1????????Soul Bound


    1.3??????Making a Splash


    1.3.1????An Obligated Noble


    1.3.1.20 Reality, and how to bend it


    Camillo: “This is the template for a storm cellar. With time, and an appropriate support group or mana source, a master can use this to make a permanent construction from brick or stone, but today I’ve borrowed some of Count Landi’s horses and we’re going to create a temporary version from soil. If well compacted, it will last long enough to serve as a concealed bunker that a patrol can defend or hide in until nightfall. The more often you succeed at a particular model, the greater your confidence and the faster you can construct it, so reality mages often end up with types of design they specialise in. For example, Grand Master Poggio specialises in repairing ancient infrastructure that uses active magic, while his wife, High Master Selvaggia, knows more about military defences and constructing big buildings than anyone else in the Etruscan region.”


    Kafana: “What’s your speciality? And may I add you to the gestalt that Wellington and I are in? I’d love to experience it from your perspective, if you’re willing to trust us. I swear we won’t take advantage.”


    Camillo blinked at the unusual request, but responded to the light on her diadem showing her words to be sincere and her voice that was still tinged with warmth from her interaction with the System, who she now thought of as a friend.


    Camillo: “Hmm, very well. Normally it would be out of the question, but you are trusted friends of the Count and I can’t very well doubt Cov’s endorsement of you. My specialty isn’t construction at all, I’m afraid. Torello has an interesting variety of portals to private dimensions and the Zoo of course. I specialise in the analysis and modification of spatial properties, with a bit of warding and bibliomancy on the side. The ladders in the library are one of my projects, you know. A simple recursive loop, but it does save on time fetching books!”


    She grinned at his bashful enthusiasm, and drew him gently into the gestalt. She really ought to talk with a proper mind mage at some point, to learn the correct way to protect people’s privacy when linked to them. Not now, though. She focused on the task at hand.


    Half an hour later, they were sitting on chairs in an earthen bunker hidden beneath the gardens of Palazzo Landi, sipping tea using items she kept in her stash. Looking at the stash while merged with Camillo’s high level Reality Sight was fascinating. Her skills had levelled up considerably and she could now sense faint lines of possibility and probability heading off at right angles to all three of the usual spatial axes. Hang on, was that her thought or Wellington’s?


    With regret she slowly dissolved the merge, not wanting to abuse Camillo’s generosity and keep it going beyond the project he’d consented to. She felt a little lonely and a little smaller, now back by herself in her own head. Oh goodness, she did miss what it had been like, what she’d been like, during those brief glorious hours that she’d been fully merged with her Vessel-self. Would she ever manage to regain it? She shook her head and tried to put the thought out of her head, lest she get depressed or, worse, break down sobbing.


    Camillo: “This is pleasant. Though it is traditional for Reality mages to be stubborn people, I am forced to admit that neither of you are typical of the students I normally teach. What do you intend to do with your new abilities?”


    Wellington: “In the short term? We are planning to build housing in Basso, as well as several larger buildings, including a warehouse and a guildhall. Anything we could do to speed that up would be useful. You mentioned Grand Master Poggio worked with a team? What sort of team, and what sort would the two of us need in order to build a house or something larger?”


    Camillo: “There’s himself, his wife and six master mages. They each have at least one journeyman, to train and draw upon, which brings the total up to 16. It allows them to swap members during a long ritual, to allow rest and mana recovery. Or course that number doesn’t include his secretary, the people who work with the horses, master builders and specialised craftsmen, and all the other non-magical servants and workers.”


    Wellington: “Finding adventurers to help, who are apprentice or journeyman mages, and who have an affinity for reality magic, shouldn’t be a problem.”


    Camillo: “If you’re using apprentices rather than masters, you’ll need more people. A rule of thumb is that each tier of mage is 4 times more effective than the one below. And numbers can only take you so far. You need at least 1 in a tier above for every 3 at a particular tier.”


    Wellington: “What total strength or level mage is needed for raising a complex permanent structure the size of a house or larger?”


    Camillo: “For a permanent construction of that size, using multiple types of material and fine details that need accurate and knowledgeable placement, it would be best to have a high mage leading the merge. Selvaggia is young, but she learned a lot about group work when she was a member of the Company of the Pink Rose. She’ll be back in Torello in a few days, if you’d like me to ask her? She will work for hire when the whim takes her, though she won’t come cheaply. In terms of support, 5 journeymen and 15 apprentices would be sufficient, if they’re good at working together, provided the pair of you can direct them and you’ve practiced enough in advance to raise your skill in reality magic to level 20 or higher. For something bigger than a house, or if you’re adding a complex passive ward, or any sort of active ward, more will be required.”


