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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4818434" data-attributes="member: 54707">The Process of Invention: Real World and In-Game Inventing, and how it affects some of my real work, as well as my setting.The Silkârjen – in the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/248536-museum-laboratory-invention.html#post4818439" target="_blank">Museum Thread</a> I discuss the artefact of the Silkârjen.Briefly, in this thread entry, I’m going to describe how I developed the Silkârjen and the idea for the Silkârj. The other day I was working upon an invention regarding radio. As many of you may know old radios used crystals that vibrated at certain frequencies in order to function. While working on my invention the idea occurred to me, what if a crystal already possessed the necessary energy within itself to both intercept and translate radio waves without the need for the corresponding electromagnetic (interpretive) machinery? The idea occurred to me to either miniaturize the necessary machinery and then insert it directly into the crystal (the machinery inserted into the crystal rather than the crystal inserted into the machinery) or transpose all functions of the machinery and then wrap that around the crystal like a net. You could then shape and insert such a crystal directly into your ear like a hearing aid and if necessary it could use biological (probably electrochemical) energy as a power source. Though my initial idea was simply to either A.) use the enwrapping net to gather energy, or B.) set the crystal vibrating and then allow it to continue vibrating at necessary frequencies through sympathetic entrainment (in this way maybe even the human body could act as either an radio amplifier, a radio in and of itself, or as a biological antenna). In any case if it worked you could shrink an entire radio down to the size of a crystal (it would be extremely durable and hard to break) that you could insert into your ear like a hearing aid. Perhaps even small enough to go unnoticed. The Intel gathering value alone would be enormous as such radios could also be modified to be used as hearing aids and to intercept encrypted signals and scrambled frequencies (it wouldn’t have to descramble such frequencies, just intercept and record, or intercept and retransmit to a different receiver). It would have numerous communications and perhaps even decryption applications.After working on these ideas and sketching them out some I started thinking, well, how would I interpret the same sort of device for my gaming world? As a non-technological device or artefact? I like these kinds of exercises because by comparing and contrasting the process of real invention with that of imaginary invention I often develop ideas, inventions, and systems that cross-pollinate and cross-fertilize each other.I already had the basic outline of what I wanted to create with my real world invention-idea; so then it was just a matter of reverse-engineering the process for the same sort of artefact for Ghantik and Samarkand. Then I had to decide who would build it, how it would be discovered and developed, and who would be best equipped to make the most efficient use of it. Since in this particular case it would be a magical and non-technological device I thought about how it would function in confusing or unknown ways, and how it might malfunction and what the danger of that would be. I am still developing the potential of the device however, as is the case with my real world idea. However the in-game invention is much, much larger in scope and function, and based more upon the Echelon System in how it operates. It is not in this case a small piece of personal technology, but rather a large-scale sort of magical version combination Echelon communications surveillance network and DEW line. Although I’m considering this “system” as the basis for another real world invention, a netted and skinned radio telescope which would be in orbit and the entire “skin” of which would be a dual reception/amplification scope. Anyway the result of those ideas in game terms was the Silkârjen.<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Louxor_obelisk_Paris_dsc00780.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /></blockquote>

Verification