Thus Spake Zaraborgstrom/SeaOfMind
Contents
Its Halucination
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/13/2004 18:26:32
Imagine that you're out at the beach. You see a child swimming out at sea. You smile. Cute kid. So happy. It's good that there's sun and sea and kids can have fun.
Wait, no, the kid isn't swimming. The kid's drowning! You're seeing the same thing. Limbs flashing. Kid in water. It's all the same. But it's not sweet. It's horrible! You jump to your feet and rush to the water.
Wait, no, now that you're standing up and can see it better, that's not a kid. It's just some shiny driftwood.
**\\ The world you're living in depends a little bit on your perceptions. Just a little bit. I mean, it's pretty clear that it was *always* driftwood, right? The kid you saw---he never existed. He was never swimming. He was never drowning. The reality you interacted with was always the same.
. . . but now suppose that you're three years old.
**\\ Wait, no. That's not driftwood! It's a giant octopus! It's reaching for you! It seems all hope is lost! But then, the Five Metal Blimp rushes to your rescue! It lowers a rope ladder. You grab hold! You rush off through the air. The tentacles grasp for you and miss as you sway in the air. You salute the octopus. Good bye, mutant sea monster! Good bye!
**\\ I originally wrote 'suppose you're drugged'. But that actually looks more like a three-year-old reality than Hunter S. Thompson quote. :) So.
Either way---three years old or drugged---what were you actually doing? There's no Five Metal Blimp in Exalted. It's unlikely that you're *actually* flying away on a rope ladder. But that's what you see. That's your reality.
What do other people see? Well, if you're a really smart three year old, or if you're good at handling drug experiences, or whatever, you'll seem delusional but lucid. You may be running around on the beach thinking you're hanging from the Five Metal Shrike, but you don't run into walls, and if people ask you, "Hey, what's the answer to this math question," you can still give them one.
**\\ So, that's the Sea of Mind. It's not something you enter physically. It's something that you *see* and *hear* and *feel*. It changes your perceptions. And sometimes it changes how you act. It's like a daydream or hallucination that all the Forest Witches share. It's like a secret world that only they can see. It's like a virtual reality that they're plugged into. It's like a real alternate universe that they have visions of. It's like an incomplete universe that they're building with their dreams. It's like a lot of things. But in practical terms, it's closest to a hallucination that's being maintained by Essence. It's consistent with other Essence manipulations the Sea does---if you hallucinate a dead friend, and you put your friend's hearthstone-like thing in a warstrider so that the Sea can animate it, the hallucination and the animation are consistent. :)
Rebecca
Yozi's Method of Escaping Malfeas
> The_Boot_of_Nero > I'm content with my theory it's the Yozis' secret method by which they shall escape Malfeas and whup Exalt ass. --but that's just me NB
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/13/2004 18:42:53
:)
It's a good theory! And I put in some hooks for that sort of thing deliberately.
Rebecca
Where Artifacts Go, and Dead or Not
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/14/2004 03:53:52
> nexus > So its like Virtuality from Cybergeneration?
I don't know. My GM won't let me read Cybergeneration. Apparently, there is much that will be spoiled if he ever gets around to running it. :)
> jester7789 > So RSB, where do the Artfacts sacrificed to the sea go? are they destroyed or mystically 'hooked up' to the sea like a battery to a car?
More the latter, I suspect. Fuel for the fire. :)
> jester7789 > and do the cheap charms bought in the sea effect the real world if it is congruent with the sea?
I'm not sure what you mean.
> jester7789 > by the way, your stuff is probably my most favorite of all the Exalted authors!
Thank you for your kind words. :)
> Agent333 > What I still don't get is how you be dead and need Dragon Armor to interact with Creation. If you're dead, shouldn't you be a ghost? And therefore NOT be a Dragon-Blooded? Rebecca, your explanation was great but could you help clear this up?
Sure.
Suppose you think the Sea of Mind is real but a different place.
Then in the instant of your death, the Sea of Mind copies you. In the Sea, you don't die---you become an immortal citizen of Atsiluth Eternal. Your mind goes on. In that context, you're still a Dragon-Blooded.
Suppose you think that it's just a hallucination.
Then when you die, the Sea of Mind causes everyone to hallucinate that you're now a Dragon-Blooded citizen of Atsiluth Eternal. Everyone sees you step out of your old shell of a body in Creation and live forever in the Sea of Mind. They're just hallucinating, so it doesn't matter whether they see you with ghost powers, Dragon-Blooded Charms, or, for that matter, Solar Charms. :)
It's like I said in another thread---if someone wrote a history about you later, they'd write a history about you as a Dragon-Blooded, not a ghost. If your friends remembered you later, they'd remember you as a Dragon-Blooded, not a ghost. If kids ran around pretending to be you, they'd pretend to be a Dragon-Blooded, not a ghost. If people said, "Well, what <your name> would have done now is <action>", they'd talk about Dragon-Blooded actions, not a ghost's. When people see you in the Sea, they see a Dragon-Blooded, not a ghost.
