Magic biology
Jun. 21st, 2019 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOkay so everything that seemed clever in my head yesterday already feels like I forgot half of it
but
I have read about orcs being basically fungus
(Warhammer)
but I was thinking
what if basically lichen?
... aaand I just found a warhammer wiki and they're ahead of me, unsurprisingly, what with probably being in the back of my mind since I was reading White Dwarf in the 90s.
Warhammer orkoids are a biological symbiosis of fungus and animal, and they grow from spores, so once they're in an area they keep growing again.
That's neat, but also mean.
But I was thunking lichens as a model fo cooperation with thaumosynthesising life forms.
Like the simplest way to splics magic on to existing biological systems is to make it glow, and use photosynthesis. Orcs as big fungus systems containing algae would make orcs green, and if those algae are teamed up with dimly glowing light spells, well... that would be kind of cool. But if the orcness of orcs is a while symbiotic system then that could explain how they make half orcs with anything. ... as it does in Warhammer. ... I realise ideas don't stop being cool when they stop being original, but I thought I was doing more of the thinking and I'm frustrated now.
The photosynthesising step isn't the only way to incorporate magic though. Magic can recharge your fatigue directly, thus provoding cellular energy that usually requires food, and there are food spells that make you not need to eat, as well as ones that make food from raw magic. Light is the simplest spell in a lot of chains, but food spells exist. So simple thaumobiology would exploit simple spells, but complex beings could just, like, make bodies. Which is really expensive when ghosts do it but also those bodies wear off so they seem more like ullusion/creation spells than food/healing spells. To make stable long lasting biological matter there'd be processes rather like food or healing spells, only small and ongoing.
... like monsters that regenerate.
And some systems would be magical from the get go, but others would be partnered with thaumobiology despite starting out as organic chemistry.
So like lichens they'd provide a safe structure for some other micro organism that provides it with necessary energy or energy producing compounds.
If such an organism could be created by infection you'd get something kin to werewolves or vampires, though both those have specialisations not necessary to the theory. Infectious zombies would also make sense. And of course higher undead, the more intentional, fewer side effects kind. Like wraiths, or liches.
... yes I made all this up to make a pun on lichen lich...
But undead are unsatisfying because how do they work really? And what's with the calling them evil?
And maybe they work by sidestepping the whole chemical biology game and, as mana dependent entities, teaming up with magic eating autotrophs on a cellular level.
Or subcellular. Mitochondria are a powerhiuse. What would thaumobiological equivalents work like?
... however we choose, obviously, because inventing things.
Okay but undead haunted areas are often associated with lifebane? Like the bringers around christmas trees, everything else dies. And that implies they're not just harmlessly chewing on mana, they are, even without the flesh eating, metabolising something necessary to all other life.
... or putting off waste products. I don't lnow what magical waste products would look like, but maybe like aspected mana?
So there's life that teams up with magic, many and varied sorts of it, but there's also unlife that does something inimical to life. Then it's not just calling them rude words, their needs are incompatible with other life forms, and some shorten that to evil.
But you could approach it like Star Trek and figure out methods of containment, altwrnative nutrients, and ways to dispose of waste.
And then they'd just be people, who don't age or need anything except magic.
Which would be neat.
Also I think a trait of high level monks and druids without the darker side effects? Depending on system and setting, obviously.
If humans can tune in to magic and use it, is it because magic be like that, or because they've changed somehow? Magery as evidence of symbiosis?
I've read a bunch like that somewhere... huh, might be Janny Wurts? Humans get magic by adjusting to symbiosis with life forms that already have magic... sounds like familiars too. Lots of good stuff.
I just like the idea of getting real fiddly about where exactly magical energy is entering a system, because then you can just science it and find work arounds and see how it plugs in to stuff.
I also like the idea in GURPS Fantasy worlds that humans, among many others, got there via Banestorm, and the native life forms are, well, not us. Not familiar. Because then you've got the ethical problems of terraforming an inhabited planet, but happening because of natural (magical) processes none of the existing civilisations has any control over, so there's no way to turn it off. Stuff has started and new stuff can be dumoed in to change everything at any time.
