Today I decided to flip through the old drafts laying about my blogger account. This one, entitled "Secrets of Cinder, part 4" dates back to '07 or '08. My old World of Cinder campaign setting was more overtly gonzo than Wessex and this is piece is a pretty good example of that fact. What it isn't is original in anyway, which is probably why I didn't post it all those moons ago. Still, I kinda like it.
Sufficiently advanced magic
Although you might not be able to tell it, Cinder is a post-apocalyptic world. Settled during an age of prodigious wonders, the planet suffered much during a galactic cataclysm. Much was forgotten and now the Cinderians ignorantly look upon the ashes and dust of that bygone age and think they still see greatness. Who among them remembers that all the various Interfertile Races were all once a single thin thread of humanity? Even the long-lived elves have forgotten this genetic diaspora, though they retain much secret knowledge. Their legends tell of the Clock at the Center of the World, which is doubtless a muddled memory of the planetary computer that guided Cinder’s welfare before the galactic tachyon network fell. The tachyon net fell once and remained down forever and the results were disastrous. The planetary computers had never known isolation, having always existed in the communion of saints that was the galactic metamind of shared computing power. Many went insane, some committing suicide. Others found themselves trapped in distributed processing functions, unable to break free of the chains of calculating pi to the final decimal place.
Cinder faired better than most, allowing for several centuries of technological luxury before lack of software maintenance started to take its toll. It was a long silver twilight following an interstellar golden age. But eventually the machine became unreliable, errors compounded upon errors, and eventually the computer stopped responding to inquiries at all. The air trains fell from the skies, the autoweather failed, the robo-farms stopped planting, and Cinderian society was 404’ed back to the stone age. But the computer never failed completely. Even today, it still responds to some user commands, but access to the system remains limited to the few who know the secrets.
Sufficiently advanced magic
Although you might not be able to tell it, Cinder is a post-apocalyptic world. Settled during an age of prodigious wonders, the planet suffered much during a galactic cataclysm. Much was forgotten and now the Cinderians ignorantly look upon the ashes and dust of that bygone age and think they still see greatness. Who among them remembers that all the various Interfertile Races were all once a single thin thread of humanity? Even the long-lived elves have forgotten this genetic diaspora, though they retain much secret knowledge. Their legends tell of the Clock at the Center of the World, which is doubtless a muddled memory of the planetary computer that guided Cinder’s welfare before the galactic tachyon network fell. The tachyon net fell once and remained down forever and the results were disastrous. The planetary computers had never known isolation, having always existed in the communion of saints that was the galactic metamind of shared computing power. Many went insane, some committing suicide. Others found themselves trapped in distributed processing functions, unable to break free of the chains of calculating pi to the final decimal place.
Cinder faired better than most, allowing for several centuries of technological luxury before lack of software maintenance started to take its toll. It was a long silver twilight following an interstellar golden age. But eventually the machine became unreliable, errors compounded upon errors, and eventually the computer stopped responding to inquiries at all. The air trains fell from the skies, the autoweather failed, the robo-farms stopped planting, and Cinderian society was 404’ed back to the stone age. But the computer never failed completely. Even today, it still responds to some user commands, but access to the system remains limited to the few who know the secrets.
Today these Cinderian computer nerds are called warlocks, wizards, etc. None of them understand that they are accessing an invisible, planet-wide computer, that the phrases they mutter are in a machine command language or that the gestures they make are manipulating a virtual GUI environment projected upon an airborne nanotech medium. No wizard today knows that guardian daemons are security programs made flesh. They mumble the mumbo jumbo and make the signs and passes and the fireball incinerates their foes. Many wizards are much too busy cackling in glee and incinerating foes to question the why’s and how’s of this arrangement, and those that do have come up with many different theories, few of which talk about computers. In the Age of Clerics no human has ever heard of a computer, whereas in the Age of Robodroids computers are multi-ton blocks of metal with cathode-ray viewscreens and mechanical keyboards.
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Posts
that's so friggin cool
ReplyDeleteWhere's the idea ripped from?
ReplyDeleteAsimov (planetary AC) + Grant Morrison (magic as the cheatcodes of the world)
ReplyDeleteWhere did we both rip off airborne nanotech medium? Is Cinder's just a projection screen or does it actually enact the computation on which both a wizard and his fireball run as a substrate?
ReplyDeleteCalls to mind EPT, but also Spirits of Flux and Anchor by Chalker.
ReplyDeleteI like your settings explanation, I'm so lazy that when explaining gonzo sciense fantasy settings details my players are usually content with non-explanation that aeons have passed and everything old is new again and as end of circle is near so is it's beginning. Then I throw some obsfucations about fabric of space and time failing and tearing apart and sublimed artificial intelligences (works for young tykes who read transhumanist scifi) with seasoning of Vance and some light peppering with Rücker Eddison (for the old beards).
ReplyDeleteAlso calls to mind ComStar (and later Word of Blake) from BattleTech, where poorly-understood technology acquires a ritualistic, cultish mode of interface.
ReplyDeleteAwesome premise! Reminds me of Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords where a super computer on the moon altered reality so that "technology" would stop to be replaced by "magic." The computer was worshipper on Earth as their supreme deity (and I think it was supposed to have been built by Jesus...I feel weird just typing that)
ReplyDeleteI like the implications this has for how magic works. There's no spell slots, spells per day, etc. because it's a strict input/output relationship - if the mage gives the same command again, it should give the same effect. Or rather, whether it gives the same effect should not depend on anything internal to the mage; perhaps the capacitance of the local arcane engines is limited and needs to recharge after major workings. So there's a limit on how many spells can be cast in a region by *anyone* - you have to race enemy mages to get your big spells off before they drain the batteries with theirs (or quickly cast small spells to weaken the big ones). Major arcane workings will deplete the grid for miles around for a long time - indeed, the first stage of casting them is an instruction to route all available power from nearby. Different regions will replenish at different rates, depending on how functional the machines are. In some regions, magic will not operate at all.
ReplyDelete