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Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Printable Version

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Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Titor - 11-04-2014

redacted

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - DreamedReality - 11-05-2014

Oh! Heart I'm finally feeling comfortable enough with the world that I want to try RPin a magic user. And arcanists with their geometries seem the most interesting to me. So I've been trying to come up with my own headcannon for them for the last month or so. This helped a lot!

My headcannon actually matches yours fairly decently. Especially in that last section of grimoire/free drawing. Although you've gone to far greater depth than I have yet. I'm curious where you believe that the shielding geometries lie in the spectrum. The neutral area or do those still fall into healing?

I hadn't considered a pattern that attached itself to a host to use the hosts own aether to prolong itself. But it does make sense. I am considering going more for the mix of white/black magic. The arcanist uses their own aether to fuel the spell initially. But then certain patterns start drawing on aether from the surrounding area to sustain before it eventually deteriorates since there is nothing permanent and no directing will to keep the structure of the pattern intact once it leaves the arcanist's control.

As far as shapes... in my headcannon spirals (and springs) are used to draw from outside aether and to concentrate aether into the geometric pattern. A '-o-' line with a connecting circle  is a place that aether can be stored in a sense. And size plays a part in the geometries power and potential. So that matches. I like the idea of smooth vs. jagged patterns depending on the pattern's use... I may just steal that. >.>; Cactuar

I'm still trying to work in how summoning works and more importantly how to sustain a summon in my headcannon. How difficult is it to maintain? etc. I like the food for thought you put in that.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - cuideag - 11-05-2014

This is pretty neat actually! It's not something I bring up in RP a lot because it's not something I've really thought on or fleshed out in my head. One of my characters is an incredibly amateur arcanist [after a fashion], and I've often wondered if one of my interpretations of arcanistry and the way geometries work might even be plausible.

I read somewhere on a wiki or something that arcanistry was basically brought out of the south seas somewhere, though I wonder if other forms might have been discovered elsewhere? Or if other forms aside from what I assume to be the traditional ink-and-grimoire approach have been developed? Could other mediums be marked or used to grand the same effect? Would free-drawing, something that would undoubtedly be a rather chaotic way to mark geometries, apply to these other mediums as well?

I am kind of glad that these sorts of things seem to be left open to interpretation, though I often worry I tread on things that might just simply be impossible at best, absurd at worst.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Sophia_Grave - 11-05-2014

Interesting read! Arcanima is definitely one of the more interesting concepts. I wish that there was more established lore behind it :/ But what you've written definitely has a natural flow that just seems to make sense in my head.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Atlas - 11-05-2014

Great thoughts, they make a lot of sense. So from what I understand the majority needs a grimoire to draw their geometries, and the grimoire is essentially a collection of individual pages-- like any book. So an arcanist could take a page from their grimoire and write on it then use it like they would their grimoire. Finally, I believe that an arcanist should be able to inscribe a geometry in this manner, fold it up, tuck it away somewhere, and be able to use it in a pinch later. What say you on this? Personally I love the idea of whipping out a piece of paper from your pocket and bam! Magic.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Jazz Egi - 11-06-2014

I agree with a lot of your original post's concepts but disagree on the meaning of shapes themselves.

In my headcanon a geometry is sort of a circuit diagram for aether distribution. Healing magics require a completed circuit to allow gentle, even flow while offensive magic is intentionally ungrounded. A spell such as physick gently courses aether through a target while a spell like ruin spikes them with energy through ending the circuit with the target.

In the game it is evident that an overdose of aether can do many horrible things. Primals temper this way, and mutations based on elemental or corrupted aether are the basis for many monster ingame! This makes it very plausable that dousing opponents in aether is inherently dangerous, explaining why most offensive geometries are slow and toxic.

Back to the actual shapes, they could perhaps symbolize fundamentals of current control. Resistors, accelerators and logic circuits would all be necessary in formulating the exact flow you want. Elemental aspects may take part, but arcanima seems largely unaspected.

I recommend reading up on some basic electrical engineering, replacing any reference to electricity with aether. This theory is basically the hardware to your software. What if corrupted aether is just an absence of semicolons?

