjoy that image in your head.) Why is this useful? Well, while carrying the fire runes with you, the reality you are in is understood to have a large fire in your vicinity, and if there is already fire nearby, the odds of say, a large fireball striking an enemy of yours are much higher, as such it takes much less energy to make this happen via magic.

While this is interesting in its own right, it is made all the more so by realizing that if runes are not the source of magic, one can use magic without the use of runes. This led to a large study to understand magic in its purest form, the result being the rediscovering of what we call base magic. "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

08-May-2010 17:45:39

Dantalian

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Before I explain base magic, I must go into the subject of essences. An object*s essence is the description of that object, it is what makes an apple an apple and not an orange, but on a mystical level, not a scientific level. Mages long ago proposed that essences were composed of elements, the same way names are composed of letters. These mages proposed that there were but four elements; fire, the active element; earth, the solid element; water, the liquid element; and air, the gaseous element. While we found that these were indeed elements, our group also discovered there were many more elements, however I won’t go into a list of the elements here, so that I might instead go into base magic. "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

08-May-2010 17:47:06

Dantalian

Posts: 3,434 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Essences are the code, if you will, in which the universe is written. By understanding this code, and how to write it, we may redefine the universe itself to fit our will. Rather than look for another coherent reality and jump to it, as in normal magic, we can rewrite our very reality to achieve our result. Since energy is not expended in the jump between possible realities, we can achieve far greater things, and do such without the use of runes. However, as with everything, there is a cost to base magic; as it turns out, the universe is written in such a way that it strikes a delicate balance. By changing a portion of it via base magic, we risk upsetting this balance. Amongst those of us more skilled in base magic, the imbalances we cause tend to be minor, and affect our spells, causing them to behave somewhat differently than expected. However, when we were first researching and testing base magic, we had several occasions where nigh catastrophic situations arose. More disturbingly, these situations did not need arise in the same place as where we casted the spell; it is my belief that the great earthquake in Karamja was caused by one of our number as he created a controlled whirlwind using base magic. At the very least, the earthquake occurred mere seconds after he had finished, despite the fact that we were in Yanille, and the earthquake was in Karamja.

As such, despite the promises that base magic holds, I suggest that we proceed carefully with our studies, thereby preventing disastrous consequences.

Yours humbly,

Taika Guillory "He appears in the Form of a Man with many Countenances; and he hath a Book in his right hand. His Office is to teach all Arts and Sciences unto any; and to declare the Secret Counsel of any one."

08-May-2010 17:49:58

Orcris

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Hmm very interesting. I quite like it. Though when you got to the bit about the code the quote "He's starting to believe" came to mind. It sounds very much like the matrix and what "The One" can do. But what else should I expect from a software nerd. Hmm too bad our world does not work that way, I could manipulate things masterfully.

~Orcris~
~Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.~ Darth Revan
~Est Sularis Oth Mithas~ Sturm Brightblade
~Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality~ Richter Abend
~What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger* Friedrich Nietzsche
~Who I am is not important, my message is~ Darth Revan
~Amor omnia vincit~ Virgil

09-May-2010 07:40:20

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