1 Soul Bound
1.3 Making a Splash
1.3.2 An Allotropic Realignment
1.3.2.12 Distractions
Kafana scarcely heard, as Wellington tentatively tried reasoning with her.
Wellington: “You couldn’t have done it a day earlier, you know. We only managed it because the vials we took from the smugglers contained pure samples of the disease.”
Bungo: “It wasn’t your responsibility. What about all the other priests with higher levels?”
Kafana: “It doesn’t matter what they didn’t do. I didn’t do enough. I didn’t know enough, learn enough. I still don’t know how to heal a missing hand, like Antegnati’s back at the foundry, or even cure long term problems like the ones that make it painful for Giovanni to play a violin.”
Tomsk: “Kafana, I don’t really get how healing works in Soul Bound. We have just one ‘hit point’ total for the entire body. Is combat damage really proportionate to health? If you are on full hit points, shouldn’t that mean you are in perfect health? Kafana?”
The need to respond to his insistent question drew her back a bit, and she answered hesitantly, forcing herself to think.
Kafana: “I think the numbers are just an abstraction provided for the benefit of players by the System. When I heal, I don’t ‘Cast a cure light wounds spell for 30 hit points’. I make changes in the patient’s body, restoring it to match the body’s memory of how it ought to be, via a resonant link with my own body.”
The distraction was working, and she didn’t resist it. She straightened up as she continued to answer.
Kafana: “Curing disease is similar. The patient’s mind doesn’t know the structure of their own pancreas or even where it is, but the patient’s body knows. And similarly, it can also identify what is and is not a true part of the body, which lets me locate diseases or even splinters left inside an arrow wound.”
Wellington: “Is the body’s view of what it is similar to what Camillo mentioned when talking about reality magic: that each local space has a template of what its rules ought to be, placed there when the deities created it and supported by popular belief, that the mage has to overcome?”
Tomsk drew her onwards as he spoke to her, and she took a step, then another.
Tomsk: “So what are hit points? What is increased when we put stat points into CON? Why are there not separate totals for each limb, that result in an arm being chopped off when the arm’s total reaches zero? Can you choose which part of the body to heal first, if you are low on mana? Like repairing legs until someone can run, while leaving their arm broken?”
Kafana: “I’m not sure. Perhaps your maximum hp is how hardy you are, and your current hp is a measure of where you are between death and fully functioning? It sounds like that’s just an abstraction view provided for our benefit by the System, layered on top of what is actually happening. Maybe each limb does have its own subtotal, and the more damaged the limb is, the more likely it is that a critical hit will sever it?”
Bungo: “If you had a total for each limb, why not one for each finger, each bone, or even each muscle and tendon? Where would it end? No matter what scale you pick, there’s always a smaller one.”
Wellington: “Is there always a smaller one? This is a game. We don’t know what resolution they actually simulate it at. Maybe cells don’t exist except when someone is looking down a microscope or actively trying to sense them using magic?”
They walked slowly down the length of the yard, chatting merrily, filling spaces in the conversation when she went silent, including her but not demanding she talk, and something unclenched inside her. At the end, Bulgaria paused again to bow his head respectfully, and this time the whole group did the same. Later, in private, she might put her feelings about this into song, but here and now did not feel right. It wasn’t her story, her grief, that was central to this shrine.
She left the shrouded yard, an ache still in her heart.
The way the tunnels joined the yards together into a regular structure reminded her of Alderney’s talk about olives joined together by cocktail sticks. Science? She could use a good distraction herself, right about now.
Kafana: “Bungo, what were you and Alderney saying earlier about iron and microstructures?”
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The new yard seemed to be in the business of creating metal parts for saddlers. Bungo pointed to a nearby bench equipped with vices and anvils, where a journeyman was busy shaping a steel hamehook.
Bungo: “All that stuff blacksmiths do? Heating the metal, folding it, whacking it with a hammer? It’s superstition. What’s really important are the microstructures.”
The journeyman glared at Bungo who, not noticing, carried on.
Kafana: “What are they?”
