Alicornucopia [Alicorn Author Thread]

[Marri]

There is a goal somewhere for me to get Alicorn a scraper such that everything can just go into the Constellation and she doesn't have to worry about indexing. This of course assumes I have free time for Constellation :(

[Alicorn]

I am like... behind in part because I wish to be done with it?

[DanielH]

[Note: If a worldbuilding thread is created and you want to move this post to it, I recommend the first post moved being this one because it is the last in its thread and easy to replace; if not I can remove this note]

What happens if somebody invents a spell with swirls nobody used before, but then neglects to tell amybody, and somebody else uses those swirls to mean something completely different?

[Alicorn]

(I will get around to a Disappear worldbuilding thread at Some Point.)

It depends a little on if they only use the convention in one spell. If it's just one, no big deal, you've got "stigmata as Christ allusion" and also one "hand injury as metaphor for disability generally" or whatever. If they use it a lot you may have a problem but it's still not that hard to establish a competing convention, it may just depend a little more on walking the symbol/nonsense dividing line very neatly and having in mind what you mean properly when you first cast.

[DanielH]

Wasn’t there something aboutbpeeling disappearance points off surfaces, as part of gate-making?

[Alicorn]

Not "off of". You can put a disappearance point on, e.g., a board stuck to a wall, then take the board off when the disappearance point has gone through it.

[DanielH]

Ah, that makes much more sense. I was having trouble visualizing that part.

If I didn’t expect something else to happen in the meantime, I would hope that some time in the next few centuries, Elves develop the surgery to remove somebody’s forehead skin from their skull without killing them. It should be easier with elves than humans, but I don’t that moves it into “easy”.

[Kappa]

I mean, I don't think it's that hard to skin somebody's forehead without killing them, really.

[Alicorn]

Cor made the point very narrow, so it's a bit deeper than that.

[DanielH]

The head has a lot of blood; for a human I would expect a large chance of complications due to blood loss or infection. Certainly not guaranteed, but not the kind of risk you would ordinarily want to take, and there is time to figure out a way to do it more safely.

If it goes into the skull already, that makes it much more complicated, and makes any subsequent healing harder.