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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2281556" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's interesting, but I don't really need 'help' per se.  I've been thinking about this for at least 20 years.None of your laws are actually applicable to the setting.   Energy doesn't really flow through objects, and in fact, energy doesn't have a meaningful existance in the universe anyway.  All energy is effectively the downward flow of the cascade draging on a particle.  'Energy' in the form of moving particles can tunnel through channels in an object, put there isn't really anything like 'electrons' (or there magical equivalent) in the game universe.   Hense, there isn't really anything like capacitors either.   You can't really store energy (the cascade would suck it off even if you could), but you can store potential energy in the form of 'wound' rune wheels, and you can keep a rune wheel continually turning by building a self-feeding gate system with an appropriate set of sinks, effectively building a mini-cascade. You can also get help by tieing into the Great Tree and letting the tree's own self-organizing principals do the complex work for you.  This is the principal behind spells that do seemingly impossible things like 'comprehend languages', and the principal involved in divinations.   It's worth noting that there is no such thing as 'supernatural' in my campaign universe.  Everything operates according to the same principals.  If you have mage sight - and are stupid enough to try - you could magnify your vision to the point that you see the little spinning rune wheels winding and unwinding a person's muscles, the tree's branches extending into your own mind helping you to organize your thoughts, tiny little spells effects transforming the matrixes of your food into different shapes, and so on and so forth.   This however would classify as one of those things that mortal minds where just not meant to know, and if you were to try it without proper filters in place they'd be feeding your catatonic form through a straw for the remainder of your natural life.While I'm still side tracked, I'll answer a few questions:Anyone inborn with full fledged mage sight would probably not survive unless they weren't fully human (I suppose I should say not fully one of the Free Peoples).   However, mage sight can be trained into anyone of sufficient intelligence and patience.  You could assume that anyone that could complete as Masters program in Engineering could also develop mage sight.  In fact, the hard part isn't getting the eyes to see 'magic', because everything is magical.  The hard part is overcoming the natural fliters in your mind protecting you from information overload without killing you or driving you insane.  I suppose someone could come up with a spell that actually gave mage sight to people, but as should be obvious giving mage sight to a mind without sufficient knowledge and discpline to handle it would be an extraordinarily cruel thing.  Sorcerer's can develop mage sight as a consequence of exploring thier abilities, but most of them aren't fully human anyway and in general Wizards can't help them with what they do and vica versa.  In this universe, concepts and symbols are abstract things that lack tangible substance.   In the universe I'm describing, concepts and symbols are tangible things that anyone with sufficient intelligence and training can physically see.  In fact, the whole universe is at some level nothing more than a bunch of little concepts and symbols turning like intermeshing gears powered by little water wheels.  No, what I've described is an intervening mechanical device.  A wizard can draw out on a peice of paper what the final device that the spell creates is supposed to look like.  In fact, that's exactly how one goes about learning 'spellcraft'.   A wizard can watch his apprentice building the device as the spell has cast and then say things like, "The spell failed because you put Exarch's Third Rune of Warding two finger spans from Molybion's Excellent Circumscribing Coil, which caused you fire channel to come unwound after travelling only a few inches.  Try again this time using less wiggle when transforming from the Eighth Position of the Wounded Crane into the Upturned Hand of Enlightenment"No, but there is a little more going on than just wish fulfilment (and for that matter, there is ALOT going on in wish fulfillment).  But the point of all this was that at some level what science fiction authors are doing in thier universes is no different than what I just described to you.   The frame of science if usually only superficial.  It's just there to help you suspend your disbelief because fantasy is more powerful if you at least in part believe in it.</blockquote>

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