MacThorstenson

"You will be coming back here. Follow me." Mac turned and started walking. He then stopped at the wall and poked it. Opening up a long dirt path that looked like it was cut into a mountain. "Step through here, then I will close the door. Come back to this alley. Remember, don't look at the void. Good luck."

The young DA scientist realized with horror that he forgot to specify spiritual gene in his suggestion. He quickly tried to fix that by shouting it really loudly.

Ahhhhh. It makes sense now. "To answer your question, not quite. But your response makes sense. I would caution you against doing that however. The alleys, while they aren't alive, are intelligent. They also look at what you are trying to do when you alleytravel. What you did worked. You did con the alleys and you moved them. But they knew that you were conning them, and they didn't like that. They had to follow your mind, but they tried to make you suffer because of it. A bit like if you are driving a horse that hates you. You can continue trying to con the alleys, but when you do so, you need to make sure that you believe that you can do it 100%. You need to believe it so completely, that there isn't even a con. To get in the mindset of alley traveling you can think about it as a con job. But when you actually travel your mind needs to be clear, that you are doing something normally. That nothing is wrong. Does that make sense? But back to your question. There are two types of creating new paths. The one that most people do, and yourself included, is taking alleys and moving them to make a path. Like laying down bricks to form a path. What clay boy did was change where the alleys that he was in were. He stretched them out and slid that one alley around so that it would connect. He didn't create paths, but moved one path to end at a different place. The other type of creating new paths is something that only me and Voidus can do. Essentially we make new alleys to get us where we want. These alleys rarely last long without voidus' help however. So when I make them they tend to be very temporary. But they are incredibly versatile." Mac paused. "Do you think you can try alley traveling again? Or do you have more questions."

"It would generally work, but I need to know what you did last time, because it could be part of the reason why you popped out screaming. The alleys, while they bend to your will, also know about you and know you. If they think you are messing with them when you shouldn't be, they will punish you. For example, the guy who played with them like clay. He molded them like a lump of clay, using hand motions as a trigger. The first time he did this, the alleys were molded around to fit him. He didn't make a new path like i have been doing, he changed what was there. After we got him supplements everything was straightened out, but still he tended to move pathways instead of making them. I'm concerned that even once we give you these with supplements, whatever caused you to collapse and scream will still be affecting you."

"Not here it wouldn't. The alleys are safer here, so if you had stepped off it wouldn't have been too bad. But it would have been irritating. But you aren't answering my question. Im not phrasing it the best way, but I need to know what you thought it was like. For some people, when they start trying to alley travel, they think of themselves manipulating something. And that is how they believe that the alleys are under their control. One guy a while back thought of it like a con-job, but he was a mess for a variety of reasons. There needs to be something that you think you are doing, whether its playing with clay or baking a cake, otherwise you can't manipulate the alleys without knowing their true nature. And that takes forever to figure out. So what is it for you?"

Mac breathed a sigh of relief. "Ok, that's good. At least you didn't look into the void. You shouldn't have gotten that close to it this time, but you did the right thing. Someday you will be able to look into the void, but generally it means certain death. The tin also shouldn't have been an issue. But can you describe to me your thought process? What did you think you were doing?" Internally he sighed. That came out wrong. "Sorry, bad phrasing. When you thought about alleytravel, did you think about it like you were just walking? Like you were folding origami? One guy even says its a bit like baking a cake for him. So what did you think it was like?"

