Daevinity Worldbuilding Info

[Alicorn]

Yes, you can trap a daeva like that if you want to. There are probably ordinances against it in a lot of places since if it were common daeva would stop accepting summons.

[Adelene]

Can angels modify plants or animals in such a way that they breed true?

[Alicorn]

Yes, if they know what they're doing well enough.

[DanielH]

About how well would “well enough” be? Would they need to know about the existence and purpose of DNA? Details on the genetics of the species of plant? Exactly what genes they want to change and how? Would it be easier to instead change just the seeds than to change the whole plant? If an angel wanted to add genes to a plant (make a true-breeding bioluminescent potato, say), would that be more difficult than changing genes?

[Alicorn]

They would have to change the DNA and know what genes to change; Mendelian inheritance does not apply to daeva-adjusted plants. It would be a little faster but not that much easier to change the seeds. Adding genes would require getting the (small amount of) extra matter from somewhere but not otherwise be harder.

[DanielH]

Wow, I knew they needed more detail than demons, but that’s more than I was expecting. I guess it is a complicated change. Would this mean that an angel neuroscientist could create a cat from cloud-fluff with actual catlike intelligence (even if people are metaphysically impossible, cats should work because they aren’t people enough for an afterlife)?

Also, I expect Cat Max to explore this more, but Cam won’t know the answers. If human-level AI (say, JARVIS) were made, would it get into an afterlife upon being destroyed? Would the Tony responsible get a JARVIS in Limbo? (Answer: no, Tony would totally summon something. But if for some reason he didn’t, and like Charlie got his house, would the house be JARVIS?) Would a demon Tony (seems the most likely afterlife to me) be able to make another JARVIS (given that it could technically count as reproduction)? Or are we assuming that a native AI would be impossible here for ~reasons~?

[Nemo]

In one of the sandboxes, JARVIS was able to summon daeva, so maybe? If that's canon; sandboxes have changed things before.

[DanielH]

Yeah; that’s part of why I used JARVIS as an example; he’s obviously a person enough to count as a summoner (the rest was from him being mostly tied to a physical form instead of software; it’s harder to define when software dies). But I asked about a native JARVIS because we still don’t know how other worlds interact with this afterlife set. Or, for that matter, how that’s handled in general; perhaps rules about conflicting afterlives are actually consistent somehow (though I doubt it; if they are, I’d guess personal (eg, from summoning) trumps native world trumps current world, and cessation of existence iff none of those afterlives exist).

[Kappa]

I haven't decided anything about how I'd deal with Jarvis in a daeva verse beyond what had already occurred in Resplendence. But I'd be astonished if becoming a daeva made it impossible for a Tony to create a Jarvis. That would just be weird. Like, maybe he'd have to program him more manually rather than shortcutting with demon powers because demon powers fail at brain complexity? But I can't imagine how he would be prevented from doing it at all.

[DanielH]

I also wouldn’t expect it (unless somehow human-level AI failed to operate in Daevinity at all because of its rules about “people” being weird; I’m similarly curious whether an HDM-world AI would get a daemon or fail to be a person). However, daeva can’t reproduce, even though their human bodies seem to be otherwise fully-functional, so the possibility occurred to me.