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Research & Magic

#1 User is offline   protoclave 

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Posted 29 May 2015 - 02:58 PM

So I want to write this fantasy series. I want to base my story off of history but im not sure what in history what are some periods in history that have alot of information on it but it might be unknown to the public? Also what are some good books on chemistry. I wanted to base my magic off of chemistry. Thats the furtheset I am going to explain on the subject, Also I wanted to continue the story into the modern age so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on magic that can be used along side technology? Where as the world is both dependant on the technology and the magic.

For example, Necromancer is one i thought is useful for people in the modern age but doesn't get rid of technology
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#2 User is offline   HiddenOne 

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Posted 29 May 2015 - 08:29 PM

Use the bones and tissue of the long dead to power your machines.
HiddenOne. You son of a bitch. You slimy, skulking, low-posting scumbag. You knew it would come to this. Roundabout, maybe. Tortuous, certainly. But here we are, you and me again. I started the train on you so many many hours ago, and now I'm going to finish it. Die HO. Die. This is for last time, and this is for this game too. This is for all the people who died to your backstabbing, treacherous, "I sure don't know what's going on around here" filthy lying, deceitful ways. You son of a bitch. Whatever happens, this is justice. For me, this is justice. Vote HiddenOne Finally, I am at peace.
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#3 User is offline   Vengeance 

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Posted 29 May 2015 - 08:41 PM

View PostHiddenOne, on 29 May 2015 - 08:29 PM, said:

Use the bones and tissue of the long dead to power your machines.


Yeah where you grind up the bones turn them into a black liquid and then compress it. Once it is compressed you then process it using heat and some other chemicals and it will power your machines... Here we call that oil and gasoline. But hey.

Personally I would steal babies and then use there precious tears to create unstoppable weapons. The neat trick would be that you have to have the babies be alive but pissed off all the time so that you can harvest their tears.

You can use that one. I didn't like it. :)
How many fucking people do I have to hammer in order to get that across.
Hinter - Vengy - DIE. I trusted you you bastard!!!!!!!

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#4 User is offline   protoclave 

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Posted 29 May 2015 - 08:52 PM

View PostVengeance, on 29 May 2015 - 08:41 PM, said:

View PostHiddenOne, on 29 May 2015 - 08:29 PM, said:

Use the bones and tissue of the long dead to power your machines.


Yeah where you grind up the bones turn them into a black liquid and then compress it. Once it is compressed you then process it using heat and some other chemicals and it will power your machines... Here we call that oil and gasoline. But hey.

Personally I would steal babies and then use there precious tears to create unstoppable weapons. The neat trick would be that you have to have the babies be alive but pissed off all the time so that you can harvest their tears.

You can use that one. I didn't like it. :)


O god not going to use anything with babies. I'm not bioware, i can't get away with zombie babies. though erikson, sanderson, king or butcher could probably get away with it.

This post has been edited by protoclave: 29 May 2015 - 08:53 PM

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#5 User is offline   HiddenOne 

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Posted 30 May 2015 - 02:55 PM

no, it's workable - Imagine a giant daycare center where children are supposed to be nurtured, but once the parents leave, the kids get strapped into chair&table shaped machines (still powered by the dead flesh) and these machines pump Truth about Reality into their minds through visual displays and as the tears naturally flow, little suction devices arise to harvest them up. At the end of the day, the same visual displays will produce mind numbing images to make the kids forget about their experiences and when they go home, the kids all forget to care and Mom and Dad forget to ask because they have their own version of the visual display forgetting devices.

This idea is golden, I really think it could fly.
HiddenOne. You son of a bitch. You slimy, skulking, low-posting scumbag. You knew it would come to this. Roundabout, maybe. Tortuous, certainly. But here we are, you and me again. I started the train on you so many many hours ago, and now I'm going to finish it. Die HO. Die. This is for last time, and this is for this game too. This is for all the people who died to your backstabbing, treacherous, "I sure don't know what's going on around here" filthy lying, deceitful ways. You son of a bitch. Whatever happens, this is justice. For me, this is justice. Vote HiddenOne Finally, I am at peace.
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#6 User is offline   Vengeance 

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Posted 30 May 2015 - 05:18 PM

View PostHiddenOne, on 30 May 2015 - 02:55 PM, said:

no, it's workable - Imagine a giant daycare center where children are supposed to be nurtured, but once the parents leave, the kids get strapped into chair&table shaped machines (still powered by the dead flesh) and these machines pump Truth about Reality into their minds through visual displays and as the tears naturally flow, little suction devices arise to harvest them up. At the end of the day, the same visual displays will produce mind numbing images to make the kids forget about their experiences and when they go home, the kids all forget to care and Mom and Dad forget to ask because they have their own version of the visual display forgetting devices.

