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Ok, that makes more sense. I was gonna ask, what frame of reference does it stop in motion, so the infinite inertia idea does kinda help. I’ll still have to ponder on how that works on the temporal aspect though.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
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So, there’s a magic system I’ve been struggling with for a while, and I think I’ve finally got the basic organization of it down, although there’s a lot left to fill in.
It utilizes the first 29 transition metals on the periodic table (the last row are all synthetic. Besides, they have terrible names.) They are sorted into groups of two or three, based on their columns:
Scandium and Yttrium;
Titanium, Zirconium, and Hafnium;
Vanadium, Niobium, and Tantalum;
Chromium, Molybdenum, and Tungsten;
Manganese, Technetium, and Rhenium;
Iron, Ruthenium, and Osmium;
Cobalt, Rhodium, and Iridium;
Nickel, Palladium, and Platinum;
Copper, Silver, and Gold;
and Zinc, Cadmium, and Mercury.
So how it works is that you have to put something into the metal to give it a power. For example, one of them will allow you to store a life in it, killing someone else in the process (it must be willing though.) this gives the object the power to resurrect one recently dead person before becoming useless once more.
Most powers don’t get used up, so that may not have been the best example, actually, but it should give an idea. Each group (column) shares a theme. The first row metals are physical, the second mental, and the third spiritual.
To illustrate this, I will use the Copper, Silver, Gold group (which is the only one I’ve settled on.)
Copper requires you to pour some spiritual aspect in. It then grants you the power of Command. This allows you to target a person and speak a command. The target’s body will automatically obey. They can fight off the impulse, but it usually takes a few seconds unless they are prepared for it.
Silver requires spiritual aspect too, but more. It gives you mental control. I haven’t decided what exactly this will do. Possibly it will let you control people like a puppet—unlike copper, you personally control them, but they also can’t follow non-specific orders and require consent supervision.
Gold required a lot of spiritual aspect. It allows you to dominate others. This breaks their spirit and enslaves them to your will. This basically combines the benefits of Copper and Silver. They maintain conscious intention unlike Silver, but it has a more permanent effect than Copper. It is possible to break free from this, but it requires extreme force of will.
Most metals will probably just use spiritual aspect, but some will probably use physical attributes.
Where this gets a bit more interesting is that users can use other people’s attributes to create these, although they must be willing. These metallic objects have an inherent loyalty towards their creator, but also a strong tie to the person whose attribute was used. This can be dangerous as it gives them a sort of backdoor.
The destruction of these objects can be very damaging to the person who has part of their spiritual aspect inside. If it’s enough of it, it will kill them.
I see this as a sort of combination of Feruchemy and Rings of Power from LOTR.
Feedback I’m looking for are
- What do you think about the fact that I am using an entire chunk of the periodic table? Is it too much? For Mistborn, it seems that Brandon Sanderson chose his metals without any internal logic, but I’m too perfectionistic, so unless there’s a logical place to remove some of these, I’m using all 29.
- Any ideas for other things these could do? I have 29 slots to fill and only a few ideas so far.
- Anything else.
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📚 Appreciator of BooksThinking about this a bit more, I’m a bit dissatisfied with the ‘mental’ category of powers. I haven’t been able to think of anything cool to do with these, which is especially disappointing because I’m partial to some of the second row metals like Yttrium, Palladium, and Silver. (And then there are also those silly sounding ones like Molybdenum and Technetium. I’m not sure how they’re supposed to be pronounced, but I pronounce them as ‘mol-IB-den-um’ and ‘tek-NET-ee-um.’)
The problem is I can’t think of anything to do other than mental. Nothing else really fits with physical and spiritual. Perhaps I can change those categories as well without changing the powers. For reference, if anyone has any ideas, the powers I have created for those two so far are:
Physical: regrowth (heals the body), physical endowment (enhances certain physical attributes), and command (lets you briefly command a person’s body.)
Spiritual: resurrection (reattaches the soul of a recently deceased body), spiritual endowment (grants certain spiritual attributes), and domination (lets you enslave a person to your will.)
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📚 Appreciator of BooksOh my, I just discovered that Technetium is radioactive. (I guess I sort of knew that, but I didn’t think about it.) That should be interesting to play with. I haven’t decided what power it will have, but it would be interesting for the users to have to worry about getting radiated (although I’m not sure how dangerous it actually is.) Technetium is also synthetic, so I guess they might not even have it yet.
