Age of Ideas: Dawn QuixoticThe Fire being augmented, the Drops became red, and congealed as they fell into the Receiver; this lasted about two Hours.
The Fire being again augmented, the Receiver was filled with white Clouds, which I saw resolve into a kind of Dew, white and unctuous, which was partly Spirit, and partly a white Oil; the red Drops however continued to the End...M. de Chélus,
The Natural History of Chocolate
The Greater Ideas, ever hungry for insight, variously gathered together the ambient Lesser Ideas, reflected on their own Ideas, or some combination of the two. In the process of contemplating their Ideas, quite a few of them saw Leads, hints of Projects by which to go beyond sterile thought.
It is now possible to Ruminate on Leads (and Co-Ruminate) to gain Projects.
Luck saw crossroads, tipping points, frequencies, and metastability in Divergence and Quantity and drew them in. In doing so,
Luck gained a Lead on
Luck manipulation.
Unique saw
Uniqueness in the weakness and sentience of Convergence, but it was
Luck that absorbed Convergence.
Contradiction gathered together Cooperation and Discord and sought to reconcile the two to Discord's hypothetical chagrin. This resulted in the highly unstable concept of Tradiction. The meaning of this Idea is uncertain, but
Contradiction gleaned some insight on the decay of unstable Ideas from this experiment.
Silence refuted the Idea of Noise as
Idol tried to to absorb it, and Silence appears to have succeeded.
Silence also absorbed the Idea of the Pariah and Rejection and found inspiration on improved denial.
Undoubtedly wary of the alignment of
Luck and
Chaos,
Fate refuted the idea of Misfortune and, unfortunately for
Chaos, succeeded. With
Fate's prospects improving,
Fate took in the Ideas of Continuity and Direction and saw glimpses of an interesting concept of some sort that could possibly tame the Ideosphere.
Denied Misfortune,
Chaos dithered and came up with the Idea of Exchange.
Chaos spotted a potentially useful Lead in this Idea, but as with all other Leads, it will take some work to implement.
Chaos also extrapolated from itself and discovered Complexity, a horrifying yet common cause of mundicide.
Idol absorbed Existence and discovered Image by extrapolating from its core. Combined with Direction, these Ideas could lead to something interesting...
Unique extrapolated from itself and found Scarcity. Uniqueness also observed and copied
Contradiction, diluting the Idea! As a result of this event, both
Unique and
Contradiction found strange Leads.
As for the complimentary divination,
Luck was briefly opposite
Chaos and
Unique and thus influenced/was influenced by
Unique in some way.
Fate is no longer eclipsed by
Luck or observing an alignment of
Luck and
Chaos but did briefly observe a conjunction of
Luck and
Contradiction. Alarmingly (or maybe not), there are no interesting alignments in progress.
Even as the Greater Ideas thought as they did, the Lesser Ideas were busy doing as they thought. Certainly, none of them approached the Greater Ideas in stature, but from transient non-ideal constructs to minuscule short-lived projects, some of their more esoteric creations extended beyond what was considered plausible. Here they are in no particular order:
- Discreteness (:2)
- Emptiness (:1)
- Repetition (:2)
- Volition (:2)
- Boundary
- Confusion (sentient, weak)
- Consistency
- Desire
- Dimension
- Inversion (strong)
- Manipulation
- Order
- Release
- Relevance
- Sacrifice
- Understanding
It is currently the Age of Ideas. Speech has been discovered but not Naming. Three actions are available for each Greater Idea.
Unnameable One (Glass)
- Orbit: 0
- Ideas: Luck (sapient!), Divergence, Convergence (weak, sentient), Quantity (strong)
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
Unnameable One (Nakéen)
- Orbit: 2
- Ideas: Contradiction (weak, sapient!), Tradiction (unstable!)
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
- Unstable Ideas (0/2A)
- Piratical project (0/2A)
Unnameable One (micelus)
- Orbit: 4
- Ideas: Silence (sapient!), Pariah, Rejection
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
Unnameable One (Demonic Spoon)
- Orbit: 8
- Ideas: Fate (sapient!), Continuity, Direction
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
- Interesting big thing of some sort (0/6A)
Unnameable One (crazyabe)
- Orbit: a
- Ideas: Chaos (sapient!), Exchange, Complexity
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
Unnameable One (TricMagic)
- Orbit: c
- Ideas: Idol (sapient!), Existence, Image
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
- Something big and interesting (requires Existence, Direction, ? ? ?) (0/6A)
Unnameable One (Stirk)
- Orbit: f
- Ideas: Unique (sapient!), Scarcity, Contradiction (weak, sapient!)
- Crystallization: 0
- Leads:
Greater Ideas can perform
twothree actions every turn despite the lack of coherent time:
- Absorb: Absorb an Idea from the ambient Ideosphere. Where two Greater Ideas compete for the same Idea, the targeted Idea is given to low-Crystallization and low-Orbit Ideas in equal measure (with Orbit taking precedence in ties). Opposition by other means (such as Refute[/b[ actions) result in opposed rolls also with Orbit and Crystallization modifiers.
- Accrete: Strengthen an owned Idea by sacrificing another one. May fail and annihilate both Ideas if the sacrifice is too close to an inverse of the target Idea.
- Agree: Create a related target-owned Idea of your choice and an owned Idea of the target's choice. Both sides must have a sapient Idea, and both sides must sacrifice an Idea. This action must be accompanied by at least one line of dialog from both sides.
- Argue: Attempt to remove an Idea owned by another Greater Idea. Requires an owned sapient Idea and must be accompanied by at least one line of dialog. Modifiers: -Rebuttal from target, -High target Crystallization
- Ascend: Decrease Orbit by 1. Fails if a Greater Idea occupies the resulting Orbit.
- Compare: Select two owned Ideas to generate a related but random new Idea.
- Copy: Attempt to weaken a target-owned Idea and create a weakened owned copy. Modifiers: +Higher Orbit.
- Co-Ruminate: Contribute to investigating a Lead.
- Create/Destroy/Modify: Create, destroy, or modify something. Nothing interesting happens, strangely enough...
- Descend: Increase Orbit by 1. Fails if a Greater Idea occupies the resulting Orbit.
- Disavow: Disown an owned Idea.
- Dither: Create an entirely new owned Idea.
- Extrapolate: Attempt to generate a new Idea from an existing owned one. Modifiers: +Lower Crystallization.
- Fade: Default action. Greater Ideas fade to irrelevance over 3 turns, after which another Greater Idea may arise in their Orbit.
- Forget: Attempt to decrease Crystallization by sacrificing an Idea. The older the Idea or the closer to the Core Idea, the greater the resulting decrease. Recently acquired Ideas are unlikely to reduce Crystallization by more than 1-2.
- Refute: Attempt to destroy an unowned Idea. Modifiers: +Similar owned Idea, +High Orbit
- Resolve: Increase Crystallization progress.
- Retract: Attempt to invert an owned Idea. Modifiers: +Lower Crystallization, -High similarity to core Idea (if not core Idea).
- Ruminate: Work on turning a Lead into a Project. Most Leads take 1-4 actions to complete.
- Synthesize: Sacrifice opposing owned Ideas to generate a stronger Idea not opposed to either. Result can be specified within reason.
- Teach: Weaken an owned Idea and create a target-owned also weakened copy. Modifiers: +Lower target Crystallization, -Higher Orbit
- Transcend: Currently swaps Orbits with a neighboring Greater Idea. Requires permission from the target.
A number of actions are unknown as of now.
The next update is scheduled for 48h from now or after everyone posts whichever comes first.
Author
Topic: Age of Ideas IC: Hello World (7/16) (Read 4556 times)