Book 2 - Text Updates 002

[Ytaker]

Not sure knowing that two spiders are from a different subfamiliy (sylvestris or campestris) because the white dots on their back are 1 mm diameter rather than 2 is really useful That's just descriptive and has relatively no impact, but it's still science.

Unless they happen to have slightly different venoms, or if one has a slightly different impact on the food chain, or if they're found in different places. Then it serves as a quick qualitative test which could help you save a person's life, or increase crop yields by using them to prey on a creature, that serves as a reference to substantial research which indicated what properties they have.

Science hasn't always been about going into details, but more about questioning even the obvious. In the first days of human history things had to fall on the ground, volcanos were entrance to hell, sun was going around the earth then hiding underground. These were normal things and science was as "simple" as questionning them. Parson is just like the old "alchemists", making experiments to test the rules of reality. But erfworld is not earth and parson isn' doing chemistry / physics or biology, instead he's testing "game-like mechanics" that rules erfworld. And what he has already done with this knowledge had a large impact (apparently, Erfworlders never considered you could win with a "simple" engage/disengage tactic or you could achieve a spell that affects multiple hex).

Science is more, taking samples of lava, recording how an eruption occurs, doing drawings of volcanoes, and those sorts of things. Sun mechanics was more, producing a full mathematical model of a heliocentric system, and looking at the retrogade movement of the planets. People do question stuff a lot. "At the center, they [the Pythagoreans] say, is fire, and the Earth is one of the stars, creating night and day by its circular motion about the center" said Aristotle. They questioned it. They believed fire was a more sacred element than earth, and so, there was a really sacred flame which the sun and the earth orbited. It was still wrong. Science has to gather evidence, and good evidence, so that there's much more chance of being right than wrong.

That was less science, than, his knowledge of military theory. He knew that his forces had overwhelming military force, but that the enemy had the numbers to defeat them. And he knew that units healed at dawn. So, he connected the two ideas, and knew a common earth tactic would work well. Not scientific, just military. Just smart. There might be some big effect from him introducing earth military techniques. The volcano idea was from his basic high school knowledge of volcanoes, and his creativity. The knowledge that the volcano had a similar structure to an earth one (confirmed by Sizemore's vision) was scientific, but he didn't seem to care. The magic is evidence that croakamancy/ dirtamancer link ups can resurrect volcanoes, which I suppose is very vaguely scientific, as new knowledge, but it's unlikely to ever come up again, or be revolutionary, as defined by the first poster.

Edit. There are no obvious ways to perform another multihex damage spell. No other natural features with that much power trapped within them.

[Menas]

Edit. There are no obvious ways to perform another multihex damage spell. No other natural features with that much power trapped within them.

Unless there are a large number of units over multiple hexes of water. Watermancy anyone? A Tsunami or a huge whirlpool could wreak havoc. Come to think of it, air mastery could do the same thing to any hex, regardless of the terrain type. Hurricanes or Tornadoes.

If such things are possible. Just because dirtamancy exists doesn't mean there are magic classes that allow for the mastery of all the different types of elements.

[Ytaker]

Edit. There are no obvious ways to perform another multihex damage spell. No other natural features with that much power trapped within them.

Unless there are a large number of units over multiple hexes of water. Watermancy anyone? A Tsunami or a huge whirlpool could wreak havoc. Come to think of it, air mastery could do the same thing to any hex, regardless of the terrain type. Hurricanes or Tornadoes.

If such things are possible. Just because dirtamancy exists doesn't mean there are magic classes that allow for the mastery of all the different types of elements.

Tornadoes and waterspouts are huge. Caused generally by a storm. To generate it, you'd need a storm. I'm not sure if they even have that weather effect. And so it would take a lot of juice. And a hurricane would also require you to effect multiple hexes with your own juice, to combine hosts of thunderstorms, which are miles wide. The genius with the volcano was that it did most of the work- it was just inhibited. They just had to release it.

Indeed.

[regisminae]

Although, in light of the comments made in this text update regarding the magic class system, just because it seems to be organized in one way doesn't mean that it's actually the way that it works - maybe the three-element/three-axis system just provided the best explanation that anyone had found up to this point, but apparently the workings of magic are still under debate, even among those as knowledgeable as the master-mancers of the Magic Kingdom.

So, I wouldn't preclude the possibility of some sort of Weathermancy, especially when we've seen so little of the magic system actually in action.