This idea is golden, I really think it could fly.

Ohhh I like it!!!
How many fucking people do I have to hammer in order to get that across.
Hinter - Vengy - DIE. I trusted you you bastard!!!!!!!

Steven Erikson made drowning in alien cum possible - Obdigore
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#7 User is offline   stone monkey 

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Posted 30 May 2015 - 11:40 PM

View Postprotoclave, on 29 May 2015 - 02:58 PM, said:

So I want to write this fantasy series. I want to base my story off of history but im not sure what in history what are some periods in history that have alot of information on it but it might be unknown to the public? Also what are some good books on chemistry. I wanted to base my magic off of chemistry. Thats the furtheset I am going to explain on the subject, Also I wanted to continue the story into the modern age so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on magic that can be used along side technology? Where as the world is both dependant on the technology and the magic.

For example, Necromancer is one i thought is useful for people in the modern age but doesn't get rid of technology


The obvious answer, I would suggest, is Late Antiquity aka the Dark Ages (the period in Europe after the fall of Rome); it's a period that almost everyone thinks almost nothing is known about (they're wrong, there are tons of records) and a period where almost everything that most people think they know about it is wrong.

A decent starter book on chemistry would be Mendeleyev's Dream by Paul Strathern; which gives a potted history of the search for the elements. Although if you actually want to understand the ideas of chemistry, you'd be better off consulting a textbook of some sort.

You could use what Warren Ellis called "Descriptor Theory" (Greg Bear had the same idea somewhat earlier; he referred to "Privileged Bands" iirc). The idea is that, essentially, the universe continues to exist by everything in it talking to everything else in it and telling it what it is and where it is and what it's doing, by "hacking" into these "privileged bands" of information you're able to instruct anything in the universe to do what you want by changing its "descriptors" i.e. be something else, be somewhere else, be moving differently etc. It's a pretty powerful idea... and has the, rather seductive imo, advantage that it's currently not provably wrong within the framework of what we think we know about the universe (barring qualms similar to those Einstein mistakenly had about Quantum Mechanics' "spooky action at a distance" that is). It would, I think, be a pretty trivial exercise in imagination to apply such ideas to chemistry; especially considering modern chemistry already has the weird observer effects of Quantum Mechanics baked in, so to speak.

Arguably this would be magic as a technology rather than magic used alongside technology; which is an idea I'm quite fond of myself, actually.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 30 May 2015 - 11:52 PM

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If some one maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. … So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. Bertrand Russell
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#8 User is online   Tsundoku 

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Posted 31 May 2015 - 08:37 AM

View Poststone monkey, on 30 May 2015 - 11:40 PM, said:

You could use what Warren Ellis called "Descriptor Theory" (Greg Bear had the same idea somewhat earlier; he referred to "Privileged Bands" iirc). The idea is that, essentially, the universe continues to exist by everything in it talking to everything else in it and telling it what it is and where it is and what it's doing, by "hacking" into these "privileged bands" of information you're able to instruct anything in the universe to do what you want by changing its "descriptors" i.e. be something else, be somewhere else, be moving differently etc. It's a pretty powerful idea... and has the, rather seductive imo, advantage that it's currently not provably wrong within the framework of what we think we know about the universe (barring qualms similar to those Einstein mistakenly had about Quantum Mechanics' "spooky action at a distance" that is). It would, I think, be a pretty trivial exercise in imagination to apply such ideas to chemistry; especially considering modern chemistry already has the weird observer effects of Quantum Mechanics baked in, so to speak.

Arguably this would be magic as a technology rather than magic used alongside technology; which is an idea I'm quite fond of myself, actually.


Sounds a bit like Harry Keogh from Brian Lumley's Necroscope series. Always liked that premise.
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