A/N: Skip to bottom if you're only interested in Cato's magic application ideas.
Chapter was also delayed due to immigration issues.
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It has been six months since I've arrived in Inath, plus or minus a week. I lost my counting pad in the journey from the Fuka village and a few days might be miscounted. Six months is a long time.
In the five months or so that I have been here in the country Ektal, Minmay city has begun to develop the ideas I have brought much quicker than I thought. The Industrial Revolution on Earth took a considerable time to get started, but I suppose having me as someone who knows the end product, re-inventing many of Earth's technologies is less difficult than doing it the first time.
From being dependent on charity, I have now essentially become financially independent, with more than enough money to ensure a comfortable lifestyle. As well as to help others, as my personal interest in the Fukas in Corbin is turning out to be.
While I have done my best to maintain my health with cleaning practices, the same cannot be said for anyone other than Landar. The germ theory of disease has not been widely accepted despite the demonstration of boiling sterilization that I had Kalny give, many people seem to regard illness as the work of invisible monsters. I fear it may take a proper epidemic to get a sufficiently convincing demonstration case.
Apparently, boiling water for the purpose of washing hands and drinking is considered a waste of good fuel and my insistence that visitors to my house remove their shoes, wash their hands with lye and rinse their feet is a famous eccentricity. But sanitation is poor and I simply will not allow visitors, who sometimes have been walking through streets streaked with human waste, into my house without first being washed. I can afford it in any case. The look on the mason's face when I gave him layout drawings for the house with essentially a bathroom right after the front door... made for an interesting dinner table topic.
I have noticed a few personal issues. Despite my attention to health, I have still developed minor skin rashes, chapped lips and the occasional pimple. Some sort of moisturizing oil would be useful. And I suspect the cosmetics industry, currently just an extremely limited set of powders, will welcome a useful stabilizing agent for creams and oils.
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On gender roles
I have noted that Inath has considerably more gender equality than the same historical development era on Earth. While obviously their society is strained by the existence of the monsters, and a low-key war that burns continuously in the background, I suspect gender roles have been eroded by the existence of magic. Magic is an equalizer between the genders much in the same way the gun was an equalizer between people of different physical strengths. The power of magic is sufficiently large that differences in magical power tend to dominate conflict in Inath.
And as far as they can tell, there is no difference in the amount of magical power each gender can achieve. Nor do there seem to be any tendencies towards the various 'branches' of magical study. I did attempt to perform an IQ test with questions requiring spatial manipulation and spatial memory, gender-biased topics which I remembered reading about, but my small sample size and lack of the formula for T-testing means no conclusive results could be observed.
I fear though, the attempt has introduced the concept of a written test into Inath society.
In any case, the equal opportunity violence that is prevalent around here results in sights unseen on Earth. The famous Order of the Knights of Inath is essentially gender neutral, anyone who can perform a useful duty to the adventuring parties can be recruited and ultimately learn magic from their peers and formally join. Nobility, positions of power and social roles are far more equal too, with a significant number of house husbands and working wives. Socially and culturally, women are equally aggressive negotiators compared to men, although of course this is affected by personal temperament.
Marriage also has no expectations of being permanent, it is an informal institution not enforced by any special mention in laws. A cultural construct, with underlying human impulses like pair bonding. Divorces, as the concept exists here, is primarily of importance to nobility when considering the right of succession, which can flow as easily from father to daughter as it can from mother to son. On the other hand, while the social value of virginal status is clearly devalued, the obsession with appearing young and healthy appears to be the same as on Earth.
Despite all these differences, it did not escape my attention that courtship rituals and sexual/romantic displays are in fact similar enough to western culture that I can understand most of it. A less ritualized form of dating is even recognizable, they call it an engagement period. Aleas and Ryulo are one such pair. Am I lucky that female breasts are considered sexual displays while hair isn't? How can one talk of luck when travelling between cultures or even entire universes? I doubt it could be mere coincidence that our cultural norms are sufficiently similar for me to understand it with only occasional misunderstandings.