Before I say anything else, please understand that its not my intention to say anything offensive or sexist. Lets all keep cool heads while discussing this as it is a touchy subject in the real world and all of us are coming from different backgrounds with this. That said, I would like to respectfully disagree, and I would like to note that what I was saying was trying to refer to the culture as a whole and not what our characters can do. Because like you said, we can use natural magic for our characters. My concern with using natural magic on a large scale is that it would result in a few extraordinary people, and not necessarily equality between the genders. We have a few notable examples of strong women in our history as a world, and I think that natural magic would result in something similar. Those extraordinary people would most likely be our characters, but they would still live in a world where women are physically weaker than men. Which means that they would need to be fighting that judgement and persecution every time they enter a place with people. And while it is definitely true that this is not our medieval world, there are a lot of similarities. Namely that physical strength is likely going to be one of the most valued traits for a person. People are still farming via plows and horses, they are loading crates onto ships by hand. They are still fighting hand to hand. Unfortunately this is the one area where women tend to fall behind men. So if we intend to men and women to be equal in the society, we would need someway to counter the fact that the strength of women tends to be lower than the strength of men. I would point out that intellectually men and women would easily be equals. They both have equal capacity for ritual magic and thus would be considered equal in magical circles. EDIT: I would also like to say, like others had, that due to the fact that Kuria is a trade kingdom, it would tend to be more egalitarian. And I don't think that we need to take any artistic licence to say that women in shops or in magic or politics are equal. But I do think that due to the logical magic system, people would tend to approach things like this logically. Women aren't any worse then men in politics, or in science, finance, or education. But when it comes to fighting a war, or the physical labor of farming, there would be difference in ability logically.

I think the initial reason behind doing some gender divide was in order to provide some reason why women wouldn't be inferior to men without using a lot of handwavium. Otherwise the gender divide would be pretty clear, men would be adventuring and women in the house. This isn't a modern society, and the fighting style is such that women are in a severe disadvantage biologically.

Mac appeared back where they started, next to Laurelai. He never really liked this part of the process. There wasn't too much that could go wrong, but what could go wrong was absolutely terrifying. It was a very efficient system when you thought about it. They would either make it back and be fully useful, or they would make it back and be broken so terribly that we didn't need to worry about them. Or they didn't make it back at all. Suddenly with a clap like thunder Lita appeared and collapsed, screaming. Mac reflexively warped 10 feet back, confused. That never happened. There was never sound, no indication of change. Alleytravel was instantaneous. It wasn't even clear if it was temporal. He slowly walked toward the weeping figure on the ground, trying to make sure she wasn't possessed. What had happened there? People never came back like this. They were either comatose, dead, or insane, but never screaming and crying. "What happened back there?" He asked softly. "Are you alright? Tell me what happened."

One of the DA members proposed that maybe there was a gene for blowing raspberries, and it wasn't just a factor of your lung capacity.

Here's an idea if we want to split up the innate magic in a way that is more evenly divided. One half of the Innate's can see the ritual side of things, the other can see the natural side. The ritual side works as explained. But the natural side can see belief. It can look at people and see what they believe and see how they view the world. It can also show you what would make them change their mind. If the ritual side is viewing the spiritwebs and translating that into symbols, the natural side is looking at the cognitive aspects (how they see and perceive the world) and translating that into language. We could easily divide this across gender lines, which would pose interesting things with one gender being much more ritual oriented and the other more natural oriented. It would also have the added affect of women being highly valued as speakers and stateswomen.

While you are kind of joking, this does raise a question, what affect do the different regions of the world and their beliefs about the creation have on the world itself? As to @kenod‘s post, that makes a lot of sense thank you. And I wouldn’t expect everyone or anyone to be able to get the grammar right. I don’t even know the whole language, only that which is easily reasearchable. I would even be fine with the language being dead and studied like Latin is today.

I have one concern with using different Scandinavian languages, and that is that a lot of them are similar to English. Old Norse was very isolated in Iceland, and didn’t really change. So Icelandic is nearly the same language as old Norse, and both are very different from other languages.

Basically. Shadowlord sith proposed a change to the magic that would make women more equal. I love this Idea. This is one of my favorite ideas ever. Me encanta.

If we have a constand, I would like a nordic name to be it. I am more biased toward old norse names, because I am part icelandic, but I like the idea of using the oldnorse/icelandic word for earth. Jörð. Its a mess to pronounce for English speakers, but looks archaic and foreign in my opinion. To pronounce Jörð: The J makes a y sound. The ö makes a u sound like in "fur" or "urgent". The r is like a spanish rolled r. The ð is like a th in "that" or "feather". OK. That makes sense. We would need to map out the ley lines though.