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    They carried on chatting, delving into Camillo’s extensive knowledge. It seemed there wasn’t anything, or any period of history, that he didn’t know at least something about. Did he spend all his time reading books? The more obscure and detailed the question, the greater his enjoyment at being able to furnish an answer. Eventually he asked a question of his own.


    Camillo: “You spoke about the short term. What are your long term plans, if you don’t mind my asking?”


    Wellington: “I want to understand the universe. All of it. How the planets and planes relate to each other. How did the ancients travel, before the incursions? Is teleportation possible? Why does magic work the way it does, and how do the different types fit together? The nature of time and gravity on Covob. Everything. Reality.”


    Wellington: {Or, at least, their reality. Velife. I want to understand how the programmers have implemented the game, what they fully simulate and what they extrapolate on the fly. I want to be able to predict the bugs and limitations of their simulation engine, and create a model of the priorities and strategies of the game’s expert systems.}


    Kafana: {I don’t understand. I might if you spoke in chat, but I don’t think my learning buff affects our out of character group chat channel.}


    Wellington: {In arlife, philosophers consider an uninhabited forest, and ask whether a falling tree can be said to make a sound when there is no ear to receive the vibrating air caused by the crash. In velife, the question is different. Programmers consider periods when there are no users in the forest to experience falling trees and ask whether it is worth simulating each fall at the moment it is due to happen, or whether it is more efficient to freeze the forest in time until a user does try to enter it, then simulate a statistically likely number of trees to have fallen in the intervening period and instantaneously change the forest’s state to them having fallen and rotted appropriately, before allowing time in the forest to unfreeze.}


    Kafana: {Ok. But why does that matter? If the difference can’t be detected by the NPCs, how does knowing help you?}


    Wellington: {The more complex the system being simulated, the harder it is for the programmer to anticipate when a user is about to interact with a frozen forest in time to unfreeze it. Occasionally they make mistakes, and if you can spot a pattern that lets you predict when such mistakes will be made, you can take advantage of that.}


    Kafana: {Like when the expert systems didn’t predict that I’d use my skills as a linguist to decode Lovariszo so fast, and they hadn’t finished generating the culture and back-history for it?}


    Camillo: “Hmm, tricky.”


    They waited.


    Camillo: “Teleportation I can answer. Yes, it is possible in theory. In practice, the only known examples from the modern era involved an artifact which could teleport the user back to one specific location, from a limited range. Creating such artifacts takes a Grand Master level reality mage specialised in that area and with a high crafting skill. And since that sort of person could also remove things from other people’s private stashes or warded vaults, they wouldn’t need to craft items to sell. You’re unlikely to ever see one. There’s a rumour that a noble over in Alto has been seen to do it, but I suspect that was just an illusion.”


    Camillo: “For planes and planets, I suggest the treatise on celestial harmonics, written by Lord Galilei the string theorist.”


    Kafana: “String theory?”


    Camillo: “Yes, lute strings. He started off as a musician. I believe his son, Michelagnolo, is quite accomplished.”


    Camillo: “The rest? Short of trying to get an answer from Lady Dieconeura, your best bet is to ask Enzo Zeno, the Count of Libri. He’s amazing. My only hypothesis on how he knows so much about everything is that his bibliomancy must be high enough to feed into his brain the complete knowledge stored in his library, without him having to even touch or find a book. The only time I’ve ever seen him answer a question incorrectly, was when he debated Dottore.”


    When tea was finished and everybody’s mana had recovered, Camillo showed them how to create a copy of his bunker template, which they managed to perform by themselves. Wellington stored it carefully in his stash and thanked Camillo, before they left the bunker to emerge into the late afternoon sun.


    The rouncies they’d borrowed from the stables were peacefully nibbling away at the lush offerings of the herb garden and, based on the training she’d been receiving from Yago (the Lovari’s Horsemaster), she interpreted their expression and ear flick as annoyance at being interrupted. Poor fellows, after all their hard work on her behalf. She made sure to give them plenty of fuss and attention, as she and Wellington led them back - it didn’t feel right to ignore someone’s contribution, just because they have no voice and you can get away with doing so.


    All in all, a good day, and a peaceful one. Nobody had threatened her with a dagger, yet, which might be a record. Now all she needed to do was find the others, have a quick chat with the Count, and say some polite goodbyes. Alderney would probably complain their viewers would prefer to see dramatic disembowellings but, as the person on the spot actually risking getting perforated guts in her hair, Kafana couldn’t really regret the lack of drama. The Palazzo was an artistic wonderland. Surely some viewers would appreciate that?