Btw, this magic system is for Oldonar (the one with Metal Bonding.)
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📚 Appreciator of BooksHmm… it does seem like a lot, but idk. I don’t really have any comments rn, except ‘cool’. XD
(I’m very helpful, am I not? *sarcasm*)
Any noun can become a verb if you don't care enough.
I just created Scandium’s power: Manifestation.
This allows the piece of Scandium to pull magic energy into a physical form attached to the Scandium. It appears as a glowing white substance with a slight orange-yellow tint. The shape is set permanently after it is manifested the first time. These are used for swords, which are called Scandblades. They’re similar to lightsabers but way cooler because they’re shaped like swords instead of sticks. They’re not hot, but they cut through things pretty easily.
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📚 Appreciator of BooksThey’re similar to lightsabers but way cooler because they’re shaped like swords instead of sticks.
I found that really funny for some reason XD
Any noun can become a verb if you don't care enough.
This sounds pretty cool!
The issue I would say about using all 29 would be the same debate of how many digits there are in a number system. More digits means more compact information, but it also means more informational storage is needed (you need to remember it all).
29 different metals all with completely unique sets of powers, even if they are organized into subsets will be daunting for readers to remember. That being said, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go for it, I would just stick to a smaller set of metals story-wise. It could even be similar to Mistborn and the resonance magic system you have, where they simply don’t have it all yet. You can also just think of some reasonable explanations as to why some metals have arcane behavior while others don’t. It could be mathematical, perhaps something to do with the atomic structure, I don’t know.
So have you worked out the themes of each column? You just said there’s a theme of each column, but then talked about the theme of the rows.
There’s a whole lot of things you can d with mental. There’s things like mental influence, but there’s also mental swaping, memory forging and removing. Anti-memetics is also really fascinating if you’ve ever heard of that. Other themes instead of mental though could be things like perhaps the temporal and substantial experience around the lifeform, though I guess those are just extensions of mental.
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
The issue I would say about using all 29 would be the same debate of how many digits there are in a number system. More digits means more compact information, but it also means more informational storage is needed (you need to remember it all).
29 different metals all with completely unique sets of powers, even if they are organized into subsets will be daunting for readers to remember. That being said, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go for it, I would just stick to a smaller set of metals story-wise. It could even be similar to Mistborn and the resonance magic system you have, where they simply don’t have it all yet. You can also just think of some reasonable explanations as to why some metals have arcane behavior while others don’t. It could be mathematical, perhaps something to do with the atomic structure, I don’t know.
What is useful about using these metals is that most of them were actually discovered fairly recently, so I have an easy way to choose which ones they know about. Oldonar is probably around 15th century in terms of technology, but since metals have these powers, that would incentives them to discover them faster than we did. The only metals that were known at that time in our history are iron, copper, silver, gold, and mercury. Others like technetium, rhenium, and hafnium were discovered in the 20th century, and the rest were discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries.
I have looked for a way to split off some of these metals, but I haven’t found a good one yet. To get technical, the identifying characteristics of the transition metals is their d-subshell for electrons. (I don’t know if you’re a science person (I am not) so hopefully I’m not telling you things you already know.) Here’s a picture to illustrate:
So the electron configuration is shown under the element name. Each letter represent a subshell. The big number just refers to the row its in, so that doesn’t really matter. The small number shows how many electrons are in that subshell. If we look at calcium, it only has electrons in its s-subshell. Scandium, next to it, has one electron in its d-shell. This continues to climb until you get to gallium on the other side which has a full d-shell and adds an electron to its p-subshell. Technically, zinc, cadmium, and mercury have full d-subshells as well, so I could cut them out, but I kind of want to use mercury since it has the interesting property of being a liquid. There are also a few eccentricities out there. Look at copper for example. It actually has one less electron in its s-shell than nickel, but it has two more d electrons. Another potential cut off point could be the manganese, technetium, rhenium column. They have one more s electron than the previous metals, which means I could cut off the ones before that. Unfortunately, that would get rid of some of the cool ones like titanium and vanadium.
I know most readers aren’t going to pull out a periodic table and start scrutinizing my choices, but it bothers me. I probably will end up just using all 29. Some will be undiscovered at first, and some will probably just not be very useful in the first place.