I think that whatever the planet name is should either be a constant throughout the world, or language specific. If it’s language specific we should use the same naming conventions we will be using for the rest of the locations. If it’s a world constant, we would need to figure out the oldest culture in the world and use those names. I am more biased toward nordic names, because I am part icelandic, but I like the idea of using the oldnorse/icelandic word for earth. Jörð. Its a mess to pronounce for English speakers, but looks archaic and foreign in my opinion. EDIT: Yeah, eventually the mod team will be rolling out a style guide so that things are a tad more organized. I hope that a part of that is that different settings will have different orange tags in front of their name.

I do think that we need to come up with a name for the world. Also, in order to keep things organized, whenever we post threads for this setting let’s make sure to have the world name as a tag, and have that tag as a orange box before the title of the thread. Finally, @ShadowLord_Lith, does that mean that the women can understand the totality of the ritual circles and the individual runes? Or just the purpose of the general circles? Also what do you mean that women are able to draw on ey magic themselves. EDIT: I’m not sure I want anyone to be able to use the magic without a fuel, because then they get really OP.

Mac raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I genuinely did not expect you to keep your sanity. Most people break after having the normal concepts of space and time broken down before their eyes." He clasped his hands, and started walking down the alley. "You don't need to worry about your sanity or safety here. This is alley 5937. We keep it specially for training people to alleytravel. Now, on to alleytraveling. To alleytravel, you need to understand a few things about the alleys. The biggest and first thing is that the alleys are fluid. They are always changing and shifting depending on a variety of things. In fact, the alley's may be similar to electrons in that they are in a constant state of flux when they aren't observed. Why is this important? Because it allows you to know that where ever you want the alleys to take you they can. The path doesn't need to be logical, it doesn't even need to hav been there yesterday. The alleys can make it. The second is that the alleys are everywhere. They can connect to every single alleyway in the entire multiverse. They connect to even more than alleyways, but that's not important right now. What's important is that they can take you from every place, to every other place. They are an ever shifting labyrinth that has infinite entrances that you can control with your mind," He paused for a breath, "Once you know those two things, all it takes is believing them. Once you truly believe them, you can alleytravel. All it takes is concentrating with an obscene amount of strength on where you want to go and how you want to get there. So right now, I want you to think about where we are now. Once you have that in your mind, I will take you to a different alley. Then, I want you to believe with all of your strength that they alleys will bend to your will. That they will move you there. Then, holding that thought in your mind, start walking forward and turn when you feel like you should. Don't worry about getting lost and getting killed in horrible ways. This is a safe space to practice." Mac stopped talking and looked at her with concern. Most people didn't make it. They would get lost, accidentally look into the void, or walk into an eldritch horror. It was a shame to risk their lives with this. If we had to kill them it might as well be in the name of science. Lita had so much potential too. But it had to be done. This was as much a measure of aptitude as it was them learning how to alleytravel. It would tell Mac how many supplements to give her. Hoping that she had gotten familiar with their surroundings enough to will herself back there. Mac motioned for her to follow him, then started walking. After about 3 steps everything changed. The walls were no longer slabs of concrete, they were bricks. The sky grew more blue, and the ground turned to dirt. Mac closed the path that they had just walked through then said, "I will come find you in 5 minutes if you can't get back." With that he disappeared.

"It has certainly been an illuminating couple of hours," She said. Mac decided that it would probably be best for her to retain her sanity a little longer, so he didn't mention that this R&D Laboratory was outside of the normal time stream. Instead he grinned, "You have no idea. Follow me please." He walked to the door of the lab and opened it up into what appeared to be an infinite blackness with a single white path. Before walking out onto the path he turned around, staring at her. "Do not, under any circumstances, step off of the path. Alley 7+86i is an interesting one, as you will soon find out. But do not leave the path." He then started walking down the alley. Like most of the imaginary alleys, this one changed after every step. Every step he took the color of the path and and the void surrounding it changed randomly. Thankfully he was not epileptic, or else he would have been in trouble. He walked about 100 yards then stopped and opened an invisible door next to the path. This one was a door to the more traditional alleys. The ones with integers as their labels. These just looked like normal city alleys. Once there he waited for Lita to arrive. @ZincAboutIt