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I'm still sick. It came back last night, after going into hibernation for about six hours. It would seem that my health is strongly linked to the position of the sun in the sky, or perhaps the the amount of daylight in my vicinity; sick at night/early morning, healthy in the afternoon.
But enough about that. Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I started thinking about the Project and all the things I can do with it. Because that's basically the point of it; it's an exercise in ingenuity / mixing blue and yellow to create a magical shade of green with the property of Healing / fun with"magic" science.
I have a couple of plot ideas I want to explore. And there are a couple of scenes that I have to write (mainly a big battle scene: enemy troops and air ships with actual weapons against the Handlers with their artefacts, with support from the Engine). But there are things I have to work out before I can do any of them. That's the problem with creating a new world from scratch, I think; you have to set up the rules as you go, based on what you encounter. But you also don't always know what you CAN encounter until you have some rules set up. It's a little bit Catch 22ish; you need one to create the other, but you need the other to build the one.
Anyway, I couldn't sleep*, so I got out my sketch pad and my list of artefacts and I started thinking. And I started ingenuing. And I started mixing blues with yellows. And then I drew a cat for some reason, but then I got back to the task at hand and started having fun with my pseudomagic. I came up with a way for the Random Generators to be used safely inside the dome from outside, without damaging the dome itself, and without killing the User by creating a toxic environment. I decided it would be easier for the User to create lots of tiny rock golems and then use Grow or Amplify to, basically, turn them into War Golems. There was also the idea that I could probably create sonic weaponry using a pitchfork, a sock and a mirror.
But it didn't stop there; I started asking myself some questions. If your opponents temporarily lost gravity on the battlefield, would that not be awesome? And if you had a way of making lightning strike perpetually - not just repeated strikes, but making the same strike last forever - wouldn't that be an amazing alternate energy source? Weapon? Way to fuck up weather patterns? ('Cause if you've got lightning continuously striking, it has to be continuously recharging, and clouds charge by moving around a lot, so you'd need lots of motion in the one spot... it'd be like a cloud running on a treadmill, but at super speed.) Not to mention the havoc it would wreck on the local electromagnetic field, creating a super(-) along the arc of lightning (or would it just be at the point of discharge?) and a super(+) in the area surrounding the cloud.
And that was really just for the battle scene. I still have heaps of ideas for when the artefacts are basically let to roam free through the outpost and the hilariously devastating consequences thereof. The possessions will be most fun, I think.
Writing introductory material is boring though. I already know all of this stuff; I created it! I just want to jump ahead to the good bits. Aaaaaargh!
*Actually, that's just an excuse; to be honest, I was trying to incur another Project-based dream by going to sleep still thinking about it / saturating my brain with it. I'm such a greedy little so'n'so - like two nights of dreams in a row isn't enough? I just wish I could remember more of the specifics of the second nights' dreams - I know they were fantastic and full of action and detail and Projecty goodness, but the only real specific I can remember is scene with a bunch of metal panels, six of them I think, full of wires and stuff, attached in six-pack formation, each one representing a different artefact. One of them was Storm (Lightning). The six-pack was flying, and I think there was someone below it. My view of the scene was bird's eye, and the scene itself seems, in memory, like a screenshot from a computer game. There may also have been running through a hall. And someone twisting, dying. But I'm not sure.
But enough about that. Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I started thinking about the Project and all the things I can do with it. Because that's basically the point of it; it's an exercise in ingenuity / mixing blue and yellow to create a magical shade of green with the property of Healing / fun with
I have a couple of plot ideas I want to explore. And there are a couple of scenes that I have to write (mainly a big battle scene: enemy troops and air ships with actual weapons against the Handlers with their artefacts, with support from the Engine). But there are things I have to work out before I can do any of them. That's the problem with creating a new world from scratch, I think; you have to set up the rules as you go, based on what you encounter. But you also don't always know what you CAN encounter until you have some rules set up. It's a little bit Catch 22ish; you need one to create the other, but you need the other to build the one.