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Jazz Egi - 11-06-2014

(11-05-2014, 04:24 PM)Atlas Wrote: Great thoughts, they make a lot of sense. So from what I understand the majority needs a grimoire to draw their geometries, and the grimoire is essentially a collection of individual pages-- like any book. So an arcanist could take a page from their grimoire and write on it then use it like they would their grimoire. Finally, I believe that an arcanist should be able to inscribe a geometry in this manner, fold it up, tuck it away somewhere, and be able to use it in a pinch later. What say you on this? Personally I love the idea of whipping out a piece of paper from your pocket and bam! Magic.

Also, this is essentially scrolls.   There is no lore evidence of it but scrolls are one of my favorite mechanics in tabletop!  Always bring them along!

Edit:   Attached is a lexicon of a few circuit diagram symbols.   Looks pretty familiar, right?

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - HonZoMon - 11-06-2014

[Image: tumblr_inline_n15ng13AR01qz8z9o.gif]

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Unnamed Mercenary - 11-06-2014

I like and generally agree with the idea of geometry/magic circuits for arcanima. As a programmer, the idea of an arcanist's tome basically being a bunch of Magic ASM fits right in with my interests. If it worked like this, then I could rationalize casting without a tome as well, since it's fairly unlikely that a person would just be walking down the street thinking about how to program something extremely complex in some assembly language, rather than a higher-level language that allows for much more simplified keywords.

We know that the tomes contain the spells for arcanists to cast, so it could really be like a program, where the geometry is read and the arcanist compiles/executes it on a target. Just hope they never end up in an infinite loop or a stack overflow.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Goodfellow - 11-06-2014

I can get behind this subject and what everyone's proposed thus far.  My own headcannon is a little less exact, and intentionally so. 

The way Lolo utilizes the geometries is to treat them more as rough guides, general patterns that engage and tug at one's aether in a particular way, but a given individual will have more success "going off-book," so to speak, that is to say by following the feel/flow of their aether and adding flourishes/closing angles/widening parabolas/what have you, to personalize the geometry in some way so that it corresponds more directly to the aetheric situation in their own body.

So for example, tracing the pattern for Ruin exactly will indeed cast a basic instance of Ruin, but figuring out your own version inspired by and more or less following the original outline will cast a much stronger and fuller version of the basic Ruin paradigm.

Edit: So I guess if others are coming at this from a computing/programming point-of-view, my own is more inspired by language and style, which makes sense, given my RL work and interests.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Jazz Egi - 11-06-2014

(11-06-2014, 07:58 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: I like and generally agree with the idea of geometry/magic circuits for arcanima. As a programmer, the idea of an arcanist's tome basically being a bunch of Magic ASM fits right in with my interests. If it worked like this, then I could rationalize casting without a tome as well, since it's fairly unlikely that a person would just be walking down the street thinking about how to program something extremely complex in some assembly language, rather than a higher-level language that allows for much more simplified keywords.

We know that the tomes contain the spells for arcanists to cast, so it could really be like a program, where the geometry is read and the arcanist compiles/executes it on a target. Just hope they never end up in an infinite loop or a stack overflow.

Yeah.   ...I bet some grimoires have failsafes while the better ones don't!   Like, grimoires designed for spell tests and grimoires designed for pages that work.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Meoix - 11-06-2014

I'm new to the game so I apologize if anything I say breaks lore. Also, no matter what I tried to do (clear cache, cookies, restart browser, I couldn't get this quote to stop appearing on top of my post...).

Over all the concept is pretty interesting and does fit within some various lore.
I've usually thought of Aether as more a permutation of a subatomic particle forming another kind of matter. As it is the source of life, manipulation of external Aether via internal to manipulate the environment is what's known as magic. 

Creating special Aetheric 'particles' could allow for 'long' term effects ie. Regen, to provide effects so long as the amount of internal energy provided to the spell lasts. 
A real life example would be the chlorine molecule (Chlorine Monoxide/ClO) reacts to ozone (trioxygen/O3). In realife Chlorine constantly binds and more or less, depletes Ozone in the Ozone layer. Now imagine if that chlorine had to be powered to react with Ozone.

However my headcannon wouldn't allow for grimoires or geometric 'circuits' so my theory as several holes. Also a large amount of science knowledge of the environment would required for even simple spells.