Bungo: “Ok, at the lowest level you have atoms of different elements, right? And depending on which elements you have, and their proportions, there are only a limited number of ways they can fit together in regular patterns to form crystals. For example, pure iron only has five forms: alpha, delta, epsilon, gamma and rho. But when you’ve got carbon too, the number of possibilities expands. For example pearlite is alternating layers of alpha iron, and iron carbide; bainite and martensite are similar, but arranged differently.”
Were those the allotropes Alderney had been talking about?
Kafana: “So they’re the microstructures?”
Bungo: “No, they’re what microstructures are made of. Other than gemstones, most things you can see with your eyes are not one single big crystal. They’re polycrystalline - made up of different types of crystal, or small bits of the same type, but mis-aligned. When you slice a rock, klemm it, and then view it through a microscope with polarised light, the results are beautiful - a whole new world! Not just different grain sizes, but jeweled bubbles, flights of spears and branching trees.”
Kafana: “And they’re important?”
Bungo: “They’re fundamental. If you want to make a chisel that’s tough enough to withstand repeated impacts without shattering, you need bainite so you quench at a high temperature. If you want to make a file that’s hard enough to scrape away lesser steels, you need martensite so you quench at a lower temperature. Want a wrench that’s both hard and tough? Add chromium. Want a drill bit that doesn’t melt at high speeds? Add cobalt. Everything comes down to chemistry in the end. It’s the heart of the hard sciences.”
“...said the chemist.” she thought to herself, amused by the tone of importance that had entered his voice. She wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Tomsk: “What if I want a sword with a hard edge and a tough core?”
Bungo pointed at a four colour striped awning.
Bungo: “Imagine that awning was a cross section through the blade of the sword. You’d want to vary the microstructure depending upon the position in the cross section. With proper modern technology we can do it directly, as with gradiated ceramics. With this level of technology? I suppose there’s some skill involved in achieving an approximation to the ideal, just by whacking things with a hammer, but it isn’t science. It would be cool if you could do it by magic, setting up a gestalt between the sword cross section and a 2D template like the sample plates we saw being created in the foundry.”
Tomsk: “Swords can vary in size and desired composition as you go along the blade.”
Bungo: “Ok, make it a series of thin samples, evenly spaced along it. 3D.”
Wellington: “Wouldn’t you need a different template for each step, to account for the changes in composition over time as it cooled? That would be 4D, though I suppose you could use something like Grandmaster Johannes’ zoetrope.”
Bungo sighed.
Bungo: “No point. If these magic metals are new elements in the periodic table, we have no idea what they can do. I saw Alderney’s samples. They’re really heavy - much denser than gold. They ought to be radioactive and very short lived, but they aren’t.”
Bungo: {It’s sad in a way, most of the stuff XperiSense created for Covob fits together perfectly. But having new elements with arbitrary rules seems inelegant, like a bodge they tacked on as an afterthought, then adjusted for game balance purposes. I suppose they wanted it to be heavy enough to require a high STR stat, in order to prevent low level characters wearing high level armour.}
Kafana: {Is that why Alderney told me not to spend any of my stat points?}
Bungo: {Yeah, she doesn’t want to make us new armour, then find out we can’t wear it because it requires more STR, DEX or INT that we have. It’s annoying - I’ve enough points now to raise my MAG stat to 300 which would let me use my Living Illusion skill.}
Bulgaria led them through another tunnel.
Kafana: “Bulgaria, I didn’t ask. Are you taking us somewhere in particular? Alderney won’t be finished for hours, and we haven’t stopped to talk with anyone yet, just walked and walked and walked.”
Bulgaria: “I’m taking you to the future. Or, rather, the Ghetto’s hope of a better future, of breaking the cycle and escaping the entrenched inequality that keeps it forever behind the families of Libri, Mercato, Alto and Centrum.”
Wellington: “A trading hub?”
Tomsk: “A worker’s collective?”
Bungo: “Something strange and magical?”
Kafana: “A social movement with an inspiring leader?”
He shook his head at each guess, before raising a finger with a flourish, to point onwards and upwards.
Bulgaria: “Fellow Wombles, we are going to the Press!”