Second Entry to the Tome of Magic: Now that the others and I have decently settled into this new land we find ourselves stranded in, I suppose I best get into the habit of recording my observations once more.
A Most Peculiar Natural Property of this Realm
Today I wish to chronicle perhaps the most important one so far. It may not seem like much at a glance, but the more I consider the implications, the faster my thoughts race. But I am getting ahead of myself here. The observation I mean is this:
Knowledge in this Plane of Existance is attracted to other Knowledge
To explain what I mean, allow me to give an example. Perhaps the first thing we discovered when exploring the new lands was, that memories and knowledge persist in the world beyond the life they originate from. Slaying beasts and monsters you can observe these fascinating wisps of light. Whenever a being draws its last breath, it exudes small specks of light, which hover in the air, dancing, only maginally affected by the pull of gravity.
They swirl and move, and crucially, if in proximity to each other, will drift together until they join together into larger blobs. This property is what I have begun calling "Coalescing" and it also applies to sapient species. When you approache these wisps, they will begin drifting to your body. If they touch it, it becomes clear what the wisps are. They're fragments of the memories and
experiences of the being that perished. I have no doubt in my mind about it. They rush to your consciousness, none whole enough for you to actually remember the details, and yet, one feels wiser and more experienced after the fact.
Extrapolating from this initial example, the same trend holds true for all forms of knowledge. Pages of books stick together as if ever so slightly magnetized once knowledge is written in them. Likewise, when one channels arcane power through a tome, the nearby books will begin producing lumious letters that slowly draft toward your arcane focus.
Potential Applications
Before I delve deeper into my own ideas for use cases here, I wish to briefly mention the locals. One of their professions seems entirely focused on Coalescing and its aspects. They seem to have mastered a way of collecting the memory-wisps and store them for later use. I tried asking them about it, but alas I still don't speak their language yet. I have however, managed to trade a few bottles of memories with them and plan to conduct some experiments. Maybe I can discover the secret to the technique yet.
Now, onto the implications I promised. The first and more obvious use is the channeling of Coalesced Memory into arcane uses. Magic inherently draws upon the users experience and the ability to collect experience from other beings in this world means, that we could easily enchant our tools, armor and even weaponry with magic properties, make them more durable, efficient, and useful.
The second and broader implication is the collection of knowledge. Calypso, my lovely neighbor, speaks of constructing a large library to chronicle our efforts and exploits and experiences. I haven't learnt of or inquired after her reason yet, but the idea of a library doesn't leave my mind anymore. In general, the attractive properties of knowledge seem to drop off drastically with distance, but what if we increase the knowledge in one spot further and further. Is there point of critical mass? Just imagine the possibilities! A library that attracts knowledge and grows on its own! Perhaps once it reaches an even larger size, it could start attracting knowledge from other planes of existence. As a scholar the concept intrigues me to no end.
Dwellings on my nightmares
Lastly, I wish to briefly mention a cause of concern. Ever since my expedition to the deep roots of the mountains, the
Terrors I encountered haven't left my mind. I finally begin to comprehend the true monstrosity of the lifeform that dwells in the deep. It sustains itself on coalesced knowledge. Its the very antithesis of what we are creating with this library. What happens when the Terrors take notice of what is happening above them at the surface? What if we are dooming the world with our actions?
Comments