There’s a whole lot of things you can d with mental. There’s things like mental influence, but there’s also mental swaping, memory forging and removing. Anti-memetics is also really fascinating if you’ve ever heard of that. Other themes instead of mental though could be things like perhaps the temporal and substantial experience around the lifeform, though I guess those are just extensions of mental.
I have not heard of anti-memetics before. I’ve made a bit of progress with the mental powers since I mentioned that. I now have:
zirconium: protects your mind against tampering or observation.
niobium: helps your focus and can also heal certain mental illnesses.
molybdenum: lets you hear other people’s thoughts.
ruthenium: lets you store memories inside.
silver: mind control.
There are still four for me to fill out. I sort of branched out from what I was originally thinking for powers when I added scandium’s power. The problem is that doing things that are so physically based like that are going to be difficult to find a mental and spiritual power to put with it. Luckily, scandium is part of the group that only has two transition metals in its column instead of 4, so I don’t have to do a spiritual one.
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📚 Appreciator of BooksSo have you worked out the themes of each column? You just said there’s a theme of each column, but then talked about the theme of the rows.
I don’t have all the themes decided upon yet. There should be 10 eventually, and I probably have 6 or so right now.
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📚 Appreciator of BooksYeah, I’m more of a math person, but I have my fair share of science knowledge, though more in physics than chemistry. I do know a little bit about the different shell structures though, and how that leads to the different global behaviors of a substance. Never mind a good rant though.
I’m just thinking if there may be some way to think about these shell structures that consecutively eliminates some alternating set. I’m sure if you take some time with it, your gonna find a rationalization, but then again, it would likely eliminate elements you want to keep.
I have not heard of anti-memetics before.
So the original definition of a meme is essentially a cultural gene. A conceptual unit that adapts, grows, and mutates in the collectives consciousness of a culture. You can learn about any idea, and that idea can grow and develop in your mind. An anti-meme is the reverse of that. When you try to learn about it, you understand it less, you cannot retain anything you know about it, it can’t be directly observed or documented. This is not a real phenomenon luckily, but it’s a fun idea to play with. Most examples I know of are found in the SCP archive (which is what I based the AT-C off of if you weren’t aware).
He is perfect in Justice, yet He is perfect in Mercy, even when we fail Him. For this, He is good.
I’m just thinking if there may be some way to think about these shell structures that consecutively eliminates some alternating set. I’m sure if you take some time with it, your gonna find a rationalization, but then again, it would likely eliminate elements you want to keep.
Yeah, I could just come up with something completely arbitrary like saying only metals with an odd number of d electrons work. But I think 29 is workable, considering that I can dole them out slowly since a lit of them are not discovered until fairly late.
An anti-meme is the reverse of that. When you try to learn about it, you understand it less, you cannot retain anything you know about it, it can’t be directly observed or documented. This is not a real phenomenon luckily, but it’s a fun idea to play with. Most examples I know of are found in the SCP archive (which is what I based the AT-C off of if you weren’t aware).
Interesting.
Thanks for your thoughts!
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There’s a magic system (the one above actually) that’s been giving me a lot of trouble. This is an outgrowth of Metal Bonding, which is now going to be just a part of it. I have a basic grasp of what I want, but the details are really frustrating me. For one thing, I don’t know what I want each of the 29 metals to do, or even the overall trends and organization.
To start, the premise of this magic system is that you put a piece of your spiritual aspect into a piece of metal to give it a specific trait.
There are a few effects that I know I want, but not many.
- Gold in some way allows you to “dominate” and control other people.
- Tantalum allows you to revive someone recently dead, but at the cost of another life.
- Something (likely iron) gives you the controllable flying weapons that were formerly a part of Metal Bonding.
- Something is able to produce sentient constructs. (Doesn’t matter to me too much which one.)
I’ve tried several different set-ups for this, but a lot of them have just ended up as an assortment of random powers. I want the metal to be relevant. It doesn’t have to be as relevant as it is for flying weapons and such, but I don’t want it to just be that the metal grants random abilities.
Lastly, the name I’ve been using is “Soulforging.” I feel like this is perfect, but it has been used in several places. (As a subtype of Forgery in the Cosmere, as well as a couple other obscure places.) I’m torn about whether to keep it, because it has been used, but not prominently as far as I can tell, and it’s way better than any other name I’ve thought of.
So, if anyone has any thoughts, I would appreciate it. No pressure though. I haven’t been working on this much lately, but I thought I’d put this put here.
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