Also as for infinite loops or stack overflow, granted probably recognized as a joke I'd like to have fun and think about it Smile.
Infinite loops naturally occur during paradoxical statements.
ie.
int i = 0;
while(i >= 0)
   i++;
Or, starting from 0, add 1 to the variable 'i' until it's while it's greater than or equal to 0.
This would go on 'forever'. (May not be the case depending on the system used).

Aether is an energy source. Loop a battery onto itself, no matter what else is in the loop and eventually the charge will dissipate due to either the resistance of the wire or what ever the electricity is powering. 

This would be the same for Aether, unless an unlimited energy source is available, the effect of the spell would drain, or any potential resistance from the environment would drain the energy also. (Perhaps this resistance comes off as light hence the glowy effects of magick.)

As for stack overflow I'm having a hard time imagining how this would occur with Aether (Again I'm just thinking about it for fun.).
Stack Overflow is very simply when a computer tries to read from system memory that does not exist, ie. If you have 128 'slots' of memory and the computer tries to access the 129th one.

The best I can come up with is either
A. The amount of internal energy required exceeds your own causing death or crumbling of said grimoire.  
B. If the nature of Aether transcends the 3 dimensional plane and causes a rift between two places or other dimensions in some form. 

Now please don't judge my post too harshly, I've only played the game for about a week now so I'm still a newbie Smile.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Unnamed Mercenary - 11-07-2014

(11-06-2014, 09:12 PM)Meoix Wrote: [clipped]

They were just programming jokes. I took a class where we had to make a compiler and it needed to be able to shoot off an error if either of those occured. (That it could detect). I don't think it'd be possible with arcanima because aether's still a limited resource.

From what we've been given lore-wise for Aether, SE has said it's similar to FF7 lifestream. We know that living things are born from it and return to it. The game directly states that people have different sized aether reserves, which in a programming mindset, would be like physical memory. I've seen others refer to aether reserves like a cup. You can only use so much liquid in a cup until it's gone and you have to wait to fill it up again. Not all cups are the same size, and some can hold more, some might only let a little liquid out, etc.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Meoix - 11-07-2014

(11-07-2014, 12:47 PM)Unnamed Mercenary Wrote: They were just programming jokes. I took a class where we had to make a compiler and it needed to be able to shoot off an error if either of those occured. (That it could detect). I don't think it'd be possible with arcanima because aether's still a limited resource.

From what we've been given lore-wise for Aether, SE has said it's similar  to FF7 lifestream. We know that living things are born from it and return to it. The game directly states that people have different sized aether reserves, which in a programming mindset, would be like physical memory. I've seen others refer  to aether reserves like a cup. You can only use so much liquid in a cup until it's gone and you have to wait to fill it up again. Not all cups are the same size, and some can hold more, some might only let a little liquid out, etc.

I know, I was just having fun will rolling with it to see how possible 'similar' events were.
I'm a developer myself that's where my mind set comes from.

RE: Geometry Headcanon/Discussion - Titor - 11-07-2014

I love the idea that it is like aetheric ASM, that was kind of the idea that I was going with but like conceptualizing it like that never hit me.

Also using circuit diagrams, yes. Maybe a combination of the two? The circuit elements are more like the internals, and the jagged/curved is more like the overall shape of the geometry. 

I have my degree in EECS so all of this is supppeerrr interesting to me. And exactly what I was going for. So I am glad that a lot of people have the same idea for it!

As for summoning/life, I was thinking more this was drawing up an actual entity out of the aetherflow (like how summoners pull on the primal's energy, they are not re-engineering the primal's life). So like, in the Aetherflow there are carbuncles, or one giant carbuncle that you pill bits and pieces from, and so when you summon them it is more like a familiar. The arcanist in MD seems to treat their carbuncle like a pet, instead of like a master/slave kind of relationship, so I think that arcanists with carbuncles would keep them more like friends or pets.

They are not drawing up the life itself and bringing forth a new entity (which is why all carbuncles look similar and stuff, and there are not people who have like dragon fish godlike summons that they designed and created themselves). So along that lines I was thinking of summoning not as geometries but as a kind of pet/familiar relationship. Summoning a carbuncle (since it is a low level skill in game and a lot of arcanists are shown with them) seems to be a pretty basic move for an arcanist if they want one, so I doubt it is anything complex or hard like engineering the carbuncle's whole life and form.