... I mean logically that's terrifying, that's living on the Hellmouth or the Ruft, only with plagues and new species and possibly entire cities appearing from nowhere.
But it's also like Stargate if nobody was in charge of the gate, people just got teleported in sometimes. I mean, that's a very different story.
And if we're not the natives then the poasible approaches look rather different?
Like sure, orcs are nasty savages who don't like us... says us, trying to ignore the fact they werw there first.
Like if there's two competing ecosystems that's a lot, and if there's more than two that's chaos. But if there's orc like life that's all related to orcs and all has that same magical lichen like symbiosis with thaumosynthetic cells, but the storms and the new people have been altering the palatability of magic, so there's places where that kind of life is in thin air or shallow water, but ordinary Terran life is in nice sunlight and reasonable water conditions and does just fine. Competing biological systems with different autotrophic needs.
But then if intervention can change the aspect of mana, you'd get people making it not nice for magical beings to live around there? Like undead are incompatible with other life, terran life does something to the magic to make it, like, tame, but not great for magic eating life forms.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy rates three sorts of magical power, for wizards, clerics, and druids. Druids need wilderness. If there's entire life forms that need wilderness, and wizard magic strengthening weakens the sort they can digest... big fighting!
But if wizard magic is pulling so much out or putting so much out or both that it's becoming non reneqable, then we have parable. Like the older ecosystem had a certain balance, but the wizards way cuts out so many of the conditions, the mana becomes steady and predictable but... dying? And then wizards figure out how to make undead, and everyone is like, oops.
Conflict!
Struggle for resources between groups with different needs!
Possibly a bit on the nose right now but *shrugs* it's just ideas.
Magic can have any set of requirements and limitations we say. So it can be watwr pulled from deep aquifers, or it can be conplex chemical processes, or it can be energy locked up for thousands of years and now building up towards a catastrophe.
Fun stuff.
Now it just needs characters and a plot...
but
I have read about orcs being basically fungus
(Warhammer)
but I was thinking
what if basically lichen?
... aaand I just found a warhammer wiki and they're ahead of me, unsurprisingly, what with probably being in the back of my mind since I was reading White Dwarf in the 90s.
Warhammer orkoids are a biological symbiosis of fungus and animal, and they grow from spores, so once they're in an area they keep growing again.
That's neat, but also mean.
But I was thunking lichens as a model fo cooperation with thaumosynthesising life forms.
Like the simplest way to splics magic on to existing biological systems is to make it glow, and use photosynthesis. Orcs as big fungus systems containing algae would make orcs green, and if those algae are teamed up with dimly glowing light spells, well... that would be kind of cool. But if the orcness of orcs is a while symbiotic system then that could explain how they make half orcs with anything. ... as it does in Warhammer. ... I realise ideas don't stop being cool when they stop being original, but I thought I was doing more of the thinking and I'm frustrated now.
The photosynthesising step isn't the only way to incorporate magic though. Magic can recharge your fatigue directly, thus provoding cellular energy that usually requires food, and there are food spells that make you not need to eat, as well as ones that make food from raw magic. Light is the simplest spell in a lot of chains, but food spells exist. So simple thaumobiology would exploit simple spells, but complex beings could just, like, make bodies. Which is really expensive when ghosts do it but also those bodies wear off so they seem more like ullusion/creation spells than food/healing spells. To make stable long lasting biological matter there'd be processes rather like food or healing spells, only small and ongoing.
... like monsters that regenerate.
And some systems would be magical from the get go, but others would be partnered with thaumobiology despite starting out as organic chemistry.
So like lichens they'd provide a safe structure for some other micro organism that provides it with necessary energy or energy producing compounds.
If such an organism could be created by infection you'd get something kin to werewolves or vampires, though both those have specialisations not necessary to the theory. Infectious zombies would also make sense. And of course higher undead, the more intentional, fewer side effects kind. Like wraiths, or liches.