The major differences are found with the Fukas and Elkas, who attach sexual and romantic significance to their tails and wings respectively. That, and the fact that the equalization of gender roles seems to have resulted in both genders making romantic advances. It is apparently considered normal to have a woman doing the 'chasing' in a developing relationship.
This effect trickles down from the ruling and wealthy classes to the commoners and peasants, albeit imperfectly. Danine mentions that far from being an anomaly, the ruffians attacking them in Corbin have been a little more than a third female! And although instances are much rarer, Danine did not consider male Fukas being raped to be a surprising fact worth special mention. I was a little shocked and sad to find that Danine seems to be emotionally inured to such atrocities. Or perhaps that such is not considered by as criminal as on Earth?
I am tempted to describe this as barbaric but I shall give Inath the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to enforcement difficulties. When the adventurer parties and mercenary guards have constant sexual tension because gender segregation is too advanced an organizational principle, I doubt much policing gets done other than for criminal cases that are serious enough to generate bounties.
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Food
The first thing I noticed about the food here was the lack of taste. Oh, it's not that they don't have spices or flavours, but that all of it comes from the addition of simple leaves or the oil from paka fat. I tried to introduce the concept of deep frying using paka oil but the cost in fuel is prohibitive to anyone other than the most wealthy merchants, or a noble.
This lack of cheap good tasting food, fast food even, is due to the rarity and cost of basic sugar and salt. Cooking oil and monosodium glutamate are completely unheard of; although Kalny has been trying unsuccessfully to remove the bitter aftertaste from the oily fruits of the Esquire tree. It is an excellent plantation crop, with continuous year round flowering and fruiting, but that bitter taste is unpopular.
Sugar is boiled out of the root of a plant called yama, which the Fukas used to make jam with. Yama is poor for a root crop, with tiny nodules that are hard to peel and wash, and needing to be laboriously mashed. Furthermore, only the Fuka village were able to grow them in large quantity by planting them individually, a highly laborious task. Although with the freeing up of manpower required for planting and tilling the soil, more peasants are starting to copy the same. Yama is a good cash crop in this sugar starved world.
Salt is the hard one. The majority of salt production comes from the port cities, where workers obtain sea salt by evaporation of sea water. They then wash the salt to remove impurities, unwashed salt is known to be bad for health but washed salt is not much better. I hope to improve the process once the mana tax begins to yield useful amounts of power.
Kalny has still made a killing by being first to market a noodle, along with the concept of a fork. His profit margins with tinned wind eye gruel packed with paka or piyo meat and some vegetables has been atrociously high. Prepacked durable meals are extremely popular amongst adventurers, all they have to do is poke a hole and heat up the can to get an instant meal ready to eat without the fuss of packing foodstuffs. Additionally, Kalny has introduced the concept of noodles made from wind eye flour, also well received by adventurers.
Both the tinned food and the noodles have been extensively copied by other food merchants, despite Kalny's attempts at maintaining control. With all the demand for cheap tins, the Ironworkers have also opened Inath's first tinned food factory, copying the same production line organization from Razzi's paper mill.
I wonder how long it will before the first contaminated food panic occurs.
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Geography
I have obtained descriptions and rough maps of the territories of Inath. Judging by the length of time it takes to travel, it would appear that the entire Inath Federation, minus the vast southern country known as Illastein, is only about the size of France. At least if I'm remembering my geography correctly. Inath might be a bit bigger but the error in my estimates should only be in the range of a hundred kilometers or so. Illastein is perhaps half the size of the rest of the Inath countries but the poor soil there means a much lower population density.
Currently, the Inath Federation consists of four major powers. That being Illastein, Ektal, Ranra and Inath, in order of increasing political importance. Other areas like the Calva principality and the Erushen special region are all that remains of larger countries after the past wars or monster attacks have reduced them to their current state.