Is it real? Does it matter?
Rebecca
On Drugs, or About to Transcend
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/14/2004 15:50:51
> jester7789 > I was sure, at least for a second, that the Dragon Blooded who were attuned to the sea of mind could bye Charms for extremely cheap, but the Charms are suppose to only work in the perfected vision of the sea,
Ah. Yes. You can get cheap combat Charms that only activate when you burn a Valor. They never manifest in Creation---they're just a demonstration of how invincible you become, in the Sea, when you apply your Valor to something.
From an external perspective, the Sea doesn't give the Witches much. It pumps their morale, gives them something to work towards, and it doesn't hurt that they have some access to prophecy and self-activated suits of armour. These are useful. One can make a case that the Sea provides some guidance . . . it might help them accomplish things sometimes, to minimize the divergence between reality and Sea. But for the most part, all the kewl powerz they get through the Sea are . . . imaginary.
The Witches know this. It's worth understanding that. They know that it's all just a big daydream. But they also think that if they gather enough power, then one day, it *won't* be a big daydream. The Sea'll change the rules of Creation, or exist somewhere outside Creation, and then the Forest Witches really *will* be immortal and cooler than toast.
Whether they're right depends on whether you want to think of them as posthumans on the verge of transcendence or drug addicts promising themselves that they'll be rich enough to afford better drugs someday. If they're somewhere in between, then they're probably half-right: pawns, but with a mostly right idea about where things are going.
> Agent333 > Anyhoo, what about the armor?
The armor lets you interact with Creation for real. Basically, the armor hallucinates that you're inside and moves accordingly.
Why do you care whether it's for real in Creation, if you're already a dead Witch who only exists to whatever extent the Sea is real? Mostly, because each paradox---where you do something in the Sea, but not in the real world---makes the Sea burn Essence faster keeping its reality consistent. So the dead are encouraged to use the armor.
> Agent333 > If Astiluth Eternal's nothing but a grand illusion, how do the living visit?
I believe that they walk into the pool and disappear for a while. :)
Rebecca\\ The Witch-King turns <the radio> down. "Barry Manilow is wise," he says. "Listen to Barry Manilow."\\ I REMEMBER ALL MY LIFE, http://rebecca.hitherby.com
Comment: so *that's* where Mages come from in the WoD. The Sea gets really big... and here I thought it was the Sidereals.
Why the Dead have a Stealth Bonus
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/17/2004 05:37:25
The +3 to Stealth is from the perspective of the Sea.
It's because it's easier for the Sea to determine what "happens" if you never get spotted. When a dead person "trips" and "alerts the dogs" and "rouses the fortress" and "the army charges out to attack the Witches" . . .
Well, none of that actually happens in Creation. The dead person does not even *exist* from Creation's perspective. So that's a heck of a lot of work the Sea has to do, all because your dead PC botched a Stealth roll. So the Sea gives dead people free sneakiness. But not too much, since from the PCs' perspective, they're alive. :)
Rules for the dead of the Sea are written from the perspective of the Sea. From Creation's perspective, they don't need rules---they never do anything. (Creation blames possessed armor on the Walking Stones.)
Rebecca
Walking Armour
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/17/2004 05:41:29
> jester7789 > So what kind of health do I give these walking hallucinating armors?
Those of the dead D-B inside. :)
You can kill the dead of the Sea; unless it was cut or heavily edited, the relevant phrase is:
---if “slain”, the dead of the Sea must simply wait until the will of the elders’ council recreates them.
Rebecca
What happened to the child who was never born
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/17/2004 20:14:38
Well, here's the thing.
Suppose someone had spent Virtue to find her, during her exile. What would have happened?
They would have found her. Remember, she's basically a dream of her father's . . . a dream of the living Forest Witches. She wasn't removed from the dream. When a normal Forest Witch gets exiled, it's not like the other Witches suddenly can't see *her*. Why would she be different?
Exile means that *you* can't see the *Sea*.
So that's all that happened to her. It's not like -- inasmuch as she ever existed -- she stopped *existing*. Oh, the Sea probably explained stuff away by making her "go away" and "be very hard to find". But she was still a part of the dream.
She just couldn't *perceive* the world of the Sea any more.
I can think of many very interesting things that she might have seen and felt in the year of exile. But if you don't want to explore it, 'nothing' is adequate to explain the observed facts.
Rebecca
rebeccaborgstrom - 02/18/2004 15:19:33
:)
I figure that a year of sensory deprivation is the simplest, most plausible outcome, and yes, it's pretty horrific.
Spending a year in Creation as a nonexistent person who can't interact with anything, even the Underworld, is also kind of interesting. And I figure that if the Storyteller decides anything interesting about what the Sea is---I put in some seed ideas for this, although you can just take the Sea literally---then it might shape that girl's experience. One of the reasons she's there is so that players can go, "What? The Sea could be *what?* . . . oh, ****, we have to go talk to that girl again. I didn't pay enough attention to her rant . . ."
Rebecca