Anyway, I couldn't sleep*, so I got out my sketch pad and my list of artefacts and I started thinking. And I started ingenuing. And I started mixing blues with yellows. And then I drew a cat for some reason, but then I got back to the task at hand and started having fun with my pseudomagic. I came up with a way for the Random Generators to be used safely inside the dome from outside, without damaging the dome itself, and without killing the User by creating a toxic environment. I decided it would be easier for the User to create lots of tiny rock golems and then use Grow or Amplify to, basically, turn them into War Golems. There was also the idea that I could probably create sonic weaponry using a pitchfork, a sock and a mirror.
But it didn't stop there; I started asking myself some questions. If your opponents temporarily lost gravity on the battlefield, would that not be awesome? And if you had a way of making lightning strike perpetually - not just repeated strikes, but making the same strike last forever - wouldn't that be an amazing alternate energy source? Weapon? Way to fuck up weather patterns? ('Cause if you've got lightning continuously striking, it has to be continuously recharging, and clouds charge by moving around a lot, so you'd need lots of motion in the one spot... it'd be like a cloud running on a treadmill, but at super speed.) Not to mention the havoc it would wreck on the local electromagnetic field, creating a super(-) along the arc of lightning (or would it just be at the point of discharge?) and a super(+) in the area surrounding the cloud.
And that was really just for the battle scene. I still have heaps of ideas for when the artefacts are basically let to roam free through the outpost and the hilariously devastating consequences thereof. The possessions will be most fun, I think.
Writing introductory material is boring though. I already know all of this stuff; I created it! I just want to jump ahead to the good bits. Aaaaaargh!
*Actually, that's just an excuse; to be honest, I was trying to incur another Project-based dream by going to sleep still thinking about it / saturating my brain with it. I'm such a greedy little so'n'so - like two nights of dreams in a row isn't enough? I just wish I could remember more of the specifics of the second nights' dreams - I know they were fantastic and full of action and detail and Projecty goodness, but the only real specific I can remember is scene with a bunch of metal panels, six of them I think, full of wires and stuff, attached in six-pack formation, each one representing a different artefact. One of them was Storm (Lightning). The six-pack was flying, and I think there was someone below it. My view of the scene was bird's eye, and the scene itself seems, in memory, like a screenshot from a computer game. There may also have been running through a hall. And someone twisting, dying. But I'm not sure.
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should be
"And even if you did manage to overload the ring"
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Damn it.
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There are the beginnings of a story on LJ, and the next couple of chapters are written, but I don't know how much help they'll be - the characters tend to go off script and start asking questions they shouldn't and explaining things in ways that don't make that much sense, and generally make a mess of things. Miss Amy says this is a good thing, that this is what it's like to have Real Characters. I think it's a poor way to start writing a new universe, but then again I don't have anything else to compare it to - I haven't written universes before.
Perhaps I should have started with a wiki...
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This is back story to the universe which provides the basis for... well, everything, by providing the exotic particles that create the pseudomagic.
If you'd like a visual for the Engine, there's one here.
And there may be a step missing between "this is the concept" and "this is how the concept works", but that is how the Engine and its parts work. The rules behind them, at least. More or less.
Now, I know nothing about string theory, but you said you're cool with artistic licence and whatnot, so here goes. According to string theory, the universe is made up of strings, vibrating at different frequencies to create different things. Imagine, then, that these strings are in fact a string quartet, all playing a lovely C chord in their upper registers - the harmony produced is the universe acting in accordance with the basic laws of physics. Then along comes a big arse bass tuba, which proceeds to play a C# - this disrupts the harmony quite a bit, getting the audience quite upset. That bass tuba is the equivalent in the string quartet to exotic particles in our universe, disrupting the natural laws of physics. Those exotic particles are remnants from the above origin story - particles of the two immortal beings torn assunder by Good's Thunder.
If you have any questions, if there are holes in anything, I'd be happy to answer them. In fact, I like questions - they help me create; they require answers.
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