Dreamward Worldbuilding Info

[Bluelantern]

How about rescuing or escaping via reducing the quantity of bodies... like you can only feed one body? just shove everyone in a single body, hilarity issues.

[Alicorn]

The problem with implementing old-people-moving-into-young-ones-in-a-cycle is this:

Suppose Alabaster and Bird and Candle are three people of various ages. Alabaster grows to be old in a dreamward, to start us off uncomplicatedly. Then, when Bird is a teenager, Alabaster moves in with her. So far, so good; Bird gets a responsible older cohabitor and Alabaster gets another lifetime. But when Bird's body is old again, now you have two people to move. If you're being fair, you can have Bird awake and Alabaster asleep, and put Bird into the teenage Candle's body. But then Alabaster will almost certainly die - and die right then at the hand of the troporter, not of old age. She will be asleep and not automatically wake up, probably ever; being old doesn't help. This would be a better system in a lot of ways and I'm sure it's been tried, but once they know how soul-moving works, implementing it consistently requires having troporters who are willing to euthanize old people, probably including old people who aren't in particularly imminent danger of death otherwise (you don't want to wait until Alabaster and Bird have a heart attack and be unable to get Bird out and safely in with Candle before they die). Alabaster also has a lot of incentive to try to impersonate Bird.

This may still happen in some cases - a sufficiently rich and famous and beloved Alabaster can hitch a ride in Bird and then abandon Bird to move in with Candle if she can convince the right people. But it's not customary.

[Kappa]

Aha. I'd forgotten the thing about what happens when you move a soul out of a cohabitation.

[Lambda]

Could you troport a bunch of age into a body that's about to be vacated? That is: assume Alabaster and Ammonite are cohabiting in an old body, and young Bird is preparing to move in with young Bromide. The age of Alabaster-and-Ammonite's body is swapped with Bird's body; Bird then promptly moves out their now-aged former body and into Bromide's young body. The end result is old Alabaster-and-Ammonite in a young body, young Bird-and-Bromide in a young body, and an empty old body.

There's still a resource-limit tradeoff, in that a society can't support an old population that outnumbers its young population, but not the theoretical difficulties of moving out of a cohabitation. I imagine there would be a tendency to have at least four kids (two to rejuvenate whoever the parents rejuvenated, and two to rejuvenate the parents), and lots of nagging about grandkids.

(We now have names Bell, Book and Candle; I vaguely hope something comes of that.)

[Alicorn]

You can't troport agedness.

[Lambda]

Then what did you mean by

You can in theory keep someone alive indefinitely with a combination of animal and human sacrifice, yes.

?

[Alicorn]

See the circumstance where Alabaster moves into Bird and then later into Candle.

[Rayketh]

Where does the animal sacrifice come into play?

[DanielH]

Toporting away injuries or diseases that can be toported. If nothing else, mice will die eventually if you leave dreamwards.

EDIT: My guess; I’m not Alicorn.

[Alicorn]

You're correct.