The major countries of Inath have been in a state of low key war ever since they were settled. Their history speaks of growing monster attacks that have slowly shrunk the domain of humanity until the present day Federation. Currently, the situation is stable as the Snow Wall to the north and the Calva Ranges to the east funnel the monsters into a battlefield known as Algami plains somewhere to the east of Ranra. Most of the fighting occurs there with regular armies of adventurer-knights seeking their fortune in bounties.
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Magic Theory
Summoning Stones
I have investigated summoning stones further with the cooperation of Landar and I am almost certain that their names are a misnomer. They are magical items that assist in creating effects and do not summon anything at all.
Summoning stones have a short delay during which most of the parameters of the 'summon' is set. Simpler stones like Dancing Lights or Sword have nearly no such parameters, with variables like length and size being adjustable by the caster on the fly. More complicated stones like Tempest Bolt have almost no parameters that can be changed on the fly other than attack type and target. Stones in the middle, like Shield Wall, have some parameters fixed at casting time, the determination of the direction 'up', but others adjustable, like the position or speed of rotation.
A second piece of evidence is that summoning stones are actually inefficient. This claim is controversial and no one other than Landar will even entertain the idea, but crude calorimetric testing of power output indicates that Tempest Bolt outputs only thirty to forty percent of the heat generated by raw fire spells. I suspect that the simpler stones are actually more efficient than the flashier ones! Of course, using a large pond as a target suffers from inaccuracy but such a large difference can hardly be explained.
Spellcasting Methods
Spells cast do not have to originate from a fixed point, even though most mages will choose to create their spells in a zone in front of them where they can see it, or over their hands. This preference is just a convenience and a concentration tool, a spell can be created and fired from any body part in any direction. One of the alchemists demonstrated shooting a firebolt out the back of his head, although for obvious reasons, it was badly aimed.
What was interesting to note is that there are two major methods for learning magic. The First style that Tori tried to teach Danine and I in Wendy's Fort, and indeed how the majority of the knights learn magic, is described as "pushing magic out from the hands". The Tsarian style that Landar learnt involves extending the lifeforce out of the body and creating the effect there. The differences between these are limited, although the Tsarian style spends more magic to cast at long range and less to cast at short range. The backlash from overspending magic is also lesser for those of the Tsarian style, which is not necessarily a good thing since it is easier for them to drain themselves to a dangerous level.
It has been observed that the Tsarian style taught by all the summoner clans are more effective on people born with direct maternal descent from the Tsar. Such people are also known for learning Ems more easily. Tsarian descent is also not linked with any disadvantage in other fields other than the traditional casting method.
Why this should be so is unknown. Among the nobles, those few cases where the maternal line is of First origin, the person does not learn the Tsarian style of casting easily, nor displays the affinity for Em magic. Even in one case where only the maternal grandmother was of First origin, the children all displayed First style casting. I suspect that this effect is either linked to the mitochondrial genome or non-genetic. Probably non-genetic.
Given that the Fukas seem to pick up Em magic so easily, I suspect the Fukas are linked to the phenomenon behind this difference, although their ability to learn Ems is beyond any human. I asked Landar to provide Danine with some training materials to see if she can learn to cast magic more easily with the Tsarian style of casting but there was no miraculous progress there.
I have asked Minmay to invite the two Elka families over from Wendy's Fort. They are interested in the reports of Elkas at the fort in The Great Yang past the Central Territories to the east. Ka will lead them to stop over at Minmay for a while. I look forward to trying to teach them magic and observing any differences there.
Alchemy
One often thinks of magical items in terms of things like rings of power and monster-spawning television sets. But the Inaths have never heard of such a thing. Apart from the Alchemy spell spending magic on the Resist function,
Simply put, Alchemy is just another method of casting spells. In the same way that normal spells form a rigid boundary to contain the magic, alchemy contains the magic by binding it to physical matter. The difference between Alchemy and a normal spell is that the magic in normal spells slowly leak away over time. This difference is crucial. Alchemy allows the storage of magical power which forms the basis of making magic more controllable than relying on fallible human casters.
