Swimmingly

Except that that's a one-time boost, and Kaladin implies later on that Dalinar supercharged him again.

Here it is. This feels a LOT like Brandon's novels. It's got the same tight pacing, similar effective prose, great worldbuilding, you know the rest. This is a world where fame grants power. Dominic de Luca is a young man on the brink of poverty, scraping money in however he can - and it's not fast enough. When a battle between demigods takes an unexpected turn, his life changes forever.

I just tried to get on the Coppermind. And then it just... stopped working. coppermind.net 403 Forbidden You have requested a web page that is not available. This could be for a number of reasons: The site may not be set up yet. Sites are not available until the site administrator has uploaded the site content. This directory may not have an index file. Directory indexes are disabled by default as a security precaution. You may not be allowed to access this site or page. Access may be limited to visitors meeting certain criteria or from certain locations. Please contact the site administrator for more information. If you are the site administrator: To upload files to the site, follow these instructions. To allow your directories to be indexed, follow these instructions. To replace this error message with one of your own, follow these instructions. Site Administrator: [email protected] NearlyFreeSpeech Error 403

Die on a bed fully charged Ferucemically. Made of gold.

With Stormlight constantly healing crushed lungs/boosting muscle strength/preventing you from needing to breath, it becomes irrelevant.With Feruchemical pewter, Feruchemical iron, Feruchemical gold, Allomantic pewter, Feruchemical cadmium, more than a normal human to an arbitrary amount. Otherwise, no idea.

Perhaps they've got superhuman speeds and reaction times? Or maybe constant Stormlight healing sans Stormlight?

Unless it simply never occurred to them that powers could be gifted.

At least they aren't becoming an equinonymous herd. That would truly be terrifying.

I haven't actually worked out the spirits' behaviour yet. I figured that could wait for another time, as the focus of what I'm going to be doing is the diagrams.

Ok, I'm going to try to describe this a different way: Imagine that each diagram is function in a program, which accepts only spacial parameters. So long as the deal's valid, anybody can call it by inscribing the diagram with red dust (this is usually done by tracing it in an adhesive and brushing the dust over it). As to capabilities, I want to leave that more open-ended. Because of the changeable nature of deals (e.g, if there's a diagram tied to a person's lifespan, or tied to the power of a dead or imprisoned entity, or only works every other day) it's most effective to memorise well-documented diagrams tied to powerful entities with few restrictions. It also means that, if you mess up, your diagram either doesn't work at all or does something entirely different. I want to roughly confine the effects to the purely physical, but even that has some wiggle room. Again, you do not use the diagrams to summon anything. That's entirely different. And the spirits can affect people without a deal. They just tend to move through pawns, worshippers, or negotiators who traded a favour for a diagram.

Basically, when a deal is made, it's in "the public domain" so to speak. The negotiator can keep the diagram secret, if he wants, but anybody using that configuration of shapes can access it. Also, the deals are by no means a required art for the diagrammists. That's something entirely different, even if it's a logical progression. An analogy that works is that the negotiators are electricians, connecting the switch to the power line and the lightbulb. Diagrammists just flip the switch. The only difference is that, because the wires are metaphysical, the lightbulb can be anywhere.

So, I'm writing an urban fantasy (think Dresden Files) and I want to have a world where there are an indeterminate number of magic systems, all supporting eachother in one way or another, and possible to group in any number of ways depending on your perspective. Anyway, the system I want to focus on is diagrams. My idea for diagrams is that they're very specific geometric figures which invoke agreements with abstract entities. These deals can be set up by shamans, priests, summoners, diabolists, whatever, but they come down to an agreement whereby the entity agrees to cause such and such effect whenever a particular geometric shape is drawn and traced with activation dust. For example, a minor spirit of gravity might agree to power a small region of weightlessness when such and such diagram is inscribed. The price might be worship, it might be a symbolic offering of power, it might be an inch of height, it might be the chance to corrupt the negotiator with some measure of mental and bodily influence. Anyway, I want to explore the way that, while there might be an official guide to designing these diagrams, in the end, it's really up to the negotiator what it looks like. I could draw some interesting parallels between this and language, I think.

It sort of reminds me of that Sherlock and Holmes IN THE FUTURE thing, but better defined. I think that, if you could keep the stories recognizable as containing elements of a proper Holmes mystery as well as the themes and plots of the period aspect, it could turn out quite well. On the other hand, it would be much like lining up a pile each of bowling balls, knives, feathers, and loaded handguns, then promising to juggle them in succession while riding a unicycle. In case the metaphor is not clear, it might not be pretty if you messed up. I would also warn against falling into stereotypes of period pieces, and looking at the kinds of twists you could do with it. Quite a lot of bad fanfiction happens when people take characters they enjoy reading, settings they enjoy reading, and mashing it all together with mediocre writing and very poor themes. Not to cast this in any sort of negative light - I know you enjoy fanfiction - but that is what this boils down to: transplanting characters into new situations. It needs to be done exceptionally to look good. Those issues avoided and your exemplary writing adhered to, it'll kick some serious rock-shelled saddle-backed chull.