... yes I made all this up to make a pun on lichen lich...
But undead are unsatisfying because how do they work really? And what's with the calling them evil?
And maybe they work by sidestepping the whole chemical biology game and, as mana dependent entities, teaming up with magic eating autotrophs on a cellular level.
Or subcellular. Mitochondria are a powerhiuse. What would thaumobiological equivalents work like?
... however we choose, obviously, because inventing things.
Okay but undead haunted areas are often associated with lifebane? Like the bringers around christmas trees, everything else dies. And that implies they're not just harmlessly chewing on mana, they are, even without the flesh eating, metabolising something necessary to all other life.
... or putting off waste products. I don't lnow what magical waste products would look like, but maybe like aspected mana?
So there's life that teams up with magic, many and varied sorts of it, but there's also unlife that does something inimical to life. Then it's not just calling them rude words, their needs are incompatible with other life forms, and some shorten that to evil.
But you could approach it like Star Trek and figure out methods of containment, altwrnative nutrients, and ways to dispose of waste.
And then they'd just be people, who don't age or need anything except magic.
Which would be neat.
Also I think a trait of high level monks and druids without the darker side effects? Depending on system and setting, obviously.
If humans can tune in to magic and use it, is it because magic be like that, or because they've changed somehow? Magery as evidence of symbiosis?
I've read a bunch like that somewhere... huh, might be Janny Wurts? Humans get magic by adjusting to symbiosis with life forms that already have magic... sounds like familiars too. Lots of good stuff.
I just like the idea of getting real fiddly about where exactly magical energy is entering a system, because then you can just science it and find work arounds and see how it plugs in to stuff.
I also like the idea in GURPS Fantasy worlds that humans, among many others, got there via Banestorm, and the native life forms are, well, not us. Not familiar. Because then you've got the ethical problems of terraforming an inhabited planet, but happening because of natural (magical) processes none of the existing civilisations has any control over, so there's no way to turn it off. Stuff has started and new stuff can be dumoed in to change everything at any time.
... I mean logically that's terrifying, that's living on the Hellmouth or the Ruft, only with plagues and new species and possibly entire cities appearing from nowhere.
But it's also like Stargate if nobody was in charge of the gate, people just got teleported in sometimes. I mean, that's a very different story.
And if we're not the natives then the poasible approaches look rather different?
Like sure, orcs are nasty savages who don't like us... says us, trying to ignore the fact they werw there first.
Like if there's two competing ecosystems that's a lot, and if there's more than two that's chaos. But if there's orc like life that's all related to orcs and all has that same magical lichen like symbiosis with thaumosynthetic cells, but the storms and the new people have been altering the palatability of magic, so there's places where that kind of life is in thin air or shallow water, but ordinary Terran life is in nice sunlight and reasonable water conditions and does just fine. Competing biological systems with different autotrophic needs.
But then if intervention can change the aspect of mana, you'd get people making it not nice for magical beings to live around there? Like undead are incompatible with other life, terran life does something to the magic to make it, like, tame, but not great for magic eating life forms.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy rates three sorts of magical power, for wizards, clerics, and druids. Druids need wilderness. If there's entire life forms that need wilderness, and wizard magic strengthening weakens the sort they can digest... big fighting!
But if wizard magic is pulling so much out or putting so much out or both that it's becoming non reneqable, then we have parable. Like the older ecosystem had a certain balance, but the wizards way cuts out so many of the conditions, the mana becomes steady and predictable but... dying? And then wizards figure out how to make undead, and everyone is like, oops.
Conflict!
Struggle for resources between groups with different needs!
Possibly a bit on the nose right now but *shrugs* it's just ideas.
Magic can have any set of requirements and limitations we say. So it can be watwr pulled from deep aquifers, or it can be conplex chemical processes, or it can be energy locked up for thousands of years and now building up towards a catastrophe.
Fun stuff.
Now it just needs characters and a plot...
no subject
Date: 2019-06-21 12:24 pm (UTC)~