Alchemy enchantments also cost much more magic to achieve the same effect. A good alchemist still requires three times more magic to make a single shot firebolt wand than it takes a battlemage to create a firebolt, empirically determined by counting the number of firebolts Landar can make from full power. This so called alchemy penalty is not recovered even when the alchemy enchantment is reworked into a normal spell.
Magic Tools
Key to this control are what I will call magic tools. Rather than using alchemy to store single shot magical spells like the wands or wall enchantments, alchemy should allow far more complex spells simply because they allow the caster time to work on the spell instead of fighting constant magical attrition.
To this end I have categorized the various functions of magic and included a few notes on what applications might be possible.
The six basic functions introduced to me were heat, cool, accelerate, decelerate, resist and deflect.
The questions are accelerate and decelerate, which apparently increase or decrease the speed in the direction of movement. The question is, which frame of movement applies? A moving cart will accelerate over the ground, the same applies to a moving boat. More interestingly, apples inside a cart are apparently also considered moving, even if the cart is enclosed. Apples inside a constantly moving cart behave differently from apples sitting on the ground, which poses some difficult questions for relativity.
More to point, we are presumably on a rotating planet that is orbiting the sun. What about that movement? If apples on a cart are considered moving, then why not the mountain on a moving planet? But accelerate does nothing to stationary objects, for some value of stationary.
I haven't quite understood how that is supposed to work. To say nothing of the weight increasing Resist function and the direction changing Deflect. Heat and cool also present their own problems, the differentiation of macro scale and micro scale movement.
Another group of functions are the creation of elemental magic, also called magical materials. So far, Inath is aware of the creation of materials called Water, Fire, Heat, Ice, Crystal, Mist, Light and Darkness. These materials are mostly named after their functions and properties, which should need little explanation.
The third and most important group of functions are what I consider sensors. Such functions are portions of spells that change state depending on the conditions experienced at the point they exist at. In particular, the sensors known to Landar are for detection of magical power, light level, force exerted and overlap with solid or liquid objects. Timers are somewhat related. Sensors themselves can communicate with other functions through the use of logical linkers that propagate the change of state in the direction decided when created. I have a hunch, given how flexible the logic functions are, that the three And, Or and Not functions are all possible.
The last group of functions are meta functions. The alchemists and Academy mages have long known that the structures their own lifeforce uses to cast spells can be partially mimicked in a spell. This is the origin of the functions that convert raw magical power, that only has a disruptive effect, into something useful like the six basic functions or the magical material creation functions. Meta functions are currently the only functions being triggered by logical linkers although of academic interest is the fact that sensors can also be toggled on and off by the linkers.
Landar has made significant strides into building standardized magical functions. The thread and board setup she has is a good start into standardizing magic.
Magic Applications
With this, I can start speculating on the possible magical applications. Composite materials and fortification weaponry would obviously benefit greatly from the mana tax, but I've covered those before. The air conditioner concept could be used for climate control, with both heat and cool functions as well as using force functions to scatter water.
Movement engines using Accelerate and Decelerate are probably inefficient uses of magic since I estimate the energy content of such functions are far less than the equivalent generated by direct heating or Fire magical material. On the other hand, they don't require complex heat engines to convert the work done. I have plans to experiment with the generation of vacuum using magic, which could have applications in freeze drying and chemical preparation methods.
Besides these, magic can possibly be used in alarm and sensor systems, even more varied than those present on Earth. Heat, light and force sensors can all be used as tripwires and alarm panels. The enchanted house concept pioneered by Landar is probably the most feasible method for implementation. Logic functions could be used to reinvent a Turing machine and possibly employ magic for computation.
The house and ground enchantment concept that will replace Landar's magical threads could be used to move magic over long distances without suffering huge losses by shooting spells across. Indeed, this is similar to an electrical grid back on Earth, and with a large enough income of magic, could be feasible even. Such a grid could also be combined with magical computing idea to transmit information. Further afield, the Light magical material combined with light detectors and good mirrors could be used as a system for long range communication much like a semaphore, without requiring expensive enchantment of long stretches of ground in order to lay a logic linker line.